The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that we do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as a launch-pad for further inquiry, in addition to being generally free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
North America
Beginning in North America, a wide array of bomb threats continue to spread across the country, mostly targeting schools, but also businesses and shopping centers. While various individuals with certain mental or emotional issues are typically responsible for these events, the possibility exists that these are efforts to monitor emergency response procedures by law enforcement and other emergency services.
As well, a bomb, threat was made against a synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois, some 25 miles north of Chicago on the 18th, while the next day, worshipers at a mosque in Montreal Canada were attacked by an assailant identified as as 24-year-old Mohammad Moiz Omar, who walked into the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, about 15 miles from Toronto, and began spraying “bear mace” at the congregation. Worshipers subdued the assailant, who was arrested by Canadian police, was also armed with a hand ax. Authorities are claiming that the attack was a case of “Islamophobia“.
Turning to Africa, the AlgerianArmy arrested seven suspected “militants” in its ongoing, low-level guerilla war against the remnants of Al Qaeda [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda]-aligned groups in the North African nation, following the end of its civil war in 2002.
Meanwhile, thirteen soldiers were killed in the eastern region of Burkina Faso, in an ambush by unidentified gunmen, while eight more soldiers were wounded. This comes a week after over a dozen police officers were killed in a similar ambush in the landlocked nation’s central-north region, as we reported last week.
In Nigeria, gunmen abducted over sixty people during the week. Most of these abductees are usually released after ransoms are paid, but many are either sold into human trafficking rings or forced to join armed groups, such as Boko Haram.
Speaking of Boko Haram, demining and cleanup operations continue in the Shiroro Local Government region, in the country’s central region, where the terrorist group laid numerous IED’s to deny residents access to their homes as a part of the group’s ongoing guerilla war throughout the region.
In the nation’s far northeastern Borno State, an airstrike by Nigerian Air ForceSuper Tucano light strike aircraft has reportedly killed Sani Shuwaram, the “Commander In Chief” of the “Islamic State – West Africa Province” (ISWAP). Details remain sketchy, although intelligence reports indicate that he may have been replaced by one Mallam Bako Gorgore, although few details of this individual are available at this writing.
In the Central African nation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), horrific levels of violence continues in the Ituri region of the country’s northeast, as fourteen people were hacked to death in a “displaced persons camp” in the province. According to local officials the attack was carried out by an armed faction of the “CODECO” group, a formerly peaceful agricultural cooperative organization, which returned to violence in 2017 after a ceasefire following the Ituri Conflict of 1999-2003.
In the continually strife-torn nation of Somalia, the Somali National Army reportedly killed seven terrorists belonging to the Al Shabaab terror group, while two other militants surrendered in the central region of the county.
At the same time, three persons were reportedly injured by a car bomb in the Hodan district of the capital city of Mogadishu. Accoding to police sources, the attack was aimed at Turkish engineers working in the country. Turkey has been quietly expanding into the African state since 2010, opening a basic military training facility in their own encampment to train a new army for the country, as well as a formal school for officer training.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, four Israeli civilians were killed in the town of Be’er Sheva/Beersheba and one remains in critial condition, following a ram-and-stab attack by an attacker identified as 34-year-old Muhammad Aleb Ahmad Abu Alkyan, a Bedoiun Israeli who was previously convicted and served three years in prison for supporting and promoting ISIS. This comes at the same time as continued protests on the West Bank, and threats by Iran’sIRGC commander to launch a missile attack on the Jewish state.
In Syria, a US base near the Deir Ez-Zor oil field was reportedly struck by several missiles, and reportedly by drones. No casualties were reported, but independent confirmation is not available at press time.
Elsewhere in Deir ez-Zor, a tribal elder was assassinated by IS, while in the north of the country, Russian Air Force jets struck reported IS targets on the 20th.
In the South Asian nation of Pakistan, the driver of a water tanker truck was killed when his truck struck a landmine. The deceased, identified as Mohammad Bahadur Khan Pathan, was delivering water to a the Notal-Gandhwah road construction project in the southern part of the country, when his vehicle struck the landmine. No word was available on which group may have planted the device at press time.
In the central state of Odisha, a man was arrested for “providing logistical support” to Maoist insurgents, in the town of Kalahandi. In the neighboring state of Chhattisgarh, Maoist’s attacked a CRPF camp in the Sukma district, injuring three police officers.
Finally, in India’s far northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, police and units of the Assam Rifles killed two insurgents from the “National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM)” in a raid on a safe house in the Tirap district, recovering military weapons (including a US M4A1 rifle), ammunition and other military-type equipment. The presence of a late-model M4A1 in far eastern India may indicate a case of fallout from the collapse of the US and Coalition efforts in Afghanistan, in August of 2021, potentially confirming the fears of analysts that the equipment left behind may be making its way into the wider terrorist community.
Welcome to the World Situation Report For March 18th, 2022
The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that we do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as a launch-pad for further inquiry, in addition to being generally free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
North America
Starting off in the United States, a wave of bomb threats were called in across the country, to everything from junior and high schools, to grocery stores, a YMCA, a comedy club and even to facilitate a back robbery. Just a short sample of stories are under the links below:
Meanwhile, 21 year/old Elvin Hunter Bgorn Williams pleaded guilty to attempting to join the Islamic State in May of 2021. Williams was arrested by FBI agents as he attempted to board a flight bound for Cairo, Egypt. Williams had come to the attention of Federal law enforcement some five years ago, when he was reportedly kicked off of social media for expressing his opinion that the 2017 suicide attack on the Manchester, England Arena following a concert headlined by singer Ariana Grande was justified because of how she dressed on stage. The Seattle-area mosque Williams attended attempted to de-radicalize him, even obtaining a laptop and cellphone for him, to help him find a job; however, after finding him using the devices to view extremist content online, the mosque demanded the devices be returned and contacted the FBI. The mosque was not named in court documents. Williams was arrested after contacting what he believed to be Islamic State recruiters.
Finally, the US Consulate in Nueva Laredo, in Mexico’s Tamaulipas State, announced that it will be temporarily closed to the public, after being hit by gunfire from suspected gangs on the night of March 13-14, following the arrest of Juan Gerardo Trevino, or “El Huevo,” the purported leader of the Cartel of the Northeast, a breakaway group that calved off of the Los Zetas criminal syndicate.
There was no word on when full operations at the consulate might resume.
Turning to Europe, in a disturbing possible expansion of the current war in the Ukraine, a pair of drone aircraft, reported to be a Tu-141 dating from the Soviet era, in current use by Ukrainian forces, crashed near the outskirts of the capital city of Zagreb, Croatia, while a current-model Orlan-10 scouting drone, believed to be in exclusive use by Russian forces, was discovered crashed in a field northern Romania, signalling a possible spill-over in the on-going fighting.
Both vehicles were reported to have contained traces of explosive material, although investigations by local authorities continue.
NATO officials confirmed that NATO air defense units had tracked the Tu-141 as it flew through the airspace of member-states Hungary and Croatia, but made no effort to intercept the drone. Croatia and Hungary have both raised protests with NATO, as well as launching investigations within their own air defense forces as to why the six-ton, forty-seven foot long was not intercepted before crashing near a large dormitory of an unnamed university, reportedly damaging some 40 vehicles.
The Tu-141 was long ago replaced in the Russian inventory by newer designs, but numerous examples are known to be operated by Ukraine, leading to speculation that some may have been armed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces as long-range strike weapons
Although the Orlan-10 is normally unarmed, the small Russian drones are known to be capable of carrying small ordnance of c.15lbs.
In the southern port city of Marseilles, France, meanwhile one police officer was hospitalized and two others injured after a man attacked the officers with a knife, according to reports, on March 12. The reason for the attack remains unclear. The perpetrator, who apparently was unknown to police for any prior offenses, was killed by other offices after “warning shots” were fired. An investigation is underway in an attempt to determine if the attack has any terrorist connections.
