Tax rises and pension changes will make the economic costs more visible
Prague was a sea of blue-and-yellow this weekend to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Light displays, public demonstrations and concerts combined an atmosphere of solemnity with bittersweet celebrations of Ukraine’s continued survival.
Sean Penn is unexpectedly fluent in Soviet aircraft.
After apologizing for his hoarseness — he had just come from a post-production sound session — the Oscar-winning “Milk” and “Mystic River” actor launched into a detailed comparison of Russian versus Ukrainian fighter jets.
“The Ukrainians are flying without guided missile systems. So, they actually have to get a visual on the Russian MiGs to shoot them down,” Penn said in a phone interview. “Whereas the Russian fighter jets can lock in, fire a guided missile from 100 kilometers out, then duck into safe airspace.”
Thank God for Hollywood.
Sending waves of soldiers onto the battlefield, compounded by emigration, will hasten Russia’s birth rate decline
Dmitry Nechaev bought a one-way ticket from Moscow to Tel Aviv a year ago.
Two days into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the 38-year-old businessman abandoned his apartment in the Russian capital and travelled to Israel, leaving his wife, children and dog behind.
Within days, Visa and Mastercard suspended their services in Russia, blocking his cards and preventing him from buying plane tickets for his family. His wife had already got rid of many of their belongings in a fire sale, including their country house and camper van in a bid to raise cash quickly.
It has been known for quite a while that China has been undercutting Western sanctions against Russia through trade and Chinese purchases of long-term energy supplies.
Twenty days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia and China declared a “no-limits” partnership, and have steadily been increasing trade with each other ever since — and in their own national currencies. When, however, it was recently reported that “China is providing technology that Moscow’s military needs,” including “navigation equipment, jamming technology and jet-fighter parts,” the move seemed to take the Biden administration by surprise.
Most of the non-Western world declares neutrality between Russia and U.S.
Surprised that governments across the so-called Global South aren’t interested in allied posturing over the Russo-Ukraine war? Imperious Western officials assumed they were leading the world against Moscow’s aggression, only to turn around and find no one behind them.
Reported the New York Times: “Instead of cleaving in two, the world has fragmented. A vast middle sees Moscow’s invasion as, primarily, a European and American problem. Rather than view it as an existential threat, these countries are largely focused on protecting their own interests amid the economic and geopolitical upheaval caused by the invasion.”
Go woke get ignored.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday accused NATO of actively participating in the war in Ukraine and working to dissolve his country.
During an interview aired on the state-owned Rossia-1 channel to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin claimed that by “sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine” the North Atlantic Alliance was taking part in the war.
He further accused the West of having “one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part … the Russian Federation.”
Could it be the Deep State has decided a proxy war is the ideal means to clear Russia’s oil & gas from the table? Otherwise it is a mystery why the Liberal-Left lived in fear of President Trump’s “warmongering” yet so willingly court Armageddon under Biden. Or is the conflict’s end being set in motion?
One year on, the defiance of the country’s soldiers and their families is palpable — but Kyiv is reluctant to reveal the true toll of resisting Putin
The Rage Brigade is the name emblazoned across the poster showing a fierce, gun-wielding soldier at the recruiting centre in western Kyiv. It urges Ukrainians: “Take your fury and turn it into a weapon.”
Inside the building Kateryna, 35, is hoping to do just that. “I want to help my country, which I love,” she says. “We’re all taking a risk every day living here in Kyiv. I would prefer to take that risk on the front lines where I could be useful and fight.”
If anything, Europe has come off worse from the decision
Last week the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) released a weekly snapshot of Russian fossil fuel exports. Since the price cap on Russian oil was announced in December 2022 and the snapshot provides data up until February 2023, it allows us to assess how effective sanctions against Russian crude oil have been.
#Ukraine: A Russian T-72B3 tank and BMP-2 IFV were destroyed by the Ukrainian 72nd Brigade using an AT mine and ATGM respectively in Mykilske near Vuhledar, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/ZpJRkRStLw
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) February 25, 2023
Most of Ukraine’s tanks are post-Soviet models. Without ammunition, these are ‘not tanks but tractors’
General Valeriy Zaluzhny, stocky, forceful, apple-cheeked, sits at the desk in Kyiv from which he commands all Ukraine’s armed forces. I ask him what they need from the West. First, air defense. With a twinkle in his eye, he unzips his khaki fleece to reveal a garish T-shirt demanding “F-16s!” Next on his list are long-range missiles such as the American ATACMS and the Franco-British Storm Shadow, so they can hit Russian targets beyond the range of their current armory. Now the general jumps up, disappears behind a glass-fronted office cupboard into an improvised sleeping area, and returns with another T-shirt, this time calling for missiles. It seems he has a T-shirt for every weapon system.
Police in Berlin said on Saturday afternoon that roughly 13,000 people had attended an event in central Berlin organized by a controversial socialist politician, Sahra Wagenknecht, and a prominent writer and feminist, Alice Schwarzer.
The Rebellion for Peace rally organizers have received fierce criticism from many politicians, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who say the demonstration could weaken public support for Ukraine’s fightback against Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that if America pulls military support from his country, the United States will “lose NATO” and its global leadership position.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv (Kiev) on the one-year anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of his country, Zelensky responded to a question on the growing unpopularity of continued support for the war in Ukraine in the United States by criticising Americans who do not want to continue to send arms and billions of their taxpayer dollars to his administration.
I suspect NATO was on shaky ground before this crisis. If it is proven the US sabotaged the NordStream pipelines more than just a disagreement among friends can be expected.
Zelensky is asked about opinion polls showing Americans think they're giving too much to Ukraine: “If they don’t change their opinion, if they don’t support Ukraine, they will lose NATO and they will lose their leadership position in the world.” pic.twitter.com/bNbB3kAbNx
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 24, 2023
Canadians are still largely invested in Ukraine’s struggle to stop Russia’s invasion and are supportive of Canada’s efforts to help, but that support has dipped slightly since the war began a year ago, a new poll suggests.
The Ipsos poll, conducted exclusively for Global News and released on the one-year anniversary of the invasion, found 65 per cent of those surveyed are just as concerned about Ukraine’s future as they were last February.
China’s supposed peace overture is likely a product of its unease with how its junior partner in Eurasia has prosecuted the conflict.
For months, political observers have been confronted with growing evidence that the formerly durable consensus in the West around the need to support Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s war of territorial expansion is eroding. This developing trend has been met with both trepidation and jubilance, depending on the observer’s political affinities. The risks associated with drawing a potentially fallacious straight-line projection into the future notwithstanding, the trend is real, and no one can afford to ignore it.
SEYMOUR Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist with decades of experience assessing intelligence for its credibility and accuracy, has published a detailed account of how the CIA, in collaboration with Norwegian partners in Nato, planned and executed the sabotaging of the Russian gas pipelines collectively known as Nord Stream 1 and 2.
The revelations have largely been met with silence in the MSM. A White House spokesman called the account ‘utterly false’. The Norwegian government said that one of the ships Hersh refers to as having participated in the operation was not in the position he stated it was.
OTTAWA – Canada will send another four battle tanks and thousands of rounds of ammunition to Ukraine, while also sanctioning more Russian businesses and individuals, as the full scale invasion marks a grim anniversary.
