For 471 days, Ukrainian sergeant Serhiy Tyshchenko, 46, lived in a mud bunker dug under an asphalt road near Bakhmut.
Russian dead bodies piled up near the entrance. “We climbed over them and threw soil on them to kill the stink” he says. “But it never goes”, The Independent. 1/
Tyshchenko says he arrived at the position when Biden was US president.
By the time he left, a new US leader was in charge and was “trying to persuade Ukraine to give up the land” he had defended for 471 days. 2/
For 16 months, he stayed underground with so little air he felt close to suffocation.
He says hunger and extreme thirst were constant. More than once, the mud bunker collapsed around them. He got out alive and kept serving near the front. 3/
German Defence Chief, Breuer: In 2029, Russia could wage a major war against a NATO country.
It is building up its military to a strength nearly doubling from before the war against Ukraine.
I've never experienced a situation that dangerous like it is today. 1/
Breuer: Capabilities Europe needs to acquire in the next 3 to 4 years: drones, precision strike, and space capabilities. These are the most urgent needs.
We put them on a prioritized list, and we are working it. We are good on our way to do so. 2/
Breuer: We can’t think in boxes anymore. It’s not the European theater and the Middle East theater.
We have to connect the dots. Those theaters are intertwined. What happens in one theater has impact on the other. This has shaped our military strategy. 3X
Ukraine is close to a cash crunch for the war. Funding to cover spending only until June — 2 months runway.
If money doesn’t arrive, Kyiv may face a choice it tried to avoid: the central bank financing the budget, Bloomberg. 1/
In practice, a “cash crunch” means salaries for troops and public workers, basic state services and the war’s essentials, like air defense and drones, start getting underfunded.
Zelenskyy’s warning is no money — the army feels it. 2/
A pile-up of blocked or delayed external cash.
Hungary is vetoing a €90B EU loan and tying it to Ukraine resuming transit of Russian oil through Druzhba.