Turning to Africa, Moroccanpolice arrested five suspects on the 16th, on suspicion of being affiliated with the Islamic State, and plotting attacks throughout Morocco.
In northwestern Nigeria, meanwhile, a wave of kidnappings is sparking fears of a return to “forced recruitment” by terror groups such as Boko Haram, although the kidnappings could be related to “forced labor human-trafficking groups” (i.e., slavers).
In Central Africa, the so-called “Allied Democratic Forces”, an Islamist terror group operating in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with ties to ISCAP, continued their offensive in the northeastern DRC province of Ituri, killing as many as fifty-two civilians in attacks on four villages. This comes as one of the ADF’s main leaders, Kabanda Abdulla Musa, was arrested by Ugandan authorities following a series of surprise raids in that country’s border region with the DRC.
Moving to the Arabian Peninsula, the war in Yemengrinds on, with near-continuous air strikes by Saudi-led coalition jets being countered by Houthi strikes against oil refineries by bomb-carrying drones attacking the vulnerable facilities. The confusing, multi-sided conflict – part of the 40+ year-old Saudi-Iranian Proxy War – is now in its seventh year, with no end in sight.
In the Middle East, proper, Israeli government websites were targeted in a large-scale cyber attack on the 14th, as Palestinian confrontations with Israeli security forces in the West Bank killed two, with three more being arrested.
Throughout Iraq and Syria, sporadic, low-level fighting continues, including attacks on US logistics convoys rolling north into Iraq from Kuwait, as well as attacks on Iraqi Army commanders by numerous groups.
This comes as Iran’sIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired a series of twelve ballistic missiles into the Kurdish city of Erbil on the 13th. The IRGC claimed the attacks were in response to purported attacks on an Iranian drone factory by Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, in February and March of this year.
To the south, in Balochistan, 4 gendarmes of the Frontier Corps (FC) were killed and eight wounded in an IED attack on an FC convoy on the 15th. Elsewhere, in North Waziristan, security forces killed four suspected terrorists in a pair of gun battles, after acting on tips.
Turning to India, Indian security forces have reportedly killed 39 terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir, so far this year, although continual skirmishing with Islamic terror groups continues.
Finally, in Central India’s “Red Corridor”, several Communist guerilla’s were killed in encounters with various security forces, while others planted a crude IED at a train station in the northern city of Bihar. The device was discovered and disarmed by police, disrupting rail operations for over three hours.
William Collier- Regardless of HOW and WHY we, the US, got to this place of Russian revanchism, which was certainly goaded on by the would-be globalist hegemonic ruling class of the West, the situation now is that Russsia has become a hazard to our country and its allies. We can leave for future articles how we the freedom-loving masses ought to deal with our own corrupt ruling class who are to blame for this and focus for now on how we, as the US, might contend with the Putinistas, basically Putin and the oligarchs who support him.
We can start with the premise that Putin’s strength comes from a 60% to 70% approval among the Russian people because, basically, although it’s never quite as simple as this, he is viewed as a strong man and Russians, in the main, but not all Russians, adore the strong and despise the weak. There may be many reasons for this, but in general, when a leader is seen as strong they enjoy support, even if in character and in how they treat the Russian people, they are corrupt and evil.
This may SOMEWHAT be shifting as more and more Russians do not cotton to such thinking, but among most, among at least 60% if polling is accurate, it still holds that “strong is good and weak is bad.”
Keep this in mind.
Next, let’s consider three other factors: Russia has a basically under-developed and corrupt economic system, Russia is essentially a gas station, and the only real power Russia has is their nuclear arms.
So now we have four key things: Russians support the strong and hate the weak, Russia has an underdeveloped economy due to massive corruption, Russia’s only economic asset is gas and oil, and the only real military strength they have is nuclear arms.
The Putinistas are authoritarian and corrupt. While they cater to the Russian nationalist sentiment and some rightly see them as a counter to the West’s vision of a globalist corporate-government hegemony that is directly against nationalist sovereignty, the Putinistas are mostly for themselves first. Perhaps in Putin’s mind he and his cronies ARE the living embodiment of Russia, but the net effect is all wealth and power centers on Moscow and to hell with everyone else.
Add to all this that we, as in the US, have other fish to fry, as it were. We face threats in many quartets.
Internally we have this corporate-led assault on our history and way of life through the cancel-culture wokatariate and their rather intolerant behavior toward anyone who refuses to ditch their Judeo-Christian values for the new alt-gendered fantasy they call progress. On the other hand we have a reactionary core who, in response to this, are embracing things like identitarianism and either racial separatism or racial supremacism, and this could grow.
But externally we have threats coming from places like Iran and China, North Korea, Pakistan, Cuba, and Venezuela, among others.
Thankfully, at this time, our internal and external threats haven’t unified. The true powers, as in the actual shot-callers behind each of these threats, are as much against each other as they may be a threat to the people of the United States of America.
With all this in mind, how do we, as in the US, counter Putin and his cronies?
At the basic level we have to seek ways, in every possible arena, to make him and his cronies look weak and powerless. His chosen arena is Ukraine and while countering him there may be important, as we analyze all the arenas Russia must operate in we will find many opportunities to out Putin on his back foot.
First, there is the more obvious fact Russia depends on energy exportation. Second, there are Russian goals in Syria whose regime Putin props up. Third, there is the Russian defense industry which exports weapons all over the world. Fourth, there are Russian territories claimed by Japan and China. Fifth, there are Russian economic and investment schemes in Africa.
All these vulnerabilities present opportunities to bring pain to bear and make Putin look weak.
In Syria, for instance, and with Iran as her ally, Russia has severe disadvantages if we care to exploit them. The US can shut Iran off from all exports and imports via the sea. The US can arm anti-Assad forces in Syria while Russia cannot bring seaborn reinforcements as long as the war in Ukraine is happening. These moves would potentially force the Russians out of Syria and would demonstrate how Russia could do nothing to help their ally Iran.
As for Ukraine itself, efforts to continue to supply Ukraine with anti-air and anti-armor weapons and munitions should continue apace, albeit through many points and not via massive convoys the Russians can bomb. The erosion of Russian military might in Ukraine plays into a narrative that Putin is weak.
Now let’s consider all the places where Russia is vulnerable internally and use our covert means to foment trouble on every periphery. Russia has a substantial and growing, and disaffected, Muslim minority, some of whom may feel strongly that Russia is their foe. Russia has cordial relations with the Central Asian countries, this is something we ought to be undermining.
We can support the opposition in Belarus and Khazajstan, for instance, and foment unrest at a time when Russia cannot spare forces to put them down.
Instead of thinking holistically about a global response on Russia’s periphery, the present US administration, whose policies in line with past Presidents have goaded the Russians into attacking Ukraine, are thinking in a very limited and one-dimensional way. They are actually perpetuating the mythos of Putin as a strong man who they are powerless to stop because it might “escalate” things. Having goaded the Russians we are now saying we don’t want to escalate things further with them lest they unleash nuclear holocaust.
It would have been better to counsel the Ukrainians to pursue strong neutrality, to cool their ambitions to join the EU and NATO, and to actually invest in a credible air defense, which they neglected up until now. As for whether or not the US actually operates or funds biolabs and whether or not they are former Soviet labs or present-day bioweapons programs, the activities of the US, under Fauci’s management, in these things remains suspect.
But, be that as it may, the mythos of Russia as being 10 feet tall and Putin being beyond our reach stems from the fact we are playing in his sandbox and on his terms instead of taking a holistic approach. Goading the Russians into a war that is spiraling out of control was bad policy, but now that we have, the question is, “should we retreat and let Putin be the strong man or should we take the battle into arenas where he is helpless?”
