“Ukraine – Russia”

President Duda excoriated Germany’s Scholz and France’s Macron for warning against “humiliating” Putin over the invasin of Ukraine. He accused them of legitimizing Russian atrocities.

Polish President Andrzej Duda slammed the leaders of both Germany and France for their phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, comparing it to maintaining a direct line with Adolf Hitler during World War II.

In an interview published in Thursday’s edition of German best-selling newspaper Bild, Duda questioned what Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron thought was to be gained by the calls as Russia continues to bombard civilian targets in Ukraine.

James Challice, a 42-year-old Canadian Forces veteran, travelled to Ukraine in late March and has been training young recruits to defend their country.

In a video interview with Today’s Northumberland community news site in April, the Cobourg, Ont., man said he is confident Ukrainians will take back their country because “the morale is phenomenal.”

In recent days though, Challice has been fighting at the front and in an exchange with contacts in Canada laid out a far less optimistic synopsis.

A bad stench emanates from this conflict.

It is evident the elites will protect profits over lives as with Freeland floating a deal to benefit her Oligarch friends and the continued free flow of gas, oil and money between so called enemies.

A cynical coalition of nations is very pleased to have tax payer funded aid used to support Russian oil and gas profits so as not to unsettle their home markets.

We are paying the price with runaway inflation and potential food shortages while the Trudeau Liberals virtue signal and use the Ukraine crisis to advance their ruinous green-scam.

Ukrainians are dying while we support their enemy.  

PS. If Zelensky makes a Zoom appearance on one more awards show I am washing my hands of this whole thing. My bet is he’s booked for the finals of the Rupaul Drag show.

Two British men and a Moroccan man held by Russian forces in Ukraine have been sentenced to death.

Shaun Pinner, 48, and Aiden Aslin, 28 – along with Moroccan national Saaudun Brahim – were all captured while fighting in Ukraine.

The so-called supreme court of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) issued death their sentences on Thursday, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency said.

In a corner of the leafy town of Irpin, the brutality of the Russian occupation was clear from the start. The body of a young woman in a red coat would remain in the street for four weeks – lying where she had been trampled not once, but over and over again, under the wheels of Russian armoured vehicles.

Irpin is on the doorstep of Kyiv, and in early March Russian troops intent on conquering the capital took hold of the town.

Its blown-up bridge and river crossing became known internationally as a risky escape route from next-door Bucha, the scene of many of Russia’s alleged war crimes.

Russian proxy fighters in east Ukraine have said they are opening a trial against two Britons, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were captured fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol.

The two men, who are serving in the Ukrainian military, and Ibrahim Saadun, a captive from Morocco, were shown sitting in a courtroom cage reserved for defendants in a video released on pro-Russian social media channels on Tuesday.

Prosecutors from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a proxy government in east Ukraine controlled by Russia, have said that the men face the death penalty for “terrorism” and for fighting as “mercenaries” against the Russian invasion.

A notorious Russian mercenary known as “The Executioner” and suspected of slaughtering prisoners of war and civilians in Ukraine has been killed, according to reports.

Russian-language Telegram channels and media outlets reported that Vladimir Andonov, 44, a purported member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s feared private army the Wagner Group, was shot dead by an apparent Ukraine sniper in Kharkiv last week.

Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s east has brought it some battlefield success as its military has advanced slowly in fierce fighting in Donbas.

But those gains have come at a high price for the Russian invasion force, with evidence that high-level casualties are growing and that some units may be approaching exhaustion as the war moves past its 100-day mark.

As the conflict drags on, some fighters have gone public with appeals to Vladimir Putin for an investigation into battlefield conditions and whether their deployments to the front are even legal.

KYIV, Ukraine — As the Russian army made its move on Kyiv in late February, the Ukrainian defences enlisted a drone pilot to pinpoint a column of military vehicles approaching the capital from the west.

The civilian who took on the task sent his drone up in a field near his house and found the Russian convoy. Ukrainian artillery destroyed it and the drone operator was quietly saluted as a hero.

Underground efforts appearing to spread, say analysts, after reports of explosions and attacks on Russian border guards

Ukrainian partisans in occupied areas of the country are increasing attacks and sabotage efforts on Russian forces and their local collaborators, with organised underground efforts appearing to spread.

Six Russian border guarders were reportedly killed last week when their position came under fire near the Zernovo border checkpoint in Ukraine’s north. Two days later an explosion struck close to the office of Yevgeny Balitsky, a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian official in Melitopol.

The increase in partisan warfare, particularly in the country’s south around Kherson, follows warnings at the outset of Russia’s war against Ukraine that any area under occupation was likely to see the emergence of guerrilla warfare.

Proposed powers to sell, redistribute Russian assets may violate international law, says legal expert

If the House of Commons passes the budget implementation bill as expected this month, the Canadian government could have new powers to seize and sell sanctioned Russian assets to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine, setting up a potential violation of international law.

Chapter 2 of the United Nations Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, adopted by the International Law Commission in 2001 and submitted to the General Assembly, lays out rules for countermeasures member states may take to hold another member — Russia in this instance — accountable for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Isn’t that swell?

Can a dating app fight Russian propaganda?

If you are impatient with the calibre of potential partners in your city, Tinder has a feature for you. For £18 a month, you can “passport” to another place; that is, you can set your location to anywhere in the world. Tel Aviv, Jeddah, Moscow, Kyiv. Tinder’s blandness, combined with the fact that matchmaking is a universally smiled-upon process, has allowed it to operate as a politically-neutral entity — even in sexually repressive or war-torn regimes.

In late March, roughly a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unnamed Nato official told NBC News that the conflict was turning into a meat grinder for both sides. ‘If we’re not in a stalemate, we are rapidly approaching one,’ the Nato official said at the time. ‘The reality is that neither side has a superiority over the other.’

Sure enough, a month and a half later, the Pentagon’s top intelligence official testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘stalemate’ is exactly what is occurring. ‘The Russians aren’t winning, and the Ukrainians aren’t winning, and we’re at a bit of a stalemate here,’ Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said on May 10.