“Ukraine – Russia”

MOSCOW — Parishioners have denounced Russian priests who advocated peace instead of victory in the war on Ukraine. Teachers lost their jobs after children tattled that they opposed the war. Neighbors who bore some trivial grudge for years have snitched on longtime foes. Workers rat on one another to their bosses or directly to the police or the Federal Security Service.

#Ukraine: A Russian D-20 152mm towed howitzer was destroyed by the Ukrainian army with a direct M982 Excalibur hit on the left bank of the Dnipro River, #Kherson Oblast. pic.twitter.com/ecIDxIzEli

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 27, 2023

Russia has summoned the ambassadors of Germany, Denmark and Sweden to protest a “complete lack of results” in a joint investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions last year.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused the three countries of dragging their feet and refusing to engage with Moscow.

“It has been noted that these countries are not interested in establishing the true circumstances of this sabotage. On the contrary, they are delaying their efforts and trying to conceal the tracks and the true perpetrators of the crime behind which we believe are well-known countries,” it said.

There’s absolutely no panic among the russians in Bilhorod (not Belgorod).
– Tell governor Gladkov that he’s a f…got, we’re being bombed here! What are you getting paid for?- calmly says the local woman while the men are opening the bomb shelter. pic.twitter.com/HbmjeOlVs4

— Operator Starsky (@StarskyUA) May 22, 2023

Russia has started moving nuclear weapons into Belarusian territory, President Lukashenko has said after the countries struck a deal today.

“The transfer of nuclear munitions has begun,” the Belarusian leader said in a video shared online, adding that it was “possible” the weapons had already arrived.

Moscow announced that it was sending tactical nuclear weapons to its neighbour in response to what it called a “sharp escalation” on its western border. An aide to President Zelensky of Ukraine said a counter-offensive against Russian forces had already begun.

Best news for today! Prisoner exchange went well, and 106 Ukrainian POWs returned home! #RussiaisATerroistState pic.twitter.com/RJTOdhX5IR

— Anna Filippova (@AnnaFil_Ukraine) May 25, 2023

This week, near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, I spent time with commanders and soldiers who have been fighting the Russian invaders in the shattered city, sometimes for months on end. This has been one of the longest battles anywhere in the world since 1945 and by far the most brutal in this war, with Russians and Ukrainians often fighting at close quarters, artillery hammering the city into Stalingrad-like rubble and a level of slaughter unequalled anywhere else in Putin’s vicious war.

The extent of the damage (if any) is unclear, but judging by the footage of the USV that was destroyed, it carried a serious explosive charge.pic.twitter.com/0yPJwE1Qdl

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 25, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 fighters in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, with about 20% of the 50,000 Russian convicts he recruited to fight in the 15-month war dying in the eastern Ukrainian city.

The figure was in stark contrast with widely disputed claims from Moscow that it lost just over 6,000 troops in the war, and is higher than the official estimate of the Soviet losses in the Afghanistan war of 15,000 troops between 1979-89. Ukraine hasn’t said how many of its soldiers have died since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

#Ukraine: Two Russian 2S19 Msta-S 152mm self-propelled howitzers, parked back to back, were destroyed by the Ukrainian army using two M982 Excalibur 155mm high-precision projectiles – both landed practically on the same point. pic.twitter.com/1RIS3ZH4Y6

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 23, 2023

In a cramped crew room, in a building just next to the runway of the Amari airbase in Estonia, the television is showing old episodes of Friends.

Feet up on the table, coffee mugs in hand, a bit of casual banter crisscrosses the room. On the TV screen, Rachel is just back from the hairdressers, Ross is upset about something. Then an airman pops his head around the doorway and announces calmly: “Zombie heading north out of Kaliningrad.”

Troops entered Russia from Ukraine on Monday, hitting checkpoints on the border with tank fire and pushing eight kilometres past the frontier into three villages.

Ukrainian military intelligence, the GUR, said that the Freedom of Russia Legion, a group of Ukraine-backed Russian partisans, were conducting an operation in the Belgorod region to create a “security strip” to protect Ukrainian civilians. It was being carried out exclusively by Russian citizens, a GUR spokesman told Suspilne, Ukraine’s public broadcaster.

#Ukraine: Near Vuhledar, #Donetsk Oblast a damaged Russian T-80BVM tank was finished off by an improvised munition dropped from a Ukrainian drone right through an opened hatch- resulting in the catastrophic detonation of the ammo onboard. pic.twitter.com/fYLnyfTjcV

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 22, 2023

As the Russian president congratulated his army and Wagner mercenaries, Volodymyr Zelensky denied the city had been captured

Vladimir Putin has claimed his first battlefield victory in a year with the capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

The Russian president congratulated Wagner troops as well as the regular Russian army for seizing the ruined city, which has been the site of the longest and bloodiest battle of the entire war.

Ukraine has denied that Bakhmut has fallen but Russian propagandists have started celebrating “one of the greatest battle victories in the 21st century”.

#Ukraine: A Ukrainian Zil-131 with a ZU-23-2 23mm autocannon was destroyed by two Russian FPV loitering munitions in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/BrK9ZnOVUJ

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 21, 2023

Almost exactly a year ago, when the last Ukrainian defenders left the shattered city of Mariupol, many analysts believed that the war triggered by Vladimir Putin would be heading towards an end with a Russian victory.

That belief was based on a number of assumptions that have since proven wrong. The first was that the 80-day battle for Mariupol could not be repeated in other Ukrainian towns and villages under Russian attack. In Mariupol, resistance was led by a hard-core of Ukrainian nationalists ready, if not eager, to fight to the very end. Most were workers in the country’s largest steel mill and had developed an esprit de corps worthy of military gradation. That combination of reasons for resistance could not be repeated elsewhere in Ukraine.

German police have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning of two Russians living in exile, officials said on Sunday.

Russian investigative media outlet Agentstvo reported that two Russian dissidents who attended a meeting in Berlin on April 29 and 30 described feeling ill. The meeting was organized by Kremlin critic and exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began over a year ago, officials in Kyiv have been asking their Western allies to supply the country’s air force with advanced warplanes such as the F-16. But the United States, which manufactures the fighter jet, was long reluctant to provide it, or to allow other countries that have F-16s to re-export them to Ukraine.

#Ukraine: A Russian attack formation near Pisky, #Donetsk Oblast, was targeted by the Ukrainian 59th Motorized Brigade- an MT-LB AOC was destroyed after running over anti-tank mines and then a BMP-2 IFV suffered a direct hit from a FGM-148 Javelin. pic.twitter.com/PIXNqJwyKN

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

CZELADZ, Poland—Oleksandr Karpets, a marksman from Ukraine’s 80th Air Assault Brigade, remembers the bone-crushing pressure on his face when shrapnel from a Russian tank artillery round shaved off his lower jaw, leaving him on the ground gasping for breath as his comrades radioed base thinking he was dead.

“I was on the position that happened to be first in the line of fire,” the 35-year-old says.

After months of flat denials, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence has admitted that Kyiv is carrying out a campaign of sabotage and assassination inside Russia. But why change the official line now?