Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: Scott Moe’s genital inspectors

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While I haven’t been following the Saskatchewan election too closely, but while on the campaign trial, incumbent Scott Moe promised anti-trans change room policies if re-elected. And I just can’t even.

Set aside for the moment the fact that this is a) the kind of anti-LGBTQ+ scapegoating that comes out of the authoritarian playbook; and b) that Moe has already told on himself with his previous anti-trans legislation whereby he not only pre-emptively invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, but also inoculated himself and his government from being sued for any harm that comes to trans people as a result of these policies, this policy is unenforceable, just like Danielle Smith’s similar pledge to ban trans women from playing sports in women’s and girls’ leagues. Is the plan from either premier that they plan to hire government genital inspectors before someone can enter a change room or play on a sports team? Or do they plan to let vigilantes do it for them and expose already vulnerable trans people to more violence?

And this is the real kicker—this very quickly spirals out from anti-trans panic to all-out assault on women who don’t conform to a preconceived notion of femininity at the hands of these vigilantes. There was a case last summer in BC where someone demanded that a nine-year-old girl who had a short haircut prove that she was actually a girl at a school track meet. This is the kind of harassment that Moe and Smith are promoting—now every girl with short hair, or small breasts, or who is a called a “tomboy” will need to subject herself to ongoing genital inspections to ensure that she’s not trans. And heaven forfend if a child was born intersex and is not easily sorted into this particular system. Is this the world that they actually want? It’s insidious and it solves not a single problem other than the ones in their fevered imaginations. And the fact that Moe thinks this is his Hail Mary pass in an election where he can’t defend his own record speaks volumes about where this kind of anti-trans panic has taken hold among voters on the political right.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 56 drones and a missile overnight against Mykolaiv in the south, attacking their energy infrastructure. Russia claims that they took the village of Maksymilianivka, but this has not been confirmed. President Zelenskyy told NATO members that their intelligence indicates that as many as 10,000 North Korean troops could be deployed on Russia’s side in the conflict, but no one else could corroborate this.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1846855444934852759

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Roundup: The PBO’s update won’t stop the disinformation

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s revised report on the distributional impacts of the carbon levy was released yesterday, and lo, it reconfirmed that indeed most households are better off with the rebates than what they pay—most especially the bottom 40 percent of households by income. It also showed a much, much smaller impact on the overall economic impact when broken out per household, which is a significant change from his initial report, and what the Conservatives in particular weaponized. They still are—Question Period was full of those same figures being mendaciously framed as costing individual households when it’s talking about the impacts on GDP when broken out into the abstract figure of per-household costs, which is not how the economy works, and yes, any climate action is going to have an impact on GDP, but inaction is also going to have an even larger impact. But lying liars are going to lie about what these numbers mean, because nobody will actually explain the difference to them.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402178200670530

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402188518605295

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402192742269299

With that in mind, take a look at the varied headlines, and guess the outlets:

As you can gather, at least one of those headlines is incredibly misleading, and unsurprisingly, some were framing this in explicitly the same terms the Conservatives are.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1844551195257446581

As well, Yves Giroux went back on Power & Politics to talk about his updated report, and thankfully David Cochrane gave him the gears for it, because he continues to refuse to take responsibility for the state of confusion and disinformation that his previous report has left the country and the political discourse in. I was also struck by the fact that he kept saying that these are the government’s own numbers—so what exactly is his office doing if they’re not independently coming up with their own figures as is the whole gods damned point of why the office was created? It just keeps reiterated how Giroux is completely unsuited for this job, and needs to resign because he’s clearly making the case for why this office needs to be abolished.

Programming note: I am taking the full long weekend off, so have a good Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch

Overnight attacks by Russia and those into Thursday hit civilian and critical infrastructure in cities like Mykolaiv and Kherson. There is also fierce fighting in the strategic city of Toretsk as Russians increase pressure on the eastern front. Ukrainian forces hit an ammunition depot in a Russian airfield in the Adygeya region, about 450 km from the front line.

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Roundup: Setting a precedent in this privilege fight

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There was a privilege debate in the House of Commons yesterday, and it’s expected to carry forward through today, on the subject of the refusal by certain entities, including the Auditor General, to turn over documents related to Sustainable Development Technologies Canada with the intention that they be turned over to the RCMP, even though the RCMP says they don’t want them, in part because it could be tainted evidence that may not stand up in court. This has been an abuse of the Commons’ privilege around the production of papers, in large part because they’re not for the benefit of the Commons or its committees, but to turn them over to the RMCP, which is also interference in their independence. Having politicians direct the police in terms of who they want investigated is the stuff of banana republics or authoritarian regimes, and it amazes me that neither the Bloc nor the NDP could recognize that fact in their quest to use any tool at their disposal to embarrass the government.

