“At first, the Russians destroyed Mariupol and its residents,” he said.
“Now, a Russian missile hit a car with the World Central Kitchen humanitarian aid, which was supposed to feed Donetsk Oblast and will now affect Mariupol residents in the YaMariupol centers.”
Mariupol was under siege by the Russian invaders for almost three months. Russia’s actions led to a large-scale humanitarian catastrophe, as the invaders bombed residential areas and civilian infrastructure, as well as continually blocking humanitarian aid.
In Severodonetsk, Ukrainian military controls a third of the city, and industrial zone
June 15, 2022
A third of Severodonetsk with the industrial zone remain under control of the Ukrainian military
Stryuk said that there had been no major changes to the situation. The military continue to hold their positions. Last night, there was heavy shelling, with the Russians using Grad multiple launch rocket systems and heavy artillery to attack Ukrainian positions.
US military veterans training Ukrainian frontline troops say NATO’s artillery and rocket launchers are essential for Ukraine to beat Russia
Cheryl Teh – June 15, 2022
Ukrainian soldiers man a howitzer during artillery drills in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region.Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images US military veterans training Ukrainian frontline troops say NATO’s artillery and rocket launchers are essential for Ukraine to beat Russia
US military veterans training Ukrainian soldiers said Ukraine needs NATO weapons to beat Russia.
They said Ukrainian forces might be overwhelmed without more modern, long-range weaponry.
“It’s a bit of a slugfest,” Martin Wetterauer, a Marine veteran, said of the war.
A group of US military veterans currently training Ukrainian soldiers said Ukraine needs more NATO weapons to win its war with Russia.
Officers in the Mozart Group told Newsweek that modern, long-range artillery would help Ukrainian forces fend off the Russian offensive.
“It’s a bit of a slugfest,” Martin Wetterauer, a Marine veteran and the Mozart Group’s chief operations officer, told Newsweek from the organization’s outpost in Zaporizhzhia.
Wetterauer told the outlet that the Ukrainians were under heavy fire from Russian artillery and said that NATO’s artillery systems and aircraft would be essential to help eliminate Russian defense lines in the Donbas region.
Steve K., an operations manager in the group who declined to give Newsweek his full name, agreed with Wetterauer and highlighted the US-made Multiple Launch Rocket System and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System as being vital tools for the Ukrainian war effort.
“They need the artillery, they need rounds,” Steve K. told the outlet. “If we do not continue with that supply, they won’t be able to hold them back.”
Per Newsweek, Wetterauer added that the Ukrainians do not underestimate the Russians’ capabilities and expressed confidence in their chances of winning if they received the right equipment.
“If we can increase their skill set, then ultimately over time hopefully they’ll get better and more advanced weapon systems,” Wetterauer said, per the outlet. “With the fighting spirit that they have, there’s no doubt they will turn this war. It’s just going to take a while.”
One Surprising Theory Why the Philippines Has Very Few Mass Shootings—Despite Easy Access to Lots of Guns
Chad de Guzman / Manila – June 15, 2022
Shop assistants pose with various handgu
Shop assistants pose with various handguns at the Defense and Sporting Arms show at a shopping mall in Manila on July 16, 2009. Credit – TED ALJIBE/AFP via Getty Images
Mass shootings are a result of a confluence of factors, but at the heart of the problem are guns—of which the Philippines has plenty. Firearms are sold openly in malls, and almost anyone can carry them, even priests and accountants.
Fixers can reportedly take care of formalities standing in the way of gun ownership, such as drug and psychological tests, and there are estimated to be some four million firearms in the nation of 110 million people. Hundreds of thousands of weapons are illegally owned. Poverty, corruption, crime, and outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs have left deep social scars.
No consensus has been reached in the Philippines over what sets a mass shooting apart from other gun deaths, but indiscriminate slayings are uncommon. When eight people died and 11 were injured after a drunk gunman began firing wildly in the southern province of Cavite back in 2013, the tragedy was notable for its sheer rarity.
To be clear, homicides involving firearms are a fact of life in the Philippines. Hitmen can be hired for as little as $300. In fact, the Philippines is one of the deadliest places in Asia when it comes to firearm homicides. The country saw over 1,200 intentional killings using firearms in 2019. This meant guns killed one in every 100,000 people in the Southeast Asian country—one of the highest rates in Asia. (In 2020, the comparable figure for the U.S. is four.)
