Russia captures strategic stronghold after 2 years of Ukrainian resistance
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russian troops on Wednesday took charge of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Russia launched its full-scale assault in 2022.
The advance of Moscow’s forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia’s vast superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.
Ukraine’s eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops and “preserve personnel and military equipment.”
The 72nd Mechanized Brigade, the last unit defending the city, posted photos of wounded soldiers to Facebook with the message: “These are very hard days. Very!”
The Russian defense ministry did not mention Vuhledar in its daily battlefield report.
Russian Telegram channels, however, published video of troops waving the Russian tricolor flag over shattered buildings.
The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era apartment buildings smashed apart and scarred.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s primary tactical goal is to take the whole of the Donbas region — the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk — in southeastern Ukraine.
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Russia controls about 80% of the Donbas, a heavy industry hub where the armed conflict began in 2014 when Moscow-coordinated pro-Russian "separatist" forces took control over part of the region after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Kyiv and Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine.
Since Russia sent its army into Ukraine in February 2022, the war has largely been a story of grinding artillery and drone strikes along a heavily fortified 620-mile front involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
But in August the battlefield became much more dynamic: Ukraine smashed through the border in Russia’s Kursk region in a bid to divert Russian forces, and Russian troops began advancing faster than before in eastern Ukraine.
Russian forces have been pushing westwards at key points along some 95 miles of the front in the Donetsk region, with the logistics hub of Pokrovsk also a key target.
They captured Ukrainsk on Sept. 17 and then began encircling Vuhledar, about 50 miles south of Pokrovsk.
Russia has been using pincer tactics to trap and then constrict Ukrainian strongholds. Images from the area showed intense bombardment of the town with artillery and aerial glide bombs.
Neither side discloses losses, and each said the other had paid a high human price for the town.
“Having suffered numerous losses as a result of prolonged battles, the enemy did not stop trying to capture Vuhledar. In an effort to take control of the city at any cost, he managed to direct the reserves to carry out flanking attacks, which exhausted the defense of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As a result of the enemy’s actions, there was a risk of the encirclement of the city,” Ukraine’s eastern command said early Wednesday.
“The higher command has given permission to carry out a maneuver to withdraw units from Vuhledar in order to preserve personnel and combat equipment, to take up positions for further actions.”
Control of Vuhledar, which lies at the intersection of the eastern and southern battlefields, is significant because it will ease Russia’s advance as it tries to pierce deeper behind the Ukrainian defensive lines.
Russian bloggers said Russia could now try to push towards Velyka Novosilka, just over 20 miles to the west.
Vuhledar also sits close to a railway line connecting Crimea to the Donbas region.
Russian forces currently control 98.5% of the Luhansk region and 60% of the Donetsk region.
Successo di pubblico e una contestazione all'International Salieri Circus Award
L'evento di Legnago si è chiuso con sette spettacoli che hanno fatto sempre registrare il tutto esaurito. Squalificata l'artista ucraina AnnaDallArt per la sua protesta contro la presenza di un giurato russo
Saluti finali all'International Salieri Circus Award 2024
Si è concluso con una polemica ed un grande successo la quarta edizione dell'International Salieri Circus Award, uno degli appuntamenti più prestigiosi per l'arte circense internazionale. Accompagnati dalla musica eseguita dal vivo dall'Orchestra Ritmico Sinfonica Italiana diretta dal maestro Diego Basso, artisti provenienti da 21 diverse nazioni si sono esibiti sul palco del Teatro Salieri di Legnago in sette spettacoli che hanno fatto sempre registrare il tutto esaurito.
Al termine della kermesse, il direttore generale Luciano Giarola ha elencato dati importanti. La vendita di tutti i biglietti è stata raggiunta con largo anticipo rispetto allo scorso anno e molte persone non hanno potuto accedere al teatro. Ed anche gli eventi collaterali hanno registrato una grande partecipazione, con un ottimo afflusso alle mostre e alle altre iniziative in programma.
Uno dei fattori chiave del crescente successo di pubblico è stato individuato nell'estensione della durata del festival, con l'inaugurazione delle mostre nella settimana precedente, per un totale di 16 giorni di eventi.
Giarola ha infine annunciato le date degli spettacoli della quinta edizione, che si svolgeranno dal 25 al 29 settembre 2025.
E la quarta edizione verrà ricordata per i vincitori premiati al termine dell'Award Gala, ma anche per una plateale protesta avvenuta sul palco domenica scorsa, 29 settembre.
La protesta di Anna Petrenko (Fermo immagine video Instagram - annadellart)
Sul palco era salita la giocoliera ucraina AnnaDellArt, nome d'arte di Anna Petrenko. Il sipario del Salieri si è aperto, ma invece di esibirsi AnnaDellArt ha mostrato a tutti la bandiera dell'Ucraina e dei cartelli contro uno dei giurati, il russo Maxim Nikulin. Una contestazione diretta agli organizzatori che hanno messo in giuria il direttore del circo di Mosca. «Nikulin è funzionario di un paese aggressore - ha spiegato sui social AnnaDellArt - Sotto la sua guida, il Circo di Stato di Mosca offre benefici ai partecipanti alle azioni militari in Ucraina e ai loro figli, mentre le brigate di artisti favorevoli alla guerra si esibiscono per i soldati. Nikulin aiuta l'esercito e sostiene il governo russo. Ogni giorno le bombe continuano a colpire case pacifiche in Ucraina. Come può una persona con un'immagine del genere essere invitata nella giuria dove si esibiscono gli artisti ucraini?».
AnnaDellArt, anche per il semplice fatto di non essersi esibita e quindi di non aver dato materiale per essere giudicata, è stata squalificata. La giovane si è scusata con il pubblico che non ha potuto vedere il suo spettacolo ed ha ringraziato che l'ha supportata. «Attraverso la mia esibizione - ha aggiunto - ho espresso il mio malcontento per la decisione degli organizzatori che giudico un tentativo di riabilitare l'immagine della Russia, Paese aggressore nella guerra contro l'Ucraina».
Mikail Karahan (Foto di Gaby Merz)
AnnaDellArt è stata quindi esclusa dai possibili vincitori dei premi del festival.
Alla fine, la giuria presieduta da Anita Gambarutti Orfei ha conferito il Salieri d'Oro, massimo riconoscimento, a Mikail Karahan per la sua performance con la ruota Cyr. L'artista, a Legnago, ha conquistato il pubblico grazie a un numero che unisce virtuosismo tecnico e grande espressività comica. Il Salieri d'Argento è andato al giocoliere russo Aleksei Teslin, che ha stupito con la sua energica esibizione con il diabolo, e agli acrobati aerei Xtreme Flying, che hanno incantato con un romantico e coinvolgente numero di acrobatica aerea e pole dance. Il Salieri di Bronzo è stato assegnato al verticalista bielorusso Cello, che ha eseguito difficili equilibri sulle mani con eleganza e precisione, al duo aereo americano Luna Girls, che ha emozionato con una performance armoniosa al cerchio aereo, e alla trapezista italiana Valentina Padellini, della compagnia ArteMàkia, che ha saputo coniugare danza e trapezio in un numero intenso e sperimentale realizzato con la regia di Milo Scotton.
Il Premio della Critica, deciso dalla giuria della stampa composta da giornalisti italiani e stranieri esperti del settore, è stato assegnato all'acrobata russo Ivan Slipchenko, per la sua straordinaria combinazione di teatralità e abilità nell'equilibrismo. Il Premio Musica, conferito dal maestro Diego Basso, è andato all'artista belga Alexandra Malter, che ha incantato con una coreografia fluida e perfettamente sincronizzata con la musica, utilizzando l'hula hoop. Il Premio del Pubblico, deciso tramite gli oltre 1.550 voti raccolti tramite l'app del festival, è stato vinto da Mikail Karahan, acclamato per la sua maestria e simpatia. Il Premio Ansac (Associazione Nazionale Sviluppo Arti Circensi) è stato assegnato all'equilibrista russo Artem Sherstobitov, per il suo impressionante controllo durante complesse evoluzioni su strutture precarie. Il duo di clown argentini Crazy Mozarts ha ricevuto il Premio Città di Legnago per la loro sinfonia di gag comiche e musicali che ha coinvolto e fatto ridere il pubblico. Infine, Il Premio Fondazione Teatro Salieri è stato consegnato dalla presidente Mariagrazia Moratello all’artista Cello.
E durante l'Award Gala, è stato assegnato il Salieri di Platino alla Carriera a Paolo Casanova, in arte Carillon. La sua emozionante performance con la cantante Nox e la successiva consegna del premio hanno incantato il pubblico, celebrando la sua carriera come massimo interprete della "Clownerie del Cuore".
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Благодарю российских дипломатов, всех коллег и просто неравнодушных людей за поддержку в ситуации, которая произошла в штаб-квартире ООН. Будем бороться дальше. Не за себя, а за то, чтобы никто не мог препятствовать нашим зрителям и слушателям в доступе к информации.
Цитата:
Возмутительная история с Валентином Богдановым и его съемочной группой. Будем бескомпромиссно бороться за права наших журналистов в ООН!
Цитата:
Официальный представитель МИД России Мария Захарова раскритиковала решение секретариата ООН понизить уровень аккредитации шефа нью-йоркского бюро ВГТРК Валентина Богданова:
"Если бы секретариат ООН наказывал всех журналистов, которые задают вопросы дипломатам, передвигающимся по штаб-квартире, то в ООН не осталось бы ни одного представителя средств массовой информации".
Цитата:
Россия направила ноту генсеку ООН с требованием прояснить обстоятельства инцидента с Валентином Богдановым и дать оценку действиям представителей Германии, заявила Мария Захарова.
"Мы будем добиваться справедливости, восстановления нашего журналиста в правах и вынесения соответствующих… предписаний в отношении действий Анналены Бербок и ее команды хамов".
DAVID PATRIKARAKOS: My Israeli sources say there's never been a better time to destroy those who want them dead. All of us who hope to live in peace must pray they succeed
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The only surprise was that the attack didn’t come sooner. Israel has spent weeks pounding Iran’s proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
It has killed both Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – and on Monday night, Israel finally put boots on the ground in southern Lebanon. The humiliation for Tehran’s mullahs has been relentless.
So last night’s sudden barrage of missiles – 500 illuminated the skies over Israel, which caused panic but inflicted limited casualties – was hardly unexpected. This day was always going to come.
It’s deja vu in the Middle East. Once more, Iran strikes Israel. Once more, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are marching across a border – this time to neutralise Hezbollah which has struck Israeli civilians, towns and cities almost daily since the October 7 Hamas atrocities.
Islamist terrorists in the Middle East refuse to let the Jewish state live in peace; and the Israelis have had enough.
Both Hezbollah and Tehran are united by a single goal: to destroy a sovereign democracy. It is an intolerable situation for any nation state. My Israeli sources tell me they are ready for anything Iran throws at them. They believe that there has never been a better time to destroy those who want them dead.
Britain and America have significant ¬military assets in the region, which will likely support Benjamin Netanyahu’s forces. The United States has a senile incumbent and a vice president focused on winning an election. The absence of internal US leadership gives Israel more latitude to operate than it has perhaps ever had. And after its extraordinary successes over recent weeks, it has something else vital, too: momentum.
With so many actors involved, the regional and possibly global war that no one wants but everyone fears is now all too real.
Hezbollah has turned southern Lebanon into a staging post for its attacks. Its border villages have become military bases; its houses ammunition stores and its civilians human shields.
Now that Iran has attacked, the IDF’s mission in Lebanon could not be more critical. It has described the invasion as one that will be ‘limited, localised and targeted’. The goal is to disrupt Hezbollah’s infrastructure and eliminate its military positions there.
Simple and quick, right?
The problem here is that this is exactly what the IDF told me the Gaza operation would be like when I visited their HQ in October 2023. Almost a year later, Israeli troops are still in the strip. Hamas, though massively degraded, is there, too.
The IDF will not find southern Lebanon a hospitable place. It’s a beautiful part of the world, formed by the Jabal Amel mountains – rich in olives, grapes and tobacco – and the Litani River, which originates in the Beqaa Valley and flows southward, creating a fertile coastal plain, before turning west towards the Mediterranean.
But southern Lebanon is also home to something else: hundreds of miles of tunnels and caves, a subterranean labyrinth of terror that Hezbollah (Arabic for Party Of God) uses to hide, to store its massive arsenal and to launch its demented attacks.
Israel knows this. Military spokesman Daniel Hagari, an articulate and thoughtful man in my experience, says special forces have in fact operated inside Lebanon dozens of times over the past months, destroying tunnels ¬wherever they find them. I don’t doubt it. The Israelis are excellent at this sort of thing. But still, I can’t help but worry – not least after last night’s spectacular missile onslaught. Lebanon is a tiny country that has always exercised an influence far beyond its size. As I said on 90 Seconds To Midnight, the Mail’s weekly global news podcast, it’s worth remembering a dictum of international politics: ‘Beware of small states.’
Believe me, no country has felt this curse more than Israel – itself a very small state. On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, aiming to quickly neutralise the threat to their north.
Operation Peace For Galilee was launched after gunmen from the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. It was time, Jerusalem decided, to take them out once and for all. Eighteen years later the Israelis, exhausted and demoralised, finally withdrew, the threat to their north still present.
When the Israelis whacked ¬Nasrallah last week, they did not only themselves, but the world, a favour. The Hezbollah boss was not just a terrorist butcher – he was a highly capable one. With help from Iran, of course, the group has achieved more military success against Israel in just over 30 years than almost all the Arab states had in around 80.
First, it kicked the Israelis out of the ‘security zone’ they held in southern Lebanon for 18 years. Then, in 2006, it fought Israel to something approaching a draw in a head-to-head war. It began when Nasrallah ordered his men to kidnap some Israeli soldiers, which they did, and which brought a ferocious Israeli response. So vast was the destruction to Lebanon that Nasrallah said that had he known how the Israelis would react he would never have ordered the kidnapping. But to many in the Arab world, Hezbollah had once again stood up to the ‘Zionist oppressor’. They were heroes.
Well, no longer.
‘Unprecedented’ is an overused word in political and journalistic discourse, but Israel’s ability to pack thousands of Hezbollah ¬pagers with explosives that were then distributed to the group’s members across Lebanon was truly something I’ve never seen before – an operation that will be studied in military history for -decades to come.
Then they swiped Nasrallah himself. The Israelis have since taken out around 98 per cent of Hezbollah’s leadership. But Hezbollah is not just a terror organisation, it is a highly organised ¬paramilitary group (not to mention political party and social actor in Lebanon). Within its second-rung leadership, there are men who are smart and exceptionally ruthless as they’ve spent years fighting on the ground.
Already you can see how its ¬tactics are shifting. After Mossad took out Hezbollah’s pagers (and then walkie-talkies) it shattered the group’s communications, not only internally but with its ¬masters in Tehran and terrorist allies across the region. But it also forced Hezbollah to get creative and, in true Islamist style, this has meant regression – to earlier, more analogue forms of contact.
The militants now pass messages verbally, the group’s vast networks allow them to spread widely rapidly and, of course, it’s much harder to hack or intercept them with satellites.
Meanwhile, the bulk of Hezbollah’s ground forces remain – brandishing large amounts of sophisticated weaponry (including guided missiles theoretically capable of hitting deep inside Israel).
Israel is embarking down a hard and brutal road. By splitting its resources between two fronts –not including any direct action it might take on Tehran – it may well be weakened. But what choice does it have?
What would we demand of Downing Street if thousands of rockets had rendered large parts of Britain uninhabitable? What would be the point of our armed forces if not to remove that threat?
We must hope that Israel ¬succeeds in its missions against both Iran and its proxies, quickly and with minimal loss of life.
This is a battle not just for regional security, but for anyone who cares about democracy, the rule of law and the right to live in peace – and the Israelis are fighting it on behalf of us all.
Цитата:
How Israel could target Iran's sprawling 'oil island' where 90% of the country's exports flows as IDF 'prepares to launch retaliation for missile barrage attack'
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Israel could be plotting to target Iran's sprawling 'oil island' where 90 per cent of the country's exports flow as the IDF is peparing to exact revenege following last night's missile barrage attack.
The Israeli military branded the multiple strikes 'a severe and dangerous escalation' and warned 'there will be consequences,' as tensions in the Middle East continue to spiral.
Now, in retaliation to the launch of almost 200 Iranian missiles into Israeli territory, the country is planning a major response which is likely to destory Iran's most crucial oil export hub - Kharg Island.
Known as Iran's 'Oil Island', up to 95 per cent of the country's oil exports travel through its doors, meaning Israel could target the terminal in the Persian Gulf with the aim of denying the country oil revene.
Located just 15miles off Iran's Northern coast, Kharg Island was once the world's largest offshore crude oil terminal and a hit could carry devastating consequences.
A view of oil facilities on the Kharg island on the Persian Gulf about 1,250km south of Tehran on February 23, 2016
Located just 15miles off Iran's Northern coast, Kharg Island was once the world's largest offshore crude oil terminal and a hit could carry devastating consequences
Up to 95 per cent of the country's oil exports travel through Kharg Island
Such an attack will likely end with a short-term crude price spike of around five per cent as it carries the potential for widespread international disruption - primarily to Iran's exports to China, the world's largest importer of oil.
Iran is the third biggest producer of crude oil in the OPEC group of oil-producing countries and is heavily reliant on its oil and gas exports to prop up its ailing economy amid years of sanctions.
Former Israeli Intelligence official and regional analyst Avi Melamed told MailOnline the Iranian strike was likely to 'provoke a significant counterstrike', warning that 'Israel's response this time will likely be broader and less restrained than it was in the wake of Iran's unprecedented direct strike in April.'
But Iran's armed forces joint chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri said this morning that the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) was prepared both defensively and offensively to repeat its missile attack with 'multiplied intensity', should Israel seek retribution.
'If the Zionist regime, that has gone insane, is not contained by America and Europe and intends to continue such crimes or do anything against our sovereignty or territorial integrity, tonight's operation will be repeated with much higher magnitude and we will hit all their infrastructure,' he said.
With crude supplies in the region under threat, oil prices have sky-rocketed by more than two per cent.
Iran is believed to be producing more than a staggering three million barrels a day, placing it at a five-year high.
Helima Croft, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank, told CNBC: 'There has been a lot of complacency about this war'.
Ballistic missiles being launched from Iran against Israel and intercepted in the sky. Over 150 ballistic missiles had been launched from Iran against Israel and intercepted in the sky across the country
A view of lighting flares fired by Israeli army at the Netzarim Corridor area in the central part of the Gaza Strip, Gaza on October 01
Iran launched a missile attack on Israel's commercial hub Tel Aviv
Artillery is fired by the Israeli Army into Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from Jish, northern Israel October 2, 2024
Iranian state TV broadcasted the moment it launched nearly 200 missiles towards Israel
She added that amid the ongoing chaos, traders have mostly ignored the threat of oil supply disruptions .
'We do need to think about a scenario where Iranian oil supplies are at risk,' Croft warned.
US lawmakers have backed a strike against Iranian oil production.
Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, said he would 'urge the Biden administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran's ability to refine oil'.
In a statement, he said Iran's oil refineries should be 'hit and hit hard'.
The threat comes after Iran last night fired a barrage of nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli territory with Israeli military now preparing a 'significant retaliation' to the shocking attack.
The IDF said it intercepted 'a large number' of the ballistic missiles thanks to the country's Arrow and David's Sling missile defense systems, and assistance from US destroyers and Jordanian interceptors in the region.
Israel Defence Forces' Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said: 'There were a small number of hits in the centre of Israel, and other hits in Southern Israel.
'The majority of the incoming missiles were intercepted by Israel and a defensive coalition led by the United States.
'Our defensive and offensive capabilities are at the highest levels of readiness.
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Цитата:
Did Israel's Iron Dome withstand Iran's rocket salvo? How missile defense system intercepted missile barrage...and what could happen if it fails
A vindictive Iran last night sought to strike at the heart of Israel with a shocking attack that saw an unprecedented barrage of almost 200 ballistic missiles streak towards Israeli cities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran 'has made a big mistake' and 'will pay' for the attack, with Israel's military preparing a 'significant retaliation' to the bombardment that could see if strike nuclear facilities and oil fields.
It's unclear how many of the missiles actually penetrated Israel's defences, with the scale of the strike proving to be one of the biggest tests ever faced by the country's hi-tech Iron Dome network.
A triumphant Tehran has claimed up to 80 per cent of its missiles ripped through Israel's sophisticated air defences - but the IDF disputed this, saying most were shot down, with the aid of US warships in the region.
Dramatic footage from the aerial assault showed missiles streaking through the sky, with some exploding mid-air after being hit by Israeli air defence missiles - while others were seen slamming into the ground and blowing up.
And as the fallout of last night's raid continues to clear, amid fears a retaliatory strike could ignite 'all-out war' in the Middle East, defence experts have said Israel's air defences were broadly successful in protecting the country.
'If this is the best [Iran] can do, then Israel will chalk this up as yet another victory. Yes, another humiliation for Tehran,' defence expert Michael Clarke said.
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Israeli officials have not reported any serious injuries as a result of Tuesday's air attacks, but Israeli medics said two people had been slightly wounded by shrapnel.
Israel's Iron Dome system garners the most attention of the country's air defences as it's used most frequently to bring down unguided, short-range rockets often fired by Hezbollah and Hamas.
However, the country's air defences are made of three critical 'overlapping' systems that can blast threats out of the skies at different ranges.
The targeting of guided ballistic missiles that travel at higher altitudes, longer ranges and faster speeds requires a different system from the Iron Dome to take them down.
For this, Israel uses both 'David's Sling 'and the 'Arrow 2 and 3' home-grown air defence systems which are built to destroy medium-range and long-range ballistic missiles.
Defence expert Prof Clarke said Iran's shock attack had sought to 'overwhelm' Israeli defences - and was a step up from Tehran's last attack on April 13 when more than 300 projectiles were fired and largely repelled.
He said TV pictures indicated a 'fairly fierce, sort of missile, counter-missile battery battle' above Jerusalem and other cities.
Although some missiles appeared to breach Israeli defences, Prof Clarke claimed this could have been a deliberate decision by the IDF to 'let go' the missiles that weren't deemed a major threat.
Describing the Iron Dome and it's effectiveness, he told Sky News: 'It's really important to understand when we're trying to talk about how effectively the Iron Dome – Israel's defence system works.
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'What they do is they track incoming missiles and if they think that the missile is going to land in a place that doesn't matter they just let it go.
'There's no point in using a very expensive air defence missile against something that is going to fall into the middle of the desert.
'The whole of the Iron Dome system is built on a very sophisticated monitoring system and they work out which missiles they need to intercept and which missiles they just let go.
'And so when the Iranians claims 'lots of missiles have landed' some of them probably will have – but some of them will have probably landed in the middle of nowhere and the Israelis will have just let them go.'
He said ballistic missiles were 'much more predictable than cruise missiles', which weren't used last night.
Cruise missiles have the ability to be guided towards their target and were 'harder to predict' where they would land, Prof Clarke said.
'It may be programmed to dodge around and go on a decoy and turn back around and so on before it reaches it’s target.
‘So you don’t really know [where it will land] and you’ve got no choice but to shoot cruise missiles down if you can.
‘But ballistic missiles – the sort that the Iranians are using which are almost certainly variations of the Fateh-110 which they developed many years ago – only burn for maybe 30 or 40 seconds, and then they’re on pure ballistics.
‘So once the take-off has been detected – and they’re easy to detect on take-off because they’re slow and hot and have a very big signature.'
Israel's Iron Dome air defence system has been dubbed one of the best in the world, and according to its developer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, is '90 per cent effective'.
The three-part, multi-billion pound Iron Dome system, developed by Israel with US backing after the 2006 Lebanon War, has been crucial in defending Israeli cities for over a decade and is credited with preventing serious damage or casualties.
Similar tactics have also been used by Russia to blast Ukraine's flurry of Western and Soviet-era surface-to-air systems.
The Jewish state has at least 10 missile batteries capable of intercepting enemy rockets and missiles scattered across the country.
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The device is made up of three main sections: a radar detection system, a computer to calculate the incoming rocket's trajectory, and a launcher that fires interceptors if the rocket is deemed likely to hit a built-up or strategic area.
Each Iron Dome battery consists of three to four launchers that can each carry up to 20 Tamir interceptor missiles.
Commodore Stephen Prest, a retired Royal Navy Commodore who has worked as part of a carrier battle group, believed Israel targeted missiles that posed a high-threat to Israeli civilians and military HQs.
But he told MailOnline: 'These are not trivial problems.
'Ballistic missiles has an up-and-over trajectory whereas cruise missiles fly like a small fast airplane.
'Ballistic missiles launch up like a space rocket, they will potentially exit the atmosphere and come back down. There will be some guidance once back in the atmosphere on getting back on to target.
