Russia “will not accept” a price cap on its oil and is analysing how to respond, the Kremlin said in comments reported on Saturday, in response to a deal by Western powers aimed at limiting a key source of funding for its war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had made preparations for Friday’s price cap announcement by the Group of Seven nations, the European Union and Australia, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.

“We will not accept this cap,” RIA news agency quoted him as saying. He added that Russia would conduct a rapid analysis of the agreement and respond after that, RIA reported.

Russia has repeatedly said it will not supply oil to countries that implement the cap – a stance reaffirmed by Mikhail Ulyanov, Moscow’s ambassador to international organisations in Vienna, in posts on social media on Saturday.

“Starting from this year Europe will live without Russian oil,” he said.

The G7 price cap will allow non-EU countries to continue importing seaborne Russian crude oil, but it will prohibit shipping, insurance and re-insurance companies from handling cargoes of Russian crude around the globe, unless it is sold for less than $60. That could complicate the shipment of Russian crude priced above the cap, even to countries which are not part of the agreement.

Russian Urals crude traded at around $67 a barrel on Friday.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the cap will particularly benefit low- and medium-income countries that have borne the brunt of high energy and food prices.

“With Russia’s economy already contracting and its budget increasingly stretched thin, the price cap will immediately cut into (President Vladimir) Putin’s most important source of revenue,” Yellen said in a statement.

In comments published on Telegram, Russia’s embassy in the United States criticised what it called the “dangerous” Western move and said Moscow would continue to find buyers for its oil.

“Steps like these will inevitably result in increasing uncertainty and imposing higher costs for raw materials’ consumers,” it said.

“Regardless of the current flirtations with the dangerous and illegitimate instrument, we are confident that Russian oil will continue to be in demand.”

British investigative journalist and author John Sweeney, who has covered wars and chaos in more than 80 countries, says Ukraine has no choice but to win the war against Russia.

“If they don’t fight, there is no Ukraine,” said the award-winning journalist and author of “Killer in the Kremlin – The Explosive Account of Putin’s Reign of Terror.”

Sweeney, who has worked on two flagship BBC news and current affairs programs, “Panorama” and “Newsnight,” and the Observer newspaper, said the Ukrainian spirit is so extraordinarily strong, that the fight would continue. The question was whether the West had the willingness to keep helping Ukraine in its fight.

“If you look at the reality on the ground, you will see the Ukrainian army has three great things going for it: great spirit; logistics getting better thanks to NATO; and great leadership from President Zelensky and General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Sweeney has been to Ukraine countless times and was there during the battle for Kyiv. In his book, he comically wrote on the opening page: “Some idiot is moving heavy furniture in the flat above and I wake up with a start. I’m about to give Lambeth Council a ring to get them to sort him out when I remember I am in Kyiv, it’s four o’clock in the morning, and it’s not tables and chairs that are going bang but Russian artillery.”

With the current waves of missile attacks pummelling Ukrainian infrastructure, Sweeney said Russian President Vladimir Putin was playing what he described as a de-civilization game.

“He is trying to degrade ordinary society,” he said. “This is a war between good and evil.”

Sweeney believes it would be very difficult for the leaders of the Western world and other democracies to back down and let Ukraine die because the Russian killing machine is so barbaric. He offered the example of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, pretending to send a blood-stained sledgehammer to the European Parliament.

Responding to a report that Russia is circulating a document among the military called “Conclusions of the war with NATO in Ukraine” calling for five million Russian troops to be deployed in Ukraine for a Russian victory, Sweeney called it hot air.

“The Russians have lost the battles of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson. He would need five million soldiers to take Ukraine, but Russian society is not North Korea.”

In his book, Sweeney said that Putin has probed the West’s steel and found jelly. Asked whether this missile attack was just that he said he didn’t think so.

“It is entirely likely it was a Ukrainian missile that hit Poland,” he said and continued, “The West needs to provide better air defense missiles so that Ukraine can defend itself properly. The air defense missile was probably from the Soviet weapons store, so poorly made it went astray.”

Sweeney spoke passionately about what he has seen in Ukraine. One occasion that stuck in his mind was when he visited the crash site in July 2014 of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 shot down by Russian forces and the carnage he saw with his own eyes.

He wrote: “Dusk is falling. I am in an endless cornfield in the middle of nowhere in eastern Ukraine, the land rising and falling like a calm sea, looking at the nose of a passenger jet and plane seats and Air Malaysia logos and bodies in black bags being dumped in the back of a bin lorry.

