Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky could be “lying on purpose to get us into a war,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared on Wednesday night. Zelensky’s refusal to admit that a Ukrainian missile caused a fatal explosion in Poland makes him “not worth supporting,” Carlson suggested. Zelensky “was commanding the US to lead the Third World War immediately” after the blast, Carlson told his viewers. “The only problem is that it was completely and utterly wrong.”
The Ukrainian leader described the explosion, which killed two people, as a Russian attack on NATO territory and called on the West to put Russia “in its place” in response. Anonymous US intelligence officials seconded his claims in statements to the press. Moscow argued that debris at the blast site showed that it was caused by a missile from the S-300 air defense system, a piece of Soviet-era kit fielded by Ukraine. Within hours, the leadership of the US, NATO, and Poland had all publicly stated that the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian anti-air missile. Zelensky doubled down. “I have no doubt that this is not our missile,” he said in a video address. “I believe that it was a Russian missile, based on our military reports.” “That’s not only untrue,” Carlson said. “It’s a lie that could get millions of Americans killed. So you have to ask yourself, is it time to stop backing this guy? Could the risk be too high? He’s lying on purpose to get us into a war?” “Maybe he’s not worth supporting in the first place. Maybe he’s just another corrupt Eastern European strongman in a tracksuit, getting as rich as he can on American handouts.” Carlson has been a long-time critic of the US’ support for Zelensky, arguing that Ukraine is not democratic, and that intervening in its conflict with Russia is not in the US’ national security interest. Zelensky has since walked back his claims, saying on Thursday that Kiev doesn’t “know for 100%” what happened.
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British rock star Roger Waters has hit out against the US for profiting off of the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which he says Washington allowed to happen because it was beneficial to American interests. Discussing US foreign policy on the Bad Faith podcast on YouTube, the Pink Floyd co-founder stated that the conflict in Ukraine was “the best thing to happen to them in the last 10 years,” because it was “really good for business.”. “Part of their business is making money from the war through making weapons and selling them to the people and taking the profits from it,” Waters explained, adding that this money never goes to ordinary people. “It’s not you or me, not ordinary people who invest in the war industry. It’s people with tons of cash, and they get very well paid when there’s war.”
Another benefit of the war for the political establishment, according to Waters, is that it allows it to convince people who struggle to make ends meet and end up homeless that their woes are the fault of the Russians and Putin, who is compared to Hitler and accused of being responsible for “destroying everyone’s lives.” Roger says he has now been banned from performing in Poland for openly criticizing the West’s military meddling and calling for peace between Russia and Ukraine. Previously, the musician had written letters personally addressed to presidents Vladimir Putin, Zelensky and Joe Biden, calling for diplomatic talks to end the conflict, stating it is “the worst possible thing that can be happening,” due to the potential of an all-out nuclear war. Russia wants its main agricultural lender Rosselkhozbank to be reconnected to the SWIFT financial network, in order to free up grain and fertilizer exports, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said on Saturday.
“This is not the first time we are discussing this because, from my perspective, reconnecting Rosselkhozbank, which provides the majority of agricultural transactions, is a key issue… We have discussed this issue and received assurances again from the UN representatives that they also consider this issue to be vital,” Vershinin told reporters. His comments follow a meeting with senior UN officials on Friday, addressing the deal guaranteeing safe passage to Ukraine’s grain exports via the Black Sea. Under the pact, brokered in July by the UN and Türkiye, Russia sought a sanctions reprieve for its own agricultural trade, but has since voiced discontent with UN efforts to lift Western restrictions affecting the sector. While the sanctions do not directly target Russia’s agriculture, they affect payments, insurance and shipping. Many Russian banks were disconnected from the SWIFT financial messaging system earlier this year, making it difficult to carry out direct settlements for exports. According to Vershinin, one way to ease the problem would be to open correspondent accounts in foreign banks, such as Citibank and JPMorgan, to facilitate payments for Russian exports. “This option, if anything, can only be temporary, because the real solution is a full reconnection to the SWIFT financial messaging system of Rosselkhozbank,” he stressed, adding that the issue needs to be resolved before the grain deal expires on November 19. Vershinin noted that Moscow has not yet agreed to extend its participation in the deal. Previously, a number of top Russian top officials warned that the country could choose to exit the agreement, if the UN does not fulfil its pledges regarding Russian exports. This month, United States President Joe Biden warned that the world could face Armageddon if his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, were to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. You would imagine that such a prognosis would lead to urgent action to dial down the confrontation. Yet no effort is being made to move us back from that risk. On the contrary, governments on all sides are piling on more threats, more militarisation and more actions that are not just making nuclear war possible but are increasing its probability.
