Source link

The post One killed, one injured as Russian forces shell Kherson appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

The United States on Thursday sanctioned individuals and companies for allegedly providing financial services to and facilitating weapons procurement for Hezbollah, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action against two individuals and two companies based in Lebanon for providing financial services to Hezbollah, along with an additional individual involved in facilitating weapons procurement for the group, it said in a statement.

Founded in 1982 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and classified by the United States and other Western countries as a “terrorist organization,” Hezbollah is a powerful group in Lebanon because of a heavily armed militia that fought several wars with Israel. It grew stronger after joining the war in Syria in 2012 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

OFAC regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or within the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated entities.

Among the individuals sanctioned on Thursday were Adel Mohamad Mansour, who led a Hezbollah-run quasi-financial institution; Hassan Khalil, who worked to procure weapons on behalf of Hezbollah; and Naser Hassan Neser, who worked with an entity that provided financial services to the group, the Treasury Department said.

The two companies sanctioned on Thursday over providing financial services to Hezbollah were named Al-Khobara and Auditors.

Last month, the United States issued sanctions against an international oil smuggling network it said supports Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force, targeting dozens of people, companies and tankers.

U.S. President Joe Biden said that new laws that give incentives for domestic production of computer chips and renewable energy parts were never intended to exclude European allies and could be tweaked.

Speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron at a joint press conference at the White House, Biden said “There are tweaks that we can make that can fundamentally make it easier for European countries to participate and/or be on their own.”

Biden did not detail what tweaks could be made and legislative options may be slim. There is little appetite on Capitol Hill to reopen fiercely-debated bills, and since they passed this summer Republicans, who are unlikely to take steps to please the Democratic president, have gained control of the House.

However, France is pressing the White House to use executive powers to loosen some of the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, a French government source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The climate bill that favors domestic production could possibly restrict trade, European countries say.

“Exactly what that mechanism could be, whether there is an executive path through regulation, whether the way the IRA is implemented or if it’s going to require legislative action is not exactly clear to me,” said Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Coons, speaking to Reuters outside the U.S. Senate chamber on Thursday.

“There are several options that I am discussing with colleagues but it’s not something that we are going to do this week,” Coons said.

The United States and France also announced on Thursday the formation of joint task force between the Unites States and the European Union to deal with trade disputes around clean energy issues emerging from the act.

Europe’s industry fears that the bill, which gives tax credit for each eligible renewable energy component produced in a U.S. factory, would take away potential investment from the continent.

The IRA, which was signed into law in August, also provides a tax credit of 30% of the cost of new or upgraded factories that build renewable energy components.

Biden said he makes no apologies for promoting American manufacturing of essential goods, but said large legislation often requires tweaks to deal with unintended consequences.

“We’re going to continue to create manufacturing jobs in America but not at the expense of Europe,” Biden said.

Macron told reporters that he was encouraged by his talks with Biden and is hopeful of a fair resolution.

“We agreed to resynchronize our approaches, our agendas in order to invest in critical emerging industries. Semi-conductors, batteries, hydrogen,” Macron said.

Biden in August signed the $52.7 billion semiconductor chips manufacturing subsidy and research law, which subsidizes U.S. chip manufacturing and expands research funding.

The presidents of the United States and France vowed to hold Russia to account for its actions in Ukraine and the European Union reached tentative agreement on Thursday on an oil price cap aimed at starving Moscow of resources.

Western powers are trying to rally support for Ukraine, which is reeling from massive, near weekly missile and drone attacks targeting power supply, water and heat in its cities just as winter has set in nine months into Russia’s invasion.

Russia meanwhile accused the United States and NATO of playing a direct and dangerous role in the war and said Washington had turned Kyiv into an existential threat for Moscow which it could not ignore.

Speaking after an Oval Office meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden said that “France and the United States are facing down Vladimir Putin’s grasping ambition for conquest” and “defending the democratic values and universal human rights.”

