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‘It’s All Over for the iPhone’ – Russian Officials Told to Get Rid of American Cellphones

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Reports suggest Russian officials have been told to get rid of their iPhones by the end of March, amid the sanctions war with the West over Ukraine and increasing tensions over competitor states’ using each other’s tech more broadly.

Mobile phones manufactured by Apple will no longer be allowed at the Presidential Administration, according to a report by Russian daily newspaper Kommersant [Businessman] which has also been picked up by the likes of POLITICO and Newsweek.

Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff at the administration, is said to have issued the order at a seminar, with an attendee quoted by Kommersant saying: “It’s all over for the iPhone: Either throw it away or give it to the children. Everyone will have to do it in March.”

Kommersant noted that the Kremlin has been discussing ” a sovereign mobile ecosystem in Russia… based on technologies independent of Western IT giants” since late last year, motivated chiefly by security concerns. Part of the motivation for the move is “information security”, in other words the perceived ease with which the U.S. can snoop on iPhone users remotely.

The anti-iPhone move, which has not been officially confirmed by the Kremlin as of the time of publication, comes as their is increasing tension over the use of competitor states’ technology not just in Russia but in the West as well — though there concerns tend to focus on Russia’s allies in Communist China.

Tech giant Huawei, in particular, has become a focus of much debate, with even the likes of Britain — traditionally keen to abase itself before Peking (Beijing) in hopes of securing Chinese investment — beginning to baulk at its involvement in key infrastructure such as the 5G network after the Wuhan virus pandemic accelerated the souring of Sino-Western relations.

There are also concerns over Chinese-made surveillance cameras in Britain turning out to have hidden microphones in them, and to be linked to suspected human rights abuses in Xinjiang (East Turkestan).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States even expressed concern that Chinese telecoms equipment may be capable of intercepting and even disrupting military communications last summer.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

Sweden Sending Police Officers To Ukraine To Investigate Russian War Crimes

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The Swedish government has announced it will be sending a delegation of police to Ukraine to investigate possible war crimes committed by Russian forces during the invasion of Ukraine.

Swedish Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer, a member of the centre-right Moderates, announced that he believed Russia had committed war crimes in the country. The announcement follows the issuing of an arrest warrant for President Putin by an international court on war crimes allegations.

“We are at a point where it is no longer a question of if all the war crimes that Russia is guilty of in Ukraine should be prosecuted, but how it should be done,” Strömmer said, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

Along with contributing around £550,000/$675,000 and sending three prosecutors and six investigators to work on looking into Russian war crimes, the Swedish police authority will also be sending officers to a field office in Kyiv.

“The field office is being set up right now and will grow over time. At the initial stage, it is a matter of hiring three investigators from the Swedish side,” Strömmer said.

The allocation of the funding and the deployment of officers comes despite Sweden itself being desperately short of experienced police officers, with the country struggling to face down spiking levels of violent crime.

The Swedish move is in cooperation with the  International Criminal Court (ICC), which put out an arrest warrant last week for Russian President Vladimir Putin after accusing the Russian leader of carrying out war crimes.

ICC president President Judge Piotr Hofmański spoke out about the warrant for Putin and  Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna, which claims that Russia has kidnapped children from Ukraine and moved them to Russia.

“It is forbidden by international law for occupying powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to other territories,” ICC president President Judge Piotr Hofmański said Friday.

How the arrests will be executed is unclear as Russia pulled out of the Rome Statute agreement for the ICC in 2016 and Ukraine had never ratified the statute, although the country did sign it. The United States is also not a party to the court and has previously threatened it over potential war crimes investigations over its pursual of the Afghanistan war.

The arrest warrants came just days after Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced that regime change in Moscow was the end goal in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now — because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically — and what are the impacts also on society, and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia,” Joly said.

“The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account,” she noted.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

‘Woke’ broke the US military

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When you have high-ranking members of the military posing in “dog play” costumes and expressing more concern about pronouns than equipping America’s military for battle, you know your military has been weakened.

