FIVE EYES
Russia, China in 'strategic convergence' -Australian intelligence

 A Chinese flag is seen near a construction site in Beijing's central business area


Tue, March 8, 2022


SYDNEY (Reuters) - A "troubling new strategic convergence" between Beijing and Moscow has developed and the risk of "major power conflict" had grown since Russia invaded Ukraine, Australia's intelligence chief said on Wednesday.

Andrew Shearer, director general of the Office of National Intelligence, said China's President Xi Jinping appears to be planning to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and use it as a base to overtake the United States as the world's leading power.

The comments reinforce warnings that the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has met near-universal condemnation by the West, may spread into a regional or global conflict. This week Australian Prime Minister called on liberal democracies to stop an "arc of autocracy" reshaping the world.

"We're going to have to work much harder to maintain the liberal quality of the rules-based order in Europe and here in the Indo-Pacific region," Shearer said at a conference hosted by the Australian Financial Review.


"We see a leader who's really battening down and hardening his country for this struggle to overtake the United States as the world's leading power," he added, referring to Xi.

"The base camp ... is to establish primacy in the Indo-Pacific region."

Shearer said the geopolitical threat would centre around technology, including use of cyber attacks, so Australia must bolster its cyber defences without closing itself to trade and information-sharing.

"We need a growing, open economy so we can fund the increases in defence spending that the government's committed to, but this can't be a zero sum trade-off between economics and security," he said.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which it has called a "special operation", Australian intelligence professionals considered that "a major power conflict unfortunately is becoming a less remote prospect than it was previously", Shearer said.

He echoed many Western commentators by saying he was surprised by the effectiveness of Ukraine's resistance to Russian forces. But he foreshadowed a "brutal, bloody couple of weeks" since Russian leader Vladimir Putin had "everything at stake now (and) it's hard to see an elegant, or inelegant, dismount".

The Kremlin describes its actions as a "special operation" to disarm Ukraine and unseat leaders it calls neo-Nazis. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice that has raised fears of wider conflict in Europe.

A Chinese foreign ministry official told reporters on Wednesday that he was not aware of Shearer's remarks.

But Shearer should pay more attention to the "ignorance of Australia's commitment to non-proliferation" as a result of the trilateral AUKUS agreement that will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman at the Chinese ministry.

Under a trilateral security partnership announced last year, Australia is to build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with U.S. and British technology.

"This is what is truly troubling for the region," said Zhao.

(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing; Editing by Michael Perry)

'Energy transition? Leave us out,' say African energy leaders


A vertical gas flaring furnace is seen in Ughelli

Tue, March 8, 2022, 
By Sabrina Valle and Arathy Somasekhar

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Developing countries should not have to target renewable energy sources and turn away from fossil fuels, Nigerian and Equatorial Guinea energy officials said on Wednesday, joining other emerging oil-producing nations reluctant to embrace the global energy transition trend.

Emerging economies must contend with higher fuel costs at a time when millions lack access to reliable energy sources while also dealing with extreme climate events.

Some 900 million people in the world, most of them in Africa, still have no access to energy for basic needs, Nigeria's oil Minister Timipre Marlin Sylva said during the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.


"We are still in transition from firewood to gas," Sylva said. "Please allow us to continue with our own transition."

Equatorial Guinea Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Gabriel Obiang Lima echoed those concerns, saying pressure over renewables is "very unjust", with a discussion on how to transition only possible after the energy security crisis is over.

The 38 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), some of the richest countries worldwide, along with Russia, China and India, account for more than two-thirds of the world's oil demand. The rest, which includes Africa, most of Asia and Latin America, accounts for just 31%, according to OPEC data.

"Every emerging economy has to have the right to access reliable, safe energy," said Tengku Muhammad Taufik, president and CEO of Malaysia's state-owned Petronas.

Other countries with oil discoveries still in development, including Ghana, Guyana and Suriname, also have said they cannot be expected to give up the chance to benefit from oil and gas that helped build more developed economies.

"They want all of us, including those of us without food, to carry the burden of transition," Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) general manager Bala Wunti said.