The government’s counter-argument to this abuse of privilege is not only that this erodes the independence of officers like the AG, or the RCMP, btu this becomes a dangerous precedent when it comes to Canadians’ Charter rights, particularly around unlawful search and seizure. The Conservatives mock this argument in saying there is no Charter right for government documents, but that’s the thing about precedents when you have a party who is willing to use the authoritarian playbook to their own ends. Today it’s government documents, but how long before it’s a private individual whom they want to embarrass or to encourage police intervention? We watched the Conservatives (with the assistance of the Bloc and the NDP) haul one of the partners from GC Strategies before the bar of the House of Commons, against his doctor’s wishes because he was in the midst of a mental health crisis, because they wanted to embarrass him publicly. It looks like we’re about to get something similar with Randy Boissonnault’s former business partner, who is the subject of the second privilege debate that will be taking place, possibly later today, who has also not turned over demanded documents to the committee as they are on a witch-hunt to find “corruption” that the Ethics Commissioner has repeatedly found no evidence of. And as a reminder, there has been no evidence of any criminal behaviour with the SDTC allegations, but they are trying to find that evidence using the most ham-fisted and abusive methods possible.

Having parliament go after private citizens because they’re on private little crusades, mostly for the benefit of social media clicks, is a terrifying prospect for the future, and yet we are careening down that pathway. Speaker Fergus has been useless in putting his foot down against the abuse of Parliament’s powers in this way, and we may yet be in for another Supreme Court of Canada showdown on defining these powers and when parliamentary privilege because state-sanctioned harassment. But in the meantime, we’ll see the Conservatives drag out these privilege debates in order to derail the government’s agenda, because that’s the level of absolute dysfunction we’re at.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb struck an apartment block in Kharkiv late Wednesday, injuring at least ten civilians. There were also drone attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa and attacks on power systems in Sumy region. Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from Vuhledar after two years of grinding combat, which some describe as a microcosm of the current state of the conflict.

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Roundup: Singh’s unfinished business

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As you probably saw, the big news yesterday was Jagmeet Singh melodramatically ripping up the supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals—well, except he didn’t really, but he posted a social media video and hid from reporters the whole day, and locked down all of their MPs from speaking…but then put up the party president, who didn’t know what she was talking about, and basically humiliated herself on national television, so that was…something. I’ve already expounded upon the events in a column here, but I will reiterate that the procedural warfare we’re about to see is going to be absolutely ridiculous, and Singh not only doesn’t understand jurisdiction, but also how Parliament works. He’s doomed the very things he claims to care about for the sake of hollow performance.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1831387238279819412

Here’s a look at what was accomplished from the agreements in the deal and what wasn’t. Pharmacare hasn’t crossed the finish line, so I’m not sure why both the Liberal and NDP are talking like it has (especially because no province has signed on yet). There was also an unfinished commitment to a safe long-term care legislation, which has only completed consultations, but again, this is pretty much entirely within provincial jurisdiction, so I’m not sure how meaningful any federal legislation is going to really be on it. As well, the Elections Act changes promised in the agreement are still being debated. More than anything, the fact that the NDP pulled out of the deal nearly a year early when the Liberals were living up to their side of it looks an awful lot like Singh and the NDP are operating in bad faith, and it doesn’t speak highly for anyone trusting them in any future agreements.

In pundit reaction, Althia Raj defends Singh’s actions, saying it was necessary for the NDP to rebrand themselves as change candidates in the next election. The legendary Don Newman points out that Singh traded policy wins for political power, and that this move will actually cement Trudeau’s leadership since it will be deemed too risky to hold a leadership contest now. Paul Wells notes that Trudeau’s tactic appears to be just staying the course and saying or doing nothing as everything happens around him, so we’ll see how that works for him as the fall rolls along. And as always, the Beaverton got it right.

Ukraine Dispatch

The overnight missile and drone attack Wednesday killed four people in Lviv, while more energy facilities were targeted in nine regions. Here is a lengthy piece about the first F-16 pilot killed in the war. Ukraine’s foreign minister has also resigned in advance of an expected government shake-up.

