ah, with a with ah, with allergy top headlines on auntie international. as we get exclusive footage from the dalton bass city of philadelphia, where the russian power military group, wagner says it has taken the area also in the program for you and a quick warning of disturbing images coming your way with south africa launch is an investigation after a video circulates on line, apparently showing a group of soldiers burning the corpses of she hottest in neighboring mozambique. it is a decade since the antique hottest french military operation started in the west african nation of molly,

but concerns that stand over its ultimate failure to address the cold political problems that brought chaos to the region with mid week on wednesday. here at moscow this our program absolutely packed with your latest world news. welcome to it. and we do kick it off now with big developments on the front lines from don bass as the russian power military group. wagner says it has completely taken the strategic city of solid are by the area is crucial for control. and they don't yet square public and has been the scene of intense fighting with ukrainian forces who are mixed in with western mass center. i know there are ukranian troops above ground, just 2 kilometers from here, but that won't last long. a or any of them under ground? i suppose. so let's go out and see this a exclusive footage. i shows wagner, members on the head of the group inspecting an underground mine that was previously

used by key ebs troops to stole weapons. a wagner has ultimately been one of russia's most successful fighting forces in the ukraine conflict. the organization's chief earlier confirmed that some remaining ukrainian troops and the city have been encircled with a deadline imposed for them to surrender by midnight rushers, defense ministry also committed on the takeover of this key city. others, if you are grossly defunct, the course, like the russian airborne troops blocked salvador from the northern and southern parts of the city. and the air force struck enemy strongholds, assault units are now fighting in the city. as a result of the attacks on ukraine's army up to 80 servicemen that are one tank, 3 armored fighting vehicles and 2 cars were destroyed portal in the direction of done. it's the settlement of pot gardonia in the dynette peoples republic was liberated by russian troops during successful offensive operations. log new or what i bring up i'm up here for you on the program. a solid are is a strategically important location that's and gainey control over it. effectively

paved the way for russian forces to press key abs troops out of the city of charlotte. you see on the map right here. and that is a vital transport hub is got networks of roads and railways. basically, supply lines and the head of the donuts republic set that off to solar dot russian forces will be able to move towards another key city that of savannah scan the top of the map right here. then the cities of crime, a tortoise can saw the unscrewed, theoretically be next in line, while in an interview to r t, the head to the donors republic, denise put shill, and he emphasized that solid r has been a crucial point for the russian offensive to take control essentially of, with this entire region seek dies was admitted into greece. could there zalinski uses some kind of anti crisis when the situation gets hot. we saw how solid our did not leave the news pages some days before us about it in a sort of birth deliberation of sola. dar allows russian troops to go to the city of archer, musk in more favourable conditions with deliberation of solid. are we prepare for

the liberation of the den? that's people's republic. we see that now the situation has changed. and russian troops have taken the initiative model approach. and so i made a correspondence in the region is a roman cutoff. he's in don't yet explaining the strategic significance of solid on bob announcement. so regards to salazar came laid on the tuesday evening. we 1st received a news that the fighters of the wagman group are now in control of the sensor of the city. later we got news from a precaution, getting forgotten himself, the head of the wagner group that's in his units are now in full control of the city. not only that, on roads to retreat for ukrainians are under artillery control of the wagner group as well. at the moment, the clearing operation is underway in the city where the soldiers are going from house to house looking for the remaining ukrainian soldiers of air. according to

their wagner group, for a small number of ukrainian soldiers are now hold up and are in a cauldron in the sensor all for the city. and we are waiting for the news where the city has been completely freed from ukrainian and nationalist. now the city of salazar is a certainly very strategic, very important for the nest people's republic. now it houses one of the largest salt wines in europe and our previously the also stationed one of the largest ammunition to peoples in east or europe as well. but so more than that, the city is strategic for the remainder of russian forces. as by taking it, it now paves the way to the city of thomas, which ukraine had renamed as baltimore when it's overtook of the city back in 2014 . and so once that operation is complete,