Last week, NATO began a round of nuclear exercises simulating the dropping of ‘tactical’ B61 nuclear bombs over Europe. Although these drills are presented as routine, they are occurring alongside parallel Russian exercises. It’s hard to imagine worse timing. Surely with concerns about Armageddon expressed at the very highest levels of power, these exercises should have been called off as a message that the West won’t contribute to escalating nuclear tensions? Instead, our leaders are systematically failing to reduce the risk. Still, there are powerful messages that should be listened to and acted upon. In August — even before Putin’s latest, thinly veiled nuclear threats — United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that the world is “one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”. His words must serve as a wake-up call to leaders who pursue policies inexorably driving us towards nuclear war and to populations that are not yet taking action to stop these terrible dangers. Guterres warned that we are at a time of nuclear danger “not seen since the height of the Cold War”. He cautioned against countries seeking “false security” by spending vast sums on “doomsday weapons”. He said that the world had been lucky that nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. But as he rightly stated: “Luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict.” Indeed, we cannot rely on luck. And we must remember what nuclear use means and understand what nuclear war would look like today. An estimated 340,000 people died after the US dropped atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945. That included many who survived the immediate blast but died shortly afterwards from fatal burns. Others died because of the complete breakdown of rescue and medical services that had also been destroyed. And many more died when the impact of radiation kicked in, poisoning people and causing cancers and birth deformities. If that isn’t bad enough, consider this: The Hiroshima bomb was actually a small nuclear bomb in today’s terms. Current nuclear weapons — even the supposedly limited-range, battlefield-oriented ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons now routinely discussed in the context of the Ukraine war — are many, many times more powerful. The ones that the current exercises over Europe are designed for have variable yields of up to 20 times greater strength than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Equally worrying are the recent policies of nuclear weapons states. We had seen gradual reductions in nuclear weapons for a few decades. Now we are seeing modernisation programmes on all sides, with the US planning an upgrade of missiles that can deliver nuclear weapons, France launching a project to build a new generation of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, and Britain, India and Pakistan preparing to increase their nuclear arsenals.
CBS News joined the division's Deputy Commander, Brigadier General John Lubas, and Colonel Edwin Matthaidess, Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, on a Black Hawk helicopter for the hour-long ride to the very edge of NATO territory — only around three miles from Romania's border with Ukraine. From the moment Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, his forces have advanced northward from the Crimean Peninsula, a Ukrainian region that Moscow illegally seized control of in 2014. For more than seven months, Russian troops have tried to push along the Black Sea coast into the Kherson region, aiming to capture the key Ukrainian port cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.
Their goal is to cut off all Ukrainian access to the sea, leaving the country and its military forces landlocked. That threat, so close to NATO territory in Romania, is why one of America's most elite air assault divisions has been sent in, with some heavy equipment. "We're ready to defend every inch of NATO soil," Lubas told CBS News. "We bring a unique capability, from our air assault capability… We're a light infantry force, but again, we bring that mobility with us, for our aircraft and air assaults." Skirting northward along Romania's Black Sea coast, the Black Hawk eventually touched down at a forward operating site where U.S. and Romanian troops were pounding targets during a joint ground and air assault exercise. The tank rounds and artillery fire were real. The drill was meant to recreate the battles Ukraine's forces are fighting every day against Russian troops, just across the border. The war games so close to that border are a clear message to Russia and to America's NATO allies, that the U.S. Army is here. "The real meaning for me, to have the American troops here, is like if you were to have allies in Normandy before any enemy was there," Romanian Major General Lulian Berdila told CBS News, referring to the landmark World War II battle on France's north coast. The American forces have been establishing a garrison at the Romanian military's air base. In all, about 4,700 soldiers from the 101st Airborne's