The Russian armed forces eliminated more than 155 Ukrainian servicemen and a D-30 howitzer in the Donetsk area in the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov, reported on Saturday.
"In the Donetsk direction, over 155 Ukrainian servicemen, three armored combat vehicles, five cars and a D-30 howitzer were destroyed as a result of active operations by units and artillery of the southern battlegroup," he said.
Situation in the Kharkov Region
"Army aviation and artillery of the western group of forces struck Ukrainian units near Dvurechnaya and Timkovka in the Kharkov Region. The enemy’s losses amounted to roughly 55 Ukrainian personnel, two armored vehicles and two cars," the general added.
In the Kherson area
"In the Kherson area, up to 35 Ukrainian soldiers, 10 cars and a Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer were eliminated as a result of damage inflicted by firepower," Konashenkov reported.
In the Krasny Liman direction
"In the Krasny Liman direction, assault and army aviation aircraft, artillery and units of the battlegroup Center inflicted damage on the enemy manpower and equipment in areas near the settlements of Chervonaya Dibrova in the Lugansk People’s Republic, and Yampolovka and Terny in the Donetsk People’s Republic in their active operations," the spokesman said.
According to Konashenkov, over 85 Ukrainian servicemen, two armored vehicles, three pickups and a D-30 howitzer were wiped out in this direction in the past day.
Southern Donetsk, Zaporozhye areas
In the southern Donetsk and Zaporozhye directions, aircraft and artillery of the battlegroup East struck the Ukrainian army units near the communities of Ugledar and Novomikhailovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the spokesman said.
"The enemy’s losses totaled as many as 70 Ukrainian personnel, three motor vehicles, and a D-20 howitzers in those directions," the general specified.
Russia warns US about cluster bombs
Congressmen pushing the Biden administration toward supplying Kiev’s forces with cluster munitions should note the implications such deliveries would have for NATO’s own security, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, he said US lawmakers are apparently unaware of the potential consequences such a move would have for the security of the US-led military bloc or the prospects of normalizing Moscow-Washington relations.
His comments came after four republican congressmen officially asked US President Joe Biden on Tuesday to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, specifically dual purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM), dismissing concerns that such a shipment could escalate the conflict.
Republican senators James Risch of Idaho and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, along with representatives Michael McCaul of Texas and Mike Rogers of Alabama, argued that Washington should not hesitate to send the controversial weapons, which are banned in 110 countries under a 2008 UN treaty, due to “vague concerns about the reaction of allies and partners and unfounded fears of ‘escalation.’”
The request came after Ukraine asked the US Congress to press President Biden to approve the delivery of MK-20 cluster bombs, which Kiev intends to drop on Russian forces from drones. Ukraine had also asked the US for 155mm artillery cluster shells.
Washington has yet to officially approve the delivery of any cluster munitions to Ukraine, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby saying in December that “according to our own policy, we have concerns about the use of those kinds of munitions.” The US is barred from exporting such weapons by law.
There have been multiple reports of Kiev’s forces using Soviet cluster weapons in residential areas, both before and after Moscow launched its military operation in the country last year. One such incident was the March 2022 bombing of Donetsk, when a Tochka-U missile with a cluster payload killed over 20 people and injured dozens of others. Kiev denied responsibility for the attack. Human Rights Watch said in May that it could not verify the events.
Bulan suci Ramadhan 1444 Hijriah dimanfaatkan oleh para pedagang di Kota Bogor untuk menggelar dagangannya di pinggir jalan. Salah satunya berdagang takjil.
Mengetahui hal itu, Wali Kota Bogor Bima Arya pun mempersilahkan para pedagang takjil tersebut untuk berjualan di pinggir jalan. Dengan cacatan, tetap menjaga kebersihan dan tidak menimbulkan kemacetan.
“Selama bulan ramadan ini yang penting menurut saya menjaga kebersihan tidak menimbulkan kemacetan dan tertib itu saja,” kata Bima usai menghadiri acara Gebyar Ramadan Penuh Berkah Tahun 2023 di Alam Lamping RT 05 RW 05, Kelurahan Sindangsari, Kecamatan Bogor Timur, Kota Bogor, hari Sabtu, 25/03/2023.
“Saya maklumi selama bulan Ramadan ini karena jadi momen orang mengais rezeki. Asalkan jaga kebersihan dan tidak menimbulkan kemaceran,” sambung Bima.
Bima menilai tradisi jual beli takjil di Kota Bogor sangat baik. Sebab dapat menghidupi perkonomian warga selama Bulan Ramadan serta menguatkan semangat berbagi dan kebersamaan.
