The petition description cited Thomas’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade as reasoning for his removal.
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—who sided with the majority on overturning Roe—made it clear what’s next: to overturn high court rulings that establish gay rights and contraception rights,” the petition read.
The description also mentioned Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, and her role in encouraging members of the Trump administration to continue to challenge the 2020 election results.
The Supreme Court earlier this year rejected a request by former President Trump to prevent the release of documents related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Thomas was the only justice to dissent on the matter.
“He has shown he cannot be an impartial justice and is more concerned with covering up his wife’s coup attempts than the health of the Supreme Court.”
“He must resign — or Congress must immediately investigate and impeach,” the petition concluded.
The petition garnered more than 1.1 million signatures and urges Congress to either investigate or impeach Thomas for his actions.
The MoveOn petition follows a similar one created by George Washington University students last week in an effort to remove Thomas from his teaching position with the Washington, D.C., university.
The student-led petition came after the high court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 ruling that determined a woman’s right to abortion was constitutional.
In a school-wide letter, GWU officials said they don’t have plans to remove Thomas as an adjunct instructor in their law school, stating that he did not violate the school’s policy on academic freedom.
“Just as we affirm our commitment to academic freedom, we affirm the right of all members of our community to voice their opinions and contribute to the critical discussion that is foundational to our academic mission,” school officials wrote in their letter.
The desperate new recruiting drive has been reported in St. Petersburg, where the families of inmates at two prisons say the Wagner Group—a private Russian military force that has been tied to the Kremlin—is offering prisoners money and a get-out-of-jail-free card to go “search for Nazis” in Ukraine, according to the independent Russian news outlet iStories.
“They told my relative, ‘It’s very hard to find the Nazis there, and they are very well-prepared. You will be at the forefront in helping to detect Nazis, so not everyone will return.’ At first they said about 20 percent would come back. Then that ‘almost nobody will return.’ Those who survive are promised 200,000 rubles and amnesty. And if someone dies, they promise to pay their family 5 million rubles. This is all only in words, nothing is fixed on paper,” an unnamed relative of one of the inmates told the outlet.
At least 40 inmates signed up to join the war at that prison, the relative said. The inmates, after being urged to “defend the motherland,” were reportedly told it would look like they were being transferred but they’d be dropped off at the border with Ukraine.
“Wagner is recruiting people. No one is hiding that, the [prison foremen] are saying that directly,” the inmate’s relative said.
Family members of another inmate who agreed to join the war told iStories he’d done so because he genuinely believed he’d have his conviction expunged and be free upon his return. But it seems the recruiters aren’t really expecting any of the inmates to make it back alive: Relatives of an inmate at a separate prison said the men were told they’d be sent into the war without any identification documents.
Workers at two St. Petersburg shipyards managed by the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation and sanctioned oligarch Alisher Usmanov’s Metalloinvest have also reportedly been targeted as part of a recruiting drive by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
The Moscow Times’ Russian service reported Tuesday that workers at the Admiralty and the Baltic shipyards were offered contracts with monthly salaries of 300,000 rubles ($5,300) to go fight in Ukraine.
“They offered it to those with good experience, age has nothing to do with it. For example, they gave a call-up notice to one older employee who went through the Second Chechen War,” one of the employees told the Times.
Workers at Lebedinsky mining and processing works in Belgorod, owned by Usmanov’s Metalloinvest, described similar efforts, though the company has denied that.
High cost of Russian gains in Ukraine may limit new advance
The Associated Press – July 5, 2022
After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
But Moscow’s seizure of the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its capture of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.
“Yes, the Russians have seized the Luhansk region, but at what price?” asked Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst in Ukraine, noting that some Russian units involved in the battle lost up to a half their soldiers.
Even President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Monday that Russian troops involved in action in Luhansk need to “take some rest and beef up their combat capability.”
That raises doubts about whether Moscow’s forces and their separatist allies are ready to quickly thrust deeper into Donetsk, the other province that makes up the Donbas. Observers estimated in recent weeks that Russia controlled about half of Donetsk, and battle lines have changed little since then.