Elections can be particularly bloody times, with lethal attacks on poll officers and political rivals. One of the country’s worst killings, the 2009 Maguindanao massacre of 58 people, took place during a gubernatorial election. But it was a political atrocity. Shootings not related to politics or crime are uncommon—and there has been nothing as extreme as Columbine, Sandy Hook, or Uvalde.
“I think it’s just a matter of time,” says Gerry Caño, Dean of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Cagayan de Oro College. “I think our authorities and the public safety practitioners are just waiting for that time to happen, considering that Philippine culture is greatly influenced by the West, particularly the United States.”
For now, though, powerful social factors continue to have a restraining effect on indiscriminate violence. Philippine academic Raymund Narag, a criminology associate professor at Southern Illinois University and a former prisoner himself, says mass shootings in his native country are in part deterred by hiyâ, a Tagalog word meaning shame or embarrassment. Avoidance of hiyâ, and sparing one’s family and community from it, is often described as a core Philippine value.
“It reflects on you, and reflects on your family,” Narag says. “When I was jailed, our entire clan felt humiliated.”
Visitors view displayed firearms during the Tactical, Survival and Arms Expo in Pasay City, the Philippines, Nov.15, 2019.Rouelle Umali/Xinhua via Getty
Gun culture in the Philippines
While the right to bear arms isn’t enshrined in the nation’s constitution, as it is in the United States, there is no denying the Philippine love of guns.
When the U.S. colonized the Philippines in the early 1900s, private citizens were allowed to own high-powered guns for “lawful purposes” and hunting. After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, owners were limited to one low-powered rifle and a pistol or revolver—and both had to be licensed. But in 2000, President Joseph Estrada lifted these limits and allowed citizens to possess as many guns as they wanted, of any type and caliber.
A 2013 law set down qualifications for owning guns and carrying them in public. Licensed gun owners had to be 21 years old and take a firearm safety seminar, among other requirements. Depending on their license, most owners could possess up to 15 handguns, rifles and shotguns (collectors are allowed more than 15). Licenses were issued for as long as 10 years.
Before he was president, Estrada was a gun-wielding hero in action movies—a genre beloved of Filipinos for playing up machismo and depicting shootouts as legitimate forms of defense in a crime-riddled country. The action movie craze certainly helped Filipinos embrace gun culture.
In some of the country’s poorest communities, guns became a common sight among warring gangs, who sourced low-priced firearms from illegal sellers. Shooting clubs opened for those with more money and an interest in shooting for sport. Many affluent Filipinos took up gun collecting, while the wealthiest citizens began enthusiastically arming their bodyguards.
But despite the glorification of firearms, when gun violence takes place, the victims are rarely random bystanders in movie theaters or shopping malls. Almost a quarter of the Philippine population falls below the poverty line and “the money or the reward seems to be the best motivating factor” in many homicide cases involving firearms, Caño says.
In January, a provincial hitman admitted to committing his crime in exchange for $500 to help his child, who was suffering from meningitis. In April, another gunman confessed to killing a mechanic for $400.
Displaced children playing with wooden toy guns inside a temporary shelter area in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, on August 22, 2018, in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, southern Philippines.Jes Aznar/Getty Images
How hiyâ plays a role in social control
Narag says the strong ties of Philippine kinship mean troubled individuals are more likely to be identified before they become mass shooters. He contrasts that with the situation in the U.S., where he presently lives and teaches.
“Here, if you have problems, you have to go to a health professional,” he tells TIME. “You’ll divulge everything there. You don’t talk to your neighbors—sometimes you don’t talk to your own parents—because [there isn’t] an engaged culture where one’s problem is everyone’s problem.”
Jose Antonio Clemente, a professor of social psychology at the University of the Philippines, says community is everything. “At an early age, we are trained to give importance to our families and our relationships,” he says. “Maybe at some point we’re also taught to value our community, since there are a lot of communities that are very close-knit because of the high population density.”
National police do have mass shooting protocols in place. Authorities have also suggested an increased police presence on college campuses to deter insurgent groups from recruiting students. But it seems that ingrained values in the Philippines are restraining people from using guns indiscriminately.
Whether that is enough is up for debate. For now, however, hiyâ means you cannot “just start shooting people,” Narag says. “Because if that happens, you know the community won’t support you.”
Hellfire: The Uvalde Shooter Owned a Device That Makes AR-15s Even More Deadly
Tim Dickinson – June 15, 2022
US-TEXAS-GUNS-NRA – Credit: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
“Unleashing ‘Hell-Fire.’”