Undermining Putin’s standing as a strong man is the easiest way to depict him as weak and undermine his support among his people but, most importantly, his fellow oligarchs.
The fact the US is not taking a holistic view of limiting Putin’s power and is not encouraging peace in Ukraine based on neutrality may prove that the people pulling the levers of power in Washington today aren’t really doing so in the interest of the American people.
Welcome to the World Situation Report For March 10th, 2022
This is a new column for the Freedomist. I am delighted to be able to join the Freedomistteam, and to once again work with William Collier, my long-time friend and editor. For those who may have followed my work at the Military Gazette, this column is a version of MilitaryGazette’s “World SITREP” column. The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that I do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as an introductory launch-pad for further study, in addition to being free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
That said, let’s move on to the news…
Japan Moves Ahead with Plans to Deploy Automated Cargo Vessels
Japan has decided to proceed with automating sea-going cargo vessels, as falling numbers of skilled crews and the dream of increased profits tempt executives to give automation a chance.
The falling numbers of people willing to take the very real risks of a life working the sea is real. Despite the comparatively low crew requirements of modern ships, compared to older vessels, increasing traffic from more and more hulls in the water have balanced out the numbers. However, for some decades, fewer and fewer people sign up with merchant shipping academies, making qualified crew hires a priority. In such an environment, the allure of a completely automated cargo vessel, requiring no crew to pay or insure, is very real.
The problems, of course, are legion: many ports have strict rules concerning pilots coming aboard to conn ships, not least because channel conditions change, sometimes frequently; ships also require underway maintenance – engines are reliable, but issues frequently occur. The number of things that can go wrong on any seagoing ship are too numerous to go into in any detail here, but having crew aboard to address the problem as it occurs is a problem Japan will need to address, before most ports – and shipping companies – are going to accept completely robotic cargo ships…
…And that’s before we address pirates, and hacking.
TFI Global – Japan moving ahead with automating cargo vessels:
Merchant Ships Attacked In Ukrainian Waters, France Seizes Russian Freighter
As the war in Ukraine intensifies, cargo vessels are suddenly finding themselves in the midst of a deadly crossfire. As of 2/26/2022, the Moldovan-flagged chemical tanker “Millennial Spirit”, carrying 600 tonnes of diesel fuel (with a Russian crew), was apparently shelled by a Russian warship, seriously injuring two of the crew; the Turkish owned “Yasa Jupiter” was struck by a bomb (with no reported casualties, thankfully), and is limping towards Romanian waters; and the Panamanian-flagged bulk freighter “Namura Queen”, loaded with wheat, was struck by a rocket on her stern; she is currently underway, making for a safe port near Istanbul, Turkey.
A large number of non-combatant vessels remain tied to docks in harbors and estuaries as fighting continues to rage around them. These vessels will be hard-pressed to leave on their own, as Ukrainian harbor pilots are obviously occupied elsewhere.
Meanwhile, France has seized the Russian-owned vessel “Baltic Leader” in the English Channel, on suspicion of being on the list of sanctioned Russian companies black-listed by the European Union (EU), NATO and the United States.
Contrary to popular belief, wars are not “good” for business – preparing for war is good for business, not actually fighting it. With the world logistics system still reeling from Covid-related delays and the Ever Given accident that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a full week, delaying schedules and causing knock-on effects throughout the fragile global logistics network, it is hard to detail specifically what effects Putin’s War will have on the global shipping industry, but it is unlikely to be good.
A bomb threat against the Bainbridge Island – Bremerton disrupted ferry service on March 6th. Police explosive-sniffing K-9’s cleared the ferry “Tacoma” to return to service by 1pmPST…
Also on the 6th, two persons attempted to rush the main gate at Joint Base Andrews (JBA) – home of the Presidential transport squadrons – at approximately 9pm, but were stopped by alert guards and automated barricades. One of the individuals (a 17-year old male) was captured, and the other is being sought. Although reports remain foggy, at least one of the persons (the individual captured by security) was armed. No shots were fired, despite initial reports of an “active shooter”.
As of this writing, the other individual remains at large. No information has been released on either individual involved in the incident, although the 316th Security Forces Group and local authorities have stated that the at-large individual is not on the base.
Vice President Harris and various other members of the cabinet had been aboard JBS earlier in the evening, boarding a flight to Selma, Alabama, but were not present at the time of the incident.
Proving that some people just want to act out, thus making martyrs where they don’t need to, a makeshift “bomb” was thrown onto the ground of the Russian diplomatic mission to The Hague, in the Netherlands, while an envelop containing an unspecified “white powder” was mailed to the Russian embassy in Canberra, the Australian capitol, this week….
In Sweden, meanwhile, it seems that the so-called “Islamic State” – still extant – will take anyone, as a 49-year old woman was convicted of not preventing her then 12-year old son from being recruited to fight for the terror group in 2013. The child, along with his father and an older brother, were all subsequently killed fighting for the IS. The mother denied any wrongdoing, saying that she had been “lured” to Syria in 2013 by her husband…no word on what she thought was happening in Syria at that time.
In Turkey, riot police celebrated International Women’s Day by firing tear gas at demonstrators attempting to join a women’s march. The demonstrators are engaged in protests against the Erdogan government’s withdrawal from a European treaty on combating violence against women last year.
Meanwhile, Turkey has also arrested or is seeking to arrest over one hundred individuals that the government claims were involved in the attempted coups-de-tat against the Erdogan government in July of 2016.
Malian Army (FAMa) forces beat back an attack by ISWAP on an outpost in Mondoro, in the central part of the country, on March 4th, reportedly killing at least 70 terrorists, while suffering at least 27 troops dead, 33 injured, and 7 missing. The attack was described as “complex”, and involved the use of “vehicle bombs”.
To understand the scale of this fighting, the numbers being reported by FAMaare essentially two full platoons of infantry, or about two-fifths of an infantry company (generally, about 180 personnel). And this is not the first action of its kind, in this country of barely 20million people; actions on this scale have happened more than a few times. This kind of loss rate in action is rather rare, these days; to give an idea of scale, the United States lost a total of 258 personnel in the Gulf War of 1990-1991, and in the entirety of what is known as the “War on Terror“, from 2001 to today (March, 2022), the US has lost a total of 7,074 dead.
In neighboring Niger’s southwestern Torodiregion, five soldiers were killed and three more were wounded on March 6th, when their vehicle rolled over an “improvised explosive device” (IED) laid by the “Islamic State in the Greater Sahara”. Niger has approximately 12,000 troops deployed full-time in its interior, trying to fend off terror groups that have been operating in earnest in the region since early 2017.
Niger was also the scene of the October, 2017 ambush of a US Army Special Forces team and their Niger partner-forces at the village of Tongo-Tongo which killed four of the ten-man US team, and four Niger troops.
In Nigeria’s far-northeastern region, Boko Haram terrorists attacked a Nigerian ArmyForward Operating Base (FOB) near the town of Damasak, and were repelled with the loss of seventeen dead and three captured, along with several vehicles and weapons.
Boko Haram made its name when it appeared several years ago, by kidnapping hundreds of elementary- and middle-school children to use as either child-soldier “recruits” (for the boys) or as “wives” (for the girls) for their “troops”.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s“Department of State Services” (DSS) security service has reported that the “Islamic State/West Africa Province (ISWAP)” has been training suicide-bombers in the northeast of the country, as well.
The “Middle East” remains unstable in the extreme. A small sample of the past week:
*The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide-bomb attack in Pakistan, that killed five security force troops when the attacker detonated their vest as a convoy rolled past in the Pakistani state of Baluchistan. This comes on the heels of the suicide attack on March 4th, in Peshawar that killed 63 and wounded nearly 200.
