Russia-Ukraine war LIVE: Putin warns West not to let Ukraine use its missiles to hit Russia | WION
Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said that they have captured ianka in the khi region and Nell in the dones region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone outside Moscow Andre waro the governor of the Moscow region said that the air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to its de falling on a house but nobody was injured in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in K Keef prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 people dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian Hell City of Lans in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of kar in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president vadir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s sui City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks and preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after Kar now Kremlin is planning to attack sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies zilinski is visiting Belgium now to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander deu and that’s after he visited Spain and signed a security pack with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates one .08 billion Military Support to Ukraine within this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander siski has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kar region and natov in the donat region Russia has also claimed to have down drone out drones outside Moscow Andre vov the governor of the Moscow region said air defenses down a drone in basika leading to its debris falling on a house but nobody nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated well in time meanwhile in karv prosecutors shared footage of weekend missile attacks that left 16 dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles at least 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the Twin missile strikes that hit the store on Saturday Russian troops and thousands are lining up along Northwest of karke in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president ladimir zinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinski says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine sui City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft takeoff and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the is Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities now zilinsky warned that after kke now Kremlin is planning to attack the sui City as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander the crew that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed a security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro santz that allocates $ 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syki has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru and he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kariv region and nelo in the denes region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone a drone in fact outside Moscow Andre vorov the governor of Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to the debris falling on a house but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in car key prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 dead on Saturday security camera footage showed the moment when a large Construction Supplies store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian held city of luhansk in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday meanwhile Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian president President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan according to Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatts each in usbekistan now this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized Putin said Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of 500 $ million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export high-tech products to new Asian markets amidst sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union markets in the past year now the usbek president called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both uranium producers have long said their growing economies needed them in fact to give us more on this we were earlier just joined by Professor Peter kusik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at the American University and just listening to what he had to say uh R Russia will be actually SE selling more and more oil and gas to usbekistan which previously had been exporting oil and gas usbekistan and Kazakhstan have both said that they need nuclear power that the their oil and gas supplies should not be exported they need them internally but they also need nuclear power to meet their demand and Russia is in a prime position Rose Adam the Russian nuclear agency has been exporting a lot of nuclear power so they’re in a very strong position technologically economically politically to carry this out right now the West’s ability to hurt Russia with sanctions has proven to be surprisingly limited Russia has been opening up trade with the East orienting away from the west and so now they’ve got increased trade as you know with India with China with Eastern Europe with Africa with other Asian countries so Russia has its own strategy which has been working whereas countries like Britain and Germany are showing signs of economic decline Russia is actually showing signs of economic growth so Russia has not been hurt but in the long run this has not been positive for Russia’s economy what Russia’s done is been building up its military industrial complex well that can work in the short run but in the long run it’s not producing the kinds of goods that people need to raise their standard of living and so in the long run this will not be beneficial for Russia but in the short run it has been working Russia will help usbekistan build nuclear reactors as part of an agreement signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Central Asian country now the project is expected to be financed mostly through a Russian loan with a nuclear reactor in Central Asia now Russia’s Global imprint is growing even further to discuss this further we’re joined by Ben Aris who’s founder and editor and chief of b& intell news and former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph Ben always a pleasure speaking with you thank you for joining us here on beond world is one you’ve had a vast amount of experience in Russia as you were just talking about before the interview started I wanted to understand for you with the latest Development coming from usbekistan how do you feel the West will respond to Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia there’s not much it can do uh the problem is is that you know usbekistan Central Asia it’s about as far from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get and it’s surrounded um to the north uh by Russia and to the east by China uh and to the South is cked up by the instability in Afghanistan but the trade volumes uh with the rest of the world which would be one point of leverage um simply doesn’t exist I mean usbekistan does $10 billion a trade with Russia and $1 13 billion of trade a year with China and the trade it does with the rest of the world and the EU um is is negligible although usbekistan itself is is trying to diversify um its trade and do more business but there’s no leverage and so the West um they can complain or they like but there’s very little they can do then usbekistan tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the previous year now Russia has announced they are going to be making nuclear reactors in usbekistan through these nuclear reactors do you feel those sanctions that were imposed on Russia are going are kind of just going to get negated because usbekistan is anyways trading with the European Union indeed and there’s several things going on here um usbekistan has been suffering from an energy crisis in so much as it used to be a net exporter of gas um and now it has to import it did a deal with Russia in December and imports 12 billion cubic meters of gas because it’s growing so fast I it’s growing about 6% a year and it needs to keep that up and consequently uh the gas is solved the worst of the energy crisis and now these nuclear power stations that it’s buying from Ros atom will deepen its energy security um and it’ll also tie usbekistan more closely to Russia and Russia’s been very actively using it export of both nuclear technology and refined uh enriched uranium uh in order to bind countries like usbekistan to it um I mean these reactors come with a 60-year maintenance and fuel supply deal at the same time the European Union is trying to diversify away because it’s also dependent on Russian uranium exports although I mean Russia is a big producer but it dominates the processing of uranium and somewhere like usbekistan which has raw uranium uh it doesn’t process very much and so it’s sending some to France which has limited capacity to process the states is also dependent on russan uran and in that sense uranium has become the new gas to become a geopolitical tool to bind people to Russia or at least to you know give it some leverage uh in its relations with countries like that uh as far as the sanctions are concerned I mean the Americans have banned the import of Russian uranium but then they’ve introduced this waiver system because they don’t have any uranium that they can burn themselves and the waiver system means that for the next 5 years uh although technically there’s a ban everybody’s going to continue to import I mean the us is going to continue to import Russian uranium for another five years while they try and build up their refining capacity then I want to now shift Focus to Russia’s growing Global ties and most of it which has come out in the last two years I would say most of it has been strengthened in the last two years talk about Russia’s relations with Iran EK kazakistan China we’ve already seen Putin make two visits to China in the last 8 months itself North Korea then there’s Saudi Arabia and UAE let’s not forget the kind of reception that Putin received in these two uh West Asian Nations just last year he got a Heroes welcome over there the African C Nations so many Russian flags that we’ve seen in Africa where Western forces have been ousted by those Nations itself all this has happened and majority of it in the last two years it has been strengthened did the Western sanctions push Russia towards strengthening more Global ties in the past two years absolutely uh I mean this is Putin’s gamble I mean what he did is he definitively broke off relations with the Western World with Europe and and America by invading Ukraine and he knew that was going to happen and his gamble is that Russia can remake uh its relations or strengthen his ties with the global South and what Putin is betting is that his complaint that the world’s politics dominated by the US hemony um is actually shared by a lot of other countries and I think what’s happening is that being proven to be true um the countries in the global South in the Middle East in Africa um they are unhappy I mean when macron was touring in Africa the the sort of residual um Colonial resentment of the French Colonials came out very visibly in so much as there were demonstrations everywhere he went but then when labov goes and tours Africa he’s welcomed everywhere he goes and then they’re doing deals they’re supplying gas they’re supplying grain they’re supplying nuclear technology and all these fast growing countries in the in the emerging World um they want that and therefore Russia is seen as a friend and on top of that you’ve got the Soviet Legacy um whereby a lot of people uh in Asia in in Africa they were all trained by Moscow there was this DBA friendship of the people um and lots of these leaders who are in place now um they studied in Moscow in their youth uh where they got a first class education and that’s all playing to Russia’s Advantage too and I think the West is miscalculated um it’s overestimated its political and economic clout when it comes to forcing or pressuring all these uh Global South countries into joining their side and sanctioning Russia or at least not doing business because most of them are simply not interested this like this is not our fight this is a fight between the Europeans uh has nothing to do with us and we’re very busy like building up our economies and catching up and bringing living standards up to to Western St uh and consequently Russia is is a partner there and I think we’ve seen exactly this with uh Putin’s trip to to visit MEF in usbekistan is that at the end of the day um the USCS are trying to sort of navigate between all these these Clashing rcks of global geopolitical um problems um and at the end of the day he’s he’s focused on on growing his his economy and what does he need for that he needs energy where’s he going to get that from he’s going to get it from Russia so he’s done the deal um and I think this pra this pragmatic mindset is driving a lot of what the global South um are looking at when they dealing with Russia is that you know first and foremost we have to look after ourselves and let the West um you have their their ding-dong with Russia um but all said and done we’d rather not get involved definitely certain amount of overestimation from the West Side regarding how much their sanctions would affect Russia and what kind of clout they have in that part of the world clearly Russia has developed its Ties on everything apart from the west and that is a major part of the world and we are of course tracking this closely always a pleasure speaking with you Ben that was Ben Aris uh editor and chief of B intell news joining us from Berlin always pleasure speaking with you and