Nazis, genocide, Nato, history: Russia has no shortage of apparent justifications for its war in Ukraine.
But are any of them valid? Were Russian speakers endangered in the country’s east? Is Nato’s expansion a material threat to Moscow? Were there cliques of neo-Nazis running amok in Ukraine?
We assess whether Russia’s claims justify the invasion of a sovereign country.
A good Guardian piece that debunks Putin’s claims.
Just over a week ago I met a group of young men who had volunteered at a centre in Kyiv to fight for Ukraine.
Most of them were in their late teens, not long out of school. They told me that after three days’ basic training they would head for the front line – or very close to it.
Maksym Lutsyk, a 19-year-old biology student, told me he wasn’t fazed about trying to become a soldier after less than a week of instruction. He’d manage, after five years in the Scouts, not just learning backwoods skills, but also some weapons training. He was 10 when Ukraine’s long war with separatists sponsored by Moscow started in 2014.
Ukraine mourns its fallen as Zelenskiy says 1,300 soldiers killed
Ukraine’s announcement that at least 1,300 of its soldiers have been killed so far during Russia’s invasion has been accompanied by an increasingly public acknowledgement of the country’s losses.
Sombre funeral processions have become a daily sight, with photographs showing rows of flag-draped coffins being delivered for their funerals in cities including Lviv – with its historic garrison church of St Peter and St Paul.
When he launched his invasion of Ukraine over two weeks ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared like a man who knew what he was doing. In his televised session with the High Council of National Security, he gave the impression that he had a precise war plan with clear objectives.
Now, however, the possibility of that impression having been wrong cannot be dismissed. In other words: What if the Great Vladimir doesn’t know what he is doing or, worse still, doesn’t know what he wants?
During WW II Soviet generals would ask one another about their typically substantial losses in such callous terms of “How many pencils did you break.” Putin may have suffered up to 10K in deaths so far in a war he didn’t have to fight. He was winning by posturing and would have been rewarded for his patience.
… We were told they were strong, minus the nukes, mostly because they were big, and that assumption continues to this day. But their actions in Ukraine are not that of a world-class military, not by a long-shot. It’s more like a drunken douchebag indiscriminately launching rockets, quite possibly because they lack anything with precision. We can drop a missile down a chimney with the accuracy of Santa Claus, but what if the Russians couldn’t even hit a brick in a brick factory?
Russian military’s corruption quagmire
“There are also reports that Russian advances in Ukraine were slowed by lack of fuel — and this in a country rich with oil and gas. But ineffective control over fuel consumption in the Russian military actually long preceded the war in Ukraine and had historically created opportunities for embezzlement — that is why fuel is often called the Russian military’s “second currency.” It is plausible that the long-standing tradition of corruption in fuel supply decreased the pace of Russian advancement in Ukraine.
It is also important to remember that the weapons currently targeting Ukraine were produced despite this level of corruption. Meanwhile, many technological innovations, including those that could increase the precision of Russian strikes, have never materialized due to graft, embezzlement and fraud.”
Interesting article on corruption – Thank you Oligarchs!
#Ukraine: The 10th Mountain Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Army claimed to repel Russian attacks, and captured a (working) T-80BVM tank, MT-LB, a UR-77 Meterorit mine clearing vehicle, and a BMP-2. pic.twitter.com/JYGwVV6GDQ
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 13, 2022
#Ukraine: Russian forces abandoned a PAK-200 field kitchen truck.
As you can see, it doesn’t look very pleasant inside. pic.twitter.com/Az6reX2P57
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 13, 2022
Russia’s space program has apparently threatened to leave an American astronaut aboard the International Space Station as it comes crashing down to Earth in a video shared by Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti.
Mark Vande Hei, a married 55-year-old father of two from Texas, is scheduled to return to Kazakhstan from the International Space Station (ISS) with two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30 after spending nearly a year on board.
A Ukrainian monastery sheltering 1,000 people was struck by Russian missiles and a train heading to pick up evacuees was damaged by bomb debris last night as more than 2.6 million people have fled the country.
Families, including 200 children, sheltering in the Svyatogorsk Lavra, an Orthodox Christian monastery in the Donetsk region, were left terrified after it was damaged by a missile last night.
The monastery says the bomb exploded 50 metres from a bridge at the entrance to the site, injuring a number of people.
Huge equipment losses.