It pictures a gunman, wearing a skull mask with blacked out eyes, who unloads an AR-15 that is sending spent cartridges flying from its ejection port. The ad copy reads: “All you do is squeeze the trigger and shoot at rates up to 900 rpm” — or rounds per minute.
The sales pitch is for a hellfire trigger device, a gun accessory that allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire at rates similar to machine gun. Although the physics behind the device are nearly identical to that of a bump-stock — now illegal under federal law — hellfires remain cheap and easy to acquire. Including, evidently, by a teenager bent on mass murder.
The gunman in the Uvalde massacre had purchased a hellfire device, which was recovered from one of the classrooms where the massacre took place, according to investigative documents reviewed by the New York Times. Federal authorities reportedly don’t believe the device was used in the attack. But had it been deployed, the carnage at Robb Elementary School — where 19 children and two teachers were murdered — might have been, unimaginably, worse.
Even in the trigger-happy US of A, machine guns are supposed to be illegal. A central fixture of federal firearms law since the days of Al Capone’s 1930s is that fully-automatic weapons are too powerful to be in civilian hands. Yes, modern consumers can buy high-powered weapons, like AR-15-style rifles, that are nearly identical to guns used in the U.S. military, but these guns fire only one round with each trigger pull.
But in the poorly regulated market of fire-arms accessories, a small but dedicated band of companies have pushed the legal envelope. They’ve engineered and marketed devices that circumvent the limitations of semi-automatic weapons, turning rifles into bullet hoses that can fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
After a 2017 massacre in Las Vegas, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — better known as ATF — outlawed one class of these accessories, known as bump stocks, by classifying them as machine guns. But they didn’t touch hellfire triggers.
That differential treatment has no logic, insists Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center. When it comes to hellfires and similar “trigger activators,” he says, “ATF has been very, very lenient in its interpretation of federal law.”
Screenshot of an ad for a Hellfire style device – Credit: Youtube
Youtube
“Bump firing without the stock”
A hellfire device and a bump-stock both rely on the same physics to mimic fully automatic fire. They absorb the energy from the recoil of a single gunshot, then rebound the weapon slightly forward, activating the trigger against a shooter’s otherwise stationary finger — again and again and again and again and again.
With a bump-stock, this rebound is generated in the butt of the rifle pressed against the shooter’s shoulder. A hellfire device attaches to the pistol grip and rebounds, instead, against the shooter’s palm.
ATF itself recognized the similarity of the devices, explicitly comparing them in 2013 correspondence with a congressman, back when both devices were deemed legal. Gun enthusiasts today praise the hellfire as offering “bump firing without the stock.” (ATF did not answer questions from Rolling Stone about why the devices are treated differently.)
From San Francisco to Waco
Hellfires are not new. In fact, the trigger devices have dark history. In a 1993 mass shooting in a San Francisco high rise, the gunman used hellfire triggers, attached to a pair of assault pistols with 50-round magazines; he killed eight, wounded six, and then took his own life. Hellfire triggers were also believed to have been in use at David Koresh’s militarized Waco, Texas, cult compound.
These days, the trigger devices are cheap, and marketed with disturbing slogans and imagery. It’s not immediately clear what device the Uvalde shooter purchased. But there are many models available online. At one retailer, just $29.95 can get you the “Classic” hellfire “made infamous by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco,” according to the sales pitch.
The “Gen II” model offers “recoil assist technology” to enable “one handed operation,” and will set you back $59.95. A new “Stealth” model, meanwhile, is for sale at just $39.95, and can be installed “invisibly within your grip on any AR15 style rifle” and be “activated or deactivated in seconds.”
Banning Bump-Stocks
It was the Trump administration, surprisingly, that banned bump-stocks — after they were used to catastrophic effect in a 2017 Las Vegas shooting. In that attack, a gunman fired bump-stock-equipped AR-15s from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. The spray of more than 1,000 rounds killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 at a concert festival below.
Without the need of new legislation, the ATF issued a rule in 2019 outlawing bump stocks. The devices, the regulation states, “convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun” by harnessing “the recoil energy… [to] continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.” (The regulation has, at least so far, held up in court)
Despite operating on the same principle, hellfire triggers remain street legal — putting machine gun firepower in the hands of untrained amateurs. The rate of fire enabled by these devices is so high, in fact, that the more expensive hellfire models actually offer features to slow down the firing cycle “to save ammo!”
