Western Weapons, Equipment And Instructors Flood Ukraine In Sign Of Further Tensions With Russia

On November 20, the Daily Telegraph reported that the UK is going to increase its military support to the Kiev government. This effort will include the deployment of British troops in Ukraine and sending a British Navy ship to the country.

“As long as Ukraine faces Russian hostilities, it will find a steadfast partner in the United Kingdom,” British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson will say announcing the move according to the Tory-supporting Telegraph, who have apparently been provided with access to Williamson’s speech.

Since 2015, the UK has reportedly trained about 10,000 Ukrainian troops in areas such as logistics and identification of improvised explosive devices. So, British special services also provide “assistance” to their Ukrainian counterparts in the smoldering conflict in the region of Donbass.

On November 19, 2018 the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that the US had allegedly suggested to supply two Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates to Ukraine. These frigates were put out of commission by the US Navy in 2013-2015.

On September 27, Ukraine received two old patrol boats from the US Navy. Despite receiving them free, Ukraine will have to pay $10 million for renovations of the vessels in Baltimore, where they will remain until fall of 2019.

These developments come ahead of an expected further escalation in relations between Ukraine and Russia. The Sea of Azov is the main point of tensions between the two sides besides the region of Donbass. Over the past year, Ukraine has undertaken a series of hostile steps toward civil ships under Russian flag in the Sea of Azov. Rusisa has responded by deploying an additional coastal guards force and started checks of all ship heading towards the Ukrainian ports in the area.

According to experts, there are litlte doubts that the Kiev government will use its “boosted” naval capabilities to increase tensiosn in the Azov Sea.

Another point of escalation is a contact line between the Ukrainian Armed Forces and forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Sporadic clashes and artillery duels erupt there on a cosntant basis. However, as the Ukrainian presidential election is drawing closer, the chances that the Poroshenko regime (wich lost all of its questionable popularity) will attempt to use the conflict to gain an upper hand in a political standoff with its internal opponents are growing.

https://southfront.org/western-weapons-equipment-and-instructors-flood-ukraine-in-sign-of-further-tensions-with-russia/

PROJECT GREATNESS

Head of Russian military intelligence GRU dead 'after long and serious illness'

The head of the Russian Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Colonel General Igor Korobov has died “after a long and serious illness,” the Defense Ministry has confirmed.

The statement announcing Korobov's death was released around 2:00 am Moscow time (11:00 pm GMT) on Thursday morning.

Korobov took his post at the helm of the Directorate in 2016, and directed the GRU operations against terrorist forces in Syria. In 2017, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation, the highest state honor.

Korobov began his military career in the late 1970s, serving in the Soviet Air Force before being selected to join the military intelligence branch. He later went on to oversee Russia's strategic intelligence gathering, and ultimately, to lead the entire agency.

Korobov held the position at a time when GRU became a household name for anti-Russian politicians everywhere. The Directorate was blamed for things like the poisoning of former Russian-British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, as well as the supposed hacking attacks on the 2016 US presidential election.

Those latter allegations made Korobov one of the targets of anti-Russian sanctions in the US. Despite that, he paid an official visit to Washington early this year, according to US media reports citing anonymous sources. Along with the heads of other Russian intelligence services, Korobov went to Washington to discuss counter-terrorism with then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo. There has not been an official confirmation of his visit from either side.

https://www.rt.com/news/444590-russia-gru-head-dead/

Italian cops destroy ‘mafia’ homes, residents claim persecution ‘like Jews under Mussolini’

Italian police have begun bulldozing a community of 8 villas allegedly built by a mafia clan in Rome. Some of the residents claimed the raid amounts to the kind of persecution that Jews faced under the fascist dictator Mussolini.

As the walls of the first two villas came crumbling down early Wednesday, police were given a glimpse into the lavish and gaudy lifestyles of the Casamonica clan – including gold-plated animal statues, over-the-top chandeliers, and imitation frescoes.

https://www.rt.com/news/444582-mafia-villas-demolished-italy-casamonica/

Welcome to dictatorship? What lies behind France's controversial 'fake news' law

French parliament has passed a controversial law to tackle 'fake news'. Approved ahead of the European election and clearly targeting foreign media, it is feared it could jeopardize democracy and censor press.

The National Assembly finally adopted the law, advocated by President Emmanuel Macron, against "the manipulation of information" during the country's election campaigns on Tuesday. The legislation which had been rejected by the Senate earlier this year, 'crowns' the president's campaign to clamp down on what he calls 'destabilization' attempts, aka 'fake news'.

The bill allows a candidate or party to appeal to a judge to stop the dissemination of "false information" during the three month period preceding any ballot, be it a vote to choose the French president or the European Parliament election. The latter is taking place in May 2019. The legislation mainly targets media controlled by foreign states.