Biden told reporters he was “prepared to speak with Mr. Putin, if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he’s looking for a way to end the war,” but added that Putin “hasn’t done that yet.”

There are no political talks under way to end the war, which Russia launched as a “special military operation” claiming its aim was to disarm its neighbour and root out leaders it characterises as dangerous nationalists.

Kyiv and the West call it an imperialist land grab, which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on both sides. Ukraine’s armed forces have lost somewhere between 10,000 and 13,000 soldiers so far in the war against Russia, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told a Ukrainian television network on Thursday.

“We will never urge the Ukrainians to make a compromise which will not be acceptable for them, because they are so brave,” Macron said.

In a bid to cut resources available for Moscow’s war effort, the European Union tentatively agreed on Thursday on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, according to diplomats. The measure would need to be approved by all EU governments in a written procedure by Friday.

The stakes have been increased in recent weeks as Russia has intensified a campaign to knock out power, water and heat supplies in Ukrainian cities, which Ukraine and the West say are intended to harm civilians, a war crime.

The last huge volley of strikes last week knocked out heat and power for millions, and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned Ukrainians to expect another wave soon.

Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko on Thursday told residents to stock up on water, food and warm clothes in the event of a total blackout and advised people to consider staying with friends in the outskirts of the capital if they could.

The attacks on infrastructure are likely to increase the cost to keep Ukraine’s economy going next year by up to $1 billion a month, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

Russian rockets pounded neighbourhoods overnight in the recently liberated city of Kherson, which lies along the Dnipro River, which represents the southern stretch of the front line.

The strikes knocked out power in the city where electricity had only begun to be restored nearly three weeks after Russian troops vacated the city and fled across the river.

Some locals hugged Ukrainian servicemen in the city as they patrolled past burnt out cars and buildings whose windows were blown out by overnight shelling, which left a number of people hospitalised.

“Ukraine will win. We will get through it,” said Inna Sydorchuk, 52, a resident of one of the apartment blocks hit.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking during an annual news conference in Moscow, defended recent missile strikes, saying it was targeting Ukraine’s civil infrastructure to prevent Kyiv from importing Western arms.

He did not explain how such attacks could achieve that aim.

“We disable energy facilities (in Ukraine) that allow you (the West) to pump lethal weapons into Ukraine to kill Russians,” Lavrov said.

“So don’t say that the U.S. and NATO are not participants in this war – you are directly participating.”

In a sign some channels of communication remain open, Russia’s Defence Ministry and the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration said the two countries swapped 50 service personnel on Thursday.

Russia’s defence ministry published video of prisoners of war cheering as they crossed the border in a bus. “We’re going home!” said one as his fellow soldiers waved at a camera.

After pulling back in the south in November, Moscow has focused its firepower on a section of the front line in the east near the city of Bakhmut, where hundreds of soldiers are thought to be dying each day in fighting in cold and muddy trenches, yielding scant reported gains of territory on either side.

Ukraine’s armed forces reported heavy shelling of a number of frontline villages in the area.

Ukraine’s military meanwhile said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south.

The statement gave only limited details and made no mention of any Ukrainian forces having crossed the Dnipro.

Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports.

Related Galleries:

Problems and debris is observed in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on November 29. (Yevhan Titov/AFP/Getty Pictures)

Social media video clips reveal that Russian troops in the locations all over Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region are getting weighty casualties, even as they acquire some territory, specifically south of the city. 

Some videos from Ukrainian armed forces drones show Russian troops in foxholes and trenches getting qualified by explosive expenses dropped from the drones. Other films at floor level clearly show the bodies of Russian soldiers littering the countryside. 

One online video shot by the Ukrainian armed forces and revealed on Telegram reveals distinct weapons units remaining utilised in a coordinated assault on Russian positions, including 155 mm Howitzers and mortars. It appears from some movies that Russian positions have very little defense and are uncovered in open up countryside.

Russian forces have been attacking the location about Bakhmut for months — and additional just lately have sent recently mobilized but much less skilled models forward. 

