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Ukraine uses chemical weapons – Russian journalist

RT | May 11, 2023

Ukrainian forces have used chemical weapons, which caused loss of consciousness after inhalation, during an attack in the Orekhov sector, military correspondent Alexander Kots reported on Thursday.

The use of substances banned by international conventions appear to be part of the much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive, said the reporter for the outlet KP.

According to Kots, Western-supplied tanks have been spotted outside of Kharkov, while Ukrainian troops have launched attacks on Russian positions north and south of Artyomovsk, which they call Bakhmut.

Multiple Western officials have said over the past week that all the weapons, ammunition and supplies required for Ukraine’s grand counter-offensive had already been delivered. On Thursday, the UK confirmed it had supplied Kiev with long-range ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, however, claimed he needed more time and more armored vehicles before he could launch the assault, in order to avoid casualties. In the same interview, Zelensky claimed Ukraine had nothing to do with the drones that attacked the Kremlin last week.

According to US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose son had volunteered on Kiev’s side for several months last year, Ukraine has suffered around 300,000 military casualties and is taking losses at a far higher rate than Russia.

Donetsk People’s Republic authorities had accused Ukrainian troops of dropping chemical weapons from drones back in February, pointing to frontline reports and videos shared by Ukrainians on social media.

In late February, the Russian military warned that the Ukrainian forces in Kramatorsk had received 16 containers with riot control agents CS (chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile) and CR (dibenzoxazepine), as well as the incapacitating agent BZ (3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate), accompanied by “citizens of foreign countries.” Moscow suggested the US might be planning a “false flag” attack in the Donbass.

Chemical warfare is forbidden under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty that took effect in 1997 and to which both Ukraine and Russia are signatories.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US confiscates assets of Russian businessman for ‘rebuilding Ukraine’

Press TV – May 11, 2023

The US Justice Department has announced the first transfer of assets illegally confiscated from a Russian businessman to a fund purportedly intended for “rebuilding Ukraine” amid its persisting efforts to punish entities on good terms with Moscow.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland declared in a statement on Wednesday the first transfer to the Ukraine fund of assets seized from the US accounts of Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev, who Washington has accused of funding pro-Russian forces in Crimea in 2014.

“While this represents the United States’ first transfer of forfeited Russian funds for the rebuilding of Ukraine, it will not be the last,” Garland boasted in what appears as more of a pro-Kiev publicity move.

Last year, the US Justice Department pressed charges against Malofeyev — a Russian banker whose business interests include the pro-Moscow Tsargrad media group, described by American officials as “one of the main sources of financing” Russian interests in eastern Ukraine and Crimea — for violating sanction against Russia.

At that time, Garland further claimed that millions of dollars had been seized “from an account at a US financial institution traceable to Malofeyev’s sanctions violations.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned that the US-led sanctions imposed against Russia as well as the massive transfer of advanced weaponry to Ukraine will further prolong the war and add to the casualties that have reached several hundred thousand since the Ukraine conflict began in February 2022.

Garland’s announcement came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at Western governments for unleashing a “real war” against his country, vowing that the battle with the US and its allies over Ukraine will end in Russia’s victory.

“Today, civilization is again at a decisive turning point. A real war has been unleashed against our homeland,” Putin said in a Tuesday address on Moscow’s Red Square marking the anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

He also vowed to continue to defend the pro-Russian population in eastern Ukraine and protect Moscow’s interests against Western ambitions.

Putin further slammed “Western global elites”, saying they are “sowing hatred, Russophobia, and aggressive nationalism.”

The development also came after US President Joe Biden called on the nation’s divided Congress to make it easier to transfer confiscated assets of Russian businessmen to Ukraine. In December 2022, Congress passed a law that allowed certain assets seized by the Justice Department to be funneled to Ukraine via the US Department of State.

Among the Russian assets seized by Washington was a fleet of super yachts, including a 106m (348-foot) vessel owned by Suleiman Kerimov valued at over $300m, which had been docked in Fiji.

