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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 14:19 schreef Ulx het volgende:
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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 14:32 schreef Breekfast het volgende:

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Tja, allemaal leuk en aardig. Maar het blijkt telkens weer dat het Westen beter is in het aankondigen van sancties dan ze te handhaven. En daarna maar verbaasd zijn dat de sancties niet lijken te werken.

Vandaag ook weer een heel artikel in NRC hoe Griekse rederijen massaal op zee Russische olie overtanken om ze alsnog op de Europese markt te brengen. Dat is onder het sanctie-regime verboden, maar niemand die het wil of kan handhaven.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 14:44 schreef Ulx het volgende:
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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 15:38 schreef Cilantro het volgende:
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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 15:41 schreef BEFEM het volgende:
Gaat toch vooral ook om de raketten? Wat is daar de productie van eigenlijk? Zijn daar gegevens van bekend?

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 15:45 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Er zijn er in januari iets van 1000 besteld door samenwerkende landen in Europa. Volgens mij maakte Lockheed iets van 50 raketten per maand. Maar dat kan ondertussen wel zijn opgevoerd. In Japan maakt men ze ook dacht ik.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 15:49 schreef BEFEM het volgende:

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Dat ze besteld zijn zegt niks, zal vast pas in 2028 ofzo de eerste levering zijn.

Als ze die 50 per maand gewoon linea recta naar Oekra�ne zouden sturen

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 16:02 schreef Ulx het volgende:
How companies plan to ramp up production of Patriot missiles

Ik hou overigens altijd wel een slag om de arm bij dit soort nummers omdat je de exacte aantallen liever niet aan iedereen doorgeeft.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 15:45 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Er zijn er in januari iets van 1000 besteld door samenwerkende landen in Europa. Volgens mij maakte Lockheed iets van 50 raketten per maand. Maar dat kan ondertussen wel zijn opgevoerd. In Japan maakt men ze ook dacht ik.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 15:49 schreef BEFEM het volgende:

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Dat ze besteld zijn zegt niks, zal vast pas in 2028 ofzo de eerste levering zijn.

Als ze die 50 per maand gewoon linea recta naar Oekra�ne zouden sturen

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 21:32 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Het probleem daarvan zal ook de financiering zijn.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 21:35 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Nope.

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Waarmee ik niet zeg dat NL het allemaal gaat betalen. Maar geld is, europa-wijd, gewoon geen issue.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 21:43 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Het grootste deel van de steun is simpelweg nodig om Oekra�ne overeind te houden. Hou er rekening mee dat Oekra�ne in 2024 opereert met een overheidstekort van 43 miljard.

Daarnaast vraag Oekra�ne momenteel om 7 patriotsysteem en voldoende raketten. Dat komt uit op zo'n 15 miljard extra en daarna 7+ miljard per jaar.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 21:50 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Sure, dus we gaan alles betalen, maar niet de raketten die voorkomen dat het land aan puin wordt geschoten.

Makes sense, muchacho.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 21:58 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
De vraag is dan ook waarom dit materieel niet geleverd is.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 21:43 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Het grootste deel van de steun is simpelweg nodig om Oekra�ne overeind te houden. Hou er rekening mee dat Oekra�ne in 2024 opereert met een overheidstekort van 43 miljard.

Daarnaast vraag Oekra�ne momenteel om 7 patriotsysteem en voldoende raketten. Dat komt uit op zo'n 15 miljard extra en daarna 7+ miljard per jaar.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:00 schreef ExTec het volgende:
Werkelijk?

Omdat je een setje schijthazen hebt in DC, en in berlijn, die denken dat ze als ze maar genoeg deescaleren, rus heus wel weer braaf gaat doen.

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Sure, dus we gaan alles betalen, maar niet de raketten die voorkomen dat het land aan puin wordt geschoten.

Makes sense, muchacho.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:04 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Maar dan je het dus met me eens.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:04 schreef grrrrg het volgende:

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Voor onze veiligheid is het peanuts

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:06 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Ja, bijna, maar misschien dat in jouw hoofd het westen louter uit de VS en DE bestaat, maar ik ben die mening niet toegedaan.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:06 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Maar dan moet je wel met dat geld over de brug komen en dat gebeurt dus niet. Wat mij betreft is het grote probleem ook dat wat politic roepen en de uitvoering uit elkaar lopen.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:12 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Denk dat geld niet de issue is, het is meer productie capaciteit, die heeft alleen duitsland, maar die schijten permanent alle kleuren van de regenboog.

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Trump Says Make Ukraine Aid ‘In the Form of Loan’

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It should be noted that total European aid has surpassed US aid for Ukraine, though a significant gap remains between EU commitments and allocations, which would require the bloc to double its current level and pace of arms assistance to fully replace US aid, as reported by the Kiel Institute.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:17 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Gezien de Duits-Russische historie lijkt me een andere aanpak niet zo gek.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:19 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Eh, come again?

Welke geschiedenis is dat?

Die geschiedenis waar rus ongeveer de helft van dat land onder de knoet had...?

Is dat net zoiets als dat mexico spaanse troepen met open armen zou gaan ontvangen vanwege de "mexicaans-spaanse geschiedenis"?

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:31 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Dat gaat natuurlijk wat langer terug en omvat de beide wereldoorlogen.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:33 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Vertel.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:35 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Zoek maar op.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:37 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Je lult dus uit je nek.

Maar ik snap dat als je in een shithole land woont waar russia today niet 1 maar.. wat was het, 5? kanalen heeft? - feitelijke historie een backseat neemt.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:45 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Nou, als je de woonplaats van iemand erbij moet halen om je gelijk te halen ben je wel bijzonder diep gezonken.

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Verder wil ik je hier best uitnodigen en een rondleiding geven.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:49 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Nee, dat haal ik er alleen bij om aan te geven dat information space waar jij je in bevind verzadigd is met rus propaganda.
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Ja, je had het verteld. Het is daar lekker weer.

Ondertussen outclassen de drugscartels gewoon je federale overheid.

Dat is de definitie van een failed state.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:45 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Qua lectuur over de lange relatie tussen Duitsland en Rusland kan ik je Christopher Clark en Martyn Rady aanraden.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:59 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Mooi weer is toch prima?

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:00 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Wist je dat NL een zeer lange, diepe relatie heeft met rus?

Dat een van ons koningshuis' prinsen de uitgesproken rus naam Constantijn heeft, is daar een van de vele voorbeelden van.

Maar dat vertaal zich niet naar dat NL 24/7 het in de broek doet, of anderzijds op de rem hangt?

Dus wat bedoel je precies met: Gezien de Duits-Russische historie lijkt me een andere aanpak niet zo gek?

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:03 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Ja, 3de wereldland, failed state en lekker weer, of het gematigd klimaat in NL, met een solide staat, geen extreem drugskartel geweld, moeilijke keuze.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:03 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Ik doel uiteraard op de Duitse invasies van Rusland in de 20e eeuw.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:04 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Ben je afhankelijk van een uitkering of iets dergelijks? Het is verder prima hoor, ieder hecht belang aan andere zaken in de leefomgeving.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:09 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Ah, ok, dus je bent zelf ook precies op de kern aangeland, namelijk: we hebben nogal wat debielen in DE, die denken dat ze de russen iets verschuldigd zijn, omdat DE reguliere slachtingen aan heeft aangericht onder russen, NIET omdat DE zo (super) sterk waren, maar omdat rus nog steeds niet beter weet dan enorme meat waves op problemen afsturen?

Sorry, vind jij dat normaal? Vind jij dat een achterlijke agressor krediet verdient, omdat in vorige conflicten ze net zo achterlijk waren zoals we heden ten dage kunnen zien...?

En vind je het dan ook normaal dat je voor de rest een ander, onschuldig volk maar gewoon aan het gas laat gaan, omdat jij je inbeeld dat je die russen iets verschuldigd bent...?

Blijkbaar wel.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:14 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Maar dat is het punt helemaal niet, of ik het er mee eens bent is niet de juiste vraag. Ik ben geen Duitser en ben ook niet opgegroeid in een omgeving waar een dergelijke gedachtengang heerst. Wij hebben daar naar mijn mening niet over te oordelen en we moeten het simpelweg accepteren.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:17 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Maar goed Duitsland mag natuurlijk een eigen keuze daarin maken. Gezien de Duits-Russische historie lijkt me een andere aanpak niet zo gek.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:11 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Hey, jij wil niet dat ik je hier ongenadig om de oren ga slaan met bv levensstandaard statistieken.

Dus qua dat: shhhhhht.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:19 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Vandaar dat ik je graag uitnodig zodat je precies kan leren dat dergelijke statistiek niet van toepassing is op grote landen omdat de interne verschillen veel te groot zijn.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:19 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Hmmmm.
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Je leek er anders wel begrip voor te hebben.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:22 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Ja, je kan toch ergens begrip voor hebben zonder dezelfde denklijn aan te houden. Vaak kunnen we juist veel leren van de geschiedenis.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:22 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Totdat een van de vele cartels ineens een reden ziet om in jouw deelstaat iets te gaan doen. En dan zien we je binnen een maand op schiphol.

Want het cartel geweld is ver weg, vertel je jezelf, amirite?

Uh huh, totdat het niet meer ver weg is.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:23 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Nee, je inleven in de waanideen van een gek is maar zo zo nuttig. Daarna negeer je het, en trek je je eigen plan.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:24 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Maar we moeten toch juist verklaren waarom Duitsland zo handelt.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:27 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Maar dan houden we het verschil tussen JIJ die het stockholm syndroom eigenlijk wel 'begrijpelijk' vind, en IK die het gewoon keihard afwijst.

Met oneindig relativisme, veranderd er ook niks.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:32 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Hoe wil je het stockholm syndroom afwijzen terwijl dit een bestaand fenomeen is?

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:41 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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De wereld verbeterd zich niet door mensen die vanaf de zijlijn staan te pontificeren dat 'het nu eenmaal zo is, zoals het is'.

Kan jij ook maar 1 verbetering opnoemen die zo gerealiseerd is?

Nee.

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Germany to send additional Patriot air defense system, missiles to Ukraine

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:46 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Ik denk dat de weg van de geleidelijkheid de beste weg is. Te extreem een richting in willen slaan heeft ook vaak tegenstelde consequenties.

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 23:55 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Dat is inzake Sholz die permant in z'n broek schijt, en bv ondanks smeken van MBDA, de productie lijn van de Taurus'sen laat afbreken, en bv ook niet accepteert dat de producent van leopard's 24/7 gaat draaien, een lekker ontoereikend antwoord van iemand die veilig op een ander continent zit, en derhalve 0,0 skin in the game heeft.

Ow, en de information space, powered by ladingen russia today kanalen zullen je ongetwijfeld vertellen dat het allemaal prima is. Want "rus en DE hebben geschiedenis, ziet u".

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 00:05 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Als we het pragmatisch bekijken is er toch ook niks aan de hand voor Duitsland? Ik denk dat ze de productie van Leopards en Taurussen wel degelijk op zullen starten als de Russen bijvoorbeeld Polen binnenvallen, op het huidige tempo van veroveringen van de Russen zal dat niet voor 2250 zijn.

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 00:15 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Geef me even een @ wanneer het cartel geweld zich aandient in de deelstaat waar jij woont.

Misschien dat je begrijp hoe lakend dat is, als ik dan alleen maar uitkraam "hoe begrijpelijk het is dat de cartels dat doen, bla bla bla".

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 00:24 schreef BlaZ het volgende:
Nee, dat is niet lakend, dat is de realiteit.

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SBU foils assassination attempt on Kherson region governor Prokudin
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has thwarted a plot to kill Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration.

SBU Chief Vasyl Maliuk said this at a meeting of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Ukrinform reports, citing the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (Mirror of the Week) newspaper.

"A resident of Kherson was detained on April 10. He organized an attempt on Prokudin together with the enemy's special services," Maliuk said.

According to him, a new sample of an enemy first-person view (FPV) drone was launched from a distance of 12 kilometers. The traitor carried out visual observation directly on the spot and adjusted fire on Prokudin's car.

"We managed to document all this. He was detained at the stage of an attempted assassination. The enemy drone was landed in a timely manner thanks to our electronic warfare systems," Maliuk said.

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'I’d be a king in Somalia with this money:’ Foreign POWs on being lured to fight for Russia in Ukraine

^{Russian POWs are seen standing in line waiting to make a call home in a prisoner of war detention camp in the Lviv region, Ukraine, on Aug. 3, 2023. (Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)}

Adil Muhammad, a Somali, sits in a Russian military uniform among other prisoners of war (POWs) in a press conference in Ukraine’s capital in mid-March.

The former infantryman was captured in combat near Marinka in Donetsk Oblast while fighting with the Russian army in Ukraine in early 2024, five months after he came to Moscow on a tourist visa to work and only four days after being deployed to the front lines.

Three months into working for $140 a month at a clothing factory, Muhammad saw a billboard with a Russian army advertisement. He described the one-year military contract terms as a “dream” — a $2,000 monthly salary, 14 times higher than back home, army service inside Russia, and Russian citizenship.

Muhammad and seven other POWs prisoners of war, including five Nepalis, a Cuban, and a Sierra-Leonian, say they came to Russia seeking an escape from poverty. They also say they were tricked into fighting for Russia on the front lines in Ukraine.

All foreign POWs claimed Russia promised not to deploy them to the front lines in Ukraine and that they would receive regular pay. However, only one said he received his salary, albeit not in full.

“If I returned to Somalia with the money I made serving, I would be a king. I swear to God. The only problem (is that the Russians) put us in the first line,” Muhammad told the Kyiv Independent after the press conference.

^{Foreign soldiers made prisoners of war (POW) after being captured by Ukraine as combatants within the Russian armed forces take part in a press conference organized by Ukrainian officials in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 15, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference organized by Ukrainian officials, eight POWs from Cuba, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Somalia said they were lured with promises of high wages, non-frontline roles or simply tricked. Organizers defined the men as "mercenaries" from the "Global South" and said they were treating them the same as Russian POWs. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)}

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As Russian casualties mount and Moscow runs low on inmates to fill its ranks with, Russia has intensified recruitment efforts, targeting foreigners in low-income countries and migrant workers to bolster its war against Ukraine.

Ukraine's governmental agency responsible for POWs says the share of foreigners with the Russian military has been growing over the last six months when the Ukrainian military first observed large numbers of foreign fighters on the front lines.

The fate of those captured is up in the air. They could be swapped if either Russia or their home countries are interested, although the Kremlin generally shows little interest in exchanging them.

Ukraine also wants to try to charge these foreign soldiers as mercenaries as their primary reason behind wanting to fight is money. If found guilty of mercenarism, they could lose their status as prisoners of war and end up in a Ukrainian prison, where the conditions are far worse than in prisoner-of-war camps bound by international conventions.

But proving they are mercenaries is extremely difficult as several criteria must be met in order to do so, says Gyunduz Mamedov, an expert on international and Ukrainian criminal law and a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine.

Recruitment in Russia
A week before Muhammad was captured in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin solidified the framework for recruiting foreigners with a new decree in January that outlined the benefits for foreigners who serve in the Russian military.

Russia entices foreigners with lucrative salaries, citizenship, and comprehensive social welfare benefits. With each new decree, the Kremlin has gradually eased military enlistment requirements, such as needing residency to join the military, and expanded its list of incentives to join.

^{A group of Russian POWs lined up towards the stairs in a detention facility in western Ukraine on April 18, 2023. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)}

Under Putin's latest decree, the third on foreign recruits since the start of the full-scale invasion, signing a one-year military contract grants foreigners Russian passports along with their spouses, children, and parents upon application.

It is unclear how many foreigners Russia has managed to recruit. Ukrainian authorities don’t disclose how many non-Russian POWs are currently in custody in Ukraine.

Petro Yatsenko, spokesperson of Ukraine’s governmental agency for the treatment of POWs, said that only one in a thousand foreigners fighting on the Russian side has been taken as a POW by the Ukrainian military.

While working in Russia, Sujan Subedi, a POW from Nepal, watched Nepalese soldiers' TikTok videos advertising money and a passport in exchange for Russian military service.

“If there is a lot of money, there are no problems at home,” Subedi said, citing one of the advertisements as he spoke to the Kyiv Independent in broken Russian.

CNN reported on Feb. 11 that Russia recruited 15,000 Nepalis to fight against Ukraine, with several being confirmed killed in action. Nepal halted issuing work permits for Russia for its citizens after urging Moscow to cease recruiting locals.

^{Family members and returnees from the Russian Army are demonstrating near the Russian Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Feb. 6, 2024. Dozens of Nepalis have been killed and scores injured while fighting on the front lines in the war against Ukraine. The demonstrators are submitting a letter to the Russian Embassy officials, requesting Russia to stop the recruitment of Nepali citizens as soldiers in their forces with the promise of a handsome salary. (Subaas Shrestha/NurPhoto via Getty Images)}

Subedi, a Nepalese prisoner of war who, unlike the others, had gone to Russia about a year before being recruited, says he was approached by an Indian man who proposed he sign a military contract.

Although he expressed concerns to the man, he assured him that Subedi would probably serve in medical or support forces far from the combat zone.

"I was just given documents to sign and joined the army," Subedi said, adding that he received $4,800 for five months of service, even though he was promised $2,000 a month.

However, not everyone succeeds in securing the funds. Yatsenko said Russia’s offer has a catch:

“The lifespan of such an infantryman is not measured in days but hours,” as foreign fighters are often used as "cannon fodder" by Russia on the front.

Subedi, marked by burns on his hands and face from combat, eventually gave the money to the Indian man who helped him secure a military contact, referring to it as settling a "debt." He didn't explain what the debt was for but said he had paid it before having the chance to send any money back home.

^{A group of Russian soldiers captured during the Russian invasion of Ukraine lined up in a prison in western Ukraine on April 18, 2023. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)}

Prisoners of war said they saw soldiers from India, Ghana, Cameroon, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Iraq, China, Serbia, and France, among other nationals fighting on the Russian side.

“Here is the representative sampling (of non-Russian national POWs),” Yatsenko told the press conference, suggesting there are more Nepalis than other foreign fighters in Russia’s military.

The Center for National Resistance, a Ukrainian government agency, claimed in February that “tens of thousands of African and Asian nationals are fighting on the Russian side.”

The recruitment continues.

Cuba, where the recruitment ads come while scrolling through one’s Facebook feed, serves as a healthy source of foreign fighters for the Russian army.

“The flow of mercenaries from Cuba does not cease as Russian recruiters feel free there,” said Yatsenko.

^{Russian POWs are seen waiting in line to call home to Russia in a prisoner-of-war detention camp on Aug. 3, 2023, in the Lviv region, Ukraine. Hundreds of captured Russian POWs including conscripts, mercenaries, Wagner militia, and Storm-Z Russian prisoners are being held in up to 50 sites around Ukraine. Storm-Z is a series of penal military units established by Russia since April 2023. (Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)}

The Cuban recruitment activity, first reported by Reuters, began several weeks after Putin’s May 2023 decree enabling foreigners who joined the military on year-long contracts to obtain Russian citizenship, along with their family members.

“In Cuba, we don't have many possibilities to earn money, so I saw this as an opportunity to help my family,” Frank Dario Jarosey, a genial Cuban POW with dreadlocks, told the Kyiv Independent, adding he had to sell his phone just to get to the Havana airport in order to fly to Russia.

Conditions in custody
Yatsenko said all eight POWs were held with other prisoners of war, but declined to directly answer whether foreigners were being held alongside Russians.

After Russian soldiers, mercenaries, and forcibly conscripted Ukrainians from occupied Donbas are captured, they move through a series of detention centers across Ukraine before arriving at prisoner-of-war camps.

Although the eight men claimed they were speaking freely, when the Kyiv Independent talked to the Cuban POW about the conditions in custody, a masked guard signaled him not to answer this question.

A military intelligence operative who wasn’t authorized to speak to the media told the Kyiv Independent that foreign POWs were kept in an undisclosed pre-detention center without providing other details. The conditions in such facilities can vary from place to place.

<sup>Russian prisoners of war having lunch inside a POW camp in Ukraine in Sept., 2023. The lunch includes a vegetable salad, a thin pea and potato soup, porridge with butter, a meat patty, and freshly baked bread. (Alexander Khrebet / The Kyiv Independent)


Prisoners of war on duty in the dining hall before lunch at a camp for Russian POWs in Ukraine in mid-Sept., 2023. (Alexander Khrebet / The Kyiv Independent)</sup>

The only thing the POWs said about the conditions was that adjustments were made for Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims. Muhammad, a Muslim, said the detention center’s administration had arranged meals for him that fit his diet.

He also said that as he has three meals a day, he considers his conditions in Ukrainian captivity to be “good.”

Swapping foreign POWs
Yatsenko said that all foreign soldiers would eventually end up in a POW camp. The next stage after arriving there is the exchange, but it is unclear how it works for non-Russian nationals.

Uncertainty looms over foreign POWs as Russia isn’t requesting to swap them. Moscow “doesn’t need them,” claimed Yatsenko.

Russia’s decade-long war in Ukraine saw a precedent when Moscow exchanged a foreign fighter who had fought on its behalf. Rafael Lusvaghi, a Brazilian who served alongside Russian proxies in Donbas, was convicted of terrorism in Ukraine before being swapped to Moscow in a prisoner exchange in 2019.

"If there is interest from (foreign) governments (to repatriate a POW), we can look for ways to exchange," said Yatsenko, adding that Ukraine also doesn't need these captives.


^{Russian prisoners of war inside one of the workshops crafting garden furniture inside a POW camp in Ukraine in Sept., 2023. (Alexander Khrebet / The Kyiv Independent)}

He said captured foreigners could be tried in Ukraine for mercenarism, however, there were no such trials yet, and they are currently being held as POWs in accordance with the 3rd Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.

Nonetheless, Mamedov, a former deputy prosecutor general from 2019-2021 who supervised around 250 investigations into foreigners fighting on the Russian side in the war in Donbas, warned that POWs cannot be held accountable for anything other than war crimes as per the convention.

The Ukrainian courts could try and charge foreigners mercenarism, but it is very difficult to prove their guilt in accordance with the United Nations Mercenary Convention.

“It is essential to understand that prosecuting for violations of the convention is very difficult because it has many cumulative criteria by which a mercenary is determined,” Mamedov told the Kyiv Independent.

Yet, if mercenarism is proven, mercenaries could lose their status as combatants or POWs.

Some of the foreign prisoners of war expressed reluctance to be exchanged to either Russia or their home countries, where they could face charges related to mercenarism, an activity prohibited in many countries.  

^{Injured Russian prisoners of war sit and lie on their beds at a camp for Russian POWs in western Ukraine on Sep. 19, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The center is the last stop for detainees first held in other cities before being exchanged. Ukrainian officials gave a tour of the camp which opened in 2022 for Russian prisoners of war to journalists. (Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images)}

“If I return to Cuba, they will put me in prison… I do not know what will happen with my life from now on, but I can tell you that what I would like to do is go to another country,” said Jarosey.

Muhammad also foresees problems for himself and wants to be exchanged “anywhere to a NATO country.”

“I don’t want to make (Ukrainians) have to take care of me. They have to take care of their lands and defeat Russia,” Muhammad said, adding that the best thing that happened to him while being a Russian soldier was that Ukrainian forces captured him.

Interviewing Russian soldiers in POW camp in Ukraine

quote:

Russel Bentley, pro-Putin fighter and Russian propagandist from Texas went missing in Russian-controlled Donetsk

Russell Bentley, US citizen, who fought for pro-Putin forces in Russia’s war against Ukraine has gone missing, say the so-called police in Russian-controlled Donetsk (temporary occupied territory of Ukraine).

Russell Bentley, 63, who is married to a Russian woman and has a Russian passport, disappeared after an attack by Defense Force of Ukraine, according to reports. He was last seen in Donetsk on 8 April 2024 before moving in an ‘unknown direction’, and his current location is unknown.

Bentley has posted that he was ‘heading west with the “Liberators of Ukraine”. We may stop in Kryiv, we may stop on the English Channel. We may liberate the USA.’

A visitor to Cuba, in 1999 he escaped from a minimum security US facility where he was being held for drug trafficking, Daily Mail reports.

‘I didn’t have to dig a tunnel or take anybody hostage,’ Bentley said.

‘But I did escape from prison.’

He was later captured and put in a high security facility to finish his sentence.

He became a fighter for pro-Putin forces in 2014 after breaking up with his yoga-instructor girlfriend, though he spoke almost no Russian.

He sympathised with the Russian rather than Ukrainian side.

He has lived in Donbas – Russian-occupied Ukraine – ever since.

He called himself the information warrior and had worked for a media outlet affiliated with Sputnik, a Russian state media outlet.

quote:

Russia recruits women from penal colonies to go to war
The Russians have been actively recruiting women from Russian penal colonies in search of additional human resources.

Source: Ukraine's National Resistance Center (NRC)

Details: Recruiters from the Russian Defence Ministry are primarily looking for medics and snipers and, optionally, women for assault units. Imprisoned women are promised money and the opportunity to come back home.

The NRC noted that imprisoned women are actively agreeing to the terms as they believe in the propaganda that they will come back home alive.

Quote: "However, a completely different situation awaits them in Ukraine, and many of them will go to hell instead of freedom."

quote:

What if Putin Doesn’t Want Peace?
Calls for the U.S. to push Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war require assuming a peace-minded Russia that doesn’t exist.

As the Ukraine war rages for a third year, with casualties well into the hundreds of thousands, some Americans argue that the United States should pursue peace via negotiations, instead of helping Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion.

It’s a common position among the Republican Party’s dominant MAGA wing—for example, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) argued that military aid for Ukraine “should be totally off the table and replaced with a push for peace talks”—as well as the “anti-war” left, and some self-styled “realists.”

The underlying logic is that American support makes the Ukrainians overconfident—including in 2023’s costly and largely unsuccessful counteroffensive—and the U.S. doesn’t mind sacrificing an indefinite number of Ukrainians to hurt Russia. Therefore, weakening Ukraine by withdrawing aid would encourage them to pursue reasonable accommodation. In this vision, Ukraine concedes land Russia currently controls and formally promises never to join NATO, the U.S. guarantees it, and the violence finally ends.

SPOILER

quote:

In The Nation, Adolph Reed, Jr. says he’s “outraged at Biden’s adventurist bellicosity in Eastern Europe” with “rhetoric to stoke hostilities between Russia and Ukraine,” and claims the United States “seems hell-bent on fighting to the last Ukrainian.”

Reed doesn’t try to explain how the U.S. supposedly tricked or forced Russia into massing 190,000 troops and invading in 2022, nor tricked Ukraine into resisting Russia’s assault when they supposedly want to surrender. He assumes that Russia wants peace, the United States wants war, and Ukraine has no agency, so war it is.

Arguing in Foreign Affairs that the West should “pave the way for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine,” Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro acknowledge Russian and Ukrainian agency, but like Reed, assume Vladimir Putin wants peace. “Kyiv and Moscow have more opportunities for signaling, because they are the belligerents,” they write, so “Russia should indicate that its war aims are limited, that it is prepared to negotiate an end to the war, and that it will abide by the terms of a settlement.”

But what if Russia’s war aims are expansive, it’s not prepared to negotiate, and if it got concessions now, it’d violate the settlement when ready to try for more, much as the 2022 invasion violated previous agreements? Charap and Shapiro don’t say.

Some world leaders, such as Brazilian President Lula da Silva, have gone further, calling for negotiations now, and chastising Ukraine for wanting too much. Pope Francis stirred controversy in March when he told Ukraine to “have the courage to raise the white flag.”

But while the Trumpist right appears driven by a desire to see Russia succeed, even the well-intentioned calls to cut off Ukraine aid in the hope it leads to a negotiated settlement rely on a very dubious assumption: that Russian leader Putin wants peace.

Putin Is After Conquest
Most people like peace. They might be willing to fight in self-defense, but generally think the death and destruction of war is bad and want it to stop.

Putin is not like that. His words and actions indicate he prefers pursuit of domination over peace, and thinks his tolerance for the suffering of war is an asset against more peace-minded adversaries. Russia launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine over two years ago for basically the same reason Russia launched military action against Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008: because Putin wants to and can.

Putin’s Russia has repeatedly shown that by “we’re open to negotiation” they mean “we’ll accept your surrender now.” Government officials and state media figures insist Ukraine “is not a real country” and should not exist. In March 2024, former Russian president and current deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev declared that “Ukraine is definitely Russia,” and displayed a map of Eastern Europe depicting a larger Russia, with Poland and Romania’s borders changed as well.

It’s possible all this is an elaborate, sustained, collective posturing to generate leverage for negotiations. But if so, it’s awfully consistent, and they’ve maintained it across numerous public and leaked private channels for over two years under global scrutiny. More likely, it’s an expression of intent.

That means Russia’s reaction to Ukraine weakening—due in large part to the loss of American support—is not “oh thank God, that means we’re safe, we can stop this awful war now,” but something more like “see, I told you they’re weak, now’s the time to push harder, they’ll break.”

