French President Emmanuel Macron’s talk about maybe sending troops to aid Kiev may have been spurred by three assessments produced by the French military that painted a dire picture of the Ukraine conflict, according to the magazine Marianne.

The reports, which have somehow found their way into the weekly’s possession, argued that Ukraine wrecked its Western-trained force in the failed 2023 offensive, has run out of men to mobilize, and that its recent loss in Avdeevka shows it can’t even hold the line against Russia.

“Ukraine cannot win this war militarily,” concludes the first report, written in the fall of 2023, following Kiev’s disastrous ground offensive. It praises the Russian forces as the new “tactical and technical”standard of how to run defensive operations and debunks the media myth of “meat assaults.”

NATO head rejects Pope’s ‘white flag’ appeal to Ukraine
The pontiff suggested that Kiev should “find the courage” to end the conflict with Moscow through talks...

Ukraine needs more military aid before it can start negotiating a peace deal with Russia, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said. His comments came after Pope Francis told Swiss broadcaster RSI that Kiev should have “the courage of the white flag” and begin talks with Moscow.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published new details of the failed Ukraine peace talk held in Istanbul in the spring of 2022. The story resembles some kind of off-the-wall pro-Kiev propaganda along the lines of 'look how Moscow tried to subjugate them, it’s no wonder the Ukrainians refused.'

Today, we’ll try to reconstruct the events and understand why the peace agreements were sabotaged, what role each party played in the process, and whether it was really former British prime minister Boris Johnson who scuppered a deal. 

 

M23 rebellion in North Kivu province. Rwandan troops are now directly involved in the fighting. Congolese Armed Forces suffered multiple setbacks. Major humanitarian crisis. UN peacekeepers to leave the country. Regional war could erupt.

DR Congo is Preparing for WAR Against Rwanda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjb8ZCRMt14

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

Mary Kostakidis and Quentin Dempster explore the Australian mainstream media’s blind eyes on the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in Gaza.

This vodcast was recorded on March 11 2024 following the referral of the Australian Government to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice’s conditional ruling on South Africa’s submitted evidence of IDF “genocide” of Palestinians.

https://johnmenadue.com/accessory-to-genocide-in-gaza/

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

SEE ALSO: 

always the victim ....

 

BEAT

I’m an Australian-Ukrainian researcher and I moved back to Kyiv from Sydney in 2022 after the full-scale Russian invasion. My life in a war zone has given me the chance to witness firsthand Russia’s brutality and Ukraine’s limitless bravery. 

In late 2022, Russians began targeting critical infrastructure in major cities. Many residents were left without access to electricity, heat and water. My cousins spent most of their school days in shelters. 

I spent many winter nights writing my dissertation by candlelight, while searching for Wi-Fi and mobile hotspots and hot meals for my grandma and mother. The sounds of air-raid sirens and missile explosions were as ubiquitous as the sounds of birds chirping in Australia.

As the lead managers of the Great Barrier Reef, the Reef Authority keeps an eye on the Reef year-round — with efforts stepped up over summer, a typically high-risk period from extreme weather.

Over summer the Reef Authority releases weekly updates on how the Reef is faring with a focus on sea surface temperatures, rainfall and floods, cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, and coral disease.

 

These updates are based on forecasts, water temperature heat mapping, in-water surveys, citizen science and aerial surveys. 

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson secretly flew to Venezuela last month to conduct unofficial talks with the leader of the South American nation, Nicolas Maduro, the Sunday Times has reported. 

The meeting came amid supposed concerns from Ukraine’s Western backers that Venezuela could supply weapons to Russia. The former prime minister spent less than 24 hours in South America, having traveled by private jet from a holiday home in the nearby Dominican Republic, unnamed sources told the newspaper. 

The two politicians also reportedly discussed the normalization of relations between London and Caracas, the holding of free and fair presidential elections in Venezuela this year, and the South American country’s dispute with Guyana, a former British colony, over a 62,000 sq-mile oil and mineral-rich area around the Essequibo River.

 

Comments by Pope Francis about launching peace talks to end the Ukraine conflict echo the repeated calls Moscow has made for the same, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Peskov’s remark comes after the head of the Catholic Church stated in an interview with Swiss broadcaster RSI over the weekend that it would be a display of courage from Kiev if it raised a “white flag” and entered into peace negotiations with Russia. 

“The idea that [the Pope] spoke about is quite understandable,” Peskov said. “You know that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] has repeatedly spoken about our readiness and openness to solve our problems through negotiations and this is the preferred way.” 

US President Joe Biden’s recent blunder in which he mixed up Ukraine and the Middle East sums up his poor mental state, former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.

Biden’s gaffe came in an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, as he discussed the Israeli military campaign in Gaza with host Jonathan Capehart. The US leader said West Jerusalem should not repeat the mistakes that Washington made following the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

“America made a mistake. We went after Osama bin Laden until we got him, but we shouldn’t have gone into Ukraine,” Biden stated. He then corrected himself, saying he meant “the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan,” referring to the US invasions and occupation of the two Middle Eastern nations. Confusing places and people has been a recurring issue for the 81-year-old president.

EU MURDER

Russia’s ambassador to France was summoned on Friday [2022] to the French Foreign Ministry over an earlier embassy Twitter post that Paris deemed unacceptable, the foreign ministry said.

The Russian Embassy in Paris on Thursday had posted a picture depicting a body lying on a table called “Europe” with characters representing the United States and European Union jabbing needles into it.

“We made that clear today to the Russian Ambassador,” the ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters. “We are trying to maintain a demanding channel of dialogue with Russia and these actions are completely inappropriate.”

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, President Emmanuel Macron dismissed the cartoons as false propaganda.

 

An updated diagnosis of the most intractable problem currently facing the world economy - the simultaneous emergence of hot and homeless money, often illegal in origin, and a massive, growing, and ultimately unrepayable burden of debt incurred, often illegitimately, by the world's poor countries.

France is forming a coalition of nations that are willing to consider the possibility of deploying Western forces to Ukraine, Politico reports.

On Friday, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné travelled to Lithuania to hold a meeting with his Baltic and Ukrainian counterparts to promote the idea that foreign forces might assist Ukraine in tasks such as de-mining.

Séjourné repeatedly mentioned mine clearance operations as a potential area of assistance, stating it "might mean having some personnel, [but] not to fight."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called on EU member states to invest heavily in the defense industry. These efforts should see the creation of weapons that will ensure the dominance of their armies on the battlefield, she said.

Von der Leyen also equated European security with continued support for Ukraine, which she said Brussels will keep providing “for as long as it takes.”

Addressing a congress of the European People’s Party in Bucharest, Romania on Thursday, von der Leyen said that the bloc needs to “turbo charge our defense industrial capacity in the next five years.” She added that this push would “help us fill the urgent need to rebuild, replenish and modernize Member States’ armed forces.”

Gutfeld: If Biden was a Walmart greeter, he'd say hello as customers leave the store

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM0g0rjRVBo

 

My favorite Sesame Street character and the White House are in agreement about shrinkflation, Hope writes.

What they're saying: "C is for consumers getting ripped off. President Biden is calling on companies to put a stop to shrinkflation," the White House posted while quoting Cookie Monster, who said —

"Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller."
The intrigue: Not everyone's happy about the blue monster's commentary.
"I'm shocked," Frank Oz, who worked with creator Jim Henson, wrote on X. "Muppets need to live in their own pure world."