“Paperbacks and bits of plane seats and luggage and Trunkis, those little wheelie suitcases that you pull a toddler along on, litter the ground. And every time I see a kid on one of those at Heathrow or Gatwick, I get a flashback and I start to cry.”

This outrage made Sweeney want to confront Putin, but he knew he couldn’t doorstep him in Moscow where security is tight, so he took a flight to Siberia, where Putin was inspecting the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk.

Sweeney jumped out of a line of Paleolithic period academics and asked him the question: “What about the killings in Ukraine, sir?” The Russian media thought the question was included in the schedule, so the TV lights came on for the answer.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was furious, but Sweeney asked Putin again: “Thousands are dead, Ukrainians, Russians, Malaysians, British, Dutch. Sir, do you regret the killings in Ukraine, sir?”

Sweeney said in his book that he got a long and very boring answer in Russian, which Peskov translated, even though Putin can speak English.

Sweeney’s book is not based only on his observations, but on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those that have suffered at Putin’s hands.

It also deals with the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance and the heroism of the Russian opposition, not to mention the assassinations and locking away of his opponents.

In his book, Sweeney chronicled a whole list of Putin’s misdeeds which the West let him get away with lightly: from the first Moscow apartment bombings which led to the Second Chechen War, the gunning down by a lone assassin of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the annexation of Crimea, the poisonings of Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei and Yulia Skripal on British soil, the shooting down of Malaysian airliner MH17, and numerous opponents falling out of tall buildings or dying in mysterious circumstances.

Sweeney added that part of what drives Ukrainians to fight the Russians in the incredibly brave way that they are doing is the Holodomor, the artificial famine brought about by Stalin’s collectivization of farms, which led to about seven million deaths, though he qualifies that number by saying nobody knows the exact figure because no one counted.

Sweeney mentioned Stalin’s hatred for Ukrainians because they humiliated him during the Russian civil war. According to Sweeney, the tragedy of the Holodomor is three-fold: No soviet leader – in particular Stalin – paid for their crimes; it was never properly explained or taught to Putin’s generation so they don’t know what happened; this was a display of Russian imperialism and Russia has never said sorry for this appalling act of imperialist nonsense.

Sweeney said his book was the most critical about Putin written in English to date. In it he explains how he slept at night having witnessed all of humanity’s horrors.

“To deal with this, I deliberately brought with me six books by P.G. Wodehouse,” he wrote. “I would interview Chechens who had been tortured all day, then return to my hotel and knock back a bottle of vodka and inhale “The Code of the Woosters.”

“By around two o’clock in the morning the combination of alcohol and Bertie getting back the cow-creamer for Aunt Dahlia would work its magic and I’d fall asleep. Some nights, I just could not.”

The post Author Says Putin Playing a De-Civilization Game In Ukraine appeared first on Kyiv Post.

Estonia has agreed to buy six HIMARS rocket systems from the United States worth over $200 million, the state defence investment agency said on Saturday.

It is the largest arms purchase in the country’s history.

Estonia, which neighbours Russia, has increased defence spending since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, as has its Baltic neighbours, Latvia and Lithuania.

The HIMARS systems delivered to Ukraine are widely seen as one of the most effective tools in its arsenal, as the pro-Western country fights back against Russian troops.

Magnus-Valdemar Saar, director general of the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments (ECDI), signed a contract on Friday with the United States’ Defense Security Cooperation Agency to boost the country’s indirect fire capability, the ECDI said in a statement.

Estonia will also “procure ammunition, communications solutions, as well as training, logistics, and life-cycle solutions”, said armament category manager Ramil Lipp.

The ECDI did not provide details on how many rockets were ordered but said the purchase included those which can strike targets at a distance of 300 kilometres (186 miles), and rockets of shorter range.

The first deliveries will arrive in 2024.

Lithuania last month said it would buy eight HIMARS rocket systems from the United States for $495 million.

The post Estonia to Buy HIMARS Rocket Launchers From US appeared first on Kyiv Post.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden, reacting after the latest station in Kanye West’s dolorous journey, explained that Hitler was bad and the Holocaust was real and chided politicians like his predecessor Donald Trump who give the rapper’s antisemitism oxygen.

“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure,” Biden said Friday on Twitter. “And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”

Biden’s statement did not call out anyone by name. But the most immediate reference Biden was making was to a three-hour appearance this week by West, also known as Ye, on Infowars, the streaming show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in which he repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler, said he loved Nazis and denied that the Holocaust happened as it did.

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Biden also appeared to be referring to Trump, who last week had West over for dinner, along with Nick Fuentes, a prominent antisemite and Holocaust denier. Biden has denounced antisemitism and Trump’s proximity to it since the first speech of his presidential campaign.