Nigeria now faces a double blow from high prices of gas for cooking that it imports and lack of investment in its oil industry, Sylva said, as banks and funds have been pushing to restrict investment in oil globally to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Nigeria has had to cut oil production from 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to less than 1.5 million bpd due to lack of financing to maintain its facilities, Sylva said.

That lost production could have helped contribute to global supply as the world now seeks alternatives to Russian oil after buyers halted purchases over its invasion of Ukraine, he said. Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation".

Investors backing renewable fuels have cut financing for oil projects, reducing production of oil, gas and coal faster than renewable sources of energy could replace them, pushing prices up, he said.

"It was expected we were going to arrive at this point where we have an energy crisis," Sylva said. "There is a gap."

(Reporting by Sabrina Valle; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and David Gregorio)

Finland detects GPS disturbance near Russia's Kaliningrad

Wed, March 9, 2022,

HELSINKI, March 9 (Reuters) - Finnair said on Wednesday it had noticed interference with its planes' GPS signals near Russia's Kaliningrad enclave, while other aircraft reported similar problems near Finland's eastern border with Russia since Sunday, Finnish authorities said.

The interference began soon after Finland's President Sauli Niinisto met U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in Washington on Saturday to discuss deepening defence ties between Finland and NATO due to Russia's attack on Ukraine.

Prime Minister Sanna Marin told Reuters on Wednesday she had no information about the source of the disturbances, nor about whether they originated in Russia, while the Foreign ministry said it was looking into the events.

"If they would be caused by outside influence, it would surely be said publicly," Marin said.

The Kremlin did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the reported interference.

Some of Finnair's Asian flights and most of its European ones go past Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between NATO members Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea's eastern coast, the company told Reuters.

"Our pilots have noticed interference in GPS near the Kaliningrad area in the past few days," a spokesperson for Finland's national carrier said in an email.

Some 10 aircraft have also reported unusual disturbances in GPS signals near Finland's eastern border with Russia since last Sunday, Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom said on Tuesday.

Traficom said it had asked aviation authorities to alert aircraft pilots to the situation by issuing an official Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) notification. The disturbances were continuing, it said.

"Flying is still safe. Airlines have operational procedures for such situations if the GPS signal is lost," Traficom's director Jari Pontinen said in a statement.

Lithuanian airline Transaviabaltika told Reuters it had been forced to cancel 18 flights between Helsinki and Savonlinna in eastern Finland after the lack of GPS made it impossible to land because Savonlinna airport does not have alternative navigation equipment.

"We have made three attempts to fly to Savonlinna. So far, we have not succeeded," Manager Rene Must from Transaviabaltika told Reuters.

Electromagnetic radiation from the sun and signal jamming are the only two reasons that could explain such long-lasting disturbances that affect several planes, Director Jukka Savolainen from HybridCoE, a pan-European organisation that seeks to counter hybrid threats, told Reuters.

"States can have systems to see where the jamming comes from if they happen to be turned on and in that direction," he said.

 (Reporting by Essi Lehto and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, Editing by William Maclean)

Russia admits it sent young conscripts

 into its Ukraine war after Putin denied

those troops were involved

Natalie Musumeci

Wed, March 9, 2022,

• Russia's army said on Wednesday that young draftees were sent to fight in its war against Ukraine.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin previously denied that conscripts were involved in the attack.

• Some of the conscripts have been captured, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

Russia's military admitted on Wednesday that young draftees were sent to fight in its war against Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that conscripts were involved in the attack.

"Unfortunately, some facts have come to light about the presence of conscript servicemen among the Russian armed forces conducting the special military operation on Ukrainian territory," said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

"Practically all of the conscripts have been returned to the territory of the Russian Federation," Konashenkov added.

Konashenkov said, however, that some of the conscripts have been captured.

"In addition, one of the divisions operating toll security has been attacked by a diversionist group of the national battalion," he said, adding, "A number of military personnel, some of which conscripts, were captured in this attack."

Konashenkov continued, "Effective immediately, exhaustive measures have been taken to prevent conscripts from entering any and all combat zones, and to free captured personnel."

