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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s Environment Minister said Thursday a clandestine oil deal that would have turned a scuba divers’ paradise into a waypoint for Emirati oil headed for Western markets has effectively been blocked.... ...The secret deal would have significantly increased the number of oil tankers docking and unloading in the Israeli resort city of Eilat. It was struck last year between the Europe-Asia Pipeline Company, the Israeli government-owned corporation, and MED-RED Land Bridge, a joint Israeli-Emirati venture, following the historic agreement establishing formal diplomatic ties... ...Senior officials in former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — including his...

Russia has three ways to influence the US. One of them is a nuclear warning strike on a test site in Nevada. You can even use missiles strategically.This proposal was made on the air of the National Course YouTube channel by State Duma deputy from United Russia Yevgeny Fedorov.“This is a training ground where the US military is located , there are no civilians there, and if you warn two or three days in advance, then it’s quite a good action to demonstrate the seriousness of intentions, ”the deputy expressed his opinion.Fedorov noted that Russia can afford such actions and...

Russia again expects the US and EU countries to provide written responses to demands for security guarantees related to NATO's refusal to expand to the east. In particular, this was stated by Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov, who shared his own assessment of the results of his country's dialogue with the United States in an interview with Newsweek. "It must be admitted that the discussions held last week with the United States and NATO have not yet yielded any significant results. We expect written responses from Washington and Brussels to our draft agreements. Based on them, we will make...

Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the United States was in a “new cold war” with Russia. Discussing Russia gathering troops on its border with Ukraine, McCaul said, “I’m seeing tough rhetoric but not a lot of action. I talked to Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman prior to her negotiations that. You know, you have to put things on the table, like sanctions. You have to talk about more arms sales, weapon sales to Ukraine, and this Nord Stream.”

The World Situation In A Nutshell British Intelligence puts out a news release about a Chinese spy in Parliament. A News Release!!! I guess the real problem is that Russia is about to invade Ukraine you read about it every day at least???? John F. Kennedy drew a red line over Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 in territory near the US and Russia is drawing a red line over NATO expansion and offensive capabilities near its territory in 2022... Politics I See The Wagons Circling Is That A Sign Of War! Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, Boeing etc....

Russia has dismantled ransomware crime group REvil at the request of the United States in an operation in which it detained and charged the group's members, the FSB domestic intelligence service said on Friday. The arrests were a rare apparent demonstration of U.S.-Russian collaboration at a time of high tensions between the two over Ukraine. The announcement came as Ukraine was responding to a massive cyber attack that shut down government websites, though there was no indication the incidents were related. read more The United States welcomed the arrests, according to a senior admininstration official, adding "we understand that one...

But the Minsk Agreement is only one element of Putin’s ultimate plan, which American policymakers don’t seem to fully grasp. Quite simply, Putin’s grand strategy is to dominate and implode the West.(...) But already during the pro-Western Russian presidency of Boris Yeltsin, pro-Soviet Russian diplomats led by a former top KGB agent, Yevgeny Primakov, sought to restore Russian pride with a new strategy of “de-Americanization.”

Europe’s largest economy, Germany, is expected to become a net importer of electricity in 2023 for the first time since 2002 due to retiring coal plants and the nuclear phase-out, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. Germany plans to switch off all its remaining nuclear power generators by the end of 2022, while it will also retire a large portion of its coal-fired capacity fleet between 2022 and 2024. Recently, the country has said it would aim to phase out coal by 2030 – eight years ahead of earlier plans. The coal exit for Germany could be more...

As the predictably useless U.S.-Russia security talks in Europe are wrapping up this week, Putin is launching another huge live fire drill on the border of Ukraine. In addition to the 100,000 combat-ready troops that were pre-positioned in the area, Russia deployed additional 3,000 troops, 300 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, ground attack fighter jets, transport and attack helicopters, and other weaponry. The Russian strongman’s answer to President Biden’s naïve pleas to “de-escalate” the crisis in Ukraine is to keep messing with the Americans’ heads (morochit golovu). On Sunday, after the high-level US-Russia meetings kicked off with a two-hour working dinner...

The powerful American nuclear submarine of the Virginia class named USS New Mexico has approached Russia’s territorial waters. USS New Mexico is a powerful US nuclear submarine carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles that has been discovered in northern Norway and is believed to be on its way to Russia’s territorial waters The purpose of the appearance of this nuclear submarine is not clear yet, but analysts say it is related to negotiations between the US and Russia on Ukraine. It is not excluded that Russia will send anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft to “monitor” US nuclear submarines when they approach their territorial waters....

