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Ukrainian troops have made a tactical retreat from three more villages as Russian forces press forward across the eastern front line and take advantage of Kyiv’s exhausted military, which is desperately awaiting the arrival of new U.S. assistance. Ukraine’s commander in chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in a Telegram post Sunday that the “situation at the front has worsened” and described some of the toughest fighting west of Avdiivka, the city that fell to Russian forces in February. In that direction, Ukrainian troops withdrew from the villages of Berdychi, Semenivka and Novomykhailivka. “Trying to seize the strategic initiative and...

The Ukrainian army has come under rare criticism from military analysts for allegedly bungling up a troops rotation that allowed Russia to capture 5km of land, highlighting the strains Kyiv’s forces are under as they await the arrival of fresh US aid. Deep State, a Ukrainian analytical group with ties to the defence ministry, on Wednesday said the Russian advance late last week in the southern part of the village of Ocheretyne had been caused by a rotation that left the area unprotected. The criticism comes a day after the US Senate approved a $61bn aid package for Kyiv which...

Ukrainian men are protesting at the consulate in Warsaw, Poland, after Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba announced men aged 18 to 60 would be denied consular services earlier this week.Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz stated of the 950,000 Ukrainians living in Poland, Warsaw would assist Kyiv in enforcing the conscription requirements for the Ukrainian men.Kosiniak-Kamysz also stated that many Poles were upset seeing military-aged male Ukrainian refugees throughout Poland despite the amount of support that has been sent to Ukraine:I also understand the frustration of Poles who see young Ukrainians of draft age in hotels and cafés, while...

Avdeevka…. From where the Ukrainian Army has shelled the rebel civilians of Donetsk City for TEN YEARS, has fallen to the Russians after ten years, with many reports of the Ukrainian forces in an absolute rout. There are going to be lots of tactical, strategic, and political implications from this that we will see over the next days and weeks. There are reportedly few Ukrainian defenses behind Avdeevka, the Ukrainians put all their eggs into one basket, counting on the deep Soviet-era nuclear bunker system, and defenses built since the end of the civil war to make it impregnable.

Fierce storms killed three people on the Russian and Crimean Black Sea coast on Monday, with hundreds evacuated. -snip- Video published online showed large waves sweeping over the seafront in Sochi, and carrying away cars. In the Crimean town of Yevpatoriya, streets were flooded. The Russian-installed governors of Crimea and Sevastopol, both of which Moscow seized and unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, declared states of emergency. And the Energy Ministry said bad weather had left about 1.9 million people without electricity on Monday morning in the southern Russian regions of Dagestan, Krasnodar and Rostov, as well as Crimea and...

The ruble, the national currency of Russia, has been depreciating the whole week. At midday on Friday, the dollar was trading at 83 rubles, the euro — 91 rubles. These are the lowest values that the ruble has hit since last spring when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was just beginning. At the time, the currency markets were in full-blown panic, the dollar soared to 130 rubles, while the exchange rate fluctuations reached 10% a day. There are now far fewer causes for worry. Following the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production, the Brent crude price rose to $85, a comfortable...

Russia lost elections to three United Nations bodies this week, a sign that opposition to its invasion of Ukraine over a year ago remains strong. The votes in the 54-member U.N. Economic and Social Council follow approval of six non-binding resolutions against Russia by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly. The latest — on Feb. 23, the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion — called for Moscow to end hostilities and withdraw its forces and was adopted by a vote of 141-7 with 32 abstentions. In the ECOSOC votes, Russia was overwhelmingly defeated by Romania for a seat on...

Ukrainian tank destroys Russian trenches after surviving near miss. A Ukrainian tank is seen destroying Russian trenches after it nearly missed getting hit by a Russian anti tank missile on the frontline. Ukrainian soldiers later appear and successfully capture the tactical point.

After three months of small drops, Britain's inflation jumped in February, defying expectations and raising pressure on the Bank of England to increase interest rates, data released by the Office for National Statistics showed Wednesday.The consumer price index rose by 10.4 percent in February, up from 10.1 percent in January.

The rate of inflation has taken a surprise leap, driven by a rising cost of alcoholic drinks in pubs and food - partly a consequence of the recent salad shortage. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) calculated the consumer prices index (CPI) measure of inflation at 10.4% over the 12 months to February. That was up from an annual rate of 10.1% the previous month, dashing expectations of an easing that has been seen since the 41-year high of 11.1% in October last year, as the cost of living crisis gathered steam. At that time, unprecedented energy prices were being...