It is quite unclear, however, how the assets transferred in this case will be used by Ukraine or when they will be available to Kiev. This is one of the issues G7 finance ministers gathering in Japan for a meeting, ahead of the leaders’ summit in Hiroshima later this month, will be discussing.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

America faces major hurdles trying to form ‘Asia-Pacific NATO’

By Drago Bosnic | May 11, 2023

While serving as the UK Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss pompously announced that so-called “Global NATO” was in the making, while also calling for the United Nations to be reformed to the political West’s liking (although quite the opposite is sorely needed). However, the ever-belligerent power pole seems to be having trouble forming even the “Asia-Pacific NATO”, let alone a global organization that would gather virtually all of Washington DC’s vassals and satellite states. The main issue seems to be stemming from the unresolved historical disputes of the Second World War and the way it affected the Asia-Pacific region.

It should be noted that attempts to create a NATO equivalent in the region are hardly new. The United States has been trying to accomplish this for decades during the (First) Cold War. However, the deals would usually fall apart faster than it took them to be signed by all parties involved. Such disunity greatly contributed to the humiliating defeat of US aggression in Vietnam/Indochina half a century ago. Nowadays, similar disunity is once again emerging among America’s East Asian satellite states, specifically between South Korea and Japan. The US insists that the two countries should set their differences aside and go for a historical push that would lead to complete reconciliation.

However, numerous Japanese war crimes during WWII (as well as in the decades prior) are deeply ingrained in the minds of the Korean people, on both sides of the 38th parallel. In fact, it’s one of the few things both Seoul and Pyongyang actually agree on, albeit tacitly. A recent South Korean court case was supposed to resolve the issue of several major Japanese companies using forced labor in Korea during WWII, but Tokyo was still left unscathed by the process, which angered many Koreans. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol dubbed the court decision “a step towards trilateral cooperation to defend freedom, peace and prosperity not only in our two countries, but also around the world”.

The “trilateral cooperation” he was referring to is between the US, Japan and South Korea. However, only a third of South Korean citizens support the deal, as they consider it didn’t truly address Japanese war crimes. Worse yet, this isn’t the first time such deals have fallen through. In 2015, a similar arrangement regarding the so-called “comfort women battalions”, another Japanese war crime that went largely unpunished, collapsed shortly after it was announced, as the vast majority of South Koreans rejected the deal. On the other hand, Japan considers this to be a “case closed”, further antagonizing the (rightfully) angered Korean people who suffered tremendously during decades of Japanese occupation.

To add insult to injury, South Korea is doing all this so it could firmly join an explicitly anti-Chinese coalition (and also implicitly anti-Russian), becoming the first country in the line to get quite literally obliterated in a possible superpower confrontation, as if the US inability to deal with North Korea wasn’t enough already. And while Seoul might feel “motivated” by incessant US pressure, the people of South Korea are wholly unmoved. They see China as an important trade partner, as well as a virtually endless market for South Korean pop culture. Thus, they have no interest in an open confrontation (or any other kind) with their giant neighbor. On the contrary, they prefer the current status quo.

The US is worried this could greatly weaken their ability to form a wider and more compliant anti-Chinese coalition. For years, Washington DC has been trying to enlist Beijing’s neighbors in a “freedom and democracy alliance”, the bulk of which would be composed of Japanese and South Korean forces. Precisely this is the reason why Tokyo started a massive rearmament program last year, while Seoul engaged its fast-growing domestic military-industrial complex to arm several key US vassals around the world (particularly Poland). However, the question remains, how ready this anti-Chinese/anti-Russian coalition would be to deal with powers that make North Korea’s nuclear program look like a footnote?

America’s usual warmongering doesn’t only bring instability to the region that enjoyed decades of relative peace, prosperity and economic cooperation, but it also risks leading to the complete fracturing of US-imposed alliances, which itself could backfire and cause Washington DC to lose influence in the region. Naturally, this would be fantastic for the advancement of actual peace, but it makes America’s foreign policy framework look completely self-defeating and even suicidal. Similar efforts have already led to such results, with the Quad (Japan, UK, US, India) effectively dead as New Delhi has outright rejected anti-Russian rhetoric. The only exception to this is the AUKUS (Australia, UK and US), but even this alliance has created issues with other US partners.

