March 3 (Reuters) - Canada will remove Russia and Belarus's most favoured nation status as trading partners, and will provide additional lethal aid to Ukraine, including rocket launchers and hand grenades, Canadian officials said Thursday.

The only other country that does not enjoy the most favoured nation status with Canada is North Korea, and goods from Russia and Belarus will be subjected to a 35% tariff when imported into Canada, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said.

"Simply put, this means that Russia and Belarus will no longer receive the benefits, particularly low tariffs that Canada offers to other countries that are fellow members of the WTO," Freeland told reporters at a news conference.

Canada had about C$1.2 billion ($948 million) in imports from Russia and about C$23 million from Belarus in 2020, according to Statistics Canada.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-raise-tariffs-russian-imports-send-rocket-launchers-ukraine-2022-03-03/?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_source=reddit.com

Two cargo ships hit by blasts around Ukraine, one seafarer killed

LONDON/DHAKA, March 3 (Reuters) - An Estonian-owned cargo ship sank on Thursday off Ukraine's major Black Sea port of Odessa, hours after a Bangladeshi vessel was hit by a missile or bomb at a port east of Odessa, underlining the growing peril to merchant shipping after Russia's invasion of Ukraine

...Late on Wednesday, a missile or bomb struck a Bangladeshi-owned cargo ship in the Black Sea port of Olvia, killing one of its crew members. Efforts were underway to rescue the others from the vessel, its owner said on Thursday.

https://www.reuters.com/world/bangladesh-cargo-ship-hit-by-missile-crew-member-killed-bangladesh-official-2022-03-03/

The Helt's crew consisted of one Russian, one Belarusian and four Ukrainians, according to ERR

Earlier:
ERR - Estonian Public Broadcasting

An Estonian-owned cargo ship has been reported sinking in the Black Sea, off the coast of the port city Odesa, the result of an explosion thought to have been caused by striking a sea mine. The ship is one of many reported to have been used by Russian naval forces as a type of human shield, ahead of an amphibious landing planned for Odesa.

As of Thursday afternoon, the vessel, a cargo ship named the Helt was sinking, with a heavy list, maritime news site Maritime Bulletin reports, citing Ukrainian sources.

U.K. paper the Daily Mail reported on its website that four crew members were still missing, while two have abandoned ship by using a lifeboat, and that the ship struck a mine after having been hijacked by Russian forces. Reuters also reports mine-strike as the likely cause of the initial explosion.

All six crew members have since been safely accounted for, the Estonian foreign ministry says. None of the six were Estonian citizens, the ministry added.

https://news.err.ee/1608519392/estonian-owned-cargo-ship-sinking-off-odesa-after-russian-action

The Helt had reportedly been captured by the Russian Navy and used by them as a shield from direct fire, the Daily Mail reports

BTW It was flying a Marshall Islands flag

Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Cate Cadell


When Japan in recent days announced an aggressive set of sanctions to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, it wasn’t just Moscow it wished to signal, according to U.S. and Asian officials.

It was also China.

Japan, not typically a sanctions hawk, wanted to ensure that Beijing drew the right lesson from Russia’s invasion of a weaker neighbor. Moscow would pay a high price.

Some key countries in East Asia are joining with the West to take what is for them the exceptional step of imposing significant financial sanctions, officials and analysts say, brought together by outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concern over China’s growing aggression in the region.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/03/ukraine-asia-sanctions/

Article says the nations are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

from Cusstionary

https://cusstionary.com/language/Russian

Woke up around 4 am in a cold sweat, and rushed to my laptop for the latest news. Thank heaven Kyiv hasn't fallen, and the Ukrainians are fighting back courageously. Goddess help them. Goddess help President Zelensky.

Every time I check the news, it fills me with dread. The pictures and video clips are sickening.

Even though I'm not Ukrainian, this particular conflict hits me hard. My parents were Estonian immigrants. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania may be next on that bastard's list, although they are NATO members. I have no close relatives other than 2 daughters and some grandchildren, but my only first cousin lives in Estonia.

For what it's worth, my DNA test shows some Ukrainian ancestry from way back. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that a well-armed military is killing and destroying an independent, democratic nation, at the whim of an evil madman. A madman with nuclear weapons. I hope somebody inside Russia can stop him.

HuffPost
Ryan Grenoble

A crowd of hundreds of Ukrainians on Wednesday blocked the road to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as Russian troops reportedly took control of the area.

The plant, near the city of Enerhodar in the country’s southeast, is the largest in Ukraine and the whole of Europe.

Video shared on Twitter and verified by CNN shows plant workers and civilians congregating en masse on both the road into the facility and a set of railroad tracks nearby.

What appear to be garbage trucks are parked farther down the road, behind makeshift bunkers made of sandbags, parked cars and piles of tires.

https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1498959118689779715

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ukraine-crowd-nuclear-power-plant-russia_n_621f9444e4b0250871a8e06f

https://twitter.com/JamWaterhouse/status/1499042096036163599

Waterhouse is a BBC correspondenrt

Source: Voice of America News

United Nations —

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine Wednesday and called for its troops to immediately and completely withdraw, as Moscow's military bore down on several Ukrainian cities with airstrikes and troops.

Of the 193 member states, 181 participated in the vote. Of those, 141 countries supported the resolution condemning Moscow and five were against it – including Russia and a tiny group of its allies — Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea. Thirty-five countries abstained, but their numbers do not affect the two-thirds majority needed for adoption.

"The vote is a powerful message to the Russian Federation," Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters.

Nearly 100 countries co-sponsored the measure, which mimics in tone the one that Russia vetoed in the Security Council last Friday, prompting the move to the General Assembly.

Read more: https://www.voanews.com/a/un-general-assembly-overwhelmingly-condemns-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine-/6467348.html

BUZZFEED NEWS
Peter Aldhous
Christopher Miller

Hours before Vladimir Putin announced the start of “special military operations” on the morning of Feb. 24, Moscow time, a small team of researchers based in Monterey, California, knew that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had begun.

Watching the traffic layer on Google Maps for the main road from Belgorod, Russia, to Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, analysts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies saw a “traffic jam” appear at 3:15 a.m., local time. It was right at the spot where a graduate student, Steven De La Fuente, had earlier seen the buildup of armored personnel carriers, mobile missile launchers, and other military vehicles on high-resolution images from a commercial satellite that can pierce clouds and fog using radar. He had been scouring imagery for the region after TikTok videos posted by Russian civilians appeared to show hardware including Buk surface-to-air missile launchers.

The only reasonable explanation for the signal on Google Maps was that the Russian armor was now on the road, blocking progress for the few civilians traveling at night and whose smartphones were sending location data to Google’s servers.

“Someone’s on the move,” tweeted Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert who heads the Middlebury team.

Much more at link

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/osint-ukraine-war-satellite-images-plane-tracking-social?ref=bfnsplash