The Hungarian minister called Europe "losers" because of anti-Russian sanctions

Finance Minister Mihai Varga said anti-Russian sanctions have weakened Europe and have risen the question of its very survival.

“The sanctions imposed so far have been ineffective and have not received international support. From this point of view, Europe is one of the biggest losers,” the minister said at a conference in Romania.

According to the head of the Ministry of Finance, the EU needed energy supplies from Russia, since the transition to alternative sources requires a lot of time and high costs.
Varga admitted that now the EU may not survive the sanctions.

The Minister also stressed that Hungary is committed to establishing peace in Europe.

BUDAPEST, July 23 - RIA Novosti. Anti-Russian sanctions have not shaken Moscow, and Europe has already lost four governments, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, speaking in the Romanian city of Baile Tusnad.
"The strategy of the West is like a car with flat tires on all four wheels <...> Europe is in trouble - economic and political, four governments have become victims: British, Bulgarian, Italian and Estonian <...> People will face a sharp increase in prices," said he.

At the same time, the prime minister noted, most of the world defiantly did not support Europe.
"China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the Arab world are all aloof from this conflict, they are minding their own business," Orban said.

In his opinion, Europe needs a new strategy in the Ukrainian conflict. And although Hungary should not be under the illusion that it can influence the entire West, it will be a matter of honor and morality for it to state its position, Orban said.
“A new strategy is needed, the goal of which would be peace and the formulation of a good proposal for peace. The task of the EU is not to take sides, but to stand between Russia and Ukraine,” he concluded.
After the start of the Russian military special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, the West stepped up sanctions pressure on Moscow: Russian assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars were frozen, banks were disconnected from the SWIFT system, and many brands left the country. The European Union has already adopted seven packages of sanctions, including an embargo on coal and oil. All this has already turned into problems for the West itself, provoking a sharp increase in inflation and prices for food and gasoline.
Against this background, Orban has repeatedly criticized the European policy of sanctions. According to him, by imposing restrictions on Russian energy, the EU shot itself in the lungs and now its economy is suffocating.
Hungary is trying to avoid negative consequences. She introduced a state of emergency in the energy sector, this week Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto came to Moscow to agree on additional gas supplies. In addition, Budapest opposed the proposal of the European Commission to reduce gas consumption by 15 percent in the EU countries.

BELGRADE, July 23 - RIA Novosti. Analyzes of two Serbian servicemen who were exposed to the 1999 NATO bombings showed that their radioactive uranium content is hundreds of times higher than the norm, lawyer Srjan Aleksic told RIA Novosti. The examination was carried out by a laboratory in Turin.

“I will not delve into medical specifics. But the results are frightening not only for the south of Serbia, Kosovo and Metohija and the ground security zone between them, where our first plaintiff served for 200 days. The following analysis was taken from a woman from Belgrade, and I am afraid that her performance is slightly better, we will file a lawsuit based on the results," he said.

In Italy, a correspondent for the Serbian newspaper Vecherne Novosti contacted the forensic expert.
“The amount of depleted uranium that I found in the tissues of two of your citizens is dramatic. This amount has not yet been detected in any military or civilian in the world. All of the detected metals contain traces of uranium-238, which comes from shells used by NATO during bombings in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, especially in Kosovo and Metohija. Its impact has certainly spread to neighbouring countries, Albania and North Macedonia," the portal quotes Dr. Rita Celli as saying.
According to the publication, under normal conditions, the aluminum content in a litre of blood does not exceed 3.3 micrograms, while the Italian and Serbian military found over 500 micrograms, sometimes up to three thousand per liter. The level of uranium in the civilian population is 0.0053 units, and in those who have been bombed, it reaches up to ten micrograms.

At the beginning of last year, Aleksic filed five lawsuits against NATO against victims of the use of depleted uranium munitions in Serbian courts, and two more in January of this year. The Serbian lawyer is assisted by his Italian colleague Angelo Fiore Tartaglia, who has successfully represented Italian military personnel in similar cases. The first session of the High Court in Belgrade is expected on 16 October.
The NATO Liaison Office in Serbia, in response to the lawsuit, said that it has full immunity under the agreements of 2005 and 2006. But, according to Aleksic and Tartaglia, this is a war crime, so there can be no judicial immunity.

