Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION #4

New Posts

Status
Not open for further replies.
  • #321

International investigators visit war-torn areas near Kyiv – as it happened​

www.theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com

3h ago 19.03

Summary​

It’s 2am in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
  • A Ukrainian paramedic has been released from Russian captivity, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Saturday. Zelenskiy said that Ukraine has been able to secure the release of Yulia Payevska, a civilian parademic who was captured by Russian forces in Mariupol on March 16.
  • The Biden administration’s plan to sell four large, armable drones to Ukraine has been paused on the fear its sophisticated surveillance equipment might fall into enemy hands, according to two people familiar with the matter. The objection to the export of the drones arose due to concerns the radar and surveillance equipment on the drones could create a security risk for the United States if it fell into Russian hands.
  • Viktoria Apanasenko, a civic volunteer from Chernihiv, Ukraine has been chosen to represent the country at the 2022 Miss Universe pageant. “Victoria helps the capital Naíve [a Kyiv-based restaurant] cook food for battalions of the Armed Forces and the elderly. She and her friend are engaged in addressing food, medicine and hygiene products for children, the elderly and internally displaced people,” said a statement by Ukraine’s Miss Universe organization.
  • Dozens of Ukrainian civilians performed military exercises on Friday in fortified positions left by Russian troops in Bucha, a town synonymous with war crimes blamed on Moscow’s forces. “Most of those who are here aren’t soldiers. They’re just civilians who want to defend their country - 50 percent of them have never held a weapon until today,” said a sergeant known as “Ticha”.
  • Ukraine has received a $733 million loan from Canada. In a statement released on Friday, Ukraine’s finance ministry said that funds, which were “raised in accordance with the loan agreement between Ukraine and Canada”, will be “directed to the state budget to finance priority expenditures, in particular, to ensure priority social and humanitarian expenditures.”
  • German chancellor Olaf Scholz said that it is “absolutely necessary” for leaders to speak directly with Russian president Vladimir Putin in attempts to end the war. Speaking to German news agency DPA on Friday, Scholz said, “It is absolutely necessary to speak to Putin, and I will continue to do so – as the French president will also.”
  • Russian media has supposedly shown images of two US citizens captured in Ukraine. On Friday, the Izvestia newspaper showed footage of what it said was an interview with Andy Huynh, 27. The Russian channel RT also posted a photo of a man that it identified as Alexander Drueke, 39.
  • A group of international investigators and experts have visited war-torn areas near Kyiv, including a burnt-out school, as part of Ukraine’s ongoing investigation into alleged war crimes. “The scale of these crimes, the systematic nature of them, it very clearly appears to be crimes against humanity ... it runs the whole gamut of violations of international humanitarian law,” one expert told Reuters.
 
  • #322
JUN 18, 2022

Russian state media releases video of missing U.S. vets in Ukraine​


New video has emerged showing missing U.S. citizens in Ukraine who now appear to be detained by Russian soldiers. Melissa Nakhavoly has more on the video and the plea from the family of the missing men.
 
  • #323
  • #324
  • #325

Nicaragua approves Russian troop access to country, defies US objection​

Nicaragua approved Russian forces to train within its borders and conduct military drills with the Nicaraguan army just after the U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on officials from the Central American nation.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega renewed the order, which the National Assembly approved. The decree applies to troops and military equipment from Russia as well as the U.S. and seven Latin American countries to enter the country and participate in "an exchange of experience, training exercises and humanitarian aid operations."

[...]

The assembly approved the measure on Tuesday after the U.S. sanctioned 93 Nicaraguan officials, including judges, prosecutors, lawmakers and interior ministry officials over the holding of 180 alleged political prisoners.

The measure will allow 230 Russian troops to enter Nicaragua beginning in July and lasting through the end of the year to patrol the Pacific along with the Nicaraguan Army, according to a report by Reuters.

[...]
 
  • #326
  • #327
JUN 20, 2022
apnews.com

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

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s military machine persevered in its ferocious effort to grind down Ukraine’s defenses Monday, as the war’s consequences for food and fuel supplies increasingly weighed on minds around the globe after warnings that the fighting could go on for years.
apnews.com 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.

[...]
 
  • #328
JUN 20, 2022
apnews.com

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

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — From a hideout in a bombed-out house in eastern Ukraine, army commander Mykhailo Strebizh twirls a mortar shell the size of a bowling pin, calling it “aid we got from Europe and America.”
apnews.com 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.”

[...]
 
  • #329
JUN 20, 2022
www.foxnews.com

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 www.foxnews.com
On Sunday, North Korean President Kim Jong Un sent a "warm" message to Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating him on Russia’s National Day, a holiday that marks Russia’s independence from the USSR, according to both countries' state news agencies.

The Korean leader expressed "full support" to the Russian president, the "friendly" Moscow government, and the Russian people, praising Putin for his "leadership and great success in carrying out the just cause of protecting justice and his country’s dignity and security," in an apparent reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

[...]
 
  • #330
  • #331
@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
 
  • #332
  • #333
  • #334
www.theguardian.com

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

This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here
www.theguardian.com 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.
[...]
 
  • #335
www.theguardian.com

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

This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here
www.theguardian.com 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.
 
  • #336

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.

(...)

www.rte.ie

Charity warns global food crisis 'will kill millions'​

www.rte.ie
www.rte.ie
 
  • #337
JUN 23, 2022

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

www.theguardian.com
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.
 
  • #338
  • #339
JUN 24, 2022
apnews.com

Ukrainian army leaving battered city for fortified positions

Ukrainian officials say their country's forces are withdrawing from a besieged eastern city to move to stronger positions.
apnews.com 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).

[...]
 
  • #340
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

margarita25
  • Locked
Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION
47 48 49
Replies
972
Views
28K
JerseyGirl
JerseyGirl
margarita25
  • Locked
Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION #2
48 49 50
Replies
980
Views
22K
JerseyGirl
JerseyGirl
margarita25
  • Locked
Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION #3
51 52 53
Replies
1K
Views
29K
JerseyGirl
JerseyGirl
margarita25
Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION #5
47 48 49
Replies
968
Views
32K
JennieM
J
margarita25
  • Locked
Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022
44 45 46
Replies
900
Views
52K
JerseyGirl
JerseyGirl

Staff online

Members online

... and 140 more.
Total: 2,615 (members: 141, guests: 2,474)

Online statistics

Members online
141
Guests online
2,474
Total visitors
2,615
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
633,258
Messages
18,638,674
Members
243,459
Latest member
GlenNi
Back
Top