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Russia’s Defense Ministry promised Friday to ramp up missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital in response to Ukraine’s alleged aggression on Russian territory, an ominous warning that followed Moscow’s stinging symbolic loss of its navy’s flagship in the Black Sea.
The threat of intensified attacks on Kyiv came after Russian authorities accused Ukraine of wounding seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with airstrikes on Bryansk, a region bordering Ukraine. Authorities in another border region of Russia also reported Ukrainian shelling Thursday.
“The number and the scale of missile attacks on objects in Kyiv will be ramped up in response to the Kyiv nationalist regime committing any terrorist attacks or diversions on the Russian territory,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
A jury on Thursday convicted the Jan. 6 defendant Dustin Thompson on all six charges he faced — including felony obstruction of Congress — rejecting his effort to blame Donald Trump’s campaign of disinformation about the election results for his conduct.
The verdict, the third conviction in three jury trials for the Justice Department, was a significant validation of prosecutors’ effort to separate the actions of individual participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot from the attempts by Trump to subvert the election results.
After the verdict, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton tore into Trump for his efforts to dupe supporters into believing the election was stolen.
CNN has obtained text messages of separate conversations that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had with Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas after the 2020 presidential election and through early January 2021.
The messages reveal how two GOP allies of then-President Donald Trump lobbied and encouraged the White House in its efforts to overturn the election. The text messages were obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN.
Note: CNN has removed personal information from the texts and adjusted profanity. Errors in spelling and grammar reflect the messages as reviewed by CNN.
Associated Press, ,
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-business-europe-moscow-f5b814ca711f0679cf362016cd46cd47
Unbroken by a Russian blockade and relentless bombardment, the key port of Mariupol is still holding out, a symbol of staunch Ukrainian resistance that has thwarted the Kremlin’s invasion plans.
More than six weeks after the Russian siege began, Ukrainian troops are continuing to fight the vastly superior Russian forces in ferocious battles amid the ruins of what once was a bustling city on the Sea of Azov coast.
The city’s mayor says that an estimated 120,000 people remain in the city, of Mariupol’s pre-war population of about 450,000.
The Ukrainians’ fight against all odds has scuttled Moscow’s designs, tying up significant Russian forces and delaying the start of a planned Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland, Donbas. The Kremlin hopes that an attack in the east could reverse the battlefield fortunes for Russia after a humiliating failure of its attempt to quickly storm the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
CNN, – April 15, 2022
Ukraine inflicted a stunning defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s feeble attempt to capture the capital Kyiv in the war’s opening round. Now, Russia is preparing to launch a revised second phase in the east, shaping up to be the biggest tank battle in Europe since the Second World War: The Battle of Donbas.
After running into fierce resistance north and west of Kyiv — and suffering egregious casualties — Russia’s tank-heavy force gave up its hopes of capturing the city and at the end of March began pulling its troops away.
Putin’s primary target, however, appears less to be the capture of geographic territory in the Donbas than it does the destruction of Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) defending in the east. Militarily, that looks like a far more attainable objective than the initial target of Kyiv.
Outside of the urban capital, Ukrainian defenders won’t have the protection of buildings to shield them from Russian observation, and Putin’s troops will be able to use their mobility to their advantage.
The Justice Department is improving language access to its programs to help people with limited English proficiency better report crimes. The Interior Department is providing technical assistance to Native American tribes to help them apply for grants. The Energy Department is helping low-income households access programs to weatherize their homes and save energy.
Those efforts are among hundreds of strategies and commitments the Biden administration released Thursday. They are the product of an executive order that President Joe Biden signed hours after taking office with the goal of advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities across the federal government.
When Rep. Fred Upton announced his retirement from Congress, colleagues in both parties lined up to lament. The one who misses him the most, in the end, may be Kevin McCarthy.
The Michigan Republican’s departure after 18 terms is the latest in a series of blows to the House’s small but mighty group of GOP dealmakers, a loose bloc of lawmakers who — despite a party shifting rightward — still favor compromise over obstinacy. They will prove critical to Republican leaders’ ability to run the chamber next year should they win back the House as expected, regardless of the margin of that victory.
April 15, 2022 – 2:00 pm (ET)
