Russian Entitlement to Ukraine

"[If those behind such reports; forced deportation of children; supported objectivity] then we are ready to analyze specific cases, answer questions, provide data, statistics and facts."

"But if they are biased, if they represent only one point of view ... then there is no use responding to these reports."

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

Stasik, 45, a Ukrainian soldier who recently had his right arm amputated, is examined by a medical volunteer during an evacuation operation from the eastern frontline near Bakhmut to hospitals in the Dnipropetrovsk region on March 15.

 

The reports this spokeswoman refers to based on over 500 interviews along with satellite images and in-person visits to detention sites and graves, discuss incidents of Russian forces committing war crimes in Ukraine; out of a UN-mandated investigation. Detailing wilful killing, torture, detaining non-combatants and in some instances forcing children to witness their mothers, sisters, aunts being raped. How can there be 'neutrality' over such episodes of military atrocities being carried out by Russian forces in Ukraine?

Coincidentally with the release of the report, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Russian officials for their role in having Ukrainian children forcibly deported from Ukraine, as well as the Russian military's deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure in the country Russia has invaded. Russia, needless to say, denies having committed any such atrocities, much less attacking Ukrainian civilians.

Meeting members of Russia's business elite this week, President Vladimir Putin urged them to invest in their country, to give it the financial assistance it needs to see out what he names the "sanctions war" imposed on Russia by the West. Of those attending the meeting called for the first time since the invasion, many are themselves under Western sanctions.

And it just happens that a day later, Russian President Vladimir Putin was placed under a warrant of arrest by the ICC, also obviously persecuting Russia for no good reason.

 

Ukrainian troops fire a howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on Friday. A Nato official says Russia is sustaining up to 1,500 casualties a day, mostly in Bakhmut, while Ukraine is taking ‘an order of magnitude less’. Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

 

The man who has instructed the Russian military to destroy Ukraine, at the same time that he has declared eastern Ukraine Russian territory, oversees a military and a nation that brooks no interference or criticism in its brutality to bring a neighbouring country to its knees. A stubborn neighbour at that, refusing to pay obeisance to the bully next door intent on expanding its territory while terrorizing a community which refuses to submit to terror.

In destroyed Bakhmut the bloody infantry battle continues, with Russian forces led by the Wagner mercenary army capturing the city's east portion. Plans to encircle Bakhmut that had been boasted of have not yet materialized, since the Ukraine military has no intention of allowing it.  "Sometimes we see  groups of seven people (Russian soldiers). We strike, three fall and the rest continue to advance" -- Marian, age 21, a member of the 80th Ukrainian Air Assault Brigade, describes, at his mortar position.

 

A Ukrainian soldier, Bakhmut trench   Reuters

 

Seven mortars were fired by the brigade from that position, as small arms fire in the distance speak to the constant unfolding of a long-drawn-out checkmate. Taking Bakhmut has become a major aspiration for Moscow which sees it as opening a path to the entire surrounding Donetsk region finally falling to Russia. Kyiv, on the other hand, has decided that the ruined city is still worth fighting to contain for its value in inflicting huge damage on Russian troops.

"They (the Russians) need this victory like air and therefore do not count the losses" of untrained, poorly kitted-out Russian conscripts and mercenaries falling in huge numbers of dead and wounded in the fray of conflict where they are ordered to advance en masse, explained Serhiy Cherevatyl, a spokesman for Ukraine's eastern military command.

A declassified video was released Thursday of a Russian military jet intercepting an American drone in  international airspace over the Black Sea two days previously. Highlighting risks of a potential clash between the two nuclear powers. Moscow accused Washington of escalating tensions near Ukrainian Crimea annexed by Russia in 2014. The Pentagon's release of the video recorded the incident when the MQ-9 Reaper drone was intercepted by a Russian jet, sending it crashing into the sea.

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet can be seen in the video close to the drone dumping jet fuel over it in an obvious attempt to damage the aircraft. A second pass by another Russian jet resulted in a collision with the drone, the Russian plane striking the propeller, disabling the damaged drone. According to Russia, no such collision took place, the drone crashed when it made "sharp manoeuvres" while "provocatively" flying close to Russian airspace.

