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New information has emerged regarding the counteroffensive launched by Ukraine in the Kherson region on Monday, August 29. In Russian-controlled Novaya Kakhovka, Kherson region, evacuations from workplaces has been announced, people are leaving for shelters. “Workplace evacuations have been announced in Novaya Kakhovka, people are going to shelters, there are no plans to evacuate the population from the city, the head of the administration, Vladimir Leontiev, told RIA Novosti. “Russian troops in the Kherson region have nowhere to run. Ukrainian defenders put beyond use the four major bridges: across the Inhulets’ River at Dar’yivka and across the Dnipro River at...

The Ukrainian military announced on Monday that it had launched offensive operations in multiple areas along the front line in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, perhaps signaling the start of a long planned counteroffensive aimed at retaking territory seized by Russia. Fighting along a swath of the front line escalated sharply on Monday, according to Ukrainian military and civilian officials, and the Ukrainian government said that its military had “breached the occupiers’ first line of defense near Kherson.” It was not immediately possible to verify the claim. A United States defense official lent support to the idea that Ukraine...

Ukraine’s campaign to retake Russian-held territory in the south appeared to take a major step forward as officials on Monday announced the start of a long-awaited counter-offensive against Moscow’s forces. As explosions were reported across the southern frontline, multiple officials confirmed Ukraine’s armed forces had “breached” Russia’s first line of defences around occupied Kherson in social media posts. "The first line of Russian defences on the Kherson front has been breached,” Sergey Khlan, an aide to the ousted Ukrainian head of the Kherson region, said on the Telegram messaging app. "Today there was a powerful artillery attack on enemy positions...

KYIV, Aug 29 (Reuters) - The Ukrainian military on Monday started a long-awaited counter-offensive against Russian forces in the country's south, its southern command said on Monday.Command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk confirmed the offensive in a news briefing and said it included the Kherson region.Ukraine has regularly stated its intention to retake its south, and in particular the city of Kherson, the only regional capital that Russia has been able to capture from Ukraine since it invaded six months ago.The region lies north of the Russian-held Crimean peninsula and has coasts on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Ukrainian troops have taken four villages back from Russian occupation in the south near the city of Kherson, a Ukrainian military source tells CNN. Their main “target” is Kherson, the source added. “The operation began at night with massive shelling of Russian positions and the rear,” the source, who CNN is not naming for security reasons, said. “The main direction of the attack was on Pravdyne. We hit their infantry from the DNR (Donetsk People's Republic) and LNR (Luhansk People's Republic), and they fled. The Russian landing force fled after them," the source told CNN. “We have now liberated four...

Russia is being forced to deplete "certain units" from key parts of Ukraine in order to have enough troops respond to Ukraine's counteroffensive in Kherson, United States National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Monday. Ukraine launched the counteroffensive on Monday as it hopes to take back control of Kherson, the first major city Moscow won control of at the start of the invasion, which was launched on February 24 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the more than six months since the war started, Russia has faced a stronger-than-expected response from its Eastern European neighbor, as well as...

Photos that appeared online over the weekend, depicting Russian army armored vehicles on trains rolling out of the army training base Mulino, 200 miles east of Moscow, are a potentially ominous sign. The Russian army’s newest grouping, the 3rd Army Corps, is on the move–toward eastern Ukraine. The 3rd Army Corps is the first big new formation to take shape as a result of the Kremlin’s urgent initiative, beginning this summer, to recruit new soldiers and stand up new units in order to replace the tens of thousands of troops it has lost in the six months since it widened...

BRICS - The president of the BRICS International Forum, Purnima Anand told reporters on Thursday that both Russia and India no longer need the U.S. dollar, as they have "turned to national currencies to conduct mutual settlements," according to Russian state news RT. The BRICS president stated, "We have implemented the mechanism of mutual settlements in rubles and rupees, and there is no need for our countries to use the dollar in mutual settlements. And today a similar mechanism of mutual settlements in rubles and yuan is being developed by China,"...

Russia is pulling all of its fighter jets out of Crimea in an apparent response to recent explosions at Russian military outposts in the region, a secret NATO report seen by Insider said. Russia has already moved ten aircraft — six Su-35S and four MiG-31BM jets — out of Crimea and into Russia and is set to continue until all fighter jets are removed, the report, which was dated August 22, said. The first ten jets were moved from Belbek airfield in Crimea to Kushchevskaya and Marinovka, two regions in Russia, the report said. "Russia has dispersed 10x fighter aircraft...

Six months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, signs are accumulating that the balance on the military and economic battlefields is slowly tilting the way of Kyiv and its Western backers. ... Some results of the war already seem settled. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to rewrite the ending of the Cold War by restoring Moscow’s historic sphere of influence in Eastern Europe has failed. His war on Ukraine has instead united almost all of Europe against him, revivifying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is poised to add Sweden and Finland as new members.

