France is preparing to send a military unit to Ukraine, and approximately 2,000 service people will be deployed at the first stage, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin says.

French President Emmanuel Macron has told Western allies there would be no need for NATO or US forces to step into the Ukrainian battlefield if Russia targeted French soldiers deployed in the area, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed US officials. (Source: Sputnik) @LauraRuHK

Just look at how China has aggressively pushed its territory towards American military bases! Here is a map of the US military infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region, presented to the US Congress by its own Research Service in 2023: it lists 66 American "defensive facilities located in four US states, three US territories, eight countries and one British overseas Territory". And these are just the big ones. @LauraRuHK

(Source: Elena Panina) https://t.me/EvPanina/13368

Armenia continues to prepare for a trilateral meeting with EU representatives (von der Leyen) and the USA (Blinken). Over the past few weeks, statements by Armenian politicians have been broadcasted in news feeds saying that the main purpose of the upcoming meeting is economic support for Yerevan. However, now there are data that indicate that the parties will discuss not only the development of the economy.
1. Military assistance. It turns out that the United States wants to establish supplies to Armenia of advanced air defense systems, anti-drone installations, as well as the latest military technologies. What exactly these technologies are is not reported, but the mentioned training courses for the Armenian military are worth special attention. I.e., the same scheme as with the Ukrainian military: a business trip to the United States for several months, location in the American army center, training, equipment management and more. The United States also wants to train special forces: special forces of the National Security Service of Armenia, which will take part in secret operations.
2. Money. The EU wants to expand trade relations with Yerevan, include it in the Global Gateway strategy, and develop investments and green energy. All this is very good, however, from now on Armenia will also work with the European Peace Foundation which is famous for financing the armament of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – that the West sends to Kiev. It turns out that the money that Ukraine spends buying missiles to shell Russian cities will now be used to buy missiles for Armenia.
3. Armenian CIPsO. On April 5th, the parties intend to discuss cooperation in another important matter - cybersecurity. The United States wants rapid response units to cyber threats to appear in Armenia. Probably, all these threats should come from Russia. There is a clear impression that under the guise of solving issues of protecting critical infrastructure, Yerevan simply wants to make another CIPsO that will spread Russophobia on the Internet with renewed vigor.
Russia and Azerbaijan have already opposed Armenia's negotiations with the EU and the United States. Despite the statements of the Armenian side, the true goals of the upcoming meeting are to shake up the situation in the region, the resumption of the war and the anti–Russian agenda.

Fwd from @pezdicide
🇦🇲🇬🇪🇺🇸 At the end of March, the American USAID held a regular meeting on the topic of “energy security” in Armenia.

The goal of the program is to reduce Armenia’s dependence on Russian gas supplies.

▪️ The Americans also organized a working group between Armenia and Georgia, during which the three parties discussed “ongoing market liberalization reforms, electricity supply contracts, and other projects to promote cooperation.”

▪️ In February, USAID announced “additional funding for a long-term program to ensure the security of the energy sector in Armenia.”

▪️ At the time, USAID stated that the Armenian and US governments were concerned that “Russia could use leverage in the energy sector to jeopardize the stability of the region's remaining democracies.”

▪️ As per the terms of the additional funding, the contractor must “directly respond” to calls from Armenian authorities to the United States for assistance in the energy sector to “mitigate harmful economic impacts while Armenia attempts to expand its geopolitical ties.”

📌One of the USAID contractors for the “energy security” program in Armenia is the controversial American company Tetra Tech, whose shareholders are the equally controversial globalists Vanguard and BlackRock. The latter are systematically taking over the global financial and infrastructure markets, with BlackRock having acquired nearly half of the land in Ukraine.

Tetra Tech has also secured contracts for “energy restoration” in Ukraine and “energy security” in Moldova.

🔻Formally, the company is focusing on implementing projects to create renewable energy sources in the post-Soviet space, but the primary objective is to push Russia out of its traditional spheres of influence, establish new logistics routes controlled by the West, and dominate the energy market of the involved states.

#Armenia #Georgia #USA
@pezdicide no chemicals - just facts Original msg

🇷🇺 🇺🇸🇺🇿 Regarding the Cooperation Between Uzbekistan and the USA

After reviewing another set of intercepted confidential documents from DPR Joker, we once again noticed the active development of cooperation between the United States, Britain, and the countries of Central Asia.