Apart from being virtually redundant, as the so-called Five Eyes (UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) covers its functions, AUKUS created a lot of controversies after Australia backed out of the extremely lucrative submarine deal with France and opted for an arrangement with its Anglo-American overlords. This didn’t only make Canberra look like an outright satellite state, but also made Paris deeply frustrated, which might have contributed to its (for now only apparent) tilt towards Beijing, the very superpower AUKUS is aimed against. Such dictatorial US moves are creating multilayered problems in other geopolitical theaters as America is effectively forcing others to prioritize its national interests over their own.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

The US, Poland, & Germany Are Responsible For Russia Formally Withdrawing From The CFE Treaty

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 10, 2023

The Kremlin revealed on Wednesday that it’ll formally withdraw from the long-defunct Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) that it had already partially suspended participation in and then pulled out of its mechanisms in 2007 and 2015 respectively due to NATO failing to fulfill its commitments. This arms control pact did exactly what its name implies by limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe, the purpose of which was to preemptively avert future security dilemmas.

That noble goal was sabotaged by the US as part of its global power play that began after the former Bush Administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 on the false pretext of needing to build a “missile defense shield” in Europe to protect against Iran and North Korea. In reality, this was actually aimed at eventually neutralizing Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities in order to place it in a position of nuclear blackmail so as to coerce never-ending concessions from it.

Despite being defunct for eight years already, Russia had thus far been reluctant to formally withdraw from the CFE Treaty since it held out hope (naively in hindsight) of US-led NATO once again complying with this pact as part of the larger deal that it sought to negotiate with the West. Even after Moscow was compelled to commence its special operation in Ukraine, its leadership still thought that the West’s return to the CFE Treaty could factor into a forthcoming peace treaty for reforming European security.

The timing behind this decision, being over one year since the start of this proxy war’s latest phase, suggests that some of the subsequent events that unfolded since then were most responsible for the Kremlin’s recalculations in this respect. In particular, this likely concerns the US, Poland, and Germany’s military buildup plans, which collectively leave no doubt about their intent to not even keep up the prior pretense of supposedly complying with the CFE.

Whatever well-intended but ultimately naïve hopes the Russian leadership previously had about this pact playing a role in a post-conflict peace agreement were shattered by these developments, but even then, there was a delay between their respective announcements and this decision. That was likely attributable to still holding out hope against the odds that these were mostly just rhetorical statements that wouldn’t be tangibly acted upon, yet now nobody can deny that these plans are indeed sincere.

America was going to deploy more assets to this theater no matter what since its leadership believed that this aligns with their unipolar hegemonic interests, but what Russia apparently didn’t expect was the gusto with which Poland would seek to exploit events to accelerate its rise as a regional power. The military-strategic complementarity between the US and Poland in this respect exacerbated the Kremlin’s threat assessment of their coordinated moves, which was made all the worse by Germany’s later on.

Chancellor Scholz waited until last December to signal his country’s hegemonic ambitions in a lengthy article for the influential Council on Foreign Relations’ official magazine, which were arguably influenced by its regional competition with Poland for leadership of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE). Accordingly, “Russia Needs To Once Again Brace Itself For A Prolonged Rivalry With Germany”, which is fighting tooth and nail not to cede control over the EU’s foreign and military policies to Poland.

The US is masterfully playing Germany and Poland off against one another as they compete to remain or become its top partner in Europe respectively, to which end they’re literally in an arms race with each other that’s driven by their shared desire to lead the continent’s containment of Russia. Amidst these newfound military-strategic dynamics, remaining party to the CFE in any capacity makes absolutely no sense, hence why the decision was finally made to formally withdraw from it.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Syria’s Return to Arab League Shows US Gulf Allies Tired of ‘Regime Change’

By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 09.05.2023

Syria’s secular government is still standing after more than a decade of sectarian terrorist insurgency backed by the US and its regional allies. Independent investigative journalist Christopher Helali said its readmittance to the Arab League was a sign of waning US power in the Middle East.

Return of Damascus to the bosom of the Arab League after 11 years of pariah status shows the failure of the US doctrine of regime change, a journalist says.

The regional group of nations voted on Sunday to reverse its 2012 decision to expel the Syrian Arab Republic over President Bashar al-Assad’s resistance to religious-sectarian ‘rebels’ backed by the Western powers and several of the Gulf monarchies.

The tide of the conflict turned in 2015 with Russia’s military assistance, helping to break the sieges of Aleppo and other cities alongside volunteers from Iraq and Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Christopher Helali told Sputnik that the major change of stance by the Arab nations was “part of the ongoing geopolitical shifts that we’re seeing in the wider region.”
“Syria being allowed back into the Arab League is certainly a coup, not only for the Arab countries, but I think for countries like China behind the scenes who have been pushing diplomacy and pushing rapprochement between different sides in the Syrian civil war,” Helali said.