In 1999, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the army and police of Serbia led to the fact that the North Atlantic Alliance began bombing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at that time consisting of Serbia and Montenegro). The military operation took place without the approval of the UN Security Council and on the basis of Western allegations that the Yugoslav authorities were carrying out ethnic cleansing and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo. Airstrikes continued from March 24 to June 10, when more than two and a half thousand people were killed, including 87 children.
In 2000, a court in Belgrade found US General Wesley Clark and then-NATO Secretary General Javier Solana guilty of war crimes. But after the overthrow of President Slobodan Milosevic, the new authorities of Yugoslavia succeeded in overturning the verdict.
According to Serbian media, now the republic ranks first in Europe in terms of the number of cancer cases - 40,000 new cases are detected annually, about 30,000 people die from oncological diseases.

More bear news from Russia:

In Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, residents removed a bear cub from a tree.

People called emergency cervices, but while they were getting there, they decided to rescue the cub on their own - they shook the tree. The little bear fell into a blanket stretched under a tree and ran away.

🇩🇪🇷🇺 Flying into big politics: Twitter blocked the account of the Russian embassy

The account of the Russian embassy in Berlin was blocked for a tweet with a quote from an article by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"The traces that the forces engaged in the special military operation have discovered in military-biological laboratories in the liberated territories of Donbass and adjacent areas clearly indicate direct violations of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC)," Lavrov was quoted by the diplomatic department.

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commented on the situation in her Telegram channel: "Apparently, the torch of the Statue of Liberty in New York was blown out."

◾11 NATO Countries Take Part In Military Exercises On Black Sea

◾Bulgaria’s annual military exercise “Breeze 2022” kicked off in the Black Sea, near the city of Burgas.

Naval forces from Bulgaria, Albania, the US, Greece, Belgium, Italy, France, Poland, Romania, Latvia, and Turkey are participating in the exercises.

And there are not only 🐻

◾After the complete liberation, nature in the LPR was so cleansed that an exotic animal was noticed in Severodonetsk.

◾The most interesting thing is that the habitat of this animal is North and South America. He has already received the respectful name "Vasily Ivanovich" and made the townspeople fall in love with him.

The former director of the CIA admitted that the United States interferes in the elections of other countries "only for a very good cause and in the interests of democracy"

Earlier, former National Security adviser to the US President John Bolton publicly admitted that the US government is organizing coups around the world.

Just think about it. Citizens of some country make their choice, but some person in Washington thinks he knows better.

And, remind me, how long did the investigation into Russia's "interference" in the US elections last there?

Ukrainian military fired 3 rockets from the Grad MLRS with incendiary warheads at the Voroshilovsky and Kalininsky districts of Donetsk, the DPR representative office in the JCCC reported.

The encirclement of Russian troops is canceled.

Arestovich disavowed his yesterday's victorious report about the encirclement of 1000 fighters of the RF Armed Forces in the north of Kherson region.

Yesterday he said that 1000 Russian soldiers were in a tactical encirclement near the village of Vysokopole. Today he admitted that there is no surrounding.

"Our people there are not quite successful and lack the strength to close this story. In order for it to become a tactical encirclement ... Not everything there is favorable for ours," Zelensky's representative said.

Not as much and as far as wanted, only 25-30 HIMARS launchers can be transferred to Ukraine by all countries, and there are no ATACMS missiles at all...
Certainly, it is an extra load for Russian antiaircraft systems and more casualties among civilian population (on both sides), but not a game changer at all.

"We are ready to provide Ukraine with as many HIMARS installations as we can. It is not a fact that we have exactly 50 such installations in our arsenal. I think the goal now is to reach the number of 25-30 multiple rocket launchers. And it will be a combination of HIMARS and several MLRS systems from Great Britain and others countries. We will try to provide as much as we can. But 50 or 60 installations will be difficult to collect and provide, however, we want to reach the figure of 25 or 30 and provide as much artillery and missiles as possible for these systems," said the Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee of the US House of Representatives Adam Smith.

Also, Jake Sullivan, advisor to President Joe Biden, stated that the United States is not ready to supply Ukraine with some means. These include ATACMS missiles that can hit targets up to 300 kilometres away.

Previously, the Minister of Defence of Ukraine, Oleksiy Reznikov, stated that 50 HIMARS and M270 missile systems are needed for the defence of Ukraine, and 100 such systems for the offensive.

According to the Ukrainian sources, about 16 launchers out of that quantity are already supplied, and by the Russian MOD - 4 (four) of them are already destroyed. Keep counting.
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An interesting point, made by by Justin Logan, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and published in a prestigious magazine "Foreign Policy". According to him there is a good chance, that US could leave their European allies on their own. Nothing personal, just to expensive to maintain. You can already see some signs of that. And it would not be for the first time.