home base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, have been deployed to reinforce NATO's eastern flank. Matthaidess told CBS News that he and his troops were the closest American forces to the fighting in Ukraine. From their vantage point, they've been "closely watching" the Russian forces, "building objectives to practice against" and conducting drills that "replicate exactly what's going on" in the war. "It keeps us on our toes," he said. The "Screaming Eagles" commanders told CBS News repeatedly that they are always "ready to fight tonight," and while they're there to defend NATO territory, if the fighting escalates or there's any attack on NATO, they're fully prepared to cross the border into Ukraine. History records that on October 16, 1962, then-US President John F. Kennedy received information from the CIA about the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. This event was the formal beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis — the first, and for a long time, the only event in world history that brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war. Back then, cool heads – who had not yet forgotten the horrors of a real war – were able to prevent a catastrophe. Whether today's leaders will show the same restraint is far from certain. Rhymes and echoes Nineteenth century American humourist Mark Twain famously said, “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” Pakistani-British historian Tariq Ali is credited with a similar take: “History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.” Either could have been referring to today’s Russia-Ukraine conflict, which seems to be rhyming with, and echoing, a perilous episode from 60 years ago and 6,000 miles away – the Cuban Missile Crisis. Observers who recall the US-Soviet showdown of October 1962 can only hope that the latest confrontation between Washington and Moscow doesn’t require as much luck to avert a potentially planet-ending nuclear war. The similarities – rhymes and echoes – are evident. For starters, the Ukraine and Cuban crises were both rooted at least partly in the same principle: A superpower can’t stand idly by when a geopolitical rival upsets the security balance between them. In 1962, the trigger was the secret placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, right on America’s doorstep. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who ironically grew up in what was then Ukraine, saw the move as a way to protect the island against a US invasion after the failed Bay of Pigs assault in April 1961, as well as a tit-for-tat response to the Pentagon’s deployment of Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy, which positioned Washington’s nuclear warheads to hit the USSR's territory in as few as ten minutes. At the time, the long-range missiles in Soviet territory took hours to fuel up and fire, meaning a delayed response to a US first strike. “Since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their military installations, we should pay them back in their own coin and give them a taste of their own medicine so that they find out for themselves how it feels to live as a target of nuclear arms,” Khrushchev was quoted as saying by Aleksandr Alekseev, then Moscow’s ambassador to Cuba. US President John F. Kennedy didn’t see it that way when a U-2 spy plane spotted surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba on October 16. As Ukrainian-born author Sergey Plokhiy wrote in his 2021 book, ‘Nuclear Folly,’ Kennedy was initially inclined to order an attack on the missile sites, which easily could have escalated into a Soviet response and, eventually, mushroom clouds on both sides. The American president wasn’t yet aware that the Soviets had already shipped nuclear warheads to Cuba. Nor did he know that the USSR had 43,000 troops on the island, as well as tactical nukes that could be used to destroy a US attack force. But Kennedy knew that having Soviet ballistic missiles just across the Florida Straits – Havana is only about 1,100 miles from Washington and 230 miles from Miami – was intolerable and potentially gave the USSR the ability to win a nuclear war with the US. Russia has raised similar concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion. The Western military bloc was formed to ensure collective security against the USSR, but instead of reaping a peace dividend after the Soviet collapse in 1991, it has expanded to 30 states, nearly doubling in size. It also placed strategic weapons in Eastern Europe, which Moscow perceived as a threat. As if those moves weren’t provocative enough, NATO has also pledged to eventually push into Ukraine and Georgia, which would expand its reach into two former Soviet republics on Russia’s borders. Tensions escalated further when a US-backed coup overthrew Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, setting off a war between Kiev and separatists in the Donbass that left an estimated 14,000 people dead even before Moscow began its military offensive last February. Some observers have blamed the US and