“Ukraine – Russia”

Defence minister says Germany ‘cannot give everything away’ to Ukraine as their military is beset by shortages of equipment

Germany’s Defence Minister has ruled out sending any further weapons or equipment to Ukraine, admitting that the Bundeswehr will already not be able to replenish its stocks by 2030.

Blighted by chronic underinvestment since the end of the Cold War, the German army is now in even worse shape after having sent equipment, ammunition and vehicles like the Leopard 2 main battle tank to the battlefields of Ukraine.

“To put it bluntly, like other nations, we have a limited inventory,” said Boris Pistorius.

#Ukraine: A Russian T-72B3 (Possibly Obr. 2016/2022), was destroyed by Ukrainian fire in Marinka, #Donetsk Oblast. Only a minor entry in the turret tossing competition this time. pic.twitter.com/QXCuZe877W

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 31, 2023

President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed new guidelines aimed at curbing Western “dominance” and identifying China and India as key partners for the future.

The 42-page document, which was published on the Kremlin’s website, said that Russia would aim to “create the conditions for any state to reject neo-colonialist and hegemonic aims.”

Russia has become increasingly isolated on the world stage and has sought to boost political and economic ties with countries in Africa and Asia such as China and India that taken a more neutral stance towards its offensive in Ukraine

Documents leaked by whistleblower angry over Ukraine war

The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.

Inside the six-storey building, a new generation is helping Russian military operations. Its weapons are more advanced than those of Peter the Great’s era: not pikes and halberds, but hacking and disinformation tools.

The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan. On the surface, it looks like a run-of-the-mill cybersecurity consultancy. However, a leak of secret files from the company has exposed its work bolstering Vladimir Putin’s cyberwarfare capabilities.

The study tracked Russian information-warfare campaigns that it said were tailored to Canadian audiences on Twitter and what it called the “supportive ecosystems of accounts” that retweeted these messages. By 2023, it said, this included about 200,000 Twitter accounts that shared these messages with millions of Canadian users.

The underlying themes of the Kremlin-aligned messages include such ideas as: “Canada’s foreign policy is controlled by Ukrainian Canadians,” “Canadian sanctions are responsible for inflation and rising energy costs,” “Ukraine is corrupt and doesn’t deserve our support,” “NATO is responsible for the war” and Russia is “de-Nazifying Ukraine.”

So a government funded study is telling us what our opinion should be about Ukraine.

Got it.

Russia’s security and intelligence services have achieved greater success in Ukraine than its army, says a leading UK defence think tank.

Russian spy agencies began preparing for the invasion of Ukraine as far back as June 2021, says a report by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

The Federal Security Service (FSB) has quickly dominated populations in occupied areas of Ukraine, Rusi adds.

The report was compiled using sources including captured documents, it says.

The United States has a limited ability to ensure the billions in weapons sent to Ukraine stays out of the wrong hands, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told Congress on Tuesday.

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the difficulty of guaranteeing the final destination of more than $30 billion in weapons aid delivered so far to Ukraine. An ability to maintain only a small contingent of non-combat personnel dedicated to oversight at the embassy in Kyiv means it relies mostly on Ukrainian soldiers to inspect aid at destinations closer to the front lines and upload photos of weapons to a secure software for confirmation

For a year I’ve been expressing my fear of a desperate Vladimir Putin ultimately resorting to a nuclear option of some sort in Ukraine. The Russians always get their tails kicked in military conflicts, and the fact that they’ve been beat up in Ukraine is no surprise to anyone with a knowledge of Russian military history. Maybe the one person most surprised is Vladimir Putin. He’s not pleased. Putin is a thug, and as he runs out of options to seize Ukraine, the cornered Mad Dog could lash out at his fabricated enemy in an especially vicious way. That might mean nuclear weapons in some form.

A Russian single father whose daughter was reported for drawing an anti-war picture has been given a two-year jail term for discrediting the army.

But Alexei Moskalev, 53, was not in court in Yefremov for the verdict. The court press secretary said he had escaped house arrest.

“I don’t know where he is,” his lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko told the BBC.

#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 10th Mountain Assault Brigade destroyed a Russian BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle with an ATGM strike in Bilohorivka, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/rMDFJ2T7Gv

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

The first British Challenger 2 battle tanks have arrived in Ukraine, in a major boost for its armoured forces ahead of a planned spring offensive.

“Today, I had the honour to try out the newest addition to our armed units, particularly Challengers from the UK,” Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukraine defence minister, said.

A Challenger 2 was pictured alongside several other recently donated armoured vehicles including an American Stryker infantry carrier and a German Marder.

#Ukraine: New Western equipment was transferred to the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces – including 🇬🇧 Challenger 2 tanks, 🇺🇸 Stryker armored personnel carriers, 🇩🇪 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, 🇺🇸 Cougar MRAP vehicles and 🇨🇦 Roshel Senator armored cars. pic.twitter.com/qgu96nQAuV

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

German Leopard 2 tanks now in Ukraine, Berlin confirms

Germany’s much-awaited shipment of 18 Leopard 2 battle tanks has arrived in Ukraine, the German defence ministry has confirmed.

After months of prevaricating, the German government announced in late January it would provide Kyiv with the state-of-the-art fighting vehicles as part of a deal under which several EU states would contribute to a shipment of two Leopard 2 battalions and 31 American-made M1A2 Abrams tanks from the US.

Members of a recently formed Russian assault unit say their commanders deployed troops to stop them from retreating and threatened them with death after they suffered “huge” losses in eastern Ukraine.

In a video addressed to President Vladimir Putin, a group of about two dozen men in military uniform say they are the remnants of Storm, a unit under the defence ministry.

“We sat under open mortar fire and artillery for 14 days,” Alexander Gorin, a Russian soldier, is heard saying in the appeal, which first appeared on Friday on Russian Telegram channels. “We took huge losses. Thirty-four people were injured and 22 died, including our commander.”

A convoy of six Russian naval vessels was detected around the site of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage five days before it occurred, according to a report.

Three of the four conduits carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea were disabled by explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm on September 26 last year. While various reports have pointed the finger of blame at the US or a “pro-Ukrainian” group, there are discrepancies and puzzling details in both versions of events.