🌐👀Global Eyes
🔥 News and notes from a world on fire
🇺🇦Ukraine
Russian forces have launched an all-out assault to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, closing in on the city of Sievierodonetsk, on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets river, and Lysychansk on the west bank of the river:
Russia is now in control of an unbroken swathe of eastern and southern Ukraine, but has yet to achieve its objective of seizing all of Luhansk and Donetsk. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that the “ruthless” offensive in Donbas showed Ukraine still needed more Western arms, especially multiple launch rocket systems, long-range artillery and armored vehicles.
Moscow throws massive resources into offensive:
Russia continued to pour forces and equipment into its all-out offensive in eastern Ukraine, where it seeks to encircle Ukrainian troops in two cities, as Kyiv warned that the country is facing an existential battle that could determine its fate.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said on May 24 that battles being fought in eastern Ukraine could determine its future.“Now we are observing the most active phase of the full-scale aggression which Russia unfolded against our country,” Motuzyanyk told a televised briefing. “The situation on the [eastern] front is extremely difficult, because the fate of this country is perhaps being decided [there] right now.”
The Ukrainian army is under more pressure than at any time since the first weeks of the invasion:
They have slowed the Russians down but have not stopped the offensive grinding forward. The Russians are inflicting heavy casualties. A military source in the 57th Brigade told me that one of their units went into the line with 240 men and came out with about 140—the rest of them killed, wounded and captured. … Zelensky has said the Russians could be killing up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers a day in Donbas. …
If President Putin's forces can encircle Severodonetsk, their next targets would most likely be the key cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk in the Donetsk Oblast, the other side of Donbas. Then he might declare victory in the battle for Donbas.
I saw lines of freshly dug trenches near the two cities, as the Ukrainians prepared fall back positions. If they fell, and it is no certainty as they are both heavily defended, President Putin would be able to declare his first significant victory of the war. Russia would control a belt of territory stretching along its border south from Donbas and along most of Ukraine's coastline.
A shower of Russian missiles is raining down on Ukraine’s railroads to hinder the delivery of Western arms to the Donbas front:
On the evening of Monday, May 23, four strikes targeted the railway infrastructure near Pavlohrad, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, causing “serious damage to the tracks and catenaries,” the head of the regional administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, said in a statement. Pavlohrad is a crucial railway junction that forms the gateway to the Donbas.
Zelensky: The situation in the Donbas is “extremely difficult.”
“In fact, all the power of the Russian army, which still remains in them, was thrown there to attack. Lyman, Popasna, Severodonetsk, Sloviansk—the occupiers want to destroy everything there. But in the intercepts of their conversations, we hear that they are well aware that this war does not make sense for Russia and that strategically their army has no chance. But it takes time and a lot of extraordinary efforts of our people to break their advantage in the amount of equipment and weapons.
“Well, after three months of looking for an explanation for why they failed to break Ukraine in three days, they came up with nothing better than to say that they supposedly planned to. Almost 30,000 Russian soldiers killed. More than 200 downed planes. Thousands of lost Russian tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment. Russian missile ammunition is almost completely used up. And they want to cover it up with lies that they are not fighting at full strength? Miserable. And the time will come when they themselves will admit it.
“I emphasize again and again: The longer this war lasts, the greater will be the price of protecting freedom not only for Ukraine but for the whole free world. Therefore, the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine—rocket-propelled grenades, tanks, anti-ship and other weapons—is the best investment in maintaining stability in the world and preventing many severe crises that Russia is still planning or has provoked.” (In Ukrainian.)
The head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration, Sergei Gaidai, wrote on Telegram:
‼️ Now is the most difficult time for Luhansk region is all eight years of the war. The Russians are destroying us‼ ️
📌 It only gets worse. What the racists are doing is hard to describe in words. Orcs are killing our cities, destroying everything around. Severodonetsk is barely alive. The regional center was bombed.
The Russians are advancing in the Luhansk region in all directions at once. They are attacking the Severodonetsk direction, in the mountain community from the side of Zoloty and Katerynivka, near Popasna from the side of Komyshuvakha, and our Luhansk Chornobayivka—Belogorivka. The Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway is being completely shot down. Enemy DRGs are already “working” there.
The situation is on the verge of critical. The Nazis brought an insane number of fighters and equipment to our region. Orcs keep helicopters and heavy weapons ready in the occupied territories
📌 Free Luhansk region is now like Mariupol. We are an outpost that restrains the onslaught and restrains precisely. Despite the superiority of the enemy army, we will win, because we are fighting for our land. For every killed civilian, for every destroyed building, for every tear … to the end … to Victory.🇺🇦 (In Ukrainian.)
Hundreds of decomposing corpses were found in the basement of an apartment building in the city of Mariupol:
Workers digging through the rubble of an apartment building in Mariupol found 200 bodies in the basement, Ukrainian authorities said … The bodies were decomposing and a stench permeated the neighborhood, said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor.
Ukrainian authorities have said at least 21,000 people have been killed—and accused Russia of trying to cover up the extent of the horrors by bringing in mobile cremation equipment. They have also alleged some of the dead were buried in mass graves. Strikes have also hit a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians were sheltering.
Zelensky, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, said that Putin was the only Russian official he was willing to meet to discuss how to end the war:
“The president of the Russian Federation decides it all. If we are talking about ending this war without him personally, that decision cannot be taken. I cannot accept any kind of meeting with anyone coming from the Russian Federation but the president. And only in the case when there is one issue on the (table): stopping the war. There are no other grounds for any other kind of meeting.”
