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Ukraine said their units have managed to stop Russian forces in Kharkiv, but Moscow said they would continue to advance.
Ukrainian forces fought to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kharkiv region, home to the second-largest city in Ukraine and located in the country's northeast. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the military sent reinforcements to the area. As Russia tries to gain ground near the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian soldiers do what they can to bring residents to safety, reports from Vovchansk say, just a few kilometers from the Russian border. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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The German government revealed on Wednesday that it has expelled seven Ukrainian troops undergoing military training in the country for sporting Nazi symbols.
Berlin, however, attempted to downplay the potential threat posed by Ukrainian far-right nationalists to any future peace process between Kiev and Moscow. According to the German military’s estimates, “around 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers were trained by German and multinational units on German soil in 2023.” Under the European Union Military Assistance Mission Ukraine (EUMAM UA) established in November 2022, German instructors and those from several other member states have trained Ukrainian military personnel. In a reply to an inquiry made by the right-wing Alternative for Germany Party (AFD), the German government wrote that “within the framework of training for the Ukrainian armed forces conducted by the Bundeswehr, seven cases have been established where soldiers were wearing far-right extremist symbols.” The document further revealed that these troops had been removed from the course and sent home. Incoming Ukrainian military personnel are warned against the use of Nazi insignias on arrival, the German government said. The reply noted that Berlin “sees no threat to a possible peace process in Ukraine [posed] by Ukrainian extremist nationalists.” “It is Russia’s imperialism that underlies the illegal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and that threatens security in Europe,” the document said. Upon the launch of Russia’s military operation against the neighbouring state in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin listed the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of Moscow’s main goals. Russian officials have for years expressed concern over the growing role of far-right elements within the Ukrainian government and military. Moscow has also claimed that some units within Kiev’s army are made up almost exclusively of neo-Nazis. Ukraine’s glorification of WWII-era nationalist partisans who collaborated with Nazi Germany, as well as Ukrainian SS units, has also been condemned not only by Russia, but also neighbouring Poland. Despite these criticisms, monuments to honour these figures continue to be erected across Ukraine, with streets renamed after them in some cases as well. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Putting British or other NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine would not make sense, but there are other ways of helping Kiev, British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has said.
Some officials in Kiev have proposed sending Western military veterans as civilian contractors to train Ukrainian soldiers inside the country in order to quickly raise enough brigades to offset battlefield losses. “I don’t want to step over that line that puts British, sort of, troops on the ground in Ukraine. I don’t think that makes sense to do. But what I do think is sensible is potentially moving training closer,” Shapps said on Wednesday, speaking to a Telegraph podcast about the situation in Ukraine. “There may be other models that we could look at. Not something I would want to go into in detail currently,” the defence minister added. He pointed out that the UK has already trained 65,000 Ukrainian soldiers since 2014, most of them since February 2022, and that London’s commitment to Kiev “is absolutely rock-solid.” Shapps admitted that the situation north of Kharkov is rather dire for the Ukrainian military and blamed it on “the civilized world” not paying attention. “I think the world took its eye off the ball,” Shapps told the Telegraph, but added, “I think it’s rescuable, at this stage.” According to Shapps, other “civilized” countries should follow the UK´s lead and send even more money to Kiev, to ensure that Ukraine has all the weapons, training and equipment it needs to defeat Russia. Earlier this week, Shapps told Times Radio that London saw “no sense at all” in persuading or “strong-arming” Kiev into accepting any peace conditions and “giving up some of their territory” to Moscow. Boris Johnson, who was the British prime minister at the time, made a similar argument during his visit to Kiev in April 2022, which was seen as crucial in persuading Ukraine to reject a proposed armistice with Russia and continue fighting. Shapps was appointed defence minister last August. Unlike his predecessor Ben Wallace, he has no military experience, having been a printing salesman before entering politics. He has served in a variety of cabinet posts under several Tory governments, from housing and transportation to Home Office and net zero. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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EU shifts toward ‘War Economy’5/15/2024 The European Union’s defence industry has partially switched to a war economy, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton has said.
