US officals repeat what had beeen rumoured early in the conflict that Russian military people shoot those soliders that refused to go into combat in the feild…
Peace talks without the Ukraine don’t make much sense…
Russian War crimes evidence is being compiled….
The US makes its weeking aid announcement while all parties wait for the US House to deal with the issue now that there Is a US House Speaker …Rep. Johnson, the Speaker says he will addressing a bill, but wants some assurances attached to aid….President Biden has already spoken to the new Speaker about aid for the Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan…
Did a Chinese ship cause danage to an undersea gas pipeline to Finland?
It appears Putin has a new riend in Slovika with that countries new leader who says he will stop sending aid to the Ukraine….
Reps from Russia DO talk to each other concerning POW swaps, returning children and grain shipments and whatever else…
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The White House has claimed Russia was executing soldiers who failed to follow orders and threatening entire units with death if they retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire. White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said it was a development that security officials believe reflects Russia’s morale problems 20 months into its invasion.
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Russia criticised Ukrainian-backed peace talks set to be held in Malta this weekend, warning any discussions without its participation would be counterproductive. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the upcoming meeting had “nothing to do with the search for a peaceful resolution” and criticised Malta for hosting what she called a “blatantly anti-Russian event.”
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Dossiers of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine were presented to German federal prosecutors at the start of a campaign to use the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring war criminals to justice. The cases were filed on Thursday morning by the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), representing 16 survivors and the families of victims in three separate war crimes cases.
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The US has announced additional security assistance for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion valued at $150m (£124m), the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Pentagon said. The latest package “utilizes assistance previously authorised for Ukraine during prior fiscal years,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
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Russian lawmakers backed a record increase in military spending to fund Moscow’s offensive on Ukraine, in a first reading of the bill Thursday. Defence spending will account for almost a third of all outlays in 2024 – up 68% to 10.8tn rubles ($115bn).
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Ukraine denied reports by Ukrainian and British firms that the new Black Sea export corridor had been suspended. “The information regarding the cancellation or unscheduled stoppage of the temporary #Ukrainian-corridor for the movement of civilian vessels from and to the ports of the Big Odesa (region) is false,” deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on X.
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Russia’s FSB security service said it had killed a man while foiling what it said was the latest of several Ukraine-inspired murder and sabotage plots against its soldiers. The FSB said it had “neutralised” a suspect during an attempted arrest after discovering a plot to blow up an enlistment building in the city of Tver, north-west of Moscow, the Tass news agency reported.
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Finland is working with Beijing to find out more about a Chinese ship likely linked to damage of an undersea gas pipeline, prime minister Petteri Orpo said. Finnish police have recovered an anchor, believed to be from a Chinese vessel, that appears to have caused the breach in the Baltic Sea Balticconnector pipeline to Estonia this month.
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Ukraine said it planned to evacuate hundreds of children from communities near the north-eastern city of Kupyansk, as Russia steps up assaults in the area. Kyiv’s forces recaptured Kupyansk and the surrounding areas of Kharkiv region in September 2022, but Moscow has since pushed back in a bid to move the frontline west ahead of the winter.
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Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said he was proud to keep communications open with Moscow after angering fellow EU leaders by meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin last month. “We keep open all the communication lines to the Russians. Otherwise, there will be no chance for peace,” Orban told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. “This is a strategy. So we are proud of it.”
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Slovakia’s new populist prime minister, Robert Fico, said his three-party coalition government was ending military aid to its eastern neighbour Ukraine, fulfilling one of his central campaign pledges. He said he had spoken to the head of the European Commission about his government’s move at a meeting before the bloc’s summit in Brussels.
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A Stockholm court acquitted a Russian-Swede accused of passing western technology to Russia’s military, ruling that while he did export the material his actions did not amount to intelligence gathering. Prosecutors had sought a five-year sentence against Sergei Skvortsov, a 60-year-old dual national who has lived in Sweden since the 1990s running import-export companies…..
The Wasahington Post details the surprising on-going communications between adversaries Russia and the Ukraine behind the scenes …
Neither side is keen to advertise the existence of these back channels.
“It’s very, very emotionally difficult,” said Dmytro Usov, a Ukrainian military intelligence official who heads a coordination center overseeing prisoner exchange negotiations.
“They are the enemy, but if we talk about the negotiation process, this conflict of interest has to be overcome,” Usov said. “We understand that whatever has happened, whatever the relationship we have now, we as Ukrainians are interested in the return of our defenders and if we reject every communication channel, we won’t be able to do that.”
Intermediaries are a fallback. “If we can do it ourselves, then we will resolve it,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said.
Given Russia’s brutal attempt to topple Ukraine’s government and steal its territory, there has been little room for negotiation to stop the war. In March 2022, a series of official peace talks failed. Instead, Ukraine and Russia have fallen back on basic points of mutual self-interest, including exchanging prisoners of war…
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Negotiations “can’t be done in such a way that one side has gotten more or less,” Usov said. “Each side has to be able to prove they’ve won in some way.”…
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In a rare move for the Vatican, which prefers to deal with religious institutions, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, was invited to meet Pope Francis last summer.
The Vatican’s work on noncombatants is still “in process,” Usov said…
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This month, Qatar helped secure the return of four Ukrainian children from Russia, making it just the third country, after Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to broker a successful deal between Russia and Ukraine….
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Starting in March, however, groups of children have come back to Ukraine on a semiregular basis. They have been dropped off at a far western part of the Ukraine-Belarus border, cross over by foot, and are met in Ukraine by Save Ukraine, a nongovernmental organization….