Tag Archives: Digital Asbestos

Roundup: Cold water on that fantasy pipeline

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Ever since Alberta premier Danielle Smith started her latest scheme of trying to get the ball rolling on a bitumen pipeline to the northwest coast of BC, everyone has been trying to get some kind of answer as to whether this project—which has no actual proponents, no route, and no hint of buyer contracts—is going to get some kind of fast-track approval. Of course, that’s the kind of thing that the government’s Major Projects Office push has engendered by its very existence, because Smith and the Conservatives federally have been ratcheting up their rhetoric to stake the future of the country on this imaginary project.

At a committee appearance, Major Projects Office CEO Dawn Farrell didn’t answer MPs questions as to whether her powers include being able to violate the BC tanker ban, which would be essential for such a project to happen. But of course, this response was because there is no project, no route, nothing to judge any hypotheticals on, so the safest course is not to answer, because hypotheticals have a way of spinning out of control. And such a question may not wind up mattering at all, because natural resources minister Tim Hodgson came out to say that any pipeline through BC needs approval of the provincial government and affected First Nations. So good luck with that.

So now we will start seeing the fallout from this, with more threats from Danielle Smith, and howling denunciations from the Conservatives. Apparently, the country can’t work so long as we have things like environmental laws, and who cares that oil production increased while emissions as a whole declined (though not necessarily within the sector), so it’s not like those laws were exactly detrimental to the sector. “Oh, but we could have been making even more money!” Really? Would pumping more supply into the market not have possibly depressed prices? There is no guarantee that just trashing our environmental laws would increase investment and make us more prosperous, because things are complex, and climate change has costs. We need to start talking about that fact.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-09T14:05:25.084Z

Programming Note: I’m going to take the full long weekend off, so have a great Thanksgiving everyone.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on Kyiv hit an apartment building and targeted energy sites. Here is a look at the use of saboteurs in the war, both in Russia recruiting them in Ukraine, and Ukraine employing them within Russia. President Zelenskyy is taking credit of the gas shortages in Russia, thanks to new missile and drone strikes against Russian energy facilities. That could be one reason why the Russian war economy has stalled, forcing producers to furlough staff.

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Roundup: Managing the expectations from Washington

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Monday was a weird day of expectations management as prime minister Mark Carney headed to Washington for a “working lunch” with Trump to happen today. There were murmurs from Senior Government Sources™ that there could be some kind of relief for some—but not all—of the steel and aluminium tariffs, but those were heavily caveated and is not going to be any kind of comprehensive tariff deal, because Trump loves his tariffs. (And there is no deal to be had). Oh, and while all of this expectations management was going on, Trump declared new 25 percent tariffs on medium and heavy-duty trucks. Because of course.

Amidst this, Pierre Poilievre released a peevish open-letter to Carney that demanded “no more losing” when it comes to dealing with Trump, and a list of things he wants “wins” on, whether it’s tariffs or softwood lumber, or what have you. Because remember, under this framing, Trump is the rational actor and Carney is the one who is the inept negotiator who simply can’t get anything done. Reality of course, is entirely the opposite, that you can’t really negotiate with Trump because he has no logical basis or consistency for his “deals,” and anything he agrees to isn’t worth the paper its written on (if it’s even written down, as some “deals” were nothing more than blank pages with a signature on it).

To that end, Andrew Scheer went on Power & Politics looking to pick a fight with David Cochrane about this, and when Cochrane pointed out that yes indeed, Trump’s tariffs are both affecting our economy and we still do have the best deal of anyone with Trump, that Scheer twisted this into “agreeing” that Carney’s ineptitude has cratered the economy and soured any deal with Trump, because Scheer is a liar and a braying doofus. But this is what everyone has to deal with when it comes to the level of rhetoric and sheer sophistry coming from the Conservatives these days, which is not exactly conducive to informed debate.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-06T22:08:02.378Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s forces say that Russian sabotage groups are active in the city of Pokrovsk, which Russians have been trying to capture for months. Ukraine’s long-range drones have struck a Russian ammunition plant, a key oil terminal, and an important weapons depot.

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Roundup: Telling on themselves about bail

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After Question Period today, there will be a vote on the Conservatives’ latest Supply Day motion, which is for the House of Commons to pass their blatantly unconstitutional “jail not bail” bill at all stages. This is going to be an increasingly common tactic as they have loaded up the Order Paper with a number of these kinds of private members’ bills, and they are using the rhetoric that the government is somehow “obstructing” their legislation, even though most of those bills would ordinarily never see the light of day because there is a lottery system for private members’ legislation to come up for debate, with no guarantee of passage in either chamber (because the Senate can and will sit on private members’ bills long enough for them to die on the Order Paper if they’re particularly egregious). But most people don’t understand the legislative process, or that opposition MPs can’t just bring stuff up for debate at any point in time, so this is just more rage-baiting over through use of scary crime stories to make the point about how the Liberals are “soft on crime,” and so on. It would be great if legacy media could call out this bullshit, but they won’t.

