The Russian’s ARE moving troops into the East of the Ukraine as Putin does another switch in his military command….
The fierce fighting in the Donetsk region continues ….
More Republicans are now talking defunding the Ukraine effort to make them settle with Russia and view Russina President would sorely like….(Afghanistan ALL over?)
Here’s what we know:
Moscow is building up troop numbers in the east as a fierce battle for the small town of Soledar continues, a top Ukrainian official said.
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The fight for the small town of Soledar grinds on, costing lives.
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A funeral near Kyiv bears witness to the toll of fierce fighting in Ukraine’s east.
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‘The smell of smoke and death’: Ukrainian forces describe months of fighting in Soledar.
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Russia releases a U.S. Navy veteran quietly detained in Kaliningrad in April of last year.
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Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the new head of Russia’s war effort, is the Kremlin’s top military commander.
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As Poland and Britain weigh sending tanks to Kyiv, pressure on other allies mounts.
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Satellite images show the scale of destruction in Soledar and a nearby village…..
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The United States is not in a position to predict the outcome of the battle, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday, but even if Russian forces were to take the town, “it’s not going to have a strategic impact on the war itself. And it certainly isn’t going to stop the Ukrainians or slow them down in terms of their efforts to regain their territory.”
Particularly in the Donbas, “towns and villages have swapped hands quite frequently,” he said. “So … don’t count the Ukrainians out.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- The “top issue is Soledar, Bakhmut, the struggle for the Donetsk direction in general,” Zelesnky said Thursday in his nightly address. “We have analyzed in detail what decisions are needed, what reinforcements are needed, what steps should be taken by commanders in the coming days.”
- “The battles are ongoing” for the town, according toBrig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov, a top official on the Ukrainian army’s general staff. In a military briefing Thursday, he did not provide estimates of “which part of the city we control and which part the enemy is trying to control.”
- “Civilians are trying to survive amid that bloodbath as the Russians are pressing their attacks,” Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, said in televised remarks Thursday, Reuters reported.
- “A really gigantic job has been done in Soledar,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. “But there is still a lot of work ahead” in the town and other contested cities, he added. “This is not the time to stop. The main work is yet to come.” He was responding to a question about the Wagner Group’s role in the Ukrainian town. The group’s founder, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, reiterated his claim Wednesday that his private military forces had seized the town, which Kyiv has denied.
- Taylor Dudley, 35, A U.S. citizen who had been detained in Russia for nine months, was released on Thursday, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter. He was released at a border crossing with Poland and was traveling to the United States with a team working for former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, according to a statement from his center, which negotiates for the release of hostages and prisoners abroad. U.S. officials confirmed the release.
- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu replaced Gen. Sergei Surovikin with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, longtime chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, in Wednesday’s shake-up. Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon” for his brutal tactics in Syria, had led the Russian campaign in Ukraine for just over three months. The move “likely does reflect some of the systemic challenges that the Russian military has faced since the beginning of this invasion,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters Thursday, Reuters reported.
- The Wagner Group said it found the body of one of two missing British men in Soledar. In a post on Telegram, the group included photos of two British passports allegedly found with the body and bearing the names of the two men. Volunteers Christopher Parry and Andrew Bagshaw were reported missing this week. Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was “supporting the families of two British men who have gone missing in Ukraine….”
President Biden has been doing weekly aid packages to the Ukraine up now….
An increasing number of House Republican have pledged to slow that , with some wanting cut it off completely….
Completely stopping exonomic and military aid is NOT gonna make it thru the Us Seante and Biden….
But a cutting the amount IS entirely possible….
Some of the stuff promised is a ways out and House GOPer’s could try to cut funding for that struff back in upcoming budget spending….
A new CBS News/YouGov poll this week — the first to test the issue since Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke before Congress in December — is the latest to illustrate that drift. And despite Zelensky’s plea for American resolve, it shows that a slight majority of Republicans — 52 percent to 48 percent — want their member of Congress to oppose further Ukraine funding.
But it’s hardly the only signifier of this shift.
When the war started, support for Ukraine was a very bipartisan issue. Then the percentage of Republicans who said we were doing “too much” to help Ukraine grew sharply, from the single digits shortly after the war began in February to 48 percent in a Wall Street Journal poll released shortly after McCarthy’s comments. Multiple polls released after the election — from Marquette University law school and Fox News — showed that a plurality of Republicans thought we were doing “too much,” rather than the right amount or not enough…
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But saying we should do less isn’t the same as saying we should do nothing. And now a significant number of Republicans say that’s their position…
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What the polls have also shown is more pessimism among Republicans about Ukraine’s ability to win the war and more desire to make concessions to Russia in the name of ending it….
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But the real battle, to the extent it exists, is likely to take place in the House. And perhaps the tacks of McCarthy and Scalise, emphasizing general fiscal accountability and opposing an open-ended commitment to Ukraine, may turn out to be a successful strategy for ultimately securing some amount of aid in the future.
But we’ve also seen how the noisier wing of the party often gets what it wants — or at least leverages things in its favor. And the noisier half increasingly opposes further Ukraine funding….