“Ukraine – Russia”

Polish prime minister, Matesuz Morawiecki, has declared that his country is “no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine”. Instead, it will be focusing on “arming Poland with more modern weapons”. As explosive as the announcement is, it is unlikely to change the situation in Ukraine in the short term.

What matters more is the language. It is incredibly telling that president Andrzej Duda described Kyiv as behaving “like a drowning person clinging to anything available”, potentially bringing down those attempting to save them. It sounds like an acceptance that Ukraine cannot win this war, at the current scale and intensity, and that Europe cannot continue to supply it.

Poland has announced it will stop supplying weapons to Kyiv amid a row over grain supplies, in a new crack in western support to Ukraine.

Warsaw had been one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies but the trade dispute has thrown the relationship into doubt.

Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, said the decision would allow his country to focus on upgrading its military.

The controversial American transgender spokesperson for Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born Michael Cirillo) has been suspended indefinitely by the Ukrainian military, also pending an investigation. According to an official Ukrainian military statement, Ashton-Cirillo’s recent statements regarding “hunting down” dissidents and “propagandists” were not approved…

Who hired this freak?

Oops …

BREAKING: Ukrainian media edited Zelensky's UN speech to make it look like he had a bigger audience

They forgot to edit out Zelensky himself sitting in the audience. Look at the 0:14 mark pic.twitter.com/xA1DLr2eXH

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 21, 2023

The United Nations Security Council is no match for Europe’s most consequential war in decades, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, told members of the council at its headquarters on Wednesday, dubbing the council’s attempt at ending the war “ineffective.”

If one needed an example of the UN’s most powerful body’s struggling to be effective, the session provided one, starting with a long procedural debate about when Mr. Zelensky would be allowed to speak. Eventually, Mr. Zelensky took the stage.

#Ukraine: An active Russian Osa SAM system was destroyed by a Ukrainian precision artillery strike south of Lozove, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/eVvSvgOnbb

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 20, 2023

Ukraine is reported to have rejected a consignment of Germany’s Leopard 1 tanks – on the grounds that they are technically flawed, and that Ukrainian engineers lack the skills and training to fix them.

Embarrassingly for Germany, this is the second time that Ukraine has turned its collective nose up at a delivery of German armour. When the first ten tanks – the advance guard of a total of 110 Leopard 1s that Berlin has agreed to supply to Kyiv – arrived in Ukraine, they too were found to be unsuitable for deployment on the front line. This despite the desperate need for armour to break through Russia’s defence lines resisting Ukraine’s vaunted counter offensive striking south towards the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine on Tuesday pushed back against a New York Times investigation, which said evidence suggested that Kyiv accidentally bombed a local market in its own town of Kostiantynivka killing 15 people.

According to the New York Times‘ report published Monday, a combination of witnesses, findings in Kostyantynivka and open-source investigation of video footage and local anonymous Telegram channels indicated the September 6 attack was actually a tragic accident, caused by a Ukrainian BUK missile system firing toward Russian forces from the Ukrainian-controlled nearby town of Druzhkivka.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Canada later this week after his visit to the United Nations and the U.S., sources told CBC News.

Zelenskyy will visit Ottawa and Toronto during his Canadian trip, sources said.

Zelenskyy is expected to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday to rally support for continued help to repel Russia’s invasion.

Twice last week, Crimea’s night skies lit up with the fiery destruction of valuable Russian military equipment.

In the early hours of Wednesday, cruise missiles struck the Sevmorzavod shipyard, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Clips of the aftermath showed the skies over Sevastopol illuminated by a burning landing ship and attack submarine.

The following morning at Yevpatoriya, in the west of the Russian-occupied peninsula, footage circulated on social media showed another fireball. This time the target was said to be one of Russia’s sophisticated S-400 Triumf air defence batteries.

#Ukraine: The destruction of an abandoned Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle by a FPV loitering munition of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/4aLXbmEuXd

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 18, 2023

Human rights lawyers believe Kremlin is ‘intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’

War crimes investigators say they aim to bring the first international prosecution for starvation following Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian food supplies and farming.

The targeting of Ukraine’s agriculture, its farmland and grains stocks, and even civilians searching for food, amounts to a weaponisation of starvation and a clear war crime, investigators argue.

#Ukraine: A Russian 2S9 Nona 120mm self-propelled mortar was destroyed and another one was taken out of action by two GMLRS strikes of the Ukrainian army near Makiivka, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/FByKkv7gRV

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) September 18, 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine 19 months ago, western socialists had an opportunity to prove that their commitments to “anti-imperialism” were authentic and principled. Instead, many of these leftists rallied behind Moscow and, in the process, spotlighted their own moral bankruptcy and disdain for eastern European lives.

This behaviour, however disappointing, was utterly predictable when put into historical context.

The chance of a serious disaster at the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine has risen to one in five, a leading engineer at the Soviet-era facility has warned.

A recent exodus of top staff and the power station’s use as a military base by Chechen troops are among the reasons why a “Fukushima scenario” could happen at any time, according to one of the ten most senior engineers at the plant near Zaporizhzhia, which had a prewar workforce of 11,000.

The shortage of expertise is so acute that janitors, secretaries and “blue-collar” workers are posing as engineers in lab coats to dupe international observers into believing that the Russians have the necessary staff to avert disaster, according to sources with knowledge of conditions inside the facility.

This week saw spectacular Ukrainian attacks on the Crimean Peninsula, hitting Russian warships and missiles.

Estimates of the damage done ran into billions of pounds and raised the question: is Ukraine getting ready to retake Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014?

Crimea is a Russian fortress, so it is important not to get carried away.

“The strategy has two main goals,” says Oleksandr Musiienko, from Kyiv’s Centre for Military and Legal Studies.

Damage from Ukraine's recent strike on Russian air defenses in Crimea is visible in new high resolution satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/is2lF3TonU

— Brady Africk (@bradyafr) September 14, 2023

A large nation does not engage in the same pattern of behavior for centuries for no reason.

Russia has changed little over the past 400 years. Yes, Russians now drive cars instead of oxcarts, but from a political, cultural, military, and geopolitical standpoint, Russia and how it behaves has changed remarkably little. In fact, the run-up to and trajectory of the war in Ukraine is very much a repeat of Russian history. Yet Western governments have completely ignored this, and their obliviousness is proving costly.