RT News - January 2nd 2023

Sixty three Russian soldiers were killed in Donbass in a recent attack by Ukrainian forces using US-supplied HIMARS rockets. The attack happened on New Year's Eve. An investigation is underway. The deadly news was confirmed by Russia's MOD this Monday. (A)

Jens Stoltenberg continues to tell the world that the quickest way to peace in Ukraine is to keep supplying it with weapons paid for entirely by the citizens of NATO and NATO allies. (QS : Absurd. That's the same as supplying gasoline to dowse a fire. The citizens have been paying for NATO's and Britain's proxy war against Russia since 2008, where they groomed and grew extremist, fascist elements to overthrow the democratically elected government in a deadly coup and after that, to allow the blockade of Donbass. From those blockades and trenches, the extremists and fascists set about killing, bombing, shelling, looting and terrorising the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk over a period of eight years)

So absurd is this notion that US Senator candidate, Geoffrey Young has called for Stoltenberg's arrest as a war criminal, to be tried in The Hague.

The M23 militant group may leave several key areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as soon as Thursday. That's after months of violence against the local population.

Whilst RT continues to look back at the year that was, 2022 saw the French military leave the vast Sahel region in Africa after eight years. Its anti-jihadist operation ultimately a failure, resulting in the displacement and deaths of thousands.

RT also recalls Sri Lanka's mass protests last year and worst economic crisis since gaining independence, largely brought about by economic mismanagement and exacerbated by Western sanctions against Russia's energy.

North/South Korea. Military drills are to take place between South Korea and United States and are causing heightened level of tension in the region. (QS - if there was just one thing that Pres. Trump did which didn't get trodden on during his term as President, it was the the visit of South and North Korea and days of hope which extended into months. After a while that was stymied by US .gov and things went back. What a true shame that was)
================================================
Below: A) --- Dozens dead in Ukrainian strike on Russian troops – Moscow
1) --- Stoltenberg warns of potential new Russian offensive in Ukraine
2) --- German MP warns against ‘unimaginable escalation’
3) --- Ukrainian parliament slammed over celebrating Nazi collaborator
4) --- Zelensky aide moots ‘Lord of the Rings’ concept to win conflict
5) --- IMF issues dire warning
=============================================

2 Jan, 2023 13:20

A) --- Dozens dead in Ukrainian strike on Russian troops – Moscow

The deadly attack took place in the city of Makeyevka in Donetsk People’s Republic, the Defense Ministry says

More than 60 Russian troops have been killed by a Ukrainian missile strike, Moscow confirmed on Monday. The bombardment hit a temporary housing area used by the Russian forces in Donbass.

The facility in the city of Makeyevka in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic was targeted by six missiles from US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, the Defense ministry said. Two projectiles were intercepted by air defenses, but four made it through, the statement added.

"As a result of a strike by four missiles with high-explosive warheads on a temporary deployment point, 63 Russian servicemen were killed,” Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing.

All necessary assistance and support will be provided to the families of the fallen troops, the ministry assured.

The strike was earlier reported by the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov, who said the missiles targeted the building of a vocational school where the troops were stationed. It happened precisely at 0:01 am on New Year’s night, while the serviceman were celebrating, he added.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry earlier condemned Washington for not only supplying sophisticated weapons to Kiev, but also providing the Ukrainian military with intelligence about the location of the Russian forces.
https://www.rt.com/russia/569298-makeevka-strike-ukraine-casualties/

2 Jan, 2023 09:34

1) --- Stoltenberg warns of potential new Russian offensive in Ukraine

Military support for Kiev should be long-term, the NATO secretary general said

The West needs to brace for a protracted conflict between Ukraine and Russia, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday, insisting that arms shipments to Kiev must continue.

Stoltenberg told the BBC that Russia’s partial mobilization, launched in September, shows that Moscow has no plans to end the hostilities in the near future. “All that indicates that they are prepared to continue the war and also try to potentially launch a new offensive,” he claimed.

The head of the US-led military bloc also insisted that the West continues to provide arms and other forms of support to Ukraine. According to the secretary general, “that's the only way to convince Russia that they have to sit down and negotiate in good faith and respect Ukraine as a sovereign independent nation in Europe.”

"What we do know is that what Ukraine can achieve around that table is totally dependent on the strength on the battlefield," he stressed.

