13 Aug, 2022 15:33

Russia announces capture of strategic settlement in Donbass

Ukraine's Zelensky had described the situation in Peski as “just hell”

Russian forces have established complete control over the strategic settlement of Peski in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Russia’s Defense Ministry has said.

“As a result of the offensive by the allied forces [Russian troops and DPR militia] the settlement of Peski has been fully liberated”from the Ukrainian military, the ministry’s spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov announced during his daily briefing on Saturday.

Peski, located some 2km away from the Donetsk Airport, has been one of the main pillars of Ukraine’s elaborate defense line in the DPR.

The settlement had been heavily fortified since 2015. A DPR militia commander told Russia’s Channel One last week that the area had been turned into “literally one big garrison,” from which all civilians were evacuated long ago. All buildings in Peski are surrounded by trenches, while Ukrainian defenses had been set up in “according to NATO standards,” he pointed out.

The joint operation to seize the settlement began in late July and saw intense fighting and artillery shelling. In early August, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky described the situation in Peski and nearby Avdeevka by saying that “it’s just hell there. It can’t even be described in words.”

Meanwhile, strikes against Kiev’s forces and military infrastructure continued in other parts of Ukraine over the past 24 hours, Konashenkov said.

Among other things, a HIMARS multiple rocket launcher and a warehouse that stored munitions for it were destroyed near the town of Kramatorsk in the DPR, according to the spokesman.

More than a hundred Ukrainian troops and members of the nationalist Right Sector group were also killedin a strike near the village of Starye Terny in the DPR, Konashenkov added.

Radicals from the Right Sector played a key role during the violent coup in Kiev in 2014 and subsequently took an active part in the fighting in Donbass over the next two years.

https://www.rt.com/russia/560777-ukraine-peski-himars-right-sector/

13 Aug, 2022 15:51

Ukrainian nuclear site faces new threat

Kiev is flirting with disaster by shelling the hydroelectric facility that services the Zaporozhye nuclear plant, says a local official

Shelling of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station by Ukrainian forces risks a “nuclear catastrophe” at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Arseniy Zelensky, the Kakhovka facility's deputy director for reconstruction, told reporters on Saturday.

According to Zelensky, as quoted by TASS, Kakhovka is now operating in a “very dangerous” emergency mode.

The Kakhovka plant is located in Kherson Region in southern Ukraine, which was seized by Russian forces in the early stages of Moscow’s military operation. Together with Russia-controlled Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, it has been attacked by Kiev’s troops – with use of Western-supplied weapons – according to the regional authorities.

“In case of problems with the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, there will be big troubles at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. [This] could lead to a nuclear catastrophe,” the deputy director of the Kakhovka plant said.

He explained to journalists that if the dam is destroyed, the nuclear facility would be deprived of the water needed to cool its reactors.

He revealed that the station has been working in emergency mode “since the first days of hostilities.”

“The station's own needs, backup 6 kV, are lost, we are working in a very dangerous mode," he said, adding that one of the turbines had to be turned off following Ukrainian rocket attacks.

If the military action ceases, Zelensky said, the plant can be “restored within a week.”

“Fortunately, the station has not yet received major damage, except for hydroelectric unit number three, which burned down in March, it takes 1.5 years to complete the work,” he said.

Zelensky’s remarks came the day after Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the military-civilian administration of Kherson Region, revealed that the city of Novaya Kakhovka had again been attacked by “Ukrainian nationalists” but “no tangible damage” was caused. “The hydroelectric power station was not damaged,” he said.

On Thursday, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council that a nuclear disaster can happen “at any moment” amid the “reckless” shelling of the Zaporozhye plant by Kiev’s forces.

“Kiev’s criminal attacks on the nuclear infrastructure facilities are pushing the world to the brink of a nuclear disaster that would rival the Chernobyl one,” Nebenzia said.

Responding to Kiev’s claims that Russia was the one targeting the plant in an alleged plot to discredit Ukraine, the diplomat said that Russia has no reason to target the facility or its own troops, and that multiple attacks on the facility have been documented from Ukrainian-held territory in Dnepropetrovsk Region.

The US Department of State, however, took Kiev’s side by endorsing the demand for a demilitarized zone around the Zaporozhye nuclear plant and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops that control the area.

https://www.rt.com/russia/560778-zaporozhye-kakhovskaya-nuclear-shelling/

Zelensky will be safe, thats all that matters, he’s got a plane put to Israel if the whole country goes up in smoke. But I wouldn’t be so sure of that, even if he is in Poland. This is insane!

