The Brink of War?

[Moses]

The TASS report (https://tass.com/economy/1452979) has the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak telling reporters on Wednesday: ""Agreements were reached to increase the number of flights both from the side of Turkish Airlines and from the side of our companies that will be flying (sic)." That is, he doesn't name Aeroflot or any other Russian airline as providing such additional flights..

Maybe this is why: "Aviation safety: 20 Russian airlines added to EU Air Safety List" (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pres.../en/IP_22_2389 - Press release11 April 2022 Brussels): The Commission has updated the EU Air Safety List, which is the list of airlines that are subject to an operating ban or operational restrictions within the European Union, because they do not meet international safety standards. Following the update, 21 airlines certified in Russia are now included on the EU Air Safety List. This reflects serious safety concerns due to Russia's forced re-registration of foreign-owned aircraft, knowingly allowing their operation without valid certificates of airworthiness. This is in breach of international aviation safety standards.

Commissioner for Transport Adina Vălean said: “The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency has allowed Russian airlines to operate hundreds of foreign-owned aircraft without a valid Certificate of Airworthiness. The Russian airlines concerned have knowingly done so in breach of relevant international safety standards. This is not only a clear breach of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (the Chicago Convention), but it also poses an immediate safety threat. We are living in the context of Russia's unprovoked and unjustified military aggression against Ukraine. However, I want to make it crystal-clear that this decision is not another sanction against Russia; it has been taken solely on the basis of technical and safety grounds. We do not mix safety with politics.”

1. Turkey isn't EU, so nobody cares
2. Russia already maintained own Air safety register and list, and it is recognized by Turkey, so everything still is in order: certificates are valid. Russian certificates.
3. Yes, names of companies aren't pronounced: there are a lot of companies in Russia, why he should list them in short message?
4. "Cristal clear" lie: all aircrafts became "not safe" in one day, for sure it is "technical and safety ground", no politic and pressure here.

[cdnmatt]

Moses, you do realize this would all be easier it we could just all be friends, right?

[Moses]

Sometimes even Bush may say truth.

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.”

[dab69]

. High season is starting.

and Nazi blitzkreig continues

Heil Putin

[Moses]

Be warned: Ukrainian brain-washed refugees have strange habit to burn Russian flags. Sometimes along with house and houses of neighborhoods.

image_2022-05-19_111511609.jpg

[dab69]

and Russian Nazis still murdering and invading...
Blitzkreig continues...

[dab69]

In a country where independent media and commentary has all but disappeared from public view, it's rare to hear dissenting voices on the many state-controlled TV networks in Russia — particularly now with the country at war with Ukraine.

But one well-known military analyst and veteran has stood out this week after he appeared on state TV and gave a damning assessment of the Ukraine invasion, or what Russia calls its "special military operation."

"The situation, frankly speaking, will get worse for us," Mikhail Khodaryonok, a retired Russian army colonel, told the "60 Minutes" talk show on Rossiya-1 TV program hosted by Olga Skabeyeva, who's renowned for her pro-Kremlin stance.

"You should not swallow informational tranquilizers," Khodaryonok told the host as he warned that Ukraine was in no way near being beaten by Russia, and that Kyiv could mobilize and arm a million people if it wanted to.

Khodaryonok, who is also a defense columnist for the gazeta.ru newspaper and a graduate of one of Russia's elite military academies, according to Reuters, had previously warned the country against invading its neighbor Ukraine, saying it was not in Russia's national interests.

His advice unheeded, Russia is now almost three months into a bloody conflict in Ukraine with only a few significant territorial gains in the east and south, and with the invasion likely to turn into a long-term war of attrition with Ukraine's fighters showing a bravery and resilience underestimated by Moscow.

Russia has already had to scale back its apparent strategy to invade Ukraine from the north, east and south and has now focused its fighting forces on eastern Ukraine, in the Donbas region.

Khodaryonok emphasized that even if Ukraine had to rely on hundreds of thousands of conscripts that only had rudimentary military training, what mattered is that their hearts would be in the fight, and that would not bode well for Russia.

"The desire to defend one's motherland in the sense that it exists in Ukraine — it really does exist there and they intend to fight to the last," Khodaryonok said before he was interrupted by Skabeyeva who was trying to downplay the effectiveness of Ukraine's forces.

"We need to treat this million Ukrainian soldiers as a reality in the nearest future," he said.

Neither Khodaryonok nor Skabeyeva could not be reached for comment, Reuters reported.
'The world is against us'

On the global stage, Russia is widely ostracized and has been sanctioned to the hilt, with even its erstwhile allies in China and India edgy over how long the conflict could last.

"The main deficiency of our military-political position is that we are in full geopolitical solitude and — however we don't want to admit it — practically the whole world is against us ... and we need to get out of this situation," Khodaryonok continued on the talk show, with the other studio guests appearing dumbstruck by his outspoken critique.

