Дмитрий Песков прокомментировал задержание сотрудницы МИД РФ в аэропорту Парижа.
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"Nous n’avons pas l’intention de laisser cette situation sans conséquences" : la Russie affirme qu’une employée d’un ministère a été détenue temporairement dans un aéroport français
La Russie affirme qu’une employée d’un ministère a été détenue temporairement dans un aéroport français. L’ambassadeur français à Moscou a été convoqué.
La porte-parole du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, Maria Zakharova, à Moscou, en Russie, le 14 janvier 2025. EPA - YURI KOCHETKOV
Le nouvel ambassadeur français à Moscou, Nicolas de Rivière, a été convoqué au ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, après la brève détention d’une employée d’un ministère russe dans un aéroport français, a annoncé mercredi 9 avril la porte-parole de la diplomatie russe.
"Suite aux démarches entreprises, notre collègue a finalement été autorisée à entrer dans le pays, mais elle a dû passer une journée dans la zone frontalière de l’aéroport", a dénoncé Maria Zakharova, directrice de l’information et de la presse du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères lors de son briefing hebdomadaire.
"Nous n’avons pas l’intention de laisser cette situation sans conséquences", a-t-elle averti après cet incident diplomatique entre Moscou et Paris, qui intervient dans un contexte de crise politique sur fond de guerre en Ukraine, la France étant l’un des plus grands alliés de Kyiv au sein de l’Union européenne.
"Bien entendu, nous condamnons de tels agissements de la France et les considérons comme inadmissibles (...) Cela aggrave encore plus nos relations bilatérales déjà abîmées", a déclaré le porte-parole de la présidence russe, Dmitri Peskov, lors d'un briefing.
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Moscou dit avoir convoqué l'ambassadeur français après la brève détention d'une employée d'un ministère russe en France
"Nous n'avons pas l'intention de laisser cette situation sans conséquences", a prévenu mercredi la porte-parole de la diplomatie russe, Maria Zakharova.
La Russie s'est émue, mercredi 9 avril, de la brève détention d'une employée d'un ministère russe dans un aéroport français, dimanche. La porte-parole de la diplomatie russe a affirmé que le nouvel ambassadeur français à Moscou, Nicolas de Rivière, a été convoqué au ministère russe des Affaires étrangères. "Ce qui s'est passé le 6 avril à l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle est inexplicable", s'est indignée Maria Zakharova lors de son briefing hebdomadaire.
"Les services frontaliers français ont détenu sans explication une employée du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, membre de la délégation officielle russe, et ont saisi son téléphone et son ordinateur", a-t-elle raconté. "Suite aux démarches entreprises, notre collègue a finalement été autorisée à entrer dans le pays."
Une source diplomatique a cependant démenti auprès de franceinfo la convocation de l'ambassadeur français. Selon cette source, le numéro deux de l'ambassade s'est, en revanche, rendu au ministère des Affaires étrangères russe, où il avait été convié pour clarifier l'affaire.
Les relations entre Moscou et Paris sont glaciales depuis que le Kremlin a déclenché, il y a plus de trois ans, un assaut contre l'Ukraine, soutenue par la France. "Nous n'avons pas l'intention de laisser cette situation sans conséquences", a averti la porte-parole de la diplomatie russe, après cet incident diplomatique entre Moscou et Paris.
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Tensions France-Russie : Moscou hausse le ton après la détention d’une diplomate russe à Roissy
Une employée du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères a été brièvement détenue à l’aéroport de Roissy, menant à la convocation du numéro deux de l’ambassade de France à Moscou. Un nouveau soubresaut diplomatique, dans un contexte de fortes tensions liées à la guerre en Ukraine.
Les relations diplomatiques entre Paris et Moscou se crispent davantage. Le numéro deux de l’ambassade de France à Moscou, Zacharie Gross, a été convoqué au ministère russe des Affaires étrangères, a appris Le Figaro ce mercredi 9 avril. La convocation du diplomate intervient après la brève détention d’une employée du ministère russe des Affaires étrangères à l’aéroport de Roissy. Cette dernière se rendait à une conférence à l’Unesco, à Paris, lorsqu’elle a été retenue et interrogée.
La porte-parole de la diplomatie russe, Maria Zakharova, a précisé que le téléphone et l’ordinateur de la diplomate avaient été confisqués. L’employée n’aurait pas reçu son visa à temps, selon Maria Zakharova, et aurait finalement pu entrer sur le territoire français après 24 heures passées dans la zone frontalière.
Vers des « conséquences » ?
Une note a ensuite été envoyée au Quai d’Orsay par l’ambassade de Russie à Paris pour protester contre cette brève détention, relate Le Figaro. « Nous n’avons pas l’intention de laisser cette situation sans conséquences », a prévenu la porte-parole de la diplomatie russe lors d’un point hebdomadaire, sans détailler quels leviers pourraient être actionnés.
Le Kremlin a également condamné les « agissements » de la France, les jugeant « inadmissibles ». « Cela aggrave encore plus nos relations bilatérales déjà abîmées », ajoute enfin le porte-parole de la présidence russe, Dmitri Peskov.
Les relations entre la France et la Russie sont au plus bas, trois ans après le lancement de la guerre d’invasion russe de l’Ukraine, condamnée par Paris. Le président de la République Emmanuel Macron dénonce les bombardements russes tuant des civils en Ukraine, reproche à Moscou de refuser l’offre de paix formulée par les États-Unis et décrit la Russie comme une « menace » multidimensionnelle pour la France et l’Europe.
LIVE: President Macron Hosts Serbian President Vucic in Paris for Key Talks
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Putin wants Western Balkans as his next ‘playground,’ UK warns
Tensions are rising in the Western Balkans, Europe’s ‘other hotspot.’ Britain’s foreign affairs chief David Lammy sees the ‘long hand of Russian interference.’
BELGRADE — Alarm bells are ringing in Belgrade, Kosovo and Sarajevo.
While Europe’s attention has been focused on Ukraine, tensions in the Western Balkans have been simmering, and leaders in the region — as well as in Britain — worry Russian President Vladimir Putin will use the moment to further exploit fault lines in the former Yugoslavia.
The Western Balkans are described as “the other hotspot” by figures in the upper echelons of the U.K. government — and with the heat now being turned up, Britain is pushing for all six states in the region to join the EU to ward off Russian influence.
“At this time, with war in Europe and seeing the long hand of Russian interference also in the region, you would be a fool if you took your eye off the Western Balkans, where there are still legacy issues that are yet to be overcome,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told POLITICO during a visit to the region last week.
“Putin’s interests here are to keep the region destabilized. It’s in his interests to keep the countries that make up the Western Balkans on edge, to have a destabilized population and to wage a cyber and hybrid war.”
All six western Balkan states are attempting to become EU member states, a protracted process in which geopolitics can be as important as fulfilling alignment tasks. They face significant challenges, both domestically and with their neighbors. Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, has been pushed into crisis as Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of the country’s three-way presidency, evades arrest for his separatist policies. Meanwhile, Serbia accuses Kosovo of repressing its Serb minority, while Kosovo blames Serbia for violence within its territory.
Foreign policy experts and ministers alike fear the Kremlin will try to capitalize on the deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions to stoke further unrest across the Balkans, entrenching Russia’s own interests and creating yet more troubles in the EU’s backyard.
“Right now they must move forward or they will continue to be Russia’s playground,” said one U.K. official, granted anonymity to discuss matters they were not authorized to comment on publicly. There is now “quite a small window” in which the Balkan states need to “stop sitting on the fence” before Brussels is instead consumed by Ukraine’s accession, they said.
‘Paradox is alive here’
Lammy believes that Serbia — despite the democratic backsliding, the cozying up to Russia, and its continued refusal to recognize Kosovo — genuinely wants to accede to the EU, a process it started back in 2009.
“But there are different perspectives about how to get there and how quickly and how seriously,” Lammy said during an interview in the Serbian capital Belgrade. “And there is an alternative vision, and that is a darker vision. It’s a position that harks to oligarchy, corruption, heavy state control, much more of a police state. There’s that vision as well, and those things are contested in this part of the world.”
The huge hurdles Serbia must overcome to join the bloc are on stark display on the streets of Belgrade. The increasingly authoritarian government led by President Aleksandar Vučić, who recently welcomed Dodik with open arms, is being severely tested by a wave of protests on a scale never before seen in Serbia.
Hundreds of thousands have marched against government corruption, in demonstrations organized by students over a canopy collapse at a renovated railway station in the city of Novi Sad that killed 16 people in November. They continue to blockade roads daily.
They’ve even extended their protests to counter a proposed luxury real estate development by U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The hotel complex is planned on the site of the bombed-out former Yugoslav defense ministry, a memorial to the NATO airstrikes that brought the war with Kosovo to a close in 1999. The students link that plan to other real estate deals they say are corrupt. Many in the country also feel distaste at the Trump family’s profiting from a site wrecked by a bombing campaign led by Washington.
The students’ decentralized model of organizing means there is no clear leader that can be targeted in a crackdown, but the authorities have been accused of using an illegal sound cannon against demonstrators. Belgrade has also said that Russia’s spy services helped respond to the unrest.
Lammy told POLITICO that “we stand alongside the people,” before raising the protests and the sonic weapon use claims during a Wednesday meeting with Vučić at his presidential palace. The foreign secretary was there to sign a series of accords with the twin aims of tackling illegal migration and holding Serbia closer to the West.
But it was clear in a statement to assembled broadcasters that Vučić, the 6-foot-6-inch populist who has spent more than a decade at the top of Serbian politics, did not take kindly to being challenged. “It doesn’t even occur to me to make any comments on protests and demonstrations in Great Britain since I respect the sovereignty of Great Britain,” he told Serbia’s tightly controlled media.
Vučić also denied that force or acoustic weapons had been used against protesters, and issued a staunch defense of Dodik after Lammy raised his “unconstitutional” actions during their statements to the press. (The Serbian government did not respond to requests for an interview.)
EU flags are not waved at the protests. Students perceive Brussels as having turned a blind eye to the endemic corruption they are condemning, as the EU tries both to bring Vučić into the fold and to gain access to Serbia’s lithium deposits for electric-vehicle battery-makers.
Unlike elsewhere in the Balkans, Serbian approval for joining the EU doesn’t appear overwhelming, and widespread support for Russia remains. The process could be even harder if the country has to recognize Kosovo as a condition for accession. Graffiti throughout Belgrade claims “Kosovo is Serbia.” A denial of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys is visible from the central Republic Square. Common, too, are daubings of “fuck NATO fuck EU.”
Serbia has discreetly allowed its ammunition to end up in Ukraine, but it is one of just two European countries not to sanction Russia. Its leadership advocates joining the EU, but it also maintains close relations with Moscow and China, with whom Belgrade has been deepening economic and military ties. “Paradox is alive here,” as Lammy put it.
Fault lines and overtures in Kosovo
Lammy’s visit to the region began 150 miles south in Kosovo, where in the capital Pristina his welcome could not have been warmer. Britain, the U.S. and NATO are held in the highest regard there for coming to Kosovo’s aid in the war with Serbia. A generation of children named Tonibler, Clinton or Madeleine after the Western leaders who helped the nation win independence are now in their mid-20s.
In an interview with POLITICO in her office, Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani, an energetic millennial who has held high office since 2021, makes it very clear all is not well in relations with Serbia, which she describes as their “crazy hegemonic neighbor.”
Recent flashpoints include the siege of a Serbian Orthodox monastery in Banjska village in northern Kosovo in 2023 by gunmen in armored vehicles. One policeman and three ethnic Serb attackers were killed in a heavy firefight that Kosovo blames on Serbia, which Belgrade disputes.
Then there was an explosion that damaged energy and water systems at a crucial canal last December, which Kosovo called a “terrorist attack.” Serbia denied involvement and alleged the incident was being used as a pretext to crack down on Serbs in Kosovo.
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti, whom Belgrade accuses of repressing Serbs in his country, has long warned that the “threat of another war” is real, citing Serbia’s intensifying cooperation with what Osmani calls the “triangle of evil” — Russia, China and Iran. Vučić has also frequently repeated the omen of a new conflict in the region, claiming Kosovo is treating the Serb community unfairly.
NATO-led troops from 29 countries assigned to the Kosovo Force, or KFOR, are crucial to maintaining the fragile peace. POLITICO was at their Camp Film City base as British troops told Lammy they believe Russia is supporting Serbian activities in Kosovo, including with intelligence operations, an assessment a senior official in Pristina confirmed. The soldiers also monitor political rallies and elections, as well as key infrastructure following the canal explosion.
Osmani alleges that Serbia interfered in Kosovo’s recent general elections; that the “Serbian-Russian Humanitarian Centre” on the border with Kosovo is really a “Russian spy center”; and that Moscow has tripled the amount spent on disinformation in the Western Balkans since invading Ukraine.
She insists that America under Trump is a reliable ally, but warns that if Putin emerges emboldened from U.S.-led peacekeeping talks with Ukraine, the Balkans could be “fertile ground” for a “spillover” of that conflict.
“If these autocrats seeking destabilization are able to do whatever they wish … things can escalate very, very quickly in this region,” she says. “So prevention and deterrence is key, and we should not allow Putin to have his way. Vučić has been dancing to Putin’s tune for way too long. It’s about time he decides where he wants to take his country.”
Lammy was traveling the region with Karen Pierce, the recently appointed special envoy to the Western Balkans. Until February, Pierce was Britain’s ambassador to Washington, where she was widely praised for her work with both the Biden and Trump administrations. She has a long history in the region, and her appointment is seen as confirming “just how seriously the U.K. takes the Balkans,” said one European diplomat.
In Osmani’s meeting with Lammy, the president pressed him over signing an economic and security deal that would include bilateral arms purchasing and more joint operations between their troops. She also told POLITICO she had “formally expressed” her country’s willingness to join the peacekeeping force that the U.K. and France are trying to organize for Ukraine — but she did make it conditional on the U.K. signing her desired deal.
The president hit out at the “active appeasement” by unnamed parties in the EU, whom she criticized for continuing to hand out money to Serbia despite the tensions. Kosovo formally applied to join the bloc in 2022, but is still not recognised by five member states and has been told, like Serbia, that it needs to do more to normalize relations.
She said Lammy should tell Vučić to “stop attacking his neighbors, very plain and simple,” though in the interview with POLITICO he declined to attribute any blame for the Banjska siege. (Privately, British officials admit there is evidence of Serbian involvement.)
‘It’s developing slowly’
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dodik, the fiery president of the country’s Serb-run entity, was sentenced to a one-year prison term and a six-year ban on holding public office for defying the orders of the international peace envoy, whose position was created to stop the region slipping back into war. He has since evaded a nationwide arrest warrant to be greeted by Vučić in Serbia and by Putin in Moscow.
The U.S. and Britain have sanctioned him in recent years, but there are those who want them to go further, such as Arminka Helic, a refugee of the Yugoslav wars who is now a member of the U.K.’s House of Lords.
“We have imposed certain sanctions, but they’re not devastating,” said the former government foreign policy adviser. She also has advocated to ministers for the U.K. to send troops to the EU’s peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Lammy doesn’t rule out hitting Dodik with fresh sanctions, declining to comment on such measures except to say “they’re always kept under review.”
One disaster scenario Helic envisages is that Dodik, positioning himself as on the “right of the right” and falling victim to a “big leftwing conspiracy,” could succeed in appealing to Trump to recognize the independence of his region in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In one of Belgrade’s smoke-filled bars, Helena Ivanov, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society think tank, warned that the EU cannot “afford to lose” Serbia given the geopolitical circumstances, arguing it could trigger a ripple of problems across the region.
“If you go back to the Yugoslav time, had someone paid more attention to what was going on here in the ‘80s, I think things could have played out very differently. I think the West woke up to the realities of what was going on in Yugoslavia, too little, too late,” she said.
“And I’m wondering whether something very similar could happen right now, not in terms of the outcome being the same — like you’re getting a war, no — but waking up to a reality where Russia and Chinese influences are so deeply entrenched into this country that it’s too little, too late.”
Helic agrees that the West is paying too little attention, and attributes that to Russia’s gradual creep into the region.
“It’s like a disease because it’s developing slowly and invisibly. It’s not a cut; it’s like a slow-burning infection and contagion,” she said.
There is the influence of state media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as the Kremlin-linked Russian Orthodox Church. Disinformation campaigns are being waged on social media as well.
Like Ivanov, Helic thinks the danger could become obvious to outsiders very suddenly if Putin is allowed to get his way, but perhaps only when it’s too late.
“It can go from bad to worse overnight because this has been a process of unravelling the state institutions since 2006, everything that we achieved after the wars in ’95,” Helic said. “Russia doesn’t want a stable Balkans because it’s a constant, never-ending toothache for the West, and it suits Russia just fine.”
_________________
С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Бывший украинский офицер полетел в космос с русскими.
Бортинженер Алексей Витальевич Зубрицкий.
«8 апреля 2025 года в 08:47:15 по московскому времени с космодрома Байконур стартовала ракета «Союз-2.1а» № К15000-075 с космическим кораблём «Союз МС-27» № 758. Пуск прошёл с пусковой установки №6 площадки №31 под управлением команд Госкорпорации «Роскосмос». Запуск завершился успешно: корабль вышел на околоземную орбиту, несущий экипаж к Международной космической станции.
На борту «Союз МС-27» — экипаж 73-й экспедиции: командир Сергей Николаевич Рыжиков (Россия), бортинженер Алексей Витальевич Зубрицкий (Россия) и бортинженер-2 Джонатан Йон Ким (США). Для Рыжикова это третий полёт, а для Зубрицкого и Кима — первый. Они проведут около восьми месяцев на МКС, участвуя в научных экспериментах в рамках экспедиций 72 и 73, с возвращением в декабре 2025 года».
Это официальное сообщение Роскосмоса.
В первую очередь – молодцы! Я глубоко убежден, что космос — это неизбежный путь развития цивилизации и каждый шаг за пределы атмосферы — это шаг по пути развития человечества.
Но в этой новости для многих будет гораздо интересней другое, а именно – биография нашего космонавта, Алексея Зубрицкого.
Космонавт родился 22 августа 1992 года в селе Владимирское Запорожской области.
В 2013 году Алексей окончил Харьковский университет Воздушных сил Украины имени Ивана Кожедуба по специальности «управление действиями подразделений авиации».
В период с 2013 по 2014 год, Зубрицкий проходил службу в должности лётчика авиационного звена 204-й Севастопольской бригады тактической авиации Воздушных Сил Украины, дислоцировавшейся на аэродроме Бельбек в городе Севастополь, Автономной Республики Крым.
После воссоединения в марте 2014 года Крыма с Россией Алексей Зубрицкий стал военнослужащим Вооружённых сил РФ и с марта 2014 года продолжил службу лётчиком в 38-м истребительном авиационном полку ВВС России, находящемся в том же месте дислокации, в городе Севастополь.
Но парня, судя по всему, тянуло выше.
И 1 ноября 2018-го он был принят на должность «кандидат в космонавты-испытатели» отряда космонавтов им. Ю.А. Гагарина Госкорпорации «Роскосмос». По окончании общекосмической подготовки 2 декабря 2020 года Алексею присвоена квалификация «космонавт-испытатель».
И вот 8 апреля 2025 года простой запорожский парень, подчеркну – бывший украинский офицер, полетел в космос.
Напомню, в украинском обществе в умы людей давно внедрен тезис о том, что все бывшие военнослужащие Украины, перешедшие в Крыму на сторону РФ – изгои, давно уволены, у них нет шансов на карьерный рост. А еще им всем в личных делах ставят штамп «склонен к измене».
И вообще – Россия страшное тоталитарное государство, где украинцев всячески унижают и зажимают.
Интересно, что такие люди скажут, узнав про полет Алексея?
Вот вам ярчайший пример того, что в России у всех равные возможности и никто не делит людей на первый и второй сорт. И военнослужащих Украины, перешедших на сторону России, никто не гнобит. И самый простой парень из пригорода Запорожья может пробиться в космос.
Цитата:
Трансляция запуска пилотируемого корабля «Союз МС-27».
Trump's Tariffs Show Someone Finally Fighting China's Treatment of America, with Bevan and Cannon.
Цитата:
Trump says he's pausing tariffs because people are 'afraid'.
Цитата:
BREAKING NEWS: President Trump Speaks To Reporters After Shock 90-Day Pause On Most Tariffs
Цитата:
Markets soar after Trump announces tariffs pause | BBC News.
Цитата:
China issues US travel advisory as Trump ramps up tariff retaliation
The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism Wednesday cited a “deterioration of economic and trade relations.”
The Chinese government issued a new travel advisory for the United States on Wednesday amid growing tensions between the two nations sparked by President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs.
The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism cited a “deterioration of economic and trade relations” and the “security situation” with the U.S. in its risk advisory. The Chinese government issued the advisory on the same day that Washington and Beijing levied retaliatory tariffs on one another.
Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday to up the ante again, saying he’d be levying 125 percent tariffs charged to China “effective immediately.” He also issued a 90 day pause on tariffs on other countries — charging a universal 10 percent tariff in the interim while singling out Beijing in his post.
“At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
This batch of reciprocal import taxes, in addition to the Chinese travel advisory, marks the latest escalation in the trade war between the U.S. and China, launched by Trump last week as part of a broader campaign to reset American trade relationships that he has long decried as unfair.
