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Two hydropower plants in Ukraine were severely damaged and were no longer in operation after Russian bombardments earlier this week, the state energy company Ukrhydroenergo said Thursday. "As of today all hydro generation has suffered devastating damage," it said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, adding that significant financial resources and efforts would be required to repair the damage and restore the plants' operations. Ukraine plans to double electricity imports Thursday after the powerful Russian attack on Ukraine's energy system, the energy ministry said.

Missiles from North Korea, drones from Iran, and a massive amount of technical assistance from China. Russian President Vladimir Putin may complain about the backing Ukraine is receiving from Nato allies, but it is doubtful that Russia would be able to maintain its military offensive without the help it is getting from its motley collection of autocratic friends. In the latest indication of the support Moscow is receiving for its war effort in Ukraine, a team of UN investigators has concluded that debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on January 2 was from a...

Russia launched a barrage of missiles and drones targeting energy and military-industrial facilities across Ukraine in the early hours of May 8. The strikes reportedly targeted five Ukrainian regions – Poltava, Kirovograd, Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk, and Vinnitsa – as well as part of the Zaporozhye region currently under the Kiev regime’s control. Air defense systems were also operating in Kiev and the capital’s environs.

The ink was barely dry on President Biden’s signature transferring another $61 billion to the black hole called Ukraine, when the mainstream media broke the news that this was not the parting shot in a failed US policy. The elites have no intention of shutting down this gravy train, which transports wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy and connected class. Reuters wrote right after the aid bill was passed that, “Ukraine’s $61 billion lifeline is not enough.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61...

As the West struggles to define its strategy in Ukraine, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have long insisted that the only path to a “just and lasting peace” is to support Ukraine until Russia unconditionally admits defeat. They dismiss calls for a negotiated settlement as naive, dangerous and futile, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not relent unless stopped by force of arms — Ukrainian or otherwise. More than two years into the conflict, Western leaders remain unfazed in their commitment to Russian military defeat, even as the fighting tilts decidedly in Moscow’s favor. The West’s continued...

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official warned about the threat Moscow poses on other nations in Europe, saying "the Russians will take the Baltics in seven days" if allies don't stand up to Russia now. The comment was made by Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate (GUR), during an interview with The Economist published on Thursday. The alarm has been sounded before about the potential of Russian President Vladimir Putin looking to start conflicts in the Baltic states. Earlier this year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that the Russian leader appeared to...

(Kyiv, May 2, 2024) – Russian forces appear to have executed at least 15 Ukrainian soldiers as they attempted to surrender, and possibly six more who were surrendering or who had surrendered, since early December 2023, Human Rights Watch said today. These incidents should be investigated as war crimes. “Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its forces have committed many heinous war crimes,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “The summary execution – or murder – of surrendering and injured Ukrainian soldiers, gunned down in cold blood, expressly forbidden under international humanitarian law, is...

A very sobering @olliecarroll interview with Ukraine’s deputy mil intel chief. He says Chasiv Yar will fall eventually, that Ukraine is far from stabilising the front and that Russia is “generating a division of reserves” & wants to strike at Sumy/Kharkiv. ‘Right now, both sides are jockeying for the “the most favourable position” ahead of potential talks. But meaningful negotiations can begin only in the second half of 2025 at the earliest, he guesses

Ukraine’s population collapsed to 29mn souls last year, according to Ukraine Business News, with just 187,000 births recorded (including in Russian-occupied territories). This is the lowest annual figure in recorded history over the last 300 years, exacerbating an already dire population catastrophe facilitated by economic turmoil and war. Ukraine's demographic crisis dates back to the Soviet collapse in 1991, when the country’s population stood at 51.9mn. Economic crises and labour migration saw the country’s total fertility rate plummet to 1.4 births per woman (well below the replacement level of 2.1) by 2022 and possibly as low as .7 by the...

Well, as suspected, the war in Ukraine isn't about Democracy. It is about business and appeasing investors, the same investors who are also donators to the political parties. Col Douglas MacGregor talks about BlackRock and other investors who wanted to carve up Russia & Ukraine.

