The Russia-affiliated Wagner private military company continues to recruit fighters by more traditional means as the UK Defense Ministry said that its convict recruitment program operated at a reduced scale in late 2022 on Friday.
According to a Monday posting in the Wagner-tied Grey Zone Telegram group, the PMC was offering contracts for 240,000 rubles with “good bonuses for performance.”
Other benefits included health and life insurance and would provide equipment for recruits that needed.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has said the reluctance of Kyiv’s Western allies to send jet fighters to aid in the battle against Russian forces will “cost us more lives,” even as he repeated warnings that Moscow is poised to launch a major new offensive in the nearly yearlong war.
“I am sure that we will win this war. I am sure we will liberate all the occupied territories,” Reznikov told a Kyiv news conference on February 5. But without Western supplies of jet fighters, “it will cost us more lives.”
Western leaders have said it is not practical to send such jets to Ukraine given the amount of time it would take to train pilots and maintenance crews and amid fears of widening the conflict.
#Ukraine: A Russian 2S19M2 Msta-SM2 self-propelled 152mm howitzer was taken out of action by a Ukrainian M982 Excalibur strike in #Kherson Oblast. pic.twitter.com/4zwQG1kGBg
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) February 4, 2023
Recent reports from major U.S. outlets have presented a startling departure from the customary narrative surrounding the war in Ukraine.
It is becoming clear that the only war the U.S. has been winning has been the information war surrounding the conflict. With the report from the RAND Corporation last month, who have been advising the Pentagon since 1948, comes the news that the ground war is lost and that no return of Ukrainian lands is likely.
The report, titled “Avoiding a Long War,” glosses over the complicated history of Ukraine and makes no mention of the many interventions and diplomatic failures directed by the US and its NATO allies, which I detailed in a long four part series here.
Instead, it focuses on the need to avoid a protracted conflict – chiefly to free up the U.S. military to concentrate on the next big war with China.
We’ll see. The war on corruption likely indicates Z was read the riot act.
No evidence that Moscow was involved in the suspected sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea has been found so far, a German investigator has admitted.
An investigation being conducted by Germany’s Public Prosecutor General, Peter Frank, has come up with zero evidence that Russia was involved in the explosions that rendered both Nord Stream pipelines inactive.
This looks more and more like a Corporate war.
BRUSSELS — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the greatest challenge to European security since the end of the Cold War, but the Europeans have missed the opportunity to step up their own defense, diplomats and experts say. Instead, the war has reinforced Europe’s military dependence on the United States.
Washington, they note, has led the response to the war, marshaled allies, organized military aid to Ukraine and contributed by far the largest amount of military equipment and intelligence to Ukraine. It has decided at each step what kind of weapons Kyiv will receive and what it will not.
The US says additional military aid to Ukraine worth $2.2bn (£1.83bn) will include long-range missiles capable of doubling its attack range.
It brings the total amount of military aid given to Ukraine to more than $29.3bn (£24.31bn) since February 2022.
The package includes ground-launched small-diameter bombs (GLSDB) which can hit targets 150km (93 miles) away.
But officials refused to be drawn on speculation that the munitions could be used to attack parts of annexed Crimea.
The first task is to wipe off or cover up the Z, says Anatoly, 44, of the call sign infamously daubed on Russian hardware involved in the war in Ukraine. “We don’t want friendly fire later on.” Then the mechanics get to work.
In a secret location in Ukraine, within a vast warehouse that could be mistaken for a tank graveyard, what was once Russian – Soviet, in many cases – is being turned Ukrainian.
All the headlines have recently been made by the decision of Germany and a host of others to supply Ukraine with western heavy armour: Leopard 2s, Challengers and Abrams.
The Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reports that Joe Biden offered Russian President Vladimir Putin 20% of Ukraine in exchange for a peace treaty. The offer was made by CIA Director William Burns during a top-secret trip to Moscow in January.
Germany has approved the export of older Leopard 1 battle tanks, which would add to the raft of fighting vehicles Berlin promised last week it would send to Ukraine.
A spokesperson said on Friday that Olaf Scholz’s government had granted an export licence for the German-made tanks first produced in the 1960s and replaced within Germany’s own military by Leopard 2 tanks in 2003. Further details would be provided in the coming days and weeks, they said.