“History is at a turning point,” said Zelensky. “This is really the moment when it is decided whether brute force will rule the world.” He called Russia “a criminal state, of war criminals” and said he “would not be surprised” if Moscow used chemical or nuclear weapons.
Zelensky said the West, and Europe in particular, must close ranks and bolster support for Ukraine:
Zelensky specifically thanked the United States for its support while singling out Hungary, which has ardently opposed an EU-wide embargo on Russian oil imports, for stalling Europe’s ability to ratchet up pressure on Moscow. “We are on the European continent and we need the support of a united Europe.... Hungary is not as united as rest of the EU.”
Accusations of rape by the occupying forces are multiplying, especially in the liberated cities of the Kiev region. (In French.)
Russian troops are running out of high-precision weapons, said a spokesman for the Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate. (In Ukrainian.)
Another Russian general has been killed by Ukrainian forces. Retired Russian Air Force Major General Kanamat Botashev was the 13th general to die in Ukrainian territory.
Satellite images show Russian ships loading up with Ukrainian grain in Crimea.
British warships could be sent to protect freighters carrying Ukrainian grain:
The UK is in talks with allies including Lithuania about the formation of an “alliance of the willing” to help lift the Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports. It is thought that Egypt and other countries reliant on Ukrainian produce could also help. If this proved possible, the waters near the Ukrainian coast would need to be de-mined before exports could resume.
There is a time for clever policies, subtle diplomacy, considered overtures, and exquisite compromise. This is not it.
🚩 The war won’t end until Putin loses:
The West should not aim to offer Putin an off-ramp; our goal, our endgame, should be defeat. In fact, the only solution that offers some hope of long-term stability in Europe is rapid defeat, or even, to borrow Macron’s phrase, humiliation.
🚩 The war in Ukraine is not complicated: A response to the New York Times Editorial Board.
🚩 Between front lines, Ukrainian reconnaissance teams hunt Russian targets.
“We are not a passive victim hiding in a burrow and just waiting for the enemy to come and get us. We carry out offensive operations and try to destroy the enemy, during the day and during the night,” said the outpost’s commander, Semen. “It’s a very complicated game. As we choose their vulnerable points and hit them, the intensity of their operations has decreased. They don’t have enough men, they don’t have the morale, and they keep losing the armor that they cannot replace. It’s hard for them. They are not idiots and they don’t want to die, either.”
🇷🇺 Russia
Appealing unsuccessfully against his latest nine-year sentence, Navalny used his address to a Moscow court to describe Putin as a doomed madman:
Castigating Putin’s Russia as a state run by thieves and criminals, Navalny said the current leaders of Russia would ultimately be crushed by the forces of history and burn in hell for creating a bloodbath in Ukraine. “This is a stupid war which your Putin started,” Navalny, 45, told an appeal court in Moscow via video link from a corrective penal colony. “This war was built on lies. One madman has got his claws into Ukraine and I do not know what he wants to do with it—this crazy thief,” Navalny said …
“What do you want to achieve—do you want short-term control, to fight with future generations, to fight for the future of Russia?” Navalny asked the court. “You will all suffer historic defeat. Your time will pass … When you will all be burning in hell, your grandfathers will be adding wood to your fires.”
A Russian diplomat at the country’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva resigned in protest of the invasion of Ukraine:
“I studied to be a diplomat and have been a diplomat for 20 years,” he wrote. “The [Russian foreign] ministry has become my home and family. But I simply cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy.”
The US says it won’t extend an exemption that allowed Russia to pay foreign debt to American investors in dollars, which may cause Russia to default:
[Analyst Timothy] Ash predicted that Russia will lose most of its market access, even to China, in light of the default, since Moscow’s only financing will come at “exorbitant” rates of interest. “It means no capital, no investment and no growth. Lower living standards, capital and brain drain. Russians will be poorer for a long time to come because of Putin.” Ash suggested that this would further Russia’s isolation from the global economy and reduce its superpower status to a similar level to “North Korea.”
🎧 What’s the connection between the largest cocaine bust in Russian history and the man who was the city’s deputy mayor at the time—Vladimir Putin?
Despite drawing closer, Xi and Putin distrust each other, and China clearly feels barely disguised contempt for Russia:
“The so-called revitalization of Russia under Putin’s reign is based on a false premise,” said Gao Yusheng, who served as China’s ambassador to Ukraine from 2005 to 2007. “Russia’s decline is evident in all areas ... and has had a significant negative impact on the Russian military and its combat capabilities.” Gao’s comments came at a Beijing seminar in April that was later published by Phoenix News Media, a partially state-owned Chinese television network, as a transcript.
“The Russian military’s economic and financial strength, which are not commensurate with its status as a so-called military superpower, could not support a high-tech war,” Gao said. “The Russian Army’s poverty-driven defeat was evident.” The article was taken down within hours of being posted.
🇪🇺 Europe
🇭🇺 Viktor Orbán declared a state of emergency because of the war in Ukraine. Orbán will now rule by decree:
“We have seen that the war and sanctions from Brussels have brought about a great economic upheaval and drastic price rises,” he said. “The world is on the brink of an economic crisis. Hungary has to stay out of this war and has to protect the financial security of families.” The state of emergency “will allow the government to react immediately and protect Hungary and Hungarian families by all possible means,” the prime minister said. (And they held the CPAC convention in Hungary. What a disgrace—Claire.)
