Ammo and equipment resupplying is occuring for the Ukraine, Russia and America….
The Ukraine is trying keep communications throughout the country and outside world….(Google , Amazon, Microsoft and other tech companies are helping)
Prices cap for Russia Oil by Europe is agreed to….
Russians ARE suffering economically as are Ukrainian’s….They aren’t being bombed though…..
Russian President is losing something he started almost a year ago….
And a LOT of soldier’s are NOT returning back home ….
The United States expects the “reduced tempo” of fighting in Ukraine to continue over the coming months, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a panel Saturday. Her assessment comes as the Institute for the Study of War think tank said that mud has prevented large vehicles from traversing eastern Ukrainian terrain during much of the past week, though the weather probably will become more conducive to combat in the winter.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- Ukrainian authorities offered no assistance to those crossing the river. The Kherson City Council announced the death of the woman, 65, who was killed crossing the river with her husband, who survived. Local authorities did not respond immediately to requests for more information, and they did not say whether Russian or Ukrainian forces had fired the shots.
- There has been a “slowdown” in fighting following Russia’s retreat from Kherson and that is “likely to be what we see in the coming months,” Haines told the Reagan National Defense Forum in an interview with NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell on Saturday. “Most of the fighting right now is around Bakhmut and the Donetsk area,” Haines added.
- Russia and Ukraine will both probably “try to refit, resupply, in a sense, reconstitute” in the spring, so they are prepared for the other side’s counteroffensive, Haines said. However, she added that U.S. intelligence officials “actually have a fair amount of skepticism as to whether or not the Russians will be in fact prepared to do that. I think more optimistically for the Ukrainians in that time frame.” As The Washington Post has reported, Ukraine’s military appears to be pondering its next move.
- The ground in Luhansk will soon harden as temperatures drop, according to its regional governor, Serhiy Haidai. Troops in the area have been sinking into the mud, Haidai said Friday on Telegram, hindering the advances of Ukrainian forces. The Institute for the Study of War said Saturday that December is “one of the most optimal times of year for mechanized maneuver warfare in this region.”
- Russia will not sell oil to nations that cap its prices, according to a Kremlin official. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said a Western move to penalize Russia’s seaborne oil was “interference,” according to Reuters. “We will sell oil and petroleum products only to those countries that will work with us under market conditions, even if we have to reduce production a little,” he added.
- Russia is “not capable of indigenously producing” munitions at the pace that it is using them, Haines said at the forum. “So that is going to be a challenge, and that’s why you see them going to other countries effectively to try to get ammunition,” she added.
- Russian public opinion toward the war could be souring, with the conflict in Ukraine now in its 10th month, said Finland’s foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto. “The war was more popular when you don’t have to send your close relatives or your brothers or your sons to the front,” Haavisto told Japan’s Kyodo News agency in an interview conducted Thursday and published Sunday. Britain’s Defense Ministryalso suggested that “the conflict has become increasingly tangible for many Russians” since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s partial military mobilization.
- Ukraine announced sanctions against 10 representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,accusing them of working with Russian occupation authorities or supporting the invasion. The sanctions, announced Saturday by the Security Service of Ukraine, freeze the assets of the church officials — most of whom live in Russian-occupied territories — and prevent them from owning land in Ukraine, among other restrictions…..
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Even as rolling blackouts darken parts of wartorn Ukraine, Kyiv is working to digitize its government operations, to help citizens access services, to reassure international supporters about aid donations, and to better fight off invading Russian forces, Ukraine’s top digital innovation official said Friday.
“We have not stopped in the construction of the digital state,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, deputy prime minister for digital innovation.
Fedorov, who spoke at an Atlantic Council event, was in the United States to meet representatives from Google and other companies.
Google is donating 50,000 Google Workspace licenses to the Ukrainian government, company officials announced on Friday.
That followed Federov’s Thursday announcement that Amazon had donated items and services worth $75 million to Ukraine, and vowed to continue supplying the services through 2023.
“At the start of the full-scale war, Amazon AWS was one of the first to help hold the country’s digital infrastructure,” he wrote on Telegram. “The company provided services worth millions of dollars for the storage of about 100 state registers. This allowed registries to work even during Russian shelling and emergency power outages, and Ukrainians to receive government services online.”
And that followed Microsoft’s Nov. 3 announcement that it would donate cloud-computing services worth roughly $100 million though next year, which company president Brad Smith said would bring its total wartime support for Ukraine to $400 million.
The donated services have helped the Ukrainian government to continue to function during the invasion, and to keep important data out of Russia’s crosshairs. …
image….A man pushes his bike near destroyed residential buildings in Borodyanka, near Kyiv, on Sunday. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)