#Ukraine: The second ever destruction (in as many days) of the extremely rare Russian 9A331MDT Tor-M2DT air defense system, intended for use in the Arctic.
It was again destroyed using M982 Excalibur guided projectiles in #Kherson Oblast. pic.twitter.com/8FrubQC64K
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) February 3, 2023
Ukrainian students are facing an increase in anti-Ukrainian hate symbols and harassment on Canadian university campuses, student clubs say.
In an open letter published last Thursday, the Carleton Ukrainian Students’ Club described several incidents of anti-Ukrainian harassment that have taken place on the university’s campus since September 2022, including multiple reports of hate graffiti, an allegation of verbal harassment and an on-campus panel discussion which the club views as pro-Russian.
… In its own open letter, the University of Victoria Ukrainian Students’ Society alleged that some of its members were verbally accosted on campus and one member’s property was defaced with the word “Nazi.”
The club also said that members of the Young Communist League of Canada, another ratified club at the university, accused Ukrainian students of supporting fascism and antisemitism in a Facebook post.
What a surprise that the Young Communist league is involved in much of this. Where does that put the NDP?
New polls show that attitudes to the conflict may be shifting
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches its first anniversary later this month, it remains unclear how this conflict is supposed to end. Nowhere is this more evident than in Germany’s foreign policy, where Olaf Scholz is proving to be something of an enigma. While it is true that Germany has not been Kyiv’s loudest cheerleader, the reality is that military equipment has been delivered continuously. Only the United Kingdom and the United States have provided more provisions to the Ukrainian armed forces.
In early October 2021 President Joe Biden, the CIA director William Burns and other top members of the US’s national security team gathered in the Oval Office to hear a disturbing briefing from US military chief General Mark Milley. ‘Extraordinary detailed’ intelligence gathered by western spy agencies suggested that Vladimir Putin might be planning to invade Ukraine. According to briefing notes that Milley shared with the Washington Post, the first and most fundamental problem facing Biden was how to ‘underwrite and enforce the rules-based international order’ against a country with extraordinary nuclear capability ‘without going to World War 3’. Milley offered four possible answers: ‘No. 1: Don’t have a kinetic conflict between the US military or Nato with Russia. No. 2: Contain war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine. No. 3: Strengthen and maintain Nato unity. No. 4: Empower Ukraine and give them the means to fight.’
It was Christmas Eve, and the Alberta-born sniper was sitting alone in an abandoned apartment on the fifth floor of a building in the battle-ravaged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. His .50-calibre rifle was leaning across an ironing board and a desk, pointed out a blown-out window toward the Russian front line.
#Ukraine: The first confirmed destruction of an esoteric Russian air defense system- the 9A331MDT Tor-M2DT, intended for use in Arctic environments.
The SAM system was destroyed by the 406th Artillery Brigade along with a DT-30 carrier using M982 Excalibur guided projectiles. pic.twitter.com/JYItQ4yHBl
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) February 1, 2023
Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s crackdown on corruption has continued as the woman leading the Kyiv tax authority was accused of massive fraud after a raid of one of her four homes, and a series of national officials were forced from office.
The residence of the businessman Igor Kolomoisky, a former political ally of Ukraine’s president, was also raided as part of an investigation into the suspected evasion of customs duties linked to the Ukrainian oil producer Ukrnafta and refiner Ukrtatnafta.
The media empire owned by Kolomoisky, who is already under US sanctions for his alleged involvement in “significant corruption”, helped popularise Zelenskiy as an entertainer and then supported his political career. Kolomoisky has denied any wrongdoing.
ALONG THE SOUTHERN DNIEPER RIVER, Ukraine — Only the water keeps them apart.
Russian soldiers — pushed into retreat by a counteroffensive late last year — control the east bank of the mighty Dnieper River. Ukrainians control the west.
As Ukraine awaits new tanks from the United States and Europe, and fighting rages over strategic towns in the east, a war of attrition is underway in this southern battleground. The river limits territorial advances, permitting — for now at least — only destruction from a distance.
#Ukraine: The Ukrainian 110th Mechanized Brigade destroyed three BMP IFV and at least one other armoured vehicle of the Russian Army in the vicinity of Avdiivka, #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/qGsNDM9bFG
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 28, 2023
