Tag: russia

Mysterious Explosions Rock Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker Off Italian Coast

Two explosions rocked the hull of a Maltese-flagged oil tanker hauling Russian crude oil from Algeria while it was docked at the port of Savona in northwestern Italy late last week. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the “two loud bangs” were caused by explosive devices, as a section of the hull appeared to be “retracted inwards.”

Italian daily newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano reported that the oil tanker Seajewel, part of the Russian shadow fleet to circumvent Western sanctions, was hit by “two loud bangs” on Friday. The crew found a section of the hull “bent inwards.” 

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The West Faces Uranium Shortage Amid Competition From China And Russia

American and European companies in the nuclear energy supply chain have become increasingly vulnerable to a possible supply shock in the uranium market amid fierce resource competition from China and Russia and the planned surge in nuclear power generation to meet electricity demand.

As many countries are now looking to nuclear power to cut emissions and reliance on imports of oil and gas, and meet the growing power demand from AI and data centers, they would need more uranium supply.

But China and Russia have moved to secure supply from African countries and are buying the key nuclear fuel from Kazakhstan, which is the biggest producer of uranium in the world and prefers to keep its sales diversified.

Not all in the nuclear power industry and the energy companies in the West have realized that competition for uranium supply is leading to a supply crunch, industry executives have told the Financial Times.

“We’re on a depletion curve that I don’t think many customers have realised,” Cory Kos, vice-president of investor relations at Cameco, the biggest western supplier based in Canada, told FT.

Amid plans for expansion of nuclear power generation in many countries, including in the United States, uranium demand is set to surge in the coming years and decades, while Western companies are seeing increased competition from China and Russia for supply.

“Russia and China are rapidly expanding their offtake of mined uranium from international partners, uranium enrichment capabilities, and nuclear infrastructure,” Gracelin Baskaran and Meredith Schwartz with the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote in a report earlier this month.

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Spoiler Alert: Ukrainian President Zelensky Says “I Will Never Accept Any Decisions Between the United States and Russia About Ukraine… Never”

Maybe this is why they did not invite him.

Ukrainian president Zelensky sat down with far-left ABC News reporter Kristen Welker on Sunday.

This comes after a Saturday when Zelensky could not stop ranting about the upcoming Trump-Putin talks in Saudi Arabia.

Zelensky on Saturday told reporters it would be more dangerous if President Trump speaks with Putin first before he speaks with Ukraine.

On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky firmly rejected any negotiations between the U.S. and Russia that exclude Ukraine.

Kristen Welker:
Something that President Trump said this week—he did not say “yes” when he was asked if he sees Ukraine as an equal member in the peace process. He did say later that Ukraine would have a seat at the table. Have you been given any assurances that Ukraine will have an equal seat at the negotiating table?

Volodymyr Zelensky:
I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never. Our people—never. Our adults and children, everybody—it can’t be so. This is a war in Ukraine against us, and it’s our human losses.

We are thankful for all the support, the unity between the USA and Ukraine, the bipartisan unity, and the bipartisan support. We are thankful for all of this. But there is no leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us—about us.

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MAJOR UPDATE: President Trump Says He Is Working on a Plan for Ukraine to Pay Back the $350 Billion the US Sent to Ukraine

President Donald Trump spoke to reporters briefly before he flew to Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500.

During the questions and answers, President Trump made when he announced that Ukraine was going to pay back the estimated $350 billion the US generously sent to the Zelensky regime.

This was a major announcement by President Trump.

Here is the transcript.

Reporter: Would you support Zelinsky’s seeding territory or exchanging territory in any agreement to end the war?

President Trump: Well, he’s going to have to do what he has to do, but his poll numbers aren’t particularly great, to put it mildly. He’s got a country where it’s been savaged and attacked, and he’s got an army that’s been very, very brave, actually, despite the fact that we’ve given him, in my opinion, $350 billion. That’s what the number is. You don’t hear that number. And Europe has given, in my opinion, $100 billion. And they’ve done it in the form of a loan.

And I have a Secretary of Treasury right now who’s actually quite brave. He’s over in Ukraine on a train, and there’s a lot of things happening around that train that aren’t so good. And he’s going there to get a document done where we’re going to be assured that we’re going to, in some form, get this money back because we’re putting up far more money than Europe.

And Europe is in far more danger than we are. We have an ocean in between. Europe has nothing in between. You know what they have in between? They have Ukraine in between. So as you know, Europe is putting up money, and they’re getting it in the form of a loan.

And the United States, under Biden, didn’t do loans. They just handed money. Every time somebody walked in from Ukraine, they just handed them money foolishly. This should have never happened. It should have never started. And once it did, other things should have happened. Other things should have taken place. So we’re getting security on our money. We’re going to have it secured by… They have raw earth, and they have oil and gas, and they have a lot of other things. And we’re asking for security on our money. So does it mean you are not sending any more aid to Ukraine? They’ve agreed to it. Ukraine has agreed to it.

Reporter:  Does it mean you are not sending any more aid to Ukraine?

President Trump:  No, we are, but we want it secured, and the money is going to be secured..

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Is a Grand Bargain between US and Russia in the works?

Last month Donald Trump suggested that he would end the war in Ukraine as a gift to the Russian people. The terms of that peace, as far as we know from General Kellogg’s peace plan are unacceptable to Russia and will certainly be rejected. In a subsequent interview Vladimir Putin suggested that the US and Russia should have friendly relations but that they should discuss bigger issues than the war in Ukraine.

