RT News - January 16th 2023 Late

The Kremlin rejects accusations that it's responsible for a missile strike on a residential building in Dnepropetrovsk. That's after a Zelensky adviser blamed the deadly explosion on the results of Ukraine's own air defence.
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Croatian Pres Zoran Milanovićhas criticized NATO's ongoing support for Kiev, calling it Washington's proxy war against Russia. Hungary's Viktor Orban says it's Europe who will bear the brunt of the sanctions and anti-Russian policies, not USA. Report from Rachel Marsden. Is there "a plan for Europe"?
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Yellow vest protests are back in France with tens of thousands protesting each weekend.
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The United Kingdom "Public Order Bill" is announced and will give extended powers to the police in matters such as protests (amongst other things). UK .gov is preparing to deal with all dissent. Analysis from Joti Brar.
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India hits a historic peak of importing one million barrels of Russian oil per day. That's 33 times more than a year earlier.
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The EU is preparing the 10th round of sanctions against Russia.
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China/India relations and USA interference. Wang Xiaojian (Spokesman of the Chinese embassy in India) said China is firmly opposed to third-country meddling coming from geopolitical considerations. The border issue is a matter for the two countries to be resolved through dialogue and consultation. (QS: darned right!) Nelson Wong comments.
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Russia's Pres Putin and Türkiye's Pres Erdogan had a phone conversation today (Monday). They discussed Ukraine, Syria, gas transit, prisoner exchange, the recent meeting in Ankara and more. Analysis from Steve Sweeny.
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Germany's defence minister, Christine Lambert, has resigned amid scrutiny over response to Ukraine crisis. In depth report.

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Below, via RT website www.rt.com (which has so much more than these few posts)
1) --- NATO tanks ‘will burn’ – Kremlin
1a) --NATO promises more heavy weapons for Ukraine
2) --- Zelensky is destroying Ukraine – exiled opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who also argues that the Kiev government is leading Europe towards a potential nuclear crisis
3) --- UN nuclear watchdog reveals plans for Ukraine mission
3a) --Russia building giant dome over Europe’s largest nuclear plant (QS: re-post)
4) --- Economists signal rising risks of US recession
5) --- Richest 1% grab two-thirds of world’s wealth – Oxfam
6) --- Kiev sent poorly-equipped volunteers to defend key Donbass city – The Times
7) --- New York City is full, mayor tells migrants
8) --- German defence minister resigns
9) --- NATO waging ‘proxy war’ against Russia – Croatian president
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16 Jan, 2023 13:12

1) --- NATO tanks ‘will burn’ – Kremlin

The delivery of heavy weapons to Kiev will prolong the conflict but won’t alter its outcome, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says

Kiev’s foreign backers who have vowed to supply tanks and other heavy weapons to Ukraine don’t care about Ukrainian lives and are motivated by their desire to hurt Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Promises made by Poland and the UK to provide main battle tanks to Kiev indicate that they want the conflict in Ukraine to spiral further, the Russian official told journalists on Monday. However, those weapons will not change the outcome of the conflict, he added.

“Those tanks can burn and they will burn like the rest [of the weapons],” Peskov stated.

Russia has a negative attitude to the planned shipments and considers them further proof that the nations supplying them “are using [Ukraine] as an instrument in achieving their anti-Russian goals,” he added.

NATO and a number of individual member states have pledged to provide heavier weapons to Ukraine. The British government has vowed to deliver 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks, while the US, France, and Germany have committed to sending infantry fighting vehicles.

Poland has also expressed its intention to send German-made Leopard tanks to the country, though Berlin has warned that doing so without its consent would violate the arms export agreement, under which the armor was delivered to Poland in the first place.

