Tag Archives: Pierre Poilievre

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: Alberta’s book bans take shape

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Because Danielle Smith’s Alberta continues to descend into this somewhat farcical MAGA karaoke, the alleged list of books that the Edmonton Public School Board is proposing to ban from its libraries per the government’s new policy got leaked yesterday, and you can bet that so many of the usual suspects were on it, including The Handmaid’s Tale, books by Margaret Lawrence, George Orwell, and plenty of queer titles as well, including Flamer, Fun Home, Gender Queer and Two Boys Kissing, because of course they are. (Funnily enough, Ayn Rand’s two most famous works are also on this list). These were all targeted supposedly for “explicit sexual content,” which is ridiculous in pretty much every single case (including those couple of panels from Gender Queer that has every single social conservative apoplectic).

Well, the list of books being banned from EPSB is appalling. And it's very likely that an author on this list will get their other works pulled too, especially in the absence of teacher librarians.There are books on this list that changed my life. This is what the UCP is taking away from kids.

— Bridget Stirling (@bridgetstirling.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T17:23:59.383Z

More of the list. It's truly shocking to realize just what this will mean.

— Bridget Stirling (@bridgetstirling.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T17:23:59.384Z

But based on the cheers I've heard Danielle Smith's school library content crackdown get at AlbertaNext Panels and UCP function, her political base absolutely adores this.

— Jason Markusoff (@markusoff.bsky.social) 2025-08-28T21:42:02.703Z

Of course, once the list was leaked, the minister had to start engaging in damage control, and wants “clarification” on the list, but come on. You set up a moral panic, predicated mostly on queer books, and once you started pulling that thread, whoops, the results were quickly exposed for what they really are, because Smith and company didn’t want to be upfront about the homophobia/transphobia that they were clearly pandering to. So now they’re going to take control over the book ban lists directly, which they insisted they didn’t want to do, and you can bet that the books that stay banned will pretty much entirely be queer or trans materials. Just you wait.

Meanwhile, falling oil prices have turned Alberta’s planned surplus into a big deficit, because they refuse to get off the royalty roller-coaster. Every time they insist that they’re going to, they just double down on resource revenues because they absolutely do not want to implement a sales tax, and the province’s books are constantly in an absolute mess as a result. Of course, Albertans also expect high levels of public services for their low taxes, which is a choice that provincial governments have been making for close to five decades now, and lo, here we are again. Maybe they’ll learn this time? (Haha, no, they won’t).

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-28T21:27:01.802Z

Programming Note: I am taking the full long weekend off, so I’ll return Wednesday morning.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russians sent 598 drones and 31 missiles into Ukraine early morning on Thursday, most of them aimed at Kyiv, which resulted in at least 21 dead and 48 wounded, with British and European Union diplomatic buildings targeted alongside more residential buildings. (Photos here, some recounting of the scenes here).

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Roundup: Trying to make Churchill happen. (It’s not going to happen)

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In light of news that the new Major Projects Office is due to be launched this week, and comments that prime minister Mark Carney and others have been making about the possibility of an LNG terminal at the Port of Churchill, Manitoba, it behoves me to once again bring up energy economist Andrew Leach, who has a giant reality check for everyone saying this is going to be a thing. It’s not—unless we want to spent billions of taxpayer dollars on a money-losing exercise, that is. Which is not what this whole drive toward expanding resource extraction is supposed to be about.

That said, I think that Leach is ultimately correct here—that Carney and his brain trust have spent too long reading the Conservatives’ talking points about resource development and have believed them to be true, which they obviously are not. But when you have legacy media in this country just completely uncritically regurgitating the talking points from the Conservatives and Danielle Smith, and reporters and political talk show hosts just uncritically mocking the “no business case” line about why we don’t have LNG terminals on the east coast without talking to a gods damned energy economist about why that didn’t happen, well, of course it becomes easy for someone like Carney to just uncritically believe this nonsense, because that’s all that’s being presented. Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet couldn’t actually articulate why there was no business case (because “if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” so they never explained anything), and trusted the media to do it for them, which media wasn’t going to do, and could barely be arsed to even both-sides that particular issue. And this is where we are today, and Carney is going to be forced to take the loss on this one, because Liberals refuse to take Conservatives to task for their bullshit.

Speaking of, Pierre Poilievre was in Charlottetown, PEI, to decry that the incoming clean fuel regulations are “Carney’s Carbon Tax 2.0,” even though Trudeau’s government put through those regulations years ago, they’re not a tax, and associated costs are not going into government coffers, but simply businesses passing along the costs of reducing their emissions. It’s the same brand of dishonest bullshit that he trades in, and even some Conservatives are getting tired of it, telling the National Post that he’s become a caricature of himself. So, way to go there.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-27T22:01:25.944Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive Russian drone and missile attack on energy infrastructure across six regions of Ukraine in the early morning hours, looking in part to exacerbate an existing has shortage. Russia also says that they object to the European proposals around security guarantees, which is not a shock at all.

