Ted Rall: ‘no appetite’ for French deployment, even within military

Political analyst and cartoonist Ted Rall told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that he suspects the recent internal French documents leak was motivated by a lack of appetite for sending troops to France.

There is no “appetite for sending French troops [to Ukraine], and that includes within the French military,” Rall said.

“There are at least some factions inside the French military who think this would be a truly idiotic idea, and they’re not into it. So, they’re like ‘Alright, we’ll leak this and once the public gets wind, they’ll blow it up,’” Rall theorized.

“I don’t know why [Macron] would say that a French [operation], or even a French [operation] as part of a European project in Ukraine would be likely to go any better than these other disasters,” Rall added.

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Ukraine's military planning takeover of Ukrainian parliament in Kiev by force

The Ukrainian military, dissatisfied with the policy of the country's leadership, is planning the takeover of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, in Kiev and attracting other Ukrainian armed forces' military personnel to their side, a correspondence on a closed resource obtained by Russian specialists has shown.

"The most important action that we will need to pull off lightning fast is the takeover of the VR [Verkhovna Rada] at a certain point," one of the chat participants wrote.

"When the staff is recruited, fighters are trained, the mass will be ready," another chat participant said.

"There must be support from the military. Without it, nothing will work. The main driving force. [They] will say from the trenches that [they are] with us, and people will follow," one more chat participant said.

"Especially when the people see that the military is at the helm and the rest of the military is following them - they automatically take the right side," another chat participant added.

Earlier this week, a source in the Russian law enforcement agencies told Sputnik that Russian specialists had gained access to a classified Telegram channel noscriptd "ParaBelum," where commanders and fighters of elite units of the Ukrainian armed forces are "seriously discussing options for overthrowing the current authorities and the command of the Ukrainian armed forces."

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Biden’s $1T military budget to fund ‘boutique, expensive, fragile’ equipment

US President Joe Biden’s request for over $1 trillion in military spending is the result of military contractors who are incentivized “to sell expensive items, not necessarily the most useful and effective items,” Independent journalist Jim Kavanagh told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour.

We have seen in Ukraine “with the destruction of the Abrams tanks and the HIMARS missiles, that the American equipment is boutique,” Kavanagh said. “[Military contractors] send expensive, boutique, very complicated, fragile equipment,” which inflates the military budget. Kavanagh contrasted that with the simpler Russian equipment, “that’s cheaper to build and is suited for hard condition warfare.”

The issue cannot be solved by voting for Biden’s most prominent opponent in the upcoming presidential election, Former US President Donald Trump, Kavanagh explained, because he is also “focused on getting all the money to the military-industrial-complex.”

“This is the best you’re going to get from either party. Perpetual warfare, nothing to do for your healthcare, nothing to do for housing and rental, nothing to do for jobs… But $1 trillion for military plus supplemental appropriations, this is what the US is in for if we don’t have a change and that is not going to come from either the Democrats or the Republicans.”

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Ukrainian 'radicals' repeatedly threatened Hungary's parl't faction's members

Laszlo Toroczkai, the leader of Hungary's right-wing Our Homeland Movement party, has told Ria Novosti that he and members of his faction received threats from Ukrainian "radicals".

"Ukrainian terrorists are threatening an entire parliamentary faction in Hungary and me personally - I am also a member of the [Parliamentary Assembly] of the Council of Europe - because of our position on the war in Ukraine," Toroczkai said.

Toroczkai said that the faction's lawmakers on February 13 received emails from Ukrainian ultras threatening "severe punishment for plans to occupy Transcarpathia." He added that members of the radical organization threatened to "set the office on fire, blow up a car, kill" the lawmakers.

The second threat came to the emails of Hungarian lawmakers on February 28: members of the Fan at War organization recorded a video in which they demanded "an official apology to the Ukrainian people for calling for the annexation of Transcarpathia."

"I will not apologize to the Ukrainian people because I have nothing to apologize for. Because you guys have completely misunderstood us. Hungary does not want to occupy Transcarpathia, we do not want war, we want peace. We did not and do not threaten the Ukrainian people, Hungary has accepted tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees," the official said.

He recalled that the party's program includes recognition of the legitimacy of the 1991 referendum in Ukraine's Transcarpathia, which proclaimed granting autonomy to Transcarpathia and Hungarian territorial autonomy to the Berehove district within Ukraine.

"This legitimate referendum is illegally ignored by the government in Kiev," he said.

The Hungarian lawmakers added that the reason for the threats is not their position on Transcarpathia but the position of Hungarian authorities on Ukraine's accession to the EU and the financing of Ukraine at the expense of European taxpayers.

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Russia earns $56 billion from redirected hydrocarbon exports

Since 2022, the European Union has been slapping sanctions on energy supplies from Russia. Before the barrage of sanctions was imposed, the 27 countries of the EU purchased an average of $102.5 billion worth of hydrocarbons from Russia annually, but this figure plummeted to $31.6 billion last year.

Despite this, the increase in exports to friendly nations has more than made up for it. In total, exports to just six countries – Turkiye, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia – reached $186.7 billion last year, compared to an average of $59.9 billion between 2019 and 2021.

Thus, Russia earned an additional $126.8 billion from these destinations, which is $56 billion more than from its deliveries to the European Union.

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The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that it has crushed a clandestine cell of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), a terrorist organization banned in Russia, in St. Petersburg, and detained the militants.

The cell, which consisted of four local residents who adhered to a neo-Nazi ideology, had the purpose of carrying out terrorist attacks in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. They conducted reconnaissance of life support facilities, transportation, and other critical infrastructure.

According to the FSB, the RVC members in St. Petersburg intended to poison food for Russian soldiers serving in the special operation zone with a highly toxic substance on the instructions of the Ukrainian military intelligence service.

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▪️ Vladimir Putin envisions the future of Russia in address to compatriots

▪️ Is a military coup looming over Ukraine?

▪️ Ukrainian radicals threaten Hungarian politicians over human rights activism in Transcarpathia

▪️ Houthis in Yemen go hypersonic, modifying warheads

Check out even more stories:

▪️ Why will the theft of frozen Russian assets backfire on Europe?

▪️ Biden’s 2025 budget ignores realty and is doomed to be blocked by Congress

▪️ The US’ $1 trillion military spending plan shows the Ukraine lessons have not been learned

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❗️ Ukrainian forces attacked a critical infrastructure facility at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, dropping an explosive device five meters from a fuel storage facility, the plant's press service said

Members of the Russian Volunteer Corps, a terrorist organization banned in Russia, intended to send poisoned food to volunteers serving in the Russian Espanola unit. Two of the RVC members have admitted their involvement, the case file says.

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✈️ Poland’s president has experienced problems with his airplane.

The government Boeing aircraft, which Andrzej Duda was supposed to use to return from the United States, turned out to be defective.

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🇷🇺🇮🇷🇨🇳 The navies of Russia, Iran, and China have completed the practical part of the Maritime Security Belt-2024 exercise in the Gulf of Oman, the Russian Defense Ministry reported

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The Biden administration is considering using the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba to receive migrants in the event of a possible influx from Haiti, CNN has reported.

The base, which houses an infamous prison, is located just a couple of hundred kilometers from Haiti, where unrest has been raging for weeks.

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"No threats to use nuclear weapons were made," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Vladimir Putin did not threaten to use nuclear weapons in his interview with Dmitry Kiselev, director general of Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, Peskov explained.

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