'But it’s the speed they come down with that makes them much more difficult to target coming down.'
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Cmdr Prest suspected that Israel opted to take out the missiles that posed the biggest threat to civilian populations or military HQs.
He added: 'In general, that’s how air defence deals with something called threat evaluation and weapon allocation. You look at all potential threats coming in and priotise them and allocate the appropriate effector.
'You then consider where you think it likely the target and missiles are going to land. If you’re in a ship and have missiles coming in and going near where near the task force you wouldn't waste your munitions of those. You’d use those on the greatest threat – that's those missiles which are targeting the high-value targets like aircraft carriers.
'If you’re defending populated areas or military facility you care far less about the ones that aren’t part of this.'
The region is edging closer to all-out war that is already drawing in allies on both sides - with British jets used to counter Iran's strikes, which were fired in retaliation to attacks on the Islamic Republic's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon in recent days.
Reports suggest Israel, which has vowed to strike 'powerfully' in response to Iran , could go after the country's oil facilities.
However, a former head of Britain's Royal Navy this morning warned any such strike could lead to Iran becoming 'even more dangerous'.
Lord Alan West told MailOnline: 'Iran won’t be beaten by being bombed, she will just be wounded and more dangerous. They will just try and find to get back at them.'
Iran is the third biggest producer of crude oil in the OPEC group of oil-producing countries and is heavily reliant on its oil and gas exports to prop up its ailing economy amid years of sanctions.
Former Israeli Intelligence official and regional analyst Avi Melamed told MailOnline the Iranian strike was likely to 'provoke a significant counterstrike', warning that 'Israel's response this time will likely be broader and less restrained than it was in the wake of Iran's unprecedented direct strike in April.'
But Iran's armed forces joint chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri said this morning that the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) was prepared both defensively and offensively to repeat its missile attack with 'multiplied intensity', should Israel seek retribution.
'If the Zionist regime, that has gone insane, is not contained by America and Europe and intends to continue such crimes or do anything against our sovereignty or territorial integrity, tonight's operation will be repeated with much higher magnitude and we will hit all their infrastructure,' he said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also declared that Tehran had warned the US 'to withdraw from this matter and not to intervene'.
But the US has vowed to stand with its regional ally Israel, with national security adviser Jake Sullivan telling reporters at the White House: 'We have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences, for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.'
Meanwhile, Israel's ongoing military operations have continued uninterrupted - at least five airstrikes reportedly hit the southern suburbs of Beirut early this morning.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon since September 17, while hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.
And Israeli strikes killed at least 32 people in southern Gaza overnight as the military launched ground operations in the hard-hit city of Khan Younis.
Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas' October 7 attack ignited the war, even as attention has shifted to Lebanon and growing tensions with Iran.
Defence secretary John Healey visited Cyprus today as the British government steps up efforts for a potential evacuation of UK nationals in Lebanon as the crisis threatens to boil over.
Mr Healey confirmed British forces were involved in efforts to defend Israel from Iran's ballistic missile barrage as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer warned of the risk of a 'miscalculation"' after the escalation of violence in the region.
It is understood RAF jets were involved in the efforts to intercept the Iranian missiles targeted at Iran.
The operation was similar to the role carried out by the UK's forces when Iran launched a drone and cruise missile barrage at Israel in April, when RAF Typhoons were involved in the defensive effort.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Mr Healey confirmed "British forces have this evening played their part in attempts to prevent further escalation in the Middle East".
Hundreds of British troops have been deployed to Cyprus alongside RAF and Royal Navy assets in the region in preparation for a potential evacuation of British nationals from Lebanon following the launch of Israel's ground offensive.
On Wednesday, Mr Healey met Cypriot counterpart Vasilis Palmas for talks about the crisis.
Israel said it intercepted many of the missiles fired by Iran on Tuesday, while Tehran claimed most had hit their targets. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
In a Downing Street statement on the crisis, Sir Keir Starmer said he was "deeply concerned that the region is on the brink and I am deeply concerned about the risk of miscalculation".
He said that Iran, with proxies including Hezbollah in Lebanon, had "menaced the Middle East for far too long".
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Fears UK and US could be dragged into Israel and Iran conflict in the Middle East: Experts say 'huge diplomatic pressure' could pull West into WW3
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Britain and America could be dragged into a wider war between Israel and Iran, a defence chief has warned - as the globe teeters on the brink of World War Three.
US and British warships are already in the region, with one of America's most powerful aircraft carriers the USS Harry S Truman now steaming across the Atlantic to bolster the West's military muscle in the region.
It comes after Iran launched an unprecedented onslaught against Tel Aviv overnight which saw about 180 ballistic missiles being fired against Israel, plunging the Middle East into chaos.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Iranian leadership had 'made a big mistake' and he defiantly vowed it 'will pay' for its bombardment.
Meanwhile Iran threatened more 'crushing attacks' on Israel - while Iranian-backed militias warned American bases in Iraq would be targeted should the US join any action against Tehran.
And as the crisis threats to explode, with Israel continuing with its bombing against Lebannon today, Admiral Lord Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, feared the ratcheting up of military aggression was reaching a dangerous stage.
The veteran Labour peer told MailOnline: 'There's a huge amount of diplomatic pressure - the last thing we want is for a war between Israel and Iran because inevitably America would be involved because the USA is the 'Great Satan' and we're the little one and Iranians see us working alongside us, so it could inevitably see the UK getting pulled into this.'
Pictured are the British and American warships in the region that could aid Israel against Iran
Two American warships were last night used in the effort to defend Israel from Iran's bombardment, with the USS Bulkeley and USS Cole firing 'approximately a dozen interceptors against the incoming Iranian missiles', US officials confirmed.
America already has a number of major naval battle groups stationed in the region, with the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group in the Gulf of Oman, south of Iran, the USS Wasp amphibious assault group in the Mediterranean, as well as a number of Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers in the Med and Red Sea.
The USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier is steaming across the Atlantic with Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Jason Dunham and USS Stout and guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg and is expected to arrive in the region soon.
While Britain has £1bn Type 45 warship HMS Duncan, which is touted as one of the most advanced air defence destroyers in the world, is currently in Cyprus - a key staging point for UK forces in the Middle East region.
The UK Ministry of Defence said two Typhoon jets and a tanker were involved in the operation on Tuesday night as Iran launched a missile barrage against Israel but 'due to the nature of this attack, they did not engage any targets'.
The bolstering of Western military hardware comes as the region edges closer to an all-out war that is drawing in allies on both sides - with British jets used to counter Iran's strikes, which were fired in retaliation to attacks on the Islamic Republic's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon in recent days.
Reports suggest Israel, which has vowed to 'make Iran pay', could go after the Islamic Republic's oil facilities.
Iran is the third biggest producer of crude oil in the OPEC group of oil-producing countries and is heavily reliant on its oil and gas exports to prop up its ailing economy amid years of sanctions.
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Meanwhile, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett this morning called for a decisive strike to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.
'We must act now to destroy Iran's nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime,' Bennett wrote on X just hours after the attack on Israel on Tuesday.
'We have the justification. We have the tools. Now that Hezbollah and Hamas are paralysed, Iran stands exposed.'
Speaking at the opening of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday night, Mr Netanyahu said Iran 'does not understand' his country's 'determination to retaliate' against its enemies.
'They will understand. We will stand by the rule we established: whoever attacks us – we will attack'.
An Israeli official said the attack – a major escalation in the months-long conflict in the Middle East – signalled war had been declared on Israel.
'This attack will have consequences. We have plans, and we will operate at the place and time we decide,' added Rear-Adm Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman.
America, which was involved in shooting down the barrage, warned there will be 'severe consequences' for Iran, while Downing Street 'completely condemns' Tehran's actions and has called for de-escalation across the region.
In the wake of Iran's missile attack, President Joe Biden said last night the US remains 'fully' supportive of Israeli defense efforts.
Speaking just before he was set to receive a briefing on ongoing relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene, Biden said American troops had 'actively supported the defense of Israel' against Tehran's shock offensive.
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'Based on what we know now, the attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective, and this is testament to Israeli military capability and the US military,' he said. 'It's also a testament to intensive planning between the United States and Israel to anticipate and defend against the brazen attack we expected.'
Responding on Tuesday to Iran's attack, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK 'stands with Israel' and recognises its right to self-defence.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed it had launched the missiles in retaliation for recent attacks that killed the leaders of the Hezbollah and Hamas terror groups, as well as a top Iranian commander.
But speaking from Downing Street Sir Keir lashed out at Iran's bombardment of Israel, saying he was 'deeply concerned that the region is on the brink'.
'We stand with Israel and we recognise her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression,' said the PM, who had been on the phone with Netanyahu when the strikes began.
Calling on Iran to stop its attacks, the PM added: 'Together with its proxies like Hezbollah, Iran has menaced the Middle East for far too long, chaos and destruction brought not just to Israel, but to the people they live amongst in Lebanon and beyond.
'Make no mistake, Britain stands full square against such violence. We support Israel's reasonable demand for the security of its people.'
Defence Secretary John Healey, who is Cyprus to visit personnel based on the island, said British forces had 'played their part in attempts to prevent further escalation', without giving more details.
He added: 'The UK stands fully behind Israel's right to defend its country and its people against threats.'
Former Tory Armed Forces Minister said Britain must remain staunchly behind its allies in Israel.
He told MailOnline: 'We should stand by Isreal, the only democracy in the Middle East, in her hour of need.'
In a statement, the MoD said: 'Last night two Royal Air Force Typhoon fighter jets and a Voyager air-to-air refuelling tanker played their part in attempts to prevent further escalation in the Middle East, demonstrating the UK's unwavering commitment to Israel's security.
'Due to the nature of this attack, they did not engage any targets, but they played an important part in wider deterrence and efforts to prevent further escalation.
'The Defence Secretary has thanked our personnel involved in the response.'
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Эта ночь может быть непростой для целого ряда русских земель - по поступающим данным, боевики ВСУ подготовили массированную атаку дронов на следующие российские регионы - Белгородскую, Курскую, Брянскую, Воронежскую и Липецкую области.
По предварительным данным, общее количество запущенных нацистами дронов только по трём областям - Брянской, Курской и Белгородской - уже превысило 200 БПЛА и может достигать 250 беспилотников.
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Российские паблики сообщают, что Украина предприняла новую массированную атаку дронов по территории РФ.
Пишут, что более 200 БПЛА летят через Брянскую, Белгородскую и Орловскую область в северном направлении.
По ним работает ПВО.
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В Белгородской и Курской областях отбивают атаки украинских беспилотников — местные власти
Губернаторы Белгородской и Курской областей России пишут в соцсетях, что в их областях идет отражение налетов украинских беспилотников.
«Над Белгородом и Белгородским районом продолжает работать наша система ПВО — идет уничтожение вражеских беспилотников. Информация о пострадавших на данный момент не поступала», — сообщил губернатор Белгородской области Вячеслав Гладков.
Гладков утверждает, что, по его информации, отражение налета пока привело только к двум небольшим пожарам в Белгороде и селе под ним.
Российские военные телеграм-каналы утверждают, что над Белгородом сбиты около 15 дронов, но эти утверждения нуждаются в проверке.
Губернатор Курской области Алексей Смирнов в последние полтора часа сообщил в своем телеграм-канале о двух ракетах и 10 беспилотниках, сбитых над его областью.
Би-би-си не может оперативно проверять утверждения воюющих сторон.
Просьба не забывать, что в основном, нижеприведенные рекламно-политические материалы, по определению, могут рассчитывать только на весьма ограниченную объективность и ориентированы, в первую очередь, на либеральную публику.
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Iran's Hand on the Trigger
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TEHRAN – Salvos of Iranian missiles rained on the occupied territories on Tuesday night, comforting the people of the region who were eagerly awaiting a response to Israel’s terror attacks in the past two months, and occupying observers with the thought of what could happen next.
Iran’s attack dubbed Operation True Promise II involved firing approximately 200 ballistic missiles at three Israeli military bases near Tel Aviv. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement that 90% of the projectiles managed to hit their targets. Israel and the U.S. claimed the operation had “failed”, not addressing online footage that showed tens of Iranian missiles hit the ground after the regime’s sophisticated defense shield failed to intercept them despite help from surrounding American forces and at least one regional country.
Operation True Promise II marked the second time Iran has targeted Israel directly from its soil. In mid-April, Tehran lobbed around 300 hundred drones and missiles at the occupied territories two weeks after the regime attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing a high-ranking IRGC commander and his deputy. After April’s strikes, Iran said it would repeat the procedure more painfully if Israel harms its personnel or assets anywhere in the world.