🇭🇺 Viktor Orbán says Hungary will obstruct EU proposals to further sanction Russia, including by banning its oil, and EU leaders shouldn’t so much as discuss this—or sanctions on the Russian Orthodox Church—at an upcoming summit:
Orbán, who won a fourth term in office last month, is seen as the EU’s strongest supporter of Russia, going back years and well before Moscow’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. He has also frequently poked Ukraine’s government over the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in western Ukraine.
Several other EU countries—including Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic —have also voiced concern about the consequences for national economies if Russian oil is blocked. Orban said the proposal didn't differentiate between countries; EU members that have a coastline, for example, can import oil by tankers. Landlocked Hungary doesn’t have that option and therefore is more reliant on Russian oil through pipelines.
🇵🇱🇩🇪 Polish President Andrzej Duda accused the German government of breaking its word on an agreement to supply Warsaw with new tanks:
“We have provided Ukraine with a large number of tanks … because we believe it is our responsibility as a neighbor,” Duda said, referring to reports that Warsaw handed at least 240 Soviet-era tanks to the Ukrainian military. “By doing so, we depleted our own military potential and stockpiles,” he argued. The Polish president added that “a large part of our tank arsenal in the Polish armed forces are German Leopard tanks,” adding that Berlin had made a “promise” to deliver such tanks to Poland.
A German defense ministry spokesperson said Monday that Berlin was “engaged in a constructive exchange with our Polish allies and to see how we can reconcile their wishes and our possibilities.”
🇫🇮🇸🇪 Finnish President says he takes “terrorism seriously.” Swedish prime minister willing to “sort out issues” with Turkey.
🇹🇷 The Turkish President’s Directorate of Communications published a list of Turkey’s demands: Sweden must lift sanctions against Turkey, including an arms export embargo; it must end “political support for terrorism;” eliminate sources of terrorism financing; and halt arms support to the PKK/YPG.
🇹🇷🇬🇷 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he will stop talking to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and cancel a key meeting between their two governments, accusing the Greek leader of antagonizing Turkey.
In a televised address following a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Erdoğan accused Mitsotakis of recommending to US officials that Washington not sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey during a recent visit to the United States.
Erdoğan then went on to accuse Greece of harboring followers of US-based religious leader Fethullah Gülen, who Turkey says was behind a failed coup attempt in 2016, and of establishing military bases against Turkey.
“He no longer exists for me. I will never agree to meet with him. We will continue our way with honorable politicians.”
🇸🇪🇫🇮🇹🇷 Delegations from Sweden and Finland are in Ankara trying to cure Turkish angst.
🇸🇪 Sweden does not fund or arm terrorist organizations, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said. “We are not sending money to terrorist organizations, of course, nor any weapons.” .
🇷🇺🇹🇷 Russia’s shopping centers have been holding talks with Turkish companies in the hope that Turkish retailers can step in to fill the gap left by Western companies:
“Turkey is an important trading partner for Russia. The talks, which are focused on Turkish brands replacing the retailers which left Russia, mark a new phase,” said Dmitriy Moskalenko, the chair of the Russian Council of Shopping Centers, describing the ongoing talks as “positive.”
🇹🇷 Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahçeli says Turkey should consider leaving NATO if its demands of Finland and Sweden aren’t met.
🇹🇷🇷🇺 Appease and enable: The West’s disastrous Russia and Turkey policies.
Despite the disastrous consequences of its pre-invasion policy toward Russia, the West continues to indulge their illusions about Turkey. Appeasers fail to understand that Western standards, values and principles are obstacles to the functioning of these regimes. Thus, they cannot be engaged through values and rules-based approaches but need to be treated as what they are—security threats.
🇬🇧 Boris Johnson presided over a culture of lockdown-breaking parties that featured drunken fighting among staff, an inquiry revealed, prompting renewed calls for his resignation.
🇬🇧 What will it take to get the UK’s inflation under control?
Today’s astronomical rise in inflation is no less shocking, even though it was predicted. UK inflation is simply not supposed to hit levels such as 9 percent, and the statisticians have had to go back in time to remodel historical data, as inflation has not been this high while the Consumer Prices Index has been in existence. …
So the government will face pressure to do more, and yet an inflation rate this high creates instant multibillion pound problems that make that job harder. A-real terms pay rise for the frontline workers that everyone clapped for during the pandemic? Increasing pensions by 9 percent next year after the peak of the inflation? Rail fares? Student loan repayments? It would all add up.
Macron dashed expectations of a broader reshuffle that would bring in more politicians from the left and the right or high-profile figures from civil society. Instead, he opted to keep heavyweights in key posts, reassign loyalists or promote junior ministers who rose to power alongside him.
🇫🇷 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Trotskyite pest leading the new French left:
The question now is whether the far right is on the wane and if Macron’s next term will be marred by a full-frontal face-off between his mainstream pro-business party and a radical, populist left spearheaded by Mélenchon that will not shy away from whipping up street protests and finding ways to block his agenda. …
The sealing of the left-wing deal between Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party, the Greens, the Socialists and the Communists sent the old guard of the once-powerful Socialist Party into an open rebellion. The former leader of the party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, said a France led by Mélenchon would look like “North Korea,” while former PM Bernard Cazeneuve accused his party of condoning “the hatred of the state” and of “tolerating authoritarian regimes” in striking a deal with him.
🇮🇪 Security for a US delegation led by senior Congressman Richard Neal to Ireland and Northern Ireland has been ramped up after the details of his itinerary were leaked to loyalist paramilitaries. Neal is heading a US delegation to speak to officials on both sides of the border about the Brexit Protocol. (Paywalled.)
