🔴Annual maintenance for Nord Stream 1 pipeline starts on Monday, with flows expected to stop for 10 days, but there are concerns the shutdown might be extended due to the Ukrainian war.
Vladimir Putin is recruiting soldiers from prisons and the poorest parts of Russia as the Kremlin scrambles to prop up its army after suffering tens of thousands of losses in Ukraine
🇷🇺 Western officials believe that the regime is not confident it has the support for mass mobilisation in Russia’s biggest cities and is instead resorting to increasingly desperate measures to prevent a collapse in numbers
🔴The death toll of a Russian missile strike that blew up an apartment block in the Donetsk town of Chasiv Yar has climbed to 31, as rescuers continue to pull more bodies from the destruction.
➡️Nicola Sturgeon’s government has said that Scotland will refuse to accept new applications to house Ukrainian refugees and that it plans to send those fleeing the Russian invasion to live in disused high-rises and on a ferry.
🔴 Russia is running short of ammunition for its armies fighting in Donbas after Ukraine hit several arms depots with new Western long-range artillery, a pro-Russia blogger has said
The hits on at least five depots lying miles behind the frontline between Donetsk and Luhansk began on Friday and set off explosions at each site that lasted several hours
Daniel Burke, the leader of a group of foreign military volunteers in Ukraine, prefers not to say exactly where they launched their recent ambush on the Russians
But his description of it – “the bottom of the a--e end of no-man’s land” – says it all.
His unit, who call themselves the Dark Angels, had crept up to the Russian frontlines outside the southern port city of Kherson
Mexico’s cartel violence reaches bloody nadir with ‘hugs, not bullets’
Left-wing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s controversial efforts to reverse high poverty and crime levels are only leading to tears, reports @JamieoJohnson
✍️“Although Russia has claimed a victory in the city of Lysychansk, leaders in Moscow and Kyiv may look favourably upon the end of the fighting in the last pocket of the Luhansk region”
➡️“The area has limited strategic value, so while it is always regrettable for a defending force to retreat, Kyiv’s troops there have mostly achieved their mission: slow the Russian advance, make the enemy pay for every mile gained and get out without being decisively engaged”