В Presidential elections were held in Transnistria in the region. The current head of the unrecognized Transnistrian Republic of Moldova, Vadim Krasnoselsky, won the victory. According to the Central Electoral Commission of the region, it won 79.4% of the vote.
More than 144,000 locals took part in the vote. They chose between two candidates. This is Krasnoselsky and a resident of the village of Gyrtop, Grigoriopol region, Sergei Pynzar. He eventually won 11.8% of the vote. Another 8.8% of ballots were declared invalid. According to the CEC, the final participation was 143,054 people, ie 35.2% of the population of the republic.
The election of the head of the unrecognized republic took place on 12 December. They were seventh in the county. The campaign was marred by a scandal. The fact is that the Moldovan authorities have not allowed 10 Russian election observers into the country. They were sent to Moscow without explanation.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has again threatened to cut off gas transit from Russia to Europe. According to him, this will happen if the western sanctions that will be introduced in the future will put the republic in a state of emergency. In this case, Minsk will have no choice but to respond to these restrictions “ with these tough measures. & # 39; & # 39;
In an interview with the Turkish television and radio company TRT, the Belarusian leader also spoke of the West not recognizing its legitimacy. He called this position a “matter of taste.” However, he does not ask anyone abroad to acknowledge their legitimacy. It is enough that the people who elected him consider him legitimate, writes BelTA.
Lukashenko had previously repeatedly threatened the European Union to stop the transit of Russian gas. In particular, he noted that if the border is closed by Poland, Minsk is ready to block the transit of Russian fuel through the territory of the republic.
Meanwhile, Russian President's press secretary Dmitry Peskov expressed hopes that the threats of the Belarusian leader would not affect Russia's gas contracts with Western countries. A Kremlin spokesman noted that such a question had been asked by President Vladimir Putin. He believed that such statements by Minsk were a response to unprecedented pressure from the West.
Photo: OSCE Parliamentary Assembly from Copenhagen, Denmark – speeches by CEC President Lidia Yermoshina parliamentary observers, Minsk, September 9, 2016 Photo: ru.wikipedia.org
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has replaced the head of the Central Election Commission of the Republic. Lidia Yermoshina, who has headed the committee since 1996, has resigned.
Now Igor Karpenko will take over this post. He was previously the country's education minister. According to BelTA, Vladimir Andreichenko, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus, and Igor Petrishenko, Deputy Prime Minister, recommended him to this position.
Five members of the Belarusian parliament A central commission was also appointed. They are Elena Baldovskaya, Vadim Ipatov, Sergei Kalinovsky, Denis Duk and Alexander Juzhik.
Yermoshin's resignation took place on the eve of the constitutional referendum, which is expected in February 2022. She herself previously expressed the opinion that the optimal time for a referendum on the draft new constitution for Belarus could be December 2021. The vote should be associated with the holding of local elections, which must take place by 18 January 2022, because in this case it will require at least additional costs.
The President of the State Duma Viačeslav Volodin said that the bill on the introduction of QR codes for vaccination or the presence of antibodies against coronavirus in transport will be excluded from consideration.
Photo: pixabay.com transport.
It is clarified that the decision was taken by the Ministry of Transport after consultation with members of the relevant State Duma committee, experts, carriers and public organizations.
This information was confirmed by the Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Transport and Development transport infrastructure Evgeny Moskvichev.
The President of the State Duma Viačeslav Volodin said that the bill on the introduction of QR codes for vaccination or the presence of antibodies against coronavirus in transport will be withdrawn.
“This decision is the result of a dialogue between the State Duma and the government, taking into account the views of the regions and the challenges of the citizens. We will discuss the removal of this law from the agenda at the State Duma Council on Monday, “Volodin added.
German Interior Minister Nancy Feser called for tightening control over the telegram in the fight against hate speech. She stated this in an interview with the media group Funke.
“We must act more decisively against bullying, violence and hatred on the Internet,” the minister said.
Feser recalled that in Germany he had filed two infringement cases against Telegram in order to improve law enforcement on social networks. The messenger operator didn't respond, she remarked.
In Germany, messaging services are not covered by this law because they are intended for personal communication. With the help of a telegram, you can write messages in public groups and channels with thousands of participants, Feather stressed. Such channels are subject to the same regulatory rules as Twitter and Facebook.
“This means that deliberately punished content must be removed within 24 hours, illegal content within seven days,” Feather said.
