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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
If Germany sends Taurus missiles to Ukraine, Russia has a major Crimean Bridge problem
A statement from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on May 26 about long-range strikes inside Russia resurrected a long-held hope in Ukraine — that Berlin is finally about to send Kyiv its Taurus missiles. "There are no longer any restrictions on the range of weapons delivered to Ukraine — neither by the U.K., France, nor us. There are no restrictions by the U.S. either," Merz said. Dampening expectations somewhat, Merz the next day clarified he was referring to permissions given by Ukraine's allies last year, but his mention of "us" still raised speculation that they could be on their way — currently, Berlin provides Ukraine with no long-range missiles that the granted permissions related to. "It's good news that they have lifted these restrictions on the use of missiles," Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and chair of the parliament's foreign affairs committee, told the Kyiv Independent. "But where are these missiles? Where is Taurus, for example?" he added. Germany's stance on not sending Ukraine Taurus missiles was a policy largely driven by Olaf Scholz, Merz's predecessor. Ukraine has been using U.S.-made ATACMS for over a year, and UK-French Storm Shadows for more than two. "Delivering Taurus at this point is less for the Ukrainians and more for the Germans because Taurus has become this ultimate symbol of German fear and escalation angst," Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo specializing in missile technology, told the Kyiv Independent. "And that's why delivering Taurus is so important — you right that wrong," he added. While Scholz repeatedly blocked the delivery of Taurus missiles over his concerns about escalation, his successor has been much more open about the possibility. In April, Merz even specifically suggested Taurus could be used to target strategic Russian military infrastructure in occupied Crimea, including the Crimean Bridge. In an interview with ARD, Merz emphasized the need to support Ukraine in moving from a reactive to a proactive stance on the battlefield, saying Kyiv must be equipped to "shape events" and "get ahead of the situation." "If things continue as they are, if, for example, the most important land connection between Russia and Crimea is destroyed, or if something happens on Crimea itself, where most of the Russian military logistics are located, then that would be an opportunity to bring this country strategically back into the picture, finally," Merz said. In range, speed and payload, Taurus much resembles the Storm Shadow, which is made by Taurus' manufacturer MBDA's French affiliate. "SCALP/Storm Shadow and TAURUS belong to the same class of cruise missiles," a representative for MBDA Deutschland, wrote in a statement to the Kyiv Independent. "They differ in their performance data, but are both fundamentally suitable for deep strike missions against strategic targets.""Taurus is the best weapon system in Western arsenals to take down bridges." The primary distinction for Taurus is in the design of the actual warhead — Taurus can be programmed to explode after hitting a specific target, such as a bunker. The missile can penetrate and actually count layers before the final explosion, maximizing damage. Taurus would represent a major upgrade to Ukraine's deep-strike firepower, primarily because it can blast through denser Russian fortifications. Thanks to a more efficient engine, Hoffmann explains, Taurus can also reach deeper into Russia than other system currently in Ukraine's arsenal, and packs more of an explosive punch than Ukraine's new crop of deep-strike "missile-drones." Despite a publicly advertised range of 560 or more kilometers, Hoffmann believes they can reach 700 to 800 kilometers. They are, however, air-launched, so they originate from planes that would not be over the front line, where they would be vulnerable to Russian anti-aircraft fire. Taurus "can be easily adapted" to F-16 fighter jets, which are now deployed in Ukraine, and to Gripen — a Swedish aircraft that could be on their way soon. "Taurus is the best weapon system in Western arsenals to take down bridges," said Hoffmann. "So in theory, if Ukraine wants to take down the Crimean Bridge, Taurus would be the ideal weapon system to do that." Constructed after Russia's illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Crimean Bridge is a critical supply and transport route for Russian forces to occupied Ukrainian territories. It also holds huge symbolic value — the $4 billion project was a political statement designed to cement what Russian President Vladimir Putin saw as one of his crowning moments — the annexation of Crimea. The bridge has been a repeated target of Ukrainian strikes, suffering significant damage in October 2022 and July 2023, though neither managed to take the bridge out of commission. Taurus could potentially change that. There has so far been no confirmation of actual delivery of Taurus to Ukraine. "We are not issuing comments on any speculation on political debates and decisions," a representative for MBDA Deutschland, Taurus' manufacturer, wrote in a statement to the Kyiv Independent. "Please rest assured that MBDA is prepared to support the German government and Ukraine with the necessary integration, training and logistics if a political decision is made." Hoffmann notes that Taurus today is less important for Ukraine than it would have been two years ago, when there were fewer home-grown options for deep strikes. "If you deliver it now, Ukrainians could use it against the targets that really matter, whereas in 2023, they had to allocate Storm Shadow for everything. So there are some advantages, I'm