The welcome back for Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad showed there was “no more appetite for regime change” or for backing the “alphabet soup of jihadist groups” funded and armed by Washington — the al-Nusra Front, Islamic State, various al-Qaida affiliates and the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Those sectarian terrorist forces were supported by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and possibly Qatar and Jordan, the journalist said.

The journalist noted there was “growing discontent” among the Arab states over how the conflict has progressed and its unwanted effects. “People are saying, okay, let’s just let’s finish it and let’s send a lot of these refugees back.”

The other question is who Assad must negotiate with to finally end the 12-year conflict, given the Gulf monarchies previous insistence on a political “transition” that brings the “rebels” into the mainstream.

Those groups have been “allowing different Western journalists there to show that ‘we are moderate rebels… we are Islamists, but we’re not fanatical like ISIS, even though they are underground’,” Helali said.

“Ultimately, Assad would have to speak to the great power brokers in this conflict — the people who supported those groups. So you’d have to think about Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the United States, Russia, Iran, everybody would have to be at the table,” he continued. “But of course, nobody’s coming to that table except for the people already on Assad’s side. Plus Turkiye, because it’s being pushed to find a settlement, especially for the northern part of Syria, especially by Russia and as well as Iran.”

The elephant in the room remains the illegal US occupation of north-eastern Syria, with its concentration of lucrative oil fields, along with its outpost at al-Tanf in the southern desert near the border with Jordan.

“There can be no peace plan, there can be no situation in which everything is resolved so long as foreign troops, including US troops, still occupy sovereign Syrian territory and so long as arms and equipment and funding keeps funnelling in to Syria, to other armed groups,” Helali stressed.

“Once that stops and once there can be sovereignty over in territorial integrity, Syria reclaiming all of its borders, then there can be some plan. But that plan will have to be Syrian-led” and not imposed form outside, he said.

The ultimate significance the republic’s return to the League is the tacit admission that the US-led plan to overthrow Syria’s government failed — with disastrous consequences for her neighbours.

“What the Arab League is saying is that we’ve tried, it’s failed. Assad is here to stay and we have to find some normalization because we’re also dealing with millions of refugees in the region,” Helali said. “There has to be some political resolution to this conflict so that people can return home. Turkiye has 5 million Syrian refugees. Everybody wants a resolution to this.”

May 9, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian citizen killed in Israeli raid

The aftermath of the Israeli strikes on Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip, May 9, 2023 © AP / Yousef Masoud
RT | May 9, 2023

The Israel Defense Forces launched operation ‘Shield and Arrow’ against the leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza on Tuesday morning, allegedly killing several high-ranking militants – as well as their wives, children and other civilians nearby.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qedra, told RIA Novosti that one of the victims was a citizen of Russia, Jamal Abu Haswan, who “died in Gaza City as a result of shelling by the Israel Defense Forces.”

A neighbor and friend of the deceased told the agency that “a rocket hit the apartment where Abu Haswan lived, which led to his death along with his wife and son.” According to RIA, Abu Haswan worked at a medical facility that “specializes in physical therapy and medical rehabilitation.”

The air raid took place at around 2am local time and left at least 20 people injured in addition to the 12 killed, according to the latest estimates.

The IDF has issued a rare statement confirming its military operation against the PIJ, claiming to have neutralized three top members of the group.

The Palestinian Health ministry said the militants’ families and other civilians were killed in the strikes on an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern city of Rafah.

May 9, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Assassination Bid on Putin to Provoke Furious Escalation… for Whom?

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 7, 2023

Just as the Western public is growing increasingly skeptical of the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia and the insane military and financial aid being pumped to prop up the corrupt Kiev regime, we then see a daring assassination drone attack on the Kremlin.

Russia called it an act of terrorism to kill President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has also pointed  the finger at Washington for authoring the assassination bid as well as the Kiev regime for having a hand in it.

The White House denies any American role in the air raid as does Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Western media are reporting claims that Russia may have carried out a false-flag terror attack on itself to justify ramping up military force in Ukraine. Those claims echo those put out earlier by the West about Russia blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September. In both cases, the notion of Russian false-flag attacks seems absurd.