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Roundup: Another Longest Ballot initiative

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The chuckleheads at the “Longest Ballot Committee” have struck again, this time with the by-election in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, where they have ensured that there are 91 names on that ballot, which surpasses the number they have on the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election ballot. And no, this is not Conservative skullduggery as many people like to suggest—this is the work of proportional representation fetishists who think that stunts like this will somehow convince the federal government to bow to their demands and institute PR, which isn’t going to happen. Why? Because we’ve been through this process before, and the hot garbage report that the parliamentary committee produced called on the government to invent a bespoke PR system whose main features were going to essentially be impossible to implement without massive constitutional change (because seats have provincial allocations and you can’t achieve a low Gallagher-index score with as few seats as many provinces have) or massively increasing the size of Parliament.

These stunts, however, are pretty much going to guarantee that electoral reform is coming in the form of increasing the thresholds for getting on the ballot, and restricting the kinds of nonsense that enabled these stunts, such as allowing a single person to be the official agent for the vast majority of these names. There is already an electoral reform bill in front of the Commons, which was intended to do things like allow for more early voting days and greater accessibility options, and that means it’s going to be very easy to add in an amendment that will help thwart these kinds of cockamamie tactics going forward. They haven’t helped their cause, and their self-righteous justifications for doing so have actually hurt themselves more than anything.

Ukraine Dispatch

The latest barrage of Russian missiles killed six people across two regions, which included another hotel being targeted. Ukrainian forces also noted that many of those missiles were shot down by their new F-16 fighters. While Ukrainian forces continue to advance in Kursk, Russian forces continue to press toward Pokrovsk because it is a strategic rail hub. Ukrainian drones have hit a Russian oil depot in their Rostov region, and started a fire. President Zelenskyy says that he will present a plan to Joe Biden to help pressure Russia into ending the war.

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Roundup: Both-sidesing the Russian jet footage

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I am going to call out The Canadian Press for their atrocious headline of “Tories delete Canadian dream video featuring what Liberals say are Russian jets.” *sigh* The Liberals didn’t say those were Russian jets—those were Russian jets. Anyone who knows about jets can tell what they are, and they certainly were not CF-18s or F-35s (as the new Canadian fighter jets will be). The problem of course is that CP feels the need to obsequiously both-sides absolutely gods-damned everything in the name of sounding neutral and balanced, rather than simply providing a proper fact-check like they should as the national wire service. It shouldn’t need to be framed as a partisan accusation that the video used stock footage of Russian jets because objectively that’s exactly what the video did—use stock footage of Russian jets when Poilievre’s speech was referencing new Canadian fighter jets (which again, are going to be F-35s).

I will note that CBC simply called out the fact with their own headline of “Conservative Party posts—then deletes—video showing Russian-made jets.” See—it’s accurate and fact-checks, and while the CBC is also just as obsequious as CP is with both-sidesing almost all of the time, they didn’t feel the need to couch this one in a partisan accusation in order to look like they weren’t the ones providing the factual correction. I wish I knew why CP is so gun-shy when it comes to actually calling out this kind of thing rather than always couching it in a partisan accusation (because again, this isn’t the first time this has happened), whether it’s because they’re afraid Poilievre will continue to harass their reporters at press conferences (which appeasing won’t actually help), or because they’re so afraid of being sued that they won’t dare call a spade a spade on their own. Either way, it’s not really serving Canadians to behave this way.

Meanwhile, the Liberals and NDP pounced on that video, including Bill Blair using that footage incident to accuse the Conservatives of being “soft on Russia.” And the Conservative Party’s spokesperson responded that “mistakes happen,” but then went on to excuse it by pointing out that the Liberals once used stock footage of a crowd rather than an image of real supporters at an event. Because apparently if it’s not both-sidesing, it’s whataboutism. (Could we all just be grown-ups in this country for a change?)

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s air defences downed all 11 drones launched overnight Sunday, targeting a number of cities including Kyiv. Civilians in Pokrovsk in Ukraine have been fleeing as Russians advance on their city, destroying outlying settlements as they approach, and the Ukrainian forces say they need to be out in a week or two. In Kursk, Ukrainian forces destroyed another bridge to slow Russian responses, while president Zelenskyy says that their incursion into Kurk shows that Russia’s alleged “red lines” are just a bluff, which they have now called.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1825645648697274715

Good reads:

  • Labour minister Steve MacKinnon is meeting with representatives of the two main railways and their unions ahead of the lockout deadline.
  • Mélanie Joly announced $1 million to help with the mpox outbreak in Africa, as she was visiting a vaccine coordination centre in Ivory Coast.
  • Northern Affairs minister Dan Vandal thinks there were better choices to appoint to the Senate than Charles Adler (which may be a breach of Cabinet solidarity).
  • The federal government is going to freeze approvals for temporary foreign workers in Montreal for the next six months per the province’s request.
  • The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs want the prime minister and Governor General to rescind Charles Adler’s Senate appointment. (No, the GG can’t do that).
  • A court challenge has been filed to force the government to enact its own legislation on making MAiD available for mental illness as the sole concern.
  • A recent report shows that the two business sectors responsible for the majority of capital gains earned didn’t create any jobs over the past five years. (You don’t say!)
  • The federal Liberals have pulled out of the Ottawa Pride parade because of the controversy over their pro-Palestinian statement.

