A military-intelligence source explains, in an interview with @glastris, that we've had Green Berets going into #Ukraine for years training Ukrainian special forces for just this kind of moment. This resistance was very well planned out. [_link]

— Washington Monthly (@monthly) March 11, 2022

A military-intelligence source explains Ukraine's chances of victory and how the embattled nation might still get those MiG fighters.

Q: How does this end?

A: It's a race against time. The Ukrainians are killing hundreds of 19-year-old Russian conscripts. The Russians are killing hundreds of Ukrainian civilians. Thousands are going to die. But the Ukrainian people have had a taste of the West, a taste of freedom, and they don't want anything to do with Russia. The Russian people, on the other hand, have had a tacit understanding with Putin: They don't get involved in politics, and he gives them some semblance of economic stability. But now, with the war and the sanctions, Putin has broken the deal. Average middle-class Russians can't go to Greece for vacation anymore. They can't watch soccer. They can't even go to McDonald's. That tacit understanding has been broken. It's really a case of this being one man's war: Putin's.

Washington Monthly ... the arrogance.

'Sapere aude'

This was told to the German publication DW by a local realtor. According to the real estate worker, there is no curfew in the region and it was almost never shelled, which is why hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians came to live there. As a result, rental prices skyrocketed.

In March, property owners asked for a three-bedroom Khrushchev 1500 thousand dollars [sic] a month. Four rooms in the old house were rented out for $2,000 [UAH 72,112]. And people paid. In January, we already wrote that because of the war, rental housing in regions far from the fighting has risen in price. In December, the rent of a one-room apartment in the Transcarpathian region tripled and cost UAH 17,304, which is 185.4% more than a year earlier. And as of the beginning of 2023, renting a one-room apartment in Lviv was one and a half times more expensive than in Kiev.

[...]
Ukraine also helped evacuate 36 Moldovan citizens. Evacuation continues.

"Our embassies in Israel and Egypt, as well as other relevant organizations, are making every effort to get more of our citizens out of Gaza," Zelensk* added.

Recall that in mid-October, the second evacuation with Ukrainians took off from Israel. 155 Ukrainian citizens, including 107 women and 23 children, flew from Ben Gurion Airport (Tel Aviv) to Romania.

Earlier, we wrote that the number of Ukrainians killed as a result of the war between Hamas and Israel has increased to 25 people, 21 people were killed in Israel and another 4 (including three children) in the Gaza Strip. Another person is considered missing.

[...]
Hepatitis outbreaks in Ukraine have always occurred, with different frequency. So, in the late 90s and early 2000s, from 20 to 40 thousand patients were registered annually in Ukraine, but then the incidence dropped sharply.

"In recent years, there has been a very low circulation of the virus. This was due to the improvement of sanitary and economic conditions. People began to drink bottled or boiled water, which brought us closer to European countries, where the incidence was about 10 per 100,000. At this level, and we have kept it for a long time," says Victoria Zadorozhnaya.

But the war, population migration and deterioration of sanitary and epidemiological conditions have worsened the situation. The destruction of the Kakhovka reservoir by the invaders also played a role in the spread of hepatitis, which caused a lot of contaminated substances to enter the water.

"The explosion of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station could also increase the circulation of this virus, because there was a strong contamination of water. And, unfortunately, this coincided with the summer-autumn season, when in general, in principle, the circulation of viruses that are transmitted orally and faecally increases. That is, everything is interconnected. But the fact that the war had an impact is unequivocal, " explains Victoria Zadorozhnaya.
[...]

Ukrainian letter of solidarity with the Palestinian people | Al Jazeera |

We reject the Ukrainian government statements that express unconditional support for Israel's military actions, and we consider the calls to avoid civilian casualties by Ukraine's MFA belated and insufficient. This position is a retreat from the support of Palestinian rights and condemnation of the Israeli occupation, which Ukraine has followed for decades, including voting in the UN.

Aware of the pragmatic geopolitical reasoning behind Ukraine's decision to echo Western allies, on whom we are dependent for our survival, we see the current support of Israel and dismissing Palestinian right to self-determination as contradictory to Ukraine's own commitment to human rights and fight for our land and freedom. We as Ukrainians should stand in solidarity not with the oppressors, but with those who experience and resist the oppression.

We strongly object to equating of Western military aid to Ukraine and Israel by some politicians. Ukraine doesn't occupy the territories of other people; instead, it fights against the Russian occupation, and therefore international assistance serves a just cause and the protection of international law. Israel has occupied and annexed Palestinian and Syrian territories, and Western aid to it confirms an unjust order and demonstrates double standards in relation to international law.

We oppose the new wave of Islamophobia, such as the brutal murder of a Palestinian-American six-year-old and assault on his family in Illinois, US and the equating of any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. At the same time, we also oppose holding all Jewish people all over the world accountable for the politics of the state of Israel and we condemn anti-Semitic violence, such as the mob attack on the airplane in Dagestan, Russia.

We also reject the revival of the "war on terror" rhetoric used by the US and EU to justify war crimes and violations of international law that have undermined the international security system and caused countless deaths, and has been borrowed by other states, including Russia for the war in Chechnya and China for the Uyghur genocide. Now Israel is using it to carry out ethnic cleansing.

Call to Action

We urge the implementation of the call to a ceasefire, put forward by the UN General Assembly resolution.