“Ukraine – Russia”

Fish fingers sold in most UK supermarkets use whitefish caught by Russian ships, despite many chains pledging to boycott Russian produce.

While supermarkets have taken steps to signal their solidarity with Ukraine, rebranding their chicken kievs as kyivs and taking Russian vodka off the shelves, they have carried on buying its fish.

Big brands such as Birds Eye and Young’s, as well as most major supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons and Asda, still use Russian-caught fish.

Buy their oil and gas and their fish sticks. Great.

Ex-Wagner Group fighter says recruiters asked him to fight alongside invading force, but he knew that Putin’s men weren’t up to the task

The Russian military’s failure to seize the Ukrainian capital was inevitable because in the preceding years they had never directly faced a powerful enemy, according to a former mercenary with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group who fought alongside the Russian army.

Marat Gabidullin took part in Wagner Group missions on the Kremlin’s behalf in Syria and in a previous conflict in Ukraine, before deciding to go public about his experience inside the secretive private military company.

A Russian soldier has appeared in court accused of murdering an unarmed man on a bicycle, at the start of the first war crime trial in Ukraine since Vladimir Putin invaded the country.

Vadim Shysimarin, a commander of the Kantemirovskaya tank division, arrived at Kyiv’s small district court No 3 in a grey and blue tracksuit and handcuffs for a preliminary hearing.

The 21-year-old is charged with premeditated murder of a 62-year-old man who was not named in court. Shysimarin is being held in Ukrainian custody. The case is scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

Ukrainian forces have repelled a Russian attempt to cross a strategically significant river west of Severodonetsk in the Donbas, incurring heavy losses in the process, according to British defence intelligence.

The British said Russia had lost “significant armoured manoeuvre elements” from a battalion tactical group – a formation with about 800 personnel at full strength – as well as pontoon bridging equipment.

Severodonetsk is the easternmost town held by Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, and the effort to cross the Siversky Donets River to its west was likely to have been intended to be a fresh attempt by the Russians to cut off the defending forces.

It is quite possible that there are more losses seen in this video- but unfortunately resolution is limited. The bridges themselves are sunk/damaged too.

This must be regarded as a very serious blow. pic.twitter.com/8UZRuyvvGv

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

In case that wasn't enough, there was also drone footage posted of a wider area.

Though we cannot classify all vehicles as destroyed or abandoned, there is approx. 7x BMP/MT-LB and 7x T-72B more seen- again, we have tried to avoid what we have previously posted. A huge loss. pic.twitter.com/cKpclC8Ll2

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 12, 2022

When the soldiers of an elite Russian army brigade were told in early April to prepare for a second deployment to Ukraine, fear broke out among the ranks.

The unit, stationed in Russia’s far east during peacetime, first entered Ukraine from Belarus when the war started at the end of February and saw bitter combat with Ukrainian forces.

“It soon became clear that not everyone was onboard with it. Many of us simply did not want to go back,” said Dmitri, a member of the unit who asked not to be identified with his real name. “I want to return to my family – and not in a casket.”

Amid horrors of amputation and dwindling medical supplies, Azov battalion reject their portrayal as far-Right radicals and demand urgent aid

It is a scene reminiscent of the horrors of the First World War – unshaven soldiers in filthy uniforms, their arms and legs ending in bandaged stumps.

The images, though, are not from the trenches of Ypres or Flanders, but from Ukraine a century later, showing wounded fighters trapped in Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant.

They cannot accept that war in Europe is now a reality

In Germany, this was a Victory in Europe Day like no other. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Berlin’s entire postwar consensus has crumbled. Previously settled policies and cherished beliefs have dissolved in this new reality: the brutal return of war to Europe. All these confusions were displayed for the world to see on Sunday.

There has been a sustained cyber-conflict over Ukraine which could still escalate, a senior US intelligence official has told the BBC.

Despite warnings, major cyber-attacks on the West have so far not materialised.

But Russia shouldn’t be underestimated, Rob Joyce, director of cyber-security at the National Security Agency said.

Meanwhile independent hackers targeting Russia in support of Ukraine could also spark escalation, he warned.

Russia is expected to make almost $321 billion from its energy exports this year — over a third more, according to Bloomberg, than last year.

Twenty-seven European Union member states, despite adopting five packages of sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, have nevertheless spent at least around 35 billion euros — around $38 billion — in payments to Russia for its oil and gas since the invasion, according to the EU’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell.

Ukraine – the next Afghanistan.

“I watched this clip (from Chinese media!) that’s circulating on Twitter hours ago and thought nothing beyond, “Whoa, cooooool.”

Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.

Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.

There is “credible” information that Russian prisoners of war have been mistreated by Ukrainian forces since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February, a United Nations official said.

The evidence suggests that Russia is not the only country willing to break international norms during war, as the U.N. reports that Ukrainian forces have subjected Russians under their watch to treatment that violates international law, Matilda Bogner, head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said Tuesday.

Ukraine prosecutors ready to launch first war crimes trials of Russia conflict

Three Russian prisoners of war accused of targeting or murdering civilians, and a soldier who allegedly killed a man before raping his wife, are set to be in the dock in the first war crimes trials of the Ukraine conflict, the Ukrainian prosecutor general has revealed.

More than 10,700 crimes have been registered since the war began by the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general, led by Iryna Venediktova, and a handful of cases have now been filed or are ready to be submitted in what marks a watershed moment two months into the war.

When Leonid Pliats and his boss were shot in the back by Russian soldiers, the killing was captured on CCTV cameras in clear and terrible detail. The footage, which was obtained by the BBC, is now being investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors as a suspected war crime.

It was the height of the fighting around Kyiv and the main roads into the capital were a battlefield, including around the bicycle shop where Leonid worked as a security guard.

But this was no firefight: the video clearly shows heavily armed Russian soldiers shooting the two unarmed Ukrainians and then looting the business.

A Ukrainian village councillor has been arrested by elite special forces after she was accused of being a Russian collaborator.

Nadiya Antonova, from Kutuzivka near Kharkiv, was swarmed by Alpha Force troops and secret intelligence agents who led her away in handcuffs – and she now faces life behind bars.

The secretary of the local council is accused of betraying her country’s defenders by giving away the identities of police, soldiers and counter-terrorism specialists to Putin’s invaders.

Most “Theatrical” war ever!