The supplying countries will meet this Friday at US Air Base Ramstein in Germany, the seventh gathering of its kind since Russia sent troops into its neighboring state almost eleven months ago. Moscow cited the creeping expansion of NATO into Ukraine as a threat to its national security and a major reason for its military operation.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “the recent pledges for heavy warfare equipment” to Ukraine were important and that he expects more to be made in the near future.
https://www.rt.com/russia/569949-nato-tanks-ukraine-kremlin/

=================== RELATED

15 Jan, 2023 20:48

1a) --- NATO promises more heavy weapons for Ukraine

The bloc’s military leaders will meet in the coming days to drum up additional arms for Kiev

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Saturday that Ukraine would receive more “heavy warfare equipment” from the West in “the near future.” The UK has already pledged tanks to the country, and Germany is under pressure to follow suit. A US-led ‘contact group’ for arming Ukraine will meet on Friday.

"We are in a crucial phase of the war,” Stoltenberg told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Sunday, days after Ukraine lost the strategically important Donbass town of Soledar to Russian forces. “We are experiencing heavy fighting,” the NATO chief continued. “It is therefore important that we equip Ukraine with the weapons it needs to be able to win.”

Recent weeks have seen a dramatic escalation in the equipment promised to Ukraine by NATO’s largest powers. The US, France, and Germany simultaneously announced at the beginning of the month that they would donate infantry fighting vehicles to the Ukrainian military, while the UK officially confirmed on Saturday that it would send fourteen Challenger 2 main battle tanks.

"The recent pledges for heavy warfare equipment are important, and I expect more in the near future," Stoltenberg told Handelsblatt.

Further weapons packages will likely be announced after the US-led ‘Defense Contact Group’ meets on Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. This panel of nearly 50 countries has met seven times already since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last February, with each meeting followed by fresh pledges of military aid from America and its allies.

One of the first meetings in May was followed by deliveries of anti-ship missiles from Denmark, helicopters from the Czech Republic, and artillery systems from Italy, Greece, Norway, and Poland. The group’s last meeting in November came as the US announced a $400 million aid package, including surface-to-air missiles.

Although Stoltenberg insists that he does not want “a full-blown war between NATO and Russia,” Moscow has repeatedly warned the West that its continued arms deliveries will only prolong the conflict in Ukraine, while making the Western powers de-facto participants. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the conflict as one between Russia and “the entire Western military machine,” but said on Saturday that the progress of Moscow’s military operation is “positive,” with the battlefield situation “developing within the framework of the Defense Ministry’s and the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s plan.”
https://www.rt.com/news/569919-stoltenberg-more-weapons-ukraine/
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16 Jan, 2023 10:17

2) --- Zelensky is destroying Ukraine – exiled opposition leader

Viktor Medvedchuk also argues that the Kiev government is leading Europe towards a potential nuclear crisis

The policies of President Vladimir Zelensky's government – based on hatred and intransigence towards Russia – are inevitably driving Ukraine into poverty, the former parliamentary opposition leader has warned.

Viktor Medvedchuk, who was forced into exile after being arrested by the SBU (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB), claims that Kiev is encouraging the same approach in other European states. He believes that such dangerous sentiment could even lead to an eventual nuclear standoff.

Medvedchuk’s political party was the second largest in the current Ukrainian parliament, before it was banned last year. The rump of the faction is now closely controlled by Zelensky's "Servant of the People" group.

As part of his crackdown on dissent, the President personally targeted Medvedchuk, who was a proponent of reconciliation with Russia, the latter has claimed in an article published on Monday in Russian newspaper Izvestia, in which he gives his view on the roots of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Both Zelensky and his predecessor Pyotr Poroshenko had been elected after the 2014 coup in Kiev on a platform of peace, and each made a U-turn after getting into office, Medvedchuk pointed out. He argued that this shows a pattern of betrayal of the Ukrainian people by its leadership and by what he termed a “party of war.”

Being enemies with Russia is against Ukraine’s economic interests, Medvedchuk asserted. Not only is Russia a major market and source of raw materials from which Ukraine can benefit, the country’s industrial sector was mostly in the east and people there, who for historic reasons have ties to Moscow, were antagonized by Kiev. Economic ruination is an inevitable consequence of the conflict, the politician wrote.

“It is no longer [Western] Europe that teaches Ukraine politics, but Ukraine that teaches Europe how to achieve economic decline and poverty with the help of a policy of hatred and intransigence. And if Europe continues to support this policy, it will be dragged into a war, possibly a nuclear one,” he warned.

