Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 #9

[PommyMommy]

JUN 20, 2022

'It's just hell there': Russia still pounds eastern Ukraine​

apnews.com

[...]

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the Kremlin had ordered the Russian military to overrun the entire Luhansk region by next Sunday. Currently, Moscow’s forces control about 95% of the region.

Maliar said in televised remarks that “without exaggeration, decisive battles are taking place” in the area, where Ukrainian forces are desperately trying to avoid being encircled.

“We must understand that the enemy has an advantage both in terms of personnel and weapons, so the situation is extremely difficult. And at this very minute these decisive battles are ongoing at the maximum intensity,” Maliar added.

[...]

Haidai told The Associated Press on Monday that the situation in Sievierodonetsk was “very difficult,” with the Ukrainian forces maintaining control over just one area — the Azot chemical plant, where a number of Ukrainian fighters, along with about 500 civilians, are taking shelter.

The Russians keep deploying additional troops and equipment in the area, he said.

“It’s just hell there. Everything is engulfed in fire, the shelling doesn’t stop even for an hour,” Haidai said in written comments.

Only a fraction of 100,000 people who used to live in Sievierodonetsk before the war remain in the city, with no electricity, communications, food or medicine.

[...]

Financial help for children displaced by the war in Ukraine was due to come from an unlikely quarter later Monday, when Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov looked to auction off his Nobel Peace Prize medal in New York.

[...]

Muratov had already announced he was donating to charity the $500,000 cash award that came with the prize. The proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine.

[...]

 

[PommyMommy]

JUN 20, 2022

Men, morale, munitions: Russia's Ukraine war faces long slog​

apnews.com

[...]

The United States last week upped the ante with its largest pledge of aid for Ukrainian forces yet — an additional $1 billion in military assistance aimed to help repel or reverse Russian advances.

But experts note that such aid deliveries haven’t kept pace with needs, raising questions about how sustainable the war effort will be — and how defense industries on both sides can continue to feed it.

[...]

“We’re moving from peacetime to wartime,” said Francois Heisbourg, a senior adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research think tank. “Peacetime means low production rates, and ramping up the production rate means that you have to first build industrial facilities … This is a defense-industrial challenge which is of a very great magnitude.”

That, in part, explains why Western deliveries of much-ballyhooed support for Ukraine have often fallen short and are slow in coming.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany last week issued a “Ukraine Support Tracker” that showed the U.S. has delivered about half of its pledged commitments in military support for Ukraine, and Germany about one-third. Poland and Britain had both delivered on much of what they had promised, the report showed.

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s ambassador in Madrid, Serhii Phoreltsev, thanked Spain — which trumpeted shipment of 200 tons of military aid in April — but said the ammunition that was included was only enough for “about two hours of combat.”

Ukrainian filmmaker-turned-fighter Volodymyr Demchenko, tweeted a video of himself expressing gratitude about U.S. firearms: “There is American guns they send to us. It’s nice guns, and 120 bullets to each,” he said, before lamenting: “It’s like 15 minutes of a fight.”

[...]

“What the Ukrainians have got to do is conduct what military people tend to call a counter-battery operation” to respond to Russian artillery fire, said Ben Barry, a former director of the British Army Staff who is senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “To do this, you need accurate weapons with a high rate of fire and a range that allows them to keep out of the way of the other side’s artillery.”

“The Ukrainians are saying they don’t have enough long-range rockets to adequately suppress Russian artillery,” he said. “I think they’re probably right.”

[...]

 

[Sundog]

Bromance? Putin and Kim take on the world, critics fear Ukraine war has boosted alliance

Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin have increasingly grown closer since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Kim has recently praised Putin and Russia's role in the world.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Sundog]

Russia threatens retaliation after Lithuania bans goods in transit to Kaliningrad

Russia on Monday threatened retaliation against Lithuania after it banned goods in transit to Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave located along the Baltic Sea.

www.foxbusiness.com

Russia threatened retaliation against Lithuania Monday after it barred rail transit from Russia to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad to comply with sanctions imposed by the European Union over the war in Ukraine.

 

[sds71]

@ChristopherJM

NEW: Attorney General Merrick Garland is making an unannounced visit to Ukraine today, where he will meet Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to discuss US and int'l efforts to help Kyiv ID Russians responsible for war crimes and other atrocities. h/t
@joshgerstein

 

[Sundog]

Will Finland, Sweden join NATO? Crunch talks explained

"I'm not sure whether there is enough time left to find common ground," a former Turkish diplomat told Newsweek.

www.newsweek.com

Good summary of the current status of Turkey's position on Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the diplomatic talks under way.

