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StephonClarkS2:
Ukraine’s Leader Faces Calls For Party Expulsion
Former Ukrainian PM Yulia Timoshenko has sparked outrage by reportedly holidaying in Dubai amid the conflict with Russia. Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Timoshenko is in hot water over media reports that she spent the recent festive period holidaying in the United Arab Emirates as her country remained locked in a protracted conflict with Russia. A Ukrainian MP has called on Timoshenko’s party to expel her in light of the reports of her New Year getaway. “[I] am addressing the Fatherland [Party] with a call on Yulia Vladimirovna [Timoshenko] to be expelled from the parliamentary faction and the party,” Mariana Bezuglaya, the deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament’s Defense and National Security Committee, wrote on her Facebook page on Friday. The high-ranking MP also published a photo purportedly showing the former leader spending her time on a beach in Dubai. Timoshenko, who served as Ukraine’s prime minister between 2007 and 2010, currently leads the Fatherland Party as well as the party’s faction in the national parliament or Verkhovna Rada. Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper published a series of photos apparently depicting Timoshenko and her family relaxing in Dubai. The former prime minister reportedly spent a vacation in a villa belonging to the five-star Kempinski Hotel in the UAE. Ukrainian journalists said they photographed the politician at a private, closed beach on January 5. In a separate piece, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported, citing an anonymous source within the Ukrainian border guard service, that the former prime minister had spent around a month in Dubai between December 27 and January 23. Her daughter moved to the UAE together with her family before the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the paper added. Timoshenko herself has not commented on the reports, and her party did not respond to Bezuglaya’s call. Timoshenko, who was jailed under President Viktor Yanukovich on charges of abuse of office, actively supported the Maidan coup after her release in early 2014. Later the same year, her Fatherland Party sought to initiate a referendum on Ukraine’s accession to NATO. The news comes as Kiev seeks to limit foreign trips by Ukrainian officials. On January 23, President Vladimir Zelensky signed an executive order banning all government and presidential administration officials as well as all MPs from traveling abroad for any reasons not related to their professional duties.

However, even before Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine last year, the country “had a GDP four times smaller than Poland,” the former minister pointed out, adding that Ukrainians “are now paying dearly for this maneuvering” by the elites.

StephonClarkS2:
NATO bloc member disassociate self from NATO's War Against Russia The US and Germany might be at war with Russia, but that is news to Croatia, said Zoran Milanovic. Commenting on the German foreign minister’s declaration that Europe is “fighting a war against Russia,” Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Thursday that this was news to him, and wished Berlin better luck than in WWII. Croatia “should in no way help” Ukraine militarily, Milanovic said while visiting the port city of Split. “Do you want us to enter the war?” Framing the Ukraine conflict as one between Washington and Moscow, he reminded reporters that he was criticized for merely echoing the words of Kiev’s defense minister, about the current conflict being a “proxy war” between NATO and Russia. “Now the German foreign minister says we must be united, because I quote, we are at war with Russia. I didn’t know that,” Milanovic said. “Maybe Germany is at war with Russia, but then, good luck, maybe this time it turns out better than 70-odd years ago.” The Croatian president was baffled to hear such a claim from the leader of the German Greens, which he said used to be a pacifist party equally against the US and the USSR, and not from Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “If we are at war with Russia, then let’s see what we need to do. But we won’t ask Germany for its opinion,” Milanovic added. “Let them figure out who is the actual chancellor over there. I’ve been in politics for a long time, and our country has been through a lot, but I’ve never seen this kind of madness before.” When it comes to tanks, “Russian or American, they burn just the same,” Milanovic said, noting that deliveries of armor to Ukraine – announced by the US and Germany this week – will only prolong the fighting. “Those tanks may burn, or they may reach Crimea, but Croatia will have nothing to do with it,” he insisted. The social-democrat president has frequently clashed with the nationalist parliamentary majority over Croatia’s Ukraine policy. Just last month, Milanovic opposed Zagreb’s participation in the EU program to train Ukrainian troops, saying it clashed with Croatia’s constitution. Unless the US and Russia are holding some kind of talks, the world is “slowly sliding into World War Three,” Milanovic added. “Some people think it has already begun, but I have my reservations.”