In many ways, President Vladimir V. Putin seems to be winning.
Russian forces are pushing ahead in Ukraine. President-elect Donald J. Trump is returning to the White House. War fatigue is spreading across Europe. North Korean troops have boosted the ranks of his army.
And yet on Thursday, Mr. Putin appeared weary, threatened and newly aggrieved as he took his bellicose threats against his Western adversaries to a new level.
Russia has launched an intercontinental ballistic missile at Ukraine for the first time, Kyiv said on Thursday as Moscow warned that an American missile defence base in Poland was on its list of targets for “potential destruction”.
The Ukrainian air force said that a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) had been used as part of an attack on critical infrastructure in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine. It was not immediately clear what damage was caused and the claim has yet to be independently verified. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment.
‼️ The Ukrainian city of Dnipro became the first city in human history to be struck by an intercontinental ballistic missile. It is a historic turning point. An intercontinental ballistic missile used not on a firing range, but against a city of a million people. pic.twitter.com/TyXjY3TjFz
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) November 21, 2024
But … US official disputes Ukraine’s missile claim
SEOUL—In a country that fetes its military elites like celebrities, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok was rarely seen—or even mentioned—in public. His role leading North Korea’s special forces required him to keep a low profile to conceal his identity. But now he is a very public figure.
He is the top North Korean military official in Russia, where more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to aid Moscow’s efforts to dislodge Ukrainian troops who have seized a chunk of Russian territory.
Kyiv and Seoul officials have confirmed his presence in Russia. In recent days, President Biden gave the green light for Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied, long-range weapons to strike inside Russia—with the new North Korean presence a motivating factor. Ukraine fired those missiles for the first time on Tuesday, hitting an ammunition storage facility in Russia’s Bryansk region.
Biden’s surprise decision on Sunday, November 17, 2024, to authorize Ukraine to utilize long-range U.S. missiles capable of reaching 186 miles into Russia requires explanation. (As of this writing, Ukraine has already fired a missile into Russia.) Does the U.S. military believe that allowing Ukraine to fire a few U.S.-manufactured Army Tactical Missile systems (“ATACMS”) into Russia will win the war for Ukraine? Or is Biden’s decision evidence that the United States is in a military coup d’etat aimed at escalating the war in Ukraine so Donald Trump will not be able to settle the war should he manage to be inaugurated in approximately two months, on January 20, 2025?
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told Fox News late on Tuesday that Ukraine would lose the war if Washington, its main military backer, pulled funding.
The Ukrainian leader said it would be “very dangerous if we lose unity in Europe, and what is most important is unity between Ukraine and the United States”.
US President-elect Donald Trump has campaigned on a promise to end US involvement in wars and instead use taxpayers’ money to improve Americans’ lives.
Biden’s decision to escalate the Ukraine war is a last-ditch effort by the military-industrial complex to undermine Trump’s ability to end this tragic conflict.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to replace several top-tier Pentagon officials and officers who have overseen our military support of Ukraine, the Biden administration has announced that it has given permission to Kyiv to use long-range American missiles (Army Tactical Missiles Systems, or ATACMS) to strike deep inside Russia, a policy change that risks escalation of the Russia–Ukraine war, even as Trump and his transition team plan to seek a negotiated ceasefire to the conflict. The resistance to Trump’s policy preferences has begun in the most dangerous place — the Pentagon. The military-industrial complex will not readily surrender its policy of victory in Ukraine, even if that means bringing us closer to a full-scale Russia–NATO war.
Germany has said it has to assume that damage to two undersea fibre-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea since Sunday was an act of sabotage.
Two cables in the Baltic – one between Finland and Germany, the other between Sweden and Lithuania – were severed on Sunday and Monday, raising suspicions of a malicious attack, though authorities initially declined to speculate.
“No one believes that the cables were accidentally damaged. I also don’t want to believe that the ships’ anchors caused the damage by accident,” the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said in Brussels on Tuesday.
Russia says Ukraine has fired US-supplied long-range missiles into the country, a day after Washington gave its permission for such attacks.
Ukraine used the Army Tactical Missile System (Atacms) in a strike on Russia’s Bryansk region this morning, the ministry of defence in Moscow said.
Five missiles were shot down and one damaged, with its fragments causing a fire at a military facility in the region, it said in a statement.
And …
Putin approves changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine
Vladimir Putin has approved changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, setting out new conditions under which the country would consider using its arsenal.
The doctrine now says an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia.
Sweden is sending out five million pamphlets to residents urging them to prepare for the possibility of war, with instructions on how to stockpile food and even seek shelter during a nuclear attack, as fears grow of a conflict between Russia and NATO.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Stockholm has repeatedly urged Swedes to prepare both mentally and logistically for a possibile conflict, citing the worsening security situation in its vicinity.
The booklet ‘If Crisis or War Comes’, sent out by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), contains information about how to prepare for emergencies such as war, natural disasters, cyber attacks and terrorism.
US-made ATACMS missiles, with a range of nearly 200 miles, are likely to be used against Russian and North Korean troops in the Kursk region
President Biden has signalled a major shift in US policy, authorising the first use of American-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia.
The weapons, with a range of nearly 200 miles, are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops who are fighting Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, US media reported.
Let the senile Prez do the heavy lifting. Great idea.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Donald Trump becomes US president.
Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during their phone conversation after his victory in the US presidential election.
He did not say whether Trump had made any demands regarding possible talks with Russia, but said he’d not heard anything from him that was contrary to Ukraine’s position.
Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.
The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads.
Ireland recently signed a 10-year bilateral security arrangement with Ukraine. Simon Harris, our “far right”-condemning Taoiseach (prime minister), signed this deal. He did so despite the fact that, as I have outlined, Ukraine has a ‘far-right’ ultra-nationalist block, which, though electorally very small, has serious political influence and state support, especially since the U.S.-backed 2014 overthrow of the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine is also a nation which, quite tragically for the 73% of voters who elected Zelensky as president in 2019 on a promise of peace, is being militarily demolished on the battlefield.
To find the only Canadian woman serving on the front lines of the battle for Ukraine, you first have to drive to the absolute hottest point of the war.
Brittney Shki-Giizis, a 31-year-old tank gunner, says she left the Canadian army and joined Ukraine’s forces because she wanted to be part of the fight to hold back Vladimir Putin’s Russia, rather than watch from afar as Moscow tries to conquer a European country.
President-Elect Donald Trump had made peace in Europe a key campaign pledge, but several NATO member states are dedicated to total Ukrainian victory and will discuss how to “thwart” him and keep Kyiv in the war even if Washington withdraws support.
My Spidey sense says FAFO imminent.
