The War in Ukraine

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The War in Ukraine

American Express suspends operations in Russia and Belarus



American Express is the latest credit card company to announce it is ending its operations in Russia as its invasion into Ukraine escalates.

On Sunday, the company said in a statement that globally issued American Express cards will no longer work in Russia, and cards issued in Russia won’t work outside the country.

American Express also said it is ending its business operations in Belarus.

“This is in addition to the previous steps we have taken, which include halting our relationships with banks in Russia impacted by the US and international government sanctions,” American Express said in a statement Sunday.

Other credit card companies have taken similar steps this weekend.

Mastercard said Saturday it was suspending its network services in Russia. Cards supported by Russian banks will not work in Mastercard’s network, and any cards issued outside of Russia will not work within the country.

“Our colleagues, our customers and our partners have been affected in ways that most of us could not imagine,” Mastercard said in a statement Saturday. “This decision flows from our recent action to block multiple financial institutions from the Mastercard payment network, as required by regulators globally.”

The company, which has operated in Russia for more than 25 years, had previously announced that it had “blocked multiple financial institutions” from its network as a result of sanctions on Russia and would “continue to work with regulators in the days ahead.”

Visa said Saturday it is suspending all of its operations in Russia. Over the next few days, it will end all Visa transactions within Russia, and Visa cards issued in Russia will no longer work outside of the country. In addition, all Visa cards worldwide “will no longer work within the Russian Federation,” Visa said.

“We regret the impact this will have on our valued colleagues, and on the clients, partners, merchants and cardholders we serve in Russia,” Visa Chairman and CEO Al Kelly said in a statement Saturday.

[Phil B.]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Wild Video Out of Ukraine: AA Missile Allegedly Strikes Russia's Fearsome 'Hind' Helicopter in Violent Head-On Hit

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[slimslob]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Japan moves to accept Ukrainian refugees and rebuild its military as countries continue to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine - TheBlaze

[Phil B.]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Rep Waltz: Ukrainians Have Been Begging for US Stinger Missiles Since December, But Biden Held Off Until It Was Too Late

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[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Rep Waltz: Ukrainians Have Been Begging for US Stinger Missiles Since December, But Biden Held Off Until It Was Too Late

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... the US military was Ukraine training it soldiers months before the invasion started on things like how to use the Stinger and Javelin missile systems.

... there are different generations of Stingers that the US produces and US officials have been cognizant of not providing the newest model to the Ukrainians in case they fall into the hands of the Russians who could steal the US technology.

Earlier this week German announced that they would deliver 1,000 antitank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine, marking a change in its previous stance of not sending weaponry to Ukraine amid this crisis.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The War in Ukraine

At a secret airfield in Eastern Europe, a multinational effort to send weapons to Ukraine proceeds at high speed


Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley went last week to an undisclosed airfield near the Ukrainian border that has become a hub for shipping weapons, a senior Defense Department official said, seeing firsthand the multinational effort to get weapons into Ukraine amid Russia’s unprovoked invasion.

While at the airfield, Milley met with troops and personnel and examined the shipment activity, the official said Friday. The site has become a beehive of activity in recent days, going from a handful of flights each day to as many as 17, the field’s maximum capacity.
The airport’s location remains a secret to protect the shipments of weapons, including anti-armor missiles, into Ukraine. The Russian military has not targeted these shipments once they enter Ukraine, the official said, but there is some concern Russia could begin targeting the deliveries as its assault advances.

Since even before Russia’s invasion began late last month, the skies above Europe have been filled with military cargo aircraft of the US and others, particularly C-17s, the backbone of the US airlift fleet. The flights have been repositioning troops along NATO’s eastern flank, but also moving weapons to the transfer points where they can be delivered to Ukraine. The pace of the flights has only increased.

US European Command (EUCOM) is at the heart of the massive shipment operation, using its liaison network with allies and partners to coordinate “in real time” to send materials into Ukraine, a second Defense official said.


EUCOM is also coordinating with other countries, including the United Kingdom, in terms of the delivery process “to ensure that we are using our resources to maximum efficiency to support the Ukrainians in an organized way,” the official added.

Since Russia’s invasion began, 14 countries have sent security assistance to Ukraine, the official said, some of whom had rarely sent such substantial equipment before.

The “vast majority” of a $350 million US security assistance package has already been delivered to Ukraine, according to the official, only one week after it was officially approved by the White House.

Approximately $240 million of the package has reached Ukraine, and the rest should arrive within days and maybe weeks, “but not longer,” the official said Friday. The components that have already been delivered include “the most needed capabilities, like anti-armor capabilities.”

Once in possession of the weapons, the Ukrainians have used them to slow and stall Russian assaults in different parts of Ukraine.

“I think all of us have been tremendously impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been using the equipment that we’ve provided them,” the official said.

Perhaps most notably, a massive Russian convoy spanning 40 miles of road north of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, has barely moved in days.

“We know that they have conducted attacks on that convoy, that those attacks were effective in slowing and stopping it,” another senior Defense official said Friday.

The equipment being sent in is equipment on which the Ukrainians have already received training, including some “just-in-time” training in late December and early January, the senior official said, adding that the Ukrainians can “use proficiently” the vast majority of the military equipment being sent in.

The speed at which the US now delivers weapons to Ukraine is dramatically faster than just two months ago. Most of a $200 million package approved in late December was delivered within a month, though some ammunition has yet to be shipped, the official said.

Meanwhile, the complete $350 million package, which the official described as the largest presidential drawdown in history, should be completed within days or weeks.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Stings sings his song

STING on Instagram: “I’ve only rarely sung this song in the many years since it was written, because I never thought it would be relevant again. But, in the…”

... " believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too".


“Russians” is off Sting’s debut solo album “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” and is about the Cold War.

In it Sting sings, “There is no monopoly on common sense/On either side of the political fence/We share the same biology, regardless of ideology/Believe me when I say to you/I hope the Russians love their children too.”

He went on to post the address of a place where people can send supplies to those affected by the war.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Netflix suspends service in Russia


Netflix said Sunday it will stop selling and providing its streaming video service in Russia for the time being.

"Given the circumstances on the ground, we have decided to suspend our service in Russia," the company said in a statement.

The company did not specify what would happen to existing subscriber accounts or when it would reevaluate the matter.

Netflix and other major entertainment companies have shunned Russia in a variety of ways in the past week and a half. Netflix put productions in Russia on hold after the war in Ukraine began. Major Hollywood studios have also postponed new movie releases in the country.

[Phil B.]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Antony Blinken gives NATO allies 'green-light' to send fighter jets to Ukraine as Western sanctions cripple Russia's economy - TheBlaze


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[bsm2]

Re: The War in Ukraine

[bsm2]

Re: The War in Ukraine

[Drivee]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Yea, they will fins the same as other countries find nato soldiers. The same. Children's stories..

[RandyW]

Re: The War in Ukraine

attaching photo from nuclear power plant in Ukraine.




Hey bro my ADF is jamming



bro what happened here? did a bomb go off in your office?

[SalesServiceGuy]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Russian tanks emblazoned with ‘Z’ were first spotted on Ukraine’s border. Here’s how the letter became a pro-war symbol



In late February, days before Russian forces launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine, videos and photos began circulating on social media showing tanks, communications trucks and rocket launchers emblazoned with the letter “Z” rolling toward the border.

Digital sleuths speculated over what the “Z,” written in the Roman alphabet rather than Cyrillic, might indicate about Moscow’s next moves.

Military experts interpreted the “Z” as “Za pobedy,” Russian for “for victory,” or as “Zapad,” for “West.” Some dubbed vehicles painted with the symbol the “Zorro Squad,” while others suggested the “Z” might stand for the Kremlin’s self-styled “target number one,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Aric Toler, a researcher with Bellingcat, an open source investigative operation that has been monitoring Russian military operations since Moscow fomented a war in eastern Ukraine eight years ago, said on February 20 that the group had no idea what the “Z” symbol meant and had not seen it used before. “So, assume the worst, I guess/fear,” he wrote on Twitter.

