STORY: Hours after Russia’s attack on Ukraine began, five German warships set sail for Latvia to help protect the most vulnerable part of NATO’s eastern flank. Russia’s invasion has propelled the alliance into what Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has called a “new normal”. It looks a lot like the past. NATO was founded in 1949 to defend against the Soviet threat. Now, a new Iron Curtain could fall across Europe. NATO needs to ensure its members are not behind it if it does.
NATO has expanded eastwards since the 1990s, bringing in former Soviet states such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – where these French troops disembarked last week.
A single overland corridor connects them to the rest of NATO territory, and it is squeezed between the heavily armed Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Moscow ally Belarus. An emboldened Russia could encircle them and cut them off from the alliance. That’s where the Latvian mission comes in – a regular mine-clearing exercise that was brought forward by Russia’s invasion. One goal is to keep the waterway open, the other is a show of strength. This was German naval commander Terje Schmitt-Eliassen, on board the ‘Elbe’ in Riga’s harbor: “We will be 12 units from six countries, and we are essentially showing our presence in the eastern Baltic.” Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could touch off a global conflict. One retired NATO commander told Reuters the alliance is considering whether deterrence is enough. Not according to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis last week. “We are convinced in the Baltic states that we need to move from deterrence to a standing defence and it has to come from NATO planning leadership, that they will start looking into the region differently than they had throughout the last two decades.” Since the invasion, NATO allies have also moved five aircraft carriers into European waters, increased the number of warplanes in NATO airspace and more than doubled the size of combat units in the Baltics and Poland. NATO also faces a return to mechanized warfare and a huge increase in defense spending. NN: NATO is a joke. Member states cannot even talk to each other on the battle feild…. And their is no will to fight… AND Russia damn well knows it. Look at the messaging as they slice and dice the Ukraine. What makes you believe Russia wants to occupy the country. They want to punishmen them and set them back a hundred years….. See Poland and Romania are watching… Its a game of who the bells tolls…. next.
The Kremlin said on Monday Europe would be hit hard in the event of an embargo on Russian oil, striking the continent’s energy balance, but would not affect the United States. Some European Union foreign ministers are pushing for an oil embargo as part of a possible fifth round of sanctions against Russi, in an effort to punish Moscow over events in Ukraine. read more “Such an embargo would very seriously impact the global oil market, very badly impact energy balance on the European continent,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a daily conference call. Diplomats have said a Russian chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, or a heavy bombardment of its capital Kyiv, could be a trigger for an energy embargo. Russia says it targets military, not civilian infrastructure.
Moscow itself has warned that EU sanctions on Russian oil could prompt it to close a gas pipeline to Europe. For now, the 27-nation EU, which relies on Russia for 40% of its gas, with Germany among the most dependent of the bloc’s large economies, is divided on how to tackle the energy issue.
“Americans would remain as they are and would feel much better than Europeans (in the event of oil embargo). This would be hard for Europeans – such a decision would hit everyone,” Peskov said. Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a “special operation” to degrade its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists. Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces. NN: Embargo Russian oil and Russia will embargo natural gas to Europe. This has always been Putin’s hole card. If he was not able to sucker Europe into letting him the the sole provider trap the Ukraine attack would have never happened.
EU nations and U.S. President Biden set to hold talks
Saudi refinery attack adds to market jitters
Some OPEC+ producers still falling short of quotas
LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) – Oil prices jumped by more than $4 on Monday, with Brent crude climbing above $111 a barrel, as European Union nations considered joining the United States in a Russian oil embargo and after a weekend attack on Saudi oil facilities. Brent crude futures were up $4.44, or 4.1%, at $112.37 a barrel by 1321 GMT, adding to a 1.2% rise on Friday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose $4.05, or 3.9%, to $108.75, extending Friday’s 1.7% jump.Prices moved higher ahead of talks this week between European Union governments and U.S. President Joe Biden in a series of summits that aims to harden the West’s response to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. EU governments will consider whether to impose an oil embargo on Russia. Early on Monday, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vershchuk, said there was no chance the country’s forces would surrender in the besieged eastern port city of Mariupol. With little sign of the conflict easing, the focus returned to whether the market would be able to replace Russian barrels hit by sanctions. “Optimism is seeping away about progress in talks to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine and that’s sent the price of oil on the march upwards,” Susannah Streeter, senior markets analyst at UK-based asset manager Hargreaves Lansdown, said. “With the possibility that more than a million barrels of Russian oil a day will be snubbed, given that the Netherlands and Germany combined received around a quarter of Russia’s crude and light oil exports, demand would shoot up for crude supplies from OPEC+ nations.” Over the weekend, attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group caused a temporary drop in output at a Saudi Aramco refinery joint venture in Yanbu, feeding concern in a jittery oil products market, where Russia is a major supplier and global inventories are at multi-year lows. The latest report from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia, together known as OPEC+, showed some producers are still falling short of their agreed supply quotas. NN: Watch the game. Oil hysteria will soon be upon us… And i expect oil to soar to around $150 a barrel….. Then magically supplies will appear out of no where and oil will crash…… AGAIN. I am sure you get my drift of what we are going to do….