At the same time, the Conservatives calling it “Liberal bail” is telling on themselves. The law of bail stems from the pre-Charter right to the presumption of innocence, which is a cornerstone of our entire legal system. The specific law of bail has been honed through decades of Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence, and the last time the Liberal government made any major bail reform legislation, it was to codify that Supreme Court jurisprudence, and to actually increase the onus for cases of domestic violence. None of this made things easier for bail, but the Conservatives haven’t stopped demanding that legislation be repealed (and only once in a while will a Liberal minister or parliamentary secretary actually call that out). This is about undermining important Charter rights, but do the Conservatives care? Of course not. They want to look tough and decisive, no matter who gets hurt in the process.

Meanwhile, much to my surprise, Poilievre says he won’t support the (really bad) omnibus border bill, C-2, so long as it contains privacy-violating sections like enhanced lawful access, which is a surprise, because the Conservatives have been champions of it for years (much as the Liberals used to be opposed to it). So, the world really is upside down now. Unless this is some kind of tactic or ploy, which I also would not be surprised by, but at the moment it looks like they’re on a “the Liberals are the real threats to your freedom” kick, which to be fair, this legislation is not helping the Liberals’ case.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched their largest aerial assault against Lviv and surrounding regions early Sunday, killing at least five. Earlier in the weekend, Russia attacked a passenger train at a station in Sumy, killing one and injuring approximately thirty others.

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Roundup: Forcing a pipeline project

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Believing herself clever, Alberta premier Danielle Smith is trying to lay a trap for prime minister Mark Carney, but it’s a really obvious trap and Admiral Ackbar can see it from a mile off. Because she is apparently now a socialist, Smith has decided that the provincial government will take the lead on proposing a pipeline to the northern coast of BC, with the “advice” of three pipeline companies, but none of them will actually be the proponent as this goes to the Major Projects Office. Smith claims that she is trying to get around the “chicken and egg” problem of not having any interested proponents in such a pipeline, and hopes that she can get it off the ground so that a private company will take it over, but remember that it’s not 2014, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of market demand. (Oh, and she wants to use digital asbestos to help map the route, which is even more hilariously sad).

This is very much a dare to everyone to oppose her. BC premier David Eby has called this out as a stunt because it’s not a real project, with no real proponent, and no buyers lining up for any of the product. The Indigenous rights and title-holders in the area are not interested in the project, and are opposed to a bitumen pipeline going through their territory and off their coast, because this would also require lifting the tanker ban because Smith wants to ship bitumen through it, which is a “persistent” product unlike LNG. Carney has previously said that if the province and First Nations are opposed to the project, it won’t go ahead, but he has also given himself the power to override pretty much any objection, or the tanker ban, or any of it, if he really wants to. But a refusal is largely what Smith is counting on, so that she can once again play the victim, and blame the federal government for a lack of market interest.

In a sense, the province wasting millions of dollars on this for the sake of grievance theatre is not new. Jason Kenney sunk $1.3 billion into the dead Keystone XL project in an attempt to revive American interest in it, even going so far as to proposed to fund its construction if the proponent wouldn’t to try and challenge the Biden veto. This feels like more of the same, where she is sinking money she doesn’t have into a losing prospect in an empty gesture in order to secure her political future by playacting as the great defender of Alberta and its ossifying industry. But there are going to be epic tantrums, and she’s going to try and use the threat of separatism to try and get her way (because she thinks it worked for Quebec and doesn’t understand how much it devastated the economy in that province), and we’ll see if Carney is actually prepared to handle it, because so far, he’s telling a lot of people what they want to hear, and those messages are starting to collide.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is now going the longest it’s been without external power for cooling reactors, increasing concern. This after Russia also attacked the area near Chornobyl, which also briefly cut its external power supply.

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Roundup: Giving credence to Poilievre’s trolling

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In spite of it being an exhaustingly packed news week, The Canadian Press took time out to get some reaction to Pierre Poilievre’s trolling tweets about prime minister Mark Carney’s many international trips of late. Yes, it’s summit season right now and there is a lot more travel coming up, but he has made a number of trips since he was appointed PM, and we have to ensure that it’s not “excessive” or something. Never mind that we’re in a moment of global crisis as the United States has turned into an authoritarian regime that is upending the post-war international order and tacitly siding with other authoritarian regimes, and this requires a global realignment of liberal democracies, but is he travelling too much? Guys.