In a recent interview, Putin himself confirmed as much, saying, “It would be ridiculous for us to start negotiating with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition.”

Ukraine Doesn’t Want to Surrender
Ukrainians are human beings with agency. Ukraine is an independent state with an elected government. It might seem absurd to say something so obvious, but some prominent arguments against aid treat Ukraine as a Western vassal, forced to fight at foreign masters’ bidding.

For example, in one conspiracy theory, Ukraine and Russia were on the verge of a peace deal in spring 2022, except then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukraine not to.

Like many conspiracy theories, it requires leaps of logic. How did Johnson have the power to make a country that had been fighting off Russian invasion for two months—eight years, really, since Russia took Crimea and fomented war in Donbas in 2014—to keep fighting when they wanted to quit?

In reality, Ukraine had just thwarted Russia’s initial thrust to take the capital, Kyiv, and uncovered torture, rape, and murder in the town of Bucha after Russian forces withdrew. In those 2022 talks, Russia rejected further withdrawal and demanded big concessions, Ukraine didn’t want to subject millions of Ukrainians to Russian occupation like in Bucha, and the talks went nowhere due to incompatible demands.

Accepting that Putin wants to dominate Ukraine, and that Ukraine wants to resist, means that even a weakened Ukraine with less foreign support is unlikely to surrender. If Putin achieves his original goal of regime change in Ukraine, that probably won’t end the war—as Americans should know from Iraq.

If Putin takes a deal that leaves the Ukrainian government and military in place, it will likely be unstable, with Russia reconsolidating to try for more later, and Ukraine preparing to counter it. That describes the situation for a decade now, and into the indefinite future.

And even that sort of deal appears out of reach, with Russia and Ukraine both demanding significantly more (in opposite directions).

Russia isn’t expressing openness to any real peace deal. And to the extent they do, Ukrainians don’t trust Putin’s word. No negotiated agreement since 2014 stopped Russian aggression—not entirely, or not for long.

Military Realities
Underlying some calls for Ukraine to sue for peace is a misunderstanding of the state of combat. After large swaths of territory changed hands in 2022, the front line barely moved in 2023, leading some to call it a stalemate. But the line was very active, with Russia alone suffering about a quarter million casualties last year.

Then in 2024, Russia managed to break that not-actually-a-stalemate. As Ukraine faces ammunition shortages, in part due to U.S. aid drying up months ago, Russia has taken advantage, pressing up and down the line. In February this year, Ukraine withdrew from the eastern city of Avdiivka, Russia’s first territorial gain since spring 2023.

Despite increasingly desperate requests, Congress hasn’t passed any aid for Ukraine in over a year. The Senate passed a bill two months ago by a vote of 70-29, but Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has refused to bring that or any alternative to the floor (likely because he knows it’s popular and would pass with bipartisan support). Ukraine is notably weaker as a result, but there are no signs they’re more inclined to surrender.

Meanwhile, Russia has reacted to Ukrainian weakness not by seeking a negotiated settlement, but by pushing harder, throwing bodies at the front and bombs at Ukrainian cities. Putin, other top Russian officials, and Russian state media are sounding confident and aggressive, reiterating that Russia aims to dominate Ukraine, and that they expect the weak-willed West to fold.

As military analyst Michael Kofman notes, Russia has geared up for a long war, now devoting approximately 8 percent of GDP to defense.

If cutting off military aid would incentivize both Ukraine and Russia to seek peace, we’d probably see signs of it by now. But we’re seeing the opposite.

Waiting for the 2024 U.S. Election
One of the biggest factors in the Ukraine war this year is the upcoming American presidential election, because there is a realistic possibility that the U.S. will switch sides.

Current president and Democratic nominee Joe Biden supports Ukraine and democracy more generally. Biden told America’s NATO allies in Europe that he’ll back Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” and calls on Congress to pass more aid.

By contrast, former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump expresses sympathy for Russia and Putin’s model of authoritarian leadership. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Trump publicly gushed that the move was “savvy” and “genius.” He urged Republicans in Congress to block Ukraine aid even after they’d won concessions on U.S. border security.

If Trump becomes president again, it’s apparent that his plan for the war is to push Ukraine to give Russia what Putin wants. Trump openly advocates Ukraine ceding territory to Russia, including land the Russian military hasn’t been able to take and hold.

Going further, Trump says that if Russia threatened a NATO ally, he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” if the NATO country “didn’t pay,” misguidedly treating the NATO alliance like a protection racket rather than a mutual defense pact.

The Russian government can see all this, and surely believes they’d get a more favorable settlement in Ukraine with Trump in the White House rather than Biden. And since Putin doesn’t see the death and destruction as inherently bad—something to stop for the sake of sparing lives on both sides—he’ll continue the war through 2024 no matter what.

That means peace isn’t an option this year, even if Westerners wish to see it. The choice facing the United States in Ukraine is not between peace and war, but between a weakened Ukraine pushed back by Russia and a well-equipped Ukraine defying Russia.

And that, like so much else, is on the ballot this November.

quote:

Minister to propose classing Moscow Patriarchate church as terror organization
Interior Minister Lauri L��nemets (SDE) is to propose the Riigikogu declare the Moscow-based Orthodox Patriarchate a terrorist organization, the minister said Thursday.

The Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (MPE�K) is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, but will not be designated in the same way under the plan.

Speaking to ETV politics show "Esimene stuudio," L��nemets said that the ultimate aim is to ban the Moscow Patriarchate's activities in Estonia.

SPOILER

quote:

Speaking at a press conference earlier this week, a representative of the MPE�K said the organization does not directly report to the Moscow Patriarchate, or to Patriarch Kirill, and so cannot be held accountable for his statements of support regarding Russia's war in Ukraine, however.

L��nemets told "Esimene stuudio" that, based on his ministry's knowledge plus a recent assessment from the Internal Security Service (ISS), as minister of the interior, he has no choice but to act to sever the ties between the MPE�K and the Moscow Patriarch.

"Taking the context as a whole, as minister of the interior, I have no choice but to propose to the Riigikogu that they declare the activities of the Patriarchate operating in Moscow as [a] terrorist [organization] and supportive of terrorism, so consequently the interior minister may go to court and propose the termination of the activities of that church organization as it operates here," he said.

"This will not affect congregations, and it does not mean that churches will be closed, but it means that the connection with Moscow will be cut," L��nemets went on.

"We must understand that today the Moscow Patriarchate is subordinate to Vladimir Putin, who fundamentally leads terrorist activities worldwide," he added.

According to L��nemets, the Riigikogu has previously adopted a similar declaration and recognized Russia as a terrorist state.

L��nemets has been interior minister since July 2022 and during that time has called for representatives of the MPE�K to give an account regarding security issues on a total of four occasions.

However, a statement in April adopted by the World Russian People's Council, an ethno-centric organization, has taken the security situation to the next level, the minister said.

L��nemets said: "To draw a parallel, Islamic terrorists who claim to be waging a holy war against the Western world, against Western values; well the present day patriarch and Patriarchate operating out of Moscow are no different from those Islamist terrorists."

L��nemets noted that there are various MPE�K congregations active in Estonia, and that their internal operations are not directly influenced by Moscow, yet the churches' subordination to Moscow still poses a threat to Estonia's security.

The MPE�K has over 100,000 followers in Estonia.

"We must understand that if Patriarch Kirill is the head of the church in Moscow, then no matter what is discussed in congregations in Estonia, his message is very forceful and strong, and it certainly reaches people, and this is what certain people (also in Estonia) base their actions on. /.../ We have reason to suspect that (from Russia), preparations are being made for much larger things for the (Orthodox) community, and this also affects Estonia," L��nemets added.

quote:

Soldiers backed with HMMWVs knocked invaders out of the houses in Krasnohorivka

Servicemen backed with HMMWVs knocked Russian invaders out of houses in Krasnohorivka.

Soldiers of the 109th Territorial Defense Brigade took part in the battle.

Now Krasnohorivka has become the epicenter of the Russian offensive in the Novopavlivka sector.

Russian invaders tried to gain a foothold in the houses on Vatutin Street in Krasnohorivka, Donetsk region.

У Красногорівці бійці з HMMWV вибили окупантів з будинків [Квітень 2024]

SPOILER

quote:

To prevent this from happening, the Ukrainian soldiers backed with HMMWVs moved to houses seized by Russian troops.

As the HMMWVs approached the houses, the soldiers opened heavy fire. Ukrainian fighters then threw explosives into the houses and drove away.

“Our soldiers were engaged in close combat in the urban area, mortar gunners supported them, and meanwhile kamikaze drone pilots were hitting enemy vehicles trying to break through our defense,” the military said.

The brigade noted that the Russian assault had been repelled, and the enemy had failed to gain a foothold.

Krasnohorivka, near Mariinka, in the Novopavlivka sector of the frontline, remains one of the epicenters of the Russian army’s offensive in recent days.

“We are constantly catching single Russian soldiers, who are reinforced by special forces, who tried to advance towards our positions on ATVs. These are desperate assaultmen, that is, the mobilized ones are reinforced. They want to strike and break through the defense in one place. This is their maneuver. They have concentrated their fist there,” said Serhii Tsehotskyi, an officer of the 59th Separate Motorized Brigade “Yakiv Handziuk”.

On April 13, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that in the Novopavlivka sector, the Ukrainian Defense Forces had continued to hold back the enemy in the areas of Krasnohorivka, Heorhiivka, Novomykhailivka, Kostiantynivka, Vodiane, and Urozhaine in the Donetsk region. The enemy tried to break through the Ukrainian defense 29 times.

As previously reported, the mobile workshop purchased by the volunteers has already repaired hundreds of American HMMWVs.

quote:

Cruise missiles hit invaders’ facility in Luhansk

In the temporarily occupied Luhansk, cruise missiles were launched at the invaders’ facilities.

At about 11:30 a.m., the missiles hit the area of the machine-building plant, where, according to preliminary data, Russian invasion forces were based.

“The strike was on the Luhansk machine building plant, that, according to preliminary data, is a Russian repair base,” said the sources of the operativnoZSU Telegram channel.

After the strikes, a fire broke out, accompanied by heavy smoke – a column of smoke appeared over the city after the explosions.

SPOILER

quote:

У Луганську крилаті ракети уразили об'єкт окупантів

Leonid Pasichnyk, a Ukrainian traitor and leader of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic”, confirmed the strike on the Luhansk machine building plant.

Allegedly, several Storm Shadow missiles struck Russian facilities in Luhansk.

A large number of Russian soldiers are currently stationed in Luhansk.

Storm Shadow
The Franco-British Storm Shadow/SCALP EG is a long-range air-to-ground air-launched cruise search missile.

It is designed to overcome air defense systems and destroy important stationary targets, including bunkers. The 5.1-meter-long search missile has a flight weight of up to 1,300 kg, while the weight of its warhead is 450 kg.

The French version of the missile called SCALP EG and the British Storm Shadow are basically identical. The difference is only in software and type of aircraft designed to carry this missile.

The stated operational range of the cruise missile is over 250 km in the export version and up to 560 km for the army of France and Britain.

As previously reported, the Ukrainian Air Force uses these cruise missiles from Su-24M tactical bombers. In 2024, the French division of MBDA is to produce 40 SCALP cruise missiles, the production of which has been halted for a long time.

quote:

Zelenskyy: 500 defence companies operate in Ukraine, other countries interested in Ukrainian weapons

At present, Ukraine has 500 defence industry companies employing almost 300,000 people.

Source: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the occasion of the Day of the Defence Industry Worker; the Ukrainian president's website

Details: Zelenskyy noted that there are currently 500 defence industry companies operating in Ukraine. Almost 300,000 people are involved in this priority production. In particular, they produce Ukrainian shells, guns, mortars, armoured vehicles, anti-tank systems, electronic warfare systems and much more.

Quote: "Other countries are already interested in our weapons and in cooperating with us. After all, without our strength there would be no full-fledged force of the EU and NATO. Ukraine will ensure security for itself and help others to maintain and preserve their security."

More details: Zelenskyy inspected the latest models of military equipment and weapons and listened to a report on their production volume and use at the front. The president and the manufacturers also discussed the issue of state orders for the presented samples and the opportunity of increasing production.

For reference: On 13 April 2022, two Neptune missiles developed and manufactured by Ukrainians destroyed the Russian missile cruiser Moskva. In honour of this event, a presidential decree last year established a professional holiday for employees of the Ukrainian defence industry.

quote:

The European Parliament fined deputy Zhdanok 1,750 euros for connections with the FSB

Member of the European Parliament Tatiana Zhdanok, who is suspected of collaborating with Russian intelligence services, will not be paid five days of daily allowance totaling 1,750 euros for violating the Code of Conduct for Members of the European Parliament (EP). This was stated by the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola, Delfi reports.

Zhdanok was also banned from representing the European Parliament in the cooperation delegation, inter-parliamentary conference or any other inter-institutional forum until the end of this convocation. Metsola noted that Zhdanok did not appeal, so the decision is final.

In March 2024, the State Security Service (SSS) of Latvia began a criminal investigation against Zhdanok. It was related to her alleged collaboration with the FSB.

At the end of January 2023, the Bellingcat group and The Insider published an investigation based on data obtained as a result of the leak of Zhdanok’s email correspondence. The authors of the investigation claim that Zhdanok conducted active correspondence with Russian citizens and, at least since 2004, reported on her activities to employees of the Fifth Service of the FSB and requested money to organize events. That same year she became a member of the European Parliament.

Zhdanok denied accusations of collaboration with Russian intelligence services, but did not deny the authenticity of the correspondence. She also noted that hacking personal email without permission from law enforcement is identity theft.

The mandate of Member of the European Parliament Zhdanok expires this year. She was previously expelled from the European Greens faction after refusing to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She herself stated that she “cannot be intimidated” and noted that maintaining contacts with people is “the direct responsibility of a politician.”

quote:

In Switzerland, the far right initiated a referendum on neutral status
In Switzerland, the far right collected signatures to hold a referendum on the country's neutral status. Source: Bloomberg

This initiative, which involves a ban on any sanctions, was initiated by the far-right Swiss People's Party and activists. They seek to enshrine in the country's constitution a provision on permanent armed neutrality, which excludes participation in any military alliance.

The initiative also aims to block “participation in non-military coercive measures,” which includes sanctions.

Despite the collection of signatures, the vote may be delayed. Once the signatures are legally certified, the government and parliament must discuss the issue. Usually the entire process before holding a referendum takes several years.

It should be noted that this week the Swiss People's Party expressed concern about "deliberate attempts to undermine neutrality" after the country imposed sanctions on Russia. The party argued that this action undermined the international perception of Switzerland as a neutral country.

Let us remind you that in the elections in Switzerland, the right secured a good result with the help of populism and disinformation .

quote:

Your questions about Trump’s trial, answered
When CNN asked for your questions about former President Donald Trump’s upcoming first criminal trial – for his role in hush money payments made before the 2016 election to women who said they had affairs with him – we got a flood of input. Not all of it was fit to print.

But there were a lot of legitimate and very thoughtful questions. Keep reading for a representative sampling, which helps explain the case, along with context from CNN’s reporters and coverage.

Most of the questions come directly from reader submissions, but for others, I’ve taken the liberty of simplifying multiple submissions into one question. Trump, by the way, denies having the affairs and has pleaded not guilty in the case.

SPOILER

quote:

Could Trump actually go to jail?
I went to CNN’s chief legal analyst Laura Coates for the single, most-asked question, which was asked in many ways but boils down to: Could Trump actually go to jail?

Coates: If Trump were to be found guilty of all of the counts, he could theoretically be facing more than a decade in prison. The 34 felony counts are classified as Class E felonies in New York, the lowest level felony in the state.

The maximum penalty for each of those counts is four years; however New York caps sentencing for this type of felony at 20 years. It is within the judge’s discretion to decide whether those sentences would run concurrently or consecutively. Because the crimes involve nonviolent offenses and Trump does not have a criminal record, the judge could also consider jailing him for a period that is but a fraction of the maximum penalty.

Another possibility is that the judge could forego prison entirely and place him on probation with the possibility of incarceration looming over his head if he fails to abide by the conditions set by the judge. If the judge should decide to incarcerate post-conviction, Secret Service would become the elephant in the, well, cell. The unprecedented nature of incarcerating a former president would raise questions about how best to ensure equal treatment under the law and security for a former president.

Watch Coates’ show weeknights at 11 p.m. ET where she’ll answer a lot more of your questions.

If Trump were sent to prison, would he still have his presidential Secret Service protecting him in jail?
I reached out to the Secret Service to ask if they had planned for the potential that Trump could be imprisoned. Not surprisingly, I was told by a spokesman that this is “something we can not comment on at this time.”

But note that as a matter of US law, former presidents and their spouses are afforded lifetime Secret Service protection, unless they decline it.

Will the trial be televised?
No. While many states frequently broadcast trials, New York state civil rights law limits what is allowed. The judge, Juan Merchan, could in theory make an exception, but he did not allow cameras to broadcast Trump’s arraignment last year.

It is possible that photos and video inside the courtroom may be taken prior to proceedings, as occurred during his New York civil fraud trial.

Similarly, if or when his federal trials on charges of election interference and mishandling classified data occur, there are rules that likely bar the broadcast of those as well. His trial in Georgia on charges of election interference would be televised if it occurs.

Does Trump have to be in court every day?
Yes. The judicial process is built around the idea that defendants are there to answer charges, and New York law requires that a defendant be present at trial.

There are a few exceptions. Trump could ask to be excused and waive his right to be present, but the prosecution could object. Disorderly or disruptive defendants can also be removed from court during their trial.

Are prosecutors able to question Stormy Daniels about personal, physical aspects of their alleged affair? … It seems to me that the more ironclad proof of the affair is, the more it demonstrates his premeditation and intent in falsifying records and covering up.
Daniels’ comments and her side of the story are likely to be a big part of the case, according to CNN’s Katelyn Polantz. You can imagine Daniels will be a top witness for the prosecution and that Trump’s team will try to limit what she has to say.

Trials are unpredictable things, Polantz notes. We won’t entirely know who will be called or what they will be allowed to say until it happens.

Lots of presidents have had extramarital relationships. Many were probably paid off. Why do we care this time?
Trump isn’t technically accused of having an affair, which he denies and which is not illegal. The hush money itself, represented by a contract between two parties, is not necessarily illegal either. Hush money was paid by the Trump-supporting publisher of the National Enquirer to the former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and, separately, it was paid by Trump’s fixer and former attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels.

But in this case, the payments, which were intended to hide details from voters before the 2016 election, violated campaign finance law. National Enquirer’s parent company admitted wrongdoing, and Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign law and served time in prison.

Federal prosecutors, as a matter of Department of Justice policy, were unable to prosecute Trump for the payments when he was president and decided not to bring charges after he left office. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg then brought this case. Trump is accused of falsifying business records (a New York state crime) in an effort to use illegal campaign contributions to influence the 2016 campaign (a federal crime).

Will the prosecutor connect the hush money case to interference with the 2016 presidential election?
Here’s an answer from CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig: He better, because that’s what he’s charged. Just falsifying business records on its own is a misdemeanor. The felony charge here, which is the lowest level felony under New York law, is falsifying business records to further some other crime. Some other crime here is campaign finance violation. So that is a necessary showing that the prosecution must make.

Honig adds that people should look for this odd combination of a state crime (falsifying business records) with a federal crime (campaign finance violations) to be raised during the trial and potentially on appeal if Trump loses the case.

Please tell me we don’t have to go through the appellate process and then SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) review for Trump’s latest efforts to delay the trial.
Honig: Probably not. He’s been trying throughout this week (before the trial) and the New York appeals court has disposed of his arguments astonishingly quickly, sometimes in less than an hour. We can’t predict what’s going to happen … and he may try to continue appealing up the chain, but so far we’ve seen the appeals courts very quickly shut it down.

It seems that Trump is allowed to appeal each and every decision. Is this normal procedure for any defendant?
Nothing about any of this is normal. Trump’s stated legal strategy is to delay legal proceedings as much as possible in the hope that they do not conclude before the presidential election.

It’s a strategy that so far is paying off in federal court. His federal election interference case is stalled until the US Supreme Court considers what most people consider to be a ridiculous total immunity argument later this month. His federal trial on classified documents is proceeding slowly in Miami. His trial in Fulton County, Georgia, on state election interference allegations has been delayed by allegations of impropriety in the personal life of the DA bringing the case.

In New York, Trump’s attempts to appeal the judge’s pretrial decisions have also been made in an effort to delay the start of the trial, but so far that tactic hasn’t worked in this case.

What will we know about the jurors?
Very little. While Trump, under New York law, has a right to know their names, their identities will be kept from public view. A gag order in place forbids Trump from making statements about them.

But we will know from juror questioning a lot about how they live their lives, where they get their news and their politics.

Norman Eisen, a CNN legal analyst who edited a book on Trump ahead of this trial, writes for CNN Opinion that the former president could be hoping with his strategy of grievances, constant motions and losing appeals to taint the New York jury pool and generate “one angry juror” who is willing to ignore the law and simply vote to acquit him no matter what.

Could he be president from prison?
This is a great and essentially unanswerable hypothetical. First, it assumes multiple things will occur: Trump would have to be convicted, sentenced, exhaust appeals, report to prison and win the election. That’s a very specific scenario thrust upon a very unpredictable set of circumstances and a short timeline. But here we go.

I talked to Frank Bowman, a law professor emeritus at the University of Missouri who is both an expert in criminal law and published a book on the impeachment process, for his thoughts on how to deal with a convict president. The Constitution, he said, theoretically allows a person to serve “even if he’s a convicted felon or even if he’s a convicted felon in the joint.”

Timing, however, would get in the way of this hypothetical ever occurring. “This stuff takes a long time, and the appeals would drag out,” probably beyond Election Day and Inauguration Day, Bowman said.

It’s also possible Trump’s opponents, after a conviction, could try again to either impeach him or object to his presidency based on the 14th Amendment, although those avenues have been tried and failed previously.

If somehow Trump was convicted in this state case, Bowman imagined there could be some argument by which the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause – which prohibits states from interfering in the exercise of constitutional powers – could be utilized to keep Trump from state prison. But it would be a novel thing.

If, on the other hand, Trump was somehow convicted in one of his two federal trials and sentenced to federal prison, as president he could theoretically try to pardon himself or order the Bureau of Prisons to do something like confine him at the White House. Again, this is uncharted territory that is unanticipated in US law and, Bowman argues, unlikely to occur.

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Donald Trump hush money trial, explained
Former President Donald Trump is set to go on trial this month in Manhattan for his alleged role in a hush money scheme to silence his alleged mistresses before the 2016 election.

It will be historic; no former US president has ever faced criminal prosecution.

It will be salacious; the alleged mistresses are a former adult-film actress and a Playboy model.

SPOILER

quote:

Even though it features the former president, who denies all wrongdoing, it may or may not be the trial of the century. Trump still faces three other criminal trials in federal court and in Georgia for the arguably weightier crimes of election interference, conspiracy and mishandling classified documents after he left the White House.

All of these trials and the characters involved make for a complicated legal mess, particularly when the four criminal cases are added to Trump’s civil liability for defamation and sexual misconduct and for business fraud.

Here’s what to know to get up to speed on this first criminal trial:

What’s the general outline of the hush money case?
Two women who said they had affairs with Trump years before he ran for president were paid six-figure sums in the months before the 2016 election.

The first woman, Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., for the rights to her story. AMI promptly did nothing with the story. It’s a process known as “catch and kill.”

AMI also paid to catch and kill a former Trump Tower doorman’s story alleging Trump had an unacknowledged child, but that allegation has never been corroborated by any reporting. Trump’s friend David Pecker, who was then CEO of AMI, OK’d the payments.

The second woman, who was born Stephanie Clifford but built a career in the adult-film industry as Stormy Daniels, was paid $130,000 by Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen to sign a nondisclosure agreement about her encounters with Trump. Cohen obtained a line of credit on his home to make the payment just before the election.

Trump’s campaign was particularly worried about allegations of sexual impropriety in the final days of the 2016 election as the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump described grabbing women by the genitals, dominated news coverage.

After the election, Trump’s company paid Cohen back for the payment to Daniels.

How did these payments and the alleged affairs come to light?
The Wall Street Journal actually reported on the AMI catch-and-kill scheme and that Daniels had been in talks to share her story days before Election Day in 2016. McDougal and Daniels shared the same lawyer.

But things did not really blow up until January 2018, when the Journal reported on the payments Cohen made to Daniels.

Were these hush money payments illegal?
Yes. Cohen and AMI have both admitted they broke laws.

Cohen pleaded guilty to two campaign finance charges in August 2018: causing an unlawful campaign contribution for his involvement orchestrating the payment from AMI to McDougal, and making an excessive campaign contribution for the payment to Daniels.

AMI, now known as a360media, was not criminally charged by federal authorities but did admit to making the payment to McDougal. The company paid a $187,500 fine to the Federal Election Commission for making an unlawful campaign contribution.

What did Trump know about these payments?
Cohen recorded at least one conversation with Trump that appears to be about the payment to Daniels in which they are heard discussing whether to make the payment in cash.

Cohen has also testified to the grand jury that indicted Trump. In 2018, Trump initially denied any knowledge of the payments, but he later admitted in a carefully worded tweet that he made them to Cohen. Trump argued they had nothing to do with the campaign.

What law is Trump accused of breaking?
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Trump’s indictment by a grand jury in April 2023, accusing the former president of “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

Technically, Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a Class E felony. Trump was charged with a felony because prosecutors accused him of falsifying business records with the intent to commit or conceal another crime connected to his 2016 campaign.

This is the least serious type of felony in New York, which means if Trump is found guilty, the judge could sentence him to probation or a maximum sentence of up to four years in state prison on each count.

There’s a lot more to this
This is a long and sordid tale, and what’s in this refresher really just scratches the surface.

It’s almost beside the point of the payments, but there is the question over whether the alleged affairs occurred. Trump denies they happened. But both women, who have very similar stories, say they had sexual encounters with Trump in 2006. Both saw him at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Both have said they visited with him in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

It took a very long time for this case to be built. Trump was not charged by the federal investigators who went after Cohen. It took years for the Manhattan DA to finally present the case to a grand jury. Now it could theoretically end up being the only one of the four criminal cases against Trump to go to trial before the November election in which he’s trying to reclaim the White House.

There will be courtroom drama. The judge overseeing the hush money case, Juan Merchan, expanded a gag order on Trump after the former president attacked Merchan’s daughter on social media. Trump, however, is still likely to find a way to campaign from outside the courtroom, attacking New York authorities such as Bragg.

It is a Shakespearean drama. Cohen has gone from Trump’s fixer to his enemy. Daniels’ onetime attorney, Michael Avenatti, who was once a fixture on TV, is now in federal prison for stealing clients’ money. And the witness list for this hush money case includes former Trump aides such as Hope Hicks.

McDougal has largely stayed out of the public eye, but there’s a documentary focused entirely on Daniels.

In many ways, this case feels like a throwback to an earlier time in US politics, when Trump was still the insurgent reality TV candidate and had not remade the entire Republican Party in his own populist image. It feels much smaller than the federal and the Fulton County, Georgia, cases, which accuse him of trying to fraudulently overturn the 2020 election rather than hide some unflattering, personal accusations before the 2016 election.

But those other cases are all being slowed down. The Supreme Court is taking its time to consider Trump’s incredible claim that he should be exempt from all federal prosecution. A federal judge in Miami is entertaining Trump’s delaying tactics in the classified documents case. And the Fulton County DA had to answer accusations about her own private conduct. So that’s why this New York case about hush money paid eight years ago is the one that’s going to trial first.

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Trump will juggle appearances in courtroom and on campaign trail as hush money trial begins
Former President Donald Trump’s appearance in a New York courthouse Monday for jury selection in his criminal hush money trial will kick off a weekslong juggling act between the courtroom and the campaign trail during a crucial period for his general election bid.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is required to be present in court the entire time – every weekday, except Wednesday – with the schedule set by the court. Trump’s team is working around the limitations to keep him interacting with voters and donors.

SPOILER

quote:

Since launching his third presidential bid in late 2022, the former president has rarely held campaign events for more than two days a week. However, with Trump’s days away from court limited to Wednesdays and weekends, his flexibility to travel for fundraising and campaigning at his own discretion will be severely curtailed, which he and his staff have lamented.

A preview of that balancing act begins this weekend. Trump is expected to travel to New York City following a campaign rally and donor event in Pennsylvania on Saturday in order to be prepared by members of his legal team on Sunday over court protocol and messaging, sources familiar with his plans told CNN.

Trump’s team believes news coverage of the trial will keep the former president in the spotlight, despite limited access to cameras in the federal courthouse and no video coverage of the trial itself. As he did during his earlier fraud trial, Trump will seek to ensure he remains front and center.

The former president is expected to speak to cameras on his way in and out of the courtroom and is also likely to deliver on-camera remarks at his Trump Tower residence after his court appearances. Trump advisers warn that these remarks will be determined by his whim on any given day, as are most things in the case of the former president. The location was chosen out of convenience, as Trump is expected to stay at Trump Tower during the trial.