The episode proving that the United States is actively, directly taking part in the Ukraine war that is none of their business; strictly a Russian internal affair, proclaims Moscow. 

Ukraine, Opposing Russian Occupation

December 25. (Presidential Office of Ukraine)

"{The situation there [in the Eastern Donbas] is difficult, painful. The occupants are spending all the resources available to them — and these are significant resources — to squeeze out at least some progress."

"As of this evening, about 9 million people are cut off in different regions of Ukraine. But the number and duration of outages is gradually decreasing. I am grateful to each and every person who ensured this result."

"Today, I held a special meeting with government officials on the situation in the energy sector and infrastructure. We are preparing for the next year — and not only for the winter months. There are threats that must be eliminated. There are steps to be taken. And the state will definitely make them."

"Air defense is preparing, the state is preparing, and everyone must be prepared. Please pay attention to the sirens."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

Ukrainian soldiers with the 43rd Heavy Artillery Brigade fire a rocket from a self propelled cannon on the front line in Bakhmut on Monday, 26 December. (Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

 With his return back to Ukraine, President Zelenskyy spoke of his forces "working toward victory", contradicting Russian President Putin's warning no end to the war would occur until Russia's military aims were achieved. On his trip to Washington, President Zelenskyy was awarded a new $1.8 billion military aid package to which he pledged "we'll overcome everything". Strategic agreements with Washington, he announced later to Ukrainian ambassadors, would strengthen Kyiv's defence forces for the year to come.

Mr. Zelenskyy also thanked the Netherlands which pledged up to $2.65 billion for 2023 to  help in financing military equipment and the rebuilding of critical infrastructure. Relentless Russian artillery, rocket and mortar fire is continuing in Ukraine's east; airstrikes on the eastern and southern fronts are also ongoing. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin stated the war would end once the "special military operation" reached "the goals that the Russian Federation has set. A significant headway has been made on demilitarization of Ukraine".

Of course in that same sense, Ukraine has succeeded in its self-defence in making headway in 'demilitarizing' Russia. There are all the Russian tanks and other military hardware Ukraine destroyed, along with the battlefield hardware that Russian troops abandoned in their haste to retreat before the forward action of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. And finally all the missiles shot down by Ukraine that Russia has sent whizzing over Ukrainian towns and cities.

According to the Ukrainian military, Russian forces fired multiple rocket launchers "more than 70 times" across Ukrainian geography in one night alone [Russia busy 'demilitarizing' itself, depleting its missile stockpiles], while battles raged fiercely around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Donetsk province. Bakhmut and Lyman in neighbourimg Luhansk region together with the Kharkiv region have borne the brunt of Russian strikes, explained the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

In a 24-hour period. up to 61 Russian rocket, artillery and mortar fire attacks were launched in the Kherson region with regional Kherson Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych posting that Russian forces attacked from dug-in positions on the Dnieper river to hit educational institutions, apartment blocks and private homes. Russian strikes on Kherson have been constant since the Ukrainian military succeeded in freeing the city from Russian occupation.

Russia continues to target civilian areas, with Ukrainian forces repelling Russian ground attacks on or close to 19 settlements in Ukraine's north and east. A district hospital in the city of Volchansk, Kharkiv region, was struck by Russian shelling. Several factory buildings housing Russian troops in the occupied city of Tokmak in southern Zaporizhzhia region on Thursday were hit with several blasts, sparking a fire. 

 

In the city of Melitopol a car used by Russian occupation forces exploded, a day after a car bomb killed the Russian appointed head of the village of Lyubymivka in Kherson region. 

For months, Ukrainian guerrillas have operated behind Russian lines in the occupied south and east of Ukraine. Their target: Kremlin-installed officials, institutions and key infrastructure, like roads and bridges. And in Mariupol, its famed theatre, the site of a deadly airstrike where up to 600 people were killed sheltering in the theatre transformed into a bomb shelter, its remaining walls are being destroyed. Moscow faces accusations of destroying evidence of its war crimes.

