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Ukraine War: Borrell warned EU citizens that punishing Russia was "going to have a price".

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is becoming increasingly merciless, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday, as strikes were reported on residential areas.

"The Russian military campaign is becoming more and more ruthless and Ukrainian armed forces are fighting back with courage," Borrell told journalists.

"There are a lot of civilian casualties... and the flow of people looking for shelter, escaping the war is increasing."

The EU on Sunday unveiled a 450-million-euro ($500-million) package to fund the supply of weapons to Ukraine, the first time the bloc has agreed to send arms to a third country.

Borrell said the EU had in addition "mobilised" its satellite centre in Madrid to provide Ukraine with geospatial intelligence following a request from Kyiv.

Borrell sought to clarify a statement he made Sunday that the 27-nation bloc would supply fighter jets to Ukraine.

"Some European countries, if they want to, bilaterally can mobilise any kind of aid to help Ukraine to defend itself, and they also need aircraft," Borrell said.

"But they would have to be those European countries, if they have them, that have fighter jets which could be piloted by the Ukrainian air force pilots."

In addition to military support, the EU has also unleashed its strongest-ever barrage of sanctions against Moscow, including blocking transactions with Russia's central bank.

Major energy exporter Russia has threatened to hit back over the measures, and Borrell warned EU citizens that punishing Moscow was "going to have a price".

"Sanctions will backlash. Sanctions have a cost," Borrell said.

"But we have to be ready to pay this price now because, if not, we will have to pay a much bigger price in the future."

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Ukraine Invasion Getting "More And More Ruthless": European Union - NDTV

We make decisions based on available information. If we have not completed formation, it is very much possible to make the wrong decision. Unfortunately, in todays world, the West controls the worlds major media, especially the Internet companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple in the United States, they control the global Internet public opinion. Since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the West has been hanging Russia in the field of public opinion. In early February, Bloomberg reported fake news that Russia had invaded Ukraine.

Since the Ukrainian war started, Russia has been in a position of being beaten and scolded in online public opinion, and there are still many supportive voices on the Chinese Internet. In other countries in the world, all voices supporting Russia have been blocked. American Internet companies, the Russian government, and even the new media accounts of the US embassy were blocked.

There is no doubt that Russia has fought very hard in this battle. In fact, Russia has always been very restrained on the battlefield. From the beginning of the battle, it has not launched a large-scale attack. It has tried its best to avoid casualties of the people. The Ukrainian government has a chance to negotiate, even knowing they are stalling for time.

All of this is inseparable from Russias passivity on the battlefield of public opinion. But even if Russia tolerates everything, in the Internet world, Russia is still smeared and demonized by all kinds of fake news. For example, foreign media took the video of the Ukrainian army bombarding civilian houses and blamed the Russian army.

This time Russia finally came up with this trick, and it really is extremely clever. Using the Soviet Union as the main contributor to the worlds anti-fascism, in the name of convening a world anti-fascist conference, fundamentally shake the hegemony of the West. This time, the World Anti-Fascist Conference will definitely have more influence than Bidens Global Democracy Summit and deal a heavy blow to Western hegemony ideologically.

First, Russias primary goal in launching the Ukrainian war is to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

Ukraines neo-Nazis are notorious for brutal massacres of civilians in the Eastern Ukrainian region for eight years, creating at least three mass graves. I saw on the news that they massacred at least 13,000 women and children. And all this is not reported by the mainstream media controlled by the West.

Russia held the World Anti-Fascist Congress to nail the Ukrainian puppet government to the pillar of neo-Nazi shame.

Moreover, Russia sent the most powerful Chechen armed forces to Mariupol and Kyiv to deal with neo-Nazis. In particular, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi organization Azov Battalion, which participated in the intervention in the Hong Kong riots in 2019, received key receptions.

Second, suppress German ambitions.

This time during the Ukrainian war, the Germans jumped high. On the one hand, the president of the European Commission, the German von der Leyen, took over the Ukrainian war and invited it to join the European Union (Ukraine plans to join the European Union, Europe is brought to the table!), this von der Leyen is not simple, Her ancestor is a Junker noble, who has lived and worked in the United States for a long time, and served as the German defense minister. She was originally expected to be Merkels successor, and later became the president of the European Union.