The tit-for-tat could prove immensely costly to consumers on both sides of the Pacific: Until Wednesday afternoon’s 125 percent tariff announcement from Trump, China has matched each U.S. import tax with one of its own. Taken together, China has thus far imposed 84 percent tariffs on U.S. goods.
While other countries have rushed to open talks with the White House and avoid the fallout, China has been resolute, its commerce ministry insisting it would continue to fight and take “countermeasures” against the U.S. if necessary.
“The Ministry of Culture and Tourism prompted Chinese tourists to fully assess the risk of traveling to the United States, and to travel with caution,” the notification on the Ministry’s website reads.
The U.S. currently has China on a level two travel advisory, warning U.S. travelers to “exercise increased caution.” But that advisory represents a softening from the country’s previous level three advisory — “reconsider travel” — that was changed in part after U.S. citizens were released in a prisoner swap last November.
Neither the White House nor the Chinese embassy in Washington immediately responded to a request for comment.
Democratic group hammers Trump, Republicans over tax plans in new ad
Thank You.
A Democratic group formed to counter Donald Trump’s tax policies is launching a Tax Day-themed ad criticizing the administration and Republican lawmakers over potentially pursuing cuts to Medicaid to fund the president’s agenda.
The nonprofit Families Over Billionaires is putting six figures behind the ad that will run on social media and streaming platforms through Tuesday in the DMV market, according to information shared first with POLITICO.
“This Tax Day, I want to thank Republicans in Congress for having the guts to slash health care for families, seniors, and our veterans — all to give billionaires like me another tax break,” a man says in the ad as a butler hands him a refund check on a silver platter.
Democrats’ latest attack comes as the House is set to vote as soon as today on the framework to advance Trump’s sweeping border security, energy and tax agenda that cleared the Senate last week.
House Republicans are looking at major reductions to Medicaid to help fund the party-line push to enact Trump’s priorities — though the president reiterated last week that he would not approve cuts to the program.
But Democrats are hammering away at it anyway. Families Over Billionaires has launched a series of ads since its launch in late January targeting vulnerable Republicans over the GOP’s tax plans. The group counts former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), former Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and the Service Employees International Union among its backers.
Цитата:
Vaalimainokset lupaavat tasa-arvoa ja oikeuden-mukaisuutta – ”Ei puhuttele”, sanoo kuntapolitiikan konkari
Puolueet ja ehdokkaat lupaavat vaali-ilmoittelussaan asioita, joista voi olla vain samaa mieltä. Käytännön asioita ilmoituksissa näkyy vähän.
Puolueet ja ehdokkaat käsittelevät mainoksissaan hyvin vähän käytännön asioita. Mainoslauseet ovat niin yleisellä tasolla, että monet niistä voisi vaihtaa puolueelta tai ehdokkaalta toiselle, eikä lopputulos näyttäisi mitenkään kummalliselle.
– Tämä on ollut vaaliretoriikan haaste ties kuinka kauan. Kuinka rakentaa samaistumista mahdollisimman laajalle yleisölle, mutta samaan aikaan välttää se, ettei puhuttelekaan ketään, sanoo Lapin yliopiston politiikkatieteiden dosentti Jouni Tilli.
Katsotaan vaikkapa jyväskyläläiseen ilmaisjakelulehteen ostettuja vaalimainoksia ja niiden iskulauseita. Ne ovat muun muassa tällaisia:
• Hyvinvoinnista elinvoimaa
• Kyllä on väliä...
• Oikealla asialla
• Kaiken voi tehdä reilummin
• Oikeudenmukaisuutta päätöksentekoon
Mainoksissa on asioita, joita kukaan ei varmasti vastusta: ei löydy ehdokasta, joka kertoisi olevansa väärällä asialla tai vaatisi epäoikeudenmukaisuutta päätöksentekoon.
– Oikeudenmukaisuus on jo niin yleisen tason ilmaus, että se on melkein menettänyt merkityksensä. Se on niin itsestään selvä, Tilli sanoo.
Osin mainonnan mitäänsanomattomuus on seurausta siitä, ettei haluta suututtaa ja karkottaa ketään.
– Patenttiratkaisua ei ole, mutta olisi hyvä miettiä jotain muutakin kuin ne perinteiset kliseet. Mainokseen on kovin helppo vetäistä tasa-arvoa, työtä ja toimeentuloa kaikille, sanoo Tilli.
Pitäisi erottautua, sanovat konkarit
Paavo Barck on SDP:n pitkän linjan kunnallisvaikuttaja Mikkelistä, mutta jättäytyy pois politiikasta näissä vaaleissa. Hän tunnistaa mainosten onttouden.
– Se on vanha malli, ollut jo vuosikymmeniä, samaa vain toistetaan. Pitäisi jollain pyrkiä erottautumaan, nämä mainokset eivät puhuttele millään tavalla, Barck sanoo.
Erottautumisesta puhuu myös Aila Paloniemi, keskustan entinen kansanedustaja ja pitkäaikainen valtuutettu Jyväskylästä. Hänkään ei ole ehdolla näissä vaaleissa.
Paloniemen mukaan ehdokkaan kannattaisi nostaa esille jokin itselle tärkeä teema tai asia, jota aikoo politiikassa ajaa, mutta muitakin keinoja erottautumiseen on.
– Ensimmäisissä vaaleissani esitteeni oli kuvataiteilijan tekemä. Pääsin muuten läpi niissä vaaleissa.
Ilmaisjakelulehdestä löytyy joitakin teemaan perustuvia mainoksia, kuten se, jossa ilotulitusten vastustajana profiloitunut ehdokas kertoo koira sylissä haluavansa rajat räiskeelle.
Muita teemoja ovat esimerkiksi ”kunta kansalle, kapitalismi loitolle”, ”esteettömyys ja saavutettavuus kaikille”, ja ”yhteistyö yhdistysten kanssa”.
Raha ratkaisee
Syytä vaalimainosten onttouteen voi etsiä perinteiden lisäksi rahasta. Lehtimainos maksaa satoja euroja, eikä siihen silloinkaan montaa sanaa mahdu. Lopputulos on mainos, jossa näkyy naama, numero, puolueen värit ja pari sanaa vaikkapa kokemuksesta ja yhteistyökyvystä.
– Melkoinen mainosnikkari saa olla, että saa 3–4 sanaan merkityksellisen kokonaisuuden, jolla ei kovin paljon karkota äänestäjiä, sanoo Aila Paloniemi.
Kunta- tai hyvinvointialueen poliitikkona toimiminen ei myöskään juuri tuo tuloja, joiden vuoksi mainontaan kannattaisi panostaa.
– Talkoillahan sitä tehdään. Nyt kun en ole itse mukana eikä voida syyttää omaan pussiin pelaamisesta, voin rehellisesti sanoa, että päättäjien palkkiot ovat työmäärään suhteutettuna onnettomat, sanoo Paavo Barck.
House Republicans want to ratify President Donald Trump’s efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Democrats have other ideas.
At a House Natural Resources Committee markup Wednesday of legislation from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to formally redesignate the oceanic basin as the “Gulf of America,” Democrats threw out alternative suggestions, forcing Republicans to take amendment votes to name it something else.
One amendment would have renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of Ignorance.” Another would have dubbed it the “Gulf of Helene,” after a major hurricane that wreaked havoc off the coast of Florida last year.
In a similar vein, Democrats threw out calling it the “Gulf of American Should Rejoin The Paris Accord” — the global emissions reduction pledge from which Trump has on two separate occasions withdrawn the United States.
The most dramatic proposal from Democrats was to simply just rename the entire planet after Trump.
“Let’s skate to where the puck is going” said the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, noting that Congress should forget about simply renaming one body of water and think bigger.
He said his amendment offered an opportunity for Republicans to “show how mindlessly cultish you are.” He offered these thoughts next to an illustration of a golden statue of Trump on horseback.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the chair of the committee, suggested that that particular amendment was not germane. Huffman did not disagree.
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Hole lot of trouble! Council contractor paints white lines over large potholes BEFORE they were filled in
Residents have poked holes in a council contractor's work after they painted over two large road defects before they were filled.
The blunder took place near Wakes Colne on the A1124, which runs between Halstead and Colchester.
Essex Highways have since confessed that the mistake took place following a 'diary error' which saw its contractor paint the road before resurfacing took place.
Despite admitting fault, locals are still furious over the matter, with one resident branding the matter as 'mismanaged idiocracy'.
James Joyce, 58, who regularly drives along the route to get to work, dubbed it an 'astonishing waste of money'.
'Words fail me, I can't think of a suitable superlative for the complete stupidity of this on so many levels by those responsible.'
'So let's spend money on new white lines before we fill in the potholes and sometime previously we'll put new cats eyes in without bothering to remove the old ones.'
He also alleged that the A1124 route had been in 'managed decline', whilst taking another swipe at Essex Highways and the council for the mix-up.
Locals have hit out at Essex Highways and the county council after contractors painted over potholes before they were filled in
Essex Highways have since confessed that the error took place on the A1124 following a 'diary error' which saw its contractor paint the road before resurfacing took place
The A1124 - a route which mainly runs through the countryside - was at one time a major highway serving Colchester.
Last December, the government also said the East of England would receive an additional £72 million for pothole as well as payment repairs in 2025.
However only 36 percent of routes in the region are in a good condition, according to the BBC.
A spokesman for Essex Highways said it was reviewing how the error in Wakes Colne occurred.
'We understand how this looks and why it has been pointed out, but there is a simple explanation - the lining works in this location progressed ahead of our planned patching works.'
'The road defect is still scheduled for repair, and the markings will be refreshed afterwards.
'We are reviewing how the scheduling was handled with our contractor to hopefully avoid similar issues in the future.'
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Четвёртый год войны. В.Баранец, В.Дандыкин, А.Матвийчук, К.Сивков (10.04.2025)
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Russian Realism + European Dreams = UKRAINE DEFEAT
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Prince Harry pictured with wounded soldiers in surprise visit to Ukraine
Duke of Sussex sees services including prosthetics given to wounded civilians and fighters
The duke has made helping injured soldiers one of his most prominent causes (AP)
The Duke of Sussex has met war victims in Ukraine in an unannounced visit to the country as part of his work with wounded veterans, a spokesperson said.
Prince Harry visited the Superhumans Centre, an orthopaedic clinic in Lviv that treats and rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians.
He saw some of the sophisticated services provided free of charge, including prosthetics, reconstructive surgery and psychological help.
The duke, who served 10 years in the British Army, including two tours in Afghanistan, where he flew missions as an Apache helicopter co-pilot gunner, has made helping injured soldiers one of his most prominent causes.
He founded the Invictus Games in 2014 to offer wounded veterans the challenge of competing in sports events similar to the Paralympics.
Harry was accompanied by a contingent from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who have been through similar rehabilitation experiences.
The visit to the area in western Ukraine that has frequently been targeted with Russian missiles was not announced until after he was out of the country.
(выделено а.п.)
The prince was in London this week for a two-day Court of Appeal hearing to challenge the dismissal of his High Court claim against the Home Office over a decision that he should receive a different degree of protection when in the UK. He claims his life is at risk because of the downgrading of his security.
Harry, 40, is the second member of the royal family to visit Ukraine. His aunt, Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, became the first British royal to travel to the country since Russia’s 2022 invasion when she made an unannounced visit to Kyiv last year.
The royal family has consistently spoken out in support of Ukraine. The King warmly greeted president Volodymyr Zelensky at his Sandringham estate just two days after his extraordinary dressing-down by US president Donald Trump at the White House.
Harry's older brother, the Prince of Wales, met Ukrainian refugees during a two-day visit to Estonia last month.
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Prince Harry makes unannounced visit to wounded veterans in Ukraine
Visit came after prince spent two days at the high court appealing the government’s decision to strip him of security protection
…
It is in western Ukraine, an area that has frequently been targeted by Russian missiles, and the visit was not announced until after Harry was out of the country.
...
TARIFF PAUSE. White House chaos as problems multiply.
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Trump Pauses, Bond Crisis forces Tariff U-Turn, China Stands Firm; Shock Russian Toretsk Advance.
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Trump tariff pause, people YIPPY. Kallas, China enables Russia war. Elensky wants $50B US weapons.
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INTERVIEW: Worse than Biden. Judge Napolitano's verdict
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Prof. Glenn Diesen : Ukraine, Tariffs, and Europe.
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Richard D. Wolff and Michael Hudson: China Strikes Back as Trump Ignites New Tariff War!
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Donald Trump’s climbdown will be a turning point in his presidency
Editorial: Market forces have shown that the US president, for all his self-belief, is not invulnerable. The undoing of his foolhardy fiscal strategy is a wake-up call for the American establishment, which needs to recover its nerve and offer some checks and balances of its own
He blinked. Not since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 has an American president engaged in such a high-risk, high-stakes game of chicken with the future of his nation and the world.
In that lost age of American leadership, John F Kennedy faced down the Russians – and won. This week, Donald J Trump tried to face down China, the European Union and, most foolhardy of all, the capital markets. He lost.
Trump may or may not have thought himself playing some grandiose global poker match – but, in any case, he folded. He is left with what remains of his credibility in shreds, an unwelcome reputation as being even more unpredictable than previously assumed (a perversely awesome achievement), and the two largest economies in the world remain locked in something even worse than a trade war.
For all practical purposes, absurdly high tariffs in excess of 100 per cent on both sides have frozen trade in physical goods between America and China. That in itself will stymie economic progress for at least the next few months.
There is no spin that can explain the events of the past week as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.
The capital markets have bounced back – but from a brief but vicious bear market. Confidence has been drained from the world economy, and investors, businesses and households remain in a state of post-traumatic stress, despite the palpable relief.
Some, like Mr Trump’s cult apostle Scott Bessent, installed as Treasury secretary, claim with an impressively straight face that this was all some grand plan by President Trump to “goad” the Chinese into a corner and force them into a deal.
Implausible as it certainly is, this fanciful account is contradicted by the president himself, who wandered out of the White House to shrug his capitulation off. The president freely conceded that he’d changed course because of the reaction in financial markets, especially US Treasury bonds: “You have to be flexible… I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy. You know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”
The “Trump put”, in other words – a policy correction called forth by market volatility and observed during various crises in his first term – is still operational. It is also, evidently, still required to save the world economy from the ever-present danger of some blunder that would result in a Trump Slump.
The “bond vigilantes” administered some strong discipline on the White House in recent days, and, after some windy reluctance, the president eventually meekly complied. If only he were so obedient to the courts and the provisions of the Constitution of the United States.
President Trump is a man so lacking in self-awareness that his reflections on his tariff fiasco carry a satirical air. “No other president would do what I did,” he proudly declared.
And he was right. No other president in history would have been so foolish. He has deliberately taken an economy in rude health and subjected it to the punishment he has meted out since he returned to office. The 45 men who served before President Trump had to face wars, depressions, inflation, riots and countless crises – but none has so deliberately unleashed such harm on the living standards of Americans and on the world economy.
Nor would they have been so asinine as to tell the Chinese leadership to call them first for negotiations, at the same time as they were bragging that world leaders were queuing up to “kiss my ass”. President Xi, Mr Trump also observed, correctly, is a proud man who wants to find a way to strike a deal. Why, then, insult him? Why let the vice-president scorn “Chinese peasants”?
China – unlike Denmark, Panama or Ukraine – is far too big to be pushed around by the US. It will lose perhaps $500bn in export earnings soon, but that is also half a trillion dollars that won’t be lent to the US Treasury to keep the federal government afloat. Such is globalisation. Such is the reliance of America on borrowed money and a vigorous world economy to fund its giant twin deficits: the federal budget and international trade.
“Panicans”, Mr Trump called those who expressed doubt about the ability of tariffs to rebalance these deficits and make America wealthy again. These sirens hopelessly appealed to reason and the political damage he was causing to Republicans. They were being rational. In the end, though, it was he who panicked, and for that small mercy all should be grateful.
We have known for some considerable time that Mr Trump is not always a man of his word. We also know him to be a menace to constitutional governance, continually testing the limits of his powers and pushing his luck. He has seen off multiple legal challenges, packed the Supreme Court, appointed the most unworthy and under-qualified cabinet in history, captured the Republican Party and converted it into a personality cult, ignored Congress, suppressed the media and generally behaved as a disgrace to the office he holds.
He has betrayed allies and forfeited trusted allegiances. In around 80 days, he has dismantled the international frameworks that served the United States well for eight decades. He has appeased enemies. He knows no other way of operating.
Yet this week, he has met his match, at least in the financial sphere. But the markets care about money more than politics or morality. The checks and balances that should restrain Mr Trump in areas of life that are of no interest to the markets also need to be restored, strengthened and brought into contention.
Congress, the independent judiciary and the agencies need to recover their nerve. This week has proved that Donald Trump is not invulnerable. It should be a turning point.
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What Really Caused Trump to Switch Gears on Tariffs After "Yippy" Meltdowns, with Stu Burguiere.
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"Трамп раскалил кочергу!" // Война тарифов, игра на бирже и последствия для мира | Сергиенко.
‘Postbox of the future’ unveiled by Royal Mail
Royal Mail called the digital postboxes a ‘new lease of life’
Royal Mail introduced its 'postbox of the future' (Royal Mail)
Royal Mail has unveiled its “postbox of the future” that is solar-powered, has a built-in barcode reader and a large hatch that can accept parcels bigger than letterbox size.
In a historic change to the iconic red pillar box, Royal Mail said the new futuristic looking postbox “is to maximise choice and convenience for our customers” as the number of letters people send declines but parcels trade continues to boom.
Customers can scan their packages using the barcode scanner - powered using solar panels on the black lid that aim to store energy when there is no sun - and put it in the large draw that will open.
They can then use the Royal Mail app to request “proof of posting”, a new feature recently introduced so that people can post small, barcoded parcels in a postbox.
Five postboxes will be trialed in Herfordshire and Cambridgeshire (Royal Mail)
Five of the new postboxes are being piloted in Ware, Hertford and Fowlmere areas across Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, before Royal Mail intends to roll them out across UK.
Emma Gilthorpe, CEO at Royal Mail, said: “In making this historic change to our postboxes, our goal is to maximise choice and convenience for our customers. In an era where letter volumes continue to decline and parcels are booming, we are giving our iconic postboxes a new lease of life on street corners across the nation.
“You can now drop your parcel in any postbox where it fits - you just need a label with a barcode.”
Royal Mail hope the new postboxes will make it easier for people to send parcels using their services, as there are 115,000 postboxes in the UK, located within half a mile of 98 per cent of addresses. While the pillar boxes already accept parcels small enough to fit through a letterbox, thousands across the country could be adapted to accept larger parcels.
The parcel trade is booming while Brits are sending less letters than ever before (Royal Mail)
The parcel boom shows no sign of dying as more Britons continue to use parcel courier services to buy and sell online. Research from Virgin Media O2 Business and Depop in December found that 23.8 million Britons were turning to online secondhand selling platforms.
As the cost of living increased, second hand shopping became more important for a quarter of shoppers, with one in five increasing their use of second hand shopping apps in the final quarter of 2024.
As well as updating their postboxes, Royal Mail has more than 21,000 locations where customers can drop off and collect parcels, including 1,000 lockers, 7,000 Collect+ stores, 11,500 Post Office branches, 1,200 Royal Mail Customer Service Points and 1,200 parcel postboxes.
The new postbox pilot comes before Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services, is set to be sold to Czech energy billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group in a £3.57 billion deal.
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
US ambassador to Ukraine stepping down after three years
Bridget Brink was tapped for the role shortly after Russia’s invasion in April 2022
Bridget Brink, a longtime diplomat who spent the last three years serving as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in Kyiv, is stepping down from her post, the State Department said Thursday.
Her exit comes as the Trump administration pushes for a diplomatic end to the war between Russia and Ukraine and as the White House seeks a mineral deal it argues will provide Kyiv with the security guarantees it craves.
“Ambassador Brink’s been ambassador at the embassy in Ukraine for three years — during a time of war for those three years — an extraordinary performance there,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a press briefing. “And we wish her well.”
Brink — a career foreign service officer — was appointed in April 2022 by President Joe Biden, two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She sailed through the confirmation process with unanimous Senate support.
She became the first Senate-confirmed envoy to the country since 2019, when President Donald Trump fired Marie Yovanovitch, who later served as a key witness against him in his 2019 impeachment hearings. Brink has since been a consistent proponent of U.S. military assistance to the war-torn country.
But White House policy around Ukraine has changed drastically with Trump now back in the Oval Office.
The Biden administration and most of Europe had provided Ukraine with unambiguous support. But Trump has pressured and belittled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, heaping blame for the war that Russia started on Ukraine.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance delivered a stunning takedown of Zelenskyy in front of reporters in the Oval Office in February after he voiced skepticism about the value of diplomacy with Russia.
“You’ve done enough talking. You’re not winning this,” Trump told Zelenskyy. “You have a damn good chance of coming out OK because of us.”
Zelenskyy was then kicked out of the White House.
“It’s a reminder when it comes to the issues that we think about that surround this conversation, is that we know that we’re working for that war to end,” Bruce said. “And that is our focus.”
Brink’s relationship with Zelenskyy has recently been rocky. Last week, Zelenskyy slammed the outgoing ambassador for failing to call out Russia in a statement she released after a Russian ballistic missile killed at least 19 people and injured more than 50 in the town of Kryvyi Rih.
