усі новини
Керівник чеської Служби безпеки зауважив, що «було б помилкою вважати конфлікти в Україні чи в Газі за те, що не торкається Чехії»
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Польський міністр додав, що, заборонивши транзит в односторонньому порядку, можна отримати зустрічну дзеркальну реакцію з українського боку
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«Йдеться про використання американських громадян як пішаків для досягнення політичних цілей», заявила Лінн Трейсі
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Міністр нагадав, що від самого початку війни в Україні Франція надала лише 30 тисяч снарядів
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Раніше у розслідуванні «Схеми» розповіли про майно його родини на 70 мільйонів гривень
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У польській митниці кажуть, що не мають фізичної можливості перевіряти справжність усіх митних декларацій
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London — A new report and research from a British defense research group has found that many Western nations are still reliant on Russian nuclear fuel to power their reactors, despite efforts to sever economic ties with the Kremlin following its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia may be able to take advantage of incongruencies in sanctions or other restrictions, as well as persistent contractual dependencies and supply challenges, to maintain access to Western nuclear fuel supply chains and continue generating revenue through its enriched uranium exports,” the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, says in its report.
Rosatom
Of those supplying nuclear fuel, Rosatom, Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, “is the biggest supplier of uranium enrichment to the global market” and has continued to export significant volumes of enriched uranium product since February 2022. The report estimates that Russia sold enriched uranium worth $2.7 billion in 2023.
Rosatom supplied some 30 percent of the enriched uranium purchased by European Union states in 2022, and 23 percent of that purchased by U.S. utility companies, according to the RUSI analysis of publicly available statistics. Not all countries publish their import or export figures for nuclear materials.
Western companies may be finding it difficult to change long-term contracts with Rosatom, said Darya Dolzikova, author of the RUSI report. “In the enriched uranium space in particular, there are historical dependencies, so there are contractual obligations that might be difficult for certain utilities to get out of,” she told VOA.
French dependency
France, which has 56 nuclear reactors generating around two-thirds of the country’s electricity, is one of Russia’s biggest customers for enriched uranium, despite growing political tensions between Paris and Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine.
“Imports into France of Russian enriched uranium have increased significantly since the start of 2022. So there was an increase of about 184 percent in volume,” Dolzikova said.
French utility EDF is even planning a joint venture with Russia’s state-run Rosatom to process uranium at a site in Lingen, Germany.
The RUSI report also details Russian uranium exports to the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. “Russia is still the biggest exporter of enriched uranium and enrichment services globally. They account for about 44% total capacity of enrichment services,” Dolzikova added.
Decarbonization
Global enthusiasm for nuclear power fell after the 2011 Fukushima reactor meltdown in Japan.
However, as countries try to slash carbon emissions to combat climate change, many governments are rethinking their approach to atomic power. At a March 21 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Brussels, several world leaders called for a reinvestment in nuclear power.
“Adapting supply chains take time. And doing it in a secure and reliable way takes time. But it is clearly one of the assignments to the industry and to governments working on this, is to adapt supply chains as fast as possible and also … to disconnect from Russian supply,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told delegates at the IAEA meeting.
“But we need to balance things, I mean, in a sense, if you want to decarbonize, if you want to reduce CO2 production, we need to make sure that our nuclear power plants can continue,” De Croo added.
China ‘displacement’
The report says Russian exports to China have also increased, raising suspicions that Beijing could be importing Russian enriched uranium to facilitate greater exports of China’s own enriched uranium supply — so-called “displacement.”
“We know that China is also keen to increase its own role, expanded zone role on global nuclear fuel markets. So that raises questions as to whether the additional imports into China of Russian uranium could potentially be backing increased exports of Chinese material. That is very difficult to prove definitively,” said report author Dolzikova.
Self-sufficiency
Western nations are trying to boost their nuclear self-sufficiency. France is boosting uranium enrichment capacity by more than 30 percent at a site in the southern region of Valence, according to nuclear industry reports. The American firm Westinghouse and Ukrainian firm Energoatom have begun producing nuclear fuel that can supply former Soviet reactors in eastern Europe, from a site in Sweden.
Dolzikova of RUSI said it will take at least two years for the West to end its reliance on Russian nuclear fuel. While boosting Western enrichment capacity is vital, the RUSI report also recommends that trade measures are tightened to cut Russia out of global markets.
“Sanctions — or any kind of restrictions — need to be multilateral. Otherwise, because of the complexity of enriched uranium supply chains and fuel supply chains, Russia will find the weakest link in that wall of restrictions to try to continue accessing Western markets,” Dolzikova added.