Another is that the German government announced to provide Ukraine with 1,000 anti-tank missiles and 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which are very deadly for the Russian army. Then, through a special fund, Germany invested 100 billion euros to equip the troops at one time; in addition, the defense expenditure must be increased to more than 2%. Germanys GDP is 4 trillion US dollars, and 2% is 80 billion US dollars. In this way, Germany will become a military expenditure. The third-largest country after China and the United States.

These signs indicate that the German Nazis will be resurrected and break the seal left by the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II. After World War I, Germany was resurrected after only a dozen or so stops. This time it was sealed for more than 70 years, and it felt the opportunity to be resurrected. Russia will definitely not agree to borrow the revival of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and bring back the dead! It is estimated that other Eastern European countries will also be scared to death.

Third, shake the moral foundation of Western hegemony. Western white leftists really think that by putting on the halo of democracy, freedom, and human rights, they have really cleaned up history, which is obviously a dream. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a nightmare for the West in the field of ideology, and developing countries yearned for the Soviet Union. Now Russia has picked up the banner of anti-fascism, and it is a sword that pierces the heart of the West.

The media has the responsibility of conveying facts, letting the readers decide who is right or who is wrong. Media is only an information provider, not the narrative builder or brainwasher. We need to follow a balanced approach of matters up to the possible extent. Definitely, personnel affiliation has an impact on ones writing, but, try best to have an unbiased approach and reflect both sides narratives.

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Make Sense of Belarus Interests through Full Support to Russia for Invasion in Ukraine - Modern Diplomacy

Amore Vero, the yacht owned by a company linked to Igor Sechin, is pictured in the shipyard of La Ciotat in southern France on Thursday. Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Amore Vero, the yacht owned by a company linked to Igor Sechin, is pictured in the shipyard of La Ciotat in southern France on Thursday.

French authorities say they have seized a yacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Igor Sechin.

Sechin served as Russia's deputy prime minister from 2008 to 2012 and is the current CEO of state oil company Rosneft.

He is among the several "elites close to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin" that the U.S. Treasury Department targeted with sanctions last week. The European Union imposed sanctions against Sechin on Monday, calling him one of Putin's "most trusted and closest advisors, as well as his personal friend" and saying the two were in daily contact.

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Thursday that French authorities had seized Sechin's yacht named "Amor Vero," or "True Love" in Italian at the Mediterranean port of La Ciotat on Wednesday.

"Thanks to the French customs officers who are enforcing the European Union's sanctions against those close to the Russian government," he said, according to a Reuters translation of his tweet.

The 280-foot yacht had been docked in southern France's La Ciotat since early January, and was set to remain there undergoing repairs through the end of March, CNBC reports. But the French ministry of finance said the yacht was preparing to cast off when authorities began their check, which lasted several hours.

The ministry said it had identified Sechin as the main shareholder of the company that owns the yacht, according to The Guardian.

"As part of the implementation of European Union sanctions against Russia and in support of Ukraine, we seized a first yacht," French Minister at the Ministry of Public Action and Accounts Olivier Dussopt wrote in a tweet on Thursday translated by France24.

The U.S. announced a fresh round of sanctions against Russian oligarchs later Thursday.

It enacted "full blocking sanctions" on eight oligarchs and their families and imposed visa restrictions on 19 others as well as 47 of their family members and close associates.

"These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people, and some have elevated their family members into high-ranking positions," the White House said in a statement. "Others sit atop Russia's largest companies and are responsible for providing the resources necessary to support Putin's invasion of Ukraine."

It said those targeted by the sanctions will be cut off from the U.S. financial system, with their assets in the U.S. frozen and their property blocked from use. The individuals named include Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, and billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

Citing data from shipping database Marine Traffic, CNBC has reported that at least four Russian billionaires began moving their superyachts toward Montenegro and the Maldives which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. after the U.S. and other Western countries announced a raft of sanctions against Russian oligarchs and financial institutions.

President Biden has repeatedly pledged to pursue the crimes of Russian oligarchs, including in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

"We're joining with European allies to find and seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets," he said. "We are coming for your ill-begotten gains."

The following day, the U.S. Department of Justice announced "Task Force KleptoCapture," which it says will enforce sanctions and other financial measures imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, seize the assets of people who violate them and leave no stone unturned in investigating criminal acts that support Russia's aggression.

France's announcement comes a day after Forbes reported citing three yacht industry sources that German authorities in the port city of Hamburg had seized Usmanov's superyacht.