Earlier this week, Putin said that only "professional" Russian soldiers were sent in to invade Ukraine and that he would not send conscripts to fight, according to The Moscow Times.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday Putin ordered conscripts to be excluded from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to Russian state media.

Before Russia launched its February 24 attack on Ukraine, Putin had instructed all military commanders "to categorically exclude the involvement of conscripts for any tasks on the territory of Ukraine," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, the state-owned TASS news agency reported.

"In connection with the facts of the presence of a number of conscripts in the units of the armed forces who are participating in a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, at the direction of the President of Russia, materials have been sent to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office to verify and legally assess the actions and punish officials responsible for failure to comply with this order," Peskov said, according to TASS.

Translations by Nikita Angarski.

Russia acknowledges conscripts were part of Ukraine operation, some are POWs

Russian Army military vehicle drives along a street in Armyansk

Wed, March 9, 2022

(Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry acknowledged on Wednesday that some conscripts were taking part in the conflict with Ukraine after President Vladimir Putin denied this on various occasions, saying only professional soldiers and officers had been sent in.

The ministry said that some of them, serving in supply units, had been taken prisoner by the Ukrainian army since the fighting began on Feb. 24.

Citing Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the RIA news agency said Putin had ordered military prosecutors to investigate and punish the officials responsible for disobeying his instructions to exclude conscripts from the operation.

Some associations of soldiers' mothers in Russia had raised concerns about a number of conscripts going incommunicado at the start of what Kremlin calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, suggesting they could have been sent to fight despite a lack of adequate training.

The Kremlin and military authorities had denied it until now. Last week, Russia's parliament passed a law imposing a prison term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally "fake" news about the military.

"Unfortunately, we have discovered several facts of the presence of conscripts in units taking part in the special military operation in Ukraine. Practically all such soldiers have been pulled out to Russia," the defence ministry said, promising to prevent such situations in the future.

One mother of a conscript, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her 19-year-old son's military unit was sent south to the Russian city of Kursk soon after he started his military service and was then moved to Belgorod, a town closer to the Ukrainian border, for training.

She says that judging by the few phone calls she had received, he had not yet been deployed into Ukraine and had not signed a contract to do so. "I am not sure what will happen tomorrow," she told Reuters by telephone.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Alison Williams, Alex Richardson, William Maclean)

Who's Tucker Carlson to demand anyone ‘Show Her Papers’?

Charles M. Blow
Wed, March 9, 2022, 

Charles M. Blow

Fox News host Tucker Carlson briefly went to a Swiss boarding school before reportedly being kicked out. He went on to graduate from Trinity College. In a 1991 yearbook entry, he described himself as being part of the “Dan White Society,” an apparent allusion to the homophobe who killed San Francisco’s mayor, George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay elected official, in 1978.

After graduation, The Columbia Journalism Review reported, “Carlson applied to the CIA, but his application was denied, so he turned to journalism. ‘You should consider journalism,’ his father told him. ‘They’ll take anybody.’ ”

That same Tucker Carlson last week demanded that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman who is President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, prove that she is qualified. He demanded that she show her papers. “It might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score was," he said on Fox News. "How did she do? … It would seem like Americans in a democracy have a right to know.”


It is outrageous, to be sure. What was Jackson doing in 1991 when Carlson was identifying with the homicidal homophobe? She was studying government at Harvard University while being a student organizer for civil rights causes, and she would graduate magna cum laude the next year. One thing to which successful Black people can attest is that you are sometimes, even often, asked to prove your credentials, to demonstrate that you have earned your way, often by far less credentialed questioners.

Donald Trump — whose time at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is shrouded in mystery — made a name for himself in politics by questioning the legitimacy, qualifications and pedigree of Barack Obama. Speaking at CPAC in February 2011, Trump said of Obama: “Our current president came out of nowhere, came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with them, they don’t even know — they never saw him. They don’t know who he is. Crazy.”

Trump also claimed that Obama didn’t write his first book. He insisted that Bill Ayers, who happens to be white, had to be the author of the first book. And it didn’t stop there. In 2012, Trump offered to donate $5 million to the charity of Obama’s choosing if Obama would release his college and passport records.

