Russia’s demands: Demilitarization of Ukraine; a list of weapons that Ukraine should never possess!

News Network
March 3, 2022

Russia has demanded the demilitarization of Ukraine, saying there should be a list of specified weapons that the nation could never possess, as a second round of conflict-resolution talks between Moscow and Kiev is underway.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the remarks in an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, saying, "Specific types of strike weapons must be identified which will never be deployed in Ukraine and will not be created."

The remarks came a few hours after Lavrov said Russia would face a "real danger" if Kiev acquired nuclear weapons, warning that if a third World War were to take place, it would involve nuclear weapons.

Russia will not allow Ukraine to obtain the weaponry, the top Russian diplomat said, adding that the ongoing military offensive aims to keep Ukraine away from such a scenario.

The latest development came as a second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine was scheduled on Wednesday. Previous talks failed to produce any breakthrough.

Lavrov further said Russia recognized President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as Ukraine's leader and welcomed as a "positive step" the fact that Zelenskiy wanted to receive security guarantees.

"Our negotiators are ready for the second round of discussing these guarantees with Ukrainian representatives," he said.

Zelenskiy said in an interview on Tuesday that Russia needed to halt its bombing of Ukraine before further talks could take place. He called for security guarantees, but from NATO and not from Russia.

Russian troops in streets of Kherson

Meanwhile, the mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Igor Kolykhayev, has said Russian troops were in the streets and had forced their way into the city council building.

Kolykhayev urged Russian soldiers not to shoot at civilians and publicly called on people to walk through the streets only in daylight and in ones and twos.

"We don’t have any Ukrainian forces in the city, only civilians and people here who want to LIVE here!" he said in a statement.

This comes as Ukraine's government had earlier denied the claim that Kherson had fallen into Russian hands, saying fighting was still occurring around the port city.

On Wednesday, Russia announced that its forces had taken control of Kherson on the Black Sea, as Moscow's large-scale military offensive against its neighbor entered its seventh day.

Kherson, a city of nearly a quarter million people just north of Crimea, is the biggest city to fall to Russian forces so far.

Last Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military offensive against Ukraine. Russian forces have been advancing towards Kiev and seizing control of a number of towns and cities along the way. Authorities in Moscow have denied claims made by Ukrainian and Western officials of civilian areas being targeted by the Russian military.

Zelenskiy has said almost 6,000 Russians have lost their lives, a claim that has not been verified. 

Russia's Defense Ministry has said 498 Russian troops have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the military offensive. The ministry has also said more than 2,870 Ukrainian soldiers and "nationalists" have been killed and about 3,700 wounded. 

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News Network
November 15,2024

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Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has killed or captured 69 terrorists linked to the Israeli spy agency Mossad during a major counterterrorism drill in the country's southeast, its spokesman says.  

General Ahmad Shafaei, the spokesman for the “Martyrs of Security” drill, said Friday that a total of 23 terrorists have been killed and another 46 arrested in various clean-up operations ever since the IRGC Ground Force launched it in the Sistan and Baluchestan province on November 1.

Seven terrorists have also turned themselves in during the period.

“The undeniable fact about terrorists is that they rely on arrogant powers, particularly the intelligence service of the wicked and vicious Zionist regime," Shafaei said.

“Unfortunately, weapons and munitions at terrorists’ disposal are among the most sophisticated ones in the world. This accounts for their heavy dependence.” 

The official stated that several members of the disbanded terror teams were non-Iranian nationals, who had been hired by foreign intelligence agencies to carry out acts of sabotage and terror inside Iran.

In a most recent operation, six terrorists were arrested and four others were eliminated, three of whom were non-Iranians, he added. 

On October 26, ten members of Iran's law enforcement forces were killed in a terrorist attack in the Gohar Kuh district of Taftan in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

The so-called Jaish al-Adl terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault, which was one of the deadliest in the province in recent months.

The group has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in Iran, primarily in Sistan and Baluchestan.

Its tactics include the abduction of border guards as well as targeting civilians and police stations within the province to incite chaos and disorder.

In January, Iran launched a military operation during which the headquarters of the Pakistan-based terrorist group was targeted in missile strikes, destroying its infrastructure.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.

It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.

The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.

Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.

“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.

Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.

As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.

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