The Ukrainian president's decision to reclaim Donetsk Airport, a key strategic point in the conflict in the country's east, are in violation of the Minsk peace deal, says the Kremlin.

Petro Poroshenko vowed on Monday to take the airport back: "I have no doubt - we will free the airport, because it is our land. And we will rebuild the airport." He also promised to erect a monument to the "cyborgs," which has become a common nickname for the Ukrainian soldiers that fought against the forces of the self-proclaimed eastern republics for control of Donetsk Airport.

Poroshenko spoke at the premier of the documentary Airport, which was dedicated to the siege.

When asked if he thinks such words violate the Minsk peace deal, the Russian president's press secretary said they do: "Of course, they are a violation. In fact, we have repeatedly said that Ukraine is not complying with the Minsk agreement."

The "industry of death" exists in the world as many people in power live off war, Pope Francis told Italian schoolkids in the Vatican on Monday.

"Many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war," the Pontiff said as he met with pupils from Rome's primary schools in the Nervi Audience Hall.

Talking to children during the audience organized by the Peace Factory Foundation, he explained that every war has the arms industry behind it.

"This is serious. Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms and sell them to one country for them to use against another country," the Pope was cited by AGI news agency as saying.

The head of the Catholic Church labeled the arms trade "the industry of death, the greed that harms us all, the desire to have more money."

"The economic system orbits around money and not men, women," he told 7,000 kids present at the audience.

Despite the fact that wars "lose lives, health, education," they are being waged to defend money and make even more profit, the Pope said.

"The devil enters through greed and this is why they don't want peace," 78-year-old Francis said.

"There can be no peace without justice," the Pope said and asked the children to repeat those words out loud three times.

Around 20 vessels representing nine NATO member states have begun the Baltic Fortress 2015 exercises, taking place off the Lithuanian Baltic Sea coast.

Warships from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the UK are participating in the exercises, accompanied by a Lithuanian Navy submarine unit and two airplanes from the country's Air Force.

The maneuvers in the Lithuanian territorial waters are scheduled to last until May 14, Lithuania's Ministry of National Defense said.

The ships will practice interactions between NATO allies during international operations, including cooperation with bloc's rapid reaction forces, Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1.

The Baltic Fortress 2015 program will see the vessels performing joint maneuvering, shooting, de-mining, interception and the escorting of vessels as well as search and rescue operations, the ministry added.

Baltic Fortress drills have been held annually since 2008 with the host country rotating every year. Neighboring Latvia will provide the venue for the exercise next year.

NATO's ground forces are also currently involved in two exercises in the Baltic States.

Up to 3,000 Lithuanian troops are taking part in the Zaibo Kirtis (Lightning Strike) drills, aimed at perfecting joint action by the army and civilian authorities against so-called hybrid threats combining both military and non-military methods of fighting.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has uncovered one of the biggest lies in modern American history. It turns out that much of what the American public was told about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden was a blatant lie. According to Hersh, Osama bin Laden had been captured by Pakistan all the way back in 2006, and he was being held by the ISI as a prisoner at the Abbottabad compound that the Seals ultimately raided in 2011. In addition, Hersh says that the ISI and Pakistan's military knew about the Seal raid in advance. Arrangements were made so that the Black Hawk helicopters could travel through Pakistani airspace safely, and the ISI guards at Osama bin Laden's compound were pulled away before the Seals got there. And by that time, Osama bin Laden was reportedly in such bad health that he was essentially a cripple. There was no "firefight" at all - only a turkey shoot. Afterwards, Osama bin Laden's body never made it to the USS Carl Vinson for a "burial at sea". That was all just part of the cover story according to Hersh. Of course the White House and Obama's lackeys at CNN are strongly denying all of this, and they will continue to deny the truth for as long as they possibly can. But there are individuals in the U.S. military and in the U.S. intelligence community that can come forward and tell us what really happened. Let us hope that at least some of those individuals still care enough about this country to do that.

According to Hersh, one of the biggest lies that Obama told was that Pakistani leadership had no idea that the Seals were coming in. Actually, the truth is that the head of the army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the director general of the ISI, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, were both heavily involved in the planning of the operation. The following is an excerpt from Hersh's article for the London Review of Books...

Pasha and Kayani were responsible for ensuring that Pakistan's army and air defence command would not track or engage with the US helicopters used on the mission. The American cell at Tarbela Ghazi was charged with co-ordinating communications between the ISI, the senior US officers at their command post in Afghanistan, and the two Black Hawk helicopters; the goal was to ensure that no stray Pakistani fighter plane on border patrol spotted the intruders and took action to stop them. The initial plan said that news of the raid shouldn't be announced straightaway.

