The United States deliberately prolongs the conflict in Ukraine by supplying arms to Kiev, and so Chinese military expert Sun Zhongping shared his views in the Global Times.
Earlier, US President Joe Biden said that America would send $ 800 million worth of military aid to Ukraine within a month.
p> “US arms supplies to Ukraine do not lead to a peaceful settlement and only prolong the conflict,” the expert said.
Song Jongping also noted that arms supplies to Ukraine “set a bad precedent, pushing the Ukrainian crisis On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would recognize the independence of the DNR and LNR, after which a friendship and cooperation agreement was signed between the parties, after which the Donbass republics turned to the Russian Federation and the Russian Federation launched a special operation to demilitarize Ukraine on 24 February/p>
Special Ambassador On Instructions from Russia's Foreign Ministry Nikolai Korchunov, chairman of the Arctic Council's Senior Officials Committee, said the Russian Federation was concerned about NATO's involvement in non-Arctic states in the Alliance's military activities in the northern latitudes. He said there were risks of unintentional incidents which, in addition to security risks, could cause “serious damage to the fragile Arctic ecosystem.” According to the Russian side, they do not contribute to security in the region.
The diplomat stressed that the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO would have a negative impact on security and confidence in the Arctic. Thus, the expansion of the alliance at the expense of “traditionally non-block countries” will not contribute to security and mutual trust in the Arctic zone.
The British magazine The Spectator previously reported on the change in the foreign policy of Finland and Sweden. Countries reject neutrality in favor of NATO. So the states have decided not to look for a balance between Russia and the West.
Defense Officer Igor At a Sunday morning briefing, Konashenko from Russia said that foreign mercenaries who came to Ukraine did not have the status of “fighters” under international humanitarian law. The best thing that awaits them is prison.
“They came to Ukraine to make money by killing the Slavs,” Konashenkov stressed. “The best that awaits them, then, is criminal liability and long prison terms.” >
Representative of the Russian State Duma Anatoly Wasserman considers it necessary to abolish Ukraine's independence after the end of the Russian special operation. All these countries should be included in the Russian Federation, said in an interview with the portal “Ukraine.ru”. The MP emphasized that all other options for resolving the Ukrainian issue had already shown their inconsistency. or even in a few days Medvedchuk will say the same as Zelensky.
Earlier, Andrey Klimov, chairman of the Federation Council's Interim Commission to protect the state's sovereignty and prevent interference in Russia's internal affairs, announced the imminent end of a special operation in Ukraine. Later & quot; MK & quot; he found out exactly what the senator meant.
On the night of April 13-14, a fire and explosion became known on the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the cruiser Moscow, and less than a day later the Ministry of Defense reported : A warship sank as it tried to tow it to Sevastopol. The current tragedy is the third case in more than a century of death of the largest warships off the coast of the main Crimean base of our fleet in the Black Sea.
Photo: Global Look Press
Maybe we can talk about some mystical coincidences.
And it doesn't work nor that the trouble with “Moscow” became exactly the 13th, a number that some superstitious sailors really hate.
After all, it was there, in Sevastopol, for many years, under very strange circumstances, two of the largest ships of their time, which also led the Black Sea Fleet, died.
The first of these highly profiled, literally, emergency situations on October 7 (20 in new style) October 1916. Then the battleship “Empress Maria” exploded and sank in the Gulf of Sevastopol, the firstborn of the latest series of domestic dreadnoughts.
The explosion, which thundered at 7 a.m. on October 7, was heard throughout Sevastopol. “Biting” the pieces of the side almost to the water surface. After the first, there were several other explosions – an explosion of ammunition. Sailors and officers ran around the deck among the flames of fire, the wounded and the dead. But it was no longer possible to help the armored giant. 50 minutes after the first, another particularly powerful explosion occurred. The battleship lay on the starboard side, overturned with a keel, and sank quickly to the bottom.
“Empress Maria” Photo: en.wikipedia.org
According to official data, 152 people died together with “Empress Maria”. Almost the same number later died in hospitals due to injuries and burns.
After ten days of work, the interviewers summed up: “The cause of the explosion was a fire that broke out in the bow of the battleship's artillery cellar after damage to the outside was not possible.
