Moscow’s forces have liberated several more settlements in Donbass, Sergey Shoigu has said
Russian troops are firmly in control of the battlefield situation and are steadily pushing back Ukrainian forces, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said.
Speaking at a meeting with top Russian commanders on Monday, the minister announced that Moscow had liberated the villages of Pervomayskoe and Novomikhailovka, west and southwest of the Russian city of Donetsk, as well as the settlement of Bogdanovka not far from Artyomovsk, known in Ukraine as Bakhmut. The latter strategic city was captured by Russia last year after months of bitter fighting.
He added that the control zone was also being expanded in Berdychi and Georgievka, north and west of Donetsk.
”Our high combat potential allows us to constantly strike the enemy and prevent him from holding the defense line,” Shoigu noted, estimating Kiev’s losses at half-a-million troops since the start of the conflict.
He also recalled that last year’s much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive, prepared with the help of NATO instructors, had been a failure. “Our servicemen have dispelled the myth of the superiority of Western weapons,” he said.
The Russian minister also hailed the national defense industry, saying it had ramped up output repeatedly. This “has significantly increased the combat capabilities of our armed forces. This is evidenced by the situation in the special military operation zone,” Shoigu said.
Amid current tensions with the US and its allies, the minister vowed to further boost military production while promising to “increase the intensity of attacks on logistics centers and facilities where Western weapons are stored.”.....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