What happens in the Donbas could determine the course of the war. If Russia succeeds there, it could free up its forces to grab even more land and dictate the terms of any peace agreement. If Ukraine, on the other hand, manages to pin the Russians down for a protracted period, it could build up the resources for a counteroffensive.
Exhausting the Russians has long been part of the plan for the Ukrainians, who began the conflict outgunned — but hoped Western weapons could eventually tip the scales in their favor.
They are already effectively using heavy howitzers and advanced rocket systems sent by the U.S. and other Western allies, and more is on the way. But Ukrainian forces have said they remain badly outmatched.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said recently that Russian forces were firing 10 times more ammunition than the Ukrainian military.
After a failed attempt at a lightning advance on the capital of Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war, Russian forces withdrew from many parts of northern and central Ukraine and turned their attention to the Donbas, a region of mines and factories where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainians since 2014.
Since then, Russia has adopted a slow-and-steady approach that allowed it to seize several remaining Ukrainian strongholds in Luhansk over the course of recent weeks.
While Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that their troops have withdrawn from the city of Lysychansk, the last bulwark of their resistance in Luhansk, the presidential office said Tuesday the military was still defending small areas in the province.
Zhdanov, the analyst, predicted that the Russians would likely rely on their edge in firepower to “apply the same scorched earth tactics and blast entire cities away” in Donetsk. The same day that Russia claimed it had taken Lysychansk, new artillery attacks were reported in Donetsk.
But Russia’s approach is not without drawbacks. Moscow has not given a casualty count since it said some 1,300 troops were killed in the first month of fighting, but Western officials have said that was just a fraction of real losses. Since then, Western observers have noted that the number of Russian troops involved in combat in Ukraine has dwindled, reflecting both heavy attrition and the Kremlin’s failure to fill up the ranks.
The limited manpower has forced Russian commanders to avoid ambitious attempts to encircle large areas in the Donbas, opting for smaller maneuvers and relying on heavy artillery barrages to slowly force the Ukrainians to retreat.
The military has also relied heavily on separatists, who have conducted several rounds of mobilization, and Western officials and analysts have said Moscow has increasingly engaged private military contractors. It has also tried to encourage Russian men who have done their tour of duty to sign up again, though it’s is unclear how successful that has been.
While Putin so far has refrained from declaring a broad mobilization that might foment social discontent, recently proposed legislation suggested that Moscow was looking for other ways to replenish the ranks. The bill would have allowed young conscripts, who are drafted into the army for a year and barred from fighting, to immediately switch their status and sign contracts to become full professional soldiers. The draft was shelved amid strong criticism.
Some Western officials and analysts have argued that attrition is so heavy that it could force Moscow to suspend its offensive at some point later in the summer, but the Pentagon has cautioned that even though Russia has been churning through troops and supplies at rapid rates it still has abundant resources.
U.S. director of national intelligence Avril Haines said Putin appeared to accept the slow pace of the advance in the Donbas and now hoped to win by crushing Ukraine’s most battle-hardened forces.
“We believe that Russia thinks that if they are able to crush really one of the most capable and well-equipped forces in the east of Ukraine … that will lead to a slump basically in the Ukrainian resistance and that that may give them greater opportunities,” Haines said.
If Russia wins in the Donbas, it could build on its seizure of the southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.
But that is far from assured. Mykola Sunhurovsky, of the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, predicted that growing supplies of heavy Western weapons, including HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, will help Ukraine turn the tide of the war.
“The supplies of weapons will allow Ukraine to start a counteroffensive in the south and fight for Kherson and other cities,” Sunhurovsky said.
But Ukraine has also faced massive personnel losses: up to 200 soldiers a day in recent weeks of ferocious fighting in the east, according to officials.
“Overall, local military balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine,” wrote Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and program director at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. “However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.”