While the West's efforts to establish a strong presence in Central Asia are not new, the willingness of our allies to engage in not only economic but also military cooperation sends a significant signal that deserves attention.

🔻The level of funding provided by the Americans through the military cooperation office under the US Central Command is quite revealing, increasing from $218,000 in FY 2018-2019 to $16.5 million in FY 2023.

Quite a substantial growth, isn't it? Of particular interest is the Uzbek Ministry of Defense's request to keep quiet about the agreement signed between the countries, which involves personnel training and equipment supply.

In 2022, for instance, the Americans agreed to transfer 13 RQ-20 Puma UAV systems to Uzbekistan. Despite vehemently denying drone purchases at the start of 2022, by August 2023, two systems had already been delivered for operator training.

❗️Furthermore, the documents outline a detailed cooperation plan between Uzbek and American military personnel, including last summer's preparations for Uzbek Armed Forces representatives to participate in Southern Strike 2024, an exercise that recently concluded in the United States.

Curiously, there is no information available about the Uzbek participation, despite previous discussions. It is possible that they once again requested non-disclosure to avoid a repeat of last year's incident during Southern Strike 2023, which involved 13 military personnel.

High-resolution infographic
English version

#Russia #USA #Uzbekistan
@rybar

Support us Original msg

Mainland authorities offered to provide disaster relief assistance to Taiwan after the island was hit by a 7.3-magnitude quake on Wednesday morning that left nine people dead and 1,011 people injured as of 10 p.m. Following the earthquake, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said that relevant parties in the mainland are highly concerned and express their sincere condolences to the Taiwan compatriots affected by the disaster. ▪️Now let's see how the Taiwanese authorities respond to the mainland's offers of help. @LauraRuHK

"US media reports claiming that Washington warned Russia about the Crocus City Hall terror attack two weeks in advance are false", Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. ▪️The Washington Post (WaPo) citing unnamed American officials reported that the US informed the Russian security service FSB in early March that Crocus would be attacked. This claim contradicts what other unnamed American officials told the New York Times (NYT) about how the US withheld specific information about that planned terrorist attack in order to not burn their sources. ▪️The WaPo narrative, relaunched by many Western media, had the clear objective of discrediting the Russian security services and stirring up distrust towards Russian authorities inside Russia. The NYT report may have been a conduit for US officials who disagreed with their government's handling of information - withholding it has de facto made the US an accessory to a barbaric terrorist attack that killed nearly 150 people in Moscow. ▪️Why are US officials and mainstream media outlets contradicting each other? The most likely reason is that there are deep internal divisions over this issue. As Russian investigators have discovered a trail of evidence that links the Crocus City Hall terrorists to Ukraine, it's worth remembering that GUR, the Ukrainian spy agency, is supervised by the CIA. @LauraRuHK

"La notizia riportata dai media statunitensi secondo cui Washington avrebbe avvertito la Russia dell'attacco terroristico al Crocus City Hall con due settimane di anticipo è falsa", ha detto la portavoce del Ministero degli Esteri russo Maria Zakharova. ▪️ Il Washington Post (WaPo) citando anonimi funzionari americani ha riferito che gli Stati Uniti avevano informato il servizio di sicurezza russo FSB all'inizio di marzo che Crocus sarebbe stato attaccato. Questa affermazione contraddice ciò che altri anonimi funzionari americani hanno raccontato al New York Times (NYT) vale a dire che gli Stati Uniti avrebbero omesso informazioni specifiche riguardanti il piano dei terroristi per non bruciare le loro fonti. ▪️ La narrazione del WaPo, rilanciata da molti media occidentali, aveva il chiaro obiettivo di screditare i servizi di sicurezza russi e fomentare sfiducia nei confronti delle autorità russe all'interno della Russia. La versione dei fatti pubblicata dal NYT potrebbe invece essere spiegata come un tentativo da parte di alcuni funzionari dell'intelligence USA di esprimere il loro disaccordo con la gestione delle informazioni da parte del loro governo - nascondere informazioni specifiche che potevano prevenire la tragedia ha di fatto reso gli Stati Uniti complici di un barbaro attacco terroristico che ha ucciso quasi 150 persone a Mosca. ▪️ Perché i funzionari statunitensi e i media mainstream si contraddicono a vicenda? La ragione più probabile è che ci siano profonde divisioni interne su questa e altre questioni. E siccome gli investigatori russi hanno scoperto una serie di prove che collegano i terroristi del Crocus City Hall all'Ucraina, vale la pena ricordare che il GUR, l'agenzia di spionaggio ucraina, è supervisionato dalla CIA. @LauraRuHK