This is a terrible place for the United States military to be in. We’re facing aggression from Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China — and meanwhile, recruitment is plummeting.

Why is recruitment plummeting?

Perhaps it’s the difference in military recruitment videos.

While Russia makes a show of its physical strength and unity, America makes a show of its empathy and diversity.

We can thank Biden for that.

Mark Levin believes that America is not putting enough emphasis on the threat that is Russia and has instead placed all its attention on Ukraine.

He asks, “How many Americans have been kidnapped in Russia? Several are still there … how many threats [have] Putin and his surrogates made about shooting nukes at us or using nukes?”

He continues, “Now they’ve taken out one of our military drones.”

Levin points out that Ukraine has never kidnapped Americans. Not before or during the war. It’s never made threats with nuclear arms. And it’s never made an effort to sabotage the United States military.

Russia is the real threat, yet there are many on the right who think Putin is the good guy.

He continues, “Bill Clinton, in 1994, working with the Russians and the British, persuaded the Ukrainians to give up all their nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for security.”

That didn’t last long.

Levin says it’s clear that “there’s good and there’s evil. We’re the good guys. Russia is the evil guys.”

He finishes, “So many people today think like Marxists. They say the same thing: ‘Forget about history. We know what’s best today. And it’s isolationism and pacifism.’ So, I guess we have to wait to be directly attacked … oh wait a minute. We were yesterday.”

Russia knocked out one of our military planes. What did we do?

Nothing.

And it’s time for that to change.



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Xi Jinping in Russia: China Will ‘Stand Guard over the World Order’

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Russian leader Vladimir Putin lavished praise on visiting Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on Monday as Xi began his visit to Moscow.

While Xi’s public statements upon arrival were mostly about the growing partnership between China and Russia, Putin played his part as the junior partner in the new axis of tyranny, gushing over the Chinese leader and promising “clarification” for why Putin made things awkward for Beijing by invading Ukraine.

Reuters quoted Putin rhapsodizing over Xi’s amazing leadership qualities, and very delicately explaining why his government has not rushed to embrace the vague “peace plan” China is touting as a towering accomplishment of global diplomacy:

Russia is open to a politico-diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. However, back in April 2022, the peace talks were by no means terminated by us. The future of the peace process depends solely on the readiness for a serious conversation, taking into account the prevailing geopolitical realities.

I met Comrade Xi Jinping in March 2010, when he came to Moscow at the head of a representative Chinese delegation. Our first meeting was very businesslike and at the same time sincere and friendly. This style of communication personally impresses me deeply. I know that China attaches great importance to friendship and human relationships. It is no coincidence that the sage Confucius said: ‘Isn’t it a joy when a friend comes from afar!’ We in Russia also highly appreciate these qualities, for us a true friend is like a brother. In this, our peoples are very similar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 20, 2023. (SERGEI KARPUKHIN/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin sang from China’s playbook about how Western notions of human rights and international good behavior are just a scam to keep the rising authoritarian powers of the world under control:

The ‘collective West’ clings more and more desperately to archaic dogmas, to its elusive dominance, putting the fate of entire states and peoples at stake. The course pursued by the United States of dual containment of Russia and China, as well as all those who do not succumb to American dictates, is becoming more acute and assertive. The architecture of international security and cooperation is being dismantled.

The Kremlin said Putin would offer Xi “exhaustive clarifications” on Russia’s plans for Ukraine, giving the Chinese dictator a “first-hand view of the current moment from the Russian side.”

One Year Anniversary of War in Ukraine:

Volodymyr Zelensky via Storyful

This seems like a polite way for Putin to tell Xi that China’s “12-point peace plan” is not good enough to end the fighting in Ukraine. Putin claimed he has “thoroughly studied” China’s proposals and was prepared to discuss them with Xi, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov flat-out dodged questions about if China would be welcomed as a peacemaker and intermediary between Russia and Ukraine’s supporters in the West.

Peskov would say only that China is wasting its time attempting to mediate because the U.S. is “sticking to its position, which is aimed at further provoking the conflict, preventing any decrease in the intensity of hostilities and pumping weapons into Ukraine.”

