Ukraine does a cyber attack on the computers in Russia’s Defense headquarters…
Ukraine President Zelensky is having a bad time right now with his military….
A messy retreat in Avdiivka….
Continued trouble in drafting people for his military….
Waiting for more US aid money….
Low stocks of ammo……
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Ukraine said it had not seen the €16bn (£13.7bn) in proceeds from two donor conferences held in Poland in 2022, early on into Russia’s full-scale invasion. The two events in 2022 had raised 10 billion and six billion euros, respectively, the Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmygal, told a press conference.
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A first-of-its-kind training exercise involving more than 20,000 soldiers from over a dozen countries has launched across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland as the region prepares to become a fully Nato territory within days. The training exercise across air, land and sea – which will also include soldiers from the UK, US, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada – will incorporate a cross-border operations exercise in the Arctic Circle.
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The Kremlin said a purported recording of German military discussions showed Germany’s armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory. Russian media on Friday published a 38-minute recording of a call in which German officers were heard discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea. Germany’s ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Graf Lamsdorff, was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry on Monday in order to explain the leaked discussion. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the leaked discussions showed that the appetite for war in Europe “still remains very very high”, and the aim was to ensure “Russia’s strategic defeat on the battlefield”. The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedevcommented that: “Germany is planning a war with Russia”. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, dismissed the reactions as “completely absurd”, accusing Moscow of wanting to sow distrust and discord in Germany.
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Disqualified Russian presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin said he would keep filing challenges against his exclusion from this month’s election after his latest appeal was rejected by the supreme court.
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Ukraine’s military intelligence agency launched a cyber-attack against the servers of the Russian defence ministry, gaining access to “a bulk of classified service documents,” the agency said…..
The Ukraine has a problem…It’s military is having a hard time filling the ranks….
Even as he promises international partners that Ukraine will handle the fighting if given needed weapons and other support, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top military commanders have failed so far to come up with a clear plan to conscript or recruit many thousands of new soldiers critically needed to defend against Russia’s continuing attacks.
Zelensky’s inability to forge a political consensus on a mobilization strategy — despite months of warnings about a severe shortage of qualified troops on the front — has fueled deep divisions in Ukraine’s parliament and more broadly in Ukrainian society. It has left the military relying on a hodgepodge of recruiting efforts and sown panic among fighting-age men, some of whom have gone into hiding, worried that they will be drafted into an ill-equipped army and sent to certain death given that aid for Ukraine remains stalled in Washington.
The quandary over how to fill the ranks has confronted Zelensky with perhaps the greatest challenge to his leadership since the start of the February 2022 invasion. The lack of a clear mobilization strategy — or even agreement on how many more troops Ukraine needs — factored into Zelensky’s dismissal of his top general in February, but the new commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, so far has brought no new clarity….
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If you want to go to a concert in Kharkiv these days, you have to know who to ask.
In Ukraine’s second city, just 40 kilometres from the Russian border, mass gatherings have been banned since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Most cultural events that do take place are not advertised to make sure they do not get shelled.
But after two years of near-silence, the Kharkiv National Opera and Ballet is about to burst back into sound – underground.
“We want to bring life back to Kharkiv, including cultural life,” the theatre’s general director, Ihor Touluzov, explains. “Demand for any kind of cultural event here is really high.”
Singing beneath the streets
The bunker theatre is being prepared beneath the main auditorium, down several flights of stairs.
It has no dress circle, chandeliers or Champagne – but a lot of grey concrete. Yet if you follow the sound of music, it leads to a raised stage with spotlights and rows of seats.
Most importantly, there’s a company of singers, dancers and musicians desperate to perform before a proper audience again.
“We really miss our big hall, the feeling of being on a big stage with lots of people watching,” violinist Natalia Babarok explains….
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev promoted Russia’s extensive territorial objectives that expand deep into Ukraine’s territory. Medvedev gave a lecture on March 4 called “Geographical and Strategic Borders” at the Russian World Youth Festival, a Kremlin-organized event that includes attendees from more than 100 foreign countries, during which he claimed that “Ukraine is, of course, Russia.” Russian forces currently occupy the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast, but Medvedev defined all the territories on the left bank of the Dnipro River and many territories on the right bank of the Dnipro River as “integral” to Russia’s “strategic historical borders.” Russian forces currently do not occupy any territory in right-bank Ukraine.