our our focus and beond right now Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan well according to the Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatts each in usbekistan this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gwatt one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized well Putin said that Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export Hightech products to new Asian markets and all this emit sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year usek president Miz yv called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both Uranian producers have long said their growing economies needed them for more on this we earlier joined by Professor Peter kosnik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at American University we asked him about the significance of this project in usbekistan take a listen globally now we see a trend toward building more and more nuclear energy most people believe that that is relatively safe and much more environmentally friendly Russia and China have both been expanding the number of nuclear facilities that they’re building around the world so on the one hand this is in that context uh but is also part of the competition with the US in Central Asia the United States has tried to make more and more inroads through trade in that region but the Russians are showing that they can match them technologically and are not is not ready to relinquish influence in that region so on the one hand uh you can see it in that context in the broader nuclear context now we’ve got a very alarming Trend taking place and that’s this game of nuclear chicken that’s occurring on the battlefield Ukraine is losing losing more and more ground as Russia is gaining and that is making many of the NATO countries feel quite desperate right now we’ve got two kinds of threats going on on the one hand we’ve got macron and others calling for sending NATO troops into Ukraine both as trainers and in combat in certain circumstances uh and then on top of that we’ve got the Cameron and blinkin and stoltenberg and the polls and the estonians saying that the ukrainians should be allowed to use Western weapons to hit inside of Russia now that is very dangerous because Putin’s response is these tactical nuclear weapons drills on Ukraine’s border so we see nuclear escalation going on on both sides in this nuclear chicken game that could lead to World War I so we’re at a very alarming moment the positive use of nuclear energy and nuclear power that we’re seeing right now in usbekistan is one thing but the threatened use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or more broadly is much more alarming to me right now moving on Russia is producing artillery shells three times faster than Ukraine’s West W allies the Russian shells are also costing just a quarter of the western counterparts and this is according to new analysis the data released by Sky News and cated by consulting firm Bane and Company highlights the major hurdle for the Ukrainian Armed Forces using publicly available data the study shows that Russian factories are expected to produce or refurbish approximately 4.5 million artillery shells this year and this is in stark contrast to the combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US the research also highlighted the cost disparity it said that the NATO countries produced each 155 mm Shell at an average cost of $4,000 per unit Russia on the other hand produces each 152 mm Shell at just $1,000 per unit now given caves dependence on ammunition the US UK and other European nations have tried to increase their production but they are coming up vastly short in comparison to Russia Ukrainian soldiers in the front lines know that for every single round they fire the Russian forces the enemy retaliates with five shells but to address the problem kev’s forces are using their skills to maximize the impact senior leftenan coste atan currently fighting on the front line line against Russia’s forces said and I’m quoting the colonel here often with just one two or three shells we can completely destroy a Target unquote during a meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense industry Enterprises on Saturday Putin said that the production of ammunition in the country has increased 14 fold drone manufacturing has increased fourfold and the Assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5 fold since the launch of the military operation in Ukraine in 2022 Moscow has warned that the supply of weapons and ammunition to Cave by the US and its allies will not prevent it from achieving its military goals adding that it will merely prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct concentration uh between Russia and NATO moving to another War front Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of kar in Ukraine and says Ukraine’s President Vladimir zilinski as he renews his flea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zinsky says that the satellite images it shows Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched they are all all located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said that the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their region that is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at the Ukrainian cities zalinsky warned that after KH now Kremlin is planning to attack Sumi city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s in Asian forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander de crew and that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $ 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexandra siski has said that the French military instructors would soon be arriving in Ukraine to train the Ukrainian servicemen and this after wiing talks with the French defense minister paperwork has also been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said that they have captured ianka in the khari region and Netto well in the donet region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone outside Moscow Andre waro the governor of the Moscow region said that the air defenses down a drone in balika leading to its Dey falling on a house but nobody was injured in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in K Keef prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 people dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian H city of Lans in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of karv in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president vadir zalinski as he renews his flea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zilinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s Sumi City and that’s the areas from where Russian combat B aircraft take off and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks and preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after K now Kremlin is planning to attack Sun City as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies zalinsky is visiting Belgium now to sign a security paa with prime minister Alexander deu and that’s after he visited Spain and signed a security Packa with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $ 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine within this year furthermore Ukraine top Commander Alexander syki has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kar region and natov in the region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone out drones outside Moscow Andre vov the governor of the Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in balika leading to its debris falling on a house but nobody but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated well in time meanwhile in karv prosecutors shared footage of weekend missile attacks that left 16 dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles at least 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the Twin missile strikes that hit the store on Saturday Russian troops and thousands are lining up along Northwest of karke in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president ladimir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft takeoff and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities now zalinsky warned that after kke now Kremlin is planning to attack the Sumi city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security PCT with prime minister Alexander the crew that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed a security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro santz that allocates $ 1.08 billion doar Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syki has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru and he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the Kari region and nelo in the denes region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone a drone in fact outside Moscow Andre vov the governor of Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to the debris falling on a house but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in carke prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 dead on Saturday security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest Russian Hell City of luhansk in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday meanwhile Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan according to Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatts each in usbekistan now this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws W agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized Putin said Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export high-tech products to new Asian markets amid sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year now the usbek president called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although obb is and its neighbor kazakistan both uranium producers have long said their growing economies needed them in fact to give us more on this we were earlier just joined by Professor Peter Kik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at the American University and just listening to what he had to say uh R Russia will be actually SE selling more and more oil and gas to usbekistan which previously have been exporting oil and gas usbekistan and Kazakhstan have both said that they need nuclear power that their their oil and gas supplies should not be exported they need them internally but they also need nuclear power to meet their demand and Russia is in a prime position Rose Adam the Russian nuclear agency has been exporting a lot of nuclear power so they’re in a very strong position technologically economically politically to carry this out right now the West’s ability to hurt Russia with sanctions has proven to be surprisingly limited Russia has been opening up trade with the East orienting away from the west and so now they’ve got increased trade as you know with India with China with Eastern Europe with Africa with other Asian countries so Russia has its own strategy which has been working whereas countries like Britain and Germany are showing signs of economic decline Russia is actually showing signs of economic growth so Russia has not been hurt but in the long run this has not been positive for Russia’s economy what Russia’s done is been building up its military industrial complex well that can work in the short run but in the long run it’s not producing the kinds of goods that people need to raise their standard of living and so in the long run this will not be beneficial for Russia but in the short run it has been working Russia will help usbekistan build nuclear reactors as part of an agreement signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Central Asian country now the project is expected to be financed mostly through a Russian loan with a nuclear reactor in Central Asia now Russia’s Global imprint is growing even further to discuss this further we’re joined by Ben Aris who’s founder and editorinchief of B intell news and former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph Ben always a pleasure speaking with you thank you for joining us here on beond world is one you’ve had a vast amount of experience in Russia as you were just talking about before the interview started I wanted to understand with you with the latest Development coming from usbekistan how do you feel the West will respond to Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia there’s not much it can do uh the problem is is that you know usbekistan Central Asia it’s about as far from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get and it’s surrounded um to the north by Russia and to the east by China uh and to the South it’s cked up by the instability in Afghanistan but the trade volumes uh with the rest of the world which would be one point of Leverage um simply doesn’t exist I mean usbekistan does 10 billion dos of trade with Russia and $1 13 billion of trade a year with China and the trade it does with the rest of the world and the EU um is is negligible although usbekistan itself is is trying to diversify um its trade and do more business but there’s no leverage and so the West um they can complain or they like but there’s very little they can do then usbekistan tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the previous year now Russia has announced they are going to be making nuclear reactors in usbekistan through these nuclear reactors do you feel those sanctions that that were imposed on Russia are going kind of just going to get negated because usbekistan is anyways trading with the European Union indeed there’s several things going on here um usbekistan has been suffering from an energy crisis in so much as it used to be a net exporter of gas um and now it has to import it did a deal with Russia in December and imports um 12 billion cubes of gas because it’s growing so fast I it’s growing about 6% a year and it needs