The total number of deployed nuclear warheads has increased by 105 since 2020, to 3,825. At the same time, about 2 thousand of them were on high alert, almost all of them belonged to Russia and the United States
The number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world as of the beginning of 2021 has increased, with a significant part being under the operational control of Russia and the United States, according to a new report by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
According to him, the total number of nuclear weapons at the beginning of 2021 was 13080, which is 320 units less than the states had at the beginning of 2020 (according to SIPRI estimates). However, the total number of nuclear weapons currently deployed has increased from 3,720 last year to 3,825 this year. And about 2 thousand of them were on high alert, almost all of them belonged to Russia and the United States.
“While the United States and Russia continued to reduce their total nuclear weapons stockpiles by dismantling decommissioned warheads in 2020, it is estimated that both countries had approximately 50 more nuclear warheads in operational deployment in early 2021 than a year earlier. Russia has also increased its total military nuclear arsenal by about 180 warheads, mainly through the deployment of more land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)», & mdash; says the SIPRI report.
The Institute notes that Russia and the United States account for more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, and both states have extensive and expensive programs to modernize nuclear warheads.
“The total number of warheads in global military arsenals now appears to be increasing, and this is a worrying sign that the downward trend that has characterized global nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War has stalled,” said Hans Christensen, an associate researcher at SIPRI’s Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Program.
He also suggested that Russia and the United States attach more and more importance to nuclear weapons in the context of their national security.
According to the International Campaign for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Russia ranks third in the world in terms of spending on this type of weapon after the United States and China. In 2020, the state spent $8 billion. For the US, this figure is $37.4 billion, for China – $10.1 billion
Paccording to The Telegraph, Johnson mentioned the agreement with Northern Ireland on Brexit, while Macron hinted that Northern Ireland is not part of Britain. This angered Johnson, the newspaper writes
Emmanuel Macron (left) and Boris JohnsonBritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron fell out during the G7 summit over Brexit, The Telegraph reports, citing a government source.
According to the newspaper, Johnson spoke about negotiations with Northern Ireland over Britain’s exit from the EU and asked Macron what he would do if sausages from Toulouse could not be imported to Paris.
Macron said this, according to The Telegraph, that the comparison is incorrect, since Paris and Toulouse are in the same country. According to the newspaper, the French president “mistakenly assumed that Northern Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom”.
Johnson, in a conversation with aides, expressed bewilderment over Macron’s comment and later in a conversation with Sky News hinted at this situation, saying that some leaders should “get it into their heads”that Britain is a single country.
At the same time, Reuters writes, citing a source in the French diplomatic corps, that Johnson used the Brexit issue to distract attention from the real problems during the summit. According to the source, Macron told Johnson: “Don’t tell me you didn’t know what you were signing up for.”
On Saturday, Macron told Johnson about the need to “reset” relations between their countries, France24 reports, citing a source. At the same time, the French leader stressed that this is possible if Britain “keeps its word to the Europeans”, meaning that London fulfills all the conditions of the Brexit agreement.
The G7 summit was held in Cornwall. The leaders of the G7 countries discussed the fight against coronavirus and climate change, as well as relations with Russia and China. As a result, they agreed to allocate 2.3 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to poor countries, as well as to speed up the production of drugs and their supplies, expressed interest in stable relations with Russia, and decided to reduce carbon emissions to zero no later than 2050.
Djoe Biden meant that cybercriminals can be held responsible in the United States, the exchange was not discussed, the presidential adviser explained. Earlier, Biden reacted to Putin’s words that Russia and the United States can exchange hackers
Jake Sullivan
US President Joe Biden’s comments about the exchange of cybercriminals with Russia did not mean that the American leader was ready to do it, said Assistant to the President for National Security Jake Sullivan.
“He (Biden) meant that if Vladimir Putin wants to come and say:’ I am ready to make sure that cybercriminals are brought to justice, ‘ Joe Biden may well say that cybercriminals will be held accountable in America. Because they are already [responsible], ” he said (quoted by USA Today).
“It’s not about an exchange or anything like that,” Sullivan added.
Earlier on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would be ready to extradite cybercriminals to the United States if the two countries conclude an agreement and Washington agrees to the same.
“If we agree on the extradition of criminals, then Russia will go for it, we will do it. Only if the other party, in this case the United States, agrees to the same and will extradite the relevant criminals to the Russian Federation, ” the president said (quoted by RIA Novosti).
Commenting on the words of his Russian counterpart, Biden said that this is a “potentially good sign of progress”.
In early June, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that Russia, like any other state, should stop the activities of cybercriminals if they work from its territory.