NATO for provoking the conflict. “As the one who started the Ukraine crisis and the biggest factor fueling it, the US needs to deeply reflect on its erroneous actions of exerting extreme pressure and fanning the flame on the Ukraine issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in July. Pope Francis claimed in June that World War III had already been declared and reiterated his claim that NATO may have triggered the crisis. He cited an unidentified world leader who told him that the bloc was “barking at the gates of Russia” and pushed back against criticism that he had failed to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin. NATO isn’t just a casual association of states. As UK cabinet minister Sajid Javid noted in February, shortly before the Russian offensive started, an encroachment on one member is an encroachment on all. He even referred to the 30 member states as “NATO territory,” as if the bloc were one giant nation. In terms of security, it may as well be one country. As Article 5 of the NATO treaty states, an armed assault on one member is considered an attack on all. That was a heavy responsibility when NATO started with 12 close allies. It has become a far more precarious pledge with expansion eastward. A dust-up in Skopje or Tallinn, even if justifiable, could have just as much potential to trigger a nuclear conflagration as an attack against Berlin or Paris. And what if one of the little brothers is a bad actor, essentially provoking a fight that the big brothers are bound to finish? From Russia’s perspective, Ukraine would pose just such a risk. Putin has accused Kiev of committing “genocide” against Russian speakers in Donbass, and Ukraine has failed to implement the Minsk agreements, the protocols brokered by Germany and France to bring peace to the region. Russia also has called for the “denazification” of Ukraine. Moscow’s envoy to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, tried to explain Russia’s security concerns to a CBS News interviewer just four days before tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders. Geopolitical rivals mustn’t trample on the principle of 'indivisible security', meaning neither NATO nor Russia should be allowed to strengthen its own security at the expense of the other party, he said. In that context, adding Ukraine to NATO would be “not possible for us to swallow,” Antonov explained. His next comment made clear why such tactics aren’t in the interest of NATO member states, either: You’ll see that there’s no space for us to retreat World War I was supposed to have taught politicians that hair-trigger alliances can bring unintended consequences, such as when the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo set off a global conflict that killed or maimed 40 million people. The resulting carnage was so devastating that it was supposed to be “the war to end all wars,” though tragically, rival blocs were going at it again – with even more deadly consequences – just 21 years later.
EU countries are discussing whether to contribute funding to ensure Ukrainians keep their access to vital Starlink internet services currently paid for by Tesla boss Elon Musk. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis disclosed the plans, which are at an early stage, in an interview with POLITICO on Monday.
The proposal follows warnings from Musk that his SpaceX rocket company could not indefinitely continue paying for Ukrainians to have access to Starlink internet services, amid suggestions that he wanted the U.S. government to foot the bill. Musk, the world’s richest man, later changed his mind and said he would carry on funding the service. But the scare raised concerns about the security of Ukraine’s continued access to a crucial telecommunications system that has played a vital role in their counteroffensives against Russian troops in occupied territories, as well as keeping the civilian population connected. Landsbergis suggested Ukraine's internet access should not be left in the hands of a single "super-powerful" person who could "wake up one day and say, ‘This is no longer what I feel like doing and this is it.’ And the next day, Ukrainians might find themselves without the internet.” He continued: “I figured that it's probably way better to have this as a contractual agreement between, let's say, a coalition of countries that could purchase a service from Mr. Musk, the Starlink service, and provide it to the Ukrainians and keep on providing it to Ukrainians.” The topic made it into the discussion at the meeting of the 27 EU foreign ministers Monday, according to Landsbergis. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell raised the subject, “and certain countries also joined in,” the minister said, without specifying which countries. “If it happens in EU, it's even better,” he said. “I don't see why it couldn't.” Sweden won't share findings of the investigation into the explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines with Russian authorities or Gazprom, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Monday.
