Blazingcatfur

NATO governments have pledged to crack down on the dealings of Russian oligarchs and companies, but some controversial figures with significant investment ties to Western Canada have so far evaded sanctions from the Canadian government.

Every weekend for most of her youth, while other children were out playing, Natalia Toroshenko attended Ukrainian school, studying the country’s geography, language, its history and national heroes.

“Ukraine, and being Ukrainian, is a deep part of me,” she said. “I wasn’t born there, but it’s my ancestral homeland.”

Toroshenko grew up in Montreal, thousands of kilometres away from the country her father had left to flee famine and conflict. But, she like many other Ukrainian Canadians, has maintained strong connections to the country – and watched horrified as family and friends are trapped in war.

It’s not often that tax can lift people’s spirits but Ukrainian authorities may have done just that, assuring citizens that any Russian military equipment they seize won’t need to be declared for tax purposes.

“Have you captured a Russian tank or armoured personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the motherland!” Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption (NAPC) said, according to the Ukraine arm of the Interfax news service.

The agency went on to explain there was “no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH248,100) ($8,298).”

#Ukraine: Locals in #Mykolaiv Oblast found 4 abandoned 2K22M/M1 Tunguska AA vehicles. And burned them down. pic.twitter.com/U3hfBEoxTS

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 3, 2022

Despite Zelenskyy’s urgings, Canada, the U.S. and other members of NATO have repeatedly said they will not enter into a war with Putin and Russia.

That means that at the end of the day, they are prepared to sacrifice Ukraine to Russian aggression.

We all admire Zelenskyy’s bravery. His blunt refusal of an offer by the U.S. to evacuate him to safety declaring: “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride” was Churchillian in its defiance, recalling Winston Churchill’s famous war-time speech: “We shall fight on the beaches.”

Nothing like a nuclear war to stir things up.

Concern is mounting over the movements of a huge column of Russian military vehicles outside Kyiv, amid a lack of fresh information about its position and the threat it poses.

While a US defence official suggested it appeared to have “stalled”, there was also speculation that an estimated 15,000 troops attached to it may be regrouping, and potentially waiting for logistical supplies before an assault on Kyiv.

Efforts to ascertain the status of the convoy and the threat it poses have been set back by recent cloud cover over Ukraine that has prevented Maxar Technologies – which issued the first satellite images of the convoy – from releasing new pictures.

Ukrainian city of Mariupol ‘near to humanitarian catastrophe’ after bombardment

The key Ukrainian port city of Mariupol was “near to a humanitarian catastrophe” on Wednesday after more than 15 hours of continuous bombardment by Russian forces, the city’s deputy mayor told the BBC.

“The Russian army is working through all their weapons here – artillery, multiple rocket launch systems, airplanes, tactical rockets. They are trying to destroy the city,” Serhiy Orlov said.

Mr Orlov said Russian forces were several kilometres from the city on all sides and had launched strikes on key infrastructure, cutting water and power supplies to parts of the city. One densely populated residential district on the city’s left bank had been “nearly totally destroyed”, he said.