Putin clings to semblance of normality as his war grinds on posted at 15:04:08 UTC via Reuters
Donbas fighting: Foreign fighters unit positioned in eastern Ukraine • FRANCE 24 English
Russian forces on Wednesday fought their way into the centre of the Ukrainian industrial city of Sevierodonetsk and appeared to be close to claiming a big prize in their offensive in the eastern Donbas region. FRANCE 24's Jonathan Walsh reports from Ukraine.
#Ukraine #ForeignFighters #Russia
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Russian forces on Thursday hammered the last Ukrainian defences holding a strategic city in the Donbas region as the war approached its 100th day and Washington warned it could still last for months.
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Nearly 100 days of war in Ukraine have wrought devastating consequences for children at a scale and speed not seen since World War II, UNICEF reported on Wednesday. Three million children inside Ukraine and over 2.2 million children in refugee-hosting countries are now in need of humanitarian assistance.
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Four days of celebrations honoring Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne kicked off Thursday with a display of British military traditions stretching from the days of horse and cannon to the jet age. FRANCE 24's Bénédicte Paviot reports from London.
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Tens of thousands of people cheered Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday as she appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on the first day of celebrations marking the British monarch's 70 years on the throne.
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This article links to a state controlled Russian media. Read more.
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Approaching the 100-day mark in a war that he refuses to call by its name, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man intent on conveying the impression of business as usual.
As his army fought its way into the Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk this week, Putin was making awkward small talk in a televised ceremony to honour parents of exceptionally large families.
Since the start of May, he has met - mostly online - with educators, oil and transport bosses, officials responsible for tackling forest fires, and the heads of at least a dozen Russian regions, many of them thousands of miles from Ukraine.
Along with several sessions of his Security Council and a series of calls with foreign leaders, he found time for a video address to players, trainers and spectators of the All-Russian Night Hockey League.
The appearance of solid, even boring routine is consistent with the Kremlin's narrative that it is not fighting a war - merely waging a "special military operation" to bring a troublesome neighbour to heel.
For a man whose army has heavily underperformed in Ukraine and been beaten back from its two biggest cities, suffering untold thousands of casualties, Putin shows no visible sign of stress.
In contrast with the run-up to the Feb. 24 invasion, when he denounced Ukraine and the West in bitter, angry speeches, his rhetoric is restrained. The 69-year-old appears calm, focused and fully in command of data and details.
While acknowledging the impact of Western sanctions, he tells Russians their economy will emerge stronger and more self-sufficient, while the West will suffer a boomerang effect from spiralling food and fuel prices.
But as the war grinds on with no end in sight, Putin faces an increasing challenge to maintain the semblance of normality.
Economically, the situation will worsen as sanctions bite harder and Russia heads towards recession.
Militarily, Putin's forces have gradually advanced in eastern Ukraine but the United States and its allies are stepping up arms supplies to Kyiv, including a U.S. promise this week of advanced rocket systems.
Should Russia's offensive falter, Putin could be forced into declaring a full-scale mobilisation of reserves to bolster his depleted forces, Western defence experts say.
"This would involve more than a million people in Russia, and then of course it will be visible for those whose who have not yet realised that Russia is in a full war," said Gerhard Mangott, an Austrian academic who has met and observed Putin over many years.
That would be a hard sell to a Russian public which is mainly reliant on state media loyal to the Kremlin and has therefore been kept in ignorance of the scale of Russian setbacks and casualties.
Yet Russia is still not at that point, Mangott said, and Putin may draw some encouragement from signs of Western fatigue with the war. Divisions are emerging between Ukraine's most hawkish backers - the United States, Britain, Poland and the Baltic states - and a group of countries including Italy, France and Germany which are pressing to bring an end to the war.
"Putin is counting that the longer this war drags on, the more conflicts and frictions within the Western camp will appear," he said.
Meanwhile peace talks with Ukraine stalled weeks ago, and Putin shows absolutely no sign of seeking a diplomatic exit. "He still thinks there is a good military solution to this problem," said Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia at Crisis Group.
Putin preserves the option to claim victory at any point because his stated objectives - what he called the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine - "were always goals that you could declare accomplished because they were never clearly defined and were always somewhat ridiculous", Oliker said.
The words "war" and "Ukraine" were never spoken during Putin's 40-minute video encounter on Wednesday with the prolific families, including Vadim and Larisa Kadzayev with their 15 children from Beslan in the North Caucasus region.
Wearing their best dresses and suits, the families sat stiffly at tables laden with flowers and food as Putin called on them in turn to introduce themselves. On the same day, eight empty school buses pulled into the main square of Lviv in western Ukraine to serve as a reminder of 243 Ukrainian children killed since the start of Putin's invasion.
The closest he came to acknowledging the war was in a pair of references to the plight of children in Donbas and the "extraordinary situation" there.
Russia had many problems but that was always the case, he said as he wrapped up the online meeting. "Nothing unusual is actually happening here."
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ states agreed to bring forward oil production rises to offset Russian output losses to ease surging oil prices and inflation and smooth the way for an ice-breaking visit to Riyadh by U.S. President Joe Biden.