The Associated Press

Destroyed Russian tanks and armoured vehicles are on display near the St. Michael’s Cathedral in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko)

Xi is clearly still hoping to build on momentum from the China-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, perhaps hoping that China could cement its position as the new dominant global power by negotiating an end to Putin’s Ukraine war while the Biden administration glares sullenly from the sidelines.

Xi said when he landed in Moscow that his regime is ready to “stand guard over the world order based on international law” and “resolutely defend the U.N.-centric international system,” which seems like a hollow boast for a leader who refuses to denounce an invasion the U.N. has resoundingly condemned on several occasions over the past year.

The Associated Press

U.S. President Joe Biden, right, stands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting on November 14, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

It is also darkly comical for Xi to boast of his respect for “the unity of the world community’s views” when the International Criminal Court (ICC) swore out a warrant for Putin’s arrest as a war criminal three days ago — and Xi’s Russian partner not only ignored the action but opened a sham “criminal investigation” of the ICC. 

For their part, the Ukrainians have signaled a willingness to accept China at the negotiating table, perhaps even at the head seat, but only if Beijing modifies its sketchy “peace plan” to require that Russia vacates Ukrainian territory.

“The formula for the successful implementation of China’s ‘Peace Plan’. The first and main point is the capitulation or withdrawal of the Russian occupation troops,” Ukrainian national security secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on Monday.

China’s Xi Jinping Arrives in Moscow for State Visit, Putin Talks

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Chinese Communist Party supremo and national leader Xi Jinping landed in Moscow on an Air China Boeing 747 on Monday afternoon, state media says, kicking off a state visit amid Ukraine war tension.

Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow Monday afternoon local time, commencing a long-discussed potential state visit to Russia by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) frontman amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, and even a presently-unenforceable arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin issued by the International Criminal Court.

The CCP leader arrived in Moscow aboard an Air China Boeing 747 and will be in the country for two days. As the Kremlin’s wire news service TASS reports, a Hongqi-made Chinese limousine was waiting for the arrival of President Xi at the airport, from where he was taken to have talks with President Putin.

The Kremlin says the talks are due to last until tomorrow, with a state spokesman saying the visit was less about pomp and pageantry, and more about talk. TASS reports the spokesman as saying: “there will be no additional protocol stuff, the main thing is negotiations, negotiations and negotiations.” Whatever is discussed, the visit is a demonstration by the Russian state that despite the Western sanctions regime, the country still has powerful allies on the world stage.

As reported ahead of the visit, Russia’s prosecution of the war in Ukraine will be a key matter of discussion, with industrial giant China even trying to portray itself as a possible broker of peace. What this peace would look like is an open question, especially given the degree to which China’s economy is being buoyed by massive imports of cheap Russian energy. Russia has benefitted from the income these sales have generated.

Preparing for this week’s summit between Xi and Putin, the Kremlin said: “I’m sure that our leader and the Chinese leader will exchange their assessments of the situation. We shall see what ideas will emerge after that. The Chinese foreign ministry said Xi would make “an objective and fair position on the Ukraine crisis and play a constructive role in promoting talks for peace.”

Ukraine itself, invaded by Russia in progressive waves over the past nine years and particularly since 2022, has rejected peace talks, with negotiation and compromise inevitably meaning a permanent loss of territory in return for a cesation of hostilities. Earlier this year, Ukraine’s Zelensky said he was not interested in talks with Russia, and Ukraine spokesmen have made clear “justice” is now a priority, with “Our tanks will be on Red Square” discussed.

China’s President Xi Jinping waves as he disembarks off his aircraft upon arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on March 20, 2023. – Chinese leader arrived in Moscow on Monday saying his first state visit to Russia since the Ukraine conflict broke out would give “new momentum” to bilateral ties. (Photo by Anatoliy ZHDANOV / Kommersant Photo / AFP) / Russia OUT (Photo by ANATOLIY ZHDANOV/Kommersant Photo/AFP via Getty Images)