A Swedish crime scene investigation of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Europe has found evidence of detonations and prosecutors suspect sabotage. Last week Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin sent a letter to the Swedish government demanding that Russian authorities and Gazprom would be allowed to be involved in the investigation, which Sweden denied. On Monday Andersson said Sweden won't even share the findings of the explosions that took place in the Swedish economic zone, with Russian authorities. "In Sweden, our preliminary investigations are confidential, and that, of course, also applies in this case," she told reporters. Who runs Wagner? Western intelligence agencies have long believed Wagner to be financed by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” for his lucrative catering contracts with the Kremlin and close ties to the Russian president. Prigozhin is also wanted by the United States for funding the state-backed troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, which is accused of influencing the 2016 US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump. For years, Prigozhin (who turned a hotdog stand into a food empire after serving serious prison time) vehemently denied the Wagner connection. He sued journalists who made the link, even as he raked in wealth from the group’s deployments overseas in Syria and Africa. Then, in September, Prigozhin finally admitted he owned Wagner, having been filmed touring prisons to offer convicts early release in exchange for six months fighting alongside Wagner in Ukraine. “I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this,” Prigozhin said in a statement released by his Concord catering firm. “From that moment, on May 1, 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion. I am proud that I was able to defend their right to protect the interests of their country.” Experts suspect the Russian state may directly bankroll parts of Wagner too, supplying them with weapons and aircraft and offering training. The French government has accused the Kremlin of “providing material support” to Wagner where it operates in Mali, West Africa, for example. Back home, Wagner’s training base is next door to that of the Russian army, although officially the site is listed as a children’s holiday camp. And there have been cases of Wagner troops evacuated from conflict zones to Russian military hospitals, Currie says, including after that 2018 US air strike on attacking Wagner forces in Syria. “Generally, private military companies would not receive such benefits, specialised military health care, from the state.” In 2021, Russian journalist Ilya Barabanov, along with Nader Ibrahim at the BBC, stumbled upon a discarded Wagner tablet and uncovered a “shopping list” of weapons and equipment the organisation had sent Russian authorities directly. It’s not the only time the group has been careless. In August, a pro-Kremlin war blogger inadvertently revealed the location of Wagner’s main base in eastern Luhansk, Ukraine, when he posted a photo with fighters there. Within days, Ukrainian rockets had reduced it to rubble. Currie recalls seeing the image pop up on open-source intelligence channels, as investigators, both amateur and professional, around the world scrambled to identify its location. “There were clues like a sign on a building we were looking at. Then I woke up the next day and someone had cracked it and the Ukrainians had taken it out.” The casualties for Wagner were reportedly grave. Prigozhin himself had been photographed at the base just before the strike, but he soon resurfaced at a high-profile funeral elsewhere, disproving rumours he’d been killed. Russian outlet Medusa reports that, before the invasion, Prigozhin had somewhat fallen out of favour with the Kremlin, publicly feuding with many of its high-ranking officials and other oligarchs. A large Wagner force was not deployed to Ukraine until the end of the war’s first month, when UK intelligence said more than 1000 mercenaries had joined the fighting. What does Wagner mean for the Ukraine war, and for Putin?
As the first Russian missiles fell on Kyiv, Wagner mercenaries were reportedly already prowling its streets with orders to hunt down Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. (Ukraine’s military later posted photos of dog tags it said belonged to the dead “Wagnerists” whose assassination plots it foiled.) Many months on, Ukraine continues to win back ground, and Russia is increasingly turning to Wagner in tight spots. The private army appears to have been allocated entire sections of the frontline like a normal military unit, according to UK Ministry of Defence intelligence. At times, they are helping command squads. But, while the mercenaries have had greater success against Ukraine’s seasoned fighters of the Donbas (compared to a Russian army beset by low morale and inexperience) the group, and the other rag-tag mix of “volunteers” the Kremlin has deployed to Ukraine, is unlikely to win the war for Russia. Already, Wagner appears to be feeling the pinch of poor co-ordination across the wider Russian military machine. And it is thought to be suffering its heaviest losses of any conflict so far, such is the scale of the fighting. While Currie says there is still strong support for Putin among Wagner channels online, she is seeing frustration too. “We don’t have exact figures of how many Wagner mercenaries