not saying it's nothing," Hoffmann explained. "But a long range drone with a 50 kg warhead or even less is perfectly fine under some circumstances. So Ukraine has a lot of options." Experts believe that the Taurus is unlikely to be a game-changer in the war and that while targeting the Crimean Bridge would be a big symbolic victory for Kyiv, Ukraine needs it primarily to replenish its long-range weapons stockpile. "Storm Shadow, SCALP EG, they are running out sooner or later. Taurus is another very capable cruise missile that could be used by Ukrainians to just extend the availability of its long-range range strike capability," Hoffman said. "This is a key advantage. It's mostly about the quantity and the number of missile systems available in Ukraine's arsenal." Read also: Sanctions on Russia are working, Ukraine just needs moreWe've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Observer
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Bangladesh's leader threatens to resign
DHAKA, Bangladesh—In August, an idealistic movement led by students toppled Sheikh Hasina's increasingly autocratic government, and millions of Bangladeshis celebrated the imminent revival of democracy. Almost nine months later, an appointed interim government is frustrating everyone who wants to vote for new leaders right away. Now its celebrated leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, is threatening to quit if he is not allowed to get on with his job and prepare the country for elections at a slower pace. Yunus, an internationally respected technocrat, was seen as Bangladesh's best chance to pull things together until fair elections could be held. He was appointed to lead an interim government while there was still blood in the streets. But his aides say he feels thwarted by an emerging alliance between the country's largest remaining political party and the army, which have criticized his policies and say he is being too slow to plan elections. On Thursday, Yunus threatened to resign if he did not get political and military backing to carry on unfettered. Yunus went as far as drafting a speech announcing his resignation, according to a senior official in his government. Other advisers managed to persuade him that his resignation would further destabilize Bangladesh. The official said by phone that his boss was especially unhappy with statements recently made by the army chief calling for elections this year, and felt worn down by criticism from political opponents. Hasina's old enemies stand to gain in any election, the sooner the more so. With her party in disgrace and more recently banned outright, the country has been stranded without meaningful political competition. Bangladesh has also been plagued by a breakdown in law and order and haphazard efforts to fix it. Yunus, who has personally come under increasing pressure from the country's army and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, lacks political support of his own. Mubashar Hasan, a political scientist and research fellow at the University of Oslo, said that Yunus 'could be a great banker, he could be a great leader in leading institutions, but what he lacks, and it appears day by day, is that he doesn't have a firm and strong persona.' Instead, Hasan thinks, Yunus can be overly influenced by his advisers. Yunus feels sidelined by some of the people who are supposed to be helping him get the country's democracy back on track, said the official who works closely with him. He seemed to reach his breaking point after the leader of Bangladesh's army, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, said Wednesday that an election should be held by December. Yunus previously suggested that the country might be ready for an election by June 2026, but has given no clear timeline. He has told his Cabinet he doesn't believe the current political climate is suitable for a fair election. In an address to the nation in November, Yunus said, 'The election train has started its journey. It will not stop. But we have to complete many tasks on the way.' The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has been insisting that a democratic mandate is needed before the future course of the country can be decided. After the banning of its traditional nemesis, Hasina's Awami League, the former opposition party wants to seize its chance to win power. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party was initially supportive of Yunus' government, but in recent months, it has stopped cooperating over a series of policy disagreements. Yunus and his officials, for instance, want to privatize the country's largest seaport at Chattogram; to open an aid corridor to war-torn parts of Myanmar; and to split up Bangladesh's main tax authority. Stabilizing the political turmoil has proved a challenging — and at times, almost insurmountable — task for the 84-year-old economist. With one of Bangladesh's two broad-based parties outlawed and the other urging haste, Yunus seems to want to buy time. That annoys even sympathetic analysts. 'There is no reason this election cannot be held by December,' Hasan said. 'It completely depends on the willingness of the government.' Members of the student protest movement that overthrew Hasina's government have clashed violently with her supporters since. But they dread letting her old enemies in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party take her place. Most still put their faith in Yunus. In February, one of Yunus' former advisers, Nahid Islam, launched a political party called the National Citizens Party, hoping to attract students into its fold. Islam said he has urged Yunus not to resign. On Thursday, they spoke, and Yunus told him that the promises he had made when he took office are being broken. 'With different groups creating instability, disorder, and pressuring the government, he feels it is no longer possible for him to carry out his responsibilities in an effective way,' Islam said. This article originally appeared in
