Nobody interested in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

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What exactly does the "emboldened" West do?

We have been giving more lethal weapons as time goes on. When the war started our goal was to make Russia’s inevitable victory uncomfortable, now it is helping Ukraine win outright.

Because it turned out possible - almost nobody believed it at the beginning.
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I completely agree that is the reason why. Every success has bread the temptation to do more and less fear of Putin. What I am getting at this is not a pre planned thought out process but spontaneous emotional reaction to the facts on the ground.

I completely agree that is the reason why. Every success has bread the temptation to do more and less fear of Putin. What I am getting at this is not a pre planned thought out process but spontaneous emotional reaction to the facts on the ground.

The U.S. and its NATO allies are racing to assemble air defense shields both for Ukraine and for Europe as a whole, facing down complex issues from timing to getting systems to work together, as bombs rain down on civilians in Kyiv.

The renewed Russian cruise missile campaign on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian targets came as NATO leaders gathered in Brussels this week, and as images of bloodied civilians poured out of Ukraine.

The response from NATO allies was swift. Germany announced the first delivery of a new air defense system, and France and Spain pledged new donations to knock Russian missiles and new Iranian-made suicide drones out of the sky.
At the same time, 14 members of the alliance — plus Finland — announced an ambitious effort on Thursday to build a new, interlinked missile defense system that spreads across the continent, something officials said was critical after seeing the violence Russia has loosed on Ukrainian cities.

Dubbed the European Sky Shield Initiative, member nations are tasked with buying state-of-the-art missile defense systems and networking them to other nations’ systems to give the alliance a complete picture of Russian threats emanating from the sky.

In announcing the plan, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht noted existing “gaps” in European air defense. “We need to fill these gaps quickly, we are living in threatening, dangerous times,” she said.

The U.S. does not currently have a significant role in Sky Shield, but it does already operate two Aegis Ashore ballistic missile sites in Romania and Poland, which are focused on the potential threat of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Details are thin, but the complexity of the effort is clear. “Probably the most important task is how to link all those systems together,” Latvian State Secretary Janis Garisons told POLITICO after signing the agreement. It will take time and effort to build a “joint picture to make sure it is interoperable, and that might be the big challenge.”

Any functioning network will almost certainly take years to develop and deploy, as sophisticated air defense systems are both expensive and slow to build. Advanced networking systems and coming up with rules for data and information sharing will be another hurdle for nations that have at times been hesitant to share such sensitive information.

Combining this effort with the push to immediately donate more NATO-caliber weaponry will also likely force countries to make tough choices about where they put their money. But the destruction Russia is visiting on Ukrainian civilians has shifted European thinking, showing the continent what industrial-scale war looks like for the first time since World War II.

The Kremlin’s recent appointment of Gen. Sergei Surovikin to lead the war effort has also been noted. “His nickname is ‘General Armageddon’ and he certainly earned it in the air campaign in Syria,” a NATO official told reporters on the sidelines of the meetings Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to ground rules in effect.

The new air defense systems being rushed to Ukraine are a “signal to Putin that the only thing he achieves by doing these attacks on civilian infrastructure and on completely innocent citizens is that we are stepping up our efforts to help Ukraine,” Ollongren said. “And for Ukraine, if air defenses are what they need, air defenses are what they are going to get.”

NATO officials this week said they were absorbing lessons from the war, and they’re hurriedly taking stock of how much ammunition is left in European depots after months of funneling artillery, anti-armor rockets and ammunition to Ukraine. One of the lessons is how many artillery rounds Ukraine is firing, and the effect it has on Russian units and equipment, a data point critical in planning overall defense spending.

In Ukraine, where Russian forces have already expended most of their precision-guided cruise missiles, the threat to civilians grows with each unguided missile launch from ships in the Black Sea and bombers flying inside Russian airspace.

The Russian barrages against civilians “will continue,” the senior NATO official said, adding that the introduction of the Iranian-made Mohajer-6 and Shahed drones “put stress on Ukrainian air defenses. They’re just harder to detect and you don’t want to waste [high end] defensive systems” on cheap targets with limited destructive capability.

Olga Lopatkina paced around her basement in circles like a trapped animal. For more than a week, the Ukrainian mother had heard nothing from her six adopted children stranded in Mariupol, and she was going out of her mind with worry.