He did not elaborate, leaving us to try and guess what the big agenda could be. We know that the Kremlin and many other powers including China, India and Iran are keenly interested in redrawing the Eurasian continent’s security architecture and also improving global economic, financial and trade relations.

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Zelenskiy Refuses To Sign Rare Earth Deal With Trump, Ukrainian Official Mocks, “We Will Send Eggs”

The Washington Post reports that although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy refused to sign a deal with the United States for $500B in rare earth minerals for the hundreds of billion in aid provided by America for the Ukrainian armed forces, a Ukrainian official mocked the offer, and said Ukraine would send eggs to help Americans.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected a Trump administration request this past week that Kyiv hand over 50 percent of its mineral resources — an extraordinary demand that could significantly overshadow the value of aid that has been sent to Ukraine, wrote WaPo.

“We can consider how to distribute profits when security guarantees are clear. So far, I have not seen that in the document,” he told reporters at an annual gathering of U.S. and European security elite.

“Senior Ukrainian official jokes that to maintain U.S. support, Ukraine would even send a massive shipment of eggs, noting the country’s surplus and rising U.S. prices.”

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine’s president calls for creation of ‘armed forces of Europe’ amid fears of reduction in US support

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he believes it is time for the creation of an “armed forces of Europe”, adding his army was “not enough”.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian president said Europe cannot rule out the possibility that “America might say no to Europe on issues that threaten it”.

Ukraine has been defending itself from Russia‘s full-scale invasion for nearly three years.

Mr Zelenskyy noted that many leaders have long spoken about how Europe needs its own military.

“I really believe that time has come,” he told the gathering in Germany.

“The armed forces of Europe must be created.”

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Dictator Zelenskiy Continues To Goad Europe To War, Says He ‘Won’t Take NATO Membership Off The Table’, Says Ukrainians Don’t Want Elections

The fact is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is not a legitimate leader. He has overstayed his electoral mandate for a year. The parliament is not legitimate either.

Zelenskiy will not hold elections because he does not want to lose power, or should we say those who are controlling him do not want to lose power over the war against Russia, and the backroom deals that have been made for natural resources. Zelenskiy also does not want an investigation into the level of obscene grift of Western aid.

Saying Ukrainians do not want an election is a lie. He is extremely unpopular in-country. Much of this animosity towards the Ukrainian President comes from his attacks against Christianity and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

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High-Explosive Drone Pierces Shell Of Chernobyl Nuclear Plant At Very Moment Trump Pushes Ukraine Toward Peace

On Friday just prior to high-level meetings among Western security officials and Ukrainian leadership commencing in Munich, including US Vice President J.D. Vance and Zelensky, there was a dangerous incident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine’s Kyiv oblast.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky accused Russia of launching a drone equipped with a high-explosive warhead at the historic, defunct power plant, site of the April 1986 nuclear disaster and meltdown. The drone reportedly hit the protective containment shell of the Chernobyl plant.

Zelensky’s office released footage showing an impact to the giant concrete and steel shield protecting the remains of the nuclear reactor. BBC writes that “The shield is designed to prevent further radioactive material leaking out over the next century. It measures 275m (900ft) wide and 108m (354ft) tall and cost $1.6bn (£1.3bn) to construct.”

And WaPo details further of the looming potential dangers:

In 2019, construction was completed on the New Safe Confinement — a $1.7 billion arch-shaped steel structure, which would contain the destroyed reactor. The site still contained some “200 tons of highly radioactive material,” according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, which helped finance the project.

Thus the situation is deeply alarming given the potential for a new radiation leak at the site which could impact the region, or even Europe. An IAEA team on the ground said it heard an explosion at around 01:50 local time coming from the New Safe Confinement (NSC) shelter. Photos showed flames at the top of the huge structure.

The UN agency is on high alert, but issued a statement saying the drone strike did not breach the plant’s inner containment shell. The IAEA also did not attribute blame, not identifying who sent the drone.

The Kremlin strongly rejected that it was behind the incident:

“There is no talk about strikes on nuclear infrastructure, nuclear energy facilities, any such claim isn’t true, our military doesn’t do that,” Peskov told reporters in a call.

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The Isolation Is Over: Trump Calls Putin

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. has led an international campaign to shun and isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Former U.S. president Joe Biden did not talk to Putin once after the war began.

That policy of isolation is now over. On February 12, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin.

But Trump did not just open the door a cautious crack. He flung it wide. He did not just agree to further phone calls: he agreed that he would go to Moscow and Putin would come to Washington: “We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.” More importantly still, Trump appeared to extend an invitation to welcome Russia back into the international community. He says that he and Putin “talked about… the great benefit that we will someday have in working together.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said that Trump and Putin’s phone call lasted almost an hour and a half and that they had agreed that “the time has come for our countries to work together.”

On the same day that Trump spoke to Putin, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was speaking to NATO and Ukrainian defense ministers. He offered the clearest yet revelation of Trump’s position.

Trump and Hegseth’s statements combined provide a glimpse of the parameters of the peace plan. Hegseth clearly stated that “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.” That blow to Ukraine dovetails with Peskov’s statement that during the phone call, “Vladimir Putin, for his part, mentioned the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict.” Those statements combined suggest a clear path for Putin to achieve his key goal in going to war: to receive a written guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO.

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