Today, another Russian general goes missing, another scandal from the Finnish government, UNAid ends in Syria after a Russian veto, and China launches the first methane rocket. From TLR News, this is your daily briefing for Thursday the 13th of July. A senior Russian general who led forces in Ukraine hasn't been seen in weeks, following the failed mutiny by the Wagner Group, prompting all sorts of speculation about his well-being and whereabouts. General Sergei Sorovkin, once dubbed General Armageddon, is said to have had close relations with Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigogin, which obviously compounds speculation about where he's gone.
Amid this speculation, the head of the Russian Duma Defense Committee said that the general was just taking arrest and was unavailable right now. Now, that's at least possible. In the past, Sorovkin has fought in places such as Chechia and Syria before being put in charge of Russian forces in Ukraine in October, but then removed three months later. That's not the only strange story involving a Russian general in recent days, though.
Another general, Ivan Popov, who led forces in Ukraine, has said publicly that he was abruptly dismissed from his post after criticizing the Russian defense ministry's leadership and decisions. Prior to this, he served as the commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army, which has been active in the Zaporizhia area of southern Ukraine. Now, in a recording published on Telegram, Popov can be heard saying that he had a choice of telling the superiors what they wanted to hear or to call a spade a spade. And he says that he raised questions about the lack of counter-battery combat, the absence of artillery reconnaissance stations, and the mass deaths and injuries of our brothers from the enemy artillery.
He then added that he also raised a number of other problems and expressed it all at the highest level frankly and extremely harshly general popov goes on to say that after he raised these concerns defense minister sergey shoigu signed the order and got rid of me now all of this comes against the background of the ukrainian strike in zaporizhia which reportedly killed another russian commander lieutenant general oleg toskov furthermore on monday a russian submarine commander was shot and killed in a russian city while out on a run It even been alleged that his killer may have been tracking him using the Strava app which the commander used to record and track his exercise habits All in all then, there are a number of issues at the highest level of the Russian army, all of which will likely be concerning for the Kremlin. Now, there's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine, or just search for us in your podcast app of choice to listen along. Finland's deputy prime minister has apologized for a number of racist comments that she posted online in 2008, the latest in a series of scandals involving the nationalist Finns party, who are the second largest party in government. Pura, who's the party's leader and also serves as finance minister, issued an apology for what she called stupid social media comments from 2008 that include racial slurs, anti-immigrant remarks, and threats of violence.
Now, the new right-wing government that she forms part of only took office on June 20th, and since then, another Finns party politician has already resigned as economy minister after it emerged that he made Heil Hitler jokes and promoted the idea of so-called climate abortions in Africa. Now, the country's prime minister, who also leads the National Coalition Party, said that Pura's comments were unacceptable, but her apology has closed the matter. A number of opposition politicians, however, don't agree, and have called for a no-confidence vote to remove the deputy prime minister. Now, as I said, various scandals have already rocked this very newly formed government, but the prime minister has insisted that the government will not fall because of the past actions of some of his coalition partners, with him remarking the government has zero tolerance when it comes to all forms of racism and extremism.
If you want to learn more about this whole situation, we made a video about it over on the TLDR EU channel, which you can check out now. Anyway, let's move to Syria. A long-running UN-led aid operation for millions of people in northwest Syria has come to an abrupt end after the UN Security Council failed to renew the authorization of the essential program. Since 2014, this operation has been delivering food, supplies, medicine, and more across the border from Turkey to Syria for 4 million people in the rebel northwest Now for this program to work it needs UN Security Council approval as the Syrian government has not actually consented to it on sovereignty grounds And while it did get approval in the past this agreement has come up for renewal with the UN Secretary General pushing for it to be renewed for another 12 months.
With this deadline looming, a proposed nine-month extension was voted on by the Security Council, but it was rejected due to a veto by Russia, an ally of the Syrian regime, despite the fact that 13 of the 15 Security Council members voted in favor. Russia then proposed its own six-month expansion to the aid operation, which was supported by China, but was voted down by the US, UK, and France, who all wield vetoes in the Council. Aid organizations have decried this failure to renew the operation, with the International Rescue Committee saying that needs are at record levels across Syria, and it remains a major and acute crisis. More broadly, the UN has said that it will continue to advocate for expanding all avenues to deliver humanitarian assistance to millions of people in need in northwest Syria.
Now, hopefully this can be achieved, because the mandate has expired twice before, but previously compromises were eventually found in order to restart the operation, and hopefully that happens again. Next up, a Chinese company has launched the world's first methane-fueled rocket into orbit, beating the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin to the milestone. The Juchua 2 rocket blasted off from the launch center in northwestern China on Wednesday, and completed its space flight according to plan, with this being the second attempt to the launch by the Beijing-based company Landspace. This is significant too, because methane fuel is deemed to be more efficient, less polluting, and more sustainable for reusable rockets.
As in the United States, commercial companies are playing an increasingly significant role in the space sector in China, and have been doing so since 2014, when the government first started allowing private investment in the industry. And this successful launch was on the same day that reports emerged that China was planning on sending two rockets to the moon by 2030, one with a lunar lander, and the other containing astronauts. This highlights something of a race to head back to the moon with China trailing the United States in space travel experience and technology but making notable progress in recent years For its part NASA is hoping to send Americans back to the moon in 2025 as part of its Artemis missions This isn just a vanity project either The moon is attractive not just for its potential mineral resources, but also because a moon hub could be used to support future missions to Mars. Finally, in a recent episode of the Data Briefing, we discussed the drop in deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest.
So we wanted to follow that up with some more uplifting news from Colombia, which has also recorded a significant fall in deforestation. According to newly released government data, Colombia saw deforestation fall by 29% last year to the lowest level in nearly a decade. President Gustavo Petro has made environmental protection a key priority for his government, and this data suggests that things are moving in the right direction. The country's environment minister said that this is just the beginning.
I think that Colombia can overcome deforestation in the Amazon and turn this all around. Now, that's all we have time for on YouTube today, but the briefing isn't over as Rory quizzed Ben on the news of this week. I don't want to seem like an idiot on camera. I don't want this on camera.
I don't want to do this on camera. Please don't judge me. or tweet at me. Yeah, is it?
I don't know. Write that down. Someone might write that down. You've got to cut.
I'm sorry, we have to cut. I'm not doing it. In the extended ad-free edition of the Daily Briefing, only available on Nebula. That's a streaming service that we're building with a bunch of our creator friends, many of whom you're likely already watching.
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