3 Oct, 2023 18:40

Swedish minister stopped at Ukrainian border

Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom reportedly forgot his passport and could not travel to a summit in Kiev

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom forgot his passport and could not enter Ukraine for an EU Council summit in Kiev, Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported on Monday.Several European ministers skipped the meeting, which saw the bloc offer “solidarity” – but no new military aid – to Ukraine.

Without his passport, Billstrom was forbidden from crossing the Poland-Ukraine border on Monday for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Kiev later that day, Die Presse reported, citing diplomatic sources.

Billstrom missed out on an eight-hour train journey to the Ukrainian capital for a largely symbolic gathering. Although the summit was historic in that it marked the first time that the EU Council has ever met outside of the union’s borders, it delivered little in the way of concrete assistance for Ukraine.

In a statement after the gathering, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell announced that member states would attempt to agree on a €5 billion ($5.2 billion) arms package for Ukraine next year, and would contribute €50 billion in economic aid,if internal disagreements within the bloc can be overcome.

In the meantime, the summit “sent a strong message of solidarity and support to Ukraine,” Borrell said.

Billstrom was not the only foreign minister to skip the meeting. Polish FM Zbigniew Rau sent his deputy, Wojciech Gerwel, in his place, telling Polish media that an ongoing spat betweenWarsaw and Kiev over grain imports had “shaken” the trust between the formerly close partners.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto also sent a deputy in his place. Budapest has forbidden the transfer of weapons to Ukraine via Hungarian territory, has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, and opposes economic sanctions on Russia. Hungary has also maintained its veto on a €500 million arms package for Kiev since May.

“The more weapons we supply – the more people will die, the longer the war will continue and the greater the destruction will be. And the more sanctions packages we adopt, the more we destroy European competitiveness,” Szijjarto told the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet on Tuesday.

Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Kariņs also missed Monday’s summit due to illness.

(The whole sham is falling apart, mostly because Ukrainian’s are ungrateful assholes)

https://www.rt.com/news/583985-sweden-minister-passport-ukraine/

>>19660542

I vote on purpose, not a lot of important leaders showed up. The bloom has left the rose

3 Oct, 2023 18:36

EU state warns of ‘difficult’ relations with Ukraine

Poland has no desire to meet Kiev’s “expectations,” government spokesman Piotr Muller has said

Poland will not sacrifice its national interests for Ukraine, government spokesman Piotr Muller told Polish Radio on Tuesday, commenting on the ongoing row between the two neighbors over grain exports. Relations between Kiev and Warsaw will not necessarily be “bad,” but they are likely to be “difficult” in the months to come, he added.

“We know it perfectly well that Ukraine … has its own economic interests, including in the field of agriculture,” Muller said, adding that Polish officials “will not be able and do not want to meet these expectations of Ukraine.”

“We represent the Polish government, not the Ukrainian one,” the spokesman stated. Over the past months, Kiev and Warsaw have been locked in a dispute over Ukrainian agricultural exports, which also resulted in what has now become a diplomatic row.

The EU previously suspended tariffs on Ukrainian exports in a bid to support Kiev in its conflict with Moscow. The move made the farmers in highly regulated markets in neighboring countries unable to compete with cheap corn, wheat, and sunflower oil from Ukraine. Brussels then banned imports of the goods but allowed them to transit through Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. When the EU moratorium expired in mid-September, however, the four nations decided to extend it at the national level, a move to which Kiev responded by filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization. President Vladimir Zelensky accused the four countries of supporting Russia.

On Tuesday, Muller denied that Warsaw might freeze diplomatic relations with Kiev altogether but admittedthat the coming months are likely to be “difficult” for the two nations. He also branded “some diplomatic gestures” and statements made by Ukraine as “inappropriate.” These concerns have been relayed to Kiev “directly,” he added.

On Monday,Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau warned that a “titanic effort” would be needed to mend the ties between the two nations, adding that the Poles’ trust in Ukraine had been “shaken” by Ukraine’s WTO complaint and Zelensky’s words at the UN General Assembly.

Rau also told the Polsat broadcaster that he snubbed an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Kiev on Monday to draw attention to a “period of downturn” in relations with Ukraine. Muller downplayed the incident by arguing that no “far-reaching conclusions” should be drawn from it and maintained that the two neighbors continue to communicate on a daily basis.

