“Ukraine – Russia”

Promotional film inadvertently shows new apartments replacing bomb-damaged properties have leaks and dropped ceilings

Russian propagandists sent to promote newly-built apartment blocks in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol have inadvertently revealed that the buildings are marred by problems.

Eight months after the once thriving port city in south-eastern Ukraine fell under Moscow’s control last May, its remaining residents have complained of flooded apartments and shoddy workmanship.

Only about 8 percent of EU firms have divested from Russia, with the majority of Western firms still active in the country being German.

A vast number of firms headquartered in the European Union and G7 countries continue to operate and invest in Russia, according to a new study on equity investments made by Western companies.

Less than 9 percent of about 1,400 EU and G7 companies that had subsidiaries in Russia before Moscow invaded Ukraine had divested at least one subsidiary in the country by November 2022, according to data obtained by professor Simon Evenett, from the University of St. Gallen, and and professor Niccolò Pisani, from the International Institute for Management Development. This is despite the harshest ever Western sanctions against Moscow and the media reports of multiple companies’ exits from the country since the start of the Ukraine war.

What kind of war is this? What kind of allies are these?

Tanks, no tanks: Scholz holds key to Leopards for Ukraine, but waits for Biden

BERLIN/DAVOS — International efforts to ship Ukraine modern tanks may hinge on Germany — but it’s waiting for the U.S. to move first, which isn’t happening.

Ahead of a meeting of Western defense ministers this Friday at the U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is being goaded to help Ukraine get Germany’s best-in-class Leopard 2 tanks in anticipation of a possible spring offensive. The reason: In addition to overseeing his own fleet of Leopard tanks — and Europe’s largest economy — Scholz must approve other countries’ donations of the German-made tanks.

But But But …. Western Allies Back Sending Modern Tanks To Ukraine As Pressure Mounts On Germany (No sign of Canada agreeing)

… U.S. Representative Gregory Meeks (Democrat-New York), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told AFP on January 19 that Scholz told U.S. congressmen in Davos that Germany will supply heavy tanks to Ukraine if the United States also sends tanks. German government sources have told Reuters that Berlin wants the Americans to specifically send Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

“It’s basically that it’s got to be the United States and Germany. There’s no question about that,” Meeks told AFP.

But U.S. officials say the Abrams is not the right tank for Ukraine since it runs on turbine engines that use too much fuel for Kyiv’s strained logistics system to keep them supplied at the front.

The Biden administration must discern the strategy most likely to end the war at an acceptable cost and pursue it.

With Americans across the political spectrum increasingly skeptical of massive aid to Ukraine while domestic woes mount, staunch Ukraine supporters in Washington must explain more convincingly why Ukraine deserves continued financial support from America. The Ukrainians have fought with admirable courage and skill, and Ukraine’s democracy bests Russia’s autocracy in both moral and practical terms. And yet, critical questions remain. With a population more than three times the size of Ukraine’s, can Russia ultimately prevail through bloody attrition? How much aid will other countries contribute to the combatants in the next year? What plausible conditions will convince both sides to agree to peace?

Now there’s talk of taking Crimea back. That says escalation.

#Ukraine: In #Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian army destroyed a Russian 2S1 122mm self-propelled howitzer and damaged a 2A36 Giatsint-B 152mm towed howitzer using M982 Excalibur guided projectiles. pic.twitter.com/t6REB4qwZw

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 18, 2023

Fifteen years ago, I died in a Leopard 2 tank.

Fortunately for me, it was only a simulated death. I was riding in an open turret during a mock battle at the German Army Combat Training Centre near Berlin. It was an experience that impressed upon me how terrifying these machines can be.

The 62-tonne behemoth charged across the countryside at 70 kilometres per hour, knocking trees down like matchsticks.

Justin sounds like Germany’s Scholz and likely wants the US to send tanks first.

As the conflict escalates, Zelensky’s allies face a dilemma

Over the last six months, Western joy over Ukraine’s military victories in Kharkov and Kherson has started to dissipate. Russia has since managed to stabilise its defensive lines and is once again on the front foot in the Donbas. It has been a wake-up call for Western policymakers, who are actively trying to replenish Ukrainian equipment losses, train additional forces, and even introduce new weapons systems into the arena. This marks a significant escalation in the conflict, even though few seem to have realised.

Related… Ukraine tank sergeant: ‘We’re tired of fighting Putin with rubbish kit’

The breakdown in Bakhmut was not staged, but the 24th Mechanised Brigade could hardly have put on a better show of its men’s demands for better kit.

A battered-looking Soviet-era T-62 stood parked against the wall of a block of flats behind the front lines in Bakhmut, the Ukraine war’s most heavily contested town. Behind was its back-up, a BMP-2 armoured fighting vehicle, also of Soviet vintage. The problem was that the BMP would not start.

