Macron’s speech was ‘clumsy’ imitation of Churchill – Russian envoy
The French president failed in his apparent attempt to replicate the British leader’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, Mikhail Ulyanov has said
French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent address in which he accused Russia of posing a threat to Europe was a poor imitation of Winston Churchill’s iconic 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, senior Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov has said.
On Wednesday, Macron called for a substantial increase in EU defense spending and other initiatives to counter what he described as a persistent threat from Russia.
Ulyanov, Moscow’s representative at international organizations based in Vienna, likened Macron’s rhetoric to a “clumsy replica” of Churchill’s seminal speech delivered in Fulton, Missouri, widely regarded as a turning point in the Cold War.
“The European support group for Ukraine is making a somewhat sad impression right now, isn’t it?” Ulyanov wrote in a post on X on Friday.
The EU this week announced plans to spend some $840 billion on rearmament of member states, which Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has touted as a way to beat Russia in an arms race. Additionally, Brussels has vowed to sustain military support for Ukraine, even as US President Donald Trump’s administration seeks a swift resolution to Kiev’s conflict with Russia.
Moscow interprets Macron’s address as a commitment to prolonged animosity towards Russia, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who described the remarks as “extremely confrontational” and misrepresenting the causes of the ongoing tensions between Russia and the West. Moscow has called the expansion of NATO in Europe since the 1990s a serious national security risk.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin did not directly respond to Macron’s speech, he alluded to Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia on Thursday, remarking that “some people still can’t get over it.”
Moscow targeted by dozens of Ukrainian drones – mayor
At least one person has been killed and three injured as 69 UAVs heading toward the capital have been destroyed by air defenses
Moscow is repelling a major multi-wave Ukrainian drone attack, with at least one residential high-rise in the capital damaged by falling debris, according to Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. Outside Moscow, at least one person has been killed, and multiple buildings have been damaged, Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyev has confirmed.
At least 69 incoming UAVs were shot down early Tuesday by air defenses southeast of the capital, Sobyanin wrote in a series of Telegram posts. According to the mayor, most of the drones were intercepted outside Moscow, and only one residential building in the city sustained damage, with no injuries reported.
“At the moment, the roof of a house in Moscow is slightly damaged by falling debris from a downed UAV on Domodedovo Street,” Sobyanin wrote, adding that emergency services were working at the scene.
However, at least three more residential buildings were damaged in Domodedovo, Vidnoye, and Ramenskoye, according to Vorobyev. He confirmed that one person was killed and three others were injured in those incidents.
“The debris of the drone hit an apartment building in Ramenskoye, damaging at least seven apartments on the 19th to 22nd floors,” Vorobyev said, confirming previous eyewitness accounts and videos circulating on social media.
Moscow's Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky international airports have announced suspension of their operations amid the drone raid.
Kiev’s last attempted major drone attack on the Russian capital took place in November when as many as 32 UAVs were shot down or intercepted over several Russian regions while heading toward Moscow.
Meanwhile, the Russian regions of Belgorod, Kursk, Kherson, and Bryansk, as well as Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic –all of which border Ukraine –have suffered the most from Kiev’s shelling and drone attacks. On Monday, at least four people were killed in a missile strike on a shopping center in Kursk, while another three civilians died in an attack on a market in Kherson Region the day before.
Kiev is increasingly resorting to terrorist tactics, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, warned last month. Ukraine will attempt to carry out strikes deep into Russian territory using drones and Western-supplied weapons, with the goal of “inflicting maximum economic damage and intimidating the population,” the top security official said.
MANILA, Philippines — Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested
by the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Tuesday as he returned from
Hong Kong as the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest
warrant for him for his crimes against humanity case.
Malacañang Palace confirmed the ICC issuance of the arrest warrant.
The PNP arrested the former president at the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport (Naia) on his return from Hong Kong where he,
accompanied by his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, had a sortie
among overseas Filipino workers.
According to former Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, who
accompanied the former president, Duterte was taken to Camp Crame in
Quezon City.
Disclaimer: Comments do not represent the views
of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments which are
inconsistent with our editorial standards. FULL DISCLAIMER
MANILA, Philippines — Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested
by the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Tuesday as he returned from
Hong Kong as the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest
warrant for him for his crimes against humanity case.
Malacañang Palace confirmed the ICC issuance of the arrest warrant.
The PNP arrested the former president at the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport (Naia) on his return from Hong Kong where he,
accompanied by his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, had a sortie
among overseas Filipino workers.
According to former Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, who
accompanied the former president, Duterte was taken to Camp Crame in
Quezon City.
Disclaimer: Comments do not represent the views
of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments which are
inconsistent with our editorial standards. FULL DISCLAIMER
MANILA, Philippines — Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested
by the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Tuesday as he returned from
Hong Kong as the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest
warrant for him for his crimes against humanity case.
Malacañang Palace confirmed the ICC issuance of the arrest warrant.
The PNP arrested the former president at the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport (Naia) on his return from Hong Kong where he,
accompanied by his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, had a sortie
among overseas Filipino workers.
According to former Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, who
accompanied the former president, Duterte was taken to Camp Crame in
Quezon City.
