Russia Ukraine war Russian

RIGA, Latvia — Battlefield setbacks in Ukraine are prompting mounting criticisms of the Russian military among Russians who support the war but are ...

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. Whether the criticisms are reaching Putin and his inner circle is in question. And greater leeway to speak out is given to pro-war Russians who have demonstrated unquestionably patriotic credentials, said a Russian journalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he opposes the war and fears the consequences of being publicly quoted. The fight: A slowly regenerating Russian army is making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine against valiant but underequipped Ukrainian forces. A failed attempt by Russian forces last week to cross the Siversky Donets river that stands in the way of their westward advance drew ridicule. “In short, the military now demands all-out war, including mobilization.” Tatarsky, the former Donbas fighter, called for the “military genius” who ordered the operation to be publicly named and held accountable. The Russians then attempted at least one other identical maneuver at the exact same point, only for that force to be destroyed, too, the ISW said. The Russian critics are asking the same question. Russia has also steadily been sending reinforcements, including regular contract forces alongside reservists, conscripts and mercenaries, for a current total of around 167,000, according to a Ukrainian estimate on Tuesday. Others bluntly question whether Russia can win the war without radical adjustments to its tactics or the mass mobilization of Russian reservists. Thousands of Russians have been detained or harassed because they oppose President Vladimir Putin’s decision to go to war.

Donbas region has been 'completely destroyed', Volodymyr Zelenskiy says; Russia will only consider opening Ukraine's Black Sea ports if western sanctions ...

Schröder – chancellor from 1998 to 2005 – will be stripped of his office and staff, which cost about €419,000 ($443,000) in taxpayers’ money in 2021. Russia’s promise to use lasers to shoot down drones in Ukrainehas prompted widespread scepticismthat the novel and possibly nuclear-powered weaponry could be deployed on the battlefield or have any significant impact on the war. It is not clear how many remain at the plant. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the Donbas, whereRussiais now concentrating its main effort, has been “completely destroyed”. “There’s hell, and that’s not an exaggeration,” he said in his nightly address. Russia’s foreign ministry said it would consider opening access to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports only if the removal of sanctions against Russia was also considered. Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukraine’s top presidential adviser and a member of the negotiating team, said a ceasefire with Russia was “impossible without total Russian troops withdrawal”. Podolyak said Kyiv was not interested in a new “Minsk”, referring to the 2015 Minsk agreement, brokered by France and Germany, which attempted to secure a ceasefire between the Ukrainian government and Russia-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine.

As Thursday draws to a close in Kyiv and in Moscow, here are the key developments of the day: Russia said another 771 Ukrainian fighters surrendered at a ...

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says country's eastern Donbas region has been “completely destroyed” by Russian forces. · US President Joe Biden applauds ...

It is hell there – and that is not an exaggeration,” he said in a late-night video address. “Old people, women and children are dying,” Shevchuk said during a concert. A flash of bright blue is visible among the dead bodies. In one of the videos, some of the Ukrainian captives are hunched over, holding the belts of those in front of them. “Walk to the right, bitch,” one of the soldiers orders them. “This could be a continuation of the very line that has become popular recently in a number of countries – stealing other people’s assets. Witnesses then report soldiers took the men behind a nearby office building that the Russians had taken over and turned into a makeshift base. The motherland is a poor grandmother selling potatoes at the train station.” “The Russian government seems to think that using food as a weapon will help accomplish what its invasion has not – to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people,” he said. The captives did not return. The men are then forced to the ground, with one wearing a bright blue shirt. Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify Herashchenko’s claims.

During the first war crimes trial arising from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a 21-year-old Russian soldier asks a Ukrainian widow to forgive him for killing ...

Russia has denied targeting civilians or involvement in war crimes. Some Russian voices are calling for them to be put on trial for crimes. The widow told the court she had heard distant shots fired from their yard and that she had called out to her husband the day he was killed.

Using a body camera, a celebrated medic and Invictus games athlete recorded 256 gigabytes of her team's frantic efforts over two weeks to bring people back ...

