Latest news, headlines and top stories you need to know RIGHT NOW about Russia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
With relations worsening between Hungary and the Zelensky Regime in Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó issued an official statement on Friday denouncing Kiev’s mistreatment of ethnic minorities, in particular the Hungarians living in the Transcarpathia region occupied by the Soviets after World War II and forcibly annexed to Ukraine.
What is being called one of the deadliest earthquakes of this century left over 25,000 dead so far and 80,000 injured, mostly in Turkey. 870,000 people are in urgent need of food. The rescue teams are still working around the clock and finding survivors. Syria is being overlooked.
Internal political struggles within the pro-Western government in Chișinău have led to the resignation of Prime Minister Natalia Gavriliță. President Maia Sandu quickly named her National Security Advisor Dorin Recean as Prime Minister designate. He will have fifteen days to form a new government.
According to Ukrainian officials, Friday saw more of the eerily consistent nationwide missile strikes that Russia has been conducting across the country for months. However, there was a noticeable uptick in the number of strikes Russia conducted on Friday with Moscow firing up to 35 S-300 missiles at Zaporizhzhia and the Kharkiv region. The escalated strikes caused additional power outages overnight across the country.
On Thursday, Matt Gaetz will introduce a resolution in the House that calls for the Biden administration to cease U.S. military and financial assistance to Ukraine. The measure also calls for a peace agreement as the war will enter its second year on February 24.
Hersh’s reporting shows that Biden and his advisors secretly planned this act of aggression against Russia long before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. “The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022,” he wrote. The motive for the attack was that “As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.”