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The “hit squad” will target infrastructure and Moscow friendly leaders, according to Russian news agencies FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian fighters from besieged Azovstal steel plant who have surrendered wait in a bus outside a pre-trial detention centre, Donetsk People’s Republic © Sputnik / Alexey Kudenko The UK foreign intelligence service MI6 has allegedly prepared a group of saboteurs to disrupt Russia’s growing economic cooperation with African states, a military-diplomatic source told the RIA and TASS news agencies on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy returned from a visit to Turkey on Saturday, bringing home five former commanders of Ukraine's garrison in Mariupol despite a prisoner exchange last year under which the men were meant to remain in Turkey. Russia immediately denounced the release of the men. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Turkey had violated the prisoner exchange terms and had failed to inform Moscow. -snip- "We are returning home from Turkey and bringing our heroes home," said Zelenskiy who met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Istanbul on Friday. "Ukrainian soldiers Denys Prokopenko, Svyatoslav Palamar, Serhiy Volynsky, Oleh Khomenko,...

A true story of the Mariupol siege and its heroic defenders I was waiting for an arrival of a delayed flight from Warsaw in the heart of Ben Gurion Airport. People around eagerly awaited their beloved ones from abroad. Everything around was the usual airport routine. But we were waiting for extraordinary guests from Ukraine – Lt. Illia Samoilenko (Special Operations Detachment “Azov”) and Yulia Fedosiuk (deputy head of The Association of Azovstal Defenders Families). This is their first joint mission abroad as representatives of both military and civil parts of the Azovstal defenders movement. I would also say that...

“Ukraine lost more than 100 thousand servicemen since the war started,” said the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, News.az reports citing UNIAN.He stressed that Russia should pay for the crimes it committed: “Occupation of Ukraine by Russia led to death, destructions, in short, sufferings that can not be expressed with words. All of us remember Bucha events. It is estimated that more than 20 thousand civilians and more than 100 thousand Ukrainians. Russia should pay for these horrific crimes.”

Beginning in 2014, when the Maidan uprising brought a new government to Ukraine, the country has been erecting monuments to Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators at an astounding pace — there’s been a new plaque or street renaming nearly every week. Because of this, the Ukraine section represents an extremely partial listing of the several hundred monuments, statues, and streets named after Nazi collaborators in Ukraine. L’viv and Ivano-Frankivsk — 1.5 million Jews, a quarter of all Jews murdered in the Holocaust, came from Ukraine. Over the past six years, the country has been institutionalizing worship of the paramilitary Organization...

Jews have been fleeing Russia in droves | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images As Vladimir Putin’s war rages on for the fifth month in Ukraine and repression suffocates civil liberties back home, Russian Jews are worried they’ll soon become the Kremlin’s targets. Jews have been fleeing Russia in droves; those who’ve stayed behind are terrified of directly criticizing the war, which Putin has cynically claimed he launched to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. “In our congregation, we don’t talk about any political issues,” said a Moscow rabbi who asked not to be named. He added that after a 2011 crackdown on protests linked...

More than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered in the city of Mariupol have been transferred to Russia for investigation, Tass news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a Russian law enforcement source. “More than 1000 people from Azovstal were brought to Russia. Law enforcement organs are working with them closely,”

@marklevinshow Ukraine’s in trouble! Russia must be beaten back!

Much as the Western press has been promoting the idea that Ukraine is winning the war against Russia, it’s becoming clear that there will be no clear military conclusion to the conflict, and even the New York Times is beginning to admit that a diplomatic solution is in the offing, and the only real question is how much territory Ukraine will have to cede and how much of the sanctions currently imposed on Russia will have to be removed. Jimmy and his panel of The Dive’s Jackson Hinkle and American comedian Kurt Metzger discuss the prosecution of the war and...

Ukraine has “a wonderful lever of pressure” on Hungary via the Druzhba – which translates to ‘Friendship’ – oil pipeline, Ukrainian energy minister adviser Lana Zerkal claimed on Thursday. Speaking during an online discussion at the Kiev Security Forum, Zerkal criticized the policy of the Hungarian government, which is blocking a sixth round of EU sanctions, one which would ban Russian oil. “Ukraine has a wonderful lever of pressure in its hands – it’s the Druzhba oil pipeline,” Zerkal said, adding that “something could happen” with Hungary’s separate part of the infrastructure. “And, in my opinion, it would be very...

<p>The Office of the Prosecutor-General, a body responsible for overseeing prosecution in Russian courts, has asked the Russian Supreme Court to designate the ultranationalist Azov Battalion as a terrorist organization, potentially paving the way for the prosecution of the Azov members who surrendered to Russian forces earlier this week at the Azovstal factory in the southeastern port hub of Mariupol.</p>

The surrender of the last of the militant Azov “soldiers” who were hiding in the bowels of the Avostal Steel plant in Mariupol is the final curtain for NATO’s fantasy that Ukraine would beat the Russians.Almost 2,500 of the Azov battalion surrendered to the Russians and are now incarcerated in POW camps in Russia. -Zelensky and his gang of thieves pushed the meme that Russia was attacking ruthlessly the civilian population of Mariupol. But that is another big lie. The Azov thugs placed their weapons and personnel in civilian neighborhoods and refused to let the civilians flee to safety. Russia...

A little-noticed provision in the 2,232-page government spending bill passed last week bans U.S. arms from going to a controversial ultranationalist militia in Ukraine that has openly accepted neo-Nazis into its ranks. House-passed spending bills for the past three years have included a ban on U.S. aid to Ukraine from going to the Azov Battalion, but the provision was stripped out before final passage each year. {mosads}This year, though, the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill signed into law last week stipulates that “none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other...

Ukrainian activists claim to have identified the so-called “Butcher of Bucha,” a decorated Russian commander leading the unit that massacred hundreds of civilians in what is being widely condemned as genocide. Lt. Col. Azatbek Omurbekov, thought to be around 40, was first identified by InformNapalm, a Ukrainian volunteer group that monitors Russia’s military and special services. It shared his home address as well as email and telephone number, calling him the “military villain” behind the massacre in Bucha, the suburb of Kyiv where bodies have been left strewn in the street or thrown into mass graves. The group IDed Omurbekov...

**WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT** Mass graves uncovered in Bucha, city to the west of Kyiv which Russian forces retreated from at the weekend One containing the bodies of at least 57 civilians was uncovered in the ground of a church in the city centre Satellite images reveal pit was dug some time before March 31, as Putin's men were still in control of the area Officials say the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in total, with many strewn through the streets One grave contained the bodies of a mayoress and her family who were killed for...

A RED Cross aid mission was reportedly hit by a Russian bomb in the besieged city of Mariupol while victims are buried in mass graves. Two bombs were dropped in the attack on the International and the Ukrainian Committees of the Red Cross, according to unconfirmed reports.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Corpses lie in the streets of Mariupol. Hungry people break into stores in search of food and melt snow for water. Thousands huddle in basements, trembling at the sound of Russian shells pounding this strategic port city. “Why shouldn’t I cry?” Goma Janna demanded as she wept by the light of an oil lamp below ground, surrounded by women and children. “I want my home, I want my job. I’m so sad about people and about the city, the children.” A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in this encircled city of 430,000, and Tuesday brought no relief:...

Justice and truth are on Russia's side, President Vladimir Putin said MOSCOW, February 24./TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he had made the decision to hold a special military operation in response to address of leaders of the Donbass republics. "People's republics of Donbass approached Russia with request for help. In connection<...>I made the decision to hold a special military operation. Its goal is to protect the people that are subjected to abuse, genocide from the Kiev regime for eight years, and to this end we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and put to justice those that...