A military expert explained who was threatened by Donbass. Although it made a lot of noise. For several hours, the operation of ships under the Crimean bridge was blocked, with several dozen accumulated. What could be dangerous for us on this Ukrainian command ship and why the Russian border guard said it posed a threat to navigation, said Captain 1st Reserve Reserve Vladimir Gundarov.
Photo: ru.wikipedia.org George Chernilevsky.
Late on Thursday evening, the Russian Border Guard Service announced that a Ukrainian warship was heading for the Strait of Kerch without any statement of intent and did not respond to requests from Russian border guards and requests for a change of course, it seemed to be in serious conflict. in the Black Sea. And then according to plan: noise in the world media, new sanctions, convictions and accusations of Russia's aggression … But this time it all ended in fiasco. The Ukrainian ship with the proud status of “pilot ship”, just swung at the scandal, silently left home.
“This is an old galosh that, in itself, poses no danger to us from a military point of view,” said Vladimir Gundarov. – But imagine the situation: in Moscow, there is a dense stream of cars on Tverskaya Street. And suddenly a manure cart is trying to cross this street. In this case, it is very dangerous because other normal vehicles can crash into it.
This “Donbass” created roughly the same situation in the Kerch Strait. Civilian merchant ships are constantly flowing through the Kerch Strait. Not only Russian and foreign flags, but also Ukrainian. They go across the Kerch Strait for unloading and loading into the same Ukrainian Mariupol. And in order to be queued for transit through the Kerch Strait, you must submit an application. And this “Donbass” didn't hit every shot, you see, he's so independent he'll go where he wants. And again, it is not clear whether he wanted to pass or not. Anyway, I was moving in that direction.
– The situation of 2018 would be repeated with two Ukrainian artillery boats and a tugboat. Donbass would be blocked in the same way. That means they would stand in his way, take him on board and tow him to our port. At the same time, even without firing, as was the case in 2018, when warning fire was launched on artillery boats from helicopters. The ship's crew would be detained, fined and then released. The ship itself will be returned later.
In fact, this “Donbass” has once been returned. This “old galuska” was originally built as a floating workshop. She burned several times, drowned, surrendered … In March 2014, during the Crimean Spring, her sailors surrendered. The Russian flag was hoisted on the ship. And then, a year later, Russian sailors in tow brought the ship back to the port of Odessa. Only later, in free Ukraine, this wreck began to be called a command ship.
– A command ship is a ship on which there is a march headquarters. For example, a squadron is sent to the sea, and such a ship may have a marching headquarters, communications equipment, or reconnaissance equipment. Although – not a fact. It's hard to say exactly what they had in this “Donbas”.
– Yes, he has no weapons at all. Not a single cannon. Maybe just officer submachine guns and pistols. When I was a cadet and an intern at Sevastopol, I lived on a command ship. It was a former Goebbels yacht, which was handed over to us as a repair after the war. We turned it into a Black Sea Fleet command ship. There was a beautiful Karelian birch deck, everything was decorated with mahogany and bronze, there was even a beautiful sauna. But there were no weapons on such a ship.
– It's hard to explain why it's done. Perhaps due to a lack of intelligence and imagination among Ukrainian elites. I think it's all pure provocation, which was specially prepared for the moment of telephone conversations between Zelenský and Biden. The Ukrainian president needed to show: so, they say, while you are “Mr. Biden”, you are trying to persuade me to move towards the Minsk agreements, at this moment Russia is once again showing its aggressive nature and attacking a defenseless ship
Their “Donbass” is no good. He cannot perform any military functions. So they probably tried to use this “galuska” for provocation. If she blocked the movement of normal ships and ships passing through the Kerch Strait, it is not yet known what could have happened there. She could stop in the middle of the strait, like the barge in the Suez Canal, and block the entire fairway. Well, who needs all this?
– It could, of course, but it would last. But the Ukrainian “Donbass” would certainly sink. So we were basically rescuing a Ukrainian ship from an unintentional sinking.
The latest offshore platform & nbsp; for the Russian Navy (Navy) will be designated for the base of tactical and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Developing in Russia & nbsp; the source told reporters.
The platform will carry a large number of tactical drones and unmanned reconnaissance vehicles.
The platform will be able to accept medium and light helicopters and aircraft. It will be launched from the ship using a pneumatic catapult. The construction can be used in coastal strips and open sea areas.
The source noted that a number of conditions needed to be taken into account in order to secure drone flights. We will have to protect the onboard electronics from the aggressive marine environment. The drones themselves should not be fragile.
passing through southwestern Russia was a bad omen for negotiations to prevent a major war with Ukraine. This is the view expressed by The Guardian.