He accused Western nations of hailing the incumbent Ukrainian government for “victory after victory, while no military breakthroughs are observed,” referring to the parades that generals in Ancient Rome were given after major victories. Meanwhile, the “party of peace” has no voice either at home or abroad, Medvedchuk lamented.

Those who stood for peace were slandered, intimidated and repressed on incitement from the West. The Ukrainian party of peace simply did not suit Western democracy

“This eloquently suggests that most US and European politicians do not want any peace for Ukraine. But this does not mean at all that Ukrainians do not want peace, and that Zelensky’s military triumph is more important to them than their lives and destroyed homes.” he reasoned.

Only when pro-peace politicians are allowed to make their case freely can there be hope to resolve the situation, Medvedchuk believes.
https://www.rt.com/russia/569934-medvedchuk-ukraine-war-party/
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16 Jan, 2023 11:34

3) --- UN nuclear watchdog reveals plans for Ukraine mission

IAEA’s experts will be present on all nuclear facilities in the country, the body’s chief Rafael Grossi says

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expanding its presence in Ukraine, with its experts to be deployed at all of the country’s nuclear power stations, the UN nuclear watchdog’s chief Rafael Grossi has announced.

The IAEA is sending more personnel to Ukraine “to help prevent a nuclear accident during the ongoing conflict” between Moscow and Kiev, Grossi wrote on Twitter on Monday.

The official, who is currently on a visit to Ukraine, said he was proud to lead the mission that would see the watchdog “deploying in all of the country’s NPPs (nuclear power plants) to provide assistance in nuclear safety and security.”

At the request of Kiev authorities, two-member teams will be stationed at the Rovno and Khmelnitsky nuclear power plants as well as at the Chernobyl site, where the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred in 1986, the IAEA said last week.

Grossi is expected to personally launch the missions in Rovno and Chernobyl, while also holding talks with top Ukrainian officials in Kiev as part of his visit, it added.

The IAEA already has experts present at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in the region of the same name, which became a part of the Russian state in autumn, together with Kherson Region and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The watchdog’s team arrived at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in September amid Moscow’s claims that Ukraine had been risking a nuclear disaster by its continuous shelling of the facility. Kiev has denied those accusations, claiming that the Russians had turned the station into a military base and had fired at it themselves in order to pin the blame on the Ukrainian forces.

The IAEA didn’t find heavy Russian military hardware on site and confirmed damage to the Zaporozhye NPP, but has been reluctant to name the side responsible for the attacks that are still happening frequently.

In November, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova urged the IAEA to start acting like an “authoritative and independent international body” and to “clearly and unambiguously” identify the culprits of the shelling. She also blamed the West for giving Ukraine a “blank check” to continue with its “reckless” attacks on the nuclear plant.

Grossi, who has been in talks with Russia and Ukraine on establishing a safe zone around the complex, said last week that discussions were “making progress, albeit not as fast as they should.”

The IAEA chief insists that the withdrawal of Russian troops from the site is key to establishing the security zone, but Zakharova said in early December that “there can be no talk about this” as Zaporozhye Region is now Russian territory.

The head of Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, last month accused Kiev of “nuclear terrorism” for having targeted the plant, saying that the facility is only safe due to the presence of Russian troops there.
https://www.rt.com/news/569932-ukraine-nuclear-grossi-iaea/

============ RELATED (posted in December)

17 Dec, 2022 11:37

3a) --- Russia building giant dome over Europe’s largest nuclear plant

The structure will shield stores of spent radioactive fuel from Ukrainian attacks

Russia is constructing a protective dome over spent radioactive fuel stores at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant as Ukrainian forces continue to target the facility, senior regional official Vladimir Rogov has said.

He took to Telegram on Saturday to post a short video of the work that’s taking place. It showed technicians setting up shields over the tanks that hold spent nuclear fuel.

The dome is designed to protect the storage facilities from shrapnel and improvised explosive devices carried by drones, the official explained, adding that it would be reinforced further at a later period.