Odds and ends:

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Roundup: Local media takes on Poilievre

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It was a banner day for local media yesterday, as the local news in Sudbury absolutely roasted the Conservatives for trying to send them media lines about how the Liberals’ Ontario caucus is holding their retreat in the “lavish” Sudbury Holiday Inn. No, seriously, that’s the line they’ve been trying to spin. (It’s the “Rome of the North,” remember?) Of course, Poilievre himself has held a top-dollar fundraiser at an expensive restaurant in Sudbury just a few weeks ago, and the Sudbury news did point out the cost of the Conservatives’ previous caucus retreat in Quebec City, but yeah, the attempt at outrage politics is that bad.

Meanwhile, the editor of the local paper in Niagara-on-the-Lake recently tried to ask Poilievre about government supports for local media, and then wrote a lengthy editorial dismantling the completely obvious lies that Poilievre told him in response, in part because he treats people like they’re idiots as he lies to them. It’s nice to see local media like this hold him to account, and are doing it better than some of the national outlets, who are very studiously both-sidesing everything Poilievre says and not calling him out on the clear and obvious lies, possibly because they don’t want to be on the receiving end of his vitriol the way CBC and The Canadian Press have been in recent months.

Speaking of media, I absolutely cannot believe that CTV actually posted a story trying to find a Canada Angle™ to US president Joe Biden’s pledge to impose term limits on judges in that country. Like, seriously, you do not need to Canada Angle™ every single gods damned story that comes out of the US. We’re a different country. We have a different laws and different structures, and we’re doing things better than they are in most cases as it is already. We don’t have an ideological Supreme Court, and we don’t have judges on that court hanging onto their positions literally until they die, and to even try and Canada Angle™ this is just amateurish. We have plenty of under-reported news stories in this country as is. We don’t need to import American stories while we’re at it.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says it downed all 29 Russian drones overnight on Thursdsay, however, a guided bomb struck the Kharkiv region, killing two and injuring twelve. There has been heavy fighting in the eastern front, as Russia is advancing toward the city of Pokrovsk. Russia says it will beef up border defences as Ukraine has taken control of the town of Sudzha, the administrative centre for the Kursk region, where they plan to start delivering humanitarian aid to residents. The push into Kursk has exposed Russia’s vulnerabilities, and some analysts believe could change the course of the war. In case you were wondering, Canada has okayed any of our donated heavy equipment to be used in Russian territory.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1824012366792560682

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Roundup: Another committee demand

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The Conservatives are demanding yet more “emergency” committee hearings, but because it’s a committee they don’t control, they are getting in front of the cameras to make performative demands. Case in point, yesterday Andrew Scheer called a press conference to demand that the NDP and Bloc agree to recall the public safety committee to examine how a suspected terrorist was able to immigrate and obtain citizenship when he may have been videotaped dismembering a prisoner in 2015.

Of course, the Conservatives’ case and rationale is largely hyperbolic, and their blaming the current government for crime rates is both specious and done entirely in bad faith. But then again, Scheer is a lying liar who lies constantly, so he’ll say anything to get attention, and that’s all this is really about—attention. The Conservatives need to get fresh clips for their socials, and summer committee meetings are precisely the kind of thing that they think makes them look good, so that’s why they have been trying to run committees over the summer, and claiming that the other parties want to be “on vacation” rather than doing work in their constituencies. (This becomes one of those areas where you could accuse the Conservatives of projection in that they treat constituency time as “vacation” or a “break” rather than simply doing other kinds of work in the riding).

This is just one more demand for a dog-and-pony show. I’m not sure what exactly a parliamentary committee could do here.

