A Russian soldier shot three of his colleagues, seriously injuring them before fleeing his military base.The shooting is just the latest in a series of deadly incidents in the Russian army, and comes amid reports of thousands of soldiers deserting their units, as moarle and dsicipline continues to collapse.
Alexey Zhuravlev, 29, was serving in a military unit in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine.Reports say he was drinking with his fellow soldiers on the evening of July 11, when a row broke out after they started to insult him.
Zhuravlev warned his comrades to stop, and when they refused he shot them with his machine gun.

By 2100, Ukraine's population could be down to 15.3 million.

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs noted this in its adjustment of world population predictions for 2024.

According to the UN, Ukraine's population was 37.441,000 as of 1 January 2024.It was also reported that Ukraine's population will expand to 39.7 million by 2026, after which it will begin to decline annually. At this rate, by 2100, the population might be reduced to 15.3 million individuals.

Oleksandr Hladun, Deputy Director of Institute for Demography and Social Studies, in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia noted that such a forecast by the UN is very pessimistic.

In my perspective, the most dismal long-term prognosis for Ukraine is a population decline to 25 million. However, even if the population starts to drop rapidly, it will be replaced by people who move from other countries," he explained.

According to the New York Times, in the spring of 2024, Ukraine's generation of healthy men under the age of 30 is the smallest in the country's history.

MILWAUKEE — Europe was already panicked about a second Trump presidency and its implications for U.S. foreign policy. With the announcement of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate in November’s presidential election that alarm has only escalated.

Trump announced his choice on Truth Social on Monday shortly after the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the great state of Ohio,” Trump said in a separate statement. Minutes later, chants of “J.D., J.D.,” broke out in the convention hall.

The 39-year-old senator is one of the most isolationist members of the Republican Party. He is vehemently opposed to using more funds to help Ukraine and has blasted what he sees as Europe’s over-dependence on the United States when it comes to military investment.

Since February, Vance’s rhetoric has only toughened as he has doubled down on his Trump-style, America-first foreign policy beliefs. In a speech on the Senate floor in April he blasted Europe for not spending enough on defense.

“For three years, the Europeans have told us that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe. And for three years, they have failed to respond as if that were actually true,” he said, calling out Germany in particular for failing to spend two percent of its GDP on defense.

​​​​​​​ One senior EU official told POLITICO Monday night that the appointment of Vance was a “disaster” for Ukraine, noting that, if he becomes vice president, Vance would likely push Europe to take a stronger stance on China.

Vance’s skepticism about the fundamental underpinning of the ‘rules-based international order’ extends beyond foreign policy. The Ohio senator, whose best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy chronicled his own upbringing in America’s rust belt, has long championed the cause of the American worker and the importance of the U.S. manufacturing sector. Expect him to advocate a turning inwards economically and push against China if he is elected as vice president on the Republican ticket in November — another headache for Brussels as the E.U. seeks to repair a battered trade relationship between Brussels and Washington.

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The U.S. is firmly against any spilling over of the Ukraine war outside the country's borders, the Pentagon has said, as Kyiv pushes for the freedom to launch long-range strikes with Western weapons into Russia. Moscow has warned this could lead to a broader conflict.

"We do not want to see unintended consequences, an escalation that can turn this conflict into a wider one that will go beyond the borders of Ukraine," Pentagon press secretary, Major General Pat Ryder, told Voice of America's Ukrainian edition in an interview published on Monday.


The U.S. is firmly against any spilling over of the Ukraine war outside the country's borders, the Pentagon has said, as Kyiv pushes for the freedom to launch long-range strikes with Western weapons into Russia. Moscow has warned this could lead to a broader conflict.

"We do not want to see unintended consequences, an escalation that can turn this conflict into a wider one that will go beyond the borders of Ukraine," Pentagon press secretary, Major General Pat Ryder, told Voice of America's Ukrainian edition in an interview published on Monday.


AdRyder was responding to a question on potential Ukrainian use of Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to strike deep over the border into Russia. "I think this is something that we all need to consider and take very seriously," he said, adding: "Our long-distance policy has not changed."

The U.S. has sent several rounds of ATACMS to Ukraine. However, Washington has only authorized Kyiv to use the tactical ballistic missile against Russian targets in mainland Ukraine and in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 from Ukraine.