Was Iran’s attack legal?
Iran’s attack was in line with Article 51 of the UN Charter, which states that countries have an inherent right to defend themselves when they have been the victim of an “armed attack”. The Tuesday operation came after Iran became the target of two Israeli armed attacks. One on July 31, which killed Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and one on September 27, which claimed the life of IRGC military advisor Brigadier General Abbas Nilforooshan along with Hezbollah leader Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah in southern Beirut.
According to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran was willing to put off a retaliation against Israel if that meant the U.S. could successfully pressure Israel to seal a cease-fire deal with Hamas. However, after the recent round of talks - which were initiated by the U.S. following the Haniyeh assassination - failed due to Israel's intransigence, and with the assassination of Nasrallah and a buoyed wave of Israeli terrorism in Lebanon, Tehran was forced to get back on track.
What happens next?
Iran says it used only a portion of its capabilities to strike Israel Tuesday night, a claim that analysts seem to confirm. Multiple high-ranking Iranian officials have stated that they are ready to take more severe action if the regime continues its aggression and responds to the missile strikes.
Israel, for now, says it will be retaliating. On the night of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran had made a “big mistake” and that it would end up with the same fate as Gaza and Lebanon, as he read from a paper he was holding onto with shaking hands.
Iran’s rhetoric so far shows that while it is not looking to enter a war, it would also not shy away from one either if its interests and assets were on the line. It remains to be seen what move Israel makes next, but analysts speculate that the regime's actions will have a significant impact on the future of the region.
It is believed that Israel could choose to respond to Iran by trying to strike its military bases, nuclear sites, or energy facilities. It might also decide to carry out a sabotage attack, which is less likely to draw a strong reaction from Tehran.
“This may be where the Biden administration will intervene and truly rein in Israel,” said Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector. “If Israel attacks Iran’s oil-producing facilities, Tehran will do the same and target similar sites across the region. This would lead to global catastrophe and skyrocketing energy costs, especially in the West,” he told the Tehran Times, adding that current Vice President Kamala Harris would not have the chance to get elected as the next president if that happens.
Targeting Iranian nuclear sites will have unprecedented and devastating repercussions too, Ritter added. “I think Israelis will choose some military sites or decide to conduct sabotage attacks.”
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‘Unilateral self-restraint has ended,’ Iran tells US in indirect message
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TEHRAN - An Iranian source has told Al Jazeera that Tehran has sent a message to the United States via Qatar addressing the rising regional tensions.
In the message, Tehran told Washington that “the phase of unilateral self-restraint has ended.”
It also said any Israeli attack would meet an “unconventional response” that includes targeting Israeli infrastructure.
The indirect message also emphasized that Iran does not want a regional war, the official said.
In a meeting on Wednesday with a high-ranking delegation from the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement in Dohan, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated Tehran’s position that the Islamic Republic will definitely give a “stronger and more crushing” response to Israel if it commits the “slightest” mistake.
The meeting came a day after the Islamic Republic carried out a retaliatory operation against Israel, dubbed Operation True Promise II.
Pezeshkian criticized Western countries for making empty promises, saying they requested Iran to exercise self-restraint and refrain from giving a response to the Israeli assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political bureau chief, in Tehran on July 31 in exchange for establishing ceasefire in Gaza.
Therefore, "the continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes made the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran to give a decisive response,” he added, Press TV reported.
The president condemned the atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, and lashed out at the United States and other Western countries for pursuing hypocritical approaches, saying they back Israel while claiming to advocate democracy and human rights.
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An analysis of Operation 'True Promise II'
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In an official statement from the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), it was reported that these missile strikes are part of Operation "True Promise II," executed under the codename "Oh Messenger of God!" and directed against security and intelligence targets in Israel.
The IRGC issued its statement just minutes after the operation began, stating: “The great Islamic community, the noble and martyred Iranian nation, moments ago, after a period of restraint in the face of the violation of the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the assassination of the martyred fighter, Dr. Ismail Haniyeh, by the Zionist regime, and under the country's right to legitimate defense according to the United Nations Charter, has responded to the intensification of the regime's atrocities, supported by the United States in the massacre in Lebanon and Gaza. In this context, and in tribute to the martyrdom of the great fighter, leader of the Resistance Axis, and proud Secretary-General of Hezbollah, the martyr Hassan Nasrallah, as well as the brave commander and senior advisor of the IRGC in Lebanon, Major General Seyyed Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC Aerospace Force has launched dozens of ballistic missiles against key military and security targets in the heart of the occupied territories.”
The statement also warned that “this operation has been approved by the Supreme National Security Council and ordered by the General Staff of the Armed Forces, with the support of the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Ministry of Defense. It is warned that if the Zionist regime responds militarily to this operation, which is in accordance with international law and the legitimate rights of the country, it will face devastating and crushing attacks.”
Simultaneously, Iran's representation at the UN issued another statement regarding the missile attack on the occupied territories, declaring that "Iran's legal, logical, and legitimate response to the terrorist actions of the Zionist regime, which targeted Iranian citizens and interests and violated the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic, has been carried out."
According to several reports, this operation was conducted through the launch of ballistic missiles. Iranian local channels, citing sources from the IRGC, claimed that approximately 400 missiles were fired at military targets in Tel Aviv and its surroundings. Israeli media, for their part, reported that several Iranian missiles had been launched against targets located in the central and southern parts of the colonial entity.
Iranian media, citing sources close to the operation, claimed that “over 80% of the missiles in the first wave hit their intended targets." Additionally, it was reported that the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, was completely destroyed in the attack, although this information has not yet been confirmed or denied by colonial authorities, who have prohibited any photographs showing the damage caused by the Iranian operation.
Another target of the Iranian missiles was the Negev Air Base, located in the southern part of the occupied territories. This base houses the two squadrons of fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets of the Israeli Air Force and was scheduled to receive a third squadron once more units were delivered. Iranian media sources have reported that the facility was "completely destroyed" during the attack.
Images from Israel confirm the impact of dozens of ballistic missiles that the country's air defenses, known as the “Iron Dome,” failed to intercept. The inability of the Iron Dome to intercept these missiles, evidenced in hundreds of online videos, is explained by military sources as a consequence of its design. This defense system was specifically conceived to intercept and neutralize short-range rockets and mortar shells, primarily launched from Gaza. In this context, it has proven effective, managing to intercept a high percentage of incoming threats.
However, when it comes to hypersonic missiles, which exceed the speed of Mach 5 and have highly maneuverable trajectories, no existing air defense system in the world, including the Iron Dome, offers credible deterrence. Hypersonic missiles present unique challenges due to their speed, unpredictability of trajectory, and ability to evade radar systems, making them an extremely difficult threat to counter with traditional defense technologies.
According to Iranian media, various types of missiles were used in Operation “True Promise II.” Among them are the Ghadr missiles, publicly unveiled in 2005 and available in three versions: the Ghadr-S, with a range of 1,350 km; the Ghadr-H, with 1,650 km; and the Ghadr-F, which reaches 1,950 km. Ballistic Emad missiles with a range of 1,700 km were also launched. Lastly, the IRGC employed the hypersonic Fattah-1 missile, which has a range of 1,400 km and a terminal velocity of Mach 13 to 15 (16,000 to 18,500 kilometers per hour).
In general terms, the operation reflects Iran's need to regain its “capability of threat” in the face of ongoing Israeli aggression, supported by the United States. In this regard, it is interesting to highlight an article published by the U.S. magazine Politico, which aligns with the liberal consensus, clarifying that there is a well-articulated plan between the U.S. and Israel to invade Lebanon and redraw the region.
Iran has made every effort to avoid falling into Zionist provocations, reiterating its intention to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and asserting that it never sought to initiate a war that would jeopardize regional stability. However, the Islamic Republic is aware that Israel's genocidal escalation, both in Palestine and Lebanon, ultimately targets Iran and aims at the political redesign of the region—something that is politically and militarily untenable.
The Islamic Republic's restraint in the face of Zionist attacks also serves to challenge the prevailing narrative in the West that presents Iran as an irrational actor with unpredictable behavior. Accusations of "irrationality" against the Iranian government are closely linked to the idea that it seeks to export its revolution by force throughout the region and that its regional preference is chaos.
This discourse, which associates the Islamic Republic with violence and irrationality, was challenged by the manner in which the Iranian response unfolded. At a moment of heightened regional tension, generated by Israel's provocative behavior, Iran demonstrated a level of restraint and strategic vision that deserves highlighting. It is also relevant to point out a fundamental difference in how Iran and Israel manage the division between friends and enemies.
While Israel seeks to maximize casualties in each attack, doing everything possible not only to avoid them but also to increase them, Iran, as seen in this attack, has consciously avoided targeting what are considered "civilian" objectives (although in a colonial context such as Palestine, the category of “civilian” blurs, since all colonists benefit, to varying degrees, from the occupation).
The philosopher Walter Benjamin spoke of the difference between mythical violence and divine violence. The former seeks to secure power and maintain hierarchical divisions, while the latter aims to rehumanize the sanctity of life. It is not intended to suggest that Iran's response to Israeli violence fits within the category of “divine violence” as explained by Benjamin. However, it is important to note that even in a military conflict context, there are two distinct approaches to achieving objectives: on one hand, a cruel and brutal manner, and on the other, a restrained approach that shows respect for the lives of those who, in many cases, benefit from and support the genocidal colonial occupation of Palestine.
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С интересом и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
In a Cat-and-Mouse Game, Russian Oil Tankers Are Flying New Flags
A shadowy network of ships has registered in Gabon, highlighting how Vladimir V. Putin is building an economy beyond the reach of Western sanctions.
Dozens of tankers have registered in Gabon over the past year, records show, making that country’s ship registry one of the fastest-growing in the world.Credit...Yoruk Isik/Reuters
The Jaguar, a tanker the length of nearly five Olympic-size swimming pools, left a port near St. Petersburg, Russia, last year, bound for India and loaded with Russian oil.
Its trip that spring came as Western authorities were frantically trying to piece together the network to which it belonged: one of shadowy ships with hidden owners on whom powerful Russians relied to transport the nation’s valuable oil.
But by a quirk of the shipping industry, the Jaguar had ties to the West. The tanker flew the flag of St. Kitts and Nevis, which has its maritime registry just outside London — some 20 miles from the very British authorities who chase Russia’s assets around the world and chart its oil shipments.
After unloading the oil, the Jaguar would soon switch to a more obscure flag, the Central African nation of Gabon. With an act of paperwork, the Russian tanker had moved beyond the reach of Western financial authorities.
Dozens of tankers have made similar moves over the past year and a half, records show, as Moscow has worked to protect its so-called dark fleet in the face of international pressure to limit the market for Russian oil.
It is the latest in a cat-and-mouse game that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played with the West since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As American, European and British authorities have pursued, frozen and seized Russian money worldwide, Mr. Putin has found ever new ways to evade their grip.
In doing so, he has shaped a new world order of companies and countries willing to transact with Russia. He has assembled an economy largely independent of the dollar, the euro or the pound — and increasingly beyond the reach of regulators.
Under Western sanctions, Russia is permitted to sell oil, but at a capped price. That is intended to stunt Moscow’s profits and keep oil prices from spiking. Russia has devised a workaround by using its dark fleet to sell to buyers in countries like India and China, which are not bound by the price cap.
The Jaguar and other tankers like it are examples of Russian assets that maintained bureaucratic links to the West, even as government officials hunted for Kremlin-linked money.
Just as the St. Kitts and Nevis ship registry is operated out of Britain, two major maritime shipping authorities, Liberia and the Marshall Islands, run their operations from the Washington suburbs. Whether American and British regulators were unaware, preoccupied or simply unsure whether they had jurisdiction to act, dark-fleet tankers remained untouched more than a year into the war.
Treasury and Justice Department officials declined to comment on the ships. In an email, the British foreign office indicated that it was still exploring whether foreign ship registries based in Britain were obligated to comply with British sanctions.
Since July 2023, more than 85 Russian-affiliated ships changed their registrations to Gabon from Liberia, according to the maritime analytics company Windward. Among them are ships in the fleet of Sovcomflot, a state-owned Russian shipping company that has been the subject of Western sanctions.
With that, Gabon’s registry, which opened in 2018, has ballooned into one of the quickest growing in the world.
Other Russian tankers have re-registered in Panama and Palau, according to vessel registration information retrieved through MarineTraffic and Lloyd’s List, providers of maritime analytics.