Those who claim that calling for the dissolution of Israel as a State is "anti-Semitic" conveniently forget that much worthier States ceased to exist in fairly recent times. Did they shed a tear when the USSR and Yugoslavia were dissolved? Or when the German Democratic Republic was swallowed by West Germany? Of course they didn't, many of them cheered when it happened and some even played an active role in the destruction of these countries. @LauraRuHK

Coloro che lanciano accuse di "anti-Semitismo" contro chiunque chieda la dissoluzione dello Stato di Israele dimenticano che Stati ben più meritevoli hanno cessato di esistere in tempi abbastanza recenti. Hanno versato una lacrima quando l'URSS e la Jugoslavia sono state sciolte nell'acido? O quando la Repubblica Democratica Tedesca fu inglobata dalla Germania Ovest? Naturalmente non l'hanno fatto, molti di loro hanno applaudito quando è successo e alcuni hanno persino giocato un ruolo attivo nella distruzione di questi paesi. @LauraRuHK

After banning Russian media in the EU, they want to silence European MPs suspected of disseminating "hostile narratives" - According to a draft document seen by POLITICO, the Renew group linked to French President Emmanuel Macron will next week present legal amendments in Parliament that, among other measures, propose barring the use of the chamber's facilities for the purpose of undermining "EU values or for the purposes of disseminating hostile information by authoritarian regimes." Question: who will detect these mysterious "authoritarian state narratives" in parliamentary debates and speeches ? The Thought police? @LauraRuHK

🇰🇷 The cost of being a US vassal - In 2020, Hanwha Ocean Co., then still called Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), and Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) signed a contract with the Russian "Sovcomflot" for the construction of a batch of LNG tankers with a volume of at least 172 thousand cubic meters each. Now, due to sanctions, Hanwha Ocean Co. is saddled with 6 LNG carriers that can no longer be sold to Russia. Koreans cannot sell them to anyone else because they were originally designed and built for the Russian Arctic.
As of 2022, the cost of building one Arc7-class polar LNG carrier at a South Korean shipyard averaged $290 million, which means Koreans suffered a loss of almost two billion dollars. As to Russia, the construction of this type of LNG tankers has been undertaken by the shipyards of the Zvezda plant though their cost is going to be higher. @LauraRuHK

A big applause to Henry Johnston for revisiting the work of Giovanni Arrighi, an Italian political economist and historian of global capitalism. Arrighi demonstrated how the turn to financialization, which is initially quite lucrative, can provide a temporary and illusory respite from the trajectory of decline, but only defers the onset of the terminal crisis. https://swentr.site/business/594432-financialization-death-empires/

"NATO will create a mission to support Ukraine", Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said.

“This doesn’t mean that we’re entering the war, but rather that we’ll now be able to utilize NATO’s coordinating, training and planning capabilities to support Ukraine in a better manner,” he said following a meeting of the military bloc’s top diplomats in Brussels.
He noted that the mission will not participate in combat in Ukraine. (Source: TASS) ▪️Given that NATO is already supporting, coordinating and training Ukrainian forces, this proposal speaks volumes about NATO's desperation. More NATOids on the ground are necessary to keep an eye on Ukrainians and make sure that they keep fighting even when doing so is suicidal. @LauraRuHK

The Russian military has entered the suburbs of the city of Chasov Yar, in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and is close to taking all supply routes of the Ukrainian armed forces under fire control and disrupting their logistics in the city, Yan Gagin, an adviser to acting DPR Head Denis Pushilin, told Sputnik.

He said the liberation of Chasov Yar would pave the way for a further offensive of the Russian military toward the cities of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. (Source: Sputnik) @LauraRuHK

🇷🇺🇺🇦 ❗️The investigation received data from the mobile phones of those accused in the case of the terrorist attack in Crocus, proving the connection of the terrorists with Ukraine

It turned out that on the morning of February 24, 2024, that is, on the anniversary of the start of the special operation, one of the accomplices, at the direction of the curator, found and sent him screenshots of images of the Crocus entrances and access roads.

Photos of people in camouflage with a Ukrainian flag against the backdrop of destroyed houses and a Ukrainian postage stamp with an obscene gesture were found on the terrorist’s phone.

