Russians Shelling Donetsk …Again….
Also knock out several power facilities …AGAIN….
Russia joins the Ukraine in keeping tabs on the media…
Tanks are fine….And they will be forthcoming…..
But they aren’t gonna win the conflict for the Ukraine by themselves…..
Here’s what we know:
President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the notion of athletes competing under neutral flags. “There is no such thing as neutrality” in wartime, he said. In eastern Ukraine, Russian shelling killed civilians near the front lines.
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Zelensky admonishes the I.O.C. president over plan to allow Russian athletes at the Paris Olympics.
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Russian shelling kills eight civilians in Donetsk Province in eastern Ukraine.
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Hackers target Germany after Berlin decides to send tanks to Ukraine.
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Ukraine observes Holocaust Remembrance Day amid a war that Putin falsely claimed was about ‘denazification.’
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Russia blocks access to the C.I.A. and F.B.I. websites for spreading ‘inaccuracies.’
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Russia says it will switch four occupied Ukrainian regions to Moscow time.
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Nuclear experts at the Zaporizhzhia power plant raise concerns about nearby explosions.
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In a liberated village, a sense of rebuilding a community takes hold…..
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American officials acknowledged that the true power of the 31 Abrams tanks the United States announced on Wednesday it would send Ukraine is that they will unlock more donations of German-made Leopard 2 tanks, as well as more artillery and infantry fighting vehicles.
The U.S. provision of the tanks will “spur the Germans and inspire the Poles” while demonstrating NATO unity, said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. In addition to the 112 Leopards Germany will send, Poland has pledged 14 (along with hundreds of older tanks) and Canada will send four. Norway said it will send some of the tanks and Spain is considering a donation.
The new donations alone are unlikely to boost combat power enough to win the war for Ukraine, but officials and outside analysts say they will help substantially.
The tanks will punch through the trench lines and open a path for infantry in Bradley Fighting Vehicles to hold the reclaimed territory.
And the tanks send important signals to both Ukraine and Russia about continued American support….
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As Western countries pledged to ship battle tanks to Kyiv, Japan expanded its ban on exports to Russia, while the Kremlin maintained that it was “increasingly adapting to life under sanctions.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces hit Ukraine’s energy system on Thursday with drones and a “massive missile strike” from the air and the sea. The attacks disrupted the “transportation of weapons and ammunition,” the ministry said Friday. A Ukrainian official said at least 11 people were killed and 11 others injured in the strikes.
- The type of American tank going to Ukraine will be the M1A2 Abrams, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh. The M1A2 has more-advanced electronics and targeting ability than the M1A1 Abrams, according to U.S. military specifications. The Biden administration announced this week that it will send 31 of the U.S. main battle tanks, which are not expected to arrive in Ukraine for many months.
- “These decisions do not bring anything terrible for us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday after Japan announced new sanctions. He also accused President Biden of blocking an end to the war instead of pressuring Kyiv to stop fighting. “We now see that the current White House leader does not want to use this key. On the contrary, he chooses to continue pumping Ukraine with weapons,” Peskov said.
- The U.N. refugee agency said Moscow is giving Ukrainian children Russian passports and putting them up for adoption. In a Reuters interview during his visit to Kyiv, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi accused Russia on Friday of violating the “fundamental principles of child protection in situations of war.”
- U.S. government auditors are in Kyiv this week as part of steps to ensure that “no aid or weapons” are diverted, Victoria Nuland, undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department, told lawmakers Thursday. Several senior Ukrainian officials resigned or faced dismissal this week over corruption allegations.
- Russia plans to change the official time in territories it illegally annexed during the conflict to Moscow time, an hour ahead of clocks in Ukraine, according to a statement by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia.
- Poland will deliver 60 tanks to Ukraine, including 30 of the Polish PT-91 Twardy and 14 of the German-made Leopard 2, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday. Kyiv’s Western allies have agreed to send battle tanks after months of deadlock, although the broader package put together by the United States and European allies includes a mix of models, each with different delivery times and logistical hurdles, The Washington Post reports.
- The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said inspectors reported “powerful explosions” outside the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said “such events” have occurred “almost daily” in recent weeks around the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control. He has sought to negotiate a deal between Moscow and Kyiv to establish a safety buffer zone around the facility, where the IAEA said six reactors remain shut down….