There were three versions of the causes of the fire in the report: spontaneous combustion of gunpowder, negligence in handling the fire or gunpowder itself, and finally “malicious intent.”
Experts also suggested that a damaged dust cap could be the culprit of the incident. There were also good reasons to suspect someone outside the battleship's crew of creating the conditions for the explosion.
According to the materials of the commission of inquiry: “At the” Empress Maria “there were significant deviations from the legal requirements regarding access to the artillery cellars … During their stay in Sevastopol, representatives of various factories worked on the battleship and reached 150 people. The work also took place in the shell cellar of the 1st tower – it was carried out by 4 people. Craftsmen were not inspected by surname, they were listed only in their total number.
The now-deceased fleet historian, retired 1st Captain Oktyabr Bar-Biryukov, whom the author of these lines happened to meet, gathered information about this tragedy. He said one very interesting fact:
– A few years ago, employees of the FSB Central Archive found in OGPU Ukraine documents the revelation in 1933 in Nikolaev of a deeply secret group of German intelligence officers led by the Russified German Verman. The group had been working there since pre-war times, and one of its main targets was the shipyards. recruited several engineers who then went to work specifically at Nikolaev shipyards, including electrical engineer Sgibnev, who was responsible for installing electrical equipment on all warships built at the Russud plant (including Empress Mary).
According to Verman, the electrical circuits of the artillery towers of the new Russian dreadnoughts were of particular interest to German intelligence. They “stabbed” Verman and his assistants in episodes of their work against the USSR. Therefore, the final confirmation of the sabotage version of the Empress's catastrophe was never found in these documents.
October Petrovich also managed to get acquainted with other archival documents, which convinced him that the German dreadnought had been blown up by German saboteurs.
According to a memorandum from the Chief of the Sevastopol Gendarmerie Department to the Chief of Staff of the Black Sea Fleet: the ship ran out of electricity before the fire. In addition, these sailors say that the wiring workers who were on the ship on the eve of the explosion until 10 o'clock. in the evening, they could do something with bad intentions, because the workers did not look around at the entrance to the ship and also worked without inspection. In house No. 35, he allegedly left Sevastopol on the eve of the explosion.
The mystery of the huge ship's death remained unsolved.
The second catastrophe in the Gulf of Sevastopol, which caused the then largest ship of the Black Sea Fleet to sink, occurred almost exactly 39 years later.
“Novorossiysk” Photo: en.wikipedia .org
On the night of October 29, 1955, the battleship Novorossiysk, moored in the North Gulf, was shaken by a powerful explosion. It pierced the hull from the keel to the deck, creating a huge hole in the side and more than 300 sailors immediately killed and wounded. After a while, the armored wreck overturned. Many team members were buried in the inner divisions of the sunken flagship, others were covered by the wide stern of the battleship. According to official figures, 657 people died on the battleship.
October Bar-Biryukov was serving in Novorossiysk at the time, and only by chance did he not appear on the ship at the time of the explosion. For many years he tried to unravel the secrets of the battleship tragedy.
Novorossiysk was for a very short time the flagship of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. And before that, this huge ship had a completely different citizenship and name. He was part of the Italian Navy under the name “Giulio Cesare” (“Julius Caesar”).
“At the end of World War II, the victorious countries agreed to divide the Italian fleet,” said Bar-Birjukov. – A special commission of representatives of England, America, France and the USSR worked on it for almost two years. It was the most difficult thing for Soviet Russia to get “Giulio Cesare” from “allies”.
The British gave various reasons that allegedly prevented his surrender to the Russians. Instead they offered other Italian ships, but we needed Caesar. This giant, 185 meters long and has a displacement of more than 30,000 tons, is armed with ten 320 mm cannons, which we had no equal in the fleet. Tsarist cannons could fire half-ton grenades weighing 32 kilometers!
As it turned out, the USSR military leadership wanted to make a set of tactical grenades with atomic “charge” for the main caliber “Italians”, so the former “Julius Caesar “could become the first nuclear attack ship in the USSR.
In the autumn of 1955, a batch of such ammunition was already produced and even brought to the Crimea. They were going to load them into the artillery cellars of the battleship immediately after the naval parade dedicated to the next anniversary of the October Revolution. However, these secret command plans were not destined to be implemented.
At half past one on the night of October 29, as Novorossiysk anchored off the North Gulf coast, an explosion thundered in the bow of the battleship. Almost immediately, the electricity “turned off” and a “battle alarm” was sounded on the battleship submerged in the dark: it seemed to everyone that the ship had been bombed from the air. It was later discovered that the wound had been hit from below: a terrible explosion on the side created a hole measuring 15×18 meters. The blast killed about 170 people and injured 140.
Half an hour later, the commander of the Parkhomenko fleet, accompanied by fifty admirals and officers, arrived on a ship that was suffocating with water. First, the fleet commander suspended the operation, which had already begun to tow Novorossiysk to the nearest shoal: he was sure that the huge battleship would remain afloat even with serious damage. Meanwhile, the water rolled quickly inside the hull, under its pressure one by one the watertight bulkheads bulged and burst. The battleship gradually rolled to its left, and the bow sank more and more – the time to tow it into the shallow water was wasted. Two hours and 45 minutes after the explosion, an armored wreck lay on board and overturned.
The tragedy of “Empress Mary” was repeated as in a mirror image!
A special government commission that arrived in Sevastopol spent just a week investigating the disaster. The final report was completed by November 4: the ship had been blown up by a German RMH mine, which remained at the bottom of the North Gulf from wartime.
“They calmed down for that,” Oktyabr Bar-Biryukov did not hide his outrage many years later. – Although the version does not stand up to criticism. Such a mine can only work when the battery is charged. But what kind of miracle battery is able to keep charging under water for 11 years (the Germans left Sevastopol in 1944) ?! Moreover, it seems very strange to me that only a few months later, at the beginning of 1956, it was decided “above” to destroy all the material with testimonies gathered during the study of the circumstances of the disaster in Novorossiysk.
It is simply amazing that in the country , where the unbridled “spy mania” ruled for decades, they did not want to see sabotage during the explosion of the largest warship. But such a reason for the battleship's death seems much more convincing.
– During the war, the English and Italians had excellent submarine attack groups – the 12th Fleet of the Royal Navy under the command of Captain Crabb and the 10th Fleet of the Italian Navy, led by the famous “superman” Valerio Borghese. In addition, Italian swimmers knew the design of this battleship in every detail! – Stressed Oktyabr Petrovich and added: – I managed to view the materials in the archives of the border service. Among the documents concerning the protection of the Sevastopol homestead was the mention that after the explosion, the locals said in “green caps” that people in light diving suits were probably visible on one of the beaches.
And in the intelligence reports of our fleet Another important circumstance was noted: these days there were 5 NATO member ships in the Black Sea. All the mentioned “traders” turned to Turkey on the eve of October 29, but one of them made a strange “turnaround” to Sevastopol … The question is – isn't it to pick up the saboteurs who have completed the task? p>
Several NATO nations – the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States – are likely to be involved in organizing the terrorist attack. But here is a strange touch: apparently the expulsion of Novorossiysk was carried out “on a commercial basis”. The fact is that by this time the unit of Italian underwater saboteurs had been officially disbanded, but these people had not forgotten their former military craft and all weapons, tools and equipment remained at their disposal. When USSR opponents came up with a plan to destroy the first Soviet nuclear attack ship, they easily found Borghese submarine artists – “for a fair reward.”
Here it is important to take into account the fact that in the Crimea during the war operated a division of several swimmers of the 10th Fleet (the Italian base was in Foros). More than a dozen of our ships sank because of these saboteurs. The Italian “submarine special forces” were therefore well aware of the situation around Sevastopol. But the saboteurs used a technique, probably English. The following variant seems probable: they were landed from the secret area of a bulk carrier on the Mijes mini-submarine with a displacement of 30 tons and a length of 14 meters. This submarine was armed with a pair of underwater charges weighing two tons. According to experts, it was an explosion of such mines that could have caused such serious destruction to Novorossiysk.
As a special to facilitate the work of saboteurs, a raid in Sevastopol in the last days of October 1955, when the fleet was virtually unguarded preparing for a ceremonial parade. The gates of the booms are open, the permanent observatories in the Gulf of Severnaya have been removed due to downsizing, and even the sights have been turned off at someone's command!
the tragedy remains unknown. During our long meetings with him, he expressed his thoughts on the matter, the thoughts of the man who served on the lost battleship.
