Biden talks with Xi for hours about Taiwan, topic, as expected, focus of their diplomatic discussion

President Biden talked Thursday for over two hours to China ruler Xi Jinping, with the topic of Taiwan emerging, as expected, to be a focal point of their diplomatic discussion.

Xi emphasized China's claim over the island, which has governed itself for decades, according to Beijing.

In the White House readout of the call, officials said Biden "underscored that the United States policy has not changed and that the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait."

The goal of the morning call was to "responsibly manage our differences and work together where our interests align,” the White House also said, according to the Associated Press.

China claims that Taiwan, which is self governing, is a part of China. Its One China policy insists that countries must not recognize Taiwanese independence if they wish to maintain diplomatic relations with the mainland.

The country, run by the Chinese Communist Party, has increasingly flexed its military might in the air and sea near Taiwan as the country seeks to become more independent.

More recently, China has threatened to use its military to "take strong measures" in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's upcoming, planned trip to Taiwan.

And China’s Defense Ministry has said her announced visit has already "caused extremely serious damage" to U.S.-China relations.

The U.S. continues to sell weapons to Taiwan for its defense, and Biden said in April that the United States would intervene if China attempted to forcefully annex the island nation, according to news reports.

China and the U.S. also have differing perspectives on such issues as global health, economic policy and human rights that have strained their relationship. China also has declined to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine adding further strain, according to the wire service.

https://justthenews.com/government/diplomacy/biden-talks-xi

29 Jul, 2022 13:05

Ukraine is ‘shooting blind’ – top official

US-made HIMARS are “a good first step,” but Kiev needs the means to take accurate shots, a senior Ukrainian official has said

The deliveries of US-made HIMARS rocket systems are “a good first step”, butthe West did not provide Kiev with the necessary technologies to accurately hit targets, a high-ranking Ukrainian official complained in an interview published on Thursday.

“HIMARS and heavy artillery are a good first step, but if we do not have the technology to find and correct targets for artillery strikes, then we’re just shooting blind,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, told Newsweek magazine.

Earlier this month, Vadim Skibitskiy, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Directorate of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defense, claimed that Kiev views the Crimean Peninsula as a legitimate target for long-range weaponry, including US-made М142 HIMARS and M270 MLRS, supplied by Western powers.

His words were echoed by Alexey Arestovich, a top aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, who said that the Ukrainian military would target the Crimean Bridge as soon as Kiev obtains the capability to carry out such a strike.

Russia pushed back on these threats, with Mikhail Sheremet, an MP who represents the region in the Russian parliament, warning Kiev that retaliation will be so harsh that Ukraine will never be able to recover from it. In his telling, the would-be strike will be followed by “a crushing blow to decision-making centers in Kiev, military infrastructure and arms-supply logistics channels.”

Crimea voted overwhelmingly to reunite with Russia in a 2014 referendum after a coup in Ukraine’s capital. However, Kiev says it doesn’t view the region as part of Russia, considering the peninsula to be Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow.

Russia and allied forces have repeatedly blamed Ukrainian troops for shelling civilian infrastructure, with the Donetsk People’s Republic accusing Kiev of using HIMARS to conduct strikes on Donetsk and other regions.

On Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense and DPR authorities accused Kiev of having used HIMARS to target a prison holding POWs, killing 53 and wounding scores more. Ukraine rejected the claim and pinned the blame on Russian troops.

According to the Pentagon, as of July 22, the US has provided Ukraine with 16 M142 HIMARS systems, while the UK has provided another three launchers capable of firing the same munitions.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov said that Kiev needed about 50 HIMARS for effective defense, and a least 100 for “an effective counteroffensive.”