Russia says it has launched a hypersonic missile attack on Ukraine for the second consecutive day, amid claims that thousands of people trapped in a besieged city have been “forcibly deported” to Russian territory. The weapon – known as Kinzhal, meaning dagger – hit a Ukrainian fuel depot near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv, a Russian defence ministry official said. It is the second day in a row that Russia says it has used the missile, which is capable of striking targets 1,250 miles away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound. In separate attacks, an art school where 400 people were taking refuge in Mariupol was destroyed and authorities in Kharkiv said at least five civilians – including a nine-year-old boy – had been killed by Russian shelling. People are feared trapped under the rubble of the school building in Mariupol, the city’s council said, but there was no immediate information on the number of casualties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the siege of Mariupol – where hundreds of thousands of people are trapped and facing relentless bombardment – is “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”. NN: All is lost Ukraine is NOT NOT NOT winning the war. They are in a hopeless fight. NATO the US are telling you the invasion (and pop guns they is stopped by the brave freedom fig supplied) fhters. It is true they are putting up a hell of fight. But they are losing and the best that can be hoped for is to arrange the best terms possible for their surrender. If you call winning your infrastructure destroyed, dominance by the Russians and an agreement to disarm, not join the EU and never join NATO i guess for a liberal lefty they can call it a win.
Researchers testing repurposed drugs against Covid-19 found that ivermectin didn’t reduce hospital admissions, in the largest trial yet of the effect of the antiparasitic on the disease driving the pandemic. Ivermectin has received a lot of attention as a potential treatment for Covid-19 including from celebrities such as podcast host Joe Rogan. Most evidence has shown it to be ineffective against Covid-19 or has relied on data of poor quality, infectious-disease researchers said. Public-health authorities and researchers have for months said the drug hasn’t shown any benefit in treating the disease. Taking large doses of the drug is dangerous, the Food and Drug Administration has said. The latest trial, of nearly 1,400 Covid-19 patients at risk of severe disease, is the largest to show that those who received ivermectin as a treatment didn’t fare better than those who received a placebo. “There was no indication that ivermectin is clinically useful,” said Edward Mills, one of the study’s lead researchers and a professor of health sciences at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Mills on Friday plans to present the findings, which have been accepted for publication in a major peer-reviewed medical journal, at a public forum sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. NN: This study was for low doses over 3 days. The recommend dose is according to body weight and for 10 days
ROME – Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, responding to a request that he intervene with Russia’s leaders to end the war in Ukraine, accused the west of disregarding Russia’s security concerns and stoking tensions between the two countries in a bid to weaken Russia. In his response to a March 2 letter from acting secretary general of the World Council of Churches Reverend Archpriest Ioan Sauca, a senior priest from the Orthodox Church of Romania asking him to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, Kirill went on the defensive. He did not directly respond to Sauca’s request to intervene, but rather defended Russia from what he said is a strategic plot to deprive it of its regional power. In his letter, dated March 10 and addressed to Sauca, Kirill noted that the Russian Orthodox Church joined the WCC in 1961, and quoted the Toronto Statement, drafted after a WCC committee meeting in 1950 to clarify several key questions about the nature of the WCC and its relationship to member churches. Kirill quoted a passage from the Toronto Statement which states that the WCC “cannot possibly become the instrument of one confession or school <…> the member churches should recognize their solidarity with each other, render assistance to each other in case of need, and refrain from such actions as are incompatible with brotherly relationship.” Members of the WCC, Kirill said, share responsibility for “justice, peace and the integrity of creation within the world community,” and a commitment for reconciliation among peoples, as well as solidarity and support for the world’s Christians. Pointing to the current conflict in Ukraine, Kirill said it is at the heart of the “thoughts and prayers” for Christians globally, but he cautioned that “this conflict did not start today.” “It is my firm belief that its initiators are not the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, who came from one Kievan baptismal font, are united by common faith, common saints and prayers, and share common historical fate,” he said. Rather, Kirill faulted the relationship between Russia and the West, saying Russia by the 1990s had been promised that “its security and dignity would be respected.”