*In Syria, Russian air force planes launched a series of attacks on March 4 and 5, targeting Islamic State forces in the central Resafa region of Syria’s Raqqa Governate, scene of the Islamic State’sPyrrhic defeat and loss of their “capital” in October of 2017. While cheered at the time as signalling the “end of ISIS”, intense fighting has continued in Syria ever since, with Russian air forces launching over 900 sorties in February, alone.
*Elsewhere in Syria, 13 Syrian Army troops were killed and 18 wounded, when the bus they were traveling in was ambushed near the ancient city of Palmyra on March 6th.
India, for a change, was largely quiet this week. Aside from security forces being on “high alert” following the Peshawar attack, police in Assam arrested five people linked to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), while arresting a Maoistleader in the city of Gaya, in the northern state of Bihar, the country was largely quiet, this week. Given the normal news cycle in India, this is a welcome change.
Finally, the South KoreanNavyfired warning shots to ward off a North Koreanpatrol boat that strayed too close to Baekryeong Island, near the Northern Limit Line on the 8th. The North Korean craft was chasing an unarmed North Korean vessel, whose crew is being questioned by South Korean authorities.
Ukraine War February 28th, 2022- Source liveuamap.com
We are approaching one week since Russia invaded Ukraine allegedly to free up a newly declared breakaway country in Ukraine and to free the world from a Nazi scourge within. Since that time, Russia has made progress, but perhaps not nearly as fast as Putin’s reputation would like. The initial hard slog has already been a black eye to the Putin shirtless wonder on a bear meme image, but victory followed by full consolidation of power in Ukraine could make the world soon forget his uncivil war’s uncivil beginning.
Or so Putin hopes. But Zelensky’s cockiness in the face of death has caused Europe to rally to his side in ways that Russia must have imagined were not possible. Germany is now arming up and sending arms to Ukraine. Finland is sending arms to Ukraine. Even the Swiss are siding with Ukraine on this one.
And now, Zelensky has served notice that Ukraine intends to seek membership in the EU. This comes after Ukraine just demanded that Russia leave all of Ukraine, including the Crimea. Perhaps Zelensky is trying to draw other nations into the conflict, which is not implausible.
The fatty enticement of a corrupt Ukraine beholden to Western corporate powers (as it has been since Obama) could be enough to consider throwing in even harder, like providing air support. NATO could attempt to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
This isn’t to suggest that this writer believes Europe will ever commit that much blood to the cost, but Zelensky has to throw whatever Hail Marys he has. What helps Russia short term, however, might hurt their chances of keeping other nations out of the fray.
The most likely next candidate to join in the fight would be Poland. After a long history of war between the two once great powers that goes back a few centuries, Poland and Ukraine, it seems, are one. That likelihood was significantly increased with Belarus now committing actual troops to aid the Russians in their invasion of Ukraine.
Leading up to this moment, Poland has been dealing with Belarus using ‘refugees’ (mostly healthy young men, fighting age and fighting fit kind of men) from the wars in the Middle East as weapons to attempt to break through Polish borders. So far, the Poles have stood. Now, the Poles must wonder if they should wait for Russia to build up power or move to stop Belarus from being a useful ally to Russia against Ukraine.
Of course, the nuclear missiles keep the Poles thinking, but, as the Poles are not a nation with nukes, and taking into consideration they would not be attacking Russian troops, let alone Russian soil, it would seem reasonable to presume Russia would not use nukes in response. Or so one would hope.
More likely, Western powers are activating dissenters from within Belarus, and there are plenty there, whether the West were involved or not, willing to throw in with anyone if they can get rid of their dictator, Lukashenko, who is now sending their boys to attempt to help Russia invade Ukraine.
Belarus is potentially an Austria of World War One for Germany, a weak ally that drags you down with the resources you will now need to keep that ally afloat. The question is, how much does Poland fear Russia won’t stop with Ukraine? How much does the rest of Europe, America, seek to risk with nuclear weapons at play?
It could be possible, however, that if Belarus were to destabilze, the Russians might quickly negotiate a deal that allows them to hold on to their southern gains but for Zelensky now moving to apply for EU membership. Now, the Russians have little reason to stop even if Belarus becomes a drain. This latest move by Zelensky puts an even bigger bounty on his head and puts a lot of super spies into deep action trying to unsettle regimes, specifically, those of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus.
If a regime change cannot be affected in Belarus, one wonders if and when Poland might enter the war. If one hopes to avoid a nuclear war, one might hope for Poland to not join the war. At that point, nuclear-powered troops might have a hard time avoiding each other.
What is most startling is the amount of anti-Russianism seeming to sweep the world, with some notable exceptions like China (more on that to follow). From Israel to Africa, protests have been happening in support of Ukraine against Russia. Russia has somehow lost the global meme war.
As for China, their internet loves Russia, it would seem, but China’s lapdog, the International Olympic Committee, just threw Russian athletes under a fleet of buses, something that would not have happened without Chairman Xi’s approval.
China is all too happy to smile for Russia but see Russia weakened as well. China is also under a lot of boycott scrutiny as of late, so China coming out strong in support of Russia is something that would have to be done very diplomatically, let’s just say.
China will have to send conflicting messages to have plausible deniability depending on which audience they are speaking to.
Some key things to watch for are protests in both Russia and Belarus. Do they grow? Do the governments use violence to stop them? Is Zelensky still alive? That’s a pretty major one now all the more significant after the EU membership filing.
Does Kiev fall within the week? Does Russia avoid causing massive civilian casualties?
Here are the critical headlines I read to produce the analysis you’ve just read:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has officially signed an application for Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, according to a post from his verified Facebook page.
“[Zelenskyy] has just signed a historical document — Ukraine’s application for European Union membership,” tweeted Andrii Sybiha, the deputy head of the president’s office. Ukraine’s prime minister and head of parliament also signed a joint statement, he added.
At peace talks with Russia on the Belarusian border, a member of the Ukrainian delegation demanded the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territories, including Crimea and Donbass, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Oleksii Arestovich said Monday.
Later, in comments to Ukrainian media outlets, Arestovich clarified that the demands were his personal opinion and not the official position of Ukraine.
Various sources reported that negotiations in Pripyat were going badly. Russia demanded the recognition of Crimea, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) within the boundaries of the regions and the federalization of Ukraine.
Cease-fire talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials began on the Belarusian border on Monday as Russia faced deepening economic isolation four days after invading Ukraine.
Russian forces seized two small cities in southeastern Ukraine and the area around a nuclear…
KYIV, Ukraine — Initial talks between Russia and Ukraine concluded without result on Monday evening, with both delegations returning from the site of the negotiations in Belarus to their capitals for consultations.
Kyiv is seeking a cease-fire in Ukraine and an end to hostilities, according to Mihailo Podolyak, a member of the Ukrainian delegation.
“The parties identified a number of priority topics in which certain solutions were outlined,” he said after the discussions ended. “In order to get some opportunities for implementation and logistical solutions, the parties are returning to their capitals for consultations.”
The Kremlin wants its security demands taken into account “unconditionally,” President Vladimir V. Putin told the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as talks were underway. Those include the recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, and “demilitarizing and denazifying the Ukrainian state and ensuring its neutral status,” meaning that it gives up…
The IOC Executive Board “recommends that International Sports Federations and sports event organizers not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials in international competitions,” the organization’s statement released on Monday read.
The Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, World Championships and World Cups are among the international sporting events the IOC is recommending Russian and Belarusian athletes be removed from, according to the statement.
Regarding how long the ban would last, “The IOC EB, assisted by the IOC Task Force, continues to closely monitor the situation. It may adapt its recommendations and measures according to future developments.”