Associated Press journalists Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
In Putin’s Russia, the Arrests Are Spreading Quickly and Widely
Anton Troianovski – July 5, 2022
The Federal Security Service building in Moscow, Aug. 29, 2018. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
They came for Dmitry Kolker, an ailing physicist, in the intensive care ward. They came for Ivan Fedotov, a hockey star, as he was leaving practice with a film crew in tow. They came for Vladimir Mau, a state university rector, the week he was reelected to the board of Gazprom.
The message sent by these high-profile detentions: Nearly anyone is now punishable in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The flurry of arrests across the country in recent days has signaled that the Kremlin is intent on tightening the noose around Russian society even further. It appears to be a manifestation of Putin’s declaration in the early weeks of his war in Ukraine that Russia needed to cleanse itself of pro-Western “scum and traitors,” and it is creating an unmistakable chill.
“Every day feels like it could be the last,” Leonid Gozman, 71, a commentator who continues to speak out against Putin and the war, said in a phone interview from Moscow, acknowledging the fear that he, too, could be arrested.
None of the targets of the recent crackdown was an outspoken Kremlin critic; many of the loudest Putin opponents who chose to stay in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, like politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, were already in jail. But each of the recent crackdown targets represented an outward-looking Russia that Putin increasingly describes as an existential threat. And the ways they were taken into custody appeared designed to make waves.
Kolker, the physicist, entered the hospital in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk last week for treatment for late-stage cancer, so weak that he was unable to eat. The next day, agents for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, arrived and, accusing him of treason, flew him to a Moscow jail. Over the weekend, he died in custody.
“The FSB killed my father,” his son Maxim, 21, wrote in all capitals on social media alongside an image of the three-line telegram sent by the authorities to notify the family of the death. “They didn’t even let our family say goodbye.”
Maxim Kolker, who is following in his father’s footsteps as a physicist in Novosibirsk, said Dmitry Kolker had been known for hiring students to work in his laboratory, helping persuade some budding Russian scientists not to seek work abroad.
Now, he said in a phone interview, the family has to return Kolker’s body from Moscow at their own cost.
It was unclear why the FSB targeted Dmitry Kolker, 54, a specialist in quantum optics. State media reported that he had been jailed on suspicion of passing secrets abroad. But critics of the Kremlin say it is part of a widening campaign by the FSB to crack down on freedom of thought in the academic world. Another Novosibirsk physicist who was also arrested on suspicion of treason last week, Anatoly Maslov, remains in custody.
The arrests came at the same time as the arrest on fraud charges of Mau, a leading Russian economist who is the head of a sprawling state university, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Mau, 62, was in no way a public critic of the Kremlin. He had joined more than 300 senior academic officials in signing a March open letter calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “necessary decision,” and he was reelected to the board of Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, just last week. But he also had a reputation as what scholars of Russian politics call a “systemic liberal,” someone who was working within Putin’s system to try to nudge it in a more open and pro-Western direction.
His Kremlin ties were not enough, it turned out, to save Mau from a fraud case that has already ensnared the rector of another leading university and that critics said appeared designed to snuff out remaining pockets of dissent in Russian academia.
“A big enemy of the government and the stability of the government are people who carry knowledge,” said Gozman, who worked with Mau as a government adviser in the 1990s. “Truth is an enemy here.”
Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist who taught at Mau’s academy until April, called the institution “the educational hub for most of the country’s civic bureaucracy” and described his arrest as Russia’s highest-level criminal prosecution since 2016. It indicated, she said, that ideological purity was becoming an ever more important priority for Russian authorities, especially in education.
“In education, it is important that a person actively profess and share the values that he has to implant in the heads of his students,” said Schulmann, now a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. “Here, ambiguous loyalty may not be permitted.”
Putin has said as much himself. In the speech in March in which he railed about the traitors in Russia’s midst, he called out those who physically reside in Russia but live in the West “in their thoughts, in their slave-like consciousness.”
He is also increasingly asserting that truly patriotic Russians must be committed to living and working in Russia. He told an economic conference in St. Petersburg last month that “real, solid success and a feeling of dignity and self-respect only occurs when you tie your future and your children’s future to your Motherland.”
