Good Morning,
Russia Claims - Destroyed Several Hundred Ukrainian Forces
The Russian Defence Ministry is saying today that it repelled a major offensive of Ukrainian forces attempting to break through it’s lines in Donetsk, killing as many. as 250 Ukrainian soldiers, destroying 16 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, and 21 more combat vehicles.
It put out a video showing several Ukrainian vehicles appearing to blow up in a field, but the video gave little credibility to the claims.
What’s significant now, is that Ukraine’s leader Vladimir Zelensky has said this weekend his forces are ready to now launch the counter offensive.
Zelensky said in an interview - “I don’t know how long it will take,” he told the WSJ newspaper. “To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it, and we are ready.”
That doesn’t sound overly promising, as a statement of Ukraines preparedness, but you can bet some of the best military planners in the world have advised Ukraine on tactics and strategy, and as a combined arms fight, it will unfold over weeks and be complex in nature to retake lands occupied and reinforced by Putin’s invading forces.
This morning there are reports of a Ukrainian “iron fist” advance near Velika Novoselovka with reports of intense fighting. There will be more of these in the coming days, by many Ukrainian units, some of them NATO trained on attacking instead of defending.
India Train Crash
India’s rail network is one of the largest in the world transporting a jaw dropping 8 billion passengers a year, and when something went wrong causing a three way crash Friday, it created a horrendous transportation disaster.
At least 275 people are dead, supposedly because of a malfunctioning electronic signalling system and the investigation is not ruling out human error or even sabotage, say officials.
France’s Economy
Three credit ratings are firing off warning about a possible downgrade in Europe’s second largest economy France.
France’s over spending in the wake of inflation and because of the pandemic, has debt surging to 111 per cent of economic output. That put’s France into a category of high debt ratio the likes of Greece, and Spain.
The debt burden is 66 per cent of economic output.
Other News…
-A Court room spectacle will unfold in the UK this week when an aggrieved Prince Harry testifies in open court against the news media, which he holds ultimately responsible for the death of his mother Princess Diana. The lawsuit is against the Mirror Group Newspaper, which Harry accuses of phone hacking and other illegal measures to obtain personal information for it’s tabloid news. One of the Mirror’s editors at the time, was now well known TV host Piers Morgan, who has denied accusations he knew of the hacking.
-U.S. officials on Sunday dispatched F-16 fighter jets to intercept a light aircraft with an unresponsive pilot that violated airspace in the Washington D.C. area. The aircraft a Cessna Citation 560, crashed in Virginia. Four people were onboard with no survivors.
Have a good day everyone.
Dana