US envoy: Africa trip isn't to compete with Russia, China
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is heading to Africa, saying she is going to focus on how the United State can help Uganda, Ghana and Cape Verde deal with the food crisis that has hit the continent particularly hard — not to compete with China and Russia.
Highland Park shooting suspect pleads not guilty
The man accused of killing seven people and wounding dozens more in a shooting at an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago pleaded not guilty on Wednesday, a week after prosecutors announced he faces 117 felony counts in the attack.
news.yahoo.comUS envoy: Russia intends to dissolve Ukraine from world map
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine “and dissolve it from the world map entirely.” Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the U.N. Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing “illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia.” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “has even stated that this is Russia’s war aim,” she said.
news.yahoo.comAfrica is being pushed to take sides in the Ukraine war
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Cameroon this week, calling the entire continent out for “hypocrisy." The leader’s remarks showed a sharp contrast with those of another current visitor to the continent: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
washingtonpost.comIn rare contact, US offers Russia deal for Griner, Whelan
The U.S. has offered a deal to Russia aimed at bringing home WNBA star Brittney Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday. In a sharp reversal of previous policy, Blinken also said he expects to speak with his Kremlin counterpart for the first time since before Russia invaded Ukraine. The statement marked the first time the U.S. government has publicly revealed any concrete action it has taken to secure the release of Griner, who was arrested on drug-related charges at a Moscow airport in February and testified Wednesday at her trial.
news.yahoo.comLavrov says Russian goal to oust Ukraine's president
Russia appears to have reversed itself after the country's top diplomat said Moscow's overarching goal is to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian artillery barrages and air strikes continue to pummel cities across Ukraine. The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine's efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports, something that would help ease global food shortages, under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend.
news.yahoo.comRussia's war in Ukraine to overshadow G-20 talks in Bali
Foreign ministers from the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations are gathering in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali for talks bound to be dominated by the conflict in Ukraine despite an agenda focused on global cooperation and food and energy security.
Russia-West tensions inflame UN debate on Mali peacekeepers
Tensions between Russia and the West are aggravating talks about the future of one of the United Nations’ biggest and most perilous peacekeeping operations, the force sent to help Mali contend with a decade-long Islamic extremist insurgency.
Venezuelan leader, barred from US summit, arrives in Turkey
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was welcomed in the Turkish capital on Wednesday just as the foreign minister of Russia, a key ally of the ostracized Latin American regime, was also visiting the city. Maduro is on a Eurasian tour after being rebuffed by Washington, which decided not to invite him to the Summit of the Americas. Turkey is one of a handful of places around the world – Russia and Iran are other friendly states – where Maduro is welcome amid U.S. sanctions on his country.
news.yahoo.comPutin health mystery leads to rare Kremlin denial
Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been fond of macho displays of personal virility and strength. Just months into his first term as the nation’s leader, he served as the co-pilot of a fighter jet that landed in Grozny, the Chechen capital that had been devastated under his direction. He has been photographed riding a horse without a shirt and hunting, also shirtless.
news.yahoo.comLavrov names Russias "absolute priority" in the war against Ukraine
Kateryna Tyshchenko - Sunday, 29 May 2022, 22:54 Sergey Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, has said that Russia's absolute priority in the war against Ukraine is to capture Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts; he added that people who live in other Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine will have to "decide their future" themselves.
news.yahoo.comKremlin rails against West, accuses U.S. of 'canceling Russia'
The Kremlin’s top diplomat on Friday accused the West of waging “total war” and promoting “the culture of canceling Russia,” in blistering remarks that underscore how Moscow continues to see the war in Ukraine as an existential struggle to remake the geopolitical order as opposed to a mere territorial conflict.
news.yahoo.comRussia lashes out at Israel as rift over Holocaust and Ukraine widens
The Kremlin deepened its unusual rift over World War II history with Israel on Tuesday by endorsing falsehood-riddled comments made by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov about the supposed collaboration of Jews during the Holocaust with their own Nazi killers.
news.yahoo.comRussia doubles down on foreign minister's Hitler remarks, accuses Israel of supporting "neo-Nazis" in Ukraine
Israel has voiced support for Ukraine after Russia launched its invasion, but has refrained from directly criticizing the Kremlin and joined the Western effort to sanction Russian oligarchs.
cbsnews.comKremlin official says West has declared 'total war' on Russia
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday took aim at the sanctions the United States and other countries have imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, saying he believes that the West has declared "total war" on Russia.Lavrov made his comments during a meeting in which he described actions that Western nations have taken in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "a real hybrid war," adding that "total war was declared on us,"...
news.yahoo.comRussian talking point: Blaming US for Ukraine church split
While Russia has sought to justify its assault on Ukraine with complaints about NATO's eastward expansion, it has also claimed that foreign actors have encroached on its religious turf in Ukraine — even alleging the United States helped instigate an Eastern Orthodox schism there. Moscow Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said both the West and a rival patriarch were “pursuing the same end” of seeking to weaken Russia and “make the brotherly peoples — Russians and Ukrainians — enemies.” “You cannot call it a religious war, but it has a religious dimension,” said the Rev. Cyril Hovorun, an Orthodox priest, native of Ukraine and professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at University College Stockholm.
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