Shell has pledged to sever ties with the Kremlin by exiting its joint ventures with the Russian state-backed energy colossus Gazprom.
The oil giant said it will end its tie-up with Gazprom by selling its 27.5pc stake in the Sakhalin 2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and will stop working on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which Germany put on ice earlier this month.
Shell’s Russian assets were valued at $3bn at the end of last year.
The move came little more than 24 hours after BP announced that it would divest its near-20pc stake in Kremlin-controlled oil major Rosneft.
Shell’s announcement followed a crunch meeting between Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden and Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, earlier on Monday.
Shell has invested an estimated $1bn (£750m) in the 750-mile pipeline that was designed to double the amount of gas flowing from Russia to Germany.
Mr van Beurden said: “We are shocked by the loss of life in Ukraine, which we deplore, resulting…
Ukrainian officials have asked European citizens of all stripes to join their fight against Russia — and some nations are responding approvingly to the call.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his officials over the weekend announced a new volunteer force for foreign fighters, called the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, and urged volunteers to join through their local Ukrainian embassies. Zelensky said “anyone who wants to join the defense of Ukraine, Europe and the world can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals.”
Foreigners willing to defend Ukraine and world order as part of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, I invite you to contact foreign diplomatic missions of Ukraine in your respective countries. Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too.
HELSINKI: Finland will send weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Monday (Feb 28), in a shift of policy.
The shipment will include 2,500 assault rifles, 150,000 bullets, 1,500 anti-tank weapons and 70,000 food packages, Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen added.
“The anti-tank weapons can be used to fight armoured vehicles,” Kaikkonen told a news conference after a government meeting on Monday.
The decision means a shift in policy for Finland which has maintained an image of a non-aligned country since the Soviet Union in 1956 gave up a naval base it had leased in southern Finland after World War II.
Kaikkonen hinted at government scrapping Finland’s long-standing policy not to supply weapons to war zones on Sunday when he said the government was considering sending Ukraine material that could be used to kill.
The Nordic state on Sunday also decided it would supply Ukraine with helmets, bulletproof vests and first aid equipment and gave Estonia permission to donate Ukraine field guns previously owned by Finland.
Move comes as Belarus faces criticism for allowing Russian forces use its territory as a launchpad to attack Ukraine.
The European Union has warned that Belarus could start hosting Russian nuclear weapons after a “very dangerous” decision at a referendum to drop the country’s non-nuclear status.
“We know what does it mean for Belarus to be nuclear. It means that Russia will put nuclear weapons in Belarus and this is a very dangerous path,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.
The move by Belarus came as the country was being condemned internationally for being used as a launchpad by Russian forces to attack neighbouring Ukraine.
Borrell slammed the “fake referendum” on constitutional changes. The amendments allow the country to host nuclear weapons and Russian forces permanently. It also extended the rule of leader Alexander Lukashenko.
About 800 people were reportedly arrested after the vote sparked the biggest protests in months and thousands took to…
Russian billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich, who owns Premier League football club Chelsea, has accepted a Ukrainian request to help negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, his spokesperson said.
Word of Abramovich’s involvement in talks, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, first came from the Jewish News, which said Kyiv had reached out through Jewish contacts to seek his help.
“I can confirm Roman Abramovich was contacted by the Ukrainian side for support in achieving a peaceful resolution, and that he has been trying to help ever since,” an Abramovich spokesperson said.
“Considering what is at stake, we would ask for understanding as to why we have not commented on either the situation as such or his involvement.”
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine’s government.
A Ukrainian government official tells CNN that Ukrainian intelligence indicates Belarusian “readiness to maybe participate directly” in the invasion of Ukraine, “in addition to allowing Russians to use their territory as well as letting them cross the border.”
A second source close to the Ukrainian government told CNN that in addition to the Ukrainian intelligence, the Biden administration has also conveyed to the Ukrainian government that Belarus is preparing to join the Russian invasion.
The intelligence sparked fresh concern within the Biden administration. A senior administration official said the White House is watching actions taken by Belarus closely and is prepared to levy more sanctions on the country. In a sign of the escalating turmoil in the region, the US announced Monday that it was suspending operations at its embassy in Belarus.
A YOUNG girl has been shot by Russian troops alongside her parents as Putin’s forces have slaughtered 16 children amid the bloody invasion.
Polina, a 4th-grade pupil, believed to be around ten years old, was killed by a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group who opened fire on her family’s car in Kyiv.
According to the city’s mayor, Volodymyr Bondarenko the girl’s brother is at Okhmatdyt children’s hospital and her sister is in intensive care.
A devastating total of sixteen children have died so far in the brutal war, said Ukraine’s Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko.
MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. Russian armed forces have blocked the cities of Kherson and Berdyansk, took control over Genichevsk and an airport near Kherson, Chief Spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry Igor Konashenkov said at a briefing on Sunday.
“Over the past day, the cities of Kherson and Berdyansk were completely blocked by the Russian armed forces. The city of Genichevsk and the Kherson airport were also taken under control,” the spokesman noted.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people “who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.” The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.
When clarifying the developments unfolding, the Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not…
Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Malyar said on Sunday that the number of dead could be as high as 4,300, but it still needed to be clarified. She also said on her Facebook page that Russian troops lost about 146 tanks, 27 aircraft and 26 helicopters.
A network of social media groups and pages spreading disinformation in Ukraine has been taken down, Facebook owner Meta announced on Sunday.
In the days immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Meta said it had uncovered a “relatively small” network of around 40 accounts, pages and groups posing as news outlets and using fake identities on Facebook and Instagram.
The network, run by people based in Russia and Ukraine, created profiles on YouTube, Telegram, Russian Facebook equivalent VKontakte and Meta’s own platforms in order to promote websites that published “claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state,” Meta said.
“It mainly posted links to long-form articles on its websites, without much luck making them engaging. It got very few reactions, and under 4,000 followers,” Meta’s threat intelligence lead Ben Nimmo said on Twitter.
The network also created fake Ukrainian user accounts using AI-generated profile pictures which posed as residents…
A network of social media groups and pages spreading disinformation in Ukraine has been taken down, Facebook owner Meta announced on Sunday.
In the days immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Meta said it had uncovered a “relatively small” network of around 40 accounts, pages and groups posing as news outlets and using fake identities on Facebook and Instagram.
The network, run by people based in Russia and Ukraine, created profiles on YouTube, Telegram, Russian Facebook equivalent VKontakte and Meta’s own platforms in order to promote websites that published “claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state,” Meta said.
“It mainly posted links to long-form articles on its websites, without much luck making them engaging. It got very few reactions, and under 4,000 followers,” Meta’s threat intelligence lead Ben Nimmo said on Twitter.
The network also created fake Ukrainian user accounts using AI-generated profile pictures which posed as residents…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday it has established “total air superiority” over Ukraine on the fifth day of President Vladimir Putin’s deadly invasion of the neighboring country.
The latest briefing claiming Russia’s military gains came as Russian and Ukrainian delegates were due to negotiate a ceasefire on the Ukraine-Belarus border at noon Monday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said it has destroyed eight Buk M-1 air defense system vehicles, an S-300 missile system, three radars and five aircraft in the past 24 hours.
“Since the beginning of the operation, Russian forces have hit 1,114 Ukrainian military infrastructure facilities, including 31 command posts and communications centers, destroyed 314 tanks and other armored vehicles, 57 multiple launch rocket systems, 121 field artillery pieces and mortars,” he said.
The US is set to send an additional $350m worth of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to help it defend itself against the Russian invasion.
The move comes after US President Joe Biden authorised the military assistance.
According to the US Department of Defense (DoD) statement, the assistance will include anti-armour, body-armour, small arms, various munitions, and military equipment from DoD inventories.
