Tag: offensive

Inside Jeff Zients’ White House charm offensive

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Recently, after dropping in on National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, he joined the NSC’s all-staff meeting that had been underway. Zients has also wandered across West Executive Drive and into the EEOB, as he did last week for Ike’s Taco Tuesday lunch, the staffers said.
“Jeff is definitely getting his steps in,” one staffer quipped.
Zients is known as an experienced manager comfortable with delegating assignments down the chain of command and setting internal deadlines for goals, results and determining next steps. But he has also spent his early time in the chief of staff role brandishing his accessibility and building relations. It’s not just the random stop-bys and taco noshing. Starting this week, he will start holding town halls on campus to facilitate more direct communication among staff. The first is set for Friday.
The meetings, which will be open to several dozen aides chosen by lottery to attend in person, will provide “an opportunity to hear from senior staff on policy and priorities and for staff to provide feedback to the Chief of Staff and White House leadership,” one White House official told West Wing Playbook.
The plan is for Zients and one or two other senior officials to give a short presentation at the outset and then open things up for roughly 45 minutes of questions, the official said.
It’s not clear how frequently the gatherings will take place, possibly every few months, but more are in the offing to accommodate those who aren’t invited to this week’s, which will take place in the EEOB’s South Court auditorium. And all administration staffers will get a Zoom link to watch live.
The town hall idea comes on top of other traditions Zients has implemented inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., including Wednesday morning bagel deliveries from Call Your Mother, the D.C. franchise he helped start.
Zients has also penned hand-written thank you notes to several staffers and continues to utilize the chief of staff’s office — and outdoor patio — for Friday happy hours. According to people familiar with the gatherings, he’s held recent happy hours for members of the budget team and for those involved in the reopening of the Navy Mess, the basement cafeteria where staffers with access often eat breakfast and lunch.

Zients is a familiar face to many given his work leading the administration’s early Covid-19 response and, last year, a quiet effort to manage staff transitions following the midterms. And at Biden’s request last year, he helped oversee the building and launch of the government website for the administration’s student loan forgiveness program, working with the Office of Management and Budget and Dept. of Education to ensure the site, where people can determine if they qualify, was operational. The role, which has not been reported on previously, was a reprisal of Zients’ initial work with then-Vice President Biden to fix the glitch-prone online healthcare marketplace during the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act roll-out in 2013.
Despite all that history, he also embarks on the staff outreach from the perch of a relative outsider in a White House filled with longtime Biden loyalists. His predecessor, Ron Klain, had worked with the president for decades and had years-long relationships with other staffers and Democratic lawmakers.
Zients, who is an increasingly active caller and texter (although this reporter’s most recent text to Zients went unresponded to 🙁), has worked to keep in touch with staff in the building and a growing number of key allies on the Hill. According to a person familiar with the conversation, he texted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the leader of the House Progressive Caucus who had a close relationship with Klain, on Tuesday to discuss her Seattle Times op-ed praising Biden’s economic agenda.
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#Jeff #Zients #White #House #charm #offensive
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 13, 2023
Sikh sentenced in UK for targeting Dalits in offensive post

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London: A 68-year-old Indian-origin Sikh in the UK has been prosecuted and sentenced to 18 weeks in jail for posting hate speech on social media targeting Dalit communities.
Amrik Bajwa, 68, of Bowyer Drive, Slough, was sentenced to 18 weeks’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to one count of sending offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message/matter via public communication network, the Thames Valley Police said.
On July 19, 2022, Bajwa posted a video to TikTok “that was offensive to the Sikh community”. He was arrested on July 22, 2022, and charged via postal requisition on March 2, 2023, a police statement read.

“I am pleased with the sentence given, which provides a clear message that Thames Valley Police will not tolerate behaviour like that of Amrik Bajwa,” Investigating officer Sergeant Andrew Grant, based at Slough police station, said.
The UK-based Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA), which was one of the key organisations to bring the Bajwa’s TikTok video to the attention of the police, said it “was highly toxic, racist and casteist in content”, and targeted Dalit communities.
“Bajwa threatened to rape women from the Dalit communities that he was insulting, and claimed to have raped their daughters, sisters and mothers in the past with impunity,” the ACDA said.
Welcoming the sentencing, ACDA said the jail-term reflects the severity of the harm Amrik Bajwa’s video caused the Dalit community.
“We understand the conviction did not specifically refer to ‘caste’ because caste is not yet a protected characteristic in law. But the Crime Prosecution Service shared at the hearing today the derogatory words ‘Choora’ and ‘Chaamar’ that Mr Bajwa used,” ACDA said in a statement.