to keep that up and consequently uh the gas has solved the worst of the energy crisis and now these nuclear power stations that it’s buying from rosatom will deepen its energy security um and it’ll also tie usbekistan more closely to Russia and Russia’s been very actively using its export of both nuclear technology and refined uh enriched uranium uh in order to bind countries like usbekistan to it um I mean these reactors come with a 60 maintenance and fuel supply deal at the same time the European Union is trying to diversify away because it’s also dependent on Russian uranium exports although I mean Russia is a big producer but it dominates the processing of uranium and somewhere like usbekistan which has raw uranium uh it doesn’t process very much so it’s sending some to France which has limited capacity to process the states is also dependent on Russian uranium and in that sense uranium has become the new gas a geopolitical tool to bind people to Russia or at least to you know give it some leverage in its relations with countries like that uh as far as the sanctions are concerned I mean the Americans have banned the import of Russian uranium but then they’ve introduced this waiver system because they don’t have any uranium that they can burn themselves and the waiver system means that for the next five years uh although technically there’s a ban everybody’s going to continue to import I mean the us are going to continue to import Russian uranium for another five years years while they try and build up their refining capacity then I want to now shift Focus to Russia’s growing Global ties and most of it which has come out in the last two years I would say most of it has been strengthened in the last two years talk about Russia’s relations with Iran usbekistan kazakistan China we’ve already seen Putin make two visits to China in the last eight months itself North Korea then there’s Saudi Arabia and UAE let’s not forget the kind of reception that Putin received in these two uh West Asian Nations just last year he got a hero’s welcome over there the African C Nations so many Russian flags that we’ve seen in Africa where Western forces have been ousted by those Nations itself all this has happened and majority of it in the last two years it has been strengthened did the Western sanctions push Russia towards strengthening more Global ties in the past two years absolutely uh I mean this is Putin’s gamble I mean what he did is he definitively broke off relations with the Western World with Europe and and America by invading Ukraine and he knew that was going to happen and his gamble is that Russia can remake uh its relations or strengthen its ties with the global South and what Putin is betting is that his complaint that the world’s politics are dominated by the US hemony um is actually shared by a lot of other countries and I think what’s happening is that being proven to be true um the countries in the global South in the Middle East in Africa um they are unhappy I mean when macron was touring in Africa the the sort of residual um colonialism resentment of the French Colonials came out very visibly in so much as there were demonstrations everywhere he went but then when labov goes and tours Africa he’s welcomed everywhere he goes and then they’re doing deals they’re supplying gas they’re supplying grain they’re supplying nuclear technology and all these fast growing countries in the emerging World um they want that and therefore Russia is seen as a friend and on top of that you’ve got the Soviet Legacy um whereby a lot of people uh in Asia in in Africa they were all trained by Moscow there was this DBA friendship of the people um and lots of these leaders who are in place now um they studied in Moscow in their youth uh where they got a first class education and that’s all playing to Russia’s Advantage too and I think the West has miscalculated um is overestimated is political and economic clout when it comes to forcing or pressuring all these uh Global South countries into joining their side and sanctioning Russia or at least not doing business because most of them is simply not interested this like this is not our fight this is a fight between the Europeans uh has nothing to do with us and we’re very busy like building up our economies and catching up and bringing living standards up to to Western standards uh and consequently Russia is is a partner there and I think we’ve seen exactly this with uh Putin’s trip to to visit MEF in usbekistan is that at the end of the day um the EGS are trying to sort of navigate between all these these clashing rocks of global geopolitical um problems um and at the end of the day he’s he’s focused on on growing his his economy and what does he need for that he needs energy where’s he going to get that from he’s going to get it from Russia so he’s done the deal um and I think this pra this pragmatic mindset is is driving a lot of what the global South um are looking at when they’re dealing with Russia is that you first and foremost we have to look after ourselves and let the West um you have their their ding-dong with Russia um but all said and done we’d rather not get involved definitely certain amount of overestimation from the West Side regarding how much their sanctions would affect Russia and what kind of clout they have in that part of the world clearly Russia has developed its Ties on everything apart from the west and that is a major part of the world and we are of course tracking this closely always a pleasure speaking with you Ben that was Ben Aris editor and chief of B intell news joining us from Berlin always pleasure speaking with you and our top focus and beond right now Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan well according to the Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm Ross atom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatt each in usbekistan this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized well Putin said that Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export Hightech products to new Asian markets and all this emit sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year usek president Miz yv called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central asan republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both Uranian producers have long said their growing economies needed them for more on this we earli joined by Professor Peter kosnik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at American University we asked him about the significance of this project in in bistan take a listen globally now we see a trend toward building more and more nuclear energy most people believe that that is relatively safe and much more environmentally friendly Russia and China have both been expanding the number of nuclear facilities that they’re building around the world world so on the one hand this is in that context uh but it’s also part of the competition with the US in Central Asia the United States has tried to make more and more inroads through trade in that region but the Russians are showing that they can match them technologically and are not is not ready to relinquish influence in that region so on the one hand uh you can see it in that context in the broader nuclear context now we’ve got a very alarming Trend taking place and that’s this game of nuclear chicken that’s occurring on the battlefield Ukraine is losing more and more ground as Russia is gaining and that is making many of the NATO countries feel quite desperate right now we’ve got two kinds of threats going on on the one hand we’ve got mcon and others calling for sending NATO troops into Ukraine both as trainers and in combat in certain circumstances uh and then on top of that we’ve got the Cameron and blinkin and stoltenberg and the poles and the estonians saying that the ukrainians should be allowed to use Western weapons to hit inside of Russia now that’s very dangerous because Putin’s response is these tactical nuclear weapons drills on Ukraine’s border so we see nuclear escalation going on on both sides in this nuclear chicken game that could lead to World War II so we’re at a very alarming moment the the positive use of nuclear energy and nuclear power that we’re seeing right now in usbekistan is one thing but the threatened use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or more broadly is much more alarming to me right now moving on Russia is producing artillery shells three times faster than Ukraine’s Western allies the Russian shells are also costing just a quarter of the western counterparts and this is according to new analysis the data released by Sky News and collated by consulting firm B and Company highlights the major hurdle for the Ukrainian Armed Forces using publicly available data the study shows that Russian factories are expected to produce or refurbish approximately 4.5 million artillery shells this year and this is in stark contrast to the combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US the research also highlighted the cost disparity it said that the NATO countries produced each 155 mm Shell at an average cost of $4,000 per unit Russia on the other hand produces each 152 mm Shell at just $1,000 per unit now given Cave’s dependence on ammunition the US UK and other European nations have tried to increase their production but they are coming up vastly short in comparison to Russia Ukrainian soldiers in the front lines know that for every single round they fire the Russian forces the enemy retaliates with five shells but to address the problem kev’s forces are using their skills to maximize the impact senior leftenan cost atan currently fighting on the front line against Russia’s forces said and I’m quoting the colonel here often with just one two or three shells we can completely destroy a Target unquote during a meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense industry Enterprises on Saturday Putin said that the production of ammunition in the country has increased 14 fold drone manufacturing has increased fourfold and the Assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5 fold since the launch of the military operation in Ukraine in 2022 Moscow has warned that the supply of weapons and ammunition to Cave by the US and its allies will not prevent it from achieving its military goals adding that it will merely prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct concentration uh between Russia and NATO moving to another warfront Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of kar in Ukraine and says Ukraine’s President Vladimir zilinski as he renews his flea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zinsky says that the satellite images it shows Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched they are all located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said that the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their region that is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at the Ukrainian cities zalinsky warned that after KH now Kremlin is planning to attack sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security PCT with prime minister Alexander de and that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $ 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexandra siski has said that the French military instructors would soon be arriving in Ukraine to train the Ukrainian servicemen and this after wiing talks with the French defense minister paper work has also been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said that they have captured Ian ifka in the khari region and Nell in the dones region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone outside Moscow Andre waro the governor of the Moscow region said that the air defenses down to drone in balika leading to its de falling on a house but nobody was injured in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in K Keef prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 people dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian H city of Lans in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of KV in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president vadir zinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks and preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after karv now Kremlin is planning to attack sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies zilinsky is visiting Belgium now to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander deu and that’s after he was visited Spain and signed a security Packa with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine within this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander siski has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kar region and natov in the donat region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone out drones outside Moscow Andre vov the governor of the Moscow region said air defenses down a drone in in basika leading to its debris falling on a house but nobody but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated well in time meanwhile in kiv prosecutors shared footage of weekend missile attacks that left 16 dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles at least 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the Twin missile strikes that hit the store on Saturday Russian troops and thousands are lining up along Northwest of karke in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president ladimir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the s light images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft takeoff and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian City cities now zalinski warned that after kke now Kremlin is planning to attack the sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign the security pact with prime minister Alexander the crew