“Ukraine – Russia”

Russia’s foreign minister has accused Nato of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, as defence ministers gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a “very critical” few weeks.

Sergei Lavrov told Russian state media: “Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”

He also warned that the risks of nuclear conflict were now “considerable” – a claim Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said showed Moscow had lost its “last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine”.

Ukraine war: Ukraine can hit Russian soil with UK weapons says Minister

It would be acceptable for Ukrainian forces to use Western weapons to attack military targets on Russian soil, a UK defence minister has said.

James Heappey said strikes to disrupt supply lines were an “entirely legitimate” part of war.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has accused Nato of engaging in a proxy war and said weapons delivered by the West to Ukraine would be fair targets.

According to our information, this was a Ukrainian attack against the flanks of a Russian convoy attempting to consolidate the front line.
[Part 2] pic.twitter.com/zx1VvwG7T1

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 25, 2022

The U.S. administration’s war against fossil fuels at home is overshadowing the far more deadly and perilous war against Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

At this critical moment, heavy weapons and more of everything are what’s needed for the Ukrainian military to counter and defeat the new Russian offensive in the Donbas. But what about the next few weeks, months, and potentially, years? The chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, has stated the war could drag on “for months, maybe years.” In any event, Europe is already hell-bent on getting out from under its dependence on Russian energy. We should be helping them, not begging for (mostly dirtier) energy from places like Venezuela, Iran, and OPEC+, which includes Russia.

The Russian war machine gets some $1 billion/day for its oil and gas from Germany/the European Union. Ironically, Russia’s invasion has led to a spike in prices, which benefits its war effort. This can only be countered with a boycott of Russian oil and gas and sharply increased deliveries of energy products to the EU from elsewhere, the United States being the main source. Arming the Ukrainians while providing Russia with the money to wage war against them is not a winning formula.

TikTok has emerged as one of the leading platforms for snappy false videos about the war in Ukraine which are reaching millions.

With a user base of more than one billion people – more than half of whom are under 30 – TikTok is where many young people have been getting updates about the conflict, as the platform struggles to stem the flow of misleading information.

Russia has already ‘failed’ in Ukraine, U.S. says amid promise for more military aid

The United States promised on Monday to reopen its embassy in Kyiv soon, as Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Ukraine’s capital and hailed its success so far against Russia’s invasion.

Both men said the fact they were able to come to Kyiv was proof of Ukraine’s tenacity in forcing Moscow to abandon an assault on the capital last month, and promised more aid to fend off Russian troops now attempting an advance in the east.

There is no disputing that Ukraine’s armed forces have performed admirably and in the process shamed Russia’s military.

No war lasts forever but how long can the effort be sustained if needed? 

Will NATO/EU solidarity hold given the reliance on Russian gas and oil by member states?

Can anyone afford trust in the Biden Potemkin Presidency?

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has said he hopes Russian losses in Ukraine will deter its leadership from repeating its actions.

He added that Ukraine can still win the war if given the right support and praised the efforts of its military.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” the US military chief said.

Mr Austin was speaking after meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.

Another video of the Russian aircraft spinning before crashing into the ground in Balakliya. https://t.co/sdwiMBhDbW pic.twitter.com/2PMhmTXIWD

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 25, 2022

Video of the aircraft hitting the ground. Looks like there are two parachutes, further indicating it may be a Su-34. 3/https://t.co/CXR6S1Voix pic.twitter.com/lbrWidCNPQ

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 25, 2022

Kyiv’s arsenal boosted by Soviet-era T-72 tanks from European Nato allies – and they could prove crucial on the flat terrain of the Donbas

Thanks to European resupplies, Ukraine’s military now has more tanks on the battlefield than Russia does, according to the Pentagon.

Two months into the war, the delivery of Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Kyiv from the Czech Republic and other European Nato allies has effectively eroded Russia’s advantage, experts have claimed.

“Right now, the Ukrainians have more tanks in Ukraine than the Russians do, and they certainly have the purview to use them,” an unnamed senior US defence official told reporters on Thursday.

US-based lab documents destruction of churches and theatres

Satellite scrutiny of Ukraine is not just focused on military hardware. Thousands of miles away from the fighting, an international group of archaeologists, historians and technicians are quietly coordinating another high-stakes monitoring effort: the tracking of the mounting losses to Ukraine’s cultural landscape.

Now an impact summary, released this month from their lab at a museum in the US state of Virginia, has revealed the bleak truth.

In a speech delivered, or stumbled through, in Poland on March 26, Joe Biden declared that Russia was in need of regime change, a sentiment echoed throughout the Western media. Many commentators and media talking-heads agreed that “regime change” is and should be a fundamental goal of Western policy towards Russia. One or two went so far as to argue that this is the reason for the West’s effort to prolong the war by continuing to pour arms into the Ukraine—rather than call for an immediate ceasefire, as is the normal procedure in modern wars. One such commentator has been Niall Ferguson, who has cautioned Western leaders that the desired regime change will almost certainly not be materializing in the foreseeable future. Writing in Bloomberg News, Ferguson concludes that the Biden administration “is making a colossal mistake thinking that it can protract the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan.” But is regime change the primary goal at all?

h/t John

The longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more atrocities against civilians are exposed, and the murkier the prospects for victory and peace become. Western publics remain staunchly supportive of Ukraine’s valiant efforts, but they can become inured to the graphic depictions of gruesome savagery, such as the newly discovered mass grave that could hold as many as 9,000 bodies near the devastated city of Mariupol. Attention spans are inevitably domestic. The pivotal question now, however, is whether the U.S. and NATO will marshal a more muscular response to Russia’s massively superior firepower.

After an air strike hit a school in Chernihiv, a video of a bloodied survivor went viral on Ukrainian social media. But soon her story was hijacked by pro-Kremlin accounts, including one promoted by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which falsely accused her of being a fake.

“There was no whistle, rustling or sound of shelling,” Tania says. “It just hit the building and suddenly everything went dark. The building collapsed.”

Tania was caught up in an air strike in early March. She was helping sort clothes for a humanitarian aid drive in school number 21 in Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, when a missile hit the building.

Very few parts of Russian society have drawn more interest than the so-called “oligarchs.” These are incredibly wealthy men with political connections to Putin’s inner circle because, in the totalitarian kleptocracy that is Russia under Vladimir Putin, if you don’t have political ties to Putin’s inner circle, wealth doesn’t bring you power; it brings you a one-way trip to a Siberian labor camp.

How do you get to be an Oligarch? Do you have to know someone? Is there a School of Oligarchy with a licensing body?