In that context, the news that Fedotov, the goalie of Russia’s silver-medal national hockey team at the Beijing Olympics in February, signed a contract in May with the Philadelphia Flyers was likely to have been seen as a challenge.
Fedotov, 25, one the hockey world’s up-and-coming stars, was planning to leave for the United States this month, according to Russian media reports.
Instead, on Friday, as he was leaving a practice session in St. Petersburg, he was stopped by a group of men, some in masks and camouflage, and taken away in a van, according to a television journalist who was filming a special report about him and saw the incident.
Fedotov’s alleged crime, according to Russian news agencies: evading military service. Russian men under 27 are required to serve for one year, although sports stars are typically able to avoid conscription. On Monday, the RIA Novosti state news agency reported that Fedotov had been taken to an unnamed Russian navy training base.
The elaborate detention was widely perceived as punishment for his having chosen to play in the United States rather than stay in Russia. “I won’t be surprised if they put him on some submarine and send him out to sea,” RIA Novosti quoted a Soviet sports veteran as saying. “He won’t go anywhere after that.”
To Gozman, the liberal commentator who remains in Moscow, a common thread running through the recent arrests was their seemingly gratuitous cruelty. In Putin’s system, he said, such behavior is more likely to be rewarded than censured by the state.
“The system is built in such a way that excessive cruelty by an official is rarely punished,” Gozman said. “But excessive softness can be. So any given official seeks to exhibit great toughness.”
Putin is threatening poor countries with starvation as the ‘next stage’ in his ruthless Ukraine war, experts warn
John Haltiwanger – July 5, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with farmers on July, 28, 2016.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images Putin is threatening poor countries with starvation as the ‘next stage’ in his ruthless Ukraine war, experts warn
Russia’s war in Ukraine is fueling a global food crisis, which experts say is a deliberate tactic.
Ukraine is one of Europe’s biggest wheat producers, but the war has made exporting extremely difficult.
Experts say Putin is willing to starve poorer countries to create a crisis that paves the way for Russia’s victory in Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is exacerbating a global food crisis, and experts say this is part of a deliberate effort by the Kremlin to stoke famine and pressure the Western coalition that’s supporting Ukraine’s government, an effort the EU has decried as a war crime.
“Russia has a hunger plan. [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is preparing to starve much of the developing world as the next stage in his war in Europe,” Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian and expert on authoritarianism, tweeted on Saturday, adding that Moscow is “planning to starve Asians and Africans in order to win its war in Europe.”
“This is a new level of colonialism,” Snyder added.
Ukraine, widely described as Europe’s breadbasket, is a major exporter of wheat, sunflower oil, and corn. It provides roughly 10% of the globe’s wheat exports, 15% of corn exports, and close to half of the world’s sunflower oil. But the war in Ukraine — particularly Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports — has thrown a wrench in its export business. This is leading to a shortage in food supply and skyrocketing prices in many countries that could plunge tens of millions more people into starvation, experts are warning.
Roughly 18 million tons of grain are sitting in storage in Ukraine as a result, and the country’s farmers are expected to harvest 60 million additional tons by the fall, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “Ukraine’s farmers are feeding themselves and millions more people around the world,” Rein Paulsen, director of the FAO’s emergencies and resilience office, said this week, per Reuters. “Ensuring they can continue production, safely store and access alternative markets is vital to strengthen food security within Ukraine and ensure other import-dependent countries have sufficient supply of grain at a manageable cost,” Paulsen added.
The UN has warned that the conflict in Ukraine could make an additional 47 million people food insecure in 2022. Countries in Africa and the Middle East that rely heavily on Ukrainian grain are especially at risk. Together, Russia and Ukraine provide over 40% of Africa’s wheat supply.
Indeed, Russia also accounts for a massive portion of the world’s wheat and sunflower oil. Russia continues to export wheat and other commodities despite the Ukraine war, but has signaled it’s being selective about who will receive its supply. “We will only be supplying food and agriculture products to our friends,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Putin and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said April 1 on Telegram. Similarly, Putin in early April said, “We will have to be more careful about food supplies abroad, especially carefully monitor the exports to countries which are hostile to us.”
