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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been accused of a "flagrant abuse of intelligence" after he revealed that British troops are helping the Ukrainian military launch long-range Storm Shadow missiles on Russian positions. Tobias Ellwood, a senior Conservative lawmaker and the former head of the UK's Defense Select Committee, said Berlin endangers the lives of British troops in Ukraine, the Telegraph reported on Thursday. "This is a flagrant abuse of intelligence deliberately designed to distract from Germany's reluctance to arm Ukraine with its own long-range missile system. This will no doubt be used by Russia to racket up the escalator ladder."

The foreign ministers of Britain and Poland appealed on Thursday to the U.S. Congress and personally to the House speaker to take the “epoch-making” decision and approve the $60 billion in aid for Ukraine. Britain’s David Cameron and Poland’s Radek Sikorski stressed that approving aid for Ukraine as it fights a war against Russia’s aggression is a matter of U.S. credibility among its allies in NATO and the world. “This is our joint appeal to the U.S. House of Representatives and personally to Speaker Mike Johnson to submit the Ukraine aid package to a vote,” Sikorski told a news conference

Donald Trump's suggestion the US would not protect Nato allies failing to spend enough on defence "undermines all of our security", the Western military alliance's chief has said. Jens Stoltenberg also suggested it put US and European troops at greater risk. The Republican said he had told allies he would "encourage" Russia to attack any Nato member that failed to meet the alliance's target of 2% of their GDP. Members of Nato commit to defend any nation in the bloc that gets attacked. President Joe Biden called Mr Trump's comments "appalling and dangerous", suggesting his predecessor intended to give Russian...

Army members have been told that they "must be prepared" for the possibility of being deployed to Ukraine to fight in the war against Russia. Warrant Officer Paul Carney issued the warning six months on from Vladimir Putin's invasion of the country in February, saying that British troops “must be prepared for new realities” as the UK military was now “shaping itself to meet the threat from Russia”. WO1 Carney, the Army’s highest-ranking Warrant Officer, instructed soldiers to check that they were physically fit enough for operations, as well as taking the time to have conversations with family members, The...

The Kremlin has threatened to strike British military targets in retaliation for the UK's support of Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin's invasion stretches into its 63rd day. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that Moscow could target territory of Nato countries which have been supplying arms to Kyiv, to defend itself from Vladimir Putin's forces. Britain has been an outspoken ally of Ukraine, and has supplied weapons including anti-tank weapons and Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. On Tuesday a defence minister said the UK supports Ukraine's right to strike Russian territory using Western supplied weapons - a line which the Kremlin said...

As Russia is trying to cut off the flow of information in Ukraine by attacking its communications infrastructure, the British news outlet BBC is revisiting a broadcasting tactic popularized during World War II: shortwave radio. The BBC said this week that it would use radio frequencies that can travel for long distances and be accessible on portable radios to broadcast its World Service news in English for four hours a day in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and in parts of Russia. “It’s often said truth is the first casualty of war,” Tim Davie, director-general of the BBC, said in a...

The United Kingdom will not send soldiers to wage war upon Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday. Appearing in Tapa, Estonia alongside NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and Estonian PM Kaja Kallas, Boris Johnson said that while the past week had brought with it “scenes we hoped we would never see again” in Europe, he would not send British forces into the fray in Ukraine.

A widely shared article on social media inaccurately claims Canada is the source of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak in China.Zero Hedge, a blog with a track record of publishing false information, said in a Jan. 26 story that the coronavirus is part of a Chinese plot to develop a bioweapon. The article was republished from a website called Great Game India."Last year a mysterious shipment was caught smuggling Coronavirus from Canada. It was traced to Chinese agents working at a Canadian lab," the story reads. "Subsequent investigation by GreatGameIndia linked the agents to Chinese Biological Warfare Program from where...

The giant Russian energy company, Gazprom, which controls the world's largest reserves of natural gas, has issued a stark warning to the European Union saying it must decide if it wants to continue receiving supplies of Russian gas.Speaking in an interview for the BBC's Newsnight programme, Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev warned that Europe was now at a crossroads. "Only three countries can be suppliers of pipeline gas in the long-term - Russia, Iran and Qatar. So there is no other choice than to deal with these suppliers," he said. "Europe should decide how to handle this situation… and if...