“Unfortunately, the response from the U.S. Embassy is surprisingly disappointing – such a strong country, such a strong people, and yet such a weak reaction,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “They are afraid to even say the word ‘Russian’ when speaking about the missile that murdered children.”
Reality Check: What Trump’s Supposed Retreat Really Means in a Historic Trade War
Even with Trump’s recent reversal, net tariffs are still the highest they’ve been in a century. We break down what this all means.
At the start of this month, President Donald Trump announced enormous tariffs on nations across the globe. Just as the tariffs took effect Wednesday, he changed course, announcing a 90-day pause on most of them in the face of market tremors and economic worries.
But even with Trump’s recent reversal, net tariffs are still much higher than they were before he was elected, and sky-high tariffs on China remain in place. What does this mean for the economy, the world and for Trump? POLITICO Magazine breaks it all down.
What does the tariff picture look like after the back and forth over the past 10 days?
Much of the news over the past day has focused on the 90-day pause. Markets initially rebounded; many traders seemed relieved to avoid a worst-case scenario. But that ignored the reality: Significant tariffs remain in place. The effect even after Trump’s partial pause is a 10-fold increase in levies on goods imported to America. At the start of the year the nation’s overall average effective tariff rate stood around 2.5 percent. With this week’s moves, it’s around 27 percent — the highest for the U.S. in more than a century. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion worth of goods in 2024, so taxing all of that amounts to a substantial tax on consumers and businesses buying from overseas.
The levies vary among the largest U.S. trading partners. The president’s moves leave 10 percent tariffs in place for most countries. The levies on imports from China — America’s No. 3 trading partner — now sit at a sky-high 145 percent. That’s a tax on every import hitting U.S. companies that buy either finished goods or parts from the world’s second-largest economy. Canada and Mexico also face a high 25 percent tariff rate on some goods (steel, aluminum, autos) and are spared tariffs on goods that comply with a 2020 trade agreement he signed with the two countries.
Who will benefit from this? Who will get hurt?
The president is deploying a remarkably risky strategy. The Trump tariffs will reshape the U.S. economy, the world economy, foreign policy and global financial markets as long as they remain in place.
In the long run, the president hopes the U.S. will benefit through investment in the U.S. — more factories and jobs — and higher tariff revenue.
In the short run, U.S. companies large and small will need to decide whether to keep buying products from countries hit by those tariffs or switch to goods from other countries. They’ll also need to decide whether to pass any added costs on to consumers. Some companies will shut down because they can’t eat the cost of a 10 percent tax on many goods, let alone a 145 percent tax on their products from China. Business leaders will also be weighed down by the uncertainty — Trump has shown he can change his mind at any time. Who will build a long-term business plan, or invest in capital-intensive projects, with the sword of uncertainty hanging over your head?
U.S. consumers will quickly face higher prices for all sorts of goods. Economists at The Budget Lab at Yale University put the initial estimate at the equivalent of $4,700 per American household. Even after the pause in some of the tariffs, we can expect inflation to rise due to higher prices and unemployment to rise through business failures and layoffs. That’s a stagflation scenario — at least in the short run.
What does this mean for all the recession warnings we’ve seen?
Whether a recession arrives depends largely on whether Trump backs down even further in the coming weeks. A walk-back could restore confidence enough to save the U.S. economy from entering a recession. But the uncertainty from sudden tariffs, even lasting a few weeks, will exact an enormous toll around the world.
Every sizable business that imports anything into the U.S. is holding emergency meetings this week to decide whether, and how, to reshape their purchasing and investment plans. Even those that don’t import goods will need to react to the realities of lower purchasing power for consumers (because of the tax on the goods Americans buy) and the volatility of the stock market. A lower stock market often translates into cost-cutting, including layoffs, to raise profitability. Higher borrowing costs — due to inflation — will also weigh on consumers and businesses.
Trump, in pursuit of a long-term strategy, appears prepared to swallow a recession in order to reshape American manufacturing and trade. It’s unlikely he can accomplish such a rapid, sweeping restructuring of the nation’s industrial base while keeping the economy above water over the coming year.
What are Trump’s long-term trade motivations?
Trump is fulfilling a lifelong dream to alter the balance of power in the world economy. He’s breaking from most of his predecessors (from both parties) who pursued ever-freer trade over the last century. His deep interest in trade developed during the rise of Japan throughout the 1980s and persisted through the national debates about NAFTA. “What I would do if elected president would be to appoint myself U.S. Trade Representative,” Trump wrote in 2000 as he weighed running for president on the Reform Party ticket. “I would take personal charge of negotiations. … Our trading partners would have to sit across the table from Donald Trump and I guarantee you the rip-off of the United States would end.”
The president finally put trade — and himself — at the center of the global policy agenda. As long as the Trump tariffs remain in place, they will reshape the American economy and the global economic order in unpredictable ways.
What does this week tell us about how Trump reacts to markets?
The markets seemed rather giddy on Wednesday on perceptions of Trump pulling America back from falling over the cliff. Then they sobered up on Thursday and tumbled as the reality of a new world order on trade set in. An old adage on Wall Street is that bear markets make fools of both bulls and bears. Expect continued volatility as long as the China tariffs remain in place.
How much that moves Trump remains to be seen. Outwardly, he’s adopted a surprising openness to the notion that a recession could result and a willingness to message to Americans that pain is ahead. But his decision to scale back his trade war on Wednesday grew out of concern about disorderly moves in bond markets, following an appeal by top aides. In many cases, stock fluctuations are temporary and recoverable. Bond market turmoil can exact deeper damage to the broader economy by freezing credit for consumers and businesses who aren’t even invested in stocks.
The president warned in his three presidential campaigns — 2016, 2020 and 2024 — that stocks would crash and a depression would result if any of his opponents won. Instead, those risks have only appeared on his watch.
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Royal Navy on alert to escort essential fuel cargo to Scunthorpe after MPs vote to seize control of British Steel from Chinese owners
The Royal Navy could be deployed to deliver an essential fuel shipment to Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces after MPs voted to seize control of British Steel from Chinese owners.
A senior source said the government was considering the extraordinary move to ensure the cargo reached the UK without being intercepted or redirected, according to the Times.
The Ministry of Defence said no decision had been taken on the navy’s involvement and it is unclear whether ministers have made a formal request.
Yesterday the day in Westminster started with MPs scrambling back from their Easter breaks into a packed Commons chamber – and ended with Government officials swooping in to take control after King Charles gave Royal Assent to the emergency law.
The extraordinary Saturday sitting to save British Steel's Scunthorpe plant from closing required the new law to clear both houses unopposed and receive royal approval before nightfall, in order to empower Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds to assume command before the furnaces were extinguished.
It was the first Saturday sitting since the Afghanistan crisis in 2021.
It came amid dramatic scenes as, just hours before the legislation passed, executives from Chinese owners Jingye attempted to enter the plant but were blocked by British Steel workers until police arrived and forced them to leave.
While the new law stopped short of nationalisation, Mr Reynolds said full state ownership 'remains on the table' and may be the 'likely option' for British Steel.
The Royal Navy could be deployed to deliver an essential fuel shipment to Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces after MPs voted to seize control of British Steel from Chinese owners yesterday.
Just hours before the legislation passed, executives from Chinese owners Jingye attempted to enter the plant but were blocked by British Steel workers until police arrived and forced them to leave
While the new law stopped short of nationalisation, Mr Reynolds said full state ownership 'remains on the table' and may be the 'likely option' for British Steel
He accused the company of failing to negotiate 'in good faith' after it decided to stop buying enough raw materials to keep the blast furnaces going.
He also accused the plant's owner of trying to shut down Britain's steel industry, saying Jingye, which bought British Steel in 2020, has 'irrevocably and unilaterally closed down primary steel making'.
The intervention came amid fears that the plant could close within days, putting thousands of jobs at risk.
The Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act gives the Government the power to instruct steel companies in England to keep the plant open, with criminal penalties for executives if they fail to comply.
While being seen as a step towards nationalisation, sources said that the preference was to secure new private investment to save the plant, which Jingye says loses £700,000 a day.
A Government source said it took a 'big political heave' to get officials to pass the legislation and change the mindset of Whitehall to pave the way for potential nationalisation.
But opposition MPs accused ministers of a 'botched nationalisation', with Conservative MP Alex Burghart saying the Government had made a 'total pig's breakfast' of saving British Steel.
Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice called on Mr Reynolds to 'show your cojones' and nationalise British Steel, claiming it could become a 'long-term, viable' asset for taxpayers, adding: 'We will support this Bill today. But there is an opportunity to go further, to be bold, be courageous.'
Steelworkers and members of UNITE Union march to Scunthorpe United Football ground as parliament held an emergency debate on the future of Chinese-owned British Steel yesterday
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said 'the whole steel industry' needs to be taken into public ownership, saying it could be 'the bedrock of the manufacturing industry in Britain'.
Scunthorpe residents welcomed seizing control and many would back nationalisation – saying taxpayers' money would be a small price to pay for rescuing the future of the industry from no future at all.
Local mum Michaela Kennington, 30, said: 'I hope it goes through. If it stops that will be it and they won't be able to get the furnaces back on. That would be disastrous for the town.
'There are many local companies that rely on them as well. If it's going to be taxpayers' money at least it will be going to something useful and something we want it to go to.'
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told MailOnline: 'While the Royal Navy routinely monitor ships due to arrive in UK waters, we are not involved in escorting this ship.'
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Estonian Foreign Minister: Detention of Kiwala Tanker by Estonian Security Forces Shows Effectiveness of Fight Against Russia's "Shadow Fleet"
The security forces of a state through whose territorial waters a foreign vessel is passing have the right to stop it for inspection. When the Estonian military took such action against the tanker Kiwala, it turned out that it was under sanctions.
According to the local newspaper Postimees, the head of the Estonian Police and Border Guard Department, Veiko Kommusaar, made this statement.
The publication notes that the detention of the vessel is connected with the fight of Western countries against the Russian “shadow fleet».
According to the documents, the tanker belongs to the state of Djibouti. However, the Estonian press claims that a request to this country did not confirm this information. The Djibouti authorities stated that this vessel is not in their register. Nothing is known about its owner either.
The media also reported that there were 24 crew members on board the tanker. The captain is a Chinese citizen, and the rest are Mauritanian citizens.
The incident with the vessel was also commented on by the head of the Estonian Foreign Ministry Margus Tsahkna. According to him, the detention of the tanker Kiwala by Estonian security forces demonstrated the effectiveness of the fight against the "shadow fleet" of the Russian Federation. He emphasized that the vessel was sailing through Estonian territorial waters without a flag or insurance, while being under British, Canadian and Swiss sanctions, as well as under sanctions of the European Union.
It seems that Tallinn is going too far in its anti-Russian zeal. This time, the Estonian authorities have effectively seized a foreign civilian vessel without having sufficiently compelling grounds for doing so.
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Estonian Navy detains Russia-bound oil tanker in Baltic Sea
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Michal had warned in December that shadow fleet tankers could be boarded if they did not provide proof of insurance.
There were no reports of any damage to subsea cables or other equipment. Regional countries have accused Moscow of using ships to damage undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in recent years.
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Estonian Navy Detains Tanker Linked to Russia's Shadow Fleet.
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Mereteenistuse juht: pole Eesti huvi, et kinnipeetud laev siia kauaks jääks
Transpordiamet tuvastas tankeril Kiwala 40 puudust, millest 23 on seotud dokumentatsiooniga. Kuni laev pole saanud lipuriigi staatust ehk riikkondsust, pole põhjust seda Eesti rannikuveest minema lasta. Samas pole Eesti huvides laeva ja meeskonda pikka aega kinni pidada, ütleb transpordiamet ja ka mereõiguse ekspert.
Tanker Kiwala tuvastati Bornholmi saarest põhja pool, mispeale Eesti transpordiamet suhtles Djiboutiga. Küsimusele, kas enne operatsiooni peeti nõu ka muude riikidega, vastas mereteenistuse juht Kristjan Truu, et teabevahetus partnerriikidega on pidev.
Mauritiusel asuv laevaomanik on teadlik, et Kiwala on Eestis kinni peetud. Laeval tuleb kõrvaldada terve hulk puudusi, millest kõige olulisem on puuduv lipuriigi staatus ehk riikkondsus. See omakorda eeldab, et laeval on kindlustus.
"Tegemist ei ole selliste puudustega, mis nõuavad väga suuri hooldustöid, väga suuri remonditöid. Need on teostatavad laevas laevapere liikmete poolt. Lisaks et laevaomaniku kaasorganiseerimisel saaks korda dokumentatsiooni küsimus," lausus Truu.
Ühtki meeskonnaliiget pole kinni peetud, seega võib laevaomanik meeskonda vahetada, kui Kiwala peaks kauaks siia ankrusse jääma. See pole kindlasti Eesti huvides.
"Kindlasti see ei ole meie huvi, et see siia nädalateks või kuudeks jääks. Ja kindlasti see ei pruugi olla ka laevaomaniku huvi, kes soovib ikkagi kommertsliku meresõiduga tegelda," ütles Truu.
Kiwala kinnipidamine toimus mereõiguse konventsiooni raames, sest oli kahtlus, et laeval puudub riikkondsus, ütles mereõiguse ekspert Alexander Lott.
"Siis võib mistahes riigi sõjalaev sellise operatsiooni läbi viia. Konkreetsel juhul tegi seda Eesti," märkis Lott.
Lott ütles samuti, et menetlus tuleks läbi viia kiiresti. Kui selgub, et kinnipidamine toimus põhjendamatult, tuleb Eestil hüvitada kahju. Igal juhul põhjustab laeva siinolek lisakoormust ja kulusid.
"Senikaua, kui see operatsioon – laeva kontroll – ei kesta üle mõistuse kaua, ei ole mingit muret," nentis ta.
Kiwala operatsioonis osales mereväe juhtimisel veel transpordiamet, PPA ja keskkonnaamet. Praegu turvab laeva merevägi, kuid transpordiamet eeldab, et laeva ei pea valvama ja omanik on huvitatud aluse vabanemisest kiiresti.
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Estonia seizes Russian “shadow fleet” oil tanker first time since war.
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Эстония задержала танкер российского "теневого флота".
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ВМС Эстонии задержали частого гостя в Финском заливе, который направлялся в Усть-Лугу
Ранним утром в пятницу, 11 апреля, ВМС Эстонии задержали в Финском заливе нефтяной танкер Kiwala, который направлялся из индийского порта Сикка в российский порт Усть-Луга и шел, по предварительной информации, без груза. Об этом сообщает издание Err.
Эстония начала готовиться к операции в четверг вечером, а сама операция началась в три часа ночи. В 4:19 танкер Kiwala вошел в воды Эстонии. Согласно данным MarineTraffic, сейчас судно находится к востоку от острова Аэгна, рядом с ним два военных корабля.
Судно, как утверждается, было под санкциями в связи с незаконной деятельностью в Европейском союзе и других странах (Великобритания, Канада, Швейцария).
«Цель задержания — проверить документы судна и его правовой статус. Задержание и проводимые расследования никоим образом не связаны с повреждением критически важной инфраструктуры, а само расследование на борту судна проводят компетентные ведомства», — сказал командующий Военно-морскими силами Эстонии, коммодор Иво Вярк.
«Не секрет, что за последний год в Финском заливе появилось немало судов, которые проходят без документов», — добавил руководитель пограничной службы Департамента полиции и погранохраны Вейко Коммусаар.
«У судна не было флага. Судно без флага. Такие суда по сути не должны передвигаться. Эстония применила в отношении судна право на его задержание с целью проверки», — пояснил Коммусаар. По его словам, речь якобы идет о части «теневого флота». Само судно будто бы занимается экспортом российской сырой нефти и нефтепродуктов в третьи страны. Согласно данным портала, владельцы и управляющие судном регулярно менялись, чтобы скрыть настоящих выгодополучателей.
Последнее время судно ходило под флагом Джибути.
В ходе задержания Департамент транспорта проверяет техническое состояние судна, наличие страховки и документы членов экипажа. Во время операции также использовался вертолет.
На танкере находится 24 человека. По данным эстонских властей, капитан судна — гражданин Китая, который сотрудничает со следствием.
Министр иностранных дел Маргус Цахкна заявил, что задержание танкера Kiwala Военно-морскими силами Эстонии доказывает, что «скоординированные шаги стран, расположенных у Балтийского и Северного морей, против российского теневого флота работают и помогают защищать окружающую среду и безопасность мореплавания».
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Estonian Navy Detains Russia-Bound Oil Tanker in Baltic Sea
VILNIUS, April 11 (Reuters) – The Estonian navy detained and boarded a Russia-bound oil tanker on an EU sanctions list on Friday, accusing it of sailing illegally without a valid country flag.
The vessel, the Kiwala, has been under EU sanctions since February as part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” a term Western countries use for ships they say Moscow deploys to circumvent international sanctions. The ships are typically not regulated or insured by conventional Western providers.
The Kiwala was on its way to Russia at the time of the seizure, MarineTraffic data showed. It was flying a Djibouti flag, but an Estonian Transport Authority official said Djibouti had denied that it was registered there.
Reuters was not immediately able to reach Djibouti authorities for comment. Russia’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Early this morning, the Estonian navy detained a sanctioned vessel with no flag state,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said in a post on social media X.
“Estonia takes suspicious activities in the Baltic Sea very seriously,” he added.
In placing the ship on its sanctions registry in February, the EU said it was involved in transporting Russian oil “while practicing irregular and high-riskshipping practices.”
“Because of the suspicions that the vessel has no flag, the Estonian authorities reacted. The crew and the master were cooperative,” said Kristjan Truu, director of Maritime Division at the Estonian transport authority.
Navy ships and helicopters were involved in the operation, and the vessel was being inspected while Estonia talks to Djibouti to confirm details, said Truu.
Michal had warned in December that shadow fleet tankers could be boarded if they did not provide proof of insurance.
There were no reports of any damage to subsea cables or other equipment. Regional countries have accused Moscow of using ships to damage undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in recent years.
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Aerials of Russia-bound oil tanker boarded by Estonian navy.
15.35.
Deadly Russian Missile Strike on Sumy Kills 20+, Zelenskiy Urges Tough Global Response | News9
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15.04.
At least 31 killed in double Russian strike on Sumy | BBC News.
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15.02.
В Сумах уже 32 погибших, из них двое детей
Уточненные данные о погибших сообщила Государственная служба по чрезвычайным ситуациям (ГСЧС) Украины.
Пострадали 84 человека, из них 10 детей. Аварийно-спасательные работы продолжаются.
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15.01.
Скандал вокруг трагедии в Сумах разрастается: ракетный удар в Сумах был нанесен по церемонии награждения 117-й бригады ТрО Украины, приуроченной к годовщине ее образования.
Украинский экс-нардеп Игорь Мосийчук дал понять, что целью российского удара по Сумам была церемония награждения бойцов 117 бригады ТРО. При этом на мероприятие областные власти пригласили гражданских. В том числе и детей:
"Надеюсь, что в Сумах уже задерживают главу ОВА Артюха и нардепа Ананченко"
Нардеп Безуглая разместила фото о годовщине создания бригады в своем телеграмм-канале и также она дала понять, что утечку информации могло допустить руководство ОВА, рассылая в открытой форме приглашения на мероприятие.
Мэр Конотопа Семенихин также призвал главу ОВА Артюха уйти в отставку.
Ситуация настолько кричащая, что возникают подозрения о сознательной провокации со стороны Киева...
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14.51.
Ukraine emergency services in Sumy where Russian strike killed dozens | AFP.
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14.50.
Dozens dead in Russian strike on Ukraine civilians marking Palm Sunday.
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14.45.
А как вам такая версия? Банковой организуется утечка информации из СБУ о награждении военных в Сумах. Кстати, сам факт такого мероприятия в прифронтовом городе на горячем направлении вызывает много вопросов. И уже под это организуется провокация с украинским ударом, но по мирным жителям. Нас тоже удивил временной разброс появления информации в сети.
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14.44.
Russian missile strike kills at least 20 in Ukrainian city of Sumy.
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14.43.
Russian missile strike kills at least 21 in Ukraine’s Sumy.
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14.27.
Глава Офиса президента Андрей Ермак написал, что ему досадно, когда «некоторые пытаются пиариться на трагедии и военном преступлении россиян в соцсетях».
Вероятно это намек на нардепа Безуглую, которая заявила, что удар в Сумах россияне нанесли по скоплению украинских военных, которых собрали на награждение.
А мэр Конотопа призвал главу Сумской ОВА и главу областного СБУ немедленно подать в отставку.
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14.18.
При ракетном ударе по Сумам погиб 31 человек, среди них двое детей
По последним данным, пострадали 84 человека, в том числе десять детей, сообщили в ГСЧС Украины.
"Очень важно всем в мире не молчать, не оставаться безучастными. Российские удары заслуживают только осуждения", - написал в своих соцсетях президент Украины Владимир Зеленский. Он снова призвал к давлению на РФ, чтобы "закончить войну и обеспечить безопасность людей", иначе "Россия и дальше будет затягивать" ее.
"Пошел уже второй месяц, как Путин игнорирует предложение Америки о полном и безусловном прекращении огня. К сожалению, они там, в Москве, уверены, что могут позволить себе убивать дальше", - написал украинский президент.
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15.37 – 3 часа
Russian missile strikes hit Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, killing at least 20.
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13.51.
