The Russian Soldiers Who ‘Don’t Support the War’ | Louise Callaghan

Jul 23, 2023 | “He just repeats again and again. I don't know why I'm here. I don't want to kill anyone.”

Zelensky Sacks UK Ambassador after Row over 'Gratitude'

THE TELEGRAPH: Vadym Prystaiko criticised the Ukrainian president over his 'sarcasm' in repsonse to Ben Wallace suggesting Kyiv should show more gratitude

President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Vadym Prystaiko as Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain on Friday, days after the envoy publicly criticised the president.

A presidential order, which said Prystaiko had also been removed as Ukraine’s representative to the International Maritime Organization, gave no reason for the dismissal. » | Telegraph’s Foreign Staff | Friday, July 21, 2023

Russian Forces Launch Overnight Drone Attacks on Kyiv

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The assault was the first pre-dawn drone barrage to target the Ukrainian capital in almost two weeks, officials said.

Sweeping up debris after an apartment building was hit by a Russian drone that was shot down in May by Ukrainian defenses in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. | Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Russian forces launched a wave of drone attacks on Ukraine’s capital before dawn on Sunday for the first time in nearly two weeks, according to Ukrainian officials.

Air-raid alarms sounded around 2:30 a.m. in the capital, Kyiv. Explosions were later reported.

Serhiy Popko, the head of the city’s military administration, said that air defenses had destroyed all of the drones in Kyiv’s airspace. It was the first time in 12 days that Russian forces had used Iranian-made attack drones to target the capital, he said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

No one was killed, but debris from downed drones damaged three homes in the Kyiv region, according to the local military administration in a statement on Telegram. A man suffered a leg injury in one of those homes, it added. » | Cassandra Vinograd, Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine | Sunday, July 2, 2023

A New York Times Exclusive: Inside a Ukrainian Battlefield Hospital

The New York Times gained rare access to a military field hospital in eastern Ukraine, capturing the relentless toll of Russia’s war through the eyes of frontline combat medics and wounded soldiers. By Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak and Ben Laffin•June 29, 2023

WARNING: This video is NOT suitable for children NOR is it suitable for the fainthearted. It is extremely graphic. More graphic than many might imagine. It also contains some very strong language. – Mark

Russia-Ukraine War: The Women Standing Up against Vladimir Putin | 60 Minutes Australia

Jun 25, 2023 | He has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians and flattened countless towns and villages, but 17 months on from his illegal invasion of the Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is still a long way from victory. It’s a major embarrassment for the Russian bully, who originally expected to win the war within days.

And now, along with the defiant Ukrainian forces, Putin is also facing other formidable foes. Tom Steinfort travels to north-eastern Europe to meet a group of fearless females, including the prime ministers of Finland and Estonia, who despite the dangers are bravely standing up to the dictator, determined to play their part in his defeat.

Is the Ukraine Counteroffensive Happening on Russian Soil? | DW News

Jun 3, 2023 | Recent days have seen large-scale Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv. At the same time there have been increasing reports of attacks on Russian territory near Ukraine.

Hundreds of people have taken refuge in a sports arena in the Russian city of Belgorod. They're among thousands reported to have fled after increased shelling near the Ukrainian border. According to local officials, at least two people were killed by heavy artillery fire in the region on Friday.

Ukraine War: Kyiv Rejects Putin's 'Trivial' Christmas Truce

EPA
BBC: Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his defence minister to impose a 36-hour ceasefire on the Ukrainian frontline, beginning on Friday.

The ceasefire, scheduled to start at 12:00 Moscow time (09:00 GMT), will coincide with the Russian Orthodox Christmas.

Mr Putin asked Ukraine to reciprocate, but Kyiv quickly rejected the request.

Ukraine's foreign minister has said the announcement "cannot and should not be taken seriously".

The Kremlin statement appeared to stress that President Putin ordered his troops to stop fighting not because he was de-escalating - Putin never de-escalates - but because he had listened to an appeal from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Patriarch Kirill had, earlier in the day, called for a Christmas truce to allow believers to attend church services for Orthodox Christmas. » | Will Vernon in Moscow & Samuel Horti in London, BBC News | Thursday, January 5, 2023

Has the War in Ukraine Changed Russia? - BBC News

Dec 30, 2022 | As Russia prepares for the New Year holidays, the BBC's Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg takes to the streets of Moscow to see how the invasion of Ukraine has changed Russia in 2022 and to consider where the world’s biggest country is heading.

Exiled Chief Rabbi Says Jews Should lLave Russia While They Can

THE GUARDIAN: Exclusive: Pinchas Goldschmidt warns Jewish population will be made scapegoat for hardship caused by war

Pinchas Goldschmidt also said that while Russia’s Jews faced an uncertain future, antisemitism was on the rise across Europe and the US. Photograph: Matthias Schräder/AP
Moscow’s exiled chief rabbi says Jews should leave Russia while they still can, before they are made scapegoats for the hardship caused by the war in Ukraine.

“When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community,” Pinchas Goldschmidt told the Guardian. “We saw this in tsarist times and at the end of the Stalinist regime.”

“We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave,” he added.

Goldschmidt resigned from his post and left Russia in July after refusing to back the Russian invasion of Ukraine. » | Stephen Burgen in Barcelona | Friday, December 30, 2022

Russia Launches Large-scale Missile Attack on Ukraine | DW News

Dec 29, 2022 | Several cities in Ukraine were hit by Russian missile strikes. In Kyiv, the regional administration said that air defense systems were activated. It said that fragments from a downed Russian missile damaged a private building in the Damtyskyi district. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said that 40% of the city's residents were left without power following strikes.

