Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the U.S. and NATO on Thursday of “immediate” participation in its war in Ukraine but claimed Moscow was however open up to talks. 

In an annual information convention from Moscow, the foreign minister began his comments by defending Russia’s barrage of missile fire on civilian targets like Ukraine’s electrical power sector and tried to assert it was a protection tactic to halt Western arms. 

“We disable electrical power services [in Ukraine] that permit you [the West] to pump lethal weapons into Ukraine to eliminate Russians,” Lavrov explained, according to a translation by Reuters. 

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“So don’t say that the U.S. and NATO are not members in this war – you are specifically collaborating,” he ongoing.  “Together with not only with the offer of weapons, but also with the coaching of personnel – you train the [Ukrainian] military on your territory.”

Lavrov was referring to intercontinental endeavours to prepare up Ukrainian servicemen with NATO strategies in nations like Britain, Germany and Italy – feedback which were being built soon after experiences surfaced this 7 days suggesting that Washington may possibly broaden its instruction of Ukrainian troopers on U.S. bases in Germany.

Russia has been accused by NATO of using wintertime as a “weapon of war” by forcing Ukrainian citizens to endure increasingly harsh ailments with out electricity, heat or functioning water as the chilly months set in.

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The West has additional claimed that Moscow is targeting civilian populations as a way to try out and drive Kyiv to capitulate as Russian forces have observed major losses on the front traces. 

It remains unclear what the normal sense in Russia is when it will come to Moscow’s fatal war in Ukraine, although towns throughout Russia have canceled their Xmas and New Year’s celebrations in recognition of the pricey war. 

Western estimates regarding the toll that the war has taken on Russian troops counsel that they have viewed at the very least 80,000 casualties since the war started in February.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reported he will not engage in peace talks right up until Russia fully withdraws all troops from Ukraine.

Diminished relations concerning Russia and the West continues to be a major geopolitical concern, significantly after Moscow pulled out of scheduled talks with Washington this week on the nuclear New Start off Treaty.

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Lavrov on Thursday prompt that Russia stays open up to talks with the U.S. and NATO member nations, but reported it was “naive” of the U.S. to feel it would engage in nuclear talks at this time.  

“For now we aren’t listening to any meaningful thoughts,” he explained. “If there will be proposals from the president [Biden] and from other members of his administration, we are going to hardly ever shy absent from contacts.”

The appropriate assertion was manufactured by the Typical Personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, an Ukrinform correspondent experiences.

“In unique, the models stationed at a regional law enforcement office and just one of academic institutions still left Mykhailivka. In Polohy and Inzhenerne, the invaders are leaving homes, exactly where they ended up accommodated, and taking absent the stolen assets. In Burchak, the occupation authorities are conducting a census for the so-referred to as voluntary evacuation of the populace,” the report states.

Above the earlier day, Russian troops have launched a missile strike on the positions of Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv area. The enemy released 16 air strikes, particularly on the Zaporizhzhia region’s Bilohiria, and shelled the city of Kherson with various start rocket units (MLRS).

The menace of missile strikes on Ukraine’s vitality and vital infrastructure is persisting all more than the region.

In the Volyn and Polissia instructions, the problem remained somewhat unchanged. No indicators of the formation of enemy offensive teams were detected.

In the Siverskyi course, Russian troops utilised mortars and artillery to open fireplace on the Chernihiv region’s Kostobobriv and Hremiach, and the Sumy region’s Havrylova Sloboda, Seredyna Buda, Pustohorod, Bachivsk, Vilna Sloboda, Budky, Bilopillia and Krasnopillia.

In the Slobozhanskyi direction, Russian invaders go on to hold models in the border locations of Russia’s Belgorod location. The enemy struck the Kharkiv region’s Huriv Kozachok, Krasne, Zelene, Slobozhanske, Ohirtseve, Bochkove, Mala Vovcha, Budarky, Dvorichna and Zapadne with the total range of artillery pieces.

In the Kupiansk and Lyman instructions, Russian occupiers are defending. They shelled the Kharkiv region’s Tabaivka, Krokhmalne and Berestove, the Luhansk region’s Stelmakhivka, Miasozharivka, Makiivka and Ploschanka, and the Donetsk region’s Torske with tanks, mortars, cannon and rocket artillery.

