Putin beordrar styrkor att gå in i Ukraina - INVASION NU (2022-02-24)

Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence service was born in 1992, shortly after independent Ukraine was itself reborn from the ashes of the Soviet Union. Ukraine’s early security and defence policies were often indistinguishable from Moscow’s, and soldiers and spies who had served the Soviet Union dominated Ukraine’s new security services.

All that changed in early 2014, when a popular revolution on the streets of Kyiv overthrew the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych. A furious Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered masked troops to seize the strategic Crimean Peninsula, in the south of Ukraine, which Mr. Putin annexed shortly afterward. Other Russian operatives appeared in Donbas, a largely Russian-speaking region in Ukraine’s southeast, stirring up a proxy war that would kill 14,000 people between its outbreak in 2014 and the start of the full-scale invasion.

At the beginning of the Donbas conflict, the country was unprepared to fight its giant neighbour, one many Ukrainians had a hard time even perceiving as an enemy. But attitudes quickly hardened. In 2016, then-president Petro Poroshenko unveiled an overhaul of HUR that included a new logo – an owl plunging a giant sword into a map of Russia. It surely wasn’t missed in Moscow that the mascot of Russia’s own military intelligence service was a bat, and owls are one of the few creatures that prey on bats.

Following a meeting with President Zelenskyy and discussions with his counterpart Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, Mr Healey announced that the UK would provide a new package of support to the country, including more artillery guns, a quarter of a million ammunition rounds and nearly 100 precision Brimstone missiles.

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This new package includes:
A quarter of a million of 50 calibre ammunition
90 anti-armour Brimstone missiles
50 small military boats to support river and coastal operations
40 de-mining vehicles
10 AS-90 artillery guns
61 bulldozers to help build defensive positions

Support for previously gifted AS-90s, including 32 new barrels and critical spares which will help Ukraine fire another 60,000 155mm rounds

John Healey also directed officials to ensure that the promised package in April of military aid is accelerated and delivered in full to Ukraine within the next 100 days.