Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION #2

[PommyMommy]

Op jacht naar 'n vliegticket, Russen zoeken uitweg voor dienstplichtige zoons

Hunting for a plane ticket, Russians find way out for conscript sons

Kirill (18) from Moscow has taken a plane to Yerevan. He has not yet been drafted into the Russian army, but feared that he would be deployed in the war in Ukraine in the foreseeable future. He hopes to avoid that in the Armenian capital.

The situation in Russia has also changed dramatically in a short period of time. More and more independent news sources are out of reach and the police are cracking down on expressions of dissatisfaction with the invasion of Ukraine. It is a reason for many Russian mothers to send their sons out of the country. Away from the war, away from a possible call to fight in Ukraine.

The ticket to Yerevan cost many times the price of two weeks ago, but it is more than worth it for people who can afford it. "We sent him away to get rid of that agonizing insecurity," Kirill's mother says. "That gives at least a little more peace in the current difficult situation."

Hast
Uncertainty about what tomorrow will look like in Russia is heightened by the unprecedented harsh economic sanctions that have been announced against Russia. A growing number of companies are turning their backs on the country.

Citizens are also in a hurry to leave. That haste is growing due to persistent rumors that President Putin will declare martial law, closing the borders.

Fear of military mobilization is not the only reason why young Russians want to leave the country. The rapidly deteriorating economy also plays a role. Russians are also afraid of being arrested now that the Russian government is doing everything it can to suppress expressions of dissatisfaction.

Reports are circulating on the internet of mainly young Russians, who are picked from the queue at airports for a conversation with members of the security service. They then look for indications (eg in mobile phones) of involvement in opposition activities.

President Putin has repeatedly said that only professional military personnel are deployed in Ukraine and not conscripts. According to him, a general mobilization is not necessary.

"I don't take him at his word," says Nadia. She points out that Putin also previously said that Russia would not invade Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry has now announced that conscripts are still fighting in Ukraine. It did so after a number of soldiers from supply units were captured by the Ukrainian army.

 

[PommyMommy]

'Southern Ukraine. You can be cool, but you'll never be ''I found this land mine on the road and decided to bring it to the nearby forest'' cool.'

'Just a man, cigarette in mouth, removing a landmine from under a bridge in Berdyansk, Ukraine. Unreal.'

'Only a Ukrainian would pick up a land mine in jeans and a jacket with a cigarette in his mouth and calmly walk it away from the bridge.'
Symbol of Ukraine's toughness: Man disposes of anti-tank mine while smoking

 

[PommyMommy]

Russian embassy in Dublin could be located on Independent Ukraine Road

Councillors propose changing the name of Orwell Road where embassy is located

Residents of Orwell Road in Dublin, where the Russian embassy is located, are set to be consulted on a proposal to change the name to Independent Ukraine Road.

(...)

All 20 councillors at the Dundrum area monthly meeting of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council agreed that the name of the road should be changed.

The motion was proposed by Labour’s Cllr Peter O’Brien who said he was inspired by countries including Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Albania that have changed the names of the street where their Russian embassies are located to associate them with Ukraine.

(...)

Cllr O’Brien said the name change was intended as a “gesture of solidarity” with the Ukrainian people.

“If the war ended in the morning, I’d be delighted to drop the proposal,” he said.

(...)

He said the councillors had considered naming it Ukraine Road, but the country might be known as that even if it was permanently annexed by Russia, so the point was to call it Independent Ukraine Road.

“If the Russians continue their occupation, the name Ukraine Road, it will mean nothing to them, but it might every time they receive correspondence to Independent Ukraine Road.”

The Russian embassy in Rathgar has been subjected to protests since the invasion of Ukraine a fortnight ago. There are barriers outside the embassy after a truck driver reversed into its gates.

(...)

 

[PommyMommy]

1 year ago

Nuclear War Simulation
This realistic, facts-based simulation is divided into 3 stages: Nuclear War, Nuclear Fallout and Nuclear Winter. Watch this video to find out what will happen to the world during each of those stages.

 

[PommyMommy]

Irish Daily Star on Twitter
Thursday’s front page

Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska hit with UK sanctions | Daily Mail Online

Russian fills his entire fridge with McDONALD'S… as others cash in by selling Big Mac meals for £250 | Daily Mail Online

Prince William says conflict in Europe is ‘alien’ compared with Africa and Asia, drawing swift rebuke

 

[PommyMommy]

'We are not co-operating': Life in occupied Ukraine

(...)

When the invading forces took control of Melitopol a week ago they ransacked the mayor's offices, Federov said, exiling his team to another location where they are attempting to continue running their city.

"We are not co-operating with the Russians in any way," Federov said emphatically. "They have not tried to help us, they cannot help us, and we do not want their help."