“Every time the president is in court, all of the focus is on him and the message he’s driving,” a campaign official said.

Some of Trump’s advisers say that his presence in court throughout the trial will continue to benefit him — despite keeping him off the campaign trail.

“[The court appearances] certainly helped galvanize a big part of the debate. His appearance in court helps with messaging, it helps with fundraising and helps with getting people out to vote and volunteer for us,” one Trump adviser told CNN.

Others acknowledge privately that they are entering uncharted territory and that what worked during a Republican primary isn’t necessarily going to work with on-the-fence or critical independent voters.

“There’s always a concern about Trump fatigue,” a senior adviser said.

In addition to utilizing his courtroom appearances, Trump will be “driving his message with both in-person and virtual events on court days,” the campaign official said.

The Trump campaign also maintains it would still be able to maximize the time he isn’t tethered to the courtroom, highlighting the former president’s reach on social media and suggesting that Trump will hold events in the New York area.

“Yes, we’ll be campaigning on Wednesdays and over weekends, but it’s not limited to just that. We have the best candidate ever, a great airplane, the largest political social media reach in history, and there are lots of things we can do in or near New York City,” another Trump campaign official told CNN.

However, this coming week, Trump will sit through jury selection on Monday and Tuesday, with nothing on his schedule Wednesday, before he’s back in the courtroom Thursday. His next scheduled campaign appearance after jury selection starts is on April 20, when he is expected to go to North Carolina for a campaign event and fundraiser.

Trump has also previously teased a potential New York campaign rally, suggesting in an interview with Fox News in February that he could hold such an event in the South Bronx or Madison Square Garden. Trump has said a few times that his campaign was going to “give New York a heavy shot” despite the state being a Democratic stronghold he lost to Joe Biden by 23 points in 2020. Democratic presidential nominees have carried the Empire State since 1988, but Trump has argued that the recent influx of migrants into the state could push more New Yorkers to cast their ballots for him in November.

Despite that public optimism, the political history of the state, and particularly New York City, has caused Trump to rant both publicly and privately that he cannot get a fair jury in New York — a theory that will be put to the test over the next few weeks as his lawyers grill hundreds of prospective jurors to ultimately hear the first criminal trial of a former US president.

Manhattan overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020. And while Trump has been complaining about the potential jury makeup for months, it was just a week before the trial’s start date, in what was widely viewed as another last-ditch effort to postpone the case, that Trump’s lawyers petitioned the court for a change of venue based on this argument. A New York appeals court denied the petition.

However, given the high profile nature of the case and the political polarization around the former president, both the Manhattan district attorney’s office and Trump’s legal team have acknowledged the importance of the jury selection process and expressed concern that jurors may not be honest when answering a wide range of questions. Those queries include where they get their news from, whether they’ve ever attended a rally for the former president or had any affiliations with groups such as the Proud Boys or with the QAnon movement, according to a jury questionnaire released Monday.

One source close to Trump argued that there is worry that some prospective jurors may have ulterior motives for wanting to be involved in the former president’s trial.

“Some may want a book deal or the clout that comes with being associated with this,” the source said.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said Trump’s attorneys will be looking for jurors who are sympathetic to the former president, of course – but also for people who’d appear to be “independent” thinkers, willing to stand alone and let a jury hang. A unanimous verdict is required for conviction

“If you’re Trump, you’d love an acquittal, but if you can’t get an acquittal, you’d want them to hang, because then there’s no conviction before the election,” Agnifilo said. “You’d want somebody who’s strong enough to be a holdout and somebody who is an independent thinker, who is not going to go along with the group.”

BREAKING: Trump VIOLATES gag order ahead of criminal trial

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Eastern Europeans buy up property in the West as Putin steps up ‘war on nerves’
Agnes Marciniak-Kostrzewa’s phone won’t stop ringing. She’s been in the property business for 25 years, helping Poles to buy homes on Spain’s southern shores, but the past few months have been “really crazy.”

There are lots of reasons why people might trade the Baltic coast for the Mediterranean. More than three decades after the collapse of communism, Poles are richer than ever before. Many who started businesses in the early 1990s are now looking to retire. And remote work, ushered in by the pandemic, has allowed many to live more rootlessly and opt for warmer climates.

But several realtors told CNN that their clients are now citing another reason: Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the fear that the conflict could spread.

SPOILER

quote:

“I experienced two waves of rapidly growing interest in buying properties. The first was in February 2022, immediately after the outbreak of the war. The second has been since February 2024,” Marciniak-Kostrzewa said.

The mood has darkened in recent weeks, as Russia seeks to build on recent battlefield gains, testing for weak spots along the frontlines and pummeling Ukraine’s cities with airstrikes. President Volodomyr Zelensky warned this week that, if the United States Congress fails to approve military aid, Ukraine “will lose the war.”

And the comments of prominent Western figures are causing jitters elsewhere on Europe’s eastern flank. Former US President Donald Trump in February said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member not paying their due. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk last month warned Europe is in a “pre-war era.”

“After Trump’s statement and after Tusk’s interview, we got calls – I don’t even know how many – with people asking if they can come within three days and buy the property, and how long the whole procedure takes to get the keys,” Marciniak-Kostrzewa said.

A record-breaking number of Poles bought property in Spain in 2023, topping the previous record set the year before, according to Polish outlet Bizblog.

Maria Ruiz Lopez, a notary based between Spain and Warsaw, said demand has been “increasing incredibly” since the start of the year.

“Very often, our clients tell us that the reason for which they’re buying real estate is because they’re afraid of the war, they’re afraid of Russia, so they would like to have some place where, eventually, they could leave for fast, if there was such a need,” she said.

Some buy in a slight panic. Lopez said a client last month bought a property because they wanted to avoid being conscripted into the Polish military. Marciniak-Kostrzewa recalled another who, spurred by fears of the war spreading, last month bought an apartment in Spain and asked to rent it out, on the condition that they could access it swiftly if needed. When she explained that removing tenants from a property takes time, the client said: “OK, let’s keep it empty, just in case something will happen.”

Others buy with an eye to their investments. For Wieslaw, a retired Pole in his 70s, the prospect of war coming to Poland is a “black swan:” a low-probability, high-impact event. Still, he wants to hedge his bets.

“When I heard stories of Ukrainian people being forced to leave their country within an hour, taking with them all their belongings, I realized then that all my property is in Poland,” said Wieslaw, who preferred to give only his first name to maintain his privacy. He still lives in Warsaw, but bought a small property in Andalucia, southern Spain. “The trigger, really, was the war in Ukraine.”

But most buy just for peace of mind – a back-up plan, for those wealthy enough to afford one. Another Polish buyer, who wished to remain anonymous to discuss a private transaction, told CNN the war was “definitely the main reason for making a quick purchase decision.” A father of two children, he said “the most important thing” for him and his wife “is that we know we have a second home if we need it. This gives us a great sense of comfort.”

Poles may be a special case. After its post-Communist economic “miracle,” more Poles are able to buy second homes abroad than before. And, due to its borders with Ukraine and Belarus, Poles may feel more need to do so.

But other Eastern European countries are also buying in the West. Liivia Illak started her business 20 years ago, mostly selling expensive Spanish properties to clients from her native Estonia. But this year, she’s received more requests than ever – and many of her clients are looking for smaller properties.

“Three months ago, I started to get requests for really small apartments, as people don’t want to keep all their eggs in one basket in Estonia. They just want to get something here, so if the situation gets a little bit more serious, then they have a place to come,” Illak told CNN.

“Obviously, we are in NATO, but I must say there’s a big amount of people who are really, really afraid,” she said. This year, she says she has also helped Lithuanians to buy properties in Spain.

The spike in demand comes as Russia has stepped up its “war on nerves,” projecting an image of its own inviolability while Europe appears to dither on matters of its own defense.

In Russia, Putin’s grip on power is tighter than ever after his rule was extended another six years in widely discredited elections and the death of opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

And abroad, Putin is keeping Europe guessing. Missiles heading for Ukraine have strayed into Polish airspace. Belarusian troops – at the Kremlin’s behest – have built up on Poland’s border. Estonia has warned of “shadow war” attacks on its soil. And in Lithuania, one of Navalny’s aides was bludgeoned by a hammer – a message that even home soil is not safe.

“It seems like they’re doing a good job, because if – at the level even of real estate – we have people justifying their lifestyle choices and their decision to leave a country or a region, because they fear there could be World War III or there could be a nuclear holocaust or there could be Russian tanks, then they’ve already won, in many ways,” he told CNN.

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Tankers with Russian oil are “stuck” at sea due to new US sanctions
Four ships carrying Russian oil and petroleum products were hit by new US sanctions due to ties to Iran. Source: Reuters

It shows the strengthening partnership between Moscow and Tehran amid Western sanctions and efforts by the West to counter the companies' complex scheme aimed at circumventing restrictions and increasing revenue for both countries.

Among the vessels hit by sanctions were fuel tankers carrying petroleum products, as well as a tanker that loaded Russian oil.

The large-tonnage vessel Anthea, which transported Russian Urals oil to Greece, is now anchored in the Suez Canal.

Another Elsa vessel, transporting fuel oil from Russian ports to Greece, is located off the coast of Singapore.

The third Hebe, loaded with fuel oil in Russian ports, is heading to the Suez Canal, but its final destination is still unknown.

The Baxter vessel, which transported oil from Novorossiysk to India, has been in the Arabian Sea since the beginning of April.

Sanctions jeopardize the use of these vessels, which could lead to a reduction in tonnage involved in the Russian oil trade.

The United States previously stepped up its efforts to restrict trade in Russian oil by imposing sanctions on state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot and fourteen oil tankers involved in transporting Russian oil.

After this, the Indian operator refused to buy Russian oil from sanctioned tankers.

Let us recall that most of the fleet of tankers that Russia uses to deliver crude oil stopped after the introduction of American sanctions . Tightening measures by Western regulators may be starting to have a noticeable impact on Moscow.

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Ukraine Russia war: BBC Russian journalist Ilya Barabanov branded 'foreign agent'

The Russian justice ministry has labelled two prominent journalists - BBC Russian correspondent Ilya Barabanov and science reporter Asya Kazantseva - as "foreign agents".

Barabanov has written extensively about Russia's war in Ukraine and the Wagner mercenary group. The BBC condemned the ministry's move against him.

"The BBC strongly rejects the decision," a BBC statement said.

The "foreign agent" label has very negative connotations in Russia.

The government has used it to marginalise not only critics of the Russian invasion of Ukraine but also voices challenging other Kremlin policies, including prominent cultural figures, media organisations and civil society groups.

One of Russia's most popular novelists - Boris Akunin - was put on the list in January. He is a long-standing critic of President Vladimir Putin.

The term "foreign agent" recalls the Soviet-era campaign against "enemies of the people". "Foreign agents" have to identify themselves as such on social media and in other publications, and face burdensome financial reporting requirements.

Both Barabanov and Kazantseva are now living abroad.

Kazantseva signed an open letter from Russian scientists and science journalists demanding that Russian troops withdraw from Ukraine. She left Russia in January, saying she was being harassed by pro-war figures and seeing her lectures and book presentations cancelled.

The justice ministry accused Barabanov - now based in Latvia - of "spreading false information" about Russian government decisions and policies, and of opposing the war in Ukraine.

The BBC statement condemned the move, stressing that "the BBC has a global reputation as a trusted and independent source of news".

It went on: "BBC News Russian has been a vital source of accurate and impartial news to Russian-speakers for 80 years. We are incredibly proud of all our journalists and our priority right now is to support Ilya and all his colleagues to ensure that all are able to continue their jobs reporting on Russia at such an important time."

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Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 22:12 schreef ExTec het volgende:

[..]
Denk dat geld niet de issue is, het is meer productie capaciteit, die heeft alleen duitsland, maar die schijten permanent alle kleuren van de regenboog.

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 05:41 schreef Delenlill het volgende:

13 Apr: RUSSIANS LOSE 106 TANKS & AFVs, AND 1.5 KM OF THE GROUND! | War in Ukraine

quote:

Op zondag 14 april 2024 09:59 schreef Mortaxx het volgende:

[..]
Jeetje en dat terwijl ik overal juist lees dat de Russen aan de winnende hand zijn

quote:

Op zaterdag 13 april 2024 17:10 schreef ExTec het volgende:

[..]
MBDA gaat ze ook maken. Al zal dat wel astronomisch lang duren.

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 17:44 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Ik hoop maar dat ze het zo doen, want anders zou het oneerlijk zijn tegen de Russen. Of zoiets.

[ x ]

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 18:08 schreef Discombobulate het volgende:

[..]
Als ze het hadden gekund hadden ze het allang gedaan.

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Op zondag 14 april 2024 18:14 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
De brug is al twee keer opgeblazen slimmerik.

Dit lijkt me gewoon een mogelijkheid een eventuele reparatie heel lastig te maken.

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A 12-year-old Ukrainian girl ran 5 kilometers on prosthetics at the Boston Marathon

Ukrainian Yana Stepanenko, who lost both legs during a missile attack by Russian troops on a train station in Kramatorsk, has taken part in the Boston Marathon.

The 12-year-old Ukrainian ran 5 kilometers on prostheses and demonstrated to the whole world the indestructibility of the Ukrainian people.

The girl, who uses prosthetic limbs, ran the marathon to raise funds for a modern prosthesis for veteran Oleksandr Ryasny, who lost his leg in the war.

The Boston Marathon is one of the most prestigious races in the world, the oldest of the marathons, which have been held annually since 1897.

A missile strike on the railway station in the city of Kramatorsk, Russian occupation troops struck on April 8, 2022.

Then the victims of the attack were 61 people, 121 were injured. Among the dead were seven Ukrainian children.

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Half of French youth ready to fight in Ukraine to defend France's interests, study finds
Half of the French youth would be willing to enlist in the military and fight on the territory of Ukraine if it were necessary to defend France's interests.

Source: Le Parisien, citing the results of a study conducted by the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM) and the Directorate-General for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS), as reported by European Pravda

IRSEM and DGRIS are entities within the French Defence Ministry structure. The study’s results were published on 12 April, and the data was collected many months before.

The research was led by Anne Muxel who analysed a series of surveys, including a questionnaire conducted by Ipsos among 2,300 French people aged 18-25 in the summer of 2023.

Among the questions was: "If France's defence required its participation in the war in Ukraine, would you be willing to join to defend your country?" 51% of respondents, including both boys and girls, answered affirmatively, with 17% giving a very confident response and 34% answering "probably yes".

In a question not mentioning Ukraine, 57% of respondents expressed readiness to take up arms to defend France in the event of war.

About a third of respondents, 31%, are supportive of potential French military involvement in the war on Ukraine's side, whereas this figure is 17% among the 50+ age group.

62% of respondents believe it would be appropriate to reinstate compulsory military service, which France abolished in 1997.

French media note that data collection took place long before President Emmanuel Macron publicly stated that he does not rule out involving Western allies in Ukraine, sparking heated discussions and public objections from most European capitals.

quote:

Border guards show how they destroyed two Russian BTR-82As in Bakhmut direction
In the Bakhmut direction, border guards of the 'Phoenix' unit destroyed two Russian BTR-82A armored personnel carriers using a Vampire attack drone.

The 3rd Border Guard Detachment named after the Hero of Ukraine Colonel Yevhen Pikus, reported this on Facebook and posted a video, according to Ukrinform.

Два БТ� -82А знищили вночі прикордонники ударним дроном «Вампір»

"In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy once again tried to storm the positions of the border guards of the 'Revenge' Offensive Guard Brigade and the Defense Forces. Thanks to the work of the Vampire attack drone crew, the Russians' attempt to advance was stopped," the statement said.

Two armored personnel carriers were destroyed, one invader was killed and one was wounded.

As reported earlier, the Defense Forces destroyed five Russian tanks and 20 armored combat vehicles yesterday.

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The leadership disbands the core of the 67th Mechanized Brigade

Investigations have been initiated against unit commanders.

The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has launched the process of transferring all commanders and soldiers of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK) of 67th Mechanized Brigade DUK to other military units. These fighters and commanders of DUK had formed the brigade and constituted its core fighting force.

The brigade’s press service reported, “The motives behind these actions are unknown to us. All attempts to halt this process and ascertain the reasons have been unsuccessful. Perhaps, some believe that dispersing DUK Right Sector fighters among various Armed Forces units will lead to the dissolution of DUK Right Sector.”

They further stated that numerous commissions are currently working within the brigade. These commissions are compiling lists of soldiers who have been defending Ukraine since 2014. Investigations have been initiated against unit commanders.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, there are suspicions that the 67th Mechanized Brigade DUK has abandoned positions near Chasiv Yar, resulting in Russian forces advancing to the town’s edge. The ongoing investigation reportedly revealed organization problems within the brigade, namely mistreat of mobilized soldiers, sending them first to hot spots and general separation from Right Sector members.

Ukrainska Pravda also spoke with a former soldier of 67th Mechanized Brigade and member of Right Sector, who said the root of the current problem lies in how volunteer units were integrated into the army, and arose when Sirsky took over the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “The brigade maintained some sort of autonomy under Valerii Zaluzhyi, but Oleksandr Sirskyi required order and discipline. They suddenly had to live according to military patterns, and commanders without necessary military rank were replaced. The volunteers saw it as the destruction of the movement, but in fact, it is a standardization.” the former soldier noted.

The leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has already created a new Facebook page of the 67th Mechanized Brigade, and removed Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK) from its name. We’ll continue to follow the story and keep you updated.

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The Kremlin Decides to Buy a Population
Putin’s regime is now openly purchasing influence in neighboring countries.

A Russian bank, Promsvyazbank, is to start paying money to thousands of residents of Gagauzia, an autonomous region in Moldova. The bank is effectively an arm of the defense ministry — and therefore the Kremlin — and is run by the son of a former senior Russian spy. It is sanctioned in the West.

Gagauzia is carefully chosen. It is in the south of Moldova and has a history of separatist sentiment. The Kremlin might well be hoping to stoke that (just as its spies have fueled unrest in the country as a whole) and so cause headaches for the pro-Western Moldovan government as the country approaches presidential elections by December.

There is nothing covert about this. Russia is acting in the open. Evghenia Gutul, the pro-Kremlin governor of Gagauzia, signed an agreement during her visit to Moscow, which stipulates that all pensioners and public sector employees in the region can apply for a monthly payment equivalent to $100 (in a country where the average pension is $220.)

According to the plan, 25,000 out of Gagauzia’s 120,000 residents, who are mostly Orthodox Gagauz, a Turkic ethnic group, are eligible. The annual bill for the Russians would be about $30m.

They don’t need to go to Russia for that; they can apply remotely. To receive regular payments, Gagauz residents are offered so-called Mir cards issued by Promsvyazbank. The state-owned lender also operates in four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions. The agreement with Gutul was signed by Petr Fradkov, the bank’s chairman, and a son of a former director of the Russian foreign intelligence agency, the SVR.

Fradkov said that the agreement provides for cross-border payments, which is possible thanks to Mir — the Russian national payment system.

SPOILER

quote:

Mir was launched in 2016 but had little success until the imposition of Western sanctions on the Russian financial sector, including the withdrawal of Visa and Mastercard, and finally the SWIFT payments system.

For Russians, the Kremlin made Mir the default choice; for those who had left, Mir gradually became the only option to transfer money from Russia, and — for those hundreds of thousands working abroad — to get paid.

Russian banks, feeling the increasing demand, stepped up efforts to make Mir available abroad — starting with the illegally occupied Georgian region of Abkhazia, then expanding to Central Asia and Belarus, Turkey, Venezuela, and Cuba. By mid-2023 Russia was also negotiating about Mir with Iran, India, Egypt, Indonesia, and others.

The US targeted Mir in February when the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Mir’s operator. The measures could make it impossible to use its cards to withdraw cash from ATMs in some countries, but not everywhere, and not immediately.

(This will inflict collateral damage on many Russian exiles who have nothing to do with the Kremlin’s subversive operations but can only find work with Russian-based companies since they are not particularly welcome to work in Europe.)

The Moldovan initiative is a shining example of Russia’s opportunist approach and of the deep influence of intelligence agencies in its foreign policy.

Mir has prospered because it is unplugged from the international financial system, and yet that makes it perfect for subversive operations. This operation in a little-known area may also be a trial for similar operations elsewhere. In theory, nothing can stop the Kremlin from issuing Mir cards remotely to pro-Kremlin communities in other countries — the substantial Russian communities in two of the Baltic states, for example.

This type of thinking dates to the Soviet era, when the Kremlin would seek to turn handicaps to its own advantage.

The Soviet Politburo had at its disposal a large network of state-owned banks abroad (called sovzagranbanki – Soviet foreign banks) from London to Singapore, and Tehran to Paris to Zurich. Their mission was to help the Soviets buy, sell, and borrow in Western hard currencies. Some of the banks were launched in the 1920s; others during the Cold War.

In the mid-1960s, the Kremlin required those banks to transact in a way that was untraceable for the United States.

This was prompted by a 1959 lawsuit. A Russian �migr� in the United States sued the Soviet Union in a New York court, accusing Soviet authorities of failing to make payments on their obligations to two English corporations with concessions in the Soviet Union. A lawsuit was brought against Chase Manhattan Bank for transferring money from the accounts of Soviet banks at Chase.

That made Soviet bankers very jumpy — what if the Americans blocked all their accounts in Western banks? As a result, they moved their dollar accounts to Soviet banks abroad. That was how a closed system of the new currency emerged, which became known as Eurodollars — completely untraceable for the Americans.The goal, a high-ranking Russian banker explained to these authors several years ago, was “to make Soviet dollar transactions impenetrable for the US government.”

Those banks also sold Soviet gold, another untraceable commodity. The Wozchod Bank in Switzerland, for instance, had a monopoly selling Soviet gold from 1972. It worked like this: Soviet gold was transported to Zurich by ordinary Soviet passenger aircraft carrying seven tons of gold per flight.

Standard ingots of 12.5kg (28lbs) were distributed evenly throughout the plane under the passenger seats — because the gold was heavy, the weight had to be evenly distributed to protect the aircraft’s flight characteristics. The ingots were then transferred to Wozchod and sent to the partners’ smelting and refining factories, where the hammer and sickle stamped onto the ingots were erased.

Gold and eurodollars were used for legitimate Soviet financial transactions, but also to provide untraceable funds to foreign Communist parties and so-called liberation movements in the developing world. The payments were essentially Soviet-funded subversion activities.

Wozchod Bank survived the collapse of the Soviet Union — these days it is Gazprom bank in Zurich. The lender was found to have been engaged in the money laundering of Vladimir Putin’s personal wealth by a Swiss court last year.

Wherever there’s a weakness in the Western financial system, Russia’s extensive and experienced espionage network will find it. Indifferent to the costs — it is awash with cash — it will find the point of least resistance, and use it.

Democracies need to get much better at tracing the tendrils of the Kremlin’s covert financial network, take a large pair of regulatory shears, and cut them down.

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Ukraine war latest: Russia aims to capture Chasiv Yar by 'Victory Day' on May 9, Syrskyi says
Key developments on April 13-14:
• Syrskyi: Russia set a goal to capture Chasiv Yar by 'Victory Day' on May 9
• Syrskyi: 'Situation on eastern front has significantly deteriorated in recent days'
• Germany to send additional Patriot air defense system, missiles to Ukraine
• Russia claims 10 Ukrainian drones downed in Krasnodar Krai
• Governor: Russian aerial bomb attack kills 1, wounds 2 in Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian military leadership set a goal to capture the town of Chasiv Yar, just west of the Russian-occupied Bakhmut, by May 9, Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on April 14.

On May 9, Russia celebrates Victory Day, a heavily militarized holiday marking the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Syrskyi's statement comes after his warning that the situation on Ukraine's eastern front "significantly deteriorated in recent days" as Russia has intensified its offensives in the east since last month's presidential election, which saw Russian President Vladimir Putin handily win another six-year term in office.

Russian troops are concentrating their efforts to break through west of occupied Bakhmut, Syrskyi said. He explained that they are trying to reach the Siverskyi Donets canal, an artificial waterway south of the river it’s named after, and seize Chasiv Yar – to advance further toward Kramatorsk agglomeration.

"The enemy's plans are being hampered by the heroic defense of our brigades, who have literally dug themselves into the ground, holding off the enemy's daily attacks," Syrskyi said.

Chasiv Yar is a nearly-emptied and heavily damaged town located around 10 kilometers (six miles) west of Bakhmut. Russia ramped up its offensive on Chasiv Yar after capturing Avdiivka, which lies about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southward, and its tempo of advance declined in early March. Russia sees Chasiv Yar as a crucial milestone for further advances toward Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk, the Ukrainian military said.

About 800 people remain in Chasiv Yar, according to local authorities.

Earlier on April 5, Moscow's proxies claimed that Russian troops had entered Chasiv Yar's suburb, but Ukraine's military later refuted that statement.

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Germany to send additional Patriot air defense system, missiles to Ukraine
Berlin will provide Ukraine with one more Patriot air defense system to fend off increased Russian attacks, the German Defense Ministry announced on April 13.

As Moscow intensified its attacks on Ukraine during the spring, the shortage of air defense systems in Ukrainian cities and villages is being felt more acutely.

Russia's recent strikes against Ukraine's energy infrastructure destroyed several thermal power plants across the country, including the Trypillia plant, the main electricity supplier to Kyiv, Zhytomyr, and Cherkasy oblasts.

Kyiv has ramped up its calls on allies to provide Ukraine with more air defenses, in particular, with U.S.-made Patriot systems that can intercept ballistic missiles.

"Russian terror against Ukrainian cities and the country's infrastructure causes immeasurable suffering," German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said.

The ministry said another Patriot will be handed over to Ukraine "immediately" in addition to the other systems already provided and pledged.

President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, saying that Berlin had also pledged to deliver missiles to the air defense systems that Ukraine already has in service.

"This is a true sign of support for Ukraine at a critical time for us. I urge all other leaders of our partner countries to follow the example," Zelensky said after a phone call with Scholz.

According to Zelensky, Ukraine needs 25 Patriots to protect the entire country from Russian attacks, but Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he is for now focused on securing seven to protect Ukraine's largest cities.

Kyiv is negotiating with its allies to receive two additional batteries of Patriot and one long-range SAMP/T anti-aircraft missile battery, Kuleba said.

Initially a hesitant partner, Berlin has become Ukraine's second-largest military donor after the U.S., although Scholz is still reluctant to supply some key capabilities, namely Taurus long-range missiles.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Germany has supplied Ukraine with 17.7 billion euros (around $19 billion) in military assistance as of April.

Russia claims 10 Ukrainian drones downed in Krasnodar Krai
Russia's Defense Ministry reported on April 14 that its air defense had downed 10 Ukrainian drones over Krasnodar Krai.

The drones were recorded at 7 a.m. local time in the region, according to the Defense Ministry.

Kyiv has not publicly commented on the attack, and the Kyiv Independent could not verify the claims.

Krasnodar Krai is located next to occupied Crimea. Ukraine has reportedly launched waves of drones in recent months, targeting oil refineries and industrial facilities in Russia, often in regions close to the Ukrainian border.

On April 12, Russia's Defense Ministry reported downing four drones over Rostov Oblast and one over Belgorod Oblast in an overnight attack.

Later on April 12, Russia's Defense Ministry claimed to have downed nine Ukrainian drones over Belgorod Oblast.

The Russian independent outlet Meduza reported that Ukraine damaged a building belonging to Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom in Belgorod Oblast.

Governor: Russian aerial bomb attack kills 1, wounds 2 in Donetsk Oblast
Russian troops launched an aerial bomb attack on a village in eastern Donetsk Oblast, killing one person and wounding two, Governor Vadym Filashkin reported on April 14.

The attack hit a five-story building in the village of Ocheretyne, located an hour-and-a-half drive northwest of Russian-occupied Avdiivka. Rescuers had retrieved the body of a 67-year-old woman from the rubble, according to Filashkin. The wounded were hospitalized, he added.

Russia's deadly attack on the village comes as Russia steps up its offensives in the east. Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on April 13 that the situation on Ukraine's eastern front has "significantly deteriorated in recent days," with Russian troops increasing armored assaults in the areas of Bakhmut, Lyman, and Pokrovsk.

"Now I call: don’t risk your life! Evacuate!" Governor Filashkin said in his Telegram post, urging civilians remaining in Donetsk Oblast to evacuate.

Throughout Russia's full-scale war, Russian troops have launched deadly attacks against civilians across Ukraine, with especially intense attacks in the east and south – leaving remaining residents in front-line areas at grave risk.

At least 604 Ukrainian civilians were killed or injured in March, representing a 20% increase from the previous month, the U.N.'s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said in a report released on April 9.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the U.N. said that at least 10,810 civilians have been killed and at least 20,556 injured. But it emphasized that the true figure of civilian casualties is likely much higher, as the true toll on Russian-occupied territories remains unknown.