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Roundup: Kenney’s omitted immigration changes

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The Conservatives are full-on throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks, and yesterday it was the moral panic over immigration figures. Pierre Poilievre put out a press release decrying that permits issued had blown past the proposed caps, and that the system is “facing collapse,” which I’m pretty sure is bullshit, before promising to propose “fixes” in the fall, which you can already be assured will mostly be comprised of dog-whistles. (And remember, the problem is less with immigration numbers than it is with premiers who are not doing their jobs with regards to building housing of properly funding healthcare).

Enter Jason Kenney, who went on an extended rant about how he “fixed” the system when he was minister, and how Trudeau and company broke it, but this is also revisionist history. He talks about the sweeping reforms he brought in in 2010, and how everyone praised it, but he omitted that he blunted most of those reforms before they could be implemented. You see, in 2010, it was a hung parliament and the Conservatives couldn’t push through draconian immigration legislation, so they needed to work with the opposition (most notably Olivia Chow as the NDP’s immigration critic), and they passed a bill that had plenty of safeguards in place. In 2011, there was an election where they got a majority, and before the 2010 bill could be fully implemented (because the coming-into-force provisions were going to take as long as a year), Kenney rammed through a new bill that curtailed most of those safeguards, and used tales of international migration cartels, and human smuggling rings that would bring people into the country to collect social assistance, which those cartels would then collect, and so on. Yes, there were problems with high rates of claims from certain countries, but like most things, Kenney was less than honest and building his scaremongering case, while also doing the thing where he played economic migrants against asylum seekers, and made “good immigrants versus bad asylum claimants” arguments to justify his legislation.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/1960088637925961993

The other thing that Kenney is blatantly ignoring is that the world is not the same world as it was in 2010, and the migration situation is vastly different than it was back then. So yes, the current government is facing different challenges, but I wouldn’t expect Kenney to be honest about well, pretty much anything, because that’s who Jason Kenney is.

effinbirds.com/post/7790141…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-24T20:02:02.229Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has been stepping up drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and fuel terminals, squeezing their war economy.

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Roundup: The same counterproductive demands, once again

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The “changed” and “humbled” Pierre Poilievre was back on his old bullshit yesterday, calling a press conference in Surrey, BC, to decry crime rates, blame the government, give some misleading bullshit about past legislation, and then take friendly questions from hand-picked outlets. Sounds familiar?

But seriously, we’ve been through all of this before. Calling for a terrorism designation for the Bishnoi gang is not helpful, and risks watering down terrorism designations in general (which is why it was a problem to do it for Mexican cartels at the behest of the Trump administration, not to mention designations shouldn’t be made for political expediency). Tougher penalties for extortion? Extortion with a firearm already has a maximum sentence of life in jail, so why they want a four-year minimum is not exactly doing anything more than current sentencing already does. Repealing the former Bill C-75 on bail? As we have said time and time again, this merely codified Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence on the law of bail and made it tougher for those accused of domestic violence to get bail, so repealing it will do nothing. What is it going to take to drive home that these are not solutions, and will do nothing about the current uptick in police-reported crime (and again, these are small upticks that are well below historic norms)?

Meanwhile, Poilievre, Andrew Scheer, and others, spent their day engaging in supportive posts for transphobes, during Ottawa Pride Week no less. So yeah, up to their same old bullshit because they want to rile up the grievance mongers so that they can begin a new round of grifty fundraising. Poilievre has learned absolutely nothing from losing his seat and the election.

Conservatives are going all-in on transphobia today, as Pride Week in Ottawa is underway. #canqueer

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-08-20T21:13:56.179Z

Ukraine Dispatch

At least fourteen people were wounded in a Russian attack on the Sumy region, three people were killed in an artillery attack on the eastern city of Kostiantynivka, and a gas distribution station was hit in Odesa. Russians claim to have advanced in the Dnipropetrovsk region, while Ukrainians knocked out power in parts of Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia.

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Roundup: Undue back-patting for Poilievre

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It really should not have been a surprise to anyone that Pierre Poilievre won the by-election in Battle River—Crowfoot by around 80 percent, which is why he chose that riding after all. But that won’t but an end to the back-patting about the “hard work” he put in, and so on. What I find particularly odd is this narrative that has emerged, from Jason Kenney and others, about how this somehow proved that Poilievre stuck it to the so-called “separatist” movement in the province, and exposed them for the empty shell that they are. Because I don’t see him having done that at all.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/1957815691299713180

This was a federal by-election and there was no real “separatist” presence, particularly when the ballot question in the riding was whether Poilievre deserved a second chance after he was defeated in his own riding. There was no actual separatist narrative being advanced, and even if there was, Poilievre basically said that they have “legitimate grievances,” which is not exactly a rousing condemnation. More to the point, those separatists are focused on the provincial level, because they know that they can wedge Danielle Smith internally within the UCP, because these are the same face-eating leopards that Jason Kenney invited into the party while he kicked out the centrist normies (and those leopards subsequently ate his face). Smith is the one giving these losers oxygen, especially as she has tried to do everything she can to ensure that they get the referendum that they’re looking for, so that she can play it to her advantage in trying to leverage concessions from the federal government. It’s going to blow up in her face eventually, but this has nothing to do with Poilievre and everything to do with Smith, so giving Poilievre any credit here is grasping.

