A look at Anti-Russian militia’s supported by the Ukraine mounting attacks across the Russian border from the Ukraine…
The Ukraine military wants the world to know that the Russian military HAS been using cluster bombs against civilian populations for a while….
Ukraine President Zelensky KNOWS the Ukraine isn’t gonna become a NATO member while the conflict continues and hopes afterwards to get his wish….
Unlike Russian President Putin….
Ukraine President Zelensky has been travel extensively in the West meeting with Western and NATO countries leaders….
Wagner boss Prigozhin is getting negative Russian press, but?
He is back in Russia and is reportily collecting TONS of money in St. Peterberg….
One wonders why Puitn hasn’t directly gone after his former waiter, who got to within 120 miles of the Russian capitol with his troops?
And?
Going forward ?
How is Prgozhin gonna pay his troops and feed them?
And Poland will keep more that 1,000 extra troops on their Belarus border joining 500 Polish special unit cops…
Ukraine forces maybe closing escape routes for Russian troops still in Bakhmut as they encircle the area….
The commander of the Freedom of Russia Legion says his fighters are planning another cross-border raid into Russia and are seeking to capitalise on disarray inside the Kremlin following the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“There will be a further surprise in the next month or so,” Caesar, a spokesperson for the anti-Putin paramilitary group, said in an interview with the Observer in Kyiv. “It will be our third operation. After that there will be a fourth, and fifth. We have ambitious plans. We want to free all our territory.”
The legion, consisting of around 200 Russian military volunteers, carried out attacks in May and early June. It occupied border villages near the Russian city of Belgorod, skirmished with the Russian army, and took 10 Russian soldiers captive. Two members of the anti-Kremlin militia were killed, Caesar said…
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He acknowledged his militia could only function with Ukrainian military help but said once on Russian territory they made their own independent decisions. The legion’s armoured vehicles were mostly seized from Russian stocks captured in Ukraine, he said. He added that Kremlin reports of heavy losses among his guerrillas were ridiculous and exaggerated, asserting: “They dressed up dead bodies in Ukrainian uniforms and put them on TV. Ours look different. It was all a dumb lie.”
There have been accusations that the legion and another paramilitary force operating in Ukraine, the Russian Volunteer Corps, have connections with far-right organisations. Caesar was previously a member of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), an ultranationalist group that is publicly opposed to Putin but has also fielded pro-Russian fighters in the war since 2014.
Speaking to the Observer, Caesar called himself a “constitutional monarchist”. He said he admired Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, and stressed that the legion’s fighters included people with left- and right-wing views, as well as disenchanted supporters of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader poisoned by the FSB spy agency and now in jail….
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Russian forces launched a deadly strike in eastern Ukraine on Saturday as President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the 500th day of the war with a show of defiance, sharing a video of himself visiting a Black Sea island that has become a potent symbol of his country’s resistance to the invasion.
In the kind of attack that has become painfully familiar, at least seven civilians were killed and 13 others were injured when Russian forces shelled the city center of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region at around 10 a.m., Ukrainian officials said.
Russian forces used cluster munitions in the attack, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. The attack came just a day after President Biden said the United States would supply the weapon to Kyiv to battle Moscow’s entrenched forces despite qualms from American allies.
At the scene of the strike were bloodstains, shattered glass and an overturned motorcycle.
The midmorning assault was a grim reminder of the toll taken on Ukraine by 500 days of war. Mr. Zelensky paid tribute on Saturday to all those who have lost their lives, using the backdrop of Snake Island to underscore Ukrainian resolve….
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Kyiv views membership in NATO as the ultimate guarantee of its security; its application in September to join the alliance was made against the backdrop of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
While Mr. Zelensky has acknowledged that Ukraine won’t be joining NATO anytime soon, given that such a move would force the mutual-defense alliance into direct military conflict with Russia, he has repeatedly urged its members to set out a timetable for accession. In recent months, he has expressed hopes that next week’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, could provide clarity.
With days to go before the meeting, Mr. Zelensky set out on a diplomatic offensive to press his case. He traveled to Bulgaria and the Czech Republic on Thursday and then Slovakia and Turkey on Friday, where he met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan….
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On the eve of the 500th day, the United Nations said that it had confirmed the deaths of more than 9,000 civilians — including more than 500 children — since the full-scale invasion, calling it a “grim milestone” in a war that “continues to exact a horrific toll.” It warned that the true number of dead was likely to be much higher….
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Britain joined Germany in distancing itself from the U.S. decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions on Saturday, as Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted a clarification and assurances about Ukraine’s use of the controversial weapons. President Biden defended the move to supply Kyiv with cluster munitions on Friday, telling reporters that Ukraine is “running out of ammunition.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- In the undated video, Zelensky described Snake Island as “proof that Ukraine will regain every bit of its territory.” The island was captured by Russian forces in the early days of the war — with its Ukrainian border guards responding to demands they surrender with profanity. The moment was hailed as a rallying moment in Ukraine’s defense — and Russia’s withdrawal a few months later was seen as a symbolic victory for Kyiv. Zelensky regularly publishes videos as part of his messaging efforts and has previously released similar videos, often self-shot, to rally Ukrainians during key milestones of the war.
