On Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky regretted that French President Emmanuel Macron had not used the term “genocide” to describe the consequences of the Russian military operation.
“Macron’s refusal is very hurtful,” the Ukrainian President said, alleging that calling things by their name is necessary to oppose “evil.”
Dubbed the ‘butcher’ of Aleppo and Grozny, Aleksandr Dvornikov, was honoured with a Hero of Russia medal in 2016.
“He’s been called ‘butcher’ since the days of the Second Chechen War, then in Aleppo in Syria,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, the former deputy chief of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces, said of Aleksandr Dvornikov.
Rather than following the lead of despots like Putin and Xi, Africa should chart its own path.
On March 30, just a day after a Russian missile hit an administrative building in the port city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, killing at least 12 people, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the case for the establishment of new world order. In a videotaped message to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Lavrov claimed the world is “living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations”. He added, “We, together with you, and with our sympathisers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order”.
Questions are being belatedly asked — and grudgingly answered — about many aspects of Merkel’s failed Russia policy, including her decisions to block Ukraine’s prospective membership of NATO, gut the German military, undermine the transatlantic alliance, and institutionalize Germany’s overdependence on Russian energy supplies.
The responsibility for Germany’s failed Russia policy goes far beyond Merkel: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and a large cross section of Germany’s business, media and political elite have supported — and continue to support — pro-Russia (as well as pro-China and pro-Iran) policies that sacrifice democracy, human rights, and the rule of law on the altar of financial gain.
The latest developments, including:
– How US declared financial war on Russia
– The US Dollar as a weapon
– How 9/11 gave the US government power to wage financial war
– Key architects of US/EU financial war
– Russia’s debt default
– Turkish drones in Ukraine
– The truth of Bucha’s atrocities
As Russia appoints a veteran of the war in Syria as its overall military commander in Ukraine, who is expected imminently to launch an offensive in the Donbas industrial area, pundits ask if the tactics that proved successful in Syria could now be employed in Ukraine.
The new appointee is General Alexander Dvornikov, who was sent to Syria in September 2015 when Russia intervened directly in the war to stop a rebel offensive backed by Saudi Arabia which was making ground against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
Andrey Kortunov the director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council admitted in an interview to Sky News that the launch of Russia’s military operation caught him by surprise. “I was shocked because for a long time, I thought that a military operation was not feasible. It was not plausible.”[1] In an article posted on the RIAC website, Kortunov listed the negative effects of the invasion:
On March 13, 2022, Professor Tang Yonghong (唐永红), a deputy director of the Center for Taiwan Research of Xiamen University and a well-known CCP expert on Taiwan issues, published an article, titled “‘Today’s Ukraine, Tomorrow’s Taiwan’ is not Impossible,” in the Chinese media outlet Duowei News Network.
Popular Chinese military scholar and TV host Song Zhongping said in a video he uploaded to the Chinese short video sharing platform Douyin on April 4, 2022 that the massacre in Bucha, Ukraine was staged by the Ukrainian government, and that there is video evidence showing some of the dead bodies standing up. Like much of China’s domestic media, Song’s claims echo Russian propaganda about the massacre, even though the Chinese government has not openly expressed support for Russia.
China is learning from Russia’s troubled war in Ukraine to improve its battle strategies and prepare for economic sanctions if Beijing ever attacks self-ruled Taiwan, experts believe.
The country may also be looking harder at peaceful solutions for Taiwan, they say.