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The Moscow-Beijing alliance is here to stay because partnering with China is the only way Putin can sustain his conflict with the West, think tank says
• Russia's growing partnership with China isn't going to fade, a think-tank director said.
• That's because Moscow's alliance with Beijing checks off three big goals for Putin.
• The West should consider enforcing economic sanctions on China as well, he said.

Russia's no-limits partnership with China is here to stay, as tying Moscow's economy to Beijing's is the only option Vladimir Putin has to sustain his war and his antagonism toward the West, according to Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

In an op-ed for Foreign Affairs, the think-tank director pointed to Russia and China's economies becoming increasingly intertwined since Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The two nations scaled up their trade partnership to a record $240 billion last year, partly because China has snapped up key Russian commodities while the West has shunned trade with Moscow. Meanwhile, Russia has bought up huge amounts of Chinese goods as it becomes increasingly isolated from the global economy.

Russia is keen to keep its alliance with China, Gabuev said, as the partnership "emphatically" helps Russia with three of its goals: helping it win its war against Ukraine, helping its ailing economy, and helping the nation push back against the West for its support for Ukraine.

SPOILER

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Those are key incentives for Russia to continue its partnership with China, even as Beijing appears to be holding an advantage over Moscow as a trade partner. Its economy is larger and still maintaining a connection with the West, while some Russian trade is struggling under Western sanctions.

"Russia is now locking itself into vassalage to China," Gabuev said. "A couple years down the road, Beijing will be more able to dictate the terms of the economic, technological, and regional cooperation with Moscow. The Kremlin is not blind to this prospect, but it does not have much choice as long as Putin needs Chinese support to fight his war in Ukraine, which has become an obsession."

A lasting partnership between Moscow and Beijing suggests that the West needs to consider enforcing economic sanctions on China similar those imposed on Russia, Gabuev added. He noted that the current situation differed from the past when the US was able to step in and offer China strategic deals during the Cold War.

"Indeed, the deepening of this partnership is one of the most consequential results of the Ukrainian tragedy. Moscow and Beijing may never sign a formal alliance, but the evolution of their relationship in the years ahead will increasingly affect the world and challenge the West," he said. "US officials cannot extend a deal ... to either Moscow or Beijing at this point. Any hopes of peeling them away from each other are nothing more than wishful thinking," Gabuev added.

Other political affairs experts have also noted potential risks stemming from Russia and China's growing ties, especially amid rising geopolitical concerns around the world.

An alliance between China, Russia, and North Korea could pose a "significant threat" to the world's financial system and security, Bruce Klingner, a research fellow for a Washington, DC-based think-tank wrote in a recent note.

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More info: "Only one Russian soldier survived - Zhenya with the call sign "Gnome". That is, a burning tank is traveling with a dead crew inside.

Zhenya himself was able to get out, after which he, wounded, walked another 2 km to the evacuation point."-russianocontext

Source:https:// t. me /russianocontext/2763

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Translation: armored car. pumped up. as they scalded (created) - that’s how it stands. unable to move. but with air conditioning

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Translation: This is our (fucked) living space. (Fuck, fkn dirt.) Here is is... all the stuff, everythiiiing! 8 rifles, PM (i assume he means the gripstock of a manpad here, thats the only PM i know), personal stuff/clothes, documents.. absolutely everything.. right here

Here! It set the the NB (munition) on fire. The 5th incendiary.. at last it hit its goal.. the trench (dont understand).. we pulled out the munition- Woah! How they fkn go off!

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Fact check: Trump’s false and unsubstantiated claims about his Manhattan criminal case
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly made false and unsubstantiated claims while denouncing the Manhattan criminal case against him over his alleged falsification of business records related to a hush money scheme executed during the 2016 presidential election.

With Trump’s trial scheduled to start Monday, here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks.

SPOILER

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Trump’s baseless claims that Biden is secretly running the case
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Manhattan case has been secretly orchestrated by President Joe Biden, Biden’s White House or the Biden-era federal Justice Department. As supposed evidence, Trump has cited the fact that Matthew Colangelo, who had served as a senior Justice Department official under Biden, left the department in 2022 for a job in the office of the Manhattan district attorney who is prosecuting the case, Alvin Bragg.

For example, Trump said in February: “What it is, is election interference. It’s being run by Joe Biden’s White House. His top person was placed here in order to make sure everything goes right.” He continued, “His top person, Colangelo, and some others have been placed into the DA’s office to make sure they do a good job of election interference.” Trump claimed in a social media post in March that unspecified Biden “Thugs” sent Colangelo to the district attorney’s office to “oversee” Bragg, “perhaps to make sure that Bragg followed their illegal orders and commands.” In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump wrote, “BIDEN’S DOJ IS RUNNING THE CASE.”

Facts First: There is no basis for Trump’s claims. First, there is no evidence that Biden, his White House or his Justice Department has had any role in launching or running Bragg’s case, let alone that Biden operatives are issuing secret commands in the case - and Bragg is a locally elected official who does not report to the federal government. Second, there is no evidence the White House or the Biden administration had anything to do with Colangelo’s decision to leave the Justice Department and join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg; Colangelo and Bragg had been colleagues before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021. Third, there is no basis for the claim that Colangelo oversees Bragg; Bragg is Colangelo’s boss.

Before Colangelo worked at the Justice Department, he and Bragg worked at the same time in the office of New York’s state attorney general, where Colangelo investigated Trump’s charity and Trump’s financial practices and was involved in bringing various lawsuits against the Trump administration.

On a minor point, Colangelo was never Biden’s very top official at the Justice Department. Colangelo served as acting associate attorney general in the first months of the Biden administration in early 2021 and then as principal deputy associate attorney general. As acting associate attorney general, he was third in command of the department.

Trump’s false claims that Manhattan has hit all-time highs for murder and violent crime
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Bragg is spending time prosecuting him despite a record-high number of murders and violent crime in Manhattan, one of New York City’s five boroughs.

Facts First: Trump’s claims are not even close to true; Manhattan, like New York City as a whole, is nowhere near record highs for murder or violent crime more broadly. In 1990, when New York City set its all-time murder record, Manhattan recorded 503 murders; it recorded 73 murders in 2023, a decline of about 85%. Manhattan’s numbers for other kinds of violent crime are also far lower today than they were in the early 1990s.

For example, Manhattan recorded 252 rapes in 2023, down about 63% from the 689 in 1990; 3,841 robberies in 2023, down about 86% from the 26,907 in 1990; and 5,116 felony assaults in 2023, down about 49% from the 10,089 in 1990.

It’s also worth noting that murder in Manhattan has declined since 2020, Trump’s last full calendar year in office, when there were 84 murders in the borough; it has declined, too, from 2022 (78 murders) and 2021 (92 murders). However, some other kinds of violent crime, such as robbery and felony assault, have increased in Manhattan since 2020, though they declined from 2022 to 2023.

Crime levels are always affected by a complicated mix of factors, and it is unclear how much impact Bragg has had on either the upticks or the declines. The fluctuations in Manhattan have been broadly aligned with trends in New York City as a whole.

“We have a tendency to want to blame one person, or credit one person, when in reality these are complex systems that rise and fall for often complex, random reasons that we don’t have the ability to explain – but it’s easier to say, ‘It was Joe Schmoe over there,’” Jeff Asher, a crime data expert and co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, told CNN when Trump was making similar claims about Manhattan last year.

Trump’s dubious claim that the judge’s daughter posted an image of him behind bars
Trump has accused the judge presiding over the Manhattan trial, Judge Juan Merchan, of having a conflict of interest because his daughter Loren Merchan has been a Democratic political consultant at a firm that has worked for prominent federal clients, including Biden’s 2020 campaign. But Trump also claimed in a social media post in March that Loren Merchan “has just posted a picture of me behind bars, her obvious goal,” and he wondered in another March post how it is fair for him to be subjected to a Merchan gag order while, among other things, “the Judge’s daughter is allowed to post pictures of her ‘dream’ of putting me in jail.”

Facts First: There is no evidence that Loren Merchan was the person who posted a picture of Trump behind bars on social media. A spokesperson for the court, Al Baker, said Loren Merchan didn’t make the post.

Baker said in a March statement that someone else had started using Loren Merchan’s former handle on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, after she deleted her own account and thus abandoned the handle about a year prior. A review of the evidence by The Spectator, a conservative-leaning British outlet, supports Baker’s denial.

Baker said: “The X, formerly Twitter, account being attributed to Judge Merchan’s daughter no longer belongs to her since she deleted it approximately a year ago. It is not linked to her email address, nor has she posted under that screenname since she deleted the account. Rather, it represents the reconstitution, last April, and manipulation of an account she long ago abandoned.”

Trump’s exaggerations about Merchan’s gag order
Trump, denouncing Judge Merchan’s gag order on him, claimed in social media posts in early April that Merchan “is not allowing me to talk.” At a campaign rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, Trump said, “On Monday, in New York City, I will be forced to sit, fully gagged. I’m not allowed to talk. Can you believe it? They want to take away my constitutional right to talk.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims are exaggerations. Merchan did issue a gag order, but it is far narrower than Trump suggested. Merchan has not generally forbidden Trump from talking; Trump is still permitted to defend his conduct at issue in the case (both in public and in any testimony he chooses to offer), to attack Merchan and Bragg, and to campaign for the presidency with rallies, interviews, social media posts and other commentary.

The gag order forbids Trump from three specific categories of speech: 1) speaking publicly or directing others to speak publicly about “known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses” in the case - specifically concerning their potential participation in the case; 2) speaking publicly or directing others to speak publicly about prosecutors in the case other than Bragg, about staff members in Bragg’s office and the court, and about the family members of prosecutors, staffers or the court – “if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staff’s work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result”; 3) speaking publicly about or directing others to speak publicly about jurors or prospective jurors in the case.

In early April, after Trump criticized Merchan’s daughter, Merchan expanded his previous gag order to cover family members of the court and district attorney.
He wrote: “The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well. Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself.”

Trump has appealed the gag order, so it’s possible the order will be overturned or narrowed by an appeals court. Submissions on the matter are due on April 29.

Trump’s unexplained claims about Bragg and Soros
While attacking Bragg, Trump has repeatedly invoked liberal billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros without explaining the nature of their connection. For example, he called Bragg “this Soros Prosecutor” in a social media post on Wednesday; in a statement last year, he claimed that Bragg was “hand-picked and funded by George Soros.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims about Soros and Bragg need context. Soros did not make any donations to Bragg’s election campaign, and a Soros spokesperson, Michael Vachon, told CNN in 2023 that the two men have never once communicated in any way; there is no evidence that Soros had any role in Bragg’s decision to prosecute Trump. However, Soros, a longtime supporter of Democratic district attorney candidates who favor criminal justice reform, did support Bragg’s election campaign indirectly: he was a major donor to a liberal political action committee, Color of Change PAC, that says it spent just over $500,000 on an independent expenditure effort in support of Bragg’s candidacy.

Vachon told CNN in 2023: “Between 2016 and 2022, George Soros personally and Democracy PAC (a PAC to which Mr. Soros has contributed funds) have together contributed roughly $4 million to Color of Change’s PAC, including $1 million in May 2021. None of those funds were earmarked for Alvin Bragg’s campaign. George Soros and Alvin Bragg have never meet in person or spoken by telephone, email, Zoom etc. There has been no contact between the two.”

Soros has been a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories painting the Jewish philanthropist as a puppetmaster behind various US and international events. In 2023, Color of Change president Rashad Robinson called Trump and his allies’ latest invocations of Soros both “antisemitic” and “anti-Black”; he told CNN that the attacks overstate both Soros’ role in the PAC’s decision-making and the PAC’s role in Bragg’s election victory.

You can read a longer fact check on this subject here.

Trump’s false claims that he has been indicted more than Al Capone
As Trump has denounced his four indictments – the one in Manhattan, another local indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, and two federal indictments – he has repeatedly claimed that he has been indicted “more than Al Capone,” the notoriously vicious 1920s and 1930s gangster.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Trump has been indicted four times, while Capone was indicted at least six times, as A. Brad Schwartz, the co-author of a book on Capone, told CNN in 2023. (You can find details about Capone’s indictments here.) And that doesn’t include various criminal charges against Capone that did not involve an indictment, such as some misdemeanors, or obscure Capone cases for which CNN couldn’t immediately determine whether there was an indictment.

Schwartz also noted: “This isn’t a race, of course, but it may be worth noting that Capone is also way ahead in individual counts (the 1931 Prohibition indictment alone added up to five thousand conspiracy charges).” Trump faces a total of 88 counts over the four indictments.

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Trump hush money case makes history with first criminal trial of a former president
Donald Trump will make history when he arrives in lower Manhattan Monday morning as the first former president to go on trial for criminal charges.

Despite a blitz of last-minute attempts to derail the trial, jury selection is expected to get underway and will continue until a panel of 12 New Yorkers and alternates are seated, a process that could take at least a week.

The historic trial centers on a potential sex scandal coverup that took place just days before the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors allege Trump falsified business records to hide the reimbursement of hush money payments that were made to influence the election outcome. Trump has pleaded not guilty and has denied having an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.

SPOILER

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The case will be a major test for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, as it may be the only one of Trump’s four criminal cases to face a jury before Election Day. Trump will trade the campaign trail for the courtroom, where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is expected to be four days a week for the next two months.

The former president has used his court appearances to rally supporters for his campaign but, despite his showmanship, the stakes for Trump are high. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. If convicted, Judge Juan Merchan, the no-nonsense judge overseeing the trial, could sentence Trump to probation or a maximum sentence of 1 1/3 to 4 years on each count in state prison. A president has no authority to pardon state crimes.

The trial will pit witnesses once in Trump’s inner circle against the former president, including his onetime attorney and former fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges; long-time friend and former CEO of the company that published the National Enquirer, David Pecker, who executed “catch and kill” deals; and campaign confidante Hope Hicks.

It will also take the jury inside the Oval Office, where prosecutors allege then-President Trump signed-off on the cover-up that involved falsifying business records – invoices, ledger entries and checks – to reimburse Cohen for phony legal services. And it may feature at least one audio recording of Trump and Cohen allegedly discussing a catch and kill deal.

Despite the salacious nature of the allegations, a lot of testimony will likely focus on mundane back-office recordkeeping. Prosecutors said there are 18 witnesses they may call to enter financial documents into the case if both sides aren’t able to reach an agreement about their authenticity.

The burden of proof
Prosecutors need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified business records with the intent to commit or conceal another crime, but they don’t have to prove that Trump committed that crime. The prosecution theory is that second crime could be in violation of federal and state election laws or state tax laws for how the Cohen reimbursement was handled.

Trump’s attorneys have kept their defense close to the vest, but in court filings they’ve indicated that they plan to attack the credibility of Daniels and Cohen and paint them as liars who are motivated by grudges and money.

His legal team is led by Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, two former federal prosecutors from New York, and Susan Necheles, a veteran criminal defense lawyer with deep experience in New York and before Merchan. Necheles represented Trump’s business at its tax fraud trial in 2022. The company was convicted.

Outside lawyers who have been following the case closely say Trump is likely to argue that hush money payments are legal and distance Trump from the repayment scheme and bookkeeping handled by his trusted employees. They may also argue the payments were made to prevent embarrassment to Trump’s family and not to influence the election.

Trump’s lawyers said they plan to call at least two witnesses in their case: Bradley Smith, a former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, and Alan Garten, the top legal officer of the Trump Organization. Merchan has limited the scope of Smith’s testimony to describing the role and function of the FEC and defining certain terms, such as campaign contributions, but has blocked him from testifying about whether the law was violated in this case.

Trump could also testify in his own defense. He has testified in two recent civil trials, after regretting not taking the stand in a prior civil trial, but the stakes are higher in a criminal case.

The doorman, the model, and the porn star
The trial goes back to the final days of the 2016 presidential election when Stormy Daniels was about to go public with allegations that she had sex with Trump in 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. The Access Hollywood tape catching Trump on a hot mic speaking graphically about his proclivity to grope women had just come out, sending panic into his campaign as it sought to limit the impact on female voters, prosecutors allege.

Trump’s allies scrambled to pay Daniels hush money to prevent her from speaking out, the indictment alleges.

It was the third “catch and kill” deal to come after a key meeting at Trump Tower in August 2015 between Trump, Cohen and Pecker. At the meeting, which was held one month after Trump announced his candidacy, Pecker allegedly agreed to be the “eyes and ears” for the campaign to look out for negative stories, according to the indictment.

In 2015, American Media, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, paid a doorman to bury a false story and the following year the publisher paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump while he was married, $150,000 for her silence and offered her two magazine cover stories.

Two months later, on October 7, the Access Hollywood tape was released. On October 27, 2016, Cohen wired the money to Daniels and 12 days later Trump won the election.

The alleged cover up
Prosecutors allege that Trump agreed to reimburse Cohen, who hammered out the details with Allen Weisselberg, the former longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. As part of the alleged scheme, the Trump Organization paid Cohen $420,000 to reimburse him for the payment, some political work, taxes and a bonus. According to prosecutors, the Trump Organization noted on the checks to Cohen and in their books that the payments were legal expenses pursuant to a retainer agreement.

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Trump seeks to use NY hush money trial to delay criminal case over classified document handling in FL
Special counsel Jack Smith told the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case she should reject the former president’s attempt to use his first criminal trial, set to begin Monday in New York, to try to delay facing a jury over the more serious federal charges in Florida.

In Trump’s latest effort to capitalize on colliding court schedules, the 2024 presumptive Republican nominee asked US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Saturday to push back a May deadline for reviewing classified evidence in the criminal case over his alleged mishandling of classified and sensitive government information stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

SPOILER

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Trump can’t meet the deadline, his lawyers said in a filing, because he’ll be on trial for state charges in Manhattan. That trial — over allegations that Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star before the 2016 election — could last into June.

But Trump and his primary defense lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, can’t be in two places at once, they said.

“President Trump has a constitutional right to be present at the trial in New York and, as a result, cannot participate in this work relating to important parts of his defense,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing to Cannon.

Smith countered in a Sunday evening court filing that, while Trump has a constitutional right to counsel, that “right is not boundless.”

Smith said Trump’s attorneys have had more than enough time to prepare to meet the May 9 deadline for reviewing the classified materials in the federal documents case. Smith also noted that Trump has local lawyers in Florida who can continue to review the classified materials while the New York hush money trial is underway.

“Each time the Court sets a new deadline in this case and attempts to keep it moving toward trial, the defendants reflexively ask for an adjournment. That must stop,” Smith said.

As the former president’s legal team steps into the Manhattan courtroom Monday, work in the Mar-a-Lago documents case will grind to a near-total halt. The classified documents case has stalled in Florida federal court, and Trump’s defense team has already dramatically reduced the amount of time they’ve spent working on the criminal case over the last six weeks.

Cannon, who is overseeing the case, has not yet set a trial date, has few other deadlines on the calendar and has a backlog of legal disputes she has yet to resolve.

Moreover, the sensitive nature of information handled in the case makes it difficult for attorneys to continue any work outside Florida. The next phase of their work requires extensive discussions between Trump and his legal team in a secure facility in remote Fort Pierce, Florida, people familiar with Trump’s legal team said.

In the filing Saturday, Trump’s attorneys said that meeting the deadline to review evidence “will require lengthy classified submissions and extensive time in a SCIF to prepare and discuss those submissions, which is time President Trump and his attorneys simply do not have during the trial that is about to begin in New York.”

Federal prosecutors from the special counsel’s office are also attempting to keep up the pressure on the case in Florida, making clear to Cannon that they believe Trump’s team should be prepared for their arguments over classified records in the defense case already.

“They have had the classified discovery for months now … they are well steeped in it,” prosecutor Jay Bratt said in a March hearing, adding that the fight over classified documents is “what leads to how the case can be presented at trial.”

In his filing Saturday, Trump’s lawyers said that the special counsel’s office indicated that they “cannot agree” with the request to push back deadlines.

quote:

Trump’s extreme rhetoric is a mainstay of his 2024 campaign. Much of it could become a reality if he wins another term
In the more than 370 days between his first indictment and his first criminal trial, Donald Trump unleashed rhetorical warfare as predictable as it was extreme.

The familiar slash and burn playbook, sharpened over decades in business and eight years in politics, has shaped an overlapping public defense and political message at an unprecedented moment of legal peril.

But the volume and repetition – always repetition, longtime allies note – obscures a stark reality.

For a former president who has unapologetically shattered norms with an unrelenting message of grievance, vengeance and retribution targeting those who stand in the way of his policy and political ambitions, the rhetoric is far from empty.

SPOILER

quote:

Trump emerged from the Republican primary – where he bulldozed his opponents – supported by a policy and personnel infrastructure designed to turn his rhetoric into reality.

His pledge to direct Justice Department investigations is backed by allies who view his second term as driven by a maximalist theory of a president’s authority.

Threats to target political enemies across the government are underpinned by planned executive action.

The system and guardrails Trump spent his first term perpetually straining and thrashing against on Capitol Hill, in the courts and within his own White House, have tilted in his favor.

“Democrats hit first, so we’re going to hit back harder,” a Republican official in regular communication with Trump’s inner circle told CNN in reference to the former president’s four criminal indictments, which include charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith for attempting to overturn the 2020 election and unlawfully retaining classified documents.

There is no proof that the special counsel’s indictments were tied to political motivations, and the allegation, made repeatedly by Trump, that Biden’s White House directed the investigations is a lie.

Confronted with those facts, the official responded without hesitation.

“That’s what he believes. That’s what his people believe,” the official said. “And unlike last time, this is his party now.”

The concept of a former president set to be the Republican Party’s nominee for a third consecutive election just now claiming the party is, on its face, nonsensical.
Yet it’s a critical element to why this moment for Trump and his supporters is so different than any prior.

If Trump manages to dodge or delay his legal troubles and win the presidential election in November, he and allies will enter to White House more personally emboldened, politically powerful and with a more expansive view of a president’s authority than any administration in recent memory.

That is an opportunity Trump and his allies have moved aggressively to ensure isn’t wasted.

“We are going to finish what we started,” Trump pledged during a March 2023 rally. “We will totally obliterate the deep state.”

2024 rhetoric
Trump has framed the 2024 campaign as existing to save the nation from an apocalyptic implosion.

The rematch with Biden is the “final battle.” Trump is but a vessel for his supporters, he says. He’s their “retribution. He’s their “warrior.” He’s their “justice.”

The debate over Trump’s words has hung over US politics since his 2015 announcement. Should he be taken seriously or literally? Does he mean what he says or is he throwing red meat to his base? Is it getting darker? More autocratic? More extreme?

In the last year, Trump has threatened to appoint a special prosecutor to target President Joe Biden and his family if he’s reelected.

He’s repeatedly attacked prosecutors and judges, their families and relationships, former officials and political opponents.

He called for former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney and the other members of the House panel that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol to be jailed.

He floated the execution of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And amid all these statements, Trump currently sits ahead of, or within the margin of error, Biden in national and key swing state polling. His rock-solid base of die-hard supporters certainly hasn’t diminished.

On some level, either many voters don’t seem to mind or, in the view of many Republican and Democratic strategists alike, have grown so accustomed to the extreme nature of his rhetoric that it has just been tuned out.

“The guy accused the sitting president of being on cocaine last week and nobody even blinked,” one senior Democratic campaign official said when asked about the effect. (That did actually happen, though it wasn’t a new Trump tactic – he floated Biden being on drugs in 2020, too.)

When Trump talks about vengeance and retribution, there are plenty of examples that can be viewed through a similar lens.

After all, his 2016 campaign was animated by the explicit call to jail his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But while Trump’s Justice Department never pursued charges against Clinton, multiple former officials confirmed that Trump raised the idea of prosecuting Clinton while in the White House. The list of opponents – and former allies who became opponents – who Trump would raise to staff for potential prosecution was long, the officials said.

“One of my favorite preoccupations as national security adviser was counting how many times Donald Trump said that John Kerry should be prosecuted,” former Trump official John Bolton said of the former Democratic senator and secretary of state.

Bolton has said repeatedly he will not support Trump and views him as a danger to the country, as have more than a dozen of Trump’s former Cabinet officials and senior White House aides.

It’s a striking reality with no precedent.

But it also underscores why a second Trump term would be dramatically different.

Critics gone
Trump repeatedly ran headlong into advisers, lawmakers and judges loath to bend to his will in his first term.

His allies viewed these as unnecessary – or in some cases, unlawful – impediments to the agenda voters sent to the Oval Office in 2016.

Some in Washington saw them as guardrails for a White House intent on fracturing not one, but all three branches of government.

Yet Trump, should he secure a second term, would enter the White House with his most powerful Republican critics on Capitol Hill almost all gone.

If House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sought to quietly placate and pacify Trump in his first two years in office, Congressional Republicans nowadays more often seek to elevate and advance his wishes.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, retired and has called Trump a “populist, authoritarian narcissist.” McConnell, who has not spoken to Trump since the end of 2020 after condemning his actions during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, will depart his position as Senate GOP leader at the end of this Congress. He has endorsed Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who holds Ryan’s old job, traveled to Mar-a-Lago on Friday to hold a joint press event with Trump as he seeks to beat back efforts to remove him from the position.

Trump isn’t one for detailing regrets, but one of the few he’s acknowledged is the people he surrounded himself with when he entered the White House in 2017.

“I made a mistake with some people I put in,” Trump said during an interview last month with NEWSMAX. “I now know people. I now know, I believe, Washington probably at the upper levels, better than anybody.”

There’s a roster of Cabinet officials and senior White House advisers who saw their role as minimizing or ignoring what they viewed as Trump’s worst instincts and ideas. Many candidly acknowledged that reality after their departures.

Trump is now surrounded in and around his campaign by advisers who aren’t just loyalists who espouse his “America First” approach, but also hardened by their own lessons learned from the first administration.

His campaign has released an expansive and far-reaching series of policy outlines that the former president regularly highlights in the scripted sections of his campaign rallies.

A constellation of outside groups filled with former top Trump administration officials and loyalists have dedicated millions of dollars and an expansive network to build out the policy and personnel resources that will almost certainly be drawn upon should Trump win a second term.

That infrastructure, while not in total alignment and at times in the position of getting crosswise with one another, puts Trump’s words in a dramatically different context.
There is clear alignment on the embrace of a maximalist view of presidential authority that Trump could use to dispense with the long-standing concept of Justice Department independence.

That includes an explicit pledge, detailed in his campaign policy plans, to direct Justice Department civil rights investigations against district attorneys in Democratic cities.

Two of Trump’s indictments were filed by Democratic district attorneys.
Trump’s pledge to fire career government officials deemed insufficiently loyal is backed by an effort to build on, and utilize, an executive order drafted in the final months of his time in office.

National security and intelligence agencies, long the center of Trump’s most deeply held frustration and grievance for his view of their role in undercutting his authority and leaking damaging information, would be audited, overhauled and subject to widespread terminations.

Seeking retribution
Trump and his campaign have publicly tried to massage his official position on personal retribution.

Trump has repeatedly suggested his indictments mean he has the right to target his political opponents – “pandora’s box,” Trump has said several times.

But when asked directly about his plans for personal revenge, Trump has attempted several ways to deny what those around him say he’s intent on pursuing in a second term.

“No, I wouldn’t do that because I want to bring our country forward,” Trump said when asked last February on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” about punishing those who attacked him, a message his advisors have said he should stick to on the issue. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“I would be entitled to a revenge tour if you want to know the truth, but I wouldn’t do that,” he added.

That would be a position that isn’t backed by his second term policy plans, or his private impulses during his first term in office – or, for that matter, in the decades prior.

Trump’s affinity for retribution existed long before his first campaign.
He spoke at length, in a 1992 interview with Charlie Rose, about his desire to get even with those he viewed as disloyal when his business career sat on the verge of collapse.

“If given the opportunity, I will get even with some people who were disloyal to me,” Trump told Rose.

Trump called revenge “very therapeutic” in an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in 2007.

“If you have a problem with someone, you have to go after them,” Trump said in a CNBC interview with Erin Burnett that same year.

The topic was relevant in 2007 for one reason: Trump’s newly released book spent an entire chapter detailing his view on the merits of retribution.

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‘Their tactics have changed’: Russia’s bid to blow apart Ukraine’s power grid
For the past two winters, Ukraine has withstood a barrage of Russian airstrikes seeking to disable its energy infrastructure, plunge its citizens into darkness and use the freezing temperatures as a weapon of war.

Ukraine survived the assault thanks to Western air defense systems and energy-saving measures taken by its citizens, as families cooked on camping stoves and doctors performed surgery by flashlight.

While Ukraine weathered this winter’s storm, Russia has renewed its onslaught in recent weeks, striking Ukraine’s power grid with an intensity and in a manner not seen during more than two years of war.

“Their tactics have changed – unfortunately, not for the better for us,” Svitlana Grynchuk, Ukraine’s deputy energy minister, told CNN.

