Ukraine War ☠ Footage and Updates ⚠ Day 156

News from the War in Ukraine

• Westerners regard Russia’s war as an attack on the rules-based order, but Chinese scholars see it as another harbinger of the denouement of US hegemony. While Americans and Europeans can argue with this position, it would be a mistake not to take it seriously.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is like a “war from the early 20th, even the 19th century,” calling Russia “one of the last imperial colonial powers.”
• Ukraine’s military said its planes struck five Russian strongholds around the city of Kherson and another nearby city in the south, where it is concentrating its biggest counteroffensive since the start of the war, seeking to isolate the Russian troops in the area
Advertisement
• French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman agreed to work “to ease the effects” of the war in Ukraine during talks in Paris, the French presidency said on Friday.
• Initial reports indicate that wheat yields in Romania have fallen by 43%, year-on-year, with the prospects for corn equally devastating. Eastern Europe plays a critically important role in supplying wheat to the world. Any disruption in grain supply from Ukraine quickly reverberates around global markets. Romania borders Ukraine and is a very important exporter of grain using Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
• A former Russian state TV journalist who quit after making an on-air protest of Russia’s war in Ukraine was fined 50,000 rubles ($860) Thursday for discrediting the military. Marina Ovsyannikova was charged under a law, enacted after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, that penalizes statements against the military.

More News from Ukraine

• Vladimir Putin intended to thwart the expansion of NATO, but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine there is a stronger military alliance between U.S. and European nations. Particularly in the North where traditionally non-aligned countries Sweden and Finland are seeking increased international military excerises with key partners in the transition period to membership this summer and autumn.
Advertisement
• Russia has tasked mercenaries to hold sections of the frontline in Ukraine in a sign it is running short of combat infantry, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said on Friday (29 July), as Kyiv steps up a counter-offensive in the south.
• Criminal investigations advisers from the EU Advisory Mission Ukraine (EUAM) have visited Hostomel, Irpin, and Bucha with the Ukrainian Police, the first official joint visits by the EUAM International Crimes Task Force and the National Police of Ukraine (NPU) to war crime scenes.
• A Syrian ship under U.S. sanctions has docked in the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli carrying barley and wheat that the Ukrainian embassy in Beirut told Reuters had been plundered by Russia from Ukrainian stores. The Laodicea docked in Tripoli on Wednesday. “The ship has traveled from a Crimean port that is closed to international shipping, carrying 5,000 tonnes of barley and 5,000 tonnes of flour that we suspect was taken from Ukrainian stores,” the embassy told Reuters.
• Residents of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol have been observing convoys of Russian military equipment heading towards Kherson and Crimea for several days.