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An analysis by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute has found that many Western nations still rely on Russian nuclear fuel to power their reactors, despite efforts to sever economic ties with the Kremlin following its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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У лютому газета The New York Times повідомила, що Росія в обмін на боєприпаси дозволила КНДР отримати доступ до світової фінансової системи, а також розблокувала частину північнокорейських активів, які потрапили під санкції ООН
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Справу продовжать розглядати 20 травня
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В уряді кажуть, що ці кошти допоможуть покрити «пріоритетні бюджетні видатки та підтримувати макрофінансову стабільність»
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Карін Жан-П’єр зауважила, що Білий дім хоче, щоб схвалення законопроєкту щодо допомоги Україні відбулося негайно
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Білий дім продовжує закликати спікера Джонсона винести цей законопроєкт на розгляд
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За її словами, білоруська опозиція буде мобілізовувати людей і проводити кампанії
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«Ми обговорили кроки, які ЄС може зробити, щоб допомогти Україні якнайшвидше отримати більше Patriot та інших систем ППО», заявив Дмитро Кулеба
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За даними слідства, перед виборами 2016 року Трамп через адвоката виплатив Стормі Деніелс 130 тисяч доларів
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TALLINN, Estonia — The four men charged with the massacre at a Moscow theater have been identified by authorities as citizens of Tajikistan, some of the thousands who migrate to Russia each year from the poorest of the former Soviet republics to scrape out marginal existences.
Along with grinding poverty, Tajikistan is rife with religious tensions. Hard-line Islamists were one of the main forces opposing the government in a 1990s civil war that devastated the country. The militants claiming responsibility for the Moscow massacre that killed 139 people — a branch of the Islamic State group in neighboring Afghanistan — reportedly recruit heavily from Tajikistan.
The four suspects who were arraigned in a Moscow court late Sunday on terrorism charges appeared to have been beaten or injured during their detention. One was wheeled in on a gurney clad only in a hospital gown.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday described the suspects as “radical Islamists,” and he repeated his accusation that Ukraine might have played a role despite its strong denials.
Here is a look at the people, militant groups and political history connected to the Moscow attack:
The suspects
The eldest defendant is Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, 32, who may have been living in Russia illegally. He was shown sitting in a glass cage in the courtroom with a black eye and bruised face.
Mirzoyev reportedly had obtained a three-month residency permit in the city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired. In video of his interrogation shared on Russian social media, he reportedly says he recently was living in a Moscow hostel with another of the suspects. The court said he is married and has four children, but it was unclear if he was employed.
Saidakrami Murodali Rachabalizoda, 30, is apparently unemployed. Registered as a resident in Russia, he could not remember in what city, according to Russian news reports. When he appeared in court, his head was awkwardly bandaged after Russian officers reportedly sawed off one of his ears.
Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, apparently had the most stable life of the four suspects. He was registered in Krasnogorsk, the Moscow suburb where the killings took place, and worked in a flooring factory. He reportedly told interrogators that he was offered 500,000 rubles (about $5,425) to carry out the attack — the equivalent of about 2.5 years of the average wage in Tajikistan.
Mukhammadsobir Faizov, 19, was brought into the courtroom on a gurney, with a catheter attached and one eye injured or missing, and he appeared to fade in and out of consciousness. He had worked as an apprentice in a barbershop in the declining textile-mill city of Ivanovo, but reports said he left that job in November.
Islamic tensions in Tajikistan
As many as 1.5 million Tajik migrants are estimated to be in Russia after fleeing the poverty and unemployment that plague their landlocked, mountainous country. An array of mineral resources are present in Tajikistan, but the industry has been slow to develop because of belated foreign investment and poor geological data, among other factors.
Although its nearly 10 million people are overwhelmingly Muslim, tensions connected to Islam are common.
Islamists were a key opponent during a 1992-97 civil war in which the government killed as many as 150,000 people and devastated the economy. When the war ended, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon took steps to sharply curtail religious freedoms.
The government limited how many mosques could be built, prohibited women and children under 18 from attending mosques at all, and banned religious instruction outside the home for children. Critics say the limits encouraged people to turn to underground and radical Muslim factions via the internet.
Tajikistan has not made any official statement about the arrest of the four men suspected in the attack. But Rahmon was quoted by his government’s press service as telling Putin in a phone call that “terrorists have neither nationality, nor a homeland, nor religion.”
Islamic State vs. Russia
Most attacks tied to Islamic extremists that afflicted Russia in the past quarter century were committed by Chechen separatists, such as the 2004 Beslan school seizure that killed more than 300 people — or were blamed on them, as in the 1999 apartment bombings that triggered the second Russia-Chechnya war.
But attacks that began in 2015 were claimed by or attributed to the Islamic State group. The group opposed Russia’s intervention in Syria, where Moscow sought to tip the balance in favor of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
The U.S. government has said it had intelligence confirming IS was responsible for the weekend attack in Moscow.
After IS declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in June 2014, thousands of men and women from around the world came to join the extremist group. Those included thousands from the former Soviet Union, among them hundreds from Tajikistan.
One of the most prominent figures to join IS was Gulmurod Khalimov, who was an officer with Tajikistan’s special forces before defecting and joining IS in Syria in 2015. In 2017, the Russian military said Khalimov was killed in a Russian airstrike in Syria.
IS claimed responsibility for the 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner that was bringing tourists home from the Egyptian resort Sharm al-Sheik. Two years later, it claimed to be behind the suicide bombing of a subway train in St. Petersburg that killed 15 people.
Two weeks before the Moscow theater massacre, Russian officials said they had wiped out members of an IS cell that was planning to attack a synagogue. Earlier in the month, it reported killing six IS fighters in the Ingushetia region adjacent to Chechnya.
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Керівник поліції провінції Крістофер Тамарі поінформував, що зафіксовано п’ятть смертельних випадків
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За його словами, «саме Путін є найбільшим вікном для терору»
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