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A former U.S. general has forecast the surrender of Russian forces in Kherson, a strategic city in Ukraine. The Kherson region has been almost entirely controlled by Russian troops since March, when it became the first major city to fall during Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have launched a counteroffensive to take back the critical port city. Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling commented Monday on a Ukrainian soldier's video from the frontlines showing destroyed Russian positions in Kherson. According to Hertling's analysis on Twitter, the footage indicated "extremely poor soldier discipline" and "horrible fieldcraft/training"...

BRUSSELS (AP) – Weapons stocks in the European Union are running low as member countries continue to sends arms and ammunition to Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat warned Monday as he urged EU nations to better coordinate their spending on military materiel. “The military stocks of most member-states has been, I wouldn’t say exhausted, but depleted in a high proportion, because we have been providing a lot of capacity to the Ukrainians,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a debate with European lawmakers.

Ukraine’s First Lady’s message to Britons facing crippling energy bill hikes and a cost of living crisis is that while they might be “counting pennies”, her county is counting casualties. “There is no comparison to the suffering of people here, but at home in the United Kingdom, as you acknowledge, people are facing very painful choices because of the soaring cost of energy that’s going to make things very tough for people,” said BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg in an interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska.

A representative of the Moscow-installed military administration in the occupied parts of Ukraine's Kherson region says a referendum on joining Russia has been postponed as Ukrainian armed forces continue military operations aimed at regaining control over the area. "We have prepared for the voting, and we wanted to hold the referendum in the nearest future, but due to the developments happening at the moment, I think we will pause [with the referendum]," the Russian-appointed deputy governor of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told the TASS news agency on September 5. Kherson, an important port city on the Black Sea, has been fully...

After the first Ukrainian attempt to push towards had failed it is now reinforcing that failure. As I describe the move: The only 'successful' attack was across the Inhulet river near Andriivka in the direction of the dam and river crossing that closes off the Kakhovka Dnieper reservoir. The troops were cut off and mostly destroyed. On the western side of the salient a Russian unit crossed the Inhulet towards north and attacked the Ukrainians on that side. It soon had to pull back and the Ukrainians used the Russian crossing to reconnect with the cut off units in the...

An estimated 70,000 people protested in Prague against the Czech government on Saturday, calling on the ruling coalition to do more to control soaring energy prices and voicing opposition to the European Union and NATO. Organizers of the demonstration from a number of far-right and fringe political groups including the Communist party, said the central European nation should be neutral militarily and ensure direct contracts with gas suppliers, including Russia.\ Police estimates put the number of protesters at around 70,000 by mid-afternoon. The aim of our demonstration is to demand change, mainly in solving the issue of energy prices, especially...

I’ve been warning about this since January 2020. Sounded crazy then. But it wasn’t. I devour history books and it’s all written over and over and over. Normalcy bias is a great killer of nations. There will be famine There will be actual pandemic There will be war There will be migrations big and small. Both personal and population-sized. Entire tribes will move, as has been happening already. Many of these Europeans and Americans will soon realize they did not just welcome in millions of individuals. They welcomed in tribes and groups that come with their own structures. These are...

I am a Ukrainian. My country has been invaded by Russia. In this video I will tell you what happened on the one hundred and ninty third day of the war.Day 193: September 04Today Ukrainian counteroffensive operation was marked by a big symbolic event.In the Dudchany direction, the fighters of the 103 National Guard battalion together with the fighters of the 63 brigade officially confirmed that they established full control over Vysokopillia and showed a video where they raise the Ukrainian flag above the town. This is the most important town in the northern part of the region, because it...

A large newspaper in Tuscany, Il Tirreno, has reported on Sunday, that Zelensky rented his luxury villa in Forte dei Marmi to a couple of Russians living in London. According to its sources, the newspaper was able to show that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rented his villa in Forte dei Marmi, in Tuscany, for 50,000 euros a month to a couple of Russian citizens coming from London. As a remember, following the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Zelensky asked Italy to stop welcoming Russian tourists as well as seizing their yachts, homes and money. Il Tirreno revealed that a negotiation...

