Ukraine's Odesa rocked by deadly blast during visit by Zelensky and Greek PM
A deadly Russian missile strike Wednesday on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa appeared to land near President Volodymyr Zelensky and the visiting Greek prime minister, who described the “intense” moment of the attack...

Ukraine’s navy told AFP the attack on port infrastructure killed five people and left an unspecified number of wounded.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was holding talks with Zelensky said, “We heard the sound of sirens and explosions that took place near us.”

“We did not have time to get to a shelter. It is a very intense experience,” Mitsotakis said through a translator in Odesa.

Ukraine stepped up its own attacks behind Russian lines with the apparent killing of a Russian election official with a car bomb and a drone assault on a metals plant.

Russia and Ukraine have increased aerial attacks as Moscow’s troops advance on the front lines and Kyiv faces a shortage of manpower and weapons.

Spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk confirmed the Odesa strike came as the Greek delegation was visiting the port with Zelensky.

Russian forces “don’t care whether (targets) are military or civilians, whoever they are, whether they are international guests, these people don’t care,” Zelensky said.

According to the White House spokeswoman in Washington, “it appears that (the rocket) landed near the convoy.”

But the Russian defence ministry claimed a strike on a “hangar in a commercial port area of Odesa in which crewless cutters were being prepared for combat use by the Ukrainian armed forces”.

The hit came just days after 12 people, including five children, were killed when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in the same Black Sea city, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in weeks.

With the White House struggling to end Republican stonewalling on new US aid packages to Ukraine, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s National Security Council said the Odesa attack showed the “urgent need” for sending weapons.

“This strike is yet another reminder of how Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine recklessly every single day.”

Authorities in the Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk in southern Ukraine blamed Kyiv for a car bombing that it said killed a local election official.

“A homemade explosive device was planted under the vehicle of a member of the precinct election commission,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

“The victim died from her injuries,” it added, publishing a video of a blown-out small beige car parked on a dirt track.

The attack came with early voting already underway across occupied Ukraine for this month’s Russian presidential election.

The Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, blamed Ukrainian authorities for the attack and said they were trying to “intimidate” residents ahead of the ballot.

A number of Russian-installed officials have been targeted since Moscow launched its full-scale military operation in Ukraine two years ago.

Russia also said Ukraine hit a fuel tank at a metals plant in the Russia’s Kursk region in an early-morning drone strike.

“A drone attacked a fuel and lubricants warehouse” at the Mikhailovsky Mining and Processing Plant in the city of Zheleznogorsk, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the border with Ukraine, Kursk governor Roman Starovoyt said.

Videos posted on Russian social media showed thick grey smoke billowing as a fire raged inside a cylindrical fuel storage tank.

Ukrainian forces have launched a wave of drone attacks at Russian energy facilities in recent months, trying to target the country’s vital energy and gas sector that Kyiv says fuels the invasion.

Meanwhile, Russian-installed officials said a Ukrainian artillery strike on Kreminna, a town in Ukraine’s Lugansk region, killed two people.

Five more were killed when a bus drove over a mine in Kirovsk, also in Lugansk, the Moscow-appointed head of the region said.

Lugansk is one of the four Ukrainian regions—along with Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—that Russia claimed to annex in 2022.

The region has been at war since 2014 when Russian-backed separatists tried to secede following a pro-EU revolution in Kyiv.

On the front lines, the Ukrainian army said Wednesday it had built an “extensive system” of fortifications near the town of Adviivka—captured last month by Russia—in a bid to stop further Russian advances.

Hold-ups to Western aid, mainly a crucial $60-billion package from the United States, have left Ukraine’s troops in a vulnerable position, forced to ration ammunition and unable to mount large-scale offensives.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also held talks with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, in Sochi to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The facility, Europe’s largest nuclear energy site, was seized by Russian troops in the first days of the war.

Speaking to AFP ahead of the meeting, Grossi rejected Russian suggestions that the plant could be put back online.

“First of all, this is an active combat zone, and this cannot be forgotten. Secondly, this plant has been in shutdown for a prolonged period of time,” he told AFP.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240306-ukraine-s-odesa-rocked-by-deadly-blast-during-visit-by-zelensky-and-greek-pm

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

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‘Back to the Future’: Russia Honors Anti-Colonial Past as the West Backs Neo-Nazis

BY JOHN MILES

The more things change, the more they stay the same in terms of US foreign policy, says one analyst.

