Heading towards World War III?

Greece has announced that it won't send any more weapons to Ukraine because it doesn’t have any to spare, and can't afford to weaken its own defenses. The country has been among the states that have armed Kiev after Russia launched its offensive in February.

“The defense equipment we sent to Ukraine came from our stocks. There is no issue of sending more,” Defense Minister Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos told the country’s parliament on Wednesday.

www.rt.com/news/553877-greece-no-more-weapons

Moscow says it will respond to any Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory by striking Kyiv with more missiles.

The "number and scale" of attacks will go up if its own settlements become targets, the ministry said.

The warning came as Russia announced a missile strike on a military factory near Kyiv, which it claimed was in response to a Ukrainian helicopter attack on a Russian village.

Ukraine denies it carried out the attack.

"Tonight, sea-based high precision long-range "Kalibr" missiles hit a military facility in the outskirts of Kyiv," Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

The strike targeted Ukraine's Vizar military facility that was producing and repairing anti-aircraft and anti-ship missile systems, Mr Konashenkov added, warning that Russia would intensify missile attacks on Kyiv if Ukraine continued what he described as attacks on Russian land.

He said: "The number and scale of missile strikes against objects in Kyiv will increase in response to the commission of any attacks of a terrorist nature or sabotage on Russian territory by the Kyiv nationalist regime."

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61117056

German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has called on the public to cut energy use and stop using cars to help wean their country off Russian oil and gas.

"If you can take the train or bike over Easter, that's good too: it's easy on the wallet and annoys Putin," said Mr Habeck, who is also economics minister and co-leader of the Greens.

Germany has resisted European calls for a ban on Russian energy.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61117828

India has received an order of Russian S-400 air defense systems, according to local media, with officials stating the shipments would continue despite Western efforts to force countries around the world to scuttle relations with Moscow over its ongoing military campaign in Ukraine.

The missile platforms arrived in the country by air and sea and have since been deployed in “designated locations,” senior government officials told India Today on Thursday, noting the S-400s are “now operational.”

www.rt.com/news/553906-india-russia-missile-system

Russia has reportedly sent a formal diplomatic note to the US this week in which it warned that the further arming of Ukraine by Washington and allies could lead to “unpredictable consequences,” claims a report by the Washington Post published on Friday.

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The Washington Post claims that in the letter Russia deemed “multiple launch rocket systems” as “most sensitive” and accused the US and its NATO allies of violating “rigorous principles” governing the transfer of weapons to conflict zones and of being oblivious to the “threat of high-precision weapons falling into the hands of radical nationalists, extremists and bandit forces in Ukraine.”

www.rt.com/news/553930-russia-us-warning-ukraine

As Moscow gears up for a new offensive to secure the Donbass region, it should be abundantly clear that the Western powers are not seeking to resolve the conflict or secure peace, but to escalate it and transform it into a fully-fledged proxy war against Russia.

Apart from its own invasions, bombings, coups, and regime change attempts imposed on countries around the world, one of America’s preferred methods of confronting its adversaries is to ‘wage war by proxy’ against them, that is, to support the war of a group or country against a rival without militarily engaging themselves. The history of the Cold War is littered with such examples, such as America’s backing of the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, its assistance to Saddam Hussein against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, or, on a more contemporary note, its failed attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad via local rebels. Proxy wars allow the US to minimize its own losses by having someone else die for its aims while also procuring geopolitical gain by undermining rival states, at the same time maximizing profits for the military-industrial complex by keeping the arms flowing.

www.rt.com/news/553925-west-want-war-moscow

State Department spokesman Ned Price told CNN on Friday that “nothing will dissuade” the Biden administration from funneling weapons to Ukraine.

www.rt.com/news/553961-biden-arm-ukraine-consequences

. . . the fate of the dollar as the world’s key reserve currency is now at stake, and the underlying logic of the global economy has been called into question. Within this framework, the key producers of resources and goods, Russia and China, exchanged their physical goods for beautiful green banknotes and stacked them in Western banks, clearly not thinking they would ever be frozen.

Now, for many countries striving for foreign policy independence, a question will arise: Where exactly and in what form should the profits and surpluses of their resources be stored? Does it still make sense to do this in the form of US government bonds kept in the West? Or is it more reasonable to exchange them for resources that can be disposed of by sovereign entities at will, regardless of who thinks what about their foreign policy?

www.rt.com/russia/553913-ukrainian-crisis-stress-test-globalisation