The primary goal of the law is to target those who sponsor the spread of fake news, Bruno Studer, a deputy of the Bas-Rhin department from Macron's ruling LREM party explains, adding that it will fight the spread of fake facts, not opinions.

Yet for Communist MP Elsa Faucillon the bill could jeopardize freedom of information and press and as a result will not be the best way to combat the spread of fake news. The law is "useless" and what's more it can be dangerous since it "provokes self-censorship," she added.

The consequences of the law will be weak since the legislation is "relatively inapplicable," Yann-Maël Lahrer, founder of Okaydoc, a platform of researchers which deal with digital challenges told RT France, adding that it will be difficult to identify the authors of this fake news. Lahrer also fears that the law may trigger "strong attacks on democracy."

Russia Today, Sputnik are the targets

Though the lengthy text of the law doesn't name any particular foreign media which may be targeted, Macron's political nemesis Jean-Luc Mélenchon says everything is evident: "It's Russians that they've been talking about since the start". Russia Today and Sputnik, to be precise.

Banishing these channels would only provoke a mirror response from Moscow, the leader of the French leftist party La France Insoumise warns. "If you do not want Russia Today in France, there will be no more France 24 … in Russia," he said, addressing the National Assembly panel.

https://www.rt.com/news/444576-france-fake-news-law/

Abu Dhabi Fund Sues Goldman As 1MDB-Inspired Client Exodus Begins

As volatility plunged during the QE era, sapping capital markets desks of badly needed brokerage revenues, Goldman Sachs started desperately searching for new clients to help make up the revenue hole. And for a while there, the investment bank thought it had found them in sovereign wealth funds. In a push to expand its sovereign wealth fund business, Goldman reorganized its network of bankers last year to better meet the needs of these politically sensitive funds, even hiring former White House foreign policy advisor Dina Powell to help oversee these relationships.

Now, with the long-simmering 1MDB scandal blowing up in the Vampire Squid's face, it appears all of the work that Goldman put in to try and court sovereign wealth funds could go to waste. In a sign that Goldman clients are taking their business elsewhere, Abu Dhabi-based International Petroleum Investment Co. and Aabar Investments PJS filed a lawsuit against Goldman in a New York court seeking unspecified damages over the bank's "central role" in 1MDB, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Both IPIC, a UAE sovereign wealth fund, claim they were harmed by Goldman when the bank bribed former managing director Khadem Al-Qubaisi and former Aabar Investments CEO Ahmed Badawy Al-Husseiny to help set up IPIC as an investment partner to 1MDB.

"Goldman Sachs conspired with others to bribe IPIC’s and Aabar’s former executives," the court filing said, referring to IPIC’s subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS.

As WSJ pointed out in its reporting about the new lawsuit, which followed a petition filed by Malaysia asking the DOJ to help it recoup all of the $600 million in fees (plus an interest-rate differential) that it paid Goldman for the bond issues that helped seed 1MDB, the reputation damage could inspire sovereign wealth funds run by some of the UAE's neighbors to take their business elsewhere as well.

The move is a sign that the 1MDB scandal, a reputational black eye for Goldman, could spill over into its banking business. IPIC and its successor, Mubadala Investment Co., are longtime investment-banking clients, having hired Goldman for years to advise on and raise money for deals.

Any moves by Abu Dhabi to shift business away from Goldman could influence other governments in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, where it has a strong voice, according to people familiar with the bank’s regional business.

Even before news of this lawsuit broke, Goldman's shares were already the worst-performing US banking stock of the year, and questions about the involvement of senior executives (including former CEO Lloyd Blankfein) raised the possibility that the DOJ's prosecution could go well beyond the two bankers that have already been arrested and charged (one of whom, Goldman's former Southeast Asia chief Tim Leissner, has agreed to cooperate). Given that Goldman (and most of the big investment banks) rarely face this level of public backlash over their misdeeds, it's hardly surprising that the bank's biggest rival Morgan Stanley indulged in some well-deserved schadenfreude when its equity analysts downgraded Goldman's shares and cut their rating to equal weight (with a price target of $226 a share, representing a nearly 20% upside to where Goldman's stock is currently trading). In its analysis, Morgan warned about other potential lawsuits related to 1MDB, according to CNBC.

"It is unclear how long the issue will take to resolve, what the fines and penalties could be, and what costs Goldman Sachs will subsequently incur to satisfy any demands from regulators," wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck. "These risks, coupled with potential headline risks in the coming months (additional lawsuits, additional regulatory probes, internal reviews), drive our Equal-weight rating."

Indeed, with so many parties involved (investors in 1MDB's bonds were left holding the bag when the fund defaulted), it's unlikely that Goldman's legal troubles will end here.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-21/abu-dhabi-sovereign-wealth-fund-sues-goldman-1mdb-inspired-client-exodus-begins