Russia-Ukraine War: Russia Bombs Indian Pharma Company In Ukraine, 31 Killed | World News.
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Ukraine: Russian missile attack kills at least 21 people, injures dozens | DW News.
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12.37.
«Мы уже передаем подробную информацию об этом военном преступлении всем нашим партнерам и международным институтам. Мы призываем все столицы и штабы к решительным ответным действиям. Россия второй месяц подряд отказывается принять предложение США о полном прекращении огня, которое Украина безоговорочно приняла 11 марта. Вместо этого Россия усиливает террор»
, — заявил министр иностранных дел Украины Андрей Сибига.
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13.02.
Удар двумя высокоточными ОТРК «Искандер-М» был нанесен по конгресс-центру Сумского университета, в котором проходило награждение боевиков ВСУ. Установленные там средства РЭБ смогли отклонить одну из ракет. Вторая ракета попала точно в цель. Тем самым украинская армия в очередной раз подставила под удар собственное мирное население. Тактика живого щита используется ВСУ с самого начала конфликта.
Нахождение военных на территории конгресс-центра доказывает и автотранспорт, попавший на кадры украинских сми. Например, на них видны несколько армейских пикапов, в том числе с тактическим знаком (треугольник). Подразделения ВСУ именно с такими тактическими знаками вторглись в августе 2024 года в Курскую область. Концентрация машин такого типа нехарактерна для городских условий. Также на видео в первые минуты после взрыва попали украинские военные. Что они делали в воскресный день у якобы «неработающего» конгресс-центра — вопрос риторический.
Факт проводившейся церемонии награждения военных подтвердила депутат Верховной Рады Марьяна Безуглая:
«Обращение к Сырскому и отдельно к командующему ТРО: не собирайте военных на награждение, а тем более в гражданских городах, — снова россияне имели информацию о скоплении. И на полигонах до сих пор построение...».
Украинская пропаганда во главе с Зеленским пытается использовать произошедшее для демонизации России и попытки срыва переговоров между Москвой и Вашингтоном.
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12.37.
Число раненых в Сумах после российского удара выросло до 83
Как сообщает министр внутренних дел Украины Игорь Клименко, количество раненых в результате ракетного удара по центру Сум возросло до 83 человек.
В числе пострадавших семь детей. В настоящий момент известно о 21 погибшем.
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12.29.
В Сумах уже 83 раненных в результате ракетного удара. Из них 7 детей, сообщает глава МВД Клименко. Число погибших не изменилось - 21.
22.35.
Ukraine-Russia war latest: At least 34 people killed in Russian ballistic missile strike in Sumy
Civilians were celebrating Palm Sunday when two ballistic missiles landed in the heart of the northeastern city of Sumy
(выделено а.п.)
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Two ballistic missiles struck the heart of the city as people walked to church to celebrate Palm Sunday.
(выделено а.п.)
…
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Russian strikes on northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy kill 34, in deadliest attack this year
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Volodymyr Artyukh, head of the military administration in the region, said that “at that time, a lot of people were on the street.”
“The enemy was hoping to inflict the greatest damage on people in the city of Sumy,” Artyuk added.
...
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21.28.
Мэр Конотопа Артем Семенихин заявил, что предыдущий мощный взрыв в Сумах, который произошел 24 марта, не был ракетным прилетом, как заявляли власти.
Об этом он сообщил, комментируя сегодняшний удар по областному центру - и обвиняя в нем губернатора Владимира Артюха, который, по словам Семенихина, собрал для награждения бойцов 117-й бригады ВСУ. По которым и ударили российские ракеты.
Но 24 марта, говорит мэр Конотопа взрывы не были вызваны ракетой.
«Кстати, перед этим тоже была одна ситуация, где Артюх рассказывал о прилете ракеты якобы по городу Сумы. А на самом деле этот мерзавец просто решил что-то поставить, сложить в центре Сум, и потом что-то произошло. Об этом я расскажу отдельно», - сказал Семенихин.
Напомним, что пожар и детонацию в Сумах 24 марта заметили еще до того, как сработала воздушная тревога. В пабликах предполагали, что взорвались боеприпасы, которые хранили среди жилой застройки. Тогда пострадали около ста человек.
При этом, по официальной версии, по городу был ракетный удар.
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«The Guardian»:
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20.55
Russian missile strike kills dozens in Ukrainian city of Sumy
Volodymyr Zelenskyy decries attack on ‘ordinary city street’ while people were going to church for Palm Sunday.
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At least 34 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a Russian ballistic missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Sumy as people were going to church for Palm Sunday, in the worst attack on civilians this year.
...
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18.31.
Число погибших в Сумах выросло до 34
Государственная служба по чрезвычайным ситуациям Украины сообщила обновленную информацию о жертвах ракетного удара по Сумам: теперь известно о 34 погибших, до этого сообщалось о 32.
Также известно о 117 пострадавших, включая 15 детей.
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18.20.
В Сумах после ракетного удара по состоянию на данный момент погибли 34 человека, из них два ребенка.
Пострадали 117 человек, из них 15 детей, сообщает областная администрация.
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18.11.
Врио канцлера ФРГ Олаф Шольц в Х — о ракетном ударе по боевикам ВСУ, которых награждали в конгресс-центре в Сумах...
Так и запишем: вэсэушники — мирные миряне. А награждали их за человеколюбие, снятых с дерева котят и перевод бабушек через дорогу.
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17.25
Что произошло сегодня в Сумах, и по кому наносился удар?
Итак, Россия утром запустила две баллистические ракеты по центру Сум. Более 30 человек погибли, ранены почти сто. Среди погибших и раненых есть дети.
Куда именно был прилет - власти не уточняют, говоря о том, что пострадали дома, автомобили и учебные заведения. При этом, судя по фото с мест, под удар попал конгресс-центр Сумского госуниверситета. Также сообщили о гибели пианистки расположенного рядом театра имени Щепкина.
В то же время, из различных источников появляется все больше информации, что целью удара были украинские военные.
Нардеп Марьяна Безуглая и бывший депутат Игорь Мосийчук заявили, что ракеты прилетели по церемонии награждения военных 117-й бригады теробороны, которая воюет на Сумщине и как раз сегодня отмечает годовщину своего создания. Безуглая и Мосийчук говорят, что могла быть утечка информации при рассылке приглашений на мероприятие.
Более того, Мосийчук заявил, что на мероприятие пригласили и гражданских. В том числе и детей.
«Надеюсь, что в Сумах уже задерживают главу ОВА Артюха и нардепа Ананченко (нардеп из Сум от правящей партии «Слуга народа» - Ред.), которые так хотели попиариться на праздничном награждении воинов 117 бригады ТРО по случаю 7 годовщины. Артюх, Ананченко пиарили награждение в Сумах и собрали туда кроме военных ещё и гражданских, в частности детей! Мрази и подонки!»
, - написал Мосийчук.
Параллельно мэр Конотопа Артем Семенихин назвал «мразью и чучелом» губернатора Артюха и призвал его до 18:00
«встать на колени и извиниться перед людьми»
. Также он заявил, что тот был на месте в момент удара и «драпал» оттуда,
«сбивая детей»
. Он призвал губернатора и начальника областной СБУ подать в отставку.
Украинская власть не комментировала по существу этих обвинений. Но глава Офиса президента Ермак написал, что ему досадно, когда
«некоторые пытаются пиариться на трагедии и военном преступлении россиян в соцсетях»
. Намекая, видимо, на Безуглую и остальных перечисленных.
Хотя проблема ударов по собраниям военных или волонтеров не нова - уже был удар по центру Чернигова летом 2023 года, когда прилёт был по выставке беспилотников. И по многим другим аналогичным мероприятиям.
Международная реакция на удар была похожей на то, что говорилось после недавней трагедии в Кривом Роге. Осуждая Россию за обстрел, в ЕС, Британии, Франции, а также в США заявили, что Москва должна последовать примеру Киева и согласиться на прекращение огня.
При этом не было призывов увеличить поставки оружия Украине и нанести РФ поражение в этой войне. Хотя и были призывы принять меры против России с целью добиться от нее согласие на прекращение огня.
То есть, этот пример также показал, что основная публичная концепция западных стран сейчас идет в русле требований Трампа - остановить огонь в Украине.
Москва обстрел Сум на данный момент не комментировала.
Также удар обещает довольно мрачные перспективы для самих Сум, если война продолжится.
Фронт приближается к областному центру, (https://t.me/stranaua/192533) который и без того после начала операции Украины в Курской области стал постоянной мишенью для КАБов, «Шахедов» и ракет. Если же российские войска в рамках создания «буферной зоны» начнут более масштабное наступление на Сумы, то город из условно-тылового станет прифронтовым - со всеми вытекающими последствиями.
Russian aggression has seen the number of people charged with spying for a foreign state hit its highest level in over a decade as experts warn 'proxy war' on Britain is intensifying
Russian aggression has seen the number of people charged with spying for a foreign state hit its highest level in over a decade, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The number of those charged with espionage has rocketed in the last year.
Experts warn Russia and other rogue states are launching a 'proxy war' on Britain which will only intensify.
British intelligence services have launched a crackdown on this, which military leaders have said has led to the increase in prosecutions.
There is also a fear organised crime gangs based in Britain are being recruited and paid for by rogue states to do work on their behalf, thus increasing the risk.
Figures from the Crown Prosecution Service show that only three people were charged over espionage offences from 2014 to 2023, leading to two convictions - but a total of 14 people were charged with similar crimes last year.
Espionage offences can include assisting a foreign intelligence service, providing prejudicial information to a foreign state, and conspiring to aid an enemy nation by collecting information that would jeopardise the safety of the UK.
Of the 14 individuals who were accused of being spies last year, at least seven have now been convicted.
Last month at the end of a three month trial, six Bulgarian nationals were convicted for spying for Russia in one of the largest foreign intelligence operations in the UK.
Vanya Gaberova, 30, Katrin Ivanova, 33, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, who were all living in London, were found guilty of spying on journalists, a former politician, and a US military base in Germany between 2020 and 2023.
Lord Richard Dannat, former head of the British Army, said the numbers had increased due to aggression from Russia and hostile states.
He said the 'insecurity' across the world had meant they were launching more espionage activity and Britain's security services were becoming better at stopping it and raising awareness of it.
Lord Dannat said: 'This shows Russia is becoming more and more aggressive. The world is a very insecure place right now.
'Russia is fighting its conflict in Ukraine and it is launching all sorts of other hybrid attacks.
'It is fermenting conflict short of war.'
Lord Dannat said British intelligence services were very aware of the threat.
He added: 'Our security services are aware of this and are doing a very good job at stopping it, as these figures confirm.
'The threat and activity has gone up and so our security services have upped their game.
'Russia itself is under a lot of pressure. It cannot afford a physical conflict anywhere else as it does not have the manpower.
'So it is creating these sorts of attacks through espionage. The figures show there is more threat and activity and we're also doing well at stopping it.'
Tan Dhesi MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Defence Committee said: 'With adversary states acting with increasing aggression in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region, focus at home should be turning towards our nation's defence and security.
'It is therefore concerning to see a spike in the number of individuals charged with espionage offences over the last year. Whilst I commend our security services for their vital work in safeguarding the UK and its interests, it is clear that more must be done to bolster our counter-intelligence capabilities.'
Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, said:
'Over the last number of years, we've seen a sharp rise in threats projected into the UK by hostile state actors.
'By this, we mean we are seeing the regimes of foreign nations, threatening individuals that have simply made the UK their home.
'It can also mean foreign states seeking to infiltrate or sabotage organisations and businesses, or interfere with democratic, financial or academic institutions for their own gain.
'That is why Counter Terrorism Policing worked closely with the UK government and our intelligence partners to make sure the National Security Act provided policing with the powers it needed to deter, detect, and disrupt this type of activity.
'We anticipated that once the act was live we would be able to increase our operational activity and that has been the reality since the implementation of the legislation.'
Col Richard Kemp, former head of counter terrorism in Afghanistan, said the figures were 'worrying'.
He said: 'It shows the nature of the threat we here in Britain face. These people want to harm our country and our democracy and our way of life.'
The spy ring was run from a guest house in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, by Orlin Roussev, 47, who pleaded guilty to espionage offences before facing a trial.
Fellow spies Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, and Ivan Stoyanov, 33, also gave guilty pleas before their trials.
After raiding the spy ring's base in a 33-room former hotel in Great Yarmouth, police uncovered an array of sophisticated spying equipment, including cameras concealed in a fake rock and a pair of glasses.
The group had spied on a US military base in Germany as they believed Ukrainian troops were being trained on site.
The spy ring also planned to stage a protest outside the Kazakhstan embassy in London and monitor a former senior Kazakh politician, who lived in the UK, as part of an elaborate plan to help Russia gain favour with its southern neighbour in Central Asia.
The group's conviction comes less than six months after a former British Army soldier was found guilty of spying on fellow soldiers in an effort to aid Iran.
On November 28, 2024 at Woolwich Crown Court, former British Army soldier Daniel Khalife, 23, was found guilty of gathering classified information to Iranian agents.
Khalife had collated and passed on classified documents, military communications, and information about soldiers to Iranian authorities from 2019 to 2021.
The former army network engineer sparked a nationwide manhunt in September, 2023, when he broke out of prison while he was awaiting trial over the espionage offences.
He escaped from Wandsworth Prison during a kitchen duty shift, which allowed him to stowaway under a food delivery lorry.
During the trial last year, Khalife's lawyer claimed that the espionage to aid Iran had been more 'Scooby-Doo' than '007'.
But in February of this year, Khalife was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his spying offences, with a further two years and three months to be served consecutively for his prison escape.
Previous espionage convictions over the last decade include a security guard who sent Russia secret documents from the British Embassy in Berlin and a defence worker who sent highly sensitive information about a UK missile system to a variety of contacts.
Former security guard David Ballantyne Smith was imprisoned for 13 years over his treachery in Berlin in February, 2023.
Simon Finch, who had worked at defence firms BAE Systems and QinetiQ, was sentenced to eight years in prison after a hearing in March 2021.
Caviar Has Become the Costco Rotisserie Chicken of Fine Dining
Fish eggs are still a menu upsell, but they’re more popular than ever.
llustration: Maggie Cowles for Bloomberg
The gleaming black-and-gold dining room at Coqodac is rowdy, and it isn’t even open for dinner yet. A table of “rappers and podcast hosts” are lingering over a late $4,000 caviar-and-champagne lunch, executive chef Seung Kyu Kim says. He doesn’t mind — he wants his Manhattan restaurant, notorious for its caviar-topped chicken nuggets ($28 per nugget), to be a place people come to celebrate.
As bird flu forces US stores to ration $10-a-dozen chicken eggs, salt-cured fish eggs have become inescapable at high-end restaurants. The slimy, briny spheres can now be found atop $68 sour-cream-and-onion dips in Nashville and $73 egg salads in San Francisco. But while customer perception of caviar as a luxury worth shelling out for has remained remarkably resilient for over a century, the wholesale cost of caviar — specifically, the roe from sturgeon — has dropped considerably in the past few years.
“There’s a caviar craze and each time someone asks me why, I tell them the same thing: an influx of mass-produced Chinese caviar at super low prices,” said Edward Panchernikov, director of operations at Caviar Russe, a caviar restaurant in New York.
Wild-caught caviar is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Russian caviar, which accounts for a small percentage of the global supply, is under US sanctions. Today most caviar imported by the US is farmed in China, where low labor costs, abundant waterways and government support have helped push down prices. Accurate data is scarce — caviar makes up a small fraction of commodity imports — but the average price for a kilogram of imported caviar in the US was around $240 in 2020, down from about $440 in 2014, according to the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products.
Caviar-topped chicken nuggets at Coqodaq.Photographer: Evan Sung/Coqodaq
China has endured multiple food-safety scandals in recent years, as well as accusations of unfairly competing on price; importers say this has tainted public perception of its caviar industry. But the scale of Chinese aquaculture means there is enormous range in the quality of caviar it sells, even within the same sturgeon farm. The same way top vineyards can produce grapes for the most coveted wines and sell the rest for bottom-shelf grocery store bottles, the same farm can produce the finest osetra fought over by Michelin restaurants to low-grade caviar sold downmarket for cheap.
Indeed, the price of Chinese caviar can range dramatically — chefs quoted wholesale prices (including markups by importers) from $500 to $1,500 per kilogram, and retailers say it can go as low as $400. Price pressures across the market mean it can be very difficult for smaller domestic caviar farms to compete. (Marshallberg Farm, a US producer that supplies caviar to the Plaza Hotel, said its break-even cost to produce a kilogram of caviar is $1,000 to $1,200.)
Chefs note that some of the most expensive and desirable sturgeon roe in the world is coming from China.
“The consistency, the flavor, and the salinity is very, very on point,” said Kim at Coqodaq. And, crucially, chefs can be more generous with their portions, creating an air of indulgence.
The Modern, a two-Michelin-star Danny Meyer restaurant in midtown Manhattan, serves a caviar hot dog on its bar menu: two cocktail wieners, each blanketed in about four grams of Chinese-farmed golden osetra caviar, on mini brioche buns for $39. Bangkok Supper Club in the West Village tops its uni and crab tartlet with the same variety, a one-bite dish for $22.
The Modern’s caviar hot dogs.Photographer: Michelle Giang/The Modern
If caviar is cheaper now, why are diners still paying a premium? Part of the answer is that customers still perceive it as a luxury, and education about varying quality has lagged the market. “Consumers aren’t thinking about it too much,” says Lianne Won, co-owner of Marshallberg Farm. “They’re thinking OK, it’s caviar. Of course it’s expensive. They’re not thinking about where it comes from.”
And despite the ascendency of Chinese caviar, when selling directly to customers, many importers still prefer not to specify country of origin. Retailer websites will claim the caviar was harvested in the immaculately clean waters of the Thousand Islands Lake, but never mention China. (China’s Qiandao Lake, which translates to “thousand islands” is where Kaluga Queen, the world’s largest supplier of caviar, is based.) “There is still some prejudice,” said Hossein Aimani, the head of Paramount Caviar, who supplies Chinese caviar to restaurants such as Le Bernardin in New York.
Snobbery about provenance as a way to drive demand, and prices, is also a sacred tradition, as old as the caviar trade itself. In the 19th century, when the American sturgeon supply was abundant, the only caviar said to be worth paying top dollar for was from the Caspian Sea. American bars put domestic caviar out for free like nuts, while industrious exporters to Europe pretended their supply was Caspian, Richard Carey wrote in his 2005 caviar history, The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire.
But while caviar is having a moment, caviar in abundance, and increasingly downmarket, could threaten the industry itself. The luxurious and rare history of sturgeon roe is “under attack a bit,” said Panchernikov of Caviar Russe. “People are trying to pedestrianize it, and rid caviar of that specialness.” Menu prices stay high not just because dealers still make good margins but because — as with all things luxury — the price is the point. “Affordable caviar is oxymoronic,” said David Stephen, an aquaculture scientist and caviar industry consultant.
Osetra caviar on a spoon, a classic.Source: Paramount Caviar
The roe’s true power for chefs is less about its cost than its ability to titillate. When New York’s Temple Bar started offering $20 caviar “bumps” in late 2021, they got attention “not because they were serving caviar, but because they were doing them as bumps, making fun of it,” said Rachel Harrison, a longtime hospitality industry publicist. It made customers laugh; they took pictures for social media, which brought in more customers. For $20, it felt more like ordering another drink than splashing out $200 for a caviar service.
Thomas Allen, the chef at The Modern, says the role of its caviar-topped hot dog is to capitalize on the ingredient’s ability to generate customer excitement, not margins. They make the cost up elsewhere, on alcohol or dessert. “The hot dog is like a feel-good moment that makes you smile,” he said. “Chances are you’re not just going to order that, you’re going to order other things. You’re going to order some wine.” Rather than being a cash cow, “It’s more like our Costco rotisserie chicken,” Allen said, referencing the retailer’s famously inflation-proof $4.99 product.
Chef Max Wittawat at Bangkok Supper Club calls the uni tartlet a “hero dish.” The restaurant isn’t making much margin on it, but it drives foot traffic, looks good on social media and — because it won’t fill you up — increases spend per customer. “China has made caviar more affordable for everyone. But at the restaurant, customers still appreciate it, they still see caviar as a luxury,” he said.
Similarly Coqodac’s chef knows people won’t order one chicken nugget and call it dinner, so he keeps the price in (relative) bounds while using fine caviar, and almost everyone wants to order one. “We’re not really making money out of this. This is just to bring excitement,” Kim said. “It’s about sustainability.”
The appeal of caviar has always been that it’s a little outrageous. Like great champagne, the cost, the history and the sheer fiscal irresponsibility has always been an erotic undercurrent beneath its culinary appeal, the reason we reach for it when the occasion feels special. But now that caviar is no longer so rare, chefs are playing with it, treating it like it’s just another ingredient, albeit one with low labor costs (they only need to open a tin). And in the case of an economic downturn, they need dishes that can draw in customers and drive spending with prices that aren’t totally out of reach.
Still, the relative affordability of high-quality caviar could soon change as tariffs on China hit importers, while scaled-up Chinese aquaculture threatens to push supply of mid-tier caviar above what the market can bear. “I hope there’s not going to be a glut, but there is a lot of caviar in the market right now,” Aimani said. It is likely, he said, that more restaurants will start buying up lower quality, cheaper caviar to bridge the gap.