that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed a security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro santz that allocates $ 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syi has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru and he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kariv region and nelo in the denes region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone a drone in fact outside Moscow Andre vorov the governor of Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to the debris falling on a house but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in car key prosecutor shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 dead on Saturday security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian held city of luhansk in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday meanwhile Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan according to Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatt each in usbekistan now this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized Putin said Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export high-tech products to new Asian markets amidst sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year now the usbek president called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both uranium producers have long said their growing economies needed them in fact to give us more on this we were earlier just joined by Professor Peter Kik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at the American University and just listening to what he had to say uh R Russia will be actually selling more and more oil and gas to usbekistan which previously had been exporting oil and gas usbekistan and Kazakhstan have both said that they need nuclear power that their their oil and gas supplies should not be exported they need them internally but they also need nuclear power to meet their demand and Russia is in a prime position Ros Adam the Russian nuclear agency has been exporting a lot of nuclear power so they’re in a very strong position technologically economically politically to carry this out right now the West’s ability to hurt Russia with sanctions has proven to be surprisingly limited Russia has been opening up trade with the East orienting away from the West and so now they’ve got increased trade as you know with India with China with Eastern Europe with Africa with other Asian countries so Russia has its own strategy which has been working whereas countries like Britain and Germany are showing signs of economic decline Russia is actually showing signs of economic growth so Russia has not been hurt but in the long run this has not been positive for Russia’s economy what Russia’s done is been building up its military-industrial complex well that can work in the short run but in the long run it’s not producing the kinds of goods that people need to raise their standard of living and so in the long run this will not be beneficial for Russia but in the short run it has been working Russia will help usbekistan build nuclear reactors as part of an agreement signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Central Asian country now the project is expected to be financed mostly through a Russian loan with the nuclear reactor in Central Asia now Russia’s Global imprint is growing even further to discuss this further we’re joined by Ben Aris who’s founder and editor and chief of b& intell news and former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph Ben always a pleasure speaking with you thank you for joining us here on we on world is one you’ve had a vast amount of experience in Russia as you were just talking about before the interview started I wanted to understand with you with the latest Development coming from usbekistan how do you feel the West will respond to Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia there’s not much it can do uh the problem is is that you know bistan Central Asia it’s about as far from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get and it’s surrounded um to the north uh by Russia and to the east by China uh and to the South is cork up by the instability in Afghanistan but the trade volumes uh with the rest of the world which would be one point of Leverage um simply doesn’t exist I mean usbekistan does $10 billion doar of trade with Russia and 13 billion dollar of trade a year with China and the trade it does with the rest of the world and the EU um is is negligible although usbekistan itself is is trying to diversify um its trade and do more business but there’s no leverage and so the West um they can complain all they like but there’s very little they can do then usbekistan tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the previous year now Russia has announced they are going to be making nuclear reactors in usbekistan through these nuclear reactors do you feel those sanctions that were imposed on Russia are going are kind of just going to get negated because usbekistan is anyways trading with the European Union indeed uh there’s several things going on here um usbekistan has been suffering from an energy crisis in so much as it used to be a net exporter of gas um and now it has to import it did a deal with Russia in December and imports um 12 billion cubic meters of gas because it’s growing so fast I it’s growing about 6% a year and it needs to keep that up and consequently uh the gas has solved the worst of the energy crisis and now these nuclear power stations that it’s buying from Ros atom will deepen its energy security um and it’ll also tie usbekistan more closely to Russia and Russia’s been very actively using its export of both nuclear technology and refined uh enriched uranium uh in order to bind countries like usbekistan to it um I mean these reactors come with a 60-year maintenance and fuel supply deal at the same time the European Union is trying to diversify away because it’s also dependent on Russian uranium exports although I mean Russia is a big produc us but it dominates the processing of uranium and somewhere like usbekistan which has raw uranium uh it doesn’t process very much so it’s sending some to France which has limited capacity to process the states is also dependent on Russian urine and in that sense uranium has become the new gas to become a geopolitical tool to bind people to Russia or at least to you know give it some leverage uh in its relations with countries like that uh as far as the sanctions are concerned I mean the Americans have banned the import of Russian uranium but then they’ve introduced this waiver system because they don’t have any uranium that they can burn themselves and the waiver system means that for the next five years uh although technically there’s a ban everybody’s going to continue to import I mean the us is going to continue to import Russian uranium for another five years while they try and build up their refining capacity then I want to know shift Focus to Russia’s growing Global ties and most of it which has come out in the last two years I would say most of it has been strengthened in the last two years talk about Russia’s relations with Iran usbekistan kazakistan China we’ve already seen Putin make two visits to China in the last8 months itself North Korea then there’s Saudi Arabia and UAE let’s not forget the kind of reception that Putin received in these two uh West Asian Nations just last year he got a hero’s welcome over there the African cool Nations so many Russian flags that we’ve seen in Africa where Western forces have been out by those Nations itself all this has happened and majority of it in the last two years it has been strengthened did the Western sanctions push Russia towards strengthening more Global ties in the past two years absolutely uh I mean this is Putin’s gamble I mean what he did is he definitively broke off relations with the Western World with Europe and and America by invading Ukraine and he knew that was going to happen and his gamble is that Russia can remake uh relations or strengthen his ties with the global South and what Putin is betting is that his complaint that the world’s politics dominated by the US hegemony um is actually shared by a lot of other countries and I think what’s happening is that being proven to be true um the countries in the global South in the Middle East in Africa um they are unhappy I mean when macron was touring in Africa the the sort of residual um colonialist res of the French Colonials came out very visibly in so much as there were demonstrations everywhere he went but then when labov goes into TOS Africa he’s welcomed everywhere he goes and then they’re doing deals they’re supplying gas they’re supplying grain they’re supplying nuclear technology and all these fast growing countries in the in the emerging World um they want that and therefore Russia is seen as a friend and on top of that you’ve got the Soviet Legacy um whereby a lot of people uh in Asia in in AA they were all trained by Moscow there was this DBA friendship of the people um and lots of these leaders who were in place now um they studied in Moscow in their youth uh where they got a first class education and that’s all playing to Russia’s Advantage too and I think the West has miscalculated um it’s overestimated its political and economic clout when it comes to forcing pressuring all these uh Global South countries into joining their side and sanctioning r or at least not doing business because most of them are simply not interested this it’s like this is not our fight this is a fight between the Europeans uh there’s nothing to do with us and we’re very busy like building up our economies and catching up and bringing living standards up to to Western standards uh and consequently Russia is is a partner there and I think we’ve seen exactly this with uh Putin’s trip to to visit MEF in usbekistan is that at the end of the day um the USCS are trying to sort of navigate between all these these Clashing rcks of global geopolitical um problems um and at the end of the day he’s he’s focused on on growing his his economy and what does he need for that he needs energy where’s he going to get that from he’s going to get it from Russia so he’s done the deal um and I think this prac this pragmatic mindset is driving a lot of what the global South um are looking at when they’re dealing with Russia is that you know first and foremost we have to look after ourselves and let the West um you have their their ding-dong with Russ um but all said and done we’d rather not get involved definitely certain amount of overestimation from the West Side regarding how much their sanctions would affect Russia and what kind of clout they have in that part of the world clearly Russia has developed its Ties on everything apart from the west and that is a major part of the world and we are of course tracking this closely always a pleasure speaking with you Ben that was Ben Aris uh editor and chief of B intell news joining us from Berlin always pleasure speaking with you and our top focus and beond right now Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan well according to the Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatts each in usbekistan this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaw one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized well Putin said that Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export high-tech products to new Asian markets and all this emit sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in central IIA in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year usbek president Miz yv called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both Uranian producers have long said their growing economies needed them for more on this we earlier joined by Professor Peter kosnik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at American University we asked him about the significance of this project in usbekistan take a listen globally now we see a trend toward building more and more nuclear energy U most people believe that that is relatively safe and much more environmentally friendly Russia and China have both been expanding the number of nuclear facilities that they’re building around the world so on the one hand this is in that context uh but is also part of the competition with the US in Central Asia the United States has tried to make more and more inroads through trade in that region but the Russians are showing that they can match them technologically and are not is not ready to relinquish influence in that region so on the one hand uh you can see it in that context in the broader nuclear context now we’ve got a very alarming Trend taking place and that’s this game of nuclear chicken that’s occurring on the battlefield Ukraine is losing more and more ground as Russia is gaining and that is making many of the NATO countries feel quite desperate right now we’ve got two kinds of threats going on on the one hand we’ve got mcon and others calling for sending NATO troops into Ukraine both as trainers and in combat in certain circumstances uh and then on top of that we’ve got the Cameron and blinkin and stoltenberg and the poles and the estonians saying that the ukrainians should be allowed to use Western weapons to hit inside of Russia now that is very dangerous because Putin’s response is these tactical nuclear weapons drills on Ukraine’s border so we see nuclear escalation going on on both sides in this nuclear chicken game that could lead to World War I so we’re at a very alarming moment the the the positive use of nuclear energy and nuclear power that we’re seeing right now in usbekistan is one thing but the threatened use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or more broadly is much more alarming to me right now moving on Russia is producing artillery shells three times faster than Ukraine’s Western allies the Russian shells