These episodes struck such a nerve because it isn’t only presidents or Supreme Court picks who have to present proof of their credentials. Too many people, Black and of other races, have had to do the same at some point in their lives. It is humiliating and degrading. It has happened to me several times, and I will share one.

Before I was a columnist, I was an information graphics journalist, a profession that deals with data, sometimes reams of it, to produce maps, charts, diagrams and the like. The New York Times was then, and remains, a leader in the field. And as its graphics director, I was in charge of its efforts. But that field was an overwhelmingly white world. So, for some, my presence was incongruous.

One year I was in Pamplona, Spain, judging the international information graphics awards. The student helpers invited some of the judges out to a bar after dinner. The bar was a cavernous space with an overwhelming amount of flashing and spinning lights.

The students introduced me to some of the locals with my title and the kind of work that I did. No one believed them. I could speak almost no Spanish, but the locals’ "noes" were as clear as their shaking heads. The students confirmed that the locals didn’t believe I could possibly be who they said I was. Before the exchange was finished, I found myself pulling out my Times ID, to the astonishment of the locals.

This is not an isolated incident. People the world over carry so much anti-Blackness that Black excellence to them is an assault on their worldview. They think, “This person, this Black person, can’t possibly be as good as he says, good enough to have earned her station.” They must find a way to attribute it to something else: an unfair advantage, a giving of preference, a bending of the curve.

In the end, all these demands boil down to one thing, ancient and metastatic: racism.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Ukraine Ambassador Gives Russian Diplomats Some Scathing 'Mental Help' Advice

Ed Mazza

Mon, March 7, 2022,

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations gave Russian diplomats some unsolicited mental health advice in response to their latest wild claim.

The Russian embassy in London on Monday tweeted that Russia, which attacked Ukraine, is actually attempting to stop a war in Ukraine.

Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador, held up the tweet, read the message and fired back.

“Let me remind the Russian diplomats that in London, in case of need for mental help, you can dial NHS line 111,” he wrote, referring to the emergency number for the National Health Service in the U.K. “Thank you.”

Russia attacked Ukraine and is currently under investigation for alleged war crimes after multiple reported attacks on civilian targets as well as for creating a massive humanitarian crisis in which 1.5 million people have fled the nation so far.

Kyslytsya made headlines soon after the invasion began by delivering a blunt warning to Russian leaders during an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting.

“There is no purgatory for war criminals,” he told Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya. “They go straight to hell, ambassador.”

On social media, others took issue with the same post from the Russian embassy in London that provoked the response from Kyslytsya:

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Ukrainian women fleeing war find welcome, and work, in Eastern Europe

By Krisztina Than

Wed, March 9, 2022, 

* Hundreds of thousands, mostly women and children, have fled war

* Fast-growing economies in Eastern Europe welcoming worker influx

* Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania all keen to fill jobs

* Employers, agencies, providing accommodation for new arrivals

* Some worry energy prices, parts shortages will lead to slowdown

VESZPREM, Hungary, March 9 (Reuters) - Two days after arriving from the bombarded outskirts of Kyiv following a gruelling journey, 24-year-old Ukrainian Olga Yasnopolska signed a contract to work for a large German automotive parts supplier in western Hungary.

She is one of hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, who have poured into Eastern Europe seeking safety since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The region's fast-growing economies, which have been struggling with a chronic shortage of workers that pre-dates even the COVID-19 pandemic, are welcoming the refugees with open arms.

Olga fled Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv, three days after the war broke out with her mother, Valentina, her 8-month-old and 11-year-old cousins and their mother, sharing a car with seven other people, with some of the children in the boot.

They arrived in the quaint town of Veszprem on Sunday, where a friend had given them contacts for a temporary work agency that employs 1,200 to 1,300 Ukrainians in western Hungary.

Yasnopolska, who worked for the railways in Ukraine, said the job contract gave her some sense of security.