By saying “silence is complicity,” Biden may have been referring to those who have not condemned Trump for hosting West, or who would not directly criticize Trump. That number dwindled as the week went on and almost all top Republicans denounced the dinner, though some with sharper criticism of Trump than others.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post ‘Silence is complicity’: Biden calls on political leaders to denounce antisemitism, not platform it appeared first on The Forward.

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The post Estonia to Buy HIMARS Rocket Launchers From US – Kyiv Post appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet said on Saturday it had intercepted a fishing trawler smuggling “more than 50 tonnes of ammunition rounds, fuses and propellants for rockets” in the Gulf of Oman along a maritime route from Iran to Yemen on Dec. 1.

“Navy personnel operating from expeditionary sea base USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3) discovered the illicit cargo during a flag verification boarding, marking U.S. 5th Fleet’s second major illegal weapons seizure within a month,” it added in a statement.

AT&T Inc. (T.N) has agreed to pay a $6.25 million penalty to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing the phone company of selectively leaking financial information to Wall Street analysts, the SEC said in a court filing.

Three executives of the company: Christopher Womack, Kent Evans and Michael Black, who the SEC alleged were involved in violating Regulation FD, or fair disclosure, also agreed to each pay a $25,000 penalty without admitting or denying the regulator’s allegations, the filing said.

“We are committed to following all applicable laws and pleased to have resolution with the SEC. With this settlement, the company and its employees neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s allegations,” AT&T told Reuters in an emailed statement.

In a March 2021 lawsuit, the SEC accused Dallas-based AT&T and three investor relations executives of leaking details about its smartphone business to 20 firms. read more

The SEC said it violated fair disclosure which it adopted in 2000 to bar companies from disclosing material non-public information privately, helping level the playing field for investors.

AT&T’s goal, alleged the SEC, was to “manage” those analysts and have them lower their revenue forecasts, so that actual results would meet the reduced forecasts and not disappoint investors who might otherwise drive its share price down.

When Nicaragua’s boxing great Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez struts into a glitzy U.S. ring bidding to become six-time world champion on Saturday, he will also represent a vast sporting project of another man: authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.

A small fighter renowned for his blistering speed and willingness to wear the Sandinista flag stitched to his boxing shorts, Gonzalez, 35, is looking to the fight in Glendale, Arizona to cement his legacy by snatching the WBC Super Flyweight title in his third bout against old foe Juan Francisco Estrada.

For Ortega, a Gonzalez victory and a televised hero’s welcome could offer a distraction from rising discontent due to soaring inflation, widespread repression and the country’s international isolation.

“Ortega’s public image has been severely compromised by the ongoing crackdown on dissent since the eruption of mass protests in 2018,” said Tiziano Breda, a Crisis Group analyst for Central America.

Yet it’s no longer clear Gonzalez packs the same populist punch.

The boxer’s support for Ortega’s efforts to hold onto power and for Nicaragua’s National Police, which were sanctioned by the United States for “serious human rights abuses” during the 2018 protests, have left Gonzalez a deeply divisive figure.

Boxers, soccer players and baseball stars have been instrumental to shoring up Ortega’s base among Nicaragua’s poorest and most marginalized people.

In return, Ortega’s government has rewarded pliable sportsmen by paying their salaries, doling out houses, and using state institutions to aid them.

Ortega’s government gifted Gonzalez a house when he won his first world title in 2008 and in 2020 a court delivered a $1.15 million decision in his favor against one of the biggest family businesses in Nicaragua.

“Sport in Nicaragua is used as a public policy,” said Nicaraguan sports journalist Camilo Velasquez Mejia, comparing Ortega’s project to the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome, when emperors used entertainment to soothe public discontent. “Roman is part of this structure,” Mejia said. “He is key.”

Ortega’s wife Vice President Rosario Murillo, who oversees government communications, responded to Reuters’ detailed request for comment by replying: “Thank you for your interest.”

Gonzalez did not respond to a request for an interview and his legal representative did not respond to requests for comment.

Softly spoken Gonzalez has embraced Ortega at political rallies, sheathed in t-shirts bearing the president’s face and caps and jackets emblazoned with ruling Sandinista party slogans, joining other sports figures in supporting the government.

Former boxing world champions Rosendo Alvarez and Ricardo Mayorga have backed Ortega. New York Yankees pitcher Jonathan Loaisiga flew to Nicaragua last month to vote in municipal elections boycotted by the opposition. Sandinistas now control all 153 municipalities.