are also costing just a quarter of the western counterparts and this is according to new analysis the data released by Sky News and collated by consulting firm Bane and Company highlights the major hurdle for the Ukrainian Armed Forces using publicly available data the study shows that Russian factories are expected to produce or refurbish approximately 4.5 million artillery shells this year and this is in Star contrast to the combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US the research also highlighted the cost disparity it said that the NATO countries produced each 155 mm Shell at an average cost of $4,000 per unit Russia on the other hand produc produces each 152 mm Shell at just $1,000 per unit now given caves dependence on ammunition the US UK and other European nations have tried to increase their production but they are coming up vastly short in comparison to Russia Ukrainian soldiers in the front lines know that for every single round they fire the Russian forces the enemy retaliates with five shells but to address the problem kev’s forces are using their skills to maximize the impact senior lein coste atan currently fighting on the front line against Russia’s forces said and I’m quoting the colonel here often with just one two or three shells we can completely destroy a Target unquote during a meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense industry Enterprises on Saturday Putin said that the production of ammunition in the country has increased 14 fold drone manufacturing has increased fourfold and and the Assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5 fold since the launch of the military operation in Ukraine in 2022 Moscow has warned that the supply of weapons and ammunition to Cave by the US and its allies will not prevent it from achieving its military goals adding that it will merely prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct concentration uh between Russia and NATO moving to another warfront Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of kar in Ukraine and says Ukraine’s President Vladimir zelinski as he renews his flea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies sski says that the satellite images it shows Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched they are all located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said that the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their region that is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at the Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after KH now Kremlin is planning to attack Sumi city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security PCT with prime minister Alexander de crew and that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed security pack with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanz that allocates $1.08 billion military support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexandra siski has said that the French military instructors would soon be arriving in Ukraine to train the Ukrainian servicemen and this after Widing talks with the French defense minister paperwork has also been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said that they have captured ianka in the Kari region and netwell in the dones region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone outside Moscow Andre waro the governor of the Moscow region said that the air defenses down a drone in balika leading to its Dey falling on a house but nobody was injured in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in K Keef prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 people dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian Hell City of Lans in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of karv in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president vadir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zilinsky says the satellite images show Russ forces building up near Ukraine’s sui City and that’s the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks and preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after K now Kremlin is planning to attack sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies zilinski is visiting Belgium now to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander deu and that’s after he visited Spain and signed a security pack with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine within this year further Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syki has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kar region and nerov in the donat region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone out drones outside Moscow Andre vov the governor of the Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to its debris falling on a house but nobody but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated well in time meanwhile in K prosecutors shared footage of weekend missile attacks that left 16 dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles at least 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the Twin missile strikes that hit the store on Saturday Russian troops and thousands are lining up along Northwest of kke in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president ladimir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s sui City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft takeoff and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities now zinski warned that after karke now Kremlin is planning to attack the sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign the security pact with prime minister Alexander the creu that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed a security PCT with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $ 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syki has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru and he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kariv region and nelo in the denes region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone a drone in fact outside Moscow Andre vorov the governor of Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to the debris falling on a house but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in car key prosecutor shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 dead on Saturday security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest Russian Hell City of luhansk in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday meanwhile Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan according to Kremlin Russian state nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatt each in usbekistan now this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized Putin said Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export Hightech products to new Asian markets amid sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union markets in the past year now the usbek president called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly the there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both uranium producers have long said their growing economies needed them in fact to give us more on this we were earlier just joined by Professor Peter gnik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at the American University and just listening to what he had to say uh R Russia will be actually SE selling more and more oil and gas to usbekistan which previously have been exporting oil and gas usbekistan and Kazakhstan have both said that they need nuclear power that their their oil and gas supplies should not be exported they need them internally but they also need nuclear power to meet their demand and Russia is in a prime position Rose Adam the Russian nuclear agency has been exporting a lot of nuclear power so they’re in a very strong position technologically economically politically to carry this out right now the West’s ability to hurt Russia with sanctions has proven to be surprisingly limited Russia has been opening up trade with the East orienting away from the west and so now they’ve got increased trade as you know with India with China with Eastern Europe with Africa with other Asian countries so Russia has its own strategy which has been working whereas countries like Britain and Germany are showing signs of economic decline Russia is actually showing signs of economic growth so Russia has not been hurt but in the long run this has not been positive for Russia’s economy what Russia’s done is been building up its military industrial complex well that can work in the the short run but in the long run it’s not producing the kinds of goods that people need to raise their standard of living and so in the long run this will not be beneficial for Russia but in the short run it has been working Russia will help usbekistan build nuclear reactors as part of an agreement signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Central Asian country now the project is expected to be financed mostly through a Russian loan with a nuclear reactor in Central Asia now Russia’s global imprint is growing even further to discuss this further we’re joined by Ben Aris who’s founder and editor-in chief of b& intell news and former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph Ben always a pleasure speaking with you thank you for joining us here on beond world is one you’ve had a vast amount of experience in Russia as you were just talking about before the interview started I wanted to understand for you with the latest Development coming from usbekistan how do you feel the West will respond to Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia there’s not much it can do uh the problem is is that you know usbekistan Central Asia it’s about as far from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get and it’s surrounded um to the north uh by Russia and to the east by China uh and to the South it’s cked up by the instability in Afghanistan but the trade volumes uh with the rest of the world which would be one point of Leverage um simply doesn’t exist I mean usbekistan does $10 billion of trade with Russia and 13 billion of trade a year with China and the trade it does with the rest of the world and the EU um is is negligible although usbekistan itself is is trying to diversify um its trade and do more business but there’s no leverage and so the West um they can complain or they like but there’s very little they can do then usbekistan tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the previous year now Russia has announced they are going to be making nuclear reactors in usbekistan through these nuclear reactors do you feel those sanctions that were imposed on Russia are going kind of just going to get negated because usbekistan is anyways trading with the European Union indeed there’s several things going on here um usbekistan has been suffering from an energy crisis in so much as it used to be a net exporter of gas um and now it has to import it did a deal with Russia in December and imports um 12 billion cubic meters of gas because it’s growing so fast I it’s growing about 6% a year and it needs to keep that up and consequently uh the gas has solved the worst of the energy crisis and now these nuclear power stations that it’s buying from Ros atom will deepen its energy security um and it’ll also tie usbekistan more closely to Russia and Russia’s been very actively using its export of both nuclear technology and refined uh enriched uranium uh in order to bind countries like usbekistan to it um I mean these reactors come with a 60-year maintenance and fuel supply deal at the same time the European Union is trying to diversify away because it’s also dependent on Russian uranium exports although I mean Russia is a big producer but it dominates the processing of uranium and somewhere like usbekistan which has raar uranium uh it doesn’t process very much so it’s sending some to France which has limited capacity to proc the states is also dependent on Russia uran and in that sense uranium has become the new gas it’s become a geopolitical tool to bind people to Russia or at least to you know give it some leverage uh in its relations with countries like that uh as far as the sanctions are concerned I mean the Americans have banned the import of Russian uranium but then they’ve introduced this waiver system because they don’t have any uranium that they can burn themselves and the waiver system means that for the next five years uh although Tech Al there’s a ban everybody’s going to continue to import I mean the us is going to continue to import Russian uranium for another 5 years while they try and build up their refining capacity then I want to now shift Focus to Russia’s growing Global ties and most of it which has come out in the last two years I would say most of it has been strengthened in the last two years talk about Russia’s relations with Iran usbekistan kazakistan China we’ve already seen Putin make two visits to China in the last 8 months itself North Korea then there’s Saudi Arabia and UAE let’s not forget the kind of reception that Putin received in these two West Asian Nations just last year he got a hero’s welcome over there the African cou nations so many Russian flags that we’ve seen in Africa where Western forces have been oued by those Nations itself all this has happened and majority of it in the last two years it has been strengthened did the Western sanctions push Russia towards strengthening more Global ties in the past two years absolutely uh I mean this is Putin’s gamble I mean what he did is he definitively broke off relations with the Western World with Europe and and America by invading Ukraine and he knew that was going to happen and his gamble is that Russia can remake uh its relations or strengthen its ties with the global South and what Putin is betting is that his complaint that the world’s politics are dominated