UKRAINE’S Right Sector neo-Nazi battalion has deployed multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) in a school in the New York settlement, and is firing at Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) troop positions, head of Russia’s National Defence Control Centre, Mikhail Mizintsev, said on Saturday.
‘In New York, 37 miles north of Donetsk in the Donbass, the Right Sector nationalists have deployed MLRS on the premises of School No. 16 (Yesenina Street) systematically firing at the positions of Russia’s armed forces and the formations of the Donetsk People’s Republic thus provoking them to return fire,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the residents of neighbouring buildings are being held in the institution’s cellar practically being used as a human shield,’ said Mizintsev who also heads Russia’s Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.
He added that the Ukrainian militants have set up firing positions and deployed armoured vehicles and artillery in schools and residential districts in several Ukrainian cities. The local residents are not evacuated and, indeed, are prevented from doing so.
The military official stressed: ‘During Russia’s special military operation, Russian troops and the units of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics do not strike civilian infrastructure facilities.’
A seven-member election committee to conduct a referendum on acceding to Russia is being set up in the Kherson Region.
The press service of the region’s military-civilian administration said on Saturday: ‘According to the July 22, 2022 decree by the head of the Kherson Region’s military-civilian administration, an election committee of the Kherson Region is being created numbering seven members with a three-year term of tenure and nominations are being accepted.
‘It is specified that the committee is being formed also for holding a referendum on the Kherson Region joining Russia.’
The press service stressed that the residents of the liberated Kherson Region have the right to express their opinion on the future of the region.
‘According to global practice, (the Kherson Region) will establish this through elections and referendums,’ the statement noted.
The nominations for the election committee can be made by civic groups and other organisations.
On Saturday, head of the Zaporozhye Region’s military-civilian administration Yevgeny Balitsky also signed a decree on the creation of an election committee to conduct a referendum on joining Russia.
The Kherson Region is in southern Ukraine bordering the Republic of Crimea. In mid-March, Russia’s Defence Ministry reported that the region was fully under the control of Russian troops.
A military-civilian administration was formed in the region in late April. The region’s authorities also indicated their desire to accede to Russia.
Meanwhile, Russian troops and units of the People’s Militia of the DPR, after intense artillery impact, took control of several positions of the Ukrainian military located on the heights above Seversk.
In recent years, intense battles have been going on outside the city. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to hold onto both Seversk itself and the heights near it, because if they lose control of this strategic area, they would have to run across the fields towards Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.
Russian artillery methodically destroyed the Ukrainian nationalists’ strongholds with long-term massive strikes. As a result of heavy fire, the enemy suffered significant losses near Seversk.
Several groups of Ukrainian servicemen have reportedly decided to surrender to units of the RF Armed Forces. Separate Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoner in their positions.
- Former US President Donald Trump has criticised the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden for providing the massive levels of assistance to Ukraine, while the American nation has too many problems of its own.
Speaking at a summit in Florida on Saturday, Trump said that Washington has ‘so far given more than $60 billion to Ukraine’.
The United States has too many problems of its own to hand money and weapons to Kiev for its war with Russia, said the former president.
The war in Ukraine began on February 24, after President Vladimir Putin ordered a military campaign ‘to demilitarise’ and ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine and to ‘liberate’ the Donbass region which is composed of two Peoples Republics, Donetsk and Lugansk.
Since the onset of the operation, the United States and its European allies have supplied billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Ukraine and imposed waves of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, despite Russia’s repeated warning that such a Western flood of weapons will only prolong the war.
Washington, most recently, shipped rocket launchers to Ukraine as part of a $450 million military assistance package announced last month.
The US says it will send four additional high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine.
Trump also doubted whether even the massive levels of military aid would change the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
‘Now, it’s much tougher to solve,’ he said about the military conflict, which has now dragged on for five months.
‘Russia has 35 times the fire power,’ said the former president. ‘And they’re looking to obliterate the weapons as we send them in. A lot of bad things are happening.
‘Well, the European countries, who are obviously far more affected than us, have given a tiny fraction of that number,’ he added.
Trump said that under the Biden administration the US ‘has gone from the strongest that it has ever been … to perhaps the weakest, especially when you include recognition and respect from all around the world.
‘We’re not respected any longer by anybody,’ said Trump.
‘Two years ago we were energy independent … Now we are a beggar nation, with Biden down on his knees pleading for energy from all over the globe; going to Venezuela, Saudi Arabia. Going to countries all over the world, asking for help,’ Trump said, referring to his successor’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia.
Biden came under fire for breaking an election campaign promise to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’.
Biden, who argued that his visit to the kingdom was necessary – given Saudi Arabia’s influence in the global oil market – returned without getting any firm assurances from Arab allies to boost crude supplies.
- Evidence continues to mount that Europe’s sanctions campaign against Russia is exacerbating the euro currency’s persistent, and perhaps structural, economic troubles.
France’s finance minister has just released a depressing outlook: this year’s economic growth will be cut almost in half, and remain between just 1.4 and 1.8 per cent until at least 2028.
The Eurozone’s second-largest economy now looks too weak to drive what many have long-called the world’s most unstable macro-economic bloc.
From 2008 to 2017, the Eurozone’s average annual growth rate was just 0.6%. From 2018 to 2021, the bloc’s growth rate was even worse, at 0.5%, meaning they are on track for a second consecutive lost decade.
Despite the clear failure of austerity policies in producing growth, President Emmanuel Macron will continue with far-right economics in his second term. His finance minister boasted of plans to cut much-needed public spending to a 20-year low, citing a desire to submit to Brussels’ entirely arbitrary 3% rule on public deficits.
This week, the new and deeply fractured National Assembly passed the ‘Emergency Purchasing Power Bill’, aimed at countering still-rising once-in-generation inflation. At just 20 billion euros it has been widely criticised as an ineffective and even superficial measure.
France’s government claims that upcoming austerity rollbacks – planned for the pension and unemployment system – will actually produce broad economic growth this time.
The European Central Bank is raising interest rates even though the Eurozone is already on the brink of recession.
Sanctions and not diplomacy continue to be the destabilising Western choice regarding Ukraine. The long-term economic outlook for France and the Eurozone is bleak.