🇮🇪🇬🇧🇪🇺🇺🇸 The delegation has warned the British Government against unilaterally removing the Northern Ireland Protocol.
🇵🇱 Poland’s prime minister criticized the fight between the UK and EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol: “Only Putin will be happy,” he said, calling on the two sides to compromise rather than risk a trade war.
🇳🇴 The Kystriksveien: Earth’s most beautiful road trip? Norway’s 670 kilometer road to the Artic is “almost too much drama for one trip, too much beauty to take in, too much wonder to absorb.”
🌏 Asia-Pacific
🇰🇵 North Korea fired a volley of missiles, including a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile, just hours after US President Joe Biden left Asia. “The United States condemns the DPRK’s multiple ballistic missile launches,” said a State Department spokesperson.
🇷🇺🇨🇳 Russian and Chinese warplanes conducted joint exercises in North Asia during a visit by President Biden:
As the leaders met, Russian and Chinese warplanes conducted a joint patrol that lasted 13 hours in the region, in what Japanese Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi characterized as a likely provocation by both Beijing and Moscow.
The patrol took place after President Joe Biden angered China by saying a day earlier he would be willing to use force to defend the democratic island of Taiwan. On Tuesday, he said there was no change to a US policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan.
“We believe the fact that this action was taken during the Quad summit makes it more provocative than in the past,” Kishi said of the Chinese and Russian exercises. Japan scrambled jets and conveyed “grave concerns” to Russia and China through diplomatic channels, Kishi said.
South Korea’s military also scrambled fighters, saying at least four Chinese and four Russian warplanes entered its air defense zone. The patrols, the first since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were part of an annual military exercise, China’s defense ministry said.
🇺🇸 The US said this shows the depth of Russia’s and China’s alignment:
“China is not walking away from Russia. Instead, the exercise shows that China is ready to help Russia defend its east while Russia fights in its west,” the person said. The senior administration official added the bomber drill indicated that Russia would stand with China on its territorial disputes with neighbors in the East and South China Sea.
🇺🇸🇹🇼 Biden said there was no change to the US policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan the a day after he said he would use force to defend it:
The issue of Taiwan loomed over a meeting in Tokyo of leaders of the Quad grouping of the United States, Japan, Australia and India, who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China—although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not aimed at any one country. …
Biden, asked if there had been any change to the US policy on Taiwan, responded: “No. The policy has not changed at all. I stated that when I made my statement yesterday.”
🇯🇵 Behind the scenes in Tokyo, Biden’s defense of Taiwan was very welcome:
“The remark goes far beyond the ambiguous strategy of past administrations. This will contribute to peace and stability in the Taiwan straits,” Masahisa Sato, a former deputy defence minister and well-known LDP hawk, said in a blog post. “There is a lot of praise for this within the party.”
🇹🇼🦠 Taiwan is suffering a record wave of Covid infections after easing the restrictions that had kept infections remarkably low at the pandemic’s outset:
For the whole of 2021, Taiwan reported less than 15,000 locally transmitted cases. Now, it's registering around 80,000 cases a day—a startling reversal after the effectiveness of its long-standing zero-Covid policy won it international praise.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong’s new leader heralds a dark era:
Lee’s overarching vision is unquestionably antidemocratic, and subservient to his ultimate masters—not Hong Kong’s people, but Beijing’s leaders. This city was never the beacon of liberal democracy existing on the border of an autocracy, as its most vocal proponents like to claim, but it was still free. The press could criticize the authorities, the police were held to account, and the courts operated according to the rule of law. John Lee’s elevation makes clear that this prior golden era of sorts is over, and a new one is under way.
🇨🇳🦠 The Chinese province of Henan has ordered its nearly 100 million people to take a Covid test every two days:
Residents who do not comply will have problems scanning the codes needed to enter public places or take transport .... Other provincial capitals—such as Shijiazhuang in the northern province of Hebei—have also rolled out similar measures, with Shijiazhuang saying it would start weekly Covid tests for its 11 million people on Monday. …
If similar mandates are expanded to all of mainland China, it could cost between 0.9 percent and 2.3 percent of China’s gross domestic product, said Nomura analysts in a report this month. Key business hub Shanghai has been almost entirely sealed off for around two months, snarling supply chains, while China’s capital Beijing has banned dining out and ordered millions to work from home. Retail sales and factory output slumped to their lowest levels in around two years last month.
💉 The Quad is working “assiduously” to get Indian regulatory approvals to get the Quad Vaccine Initiative off the ground, said US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
The initiative of the four Quad countries (India, the US, Australia and Japan), which aims to manufacture and distribute at least a billion Covid19 vaccines for the Asia region by the end of 2022, has run into challenges.
… the original plan, which was launched in March 2021 and sought to supply Johnson & Johnson vaccines from the Biological E facility in Hyderabad, has had trouble taking off due to legal indemnity issues with Indian law, safety concerns around the vaccine, lack of World Health Organisation approvals for the facility (in the context of another vaccine, Corbevax) and lower demand for vaccines in Southeast Asia.
🇵🇰 Pakistan’s government banned a protest march planned by ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is demanding fresh elections:
“No one would be allowed to siege the capital and dictate his demands,"“the interior minister said, adding that cabinet had approved the ban. He said Khan and his aides had termed it a bloody march, which could not be allowed following a sit-in that Khan held in 2014 for over four months that paralyzed the country. At the time, Khan had rallied thousands to protest alleged rigging of an election in 2013, and his supporters had attacked police and threatened to storm the parliament and prime minister’s house. “They’re coming to Islamabad with evil designs,” the interior minister said.
