Latest news with #Paks
Russia Today
04-07-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
Trump eases off Russia sanctions – but the EU is too eager to strangle itself
Looks like Washington is about to steal the EU's lunch. Again. The Trump administration just lifted sanctions on a Russian-led nuclear project in Hungary, specifically one run by Moscow's atomic energy titan, Rosatom. 'The administration of President Trump has lifted this sanction. This made it possible to guarantee the safety of Hungary's energy supply in the long term. Finally, there is a kind of presidential administration in the United States which respects the reality of the map, takes it into account,' said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. 'We are not a country with a large number of oil and natural gas factories surrounded by dry land. Thus, our sustainable, cheap and safe electricity supply can only be provided by nuclear energy.' Translation: 'Listen up, you overcaffeinated Brussels bureaucrats running this group project from hell. We were just fine running on Russian oil and gas until you snatched it away like a juice box from a toddler. Now you're scolding us for not pulling new energy out of thin air? Fine. We're going nuclear. With Russia.' Enter Paks 2, Hungary's next-gen nuclear project, pronounced 'Paksh' as in 'Paksh me another reactor, Vladimir.' This Rosatom-led deal was frozen under Biden-era sanctions. Now with Trump back, Hungary's firing it up again. Hungary's original Paks plant already supplies half the country's electricity. Paks 2 will boost that to 70% by the 2030s and replace 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually – or enough to power Brussels' virtue-signaling and moral-outrage generators for a week. It would also slash Hungary's carbon emissions by 17 million tons, which theoretically should earn Budapest a climate gold star from Brussels. But a few weeks back, Hungary smelled another bad idea brewing in Brussels. This time, it was sanctions on nuclear fuel. Because when you're already dealing with a self-imposed gas crisis, the next logical step is obviously to kneecap your nuclear options, too. 'If the European Commission and Brussels banned Central European countries, including Hungary, from purchasing fuel from Russia, this would have tragic consequences not only for Hungary, but for the entire European energy market,' Szijjarto warned back in May of the nuclear fuel side-eye. Meanwhile, in Brussels, EU leaders have been busy crafting their 18th round of Russia sanctions. That's right – 18. The sanctions now have more sequels than the Fast & Furious movie franchise. At this rate, someone should build a sanctions-themed roller coaster and amusement park. Then it could just stay closed under the pretext that it's too expensive to power. And while EU politicians perform their best moral-grandstanding monologues on the world stage, European companies are sneaking around backstage making nuclear deals with Russia anyway. Leading the pack is France's Framatome, which is co-partnering with Rosatom on the very same Paks 2 project. Framatome's role has actually expanded thanks to Germany kneecapping itself, as has become routine. The Greens in the previous coalition government blocked Siemens Energy's involvement. Just what German industry needed – another self-inflicted wound. And Framatome isn't just supplying the process control systems for Rosatom. The two have also signed a broader deal to produce nuclear fuel – in Germany. Don't mess this up, Berlin! Spoiler alert: Odds are pretty good that it probably will. If EU sanctions kill this Franco-Russian partnership, it's Germany that takes yet another hit. Also, you have to wonder why exactly Washington would do the EU a favor here. The US sees Europe as a competitor on the global economic stage. Maybe lifting sanctions on the Russian-led Paks 2 project is a strategic way of letting American nuclear giant Westinghouse steal Europe's lunch, just like it did when the EU was egged on to sanction its own Russian gas supply – and replace it with American LNG. Back in March, Szijjarto met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and 'discussed the possibilities for developing Hungarian-US energy cooperation, with nuclear energy as the primary area of interest,' Szijjarto wrote on Facebook. 'We are interested in developing this technology in a partnership with Westinghouse,' he added. So maybe Washington dropping sanctions on Paks 2 is less about Hungary and more about making it OK to date Russia again – so Washington can swoop in and steal Europe's date to the prom. But you wouldn't know any of this listening to the Eurodolts running the show. America is eyeing a European industrial asset, and Brussels' reaction is apparently to consider retreating to a monastery of moral anti-Russian purity so Washington can have its way. 'The European Union is also expected to adopt an 18th sanctions package in the next few days. Unprecedented in its ambition and the measures it contains in the financial and energy sectors,' said French President Emmanuel Macron in late June. Hey buddy, you do realize that if those sanctions extend to nuclear fuel – which is a serious consideration based on the Financial Times headline from June 15, 'EU seeks to sever nuclear energy ties with Russia' – then your own country's nuclear industry is about to take a hit through Framatome, right? 'Politically, we must keep up the pressure on Russia to engage in serious talks, starting with a real ceasefire. And therefore our 18th sanctions package aims to do that. We should be in a position to have an agreed package soon,' said Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president and de facto Queen of the EU. Sounds like the EU has the gun aimed squarely at its own foot. Their finger is just wobbling a little on the trigger. Apparently they're struggling to decide if nuclear should ultimately be included in the latest sanctions. Clearly, Queen Ursula has lost the plot. Maybe it's because she lives in a room next to her office – sorry, her royal chambers– and doesn't have to pay a power bill. Unlike everyone else in the EU trying to choose between groceries and heating. Hungary and Slovakia have been trying to block this latest genius EU move to jack up living costs, yet again. Because someone has to, given that the rest are too busy bowing to the establishment. So now the real question: will the EU finally get out of its own way and follow Washington's lead in thawing relations with Russia? Or will it just keep tripping over its own shoelaces while pretending that it's performing a brilliantly choreographed ballet and mistaking Swan Dive for Swan Lake?
