US says Russia cannot win in Ukraine, Moscow sees long war ahead

Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said the war in Ukraine is likely to last decades with bouts of fighting and truces.

Russia will not achieve a military victory in Ukraine and Kyiv’s forces are unlikely to push back all Russian troops from their territory any time soon, the United States’s highest-ranking military official has said.

“This war, militarily, is not going to be won by Russia. It’s just not,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday.

Russia’s original strategic objectives, including toppling the government in Kyiv, “are not achievable militarily”, Milley told journalists after the conclusion of a virtual meeting of dozens of countries that are members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which is also known as the Ramstein group.

There are also hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, which would make Kyiv’s objective of recapturing all territory lost to Moscow’s forces unlikely “in the near term”, Milley said.

“That means fighting is going to continue, it’s going to be bloody, it’s going to be hard. And at some point, both sides will either negotiate a settlement or they’ll come to a military conclusion,” he said.

Milly’s assessment adds to a number of forecasts that the war in Ukraine appears set to drag on, with neither side positioned to win a clear-cut victory and no negotiations currently taking place.

Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev, a key ally of President Vladimir Putin, also said Moscow’s war in Ukraine could continue for decades.

According to comments published by Russia’s RIA news agency on Thursday, Medvedev described an ongoing conflict involving years of fighting with Ukraine, interspersed with multiple years of truces before fighting renewed.

“This conflict will last a very long time, most likely decades,” the RIA news agency cited Medvedev as saying during a visit to Vietnam.

“As long as there is such a power in place [in Kyiv], there will be, say, three years of truce, two years of conflict, and everything will be repeated,” said Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Putin’s powerful Security Council.

Known for regularly making hardline comments on Ukraine and those considered Moscow’s enemies, Medvedev said earlier this year that a Russian defeat could trigger a nuclear war.

Tensions between Moscow and Washington continues to grow as the US spearheads the push for international support and military aid for Ukraine, including coordinating arms supplies from dozens of countries. In an apparent policy U-turn, the US last week announced it would support giving Ukraine advanced US-made F-16 warplanes.

In total, Ukraine’s supporters have provided nearly $65bn in security assistance to the country, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the press conference on Thursday.

On Thursday, Kyiv’s supporters “discussed plans for training Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation fighter aircraft, including the F-16,” Austin said, speaking alongside Milley, noting that “planning and executing this training will be a significant undertaking”.

Austin said the Dutch and Danish defence ministers are working with the US on jet fighter training for Ukraine and that Norway, Belgium, Portugal and Poland have already offered to contribute to the initiative.

In addition, he said the allies would set up a fund so other nations could contribute to the overall effort.

Commenting on the F-16 fighters, Milley cautioned that they were not going to be “the magic weapon”.

(Al Jazeera)

“There are no magic weapons” – not the F-16s or other weapons, he said, noting that 10 F-16s could cost $2bn, including maintenance.

“The Russians have a thousand fourth and fifth-generation fighters, so if you’re going to contest Russia in the air, you’re going to need a substantial amount of fourth and fifth-generation fighters,” he said.

F-16s have a future role as part of Ukraine’s air capabilities but it is “going to take a considerable length of time to build up an air force that’s the size and scope and scale that would be necessary”.

Air defence systems are still the weapons that Ukraine needs most in the broader effort to control the airspace, he said.

The US is poised to announce up to $300m more in military aid for Ukraine comprised mainly of ammunition, two officials told the Reuters news agency. The package is expected to contain more Guided Multiple Launch Rockets (GMLRS) for HIMARS launchers as well as other ammunition.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington DC-based think tank, said that “a long war” is not a Russian goal but a means of adapting to the situation in Ukraine after its plan for a swift victory failed. Russia’s ability to sustain an extended military campaign in Ukraine is not assured, while a “long war” would allow Russia the time and space needed to rebuild its military forces, the institute said.

“Ukrainian counteroffensives will deny the Kremlin a breather to replenish its resources, will further deplete Russia’s offensive potential, and eventually enable Ukrainian forces to expel Russia from Ukraine,” the ISW said.

“The Kremlin’s ‘long war’ narrative reflects Putin’s intent to rebuild Russia’s large-scale warfighting capability. But it is also an information operation aimed to peel the West away from Ukraine. This information operation builds on previous Russian efforts, such as ceasefire narratives and nuclear blackmail,” the ISW added.

 

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Africa must not be a global powers’ battleground – AU

 The African Union has warned that the continent risks becoming a geostrategic battleground for competing big power interests. Its commission chairman, Moussa Faki Mahamat, said Africa must resist the consequences of intensifying global rivalries that he said threatened to create a new Cold War.

China, Russia, and the United States have all sent their top diplomats to Africa this year. Ukraine’s foreign minister is currently on a mission there.

The chairman’s warning was given on the 60th anniversary of the formation of the African Union’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity.