The kids had spent their vacation at a resort in the port city, as usual. But this time war with Russia had broken out, and her little ones — always terrified of the dark — were abandoned in a besieged city with no light and no hope. All they had now was her oldest son, Timofey, who was still himself just 17.

The questions looped endlessly in her head: Should she try to rescue the children herself — and risk being killed, making them orphans yet again? Or should she campaign to get them out from afar — and risk them being killed or falling into the hands of the Russians?

She had no idea her dilemma would lead her straight into a battle against Russia, with the highest stakes of her life.

Russia’s open effort to adopt Ukrainian children and bring them up as Russian is already well underway, in one of the most explosive issues of the war, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Thousands of children have been found in the basements of war-torn cities like Mariupol and at orphanages in the Russian-backed separatist territories of Donbas. They include those whose parents were killed by Russian shelling as well as others in institutions or with foster families, known as “children of the state.”

Russia claims that these children don’t have parents or guardians to look after them, or that they can’t be reached. But the AP found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda, and given them Russian families and citizenship.

The investigation is the most extensive to date on the grab of Ukrainian children, and the first to follow the process all the way to those already growing up in Russia. The AP drew from dozens of interviews with parents, children and officials in both Ukraine and Russia; emails and letters; Russian documents and Russian state media.

Whether or not they have parents, raising the children of war in another country or culture can be a marker of genocide, an attempt to erase the very identity of an enemy nation. Prosecutors say it also can be tied directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has explicitly supported the adoptions.

“It’s not something that happens spur of the moment on the battlefield,” said Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues who is advising Ukraine on prosecutions. “And so your ability to attribute responsibility to the highest level is much greater here.”

Even where parents are dead, Rapp said, their children must be sheltered, fostered or adopted in Ukraine rather than deported to Russia.

Russian law prohibits the adoption of foreign children. But in May, Putin signed a decree making it easier for Russia to adopt and give citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care — and harder for Ukraine and surviving relatives to win them back.

Russia also has prepared a register of suitable Russian families for Ukrainian children, and pays them for each child who gets citizenship — up to $1,000 for those with disabilities. It holds summer camps for Ukrainian orphans, offers “patriotic education” classes and even runs a hotline to pair Russian families with children from Donbas.

“It is absolutely a terrible story,” said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor, who claims hundreds of children were taken from that city alone. “We don’t know if our children have an official parent or (stepparents) or something else because they are forcibly disappeared by Russian troops.”

The picture is complicated by the fact that many children in Ukraine’s so-called orphanages are not orphans at all. Ukraine’s government acknowledged to the U.N. before the war that most children of the state “are not orphans, have no serious illness or disease and are in an institution because their families are in difficult circumstances.”

Nevertheless, Russia portrays its adoption of Ukrainian children as an act of generosity that gives new homes and medical resources to helpless minors. Russian state media shows local officials hugging and kissing them and handing them Russian passports.

It’s very hard to pin down the exact number of Ukrainian children deported to Russia — Ukrainian officials claim nearly 8,000. Russia hasn’t given an overall number, but officials regularly announce the arrival of Ukrainian orphans in Russian military planes.

The children of Mariupol aren’t the first Russia has been accused of stealing from Ukraine.

In 2014, after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, more than 80 children from Luhansk were stopped at checkpoints and abducted. Ukraine sued, and the European Court of Human Rights found the children were taken into Russia “without medical support or the necessary paperwork.” The children were returned to Ukraine before a final decision.

Kateryna Rashevska, a human rights defender, said she knows of about 30 Ukrainian children from Crimea adopted by Russians under a program known as Train of Hope. Now, she said, some of those children might well be Russian soldiers. Since 2015, the Young Army Cadets national movement has trained youth in Crimea and Russia for potential recruitment into the military.

This time around, at least 96 children have been returned to Ukraine since March after negotiations. But Ukrainian officials have tracked down the identities of thousands more in Russia, and the names of many others simply aren’t published.

“We cannot ask the Russian Federation to return the children because we don’t know who they should return,” said Rashevska, with the Ukrainian organization Regional Central for Human Rights.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned another barrage of Russian air strikes, calling on international allies to help Kyiv strengthen its air defense systems after a day of drone attacks on cities in which at least four people are known to have died.

Thirty percent of Ukraine’s power stations have been taken out by Russian strikes, resulting in blackouts in many cities, the president said.