Snyder said Putin’s “hunger plan” is designed to work on three levels, including as a larger effort to “destroy the Ukrainian state” by cutting off exports. It’s also an attempt to foment instability in the EU by generating “refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, areas usually fed by Ukraine.”
“Finally, and most horribly, a world famine is a necessary backdrop for a Russian propaganda campaign against Ukraine. Actual mass death is needed as the backdrop for a propaganda contest,” Snyder said. “When the food riots begin, and as starvation spreads, Russian propaganda will blame Ukraine, and call for Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine to be recognized, and for all sanctions to be lifted.”
Rita Konaev, a Russian military expert, told Insider that Russia employed similar tactics in the war in Syria. “They’ve openly sought to destabilize Syria, neighbors, and Europe through the outpour of refugees — knowing that they would push the envelope towards ending the war in Syria and accepting the future of Syria with Assad. It’s part of their playbook,” Konaev said of the Russians.
‘The Russian invasion into Ukraine exacerbated an already bad situation’
A farm implement harvests grain in the field, as Russian-Ukrainian war continues in Odessa, Ukraine on July 04, 2022.Metin Aktas/Getty Images
Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine began as the global economy was still dealing with the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted supply chains and raised fuel prices. In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, as many as 811 million people globally faced hunger.
“The Russian invasion into Ukraine exacerbated an already bad situation” and it’s “affecting the entire global community,” Ertharin Cousin, who served as executive director of the UN World Food Programme from 2012 to 2017, told Insider.
“There are some countries that are more affected than others, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa, where they are net importers from Ukraine. So, this has a direct effect on their ability to purchase food — where their source of commodities is no longer available to them. But because of the effect that the lack of those grains in the global food system has on the escalating prices of food for the entire world, it affects us all,” Cousin said.
In lower-income countries like Somalia, the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine on the food supply are already being felt. Skyrocketing prices for grain and other commodities are pushing Somalia to the brink of famine.
“The crisis is worse now than anytime in my lifetime working in Somalia for the last 20 years, and it is because of the compounded effect of the war in Ukraine,” Mohamud Mohamed Hassan, Somalia country director for the charity Save the Children, recently told the Washington Post. “Communities are at a breaking point.”
“Many people would have survived if the Ukrainian crisis was not there and food was coming in,” Hassan told the Post, adding, “At least food prices would have been stable, and food would have been available.”
‘Russia attacked Ukraine…that is what created this problem’
A view of the beach as authorities ban swimming in the sea due to naval mines in Odessa, Ukraine on July 03, 2022.Metin Aktas/Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has explicitly blamed the growing food crisis on Russia. “If it was not for the Russian war against Ukraine, there simply would be no shortage in the food market,” Zelenskyy said in a remote address to the African Union in June. “If it was not for the Russian war, our farmers and agricultural companies could have ensured record harvests this year.”
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has described Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian food exports as a “real war crime.”
“You cannot use the hunger of people as a weapon of war,” Borrell said last month in Luxembourg.
As Kyiv and its Western allies accuse the Kremlin of weaponizing food and stealing Ukrainian grain, Putin has denied that Russia is blocking grain exports from Ukraine.
The Kremlin has blamed the brewing food crisis on the West, pointing to the harsh sanctions it’s imposed on Moscow over the war. The Russian government has offered safe passage to ships carrying grain in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Meanwhile, Russia has also blamed Ukrainian naval mines in the Black Sea for the situation, which Kyiv is reluctant to remove because it would make Ukraine’s ports more vulnerable as the Russian onslaught continues.
When it comes down to it “the war is to blame” for the escalating food crisis, Cousin said, adding, “Russia’s occupation of the Black Sea has a direct effect on the ability to move food.”
“Russia’s arguing that they can’t move their fertilizer or grain because of the sanctions. If you listen to the parties involved in this — and I’m your audience — I can see where there are challenges from all sides. But we can’t ignore the fact that it’s not about whether the grain is moving — it’s about the fact that Russia attacked Ukraine. And that is what created this problem overall,” Cousin said.
