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Here’s the latest as Israel-Hamas war enters Day 142
Israeli officials to meet on a proposed pause in Gaza while the Cabinet is set to OK a Rafah plan
Israeli officials will meet Saturday night on the next steps after the latest talks with the United States, Egypt and Qatar in search of a deal on pausing the fighting in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
But Netanyahu announced that he’ll convene the Cabinet early next week to “approve the operational plans for action in Rafah,” including the evacuation of civilians, despite widespread warnings from the international community about a military ground operation in the southern city where more than half of Gaza’s population shelters. “Only a combination of military pressure and firm negotiations” would achieve Israel’s aims in the war, he said.
A senior official from Egypt, which along with Qatar is a mediator between Israel and the Hamas militant group, said mediators were waiting for Israel’s official response to a draft deal that includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages held in Gaza in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, mostly women, minors and older people.
The Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would include allowing hundreds of aid trucks to enter Gaza every day, including the northern half of the besieged territory. He said that both sides agreed to continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent cease-fire.
Negotiators face an unofficial deadline of the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan around March 10.
Hamas political official Osama Hamdan noted that the group wasn’t at the talks, but asserted to reporters in Beirut on Friday that Israel had refused its main demands, including stopping the “aggression” and withdrawing from Gaza.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Saturday that the bodies of 92 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardments were brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the overall toll in nearly five months of war to 29,606. The total number of wounded rose to nearly 70,000.
The ministry’s death toll doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said that two-thirds of those killed were children and women. Israel says its troops have killed more than 10,000 Hamas fighters, but hasn’t provided details.
An Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah, killing at least eight people. including four women and a child, health authorities said. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies at Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital.
“Enough, enough. Either the Israelis or us should stop. There should be a truce,” said neighbor Abdul-Qader Shubeir, who described feeling lost at not being immediately able to put out the fire burning the bodies.
NEW GENOCIDE ALLEGATIONS
Brazil’s president alleged Saturday that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, doubling down on harsh rhetoric after stirring controversy a week ago by comparing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million Jews and others perished during World War II.
Israel has pushed back against genocide claims made at the U.N.’s top court and elsewhere, saying its war targets the militant group Hamas, not the Palestinian people. It has held Hamas responsible for civilian deaths, arguing that the group operates from civilian areas.
“What the Israeli government is doing is not war, it is genocide,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Children and women are being murdered.”
In response to Lula’s initial comments, Israel declared him a persona non grata, summoned Brazil’s ambassador and demanded an apology. Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel for consultations.
Last month, South Africa filed a landmark case with the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians. The court issued a preliminary order ordering Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.
Israel, created in part as a refuge for survivors of the Holocaust, has accused South Africa of hypocrisy. South Africa has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza with the treatment of Black South Africans during apartheid, framing the issues as fundamentally about people oppressed in their homeland.
HUNGER AND DISEASES SPREAD
Israel declared war after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.
The rising civilian death toll and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza have amplified calls for a cease-fire. Hunger and infectious diseases are spreading and about 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced, with about 1.4 million crowded into Rafah on the border with Egypt.
“There are choking, skyrocketing prices. It’s terrifying. There is no source of income. The area is very overcrowded,” said Hassan Attwa, a displaced man from Gaza City who now shelters in a tent on the sand in Mawasi in the south. “The garbage, may God bless you, is not collected at all. It stays piled up. It turns into a mess and clay when it rains. The situation is disastrous in every sense of the word.”
In Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, children banged on pots as part of a protest outside a closed hospital demanding more aid to the north.
Netanyahu has vowed to fight until “total victory,” but is under pressure at home. Police used a water cannon to disperse anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, and 18 people were arrested. Others protested in Jerusalem.
AP
What to know after Day 731 of Russia-Ukraine war
WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
How Russia's military uses volunteer fighters to plug gaps in Ukraine
When Russian forces withdrew from the town of Balakliia in eastern Ukraine in late 2022, pursued by Ukrainian troops and under artillery fire, they left a poorly equipped group of volunteers to guard their retreat.
The force of around 50 men came from the National Army Combat Reserve - known by its Russian acronym BARS - a loose assembly of units totaling several thousand fighters that Russia's defense ministry has deployed in Ukraine to supplement its regular forces.
