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Welcome to my newest update on Putin’s War in Ukraine. We are now 36 weeks — 254 days — since Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. My last update can be found at Putin’s War, Week 35. The Lull Before the Next Storm. There has been some action, but the crappy weather has slowed things down. Also, both sides are somewhat tired after a punishing summer’s campaigning. I look at this period as the break when the fighters have returned to their corners. Two significant items have been covered outside this update. First, the Pentagon is beefing up the...

Analogies between contemporary atrocities and those of previous wars are always risky; at times, commentary about Russia’s war on Ukraine has strained to make such analogies. Just now, though, it takes effort not to. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s launching of missiles against Kyiv, Kharkiv and other places Monday recalls past terror-bombing attempts ranging from the mutual attacks by Iraq and Iran during their War of the Cities in the 1980s to the V-2 terror-bombing of Western European cities by Germany in the final stages of World War II. Like those strikes, the 84 cruise missiles and 24 drones Mr. Putin...

Ukrainian forces have reported that Elon Musk's Starlink communication devices are currently out, causing communication disruption to key parts of the frontline.Soldiers from the Ukrainian military are pushing back against Russia, whose invasion has continued under despot Vladimir Putin.A fresh blow to Ukrainian soldiers has seen their line of communications knocked offline in some areas, Ukrainian officials have said, with Starlink terminals made by Musk's company SpaceX experiencing outages.The satellites are currently used to assist in Ukraine's use of drones as well as the receiving of vital intelligence updates, communicating with areas where there are no secure networks.Outages have since...

Reminiscent of a vassalized Central Europe where any protest was crushed by sending tanks to Budapest or Prague, the Kremlin has been ravaging Ukraine for the past five months under the guise of "denazification" and negation of the Ukrainian nation, using a strategy of terror that has so far destroyed cities, massacred and raped civilians, and displaced populations. Between February 24 and June 18, as revealed by the Russian Ministry of Defence, more than 1.9 million Ukrainians, including more than 307,000 children [200,000 according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the beginning of June], were forcibly transferred to the Russian...

In an effort to distract attention from its losses in Ukraine and obfuscate its war on Ukrainian civilians, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations accused the United States, the United Kingdom and unnamed other Western countries of launching “the largest in history war by proxy with Russia using Ukrainians and ready to go “until the last Ukrainian”. He then claimed that it was Ukraine and its Western supporters, not Russia, who started the war. It’s time to set the record straight. Leading up to Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russia fervently insisted that it had no plans to...