"It's a relief that we have somewhere to stay and now I have a job, and we are in safety," she said, with a tired, faint smile. "I'm not sure I will be able to go back there."

The three women now live in a flat rented by the temp agency in nearby Varpalota with the two children.

Olga Batozhinska, the mother of the 8-month-old whose husband stayed behind to fight, is still haunted by the memories of spending nights in the shelter in Hostomel, in freezing cold.

"I woke up to feed my baby and heard continuous shelling, the entire house shook," she said, showing photos on her phone of the shelter and how they had to sleep on the ground at a railway station en route in Ukraine.

She also hopes to find a job soon that will allow her to take care of her baby.

'UKRAINIAN-FRIENDLY JOBS'

In the wake of the European Union's 2015 migration crisis some eastern members, led by Poland and Hungary, refused to take in people fleeing war and poverty, saying an influx from Africa and the Middle East would threaten their Christian traditions.

But hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had been working in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic even before the current exodus.

Since last year, companies across the manufacturing, information technology and construction sectors in the region have been jostling to attract employees as their economies rebounded fast from the COVID-19 induced slump.

Czech job vacancies climbed to a record high of nearly 364,000 in February. Romanian vacancies reached 45,600 in the fourth quarter of 2021, up by 10,000 in annual terms.

In Poland, which has been a top destination for Ukrainian workers for years and has received more than 1.3 million refugees since the war began, employers reported 116,500 job vacancies in February.

Work agencies and companies are now hoping to tap into the large pool of refugees, trying to arrange accommodation for Ukrainian workers' family members and their children.

"This 1 million women with children is in reality about half a million people who can actually enter the workforce and the Polish economy will be able to absorb them easily within a few, three or four months," said Krzysztof Inglot of the Employers of Poland Association.

BestJobs, a Romanian recruitment platform with 32,000 open positions, has introduced a "Ukrainian friendly jobs" tag.

Jitka Souckova, marketing director of Grafton Recruitment in Prague, said there were many jobs in manufacturing or logistics, where Ukrainians could work even without speaking Czech.

"Since the beginning of the conflict, we have employed almost 200 women and accommodated their children," she said.

Gabor Berta, head of the Man at Work temp agency office in Veszprem, through which Yasnopolska found her job, said the biggest problem was finding accommodation for all the Ukrainian workers they have placed and their families.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the economy tanked, many Ukrainian workers lost their jobs and had gone home, he said. Now some firms are cautious, fearing components shortages and soaring energy prices will cause another slowdown.

"This situation is different," he said. "Here you cannot say to the Ukrainian employee that 'I am sorry I have too many workers now', or 'sorry we need to halt production, please can you go home'. Now, they cannot go home."

DESPERATION

The Hungarian plant of Mannheim-based Pepperl+Fuchs, which makes industrial sensors for factory automation, employs 146 Ukrainian workers, along with 420 Hungarians, mostly women.

"It was terrible to see the desperation of our women (employees) ... they set off rightaway, to bring out their families, as many of them have young children left behind in Ukraine," said human resources director Barbara Vamosi.

Vamosi said the morning after war broke out, the HR chiefs of companies employing Ukrainians in Veszprem got together trying to find ways to help their Ukrainian employees.

"We are expecting (to hire) a further 20-25 workers primarily from among refugees, but there are also our colleagues who try to bring out their families ... we will employ them."

In the canteen, Ukrainian and Hungarian workers together prepared sandwiches and aid packages on Tuesday, which Vamosi and her colleagues would take to Budapest to the railway station where packed trains arrive daily from the border. (Writing by Krisztina Than; Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague, Luiza Ilie in Bucharest and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw; Editing by Alex Richardson)

MISINFORMATION

Russian soldiers 'torturing staff' inside Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

Kate Buck
Wed, March 9, 2022

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during a fire on Friday (Getty)

Russian soldiers are torturing Ukrainian staff at a nuclear power plant which was attacked earlier this week, a senior Ukrainian politician has claimed.

Ukrainian energy minister Herman Galushchenko said workers at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant had been held hostage for four days. He claimed they were being forced to record an address to be used as propaganda.