#Ukraine: The losses of the Russian army from the previous days keep appearing – a T-80BVM tank and Msta-S 152mm self-propelled howitzer, which were destroyed by the Ukrainian forces. pic.twitter.com/Tz87Mdg0yj
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 13, 2022
Russians have a sense of humour!
russia has attacked the International Center for Peacekeeping&Security near Lviv.Foreign instructors work here.Information about the victims is being clarified.This is new terrorist attack on peace&security near the EU-NATO border.Action must be taken to stop this.Close the sky!
— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) March 13, 2022
h/t Billy
A captured Russian soldier spoke about the use of “execution squads” to eliminate deserters as tensions within the Russian military rise, Interfax-Ukraine reported on Saturday.
It seems Putin does not believe in his own army and resorts to Stalinist methods of controlling soldiers.
“However, this does not save him from the riots that have already begun to arise among the Russian military.” Another captured soldier has said during questioning conducted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) according to Interfax.
Brent Renaud, an award-winning US film-maker whose work has appeared in the New York Times and other outlets, has been killed by Russian forces in the flashpoint town of Irpin, outside Kyiv. A US photographer, Juan Arredondo, was wounded.
Renaud, 51, was hit in the neck and died after coming under Russian fire while working on Sunday, according to local police officials and multiple Ukrainian sources.
Russia has escalated its war in Ukraine with a strike on a major military base close to the Polish border killing at least 35 people and injuring 134 more, according to the governor of the Lviv region.
The attack happened hours after the Kremlin had warned that western supply lines into the embattled country were “legitimate targets”.
There were large explosions on Sunday at the base in Yavoriv, a garrison city less than 10 miles from the Polish border. The rocket attack took place at 5.45am.
The governor of the Lviv region said that 35 people have been killed after a Ukrainian military base used for NATO drills less than 15 miles from the Polish border was targeted in a Russian airstrike.
More on this story: https://t.co/j2j5YHyZ4Y pic.twitter.com/gEFiEkYQxp
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 13, 2022
Ukraine has chosen the image for a new postage stamp called “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!” as the besieged country continues to try to keep morale high and win the PR battle against invading Russian forces.
The country’s first deputy foreign minister, Emine Dzheppar, announced the stamp commemorating the Snake Island incident, in which 13 border guards stationed on a roughly 16-hectare (40-acre) rocky island about 186 miles (300km) west of Crimea reportedly replied, when asked to surrender: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” They were then attacked, and thought killed.
While much attention is being paid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, less analysis has focused on how foreign volunteers are flocking to join the conflict. Ukraine’s appeal to foreign fighters is not unusual; such invitations from sovereign states have occurred many times throughout history, and volunteers routinely have fought and risked their lives for countries other than their own.
One way to answer the question in the headline is “It already has.” Even to a rank amateur like me, it was clear by *day three* that Putin was facing a strategic debacle. He misjudged Ukraine’s desire and ability to resist, he misjudged the strength of his military, and he misjudged the west’s willingness to paralyze Russia’s economy with sanctions.
#Ukraine: UAV footage showing a Russian T-72 variant tank being hit by Ukrainian forces anti-tank fire in #Mariupol. pic.twitter.com/DycyL46A3a
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 11, 2022
The Catholic leader has been criticized for being too soft on the Ukraine invasion
On February 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pope Francis met with Aleksandr Avdeyev, Russia’s ambassador to the Holy See. Yet rather than summoning Mr. Avdeyev to the Vatican, Francis called at the Russian embassy, just two blocks from the Castel Sant’Angelo.
The visit was a violation of diplomatic protocol. Heads of state don’t just pop ‘round to the local embassy.
Over the next couple of days, it became clear that Francis wouldn’t be paying the same honor to Ukraine’s ambassador. Even more strikingly, Francis refused to condemn Russia for the attack. Vatican-watchers fumed.
While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was touring Europe expressing solidarity with Canada’s NATO partners last week, a new study by the Parliamentary Budget Officer said his government has postponed billions of dollars in capital spending to replace aging military equipment promised in 2017.
Russia has made dire threats to the West that any military shipments to Ukraine will be seen as ‘legitimate targets’, prompting fears there could be an escalation of conflict that could suck in other countries.
Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned the US ‘that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets’.
The warnings came after Joe Biden personally intervened to stop a shipment of Polish MiG fighter jets to Kyiv, fearing the move could lead to ‘World War Three’.
#Ukraine: Very dramatic footage of a Russian convoy ambushed yesterday, showing the destruction of a T-72(B3) and a BTR-82A, as well as the detonation of an unseen Russian vehicle. pic.twitter.com/R8JwSGMQUS
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 11, 2022