About four hours of footage from a bodycam worn by one of the fighters, obtained by Reuters, provides a rare first-hand view of the combat operations of a BARS unit, according to three military experts who reviewed the video to provide an assessment for the news agency of the unit's military capability.
The invasion of Ukraine marked the first time BARS, which was founded in 2015, deployed units in combat. The video, coupled with interviews with four platoon members, shows the BARS unit was left to defend Balakliia with no heavy weaponry or air support, malfunctioning communications, and confused coordination with the regular military.
"Where is our air force?" asked one of the BARS fighters. His squad, tasked with defending a crossroads north of the town, was sharing a mess tin of cold meat stew during a break in Ukrainian shelling.
The squad leader, Anton Kuznetsov, whose bodycam recorded the exchange, told the men that there must be a good reason there was no air support. "Do they understand that we're surrounded?" complained another soldier, off-camera.
Contacted by Reuters, Kuznetsov said that he had made the bodycam video and had then misplaced the camera's memory card but he declined to comment on combat operations. The memory card was left behind in a rucksack after the retreat.
Russia's defence ministry and the Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment about the video or the extent to which the military relies on the BARS irregulars. A deputy commander of the BARS 9 force that fought in Balakliia, contacted by Reuters, confirmed his position in the unit but declined to comment on its activities.
The news agency could not independently determine how representative the conditions in the video were of the operations of the wider BARS force.
Russia has made territorial gains along parts of the frontline in recent months. Ukraine, which replaced its military top brass in early February, has repeatedly said it needs more equipment and support from Western allies to prosecute the war.
On at least two occasions, President Vladimir Putin has publicly praised the contribution of BARS to Russia's campaign. In a Feb. 21, 2023 annual address to parliament, he said BARS fighters were patriotic volunteers and thanked them for their service.
As the war enters a third year, BARS is part of a patchwork of irregular forces that helps Russia avoid an unpopular general draft, the military experts said.
Rod Thornton, associate professor at the Defence Studies Department of King's College London, estimated that BARS contributes between 10,000 and 30,000 men to a Russian force operating in or near Ukraine of about 200,000. Russia does not disclose the number of BARS fighters.
In recent months, BARS units have been fighting in north-east Ukraine and in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, two of the most bitterly contested fronts, according to updates posted on social media by Dmitry Rogozin, the Moscow-appointed representative for Zaporizhzhia in the upper house of the Russian parliament, and a report from Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
BARS units were useful in plugging gaps in Russian manpower, said Nick Reynolds, Research Fellow in Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK-based defence think tank.
"With the Russian state clearly mobilizing for a longer conflict, a system such as BARS does provide an additional avenue from which to mobilize parts of the population, get them trained and provide additional mass," said Reynolds, who reviewed the bodycam footage.
He said the group shown in the video appeared "not particularly professional or well trained."
"WE'D BEEN FORGOTTEN"
On Sept. 6, 2022, the core of the Russian force in Balakliia was withdrawing in the face of a major Ukrainian counter-offensive. Ukrainian forces have already taken the nearby settlements of Verbivka and Lagery. But the BARS fighters stayed behind.
Kuznetsov, aged 29 and from Siberia, was one of the squad leaders of a BARS 9 platoon, in command of around a dozen men, the video showed.
The commander of the BARS platoon inside Balakliia ordered Kuznetsov's squad to head to the crossroads and repel Ukrainian forces, the video showed.
They knew they would be outgunned by the Ukrainians, conversations caught on camera showed. The heaviest weapons Kuznetsov's squad had at its disposal were machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars.
Two members of the BARS force were sent to find a spot with radio signal to contact a nearby artillery unit to get support, according to one of the four fighters who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
After around 24 hours, they located an artillery unit, but they were already pulling back towards Russia, so could not help, the person said.
"My first impression was that we'd been forgotten," he said. "It hit me very hard psychologically."
TOY SOLDIERS
On Sept 7, the last day recorded on the bodycam, Kuznetsov's squad were keeping watch from an apartment building overlooking the crossroads, as radio traffic reported Ukrainian forces approaching.
While they waited, Kuznetsov and two of his men played with a toy plane and toy tank, pantomiming a soldier requesting air support.
Soon after, a radio report came in saying five Ukrainian Humvees were spotted nearby. Kuznetsov tells his squad: "Right, men, let's get into the mood for a battle." The video footage ends as Kuznetsov heads downstairs into the street.
