Metabiota is a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons. Emails and defense contract data suggest that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia.
Although Metabiota is ostensibly a medical data company, its vice president emailed Hunter in 2014 describing how they could 'assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia' - an unusual goal for a biotech firm.
Former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis, who has reviewed emails on Hunter's laptop, remarked that"the offer to help assert Ukraine's independence was odd for a biotech executive. It raises the question, what is the real purpose of this venture? It's very odd."Faddis said the attempt to get Metabiota to form a partnership with Burisma was a perplexing and worrying revelation."His father was the Vice President of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a suspect Ukrainian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a company working on bioweapons research?
"It's an obvious Russian propaganda attempt to take advantage of this. But it doesn't change the fact that there does seem to be something that needs to be explored here.
"The DoD position is that there's nothing nefarious here, this is pandemic early warning research. We don't know for sure that's all that was going on.
"But the question still remains: why is Hunter Biden in the middle of all this? Why is the disgraced son of the vice president at the heart of this - the guy with no discernible skills and a cocaine habit."
The European Union and the United States have struck a deal under which the bloc will receive at least 15 billion cubic meters of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) this year in an effort to wean itself off Russian gas imports.The West makes its next move against Russia regarding gold transactions:
The announcement came as U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the formation of a task force on March 25 to reduce Europe's reliance on Russian fossil fuels following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Biden said:"Today we've agreed on a joint game plan for that goal, while accelerating our progress towards a secure, clean energy future. This initiative focuses on two core issues, one helping Europe to reduce its dependency on Russian gas as quickly as possible and secondly, reducing Europe's demand for gas overall."Ursula von der Leyen added:"We aim to reduce this dependency on Russian fossil fuels and get rid of it. This can only be achieved through...additional gas supplies, including LNG deliveries. Therefore, the U.S. commitment to provide the European Union with additional at least 15 billion cubic meters of LNG this year is a big step in this direction because this will replace the LNG supply we currently receive from Russia."Under the deal, both sides will aim to ramp up deliveries to 50 billion cubic meters per year by 2030. The EU consumed an estimated 378 billion cubic meters of gas in 2020, 40 percent of which was supplied by Russia.
G7 leaders have announced they are restricting the Russian Central Bank's use of gold in transactions. Previously, sanctions against Russian elites, the country's Central Bank and President Vladimir Putin did not affect Russia's gold stockpile, which Mr Putin has been accumulating for several years.
Russia holds roughly 130 billion dollars (£99bn) in gold reserves, and the Bank of Russia announced on February 28 that it would resume the purchase of gold on the domestic precious metals market.
White House officials said on Thursday the move will further blunt Russia's ability to use its international reserves to prop up Russia's economy and fund its war against Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration announced more sanctions targeting 48 state-owned defence companies, 328 members of the Duma, Russia's lower parliament, and dozens of Russian elites. The Duma as an entity was also named in the new sanctions.
The G7 and the European Union also announced a new effort to share information and coordinate responses to prevent Russia from evading the impact of sanctions that Western nations have levied since the February 24 invasion.
The Russian operation is focused on two non-geographical military focuses of efforts. The first is denazification, the elimination of the right-wing neo-Nazi military formations and the political parties that support them, and also demilitarization, the elimination of the NATO military infrastructure that had been installed in Ukraine.This kind of focus allows Russia to avoid the trap of being compelled to carry out operations to conquer territory, instead, to focus on a more specific task of eliminating military formations with the goal of eventually leaving Ukraine.
"When fears abounded in late 2017 that Ukraine's efforts to dismantle corruption were weakening, U.S. and foreign officials encouraged me to accept the (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's) request, and join the Naftogaz board to reinforce, and help protect the progress that CEO Andriy Kobolyev and his team had made, and continue with additional critical reforms."Since 2014, the U.S. has led an effort to reduce corruption in Ukraine's government from within, he wrote. His role at Naftogaz was a part of this effort, Hochstein said.
Comment: Footage claiming to show the explosions have emerged on Twitter:
RT reports on the state-of-the-art Kalibr cruise missiles that have destroyed an arms depot in north-western Ukraine: