Some updates that have come out that caught my eye and thought worth sharing:
- Russia claims it successfully struck Ukrainian troop concentrations and depots of “foreign weapons” in it’s latest round of missile attacks on Ukraine, and that all strikes were successful. Ukraine, on the other hand, says that 29 of 30 incoming Russian missiles were shot down. The only casualty claimed is a civilian security guard struck by falling debris from an intercepted missile. This attack makes the 9th set of missile strikes on Kyiv this month.
I’ll leave it to the reader to decide who to believe on that report.
- In Crimea, there was a freight train derailment on the rail line between Crimea’s two largest cities, Simferopol and Sevastopol yesterday due to the “intervention of unauthorized persons,” according to Russian officials. Russia claims no casualties from the event. At least eight cars loaded with grain were derailed in the incident.
Huh. Just think how bad it’d be if it’d been done by authorized persons, right?
- Ukraine claims that it has continued to successfully advance on the flanks of Bakhmut, with one Ukrainian official saying that “We managed to advance from 150 to 1,700 meters.”
Maybe Ukraine’s secret counteroffensive plan is to just keep rolling up the flanks of Bakhmut a kilometer at a time until the Russians are gone from the country. ;)
- Russia has announced it has frozen the bank accounts of the Finnish embassy and consulate in Moscow in retaliation for “unfriendly actions” by western countries.
I’m sure the Finns are pretty upset about that. [yawn]
- The EU is preparing it’s 11th sanctions package against Russia. It was thought that this round of EU sanctions would include sanctions against Russia’s state-run nuclear energy company Rosatom, however it appears that the EU has backed off that aspect of sanctions for the time being.
Western countries have been reluctant to go after Rosatom with sanctions because it is a major supplier of nuclear fuel. Europe buys about a fifth of it’s nuclear fuel from Rosatom, and provides enrichment services for about a quarter of what the US uses.
And, finally, this sounds fantastic:
- Ukrainians are celebrating Vyshyvanka Day on Thursday, a holiday begun in 2006 that has caught on nationwide for preserving Ukrainian traditions. To quote from Wikipedia,
Vyshyvanka Day is an international holiday that aims to preserve the Ukrainian folk traditions of creating and wearing ethnic embroidered clothes called vyshyvankas. It is celebrated every third Thursday of May.[1] Vyshyvankas are, along with pysankas (traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs), one of the best known symbols of Ukrainian culture.[1]
For more about Vyshyvanka Day, you can also take a look here.