SPOILER

quote:

In the first two years of war, Russian attacks were more scattered, firing salvos of missiles to target large swathes of Ukraine’s energy system. Now, the strikes are becoming more precise and concentrated, with dozens of missiles and drones raining down on a single target.

“In such a short period of time – in a few weeks of these massive Russian attacks – almost all of our year-long efforts to rebuild and repair were destroyed in a few days, in a few attacks,” Grynchuk said.

The turning point came in late March, Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Kyiv-based Energy Industry Research Center (EIRC), told CNN. On that day, Russia launched one of its largest missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, targeting at least 10 of the country’s regions and briefly leaving more than 1 million households without electricity.

“On March 22, Russia began to implement its new strategy of attacks,” Kharchenko said. “The new strategy consists of massive missile attacks on specific targets, when a large number of missiles and drones simultaneously focus on a very limited number of targets.”

Russia has since pummeled Ukrainian power stations across the country, and on Thursday completely destroyed the Trypilska Thermal Power Plant – the largest plant in the Kyiv region. DTEK, Ukraine’s biggest private power company, also said Thursday that Russia had caused “serious damage” to two of its plants, and that approximately 80% of the power-generating facilities it runs had been destroyed by Russian strikes.

“Rather than continuing to focus their attacks on Ukraine’s transmission systems, from late March Russia began launching massive attacks on our energy generation infrastructure,” Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, told CNN. “Unfortunately, the enemy has evolved his tactics and is using high-precision weapons. The result is a huge increase in its destructive effectiveness compared to 2023.”

Given Ukraine keeps energy in storage, the strikes on thermal power plants have not caused immediate, prolonged blackouts. Thermal plants are mostly used to balance overall need – particularly during intense heating periods in winter when consumption spikes.

As well as the intensity and concentration of the attacks, their timing has also changed. Previously, the bulk of Russia’s strikes came in the buildup to winter. Now, they have come in an unusually warm spring.

There are two reasons why Russia may have waited until spring to launch its new strategy.

First, Russia needed time to build up the weapons and intelligence needed to conduct the strikes, Kharchenko said. “This strategy was clearly a long time in the making, they spent a lot of time developing it, they clearly gathered intelligence and prepared very carefully for these attacks,” Kharchenko said.

Second, Russia may have waited until Ukraine’s power plants were less protected by air defenses, an increasingly scarce resource after two years of war, and with aid from the United States stalled for months by Congress.

“My assumption is that Ukraine had protected its energy infrastructure quite well before winter, because we expected that such attacks would take place,” Olena Pavlenko, president of the Ukrainian energy think-tank DiXi Group, told CNN.

But, having emerged from winter, Pavlenko said, some of the air defenses may have been relocated – for instance, to Ukraine’s front lines. “It’s not a mistake, it’s just prioritization. We thought that if the winter ends, probably we can use the air defense system in other places,” she said.

Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region has been the worst hit, Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said. More than 200,000 people were left without power after Russian attacks Thursday. With the city lying so close to Russia, hypersonic missiles can reach it in seconds. “Due to the proximity to the border, terrorists have the opportunity to use various types of weapons in large numbers,” Halushchenko said on Ukrainian television.

Repair or defend
Ukraine has shown a remarkable ability to repair damage to its power grid. Some of its high-voltage substations – key nodes that reduce the voltage of electricity so it can be transferred through power lines to homes and offices – have been restored more than 10 times, Kharchenko said. Dozens have been restored at least three or four times. “They are attacked and restored, and then attacked again. If they were not restored, a significant part of the regions would already be without electricity.”

And the pace of repairs has shot up, Maria Tsaturian, head of communications at Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator, told CNN. “In peacetime, it took a month to replace a damaged large autotransformer with a new one. Now we do it in less than a week,” she said.

But Ukraine is now confronting a wholly different task: repairing not just substations, but entire power plants. While substations can be protected with sandbags, anti-drone nets and other safeguards, large plants can only be protected by air defenses. While such restoration work is possible, it may be pointless.

“We can restore everything. We have a very good and highly motivated team,” said Andriy Gota, CEO of Centrenergo, which runs the now-destroyed Trypilska plant. “But again, without a sufficient number of missiles for air defense, it will be a useless exercise, to put it mildly.”

Instead, Ukraine, too, may be considering a change in tack. Rather than rebuilding large – and, without air defenses, vulnerable – power plants, it may shift how it produces its energy.

“Instead of 20 large power plants that concentrate high production capacity and have a significant share in the energy balance, there should be 150-200 small power plants scattered across the country that can power a city if one of them goes down,” Tsaturian said.

Kharchenko said Kharkiv needed a similar system urgently. “It is now clear that Kharkiv needs to bring gas-piston engines in large numbers, install them secretly, and protect them… There is no alternative to this. Any larger facility will simply be destroyed by attacks.”

While the next winter is months away, Ukraine’s energy grid may come under strain during the summer months, when air conditioning use causes consumption to spike.

To offset that, Grynchuk said Ukraine has “an additional mechanism to balance the system and maintain stable operation – imports.” She said Ukraine is petitioning its European allies to increase the 1.7 gigawatt import limit.

But the priority, she said, is receiving air defenses. “Without air protection, we see the tragic consequences and destruction that Russian attacks can cause. That is why we really need air defense.”

quote:

Lithuania willing to allocate EUR 400,000 for purchase of metal detectors for Ukrainian schools
The Lithuanian government is ready to provide EUR 400,000 to support the Educational Security Service's project to equip Ukrainian schools with metal detectors.
This issue was discussed at a meeting between Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko and Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė, the ministry's press service reports.

"The head of the Lithuanian Ministry of Internal Affairs noted that her country is ready to allocate these funds for the purchase of metal detectors for educational institutions," the statement said.

The Educational Security Service is already operating in 400 schools across Ukraine.

By the end of 2024, it is planned to scale the project to 2,000 schools.

As reported, Ukraine is implementing the project "Officers of the Educational Security Service" at the initiative of the state leadership and with the participation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the National Police. The project was created to protect children during the full-scale war and to create a full-fledged security environment after the end of the war.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 11:09 schreef ExTec het volgende:
Jammer dat hier geen live camera van is. Dan kun je de hele dag turen naar totdat die doorbreekt.

[ x ]

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 19:01 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ x ]

Anders gezegd: 'Tijd voor iedereen om maar atoomwapens te gaan ontwikkelen.'

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 19:08 schreef Perrin het volgende:

[..]
Russia can do whatever the f*ck it likes because we are scared of escalation.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 20:21 schreef Discombobulate het volgende:
Gaat slecht met Oekra�ne volgens Boekestijn en de Wijk. Aandacht is ook volledig verschoven naar Iran en Isra�l. Wat dat betreft komt het goed uit voor Poetin.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 20:34 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
Ach, tot nu toe is elke gotcha die Poetin dacht uit te delen in zijn gezicht ontploft. Polen zet binnenkort wat Patriots aan de Oekra�ense grens om het noord/westen te beschermen. Duitsland stuurt een nieuwe batterij. Als Frankrijk troepen stuurt zullen die ook wel een SAMP/T meekrijgen voor de eigen veiligheid. Tenminste, dat zou ik doen.

Het lekken van Harris' verzoek te stoppen met de raffinaderijen op te blazen en gelijk zeggen dat de VS niets te eisen heeft als ze niet helpen legt de druk bij Washington.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 19:01 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ x ]

Anders gezegd: 'Tijd voor iedereen om maar atoomwapens te gaan ontwikkelen.'

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 21:04 schreef -XOR- het volgende:

[..]
Escalatie mensuh. Laten we vooral niet Poetin in de weg zitten als hij Oekrainers wil bombarderen want dan wordt hij boos!

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 21:07 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
Daar nu nog mee aan durven komen is wel weer heel erg zwak. Twee jaar terug had je misschien een punt als je voorzichtig wilde zijn, maar nu nog? Nu, na het vernietigen van de Zwarte Zeevloot en de halve Russische luchtmacht door Oekra�ne? Om dan nog steeds te bibberen en te beven slaat helemaal nergens op.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 11:09 schreef ExTec het volgende:
Jammer dat hier geen live camera van is. Dan kun je de hele dag turen naar totdat die doorbreekt.

[ x ]

quote:

Congress leaders reach agreement on aid to Israel and Ukraine, says Democrat Senator Schumer
The best way to send aid to Israel and Ukraine is to consider and pass supplemental to both countries in the House of Representatives, Schumer said

Leaders of the US Congress reached a consensus on aid to Israel and Ukraine in a telephone conversation with US President Joe Biden, reported ABC News with reference to the statement of the majority leader in the Senate, Democrat Chuck Schumer.

The senator hopes that "something can be accomplished to aid both countries" this week.

The best way to send aid to Israel and Ukraine is to consider and pass the Senate-approved national security supplemental in the House of Representatives that includes aid to both countries, Schumer stated.

Earlier, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives of the US Congress, Steve Scalise, said that amid Iran's attack on Israel, the House of Representatives next week will shift its previously announced schedule to consider the aid to Israel instead.

On the same day, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson confirmed that he would also consider aid to Ukraine. However, the details of this are still unknown.

After talks with the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, Johnson said that he supports giving Ukraine loans instead of grants and using Russian assets to pay for new aid. According to him, these elements could be part of the aid package.

"These are ideas that I think can get consensus," he said.

Late in the evening on April 13, 2024, the IDF press service reported that Iran launched drones from its territory towards Israel.

US President Joe Biden publicly stated that US forces helped Israel shoot down almost all drones and missiles launched by Iran.

Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Iran's massive attack on Israel, urging to prevent a larger-scale regional conflict.

quote:

The Armed Forces of Ukraine struck a concentration of invaders near Krasnohorivka

Near Krasnohorivka, the Ukrainian Defense Forces hit a concentration of Russian infantry trying to gain a foothold.

The Telegram channel of the Khortytsia operational-strategic group reported on this.

The enemy has recently been attacked within this village in Donetsk region using bombs and drones.

The first video from the military shows airstrikes on buildings, according to the Khortytsia operational-strategic group.

Russian invaders tried to set up their positions and gain a foothold, but they were discovered and defeated by Ukrainian defenders.

SPOILER

quote:

Авіаудари по скупченню росіян в районі Красногорівки [квітень 2024]

As a result of these attacks, several buildings were completely destroyed. The Ukrainian military did not specify what kind of aircraft bombs hit Russian invaders.

Удари дронами по скупченню росіян в районі Красногорівки [квітень 2024]

The second video demonstrates attacks on invaders using FPV drones. They were equipped with a powerful warhead, after the explosion of which small buildings where Russian infantry were hiding were destroyed, and invaders were forced to flee.

Also, Ukrainian servicemen backed with HMMWVs knocked Russian invaders out of houses in Krasnohorivka. As the HMMWVs approached the houses, the soldiers opened heavy fire. Ukrainian fighters then threw explosives into the houses and drove away, continuing to shoot with machine guns.

У Красногорівці бійці з HMMWV вибили окупантів з будинків [Квітень 2024]

Krasnohorivka, located near Mariinka in the Novopavlivka sector of the eastern front, remains one of the epicenters of the Russian offensive in the Donetsk region.

Recently, Russian invasion forces made another attempt to storm Ukrainian positions, using a tank with a new type of drone protection.

It was a Russian T-72 with a metal canopy covering the top and side projections of the tank. However, it is unclear from the video whether the tank had additional protection in the form of mesh or something similar in the front and rear.

� осіяни застосували танк з новим типом захисту у бою на Донеччині [квітень 2024]

According to the photo, the main task of this structure is to protect against FPV strikes. Such a canopy can also protect against UAVs that drop ammunition on vehicles from above.

quote:

Iran's attack on Israel could be bad for Russia's war in Ukraine
• Iran's attack on Israel could impact Russia's war in Ukraine.
• Iran is a key arms supplier and economic partner to Russia.
• A broader Middle East conflict could also boost China's regional influence at Russia's expense.

Iran's attack on Israel on Saturday is bad not only for the Middle East but also for Russia's war in Ukraine as new fault lines emerge between Moscow and Tehran.

SPOILER

quote:

Michelle Gris�, a senior policy researcher at RAND, an American think tank, described in a commentary how a broader conflict in the Middle East could impact Russia. The commentary was first published in The National Interest magazine on Thursday — days before Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday.

Gris�'s piece followed a strike on Iran's embassy in Damascus, Syria, on April 1. Israel didn't claim responsibility for the strike, but Iran held it accountable and vowed retaliation.

"Although it has been argued that Moscow benefits from chaos in the Middle East — diverting Western attention and resources from Ukraine — it stands to lose a great deal if the Israel-Hamas conflict escalates into a wider war," Gris� wrote.

Russia has been installing itself as a military and diplomatic player in the Middle East for years.

Gris� wrote that Moscow had capitalized on instability in Syria and Libya to establish itself as a regional security guarantor, but an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East wouldn't have the same effect.

She wrote that this was in part because of Moscow's preoccupation with its war in Ukraine. Russia's partnership with Iran has also deepened in the past two years as Russia's heavily sanctioned economy became increasingly isolated.

Iran is now a critical military supplier to Russia. An Iranian "ghost fleet" has also been carrying Russian oil around the world since the war in Ukraine started, keeping Moscow's oil revenue flowing.

But should Iran become embroiled in a wider conflict, it wouldn't be able to provide the same level of support to Russia.

"A broader regional conflict, particularly if it involves direct conflict between Israel and Iran, would limit Iran's ability to continue serving as a military supplier to Russia," wrote Gris�.

Furthermore, "Tehran may demand more support when Russia has limited capacity to provide it," she added.

The G7 nations are already considering additional sanctions against Iran following its attack on Israel — which could spill over to Russia.

"We will reflect on additional sanctions against Iran in close cooperation with our partners, specifically on its drone and missile programs," Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said in a statement on Sunday.

A broader Middle East conflict could boost China's clout in the region at Moscow's expense
Even though Russia is preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has still managed to position himself as a potential power broker in the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war.

But Putin's plan could fall apart should the war spill over regionally, since Beijing is also jostling to play peacemaker.

"Russia would be especially sensitive to Chinese attempts to encroach on its influence in the Middle East," Gris� wrote in her commentary.

This is especially so since Beijing managed to deliver results in March last year, brokering a d�tente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as Gris� noted.

Since Russia's heavily sanctioned economy is already reliant on China, it would be even more exposed to Beijing's whims should Moscow not be able to hang onto any shred of global influence it still has.

In a statement on Sunday, Russia's foreign ministry expressed "extreme concern" at what it called "yet another dangerous escalation" in the region.

Calling for restraint, Russia's foreign ministry said it expected regional states "to resolve the existing problems through political and diplomatic means."

quote:

Russia Fired Commanders Amid Failure to Recapture Kherson Ground: Report
wo Russian commanders have been dismissed for failing to recapture southern parts of Ukraine that were lost during Kyiv's counteroffensive last summer, according to pro-Kremlin sources.

The commander of Russia's 18th Combined Arms Army (CAA), which has been fighting near Krynky, in the southern Kherson Oblast, was fired along with the commander of the 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment, which had been fighting near Robotyne in the Zaporizhia Oblast, according to Russian military bloggers.

SPOILER

quote:

The former was Lieutenant General Arkady Marzoev although the head of the latter unit was not named by the Telegram channel Pozivnoy in a post which was shared by other prominent milbloggers over the weekend.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.

In its latest update, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said it could not confirm these reported firings which follow "failed" attempts by the 18th CAA to repel Ukrainian attacks and attempts to push Kyiv's forces from the east (left) bank of the Kherson region, where they established a limited tactical bridgehead in November.

Neither unit regained all the territory that Ukrainian forces captured in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts during last summer's offensive. The ISW said parts of the 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment had suffered "significant degradation" during periodic counterattacks to retake territory around Robotyne since September 2023.

The Washington, D.C., think tank said that if the reports are true, Moscow is probably hoping new leadership will lead to territorial gains around Robotyne and Krynky, so it can claim it has undone the results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

It comes as Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Russia has set itself the goal of capturing the town of Chasiv Yar, just west of the Russian-occupied city of Bakhmut, by May 9, in time for Victory Day, which marks the role the Soviet Union played in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.

He said that Russian troops were trying to break through west of Bakhmut in a bid to reach the Siverskyi Donets Canal to seize Chasiv Yar and advance further toward Kramatorsk.

"The implementation of the enemy's plans is hindered by the heroic defense of our crews," Syrskyi wrote in a social media post on Sunday, praising Ukrainian troops "who literally crawled into the ground, suppressing the enemy's daily attacks."

His comments follow a warning he made last week that the situation on Ukraine's eastern front had "significantly deteriorated in recent days" as Russia intensified its offensives in the east since last month's presidential election.

quote:

Macron proposes a truce in conflicts during the Olympics
French President Emmanuel Macron wants a ceasefire in Ukraine for the duration of the Summer Olympics in Paris.

This is reported by BMF TV.

The truce concerns not only Ukraine but also the Gaza Strip, Sudan and other hot spots around the world.

“We will work on the Olympic truce,” the French president said.

It is also reported that Macron will ask Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with whom he is due to meet, to help him in this matter.

Earlier, Macron said that France would offer Russia a ceasefire in Ukraine for the duration of the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has previously said that Russian and Belarusian athletes will be able to participate in the games.

But this will happen only if they do not actively support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

quote:

Russian railway line saboteur receives 14-year sentence for ‘collaboration’ and ‘justifying terrorism’

A Russian military court handed a Sverdlovsk region resident a 14-year prison sentence on Monday after finding him guilty on charges of “collaboration with foreign governments” and “justifying terrorism”, according to online news outlet Vechernie Vedomosti.

Vladlen Menshikov pleaded guilty to the charges and will serve the first four years of his sentence in prison and the rest in a prison colony.

Investigators accused Menshikov of placing jumper cables on a railway line in his hometown of Rezh in an unsuccessful attempt to derail a train carrying military equipment. Menshikov had been acting on instructions from the Freedom of Russia Legion, a Russian paramilitary group fighting alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces against the Russian military, they added.

Menshikov was arrested while attempting to fly to Belarus from St. Petersburg in September 2022. He was initially charged with sabotage, but this was subsequently amended to the more serious charges of collaborating with a foreign government and justifying terrorism.

Menshikov has in the past been critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine, even comparing the use of the pro-war Z symbol in Russia to the swastika, state-affiliated paper Kommersant reported.

One source told the newspaper that Menshikov aligned “with the views and beliefs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces” and was himself planning to leave Russia to fight alongside Ukrainian forces.

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The Counteroffensive: A look at the Russian military's war dolphins
In a country at war, death is all around. But Pavel Goldin is focused on a particular kind of collateral damage: an aquatic mammal he's spent much of his life studying.

“Please report all known finds of dead dolphins!” reads a recurring post on a Facebook page he runs.

After locating a dead dolphin, Goldin performs a necropsy if the carcass is intact to try to determine the cause of death and learn more about how and why so many of Ukraine's dolphins are dying.

According to some estimates, 37,500 to 48,000 Black Sea dolphins died in the three-month period after the full-scale invasion started. This figure amounts to around 15-20% of the sea's total dolphin population and a death rate that is 10 times higher than before February 2022.

“The (Black Sea's dolphin) population simply cannot withstand that type of death rate,” explained Naomi Rose, an expert on marine mammals in captivity.

The ecological impact of the war highlights the vulnerability of aquatic animals to the bombings and mines that have become common along Ukraine's coastal areas.

SPOILER

quote:

While the wild dolphin population is on the verge of extinction, dolphins raised in captivity as weapons of the Russian military are making their way into the Black Sea.

Russian forces moved trained dolphins to a harbor at the entrance of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea at the start of the full-scale war.

Satellite imagery from June 2023 showed that the number of dolphins in the harbor almost doubled. The U.K. Defense Ministry reported that "trained marine mammals" were added to the Russian military's defenses. Russia also reportedly moved dolphins to another naval base northwest of Sevastopol.

The dolphins are likely used to patrol the area looking for Ukrainian divers sent to spy, to protect ships against Ukrainian divers planting mines attached by magnets, and to collect military equipment that has fallen on the seafloor.

That Russia has been training dolphins for combat purposes is common knowledge. In fact, the history of training dolphins for military purposes goes back decades.

The first known program was started in the 1950s by the U.S. Navy. Dolphins and beluga whales were held in captivity and studied as a way of researching hydrodynamics – the U.S. Navy wanted to learn more about how these animals swim, and potentially use that research to develop new submarine technology. Although this was unsuccessful, they made other discoveries.

“That’s when they noticed them clicking,” explained Rose. “The dolphins were using echolocation, and up until the 1950s researchers were unaware of that.”

^{A scientist examines a dead dolphin at the Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park amid Russia's war against Ukraine in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, on Aug. 28, 2022. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)}

While the Soviet program began a few years after that of the U.S., it also made fascinating discoveries.

“One of the researchers in the Soviet Union discovered… that they (dolphins) sleep with only one half of their brain at a time,” Rose explained. They noticed that the dolphins would swim very slowly as a pod near the surface of the water with one eye closed and one eye open and that is how they discovered unihemispheric sleep, Rose continued.

While these discoveries were significant from a scientific perspective, they didn't translate into anything useful for the military at the time.

Although these discoveries were significant from a scientific perspective, they didn’t really translate to anything useful for the military in the ways they had intended.

“But, by then, they'd realized how smart they were,” Rose said.

Goldin explained that bottlenose dolphins are predominantly used in navy training programs.

“They have long term social ties, kinds of kinships and each group can even have their own cultural traditions.”

^{Satellite imagery of the Sevastopol Port in occupied Crimea on June 8, 2023. The U.K. Defense Ministry reported that the Russian military increased the number of trained marine mammals kept at the Sevastopol Port amid Russia's war against Ukraine. (U.K. Defense Ministry/Twitter)}

This level of intellect makes it easier to train the dolphins because they have the cognitive abilities and communication skills necessary to adapt and build relationships with their human trainers, Goldin explained.

It's precisely the bottlenose dolphins' high intellect that makes them so interesting to Goldin: “It is a really amazing feeling to realize that there are… animal species which can be directly comparable to humans. This is amazing."

Scientists soon realized the dolphins could be used beyond the research lab – in combat. They are also incredibly good at noticing patterns and patrolling.

"They're trained to alert their trainer whenever they see something that's not supposed to be there... They don't have to be given an 'A, B, or C,' they can just be told 'anything that's not normal' and they'll alert their trainer," Rose explained.

It has been rumored that these dolphins were trained to attack enemy divers – one rumor even goes so far as to suggest that dolphins were trained by the Ukrainian Navy to carry underwater guns capable of shooting knives from their head.

^{A dolphin swims at the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 5, 2023. (Berk �zkan/Anadolu via Getty Images)}

Rose had strong doubts about this: "If a person is shot and reacts, and blood is in the water... I don't think (the dolphin would) ever do it again... each individual dolphin would do it once and never again because they are very sensitive to distress."

When the Soviet Union fell apart, so too did the training program.

The dolphins were transferred over to the Ukrainian Navy and put in a commercial dolphinarium. The dolphinarium's trainer, Boris Zhurid, then sold them to Iran because it was too expensive to feed them. Twenty-seven animals were thus transported to the Persian Gulf.

"I cannot bear to see my animals starve... We're out of medicine, which costs thousands of dollars, and have no more fish or food supplements,” Boris told the Washington Post back in 2016.

When Russia occupied Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and the state oceanarium in Sevastopol was taken over, the dolphins were seized by the Russian military despite demands from Ukraine.

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk questioned whether the dolphins would work with Russia: "Dolphins get used to the people they work with. It's not so easy for them to change allegiance."

Ukraine's presidential representative in Crimea, Boris Babin, said many of the Ukrainian dolphins seized by Russia died "patriotically" after refusing food from Russian trainers.

Babin explained back in 2018 that the dolphins had been trained with whistles and equipment, all of which Russia had received and yet the dolphins still refused to eat.

“It is very sad that many Ukrainian military personnel who were stationed in Crimea in 2014 treated the issue of the oath and allegiance much worse than these dolphins,” Babin said.

For a lot of people, including Goldin, using dolphins in the military is not only unethical but also pointless: “It is not only inhumane, I am fully convinced this is a crime."

"Secondly it is totally useless. It is like using elephants for combat in the 21st century. Ukraine uses underwater drones, which are very effective… Russia uses dolphins instead of drones. It is absurd. It is absolutely useless.”

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Jaw Dropping Poll Finds Republicans Trust Trump for Info on Russia-Ukraine More Than Twice as Much as Journalists Who Are Actually There
A stunning new poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Republicans trusted Donald Trump above all others when it came to getting accurate news about the war in Ukraine.

The CBS News/YouGov poll revealed that a whopping 79% of Republicans trust what Trump tells them about the conflict — a number that far exceeds the Pentagon or even journalists reporting from the war zone.

Sixty-percent of Republicans said they trusted the Pentagon for accurate info on Ukraine, while 56% trusted conservative media the most. Just 33% said they trusted journalists reporting from the field, and a paltry 27% trusted the State Department the most.

CBS reported that “Self-identified ‘MAGA’ Republicans almost entirely trusted Trump for information, and were especially opposed to aid — even more so than non-MAGA Republicans.”

A separate poll showed that just 31% of MAGA Republicans supported sending additional aid to Ukraine, while 69% did not.

Data also showed that Republicans and Democrats had wildly different views on aid to Ukraine. In a separate poll, just 26% of Republicans as a whole were in favor of additional aid, while 74% of Democrats favored it.

President Joe Biden asked Congress for another $95 billion in aid for allies that included Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Ukraine, in particular, would receive $60 billion if the foreign aid bill passes the House. It’s now up to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as to whether he’ll allow a floor vote on the bill.

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China Disguising Imported Russian Copper as Scrap to Avoid Sanctions – Reuters
China has begun disguising imported Russian copper wire as scrap metal to avoid taxes and the impacts of Western sanctions, Reuters reported Monday, citing customs data and anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

Copper wire rod is mainly used for making power cables, while copper scrap is a mix of used products chopped into grain-sized pieces. According to Reuters, a Chinese intermediary is shredding newly imported Russian copper wire rod in the remote Xinjiang Uyghur region, which borders Russia.

Disguising new copper as scrap allows both Russia and China to profit from differences in trade tariffs, Reuters’ sources were cited as saying. The shredded metal is also harder to trace, making it easier to sell to Chinese manufacturers and keep doing business with buyers wary of Russian companies under Western sanctions, though there are no legal restrictions on buying metal from sanctioned Russian firms.

The Russian Copper Company, Russia’s third-largest copper producer, delivered at least 8,000 metric tons of copper wire rod to China in December, according to Reuters. The company was sanctioned by Western countries.

Customs data on Chinese imports of copper wire rod is not publicly available. However, Chinese customs data showed a mismatch of “significantly more” copper scrap imports from Russia since December, while Russian commercial data obtained by Reuters showed “negligible” Russian scrap exports to China.

In December, Reuters said China declared 6,500 metric tons of copper scrap imports while Russian data showed only 73 tons exported that month. In February, copper scrap imports reached 11,600 tons after averaging around 100 tons in 2021 and 2022, Reuters said.

Before December, Russia had never been a major seller of scrap copper to China.

“This scrap from Russia is de facto copper rod, but not declared as rod,” a Chinese manufacturing source was quoted as saying.

Russia’s Federal Customs Service stopped publishing trade data in April 2022 soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

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Ukraine set to strike beyond front lines: Norway to provide updated F-16 fighter jets
The head of Norway's foreign ministry did not specify the number of aircraft. Norway is currently cooperating with Denmark, the Netherlands, and Britain

A coalition of fighter jet providers will deliver a "significant number" of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine, equipped with the latest weaponry and capable of striking beyond the front lines, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide stated during a joint briefing with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

The minister expressed his belief that Ukraine needs to strengthen its strike capabilities and deliver blows beyond the front lines.

"And this is one of the reasons why we are very happy to join the F-16 coalition, where we will be transferring Norwegian F-16s that have been updated and are in good shape," he said.

According to him, Norway, along with Danish and Dutch colleagues, is conducting training for Ukrainian pilots.

"And there may even be longer-range strike capabilities, which are now very important for Ukraine," he added.

Eide did not specify the number of aircraft but noted that Norway is currently cooperating with Denmark, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

"There will be a significant number. When you ask how many will come from Norway, I cannot tell you the exact number, because there are, in particular, aircraft that have been updated, in better combat shape, and some fuselages that can be used for repair in particular," he said.

Eide stated that he has experience in defense and knows that the F-16 is a very powerful platform and it all depends on how it is equipped.

"Because this is a very advanced technology platform, but the main thing is still the weapon system that can be hung on the platform. So together as a system, this will be a quite significant contribution. Therefore, the aircraft that will be airworthy will be with the latest weaponry," the minister said.

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Satellite images of the aftermath of a strike on a Russian facility in Luhansk have been released

The Planet Labs satellite recorded the aftermath of an air strike on the Luhansk Machine-Building Plant-100 used by Russian invaders in Luhansk.

The images were published by journalists of the Schemes program.

The photos were taken on April 14. They show damage to at least one building at the plant.