This data may indicate a connection between the terrorist attack and the special operation , the Investigative Committee believes. (Source: Sputnik) @LauraRuHK

🇨🇳🇺🇸Janet Yellen, US Treasury secretary, is in China for a week-long visit, her second in nine months. She arrived on April 4, on the same day Joe Biden called Xi Jinping and Chinese people celebrated Qing Ming, a traditional festival dedicated to the memory of ancestors: on this public holiday families visit the tombs of their ancestors, clean the gravesites and make ritual offerings. Strange timing for Biden's call, it must have been pretty urgent though the true reason for this call, its content and tone is anybody's guess. But let's talk about Yellen's visit. According to the US press release, Yellen will discuss "China's unfair trade practices, industrial overcapacity, bilateral cooperation on countering illicit finance and climate change." The usual list of complaints from a country that is hellbent on containing China's hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development. China argues that its companies are being unfairly excluded by developed nations that can’t compete on price. Last month Beijing accused the US of engaging in “classic protectionism” by seeking to erect barriers to Chinese EVs, and filed a case with the World Trade Organization over American subsidies for the industry. Yellen's focus will most likely be on financial stability, that is she wants China to hold on to, and buy, US Treasury bonds, given that her country's national debt stands at $34 trillion, almost equal to the combined value of the economies of China, Germany, Japan, India and the UK,

But as the global price of gold soars, China has more options in the management of its assets portfolios. And this worries the US. @LauraRuHK

In her latest article Tara McCormack succinctly exposes the hypocrisy that led to the rise and fall of unipolarity and the era of the Euro-Atlantic alliance’s free hand to punish at will. Don't miss it.

Human rights trumped sovereignty as NATO bombs dropped on Yugoslavia in support of the secession of the Serbian region of Kosovo. Kofi Annan argued that no government had the right to hide behind sovereignty. State sovereignty was an idol that had to dissolve, argued the darling of the West Vaclav Havel. And NATO, far from acting in pursuit of narrow state interests, claimed to be acting in the name of universal human rights, encapsulated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s argument that “Kosovo” was a just war based on values not interests. The Responsibility to Protect report, published in 2001, argued that if only we re-conceptualised sovereignty as the responsibility that states had to their citizens, then there was no contest between human rights and sovereignty. When states failed in their responsibilities, they were no longer sovereign, and intervention would be a form of “sovereignty restoration”. Yet for all the 1990s and 2000s statements about a post-sovereign world of universal rights and values, it was only ever a post-sovereign world for some. Only some states could choose when to intervene and which other states needed a spot of social-contract-restoring bombardment. However, the unipolar moment was to be short-lived, and the era of the Euro-Atlantic alliance’s free hand to punish at will would soon be drawing to a close. But perhaps the most significant change was Russia’s revival. In 2015’s war in Syria, the end of the unipolar moment was revealed for all to see. Now, outside of Brussels, Washington, and London, the cant of humanitarian intervention and human rights is met with a polite smile and a shrug at best. The brief unipolar political moment that allowed the Euro-Atlantic alliance to rule, and to dole out punishments in the name of universal human rights as it saw fit, is over. In its place we are seeing a return to a more complicated world of spheres of influence.

@LauraRuHK https://cafeamericainmag.com/25-years-after-the-triumph-of-humanitarian-intervention/

IN CINA SARA' PIU' FACILE PAGARE IN CONTANTI Pechino intende aumentare il numero di sportelli automatici per il cambio valuta e offrire incentivi a tassisti e negozianti affinche' accettino pagamenti in contanti e carte di credito oltre a quelli digitali, ben piu' popolari e diffusi nel paese. Con l'aumento dei visitatori stranieri le autorita' cinesi si sono rese conto delle difficolta' che molti di loro incontrano ad usare app per il pagamento digitale. Personalmente non ho mai avuto problemi ad usare contanti o carte di credito, ma e' anche vero che uso il trasporto pubblico invece dei taxi e che, non amando lo shopping, la mia esperienza di pagamento si limita ad alberghi, bar, ristoranti e negozi di generi alimentari. Il motivo per cui tassisti e negozianti cinesi preferiscono le app e' la loro comodita' e spese inferiori: le carte di credito impongono infatti commissioni piu' elevate rispetto ad Alipay e WeChat, mentre i contanti devono poi essere versati in banca. @LauraRuHK