The matter first went to the Crown Prosecution Service for a charging decision but was subsequently escalated to the Attorney General for a final decision.
Previously, Gurvinder Singh Luthra from west London received a 16 week suspended prison sentence in 2021 for producing and sharing an “offensive and menacing” hate video on social media.
The Thames Valley Police started their investigations after numerous communities, including ACDA, got together and complained against Bajwa’s actions.
“As a force, we are committed to protecting our communities and ensuring that criminal actions which have the potential to undermine community cohesion are dealt with robustly,” Sergeant Grant said.
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#Sikh #sentenced #targeting #Dalits #offensive #post
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 12, 2023
‘Ukraine doesn’t have any time to waste’: U.S. races to prepare Kyiv for spring offensive

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As spring approaches, U.S. officials are increasingly concerned about Ukraine’s dwindling supply of ammunition, air defenses and experienced soldiers. Moscow and Kyiv are continuing to throw bodies into the fight for a southeastern city the U.S. does not consider strategically important. But the Pentagon says that regardless of Kyiv’s battlefield strategy, the U.S. wants Ukraine’s soldiers to have the weapons they need to keep fighting.
Russia has spent months pummeling the country with missiles, seeking not only to cause destruction but also deplete Ukraine’s air defense stocks. Ukrainian soldiers have described acute shortages of basic ammunition, including mortar rounds and artillery shells. And upwards of 100,000 Ukrainian forces have died in the year-long war, U.S. officials estimate, including the most experienced soldiers.
Many of these losses are taking place in Bakhmut, where both sides are suffering massive casualties. Led by soldiers from the mercenary Wagner Group, Russia has laid siege to the southeastern city for nine months, reducing it to ruins. Ukrainian forces have refused to yield, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisting that defending Bakhmut is key to holding other eastern cities.
“The Russians clearly are wanting to press forward to the boundaries of Donetsk all of the way to the west, and to do that they need to get hold of Bakhmut and the road network that goes past it,” said Dara Massicot, senior policy researcher at the RAND Institute.
But Austin recently told reporters that Bakhmut is “more of a symbolic value than it is strategic and operational value.”
Instead, U.S. officials are more focused on getting Ukraine ready for a major spring offensive to retake territory, which they expect to begin by May. Hundreds of Western tanks and armored vehicles, including for the first time eight armored vehicles that can launch bridges and allow troops to cross rivers, are en route to Ukraine for the offensive. The U.S. and European partners are also flowing massive amounts of ammunition and 155mm shells, which Ukraine has identified as its most urgent need.
U.S. aid packages “going back four or five months have been geared toward what Ukraine needs for this counteroffensive,” said one U.S. official, who was granted anonymity due to the administration’s ground rules.
While U.S. officials are careful not to appear to tell Kyiv how to fight the war, Pentagon leaders said Wednesday that the equipment and training being provided will enable Ukraine to win the war — where and when it chooses to do so.

