Apr 30 Buonsera! up-date
Catching up…
NATO: NATO Air Command says its fighter jets stationed around the Baltic and Black Seas have scrambled multiple times over the past four days to track and intercept Russian aircraft near Alliance airspace. Olga Lautman has said that Russia is not only attempting to escalate but also probing for response times.
Up-date Finland-Sweden and NATO: Finland and Sweden are applying for NATO membership on the same day - May 12.
Reuters: The United States does not believe there's a threat of Russia using nuclear weapons despite a recent escalation in Moscow's rhetoric, a senior US defence official has said.
The Kyiv Independent: 2 Russian regions claim shelling from Ukrainian territory. Two Russian regions that border Ukraine, Kursk and Bryank, claim their territory has been shelled. No casualties were reported.
The BBC: Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister Taras Vysotskyi has accused Russia of stealing several hundred thousand tonnes of grain from territory its forces occupy.
President Zelensky: Russia is doing everything it can to destroy "any life" in the Donbas region in the east.
Advisor to president Zelensky, Podolyak said that Russia refuses to evacuate Mariupol. “It is symbolic for them to destroy Mariupol and Azov fighters.”
The EU is reportedly going to start implementing a phased oil embargo on Russia from next week.
President Joe Biden "has expressed publicly his opposition" to Putin attending while the US has "welcomed the Ukrainians attending", White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. Putin was invited to the G20 by Indonesia. It’s not clear yet whether the US will be attending the summit.
TASS: Patrushev instructed to prepare bunkers for the population of the southern regions of the Russian Federation. The Russian authorities are beginning to revise and prepare bunker defenses in the southern regions of the country, where a "yellow" level of terrorist danger has been introduced and where the air defense system has worked twice just last night.
The Kyiv Independent: Lavrov said that lifting sanctions against Russia part of negotiations with Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on April 30 that while peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow are “difficult,” lifting sanctions imposed on Russia is part of negotiations.
Zelensky revealed that the authorities have found another mass grave with 900 people in Kyiv Oblast. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby’s emotional response to the images he is seeing of various war crimes and genocide in Ukraine says it all.
Russia's ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov rejected Kirby’s statements as offensive and unacceptable. Not surprising given it’s coming from the mouthpiece of a criminal thugocracy.
Lukashenko in Belarus
As soon as I have the opportunity in an interview or EuroFile@6, I’ll be asking why Lukashenko and the Belarusian armed forces leadership have not sent Belarusian troops into Ukraine. Could it be because Lukashenko is the head of a Potemkin army? Do his troops really want to fight against Ukrainians? What is Belarus’s contribution to its ally, Russia?
More Russian threats on Rossiya-1. We’ve all asked ourselves if Putin will use nuclear arms at some point in this war of genocide, and we’ve thought it is not beyond him. The issue of the use of tactical nuclear weapons is complex. TV programming is reductive and sensational on this issue. Please follow and read Joe Cirincione, a national security advisor, for information on the use of nuclear weapons.
Weekend Reading…
How Russia is framing the war: Critical race theory, organ harvesting and Nazis, Alexander Nazaryan, Yahoo News
“Americans are accustomed to walking on scorched earth,” Nikolai Patrushev, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most loyal and most powerful aides inside the Kremlin, said in a jarringly expansive interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Tuesday that touched on a variety of cultural and geopolitical grievances.
Carl Bildt, “NATO’s Nordic Expansion,” Foreign Affairs, 26 April 2022
Before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the question of NATO membership was barely part of the political debate in Finland and Sweden. Both countries have a long history of military nonalignment, and although they have gradually pursued closer cooperation with the United States and NATO—and politicians in both countries have long advocated membership—NATO accession was hardly seen as a pressing issue.
Heart-warming news…
Bravo Bergamo!
In the early hours of the night, on 19 March 2020, a long column of Italian military vehicles transported the bodies of citizens who had died of Covid. Bergamo remains a chilling memory etched into our hearts and minds.
The French presidential elections are over but the legislative elections are around the corner. Listen into lively analysis about French politics with Claire Berlinski, Jerome Clavel, Arun Kapil, and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet. You can listen to the recording once Jerome has posted it.
I’m signing off…thanks for reading…
Mo & Scott