died [in the recent strike on their Luhansk base] for example, but it was a lot. Enough to generate frustration. There’s quite a legacy of Wagner mercenaries feeling abandoned to an extent by Russia.” Ex-Wagner fighter Gabidullin, for example, has hit out at the Kremlin for abandoning his team at that US airstrike during the 2018 battle in Syria, and for using Wagner to hide Russian army casualties. Officially, Wagner doesn’t exist. Mercenaries – contractors who fight wars for money rather than as part of an army – aren’t legal in Russia (nor in most countries, including the US and Australia, in light of international bans). But private groups of this kind still operate all around the world, including America’s Blackwater (now known as Academi), whose staff were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in 2007. Wagner has left its own (much larger) trail of war crimes across the globe, says the chair of the UN working group on mercenaries, Dr Sorcha MacLeod. “Russia is not the only country with a mercenary group,” she says. “We know Turkey has one too, but Wagner, based on what we know about where it’s been and where it operates, seems to be the biggest. It’s really a proxy force of the Russian state.” Wagner is pronounced “Vagner” for Hitler’s favourite composer. It’s also the call sign of the group’s unconfirmed leader, Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence lieutenant, Wagner fan and suspected neo-Nazi. Wagner emerged in 2014 as Russia seized Crimea, part of the “little green men” (soldiers in unmarked green uniforms) sent in to take Ukrainian territory. Utkin himself was wounded in the fighting that became the long-running war of the Donbas. Unofficially, Wagner mercenaries are sometimes called “the cleaners” or “the orchestra”, known for “making noise” with brutal onslaughts. In Syria, they’ve backed Bashar al-Assad’s regime and guarded lucrative oil fields; in Libya, they joined the forces of rebel general Khalifa Haftar in 2019 after he attacked the UN-backed government in the capital, Tripoli. And across Africa, they’ve been brought in to help military governments crack down on rebellion and terrorist cells (and seize diamond mines). Now in Ukraine, they’re back fighting in large numbers, reportedly “rented out” as a strike team by Russian army units and increasingly acting as a regular part of the military. Using mercenaries means Russia can distance itself from Wagner atrocities – the group often do the Kremlin’s dirty work, experts say – and it helps quell fears at home of Russian soldiers returning in body bags. “It’s about plausible deniability,” says MacLeod. “Russia says – and has said when we’ve sent them allegation letters [over Wagner] human rights violations – that mercenaries aren’t permitted under Russian law, so they can’t be doing that.” Hired guns are not new – popes and kings have used them – and, historically, they’ve been known for brutality. They do not have the same chain of command and oversight that regular armies do. But, in modern times, Wagner has taken that to a new level, says MacLeod. “There are no ID numbers, or uniforms, no accountability. Locals might recognise them as the white guys, or the Russians, even as Wagner, but usually that’s as far as it goes.” Fighters are made to sign non-disclosure agreements and are hired through a complex web of shell companies. In fact, many experts now understand the group as more of a network of Russian military contractors – code for the Kremlin outsourcing – rather than one single business entity. “Of course, for an organisation like this that operates in the shadows, it suits them for there to be speculation about who they are, their size, where they are,” MacLeod says. “That adds to the mystique.” Still, journalists and international investigators such as MacLeod have pieced together a picture of how Wagner operates.
Who (and how) does Wagner recruit? The group typically recruits in code, says researcher Isabella Currie at La Trobe University, offering spots to “musicians on tour for the Wagner Conservatory” or, more recently, for “a picnic in Ukraine”. Sometimes they will pose with violins or other musical instruments in photos from the battlefield. “It’s a joke and everyone’s in on it,” Currie says. “It’s just that the joke is terrifying.” Recruits tend to be ex-military personnel, in their 30s and 40s, often with criminal histories or hailing from small Russian towns without much work. They have a reputation as elite fighters, more seasoned than the typical Russian soldier. The bar for selection and training, though, has been lowered more and more as they take big losses in Ukraine. All up, Wagner is thought to be about 10,000 fighters strong. Its casualties in combat are not recorded publicly and so, as researcher Dr Joana de Deus Pereira writes, mercenaries can “vanish without a name”. Sometimes bodies of slain soldiers are not recovered, or their families are denied agreed compensation, told their loved one wasn’t a soldier at all but was working for a gas company or some other front. Generally, though, the pay and compensation deal is very attractive to recruits – much more than the salary on offer through the Russian army. Missile strikes on "many" Ukrainian cities including the capital Kyiv left people dead and wounded on Monday, the country's presidency said, a day after Moscow blamed Ukraine for an explosion on a bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.