“There is a significant ongoing effort to build up the Ukrainian military in terms of equipment, munitions and training in a variety of countries in order to enable Ukraine to defend itself,” said Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley.
“The increased Ukrainian capability will allow the Ukrainian leadership to develop and execute a variety of options in the future, to achieve their objectives and bring this war to a successful conclusion,” Milley said.
More than 600 Ukrainians in February completed a five-week training program in Germany that included basic skills such as marksmanship, along with medical training and instruction on combined arms maneuver with U.S.-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker armored personnel carriers. Those forces are now back on the battlefield, and a second batch of hundreds of additional soldiers are now going through the program.
Behind closed doors, U.S. officials have been pressing Kyiv to conserve artillery shells and fire in a more targeted fashion. This is a particular concern in Bakhmut, where both sides are expending munitions at a rapid pace.
“Some in the Pentagon think that they are burning up ammunition too fast,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Forces Europe. “Excuse me, they’re in a massive fight for the survival of their country against an enemy that has huge advantages in artillery ammunition and is not letting up.”
Kyiv has not yet settled on a strategy, U.S. officials said, but it has essentially two options: push south through Kherson into Crimea, or move east from its northern position and then south, cutting off the Russian land bridge. The first option is not realistic, officials said, as Russia has dug in its defenses on the east side of the Dnipro River, and Ukraine does not have the manpower for a successful amphibious operation against that kind of force. The second is more likely, officials say.
In addition to sending weapons and providing training, senior American generals hosted Ukrainian military officials in Wiesbaden, Germany this month for a set of tabletop exercises to help Kyiv wargame the next phase of the war.
President Joe Biden last month ruled out sending F-16 fighter jets, and senior U.S. officials have repeatedly said the aircrafts are not in the cards right now. But officials are working on other ways to boost the Ukrainian air force, including attempting to mount advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles on its Soviet-era MiG-29s, and assessing the skills of Ukrainian pilots.
Two Ukrainian pilots recently wrapped up an assessment at an Air National Guard base in Tucson, Arizona, for U.S. military instructors to assess what training they need to better employ the aircrafts and capabilities the West has already provided, including bombs, missiles and guidance kits. The program included simulator flights, but the pilots did not fly in American aircrafts, officials said.
An effort to mount AMRAAMs on the MiGs, if it proves successful, could also significantly increase the ability of Ukraine’s fighter pilots to take out Russian missiles, officials said.
As quickly as Ukraine is running out of munitions, Russia’s human and equipment losses are even more acute, forcing Moscow to appeal to rogue nations such as Iran for additional weapons.
“Russia remains isolated, their military stocks are rapidly depleting, the soldiers are demoralized, untrained unmotivated conscripts in convicts and their leadership is failing them,” Milley said.
Publicly, senior officials say it is up to Zelenskyy when and where to launch a new offensive, and whether to remain in Bakhmut or reposition his forces.
“President Zelensky is fighting this fight, and he will make the calls on what’s important and what’s not,” Austin said. But he noted that: “We’re generating combat power, to a degree that we believe that it will provide them opportunities to change the dynamics on the battlefield, at some point going forward, whatever point that is.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 16, 2023
Von der Leyen brings charm offensive to Canada

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“I am a European of German nationality. It was German Nazism and fascism that brought death and destruction upon Europe and the world, but Allied Forces brought liberty back to all of us,” she said. “We owe our democracy also to you, the people of Canada.”
Defense and national security are the throughlines connecting events on von der Leyen’s Canadian itinerary.
She was welcomed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Kingston, Ontario, at a Canadian Forces base two hours from the capital. The leaders toured a lithium recycling firm in the city, one with Canadian and European footprints, before returning to Ottawa for a dinner at the Canadian War Museum in a room flanked by tanks.
Her speech heaved heavy flattery on her Canadian hosts, praising Trudeau for his gender-balanced Cabinet before drawing her audience’s focus to her own initiatives. Before the end of her five-year term next year, she declared, “50 percent of all managers of the European Commission will be women.”
Von der Leyen praised Canada earlier in the day for doing “more than its fair share” and “going way beyond what is necessary” to support Ukraine, “compared to others.” She did not name names.
Ottawa announced Tuesday plans to ratchet up support for Ukraine by extending its engineer training in Poland. Combat medical trainers will also be sent to train forces.
In addition to the seven electrical transformers that Canada will donate to repair Ukraine’s damaged power grid, the government has pledged to give C$3 million to fund de-mining efforts in the country.
Von der Leyen will head to Washington Wednesday after a meeting with Governor General Mary Simon.

Her Ottawa visit and address is a pre-show to U.S. President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Canada in March, his first official trip since entering the White House.
Defense, clean energy and trade are overlapping themes expected to be addressed during Biden’s visit, which official dates have yet to be announced.
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#Von #der #Leyen #brings #charm #offensive #Canada
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 8, 2023
Balloon furor deflates China’s commercial charm offensive

