The EU has accused the US of profiteering from the Ukraine war by selling guns and gas at ramped up prices.
Several high-ranking officials within the Bloc accused Joe Biden of capitalizing on the brutal Russian invasion by marking up the cost to import the vital products.
One senior official told Politico they believe America was standing to gain the most from the continuation of the fighting, nine months after soldiers first invaded.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her policy towards Russia prior to the February invasion of Ukraine, saying she had run out of power to influence Vladimir Putin.
She said she had tried to convene European talks with the Russian president and French President Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2021.
“But I didn’t have the power to get my way,” she told Spiegel news.
“Really everyone knew: in autumn she’ll be gone,” she said.
EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade as Vladimir Putin’s war threatens to destroy Western unity.
Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West.
Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO.
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Residents of Ukraine’s bombed capital clutched empty bottles in search of water and crowded into cafés for power and warmth Thursday, switching defiantly into survival mode after new Russian missile strikes a day earlier plunged the city and much of the country into the dark.
In scenes hard to believe in a sophisticated city of 3 million, some Kyiv residents resorted to collecting rainwater from drainpipes, as repair teams labored to reconnect supplies.
Friends and family members exchanged messages to find out who had electricity and water back. Some had one but not the other. The previous day’s aerial onslaught on Ukraine’s power grid left many with neither.
PRAGUE/WARSAW, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Eastern Europe’s arms industry is churning out guns, artillery shells and other military supplies at a pace not seen since the Cold War as governments in the region lead efforts to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
Allies have been supplying Kyiv with weapons and military equipment since Russia invaded its neighbour on Feb. 24, depleting their own inventories along the way.
The United States and Britain committed the most direct military aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24 and Oct. 3, a Kiel Institute for the World Economy tracker shows, with Poland in third place and the Czech Republic ninth.
After its withdrawal from Kherson, Russia’s back is against the wall in Ukraine. Ukraine’s successful offensive has prompted concerns that Russian president Vladimir Putin might contemplate what President Joe Biden deemed nuclear “Armageddon” last month. This month even China joined the West in strongly condemning this Russian threat. Will Putin nonetheless resort to nuclear weapons to stave off defeat?
In fact, Russia is sufficiently deterred from using any nuclear weapons, including strategic and tactical warheads, a dirty bomb, or a nuclear plant meltdown. Fears that Putin might resort to nuclear weapons appeared at earlier junctures in this conflict. In September, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued a stark warning to Moscow after Russia’s latest nuclear threats that was reiterated again this month when CIA director William Burns met with his Russian counterpart in Ankara, Turkey to convey the “consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.”
The illusion of Chinese support was one of the many miscalculations that led Putin down the road to war
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has played a decisive — though publicly low-profile — role in strategic decision-making in both Washington and Moscow. As I report for the first time in my new book Overreach, it was a back-channel intervention approved by Beijing that caused the US to scupper a deal for the Poles to provide Soviet-made MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainian Air Force back in March. And since September a flurry of personal diplomacy by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi with NATO and the US has led to a rare moment of public agreement over Russia, when Xi Jinping said that the world “needs to prevent a nuclear crisis on the Eurasian continent” in a meeting with Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali.
The head of Russian private army Wagner has trolled the West showing a bloodied sledgehammer he wants to present to the European Parliament.
Vladimir Putin’s crony Yevgeny Prigozhin was responding to a vote to declare Russia a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’.
The sick stunt relates to an episode in which a Wagner fighter from Russia was bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer after defecting to Ukraine, before being exchanged back allegedly at his request.
Moscow is trying to freeze out civilians, but Ukrainian soldiers will have some advantages fighting through the cold season.
KYIV — He helped beat Napoleon’s Grande Armée and Hitler’s Wehrmacht. General Winter was always supposed to be a good friend to Russian forces.
But this year, his loyalties are less certain.
President Vladimir Putin can no longer count on Russia’s old ally now that the Kremlin’s soldiers in Ukraine are the demoralized invaders, facing rasping sleet and snow, and temperatures that plunge to -20 Celsius, and lower.
#Ukraine: Rather rare footage of Ukrainian ground-launched Brimstone 1 missiles in use.
These were supplied by the UK and have seen use since May at least. pic.twitter.com/RoopPeLDWO
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 15, 2022
Germany has angrily dismissed claims by Boris Johnson that in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine it said it would be better for Ukraine to fold than to become embroiled in a long war.
Johnson, interviewed by CNN, also claimed that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was in denial about the threat of invasion, and that Italy, led at the time by Mario Draghi, said it could not help because it was so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.
A spokesperson for the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, rejected the claims with a diplomatically phrased dig at Johnson.
#Ukraine: A direct hit on a Russian T-80BV by the Ukrainian 4th Tank Brigade in the East.
The tank received serious damage and was taken out of action. pic.twitter.com/88uDa8gQVa
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 23, 2022
Ukraine’s SBU security service and police have raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”.
Located south of the city centre, the sprawling Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex – or Kyiv Monastery of the Caves – is the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church that falls under the Moscow patriarchate, as well as being a Ukrainian cultural treasure and a Unesco World Heritage site.
The ever-professional CAR has released a fascinating report showing the Iranian origins of "Russian" drones used in Ukraine, as well as many Western components and parts shared with known Iranian models.
Highly recommended!https://t.co/OW5i6xr4eX— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) November 22, 2022
Inaccurate news report claimed Russian missiles had strayed into a Nato member state
The Associated Press put the world on high alert last week when it reported claims by a “senior US intelligence official” that Russian missiles had killed two people in Poland.
The inaccurate news alert, which was circulated last Tuesday, prompted widespread fears of an escalation of Russia’s war beyond Ukraine’s borders as it claimed Russian missiles had strayed into a Nato member state.
Will they cancel Zelensky too? I don’t see that he has recanted his assertion that the missile was fired by the Russians.
Ukraine war: Kyiv not to blame for Poland missile – Zelensky
A former Afghan platoon commander says he was doing manual labour on the Iranian island of Kish when he received a phone call. He says he listened carefully as a former comrade made a proposal: Join a new army and fight for a new cause.
That army was Russia’s, and the cause was the war against Ukraine.
The offer was for six months of training in Russia, $1,500 to $3,000 (U.S.) a month (three to six times what he’s been making in Iran) and Russian citizenship for him and his immediate family members.
Ukrainian units plying the Dnipro River venture behind enemy lines under the cover of darkness, carrying out reconnaissance and sabotage.
ON THE BANKS OF THE DNIPRO RIVER, Ukraine — Under cover of darkness, a group of soldiers heaved their dinghy off the sand into the water. Another group loaded equipment with a heavy clanking into their boat, while a third pushed off silently with oars. Engines humming quietly, the boats turned to the open water and disappeared into the blackness.
The fighters, a volunteer Ukrainian special forces team called the Bratstvo battalion, were crossing the wide expanse of the Dnipro River, the strategic waterway that bisects Ukraine and has become the dividing line of the southern front. After recapturing the city of Kherson a week ago, Ukrainian forces hold the western bank, while the Russians still hold the eastern bank.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — When the power is out, as it so often is, the high-rise apartment overlooking Ukraine’s war-torn capital feels like a deathtrap. No lights, no water, no way to cook food. And the risk of not being able to escape from the 21st floor in time should a Russian missile strike. Even when electricity comes back, it’s never on for long.
“Russian strikes are plunging Ukraine into the Stone Age,” says Anastasia Pyrozhenko. In a recent 24-hour spell, her 26-story high-rise only had power for half an hour. She says the “military living conditions” have driven her and her husband from their apartment.