"Ukraine is under missile attack. There is information about strikes in many cities of our country," Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president's office, said on social media, calling on the population to "stay in shelters." In Kyiv, AFP reporters heard several loud explosions starting at around 8:15 a.m. local time — during Monday morning rush hour. Russia's last strike on Kyiv took place on June 26. One AFP journalist in the city said one of the projectiles landed near a children's playground, and that smoke was rising from a large crater at the impact site. Several trees and benches nearby were charred from the blast, while several ambulances had arrived in the area. "The capital is under Russian terrorists' attack!" Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media, adding that the strikes had hit the city centre. "If there is no urgent need, it is better not to go to the city today. I am also asking the residents of the suburbs about this — do not go to the capital today." Videos posted on social media showed black smoke rising above several areas in the city. "Air raid sirens are not subsiding around Ukraine... Unfortunately there are dead and wounded. Please do not leave the shelters," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, accusing Russia of wanting to "wipe us from the face of the Earth." "Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Let's hold on and be strong." Russia is a major global commodity producer and exporter. The country’s invasion of Ukraine has already pushed commodity prices to historically high levels and could also lead to commodity shortages. This situation may cause considerable economic damage, with far-reaching consequences for EU industry. Why is there a Russian-Ukraine war? What's the connection with Europe's Green Deal? And what's the role of the USA? Geologists call it the Ukrainian shield. That land in the middle which starts from the northern border with Belarus up to the shores of the Azov Sea, in the south of Donbass. According to the studies of the Ukrainian geological service, in the ancient rocks of this shield are hidden lithium deposits with great potential. Findings that have been identified mainly around the area of Mariupol, the port city of Donbass torn apart by Russian bombing. Lithium deposits in Ukraine “This may not be the main reason for the invasion, but undoubtedly Ukraine's mineral wealth is one of the reasons why this country is so important to Russia,” said Rod Schoonover, former director of the Environment and Natural Resources Section of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. A wealth confirmed by the fact that Ukrainian lithium had begun to attract global attention as early as last year, before the Russian invasion halted exploration. Last November, in fact, the Australian company European Lithium said it was close to securing the rights to two promising deposits of lithium in the region of Donetsk (eastern Ukraine) and Kirovograd, in the center of the country. In the same month, the Chinese company Chengxin Lithium has also asked for the rights on some deposits, a move that would allow China to win the first deposit in Europe. “Since there are no developed deposits, I highly doubt that lithium resources are the motivation for attacks in the Southeast,” Schoonover tells Renewable Matter. “But if this region falls under Russian control, lithium reserves would certainly be a co-benefit for the Kremlin. Certainly, the rest of the world would have a say. It would not import lithium from a pariah state (a nation that is not recognized by the governments of other countries due to human rights violations), especially when there are better alternatives in geopolitically more favourable countries.”
Dini tells Renewable Matter, “ and are problematic for the metallurgical processes of extracting the metal. Since 1991, Ukrainians here have been extracting mostly precious stones.”
The other mineral resources in Ukraine Ukraine has 10% of the world's iron reserves, 6% of titanium and 20% of graphite. “In geology, this extremely flat region is called peneplain,” Andrea Dini points out, “because it is so ancient that it has been flattened by erosion. Many of the rocks are billions of years old and you don't see them on the surface because they are covered by layers of sediment.” There are more than just minerals in Ukraine, however. In the northeast, near the Russian border, there is a 400-million-year-old sedimentary basin filled with organic material and black shale rocks. “These are black slates with large amounts of coal and methane. For example, part of US energy independence is due to the extraction of methane (Shale Gas) from these rocks on US soil.” There is also another sector that has a close link with Ukraine's resources: Italian ceramics. The ceramic industrial district of Sassuolo is one of the most important in the world and the quality of its tiles also depended on the importation from Ukraine of clay and kaolin, a mineral that is extracted from the quarries of Donbass. In the Italian ceramics industry, 25% of raw materials – including clay considered prized – came from Ukraine. After the Russian invasion, companies in the district will have to find compatible and competitive alternatives. According to insiders, first of all they need to find another recipe, that is, a new mixture of clays, kaolins and feldspars with material imported from other countries.
Sweden's Maritime Authority issued a warning about two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the day after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 pipeline was discovered that prompted Denmark to restrict shipping and impose a small no fly zone. Denmark's armed forces released a video showing bubbles boiling up to the surface of the sea. The largest gas leak had caused a surface disturbance of well over 1 km (0.6 mile) in diameter, the armed forces said. "Today we faced an act of sabotage, we don't know all the details of what happened, but we see clearly that it's an act of sabotage, related to the next step of escalation of the situation in Ukraine," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at the opening of a new pipeline between Norway and Poland.