Bloomberg
29-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Hungary Says US Lifts Sanctions on Its Nuclear Expansion Project
The US government has lifted sanctions that had held up Hungary's planned expansion of its Paks nuclear plant, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Sunday. Donald Trump's administration withdrew the penalties imposed during Joe Biden's presidency, which means construction at the site on the Danube south of Budapest can now accelerate, Szijjarto said in a statement.
Indian Express
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
When US wanted Iran and China to help Pakistan in war against India
The United States has bombed Iran using its strategic bomber aircraft fleet. This is an opportune time to recall the past friendship of the US with Iran and how at one point in the India-Pakistan war in December 1971, it wanted Iran to help Pakistan with urgent fuel supplies and also fighter aircraft to save the country from decimation at India's hands. Declassified US State Department documents include minutes of a meeting held in Washington on December 9, 1971, which was chaired by Henry Kissinger, then national security advisor to US President Richard Nixon. In this meeting, the US officials worried about the lack of fuel reserves in West Pakistan and the fact that the Pakistani military would soon come to a standstill because its major fuel reserves had been destroyed by Indian attacks on the Karachi port. Kissinger asked the officials if fuel supplies could be rushed from Tehran to Pakistan so that West Pakistan could be saved from being captured by India after the successful conquest of East Pakistan. In the same meeting, discussions were also held on supplying Pakistan with fighter aircraft from Iran and asking China to make threatening mocks on the border with India. CIA Director Richard Helms informed the participants that in the last few hours, he had received a report from Karachi that the oil tanks there had been hit again, in the 12th or 13th air raid, and that six or eight of them had been burning. 'An ESSO representative has indicated that this means the loss of 50% of Karachi's oil reserves, which amounts to over 80% of the POL [petrol, oil, lubricants] for all of Pakistan. He estimates that they are left with a two-week supply, possibly less at the rate at which POL is now being consumed,' he said. Kissinger asked the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas H Moorer for his estimate of the military situation. Moorer stated that in East Pakistan, in the absence of a ceasefire, it was just a matter of time until the Pakistan Army would be essentially ineffective. 'Their supplies are cut off and they have no air left. Any serious fighting could be over in ten days or two weeks, depending on whether the Paks continue to fight to the last man or whether they begin to surrender in large numbers, which does not seem to be in the cards now,' he said. The admiral added that in West Pakistan, the Pakistanis are trying to occupy enough of Kashmir to give them a bargaining chip if and when there is a ceasefire. 'They are trying to block the main lines of communication. South of the Kashmir area, the Indians outnumber the Paks two-to-one, and they may plan to move south to Lahore, although there is no indication of that now. The best Pakistan can do is to gain as much control of Kashmir as possible,' he said. Moorer added that the Pakistanis can operate for about three weeks or so. 'However, if there is a period of attrition, with no ceasefire, the Indians can hold out longer and the Paks have had it. Mrs. Gandhi has stated that her objective is to destroy the Pak military forces,' he said. Kissenger asked whether in that case in a prolonged war, even if Pakistan got Kashmir, it would be unable to hold it and it would lead to the destruction of the Pakistan Army. 'Exactly. When East Pakistan is gone, the Indians will transfer their divisions to West-possibly four of the six divisions now in the East. This will take one to three weeks, depending on how much air they use. If the war continues to the end, the outcome for Pakistan is inevitable,' said Admiral Moorer. At this point, John N Irwin, the undersecretary of state, mentioned a CIA paper, Implications of an Indian Victory Over Pakistan, that predicts the possible acceleration of the breakup tendencies in West Pakistan— possibly into as many as four separate states. The admiral pointed out that the Indian objective was to take out the Pakistani tanks and planes. 'If they run out of POL and can't move, they'll be sitting ducks,' he said. The meeting then discussed the possibility of trucking POL from Tehran. 