Absurd to stop human progress: Putin slams calls to prioritize ecopolitics over technology

Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed appeals to abandon technological progress for the sake of prioritizing green politics.

"A profound and meaningful discussion" is needed to hash over the problems of combining long-term development and environmental welfare, and a high standard of living, the president told the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit (GMIS) on Tuesday.

"However, instead of a substantive discussion regarding the global, climatic and environmental agenda, we often see, unfortunately, downright populism, speculation, and sometimes, I am not afraid to say this - simply narrow-mindedness," Putin stressed.

"It comes to the point when the world is urged to ditch progress, which will make it possible to freeze the situation at the best, and create prosperity for the select few. In contrast, hundreds of millions of people throughout the globe will have to accept that at the moment they have, or it would be more honest to say, don’t have access to clean water, food, education and other benefits of civilization," he said.

"This archaism is a blind alley, it is a road to new conflicts," the Russian leader pointed out. According to him, "the migration crisis in Europe and in the US stems from this". A blind faith in simple, impressive but inefficient solutions leads to problems," Putin cautioned, mentioning appeals to abandon nuclear and hydrocarbon energy, while betting on current alternative sources of energy.

"Will people feel comfortable living on the planet dotted with wind-driven generators and covered with layers of solar batteries?" he asked, then noting that as the saying goes "instead of tidying up the house we’ll just sweep the garbage under the rug". He also mentioned problems with wind-powered generators that lead to the deaths of birds, and other side effects that this source creates.

"Of course, we can't stop those who want to wear animal skins or move into caves, but it is impossible and absolutely absurd to stop human progress," the Russian president stressed.

Source: https://tass.com/economy/1067764

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UK PM won’t demand new anti-Russian sanctions at EU summit

 UK Prime Minister Theresa May won’t demand that the EU countries’ leaders slap new sanctions on Russia over the Skripal case at their summit in Salzburg as she understands that this is unrealistic, a source in the European Council told TASS.

"We do not expect that she [May] will ask to introduce new sanctions since she understands that this is unrealistic now, and there is no legal basis for this," the source said on the sidelines of the two-day informal high-level meeting on Thursday.

According to the source, the UK prime minister is expected to ask the EU countries’ leaders to speed up the implementation of the June summit’s decisions, which were made after the discussions on the situation around the Salisbury poisoning. In particular, the EU countries’ heads of state and government agreed to create a new mechanism of introducing sanctions to fight against the use of chemical weapons.

Britain claims that former Russian military intelligence officer convicted in Russia for spying for the UK Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were affected by a nerve gas of the Novichok class in Salisbury, England, on March 4. The British government claimed that Russia was highly likely involved in this incident. Moscow strongly dismissed all speculations on that score, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had ever had programs for making such agents.

On September 5, the UK prime minister told the British parliament about the secret services’ conclusions regarding the investigation of the March 4, 2018 Salisbury incident. The conclusion suggested that they had become targets of a special operation by agents of the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

Scotland Yard released a package of photos supposedly showing the two Russians who had poisoned the Skripals. The official story made public by the British authorities suggests the two men entered the country 48 hours before the poisoning. They held official Russian passports issued in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. In an interview with RT, the two men rejected the claims.

Source:http://tass.com/world/1022433

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Russia presents audio recording proving Ukraine’s complicity in MH17 tragedy

The Russian Defense Ministry has presented an audio recording proving Ukraine’s complicity in the MH17 disaster in 2014, the Defense Ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov told the media

 

MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry has ascertained that the videos showing the movement of a Buk missile system from Russia to Ukraine, presented by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine, were fabricated, ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told reporters.

According to him, Russian experts thoroughly scrutinized those videos and came to the conclusion that they had been fabricated.

Read also Dutch journalists discover large pieces of wreckage at MH17 crash site

The Russian Defense Ministry has held a press conference devoted to the MH17 crash, presenting a detailed analysis of those videos and proof of their fabrication

The Defense Ministry also presented an audio recording proving Ukraine’s complicity in the MH17 disaster in 2014, Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the ministry, told the media.

General Konashenkov said the audio recording of a conversation between Ukrainian military servicemen was made back in 2016 in the Odessa Region during the Rubezh-2016 exercise and published in the Ukrainian mass media.

"If so, we’ll … [a synonym of the verb ‘shoot down’ - TASS] another Malaysian Boeing," one of the Ukrainian military servicemen said in the conversation.

How the projectile was identified as Ukrainian

The missile, which downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, was made in the town of Dolgoprudny outside Moscow in 1986, delivered to a military unit deployed to Ukraine and was never brought back to Russia, Chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Missile and Artillery Department Lieutenant General Nikolai Parshin told reporters.

According to him, the missile fragments presented by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) looking into the MH17 crash carried the numbers of the missile’s nozzle and engine. "Once we had the nozzle and engine numbers, we were able to find out the missile’s number," he specified.

"There are documents in the archives of the Dolgoprudny Research Institute, which made it possible to find out the missile’s tail number. It came out that the missile was assembled on December 24, 1986, and delivered by rail to the military unit number 20/152, officially named the 223rd Air Defense Missile Brigade. It was deployed to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s Ternopol Region, which was part of the Subcarpathian Military District," he added.

According to the general, the military unit was never withdrawn to Russia

MH17 crash

The Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a Boeing-777 passenger plane travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down on July 17, 2014, over Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk. The crash killed all the 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers. There were nationals of ten states among the dead. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) looking into the crash is comprised of representatives from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine.

On May 24, the team provided an update on the criminal investigation, claiming "the Buk-TELAR that was used to down MH17, originates from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile brigade... a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in the Russian Federation."

Russia’s Defense Ministry rejected all the allegations and said that none of the missile systems belonging to the Russian Armed Forces had ever been taken abroad.

Nevertheless, on May 25, Australia and the Netherlands issued a statement saying that they "hold Russia responsible for its part in the downing of flight MH17." The two countries called on Russia to hold talks in order to find an appropriate solution and warned that the case could be submitted to an international court or organization.


Source:http://tass.com/world/1021855

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