New York Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Bangladesh's Leader Threatens to Resign Over Election Pressure
When an idealistic movement led by students toppled the increasingly autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina last August, millions of Bangladeshis celebrated the imminent revival of democracy. Almost nine months on, an appointed interim government is frustrating everyone who wanted to vote in new leaders right away. Now its celebrated leader, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, is threatening to quit if he is not allowed to get on with his job and prepare the country for elections at a slower pace. Mr. Yunus, an internationally respected technocrat, was seen as Bangladesh's best chance to pull things together until fair elections could be held. He was appointed to lead an interim government while there was still blood in the streets. But his aides say he feels thwarted by an emerging alliance between the country's largest remaining political party and the army, which have criticized his policies and say he is being too slow to plan elections. On Thursday, Mr. Yunus threatened to resign if he did not get political and military backing to carry on unfettered. Mr. Yunus went as far as drafting a speech announcing his resignation, according to a senior official in his government. Other advisers managed to persuade him that his resignation would further destabilize Bangladesh. The official said by phone that his boss was especially unhappy with statements recently made by the army chief calling for elections this year, and felt worn down by criticism from political opponents. Ms. Hasina's old enemies stand to gain in any election, the sooner the more so. With her party in disgrace, and more recently banned outright, the country has been stranded without meaningful political competition. Bangladesh has also been plagued by a breakdown in law and order and haphazard efforts to fix it. Mr. Yunus, who has personally come under increasing pressure from both the country's army and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, lacks political support of his own. Mubashar Hasan, a political scientist and research fellow at the University of Oslo, said that Mr. Yunus 'could be a great banker, he could be a great leader in leading institutions, but what he lacks, and it appears day by day, is he doesn't have a firm and strong persona.' Instead, Mr. Hasan thinks, Mr. Yunus can be overly influenced by his own advisers. Mr. Yunus feels sidelined by some of the people who are supposed to be helping him get the country's democracy back on track, said the official who works closely with him. He seemed to reach his breaking point after the leader of Bangladesh's army, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, said on Wednesday that an election should be held by December. Mr. Yunus previously suggested that the country might be ready for an election by June 2026, but has given no clear timeline. He has told his cabinet he doesn't believe the current political climate is suitable for a fair election. In an address to the nation last November, Mr. Yunus said, 'The election train has started its journey. It will not stop. But we have to complete many tasks on the way.' The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has been insisting that a democratic mandate is needed before the future course of the country can be decided. After the banning of its traditional nemesis, Ms. Hasina's Awami League, the former opposition party wants to seize its chance to win power. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party was initially supportive of Mr. Yunus's government, but in recent months it has stopped cooperating over a series of policy disagreements. Mr. Yunus and his officials, for instance, want to privatize the country's largest seaport at Chattogram; to open an aid corridor to war-torn parts of Myanmar; and to split up Bangladesh's main tax authority. Stabilizing the political turmoil has proved a challenging — and at times, almost insurmountable — task for the 84-year-old economist. With one of Bangladesh's two broad-based parties outlawed and the other urging haste, Mr. Yunus seems to want to buy time. That annoys even sympathetic analysts. Mr. Hasan, the political scientist, said 'There is no reason this election cannot be held by December. It completely depends on the willingness of the government.' Members of the student protest movement that overthrew Ms. Hasina's government have clashed violently with her supporters since. But they dread letting her old enemies in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party take her place. Most still put their faith in Mr. Yunus. In February, one of Mr. Yunus's former advisers, Nahid Islam, launched a political party called the National Citizens Party, hoping to attract students into its fold. Mr. Islam said he has urged Mr. Yunus not to resign. On Thursday, they spoke and Mr. Yunus told him that promises he was made when he took office are being broken. 'With different groups creating instability, disorder, and pressuring the government, he feels it is no longer possible for him to carry out his responsibilities in an effective way,' Mr. Islam said.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Stunned as Epic Mars Aurora Covers Entire Planet