At the recent G7 summit, leaders pledged $4.5 billion to help address the global food crisis linked to Russia’s invasion. As countries move to address the situation, Cousin said it’s important for governments “to avoid the mistake of thinking they can protect their own populations from food insecurity by implementing export bans or export restrictions — that only further exacerbates the challenges on the global food system, particularly for net importing countries during a time when they are so dependent on that global food system.”
Cousin underscored that it’s key for the global community to take “preemptive actions” now, warning that “what is today an accessibility problem could become an availability problem by this time next year.”
Adam Kinzinger and his family are getting so many death threats over his Trump criticism that his office put together a 3-minute audio clip
Camila DeChalus – July 5, 2022
Rep. Adam Kinzinger says he’s been getting threatening calls to his office in Washington, DC.
People have also threatened to go after him and his family.
Kinzinger is a member of the House committee investigating the insurrection.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Tuesday released a three-minute audio clip of recent threatening calls his office has received, highlighting the increased harassment he and his family have faced in light of his participation in the House committee investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
“Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows,” Kinzinger tweeted. “My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.”
In one call, a person threatened to come to Kinzinger’s house and go after his wife and his newborn baby.
“I’m going to come to protest in front of your house this weekend,” the caller said. “We know where your family is, and we’re going to get you … We’re going to get your wife, going to get your kids.”
Another caller said, “I hope you naturally die as quickly as fucking possible.”
Some of the callers alluded to Kinzinger’s involvement in the House committee, accusing him of lying and going against former President Donald Trump during recent hearings.
Last month, Kinzinger said he and his family had received a death threat over his sitting on the committee. He shared the letter, which was addressed to his wife, Sofia, on Twitter. “That pimp you married not only broke his oath, he sold his soul,” it said, adding, “Therefore, although it might take time, he will be executed.”
Citing data from the US Capitol Police, Axios reported late last month that threats against lawmakers had significantly increased in the past five years. The report said that in the first three months of the year, the Capitol Police opened cases into more than 1,800 threats.
Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only two Republicans sitting on the House select committee investigating the insurrection and Trump’s involvement in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Following the recent testimony from the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Kinzinger, who’s been highly critical of the former president, said Trump and his allies including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were “scared.”
Ukrainian Air Defence eliminates nine Russian cruise missiles over past 24 hours, while strike aircraft destroys two Russian ammunition depots
Valentyna Romanenko – July 5, 2022
On 5 July, Ukrainian Air Force Air Defence eliminated nine cruise missiles, while strike aircraft destroyed two Russian ammunition depots, two of their platoon strongholds and 20 pieces of military equipment.
Source: Air Force of Armed Forces of Ukraine, Press Service on Facebook
Quote: “Air Force strike aircraft continue to attack the enemy on several strategic fronts, exterminating the aggressors’ positions with fire from the air.”
“On 5 July, bombers and attack aircraft of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed two field ammunition depots, two platoon strongholds of the Russian invaders, up to twenty pieces of military equipment and killed enemy troops.”
Details: The Air Force Press Service reports that Russian forces launched sea-based Kalibr cruise missiles targeting Ukraine from the Black Sea on Tuesday, 5 July.
At 4:00, six out of seven such missiles were destroyed by anti-aircraft missile units belonging to Skhid [East] Air Command in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Anti-aircraft missile units and aviation shot down three Russian cruise missiles on the western front at about 20:00. They were destroyed by operational crews from an anti-aircraft missile unit and portable surface-to-air missile system. Another cruise missile was destroyed by the pilot of a Ukrainian fighter jet.
Adam Kinzinger and his family are getting so many death threats over his Trump criticism that his office put together a 3-minute audio clip
Camila DeChalus – July 5, 2022
Rep. Adam Kinzinger says he’s been getting threatening calls to his office in Washington, DC.
People have also threatened to go after him and his family.