In the Bakhmut direction, Russian troops are concentrating initiatives on conducting offensive functions. The enemy employed tanks and artillery to strike the Donetsk region’s Serebrianka, Verkhniokamianske, Spirne, Rozdolivka, Bilohorivka, Yakovlivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut, Zalizne and New York.

In the Avdiivka direction, Russian invaders go on makes an attempt to enhance their tactical position. The enemy opened hearth on the Donetsk region’s Avdiivka, Pervomaiske, Vodiane, Vesele, Krasnohorivka and Marinka with tanks and artillery.

In the Novopavlivka direction, Russian occupiers are keeping the protection. The Donetsk region’s Vremivka, Velyka Novosilka, Bohoiavlenka, Paraskoviivka, Zolota Nyva, Prechystivka, Vuhledar and Pavlivka came underneath enemy hearth.

In the Zaporizhzhia way, Russian troops are also defending. The enemy released artillery strikes on the Zaporizhzhia region’s Nikopol, Kamianske, Novoandriivka, Zaliznychne, Huliaipole, Dorozhnianka and Bilohiria, and the Dnipropetrovsk region’s Ilinka.

In the Kherson route, Russian invaders are defending the beforehand captured frontiers. The Kherson region’s Kachkarivka, Respublikanets, Matrosivka, Tokarivka and Antonivka came beneath enemy fireplace. Russian occupiers continue on triggering terror in opposition to Kherson inhabitants with artillery.

In accordance to the verified information, Ukraine’s Protection Forces efficiently inflicted fireplace destruction on enemy clusters in previous days.

In the Zaporizhzhia region’s Myrne, Tokmak, Inzhenerne, Polohy, Yasne and Kinsky Rozdory, Russian troops misplaced about 230 individuals in wounded. In addition, extra than 15 army equipment units and an ammunition depot were ruined. The enemy’s losses are nevertheless to be checked.

Picture: EPA

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Michael Novakhov retweeted:

Der Anschlag auf die Nordstream-Pipelines in der Ostsee hat gezeigt, unsere kritische Infrastruktur muss umfassender geschützt werden. Die @NATO sollte beim Schutz der kritischen Infrastruktur im Meer mehr Aufgaben übernehmen, darin sind sich @jensstoltenberg und ich einig.

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Dani Alves was given a job to do, and he had to complete it to have a chance of making it to the World Cup.

“Mission given, mission accomplished,” the veteran Brazil right back said Thursday.

Dani Alves will start against Cameroon on Friday to become the oldest Brazilian player at a World Cup at the age of 39. He was in danger of not making it to Qatar after Brazil’s staff visited him in Mexico — where he plays with Pumas — and said he was not in good condition physically.

The staff told him the only chance he could be called up for the World Cup was if he could get back in shape.

“I wasn’t in my best condition when they went to visit me. They noticed it, so I asked them, ‘What’s my mission?’” Alves said. “Because I’m very good at completing my missions.”

The staff told Alves exactly what he needed to do, giving him some specific training goals. He quickly went to work.

“When they came again, they saw that I was ready,” Alves said. “I was committed. I couldn’t let them down after so much history with the national team. There were some difficult moments during those four months but I made sure that I could be here right now.”

By playing Friday, he will surpass the 38-year-old Thiago Silva, the team’s captain in Qatar, as the oldest Brazilian to play in a World Cup.

“I’m proud to be here and to be closing my cycle with the Brazilian national team in a World Cup,” he said. “Life has taught me that when you really want something, and when you really work hard for it, you will be rewarded.”

Alves’ call-up was the most criticized when Brazil coach Tite announced the final World Cup list, mainly because he hadn’t been playing with Pumas. He joined the Mexican club earlier this year after Barcelona decided not to extend his contract.

“It’s normal that people criticized me, because of my age and because of my situation,” Alves said. “But I can add to the national team even if I’m not in my best moment. I can contribute regardless if I am playing more of less.”

Tite said Alves made it to the squad for his contributions on and off the field.