As for Poilievre’s return to Ottawa, could legacy media be less credulous about his supposed change in tone, or his bullshit about how he’ll work with the government on “non-partisan solutions,” which in his mind is the obliteration of environmental legislation, and the other bullshit in his so-called “Canadian Sovereignty Act.” He has explicitly stated this outright. Stop pretending he’s going to act “prime ministerial” or “statesmanlike,” because he is completely incapable, nor is he willing because that doesn’t get him clicks on social media/funds in the party’s coffers.

Ukraine Dispatch

Within hours of the “peace” talks in Washington, Russia launched their biggest overnight attack of the month, with 270 drones and ten missiles, striking energy facilities in Kremenchuk and Chernihiv. But hey, they’re going to draw up options for “security guarantees” that Russia won’t agree to, because their goal is the elimination of Ukraine. (Why are we pretending otherwise?)

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Roundup: Minister shocked at decades-old endemic problem

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Things with the Air Canada labour dispute threatened to veer into farce yesterday as things did not go as the government had hoped. Early in the morning, the Canadian Industrial Relations Board declared that the ongoing strike action by the flight attendants was now an illegal strike—but they didn’t refer it to the courts for enforcement, even though union leaders said that they were willing to go to jail for it (but there is no criminal offence here, merely administrative monetary penalties). And then, gallingly, the minister declared that she was shocked—shocked!—to learn about the allegations of unpaid labour, and ordered a probe of the situation, promising to close any loopholes in the law, but she can’t have been shocked. This has been an ongoing issue for decades. In the last parliament, both the Conservatives and the NDP put forward private members’ bills about this. The NDP in particular made a bunch of members’ statements and questions in QP about the issue, but Hajdu is only now learning about it? Come. On.

https://bsky.app/profile/lyleskinner.bsky.social/post/3lwoofl4ahs2v

Air Canada, meanwhile, is cancelling more flights, because they didn’t think that the union would not obey the back-to-work order (that has no enforcement mechanism). The union is trying to get an injunction because they argue that the order is abusing Section 107’s powers (and they are very likely right about that). And then Air Canada insisted that they won’t negotiate until the planes are flying again…but then talks resumed with a mediator by night, so we’ll see where this is at by morning.

Meanwhile, the broader problem of the moral hazard of continued government intervention, particularly the use of Section 107 (which doesn’t require a legislative process, or anything other than an email or phone call), has other unions on edge that this is going to permanently imbalance labour relations, because employers can simply declare an impasse and wait for the government to intervene. While I do think that these Quebec unions in the CP story are not differentiating between provincial and federal legislation enough (Section 107 is a federal power that applies only to federally-regulated workplaces), but we also know that many provincial governments are not exactly worrying about rights these days, which includes labour rights. Next steps remain the courts, who are likely to strike down these uses of Section 107 as being abusive.

Ukraine Dispatch

The toll from those strikes on Kharkiv and elsewhere early Monday have climbed to at least ten dead and 23 wounded. A Russian general was seriously wounded on the front lines.

At the conclusion of the meeting at the White House, Trump has agreed to European security guarantees (for now, anyway) after Ukraine offered to buy $100 billion in weapons from the US, and  now Trump wants to set up a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy (not that it will change anything as Putin doesn’t want to end the war). AP has a timeline of the changes in the front lines from February 2022 until now.

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Roundup: Attempts to end the Air Canada labour dispute didn’t take

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It took almost no time at all on Saturday for the jobs minister, Patty Hajdu, to invoke Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to try and put an end to the labour disruption at Air Canada (which was both a strike and a lockout), instruction the Canada Industrial Relations Board to send them to binding arbitration. This after the government kept mouthing the words that the best deals happen at the bargaining table, and insisting that they are on the side of workers. Well, they’re less vocal about that part under the current leadership of Mark Carney. (More on the rise of Section 107 in a story I wrote for National Magazine a few months ago).

Patty Hajdu is invoking Section 107 to order binding arbitration for Air Canada and the flight attendants' union. #cdnpoli 1/2

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-08-16T17:11:57.456Z

But it didn’t end that easily. The union is fighting this use of Section 107, and they have opted to remain on strike because the CIRB has no enforcement mechanisms, so the disruption continues, flights continue to be cancelled, and I have no doubt that the Federal Court will be a busy place tomorrow, unless Air Canada decides that they actually want to get back to the bargaining table for real.