Russia’s nuclear energy corporation Rosatom had earlier warned that damage to the spent-fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences.

The construction of the dome comes amid continued attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and the nearby town of Energodar, which Moscow blames on Kiev. Russia has repeatedly said that such strikes could result in a nuclear disaster that would eclipse the 1986 Chernobyl incident and affect many countries in Europe.

Ukraine initially claimed that the Russian military had been hitting the plant itself as part of “false-flag” operations to make Kiev look bad. However, Ukrainian general staff eventually admitted to striking the area around the nuclear facility.

The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which is the largest on the continent, has been under Russian control since February 28. All of the reactors at the facility are currently shut down due to the security situation.

Zaporozhye Region, together with three other former Ukrainian territories – Kherson Region and the People’s Republic of Donetsk and Lugnask – joined Russia in autumn after holding referendums.
https://www.rt.com/russia/568415-zaporozhye-nuclear-dome-ukraine/
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16 Jan, 2023 15:51

4) --- Economists signal rising risks of US recession

The probability of economic downturn in 2023 is very high despite the signs of easing inflation, experts warn

Higher interest rates will push the US economy into recession in the coming year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing its latest quarterly survey of economists.

According to the report, business and academic economists on average put the probability of a recession in the next 12 months at 61%. The forecast is slightly changed from 63% in October’s survey.

The WSJ report indicated that the Federal Reserve had initially hoped it could bring down inflation with only a slowing in economic growth rather than an outright contraction, an outcome dubbed a “soft landing.” However, three-quarters of respondents polled by the Journal said the Fed wouldn’t achieve a soft landing this year.

The warning comes despite a slightly more optimistic outlook on inflation. The report said that, as measured by the year-over-year change in the consumer-price index, inflation has eased from 9.1% last June to 6.5% in December. Economists expect it to fall to 3.1% by the end of this year and see it ending 2024 at 2.4%.

While recent inflation prints have shown some progress, a few persistent categories like core services are associated with the historically tight labor market, suggesting that there is still ‘a long way to go’ for the Fed,” Deutsche Bank economists told the WSJ in the survey. “The Fed would stay on its tightening trajectory to restore the rebalance of labor market and price stability, which in our view would engineer a sharp rise in unemployment and recession,” they explained.

Meanwhile, chief economist at EY-Parthenon Greg Daco said that “[w]hile services activity remains robust, the housing sector is tumbling under the weight of elevated mortgage rates and manufacturing activity is stalling–both signaling a broader economic downturn is likely coming.” The expert expects the combination of persistent inflation, tighter financial conditions and weaker global growth will push the US economy into a mild recession in the first half of 2023.

Overall, economists said that a recession can’t be avoided but that they expect it to be relatively shallow and short-lived.

On average, they expect gross domestic product to expand at a 0.1% annual rate in the first quarter of this year and to contract at 0.4% in the second. They see no growth for the third quarter and a 0.6% growth rate for the fourth, according to the report.
https://www.rt.com/business/569931-rising-risks-us-recession/
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16 Jan, 2023 16:26

5) --- Richest 1% grab two-thirds of world’s wealth – Oxfam

The collective fortunes of the super-rich have been increasing by $2.7 billion a day, a new study shows

Over the past two years, the richest 1% have amassed close to two-thirds of all new wealth created in the world, a new report by anti-poverty charity Oxfam revealed on Monday.

According to the report, a total of $42 trillion in new wealth has been created since 2020, with $26 trillion or 63% of that being amassed by the top 1% of the super-rich. The remaining $16 trillion was shared among the rest of the world.

“A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90%,” said the report, which was released on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Billionaires’ fortunes have reportedly increased by $2.7 billion a day over the past two years. This followed a decade of historic gains, with the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the past ten years.

Oxfam’s research highlighted that billionaire wealth soared in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. It said 95 food and energy corporations had more than doubled their profits last year. At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and more than 820 million people – roughly one in ten people on Earth – are going hungry, Oxfam said. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years

“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires – a roaring ’20s boom for the world’s richest,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International. She added that “taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises.”

