The World Blog by humble servant.

he US and EU have reached “a broad consensus on the need to increase pressure on the Kremlin” through the deployment of more sanctions, the Italian government announced on Tuesday, adding that the allies had also agreed on the need to “increase the international isolation of Moscow” during a virtual meeting between the US and heads of European nations regarding the latest phase of the war in Ukraine. “We will increase our sanctions against Russia again,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed in a tweet. It’s not clear exactly what sanctions are planned, though the energy industry is anticipated to be the most likely target. The conference participants made a point of reaffirming their “common commitment to diversify energy sources by reducing in this way the dependence on Russian supplies,” according to the Italian press release. Russia has already been cut off by most western companies, from tech platforms to fast food outlets, but oil and gas sales to Euro...

The Pentagon said US allies have helped bolster Ukraine’s fleet of fighter aircraft by donating spare parts needed to make more of the jets operable as fighting with Russia heats up in the country’s Donbass region. While Washington hasn’t been able to provide some of the Soviet-type weaponry that Kiev has requested, countries that have compatible gear in their inventories have stepped up to help, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday. In recent days, such aid has included fighter jet parts. “They have received support to get some of their fixed-wing aircraft more operable again,” Kirby said. “Look, the proof’s in the pudding there. They right now have available to them more fixed-wing fighter aircraft than they did two weeks ago. That’s not by accident. That’s because other nations who have experience with those kinds of aircraft have been able to help them get more aircraft up and running.” Kirby didn’t identify the countries involved in the parts shipments; nor ...

The prospects of a nuclear conflict breaking out are "unthinkable," Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said during a media briefing on Tuesday. A reporter had asked the official whether the UN had been making “any preparations” in the wake of alleged “threats” to use chemical and nuclear weapons amid the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The reporter did not elaborate who exactly had purportedly voiced the "threats." Dujarric, however, firmly brushed off prospects of the situation deteriorating into a nuclear war. “I have nothing to share with you on that. The mere thought of a nuclear conflict is unthinkable. It goes without saying that use of any kind of chemical or biological weapons would be atrocious and would go against international law,” Dujarric stated. The topic of nuclear weapons use was brought up by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with CNN on Friday. Zelensky alleged that Russia may use t...

US President Joe Biden admitted on Tuesday that Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns were the primary cause of runaway inflation, but still blamed his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for high gas prices at home. Biden’s domestic popularity has suffered amid the worst inflation since 1981. The White House has tried to blame the inflation on Russia’s military operation in Ukraine for the past six weeks, insisting on the phrase “Putin price hike” to describe the skyrocketing prices at the pump. Biden dutifully repeated the talking point in a speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday, but then “demoted” Russia as the principal culprit. There were “two reasons” for the high prices, Biden said. “The first was Covid. Because of the pandemic, we had disruptions in our supply of important materials, so prices went up.” He followed that up by attempting to explain the supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic lockdowns back in 2020. “And the second big reason for inflation is Vladimir Putin, not ...

arner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, is shutting down marketing for the network’s new streaming service, CNN+, after a lukewarm public reception, five inside sources told Axios on Tuesday. CNN’s long-time CFO has also been let go, signaling the network’s financial issues go beyond the apparent failure of its subscription streaming service. CFO Brad Ferrer has been laid off and replaced with Neil Chugani, the former CFO for streaming and international at Discovery. The move is part of a “broader finance team restructuring,” the sources said, adding that the occupants of other high-level posts at WarnerMedia are likely to get the ax as Discovery, which merged with WarnerMedia earlier this month, places its own people in charge. CNN executives themselves apparently believe the launch was successful, the sources say, but Discovery disagrees. The platform reportedly has just 150,000 subscribers, with a mere 10,000 tuning in on a daily basis – embarrassingly low numbers given the $300 mi...

