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Germany is facing its second winter without gas deliveries from Russia. But analysts say that for gas shortages to really bite, a lot of things would have to go wrong. Germans themselves are optimistic. In the first year of it's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow tried to capitalize on concerns that energy would become scarce in Europe during the cold winter months. The Russians even made a short video to feed these fears, featuring tales of how Germans would freeze without supplies from Russia's Gazprom. The Russian state-owned company halted all gas deliveries to Germany in late August 2022. But...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov faced a chorus of condemnations over the invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, where he sought to cast Moscow as the defender of international law while chairing the proceedings despite Russia’s attempt to seize Ukrainian territory. “None of the pretexts invoked to attack Ukraine in violation of the U.N. Charter has legal merit, not one of them,” said Hernan Perez Loose, Ecuador’s ambassador to the United Nations, through a U.N. interpreter. ...United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the opening of the debate. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in violation of the United...

The ruble, the national currency of Russia, has been depreciating the whole week. At midday on Friday, the dollar was trading at 83 rubles, the euro — 91 rubles. These are the lowest values that the ruble has hit since last spring when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was just beginning. At the time, the currency markets were in full-blown panic, the dollar soared to 130 rubles, while the exchange rate fluctuations reached 10% a day. There are now far fewer causes for worry. Following the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production, the Brent crude price rose to $85, a comfortable...

...the difference in how Moscow views what it stands to gain from the two countries could ultimately influence what it might do if put in a position where it needed to choose between them. ..is not a theoretical concept, considering the existing tensions between China and India. Over the last decade China-India relations have become more competitive and deadly. Tensions could deteriorate further over border disputes. ... China’s ties with Russia displayed a bipolar character. went from being “brothers” in the 1950s to enemies just a decade later. Conversely, India’s relations with the Soviet Union moved in the opposite direction....

since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, the Russian defense industry is struggling to resupply Moscow’s own forces at the front, which have drawn down weapons and ammunition stocks at a remarkable rate. Therefore, Russia will almost certainly not be able to satisfy many export demands for the rest of the decade—with profound implications for the country’s most important arms customer, India. ...Before the war, India was already working to diversify arms suppliers, including a shift to greater domestic production. ...New Delhi has faced delays on the delivery of key equipment, spare parts, and ammunition from Russia, along with payment...

The head of Russia's private Wagner militia said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces were not leaving the city of Bakhmut and fighting was continuing in the western part of the city. "It must be said clearly that the enemy is not going anywhere," Yevgeny Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had on Wednesday raised the prospect of a possible withdrawal from the city, saying Kyiv would take the "corresponding" decisions if its forces in the city risked being encircled by Russian troops. The months-long battle for Bakhmut, one of the last urban centres in Ukraine's eastern...

BRUSSELS (AP) — The blue-and-white Finnish flag rises outside NATO headquarters Tuesday afternoon, making Finland a member and doubling Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance. The move is a strategic and political blow to President Vladimir Putin, who has long complained about NATO’s expansion toward Russia and partly used that as a justification for his country’s war with Ukraine. “What we see is that President Putin went to war against Ukraine with a declared aim to get less NATO,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “He’s getting the exact opposite.” Like all NATO members, Finland will benefit from the...

Russia is unable to honor its arms delivery commitments to India because of the war in Ukraine, the Indian Air Force (IAF) said, placing a potential strain on New Delhi’s relationship with its largest defense supplier as Moscow attempts to ramp up weapons production. An IAF representative told an Indian parliamentary committee that due to the Ukraine war a “major delivery” from Moscow “is not going to take place.” The admission, published in a report by India’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, is the first official confirmation by Indian authorities amid swirling rumors and reports in local media suggesting...

Military leaders in the U.S. and NATO continue to insist that the Russians are making little progress in Bakhmut. Here are a couple of examples of this so-called “thinking”: Russia is making small advances near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut but this was coming at a great cost, the top U.S. general said on Wednesday.…. No significant gains? I am publishing this animated map as a public service.

Russia does not use hypersonic weapons in fact now, though it has them, same as other cutting-edge systems, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview for the "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" program on Rossiya-1 TV channel published by journalist Pavel Zarubin on his Telegram channel on Sunday.

-- Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, said the Kremlin has completely stopped talking to him. -- Prigozhin claims he was cut off after revealing that his troops in Ukraine are running out of ammunition. -- The Wagner boss said he's been desperately trying to get more supplies but has been ignored. The head of Russia's infamous Wagner Group mercenary organization claims that the Kremlin has cut off contact with him. Yevgeny Prigozhin, known for years to be a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in a Thursday message on his Telegram channel that all of his...