“It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships – just the superyachts,” she concluded.
https://www.rt.com/business/569955-richest-grab-world-wealth/
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16 Jan, 2023 12:47

6) --- Kiev sent poorly-equipped volunteers to defend key Donbass city – The Times

Newspaper report paints a grim picture of Ukrainian defense forces in the strategically important city of Artyomovsk

Ukrainian forces defending the Donbass city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut by Kiev), are facing “an often desperate, regularly fatal” action, according to British newspaper The Times. Ukrainian officials have been downplaying the advances in the area made by Russian troops last week.

Last weekend, Moscow claimed to have fully seized the town of Soledar, located ten kilometers northeast from Artyomovsk. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar claimed on Sunday that fighting for the town was actually ongoing, and warned against publishing “unsanctioned” information about the situation on the ground.

The article printed by The Times on Monday apparently goes against the warning, since it includes accounts from some of the Ukrainian troops that were overwhelmed by Russian forces in Soledar and pulled back to Artyomovsk.

One such unit didn’t have access to “all the high-end smart weapons given to the Ukrainian army’s elite regiments by NATO,” the publication noted. Soldiers in it had little combat experience. Their participation in the fight for Soledar was mostly shooting in the general direction from which they believe they're under attack, the newspaper said.

According to The Times, Russian troops have locked Artyomovsk in a pincer, and Kiev’s forces in the city are waiting for it to close. It described the city’s defenders as mostly volunteers, including some foreign fighters.

The Ukrainian military “has kept its crack units out of the defense of Bakhmut and Soledar,” the newspaper reported, claiming that Moscow was interested in capturing them as “symbolic victories” rather than for military considerations.

Artyomovsk is part of a 70-kilometer-long defense line created over the years by Kiev. Russia claims sovereignty over the city along with the rest of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Donbass province joined Russia in October after a referendum, which Kiev rejected as a “sham.”

The Russian army credited the private military group Wagner for playing the key role in storming Soledar. The Times dismissed the controversial force as “murderers and robbers, gray from years in its grim jails.”

The characteristic is apparently based on claims that the unit recruited convicts, offering a pardon in exchange for risky military service. Officials in Kiev offered inmates in Ukrainian custody the same deal in the early days of the conflict.

The Times claimed that the Wagner Group had suffered heavy losses in Soledar. Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the force, claimed that an estimated 500 Ukrainian troops were killed in the final stage of the fighting.
https://www.rt.com/russia/569946-times-ukraine-defense-volunteers/
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16 Jan, 2023 16:11

7) --- New York City is full, mayor tells migrants

Eric Adams broke with the Democratic Party line on migration, urging the Biden administration to ‘do its job’

New York Mayor Eric Adams has announced there is “no room” for illegal immigrants in New York City, begging President Joe Biden’s administration to fix the “national emergency” at the Mexican border during a press conference in El Paso on Sunday.

“Now is the time for the national government to do its job,” the mayor said, referring to the migrant crisis that has reached unprecedented levels under Biden.

Adams said it was “unfair” that cities like New York and Chicago should have to host so many migrants and urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to oversee a nationwide “coordinated response.”

In a statement on Friday, Adams also said “the absence of sorely needed federal immigration reform should not mean that this humanitarian crisis falls only on the shoulders of cities.”

He urged the White House to counteract the misinformation he insisted was giving many migrants a “false impression” of the conditions they could expect in New York. Websites suggesting “basically the streets are paved with gold,” where everyone gets “automatic employment” and “you’re automatically going to be living in a hotel” must be countered by “accurate information,” he said.

The mayor traveled to El Paso to visit the border just days after he announced budget cuts for every city agency, warning the migrant deluge could cost New York as much as $2 billion. Adams had already begged New York Governor Kathy Hochul for emergency aid last week, insisting the city was at “breaking point” with 3,100 illegal immigrants arriving in a single week and a total of 40,000 having arrived since last spring.

