Blazingcatfur

At first glance, Russia may seem to be adapting to the tough new sanctions imposed by Western countries over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The ruble, which tumbled in the first days of the war to a record low, rebounded to its highest level since early 2020 this week. Grocery stores in Moscow are still filled with food, albeit at much higher prices, and revenue from the sale of oil and gas continues to flow into the budget.

Eyewitness testimony, discarded documents and social media posts point to the Russian soldiers and chain of command in the bloody occupation of the Ukrainian town of Bucha

At the end of March, when Russian troops retreated from Bucha, a leafy suburb near Ukraine’s capital, they left reminders of their deadly occupation for all the world to see. Bodies were strewn in the streets. Quaint houses were reduced to rubble. A field near the town’s church had become a mass grave.

Now, as Ukrainian and international prosecutors begin the work of identifying those responsible for the alleged atrocities, Reuters has examined the aftermath of Russia’s hasty retreat – and found vital clues to the identities of individual Russian soldiers and military units present during the bloody occupation.

Among them: An elite paramilitary force that reports up to a former bodyguard of President Vladimir Putin. A paratroop division decorated for its role in Moscow’s long secret war in east Ukraine. Chechen troops linked to the strongman leader of the Russian region. And a paratrooper who was traced thanks to a love letter found in the ruins.

Twenty years after Vladimir Putin flattened their capital Grozny in the same way that his forces are now destroying Mariupol, Chechens refugees in Europe still live in fear of Russia’s long arm.

Tens of thousands fled the small Muslim-majority republic in the North Caucasus in the aftermath of two bloody wars with Moscow, the last launched by Putin in 1999 to bring the breakaway region to heel.

The Russian leader later installed Ramzan Kadyrov as Chechnya’s strongman. He has since ruthlessly suppressed all opposition, and never tires of declaring his ferocious loyalty to Putin.

Group in favour of supplying Kyiv with weapons noticeably younger than those of opposing view

The war in Ukraine is laying bare a generational divide over what lessons Germany should draw from its own history of waging bloody conflicts, as some of the country’s leading artists and intellectuals line up in favour of or against supplying Kyiv with weapons in a series of open letters.

The first, published in the feminist magazine Emma on Friday last week, days after the German government announced it would send about 50 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, urged the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to refrain from directly or indirectly contributing further heavy weapons systems to the conflict.

It happened in a split-second.

About 10 days ago, a Russian tank that Shadow and a fellow Canadian — the sniper known as Wali — had been quietly stalking in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine turned and fired on them.

Two Ukrainian soldiers who were with them had ignored Wali’s advice a moment before by stepping outside the cover of their observation post — nothing more than a trench — for a cigarette.

Olaf Scholz is not a Kremlin stooge, he just leads a confused and unprincipled party.

The war in Ukraine has exposed the emptiness at the heart of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) – the centre-left party which leads the current government. SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz has been on the defensive for weeks, as ever more damning news keeps emerging about the apparently close ties between top SPD functionaries and the Putin regime. Scholz’s initial reluctance to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine angered both opposition politicians in Germany and European allies. Critics of the chancellor say his party has a ‘Putin problem’.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the SPD’s biggest headache has been the relationship between former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Schröder is not only a personal friend of Putin – he is also a prominent lobbyist for Gazprom, the largely state-owned Russian gas giant. Schröder’s refusal to cut ties with Putin, or to resign from any of his roles with Russian energy companies, has made him a pariah.