"The threat is real because these people are sitting in power. They are petrified that if I win the elections they will be in trouble, or held accountable."He blames Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, and Major General Faisal Naseer, a senior intelligence official, of plotting his assassination at a rally last November. Khan, who was removed from office in a no-confidence motion seven months earlier, was hit in the leg and hospitalized. Sharif denies any involvement in the alleged murder attempt, and has accused Khan of spreading "false and cheap conspiracies." He has also denied colluding with the US to have Khan removed from power.
"The sabotage left Berlin without an option to "choose which gas is better and cheaper and which is ecologically better. Before, it was a decision under political pressure, whether to use gas or not. But now there is no infrastructure to use gas, and this is the biggest impact."Germany used to meet up to 40% of its demand with gas from Russia. Last year, Berlin managed to reduce its reliance on the fuel from the sanctioned country by replacing it with imports of LNG from the US, "which is by far more expensive and worse from an ecological point of view," according to Hunko.
"Russia's output level and its military-industrial complex are developing at a very fast pace, which was unexpected by many. While multiple Western countries will provide Ukraine with munitions, the Russian production sector on its own will produce three times more ammunition for the same period of time."
A new ballistic missile with a destructive power 2000 times greater than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is being tested near the Ural Mountains before it enters service with the Russian Strategic Forces. Armed with 10 independently steerable warheads - and numerous decoys - a single RS-28 'Sarmat' intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) can end all human life in an area as large as Texas. According to one US writer, the 100 ton behemoth makes America's 39 ton Minuteman look like a "rocket propelled toothpick".That said, there are a variety of other weapons, both officially acknowledged, and not, that he, and his colleagues, may have in mind:
The western media, for once, is spot on. The 'Sarmat' is the son of the SS-18 'Satan' - the NATO codename for the nearly 50 year old RS-36, which is currently the most powerful missile in existence. The Sarmat will not only have stealth features but can travel vast distances - exceeding 11,000 km - so that it can be launched over either the North or South Poles, creating huge certainty in the enemy's mind. These features make it an extremely useful weapon of strategic deterrence.
"During 2022, Silvergate's deposit base grew dramatically, almost doubling its assets to $210 billion. But the bank did not have either the administrative capacity or market demand to lend out all of the money, as banks normally do.
So, it invested the excess deposits in Treasury bonds and mortgage investment products. But the bond purchases became a problem as the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates to address inflation."
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas on Thursday spoke against any weakening of sanctions against Russia under a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, and called for the G7 to tighten its oil cap to squeeze Russia's revenue more.See also:
"We know that Russia is earning less from the oil... we see the economic sanctions, including the oil price cap, are having an effect on the Russian economy and their ability to fuel the war machine," she said on arriving to talks among the EU's 27 national leaders in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
Maybe Russia is making a bit less from selling oil, but citizens of the West are paying up to 3 times the cost for gas, and their governments have been threatening them with rolling blackouts all winter. Meanwhile the West has hypocritically and humiliatingly resorted to buying Russian energy from intermediaries.
"We should continue with that," she said, adding that Estonia would agree to raise the cap again should oil prices rise. She spoke against any weakening of sanctions against Russia as sought by Moscow in the grain deal talks.
"We shouldn't weaken the sanctions," she said, adding Russia could still use 18 ports for its agri-food exports to third countries and that only a dozen-or-so of Russian banks were targeted by Western sanctions.
Comment: The power to dictate eliminates the power to choose.