the russian forces can move to other heavily fortified the cities of slogans and from a source of course that is of a major importance as well because the heavier fighting was taking place there back in it's when see 14 as well, as there are many, many people that left those area, many risky, geez, and of course, are all waiting to get home as soon as possible. or let's take this investigation of other aeronautics international. there is scott ritter, a former marine corps intelligence officer, joining us live here on the program. great to see you today, scott. i know you've been across all the wires and checking the latest with this. a key strategic town of solar dod. obviously, scott, many moving parts here on the ground. what effect do you think the takeover of solid on might have on the russian operation in the region? let's put it this way of so dar hadn't fallen in the ukrainian defences that they had been building up for over 8 years from 2014 to 2022 would still be

intact. and that would complicate extraordinarily, any russian offensive. that was going to be, you know, that has been planned when the remaining 82550000 mobilized troops. finally appear on the battlefield. that they, the capture of sola dar, the eventual capture of bach mood. the piercing of the ukrainian defences is an essential precondition for any follow on russian offensive operation. so this is a, this is a battle of tremendous significance and tremendous consequence for both sides. scott, what, what do you make all the attention to that of the wagner group all over the headlines that we've seen. what is the significance of the wagner group taking responsibility for the takeover of thought and not the russian military so to speak? well mean, look, the history of wagner is,

is one that's attached to the don boston. the fighting of the russian government is reticent about talking about the you know, the, the actual birth of this unit. but it was created in 2014, to provide aid, non russian military affiliated military capability to the dumbass. the russian military was prohibited by law, by constitution in getting engaged in don't baz because going back that time was ukrainian territory. but wagner, being a so called private military contractor, a could serves a vehicle to bring in russian military expertise, russian military personnel, russian equipment, and engage in military operations in support of bone basses. wagner has been there since 2014. it's a very professional military organization. this isn't a bunch of mercenaries. these are simply russian soldiers serving under

a different contract vehicle than what is normally associated. so the idea that this isn't the russian army is absurd in the extreme. it's of wagner reports to the russian high command. it doesn't operate independent of the russian. i command. it takes its orders from the russian. i command and its operations are thoroughly integrated into the overall concept of operations. but it is a separate unit. it has its own a sprit to cor, it's a very, a, a, you know, with the history of aggressive operations. they're proud of this and with the capture of sold are they've, they've accomplished something of the historical significance. scott, let's, let's draw attention now to all the weapons that have been essentially flowing in from, from the west into ukraine. of, you know, the key f has been asking germany for the leper tanks. they also won the u. s. abram tanks that the u. k. is going to sense and marauders as i understand, but it's now been announced that that a battery of patriot missiles will be delivered to ukraine. the u. s,

as we understand is going to train ukrainian soldiers either in oklahoma or perhaps even in texas. what are your thoughts on how if and when the patriot missile battery system arrive in the ukraine? how. how might that change the balance of power on the battlefield? well, the short answer is, unless russia allows it to change the balance of power, it's not going to change a balance or what i mean by that is, you know, it takes 5 months to grain for i just basic training for a patriot miss. ready operator and so even if the united states comes up with an accelerated training program, or these patriots aren't going to be available until may, june of this year. it's this one battery that's 88 launchers. um, you close a big country so clearly this battery isn't going to be a game changer. it's an additional capability, a one which is going to be diminished because you're going to have soldiers with

little more than basic training operating that you're not going to have experienced veterans, et cetera. but here's the other thing if you take, but if you did a climb like, oh, all the equipment has been promised. and then you phased it out and the, when it's actually going to be delivered it together with trained personnel, you'll see that it is staggered. it doesn't all come into once and why is this important? because once russia begins, it's major offensive. so long as russia can maintain momentum with the momentum to faulkner is achieving right now. and so darn impact mood if russia is able to read your retain this momentum, they will be defining the pace of action, meaning that as these new military capabilities emerge and ukraine, they will be immediately dispatched to the battlefield. so be a piecemeal um,

you know, dispatch of troops and that will be sufficient change anything with russia causes or any reason and allows ukrainians time to accumulate these resources and consolidate them into a singular fighting force. then ukraine has the opportunity to regain the momentum . so i think the fact that all of this equipment, even though looks good on paper, is staggered in the advantage it still russia. because as long as russia maintains momentum and pressure, these forces are going to be not able to be concentrated. they'll be void piecemeal . and they'll be destroyed piece, but appreciate you clearing that up. this got appreciate unless no one is only going to have a one more question. please just bear with me. he will for a moment. his scott, a senior correspondent, man gasdio, has spent nearly 7 months down in that part of the world. he's been basically on the front lines and all around them. he was reporting that when the, when the, when the, when the russian side get the hands on the west side or the ukrainian sides walkie

talkies, their radios and they listening to the radios, they hear tons of polish speaking fighters. many, many. busy germans and hardly any ukrainians. it's something the western press barely even touches. what are your thoughts on what our senior correspondent had to say? well again, so the 1st time i've heard reports such as this and i have no reason to doubt the integrity of your reporter, um or the, the, the veracity of his sources. oh, we know that a poland has dispatched thousands of troops. some i'm surprised at the number of germans. ah, but i'm not again, i'm not doubting that. i heard reports that there's a lot of english voices heard and then also um, some romanian voices as well. but that the reports i have is that, um, in certain sectors of the front, especially where there was heavy combat on it, there appears to be an overwhelming number of these foreign mercenaries who are in

your, posing the russians in that. and that's something that links back to what happened this past fall. well, when you take a look at the offensive operations carried about by the ukrainians in the car code region, the initial shock troops were almost exclusively mercenaries. the troops that are required to undertake the most complicated offensive operations, et cetera, are foreigners, not the ukrainians. um and so wouldn't surprise me that there are sectors of the front where the, the operations might be of a more complex nature than the normal. where you'll find a heavily accumulation of, of, of non ukraine form mercenary soldiers already printed your analysis on this. i scott read a former marine corps intelligence office on so good to have you on the program. always great to see if thanks for that. thank you. meanwhile, a series of large explosions reported in ukraine's 2nd largest city hot call.

around the same time the solar daughter was being taken by the wagner group. locals reported that a russian missile had an ammunition depot. web pyrotechnics were also being stored . you can see those pictures right there. the blasts went on for quite some time, was shifting gears now to the russian border region of belgrade, where 6 people have reportedly been wounded in the latest ukrainian shelling a local authorities say. one woman was hospitalized with severe injuries after no fewer than 50 shells were fired into her village. well, you can always learn much, much more about all of this. what's happening on the front line, our t. c dot com. you've got all your analysis for the battle of solar dot and other russian military activities along the front lines of dawn. vast, the updates are 20 full 70 now, as the russian and private military company, wagner makes advances in the ukraine conflict of the us, as we understand,

as are portly, been tracking the organization's activities, but in global conflict zones, let's get the thoughts and opinions of arctic contributor ritual must american officials at the highest level have been busy spying on the russian private military contractor whitener group all the way from ukraine into africa and even into europe. that's according to western press reports, citing diplomatic cables. one unnamed senior bite and official framed it this way. the u. s. government is concerned about the extent to which raw grows interfering and sovereign countries, internal politics, violating human rights and robbing them of mineral wealth. there is significant evidence that wagner halls counter terrorism tactics in places like molly a worsening the situation by creating more opportunities for extreme exploitation. last year molly chose the wagner group for a new partnership after picking out french forces whose efforts to secure the country were so spectacular, that there were 2 who they taught us in as many years. so while the u. s.