(Ukraine brought this on themselves!)

https://www.rt.com/news/583983-eu-state-difficult-relations-ukraine/

3 Oct, 2023 08:11

Russia charges Ukrainian commanders with terrorism

Spy chief Kirill Budanov and three others have been accused of launching drone attacks on civilian targets in Russia

The Russian Investigative Committee has identified four senior Ukrainian military officials as the masterminds of over 100 “terrorist attacks” involving drones targeting civilian infrastructure.

In a statement on Tuesday, the agency said it has collected enough evidence to charge the four commanders in absentia with terrorism-related crimes. Russia will seek the arrests of the suspects, it said.

The committee named Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, the commanders of the Air Force and the Navy, Nikolay Oleshchuk and Aleksey Neizhapa, as well as the commander of the 383rd drone regiment of the Air Force, Sergey Purdenyuk, as the culprits. Their alleged offenses took place between April 2022 and September 2023.

Russian officials regularly accuse Kiev of launching fixed-wing kamikaze drones at targets inside Russia. Senior Ukrainian officials publicly call those drones “unidentified,” but do little to deny their country’s responsibility for the attacks.

The semi-secret drone program was detailed in August by the British magazine The Economist. It explained how competing drone developers sometimes conduct operations that “appear to be PR projects designed to bring a prototype to the attention of procurement bosses, rather than having military value.”

There is also an aspect of psychological warfare in delivering “headline-making strikes” on civilian targets such as Moscow’s financial center, the article said.

Budanov, who is arguably the most media-engaged official among the four Ukrainians charged, told the same outlet last month that his agency sought to disrupt the Russian economy, including by forcing airports in Moscow and St. Petersburg to close during drone raids. He claimed the strikes caused “zero” civilian casualties in Russia, contrary to local reports.

In May, the spy chief acknowledged that his agency was involved in assassinations of Russian public figures.

(Let's see what happens here, Russia has not done this before)

https://www.rt.com/russia/583939-ukrainian-commanders-terrorism-charges/

>>19660676

absolutely, and the west said they were worried about Ukraine dropping in bombs in Russia, but they don't say a peep now. cynical assholes

3 Oct, 2023 18:35

US ‘failing’ at life expectancy – WaPo

Chronic diseases kill more middle-aged Americans than opioids or guns, research has shown

The US is dead last among “peer countries” in terms of life expectancy for its population, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. Months of research and interviews have revealed a widespread problem with obesity, cancer, heart conditions, and diabetes, as well as a growing gap between poor and wealthy Americans.

“Among wealthy nations, the United States in recent decades went from the middle of the pack to being an outlier. And it continues to fall further and further behind,” according to the Post.

American life expectancy peaked at 78.9 years in 2014, the same year the Affordable Care Act – also known as ‘Obamacare’ – fully went into effect. It has been declining ever since. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of 2021 it was at 76.4 years. (WAPO says the quiet part out loud, the ACA was intended to destroy our health system, kill people and it has. As far as “Affordable” it’s never been affordable.)

The Post reporters looked at county-level death records over the past five decades, finding the largest increase in excess deaths among the 35-64 demographic. In that group, chronic diseases kill twice as many Americans as “all the [drug] overdoses, homicides, suicides and car accidents combined.”

Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, liver failure, and other chronic ailments are the main culprits. Cases of breast, thyroid and colorectal cancer are “mysteriously” rising among Americans under 50. Meanwhile, almost 42% of adult Americans are obese, compared to 11.6% in 1990.

Medical professionals and scholars interviewed by the Post blamed a variety of factors, from lack of preventive care and focus on treatment, to racism. They said advances in medicine, nutrition, and technology have been “overwhelmed by poverty, racism, distrust of the medical system, fracturing of social networks and unhealthy diets built around highly processed food.”

While the US medical system is great at treating diseases, “growing healthy people to begin with, we’re the worst in the world,” according to William Cooke, a doctor in Austin, Indiana.

Elena Marks, a senior health policy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, argued that the US has built a “health industrial complex” that costs trillions of dollars but focuses on treatment.

“Eighty-plus percent of health outcomes are determined by nonmedical factors,” said Marks, who used to be the health and environmental policy director for the city of Houston in Texas.

There is a major “wealth gap” in life expectancy, according to the Post. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the poorest Americans were 61% more likely to die than the richest ones, and had “far lower” life expectancy than poor people in comparable countries. While wealthy Americans enjoyed longer lives on average, they too lagged behind their counterparts in Canada, France, or Japan.

The Post also highlighted the racial disparities in life expectancy, with Native Americans coming in dead last at 65 and Asian-Americans leading at 84. Meanwhile, Hispanics were at 78, whites at 76, and African-Americans at 71.

https://www.rt.com/news/583980-us-life-expectancy-crashes/