Pope Francis in an interview published on Tuesday slammed NATO over the Ukraine war.
Questioning the conflict’s causes, the pope spoke of an “anger” in the Kremlin which could have been “facilitated” by “the barking of NATO at Russia’s door”.
The remarks came as the pope reiterated that he requested a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, while comparing the scale of the bloodshed in the country to the genocide in Rwanda.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal is urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to visit Kyiv as soon as possible.
In an exclusive interview with CBC News Network’s Power & Politics on Wednesday, Shmyhal said he and other Ukrainian officials are still waiting for a visit from high-ranking members of the Canadian government.
“We are waiting [for them] so much,” he told host Vassy Kapelos. “We will be very glad. It will be a big honour for us to host your prime minister, your government members.”
“C-list” may be overstating their status.
On one hand, the impulse to cheer is undeniable, especially with the brutality and clear ethnic-cleansing strategy behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On the other, the US and NATO seem to be edging very closely to fulfilling Vladimir Putin’s propaganda needs, if this New York Times report is accurate.
U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say
WASHINGTON — The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.
Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.
The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.
#Ukraine: Somewhere in the South, three Russian 2S1 Gvozdika 122mm self-propelled howitzers were targeted by Ukrainian artillery fire. However, we can only see one clearly destroyed- damage to others is possible. pic.twitter.com/vnOp64aoFW
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 4, 2022
The Department of National Defence (DND) says it has concluded its 2021 review into the findings of a report from George Washington University that cited allegations by a far-right group in the Ukrainian military that claimed it had trained with the Canadian Armed Forces and other western military and found itself absolved.
In a statement emailed to CTVNews.ca Wednesday, as spokesperson for the DND reiterated that all Task Force Ukraine personnel receive pre-deployment training on right-wing extremism, including symbols.
Russia Triples Down – Israel’s mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine with the Azov battalion!, says Moscow
In an interview with radio station Sputnik, Maria Zakharova stated, “Israeli mercenaries are practically shoulder to shoulder with Azov militants in Ukraine.”
Its members are part of the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, which is holed up within the Azovstal steel complex, which Russian soldiers attacked on Tuesday.
By implying that Israelis are fighting with Azov, whom Russia regards as “fascists” and “Nazis,” Moscow is exacerbating tensions that arose when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared on Sunday that Hitler had “Jewish blood.”
Fierce fighting has continued inside Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, the commander of Ukrainian forces in the plant said, as more civilians fled the city on evacuation buses following weeks of brutal bombardment that have reduced much of it to rubble.
Ukrainian forces were fighting “difficult bloody battles” against Russian troops for a second day, Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov regiment, said in a brief video released on Telegram late on Wednesday.
“I am proud of my soldiers who are making superhuman efforts to contain the pressure of the enemy … the situation is extremely difficult,” commander Denis Prokopenko said.
Moment £4m next-generation Russian super-tank with reinforced steel and special automatic defence system is blown up by Ukrainian army just days after making its battlefield debut
This is the moment Ukrainian troops destroy one of Russia’s most advanced tanks which are protected by special reactive armour.
The armour on the T-90M is designed to explode when hit reducing the penetrative power of an incoming round.
The tank is also protected with a automated defence system which fires smoke grenades when it is ‘painted’ by a laser beam used by an incoming missile.
#Ukraine: A Russian Mi-35M attack helicopter was drag out from Dnipro river, #Kyiv Oblast. Highly likely this one was shot down on Day One – and it is also observed on the famous video below.https://t.co/XqODvY6rXH pic.twitter.com/t0xyVMfLd1
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 4, 2022
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — She stood in just her bathrobe in the freezing basement of the Mariupol theater, coated in white plaster dust shaken loose by the explosion. Her husband tugged at her to leave and begged her to cover her eyes.
But she couldn’t help it — Oksana Syomina looked. And to this day, she wishes she hadn’t. Bodies were strewn everywhere, including those of children. By the main exit, a little girl lay still on the floor.
Syomina had to step on the dead to escape the building that had served as the Ukrainian city’s main bomb shelter for more than a week. The wounded screamed, as did those trying to find loved ones. Syomina, her husband and about 30 others ran blindly toward the sea and up the shore for almost five miles (eight kilometers) without stopping, the theater in ruins behind them.
Turkey’s “balancing act” during the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the result of the country’s Islamist leader’s two-decade long indoctrination of a generation of Turks to make them “pious.” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may or may not have raised pious generations, as he declared was his political mission, but he has definitely raised an anti-Western generation. That anti-Western sentiment once again makes Turkey the odd-man-out in NATO.