In the meantime, caviar remains ubiquitous. “Caviar has been pigeonholed by society as a luxury ingredient,” said Mike Bagale, executive chef of New York restaurant Sip & Guzzle. “I try to serve it almost at cost. I don’t want to buy into the idea of overcharging for a commodity that costs a lot, serving it in small amounts.” He serves it in a koji cool ranch “party dip” with puffed chicken skin ($125). The relative affordability of caviar today means he can be generous.
“They’re fish eggs. It doesn’t have to be super embellished or dainty or tweezered onto fish filets at a fine dining restaurant anymore,” said Bagale. He serves Greek caviar on ice cream, $70 for 10 grams. “At the end of the day, it’s salt.”
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Tucker Carlson’s Greatest Dog Moments
_________________
С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Фрагмент интервью С.Лаврова газете «Коммерсантъ», Москва, 14 апреля 2025 года.
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Published: 15:01 BST, 14 April 2025 | Updated: 15:35 BST, 14 April 2025
Shameless Putin accuses Ukraine of using 'human shields' after missile strike slaughters 34 people - and says Germany is 'escalating' the situation by arming Kyiv
Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of using civilians as 'human shields' after Sunday's missile attack hit a meeting of army commanders in Sumy which killed at least 34 people.
The strike was one of the deadliest in recent months and drew condemnation from leaders around the world, with Russia now suggesting Germany is 'escalating' the already volatile situation by arming Kyiv.
Russia staged a barbaric double Iskander-M missile strike on Ukraine on Palm Sunday hitting a trolley bus, killing at least 34 people, including two children, and wounding 117, including 15 children.
The strikes hit the centre of Sumy triggering outrage in Kyiv and among its allies. 'Only completely deranged scum can do something like this,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The Kremlin rejected that its army had targeted civilians or a residential area. 'Our army hits only military and military-related targets,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the strike and Trump's comments.
The army appeared to concede that there were civilian casualties, though placed the blame on Ukraine.
'The Kyiv regime continues to use the Ukrainian population as a human shield, placing military facilities and holding events with the participation of soldiers in the centre of a densely populated city,' the defence ministry said.
It comes as the Kremlin on Monday warned Germany against supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine, saying incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz's proposal risked escalating the three-year conflict.
Russia on Sunday staged a barbaric double Iskander-M missile strike on Ukraine on Sunday hitting a trolley bus, killing at least 34 people, including two children, and wounding 117, including 15 children
This handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Emergency Service on April 13, 2025, shows a Ukrainian rescuer working at the site of a missile attack in Sumy
Pictures show destroyed buildings and burned out civilian cars at the site of a Russian ballistic missile strike on the city centre, killing many civilians on April 13, 2025 in Sumy, Ukraine
The Kremlin on Monday warned Germany against supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine, saying incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz's (pictured) proposal risked escalating the three-year conflict
A Taurus (Target Adaptive Unitary and dispensor Robotic Ubiquity System) KEPD 350 air-launched cruise missile, on display during the press presentation at the International Aerospace Exhibition (ILA) in Schoenefeld, near Berlin, on June 3, 2024
The air-launched missile, jointly developed by Germany and Sweden, can reach targets up to 500km away.
Outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz had ruled out sending them to Kyiv, but Merz said on Sunday he was open to the idea provided Germany had agreed with its European partners.
'He is agitating on the side of toughening his position and in favour of various steps that can - and will - inevitably lead to a further escalation of the Ukraine situation,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Merz.
'Unfortunately, European capitals are really not inclined to look for ways of reaching peace talks, they are rather inclined to further provoke the continuation of the war,' Peskov added.
Russia has long criticised Western countries for supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine, arguing Kyiv uses them to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.
Both the United States and the UK have supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine.
Following Sunday's attack, Donald Trump has claimed that Russia 'made a mistake' with its devastating strike.
'I think it was terrible. And I was told they made a mistake. But I think it's a horrible thing. I think the whole war is a horrible thing,' Trump told reporters on board Air Force One while headed back to Washington.
Asked to clarify what he meant by a 'mistake,' Trump said that 'they made a mistake... you're gonna ask them' - without specifying who or what he meant.
The dead and wounded - covered in blood - lay in the streets of the city centre on Sunday after the two massive explosions rocked the city, with video showing fireballs erupting in busy civilian areas.
President Trump's National Security Council (NSC) had earlier Sunday called the Russian strike 'a clear and stark reminder' of why his efforts to 'try and end this terrible war comes at a crucial time.'
Following Sunday's attack, Donald Trump has claimed that Russia 'made a mistake' with its devastating strike
Russia staged a barbaric new double Iskander-M missile strike on Ukraine today hitting a trolley bus, killing at least 21 people and leaving dozens more injured
Bodies of people killed in a Russian ballistic missile strike lie covered with emergency blankets at the strike site on April 13, 2025 in Sumy, Ukraine
Neither Trump nor the White House named Moscow as the perpetrator of the attack, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier offered condolences to the 'victims of today's horrifying Russian missile attack on Sumy.'
Speaking in a US television interview broadcast yesterday, Volodymyr Zelensky urged President Trump to visit his country to better understand the devastation wrought by Russia's invasion.
'Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,' he said according to a transcript of an interview to be broadcast on CBS.
The channel aired an interview conducted by reporter Scott Pelley with Zelensky on the site of a Russian attack where nine children were killed earlier this month.
Zelensky said he has '100 percent' hatred for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, and warned that 'if we do not stand firm, he will advance further.'
'It is not just idle speculation; the threat is real. Putin's ultimate goal is to revive the Russian empire and reclaim territories currently under NATO protection. Considering all of this, I believe it could escalate into a world war,' he said.
He added: 'There won't be a safe place, there won't be a safe place for (anyone).'
Following its broadcast, Trump hit back against CBS on Truth Social, saying the war in Ukraine 'would never have happened if the 2020 Election had not been RIGGED, in other words, if I were President.'
The Sumy strike came two days after US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff travelled to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin and push Trump's efforts to end the war.
Trump earlier said the visit by his envoy Steve Witkoff to see Putin in Moscow showed that the peace efforts 'might be going OK - and you're going to be finding out pretty soon.'
But Poland's foreign minister declared today that Putin is 'mocking' Donald Trump's goodwill by continuing to attack Ukraine.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) decorating a wounded Ukrainian serviceman as he visits a medical facility where wounded defenders are being treated in Kryvyi Rig on April 11
A man cries as he leans on the bus that was hit by a Russian missile on Sumy, Ukraine
'Ukraine unconditionally agreed to a ceasefire over a month ago,' Radoslaw Sikorsk told a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
'The heinous attacks on Kryvyi Rih and on Sumy is Russia's mocking answer. I hope that President Trump and the US administration see that the leader of Russia is mocking their goodwill and I hope the right decisions are taken.'
The Kremlin said Monday that Russia's army targets only military sites, a day after a missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy killed 34 people and wounded dozens more.
'Our army hits only military and military-related targets,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing when asked about the strike and comments by US President Donald Trump that Russia might have 'made a mistake'.
Speaking in his evening address on Sunday night, Zelensky stressed that the attack was on civilians and had occurred on Palm Sunday, a major Christian feast.
Photos too graphic for MailOnline to publish showed the trolley bus burning with victims inside.
At least one child was a victim of the horrific new strike on a city marking the Sunday before Easter.
At least one car was ablaze with people trapped inside.
The Congress Centre in Sumy - part of the city's university - was hit in one of the most shocking strikes of the three-year war.
The dead were seen covered in silver sheets at the scene of the strike where rescuers worked through the rubble of a building near a destroyed trolleybus.
…
Zelensky said eight of the 68 injured in hospitals were in serious condition.
'In addition to the university, the strike damaged five apartment buildings, cafes, shops, and the district court. In total, the Russian attack damaged 20 buildings,' said Zelensky.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was 'deeply alarmed and shocked' by the strike, which highlighted a 'devastating pattern of similar assaults on Ukrainian cities and towns in recent weeks,' his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said: 'The Russians hit the city of Sumy with missiles, killing civilians.'
The office of the Sumy mayor said there were 'many dead'.
Acting mayor Artem Kobzar said: 'On this bright day of Palm Sunday, our community suffered a terrible tragedy.
'The enemy launched a missile strike on civilians. Unfortunately, more than 20 deaths are already known…'
Zelensky said: 'A terrible strike by Russian ballistic missiles on Sumy.
'Enemy missiles hit an ordinary city street, ordinary life: houses, educational institutions, cars on the street...
'And this is on a day when people go to church: Palm Sunday, the feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem.
'According to preliminary data, we are talking about dozens of dead and wounded civilians. Only a scoundrel can act like this.
'Taking the lives of ordinary people. My condolences to the relatives and friends. A rescue operation is underway now. All necessary services are working.'
Zelensky pleaded for a 'tough reaction from the world'.
(выделено а.п.)
…
He said: 'The United States, Europe, everyone in the world who wants an end to this war and murders.
'Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging out this war. Without pressure on the aggressor, peace is impossible.
'Talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and air bombs. We need the kind of attitude towards Russia that a terrorist deserves. Thank you to everyone who is with Ukraine and helps us protect life.'
The head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said on Telegram that Russia had used two Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles on Sumy.
One witness told AFP she heard two explosions.
'A lot of people were very badly injured. A lot of corpses,' she said, struggling to speak.
Sumy declared three days of mourning.
It was the second Russian attack this month to cause a large civilian death toll. An attack on Zelensky's home city of Kryvi Rig killed at least 18 people, including nine children.
Zelensky called on the United States and Europe to give a 'strong response' to Russia, adding: 'Talking has never stopped ballistic missiles and bombs.'
Trump has previously voiced anger at Moscow for 'bombing like crazy' in Ukraine.
France's President Emmanuel Macron said the strike showed Russia's 'blatant disregard for human lives, international law and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump'.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was 'appalled' by the attack, which Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni described as a 'cowardly' act by Russia.
Germany's chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz described it as 'a serious war crime, deliberate and intended'.
Staging an attack on Palm Sunday outraged several leaders.
(выделено а.п.)
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, said: 'Sumy. Day off. A major religious holiday for Ukrainians is Palm Sunday.'.
(выделено а.п.)
The Palm Sunday massacre in a region close to the border between the countries left people screaming in terror with scenes from Armageddon.
(выделено а.п.)
It was 'a barbaric attack, made even more vile as people gathered peacefully to celebrate Palm Sunday,' European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on X.
'The Russian version of a ceasefire. Bloody Palm Sunday,' said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
(выделено а.п.)
Moscow has refused a US-proposed unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine.
Authorities in Sumy published footage of bodies in the street and people running for safety, with cars on fire and wounded civilians on the ground.
Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine in recent weeks, stepping up its all-out invasion that has gone on for more than three years.
Sumy has been under increasing pressure since Moscow pushed back many of Ukraine's troops from its Kursk region inside Russia, across the border.
Kyiv has warned for weeks that Moscow could mount an offensive on the city.
Russia launched its invasion partially through the Sumy region and briefly occupied parts of it before being pushed back by Ukrainian forces.
On Sunday, Russia said it captured another village in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.
Цитата:
14.30.
Первый комментарий РФ по вчерашнему ракетному удару по Сумам.
Минобороны РФ утверждает, что два "Искандера" ударили «по месту проведения совещания командного состава ВСУ, в результате удара и поражения цели были уничтожены более 60 военнослужащих ВСУ».
Напомним, мэр Конотопа Семенихин также заявил, что на месте удара по Сумам были сборы украинских военных. Ранее об этом заявляли нардеп Безуглая и экс-депутат Мосийчук.
Официально власти этого не подтверждали. Сообщалось, что погибли 34 человека. В частности, множество гражданских, а также командир воинской части А 1476 полковник Юрий Юла.
Цитата:
14.27
Министерства обороны Российской Федерации о ходе проведения специальной военной операции по состоянию на 14 апреля 2025 г.
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Вчера Вооруженными Силами Российской Федерации в городе Сумы в условиях активного противодействия ВСУ средствами радиоэлектронной борьбы и противовоздушной обороны иностранного производства нанесен удар двумя оперативно-тактическими ракетами «Искандер-М» по месту проведения совещания командного состава оперативно-тактической группы «Северск». В результате поражения цели уничтожено более шестидесяти военнослужащих ВСУ.
...
Цитата:
Published: 14:21 BST, 14 April 2025 | Updated: 15:58 BST, 14 April 2025(время островное: а.п.)
Ukraine's Zelensky tears into JD Vance for 'justifying' Putin's actions as Trump makes excuses for new strikes.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky took another shot at President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance for their 'altered reality' surrounding the events that triggered the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
'It seems to me that the Vice President is somehow justifying Putin's actions,' Zelensky said during an interview with CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Zelensky's comment is the latest of criticisms he had for the vice president after he was scolded by both Trump and Vance in the Oval Office for his belligerent behavior despite significant military aid and funding from the United States.
The Ukrainian president insisted that Ukraine was the 'victim' of the war, and that Putin was the aggressor.
'I tried to explain, "You can't look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor and there is a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim,"' he said.
He accused Trump and Vance of parroting talking points from Russia in their ongoing effort to end the war.
'It's a shift in tone, a shift in reality, really yes, a shift in reality, and I don't want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me,' Zelensky said.
Zelensky's comments on 60 Minutes reflect little change in his attitude with Trump and Vance since their dramatic meeting in the Oval Office in February.
Vance's office did not respond to a DailyMail.com request for comment.
Hostilities continue in Ukraine as a Russian cluster bomb hit civilians gathering for a church service on Palm Sunday, according to the Ukrainians.
Trump reacted to the attacks while speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, and revealed that he believed the attack to be a 'mistake' by the Russians.
'I think it was terrible. And I was told they made a mistake. But I think it’s a horrible thing. I think the whole war is a horrible thing,' he said.
Gen. Keith Kellogg, the president's Ukrainian envoy, was more forceful in condemning the attack.
'Today’s Palm Sunday attack by Russian forces on civilian targets in Sumy crosses any line of decency,' he said in a statement on Sunday. 'There are scores of civilian dead and wounded. As a former military leader, I understand targeting and this is wrong. It is why President Trump is working hard to end this war.'
Vance clashed with Zelensky during the Oval Office meeting in which he defended President Trump's attempt to end the war using diplomacy with Russia.
'Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,' Vance said after Zelensky repeatedly interrupted and disputed statements made by Trump about the war.
Vance publicly criticized Zelensky for failing to thank the American people and Trump for trying to end the war.
'Just say thank you,' Vance said. 'Accept that there are disagreements and let's go litigate those disagreements rather than trying to fight it out in the American media when you're wrong. We know that you're wrong.'
Vance also criticized Zelensky after the meeting in an interview with DailyMail.com, suggesting that he was getting bad advice.
'The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president's mind by badmouthing him in public media ... everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,' he said.
Germany's Leopard 2 tanks have been a failure on Ukraine's battlefields according to classified document that details where they have gone wrong
Germany's Leopard 2 tanks are said to have been a failure on the frontline in Ukraine and Kyiv's soldiers prefer using German tanks from the 1960s, according to a damning assessment by Ukraine's military.
Ukrainian soldiers also named a string of other high-end German military equipment, including howitzers and air defence systems, that they said were too fragile to function properly on the battlefield.
The shocking revelation was made by the Deputy Military Attaché at the German Embassy in Kyiv, who in January met with 200 German army soldiers at a military base in Saxony to provide them with feedback from their Ukrainian counterparts.
German media outlet Sueddeutsche Zeitung obtained a copy of the lecture transcript and discovered that Ukrainian soldiers were dissatisfied with much of the state-of-the-art German kit they were afforded.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz shipped 18 of Germany's Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in 2023 after allies, including the US and UK, agreed to send their Abrams and Challenger 2 tanks.
Berlin has since become one of the foremost providers of military aid to Kyiv, but Ukrainian soldiers say that 60-year-old German tanks have proven more capable in fighting Russia's forces than their modern replacements.
'Hardly any large German piece of equipment is fully suitable for war,' the document concluded.
The feedback said the Leopard 2A6 - pride of place in Germany's lineup of modern war machines - was too complex and expensive to repair, and almost impossible to repair in the field if it sustained damage near or on the frontlines.
The Leopard 2's predecessor, which entered service in 1965, is considered more reliable, while Ukrainian soldiers reported that Germany's Gepard anti-aircraft tank - a derivative of the Leopard 1 that began service in 1976 - is 'the most popular, most efficient, and most reliable weapon system' Berlin has provided to Kyiv.
German servicemen participate in drills with their main battle tank, the Leopard 2
Ukrainian soldiers repair a Leopard 2 tank in Zaporizhzhya region, Ukraine, Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Ukrainian soldiers are said to be frustrated at the performance of the Leopard 2
Ukrainian army from the 43rd Heavy Artillery Brigade fire the German howitzer Panzerhaubitze 2000
Ukrainians are said to prefer German tanks that are 60 years old as they are more reliable and easy to repair
'Too expensive' and 'hard to repair' were the central complaints in Ukrainian feedback regarding modern German weapons systems.
Another German product, the Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzer, reportedly suffered from such a 'high technical vulnerability' that its 'combat capability is seriously questioned'.
Having delivered the Ukrainian feedback to the German troops in Saxony, the defence attaché ultimately concluded: 'Complicated equipment remains unused... The operational value of ultra-modern and complex large-scale equipment is low if troops cannot carry out repairs on site.'
Managing Director of the European Resilience Initiative Centre Sergej Sumlenny explained why the Leopard 2 appears to be struggling in Ukraine, despite being considered as one of the world's top-line battle tanks.
'They were designed by a generation of German manufacturers that hadn't seen war, and so tended to overcomplicate the system.
'Older systems, designed in the 1960s by those who actually saw war, are far more useful on the battlefield but have weaker armour,' Sumlenny told The Telegraph.
'Leopard 2s were also not designed for the Ukrainian battlefield. They function well when they have good air support, but Ukraine is short on this.'
Such revelations will be unwelcome news for the new German government, particularly after Parliament passed a measure tabled by Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merzto lift Germany's so-called 'debt brake' and boost defence spending.
Merz has said the government will ramp up defence spending 'significantly' over the next four years to meet NATO targets for troops and weapons.
Germany will introduce a new military service, for now on a voluntary basis, after suspending conscription in 2011, the readiness of forces will be stepped up, and they will be fully equipped with weapons and other equipment.
Within the first six months in office, the coalition will pass a law to speed up defence procurement and simplify procedures.
The German Gepard anti-aircraft tank, which entered service in the 1970s, is among the favourite pieces of German military kit for Ukrainian soldiers
The Gepard antiaircraft tank of the German armed forces Bundeswehr fires during a demonstration at the exercise area of Munster about 80 km south east of Hamburg, Germany, June 20, 2007
Germany's moves reflect a wider sentiment across the continent that defence spending and procurement must be made a priority as the European Union prepares for a scenario in which the bloc comes under attack from Russia and must respond without support from the United States.
Under its ReArm Europe plan, the EU is looking to boost military spending by 800 billion euros ($876 billion) over the next four years, loosening fiscal rules on defence investment and joint borrowing for large defence projects against the EU budget.
But ministers are also considering a plan set forth by the Bruegel think tank which advocates for the creation of a specialist fund called the European Defence Mechanism (EDM).
Bruegel said the EDM fund could focus on the manufacture and procurement of 'strategic enablers' - costly military infrastructure and equipment armies need to operate - now often provided by the United States.
These include joint command and control systems, satellite-based intelligence and communication and development of expensive new weapon systems such as fifth- or sixth-generation fighter jet.
It also includes integrated weapon systems needed by multiple countries like strategic air defence, strategic large-scale air transport and maritime logistics, missiles and nuclear deterrence.
The EDM would also promote a single European market for defence equipment to lower costs, pool resources and improve interoperability.
Defence production in the 27-nation EU is currently highly fragmented with at least seven different types of tanks, nine types of self-propelled howitzers and seven types of infantry fighting vehicles.
This has caused problems for Ukrainian units who have complained that ammunition for Western military equipment is not interchangeable, dramatically reducing frontline capabilities and increasing costs to replace munitions.
Цитата:
„Kriegstauglichkeit stark infrage gestellt“
Zu teuer, zu kompliziert, zu fehleranfällig: Erfahrungsberichte der ukrainischen Armee zeigen, dass viele der von Deutschland gelieferten Waffensysteme an der Front nur bedingt einsetzbar sind. Sollten Militärs und Politiker hierzulande bei den geplanten Milliardeneinkäufen umdenken?
Ein amerikanisches Flugabwehrsystem vom Typ „Patriot“ aus den Beständen der Bundeswehr.(Foto: Axel Heimken/dpa)
...
_________________
С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
20.13
Глава Сумской ОВА Артюх подтвердил, что был участником мероприятия, которое проводилось в центре Сум накануне ракетного удара.
«Моей инициативы там не было. Я был приглашен», – сказал Артюх «Суспильному».
На вопрос журналиста, кто его приглашал, Артюх ответил: «Это уже другая тема. Я вам ответил».
Напомним, вчера нардеп Марьяна Безуглая, экс-депутат Игорь Мосийчук и мэр Конотопа Артем Семенихин заявили, что глава Сумской ОВА Артюх устроил в Сумах мероприятие по награждению военных 117-й бригады. По которым и наносился удар "Искандерами".