Kiev could face a “dangerous period” this year as the focus of Western politicians backing it has now turned to the European Parliament elections on June 6-9 and US presidential election on November 5, Breton explained in an interview with French broadcaster BFMTV on Monday. Russia may well take advantage of this “uncertainty” and “move forward” on the front line, he said. “Because of this, we in Europe have decided to significantly increase our subsidies in terms of weapons and ammunition” for Ukraine, the commissioner stressed. According to Breton, the EU is now on track to be producing 2 million shells, including 155mm calibre, per year for Ukraine. He said that it is fair to say the EU has “moved into a war economy” at least in terms of shell production. “Now the challenge is for us to move into a war economy in all segments of the European defence industry,” the commissioner added. In March, the European Commission approved the allocation of €500 million ($590 million) to boost the production of shells in the EU. According to Brussels, the bloc will be able to make 2 million shells annually by the end of 2025. Last year, the EU vowed to supply Kiev with 1 million shells by March 2024. However, it later acknowledged that it would not be able to meet this goal. Ukrainian officials said that they received around a third of what had been promised. In April, French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that the switch to a war economy was “necessary” as defence spending and military orders have been on the rise across the EU. Russia has warned repeatedly that foreign weapons being sent to Kiev will not prevent Moscow from achieving its military goals, but will merely prolong the fighting and increases the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. According to officials in Moscow, the provision of arms, intelligence sharing, and the training of Ukrainian troops mean that Western nations have already become de-facto parties to the conflict. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Poland cannot give Ukraine any US-made Patriot missile systems because it does not have the full system for its own defense, Polish President Andrzej Duda reiterated on Tuesday.
Kiev has been asking its Western backers to provide more long-range air defense systems to repel Russian strikes. Poland has only just started receiving the first elements of the Patriot surface-to-air batteries that it ordered from the US seven years ago, Duda told Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. Warsaw is currently in the process of building its own defense shield, part of which will be formed by the Patriot, he added. “It’s difficult to say right now if we could be providing Patriot systems to Ukraine because, as a matter of fact, we still do not have the system in Poland, we do not have it complete to provide for our own defense,” Duda stated. Ukraine earlier received several Patriot launchers, each of which costs more than $1 billion, from the US, Germany, and the Netherlands. The Financial Times reported in April that Kiev was lobbying Poland, Spain and Romania for batteries to be donated. Both Duda and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated last month that Poland didn’t have any Patriot missile systems available to donate to Ukraine. Germany and Spain recently agreed to send additional batteries to Kiev. Greece ruled out a donation, and Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said some members of his government were against the idea of sharing such weapons. Poland has already donated $4 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine, including more than 300 battle tanks and Soviet-designed MiG 29 fighter jets, Duda said on Tuesday. Poland is modernizing its armed forces, and it must replace what it donated to Ukraine, he added. Warsaw spends 4% of its GDP on defense, which is higher than NATO´s 2.5% target. The Polish leader reiterated the claim that if Russia is allowed to win in Ukraine, it will keep attacking, and may target other neighboring countries. The Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – have increasingly voiced fears that they could be next. That would be “a huge threat to the whole world,” Duda said. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Kiev to get first of F-16s5/13/2024 Ukraine may receive the F-16 fighter jets promised to it by its Western backers “within weeks,” the British newspaper Evening Standard claimed, citing what it called a “high-ranking military source.”
