By David Child, Sasha Petrova, and Ali Harb Aljazeera - May 2022|Updated: 11 minutes ago

Ukraine accuses Russia of failing to find areas for compromise as Moscow says Kyiv has ‘practically withdrawn’ from talks.

• Sweden and Finland announce they will submit their applications to join NATO on Wednesday but face a potential stumbling block to ascension after Turkey said it was opposed to them gaining membership.
• Talks between Ukraine and Russia over ending the war have stalled, with both sides blaming each other for a breakdown in negotiations.
• Ukraine’s military declares an end to the Azovstal operation in Mariupol after hundreds of soldiers were evacuated, having surrendered to Russian forces.
• The Kremlin claims the fighters will be treated “humanely” but a Russian lawmaker says they “don’t deserve to live“, while the speaker of the Duma calls for them to stand trial.
• The International Criminal Court deploys a team of investigators to Ukraine to probe possible war crimes.

Putin: Europe’s Russia sanctions tantamount to ‘economic suicide list

The fate of hundreds of Ukrainian fighters is uncertain after the surrender

EU set to approve new military aid for Ukrainelist 4 of 4

Photos: Ukrainian medics battle to save lives as casualties mounted on list

This live blog is now closed, thank you for joining us. These were the updates on Wednesday, May 17:

Ukraine has become the world's largest recipient of US military aid

© EPA-EFE/SERGEY DOLZHENKORead TASS atYandex.NewsYandex.Zen

WASHINGTON, May 18. /TASS/.

The newspaper notes that Washington sent Kyiv 2014 to 2021 about $ 2.7 billion

Ukraine has become the world's largest recipient of US military aid, surpassing Egypt and Israel on this list. Such assessments are contained in an article published on Tuesday by The Washington Post. ON THIS TOPICMilitary operation in Ukraine.

The material notes that the United States sent Kyiv 2014 to 2021 about $ 2.7 billion in military assistance. At the same time, since the beginning of the military special operation in Ukraine, the volume of this assistance has amounted to $3.8 billion. The publication emphasizes that the new $40.1 billion assistance package under consideration contains about $20 billion for defense.

The newspaper compares these figures with the latest data currently available for the 2020 financial year (which begins in the US on October 1). Then the world's largest recipient of US military aid was Israel, which received $3.3 billion, followed by Egypt ($1.3 billion), and Jordan was in third place ($0.51 billion).

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 a special military operation in response to the request of the leaders of the Donbas republics for help. He stressed that Moscow's plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories, and the goals are the demilitarization and denazification of the country. The United States and its allies responded by imposing large-scale sanctions against the Russian Federation and stepped up arms supplies to Kyiv. Russia's ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, warned that the West's militarization of Ukraine directly threatens European and global security. He noted that Moscow is calling on the sponsors of the Kyiv regime to stop encouraging bloodshed and seriously think about the consequences of their activities.

Follow our news on Telegram, VKontakte, and Odnoklassniki.

Russia Says 265 Azovstal Defenders Surrendered

Moscow Times - Updated: 17 May 10:05

Russia said Tuesday that 265 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant had “surrendered,” contradicting Kyiv’s account that the evacuated soldiers would be exchanged later.

“The surrender of fighters from the Azov nationalist unit and Ukrainian servicemen blocked in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol began yesterday,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a daily briefing.

Russia’s military said 265 fighters, 51 of whom were seriously wounded, “laid down their arms.”

Those in need of medical assistance were sent to a hospital in the town of Novoazovsk, which is controlled by pro-Russia separatists, it added.

Ukraine’s defense ministry said Monday the fighters had been evacuated through humanitarian corridors to areas under Russian and Moscow-backed separatists’ control and that a further “exchange procedure” would take place later.

But shortly after the Russian Defense Ministry's statement, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, ordered lawmakers to draft a standing order prohibiting the exchange of Azovstal troops for Russian prisoners of war.

“Nazi criminals should not be subject to exchange. They are war criminals and we must do everything to bring them to justice,” Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin was quoted as saying.

Russia has been waging what it dubs a “special military operation” in Ukraine with the aim of “de-Nazifying” its pro-Western neighbor, which Moscow falsely asserts is led by neo-Nazis.

Leonid Slutsky, chair of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, called for an exception to Russia's moratorium on the death penalty so that the evacuated Azovstal fighters — who he described as “Nazi beasts” — could be executed if found guilty of war crimes.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s defense ministry said a rescue mission to extract the last of the estimated 340 remaining Azovstal defenders was underway.

“Our state is taking all necessary rescue measures,” the ministry said in a Telegram message.

It credited the defenders of Azovstal for delaying the transfer of 20,000 Russian troops to other parts of Ukraine, preventing Moscow from quickly capturing the southern city of Zaporizhzhia and allowing Ukrainian forces to regroup.

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said earlier Tuesday that the mission to defend Azovstal is over, effectively ceding control of Mariupol to Moscow and opening a land corridor between annexed Crimea and mainland Russia.

Mariupol has suffered some of the war’s most brutal shelling since Russian troops encircled it in the early days of the invasion.

AFP contributed reporting

COPYRIGHTS

Copy & Paste the link above for Yandex translation to Norwegian.

WHO and WHAT is behind it all? : >

The bottom line is for the people to regain their original, moral principles, which have intentionally been watered out over the past generations by our press, TV, and other media owned by the Illuminati/Bilderberger Group, corrupting our morals by making misbehavior acceptable to our society. Only in this way shall we conquer this oncoming wave of evil.

Commentary:

Administrator

HUMAN SYNTHESIS

All articles contained in Human-Synthesis are freely available and collected from the Internet. The interpretation of the contents is left to the readers and do not necessarily represent the views of the Administrator. Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of the sole responsibility of the author(s). Human-Synthesis will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. Human-Synthesis grants permission to cross-post original Human-Synthesis articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified