Saxony premier Michael Kretschmer said the sabotaged gas pipelines would be needed if Germany and Russia resume trade

Germany should repair the Nord Stream gas pipelines while it is still possible, the state premier of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, has argued. The politician suggested that the pipelines, which were blown up last September, would be needed again in the event that Germany and Russia normalize trade relations under new leadership in Moscow.   

“In energy policy, it’s all about keeping options open,” Kretschmer told Germany’s Focus magazine in an interview published on Sunday.     

“When Putin is gone, the pipeline could also be an opportunity for a successor to restore economic relations with us,” the official added, predicting that this could happen in around five years’ time.  

According to the Saxony state leader, work should begin soon on repairing the conduits as they will soon be beyond saving.   

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Kretschmer also insisted that Germany would benefit from as many operational pipelines as possible, not least in terms of tackling CO2 emissions. Germany is now reliant on liquified natural gas (LNG), although according to the politician, this is expensive and causes just as much as pollution as domestic brown coal when taking into account its transportation. Meanwhile, power consumption is expected to rise in the country, Kretschmer noted.   

Asked about a potential Polish backlash to any restoration of Nord Stream, given Warsaw’s longstanding opposition to the project, Kretschmer said that the two EU member states should discuss the issue reasonably. However, he asserted that Germany is a sovereign nation which must pursue its own interests. 

Regarding the Ukraine conflict, Kretschmer argued that Germany has placed “too much focus” on weapons deliveries to Kiev instead of producing a peace proposal. He claimed that the situation in Ukraine is getting “worse and worse” by the day, meaning that a ceasefire and peace talks are urgently needed.   

The Saxony state premier argued that through its military aid for Ukraine, Germany is “now directly involved in this conflict.” 

“I felt that this is exactly what we should not have done in order to be more credible and active as a mediator and diplomatic actor,” Kretschmer stated, claiming that “nearly 50%” of people in eastern Germany agree with him.

Russia and China fully understand they must stick together to fend off Washington, because if one falls the other is on its own

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow is not just symbolic as his first foreign excursion after being re-elected to an unprecedented third term. The trip is particularly important because of the wider context in which it is taking place. The global situation calls for a further upgrade in Sino-Russian relations to address the external challenges that both countries face. 

The international system is going through a crisis on the scale of a world war. It began nearly a decade ago when the Western-supported "Euromaidan" coup in Kiev, and Russia’s response by taking control of Crimea, prompted a prolonged US-Russian confrontation.

This was followed three years later by the US abruptly replacing its former China policy of ‘engage and hedge’ with a trade and technology war, resulting in a confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

Last year, Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, seeking to eliminate the threat from what many in Moscow saw as the “land-based US-armed and -controlled aircraft carrier parked on Russia’s doorstep,” which Ukraine had become. With that, the Russo-American confrontation degenerated into a proxy war between the world’s two principal nuclear powers. Meantime, Washington further hardened its approach to Beijing, also seeking to organize its allies and partners in Asia and Europe against China.

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Against that background, tensions around Taiwan have risen considerably. Thus, the possibility of Washington provoking an armed conflict over the island cannot be dismissed. 

What is at stake here is not just the fate of Ukraine or the future of Taiwan. The issue is the existing world order itself and its current organizing principle – America’s global hegemony. This status, roundly rejected by Moscow and Beijing, is now in question. For a few years now, the US has been calling the present situation a ‘major power competition’ – which in the 20th century was the essence of both world wars. The Russians and Chinese, for their part, have been advocating since the 1990s for a transition from US-led unipolarity to a multipolar world order. This position is gaining support among various countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In effect, the process of systemic change is already underway.

In response to this, the US has pursued a strategy of defending its global control at all costs. This is a strategy of prevention. The Americans have seen the rise of China, Russia’s unexpected recovery from the Soviet collapse, and Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions as challenges that could not be tolerated. Notwithstanding Beijing’s strong interest in maintaining its vast and profitable economic links with the West, Russia’s efforts to resolve the crisis in Donbass along the lines of the Minsk accords, and Iran’s commitment to the JCPOA nuclear deal, Washington has continuously gone on the offensive. The US has clearly understood that time is not on its side and has resolved to act while the balance of power is in its favor. Provoking Moscow into taking military action in Ukraine was designed to weaken and isolate Russia; stoking tensions in the Taiwan area has served the goal of pressuring China and strengthening anti-Beijing alliances in the Asia-Pacific.

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The US strategy includes mobilizing and disciplining Washington’s multiple allies around the world. American leadership within that those blocs, which is the newest version of the world empire, has never been as absolute as now.

Indeed, former great powers such as Britain and France, and the leading industrial powerhouses, Germany and Japan, are much more closely bound to the policies of the US than they were in the Cold War era. Having encouraged NATO to move to the Indo-Pacific and having founded a new military bloc (AUKUS), which specifically targets China, Washington is using the total power of its alliances against both of its rivals in Eurasia, China, and Russia. It is also hoping to beat those rivals one by one – first, eliminate Russia as a major power, and then make China accept American conditions.

What, then, could be the strategy of Sino-Russian interaction in the face of all this? China and Russia are both major powers, fully sovereign in charting their strategies on the world scene. These targets are squarely based on their respective national interests. The Moscow-Beijing relationship is a far cry from the tight bloc discipline that exists in the US-led Western alliances.

Nevertheless, the Chinese and Russian leaders certainly understand that they must wreck Washington’s plan of defeating Moscow first and then turning on Beijing. As a result, American warnings and threats to the Chinese over the assistance they can give to Russia may actually be counter-productive. The leadership will find the tone of these admonitions rude and disrespectful – particularly in conjunction with forthcoming American arms deliveries to Taipei. While China certainly cares about the US and EU markets for its goods and services, but it wonders whether it can really trust Washington and its allies, given Moscow’s experience with the Minsk agreements on Donbass which, as the former German and French leaders have admitted, were nothing but a ploy to buy time. 

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Thus, much more coordination between Beijing and Moscow can be expected. This does not presage a new military bloc in Eurasia, but instead a greater joint effort to help the world move faster toward multipolarity, which effectively means ending American global hegemony.

One way to achieve this would be by reducing role of the US dollar in international transactions. Much of the Sino-Russian bilateral trade is already carried out in the Chinese yuan; but the yuan can also be used in dealing with third countries.

Another way to help bring about the new world order is upgrading non-Western institutions, such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to set the agenda for the world in areas such as finance and technology, energy and climate, and, not least, international security.  