“He has the quality as a player and deserves all my respect for having gone so far in his career,” Tite said. “He transcends soccer. It’s not only about what he does on the field.”

Alves will get to start against Cameroon because Tite is rotating the entire squad after Brazil won its first two games and has already reached the round of 16.

The coach said he didn’t use Alves in the game against Switzerland because he needed a more defensive-minded player to replace the injured Danilo at right back. He picked central defender Éder Militão instead.

“I understood that the team at that moment needed someone to defend, and I’m better at attacking,” Alves said.

Alves first played with Brazil in 2006 and is participating in his third World Cup. His last appearance at the tournament was in the round of 16 in 2014. He was injured ahead of the tournament in Russia.

Alves will be the captain against Cameroon in what will be his 126th appearance for Brazil.

“My mission is to serve the national team any way I can,” Alves said. “If it’s by playing the tambourine, then I’ll try to be the best tambourine player that I can be.”

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THE HAGUE (AP) — The United Nations’ highest court found little to rule on Thursday in a long-running dispute over a small river which flows from Bolivia to Chile as the Latin American neighbors had mostly resolved their conflict during the 6-year proceedings.

The International Court of Justice spent most of the hour-long hearing announcing the legal claims over the Silala River – a short waterway in the Atacama Desert – were “without object” as both countries now agreed on how the water system should be managed.

“It is an international watercourse, as both parties now agree,” the court’s president, U.S. judge Joan E. Donoghue, said. Bolivia had initially rejected this designation, as international law requires international water resources to be managed cooperatively.

Chile brought the claim to The Hague-based court in 2016, arguing Bolivia was violating international water laws by blocking the flow of the river. During hearings in April, Bolivia claimed the waterway isn’t a river at all, but rather a series of underground springs forced above ground by Chilean construction.

A 1997 U.N. convention on water rights requires countries whose borders intersect major waterways to share the natural resource equally.

However, during the 6 intervening years, the two countries dramatically narrowed the scope of their disagreement via diplomatic means, eventually agreeing on all but several minor technical points. Chile demanded that Bolivia notify it before carrying out certain activities on the waterway, but the court rejected this request as having no basis in international law.

Santiago saw the court’s ruling as a victory. “The court is now only restating the fact that Bolivia has accepted all that Chile came for,” Ximean Fuentes, Chile’s vice-minister for foreign affairs, told reporters following the hearing. Bolivia’s legal team left without speaking to the media.

The court stressed that the two countries, who have not had diplomatic relations since 1978, needed to work together to manage the Silala waters. The countries should “conduct consultations on an ongoing basis, in a spirit of cooperation,” Donoghue said.

It isn’t the first time the neighbors have used the court to settle their disputes. In 2018, judges sided with Chile, finding the country was not legally obliged to give sea access to its landlocked neighbor. Bolivia was not always cut off from the ocean. It lost its only coastline to Chile in an 1879-1883 war and has been unhappy with the outcome ever since.

CHICAGO (AP) — Emboldened by the results of November’s midterms, abortion rights supporters say they are preparing for even bigger fights in state legislatures and pivotal elections to come, including 2024 races for Congress and president.

Victories for abortion rights ballot measures and candidates who support abortion provided a roadmap for how to win future campaigns, Democrats and leaders of several organizations say. Mobilization efforts brought together women of different races, ages and ideologies who disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this summer to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, forming more diverse and larger coalitions.

The election also changed the way people talk about abortion, they say. Long seen as a polarizing issue Democrats were advised to pivot away from, it’s now considered a fundamental topic that must be addressed — and one that will help them win.

“We think, based on the enthusiasm and what we saw on our exit polling and in the election results, that this is an enduring issue,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. The group, along with Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and EMILY’s List, committed $150 million to the 2022 election.

“We got very, very far. But we could do a lot more and we’ll have to build toward that for 2024,” she said.

Heading into the November election, skeptics — including some within the Democratic Party — believed the Supreme Court’s June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade had faded as a motivator for voters, overtaken by concerns about inflation, crime or President Joe Biden’s unpopularity.

