Smoke rises after explosions Tuesday at Saki Air Base in Crimea. Since then, Crimea has been promoted on Russian state media much as it was during the Soviet era, as a popular summer seaside destination - within Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin later acknowledged in a Russian documentary the stealth takeover and annexation of Ukraine’s peninsula on the Black Sea, which is about the size of Massachusetts. Russian soldiers, notoriously disguised as “ little green men,” invaded Crimea in March 2014, weeks after protests in Kyiv erupted over Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s about-face on further integrating the country with the European Union. As many as nine Russian warplanes were annihilated on Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. Whatever it was, Ukrainians on social media haven’t been this excited since their military sank the Moskva, the flagship cruiser of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, in April. Inflation in the UK surged in May to its highest annual rate in 40 years, official data showed, piling pressure on the government to step up assistance for households facing a worsening cost-of-living crisis.How did Ukraine blow up Russia’s Saki Air Base in southwest Crimea on Tuesday? Was it with supersonic ballistic missiles, perhaps made in the United States? Or did it send a SEAL Team 6-style special ops, dropped deep behind enemy lines, to set explosions? “Some people do have sympathy with the striking workers, it’s not just train drivers and guards, these are railway staff across a lot of professions”, Brennan said, adding: “People say look the cost of living is such as going up at such a rate that people are entitled to a pay rise”.īut other commuters are frustrated with the disruptions. UK public is divided on their support for strikes. Only 45 percent of the whole network will be operating, and with that number of services cut to one fifth compared with a regular day. Pamphlets and newspapers are distributed at a picket line outside Waterloo Station in London Īl Jazeera’s Paul Brennan reported from the UK’s biggest and busiest station Waterloo, saying “extraordinary sight compared to normal” day. The strikes are the biggest dispute on the UK’s railway network since 1989, according to the RMT. Schools are warning that thousands of teenagers taking national exams will also be affected. The walkouts – also on Thursday and Saturday – risk causing significant disruption to major events including the Glastonbury music festival. “I absolutely deplore what they’re doing today and there is no excuse for taking people out on strike.”īut Mick Lynch, RMT’s general-secretary, described as “unacceptable” offers of below-inflation pay rises by both overground train operators and London Underground that runs the Tube in the capital. “The people that are hurting are people who physically need to turn up for work, maybe on lower pay, perhaps the cleaners in hospitals,” he told Sky News broadcaster. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he “deplored” the strikes, which he said evoked the “bad old days of the 1970s”. Major stations were largely deserted on Tuesday morning, with only about 20 percent of passenger trains scheduled to run, forcing people to either work from home or find alternative routes into the office. Passengers queue for a bus outside Waterloo Station on the first day of the rail strike in London The government says it is not involved in the talks, but has warned that big raises will spark a wage-price spiral driving inflation even higher. The union accuses the Conservative government of refusing to give rail firms enough flexibility to offer a substantial pay increase. The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) says it will not accept rail firms’ offer of a 3 percent raise, which is far below the rate of inflation, currently running at 9 percent. Last-minute talks on Monday failed to make a breakthrough. But that is well below pre-COVID-19 levels, and train companies, which were kept afloat with government support during the past two years, are seeking to cut costs and staffing. There were almost 1 billion train journeys in the UK in the year to March. The dispute centres on pay, working conditions and job security as the UK’s railways struggle to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Tens of thousands of the UK’s railway workers began the network’s biggest strike action in more than 30 years, leaving commuters facing chaos.Ībout 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff were holding a 24-hour strike on Tuesday, with two more planned for Thursday and Saturday.
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