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“This intrusion was completely unacceptable and has got a lot of people asking a lot of questions,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, a senior member on the House Financial Services Committee, said about the initial balloon incursion. “I don’t see [our approach] becoming less hawkish. If anything it’ll stay the same, but likely get more hawkish.”
The House Financial Services Committee is now kicking off work on legislation targeting American firms operating in China — rules they hope will prevent U.S. banks from funding technologies that can end up in Chinese military or surveillance applications, like the balloon and other spy devices. The Biden administration is also readying its own action on the same front, with a new executive order expected next month, following its decision Friday to blacklist six Chinese aerospace firms allegedly associated with surveillance balloon development.
The reopening of hostilities in the trans-Pacific trade war is a shift from the implicit ceasefire that President Joe Biden struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali last November, when they pledged to put a “floor” on the deteriorating relationship on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
Since that meeting, the U.S. had refrained from issuing trade penalties that could inflame Beijing, like sanctioning new military-aligned firms, and planned high-level visits for the nations’ top economic and diplomatic officials. Meanwhile, Chinese officials mounted a diplomatic campaign in Washington to reset the two countries’ commercial relationship.
But in the time it took the Chinese balloon to travel from Montana to South Carolina, U.S. officials say that any nascent goodwill has evaporated, and Washington is again revving up its campaign to hem in the Chinese economy.
“It’s literally got the entire country lit up now,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, who authored a House resolution this week condemning the balloon that passed unanimously. “I think it did tremendous damage … to the relationship. If that was their goal, fine, but I don’t think that was in their best interest.”
Whether by design or accident, the balloon incident has dealt a critical blow to Beijing’s recent efforts to improve the trade relationship as its economy emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. Since late last year, Communist Party officials have blanketed Washington with diplomatic overtures, offering lawmakers visits to China and policy briefings on contentious issues like Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok’s operations in the U.S.
The Chinese sought openings with even some of the most hawkish members of Congress, including McCaul and Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who both confirmed in interviews that China’s ambassador to the U.S. contacted them late last year.

“They made a lot of charming overtures for me to come to China,” said McCaul, who said the Israeli ambassador facilitated an introduction to China’s then-ambassador at a social function in November. “And the TikTok issue, they want to talk to me about this new arrangement they have,” he said, referring to a proposed national security compromise between the firm and the Biden administration.
Barr said his contact with then-ambassador Qin Gang — now China’s Foreign Minister — was more contentious.
“Our conversations should be diplomatic, and that was not,” he said, declining to elaborate. “We just have a lot of reasons to be upset with the Chinese right now. They shouldn’t be spying on the American people.”
But while Washington is by and large united in its desire to crack down on China’s high-tech economy, policymakers are increasingly divided over how to do it.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) questions Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, April 28, 2022.
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Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
For over a year, China hawks in Congress have pushed legislation that would set up a new federal oversight body to review — and potentially deny — American investments in key Chinese industries that could affect U.S. national security. Sponsors of that bill, the National Critical Capabilities Defense Act, say they will soon reintroduce it in the new Congress. The Biden administration is also considering restricting U.S. investments in those sectors via an executive order that has been in the works since last year.
But some House Republicans oppose those efforts, arguing they are a dangerous expansion of the federal government’s power over business, even as they insist they want to penalize Beijing’s high-tech industries.
Those lawmakers presented their case at a Financial Services hearing on China this week, led by committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.).
“For the U.S. to compete with China, we cannot become more like the Chinese Communist Party,” McHenry said. “We need to carefully evaluate if a policy proposal could jeopardize America’s ability to innovate, grow, and allocate capital, or if it would cause allies to question our commitment to free people and free markets.”
Instead of a government review board, members of the committee offered up a bill from Barr that would expand the federal government’s authority to sanction or blacklist Chinese firms connected to the country’s military. Such an approach would give more certainty to financial institutions about where they could invest, Barr said, rather than leaving their fate up to an oversight committee.
The debate on stricter oversight of U.S. investment in China is still in its early stages on Capitol Hill. The Senate Banking Committee is set to take up the issue in a hearing at the end of the month, likely setting up months of debate and negotiation over how to shape final legislation.
The debate is also continuing to play out in the White House, where the push by national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others to tighten oversight of U.S. investments in China has been met by resistance by economic officials in the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Congressional leadership has pushed the Biden administration since last year to quickly issue that order, and China hawks are hopeful the balloon incident will spur them to action.
“They said, originally, March,” Casey said. “I hope they can keep to that. We’re pushing them.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 14, 2023
Offensive skit case: 9 including students arrested in Bangalore

