“Ukraine – Russia”

Russia-Ukraine live news: Partial evacuations on hold

Ukraine accuses Russian forces of breaking temporary ceasefire; Moscow blames Ukrainian ‘nationalists’ of preventing civilians from leaving.

Zelensky slams Nato over rejection of no-fly zone

Ukraine’s president has attacked Nato leaders in a fiery speech over their refusal to implement a no-fly zone around the country.

Speaking from Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelensky said the West’s reluctance to intervene has given Russia “a green light” to continue bombarding towns and villages.

Nato has argued that a no-fly zone will result in confrontation with Moscow.

But Mr Zelensky said he disagrees that direct action could “provoke Russia’s direct aggression against Nato”.

President Zelenskyy has said NATO is ‘very weak’ and ‘lost’ after it refused to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Latest updates: https://t.co/HsyjSWVdV9 pic.twitter.com/48DYVpAdHi

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 5, 2022

Trudeau defends NATO rejection of Ukraine’s no-fly-zone request

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending NATO’s decision to reject establishing a no-fly-zone over Ukraine, warning the move would lead to an “unfortunate” escalation in the conflict.

He made the comment during a press conference on Friday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enters the ninth day of his call for NATO to impose and enforce a ban on Russian jets flying in Ukrainian skies.

BBC, CBC, CNN and other global news outlets suspend reporting in Russia

Global news media said they were temporarily suspending reporting in Russia to protect their journalists after a new law cracking down on foreign news outlets was passed that threatened jail terms of up to 15 years for spreading “fake news”.

Britain’s BBC said Friday it had temporarily halted reporting in Russia, and by the end of the day, the Canadian Broadcasting Company and Bloomberg News said their journalists were also stopping work. CNN and CBS News said they would stop broadcasting in Russia, and other outlets removed Russian-based journalists’ bylines as they assessed the situation.

Ukrainian officials said several civilians, including at least one child, were killed when Russian warplanes bombed homes and vehicles in the village of Markhalivka, south of Kyiv. Latest updates: https://t.co/HsyjSWDD3B pic.twitter.com/TEpUm2ydlU

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 5, 2022

Sky News journalists evacuated after being shot by Russian ‘death squad’

A Sky News crew has been evacuated back to the UK from Ukraine after journalists were shot during an ambush by a suspected Russian “death squad” on Monday.

The team of five were attacked while out in a car, after unsuccessfully trying to visit the town of Bucha near Kyiv.

WATCH: Sky News reporters ambushed near Kyiv, injuring one of them pic.twitter.com/zDXGGEwJ40

— BNO News (@BNONews) March 4, 2022

A tough choice between Muslim Europe and Muslim Russia.

Russia, with a birth rate of 1.5 children per woman, has invaded Ukraine, where the birth rate is 1.2 children per woman, to determine which nation with below replacement birth rates will go extinct the fastest. In the long run the only winners of the war to determine whether Ukraine will belong to the 1.2 or 1.5 people will be the Chechen and other Muslim soldiers doing the fighting.

The Chechens have a birth rate of 2.5. Their religion and mosques are more likely to inherit the territories they are fighting over than either the Russian or Ukrainian Orthodox churches.

With Russia largely blocked from the US dollar-based global financial system as a result of wide-ranging sanctions, some policymakers and money-laundering experts have warned that cryptocurrencies could provide a hidden route for Russians to preserve their wealth.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren said “cryptocurrencies risk undermining sanctions against Russia, allowing Putin and his cronies to avoid economic pain,” and called upon US regulators to clamp down. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, has repeatedly called upon crypto exchanges to block Russian users since the invasion began.

Ukraine will never bow down to a pro-Kremlin stooge

A week after it launched its attempted blitz across Ukraine, finally the Russian army has taken its first major city: Kherson, a key port city in the south of the country. But the defenders of Kyiv and Kharkiv have held out; elsewhere, Ukrainians have succeeded in repelling the invasion.