The status of the yacht is unclear.

Hamburg officials have since denied the report, with a spokesperson for its economic authority telling The Guardian that "no yachts have been confiscated." Any order to seize properties subject to sanctions would have to come from higher federal customs authorities, they added.

But when the White House announced sanctions against Usmanov and other oligarchs on Thursday, it said the superyacht which it called "one of the world's largest" had been seized by Germany. Officials said property like his yacht and private jet will be blocked from use in the U.S.

The yacht in question, named "Dilbar," measures 512 feet long and is valued at $600 million, both outlets report. It can accommodate as many as 24 guests in a dozen suites, as well as up to 96 crew members, according to luxury yacht comparison site YachtCharterFleet.

Satellite imagery obtained by CBS News shows the superyacht believed to be owned by Putin docked in Kaliningrad, a "highly militarized port in Russian territorial waters" and out of reach of U.S. sanctions.

Marine Traffic data suggests "the Graceful," Putin's alleged yacht, left Germany two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

On Tuesday, the "hacktivist" group Anonymous took credit for changing the yacht's call sign to "FKPTN" and its destination to "hell."

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France seized a yacht linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch - NPR

The joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, reconvenes after insurrectionists interrupted it. Photo: Erin Schaff/UPI/Shutterstock

On the chaotic day of January 6, 2021, it was not really clear what Donald Trump and his allies were trying to accomplish in challenging the confirmation of Joe Bidens election in Congress, even as Trump incited a mob of his followers to assault the Capitol in the middle of those proceedings.

It was well known at the time (mostly because the vice-president released a statement about it that very day) that Mike Pence had rejected big-time pressure from Trump to use his position as the presiding officer of the joint session of Congress to deny Biden his victory and/or declare Trump the winner. But its only become clearer that disrupting Bidens confirmation via Pence wasnt just an outlandish idea quickly laid to rest it was Plan A. Trump hadnt given up on the gambit even as the fateful hour arrived. If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election, the president told his supporters just before they headed to the Capitol.

Weve learned a lot in the intervening year about the days just prior to January 6 and what the various players in the drama were thinking. Not all claims about Trumps strategy are terribly credible. (See former Trump staffer Peter Navarros recent assertions about the Green Bay sweep, a scheme he cooked up with Steve Bannon to delay certification of Bidens win, which makes zero sense because of the Democratic control of Congress.) But we now know that behind the scenes the White House kept lobbying Pence to derail Bidens confirmation up to the last minute, and Pence continued waffling, asking various advisers if there might be a way to succor the Boss without arrogating unconstitutional or illegal powers to himself.

The breadth and persistence of Trumps reliance on Pence for salvation was made most evident by the famous Eastman memo, which first surfaced publicly in a book by Washington Post reporters in September 2021. The final version of this memo, clearly addressed to Pence, was dated January 3. It is indisputable that Trump approved of Eastmans strategy, whose language and (such as it was) logic was echoed by the president on January 6.

Though Eastman laid out multiple scenarios for a Pence coup on January 6, all of them were based on an eccentric constitutional theory holding that the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which sets out procedures for the finalization of states electoral-vote counts, was an unconstitutional abrogation of the vice-presidents all-but-sovereign power under the 12th Amendment to decide which electors to recognize and count. The memo devotes a lot of space to giving Pence specious reasons to reject Biden electors from six states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Most crucially, Eastman offered Pence the choice of recognizing self-designated Trump electors from those states (definitely a reach) or just refusing to recognize any electors. The latter scenario could have produced a Trump victory on grounds that he won a majority of the recognized electors or thrown the election to the House on grounds that the Electoral College had failed to reach a decision.

Eastman also presented a cop-out option, to adjourn the joint session and throw the matter back to the states, which might have become more tempting to Pence as the events of January 6 unfolded:

VP Pence determines that the ongoing election challenges must conclude before ballots can be counted, and adjourns the joint session of Congress, determining that the time restrictions in the Electoral County [sic] Act are contrary to his authority under the 12th Amendment and therefore void. Taking the cue, state legislatures convene, order a comprehensive audit/investigation of the election returns in their states, and then determine whether the slate of electors initially certified is valid, or whether the alternative slate of electors should be certified by the legislature.

