Heading towards World War III?

The German government has given the green light for the delivery of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, the country’s Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Tuesday.

Speaking at US-hosted defense talks at the American airbase Ramstein in Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate state, Lambrecht said that the leadership in Berlin made the decision on Monday. She emphasized that Germany was “determined to help the Ukrainian people with unified resolve in this existential emergency.”

The minister explained that “Ukraine will order” hardware from German manufacturers and “Germany will pay.” Berlin would earmark some 2 billion euros to that end, Lambrecht added.

The armored vehicles in question are Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, which were decommissioned by the German military back in 2010. Designed to take out cruise missiles and aircraft, Gepards can also be used against targets on the ground. As many as 50 heavy vehicles could reportedly be delivered to Ukraine.

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Russian troops have destroyed six traction substations, – units that power the railways – which are being used for delivery of “foreign weapons and military hardware to the Ukrainian forces in the Donbass,” Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov announced on Monday.

He added that the stations were located at the Krasnoye, Zdolbunov, Zhmerinka, Berdichev, Kovel, and Korosten railway hubs, all in western Ukraine.

According to Konashenkov, 27 military targets were also destroyed by airstrikes, including four command centers.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said last month that pushing Ukrainian troops from the territory of the Donbass republics had become Moscow’s top priority at this stage of the campaign.

www.rt.com/russia/554519-russia-hits-supply-ukraine

It would be acceptable for Ukrainian forces to use Western weapons to attack military targets on Russian soil, a UK defence minister has said.

James Heappey said strikes to disrupt supply lines were an "entirely legitimate" part of war.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has accused Nato of engaging in a proxy war and said weapons delivered by the West to Ukraine would be fair targets.

The UK announced it will give Ukraine a small number of anti-aircraft vehicles.

Western countries have donated hundreds of millions of pounds of military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion back in February and Nato and European Union officials are meeting in Germany to discuss further military assistance.

It comes as Russia has focused its forces on the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, with the UK's Ministry of Defence reporting the city of Kreminna, in Luhansk, has fallen.

Russia has accused Ukraine of attacking targets within its territory, including an oil depot in Belgorod, but Ukrainian forces have not confirmed any strikes.

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The Russian Ministry of Defense has accused London of a “direct provocation” after British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey encouraged Ukrainian forces to use UK-supplied weapons to attack targets inside Russia. Any attempts to do so would invoke an immediate response, the ministry warned in a statement on Tuesday.

“We want to emphasize that London’s direct provocation of the Kiev regime to such actions, should they attempt to do so, will immediately lead to our proportional response. As we have warned, the Russian armed forces are on standby around the clock to retaliate with long-range high-precision weapons against decision-making centers in Kiev,” the military warned.

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Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK was looking at ways to supply anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, including mounting its Brimstone missiles to vehicles.

Now, defence minister James Heappey has told MPs that the work to adapt the missiles has progressed quickly enough that it can provide them "in the next few weeks".

This latest planned delivery is in response to requests from Kyiv for longer-range ground attack missiles, he said.

Brimstone missiles are designed for use against fast-moving land and sea targets and are typically fired from aircraft.

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Sending heavy weapons and other arms to Ukraine is dangerous for European security, the Kremlin has warned Western nations.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to a speech by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss urging Kyiv's allies to "ramp up" military production to help Ukraine.

Western allies have maintained their support does not amount to a military confrontation between Moscow and Nato.

But Peskov told reporters: "The tendency to pump weapons, including heavy weapons into Ukraine, these are the actions that threaten the security of the continent, provoke instability."

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The world order created after the Second World War and the Cold War isn’t working anymore, so the West needs “a global NATO” to pursue geopolitics anew, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss argued, in a major foreign policy speech on Wednesday. Truss also urged the US-led bloc to send more “heavy weapons, tanks” and airplanes to Ukraine, and said China would face the same treatment as Russia if it doesn’t “play by the rules.”

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Russian State Television has issued a chilling warning. A news report simulated a nuclear attack against the UK and Ireland. How serious is this threat?

Regarding the besieged port city of Mariupol, the Russian president claims Ukrainian soldiers are holding civilians as human shields at the Azovstal steel plant and Russian forces were not stopping them leaving.

Russia has made this allegation about human shields before. The BBC has not seen evidence to support the claim.

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Putin restated at length his justification for invading Ukraine.

But he told Antonio Guterres: "We still expect and hope we will be able to achieve agreements through a diplomatic channel."

Putin said recent talks in Istanbul had reached a "breakthrough" but he suggested they had been derailed after the reports of atrocities against civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

He claimed these were a "provocation" and added "the Russian army had nothing to do with it".

But he said talks continue and he hopes they reach a positive result.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin met the UN Secretary General across his famous long white table earlier today, telling Antonio Guterrez that negotations with Ukraine continue online.

He said he hopes for a "positive result" from the talks.

But Putin said he cannot sign security guarantees for Ukraine without deciding on territorial issues over Crimea and Sevastopol, annexed by Russia in 2014, and the Donbas - where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine for eight years.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the Kremlin on Tuesday for talks revolving around the Ukrainian crisis. The two discussed the situation on the ground, with Putin explaining to the UN chief Russia’s reasons for launching its military operation against the neighboring country in late February.

Moscow’s move to recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk was based on the Kosovo precedent, set up by the UN-backed court, Putin told Guterres. The republics emerged after people living in Ukraine’s east rejected the 2014 Maidan coup, Russia’s president explained, while the new Kiev officials opted for a military solution that led to the eight-year standoff in the Donbass.

“I remember very well the decision of the International Court of Justice, which states that in exercising the right to self-determination, a territory of any state is not obliged to apply for permission to declare its sovereignty to the central authorities of the country,” Putin said.

Guterres pointed out that the UN itself still does not recognize Kosovo as an independent entity, viewing it as a part of Serbia. Putin, however, parried that the legal precedent still exists, as Kosovo received wide recognition in the West.

“So many states in the world, including our opponents in the West, have done this with respect to Kosovo. Kosovo is recognized by a lot of states – it is a fact – by a lot of Western states it is recognized as an independent state. We did the same with respect to the republics of the Donbass,” Putin said, adding that the republics subsequently asked Moscow for military assistance – which Russia provided in full compliance with the UN Charter.

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Ukraine could be broken up into several smaller countries as a result of the war, one of Russia's top defence officials has said.

Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's Security Council, accused the US and other Western nations of trying to instil hatred towards Russia in Ukraine - and said that "history teaches that hatred can never become a reliable factor in national unity", the newspaper reported.

As a result, "the policy of the West and the Kyiv regime under its control can only be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states," he told Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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