China’s recent rise as a worldwide geopolitical – not just geo-economic – player, exemplified by its recent brokering of the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement, is welcomed in Russia as a practical step toward the new order. Moscow and Beijing can be more successful if they act jointly to reduce the economic and political dependence of many countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America on the US and its European allies. 

In the field of military security, there is much that Russia and China can benefit from through closer collaboration – beyond the existing formats. The main goal here is dissuading Washington, by deed not just word, from escalating the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and from provoking Beijing over Taiwan.

One specific area is in-depth dialogue on nuclear policies and nuclear proliferation under the present conditions of major-power confrontation and actual conflict. Even as they work on transitioning to a multipolar future, Putin and Xi bear a huge responsibility to make sure that this transition happens without a shooting war between the major powers. China and Russia cooperating more closely on security issues would make the transition safer

The “war party” in Brussels wants to push Budapest into sending weapons, Peter Szijjarto has said

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said that his country won’t be pushed into supplying arms to Ukraine. Szijjarto accused the EU of a pressure campaign against Budapest, as the bloc’s ministers reportedly agreed to send $2 billion worth of ammunition to Kiev’s forces.

“Another war party proposal is on the table: this time Brussels wants to send ammunition to Ukraine,” Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page on Monday. “The pressure is constantly increasing on us, but we are not allowing anyone to push us into war,” he added.

Szijjarto traveled to Brussels on Monday for a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers, in which a $2 billion ammunition deal for Ukraine was reached, AFP reported, citing diplomats. The deal will see the bloc committing roughly $1 billion to purchase artillery ammo from member states’ already depleted stockpiles, and another billion to purchase 155-millimeter shells on the open market.

The bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that reaching an agreement was vital, “otherwise, we will be in difficulty in order to continue supplying arms to Ukraine.” Borrell and other top EU officials have repeatedly called on member states to boost their industrial capacity to meet Ukraine’s demands, with Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton declaring earlier this month that the EU should “move to a wartime economy model.”

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Since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last February, Hungary has refused to allow weapons to enter Ukraine via its territory. Szijjarto and Prime Minister Viktor Orban have condemned Brussels’ twin policies of sanctions on Moscow and arms deliveries to Kiev, arguing that neither have helped end the conflict, and both have hurt the European economy.

As an EU member, Hungary is still a party to the EU’s sanctions, but Orban has vowed to veto any sanctions on Russia’s nuclear industry. Likewise, while Budapest opposes arms shipments to Kiev, and does not supply weapons itself, it has not vetoed any joint EU weapons packages to date.

“Europe is getting immersed in war, in reality they’re already indirectly at war with Russia,” Orban said at his annual state-of-the-nation speech earlier this month. In comments to members of his Fidesz party last month, Orban blamed “the Biden administration, pro-war Brussels bureaucrats, and pro-war politicians” for stoking the conflict “at the expense of European interests.”

Hungary, he said, would continue to “defend the pro-peace position against the Biden administration and Brussels.”

The move comes after a proposed overhaul triggered major demonstrations in Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has softened his proposed reform to the judicial system following protests by hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the past two months. Netanyahu held a phone call with US President Joe Biden the day before announcing the amendments, with the American leader reportedly calling for compromise.

Netanyahu’s coalition government issued a statement on Monday that contained several changes to the original version of the legislation put forward on January 4. Among other things, the latest iteration envisages fewer government representatives in the Judicial Selection Committee – the body that appoints judges to Israeli courts – than was originally proposed.

The Israeli PM urged parliamentary opponents of the reform to abandon their plans to boycott ratification votes, and asked them to end their calls for further protests.

“We are extending a hand to anyone who genuinely cares about national unity and the desire to reach an agreed accord,” the coalition government statement read.

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Netanyahu insists that he is seeking to ensure balance among government branches through his plan to change the way judges are selected, although critics have claimed the proposals risk limiting the independence of courts.

On Sunday, the White House said that President Biden had spoken by phone with Netanyahu, emphasizing that “democratic values… must remain a hallmark of the US-Israel relationship.” The US leader also stressed the importance of “genuine checks and balances” in a democratic society.

“The president offered support for efforts underway to forge a compromise on proposed judicial reforms consistent with those core principles,” the White House statement added.

According to several media outlets, citing an anonymous US official, Biden had expressed “concern” over the planned overhaul of Israel’s judicial system.

Appearing on a radio talk show on Friday, Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, compared the left-wing protesters to the paramilitary wings of the Nazis in Germany and fascists in Italy during the 1930s.

He accused the demonstrators of creating chaos in the streets, having previously branded them “domestic terrorists.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned in a video address last Wednesday that the nation risks sliding into civil war over the contentious judicial reform plan. Herzog suggested a set of alternative measures, which Netanyahu was quick to reject.

Kiev may not get enough foreign aid to continue fighting next year, Petr Pavel has warned

With the US set to refocus attention on domestic issues next year, Ukraine may not get funding for continued military action, Czech President Petr Pavel has said. The former army officer said Kiev’s armed forces may therefore have just one shot at conducting a major push against Russian troops.

“The window of opportunity is open this year. After next winter, it will be extremely difficult to maintain the current level of aid,” Pavel told the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita.

“Ukraine will only have one attempt to launch a major counter-offensive,” he added as quoted by the outlet on Monday. If it fails, “it will be extremely difficult to obtain funds for the next one.”

Pavel, a retired general who served as chair of the NATO Military Committee until 2018, predicted that US interest in aiding the Ukrainian army would likely dwindle in 2024. The political focus in the country will shift to the presidential campaign, and US-China relations are likely to be the top foreign policy issue. European nations will likely reduce their funding of Ukraine too, the politician predicted.

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He said it was up to Ukraine to decide what constitutes a victory over Russia, which Pavel assured would happen. But if it fails despite all Western help, there will be a “long war of attrition.”

“You cannot pretend that the only possible solution is complete success,” he said.

Pavel’s preferred outcome for the conflict is a weakened Russia that prefers “cooperation, not aggression.” He stated that it would take a change of the “Russian regime from within” before the EU would go back to business as usual with the country.

Kiev has declared full control of the territories it claims sovereignty over as the objective of its military campaign. It has refused talks with Moscow as long as President Vladimir Putin remains in office. Washington, for its part, has pledged to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia.

Russia considers the hostilities in Ukraine to be part of a US-led proxy war, with Ukrainian troops being used as “cannon fodder” by Washington.

Washington is still ordering Islamists to attack Assad’s forces, Moscow’s spy chief has claimed

The US is still working with Islamic State terrorists and other Islamist groups to carry out attacks against Bashar Assad’s government forces in Syria, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief, Sergey Naryshkin, has claimed.   

According to an SVR report released on Monday, the US military’s Al-Tanf base in southern Syria is coordinating subversive activities, with the actions of terrorist groups being planned by representatives of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces as well as US intelligence officers.   

The SVR stated that a special role has been assigned to the so-called Free Syrian Army, which consists of Kurdish and Arab detachments operating in the central and northeast parts of Syria. “Through them, the Americans and their British allies are working with the underground formations of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] that still remain in remote areas of the country,” it was alleged. 

“ISIS was instructed to incite hostilities in the Syrian south-west (the provinces of Suwayda and Deraa), in the central part of the country (Homs) and east of the Euphrates River (Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor). For this, it is planned to form several detachments of radicals with a total number of about 300 people. After special training, they will be involved in attacks on military facilities in Syria and Iran,” the statement added.  

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The SVR claims that the US also intends to use terrorists in the region around the capital, Damascus, to conduct tasks such as kidnapping Russian and Iranian servicemen. 

In addition to coordinating the actions of Islamist groups, Washington is providing terrorists with weapons, according to the SVR. Several dozen four-wheel-drive pickup trucks with heavy machine guns, as well as a number of rocket systems such as NLAW ATGMs, TOWs, and Igla MANPADS are set to be handed over to fighters in the near future, the report alleged.  

Washington’s actions put it “on the same level” as Islamic terrorists and IS militants, and is a manifestation of state terrorism, the SVR argued. 

In February, the SVR reported that the US was using Islamist extremists to plan terrorist attacks in Russia and former Soviet republics. Washington has been training as many as 60 terrorists at the Al-Tanf base to make improvised explosive devices and use them to target diplomats, public officials, law enforcement officers, and military personnel, the intelligence service claimed.

In March 2003, then President George W Bush approved the military attack, with major repercussions for US politics, and global perceptions of the country

Twenty years ago, the world was shaken by one of the major geopolitical events of this century. On the morning of March 20, 2003, the US officially launched its illegal invasion of Iraq. The rationale was based on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties with terrorists, and intelligence regarding the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, both claims turned out to be false and were later refuted.

Russian political analysts believe that the real reasons behind the invasion of Iraq included a desire for control over oil fields, the naive hope of creating a ‘showcase of democracy’ in the Middle East, and a demonstration of the ‘fight against terrorism’ to US voters. None of these goals were achieved, but the grievous consequences of the endeavor are evident. 

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The reasons behind the invasion

Washington initially called its operation ‘Shock and Awe’, but later renamed it ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. Official Baghdad called it ‘Harb al‑Hawasim’ (the Final War).

American society had been carefully prepared for the war over the course of several years. On January 30, 2002, then-President George W. Bush first used the expression ‘axis of evil’ in his State of the Union address when referring to North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. In February of that year, US Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly discussed a potential change of regime in Baghdad.

Bush's team stated that one of their main goals in Iraq was the fight against terrorism, which was launched after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The US government claimed that Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terrorist organization was responsible and was also being supported by then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. However, on September 9, 2006, the US Senate released a report which proved that Hussein had no links with Al-Qaeda. Moreover, as the report showed, he had “tried, though unsuccessfully,” to find and capture Iraqi terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Another reason for the invasion was Iraq’s supposed development of weapons of mass destruction. At a meeting of the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, Colin Powell showed a test tube with white powder that he claimed contained samples of chemical weapons found in the country. But this ‘proof’ also turned out to be fake. On October 6, 2004, the Iraq Survey Group, comprised of 1,400 US, British, and Australian weapons experts, established that by 2003, the country “had no nuclear, chemical, or bacteriological weapons programs, or WMD arsenals.”

In other words, both accusations which were supposed to justify the US military intervention turned out to be false. As Andrey Chuprygin, a senior lecturer at the HSE School of Asian Studies, explains, the real reason behind the illegal invasion was that the ‘war on terror’ declared by Bush in 2001 yielded no visible results by 2003.

“By 2003, the US spent a huge amount of money and lost military personnel, but there was still nothing tangible to show voters – there was no victory over terror. It seems that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were chosen as scapegoats in order to gain an illustrious victory and present it to voters. And that was exactly what happened,” Chuprygin told RT.

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He believes that Hussein’s main political mistake – the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 – made him a target for the US. “He set himself up and became a convenient target for the Americans, who wanted to kill two birds with one stone: Demonstrate victory in the war on terror by labeling Hussein a terrorist accomplice, and also help their ally, Saudi Arabia.” 

The invasion of Iraq revealed the true goals of the war against terrorism, Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes. In his opinion, the US was chiefly concerned about establishing control over the oil fields in the Near and Middle East.

“They wanted to have control over the global market, over the energy and oil prices. They wanted to make a big profit and directly influence the global energy market. American energy monopolies were the main sponsors of the Republican Party at the time,” he told RT.

Vasiliev also said the US wanted Iraq to become a kind of ‘showcase of democracy’, a Western-type country in the Middle East. Washington hoped that these ideas would later spread west and east of Iraq, and come to influence Syria and other countries.

Close relations between the US and Israel may have also played an important role in the Iraqi operation, Vasiliev noted. Under the leadership of Hussein, Iraq was then seen as one of the main threats to Israel’s national security.

The military campaign

The joint operation of US and British troops against Iraq was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Powell stated that the governments of 45 states either directly or indirectly supported the US, and 30 states unconditionally supported America’s goal of overthrowing Hussein.

The operation was led by the Joint Central Command (JCC) of the US Armed Forces. A 280,000-strong grouping of US and British troops took part in combat in the Persian Gulf zone. The Air Force was equipped with over 700 combat aircraft. The coalition had over 800 American M‑1 Abrams tanks, around 120 British Challenger tanks, over 600 American M‑2/M‑3 Bradley armored vehicles, and around 150 British Warrior armored vehicles.

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The Iraqi Army numbered 389,000 soldiers, 40-60,000 paramilitary and police formations, and 650,000 reservists. It was armed with around 2,500 tanks, 1,500 BMP‑1 and BMP‑2 infantry fighting vehicles, and around 2,000 artillery pieces over 100mm in caliber. Iraq had around 300 combat aircraft (mainly Mirage F‑1EQ, MiG‑29, MiG‑25, MiG‑23, and MiG‑21), 100 combat helicopters, and 300 transport helicopters.