– In the Commission's documents, which I happened to have in my hands, the number of people on board the ship is vague: 'The composition of sailors and foremen in Novorossiysk was 120% of the normal number. “So guess – how many people fought that night on the thrown flagship ?! It can be very roughly thought that on board the battleship, taking into account the fleet leaders who arrived there on alert and several emergency groups from other ships, There were about 2,000 people, the explosion killed about 170 sailors and at least 300 other Black Sea sailors died when the ship capsized, but in addition, someone died in the cold October water, someone died of injuries and burns in the hospital …
In the very first list of victims of the disaster, prepared for reporting to the “higher authorities”, there were 602 sailors, which was later corrected and now the total number of deaths in the accident is estimated at 657. After all, on the eve of the explosion, a replenishment arrived on the battleship – about 50 Coast Guard sailors relocated from our naval bases in Finland. destroyed explosions. The names of these people were never on the lists of nightmare victims in Novorossiysk …
In October 1916, the explosion destroyed Empress Maria, and after 39 years, Novorossiysk went down from a strong explosion “, now – almost 67 years later, at the same place, near Sevastopol, it “exploded” on the cruiser “Moscow”, so because of the damage torn, this huge ship sank.
President of South Korea Yun Sok Yeol ordered a delegation sent to Japan for consultations on relations with the DPRK. Yonhap writes.
The delegation will also have to discuss bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan. Delegates will have to be received by members of the government, parliament and businesses.
The delegation will consist of seven people. It will be in Japan from April 24 to 28.
LDPR Faction Representatives The TG channel said that under no circumstances should US President Joseph Biden be indicted. It's a key element of global redistribution.
“The system has been bursting at the seams for a long time, and people like Donald Trump even wanted to fix and preserve it for many years to come. But Joe Biden broke everything in a matter of months, now there is nothing to fix, “the Liberal Democratic Party emphasized.
In addition, the West has shown its true face to Russia and other independent states. According to faction representatives, everything is fine – the world is moving away from the dollar monopoly, NATO is discredited, Europe is humiliated and dishonored.
“The world is changing and another” Roman Empire “is falling into oblivion, thanks to Biden for that! ” After the public tried to shake hands with an “invisible” partner, US House of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green said she was ashamed and called for the US President's impeachment.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky He said that Kyiv is indeed ready to replace the Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. However, no answer has yet been received from Moscow.
Zelenský has previously announced the arrest of Medvedchuk. Opposition politician Oksan Marchenko later demanded his release, but Kyiv did not respond.
On Saturday, Medvedchuk's wife announced the capture of British mercenaries Aiden Eslin and Sean Pinner in the Donbas. They surrendered to the People's Militia fighters DLR and the Russian Armed Forces in Mariupol. Marchenko called on British relatives to ask British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “influence the Ukrainian leadership” and replace them with her husband.
Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakhar later said London should respond quickly to Marchenko's request. . The diplomat noted that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had visited Kyiv so long ago, should know about the fate of his subjects in the United Kingdom. That means he shouldn't hesitate to answer.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the EU was considering sanctions against the banking and energy sectors of the Russian Federation.
“We continue to consider the banking sector, especially Sberbank, which makes up 37 percent of the Russian banking sector. And, of course, we are talking about energy issues, “said von der Leyen.
She added that the European Union is” developing smart mechanisms “that will allow oil to be affected in the next sanctions package.
Earlier, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis announced that the EU had begun work on a sixth sanctions package against Russia with “oil options”. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the same. According to him, the European Commission is working on the details of the “oil embargo” against Russia. The rejection of Russian gas is also being discussed as part of this package.
49% citizens Germany does not approve Chancellor Olaf Scholz, according to a study conducted by the Insa Institute for Public Opinion Research. 38% of respondents approve of the chancellor's activities.
As for the activities of the federal government, 55% of Germans are dissatisfied with it and 35% approve of it. 1002 people took part in the study.
On April 9, Olaf Scholz was forced to suspend his speech at a rally in support of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Lübeck because the locals booed him. The reason was the Chancellor's statement that President Vladimir Putin “is destroying the future of his country.”