“However, as time went by, the forces overtly considering Russia to be their enemy came close to its borders. Year after year, month after month, the NATO member states have been building up their military presence, disregarding Russia’s concerns that these weapons may one day be used against it,” he said.
“Moreover, the political forces which make it their aim to contain Russia were not going to fight against it themselves,” he said, and accused them of inciting hatred amongst the “brother peoples” of Russia and Ukraine. These western forces spared no effort or expense “to flood Ukraine with weapons and warfare instructors,” Kirill said, and accused the West of attempts to “re-educate” Ukrainians and “mentally remake” them into enemies of Russia. He also faulted Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who, he said, pursued the same ends when he established a new Orthodox body in Ukraine by granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2018, against Kirill’s wishes. When Ukrainians ousted their pro-Russian president in 2014 amid a swath of deadly protests, the WCC secretary at the time, Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, voiced concern that “the situation puts many innocent lives in grave jeopardy” and “risks undermining the international community’s capacity to act now or in the future on the many urgent issues that will require a collective and principled response.” Shortly after, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and further conflict broke out in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region as Russia backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. This conflict was being waged by people “whose population was defending their right to speak the Russian language, demanding respect for their historical and cultural tradition,” Kirill said, responding to allegations that Ukraine had made it illegal to speak Russian in the region. The conflict in Donbass “has become a part of the large-scale geopolitical strategy aimed, first and foremost, at weakening Russia,” he said, and pointed to the crippling sanctions that have been placed on Russia since they first invaded Ukraine Feb. 24. Rather than punishing Russia’s leaders, the results of these sanctions will be “harmful to everyone,” he said, saying the powers that imposed the sanctions have made their intentions “blatantly obvious – to bring sufferings not only to the Russian political or military leaders, but specifically to the Russian people.” “Russophobia is spreading across the Western world at an unprecedented pace,” he said, and prayed that God would “help establish the lasting and justice-based peace as soon as possible.” Kirill’s letter comes as he faces mounting criticism for his apparent backing of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, having made several statements in recent days outlining a clear pro-Russia position. On March 6, when the Russian Orthodox Church observed “Forgiveness Sunday” before the beginning of their Lent, Kirill backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region and suggested that an unnamed western body of nations is organizing genocide campaigns against countries that refuse to hold gay pride parades. On March 9, during the Lenten Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts, Kirill delivered another sermon in which he referred to Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” and accused the West of supplying Ukraine with weapons in a bid to weaken Russia out of a growing fear of how powerful Russia had become. NN: All wars are a clash of ideas. At some point people drag GOD into it.
Germany was “stupid” to let itself become dependent on Russia for about half of its gas supplies, according to Economy Minister Robert Habeck. Habeck, who’s in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates this weekend to discuss buying liquefied natural gas, told Deutschlandfunk radio that individual suppliers should in future each be limited to providing “10% or 20%” of Germany’s needs. In a separate interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, he defended the practice of sourcing energy from “non-democratic countries,” saying there’s a difference between a country where the human rights situation is “problematic,” and one like Russia which “is waging an aggressive, illegal war at our front door.” Boris Johnson Says There Can Be No Concessions to Putin (1:50 p.m.) U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there should be no way back from international isolation for President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It would be a mistake to consider trade-offs, Johnson told members of his Conservative Party at a conference in Blackpool. “There are some around the world, even in Western governments, who invoke what they call realpolitik and who say that we are better off making accommodations with tyranny,” Johnson said. “I have to say, I believe they are profoundly wrong.” “To try to renormalize relations with Putin after this, as we did in 2014, would be to make exactly the same mistake again,” he said. NN: FINALLY they are starting to realize how bad it is. The problem is its to late. Europe is indeed Putin’s bitch……
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has called on governments to urgently implement measures to cut global oil consumption within months following supply fears stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The outbreak of war in Ukraine has sent fuel prices up sharply and led to major economies, such as the United States and Canada, sanctioning Russia by banning imports of oil. The IEA warned earlier this week of the risk of a global supply crisis as major oil companies, trading houses, shipping firms and banks have shunned Russia.