🇮🇳 Flash floods and landslides in India’s northeast Assam state have killed at least 25 people and displaced more than 650,000:
Heavy monsoons are a yearly occurrence in Assam, resulting in flooding and landslides which force residents to flee their homes, often leaving behind their belongings. The Brahmaputra River, one of the largest rivers in the world which flows from Tibet to India and finally into Bangladesh, burst its banks in Assam, inundating more than 1,800 villages in 26 districts this month.
🇧🇩 At least four million people have been affected by the worst floods in Bangladesh’s northeast for nearly two decades:
The Bangladeshi government said the floods, which began last week, had submerged 70 percent of Sylhet district in the northeast and 60 percent of Sunamganj district, leaving at least 10 people dead and about two million marooned.
Heavy rains and a rush of water from upstream in India’s northeast swelled rivers in Bangladesh, with two main border rivers, the Surma and Kushiara, breaching a major embankment and inundating hundreds of villages.
… The United Nations Children Fund put the extent of the damage even higher with “over four million people” in five districts in the country’s northeast affected by the floods.
🇮🇳⛓ The incarceration of a state lawmaker for criticizing India’s prime minister in a tweet is raising concerns about the health of India’s democracy:
Jignesh Mavani’s tweet accused the PM and leader of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for idolising Madhuram Godse, the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi in 1947.
The offending tweet was later taken down by Twitter upon the government’s request. It is this censorship by Silicon Valley which has many asking how Elon Musk’s pledge to protect free speech will work in a country where social media platforms have previously complied with law enforcement and the political leadership to retain market access. During the Covid19 pandemic, Facebook revealed that it had blocked posts with the hashtag #ResignModi when citizens voiced their anger at the government’s handling of the crisis.
🇮🇳🇺🇸 Narendra Modi and Joe Biden reached “substantive outcomes” in talks to strengthen their trade and defense ties, India said, though Modi refrained from condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine:
“Discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in trade, investment, technology, defense, P2P ties between the two countries,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson, Arindam Bagchi, said on Twitter, referring to people-to-people ties. “Concluded with substantive outcomes adding depth and momentum to the bilateral partnership.”
Biden told Modi he was committed to make the US-India partnership “among the closest we have on earth.”
(Bonus question: Which theory in international relations would predict that the United States would try to make the US-India partnership “among the closest we have on earth?”)
🇲🇲 Dozens of Rohingya refugees are dead or missing after a boat with about 90 people aboard, including children, capsized and sank off the coast of Myanmar.
🇬🇧🇦🇫 The UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee has published a report charging that Afghan allies and British soldiers were “utterly let down by deep failures of leadership” by the UK’s withdrawal:
The international withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a disaster in terms of planning, execution, and consequences for the UK’s wider interests. It was a betrayal of our partners in the country and, worst of all, undermined the security of the United Kingdom by encouraging our enemies to act against us. The former head of the armed forces told us that the decision to withdraw was “strategically illiterate and morally bankrupt,” while the former National Security Adviser has called it “a bad policy, badly implemented. It is an act of strategic self-harm.” The decision has damaged the reputation of the UK and its allies, and will affect the Government’s ability to achieve its foreign policy goals for years to come. …
The UK Government failed effectively to shape or respond to Washington’s decision to withdraw, despite having had 18 months’ notice.
The UK Government failed to predict the speed of the Taliban’s takeover. The fact that this came as a surprise to many, including the militants themselves, does not excuse the UK’s failures, but rather makes it more urgent to identify where its intelligence gathering, analysis and planning fell short. The failure to heed warnings from the Kabul Embassy points to systemic shortcomings in drawing on officials’ in-country knowledge. Despite this, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has sought to avoid responsibility, and the parameters of its internal review have been set to avoid the topic of intelligence altogether.
The FCDO failed to make the necessary preparations for withdrawal, in terms of laying the groundwork for an evacuation with third countries, considering and planning for which of the UK’s in-country partners should be prioritized for evacuation, and putting in place a robust timeline to evacuate the Embassy that could adapt to fast-changing scenarios.
🎧🛩 Was pilot suicide the reason for the China Eastern crash? Mohan Ranganathan explains how pilot suicides have caused air disasters in the past, how a pilot can bring down a plane, and the lessons for aviation.
🚔🚩 The Xinjiang police files: A massive cache of documents hacked from Chinese police computers has been leaked to The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. They unprecedented evidence from internal police networks in China’s Xinjiang region proves the repressive nature of the reeducation camps and shows top Chinese leaders’ direct involvement in the mass internment campaign. The documents include:
Photos of detainees forced to watch propaganda while being threatened by guards with large clubs.
Photos of SWAT teams conducting anti-escape drills from the internment camps.
Photos of detainees being interrogated while placed in a “Tiger Chair.”
Photos of guards performing forced medical injections on handcuffed detainees.
Satellite images confirming that camp construction began in 2017 and features four large buildings and a high surrounding wall with three exterior watchtowers. The camp is guarded by hundreds of police, including heavily armed “Special Police Units.”
May 2017 transcripts reveal a speech telling police to “handcuff them, blindfold them and use ankle shackles if needed” when referring to ethnic minorities in southern Xinjiang.
A May 2017 speech refers to Xinjiang’s mass internment as “humane” while arguing that detainees “must not be let out” (of the camps) because “some may not necessarily have been [re-educated] well even after five years.”
A 2017 speech by Xinjiang's leading official tells police forces to “shoot dead” anyone who even attempts to escape by running a few steps.