That maritime reshuffling has put the small countries in a position to profit off the war in Ukraine. Once a stalwart ally of the United States and France, Gabon has been increasingly friendly with Russia after a military coup in 2023. With Western exports to Russia largely frozen, Gabon has emerged as a key part of Moscow’s supply chain, with Western-made aircraft parts recently flowing through a Gabonese company to Russia, according to The Moscow Times.
The Russian Embassy in London did not respond to emails requesting comment on the tankers that had registered in Gabon.
“Gabon is important to Russia because it has been willing to register tankers that other flag states have dropped under Western pressure,” said Craig Kennedy, a former investment banker and now an associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. “They are helping Russia develop a parallel shipping capability that makes it easier to sell oil above the price cap.”
Shipping records between Russian companies and their clients are normally private, so it is virtually impossible to say whether all of the tankers that reflagged have sold Russian oil, and for what price. But The New York Times obtained invoices showing that at least three tankers belonging to Russia’s dark fleet sold Russian oil last year while maintaining bureaucratic ties to the West. United States Treasury officials have reviewed those same records, according to two people familiar with the Treasury review.
American officials have engaged the Gabonese government about sanctions and particular ships, according to one U.S. official. The official requested anonymity to speak about internal government matters, adding that the Group of 7 nations behind the price cap continued to work publicly and privately to enforce it.
There are signs that Gabon is open to listening. It removed its flag from at least one ship this year after Western authorities had specifically named it as subject to sanctions.
In this photo released by state media, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is with Igor Sechin, right, of the Russian state-controlled Rosneft oil company. Russia’s dark fleet has been opaquely linked to powerful players like Mr. Sechin.Credit...Pool photo by Pavel Bednyakov
Unlike the Sovcomflot tankers tied outright to the Russian state, the dark network to which the Jaguar belongs is part of a web far harder to trace. It has been linked opaquely to powerful players within Russia, including Rosneft, the state-controlled oil giant, and Igor Sechin, its head, who is widely considered a close ally and adviser to Mr. Putin, according to analysis of vessel registration information and two people familiar with the fleet’s business network.
The Jaguar is among the vessels chartered by Voliton, a regular trader of Russian oil that the United States subjected to sanctions late last year.
The Gabonese Ministry of Transport and the Gabonese Embassy in London did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Two people who answered the phone for Intershipping Services, which runs Gabon’s registry from the United Arab Emirates, declined to answer questions about their certification process and the boom in registrations.
All ships must register with a national authority, and countries with maritime registries have competed to offer lower taxes, less stringent regulations and speedy certifications.
In registering ships, the authorities must certify that a vessel is seaworthy and well insured. That Gabon has registered so many Russian tankers has contributed to its reputation for not being as strict as other jurisdictions.
Last year, a fatal explosion occurred aboard one aging tanker that had newly registered in Gabon. Another tanker registered in Gabon was detained in Gibraltar this year after its crew complained that they had not been paid in two months.
A photograph taken last year and released by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency showing a tanker that had newly registered in Gabon and experienced an explosion. Ship registries must certify that a vessel is safe.Credit...Agence France-Presse, via MMEA
MPs accepting freebies while out of power ‘different’, minister claims
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A minister has claimed accepting freebies in opposition is “different” from doing so in government as she attempted to explain why Sir Keir Starmer has paid back the value of some Taylor Swift tickets, but not thousands of pounds worth of other gifts.
Industry minister Sarah Jones suggested Sir Keir and other Labour frontbenchers were taking free tickets to concerts and festivals while in opposition to “build relationships” with businesses.
It included Sir Keir’s £2,800 trip to see Taylor Swift and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, who accepted Glastonbury tickets worth more than £3,000 from Google.
But Ms Jones said: “There is a difference between government and opposition when you’re building relationships in opposition, it’s different for when you’re a government minister with real levers of power.”
Ms Jones was sent out to defend Sir Keir’s decision to pay back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality. The move, which followed weeks of criticism of Labour ministers over freebies, was made as an updated register of MPs’ interests revealed thousands of pounds of additional freebies accepted by Sir Keir’s top team.
Keir Starmer’s decision to pay back some freebies raised more questions than it answered (PA Wire)
The latest update showed Angela Rayner’s trip to an Ibiza nightclub, where she was filmed dancing in the DJ booth, was an £836 handout from electronic DJ Fisher’s agent.
Sir Keir’s decision to pay back some gifts but not others has raised more questions than it has answered, and has piled pressure on other Labour ministers to hand back the value of their own freebies.
Ms Jones said she will look at paying back the value of some of the free hospitality she accepted, including tickets to the Capital Radio Summertime Ball. And while she stressed that “it was all completely above board”, she said she would not go to other free events if she is invited in future.
She told Times Radio: “There is a difference in what you do as a minister, and what you do as a shadow minister.” And she said nobody else is being asked to pay back gifts because “nobody has broken the rules”.
Gifts which Sir Keir paid back include four Taylor Swift tickets from Universal Music Group totalling £2,800, two from the Football Association at a cost of £598, and four to Doncaster Races from Arena Racing Corporation at £1,939.
An £839 clothing rental agreement with Edeline Lee, the designer recently worn by his wife to London Fashion Week, along with one hour of hair and makeup, was also covered by the PM.
Business minister Sarah Jones said accepting gifts is fine when you are not in power (PA Media)
Sir Keir committed to overhauling hospitality rules for ministers to ensure better transparency about what is provided following the backlash.
On Wednesday, a Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister has commissioned a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code.”
Ms Jones also said high profile Labour peer Waheed Alli was “confident” he had done nothing wrong.
Lord Alli, who has faced scrutiny after donating thousands of pounds worth of glasses and suits to Sir Keir, is under investigation by the Lords’ commissioner over “alleged non-registration of interests” leading to a possible breach of the members’ code of conduct.
Ms Jones said: “He will completely cooperate with that investigation, of course, and he’s confident he’s registered everything in the way that he should have done. And that’s that, really. We need to let that investigation run its course.”
Ms Jones added: “You know he’s been a Lord for decades and he’s been very involved in trying to deliver a Labour Government for a very long time.
“It’s why he made the donations he did, because he was helping us to do that... I don’t think there was any question over whether he was trying to influence anything other than to deliver a Labour Government.”
She said Lord Alli was also involved in Labour’s 1997 campaign, insisting the party was “very grateful” for his donations but he “is not influencing any policy at all”.
When Artists Found Beauty in London’s Toxic Fog
Monet and Turner found something sublime in the polluted 19th-century city — and maybe something darker, too.
“Waterloo Bridge, Overcast” (1903), which is on display in “Monet and London: Views of the Thames” at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Credit...Anders Sune Berg
If you’ve been to London recently (or ever) you’ll probably recognize Claude Monet’s description: “Today the weather was maddening, gusts of snow, then sunshine, fog and dark weather and clear, it was magnificent but all too changeable.”
Yet the French painter found London’s moody climate an inspiration, and he purposely came in only the colder months. During three visits from 1899 to 1901, he produced dozens of canvases of the city’s surging River Thames, 36 of which were shown to acclaim in Paris in 1904 but never exhibited in London.
One hundred and twenty years later, the Courtauld Gallery has brought a selection of the series home for the first time in “Monet and London: Views of the Thames” (through Jan. 19, 2025). The effect is as radiant and sublime as Monet might have hoped — though today we might see those unsettled skies in a different light.
“Every day I find London more beautiful to paint,” he wrote to his wife Alice from the swish Savoy Hotel, where he stayed on those visits. From his riverside balcony, the artist could observe the working waterway, chugging with boat traffic and steaming with trains on bridges above, from sunrise to sunset. Here, he would fulfill his enduring wish to “try to paint some fog effects on the Thames.”
Monet’s “Charing Cross Bridge, The Thames” (1903)Credit...Alain Basset/Lyon Mba
At the Courtauld (less than half a mile from the Savoy), 21 canvases show the river in an atmospheric suite of cornflower blue, cobalt, dove gray and mauve. The choppy Thames glimmers in shades of silver and blue flecked with violet and pink, or flaming yellow, orange and crimson from the sun — “the little red ball,” Monet called it — that’s high above in a sky thick with “delicious fog.” “The extraordinary fog so very yellow,” he wrote, characterized the industrialized late-19th-century London. Locals already called it “the Big Smoke.”
From the early 1800s, coal was a mainstay across Europe’s major cities, used to power industrial motors and, particularly in Britain, to warm homes. The resulting dense smoke saturated the atmosphere and, in London, it was amplified by gas street lighting. The fog stank of carbon and sulfur and irritated inhabitants’ eyes and noses. For the 19th-century art critic John Ruskin, it was a “plague-wind,” but artists — then and now — have taken differing approaches to pollution and its visual effects.
To Monet, industrialization’s miasma was a kind of aesthetic blessing for his Impressionist experiments. In “Charing Cross Bridge: Smoke in the Fog; Impression” (1902) the scene is awash in pearlescent hues, the piers of the bridge barely visible in spare teal lines. Billowing clouds of purple steam dominate the image, although no train is visible: All particulars have dissolved. “Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect” (1903) is divided by the indigo monolith of the bridge, the sky above churning with violet clouds reflected in the water below.
The artist had previously painted series — haystacks, Rouen Cathedral — but these canvases are wild and tempestuous, otherworldly. The London works begin with modernity and end in dreamlike visions, but they are fundamentally about “a struggle with Nature,” as he wrote to his wife — an interesting characterization of a poisonous environment.
“Houses of Parliament, Sunset” (1900-03)Credit...RecomArt-Cruse-Color
“Parliament: Sunlight in the Fog” (1904)Credit...Grand Palais RMN (musée d’Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski
The Courtauld Gallery show assembles 21 paintings that Monet showed in Paris in 1904, but that have never been seen in London.Credit...Tolga Akmen/EPA, via Shutterstock
Monet worked en plein air in London, but all of his canvases were finished at his studio in Giverny, France, where they took on new life. As much as they are representations of a city and its unearthly fog, they also show how art best captures nature when it transforms it. Critics described the 1904 Paris exhibition as a symphony of color, a whole work to be experienced at once; others praised “the prodigious views of the Thames by our French Turner.” Although the exhibition catalog says Monet never commented on the comparison, he was clearly influenced by the stormy landscapes, with their dramatic skies and rushing trains, of the British painter J.M.W. Turner.
Farther west down the Thames from the Courtauld, one of Turner’s fiery canvases, “Sunset” (1830-35) hangs at Sandycombe Lodge, the artist’s onetime country home, now a museum in the London suburbs. The painting is a standout work in “A World of Care: Turner and the Environment,” a small exhibition at Turner’s House (through Oct. 27) that shows how the artist observed the changing 19th-century environment through a very different lens from Monet’s.
Turner also witnessed unnaturally vivid sunsets caused by coal pollution, but unlike the Frenchman, he did not describe the effect in rapturous tones. A watercolor view of “London from Greenwich” (1808-9) shows the curving Thames obscured by what Turner described in an accompanying poem as a “murky veil” of pollution produced by the city’s “commercial care and busy toil.” Another watercolor from beyond the capital’s limits, “Crowhurst” (around 1816), shows a decimated East Sussex woodland where poor land management led to fuel shortages for local industry and to flooding that remains an ongoing problem.
“Sunset” (1830-35), by J.M.W. Turner, is on display at Turner’s House in London as part of the exhibition “A World of Care: Turner and the Environment.”Credit...
Wall labels remind us that Turner lived through a time of rampant fossil fuel extraction, rapid deforestation and climate-altering natural disasters: 1816 was known as “the year without a summer” after dust from an Indonesian volcano drifted around the world, causing temperatures to plunge and harvests to fail. Rather than fantastical visions, Turner’s images serve as records of his present — and, moreover, warnings about our future.
In a recent rehang of Tate Britain, another London museum, which owns one of the world’s largest Turner collections, contemporary works were placed in conversation with the permanent collection. A room of Turner watercolors now has flickering at its center a work by Yuri Pattison called “sun[set] provisioning” (2019) featuring a virtual reality ocean sunset whose colors shift according to real-time local pollution levels. When I visited the museum recently, the sky was dark blue, the waters lapis with a hint of red light on the horizon. But on other days, the sky is Monet’s eerie chartreuse, or Turner’s violent streams of red and orange.
London’s toxic fog has dissipated. The problem with pollution now is that it’s largely invisible and easy to ignore, unless — like artists — we find new ways of looking.
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Может ли Иран рассчитывать на Россию в конфликте с Израилем?