'There is one road. We have one report that indicates that Chinese trucks are coming in but we don't know what they are carrying. Iran is the logical source of POL. I talked to the Turkish Chief of Staff at NATO and asked him how much assistance he thought Iran was prepared to give to Pakistan. He said he thought the Shah wanted to be helpful, but had one eye cocked on Iraq. In the end, he didn't believe the Shah would give significant assistance,' said the Admiral. The documents also reveal that on instructions from Washington, a senior embassy official met the Shah of Iran in Tehran on December 8, 1971, to discuss the possibility of Iranian military support for Pakistan. The Shah stated that he had informed the Pakistani ambassador in Tehran that, in light of the treaty of friendship signed by India and the Soviet Union, he could not send Iranian aircraft and pilots to Pakistan. He was not prepared to risk a confrontation with the Soviet Union. The Shah proposed an alternative way to support the hard-pressed Pakistani Air Force. He suggested that the United States urge King Hussein to send Jordanian F-104 fighters to Pakistan. The Shah in turn would send two squadrons of Iranian aircraft to Jordan to defend Jordan while Jordanian planes and pilots were in Pakistan engaged in support of fellow Muslims. 'The Embassy official indicated that, because of legal constraints regarding the use of military equipment provided by the United States, it would be difficult for officials in Washington to give permission for the transfer of the F-104s from Jordan to Pakistan, or to overlook their absence in Jordan. The Shah said that the United States could not hope to achieve the objective of bolstering Pakistan while maintaining that it was not involved in the effort,' the document says. President Nixon, Attorney General John N Mitchell, and Henry Kissinger had earlier met on the afternoon of December 8, 1971, for an extended discussion of the crisis in South Asia. Turning to the situation in East Pakistan, Kissinger warned that 'the Indian plan is now clear. They are going to move their forces from East Pakistan to the west. They will then smash the Pakistan land forces and air forces.' He added that India planned to 'annex the part of Kashmir that is in Pakistan.' Kissinger went on to attribute to the Gandhi government the goal of balkanising West Pakistan into units such as Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province. West Pakistan would become a state akin to Afghanistan and East Pakistan would equate with Bhutan. Nixon said that he had given Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a warning during his dinner in Washington with her. 'I told her that any war would be very, very unacceptable.' Kissinger observed that any such warning obviously fell on deaf ears. 'She was determined to go.' 'As I look at this thing, the Chinese have got to move to that damn border. The Indians have got to get a little scared,' said Nixon. He instructed Kissinger to get a message to that effect to the Chinese. Kissinger suggested that another pressure move would be to move a US aircraft carrier force into the Bay of Bengal. Summarising the decisions they were considering, Kissinger said, 'We should get a note to the Chinese, we should move the carrier to the Bay of Bengal.' Nixon interjected, 'I agree.' Kissinger also pointed to the threat to West Pakistan, 'At this stage, we have to prevent an Indian attack on West Pakistan.' Nixon agreed. Kissinger continued, 'We have to maintain the position of withdrawal from all of Pakistan.' He stated that by introducing its military power into the equation, in the form of a carrier and other units from the Seventh Fleet, the US was seeking to prevent 'a Soviet stooge, supported by Soviet arms' from overrunning an ally. Nixon returned to his conviction that China could exercise a decisive restraining influence on India. 'The Chinese thing I still think is a card in the hole there. I tell you a movement of even some Chinese toward that border could scare those goddamn Indians to death.' Kissinger agreed, 'As soon as we have made the decision here, we can then talk to the Chinese.' Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger engaged in conversation outside the Oval Office. Source: US National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials Project Photo Collection)
Hindustan Times
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
BJP calls out Pakistan deputy PM Ishaq Dar's ‘king of the skies' gaffe, posts video: ‘Stupid stuff'
Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have called out Pakistan for propagating lies after Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and foreign minister Ishaq Dar, quoting a fake and an edited headline of UK-based newspaper The Telegraph, claimed victory over India inside the country's Senate. BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya said Pakistan's 'propaganda is quickly falling apart'. He said the claim made in the fake image of the newspaper was fact-checked by the local newspaper Dawn and deemed false. He also shared a video of Ishaq Dar making claims in support of Pakistani forces in Pakistan's Senate. "Pakistan's propaganda is quickly falling apart, exposing a web of lies and desperation. In a blatant attempt to save face, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar misled the country's Senate by claiming that The Telegraph had declared the Pakistan Air Force as the "Undisputed King of the Skies." The claim was so outrageous that even Dawn, Pakistan's own leading newspaper, felt compelled to fact-check and debunk it," Amit Malviya posted on X. BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar also reacted to the issue. He also took a dig at the Congress, saying "only Rahul's Congress", apart from the Pakistan Army, 'operates on the sole premise of 'people are fools, so let's just lie'. On X, Chandrasekhar said, "Head scratchingly stupid stuff from Paks overfed, overmedalled Generals I hv said this before and cant help say this again - Apart from Pak Army, only one other organizatn operates on sole premise of "people are fools so lets just lie" - that is Rahuls Congress." Chandrasekhar's statement came in response to the post shared by the Fact Check Unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on the social media platform X. The PIB Fact Check has revealed that an image circulating on social media, allegedly showing the front page of UK-based newspaper The Telegraph with the headline 'Pakistan Air Force: The undisputed king of the skies', is fake and AI-generated. It clarified that the British publication has never published any such article. On Thursday, Ishaq Dar praised the country's air force by quoting a fake page of The Telegraph. In his address to Pakistan's Senate, Dar said, "Telegraph writes Pakistan Air Force is the undisputed king of the skies." Pakistan newspaper The Dawn's iVerify Pakistan team investigated the content, found discrepancies in the viral photo, and determined that the information was false. It analysed through its tools and checked the British Publication 'The Daily Telegraph' to see if it had shared any such news story. Posts from multiple users across social media have been sharing the photo since May 10, allegedly showing the front page of The Telegraph newspaper declaring the Pakistan Air Force the "King of the Skies" amid the recent escalation with India. However, no such article was published in the newspaper, and the screenshot is fake, Dawn reported. While analysing the viral image, Dawn found multiple discrepancies, including spelling errors, mistyped and jumped sentences and language inconsistencies. Words like "Fyaw..." instead of "Force" and "preformance" instead of "performance" are incorrect, "Aur Force" appears instead of "Air Force" and "advancemend" instead of "advancement" is incorrect. These typographical and spelling mistakes are inconsistent with the editorial standards of a mainstream newspaper, Dawn reported. The layout of the page was compared to the official version of The Telegraph. The image of the article is fake and no such article has been published by the UK-based publication.
Irish Examiner
15-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Robbie Keane's Ferencvaros lose Hungarian cup final on penalties
The double dream is over for Robbie Keane. The former Ireland skipper saw his Ferencvaros side lose the Hungarian cup final on 4-3 penalties on Wednesday night to Paks. Paks took the lead through Barna Toth before the break in the Magyar Kupa decider. Third-placed in the league, the underdogs led until the dying moments when Lenny Joseph equalised and brought the game to extra time. After a scoreless extra 30 minutes, the game went to a shoot-out, with Keane's side ultimately losing out. "They didn't have any serious chances apart from the goal," Keane said. "Before the break, you should not concede a goal from such a mistake. In the second half, we played with the upper hand, because we made good use of the open areas on the wings, but the last quality pass was missing from our game, which is the most important thing in football." "I would never blame anyone for a missed penalty," he continued. "It can be a terrible feeling, but I told my players to remember this feeling so they never have to go through it again." Keane added that from Thursday they will focus on the remaining two league matches to win the Hungarian championship. It would be the seventh title in a row for the Hungarian heavyweights. The Dubliner's side currently hold a three-point lead over second-place Puskás Akadémia with two games remaining. A victory this weekend against Fehervar would seal the championship. Keane previously led Maccabi Tel Aviv to the 2023–24 Israeli Premier League title.