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has asked state legislators to review a law that lets the Walt Disney World resort to act as a type of local government. The news was confirmed by his office in an official declaration on Monday morning. Without naming Disney explicitly, the declaration submitted to legislators mentions “independent special districts… established prior to November 5, 1968” and notes that Florida’s constitution, revised in 1968, “prohibits special laws granting privileges to private corporations,” but that its earlier incarnation contained no such prohibition. Reedy Creek Improvement District was developed by means of a private-public partnership launched in 1967 between the Walt Disney Company and the State of Florida. The partnership conferred to Disney the same authority and responsibilities as a “county government” to develop the nearly 40-square-mile fiefdom of “largely uninhabited pasture and swamp land” ten miles or more from the nearest power and water lines, a...

Americans to train Ukrainian troops Ukrainian instructors will travel to third country to receive training on American tools, such as howitzers and radar -Then they send some diversity coaches.GET THIS. TO SOME bigots. Let see. hate negros or jews. anti semite or anti blackmite .WE HATE THEM all . what idiot and clowns who make clown look genius johnnie ellington @e7johnny · 5m How IRONIC they send all these weapon,.And the dumb nazi don't know how use them. What BELLIGERENT ILLITERATES. damn bigot. This is about right from crazy joe the genocide enabler. THERE all nuts.SEND weapons. johnnie ellington @e7johnny · 5m EVEN THOUGH we don't know how to use them.WHO more stupid the sender or the dummies.Birds of a feather flock together And while there they will train them on diversity and 3rd gender and abortion and sin.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing political pushback after using the occasion of his apology to Parliament for violating Covid-19 lockdown rules to campaign for increased military aid to Ukraine. Speaking at the House of Commons on Tuesday, Johnson briefly apologized for holding a June 2020 birthday party when the rest of Britons were locked down – a violation that he blamed on his ignorance of the pandemic rules – then quickly transitioned by linking his regret over the incident to the Ukraine crisis. He called for boosting aid to help Kiev repel the offensive ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February. “It is precisely because I know that so many people are angry and disappointed that I feel an even greater sense of obligation to deliver on the priorities of the British people and to respond in the best traditions of our country to Putin’s barbaric onslaught against Ukraine,” the PM said. Johnson noted that he was the first G7 leader to visit Kiev since the c...

Hundreds of Ukrainians in the UK on seasonal visas have ended up working on farms they describe as “akin to modern-day slavery,” the Guardian, which spoke to multiple people who had escaped from such farms, reported on Tuesday. A Ukrainian worker who escaped one of the farms described feeling like a “hostage in the UK,” unable to go home because of the war but forced to do menial labor for a living despite having two university degrees. She and her boyfriend had worked on a cherry farm where laborers were not even allowed gloves, causing extreme damage to their hands and skin. “Nobody cares what happens to seasonal workers. I thought our rights would be well protected in the UK but this has not happened. Working on the farm is probably one of the worst experiences and the worst treatment of my life,” the woman said, adding that the farm management set “unachievable targets” and when workers tried to protest, suspended them for a week. “I will never go to work on any of the farms ag...

Russia’s decision to change the payment mechanism for natural gas exports to its domestic currency is “obvious and understandable” in light of Western sanctions, which have frozen half of Russia’s foreign assets, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with India Today on Tuesday. According to Russia’s top diplomat, Western buyers will no longer be able to pay for gas using Gazprom’s bank accounts abroad, which can be easily frozen by sanctions. Instead, “they will pay through Gazprombank, an independent institution.” “They will pay the same amount that they owe under existing contracts, but they will pay through a special account that they will have to open in this bank,” Lavrov stated. He explained that, while buyers will still make their payments in their currency of choice, Gazprombank will convert the payments into rubles, enabling Russian gas provider Gazprom to receive the amount owed in the national currency without the threat that these funds could become subjec...

Military cybersecurity games, dubbed Locked Shields, kicked off in Tallinn, Estonia on Tuesday. The annual exercise is staged by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE), a cyber organization accredited by the US-led military alliance. “Locked Shields is an opportunity for a multinational team of both NATO and national experts to work together and learn how to collaborate with each other, providing them with an opportunity to realistically test their skills in a safe environment.” chief of the NATO Cyber Security Centre at the NCI Agency, Ian West, explained. The exercise is the world’s largest and most complex ‘live-fire’ cyber-defense event, according to its organizers. Participants in the event will hone their skills in “reporting incidents and mitigating them in an effort to defend their fictional national civilian and military IT systems and critical infrastructure.” The three-day drills are expected to bring together some 2,000 cyber security specialists...