Военно-техническое и военное сотрудничество Тегерана и Москвы связано с войной в Украине, которую Россия начала в 2022 году, а также с ударами Ирана по Израилю, которые могут вылиться в полномасштабный конфликт уже в ближайшее время.
Иран уже поставлял в Россию дроны, которыми российские военные обстреливают Украину. Были и другие поставки, менее крупные.
Однако это военно-техническое сотрудничество могло бы быть намного более серьезным. Например, Россия могла бы продать Ирану партию истребителей Су-35, ранее собранных для продажи Египту в рамках сорвавшейся сделки. Иран высказывал интерес в получении этих самолетов.
Наличие таких истребителей осложнило бы проведение воздушных операций против Ирана. Сейчас иранские ВВС насчитывают всего несколько десятков боевых самолетов — это российские и устаревшие американские модели, оставшиеся после исламской революции 1979 года.
Весной 2023 года иранская телерадиокомпания IRIB процитировала анонимного сотрудника иранской миссии в ООН, который сказал, что сделка совершена, но с тех пор сообщений о передаче самолетов Ирану в СМИ не было.
На стоянке аэродрома дальневосточного авиационного завода КнААЗ остается более 20 истребителей в окраске, которую российский военный аналитический Центр анализа стратегий и технологий называл «египетской». Их можно увидеть даже в сервисе Гугл-карты.
Россия также могла бы передать Ирану средства противовоздушной обороны, например, комплексы ближнего радиуса действия «Панцирь С1». Они могут быть использованы для защиты более дальних систем ПВО или других объектов от ударов израильских ракет.
Как заявляли в Белом доме в 2023 году, российская группа «Вагнер» собиралась передать такую установку либо группе «Хезболла», либо Ирану. Тогда представитель американского Агентства по национальной безопасности Джон Кирби заявил, что американцы готовятся применить «контртеррористические санкции против российских физических и юридических лиц», если такие поставки состоятся.
О реализации этих планов впоследствии ничего не сообщалось.
В свою очередь Иран мог бы поставлять в Россию баллистические ракеты — оперативно-тактические или даже малого радиуса действия. Если бы такие ракеты появились у российской армии, то это сильно изменило бы обстановку в Украине. Дело в том, что баллистические ракеты труднее сбивать, а у России их запасы уменьшились, и она использует их реже, чем крылатые.
В случае войны с Израилем для Ирана, который находится на расстоянии тысячи километров от Израиля, были бы актуальны ракеты средней дальности, тогда как России нужны либо оперативно-тактические, либо малого радиуса c дальностью до 500 километров. Поэтому на возможности обстреливать Израиль эти поставки не отразятся.
Возможная передача ракет выглядела настолько опасной, что стала предметом внешнеполитического напряжения между Москвой и Вашингтоном — в начале сентября президент Джо Байден рассматривал возможность дать разрешение Украине на применение американских ракет против целей в России.
Тогда США, Франция, Германия и Великобритания официально обвинили Иран в поставке баллистических ракет в Россию. По информации, которая попала в прессу, эти ракеты уже прибыли в Россию.
Разрешение на удары по целям в России Киев так и не получил, но и Москва не стала применять в Украине иранские ракеты. Иран официально заявил, что не передавал их России.
Истребители и баллистические ракеты — самые крупные несостоявшиеся поставки, о которых стало известно, потому что информация попала в прессу.
Но они показывают, что потенциал военно-технического сотрудничества у Ирана и России велик и может сказаться на ситуации в регионах.
Однако такое сотрудничество затрагивает интересы Израиля, с которым у России отношения если не близкие, то как минимум не настолько же сильно испорченные, как с другими странами политического Запада.
Израиль до сих пор не поставлял Украине летальное оружие, по крайней мере открыто, хотя запросы со стороны украинского руководства были уже давно.
Киев интересуют высокоэффективные израильские системы противовоздушной обороны, такие как «Железный купол». Израиль вряд ли стал бы передавать Украине системы ПВО из действующей армии, но их строят на экспорт, и, кроме того, две батареи уже имеются в США — их можно передать украинцам с согласия израильтян.
Израиль не оказывает серьезную военную помощь Украине — он участвует только в гуманитарных поставках.
В феврале 2023 года премьер-министр Израиля Биньямин Нетаньяху сказал, что может рассмотреть возможность оказания военной помощи Украине, не уточняя, какой именно. Однако до сих пор этот вопрос не решился.
Отношения Израиля и России также осложняет тот факт, что военная авиация двух стран действует бок о бок в Сирии, где в воздухе военные самолеты нередко летают совсем рядом друг с другом.
Им постоянно приходится координировать свои действия, чтобы не допустить инцидентов, подобных гибели российского самолета-разведчика в 2018 году. Его по ошибке сбила сирийская ПВО, но в России утверждали, что рядом с ним находились израильские истребители, по которым стреляли сирийцы.
Международные отношения стран на Ближнем Востоке сплетены в такой плотный клубок, что любое интенсивное вмешательство повлечет за собой цепную реакцию проблем с другими странами.
В любом случае Москва и Тегеран явно старались обговорить все детали до эскалации обстановки в регионе.
30 сентября в Тегеран прилетал с визитом российский премьер-министр Михаил Мишустин. Как пишет российская газета «Ведомости», в ходе визита планировалось обсудить весь комплекс российско-иранского сотрудничества, но особое внимание было уделено крупным совместным проектам в области транспорта, энергетики, промышленности и сельского хозяйства.
Означает ли это обмен военными технологиями, неизвестно.
Old graves could be reused as the UK runs out of space for the dead
Plots could be eligible for reuse when the last person was buried at least 75 years ago
The UK is running out of space to bury the dead.
The issue has forced a commission to recommend drastic measures in which old graves could would reused to manage the shortage of burial space.
Under the proposed changes put forward by the Law Commission, graveyards declared “full” during the Victorian era could also be reopened.
The commission warned urban areas across England and Wales are fast running out of burial space.
Proposed changes would allow any burial ground to reuse graves, but only following public consultation and government approval.
Safeguards would also be in place for each individual grave, with plots only eligible for reuse when the last person was buried at least 75 years ago.
Another separate public consultation is considering the timeframes around grave reuse, and what would happen if family members objected.
Professor Nick Hopkins, Commissioner for Property, Family and Trust Law said any change would need to be tackled in consultation with the public.
“Our proposals provide a significant opportunity to reform burial and cremation law and secure burial space for future generations,” he said.
“This must be done sensitively and with wider public support.”
Current legislation makes it illegal to redevelop a graveyard for any reason other than to grow a place of worship.
Other publicly-run cemeteries can be redeveloped if the owner is granted an Act of Parliament.
Alex Davies-Jones, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice, said the Government was supportive of the Law Commission’s work.
“We await with interest the Law Commission’s recommendations, in due course, on the most appropriate framework to provide modern, consistent regulation for burial and cremation,” she said.
Public consultation on the proposed changes is open until January 2025.
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Детали и причины завершения дипломатической миссии Антонова пока не сообщаются.
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"Посол вылетает в 15 часов из Вашингтона в Москву спецрейсом", - заявило Посольство, добавив, что подтверждает завершение командировки Антонова.
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ООНовцы передумали и возвращают нам наши полные аккредитации после истории с Бербок. Это наш общий успех. Большое спасибо всем, кто помогал и поддерживал! Здесь в Нью-Йорке, в Москве и по всему миру. Так победим!
Israel ‘preparing response’ to Iran attack as 7 October anniversary looms
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The Israeli military is expanding its operations on multiple fronts around the anniversary of the 7 October attacks on Monday, including planning for a “significant and serious” retaliation against Iran for last week’s large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israel.
Signs of imminent Israeli retaliation against Iran came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for an international embargo on arms delivered to Israel for use against Gaza, where authorities say more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s year long assault.
“I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” Macron told broadcaster France Inter, adding that France was not sending any arms to Israel.
Macron made his comments as the Israel Defense Forces said a major strike on Iran was imminent, as Israel hit targets in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza on Saturday.
“The IDF [Israeli military] is preparing a response to the unprecedented and unlawful Iranian attack on Israeli civilians and Israel,” the military official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the issue.
As Israel said it was planning its response to Tuesday’s Iranian missile strikes, which hit on or near a number of key Israeli bases, the US president, Joe Biden, cautioned against striking Iranian oil facilities, a day after he said Washington was “discussing” such action.
“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oilfields,” Biden said during a rare appearance at the White House daily press briefing. The Biden administration has already suggested it opposes an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Amid the worsening violence, speculation was hardening that a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs had killed Hashem Safieddine, who had been widely expected to succeed Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah. According to Lebanese security sources, Safieddine has been unreachable since Friday.
Assessments suggest that Safieddine was killed with aides and Iranian advisers in a powerful strike that has made reaching any bodies difficult. In the aftermath of the strike the IDF said it had hit Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters without disclosing who was present.
The fighting comes as Israel prepares to mark the first anniversary on Monday of the devastating 7 October Hamas attack that prompted the current war in Gaza, which has now engulfed neighbouring Lebanon, creating a dangerous regional crisis.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, will lead a memorial service in Sderot, one of the cities hardest hit during the onslaught by Hamas militants, amid fears that the anniversary may attract fresh attacks on Israeli citizens.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it was also ordering Palestinian civilians in some areas of the Gaza Strip – including Nuseirat and Bureij, which host large encampments of internally displaced people – to evacuate, saying that the IDF planned to act “with great force” against Hamas operating there.
Israel also appeared to be ramping up operations over the weekend in southern Lebanon, which its ground forces entered earlier this week.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it was opposing Israeli attempts to enter the southern town of Odaisseh, adding that clashes were ongoing.
As Hezbollah continued to fire rockets at northern Israel, there were direct hits in two buildings in Karmiel and near Acre, with reports of casualties from an impact on an apartment block in the Israeli-Arab village of Deir al-Asad.
Israel, which began ground operations targeting southern Lebanon on Monday last week, says they are focused on villages near the border and has said Beirut is “not on the table”, but has not specified how long the ground incursion will last.
It says the operation’s aim is to allow tens of thousands of its citizens to return home after Hezbollah bombardments, which began on 8 October 2023, forced them to evacuate from its north.
Rapidly escalating violence in recent days has brought intense Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon as ground troops conducted raids near the border, transforming nearly a year of cross-border exchanges into full-blown war.
In the first reported Israeli airstrike on the northern Tripoli region in the current flare-up, Hamas said “Zionist bombardment” of the Beddawi refugee camp killed a commander, Saeed Atallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.
Amid mounting fears over the deepening region-wide crisis, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, renewed his call for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon on Saturday.
“The most important issue today is the ceasefire, especially in Lebanon and in Gaza,” he told reporters. “There are initiatives in this regard, there have been consultations that we hope will be successful.”
Ukraine’s Donbas Strategy: Retreat Slowly and Maximize Russia’s Losses
The idea is to use rope-a-dope tactics, letting Russian forces pound away until they have exhausted themselves. It’s far from clear if the Ukrainian strategy will succeed.
Soldiers with an artillery battery of the 15th Brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard preparing to fire from their position in the Donbas region of Ukraine this week.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Throughout the year, Ukraine has lost a series of cities, towns and villages in its eastern Donbas region to Russia, typically withdrawing its troops after hard-fought battles that sometimes lasted for months.
Marinka was the first to fall, a sign in January that Russia had regained momentum on the battlefield. Then came Avdiivka, an industrial city where Ukrainian soldiers had hunkered down in a dense maze of trenches and bunkers. Finally, this past week, Ukraine retreated from Vuhledar, a mining town perched on high ground that was a linchpin of Ukrainian defenses in the southeast.
To outside observers, Ukraine’s slow but steady retreat from the Donbas region, the main theater of the war today, may seem to signal the beginning of the endgame, with Moscow firmly gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, leveraging its overwhelming advantage in manpower and firepower.
But Ukrainian commanders and military experts dispute that, saying that a more crucial fight is unfolding in the region that goes beyond simple territorial gains and losses. It is now a war of attrition, they say, with each side trying to exhaust the other by inflicting maximum losses, hoping to break the enemy’s capacity and will to continue the war.
All summer, Russia was sending waves of troops backed by columns of armored vehicles in brutal assaults, regardless of the casualties, and saturating the skies with drones, shells and bombs.
Ukraine, a country that is a fraction of the size of Russia and with about a third of the population, is at an inherent disadvantage in this kind of battle. It has fewer men to send to the front, and, despite an influx of Western military aid, remains largely outgunned on the battlefield.