Russia Launches New Deadly Strikes across Ukraine - BBC News

Dec 16, 2022 | Russian forces fired 60 missiles and carried out drone attacks across Ukraine on Friday, officials said, striking the capital Kyiv and cities in the north, south, west and centre. Two people were killed when a residential building was hit in Kryvyi Rih and a third died in Kherson. Attacks have intensified this week as Russia targets Ukraine's civilian infrastructure. Power was completely down in Kharkiv in the north and several other regions.

No Christmas Ceasefire in Ukraine, Russia Says, as Winter Deadlock Sets In

THE GUARDIAN: Kremlin rejects Zelenskiy call for troop withdrawals, saying Ukraine must accept Russia’s territorial gains, as Canada reinstates Nord Stream sanctions

A street decorated with Christmas lights in Lviv, Ukraine. Russia has said a Christmas ceasefire in its war is ‘not on the agenda’. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Moscow has said no “Christmas ceasefire” was on the cards after nearly 10 months of war in Ukraine, with fighting looking set to drag on through the winter.

“There is no calm on the frontline,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in his regular evening video address on Wednesday. “Every day and every metre is given extremely hard. And especially where the entire tactic of the occupiers boils down to the destruction of everything in front of them with artillery – so that only bare ruins and craters in the ground remain.”

Asked on Wednesday whether Moscow had seen proposals for a “Christmas ceasefire”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “No, no such offers have been received from anybody. This topic is not on the agenda.” » | Agencies | Thursday, December 15, 2022

How War Is Changing Russia’s Population | DW Business Special

Dec 2, 2022 | President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is causing major changes back home. Hundreds of thousands of Russian men are being mobilized to fight and tens of thousands have already been killed or injured. Meanwhile, many Russians have left their country and millions of Ukrainians are thought to have arrived.

What impact will these changes have on the Russian population? And could the public response lead to Putin’s downfall? We discuss these questions and more with UCLA’s Oleg Itskhoki in this DW Business Special.

Olena Zelenska: We Will Endure

BBC: Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska tells the BBC that Ukraine will endure this coming winter despite the cold and the blackouts caused by Russian missiles, and will keep fighting what she describes as a war of world views, because "without victory there can be no peace".

We meet in a storied city where a winter's chill is biting, where charming street lamps are dimmed, where buildings are going dark and cold in the midst of blackouts as Russia keeps striking Ukraine's energy grid. The Ukrainian people have won plaudits for standing their ground against Russia's blistering assault. But this is yet another painful test of fortitude.

"We are ready to endure this," Olena Zelenska asserts when we sit down in a heavily secured compound tucked inside a sandbagged labyrinth of buildings in Kyiv.

"We've had so many terrible challenges, seen so many victims, so much destruction, that blackouts are not the worst thing to happen to us." She cites a recent poll where 90 % of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union.

That seems like an awfully long cold road, and she knows it. » | Lyse Doucet, Chief international correspondent | Friday, November 25, 2022

Israel Summons Russia Envoy over Minister’s Hitler Comments

THE GUARDIAN: Israel condemns comments by Sergei Lavrov, who said Hitler ‘had Jewish blood’ and the ‘most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews’

The comments by Sergei Lavrov (left) were described as ‘unforgivable and outrageous’ by Yair Lapid (right). Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/AFP/Getty Images
Israel has summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology over remarks by the Kremlin foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that the “most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews”.

The remarks were part of Lavrov’s defence of Russia’s policy of “denazification” in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s term for a sweeping purge that Ukraine says is a pretext for “mass murder.”

In an interview with Italian TV, Lavrov was asked to address how Russia could say it needed to “denazify” the country when its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish.

“As to [Zelenskiy’s] argument of what kind of nazification can we have if I’m Jewish, if I remember correctly, and I may be wrong, Hitler also had Jewish blood,” Lavrov said during an interview with Italian television channel Mediaset. “It doesn’t mean anything at all.” » | Andrew Roth and Angela Giuffrida in Rome | Monday, May 2, 2022

Israel verlangt Entschuldigung von Lawrow nach Hitler-Vergleich: Nachdem der russische Außenminister den ukrainischen Präsidenten Selenskyj mit Hitler verglichen hatte, fordert Israel eine Entschuldigung. Lawrow hatte gesagt, dass die eifrigsten Antisemiten Juden gewesen seien. »

Related links.

Israel Outrage at Russian Claim That Hitler Was Part Jewish

Lavrov's remarks came days after Israel commemorated the Nazi Holocaust | EPA
BBC: Israel's foreign minister has denounced as "unforgivable" remarks by his Russian counterpart that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood".

Russian FM Sergei Lavrov made the comments to try to justify Russia's portrayal of Ukraine as "Nazi" despite the fact that its president is Jewish.

Israel's foreign ministry summoned Russia's ambassador for "clarification" and demanded an apology.

Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust in World War Two.

Mr Lavrov made the remarks in an interview with the Italian news channel Zona Bianca on Sunday, days after Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, one of the most solemn occasions in the Israeli calendar.

When asked how Russia can claim that it is fighting to "de-Nazify" Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish, Mr Lavrov said: "So what if Zelensky is Jewish."

"The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood," adding that "some of the worst anti-Semites are Jews." » | Monday, May 2, 2022

«Hitler avait aussi du sang juif» : Israël fustige les propos de Sergueï Lavrov : Le ministre russe des Affaires étrangères a ainsi fait référence à la judéité du président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelensky. Israël dénonce des propos «scandaleux, impardonnables et une horrible erreur historique». »

How Russia’s Disinformation Spreads beyond Its Borders | Russia-Ukraine War

Apr 15, 2022 • We traveled inside Transnistria, a Moscow-backed breakaway state in Moldova, to find out how Russia’s disinformation campaign stretches beyond its borders.