Ambassadors of Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and informed that a number of their diplomats had been declared personae non gratae. The move is Moscow’s response to their earlier decision to expel Russian representatives over the conflict in Ukraine. All four ambassadors received protest notes regarding their government’s recent decision to expel Russian diplomats. Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands were informed of the number of their own diplomats who would have to leave Russia in response, while Luxembourg was let off with a warning. Vienna’s decision to expel four Russian diplomats on April 7 was an “unfriendly act that seriously harms both bilateral relations and the international reputation of Austria,” Moscow told Ambassador Werner Almhofer, adding that four of his employees had until April 24 to leave Russia. Belgium’s Mark Michielsen was likewise given a list of Belgian diplomatic staff who will ha...

Some 5,071 Ukrainians were detained at US borders in March, figures released by the US Customs and Border Protection on Monday show. The spike comes amid the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with the botched illegal entry attempts growing fivefold compared to February figures, when just over 1,100 Ukrainians were detained at the border. A vast majority of the detained Ukrainians were caught by the US border guard at the southwest border. Over the past few years, the flow of Ukrainians detained while attempting to cross into the US each month remained constant, hovering below the 1,000 mark on average, according to official data. The influx of Ukrainians came amid an overall spike in detentions at US sea and air borders. In March, nearly 250,000 people were detained at the borders, compared to some 190,000 in February. A vast majority of the people seeking to get into the US – some 220,000 – were apprehended at the Mexico border. Americans to train Ukrainian tro...

The European Union is planning to provide most of the funds needed for Ukraine’s reconstruction, Bloomberg reported citing sources in the European Commission. According to the publication, the commission is working on a scheme which would support Ukraine on a long-term basis as the bloc expects to be responsible for providing the lion’s share of the funds for the country’s reconstruction. To do that, the EU plans to set up a solidarity trust fund. It will reportedly be based on the post-Covid-19 recovery fund for EU member states and help finance investments and reforms in Ukraine, the sources said. The EC has not unveiled the exact amount of money they plan for the fund to raise, as Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is still ongoing. However, sources say the figure would amount to hundreds of billions of euros over the next several decades. The commission now plans to assess Ukraine’s financial needs, jointly with the World Bank. According to Kiev’s estimations, the destructio...

Russia’s foreign ministry has denied that the UN Secretary General has tried to contact Russian President Vladimir Putin lately, contrary to a statement made by Antonio Guterres’ spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric. On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, published a post in her Telegram channel, citing reports, according to which Dujarric replied in the affirmative when asked if his boss had tried to contact the Russian president following the start of the Kremlin’s military offensive against Ukraine in late February. Zakharova went on to deny there have been any attempts at communication on the part of Guterres. “A short comment: no. The UN secretary general has not tried to get in touch with the Russian president,” Zakharova insisted. She added that “no one has made such overtures, either to Russia’s permanent mission to the UN or directly to the foreign ministry.” Zakharova urged the “representatives of the UN Secretariat to return to reality.” Last Wednes...

The White House has brushed aside concerns over a formal complaint from Russia, reportedly sent to the US after Washington announced its latest $800-million package of weapons supplies to Ukraine. Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared to call the message an “empty threat” during her Monday briefing. Psaki was asked about the warning, in which Moscow reportedly mentioned “unpredictable consequences” of Washington’s continued arming of Ukrainian troops with increasingly sophisticated weapons. The note was reported last week by US media. “We’re not going to comment. I mean, I’m not going to speculate on empty threats or threats by President [Vladimir] Putin or by Russian leadership,” Psaki told journalists. She added that US assistance for Ukraine will continue, as promised by US President Joe Biden. Other US officials made statements in the same vein last week. The letter from Moscow accuses NATO of pressuring Ukraine to abandon negotiations with Russia “in order to continue the bloods...