Zelenskyy also urged Ukrainian troops to take more Russian prisoners, saying this would make it easier to free those held by Russia.

His comments came shortly after Kyiv and Moscow carried out the largest prisoner swap of the war to date.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, said that if his party wins a majority in next month’s midterm elections, its members would be unwilling to “write a blank check” to Ukraine, suggesting it could be more difficult for President Biden to get congressional approval for large infusions of aid to bolster the country’s war against Russia.

“I think people are going to be sitting in a recession, and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” he said in a recent interview with Punchbowl News. “Ukraine is important, but at the same time, it can’t be the only thing they do, and it can’t be a blank check.”

Mr. McCarthy’s comments reflected the rising tide of isolationism in the Republican Party, especially in the House, where an increasing number of libertarian-minded conservatives who have adopted former President Donald J. Trump’s “America First” position have vocally opposed authorizing billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as it fights off an unprovoked attack from Russia.

That impulse led 57 House Republicans to vote in May against a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. In the Senate, 11 Republican senators opposed the aid package after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, forcefully marshaled support for the legislation in his conference.

The House Republicans who are poised to run the committees with oversight of the war should they win the majority are largely hawks who have backed the aid to Ukraine, indicating that some in the party may be reluctant to turn their backs on Kyiv. And many Democrats have supported the money for Ukraine, suggesting that even if most Republicans were opposed, the House could still muster bipartisan support to approve such aid.

I really hope Ukraine won't become a partizan thing in USA. It was bad enough that covid was.

Meanwhile, I'd keep my eyes on Kherson. Today, civilians got text messages from Russians, urging them to "evacuate" with buses they provide.
I have a very bad feeling about this.
My bet: men from these buses end up as cannonfodder, women and children end up somewhere in Syberia. And this is not the worst thing I can imagine.

In the initial invasion Kherson was given up without a fight leaving a large anti Russian population to manage.

There have been many pro Ukraine demonstrations there that Russia have had to put down.

Maybe it’s cynical to think this but the evacuation may just be a form of ethnic clensing.

The pro Russian minority are moved out to be protected while the pro Ukraine population will likely either be killed in the coming battle which will destroy the city or flee to W Ukraine.

I don’t think Russia wants to manage this Ukraine population and would prefer empty lands of a few villages populated by a few elderly people.

I would expect this same tactic in other captured cities East of Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law Wednesday in the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow annexed and gave all regional governors in Russia emergency powers that open the door for sweeping new restrictions throughout the country.

Putin didn’t immediately spell out the steps that would be taken under martial law, but said his order was effective starting Thursday. His decree gave law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals and orders the creation of territorial defense forces in the annexed regions.

The upper house of Russia’s parliament quickly endorsed Putin’s decision to impose martial in the annexed Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. The approved legislation indicated the declaration may involve restrictions on travel and public gatherings, tighter censorship and broader authority for law enforcement agencies.

Putin didn’t provide details of the extra powers the heads of Russian regions will have under his decree. However, the order states that measures envisaged by martial law could be introduced anywhere in Russia “when necessary.”

According to the Russian legislation, martial law could require banning public gatherings, introducing travel bans and curfews, and conducting censorship, among other restrictions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s order doesn’t anticipate the closure of Russia’s borders, state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. In an apparent attempt to assuage a nervous public, regional authorities rushed to declare that no immediate curfews or restrictions on travel were planned.

Putin didn’t provide details of the extra powers the heads of Russian regions will have under his decree. However, the order states that measures envisaged by martial law could be introduced anywhere in Russia “when necessary.”

According to the Russian legislation, martial law could require banning public gatherings, introducing travel bans and curfews, and conducting censorship, among other restrictions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s order doesn’t anticipate the closure of Russia’s borders, state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. In an apparent attempt to assuage a nervous public, regional authorities rushed to declare that no immediate curfews or restrictions on travel were planned.

My opinion:
In best case scenario, Russians are concealing their own retreat for the sake of domestic propaganda.
In worst case scenario, they are preparing for using some weapons of mass destruction.
The two don't exclude each other - and neither do they exclude your scenario.

The mayor of Russian-occupied Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, warned that Kherson's civilians were facing enforced deportation and being deprived of their homes so that Russia could populate the city with "soldiers and traitors".