Section: National Post (Canada)
U.S. lawmakers say Russia ‘trying to hide their casualties by taking mobile crematoriums’ into Ukraine
LiveLeakA mobile cremator seen in a video posted online, purportedly used by Russia in Ukraine to dispose of bodies to conceal its involvement in the neighbouring country. Russia is so desperate to hide its military involvement in Ukraine that it has brought in mobile crematoriums to destroy the bodies of its war dead, say U.S. lawmakers who...
Canadians take part in NATO war games aimed at sending message to Russia over Ukraine aggression
CAMP DOIRON, Romania — Would Canadians have reckoned 16 months ago infantrymen from a base in the Ottawa Valley would be climbing a hill on the edge of the Transylvanian Alps to attack a Romanian position in war games aimed at deterring Russian aggression? But there they were, a platoon from the Royal Canadian Regiment in Petawawa, Ont., dressed...
Leonid Bershidsky: In trying to eradicate its communist past, Ukraine throws in with neo-Nazis
It’s goodbye Lenin, hello Nazi collaborators in Ukraine these days. Laws signed into effect by President Petro Poroshenko require the renaming of dozens of towns and hundreds of streets throughout the country to eliminate Soviet-era names. At the same time, Ukraine will begin to honour groups that helped Hitler exterminate Ukrainian Jews...
Ukraine is now in a ‘real war’ with Russia, president says amid fears of nuclear weapons in Crimea
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine is open to considering proposals to place a ballistic missile-defence system on its territory to ward off the risk of attacks from Russia, a senior Ukrainian defence official said Wednesday. So far no one has offered. Oleksandr Turchynov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, told Ukrinform news agency in...
Former Soviet republics ask NATO to permanently deploy an army brigade as a deterrent against Russia
VILNIUS, Lithuania — The three Baltic countries are asking NATO to permanently deploy an army brigade to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as a deterrent against an increasingly assertive Russia. The chiefs of defence of the three countries are presenting the request in a joint letter this week to NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, said...
Russia has thousands of troops fighting in Ukraine, report by murdered Putin critic says
MOSCOW — Russia has up to 10,000 soldiers involved in the war in Ukraine and at least 220 have died in battles there in the past year, Russian opposition activists claimed in a report published Tuesday. The report, which prominent Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov was working on at the time of his murder in February, seeks to counter overwhelming...
Ukraine erects rickety stretch of fences along eastern border in First-World-War-style defence against Russia
HOPTIVKA, Ukraine — The flimsy, razor wire-topped fences popping up along bare expanses of Ukraine’s eastern frontier are the first line of defense against a much-feared Russian invasion. Trenches fortified by timber have been hollowed out for soldiers to take up positions. And bulky, metallic obstacles looped together with more barbed wire...
National Post View: An ill-chosen moment for Chrétien to be meeting with Putin
Former government leaders often find it difficult to leave behind the ego-boosting lifestyle that comes with election to their country’s highest office. Limousines, swank hotels, photo ops with similarly eminent international worthies … it’s a heady world to lose just because you’re no longer in power. Thus it must have been a...
Chretien and Putin met Thursday, and now the Harper government wants to know what they talked about
OTTAWA — The Harper government wants to know what former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien said in his meeting Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. And Defence Minister Jason Kenney said he hopes Chretien used the opportunity to deliver the same message the Conservatives always send these days to the Russian leader — get...
Pro-Russia separatists firing rockets again in violation of ceasefire deal, Ukraine says
KYIV, Ukraine — Separatist rebels in the east of Ukraine have resumed the use of rocket launchers that should have been withdrawn under a February peace deal, Ukrainian military officials said Tuesday. The army said in a statement that Pro-Russia rebels fired Grad rockets Monday evening at the government-held town of Avdiivka, which lies on the...
