A French energy giant has been accused of “complicity in war crimes” over allegations it helped fuel Russian fighter jets that bombed Ukraine.
TotalEnergies faces an anti-terror investigation after two associations filed a legal complaint against it.
The complaint comes at a delicate time for the company, which is locked in a battle with hardline unionists who continued to block its petrol refineries in France on Friday in a row over pay, leaving thousands of motorists scrambling for fuel.
Over 70 percent of Canadians say they support increasing Canada’s oil and gas production to reduce the world’s dependence on Russian energy, according to a recent poll.
Released by market research firm Leger on Oct. 12, the poll found that 72 percent of Canadians indicated their support for producing and exporting more domestic oil and gas resources.
The poll was conducted with 1,535 Canadian residents aged 18 and over from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3, via the firm’s online panel.
(Reuters)—Elon Musk said on Friday SpaceX cannot “indefinitely” fund the Starlink internet service in Ukraine and send it several thousands more terminals after a report suggested that his rocket company had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations.
Musk’s comment on the question of support for the internet service in Ukraine comes after he angered many Ukrainians with a proposal to end Russia’s war in their country that included ceding some territory.
A Calgary man has been charged with multiple counts of criminal harassment after the CPS hate crime team investigated a number of threats that were found to be hate-motivated.
Calgary police said they received reports around 8 p.m. on Oct. 11 that a man had called and made threats to staff and the church congregation at the All Saints Russian Orthodox Church on 8 Ave. N.E. Police said it is believed the church was targeted because of its Russian heritage and have deemed the threats to be hate-motivated, a news release said Thursday.
(Conservative Treehouse) – In a statement Monday from the White House, President Joe Biden pledged “to continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defense systems.”
The statement was a result of a phone call between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Two days prior, the Kerch Strait bridge between Russia and Crimea was bombed by Ukraine causing a section of the bridge to collapse. Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin retaliated with missile strikes against several cities in Ukraine and key infrastructure for energy.
The soldier with the Kalashnikov wasn’t happy. Neither were the hundreds of comrades who had chosen him as the spokesman for their angry complaints as they milled about on a train platform somewhere in Russia. ‘There are 500 of us, we are armed, but we haven’t been assigned to any unit,’ the newly mobilised soldier complained on a video that went viral earlier this month. ‘We’ve been living worse than farm animals for a week… Nobody needs us, we’ve had absolutely no training.’ Other soldiers, most of them masked, chipped in with more grievances. ‘The officers treat us like animals,’ shouted one. ‘We’ve spent a fortune on buying food for ourselves.’
BERLIN — The German government on Thursday declassified a top-secret security assessment on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from 2021, only four months before the outbreak of war, which claimed energy supplies “won’t be jeopardized” by increased dependency on Russian gas.
The document, dated October 26, 2021, was adopted in the final days of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s outgoing government, in which Germany’s current leader Olaf Scholz played a key role as vice chancellor.
A leftist German state Prime Minister has described those protesting the country’s car-crash energy policy as the beginning of a new “fascist movement” in the country.
Bodo Ramelow, the Prime Minister of Thuringia who is a member of the far-left Die Linke party, described what he saw as an ever more unified populist right in the country as being the embryonic stages of a new “fascist movement” in the country.
LONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) – If Ukraine is admitted into the U.S.-led NATO military alliance, then the conflict in Ukraine would be guaranteed to escalate into World War Three, a Russian Security Council official was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin formally proclaimed the annexation of up to 18% of Ukraine on Sept. 30, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced a surprise bid for fast-track membership of NATO.
… The intimate connection between industrial war and proletarian revolution was understood well enough that, as historians Gabriel Kolko and Azar Gat have demonstrated, most of the distinctive military strategies that emerged across the last century were expressly devised in order to avoid imposing the kinds of costs — especially in blood — that necessitated making promises to the masses. This was true of strategies such as the blockade by the Royal Navy, RAF terror bombing, Nazi Blitzkrieg and US containment, among others. It was also believed that de-massifying politics would help defuse the nationalist passions that fuelled conflict, facilitating diplomacy once elites were freed from explicit commitments to their national populations.