Gun manufacturing in the Pakistan boondocks. In the clip below you'll see an amazing 'industry' in Pakistan turning out 1000 weapons a day and have done so for seventy years. That is over 25 million firearms...and we think they can be subdued...maybe after killing them all. Mr. Obama has a tall job in front of him, espescially if he believes that he can overcome Islam and their arms to achieve their end... Have a look...

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Russia joins the war in Afghanistan By M K Bhadrakumar Jun 25, 2008 Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union's nine-year adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the implications for regional security could be far-reaching.

The United States has invited India to appoint military officers to liaison posts in the U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, its largest and most critical defense set-up mandated to control strategic nuclear assets, space and missile defense and global deterrence against weapons of mass destruction, India's Financial Express newspaper reported Tuesday. STRATCOM, whose area of operation spans the globe, controls all U.S. nuclear delivery platforms, including ballistic missile submarines, B-52 strategic bombers, Minuteman-III intercontinental ballistic missiles and Tomahawk land attack systems. Having an Indian liaison officer on board will allow a more efficient link between Stratcom centers and India's relatively...

India and China are locked in a bitter struggle for Pan-Asian leadership in South, Southeast and Central Asia. Three regional economic and security organizations—South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—symbolize their jostling for power. Of these, SAARC is symbolically significant with little political or economic substance. ASEAN combines Southeast Asia’s economic concerns with its security needs, while the SCO primarily remains a security organization dominated by Beijing’s interests in Central Asia. These organizations, however, articulate multilateral concerns, which are greatly shaped by the competing interests of Beijing...

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Uzbekistan has told NATO allies they can no longer use its territory or airspace to support peacekeeping missions in neighboring Afghanistan - an apparent retaliatory move against a West critical of the former Soviet republic's human rights record, alliance officials said Wednesday. Uzbekistan's shift away from once-warm relations with the West has been matched by closer ties with Russia, ever wary of Western influence in its former Soviet satellites. The two countries this month signed a far-reaching treaty opening the way for a Russian military deployment in the Central Asian nation. The NATO officials said, however, that...

MOSCOW – Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say. The group, which started in 2001 with limited goals of promoting cooperation in former Soviet Central Asia, has evolved rapidly toward a regional security bloc and could soon induct new members such as India, Pakistan, and Iran. One initiative that core members Russia and China agree on, experts say, is to squeeze US influence - which peaked after 9/11 - out of the SCO's neighborhood. "Four years...

<p>MOSCOW - In the early 19th Century, czarist Russia and the British Empire shadowboxed over Central Asia in an exercise of diplomatic brinkmanship that historians would later dub the "Great Game." The United States insists it has no designs on replaying that game.</p>

ALMATY, Kazakhstan - When Sergei Pashevich looks at the map of Central Asia, he sees a chessboard on which a replay of the Great Game is unfolding, with oil, trade and the war on terrorism as the big global issues. The Great Game, a term invented to define the imperial rivalries and ambitions of 19th-century Russia and Britain, now applies, in Pashevich's view, to a new, post-9/11 struggle for influence that is pitting Russia and China against the United States. "Right now the whole Central Asian region is a field for geopolitical games," he says. [SNIP - see article for...

India and Iran sign $40b LNG deal* Delhi will import 7.5m tonnes LNG a year starting 2009 and running for 25 years NEW DELHI: India has signed a $40 billion deal with Iran to import liquefied natural gas and join in developing three Iranian oilfields. A joint statement said India would import 7.5 million tonnes a year (tpy) of LNG starting 2009 and running for 25 years. “Every last detail has been settled, price too,” said Indian Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar after talks with his Iranian counterpart, Bijan Zanganeh, on Friday. An Indian government official put the price tag...

Date: 11/22/2004 16:31:35 China Economic Net China and India wrestling for Iran's oil Iran Expert As the fight between China and Japan and that between China and Vietnam for petroleum is still pending, India, a future big oil consumer, is competing with China for oil supply from the Middle East, especially Iran, which is beyond the control of the U.S. Once India, a major Asian country, gets into the period of fast growth in investment as China did, the world's oil sector will face the most formidable test in the next stage. As a future big oil consumer, India clearly...