Resentment has built among native New Yorkers as the mayor slashes the budgets of much-needed services, which he admitted could impact the city’s public safety. With affordable housing already in short supply before the migrants began arriving, homelessness has also reached epidemic proportions.

Adams may have invited the crisis when he reportedly told El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser in September that New York would welcome the border city’s surplus migrants. However, the city’s government quickly became unable to manage the influx, declaring a state of emergency in October and begging the White House for $1 billion in federal aid that it has thus far refused to commit.
https://www.rt.com/news/569963-adams-nyc-full-migrants-border/
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16 Jan, 2023 13:17

8) --- German defense minister resigns

Christine Lambrecht had been repeatedly criticized over a series of recent gaffes

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann confirmed on Monday. Lambrecht will continue to serve in an acting capacity pending the appointment of her successor.

The minister made the decision as a result of “months-long media focus on [her] persona,” according to her resignation letter, as quoted by the German press. This attention “hardly allows factual coverage about the soldiers, the Bundeswehr, and setting a course for security policy in the interest of German citizens,” she explained.

Lambrecht added that the “valuable work” of military personnel and “many motivated people” should take center stage instead.
The minister’s critics had insisted for some time that she had failed to develop a genuine interest for the military, and had not demonstrated the level of leadership needed for the position of defense minister.

The official’s reputation was further damaged when she posted a New Year’s Eve address on Instagram, in which she said the Ukraine conflict had given her many “special impressions” and allowed her to meet many “interesting and great people.” In the video, her words were repeatedly drowned out by the sound of fireworks in the background.

Critics were quick to pan Lambrecht’s speech as “embarrassing” and “inappropriate.”

Others criticized her for a lack of enthusiasm for the continued supply of German-made heavy weapons to Ukraine.

However, Chancellor Scholz had backed Lambrecht as recently as last month, when he described her as a “first-class defense minister.”

On Friday, reports appeared in Germany’s SZ and Bild newspapers, suggesting the minister was going to step down in the coming days. The two outlets, citing sources close to the politician, claimed that Lambrecht had by then already discussed her decision with Scholz.
https://www.rt.com/news/569941-german-defense-minister-resigns/
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16 Jan, 2023 10:17

9) --- NATO waging ‘proxy war’ against Russia – Croatian president

Speaking about the Ukraine conflict, Zoran Milanovic said he doesn’t want to be an “American slave”

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has claimed NATO, a military bloc of which Zagreb is a member, is waging a “proxy war” against Moscow in Ukraine. He also dismissed sanctions against Moscow as “nonsense,” adding that he does not want to be an “American slave.”

Speaking to Croatian reporters in the city of Vukovar on Sunday, Milanovic said, among other things: “Washington and NATO are waging a proxy war against Russia through Ukraine,” as quoted by media outlet Istra24.

He went on to argue that “The plan cannot be to remove Putin. The plan cannot be sanctions,” adding that such punitive measures are “nonsense and we will not achieve anything with them.”

“They go from war to war. And what should I be? An American slave?” Croatia's president asked rhetorically.

Milanovic voiced his frustration with the US-led military bloc’s policies in the same interview in which he tore into Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, over his latest Ukraine-related remark.

Speaking to news channel France 24 on Saturday, Plenkovic said the Balkan nation’s lawmakers, who in mid-December didn't support the EU’s program to train Ukrainian military personnel in member states, have “failed to be on the right side of history.”

Commenting on the remark, Milanovic, in turn, slammed the premier for bringing “disgrace” to his country “and to its democratic representatives in front of others.” The Croatian president argued that this kind of behavior reaches a low that is “the bottom of the bottom.”

As for the EU’s mission, the Croatian president warned that it effectively means that “for the first time in its history, the EU is participating in a war.” This, according to Milanovic, is “against the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.”

In December 2022, Milanovic argued that having Ukrainian service members train on Croatian soil would “bring war” to the Balkan nation.

He also insisted at the time that “Ukraine is not an ally,” criticizing Brussels’ decision last June to grant Kiev candidate status as “cynical.”
https://www.rt.com/news/569929-croatia-president-nato-proxy-war-russia/
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