The US began its operation with isolated strikes on strategically important military targets and government facilities in Baghdad, using sea-based cruise missiles and precision-guided munitions. It took the Americans 20 days to capture the capital. Baghdad was occupied on April 9, followed by two of Iraq’s largest cities, Kirkuk and Mosul, on April 10 and 11.

On May 1, 2003, the US president announced the end of hostilities and the beginning of the military occupation of Iraq. Not until November 2008 did the Iraqi government and parliament, which had effectively been installed by Washington, approve an agreement on the withdrawal of US troops and the regulation of their temporary stay on Iraqi territory. In the winter of 2009, when Barack Obama was elected US president, 90,000 troops were withdrawn from Iraq. On August 31, 2010, Obama announced the end of the active stage of the military operation. The last column of American troops left Iraq on December 18, 2011.

Iraq no longer exists

The US invasion resulted in the overthrow of Hussein’s government. In 2006, he was found guilty of murdering 148 Shiites and was sentenced to death by hanging.

Chuprygin believes that Iraq ceased to exist as a unified state after the US invasion. The country broke apart into different regions controlled by hostile political forces. To this day, there has been no end to the confrontation.

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The new Iraqi Constitution was adopted in 2005. It proclaimed Iraq a democratic federal parliamentary republic, approved autonomous governance in the country’s north and south regions, and redistributed power in favor of the Shiites and Kurds.

“Iraq seems to be a single state (at least to the outside observer), but this is really not the case. Opinions differ whether it will remain unified or, as many experts said a few years ago, would break up into two or even three territories – Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish,” Chuprygin said.

Terrorism and countless victims

The biggest global consequences of the US intervention include the formation of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Syria and Iraq – which in military and economic terms, became the world’s most powerful terrorist organization. As Vasiliev notes, IS was originally made up of former officers of Hussein’s army who remained loyal to him. The Islamists viewed the US as occupiers and staged numerous attacks against US troops in Iraq.

In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands of people became victims of the military invasion, terrorism, and the civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis. It is still not known exactly how many people died during the eight years of the US operation in Iraq. The non-governmental organization Iraq Body Count (IBC) claims that by the summer of 2010, the number of civilian deaths ranged from 97,000 to 106,000 people. Other estimates state that almost half a million Iraqis died as a result of combat from 2003 to 2011. According to the Pentagon, the losses of US servicemen amounted to 4,487 people, and 66 soldiers died in Iraq after the end of the operation. 

In 2015, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq stated that the number of internally displaced persons in the country topped 3 million people.

Human Rights Watch also noted that a system of collective punishment against families suspected of affiliation with the Islamists formed in areas liberated from ISIS.

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US fiasco

“The Iraqi operation ended in a total fiasco in all aspects,” Vasiliev said.

He claims that the US failed in its crusade against the Islamic world, so Obama’s election was important not only from the standpoint of the anti-war movement in the US, but also in view of "extending an olive branch to the Islamic world.”

Washington did not manage to create a ‘showcase of democracy’ in Iraq which other Persian Gulf countries could emulate. The attempt to use Iraq as a stronghold for solving other geopolitical issues, including the fight against Iran, also fell through. 

Moreover, Vasiliev believes that when US energy policy shifted, previous calculations regarding control over oil resources were no longer justified.

“The reason for the fiasco was that, from the American standpoint, the neoliberal world order that won over Europe in the 1990s could be also applied to the Middle East. But this was not destined to come true,” Vasiliev said.

Ultimately, the invasion of Iraq turned many world leaders against the US. 

“A powerful anti-American wave emerged. Never was it so strong as in that first decade of the 21st century. Germany and France, along with Russia, spoke out against the actions of the United States,” he explained.

Vasiliev added, however, that Europe’s “anti-Americanism vaccine” soon wore off, and the negative aspects of the US invasion gradually faded from memory with the departure of George W. Bush and the election of Barack Obama.

The first such drills in five years are taking place against the backdrop of North Korea’s protests and nearly daily missile launches

The US and South Korean militaries have embarked on a large-scale joint exercise aimed at practicing amphibious landings, South Korean media has reported. The drills, which are part of the ongoing ‘Freedom Shield’ maneuvers, went ahead despite Pyongyang’s repeated warnings.

On Monday, South Korea’s KBS TV channel, citing the country’s military, reported that the ‘Ssangyong’ drills had kicked off on the eastern coast in North Gyeongsang Province, and are expected to conclude on April 3. The outlet said they are the first after a five-year hiatus, with entire divisions taking part this time instead of just brigades.

The exercise features more than 30 vessels from both countries, 70 aircraft, including F-35B stealth fighters and AH-64 attack helicopters, as well as 50 amphibious assault vehicles.

Last week, the Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean military officials as saying that the ‘Ssangyong’ maneuvers were intended to demonstrate the “overwhelming” capabilities of the partner nations.

“The upcoming training will demonstrate the South Korea-US alliance’s will to realize ‘peace through strength’,” Marine Corps Commandant Lt. Gen. Kim Gye-hwan was quoted as explaining.

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According to Yonhap, participating in the drills for the first time are several dozen British marines, with military personnel from Australia, France and the Philippines observing them.

Meanwhile, North Korea said on Monday that it had test-fired a missile “tipped with a test warhead simulating a nuclear payload” over the weekend, demonstrating Pyongyang’s firepower and readiness to respond to any “reckless moves” by Washington and Seoul.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted the country’s leader Kim Jong-un arguing that “it is only when the North is fully equipped with a nuclear attack posture that it can carry out its important strategic mission of deterring war.”

Kim watched Sunday morning’s missile launch along with his daughter Ju-ae.

The DPRK’s latest show of force was preceded by several other missile launches over the past week.

Pyongyang insists its increased military activity is merely a response to the ongoing US-South Korea military exercises, which the North believes to be preparation for an attack.

Washington and Seoul, in turn, say that the maneuvers are their answer to the North’s destabilizing actions, including a record number of missile launches in 2022.

Washington’s gangster-like attempts to take over the social media app reveal an inability to tolerate competition

The TikTok wars are heating up. The Biden administration has reportedly issued an ultimatum to the Chinese company Bytedance that it must sell the social media application or face a ban in the US.

