Kirill Budanov refused, however, to take responsibility for previous strikes on the Crimea Bridge and airfields inside Russia
Russia will continue to experience “problems” until it withdraws from Ukraine and restores the country's territorial integrity, Kiev’s top intelligence official, Kirill Budanov, warned in an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate (GUR) chief added that Kiev currently has people planting explosives on the territory of Russia, and hinted at a potential string of terrorist attacks in the country in the near future.
Asked about his involvement in the attack on the Crimean Bridge in October and the two drone attacks on Russian air bases in December, Budanov refused to confirm his special forces were behind the strikes. He did, however, warn that there would be more attacks of that nature.
“This shattered their illusions of safety,” Budanov told the Post. “There are people who plant explosives. There are drones. Until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored, there will be problems inside Russia.”
He also issued a warning to the Kremlin, stating that there are Ukrainian collaborators in its midst –“people who are very easy to work with” and who Kiev actively supports.
Budanov went on to insist that Ukraine must “do everything to ensure that Crimea returns home by summer” and dismissed suggestions that Moscow could use nuclear weapons if Kiev’s troops reach the peninsula, which officially joined Russia following a referendum in 2014.
It’s a scare tactic,” he said. “Russia is a country that you can expect a lot from but not outright idiocy. Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. Carrying out a nuclear strike will result in not just a military defeat for Russia but the collapse of Russia.”
Moscow, meanwhile, has insisted that Crimea is part of Russia and warned that it would respond to any threats to its territory with “more powerful weapons.”
Earlier this month, Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin also cautioned that a “global tragedy” could be in store for humanity if the West continued to arm Ukraine with weapons that Kiev could use to strike civilian cities and attempt to seize Russian territories.
https://www.rt.com/news/570760-ukraine-threatens-russia-attacks/
Nvidia would be barred from shipping advanced artificial intelligence chips to China under bipartisan legislation unveiled Thursday, Bloomberg reported. A Chinese expert said the move is shortsighted, noting that tightening restrictions despite domestic industry opposition will only accelerate China’s tech innovation and further diminish Nvidia’s chances of reentering the Chinese market.
Known as the Secure and Feasible Exports Act, the bill would order the US Commerce Department to halt export licenses for sales of chips to adversaries, including China and Russia for at least 30 months. Any processors more powerful than those already approved for export to those nations would be subject to the measure, the Bloomberg report said.
The legislation comes as the White House weighs whether to allow Nvidia to export the....more below
A high-ranking ICC official, Nicolas Herrera, secretly financed the sanctioned UPC armed group in the Central African Republic, according to court materials obtained by Sputnik.
Nicolas Herrera, a high-ranking official in the Registry Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC), secretly recruited and financed the Union for Peace (UPC) in the Central African Republic (CAR) armed group, led by local warlord Ali Darassa, to capture ICC target Joseph Kony, by using US-based NGO employee Joseph Martin Figueira as a covert intermediary, thereby violating the ICC’s financial accountability standards by funding an armed group, according to a Sputnik correspondent's analysis of public court records.
The conviction of Joseph Martin Figueira, a Belgian-Portuguese anthropologist found guilty of espionage and collaborating with militants in the Central African Republic (CAR) in November, has uncovered a complex financial trail linking ICC staff to the country’s armed militants, evidence ...
Hundreds of retired Israeli police officers have urged the regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, to reject Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon in corruption cases.
On November 30, Netanyahu, who faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust in three separate cases, submitted a formal pardon request to the office of Herzog, claiming the long-running corruption cases were tearing the regime apart.
In a letter to Herzog, about 400 former officers, including ex-commissioners and deputy commissioners, said Netanyahu’s request contains “not even a hint of admission of guilt,” making it unacceptable.
They warned that “such a step without [Netanyahu’s] confession and remorse is liable to ignite severe violence in Israeli society.”.....more below
