International
Ukraine destroys another key bridge in the Russian region of Kursk and takes another locality
The Ukrainian Army claims that it has destroyed a second bridge in the Russian region of Kursk where its detachments are “reinforcing” positions, Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk reported on his Telegram channel. In addition, he has taken the Russian town of Otruba.
Oleshchuk posted a video on that social network where he apparently shows what he described as a “precise” air strike on the structure of the bridge.
Although Oleshchuk did not specify the location of the damaged structure, the Russian Telegram channel ‘Mash’ said that it was a bridge over the Seim River, near the town of Zvannoye.
He also stated that the attack used HIMARS (multiple rocket launcher system) supplied by the United States, according to information from local Russian media that cannot be independently verified.
If this attack is confirmed, it would be the second bridge destroyed by Ukrainian forces in recent days, which will further hinder Russia’s ability to replenish troops to defend itself from Ukraine’s incursion.
Another bridge over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district in the Russian region of Kursk was attacked on August 16, as confirmed by Alexey Smirnov, interim governor of the region.
For its part, Russia affirmed that “this is not the time” to negotiate with Ukraine in view of its offensive in the Russian border region of Kursk, but insisted that Moscow’s conditions for the settlement of the conflict “are not annulled.”
“No, (the conditions) are not canceled, but right now it would be inappropriate to start a negotiation process,” Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov told the Telegram Shot channel.
He insisted that at the current stage of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, Russia is not going to talk to the authorities of that country.
Ushakov thus referred to the conditions of Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, which go through the withdrawal of Kiev forces from four regions annexed by Moscow in September 2022.
Russian forces captured 19 Ukrainian soldiers during the defense of the Russian region of Kursk from the Ukrainian offensive, the state agency RIA Novosti reported.
Almost two weeks after the start of Ukraine’s cross-border offensive in the Russian region of Kursk, Ukrainian troops claim to control about 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory and more than 80 settlements in the region and continue to move forward.
One of the objectives of the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk is to create a plug zone in the territory of the aggressor country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed.
“Right now, the main task of our defensive actions is to destroy as much as possible of the Russian potential, of its war potential, and maximize our counterattacks,” Zelenski said in his last night speech.
“This includes the creation of a plug zone in the aggressor’s territory: our operation in the Kursk region,” he explained.
Everything that inflicts damage to the Army, the State, the defense or the economy of the Russian Federation helps Ukraine to prevent the expansion of the war and put an end to it with “a just peace for Ukraine,” Zelenski emphasized.
On the other hand, Ukrainian forces have taken the Russian town of Otruba and 11.5 square kilometers of its surroundings after penetrating the Russian region of Kursk crossing the border in another area, 35 kilometers from the initial incursion, Ukrainian military analysts say.
The take of Otruba was confirmed by the Ukrainian analysis platform DeepState on Sunday at the last minute.
According to the map of the fights, there are several more localities that are in the running, including Tiotkino and the territories near Popovo-Lezhachi, so in total there are six square kilometers that are being contested in that area.
These fighting is taking place west of the Glushkovo district of the Kursk region, about 35 kilometers away from the area that Ukraine already controls in the Russian region, east of that district.
To the east of the Glushkovo district, Ukraine captured the towns of Snagost and Apanasivka, Deepstate also reported on Sunday night, and its forces have also made advances in Olgovka, near Korenevo, to the north.
As a result, Ukraine already controls or disputes more than 1,200 square kilometers of Russian territory in Kursk, according to Deepstate.
However, families with minors will have to leave the city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, due to the danger posed by the Russian advance towards the important logistical node, the authorities announced.
Russia has lost more than 600,000 of its soldiers, between dead and wounded, since the beginning of its large-scale invasion that began almost two and a half years ago, said the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army.
In addition, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warns of the deterioration in the safety of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporijia, under Russian occupation and with the reactors turned off since 2022, after the impact this weekend of a drone with an explosive charge near the plant.
“Nuclear power plants are designed to withstand technical, human and external events, even extreme failures, but they are not built to resist a direct military attack,” explains the director general of the IAEA, the Argentine Rafael Grossi, in a statement.
The Ukrainian Air Force also stated that last morning it has managed to successfully intercept the 11 kamikaze-type drones launched by Russia from the Kursk and Primorsko-Akhtarsk regions.
For its part, the Russian Army took the Ukrainian town of Zalizne, known to the Russians as Artiomovo, in its advance towards the city of Toretsk, one of the objectives of the Russian offensive in the annexed region of Donetsk, as reported today by the Russian Ministry of Defense in its daily war report.
International
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
The American press agency Associated Press (AP) announced this Friday that it has sued three members of the Donald Trump Administration after being banned from the Oval Office and the presidential plane Air Force One for not complying with the directive of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not to be retaliated for it by the Government. The Constitution does not allow the Government to control freedom of expression,” the media maintains.
In its style guide, AP decided to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico “by its original name”, still mentioning the new name chosen by Trump, since it is a body of water that shares a border with Mexico and Cuba.
The White House formally blocked AP’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One on February 14. “We are very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The agency’s lawsuit, of 18 pages and filed before a federal court in Washington DC, alleges that they have decided to take this step to claim their right to editorial independence and prevent the Executive from coercing journalists to use only a language approved by it.
Trump signed the executive order to change the name to Gulf of America on January 20, the first day of his return to power. He later named February 9 as ‘ Gulf of America Day’.