If supplies of Russian oil are cut even more, “there is a real risk that markets tighten further and oil prices escalate significantly in the coming months” as the world enters its peak demand season, the IEA said.
In a report released Friday, the IEA put forward 10 proposals, together with the French government, which could cut oil consumption among advanced economies “by 2.7 million barrels a day within the next four months”. The countries currently consume between 44 and 45 million barrels a day, according to IEA estimates. Together the world’s advanced economies account for “around 45 percent of global oil demand”, the IEA said. The proposals, principally targeted at transport, included reducing speed limits, working from home three days a week, car-free Sundays, cheaper public transport and greater use of long-distance trains over planes. The IEA also called on the OPEC+ group of oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia to help “relieve the strain” on markets, while warning that the world faced the biggest shock to supply “in decades”. However, increases in the supply of oil “would not be able to ease the current strains” after the “disappointing outcome” of a recent monthly meeting of OPEC+, the IEA report concluded. The OPEC+ group has resisted US pressure to step up production for months, agreeing only to modest increases in output at its regular meetings, even after Russia invaded Ukraine. The IEA was hoping for “some good messages which could help to relieve the strain on the oil markets” after the group’s next meeting on 31 March, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said at Friday’s press conference to present the plan to cut demand. NN: The extra barrels are coming…. BUT not before some more price pain at the pump, Nothing better then $5.00 a gallon gasoline to send the grenneiiwinnies anti oil folks packing.
Hypersonic missile failures cast doubt on US bid to catch up with China and Russia after Pentagon awarded $1 billion development contract to Lockheed Martin
The US-developed hypersonic missiles have failed three consecutive tests
The program must complete two successful tests by June 30 to stay on schedule
The Pentagon hopes to have the weapons, and a production contract, ready by September 30, a deadline that experts call ‘aggressive’ and ‘challenging’
The weapons are being developed with Lockheed Martin, which was awarded an initial development contract back in 2018
The cost of that contract is expected to balloon up to $1.4bn from $480 million
The US is unlikely to meet its deadline of having combat-ready hypersonic weapons by the end of September after three consecutive failed tests, experts say. The Department of Defense planned to have the weapons, along with an approved production partner, ready by September 30. That seems increasingly unlikely given that the Pentagon and the weapon’s developer, Lockheed Martin, would have to complete two successful tests of the missile’s booster motor by June 30 in order to stay on schedule. Hypersonic missiles are dropped from bomber jets and can travel up to 15 times faster than the speed of sound. They can also be steered in-flight toward a target, making them more precise and harder to shoot down. The development of hypersonic missiles has led to an arms race between the US, China and Russia. Last month, Russia said that it test-fired a hypersonic missile, according to Bloomberg. In December, Chinese researchers claimed to have developed technology to allow a hypersonic missile to find a target based on its heat signature, according to the South China Morning Post. Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a Democrat, says the continued delays pose a problem for US competitiveness. ‘The US has a lot of catching up to do with China,’ Cooper said. ‘It will take much more than a Sept. 30 press release to regain the lead we’ve squandered since the 1970s.’ The hypersonic development effort needs ‘funding, engineering excellence, and rapid testing to begin to reach parity. Even then, I worry that the US doesn’t even know how to catch up, particularly given the repeated failures’ with the missile program that ‘we’ve had to date on components that should not be technically challenging,’ he added. The hypersonic weapons being developed by the US are intended to be dropped from B-52H bomber jets and accelerated by a booster, which later detaches and allows the missile to fly at hypersonic speeds.
The three test failures so far involved the performance of the booster after it is dropped from the jet, but before the booster detaches.