TikTok has been subject to growing pressure from US politicians, who claim that the app, which was the most downloaded one in the world in 2022, is a growing national security risk, on account of its Chinese origin. Using the logic of guilt by association, it has been argued that TikTok could pass on its users’ data to the Chinese government. This has never been proven, directly or indirectly. It is a drummed-up ‘potential’ danger based on rampant paranoia that has engulfed Washington pertaining to all things Beijing.

In this, the Biden administration once again shows its incapability and unwillingness to challenge, restrain, or demonstrate reason against the worst elements of McCarthyism in American political circles. Instead, those elements are embraced for political gain. Now the administration wants to carry on where Trump failed and extort a sale of TikTok under the threat of a ban.

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Washington’s posturing on TikTok is like that of a gangster: “You’ve got a nice social media app there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” The “national security” fears are a superficial excuse that covers up the real reason behind all American decisions regarding Beijing: Washington’s inability to accept competition. Anything Chinese that is deemed to be successful or ‘outdo America’ is threatened, whether it’s political influence in the global arena or a successful market product.

The US has targeted a wide variety of Chinese companies with superfluous, opportunistic, and outright dishonest claims in order to quash their market shares. The most common line is the same one that is currently being weaponized against TikTok – about it being a “national security threat.” These claims always involve an alleged link to the Chinese government, and a claim that the given app, service or product is being used to spy on Americans, which is never proven. The claims are often deeply irrational, such as the recent allegations about surveillance through fridges or cargo cranes.

When the national security argument does not suffice, the Biden administration weaponizes the “human rights abuse” issue, as was done with Chinese solar panels, the availability of which Washington has sought to limit domestically as part of its ‘made in America’ green agenda, preferring home-made alternatives instead. The US, again without evidence, alleged the panels were manufactured with forced labor in the Xinjiang autonomous region. But the picture is nonetheless clear: it is always about market share and American dominance, and the outrage is manufactured as a way of creating support for sanctions.

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But TikTok is different. It has established itself as the world’s number one social media app and is used by over 100 million Americans. It is so successful that to simply ban it outright would be a hugely unpopular decision. So on two occasions now the policy has been not to simply get rid of it instantly but to use political power to try to coerce the app’s Chinese owners into selling it to America. In other words, TikTok has been so good at swallowing up the US market that really China has no right to own it and an app such as that ought to be American.

Such a move contravenes everything the US professes to stand for. Although Facebook is banned in China, how would Washington and the media react to a demand by Beijing that Facebook sell its entire operation in China to a Chinese company for the right to operate in its market? The reaction would be explosive, and there would be accusations of Chinese ‘economic coercion’, ‘bullying’, abuse of state power, etc. The same goes here: the US is actively undermining the spirit of free enterprise, freedom of speech, and the rule of law by attempting to demand that a firm sell its entire business. For China to agree to this outcome would be nothing short of humiliation and acceptance of a place beneath the US. In other words, anything China makes that is good ought to be taken from it, and it has no right to its own success.

China should immediately block Bytedance from selling TikTok under any circumstances. If the US wants to ban it, let it just go ahead and do so, thus letting a generation of young people see the realities of the anti-China hysteria that the Biden administration is actively embracing. In that case, Biden should suffer the political fallout of that. America must not and cannot be allowed to win on this. Washington D.C’s arrogance is contemptible, but this is nothing short of robbery.

Pyongyang said its latest missile launch, overseen by Kim Jong-un, practiced a “counterattack” on a “major enemy target”

North Korea has declared that it fired a missile “tipped with a test warhead simulating nuclear payload” as part of a two-day drill over the weekend, demonstrating the country’s firepower and readiness to respond to any “reckless moves” amid joint military exercises on the peninsula by South Korean and US forces.

“It is impossible to practically deter war with the mere fact that our country possesses nuclear weapons,” state-run news agency KCNA quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying on Sunday. “It is only when the North is fully equipped with a nuclear attack posture that it can carry out its important strategic mission of deterring war.”

Kim attended Sunday morning’s missile launch along with his daughter Ju-ae. KCNA called the drill “virtual comprehensive tactical training for nuclear counterattack.” The first day of the exercise, on Saturday, included testing of “the reliability of the command, management, control and operation system for tactical nuclear forces.”

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Those capabilities were put to the test in “various hypothetical emergency situations,” KCNA added, practicing “the order of action to quickly move on to a nuclear attack while inspecting the accuracy of nuclear attack order and reception procedures, nuclear weapon handling order and operation procedures in accordance with different nuclear attack plans from a strict safety standpoint.”

The ballistic missile was equipped with a mock nuclear warhead and was launched from Pyongan Province. It allegedly traveled 800 kilometers before being “accurately” detonated 800 meters above its target off the peninsula’s eastern coast. KCNA noted that the test was conducted amid a “tense situation” with the large-scale exercises being conducted by Seoul and Washington.

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The launch marked North Korea’s fourth “warning shot” in the past week. A US B-1B strategic bomber returned to the peninsula on Sunday, making a “show of force against North Korea,” according to South Korea’s Yonhap News.

Seoul’s joint drills with the US, which began on March 13 and will run through March 23, are the largest exercises by the two allies in at least five years. Pyongyang has repeatedly condemned such war games as rehearsals for an invasion of North Korea and said last month that they could be considered a “declaration of war.”

London has admitted a “mistake” that required its Afghan contractors to vet their relocation with Taliban officials

The UK Ministry of Defence has belatedly apologized for requiring Afghan citizens who worked with London during the US-led NATO occupation of their country to have their documents approved by the Taliban before applying for resettlement in Britain, the Independent revealed on Sunday.

The government confirmed that 37 applicants to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Police (ARAP) program, designed specifically to relocate allies who worked directly with the British military during the war, had been told they would have to have their papers certified with Afghan government departments. Those departments have been run by the Taliban since the group returned to power amid the hasty withdrawal of NATO forces in 2021.

Given that such individuals would be seen as enemy collaborators by the Islamic fundamentalists, the policy amounted to “asking them to sign their own death warrant,” one UK lawmaker told the Independent.

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After initially denying that applicants had been given any such instructions for weeks, the ministry has apologized “unreservedly for this error.” A spokesperson told the Independent there would be an investigation into how the life-threatening orders had been sent, plus a review “to identify any further remedial actions needed to strengthen policies and processes.”