Two of the fighters told Reuters they did engage the Ukrainian forces, but the Russians were outnumbered.
After the retreat, BARS 9 temporarily disbanded, according to the same two fighters, though they said it has since been re-started.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Russia’s former leader threatens West with ‘revenge’
Moscow should retaliate as hard as it can against the West for its indiscriminate sanctions that hurt regular people, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday.
The sweeping restrictions imposed on Russia go beyond targeting just “the authorities and businesses,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel. “They are directed at the whole Russian population.”
“The rationale is clear: the more Russian citizens suffer, the better it is for the Western world,” Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, argued.
“We just need to remember this and exact revenge everywhere we can. They are our enemies.”
Medvedev suggested that Moscow should punish its adversaries by “creating various difficulties in the economy, stirring up public discontent over the foolish policies of the authorities in the West, and promoting international decisions that undermine the interests of the Western world.”
On Friday, the US announced a new round of restrictions targeting 500 individuals and entities in Russia, citing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the death of jailed opposition activist and anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny. The fresh sanctions are aimed at Russia’s defense and financial sectors.
The US Treasury also blacklisted the state-owned operator of the Mir payment system, which soared in popularity in Russia after the country was cut off from the SWIFT financial messaging network and the services of Visa and Mastercard.
Moscow has maintained that all sanctions against it are illegal and are aimed at destabilizing the country.
RT/Reuters
The Akpabio-provoked N30b Intifada - Festus Adedayo
So at plenary in the senate last week, Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, rushed naked out of the bathtub. He raised his hand up. In the presidency’s search for scapegoat, Akpabio suddenly became Archimedes. Last week, he came forward to shout “Eureka!” He had found the No 1 Nigerian enemy! Ancient Greek scholar, Archimedes, was the author of a find similar to but of sterner stuff than Akpabio’s.
Archimedes had proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" immediately he stepped into a bath and discovered that the water level immediately rose. This led him to the discovery that the volume of water he had displaced equaled the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. This discovery led to what in science is today known as the Archimedes principle. The Greek scholar was said to have been so excited at his discovery that he dashed out of the bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse. Before him, this knowledge was not known.
Like Archimedes, Akpabio had made a find that would revolutionize the quest for who exactly was behind Nigeria’s food crisis. He said he got this Archimedes find from an “unverified report." The world slid into eerie silence. Why would the No 3 Citizen of Nigeria regale Nigerians with a report that lacked the rigour of verification? That office, at the occupier’s beck and call, was stacked with panoply of authentic information about happenings in high and low places. So, why would Akpabio seek to transmute an unverified report into national discourse? Wasn’t this akin to giving life to rumours? Nigerians listened nevertheless. And Akpabio spoke. He had found the enemy of Nigeria. They are the 36 state governors. They collected N30 billion each from the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to cushion the effect of biting inflation and high cost of food in their respective states. He thereafter relapsed into the usual inane platitudes that Nigerian leaders are known by. Every state government should utilize the money, he said. The state governments have a lot to do because they are closer to the people and Nigerians want to eat as there is no excuse, bla bla bla...
The logic of Akpabio’s find does not seem to add up. As governor of a Nigerian state for eight years, he must be aware that FIRS cannot pay money directly to sub-national governments. It is a revenue generating agency. It is not a revenue sharing entity. Even then, in its strict configuring, the Nigerian federal government is the proverbial Alabahun or Ahun, otherwise known as Tortoise, the trickster. A fable is told of how Tortoise and his son were at the dining table. As Tortoise, the father, scooped up a morsel en-route his mouth, his son opened his mouth, hoping the father had meant it for his belly. Tortoise felt sorry for his hungry son and told him that if he was that generous, the world would not ascribe the appellation of ahun (the stingy) to him.
As designed by the RMAFC and approved by the National Assembly, the Federal Government takes 52.68% of federally distributable revenue and states, 26.72%. The FG is very wealthy. Akpabio must however be aware that, as huge and wealthy as it may be in public eye, the federal government cannot give out freebies to any state, except their statutory entitlements. So, did Akpabio not know this or did he damn all he knew for the sake of an ulterior motive? Or was it the usual lack of depth in high places that was unraveling?
