Monthly Archives: June 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Russia has sent the first nuclear weapons to Belarus as part of a plan to deploy tactical nuclear bombs in the country bordering Ukraine.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin said the rest of the nuclear weapons would be delivered by the end of the summer.

This is a deterrence measure [against] all those who think about Russia and its strategic defeat, he said in response to a question about the use of nuclear weapons in war.

The Russian leaders comments follow claims from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko this week that his nation received the first part of the bombs and missiles from Russia.

God forbid I have to make a decision to use those weapons today, but there would be no hesitation if we face an aggression, Lukashenko said in a statement.

The move was first announced by the two allied leaders back in March, part of a strategy from Putin to keep the threat of nuclear weapons in the minds of Western leaders who are heavily backing Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Belarus was one of four former Soviet Union members, including Ukraine, that transferred nuclear weapons over to Russia.

Moving the nuclear weapons back into Belarus marks the first nuclear weapon transfer for Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The weapons Moscow is transferring are short-range tactical nuclear weapons, which have a shorter range and lower yield than nuclear warheads fitted to ballistic missiles but are still capable of immense damage far exceeding the bombs dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II.

The U.S. also deploys tactical nuclear weapons abroad, including about 100 nuclear gravity bombs stationed in Europe.

On Friday, Putin, who has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons during the Ukraine war, castigated the U.S. as the only country to drop nuclear weapons on another country and deflected questions about his own nuclear weapons strategy.

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When pressed about the transfer decision, Putin on Friday said he didnt want to frighten the whole world and maintained the nuclear weapons would only be used in self-defense.

These measures can be used only if theres a threat to Russian statehood, he said. All the means in our hands will be used against it.

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Putin says Russia has sent first nuclear weapons to Belarus - Yahoo News

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Ukrainian soldiers who were taken prisoner during fighting sit inside a defendant's glass cage during a hearing at the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. More than 20 Ukrainian soldiers who were taken prisoner during fighting in Ukraine are facing trial in southern Russia. The captured soldiers were members of the Azov battalion that fought Russian troops in the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol last year. (AP Photo)

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Ukrainian soldiers who were taken prisoner during fighting sit inside a defendant's glass cage during a hearing at the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. More than 20 Ukrainian soldiers who were taken prisoner during fighting in Ukraine are facing trial in southern Russia. The captured soldiers were members of the Azov battalion that fought Russian troops in the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol last year. (AP Photo)

MOSCOW (AP) More than 20 Ukrainian soldiers who were taken prisoner during fighting in Ukraine went on trial in southern Russia on Wednesday.

The captured soldiers were members of the Azov battalion, an elite Ukrainian armed forces unit that fought Russian troops in the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol. Russia captured Mariupol last year after a three-month battle that reduced most of the city to smoldering ruins.

The last remaining Ukrainian defenders who holed up at a giant steel mill in Mariupol surrendered to Russian forces in May 2022.

Russian authorities have designated the Azov battalion as a terrorist group. The defendants are facing charges of involvement in a terrorist organization and taking part in action to overthrow the Russia-backed authorities in the Donetsk region.

They face sentences ranging from 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

Of the 24 people who have faced the charges, two have been swapped for Russian prisoners of war as part of a prisoner exchange. Of the remaining 22 defendants facing the trial, eight are women, who reportedly worked as cooks for the Azov battalion.

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Captured Ukrainian soldiers face trial in Russia - The Associated Press

All the latest developments from the war in Ukraine.

Parts of Ukraine are witnessing "extremely fierce battles" on Thursday as Kyiv's troops push into Russian-occupied territory, according to the Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister.

Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had gained ground near Bakhmut in the east and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

Troops have advanced between 200 and 500 metres in unspecified sectors of the Bakhmut frontline and 300 to 350 meters towards Zapotizhzhia, she noted.

But the Minister conceded Russian forces were mounting a stiff resistance in some areas.

US Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Washington was committed to partially replacing Ukrainian losses of US-suppliedequipment used in counteroffensive operations.

However, she noted there may not be a one-for-one replacement ratio.

Russian cruise missiles hit two industrial complexes in the central city of Kryvyi Rih overnight, according to regional governor Serhiy Lysak.

He said strikes caused significant damage, including broken gas pipelines.

"Fires broke out at enterprises, which rescuers have already put out, he added.

A 38-year-old man was injured in the attack.

Military officials said four cruise missiles were launched by Russia overnight. One was destroyed by Ukrainian air defences, the rest hit industrial facilities in the Dnepropetrovsk region, where Kryvyi Rih is located.

Oleksandr Vilkul, the mayor of Kryvyi Rih, noted the attacks caused significant damage, but the buildings hit had nothing to do with the military.

The southern port city of Odesa was reportedly targeted by 20 Russian drones, all of which were shot down, according to Ukraine's southern military command.

Toyoko is in talks to provide artillery shells to the US to help with the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The East Asian nation is considering supplying 155 mm artillery shells as a part of a 2016 ammunition pact, according to the US-based Wall Street Journal.

