July 9, 2022

First Group Of Ukrainian Soldiers Begin Training In Britain

The first group of an expected 10,000 Ukrainian military recruits to receive training in the United Kingdom in the upcoming months have arrived in Britain and begun exercises, the Defense Ministry said.

Defense officials on July 9 said 1,050 British service personnel will train the inexperienced Ukrainian volunteers at several locations across Britain for several weeks.

Defense Minister Ben Wallace met with the recruits earlier in the week, telling them that "this ambitious new training program is the next phase in the U.K.'s support to the armed forces of Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression.”

The Ukrainians will undergo Britain's basic soldier training program, featuring weapons handling, battlefield first aid, field craft, patrol tactics, and the laws around armed conflict, the British ministry said.

https://www.rferl.org/a/britain-ukraine-soldiers-training-russia-invasion/31936063.html

June 28, 2022

Turkey drops opposition to Finland and Sweden joining Nato

Turkey drops opposition to Finland and Sweden joining Nato
Turkey has dropped its opposition to Finland and Sweden joining Nato, according to Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson and Finnish president Sauli Niinistö.

Guardian news feed

https://twitter.com/TheLocalSweden/status/1541851970750783488

https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi/status/1541853500082192385

I do know that they were in talks all day so glad it went good.

June 24, 2022

At least 71,000 Ukrainians have entered the US since March, with Joe Biden's pledge to welcome 100K

At least 71,000 Ukrainians have entered the US since March, with Joe Biden’s pledge to welcome 100,000 people fleeing the Russian invasion on track to be met over the summer.

Per the Guardian live feed.

June 23, 2022

European leaders are poised to grant Ukraine candidate status, a move that usually takes years

EU leaders meeting in Brussels are expected to approve Ukraine’s candidate status later on Thursday, nearly four months after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy launched his country’s bid to join the bloc in the early days of the Russian invasion.

The move from applicant to candidate usually takes years, but the EU has dramatically accelerated the process, amid outrage over the brutality of the unprovoked Russian attack, and to show solidarity with Ukraine’s defenders.

“Ukraine is going through hell for a simple reason: its desire to join the EU,” tweeted the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the eve of the summit. The commission last week called on EU leaders to grant Ukraine’s candidate status. “Our opinion acknowledges the immense progress that [Ukrainian] democracy has achieved since the Maidan protests of 2014,” Von der Leyen said.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said candidate status would “draw a line under decades of ambiguity and set it in stone: Ukraine is Europe, not part of the ‘Russian world’”.


Guardian live feed

June 22, 2022

An unusual kamikaze drone struck a refinery in Russia today

Its about 90 miles from the front line, inside russia. The iinteresting part is that its not the expensive Ukrrainian drone that costs about 1 mil to fly & operate, mostly used for reconnaissance but a cheap China drone that anyone can buy off AliExpress. that can deliver a 20 kg package (bomb in this case) MSM is reporting about this, Forbes, ect... but I found an interesting take on it here.

https://mezha.media/en/2022/06/22/an-unusual-kamikaze-drone-struck-a-refinery-in-russia/

First, the location appears to be south of the Novoshakhtinsky refinery, somewhere between the cemetery and the village of Lichnyi Trud. Then the UAV flies from the southeast, ie from the territory of Russia, from Novoshakhtinsk. That is why the person behind the camera first decided that it was a Russian UAV. On the other hand, it could have been a detour for our pilots.

Secondly, the UAV itself. At first, everyone decided that it was Ukrainian UKRSPECSYSTEMS PD-2, but it’s not it. PD-2 is a reconnaissance UAV that can carry only 3 kg of bomb load. Yes, the carrying capacity of PD-2 is as much as 19 kg, but it is necessary to remove everything and stuff explosives instead of equipment. In addition, the PD-2 is a very expensive toy. We remind that the PD-2 complex (two UAVs and a control car) costs $1,000,000, a little too much to use as a kamikaze drone. Most likely, it is something much cheaper, especially since the appearance of the stabilizer of the unknown drone is not much like the PD-2 stabilizers.