If one of the governors, Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, had not bravely spoken out almost immediately last week, the consequences of the deflection of arrows parceled out for Nigerian governors would have been dire. Makinde’s counterpart in Akwa-Ibom, Umo Bassey Eno, also did same. Eno was even blunt and direct: “We are in a time when people want to be relevant and they feel that being relevant is to incite the public, tell lies against government. No civil society behaves like that.” He said this in denying Akpabio’s conjured N30b. Already, a welter of attacks against the governors had sprung up on the social media. If the Akpabio allegation had gone without a lie put to it, we would have had passers-by pelting governors’ vehicles with stones and a state of uprising in the states. Akpabio would have feathered his political nest in the presidency as a good Man Friday.
At critical moments, virtues leaders need to exhibit are self-restraint and forbearance. The mouth, as harmless as it may seem, is a very powerful weapon that leaders must use sparingly. It holds emotions and feelings and is also a tinder which can cause national fire. The moment the mouth is set a-loose, its destructive effect is unimaginable. In the Ifa corpus, Esu, being the most gluttonous of the Irunmoles (deities) reputed with the task of ferrying human appeasements from earth to heaven, is most times depicted with his lose mouth. A story of the destructive nature of the mouth and unconscionable decision is often told in King Odarawu. He was an Alaafin in the old Oyo Empire whose brief reign in the late seventeenth century, after succeeding Alaafin Ajagbo, his father, made him the first Alaafin to be rejected by the Oyomesi, the council of state. Odarawu was a prisoner of his tongue and temper and this led to the brevity of his reign. His fiery temper and the calamity it wrought became almost like a totem which the kingdom used to teach morals about leaders and their mouths.
Told by The Reverend Samuel Johnson in his authoritative Yoruba nation biography, The history of the Yorubas, (p 169) as was the custom, at his installation, Odarawu was asked to name his enemy. Without mincing words, the Prince named Ojo Segi, a town in the kingdom. On what provoked the enmity, Odarawu went down memory lane. Years back, the Prince had gone to buy corn meal (eko) for dinner. Unbeknown to him, the woman who sold the eko was the Baale’s wife. The price of a wrap of eko was then a cowry and Odarawu bought six. He however paid five cowries, according to the privilege of his birth. The Baale’s wife, feeling insulted and not aware of his princely status, decked Odarawu’s face with a dirty slap. She then repeatedly shouted “thief!” at him for trying to withhold a cowry off her legitimate earning. As he was being installed Alaafin, Odarawu asked the council for one favour: the destruction of Ojo Segi. Though the Oyomesi acceded to his request and brought the town to ruins, the council agreed to do away with Odarawu. In their estimation, the new king was a heartless tyrant. If, out of malice against a single woman, he could have macabre pleasure in the destruction of a hapless people, he was not worthy of the kingdom. Oyo people thereafter rejected Odarawu and, in frustration, he committed suicide.
Nigeria’s Senate President, Akpabio, took on a very minute slice of the vice that brought Odarawu and the people of Ojo Segi to destruction. Akpabio unleashed the power of the tinder in his mouth. Today, Nigeria is embroiled in crises. Her economy is tailspinning into chaos. A video of Thomas Hobbes on Kaduna road, Suleja went viral a couple of days ago. Protesters against the badly hit economy went haywire, showcasing Nigerian life at this time as nasty, brutish and short. A Dangote truck was also said to have earlier been hijacked somewhere in the north and its food content pillaged. From every indication, there is a national emergency and leaders’ cast role at this time should be forbearance and words that will fuse the people together.
Rather, buck-passing and scape-goating have reigned. Yet, hunger has morphed into anger on the streets. Apart from seeking ways out of their hunger, Nigerians want to know who their enemy, the one responsible for this hunger, is. Spiritedly, Bola Tinubu, president of Nigeria, has seized every opportunity to tell the people he is their friend. Like an evangelist, Tinubu has been gospelling. His have been preachments of patience and policies (PPP). But, like the biblical sower, Tinubu’s seeds are not landing on the ridges where they should germinate. They fall on furrows and waysides where sparrows fly down from the sky and immediately swallow them for dinner.
