Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced that it’s temporarily halting Soyuz rocket launches in French Guiana due to sanctions imposed by the European Union, according to a report by Space.com.
“Roscosmos is suspending cooperation with European partners in organizing space launches from the Kourou Cosmodrome and withdrawing its personnel, including the consolidated launch crew, from French Guiana,” a translated tweet from the agency reads on Twitter. Roscosmos says it’s working on a plan to withdraw all 87 of its staff from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, who assisted with Soyuz rocket launches for Roscosmos and other Russian companies.
As Space.com points out, European launch provider Arianespace uses Roscosmo’s Soyuz rockets to launch satellites from French Guiana and the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Arianespace was on track to launch two Galileo satellites into orbit using a Soyuz rocket in April, however, that will likely be pushed back due to growing tensions among nations. The US and Europe have put a slew of sanctions on Russia since its invasion into Ukraine, and have also moved to exclude some Russian banks from SWIFT.
“I confirm that this decision has no consequences on the continuity and quality of the Galileo and Copernicus services,” Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Space said in a statement. “Nor does this decision put the continued development of these infrastructures at risk.”
Russia and Europe have been readying for a robotic mission to Mars set to take place this year. European Space Agency director Josef Aschbacher says the “ESA continues to work on all of its programmers, including on ISS & EXOMars launch campaign,” but will “continue to monitor the evolving situation.”
In addition to temporarily cutting ties with Arianespace, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin has decided to exclude the US from a joint mission to explore Venus, called Venera-D. Early Saturday morning, Rogozin said he considers “the continued participation of the United States” in Russia’s Venera-D mission “inappropriate” in light of the sanctions it put on Russia. Rogozin also claims these sanctions will ruin relations between Russia and NASA, potentially leading to the downfall of the International Space Station."
Wendy Rogers (born July 24, 1954) is an American politician and a Republican member of the Arizona Senate, representing Arizona Legislative District 6. Elected in November 2020, she assumed office on January 11, 2021. She had previously made five unsuccessful campaigns for the United States Congress or Arizona Legislature.
"A Republican state senator fawned over the leader of a white nationalist movement on Friday and told his followers that she fantasizes about hanging her perceived enemies from gallows.
“I’ve said we need to build more gallows. If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country,” Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said Feb. 25 in her speech to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference in Florida.
Rogers told the white nationalists who were assembled in the ballroom at the Orlando World Center Marriott that they were “patriots.”
She addressed the AFPAC crowd remotely, speaking from Arizona, where she said she was busy pushing legislation. Rogers effusively praised Nick Fuentes, the event’s racist organizer, who she said had been “de-platformed everywhere” because he says things that upset “the media and the far left.”
“I truly respect Nick because he’s the most persecuted man in America,” she said to loud cheers, adding later that he was “standing up to tyranny” by creating AFPAC.
Fuentes, an advocate of turning America into a nation only for white Christians, is one of the leaders of the so-called “groyper” movement — along with the founder of American Identity Movement, a white nationalist group formerly known as Identity Ervopa — and Rogers is one of its emerging icons.
The groyper movement is a collection of white nationalists who seek to normalize racism and make it a part of mainstream conservative political ideology.
AFPAC opened with Fuentes soliciting a round of applause from the crowd for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The white nationalists chanted in response, “Putin! Putin! Putin!”
In his closing speech, Fuentes said “the United States is the evil empire in the world.”
“Now, they’re going and saying,’’Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler,’ as if that isn’t a good thing,” he said, before nervously laughing and adding, “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Rogers lamented that there was no longer freedom of speech, and said “we can’t even laugh at comedy any more” for fear of being banned from social media platforms. (The First Amendment protects people from being punished by the government for their speech, but it does not apply to businesses or exempt people from facing consequences for their speech.) She pined for the 1980s and 1990s, when “we could say the craziest stuff and people would just laugh and not take offense, because it was simply light-hearted.”
“Now, they deplatform and debank people like Nick Fuentes, and even President (Donald) Trump,” she said. “This is like the USSR, but worse.”
The crowd at AFPAC included prominent members of America’s white nationalist movement, among them Jared Taylor and Peter Bigelow > One speaker at the event was Vincent James Foxx, a stalwart white nationalist who said he wanted to “criminalize” LGBTQ Americans and warned of the “Great Replacement.” That idea, popular among white supremacists, holds that white Americans are being replaced by non-white immigrants. . .