In one of the last videos Taira shot, she is seated next to the driver who would disappear with her. The officer contacted Taira on a walkie-talkie, and she asked the journalists to take the card safely out of the city. Then she curses at no one in particular, and the screen goes dark. There, she taught tactical medicine and started a group of medics called Taira’s Angels. She also worked as a liaison between the military and civilians in front-line towns where few doctors and hospitals dared operate. On March 15, a police officer handed over the small data card to a team of Associated Press journalists who had been documenting atrocities in Mariupol, including a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital. She calls the young man “Sunshine” — a favourite nickname for the many soldiers who passed through her hands — and asks why he came to Ukraine. And always, she wears a stuffed animal attached to her vest to hand to any children she might treat. The video is an intimate record from February 6 to March 10 of a city under siege that has now become a worldwide symbol of the Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance. By the end of the night, despite Taira’s entreaties to “stay with me, little one,” so is the little boy. Now she is in Russian hands, at a time when Mariupol itself is on the verge of falling. Taira, 53, is known in Ukraine as a star athlete and the person who trained the country’s volunteer medic force. The mother and child ended up separated, and the little girl made it to the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, UN officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Donbas is "completely destroyed" and accused Russia of a "deliberate and criminal attempt to kill as many ...

"The city has been without electricity, internet and communication for almost a week now," he said. The Russians suffered personnel losses and retreated," Hayday said. "The assault on Severodonetsk was unsuccessful.

A NATO military official with knowledge of the intelligence said the military alliance is seeing momentum in the war is shifting significantly in favor of ...

Despite artillery and missile attacks by Russian forces on a wide front over the past 24 hours, there are no signs they have taken new territory. Current crimes have a long history ... Crimean Tatars are no longer put in freight cars and taken out by force, but [the Russians] create conditions for us to leave our historical homeland." The woman questioned the Russian soldier as to why he came to Ukraine, asking rhetorically: "Did you come to defend us? The trial has been moved to a larger Kyiv court. "Now under the slogans of denazification and demilitarization, the occupiers launched a so-called special operation, and in fact the genocide of the Ukrainian people." The need for these priority measures is dictated solely by concern for people," he said. And this needs to be taken care of. "The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia. And the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq, I mean of Ukraine," Bush said. "Yes I acknowledge my fault. But he had wanted to come to the event in Simferopol, to "get together in a crowd with our flags, pray together and commemorate this tragedy, because it moves the soul." On Wednesday, the US flag was raised over the United States Embassy in Kyiv to mark the official resumption of US Embassy operations in the Ukrainian capital. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the future of the regions in Ukraine occupied by Russia will depend on the "will" of the people living there.

Ukrainian troops in the country's east are fighting on in the face of intense Russian bombardment, under conditions in the Donbas region that President ...

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other allies. Shishimarin said he was ordered by other soldiers to shoot the man because the man was talking on his phone and they feared he would report their location. The fight: A slowly regenerating Russian army is making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine against valiant but underequipped Ukrainian forces. Kharkiv: Russian forces had sought to encircle this northeastern city, the second-largest in Ukraine, but they have been forced to retreat after Ukrainian troops in recent weeks mounted a successful counteroffensive. Severodonetsk is one of a few Ukrainian strongholds standing in the way of Russia seizing full control of the Donbas region. A court in Kyiv on Thursday approved a request from the prosecutor general’s office to arrest former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for allegedly smuggling people across the border into Russia in 2014. According to a statement from a court in Kyiv’s Pechersk District, Ukrainian investigators accused Yanukovych and several Ukrainian government employees of illegally transporting at least 20 people into Russia using three Russian military helicopters. This is their contribution to their own security.” The State Department suspended the embassy’s operations to ensure the safety of its staff days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. “Standing together today, we reject the bloody creed that might makes right, and we declare a more powerful creed, all for one and one for all,” Biden said. “I am grateful to the United States for approving a new $40 billion package of support for Ukraine and democracy in our region,” Zelensky said in a Thursday evening address. The Pentagon said Thursday it had observed “a lot of kinetic activity,” or active fighting, in between the cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv, but that there were no major changes on the battlefield.