The latest military aid marks the third time in recent months that President Biden used the Presidential Drawdown Authority to facilitate emergency security assistance for Ukraine.
The countries’ friendship has “no limits,” they declared.
Given that the leaders met just weeks before the invasion, it would be understandable to conclude that China should have had better knowledge of the Kremlin’s plans. But growing evidence suggests that the echo chamber of China’s foreign policy establishment might have misled not only the country’s internet users, but its own officials.
My colleague Edward Wong reported that over a period of three months, senior U.S. officials held meetings with their Chinese counterparts and shared intelligence that detailed Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine. The Americans asked the Chinese officials to intervene with the Russians and tell them not to invade.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, there have been countless examples of citizens going above and beyond to defend their country.
Whether they’re towing tanks away with tractors, moving land mines off roads with their bare hands or tragically blowing themselves up on bridges to slow the Russian advance – the actions of everyday Ukrainians have been heroic.
But for every day the Russian invasion is frustrated, the chance that Vladimir Putin will unleash a nightmarish arsenal of weapons on the region increases.
Former KGB agent Putin has a vast supply of unconventional weaponry at his disposal including robotic tanks and fearsome crack dog units, reports the Mirror.
Like many commentators I was surprised (and heartened) to see a video of a drone strike carried out by Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 drones against a Russian supply convoy. Unlike some such videos this one seems to be genuine according to Rob Lee, senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The Ukrainian Air Force has since confirmed it has carried out such attacks; another video can be seen here. This simply could not happen if Russia was conducting its military operations properly, and points to a series of failings in the Russian war machine.
To rewind slightly: the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 – ‘Tactical Block 2’ — is approximately equivalent to the old U.S. Predator drone. It has a wingspan of 39 feet and a 105-hp engine giving it a cruising speed of around 80 mph, so it could…
Five Chinese historians have published an open letter condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in a move that breaks ranks with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s ban on criticism of the move by Putin.
“As a country that was once also ravaged by war … we sympathize with the suffering of the Ukrainian people,” the letter, signed by history professors at five top Chinese universities, said. “The ruins of buildings, the sound of artillery fire, and the wounds of refugees in Ukraine have injured us deeply.”
Calling the invasion a “war that began in the dark,” Nanjing University professor Sun Jiang, Peking University professor Wang Lixin, Hong Kong University professor Xu Guoqi, Tsinghua historian Zhong Weimin and Fudan University’s Chen Yan call for an immediate end to the fighting.
“We emphatically call on the Russian government and President Putin to stop the war and resolve any dispute through negotiations,” it said.
A bonfire of EU shibboleths on the economy, conflict, finance, energy supply, migration, and even the bloc’s future shape and size, has been lit by the conflict raging in Ukraine.
Battlefield images, the leadership of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has framed the war as being between European democracy and brute bullying power, and the challenge of coordinating with UK and US allies who are pushing for more while having less to lose, has created a new political necessity.
The standard rational actor analysis of economic interests has gone by the wayside. And while during normal times, the EU’s deep economic ties with Russia had been a liability, with countries fearful of upsetting the Kremlin, those ties now offer leverage unmatched anywhere else in the world.
South Korea’s capital has joined a number of cities around the world lighting monuments in blue and yellow in support of Ukraine, reflecting the colors of its national flag.
Four landmarks in Seoul — the City Hall, Namsan Seoul Tower, Sebitseom on the Han River and Seoullo Media Canvas — were lit up on Monday.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians and supporters protested against the Russian invasion outside Moscow’s embassy in Seoul on Sunday and Monday.
New York’s Empire State Building was also lit up blue and yellow last week, with crowds gathering in Times Square on Saturday to protest the Russian invasion.
One protester, Olga Ladygima, told CNN she hadn’t slept for the past three nights. She is from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, she said — and…
HELSINKI, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Airlines on Monday braced for a potentially lengthy dispute after the European Union (EU) banned Russian airlines from its airspace and Moscow responded in kind, barring carriers from 36 countriesincluding all 27 members of the European Union.
Dozens of flights were cancelled or sent on costly detours as the crisis hit airline shares.
The rerouting meant Kazakhstan’s airspace saw a tripling of flights to more than 450. read more
Russia’s ban came after the EU and Canada on Sunday banned flights by Russian airlines as fighting raged in Ukraine. read more
Without access to Russia’s airspace, carriers will have to divert flights south while also avoiding areas of tension in the Middle East. read more
Shares in European airlines and airport operators were down 3-6% in early trade, while Finnish national carrier Finnair cut its guidance with its shares down 21% in afternoon trade. [nL8N2V32H1]
In the dingy basement of Okhmadet Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, mothers and babies find what comfort they can on makeshift beds and blankets laid out on either side of the concrete aisle, Reuters reports.
Older children who are too sick to go home or flee the capital with their families following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are also adjusting to life under siege, staying away from windows and lying in corridors on intravenous drips.
Staff, patients and their families share Ukrainians’ sense of shock at being caught in a conflict few could have foreseen even a few days ago.
Russian troops may soon attempt to jam communications (mobile and internet network) in the near-front zone.
The relevant statement was made by the National Guard of Ukraine on Telegram, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“According to the intelligence data, the Russian military may soon attempt to jam communications (mobile and internet network) in the near-front zone to conduct a further disinformation campaign regarding Ukraine’s fake ‘capitulation’ with calls to surrender and not to oppose. Please be aware and do not trust the enemy,” the report states.
According to the National Guard of Ukraine, Ukraine will fight and defend itself as long as necessary.
A reminder that, on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, starting a war. Russian troops are shelling and destroying the key infrastructure facilities, launching missile strikes on residential houses in Ukraine.
This weekend, as the Japanese government dramatically ramped up sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine, the Japanese people responded, too. With the help of Japanese social media influencers and celebrities spreading news about Ukraine and calls for action going viral on social media, Japanese residents have shown up for Ukrainians in droves.
Solidarity with Ukraine could be found in many Asian countries, with symbolic protests in several capitals and Singapore and South Korea joining the sanctions against Russia. People in Myanmar and Hong Kong also recognized the Ukrainians’ struggle as similar to their own fight against oppression.
In Tokyo, Japanese residents stood alongside Ukrainians and Russians in several protests for peace, including one that drew about 2,000 people in the popular district of Shibuya.
Japan will slap sanctions on Belarus over its “clear involvement” in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, zeroing in on President Alexander Lukashenko and other Belarusian individuals, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Monday just as talks between Kyiv and Moscow got under way.
Belarus, known for its close ties with Russia and serving as an entry point for Russian forces invading Ukraine, will also be subject to Japan’s export controls.
The scope of Japan’s sanctions regime in response to the military attack launched last week now expands beyond Russia and two pro-Moscow separatist regions in Ukraine. The move is in line with steps taken by the United States and other nations.
Along with the announcement on Belarus, Kishida said the government will limit transactions with the Russian central bank. It is the latest escalation of…
Feb 28 (Reuters) – Russia has employed hundreds of powerful and precise ballistic missiles in the first days of its Ukraine attack, but analysts and U.S. officials say many Ukrainian defences remain intact – effects that countries around the world are watching closely.
The use of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) is likely being watched closely as a real-world case study by China, North Korea, and other countries that have been developing increasingly advanced arsenals of such weapons in recent years. And Western governments who see Russia as an adversary are eager to gather data on the missiles’ effects in combat.
Russia had fired more than 320 missiles as of Sunday morning, with the majority of them SRBMs, a U.S. official told reporters.