On Friday, Stoltenberg claimed that while “it may sound paradoxical,” Western military support for Ukraine is "the quickest way to peace.”

Following the start of Russia’s military operation in late February, Western countries have ramped up their weapons shipments to Ukraine, a move that has been condemned by Moscow. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that NATO was using the military potential of nearly all of its member states against Moscow in Ukraine. According to the president, efforts to undermine the Russian economy in the “sanctions war” over Ukraine have largely failed.

Earlier, he also accused the West of turning Ukraine into “a colony”, and using its people as “cannon fodder, a battering ram against Russia.”

At the same time, the Kremlin maintains it is open to talks with Ukraine, accusing Kiev of refusing to negotiate. However, Moscow has insisted that Kiev must “recognize the reality on the ground” as a prerequisite for any peace talks, including the new status of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye as parts of Russia.
https://www.rt.com/russia/569287-stoltenberg-russian-offensive-ukraine/
===========================================

2 Jan, 2023 15:12

2) --- German MP warns against ‘unimaginable escalation’

Berlin will continue to support Kiev but will not risk becoming a party to the conflict with Russia, a lawmaker has said

Berlin has no plans to send modern Western-made tanks to Ukraine, as the risks involved are too high, a German lawmaker said on Monday. Such a move could make NATO a direct party to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev and lead to an escalation, Michael Mueller told Germany’s ARD broadcaster.

Berlin will continue to refrain from any “ill-considered unilateral moves,” Mueller, who is a member of the German Bundestag’s Foreign Policy Committee, told ARD’s Morganmagazin show.

“We would only deliver such weapons in coordination with our NATO partners,” he said, adding that the military bloc wants to avoid becoming a direct party to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“That would be in the interests of all of us… If NATO became a direct war party against Russia, it would be an escalation that none of us want to imagine,” Mueller, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), warned.

No other nations who possess “comparable” military hardware – including the US and France – have supplied them to Ukraine, Mueller pointed out, adding that those countries appear to share Germany’s concerns.

The lawmaker also said that dialogue with Russia should be maintained. “There should always be an offer to talk,” he argued, criticizing his party’s coalition partners – the Greens and the Free Democrats – for failing to understand that.

Mueller said Chancellor Scholz is now the only leader who continues to seek such contacts, adding that the Foreign Ministry should also look for options for dialogue.

Scholz has previously repeatedly said that resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would be much harder without dialogue with Moscow. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, on the contrary, has taken a staunch anti-Russia position, vowing to ramp up sanctions against Moscow and stating that “normal relations” with the Kremlin are out of the question.
https://www.rt.com/news/569304-germany-nato-russia-unimaginable-escalation/
==============================================

2 Jan, 2023 17:41

3) --- Ukrainian parliament slammed over celebrating Nazi collaborator

A Twitter post cheering Stepan Bandera’s birthday has caused a backlash among Kiev supporters

A post on social media by Ukraine's parliament that celebrated the birthday of WWII Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) has sparked a wave of condemnation from Polish officials, as well as researchers and journalists from the US and Israel. The Verkhovna Rada deleted its tweet amid the outcry.

The now-deleted post celebrating what would have been Bandera’s 114th birthday on January 1 featured a quote from him and a photo of the Ukrainian Armed Forces chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, with a large portrait of the Nazi collaborator in the background.

Another apparently deleted post by the Rada quoted Bandera as having said that “the complete and supreme victory of Ukrainian nationalism will be when the Russian Empire ceases to exist,” Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Monday. Zaluzhny was “well aware” of “these instructions of Stepan Bandera,” the post added, according to the news outlet.

The posts were not received well by Ukraine’s backers in the West and particularly by Poland.

https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1609745595975049217

https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1609894585609719809

“Bandera was the murderer responsible for the genocide of Poles in 1943-44,” Kacper Plazynski, the head of the EU Affairs Committee in the Polish parliament, said in a tweet, adding that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – a militant wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) led by Bandera – “horribly killed about 100,000 Polish civilians.”

Another Polish MP and a former deputy interior minister, Sylwester Tulajew, echoed Plazynski's condemnation. A Polish brigadier general and the former head of the Government Protection Bureau (BOR), Andrzej Pawlikowski, insisted that commemoration of Bandera “must raise strong opposition.”