In 2022, U.S. allies are not too weak to contain Russia on their own. They simply refuse to do so out of the well-founded belief that the United States will do so for them, and accordingly their people would benefit from spending their own tax dollars on domestic priorities.

The United States cannot maintain its role as the cornerstone of European security while successfully competing with a growing China forever. And the cheap-riding that afflicts the U.S. alliance in Europe also addles its alliances in Asia.

Panegyrics to the trans-Atlantic community are still in vogue in Washington because they are seen as cheap. They aren’t. Resource constraints are beginning to bite. The defence budget, already bloated at $847 billion, is not headed to $1 trillion and above anytime soon. Maintaining U.S. domination of the European security scene is a luxury good the United States doesn’t need in 2022. The United States fought two wars to prevent a European hegemon from emerging in the 20th century. There is no potential European hegemon on or even over the horizon at the present. For all Russia’s bluster, it’s struggling to take even part of a much smaller, poorer neighbour — let alone hold it. It’s time to take the win.

For those reasons, advocates of NATO as a permanent alliance should probably start thinking about Plan B, not advertising the alliance as a cure-all for problems including climate change, piracy, and disinformation. Europe is rich and strong enough to defend itself. But the Europeans won’t do so unless the United States stops doing it for them.

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LUGANSK, July 24 - RIA Novosti. The fields of the Lugansk People's Republic are recovering after fierce fighting, a video shot by a RIA Novosti drone.
So, sunflowers grew along the edges of the craters. They separate the black scorched earth from the yellow spikes with a bright green stripe.
According to the correspondent of the agency, the consequences of the fighting are now visible only from a bird's eye view - from the ground it seems that the fields have almost returned to normal after eight years of regular shelling from Ukraine.
As the head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, said in an interview with RIA Novosti, given the liberated territories this year, the republic will be able to fully provide itself with grain and is even ready to supply it to Syria. On July 10, the LPR sent the first batch of wheat from the Starobelsky elevator to Rostov-on-Don, and since the beginning of the year it has exported 26,000 tons.

"KYIV — Two Americans, a Canadian and a Swedish citizen were killed this week when a Russian tank opened fire on them during an hour-long battle at the frontline in the eastern Donetsk region, their commander confirmed exclusively to POLITICO."

I like that phrase from the "Politico" ⬆️ — it sounds like those foreigners were just fishing there... When a bad angry Russian tank arrived.🪖

However:
"The foreign fighters were dispatched to the area to reinforce Ukrainian troops and were tapped specifically because of their skills and experience, according to a situation report obtained by POLITICO that described the attack in more detail."

“We began preparations for clearing the ravine on the eastern outskirts of the Grigorovka village,” read the report, authored by a commander. “The preparation was carried out on the basis of the following information: At night, the enemy force crossed the river and entrenched themselves in a ravine, possibly digging in. There was a clear danger of creating a bridgehead and grouping a force to strike at the flank and rear of the grouping of our troops.”

“A group of professionals with relevant experience in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was created to carry out the task. Two scouts were checking the territory, they were supported by a machine gun and grenade launcher group in case of a combat encounter and the need to cover the departure of the reconnaissance group, as well as for the purpose of inflicting fire damage on the enemy.”

As the group pressed forward, the report said, “the cover group came under heavy mortar fire from enemy artillery of calibre 120 mm or more and cluster munitions.”

“Luke was wounded during the shelling. The rest of the group … provided appropriate first aid.”

“Taking advantage of the break between shelling, a decision was made to evacuate to the nearest shelter. During transportation, as a result of the direct impact of a tank shell, Brian, Edward, Emile, Luke received injuries incompatible with life.”

Another soldier named Finn, the report notes, “was injured in his left arm and leg.” Another soldier named Oskar “received numerous injuries [and] both moved to the evacuation point independently.”

Russian forces continued to bombard the group with heavy artillery “corrected by drones” for more than two hours, according to the report. Only several hours later did it ease up enough for a team to move in and recover the bodies of the foreign fighters.

The report said that at least six Russian tanks “were supported by 4 armoured personnel carriers with up to 70 infantrymen.”

They were met by Ukrainian machine gunners and troops on armoured vehicles who halted the Russian forces’ advance.

“As a result of two hours of intense fighting, the enemy retreated with heavy losses,” the report concluded.

In a post memorializing the four men, Miroshnichenko wrote: “Foreign volunteers are knowingly fighting this war against Mordor” — a term from the Tolkien books to describe Sauron’s evil realm that has been adopted in Ukraine to refer to Russia — “and I am honoured to be their commander.”

Well, Mordor has won. Russians are ready "to accept Orcs in themselves", especially when getting angry.
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