Source: BBC

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FBI Reveals 1980s Plot To Kill Queen Elizabeth II

 Queen Elizabeth II faced a potential assassination threat during a 1983 visit to the US, newly released FBI documents show.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a cache of files relating to the late Queen’s travels to the US, following her death last year.

They show how the FBI, which helped secure the monarch’s safety during her visits, worried about IRA threats.

The assassination threat was made to a police officer in San Francisco.

According to the file, an officer who frequented an Irish pub in San Francisco warned federal agents about a call from a man he had met at the venue.

The officer said the man told him he was seeking revenge for his daughter who “had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet”.

The threat came on 4 February 1983 – about a month ahead of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip’s visit to California.

“He was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth and would do this either by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia when it sails underneath, or would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park,” the document says.

In response to the threat, the Secret Service had planned to “close the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge as the yacht nears”. It is unclear what measures were taken at Yosemite, but the visit went ahead. No details of arrests were published by the FBI.

The 102-page cache was uploaded to the Vault, the FBI’s information website, on Monday, following a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by US media outlets.

Many of the late Queen’s state visits to the US, including the 1983 visit to the West Coast, came during heightened tensions amid the troubles in northern Ireland.

In 1976, the late Queen was in New York City for America’s Bicentennial celebrations.

The documents reveal how a summons was issued to a pilot for flying a small plane over Battery Park with a sign that read “England, Get out of Ireland.”

The files show how the FBI remained vigilant to what it considered to be the real potential of threats to the late Queen.

Her second cousin Lord Mountbatten was killed in an IRA bombing off the coast of County Sligo, Republic of Ireland, in 1979.

Ahead of a personal visit by the late Queen to Kentucky in 1989, an internal FBI memo read “the possibility of threats against the British Monarchy is ever-present from the Irish Republican Army (IRA)”.

It continued that “Boston and New York are requested to remain alert for any threats against Queen Elizabeth II on the part of IRA members and immediately furnish same to Louisville,” in Kentucky.

The late Queen, who owned racehorses, is known to have visited Kentucky several times during her life to enjoy the state’s equestrian highlights, including the Kentucky Derby.

On a state visit in 1991, the late Queen was scheduled to see a Baltimore Orioles baseball game with President George H Bush.

The FBI warned the Secret Service that “Irish groups” were planning protests at the stadium and “an Irish group had reserved a large block of grandstand tickets” to the game.

The bureau told NBC News there might be “additional records” that exist besides the ones released this week, but it did not set out a timetable for their publication.

Source: BBC

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Mississippi family seeks charges after policeman shoots boy, 11

Lawyer says Aderrien Murry, who called police at the request of his mother, was unarmed and following instructions when he was shot in the chest inside his home.

A Mississippi family is demanding a police officer be charged with aggravated assault for shooting an 11-year-old boy after police responded to the child’s own domestic disturbance call at his home.

Aderrien Murry, who called police at the request of his mother, was unarmed and following instructions from Indianola officer Greg Capers when Capers shot him in the chest last Saturday, family lawyer Carlos Moore said.

“We are demanding justice,” Moore said on Thursday during a protest that his law office showed on a livestream video.

“An 11-year-old Black boy in the city of Indianola came within an inch of losing his life,” Moore said at Indianola City Hall. “He had done nothing wrong and everything right.”

Aderrien’s mother, Nakala Murry, said her son is “blessed” to be alive but he does not understand why an officer shot him.

“This was the worst moment in my life and I feel like nobody cares. That’s my child, y’all,” Nakala said as she cried in the lobby of City Hall.

Moore said Nakala asked her son to call police at 4am when the father of one of her other children showed up at her home. Moore said the man was irate and Nakala felt threatened.

“He called the police to come to his mother’s rescue,” Moore said of Aderrien. “He called his grandmother to come to his mother’s rescue. The police came there and escalated the situation.”

Moore said two officers responded and one kicked in the front door before Murry opened it. She told them the intruder had left the home but three children were inside, the lawyer added.

According to Moore, Murry told him Capers yelled into the home and said anyone inside should come out with their hands up. Moore said Aderrien walked into the living room with nothing in his hands, and Capers shot him in the chest.

Indianola City Attorney Kimberly Merchant confirmed to The Enterprise-Tocsin newspaper in Indianola that Capers is the officer who fired the shot.

Moore called for bodycam video to be released and objected to Capers being placed on paid leave pending the investigation.

Murry was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for treatment and released on Wednesday, CNN reported. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation announced it is probing the shooting.

The incident is the latest in a string of police shootings of unarmed African Americans. In April, officers responded to a domestic violence call at the wrong house and killed a 52-year-old man in New Mexico.

Breonna Taylor was killed in 2020 during a botched police raid in Louisville, Kentucky.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Mozambique proposes pay cut for top officials

 The Mozambican cabinet has approved a bill proposing pay cuts for ministers, deputy ministers, state secretaries and MPs as the government grapples with a rising wage bill.