That has left Kyiv with little choice but to adopt what Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine’s government-run Institute for Strategic Studies, called a strategy of “trading space for Russian losses.” The idea is to retreat from towns under attack after exacting the highest price it can on manpower and matériel.
“It’s a matter of how much they lose before they realize it’s futile,” Oleksandr Solonko, a member of Ukraine’s 411th drone battalion, who is fighting around the frontline city of Pokrovsk, said of the Russians. But faced with relentless assaults, he added, some Ukrainian commanders also “prefer to abandon a position or a settlement if it reduces personnel losses.”
With Moscow so far proving capable of absorbing its losses by recruiting more soldiers and ramping up arms production, it remains unclear how much territory Kyiv will have to give up before the Russian Army runs out of steam — if it ever does. Compounding the situation, Ukraine’s offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region in August has further stretched its resources, threatening its ability to conduct a controlled retreat in the Donbas region without having the front line collapse.
Pasi Paroinen, a military expert from the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which analyzes footage and satellite images from the battlefield, said that after the Kursk offensive, Russia advanced in the Donbas region at a pace unseen since 2022. In the past two months, it captured some 270 square miles in the area, roughly three times the amount taken in June and July, he said.
But that leaves Russia far short of achieving its long-held objective of fully seizing the region. To do that, it would need to take another 4,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory, about five times as much as it has captured over the past year.
“This war isn’t going to be decided by who controls Vuhledar or other tactical frontline towns and cities,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst. “It’s about how many troops the Russians have spent trying to seize Vuhledar versus the losses the Ukrainians have sustained in trying to hold it.”
Donbas, which comprises Ukraine’s two easternmost regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, has been the focal point of this attritional battle. Its proximity to western Russia has allowed Moscow to easily funnel troops, equipment and ammunition to the front lines there. The area is scattered with numerous towns and villages, forcing both sides into grinding urban combat.
Roman, a commander who defended Vuhledar with Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade, said that when Russian forces concentrate their efforts on a specific area, they can overwhelm Ukrainian defenses. By late summer, he noted, the Russians held a 10-to-1 advantage in artillery systems around Vuhledar.
“How can one of our artillery systems fight 10 of theirs?” Roman asked, using only his first name according to military rules.
Ukrainian forces held on to Vuhledar for more than two years, destroying columns of Russian tanks in ambushes and killing many soldiers sent into brutal ground assaults. But Moscow’s army pressed on, and as it closed in on Vuhledar in recent weeks, it began inflicting substantial casualties on Kyiv’s forces. Ukrainian medics said dozens of soldiers were injured daily, and the military reported assaults that “depleted” its troops.
The army eventually announced on Wednesday that it had retreated from the town “to save personnel and military equipment.”
Ukraine ultimately hopes that Russia’s mounting losses will make the war unsustainable for the Kremlin before it becomes so for Kyiv. “This is the most important thing — to exhaust the enemy,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in his nightly address on Wednesday.
But how realistic is this strategy? President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has put his country’s economy on war footing and has shown no sign that he is prepared to quit the fight. And the Russian people seem steadfast in their support of the war effort.
Ukrainian and Western officials point to rising Russian casualty figures — nearly 1,200 a day in August this year, according to an adviser to the British military, Nicholas Aucott — as evidence of the war’s heavy toll on Russia.
Throughout the war, Russia has lost roughly three armored fighting vehicles for every Ukrainian one, according to Oryx, a military analysis site that counts only visually confirmed losses. Analysts from the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based military and security research organization, estimated that with the current rate of losses and the production of replacements, Russia is likely to exhaust its stocks of armored fighting vehicles by 2026.
Mr. Gady, who conducted a similar study, said Russia by then would be able to afford only “one or two battles of the scale of Avdiivka in terms of losses” of armored vehicles.
At least for now, however, the Russian Army is moving to increase its troop numbers and arms production. On the battlefield in the Donbas region, Mr. Solonko said, the Russians have been “using a lot of resources and rushing when they could be taking things slower, with fewer losses.”
Mr. Gady and other military experts said that, as summer began, Ukraine’s military was well positioned to endure the fight in the region while waiting for Russian losses to accumulate, setting itself up for possible counterattacks next year.
Ukraine’s manpower and firepower disadvantages were starting to narrow thanks to mobilization efforts and increased ammunition supplies from Western allies, including this year’s multibillion-dollar aid package from the United States. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top commander, said last month that the ratio of artillery shells usage between Russia and Ukraine had narrowed in recent months.
But Ukraine’s surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region in August has left its forces at greater risk, analysts said.
While the cross-border assault lifted morale in Ukraine, it also further stretched the country’s fighting resources, with some of its most experienced troops being diverted to the Kursk region from the Donbas region. Kyiv has lost more than 200 pieces of equipment in its offensive so far — nearly as much as Russian losses near the embattled city of Pokrovsk over the same period, according to Naalsio an open-source intelligence researcher and contributor to Oryx.
Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbas region have differing views on the merits of the Kursk offensive. Some believe it has forced Russia to move some Russian forces there from the eastern front, while others have expressed frustration over ammunition rationing that has occurred since the assault began.
Volia, a captain in Ukraine’s National Guard fighting near Toretsk, a city under Russian attack, said the fighting there was as brutal as ever, with both sides using every weapon possible to wear down the enemy, from old bombs carrying thousands of pounds of explosives to modern drones with night-vision capabilities.
“The Donbas,” he said, “is the field for using all means and hitting as much as one can.”
The family of Bohdan Shram, 23, during his funeral last month in Dnipro, Ukraine. While the Ukrainian forces are outmanned and outgunned by the Russians, they hope to bleed the enemy into battlefield paralysis.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
'Blue plaque' put up outside Tesco where lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss bought
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A "blue plaque" commemorating the lettuce that famously outlasted Liz Truss' premiership has been unveiled above the shop where it was bought.
The lettuce, purchased by a Daily Star journalist, became the star of its own live stream not long after the controversial PM took office in late 2022. Ms Truss, who was appointed on September 6 that year, failed to hold on to her position before the lettuce wilted, lasting just 44 days at Number 10 to the vegetable's 49.
The live stream took the nation by storm, becoming a valuable distraction from Ms Truss and then-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's chaotic economic policy and political turmoil. Now, the moment that started it all has received its own "blue plaque", an honour traditionally reserved for the most iconic moments in British history and the Britons behind them.
The unofficial plaque has appeared outside the Tesco in Walthamstow where the lettuce was purchased, above a security warning sign and next to an advert for British cheddar, reports the Daily Star. The plaque reads: "A lettuce purchased here in 2022 lasted longer than Prime Minister Liz Truss (49 days). "
As if the plaque wasn't enough the sign's placement also allows people to harken back to another one of Ms Truss' more bizarre moments. In 2014, while serving as the environment secretary under David Cameron, she said it was a "disgrace" that the UK was importing two-thirds of its cheese.
The plaque also shows the cultural weight the lettuce continues to bear nearly two years after the ex-PM left office - becoming the shortest-serving in history - with the comparison remaining very much in the public consciousness. Political campaign group Led By Donkeys took advantage of the fact earlier this year when it unfurled a banner during one of the former politician's speaking events.
Ms Truss was speaking at a book event when the group unfurled the remote-controlled banner above her and an interviewer that read: "I crashed the economy." The banner also bore the image of the famous lettuce, and prompted an angry reaction from Ms Truss, who stormed off saying it was "not funny" and earning an applause as she did so.
The group said in a post on Facebook: "We just dropped in on Liz Truss’s pro-Trump speaking tour with a remote-controlled lettuce banner. She didn’t find it funny."
Цитата:
The Lettuce Outlasts Liz Truss
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LONDON — As support withered for Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain, so did the ball of lettuce.
Purchased at a Tesco grocery store for 60 pence (68 cents), the lettuce became a caricature of the Conservative leader’s flailing hold on power, pitted against the prime minister by The Daily Star, a British tabloid.
“Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?” the newspaper asked in a live video that has been running since Oct. 14, attracting bounds of viewers and comments on social media.
The lettuce gag was inspired by The Economist, which noted on Oct. 11 that between a near-immediate political implosion at the beginning of her tenure and the 10 days of mourning after Queen Elizabeth II died, her grip on power amounted to seven days, or “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
In the end, the lettuce emerged victorious after Ms. Truss resigned on Thursday. Someone flipped the photo of Ms. Truss face-down on the table, colorful lights swirled, and a recording of “God Save the King” played on repeat as nearly 20,000 people watched live.
“The lettuce outlasted Liz Truss,” the video declared. Minutes later, a remix of “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang set the mood.
To be compared directly to lettuce was one of many indicators that Ms. Truss had a nightmare turn as Britain’s leader since the Conservative Party elevated her in September to replace Boris Johnson. Her proposed tax-cut plan so alarmed voters and the markets that she was forced to reverse herself and fire her top ally, leaving many to wonder if she would be pushed out just weeks after she started.
The Daily Star took The Economist’s joke and ran with it, plopping the lettuce on a table next to a framed photo of Ms. Truss. The lettuce was later given a glow-up, featuring a blonde wig, glasses and Mr. Potato Head-like feet and hands, while it was surrounded with crackers and a mug. At one point the lettuce wore an eye mask to get some rest, and on Tuesday the newspaper declared in a front-page headline: “Lettuce Liz on Leaf Support.”
To many of the newspaper’s readers, it was a ludicrous statement befitting of a ludicrous moment.
The lettuce did not wilt in its six days in the spotlight. Lettuce can generally stay crisp for about seven to 10 days — though that’s typically the life span of refrigerated lettuce, not a head that’s been sitting out on a table and wearing a wig.
The lettuce did not wilt in its six days in the spotlight. Lettuce can generally stay crisp for about seven to 10 days — though that’s typically the life span of refrigerated lettuce, not a head that’s been sitting out on a table and wearing a wig.
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С интересом и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Russian ambassador to U.S. "concludes" term, Russian agencies report
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Oct 6 (Reuters) - Russia's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, is
"concluding"
(выделено а.п.) his diplomatic mission, Russian agencies reported late on Saturday.
"Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow," Interfax agency cited a representative of the Foreign Ministry as saying.
The envoy will be returning to Moscow within hours, Vedomosti newspaper reported. There was no further detail provided.
Antonov has been Russia's ambassador in Washington since 2017.
Атака Израиля на Иран может начаться «в ближайшие часы», сообщают источники из неправительственных организаций в Иордании — израильский 14-й канал. В предупреждении также говорилось о вероятности запуска баллистики из Ирана в ответ на атаку ЦАХАЛ.
Цитата:
Lebanese media outlet: Israeli strike on Iran to begin soon
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Jordanian NGOs recommend civilians remain near protected spaces, warn any Israeli military operation against Iran may trigger immediate Iranian response; no official confirmation of reports.
Цитата:
Israel has given no assurances it won’t target Iran’s nuclear facilities, top State Department official tells CNN
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Israel has not given assurances to the Biden administration that targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities is off the table in retaliation for the Iranian ballistic missile strikes earlier this week, a top US State Department official told CNN on Friday.
The official added that it is “really hard to tell” if Israel will use the anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attacks to retaliate.
“We hope and expect to see some wisdom as well as strength, but as you guys know, no guarantees,” the official said when asked by CNN if Israel has assured the US that Iran’s nuclear sites are off the table.
US officials have voiced support for Israel responding to Iran’s missile attack earlier this week, with multiple officials publicly saying there must be consequences. At the same time, officials have also voiced concerns about a regional conflagration as they grapple with an increasingly volatile Middle East.
President Joe Biden said earlier this week the US would not support Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program.
“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Biden said at a press briefing Friday.
US officials also do not yet have clarity as to when Israel’s response will be decided upon, or enacted. The president said Friday that Israel was “not going to make a decision immediately.”
The senior State Department official, asked by CNN whether Israel would use the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack to retaliate against Iran, said, “It is really hard to tell.”
“I think in some ways they would want to avoid the seventh, so in my estimation if there is anything it would likely be before or after,” the official said, pointing to the solemnity of that day and any Israeli retaliation potentially taking away from what that day was all about.
The US has been working for almost a year to prevent the conflict from turning into a bigger war – and has so far done so, the official said. Right now, “this is on the edge,” the official added.
Biden said Friday that US officials are in touch with their Israeli counterparts “12 hours a day.”
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Wednesday that there are “major efforts on both sides to keep lines of communication open and to make sure that perspectives are understood.”
“There have been moments of surprise, I don’t think that’s a secret, over the course the last couple of months,” he acknowledged.
