#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40017240

A key summit of Nato leaders wrapped up on Thursday after two days of talks. Vladimir Putin reacted to Tuesday’s news that Finland and Sweden would be invited to join Nato after member Turkey withdrew its opposition to the Nordic countries joining the alliance.

“We don’t have problems with Finland and Sweden that, unfortunately, we have with Ukraine,” President Putin said, claiming Russia took no issue with the two countries joining the alliance which Moscow sees as expansionist and aggressive. The Russian president did, however, say that his country would respond to Nato deployments in the countries, without specifying what any response would look like. “Now, if Nato troops and infrastructure are deployed, we will be compelled to respond.”

In Madrid, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that while she expected Russian retaliation for the admission of Finland and Sweden, she did not think military action was likely, instead of anticipating cyber and hybrid attacks.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said the country’s invitation to join Nato would be “good for the security in Sweden and for the Swedish people” but added that she wanted the country to be a “security provider” for Nato in return.

Leaders gathered for closed talks before speaking to the press in the afternoon.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the war in Ukraine had made Nato stronger and more united and had seen “democracies of the world stand up and oppose his aggression and defend the rules-based order.”

President Biden went on to describe Russia as posing and “direct threat” to Europe and called out what he called the “systemic challenges that China poses to a rules-based world order.”

The United States is changing its force posture in Europe based on threats coming from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and other directions. Biden confirmed the U.S. will raise the number of destroyers in Spain to six from four and said Washington will send two additional F-35 squadrons to Britain and establish the 5th Army headquarters in Poland.

Nato’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Finland and Sweden would sign an accession protocol to join Nato on Tuesday but said the political decision on membership had been made. He added that the alliance would protect the two countries during their accession process in “all eventualities.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron said the move sent a “very clear strategic message to Russia” while Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke of the importance of investment in defence spending and said the UK’s defence budget would reach 2.5% by end of the decade.

Published : July 01, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40017238

Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Snake Island was free, but said there was no guarantee “that the enemy will not come back” to the strategic Black Sea outpost.

Ukraine’s control of Snake Island, or Zmiinyi island, could loosen the grip of Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian ports.

Snake Island captured world attention after Russia seized it on the war’s first day. A Ukrainian guard, ordered by Russia’s flagship cruiser Moskva to surrender, radioed back “Russian warship: go fuck yourself.”

Russia said it had decided to withdraw from the outcrop off Ukraine’s southwestern coast as a “gesture of goodwill” to show Moscow was not obstructing U.N. attempts to open a humanitarian corridor allowing grains to be shipped from Ukraine.

Zelenskiy described the situation in Donbas as ‘the harshest.’ Russia has focused its firepower on capturing cities and towns in the Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and Luhansk provinces on the border with Russia.

Published : July 01, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40017204

Twenty goats from Green Goats farm in Rhinebeck, New York journeyed to Riverside Park in Manhattan to munch on invasive weeds on Wednesday.

It’s an environmentally friendly win-win for invasive species removal at Riverside Park – the goats get to feast on overgrown brush and the Riverside Park Conservancy doesn’t dump harsh chemicals on weeds and poison ivy. The goats also do the hard work for humans.

“Have you seen this slope over here? I am told it is the steepest river bank east of the Palisades,” said John Herrold, interim president & CEO of the Riverside Park Conservancy. “Imagine trying to keep your balance while you’re pulling out invasive plants so that you can plant native species that will better hold the soil and provide better habitat for the wildlife.”

Goats are an ingenious approach to weed removal, harnessing the goat’s natural hunger for leafy greens as the primary mechanism behind the task, which traditionally involves pollutant chemicals. They even eat species dangerous to humans, like poison ivy.

“They love this stuff,” said Herrold. “They eat poison ivy, they eat the porcelain berry, they eat the multiflora rose and that’s what we’re trying to get rid of.”

Of the 20 goats, four will call Riverside Park its home through the end of summer, eating their way through two acres of the park.

Published : June 30, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40017202

A French court on Wednesday handed down guilty verdicts for all 20 men tried for the 2015 killing of 130 people in a coordinated gun-and-bomb rampage by Islamist gunmen in Paris.