On 20 March 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin officially announced that 70% of the town of Bakhmut (Artiomovsk) was under the control of Wagner’s fighters. At the same time, Russian forces near Avdeyevka have taken control of Krasnogorovka and Petrovskoye (Stepovoye) to the north of the city, and are already attacking the south-western outskirts of the town. In a letter officially addressed to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that 70% of Bakhmut (Artiomovsk) is now under the control of the “musicians”. While the city is already in a state of operational encirclement, but not yet complete physical...

DONETSK OBLAST – Just days before heading back to fight in the Battle of Bakhmut, a Ukrainian soldier Volodymyr, 54, said he felt ill-prepared."When they drive us to Bakhmut, I already know I'm being sent to death," Volodymyr told the Kyiv Independent during his brief stay in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk Oblast some 25 kilometers west of the front line.Volodymyr, an infantryman from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, said he struggled to eat after fighting in Bakhmut for months. He looked shaken as he talked.For two months, Volodymyr's unit was tasked with guarding Bakhmut against small Russian assault groups creeping...

The U.S. Air Force this month launched an effort to hire a handful of senior-level diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) managers and is hoping to place these officials in posts across the country, from Washington, D.C., to Alaska. Each post pays at least $82,000 per year, and the top position at the Pentagon could pay more than $180,000 per year. The Air Force declined to respond to questions for Fox News Digital about how many senior-level DEI officials work for the Air Force or how many more positions it’s looking to fill this year. But the Air Force has put...

DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine — The quality of Ukraine’s military force, once considered a substantial advantage over Russia, has been degraded by a year of casualties that have taken many of the most experienced fighters off the battlefield, leading some Ukrainian officials to question Kyiv’s readiness to mount a much-anticipated spring offensive. U.S. and European officials have estimated that as many as 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of Russia’s invasion early last year, compared with about 200,000 on the Russian side, which has a much larger military and roughly triple the population from which to...

KHROMOVE, Ukraine (AP) — Pressure mounted Saturday on Ukrainian troops and civilians hunkering down in Bakhmut, as Kyiv’s forces tried to help residents flee amid what Western analysts say may be preparations for a Ukrainian withdrawal from the eastern city that Russian forces have spent months trying to capture. A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of Bakhmut on Saturday, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them. A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it...

Ukrainian officials are signaling a potential retreat from the embattled town of Bakhmut. A top Ukrainian presidential adviser hinted at a potential withdrawal on Tuesday, telling CNN that Kyiv was weighing the costs and benefits of holding the city. “So far they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back because we’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing,” said Alexander Rodnyansky.

The situation in the city of Bakhmut, on the eastern frontline, is becoming "more and more difficult", Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. Russian forces have been trying to take the city for over six months. "The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions", Mr Zelensky stated. The Ukrainian leader's remarks came as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned China against arming Russia during a visit to Kyiv on Monday.

Russia raked in significantly more money from its crude oil sales than previously thought, a group of academics have said.Russia took in more money in the weeks that followed the oil price cap implemented on December 5 last year, calculations from academics at the Institute of International Finance, Columbia University, and the University of California show. The calculations show that Russia sold its crude oil for about $74 per barrel on average, according to the paper “Assessing the Impact of International Sanctions on Russian Oil Exports” published on the Social Science Research Network.The paper studied two things: the effects of...

At about 1am on February 24 last year, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, received a troubling phone call. After spending months building up a more than 100,000-strong invasion force on the border with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had given the go-ahead to invade. The decision caught Lavrov completely by surprise. Just days earlier, the Russian president had polled his security council for their opinions on recognizing two separatist statelets in the Donbas, an industrial border region in Ukraine, at an excruciatingly awkward televised session — but had left them none the wiser about his true intentions. (snip) Later that day, several...

Ukrainian forces have reportedly blown up a bridge near the eastern city of Bakhmut, in a sign they may be planning to retreat from the area, which would give Russia a significant, symbolic boost ahead of the first anniversary of the war. Troops blew up the bridge on Monday, according to a local Donetsk region news site. Ukraine denies it intends to leave Bakhmut, despite six months of heavy fighting and reportedly dwindling stockpiles. It appears the Kremlin is concentrating maximum force on capturing Bakhmut before the one-year anniversary of the invasion on 24 February. Ukraine and its western allies...