On board was the Buk-M1, a medium-range anti-aircraft missile system that became famous in 2014 after a missile that shot down a Malaysian airliner and killed all 298 people. If Russia goes to war with Ukraine, it will still have to take a number of steps: install fuel pipelines, open field hospitals and deploy air defense systems, such as Buk, to protect its heavy weapons and front-line soldiers. , according to British authors.
Although Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin negotiated an end to the crisis, Russia was gradually approaching its neighbors' readiness to launch a large-scale ground invasion, according to the authors of the publication. “These data allow us to conclude that, despite negotiations between Biden and Putin, the concentration of Russian troops in areas bordering Ukraine-controlled territory continues,” wrote the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an online research group that used social media, trained. plans and other data that reveal details of the Russian border army.
Putin may still choose not to launch an invasion because he leaves troops at the front as a lever for action. But Russian and Western analysts predict that this build-up of an army – the second this year – heralds a series of future crises in Ukraine as Putin tries to reverse his trajectory to the West.
“Even if Putin gets something … either from the West, serious negotiations or a discussion about guarantees – will that be enough for Putin?” Said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the analytical company R. Politik. “We are witnessing a new geopolitical adventurism emerging from Russia.”
Despite talks between Putin and Biden, the crisis is deepening.
On Thursday, the Russian FSB announced that it had detained a Ukrainian vessel in the Sea of Azov near Crimea for failing to comply with orders. A day later, Russia closed almost 70% of the Sea of Azov. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia and the United States could seek to repeat the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And Putin said the situation in eastern Ukraine “looked like genocide” at a recent meeting, raising fears he might seek an excuse to bring his troops to the country.
Due to the military threat, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a list of demands on Friday to end the crisis. The main one was that NATO “officially distanced itself from the decision of the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 that” Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. “
Putin has spent the last two decades trying to fight NATO enlargement, but Ukraine's possible entry into the military alliance has always provoked deeper emotions, the authors of the publication believe.
The US tried to persuade Russia that Ukraine would not join the alliance in the foreseeable future, but Moscow demanded a more formal statement on Friday. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said there was no reason to start. “NATO's relations with Ukraine will be decided by 30 NATO allies and Ukraine – no one else,” he told a news conference with new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Support for NATO membership has increased significantly in Ukraine in recent years, and for countries on NATO's eastern flank, “Russia's permission to dictate the Alliance's policy towards Ukraine is seen as the first step on the slope towards recognizing Russia's sphere of influence.”
“History shows that promises of neutrality by Ukraine or any other country in the region do not diminish Putin's appetite; rather, they feed them, “wrote Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in an article published by Foreign Affairs on Friday. “The best way to respond to such ultimatums is to ignore them altogether.”
There are doubts as to whether Russia really wants to conclude an agreement. Analysts note that despite Moscow building its forces for several months, Russian diplomats have not prepared any official documents or formulated the country's demands until last week. And the idea of gathering nearly 100,000 troops in close proximity to Ukraine's borders (the United States said Russia could increase that number to 175,000 by the end of January), just because of negotiations with Biden, seemed useless to Western observers.
At the end, the authors of the article come to this conclusion: “The clock is ticking. Putin may back off, but it would be embarrassing to do so without a solid victory. And Russia's demands seem unfeasible to the West: “Putin thinks that if Biden wants to, he can move mountains, he can persuade allies and persuade Kiev [to make concessions],” Stanovaya said. “This problem could make Putin demand the impossible and bet everything will end in war.”
By portal & quot ; Ukraine.ru & # 39 ;, expert-Americanist Aleksey Chernyaev told reporters how long Ukraine can remain interesting for Western countries.
According to him, the project “Kiev & # 39; & # 39; is of interest to Washington if Nezaležnaya can be an instrument of influence in Russia.
“The period of validity … of the Ukrainian source for the Americans as instruments of influence in the post-Soviet space, good and reliable leverage against Russia, is unlimited”, – said Chernyaev.
He added, that states can lose this interest only in the event of the disintegration of Ukraine.
President of the European Council Charles Michel At a meeting in Brussels with former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tichanovska, he said that in 2022 he expects the Belarusian leader to have a “democratically elected president” in the chair of the Belarusian leader. We add that in June 2021 Minsk officially announced its withdrawal from this program.
Meanwhile, Michel announced an EU allocation of another € 15 million to support NGOs and media broadcasting to Belarus from abroad.
The President of the European Council also recalled that EUR 3 billion would be transferred to Belarus following the “democratic transfer of power”.