The main suspect Salah Abdeslam was found guilty on terrorism and murder charges, judge Jean-Louis Peries said.

The 32-year-old Belgium-born Frenchman, the only surviving member of the group that carried out the attacks on Nov. 13, 2015, was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of early release, a sentence handed out only four times previously in France.

“I am convinced that this most severe sentence will satisfy the expectations of a certain number of our members, a certain number of victims,” said Philippe Duperron, the father of a victim of the attack at the Bataclan concert hall.

The Bataclan hall, six bars and restaurants and the perimeter of the Stade de France sports stadium were targeted in hours-long attacks across Paris that shook France and left deep scars on the country’s psyche.

A defiant Abdeslam had said at the start of the trial that he was a “soldier” of the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

He later apologized to the victims and said during the trial that he had chosen at the last minute not to detonate his explosive vest. But, based on the investigations and hearings, the court ruled otherwise.

“The court considered that the explosive vest malfunctioned,” Peries said. Abdeslam is “guilty of being a member of a terrorist network,” he also said.

“All defendants are found guilty on all counts,” the judge added, with the exception of terrorism charges for one of the less prominent accused.

It has been a trial like no others, not only for its exceptional length of 10 months but also for the time it devoted to allowing victims to testify in detail about their ordeal and their struggles in overcoming it, while families of those killed spoke of how hard it was to move on.

Thirteen other people, ten of whom are also in custody, were also in the courtroom during the months-long hearings. During that time, some took responsibility for their role in the attacks and apologized to the victims. Others have not said a word.

The court found them guilty of crimes ranging from helping provide the attackers with weapons or cars to planning to take part in the attack. Six more, tried in absentia and believed to be dead, were also found guilty.

Arthur Denouveaux, a survivor of the Bataclan attack, said although he was content with the trial’s outcome, it’s only the first step in the victims’ healing process.

“It was justice for sure, but justice can’t do anything, justice is just, you know, applying the rule of law and it’s not healing everything. We’ll see that, it will help us heal, but we still have work to do obviously,” he said.

French politicians on Wednesday stated their support for the life sentencing of Salah Abdeslam. 

Former French Socialist President Francois Hollande, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and far-right leader Marine Le Pen also expressed their sympathy for the families of the victims.

“Justice has been served,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said.

Published : June 30, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40017200

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would respond in kind if Nato deployed troops and infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after they join the U.S.-led military alliance.

“With Sweden and Finland, we don’t have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join Nato, go ahead,” Putin said after talks with regional leaders in the ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan.

“But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created.”

He said it was inevitable that Moscow’s relations with Helsinki and Stockholm would sour over their Nato membership.

“Everything was fine between us, but now there might be some tensions, there certainly will,” he said. “It’s inevitable if there is a threat to us.”

Putin made his comment a day after Nato member Turkey lifted its veto over the bid by Finland and Sweden to join the alliance after the three nations agreed to protect each other’s security.

The move means Helsinki and Stockholm can proceed with their application to join Nato, marking the biggest shift in European security in decades.

Putin added that the objectives of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine remained unchanged, that its goal was to “liberate” eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and create conditions to ensure Russia’s security.

He said Russian troops had advanced in Ukraine and that the military intervention was going as planned. There was no need, he said, to set a deadline for an end to the campaign.

Published : June 30, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40017198

Ukraine on Wednesday carried out its biggest exchange of prisoners of war since Russia invaded, securing the release of 144 of its soldiers, including 95 who defended Mariupol’s steelworkers, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said.

The majority of the Ukrainians were badly wounded, suffering from gunshot and shrapnel wounds, blast traumas, burns, fractured bones and amputated limbs, the agency known by the acronym GUR said in a statement on Telegram.

There was no comment from Russia about a prisoner swap.

But the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine said it had secured the release of 144 soldiers, including its fighters and those of the Russian army.

Hundreds more Ukrainians are still thought to be held by Russia and its pro-Moscow separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine, but their precise whereabouts are not known.

The prisoner swap included the handover of 43 members of the Azov regiment, a National Guard unit that Russia says is a dangerous far-right battalion, a promising sign for Ukrainians hoping for the release of other fighters from the unit.

Published : June 30, 2022

By : Reuters