🇺🇦Ukraine is reinforcing Avdeevka. And there are good reasons to believe it’s bolstering the eastern city—current the locus of Russia’s winter offensive—with one of the best brigades in the Ukrainian army.

The 3rd Assault Brigade. The only Ukrainian ground-combat brigade that we know for sure was in reserve in eastern Ukraine as of last week.

Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the Tavriya group of forces in Avdeevka, announced the reinforcement on Telegram on Saturday. “We strengthen the blocking line, set up additional firing positions and use fresh effective forces,” Tarnavskyi wrote. “Logistical delivery continues.”

That the Ukrainians would reinforce Avdeevka was not a foregone conclusion. In apparently choosing to stay and fight, Ukrainian forces are accepting enormous risk.

After four months of hard fighting, Russian troops from the 2nd and 41st Combined Arms Armies finally breached Avdeevka—a key Ukrainian stronghold just five miles northwest of Russian-occupied Donetsk—earlier this month and approached within a few hundred yards of the main road by which the Ukrainian garrison, centered on the 110th Mechanized Brigade, gets supplies into the city.

At that point, Tarnavskyi had two options. Pull back the 110th Brigade’s survivors from the exposed eastern part of the city and consolidate the Ukrainian line in central Avdeevka or just outside the city, to the west.

Or: reinforce the 110th Brigade and try to push the much larger Russian force away from the garrison’s supply lines.

It’s possible it wasn’t Tarnavskyi’s decision to make.

Last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky removed his popular top general, the charismatic Valery Zaluzhny, and replaced him with the unpopular former head of the ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Zaluzhny has a reputation—deserved or not—for embracing a mobile defense in order to minimize Ukrainian casualties. Syrskyi by contrast has a reputation—again, deserved or not—for accepting high casualties in stubborn, static fights.

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The commander of the Ukrainian armed forces' Tavriya Tarnavskiy, on the decision of commander-in-chief Syrskiy, withdrew the 3rd Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces from the southern front and transferred it to Avdeevka. It is considered the best "Azov" brigade in the Ukrainian army.

These are the same mommy's "lions" from which Wagner made canned food in Bakhmut several times. Our Airborne troops did the same with them later. After which a little more than the remaining 20% of the 3rd assault of the AFU were sent to the rear for additional manning. Then they were reassembled in January at Zaporozhye and now Avdeevka.
Their commander Kukharchuk, after the last defeat of the brigade, said: I do not believe that we will win. I do not believe that we are fighting degenerates. We are all heirs of the Soviet Army. But the Russian one is bigger today.

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Sighting shot — on-target shot

💥 T-80 tank crews of the Zapad Group of Forces obliterate AFU positions in Kupyansk direction. In just few minutes, enemy fortifications were destroyed, and enemy forward units after were forced to retreat suffering losses.

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🇺🇦🤝🇵🇱 Lvov mayor calls Polish farmers who threw Ukrainian grain out of trucks "pro-Russian provocateurs".

- Earlier, Rafal Mekler, an activist of the Confederation coalition of nationalists and Eurosceptics and one of the organizers of the Polish farmers' protests, said that the protesters poured grain out of Ukrainian trucks at the Dorohusk checkpoint.

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In Ukraine, there is a proposal to exhume the remains of the Russian reformer Pyotr Stolypin and exchange them for captured AFU soldiers.

This suggestion comes from Maxim Ostapenko, the director of the state museum-reserve "Kievo-Pechersk Lavra," where Stolypin is buried.

"We have living heroes who are in captivity, and we also have Ukrainian prominent figures buried within the Russian Federation, abandoned and their whereabouts unknown," Ostapenko stated, advocating for their inclusion in the "exchange fund."

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🇺🇸🇬🇧❌⚖️ Assange's Extradition: A Litmus Test for Western Hypocrisy

In a stark call to the UK's conscience, UN special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, stands as a beacon of justice against the impending doom awaiting Julian Assange. With the UK magistrates poised to revisit the High Court's refusal of Assange's appeal on February 20 and 21, the clock ticks ominously for the WikiLeaks founder. Edwards' plea to halt the extradition is a dire warning against the backdrop of Assange's deteriorating mental health and the monstrous prospect of a 175-year sentence looming in the US—a grim testament to the lengths the West will go to muzzle the messengers of truth.

Since his ’19 arrest, Assange's saga has been a sordid tale of Western double standards. Imprisoned in the bowels of Belmarsh for exposing the true face of US military and diplomatic machinations, his only 'crime' has been to hold a mirror to the West's war crimes. From the bloodstained sands of Iraq to the shadowy corridors of global diplomacy, Assange's leaks ripped the veil off the sanctimonious facade of the freedom-loving West, revealing a ghastly portrait of power unchecked and accountability scorned.

The proposed extradition is nothing short of a judicial farce, a damning indictment of the UK and US's contempt for human rights and press freedom. As Edwards rightly points out, the diplomatic assurances from the US are but a thin veil over the barbaric reality awaiting —a reality of isolation, despair, and a Kafkaesque trial. This charade lays bare the grotesque hypocrisy of Western powers, who brandish the torch of human rights with one hand while suffocating dissent with the other. How laughable then, their sanctimonious critiques of Russia, China, and Iran, when they orchestrate the slow-motion crucifixion of a man whose only endeavour was to shine a light on their darkest deeds.

The saga of Assange is a clarion call to the world, a test of our collective moral fibre in the face of the West's duplicity.

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⚙️ Airborne Troops repair and maintenance units promptly repair and modernise armoured hardware and motor vehicles

📍 Kherson direction

▫️ In the field, the specialists of repair and maintenance units perform repairs of any complexity using modern equipment.

▫️ In order to maintain the high combat capability of the units of the Russian Groups of Forces and ensure continuous combat operations, the first priority is to repair hardware necessary for the fulfilment of combat missions.

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Russian strikes on Nikolaev during the night of February 11 targeted two ports and the Black Sea shipyard, according to underground coordinator Sergei Lebedev's statement to RIA Novosti.

Another series of attacks targeted the Nikolaev oil depot and the Zorya-Mashproekt plant, which produces military products.

Additionally, on February 10 in the Kirovograd region, a strike was launched on the railway station in Alexandria, where trains carrying military equipment and fuel were present.

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Hamas has blamed the United States and its President Joe Biden personally for the Israeli Air Force strikes on the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, which caused numerous casualties, according to local media.

Hamas also called on international organizations, including the UN Security Council, to take urgent measures to stop the "Israeli aggression and genocide" against the civilian population of Gaza.

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba reported being bitten by a dog while taking a walk in Kiev. As a result, he had to seek medical attention at the hospital due to bleeding wound on his leg.

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Ukrainian monitoring resources report explosions in the Kharkov region (presumably in the Chuguevsky district)

They also write about missile strikes in the Kirovograd region, and missiles flying over the Cherkasy region.

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