But in the first nationwide election since the ruling, voters protected abortion rights via ballot measures in five states. Democrats performed better than anticipated, keeping control of the Senate and winning races for governor and other top statewide offices, and among the biggest winners were Democratic candidates who made preserving abortion rights a centerpiece of their campaigns.

VoteCast, a broad survey of the midterm electorate, found 7 in 10 voters said the high court’s ruling on abortion rights was an important factor in their midterm decisions. VoteCast also showed the decision was broadly unpopular. About 6 in 10 say they are angry or dissatisfied by it. And roughly 6 in 10 say they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

“The election showed how motivating this is for people and I don’t think that is going away any time soon,” Jen Klein, the Biden administration’s Gender Policy Council director, said of abortion rights.

A key takeaway for supporters of abortion rights was that voters care about, and vote based on, more than a single issue. And for many women, reproductive rights is an economic issue, activists said.

House Democrats, who lost the majority but held more seats than expected to give the GOP a narrow advantage, mentioned abortion in 51% of the TV and radio ads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran in its most competitive districts, according to a post-election DCCC memo. The economy, extremism and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol also were mentioned, though less often, in DCCC ads.

“There were a lot of skeptics, a lot of pundits saying we’re going to lose. They said abortion was polarizing, don’t talk about it, it’s not going to mobilize women,” recalled Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of Supermajority, a multiracial, progressive organization formed after Donald Trump’s 2016 election to organize women and turn out the vote. “They could not have been more wrong. You now have an electorate that feels powerful.”

With near-total bans on abortion in place in over a dozen states, abortion-rights groups expect many of their next efforts will be in state legislatures, where Republicans continue to push for restrictions. They also are active in the runoff for U.S. Senate in Georgia between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and GOP football legend Herschel Walker.

Other next tests include a spring election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court that could shift the balance of the court in a state where abortion is banned, and the November 2023 governor’s race in Kentucky. Several Republicans are vying to challenge Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who supports abortion rights, in a conservative-leaning state where voters in November rejected a Republican-backed ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion.

Then will come 2024, when the nation will choose a president and which party controls Congress.

Abortion opponents, meanwhile, also are looking at what worked — and what didn’t — in the midterms, and debating their strategy going forward.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, argued that to the extent abortion rights opponents lost, it was more a sign of how advertising money was spent than the direction the country is moving on the issue in light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Democrats, notably vulnerable incumbents in competitive U.S. House races, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising pointing to their Republican opponents’ strict opposition to abortion rights. Meanwhile, Republican campaigns and related groups spent a fraction on abortion-specific messaging, allowing attacks — at times misrepresentations of GOP positions and records — to receive little or no response.

“The lesson I hope is learned — some lessons are hard ones — is that that doesn’t happen again,” Dannenfelser said. “Our goal is for there to be a lessons-learned lightbulb moment, and that there is a shift from the ostrich strategy of putting your head in the sand.”

The money bought what Dannenfelser called “unanswered lies.”

For example, a national Democratic House campaign group aired ads to help two-term Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, stating her Republican challenger Tyler Kistner supported banning abortion without exceptions for women who become pregnant as the result of rape or incest. That is despite Kistner stating he supported such exceptions in June.

Kistner’s campaign aides protested during press interviews during the campaign. But neither Kistner nor Republican groups aired ads responding. Still, Kistner, who ran unsuccessfully against Craig in 2020, made no mention of his abortion position on his campaign website this year, unlike two years ago.

“When party committees and their leaders are saying, ‘No matter what they say, don’t talk about abortion,’ then the lies stick,” Dannenfelser said.

With a divided Congress, the focus for Dannenfelser’s group shifts to closely evaluating Republican candidates for president, she said. That means sorting out of the field candidates who see no federal role to restrict abortion, she said.

“The one thing that is unacceptable is the idea that they have no job to do if they are elected,” she said.

Other Republicans say the lesson may be that the GOP should move away from supporting strict prohibitions. They point to elections like one this summer in conservative Kansas, where voters overwhelmingly supported abortion rights.

“I think there are quiet conversations about whether the party at a national level should be paying careful attention about what happened for instance in a state like Kansas,” said Jennifer Young, a Republican health care lobbyist.

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Associated Press reporters Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Colleen Long and Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report.