Astronomers have finally captured visible auroras dazzling the skies above Mars — and they're unlike anything we see on Earth. The spectacular discovery was made using NASA's Perseverance rover. Thanks to careful planning by the researchers, the robotic explorer gazed up to the heavens just in time to catch a powerful solar storm slamming into Mars' thin atmosphere, creating a diffuse green glow that could be seen across the entire planet, dwarfing its Earth counterparts. The findings, published in a new study in the journal Science Advances, mark the first time that the Red Planet's auroras have been captured in light visible to the human eye. More than that, it's also the first time that an aurora has been seen from the surface of another planet. "This exciting discovery opens up new possibilities for auroral research and confirms that auroras could be visible to future astronauts on Mars' surface," said study lead author Elise Knutsen at the University of Oslo in Norway in a statement about the work. Auroras form when high-energy, electrically charged particles, usually from the Sun, strike a planet's magnetic field and excite the particles in the upper layers of the atmosphere. Green, the most common color, is the result of emissions from excited oxygen atoms. For years, astronomers have suspected that Mars could host green auroras. But until now, Martian auroras have only been observed in ultraviolet light from orbit, according to NASA. The fact that Mars has auroras at all is a bit of a head-scratcher. The Red Planet has little atmosphere left to speak of and longer possesses a global magnetic field, unlike Earth. The planet does have smaller regions of magnetism, however, and studying the auroras that emerge can tell astronomers a lot about the Martian atmosphere, which mysteriously vanished around 3.5 billion years ago, along with all its surface water. "Aurora is the visible manifestation of how the Sun really affects the atmosphere of planets," Knutsen told the Washington Post. "It really lets you probe in a very direct way how particles are transferred and injected into atmospheres." The curtains of light that we see on Earth are known as discrete auroras, Knutsen explained to WaPo. But Mars can host sinuous auroras, which take a winding shape that stretches across half a planet, and diffuse auroras, which cover an entire planet. Serendipitously, the astronomers got to witness a globe-spanning one. Allowing them to make the discovery, scientists at NASA's Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office forecasted that a powerful solar eruption known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) would impact Mars on March 15, 2024. After word got to Knutsen's team, they instantly knew that this was their chance. "When we saw the strength of this one," Knutsen said in a statement, "we estimated it could trigger aurora bright enough for our instruments to detect." When the CME finally came, Perseverance was ready. Just as Knutsen's team predicted, a green aurora lit up the sky, and the rover imaged it using its Mastcam-Z instrument. The picture may be pretty grainy, but this, the team assures, is just the beginning. "It opens this new avenue for doing magnetospheric, atmospherics, and space weather research on Mars," Knutsen told WaPo. More on dazzling lights: There's Something Very Unusual About Jupiter's Auroras
Express Tribune
16-05-2025
- Science
- Express Tribune
NASA rover observes aurora on Mars
The first visible-light image of a green aurora on Mars (left), taken by NASA's Perseverance rover, is seen next to a comparison image showing the night sky without the aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos (right). PHOTO: REUTERS NASA's Perseverance rover has observed an aurora on Mars in visible light for the first time, with the sky glowing softly in green in the first viewing of an aurora from any planetary surface other than Earth. Scientists said the aurora occurred on March 18, 2024, when super-energetic particles from the sun encountered the Martian atmosphere, precipitating a reaction that created a faint glow across the entire night sky. Auroras have been observed previously on Mars by satellites from orbit in ultraviolet wavelengths, but not in visible light. The sun three days earlier had unleashed a solar flare and an accompanying coronal mass ejection - a huge explosion of gas and magnetic energy that brings with it large amounts of solar energetic particles - that traveled outward through the solar system. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, following Mercury, Venus and Earth. Scientists had simulated the event in advance and prepared instruments on the rover to be ready to observe the expected aurora. Perseverance has two instruments that are sensitive to wavelengths in the visible range, meaning they detect colors human eyes can see. The researchers used the rover's SuperCam spectrometer instrument to identify exactly the wavelength of the green glow and then used its Mastcam-Z camera to take a snapshot of the softly glowing green sky. An aurora forms on Mars the same way as on Earth, with energetic charged particles colliding with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, exciting them, and causing subatomic particles called electrons to emit light particles called photons. "But on Earth, the charged particles are channeled into the polar regions by our planet's global magnetic field," said Elise Wright Knutsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo's Center for Space Sensors and Systems and lead author of the study published this week in the journal Science Advances. "Mars has no global magnetic field so the charged particles bombarded all of Mars at the same time, which leads to this planet-wide aurora," Knutsen added. The green color occurred because of the interaction between the charged particles from the sun and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. While auroras can be brilliant, as often seen in Earth's northernmost and southernmost regions, the one observed on Mars was quite faint. "This specific aurora we observed on March 18th of last year would have been too faint for humans to see directly.