Hellfire triggers can be finicky to master — which may be why the young Uvalde shooter ultimately didn’t deploy his. And it’s impossible to know whether automatic fire would have led to even more devastation at Robb Elementary School. (The shooter was left unimpeded for more than an hour by dithering local police; the gunman was not pressed for time.)
Marketing Lethality
The “most important” takeaway from the hellfire purchase is what it reflects about “the mindset of the shooter,” argues Sugarmann. “He had done everything he could, in his mind, to find the most lethal combination of weaponry and accessories when he planned the attack.”
Such lethality is — not coincidentally — the top selling point of a the modern firearms industry, which pitches its customers on military-grade precision and firepower. That includes the maker the Uvalde shooter’s rifle, Daniel Defense, whose Georgia headquarters are located at “101 Warfighter Way.”
The Uvalde shooter simply found, in the hellfire, a low-cost accessory that promised to unlock his weapon’s full military pedigree, by mimicking the automatic fire reserved for soldiers.
Sugarmann insists the ATF has the authority to send a warning to the industry by targeting hellfire makers, who are small operators and operate at the margins of the industry. “They’re the bottom feeders,” he says. “If you took action against one of them, it would send a message throughout the industry that ATF has regulatory role that it can use to the to protect public safety.”
The Violence Policy Center founder insists that the agency “could move against them, the way that they moved against bump-stocks.” But at least so far, Sugarmann laments, “the agency has chosen not to.”
Indeed, the text of ATF’s own bump-stock regulation notes that public commenters argued the broad language could be read to encompass “Hellfire trigger mechanisms” and similar devices. The agency’s response? Simply that it “disagrees that other firearms or devices… will be reclassified as machineguns under this rule.”
Ukrainian aircraft destroy Russian company-tactical group
Valentyna Romanenko – June 15, 2022
Over the course of the past 24 hours, Ukrainian assault and bomber jets have destroyed a Russian company-tactical group, and have inflicted losses on Russian military equipment and personnel.
Source: Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook
Details: On Tuesday, 14 June, Ukrainian Su-25 and Su-24 planes conducted several airstrikes on Russian positions, destroying a Russian company-tactical group and inflicting losses on the occupiers’ military equipment and personnel.
Also on 14 June, anti-aircraft missile units of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed four cruise missiles that Russian forces had launched on Ukraine from the waters of the Black Sea.
Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile units also struck down two Russian unmanned aerial vehicles.
Ukrainian fighter jets are continuing to patrol Ukrainian airspace and are conducting operations to intercept Russian air targets, and to provide cover to the operations of assault and bomber aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force.
Putin still wants a ‘significant portion’ of Ukraine or even the whole country, but Russia won’t be able to do it: Pentagon official
Natalie Musumeci and John Haltiwanger – June 15, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur Region, Russia, on April 12, 2022.Sputnik/Evgeny Biyatov/Kremlin via Reuters
Vladimir Putin likely still wants to take much or all of Ukraine, but won’t be able to, a US official said.
“I do not think he can achieve those objectives,” said Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl.
The “Ukrainians are holding tough” against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country, said Kahl.
Russian President Vladimir Putin likely still wants to control a “significant portion” of Ukraine or even capture the entire eastern European country — but he likely won’t succeed in that mission, according to a top Pentagon official.
“I still think he has designs on a significant portion of Ukraine, if not the whole country,” US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Kahl, while speaking at the Center for a New American Security’s National Security Conference, added, “That said, I do not think he can achieve those objectives,” according to the news outlet.
The US official said that Russian forces “may make tactical gains here and there” in the Kremlin’s months-long unprovoked war against Ukraine, but that the “Ukrainians are holding tough.”
“I do not think the Russians have the capacity to achieve those grandiose objectives,” Kahl explained.
“I think he envisioned some kind of a thunder run to Kyiv that would change the regime,” said Kahl, adding, “The Russians were badly defeated in the battle of Kyiv. They’ve also been pushed out of Kharkiv.”
Kahl said that the Russians have been making incremental gains in the south and east of Ukraine, but that the Ukrainians have remained “stalwart defenders.”
The UK’s Ministry of Defense said Wednesday that “it is highly unlikely that Russia anticipated such robust opposition or such slow, attritional conflict during its original planning for the invasion.”