OPEC+ said it had agreed to boost output by 648,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July - or 0.7% of global demand - and a similar amount in August versus the initial plan to add 432,000 bpd a month over three months until September.
The move will be seen as a sign of willingness by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC Gulf nations to pump more after months of pressure from the West to address global energy shortages worsened by Western sanctions on Russia.
Oil rose on the news towards $117 a barrel as analysts said the real production boost will be insignificant as most OPEC members except for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are already pumping at capacity. Earlier this year, oil came close to an all-time peak of $147 hit in 2008.
OPEC+, an alliance of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producing nations, includes Russia, whose output has fallen by about 1 million bpd following Western sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. diplomats have worked for weeks on organising Biden's first visit to Riyadh after two years of strained relations because of disagreements over human rights, the war in Yemen and U.S. weapons supplies to the kingdom.
U.S. intelligence has accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS, of approving the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a charge the prince denies.
Saudi Arabia and its neighbour the United Arab Emirates have been frustrated at the Biden administration's opposition to the military campaign in Yemen and failure to address Gulf concerns about Iran's missile programme and its regional proxies.
With the Ukraine war adding to a tight crude market, the U.S. administration has sought more supplies from Gulf allies such as Saudi Arabia, as well as from Iran whose output has been restricted by U.S. sanctions that could be lifted if a nuclear deal is reached, and Venezuela, also under U.S. sanctions.
Rocketing gasoline prices have driven U.S. inflation to a 40-year high, hitting Biden's approval ratings as he approaches mid-term elections. Biden has refused so far to deal with MbS as Saudi Arabia's de-facto ruler.
A source briefed on the matter said Washington wanted clarity on oil output plans before a potential Biden visit for a summit with Gulf Arab leaders, including MbS, in Riyadh. read more
A second source familiar with discussions about Biden's visit said the issue was not only tied to oil production, but also to Gulf security issues and human rights. The source said both Riyadh and Washington had been showing more readiness to listen to the other's concerns.
The White House said it welcomed Thursday's decision and recognised the role of Saudi Arabia in achieving OPEC+ consensus.
Western sanctions could reduce production from Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter, by as much as 2 million to 3 million bpd, according to a range of industry estimates.
Russia was already producing below its OPEC+ target of 10.44 million bpd in April with output running at about 9.3 million bpd.
A Western diplomat said Russia might be ready to agree to other members of OPEC+ to fill a gap in its output to preserve unity in the group and maintain support from the Gulf, which has tended to take a neutral stance over the Ukraine war.
OPEC+ agreed to cut output by a record amount in 2020 when the pandemic hammered demand. By September, when the deal expires, the group will have limited spare capacity to lift output further.
Saudi Arabia is producing 10.5 million bpd and has rarely tested sustained production levels above 11 million bpd. Riyadh says it is working on boosting its nameplate capacity to 13.4 million bpd from the current 12.4 million by 2027.
The only other OPEC state with significant ability to produce more oil is the UAE, although OPEC is estimated to have less than 2 million bpd of spare capacity in total.
Amrita Sen, co-founder of Energy Apsects think-tank, said, the real production boost over July-August would amount to around 560,000 bpd - compared to the scheduled 1.3 million bpd - because most members have already maxed out their production.
"These volumes will barely make a dent to the deficit in the market," she said.
The avowed white supremacist accused of a racist attack that killed 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday on 25 counts, including a charge of domestic terrorism motivated by hate.
Payton Gendron, 18, will appear at a 2 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) hearing before Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan after a grand jury returned a 25-count indictment, according to Erie County District Attorney John Flynn.
Gendron was targeting Black people, authorities said, when he drove three hours from his home near Binghamton, New York, and shot 13 people with a semi-automatic, assault-style rifle at a Tops store in Buffalo, killing 10 in the May 14 attack.
The indictment’s first count - domestic terrorism motivated by hate - accuses Gendron of carrying out the attack “because of the perceived race and/or color of such person or persons” injured and killed.
Gendron also faces 10 counts of first-degree murder and 10 counts of second-degree murder, all of them as hate crimes. The grand jury, which decides whether sufficient evidence exists to bring a defendant to trial, also returned three counts of attempted murder as hate crimes and a single count of illegal possession of a weapon.
The gunman streamed video of the attack to a social media platform in real time after posting white supremacist material on line showing he had drawn inspiration from previous racially motivated mass killings, authorities have said.
The shooting, along with last week's school massacre in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two teachers dead, has reignited a longstanding national debate over U.S. gun laws. read more
Hours after the Buffalo attack, Gendron pleaded not guilty to a single count of first-degree homicide during an initial arraignment. He faces life in prison without parole if convicted. New York has no capital punishment.
New York's domestic terrorism hate crime law, proposed after a mass shooting targeting Mexicans at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas took effect Nov. 1, 2020.
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It would mean one more step to #PersonalDictatorship.
twitter.com/mikenov/status…
US Intel would know all about this ;)
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theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
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