Hezbollah, tensione cresce; Zelenskyy: servono più attacchi in Russia 🗞 Rassegna 24/06/2024

Israele

(Associated Press) Thousands of Iran-backed fighters offer to join Hezbollah in its fight against Israel

• Thousands of fighters from Iran-backed groups in the Middle East are ready to come to Lebanon to join with the militant Hezbollah group in its battle with Israel if the simmering conflict escalates into a full-blown war, officials with Iran-backed factions and analysts say.
• The situation to the north worsened this month after an Israeli airstrike killed a senior Hezbollah military commander in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah retaliated by firing hundreds of rockets and explosive drones into northern Israel.
• Israeli officials have threatened a military offensive in Lebanon if there is no negotiated end to push Hezbollah away from the border.
• Over the past decade, Iran-backed fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan fought together in Syria’s 13-year conflict, helping tip the balance in favor of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Officials from Iran-backed groups say they could also join together again against Israel.
• Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Wednesday that militant leaders from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other countries have previously offered to send tens of thousands of fighters to help Hezbollah, but he said the group already has more than 100,000 fighters.

Ucraina

(NYT) Ukraine Urges Allies to Allow Their Weapons to Target Russian Air Power

• As bombs dropped by Russian warplanes tore through residential districts in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv this weekend, killing at least four people and injuring dozens more, President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday called on allies to further ease restrictions on the use of Western weapons so that his forces could use them against Russian air bases.
• The Biden administration’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use certain weapons to hit forces inside Russia has had an immediate impact, helping Ukraine thwart Moscow’s offensive north of Kharkiv and slowing the bombardment of the city, Ukraine’s second-largest, which is only about 25 miles from the border.
• But the lifting of U.S. restrictions does not apply to the use of Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, some of which have a range of around 190 miles. Those longer-range weapons would be needed to hit air bases deep in Russian territory that are used by the bombers. Kyiv has been left to rely largely on its own expanding fleet of domestically produced drones to go after those bases.
• The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, noted the decline in Russian infantry attacks north of Kharkiv but said that Moscow appeared to be stepping up its assaults in other parts of eastern Ukraine. Military experts have said that they think the Russian attacks near Kharkiv were intended, at least in part, to create gaps elsewhere by stretching Ukrainian forces more thinly. Russia continued to make grinding gains along other parts of the front.
• But as Western arms flowed into Ukraine and the Biden administration eased restrictions on the use of American weapons, artillery crews outside Kharkiv were given permission to use truck-mounted, multiple-rocket launchers known as HIMARS, which fire satellite-guided rockets up to 62 miles, to strike Russian troops across the border. Almost immediately, commanders in the area have noted, the pace of Russian assaults slowed as infantry units got bogged down and were left with little support.

Russia

(REUTERS) Russia could reduce decision time for use of nuclear weapons, lawmaker says

• Russia, the world's biggest nuclear power, could reduce the decision-making time stipulated in official policy for the use of nuclear weapons if Moscow believes that threats are increasing, parliament's defence committee chairman said.
• The war in Ukraine has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, with President Vladimir Putin last month saying that Russia might change its official nuclear doctrine setting out the conditions under which such weapons could be used.
• On Sunday Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Russian lower house of parliament's defence committee, was quoted by state news agency RIA as saying that if threats increased then the decision-making time for using such weapons could be changed.
• "If we see that the challenges and threats increase, it means that we can correct something in (the doctrine) regarding the timing of the use of nuclear weapons and the decision to make this use," RIA quoted Kartapolov as saying.
• Russia's 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out when its president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons "when the very existence of the state is put under threat".

(Associated Press) With its new pact with North Korea, Russia raises the stakes with the West over Ukraine

• Behind the smiles, the balloons and the red-carpet pageantry of President Vladimir Putin’s visit to North Korea last week, a strong signal came through: In the spiraling confrontation with the U.S. and its allies over Ukraine, the Russian leader is willing to challenge Western interests like never before.
• The pact that he signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un envisions mutual military assistance between Moscow and Pyongyang if either is attacked. Putin also announced for the first time that Russia could provide weapons to the isolated country, a move that could destabilize the Korean Peninsula and reverberate far beyond.
• He described the potential arms shipments as a response to NATO allies providing Ukraine with longer-range weapons to attack Russia. He bluntly declared that Moscow has nothing to lose and is prepared to go “to the end” to achieve its goals in Ukraine.
• Putin’s moves added to concerns in Washington and Seoul about what they see as an alliance in which North Korea provides Moscow with badly needed munitions for its war in Ukraine in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would enhance the threat posed by Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile program.