Steven Pifer, who was US ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000, told Insider that Putin has made it clear that “he sees his mission as the recovery of Russian lands,” alluding to the Russian leader’s recent comparison of himself to Peter the Great. If Russia is able to conquer Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where the heaviest fighting is occurring at present and Russian forces are gradually making gains, “he might return to that objective” and “try to go for Kyiv and such.”
“Whether everybody in Moscow shares that ambition is a very different question. But then you also have to ask — does the Russian military have the wherewithal to make that kind of offensive operation?” Pifer said, adding, “There are a lot of Russian soldiers who are not particularly thrilled that they’re fighting in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are getting battered and may have some morale issues. But I think most Ukrainians still think that this is an existential fight and that if they lose their democracy is gone and their vision of what Ukraine would be as an independent state.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its 112th day on Wednesday — and since the war began on February 24, thousands have been killed on both sides.
‘Moment of reckoning:’ Federal official warns of Colorado River water supply cuts
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – June 15, 2022
The Colorado River’s reservoirs have diminished to the point that significant cuts to the water supplied to the seven states that rely on it will be necessary next year, a federal official warned Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee maintaining “critical levels” at the largest reservoirs in the United States — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require large reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” she said at a hearing. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The relatively arid desert Southwest is viewed at 33,000 feet on May 19 near Moab, Utah. The Colorado River, flowing from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain through Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California is dependent on winter snowfall in the Rockies. (George Rose/Getty Images)
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada all receive water from the Colorado River and next year will see a decrease of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water due to the ongoing drought that has gripped most of the Western U.S. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land in one-foot-deep water.) Current allotments of water from the Colorado range from 300,000 acre-feet for Nevada to 4.4 million acre-feet for California.
“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told the Senate hearing. “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”
The West has been suffering through an acute drought since 2020, part of a megadrought that began in 2000. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the last 1,200 years. This year is so far the driest on record in California. Scientists attribute these conditions to climate change, which causes more water evaporation due to warmer temperatures.
“As a climate scientist, I’ve watched how climate change is making drought conditions increasingly worse — particularly in the western and central U.S.,” wrote Imtiaz Rangwala, research scientist in climate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, in May. “The last two years have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) warmer than normal in these regions. Large swaths of the Southwest have been even hotter, with temperatures more than 3 F (1.7 C) higher.”
A thick white ring shows the dramatic decline of water levels at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, which has reached its lowest water levels on record since it was created by damming the Colorado River in the 1930s, as growing demand for water and climate change shrink the Colorado River and endanger a water source millions of Americans depend on, near Boulder City, Nevada, April 16. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)
Western states have already been undertaking emergency measures to deal with the water scarcity. Seven months ago, California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take less water from Lake Mead, and six weeks ago the Department of Interior announced it is withholding some water from Lake Powell. Otherwise, DOI feared, the reservoir could drop so low that Glen Canyon Dam would not be able to generate electricity.
Last year, for the first time ever, the federal government declared a shortage on the river, which led to reductions in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Some farmers in Arizona have had to leave some fields unplanted as a result.
Local governments and water utilities have been imposing restrictions on water usage. On June 1, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California instituted limits on outdoor watering; typically it will be restricted to one or two days per week. But the water shortage persists.
“Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.”
A formerly sunken boat rests on a now-dry section of lakebed at the drought-stricken Lake Mead on May 10, 2022 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Touton told the Senate committee that her agency is negotiating with the seven states that depend on the Colorado River to develop a plan for apportioning the water supply reductions in the next two months. In all, nearly 40 million people rely on water from the river.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., attributed the gathering crisis to a lack of coordinated action to mitigate climate change.
“It’s frankly a direct result of the lack of action on climate that we have seen for more than 20 years,” Heinrich said.
US military veterans training Ukrainian frontline troops say NATO’s artillery and rocket launchers are essential for Ukraine to beat Russia
Cheryl Teh – June 15, 2022
Ukrainian soldiers man a howitzer during artillery drills in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region.Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images US military veterans training Ukrainian frontline troops say NATO’s artillery and rocket launchers are essential for Ukraine to beat Russia
US military veterans training Ukrainian soldiers said Ukraine needs NATO weapons to beat Russia.
They said Ukrainian forces might be overwhelmed without more modern, long-range weaponry.
“It’s a bit of a slugfest,” Martin Wetterauer, a Marine veteran, said of the war.
A group of US military veterans currently training Ukrainian soldiers said Ukraine needs more NATO weapons to win its war with Russia.