The one thing that irked me the most in the story was the point about Carney having only attended three Question Periods since Parliament resumed last week, and only nine in the four-week spring session. There was no context to this, which is that it means once or twice per week, which is perfectly normal for any sitting prime minister. Once or twice a week was all Stephen Harper could deign to attend. Justin Trudeau started out with three a week, but then fell back to two on most weeks, but sometimes was just once. The difference of course was that Trudeau made it his practice to answer every question on Wednesdays, which no previous PM had done, and which Carney has not kept up (possibly because he may not have stamina enough to pat himself on the back for a full forty-five minute). In other words, Carney’s QP attendance is fully within the norm, and you would think that the national wire service could point this out, but that might mean that they would have to have someone with enough institutional knowledge and memory to know this, but pretty much every bureau on the Hill no longer has either. (As a reminder, I am the only journalist who goes to QP every day, because someone has to).

This being said, I think we need to once again have a discussion about the kind of insular nativism that Poilievre is stoking by making it sound like foreign travel by the prime minister is somehow illegitimate, or that every trip must come with some kind of signed agreement (even though we may already have signed agreements with countries like Mexico, and forging stronger ties is important beyond just a signed piece of paper). Trying to create this false expectation that the PM can’t go anywhere so long as there is “crime and chaos” at home is juvenile and frankly troubling, because it means that they have absolutely no idea how the real world works, and are playing with fire, especially if they ever want to form government one day.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-26T13:24:02.797Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The front line in the conflict has grown to nearly 1250 km in length, as Russian forces have shifted tactics to try and make breakthroughs. That said, both president Zelenskyy and his top military commander say that Russia’s 2025 offensive has failed to meet their goals, and suffered heavy losses in the process. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s assessment of the drone incursions into NATO airspace is that Russia is trying to stoke fatigue in Ukraine’s allies in the hopes of drawing down military support.

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Roundup: A digital asbestos task force

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Everyone’s favourite bullshit Cabinet minister, Evan Solomon, is putting together a task force to determine the next steps in the government’s digital asbestos strategy. While we wait to see just who is going to be on this task force, because that will say volumes, it’s almost inevitable at this point that this is mostly going to wind up being more hype, because Solomon has guzzled it all down, while prime minister Mark Carney has also bought into it as the cure for Canada’s flagging productivity and other problems (rather than the obvious fact that corporate Canada is lazy). We’ve all heard everything Solomon has said so far. I’m not optimistic at all.

It's gonna be so much more hype. We are so boned.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-24T15:21:05.227Z

I’m also extremely sceptical about Solomon insisting that they’re going to take the lessons from the Privacy Commissioner’s investigation into TikTok and its privacy violations in order to shape the new digital asbestos laws, because that would be too much intervention for what Solomon has been preaching about “light touches.” Part of the problem with the TikTok violations are that this is their business model, and while they insist that they are trying to keep children off the platform, they put more effort into hoovering up private data for marketing purposes than they did in using those very same tools they developed to keep kids off the platform, as it was hoovering up their data at an alarming rate. So much of what makes up digital asbestos is similar business models about siphoning that personal data, as well as using techniques to keep users engaged on that platform, hallucinations and all, and not caring about it sending them on delusional spirals that craters their mental health. They don’t care because it’s the business model, and that’s why I can’t trust Solomon to actually regulate—because he has bought into the hype around that model, and if he regulates, the tech bros will cry and whine that they can’t operate in those rules, and he’ll kill the industry, and gods forbid, we couldn’t have that.

Evan fucking Solomon says they'll take the lessons from the TikTok privacy report in order to shape new digital asbestos laws. www.thestar.com/politics/fed…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T03:13:46.890Z

Meanwhile at the UN, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning about the destructive arms race happening right now with digital asbestos and drones, and is calling for international rules about limiting its spread. But of course, I can just hear someone like Solomon insisting that we don’t want too many rules, because that will “stifle innovation,” and so on. Absolutely nobody is taking any of this seriously (and no, we’re not talking about Skynet), and we’re heading for some serious problems in the very near future as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has attacked the petrochemical complex in Salavat for the second time in a week, further reducing Russia’s refining capacity.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Notwithstanding hypocrisy

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Danielle Smith is planning to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to protect her anti-trans legislation before the courts can weigh in, much as what happened in Saskatchewan. If you’ve been following that case, at the first court injunction, Scott Moe hurriedly not only invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, but also enacted legislation to shield his government from lawsuits for any harm that may come to these youths as a result of his policy—because if that’s not telling on himself, I’m not sure what else is.