> Later in the evening, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gave a rambling, 40-minute speech in which he seemingly didn’t realize he was speaking to a crowd of white nationalists. At times, he seemed taken aback at the reaction to things he said."
Arizona Governor Says He’d Rather Have a White Nationalist in State Legislature than a Democrat
Doug Ducey spent $500,000 to help elect Wendy Rogers — a lawmaker who’s making common cause with overt racists. He’s apparently just fine with that decision
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey was questioned Thursday about his efforts to get Wendy Rogers elected to the state senate in 2020, and whether he has any regrets in light of how Rogers has been promoting white nationalist causes.
Arizona Mirror reporter Jeremy Duda asked the Republican governor his thoughts on Rogers during an event where Ducey announced a scholarship program for the state’s foster children.
“Are you still happy with that investment? Do you believe that was a good decision?” Duda asked, referring to the governor’s independent expenditures giving half a million dollars to Rogers’ campaign.
“What I need as a governor are governing majorities so that I can pass dollars into our social safety net so we can provide programs like this that will help children from all over our state… [and so] we can pass budgets that will put $8.6, $8.7 billion additional dollars into K-12 education,” Ducey claimed. “So that’s what I’ve wanted to do, is move my agenda forward. I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, and [Rogers] is still better than her opponent, Felicia French.”
[. ] Rogers has intertwined herself with the Q-Anon crowd, has espoused racist “great replacement” theories, has called for Christian theocracy, and is a member of the paramilitary group the Oath Keepers. She is also a ‘Big Lie’ proponent, falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.
In the past, Ducey has sometimes distanced himself those on the fringes of his party, like when he ignored then-president Donald Trump’s demand that he not certify the results of Arizona’s 2020 presidential election. But on Thursday, rather than take the opportunity to speak out against Rogers, Ducey used children as an attempt to justify why he cares more about his party maintaining power than upholding principles. It seems like as long as Republicans hold a slim 16-14 edge in the Arizona state senate, Rogers will be welcome to continue her gross behavior without much, if any, criticism from the governor."
-- “I have the reputation of being the biggest racist in the country,” he said, to robust applause. “What are you clapping for, that I am or that I’m not? Well, I’m not.”
Later, when he repeated that he was called “the biggest racist in the country” and received loud applause, he quickly added, “I have a black grandkid, I got a Mexican grandkid,” prompting some in the crowd to boo him.
At another point, Arpaio boasted about having a howitzer artillery gun while sheriff. ---“Everyone said, ‘What are you using this for?’ I said, ‘To shoot people that come across the border,’” he said, eliciting raucous cheers from the crowd that left Arpaio visibly surprised.
“Wait a minute. I didn’t mean to shoot the illegals coming across. I’m saying the illegals that are terrorists and other violent (criminals), if they’re going to start shooting at my people, I’m going to fire back,” he explained, to much fewer cheers.
“I’m not about to shoot illegals who are coming across, just for coming illegally,” he finished, to no cheers.
> Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, a Republican from Prescott, gave a brief video address, a far cry from last year, when he was the featured speaker."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine is ready for peace talks with Russia but not in neighbouring Belarus, an ally of Moscow which used it as a staging ground for its multipronged invasion.
Speaking in Russian in a video message on Sunday, Zelenskyy left the door open for negotiations elsewhere and listed the cities of Warsaw, Bratislava, Istanbul, Budapest or Baku as alternative venues.
He said other locations were also possible but stressed Ukraine does not accept Russia’s selection of Belarus.
“Any other city in a country from whose territory missiles do not fly would suit us,” Zelenskyy said.
Earlier, the Kremlin said a Russian delegation had arrived in the Belarusian city of Gomel for talks and was waiting for the Ukrainian officials.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the delegation includes representatives from the foreign ministry, defence ministry and presidential administration.
“We are ready to start these negotiations in Gomel,” Peskov said, according to the TASS news agency.
But Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine wants only “real” negotiations, calling Russia’s decision to send the delegation to Belarus for talks “propaganda”.
“They arrived in Gomel knowing that it was pointless. And now they say – ‘we are waiting’,” he told Reuters news agency.
“Zelenskyy’s position remains unchanged: only real negotiations, no ultimatums. . ."
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![<div class=__reading__mode__extracted__imagecaption>A helicopter flies over troops during a joint military drill of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus in the Brest region of Belarus on February 19 [File: Vadim Yakubyonok/Belta/Handout via Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2022-02-19T150256Z_36277825_RC20NS9ZCUCV_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-RUSSIA-BELARUS-DRILLS-1.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