Moscow says it has destroyed a drone with a laser, but Kyiv says it can't mask battlefield failure.

"At the beginning of the war, they assumed that talking about these new weapons would intimidate and force Ukraine to quit. You need to put it on the target and wait until it heats up and destroys it," he said. "Missile warfare is a war of resources. There are much better ways to do it, to use a Stinger or any anti-aircraft missile would have been cheaper, faster and longer range." What are laser weapons and how effective could they be in the conflict? Lasers work by sending out a beam of infrared light that heats up its target until it combusts. Israel's expensive Iron Dome interceptor missiles are designed to protect major cities from incoming missiles, rather than mortar rounds or drones. "It may be premature to see this as a case of being reactive because the war is going badly," he said. "It's not like in Star Wars where they point a laser gun at the bad guys and quickly push a button and the bad guy explodes. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said it could shoot down drones, mortars and rockets for just $3.50 (£2.80) a shot. It's cheaper to make the rockets than to defend against them. "The clearer it became that they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about an amazing weapon that would be so powerful as to ensure a turning point," he said in a video address.

The brutal Russia-Ukraine war has entered day 85. In a massive move, Sweden and Finland moved ahead with their applications for NATO membership leading ...

Un Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war in Ukraine and its immediate effects on energy price increases is yet another wake-up call to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Their bids to join the alliance represent a significant shift in European security and geopolitics. Speaking to students at the presidential library in Ankara on Thursday, the Turkish President stated that "NATO is a security organization and his government cannot accept the presence of terrorist organizations in it." Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated in a speech to the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, on May 19 that "Russia must not win this war." According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, registration of Ukrainian prisoners of war, including wounded fighters, began on Tuesday as part of an agreement between Russia and Ukraine. According to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the European Union must make preparations for rebuilding Ukraine after the war by establishing a solidarity fund to help cover the billions of euros in reconstruction costs. Russian troops have conducted yet another airstrike on Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast shelling a five-story building, a private house and an office building, Pavlo Kyrylenko , head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration said in a Telegram update. A Russian soldier on trial for war crimes in Ukraine apologised to the woman whose husband he killed during the ongoing war. "The Russian people express firm support for the Operation which will continue to go as planned," the delegation said. Russia reaffirmed that nuclear war must never be fought and any military conflict between nuclear powers be avoided as declared by P5. The former accused the West of flaring the Ukraine conflict by supplying weaponry to Ukraine to kill Russian forces. And it's not just in the area of Popasna or Bilohorivka. They are already trying to cut the route near Bakhmut in order to make it impossible to evacuate people and thwart humanitarian deliveries," said the head of the region. UK Prime minister Boris Johnson pledged the British solidarity with the Ukrainian people "particularly for the brave defenders of Mariupol."

Russian forces are likely to shift focus to reinforcing their operations in the Donbas once they have secured Mariupol, the UK's defence ministry said. The ...

We look forward to the signing of the law by@POTUS $ 40 billion is a significant 🇺🇸 contribution to the restoration of peace and security in Ukraine, Europe and the world. - Russia will fight attempts to steal its assets abroad after discussions by EU leaders to use the frozen assets of Russian oligarchs to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine after the war. - Kherson will “soon become part” of the Russian Federation, the Russian-appointed head of the Kherson region said. - The White House is working to put advanced anti-ship missiles in the hands of Ukrainian fighters. - In a sign of Russia’s urgent need to bolster its war effort, parliament will consider a bill to allow Russians over 40 and foreigners over 30 to sign up for the military.

A celebrated Ukrainian medic recorded her time in Mariupol on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail and smuggled it out to the world in a tampon.

Now she is in Russian hands, at a time when Mariupol itself is on the verge of falling. The other is on his knees, hands bound behind his back, with an obvious leg injury. One is in a wheelchair. She got the harrowing clips to an Associated Press team, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of whom fled with it in a tampon. Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira, a moniker from the nickname she chose in the World of Warcraft video game. A celebrated Ukrainian medic recorded her time in Mariupol on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail and smuggled it out to the world in a tampon.