Last week the Russian military said it destroyed four of the rocket launching systems, a claim that was dismissed by Kiev as “misinformation.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/559843-ukraine-himars-missile-target-blind/

29 Jul, 2022 14:52

HomeRussia & FSU

If telling the truth puts me on Ukraine’s ‘Russian propagandist’ blacklist, I’ll wear that tag proudly

When it comes to fact-based analysis, I’ll take so-called ‘Russian propaganda’ over ‘Ukrainian truth’ every day

Part 1 of 2

In 1997 I flew into Kiev, on-mission with the United Nations Special Commission to seek the assistance of the Ukrainian government in investigating the activities of a Ukrainian citizen suspected of illegally selling ballistic missile components and manufacturing capabilities to Iraq in violation of Security Council-imposed economic sanctions. During my visit, I held several meetings with senior officials from the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, including its Secretary, Vladimir Horbulin. I left on good terms, with the Ukrainians agreeing to cooperate (they ultimately did not) and hoping that I would pass on their good attitude to US authorities in hopes that it would assist their desire for NATO membership (I did, in fact, do this.)

Twenty-five years later, this same National Security and Defense Council, through its“Center for Countering Disinformation,” has published a blacklist of individuals deemed to be “promoting Russian propaganda.”

My name is on this list. My “crimes” include describing Ukraine as a base of NATO, challenging the narrative surrounding the Bucha massacre, and defining the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia as a “proxy war between NATO and Russia.”

I am guilty on all three charges, and more.

But I am no Russian propagandist.

The Center for Countering Disinformation was established in 2021 on the order of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. It is headed by Polina Lysenko, a lawyer who received her law degree in 2015, and whose resumé includes time with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Office of the Prosecutor General (where she received a commendation from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation) and, up until her current appointment, as the Director of the Information Policy and Public Relations Department at a state-owned railway operator.

Lysenko unveiled the work of the Center for Countering Disinformation to the ambassadors of the G7 countries, as well as to Finland, Israel, and NATO shortly after her appointment. Her boss, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Aleksey Danilov, emphasized “the importance of coordinating actions with strategic partners in combating hostile information operations and fighting disinformation,” while the head of the Office of the President, Andrey Yermak, indicated that he hoped “that the Center will become not only a Ukrainian center for countering disinformation, but also an international one.”According to Yermak, the center was “fully operational.”

Polina Lysenko, in outlining the goals and mission of her organization, emphasized that “the truth will be the main weapon.”

She should have started by fact-checking Yermak–two months after he’s declared her center “fully operational,” Ukrainian media was reporting that the center lacked “premises, funding, and staff.” Lysenko was the only employee, and “she has not been paid her salary for several months.” The Center was supposed to have a staff of 52, who were to be paid some $2,000 per month. The Ministry of Finance was responsible for finding the funds for the center, something it had not done as of mid-June 2021. Lysenko worked by herself from a “tiny office on the ground floor of the National Security and Defense Council building.”

It's tough to tell the truth when you’re not being paid, it seems.

A year later, while funding and staff do not seem to be a problem (thanks in large part to the underwriting of the Ukrainian government payroll by the US taxpayer), quality control is. Take, for example, the case outlined by Lysenko and her new agency on disinformation against me. If “describing Ukraine as a base of NATO” makes one a Russian propogandist, then I should have been joined by Ben Watson, an editor with the notoriously pro-Russian (sarcasm emphasized) web-based journal, Defense One, who in October 2017 published an articlewith the self-explanatory headline “In Ukraine, the US Trains an Army in the West to Fight in the East.” The article detailed the work done by US and NATO military personnel at the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine’s Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine–literally a NATO base inside Ukraine–where every 55-days a Ukrainian Army battalion was trained to NATO standards for the sole purpose of being deployed into eastern Ukraine to fight Russian-backed separatists in Donbass.

Pro hint, Ms Lysenko–when your country hosts apermanent contingent of NATO troops on its soil, that makes it a base of NATO….

https://www.rt.com/russia/559704-ukraine-blacklist-russian-propagandists/

>>16933374

If telling the truth puts me on Ukraine’s ‘Russian propagandist’ blacklist, I’ll wear that tag proudly

Part 2 of 2

Lysenko’s staff of top-notch disinformation-countering analysts (again, sarcasm) likewise highlighted my assessment of the massacre of civilians in Bucha in late March-early April as being done by Ukrainian security forces. Lysenko was in good company here–I was banned from Twitter for this same analysis. Some four months removed from the atrocities committed in Bucha, I stand by my analysis–the fact set has not changed. I am prepared to debate this issue with Polina Lysenko and her entire staff, live on Ukrainian television, anytime she likes. I’ll debate it with anyone, anywhere—that’s how confident I remain in my original analysis. Truth, after all, is my main weapon.