The most likely candidate is Chinese Skyeye 5000 mm Pro UAV or Skyeye 6000 mm Pro UAV, which can be purchased on AliExpress. 5,000 and 6,000 wingspan here. These toys cost very little – $9,000 and $10,500 respectively. Thus, the declared cruising speed of flight is 120 km/h, and endurance of 7-8 hours. And most importantly, a payload of 15-20 kg is just enough to set fire to the refinery. There is still the question of the range, i.e. the transmitter/receiver and their security.

And here we come to the third. To get to the Novoshakhtinsky refinery, our soldiers had to launch UAVs from, say, Bakhmut or Toretsk. In this case, the UAV was to fly over the front, over the temporarily occupied territories of the terrorist groups LNR and DNR, and over the vaunted Russian echelon air defense. That is, either the air defense is nothing at all, or our soldiers are real demons. We believe in the latter!

June 20, 2022

Last month, China imported more Russian crude oil than ever before

Source: WaPo

China’s imports of Russian crude oil hit a record in May, as Chinese buyers take advantage of discounted prices after Beijing’s pledge to continue normal economic ties with Moscow despite the geopolitical fallout over President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A year-over-year rise of 55 percent in May, to 8.42 million metric tons, meant Russian imports overtook those from Saudi Arabia to become China’s largest single source of crude for the month, according to data from Chinese customs released on Friday. In April, Saudi oil accounted for 21 percent of China’s total imports, compared with 15 percent for Russian-sourced fuel, according to an analysis from Cinda Securities.

Over the first 100 days of the war in Ukraine, China became the world’s leading buyer of Russian fossil fuels, as many Western nations cut back on purchases to impose economic costs on the Kremlin for invading.

The recent increase in imports is a reversal of a period of low purchases immediately after Russia invaded, when Chinese buyers remained cautious about the risks of being sanctioned.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/20/china-russia-oil-exports/

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Remember this the next time you go to your local chinamart to buy china junk, we need to prohibit US corporations from doing business with evil countries that support evil russia.

June 19, 2022

Austria's government announced Sunday that it would reopen a mothballed coal power station

because of power shortages arising from reduced deliveries of gas from Russia.

Agence France-Presse reports:



Germany will adopt emergency measures to ensure its energy needs are met after the drop in supply of Russian gas, including increased use of coal, the government said Sunday.

Per guardian live feed

June 17, 2022

Boris Johnson has offered to launch a major training operation for Ukrainian forces

with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days, his office said.

Johnson, who has arrived in Kyiv to meet with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a statement:

My visit today, in the depths of this war, is to send a clear and simple message to the Ukrainian people: the UK is with you, and we will be with you until you ultimately prevail.

The new military training programme “could change the equation of this war - harnessing that most powerful of forces, the Ukrainian determination to win”, he added.

guardian live feed

June 17, 2022

Denmark summons Russian ambassador after warship violated Danish territorial waters

A Russian warship violated Danish territorial waters north of the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm where a democracy festival attended by senior lawmakers and business people was taking place, the Danish Armed Forces said.

Denmark called this morning’s actions an unacceptable provocation.

Reuters reports the Russian warship entered Danish waters without authorisation at 0030 GMT on Friday and again a few of hours later. The armed forces said in a statement that the warship left after the Danish navy established radio contact, it said.

“A deeply irresponsible, gross and completely unacceptable Russian provocation in the middle of #fmdk,” Denmark’s foreign minister Jeppe Kofod said on Twitter, referring to the Democracy Festival of Denmark.

guardian live feed

June 15, 2022

Kremlin: Putin and Xi agree to expand cooperation 'due to the west's illegitimate sanctions policy'

There is a readout from the Kremlin of a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Reuters reports the Kremlin says “It was agreed to expand cooperation in energy, finance, industry, transport and other spheres, taking into account the global economic situation that has become more complicated due to the west’s illegitimate sanctions policy.”

Guardian live feed


Evil empires think alike, too bad we are so dependent on China junk while they buy our debt & real estate.