Цитата:
19.50
President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of El Salvador
Цитата:
Mon 14 Apr 2025 16.10 CEST
Zelenskyy urges Trump to view devastation in Ukraine caused by Russia’s invasion
Ukrainian president calls on US counterpart to visit country as Trump appears to downplay Russia’s latest strike by calling it ‘mistake’
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International leaders condemned Russia’s strike on the centre of the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday, which killed 34 people, including two children. Two ballistic missiles hit as people made their way to church for Palm Sunday.
(выделено а.п.)
…
On Monday, the Kremlin denied its army had targeted civilians or that there had been any kind of “mistake”.
“Our army hits only military and military-related targets,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said when asked about the strike and Trump’s comments.
Russia’s defence ministry appeared to concede there had been civilian casualties, but placed the blame on Ukraine. “The Kyiv regime continues to use the Ukrainian population as a human shield, placing military facilities and holding events with the participation of soldiers in the centre of a densely populated city,” the ministry said. Russia has made similar accusations since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Trump also implied his predecessor, Joe Biden, was at fault for the war that began with Vladimir Putin’s invasion. “This war would never have started if I were president. That war is a shame,” he said.
His latest comments prompted an angry response from Ukrainians who are frustrated at Trump’s failure to confront or condemn Putin.
…
In an interview with the CBS show 60 Minutes, recorded before the attack on Sumy, Zelenskyy urged Trump to see the damage from Russia’s invasion for himself. “Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” he said.
The Ukrainian president pushed back on a suggestion made by the US vice-president, JD Vance, that Ukraine laid on “propaganda tours” for foreign leaders. “We will not prepare anything. It will not be theatre. You can go exactly where you want, in any city which [has] been under attacks,” Zelenskyy said.
(выделено а.п.)
He expressed frustration that senior White House figures continued to repeat Kremlin talking points. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff – who met Putin on Friday in St Petersburg – recently said four Ukrainian regions had “voted” to join Russia, a reference to fake referendums in occupied territory.
“I believe that Russian narratives prevail in the United States. It seems to me that the vice-president is justifying Putin’s actions. This is a change in reality. The Russians are the aggressors, and we are the victims,” Zelenskyy said.
Kyiv has accepted a US proposal made a month ago for a 30-day ceasefire. During this period Russia has escalated its bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Zelenskyy said: “Putin can’t be trusted. I told that to President Trump many times. So when you ask why the ceasefire isn’t working – this is why.”
He added: “Putin never wanted an end to the war. Putin never wanted us to be independent. Putin wants to destroy us completely – our sovereignty and our people.”
Zelenskyy said the conflict could “escalate into world war three if Putin is not stopped”. He said the “dictator’s ultimate goal was to revive the Russian empire” and to “return territories under Nato protection” – meaning the Baltic states and eastern Europe.
Ukrainian officials said Zelenskyy had been trying to fix his relationship with Trump after their disastrous February meeting in the White House. The Trump administration has indicated that Ukraine’s future security needs are now Europe’s problem.
Speaking to CBS, Zelenskyy said US military aid to Ukraine had “practically stopped”, adding that Kyiv was willing to buy US-made Patriot air defence systems.
Цитата:
18.41
В "Слуге народа" раскритиковали Трампа за его заявление о том, что удар по Сумам был "ошибкой".
Как заявил The Times председатель комитета по иностранным делам Верховной Рады Александр Мережко, это утверждение Трампа является "абсурдным" и "российской пропагандой".
Он считает, что ФБР должно расследовать, кто распространяет российскую пропаганду в Белом доме. По мнению Мережко, утверждение Трампа в отношении атаки на северный украинский город Сумы является «абсурдным».
"Это все равно что сказать, что 11 сентября было просто "ошибкой" Аль-Каиды". Это очень тревожное заявление Трампа, которое одновременно поощряет Путина продолжать злодеяния и демонстрирует, что кто-то из окружения Трампа продвигает российские нарративы", - сказал он.
Цитата:
15.22
Donald Trump ‘astonishingly susceptible’ to Putin’s flattery.
Цитата:
Published: 06:49 BST, 14 April 2025 | Updated: 15:26 BST, 14 April 2025
Trump goes nuclear at TV network over Ukraine and Greenland reports as he demands they 'pay a big price'
President Trump has gone nuclear in a furious attack on CBS over recent reports about his policies on Ukraine and the proposed annexation of Greenland.
In a Sunday night spray on Truth Social, Trump demanded the network 'lose their license' for what he describes as repeated instances of bias against him and his administration.
'They are not a ''News Show,'' but a dishonest Political Operative simply disguised as ''News,'' and must be responsible for what they have done, and are doing,' he wrote.
'CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'
On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired an interview reporter Scott Pelley conducted with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the site of a Russian attack where nine children were killed earlier this month.
(выделено а.п.)
Zelensky said he has '100 percent' hatred for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, and invited Trump to his visit his country to see the damage of the war.
Also on Sunday, correspondent Jon Wertheim reported from Greenland on what locals think about Trump's proposal to annex the island.
Trump hit back, saying the war in Ukraine 'would never have happened if the 2020 Election had not been RIGGED, in other words, if I were President'.
President Trump has gone nuclear in a furious attack on CBS over recent reports about his policies on Ukraine and the proposed annexation of Greenland
On Sunday night, 60 Minutes (pictured) aired an interview reporter Scott Pelley conducted with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the site of a Russian attack where nine children were killed earlier this month.
(выделено а.п.)
And responding to the story on Greenland, he simply said it 'cast our Country, as led by me, falsely, inaccurately and fraudulently'.
It emerged last week that Trump is considering offering every resident of Greenland an annual cash payout as part of his campaign to win over the island.
His administration moved forward on a formal plan to acquire the Arctic island from Denmark, the New York Times reported, outlining the public relations campaign and other incentives the White House is considering.
One of those options is replacing the $600million (£456million) in subsidies that Denmark gives the island with an annual payment of about $10,000 per Greenlander. Denmark insists the island is not for sale and cannot be annexed.
In the 60 Minutes interview from Sunday, locals maintained they are not for sale and do not want to become part of the US.
Trump also touched upon his $20billion lawsuit against 60 Minutes for how it edited an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris last autumn.
The president claims it was edited in a way to make Harris look good, something the newscast denies.
The edited version made Harris appear more coherent and succinct, chopping waffling answers on Ukraine's right to join NATO, the Israel-Palestine conflict and her refusal to comment on 'hypothetical' questions about China.
Zelensky said he has '100 percent' hatred for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine , and invited Trump to his visit his country to see the damage of the war
While all of Greenland's political parties are in favour of independence, none of them support the idea of joining the United States
In a Sunday night spray on Truth Social, Trump demanded the network 'lose their license' for what he describes as repeated instances of bias against him and his administration
There are ongoing reports that Trump's lawyers and CBS' parent company are involved in settlement talks.
'I am so honored to be suing 60 Minutes, CBS Fake News, and Paramount, over their fraudulent, beyond recognition, reporting,' he wrote.
'They did everything possible to illegally elect Kamala, including completely and corruptly changing major answers to interview questions, but it just didn't work for them.'
He called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to impose maximum fines and punishment 'for their unlawful and illegal behavior'.
Цитата:
Monday 14 April 2025 14:45 BST
Why is Trump trying to excuse Russia’s latest massacre?
Trump’s mumbled explanation for Russia’s ‘horrible’ Sumy bombing is no sign that he’s getting tough on Putin, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley
For a showman given to overarching high-wire performances in every theatre at home and abroad, Donald Trump’s recent criticisms of Russia have been distinctly mumbled – showing he doesn’t have the courage of his lack of conviction.
In his latest utterance, he appeared to be speaking on behalf of the Kremlin for the killing of 34 people, including two children, in a double missile strike on Sumy city, on Ukraine’s northern border with Russia.
“I was told they made a mistake,” he said.
One can only guess whether he made this claim after talking with Vladimir Putin’s officials. It seems more likely that he came up with the line to avoid further global condemnation of Russia for another war crime.
“But I think it’s a horrible thing," the US president added, after the Palm Sunday attacks using Iskander missiles fired from Russia into the centre of the provincial capital.
(выделено а.п.)
Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One, during Sunday’s flight from Palm Beach to Joint Base Andrews (AFP/Getty)
His response to the killing and bombing since the US/Ukraine-agreed ceasefire was proposed a month ago has been, safe to say, mixed. He was silent over the death of 20 people in Kryvyi Rih a week ago.
He did hint at mild frustration last Saturday when he told reporters that talks brokered by the US with Russia and Ukraine were getting to the point where the two sides would have to “put up or shut up”.
The day before he said that they should “get moving”.
And some weeks ago, Trump went as far as to suggest that he might even impose extra sanctions on nations still importing Russian oil and other commodities if Russia continued to ignore his attempts to get a ceasefire in Ukraine.
However, one should not be misled by this performative “frustration”.
Since then, Russia’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev has been feted in Washington just as Trump unleashed his disastrous wave of tariffs on the rest of the world.
Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s envoy and chief of Moscow’s government investments, then met Steve Witkoff last Friday
in St Petersburg, where Putin was once mayor.
(выделено а.п. – Путин никогда не был мэром Санкт-Петербурга).
After the Sumy atrocities, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said he hoped that Trump would be able to see that Putin was “mocking their goodwill”.
Sikorski was trying to goad Trump into taking a moral stand against Russia after the US president took Moscow’s side in negotiations and the Kremlin’s bogus interpretations of the Ukraine war.
Rescuers fight fire after Sunday’s deadly attack in Sumy (Volodymyr Zelensky/Twitter)
“Ukraine unconditionally agreed to a ceasefire over a month ago. The heinous attacks on Kryvyi Rih and Sumy is Russia’s mocking answer,” Sikorski said on arrival at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday.
“I hope that President Trump and the US administration see that the leader of Russia is mocking their goodwill and I hope the right decisions are taken.”
He may be hoping in vain. Just as Volodymyr Zelensky’s pleas for a visit by Trump to see the horrors of Russia’s invasion for himself will be in vain.
Ukraine has agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in attacks on energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea but Russia has so far refused to observe it.
On Monday, Russia said its energy infrastructure had been attacked eight times overnight and that it had shot down 52 Ukrainian drones. Ukraine said Russia had fired at least 62 drones into its territory the day after the Sumy missiles.
European foreign ministers gathering in Luxembourg are clearer than ever that they need to get their countries to step into the gap that America’s president is leaving open for Russia in Ukraine.
There is also a widening understanding that while Ukraine is suffering deeply, it is not losing and that it could actually win a war against Russia if it can hold on for a year or so.
There is a forlorn hope that, as Putin ignores Trump’s ceasefire efforts and appears to humiliate his envoy to Russia, the US president may lose patience and turn his wrath on the Kremlin.
But this ignores the pattern of his behaviour which has been to back Russia against Ukraine – no matter what.
Trump has agreed with Putin’s claim that Russia invaded Ukraine because of Kyiv’s intent to join Nato. This is nonsense. Russia invaded Ukraine before it tried to join Nato and Putin himself wrote of his intention to recolonise the country in a return to a Soviet-era “unity”.
Trump has backed Russia’s claims to hold onto, at the very least, the territory it has already captured, ruled out US troops supporting even a peace deal in the future, turned the intelligence-sharing spigot off and on again with Ukraine, and used military aid as a lever to force Ukraine into ceasefire talks.
The ceasefire talks have been driven by Trump and most favour Russia – not Ukraine.
He has shown no interest in Ukraine’s democratic future but has displayed a Putinesque passion for the nation’s mineral resources which he hopes to harness for profit and back-pay for America’s past support for Kyiv.
Trump has also served Russia’s interests by destabilising his own country’s constitutional structures, eviscerating its military and intelligence services, scuppering its relations with its closest allies, and tearing up 80 years of post-war security doctrine – oh, and threatening to invade Panama and Greenland.
Trump wants to see a Ukrainian ceasefire because Russia needs it to rebuild its forces, rearm, and return to the fight.
Small wonder he can’t bring himself to even murmur a condemnation for the murder of children.
Цитата:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The 2025 60 Minutes Interview.
Цитата:
Sun 13 Apr 2025 19.14 CEST
Civilian deaths in Sumy attack may force Washington to get tough with Putin
…
To contemplate a daytime city-centre attack, in the full knowledge that civilians will be present,
reflects a Russian culture of impunity that has been allowed to endure without effective challenge
(выделено а.п.). Nevertheless, Washington’s approach, under Donald Trump, has been to try to negotiate an end to the war by talking directly with Moscow, while remaining mostly silent on Russian attacks on civilians.
…
But Moscow believes, and acts like it believes, it can get away with it. The Kremlin will ignore condemnation from European leaders and wait for the news cycle to move on – and will almost certainly continue to attack Ukrainian cities to little military purpose. Not only are drone attacks commonplace, but there are now concerns they are routinely being armed with cluster munitions, while almost every day one or two hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles are thrown into the deadly mix.
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Rep. Curt Weldon: It’s Time to Finally Tell the Truth About 9-11.
Цитата:
US military aid for Ukraine is about to cease. Is Europe ready?
Putin is planning for this war to continue. That leaves two key questions for Ukraine’s European allies
The war between Russia and Ukraine is approaching a historic turning point: unless the Trump administration adjusts course, US military aid for Ukraine is about to cease.
In the months before leaving office, Joe Biden made a series of decisions to augment Ukraine’s stockpiles of vital munitions. Toward the end of 2024, the Department of Defense surged hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of armored vehicles to Ukraine, and that December, he approved an additional $1.25bn security assistance package for Ukraine, which has enabled the continued flow of US arms ever since (with the exception of the damaging pause ordered by Donald Trump in March).
These decisions bought Ukraine time, but that time is running out. Ukraine is depleting its stockpiles of US munitions. The $1.25bn aid package will soon be exhausted. The United States still possesses several billion dollars in drawdown authority, which could be used to send Ukraine additional security assistance. But since taking office, Trump has not approved a single military aid package for Ukraine. Even if Trump were to reverse course and utilize this remaining drawdown authority, the amount available is insufficient to sustain US support for Ukraine over time. To do that, Congress would need to approve additional Ukraine funding, which will not happen while the Republican party controls both chambers and the White House. As a result, the era of US military aid to Ukraine is approaching its end.
Vladimir Putin is stalling the Trump administration’s ineffective pursuit of a ceasefire as he waits for Biden-era military aid deliveries to run dry. Over the weekend, shortly after the Russian president met with the US representative Steve Witkoff, the Russian military launched a horrifying ballistic missile attack in Sumy that killed dozens of Ukrainian civilians. Putin is biding his time, eager to see whether the Ukrainian army will buckle in the absence of US military aid. As he said recently: “There are reasons to believe that we will finish them off.” Even if Russia is unable to capture much more territory, Putin will still wait for Ukraine’s position to become significantly more desperate before making any serious decisions about an end to this war. As US military aid for Ukraine winds down, North Korea, Iran and China are likely to continue, and could decide to increase, their support for Russia.
Putin is planning for this war to continue for at least months longer. Russia faces its own challenges: Ukrainian forces continue to fight effectively and to impose extraordinary costs on the Russian military, and falling oil prices will place further strain on the Russian economy. Even so, Grigory Karasin, Russia’s representative in talks with the Trump administration, has indicated publicly that ceasefire negotiations will progress slowly over the course of this year. The US should be seeking to adjust Putin’s calculus – and to push him to engage in meaningful negotiations – by surging security assistance to Ukraine and intensifying sanctions against Russia. But regrettably, the Trump administration has done neither of those things, opting instead to pressure Volodomyr Zelenskyy and to make unilateral concessions to Russia.
European leaders have stepped up in recent months to try to help Ukraine survive in the absence of US leadership. European discussions about a postwar reassurance force are important, but the actual war is still ongoing, and further planning is needed to deal with the impending loss of US material support.
The key questions for Ukraine’s European backers are twofold: how can Ukraine persist with a combination of its own domestic production of weapons, European security assistance, and US intelligence sharing?; and what is the most viable pathway to finance this support?
As a baseline, European countries should accept more risk tolerance in donating their own military equipment to Ukraine. Many European governments maintain significant stockpiles of artillery, rockets and air defense; given the stakes of this war, more of those capabilities should be provided to Ukraine. Meanwhile, these same European countries should increase defense spending to replenish their depleted weapons stockpiles over the longer term.
Second, Europe should direct more resources into Ukraine’s innovative defense industrial base. Ukraine is producing cutting-edge drones, munitions and air defense capabilities that are reducing, though not eliminating, its reliance on external security assistance. Now is the time to finance Ukraine’s indigenous production of weapons, which are helping to blunt Russian assaults across the front.
Third, the United Kingdom and France – as leaders in their support for Ukraine – should try to strike a deal with the Trump administration to secure additional air defense missiles for Ukraine. During the Biden administration, the United States diverted its air defense exports so that they would go to Ukraine first. A coalition of European governments led by France and the UK should attempt to negotiate an agreement with the White House to continue this policy – with the understanding that the Europeans will foot the bill. Under this arrangement, participating European countries would purchase AMRAAM and Patriot missiles for Ukraine off US production lines, and the Department of Defense would prioritize those purchases given Ukraine’s acute and ongoing air defense requirements. Trump may refuse this offer, but there is no downside to making the pitch, which, if successful, could be broadened to cover additional US defense exports that Ukraine needs.
Fourth, the European countries supporting Ukraine will need to decide how to pay for all of this. One option is to dig into their own budgets. The other, more sustainable option is for Europe to seize the approximately $300bn in Russian sovereign assets currently immobilized in their jurisdictions. Those assets can be used to finance Ukraine’s defense industry, procure weapons from the US and around the world, and support the Ukrainian economy for years to come. Strategically, those assets would provide Zelenskyy with a durable source of non-US assistance, which would reduce Zelenskyy’s dependency on the US and increase his leverage in any negotiations to end the war. Many legal and policy experts have put forward strong arguments to justify seizure and to mitigate associated risks to the European economy. The costs of inaction today far outweigh the manageable risks of asset seizure.
The realities of our current moment are both clear and regrettable: Putin has shown no indication that he will agree to a ceasefire, so this war will continue, and the end of US security assistance is approaching. Europe should move quickly to pursue the above steps and help save Ukraine from the coming storm.
RFA Proteus begins operations as seabed warfare threats increase
A recent article in the Sunday Times revealed more details about Russian undersea activities directed against UK interests. Here we look in more detail at the specific threats and how RFA Proteus and the Royal Navy are gradually improving seabed warfare (SBW) capabilities.
Subsea espionage intensifies
The RN has discovered Russian surveillance devices hidden in UK waters. These sensors, some of which were recovered after washing ashore while others were detected by RN vessels, are suspected of being part of an intelligence-gathering effort targeting the Vanguard class SSBNs. The location of these discoveries has not been publicised but the boats transiting in and out of the Firth of Clyde are most vulnerable to detection in this area. The RN has now switched to autonomous or minimally crewed boats to conduct regular route surveys. By deploying side scan sonars to frequently map the seabed in high resolution, any objects not recorded in previous surveys are obvious and can be promptly investigated.
This is form of spying not entirely new as it is believed the Soviet Navy routinely deployed submarines for intelligence-gathering operations and attempted to lay underwater acoustic sensors near NATO naval facilities, cables and strategic maritime chokepoints. NATO forces performed similar missions. As an example, In 1971 the US Navy and CIA began operation Ivy Bells, laying a recording device on a communications cable linking Russian naval bases in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle technology has made such intrusions far easier. Since 2020, Russian UUVs have been detected in proximity to deep-sea communication cables in the North Atlantic and adjacent seas. These UUVs are remotely operated and were deployed from long range. It is clear they were attempting to interfere with, or gain intelligence from, subsea data infrastructure although so far, there is no public evidence that any attempt to compromise UK cables has succeeded. Less well-publicised is the existence of military sub-sea cables vital to NATO operations around the world. This includes cables linking seabed ASW sensor arrays to data processing centres ashore which are prime targets for Russian interference.
While media attention has often focused on the Russian intelligence-gathering surface vessels such as the Yantar, which are known to operate close to NATO cables and seabed infrastructure, this is only part of a much broader threat. Although the voyage of Yantar prompted a more assertive response when she detoured over cables in the Irish Sea in November 2024, the greater concern is the deeper waters beyond the continental shelf. It is much easier to police waters close to home than detect and deter activity in the deep ocean where Russia can covertly deploy specialised nuclear-powered submarines, mother ships to small submersibles.
There is also a strong suspicion that superyachts owned by Russian oligarchs have been used as platforms for undersea reconnaissance. Several are equipped with moon pools in the centre of the hull that allow the discreet launch and recovery of submersibles, potentially offering another covert method to conduct surveillance or deliver seabed sensors.
Tentative SBW steps
Proteus, the UK’s first Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance Ship (MROS) was purchased in January 2023. Despite the ‘rapid procurement’, getting her into service has taken more than two years but she is now operational. Once into her stride, it is planned she will be deployed for up to 330 days a year. The RFA crew rotate every 4 months or so but a shortage of qualified personnel could limit this. Under Navy Command direction, the RFA has to decide which of the 5 or 6 vessels that it can find crews for will remain active. Currently, it appears Proteus is being prioritised over the Bay-class vessels.