Two quite contradictory messages are emerging about the success, or otherwise, of the Kremlin’s efforts to control what Russians learn about the war in Ukraine. On the one hand, there is still, it appears, widespread ignorance about Russia’s actions, and disbelief about reports coming out of Ukraine. In other words, the official narrative prevails. But on the other hand, the imposition of an increasing number of media curbs, including on two independent domestic broadcasters and a slew of international news websites, suggests the authorities are running scared.

“How did we just kill a billion people?”

Over just three days, as I have done countless times over the last several years, a group of past and present senior U.S. government officials from both sides of the aisle gathered to wage a NATO-Russia war in a simulation at the end of 2019. In the course of what we called the NATO-Russia War of 2019, we estimated one billion people died. And if we aren’t careful, what happened in a simulation could happen if a NATO-Russia war erupts over Ukraine.

In fact, in the simulation I mentioned above from 2019, in which Russia invades Ukraine in a similar way as it did over the last week or so, not only does NATO get sucked in unintentionally, but Russia eventually releases nuclear weapons in its desperation. The result is an eventual escalation of bigger and more dangerous nuclear weapons whereby over one billion lives are lost.

There’s no way to feel confident about this report in the Times of London, as it tracks a little too closely with something Ukrainians would want the world to believe even if it weren’t true. The focus of Ukraine’s highly effective online propaganda effort has been to make the world believe that Russian morale is collapsing. 

DUSSELDORF, Germany (AP) — Russians could face prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading information that goes against the Russian government’s position on the war in Ukraine, a move that comes as authorities block access to foreign media outlets.

The Russian parliament voted unanimously Friday to approve a draft law criminalizing the intentional spreading of what Russia deems to be “fake” reports.

Russian authorities have repeatedly decried reports of Russian military setbacks or civilian deaths in Ukraine as “fake” reports. State media outlets refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a “war” or “invasion.”

I bet Justin is green with envy.

If any good is to come from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is that the Western powers exploit the Kremlin’s unprovoked act of aggression to further strengthen the cause of democratic freedom in Europe.

In many respects, Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine has acted as a salutary wake up call for Europe’s liberal elites, who appeared more inclined to appease Moscow than stand up for Kyiv’s democratic rights.

Five Russian soldiers sit in a brick building. They are blindfolded: the latest prisoners to be captured inside Ukraine. A Ukrainian voice interrogates them. “Speak,” he says to the group’s Russian officer. What message would he like to send to his soldiers and to Russians back at home?

“Frankly speaking, they tricked us,” the officer replies, referring to his military superiors sitting in Moscow. “Everything we were told was a fake. I would tell my guys to leave Ukrainian territory. We’ve got families and children. I think 90% of us would agree to go home.”

Elon Musk issued a warning on Thursday that those using SpaceX’s Starlink terminals in Ukraine are at a high risk of being targeted by the Russians because those are some of the only remaining systems on the ground that work.

The latest developments on the Russia-Ukraine war:

After blocking Facebook, Russia’s state communications watchdog has quickly followed up by declaring a block on Twitter amid the tensions over the war in Ukraine.

The agency, Roskomnadzor, said Friday it cut access to Twitter in line with the Russian Prosecutor General’s office decision. The watchdog has previously accused Twitter of failing to delete the content banned by the Russian authorities and slowed down access to it.

Videos and photos show the bodies of soldiers left behind on the battlefield, officials say, and the charred remains of tanks and armored vehicles.

WASHINGTON — When Russia seized Crimea in 2014, President Vladimir V. Putin was so worried about Russian casualty figures coming to light that authorities accosted journalists who tried to cover funerals of some of the 400 troops killed during that one-month campaign.

But Moscow may be losing that many soldiers daily in Mr. Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine, American and European officials said. The mounting toll for Russian troops exposes a potential weakness for the Russian president at a time when he is still claiming, publicly, that he is engaged only in a limited military operation in Ukraine’s separatist east.

The International Cat Federation has banned Russian cats from its competitions following the country’s move to invade Ukraine last week.

The federation, which is also known as FIFe after its French name, Fédération Internationale Féline, said in a statement that it was “shocked and horrified” that Russian forces had attacked Ukraine and “started a war.”