The modern political divide between Russia and the West often evokes memories of the Cold War and even World War II, according to author and human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik.

The writer and activist appeared on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program on Wednesday to discuss Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent remarks at the Forum of Supporters of the Struggle Against Modern Practices of Neocolonialism.

“Over the last three decades, there's been a model of globalization engineered by the US and its closest allies which has proved to be untenable,” said Lavrov in a speech delivered in Moscow. “Western countries have led humanity not to prosperity, but to one of the most acute international crises since the Second World War. The conflict space in the world is expanding and a deep split between the West and the countries of the global majority is emerging.”

“Russia has for a long time tried to play ball with the West,” claimed Kovalik, agreeing that the rhetoric emerging from Moscow and Beijing has become more strident in recent years. “But it finally dawned on them that the West didn't want to be friends with them. So now you do hear people like Lavrov and [Security Council of Russia Deputy Chairman Dmitry] Medvedev, as you say, kind of taking the gloves off and saying it like it is.”

The lawyer pointed to Israel’s military operation in Gaza as well as the conflict in the Donbass, which The New York Times recently admitted was fomented in part by the CIA’s decade-long presence in Ukraine. Both crises risk the eruption of a major world war, he claimed.

Host Garland Nixon claimed Russia is embracing the anti-colonial or even “anti-imperialist” legacy of the Soviet Union in recent years, noting the USSR fostered strong ties with Africa and Latin America. The Soviet Union was an ally of South Africa’s anti-apartheid cause as well as popular movements in Latin American countries like Chile and Cuba.

Kovalik noted Russia released a white paper recently specifically mentioning the foreign policy legacy of the Soviet Union. “Russia's proud of that past, it's part of their legacy, and they continue to carry that forward,” he said. “And so you even see Putin, for example, hosting various Palestinian factions in Moscow, trying to get them together to agree to work as one. That is some old-timey, Soviet-like diplomacy there.”

Meanwhile, US foreign alliances increasingly recall unflattering aspects of the West’s history, including the 20th-century emergence of fascism in Europe. Earlier this week, it was announced the Ukrainian city of Nikopol had renamed a street in honor of Pyotr Dyachenko, a Ukrainian SS officer who was decorated with the Iron Cross by Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.

The incident follows the well-publicized recognition of Yaroslav Hunka by the Canadian Parliament last year, a Ukrainian World War II veteran who was revealed to have fought in a Nazi-aligned military unit. Western countries have continuously backed Ukraine’s post-Maidan government, which even the NATO-aligned Atlantic Council has admitted is significantly influenced by neo-Nazi militants.

The United States has also backed reactionary elements in Syria as it was recently announced the country has appointed a former Daesh* chief as a commander in the US-backed Syria Free Army. The US has spent billions of dollars supporting fundamentalist elements in Syria in an attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

“We live in a time in which, again, Western governments are unabashedly honoring Nazis,” claimed Kovalik. “As Russia honors its Soviet past, the West is now honoring its Nazi past.”

“My friends would say we would be very reluctant to make this analogy before October 7th, but I would say that the West is now supporting a Nazi-like regime in Israel at this point,” Kovalik added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over the killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza in recent months, the vast majority of them women, children, and innocent civilians.

Host Garland Nixon agreed. “If you look at Ukraine and you look at Israel, what you find in both instances [is] you have one ethnicity – although in Ukraine they just won't admit it – but you have one group who feels that the other group is inferior, maybe ethnically, however you want to call it, and they have a desire to wipe them out and have actively made a kinetic effort to wipe them out.” Neo-fascist troops fighting for Ukraine have referred to their foes as “Asiatic hordes,” employing racist terminology likening Russians to “orcs.”

“What we're seeing right now in Gaza is open genocidal warfare akin to the Holocaust,” claimed Kovalik bluntly. “You're starting to see images out of Gaza of these emaciated bodies who look like people who've been in a Nazi concentration camp. And, of course, they have been in a Nazi-like concentration camp, and that's called Gaza.”

“It's ‘back to the future,” the activist concluded. “We're back to the old Cold War days.”

*ISIS (also known as Daesh/ISIL/IS/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240307/back-to-the-future-russia-honors-anti-colonial-past-as-the-west-backs-neo-nazis-1117175646.html

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

READ FROM TOP

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....