Early operations are developmental trials are already underway including closing with the Russian seabed spy ship Yantar in the Irish Sea last year. She also conducted operations off Norway (where she was originally built) in February and docked in Bodø hosting the Defence Secretary, John Healy and his Norwegian counterpart. Proteus was operating again in the Irish Sea in March and embarked RN specialists for the first time. These personnel came from X-Ray Squadron of the Mine-Hunting and Threat Exploitation Group (MTXG) and members of the Diving Threat Exploitation Group (DTXG).
The MoD stated that Proteus would “participate in exercises in the Baltic Sea” following the visit to Norway, possibly joining the NATO Baltic Sentry policing mission estabished in January. However, the trip to the Baltic has not yet materialised and at the time of writing, she has returned to the North Sea and is alongside at Kirkwall Harbour in the Orkneys.
Defender ROV lowered into the moon pool.
RFA Proteus carries several advanced underwater vehicles as part of its threat detection and mitigation capability. The newest of the toys is the AEUK SeaCat, a 3-metre-long UUV with a high-resolution side scan sonar array. AEUK were awarded a £32m contract in 2022 for this system that was initially focused on mine countermeasures but can also be deployed in seabed warfare operations. SeaCat can operate at depths of up to 300 meters for up to 24 hours. It is up to 6 times more efficient at locating underwater objects than traditional shipboard mine-hunting sonars.
Complementing the SeaCat is the larger Gavia UUV, capable of diving to 1,000 metres, able to reach the deepest parts of the majority of the UK’s surrounding waters. For more complex tasks such the collection of evidence, recovery of equipment or underwater repairs, Proteus can also deploy the Defender, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that can be equipped with robotic arms and tools. DSTL Porton Down recently developed new manipulator arms for this system, capable of delivering and placing shaped charges to neutralise underwater threats, and this was tested in recent exercises off Norway.
Proteus has a large moon pool in the centre of the aft deck, this allows UUVs or ROVs to be lowered to the seabed directly below the ship and offers sheltered conditions protected from wind, waves and spray, reducing motion impact during delicate operations. The moon pool is normally covered by a heavy deck hatch but when the pool is in use, the hatch is lifted by the 120-tonne crane into a dedicated storage crib on the port side
For work in very deep water, up to 4,000m the MoD Salvage & Marine Operations (SALMO) team has acquired the FET Perry XLX-C heavy-duty ROV with manipulator arms for working on seabed objects. This kind of work requires specialist operators and a dedicated launch and recovery system. To accommodate heavier vehicles such as this, Proteus has been fitted with a luffing A-frame on her starboard side – the frame can be tilted, or ‘luffed’, to deploy the ROV over the side.
(This, and main article image) Proteus at work in the Irish Sea off Campbeltown on 21st March with containers on deck and moon pool cover in its storage crib.
Proteus arrived back in Devonport on 27th March and then departed again on 4th April, curiously with the containers and luffing A-frame removed (Photo: K. Clarke).
Stepping up
Discussions are now ongoing about acquiring a second vessel to complement Proteus. MROS(2) had originally been planned as a bespoke design built in the UK, to serve jointly as a replacement for the ocean survey vessel HMS Scott with additional seabed warfare capabilities. However, the urgency and scale of the risk to UK infrastructure suggests purchasing another second-hand vessel (or vessels) would still be a quicker way to address the problem, despite the ponderous entry into service of Proteus.
The renewed threat to subsea infrastructure has prompted some in the RN to question whether the UK should restore its mine-laying capability, something it has not possessed since the Cold War. The last British sea mines were dismantled in 1992 due to ethical concerns and the perception they were obsolete. However, the strategic context has changed.
In March 2025, Denmark announced the procurement of several hundred naval mines for delivery between 2027-29. Their aim is to bolster its defence of internal waters and support NATO’s collective deterrence posture. Australia also recently committed $500 million to acquire modern naval mines to defend its coasts from potential Chinese incursions. Several Baltic states, including Poland, have also signalled their intention to exit international treaties banning anti-personnel and anti-ship mines. Although no official proposal has been tabled within the current UK SDR, discussions within the RN suggest that defensive minefields could play a role in protecting key maritime approaches and infrastructure from enemy submarines and uncrewed intrusions.
There have been at least 11 instances of damage to subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, the discovery of covert sensors laid on the seabed close to the UK and Russian UUVs found near undersea cables. These are just recent incidents in the public domain but the full scale of this activity is likely much greater than has been revealed so far. This demonstrates that the potential threat that has been talked about for some years is materialised into something very real.
There is a clear need to further expand the RN’s seabed warfare capabilities. The technology and platforms already exist, and in many ways, it is easier to scale up SBW capabilities rapidly than to increase ASW strength or respond to other more high-end threats. The obstacles for the RN are generally prosaic: obtaining the funding, developing the CONOPS for this new battlespace and ensuring there is enough SQEP to crew commercially-derived platforms with niche skills such as marine engineers, dynamic positioning-qualified officers and ROV operators.
RFA Proteus alongside in Leith, Feb 2025 (Photo: Dave Cullen).
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Royal Navy to integrate logistics drones on Carrier Strike Group deployment
For the first time, logistics UAVs will be integrated into a UK Carrier Strike Group operations, delivering stores between vessels when the task force leaves for the CSG25 deployment later this month.
In addition to the crewed aircraft group, HMS Prince of Wales will embark a small fleet of Malloy T-150 octo-copter UAVs. These will be tasked with transporting small loads, ranging from engineering components to parcels from home, between ships, freeing up helicopters for higher-priority duties such as anti-submarine and surface surveillance operations.
Nine T-150 drones will be operated by 700X Naval Air Squadron (NAS) from RNAS Culdrose. A 12-person detachment will join three ships in the task group to trial the system at sea. With a payload capacity of up to 68kg, a top speed of 60mph, and a flight endurance of 20–40 minutes, the drones are capable of covering short distances between units within the CSG.
Historically, helicopters have been tasked with moving urgent stores between ships, even if the items were small or lightweight. According to 700X NAS, some 95% of stores transferred during previous carrier deployments weighed under 50kg—well within the drone’s lifting capability.
While drones have seen limited use in land-based roles, this will mark the first time they are employed at scale in a maritime environment by the RN. Operations will involve manual and autonomous control modes, including flights to pre-set waypoints with underslung cargo.
Developed by UK-based Malloy Aeronautics under an MoD innovation initiative, the T-150’s were only delivered in August last year. 700X NAS is responsible for integrating them into the aviation battlespace and developing procedures for use at sea, an effort that would traditionally have taken several years.
Operating drones from the confined spaces and dynamic conditions of a warship presents additional complexity. As part of the rapid induction process, aircrew have had to develop detailed documentation, airworthiness protocols, and support procedures for safe operation aboard ships.
As the RN seeks to normalise the use of uncrewed systems, 700X NAS continues to recruit and train sailors from across the service. Personnel from non-traditional aviation backgrounds are being retrained as qualified drone pilots. The deployment of the T-150 with the CSG marks another milestone in the RN’s effort to embrace uncrewed systems and modernise its logistics and operational support functions.
Jayne, who lives in Singapore, has begun removing around 70% of her tattoos and is documenting her laser treatments and aftercare online. The process will take years. Laura Oliverio/CNN
‘I want to reclaim my skin’: Why these people are removing their tattoos
When Zach Gilyard, an art director in Brooklyn, got his first tattoo as a senior in high school, he did what most teenagers do and didn’t tell his parents. But not for the reasons you might think — Gilyard’s father and older siblings are all heavily tattooed, and Gilyard, like his mother, thought he would never join them. But on a whim 2006, he got a winged foot on his ankle to represent running, and kept it hidden around his family.
“It was not very me,” he said in a phone call, of getting inked. “I kind of liked that it was a bit of a thrill for me, because it was a time where I couldn’t control the situation. I was doing something permanent.”
Twelve years and several tattoos later, Gilyard abruptly decided to reverse course shortly after beginning a black-ink traditional patchwork sleeve on his left arm, starting with a panther head on his shoulder. It was big and bold, as intended, but left Gilyard feeling unsettled.
“I always had a bit of buyer’s remorse every time I got one. It would last a week or two, and then I’d be happy that I did it,” he said. But this time, the feeling didn’t subside. “I had it for maybe a month, and I freaked out about it — it sent me into a whole panic. I couldn’t explain why. I just didn’t want it, so I told myself in that moment that I was going to get rid of it.”
Roughly a quarter of people regret at least one of their tattoos, according to a 2023 Pew Research study surveying nearly 8,500 people in the US, as well as a smaller, separate study conducted in Turkey published the previous year. But it’s only fairly recently that tattoo removal has become more reliable and widely available. (This writer can attest to that; in 2008, she had a self-administered teenage stick-and-poke lasered off. It was an ordeal.)
Zach, who lives in New York, abandoned plans to start a traditional patchwork sleeve after beginning it with a bold panther head. Courtesy Zach Gilyard
The panther head and several other tattoos are nearly gone, leaving only faded outlines. Courtesy Zach Gilyard
Celebrities have often drawn attention for their disappearing ink: Angelina Jolie famously removed Billy Bob Thorton’s name after their divorce in 2003; Megan Fox lasered off her portrait of Marilyn Monroe; and Pharrell told British Vogue in 2008 he was trying an experimental alternative that involved growing new skin. Most recently, Pete Davidson appeared newly bare-chested in a Valentine’s Day campaign for Reformation while undergoing removals of some 200 tattoos, though paparazzi shots following the ad revealed he is still sporting lots of faded ink.
In Gilyard’s case, he wasn’t lasering hundreds of tattoos, but it has taken more than half a decade and several thousand dollars to remove a handful of them, including the stubborn, highly saturated panther head. Now, that’s nearly gone, showing only a ghostly impression against the freckles on his skin. Other, smaller designs are even further along and barely noticeable to him, he said.
“Results do vary, person to person, tattoo to tattoo,” said laser technician and tattoo artist Tim Goergen, who has been treating Gilyard at his shop, Gotham Tattoo Removal, in Brooklyn.
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Tattoo ink sits in the dermis layer, or second layer, of the skin permanently because ink molecules are “too big for the body to break down,” Goergen explained in a phone interview. Laser machines release fast pulses of energy that heat and break the ink down into tinier particles, triggering an immune response that processes them through the lymphatic system. (A recent study in Sweden has linked tattoos — and their removal — with an increased risk for lymphoma, though its authors said more research is needed.) Tattoos that are easier to remove are usually older, made of black ink, have finer lines, and sit closer to the heart where there’s better blood flow, he said.
Goergen charges between $100 and $450 for an individual session, while Removery, a national chain, cites $100-615 on its website. It’s difficult to predict how many sessions a client’s desired results will take, whether that’s fading a tattoo for a cover-up or complete removal, Goergen noted, “because everybody’s different.”
Amending ‘younger decisions’
Sasha, at her home in Los Angeles, paused on laser treatments when she was pregnant, and hasn’t been eager to start up again. Austin Steele/CNN
Why people remove their tattoos is often as idiosyncratic as why they get them. Sasha Goldbas-Nazarian, who lives in Los Angeles, decided to start laser treatments when she met her now-husband, who shares her Jewish faith but comes from a more conservative, Iranian family.
Interpretations of the Torah, as well as associations with the Holocaust, have led tattoos to long be considered forbidden or taboo within Judaism, though contemporary attitudes towards it have somewhat shifted. “When we first met, he didn’t believe that I was Jewish because I had tattoos,” Goldbas-Nazarian recalled with a laugh. “He was like, ‘I’ve never really met any Jews that have tattoos.’”
He eventually offered to pay to remove her most visible tattoos, which she said were “younger decisions” made when she was in high school and college, including a star on her ankle done — unprofessionally — by her friend with a tattoo machine; a horseshoe and star on her upper back; and the initials “UWS” for New York’s Upper West Side, where she grew up, on her wrist. (Disclosure: This writer is a childhood friend of Goldbas-Nazarian, and a former colleague of Gilyard).
She's had multiple rounds of laser treatment on three tattoos, but has yet to see much progress. Austin Steele/CNN
Goldbas-Nazarian accepted, partly because her tattoos were faded and blurred and often invited questions, and partly because covering them with makeup for formal events had become a hassle during their relationship. But she didn’t anticipate how long it would take — or that it would be much more painful than getting tattooed in the first place, despite the fact that the laser sessions only last a handful of minutes each.
“Even though (the sessions are) fast, it’s still really painful. And you can smell your skin burning a little bit, which grossed me out,” she recalled. She’s gone for the treatments on and off for years but has had to pause for an extended period while pregnant, per the medical spa’s policies, and as a new mom. She has no desire to rush back, either. “Honestly, even though I still have a lot of sessions to do, I’ve been putting it off just because of how painful it is,” she said.
Freckles gone wrong
Though tattooing might typically bring to mind large, custom artworks or small flash pieces, cosmetic tattoos have become popular for their ability to enhance facial features and makeup — a so-called “semi-permanent” option for people wanting to remove the daily hassle of filling in their eyebrows or adding beauty marks.
But, cosmetic tattooing, which uses an alternative ink meant to produce a more natural finish on the skin, comes with its own set of challenges — as Z, who lives in the UK and prefers to go by her first initial to remain anonymous, discovered around three years ago. Her tattoos were tiny, resembling freckles across her forehead, nose and cheeks to replace natural ones she’d lost due to a rare side effect from a severe illness. She knew she would lose her hair during treatment, she said, but wasn’t aware that her complexion would drastically change.
“Growing up, I had a face full of freckles — my nickname was actually ‘Freckles,’” Z said in a phone interview. “Then I got quite poorly, and basically my freckles and all my moles faded away. And so when I was well again, I felt really weird about my face, because it felt so bare.”
After she came across a YouTube video of cosmetic freckle tattooing, she thought she would be able to get her freckles back. “But it went very wrong for me,” she said, explaining that the results didn’t feel natural. “You could tell that they were drawn on.” Unpleased with the outcome, she would cover them with makeup, but they still showed through.
Z got freckle tattoos to restore her natural complexion, but she was unhappy with the results. (This photo has been intentionally blurred by CNN.) Jordan Butler/JHB Tattoo Removal
Now, they are nearly gone, and she no longer has to wear heavy makeup to conceal the spots. (This photo has been intentionally blurred by CNN.) Jordan Butler/JHB Tattoo Removal
Cosmetic tattoo ink is meant to eventually fade, but it doesn’t always. It also runs the risk of turning into other colors such as pink or orange over time, or when treated with laser. Z said she did her research and requested regular tattoo ink, but she does not believe her practitioner honored that request. Having more melanated skin put Z at a higher risk of hypopigmentation, a loss of skin pigment, during her tattoo removal.
“There is no guarantee of perfect removal for any skin type, but it does become a little bit tougher on darker skin types,” explained Jordan Butler, founder of JHB Tattoo Removal, who has been treating Z, and sees clients with a range of complexions. “A lot of people that have come in and seen me in the past… have been told that they can’t have (a) tattoo removal, that it’s not possible. It’s definitely possible in most cases.”
Though better laser technology in recent years has improved results and lessened unwanted outcomes such as hypopigmentation, Butler and Goergen emphasized that the outcome does depend on a technician’s knowledge and care. Ink pigment colors are targeted using different wavelengths, and some (like the one that targets warmer shades) are more “aggressive” than others, Goergen explained. “It’s possible to strip natural melanin out of the skin with the red or orange or yellow (inks),” he said.
That’s why patch-testing is crucial, Butler said, which he did extensively with Z. Her first session was painful, she said, but the discomfort has lessened over time — “now it’s barely anything,” she commented — and her healing has been straightforward.
“I think we’re almost there,” Z said of her progress. “It’s so much better than what it was.”
Looking for a fresh start
Progress on Jayne's fingers tattoos — the smallest designs she's having removed. Laura Oliverio/CNN
Jayne Foo, a financial consultant based in Singapore, has experienced the more extreme side of recovery over the past few months as she’s embarked on the removal of around 70% of her tattoos, including one of her two full sleeves, a chest piece and a large stomach piece. And, for her 14,600 followers on Instagram, she’s documenting the entire laborious experience — open wounds, fluids and all. Redness, soreness and swelling are all common; but blistering can occur too, which Foo has experienced after both of her first two sessions.
“I always knew I wanted to get tattoos, but as a young girl, I never had the money to get nice tattoos, so I just plastered anything I wanted on my body without thinking of how it would look in the future,” she told CNN in a phone call. On why she’s getting the tattoos removed now, she said: “I want a fresh start. I want to reclaim my skin.”
That’s the message Foo also hopes to share with her social media followers as she embarks on the yearslong process. She’s not the first influencer to document it — and some have begun partnering with clinics to promote and show results. But videos on social media are often limited to the session itself, which can be deceptive due to “frosting,” which appears to immediately lighten the ink but is actually a temporary effect that occurs briefly (for about 15-20 minutes) when the laser hits the ink,before returning to normal.
Foo’s videos show the hours and days following her treatments, during which she experienced large, intense blistering and extreme itching from the scabbing that followed, the latter for which she was eventually prescribed antihistamines.
Jayne’s left sleeve was a cover-up of older tattoos. Now, she hopes to get rid of them all. Laura Oliverio/CNN
A screenshot from Jayne’s Instagram, where she's been documenting each session. Courtesy Jayne Foo
“The first time I had it done, my arm swelled up twice the size,” she recalled. “I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
For the first few days of healing, she chose to remain indoors completely to minimize contact. “It’s just too much of a hassle to leave the house,” she said. “You have to be very mindful of your surroundings and you have to keep yourself clean.”
Foo said she will continue to chronicle her treatments, as “it’s important to be real about it.” Accustomed to documenting many parts of her life online, including her fitness and travel, she also thought it would be “weird” to “suddenly not have tattoos” in her posts.
Conversely, Gilyard has taken a more discreet route and has kept his removal process mostly private — including from his parents once again. Though, they eventually noticed his faded tattoos.
“My dad finally looked at my tattoos one day and asked why they look like an old man’s,” Gilyard said. “My mother just asked me how much it cost, and asked me how much the tattoos themselves cost, and just said it was all a waste of money,” he laughed. “But I think she’s happy that some are going away.”
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Зеленский уволил главу Сумской ОВА Артюха, сообщает представитель правительства в Раде Мельничук
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Кабмин согласовал это решение.
Увольнение произошло после ракетного удара по Сумам, где погибли 35 человек.
Губернатор области Артюх вчера фактически подтвердил проведение награждения военных в Сумах накануне удара 13 апреля, однако заявил, что не был инициатором.
Напомним, нардеп Марьяна Безуглая, экс-депутат Игорь Мосийчук и мэр Конотопа Артем Семенихин заявили, что глава Сумской ОВА Артюх устроил в Сумах мероприятие по награждению военных 117-й бригады. По которым и наносился удар "Искандерами".
Российский «Ланцет» уничтожает позиции украинской армии на Курском направлении - Сумской фронт.
Цитата:
Suomalaiset taistelijat Ukrainassa
Yle tapasi yhden suomalaissotilaan harjoituksissa Itä-Ukrainassa ja toisen Kiovassa.
DONETSKIN ALUE/ KIOVA Ammukset kilahtelevat tauluihin ja kirosanat lentelevät, kun englantia puhuvat sotilaat juoksentelevat pitkin sotaharjoituskenttää Itä-Ukrainassa. Adrenaliinin voi melkein haistaa.
Harjoituksen taustalla soi vanha italialainen partisaanilaulu.
Joukkoa komentaa mies, joka käyttää taistelunimeä Finn. Hän puhuu suomea ruotsalaisella korostuksella, sillä hän on varttunut Ruotsissa.
Finn on taistellut Ukrainassa jo kolme vuotta. Asepalveluksensa hän suoritti Suomessa Porin prikaatissa.
– Ei voi antaa Venäjän tehdä, mitä se haluaa. Oli aika näyttää, että nyt riittää, Finn sanoo.
Aiemmin hitsaajana työskennellyt Finn järkyttyi aikoinaan lukiessaan uutisia Butšasta ja Mariupolista. Päätös lähteä Ukrainaan syntyi nopeasti.
Finn paljastaa videolla haaveensa liittyen suomalaisiin ja Ukrainan armeijaan:
Finn kertoo olleensa mukana monissa uutisistakin tutuiksi tulleissa taisteluissa, kuten Ukrainan vastahyökkäyksessä Etelä-Ukrainassa kesällä 2023.
– Meidän ryhmä oli yksi ensimmäisistä, jotka lähtivät hyökkäämään. Se oli hirveän vaikea paikka. Miinoja oli kaikkialla, Finn muistelee.
Moni Finnin taistelutovereista on kuollut. Hän oli itsekin vähällä päästä hengestään jouduttuaan tykistön tulitukseen Bahmutin taisteluissa. Sairaalassa tuli vietettyä monta kuukautta, eikä kuulo ole palannut täysin toiseen korvaan.
– Komennossani on kuollut neljä miestä. Minusta olisi väärin pakata kamppeet ja sanoa, että tämä oli tässä nyt, Finn sanoo.
Finn antaa lähtökäskyn sotilaille harjoituksissa Donetskin alueella. Kuva: Vlad Safronov
Rintamalle jo toisen kerran
Viisisataa kilometriä lännempänä pienet Ukrainan liput liehuvat vieri vieressä. Päivä on aurinkoinen Maidanin aukiolla Kiovan keskustassa.
Ukrainalaiset alkoivat asetella lippuja Maidanille kuolleiden sotilaiden muistoksi sodan alkuvaiheessa. Lippujen sekaan on ilmestynyt yhä enemmän ulkomaisia lippuja, myös Suomen lippuja.