Some Russian units —including all those affiliated with the Wagner team — look to have produced incremental progress, using a string of compact villages to the south of the town. On Thursday the Russian Ministry of Protection said that, “as a final result of the offensive steps of the Russian troops, the settlement of Kurdiumivka of the Donetsk People’s Republic was entirely liberated from the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

The Protection Ministry had earlier announced the seize of three other settlements —but all are smaller villages.

Ukrainian military hearth rockets at Russian positions in close proximity to Bakhmut, Ukraine, on November 24. (LIBKOS/AP)

What Ukraine is indicating: Ukrainians say battling proceeds in the space, and that during combat missions in the vicinity of Kurdiumivka, Ukrainian forces destroyed three ammunition depots, a person mortar crew “and manpower of the enemy.”

Analysts say the Ukrainians are also plainly getting casualties as they are specific by Russian artillery and tanks. The Ukrainian army has explained that battling carries on in quite a few spots close to Bakhmut but has not acknowledged dropping any ground. 

The Ukrainian National Guard claimed that in excess of the previous week, units experienced repelled enemy assaults in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka sectors of Donetsk region and “destroyed ammunition depots, devices and personnel of the enemy.”

Its spokesman explained that in strikes around the north-jap outskirts of Bakhmut, “the enemy’s losses amounted to 79 servicemen, of which 46 had been irrecoverable.

A CNN staff in close by Kramatorsk documented listening to heavy artillery exchanges for a lot of Thursday.

In its latest assessment, the Institute for the Analyze of War says that the Russian marketing campaign about Bakhmut indicates “that Russian forces have fundamentally unsuccessful to master from previous substantial-casualty campaigns concentrated on goals of restricted operational or strategic importance.”

Source connection

The post Russian units appear to make some progress near Bakhmut in Donetsk, but suffer heavy casualties appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

“I want that uncomplicated, Rachel McAdams love,” Sabi Mehboob declares in the opening scene of the Canadian dramedy Sort Of’s second season. What they mean is that someone who seems as perfect as McAdams—talented, successful, beautiful in all the most conventional ways—must bring minimal baggage to every kind of relationship, be it a romance or a friendship or a familial bond. Regardless of whether their assumption about the actress is accurate (I’m going to go ahead and guess that her life is plenty complex), the question of whether Sabi and other characters should simplify themselves in order to satisfy the most important people in their lives reverberates throughout a season as big-hearted and introspective as its wonderful predecessor.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Now streaming on HBO Max, it’s a season about love in general but family in particular, and what it means to be part of one when you, like everyone, are no Rachel McAdams. Sabi (Sort Of co-creator Bilal Baig), a nonbinary 20-something searching for purpose, and, yes, love in Toronto, finally has to face their traditional, Pakistani Muslim father Imran (Dhirendra) after his return from a long stint abroad. The path of least resistance would be to appease Imran while he’s in town by forgoing feminine clothing and makeup in his presence; certainly, Sabi doesn’t always correct him when he misgenders them. But what they want is for their father to love the person they really are—which necessitates honest self-presentation and harder conversations. It also makes Imran’s visit tougher on Sabi’s newly independent mother Raffo (Ellora Patnaik) and sister Aqsa (Supinder Wraich), who resents Sabi for dominating their parents’ attention.

HBO MaxSupinder Wraich, left, and Ellora Patnaik in Sort Of

The Mehboobs have a mirror of sorts in the Kaneko-Bauers, an upper-middle-class family whose two mostly-grown-up children Sabi nannies. Comatose following a bike accident for most of the show’s first season, matriarch Bessy (Grace Lynn Kung) is now awake and slowly recovering with Sabi’s help. But her ordeal has exposed secrets and rifts within her marriage to Paul (Gray Powell), which is further endangered when Bessy, who is queer and Asian, emerges from her near-death experience resolved to liberate herself from this straight, white man. As the kids struggle to make sense of what’s happening to their parents, Sabi becomes crucial to keeping the Kaneko-Bauers from falling apart. And like Imran, Paul discovers what it feels like to be an outsider in your own family—an experience with which Sabi is already intimately familiar.

