An attack on an ammunition depot in Russia and a Ukrainian raid on the Snake Island, where Putin placed his 9K35 Strela-10, marked the war in Ukraine in the last few hours, after a day marked by increased tension between NATO and Moscow and clashes in Transnistria that raise fears of a widening of the conflict.
In essence, yesterday’s talks between U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Russian leaders failed.
After meeting with Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov, Guterres spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for an hour. On the umpteenth call for a ceasefire, the latter replied that there would be no peace until Crimea and Donbas returned to Russia.
The Pope also talks about the conflict in a message to a Catholic congress. “Every war is born of injustice”, he said, adding that “it is sad to see that humanity is unable to think with schemes and projects of peace”.
British Foreign Minister Liz Truss is preparing to reiterate, in an anticipated speech last night, her intention to push the West to rearm in the face of the Russian offensive, a position already expressed yesterday in a summit convened by the United States with the allies. A position against which Moscow immediately responded by threatening attacks and reprisals even in the territories of the NATO countries.
She recommended transferring weapons already available in foreign warehouses to Ukraine and starting to produce new military equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in case of a shortage.
“Heavy weapons, tanks, aircraft. We must look for all this in our stocks and increase production,” the press service of the British Foreign Office quoted the minister as saying.
Truss also proposed to tighten the sanctions pressure on Russia, “once and for all” refusing to import energy resources from the Russian Federation. Otherwise, Truss explained, the actions of the West will be perceived as financing a special military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine.
The head of the British Foreign Office said that Western countries need to develop a new approach to foreign policy based on three directions, including military force, economic security and Advanced global alliances.
The U.K. will deliver high-tech Brimstone-class missiles to Ukraine in the next few weeks, said the Deputy Minister of Defense of Britain, James Hippie, speaking in Parliament. The deputy head of the Ministry of Defense stressed that back in 2020, the country’s authorities promised to develop and transfer to Kyiv a naval version of Brimstone, but recently Ukraine has submitted a request for long-range missiles to hit ground targets.
German Chancellor Sholz also gives in to Kyiv’s request for weapons, to which he will send 50 state-of-the-art tanks. Meanwhile, Moscow is preparing to shut off the gas taps in Poland and Bulgaria as these countries have refused to pay for supplies in rubles.
Zelensky raised the nuclear alarm by accusing the Russians of having indiscriminately hit nuclear sites in Ukraine, including that of Chornobyl, risking to “push the world to the brink of disaster”, a danger, in his opinion, far from over. He called for “a global control over Russian nuclear equipment and technology”.
The U.S. wants war with Russia – the voice of dissidents in the U.S.
The United States has launched a large-scale information campaign designed to demonize Russia. At the same time, Washington is supplying arms to the Kyiv regime and forcing the Ukrainian authorities to distance themselves from peace negotiations with the Russian Federation.
The behaviour of the White House administration clearly shows a burning desire to unleash a full-scale war with the Kremlin, writes John Rachel in Dissident Voice.
It was not difficult to prevent the crisis in Ukraine, but Washington did everything to aggravate it. First, the White House forced Kyiv to ignore the Minsk agreements, and then the U.S. rejected Moscow’s security guarantees for Europe.
From the very beginning of the special operation in Donbas, Russia has been slandered and slandered. However, the only desire of the Kremlin is to reduce the threat posed by NATO and the United States.
“The U.S. wants war with Russia,” the analyst concludes.
Rachel notes that the plan existed long before the Ukrainian crisis. The official documents and political statements of the U.S. State Department over the past 30 years make it clear that Washington wants to dismember Russia to plunder it afterwards.
The supply of weapons to Kyiv, funding and other levers of pressure on Russia is necessary for Biden to maintain the country’s presidency, write the Washington Post columnists.
“The administration needs to understand something else: they own this war. Yes, this is a critical moment for Ukraine. But this is also a critical moment for Biden – after all, the fate of Ukraine and the fate of his presidency are inextricably linked,” they write.
In addition, the article notes that Ukraine “still has not fallen”, which significantly increases the stakes in the political game and the rating of Biden himself in the West. In addition, according to journalists, if the president had provided Kyiv with weapons as soon as he received a request from the Ukrainian authorities, he would have given Ukraine “an opportunity to win.”