RT News - December 8th 2022

Russian businessman Viktor Bout is handed over by Washington after more than a decade in American custody in exchange for a US basketball star jailed in Russia.

An 'epoch-making' milestone for the multi-polar world, as the Saudi Crown Prince hosts China's President for a key summit, amid waning US influence in the Middle East. RT reports from Riyadh.

Time magazine names Ukraine's President Zelensky as its person of the year, despite previously warning that Kiev's far right Azov movement has inspired a global ideology that has led to more terrorist attacks in the US than Islamic extremism.

Pakistan is set to buy Russian oil at discounted prices, according to Musadik Masood Malik, Pakistan's Minister for Petroleum. Plans for two gas pipelines are also being finalised.
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via RT website 8 Dec, 2022 16:48

----- Merkel’s ‘confession’ may be grounds for tribunal – Moscow

The former chancellor gave evidence that the West had orchestrated hostilities in Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry says

A confession by former German chancellor Angela Merkel about the Minsk peace agreements could be used as evidence in a tribunal involving Western politicians responsible for provoking the Ukraine conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned on Thursday.

The deal, brokered by Germany and France, was supposed to be a roadmap for peace in the war-torn country. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that his country's current military offensive was prompted by the failure to implement the terms of the accords.

The former German leader admitted in an interview with Die Zeit on Wednesday that the actual purpose of the Minsk agreements was to give Ukraine time to prepare for a military confrontation with Russia.

“They talk a lot about legal assessments of what is happening around Ukraine, certain tribunals and so on in all sorts of ways,” Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a media briefing on Thursday. “But this is a specific reason for a tribunal.”

She claimed that Merkel’s comments were nothing short of the testimony of a person who had openly admitted that everything done between 2014 and 2015 was meant to “distract the international community from real issues, play for time, pump up the Kiev regime with weapons, and escalate the issue into a large-scale conflict,” Zakharova added.

She said Merkel’s statements “horrifyingly” reveal that the West uses “forgery as a method of action,” and resorts to “machinations, manipulation and all kinds of distortions of truth, law and rights imaginable.”

The spokeswoman claimed that the West had known well in 2015, when it spent hours negotiating the second part of the Minsk accords, that it would never even attempt to fulfill any part of the agreements and would instead pump weapons into Kiev.

“They did not feel sorry for anyone: women, children, the civilian population of Donbass or the whole of Ukraine. They needed a conflict and they were ready for it back then, in 2015,” Zakharova said.

Earlier this month, a number of Western officials called for the creation of a special UN-backed court to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Russia during its ongoing military campaign in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has said the West has no legal or moral right to set up any courts to investigate or prosecute Russia over the conflict, which Moscow claims was ultimately provoked by the US and its allies.
https://www.rt.com/russia/567916-merkel-ukraine-confession-tribunal/
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via RT website 8 Dec, 2022 09:54

-----Russia repels drone attack on key Crimean port

Sevastopol's governor Mikhail Razvozhaev has confirmed an attempted strike on the strategic city that hosts the Russian Navy

The Russian Navy foiled a drone attack in Crimea’s Sevastopol on Thursday morning, the city’s governor Mikhail Razvozhaev has revealed. The strategic port-city has seen a number of similar attacks in recent months, with Russian authorities pointing the finger at Ukraine.

Located on the southwest coast of Crimea, which joined Russia following a referendum in 2014, Sevastopol is considered to hold strategic significance, as has had a special status of federal city granted to it by Russian authorities.

This means that, despite being a city rather than a region, it is headed by a governor. The only two other cities with this status in Russia are Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

On Thursday, Razvozhaev posted a short message on his Telegram channel: “In the morning, a Russian Black Sea Fleet ship on duty shot down a UAV over the sea.”

He praised the military personnel, reporting that they'd handled the threat professionally, “as ever.”

The governor’s comments came after local residents started describing on social media a loud bang they'd heard over the city.

According to local media, a similar incident had occurred in Sevastopol in the early hours of Tuesday.

In October, some nine aerial and seven naval drones attempted to strike vessels of the Russian Black Sea Fleet docked at Sevastopol Naval Base. The Russian Defense Ministry said at the time that the attack had been repelled, with one vessel suffering minor damage as a result.

Russian officials say that the data retrieved from the October drone attack indicated that the UAVs and naval drones had been launched from the Ukrainian Black Sea coast, not far from the port city of Odessa, and had been moving along the UN-brokered Black Sea grain corridor.

In July, a UAV, supposedly of Ukrainian origin, attacked the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.

Ukraine considers Crimea an inalienable part of its territory, temporarily occupied by Russia. President Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly vowed to retake the peninsula.

In late April, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained that the military offensive against Ukraine launched by Russia a few months earlier had sought, among other goals, to “guarantee the peace and security” of Crimea.

In May, the Russian head of state reiterated that Ukraine had “openly been preparing for… an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea.” He claimed that Russia’s military campaign was pre-emptive in its nature.
https://www.rt.com/russia/567875-russian-navy-drone-sevastopol/
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