Would Russia really risk making itself look incompetent by staging an audacious aerial raid on the seat of political power in its capital?

Two small unmanned aerial vehicles were apparently brought down over the Kremlin in the early hours of Wednesday. The lightweight devices could hardly have posed a serious threat to kill Putin in his official residence. So, it can be dismissed as a realistic attempt at assassination. The Kremlin said Putin was not even in the building at the time.

Nevertheless, the mere fact of explosive drones breaching the iconic walls of the Kremlin and targeting the Senate Palace is certainly an outrageous provocation. One may aver that this provocative act per se was the main aim.

Moscow’s initial response was that it would retaliate accordingly at a time of its choosing. There are many voices calling for Russia to kill Zelensky. A furious reaction by Russia is understandable, but is it prudent?

It seems highly pertinent that there is growing skepticism and even disgust among the Western public about the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine. Polls are showing increasing numbers of Americans critical of the “blank checks” that Washington is throwing like a drunken sailor at the Kiev regime. Across Europe too people are angered by the unlimited money showering a corrupt cabal and the reckless danger of inciting an all-out war between NATO and Russia that could spiral into nuclear armageddon. This while Western workers are being drummed into poverty and social misery.

Skimming hundreds of millions of dollars by Zelensky and his cronies in Kiev is undermining Western public tolerance of this completely unnecessary conflict. The war is increasingly seen as a racket for the American military-industrial complex, a racket in which Zelensky and his ilk are indulged with their embezzlement and thievery of Western tax payers’ money.

The Ukraine conflict is blatantly being fueled indefinitely. There is brazen repudiation by Washington and its European minions of any diplomatic solution. A diplomatic solution was obviated from the very beginning when Russia’s reasonable security concerns and offer of dialogue in December 2021 about NATO and Ukraine were arrogantly brushed aside by the Joe Biden administration.

The war racket is too lucrative for the Pentagon industry and its ancillary European weapons firms.

But the Western propaganda narrative of “defending Ukraine for as long as it takes” is wearing thin for public consumption. The Kiev regime is burning down churches, ruthlessly repressing opposition political and media voices, glorifying Nazis and beating its own citizens on the streets in forced conscription for the military.

Vladimir Zelensky is seen as a wheedling character whose begging bowl for more weapons and funds is a black hole.

Without public support (or ignorance) in the West, the whole U.S.-led proxy war against Russia comes unstuck. The American presidential elections are approaching and the Ukrainian debacle could become a decisive factor for voters.

In order to salvage the shaky situation, therefore, what better than for Russia to launch an attack to kill Zelensky? Such an event would be spun to death by the pliant Western media as “evidence of Russian barbarism”, thereby giving the NATO proxy war in Ukraine a new lease on life and most importantly for the weapons racket to find a new throttle.

The American deep state, the CIA and Pentagon corporate oligarchy would be the most plausible agency to author the drone attack on the Kremlin. Just as this faction did with the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines. Technically and militarily, this faction has the capability. Just like the Nord Stream diversionary media stories about Ukrainian military agents being responsible for that sabotage, it is doubtful that the Kiev regime could have carried out the Kremlin attack – alone.

The timing of the Kremlin attack points to a big calculation to incite a wild reaction from Russia. It comes days before the annual May 9 Victory Day parade in Red Square commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The last time the Kremlin was attacked in an air raid was reportedly in 1942 during Hitler’s invasion. Throw into that incitement that President Putin was targeted.

Arguably, Russia should push to defeat the NATO-backed Kiev regime. The longer that regime survives, the worse the danger persists for Russia from uncontrolled instability on its border. But taking out the contemptible Zelensky and his cronies in a bloody assassination? Such a reaction might be just what his American puppet masters want.

May 8, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

US can’t explain what happened to Nord Stream – Russia

RT | May 8, 2023

Washington hasn’t responded to Moscow’s demand for an explanation of what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines after veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report blaming the US for destroying the key gas route, high-ranking Russian diplomat Konstantin Gavrilov has said.

“We haven’t received any clarification yet and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get any,” he told Izvestia newspaper on Monday. “There’ll be nothing new [from the US],” added the official, who heads Russia’s delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control.

Gavrilov said he was surprised by the behavior of the EU nations that were most affected by the sabotage of crucial energy infrastructure, which was built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany.

