L'asse Mosca-Pyongyang: il patto di mutua difesa fra Russia e Nord Corea 🗞️ Rassegna del 20/06/2024

Russia

(BBC) Putin and Kim pledge mutual help against 'aggression'

• Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un have signed an agreement pledging that Russia and North Korea will help each other in the event of "aggression" against either country.
• The pact cements a rapidly blossoming partnership that has worried the West. It could also have significant ramifications for the world, say observers.
• Mr Putin has in recent months faced difficulties on the battlefield in Ukraine, particularly with depleting weapons. During their last face-to-face meeting in September, when Mr Kim visited Russia, the two had discussed military cooperation and were suspected of striking an arms deal. Since then there has been growing evidence that Russia has been deploying North Korean missiles in Ukraine.
• The treaty is likely to anger Seoul, which had ahead of the meeting warned Russia against going “beyond a certain point”.
• Besides the possibility of Russian intervention in a fresh conflict between the two Koreas, "if North Korea continues to supply weapons to Russia, and Russia provides advanced military technology to North Korea, we can face an even greater global [weapons] proliferation problem."

Israele

Libano:

(APnews) The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group warns archenemy Israel against wider war

• Lebanon’s Hezbollah has new weapons and intelligence capabilities that could help it target more critical positions deeper inside Israel in case of an all-out war, the militant group’s leader warned on Wednesday.
• Hezbollah has used locally made explosive drones for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October, as well as surface-to-air missiles against Israeli jets.
• A nearly 10-minute-long video allegedly filmed by a Hezbollah surveillance drone and released Tuesday shows parts of Haifa — a city far from the Israel-Lebanon border. Nasrallah in his speech Wednesday said Hezbollah has much more footage — an apparent threat it could reach sites deep in Israel.
• Hezbollah’s attacks escalated after Israel expanded its offensive last month into the southern Gaza city of Rafah and spiked further last week after an Israeli strike killed high-ranking Hezbollah commander Taleb Sami Abdullah, the most senior militant killed so far during the Israel-Hamas war.

(Reuters) Israeli tanks push deeper into Rafah, forcing people to flee again

• Israeli tanks backed by warplanes and drones advanced deeper into the western part of the Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Wednesday, killing eight people, according to residents and Palestinian medics.
• Residents said the tanks moved into five neighborhoods after midnight. Heavy shelling and gunfire hit the tents of displaced families in the Al-Mawasi area, further to the west of the coastal enclave, they said.
• Nine people were also killed on Wednesday when an Israeli strike hit a group of citizens and merchants in Salah al-Din Road in the southern Gaza Strip as they waited for convoys of aid trucks carrying goods through the Kerem Shalom crossing, medical sources told Reuters.
• Residents said Israeli army forces blew up several homes in western Rafah, which had sheltered over half of Gaza's 2.3 million people before last month, when Israel began its ground offensive and forced most of the population to head northwards.

Ucraina

(Meduza) The winter ahead Russia has destroyed half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. What does that mean for the upcoming heating season?

• In March 2024, the Russian military began its largest aerial attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure yet, disabling about half of the country’s power generating capacity. While many of the affected facilities will take years to repair, winter is just months away, and Russia’s attacks show no sign of stopping.
• Russia’s widespread assault on Ukraine’s energy system began on March 22. That day, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russian troops launched 63 attack drones and 88 missiles of various kinds. The Ukrainian authorities reported that the attack was the largest on the country’s energy infrastructure since the start of the war, with more than 10 power facilities targeted, including the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station in the Zaporizhzhia region. In June, Russia carried out another attack against the plant, disabling it completely; restoring it is expected to take years.
• Since then, Russia has continued to launch regular strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities. Its tactics have changed since the full-scale war’s first winter: while Russian forces previously targeted electrical substations using cruise missiles and kamikaze drones, their new approach is to target large thermal and electrical power plants with an expanded arsenal that includes Iskander and Kinzhal missiles.
• Russia has destroyed 80 percent of Ukraine’s thermal power generation capacity and about a third of its hydroelectric power generation capacity, totaling about 9 GW of capacity, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on June 11. Last winter, the country’s peak energy demand was about 18 GW.
• The Ukrainian authorities plan to take a range of measures to compensate for the country’s lost capacity, Ukrainian energy market expert Hennadiy Riabtsev told iStories. To start, they’ll work to repair as many of the damaged facilities as possible before the start of the heating season. “There are facilities that can be restored, and this work has already begun,” Riabtsev said.

Ucraina-Kazakhstan:

(Guardian) Popular Kazakh opposition figure in hospital after being shot in Kyiv

• A Kazkah opposition figure and prominent blogger with more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube has been seriously wounded in an attempted killing in Kyiv.
• Aydos Sadykov, who was granted asylum in Ukraine in 2014, was shot near his home. His wife, Natalia Sadykova, wrote on social media: “Today in Kyiv, near his own house, an assassination attempt was made on Aydos Sadykov’s life.”
• Kyiv officials said an investigation had been launched, adding: “According to preliminary information, an unknown person with a gun ran up to the car where the victim and his wife were, shot the man, and then fled.”

Europa

Italia:

(The Guardian) Giorgia Meloni accused of splitting Italy over law to let richer regions keep taxes

• Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has been accused of “splitting the country” after parliament approved a controversial bill granting regions more power, which critics say will increase poverty in the south.
• The “differentiated autonomy” bill, sought by the wealthy rightwing-led Lombardy and Veneto as well as the leftwing Emilia-Romagna, gives regions more power over how their tax revenues are collected and spent, and over public services such as health and education.
• The measure was so bitterly contested it led to a brawl in parliament last week, with a politician from the opposition Five Star Movement needing medical assistance. The fight triggered a demonstration by opposition parties in Rome on Tuesday night, who said they were rallying “to defend national unity” in the face of the two bills and to protest against alleged “violence and intimidation” by the ruling coalition.
• Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left Democratic party (PD), said the measure was divisive and would increase inequality. “Meloni, the patriot who splits the country,” she said. “Brothers of Italy has bowed to Lega’s secessionist dreams.”

Politica internazionale

Medio Oriente

Arabia Saudita:

(Reuters) Hundreds die of extreme heat on haj pilgrimage, reports say

• At least 550 people have died on haj, diplomats told French outlet Agence France Presse (AFP) on Tuesday. Three hundred and twenty-three of the dead were Egyptians, most of whom perished due to heat-related illness, AFP reported, citing two Arab diplomats.
• Saudi state TV said temperatures rose on Monday as high as 51.8 degrees Celsius (125.2 Fahrenheit) in the shade at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
• Many of those deaths were due to extreme heat, family members said on social media, as other families continued to search for missing relatives in Saudi hospitals.

Africa

Chad:

I’ll

(Al Jazeera) At least nine killed after Chad ammunition depot fire triggers explosions

• At least nine people have been killed and 46 injured after a fire triggered a series of blasts at a military ammunition depot in Chad’s capital N’Djamena.
• The fire began in N’Djamena’s Goudji district late on Tuesday and there had been “huge explosions”, Foreign Affairs Minister Koulamallah Abderaman wrote in a statement on Facebook.
• There are multiple homes in the neighbourhood where the depot is located. It is also near the international airport and a base for French troops.