By liberating Artemovsk (Bakhmut) from the Kiev regime's forces, Russia is gathering momentum, but only future developments will show how control over this city "fits into the overall pace of conflict," military analyst and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
Taking control of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) was a military victory that shows Russia is winning, Scott Ritter told Sputnik.
Some have likened the grueling hostilities to secure Artemovsk to the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII in terms of its importance, the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer added, emphasizing that the big question is what comes next.
Future developments will demonstrate how successfully Russia is able to exploit this victory, and continue to inflict heavy casualties on the Kiev regime's forces. It also remains to be seen whether the Ukrainian military will manage to launch its much-touted “counterattack.”
“It doesn’t seem that Ukraine will be able to achieve major battlefield success, even though some 60,000 trained and equipped with NATO weaponry reserves have been accumulated. Many of these reserves were used in the battle for [Artemovsk], others have been neutralized during an attempt to gather near the front. Russia has developed tactical operational and strategic advantages over Kiev that make it almost impossible for Ukraine’s forces to be able to amass military power of sufficient quantity to carry out a sustained offensive operation,” Scott Ritter said.
Artemovsk was a 'military victory', he underscored, stressing that it was up to Russia to define what the political victory would be......more below
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