ATACMS are ground-launched missiles with a range of around 200 miles. They are not for use on the front lines but for reaching high-value targets far deeper into Russian-held territory. Ukraine has used ATACMS in dramatic strikes, such as on Russian helicopters and advanced air defense systems.

Shortly after Moscow launched a cross-border offensive from its Belgorod region into Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region in early May, the U.S. greenlit the use of shorter-range weapons it has provided to Ukraine to defend Kharkiv. ATACMS remained off the table, despite calls from Kyiv to lift the restrictions.
We recently authorized the use of U.S. munitions across the border for retaliatory fire and defensive strikes," Ryder said. "If the Russians are forming troops or firing artillery or airplanes across the border, we have recognized this fact and given permission to the Ukrainians."

Earlier this month, the British Defense Ministry had to clarify that its policy on Ukraine using U.K.-provided long-range missiles to attack Russia "had not changed" after new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, suggested Kyiv could use British air-launched missiles to hit Russian territory.

"This morning, I learned about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on July 10. "Today, we had the opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision."

The situation is "more nuanced" than Zelensky's statement indicated, Britain's The Telegraph reported, citing an anonymous senior defense source.

​​​​​​​Russian President Vladimir Putin said in late May that "constant escalation can lead to serious consequences," adding: "If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons?

"It's hard to say; do they want a global conflict?" Putin added.

Earlier this month, Moscow state media reported that Russia was examining fragments of an ATACMS missile, including the navigation system built into the U.S.-made design. Russian state news agency, RIA Novosti, published footage of what it said was the first clip showing the internal structure of a Ukrainian-operated missile.

For decades, Russian officials made clear that putting Ukraine in NATO would cross a red line. William J. Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia and the current CIA director, candidly asserted in 2008 that,
Yet U.S. officials ignored Burns’s astute observation. Despite strong Russian protestations, NATO allies agreed at the 2008 Bucharest summit that both Ukraine and Georgia would become members of the alliance. That fateful decision fundamentally altered Moscow’s threat perception of the United States and NATO. The Washington foreign policy establishment may scoff at the idea that expanding NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia poses a threat to Russia; nevertheless, prudent statecraft requires one to consider how adversaries will perceive and react to your actions.

Adding new countries to NATO should not be an end in itself. Countries should only be invited to join the alliance when doing so improves the security of current members. Ukraine’s addition would do the exact opposite and heighten the risk of a direct NATO–Russia war. The Biden administration’s support of NATO’s promise to bring Ukraine into the alliance at some future date presents a clear logical inconsistency. If Biden believes it is in the U.S. national interest to send American troops to fight and die for Ukraine in the future, why is it not in the U.S. national interest to do so now while Ukraine is being actively attacked?

The simple answer is because it is not in America’s interest to fight a war against Russia—a country that possesses over 5,000 nuclear weapons— on behalf of Ukraine, either now or in the future. Dangling NATO membership to Ukraine is the worst of both worlds. It reinforces Russia’s aggression, provides the hardliners in Moscow with an easy propaganda victory that Russia’s fight is actually with NATO, and leads Ukraine further down a path of false promises and destruction of their country.


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Lies, damned lies, and statistics. If anyone knows how to falsify figures to bolster weak causes, it is the Kremlin. From Stalin’s manipulation of Soviet productivity statistics during his Five Year Plans, to Khrushchev’s exaggeration in the Cold War of his missile numbers, no entity has proved as effective at fabricating facts to demoralise, unsettle and outmanoeuvre opponents.

Today, in a similar manner, Putin points at Russia’s 144 million citizens and argues, through his propaganda mouthpieces, that it is “impossible” for Kyiv to win his war, given Ukraine’s population is a paltry 37 million.

By this logic, figures released by British intelligence this week – that Russia lost more than 70,000 troops in the past two months, averaging daily conflict highs of 1,262 and 1,163 in May and June – become irrelevant. “Russia can always find more men”, one hears people say, justifying Western inaction.

Except it can’t. Raised on documentaries about the “unstoppable” Russian bear – capable of tearing its way through Eastern Europe, as it did in the Second World War – we forget that this is not possible in modern Russia. Nor is it even desirable for Moscow.