Russia has used the “Z” symbolism on its tanks and military vehicles. But, as our Editor-in-Chief Sean Spoonts pointed out, these markings have different meanings and allow Russian forces to recognize each other on the battlefield.
Ankara agreed that part of its natural gas payments to Moscow would be switched to rubles.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed that Ankara would switch part of its payment for Russian natural gas to rubles, in what appeared to be the most concrete result of their four-hour long meeting in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi today.
The fragile Palestinian economy in the Gaza Strip has been largely affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war, which has caused price hikes and an increase in taxes.
The fragile Palestinian economy in the Gaza Strip has been drawn into a deep crisis in the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which has caused price hikes, confusion in local fees and taxes imposed on goods, and lower public sector employees’ salaries.
The Biden administration’s next security assistance package for Ukraine is expected to be $1 billion, one of the largest so far, and include munitions for long-range weapons and armored medical transport vehicles, three sources briefed on the matter told Reuters on Friday.
Ukraine’s state nuclear power agency has said that a worker at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant was wounded and radiation-monitors were damaged in renewed shelling of the plant on Russian-controlled territory, while Russian authorities have accused Kyiv’s forces of carrying out the overnight attack.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday the Western military alliance has the joint tasks of both supporting Ukraine in its fight against a Russian invasion and to prevent the conflict from spreading into a war between Russia and NATO.
Every visit by a foreign leader to Iran draws considerable attention, not to mention criticism, in Israel. A visit, however, by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the leader of a global power working to establish an anti-American axis, is cause for greater concern. While bilateral cooperation between Russia and Iran is not unprecedented, Israel has hoped such relations would remain limited in scope due to the engrained competition between the two for influence in Syria and Moscow’s fear of getting too close to a “regional pariah.” As recently as 2018, some Israeli experts and policymakers even hoped that Russia would “squeeze Iran out of Syria” for Israel’s benefit.
Moscow’s Disastrous Invasion of Ukraine Will Reinforce the Norm Against War
When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered a “special military operation” against Ukraine on February 24, Europe had been substantially free of international war for nearly 80 years. That is likely the longest the once most warlike of continents has gone without such a war at least since the days of the Roman Empire.
Grain shipments from Ukraine’s port of Odesa resumed Monday, the first since Russia invaded its neighbor in late February.
The Sierra Leone-flagged cargo ship Razoni was the first to leave port, carrying more than 26,000 tons of corn bound for Lebanon. In a statement, Turkey’s defense ministry said other unspecified ships would also depart Ukraine on Monday.
On July 20, Sergey Lavrov, minister of foreign affairs for the Russian Federation, declared that Moscow had new objectives in Ukraine, as it now wants to expand its gains beyond the borders of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” by capturing Kherson, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Lavrov underlined Western military equipment transfer and the alleged need to protect the occupied territories from long-range weapons as main reasons for this shift (TSN, June 20).