A dad says goodbye to his son, a fallen Warrior.

Deepest condolences.

Eternal glory to Ukrainian Hero.

📹: grishchenko6313 / Instagram

While Ukraine works hard on reducing Russia's military potential, Russia continues attacking Ukrainian civilians.

One person killed, another one injured in Dnipro.

Vehicles and a shop are on fire.
Horrible.

The Pentagon released $400 million in funding for Ukraine.

Earlier this week, Senator Mitch McConnell, who chairs the US Senate's defense spending panel, criticized Pentagon leaders for withholding the money in his opinion piece for the Washington Post.

"Republican majorities on both armed services committees authorized $400 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative for each of the next two years. <...> Yet the Ukraine aid we passed months ago is now collecting dust at the Pentagon," he said.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the funding has now been released:

"The department recognizes that $400 million was allocated for European capacity building, and as of yesterday, it has been released," he told the House Armed Services Committee when asked about the funds.

The funds must be allocated under the USAI program, under which weapons are purchased from US manufacturers (rather than drawn from stockpiles).

Russia's mentality in a nutshell:

[Q]: If European countries are quarrelling with America, and America is quarrelling with the whole world, how might this end?

Medvedev: In short? With Russia's victory.

Dnipro 💔

The bus burned down completely.
Russia hit a busy area of the city in the middle of the day. Just because.

My heart breaks for my bleeding Ukraine.

Busy day for Russia's Perm.

Local authorities said everything is fine, small drone debris fell, caused a fire and closing down of airports, absolutely nothing to worry about!

President Trump reposted this:

Strait of Trump (instead of the Strait of Hormuz)

This used to be someone's apartment in Odesa, then it was hit by a direct Russian drone strike. Olena, who used to live there, now has no home.

The number of people injured by this Russian attack on Odesa has grown to 20.

📹: Radio Liberty

Putin was shown a fragment of a pipeline through which Russian soldiers tried to infiltrate into Sudzha and were crushed by Ukrainian forces about a year ago.

"Z-bloggers" said the operation was a huge failure of the Russian military.

Caption this?

Peskov gave out a set of statements reflecting Russia's current view of events:

◾️Putin did not invite Donald Trump to the parade in Moscow.

◾️No reaction from Ukraine is required for the May 9 ceasefire. "This is a decision of the Russian head of state, and it will be implemented."

◾️One phone call between Putin and Trump can hardly heal the global situation, as the concentration of conflicts in the world is high.

◾️Putin completely trusts the economic statistics published in the Russian Federation;

◾️There is a trend of GDP decline, the President and the Cabinet of Ministers are making decisions to change it;

◾️Russia is present in Mali due to the necessity declared by the current authorities of that country and will continue to provide assistance;

◾️The Russian Federation will continue the fight against terrorism, extremism, and other negative manifestations, including in Mali;

◾️The decision on a ceasefire in the Ukrainian conflict for Victory Day will be made by Vladimir Putin - at the moment, possible times and dates have not been determined. Moscow has not heard Kyiv's reaction to the truce initiative for Victory Day;

Kaja Kallas:

Russia does not want to engage in any kind of dialogue. We should not humiliate ourselves by saying, "please, we beg you to talk to us."

Instead, we should put them in a position where they move from pretending to negotiate to actually negotiating.

Russia's return to big sports is being normalized. This is wrong and unethical.

President of the Russian Curling Federation Dmitry Svishchev is using legal threats and public pressure in Moscow's bid for international readmission into another Olympic sport, Politico reported.

In November last year, Svishchev said his federation was preparing to submit a lawsuit to the world's top sports court, CAS, to force Russia's return to international curling. The RCF later wrote to the global governing body World Curling, demanding junior athletes be readmitted to competitions, along with their flag and anthem.

World Curling confirmed in late January the return of junior athletes from Russia and Belarus to competitions, with the adult reintegration to be discussed in April at Russia's "request," Svishchev said.

Oleksii Perevezentsev, president of the Ukrainian Curling Federation, accused World Curling of transgressing the International Olympic Committee's recommendation "just to bring back youth, not juniors."

"I am deeply concerned because what we are seeing is not a series of isolated decisions. It looks like a broader shift toward normalizing Russia's return to international sport," Matvii Bidnyi, Ukraine's minister of youth and sports, said.

A resident of Russia's Perm after the attack on local oil facilities:

I just can't understand how we could get into something like this again, after having survived the nightmare of war once before.

Comment from me: it's interesting that Russians are only realizing this now, four years into the war they used to approve.

While the war did not concern them, they were happy with killings of Ukrainians and destruction of Ukraine. Once the war came closer, Russians see no point in it.

Up until very recently, Russia's narrative was that Europe was harmful for any peace efforts, while the US was considered an effective ally.

Now, it looks like the narrative regarding the US has changed.

Medvedev said the US could not be an effective mediator.

There are no patented mediators, although many claim to be such. It is hardly plausible that a country that steals presidents and starts conflicts could serve as an effective mediator in all situations.

Confirmed foreign leaders to attend the parade in Moscow: Lukashenko (Belarus), Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (Kazakhstan), Sadyr Japarov (Kyrgyzstan), and PM Robert Fico (Slovakia).