Finance and Economy Minister Max Tonela on Thursday said the proposal was also seeking to address concerns over provincial assemblies members’ salaries, which he said contradicted the principles of fair pay.

Mr Tonela said some of their salaries were significantly higher than those paid to other executives and specialised professionals.

He did not indicate the amount of the proposed cuts.

The pay cuts will not be applicable to the public servants whose salary was adjusted under the Unified Pay Scale (TSU) approved this year.

The move comes nearly two weeks after the International Monetary Fund highlighted the need for the government to reduce public wage expenditure.

The wage bill will be submitted to parliament for debate before it is passed into law.

Source: BBC

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Storm fells symbolic 400-year-old cotton tree in Sierra Leone

 The tree was a symbol of freedom and had been a national landmark for centuries.

Torrential rains in Sierra Leone’s capital have felled the centuries-old Cotton Tree, a national treasure whose loss has left “a gap” in people’s hearts, President Julius Maada Bio says.

“There is no stronger symbol of our national story than the Cotton Tree, a physical embodiment of where we come from as a country,” Bio told reporters from The Associated Press news agency on Thursday. “Nothing in nature lasts forever, so our challenge is to rekindle, nurture and develop that powerful African spirit it for so long represented.”

The roughly 400-year-old tree, which had stood 70 metres (230 feet) tall and 15 metres (50 feet) wide, has been Sierra Leone’s national symbol for decades.

The Cotton Tree was an important landmark in the West African country, which was founded by formerly enslaved Africans returning from the United States. Locals say when the returnees arrived by boat in the late 1700s, they gathered under its branches to offer prayers in their new home, which they called Freetown.

The tree went on to appear on the country’s banknotes and be celebrated in children’s nursery rhymes. It was also visited by Queen Elizabeth II to mark Sierra Leone’s independence from British colonial rule in 1961.

“It was regarded as a symbol of liberty and freedom by early settlers,” the president wrote on Twitter.

“We have to see what we are going to do to make sure that we keep the history of this tree here,” Bio told the Reuters news agency where it once stood. “I want to have a piece of this history wherever I find myself – at the state house, the museum or city hall.”

While the tree had withstood damage throughout the years, including a lightning strike that has left it scorched, Wednesday’s storm left nothing of the tree but a stump.

Sierra Leone is among the countries most impacted by climate change. In 2017, more than 1,000 people were killed by a landslide due to heavy rains.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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World’s Richest Man, Bernard Arnault Loses $11bn In One Day…

 World’s richest man, Bernard Arnault loses $11bn in one day but is still richer than Tesla CEO Elon Musk by $12bn

The world’s richest man and CEO of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), Bernard Arnault,  lost $11.2 billion in one day, but is still wealthier than Elon Musk.

Musk is the second richest man in the world, with a net worth of £180 billion, $12 billion less than the 74-year-old CEO’s own $192 billion. LVMH, which encompasses brands such as Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & co., and Christian Dior took a 5% hit to its share price on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.

The stock blow is the biggest the company has seen in over a year. Before the stock drop, Arnault’s net worth was $203 billion on Monday — $23 billion above Musk’s.

The LVMH mogul’s net worth soared by $29.5 billion over the course of the last year, which can be attributed to the company’s stock rising by 35% during that time.

As per Bloomberg, the stock’s fall caused the European Luxury sector to be slashed by roughly $30 billion.
Despite the struggle, LVMH’s share price is still up 23% for the year. The MSCI Europe Textiles Apparel & Luxury Goods Index has also risen to 27%, Bloomberg reported.

Following Musk’s Twitter buyout in October 2022, his wealth took a steep drop, and he lost his position as the world’s richest man to Arnault.
The purchase knocked his net worth down to $126 billion from $340 billion.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos currently sits at number three in Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index – a $41 billion gap from Musk.

Source: Peacefmonline

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Iconic Sierra Leone tree to be preserved in a museum

 Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio says parts of the iconic cotton tree that was brought down by a storm in the capital Freetown will now be preserved in a museum. He said the tree, which stood for hundreds of years, wasn’t just a tree, but “a connection between the past, present and the future and we must strive to immortalise it”.

The preservation of the tree will be led by the tourism and cultural affairs ministry, he said, and would serve as a reminder of the country’s shared heritage and history. Mr Bio spoke when he visited the site of the fallen tree in the centre of the city.

Earlier, the president had described the tree “as a great loss for the nation” and said the tree was a symbol of liberty for early settlers. It also appears on Sierra Leone banknotes. The 70m (230 ft)-high cotton tree was said to be the oldest of its kind in the country – a government statement estimated it to be 400 years old.

Just 300m away are the Freedom Steps, climbed by newly arrived freed slaves who offered prayers at the tree before making Freetown their home.

Source: BBC

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