“Ukraine – Russia”

Barbra Streisand is better known for crooning pop ballads than as the face of a fundraiser for explosive kamikaze drones. But when she agreed to help procure medical aid for President Zelensky’s initiative last September, she soon found herself part of a celebrity network resisting the Kremlin war machine.
The fundraising platform, United24, expects to have raised $300 million to help Ukraine by the end of next month and is only $7 million shy of its goal. It counts Star Wars’ Mark Hamill, the Chelsea football legend Andriy Shevchenko, Netflix Vikings’ star Katheryn Winnick, the heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk and the Balenciaga creative director Demna among its wide range of ambassadors.

There’s an uncomfortable fact about covert operations in the information-saturated modern world. Like personal WhatsApp messages, they always leak – the only questions are how long it takes, who leaks, and what the consequences will be.

With reports coming from both Washington and Berlin that Ukrainians may have been behind the spectacular bombings of the Nord Stream gas pipeline back in September, it looks as if the current lag is just months.

If the Ukraine president knew about any attack on the pipeline what would that say about his judgment

… If he did not know about it – reports in the German and American press suggest it was an off-the-books operation by a small group of mavericks unconnected to the government – then how did private individuals access that much explosive?

Mr Zelensky may be diplomatically savvy. But there are people in the Ukrainian intelligence and military apparatus with a blunter appetite for action and fewer inhibitions about allies’ opinions.

Last week, a Russian volunteer unit led by a prominent neo-Nazi mounted a brief but massively self-publicised raid across the border into Russia’s Bryansk region – to no obvious military advantage.

I bet Freeland knows.

German prosecutors say they have searched a vessel suspected to have been used in the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September, following reports that the sabotage was carried out by a small “pro-Ukrainian” cell.

Western officials believe the explosives were placed at the bottom of the Baltic sea by two specialist divers operating from a rented yacht, according to a joint investigation by three German media outlets.

The vessel is alleged to be based on Germany’s Baltic coast but owned by a Polish-registered company that ultimately belongs to two Ukrainians.

A kettle. A cauldron. A pincer. A meat grinder. A carpet of corpses. A death trap.

A decisive battle?

Since at least August, a motley crew of Russian regular forces and soldiers from the notorious Wagner private mercenary company have been throwing World-War-I-style waves of infantry at Bakhmut, trying to dislodge Ukraine’s entrenched defense from the small city in the eastern Donetsk region.

That fighting was eclipsed in recent months by Ukraine’s counteroffensives to the north, in the Kharkiv region, and to the southwest, around Kherson, on the west bank of the Dnieper River.

These revealing photographs show shop shelves in a provincial Russian city groaning under piles of fresh food.

As British supermarkets ration eggs and an array of fruit and vegetables amid shortages provoked in large part by the Ukraine war, no such hardships afflict Vladimir Putin’s citizens.

The pictures were taken at a food hall, two superstores and a corner shop in Perm, a city with a population the size of Birmingham in the Ural mountains, a 24-hour drive from Moscow. The images suggest the West’s much-vaunted sanctions on Russia, imposed to punish President Putin for his invasion, are not having a deep bite.

Ukraine has urged the international criminal court to investigate footage circulating on social media that appeared to show Russian fighters killing a Ukrainian prisoner of war.

In the graphic clip that first circulated on Telegram, a detained combatant is seen standing in a shallow trench and smoking a cigarette. The soldier says “Glory to Ukraine” and is then apparently shot with automatic weapons.

🇺🇦 Murdered for being Ukrainian and not giving the Russians any information. His last words. "Glory to Ukraine" they shot him in cold blood. They murdered a prisoner of war.
Khamzat Galeav, the Hero. 🕯️
Remember his name.
Do not forget his defiance in the face of evil. 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/gVtJPRCSUc

— Hiding in the cracks. 🇬🇧🇺🇦 (@moscow_english) March 6, 2023

Russia is welding ageing naval turrets onto old armoured vehicles to make crude tanks as Vladimir Putin’s forces face worsening arms shortages.

The crudely engineered vehicles are being deployed in a likely attempt to shoot down Ukrainian drones as the armed forces grapple with crippling shortages of fighting machines and ammunition.

‘This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order,’ said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, a month after the invasion. ‘The unipolar world is irretrievably receding into the past … A multi-polar world is being born.’ The US is no longer the world’s policeman, in other words – a message that resonates in countries that have long been suspicious of American power. The West’s core coalition may remain solid, but it has failed to win over many of the countries that refused to pick sides. Moscow’s diplomatic mission to build ties and hone a narrative over the past decade has paid dividends.

Look at Africa. In March last year, 25 African states out of 54 abstained or didn’t vote in a UN motion condemning the invasion, despite huge pressure from western powers. Their refusal to side clearly with Ukraine was testament to Russia’s ongoing diplomatic efforts in the developing world.

The head of Russia’s Wagner private army says it is not getting the ammunition it needs from Moscow, as it seeks to gain control of Bakhmut.

The eastern city has seen months of intense fighting, as Wagner and regular Russian troops try to seize it.

But Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin says his army’s lack of ammunition could be “ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal”.

Ukraine’s president and military commanders have agreed to strengthen their defence of Bakhmut.