The armed forces of Ukraine destroyed 106 occupiers and 60 units of enemy equipment in the south. This is reported by Censor.NET with reference to the operational command "South" on Facebook. The Armed Forces captured three Russian soldiers, 2 T-62 tanks, an amphibious assault vehicle, BTR-82, many weapons and ammunition. During the day, the Russians carried out eight airstrikes on the positions of the Armed Forces, in response our aviation carried out 22 strikes, and missile and artillery units performed more than 400 artillery missions. Watch more: Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 destroyed enemy mortar 2B11 "Burevisnyk" and truck "Ural" with ammunition....

France’s state-held utility giant EDF will restart all its nuclear reactors in the country this winter, potentially alleviating the energy crisis in Europe during peak heating season. Currently, more than half of EDF’s reactors are out of operation either because of maintenance or technical issues. “EDF has committed to restart all its reactors for this winter,” French Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said at a news conference on energy security on Friday. EDF operates a total of 56 reactors in France, but 32 of them are currently either undergoing maintenance or experiencing technical issues, the minister added. Every week starting...

PARIS (AP) — France’s minister for energy transition said Friday that French electricity giant EDF has committed to restart all its nuclear reactors by this winter to help the country through the broad energy crisis aggravated by the war in Ukraine. Agnes Pannier-Runacher said the government is taking steps to “avoid restrictive measures” over energy use in the peak winter cold season, following a special government meeting over energy issues. France relies on nuclear energy for about 67% of its electricity — more than any other country — and on gas for about 7%. At the moment, 32 of the...

The economic powerhouses of the European Union, France and Germany, both set records on Friday for electricity prices, as the West’s sanctions war with Russia continues to bite. This time last year the cost of electricity per megawatt-hour (MWh) in both France and Germany sat at around 85 euros. On Friday, both countries set record highs, with the cost climbing by at least 1,000 per cent from last year to €850 in Germany and over €1,000 in France, Le Monde reports. While the price of energy has been rising since the end of the lockdown measures across the world last...

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said that targets set by the government for the filling of gas storage facilities had been reached ahead of schedule, staving off the worst fears of severe gas shortages this winter. "The reservoirs are filling up quicker than planned," he told German magazine Der Spiegel according to a report published on Sunday. The government target of reaching 85% storage capacity by October could be achieved by the beginning of September, according to Habeck's ministry. Germany is currently trying to secure alternative sources of gas to prevent an acute shortage during the cold winter months, as...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Russia has scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume flows via a major gas supply route to Germany, deepening Europe’s difficulties in securing winter fuel, after saying it had found faults in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline during maintenance.Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea, had been due to resume operating at 0100 GMT on Saturday after a three-day halt for maintenance....European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said earlier the EU should impose a price cap on Russian pipeline gas......Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would turn off supplies to Europe if Brussels imposed such a cap.

Kyiv’s Kherson offensive is not just about retaking territory but eroding Russian will to continue its futile and costly war. The great Prussian theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz, took it for granted that defence was the strongest form of warfare, if only because a successful attack required superior numbers. For this reason the weaker side was obliged to defend. A state stuck on the defensive might prevent enemy gains but could not achieve its own objectives. They therefore had to use the time gained by the defence to create a more favourable balance of strength. Then they could strike....

Russia won’t immediately resume exports of natural gas to Europe through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, worsening a shortage that threatens to tip the continent into an energy crisis this winter. On Friday, Russian state energy giant Gazprom said it would not resume flows through the pipeline on Saturday as planned because it had detected an oil leak at its Portovaya compressor station. The pipeline has been shut since Wednesday for maintenance. It didn’t give a timeline of when exports might resume.

Speaking to CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy, Guriev said it was extremely difficult to predict what might happen when Putin is eventually replaced as president. “So, probably initially it will be some kind of ultra-nationalist guy or military junta, but it will not last for long exactly because the system is built around Putin. And eventually, I think the system will collapse,” Guriev said. “It could be months, it could be several years, it could be North Korea on steroids, who knows? But it could also be a situation where the system collapses and somebody who...

"There never was a good war or a bad peace," wrote Ben Franklin at the end of the American Revolution. But that depends on the war-makers and the causes for which they fight. Six months into the war in Ukraine, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, when he could not get the U.S. or Kiev to rule out admission of Ukraine to a NATO alliance aimed against Russia, who appear to be the winners and who the losers?