Today, Monday 26 December, a Ukrainian drone struck within Russia. It was shot down by Russian air defences when it approached a military airfield in Saratov Oblast, deep inside Russian territory, in the western port city of Engels, some 500 miles southeast of Moscow, located on the Volga River. Nothing is more geared to making Moscow furious with indignation; than that Ukraine would dare to strike Russian territory. This was the second such drone strike on the city, which houses the Engels-2 military airfield, a strategic bomber airbase.

"[The attack was the] consequence of what Russia is doing." 

"If the Russians thought that the war would not affect anyone in the deep rear [of Russia] or anywhere else, they were deeply mistaken."

"Therefore, as we see, such things are happening more and more often, and let's hope that this will only benefit Ukraine."

Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat

The Engels air base has been repeatedly used by Russia to carry out missile strikes on various targets in Ukraine   Reuters

Russia -- At War With Ukraine -- and Europe

"Now the geography is different, it's far from being just the DPR and LPR  [Donetsk Peoples Republic/Luhansk Peoples Republic], it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories [beyond he Donbas which the Russian military has wholly or partially sized]."

"This process is continuing logically and persistently."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

 

"[Moscow is using a similar] playbook [to its takeover of Crimea, when it annexed the Ukrainian peninsula by organizing a sham referendum in 2014]."

"[I am] exposing [the Russian plans] so the world knows that any purported annexation is premeditated, illegal and illegitimate. [There will be a quick response from the U.S. and its allies]."

"[Areas targeted for annexation included Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk; regions Lavrov claims are now Russian objectives]."

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby 

A Russian soldier stands guard in Kherson, Ukraine. Moscow’s war aims now extend to the southern provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia  AP

 

As fortunes change in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, its original intention to march on Kyiv, occupy Ukraine's capital and decapitate its government failed as a result of Ukraine's lack of cooperation in allowing itself to return to the satellite status of years gone by under the Soviet Union. Ukrainian resistance proved too great, its military prowess too successful in destroying Russian war materiel and servicemen for the Kremlin to sustain, so its troops were withdrawn.

And a face-saving proclamation was made with proper pomp and little ceremony that Moscow's goal, after all, was to secure the entire Donbas, eastern Ukraine's industrial heartland, to be administered by ethnic Russian Ukrainian opponents of an independent Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance to Moscow's plans for its future continue to aggravate the Kremlin with its growing and successful counter-offensive. While all of Luhansk is now in Russian control, the Donetsk region remains elusive.

Yet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claims it's full steam ahead on the Kremlin's new strategy to widen its ambitions and expand the conflict beyond the Donbas. Russia responding to what Lavrov speaks of as the interference of Western powers who annoyingly continue to provide Kyiv with long-range weaponry like the US.-produced High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

US-supplied long range weapons have changed Moscow's calculus, Mr Lavrov says   Getty Images

 

Five months of Russian troops bashing Ukrainian towns and cities, reducing hospitals, schools and apartment buildings as well as military installations to rubble have failed to produce the unequivocal victory that Moscow claims is rightfully theirs as a defender of freedom from fascism of the people of Ukraine. A people that have ungratefully viewed the destruction of their nation's infrastructure with alarm and hatred toward the aggressor.

As punishment for Ukraine's steadfast defence against its neighbour's intentions, Moscow is looking further in preparation of formally annexing seized territory. Russia wanted "blood, not talks", commented Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, commenting on Moscow's intransigence in insisting that fascists ruled Ukraine and it is Russia's duty as a good neighbour intent on securing its own security, to demolish cities, create millions of homeless and refugees and murder thousands of civilians.

This, as Russian President Vladimir Putin warns Europe that gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, shuttered for weeks for maintenance, remained at risk of an even more reduced flow; a classic case of turning the screw as a punishment for Europe's response sanctioning Russia over its illegal occupation of a third of Ukraine.

 

Russia's Special Military Operation in Ukraine

"There was an attack on Kyiv -- it shocked me, not because I'm here but because Kyiv is a sacred city for Ukrainians and Russians alike."

"[The Security Council had failed to prevent or end the war in Ukraine.This was] a source of great disappointment, frustration and anger."  

"Let me be very clear: [it...Security Council] failed to do everything in its power to prevent and end this war." 

"I am here to say to you Mr President [Zelenskyy], and to the people of Ukraine, we will not give up." "[While the Security Council had been] paralyzed, [the UN was taking other actions]." 

"The UN is the 1,400 staff members in Ukraine who are working to provide assistance, food, cash [and] other forms of support."

"Mariupol is a crisis within a crisis. Thousands of civilians need life-saving assistance, many are elderly and in need of medical care, or have limited mobility. They need an escape route out of the apocalypse."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

 

"[The blasts are] proof that we need a quick victory over Russia."

"We must act quickly ... more weapons, more humanitarian efforts ... because every day Ukraine pays a high price for the protection of democracy and freedom."

Andrey Yermak, chief of staff, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Smoke rises after missiles landed at sunset on April 28, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (John Moore/Getty Images)

A member of the United Nations Security Council took especial notice with the UN's Secretary General appearing in Kyiv, to give him a surprise welcome. Warm, in the sense that two missiles blasted the historic city while Antonio Guterres was there, visiting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to see for himself what the population of Russia's neighbour is suffering under an endless barrage of bombs and missiles.

And while Mr. Guterres hugely regretted that the Security Council failed to intervene to convince one of its permanent members that invading another country with violent intent, even naming it a 'liberation' move under a special military operation is uncivilized at best, criminal in its most severe outlook. But then, Russia is accustomed to being misunderstood and blamed for events it is not responsible for. As Vladimir Putin would have it, he was provoked by American interference.

Moreover, the events described as war crimes -- rapes, destruction of civic infrastructure, mass graves are not his doing; they are in reality the malevolent orchestration developed by Ukraine that devised a grisly scenario of ghastly atrocities, enacted by Ukraine's own military and then ascribed to Russia. This is the kind of adversary Moscow faces, a fascist, neo-Nazi Ukrainian administration impudently accusing solicitous Russia of ill intentions toward Ukraine.

American and NATO provocations have brought this situation to pass, not Russian aggression. Russia will always enter the fray to protect its interests, to ensure that Russian-speaking citizens of a neighbouring country are not victimized by Russia-hating neighbours. Those two missiles fired at long range into Kyiv Thursday were just a friendly reminder that Moscow expects Kyiv to do the right thing and surrender its war-mongering government to Russia.

After all, Russian troops withdrew from the suburbs around Kyiv. To focus on the Donbas, where Luhansk and Donetsk are already declared Russian territories. The intention, of course, just to tidy things up, drive the Ukrainian military out of its lair there and leave both Republics in peace. Just incidentally Mariupol's destiny is to welcome its new status, contributing to the land bridge delivering  a direct route from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula.

 

A destroyed apartment building in the southern port city of Mariupol

 Moscow is thoroughly displeased with its nemesis, the United States. Not only has the White House pledged a $33-billion gift in humanitarian and food security and weaponry aid to Ukraine, it has outright stated its hope that Ukrainian forces beyond repelling Russia's assault on the east, but succeed to a degree that Russia's military will be reduced in strength so it cannot continue to threaten its neighbours. Russia, a threat to its neighbours? What effrontery; the U.S. is revealing its mendacious spirit, wounding Russia beyond mere words.

Now entrenched in the east, Russian forces are focusing on the separatist Russian-speaking rebels' success in accessing the entire Donbas along with the secession provinces. The southern city of Kherson, the sole regional capital captured by Russia's military since the invasion had overnight blasts to awaken its still-stunned residents. Whose Wednesday pro-Ukrainian protests were faced by Russian troops using tear gas and stun grenades in their peaceful occupation.

Moscow has reported a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian regions bordering Ukraine. Issuing a stern warning that such attacks risk escalation to a significant degree. In the Russian city of Bellgorod two large explosions occurred. It is simply outrageous that Ukraine would take their battle with Russia into Russia, endangering the lives of innocent Russians...

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