The AP complaint is specifically directed against the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his number two, Taylor Budowich, and the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt.
This Thursday, more than thirty US media asked the Government to restore AP’s participation in presidential events and not to take into account “the editorial point of view” when limiting access to the White House.
Among the signatories are the television networks Fox News and Newsmax, with a conservative tinge, in addition to other large newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic.
AP highlighted when reporting on his complaint that this Friday Trump referred to that agency as “radical left-wing lunatics”: It is “a third-rate company with a first name,” he said about it, the main one in the country and founded in 1846.
International
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
The Legislature of the city of Buenos Aires approved this Friday the suspension of the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections (PASO), a measure that, according to the deputy head of government, Clara Muzzio, “allows to save 20 billion pesos (about 18,894 million dollars)”, and advanced the legislative elections for May 18.
“The City Legislature suspended the PASO, a measure that saves $20 billion for neighbors,” Muzzio announced on Friday.
For his part, the mayor of the City, Jorge Macri, maintained that the PASO “were an expensive mechanism that only solved the problems of politicians, not of the people.”
The May 18 elections, which were originally scheduled for July, will be held through the Single Electronic Ballot system.
In that instance, the inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires will elect their local legislators and, in October, they will have to return to the polls to define, together with the rest of the country, the composition of the chambers of Deputies and Senators.
“The fact that the elections are in May allows each Buenos Aires to decide on their own city, without being tied to national discussions,” said the mayor.
The project was approved in the Buenos Aires legislature with 55 votes in favor, 3 against and one abstention, after an agreement between the main political forces.
The suspension of the primaries in the City of Buenos Aires occurs one day after the Argentine Parliament approved the same measure at the national level.
The original project sent by the national government sought the elimination of the primary system but finally, given the lack of support for that objective, the government chose to promote an initiative that suspends them for this year.
The primary election system was first implemented in Argentina to define the candidates for the 2011 general elections, based on a political reform approved by Parliament at the end of 2009, with the aim of democratizing political representation, transparency and electoral equity.
According to the PASO system, to be qualified to compete in the general elections, candidates or lists of candidates must achieve at least 1.5% of the total votes in the primaries.
All parties are obliged to participate in the primaries, although they do not necessarily have to present more than one list of candidates to decide which one will lead to the general elections, an option for which the majority of the forces have opted in the last elections.
That is one of the reasons why the system has been questioned, among which are also its costs and the cumbersomeness of the organization.
International
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order on Friday that threatens to impose tariffs on foreign governments that apply digital fees to US companies, including Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
The order states that “foreign governments have exercised a growing extraterritorial authority over US companies, particularly in the technology sector,” and directly cites the taxes on digital services that “several business partners” apply since 2019.
According to the text, the Trump Administration will impose tariffs on those governments that use taxes or regulations that are “discriminatory, disproportionate or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property from US companies to that government or its chosen domestic entities.”
Trump delegates to the US Trade Representative the possibility of “renewing investigations” on the so-called technology fees of Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria and Turkey, imposed in the first term of the Republican, and if so, “take all appropriate actions”, which would include the imposition of tariffs.
“US companies will no longer sustain failed foreign economies through fines and extortionational taxes,” says the White House document, which provides for a “process” for them to “report” these “disproportionate” measures to the Commercial Representative.
He also instructs him to investigate together with the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce whether in the European Union or the United Kingdom the use of products or services of US companies is “required or encouraged” to “undermine freedom of expression”, political activity or, “otherwise, moderate content”.
It also suggests to the Representative, among other things, to hold “a panel” with its partners of the T-MEC (Canada and Mexico) on the tax on digital services in Canada, and identify ways to achieve a “permanent moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions”.
The order does not mention any specific company, but mainly affects large technology companies such as Apple, Google (subsidiary of Alphabet), Meta and Amazon, which have precisely starred in a resounded approach to President Trump since he won the elections in November.
In his first term (2017-2021), Trump ordered to investigate the digital fees to his companies abroad and threatened to apply tariffs to the six countries indicated today; taxes were imposed in the government of his successor, the Democrat Joe Biden, and subsequently suspended.
Trump signed another executive order aimed at restricting access to US technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, what he calls “foreign adversaries”, including Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
The executive order does not specify in detail what measures will be taken to restrict the access of these “foreign adversaries” to US technology.
Under the label of “foreign adversaries”, the order identifies China, Hong Kong, Macau, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the “regime of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro”, according to the text.
Trump justifies his decision with the argument that “economic security is national security” and maintains that the country must protect its sensitive infrastructures and technologies, from artificial intelligence to semiconductors and advances in biotechnology.
The executive order focuses especially on China, pointing out that companies linked to Beijing have used investments in the US to access key technologies and that the Chinese government is taking advantage of US technology to modernize its military apparatus.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, Trump has announced several restrictions on trade with the aim of balancing the trade balance and pressuring countries such as Mexico and Canada to make concessions on immigration and efforts against drug trafficking.
It has imposed a 10% tariff on China, which is in addition to the rates already applied during its first term (2017-2021).
Trump’s new restrictions come after his predecessor, Joe Biden, took steps to limit exports of semiconductors and artificial intelligence technology to China, which led Beijing to respond with export controls on graphite, a key material for electric vehicle batteries.
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
Defense Minister commends salvadoran soldier for Central American Cross Country victory
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