The committee added that the boy is currently undergoing treatment in a hospital in Bryansk MOSCOW, March 3./TASS/. Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Russian Investigative Committee, has awarded his law enforcement agency's top medal, "For Valor and Courage," to a Bryansk Region boy named Fyodor who saved two girls during an attack by Ukrainian saboteurs in the border area, the Investigative Committee told reporters on Friday... On March 2, Fyodor and two girls, born in 2015 and 2016, respectively, were being driven to school in a car that was suddenly assaulted by armed men. The driver was killed on the...

Engineer units of the 24th and 93rd mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces began February 27 to blow up bridges in Artemovsk (Bakhmut). By destroying railway and road bridges, the Ukrainian army wants to slow the advance of Russian forces deep into the city. First, the enemy blew up the bridge over the Bakhmutka River in the northeastern part of Artemovsk. In addition, the automobile bridge over the canal northwest of the city, which served as a communication route with the surrounding area – Chasovy Yar, Bogdanovka and Kalinovka, no longer works. Another reason for the destruction of the...

Update from Ukraine | Ukraine Counterattack in Bakhmut | Drones over Crimea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM5lPdst4U8 Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ SUMMARY Military Maps & Comment here: https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-302-summary/

The head of Russia's mercenary outfit Wagner said it could take months to capture the embattled Ukraine city of Bakhmut and slammed Moscow's "monstrous bureaucracy" for slowing military gains. Russia has been trying to encircle the battered industrial city and wrest it ahead of Feb. 24, the first anniversary of what it terms its "special military operation" in Ukraine. "I think it's (going to be in) March or in April," Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said in one of several messages posted online overnight. "To take Bakhmut you have to cut all supply routes. It's a significant task," he said, adding:...

At the peak of his power, Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he could use his energy weapon to impose his will across Europe. Now Moldova — with a population of only 2.5 million — is emerging as the last truly vulnerable energy target in his flailing campaign to destabilize governments in the neighborhood taking a pro-EU trajectory. But no matter how hard Putin tries to turn the energy screws to topple the administration, Moldova’s government is doggedly resisting. Only last week Russian missile strikes triggered blackouts in half the country and last month Gazprom slashed gas supplies by a third,...

Things are disappearing in the Ukrainian city of Kherson at a rapid rate. Some are physical objects. Russian troops are taking away ambulances, tractors and stolen private cars. Cultural things are going too: archives, and paintings and sculptures from the art and local lore museums. Even the bones of Catherine the Great’s friend and lover, Grigory Potemkin, have been grubbed up from a crypt in St Catherine’s cathedral and spirited away. Russian soldiers are ferrying this loot across the Dnieper river, to the left bank of the Kherson region. They have also been deporting local citizens under the guise of...

Russia has acknowledged for the first time that it doesn't have enough equipment for mobilized soldiers in its war against Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that there are issues with equipment for the hundreds of thousands of men being sent to fight in Ukraine under President Vladimir Putin's partial mobilization decree. Peskov said a newly-formed council created by Putin is working on resolving problems with equipment. "Vigorous measures taken to rectify the situation are already yielding the first positive results," he said. Regional authorities are working on providing "the missing gear," Peskov said, noting that Deputy...

“Why are you taking our children? Who attacked who? Isn’t it Russia that attacked Ukraine?” The questions hurled at the police by a clamorous group of indignant women outside a theater in Dagestan’s capital That was last month the confrontation between infuriated mothers in Dagestan, a mountainous republic within the multi-national Russian Federation, took place shortly after Putin announced a partial mobilization. Elsewhere in the north Caucasian city, standoffs between protesters and baton-wielding police were fiercer with jostling and heavy-handed arrests, according to geo-located posted videos. Some other ethnic minority parts of the Russian Federation, including its 22 ethnic republics,...

Germany's national network regulator says gas consumption last week was down 31% compared to figures from 2018-2021. Officials say that has to do with unseasonably warm weather as well as heightened consumer awareness. According to the Bundesnetzagentur, Germany's federal network regulator, households and light industry in the country consumed less gas last week than the average for the same period between 2018-2021. The news followed a similar find from the week prior. Agency President Klaus Müller said households consumed an average of 608 gigawatt-hours per day in calendar week 41, compared to 881 GWh/day in previous years — a drop...