This scenario is clearly what Trump had in mind when he said this to the mob on January 6:

States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.

And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: Mike, that doesnt take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.

So we have it straight from the horses mouth that on January 6 he was still urging Pence to do nothing and send it back to the states before Bidens victory could be confirmed, sweeping aside the timetable set out in the Electoral Count Act. As Eastman cynically noted, had Pence just gaveled the session adjourned, it might have left no immediate recourse for Congress:

The main thing here is that VP Pence should exercise his 12th Amendment authority without asking for permission either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court.

It seems Pence may have still been wavering immediately before the joint session because his team consulted revered conservative legal authority Michael Luttig (for whom Eastman had once clerked) on the morning of January 6. Fortunately, Luttig rejected Eastmans take on the 12th Amendment powers of the veep, and his views were incorporated into Pences statement just before the session began.

Patriotic legal thinkers and policy-makers who want to keep this nightmare scenario from recurring might want to spend some time burying Eastmans veep as God construction of the 12th Amendment lest it rise again in 2024 or beyond. Legal scholar Matthew Seligman poured multiple shovels of dirt on it in an October 21, 2021, academic treatise debunking the whole outrageously dangerous notion. As he told me in an email: The absurd theory that the Vice President has this monarchical power to decide the election has to be so widely and decisively rejected that no one within earshot of the Oval Office would dare utter it in the future.The final moment of truth shouldnot come down to the conscience of a person who was told he had the power to install himself in office.

But in the heat of the moment on January 6, after Team Trumps many legal and political efforts to forestall his defeat had failed, swaying the famously sycophantic Mike Pence remained the only real play. They had run out of time to do anything else. And while this is speculative, it strikes me as likely that one of Trumps chief motives in sending the mob toward the Capitol on January 6 was to put a final burst of pressure on Pence to do the right thing, perhaps by creating so much chaos in the electoral-vote-count process that an adjournment might seem reasonable.

In the end, Pence would not go along, leaving to the judgment of history whether he should be regarded as a great hero for rejecting pressure to execute an election coup or more of an ambiguous figure thanks to his previous loyalty to a scofflaw president. There was certainly every reason for Trump to hope against hope that Pence could at least be counted on to throw some sand in the gears of the process leading to Joe Bidens inauguration on January 20. And that might be enough to constitute a strategy for a seat-of-the-pants presidency built on Donald Trumps narcissism and the willingness of subordinates to tell him what he wanted to hear at any cost.

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Trumps January 6 Strategy Was All About Mike Pence

In the Oval Office last week, the day before the vote, Mr. Trump pushed Mr. Pence in a string of encounters, including one meeting that lasted at least an hour. John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar at Chapman University, was in the office and argued to Mr. Pence that he did have the power to act.

The next morning, hours before the vote, Richard Cullen, Mr. Pences personal lawyer, called J. Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge revered by conservatives and for whom Mr. Eastman had once clerked. Mr. Luttig agreed to quickly write up his opinion that the vice president had no power to change the outcome, then posted it on Twitter.

Within minutes, Mr. Pences staff incorporated Mr. Luttigs reasoning, citing him by name, into a letter announcing the vice presidents decision not to try to block electors. Reached on Tuesday, Mr. Luttig said it was the highest honor of my life to play a role in preserving the Constitution.

After the angry call cursing Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump riled up supporters at the rally against his own vice president, saying, I hope he doesnt listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that hes listening to.

He set Mike Pence up that day by putting it on his shoulders, said Ryan Streeter, an adviser to Mr. Pence when he was the governor of Indiana. Thats a pretty unprecedented thing in American politics. For a president to throw his own vice president under the bus like that and to encourage his supporters to take him on is something just unconscionable in my mind.

Mr. Pence was already in his motorcade to the Capitol by that point. When the mob burst into the building, Secret Service agents evacuated him and his wife and children, first to his office off the floor and later to the basement. His agents urged him to leave the building, but he refused to abandon the Capitol. From there, he spoke with congressional leaders, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but not the president.

A Republican senator later said he had never seen Mr. Pence so angry, feeling betrayed by a president for whom he had done so much. To Mr. Trump, one adviser said, the vice president had entered Sessions territory, referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who was tortured by the president before being fired. (A vice president cannot be dismissed by a president.)

Read more:
Mike Pence Reached His Limit With Trump. It Wasnt Pretty ...