Moscow is moving toward dropping age limits for military service, stepping up its recruitment drive as it tries to score victories in Ukraine's east after a ...

Mr. Mendoza-Wilson said that Mr. Akhmetov had signed the contract to build the yacht in 2018. Finland has a sophisticated military that runs complex operations to track Russian activity in the seas of Northern Europe and spends heavily on modern equipment. It is unclear how Mr. Akhmetov could sell a vessel that is still under construction or back out of the contract that he signed. Before the visit by Mr. Niinisto and Ms. Andersson, Mr. Biden also issued a statement offering an informal security guarantee to the two nations while they wait for formal membership in the alliance. António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said he was negotiating for a “package deal” under which Ukraine would export food via the Black Sea and Russia could sell fertilizer and food products to the global market. On Thursday, Mr. Blinken led a Security Council meeting on food insecurity and conflict, with the impact of the war in Ukraine dominating the debate. The Ukrainian military said in its regularly published morning assessment of the war on Friday that its forces had repelled a Russian attempt to storm defensive positions near Sievierodonetsk. Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly, said in an interview that her country would offer logistical support to Ukraine, such as sending cargo ships, experts and food inspectors to facilitate the transport of grain. Finance ministers discussed ways to keep pressure on Russia while minimizing the damage to their economies as they debated the merits of a European embargo on Russian oil and whether seized Russian assets could be used to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The company, Gasum, called the move from Gazprom “highly regrettable,” saying in a statement that it would supply customers through other sources and that it did not expect disruptions. Mr. Schröder is a personal friend of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has been criticized for maintaining the relationship even as Russia wages its brutal war. Russia said on Friday that it was suspending the supply because Finland had failed to comply with its demand to make payments in rubles.

Despite the government's pro-Western policy, everyday Greeks remain wary of both the US and Russia.

In reality, both Russia and Turkey have weaponised minorities to undermine the sovereignty of independent states for geopolitical and ideological reasons,” Karagiannis told Al Jazeera. Many Greeks believe then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger actively encouraged it. “European defence is a dream for some of us … the Ukraine war taught us that there is no European security without the US and NATO. The [membership bids] by Finland and Sweden underline that,” Filis said. Russia’s navy helped secure Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire a thousand years later. “If we want Europe to be independent on the international stage, it will have to show strategic autonomy and European sovereignty … [we want] a Europe that will be an international player with a balancing role,” he said. And Turkey has been accused of violating Greek airspace as a way of showing it disputes Greek sovereignty in the east Aegean. Turkey has also recently claimed that Greece has entered its airspace. “The Russians have nothing to offer Greece in terms of controlling Turkey, and wouldn’t want to if they could,” said Constantinos Filis, who directs the Global Affairs Institute at the American College of Greece. “The red line of the Americans [vis-à-vis Turkey] seems to be the avoidance of war [with Greece]. But that is not enough for Greece. It means Turkey has a wide scope for doing things to Greece it shouldn’t do.” “We took sides. “Even the US … has actually reduced its support for Greek positions,” he told Al Jazeera. “They withdrew support for the East Med [gas pipeline], and even from the East Med Act of 2019 which provided for the US monitoring Turkish violations of Greek airspace.” The East Med, a pipeline Greece has pledged to build with Cyprus and Israel to transport Israeli and Cypriot gas to the EU market, has been a major irritant to Turkey. Three-fifths of the Greek parliament recently ratified a much-expanded defence agreement with the US, which allows Washington to use the Greek port of Alexandroupolis as a logistics hub for the supply of NATO allies Romania and Bulgaria. A mid-March survey by Politico showed that 60 percent of Greeks found Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “unacceptable”, compared with 88 percent, 86 percent, 82 percent and 78 percent in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and France respectively.

A panelist said on a show on Russia-1—a channel that has relentlessly pushed Kremlin propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine—that Russia can learn from the ...

