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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...

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...

At least 11 people were killed and 15 more wounded at a military training ground in the Belgorod region in south-western Russia on Saturday when two volunteers opened fire on other troops, the Russian defence ministry has said. .. According to Baza, a Russian news site with close ties to the police, the shooting took place at 10am local time during shooting practice. Saturday’s mass shooting points to growing tensions among Russia’s troops, issues that have plagued its army since the start of the war. The incident also comes as tens of thousands of newly drafted Russian men are sent...

...eight months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Lukashenko’s Russian-enabled grip on power risks slipping as Moscow pressures him to get more involved in the faltering military campaign next door in Ukraine. Artyom Shraibman, a Belarusian political analyst who fled to Poland after a brutal crackdown on postelection protests in 2020, cautioned that it was unclear exactly what Putin had asked of the Belarusian leader in St. Petersburg but, he added: “it is very clear that Lukashenko is not yet willing to join the war” because of the immense political risks that would bring. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader and a...

“This is not the era for war but peace,” Indian PM Narendra Modi bluntly told Putin when the two were talking on the sidelines of the Samarkand meet of SCO. The US and the European members of NATO wondered how a close ally of Russia declining to sign the condemnation resolution against Russia on Ukraine could have the guts to tell Putin something that his generals and close advisers would not. Modi added that he had told him (Putin) the same thing many times in their telephonic conversation. This is not an ordinary statement as it reflects India’s sincere and...

Two women in Russia-annexed Crimea, including Miss Crimea, have been found guilty of discrediting the Russian army by singing a patriotic Ukrainian song in a video posted on social media, local authorities have said. Olga Valeyeva, who won the Miss Crimea 2022 beauty pageant, and an unnamed friend sang the popular Ukrainian Chervona Kalyna song on a balcony. A video of the women singing was posted on Instagram ...."A video was published on the internet in which two girls performed a song that is the fighting anthem of an extremist organisation,” Crimea’s interior ministry said on Telegram on Monday. It...

Vladimir Putin will formally annex occupied regions of Ukraine to Russian in a major speech tomorrow, the Kremlin has confirmed, as he attempts to regain the initiative after his forces suffered a humiliating rout earlier this month. Putin's speech comes after Russian-backed proxy governments in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions held sham referendums earlier this week on whether to go ahead with the move. Armed Russian soldiers taking ballot boxes door-to-door left the results in no doubt, and Ukraine along with its Western allies have vowed not to recognise the results. But it still marks a turning point in...

A protest has been held in Ordzhonikidze Square, in Yakutsk, Russia, where women came out to demand an "end to the genocide" and to return men home from the war against Ukraine ...a large number of people attended [the protest], many of them coming with their families, mostly women, with grandmothers and daughters.

The Kremlin this summer scrambled to form a new army corps, seeking replacements for 80,000 troops injured or killed in Ukraine and 5,000 wrecked or captured vehicles. ...As Russian casualties exceeded 50,000 this spring, the Kremlin began scraping together fresh battalions by raiding the training and garrison establishment of existing brigades. At the same time, the army announced an initiative to form scores of new regional volunteer battalions—and even offered elevated salaries of up to $5,000 a month. This should come as no surprise. The recruitment drive behind the 3rd AC collided with Russia’s unhappy demographics and conscription practices. Roughly...

Moscow isolated at United Nations assembly, with no major country siding with it China and India have called for a negotiated end to the Ukraine war, stopping short of robust support for traditional ally Russia. After a week of pressure at the United Nations general assembly, Russia’s foreign minister took the general assembly rostrum to deliver a fiery rebuke to western nations for what he termed a “grotesque” campaign against Russians. But no major nation has rallied behind Russia, including China, which just days before the February invasion of Ukraine had vowed an “unbreakable” bond with President Vladimir Putin. China’s...

On September 15, a video of an unidentified flying object that crashed in Stavropol, Russia, around 350 kilometers (220 miles) from the Ukrainian border, went viral on the internet. The Russian media reports initially led people to believe it was a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Later, Twitter users noted similarities between the wreckage and the Russian Kinzhal missile. A Twitter user going by the handle LotA shared a video of the incident, which happened on September 14. According to the user, the unidentified object was a Russian Kinzhal missile. “If anyone wondered what crashed today in Russian Stavropol region...

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to call up 300,000 reservists should prod the West to send the longer-range artillery and more technologically advanced weapons that Kyiv will need to press its advantage in the harsh winter months ahead, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister said Wednesday. Volodymyr Havrylov’s list is topped by the ATACMS, a missile that can outrange the artillery rockets Ukraine is currently using, and fighter jets, which Washington has been reluctant to provide out of fear that Russia would escalate the nearly seven-month-old war. “I think after today's announcement [by] Putin, we are closer to a political decision here...

<p>The demonstrations in Iran began as an emotional outpouring over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman held by the country's morality police for allegedly violating its strictly enforced dress code.</p><p>Clashes between Iranian security forces and protesters angry over the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody have killed at least nine people since the violence erupted over the weekend, according to a tally on Thursday by The Associated Press.</p>

The Turkish President has fired a huge warning to his Russian counterpart who is already struggling in the wake of impressive Ukrainian counter-strikes on Moscow's invading army. ...The comments, made in an interview with PBS NewsHour on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, are likely to spark fury in Russia. When asked if Russia should be allowed to keep some of the territory it's taken from Ukraine since it invaded in February and if that should be "part of a solution to this — to this conflict", he replied through a translator: "No, and undoubtedly...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted the biggest shake-up of European energy markets this century. This film explains how Europe became so dependent on cheap Russian gas, and explores the hard choices facing the EU as it tries to balance energy security and climate ambitions. Read more at https://on.ft.com/3D7bv31