Russian forces triggered worldwide alarm last Friday after seizing the plant following a fierce gun battle.

The UN's nuclear monitoring agency has said that none of the six reactors on the site have been directly damaged and radiation levels remain normal.

Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed trying to defend the site, authorities said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of resorting to “nuclear terror” and wanting to “repeat” the Chernobyl disaster over the incident, in which a fire broke out in a training building and had to be put out.

Read more: Ukrainians in Mariupol 'dying of dehydration' as Russia cuts off city's supplies

The plant was seized by the Russian military after the fire, and according to Galushchenko, there are now 500 soldiers and 50 units of "heavy equipment" inside.

A statement from the Russian news agency, TASS, claimed the plant was now being run "jointly" by Russian military personnel, Ukrainian specialists and the national guard.

He said: "Russian occupation forces torture the operating staff of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. According to our information, occupiers compelled the Plant's management to record an address that they plan to use for propaganda purposes.

"Russia's propaganda machine aims to create one more fake for its citizens and international community in an attempt to justify its crimes.

"Operating staff of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant have been held hostage for 4 days. There are about 500 Russian soldiers and 50 units of heavy equipment inside the station.

"The employees of the station are physically and psychologically exhausted."

Galushchenko called on the international community to "take all measures" to remove Russian troops from the site.

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire after a chemical warehouse was hit by Russian shelling near Kalynivka village in Kyiv. (Getty)

Ukraine has been under attack for 14 days (Getty)

"A breakdown at a nuclear power plant due to the use of weapons by Russian troops will lead to a disaster for the whole of Europe. The responsibility for this will be entirely on Russia," he said.

"If a breakdown happens, Europeans will be forced to switch the comfort of their homes to radiation shelters.

"We must stop Russia's nuclear terrorism together. We must do it now – until it's too late."

Following the attack, the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine reported no changes in radiation levels but warned that could change.

Read more: Ukraine army band play 'Don't Worry be Happy" at barricades

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that there were no signs of elevated radiation levels. She added: "The plant's reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down."

Russian forces have also seized Chernobyl, as they attempt to take control of the country.

On Wednesday Ukraine’s state power operator warned the plant had been disconnected from the grid, sparking fears over the cooling of spent fuel.

The BBC reported that over 100 workers on the site have not been allowed to leave for more than 12 days after it was seized.

Those working on the site have been allowed to go about their duties, the broadcaster was told, but while the situation remains calm there is reportedly limited access to food and medicine.

The UN nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday systems monitoring nuclear material at the site have stopped transmitting data.

"The Director General ... indicated that remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring systems installed at the Chernobyl NPP had been lost," the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

Safeguards refers to the field of IAEA work aimed at keeping track of nuclear material.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

A Korean YouTuber and former navy seal says he has arrived in Ukraine to fight, despite his government's travel ban to the country

Waiyee Yip
Mon, March 7, 2022

Rhee said on Instagram that he is in Ukraine to fight.Screenshot from Instagram


The South Korean YouTuber Ken Rhee says he is in Ukraine to fight, despite Korea's travel ban there.


Koreans who enter Ukraine without authorization may be subject to a jail sentence or a fine.


"If I return alive, then I will take responsibility for everything," Rhee said on Instagram.

Ken Rhee, a popular South Korean YouTuber and former Korean navy seal said he has landed in Ukraine to fight as a volunteer soldier — despite his government's travel ban to the country.

On Instagram, the 37-year-old said in a post early Monday morning that he and his travel mates had initially considered departing for the country "through official procedures."


"But we felt strong opposition from the Korean government, and there was some friction," noting that he was "threatened" with "being treated as a criminal" if he ignored Korea's travel ban to Ukraine.

"But punishment cannot stand still in this situation without helping Ukraine with the skills, knowledge, and expertise we have," he continued in the post, which was shared alongside a picture of the backs of three men.

"If I return alive, then I will take responsibility for everything and receive the punishment I'm given."

It is unclear who Rhee has left the country with. He did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday that it was aware that "Koreans including Ken Rhee" have departed the country to join the Ukrainian volunteer army.