Meanwhile, the search for romance doubles as a search for chosen family. As Sabi’s love interests proliferate, the limitations of their fling with Olympia (Cassandra James), a glamorous trans woman they clearly idolize, grow increasingly apparent. Olympia is great when she deigns to drop by, but she won’t let Sabi become part of her life. And so a more organic, McAdams-like option presents itself. The connection between family and romance is more explicit for Sabi’s brash best friend 7ven (Amanda Cordner), who dives into a relationship with a frivolous, narcissistic influencer named Arrow (Heath V. Salazar). What 7ven sees in this person is utterly incomprehensible, until we meet 7ven’s frivolous, narcissistic mom Gaia (Amanda Brugel).

HBO MaxAmanda Cordner and Bilal Baig in Sort Of

New episodes of Sort Of, with its empathetic eye and sensitive soul, would be a gift at any time of year. (The fact that each full season runs about as long as one Marvel movie doesn’t hurt, either.) But it feels serendipitous that this batch arrives, with two new episodes rolling out every Thursday beginning Dec. 1, at this moment between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when family is top of mind. Because what gets lost amid the bland, tinsel-strewn seasonal fluff dispensed by Hallmark Channel and its copycats is the singular nature of each family that gathers around the tree, the menorah, or whatever object best symbolizes the love that binds together imperfect people with unused vacation days to burn before the end of the year.

“All I want is just someone who gets me,” Sabi laments at one point. “Someone who gets me the way I want to be got.” It’s about as close to universal as sentiments about interpersonal relationships get. You don’t have to be Sabi (or Imran, or Paul, or 7ven) to baffle the parents who raised you, to feel like a stranger among people you’ve known for your entire life, to struggle with tension between who you are and who you’re expected to be, or to wish that falling in love could be simpler. Not even Rachel McAdams is immune to being misunderstood. As difficult as it can be to make other people genuinely see us, Sort Of affirms, we all deserve to be recognized and loved for the messy, complicated people we are.

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on three senior North Korean officials connected to the country’s weapons programs after Pyongyang’s latest and largest intercontinental ballistic missile test last month.

The U.S. Treasury Department named the individuals as Jon Il Ho, Yu Jin, and Kim Su Gil, all of whom were designated for sanctions by the European Union in April.

The latest sanctions follow a Nov. 18 ICBM test by North Korea and amid concerns that it may be about to resume nuclear bomb testing suspended since 2017.

A Treasury statement said Jon Il Ho and Yu Jin played major roles in the development of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction while serving as vice director and director, respectively, of the North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department.

It said Kim Su Gil served as director of the Korean People’s Army General Political Bureau from 2018 to 2021 and oversaw the implementation of decisions related to the WMD program.

“Treasury is taking action in close trilateral coordination with the Republic of Korea and Japan against officials who have had leading roles in the DPRK’s unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement.

“Recent launches demonstrate the need for all countries to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions, which are intended to prevent the DPRK from acquiring the technologies, materials, and revenue Pyongyang needs to develop its prohibited WMD and ballistic missile capabilities.”

DPRK are the initials of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The sanctions freeze any U.S.-based assets of the individuals and bars dealing with them.
Decades of U.S.-led sanctions have failed to halt North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear weapon programs, and China and Russia have blocked recent efforts to impose more United Nations sanctions, saying they should instead be eased to jumpstart talks and avoid humanitarian harm.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said earlier that Washington was committed to using pressure and diplomacy to entice North Korea into giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Sullivan said the administration has no illusions about the challenges, but that the United States remained committed to holding North Korea accountable.

The last round of U.S. sanctions in October targeted two Singapore-registered companies and a Marshall Islands-registered firm that Washington said support Pyongyang’s weapons programs and its military.

Related Galleries: