Ukraine war: Belarus loosing more and more support among few Western friends she stll has

Landlocked Belaru:s is losing more access to its western neighbors. Since the start of the month, Poland has sent more troops toward its border with the country and Lithuania has shut down two of its six crossing points with Belarus. Latvia is also considering border closures: One official told DW that "active consultations" are taking place, with a decision planned later this month.

The three European Union members bordering Belarus say they're responding to the reported presence of Wagner mercenaries on Belarusian territory, after the private Russian military group's fleeting and ill-fated June rebellion.

"This decision is one of the preventive measures aimed at managing emerging threats to national security and possible provocations at the border," Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said last week in a statement announcing the temporary closures. "It will enable border officers to redistribute their capacities at the border with Belarus and pay even larger attention to the protection of the state border."

Read more at: https://www.dw,com

Russian Economy; Putn's war with Ukraine a disaster for Russia's value of the ruble.

The Russian currency has broken another threshold in its decline in value. Over the weekend, 1 ruble was worth only 1 US cent. This means 100 rubles had to be paid for $1 US. The ruble also continued to lose value against the euro, with €1 at times costing nearly 110 rubles.

The ruble fell to its lowest point since March 2022 when the currency crashed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In the following few months, the currency regained the lost ground as Russia benefited from significantly higher energy prices. However, over the past year, the ruble has steadily declined.

Read more at: https://www.dw.com

Ukraine Russian Invasion: Russia blocks grain shipment deal after it blames Ukraine for attack on bridge into the Island of Crimea which they occupied from Ukraine.

Russia has accused Ukraine of attacking a vital bridge that links Russia and Crimea, with the help of the US and UK. Traffic was earlier halted on the route due to an "emergency situation." Follow DW for the latest.

Read more at:https://www.dw.com

Ukraine war: Putin's regime threatened

• Wagner boss Prigozhin says his forces are stopping their march on Moscow to avoid bloodshed
• Wagner paramilitary forces were earlier driving north on the main highway towards Moscow, where new security measures had been put in place, and local residents were told not to travel.
• The Kremlin accused the boss of private paramilitary company Wagner of attempting to stage a coup. 
• Yevgeny Prigozhin insisted his forces were "patriots" who had the support of the Russian people. 
• Prigozhin said his Wagner troops captured the Russian army HQ in Rostov-on-Don without firing a shot
• In a speech to the nation, Vladimir Putin described Wagner's actions as a "stab in the back." 
• Ukraine's President Zelenskyy says that in Russia there's "so much chaos, no lie can hide it".           Read more at: 
• https://www.euronews.com

Ukraine war: the Ukrainian offensive has begun

Ukraine has nevertheless claimed that it has recaptured eight villages so far in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and the eastern region of Donetsk.  

To better grasp the evolving situation, FRANCE 24’s Gwendoline Debono and Amar Al Hameedawi travelled to the village of Blahodatne, which lies on the road to the port city of Mariupol. Recently recaptured from Russian forces by the Ukrainian military’s 68th brigade, Blahodatne has become one of the new fronts in the war. 

READ MORE AT: https://www. france24.com

Ukraine war: Ukrainian missile strike destroys major Crimean bridge

Ukrainian forces have carried out a missile attack on a bridge connecting Ukraine's Kherson region and Crimea, Russia-appointed officials in both regions said on Thursday.

The Chongar bridge, which connects Russian-held parts of the Kherson region with the Crimean peninsula, was struck, the officials said, adding that traffic was diverted to another route. 

Read more at: https://www.dw.com

Russia: will Putin's reign cause the disintegration of Russia ?

Vladimir Putin's continued rule will lead to the "disintegration" of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has warned.

The exiled Russian businessman, who was once considered the country's wealthiest person, was speaking on the sidelines of a two-day roundtable conference in Brussels centred on the future of Russia and the country's opposition.

The conference, called "The Day After," included EU and Russian opposition representatives and was organised by the major political groups of the European Parliament.

But Khodorkovsky said that active resistance to the war in Ukraine is not as prevalent as the opposition would like to think.

"Putin fails to completely fill people's brains with his propaganda. However, unfortunately, people's perceptions are changing under the pressure of propaganda," said Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of the oil company Yukos.

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com

Ukraine war and EU weapons donation: Euro 1 billion approved program must come from Europeaan corporations.

How European should European weapons be?

That is the question currently occupying the minds of diplomats in Brussels, who continue haggling about the technical details of a €1-billion initiative to jointly buy ammunition for Ukraine.

Despite a political agreement reached one month ago, the novel proposal finds itself stuck in negotiations, a delay that stands in stark contrast with the brutal developments on the battlefield.

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com

Ukraine War: Putin says Russia will store tactical Nuclear weapons in Belarus

Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, according to TASS state news agency.

Putin said he reached an agreement with Belarusian president — and his closest regional ally — Alexander Lukashenko.

"We agreed with Lukashenko that we could place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime," Putin said, according to the TASS report.

Read more at: https//www.dw.com

Ukraine war, Zelenski announces Russians lost 1,100 troops in one week of fighting in the Bakkhmut city area

Russian forces suffered more than 1,100 dead in less than a week of battles near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the focal point of fighting in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.