by the US hemony um is shared by a lot of other countries and I think what’s happening is that being proven to be true um the countries in the global South in the Middle East in Africa um they are unhappy I mean when macron was touring in Africa the the sort of residual um Colonial resentment of the French Colonials came out very visibly in so much as there were demonstrations everywhere he went but then when labov goes and tours Africa he’s welcomed everywhere he goes and then they’re doing teals they’re supplying gas they’re supplying grain they’re supplying nuclear technology and all these fast growing countries in the in the emerging World um they want that and therefore Russia is seen as a friend and on top of that you’ve got the Soviet Legacy um whereby a lot of people uh in Asia in in Africa they were all trained by Moscow there was this DBA friendship of the people um and lots of these leaders who are in place now um they studied in Moscow in their youth uh where they got a first class education and that’s all playing to Russia’s Advantage too and I think the West has miscalculated um it’s overestimated is political and economic clout when it comes to forcing or pressuring all these uh Global South countries into joining their side and sanctioning Russia or at least not doing business because most of them is simply not interested this like this is not our fight this is a fight between the Europeans uh has nothing to do with us and we’re very busy like building up our economies and catching and bringing living standards up to to Western standards uh and consequently Russia is is a partner there and I think we’ve seen exactly this with uh Putin’s trip to to visit MEF in usbekistan is that at the end of the day um the USCS trying to sort of navigate between all these these Clashing rcks of global geopolitical um problems um and at end of the day he’s he’s focused on on growing his his economy and what does he need for that he needs energy and where’s he going to get that that from he’s going to get it from Russia so he’s done the deal um and I think this pra this pragmatic mindset is driving a lot of what the global South um are looking at when they’re dealing with Russia is that you first and foremost we have to look after ourselves and let the West um you have their their ding-dong with Russia um but all said and done we’d rather not get involved definitely certain amount of overestimation from the West Side regarding how much their sanctions would affect Russia and what kind of clout they have in that part of the world clearly Russia has developed its Ties on everything apart from the west and that is a major part of the world and we are of course tracking this closely always a pleasure speaking with you Ben that was Ben Aris uh editor and chief of bne intell news joining us from Berlin always a pleasure speaking with you and our top focus and beond right now Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan well according to the Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatt each in usbekistan this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized well Putin said that Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export Hightech products to new Asian markets and all this emit sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year usek president m called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central asan republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both Uranian producers have long said their growing economies needed them for more on this we earlier joined by Professor Peter k director of the nuclear Studies Institute at American University we asked him about the significance of this project in usbekistan take a listen globally now we see a trend toward building more and more nuclear energy most people believe that that is relatively safe and much more environmentally friendly Russia and China have both been expanding the number of nuclear facilities that they’re building around the world so on the one hand this is in that context uh but it’s also part of the competition with the US in Central Asia the United States has tried to make more and more inroads through trade in that region but the Russians are showing that they can match them technologically and are not is not ready to relinquish influence in that region so on the one hand uh you can see it in that context in the broader nuclear context now we’ve got a very alarming Trend taking place and that’s this game of nuclear chicken that’s occurring on the battlefield Ukraine is losing more and more ground as Russia is gaining and that is making many of the NATO countries feel quite desperate right now we’ve got two kinds of threats going on on the one hand we’ve got macron and others calling for sending NATO troops into Ukraine both as trainers and in combat in certain circumstances uh and then on top of that we’ve got the Cameron and blinkin and stoltenberg and the polls and the estonians saying that the ukrainians should be allowed to use Western weapons to hit inside of Russia now that is very dangerous because Putin’s response is these tactical nuclear weapons drills on Ukraine’s border so we see nuclear escalation going on on both sides in this nuclear chicken game that could lead to World War I so we’re at a very alarming moment the the the positive use of nuclear energy and nuclear power that we’re seeing right now in usbekistan is one thing but the threatened use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or more broadly is much more alarming to me right now moving on Russia is producing artillery shells three times faster than Ukraine’s Western allies the Russian shells are also costing just a quarter of the western counterparts and this is according to new analysis the data released by Sky News and collated by consulting firm Bane and Company highlights the major hurdle for the Ukrainian Armed Forces using publicly available data the study shows that Russian factories are expected to produce or refurbish approximately 4.5 million artillery shells this year and this is in stark contrast to the combined production of about 1.3 3 million rounds across European nations and the US the research also highlighted the cost disparity it said that the NATO countries produced each 155 mm Shell at an average cost of $4,000 per unit Russia on the other hand produces each 152 mm Shell at just $1,000 per unit now given Cav’s dependence on ammunition the US UK and other European nations have tried to increase their production but they are coming up vastly short in comparison to Russia Ukrainian soldiers in the front lines know that for every single round they fire the Russian forces the enemy retaliates with five shells but to address the problem kev’s forces are using their skills to maximize the impact senior lein coste atan currently fighting on the front line against Russia’s forces said and I’m quoting the colonel here often with just one two or three shells we can completely destroy a Target unquote during a meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense industry Enterprises on Saturday Putin said that the production of ammunition in the country has increased 14 fold rone manufacturing has increased fourfold and the Assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5 fold since the launch of the military operation in Ukraine in 2022 Moscow has warned that the supply of weapons and ammunition to Cave by the US and its allies will not prevent it from achieving its military goals adding that it will merely prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct concentration uh between Russia and NATO moving to another warfront Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of K in Ukraine and says Ukraine’s President Vladimir zilinski as he renews his flea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zinsky says that the satellite images it shows Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched they are all located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said that the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their region that is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at the Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after KH now Kremlin is planning to attack Sumi city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander de crew and that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed security paa with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates 1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexandra sisi has said that the French military instructors would soon be arriving in Ukraine to train the Ukrainian servicemen and this after Widing talks with the French defense minister paperwork has also been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said that they have captured ianka in the KH region and Netto well in the dones region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone outside mosow Andre waro the governor of the Moscow region said that the air defenses down a drone in balika leading to its Dey falling on a house but nobody was injured in the incident as the house was evacuated in [Music] time on the other hand in car ke prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 people dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian H city of Lans in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of karv in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president vadir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinski says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s sui City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks and preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after Kar now Kremlin is planning to attack Sun City as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies zinsky is visiting Belgium now to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander deu and that’s after he visited Spain and signed a security pack with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine within this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syki has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kar region and nalo in the donat region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone out drones out inside Moscow Andre vov the governor of the Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in basika leading to its debris falling on a house but nobody but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated well in time meanwhile in karv prosecutors shared footage of weekend missile attacks that left 16 dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles at least 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the Twin missile strikes that hit the store on Saturday Russian troops and thousands are lining up along Northwest of kke in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president ladimir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s sui City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft takeoff and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities now zinski warned that after karke now Kremlin is planning to attack the sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinsky is visiting Belgium to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander the crew that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed a security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro santz that allocates 1.8 billion dollar Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander CI has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru and he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured evanka in the kariv region and nelo in the dunesque region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone a drone in fact outside Moscow Andre Boro the governor of Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in vachika leading to the debris falling on a house but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in car ke prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 dead on Saturday security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian held city of luhansk in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday meanwhile Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan according to Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatts each in usbekistan now this is however a smaller scale project that and the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized Putin said Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export high-tech products to new Asian markets amid sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia EXT extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union markets in the past year now the usbek president called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both uranium producers have long said their growing economies needed them in fact to give us more on this we were earlier just joined by Professor Peter Kik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at the American University and just listening to what he had to say uh R Russia will be actually SE selling more and more oil and gas to usbekistan which previously have been exporting oil and gas usbekistan and Kazakhstan have both said that they need nuclear power that their their oil and gas supplies should not be exported they need them internally but they also need nuclear power to meet their demand and Russia is in a prime position Rose Adam the Russian nuclear agency has been exporting a lot of nuclear power so they’re in a very strong position technologically economically politically to carry this out right now the West’s ability to hurt Russia with sanctions has proven to be surprisingly Limited Russia has been opening up trade with the East orienting away from the west and so now they’ve got increased trade as you know with India with China with Eastern Europe with Africa with other Asian