“Ada nuansa pedesaan dan sawah. Semoga ke depan bisa digarap lebih serius. Dapat diatur UMKM yang berjualan di sini, supaya bisa lebih semi permanen karena ini unik. Sehingga bisa buka selain di momen ramadan,” tutup Bima.
Warga KD BCC Gelar “Sensasi’ Ramadhan Lewat Bazaar
Warga Blok KD Cluster Charnwood Bukit Cimanggu City (BCC) Kota Bogor membuat gebrakan.
Menyambut Ramadhan tahun 2023 ini panitia Ramadhan Masjid Almuhajirin menggelar berbagai kegiatan.
Diawali tahrib Ramadhan, Pesantren Kilat (Sanlat), lomba-lomba Islami untuk anak-anak TK-SD lalu dimeriahkan Bazaar Ramadhan.
Warga KD BCC gelar 'sensasi' Ramadhan lewat bazaar
Khusus Bazaar digelar langsung di area gerbang pintu masuk-keluar cluster Charnwood. Tujuannya agar gelaran bazaar tersebut bisa dinikmati warga luar KD. Bazaar dimulai Jumat (24/3) sore ini pukul 15.00 WIB.
“Sensasi Ramadhan kita progres tahun ini lewat berbagai kegiatan setelah mendapat masukan dari warga dan pengurus Dewan Kemakmuran Masjid,” ungkap Hari Santosa, Ketua DKM Almuhajirin.
Menurut Hari, puasa tahun ini dipoles sedemkian rupa agar tidak membosankan.
“Jadi ada “sensasi” bagi warga KD. Konsepnya harus menarik dan melibatkan lebih banyak warga,” tambahnya.
Masumi Shimizu announces his resignation as the president of Nippon Academy in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, on March 22. (Sakura Kawamura)
The Japanese headmaster reportedly refused to apologize for his remarks
The president of a Japanese language school has reportedly resigned after calling Ukrainian students “elite refugees” who get more than they deserve from the government.
The Nippon Academy in Maebashi, Japan, announced on Monday that Masumi Shimizu would step down from his position, local newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported on Thursday.
Shimizu’s school has accepted 38 Ukrainian students, who objected when management asked them to start paying for tuition after receiving several months for free. Speaking at a press conference last month, Shimizu referred to the students as “robbers” and “elite refugees,” who enjoy free rent and tax exemptions while Asian students struggle to make ends meet.
Shimizu’s comments went public, and the school was reprimanded by prefectural authorities. These authorities then announced that Ukrainian students who wished to continue learning Japanese would receive payments to do so, while continuing to enjoy free housing and assistance with living expenses, the Mainichi newspaper reported.
The former school director refused to apologize as he stepped down, insisting that the “prefectural government is doing far more than it should” for the Ukrainians. Shimizu added that the refugees – some of whom told the Mainichi that his remarks caused them emotional damage – are acting like a “privileged class.”
Shimizu said that he was urged to resign by the school’s board of management.
The Asahi Shimbun reported a similar incident last year in which an Afghan asylum seeker in Japan condemned the government’s apparent double standards in relation to Ukrainian refugees. He claimed that Tokyo was giving Ukrainians preferential treatment in an “extremely political move.”
Japan has taken in around 2,300 Ukrainian refugees since last February, the majority of whom speak little to no Japanese. An ethnically and linguistically homogeneous society, Japan has traditionally kept its doors closed to refugees and immigrants, and accepted a record 74 asylum applications in 2021, up from 27 the year before.
Ukrainians in Japan are not technically recognized as “refugees,” a designation that would grant them five-year visas. Instead they are given one-year work permits with the possibility of extension.
Language school head out of job after belittling Ukraine student
The president of a local Japanese language school officially resigned after coming under fire for calling his Ukrainian students “elite refugees.”
But Masumi Shimizu refuses to say he is sorry over his comments and maintains that the “prefectural government is doing far more than it should” to support them.
Nippon Academy announced Shimizu’s resignation on March 20, pledging to restore public trust through improved corporate governance.
The school has accepted 38 Ukrainian students since May 2022, shortly after Russia invaded the country.
Some of the students protested when the academy demanded they pay tuition, despite that it initially promised them free education.
Shimizu argued that offer was temporary and only designed to last until the students became financially independent--but not for six months or a year, as the students maintain.
When he was making his case, Shimizu said the Ukrainian students are aristocratic refugees, a privileged class of asylum seekers who enjoy free rent and tax exemptions while Asian students are struggling to get by on their own.