He explained that a “new front of cyber threats” is being created, when hackers are engaged in extortion from their victim companies. “I think that any country has an obligation to do everything possible to find these organizations and bring them to justice, including in the event of an attack on the Colonial Pipeline. The organization that is responsible for this attack, its leaders, were in Russia, are in Russia, so I think that Russia has an obligation to make sure that this stops.- said the Secretary of State.
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The hacker attack on the pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline occurred on May 6. Because of this, the company was forced to stop the operation of the pipeline. Later it became known that hackers blackmailed the management with the disclosure of internal information of the company and Colonial Pipeline paid them a ransom.
In June, an attack was made on the largest manufacturer of meat products, JBS, because of which it closed factories in the United States for a while. The company also paid the hackers the ransom they demanded.
PHowever, the outcome of NATO needs to be changed in accordance with the changing situation, including due to Russia’s “aggressive policy” and challenges from China. NATO will also monitor the deployment of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine
The NATO member countries at the summit, which will be held on June 14, will review the strategic concept of the alliance to counter the “aggressive policy” of Russia and the challenges from China, the White House said in a statement.
“The Allies will agree to review NATO’s strategic vision, the general principles that will guide the Alliance’s approach to a changing strategic environment that includes Russia’s aggressive policies and actions; challenges to our collective security, prosperity, and values from the People’s Republic of China; and transnational threats such as terrorism, cyber threats, and climate change,” the White House said in a release under Key Summit Outcomes.
The new strategic concept will be prepared for the NATO summit in 2022.
The allies will also agree to implement new military concepts and strategies that will strengthen NATO’s deterrent and defense capabilities to deal with threats from Russia and other countries. “NATO also continues to monitor the deployment of Russian troops in and around Ukraine,” the White House said.
In addition, the summit will approve a new NATO cyber defense policy that will ensure the alliance’s resilience against threats in cyberspace from state and non-state forces.
One of the topics for discussion at the summit will be the issue of climate change. Participants will agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from military activities in accordance with national commitments under the terms of the Paris Agreement, the White House said in a release.
On the eve of the portal Defense News reported, citing sources in the United States and Europe. that the NATO member states after the summit may declare their refusal to deploy ground-based nuclear weapons in Europe. The publication clarified that this is one of the ways to defuse political tensions before the meeting of US President Joe Biden with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The heads of state will meet two days after the summit, on June 16.
The Israeli parliament approved a new government without Netanyahu’s Likud party, and Naftali Bennett became the new prime minister. In two years, according to the rules of rotation, Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, will take this post
Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett
Members of the Knesset (Parliament) Israel has approved a new government, which was formed following elections in March by the leaders of the Yesh Atid parties, Yair Lapid and Yamina Naftali Bennett. This is reported by the Times of Israel.
For the new government, which was headed by Bennett, 60 deputies voted out of 120, 59 were against, one abstained. Binyamin Netanyahu, who served as prime minister for 12 years (since 2009), has ceased to be in power.
Taking the oath of office as the country’s 13th prime minister, Bennett promised to remain loyal to Israel and its laws, faithfully fulfill the duties of the prime Minister and the decisions of the Knesset.
Lapid became the “alternative head of the cabinet” in two years there will be a rotation and he and Bennett will switch places. Yesh Atid MP Miki Levi has been elected Speaker of the Knesset.
The coalition was called the “Block of Change”, and it consisted of eight parties: “Yesh Atid”, “Yamina”, “Tikva Hadasha” (“New Hope”), “Our Home “Israel”, the centrist alliance “Kahol-Laban”, the center-left social Democratic “Avoda”, left Social Democratic “Meretz” and “Raam” (“United Arab List”). There will be no representatives of Netanyahu’s Likud party in the government.
Early parliamentary elections in Israel were held on March 23. After that, Netanyahu set about forming a government. On May 5, the deadline set for him to do this expired. Shortly before it ended, Netanyahu told the president that he could not form a government, and returned the mandate to him. After that, the mandate passed to Lapid.
Netanyahu in early June called the newly formed government coalition the result of “the greatest election fraud” in the history of democracy.
Aboutrelations will develop depending on whether Russia acts “in accordance with international norms,” Biden said. Washington is not looking for a conflict, the countries can cooperate on many issues, he said
Joe Biden
US President Joe Biden said that he agrees with the view of Russian leader Vladimir Putin that relations between the two countries are at their lowest level in the last few years.
“I think he’s right, this is the lowest point,” a CNN correspondent quotes Biden as saying. He added that the future of these relations depends on whether Russia acts “in accordance with international norms”. At the same time, the president stressed that Washington is not looking for a conflict with Moscow.