Europa

Europa-Cina:

(REUTERS) EU and China set for talks on planned electric vehicle tariffs

• China and the European Union have agreed to start talks on the planned imposition of tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) being imported into the European market, senior officials of both sides said on Saturday.
• Germany's Economy Minister Robert Habeck said he had been informed by EU commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis that there would be concrete negotiations on tariffs with China.
• The confirmation came after China's commerce ministry said its head Wang Wentao, and Dombrovskis, executive vice president of the European Commission, had agreed to start consultations over the EU's anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese EVs.
• The minister had said earlier on Saturday that the European Union's door was open for discussions regarding EU tariffs on Chinese exports.
• The EU's provisional duties of up to 38.1% on imported Chinese EVs are set to apply by July 4, with the investigation set to continue until Nov. 2, when definitive duties, typically for five years, could be imposed.

Macedonia del Nord:

(Associated Press) North Macedonia’s parliament is set to approve a new center-right government after May’s election

• North Macedonia’s center-right leader Hristijan Mickoski is expected to secure parliamentary approval to lead a new coalition government in a vote Sunday. Mickoski, 46, faces significant challenges in his four-year term in office — above all to advance the small Balkan NATO member’s long efforts to join the 27-nation European Union. At the same time, his VMRO-DPMNE party’s nationalist bent is antagonizing neighboring members of the affluent bloc, in stark contrast to the previous center-left government it defeated i n May’s national elections.
• Mickoski counts on the support of 78 lawmakers in the 120-seat house ahead of Sunday’s ballot. His VMRO-DPMNE-led coalition gained 43% of the vote on May 8, winning 58 seats — three short of a governing majority. Mickoski then struck a deal to form a government with an ethnic Albanian and a leftist party, which together have 20 seats.
• Mickoski, a former engineering professor, has pledged to continue his center-left predecessors’ efforts to shepherd North Macedonia into the EU. However, VMRO-DPMNE’s questioning of key agreements with neighboring Bulgaria and Greece — both which can block North Macedonia’s accession — could put the brakes on the EU project, said political analyst Petar Arsovski.

Politica internazionale

Medio Oriente

Iran: 

(Associated Press) Iran overturns death sentence of rapper famous for lyrics about the death of protester Mahsa Amini

• Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a government critic and a popular hip-hop artist, Toomaj Salehi — who came to fame over his lyrics about the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022 — his lawyer Amir Raisian said Saturday.
• In a post on social media platform X, Raisian said that the court assessed the case and found Salehi’s past six years in prison as “excessive” since the punishment was more than what was allowed by law. He added that another branch of the court will now review the case.
• Salehi’s death sentence in April by a Revolutionary Court in the central city of Isfahan created confusion as even Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency and the judiciary did not formally confirm it. Such courts in Iran often involve closed-door hearings with evidence produced secretary and give limited rights to those on trial.
• Salehi was released from prison last November after spending a year there on charges that his supporters said were based on the hip-hop artist’s music and participation in the protests that broke out in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22. Amini died in the custody of the country’s morality police after being detained for wearing her hijab too loosely. Salehi rapped about Amini in one video, saying: “Someone’s crime was dancing with her hair in the wind.” In another verse, he predicts the downfall of Iran’s theocracy.
• United Nations investigators say Iran was responsible for Amini’s death, and that it violently put down largely peaceful protests in a monthslong security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.

Asia e Pacifico

Filippine:

(Associated Press) Philippines says it won’t back down, but won’t start a war, after clash with Chinese Coast Guard

• The president of the Philippines said Sunday his country would not yield to “any foreign power” after Chinese forces injured Filipino navy personnel and damaged at least two military boats with machetes, axes and hammers in a clash in the disputed South China Sea, but added the Philippines would never instigate a war.
• President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. flew with his top generals and defense chief to the western island province of Palawan, which faces the South China Sea, to meet and award medals to navy personnel who came under assault by the Chinese coast guard Monday as they attempted to deliver food and other supplies to an outpost on the hotly contested Second Thomas Shoal.
• Videos and pictures of the chaotic faceoff made public by the military showed Chinese coast guard personnel hitting a Philippine navy boat with a wooden bar and seizing a bag while blaring sirens and using blinding strobe lights. The Chinese government said that its coast guard had to take action after Filipino forces defied warnings not to stray into what China calls its own offshore territory, a claim long rejected by rival claimant governments and international arbitrators.
• The violent confrontation sparked condemnation and alarm from the U.S., the European Union, Japan, Australia and other Western and Asian nations, while China and the Philippines blamed each other for instigating it. Marcos’s key advisers said Friday that his administration has no plan to invoke the country’s mutual defense treaty with the United States.