 

[Cool Cats]

"Finland's and Sweden's pursuit of NATO membership is the exact opposite of what Putin wanted for Russian neighbors" Finland's and Sweden's pursuit of NATO membership is the exact opposite of what Putin wanted for Russian neighbors

 

[Sundog]

From Business Insider, June 20, 2022 (for some reason I can't copy the link)

Sales of oil to China and India (from Russia) have helped plug the gap in demand left by Western commodity importers. Russia's oil export revenues in May jumped by 11% to $20 billion, according to data from the International Energy Agency, with soaring energy prices cushioning the blow of falling export levels. This puts the revenues back at their pre-war levels.

 

[PommyMommy]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539352220302458883

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539377133075804161

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539417361496809477

 

[PommyMommy]

Russian forces capture settlements near Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk – as it happened​

www.theguardian.com

2h ago 20.04

Summary​

• Ukraine’s army said it had launched airstrikes on Zmiinyi Island, also known as Snake Island, causing “significant losses” to Russian forces. The military’s southern operational command said it had used “aimed strikes with the use of various forces” on the island. The military operation “continues”, it added.
• The military situation for Ukraine’s defenders in the eastern Donbas is “extremely difficult”, officials say. Some 568 civilians are thought to be holed up in Sievierodonetsk’s Azot chemical plant, as Russian attacks intensified in an effort to capture Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, said Lysychansk was getting shelled “en masse”.
• Russian forces have captured several settlements near the embattled eastern cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. The head of the Sievierodonetsk district military administration, Roman Vlasenko, said the frontline village of Toshkivka had not been under Ukrainian control since Monday. Russian forces also reportedly captured Pidlisne and Mala Dolyna, located southwest of Sievierodonetsk, and saw success near the Hirske settlement in Luhansk.
• At least 15 civilians were killed in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region by Russian shelling on Tuesday, according to regional governor Oleh Synegubov.
• Mass mobilisation is “about to happen” in Russia with the Kremlin recruiting people in poorer regions to fight in Ukraine, according to western officials. Officials also said there was “more chatter” about Vladimir Putin’s health and “more speculation” about who would replace him in Russia. However, there does not appear to be an “immediate threat” to the Russian president’s position from the elite or the general population, they said.
• A fire that broke out after Ukrainian forces allegedly attacked oil rigs in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea is approaching an oil well, according to a pro-Russian official. Three people were wounded and seven people are still reportedly missing. The Russian-backed leader of annexed Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, blamed Kyiv for the attack.

[...]

• The Kremlin has said that two captured US volunteers are not covered by the Geneva conventions and could face the death penalty. Russian media claimed that two of three US volunteers missing in Ukraine have been captured and are being held by pro-Russian separatist forces. The Kremlin has denied it knows the location of the two men.
• German self-propelled howitzers have arrived in Ukraine in the first delivery of heavy weapons promised by Berlin. “We have replenishment!” Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov announced. “The German Panzerhaubitze 2000 with trained Ukrainian crews joined the Ukrainian artillery family.”

[...]

• Turkey’s military delegation will travel to Russia this week to discuss a possible safe sea corridor in the Black Sea to export Ukrainian grain, according to Turkish presidency sources. A four-way meeting between Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the United Nations will be held in Istanbul in the coming weeks, possibly with the participation of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, the sources said.

[...]

 

[PommyMommy]

Finland’s armed forces chief says his country is prepared for a Russian attack and ready to fight – as it happened​