At the request of journalists, Biden also explained the decision to hold not a joint, but a separate briefing on the results of the meeting with Putin in Geneva: “This is not a competition for who will perform better at a press conference, who will be able to put someone in an awkward position. The point is that I intend to make clear what the conditions are for improving the relationship.”
According to Biden, Russia was very interested in cooperation on issues related to its economy, with the coronavirus and the Middle East.
Earlier in an interview with NBC, Putin said that bilateral relations between Russia and the United States have ” sunk to the lowest point in recent years.”
The Presidents will hold a face-to-face meeting in Geneva on June 16. They plan to discuss the state and prospects of bilateral relations, strategic stability and topical issues on the international agenda, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the settlement of regional conflicts.
The main goal of the future summit, Putin called the restoration of personal contacts and direct dialogue, as well as the creation of really functioning mechanisms in areas in which Russia and the United States have mutual interests.
The Kremlin and the White House have repeatedly asked not to expect any breakthroughs from the talks, but stressed that the very fact of the meeting of the leaders is an important step towards establishing bilateral relations.
On June 13, a source from NBC reported that Biden at the first meeting with Putin gave a “tough signal” in contrast to the “friendly” approach that was demonstrated by the previous President Donald Trump.
«The Group of Seven agreed to accelerate the production and delivery of vaccines to poor countries and reduce carbon emissions. They called for stable relations with Moscow, but declared their readiness to resist “destabilizing actions”.
Angela Merkel
The leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries at a summit in the British county of Cornwall agreed to allocate 2.3 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines to poorer states. This was announced at a press conference by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Der Spiegel reports.
The drugs will be delivered by the end of 2022. Germany will allocate 350 million doses of vaccines, most of them through the World Health Organization’s COVAX mechanism, created to provide vaccines to the poorest countries, Merkel said.
The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, who took part in the summit, spoke in a video message about the G7 agreement to accelerate the production of vaccines and their delivery around the world: “Our priority has always been to meet the demand for vaccines, in this the EU has taken a leading position.”
Reuters, citing the draft final communique of the summit, reports that over the next year, the G7 will deliver at least 1 billion doses of vaccines and will work with the private sector, G20 countries and other states to increase this number.
In the final communique, the countries also expressed their interest in stable relations and cooperation with Russia, but stated their readiness to confront it in cases where it is necessary, Bloomberg reports. “We once again call on Russia to stop its destabilizing behavior and malicious actions, including interference in the democratic systems of other countries,” the agency quotes an excerpt from the document. According to him, the G7 will also call on Russia to comply with international obligations and human rights.
According to Bloomberg and Reuters, in the final communique, the G7 leaders also agreed:
continue to investigate the origin of the coronavirus;
reduce carbon emissions in their countries to zero no later than 2050;
expand to $100 billion in annual climate change funding under the Paris Agreement;
support the “historic commitment” made by the “Seven” on July 5 (to set a single income tax rate for large corporations at at least 15%);
Call on China to respect the rights and freedoms of people, in particular the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, as well as the autonomy of Hong Kong.
The G7 summit (United Kingdom, United States, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan) was held on June 11 & ndash; 13 in the British city of Carbis Bay in Cornwall. This year, representatives of Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa, as well as leaders of the EU countries, were invited as guests.
President Emmanuel Macron was hit in the face by a man on June 8. But more often, opponents of politicians can not get so close and use shoes, eggs and cakes to attack. Who and how attacked celebrities-in the video RBC
The President said that first of all, the parties intend to restore personal contacts and direct dialogue, as well as to create really functioning mechanisms in areas in which Russia and the United States have mutual interests.
Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview with the host of the program ” Moscow. The Kremlin. Putin told Pavel Zarubin, a fragment of which appeared on the media platform “We are watching”, the main expectations from the meeting with US President Joe Biden, which is due to take place in Switzerland next week.
“To restore our personal contacts and relations, to establish a direct dialogue, to create really functioning mechanisms in those areas that represent mutual interests, as I have already said,” the head of state said.
According to Putin, the summit will not be in vain if it is possible to create mechanisms for cooperation in various areas. Among them, the President mentioned strategic stability, regional conflicts, the global environment, as well as economic cooperation. “If we create mechanisms for working in all these areas after this meeting, I think it would be a good thing. It could be said that the meeting was not without reason, ” he said.
Speaking about the reduction of negative rhetoric against Moscow from Washington, Putin noted that it is not worth deluding yourself in this regard, since before meetings at the highest level, the parties always try to reduce the degree of negativity. This, as the head of state stressed, is done in order to create a favorable environment for work. “There is nothing special here, I have not been deceived by anything here. This is a professional approach. For our part, we are also doing this, ” the president concluded.