13 Aug, 2022 13:41

Moscow names condition for ‘normalizing’ relations with US

There are currently no visible grounds for compromise with Washington, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official says

The US needs to start respecting Moscow’s interests before damaged bilateral relations can be amended, a senior Russian diplomat has said.

“I’ll be frank: we’re not seeing grounds for finding compromises with Washington, which is not quite capable of negotiating,” Aleksandr Darchiev, the head of the Foreign Ministry’s North American Department, told the Russian news agency TASS on Saturday.

“Of course, if the American side finally turns to common sense and Washington takes a sober look at the changing geopolitical landscape, demonstrating – not with words, but with actions – the intent to respect Russian national interests, then a basis for a gradual normalization of bilateral relations will appear,”he added.

The US and its allies in NATO imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February.

However, the attempt to tank the Russian economy has failed, Darchiev argued, as have “the attempts to muster an international anti-Russian coalition that would be broader than the traditional bond between the US and its vassals.”

“We are reacting calmly, and not going out of our way to seek talks,” the diplomat said, adding that it was Washington’s decision to suspend wider contacts with Moscow since February.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his US counterpart Antony Blinken spoke over the phone in late July, their first conversation since Russia’s military campaign began.

The conversation occurred around the same time the US Senate unanimously passed a non-binding resolution that called for the State Department to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. The Kremlin said that such a move would only further strain the relations between the countries.

https://www.rt.com/russia/560775-russian-us-ties-normalization/

13 Aug, 2022 Anon said from the start, they will blow up Ukraine and not care one bit, it covers up the corruption

Ukraine struggles to find money to pay troops – WSJ

The promised Western aid is arriving too slowly, officials in Kiev complain

With Western financial help apparently slow to arrive, Ukraine has been forced to print money to pay its troops in the fight against Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergey Marchenko told the US outlet that it’s “a constant headache” for him to keep balancing the cost of the conflict and the lower tax revenues in an economy battered by almost half a year of fighting.

With around 60% of the budget being spent on the fighting, the minister said he has had to cut all unnecessary expenditures. But it’s still not enough, as tax revenues only cover 40% of government spending, the WSJ reports.

The Kiev authorities earlier said they needed $5 billion per month to run the country, and would not be able to cope without Western help. However, the grants and loans pledged to Ukraine by its foreign backers have been arriving slower than expected, according to the journal.

For example, the EU has so far provided only €1 billion out of €9 billion it promised to Kiev, with Germany resisting the idea of offering low-interest loans backed by guarantees from the bloc’s member states.

According to Marchenko, a lot of his time at work is spent trying to persuade Western governments to act faster. “Without this money, the war will last longer and it will damage economies more,” he explained.

Rostislav Shurma, an economic adviser to President Vladimir Zelensky, described the situation in harsher terms.

If Kiev acted as sluggishly at the West, “the Russians would be at the Polish border by now,” he told the WSJ.

“They don’t feel the war. That’s the problem. The only thing they feel in the EU is high prices,” Shurma said.

Due to the lack of funds, the Ukrainian Central Bank has no choice but to print more money to allow the government to pay the troops and purchase arms and ammunition in order to keep fighting.

This approach has been weakening Ukraine’s national currency, the hryvnia, which has already lost 30% since the launch of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, prompting a major spike in inflation.

But this is a sacrifice that Marchenko is willing to make: “we have to worry about winning the war. It is better to risk high inflation than not to pay soldiers’ salaries.”

He also said the conflict will likely be prolonged, and this must be factored in as well. “This is a war of attrition. You have to think in these terms, to think about 2022 and 2023. It’s a marathon.”

Earlier this week, Sergey Kiriyenko, the deputy head of the administration of the Russian president, accused the authorities in Kiev of selling out their own people to fight on behalf of NATO.

“NATO will gladly fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’ as they say themselves without hesitance. Why not? They don’t feel sorry about it,” Kiriyenko said.

https://www.rt.com/news/560772-ukraine-eu-west-aid/

Anons do you havethe pit linkfor 2nd part?

Please post

They are not going to with dementia resident and his cronies. They are stating there will not be cooperation