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Bengaluru: Following the objections raised by Dalit organisations and student groups to a skit that allegedly defamed Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the Karnataka Police arrested nine people, including the Principal and seven students of Jain University’s Centre for Management Studies (CMS) here.
Dr. Dinesh Nilkant, the Principal from Jain (Deemed-to-be) University and seven students pursuing fifth-semester in BBA course and the controversial event’s programme co-ordinator have been arrested, according to police on Tuesday.
The Dalit organisations have given a bandh call for Tuesday in protest.
The controversial skit was played at the campus during the ‘MadAds’ competition of Jain University Youth Fest 8.
After the arrest, the accused were presented before the court and remanded to judicial custody for four days.
The accused were booked under IPC Section 153 A for creating enmity between different groups and SC, ST (Prevention of Atrocities Act). The university issued an unconditional apology for the development and stated that the university does not approve of certain words used against Ambedkar and Dalits.
Karnataka Congress had raised concern over the incident of casteist slur being used in a skit performed during the college fest in Bengaluru. The party on its social media handle stated that a video containing abusive and objectionable content on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Dalit communities is being exhibited in a programme organised at Jain College in Bengaluru. The City Police Commissioner must act in this regard.
“The police should take cognizance of the incident and initiate legal action,” the Congress demanded.

The skit was performed by a group of students ‘The Delroys Boys’, who tendered an unconditional apology for the presentation. However, the debate over the issue is rising.
The incident had come to light after a group of students published an online petition on Jhatkaa.org. The petition stated the college contingent from Jain University’s Centre for Management Studies (CMS) staged an incredibly casteist and insensitive skit at the event.
The anonymous petitioners objected to the normalization of caste discrimination in the pretext of humour. The skit was performed as part of ‘MadAds’, a segment at the fest where the participants had to advertise imaginary products along lines of humour.
The Delroys Boys, the theatre group from CMS, who are in the thick of controversy, in their skit, exhibited a man belonging to the lower caste attempting to date an upper caste woman.
Akshay Bansode, State Member of the Vanchit Bahujan Yuva Aghadi has filed a police complaint in Maharashtra under provisions of the Atrocity Act and IPC. The complainant had urged the police to treat the complaint as FIR and initiate action against the performers and University.
Sources said that the controversial skit was performed at other platforms. The Delroys Boys maintained that they apologize to everyone they have spoken badly about and genuinely they apologize for their mistake.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 14, 2023
Russian forces intensify offensive efforts in Luhansk: Official

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Kiev: A top Ukrainian official said that Russian forces have intensified their offensive efforts in the eastern Luhansk region over the past week.
In a statement on Thursday, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said that officials have witnessed a slight increase in Russian operations near the cities of Kupyansk and Lyman, CNN reported.
Russia is on the offensive in Luhansk, though without “much success” so far, the Governor added.
Haidai’s remarks came just two days after he had claimed that Russian troops were being sent to the war-torn nation’s eastern region as part of an offensive planned by Moscow on February 15.
On Tuesday. he had said that “we are seeing more and more reserves being deployed in our direction”, reports the BBC.
Almost a year into Moscow’s ongoing invasion, an estimated 300,000 Russian reserve troops have been recruited in recent months in an attempt to break through Ukraine’s front lines in the east.
Capturing the key city of Bakhmut could enable Russian forces to press on towards the bigger cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
The Governor had further claimed that the Russians’ two-month training period was coming to an end and Moscow would need around 10 days to transfer them to the front for a new offensive.

He suggested that in Luhansk region they would target the three towns of Bilohorivka, Kreminna and Svatove, the BBC reported.
Since the past few months, Ukraine has been warning of an imminent Russian offensive that could begin on February 24, marking the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion.
Thursday’s development came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy met European Union leaders in Brussels after his trips to London and Paris a day earlier, during which he asked for more fighter jets in en effort to boost Ukraine’s war capabilities amid the ongoing invasion.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 10, 2023
As Kyiv steels for offensive, Russia launches missile raids and builds up troops near Kupyansk