Berlin has formed the opinion that a loss of pressure in three natural gas pipelines between Russia and Germany on Monday was not a coincidence, but a “targeted attack” from either Ukraine or Russia, the Tagesspiegel newspaper has reported. Pressure in one of the Nord Stream 2 lines dropped sharply overnight, followed by both of Nord Stream 1's on Monday afternoon. Denmark announced that a gas leak was spotted off the coast of Bornholm Island in the Baltic Sea and closed the area for maritime traffic, but could not confirm if this was what caused the situation. According to TagesSpiegel, the German government and agencies investigating the incident “can’t imagine a scenario that isn't a targeted attack,” according to an anonymous source familiar with their assessments. “Everything speaks against a coincidence.” The outlet explained that a deliberate attack on the bottom of the sea has to involve special forces, navy divers or a submarine. Berlin is reportedly examining two possible scenarios. In the first, Ukraine or “Ukraine-affiliated forces” could be behind the attack. The second option is that Russia did it as a “false flag,” to make Ukraine look bad and drive EU energy prices even higher. With Nord Stream offline since late August, Russian gas can only be delivered to Germany and central Europe via the older pipelines going through Poland and Ukraine, Tagesspiegel noted. The world is not doing enough to end the conflict in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told journalists in New York on Thursday. International leaders should focus on diplomacy and talk more with both Moscow and Kiev to put an end to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in a peaceful way, he said. Ankara has always “believed in the power of dialogue and diplomacy,” Erdogan said, pointing to Turkey’s mediating efforts in both the Istanbul grain deal between Moscow and Kiev, and the recent prisoner exchange between the two sides. He added that individual efforts of world leaders are not enough.
“The UN could not end the war, could not stop the bloodshed and it could not find a solution to the energy and food crisis,” he said, calling on other world leaders to join Turkey in its diplomatic efforts. Erdogan noted that he would call Putin and Zelensky and continue his “telephone diplomacy.” There must be a “joint effort of all world leaders,” and “everyone” should be talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, to “open the door” for diplomacy, he said. Any “negative approaches” to the two leaders will “not bring the result we expect,” but will only bring more death and destruction, Erdogan warned. Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the US and its allies in Europe and elsewhere have supported Kiev through financial and military aid. Moscow has repeatedly warned that arms deliveries to Kiev will only prolong the conflict. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are among the few Western leaders who have remained in contact with Putin since the start of the operation, though their efforts so far have not brought about any diplomatic breakthroughs. Turkey has maintained contact with both Moscow and Kiev throughout the hostilities. It condemned the use of force by Russia, but refused to take part in the international sanctions on Moscow. Ankara was also involved in the UN-brokered deal to allow the export of grain from Ukrainian ports, which was agreed on between Russia and Ukraine in July. Earlier this week, Erdogan told US news program PBS NewsHour that Moscow seeks to end the conflict as soon as possible. He also said that Russia cannot be allowed to keep the territories it has gained since February. Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found bots have had a major online presence during the war between Russia and Ukraine. The researchers analysed 5,203,764 tweets, retweets, quote tweets and replies posted to Twitter between 23 February 2022, and 8 March 2022, containing the hashtags #(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)SupportRussia, #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy and #(I)SupportUkraine. “We found that between 60 and 80 per cent of tweets using the hashtags we studied came from bot accounts during the first two weeks of the war,” said co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, an MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences. “This drove more angst in the online discourse and even impacted discussions surrounding people’s decision to flee or stay in Ukraine. “We observed increases in words such as ‘shame’, ‘terrorist’, ‘threat’, and ‘panic’. “Pro-Russian human accounts were having the largest influence on discussions of the war – particularly on accounts which were pro-Ukraine. “To our knowledge, this is the first body of published work which addresses online influence operations in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. “However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale. As a result, these environments can be used to manipulate discussion, as well as cause disruption and overall public distrust.” “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale." Fellow co-lead researcher, Bridget Smart, a Masters student in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, added: “Our research identifies that this is happening during the Russia-Ukraine war and provides a statistical framework which quantifies the extent to which this is happening. “This work extends and combines existing techniques to quantify how bots are influencing people in the online conversation around the Russia-Ukraine invasion.
“It opens up avenues for researchers to understand quantitatively how these malicious campaigns operate, and what makes them impactful. This research has identified that social media organisations may need to be better equipped for detecting and handling the use of bots on their networks. “It has identified that governments may need to have stricter policies on social media organisations, and that social media can be a vital tool during conflict.” The paper titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war” has been published in arXiv and will be presented at The International Conference on Social Informatics in Glasgow from 19-21 October. |
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