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has claimed he is liberating historically Russian lands and speakers from a Nazi regime. But in Melitopol and a string of other mainly-Russian speaking southern and eastern cities, his forces have found themselves treated as occupiers.

"There are protests in Melitopol every day," said Yuliya Kovaliova, 33, who before the invasion helped run her family business of electronics stores.

"At some point the Russian army started shooting at us and one man got shot but we have not stopped protesting," Kovaliova said. "We are not afraid to protest because we are together. We are afraid to walk alone at night, but we are not afraid to protest."

About 5,000 people gathered in Melitopol's central square on Tuesday, Federov reckoned, despite the shooting last week, which wounded a man in the leg. Videos have surfaced showing protests in occupied and part-occupied cities and towns across the region - Kherson, Berdyansk, Starobilsk, Novopskov. The BBC reached residents and local mayors to try to understand the situation inside.

"I don't know how to count the number of people protesting, I thought it was 2,000 at least," said Yunona, a 29-year-old IT worker in the southern city of Kherson. "One of our friends was beaten and taken by the Russian soldiers and people got so angry they chased the occupiers down the street and took him back."

The Russian troops in Kherson looked young and uncertain, said Olha, a 63-year-old English teacher. "We go to the protests every day and they are close to us but they look afraid," she said. "We are all just waiting for the Ukrainian army to kick them out."

(...)

Vadym Gaev, the mayor of Novopskov, a town near Donbas, told the BBC there had been daily protests but they had stopped three days ago when Russian soldiers shot three protestors - non-fatally - and beat another. Gaev said the Russian troops told an intermediary they had authorisation to shoot protesters, so there should be no more protests.

Novopskov appeared to be an example of a strange and uneasy scenario playing out in some parts of Ukraine, where local Ukrainian officials were continuing to function in some form but Russian military forces were in control. In the occupied city of Starobilsk, nearby, mayor Yana Litvinova was also working remotely, she said.

"A new 'administration' has been appointed. The only thing we know is that it is going around government buildings and asking people to co-operate, and they are refusing."

(...)

Most residents who spoke to the BBC from the occupied cities said food was fast running out.

"Shops are almost empty. You can buy the things that are left but very few things are left," said Yuliya Kovaliova, the electronics shop owner from Melitopol. "Pharmacies are empty and my mother can't buy her heart medicine."

Kovaliova said that two Russian trucks with humanitarian markings came into the city centre last week and attempted to hand out food, but they also brought a film crew. Nearly everyone refused, she said.

(...)

 

[PommyMommy]

U.S. dismisses Russian claims of biowarfare labs in Ukraine

Zakharova said the documents unearthed by Russian forces in Ukraine showed "an emergency attempt to erase evidence of military biological programmes" financed by the Pentagon. She provided no further details on the documents.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm her information.

A former U.S. official, who is familiar with the cooperation between Kyiv and Washington, said the United States had helped to convert several Ukrainian laboratories that had been involved in the former Soviet Union's biological weapons program into public health facilities.

 

[PommyMommy]

UK freezes assets of seven Russian oligarchs including Roman Abramovich

Britain said on Thursday it had imposed asset freezes on seven Russian businessmen including Roman Abramovich, Igor Sechin, Oleg Deripaska, Andrey Kostin, Alexei Miller, Nikolai Tokarev and Dmitri Lebedev after they were added to the country’s sanctions list.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, said: “There can be no safe havens for those who have supported Putin’s vicious assault on Ukraine.

(...)

 

[PommyMommy]

Talks between Ukraine, Russia's top diplomats begin

Ukraine's foreign minister said he made clear his country will not "surrender" during a meeting in Turkey with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov Thursday.

Dmytro Kuleba said Russia appeared to want "surrender from Ukraine, but this is not what they are going to get." He said that Ukraine remained open to seeking "diplomatic solutions" but could not "stop the war if the aggressor country does not want to do so."

With the war entering its third week, the high-level meeting in southern Turkey came as Ukraine sought to evacuate more residents trapped in hard-hit areas and accuses Russia of war crimes for targeting civilians.

 

[PommyMommy]

Opinion | Putin Has No Good Way Out, and That Really Scares Me

(...)

In the coming weeks it will become more and more obvious that our biggest problem with Putin in Ukraine is that he will refuse to lose early and small, and the only other outcome is that he will lose big and late. But because this is solely his war and he cannot admit defeat, he could keep doubling down in Ukraine until … until he contemplates using a nuclear weapon.

Why do I say that defeat in Ukraine is Putin’s only option, that only the timing and size are in question? Because the easy, low-cost invasion he envisioned and the welcome party from Ukrainians he imagined were total fantasies — and everything flows from that.

(...)