“We are so tired of working with stuff like this,” its driver, Sergeant “Spider” Bogdan, said. “Would we like to have a Challenger instead? What do you think? It would be a gift from the heavens.”

#Ukraine: In #Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian army destroyed a Russian 2S1 122mm self-propelled howitzer and damaged a 2A36 Giatsint-B 152mm towed howitzer using M982 Excalibur guided projectiles. pic.twitter.com/t6REB4qwZw

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 18, 2023

Freeland Tells WEF Russia’s Defeat Would ‘Boost’ Economy

“One thing where we have some real practical levers is we can help Ukraine win, clearly, definitively. And if we do that, if that happens this year, you know it as well as I do Fareed, that would be a huge boost to the global economy,” Freeland said.

Is this the reason for her belligerent declaration? Maybe Freeland is hoping to lead Army Group South into Crimea!

U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea

WASHINGTON — For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Now that line is starting to soften.

After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases.

Chrystia Freeland's opening monologue at the WEF was a disaster – here's a brief clip (but at least she was honest)

"I think people are smarter than their leaders, um certainly speaking for Canada, Canadians got this on day one" pic.twitter.com/HW6a1GbxSQ

— Canada Record 🪙 (@CanadaRecord) January 18, 2023

The statesman believes the country should now join NATO

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued on Tuesday that Ukrainian membership of NATO would be “appropriate” after peace has been secured.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum via Zoom, the 99-year-old said that although he was against Ukraine joining NATO before the invasion, it was now a desired outcome. “Before this war I was opposed to the membership of Ukraine in NATO because I feared it would start exactly the process we are seeing now,” he said. But now, “the idea of a neutral Ukraine in these conditions is no longer meaningful.

Andrei Medvedev is a former commander of Russia’s Wagner Group, a private paramilitary organization accused of human rights violations—most recently in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) confirmed on Monday that Medvedev, 26, had fled to Norway and is seeking asylum. The directorate did not provide more details.

DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian emergency crews on Monday sifted through what was left of a Dnipro apartment building destroyed by a Russian missile, placing bodies from one of the war’s deadliest single attacks in months in black bags and gingerly carrying them across steep piles of rubble.

Authorities said the death toll from Saturday’s strike rose to 40 and that 30 people remained missing Monday. Tall cranes swung across the jagged gaps in a row of residential towers, the engines growling as residents of one of Ukraine’s largest cities watched largely in silence under a gray sky.

#Ukraine: Rare footage from the Ukrainian 28th Mechanised Brigade in the area of #Bakhmut, showing a Russian Lancet loitering munition taken down by very manual means-small arms and ZU-23-2 autocannon fire. pic.twitter.com/uMciTu21Zu

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) January 15, 2023

The third world war has already started, according to one of France’s leading intellectuals, Emmanuel Todd. Speaking to Le Figaro last week, the anthropologist and historian claimed that, contrary to the prevailing idea that Russia has more to lose than its liberal opponents, the West, too, has entered into an “existential” conflict.

“It’s obvious that the [Ukraine] conflict, which started as a limited territorial war and escalated to a global economic confrontation between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war,” Todd told the French newspaper. He acknowledged that Vladimir Putin had made a miscalculation at the beginning of the conflict, assuming that Ukraine would roll over at the first sign of aggression, but made clear that Russia has itself exceeded expectations, including those of its own people, who “did not anticipate” that they would be able to withstand economic pressure from NATO. 

Canada isn’t yet looking at sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says, despite a report that the Ukrainian leadership intends to request them.

According to a report from The Globe and Mail on Monday, Ukraine intends to ask Canada for some of its Leopard-2 main battle tanks — if Germany approves the re-export of the weaponry, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz is facing pressure to do.

Britain is sending the Ukrainians the wrong tanks

Jordan has recently retired its fleet of around 400 British Challenger 1 tanks, enough to supply Ukraine with the entire fleet it needs

The Government has said that it will supply the Ukrainian armed forces with British main battle tanks in the form of the mighty Challenger 2. The logic is compelling: we have spare tanks and Ukraine needs armour for the upcoming spring offensive, when the biting Eastern European winter gives way to more favourable fighting conditions. What is less compelling, however, is the argument that we should give Kyiv Challenger 2.

Enhanced training of Ukraine combat elements by U.S. forces in Germany has begun, with the aim of having a battalion ready to field against the Russians within five weeks, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced Sunday.

AP reports Milley plans to visit the Grafenwoehr training area on Monday to get a first-hand look at the program being delivered by the 7th Army Training Command.