A February 2018 speech highlights the need to ensure the “absolute security of Internment Facilities.”
A June 2018 speech encourages police to “first kill, then report” when suppressing social unrest or incidents.
An impassioned 2018 speech refers to Uyghurs who believe in the independence of East Turkestan as “scumbags” and traitors.
🇨🇳 Xi denied the new allegations in a video meeting with the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who is now in China:
“Human rights issues should not be politicized, instrumentalized or treated with double standards,” the Chinese head of state emphasized. The “development of human rights” in China “fits with the national conditions”… “Human rights have a historical, specific and practical context.” Therefore, different ways of individual countries in dealing with human rights must be respected. China’s President stressed that there is no “ideal nation” when it comes to dealing with human rights. That’s why he sees “no need for a ‘teacher’ who orders other countries around.”
🌍 Africa
🇨🇫 Central African Republic will launch the continent’s first legal cryptocurrency investment hub. CAR recently adopted bitcoin as an official currency, becoming the first country in Africa and the second in the world to do so:
The soon-to-be-launched “SANGO” crypto initiative has a website on which interested investors can sign up to a waiting list. “The formal economy is no longer an option,” President Faustin-Archange Touadera said … “An impenetrable bureaucracy is keeping us stuck in systems that do not give a chance to be competitive.”
The move to adopt bitcoin in a country where internet use is low and electricity unreliable raised eyebrows among crypto experts, puzzled lawmakers and residents of the gold and diamond-producing country, and drew words of caution from the International Monetary Fund.
🌾 If the war in Ukraine causes food shortages in North Africa, it will lead to mass migration to Europe, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said in Davos. “If it turns out that there is hunger in North Africa... both Spain and the whole of southern Europe will have a huge migration problem … Today we should focus on Ukraine being able to export its grain.”
☦️ How the Russian Orthodox Church is vying for influence in Africa:
Late in 2021, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) decided to establish an exarchate in Africa. Two dioceses were established: one in North Africa, with its centre in Cairo, and the other in the south of the continent, with a see in Johannesburg.Bishop Leonid Gorbachev, the head of the new exarchate, also runs the recently established Armenian diocese of the ROC. This was an unprecedented decision by the canons of Orthodoxy, where there is fairly strict adherence to territorial jurisdiction: the borders of a church region, province, or a whole patriarchate are considered inviolable and those who violate them are liable to trial.
🇩🇪 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is in Africa:
Germany is seeking to reduce its heavy reliance on Russia for gas following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. It has initiated talks with the Senegalese authorities about gas extraction and liquified natural gas, Scholz said. “It is a matter worth pursuing intensively.” …
[Senegalese President Macky] Sall said Senegal was ready to work towards supplying the European market with LNG. He forecast Senegal’s LNG output reaching 2.5 million tonnes next year and 10 million tonnes by 2030.
🇬🇭 Ghana’s central bank raised its main interest rate by 200 basis points to 19 percent to curb runaway inflation.
🇪🇹 Ethiopian authorities have arrested more than 4,000 people in the northern Amhara region as part of a wider crackdown against militia fighters, critics and the press:
Amhara is the second-most populous region in Ethiopia, and a key constituency for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Amhara forces and the Fano militia backed Abiy’s federal troops against rebellious forces in northern Tigray when fighting erupted there in 2020, but relations between some top Amhara officials and central government have since soured.
🇳🇬 Boko Haram killed at least fifty people near Rann in Nigeria’s Borno state, in the country's northeastern tip near the border with Cameroon:
Since 2009, Nigeria’s northeast and Borno state in particular have been the center of an insurgency led by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. Millions have been displaced and some 350,000 people have died from attacks and the subsequent humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations. …
Local residents blamed the latest attack on Boko Haram. … “We are all in pain over the killing of our innocent people who were working on their farmland. ... We buried 50 people today in Rann. They were clearing their farmlands ahead of the rainy season, while others went for firewood,” Harun Tom, a local farmer, said.
🇨🇩 Fighting erupted near Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo a day after neighboring Rwanda accused the Congolese army of shelling its territory:
Boniface Kagumyo, the mayor of a nearby commune, blamed the attack on the M23 rebel group. The M23 militia emerged out of a 2013 ethnic Tutsi Congolese rebellion that was supported by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda at the time. M23 resumed fighting earlier this year, accusing DR Congo’s government of having failed to respect a 2009 agreement under which its fighters were to be incorporated into the army. Many in DR Congo suspect that Rwanda continues to back the group.
🇧🇫 At least 11 civilians were killed in attacks on two villages in northern Burkina Faso.
Unidentified armed assailants targeted the two communities in Seno province, which is among those hit by rising insecurity as jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State seek to gain control over once peaceful parts of West Africa’s Central Sahel region. … In recent years, Islamist violence has killed thousands of people and forced more than two million to flee their homes in the Sahel.
Public frustration with the authorities’ handling of the security situation led to protests in Burkina Faso that culminated in a military coup in January. The crisis in the Sahel started when militants took over neighboring Mali’s desert north in 2012, prompting France to intervene the following year in an attempt to push them back. But the insurgents have regrouped in recent years and seized more territory.
🕌 Middle East
🇮🇷 Iran building collapse kills 11, mayor and others arrested:
The collapse on May 23 of an under-construction 10-storey tower at the Metropol Building exposed its cement blocks and steel beams while also underscoring an ongoing crisis in Iranian construction projects that has seen other disasters in this earthquake-prone nation.
