The death of Alexei Navalny is still driving the media worldwide ….
Throwing attention on the Russian President Putin…
US and European sanctions pile up against Russian’s…
The Brit’s are sending more anti-tank weapons and increase training for Ukraine troops….
The media has NOT reported that European nations have sent MORE aid to Ukraine than America, which is in a holding pattern right now.
The American military is lacking in follow-up maintenance and supply on combat equipment sent to Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict….
Also?
The America military IS studying 2023/2024 combat in Ukraine and lessons to be learned…
The Russian military is pushing offensively in the Kharkiv-Luhansk area in maybe a attempt to develop some momentum for their President going into the March Russian elections…
House Democrats ARE moving for a Ukraine Aid bill House vote….
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Alexei Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said she has been shown her son’s body. The Russian opposition leader died in prison last Friday aged 47.
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Navalnaya has accused Russian investigators of “blackmailing” her over the funeral of her son, claiming they are trying to force her to hold a private burial ceremony without mourners. She made the allegation in a video published on YouTube.
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Navalnaya also said that she recorded the video because investigators were “threatening” her. She added: “Looking me in the eye, they said that if I do not agree to a secret funeral, they’ll do something with my son’s body … I ask for my son’s body to be given to me immediately,.”
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The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the west’s reaction to the death of Navalny “hysteria”, and said that western countries had no right to meddle in Russia’s affairs. Lavrov said on Thursday that Moscow is open to dialogue on strategic stability with the United States, but that it must be “honest”, the Russian state news agency, TASS, reported.
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Russian president Vladimir Putin said he believed US president Joe Biden had called him a “crazy SOB” in response to a comment he made last week saying he would rather have Biden as president than Donald Trump. Putin agreed in response to a TV reporter’s question that Biden’s remark was “rude”, Reuters reports.
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The UK has added 50 new entities to its Russia sanctions list, with the foreign secretary David Cameron saying “our sanctions are starving Putin of the resources he desperately needs to fund his struggling war”. The government claims the targets of the sanctions are people and businesses supplying munitions such as rocket launch systems, missiles and explosives.
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The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, has announced the UK will send 200 more anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. PA Media reports he added that the UK would train more Ukrainian troops alongside other allies, adding: “Together we will train a further 10,000 in the first half of 2024.”
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Biden endorsed the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte to be the next Nato head, a US official told Reuters. The official said: “President Biden strongly endorses PM Rutte’s candidacy to be the next secretary general of Nato.”Rutte would be succeeding the current Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian national….
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Problems with American/Ukraine combat equipment upkeep….
The Defense Department transferred Patriot air defense systems and various combat vehicles to Ukraine without a plan to sustain them long-term, which could lead to problems down the road, according to a report by the Pentagon’s watchdog.
While the Defense Department has helped Ukraine with field repairs, it does not have a plan for more complex depot-level maintenance, according to the report published last week.
Additionally, Remote Distribution and Maintenance Center—Ukraine, the Poland-based U.S. maintenance unit supporting Ukraine, has no ability to do Patriot depot-level repair, the report said. The Inspector General recommended that U.S. European Command identify the requirements and facilities that would be necessary to set up depot-level repair.
Being unable to fully maintain the Patriots “increases the risk” that Ukraine may not be able to defend itself from Russia, the report said.
Patriot batteries have so far proved effective against frequent Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. Last summer, Patriot batteries shot down every one of the more than 30 ballistic missiles Russia fired at Kyiv. …
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The US Military is studying warfare in the Ukraine…..
The U.S. military is undertaking an expansive revision of its approach to war fighting, having largely abandoned the counterinsurgency playbook that was a hallmark of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus instead on preparing for an even larger conflict with more sophisticated adversaries such as Russia or China.
What’s transpired in Ukraine, where this week the war enters its third year with hundreds of thousands dead or wounded on both sides and still no end in sight, has made clear to the Pentagon that battlefield calculations have fundamentally changed in the years since it last deployed forces in large numbers. Precision weapons, fleets of drones and digital surveillance can reach far beyond the front lines, posing grave risk to personnel wherever they are.
The war remains an active and bountiful research opportunity for American military planners as they look to the future, officials say. A classified year-long study on the lessons learned from both sides of the bloody campaign will help inform the next National Defense Strategy, a sweeping document that aligns the Pentagon’s myriad priorities. The 20 officers who led the project examined five areas: ground maneuver, air power, information warfare, sustaining and growing forces and long range fire capability.
“We immersed them in this conflict to make sure they were really understanding the implications for warfare,” said a senior defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the initiative.
The “character of war” is changing, another official said, and the lessons taken from Ukraine stand to be “an enduring resource.”…
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President Biden met with the widow and daughter of the deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Thursday…
Navalny’s death last week at age 47, after years of criticizing Moscow’s corruption and repression, eliminated the most popular figure inside Russia willing to publicly challenge President Vladimir Putin. It was significant blow to Russia’s beleaguered opposition, and Western leaders denounced it as the latest example of Putin’s brutality.
Biden has said Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death, given his long custody in Russia’s penal system. On Thursday, Biden wrote on social media that Navalny’s “legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha, and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights.”….
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Russian forces are conducting a cohesive multi-axis offensive operation in pursuit of an operationally significant objective for nearly the first time in over a year and a half of campaigning in Ukraine. The prospects of this offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk sector are far from clear, but its design and initial execution mark notable inflections in the Russian operational level approach.