“Ukraine – Russia”

Father Yuriy asks politely if we can postpone the first leg of an online interview. An air-raid siren has just gone off, he says, and he and his wife Mariia have to hurry to a nearby basement for shelter.

It’s hours before they surface again.

The vast majority of Russia’s oil exports are purchased by Europe and China, which together account for 90 percent of the country’s total exports.

That’s made it tougher for Europe to enact similar bans as the U.S. on Russian imports and lessens the economic hit to Moscow from the Biden administration’s decision this week to cut off Russian oil.

Canada’s plan to help offset Russian oil ban for Europe expected by March 23: minister

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says it will be another week or two before Canada will know with certainty how much extra oil it can produce and ship to help offset bans on the use of fossil fuels from Russia.

But he says longer-term conversations about Canada partnering with Europe on renewable energy are likely more realistic and more lucrative.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pounding the port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said Saturday as fighting also raged on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv.

There was no immediate word of casualties from the shelling of the elegant, city-center mosque. Mariupol has suffered some of the greatest misery from Russia’s war in Ukraine, with unceasing barrages thwarting repeated attempts to bring in food and water, evacuate trapped civilians and to bury all of the dead.

#Ukraine: The Russian Army lost a 9P140 Uragan MRL to another TB-2 drone strike. pic.twitter.com/UrHgCemPvM

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

#Ukraine: The first proof of loitering munitions combat use by the Russian army. ZALA KYB "kamikaze" UAV fell down in #Kyiv today.

The drone didn't explode, however it is unknown if it malfunctioned or it was downed using Ukrainian electronic warfare systems. pic.twitter.com/Ju38t0Qhrp

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

#Ukraine: Corrected Artillery fire from the Ukrainian 30th Mechanized Brigade landing on a Russian BTR. pic.twitter.com/i33BFpKT7q

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

War always creates power vacuums — the West must fill them

War is hardly a game. Nevertheless, in trying to discern the true winner of a conflict, we should always look to the edge of the board.

If a power is present but not directly involved, then it is well-placed to benefit. Having not paid the price of war — or at least not the heaviest price — it has a head start when it comes to winning the peace.

When Ukraine appeared to be on the verge of exiting Russia’s orbit in late 2013, it took an almighty effort from the Kremlin to drag the then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych back from the precipice. Yanukovych was gone within three months, fleeing into exile in Russia as the Euromaidan demonstrations consumed Ukrainian political life. These events sowed a seed in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s mind about the need to act, which found fertile soil in thinking we can trace back to his fear of the color revolutions and his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference. The tragic events we are witnessing now, as division after division of Russian troops pile into Eastern Europe, are the direct result of that seed. 

Russia has accused Ukraine and the US at the UN security council of a plot to use migratory birds and bats to spread pathogens, raising alarm among other council members that the accusations could be intended to provide cover for future Russian use of biological weapons.

The Russian permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, delivered a lengthy account of the alleged biological weapons plot, and said the birds, bats and insects supposedly intended to spread disease would cross Ukraine’s western border.

It is not the most pressing question to emerge from Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine, but I have nonetheless found myself wondering – what will happen with the word ‘erasure’ following this war? Ukraine’s heroic president Volodymyr Zelensky used the e-word last week. Russia, he said, is out to ‘erase our history’. The Putin regime and its marauding forces want to ‘erase our country, erase us all’, Zelensky cried, aptly, given the vigour and bigotry with which Putin has mocked and violently undermined Ukrainian sovereignty. Putin clearly sees Ukraine as a joke nation that can casually be erased from the map.

Russian citizens have been at the center of their government’s propaganda campaign to twist the events of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in a way that makes Russia look like the hero and Ukraine look like the aggressor.

Even before the war began, the government and state-run media in Russia were showing a distorted view of reality by painting a false narrative of the Ukrainian government.

A Canadian marketer who had planned to raise a humble few hundred dollars for a charity helping relief efforts in Ukraine has found himself the creator of a viral marketing campaign that has so far earned well over C$1m ($783,000; £600,000) using the unlikeliest of images – a rocket-armed saint.

Christian Borys helped develop the image – known as “Saint Javelin” – which depicts the Virgin Mary cradling a US-made FGM-148 anti-tank weapon. These missiles are among the arms being sent by Western allies to Ukrainian forces to aid in their fight.

Igor Gavrylko was at his home in west London when the Russian bombs began to fall on Ukraine. A British citizen originally from Ukraine, he had lived in the UK since 1996, working most recently for Nissan as a forecourt salesperson. He rang his boss. “I knew a Russian invasion was going to happen,” he said. “My Ukrainian grandfather fought against the Red Army and the Nazis in world war two. Now it’s my turn to help.”