Kinzinger is a member of the House committee investigating the insurrection.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Tuesday released a three-minute audio clip of recent threatening calls his office has received, highlighting the increased harassment he and his family have faced in light of his participation in the House committee investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
“Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows,” Kinzinger tweeted. “My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.”
In one call, a person threatened to come to Kinzinger’s house and go after his wife and his newborn baby.
“I’m going to come to protest in front of your house this weekend,” the caller said. “We know where your family is, and we’re going to get you … We’re going to get your wife, going to get your kids.”
Another caller said, “I hope you naturally die as quickly as fucking possible.”
Some of the callers alluded to Kinzinger’s involvement in the House committee, accusing him of lying and going against former President Donald Trump during recent hearings.
Last month, Kinzinger said he and his family had received a death threat over his sitting on the committee. He shared the letter, which was addressed to his wife, Sofia, on Twitter. “That pimp you married not only broke his oath, he sold his soul,” it said, adding, “Therefore, although it might take time, he will be executed.”
Citing data from the US Capitol Police, Axios reported late last month that threats against lawmakers had significantly increased in the past five years. The report said that in the first three months of the year, the Capitol Police opened cases into more than 1,800 threats.
Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are the only two Republicans sitting on the House select committee investigating the insurrection and Trump’s involvement in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Following the recent testimony from the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Kinzinger, who’s been highly critical of the former president, said Trump and his allies including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were “scared.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin must now decide his next steps in the five-month invasion he started in February.
After Russian troops captured the strategic Ukrainian city of Lysychansk on Sunday, here are five different options raised by security experts who spoke with AFP:
– Grinding advance –
Russian forces appear on course to take full control of the Donbas region that was already partly held by pro-Kremlin separatists before the February 24 invasion.
With Lysychansk and its twin city Severodonetsk captured in the past weeks, Putin’s troops “can hope to take Sloviansk and Kramatorsk and the surrounding regions,” said Pierre Grasser, a researcher at Paris’ Sorbonne university.
Sloviansk in particular is home to “a relatively welcoming population — at least those who have remained there” rather than fleeing the fighting, he added.
But there may be limits to how far the Russians can press into their neighbour’s territory.
“Their steamroller works well near their own borders, their own logistical centres and their airbases. The further away they get, the harder it is,” said Pierre Razoux, academic director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES).
– Control the Black Sea –
Southern Ukrainian city Kherson was one of the first to fall to Russian forces in the opening days of the war.
But Russia’s grip on the country’s Black Sea coast is not secure.
“Counter-attacks by Ukraine in the south… place Russian forces in a dilemma. Do they sustain their eastern offensive, or do they significantly reinforce the south?” said Mick Ryan, a former general in the Australian army.
The question is all the more pressing as “the war in the south is a front of greater strategic importance” than the Donbas, he added.
Claiming territory along the coast could allow Moscow to create a land bridge to the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, while both sides want to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
– Crack Kharkiv –
Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv is close to the northeastern border with Russia — and located in a pocket still controlled by Kyiv that could yet be cut off by Russian forces.
“If the Ukrainians collapse and Kharkiv is completely isolated, the Russians could force them to choose between committing to defend the city or taking the pressure off in the south towards Kherson,” said Pierre Razoux.
It will be up to President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian commanders “to deploy their units so as to prevent a big summer breakthrough” that could encircle Kharkiv, he added.
Home to 1.4 million people in peacetime, a siege of Kharkiv could be a bloody affair lasting up to a year, Razoux said.
– Divide the West –
While the West has so far kept up a mostly united front of sanctions and support for Ukraine, continued Russian advances could drive the allies’ judgements of their interests apart.
“The goal for Russia is to continue to grind down Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, while waiting for the political will to support Ukraine to fade among Western countries,” said Colin Clarke, research director at the Soufan Center think-tank in New York.
Deliveries of Western military aid have been too slow and too small to turn the battle decisively in Kiev’s favour.
Meanwhile, the war’s inflationary impact on basics like food and energy may gradually turn public opinion away from the strong initial support for Ukraine.
“The Americans could tell the Ukrainians ‘you can’t go on’,” said Alexander Grinberg, an analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy.