The weapon is being developed with Maryland-based engineering firm Lockheed Martin, which was awarded an initial development contract of $480 million in 2018 that grew to $986 million in December 2019. The development phase is now expected to cost about $1.4 billion. The timing of the next two tests depend on the results of a failure review for the third test, which should’ve been done by the end of last month, the Air Force program office told Bloomberg. If the fourth and fifth tests are successful, they would be followed by a flight test of a fully operational missile between July and September. The government would then need to review Lockheed’s ability to manufacture its order before a full contract is awarded. A production decision on the first 12 missiles, which was planned for January, is on hold pending results of a December failure review, the two extra booster tests and the full-missile flight. A spokesperson for Heidi Shyu, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering, said she’s ‘supportive of the Air Force’s aggressive efforts to accelerate development,’ but that ‘the Sept. 30 operational capability date is a very aggressive schedule.’ The Air Force also said it ‘will not award a production contract without a Production Readiness Review and a successful All Up Round Test Flight. ‘To date, the team has not found any systemic quality issues at Lockheed or its subcontractors’ that caused the test failures. Kelly Sayler, an analyst in advanced technology, told Bloomberg that the time between now and September 30 ‘leaves little to no room for test delays or additional flight failures, and so it will likely be challenging.’ The Air Force itself said it ‘continues to aggressively pursue’ an early operational capability ‘while maintaining high standards of technical rigor.’ The branch hasn’t yet said how many weapons it plans to buy or how much they will cost in total. In December, researchers from China’s National University of Defence Technology claimed to have developed technology to allow a hypersonic missile to find a target based on its heat signature. According to research cited by the South China Morning Post, lead scientist Professor Yi Shihe claimed in a scientific paper in the Chinese peer-reviewed journal Air and Space Defence that China had made a ‘series of core technology breakthroughs that were proven effective in tests’. If true, it means China may have overcome the difficulty of developing a heat-seeking system which capable of of working at hypersonic speeds. The feat is a challenge because the pace of the missile itself generates heat which can interfere with the detection systems. The development, which is likely to add intensity to the ongoing arms race between China, the US and Russia, came after Beijing denied testing a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August. The projectile, which circled the planet, sparked concerns among officials in the US, but China insisted the missile launch was for a spacecraft. Hypersonic missiles can reach speeds of up to 21,000 mph and can strike anywhere on Earth from space within minutes. NN: I spilled my Green Tea when i saw the story of the deployment of a hypersonic missle in the Ukraine. Ring ring goes the phone…. Sergio is it true… Yes comrade think of it as a coming out party. You need to know what they are forget to tell you. These advanced technology missiles can be nuclear tipped. They can hit any spot on the planted in under 20 minuets if launched from a fighter jet. If launched from space they can hit any target in 2 minutes. But it gets worse they are not only unstoppable but undetectable by infrared, thermal and back scatter radar systems the most advanced we have.
Russia’s defence ministry claims that it has used hypersonic missiles for the first time ever during combat.
Russia on Friday used its latest Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in Ukraine for the first time to destroy a weapons depot in the west of the country, the defense ministry said. Russia has never admitted to using the high-precision weapon in combat before, and state news agency RIA Novosti said this was the first use of the hypersonic Kinzhal weapons during the conflict in pro-western Ukraine.
“The Kinzhal aircraft missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse with missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region,” Russia’s defense ministry said on Saturday.
A Defense Ministry spokesman declined to comment when reached by AFP. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the Kinzhal (Dagger) missile “an ideal weapon” that flies at 10 times the speed of sound and can overcome anti-aircraft defense systems. The speed coupled with the ability to fly low makes them almost ‘invisible’ to most missile defence systems. Experts say that Kinzhal missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Kinzhal missile was one of a series of new weapons unveiled by Putin in his 2018 state speech. Deliatyn, a village at the foot of the picturesque Carpathians, is located outside the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. The Ivano-Frankivsk region shares a 50-kilometer border with NATO member Romania. Russia added that it also destroyed Ukrainian military radio and reconnaissance centres near Odessa using a coastal missile system. In its latest intelligence update, the UK ministry said: “This is likely to involve the indiscriminate use of firepower resulting in increased civilian casualties, destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and intensify the humanitarian crisis. NN: DO not buy into the incredible spin job. See if NATO, the EU ad the US can convince you Ukraine has stopped the invasion they paper over another liberal lefty failure to do the right thing. The west GUARANTEED the defense of the Ukraine when it gave up its formidable nuclear arsenal. Giving Ukraine pop guns against Russian hypersonic weapons is a cruel joke. And not honoring the Wests commitment to guarantee its defense against the very Russian attack you are witnessing. I guarantee you the former Soviet states are shitting all over themselves……. As Putin expected!
PS: Just so you know how fucked the liberal left is at running things. Russia developed and showcased a fully functional hypersonic missle system in2018. Fully deployed said system in 2020. The US is still in the experimental stage and seeing massive failures in the prototypes.