"In less than a week, starting from 6th March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia's irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut," Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

He said Russian forces had also sustained 1,500 "sanitary losses" - soldiers wounded badly enough to keep them out of further action. Dozens of pieces of enemy equipment were destroyed as were more than 10 Russian ammunition depots.

Read more at:https://www.france24.com

Ukraine: the chief of the Mercenary Waqner group feels betrayed by Moscow

The founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force has said his troops now tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut are being deprived of ammunition and that, if they are forced to retreat, the entire front will collapse.

Read more at: https://www.cbc.com

Ukraine war: Russians not only using , missiles, drones, but now also baloons against Ukraine forces

Ukrainian presidential official Ihor Zhovka told DW that Russia is using balloons to exhaust Ukraine's air defenses. He also reiterated calls for fighter jets from the West, and said retaking Crimea is necessary.

Read more at: https://www.dw.com

Ukraine war: If Putin wins this war NATO and EU will be on life support

Khodorkovsky – once Russia's richest man and the founder of Open Russia, an alliance of progressive Russians – said Putin has no choice but to see the invasion of Ukraine through to the end to satisfy his political base of "patriotic nationalists". 

"I am convinced that Putin cannot stop," he said. 

With Western help, Kyiv could "crush Putin", Khodorkovsky said. And defeated, the Russian president would likely lose his hold on the country. 

"Russian society is deeply marred by propaganda," he said. "But support for the war should not be overestimated." 

Read more at: https://www.france24.com

Ukraine war: Russian Barbarism - preliminary data showed that 69 of the missiles targeted energy facilities

Air raid sirens rang out across the country and officials said 120 Russian missiles were fired. Ukraine’s military chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi said preliminary data showed that 69 of the missiles targeted energy facilities and Ukrainian forces shot down 54 of them. 

Anti-aircraft defenses managed to shoot down all 16 Russian missiles that targeted the capital Kyiv, the head of the city's military administration said. 

There were no immediate reports of any deaths.

Russia dispatched explosive drones to selected regions overnight before broadening the barrage with “air and sea-based cruise missiles launched from strategic aircraft and ships” in the morning, the Ukrainian air force reported.

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com

Ukraine War: It is high time to put an end to "Bully Putin" his reign

The world was not able to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but "the notion somehow that diplomacy is dead is not correct," says Canada's ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae.

"What is true is that when you're dealing with a really aggressive country — like Russia at the moment — it's really difficult to deal with that without resisting forcefully their aggression," Rae told The Current's guest host Mark Kelley.

"When somebody is an aggressor, like when somebody is a bully in a schoolyard, you have to respond. You can't just say, 'I want to make peace with the bully, so I'm going to give in to the bully,'" he said.

Read more at: www.cbc.com

Ukraine war: Belarus has been taken 'hostage' by Russia

The current agenda of Belarus-Russia relations appears to be dominated by a single question: Will the Kremlin manage to drag the Belarusian armed forces into military action against Ukraine? It would seem that nothing less than the survival of Belarus as a sovereign state rests on this question right now.

Read more at: https//www,carnegieendowment.org/politika/88317

Ukraine war: Russia using 40 year old ammunition in Ukraine

Russia is turning to decades-old ammunition with high failure rates, a senior US military official said on Monday.

"They [Moscow] have drawn from ageing ammunition stockpiles, which does indicate that they are willing to use older ammunition, some of which was originally produced more than 40 years ago," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. 

Their comments indicate that Russian forces are running out of stockpiles as the grinding Ukraine invasion enters its 10th month. 

Read more at : https://www.euronews.com

Ukraine War: US getting very alarmed by the military Union between Iran and Russia

Russia and Iran are collaborating more closely than ever in the areas of fighter jets and lethal drones, according to US intelligence. Moscow has rebuked Washington's assessment, as the invasion of Ukraine presses on.

The United States warned on Friday that Russia and Iran are ramping up military cooperation to an extent that is "harmful" to Ukraine and Iran's neighbors.

Citing intelligence assessments, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby described "an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their relationship into a full-fledged defense partnership."

Read more at https//www.dw.com

Russia: Legal system in Russia not impartial, as all critcs of Russian war in Ukraine getting lengthy prison sentences

Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin guilty was found guilty on Friday of spreading "fake information" about the army, and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.

Prosecutors had sought a nine-year sentence for the Moscow district councillor. The outcome is the latest indication of an intensified crackdown on dissent by Russian authorities.

"With that hysterical sentence, the authorities want to scare us all but it effectively shows their weakness," Yashin said in a statement through his lawyers after the judge passed the sentence. "Only the weak want to shut everyone's mouth and eradicate any dissent."

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com

Ukraine,war : Ukraine now has its eyes set on the Kinburn Peninsula

After its stunning success in retaking Kherson, Ukraine is now faced with a strategic problem. Russian forces are using the large Dnieper river as a defensive barrier, to protect their positions in the south of Ukraine.

For this reason, Kyiv has its eyes set on the strategic Kinburn peninsula. It’s a piece of land that juts out from the in the Black Sea. Crucially it is connected to territory on the south side of the Dneiper river.

If Ukraine takes the territory, it is possible that they could outflank Russian forces, negating the need for a potentially tricky crossing of the river, with many Russian soldiers dug in nearby.

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com