UK defence officials insisted that all 37 affected applicants have confirmed they are safe, though at least one interpreter is apparently in hiding after taking his marriage certificate to the Afghan Ministry of Justice for “validation.” The Afghan contractors have been sent revised guidance and an apology for “any misunderstanding or distress” caused by previous instructions.

While the UK has two dedicated programs in place for relocating Afghan refugees, people fleeing the war-torn country now make up the largest portion of small-boat passengers arriving illegally on British shores.

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Some 743 people were resettled under ARAP in the last quarter of 2022. Under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, which is open to any “at-risk and vulnerable” refugees who “supported UK values” in their home country, just 22 Afghans have entered the UK since the Taliban takeover.

The US also imperiled hundreds of its Afghan allies as it haphazardly exited the country in August 2021, ending the longest war in American history. The US State Department gave the Taliban lists for entire busloads of people whom it wanted allowed through checkpoints so they could get to the Kabul airport for evacuation, essentially marking those individuals as potential enemy collaborators.

China’s president has previewed his visit to Moscow by declaring that “no single country should dictate the international order”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has set the tone for his visit this week to Moscow by touting improving relations with Russia in the ten years since he took office and vowing that the transition to a “multipolar world” liberated from US domination won’t be stopped.

“The world today is going through profound changes unseen in a century,” Xi wrote in an article published on Sunday by the Rossiyskaya Gazeta. “The historical trend of peace, development and win-win cooperation is unstoppable. The prevailing trends of world multipolarity, economic globalization and greater democracy in international relations are irreversible.”

Xi, who’s scheduled to arrive on Monday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, noted that the world faces “traditional and non-traditional security challenges,” as well as “damaging acts of hegemony, domination and bullying.” He added that countries around the world are “eager to find a cooperative way out of the crisis” as they try to get through a “long and tortuous global economic recovery.”

The international community has recognized that no country is superior to others, no model of governance is universal, and no single country should dictate the international order. The common interest of all humankind is in a world that is united and peaceful, rather than divided and volatile.

Xi made his comments amid escalating tensions with Washington over the Ukraine crisis and US interference in China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. Beijing has resisted Western pressure to condemn Russia over the Ukraine conflict, maintaining neutrality on the issue and promoting a 12-point peace plan to end the hostilities. Washington has dismissed the peace proposal and accused China of mulling military aid to Russia.

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“We believe that as long as all parties embrace the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, and pursue equal-footed, rational and results-oriented dialogue and consultation, they will find a reasonable way to resolve the crisis, as well as a broad path toward a world of lasting peace and common security,” Xi said. He added that China’s plan takes into account the “legitimate security concerns of all countries.”

China and Russia have cemented mutual trust and fostered a “new model of major-country relations” over the past decade, as evidenced by a doubling of trade between the two nations, reaching $190 billion in 2022, Xi wrote. “We have been active in practicing true multilateralism, promoting the common values of humanity, and championing the building of a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind.”

Xi called for increasing the quality and quantity of investment and economic cooperation between China and Russia, as well as stronger policy coordination. “We have every reason to expect that China and Russia, as fellow travelers on the journey of development and rejuvenation, will make new and greater contributions to human advancement.”

Ma Ying-jeou will pay a visit to China this month amid increased tensions with Beijing, his office has reportedly confirmed

Ma Ying-jeou, the former Taiwanese president who made history by meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in 2015, reportedly plans to break new diplomatic ground again by making an unprecedented trip to the mainland later this month.

Ma will travel to China from March 27 to April 7 and visit the cities of Nanjing, Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing and Shanghai, his office confirmed to Reuters on Sunday. His representatives didn’t disclose whether he intends to meet with Xi or any other Chinese government officials during the trip.

The visit will mark the first trip to the mainland by a current or former Taiwanese leader since Chiang Kai-shek’s supporters fled to the island in 1949. Chiang held his last meeting with Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese communist revolution, in 1945. Then-President Ma and Xi held their historic 2015 summit in Singapore, seeking to ease tensions and boost cooperation.

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Since Ma’s successor, Tsai Ing-wen, took office in 2016, relations between the self-governing island and Beijing have deteriorated. China, which considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province and still part of its sovereign territory, has vowed to reunify with the island. The US government recognizes, but doesn’t endorse, China’s claim to Taiwan under the so-called ‘One China’ policy.

However, tensions in the Taiwan Strait have escalated since last August, when then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defied warnings from Beijing and went through with a planned visit to Taipei. China responded by ramping up military drills around Taiwan and cutting off military and climate ties with Washington. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry warned earlier this month of a possible “total blockade” of the Taiwan Strait by Chinese forces.

Ma remains a senior member of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party. The KMT has traditionally opposed pushes for full Taiwanese independence and has sought peaceful relations with China. KMT deputy chairman Andrew Hsia visited Beijing last month and met with Wang Huning, a senior Chinese Communist Party leader.

Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which has accused the KMT of seeking to sell out Taiwan, condemned Hsia for going to “pay court to the communists.” The current president also blocked Ma’s planned trip to Hong Kong in 2016, citing security concerns, and he was forced to give his speech on cross-strait relations via teleconference.

READ MORE: Ex-US official suggests US could destroy Taiwan chip plants

Ma will visit sites connected to World War II and the 1911 revolution that ousted the last Chinese emperor and launched the Republic of China, his office said. 

Warsaw will have “no choice” but to take part in the hostilities should Kiev fail to defend its “independence,” the country’s envoy to France has said

Poland may end up “joining” the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine should the latter fail to protect its “independence,” the Polish ambassador to France, Jan Emeryk Rosciszewski, has said. The senior diplomat made the remarks on Saturday while speaking live to the broadcaster LCI. 

Rosciszewski squarely blamed the hostilities, which have been ongoing for over a year already, on Moscow, stating that it was “not NATO, not Poland, not France and not Slovakia” that was ramping up international tensions, but Russia. According to the diplomat, the situation now is “either Ukraine will successfully defend its independence, or we will be forced, in any case, to join this conflict.” 

“Otherwise, our principal values, which are the basis of our civilization and our culture, will be in fundamental danger, so we will have no choice,” Rosciszewski stated.

The hawkish statement promptly made headlines in international media, prompting the Polish mission in France to elaborate further on the remarks made by its head. According to a message released by the embassy on Sunday, Rosciszewski’s comments were not actually an admission that Warsaw was ready to go to war with Russia, but merely a “warning” and a pledge to continue supporting Kiev.