But it gets better. Danielle Smith is also self-righteously opposing the federal government’s factum to the Supreme Court of Canada on the upcoming challenge to Quebec’s Law 21, saying that provinces have a right to use this clause, but then says she disagrees with Quebec’s use of it, but they should have the right. So, she disagrees with using it to attack religious minorities, but she’s totally justified in using it to attack trans or gender-diverse youth? The absolute hypocritical audacity. She’s also built an entire false discourse that the federal factum is going to cause a national unity or constitutional crisis, which mischaracterises what the federal factums says. The federal government position is that the courts can weigh in on whether the law the Clause is protecting violates rights or not. A declaration of no force or effect. But she doesn’t want them to do that, because they would expose her for attacking the rights of vulnerable youth, and that makes her look bad. The poor dear.

Meanwhile, the meltdowns over the federal factum continue, with the Bloc insisting that this is an attack on Quebec’s ability to legislate for itself (it’s not), and conservatives all over insisting that this is going to tear the country apart, and that the Supreme Court needs to be removed if they impose limits, and so on. Not one of them has read the factum, of course, but they’re treating this like political Armageddon, because that’s never backfired before. I’m not sure the minister is helping by soft-pedalling the message of the federal position, especially since pretty much every media outlet is getting the very basics of this factum wrong. But of course, he would be explaining, and “when you’re explaining, you’re losing,” so they never explain, and things continue to slide downhill at an alarming rate.

Ukraine Dispatch

Fragments of a drone attack over Kyiv have damaged the city’s trolley bus network. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are pushing Russians back in a counteroffensive along the eastern front. Ukrainian drones have hit Russia’s Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil processing and petrochemical complex, one of the largest in the country. Russia has turned over the bodies of over 1000 Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian forces are training their Polish counterparts on more effective ways to counter Russian drones following the incursion.

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Roundup: The problem with “building things” nostalgia

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In all of the announcements that prime minister Mark Carney made this week, particularly around the Major Projects Office and the first tranche of projects that he was championing, there was something he said that bothers me. “We used to build big things in this country and we used to build them quickly,” he said, which is something that we hear a lot, particularly from conservatives. “We built a cross-country railroad in seven years!” But nobody wants to mention how that railroad, or any of those big projects got built, and what changed, because nostalgia is a seductive liar.

What changed, of course, is that we realized we can’t just devastate the environment, and that we can’t just keep displacing Indigenous peoples on their own lands, or that we can’t treat imported labour like slaves, or with working conditions that ensured that a great many of them died along the way. (Yes, I know there are problems with temporary foreign workers and modern-day slavery, but that is a separate discussion). And what is particularly concerning is that while Carney is not acknowledging what changed is that he gave himself a giant Henry VIII clause in his major projects legislation that lets him ignore environmental legislation, or whatever he finds inconvenient, in order to get these big things built fast. Does nobody see a problem here? Really?

Meanwhile, Poilievre mocks the “speeds not seen in generations” talks, and the unspoken part of his “government get out of the way” line is that it ultimately means environmental degradation, ignoring Indigenous rights, labour rights, you name it, because those are the things that are inconvenient. So, in a way, Carney and Poilievre are ultimately aligning on these particular things, and we shouldn’t be shrugging this off. Things changed for a reason. Going back to the 19thcentury is not a sustainable way forward, no matter how dire the economic situation we find ourselves in.

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people were killed in an incursion in the Sumy region, but that incursion has been pushed back. Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s key oil terminal in Primorsk. NATO announced plans to further shore up defences on their eastern flank after the incursion into Polish airspace. And Prince Harry made a surprise visit to Kyiv in support of wounded soldiers.

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Roundup: A narrower, more revealing book ban

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Alberta’s amended book ban was announced on Wednesday, and lo, it is now being confined to graphic novels that depict supposed sexually explicit images, and wouldn’t you just know it, we’re back to the original four books that triggered this whole thing, three of those four titles being queer or trans-related. And nobody will actually say that out loud—not the premier, not the education minister, and wouldn’t you know it, not legacy media either.

To be clear, this move brings us back to the very pointed targeting of LGBTQ2S+ graphic novels that got us here in the first place.Books that were on the government's radar thanks to far-right advocacy groups like Action4Canada.