When you get that many things wrong as a leader, your best option is to lose early and small. In Putin’s case that would mean withdrawing his forces from Ukraine immediately; offering a face-saving lie to justify his “special military operation,” like claiming it successfully protected Russians living in Ukraine; and promising to help Russians’ brethren rebuild. But the inescapable humiliation would surely be intolerable for this man obsessed with restoring the dignity and unity of what he sees as the Russian motherland.

Incidentally, the way things are going on the ground in Ukraine right now, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Putin could actually lose early and big. I would not bet on it, but with every passing day that more and more Russian soldiers are killed in Ukraine, who knows what happens to the fighting spirit of the conscripts in the Russian Army being asked to fight a deadly urban war against fellow Slavs for a cause that was never really explained to them.

(...)

So either he cuts his losses now and eats crow — and hopefully for him escapes enough sanctions to revive the Russian economy and hold onto power — or faces a forever war against Ukraine and much of the world, which will slowly sap Russia’s strength and collapse its infrastructure.

As he seems hellbent on the latter, I am terrified. Because there is only one thing worse than a strong Russia under Putin — and that’s a weak, humiliated, disorderly Russia that could fracture or be in a prolonged internal leadership turmoil, with different factions wrestling for power and with all of those nuclear warheads, cybercriminals and oil and gas wells lying around.

(...)

 

[PommyMommy]

@MarquardtA
Mariupol officials say Russian forces have begun dropping bombs on the "green corridor" designated to evacuate Mariupol residents.

Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral
One example:

A video of a young woman and a young man having fake blood applied to their faces has racked up millions of views on multiple platforms.

It is shared as supposed evidence that the war in Ukraine is a hoax and civilian victims are actually "crisis actors" - people hired to act out scenes from an attack.

But the video is unrelated to the war. It was shot in 2020 on the production set of Ukrainian TV series Contamin.

The male actor can be seen in behind-the-scenes images from the set tweeted in December 2020.

 

[PommyMommy]

Rusland zet Shell op lijst met bedrijven om eigendommen van te kunnen nationaliseren

MOSCOW (ANP - General Dutch Press bureau) — Russia has drawn up a list of Western companies that could be nationalized. That list of 59 names includes oil and gas group Shell, car manufacturers Volkswagen and Toyota and furniture store Ikea, Russian news agency Izvestia reports.

The reason for this is that the companies withdrew from the country because of the war in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin without giving guarantees to consumers.

The list could be expanded to include more companies, said Oleg Pavlov of the Public Consumer Initiative, which compiled the list. It has already been sent to the government. But if more companies stop doing business in the country and leave Russian consumers without guarantees, they will also be on the list, according to Pavlov.

Bill
Earlier, the government in Moscow passed a bill to put under receivership companies that were more than 25 percent owned by foreigners from so-called "unfriendly nations". Companies can avoid that receivership by resuming operations or selling their shares within five days of announcement, United Russia, President Vladimir Putin's party, previously said. Then the activities and employees must be retained.

If this does not happen, a temporary board is appointed for three months by a judge and the company assets and activities are transferred to a new company. At the end of those three months, the shares in the new organizations are then auctioned. A similar arrangement could apply to the companies on this list.

As expected, Russia lashed back. I'm curious how this is going to be played out by all parties.

 

[PommyMommy]

No breakthrough during peace talks in Antalya | The Time (tijd.be)

No breakthrough during peace talks in Antalya

Washington warns that the Russian military is "becoming brash", the United Nations recognizes that the actual death toll is likely "much higher" than the official estimate of 516. Peace talks at the highest level so far failed to yield concrete results on Thursday.

11:55
'No ceasefire' after talks between Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers

"No progress has been made on a ceasefire" in Ukraine. This is stated by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba after a meeting with his Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov in the Turkish city of Antalya.

Kuleba says it has proposed a 24-hour general ceasefire to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Lavrov, however, could not comment on that. The Russian foreign minister did speak of 'facilitating the fate of citizens'. He stressed the importance of humanitarian corridors.

The first official meeting between the two colleagues ended after an hour and a half. There was no joint press conference, but both ministers say they want to continue their talks in this format.

 

[PommyMommy]

@jimsciutto
@VP Harris announces US has now delivered Patriot missile batteries to Poland


'We have been witnessing atrocities of unimaginable proportion' US Vice-President Kamala Harris condemns a Russian attack on a Mariupol maternity hospital as an 'unprovoked and unjustified' act of violence.

"I've said it may times, I will say it again: The United States' commitment to Article 5 is ironclad. The United States is prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory.

Also announces another $50 million in humanitarian aid to help w/ refugees in Poland.

"When it comes to crimes and violations of intl norms & rules, we are also very clear that any intentional attack on innocent civilians is a violation.UN has set up a process by which there will be a review and we will of course participate as appropriate & necessary"

https://twitter.com/EugeneDaniels2/status/1501895423430176768?s=20&t=VGc4FDbM9HG4iNvjPfM19A

 

[PommyMommy]

War Map

Ukraine War Map on Twitter
Map of the approximate situation in Ukraine as of 00:00 UTC 10/03/22.