Using the videos released after the strike in Luhansk, the Donbas Realities project established that the company in question was targeted.

SPOILER

quote:

The attack on the plant was later confirmed by a source in Luhansk.

It is noted that the enemy was repairing equipment at the plant, and that Russian army personnel were stationed there.

The explosions in Luhansk occurred in the afternoon of April 13, after which a column of smoke rose over the city. Eyewitnesses reported at least two powerful explosions.

Russian propagandists immediately accused Ukraine of a missile attack on the outskirts of the city.

Later, the network showed the moment of the strike, and local channels reported a possible strike on a machine-building plant used by Russian invaders for military purposes.

The strike was carried out using Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missiles.

The Franco-British Storm Shadow/SCALP EG is a long-range air-to-ground air-launched cruise search missile.

As previously reported, on Monday, April 15, explosions were heard in occupied Berdiansk, which were heard throughout the city. After the explosions, which occurred around 12 p.m., smoke was observed rising into the sky in one of the city’s districts.

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Russell Bentley, Texan pro-Putin fighter and Russian propagandist found decapitated in Russian-controlled Donetsk

Texan Russell Bentley was found decapitated in Petrovskiy district of Donetsk (temporary occupied territory of Ukraine) at 10 AM, 14 April 2024.

Beside his beheaded corpse were found Bentley’s passport with registration in Donetsk, Makarov pistol, credit cards and his wallet.

He used to fight for the pro-Russian militia battalion “Vostok”.

Russell Bentley went missing on 8 April 2024.

Russell Bentley, 63, who is married to a Russian woman and has a passport from his adopted country, disappeared after an attack by Defense Force of Ukraine, according to reports. He was last seen in Donetsk on 8 April before moving in an ‘unknown direction’, and his current location is unknown.

Bentley has posted that he was ‘heading west with the “Liberators of Ukraine”. We may stop in Kiev, we may stop on the English Channel. We may liberate the USA.’

In 1999 he escaped from a minimum security US facility where he was being held for drug trafficking. I didn’t have to dig a tunnel or take anybody hostage. But I did escape from prison’, Bentley said. He was later captured and put in a high security facility to finish his sentence.

He became a fighter for pro-Putin forces in 2014 after breaking up with his yoga-instructor girlfriend, though he spoke almost no Russian.

He called himself the information warrior and had worked for a media outlet affiliated with Sputnik, a Russian state media outlet.

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Netherlands, Germany, Canada to send drones to Ukraine
Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada will supply Ukraine with drones, while Lithuania will allocate additional funds for first-person view (FPV) drone production, Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported on April 15 after a meeting of the countries' representatives.

The United Kingdom and Latvia co-lead the drone coalition, which was established in January to bolster Ukraine's drone arsenal. Seven countries, apart from the founding states, have joined the alliance, including Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Sweden, Estonia, and Denmark.

Germany plans to provide Ukraine with Vector 211 reconnaissance drones without specifying the amount, according to the Defense Ministry's statement.

Canada, in turn, will send 450 SkyRanger multi-mission drones, while the Netherlands, in collaboration with Denmark and Germany, will supply Ukraine with Heidrun RQ-35 reconnaissance drones worth 200 million euros ($213 million).

Lithuania will also allocate 3 million euros ($3 million) for the Ukrainian FPV drone production.

"The situation on the front line changes every day, the enemy continues to attack civilian facilities, especially energy infrastructure," Deputy Defense Minister Kateryna Chernohorenko said during the meeting, adding that Ukraine needs "tools" to respond to these attacks.

"Time for discussion on the decisions is running out, we need it now," Chernohorenko said.

Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds said that the drone coalition is waiting for new members to join and support this initiative.

Latvia previously announced that it would deliver 1 million euros ($1.1 million) worth of drones to Ukraine "soon."

"Latvia also plans to continue helping Ukraine further, and we are preparing the next defense aid package this month," Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina said on April 4.

quote:

The 72nd Mechanized Brigade repulsed a Russian offensive in the Donetsk region

The Ukrainian military stopped the armored offensive of Russian invaders in the east.

On April 12, Russians engaged T-62M tanks and light armored vehicles with infantry in the assault.

To neutralize the enemy, the defenders used FPV kamikaze drones and UAVs with ammunition.

The video of the liquidation of the invaders’ equipment and infantry was shown in a Telegram.

Soldiers of the Attack Drone Company “Bulava” of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade named after the Black Zaporozhians were working.

SPOILER

quote:

At least one T-62M tank was equipped with a KMT-7 tracked mine trawl to overcome minefields.

Відбиття наступу росіян на Донеччині� [квітень 2024]

Published footage from the Ukrainian military shows FPV drones taking turns hitting Russian tanks and other armored vehicles.

These drones, together with UAVs with ammunition, also eliminated Russian infantry trying to hide or escape.

According to Ukrainian defenders, one tank, probably a T-62M, and a motorcycle were destroyed, as well as 2 MT-LB tracked tractors, which Russians use as armored personnel carriers.

In addition, three enemy tanks were damaged due to the skillful actions of Ukrainian defenders.

The enemy also suffered losses in personnel: 8 invaders were reported killed and 15 wounded.

Recently, the Kyiv region handed over 600 FPV drones, including 100 with night vision, to the 72nd Mechanized Brigade named after the Black Zaporozhians. The drones were purchased at the expense of the regional budget.

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Ukraine Strikes Russian Command Post in Crimea
Kyiv Post sources in Ukrainian intelligence confirmed that Ukrainian missiles struck a Russian command post on the Crimean peninsula with high-ranking Russian officers.

Ukraine’s defense forces have hit a Russian command post with high-ranking Russian officers in Russian-occupied Crimea, intelligence sources told Kyiv Post.

Explosions sounded in Crimea on Monday, April 15 in an air raid that lasted over two hours.

As reported by the Crimean Wind Telegram channel, Russian aircraft were scrambled to the Crimean city of Sevastopol.

https://t.me/Crimeanwind/57660

Vehicular traffic on the Crimean bridge was temporarily stopped.

Russian Telegram channels claimed that Ukrainian missile was shot down near the bridge.

Further updates to be provided when more information becomes available.

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Czech Michal Strnad becomes billionaire due to Russian-Ukrainian war
Bloomberg estimates his capital at $5 billion

Michal Strnad, a Czech citizen, has become a billionaire as a result of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. His father started a business in the 1990s repairing combat vehicles, and Strnad has continued to develop it by restoring the combat capability of Soviet tanks, according to Bloomberg.

Excalibur Army, the largest and most profitable asset of Czechoslovak Group, repairs old Soviet-era tanks, including those for Ukraine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Michal Strnad's business has experienced its highest demand since the end of the Cold War. Excalibur's revenue has tripled since 2021, reaching �1.73 billion.

Czechoslovak Group already has about 300 T-72 battle tanks on its books, at least a hundred of which have been sent to Ukraine. Production of large-caliber ammunition at CSG's enterprises has increased more than tenfold since the beginning of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, and the number of employees has almost tripled to 10,000 people at enterprises in eight countries.

Strnad, who is only 31 years old, has a capital estimated at about $5 billion, according to Bloomberg. In 2023, Strnad was listed on Forbes for the first time. The valuation of his assets doubled to $4.3 billion in 2024.

"Even if the war were to end tomorrow it would take years to replenish the empty stocks, not to mention the push to boost defense spending and ramp up production. I am confident there will be strong demand for a long time to come.," Strnad said in an interview with the agency.

Czechoslovak Group also manufactures its combat vehicles and civilian and military trucks. Strnad stated that the company's portfolio of orders will provide work for many years.

He is building new assembly plants in three European countries and plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in joint ventures with Ukraine to produce weapons.

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Commission endorses Ukraine Plan, paving the way for regular payments under the Ukraine Facility
Today, the Commission has adopted a proposal for a Council Implementing Decision that assesses positively the Ukraine Plan, Ukraine's comprehensive reform and investment strategy for the next four years. This important step paves the way for regular and predictable support to Ukraine under the EU's up to �50 billion Ukraine Facility. Financing under the Facility will help Ukraine to keep its administration running, pay salaries and pensions, provide basic public services, and support recovery and reconstruction while it continues to defend itself against Russia's aggression.

The payments will be disbursed subject to the implementation of the agreed reform and investment steps set out in the annex of the Council Implementing Decision. In addition, financial support under the Ukraine Plan will be made available under the precondition that Ukraine continues to uphold and respect effective democratic mechanisms.

SPOILER

quote:

The Commission assessment of the Ukraine Plan is based on the criteria established by the Ukraine Facility Regulation. In particular, the Commission assessed whether the Ukraine Plan constitutes a targeted and well-balanced response to the objectives of the Ukraine Facility, whether it addresses the challenges of Ukraine's accession track, and whether it responds to Ukraine's recovery, reconstruction and modernisation needs.

According to the Commission's assessment, the Ukraine Plan effectively addresses the objectives of the Ukraine Facility, by identifying those key reforms and investments that can boost sustainable economic growth and attract investments, to amplify the country's growth potential in the medium-to-long term. The Plan also provides a framework to guide the recovery, reconstruction and modernization of Ukraine. Finally, the assessment finds that the Plan proposes adequate mechanisms and arrangements to protect the financial interest of the EU, by ensuring an effective implementation, monitoring and reporting on the Plan.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “Ukraine's strategy for reforms and investments offers a solid basis to rebuild a more modern and prosperous Ukraine, on its path towards the EU. The Commission's positive assessment of the Ukraine Plan will pave the way for regular payments under the Ukraine Facility. With today's proposal, we showcase once again that Europe stands with Ukraine for as long as it takes, and that we are ready to deliver much-needed financial support”.

The Ukraine Plan identifies 69 reforms and 10 investments, broken down into 146 qualitative and quantitative indicators. The reforms proposed under the Ukraine Plan cover 15 areas including energy, agriculture, transport, the green and digital transition, human capital, as well as state-owned enterprises, the business environment, public finances, and decentralisation. They aim at enhancing Ukraine's macro-economic and financial resilience, improving governance, increasing the capacity and efficiency of the administration, the accountability and integrity of the judiciary, supporting the development of the private sector and creating an environment conducive to sustainable economic growth. Several reforms are expected to help Ukraine's efforts on the accession path by advancing alignment with the EU acquis, notably in public administration, public finance management, anti-money laundering, public procurement, as well as the transport and agri-food sectors. Investments cover the fields of human capital, energy, transport, agri-food, business environment and regional policies.

Next Steps
Following the Commission's positive assessment of the Ukraine Plan, Member States have one month to adopt the Council Implementing Decision put forward by the Commission.

The adoption of the proposed Council Implementing Decision would enable the Commission to disburse up to �1.89 billion in pre-financing until regular disbursements tied to the implementation of reform and investment indicators under the Ukraine Plan would start.

Background
The new Ukraine Facility, which entered into force on 1st March, foresees up to �50 billion of stable financing, in grants and loans, to support Ukraine's recovery, reconstruction, and modernisation for the period 2024 to 2027. Of this, up to �32 billion of the Ukraine Facility is indicatively earmarked to support reforms and investments set out in the Ukraine Plan, whereby disbursements will be conditioned to the delivery of identified indicators. Close to �7 billion will be mobilised for the Investment Framework to support investments, and provide access to finance, while around �5 billion is foreseen for technical assistance to support reforms and related support measures. Finally, �6 billion are earmarked for exceptional bridge financing, of which the EU already disbursed �4.5 billion in March.

Ukraine submitted its Ukraine Plan to the European Commission on 20 March. It presents a vision for sustainable growth, based on carefully selected priorities and a sequenced set of reforms and investments for the next four years. The Plan promotes investments that foster Ukraine's recovery, reconstruction and modernisation, including at the local level.

The Commission assesses that reforms and investments put forward in the recommended Council Implementing Decision have a significant potential to enhance growth, sustain macroeconomic stability, improve the fiscal situation and to support Ukraine's further integration with EU. If all proposed reforms and investments are fully implemented, Ukraine's GDP could increase by 6.2% by 2027 and by 14.2% by 2040. The implementation of the Plan could also lead to a reduction of the debt by about 10 percentage points of GDP by 2033 compared to an alternative scenario without the Facility.

To ensure the protection of EU financial interests, the Ukraine Plan is equipped with an adequate framework for transparency, audit and control and requires the Ukrainian State to substantially enhance its audit and control systems as part of the foreseen reforms. In addition, an independent Audit Board, to be set up in May, will assist the Commission in preventing any mismanagement of Union funds and, in particular fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest and irregularities.

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Ukraine, Russia and T�rkiye hold negotiations regarding Black Sea shipping deal – Reuters
The Reuters news agency claims that Ukraine, Russia and T�rkiye have been negotiating for two months on an agreement on the safety of navigation in the Black Sea, which was to be announced at the end of March.

Source: Reuters, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The agency, citing four sources, claims that the agreement between Kyiv and Moscow has been ready and was to be announced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 30 March, the day before the local elections in T�rkiye.

But, the sources that spoke to Reuters said that "at the very last minute, Ukraine suddenly pulled out and the deal was scuttled". The reason for this step is unknown.

The draft agreement seen by Reuters envisaged Moscow and Kyiv providing security guarantees for merchant ships in the Black Sea, pledging not to strike, seize or search them if they were either empty or declared as non-military cargo.

"These guarantees do not apply to warships, civilian vessels carrying military goods (with the exception of maritime transportation agreed upon by the Parties within the framework of international missions)," the draft agreement says.

For both Ukraine and Russia, the Black Sea is an important route for delivering grain, fertiliser and oil to the world markets.

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine's Black Sea ports by Russia in July 2022, T�rkiye and the UN helped to establish the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

As part of the agreement, Ukraine was able to safely export almost 33 million metric tonnes of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea through the so-called Grain Corridor. However, in July 2023, Russia withdrew from the agreement, claiming that its requirements had not been met.

It should be noted that the Turkish side then advocated for the resumption of the grain corridor with Russia's participation, while Ukraine was able to establish its own route across the Danube River.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 23:43 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/04/15/7451379/
[..]
Dit is toch helemaal niet nodig? Oekra�ne heeft al een veilige route voor deze schepen door territoriale wateren van NAVO landen. En de laatste keer ging Rusland gewoon door met het bombarderen van Odessa. Ook hadden zij een schip ge�nterd door middel van een helikopter.

En tevens heeft Rusland nauwelijks nog een vloot over in de Zwarte Zee.

quote:

Op maandag 15 april 2024 23:13 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://russiavsworld.org(...)-controlled-donetsk/
[..]

Ja, jammer

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 00:12 schreef Cilantro het volgende:
[ x ]

Goede speech.

SPOILER

quote:

The jury of 12, along with six alternates, will be chosen from hundreds of New Yorkers after an exhaustive selection process that could stretch beyond the first week of the trial.

Court officials expect about 500 new jurors to appear each day for the selection process. About 100 prospective jurors at a time will be brought into Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom to be vetted.

Here is the breakdown of the first day of jury selection:
• Just after 2:30 p.m., 96 prospective jurors were brought in for questioning and sworn in.
• At least 50 were immediately excused after saying they could not be fair and impartial.
• At least nine more prospective jurors were excused after raising their hand when asked whether they could not serve for any other reason. Those reasons were not disclosed.

Upon questioning:
• Merchan called 18 New Yorkers to the jury box for questioning.
• Ten were questioned by the end of the day. One person was dismissed after she said she had firmly held beliefs about Trump and another person was chosen for the jury box. Merchan excused another juror who said his child was getting married on June 8.

What's next: Around 32 potential jurors remained after Monday's session, according to a pool reporter in the courtroom. They included those who were already questioned and not excused along with those who still face questioning by Merchan on Tuesday. Another panel of potential jurors will be brought in after the first group is completed, the judge said.

quote:

Takeaways from the first day of the Trump hush money trial
The first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump is here.

The opening day of the first criminal trial of a former US president began Monday, hitting home the reality that the presumptive Republican nominee for president will be sitting in a Manhattan courtroom as a defendant four days a week.

Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, sat alongside his three attorneys as jury selection began, watching them debate prosecutors over what evidence could be admitted and passing notes as they spoke.

Choosing a roster of 12 jurors who can decide Trump’s fate will be difficult, as more than 50 people immediately were dismissed when they said they couldn’t be fair and impartial.

Trump did little talking inside the courtroom Monday. But his incendiary rhetoric was once again at issue, with a new call from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for Judge Juan Merchan to sanction Trump for violating the judge’s gag order.

Here are the key takeaways from day one of “The People of the State of New York vs Donald Trump.”

SPOILER

quote:

More than half of first batch of prospective jurors say they can’t be fair and impartial
Merchan brought in 96 New Yorkers as prospective jurors. More than half were quickly dismissed because they said they did not think they could be fair and impartial.

The swift dismissal of the prospective jury pool underscores the difficulty in picking a jury when the defendant is a former president who elicits strong feelings on both sides of the aisle.

Trump has complained that he cannot get a fair jury in Manhattan, where the jurors must live. Among the jurors that stayed, most said they could be fair and impartial in this case.

But as the judge began having jurors answer 40 questions about their backgrounds, media they consume and whether they have strong feelings about Trump, one more potential juror was weeded out.

The woman answered yes to question 34: “Do you have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about former President Donald Trump, or the fact that he is a current candidate for president that would interfere with your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?”

Merchan stopped her questioning and asked whether the lawyers had any objection to dismissing her. After a brief sidebar she was thanked for her service and dismissed.

“I just couldn’t do it,” the juror was heard saying in the hallway outside the courtroom.

Among the other nine potential jurors who were questioned, none said they had read any books written by either Trump or Michael Cohen. And none had said they’d worked or volunteered for Trump.

Defense wants to slow things down
After months of appeals to delay the start of the trial, the defense is now looking to slow down the legal proceedings as the November elections near.

Sources told CNN’s Paula Reid that there will likely be many objections and sidebars during the trial because the defense is completely focused on preserving every issue for appeal.

For instance, jury selection is already expected to last a week but on Monday Trump attorney Todd Blanche requested more time to question potential jurors. Blanche asked for 30 minutes for the first round of questions and 20 minutes for subsequent rounds – double the usual time – and the judge and DA’s office agreed.

Blanche also attempted to raise problems with the current system of requiring a pre-motion letter 48 hours before filing motions, which Merchan said is in place “because we were being absolutely inundated with motions, many of which frankly were close to frivolous if not frivolous” — an apparent dig at the recent motions filed by Trump attorneys.

These tactics fit the larger Trump legal strategy, which included months of appeals to delay the start of the trial, which was successful on separate grounds. The defense now hopes legal proceedings, which are expected to last six to eight weeks, move at a slow pace with the 2024 election just months away.

DA’s office accuses Trump of violating gag order, wants him fined $3,000
Prosecutors asked Merchan to sanction Trump for violating the gag order prohibiting him from talking about witnesses in the case, the DA’s office or court staff.

Chris Conroy asked to hold Trump in contempt for violating the gag order and sanction Trump $1,000 for each of three social media posts he made that they say violate the order.

“We think that it is important for the court to remind Mr. Trump that he is a criminal defendant,” Conroy said. “And like all criminal defendants he’s subject to court supervision.”

One of Trump’s posts on Truth Social called eventual trial witness Michael Cohen his “SleazeBag former attorney,” and in another he re-posted Stormy Daniels’ letter from 2018 denying an affair with Trump, which she has since rescinded.

A third was a re-post from former Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti criticizing Cohen and Daniels. The post on X accused them of making money on “bogus documentaries” and TV interviews.

Trump on Monday morning also shared a New York Post story, quoting from the story: “A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system.”

Merchan scheduled a hearing on the district attorney’s motion for next Tuesday.

This isn’t the first time Trump has been scrutinized for his social media posts. He was fined twice for violating a gag order imposed by New York Judge Arthur Engoron in his civil fraud trial.

“Access Hollywood” tape can’t be played, but actress can testify
Merchan made several key rulings that may frame how the case is presented, delivering wins for both sides.

Aside from refusing to recuse himself from the case, the judge sided with prosecutors in allowing Karen McDougal, an actress and model who alleged she also had an affair with Trump, to testify. Prosecutors can also introduce National Enquirer stories slamming Trump’s opponents as evidence.

American Media Inc. agreed to pay McDougal $150,000 five months before the 2016 election for her silence about allegations of an affair with Trump, according to prosecutors. Trump has denied the affair. This payment is not part of the charges against Trump, but prosecutors have said that the testimony would help establish a pattern of payments.

A key victory for Trump, meanwhile, was Merchan ruling that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape can’t be played in court, saying it was prejudicial. Prosecutors also will not be allowed to bring up other sexual assault allegations against Trump that surfaced after the “Access Hollywood tape” was made public in October 2016.

“They are very prejudicial, and at this point, given what we know today, it was just a rumor,” Merchan said.

Merchan also denied prosecutors’ request to show E. Jean Carroll’s deposition from her defamation case against Trump because it would be “building in a trial into a trial.”

quote:

Johnson makes his long-awaited move on Ukraine as House plans to vote on separate aid packages
Speaker Mike Johnson announced Monday evening the House will take up separate bills this week to provide aid for Israel and Ukraine, heeding demands from the far right to keep the issues separate as the threat of a vote to oust him from the speakership looms.

The long-awaited decision by Johnson marks a pivotal moment for the Louisiana Republican as he has faced intense pressure from his conference over how he would handle foreign aid to the key US allies.

Johnson predicted the House will vote Friday evening on the separate bills.

SPOILER

quote:

“There are precipitating events around the globe that we’re all watching very carefully,” Johnson told reporters after a GOP conference meeting Monday evening. “And we know that the world is watching us to see how we react.”

Despite the speaker’s attempt to thread the needle, however, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who continues to dangle the threat of a vote on Johnson’s ouster, was quick to criticize the foreign aid plan.

“I am firmly against the plan as it stands right now,” Greene told reporters, though when asked whether she would force a vote on the motion to vacate as a result, she said, “I haven’t decided on that yet.”

Johnson dismissed concerns over a vote to oust him by his conservative flank if he moves on aid to Ukraine, telling CNN, “I don’t spend my time worrying about motions to vacate. We’re having to govern here and we’re going to do our job.”

In addition to aid for Israel and Ukraine, Johnson said in a post on X that the bills would support allies in the Indo-Pacific and there would be additional measures to “counter our adversaries and strengthen our national security.”

But Republican leaders could still take procedural steps to send all those pieces as one package to the Senate, which could enrage the right wing of the House GOP conference.

Johnson left open the possibility that the bills could ultimately be packaged together, setting up a potential fight with the right flank.

“We’re discussing whether they would be merged together in one package that’s sent to the Senate or if it goes over as individual measures,” Johnson said. “My personal preference is to do it individually, but we’ll let the body decide.”

Among the ways GOP leaders plan to address Ukraine aid: a bill to seize Russian assets, a lend-lease program for Ukraine military aid and convertible loans for humanitarian relief.

Former President Donald Trump, who recently met with House Speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago, has expressed openness to structuring Ukraine aid as a loan.

GOP Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma told CNN that Johnson is allowing germane amendment votes on these bills as well – a process that far right Republicans had been demanding of Johnson.

In the wake of Iran’s unprecedented retaliatory strikes on Israel, Democrats have called on Johnson to bring up a Senate-passed foreign aid package that includes aid to Israel and Ukraine, but hardline conservatives have urged the Louisiana Republican against attaching Ukraine funding to any Israel aid package – a warning that comes as the speaker faces the threat of a potential vote to oust him from his leadership post.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged immediate passage of the foreign aid package passed by the Senate in a new letter to colleagues.

“The gravely serious events of this past weekend in the Middle East and Eastern Europe underscore the need for Congress to act immediately. We must take up the bipartisan and comprehensive national security bill passed by the Senate forthwith,” Jeffries wrote.

In November, the House passed a bill to provide $14.3 billion in aid to Israel, but Democrats objected to the fact that the bill did not include aid to Ukraine and would enact funding cuts to the Internal Revenue Service.

The Senate passed its bill in February – a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill with assistance for Ukraine, Israel and other priorities.

A significant number of House Republicans are opposed to sending further aid to Ukraine. Now, Johnson faces the most significant threat to his speakership to date after GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is among those who oppose additional Ukraine aid, filed a motion against him that could be used to force a vote on his ouster.

Greene told CNN on Monday that Trump’s backing of Johnson during a Friday press conference will not deter her from moving to oust the speaker.

“No, no, and as a matter of fact, there’s more people that are probably going to be angry from whatever happens this week,” she said.

Later, Greene said, “He’s definitely not going to be speaker next Congress if we’re lucky enough to have a majority. I think that is a widely held belief throughout the Congress.”

Asked if she thinks he’ll remain speaker for the remainder of the current session of Congress, the congresswoman said, “That is to be determined. Like I said, I’m still processing.”

Johnson called Greene’s decision to file the motion to vacate a “distraction” during an interview on Fox News.

“That’s a distraction. What Marjorie has done with the motion to vacate is not helpful for our party, for our mission to save the country, because if we don’t grow the House majority, keep the House majority, win the Senate and win back the White House for President Trump, we’re going to lose the republic,” he said.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 12:43 schreef BEFEM het volgende:
Lol, Raytheon zegt dat ze niet de maximale capaciteit gebruiken voor Patriots omdat ze niet genoeg bestellingen hebben

Deze wereld

Hup, bestellen die handel met heel Europa.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 13:26 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
Vaag. In januari hadden een aantal Europese landen iets van 1000 raketten besteld. Wel goed om te weten dat daar capaciteit voor is.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 12:43 schreef BEFEM het volgende:
Lol, Raytheon zegt dat ze niet de maximale capaciteit gebruiken voor Patriots omdat ze niet genoeg bestellingen hebben

Deze wereld

Hup, bestellen die handel met heel Europa.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 14:28 schreef ExTec het volgende:

[..]
Die hadden aangegeven dat als ze 24/7 gaan werken, er 1 per maand gemaakt kan worden.

Maar dan zal de prijs ook redelijk omhoog gaan. Ze zullen nu gewoon 8/7 werken, en 2 nieuwe ploegen oplijnen, incl. bv tarief voor s'nachts werken kan aantikken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 14:31 schreef BEFEM het volgende:
Maar geld is geen probleem, capaciteit wel.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 13:50 schreef BEFEM het volgende:

[..]
Het gaat om de batterijen zelf, niet de munitie. Als ik het goed interpreteer hadden we vorig jaar 'gewoon' 3 batterijen kunnen bestellen en hadden we die nu al gehad.

Zie NOS bericht van vandaag.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:33 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ x ]

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:28 schreef skysherrif het volgende:
Eindelijk wat goed nieuws.

Oekraine gaat mobiliseren en het lijkt er op dat einde deze week er toch nieuwe Amerikaanse steun komt. Hard nodig ook.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:39 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]
Fingers crossed wat dat betreft. Vertrouw die maga-gristenen voor geen ene cent.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:21 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Ik denk dat ze wel robots gebruiken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:39 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]
Fingers crossed wat dat betreft. Vertrouw die maga-gristenen voor geen ene cent.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:58 schreef BEFEM het volgende:
Onder Johnson gaat het er nooit doorheen komen, onder een vervanger denk ik ook niet.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 15:58 schreef BEFEM het volgende:
Onder Johnson gaat het er nooit doorheen komen, onder een vervanger denk ik ook niet.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:02 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

[..]
Alles moet op alles gezet worden om te zorgen dat de democraten geen successen behalen en dat Trump genoeg materie heeft om campagne mee te voeren. Dat dat ten koste gaat van letterlijk duizenden mensenlevens en de buitenlandse geloofwaardigheid van dat land zal deze ekcte christenen aan hun vrome reet roesten.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:02 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
Johnson is nu wel weg. Met wat geluk halen de Dems wat vertrekkende Republikeinen binnen en wordt het Jeffries.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:02 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
Johnson is nu wel weg. Met wat geluk halen de Dems wat vertrekkende Republikeinen binnen en wordt het Jeffries.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:26 schreef ExTec het volgende:
Waarom mocht de vorige speaker moven?

Vanwege een motie van 1 van de 8 rep gekkies,

En wie stemde voor die motie?

De 8 rep gekkies, en alle dems. Voor de rest geen enkele republikein.

En die gekkies zeggen nu dus: deze wet ter stemming brengen, en er volgt een nieuwe motie.

En toen ze dems vroegen: als die komt, stemmen jullie hem dan weer weg?

Ja, zeiden ze.

Enfin, die christen eng-nek is en blijft een christen eng-nek, maar erg verbazend dat hij het niet onder stemming wil brengen, is dat natuurlijk niet.

Die dems, die permanent traantjes in hun ogen hebben omdat ze oekraine zo graag willen helpen, maar dat niet kunnen vanwege de evil reps, die zouden bv ook jonhson de garantie kunnen geven dat als de gekkies weer met die motie komen, ze daar niet voor zullen stemmen.

Maar tot zover dat ook de dems prima oekraine onderschikt maken aan plat partij belang.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:27 schreef skysherrif het volgende:

[..]
ik vermoed ook dat ze dat doen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:35 schreef ExTec het volgende:

[..]