Toinen Ylen tapaama suomalaissotilas tökkää uuden Suomen lipun lippumereen. Hänellä on mukanaan ote kaatuneen suomalaistoverinsa päiväkirjasta, ja sen hän nyt lukee:
– Rauhanomaisten kansojen kuuluu nyt nousta seisomaan ja tehdä selväksi, ettemme anna tämän jatkua. Johonkin se raja on vedettävä. Minulle se on tässä. Maailmankaikkeus katselkoon kulkuani hyväntahtoisesti.
Mikko kirjoittaa otteen kaatuneen taistelutoverinsa päiväkirjasta pieneen Suomen lippuun Maidanin aukiolla. Kuva: Justas Stasevskij / Yle
Sotatoveri kuoli viime vuonna.
– Kaveri oli romantikko, suomalaissotilas sanoo ja ihmettelee, miten tämä päätyi Ukrainaan taistelemaan.
Kutsumme Kiovassa tapaamaamme sotilasta Mikoksi tässä jutussa. Mikko ei ole hänen oikea nimensä. Oikea nimi on Ylen tiedossa, mutta turvallisuussyistä Yle ei kerro sitä.
Mikko on juuri lähdössä Ukrainan rintamalle jo toistamiseen.
– On aika kuumottavaa, kun näkee tämän lippujen määrän, Mikko sanoo katsellessaan valtavaa lippumerta.
Mikko taisteli Ukrainassa puolisen vuotta viime vuonna. Kokemus päättyi kaoottisesti, ja Mikko pakkasi tavaransa ja lähti Suomeen. Muutaman kuukauden päästä hän päätti kuitenkin palata.
Huoli Suomen puolustuskyvystä
Euroopan poliitikot ovat korostaneet, että sota Ukrainassa ei ole vain Venäjän ja Ukrainan välinen konflikti, vaan että Ukraina taistelee koko Euroopan puolesta.
Mikon mukaan kaikki eivät edelleenkään ymmärrä sitä.
Mikko lähettää videolla painavan viestin suomalaisille ja muille eurooppalaisille:
Sekä Mikko että Finn kokevat taistelevansa Ukrainassa myös Suomen puolesta. Kumpikaan ei usko, että sota loppuu pian.
Mikko kertoo, ettei hänellä ole mitään henkilökohtaista venäläisiä vastaan ja että hänellä on myös venäläisiä ystäviä.
– Osa heistä tietää, että olen käynyt täällä. Se ei ole vaikuttanut ystävyyssuhteisiimme, Mikko sanoo.
Mikon mukaan vain Ukrainasta saa sellaista taistelukokemusta, jota tarvittaisiin Suomessa, jos Venäjä hyökkäisi. Sodankäynti on muuttunut oleellisesti droonien myötä, hän sanoo.
Mikko uskoo Suomen puolustusvoimien koulutuksen olevan pahasti vanhentunutta.
– Jos Venäjä hyökkäisi Suomeen nyt, Suomi olisi pulassa. Ensivaiheen tappiot olisivat katastrofaaliset, Mikko väittää.
Mikon mukaan Suomessa ei ymmärretä, kuinka paljon taistelukentällä käytetään drooneja.
Ukrainan sotilastiedustelun sotilaat käyvät harjoitusta läpi. Kuva: Vlad Safronov
Jokaiseen autoon ja jopa yksittäisiin jalkaväen sotilaisiin Ukrainassa on kiinnitetty elektronisen häirinnän järjestelmä, jolla pyritään estämään vihollisen droonit, hän huomauttaa. Mikon mukaan Suomella ei ainakaan vähän aikaa sitten ollut elektronisen häirinnän laitteita.
– Ollaan tilanteessa, että jalkaväellä ei ole mitään keinoa suojautua drooneilta. Niitä on venäläisillä niin paljon, että he voivat vapaasti valita, kenet tappavat, Mikko sanoo.
Yle pyysi Puolustusvoimia kommentoimaan suomalaissotilaiden väitteitä. Näin Puolustusvoimat vastasi:
Puolustusvoimat seuraa tiiviisti Ukrainan sodan tapahtumia mukaan lukien tekniikan, taktiikan ja menetelmien kehittymistä. Puolustusvoimat kehittää omaa suorituskykyään ja osaamistaan jatkuvasti vastaamaan uhkaympäristön vaatimuksia.
Myös Finn sanoo, että moni Suomen asepalveluksessa opituista asioista ei enää toimi. Hänellä on drooneista sama sanoma kuin Mikolla:
– Kukaan ei näytä ymmärtävän droonien valtavaa määrää täällä.
Myös Finn uskoo, että Suomessa – kuten missä tahansa muussakin maassa – tulisi Venäjän hyökätessä alkuun raskaita tappioita.
Tuen puute painaa
Ulkoministeriön ja Supon mukaan Ukrainassa on taistellut yhteensä noin sata suomalaista viimeisen kolmen vuoden aikana. Sotilaat ovat Ukrainan asevoimien palveluksessa ja saavat palkan Ukrainasta. Suomalaisilla sotilailla ei siis ole Suomessa virallista statusta tai tukipalveluita sotakokemustensa jälkeen.
Mikko kertoo olleensa tyhjän päällä Suomessa ensimmäisen sotareissunsa jälkeen.
– En osannut käsitellä tapahtunutta. En nukkunut öisin, ja olin helvetin kiukkuinen koko ajan, Mikko sanoo.
Finn puolestaan kertoo suomalaisen taistelutoverin kuoleman olleen hänelle kova paikka.
Hän sanoo, ettei ole kolmen vuoden sotakokemuksen jälkeen enää ”sama kaveri”.
– En tiedä, onko minusta tullut vähän tunnoton. Kun joku kuolee, niin sanon vain radioon ”yksi 200”, Finn sanoo.
Numerot 200 ja 300 ovat Ukrainan ja Venäjän armeijoiden käyttämää koodikieltä. 200 viittaa kaatuneeseen ja 300 haavoittuneeseen sotilaaseen.
Mikko kiittelee suomalaisia sotilaita Ukrainassa auttavaa Your Finnish Friends -yhdistystä.
– Se on meille elämänlanka. Olen saanut yhdistykseltä enemmän tavaraa kuin Ukrainan armeijalta, Mikko sanoo.
Mikko arvostelee sitä, ettei Suomen rahankeräyslupa salli rahan keräämistä Ukrainan armeijalle ja sotilaille.
Asia on herättänyt keskustelua Suomessa. Eduskunnan Ukraina-ystävyysryhmä teki aloitteen lain muuttamiseksi vuoden alussa. Turun Sanomien mukaan jo yli sata kansanedustajaa yli puoluerajojen kannattaa lain muutosta.
Mikon mielestä koko keskustelu aiheesta on kummallista.
– Miten se, että sodimme täällä Suomen ja Euroopan etujen puolesta, ei ole yleishyödyllistä toimintaa? Mikko ihmettelee.
Hänen mukaansa kyse on lopulta sotilaiden turvallisuudesta. Ukrainan armeijan palkoilla ei pysty kustantamaan tarvittavia välineitä.
US-Russia talks; Realists face off against Neocons.
Цитата:
Михаил Хазин 15.04.2025 - Россия, Европа, США — кто рухнет первым?
Цитата:
Kyiv asks EU officials for May 9 visit to counter Putin’s victory parade
Separately, Zelenskyy would like to meet leaders from the so-called coalition of the willing.
[img]https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=1440,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/14/GettyImages-2151581640-scaled.jpg[/img]
A Russian Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launcher rolls on Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government invited top European officials on May 9 to Kyiv as a show of diplomatic force against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual military parade in Moscow the same day.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on Monday extended the invitation to his European Union peers during a gathering in Luxembourg, urging them to “show our unity and resolve in the face of the biggest aggression in Europe since the Second World War.”
The push to draw attention away from Moscow comes more than three years after Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and as United States President Donald Trump attempts to broker a ceasefire between the two countries.
Separately, Zelenskyy would like to meet leaders from the coalition of the willing in May to “determine security guarantees” for Ukraine once a possible ceasefire with Russia has been agreed, Sybiha added. The U.S. isn’t part of that coalition.
While he didn’t specify where that meeting would take place, discussions are underway regarding a potential visit to Ukraine in early May by heads of state, including soon-to-be German chancellor Friedrich Merz, said two EU diplomats who were granted anonymity to speak about the potential future event.
The Russian president has extended invitations to the leaders of Israel, China, Brazil, Slovakia and Serbia to join him in Moscow to celebrate Russia’s 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, according to Russian media. He has not invited the U.S. or most of the EU’s member countries.
Previously, former U.S. President George W. Bush and then French President Jacques Chirac attended the display of military pageantry on Moscow’s Red Square in 2005 but no Western leaders have attended in recent years.
Russia has so far ignored pressure to stop attacking Ukraine, killing 34 people and injuring more than 170 with a ballistic missile attack on central Sumy, Ukraine on Palm Sunday — an attack that drew widespread condemnation from leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump, for his part, called the attack “terrible” but stopped short of criticizing Russia.
Цитата:
Don’t go to Russia’s WW2 victory day celebrations, EU warns European leaders
Moscow has invited numerous world leaders to its annual military parade.
The European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned European leaders on Monday against participating in Moscow’s military celebrations on May 9, inviting them to show solidarity with Ukraine instead.
According to Russian media, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has extended invitations to the leaders of China, India and Brazil — as well as to EU country Slovakia and to Serbia, which aspires to join the 27-member bloc.
“What was also discussed very clearly, and said by different member states, is that any participation in the 9th May parades or celebrations in Moscow will not be taken lightly on the European side, considering that Russia is really waging a full-scale war in Europe,” Kallas told journalists in Luxembourg after a gathering of foreign ministers.
Kallas added the EU does not want to see any potential member of the bloc joining Putin’s celebrations in Moscow.
The May 9 celebrations mark Russia’s 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, in which it played a key role. Putin has dubiously claimed that his war against Ukraine is an attempt to purge the country of Nazis.
POLITICO reported earlier Monday that Ukraine was inviting top EU officials and leaders to Kyiv on May 9 to counter Russia’s military celebrations — a call echoed by Kallas after her meeting with EU foreign ministers.
“I’ve also called all the member states but also representatives of the institutions to visit Kyiv as much as possible to show really our solidarity and that we are with Ukraine,” she said.
The office of Viktor Orbán has said the Hungarian prime minister will not attend the parade in Moscow. Slovak leader Robert Fico said in November 2024 that he would attend.
German court to review seizure of Russian 'shadow fleet' tanker
BERLIN, April 14 (Reuters) - A German court will weigh a request to release a seized oil tanker that is believed to be part of a so-called shadow fleet used by Russia to circumvent oil sanctions, Germany's finance ministry said on Monday.
The Panama-flagged vessel, the Eventin, was found drifting out of control off Germany's Baltic Sea coast in January. It had been on its way from Russia to Egypt with a cargo of around 100,000 metric tons of oil, worth some 40 million euros ($45.24 million).
German authorities confiscated the decrepit vessel, which was included in an EU sanctions package targeting Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and sharply rebuked Moscow over the incident.
Russian authorities at the time said they had no information about the ship or its owner.
A spokesman for Germany's finance ministry said on Monday that it was pausing further enforcement measures pending a court's decision regarding the vessel.
"Appeals for interim relief have now been filed with the competent court against the seizure and confiscation of the ship and its cargo," the spokesman said.
The finance ministry declined to reveal the identity of the plaintiff, whether the petition had been brought by the owner of the ship or its cargo, or how long the legal process would last.
The Eventin is currently moored off the resort town of Sassnitz.
It will soon be relocated to a hazardous goods anchorage about three nautical miles away, but it is deemed seaworthy and poses no current threat, an official with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Monday.
EU sanctions have aimed to put pressure on Russia and limit its ability to finance the war in Ukraine by targeting the "shadow fleet" - vessels used by Russia to move oil, arms and grains around in violation of sanctions.
The vessels are not regulated or insured by conventional Western providers, and, with little incentive to follow shipping standards, they pose safety and environmental risks, industry experts say.
A prized artist: English Romantic painter JMW Turner (JMW Turner/Tate Gallery)
No one took greater imaginative leaps and risks than Turner – he’s Britain’s greatest artist
It’s 250 years since the birth of this prodigious son of a barber and a wigmaker, but his weather-obsessed, sea-enamoured paintings have never been surpassed, says Mark Hudson
Anyone wanting to understand why Joseph Mallord William Turner is Britain’s greatest artist need look no further than his extraordinary 1842 painting Snow Storm – Steam-Boat Off a Harbour’s Mouth, on permanent show at Tate Britain. With its trail of red-tinged smoke streaming from the perilously listing ship, and surging sea captured in a spiralling vortex of paint marks that seem to pull us bodily into the tumult, this is a patently revolutionary painting. And it’s one that embodies key tropes of national identity. There’s the old chestnut, of course, about the British being an island race whose fortunes are inescapably bound up with the sea; and, even more significantly, there’s our treasured sense of ourselves as a people who are keener than most to get physically out into nature.
Not content to watch the storm from the safety of the spray-drenched harbour wall at Harwich on the Essex coast, the 66-year-old Turner claimed that he had persuaded the sailors to “lash me to the mast to observe it for four hours”. We can picture Turner himself on the fragile craft, tethered sodden to the mast, sketchbook in hand, recording the terrifying pitching of the vessel from the viewer’s imagined perspective.
And on hearing that the painting had been written off by critics as mere “soapsuds and whitewash”, Turner responded bitterly, “I wonder what they think the sea is like! I wish they’d been in it! I did not paint it to be understood, but to show what such a scene is like.”
Turner is often referred to as a precursor and enabler of the Impressionists – as if an artist of his scale and ambition could be regarded as a mere adjunct to other people’s achievements, however momentous. Yet the fact that he tends to be regarded even now as an artist who is somewhat between movements and moments is at least in part owing to his own personality.
Described by contemporaries as enigmatic and highly eccentric, Turner feels like a certain kind of Englishman writ large: a chippy, lower-middle-class Londoner, who refused to give up his cockney accent despite receiving every possible establishment accolade. Born in Covent Garden on 23 April 1775, the son of a barber and wigmaker, yet brought up mainly in Brentford and Margate, Turner was a child prodigy. He enrolled at the Royal Academy – Britain’s premier art school – at the age of 14 and sold his first painting in the Summer Exhibition at 15. Despite an intensely competitive nature and early acceptance as one of Britain’s leading artists, Turner remained at a distance from the mainstream art world. He didn’t write any major treatises, create any theories – except what can palpably be deduced from looking at his paintings – nor did he found or join any movements.
Yet like all true Englishmen, Turner was obsessed with the weather. And what weather! From gigantic storms in the Alps to hyperreal early paintings of shipwrecks in which you can practically count the bubbles on the heaving mountains of foam, Turner’s real subject isn’t the structure of the land or even of the sea, but the atmospheric conditions through which they’re perceived. Many of his later semi-abstract seascapes feel like visualisations of that great British cultural phenomenon, the shipping forecast, with forms dissolving into banks of vapour in which you can positively feel the build-up of atmospheric pressure.
Indeed, a few scenes in Sussex’s Petworth House and some intimate drawings aside, I can barely think of a single interior in Turner’s entire oeuvre. The sheer gusty outdoorsiness of his art makes other artists’ evocation of the “sublime” – that quintessential Romantic-era sense of the awe-inspiring power of nature – feel painfully polite and literary. He often puts me in mind of the kind of old-school male who would rather be in a tent, or better still a camper-van, than a five-star hotel.
A Turner painting of Chepstow Castle overlooking the River Wye, which sold at auction for £93,375 in 2023 (PA Media)
The fact that Turner’s art is generally in widescreen, with figures seen in the middle or far distance, might suggest a lack of interest in people or an inability to paint them. Yet he also produced a significant number of very personal drawings, set in bedrooms, clearly referring to his relationship with his housekeeper Sarah Danby, with whom he had two daughters; though they never married. The sense of Turner as an artist of vast distances is further complicated by minutely detailed watercolours of animals and birds, an exhibition of which opens at his former residence, Sandycombe Lodge in Twickenham, on 23 April to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth.
While Turner and his slightly younger rival John Constable are often described as having elevated the landscape to the level of “history painting” – grand narrative images, considered the highest of the academic genres – they were substantially responsible for blowing such fusty, antiquated distinctions out of the water: in Turner’s case, literally.
Where the typically saleable 18th-century landscape took an idealised, classically inspired approach to nature, inspired by the French “father of landscape painting” Claude Lorrain – all golden evening light and tastefully positioned ruins – Constable painted his dad’s Suffolk boatyard in overcast English daylight, to the consternation of critics. Turner, though he spent considerable amounts of time in Italy, always feels most himself on the stretch of English coast between Harwich and Margate, on the Thames and Stour estuaries, edging towards abstraction in close proximity to the local fishermen and sailors, for whom he had the greatest respect.
Turner's painting ‘The Dark Rigi: the Lake of Lucerne’ depicts a mountain in the Swiss Alps (PA)
Yet he didn’t reject the great masters of the past. Far from it. Early in his career, he created dramatic sunset views that were direct responses to Claude, and designed to be viewed “in conversation” with the great Frenchman’s works, as he stipulated in a posthumous bequest to the National Gallery. During the 1830s, he produced a series of technically spectacular Italian landscapes, aimed at wealthy collectors, which blur the boundaries of the historical and contemporary, reality and dream, using multiple perspective points, mind-bending angles and truly hallucinatory colour. Ancient Rome: Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (1839), with its glowing citadel rising through a mass of hazy reflections, purports to recreate ancient Rome, though much in the scene is patently modern. And in case anyone failed to get the message that he was out to surpass anything attempted by Claude, one of his former idol’s signature tropes, the umbrella pine, is prominently positioned throughout the series.
While Turner was widely regarded as a prickly recluse, he was happy to grandstand when it suited him. His practice of completing his paintings on the gallery wall during “varnishing day” at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition (a still extant tradition whereby members can make small adjustments to their work prior to opening), came close to a form of proto-performance art. The resulting pre-publicity ensured large crowds gathered around his works when the show opened, but brought him into conflict with other artists, most notably with Constable, when large works by the two artists were hung side by side in 1831 and 1832. In the latter instance, Turner put a large red splotch in the middle of his relatively placid seascape Helvoetsluys to counter the impact of Constable’s more imposing The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, causing the latter to remark, “He has been here and fired a gun.”
Such incidents contributed to a rivalry in their reputations that continues to this day. While Constable is undoubtedly a sublime artist, his vision was intensely localised, notably around Suffolk and Hampstead, as he would have been the first to admit. Turner was simply a much bigger and broader figure, who took far greater imaginative leaps and risks. His The Field of Waterloo (1818), with its nocturnal view of the jumbled corpses of French and British soldiers, is an anti-war painting created a good century before that idea came into general currency. The Slave Ship (1840), originally titled Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon Coming On, is a horrific anti-slavery painting (though Turner has earned posthumous criticism for investing in a scheme involving enslaved plantation workers).
A Lake District viewpoint immortalised by Turner during his first visit to the area in 1797 (PA)
Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway (1844), with its locomotive hurtling towards the viewer across Maidenhead Railway Bridge, is perhaps the first incarnation of the “industrial sublime”, in which the wonders of nature merge with those of advanced technology – created decades before the Impressionists supposedly turned art on its head by embracing “modern life”.
Turner’s relationship with Impressionism is in fact complicated. While leading Impressionists Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro spent much time studying Turner’s paintings while in exile in London during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Pissarro later claimed that Turner hadn’t understood colour, because he had “used black” (which doesn’t reflect light). The French painter clearly hadn’t seen late Turner works such as the transcendent Norham Castle, Sunrise (1845), in which the Northumberland castle and surrounding countryside dissolve into fields of shimmering colour, without employing one iota of black.
Such works, never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime, make it all too easy to empathise with Turner’s famous last words, uttered as he was dying from cholera in 1851: “The sun is God.” Britain’s greatest artist may not have backed up his works with extensive written or verbal testimony, but he certainly understood the value of a good soundbite.
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С интересом и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
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Владимир Нерюев, заместитель генерального директора коммуникационного агентства Аура поделился мнением, какие изменения произошли или произойдут в профессии PR-специалиста.
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За последние пару лет реклама банков изменилась. Появились новые сюжеты и герои. Реклама по-прежнему — не только инструмент продвижения услуг, но и способ формирования доверия к финансовым организациям. Главный тренд, который отмечают эксперты,— переход от сухого перечисления выгод к эмоционально окрашенным коммуникациям.
Антитрендами наружной рекламы в текущем году стали прямолинейность и чрезмерная перегруженность сообщений. Наружная реклама продолжает показывать рост: число рекламных конструкций за последний год увеличилось более чем на 2 тысячи.
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28 марта в Центральном доме художника состоялась 25-ая выставка маркетинговых коммуникаций «Дизайн и реклама NEXT». Одним из самых ярких её событий стал День социальной рекламы, который организовала Ассоциация директоров по коммуникациям и корпоративным медиа России (АКМР) совместно с АНО «Лаборатория социальной рекламы» и оргкомитетом LIME.
На VII Международном форуме «Матрица рекламы», прошедшем в ЦВК «Экспоцентр» в рамках международной выставки «Реклама-2018», большой интерес у профессиональной аудитории вызвала VI Конференция «Интернет-реклама».
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