government is busy obsessing over this russian private military company. it might be worth remembering that it was the u. s. government that created the very blueprint for modern day security contracting when a certain eric prince, the son of one of the republican party's top donors at the time he was also a good pile of then u. s. president and former defense secretary dick cheney. and so eric friends treated blackwater, which went on to obtain lucrative know, bid security contracts for the u. s. government in the middle east during the u. s . global war on terrorism officials from the cia and the pentagon conveniently slid over to blackwater for a much more lucrative pay day than their government job. and despite a cowboy reputation and incidents like when blackwater personnel opened fire and killed 14 civilians in iraq's niss who are square in 2007, the u. s. private security model has gone on to thrive,

lucrative job offers with western and private military contractors, reportedly started popping up right from the very set of the conflict in ukraine. once it, multilingual former soldiers willing to cowardly had inter ukraine for the handsome sum of up to $2000.00 per day, plus bonus to help rescue families from an increasingly grim conflict. okay, so apparently that isn't a problem for washington. they have nothing to say about job offers like that. instead, american officials are preoccupied with the wagner groups presence in places like serbia where the group announced last month to have opened a cultural center to better inform and educate russian ex pats working against moscow from serbia. sounds kind of like serbia was looking for some hired help in preventing the country from becoming a flop house for regime change, chancery targeting moscow and its allies. the real problem with the wagner group

for the west is that it competes with western private military contractors. and serves to protect the interests of clients that depart from the western agenda. if the u. s. government has a problem with that. now, they might do well to remember that they were the ones he started back particular ball rolling in the 1st place. so good to have your company today. russia has set its saw use spacecraft, which is docked right now. the international space station has been damaged by a meteorite and will return to us soon with out a crew. the craft was, are previously slated to bring back to russian cosmonaut and a u. s. afternoon next month. now as we understand, the damage from the space rolled caught a small leak that raised concerns about the safety of crew members. if indeed they were to embark on that vessel, the russian space agency, ross cosmo said it would launch another. so used to the space station to bring back

those 3 space fairs. as soon as next month, south africa's military as lot an investigation after a video appeared on line, allegedly showing a group of soldiers or throwing corpses of jihadists onto a fire in neighboring mozambique. i should warn you, you may find the following images disturbing. a south african forces have been assisting most on big government in its fight against them. surgeons. one of the apparent soldiers in the video has south african insignia on his sleeve. or the military has said that if south african troops were involved in this, they will be brought to justice to south african national defense force does not condone in any way the acts committed in the video. those who are found guilty of such acts will be brought to book what is shown in the video is unacceptable and must be rejected in the strongest possible way. we were talking earlier with international relations expert to bias miguel. now he says the incident reflects at

the end of the day, what is a worsening situation in mozambie? yes i'm the guy is in the middle of a scene and it shows how this it will and where for the civilian and more have found in the community for housing because you can see pool of people. and it was the sometimes so just because they had a flag, but i wanted the stuff, you're not saying that these to come to was, i mean, you know, the forms for all this about the gun defense fall back on all the stuff. and the, the shows how my right the value and it was, i'm just to remind you that i'm going to print a human to read people

a solution, a, a for the civilians. haven't ever seen anything all along me. and the, if you have one of these few deal, because some of this, so just want to do. so the question is, how many are you listen? i mean, we did it, and no one is, it was a decade since france began to auntie and such an operations in the west african nation of miley. there are writing concerns about the lingering french military present. so many claims it has ultimately failed to accomplish its intended purpose. parties, africa correspondent, catabolic tattler has details. concerns would be justified really when you look at

the origins of french military involvement, particularly in this conflict, hit the areas the aim of operations about was actually launched by for my friends president, president, a land as a, as a response to a request that was made by molly and the un resolution called 2085, which was meant to stabilize the reason this operation quickly became a nun event, as a france insisted on securing rather the region and not just looking at miley. but beyond that, looking at molly booking a fossil as well as the j and 18 months into operations of al, it was phased out with a much larger ambition. that of operation by con operation. but con was meant to own, not only a support rather push back the terrorist action that we had seen from miley that

had spread into beginner fossil and neighboring j. but it was also meant to train some of the local militaries there and make sure that they're capable of defending and pushing back some of these terrorist groups. and these terrorist groups are very and they are many. and they include the affiliates of al qaeda. now, it's very difficult to look back on the exit of some of the large majority of french are contingent there that we have seen it from last year. and consider this any other thing except a colossal failure on the part of france. and it was also becoming clear, i think, given to france as well, that it was going to be impossible to win in any meaningful way. the war that he had had basically pursued on this i held region 10 years on the region is small conflict thrown. it is red hot with violence and incidents go as far as from