countries so Russia has its own strategy which has been working whereas countries like Britain and Germany are showing signs of economic decline Russia is actually showing signs of economic growth so Russia has not been hurt but in the long run this has not been positive for Russia’s economy what Russia’s done is been building up its military industrial complex well that can work in the short run but in the long run it’s not producing the kinds of goods that people need to raise their standard of living and so in the long run this will not be beneficial for for Russia but in the short run it has been working Russia will help usbekistan build nuclear reactors as part of an agreement signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Central Asian country now the project is expected to be financed mostly through a Russian loan with a nuclear reactor in Central Asia now Russia’s Global imprint is growing even further to discuss this further we’re joined by Ben Aris who’s founder and editor-in chief of b& intell news and former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph bin always a pleasure speaking with you thank you for joining us here on Beyond world is one you’ve had a vast amount of experience in Russia as you were just talking about before the interview started I wanted to understand with you with the latest Development coming from usbekistan how do you feel the West will respond to Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia there’s not much it can do uh the problem is is that you know usbekistan Central Asia it’s about as far from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get and it’s surrounded um to the north by Russia and to the east by China uh and to the South is cked up by the instability in Afghanistan but the trade volumes uh with the rest of the world which would be one point of Leverage um simply doesn’t exist I mean usbekistan does $10 billion doar of trade with Russia And1 13 billion dollar of trade a year with China and the trade it does with the rest of the world and the EU um is is negligible although usbekistan itself is is trying to diversify um its trade and do more business but there’s no leverage and so the West um they can complain or they like but there’s very little they can do then usbekistan tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the previous year now Russia has announced they are going to be making nuclear reactors in usbekistan through these nuclear reactors do you feel those sanctions that were imposed on Russia are going are kind of just going to get negated because usbekistan is anyways trading with the European Union indeed there’s several things going on here um usbekistan has been suffering from an energy crisis in so much as it used to be a net exporter of gas um and now it has to import it did a deal with Russia in December and imports 12 billion cubic met of gas because it’s growing so fast I it’s growing about 6% a year and it needs to keep that up and consequently uh the gas has solved the worst of the energy crisis and now these nuclear power stations that it’s buying from rosatom will deepen its energy security um and it’ll also tie OB bistan more closely to Russia and Russia’s been very actively using its export of both nuclear technology and refined uh enriched uranium uh in order to bind countries like usbekistan to it um I mean these reactors come with a 60-year maintenance and fuel supply deal at the same time the European Union is trying to to diversify away because it’s also dependent on Russian uranium exports although I mean Russia is a big producer but it dominates the processing of uranium and somewh like usbekistan which has raw uranium uh it doesn’t process very much so it’s sending some to France which has limited capacity to process the states is also dependent on Russian uran and in that sense uranium has become the new gas to become a geopolitical tool to bind people to Russia or at least to you know give it leverage uh in its relations with countries like that uh as far as the sanctions are concerned I mean the Americans have banned the import of Russian uranium but then they’ve introduced this waiver system because they don’t have any uranium that they can burn themselves and the waiver system means that for the next five years uh although technically there’s a ban everybody’s going to continue to import I mean the us are going to continue to import Russian uranium for another five years while they try and build up their refining capacity then I I want to now shift Focus to Russia’s growing Global ties and most of it which has come out in the last two years I would say most of it has been strengthened in the last two years talk about Russia’s relations with Iran usbekistan kazakistan China we’ve already seen Putin make two visits to China in the last8 months itself North Korea then there’s Saudi Arabia and UAE let’s not forget the kind of reception that Putin received in these two uh West Asian Nations just last year he got a hero’s welcome over there the African Co Nations so many Russian flags that we’ve seen in Africa where Western forces have been ousted by those Nations itself all this has happened and majority of it in the last two years it has been strengthened did the Western sanctions push Russia towards strengthening more Global ties in the past two years absolutely uh I mean this is Putin’s gamble I mean what he did is he definitively broke off relations with the Western World with Europe and and America by invading Ukraine and he knew that was going to happen and his gamble is that Russia can remake uh its relations or strengthen his ties with the global South and what Putin is betting is that his complaint that the world’s politics are dominated by the US hegemony um is actually shared by a lot of other countries and I think what’s happening is that being proven to be true um the countries in the global South in the Middle East in Africa um they are happy I mean when macron was touring in Africa the the sort of residual um colonialism resentment of the French Colonials came out very visibly in so much as there were demonstrations everywhere he went but then when labov goes on tours Africa he’s welcomed everywhere he goes and then they’re doing deals they’re supplying gas they’re supplying grain they’re supplying nuclear technology and all these fast growing countries in the in the emerging World um they want that and therefore Russia is seen as a friend and on top of that you’ve got the Soviet Legacy um whereby a lot of people uh in Asia in in Africa they were all trained by Moscow there was this s of DBA friendship of the people um and lots of these leaders who are in place now um they studied in Moscow in their youth uh where they got a first class education and that’s all playing to Russia’s Advantage too and I think the West is miscalculated um it’s overestimated its political and economic clout when it comes to forcing or pressuring all these uh Global South countries into joining their side and sanctioning Russia or at least not doing business because most of them are simply not interested this it’s like this is not our fight this is a fight between the Europeans uh has nothing to do with us and we’re very busy like building up our economies and catching up and bringing living standards up to to Western standards uh and consequently Russia is is a partner there and I think we’ve seen exactly this with uh Putin’s trip to to visit in usbekistan is that at the end of the day um the USCS are trying to sort of navigate between all these these clashing rocks of global geopolitical um problems um and at the end of the day he’s he’s focused on on growing his his economy and what does he need for that he needs energy where’s he going to get that from he’s going to get it from Russia so he’s done the deal um and I think this pratic this pragmatic mindset is driving a lot of what the global South um are looking at when they’re dealing with Russia is that you know first and foremost we have to look after ourselves and let the West um you have their their ding-dong with Russia um but all said and done we’d rather not get involv definitely certain amount of overestimation from the West Side regarding how much their sanctions would affect Russia and what kind of clout they have in that part of the world clearly Russia has developed its Ties on everything apart from the west and that is a major part of the world and we are of course tracking this closely always a pleasure speaking with you Ben that was Ben Aris uh editor-in chief of B Intel news joining us from Berlin always pleasure speaking with you and our top focus in be on right now Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan well according to the Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatt each in in usbekistan this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaw one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized well Putin said that Russia will put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export Hightech products to new Asian markets and all this emit San stions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the past year usek president Miz yv called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian Republic although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both Uranian producers have long said their growing economies needed them for more on this we earlier joined by Professor Peter kosnik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at American University we asked him about the significance of this project in usbekistan take a listen globally now we see a trend toward building more and more nuclear energy most people believe that that is relatively safe and much more environmentally friendly Russia and China have both been expanding the number of nuclear facilities that they’re building around the world so on the one hand this is in that context uh but is also part of the competition with the US in Central Asia the United States has tried to make more and more inroads through trade in that region but the Russians are showing that they can match them technologically and are not is not ready to relinquish influence in that region so on the one hand uh you can see it in that context in the broader nuclear context now we’ve got a very alarming Trend taking place and that’s this game of nuclear chicken that’s occurring on the battlefield Ukraine is losing more and more ground as Russia is gaining and that is making many of the NATO countries feel quite desperate right now we’ve got two kinds of threats going on on the one hand we’ve got macron and others calling for sending NATO troops into Ukraine both as trainers and in combat in certain circumstances uh and then on top of that we’ve got the Cameron and blinkin and stoltenberg and the poles and the estonians saying that the ukrainians should be allowed to use Western weapons to hit inside of Russia now that is very dangerous because Putin’s response is is these tactical nuclear weapons drills on Ukraine’s border so we see nuclear escalation going on on both sides in this nuclear chicken game that could lead to World War I so we’re at a very alarming moment the the the positive use of nuclear energy and nuclear power that we seeing right now in usbekistan is one thing but the threatened use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or more broadly is much more alarming to me right now moving on Russia is producing artillery shells three times faster than Ukraine’s Western allies the Russian shells are also costing just a quarter of the western counterparts and this is according to new analysis the data released by Sky News and collated by consulting firm Bane and Company highlights the major hurdle for the Ukrainian Armed Forces using publicly available data the study shows that Russian factories are expected to produce or refurbish approximately 4.5 million artillery shells this year and this is in stark contrast to the combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US the research also highlighted the cost disparity it said that the NATO countries produced each 155 mm Shell at an average cost of $4,000 per unit Russia on the other hand produces each $152 mm Shell at just $1,000 per unit now given Cave’s dependence on ammunition the US UK and other European nations have tried to increase their production but they are coming up vastly short in comparison to Russia Ukrainian soldiers in the front lines know that for every single round they fire the Russ Russian forces the enemy retaliates with five shells but to address the problem kev’s forces are using their skills to maximize the impact senior leftenan coste atan currently fighting on the front line against Russia’s forces said and I’m quoting the colonel here often with just one two or three shells we can completely destroy a Target unquote during a meeting with the leadership of Russia’s defense industry Enterprises on Saturday Putin said that the produ production of ammunition in the country has increased 14 fold drone manufacturing has increased fourfold and the Assembly of tanks and armored vehicles has increased 3.5 fold since the launch of the military operation in Ukraine in 2022 Moscow has warned that the supply of weapons and ammunition to Cave by the US and its allies will not prevent it from achieving its military goals adding that it will merely prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct concentration uh between Russia and NATO moving to another warfront Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of karke in Ukraine and says Ukraine’s President Vladimir zilinski as he renews his fle for permission to Target them with missil supplied by Western allies zinski says that the satellite images it shows Russian forces building up near Ukraine Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched they are all located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said