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-09-08T21:18:06.510Z

The Canadian Press didn’t mention anything about queer or trans materials, and they got quotes from Action4Canada, calling them a “parents advocacy group” instead of a far-right Christian nationalist organization, which they absolutely are. CBC’s reporting kept focusing on “explicit images of sexual acts,” and their televised coverage made zero mention of queer or trans materials, though the print story at least did quote the Fyrefly Institute for Gender and Sexual Diversity, who expressed concern that this could “disproportionately affect 2SLGBTQ+ representation,” but didn’t specify that three of the four main targeted books were queer or trans, which again, is important context to have. Neither of their coverage actually mentioned that if you look at the images that the government sent to the media about the offending images (which the government did actually provide), pretty much none of them were “explicit images of sexual acts” either, even if there was some nudity or allusions to sexual acts that were not graphic or explicit. I also have to wonder why neither the Alberta NDP (and Naheed Nenshi especially), or the Alberta Teachers’ Association could call this out for what it is.

There is a large portion of people who only really started to care about the Alberta book ban stuff when it was Margaret Atwood being pulled from shelves.I hope those same people are willing to stand up and defend queer and trans comics artists too, and call this what it is

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-09-08T21:41:10.098Z

Meanwhile, Maclean’s published a profile of six Alberta separatism supporters in an attempt to humanize them and show how they’re just ordinary people with real concerns. Those concerns? Vaccines, believing climate change is a scam designed to punish Alberta, immigration, and the general grievance addiction that social media addicts on the right have become dependent upon. They couldn’t even be bothered to correct the one gullible woman who believes that the National Energy Program is still running and siphoning the province’s wealth. No discussion about the fact that Alberta separatism is fuelled largely by Christian nationalism and white supremacy, which is really important context to have when you’re trying to humanize these people. It’s astonishingly bad journalism, but, well, that’s Maclean’s these days (just inhabiting the corpse of a once-great magazine).

https://bsky.app/profile/daveberta.bsky.social/post/3lygl7xvz7s22

In fact the #Alberta economy was impacted more because the world oil price dropped while the NEP was in place and actually continued to drop after the NEP was cancelled.#ABpoli

— True Oak (@trueoak.bsky.social) 2025-07-17T17:40:34.155Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Things have been escalating, as last night, a number of Russian drones entered Polish airspace and were downed by NATO air defences (Thread here). And the day before that, glide bombs struck in Yarova, where elderly villages were lining up for their pension cheques. And the day before that was the largest barrage of the war to date, with 805 drones and 13 missiles, and government buildings in Kyiv were hit for the first time. And Trump still isn’t doing anything while Putin mocks him.

Since January 20, Russian air raids in Ukraine have intensified dramatically

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-09-09T20:08:04.868Z

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1965345997044744662

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Roundup: Carney invites a Christo-fascist to address Cabinet

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Prime minister Mark Carney held a presser on his way into the Cabinet Retreat Planning Forum (because corporate-speak), and said that he spoke with Trump on Monday but not to expect any “white smoke” on tariffs, even though the Clerk of the Privy Council is currently in Washington right now (because there is no deal to be had, and I wish he’d stop pretending there was). The thing is, there was no readout from his office about this call, which is really not good for transparency.

Carney also used the term “austerity” when talking about his plans to rein in spending, but he was also talking about “efficiencies,” which is a magical term that politicians like to claim they’ll find. How did that work out for Doug Ford? He won’t say just what spending he plans to rein in, of course, but the neat trick in politics is that everyone expects that spending on everyone else is going to be cut, but not the things that they rely on, because that’s necessary and everyone else is waste or fat, until suddenly their programmes are cut and they feel it intensely. Meanwhile, Carney remains incoherent about cutting spending in order to invest, which ignores the fact that austerity comes with its own costs, and they can be significant over time, and some of the damage it causes can take decades to recover from, if it can be recovered at all.

The more troubling aspect, however, was that Carney invited the head of the Christo-fascist Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, to address Cabinet because he knows what Trump’s agenda is. Erm, excuse me? I mean, if they wanted to read the playbook, they could do that, but what utility does it serve to invite a far-right authoritarian to your meeting? So that he can tell you that you need to be more fascist to get on with Trump? Really? Talk about an utter lack of judgment.

I can't decide which is worse: either our government doesn't understand that these guys are Nazis, or they think it's a good idea to invite Nazis to their cabinet retreat.

— Kate Heartfield (@kateheartfield.com) 2025-09-03T23:12:27.419Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-02T14:08:03.486Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The attacks on Ukraine early Wednesday morning consisted of over more than 500 drones and dozens of missiles, targeting energy and transport infrastructure, demonstrating yet again that Russia has no interest in ending the war. Russia claims that they have captured half of the city of Kupiansk, which Ukraine denies.

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