“Ukraine – Russia”

A man swimming in the sea off an Odesa beach in Ukraine has been blown up in front of his family by an apparent mine.

Footage shared by Odesa Region Police shows the sudden blast yards from the shore, scattering the 50-year-old’s body parts across the beach as his distressed wife, son and friend watched on.

A man in Odessa went swimming in the sea and died after being blown up by a mine.

The beaches in #Odessa were mined by Ukrainians in the spring of 2022. pic.twitter.com/B0MpCIEUOo

— Егор (@aleksandrov_76) June 11, 2022

The UK has drastically increased the volume of natural gas being pumped to the EU amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, powering a record monthly rise in goods exports to the continent despite Brexit.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show EU goods exports rose for the third consecutive month to £16.4bn in April, the highest monthly level in current prices since comparable records began in 1997.

In Canada … Oil prices are rising, but Canada is getting comparatively less for every barrel — here’s why

Russia has killed hundreds of civilians in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv using indiscriminate shelling and widely-banned cluster munitions, according to new research by Amnesty International.

Amnesty said it had found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using 9N210/9N235 cluster bombs, as well as “scatterable” munitions – rockets that eject smaller mines that explode later at timed intervals.

#Ukraine: A Russian tank, moving as a part of convoy, was blown up on an anti-tank mine placed by the 57th Infantry Brigade in the vicinity of Lysychansk, #Luhansk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/JJbOUozHkY

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) June 11, 2022

Ukraine’s war with Russia is heading towards its fifth month amid increasing local concern that dwindling media attention could lead to a gradual loss of western support just as Moscow is making slow but steady gains on the frontline.

The anxiety reflects a growing normalisation of the conflict in which large parts of the country feel distant from the war in eastern Donbas – as it becomes clear that casualties are mounting and economic costs soaring. “It’s a very real threat, that people get tired psychologically,” said Lesia Vasylenko, an opposition MP with the liberal Holos party.

International media coverage has dropped markedly in the past two months, she added, and “as that number goes down further, there’s a very high risk of the support from the west going down”.

“I am not Russian!” This is the message on a new T-shirt that it is reportedly selling like hot cakes in Kazan, capital of the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan. A different version, bearing the slogan “I am not Russian, Love me!” is doing well in Ufa, capital of Bashkortostan, another autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.

“But if Zelensky and his advisers have to one day confront the realities of the war and actually approach a negotiation table once more and consider—or make—territorial concessions, that could leave Zelensky on the precipice of political turmoil, according to Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.”

More… Biden Throws Zelensky Under The Bus: Ukraine Leader ‘Brushed Off’ Invasion Warnings

A former British soldier has been killed fighting for the Ukrainian armed forces, his family has said.

Jordan Gatley, who left the British army in March and travelled to Ukraine, was described as “a hero” by his father Dean in a tribute on social media.

He died in the battle for the eastern city of Severodonetsk, which has seen intense fighting in recent days.

The Foreign Office has said it is “supporting the family of a British man who has died in Ukraine”.

A specialist gang is smuggling valuable historic artefacts out of Ukraine and into Russia, according to an international team of academics and digital technology experts who are tracking thefts.

“There is now very strong evidence this is a purposive Russian move, with specific paintings and ornaments targeted and taken out to Russia,” said Brian Daniels, an anthropologist working with archaeologists, historians and digital imaging specialists.

Eldar Gadzhiev’s heart sank when he heard the sputtering from the engine of his Skoda one day in April. Gadzhiev, who owns a fleet of four cars that he leases as taxicabs in Moscow, knew it was a terrible and expensive time for a breakdown.

Prices for spare parts, if you even could find them, had spiralled out of control since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine two months earlier. “I understood that I was in a bad situation,” he said. “I thought: the repairs are going to cost as much as the car.”

Dealerships were useless, he said. His car parts shop told him that the waiting list was months long, time he could not wait to repair his vehicle.

There are plenty of job vacancy announcements on Russian employment websites and social media these days: drivers, dishwashers, cooks, programmers, grocery store cashiers.

