Russia claimed on Wednesday that Israeli mercenaries are fighting alongside the far-right Azov Regiment in Ukraine, agencies have reported.
“Israeli mercenaries are practically shoulder to shoulder with Azov militants in Ukraine,” the spokeswoman of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, told Sputnik radio.
On a warm summer evening in July 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin, together with the German chancellor and French president at the time, Gerhard Schroder and Jacques Chirac, looked on as a lavish fireworks display entertained a vast crowd in the Baltic city of Kaliningrad. In commemoration of the 750-year anniversary of the founding of what had once been the Prussian city of Konigsberg, the Russian government that had inherited Kaliningrad after its conquest by the Soviet Union during World War II had put on elaborate festivities to celebrate its complex history.
On December 20, 1999, Vladimir Putin addressed senior officials of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) at its Lubyanka headquarters near Moscow’s Red Square. The recently appointed 47-year-old prime minister, who had held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the FSB, was visiting to mark the holiday honoring the Russian security services. “The task of infiltrating the highest level of government is accomplished,” Putin quipped.
The war in Ukraine is placing significant costs on the environment not only through the destructive effects of modern warfare, but also from the unintended consequences of developing international sanctions on Russia.
The devastating and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has not only triggered significant loss of life and a massive refugee crisis spilling into Europe, but has also dealt a heavy blow to a silent victim of modern-day military and economic warfare: the environment.
Corruption is endemic in Russia and is pervasive within its defence industrial sector and armed forces. Evidence from Ukraine suggests that it is costing Russian lives.
International security is inherently a secretive business. Governments and militaries like to hide their capabilities and plans from their rivals. Yet in the post-Cold War years, states began to become more transparent about their military postures, aiming to create a new sense of international cooperation and openness. This process has now gone into reverse, with post-Cold War transparency arrangements in sharp decline.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said Friday that his country is willing to engage in diplomatic talks with Russia to unblock grain supplies and to achieve a political solution to the war in Ukraine but won’t accept ultimatums from Moscow.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Ukrainian government had received “no positive feedback” from Russia, which he alleged “prefers wars to talks.”
The holder of the highest seat in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, said that the West is partly to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the Pope said “that barking of NATO at the door of Russia” has pushed Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, which was not a part of the alliance.
The bottom line
While Russia has made slight progress in the Donbas, the line of control has hardly budged and the Kremlin’s campaign has largely stalled.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv remains strong, with Russian forces being pushed back toward the Russian border.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin confronts a series of humiliating battlefield setbacks since his February 24 invasion of Ukraine, and amid an increased flow of Western arms into the country, the risk of escalation remains all too real.