www.theguardian.com

2h ago 20.26

Summary​

• Russian forces are edging closer to seizing the last pocket of resistance in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region. Sievierodonetsk and its neighbouring city, Lysychansk, continue to be battered by intense Russian shelling. Luhansk’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, said on Wednesday that Russian forces were moving towards Lysychansk, targeting the buildings of police, state security and prosecutors.
• Dramatic footage has emerged from Russia of what appears to be a drone flying into an oil refinery and causing an explosion in what could be an attack inside Russia’s borders. Video shared on social media showed the unmanned aerial vehicle crashing into the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Rostov region, in what would be an embarrassing breach of Russia’s air defence systems.
• A television tower in the Ukrainian separatist-held city of Donetsk has been badly damaged by shelling and broadcasting has been interrupted, the local Donetsk news agency reported. The Petrovskiy television centre is still standing, but part of its equipment has been damaged, while some equipment has been moved out, the agency said.
• A Russian missile strike has left at least one person dead in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, according to its mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych. The attack caused several fires and damaged a number of buildings including a school, Senkevych said. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said seven missiles had hit Mykolaiv.
• Residents and workers at a nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, a city in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, are being abducted by Russian occupiers, according to the region’s mayor. “Whereabouts of some unknown. The rest are in very difficult conditions: they are being tortured with electric shock, bullied physically and morally,” said mayor Dmytro Orlov.
• British intelligence predicts that Russia’s momentum will slow over the next few months.“Our defence intelligence service believes, however, that in the next few months, Russia could come to a point at which there is no longer any forward momentum because it has exhausted its resources,” British prime minister, Boris Johnson, told reporters.
• The Kremlin said the EU sanctions that led Lithuania to block the transit of some goods to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad were “absolutely unacceptable”. Moscow was working on retaliatory measures in response to the “illegal sanctions” by the EU, it said. Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow’s response to Lithuania’s ban would not be exclusively diplomatic but practical in nature.
• Ukraine has played down the chances of reaching an agreement with Russia that could allow blocked grain shipments to start sailing across the Black Sea. Consultations are ongoing, Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, said. Russia’s defence ministry said Moscow and Ankara had agreed to continue discussions on safe vessel departures and grain exports from Ukrainian ports.
• Leaders at the upcoming G7 summit in Germany will announce new measures aimed at pressuring Russia as well as new commitments to shore up European security, a senior US official has said. “We will roll out a concrete set of proposals to increase pressure on Russia,” the official said. The G7 is also likely to discuss the fate of a Russian turbine blocked in Canada and blamed for reducing gas supplies to Germany, Canada’s natural resources minister added.
• Finland’s armed forces chief said his country was prepared for a Russian attack and would put up stiff resistance in the event that one should occur. Finns are motivated to fight and the country has built up a substantial arsenal, Gen Timo Kivinen said, adding: “The most important line of defence is between one’s ears.”
• Vladimir Putin has called for a strengthening of ties with countries from the Brics group of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China South Africa– following western sanctions over Ukraine. The Russian leader said discussions were continuing on the “opening of Indian chain stores in Russia, increasing the share of Chinese automobiles” on the Russian market.
• Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov visited in Iran on Wednesday to expand cooperation between the two nations in light of western sanctions. The Iranian foreign ministry said Lavrov’s visit was aimed at “expanding cooperation with the Eurasian region and the Caucasus”.
• Europe needs to prepare immediately for Russia to turn off all gas exports to the region this winter, according to the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. He called on governments to work on reducing demand and keeping nuclear power plants open.
• A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier who was accompanying him were “coldly executed” when they were killed in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, according to Reporters Without Borders. Maks Levin and Oleksiy Chernyshov were reportedly searching Russian-occupied woodlands for the photographer’s missing image-taking drone, the agency said, citing its findings from an investigation into their deaths.

 

[Mo Thuairim]

Charity warns global food crisis 'will kill millions'​

The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world's next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organisation has warned.

A Russian naval blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports has stopped grain shipments from the world's fourth-largest exporter of wheat and corn, raising the spectre of shortages and hunger in low-income countries.

The knock-on effects of the food shortages mean many will die not only of starvation but from having weaker defences against infectious diseases due to bad nutrition, Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said.

"I think we've probably already begun our next health crisis. It's not a new pathogen but it means people who are poorly nourished will be more vulnerable to the existing diseases," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a G20 health minister meeting in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

"I think the combined impact of infectious diseases and the food shortages and the energy crisis... we can be talking about millions of extra deaths because of this," he said.

(...)

Charity warns global food crisis 'will kill millions'

The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world's next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organisation has warned.

www.rte.ie

 

[PommyMommy]

JUN 23, 2022

EU leaders to grant Ukraine candidate status in blow to Putin​

www.theguardian.com

[...]

EU leaders meeting in Brussels are expected to approve Ukraine’s candidate status later on Thursday, nearly four months after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, launched his country’s bid to join the bloc in the early days of the Russian invasion.

The move from applicant to candidate usually takes years, but the EU has dramatically accelerated the process, amid outrage over the brutality of the unprovoked Russian attack, and to show solidarity with Ukraine’s defenders.

[...]

EU leaders are also expected to grant EU candidate status to Moldova, the former Soviet country of 3.5 million that has experienced a surge in tensions since the Russian invasion of its neighbour. Georgia is expected to be granted a “European perspective”, a rung on the ladder below candidate status. Along with Moldova, Georgia filed an application to join the EU soon after the Russian invasion, but Brussels is concerned about Tbilisi’s backsliding on the rule of law and press freedom.