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected claims that Moscow could resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.Lavrov was questioned on the issue during an extensive interview with India Today in Moscow on Tuesday. When the journalist mentioned that “President Zelensky said that Russia plans to use tactical weapons,” the foreign minister didn’t even let her finish the question. “He says many things,” Lavrov said. He reminded that Russia had never mentioned the use of nuclear weapons as an option during its military operation in the neighboring country, and the Ukrainian leader was the only one to speak about this. “I cannot comment [on] something, which a not very adequate person pronounces,” Lavrov reiterated the notion that “there could be no winners in a nuclear war,” and assured that Russia would only rely on conventional weapons in Ukraine. Zelensky claimed that Moscow could use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine during his interview with CNN on Fri...

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday that the European Union is working on banning Russian oil imports. He added that the country’s President Emmanuel Macron wants such a move. “I hope that in the weeks to come we will convince our European partners to stop importing Russian oil,” Le Maire told French radio station Europe 1, according to Reuters.“We have always said that we want an embargo on coal, and we have done it,” the minister said, adding that stopping oil imports from Russia has become “more necessary than ever” as it “will undermine the financing of the war in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, the French president said on Monday that France doesn’t need Russian gas and will continue to push for sanctions on supplies of it. “Europe depends on Russian gas... but France does not need it,” Macron said in an interview with France 5 TV channel, adding that Paris is working to buy gas from other countries. Earlier in April, Macron urged the European Union to restrict Russia...

Russia will continue to modernize its armed forces, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told a meeting of senior military officials on Tuesday. The Ukraine offensive has confirmed the validity of the strategy that Moscow has chosen in reforming its military, the veteran official insisted. “Consistent implementation of the action plan by the Defense Ministry is aimed at further developing the army and the navy, providing them with advanced military equipment. In addition to that, the adoption of new forms of warfare will allow the troops to better adapt to the conditions of modern military confrontation,” Shoigu said. The minister didn’t elaborate on what forms of warfare he was referring to. The meeting was focused on the ministry’s modernization programs and the development of military infrastructure, particularly in the Arctic region. Shoigu reported progress in the use of orbital assets for military communication. Last month, the Russian military deployed a new advanced communicatio...

Montenegro’s foreign ministry has retracted a tweet where it spoke about severing diplomatic ties with Russia. Podgorica said it had been posted by mistake. On Tuesday night, a list of measures that “state institutions are obliged” to implement against Russia was posted on the official Twitter account of the small Balkan state's foreign ministry. Topping the extensive inventory was the “termination of diplomatic relations.” The severing of ties and other less radical measures were brought up in connection to Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine, which the country has condemned. However, a few hours later, Montenegrin officials removed the tweet, posting an apology to the public “for the gross omission in the previously published statement, where instead of listing the restrictive measures, it was erroneously stated that they came into force.” As per the explanation, the severing of diplomatic ties and other steps were actually mentioned merely as potential responses to R...

Russia considers the “freezing” of its international reserves unprecedented and is going to challenge those decisions, the head of the country’s central bank Elvira Nabiullina said on Monday. “We will prepare all the lawsuits because this is unprecedented on a global scale,” Nabiullina said during a discussion in the State Duma. “Still, our reserves are not arrested, but “frozen.” They cannot be used, but they have not been seized, they are not expropriated, they are not arrested, they are “frozen” and we will, of course, challenge this in all cases,” she stressed. According to the Finance Ministry, Russia has a total of about $640 billion in reserves, of which some $300 billion has been frozen as part of sanctions imposed by the US, the EU, and their allies over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Moscow could not have foreseen such a development, and the freeze essentially constitutes theft, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Some experts have also called t...

