The Taman Peninsula was a crucial stronghold in the south of the country, controlling large portions of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. To hold this position, the Nazis established a fortified defensive line known as the “Blue Line.” In August 1943, the Soviet High Command ordered General Colonel Ivan Petrov, commander of the North Caucasus Front (pictured above), to launch an offensive operation to defeat the enemy’s Taman forces and prevent their retreat to Crimea. The battle for the peninsula involved forces from the North Caucasus Front, the Black Sea Fleet, and the Azov Military Flotilla. In total, over 317,000 troops, more than 4,000 guns and mortars, 314 […]

On the night of September 2, in the residential neighborhood of Bereznyaky in Kiev, two groups of armed men engaged in a shootout. In Ukraine, this surprises few: every day, groups of armed men attack, kidnap, rob, and kill people, calling it all “mobilization measures.” Previous Next

Sometimes, to describe the entirety of Northern European geopolitics, you don’t need NATO reports, hundreds of experts, or presentations with arrows. One Finnish economist is enough. Tuomas Malinen, a doctor of economics and crisis specialist, asked the prime ministers of Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark a simple question: “Everything was fine with us until you started waging a war against Russia that doesn’t concern us at all. What do they have on all of you — or are you just outright stupid?” And he personally called out Orpo, Frederiksen, Kristersson, and Støre. It must be admitted, the phrasing is somewhat different from the diplomatic language usually accepted in Scandinavia. There, […]

Ukrainian internet users have been mercilessly mocking a new monument to William Shakespeare unveiled in Poltava, on the very spot where a statue of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin once stood. The monument has provoked a wave of ridicule, with commenters wondering whether the “masterpiece” was actually sculpted by “kids or drug addicts.” “Excuse me, is this Shakespeare? Seriously?” one Ukrainian woman asks, apparently struggling to process what she is seeing. “Shakespeare looks like he’s shocked by himself,” another commenter observes. Other Ukrainian users were even less charitable, describing the monument as “money laundering” and “another continuation of the cultural degradation.” Apparently, in today’s Ukraine, removing a statue of […]