"This may be a learning experience for our future conflicts," he said before 60 Minutes anchor Olga Skabeyeva interrupted with the observation that it was a "scary experiment." Alexei Fenenko, a research fellow at Moscow's Institute of International Security Studies, was weighing in on Russia-1 on how the invasion of Ukraine could provide a testing ground for Moscow to wage even bigger wars. A guest on Russian state television has said that the war in Ukraine could simply be a stepping stone to bigger conflicts.

Close historic ties with Russia and deep internal divisions are undermining a unified national stance on the conflict.

“The question of a pro-Russian or pro-Western alignment feeds into a longstanding fissure in Montenegrin politics and identity. In 2019, Russia accounted for 26 percent of foreign investment in the Montenegrin economy. So did the alleged Russian-backed coup attempt of 2016 and Montenegro’s entry into NATO the following year. The war in Ukraine has shrunk the room for geopolitical neutrality in Europe, leaving Montenegro in a difficult spot. Montenegrins have demonstrated in support of Ukraine while Serb nationalists in Montenegro have demonstrated in support of Russia,” said Marco Attila Hoare, a historian and associate professor at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. “With Montenegro’s population split between supporters of independence who identify as Montenegrin or who belong to ethnic minorities, and those who opposed independence and identify with Serbia, it’s primarily the former that have emerged as the pro-Ukrainian and the latter as the pro-Russian camp.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces have completely destroyed the eastern Donbas region, describing the area where the Kremlin has ...

This is what will be qualified as the genocide of the Ukrainian people and for which the occupiers will definitely be brought to justice," he added. "Food pricing is our number one problem right now, as a result of all this perfect storm for 2022," Beasley said. Experience shows that they become such by the age of 40–45," the State Duma said, according to a Reuters translation. This can be a lengthy process when done thoroughly," the ministry said. Speaking during his nightly address, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces continue to liberate the northeast Kharkiv region. Borrell said it's up to Ukraine to decide the terms of any negotiations. "Starting from tomorrow, during the upcoming summer season, Gasum will supply natural gas to its customers from other sources through the Balticconnector pipeline. Destroy as many houses, social facilities and enterprises as possible. "It is highly regrettable that natural gas supplies under our supply contract will now be halted. It also comes just two days after Finland formally applied to join NATO. There's hell, and that's not an exaggeration." He said that he hopes that "when the time comes for negotiations to take place, Ukraine will be able to negotiate from a position of strength."

"When a country buys Western-made equipment, sometimes it malfunctions or stops working, right in the middle of the battle," the analyst said.

"First of all, I must say, we should not take information tranquilizers," Khodaryonok told a panel on Monday, referring to reports about low morale in Ukraine's army. "The Russian Federation is yet to utilize even one-tenth of its military-economic potential." "When a country buys Western-made equipment, sometimes it malfunctions or stops working, right in the middle of the battle," he said Thursday on Russia's notoriously monitored state media.

President Joe Biden is set to host the leaders of Finland and Sweden at the White House after the two countries officially submitted their bids to join ...

"The operation continued Wednesday and was still ongoing Thursday," it added. It did not say where that is, but buses have carried hundreds of fighters to Russian-controlled territory. Turkey’s approval is crucial because the military alliance makes its decisions by consensus. Paul’s stall tactics miffed many colleagues who had warned that Ukraine is dangerously close to running out of weapons, food and other supplies. Read the full story here. Russia's military is likely beset by a "culture of cover-ups and scapegoating" that is hampering its war in Ukraine, the U.K. defense ministry said Thursday. Read the full story here. Read the full story here. Speaking to a group of Turkish youth, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the two countries — and especially Sweden — of being “a focus of terror, home to terror.” The video of their conversation was released Thursday. Read full coverage of the war here. While the motion is nonbinding, its adoption is an important step to the sanctions being introduced and sends a clear signal that the European community will no longer tolerate a tacit support for President Vladimir Putin’s regime that has characterized much of the continent’s approach to the Kremlin for decades. - The head of the U.N. World Food Program has warned that failing to reopen Ukraine's ports would amount to "a declaration of war on global food security."

As Friday draws to a close in Kyiv and in Moscow, here are the key developments of the day: Russia said it completed its takeover of the Ukrainian port city ...

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