2500 being recorded annually in 3 of these countries. now france, of course, was never going to admit that it was unable to secure the borders of its former colony, and that it was going to win this war. now this mission that, that replaced operation, a subaru operation, but con debt is it was also populated by not just the french army, though. it was also members of the e. you states, as well as the americans that have now with tails between their legs turned back and have left, you know, the region as volatile and it's open to insurgency. the same thing. they said they were there to protect against. and it, it, it really, you know, gives room if you will, for more insurgent activity in that region. now these countries,

while all visibly seeing the part that was not played by france, the inequities of its military and its inability to really secure the region. and they started one at a time, looking eastwards and looking towards russia as they are preferred to cooperation for military partnership. and to deal with some of the insurgency that we have seen there. now it goes without saying that the you and remains concerned about the rising levels of violence, particularly violence that has been met it against civilians. and also the amount of, of displaced people that we have seen in the region and the ensuing bets as part of its a strengthening of economic ties with africa. china is constructing facilities for an oil field in the east african nation of

u gander. those areas are to be connected with a pipeline to bring the commodity from uganda to a port in neighboring towns and export to global markets. and the east african crude oil pipeline is to be buried underground. an effort to minimize impact on the environment and environmentalists have race, concerns at the root, could still cause that of water pollution where you can just government has presented the project as a way to bring people out of energy poverty and estimated 600000000 people in sub saharan africa have no access to electricity or the european parliament meantime has condemned the construction of the pipeline. even saying the e, you should put a maximum pressure on uganda and authorities to protect the environment. the african political figures have condemned sentiment as hypocritical, saying that while western powers express and environmental concerns, they are indeed themselves mining minerals on the continent. we heard from economic ad, listed as the pipeline project would greatly contribute to economic prosperity and

the east african region. 15 years to come, almost 80 percent of oil input will be within china saying that does it want to be a variable stage where it's reliable in one source only. so this comes as a gen 4 east africa to capitalize on this opening, which can go only once in the last m. and i think i east africa, the region has the potential to must my technological but also its political influence. that it capitalize on this cooperation for his benefit from local content enhancement to job creation, to technological trust. but more importantly, revenue from oil exports will benefit gladly by expanding economies respectively, but also giving east africa that energy independence. it has been longing for because we know 4 to 5 that africa as

a whole continent suffers from energy poverty. and i think it does rather unfair for the west, even different requirements, especially at times whereby we need their technological and more support to champion for the project to be resilient, but also more sustainable. one does precedent us that his country can no longer accept refugees from the conflict. the riddled d. c. tensions between the democratic republic of congo and neighboring rwanda have been increasing as d. r. c. national forces fight the n 23 militia group. now the b. r c has a choose for a wander of supporting the insurgents. for wonder denies all that. the 10s of thousands of people that are formerly fled from the fighting in the rest of the eastern region right across the border into rwanda. and everyone does lead us. so this country can no longer cope with the influx. we cannot keeping host

refugees for which we are later on held accountable in some way or even abused about refugees as a result of ethnic cleansing based in another country. we must be a dumping ground of these people who are being deprived of their rights. the hugh ends at refugee agencies has more than 70000 people from the d. r. c. have fled to neighboring rwanda. the conflict has displaced nearly 200000. and we heard from independent journalist a galen balloon, who says that refugee situation in the region is catastrophic. we also got the views of an expert at the university of south africa. to me center quad situation is very, that's trophy. especially in reaching kim, where you can see more than 100000 people staying there without any assistance.