Germany, Sweden and Denmark, which have been carrying out probes into the explosions on Nord Stream 1 and 2 last fall, have so far been reluctant to open up about their findings. They also rejected offers from Russia to assist with the investigations.

“The stance of Europe, which is being openly humiliated, is something that I can’t fully understand,” Gavrilov said.

In early February, Hersh authored a report claiming that US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated last September had been planted at the pipelines in the Baltic Sea back in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise.

Hersh later suggested that Biden had chosen that very moment to blow up the infrastructure because the conflict between Russia and Ukraine “wasn’t going great” for Kiev and its backers in Washington.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.”

In late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “fully agreed” with Hersh’s findings that the Nord Stream sabotage had been organized by the American Special Forces.

Other Russian officials have also noted that the only party to benefit from the destruction of Nord Stream was the US, which has seen supplies of its more expensive liquefied natural gas to Europe increase massively since the blasts.

May 8, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Türkiye won’t toe Western line on Russia sanctions – FM

RT | May 8, 2023

Ankara has no plans to support the Western economic restrictions against Russia, foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu insisted in an interview on Monday.

Türkiye’s top diplomat made the comments to the Lider Haber TV channel in the run-up to the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections, due to take place on Sunday.

“We are not going to join the unilateral sanctions imposed against Russia by the US and the EU. Our own benefit and prosperity come first,” Cavusoglu explained, as quoted by the TASS news agency.

The minister also criticized the opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has said he would give priority to developing ties with the West. According to Cavusoglu, the rival to incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown himself to be inconsistent in his statements; at one rally, Kilicdaroglu reportedly said that nothing would endanger the relationship between Türkiye and Russia.

Reports emerged in March of Türkiye blocking some transit shipments destined for Russia, in response to recent pledges by Brussels and Washington to enforce anti-Russian sanctions and to stop the supply of sanctioned products via third parties. Türkiye’s Ministry of Trade provided no official confirmation of the move. It was later reported that Ankara had resumed the transit to Russia of some sanctioned goods of European origin.

The EU has repeatedly voiced concern about the country’s refusal to participate in Western sanctions against Russia, and accused the Middle Eastern state of becoming a ‘transit hub’ for Russia, thus enabling the economic blockade to be circumvented.

Ankara is one of Moscow’s main trading partners, with both sides having pledged to deepen economic cooperation and expand bilateral trade.

Last year, Türkiye and Russia signed a roadmap for economic cooperation that envisages bringing bilateral trade turnover to $100 billion a year. The two have also agreed to introduce the Russian ruble as a settlement currency for bilateral trade, including for Russian natural-gas supply.

Data shows that, around this time last year, Türkiye became one of the top five exporters to Russia. In 2021, it ranked 11th, ahead of the US, France, Japan, Poland and Italy.

May 8, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Kuwait to join Shanghai regional bloc as ‘dialogue partner’

MEMO | May 6, 2023

Kuwait signed a memorandum of understanding on Saturday to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a powerful regional bloc led by China and Russia, Anadolu reports.

The document was inked on the sidelines of a meeting of the SCO foreign ministers on May 4-5 in Panaji city, India, the state news agency KUNA reported.

“Kuwait’s joining of SCO as a dialogue partner is the first step towards joining the organization as a full member in the future,” said Kuwaiti Ambassador to India Jassim Al-Najem.

He added that the accession of some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as dialogue partners to the SCO “confirms the growing importance of the organization.”

On March 29, Saudi Arabia agreed to join the SCO as a dialogue partner in preparation for full membership.

The SCO was founded in June 2001 by China, Russia, and the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance is recognized as the world’s largest regional organization, with eight members, four observer states and several dialogue partners, including Turkiye.

Pakistan and India became full members in 2017.

Iran, an SCO observer state since June 2005, had its permanent membership approved in September 2021 and signed a memorandum of commitment a year later for its full accession.

May 6, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Over 126,000 Donbass Residents Recognized as Victims Since 2014 – Investigative Committee

Sputnik – 06.05.2023

Russian investigators have established that over 126,000 residents of the Donbass region became victims of the crimes committed by Kiev since 2014, with the damage to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics surpassing 228 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said.