All units in the Joint Special Operations Command operate under stringent secrecy and the JSOC leadership believed, as did Kayani and Pasha, that the killing of bin Laden would not be made public for as long as seven days, maybe longer. Then a carefully constructed cover story would be issued: Obama would announce that DNA analysis confirmed that bin Laden had been killed in a drone raid in the Hindu Kush, on Afghanistan's side of the border. The Americans who planned the mission assured Kayani and Pasha that their co-operation would never be made public. It was understood by all that if the Pakistani role became known, there would be violent protests - bin Laden was considered a hero by many Pakistanis - and Pasha and Kayani and their families would be in danger, and the Pakistani army publicly disgraced.

When the Seals got to the compound in Abbottabad, bin Laden and his family were completely unguarded. That is because the ISI guards had already been pulled back.

Paul Craig Roberts, Keynote Address to the Annual Conference of the Financial West Group, New Orleans, May 7, 2015

The defining events of our time are the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, jobs offshoring, and financial deregulation. In these events we find the basis of our foreign policy problems and our economic problems.

The United States has always had a good opinion of itself, but with the Soviet collapse self-satisfaction reached new heights. We became the exceptional people, the indispensable people, the country chosen by history to exercise hegemony over the world. This neoconservative doctrine releases the US government from constraints of international law and allows Washington to use coercion against sovereign states in order to remake the world in its own image.

To protect Washington's unique Uni-power status that resulted from the Soviet collapse, Paul Wolfowitz in 1992 penned what is known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. This doctrine is the basis for Washington's foreign policy. The doctrine states:

It seems that some post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe are drifting into Russia's orbit, a one US expert pointed out, desperately trying to find out what "has gone wrong" in that part of the world.

Once Washington's steadfast allies, some European countries are now "at risk" of drifting into the Kremlin's fold, Dalibor Rohac, a Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, emphasized.

"At the time, these [Eastern and Central European] countries were counted amongst the most staunchly pro-American members of NATO—and also among the boldest economic reformers on the continent, cutting their taxes and privatizing social security systems. Today, the situation could not be more different," the analyst stressed.


Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico, President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary have been recently boosting their ties with Moscow, Dalibor Rohac noted deprecatingly.

Western "colonial" states are not interested in S. Africa's development, but rather want to take its natural resources and never give anything back, Jacob Zuma, S. African president, told RT. It's China's investment that Zuma sees as a way to prosperity.

"The Western world or the European countries, in particular, came to Africa [in the 19th century] to colonize and they had been taking the resources of Africa," Zuma said.

But even after the continent decolonized itself in the mid-20th century, its relationship with the US, UK, France and other Western countries "remained the same," he stressed.

Ukraine is using a ceasefire in Donbas to strengthen its defense capacities and rearm troops, President Petro Poroshenko said on a trip to an army training center in the country's north-central Chernihiv region on Monday.

"Ukraine's victory is gained not only at the front line, but in the rear where professionals are making weapons for the Ukrainian army round-the-clock, practically in three shifts," the president said.

He said Kiev had beefed up its units with Stugna antitank missile systems on several most important directions. "We took an opportunity of this period of temporary inactivity," he said.

According to the president, the Ukrainian Ukroboronprom concern is on the list of ten top world arms exporters, but is facing a more ambitious task of hitting the list of top five.

Japan's future could be in jeopardy following an announcement in late April that Tokyo and Washington intend to deepen military ties by revising their guidelines, underpinning the US-Japanese defense alliance.

This warning was voiced by an unnamed high-ranking officer of the People's Liberation Army during a meeting with a group of senior Japanese politicians, a source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Japan Times.

"Japan will have no future if it only follows the United States," a source quoted the PLA officer, working at the China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS), as saying.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for downing Moroccan F16 fighter that Saudi-led coalition earlier declared missing. A Houthi TV channel broadcast a video that Iran-allied fighters said showed the wreckage of an F-16 plane.

"The air defence of the tribes shot down a warplane over Wadi Nushur, in Saada," Houthi news channel Al Maseera said. The channel broadcasted pictures showing local tribesmen celebrating a victory near the F-16 wreckage.

The Iran-backed Shia group claimed the Moroccan jet was downed by a surface-to-air missile in Wadi Nashour area in the northwestern province of Saada, a Houthi stronghold near the border with Saudi Arabia, while conducting airstrikes Sunday.