Western leaders shrugged it off when, in 2016, Erdoğan said in plain language that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations. Earlier, in 2013, Turkey had signed up as a “dialogue partner” saying it shared “the same destiny” as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) — which was formed in 2001 as a regional security bloc.
How many NATO members still buy Russian gas? Cui Bono?
Nothing like a coherent strategy emerged from 20 years of Nato’s war in Afghanistan; at best there were long lists of aspirations with no clear objectives or assessments of the resources needed to achieve them. But, two months after the Russian invasion, it looks very much as if the US and Nato are beginning to develop a coherent plan for Ukraine. Military strategy has been described as a synthesis of ends, ways and means. Last week, senior US and UK officials clarified the objectives – the ends.
Russia is stepping up airstrikes on key Ukrainian supply lines delivering billions of pounds worth of western arms to the country, including on railway lines and warehousing.
With Moscow and Kyiv-locked in a race to shape the conditions for the current phase of the war in Ukraine, the rapid and growing flow of weapons supplied by Ukraine’s western backers has become an increased focus for both sides.
On Tuesday Russian airstrikes hit six train stations in central and western Ukraine as the Kremlin stepped up its targeting of key infrastructure, including electrical and water supply substations.
#Ukraine: Apparently, the Ukrainian army received Milkor M32A1 40mm multi-shot grenade launchers – and they are already being utilized in combat. The delivery was not announced previously, but likely they were supplied within recent military aid packages from the US. pic.twitter.com/s3SHYza1cc
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 4, 2022
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 25th Airborne Brigade struck two Russian T-72B-pattern tanks and BMP-2 IFV with artillery fire, causing serious damage. pic.twitter.com/4kSRxnNjZF
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 4, 2022
Men and boys are among the alleged victims of rape by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, where dozens of cases of sexual violence by the invading forces are already under investigation, UN and Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday.
“I have received reports, not yet verified … about sexual violence cases against men and boys in Ukraine,” said Pramila Patten, UN special representative on sexual violence in war, at a press conference in Kyiv.
The EU has proposed some of its toughest measures yet against Russia, including a total ban on oil imports and sanctions on war crimes suspects.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the package was aimed at maximising pressure on Russia while minimising damage to Europe.
Russian crude oil would be phased out within six months, she said.
Military officers involved in suspected war crimes in Bucha and Mariupol would also face new sanctions.
… The Russian-state-owned energy company Gazprom says it has cut off supplies to Poland and Bulgaria and will not restart these until payments are made in roubles.
Many other EU countries are set to face the same issue around mid-May when payments are due.
Payments in roubles would shore up the Russian currency and benefit its economy.
“Phony War”
The German public is divided on the issue of military support for Ukraine. Many fear the delivery of tanks and training of Ukrainian soldiers in Germany may drag the country into the war.
After mounting pressure from the German public and its allies, the German government announced last week that it would send tanks to Ukraine. A day later, on April 28, the ruling coalition of center-left Social Democrats, Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats joined forces with the main opposition, the center-right Christian Democrats, to approve the delivery by a large majority in the federal parliament, the Bundestag.
However, the latest opinion polls show a rift in the German electorate as to whether or not to support that move.
Russia’s foreign ministry accused Israel on Tuesday of supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, further escalating a row which began when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins.
Israel lambasted Lavrov on Monday, saying his claim – made when talking about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who is Jewish – was an “unforgivable” falsehood that debased the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.
Pope says he wants to go to Moscow to meet Putin over Ukraine – paper
VATICAN CITY, May 3 (Reuters) – Pope Francis said in an interview published on Tuesday that he asked for a meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to stop the war in Ukraine but had not received a reply.
The pope also told Italy’s Corriere Della Sera newspaper that Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has given the war his full-throated backing, “cannot become Putin’s altar boy”.
#Ukraine: Reconnaissance drone footage of a Ukrainian T-64BV reportedly being hit by a Russian tank near Izium, #Kharkiv Oblast. Only two crew members managed to leave the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/HUtxbJ7Hd9
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 2, 2022
A FRIEND in Moscow, passing by a university library, found boxes full of books being removed. They were from the English literature department, with classic authors and titles facing the chop.
Among them were JD Salinger and Somerset Maugham, and virtually all of the books had long been available in Russia, even during the latter days of the USSR.
This is, undoubtedly, cancel culture. Finding themselves in a war against the West, with the Anglo-Saxon powers constituting the most vocal supporters of Zelensky’s Ukraine, classic English-language literature is an obvious target.