Disclaimer: Comments do not represent the views
of INQUIRER.net. We reserve the right to exclude comments which are
inconsistent with our editorial standards. FULL DISCLAIMER
One way you can recognize a rotten Ancien Regime desperately running out of road is by how boorish and transparent its methods of repression get.
By that standard, Romania and with it the EU must be on the verge of revolution. Because it is really hard to imagine a cruder set of dirty tricks than what has been deployed there to suppress the most likely winner of the next presidential election, Calin Georgescu.
By now, the hounding of Georgescu by the Romanian establishment (and that of the EU) is quite a saga. A short recap will do: Last December, Georgescu, an insurgent nationalist-sovereignist surprise candidate, won the first round of Romania’s presidential elections. Instead of holding the second round, as foreseen by law, the Romanian establishment resorted to crass lawfare: Bucharest’s constitutional court cancelled the run-off, which Georgescu had very good chances of winning. Or rather, because Georgescu had very good chances of winning.
The pretext the court used was ludicrous then – guess what? “Russian interference,” again – and by now even Western mainstream media have had to acknowledge that the so-called “evidence,” a file cobbled together by the Romanian security services, is a bad joke. Even the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, stately stalwart of German Russophobia, has long admitted that the claim of Russian meddling was a “myth” (read: lie): “The governing class in Bucharest has made a show of the Russian bogeyman to distract from the failure of its little power games – and to have a pretext for annulling elections that did not suit it.”
Worse (yes, they can do even worse in EU-Romania), Georgescu’s successful social media campaign, which was used as evidence against Georgescu was, in reality, financed by his political opponents. Their plan was to promote him into the second round where they would then be able to beat him. When he proved unpredictably popular and upset that scheme, they cancelled the election.
Unsurprisingly, many Romanians saw through this charade and rallied even more behind the suppressed candidate. Hence, Georgescu was, if anything, even more likely to win the replacement elections scheduled for May, as polls clearly indicated: leading with over 41% over his closest opponent, who had less than 19%.
That was too much to bear, of course, for Romania’s long-suffering and deeply corrupt establishment. With those poll figures just out, as it happened, the main election authority has now banned Georgescu, again. The underlying principle is simple: You look like you are going to win fair and square. But rule number one of EU democracy club is: we always win. Out you go.
Georgescu, it is true, can still appeal. But guess where: to that same constitutional court that was used to kneecap him when he was winning the first time. Fat chance he’ll have a fair hearing.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Georgescu has been widely characterized as far-right. He certainly is a nationalist and definitely does not belong to my club, the Left. But all of the above is irrelevant. Strictly irrelevant. He has a right to stand for elections. If his opponents dislike his politics, they have to beat him at the ballot box, not through lawfare and by clearly instrumentalized charges.
These charges include dubious associations, playing fast and loose with recent Romanian history, and being less than transparent about money. And so what? Big deal: Even if every single accusation should turn out to be true, the fact is that if the same standards were applied everywhere and to everyone in Romania and the EU or its favorite sham “democracy”, Zelensky’s Ukraine, then broad swathes of the incumbent “elites” would fall.
Italy, literally, has a government led by a neo-fascist; Ukraine is shot through with not even neo-fascism but the good old sturdy World War Two variant. And don’t get me started on the AfD in Germany and the National Rally in France, neither of which – in spite all the already deeply undemocratic “firewalling” they face – anyone would dare to simply kick out of elections. We could enumerate more examples, but the gist should be clear: even if Georgescu can be characterized as “far right,” the EU, to which Romania belongs, has long accommodated this type of ideology.
The real reason why Georgescu has been eliminated, for now, is, of course, something else, or rather two things: First, he is a populist (that’s praise in my lexicon, by the way) challenger to the elite in both his own country and the EU. Secondly, he has dared question the wisdom of turning Romania into a massive NATO base and thus a giant target. Everything else is pretext. Don’t fall for it.
Georgescu’s supporters are demonstrating and resisting. They are right. Those currently running the US have also come out on his side repeatedly. J.D. Vance warned the Europeans not to overdo it in Romania, or elsewhere. Elon Musk has called the new Romanian attack on the elections “crazy.” About this one, he, too, is right, even if Politico is hysterical about it.
Yet, in a way, the fact that the Romanian authorities, certainly with EU backing, have gone so far is a bad sign: it seems that with the US-Europe relationship on the rocks anyhow, the Europeans are now willing to thumb their noses at what their old overlords in Washington tell them, at least, when it’s about cancelling elections, suppressing democracy or, of course, continuing the moronic and bloody Western proxy war via Ukraine against Russia. Way to go, Europe: You are discovering your ability to rebel against the US, at very long last, only to be even worse.
Georgescu is right: This is not “merely” a Romanian affair, but yet another trend-setting event for all of EU-Europe. After the massive manipulations used in France to build bizarre governments to shut out both the populist right and left and not reflect the vote, the brazen “firewalling” (against the AfD) and probably outright falsifications (against the BSW of Sarah Wagenknecht) in Germany, now we have reached the stage of direct, open election suppression.
Romania is likely to be a harbinger of the future of the EU. No offense, but what an irony. The only hope is that Europe’s future is, actually, not the same as that of the EU. Indeed, Europe may only have a future if the EU will not.