🇮🇷 Iran says it will avenge the killing of a Revolutionary Guards colonel who was shot dead in Tehran.
💣 The chances of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are shaky at best, the US’s Iran envoy told Congress:
If the accord cannot be resurrected, Malley said the United States was “ready to continue to enforce and further tighten our sanctions ... and to respond strongly to any Iranian escalation, working in concert with Israel and our regional partners.”
🇮🇱🇹🇷 Turkey and Israel have agreed to “reenergize” their relations during the first official visit by a Turkish foreign minister to Israel in 15 years.
“The goal is to form and expand economic and civil cooperation between our countries to create business to business and people to people connections and to leverage our two countries, with their comparative advantages regionally and globally, even during the pandemic, and even in times of political tension,” [Foreign Minister Yair] Lapid said.
“We agreed to bring new synergy to our bilateral relations in many fields and establish different mechanisms from now on,” [Foreign Minister Mevlüt] Çavuşoğlu said.
“Beyond diplomacy ... Israelis simply love Turkey; every day dozens of flights leave Israel for Turkey with thousands of Israelis who love your culture, your music, your beautiful beaches and colorful bazaars,” the top Israeli diplomat said.
🇵🇸 Hamas student bloc in West Bank wins landslide:
Hamas won a large majority in the student elections at Birzeit University in the West Bank, pointing to the movement’s growing popularity at the expense of the divided Fatah movement. …
Amjad Mezyad, deputy head of the Islamic Wafa bloc in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, “We congratulate Hamas for this great victory that serves as a clear message, whereby the Palestinian students chose the resistance path and refused to make compromises as far as our Palestinian rights are concerned. This has been made crystal clear. The West Bank has spoken up and elected Hamas, i.e., the Palestinian resistance.”
🇫🇷🥷🏻 French children and their mothers are being held in Kurdish-run camps in Syria on suspicion of jihadism. Organizations for the support of victims of terrorism say France should take them back:
While many European Union countries repatriate their nationals from Kurdish camps in northeastern Syria, France remains passive. Nearly two hundred children and eighty women of French nationality are currently secluded in these real open-air prisons. In Al-Hol camp alone, tens of thousands of Syrian, Iraqi children and nationals of nearly 63 countries are reportedly detained.
The United Families collective, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the League of Human Rights, the National Federation of Victims of Collective Attacks and Accidents and the association 13onze15 Fraternity and Truth denounced the inhuman living conditions of these children, who pay for the choices of their parents, exiled to join the Islamic State. (In French.)
🌎 Americas
🇺🇸 At least 19 children and two adults were fatally shot at an elementary school, the worst school shooting since Sandy Hook nearly ten years ago. Here’s a selection of headlines about this from around the world:
Le Monde. “Texas shooting: America is killing itself, as the Republican Party looks the other way. More and more guns: this is the only Republican credo.”
Spiegel: “Uvalde is the worst US massacre in almost ten years. Despite all the grief: nothing will change. The weapons lobbyists are too powerful for that—and the Republicans too cynical.” (In German.)
The Spectator: “The Uvalde school shooting won’t change a thing.
The more America falls apart, the more Americans want guns.”
Corriere della Sera: “America’s predictable horror and recklessness.” (In Italian.)
Estadão: “Arming teachers or restricting access to weapons? The debate that resurfaces with the massacre in Texas.” (In Portuguese.)
Zeit: “Rampages in the USA—America’s horror. The massacre of Parkland, the shots in Sandy Hook and now the rampage in Texas: Too many people in the USA die from gun violence. When does it stop?” (In German.)
🍑 Republican primary voters in Georgia rejected former president Donald Trump’s attempt to unseat officeholders who had refused to help him overturn the 2020 election. Governor Brian Kemp defeated challenger David Perdue in a landslide and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger won renomination.
🇲🇽 More than a dozen gunmen opened fire in two bars and a hotel in the central Mexican city of Celaya late on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding several more in an apparent gangland shooting.
🇧🇷 Bolsinaro has replaced the head of the state-run oil company Petrobras. The last one served less than two months in the job:
The change at the top of Petrobras comes just two weeks after Bolsonaro replaced his mines and energy minister, tapping another high-ranking economy ministry official for that job.
With consumer prices including energy surging ahead of presidential elections in October contributing to double-digit inflation, Bolsonaro has railed against Petrobras’ billion-dollar profits. But so far his moves to replace Petrobras officials have had little impact on the company’s gasoline and diesel pricing.
🇦🇷 Argentina’s top anti-inflation official has resigned as prices surge:
Annual inflation in the South American nation reached 58 percent in April, as many food and energy prices surged in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with some analysts predicting consumer prices will jump 70 percent later this year.
Domestic Trade Minister Roberto Feletti announced his move in a post on Twitter along with his resignation letter after serving a little more than seven months in the post and citing policy “discrepancies” but without going into detail.
🇪🇨 Ecuadoreans are dissatisfied with President Guillermo Lasso’s efforts to combat poverty and crime. Foreign investors are spooked:
Lasso has blamed lawmakers, including some who originally backed him and others close to former leftist President Rafael Correa, for blocking his efforts and has threatened to rule by decree. Opposition legislators allege Lasso is intent on privatizing public infrastructure and services. …
Many Ecuadoreans are frustrated with what they say is Lasso’s slowness, sending his credibility rating plummeting to 21 percent in the last week of April, according to pollster Perfiles de Opinion, from 68 percent when he took office. “A year of unemployment, insecurity and deaths in the prisons, that’s what we’ve gotten,” said informally-employed secretary Viviana Palacios, 34, who lives in Guayaquil, where 1,100 police reinforcements were deployed in January amid a spate of violent deaths. “Lasso has proven his inability to carry the weight.”