During a visit to Kyiv last weekend, I kept asking Ukrainians a question that vexes me: Is your war against President Vladimir Putin — or against Russia itself? Nearly every time, I got the same unyielding answer. The enemy is a Russia that must be defeated and transformed.
Through Ukrainian eyes, this terrible conflict has become a clash of civilizations. They argue that most Russians support Putin’s brutal war in the way that most Germans supported Adolf Hitler. Unless Russia as a nation abandons the imperial dreams that Putin has evoked, the conflict cannot be resolved through negotiations.
Brothers in Arms
Footage has emerged showing a Russian unit coming under attack from a Ukrainian ambush.
As soon as they are attacked, the vehicle speeds off and the unit abandons one of their men to his fate.#Ukraine #Russia pic.twitter.com/9njZRTsVOw
— WhereisRussiaToday (@WhereisRussia) October 12, 2022
Eight months into Ukraine’s war with Russia, its emerging strategy is combining classic military operations with opportunism on the battlefield to exploit the incompetence of Russian forces—and is changing the course of the battle.
Ukraine’s command structure encourages junior officers to make in-the-moment battlefield decisions, an authority that they have used to seize opportunities and quickly take advantage of enemy weaknesses.
Russians, by contrast, have been slowed by a Soviet-era decision-making structure, in which orders trickle down the chain of command from Moscow, and troops at the front lines take little initiative.
#Ukraine: A Russian MT-LB driver, apparently with very limited vision, drove into a row of TM-62 anti-tank mines. The result is as expected. pic.twitter.com/Efp9ML2txu
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) October 12, 2022
Biden doesn’t just want to weaken Russia
All of Europe is suffering as a result of the energy crisis, but for the continent’s largest economy, this is more than just an economic crisis — it’s an existential one. Once hailed as Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany is now being labelled its “weakest link”.
A recession next year is now considered almost certain; industrial production is down 9% on last year; inflation has soared to double digits for the first time since the Second World War. Given Germany’s deep-seated inflation-phobia, all this is problematic enough. But even more traumatic for the country is the fact that Germany is now running a negative trade balance — the first time this has happened in more than 30 years. This is a very tough pill to swallow for a country where export-led growth is more than just an economic model — it’s part of its national identity.
Elon Musk personally rejected a Ukrainian request to extend his satellite internet service to Crimea, the SpaceX CEO fearing that an effort to retake the peninsula from Russian forces could lead to a nuclear war, according to a report published Tuesday.
Following Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, Musk — and the US government — provided Kyiv with thousands of Starlink systems, enabling Ukrainian forces to communicate in what were previously dead zones. The low energy requirements of the service’s satellite receivers have enabled it to be connected to reconnaissance drones, Yahoo News reported, providing valuable, real-time intelligence on Russian movements and the ability to target them.
But recently there have been problems. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the service was suffering “catastrophic” outages on the frontlines, prompting speculation that it had been shut off in areas controlled by Russia — perhaps to prevent the Kremlin from itself exploiting the network.
A photo of Elon #Musk, which was posted as a sign of gratitude for his support of #Ukraine, is being removed in #Odesa. pic.twitter.com/ZjljZjhEWh
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 12, 2022
Russian president said to have told tech billionaire nuclear strike was on the table if Ukraine refused to cede annexed territories
Elon Musk spoke directly with Vladimir Putin before tweeting a “peace plan” which would involve Ukraine permanently ceding illegally annexed territory to Russia, according to reports.
During the conversation, the Russian president is said to have told the tech billionaire that a nuclear strike was on the table if Ukraine refused to recognise Moscow’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as Putin demanded.
The alleged conversation was reported in an email sent to Eurasia Group subscribers on Tuesday by Ian Bremmer, the group’s founder. Mr Bremmer wrote that the Tesla CEO told him two weeks ago that Putin would accomplish his goals “no matter what.”