According to U.S. estimates, the initial hours of the Russian onslaught last week included more than 100 missiles launched from land and sea, mostly SRBMs but also cruise missiles and…
Those numbers seemed to reflect the mood of the conference-goers, many of whom said they felt bad about the situation in Ukraine, but they had other concerns that were of higher priority – issues like immigration, inflation, public schools and what they see as government overreach in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
BRUSSELS, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Energy ministers from European Union countries will on Monday discuss preparations for potential energy supply shocks and measures to shore up gas stocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Europe’s top gas supplier, has sharpened concerns of disruption to energy supplies and increased scrutiny of European Union countries’ reliance on imported fossil fuels.
EU ministers will “take stock of possible additional actions in terms of safeguarding supply, the use of strategic oil stocks, the management of gas stocks” at the emergency meeting, according to a preparatory note by France, which currently chairs EU ministers’ meetings.
The Ukrainian military said on Monday that Russian troops had slowed down their offensive as Moscow’s assault against Ukraine went into its fifth day.
“The Russian occupiers have reduced the pace of the offensive, but are still trying to develop success in some areas,” the general staff of the armed forces said.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday, sending shockwaves around the world.
Ukraine forces, backed by Western arms, have managed to slow the advance of the Russian army.
The Ukrainian military also accused Russia of launching a missile strike on residential buildings in the cities of Zhytomyr and Chernigiv, cities in the country’s northwest and north.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said that the European Union would close its airspace to Russian aircraft in response to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, ABC News reported.
In a press conference, Von der Leyen said, “We are shutting down the EU airspace for Russians. We are proposing a prohibition on all Russian-owned, Russian-registered, or Russian-controlled aircraft. These aircraft will no more be able to land in, take off, or overfly the territory of the EU.”
“So let me be very clear,” she continued, “Our airspace will be closed to every Russian plane, and that includes the private jets of oligarchs too.”
Von der Leyen also announced that the European Union would be prohibiting media backed by the Russian government.
Authorities in Kyiv have issued a call on social media for information about crypto wallets controlled by politicians in Russia and Belarus. On Saturday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced on Twitter that the country’s crypto community will reward those who provide details leading to their identification.
Ukrainian crypto community is ready to provide a generous reward for any information about crypto-wallets of Russian and Belarusian politicians and their surroundings. War crimes must be pursued and punished! To share info please contact in Telegram: https://t.co/XHidwUQ8bE.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets members of the Ukrainian community at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, Mayfair, on February 27, 2022 in London, England. Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine has killed scores and prompted a wave of protests across Europe. | Jamie Lorriman/WPA Pool/Getty Images
As tensions remain high with Russia’s invading troops and tanks driving deeper into Ukraine, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday that Ukrainians fleeing the invasion will be welcomed into the country if they have family in Britain.
“The U.K. will not turn our backs in Ukraine’s hour of need,” Johnson said in a statement, announcing that visa restrictions are being eased for Ukrainians who have immediate family in Britain, Reuters reported.
Ukraine has demanded the withdrawal of all Russian troops, including from Crimea and Donbass, during the ongoing talks with Russian delegations in Belarus, according to Russian media Sputnik.
Russia’s foreign ministry demanded that Canada keep their diplomats safe
After hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Ottawa on Sunday to show their support for Ukraine, Russia’s foreign ministry demanded that Canada keep its diplomats safe — and threatened retaliation if they failed to do so.
The protesters, who then made their way to city hall, were called hostile in a statement by Russia’s foreign ministry. Russia called in Canada’s ambassador to Moscow to lodge a formal protest, Reuters reported.
Some 90 percent of Ukrainians support President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s defense the country against Russia, while most believe they will be able to repel Russia’s attack, a new poll has found.
The poll conduct by the Rating Sociological group, a Ukrainian non-governmental polling organization, found that 70 percent of respondents said they believed Ukraine would be able to…
Retired Major General James “Spider” Marks explains how Belarus, a Russian ally which shares a border with northern Ukraine, could help capture the capital Kyiv.
On the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, did not mention Russia once. Mr. Bennett said he prayed for peace, called for dialogue and promised support for Ukrainian citizens. But he did not hint at Moscow’s involvement, much less condemn it — and it was left, as preplanned, to Mr. Bennett’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, to criticize Moscow in a separate statement that day.
The pair’s cautious double act embodied the bind in which the war in Ukraine has placed Israel.
Israel is a key partner of the United States, and many Israelis appreciate longstanding cultural connections with Ukraine, which, for several months in 2019, was the only country other than their own with both a Jewish president — Volodymyr Zelensky — and a Jewish prime minister. But Russia is a critical actor in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Israel’s northeastern neighbor and enemy, and the Israeli government believes it cannot risk losing…
Switzerland will adopt all the sanctions that the European Union has imposed on Russian people and companies and freeze their assets to punish the invasion of Ukraine, the government said in a sharp deviation from the country’s traditional neutrality.
“We are in an extraordinary situation where extraordinary measures could be decided,” President and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told a news conference in Bern on Monday, flanked by the finance, defence and justice ministers.
Busloads of Jewish orphans from the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr near the Belarus border have escaped to southwestern Ukraine, and hope to cross into Romania and from there fly to Israel.
On Sunday, missiles fired from Belarus hit an airport in Zhytomyr, according to Reuters.
Just under 100 children, ages four to 18, are in the care of Chabad’s Alumim orphanage based in Zhytomyr. In a country with serious problems of alcoholism and drug abuse, some have no parents while others are so-called “social orphans,” with one or two parents who, for a range of reasons, are unable to cope with child-rearing.
A number of the children had previously experienced war situations in Donetsk and Lugansk — areas declared independent by Russian-backed separatists in 2014 — and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine five days ago have been reliving the trauma, according to Alumim’s Israel-born director, Malka Bukiet.
It was the moment when a throwaway diplomatic mantra — “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” — actually made a giant difference.
A personal plea for help by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued directly to EU heads of state and government via video link as the leaders met at an emergency summit in Brussels last Thursday night is now being credited as the key intervention that led to a stunning acceleration of Western support, including weapons, officials and diplomats said.
Even after Zelenskyy’s speech, some EU leaders balked at imposing the most drastic economic sanctions, cutting Russia off from the SWIFT international payments system. They opted instead for a step-by-step approach.
But over the next 48 hours, with Ukrainian soldiers putting up fierce resistance to the Russian invasion, the EU shifted to the vanguard of action against Russia by imposing sanctions personally…
She says she was told by armed guards to wait as Ukrainians had to be let through first. She watched busloads of people, whom she described as white, being allowed through the border while only a handful of Africans were selected from the queue. After waiting for many hours, she was finally allowed to cross and made her way to Warsaw to fly back to Nigeria.
Until this week Daniel Mediakovskyi was a history student in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Since Sunday, however, he has been sticking rubber bands and plastic tops on to homemade bombs. “It’s practical history. It’s time for this right now,” he explained, loading another molotov cocktail into a crate.
Around him, about a dozen students and young creative professionals stood around a makeshift table. All wore masks and washing-up gloves. Each had a role in a busy production line. The basement bomb factory smelled strongly of petrol and paint remover – two molotov ingredients, along with polystyrene and silver dust.
Mediakovskyi – who is 20 – said his mother had woken him early last Thursday to tell him Russia had invaded Ukraine. “I knew it was going to start. My hands started shaking,” he said. After spending a day doom-scrolling on social media, he decided he would try to help.
“My parents know I’m volunteering. I haven’t told my granny. She’s worried enough…
The U.S. Department of State Monday announced it has suspended operations at the U.S. embassy in Minsk, Belarus, and authorized the voluntary departure of non-emergency employees and family members at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia’s capital, Moscow.
In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the State Department took the steps due to security and safety issues stemming from “the unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces in Ukraine.”
He said the department continually adjusts its posture at embassies and consulates throughout the world based on the local security environment, and the health situation.
Blinken said, “We ultimately have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens, and that includes our U.S. government personnel and their dependents serving around the world.”
The UN has put civilian casualties in Ukraine since Russia invaded at more than 100, including children, while 400,000 have fled the fighting as the commissioner for human rights said the world was at a “tipping point”.
“The military attack on Ukraine is putting at risk countless lives,” said Michelle Bachelet, high commissioner for human rights, at the 49th session of the council in Geneva.
The UN’s Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 102 killed in the conflict from Thursday morning to Sunday night, including seven children, with 304 injured.
“Most of these civilians were killed by explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and air strikes,” Bachelet said on Monday. “The real figures are, I fear, considerably higher.
“Meanwhile, millions of civilians, including vulnerable and older people, are forced to huddle in different forms of bomb shelters, such as underground…
After the most recent Durbin reports were released, news of the claims in the report that the Clintons may have hired people to spy on the Trump White House and Trump Tower has been missing from the DNC-MSM, and everyone has noticed.
Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan called out Democrats and the liberal media Monday for previously denying that the Clinton campaign spied on former President Donald Trump.
Reports released Friday by Special Counsel John Durham revealed that Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman allegedly worked with tech executive Rodney Jaffe to assemble data that would tie Trump to Russia. Reports also showed that Sussman repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the “Russia Bank-1” allegations.
Jordan, joining “America’s Newsroom,” said the new allegations of spying on the Trump campaign “is as wrong as it gets” and “even worse” that they allegedly spied on a sitting president.
“This is what’s egregious and so wrong about it,” Jordan told Fox News’ Dana Perino. “You think about it, they spied on a presidential campaign, that’s as wrong as it gets. But then we found out from this filing that they actually spied on the sitting president which is even…
A new effort using a fuel called trtium in fusion energy experiment offers hope in the development of fusion energy as a viable alternative sustaining energy source. The experiment creates opportunities for physicists to pursue further fusion energy development. Having sustained a fusion event for five seconds, physicists hope to scale up from seconds to hours, creating potential vast sources of readily-created portable energy anywhere in the world.
That’s the general idea behind technologies like fusion energy, to create ways for humans to create from indigenous resources as much as possible (though not entirely) most of their essential needs, with energy being a high priority (behind food and water, but even these can be enhanced by energy resources).
As we often point out with emerging technology, the tech itself is a neutrality, a tool that can become a tool of oppression or free associative sustainable self-reliance. Fusion energy tech could be locked behind Intellectual Property firewalls, used to create subscription services with morality code terms of service attached to them. Fusion energy tech could enable a people in the middle of a desert to create communities of green thanks to the power source provided by the fusion of molecules alone.
We may be a couple decades away from fusion energy becoming a viable energy source, but there’s no reason for free associative minded folks to try to develop open source tech alternatives that are better than the IP-controlled tech the powers that be are developing.
A new landmark has been passed on the quest for fusion power with a new record for energy released. However, while the announcement marks a step towards the goal of powering the world from the same energy source as the stars, it is also a reminder of how far there is to go.
Models of fusion reactors suggest the optimum fuel will be a mixture of tritium – an isotope of hydrogen, made up of one proton and two neutrons – and deuterium. Yet, paradoxically, almost all fusion research has been done on ordinary hydrogen or deuterium.
Now, however, the first fusion experiments conducted using tritium since 1997 have produced a record amount of energy for a fusion reactor over a period of five seconds – 59 megajoules. The results were described at a press conference today.
….“The record, and more importantly the things we’ve learned about fusion under these conditions and how it fully confirms our predictions, show that we are on the right path to a future world of fusion energy. If we can maintain fusion for five seconds, we can do it for five minutes and then five hours as we scale up our operations in future machines,” Professor Tony Donné of EUROfusion said in a statement seen by IFLScience.
The conservative-controlled British government is now warning its citizens if it doesn’t shape up, it’s gonna have to soon use a passport or credit card details to access the internet. The British government wants to assure that websites are adhering to age restriction laws, so it says it will target the biggies first, and it they can’t self-police, then the British people will all have to show their passports or credit card information to the website as proof of their legal access age.
It goes without saying that sites like Facebook and TikTok are sure to be targeted first. Perhaps they’ll follow through with it and drive all the British people off of social media altogether. Then the rest of the world can watch as Britain miraculously regains her sanity and starts acting like an adult human being again. Ahhh, a boy can dream.
Adults will have to hand over credit card or passport details before they can access social media sites, the British government threatened this morning.
Internet use age verification – first floated and then abandoned via the country’s 2017 Digital Economy Act – will return in the UK’s Online Safety Bill, digital minister Chris Philp MP has vowed, linking the technology, widely criticised by privacy activists, to protecting children from pornography websites.
Websites targeted by the government will be forced to submit to “a new legal duty” requiring them “to put robust checks in place to ensure their users are 18 years old or over.”
An inventor named Trevor E Chandler has claimed to have create an artificial intelligence that is capable of determining its own purpose, so to speak. The AI gets an initial code which, emergently, it ultimately overcomes, creating its own code to define its purpose, and thus action. This seems perfectly safe. I wonder if we can combine this AI with nanotechnology and just, you know, see what happens. Let’s create a nanotech ai that can replicate itself and develop its own purpose. That should be fun.
As usual, the claims might not meet the much more prosaic reality an inventor is hyping. We won’t be anytime soon seeing nanobots go up our noses and turn us into Biden voters, or, worse, Dallas Cowboys fans, but it does mean developing more autonomously developing tech that can positively enhance our ability to process and refine the world around us.
A new type of artificial intelligence has been created with the capability to advance its own source code, persist, and use its learning across use cases, and through code generation and modification, advance its action set and objectives beyond their starting state without the need for human intervention.
Trevor E. Chandler, the inventor states, “All existing artificial intelligence is limited by human bias. We either tell the AI what actions it can perform or give it data that represents actions it can use. This stunts the potential of our systems, preventing them from achieving emergence. My new approach has overcome this, and other serious issues with machine learning today, resulting in a machine learning system generating emergent actions beyond its initial actions list or data and emergent objectives beyond its initial objectives.”.
This new type of machine learning automatically searches for, finds, and uses code from other artificially Intelligent components as its starting state, continually writing code into itself from preexisting systems, then modifying its own source code as it advances its action set beyond its starting state through use of a built-in code generating and evaluation artificial intelligence. This allows useful information from preexisting machine learning systems to be utilized, not wasted, but only as a starting point…..
The Chinese are very upset at the recent decision by the Biden administration to sell arms to Taiwan, the nation that, according to China, doesn’t really exist. One China means no Taiwan, in case you’re all paying attention. They’ve issued some missives to the effect that how dare America and how weak America, blah blah blah, this is an existential threat to our very existence, blah blah blah.
As usual, the story is getting crickets on top folds across the MSMiverse, but it certainly bears noting. As an aside, if you read the Freedomist enough you know we couple the CCP and the DNC together often, but we also point out that this alliance is not really a perfect union, as both Machiavellian partners in the dance are seeking to help one another as much as they need to while pivoting to assure when the need for the union is no longer there, the other will have the advantage.
This move by the Biden administration is about assuring the billionaire class of California and New York have enough leverage to assure China follows through on the promise of allowing them continued and even extended access to that fatty gold billion people market.
Beijing lodged a protest with Washington over arms sales to Taiwan since these actions undermine China’s sovereignty, the Chinese Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.
“The sale of armaments by the United States to Taiwan seriously violates the ‘One China’ principle and the provisions of three joint communiques between China and the US,” the statement published on the agency’s website said.
According to the Defense Ministry, the US “grossly intrudes into China’s domestic affairs, harming the country’s sovereignty and security interests, destroying military relations between China and the US, as well as threatening peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” “Due to this, China expressed strong displeasure and a resolute protest as well as made a strong diplomatic remonstrance to Washington.”
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