“Ukraine – Russia”

‘Barbarians’: Russian troops leave grisly mark on town of Trostianets

The tanks rolled into Trostianets, a sleepy town 20 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border, in the first hours of the invasion. Russian troops fanned out across the town, occupying a number of buildings: the forestry agency headquarters, the railway station and a chocolate factory.

Their top general set up his office in room 23 at the local administration building, where the council’s accountants used to sit. His bottle of single malt is still on the desk, the butts of his slim cigarettes perched on the edge of an ashtray. He slept on a single bed stolen from a nearby hotel.

His men lived one floor below. They appear to have slept, eaten and defecated in the same rooms, and some of them may have died there too, judging by the bloodied Russian uniforms littering the floor.

#Ukraine: Ukrainian artillery precisely hitting the Russian convoy in #Donetsk Oblast. As can be seen, at least several vehicles were completely destroyed, even more – damaged. pic.twitter.com/FdnPDeF6PH

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 5, 2022

#Ukraine: Accurate Ukrainian fire damaging 2x T-72B3 tanks as well as hitting pro-Russian positions somewhere in the East. pic.twitter.com/nmTcj6RZkH

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 3, 2022

LONDON, April 5 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Western allegations Russian forces committed war crimes by executing civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha were a “monstrous forgery” aimed at denigrating the Russian army.

Since Russian troops withdrew from towns and villages around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been showing journalists corpses of what they say are civilians killed by Russian forces, destroyed houses and burnt-out cars.

‘Motorcade of shame’: outrage over pro-Russia displays at Berlin rally

Protest aimed to draw attention to hostility towards Russians but included pro-war elements

A rally in Berlin that was organised to draw attention to growing hostility towards Russians in Germany but included demonstrators supportive of the invasion of Ukraine has drawn sharp criticism from politicians and diplomats.

About 900 protesters in a 400-strong motorcade took part in the demonstration on Sunday that culminated in a gathering at the Olympic Stadium. Cars were draped in the Russian flag, and one bore the symbol “Z”, meant to signify solidarity with the Russian war. Participants reportedly sang patriotic Russian songs.

#Ukraine: A Russian T-72B tank was hit by a top attack munition in #Chernihiv Oblast, and decided to become one with the tarmac. pic.twitter.com/BOD5lFnvPS

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 5, 2022

#Ukraine: Remarkable footage of a single UA T-64BV tank engaging a Russian convoy, destroying a BTR-82A from an ambush position. Though other shots miss, appears that this held up the convoy enough for UA indirect fire to strike it, taking out other armour & leading to a retreat. pic.twitter.com/Ax8o23htMD

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 5, 2022

Investigators said on Tuesday that they had shut down the German servers for Hydra, a Russian darknet marketplace that was used to sell drugs, forged documents, intercepted data, and other illegal digital services.

They also seized bitcoin worth €23 million ($25 million).

Unknown individuals are also being investigated for “operating criminal trading platforms on the internet on a commercial basis,” selling narcotics, among other things, federal police said in a statement.

In the 90s, Russia was a spent force. The consensus was that free enterprise had defeated Communism. And it had. Russia isn’t fighting for Communism, but for market dominance.

A generation later we’re watching what may be the largest outsourcing war of a new century.

Russia, like China, rebooted its economy by exploiting the growing desire of western liberalism to accommodate environmentalists and socialists by offshoring their “dirty” industries.

BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the Russian military must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes, accusing the Kremlin’s troops of the worst atrocities since World War II.

The Ukrainian leader made his plea via video as grisly evidence continued to emerge of civilian massacres carried out by Russian forces on the outskirts of Kyiv before they pulled back from the capital.

The images, particularly from the town of Bucha, have stirred global revulsion and led to demands for tougher sanctions and war crime charges.

A Kremlin paper justifies erasing the Ukrainian identity, as Russia is accused of war crimes

An editorial in a prominent Kremlin media outlet appears to provide justification for the war with its call to erase the Ukrainian identity — language that geopolitical experts say is especially alarming after the discovery of dozens of dead civilians in a Kyiv suburb.

Written by Timofei Sergeitsev in RIA Novosti, the rhetoric in the editorial — entitled “What Russia should do in Ukraine” — is inflammatory, even by the usual Russian state media standards.

It claims the word “Ukraine” itself is synonymous with Nazism and cannot be allowed to exist.

“Denazification is inevitably also De-Ukrainianization,” Sergeitsev writes, stating that the idea of Ukrainian culture and identity is fake.

Ukraine round-up: Evidence of alleged Russian atrocities mounts near Kyiv

Note: We are all aware that the media blatantly lies. After years of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Clinton’s Benghazi scandal, Justin Trudeau’s fawning media coverage etc there is no denying that fact.

With regard to the atrocities in the Ukraine both “sides” of the issue are welcome to make a case here provided that comments remain civil.

It’s a war, a war with one front being social media, both sides should be questioned.

“If Europe continues importing gas from Russia, why shouldn’t Ukraine benefit from it?”

Nearly every major American and European company has imposed its own form of sanctions on Russia even if they sometimes consist of pointless virtue signaling for the social justice set.

Lego announced a pause on shipments of toy bricks to Russia. Nike has closed all its stores preventing Muscovites from purchasing $75 t-shirts made by Vietnamese slave labor. Airbnb will no longer rent dachas, Netflix won’t allow Russians access to its library of social justice pedophilia, and Blizzard has announced Russians can’t battle orcs in World of Warcraft.

After Russian troops withdrew from the town on the outskirts of Kyiv, images of bodies lying in the streets subsequently emerged and members of media organisations also saw corpses.