This could mark a breakaway sinceJapan resisted supplying ammunition to Ukraine "with the capacity to kill or wound" citing its internal principles.

The country, however, has been providingbulletproof vests, helmets, and mine detection equipment since the start of the war.

Tokyo's relief packages to Ukraine have come in the form of humanitarian aid with an additional 435 million euros pledged during Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's visit to the war-torn nation.

More than 20 Ukrainian prisoners of war went on trial in southern Russia on Wednesday.

The captured soldiers were members of the Azov Battalion, an elite Ukrainian armed forces unit that fought Russian troops in Mariupol.

Moscow captured the Sea of Azov port last year after a three-month battle that reduced most of the city to smouldering ruins.

The last remaining Ukrainian defenders - who holed up at a giant Soviet-era steel mill - surrendered to Russian forces in May 2022.

Russian authorities have designated the Azov battalion as a terrorist group.

The defendants are facing charges of involvement in a terrorist organization and taking part in action to overthrow the Russia-backed authorities in the Donetsk region.

They face 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

Of the 24 people initially charged, two have been swapped for Russian POWs in a prisoner exchange. Of the remaining 22 defendants facing the trial, eight are women, who reportedly worked as cooks for the Azov battalion.

See the article here:

Ukraine war: 'Extremely fierce battles', Azov fighters on trial, Russia strikes Kryvyi Rih - Euronews

Any hope that a Putin antidote might be found among Russias regional governing classes is falling away.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced hell run again in the fall. It looks like one of the top political actors in Russia is still around a sign that Russia is not only about one man. Can Moscow provide an alternative to Putin, as some secretly hoped?

Since 1991, Moscow has had a reputation as the most advanced, globalized, and the most liberal city in Russia. Dozens of high-class theaters, fancy restaurants, and large parks filled with good-looking hipsters and their kids made Moscow appear like a normal European capital. Gay people, artists, and everyone else who wanted to escape the burdens and restrictions of the Russian provinces poured into the capital.

And that atmosphere of modernism was reflected in the citys politics. Moscow also has been a leader of liberal thinking and political dissent. It was Muscovites who thwarted the KGB-led coup dtat in August 1991, and this tradition has never ceased. In the 2000s and early 2010s, the city did not vote for Putin, and indeed, the biggest anti-Putin rallies in the country took place in Moscow in 2011-12, and later in 2017-2018. (Of course, the size of the city, populated by at least 13 million people, contributed to that.)

Moscow is also the richest and biggest Russian region. In a country where traditional political groups like parties and trade unions were under the states absolute control, it was up to the regions and the Kremlin to play the real political game. Thus, the Moscow mayor was foreordained to play a political role in Russia.

Sergei Sobyanin has been Moscows mayor since 2010, and more to the point he is not from the siloviki crowd of security insiders: he never served in the KGB or the army. His ancestors suffered from Stalinist repression. He also has extensive experience working at the Kremlin before being made Moscow mayor he was the presidents head of administration.

Not surprisingly perhaps, when the full-scale invasion began some migr circles entertained the idea of secretly approaching Sobyanin as someone who might replace Putin, should political turmoil be triggered by the war. And it looked for a while that Sobyanin was indeed not very enthusiastic about the war.

A year and a half after, the political reality couldnt be more different. While thousands of Muscovites protested the war, the city authorities became one of the main driving forces helping the Kremlin to wage war.

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Since the start of the invasion, Moscow has contributed both to the occupation effort and the war itself. The Moscow construction complex is rebuilding Luhansk, erecting apartment buildings, and supplying buses for the citys transport system. Moscow also helpedbuildthe defense linein the occupied territories, the Russian Maginot Line.

And it is the essential Moscows telecoms and consumer conglomerateAFK Sistema, that has just developed a Russian version of the Reaper drone the Sirius unmanned aerial vehicle.

Sobyanins Moscow administration directly aids the war effort; the city government has already formed three volunteer battalions, fully funded and equipped at its own expense. Moscow also pays bonuses to Muscovites serving in other military units. In the winter, Sobyanin took the trouble to visit Russian army positions in person and was photographed in military fatigue, in the trenches.

Why has this supposedly liberal figure chosen to dress himself in the fatigues of Vladimir Putins conflict? The reason is the business model he has built. He arranged for a massive non-stop flow of Moscow government funding on city projects ranging from building up apartment blocks, to infamous never-ending roads and sidewalk repairs, to expanding Moscows metro network.

Sobyanins focus has been on digital technologies from cutting-edge video surveillance city systems to very advanced online services apparently believing, like Chinese officials, that digital technology can compensate for the inefficiency of traditional bureaucracy.

For businesses, it means that if you come up with an idea, you pitch it first to the Moscow government, so that it can be trailed and funded on a massive scale. It is as if Moscow has built its own version of a Silicon Valley, but where venture capital is provided by the city government, and there is almost no competition because the funding requirements are so huge. This strategy has helped cement a powerful alliance ofthe most capable bureaucracyin the country,andbusinesses that are now addicted to the almost unlimited government funding.

