Ukraine, 6-22-22

First, links to reports from Reuters, the Associated Press, and National Public Radio; others are accessible by clicking on their names below. Then, via Popular Resistance, a link to Mike Whitney’s analysis that sees sanctions against Russia accelerating a decades-long downward trend for the U.S. dollar. — MCM

   

Russia rains rockets on Kharkiv, at least 15 killed. Reported by Pavel Polityuk and Vitalii Hnidyi | Reuters * Ukraine says Russians hitting Kharkiv as they did Mariupol * Fire breaks out at oil refinery inside Russia * Putin to mark day in 1941 when Hitler invaded Soviet Union | KYIV/KHARKIV — Russian forces pounded Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv and surrounding countryside with rockets, killing at least 15 people, in what Kyiv called a bid to force it to pull resources from the main battlefield to protect civilians from attack. Inside Russia, a fire tore through an oil refinery just 8 km from the Ukrainian border. Russia’s TASS news agency quoted a local official as saying it had been struck by a drone. The Russian strikes on Kharkiv, throughout Tuesday and continuing this morning, were the worst for weeks in the area where normal life . . . READ MORE . . .

   

Press group: Ukraine journalist, soldier ‘coldly executed.’ Reported by John Leicester | The Associated Press KYIV — A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier accompanying him appear to have been “coldly executed” during the first weeks of the war in Ukraine as they searched in Russian-occupied woods for the photographer’s missing camera drone, Reporters Without Borders said today. The press freedom group said it sent investigators back to the woods north of the capital, Kyiv, where the bodies of Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov were . . . READ MORE . . .

   

Why volunteer grave diggers in Ukraine are exhuming Russia’s dead, by Ryan Lucas | National Public Radio Ukraine has been collecting the bodies of dead Russians left behind pushed Russian forces back from Kharkiv weeks ago. Two brothers from an outside village are helping unbury the dead. Click HERE to listen and read.

   

The War in Ukraine Marks the End of the American Century, by Mike Whitney | Information Clearing House / Educate! Due to the economic sanctions on Russia, an entirely new order is emerging in which the dollar will be substituted for national currencies (processed through an independent financial settlement system) in bilateral trade deals until — later this year — Russia launches an exchange-traded commodities-backed currency that will be used by trading partners in Asia and Africa. . . . U.S. economic sanctions and boycotts have expanded the non-dollar zone by many orders of magnitude and forced the creation of a new monetary order. READ MORE . . .

   

TO BE CONTINUED