 

[PommyMommy]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539914469429624832

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539931757621006336

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539953495100506114

 

[Sundog]

JUN 23, 2022

EU leaders to grant Ukraine candidate status in blow to Putin​

www.theguardian.com

[...]

EU leaders meeting in Brussels are expected to approve Ukraine’s candidate status later on Thursday, nearly four months after the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, launched his country’s bid to join the bloc in the early days of the Russian invasion.

The move from applicant to candidate usually takes years, but the EU has dramatically accelerated the process, amid outrage over the brutality of the unprovoked Russian attack, and to show solidarity with Ukraine’s defenders.

[...]

EU leaders are also expected to grant EU candidate status to Moldova, the former Soviet country of 3.5 million that has experienced a surge in tensions since the Russian invasion of its neighbour. Georgia is expected to be granted a “European perspective”, a rung on the ladder below candidate status. Along with Moldova, Georgia filed an application to join the EU soon after the Russian invasion, but Brussels is concerned about Tbilisi’s backsliding on the rule of law and press freedom.

I wonder what benefits Ukraine gets from being in "candidate" status with the EU and how long it takes to go from "candidate" status to EU membership status.

 

[Sundog]

Charity warns global food crisis 'will kill millions'​

The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world's next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organisation has warned.

A Russian naval blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports has stopped grain shipments from the world's fourth-largest exporter of wheat and corn, raising the spectre of shortages and hunger in low-income countries.

The knock-on effects of the food shortages mean many will die not only of starvation but from having weaker defences against infectious diseases due to bad nutrition, Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said.

"I think we've probably already begun our next health crisis. It's not a new pathogen but it means people who are poorly nourished will be more vulnerable to the existing diseases," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a G20 health minister meeting in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

"I think the combined impact of infectious diseases and the food shortages and the energy crisis... we can be talking about millions of extra deaths because of this," he said.

(...)

Charity warns global food crisis 'will kill millions'

The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world's next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organisation has warned.

www.rte.ie

The UN needs to put pressure on Ukraine and Russia both to provide a corridor for the grain shipments to go through, regardless of which country takes the lead in the shipping aspect of it. The low-income countries that depend on these exports should be the priority. They need to just get it done, whether it is Russian ships that move the wheat and corn and the mines are deactivated by the Turkish navy, or the mines are mapped out by Ukraine and the ships move around them, but it needs to be done now. World leaders need to make this a priority . This war may go on for a long time, there are other pressing issues in the world that need to be addressed, especially starvation in poor nations when it can be avoided.

 

[PommyMommy]

JUN 24, 2022

Ukrainian army to leave battered city to avoid encirclement​

apnews.com

After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country’s east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday.

The city of Sievierodonetsk, the administrative center of the Luhansk region, has faced relentless Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in house-to-house battles before retreating to a huge chemical factory on the city’s edge, where they holed up in its sprawling underground structures.

In recent days, Russian forces have made gains around Sievierodonetsk and the neighboring city of Lysychansk, on a steep bank across the river, in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said that the Ukrainian troops have been given the order to leave Sievierodonetsk to prevent that.

[...]

The Russian military controls about 95% of Luhansk province and about half of neighboring Donetsk province, the two areas that make up the Donbas.

After repeated requests to its Western allies for heavier weaponry to counter Russia’s edge in firepower, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said a response had arrived in the form of medium-range American rocket launchers.

A U.S. defense official confirmed Wednesday that all four of the promised High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, were in the hands of Ukrainian forces but said it wasn’t clear if they have been used yet.

The U.S. approved providing the precision-guided systems at the end of May, and once they were in the region, Ukraine’s forces needed about three weeks of training to operate them. The rockets can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers).

[...]

 

[PommyMommy]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1540282752653721600

https://twitter.com/x/status/1540283834020806656

https://twitter.com/x/status/1540310102800044034

 

[Mo Thuairim]

‘The Russians could come any time’: fear at Suwałki Gap on EU border

Sixty-mile strip on edge of Poland and Lithuania is seen as vulnerable due to its position between Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus

Stefan Bilas, 68, says he hears the Russians sometimes. It can be the growl of tanks that drowns out the gentle clucking of the chickens in his front yard, or more often the whirr of attack helicopters or the deafening roar of fighter jets, destination unknown.

Artillery fire was heard the other night and there is a shooting range somewhere over there, he points. The lights of a Russian watchtower can be seen at the dead of night. “Peace,” toasts the retired farmer, knocking back a vodka.