While Russia is increasingly isolated, the West appears more united than ever. Ukraine's allies in the West continue to supply arms to Kyiv and Russia's invasion has seen the Western military alliance NATO tighten its security measures. In fact, Russia's invasion has only served to strengthen the alliance, with Finland and Sweden now looking to join the organization.

Russia predicated its onslaught of Ukraine largely on opposition to it joining NATO (a prospect that was not imminent) and has invariably blamed NATO for the invasion, as well as accusing the military alliance of preparing to invade what Moscow sees as Russian territory in east Ukraine, where two pro-Russian, self-proclaimed republics are located in the Donbas.

But its response to NATO's forthcoming expansion to include Finland and Sweden has been muted. Although it initially threatened "retaliatory steps" against the expansion, with President Vladimir Putin calling it "a problem," it has since said the expansion doesn't make a big difference to it.

Geopolitical analysts have noted there is little Russia can actually do about the enlargement anyway, although Russia has threatened to act if NATO military infrastructure is placed in Sweden or Finland.
Read more

NATO is about to get bigger and Putin is unhappy: Here are 3 ways Moscow could react

Khodaryonok said Russia needed to see the reality of the situation in Ukraine. "The main thing in our business is to have a sense of military-political realism: if you go beyond that then the reality of history will hit you so hard that you will not know what hit you," he said.

"Don't wave rockets in the direction of Finland for goodness sake — it just looks rather funny," Khodaryonok said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...tLr?li=BBnb7Kz

[Moses]

At past 72 hours already over 1200 soldiers from Ukrainian army and Nazi "Azov" battalion capitulated and went out of bunker under "Azovstal" forge.

They are going out at day and night. Buses for their transfer running non-stop.

1123277187_0:0:1843:1037_2072x0_60_0_0_4c42971d8ae4e0a1518e1522d1d53bf2.jpg

24617270_0_0_1816_1023_1920x0_80_0_0_6f2022750ba7ca5f89eb9d240e0de2bb.jpg

Israeli-Embassy-Starts-Return-to-Kyiv.docx-p-scaled.jpg

[Moses]

New Mariupol's administration announced, that after end of capitulation "Azovstal" will be demolished - it will be city new park-place, since almost 100 years old metal works plant can't be adapted to modern standards of ecology for manufacturing plants.

On the pictures: "Azovstal" before conflict:

Azovstal_panoramy.jpg

Azovstal_panoramy_9.jpg

18880857_6d7b54fc81e1e1f51219896e3e411ed0.jpg

[dab69]

Russian forces gunned down a 14-year-old boy playing soccer and two teen brothers out for a walk after they seized control of villages in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions in the early weeks of the war, a new investigation reveals.

The teens were just a few of the victims of what Human Rights Watch has described as Russia’s “abhorrent, unlawful, and cruel” campaign against civilians from late February through March. Having interviewed dozens of survivors, the human-rights group on Tuesday revealed new “evident war crimes” that it says must immediately be investigated.

Survivors from the village of Yahidne recalled Russian soldiers holding more than 350 residents hostage in a school basement for 28 days, under such abysmal conditions that many of those who lived through the ordeal were still hospitalized in mid-April for conditions they developed during their time in captivity.

Seventy of those trapped in the basement were children, five of them babies, survivors said.

“After a week, everyone was coughing violently. Almost all the children had high fevers, spasms from coughing, and would throw up,” one survivor was quoted saying, noting that detainees were deprived of food for the first several days.

Ten of the older hostages are said to have died during their weeks in captivity.

In other cases, survivors recalled Russian troops searching for any excuse to kill villagers, and then executing them even if they didn’t find one.

Anastasia Andriivna, 66, a survivor from Andriivka, told Human Rights Watch her 45-year-old son had been murdered after Russian forces found a military overcoat from his time in the National Guard in 1993.

She found his body in a barn after Russian forces withdrew. “He was lying there in a fetal position, with his hands tucked under his head, and his jacket draped over his shoulders. He had been shot in the ear, with blood covering his face,” she was quoted saying.

In the village of Mokhnatyn in the Chernihiv region, a passing Russian convoy gunned down two 17-year-old twin brothers, Yevhen and Bohdan Samodiy, along with their 18-year-old friend, Valentin Yakimchuk, according to the report.

In the village of Nova Basan, 14-year-old Dmytro Solovei was simply kicking around a soccer ball on a playground when Russian forces shot him dead. His older brother was then shot as he tried to recover his sibling’s body.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, Russian troops appeared to be under orders to carry out indiscriminate executions. One survivor, a resident of Novyi Bykiv, told investigators that Russian soldiers who held him and several others hostage said they had orders to kill eight detainees and asked for “volunteers.”

When no one came forward, they picked eight men at random.

Human Rights Watch also documented instances of enforced disappearances and torture. The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed its troops are only targeting military sites and avoiding aggression against civilians, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The International Criminal Court sent its largest-ever team of investigators to Ukraine earlier this week to probe hundreds of cases of alleged war crimes.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...7f32b152a2d303