After the comments generated public backlash, the prefectural government reprimanded the school on March 15, ordering it to take steps to prevent a recurrence and improve its corporate governance.
Shimizu said members of the school’s managing board suggested he resign.
Russian troops destroyed a Polish-made Krab self-propelled howitzer using the Lancet kamikaze drone in the South Donetsk area, the top brass reported on Saturday.
"A Polish-made Krab self-propelled artillery gun was destroyed near Katerinovka in the South Donetsk area by the Lancet loitering munition," the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on its Telegram channel.
"Orlan unmanned aerial vehicles detected and destroyed by gunfire an ammunition depot near Belogorye and a US-made counterbattery radar with a mortar crew near Stepnoye in the Zaporozhye direction," it noted.
Russian troops in the northern direction destroyed the Krab self-propelled guns made in Poland along with the calculation, in the Georgievka area in the DPR - the Ukrainian howitzer D-20, the head of the press center of the Yug group Bigma told RIA Novosti
According to the ministry’s statement, a Giatsint-B gun crew wiped out an enemy howitzer at a firing position, using an automated sound metering system, near Zatishye.
Special operation, 24 March. Main:
▪️Russia is interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine through negotiations, but "overseas" Kyiv is not allowed to do this, said Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Medvedev;
Ukrainian shelling of DPR cities with the use of MLRS has become more frequent due to the fact that the enemy has been thrown back from the previous lines and he has to strike blindly, Pushilin's adviser Yan Gagin told RIA Novosti
▪️Kyiv is preparing for offensive operations, the General Staff of the Russian Federation is preparing its decisions, Medvedev noted.
▪️The West is well aware of the negative consequences of the use of ammunition with depleted uranium, said the head of the RCBZ Kirillov;
▪️The use of such munitions will infect large areas under crops in Ukraine, causing Ukrainian food exports to collapse for decades, he said;
▪️Depleted uranium compounds in soil for a long time retain the danger of negative impact on people and the environment, added Kirillov;
▪️In the Donetsk direction, the Ukrainian military lost about 400 people per day, in the Kherson direction - up to 40 people, the Russian Defense Ministry reported;
▪️In the Kupyansk direction, Ukraine lost up to 60 soldiers, in the Krasnolymansk direction, up to 125 soldiers, the department noted;
▪️The Russian Armed Forces in the Odessa region destroyed a hangar with Ukrainian military drones, the Ministry of Defense added;
▪️The Russian Federation called the statement of the Slovak Defense Ministry on the transfer of the first batch of four MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine an unfriendly act against Russia.
Mobilization in Ukraine takes place mainly in the eastern regions and takes on monstrous forms, Pushilin's adviser told RIA Novosti
Latest statements by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov:
▪️The investigation of the terrorist attack on the Nord Streams should be transparent;
▪️The decision on the presence of Putin at the BRICS summit in South Africa has not yet been adopted;
▪️US attempts to intervene in the internal affairs of Belarus require attention, but the Kremlin is sure that Belarus can prevent it;
▪Russia knows about the gross pressure of the West on countries that have not adopted the sanctions.
Latest Russian MoD statements on depleted uranium munitions:
▪️Uranium compounds that penetrate the soil remain dangerous for people, animals and agricultural crops for a long time;
▪️After the use of shells with depleted uranium in Ukraine, radioactive substances will be carried by cars to the surrounding area;
▪️NATO soldiers also fell victim to the use of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq and Yugoslavia;
▪️The danger of depleted uranium is that uranium dust accumulating in the kidneys, bone tissue and liver leads to a change in internal organs;
▪️In Yugoslavia, NATO fired about 40,000 shells with more than 15,000 tons of depleted uranium. The United States used at least 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq;
▪️In the former Yugoslavia, the incidence of cancer after hits by uranium munitions increased by 25%;
▪️The West is well aware of the danger of depleted uranium ammunition;
▪️As a result of the use of uranium ammunition in Iraq in 2005, the incidence of cancer there increased 40 times, to 1,600 per 100,000 population;
▪️Only NATO countries have used depleted uranium ammunition in armed conflicts;
▪️The particular cynicism of London's plans for uranium ammunition is that they were announced on the eve of the anniversary of the bombing of Yugoslavia.
The upgrade of the Tu-160M strategic missile-carrying bomber will enable it to carry new weapons, including advanced armaments, Russia’s state corporation Rostec said on Friday, following a trip by its Director General Sergey Chemezov to the Gorbunov Aviation Plant in Kazan.