"To protect the lives and safety of citizens, as of Feb. 13, the government has issued a Level 4 travel warning throughout Ukraine and has banned Korean citizens from traveling to Ukraine," it said.

It added that anyone who enters Ukraine without authorization may be subject to a year in prison or a fine of up to 10 million won (about $8,150). They would also be required to return their Korean passports and could face challenges applying for a replacement, it said.

But Rhee did not seem too concerned by the prospect.

In another Instagram post addressed to the Foreign Ministry, he wrote: "My team has arrived safely in Ukraine. Rather than waste time seeking to invalidate our passports, think about how you can support."

Later, Rhee shared several more posts on the platform, including a picture of a military tent and one of himself in protective gear sitting next to a dog.

"During the Korean War, the world helped Korea," he said. "Now, we will help Ukraine. We cannot just stand by and watch innocent people get hurt and die."

To date, Rhee's YouTube channel has amassed more than 774,000 subscribers, and his videos have gained more than 100 million views.

Rhee shot to fame in 2020 after appearing in the YouTube series "Fake Men," where he trained celebrity contestants to complete a brutal regimen designed for the navy's elite forces, according to The Korea Herald. As a former Korean navy seal himself, he has also shared his expertise as a guest on variety shows in South Korea, the outlet said.

In 2020, he was embroiled in controversy when it came to light that he was convicted of sexual assault in 2019. Rhee said he was wrongfully convicted, according to The Korea Herald.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/03/korean-ukrainian-actor-pasha-lee-33.html

U.S. citizens travel to Ukraine to help in war efforts

CBS News

Tue, March 8, 2022

The number of international fighters helping Ukraine is growing every day. The Ukrainian government reports more than 16,000 foreigners have already arrived, including some Americans.

Andriy Penchak is an American licensed truck driver who was born in Ukraine. He landed with three other Americans ready to go into the war zone. He told "CBS Mornings" co-anchor Tony Dokoupil that he wanted to save the lives of the Ukrainians still inside the country.

He launched this mission from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He's never been to battle and used personal savings to pay for his plane tickets.

Penchak  said the hardest part was leaving his three young children. "I didn't say goodbye. I said, see you later," he said.

While the White House says the American military is not going into Ukraine to fight Russia, everyday Americans like Penchak are not restricted from going in — although it's not recommended.

"We encourage all Americans not to travel to Ukraine right now, and those Americans who are in Ukraine to leave Ukraine, because it is not safe," said Kristina Kvien, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Bipartisan leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Congressman Gregory Meeks and Congressman Michael McCaul traveled to Ukraine's border to view the war's human toll up close.

Meeks said that the Americans traveling to Ukraine is an example of the importance of democracy.

"I think that what they see and what people around the world are seeing is democracy is at stake and as President Zelensky said to us, this is not just a fight for the Ukrainian people, this is a fight for all of us. It's just starting here," said Meeks.

"Ukrainians have inspired the world, and these freedom fighters, I call them," McCaul said.

Before the war, Kristofer Kalas was a pastry chef who split his time between Ukraine and New York.

Now, he's dressed in full body armor walking toward the checkpoint into Ukraine. He made sure his wife and baby made it safely to Poland but decided to go back - not to fight, he says, but to help others and help ensure Ukraine remains for years to come.

"I want my child to have a Ukraine to go back to when she's grown up," Kalas said.

Russia's military warned foreign fighters they'd be treated as "mercenaries," not as protected combatants under "international humanitarian law." Kalas said .

"As far as I can tell, they don't protect civilians under humanitarian law, so I don't put much credence in anything they say," Kalas said.

How AWOL British soldier could draw

U.K. into conflict with Russia

Vivienne Walt

Wed, March 9, 2022,

Barely two weeks into the brutal war in Ukraine, one question has arisen: Which countries are involved in the fighting?

On paper, there are only two armies lobbing artillery shells and ammunition at each other: Russia and Ukraine.

But the confusion about what constitutes a country joining the fight deepened this week, after the U.K. military reported that a 19-year-old serviceman had gone AWOL from his post in the Coldstream Guards—an elite unit that services Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle—and was apparently headed to fight in Ukraine.