Officers in the Mozart Group told Newsweek that modern, long-range artillery would help Ukrainian forces fend off the Russian offensive.
“It’s a bit of a slugfest,” Martin Wetterauer, a Marine veteran and the Mozart Group’s chief operations officer, told Newsweek from the organization’s outpost in Zaporizhzhia.
Wetterauer told the outlet that the Ukrainians were under heavy fire from Russian artillery and said that NATO’s artillery systems and aircraft would be essential to help eliminate Russian defense lines in the Donbas region.
Steve K., an operations manager in the group who declined to give Newsweek his full name, agreed with Wetterauer and highlighted the US-made Multiple Launch Rocket System and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System as being vital tools for the Ukrainian war effort.
“They need the artillery, they need rounds,” Steve K. told the outlet. “If we do not continue with that supply, they won’t be able to hold them back.”
Per Newsweek, Wetterauer added that the Ukrainians do not underestimate the Russians’ capabilities and expressed confidence in their chances of winning if they received the right equipment.
“If we can increase their skill set, then ultimately over time hopefully they’ll get better and more advanced weapon systems,” Wetterauer said, per the outlet. “With the fighting spirit that they have, there’s no doubt they will turn this war. It’s just going to take a while.”
More than 15,000 millionaires expected to leave Russia in 2022
Rupert Neate, Wealth correspondent –June 13, 2022
Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images
More than 15,000 millionaires are expected to flee Russia this year, as wealthy citizens turn their back on Vladmir Putin’s regime after the invasion of Ukraine, according to an analysis of migration data.
About 15% of Russians with more than $1m (£820,000) in ready assets are expected to have emigrated to other countries by the end of 2022, according to projects based on migration data by Henley & Partners, a London-based firm that acts as matchmaker between the super-rich and countries selling their citizenships.
“Russia [is] haemorrhaging millionaires,” said Andrew Amoils, the head of research at New World Wealth, which compiled the data for Henley. “Affluent individuals have been emigrating from Russia in steadily rising numbers every year over the past decade, an early warning sign of the current problems the country is facing. Historically, major country collapses have usually been preceded by an acceleration in emigration of wealthy people, who are often the first to leave as they have the means to do so.”
Ukraine is projected to suffer the greatest loss of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) as a proportion of its population, with 2,800 millionaires (or 42% of all HNWIs in Ukraine) expected to have left the country by the end of the year.
The world’s wealthy have traditionally relocated to the US and the UK but Henley said the United Arab Emirates is expected to overtake them as the No 1 destination for millionaire emigrants. “UK has lost its wealth hub crown, and the US is fading fast as a magnet for the world’s wealthy, with the UAE expected to overtake it by attracting the largest net inflows of millionaires globally in 2022,” Henley said in its report, which is based on “systematically tracking international private wealth migration trends”.
About 4,000 HNWIs are expected to have moved to the UAE by the end of the year, ahead of Australia, which is expected to attract about 3,500, Singapore (2,800) and Israel (2,500).
Large numbers of millionaires are also expected to move to “the three Ms”: Malta, Mauritius and Monaco.
“Malta has been one of Europe’s great success stories of the past decade, not just in terms of millionaire migration but also in terms of overall wealth growth,” Amoils said. “It is currently one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, with US dollar wealth growth of 87% between 2011 and 2021. Its citizenship by naturalisation process has brought substantial new wealth to the island nation and has been credited with propelling Malta’s strong growth in multiple sectors including financial services, IT and real estate. Approximately 300 millionaires are expected to move to Malta in 2022.”
The Guardian reported last year that many wealthy people buying “golden passports” to Malta (and thereby the EU) often planned to spend little time in the country. At the time, Henley said it was “proud of the service that it has provided to Malta and its people”.
The Indian Ocean island nation Mauritius is described by Henley as a “wealth magnet” because of the creation of an international financial centre offering significant tax breaks. The country has no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, and maximum tax rate of 3% of global companies.
According to the Africa Wealth Report 2022, Mauritius is now home to 4,800 HNWIs compared with 2,700 a decade ago. Approximately 150 millionaires are expected to move to Mauritius in 2022, mainly from South Africa and Europe.
Monaco has long attracted the world’s super-rich because it does not charge income tax, capital gains tax or property tax. Just under seven in 10 people living in Monaco are dollar millionaires.
The UK’s HNWI population is expected to decline by 1,500, taking the number of people with more than $1m in ready assets to 738,000. There are currently just over 15 million HNWIs in the world.