The last charge levelled against me by Lysenko’s intrepid truth sleuths, that I’ve labelled the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia as a “proxy war between NATO and Russia,” again brings to question the professionalism of her staff. After all, the Moscow-born self-hating Russian, Max Boot, in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on June 22, called the Ukraine conflict “our war, too.” It’s one of the few times I will agree with Max Boot on anything. Boot, however, was merely echoing US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s articulation of US policy regarding the Ukraine conflict as being focused on weakening Russia by supporting Ukraine–sort of the textbook definition of a “proxy conflict.”

Do better, Polina Lysenko—at least try to score some cheap points by highlighting the fact that much of my analysis regarding Ukraine is published by Russia Today (for instance, this article.) At least then you could say that I was being paid by Russia. Of course, you’d have to wrestle with the fact that my analysis is also published in numerous non-Russian outlets—I mean, what kind of Russian propagandist gets published by American and British publishers?

And then, of course, there is the tricky issue of the controlling Russian editorial staff. The following exchange serves as a guide:

Me: Any interest in me doing a deep dig on Stoltenberg’s presentation on “paying the price”?

Controlling Russian Editor: What’s your take?

Me: I don’t think Stoltenberg understands the scope of the price tag.

Controlling Russian Editor: It’s the same speech where he said ‘stop complaining’, yeah?

Me: Yes.

Controlling Russian Editor: Cool, let’s do it.

The strategic intent of the Russian propaganda machine is well documented there. I can’t believe I fell for it.

All sarcasm aside, the publication by Lysenko’s Center of a blacklist of so-called “Russian propagandists” should be an insult to anyone who believes in the concepts of free speech. I’m proud to be associated with many of those who joined me on that list—Ray McGovern, Tulsi Gabbard, Douglas MacGregor, John Mearsheimer, and others. I’m confident everyone named here would say that their motivations in taking the stance they have about the Ukraine conflict is to pursue the truth—real truth, not the confused version promulgated by Polina Lysenko and her American-paid analysts. None consider themselves to be Russian propagandists, but rather American practitioners of free speech, the kind protected by the same US Constitution many of the named individuals (and myself) have taken an oath to uphold and defend.

I’ll conclude by speaking for myself—if adhering to fact-based analysis that has withstood the test of time is the new definition of “Russian propaganda,” then count me in. It certainly is better than the Orwellian version of free speech being bandied about by the US government and its proxies in Ukraine (see what I did there?).

https://www.rt.com/russia/559704-ukraine-blacklist-russian-propagandists/

29 Jul, 2022 10:30

Russia claims Ukraine had a reason to kill its own POWs

At least 53 people died in a strike on a detention center in Donbass

Kiev’s forces shelled a detention center holding Ukrainian POWs early Friday morning to “threaten” their own troops who may want to surrender, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed.

“A large number of Ukrainian servicemen are voluntarily laying down their arms, and know about the humane treatment of prisoners by the Russian side,” the ministry said, calling the attack “outrageous.”

Authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said that thedeath toll in the missile strike has grown to 53, while 75 were wounded.

DPR Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov posted a graphic video on his Telegram channel, which shows multiple mutilated and charred bodies inside the destroyed building.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry and local authorities, Ukrainian troops used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to strike the detention center near the village of Yelenovka.

The ministry said the facility held members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, whose fighters surrendered to Russian and Donbass forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol. The battalion is notorious because it includes fighters with nationalist and neo-Nazi views.

Speaking to Russia’s TV Channel One, DPR head Denis Pushilin claimed that the Ukrainians “deliberately” targeted the detention center in order to kill Azov members who had been providing testimonies about possible war crimes by their commanders.

The Ukrainian military released a statement on Friday, accusing Russian troops of shelling Yelenovka. Moscow destroyed the prison in order to pin the blame on Kiev, as well as to “hide the torture of prisoners and executions,"the statement alleged.

https://www.rt.com/russia/559831-ukraine-pow-missile-strike/