Another aggravation of the contradictions between Russia and the United States occurred in March, after the United States imposed anti-Russian sanctions on charges of trying to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Also in March, Joe Biden, in an interview with ABC News, answered in the affirmative when asked if he considers Vladimir Putin a murderer. On March 17, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, was invited to Moscow for consultations, and in April, his American counterpart, John Sullivan, left for Washington.
On April 15, the US administration imposed new restrictions on Russia, accusing Moscow, among other things, of trying to influence the policies of the US and its allies and of committing hacker attacks. Restrictions apply to Russian federal loan bonds (OFZ). America also expelled ten Russian diplomats.
On April 16, Russia responded to US sanctions by expelling ten US diplomats from the country and restricting the work of the remaining ones. On May 14, the United States, along with the Czech Republic, were added to the list of unfriendly countries. According to this decision, the American embassy is now prohibited from hiring Russians.
A few days earlier, on April 13, Putin and Biden had a telephone conversation, during which the US president offered to meet in person and discuss relations between Moscow and Washington. The Russian side has agreed to this. As a result, Geneva was chosen as the meeting place for the heads of state. The summit is scheduled for June 16.
The British prime minister said that London could suspend part of the Brexit agreement if the EU does not compromise on the issue of facilitating the supply of goods to Northern Ireland. The European Union in this case promises to take retaliatory measures
Boris Johnson
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has clashed with European Union leaders, warning them that London may suspend part of the Brexit agreement if the dispute over the rules of trade in goods supplied to Northern Ireland is not resolved, writes Bloomberg.
The head of the British government on the sidelines of the G7 summit said that Britain could start acting unilaterally if the EU does not compromise on the issue of facilitating the flow of goods to Northern Ireland. “I think that if the protocol [on Northern Ireland] continues to be applied in this way, then we will obviously not hesitate to apply article 16,” Johnson said.
Article 16 of the withdrawal agreement describes a mechanism that allows either party to intervene and suspend part of the transaction if the application of the protocol creates “serious economic, social or environmental difficulties”.
“I’ve been talking to some of our friends who seem to misunderstand that the UK is a single country, a single territory. I just need to get it into their heads, ” Johnson said, referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
As Bloomberg notes, the escalation between London and Brussels on this issue followed a series of tense meetings between Johnson and EU representatives. Several European officials confirmed to the agency that there are serious differences behind closed doors. “Now they have spilled out,” writes Bloomberg.
The European Union, for its part, has threatened to take retaliatory measures if the British government violates the terms of the agreement, the agency reports, emphasizing that it is not yet known whether Johnson will carry out his plans to the end and how far each side is ready to go in this war of words.
The Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on the sidelines of the G7 summit, expressed hope that a trade war between the UK and the EU will not happen. “It’s too expensive for both sides. This is not what the world needs right now, ” she says.
One EU negotiator told Bloomberg that while a pragmatic solution would need to be found, it would be wrong for the UK to assume that the 27-nation bloc would simply forget about the protocol. Another EU official said the rhetoric needed to be toned down and that the union’s member states agreed.
According to the trade agreement concluded in December last year between the EU and the UK, Northern Ireland, which left the European Union as part of the United Kingdom, remained part of the EU customs territory. The dual status made it possible to avoid the appearance of a border between it and the independent Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU, but because of this, there werecontrolled procedures have been introduced in Northern Irish ports for the transport of a number of goods from other parts of the UK. Ensuring the transparency of the border on the island of Ireland was necessary to preserve the Belfast Agreement of 1998, which ended the armed confrontation between Protestant Loyalists and Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland.
The deal with the EU assumed that in the first stage, each of the food categories would be delivered to the Northern Irish Portolster during a grace period, allowing British suppliers to avoid customs and phytosanitary certificates. In March, the British government unilaterally extended this regime for animal productsof origin and may do so again this month (the grace period governing trade in the region expires on June 30). The British authorities were forced to change the terms of the agreement under pressure from business, whose representatives warned of possible supply disruptions due to the need to fill out customs declarations and undergo additional inspections.
In March, the European Commission, in response to this move, launched a legal procedure against the UK for violating the Brexit agreement. As Reuters wrote, the beginning of the legal procedure means that the EU authorities have appealed to the Supreme Court of the European Union. In theory, this may result in a fine, but in practice, the process may take a year, which will give time to find a solution that will satisfy both parties, the agency noted.
Disputes between London and Brussels over the protocol escalated at the end of May. The reason was the grace period ending on June 30, which exempts suppliers of chilled meat from processing a number of phytosanitary documents. London, fearing a shortage of meat products in Northern Irish supermarkets, is ready to extend the preferential regime again, while Brussels calls for compliance with the provisions of the protocol.