“More than 9,500 civilians were injured in the armed conflict, and over 5,000 civilians were killed. Over the entire period of the investigation in this criminal case, more than 259,000 people were interrogated, and over 126,000 people were recognized as victims, including about 24,000 minors,” Bastrykin said.

Bastrykin also said that the investigation analyzed the destruction in the cities of Mariupol, Rubezhnoe, Schastie, Krasnyi Luch, Stakhanov, Kirovsk, Alchevsk, Lisichansk and others, adding that the damage assessment in other cities was underway.

Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, after the DPR and LPR appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. In response to Russia’s operation, Western countries have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Moscow and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine.

On September 30, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR and LPR, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, signed agreements on the accession of these territories to Russia, following referendums that showed that an overwhelming majority of the local population supported becoming part of Russia.

May 6, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky must choose between talks or losing more territory – former US Army chief

By Ahmed Adel | May 5, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have to choose between peace talks with Moscow or the continuation of the conflict and the loss of more territory, former US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis wrote in an article.

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is loath to agree to any deal that leaves Ukrainian territory in Russian hands. The reality, however, is that he does not have what it takes to fully force Moscow off his territory. The most realistic choice he faces is between negotiating an end to the fighting that allows Ukraine to hold what it has, or to continue fighting and lose even more ground. That decision is Zelensky’s alone to make, but America also has agency and must look out for its own interests,” Davis wrote in 19FortyFive.

According to him, the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is unlikely to be successful since they do not have enough troops to cope with the Russian military given the superiority in the number of soldiers, weapons, and equipment.

The former lieutenant colonel also reflected on his own country’s policy regarding the armed conflict, lambasting the promise to continue giving Ukraine what it needs “for as long as it takes” because it is not a sustainable strategy and will almost certainly not produce a beneficial result for either the US or Ukraine. “A course correction is therefore required,” he stressed.

Davis added that many in Europe already recognise that Ukraine cannot win in a practical time frame at a reasonable cost.

In the end, the author states that, “as horrible as it would be for us to accept ending the war on undesirable terms, it would be even worse to ignore reality and continue pursuing an unattainable military objective. The cost for the former is unpleasant. The cost to the latter could be infinitely worse.”

In early April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces might carry out an offensive in the coming weeks. For his part, the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, appealed to wait until the end of the mud season, known as Rasputitsa, so that the roads are useable.

Spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitry Peskov, noted that any statements about the planned offensive by the Ukrainian military are being carefully monitored and considered in their own planning of the special military operation. In this way, Russia has had ample time to prepare for this Ukrainian offensive, and although gains might initially be made, it is expected that it will fizzle out and be followed by a major Russian counterattack.

The New York Times noted that if the Ukrainian military are not successful in pushing back Russian forces, Western support for Ukraine might weaken. This is especially the case since war weariness and economic crises are gripping the EU and USA.

None-the-less, the European Commission adopted on May 3 the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) “to urgently deliver ammunition and missiles to Ukraine and to help Member States refill their stocks.”

“By introducing targeted measures including financing, the Act aims at ramping up the EU’s production capacity and addressing the current shortage of ammunition and missiles as well as their components. It will support the destocking from Member States and the joint procurement for ammunition,” the announcement added.

For her part, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We stand by our promise to support Ukraine and its people, for as long as it takes. But Ukraine’s brave soldiers need sufficient military equipment to defend their country.”

However, for all the talk of supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” it is doubtful that EU member states will continue draining their economies and resources in the long-term because Kiev refuses to negotiate. This will become especially apparent as elections begin creeping up in member states and people’s fury about the dire economic situation are expressed.

In the same light as Ursula von der Leyen, White House spokesman John Kirby revealed on May 3 that the US has already handed over almost 100% of the military aid that Kiev requested for its offensive but this will not prevent them from making further deliveries.

There is evidently a clear divide between Western rulers and experts, especially when recalling that former US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis is far from the only expert urging for negotiations since Ukraine does not have a chance of winning the war despite all the brave talk and propaganda.

Pumping resources to the Ukrainian military stems from the fact that if Kiev’s offensive is unsuccessful the West would have failed in its task to preserve Ukraine’s pre-war borders and halt Russia’s advances, in addition to wasting billions upon billions of dollars to their own immense detriment. But as said, for now, it is only Western experts, and not the rulers, who are willing to face this reality.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

May 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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