MARCH 9, 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 9 | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org)

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces have likely begun renewed offensive operations into Kyiv and to continue its encirclement on the west, but have not made much progress.
• Russian troops east of the Dnipro near Kyiv are likely attempting to consolidate their lines of communication against significant Ukrainian counter-attacks and disruption to set conditions for attacking the capital from the east.
• Russia is unlikely to attempt to seize Kharkiv through a ground offensive in the coming days, but will probably continue efforts to encircle and/or bypass it.
• Russian and Russian proxy forces in Donetsk and Luhansk are driving to gain control of the full territorial extent of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, but have not yet done so.
• Mariupol remains encircled and under bombardment.
• Russian forces continue to prepare for operations against Zaporizhya City but have not yet initiated them at scale.
• Russian forces from Kherson appear to be encircling Mykolayiv from the east but have not yet crossed the Southern Bug River. Russian operations against Odesa are unlikely to commence before Russia establishes a secure line of control from Crimea across the Southern Bug.

 

[PommyMommy]

Roman said he began compiling lists of thousands of Russian phone numbers where he sent text messages with death toll numbers and pictures of captured soldiers.

“I think we just want for people to understand what’s actually happening so they can go out and demand their rights,” Roman said. “Mothers are being told not to criticize the army, and they’re not being told anything about their sons.”

The Russian government quickly caught on to the campaign, Marco said, and began manually reviewing text messages.

Since then, the group has changed tactics. It now posts ads on social media and includes pictures and updates from the war in unlikely places such as Google reviews for restaurants in Moscow.

Ukraine musters army of citizen-hackers for info wars with Russia

 

[PommyMommy]

Live updates: Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine (cnbc.com)
''Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba hit back at claims made by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, saying the leadership in Moscow “live in their own reality.”

Sergey Lavrov earlier denied that Russian forces had targeted civilians in the bombing of a children’s hospital and maternity ward, saying hospital patients had been removed from the hospital days ago, despite video evidence showing pregnant women being carried from the hospital.

“Unfortunately, I can confirm that the Russian leadership, including Minister Lavrov, live in their own reality,” Kuleba said.

“In our talks, behind closed doors and in the absence of the media, he told me looking in my eyes that the pictures of pregnant women being taken from under the rubble of the maternity house are fake, that they hit the maternity house as a military target because the Russian military was absolutely sure that it was under the control of Ukrainian army.”

 

[PommyMommy]

Mar 10, 2022, 01:48am EST
'Notable' Drop In Russian Air Activity Due To Effectiveness Of Ukrainian Air Defenses: U.K. Defense Ministry

There has been a “notable decrease” in Russian air activity over Ukraine in the past few days, owing to the unexpected effectiveness of Ukraine’s air defense forces, the U.K. Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine on Thursday.

The large Russian column north west of Kyiv has made very little progress in the past week and continues to suffer losses at the hands of the Ukrainian forces, the statement said.

The update also noted that Russia has deployed conscripts, despite previous assurances by Putin that he will not do so. This has also been acknowledged by the Russian defense ministry which added that a “number” of conscripts had been captured by Ukrainian forces.

The intel update adds that Russia may be forced to draw from across the Russian Armed Forces and “other sources” to replace losses in Ukraine.

— Siladitya Ray

Live: U.K. Sanctions Roman Abramovich, Russian And Ukrainian Foreign Ministers Meet In Turkey

 

[PommyMommy]

Video shows Russian armored convoy caught in Ukrainian ambush on way to Kyiv

Russian armored convoy caught in Ukrainian ambush: video

Several tanks and other armored vehicles are seen exploding in the attack by Ukrainian defenders using artillery shells or mines, the Times of London reported.

 

[PommyMommy]

The Kyiv Independent on Twitter - 6 hours ago
These are the estimates of Russia's losses as of March 10, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The Kyiv Independent on Twitter
️ Russia has fired 710 missiles on Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24.
Russian forces have also gotten closer to the cities of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv, CNN reports.

The Kyiv Independent on Twitter - 5 hours ago
️ Ukraine expects temporary ceasefire to evacuate civilians from 10 cities.
The cities include regional capital Sumy, encircled Mariupol and Volnovakha, Izyum, in Kharkiv Oblast, and Kyiv’s suburbs - Bucha, Borodyanka and Irpin.

The Kyiv Independent on Twitter - 3 hours ago
️Kuleba: “I came here with a humanitarian purpose, to walk out of the meeting with a decision to arrange a humanitarian corridor to and from Mariupol.”
Kuleba said they didn’t reach an agreement with Lavrov.

The Kyiv Independent on Twitter
️Foreign Minister Kuleba says he’s ready to meet again with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov “if there will be prospects to a solution.”