My prediction: the Courts will find that the use of s.107 for the Minister to direct the labour board to order binding arbitration to end a labour dispute is both unconstitutional and exceeds the statutory purpose of s.107 as it makes back to work legislation moot. #cdnlaw

— Lyle Skinner (@lyleskinner.bsky.social) 2025-08-16T23:07:55.308Z

A couple of other things to note: This is likely going to have bigger repercussions in the industry because that unpaid work is fairly standard across most airlines, and it hearkens back to an earlier age where flight attendants were promised a chance to see the world in exchange for poor wages, and well, that’s far less tenable these days considering how much seniority they need to build in order to actually get work those flights. And for the Conservatives to suddenly decide they’re on the side of flight attendants is just rank opportunism, so that they can say “Liberals bad!” Nobody actually believes they’re suddenly champions of the working class, even if they have tried to pivot to appealing to blue-collar unions.

https://bsky.app/profile/senatorpaulasimons.bsky.social/post/3lwm5ud2lmc24

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3lwksfe2c6c2o

effinbirds.com/post/7785610…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-17T14:08:02.041Z

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight drone attack on Kharkiv has killed three and injured at least seventeen others. Ukraine also says it pushed back Russians further in the Sumy region. President Zelenskyy met with his “Coalition of the Willing” allies virtually, and a number of European allies will be joining his meeting at the White House today, as Trump is looking to demand Ukraine give up more land that Russia has been unable to seize in order to “make a deal.” Here is a look at the effect of drone warfare on those on the front lines, particularly around things like medical evacuations.

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Roundup: More “Blame Ottawa” clown performance

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Sometimes, it gets very, very difficult to take the state of politics seriously in this country because so much of it is just clown performance. Two examples from yesterday:

1) Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner held a press conference to announce that she was going to table a Private Member’s Bill to stop courts from considering possible deportation in sentencing decisions—even though the sentencing rules were about asking judges to be aware of the potential for unintended consequences, so this bill is really about punching down—and along the way wound up talking about the wildfire situation. In her estimation, the federal government is to blame, and she blamed the federal government for the “forest bans” in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick…except those rules were from the provincial governments. And wildfires are provincial jurisdiction. Nevertheless, she thinks that the federal government needs to do more, but this gets back to the whole point I was making in my latest Quick Take—provinces have the responsibility but have been under-funding their emergency management systems because they know they can call on the Canadian Forces and get them to do it for free. That’s a problem. Rempel Garner is just feeding into this problem through this performance of hers.

2) Pierre Poilievre demanded that the federal government cancel the loan for the BC Ferries contract which will have those new ferries built in China, in retaliation for the latest round of Chinese tariffs on canola. Erm, except that’s a provincial Crown Corporation who contracted for those ships, and the federal government didn’t make the loan, the Infrastructure Bank did, which the federal government doesn’t exercise control over, and even more to the point, no Canadian shipyards bid on that contract. This is just more performance for social media, rage-bait to get his followers angry and opening up their wallets.

1) It is not a "Liberal" loan or a government loan. It's from the Infrastructure Bank, which is arm's-length from government. The loan was made before the procurement process was completed.2) NO CANADIAN SHIPYARDS BID ON THIS PROJECT!Is Poilievre going to force a Canadian yard to build them?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-08-13T17:53:19.054Z

The absolute mendacity of all of this is just exhausting, which is part of the point. It’s a common authoritarian tactic to lie about everything so that people give up trying to inform themselves, and not a single legacy media outlet in this country will actually call them on it. It’s a problem, and we need to do something about it now, before we get any further down the path that the US is taking.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-12T14:08:02.942Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that he told Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin on Friday that Putin is “bluffing” about his desire to end the war—and he’s correct.

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Roundup: More proof the carbon levy didn’t raise food prices

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Pierre Poilievre is at it again, railing about food price inflation, but lo, he can no longer blame it on the carbon levy because that was never actually the problem or the cause of food price inflation, but he certainly vilified it, and Mark Carney capitulated and allowed Poilievre’s vilification to work. Poilievre is now blaming government spending on food price inflation, which is hilariously wrong, but Carney has also capitulated to that as well and is ushering in a new wave of austerity, because why actually explain things when you can just surrender to the bullshit?

Meanwhile, here’s Andrew Leach walking you through why it wasn’t the carbon levy and never was the carbon levy.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians broke through the front lines near Dobropillia, but were quickly contained (but it’s a poor narrative for the upcoming Trump-Putin talks). Ukraine has also been regaining territory in Sumy region. President Zelenskyy says that Russia wants the remaining 30 percent of Donetsk region for a ceasefire, which they won’t give him.

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