Maar goed; ik heb geen wereldbeeld waarin de ene partij aldaar 'goed is' en de andere 'slecht', overeind te houden.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 16:26 schreef ExTec het volgende:
Waarom mocht de vorige speaker moven?

Vanwege een motie van 1 van de 8 rep gekkies,

En wie stemde voor die motie?

De 8 rep gekkies, en alle dems. Voor de rest geen enkele republikein.

En die gekkies zeggen nu dus: deze wet ter stemming brengen, en er volgt een nieuwe motie.

En toen ze dems vroegen: als die komt, stemmen jullie hem dan weer weg?

Ja, zeiden ze.

Enfin, die christen eng-nek is en blijft een christen eng-nek, maar erg verbazend dat hij het niet onder stemming wil brengen, is dat natuurlijk niet.

Die dems, die permanent traantjes in hun ogen hebben omdat ze oekraine zo graag willen helpen, maar dat niet kunnen vanwege de evil reps, die zouden bv ook jonhson de garantie kunnen geven dat als de gekkies weer met die motie komen, ze daar niet voor zullen stemmen.

Maar tot zover dat ook de dems prima oekraine onderschikt maken aan plat partij belang.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 18:11 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]
Wwarom moeten de Dems stemmen voor een speaker die die bezopen Hunter Biden commissie in het leven riep? Waarom verdiende McCarthy hun steun daarvoor?

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 19:31 schreef Discombobulate het volgende:
De boel staat op instorten. Is die nieuwe mobilisatie van Oekra�ne al aan de gang?

quote:

Increased activity at nuclear test site in northern Russia: expert

Active construction has been seen at a nuclear test site in northern Russia since last year, raising the possibility that Moscow is preparing for a fresh nuclear test, a Japanese expert on the Russian military said Monday.

Citing analysis of satellite images, Yu Koizumi, associate professor at the University of Tokyo, said a large-scale facility presumed to be related to nuclear testing appears to be almost complete at the site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Sea.

Koizumi called the activities exceptional and said Russia could be preparing a subcritical nuclear test, which does not create an explosion.

He believes the move is "to intimidate European countries and the United States" over their support for Ukraine, which is at war with Russia.

SPOILER

quote:

Novaya Zemlya was the site of the Soviet Union's around 130 nuclear tests, including in the atmosphere, underground and undersea, between 1955 and 1990.

Russia continued with subcritical nuclear tests on the island to enhance nuclear weapons and assess their capabilities, with the latest conducted in 2004.

Satellite images by space tech company Maxar Technologies Inc. and Earth imaging firm Planet Labs PBC, both of the United States, showed that works to construct the large facility got fully underway around last summer at the test site on the southern part of Novaya Zemlya, according to Koizumi.

The building, some 200 meters in length, is around double the size of other facilities in the area and was nearly complete in the Maxar images taken in early February, Koizumi said.

"It is highly likely that the facility was newly built for a (nuclear) test," he said, adding a pile-up of materials around an airport suggests that the facility could be further enlarged.

At the same time, the images did not show any direct evidence of a nuclear test, Koizumi said, citing snow covering an entrance of a tunnel located around 3 kilometers from the nuclear site in the mountains, which could be used for a subcritical nuclear experiment.

In November last year, Russia revoked its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosions, whether for military or peaceful purposes, in a move seen as its de facto exit from the treaty.

"We should seriously worry about Russia playing the card of a nuclear test," Koizumi said.

quote:

Russia plans 'false flag' attacks on Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Kyiv tells UN
The drone attacks against the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) on April 7 and 9 were part of a "well-planned false flag operation by the Russian Federation," Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya said at a U.N. Security Council meeting on April 15.

The ZNPP reportedly suffered at least three direct strikes on April 7 and another drone attack at the plant's nearby training center on April 9. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called the strikes a "major escalation" in nuclear danger.

The Security Council convened on April 15 to discuss safety and security at the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear facility. The plant has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022.

During the meeting, Kyslytsya said blame for the attacks and increased risks at the facility lies wit the Russian invasion and occupation.

SPOILER

quote:

"What happened at the ZNPP on 7th and 9th of April 2024 and thereafter was a well-planned false flag operation by the Russian Federation," he said.

Kyslytsya accused Russia of launching a disinformation and propaganda campaign aimed at justifying Moscow's illegal occupation of the nuclear plant.

"We categorically reject the insane allegations that Ukraine may cause nuclear disaster," he said.

Russia has claimed that Ukrainian drones carried out the April attacks on the ZNPP, an accusation Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) denies. HUR described the latest strike as "Russia's provocation."

Kyslytsya dismissed the idea that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the strikes, pointing out that Russia's allegations involve "low-power close-range FVP-drones" breaching the plant's heavy defenses.

While the IAEA announced on April 13 that all six of the plant's reactors had been moved into a state of cold shutdown, agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi warned the Security Council that the potential for a disaster is still high.

"We are getting dangerously close to a nuclear accident," he said.

Grossi did not attribute blame for the strikes against the ZNPP to either Russia or Ukraine, but called for an immediate end to the "reckless attacks."

"We cannot sit by and watch as the final weight tips the finely balanced scale," he said.

Kyslytsya said that full liberation of the plant remains "the only way to remove all threats to nuclear safety and security."

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 19:21 schreef Perrin het volgende:
[ x ]

Biden: We Will Not Walk Away From Ukraine

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 20:01 schreef Ulx het volgende:
[ x ]

Al die woke Russen met hun moderne westerse auto's zijn wel lekker fucked.

quote:

Ukrainian intelligence officers strike Russian Strela missile system

Fighters with the active operations unit of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate have spotted and struck a Strela-10 short-range surface-to-air missile system of the Russian troops.

That's according to the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, Ukrinform reports.

� озвідники знешкодили російський З� К “стрєла 10”

"As a result of the attack, the Russian Strela is no longer firing - the system has been neutralized," the report reads.

As of April 16, the Ukrainian Defense Forces have already destroyed 759 Russian air defense systems and thousands of pieces of other enemy military equipment and weapons.

quote:

Russia shifts reserves from Lyman to Chasiv Yar to bolster offense – National Guard spokesman
Ruslan Muzychuk, spokesperson for the National Guard of Ukraine, revealed that Russian forces have moved units from the Lyman direction to escalate offensive maneuvers toward Chasiv Yar
He disclosed this information on Espreso.

"The situation around Chasiv Yar is fluid. Our Defense Forces are tirelessly working to maintain control of all areas and prevent flanking attacks on Chasiv Yar. We've noticed the enemy relocating reserves, forces, and assets in this direction to gain ground and push forward along the frontline. However, our Defense Forces hold a strategic advantage, especially with fortified positions and the geography of Chasiv Yar," Muzychuk stated.

Muzychuk also noted that the enemy will strive to secure some measure of victory at Chasiv Yar.

"We've observed a reduction in enemy assault activity in certain areas. The transfer of reserves from the Lyman direction to Chasiv Yar indicates its crucial significance for the enemy. They'll exert maximum effort to achieve even minor successes," he added.

• On April 14, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi, following two days of frontline operations, warned that the Russian Federation seeks to breach the defense west of Bakhmut, reach the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas channel, and capture Chasiv Yar.
• On April 15, Oles Malyarevich, deputy commander of the ACHILLES strike battalion of the 92nd brigade, affirmed that the Defense Forces are fully committed to preventing the capture of Chasiv Yar.

quote:

A missile aimed at Ukraine crashes in Russia

A Kh-101 long-range cruise missile that was launched over Ukraine from a strategic bomber, crashed in Russia.

Militarnyi reports on this.

The air-launched missile crashed in the north of the Volgograd region. Photos of the wreckage with the characteristic shape of the Kh-101 hull and warhead were posted on social media and in the media.

The missile debris was found on Monday, April 15, in a field in the Yelansky district.

After being launched from a Russian bomber, the Kh-101 crashed and broke into several pieces after flying for some time.

SPOILER

quote:

The cause of the crash is not reported. The missile’s body shows no signs of air defense damage, which may indicate that the missile was malfunctioning or damaged during or immediately after launch.

It is worth noting that cruise missiles fall regularly in the Volgograd region and in general on the Russian border with Ukraine.

In January of this year, the wreckage of a Russian cruise missile that fell in a field was found on the outskirts of Volgograd.

Militarnyi also reported that on January 2, one of the Russian missiles fired at Ukraine fell on a village in the Voronezh region, which led to the destruction of houses.

На село у � осії впала ракета [2 січня 2024]

Russians often use the Kh-101 during massive terrorist attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure and energy supply facilities.

In March, Ukrainian air defense shot down a modified Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, which had a tandem warhead.

The modified version of the Kh-101 received an additional warhead, doubling its total equivalent from 450 kilograms to about 800 kilograms. The second warhead includes cubic-shaped steel fragments to increase combat efficiency.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 20:22 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://global.espreso.tv(...)onal-guard-spokesman
[..]
Met de ligging van Chasiv Yar, en een beperkt aantal aanvalswegen zal het erg moeilijk zijn voor Rusland om deze in te nemen voor "victory day" op 9 mei. Ik verwacht dus niet dat het gaat lukken.

quote:

Zelensky says U.S. House Speaker Johnson supports Ukraine aid package
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, supports the Ukraine assistance package laid down in the relevant bill awaiting House approval.
That’s according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who spoke in an interview with PBS, Ukrinform reports.

Zelensky said he had spoken with Johnson twice since the fall of 2023.

"He told me he was completely in favor of Ukraine receiving support," Zelensky said.

According to the president, all members of Congress, with whom he spoke convinced him that Congress would eventually pass the security assistance package to Ukraine, and that it was only a matter of time.

The head of state noted that Ukraine does not object to the idea of the assistance being provided in the form of a loan rather than a donation.

"It doesn't matter for us at this stage, we need to protect our people," said the president of Ukraine.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the U.S. House of Representatives this week is expected to consider the foreign aid package, dividing it into four separate bills involving support for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, as well as other U.S. national security needs, as per Speaker Mike Johnson.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 20:40 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://www.ukrinform.net(...)ine-aid-package.html
[..]
laten we eerst vrijdag maar eens afwachten. En het is ook al weer bijna tijd voor een vakantie voor hun toch. Of volgende week of die week daar op start de volgende recess.

quote:

Russians used a tank with a new “grill” near Krasnohorivka

Russian invaders in the Donetsk region used a tank with a metal canopy and electronic warfare to protect against drones.

It was spotted during the armored assault on Ukrainian positions near Krasnohorivka.

Serhii Sternenko, a volunteer and blogger, published the image of the enemy tank.

He noticed that so far, this type of defense has been effective on the battlefield.

The new type of “grill” that the Russians started installing on their tanks before the assault looks like a frame covered with metal sheets that covers the top and side projections of the combat vehicle from drone strikes.

SPOILER

quote:

Judging by the image, the main task of this design is to primarily protect against FPV drones.

An enemy tank with such protection was first used recently also near Krasnohorivka.

Such a metal canopy can also protect against UAVs dropping ammunition on the equipment from above.

However, this tank, unlike the first version, was equipped with an even more powerful electronic warfare system to counter FPV drones.

The EW system was installed on the top of the metal frame in front of the tank.

However, Russian tanks equipped with such electronic warfare systems have been destroyed by Ukrainian defenders more than once.

Під Тернами бійці бригади «Азов» захопили ворожий танк Т-72Б3 [квітень 2024]

Azov Brigade fighters also captured one of the tanks with powerful electronic warfare systems during a battle near Terny in the Donetsk region.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 20:47 schreef bianconeri het volgende:

[..]
VS pol spam. Geen NWS oek-rus

quote:

Borell on restoring Ukrainian power plants destroyed by Russia: Buying Patriots would be cheaper
On April 11, a large fire broke out in the turbine hall of the Trypilska TPP as a result of an attack by the Russian Federation

It would be cheaper to buy American Patriot air defense systems than to restore the Trypilska power plant destroyed by Russia, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said in an interview with Le Monde.

"In a year it may be too late. Before we talk about Ukraine's reconstruction, we need to prevent its destruction. It is cheaper to buy Patriot systems than to restore a power plant targeted by the Russians," said the head of EU diplomacy.

Borrell believes there is no point in comparing the efforts of France, Germany, or any other EU country – it is important to form a common position.

"The total number is important for me, but I fully understand that this amount is made up of very different concepts," he said.

quote:

Ministry: Mini-TPP to be deployed in Kharkiv region to replace those damaged by Russians
KHARKIV OBLAST, UKRAINE, Apr 16 — The USAID Energy Security Project in Ukraine, in cooperation with the Ministry of Energy and the Parliament’s Committee on Energy, is deploying a network of small and medium-sized cogeneration in the country’s regions.

A total of 91 cogeneration units — a “compact” thermal power plant — generating power from 50 kW to 1500 kW — were purchased for 32 cities of Ukraine. Their launch will ensure uninterrupted heat supply for more than 1 million residents of high-rise buildings and about 1,000 social facilities regardless of power outages.

Heating supply companies in the Kharkiv Oblast received six cogeneration units (CGT) in March 2024, reported the Ministry for Restoration.

As the Ministry for Restoration explains, cogeneration involves simultaneous electricity and heat production. Units generate electricity primarily for their own consumption, which allows cities to have an uninterrupted heat supply during sudden blackouts or planned power outages. Excess electricity can also be redirected to the grid for other consumers.

Oleksandr Kubrakov, Deputy Minister for Restoration, said all mini-TPPs that were received kept providing heat and electricity to critical infrastructure and apartment buildings in the Kharkiv Oblast after the Russian shelling of the local energy infrastructure on March 22.

“Distributed power generation is a powerful tool for increasing the sustainability of local heating infrastructure and supporting Ukraine’s energy system,” Kubrakov said.

Russian missile attack on energy infrastructure on March 22 severely damaged Kharkiv’s Thermal Power Plant-5. It may take several years to rebuild and restore it. Power outages have been reported in the city and region. Now, the city is considering shifting towards decentralized heating because it’s not likely the TPP-5 can be rebuilt before the next heating season.

On the morning of April 11, Russian missiles destroyed a Trypillia Thermal Power Plant near Kyiv in another massive attack on Ukrainian critical infrastructure. This led to the loss of 100% of Centrenergo’s [public electricity and thermal energy-producing company in Ukraine — ed.] generating capacity. That plant powered Chernihiv, Cherkasy, and Kyiv Oblasts.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his interview with PBS News, released on April 15, said Ukrainian forces weren’t able to protect Trypillia TPP “because we had zero missiles. We ran out of all missiles.” A $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine has been stuck in the U.S. Congress since autumn of 2023.

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Russia Kazakhstan floods: 'Colossal' floods heading for Kurgan
A "colossal" amount of water is moving towards the Russian city of Kurgan, the region's governor has said.

Vadim Shumkov said that the swollen Tobol river and its tributaries had produced water levels twice those of the last major flood in 1994.

Floods over the past two weeks have forced evacuations of tens of thousands of people from northern Kazakhstan and bordering areas of Russia.

They are caused by the rapid melting of snow and ice combined with heavy rain.

On his Telegram channel, Mr Shumkov urged everyone in areas threatened by flooding to leave their houses immediately, with waters expected to rise as high as 11m (36ft) above normal.

"This isn't just a flood, it's a genuine threat!" he said.

"Therefore, take children, elderly people, relatives with limited mobility and neighbours to a temporary shelter or to friends and acquaintances. Collect documents and valuables."

Kurgan - a city with more than 300,000 inhabitants - is the location of the military factory Kurganmashzavod, whose production includes infantry fighting vehicles and light tanks. There has been speculation by foreign defence media that it may at some point be in the flood zone.

SPOILER

quote:

People in the town of Ishim further east have also been asked to evacuate because of high levels of the river of the same name.

Petropavl in northern Kazakhstan has also been badly affected by flooding of the river Ishim. A number of rivers flow back and forth between the two countries.

Elena Kurzayeva, a 67-year-old Petropavl pensioner, told AFP on Sunday: "I was taken out yesterday and within 15 minutes, the water had come in."

Water levels in both the Ishim and the Tobol, which form part of the world's seventh longest Ob river system, are not expected to peak until 23 or 24 April.

Focus has shifted to the two rivers after flooding in the Ural river basin devastated a swathe of Russian and Kazakh territory further west last week.

The flooding is being described as the worst to hit the region in 80 years.

In the city of Orenburg, houses in some areas were left almost completely submerged.

A week earlier, the city of Orsk was badly affected after a dam burst and saw rare public protests over how officials handled the floods.

Russian Emergencies Minister Alexander Kurenkov, who is visiting the area, has assured Orsk residents they will be compensated.

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PACE adopts resolution to use Russian assets for Ukraine’s reconstruction
PACE adopts resolution to facilitate Ukraine’s reconstruction using frozen Russian assets for an international compensation fund and establishing a claims commission.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously adopted a resolution on 16 April 2024, supporting the reconstruction of Ukraine, Ukrinform reported.

The resolution, supported by all 134 participants at the meeting, focuses on transferring frozen Russian assets to an international compensation fund designated for restoring Ukraine’s damaged infrastructure. It also calls for the creation of an international claims commission to adjudicate claims related to damages caused by Russian aggression.

According to the resolution, an international trust fund should be established where all Russian state assets held by Council of Europe member and non-member states will be deposited. This fund will ensure transparency, accountability, and equity in the disbursement of funds for compensation to Ukraine and those affected by Russian actions.

The Council of Europe emphasized the need for an impartial and effective international claims commission, operating under recognized judicial norms, to process these reparations. Additionally, the resolution encourages collaborative efforts among member states, international organizations, and stakeholders to expedite the reconstruction process and ensure comprehensive compensation for the damages caused by Russia’s war.

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PACE adopts resolution on support for reconstruction of Ukraine
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has adopted a resolution on support for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

According to an Ukrinform correspondent, 134 participants in the meeting voted for the PACE resolution, with no one voting against it.

In the document, MEPs called on all countries where the Russian Federation has accounts to take the necessary measures to ensure the transfer of these assets for the restoration of Ukraine's infrastructure.

The Council of Europe also called for the establishment of an international compensation mechanism under its auspices.

SPOILER

quote:

"As the already established Register of Damage undertakes the laborious process of recording Ukrainian losses in preparation for an international claims process, countries that have frozen Russian assets should transfer those assets to an international compensation fund. An international commission for the examination of claims for the damages recorded in the register should be created to effectively address the claims process," the resolution reads.

The Assembly called for the creation of an international trust fund, where all Russian State assets held by Council of Europe member and non-member States will be deposited, ensuring transparency, accountability, and equity in the disbursement of funds that should be used for compensation to Ukraine and natural and legal persons affected by the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The resolution calls for the establishment of an impartial and effective international claims commission, operating under recognized judicial norms, to adjudicate claims presented by Ukraine and affected entities seeking reparation for damages caused by Russia's aggression.

PACE also encourages collaborative efforts among member States, international organizations, and all relevant stakeholders to expedite the process of reconstruction and to ensure comprehensive compensation for the multifaceted damages caused by Russia's war of aggressionюn

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk, in his speech at the spring session of the PACE in Strasbourg, called on MEPs to approve a resolution on support for the reconstruction of Ukraine, as well as to direct all efforts for a joint fight against the enemy.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 20:48 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://mil.in.ua/en/news(...)-near-krasnohorivka/
[..]

SPOILER

[..]

Ik vraag me af hoe effectief dit soort bouwwerken daadwerkelijk zijn. En of de voordelen opwegen tegen de nadelen.

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Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 22:01 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://euromaidanpress.c(...)ines-reconstruction/
[..]
https://www.ukrinform.net(...)tion-of-ukraine.html
[..]

SPOILER

[..]

Een stap in de goede richting. Al vraag ik mij af hoeveel stappen er nog nodig zijn om dit daadwerkelijk op te zetten.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 22:49 schreef oheng het volgende:

[..]
Volgens mij versterkt het vooral de nadelen van russische tanks: slechte zicht, slechte mobiliteit, en slechte overlevingskansen als je geraakt wordt.

Extra snelheid en een lagere detectie graad lijkt mij nuttiger. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan bepaalde soort plastic die infrarood tegenhouden.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 20:48 schreef Delenlill het volgende:
https://mil.in.ua/en/news(...)-near-krasnohorivka/
[..]

SPOILER

[..]

Ik vraag me af hoe effectief dit soort bouwwerken daadwerkelijk zijn. En of de voordelen opwegen tegen de nadelen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 23:06 schreef Perrin het volgende:

[..]
Er valt weinig te reconstrueren straks.

Het beleid van VS en Europa wat betreft Oekra�ne en uberhaupt onze militaire veiligheid is momenteel vingers in de oren en hard lalala roepen.

[ x ]

quote:

Op dinsdag 16 april 2024 23:11 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

[..]
Het is wel interessant dat er inderdaad twee denkrichtingen zijn die beide uitgeprobeerd worden; snelheid en extra pantser.

quote:

Op woensdag 17 april 2024 00:17 schreef Cilantro het volgende:
[ x ]
👀

quote:

Op woensdag 17 april 2024 00:17 schreef Cilantro het volgende:
[ x ]
👀

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Takeaways from the second day of jury selection in Trump’s hush money trial
Seven jurors were placed Tuesday on the panel that will decide former President Donald Trump’s guilt or innocence in the New York hush money case, a process that has highlighted how difficult – and often contentious – it will be to pick a full jury.

Trump’s lawyers dug through prospective jurors’ social media posts to try to root out those with an anti-Trump bias from getting on the jury, even questioning several of them about their posts as the defense team asked to remove them from the jury for cause.

That process prompted Judge Juan Merchan to sternly admonish Trump for his conduct toward the first juror questioned about her social media. It was a swift warning that he would not tolerate any attempts to intimidate jurors – an issue that did not come up the rest of the day but will surely linger over the criminal trial, the first of a former US president.

The courtroom is dark on Wednesday – as is expected for the duration of the expected six-week trial – but jury selection will resume on Thursday with a new panel of 96 prospective jurors who could end up on the panel.

SPOILER

quote:

Here are the takeaways from day 2 of the Trump hush money trial:

We have (more than half) a jury
So far four men and three women have been selected to serve on the jury that will ultimately consider 34 counts of falsifying business records against Trump.

A man originally from Ireland who works in sales in New York City was appointed as the jury foreperson, who essentially serves as the panel spokesperson.

Five of the seven have a college degree or higher education. Two men on the panel are lawyers.

All but one juror empaneled Tuesday indicated that they’re aware Trump is facing charges in other criminal cases. The woman was the only one of the 18 jurors questioned who said she wasn’t aware of the other charges.

None of them shared particularly strong views about Trump or politics.

Trump’s lawyers scrutinize jurors’ social media
When the attorneys finished questioning the first 18 jurors in a process known as voir dire, both sides were given the chance to ask the judge to dismiss jurors for cause.

Having jurors removed for cause is an important part of the process because each side is allowed to strike 10 jurors in total for any reason, in what are known as preemptory challenges. Jurors struck for cause by the judge do not count against those 10.

Trump’s side asked the judge to remove five jurors for cause, pointing to alleged anti-Trump social media posts and trying to argue that the jurors were unfairly biased against the former president.

While the jurors in this case are anonymous to the public, the lawyers were given the identities of the first panel of 96 prospective jurors on Monday. That gave Trump’s team the chance to mine their public social media postings to be ready for their challenges to the judge.

When the former president’s attorney Todd Blanche was questioning the jurors, he asked them one-by-one what they thought of Trump, outside of the case. He then tried to argue before the judge that many of the jurors’ answers that they didn’t have an opinion of Trump did not align with their social media.

Merchan was generally skeptical, but he did agree on two counts that the jurors should be struck. One man had posted “lock him up”on Facebook while Trump was president.

As for the three jurors Merchan did not strike: Trump’s side used its preemptory challenges to remove all of them anyway. After Tuesday, both Trump’s team and the district attorney’s office have four preemptory challenges remaining each.

Trump gets admonished (again)
Trump’s courtroom conduct got him once again – briefly – in hot water with a judge.

Trump was admonished for his conduct when Merchan brought in one of the jurors individually to discuss her social media posts raised by Trump’s team, in which she videotaped celebrations in New York after Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

“I very, very strongly believe that regardless of my thoughts about anyone or anything political, feelings or convictions, that the job of a juror is to understand the facts of a trial and to be the judge of those facts,” the juror said.

After the juror left the courtroom, the judge admonished Trump, saying he was was audibly speaking and gesturing in the direction of the juror.

“Mr. Blanche, while the juror was at the podium, maybe 12 feet from your client, your client was audibly uttering something, I don’t know exactly what he was uttering, he was audibly gesturing, speaking in the direction of the juror. I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan told Trump’s attorney, raising his voice. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.”

“Yes, your honor,” Blanche responded, before a brief exchange with Trump.

The moment passed without any further discussion, and the judge did not raise concerns about Trump’s conduct when more jurors were brought in individually.

But it’s a moment worth noting, as the judge has already expanded his gag order in the case barring Trump from speaking about witnesses, as well as family and staff of the district attorney’s office and the court.

And the district attorney is asking the judge next week to sanction Trump for violating that gag order, with $1,000 fines and a warning that future violations could result in imprisonment.

That hearing is next Tuesday, potentially just after the trial is underway.

Prosecutors focus on case with jurors, while Trump lawyers focus on Trump
The voir dire process, where the lawyers from both sides got 30 minutes to question potential jurors, previewed how the two sides are approaching the jury pool – and ultimately, the jury in the case.

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass walked the jurors through the case, while signaling how prosecutors will appeal to the jury at trial, noting that not all witnesses will remember events in the past the same and that witnesses might remember small details differently.

“Can you be realistic and not hold witnesses to unrealistic standards?” he asked the jury pool, asking any to say if they can’t accept that.

He said outright some witnesses “have some edge,” describing them as a tabloid publisher, an adult film star and said Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was convicted of federal crimes, including lying to Congress.

Steinglass asked jurors whether they would be able to approach the testimony from a convicted felon with an open mind.

He also noted that witnesses have written books, made podcasts and participated in documentaries.

He made the point that while jurors can consider all this in assessing a credibility of the witness, it’s not the only thing they should consider.

“The question really is, as I keep saying, can you wait until you hear not only the witness testimony but the rest of the evidence of the case” before deciding whether to believe something, Steinglass asked.

Blanche, meanwhile, spent nearly all of his time focused on how jurors view Trump. He asked jurors if they had favorable or unfavorable views of the former president.

One man went back-and-forth with Blanche repeatedly, while largely refusing to share his views on Trump, saying his views don’t matter in a courtroom and that he could compartmentalize.

“I’ll say I’m a Democrat, so there you go, but I walk in there and he’s a defendant and that’s all he is,” the juror said.

The juror was later struck for cause by the judge on a challenge from Trump’s team over his social media posts.

Jury selection could end – maybe – by the end of the week
One of the things Merchan has emphasized this week is that the court schedule is fluid. But the judge is hoping to wrap up jury selection this week.

After swearing in the seven jurors Tuesday, Merchan told them he hopes they can return next Monday for opening statements – but he emphasized that the schedule could always change and the court would be in touch.

He then swore in a new panel of 96 jurors Tuesday afternoon before dismissing them for the day, saving time logistically before they return Thursday morning.

Those jurors will go through the same process that’s played out over the past two days with the first panel of 96 jurors. The new panel will be asked if they think they cannot be impartial or if they have a conflict, and then undergo questioning first from the judge and then the lawyers on both sides.

There’s no guarantee that will get us to a full jury of 12 jurors, plus six expected alternates: Only seven were selected out of the first panel of 96.

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Trump’s stock tumbles again after Truth Social announces it’s getting into streaming
Investors in Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock are throwing in the towel.

Shares of TMTG (DJT) tumbled 14% Tuesday after closing 18% lower Monday. Driving the stock lower Tuesday: The company’s premier product, Truth Social, announced a major expansion into streaming, a notoriously cost-intensive business in which media behemoths like Disney have struggled to turn a profit.

SPOILER

quote:

TMTG’s stock, majority-owned by former President Donald Trump, is down more than 70% from the all-time high it set on March 26, the day after it merged with a blank-check acquisition company to go public. Although the company is still worth billions of dollars, it is struggling to make money and desperate for cash. Experts have warned investors to be careful if they choose to trade the stock, because the company doesn’t have the fundamentals to back up its sky-high valuation.

Trump Media lost $58 million in 2023 and made just $4.1 million in revenue. So, it announced Monday it would sell 21.5 million more shares to the public to raise cash — even though that would dilute the value for existing shareholders.

A home for ‘suppressed’ content
The streaming initiative didn’t give investors any reason to get enthused about the company. Truth Social said it spent the past six months testing its web, iPhone and iPad apps for live TV streaming, and it hopes to launch a content delivery network to stand up streaming apps for phones and tablets — and eventually smart TVs.

Truth Social suggested its streaming network could host live news, religious programing and family-friendly shows, movies and documentaries that “has been cancelled, is at risk of cancellation, or is being suppressed on other platforms and services.”