It resulted in all sorts of corruption (perfectly usable Moscow roads are repaired annually, to cite the most visible example), but also in the emergence of a technological hub on a national scale. Just before the war, during the Covid pandemic, Moscows surveillance technologies were exported to other regions to keep tabs on the population. When Putin started his mobilization campaign, it was Moscow-funded technology that was used to build a national facial recognition database to catch men hiding from the draft.

Nowadays, Moscows business and bureaucracy have no hesitation to work on war-connected projects, as long as plentiful funding is provided to help kill Ukrainians.

So be it. So much for Sobyanin. So little hope for Russian liberalism.

Irina BoroganandAndrei Soldatov are Nonresident Senior Fellows with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.) They are Russian investigative journalists, and co-founders of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of Russian secret service activities.

Europes Edgeis CEPAs online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or viewsof the institutions they representor the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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CEPA's online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

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Moscow: The Mausoleum of Russian Liberalism - Center for European Policy Analysis

WASHINGTON (AP) The House has rejected an effort to censure California Rep. Adam Schiff, turning aside a Republican attempt to fine the Democrat over his comments about former President Donald Trump and investigations into his ties to Russia.

Schiff, the former Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead prosecutor in Trumps first impeachment trial, has long been a top Republican political target. Soon after taking back the majority this year, Republicans blocked him from sitting on the intelligence panel.

But Schiff was helped Wednesday by more than 20 Republicans who voted with Democrats to stop the censure resolution or voted present, giving Democrats enough votes to block the measure.

The vote was a rare victory for Democrats in the Republican-led House, and they cheered and patted Schiff on the back after the vote was gaveled down.

Im flattered they think Im so effective they have to go after me in this way, Schiff, who is running for Senate in his liberal state, told reporters afterward. Its not going to deter me.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a newly elected Republican who sponsored the measure, passed Schiff in the hallway after the vote and told him she would try again.

Luna later tweeted that she would remove a portion of the resolution that suggested a $16 million fine if the House Ethics Committee determined that Schiff lied, made misrepresentations and abused sensitive information. Some Republicans, including Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, had argued that the fine which Luna had said was half the cost of the Mueller probe was unconstitutional.

Next week, we will be filing a motion to censure and investigate Schiff, Luna tweeted. We are removing fine as that seems to be what made these Republicans uneasy.

She tweeted, See you next week, Adam.

The resolution says that Schiff held positions of power during Trumps presidency and abused this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia. Schiff was one of the most outspoken critics of the former president as both the Justice Department and the Republican-led House launched investigations into Trumps ties to Russia in 2017.

By repeatedly telling these falsehoods, Representative Schiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people, the resolution said.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, who led the two-year Justice Department investigation, determined that Russia intervened on the campaigns behalf and that Trumps campaign welcomed the help. But Muellers team did not find that the campaign conspired to sway the election, and the Justice Department did not recommend any charges.

The congressional probe, launched by Republicans who were then in the majority, similarly found that Russia intervened in the election but that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. Schiff was the top Democrat on the panel at the time.

If the House had voted to censure him, Schiff would have stood in the front of the chamber while the text of the resolution was read.

On Tuesday, Schiff told reporters that the censure resolution was red meat that Speaker Kevin McCarthy is throwing to his conference amid squabbles over government spending. Republicans are trying to show their fealty to Trump, Schiff said.

He said he warned the country during impeachment proceedings three years ago that Trump would go on to do worse. And of course he did worse in the form of a violent attack on the Capitol.

After Democrats won the House majority in 2018, the House impeached Trump for abuse of power after he threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine and urged the countrys president to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden. Schiff was the lead House prosecutor making the case for conviction to the Senate right matters, he said repeatedly but the Republican-led chamber ultimately acquitted him.

Trump was impeached a second time a year later, after he had left office, for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol of his supporters. The Senate again acquitted Trump.

Luna in the censure resolution against Schiff also cited a report released in May from special counsel John Durham that found that the FBI rushed into its investigation of Trumps campaign and relied too much on raw and unconfirmed intelligence.

Durham said investigators repeatedly relied on confirmation bias, ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undercut their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the probe forward. But he did not allege that political bias or partisanship were guiding factors for the FBIs actions.

Trump had claimed that Durhams report would reveal the crime of the century and expose a deep state conspiracy by high-ranking government officials to derail his candidacy and later his presidency. But the investigation yielded only one conviction a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee and the only two other cases that were brought both ended in acquittals at trial.

The House censure resolution comes days after Trump was indicted on detailed federal charges of hoarding classified documents several of which dealt with sensitive national security matters and attempting to conceal them. House Republicans, most of whom are loyal to Trump, say the indictment is evidence that the government is conspiring against the former president.

McCarthy, R-Calif., called the indictment a grave injustice and said that House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.

Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who served as an impeachment manager with Schiff, says Republicans are trying to rewrite history.

This is clearly a handful of Republican members of the House that are trying to do Donald Trumps bidding and trying to distract from his very serious legal problems, Crow said.

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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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House rejects effort to censure and fine Democrat Adam Schiff over Trump-Russia investigations - The Associated Press