Bilas, the son of a Ukrainian forcibly resettled to the area by the Soviets in 1947 under Operation Vistula, Joseph Stalin’s attempt to de-Germanise territory under his control, was born and bred in this Polish village, Rudziszki, where the one road of 63 houses ends at a closed gate to a forest. Entrance is forbidden. Strangers to the village are not even allowed to walk as far as Bilas’s home.

That is because the trees mark where Poland stops and the 5,800 sq mile (15,000 sq km) exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea begins. Bilas’s small white-washed house is the last on the road, about 50 metres from the gate.

The forest – just 100 metres deep but thick and tall – covers almost all sins. For while Bilas and his wife, Halina, 65, and their neighbours Henryka Wolodzko, 63, and Jan Wolodzko, 67, can hear the Russians, they cannot see them, they say, as Halina places a plate of garlic sausage and salted tomato slices on the kitchen table. Nor do they want to.

“I think about it every day,” says Bilas, knocking back another shot. “They could come any time. Kill us in our beds.” “What do I think of them?” he says, picking up a copy of a Polish-language biography of Ukraine’s president, Volodoymr Zelenskiy. “I’d better not say.”

This is “Suwałki Gap” territory, the 60-mile or so long strip of land around the border of Poland and Lithuania that is straddled to the west by the Russians and to the east by Kremlin-friendly Belarus.

It is, military analysts say, where Vladimir Putin would probably strike first should he decide that western involvement in his war in Ukraine has left him with nothing to lose.

(...)

‘The Russians could come any time’: fear at Suwałki Gap on EU border

Sixty-mile strip on edge of Poland and Lithuania is seen as vulnerable due to its position between Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus

www.theguardian.com

Why is Kaliningrad at the centre of a row between Russia and Lithuania?

Lithuanian ban on transit of sanctioned goods across its territory to and from Russian region has angered Kremlin

www.theguardian.com

 

[Sundog]

‘The Russians could come any time’: fear at Suwałki Gap on EU border

Sixty-mile strip on edge of Poland and Lithuania is seen as vulnerable due to its position between Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus

Stefan Bilas, 68, says he hears the Russians sometimes. It can be the growl of tanks that drowns out the gentle clucking of the chickens in his front yard, or more often the whirr of attack helicopters or the deafening roar of fighter jets, destination unknown.

Artillery fire was heard the other night and there is a shooting range somewhere over there, he points. The lights of a Russian watchtower can be seen at the dead of night. “Peace,” toasts the retired farmer, knocking back a vodka.

Bilas, the son of a Ukrainian forcibly resettled to the area by the Soviets in 1947 under Operation Vistula, Joseph Stalin’s attempt to de-Germanise territory under his control, was born and bred in this Polish village, Rudziszki, where the one road of 63 houses ends at a closed gate to a forest. Entrance is forbidden. Strangers to the village are not even allowed to walk as far as Bilas’s home.

That is because the trees mark where Poland stops and the 5,800 sq mile (15,000 sq km) exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea begins. Bilas’s small white-washed house is the last on the road, about 50 metres from the gate.

The forest – just 100 metres deep but thick and tall – covers almost all sins. For while Bilas and his wife, Halina, 65, and their neighbours Henryka Wolodzko, 63, and Jan Wolodzko, 67, can hear the Russians, they cannot see them, they say, as Halina places a plate of garlic sausage and salted tomato slices on the kitchen table. Nor do they want to.

“I think about it every day,” says Bilas, knocking back another shot. “They could come any time. Kill us in our beds.” “What do I think of them?” he says, picking up a copy of a Polish-language biography of Ukraine’s president, Volodoymr Zelenskiy. “I’d better not say.”

This is “Suwałki Gap” territory, the 60-mile or so long strip of land around the border of Poland and Lithuania that is straddled to the west by the Russians and to the east by Kremlin-friendly Belarus.

It is, military analysts say, where Vladimir Putin would probably strike first should he decide that western involvement in his war in Ukraine has left him with nothing to lose.

(...)

‘The Russians could come any time’: fear at Suwałki Gap on EU border

Sixty-mile strip on edge of Poland and Lithuania is seen as vulnerable due to its position between Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus

www.theguardian.com

Why is Kaliningrad at the centre of a row between Russia and Lithuania?

Lithuanian ban on transit of sanctioned goods across its territory to and from Russian region has angered Kremlin

www.theguardian.com

Wow, sandwiched between Kaliningrad (Russian territory) and Belarus has to be incredibly unnerving. No wonder he is knocking back shots of vodka.

I bought a highly detailed world map a few weeks ago so that I could better follow all the world news globally, it has helped with a better understanding of many of the geopolitical conflicts that are going on in the world right now, particularly the Russian-Ukraine war and the entire Eastern European region.