Russian defense policy expert Rob Lee, who has been tracking the “Z” vehicles since troops began massing on Ukraine’s doorstep, suggested the symbol might refer to military contingents assigned to the fight in the country. “It appears Russian forces near the border are painting markers, in this case ‘Z’, on vehicles to identify different task forces or echelons,” Lee, a PhD student at King’s College London’s War Studies Department, tweeted on February 19.

But in the days since Moscow ordered the bloody assault on Ukraine, what started as a mysterious military symbol has become a sign of popular support for the war in Russia, and what analysts describe as the unfurling of a chilling new nationalist movement.

Russians have daubed the “Z” on their cars, sported black hoodies emblazoned with the symbol, and fashioned makeshift “Z” brooches on lapels – a sign that there is some popular support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his efforts to expand Moscow’s sphere of influence by seizing parts of Ukraine.

“Authorities launched a propaganda campaign to gain popular support for their invasion of Ukraine and they’re getting lots of it,” Kamil Galeev, an independent researcher and former fellow at the Wilson Center, a non-partisan policy think tank in Washington, DC, wrote in a comprehensive Twitter thread on the use of the “Z” symbol in propaganda videos and by Russians on social media.
“This symbol invented just a few days ago became a symbol of new Russian ideology and national identity,” Galeev added.

As the Kremlin tightens its grip on any news of Russian casualties or setbacks making its way back home – enforcing an extraordinary new law that makes the spread of “fake” information an offense punishable with jail terms – Putin’s backers are ramping up their support for the war.

At a hospice in Kazan, a city in Russia’s southwest Tatarstan region, children dying from cancer were asked to line up in a “Z” formation outside in the snow to show their support for the Russian military operation.

“Our patients and entire team took part in it, about 60 people in total. People lined up in the form of the letter ‘Z,’” Vladimir Vavilov, the chairman of a cancer charity that runs the hospice, said in a statement. “In our left hand we held leaflets with the flags of the LPR, DPR, Russia and Tatarstan and we clenched our right hand into a fist.”

Vavilov was referring to the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic, separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine that Putin recognized last month as independent states as part of a pretext for invading the country.

The “Z” symbol has also cropped up among members of Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the Duma.

Maria Butina was convicted of serving as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States trying to infiltrate prominent conservative political circles before and after the 2016 election. She now represents the Kirov region for the Putin-supporting United Russia political party, and has backed the war in posts on her Telegram channel.

Butina took to the platform to share a clip of herself drawing a white “Z” on the lapel of her blazer, and has updated her profile to a selfie in a black T-shirt with a white letter “Z.”

“Keep up the work, brothers. We are with you. Forever,” she said in the video clip, clenching her fist.

Correspondents reporting from Ukraine for Russian state-owned news network Rossiya-24 have sported the “Z” on flak jackets.

Footage from Russia’s main cities shared over the weekend captured convoys of cars with white “Z”s taped to windows, honking horns and flying huge Russian flags. At the Gymnastics World Cup in Doha, Qatar, Russian athlete Ivan Kuliak sported the insignia on the medals podium as he stood beside Ukraine’s Illia Kovtun, the gold medalist.

And in two slickly produced propaganda videos circulating on social media, young Russians wearing black T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with the letter “Z” and hashtag #СвоихНеБросаем, or “we don’t abandon our own (guys),” wave Russian flags and voice their support of Putin’s war, chanting: “For Russia, for the president. For Russia, for Putin!”

... I thought the Z symbol was because both sides in the war use the same Soviet era equipment and the Z was to identify friendly forces to the Russians.

[Drivee]

Re: The War in Ukraine

Shopping center in Kiev and naci funeral in Ukraine. No wonder why is war. I was think that we beat naci! But no..No wonder why is war..

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