The aircraft were due to be supplied to Kiev either by June or July, the source said. The paper did not report on which nation would supposedly deliver the jets or what their total number is to be. In March, Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren said that Denmark would be the first nation to deliver the F-16s and would do it at some point this summer. The Netherlands was to follow soon after and provide Ukraine with their batch of fighter jets “in the second half of the year,” the minister said at that time. Earlier in May, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Ilya Evlash stated that Kiev could get the jets as early as after May 5. He also admitted that the delivery date had already been “changed several times.” Kiev has been seeking to acquire the US-made jets for quite some time amid its ongoing conflict with Moscow, which entered its third year this February. In 2023, Western countries announced an international coalition to help Ukraine procure US-designed F-16s and train its pilots. More than 40 aircraft were pledged to Kiev in total by several Western nations, including Denmark, which vowed to provide 19 jets of this type, and by the Netherlands, which said it would send 24. The Ukrainian officials admitted that the country may face infrastructure difficulties in maintaining the US-designed jets. Some of the nation’s senior military officials also told Politico in April that the aircraft could even be no longer relevant, since Russia had already taken measures to counter them. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last November that, although the F-16s would surely add to Ukraine’s capabilities, they would be far from “a silver bullet” that could fundamentally change the situation on the front lines. Russia has repeatedly stated that continued Western arms shipments to Kiev only prolong the conflict without changing its future outcome. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Ukraine has never been in a position to get a favorable settlement to end the enduring conflict with Russia and so Washington has never actually encouraged Kiev to negotiate with Moscow, former US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and former acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has claimed.
The ex-official and one of the key proponents of supporting Ukraine through military means made the remark in an interview with Politico published on Saturday. A vast part of the interview revolved around the Ukrainian conflict, with Nuland producing a typical mainstream American assessment of it. “Let’s start with the fact that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already failed in his objective. He wanted to flatten Ukraine. He wanted to ensure that they had no sovereignty, independence, agency, no democratic future – because a democratic Ukraine, a European Ukraine, is a threat to his model for Russia, among other things, and because it’s the first building block for his larger territorial ambitions,” Nuland asserted, without providing any supporting evidence. The official insisted that Kiev can still “succeed” in the conflict, though she dodged the question of whether she believes Ukraine could seize its former territories from Russia, including the Crimean Peninsula, which broke away from Kiev in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and joined Moscow after a referendum. It can definitely get to a place where it’s strong enough, I believe, and where Putin is stymied enough to go to the negotiating table from a position of strength. It’ll be up to the Ukrainian people what their territorial ambitions should be,” she said, adding that “whatever is decided on Crimea, it can’t be remilitarized such that it’s a dagger at the heart of the center of Ukraine.” The former official revealed Washington has never actually pressed Kiev into negotiations with Moscow, claiming its “negotiating position” was never actually strong enough, including in late 2022. “They were not in a strong enough position then. They’re not in a strong enough position now. The only deal Putin would have cut then, the only deal that he would cut today, at least before he sees what happens in our election, is a deal in which he says, ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.’ And that’s not sustainable,” she claimed. Victoria Nuland has been widely perceived as one of the key figures behind the whole Ukrainian crisis that started with the Maidan events, which ultimately brought down Ukraine’s democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2014. The diplomat, who at the time was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, infamously showed up among Maidan activists, handing out pastries. The affair became widely known as “Nuland’s cookies,” serving as a textbook example of direct US involvement in the coup. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Switzerland’s neutrality remains unchanged, the country’s foreign ministry has insisted ahead of the peace conference on the Ukraine conflict next month.
Russia has accused Bern of effectively siding with the West and Kiev in the current confrontation, making it an unfit mediator. According to the Swiss government, the ‘Peace in Ukraine’ summit aims to pave the way towards a “just and lasting peace” in the eastern European country. Bern has invited more than 160 delegations from around the world, including members of the G7, G20, BRICS, and EU. However, Switzerland has not extended an invitation to Russia. Moscow has described the upcoming gathering as “pointless,” and said it would refuse to participate even if it were invited. The Kremlin has argued that the conference is based around Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s peace formula, which Russia has dismissed as an unrealistic ultimatum. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin deemed Bern’s seemingly mutually exclusive statements absurd. He stressed that “we are not being invited there” while at the same time “it is being said that it’s impossible to resolve anything” without Russia. On Friday, Reuters quoted a Swiss foreign ministry representative as stressing that Bern’s neutrality is “constant” and will not be affected by the summit on June 15-16. The statement noted, however, that “being neutral does not mean being indifferent.” “Switzerland strongly condemns Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Outside the military realm, the right to neutrality does not stand in the way of solidarity and support for Ukraine and its people,” the ministry clarified, as quoted by Reuters. Despite not being a member of either the EU or NATO, Switzerland has supported the West’s sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine. Last month, the country’s national agency overseeing sanctions revealed that Bern was holding an estimated 13 billion francs ($14.3 billion) in Russian assets, which remain frozen in its financial institutions. Also in April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that “Switzerland simply does not suit us” as a host of any peace negotiations with Ukraine. “It is not a neutral party, it has turned from neutral to openly hostile,” the diplomat claimed at the time. While some political forces in Switzerland advocate aligning the country’s position more with the US and the EU, a poll conducted by the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, a research university, which was published in March, demonstrated that some 91% of Swiss citizens believe the country should stay neutral. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has dismissed Major General Sergey Rud as the head of the state guard service, according to the presidential website.