Ukrainian government servers were hit by a "massive cyberattack" overnight that saw government websites taken down, including the homepage for the Foreign Ministry, which temporarily displayed a message warning Ukraine's people to "be afraid and expect the worst." Just hours before the latest digital sabotage, Ukraine's ambassador in Washington told CBS News that her country believed a cyberattack would precede any major military action by Vladimir Putin's forces. There was no claim of responsibility for the cyberattack, but Ukraine has blamed groups with links to the Russian government for similar previous sabotage.

Poland's foreign minister said on Thursday that Europe was at risk of plunging into war as Russia said it was not yet giving up on diplomacy but that military experts were preparing options in case tensions over Ukraine could not be defused. In Washington, the White House said the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine remained high with some 100,000 Russian troops deployed and the United States would make public within 24 hours intelligence suggesting Russia might seek to invent a pretext to justify one. "The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,"...

A distraught father who attacked his best friend when he discovered the man had sexually abused his daughter, then six, will not be charged with murder. Vyacheslav 'Slava' Matrosov, 34, was suspected of stabbing Oleg Sviridov, 32, to death in a forest near the village of Vintai in Russia after making him dig his own grave last year. It came after Matrosov found sickening footage on his friend's mobile phone which appeared to show his daughter being forced by Sviridov to perform a sex act on him. Matrosov originally faced trial for murder but sources close to the case say...

The US has intelligence that Russia is planning a 'false-flag' operation on its own forces in eastern Ukraine to create a pretext for invasion. Officials on Friday also said they believed Russia was mounting a social media disinformation campaign to portray Ukraine as the aggressor. The update, making the prospect of military conflict more immediate, came as Ukrainian government websites were taken offline in a 'massive' cyberattack, talks between Washington and Moscow collapsed and Russia held a combat readiness inspection of their troops. Meanwhile, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia had 'run out of patience' with the West as...

LIVE – Updated at 21:07 White House says feared invasion ‘may result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes, should diplomacy fail to meet their objectives’. vid guardian Guardian Report Link

US officials accused Russia on Friday of planning 'false-flag' attacks to justify invasion of Ukraine Agents trained in urban warfare and sabotage are preparing to hit Russian proxy forces as first step, they said It would mimic the Russian playbook used in 2014 when it annexed the Crimean peninsula Kiev has been on alert since Moscow moved 100,000 troops, missiles and heavy weapons close to its border Meanwhile, Ukrainian websites were hacked with the message 'be afraid and expect the worst' The Kremlin denied it was preparing to launch false-flag attacks, calling the reports 'unfounded' And Russian foreign minister Sergey...

Ukraine was hit by a major cyberattack on the night of Jan. 13-14, crashing many government websites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Veterans Affairs, State Emergency Service, Cabinet of Ministers, Ministry of Energy, and the Ministry of Education and Science. The website of Diia, Ukraine’s e-governance website and app which allows Ukrainians to access their digital documents like passports and driving licenses, was also down on the morning of Jan. 14. The message on the website said it was under maintenance. The Diia app worked normally. The content of the sites was not changed, and no personal...

German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht on Thursday warned against drawing a link between the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, meant to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany, and the differences with Moscow over Ukraine. "We should not drag (Nord Stream 2) into this conflict," Lambrecht told the broadcaster rbb in an interview. "We need to solve this conflict, and we need to solve it in talks - that's the opportunity that we have at the moment, and we should use it rather than draw a link to projects that have no connection to this conflict."

In a report that advocates governments using “psychological operations” against their own population, the Financial Times asserts, with no proof, that Russia and China are responsible for pushing “anti-vax sentiment” and criticism of lockdown measures in the west.The article quotes Mikael Tofvesson, head of the Swedish Navy’s new Psyops division, who says “foreign aggressors” are trying to “sow division by targeting areas of public concern such as crime, Covid vaccinations, the government’s response to the pandemic, and immigration.”“The most important task in psychological defence is to inoculate the population against believing false information,” states the article, which is written by...

Russia on Thursday sharply raised the stakes in its dispute with the West over Ukraine, with a top diplomat refusing to rule out a Russian military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela if tensions with the United States mount. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who led the Russian delegation in Monday’s talks with the U.S. in Geneva, said he could “neither confirm nor exclude” the possibility of Russia sending military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if the talks fail and U.S. pressure on Russia mounts. The Russia-U.S. negotiations in Geneva and a subsequent NATO-Russia meeting failed to narrow the gap on...