– Open talks –
Russia itself is suffering heavy costs from Western sanctions, battlefield casualties and losses of military materiel.
“Putin will be forced to negotiate at some point, he’s bitten off more than he can chew,” said Colin Clarke.
In late June, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov already raised the option of talks — on condition of “applying all the conditions set by Russia”, which remain unacceptable to Kiev.
But his control over domestic information means the Russian leader has a free hand to tell the public that his objectives have been achieved and justify a pause in the fighting.
A bigger challenge might be divisions on the Ukrainian side.
Hardliners and military leaders would “refuse any compromise with Russia” even if Zelensky were willing to strike a deal, said Pierre Razoux.
“They could tolerate a frozen conflict, but not a defeat.”
After attacking Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has made NATO great again | Opinion
John Knubel – July 5, 2022
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 following the death of 250 million people in two world wars the first 50 years of the 20th century.
It’s been the most effective alliance in history, having preserved a rule based comparative peace enabling 70 years of worldwide human progress: Entire diseases have been eradicated, the world’s population has tripled and humanity today enjoys more individual freedom and national self-determination than ever before in history.
NATO’s initial mission was to “Keep the Americans and British in, the Germans down, and Russians out.”
It was supported by an array of international institutions and alliances like the United Nations, World Bank, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and a Middle East alliance (CENTO), created to contain a perceived international Communist threat. It led to today’s European union.
How Putin emerged
A dedicated Russian Nationalist and former KGB agent, Putin was stationed in East Germany when the USSR collapsed. He emigrated back to Moscow finding Russia in chaos, faced down the oligarchs, a small group of businessmen who today control the economy and achieved absolute power.
Simultaneously, NATO expanded into the former Soviet empire countries and under the reassurance of NATO, Ukraine, the ‘bread basket’ of Europe, abandoned its nuclear weapons but did not join NATO.
America gradually drew down our European troop presence while President Obama announced a ‘pivot towards Asia’ and President Trump frequently referred to NATO as ‘outmoded.’
Putin claims Russia requested NATO membership and its expansion threatens Russia, propaganda which only makes sense if his aim is to attack the defensively structured alliance which of course it is. He was emboldened by his Crimean annexation and simultaneous use of chemical weapons in Syria which President Obama failed to respond to after pledging, he would.
The new world disorder and the lessons of Nazi Germany
The effectiveness of the Ukrainian army’s response on the ground has been expectedly effective due to their defending their families and homeland from foreign invaders. NATO’s recognition of the seriousness of continued Russian expansionism is encouraging. There’s widespread agreement with the apt comparison with Hitler’s restoring order to a chaotic Germany in the early 1930s and subsequent aggression leading to WWII.
It’s now crystal-clear Putin’s an unprincipled murderous dictator trying wanting to restore the former USSR. Ukraine has become a ‘buffer state’ where a hot sequel to the former cold war is joined. President Biden’s resurrection of the WWII Lend Lease program is evidence of how serious America and NATO take the invasion.
Putin’s fall-back invasion strategy is to connect previously annexed north eastern Ukraine with Crimea and the sea ports of Mariupol and Odessa to the south. Putin now hopes to strangle Ukraine which needs ports to export the wheat which supplies 80% of Egypt’s needs and much of Africa.
The Way Forward
NATO has been unified and will benefit from the membership of Finland and Sweden.
Finland adds substantial military capability having held off Russian invasions historically and both protect NATO’s northern flank and the vulnerable Baltic States. For an empowered Ukraine and revitalized NATO, the goal must now be to preserve Odessa or another channel for exporting Ukrainian grain.
NATO’s demonstrated remarkable unity in creating economic sanctions. But sanctions will take time impact Russian expansionism.
The final outcome of this chapter two of the post WWII cold war, now hot, will be determined by the combination of the sanction’s long-term effectiveness and most importantly the ability to the Russian people to throw off the yoke tyranny that Vladimir Putin has become.
John A. Knubel is a resident of Franklin, Tennessee.