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“Listening carefully to the entire conversation allows us to understand that there was no announcement of Poland’s direct involvement in the conflict, but only a warning against the consequences of Ukraine's defeat – the possibility of Russia attacking or dragging into the war more Central European countries –  the Baltic states and Poland,” the statement reads. The embassy also condemned the purportedly “sensational” reporting on the bombshell interview, suggesting that some unidentified media outlets may have acted in “ill will.”

The remarks received a poor reception in Moscow, with a top Russian senator, Alexey Pushkov, warning Warsaw of the potential consequences and questioning its presumed resolve to fight Russia on its own.

“A very presumptuous statement by the Polish ambassador in Paris. For the first time, an official representative of Poland said what its leaders have long had on their minds. However, all the ‘courage’ of the Poles is based on the support of the United States. Is Warsaw sure that Washington is ready to fight?” Pushkov said in a Telegram post.

Poland has been among the most active supporters of Kiev in the hostilities against Russia, sending in assorted military hardware, including tanks and artillery pieces, to prop up Ukraine. Apart from that, Polish mercenaries have been directly involved in the conflict in significant numbers, according to Moscow. Warsaw has also announced a major military buildup of its own, seeking to greatly expand the ranks of its armed forces and procure large amounts of modern military hardware from overseas.

Snopes stepped in to confirm that Oxfam really did call English the “language of a colonizing nation” after a backlash

Global anti-poverty charity Oxfam’s new “inclusive language guide,” a 92-page tome billed as a must-have for NGOs “who have to communicate in English,” has elicited indignation and even a fact-check following its publication earlier this week.  

The guide is “based on a set of feminist principles for language use that centre the power and agency of people experiencing inequality,” a press release accompanying its publication states. Terms that might offend a marginalized group are printed alongside preferred alternatives, some of which go far beyond familiar terminology.

Instead of “expectant mothers,” for example, the guide suggests “people who become pregnant.” “Prostitutes” are replaced by “people who sell sex”; “the blind” become “people with visual impairment”; “the elderly” and “youth” are recast as “elderly people” and “young people.” However, the document also cautions that using the term “people” could be perceived as “patriarchal,” because “it is often misunderstood as only referring to men.”

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The guide calls English “the language of a colonising nation” in its introduction, lamenting the “Anglo-supremacy” of the nonprofit sector as “one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of working and shift power.” While Oxfam has “been guilty of ‘white savior’ narratives” in the past, the charity insists it is “learning from decolonial activists to change that.”  

The guide was pilloried on social media and picked up by Fox News and other media outlets on Thursday. Advocacy workers questioned the utility of playing language police when “women in sub-Saharan Africa have a one in 37 chance of dying in pregnancy and labour,” as international development researcher Maya Forstater told The Telegraph.

Even Snopes, the notorious fact-checking website, stepped in on Thursday to verify the claim that Oxfam had in fact published a language handbook that “advises people to avoid use of the words ‘mother’ and ‘youth.’” The verdict turned out to be true, though Snopes stressed that Oxfam was not trying to “ban or abolish the use of these words.” 

Oxfam merely doubled down amid the backlash, taking to Twitter to defend advising volunteers to “avoid assuming the adoption of gendered roles [i.e. mother and father] by transgender parents” on Thursday. Accusing critics of “cropping the document” to exclude context, the charity claimed the guide wasn’t meant to be “prescriptive” but merely to be “respectful to the diverse language of people with which we work.”

Imran Khan’s supporters violently clashed with police officers outside a courthouse

Police in Islamabad have filed terrorism charges against former Prime Minister Imran Khan, after crowds of his supporters rioted outside a courthouse in the Pakistani capital. Khan was due to appear at the court on Saturday to answer corruption charges.

Khan, along with more than a dozen officials in his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and scores of his supporters, were charged with a litany of offenses, including rioting, obstruction, assault on police officers, arson, intimidation, and acts of terrorism, Pakistan’s The Nation newspaper reported on Sunday.

The charges stemmed from a riot outside the Islamabad Judicial Complex on Saturday, in which protesters hurled rocks and fire bombs at police as they waited for Khan to arrive at the building. A dozen police vehicles were burned, and officers responded with tear gas. 

More than 50 officers were injured, and 59 of Khan’s supporters were arrested, the Associated Press reported.

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Police raided Khan’s residence in Lahore earlier on Saturday, shortly after he left for the court date in Islamabad. A crowd of the former PM’s supporters attempted to block police from carrying out the raid, leading to clashes and 30 arrests. The raid was not the first on Khan’s home, and the former leader previously accused authorities of attempting to arrest and execute him.

Khan never entered the courtroom on Saturday. In a video message to supporters, he claimed that police fired tear gas at his vehicle, preventing him from stepping outside. The judge postponed his hearing until March 31.

A former cricketer, Khan became prime minister of Pakistan in 2018 but was ousted in 2022. He is accused by the state of unlawfully selling official gifts given to him by foreign dignitaries during his tenure. Khan claims that the corruption charges are politically motivated and aimed at preventing him from returning to power.

Khan built economic and diplomatic relations with Russia and China during his time in office, and he has since claimed that his removal was orchestrated by the US with the goal of installing a more compliant leader.

The PTI has been leading protests across Pakistan and calling for snap elections since Khan’s ouster. During a November rally in Wazirabad, an attacker opened fire on Khan, injuring him and eight others. 

Despite his ongoing legal drama, Khan is the most popular political leader in Pakistan, with an approval rating of 61%, according to a Gallup poll taken earlier this month. Current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sits at 32%.

A study has found that military air crews suffer high rates of melanoma and other cancers

US military aviators contract various forms of cancer far more frequently than Americans at large, a long-awaited Pentagon study has revealed, confirming the suspicions of pilots and surviving family members who had long suggested that their disease and death rates seemed unusually high.

The investigation, which was reported by media outlets on Sunday, found that overall cancer rates were 24% above normal for members of air crews who served between 1992 and 2017. Rates were 87% higher than average for melanoma and 39% higher for thyroid cancer. Male pilots and crewmen face a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer, while female air crew veterans have a 16% higher rate of breast cancer.

The multi-year study, which was based on health outcomes for nearly 900,000 service members, also revealed that members of ground crews had elevated risks of various cancer types, including a 19% higher rate of brain cancers, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancers and a 9% higher rate of kidney or renal cancers. The Pentagon acknowledged that its evaluation likely undercounted cancer cases because its data was unreliable for earlier generations of pilots.