Gonzalez’s coach, Marcos Caballero, told Reuters the criticism of his boxer was unfair. Sportsmen in other countries air their political beliefs without blowback, he said.

“People are going to hate and you are going to have (other) people who love you and you move on,” said Caballero, adding that Gonzalez was a patriot who spends most of his days reading the bible.

Many Nicaraguans disagree. They see Gonzalez as an enabler of what the opposition calls a “dictatorship”.

“Chocolatito is an accomplice of the government,” said Gabriela Hernández, 23, a Nicaraguan student exiled in Costa Rica. She hopes Gonzalez is thrashed by Estrada, a Mexican.

“He doesn’t represent Nicaraguans. He represents the Ortega family.”

Raised in a poor neighbourhood of Managua, Gonzalez trudged through childhood on an empty stomach. He would later recall being sustained only by mango or sugary water during punishing training sessions.

The 5 foot 3 inches (160cm) fighter struck gold in the 1990s when his father introduced him to the late boxing great Alexis Arguello, an ally of Nicaragua dictator Anastasio Somoza during his 1970s heyday who also hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty.

After overthrowing Somoza in 1979, the Sandinistas seized Arguello’s properties. They later tapped the charismatic boxer’s electoral appeal, with Arguello elected Managua mayor on a Sandinista ticket in 2008.

Under Arguello’s tutelage, Gonzalez morphed into a firecracker of a boxer, blending rapid fire volleys of punches with a balletic defense. He would go on to win world titles at four weight divisions, one better than Arguello.

Soon after Gonzalez turned professional in 2005, Ortega returned to power and began to court sports stars. He created a national amateur baseball league funded by municipal governments. Many soccer teams, meanwhile, are effectively financed by regional authorities.

Gonzalez, coming from a Sandinista family, didn’t need much courting. He had developed a bond with Sandinistas after they paid him small stipends when he was a teenager in Arguello’s gym, according to German Garcia, a journalist who wrote a book about Gonzalez.

The relationship would prove beneficial, say critics, who allege Ortega used the judiciary on several occasions to help Gonzalez.

In 2011, a judge threw out the case when Gonzalez’s first wife, Raquel Dona, accused him of domestic abuse. Gonzalez denied wrongdoing. “It’s false,” he said in 2011. The courts also shelved Dona’s other legal claims.

In 2014, a judge threw out drug trafficking charges after Gonzalez’s brother Milton was arrested with a backpack containing bullets, a weighing scale and 1.5 grams of white powder that a police field test determined was cocaine.

A subsequent lab test showed the substance was talcum powder, authorities said, prompting outrage amid suspicions Ortega was protecting his ally. Milton Gonzalez has always denied wrongdoing.

In 2015, at the peak of his powers, Gonzalez was named by ESPN and Ring magazine as the best “pound-for-pound” fighter in the world, taking the crown from retiring superstar Floyd Mayweather.

Two years later, the wealthy Coen family contracted Gonzalez to promote their Grupo Coen conglomerate in three world title fights in exchange for a house worth $150,000.

In April 2018, as waves of anti-Ortega protests convulsed Nicaragua, Piero Coen, a scion of the family, was shown on live television jumping on his car and unfurling a Nicaraguan flag, a symbol of the movement, among a sea of protestors.

Sandinista mobs raided and occupied nearly 1,000 hectares of Coen family’s land.

Gonzalez’s relationship with Grupo Coen also fractured. In 2019, he sued Grupo Coen after it refused to pay the boxer, claiming he didn’t contest enough world title fights to fullfil his contract.

Nicaraguan courts awarded Gonzalez $1.15 million in damages in Oct. 2020 and blocked Grupo Coen’s bank accounts until they paid Gonzalez’s hefty legal fees.

The American Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce condemned the verdict and “the use of judicial power as a repressive tool.”

Murillo did not respond to claims Ortega’s government uses the judiciary to punish its foes.

But the Sandinista partnership continued. A week after Gonzalez lost his titles to Estrada in their second bout in March last year, the boxer headlined a rally with Ortega who lauded him as a “Champion of champions”.

This year, the courts awarded an extra $150,000 to Gonzalez against Grupo Coen, according to court documents seen by Reuters.

Grupo Coen declined to comment.

With the boxer aging out of big payday fights, coach Caballero said Gonzalez is focused on securing a financial future for his family.

“He knows he has to live the rest of his life with the money he’s made,” he said.

(This story has been refiled to replace ‘lightweight’ with ‘small’ in paragraph 2 to avoid any confusion with boxing weight categories)