Also on offer: jobs/positions fighting in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Now in its fourth month, with no end in sight, the invasion is morphing into a war of attrition, as Russia struggles to achieve a semblance of victory and Ukraine mounts a dogged defense, often against the odds. Both sides are inflicting heavy casualties; Ukrainian officials say they’re losing more than 100 soldiers a day.

Any way you count it, the figures are stark: Ukrainian casualties are running at a rate of somewhere between 6oo and 1,000 a day. One presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, told the Guardian this week it was 150 killed and 800 wounded daily; another, Mykhaylo Podolyak, told the BBC that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops a day were being killed.

It represents an extraordinary loss of human life and capacity for the defenders, embroiled in a defence of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk that this week turned into a losing battle. Yet the city was also arguably a place that Ukraine could have retreated from to the more defensible Lysychansk, across the Siverski Donets River, the sort of defensive situation that Ukraine has fared far better in.

Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Brahim Saadoun embody the spirit of solidarity and internationalism.

Yesterday, two Brits and a Moroccan were sentenced to death by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine. The three, who had been fighting with the Ukrainian armed forces, were found guilty, in the words of the court, of ‘mercenary activities and committing actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the DPR’.

The official condemnation from Ukraine’s Western supporters came quickly. The British government pointed out that they were prisoners of war and that, under the Geneva Conventions, they ‘were entitled to combatant immunity… from prosecutions’. UK foreign secretary Liz Truss called it ‘a sham judgement with absolutely no legitimacy’.

Speaking of Internationalism…

Lost photos from Spanish civil war reveal daily life behind anti-fascist lines

Photographs by two Jewish female photographers who worked behind anti-fascist lines during the Spanish civil war have gone on display in Madrid after 80 years. For decades the negatives and prints, many of which have never been published, were believed to be lost or destroyed. They are now on show in the capital for the first time.

I get a kick out of this pic. The photographers were affiliated with anarchist organizations and these are captioned “Anarchist Vehicles.”

Would they mind if I drove off with one?

I don’t hold anything against the left of 1930’s. Too little was then widely known about the anti-human horror of communism. The anti-Franco volunteers may have been naïve true believers  but there is no denying they were on the right side of history for once. The horror of WW I and the ravages of capitalism’s virtual collapse made signing up for the cause pretty easy for many I suspect.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth month, Ukrainian officials are increasingly worried the West could soon suffer “war fatigue.”

They fear Russia could take advantage of that to pressure Ukraine into compromise, something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has resisted, saying Ukraine would pursue its own terms for peace.

“The fatigue is growing, people want some kind of outcome [that is beneficial] for themselves, and we want [another] outcome for ourselves,” he said.

Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands

Vladimir Putin has compared himself to the 18th-century Russian tsar Peter the Great, drawing a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands.

“Peter the Great waged the great northern war for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned [what was Russia’s],” the Russian president said on Thursday after a visiting an exhibition dedicated to the tsar.

Putin: West unlikely to reject Russian energy for years

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the West will not be able to cut itself off from Russian oil and gas for several years.

He added that nobody knows what might happen in that time, so Russian companies would not be “concreting over their oil-wells”.

It comes as a US official admitted that Russian profits on energy may be higher now than they were before the war.

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian 2S7 Pion 203mm self-propelled howitzer was hit by Russian cluster munitions near Bakhmut, #Donetsk Oblast – at the rear side propellant can be seen burning severely, so the SPH is at least damaged and likely requires repair. pic.twitter.com/OYXQyzWQ44

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) June 9, 2022

Cases of desertion are growing every week in the Ukrainian army, according to a leaked intelligence report, as up to 200 of its outgunned soldiers are being killed every day in the eastern Donbas region.

Kyiv’s troops are outnumbered 20 to one in artillery and 40 to one in ammunition by the Kremlin’s forces in the area, the leaked Ukrainian intelligence report reveals.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to the Ukrainian president, on Thursday said the battle over the war-town country’s industrial heartlands was so intense that Kyiv is suffering up to 200 military casualties per day. The previous upper limit was given as 100 soldiers.