Indian importers plan to increase purchases of Russian crude oil and coal at discounted prices, media reports have stated. According to The Economic Times, India’s state-owned oil refiners plan to boost Russian imports, shifting their purchasing strategy from tenders to negotiated deals in order to get larger discounts. “In the coming weeks, Indian importers expect an increase in oil purchases from Russia. Due to the events in Ukraine and the outbreak of Covid-19 in China, India can get more oil at a more attractive price than before,” the publication stated, citing market sources. India has already increased purchases of Russian oil, having bought 15 million barrels of it since late February at a 25% discount. The discounts were offered by Moscow to secure trade contracts, amid the sanctions, placed on Russia by the US and its allies in response to its military operation in Ukraine. India has declined to join the sanctions campaign. Separately, S&P reported that India is looki...

Russia on Tuesday offered another opportunity to surrender for the remaining Ukrainian forces holed up at the Azovstal steel plant in the Black Sea port city of Mariupol. All those present at Azovstal should exit the facility between 14:00 and 16:00 Moscow time without any arms or ammunition on them, the Defense Ministry directed. “Considering the catastrophic situation at the Azovstal metallurgical plant…the Russian Armed Forces again offer militants of nationalist battalions and foreign mercenaries to stop hostilities and lay down their arms starting 12pm Moscow time on April 19, 2022,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “All who lay down their weapons are guaranteed the preservation of life,” the ministry added. The wording of the statement repeated – almost word for word – a similar offer made to the Ukrainian forces on Sunday, which they ended up rejecting. It has been reported that the Kiev authorities strictly forbid their troops from surrendering to Russian...

Contrary to Western expectations, Russia hasn’t run out of precision munitions during the now almost two-month-long conflict in Ukraine. spoke to Yury Borisov, Russian deputy prime minister in charge of defense procurement, about the state of the nation’s defense industry and the impact of Western sanctions. Mr. Borisov, the West has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, measures that the Kremlin has dubbed an overt economic war. Can you tell us how state defense procurements are functioning under this pressure? Yury Borisov: We don’t see any serious threats that could undermine our work on the planned tasks in state defense procurement. Perhaps this is a result of our Western partners keeping us on our toes since 2014. We have had plenty of time to adapt to the continuous sanctions they have been introducing against Russia. We now have import substitution policies in place, and we have accumulated a necessary reserve stock of critically important materials and components. Ther...

Russia's military operation in Ukraine is entering a new phase, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told Indian media. In an interview aired on Tuesday, the chief diplomat said the goals of the offensive in Ukraine had been declared by Moscow from the start, and one of those was the liberation of the entire territory claimed by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as their sovereign territory. “This endeavor will continue. Another stage of this operation is beginning,” he confirmed. “And I am sure this will be a very important moment of this entire special undertaking.” There were reports of intensified hostilities in eastern Ukraine late on Monday. The Russian defense ministry reported on Tuesday morning that its troops had delivered artillery strikes at 1,260 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including 1,214 locations where Ukrainian troops amassed their forces. In addition to the artillery strikes, Russian warplanes targeted 60 military sites in Ukraine, the upd...

Google has denied making any changes to how it shows Russia’s strategic military facilities on its Maps service. The statement came on Tuesday in response to reports claiming that Google Maps had unblurred Russia’s military airfields and navy warships. On Monday, an unverified Ukrainian Twitter account linked to the country’s armed forces posted a handful of satellite images, with the caption reading “Google Maps has opened access to Russia’s military and strategic facilities.” The account in question has been cited several times by the official account of the country’s Defense Ministry. The post features four images, two of which appear to show military airfields with several stationary fighter jets, while the other two depict what looks like navy warships. The tweet claimed that “now everyone can see a variety of Russian launchers, intercontinental ballistic missile silos, command posts and secret ranges with a resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel.” The post had been retweeted...

Dozens of high-profile politicians and activists across Europe have been targeted for surveillance with the infamous Pegasus spyware, according to new research, with the reported victims including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a number of Catalan independence leaders in Spain. Findings published on Monday by Toronto-based cyber research firm Citizen Lab indicate that the Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware program was used to illicitly surveil government institutions in the United Kingdom between 2020 and 2021, among them the prime minister’s office on 10 Downing Street and the the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCO). “When we found the No. 10 case, my jaw dropped,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, told the New Yorker in an interview, while another employee said the lab suspects the breach “included the exfiltration of data.” Israel insists it only ‘legally’ spies on citizensREAD MORE: Israel insists it only ‘legally’ spies on citizens T...