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KYIV — Russia has launched extensive missile raids across Ukraine and is building up troops near the northeastern city of Kupyansk to test Ukrainian defenses, just as Kyiv is warning that Moscow is gearing up to launch a new offensive.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, said in a statement that two Kalibr cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and NATO member Romania, before veering into Ukrainian territory. Romania, however, cautioned that radar only detected a missile launched from a Russian ship in the Black Sea traveling close to its airspace — some 35 kilometers away — but not inside its territory.
“At approximately 10:33 a.m., these missiles crossed Romanian airspace. After that, they again entered the airspace of Ukraine at the crossing point of the borders of the three states. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea,” Zaluzhnyy said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added, “Several Russian missiles flew through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. Today’s missiles are a challenge to NATO, collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped. Stopped by the world.”
Governors in Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Khmelnytskyi reported power cuts due to the barrage.
The attack started before dawn in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to the governor, Oleg Synegubov.
“Today, at 4:00 a.m., about 12 rockets hit critical infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv and the region. Currently, emergency and stabilizing light shutdowns are being employed. About 150,000 people in Kharkiv remain without electricity,” Synegubov said.
Synegubov said the barrage came the same morning as Russian invasion forces increased their attacks near Kupyansk, a city in the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces liberated last fall. “The enemy has increased its presence on the front line and is testing our defense lines for weak points. Our defenders reliably hold their positions and are ready for any possible actions of the enemy,” Synegubov said in a statement.
He also reported that about eight people were injured in one of the latest Russian missiles strikes in Kharkiv. Two of the victims are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, in the west of the country, Ukrainian air defense units are firing back at multiple cruise missile attacks. “That is Russian revenge for the fact that the whole world supports us,” Khmelnitskyi Governor Serhiy Hamaliy said in a statement. He also reported a missile strike in the city, saying that part of Khmelnitsky was without power.
Ukrainian Air Force Command reported the destruction of five cruise missiles and five of seven Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones Russia launched from the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Russians also launched six Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles from a Russian frigate in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian Air Force added that air defense units shot down 61 of 71 cruise missiles that Russia launched.
“The occupiers also launched a massive attack with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from the districts of Belgorod (Russia) and Tokmak (occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region),” the air force said in a statement. “Up to 35 anti-aircraft guided missiles (S-300) were launched in the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, which cannot be destroyed in the air by means of air defense. Around 8:30 a.m. cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95 MS strategic bombers.”
This article has been updated.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 8, 2023
MP: Congress leader in Jabalpur booked over offensive remarks

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Bhopal: A Congress leader has been booked over his alleged offensive remarks during a public speech in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur district, sources said on Saturday.
While addressing the people on Friday, district president of the Congress Nilesh Jain exhorted his supporters to tackle the corrupt with an iron hand. “First request the corrupt against corruption with folded hands, and if they don’t listen, then break their hands.”
He was booked the same day on the basis of a complaint registered by a Bharatiya Yuva Morcha of Jabalpur.
His utterances came a day after the state unit Congress kicked-started its ‘Hath Se Hath jodo’ campaign, a political march that will cover all 230 Assembly seats in the state. At the event, Jain said – “Haath jodo, nahi mane to brahmachari ke haath todo’ (First request the corrupt with folded hands, and if they don’t listen, then break their hands)”
Rajmani Singh, who is the district president of Bharatiya Yuva Morcha of Jabalpur district, lodged a complaint at Shahpura police station. The Congress leader has been charged under two sections, including 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), said police.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 28, 2023
Manpower will be crucial for Russia to mount a spring offensive

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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
It appears it’s only a matter of time before the Kremlin orders another draft to replenish its depleted ranks and make up for the battlefield failings of its command.
This week, Norway’s army chief said Russia has already suffered staggering losses, estimating 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since February — a figure much higher than American estimates, as General Mark Milley, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, had suggested in November that the toll was around 100,000.
But whatever the exact tally, few military analysts doubt Russian forces are suffering catastrophic casualties. In a video posted this week, Russian human rights activist Olga Romanova, who heads the Russia Behind Bars charity, said that of the 50,000 conscripts recruited from jails by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s paramilitary mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, 40,000 are now dead, missing or deserted.
In some ways, the high Wagner toll isn’t surprising, with increasing reports from both sides of the front lines that Prigozhin has been using his recruits with little regard for their longevity. One American volunteer, who asked to remain unnamed, recently told POLITICO that he was amazed how Wagner commanders were just hurling their men at Ukrainian positions, only to have them gunned down for little gain.
Andrey Medvedev, a Wagner defector who recently fled to Norway, has also told reporters that in the months-long Russian offensive against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, former prisoners were thrown into battle as cannon fodder, as meat. “In my platoon, only three out of 30 men survived. We were then given more prisoners, and many of those died too,” he said.
Of course, Wagner is at the extreme end when it comes to carelessness with lives — but as Ukraine’s deadly New Year’s Day missile strike demonstrated, regular Russian armed forces are also knee-deep in blood. Russia says 89 soldiers were killed at Makiivka — the highest single battlefield loss Moscow has acknowledged since the invasion began — while Ukraine estimates the death toll was nearer 400.
Many of those killed there came from Samara, a city located at the confluence of the Volga and Samara rivers, where Communist dictator Joseph Stalin had an underground complex built for Russian leaders in case of a possible evacuation from Moscow. The bunker was built in just as much secrecy as the funerals that have been taking place over the past few weeks for the conscripts killed at Makiivka. “Lists [of the dead] will not be published,” Samara’s military commissar announced earlier this month.