Even Kiev’s ardent supporters in its ongoing conflict with Moscow appeared to be angered by the official tweet. Eugene Finkel, a Ukrainian-born American political scientist, who'd earlier accused Russia of committing “genocide” in Ukraine, called the move “appalling.”

“Bandera would have hated a democratic, liberal Ukraine. He would be the first in line to assassinate its Jewish president,” Finkel wrote in a Twitter post, referring to Ukraine’s head of state Vladimir Zelensky.

In Israel, a Haaretz journalist, Sam Sokol, called Bandera “a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and antisemite whose followers engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Jews and Poles during World War II” in response to Kiev’s tweet.

Bandera has been officially hailed as a national hero in Ukraine since 2010. Ukrainian nationalists regularly marked his birthday on January 1 with torch-lit marches and massive demonstrations.
https://www.rt.com/russia/569309-ukrainian-parliament-celebrate-nazi-collaborator/
=================================================

2 Jan, 2023 08:16

4) --- Zelensky aide moots ‘Lord of the Rings’ concept to win conflict

Ukraine should consider becoming a monarchy and have its own “Return of the King,” Alexey Arestovich has said

Ukraine could become a monarchy in a bid to defeat Russia, a senior aide to President Vladimir Zelensky has suggested, likening the situation in Kiev to J.R.R. Tolkien's iconic trilogy ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

Alexey Arestovich referred in particular to the final installment of the masterpiece, ‘The Return of the King’.

“If we are in the Lord of the Rings script… a return of the king must happen, that is, Aragorn. Is Ukraine ready for a monarchy?” he asked during an interview with Ukrainian musician Oleg Skripka on Sunday.

“And I’ll tell you, if you think rationally, the only way to kill everything that is coming at us from Moscow is to declare a monarchy,” he added. However, Zelensky’s aide did not clarify who might become the country’s new sovereign.

Arestovich claimed a monarchy would also enable Ukraine to start “collecting the lands” that had belonged to the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus from the 9th century. After the collapse of Kievan Rus four centuries later, the Ruriks ruled the Grand Duchy of Moscow, greatly expanding its territory and eventually transforming it into the Tsardom of Russia.

In support of his argument, he noted that the United Kingdom is also a monarchy. “Not the worst country in the world, is it?” he added.

“Just consider this thought even outside the scope of this interview and look for the benefits of the return of the king,” Arestovich said.

The ‘Lord of the Rings’ parallels attracted the attention of the media after an informal summit of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in St. Petersburg, which took place last month.

At the summit, participating leaders received nine ‘club rings’ as a gift, alluding to the Tolkien trilogy, in which the same offering was presented to the race of men by the Dark Lord Sauron in a ploy to bend their will.

Commenting on the analogy, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov described the rings as “just a kind of a New Year’s gift,” adding that “there is nothing special there.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/569284-ukraine-lord-of-the-rings-monarchy/
==============================================

2 Jan, 2023 11:05

5) --- IMF issues dire warning

Kristalina Georgieva says a third of the world economy will be hit by recession in 2023

This year is expected to be even “tougher” than 2022 as the US, EU and Chinese economies slow down, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Ukraine conflict, soaring prices, hiked interest rates and unrelenting Covid in China will continue to exert an impact on the global economy, Kristalina Georgieva told CBS’ Face the Nation program on Sunday.

“We expect one-third of the world economy to be in recession. Even countries that are not in recession, it would feel like recession for hundreds of millions of people,” she said.

In October, the IMF slashed its outlook for global economic growth in 2023 citing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, along with tougher monetary policies pursued by central banks around the world in an effort to rein in rising prices, including energy costs. Since then, Beijing has abandoned its zero-Covid policies, having begun to reopen the economy despite the rapid spread of coronavirus infections.

According to Georgieva, China will face a difficult start to 2023, as the world’s second-biggest economy is likely to grow at or below global growth for the first time in 40 years.

“For the next couple of months, it would be tough for China, and the impact on Chinese growth would be negative, the impact on the region will be negative, the impact on global growth will be negative,” the IMF chief warned.

When it comes to the US, Georgieva called the nation the “most resilient,” adding that it might avoid recession with the labor market remaining quite strong.

“This is… a mixed blessing because if the labor market is very strong, the Fed [the Federal Reserve] may have to keep interest rates tighter for longer to bring inflation down,” she said.
https://www.rt.com/business/569286-imf-world-recession-warning/
==============================================