British tabloid newspaper The Sun reported that the soldier, whose name is being withheld, was one of four active military servicemen who had absconded to go fight in Ukraine. According to the paper, he wrote to his parents before he left, telling them that he was buying a one-way ticket to Poland, the main entry point into Ukraine, whose airports have been shut since Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24.

Ukraine’s besieged government formed an international legion on Feb. 27, appealing for volunteers to bolster their military strength against the far bigger Russian forces. “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin too,” tweeted Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in announcing the foreign-fighters unit.

The foreign minister said on the weekend that about 20,000 volunteers from 52 countries have signed up, and Ukraine’s embassies report they have seen a steady stream of people seeking documentation allowing them to travel to the war front to join the fight.

From parliament to the war front

Facebook groups have sprung up to guide prospective fighters through the process of signing up; one Facebook group, the French Volunteers in Ukraine group, now has 10,700 members. And on Wednesday, Latvia announced that its Member of Parliament Juris Jurašs had left to fight in Ukraine; the Baltic nation shares a 133-mile border with Russia.

Until now, Western countries have stopped short of joining Ukraine’s military fight, focusing their efforts on imposing economic sanctions, and believing that engaging military would transform the conflict into a far broader war in Europe—something that has not occurred in 80 years—from which it could take years to extricate.

The fact that active U.K. servicemen might be among them has sparked deep anxiety in the government. It has banned active-duty military from joining Ukraine’s volunteers.

A friend of the missing Queen’s guardsman told The Sun that the serviceman had grown tired of ceremonial duties at Windsor Castle, where the guards march in formation outside the castle, dressed in ornate uniforms topped with their famous bearskin hats. “You don’t join the army to stand in bearskin hats and march about,” the guardsman told the paper. “You join it to fight and see action.”

The U.K. Ministry of Defense repeated its warning against servicemen joining the fight in Ukraine, saying they would face “disciplinary and administrative consequences.”

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
U.S. charges two siblings in $124 million cryptocurrency fraud



Tue, March 8, 2022
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. authorities on Tuesday filed criminal charges against a cryptocurrency executive and civil charges against him and his sister, accusing them of defrauding retail investors out of millions of dollars with a digital token known as Ormeus Coin.

In papers filed in Manhattan federal court, the Justice Department said John Barksdale lied about the value and profitability of Ormeus Coin's mining assets, including that the coin was backed by a $250 million mining operation generating more than $5 million of monthly revenue.

Barksdale and his sister JonAtina Barksdale were separately charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with conducting fraudulent unregistered offerings of Ormeus Coin.

The SEC said the Barksdales since 2017 raised $124 million from more than 20,000 investors through their multi-level marketing company Ormeus Global SA, and spent millions of dollars on travel, real estate and other personal expenses.

Authorities said the siblings promoted Ormeus Coin through roadshows and social media, as well as a Times Square jumbotron in Manhattan proclaiming: "$250 Million Cryptocurrency Mining Farm Revealed in Legal Audit by Ormeus Coin."

The Barksdales "acted as modern-day snake-oil salesmen" in misleading investors, Melissa Hodgman, associate director of the SEC enforcement division, said in a statement.

Lawyers for the Barksdales could not immediately be identified.

John Barksdale has been arrested, and faces up to 65 years in prison on securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges, according to the Justice Department.

Both defendants are U.S. citizens, with John Barksdale, 41, having lived in Thailand and JonAtina Barksdale, 45, in Hong Kong, the SEC said.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has called the cryptocurrency industry the "Wild West" of finance and wants cryptocurrency exchanges to register with the SEC.

The White House has been considering broad oversight over the cryptocurrency market, in part to address ransomware and other cyber crime.

President Joe Biden is expected this week to direct the Justice Department and other federal agencies to study possible ramifications from creating a U.S. central bank digital currency, a person familiar with the matter said.

The cases are U.S. v. Barksdale, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 21-cr-00684; and SEC v. Barksdale et al in the same court, No. 22-01933.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)