Rusia

As Russians struggle to maintain a steady source of ammunition and artillery, they look to their Asian neighbor North Korea for arms.

The infamous Ukrainian right-wing extremist Azov Battalion – Полк Азов – was founded on the 5th of May 2014, in the port city of Berdyansk, in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast province in South-eastern Ukraine near the Sea of Azov. Hence, its name. Initially was set up as a voluntary militia in the turmoil of the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent political instability of the country, Asov rose to prominence. Asov-men operated against the illegal armed intrusion by Russia into Donbass and Crimea. The co-founder and the first leader of the Azov Battalion is Ukrainian Andriy Biletsky.

For the plan to be effective, other countries will have to take part -particularly large nations – such as India and China, some of Russia’s most important clients.

Capping the price of Russian oil, an approach G7 members said they want to pursue “urgently,” would be an unprecedented move and one which some analysts say could backfire.

Ukraine’s troops say some southern areas have been retaken, but Russia has reportedly slowed their advance.

Ukraine’s armed forces claim to have launched a long-awaited ground operation to take back territories in the Kherson region in the 27th week of the war, striking in eight directions simultaneously.

The fight to retake the city of Kherson plays to the Ukrainians’ strengths, not the Russians’.

Ukrainian officials, defending their country against Russian aggressors, began doing something in July that seemed odd, even counterintuitive: They started speaking loudly and regularly about their plans to liberate Kherson—a key southern city that Russia seized only a week after invading Ukraine on February 24. Indeed, the Ukrainians telegraphed their intentions in a way that the Russians could not mistake. This was like waving a red cape at an angry, incompetent bull. Almost immediately, rumors proliferated that the Russians were racing reinforcements to Kherson to prepare for the Ukrainian attack.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the Kremlin does not respect the fundamentals of international law or the sanctity of international borders. This imperialistic foreign policy may soon rebound on Russia itself. Russia’s territorial integrity looks set to become increasingly disputed by the country’s numerous internal republics and regions as the disastrous invasion of Ukraine serves as a catalyst for imperial collapse.

Moscow’s Struggle to Sustain Its War in Ukraine

In April, just weeks after he launched the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin maintained that the West could never strangle Russia’s economy. The barrage of American and European sanctions had not succeeded and would not succeed in bringing his country to its knees. “We can already confidently say that this policy toward Russia has failed,” he told his officials. “The strategy of an economic blitzkrieg has failed.”

A prudent regard for the tragic, unexpected turns history can take would urge leadership in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to weigh carefully the trajectory they are on and how seriously they want to test moving in another direction.