It also called for the arrest of journalist Dmitry Nizovtsev and Anna Biryukova, the ACF’s head of public opinion research. Moscow made its army illegal shortly after launching its Ukraine offensive in February 2022. Thousands of opponents of the conflict have been censored, jailed or exiled.
- A month into the invasion and his campaign goals were dramatically scaled back after a retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv.
- A core principle of European security after World War Two was that sovereign nations have a right to make their own choices.
- Following a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday, Mr Biden said the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline would be blocked if Russia further invades Ukraine.
- But until this week, Russia still recognised them as part of Ukraine.
Cuts have already seen the size of the British Army fall from more than 100,000 in 2010 to around 73,000 now. Gen Sanders said that within the next three years the British Army needed to be 120,000 strong with the addition of reserves. But he said even that is not enough - so the Army should be designed to expand rapidly "to enable the first echelon, resource the second echelon, and train and equip the citizen army that must follow". Finland, Nato's newest member and a country which has an 800-mile border with Russia, has wider conscription. Around 80% of the male population complete some form of military service. https://euronewstop.co.uk/who-is-winning-the-war-in-ukraine.html can mean a jail sentence, though there is the option of civilian service out of uniform too.
‘Your country needs you’
“Billions of people in dozens of countries will go to the polls and exercise the right to make their voices heard. In 2024, wherever we are in the world, we can’t afford to have our choices made for us. We are obliged to exercise our agency, however limited it might seem.
- Western intelligence officials concluded that the incident fitted into a pattern of Russia widening its military activities to involve attacks on infrastructure underpinning Western economic and energy security.
- "Where the Ukrainians have an advantage is they're fighting for their own territory and all that massive firepower is going to be hard to use as an occupation force, as NATO found out in Afghanistan.
- While that is the UK aim, the defence secretary said "like so many things these are international organisations, and if not every country wants them to be thrown out of the Swift system, it becomes difficult".
- North Korea has been accused of supplying ballistic missiles and hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to the Russian government for its war in Ukraine – dealings that are in violation of international law.
But that imagined a blitzkrieg-style ground campaign that could take big cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. The recognition of the territories and occupation by Russian forces is also an act of aggression but it is not the nightmare scenario. But if Ukraine’s experience is anything to go by, the threat posed by a common enemy could have a unifying effect.
Is Russia losing the war?
Madame Chair, as we approach the third year since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the UK’s support will not falter. During his visit to Kyiv earlier this month, my Prime Minister announced a package of support and reaffirmed the close UK-Ukraine partnership. This included £2.5 billion in military support and a historic long-term security agreement.
In response to his speech, the government insisted that a full military call-up is not on the table. Crucially, General Sanders insisted that the potential scale of the conflict in years to come must not be underestimated. Sanctions will also be applied to Belarus, a long-term ally of Russia, for its role in the assault on Ukraine. Russian military convoys crossed from Belarus into Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region. Mr Heappey said "British and Nato troops should not [and] must not play an active role" and that any miscalculation could escalate quickly.
Kyiv and its allies are worried that the supply of foreign weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian military is stalling, with Republicans in the US Congress choking the funds the Pentagon needs to fulfil its aims. The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, recently made radical calls to prepare for war that would dramatically reorient the German military after nearly eight decades spent in a multilateralist defensive mode. The head of the British army has warned UK citizens to be prepared for a war on the scale of the great conflicts of the 20th Century – and that they themselves may need to mobilise. Meanwhile, UN estimates suggested more than 100,000 people have already fled their homes in Ukraine. Overnight, at least 1,000 Ukrainians arrived by train in Poland's south-eastern city of Przemysl alone.