To make up for these losses, Russia’s military bloggers, who have grown increasingly critical, have been urging a bigger partial mobilization, this time of 500,000 reservists to add to the 300,000 already called up in September. President Vladimir Putin has denied this, and Kremlin press spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also dismissed the possibility, saying that the “topic is constantly artificially activated both from abroad and from within the country.”
Yet, last month, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called for Russia’s army to be boosted from its current 1.1 million to 1.5 million, and he announced new commands in regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia, on the border with Finland.
Meanwhile, circumstantial evidence that another draft will be called is also accumulating — though whether it will be done openly or by stealth is unclear.
Along these lines, both the Kremlin and Russia’s political-military establishment have been redoubling propaganda efforts, attempting to shape a narrative that this war isn’t one of choice but of necessity, and that it amounts to an existential clash for the country.
General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” | Ruslan Braun/Creative commons via Flickr
In a recent interview, General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff and now the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine — said that Russia is battling “almost the entire collective West” and that course corrections are needed when it comes to mobilization. He talked about threats arising from Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Similarly, in his Epiphany address this month, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said, “the desire to defeat Russia today has taken very dangerous forms. We pray to the Lord that he will bring the madmen to reason and help them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.” And the increasingly unhinged Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has warned that the war in Ukraine isn’t going as planned, so it might be necessary to use nuclear weapons to avoid failure.
As Russia’s leaders strive to sell their war as an existential crisis, they are mining ever deeper for tropes to heighten nationalist fervor too, citing the Great Patriotic War at every turn. At the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, which commemorates the breaking of the German siege of the city in 1944, a new exhibition dedicated to “The Lessons of Fascism Yet to Be Learned” is due to be unveiled, and it is set to feature captured Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles. “It’s only logical that a museum dedicated to the struggle against Nazism would support the special operation directed against neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” a press release helpfully suggests.
In line with Putin’s insistence that the war is being waged to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists have also been endeavoring to popularize the slogan, “We can do it again.”
At the same time, there are signs that local recruitment centers are gearing up for another surge of draftees as well.
Rumors of a fresh partial mobilization have prompted some dual-citizen Central Asian workers — those holding Russian passports and who would be eligible to be drafted — to leave the country, and some say they’ve been prevented from exiting. A Kyrgyz man told Radio Free Europe he was stopped by Russian border guards when he tried to cross into Kazakhstan en route to Kyrgyzstan. “Russian border guards explained to me quite politely that ‘you are included in a mobilization list, this is the law, and you have no right to go,’” he said.
In order to prevent another surge of refuseniks, Moscow also seems determined to put up further restrictions on crossing Russia’s borders, including possibly making it obligatory for Russians to book a specific time and place in advance, so that they can exit. Amendments to a transport law introduced in the Duma on Monday would require “vehicles belonging to Russian transport companies, foreign transport companies, citizens of the Russian Federation, foreign citizens, stateless persons and other road users” to reserve a date and time “in order to cross the state border of the Russian Federation.”
Transport officials say this would only affect haulers and would help ease congestion near border checkpoints. But if so, then why are “citizens of the Russian Federation” included in the language?
All in all, manpower will be crucial for Russia to mount a spring offensive in the coming months. And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers on the battlefield. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest are necessary for an attacking force.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

January 24, 2023