Ukraine last week got a vital $61 billion lifeline from the United States. But it still needs a medium-term funding plan to withstand Russia’s onslaught. A multi-year funding plan would have several benefits. For a start, it would provide some insurance against U.S. political swings. It would also boost Ukrainian morale and give Western arms manufacturers greater confidence to ramp up production. Ukraine is straining every sinew to hold the line against Russia, an adversary whose $2 trillion, opens new tab economy was 11 times bigger than its own last year. How much Kyiv needs in future depends on what...

As usual, ‘HistoryLegends’ provides an excellent summary of recent battles in Ukraine and does an excellent tactical analysis. He’s good at separating the on-the-ground realities from all the noise in the media. All wars, if they last long enough, will evolve. The Ukraine-Russo war has evolved to the point that each side is doing its best to attack the enemy’s infrastructure including “dual use” infrastructure such as refineries and railway stations and support facilities.

The lack of vehicles forced Ukrainian command to back down from the original plans. The leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has reorganized the 153rd Mechanized Brigade into an infantry brigade. This change was announced through the official social media channels of the brigade.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard reports like this from Russian conscripts. Every few months we get a fresh glimpse at the Russian front lines from individuals who describe the conditions as “absolute f**king hell” or as an ongoing slaughter. The most recent entry of this type comes from an ex-convict named Aleksandr who has been serving in the Russian Army. (snip) You may remember that last year Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group was allowed to recruit tens of thousands of conscripts from Russia’s prisons. Wagner was eventually cut off from recruiting more prisoners in one of the first signs...

The Ukrainian military has halted a Russian advance in the east of the country and is now moving south, officials said on Friday. “We had very fierce battles in the Kupiansk and Lyman directions, but our soldiers stopped the enemy there,” Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar told Ukrainian television. Ukraine’s summer counterattack has won multiple small victories, but Russian officials have denied Ukrainian claims that it has taken eight villages and pushed back Russian forces. That offensive is still in its early stages, with Ukrainian forces not yet advancing on the best-defended Russian positions in Donetsk and Luhansk.

On the night of March 31, the defender of Ukraine and four-time world kickboxing champion Vitaliy Merinov died in the hospital from his injuries. Merinov was also the champion of Ukraine in universal combat and a master of sports in boxing. He also served as President of the Ivano-Frankivsk Boxing Federation. The athlete went to war on the first day of a full-scale invasion. He received a gunshot wound in the leg, but after that he was able to recover and return to the front. Merinov is survived by his wife and two-year-old daughter.

In a thick pine forest in western Ukraine, not far from the border with the Kremlin-aligned nation of Belarus, a military engineer named Anton is supervising a vast underground construction site. "It's a bunker," says Anton, who, like the other soldiers in this story, declined to give his last name for security reasons. "We shipped in most of the wood because we didn't want to cut the trees here. We need them for cover." He won't say how many soldiers the bunker, which is almost finished, will house. But he does give NPR a tour, walking us through a labyrinth...

Vladimir Putin's commanders are forcing his conscript soldiers at gunpoint to remain at the frontline. They are using a brutal Stalin tactic to prevent Russian reservist troops leaving their positions, say men who have seen the horror of the cannon-fodder killing fields. 'People are abandoned in the trenches as if homeless and littered with corpses,' complained Russian reservist draftees in a new video appealing directly to Vladimir Putin. 'Retreat-blocking detachments were set up against us and they did not let us out of positions.' They are forced at gunpoint to remain in position, a tactic used by Stalin's cruel SMERSH...

Ruslan Kubay was surprised to receive a draft notice in late January. Registered as seriously disabled since childhood—Mr Kubay is missing both hands—he falls under a list of automatic exemptions from service. Even more surprising, however, was the reaction of officials at the local registration office in Drohobych, near Lviv. Far from admitting their error, they doubled down and declared him fit for service. Only a social-media post and subsequent national scandal reversed the decision. “I was disgusted by how easily our blind people can start seeing,” he wrote on Facebook. Mr Kubay’s case was an extreme, but far from...

Peering through an infrared scope, a Ukrainian soldier noticed some heads poking over a trench a few dozen yards away. “‘Are there any of our guys in front of us?’” he asked, according to an account of the ensuing firefight by fellow Ukrainian soldiers. There were not. Two Ukrainians crept forward into the muddy wasteland of artillery craters between the two trench lines outside the eastern city of Lyman, eventually reaching the wreckage of an armored personnel carrier. Using it as cover to shoot from an unexpected angle, they forced the Russians to retreat. When it was over, they found...