2 Oct, 2023 22:14

White House sends message to Putin

The US will not let Russia “outlast” Kiev’s Western backers, Karine Jean-Pierre has said

The US and its allies will continue to support Kiev in its conflict with Moscow, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a press briefing on Monday. The official promised more aid to Ukraine “soon,” after American lawmakers did not include military assistance to Kiev in a short-term spending bill passed last week.

Jean-Pierre denied that support for Ukraine among Western nations was waning. “There is [a] strong, very strong international coalition behind Ukraine,” she told journalists. “And if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin thinks he can outlast us, he’s wrong. He’s wrong.”

The White House press secretary also announced “another package of aid for Ukraine soon,” but provided no details about either the timeline or the contents of the upcoming military assistance.

Her words came just two days after Congress passed a funding bill designed to allow the US government to function beyond September and avoid a shutdown, but it did not include any aid for Kiev. Jean-Pierre urged Congress to move quickly. “They don’t have to wait 45 days to get this done,” she said.

Some American lawmakers, however, are concerned about how the money being sent to Ukraine is actually being used, and how the Biden administration envisions an end to the conflict.

“Our members have a lot of questions, especially on the accountability provisions of what we want to see with the money that gets sent,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told journalists on Monday. He also called on the White House to arrange a briefing for lawmakers to outline a possible way out of the conflict.

Also on Monday, the Pentagon warned that budget restrictions might affect both the US ability to provide aid to Kiev and replenish its own weapons stocks. If the funding requests are not met, the US Defense Department would be forced to restrict its supplies to Ukraine, it added.

In September, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that Kiev might “lose the war”if it did not get aid in time.

Last Sunday, Ukrainian MP Aleksey Goncharenko warned that Kiev had no chance of holding out without Washington’s continued support, going so far as to suggest Ukraine commit to joining US wars abroad to secure more military assistance.

(This is a big mistake, the leaders in US do not remember WWII.)

https://www.rt.com/news/583933-white-house-message-putin-ukraine/

2 Oct, 2023 18:44

Ex-Soviet state claims US funding 'violent' color revolution plotters

Georgia has raised the alarm over USAID-funded 'violent uprising' activists

The Georgian government said on Monday it had interrogated agitators from a US-funded group planning to unleash a violent color revolution. The group was previously involved in the 2003 civil unrest in the country.

The head of the ruling party explained that he is seeking an explanation from Washington. TheUS embassy in Tbilisi didn't deny bankrolling the outfit, but said its activities were about supporting Georgian democracy.

According to Georgia’s State Security Service (SUS), three Serbian nationals from the organization called CANVAS arrived in Georgia last week and met with local activists at a Tbilisi hotel to train themhow to “overthrow the government by violent means.”

The “destructive and illegal actions” would target the government, security services, and the Orthodox Church, using techniques such as roadblocks and setting up protest encampments in front of government buildings, the SUS said. CANVAS activists also showed examples from Serbia on how to invade the parliament, take broadcasting services offline, and overthrow the government, according to the security agency.

When questioned by the SUS on September 29, Sinisa Sikman, Jelena Stoisic, and Slobodan Djinovic allegedly “tried to disguise the real reason for their stay in Georgia” and provided testimonies that contradicted evidence obtained by the investigators. The trio left Georgia the following day.

Commenting on the SUS report, leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party Irakli Kobakhidze told local media on Monday that theUS should explain why it is funding possible unrest in Georgia.

In a statement later in the day, the US embassy in Tbilisi said the accusations against CANVAS are “false and fundamentally mischaracterize the goals of our assistance to Georgia.” US aid to Tbilisi has always been “transparent,” the embassy insisted, adding that CANVAS was contracted by USAID more than two years ago to “deliver training to mothers advocating for better cancer treatments for children, and to people advocating for the rights of elderly citizens in their communities.”

The US will “continue to support Georgian organizations who support people to secure the future they determine and deserve,” the embassy added.

CANVAS stands for Center for Applied Nonviolent Strategies, and its mission is to “advocate for the use of nonviolent resistance in the promotion of human rights and democracy,” according to the group’s website. It was co-founded by Djinovic and Srdja Popovic, two prominent members of Otpor, a US-backed student group that played a key role in the October 2000 coup in Serbia.

A similar “color revolution” overthrew the Georgian government in 2003, with former Otpor activists coaching the Georgian copycat group Kmara. After the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine, The Guardian described the process as an American-devised “template for winning other people’s elections.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/583924-georgia-color-revolution-usaid/

2 Oct, 2023 13:49

Ukrainians bringing treatment-resistant infections to Western Europe – health agency

Bacterial infections picked up on the battlefield are showing up in European hospitals, the US CDC reported

Wounded Ukrainian soldiers and fleeing civilians are carrying new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to Western Europe, according to a recent paper by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Even before the conflict, scientists warned of Ukraine’s inability to monitor and restrict the spread of these infections.

The paper, published last month, noted that six different antibiotic-resistant infections had been found in the body of one injured Ukrainian soldier at a military hospital in Germany. The soldier suffered severe burns in a vehicle fire and had been moved through hospitals in Dnipropetrovsk and Kiev before his evacuation to Germany.

German researchers found that some of these infections had been found in the wounds of Ukrainians fighting in the Donbass regions since 2014 and had likely developed in Ukrainian hospitals.

“As a result, healthcare networks in Europe now consider prior hospitalization in Ukraine to be a critical risk factor” for so-called multi-drug resistant organisms, the paper warned.

These infections, which have circulated within Ukraine for nearly a decade, are also being carried into Western Europe by civilian refugees, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing multiple scientific papers.

Tracking and tackling drug-resistant infections poses a challenge for even the best-developed healthcare systems, with the Financial Times noting that one “prestigious hospital in New York” prescribes antibiotics without carrying out sufficient tests and does not dispose of unused pills – both factors in the spread of these organisms.

Not all governments have adequate plans to respond to drug-resistant infection outbreaks either. A recent analysis of 114 countries rated these plans on a scale of 0-100, giving Ukraine a score of 29, compared to 45 and 54 for neighboring Poland and Russia, respectively.

The analysis was conducted in 2021, and the subsequent conflict has likely lowered Ukraine’s score further. The Financial Times noted that widespread combat injuries, indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics, and damage to hospital infrastructure all facilitate the spread of disease.

https://www.rt.com/news/583903-ukraine-infections-bacteria-europe/