Blazingcatfur

“… On the left, identity-politics-inflected self-criticism breeds a suspicion of the West’s side of any conflict. An article published by the Washington Post this week is an especially egregious example of this mode of thinking. Under the headline “NATO was founded to protect ‘civilized’ people. That means White,” Amoz Hor exemplifies an all too familiar myopia according to which America’s racial politics are the prism through which geopolitical events are best understood. We are told that warnings about the Soviet threat to “Western civilization” were nothing more than a “dog whistle for whiteness”; that “communism was seen to pose a threat not just to “freedom” — but specifically to White freedom”; and that “NATO was born out of fear of White slavery.” There’s an alarmingly large audience for such ahistorical nonsense.”

KYIV, April 15 (Reuters) – Ukraine said on Friday it was trying to break Russian forces’ siege of Mariupol, with fighting raging around the city’s Illich steel works and port, as the capital Kyiv was rocked by some of the most powerful explosions in two weeks.

Russia said it had struck overnight what it said was a factory in Kyiv that made and repaired anti-ship missiles, in apparent retaliation for the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Moscow’s Black Sea fleet, on Thursday.

#Ukraine: Footage filmed via a Russian Orlan-10 drone of a strike against a Ukrainian vehicle, leading to its destruction- type or location unknown at present. pic.twitter.com/68Ki0pjFB6

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 15, 2022

Captain Vasyl Kravchuk has a surprisingly ready smile for a man who has endured 50 days of war. We spoke to him via video link from his base at an undisclosed location.

He knows the coming weeks will offer no respite. Russia may have received a bloody nose in its aborted attempts to take Kyiv, but with the Eastern region of the Donbas now firmly in Moscow’s sights, the men and women of Dnipro’s Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade will continue to play a key role in the next phase of the war.

Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow’s invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date.