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Congress ordered the broad study in 2021, after years of lobbying by former military pilots and family members who suspected for years that exposure to potential carcinogens in jet fuels, radar systems and other possible hazards was killing many veterans. Now that the initial review has confirmed high cancer rates, a second phase of the study will examine possible reasons.

A narrower study completed in 2021 looked only at US Air Force pilots and compared their cancer rates to those of service members in general. That review, which encompassed nearly 35,000 pilots and crew members who served between 1970 and 2004, found that rates of testicular, prostate and skin cancer were 23-30% above normal. Pilots who flew the F-100 Super Sabre, America’s first supersonic fighter jet, were “more likely to be diagnosed with, and die from, cancers of the colon and rectum, pancreas, melanoma, skin, prostate and brain,” the earlier assessment said.

The latest study comes to light after the US Air Force launched an investigation last month into cancer risks for service members who worked in America’s nuclear missile silos. A preliminary review showed high rates of lymphoma among missileers who worked at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base.

READ MORE: US Navy sued over ‘toxic secrets’

Twitter’s owner has shot down the US president’s assertion that billionaires pay only 3% of their earnings to the government

America’s richest man on Saturday took issue with President Joe Biden’s effort to sell voters on tax increases by claiming that billionaires get away with paying only 3% of their earnings, on average, to the federal government.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed back after Biden posted a Twitter message arguing that the mega-rich aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. “You know the average tax billionaires pay?” Biden asked, before answering the question himself with his 3% claim. “No billionaire should be paying a lower tax than somebody working as a schoolteacher or a firefighter.”

Musk replied, “I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% federal and 13% state), so I must be lifting the average! I also paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022.” He then invited Twitter users in the platform’s Community Notes program to weigh in on whether the 3% figure was accurate.

I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% Federal & 13% state), so I must be lifting the average!

I also paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022.@CommunityNotes, is the 3% number cited above accurate?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2023

Biden has repeatedly made the claim while promoting his effort to raise taxes on high-income Americans. When he made the same statement in a speech last month, PolitiFact pointed out that it was false. “Under today’s laws, the 25 highest-earning billionaires paid an average tax rate of 16%,” the fact-checking outlet said. The group added that most teachers and firefighters fall within an income range with effective tax rates of zero to 15%.

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Biden’s 2024 budget proposal calls for raising tax rates on individuals with earnings of more than $400,000 a year and married couples making over $450,000. He also has demanded a 25% minimum tax on Americans with fortunes exceeding $100 million.

“Look, I think you should be able to be a billionaire if you can earn it, but just pay your fair share,” Biden said. “I think you ought to pay a minimum tax of 25%. It’s about basic fairness.”

Musk countered, “I certainly agree that everyone should pay taxes and not engage in elaborate tax-avoidance schemes.” Such schemes aren’t necessary for low-income Americans because more than 40% of US households pay no federal income tax.

Bringing the ongoing hostilities to a halt would only “ratify” Russia’s “conquest” of Ukrainian lands, John Kirby has said

Washington is firmly opposed to a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has said, branding any peace initiatives “unacceptable” in the current situation. The senior White House official made the remarks on Sunday in an interview with Fox News.  

Kirby touched on the upcoming visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, stating that should any peace initiatives come out of their meeting, Washington would reject them. 

“What we have said before, and we’ll say it again today, that if coming out of this meeting, there’s some sort of call for a ceasefire, well, that’s just going to be unacceptable because all that’s going to do… is ratify Russian’s conquest to date,” Kirby stated. 

Moscow and Beijing have been “increasing their cooperation and their relationship” lately, the official said, asserting that the two nations have joined to undermine and “rewrite” the so-called “rules of the game globally.” 

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Russia and China “are two countries that are chafing against this international rules-based order that the United States and so many of our allies and partners have built up, since the end of World War II,” he said. 

Recently, China floated a 12-point roadmap for putting an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has been raging for over a year already. China has taken a neutral stance on the hostilities, repeatedly urging both parties to show restraint and stick to diplomacy in order to find a resolution.

While the Chinese roadmap has been welcomed in Moscow, it has received a cold reception in the West. Multiple top officials have brushed off Beijing’s efforts to act as a mediator, accusing it of siding with Moscow. US President Joe Biden, for instance, openly questioned Beijing’s motives and voiced suspicion over Moscow’s reaction to it. 

“Putin is applauding it, so how could it be any good?” the US president said shortly after the plan was unveiled.

A partial or full government takeover of Credit Suisse is reportedly on the table should a proposed merger with rival UBS fail

The Swiss authorities are considering a “full or partial nationalization” of ailing banking giant Credit Suisse Group should a complicated proposed takeover by rival UBS Group fail to win approval from both shareholders and regulators, inside sources told Bloomberg on Sunday.

Zurich is “considering either taking over the bank in full or holding a significant equity stake” if the UBS deal should fall through “because of the complexities in arranging the deal and the short time frame involved,” the sources explained, adding that regulators are eager to conclude the matter before Asian markets open to prevent further erosion of public faith in the banking system.

The UBS deal, in which the megabank would have picked up Credit Suisse for a bargain-basement $1 billion, leaves the Swiss government on the hook if the acquisition fails to quell the instability in the system. If the bank’s credit default spread increases by 100 or more points, UBS can simply walk away from the deal, leaving Zurich and the regulators holding the bag. Nationalizing Credit Suisse would seemingly jump right to that eventuality.

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The authorities have already reportedly agreed to a rewrite of Swiss banking laws to allow the companies to bypass the required shareholder vote and fast-track the merger.

Credit Suisse reportedly considers the valuation much too low, and the deal is also unpopular with the bank’s shareholders, as it would have paid them just CHF0.25 in UBS stock per share while their holdings were still worth CHF1.86 at the close of markets on Friday. The merger would cut thousands of jobs from the failing bank, particularly in its investment banking division. 

UBS also wants protection from any pending legal cases or regulatory probes into its erstwhile rival that could result in fines or losses, though a source involved with the deal told the Financial Times it is unlikely to receive such immunity. 

Credit Suisse has been hemorrhaging deposits for weeks amid a series of scandals and regulatory issues. As several US banking failures triggered massive systemic bank runs last week, outflows reached CHF10 billion per day and company shares lost a quarter of their value, necessitating a $54 billion loan from the Swiss National Bank. Regulators are concerned that this alone is not enough to shore up confidence in the financial system.