- Reznikov said Ukraine would not use cluster munitions in urban areas and would keep strict records of their use. The munitions would save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and would not be used within Russia’s borders, he added.
- Ukrainian troops have “trapped” Russian forces in the eastern town of Bakhmut, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Saturday, as she also acknowledged 500 days of war. Maliar said Ukrainian forces had advanced more than one kilometer (0.6 miles) to the south of the town, which fell to Russian control in May after months of bloody fighting, while British Defense Ministry said in its daily update Saturday that Ukraine had made “steady gains to both the north and south” of the city.
- Russia’s ambassador to the United States said that the weapons allotment was a “gesture of despair” and that American involvement will “only lead to more casualties and prolong the agony of the k regime.” “Washington has ignored the negative opinions of its allies regarding the perils of the use of indiscriminate cluster munitions,” Ambassador Anatoly Antonov posted Friday on Telegram.
- European officials said they would not be sending such weapons to Ukraine. Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, when asked by reporters about the U.S. decision, stressed that their countries are among the more than 120 nations that signed a treaty banning the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster munitions. The United States, Ukraine and Russia are not parties to the treaty. Spanish foreign minister Margarita Robles took a firmer line, telling reporters “no to cluster bombs and yes to the legitimate defence of Ukraine, which we understand should not be carried out with cluster bombs,” she said, per the BBC.
- Human rights groups criticized the U.S. move on cluster munitions, describing the weapons, which can leave behind unexploded ordnance that can kill years after a conflict ends, as a “grave threat to civilian lives” that “would inevitably cause long-term suffering.”
- Poland has moved more than 1,000 troops toward its border with Belarus in an effort to thwart destabilization, Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said Saturday on Twitter. Belarus, one of the Kremlin’s last allies in the region, has worried NATO member Poland recently: On Sunday, Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski tweeted that he was sending 500 riot and counterterror police to the border region.
- Five commanders who defended the Azov steel plant in Mariupol accompanied Zelensky to Ukraine from Turkey, where they were transferred after being captured by Russia in spring 2022. The men were supposed to stay in Turkey until the end of the war as part of the terms of a larger prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine, Zelensky said in December, but will now return home after an apparent renegotiation between Ukraine and Erdogan.
- At least eight people were killed in Russian shelling in the eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. Five others were injured in the attack, the ministry wrote on Telegram on Saturday.
- The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, on Saturday reported that shelling hit a market in a village close to the Ukrainian border. He said one of the shells hit a central market and started a fire, but added there were no casualties. Belgorod has seen several attacks by anti-Russian forces in recent months, according to local officials.
- Shells hit a building in Zaporizhzhia on Friday, home to several major industrial sites and a nuclear plant that has become a focus of worry over potential Russian attempts to cause a radiation leak. Regional governor Yurii Malashko said on Telegram that no residents were injured in Friday’s strike, though a building caught fire.
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed support for Ukraine’s NATO bid on Friday, telling reporters: “There is no doubt that Ukraine deserves NATO membership.” Turkey has maintained a complicated balancing act during the conflict — supporting Ukraine but also being reluctant to support Western sanctions on Russia, while helping to broker agreements to export Ukrainian grain. Turkey is also holding up Sweden’s bid to join the NATO alliance, saying it is unhappy with Stockholm’s treatment of what it calls Kurdish militants.
- Despite Zelensky’s last-minute appeals, “Ukraine will not be joining NATO” at the alliance’s upcoming summit in Lithuania, Sullivan said at a briefing on Friday. However, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said separately that he expects the bloc’s leaders to reaffirm at the summit “that Ukraine will become a member of NATO” and “unite on how to bring Ukraine closer to its goal.”
- The U.N. aid chief said the Black Sea grain deal, which Russia has threatened to abandon, “isn’t something you chuck away,” while speaking to reporters Friday. The deal has facilitated the export of millions of tons of grain and foodstuffs supporting global food security, according to the United Nations, and is set to expire in mid-July unless it is renewed. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres reiterated the “importance of full and continued implementation of the agreements” in a statement released Friday.
- Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, met Friday with Evan Gershkovich’s family members and Wall Street Journal colleagues to mark the U.S. journalist’s 100th day of detention in Russia. Gershkovich is being held on espionage charges that he, his employer and rights groups unequivocally deny, and the United States considers him to be wrongfully detained.
Kremlin smears Wagner boss Prigozhin, hailing Putin as Russia’s savior: The Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus is in overdrive working to discredit Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin and to cast President Vladimir Putin as the wise leader who saved Russia from civil war, Robyn Dixon reports.
But even as the state-controlled media is trashing Prigozhin as a greedy, treasonous opportunist, the Kremlin has permitted him to return to Russia and recover millions in cash and personal weapons, showing that it’s not so easy to make him disappear….