Another Russian village was attacked from Ukraine early on Tuesday, the governor of the southwestern Belgorod Region Vyacheslav Gladkov has claimed. The settlement of Golovchino, located some 10km from the Ukrainian border was targeted, the governor announced on his Telegram channel. “Three people were hurt” in the attack and rushed to hospital, he wrote. One of them has already been discharged after receiving treatment, while two women remain in medical care. The shelling affected some 30 residential buildings in the village, Gladkov added. Windows were smashed, with damage also being delivered to roofs, fences and parked cars. Repair work will begin on Tuesday, the governor said, also promising to swiftly restore electricity and gas supply to the settlement with a population of more than 4,700 people. Several areas in Russia’s border regions of Belgorod and Bryansk have come under Ukrainian fire in the past week. The worst attack took place last Thursday in Klimovo, Bryansk Reg...

Americans of all political stripes largely agree that the world would be a better place without Vladimir Putin in office as Russia’s president, but Republicans are even more sour on their country's own leader. A Morning Consult poll released on Monday revealed that 83% of Americans believe the world would benefit if Putin left office. However, among GOP voters, 84% of respondents said the same of US President Joe Biden. Putin was the leading villain, exceeding Kim Jong-un’s result of 78% of respondents saying the world would be better without him. China’s Xi Jinping was next in line, at 59%, followed by Biden, at 51%. Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman came in at 39% and 37%, respectively. Just 12% of respondents said the world would be a better place without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in office. It’s not that Republicans are bigger fans of Putin than are Americans at large. In fact, 83% of Republicans stated that it would be better if t...

The 735 billionaires who call the US home have watched their wealth surge 62% over the last two years, reaching the shocking figure of $4.7 trillion, according to a report by Oxfam America released on Monday. While the billionaires’ wealth gains show no sign of slowing down, ordinary workers’ earnings have gone up just 10% – meager growth that has been all but cancelled out by hefty increases in the cost of housing, gas, food, and other commodities, with no end in sight to soaring inflation. Many have struggled to rebuild economically after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. A recent ProPublica study found that while the median American family pays a federal income tax rate of 14%, the 25 richest only paid an effective rate of 3.4% from 2014 to 2018. While there are plenty of different reasons the rich may end up paying less, one major cause is that they don’t report a major chunk of their income – something even the Internal Revenue Service was finally forced to admit last year. “We...

The second phase of the Russian offensive in Ukraine and the Donbass has started, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his advisers claimed on Monday evening. Kiev said there were reports of heavy fighting on the Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov fronts, and that Ukrainian troops were holding the line. “We can now confirm that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbass, which they have been preparing for a long time,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram on Monday evening. “A large part of the Russian army is now dedicated to this offensive,” he added. His chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, said earlier that the “second phase of the war” had started in the east, but urged Ukrainians to “believe in our army, it is very strong.” Russian forces are attacking “along almost the entire front line,” said Alexey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. “Fortunately, our military is holding on.” The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on any gr...

The Pentagon intends to provide training to Ukrainian soldiers so they can use the howitzers and radars contained in the latest batch of weapons and equipment President Joe Biden has ordered to be sent to Kiev, the US military said on Monday. The training will reportedly take place in another country. Last week, the US announced it would deliver $800 million worth of weapons to the east European state. In addition to anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, this batch includes armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and tactical radars, for which the Ukrainians would need training. The Pentagon is planning to teach Ukrainian trainers how to use the new weapons sometime in the coming days in an unspecified third country, an anonymous US defense official told reporters on Monday. This way, the Ukrainians would train their colleagues on how to use the US weapons, while Washington would avoid having “boots on the ground” in Ukraine itself. Earlier, the Pentagon revealed that some of the Ukrain...