Ukraine accused Russia of a “deliberate massacre” but Russia called it “a staged provocation by the Kiev regime”. It made a series of unfounded claims about the footage from Bucha.

After the Russian withdrawal, footage taken from a car as it drove through the town showed bodies on either side of the road.

Pro-Russian social media accounts then circulated a slowed-down version of the video, claiming that the arm on one of the bodies moved.

Also, can someone with a medical degree explain to me, how a dead person can move their arm, after being dead for several days? #bucha #fakenews #ukrainefakes pic.twitter.com/ToJhzJkcju

— Irina Molotova (@IrinaGalushkoRT) April 3, 2022

Sky’s @HaynesDeborah describes scenes of ‘absolute devastation’ in Bucha, where people gave harrowing accounts of brutal killings.

WARNING: This video shows distressing images of people who have been killed.

Read more here: https://t.co/aYjTb9OYCa pic.twitter.com/m3D3hvetV2

— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 4, 2022

Russia’s Bucha “Facts” Versus the Evidence

Recent images from the town of Bucha just outside Kyiv, captured as Ukrainian forces regained ground following the retreat of Russian forces, show widespread destruction and corpses in civilians clothes strewn across streets.

These images have been shared on social media and broadcast by members of the international press who have visited the town in recent days.

Initial reports from human rights organisations on the actions of Russian forces have detailed violence targeting civilians. Interviews with local residents, meanwhile, have accused Russian troops of carrying out summary executions of unarmed men over suspicions they had fought for Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas in 2014, or even “simply for having a tattoo of Ukraine’s national emblem”.

Boxes filled with JT’s personal belongings littered the floor of his home in the west Ottawa suburb of Kanata as he readied to leave in mid-March.

Outside, a “For Rent” sign stands tall with the retired soldier telling his roommate to find a new place, unsure when, or if, the two will meet again.

The 50-year-old Ottawa resident — whom CBC News has agreed to not name due to safety concerns — is now in Ukraine as Russian forces continue their invasion of the sovereign nation.

BARDUFOSS, Norway, April 4 (Reuters) – The sound of gunfire echoed around the Norwegian fjords as a row of Swedish and Finnish soldiers, positioned prone behind banks of snow, trained rifles and missile launchers on nearby hills ready for an enemy attack.

The drill, in March, was the first time forces from Finland and Sweden have formed a combined brigade in a scheduled NATO exercise in Arctic Norway known as “Cold Response.” Neither country is a member of the NATO alliance. The exercise was long planned, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 added intensity to the war game.

The federal government has warned German residents with roots in Russia not to fall for propaganda, as the Kremlin disinformation machine kicks into overdrive amidst the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Deputy spokesman Wolfgang Büchner said that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government “implores Russian-speaking people in Germany to inform themselves comprehensively with national and international media,” to avoid falling prey to false narratives about what is happening in Ukraine.

Across social media and on Russian national outlets, Kremlin claims, such as that the killing of civilians in Mariupol and Bucha had been staged, have become widespread.

That’s a pretty impressive turn-out.

Rally in support of #Russia on the roads of Berlin. Thousands of cars came out to support the Russian Federation, the flags of Russia, USSR and the Airborne Forces been displayed.#Germany pic.twitter.com/6pxeM5e5Lx

— The Eurasianist ☦️ (@Russ_Warrior) April 3, 2022

LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) – Military conscripts in the Russian-backed Donbas region have been sent into front-line combat against Ukrainian troops with no training, little food and water, and inadequate weapons, six people in the separatist province told Reuters.

The new accounts of untrained and ill-equipped conscripts being deployed are a fresh indication of how stretched the military resources at the Kremlin’s disposal are, over a month into a war that has seen Moscow’s forces hobbled by logistical problems and held up by fierce Ukrainian resistance.

One of the people, a student conscripted in late February, said a fellow fighter told him to prepare to repel a close-quarter attack by Ukrainian forces in southwest Donbas but “I don’t even know how to fire an automatic weapon.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken aim at Western leaders who he says enabled Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In an address delivered Sunday night as reports emerged of war crimes committed by Russian forces in Bucha, a city in Ukraine’s Kyiv region, Zelenskyy said: “I invite Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy to visit Bucha, to see what the policy of 14 years of concessions to Russia has led to,” adding that he wants the them “to see with their own eyes the tortured Ukrainian men and women.”

Revulsion at the atrocities committed by Russian forces in the Ukrainian town of Bucha dominates today’s front pages, as politicians lined up around the world to condemn the massacre of hundreds of civilians.

Ukraine war: Ukraine investigates alleged execution of civilians by Russians

Ukraine has started a war crimes investigation after bodies of civilians were found strewn on the streets as Russian troops pulled out of areas around the capital Kyiv.

Bucha and Irpin were symbols of resistance to the Russian invasion, but they are now becoming synonymous with the war’s most serious abuses.

Ukrainian authorities say the bodies of 410 civilians have been found in the areas around Kyiv so far.

Russia, without evidence, says the photos and videos are “a staged performance” by Ukraine.

Satellite images show long trench at Ukrainian mass grave site, Maxar says

How has the Ukraine crisis affected political life in the West? Deeply but contradictorily. Vladimir Putin’s invasion wakened sleeping populations to eternal power realities, exacerbated leftist de-platforming, and bizarrely enhanced his appeal on the Right.

Power realities: A century-long peace following the Napoleonic wars left Europeans mentally unprepared for the carnage of World War I; similarly, the 77-year peace after World War II bred a faulty European assumption that trade and diplomacy could solve the continent’s problems. Military strength was seen as anachronistic as slavery. Slogans such as “There is no military solution” and “War never solved anything” prevailed.

Meanwhile, the non-West remains focused on the timeless verities of military might.