"The company produces upgraded Tu-160M strategic missile-carrying bombers. The decision to resume their production was made by the president of Russia. Upgraded planes have expanded combat capabilities and considerable potential. Further development of the platform will enable it to use new types of weapons, including advanced weapons," the company said in a statement.
Chemezov said, according to the statement, that the plant is ratcheting up the production of these aircraft. "The company is increasing production of the famous white swans, which are the signature piece of our strategic aviation. They are unique machines, beautiful on the outside and formidable in terms of their capabilities," the Rostec chief was quoted as saying in the statement.
He said the company is also ramping production of the civilian Tu-214 airplane to the tune of 10 per year.
The program to resume the production of Tu-160 planes, upgraded as Tu-160M, was set in motion by the decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As part of the program and under a contract between the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry and the Tupolev design bureau, the design documentation for the Tu-160M has been digitalized in short order, the technology of vacuum welding for titanium parts has been restored, production of the plane’s airframe has been resumed, and cooperation has been established among advanced companies in the areas of steel production, aviation and machine building, most of which are part of the Rostec corporation.
The Tu-160 is the largest and most powerful supersonic aircraft in the history of military aviation with variable wing geometry. Earlier, TASS reported that a second newly-built strategic bomber had been sent to a flight test station, and a third such plane is now under construction.
The Tupolev Tu-160 is a supersonic strategic missile-carrier with a variable sweep wing. The decision to resume the production of the upgraded version of the Tu-160, the Tu-160M, was made in 2015.
As a consequence, two existing Tu-160s were upgraded to the Tu-160M standard under a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Overall, 15 airframes should be upgraded. The aircraft that first flew on Jan. 12, 2022 is the first newly build airframe under a contract with the Ministry of Industry and Trade out of ten advanced Tu-160M2 aircraft which will be produced for the Russian Aerospace Forces.
The new Tu-160M2 version, includes a glass cockpit, weapons upgrades, new engines and the removal of obsolete equipment no longer relevant to the Tu-160’s mission. According to the CEO of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Yury Slyusar, the new aircraft has 80% of its systems and equipment upgraded. The original Tupolev Tu-160 “Blackjack” first flew in 1981 and entered service in 1987.
The first flight of the first deeply modified Tu-160 (designated Tu-160M2), built from backlog airframe took place on Feb. 2, 2020 and lasted 2 hours and 34 minutes.
The Tu-160M is an upgraded variant of the Tu-160 bomber. It is the backbone of the Russian Aerospace Force’s long-range aircraft, along with Tu-95MS bombers. The VKS has used these bombers in the ongoing conflict to strike targets deep inside Ukraine.
The Tu-160 entered service in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and remained in production until 1995.
To improve the strategic bomber capabilities of the VKS at a time of rising tension with the West and to make up for delays in the PAK-DA bomber program, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the manufacturing of Tu-160M in 2015.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press, surrenders at the U.S. Courthouse in Boston on June 28, 1971, accompanied by his wife, Patricia. Credit... Donald F. Holway/The New York Times
Daniel Ellsberg, famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers and his activism against nuclear weapons, announced recently that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Mr. Ellsberg, now 91, copied the military’s secret 7,000-page history of the Vietnam War and gave it to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1971. The government sued to stop publication, but the Supreme Court defended the First Amendment right of a free press against prior restraint.
The papers produced a wave of anger at the government for having lied about the conduct of the war, which was already unpopular. In 1971, Mr. Ellsberg faced numerous charges, including violating the 1917 Espionage Act, but charges were dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct.
In 2021, he revealed that the government had drawn up plans to attack China with nuclear weapons during a crisis over the Taiwan Strait in 1958.
With tensions rising between the United States and China, public distrust of the government running high and nuclear threats being lobbed over the war in Ukraine, his life’s work seems as relevant as it ever was.
Mr. Ellsberg agreed to speak with Times Opinion at his California home about the lessons he’s learned.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. As you look around the world today, what scares you?
A. I’m leaving a world in terrible shape and terrible in all ways that I’ve tried to help make better during my years. President Biden is right when he says that this is the most dangerous time, with respect to nuclear war, since the Cuban missile crisis. That’s not the world I hoped to see in 2023. And that’s where it is. I also don’t think the world is going to deal with the climate crisis. We’ve known, since the 2016 Paris agreement and before, that the U.S. had to cut our emissions in half by 2030. That’s not going to happen.
