“Ukraine – Russia”

European intelligence agencies are claiming that Russia is actively preparing various acts of sabotage, either directly or through proxies, of Europe’s infrastructure, including through detonation, arson, or other forms of damage.

If accurate, this would mean Russia would be expanding the scope (as well as type) of its foreign operations in Europe.

According to gathered intel, Moscow would be unconcerned about potential civilian casualties, the Financial Times reports. Thus far, the Kremlin has not released a statement to address the allegation.

Imagine the reaction in a NATO state if their soldiers were sent to fight for a country whose own young men are too feckless to take up arms against their invader

Emmanuel Macron warned recently that Europe is in “mortal danger.” The French president said that Russia cannot be allowed to win its war with Ukraine. He reiterated the idea he first floated in February of sending soldiers to Ukraine, saying: “I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out.” Macron’s comments come amid reports of an upsurge in draft dodgers in Ukraine. They are frightened because their government has launched a crackdown on men avoiding the draft.

Ukraine awaits US aid, but plans to take back lost territory have been shelved.

In the coming weeks, Vladimir Putin will be throwing all he’s got against a stretch of high ground between the Russian occupied town of Bahkmut and the city of Kramatorsk to gain complete control of Ukraine’s Donbass region and score a decisive, if limited, victory over the government in Kyiv. At least two Russian divisions with close air support are relentlessly attacking Ukrainian fortifications in Chasiv Yar, a ridge town dominating the Siverskyi Donetsk river valley that contains an industrial triangle of cities serving as Ukraine’s logistical hub and forward headquarters.

Russia has likely been recruiting Cuban nationals to fight in its army in Ukraine, research by the BBC has shown.

In September and October 2023, passport details belonging to over 200 Cubans who allegedly joined the Russian army were leaked online by a pro-Ukrainian platform called InformNapalm.

The passport details were obtained, the site said, by hacking the emails of a Russian military recruitment officer in Tula, south of Moscow.

On 2 January, a young Ukrainian weapons inspector, Khrystyna Kimachuk, got word that an unusual-looking missile had crashed into a building in the city of Kharkiv. She began calling her contacts in the Ukrainian military, desperate to get her hands on it. Within a week, she had the mangled debris splayed out in front of her at a secure location in the capital Kyiv.

She began taking it apart and photographing every piece, including the screws and computer chips smaller than her fingernails. She could tell almost immediately this was not a Russian missile, but her challenge was to prove it.

Are we sleepwalking … Note that I can’t verify the following report, Only Macron seems to know for sure.

France sends combat troops to Ukraine battlefront

France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine. They have been deployed in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk. The French soldiers are drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère).

In 2022 France had a number of Ukrainians and Russians in the Foreign Legion. They were allowed to leave the Legion and, in the case of the Ukrainians, return to Ukraine to join Ukrainian forces. It isn’t clear if the Russians returned home.

h/t DS

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrilo Budanov warned that from mid-May onwards, the country will face a battlefield situation that is “difficult” but “not catastrophic”. As Russian troops exploit February’s costly victory in Avdiivka by pushing westwards with increasing speed and success, Ukraine’s best hope is that he is correct.

French president Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his earlier statements about the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine in a recent interview with the Economist, published on Thursday, May 2nd.

According to the president, were Russia to push further into Ukraine, the move would be “legitimately” considered in Europe if requested by Kyiv.

Russians flocked to see the bullet-riddled wreck of a British Husky armoured vehicle that featured in a display in Moscow alongside other Nato equipment captured in Ukraine.

State television proclaimed that the star of the show was an American M1 Abrams tank, which it said had been taken out by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine using a guided rocket and kamikaze drones.

Clambering over the tank holding his microphone, a Channel One correspondent told viewers that the tank had been billed in the United States as an indestructible “wonder weapon”.

Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, which held out against the invading Russians for three months in 2022, has moved on from its far-right origins, its men say

The elite Ukrainian unit that spearheaded the defence of Mariupol against Russian forces has been excluded from the United States’ latest military aid package because of its historical links to right-wing extremists.

Azov Regiment fighters held out against overwhelming odds for three months in 2022. Their ferocious defence of the southern port city, culminating in a last stand at the Azovstal steelworks, came to symbolise Ukraine’s determination to resist the Russian invasion.

Sometimes the metaphors write themselves. As Putin purportedly seeks to showcase the illusion of Russian strength by parading a captured British Saxon armoured personnel carrier from the 1970s in Red Square – donated to Ukraine in 2015 from mothballed British stocks – Ukrainian saboteurs are deep behind Russian lines actually doing the business.

Whereas Russia is desperate to display ‘destroyed’ western kit, Ukraine is hard at work eroding Russian capacity and, crucially, hitting Moscow where it hurts – inside its own borders. The news today that two railway lines in Russia have been destroyed is a clear example of an evolving strategy designed to hurt a security-obsessed Putin and degrade Moscow’s ability to wage war.

NATO countries have failed to deliver in good time what they promised to Ukraine, the alliance’s chief said Monday, as Russia rushes to exploit its battlefield advantages before Kyiv’s depleted forces get more Western military supplies in the war that has lasted more than two years.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “serious delays in support have meant serious consequences on the battlefield” for Ukraine.

“NATO allies have not delivered what they promised,” Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, referring to delays by the U.S. and Europe in sending weapons and ammunition.

🎥 Russian troops have evacuated the first US-made M1 Abrams tank from the front line near Avdeyevka, Chief Press Officer of Russia’s Battlegroup Tsentr Alexander Savchuk told Sputnik.

According to him, soon everyone will be able to see the trophy at an exhibition of NATO… pic.twitter.com/6nut4KgfBL

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) April 29, 2024

h/t Mauser