“With respect to the Iranian attack on Israel, it is not just Israel that is thinking about its response options; it is also the United States,” Campbell said at an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Our dominant message is, ‘let’s take great care in whatever we do with respect to Iran,’” Campbell said.
Семь событий за неделю, которые пока не случились.
1. Наша прославленная лыжница Елена Вяльбе предложила сбросить бомбу на Лондон. Правильно, конечно, но решать вопрос надо в корне и сразу потопить проклятый остров англосаксонских псов.
2. Желавший смерти России президент несуществующей страны «Латвии» сломал руку. Жалко, что не шею. Ждём.
3. Свиномузыкальный киевский паяц заявил, что в скором времени «будет особый Рамштайн». Неужели он сменит на сцене Тилля Линдеманна и наконец вернётся к фаллическому пианино?
4. Нетленка от Трампа: «Если бы президентом был я, то войны в [вставьте любое] удалось бы избежать!» Как жаль, что он не был вождём, фараоном, шахом, каганом, султаном, князем, королём, царём, президентом повсюду в последние 10 тысяч лет!
5. Израиль решил объявить Генсека ООН non grata. А что, идея! Следует всех руководителей недружественных стран и международных организаций объявить нежелательными. И не надо встречаться тогда. И проблемы сами отпадут.
6. Какая-то вонючая киевская Дунда предложила перенести войну в Белоруссию. Ну тогда у Александра Григорьевича будет полное основание обратиться к России для использования размещенного в Белорусии ТЯО. И ему трудно будет отказать в удовольствии посмотреть на огоньки в Киеве.
7. Volkswagen впервые собирается закрывать свои заводы в Германии. Какая приятная новость! Ждём еще мирной кончины предприятий Mercedes и BMW. И тогда круг замкнётся!
Цитата:
Russia's envoy to US ends his term at time of bilateral turmoil
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Oct 6 (Reuters) - Russia's envoy to the U.S., a Kremlin hard-liner, was returning to Moscow on Saturday, state media reported, with the end of his term coming at a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades.
"Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow," TASS state news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.
The Siberia-born Antonov, 69, a career diplomat, was seen as a hawk who was still capable of striking compromises. Head of the Russian mission in Washington since 2017, he said in July his assignment was coming to an end.
There was no mention of who would replace the envoy, considered a military-style negotiator. His stance on Russia's war in Ukraine has shown stalwart support of President Vladimir Putin's actions.
"It is obvious to us that the enemy will be defeated and victory will be Russia's," Antonov said on Saturday in an unrelated post on the Telegram messaging app, commenting on Russian forces capturing Ukraine's mining town of Vuhledar.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a special military operation, accusing Washington and its NATO partners of waging a hybrid war in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow's aggression is an unprovoked imperialistic attempt to grab land.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union and U.S. came close to nuclear war.
Antonov, who served as deputy defence minister during a period which coincided with Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in 2014, was a subject of European sanctions when Putin named him Russia's envoy to the U.S.
He graduated in 1978 from the main diplomatic training ground of the Soviet Union, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Antonov spent the next three decades climbing through the foreign ministry ranks, according to his biography on the embassy's website.
Before moving to Washington, he was known as a shrewd arms control negotiator who had headed Russian delegations to a number of international and strategic weapons talks.
In an August interview with TASS, Antonov said Russia was ready to consider a pact with Washington on arms control.
"My tactics for conducting negotiations are very simple: you and I need to take a piece of paper and write down what you want and what I want," he said.
"Take the two sheets of paper and try to find something in common there, even if it is minimal, but start from this when solving problems."
...
Цитата:
ICYMI: Russia’s envoy to US ends his term at time of bilateral turmoil
Russia’s envoy to the US, a Kremlin hard-liner, has returned to Moscow, state media reported, with the end of his term coming at a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades.
“Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow,” TASS state news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.
The Siberia-born Antonov, 69, a career diplomat, was seen as a hawk who was still capable of striking compromises. Head of the Russian mission in Washington since 2017, he said in July his assignment was coming to an end.
There was no mention of who would replace the envoy, considered a military-style negotiator. His stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown stalwart support of President Vladimir Putin’s actions.
Цитата:
Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s envoy to the United States and a Kremlin hardliner, returned to Moscow at the end of his term, which was a time of the most hostile relations between the two nations in decades. The Siberia-born career diplomat had been heading the Russian mission in Washington, DC since 2017.
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Цитата:
Russian ambassador to US 'concludes' term – report
...
Russia's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, is "concluding" his diplomatic mission, Russian agencies reported late on Saturday.
"Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov is concluding his Washington assignment and heading to Moscow," Interfax agency cited a representative of the Foreign Ministry as saying.
British history is being destroyed before our eyes – and it has nothing to do with culture wars over statues
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The People’s Story Museum in Edinburgh is a part of the city’s cultural fabric whose name says it all: a museum and archive, opened in 1989 and located in the 16th-century Canongate Tolbooth, that takes in just about every aspect of working-class life in the Scottish capital from the 18th century to the late 20th century. Its exhibits include recreations of a bookbinder’s workshop, a wartime kitchen and a jail cell; the artefacts it looks after span work, leisure, politics, protest and more.
In a city long since transformed by gentrification and tourism, there is something brilliantly defiant about what the museum does. But after months of erratic opening hours, the People’s Story was recently closed without warning, thanks to what one councillor called “staffing pressures and a need to manage expenditure”. Last Thursday Labour, Tory and Lib Dem councillors voted to keep it shut for seven months – with an “update” in December – so they can try to pare down costs across the city’s museums and galleries: a small but very symbolic element of a drive to put through £26m in spending cuts across the council’s budgets.
The museum’s supporters now fear the worst. One of them is Jim Slaven, an energised community activist and Edinburgh tour guide specialising in social history, who well knows what is afoot. “They’ve turned the city centre into a citadel for the rich,” he recently said, “and now they’re trying to write us out of the history of the city as well.”
Here, once again, is a bafflingly overlooked story. Local councils have long been squeezed by the rising need for adult and children’s social care, the damage inflicted by post-2010 austerity and the plain fact that the huge financial gaps have still not been filled. The resulting crises are usually reported in terms of their effects on youth clubs, children’s centres, parks and libraries. But we also need to talk about museums, whose opening times are constantly being hacked back, while staff numbers are falling away. Even people who talk up a long record of resilience and creative thinking now fear widespread closures.
Last week, I had a long conversation with Sharon Heal, the director of the Museums Association. “I’ve worked in the sector for 10 years, and this is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” she told me. “I’ve been in meetings recently with museum directors who are now dealing with insolvency experts.” Her most urgent fears, she said, were not about the financial problems of the national museums largely clustered in London and part-funded from Whitehall, but those classified as “civic”: flagship city museums, town-level institutions and a multitude of others that cover just about every aspect of national and local history, and depend for much of their funding on councils.
The British establishment has always had a talent for the grimmest of ironies, and there is a prime example here. The former Tory chancellor George Osborne is now chair of the British Museum. But when he began savagely cutting back the money that once went from central government to local authorities, smaller museums were plunged into a crisis that shows no signs of ending. In the 10 years to 2020, local authority spending on museums and galleries in the UK fell by 27% in real terms. Since then, as councils have continued to feel the pinch, museums have been further battered by Covid lockdowns and a cost-of-living crisis that has squeezed crucial sources of cash, not least the cafes and shops that top up their funds. All this is on Osborne’s Tory successors, just as much as the original Conservative authors of austerity. “We cannot sit by as the left denigrate our history and pull down our monuments,” said Kemi Badenoch last week: she and her colleagues’ wilful neglect of museums shows that such talk is absurd.
Which brings me to a couple of points that would not be to the Conservative party leadership candidate’s taste. The fact that some museums are full of imperial plunder and often owe their existence to money from slavery surely ought to put them at the heart of our long-overdue reckoning with empire. The first steps taken towards returning many artefacts and objects to their origin countries only highlight how significant that role could be. And in that area and plenty of others, the dangers of disinformation might be partly answered by boosting the involvement of museums in education, and focusing some of their attention on the terrain where conspiracy theorists operate. But how can museums rise to all those challenges if they are constantly worrying about their survival?
Browse the news and there it all is. Glasgow’s museum service is facing drastic job losses. Earlier this year, amid dire funding issues rooted in the Welsh government’s £3m cut to the relevant budget, doubts were expressed even about Wales’s national museum in Cardiff. At the most grassroots level, fears have recently grown about the future of scores of places, from the Somerset Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury to Derby’s industry-based Museum of Making. To make things even worse, miserable cuts-think seems to be recasting public assets as sellable commodities: witness an odious recent BBC news investigation into the value of Birmingham city council’s art collection, put in the context of its effective bankruptcy. The logic at work was absolutely see-through: why not just flog it all off?
In March Rishi Sunak’s government announced that a small number of museums – 26 in all – would benefit from a £22m grant aimed at “repairs, renovations and the development of digital infrastructure”. But that move really only highlighted how much the crisis had been ignored. Ahead of this month’s budget, the Museums Association is looking for “emergency stabilisation funding” of at least £30m, accompanied by what is really needed: a long-overdue financial strategy to finally allow museums to confidently look into the future. We shall see.
The news from Edinburgh says a lot about how high the stakes might be. When I read about the travails of the People’s Story, I thought of a retail park on the site of the old Cortonwood colliery, the South Yorkshire pit where a walkout in March 1984 began the miners’ strike – and where there is now just an apologetic-looking sign on the wall of a Morrisons supermarket, with a single sentence about that momentous event. At the general election, nearly a third of the vote here went to Reform UK, those shameless peddlers of specious history and tall tales. Part of the UK’s malaise is our talent for creating the kind of vacuums that are then filled by the worst actors. Our precious museums, by contrast, are repositories of real and powerful stories: if they fall into even more decay and disrepair, we should all fear the consequences.
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Уровень доступа: Вы не можете начинать темы, Вы не можете отвечать на сообщения, Вы не можете редактировать свои сообщения, Вы не можете удалять свои сообщения, Вы не можете голосовать в опросах
Генеральный директор агентства мобильного маркетинга Mobisharks (входит в ГК Kokoc Group) — об эффективном мобильном маркетинге и примерах успешных стратегий.
За последние пару лет реклама банков изменилась. Появились новые сюжеты и герои. Реклама по-прежнему — не только инструмент продвижения услуг, но и способ формирования доверия к финансовым организациям. Главный тренд, который отмечают эксперты,— переход от сухого перечисления выгод к эмоционально окрашенным коммуникациям.
Антитрендами наружной рекламы в текущем году стали прямолинейность и чрезмерная перегруженность сообщений. Наружная реклама продолжает показывать рост: число рекламных конструкций за последний год увеличилось более чем на 2 тысячи.
В компании Sellty спрогнозировали развитие рынка электронной коммерции в сегменте СМБ на ближайший год. По оценке основателя Sellty Марии Бар-Бирюковой, число собственных интернет-магазинов среднего, малого и микробизнеса продолжит расти и увеличится минимум на 40% до конца 2025 года. Компании будут и дальше развиваться на маркетплейсах, но станут чаще комбинировать несколько каналов продаж.
10 сентября – Всемирный день психического здоровья. Специально к этой дате компания HINT опросила коллег в сфере маркетинга, рекламы и пиара, чтобы понять, как представители этих профессий могут помочь себе и другим поддержать в норме психическое здоровье.
Чего не хватает радио, чтобы увеличить свою долю на рекламном рынке? Аудиопиратство: угроза или возможности для отрасли? Каковы первые результаты общероссийской кампании по продвижению индустриального радиоплеера? Эти и другие вопросы были рассмотрены на конференции «Радио в глобальной медиаконкуренции», спикерами и участниками которой стали эксперты ГПМ Радио.
Деловая программа 28-й международной специализированной выставки технологий и услуг для производителей и заказчиков рекламы «Реклама-2021» открылась десятым юбилейным форумом «Матрица рекламы». Его организовали КВК «Империя» и «Экспоцентр».
28 марта в Центральном доме художника состоялась 25-ая выставка маркетинговых коммуникаций «Дизайн и реклама NEXT». Одним из самых ярких её событий стал День социальной рекламы, который организовала Ассоциация директоров по коммуникациям и корпоративным медиа России (АКМР) совместно с АНО «Лаборатория социальной рекламы» и оргкомитетом LIME.
На VII Международном форуме «Матрица рекламы», прошедшем в ЦВК «Экспоцентр» в рамках международной выставки «Реклама-2018», большой интерес у профессиональной аудитории вызвала VI Конференция «Интернет-реклама».
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