In case you missed them:

  • For National Magazine, I look at BCCLA’s fight to try to see secret documents to hold CSIS to account for possibly improper spying on environmental groups.
  • Also for National Magazine, I delve into the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on annuities the Crown owes for several Ontario First Nations for treaty breaches.
  • My weekend column conducts a thought experiment on how the Liberals could possibly hold a leadership contest under their current rules anytime soon.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the performative hairshirt parsimony on display as people lose their minds over the purchase of the diplomatic condo.
  • My column goes through some of Poilievre and company’s recent deceitful claims when it comes to drug decriminalisation and safer supply.
  • My feature story in Xtra looks at queer diplomacy in Canada, and how we’ve made great strides in the past decade, but we still have a lot more to do.
  • My weekend column on Jagmeet Singh’s continued announcements that are either economically illiterate, or entirely the domain of the provinces.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that their forces downed four Russian missiles and 15 drones overnight. Nevertheless, a missile did strike the Kharkiv region, killing one and injuring twelve. The first group of F-16 fighters are now in Ukraine, and ready to be deployed.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1820400963833958849

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1820799395371110697

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Roundup: Calling for price caps

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The NDP are at it again, and by “it,” I mean making stupid demands that should get them laughed out of any room they’re in. To wit, yesterday they demanded price caps on certain grocery items, claiming that the Loblaws settlement over the class action for the bread price-fixing scheme as “proof” that government needs to take action. I can’t think of a more economically illiterate argument that is trying to simply base itself on “vibes” that will only do far more harm than it will do good.

The high price of certain grocery items is rarely an issue of grocery chains hiking prices. It does happen, but there has been little evidence of it when margins have been stable. If you bother to actually pay attention to agricultural news or Statistics Canada data, it’s pretty clear that much of those price increases are a result of climate change-related droughts in food-producing regions, with the odd flash flood or hurricane also ruining crops, and driving up prices. The invasion of Ukraine exacerbated issues by throwing world markets for wheats and cooking oils out of whack, driving up prices as exports couldn’t get to market. And even if you have growing conditions that rebound, often price are locked into contracts with producers or processors for several years at a time, which can delay prices returning to lower levels as supply rebounds. But the point here is that most of this is explainable if you actually bother to look, rather than just screaming “corporate greed!” because you are ideologically predisposed to doing so.

More to the point, this just strikes me as a little bit of history repeating the demands for price controls in the mid-seventies as inflation was reaching double-digits, which then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau mocked with the phrase “Zap, you’re frozen!” We’re not there, and frankly the demand for price caps is frankly ridiculous, and if they persist, we should resurrect “Zap, you’re frozen” to mock them as relentlessly.

Programming Note: I am taking the next week or so off. Columns will continue on schedule but blogs and videos will be taking a bit of a break.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched drone attacks against power facilities in two regions, prompting more power grid disruptions. Another drone attack appears to have overshot and struck down in Romania, but NATO doesn’t believe that this was an intentional attack. A leaked UN report is pointing to Russia as the culprit of an explosion at barracks housing Ukrainian POWs two years ago that killed fifty.

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Roundup: Desperately latching onto a narrative

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It’s not unexpected, but over the past fifty-two hours or so, we are getting the attempts to wedge the Canada Angle™ onto the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris handoff, and trying to somehow it to Justin Trudeau. When it comes from ignorant Americans, it’s a bit creepy and you want to tell them to worry about their own messes. When it comes from Canadians, it’s cringey and a little bit desperate.

Even if Justin Trudeau were to somehow miraculously decide it was time for him to step aside, say after a long walk along the beach during his vacation right now, there will be no automatic handoff to Chrystia Freeland. Even if she were still interested in the leadership at this point (and it’s not clear if she were, because I suspect that even she realizes that no matter how competent of a minister she is, she’s something of a charisma black hole), there is no internal process for leadership selection, and the process the party designed to bring us Trudeau needs months of voter sign-ups in order to build to a coronation for a new personality cult hermit crab to inherit the empty shell of a party brand. It’s not a quick pivot, and Trudeau would likely still need to remain in a leadership capacity until a handoff, months later, which gives his successor little runway. (As I wrote in my column, if this were a healthy Westminster democracy with caucus selection of leadership, this could have been handled weeks or months ago).

Aside from that fact, there is no consensus candidate to be that replacement that would allow for a handoff like with Harris, where the Americans’ interminable election process means that they had little time to find a replacement before their convention, and all of the major players decided to line up behind Harris. That wouldn’t happen here because there is no one that the party is going to rally around as a whole. There are frankly too many personalities who want that leadership, even if it’s a poisoned chalice by now, and I’m not sure how the dynamics of trying to convert from one cult of personality to another plays on the fly rather than after a complete crash and rebuild. In any case, this isn’t the US, it’s not even remotely the same as Biden/Harris, and the pundit class needs to cool their jets.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack damaged a power facility in the Sumy region, resulting in more power cuts. Russians claim that a Ukrainian drone attack damaged a ferry and killed one person in port.

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