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WASHINGTON — Negotiators to a stop-gap spending bill in the U.S. Congress have agreed to include about $12 billion in new aid to Ukraine in response to a request from the Biden administration, a source familiar with the talks said on Monday.The source, who asked not to be identified, said the measure will also include resettlement funding for Afghan refugees

Congress has complied with the Biden administration’s request to include $12 billion for Ukraine in its stopgap funding bill, Reuters reported Monday. GOP senators remained divided over whether to support the funding request in the continuing resolution, a funding bill that needs to be passed by Sept. 30 to avert a government shutdown, CNN reported on Sept. 19. However, a source familiar with the ongoing negotiations said Congress had agreed to $12 billion in aid on top of the $4o billion authorized in May, Reuters reported. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told CNN the funding package would contain a...

You see, this is why I prefer Catholicism. All we need is confession. Russia’s establishment has grown desperate enough in Ukraine to reach for the martyrdom argument. Patriarch Kirill, a Vladimir Putin crony, declared that Russian men who die for “Holy Russia” by participating in its genocide in Ukraine will have their sins “washed away”: (snip) If that sounds positively medieval, it is, literally. It’s the same indulgence granted during the Crusades. This is the kind of martyrdom teachings one no longer finds in Christianity but still find in radical forms of Islam and extremist political ideologies. In those ideologies,...

In total, the United States has committed approximately $15.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration. Since 2014, the United States has committed approximately $17.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine and more than $15.1 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24. To meet Ukraine’s evolving battlefield requirements, the United States will continue to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities. The new military aid from the United States includes: - Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS); - 36,000 105mm...

Ukraine says hundreds of graves have been found outside Izyum, days after it was re-taken from Russia. Wooden crosses, most of them marked with numbers, were discovered in a forest outside the city by advancing Ukrainian forces. Authorities said they would start exhuming some of the graves on Friday. It is not yet clear what happened to the victims, but early accounts suggest some may have died from shelling and a lack of access to healthcare. Speaking on Friday, the head of Ukraine's national police service said most of the bodies belonged to civilians.

Surrounded by prisoners dressed in black, a man identified as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of a shadowy mercenary group, makes this pitch: Come fight in Ukraine and be rewarded with your freedom — if you can make it back alive. "Nobody goes back behind bars," Prigozhin, founder of the Russian private military company Wagner, can be seen telling men in a video from a Russian prison yard, per a translation from The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov. "If you serve six months, you are free. If you arrive in Ukraine and decide it's not for you, we execute you." He...

MOSCOW, September 13. /TASS/. Kiev will not receive any "security guarantees", in particular, because its draft is essentially a "prologue" to World War III, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev believes. "The Kiev camarilla has given birth to a project of 'security guarantees', which are essentially a prologue to a third world war. Of course, no one will provide any 'guarantees' to the Ukrainian Nazis," he wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. He believes that the agreement proposed by Kiev is tantamount to "applying Article 5 of the North Atlantic Pact to Ukraine." This article refers...

Brutal realizations have been raining upon the Kremlin’s top propagandists—and when it rains, it pours. The same pundits who used to threaten NATO countries with nuclear strikes are begrudgingly acknowledging that Russia’s Armed Forces have suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in Ukraine. Appearing on Russia’s NTV show The Meeting Place on Monday, policy analyst Viktor Olevich surmised: “Unfortunately, the situation is difficult. Can we say that the Russian forces moved closer to meeting the goals and carrying out the tasks set by the president at the beginning of the special operation—or did they get further away? Obviously, we’re now...

Ukraine's military claimed Tuesday for the first time that it encountered an Iranian-supplied suicide drone used by Russia on the battlefield, showing the deepening ties between Moscow and Tehran as the Islamic Republic's tattered nuclear deal with world powers hangs in the balance. U.S. intelligence publicly warned back in July that Tehran planned to send hundreds of the bomb-carrying drones to Russia to aid its war on Ukraine. While Iran initially denied it, the head of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has boasted in recent days about arming the world's top powers. The Ukrainian military's Strategic Communications Directorate published images of...

Ukrainian forces to the east and southeast of Kharkiv retain the offensive initiative. Russian forces are withdrawing from the strategic hub of Izium and regrouping along a straight north-south line running just east from Kupiansk down to Izium. In the South, company-level fighting continues northeast of Kherson; neither side has made any significant gains since early last week. In response to the Kharkiv region offensive, Russian air and missile forces have attacked energy and water infrastructure throughout Eastern Ukraine and caused massive blackouts in major cities. On the basis of reported large-scale US intelligence and added advanced weapons systems assistance,...

The news of municipal deputies from Russian districts signing a petition demanding Putin resigns was shared by Ksenia Torstrem, a member of the St. Petersburg municipality Semenovsky, who published the statement on Twitter. She urged other municipal deputies to join the statement. “We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President V. V. Putin are detrimental to the future of Russia and its citizens.” “We demand Vladimir Putin’s resignation as President of the Russian Federation!” reads the text of the petition, signed by about 20 deputies.

At government headquarters in NATO member Montenegro, computers are unplugged, the internet is switched off and the state's main websites are down amid a massive cyberattack that officials say bears the hallmark of pro-Russian hackers and its security services.

Latest update from The New Atlas focusing on the realities of Ukraine's recent tactical victory vs. the enormous structural cost that likely leads to speeding up to Ukraine's eventual strategic failure. Ukraine lost 5-7 brigades (20,000 to 28,000 men) in just that short 10 day period of "counter offensive." Makes the interesting point that Russia's decision to withdraw eliminated Ukraine's ability to significantly reduce Russia's manpower or weaponry. By enticing Ukraine to come out of their covered defensive positions and into the open it has provided an easier target for Russia to attack by air and artillery Ukraine's stretched out...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refused peace talks with Russia just days prior to the war, according to reports.Zelensky's adamant refusal to accept German-brokered peace talks with Russia, which ultimately resulted in large-scale killings and massive destruction in Ukraine, has earned him brickbats from people across the globe.As per the report published in the Wall Street Journal, it is evident that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had extended an offer for peace days before Russia launched the attack on Ukraine but the Ukrainian President did not pay any heed.

Saturday, I posted on the new Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv Oblast that has liberated several hundred square miles of territory and threatens to unravel the entire Russian invasion;(snip) The main effort in yesterday’s report was Kupiansk, a critical rail and highway node on the Oskil river. That city is firmly in Ukrainian hands. As I noted yesterday, this places the main railroad line from Russian forces in Ukraine to Russia within range of Ukrainian tube artillery. The Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv Oblast shows some signs of slowing down, unlike the Russian withdrawal. But progress continues. I’d thought the Oskil River/reservoir...