“With our streaming content, we aim to provide a permanent home for high-quality news and entertainment that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery services,” said TMTG CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman for California in a statement. “There is a lot of great content that simply can’t find an audience for unjust reasons, and we want to let these creators know they’ll soon have a guaranteed platform where they won’t be cancelled.”

Truth Social’s latest push sounds similar to Elon Musk’s X, which claims to be the streaming platform that best defends free speech. But X has hundreds of millions of active users — hundreds of times Truth Social’s audience — and has still struggled to attract advertisers after Musk reshaped the business, allowing hate speech and conspiracy theories to run rampant on the platform.

Trump’s association with the brand appears to be the primary reason for its sky-high valuation. That helped turn shares into a meme stock — that is, the company doesn’t trade on its fundamentals so much as it trades on emotional responses.

Trump added billions of dollars to his net worth after TMTG’s merger with the blank check company in late March. But his shares’ value has plunged from a peak of $5.2 billion to about $1.8 billion. Trump’s net worth fell roughly $300 million Tuesday from the stock’s plunge.

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Zelensky signs law overhauling Ukraine’s mobilization rules
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed into law a key piece of legislation overhauling the country’s mobilization rules.

The legislation places a new requirement on all men between 18 and 60 to register with Ukraine’s military and to carry their registration documents on them at all times. The aim is to make recruitment processes more efficient and more transparent, the government says.

Men of service age who are living abroad will not be able to renew their passports at Ukrainian consulates without producing up-to-date registration paperwork.

The new law does not cover any potential increase in the number of people who might be called up to serve.

Neither does it contain provisions for demobilizing soldiers who have spent long periods fighting. Ukrainian lawmakers had for months debated whether to allow the longest-serving of Ukraine’s soldiers the chance to return home on rotation, or whether Russia’s renewed offensives meant they could not afford to allow exhausted soldiers to rest.

SPOILER

quote:

The draft law was amended more than 4,000 times since it was first introduced – a measure of how politically difficult crafting the legislation has been. Ukraine’s parliament eventually stripped out the plans for demobilization to keep as many soldiers at the front lines as possible, disappointing many families who had hoped a fixed period of three years active service would also be enshrined in the new law.

Ukraine’s parliament passed the law last week and Zelensky gave presidential approval Tuesday.

Late last year, the leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People faction in parliament said the military was looking for an extra half million servicemen and women. But Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsyki said recently any increase in numbers would likely be significantly lower.

Zelensky’s signing of the law came shortly after Ukraine’s commander on the eastern front warned that Russian troops outnumbered its own by up to 10 times.

After the law passed last week, dozens of wives and relatives of servicemen gathered outside Ukraine’s parliament to protest and demand that mobilization deadlines be included.

Anastasia Bulba, whose husband Vitalii volunteered to join the military immediately after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, told CNN that Ukraine’s soldiers “have been left without terms of service and with no idea when they will be able to return to their families.”

“The country’s defenders, on whom the independence of the entire country rests, have been deceived,” she said.

quote:

Double-tap’ attack. Understanding one of Russia’s cruelest tactics in Ukraine

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FBI questioned AfD man Krah about contact with Russia
A politician close to the Kremlin apparently offered AfD official Krah “compensation.” This is shown by research from ZDF frontal and Spiegel. Krah denies taking any money.

When Maximilian Krah , AfD's leading candidate for the European elections, travels to the USA in December 2023, he wants to listen to a role model. Donald Trump , Republican presidential candidate, speaks at a New York Young Republican Club event . The sentence comes out: “I want to be a dictator for one day.” Krah later raved on Facebook about how “unforgettable” the evening was for him. Pictures show him in a tuxedo, with a pocket square and a bow tie. But Krah will probably not forget leaving the USA either.

On December 10, FBI officers pulled out the top AfD official at the airport. According to research by ZDF frontal and " Spiegel ", the American investigators question Krah about his Russia contacts and show him explosive chat messages from his political friend Oleg Woloshin. The Ukrainian politician is accused of treason in Kiev, but has apparently fled to Belarus. The US has sanctioned Krah's friend because he is destabilizing Ukraine.

SPOILER

quote:

Krah admits FBI questioning - chats read
When asked, Krah admits: "I was asked at the border whether I knew Mr. Voloshyn and I said yes. Apparently they checked my or Mr. Voloshyn's chat histories." According to Krah's recollection, the chats date from 2020 and they raise questions that are not only of interest to US investigators. The pro-Russian politician Oleg Woloshyn is said to have assured Krah in a message: "We settled the issue of our compensation for your technical expenditures. From May on it will be as it used to be before February." In German:

We have resolved the issue of our compensation for your technical expenses. From May onwards these will be the same as they were before February.
^{Message from Oleg Woloshin to Maximilian Krah}

Krah never accepted “even a cent” from Voloshin
Did the AfD's leading candidate secretly receive "compensation", perhaps even hidden payments, for the European elections - over a long period of time? Maximilian Krah vehemently rejects this in an interview with ZDF:

At no time did I accept a single cent of money from Mr. Voloshyn, including travel expenses or other prepaid costs.
^{Maximilian Krah, AfD's top candidate for the European elections}

“I can’t tell you what he meant either,” Krah tries to explain the chat. The AfD official speculates that he did not respond to this message and that the chat may have been “misdirected” and directed at someone else. Oleg Woloshin has not yet answered a request from ZDF and “Spiegel”.

Birthday party in Kyiv, ball in Saint Petersburg
The FBI had already questioned Voloshin at an airport in 2021 and scanned his cell phone, as he later told journalists from Time magazine . “They took my cell phone,” the magazine quoted Voloshyn as saying. "And they read all the information." The FBI declined to comment on the incident.

Krah and Woloshin are old friends. Krah traveled to Kiev for his birthday party in 2021, posted a photo on Instagram and wrote: “Happy Birthday, dear Oleg!” In September 2019, the two toasted at a ball in Saint Petersburg. Krah speculated to ZDF frontal that Woloshin might still owe him money from that evening: "I pre-financed the tickets for the opera ball and that is still open between the two of us." According to Krah, a ticket cost 2,000 euros per person; he had the whole table at the time.

Krah also says frontally to ZDF:

I think he is a very smart man and I don't let political developments dictate my friends.
^{Maximilian Krah, AfD's top candidate for the European elections}

Voloshin's ties to Putin friend Viktor Medvedchuk
Voloshyn has sat in the Ukrainian parliament since 2019 as a member of the pro-Russian “For Life” party. Shortly before the start of the war, according to media reports, he fled Ukraine, probably to Belarus, where he appeared on state television. In May 2023, Ukrainian prosecutors brought charges against him and accused him of high treason. The chairman of the now banned “For Life” party was Viktor Medvedchuk, a long-time Putin friend and oligarch.

Medvedchuk is also said to be behind the “ Voice of Europe ” media portal, which spreads anti-Ukrainian propaganda in Europe. The Czech Republic put Medvedchuk and the news site on the sanctions list at the end of March. In addition to Krah, Petr Bystron, the AfD's number two on the European list, also gave interviews to "Voice of Europe". According to "Spiegel" and the Czech newspaper "Denik K", money from Russia is said to have flowed to right-wing politicians via "Voice of Europe" - allegedly also to AfD politicians. Tape recordings are said to incriminate AfD member of the Bundestag Petr Bystron. Bystron denies receiving any money or other benefits. Krah also denied that money or other donations were given for interviews.

Pro-Russian interference networks - what are the public prosecutors doing?
Prosecutors in Belgium are now investigating Russian influence operations on European politicians. Brussels Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the country's intelligence services had "confirmed the existence of pro-
Russian interference networks with activities in several European countries and also here in Belgium." Moscow's goal is clear: to elect candidates loyal to Russia to the European Parliament.

The German judiciary is also examining whether proceedings should be initiated. The Munich Public Prosecutor's Office has started preliminary investigations. When asked, Krah said that his immunity had not yet been lifted and that he was not aware of any investigations against him.

European Parliament: Maximilian Krah's (often) empty chair
Maximilian Krah has been sitting for the AfD in the EU Parliament since 2019, where, among other things, he is a member of the Trade Committee. Minutes show that he has not taken part in a single vote in the last 12 months. Krah defends himself to ZDF Frontal: "It wasn't about questions that were controversial in any way. I was either present at all the crucial meetings myself or sent my research assistant, which is absolutely permissible."

Krah also sits on the subcommittee on human rights. The committee has met more than 70 times since 2019. In fact, Krah was there on only seven days in four years and even then mostly connected via video. The Green MP Hannah Neumann told ZDF Frontal: "Maximilian Krah has been there exactly seven times in his entire career on the Human Rights Committee and when he speaks at all, it is with strongly populist statements that, I believe, are aimed more at the Tiktok audience than "To do real work in Parliament here."

Krah: "Our ancestors were not criminals!"
AfD man Krah is controversial not only because of his proximity to politicians close to the Kremlin and his statements about the war in Ukraine. He regularly spreads his own historical truth.

In a  Tiktok video he claimed:

Our ancestors were not criminals. We have every reason to be proud of our country and the people who built it (...). Find out what grandpa, grandma, great-grandma and great-grandpa did, where they came from, what they fought and suffered.
^{Maximilian Krah, AfD's top candidate for the European elections}

ZDF frontal wanted to know what Krah's grandfather fought for. At a campaign event in Dresden, he said that his grandfather Martin Krah was a front-line doctor in the First World War and then "went to Upper Silesia because he wanted to defend Germanness in the East." He was then expelled in 1945. When asked by ZDF whether his grandfather was a member of Hitler's NSDAP, AfD politician Krah answered in the negative.

Grandpa Krah's NSDAP membership: membership number 5,557,685
But research in the Federal Archives proves the opposite. There you will find the application for admission from Dr. Martin Krah into the Nazi Party. Shortly after Hitler came to power, he wanted to join the NSDAP. On April 1, 1933, a membership card was created. Because he is moving, it cannot be delivered and he has to be patient. Finally, he officially became a NSDAP member on May 1, 1937, membership number 5,557,685.

NSDAP member Martin Krah lived and worked in Hindenburg, today's Polish Zabrze. During Kristallnacht in 1938, the Nazis set fire to the synagogue. The Germans ran a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Hindenburg, and Jews were deported here too. What exactly the AfD's top candidate's Nazi grandfather was doing at the time remains unclear. In any case, the files show that his NSDAP superiors confirm to Martin Krah: "The person named was actively involved in the spirit of the movement."

Historian: Martin Krah a “staunch supporter” of the NSDAP
Historian David Hamann has read the files. It also says that Grandfather Krah was a Nazi doctor and volunteered as a doctor for the Hitler Youth in Hindenburg.

And all of this suggests that he was more than just a minor follower, but rather a convinced supporter of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. 
^{David Hamann, historian}

Maximilian Krah encourages his audience to do genealogy research, even though he obviously doesn't know his grandfather's Nazi past. This makes it easier to claim: our ancestors were not criminals.

quote:

US State Department: Blinken to discuss Chinese military aid to Russia at G7 meeting
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will discuss US concerns over China's support for Russia's military industry at the G7 ministerial meeting in Italy.

Source: Ukrinform news agency, citing Matthew Miller, US State Department spokesman

Quote: "What we have seen over the past months is that there have been materials moving from China to Russia that Russia has used to rebuild that industrial base and produce arms that are showing up on the battlefield in Ukraine. And we are incredibly concerned about that."

Details: Miller added that this issue will be on Wednesday's agenda.

In addition, he said, Secretary Blinken plans to discuss these US concerns directly with the Chinese side during his upcoming visit to China in the coming weeks.

Background:
• US data show that China has sharply increased its sales of machine tools to Russia, as well as microelectronics and other technologies that Moscow uses to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weapons for its war against Ukraine.

quote:

S�ddeutsche Zeitung: How Russia is circumventing sanctions
Exports of German goods to Russia have dropped significantly since the introduction of economic sanctions in 2022. Last year the fall was 38.8% to 8.9 billion euros. At first glance, this is very painful for the affected companies. However, some appear to be benefiting from a sudden surge in demand from other countries, including India, Azerbaijan, Armenia, UAE, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Turkey. Source: S�ddeutsche Zeitung

Over the past two years, German companies exported to these eight countries exactly the same volume of goods in euros as they lost as a result of sanctions against Russia, according to a study by Barkow Consulting. “It can't be proven, but there is a suspicion of fraud because the export figures were one to one,” says managing director Peter Barkow.

The coincidence, which is most likely not a coincidence, means that these countries are at least not hostile towards Russia, which leads to the following suspicions: “Eight “suspicious” countries are importing goods from Germany that can no longer be supplied to Russia because of sanctions, and then sell them to Russia.”

It has long been considered certain that Russia is circumventing sanctions with the help of third countries. But the current figures, according to Barkow Consulting, show for the first time that, overall, virtually nothing has changed for the German export sector due to sanctions against Russia.

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The Kremlin will encourage conflict between Iran and Israel - RLI
Iran's attack on Israel indicates a planned plan involving Russia. The Kremlin simultaneously has two goals: firstly, it is an attempt to eliminate the possibility of external support for the United States, involving it in a confrontation with the enemy. Moscow knows how the simulation of a military conflict with Iran will end. In this regard, Russia believes that losses will force the United States and Israel to use nuclear weapons, which will give the Kremlin free rein to use weapons of mass destruction to achieve its goals in Ukraine. This scenario would also likely lead to the cessation of all military aid to Ukraine, a priority goal of the Kremlin. Source: Robert Lansing Institute (RLI)

Moscow provided Iran with target coordinates, satellite data and advice on how to overcome Israeli air defense systems. Russia provided Hamas with the same intelligence during its attack on Israel in October 2023, making the operation a tactical success. The Kremlin supports Iran through the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (military intelligence), which advised Iranian proxies on the ground. There are strong suspicions that small groups of militants from the Wagner Group have been operating in the region as a military assistance mission controlled by military intelligence since August 2023.

Russian leaders believe that an armed conflict in Iran will divert Western attention from the war in Ukraine.

SPOILER

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Secondly, Moscow should give Tehran a political victory over Israel, which will improve Iran’s image among proxies. Thus, Iran has the opportunity to neutralize the US position in the Middle East and become a key player in the region.

Russia has not achieved its goal and will most likely continue to try to undermine the region. Neither Israel, nor Iran, nor the United States are interested in further escalation. What happens next depends on the Kremlin, which is likely to add fuel to the fire, analysts say.

Moscow will likely launch a sophisticated disinformation campaign against Iran to maintain tensions and persuade the Raisi regime to continue attacks on Israel.

Russia has been putting pressure on Washington and Jerusalem since October 2023, providing Iran with technical and intelligence support for operations against Israel, thereby strengthening ties with Tehran.

The Kremlin's involvement in facilitating Iran's military planning is indirectly confirmed by the fact that Iran's approach is identical to Russia's in Ukraine: drone strikes first confuse and weaken air defenses, followed by ballistic missiles. Thus, Iran helps Russia in Ukraine, and Russia helps Iran in Israel. Moscow ultimately benefits both militarily and politically. Since Israel's air defense is equipped with Western technologies used by Kiev, Iran, thanks to Russia, knows how to break through the air defense.

Continued attacks on Israel allow Iran to evaluate the effectiveness of various strike forces, find a more effective way to evade and overwhelm Western air and naval defenses.

Saturday's attack was Iran's first direct military attack on Israel, despite decades of hostility dating back to the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. The attack came less than two weeks before an alleged Israeli strike in Syria that killed two Iranian generals at an Iranian consular building.

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Vladimir Putin not welcome at French ceremony for 80th anniversary of D-day
France says Russia can be represented but president will not be invited because of war in Ukraine

Russia will be invited to send representatives to an international ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-day – but not Vladimir Putin, the French organisers have announced.

The �lys�e is reported to have accepted that the country should be represented but said its leader is not welcome because of Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine.

“In view of the circumstances, President Putin will not be invited to take part in the commemorations of the Normandy landings,” the Liberation Mission organising committee said.

“Russia will, however, be invited to be represented so that the importance of the commitment and sacrifices of the Soviet peoples, as well as its contribution to the victory of 1945, can be honoured.”

It added: “Unlike the Kremlin regime, France does not pursue a policy of historical revisionism.”

No other information was given and the Russian embassy in Paris and the Kremlin did not react to the statement or indicate whether the invitation would be accepted.

The Soviet Union lost more than 27 million people during the war – with 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths.

Putin was invited to and attended the ceremony to mark 70th anniversary of the D-day landings despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea a few months earlier.

At the time, the then French president, Fran�ois Hollande, said: “You can have differences of opinion with Vladimir Putin but I have never forgotten and never will forget that the Russian people gave millions of lives.”

After the June 2014 commemorations, Putin and the then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, met at the �lys�e for talks after Moscow backed a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

Putin was not invited to the 75th commemorations attended by Donald Trump but the �lys�e said this was not unusual as Russia was invited to the major decade commemorations.

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"De Amerikaanse militaire steun aan Oekra�ne zorgt voor voortzettingsvermogen", zegt Frans Osinga, hoogleraar Oorlogsstudies aan de Universiteit Leiden. Met andere woorden: dan kan het land blijven vechten. Zonder die Amerikaanse steun wordt het een lastig verhaal.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 08:18 schreef Nyamuk het volgende:
https://www.nu.nl/spannin(...)r-aan-het-front.html
[..]

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 08:21 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Zowel VS als Europa laten dat land nu in zijn eigen bloed verdrinken.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 08:34 schreef Nyamuk het volgende:

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Het lijkt op papier allemaal zo'n goed idee inderdaad maar wat je zegt is inderdaad ook zo'n beetje de trend in elk land waar ze "komen helpen" helaas.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 08:39 schreef Hatseflats22 het volgende:

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Zonder hulp is Oekra�ne alleen evident slechter af, anders dan bijvoorbeeld Afghanistan of Irak waar het overigens ongeacht de bemoeienis van Amerikanen sowieso al een grote kutzooi is.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 08:41 schreef BEFEM het volgende:

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In Afghanistan is er wel meer veiligheid nu dat de Taliban aan de macht is. Rest is uiteraard klote.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 09:03 schreef NeeOfTochJA het volgende:
[ x ]

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 09:03 schreef NeeOfTochJA het volgende:
[ x ]

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 09:16 schreef Joppiez het volgende:

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Je bent zeker ook pro Hamas / Iran, anders is het wel vreemd dat je met deze bron komt aanzetten.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 09:21 schreef NeeOfTochJA het volgende:

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Waar heb je het over?

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 00:05 schreef oheng het volgende:

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Chasiv Yar gaat helemaal platgegooid worden door de russen.

[ x ]

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Russian Air Defenses Still Likely to Shoot Down Its Own Aircraft Over Crimea
Russia's top military leadership has ordered air defense commanders to engage all air threats despite ongoing problems with its “friend or foe” target detection and recognition system.

Russia's air defense still has a problem of shooting down its own air forces over Crimea because of continuing problems with its “friend or foe” target detection and recognition systems.

According to the Atesh partisan movement, in the face of constant missile and UAV attacks, air defense commanders in occupied areas of Ukraine including Crimea, are forced to identify and engage targets manually. This often results in striking on their own friendly air targets.

The guerrillas learned that in the last two weeks alone, the 12th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment of the 31st Air Defense Division of the Russian Federation had shot down two Russian military aircraft.

SPOILER

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On March 28, the division's Pantsir medium-range air defense system, deployed in the area of Inkerman Bay in Sevastopol, shot down one of its own Su-27 fighter aircraft.

Then, on April 10, an Mi-24 attack helicopter was shot down on the western coast of Crimea by another Pantsir air defense system, which was deployed near the Saki air base, according to the Atesh movement guerrillas.

The military personnel responsible for such events continue to serve and are not being punished. At the same time, the underground asks the question:

“Is it possible that the air defense system of the Russian Armed Forces shoots down Russian aircraft deliberately, taking advantage of their impunity?

“Could they be doing it to fight racism or to get a good bonus?”

How many Russian planes have been shot down by the Ukrainian Armed Forces recently?
In February, the Ukrainian Air Force set a new monthly record shooting down13 enemy aircraft.

On the night of April 5, powerful explosions were heard in three military airfields from which attacks are regularly launched against Ukraine.

Kyiv Post sources reported that the attack on the Morozovsk airfield was carried out by the SBU in a combined operation with the Defense Forces, that destroyed at least six aircraft and damaged a further eight.

On the same night, according to Kyiv Post’s intelligence sources, Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (НUR), struck three Russian airfields.

According to the source, at least three Tu-95MS strategic bombers were damaged in the attack by unmanned aerial vehicles at the Engels-2 airfield. Seven Russian soldiers were also killed in the operation, including, presumably, bomber pilots.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 09:23 schreef Joppiez het volgende:

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Als ik naar zijn Twitter feed kijk druipt het anti Westerse sentiment er vanaf.

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Some observers and officials (including, most prominently, Russian President Vladimir Putin) have claimed that there was a deal on the table that would have ended the war but that the Ukrainians walked away from it because of a combination of pressure from their Western patrons and Kyiv’s own hubristic assumptions about Russian military weakness. Others have dismissed the significance of the talks entirely, claiming that the parties were merely going through the motions and buying time for battlefield realignments or that the draft agreements were unserious.

Although those interpretations contain kernels of truth, they obscure more than they illuminate. There was no single smoking gun; this story defies simple explanations. Further, such monocausal accounts elide completely a fact that, in retrospect, seems extraordinary: in the midst of Moscow’s unprecedented aggression, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:02 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Ik denk dat hetgeen de beste man post ook niet geheel overeenstemt met het oorspronkelijke artikel, wat veel voorzichtiger is.

ik bedoel:
[..]
https://www.foreignaffair(...)ve-ended-war-ukraine

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:03 schreef Straatcommando. het volgende:

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Dat komt omdat die user niet eens leest wat hij post, zolang de kop maar in zijn straatje past. Niet de eerste keer ook.

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Russia conducts the information operation to glorify draft dodgers from Ukraine, Ukrainian Military Intelligence
The Russians launched an information operation against Ukraine to glorify the men who dodge the draft into the Ukrainian Army in order to split Ukrainian society and disrupt mobilization process.

This is reported by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

Recently, multiple videos have appeared on TikTok and other social networks, on which allegedly Ukrainian men shoot videos abroad on vacation and call themselves “draft dodgers”. Such content quickly gains views, causing numerous discussions in the comment sections, which only push them up within Tik Tok trends.

To amplify the message, for such content, so-called folk songs were created, the lyrics of which promote one message- the praise of draft dodgers.

Ukrainian Military Intelligence emphasizes that the synchronicity of the appearance of numerous songs and videos glorifying men who refuse to defend their own country, the anonymity of their authors, and the promotion of this content by organized groups of bots, which, considered in complex, indicates a purposeful hostile propaganda campaign.

“Indicated IPSO (ed. – information-psychological operation) is a classic technology for dividing society, when, on the one hand there are “defenders” and there are draft dodgers on the other. The purpose of such actions of the enemy is to disrupt mobilization, increase the tension in society due to internal confrontation. Kremlin propaganda does give up the attempts to undermine Ukrainian society from the inside, to discredit the image of the defenders of Ukraine, using any methods to this end,” Ukrainian intelligence explains.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:04 schreef BlaZ het volgende:

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Dat is gebruikelijk bij dat soort bronnen van x, dat artikel is pagina's lang en dat laat zich lastig samenvatten in drie zinnen uiteraard.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:10 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Nou, de Amerikaanse steun aan Oekra�ne is nog steeds niet goedgekeurd door het House.
Dit wordt nog wat als oom Donald wordt herkozen.

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Russia's main manufacturer of S-300 and S-400 missiles ablaze in Moscow
A fire broke out at Moscow's Avangard Machine Building Plant, the sole supplier of missiles for the S-400 system, on April 16, Russian Telegram channel Astra claimed.

The fire started in plant’s shop No. 12 and spread to 50 square meters, the channel claimed.

"The factory produces missiles for air defense systems,” Astra informers said.

“This is the main missiles supplier for S-300 and S-400 complexes."

The plant claimed the fire was part of "firefighting training," Russian propaganda media claimed.

"In order to bring training conditions as close as possible to the combat ones, pyrotechnic smoke devices were used in the facility," the propagandists alleged.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:14 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Veel erger dan nu kan het niet worden op gebied van buitenlands beleid.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:10 schreef grrrrg het volgende:
Nou, de Amerikaanse steun aan Oekra�ne is nog steeds niet goedgekeurd door het House.
Dit wordt nog wat als oom Donald wordt herkozen.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:18 schreef Straatcommando. het volgende:

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Ik vind het nog steeds een geweldig land, maar ik heb de afgelopen 5 a 10 jaar een intense afkeer ontwikkeld tegen bepaalde Amerikanen. Er komt de laatste tijd alleen maar chaos en gezeik uit bepaalde hoeken van de VS en die chaos heeft rechtstreeks invloed op jou en mij.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:18 schreef Straatcommando. het volgende:

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Ik vind het nog steeds een geweldig land, maar ik heb de afgelopen 5 a 10 jaar een intense afkeer ontwikkeld tegen bepaalde Amerikanen. Er komt de laatste tijd alleen maar chaos en gezeik uit bepaalde hoeken van de VS en die chaos heeft rechtstreeks invloed op jou en mij.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:24 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Een NAVO zonder de VS, wat een re�le optie is, betekent dat we op Rutte, Scholz en Macron moeten rekenen voor onze militaire veiligheid. RIP ons.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:26 schreef StateOfMind het volgende:

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Daarom kan ik ook niet begrijpen waarom zoveel mensen aan deze kant van de plas zo dol op die oranje idioot zijn.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:26 schreef StateOfMind het volgende:

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Daarom kan ik ook niet begrijpen waarom zoveel mensen aan deze kant van de plas zo dol op die oranje idioot zijn.

America first, make America great again.
Dat zegt toch al genoeg dat alles in ons nadeel zal gaan zijn.
Blijkbaar wil dat maar niet doordrongen in die hersentjes van die mensen.
Maar wellicht hebben die mensen een sm kelder thuis of zo, dat zou het kunnen verklaren.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:26 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Ow, de wal keert het schip wel hoor, maar ik me weinig druk om. En macron lijkt er juist bijzonder veel zin an te hebben. Die ziet voor het eerst sinds eeuwen de droom van franse europese suprematie binnen handbereik.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:14 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Veel erger dan nu kan het niet worden op gebied van buitenlands beleid.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:47 schreef grrrrg het volgende:

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Wat is dit voor onzin? Het kan veel en veel erger

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 09:03 schreef NeeOfTochJA het volgende:
[ x ]

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:33 schreef Straatcommando. het volgende:

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Omdat die mensen in dezelfde fuik zijn getrapt als maga clowns. Gewoon, tegen de meute zijn. Als het gros A zegt zullen zij B zeggen.

Pwn the libs polder editie.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 12:11 schreef Ulx het volgende:

Nice....

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 12:38 schreef oheng het volgende:

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Eerst maar eens afwachten wat de schade is.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 12:38 schreef oheng het volgende:

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Eerst maar eens afwachten wat de schade is. Hoewel een Storm Shadow een stuk gevaarlijker is dan een trage drone.

In o.a. Tartarstan claimen de russen dat ze drones hebben neergeschoten.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 12:49 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Nou....Die lijkt me behoorlijk.....Het was een luchtmachtbasis. Dat is zeker.

[ x ]

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 12:50 schreef xpompompomx het volgende:

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In ieder geval goeie BIEMS.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 12:49 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Nou....Die lijkt me behoorlijk.....Het was een luchtmachtbasis. Dat is zeker. Ook berichten dat er vrij lang secundaire ontploffingen waren. Dat hint naar een opslag.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 10:54 schreef ExTec het volgende:

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Oekraine (en wij) malen er niet om dat trump bv amerika omturnt in 1 grote episode van the handmade's tail. Of dat leuk is voor de mensen aldaar? Nee. Raakt het ons? Nee.

Op het moment dat de VS echt gewoon niks meer geeft, kan het alleen erger als ze actief rus gaan helpen. Maar dat is ook weer niet zo waarschijnlijk.

Het is handig om je niet te vereenzelvigen met de amerikanen zoals die geschets worden door het nogal liberale hollywood, en voor ogen te houden wat precies onze belangen zijn.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 13:14 schreef grrrrg het volgende:

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Zonder hulp van Amerika zijn we kansloos tegen Rusland.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 13:14 schreef grrrrg het volgende:

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Zonder hulp van Amerika zijn we kansloos tegen Rusland.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 13:17 schreef StateOfMind het volgende:

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Dat is onzin.
Okee, zonder de kernwapens van de VS hebben 'wij' er hooguit een paar honderd versus de 6000 oid van de Ruzzen, maar qua conventionele slagkracht zijn de gecombineerde Europese legers op elk vlak superieur tov Ruzland.

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Op woensdag 17 april 2024 13:16 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Daarom moeten we uit het NPT stappen en zelf nukes gaan bouwen. Dan maar zo.