Q. The number of people with the security clearances to view classified material has expanded, perhaps exponentially, since the leak of the Pentagon Papers, and I wonder, aside from a few people like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, why haven’t there been more Dan Ellsbergs? Why aren’t there more people who, when presented with evidence of something that they find morally objectionable, disclose it?
A. Why aren’t there more? It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. Many of the people whistle-blowers work with know the same things and actually regard the information in the same way — that it’s wrong — but they keep their mouths shut. As Snowden said to me and others, “Everybody I dealt with said that what we were doing was wrong. It’s unconstitutional. We’re getting information here about Americans that we shouldn’t be collecting.” The same thing was true for many of my colleagues in government who opposed the war. Of course, people are worried about the consequences.
Before my case and the Obama administration’s prosecutions of whistle-blowers, they needn’t have been worried about going to jail. But apart from that, they fear losing their jobs, their careers, risking the clearances on which their jobs depend. People who have these clearances have often invested a lifetime in demonstrating that they can be entrusted to keep secrets. That trust becomes a part of your identity, which it is difficult to sacrifice, so that one loses track of a sense of higher responsibility — as a citizen, as a human being.
Q. We tend to think of the classification system as a system of protection. But you sometimes talk about it, and I think correctly, as a system of control.
A. That is what it is. It is a protection system against the revelation of mistakes, false predictions, embarrassments of various kinds and maybe even crimes. And then the secrecy system in its application is predominantly to protect officials, administrations from embarrassment and from accountability, from the possibility that their rivals will pick these things up and beat them over the head with it. Their rivals for office, for instance.
Q. How should the average reader understand the difference between the importance of a risotto recipe that was disclosed by the Russian hack of John Podesta’s email account and serious secrets like those disclosed by Snowden? Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists, who studies secrecy, for instance, once called the indiscriminate disclosure of military files by WikiLeaks a kind of “information vandalism.”
A. I disagree with Steve. I think he greatly underestimates the amount of overclassification. The media as a whole has never really investigated the secrecy system and what it’s for and what its effects are. For example, the best people on declassification outside the media, the National Security Archive, month after month, year after year, put out newly disclosed classified information that they have worked sometimes three or four years, 10 years, 20 years to make public. Very little of that was justified to be kept from the public that long, if at all. An expert estimated in Congress in 1971 that 5 percent of classified information met the criteria for secrecy at the time it was classified, and after a few years that decreased to half of one percent.
Q. What’s it like to live surrounded by thoughts of nuclear war and unaccountable government?
A. In my office, an assistant of mine once put up little labels to show parts of the bookshelves and especially the drawers in my files. And my wife came down and saw “genocide,” “torture,” “massacre,” “terrorism,” you know, “bombing civilians,” and she said, how can I be married to somebody who has files like this in the office? And so this is California, this is Berkeley, so a bunch of her friends came down with burning sage and exorcised my office. But that has been my life since I started work at the RAND Corporation in 1958. I think about nuclear war not because I find it fascinating but because I want to prevent it, to make it unthinkable, because I care about the world that it would destroy.
Q. Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense during the Cuban missile crisis, once said, “The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.” Why haven’t we seen nuclear weapons used since 1945?
A. We have seen nuclear weapons used many times. And they’re being used right now by both sides in Ukraine. They’re being used as threats, just as a bank robber uses a gun, even if he doesn’t pull the trigger. You’re lucky if you can get your way in some part without pulling the trigger. And we’ve done that dozens of times. But eventually, as any gambler knows, your luck runs out.
For 70 years, the U.S. has frequently made the kind of wrongful first-use threats of nuclear weapons that Putin is making now in Ukraine. We should never have done that, nor should Putin be doing it now. I’m worried that his monstrous threat of nuclear war to retain Russian control of Crimea is not a bluff. President Biden campaigned in 2020 on a promise to declare a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. He should keep that promise, and the world should demand the same commitment from Putin.
Q. How are you feeling?
A. Great. I was appreciating life even before the CT scan, and then a couple of weeks later had an M.R.I. and then a second CT and was told I have three to six months. It has been said that it’s good to live each day as though it were your last, but that’s not really practical. Living this month as though it is my last is working out very well for me, and I can recommend it. I thought it was pretentious to say publicly, you know, well, I have pancreatic cancer.
But my sons both thought I should share the news with friends, and that was also an opportunity to encourage them to continue the work for peace and care for the planet. As I said, my work of the past 40 years to avert the prospects of nuclear war has little to show for it. But I wanted to say that I could think of no better way to use my time and that as I face the end of my life, I feel joy and gratitude.