The car bomb attack on 'Putin's Rasputin' - who Vladimir deemed 'uncontrollable' - has 'all the hallmarks of a Russian GRU execution' because the military spy group 'often include a target's family', an expert has claimed. Yuri Felshtinsky, author of Blowing up Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror and the Threat of World War III, has claimed the attack on Putin loyalist Alexander Dugin's daughter would have been authorised by the Kremlin. He claimed that Dugin, 60, had a reputation for being 'unruly' and that the Kremlin is 'using Dugin in its own global propaganda war' counting on the fact...

Frederick Taylor's "scientific management" was all the rage when fascism and totalitarianism was on the rise in the 1920s–30s. It sounded good — people with pertinent knowledge and skills would occupy positions in logically designed organizations in which those qualities would be optimally employed. In practice, the most common quality of scientifically managed firms was intense dissatisfaction among their workers. That's mostly because, in reality, people's family, political connections, and willingness to "play ball" with the powerful and wealthy overshadowed everything else when it came to filling positions. That's why the purest expressions of scientific management — communist countries —...

A pro-Russian propaganda channel has issued a story claiming the country's troops have been 'poisoned in a chemical attack in Ukraine'. The information, regarded as suspect, comes amid fears Russia is looking for reasons to justify using chemical weapons in its invasion of its southern neighbor. Russia Today reports traces of Botulinum toxin Type B, which is an 'organic poison of artificial origin,' were found in samples taken from soldiers, according to Russia's defense ministry. The ministry accused Kiev of 'domestic terrorism' and insisted Russian troops were 'hospitalized with signs of severe poisoning' after being stationed near the village of...

Margrethe Vestager, vice president of the European Commission, further urged EU citizens to take shorter showers. "When you turn off the water, say 'Take that, Putin!'” she said last week, referring to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Russia's military has praised civilian grade Chinese-made drones and robots for having performed well on the battlefield, leading their manufacturers to point out the equipment is not intended or sold for military purposes. When a video of a robot camera dog showed up with a grenade launcher on Russian state-sponsored media RIA Novosti this week, many immediately recognized it as Chinese Unitree Robotics' $2,700 Go1 robotic dog – albeit dressed in a sort of canine ninja suit. "Russian designers presented a sample of the M-81 robotic complex, capable of aimed shooting and transporting weapons, at the Army-2022 forum," announced RIA...

This is a really good question and has piqued my interest since it speaks directly to my doctoral research, rendering me somewhat qualified to answer this question from a behavioural scientific perspective. To understand the psychological outcome of this war, we need to understand what it is that Putin wants and then determine his current mindset with regards to the attainment of those desires or preferences. And here we run into problems, because in spite of the copious amount of ink spilt on the topic, nobody knows exactly - perhaps not even Putin himself - what he wants. The signalling...

Russian leader Vladimir Putin gave his stammering spy chief a tongue-lashing at a security council meeting Tuesday, schooling him in a discussion about Moscow recognizing the independence of two separatist-controlled regions of Ukraine. The director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia seemed to goof after a testy exchange with Putin, and said he supported absorbing the breakaway states into the Russian federation before backtracking and saying he supported their independence. Russia’s recognition of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic has been viewed as the possible first step of Russia’s expected invasion of Ukraine. Putin is...

Explosions shook an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea on Tuesday, the latest such incident in a region used by Moscow as a staging post for its war in Ukraine.

1- Explosions occurred in the occupied Crimea, an ammunition depot detonated: a railway was damaged. Video https://player.obozrevatel.com/video/files/videos/0/37/632/480p.mp4 2- https://player.obozrevatel.com/video/files/videos/0/37/621/480p.mp4 3- https://player.obozrevatel.com/video/files/videos/0/37/619/480p.mp4 Explosions in the village of Mayskoye in the occupied Crimea began around 6 a.m. on August 16. The epicenters of events were engulfed in fires, the Russian military fled from there in tanks. This was told by eyewitnesses, local residents who were evacuated to the village of Kondratyevo. In total, 27 people were taken out of dangerous places, including two children, Crimean media reported (to watch the video, scroll to the end of the news). "I live on Rosa...

The Russian invaders turned the temporarily occupied Mariupol into a continuous ghetto. The invaders banned teachers from leaving the city and began "visits" to their homes. This was announced by adviser to the mayor of Mariupol Pyotr Andryushchenko. "Strengthening the regime again. Now it concerns teachers," the report says. In particular, teachers were banned from leaving the city, because the loudly announced launches of most schools, lyceums and two universities failed due to the lack of teachers. In addition, the facts of "persuasion" of going to work because of beatings are becoming widespread. Separate patrols visit teachers ' homes and...