The move comes after two officers of the agency, tasked with protecting government bodies and senior officials, were detained over an alleged plot to assassinate the Ukrainian leader. “Dismiss Sergey Rud from the post of head of the State Security Administration of Ukraine,” a decree by Zelensky, published on his website on Thursday, read. The reasons for the sacking of the guard chief, who had held the role since 2019, have not been announced. The Strana.ua news website claimed that Rud’s dismissal was on the cards after the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), which is Kiev’s successor to the Soviet-era KGB, announced on Tuesday that two officers of the State Security Administration were allegedly part of a conspiracy to assassinate Zelensky, SBU chief Vasily Malyuk, military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, and other top Ukrainian officials. According to the SBU, the detained colonels have been working for Russia’s Security Service (FSB), leaking classified information to Moscow. They could face life in prison on charges of treason and preparing a terrorist attack. The SBU did not disclose the identities of the two officers. Strana.ua named them as Andrey Guk and his colleague, with the surname Derkach. The outlet reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources, that Ukrainian security agencies had harboured suspicions about Guk's activities for a long time, but that Rud was shielding his “close associate” from persecution. The announcement of the alleged plot targeting Zelensky was made by Ukraine on the day when Vladimir Putin was inaugurated for his fifth term as Russia’s president. Moscow has denied having any plans to assassinate the Ukrainian leader, with Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, telling the journalists: “as you understand, the information coming from the SBU can hardly be perceived as accurate.” The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Russia conducted a massive strike on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure across the country on Wednesday, the local authorities have said, confirming damage to several facilities.
Moscow has yet no comment on the reported long-range attacks. Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a Facebook post that Moscow attacked power generation and transmission facilities in Poltava, Kirovograd, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnitsa Regions, as well as the Kiev-controlled part of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region. The minister also urged people to save energy. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the strikes, noting that the attack also took place in Kiev Region. He claimed that the barrage included more than 50 missiles and 20 drones targeting infrastructure, adding that emergency services were dealing with the aftermath on the ground. The Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have shot down 39 missiles and almost all of the drones. National power grid operator Ukrenergo said, “there has been damage to power-generating facilities,” adding that equipment at one site in the central region was affected. Calling the development “another extremely difficult night for the Ukrainian energy industry,” power grid operator DTEK said Russia attacked three of its thermal power plants, adding that “equipment has been seriously damaged.” Transport operator Ukrainian Railways reported an attack on the “civilian railway infrastructure” in the Kiev-controlled city of Kherson, which damaged the tracks and the station, causing traffic disruptions. Maksim Kozitsky, the head of the military administration of Lviv Region, said one of the attacks targeted a local underground natural gas storage and a thermal power plant. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said last week that the recurring Russian strikes have disrupted half of the country’s energy system. Moscow first began targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in autumn 2022, in response to what it called the terrorist bombing of the Crimean Bridge in October of that year. While Kiev initially denied responsibility, it later acknowledged its role in the attack, saying it was intended to undermine Russian logistics. Moscow insists that the strikes are only aimed at military targets and facilities that support their operations and never at the civilian population. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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