that the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their region that is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at the Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after KH now Kremlin is planning to attack Sumi city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander de crew and that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexandra siski has said that the French military instructors would soon be arriving in Ukraine to train the Ukrainian servicemen and this after wiing talks with the French defense minister paperwork has also been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian Training Center meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said that they have captured ianka in the Kari region and Nell in the dones region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone outside Moscow Andre waro the governor of the Moscow region said that the air defenses down the Drone in balika leading to its Dey falling on a house but nobody with was injured in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in K Keef prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 people dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian Hell City of Lans in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within three hours early on Tuesday Russian troops in thousands are lining up along Northwest of karv in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president vadir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinsky says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft take off and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks and prep ations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities zinsky warned that after K now Kremlin is planning to attack sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies zilinski is visiting Belgium now to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander deu and that’s after he visited Spain and signed a security pack with Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez that allocates $1.08 billion Military Support to Ukraine within this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander siski has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the kar region and natov in the donat region Russia has also claimed to have down drone out drones outside Moscow Andre vov the governor of the Moscow region said air defenses down a drone in basika leading to its debris falling on a house but no body but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated well in time meanwhile in Kar prosecutors shared footage of weekend missile attacks that left 16 dead security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles at least 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the Twin missile strikes that hit the store on Saturday Russian troops and thousands are lining up along Northwest of karke in Ukraine says Ukraine’s president ladimir zilinski as he renews his plea for permission to Target them with missiles supplied by Western allies zalinski says the satellite images show Russian forces building up near Ukraine’s Sumi City and that the areas from where Russian combat aircraft takeoff and missiles are launched are already located but Ukrainian forces are not allowed to strike targets inside Russia with Western missiles he said the restraint on attacking the is Russian troops in their territory is providing the Russian forces a safe space for ground attacks preparations and firing missiles at Ukrainian cities now zalinsky warned that after kke now Kremlin is planning to attack the sui city as his troops struggle to hold back Russia’s Invasion forces Ukrainian leader continues to seek more military aid from his Western allies today zalinski is visiting Belgium to sign a security pact with prime minister Alexander the crew that’s after he visited Spain on Monday and signed a security pact with Spanish prime minister Pedro santz that allocates $ 1.08 billion dollar Military Support to Ukraine this year furthermore Ukraine’s top Commander Alexander syi has said that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country to train Ukrainian servicemen after video link talks with French defense minister Sebastian loru and he said paperwork has been signed to enable the first French instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers meanwhile Russia claims to have captured two villages in Ukraine in a video released by the Russian defense Ministry military officials said they have captured ianka in the Kari region and nelo in the denes region Russia has also claimed to have downed drone a drone in fact outside Moscow Andre vorov the governor of Moscow region said air defenses downed a drone in valika leading to the debris falling on a house but nobody was hurt in the incident as the house was evacuated in time on the other hand in car ke prosecutors shared footage of twin missile attacks that left 16 dead on Saturday security camera footage showed the moment when a large construction supply store was hit by Russian missiles in the latest the Russian Hell City of luhansk in eastern Ukraine came under attack twice within 3 hours early on Tuesday meanwhile Russia has announced to build a nuclear power plant in usbekistan a deal has been signed in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to usbekistan according to Kremlin Russian State nuclear firm rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatt each in usbekistan now this is however a smaller scale project than the 2.4 gaws one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalized Putin said Russia will put $400 million into joint investment M fund of $500 million to finance projects in usbekistan if implemented the deal will showcase Russia’s ability to export high-tech products to new Asian markets amid sanctions by the Western countries the move is being seen as Russia extending influence in Central Asia in competition with the West essentially usbekistan has tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union markets in the past year now the usbek president called it the first such project in post Soviet Central Asia interestingly there are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex Soviet Central Asian republics although usbekistan and its neighbor kazakistan both uranium producers have long said their growing economies needed them in fact to give us more on this we were earlier just joined by Professor Peter Kik director of the nuclear Studies Institute at the American University and just listening to what he had to say uh R Russia will be actually SE selling more and more oil and gas to usbekistan which previously have been exporting oil and gas usbekistan and Kazakhstan have both said that they need nuclear power that their their oil and gas supplies should not be exported they need them internally but they also need nuclear power to meet their demand and Russia is in a prime position Rose Adam the Russian nuclear agency has been exporting a lot of nuclear power so they’re in a very strong POS position technologically economically politically to carry this out right now the West’s ability to hurt Russia with sanctions has proven to be surprisingly limited Russia has been opening up trade with the East orienting away from the west and so now they’ve got increased trade as you know with India with China with Eastern Europe with Africa with other Asian countries so Russia has its own strategy which has been working whereas countries like Britain and Germany are showing sides of economic decline Russia is actually showing signs of economic growth so Russia has not been hurt but in the long run this has not been positive for Russia’s economy but Russ has done is been building up its military industrial complex well that can work in the short run but in the long run it’s not producing the kinds of goods that people need to raise their standard of living and so in the long run this will not be beneficial for Russia but in the short run it has been working Russia will help usbekistan build nuclear reactors as part of an agreement signed during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Central Asian country now the project is expected to be financed mostly through a Russian loan with a nuclear reactor in Central Asia now Russia’s Global imprint is growing even further to discuss this further we’re joined by Ben Aris who’s founder and editor and chief of B intell news and former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph Ben always a pleasure speaking with you thank you for joining us here on beond world is one you’ve had a vast amount of experience in Russia as you were just talking about before the interview started I wanted to understand for you with the latest development coming from usbekistan how do you feel the West will respond to Russia’s growing influence in Central Asia there’s not much you can do uh the problem is is that you know usbekistan Central Asia it’s about as far from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get and it’s surrounded um to the north uh by Russia and to the east by China uh and to the South is cked up by the instability in Afghanistan but the trade volumes uh with the rest the world which would be one point of Leverage um simply doesn’t exist I mean usbekistan does 1010 billion of trade with Russia and 13 billion dollars of trade a year with China and the trade it does with the rest of the world and the EU um is is negligible although usbekistan itself is is trying to diversify um its trade and do more business but there’s no leverage and so the West um they can complain or they like but there’s very little they can do then usbekistan tripled its exports of uranium products to the European Union Market in the previous year now Russia has announced they are going to be making nuclear reactors in usbekistan through these nuclear reactors do you feel those sanctions that were imposed on Russia are going kind of just going to get negated because usbekistan is anyways trading with the European Union indeed there’s several things going on here um usbekistan has been suffering from an energy crisis since as it used to be a net exporter of gas um and now it has to import it did a deal with Russia in December and imports 12 billion cubic mes of gas because it’s growing so fast I mean it’s growing about 6% a year and it needs to keep that up and consequently uh the gas has solved the the worst of the energy crisis and now these nuclear power stations that it’s buying from Ros atom will deepen its energy security um and it’ll also tie usbekistan more closely to Russia and Russia’s been very ly using its export of both nuclear technology and refined uh enriched uranium uh in order to bind countries like usbekistan to it um I mean these reactors come with a 60-year maintenance and fuel supply deal at the same time the European Union is trying to diversify away because it’s also dependent on Russian uranium exports although I mean Russia is a big producer but it dominates the processing of uranium and somewhere like usbekistan which has ra uranium uh it doesn’t process very much so it’s sending some to France which has limited capacity to process the states is also dependent on Russia urine and in that sense uranium has become the new gas it’s become a geopolitical tool to bind people to Russia or at least to you know give it some leverage uh in its relations with countries like that uh as far as the sanctions are concerned I mean the Americans have banned the import of Russian uranium but then they’ve introduced this waiver system because they don’t have any uranium that they can burn themselves and the waiver system means that for the next 5 years uh although technically there’s a ban everybody’s going to continue to import I mean the us is going to continue to import Russian uranium for another five years while they try and build up their refining capacity then I want to now shift Focus to Russia’s growing Global ties and most of it which has come out in the last two years I would say most of it has been strengthened in the last two years talk about Russia’s Rel with Iran usbekistan kazakistan China we’ve already seen Putin make two visits to China in the last 8 months itself North Korea then there’s Saudi Arabia and UAE let’s not forget the kind of reception that Putin received in these two uh West Asian Nations just last year he got a hero’s welcome over there the African Co Nations so many Russian flags that we’ve seen in Africa where Western forces have been oued by those Nations itself all this has happened and majority of it is in the last two years it has been strengthened did the Western sanctions push Russia towards strengthening more Global ties in the
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Tuesday that NATO members in Europe were playing with fire by proposing to let Ukraine use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia, which he said could trigger a global conflict.
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4 comments
…his theory about Russia's approach to economic development being "not good in the long run" is inaccurate….. after the conflict you convert your military industrial complex for civilian purposes…like after WW2… You have the machinery, the tooling, the skilled labor and all types of assets to mass produce products for the civilians markets, like vehicles, farm equipment, that's how so many western countries developed so fast after WW2.. they make statements like his to deter long term investing….but that view in not accurate or based on reality..
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8billions in Africa Russia is safe for doing business in Africa
What kind of stupid crap is this Putin bombs inside Ukraine but Biden says they can’t bomb back to stop getting bombed well when they kick Biden out of office he can run for president in Russia