Russia is back on its Ukraine bullshit again: last week, the Russian navy boarded and seized a Ukrainian gunboat and a tugboat taking the crews of the vessels prisoner, at least for the time being. NATO is sitting on their hands, just like they did when Putin sent mercenaries and unflagged Russian special forces operators into Ukraine to wrest control of the Crimea peninsula back in 2014. There's a lot of finger wagging and tut-tutting, sure. Trump said that he was calling off his chat with Putin last week as a result of the Russian military's aquatic clusterfuck...but then he met with him anyway.

After four years of putting up with Russian occupation of a chunk of their territory, Ukraine knows better than to leave sorting it out to diplomacy: the seizure of the nation's vessels could well be Putin's way of gauging the west's reaction to a larger action--one that could lead to a large-scale assault on Ukrainian turf.

In response to Putin's dry run, Ukraine has called up its citizen reservists, declared martial law in some parts of the country, and has been toying with the idea of refusing entry to any Russian male of fighting age. Oh, and they've asked Canada to renew the assistance that they've been giving them for the past few years.

From The CBC:

Canada is being asked to renew its military training mission to Ukraine — a proposal that's taking on a whole new level of urgency as border tension ramps up with Russia.

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