Nuova iniziativa tedesca per difese aeree all'Ucraina 🗞️ Rassegna del 18/04/2024

Israele

(New York Times) Attack by Hezbollah Injures at Least 13 in Israeli Border Village

• The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a cross-border drone and missile attack in northern Israel on Wednesday that emergency officials said had injured at least 13 people, four of them critically.

• Hezbollah said its attack on an Israeli Bedouin border village, Arab al-Aramshe, was in response to the Israeli airstrikes a day earlier which Israel’s military said had killed the commanders. Those strikes triggered a series of retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli military bases and barracks.

• Hezbollah claimed that the target in the attack on Wednesday was an Israeli military reconnaissance unit. Magen David Adom, the emergency medical service, said 13 people had been hurt, without specifying if any were soldiers.

(Guardian)Revealed: Israel has sped up settlement-building in East Jerusalem since Gaza war began

• Israel’s government has accelerated the construction of settlements across East Jerusalem, with more than 20 projects totalling thousands of housing units having been approved or advanced since the start of the war in Gaza six months ago, planning documents show.

• Ministries and offices within the Israeli government are behind all the largest and most contentious of the projects, sometimes in association with rightwing nationalist groups with a history of trying to evict Palestinians from their homes in parts of the city.

• “The fast-tracking of these plans has been unparalleled in the last six months,” said Sari Kronish, from the Israeli human rights organisation Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights. “While many government bodies were shuttered or had limited operation following 7 October, the planning authorities continued to plough forward, advancing these plans at unprecedented speed.”

(Al Jazeera)Israel-Gaza truce talks have hit ‘stumbling block’, says Qatar

• Talks on a truce in Gaza have hit a “stumbling block”, Qatari mediators have warned. The negotiations to end the fighting and secure the release of prisoners held by Israel and Hamas are at a “delicate phase,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Wednesday.

• “We are trying as much as possible to address this stumbling block”, Sheikh Mohammed, speaking at news conference alongside Romanian counterpart Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, said.

• The Qatari prime minister said negotiators are trying to “move forward and put an end to the suffering that the people in Gaza are experiencing and return the hostages”. He condemned what he described as the policy of “collective punishment” being followed by Israel in Gaza, as well as the occupied West Bank.

(Reuters) Israel will defend itself, Netanyahu says, as West calls for restraint

• Israel will make its own decisions about how to defend itself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday

• Western countries pleaded for restraint in responding to a volley of attacks from Iran.

• Netanyahu met the German and British foreign ministers, who both travelled to Israel as part of a coordinated push to keep confrontation between Israel and Iran from escalating into a regional conflict fueled by the Gaza war.

Ucraina

(New York Times)Russian Missile Attack North of Kyiv Kills at Least 17, Ukraine Says

• At least 17 people were killed and scores more injured when three Russian missiles struck a busy downtown district of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, just before noon on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said.
   
• President Volodymyr Zelensky said the death toll, reported by the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general, might rise and blamed Ukraine’s lack of air defenses for the loss of life. The prosecutor general said that 61 people had been reported injured.
   
• Also on Wednesday, explosions and fires were reported at a key Russian air base in the occupied Crimean Peninsula in what appeared to be a Ukrainian attack. Ukrainian officials did not comment on the apparent attack, but Russian military bloggers affiliated with the Kremlin reported that Ukrainian missiles had struck locations around the air base in Dzhankoi, Crimea.

(Kyiv Independent) Germany launches new Ukraine air defense initiative, appeals to EU and NATO allies

• Germany has launched a new initiative to secure more critically needed air defenses for Ukraine, the Tagesschau outlet reported on April 17, citing spokespeople of Germany's defense and foreign ministries.
   
• Berlin has already appealed to EU and NATO partners as well as other unspecified countries, as Russia's intensifying aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities continue to highlight the growing shortage of sufficient air defense systems.
   
• According to Tagesschau, the new initiative is being jointly undertaken by Germany's Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry.
   
• While no further details have been released at this time, a spokesperson said: "We need to seriously consider again whether there are other systems that can be quickly provided to Ukraine."

Russia

(Reuters) Widow of Russia's Alexei Navalny hires bodyguard after hammer attack on activist

• Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, said in an interview with Time magazine published on Wednesday that she had hired a bodyguard following a hammer attack on a senior ally of her late husband.

• A hammer-wielding assailant attacked Leonid Volkov, a Navalny aide, outside his home in Vilnius, Lithuania, in March, breaking his arm and pounding his leg with a series of blows.

• Lithuania's counter-intelligence service accused Russia's intelligence services of being behind the attack. The Kremlin declined to comment.

Europa

Georgia:

(Guardian)Georgia footballers protest against Tbilisi’s ‘foreign influence’ bill
 

• Leading players in Georgia’s national men’s football team have come out in support of pro-EU protests sparked by a controversial “foreign influence” bill criticised for mirroring a repressive Russian law.
   
• Riot police have clashed in recent nights with large rallies of people protesting outside the parliament building in Tbilisi against a controversial “foreign influence” bill, which it is claimed will hamper the country’s application for EU membership.
   
• Jaba Kankava, the captain of Georgia’s national football team, which has recently qualified for Euro 2024, its first major tournament, posted a picture on Instagram of two protesters staring down riot police on Tuesday night, adding: “Fuck Russia.”
   
• A host of other national team players, including Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, a winger for Italy’s Serie A club Napoli, and Giorgi Mamardashvili, who is a goalkeeper for Valencia in Spain’s La Liga, also posted what appeared to be coordinated messages on social media. They wrote: “Georgia’s path is to Europe. The European way unites us!! Forward to Europe!! Peace to Georgia.”

(Reuters) Georgia presses on with 'foreign agents' bill opposed by EU

• Georgia's parliament on Wednesday approved the first reading of a bill on "foreign agents" that the European Union said risked stifling freedoms and blocking the country's path to membership.

• The fate of the bill is widely seen as a test of whether Georgia, 33 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, intends to pursue a path of integration with the West or move closer towards Russia.

• Eighty-three of 150 deputies voted in favour while opposition MPs boycotted the vote. The bill, which has provoked days of protests, must pass two more readings before becoming law.

Politica internazionale

Asia e Pacifico

Pakistan:
(Al Jazeera)Pakistan says it blocked social media platform X over ‘national security’

• Pakistan blocked access to social media platform X around the time of elections in February, the interior ministry said, citing national security concerns.

• Users had reported problems using the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since mid-February, when jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party called for protests against a government official’s admission of vote manipulation.

• At the time, both the government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the state regulatory body, refused to comment on the outages that were also widely reported by internet watchdog groups.

• On Wednesday, the Ministry of Interior mentioned the shutdown in a written court submission.

• “It is very pertinent to mention here that the failure of Twitter/X to adhere to the lawful directives of the government of Pakistan and address concerns regarding the misuse of its platform necessitated the imposition of a ban,” said the report, seen by the Reuters news agency, which confirmed the long-suspected shutdown.

• “The decision to impose a ban on Twitter/X in Pakistan was made in the interest of upholding national security, maintaining public order, and preserving the integrity of our nation,” the ministry said, according to the report submitted to the Islamabad High Court in a challenge to the shutdown.