🇧🇷 Brazil’s top public prosecutor said Bolsonaro has committed no crime by questioning the legitimacy of the voting system or suggesting he might not concede defeat in the October elections:
“If the president thinks, as Trump did, that there are problems (with the electoral system), his comments only break the law if they interfere with the democratic process,” Aras said. “Merely saying so is not a crime.”
The comments from Aras, who is responsible for prosecuting electoral crimes, suggest Bolsonaro faces few short-term legal risks for his broadsides against Brazil’s electoral system. … He said he is confident Brazil’s democratic institutions are strong and the election will run smoothly despite the highly polarized presidential race.
🇮🇷🇻🇪 Iranian state firms are preparing to upgrade Venezuela’s largest oil refinery:
A deal would deepen an energy relationship that has become a lifeline for Venezuela’s dilapidated oil industry amid a crisis caused by decades of mismanagement and underinvestment, and aggravated by US sanctions.
🇵🇪 The Peruvian president shuffled his Cabinet, replacing the interior minister and the mining minister:
Castillo has shuffled his ministerial team multiple times since coming into office in the middle of last year as he has battled against falling popularity, a hostile Congress, corruption probes and community tensions hitting mining.
🇧🇷 An anti-crime operation in a Rio de Janeiro slum has left 21 dead:
Military police said they came under gunfire as they approached the northern Rio slum called Vila Cruzeiro in the early morning hours with the mission of locating and arresting “criminal leaders.” Police said at least 11 of the dead were “suspects.”
In the Americas, homicide is the other killer epidemic:
During the pandemic, most types of crime declined as much of the world was under lockdown. Although homicidal violence has risen again in a handful of countries, many more saw murder rates stay the same or even decrease since early 2020—with marked drops in some nations. The stubborn exception to the decline in lethal violence is in the Americas—the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, which remain the world’s hotspots for murder
🍫🇧🇿 This three-day Chocolate Festival of Belize kicked off with a Wine and Chocolate Gala, Belizean artists, and a band …
🌐 Global
The global elite is gathering in the Alps this week for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Journalist Peter Goodman, author of Davos Man, argues that these billionaires have hijacked capitalism.
⚕️WHO, challenged by two and a half years of pandemic, needs to reform:
With weakened leadership, imbalanced finances and doubts about its scientific credibility, the UN institution must try to address shortcomings exposed by Covid19 at the World Health Assembly, which opened in Geneva on Sunday. (Partly paywalled.)
☦️🪆The latest bats*hit from Tsargrad
MASS MURDER OF CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES. WHAT BIDEN WAS SILENT ABOUT
US President Joe Biden, speaking the day before about the monstrous tragedy in Texas, where primary school students were killed, did not talk about the root of the problem. It turned out that the killer was transgender. …
Of course, the United States has long been mired in uncontrolled violence, and the problem of free arms trafficking exists there. However, Biden kept silent about a much more complex problem. The fact is that Salvador Romas was transgender. And no one focuses on it.
In addition to the general culture of violence that shapes American society through its endless wars in foreign territory, it is worth noting the full welcome of a variety of perversions. But most recently, homosexual relations and other similar manifestations - including transgenderism - were listed as a mental illness in the DSM directory, the main medical encyclopedia for psychiatrists and psychologists, before it was eliminated in the United States. It happened in the 70s of the last century. And the reasons were political, not scientific. Today we are watching American society destroy itself. And we understand that we do not want such a future—neither for ourselves nor for our children.
🥢🧧The CCP is profoundly concerned:
Texas mass shooting exposes US system failure:
The deadly shooting at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday which killed 21 people has shocked not only the US but also the world. It was the deadliest shooting at a US grade school since the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and it came just 10 days after the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that claimed 10 lives.
While US President Joe Biden again called for action on gun control, observers and netizens who lamented the growing numbers of mass shootings making America the most dangerous place in the world expressed doubts that a failing political system could make any changes. The persistent failure to change has been amplified by the Covid19 pandemic. …The frequent mass shooting incidents in the US show that the Covid19 outbreak has made American society much more divided with a growing numbers of issues such as surging inflation and failing governance, and more social problems have accumulated, so the gun has become an outlet for their emotions and dissatisfaction, Diao Daming, associate professor at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
The mass shooting in the majority Latino school occurred one day before the second anniversary of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, which exposed entrenched racism in the US. The US is the country facing the most severe gun violence and racism, reflecting that how little it values people’s lives as top human rights, netizens in the US and in China said on Wednesday. However, the US government continues to point the finger at other countries’ human rights, for example, by calling the UN human rights chief’s visit to China a mistake, fully exposing its double standards and hypocrisy.Many US and Chinese netizens also shared their disappointment on the bad human rights records in the US. They believed that it only shows that US politicians do not really value human rights in their own country, especially with regular mass shootings. … “Is this the American-style human rights?” a Chinese netizen asked, saying that those children and their mothers have not done anything wrong to suffer such pain.
✍🏼 By the Cosmopolitan Globalists
Read Monique Camarra’s Eurofile.
🎧 Monique Camarra and Olga Lautman talk to Alexander Vindman to discuss Russia’s failing military strategy.
💐🥀The world’s gayest flower show is underway in Chelsea. Take a moment to enjoy a minute of peace:
Tsargrad: Gay Flower Shows are Regular Example of Western Decadence