You cannot blame the people. Hunger has stretched their patience thread-thin. It is tearing asunder political party loyalties and primordial sentiments. Even All Progressives Congress (APC) party members are throwing barbs at their party-led government. Yoruba are forcefully retrieving the chain of beads they cavalierly decorated on the amoeba-shaped bottom – the “Idi bebere” – of their child in the wake of the 2023 presidential election. Hunger is angrily making the people break the beads into pieces. Whilst gallant praise-singing soldiers recruited on social media to deodorize the hunger in the land attack them for being bastards, Yoruba listen to the jarring noise of hunger in their bellies. Didn’t our forefathers say that when hunger ingresses into the belly, every other matter egresses? Recently, the people’s hunger pushed them to the streets of Ibadan, Oyo State to protest. Shouting “Enough is enough” to the “Idi bebere” reign of hunger, they demanded what use the Tinubu PPP would be to them by the time hunger had sent them to their untimely graves.
In the midst of all this, explanations for the hunger in the land are finding their way into the information highway. A pot-pourri of explanations confronts the people. The soldiers are struggling to outdo one another in this roulette of convincing hungry Nigerians that they are not too hungry. Yet, Nigerians want to know who their real enemy, the one responsible for this massive hunger, is. According to the soldiers on the social media, the Number One cause of the hunger is the ramrod-thin General, the one who spoke seldom while his mindless appointees stole Nigeria blind; whose eight-year reign was filled with empty sanctimony – Muhammadu Buhari. Cascading the enemies downwards, they equally told us that thin-statured ex-CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, ranks high on the list of those responsible for this massive hunger. The history of the hunger was further elasticized. According to them, Nigeria’s financial troubles began from the crisis that stampeded Sanusi Lamido Sanusi out of the vault of the CBN. A report of huge financial mess in the Nigeria’s apex bank, they said, had allegedly indicted Lamido. But, so they reasoned, Sanusi ran out of the cold harmattan haze of the hefty allegations into the humid comfort of the Kano Emir’s palace. The palace immediately provided him a shawl for his face, immunity from a Goodluck Jonathan whose roars were as feeble as a cat’s meow. So, to Sanusi we should look for the genesis of our hunger.
The presidency was even more direct. A ubiquitous, even if nameless, opposition must be the culprit. The saboteurs, in the narrative of the president, were those who failed in their bid to clinch power in the last election. They have subsequently remained in “political mode” while working towards the fall of the country. Speaking last Tuesday in Abuja at the inaugural Public Wealth Management Conference organised by the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, the president, represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, added another scapegoat – smugglers. He said government had uncovered fresh 32 smuggling routes through which food items were siphoned out of Nigeria.
Those feeble explanations have yet to tame the anger on the streets. With attacks on the Tinubu government growing by the day, methinks a Strategic Hunger Council Meeting (SHCM) became imperative. And it was inaugurated. The spirit of Joseph Goebbels,
German philologist and Nazi politician, was immediately invoked. How could government deflect these raging arrows? Being same party-led government, there is a tolerable level to which this government could shovel the dirt of current woes on the Buhari government without a boomerang. In any case, the president himself had asked Nigerians not to pity him as he willingly asked to be president. He knew Nigerians would ask if he wasn’t aware of the challenges of governing a chaotic Nigeria before diving into the waters. Swimmers, flaunting their prowess, scold the ogberi (non-initiates) not to even step their foot on the bank of the river if they cannot swim as the Oluweri – goddess of the river – was prepared to make barbecue of them.
So, the SHCM must have agreed that the most effective scapegoats should be the Nigerian governors. Don’t our elders say, being a generally perceived abominable bird, any arrow shot at the vulture is well deserved? (Iri t’a ri’gun la fi nta’gun l’ofa) The Villa goons have empirical and believable reasons to turn their gaslighting state-wards. Since the advent of the 4th Republic, massive theft of Nigeria’s resources has taken place in the states. Governors after governors have pillaged their states’ resources mindlessly, leaving shells as memorabilia. Since 1999, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) established to go after the vultures scavenging our vaults, has tumbled from a fearsome lion to a tame cat. Today, rather than governors and other thieves in high places, EFCC’s special menu is scamming boys in university hostels.
The narrative of blame must thus land at the feet of the governors. It began with the social media soldiers calling Nigerians’ attention to increasing FAAC allocations from the casino tables of Aso Rock which they said have swelled state governments’ accounts. With this, they say there is no reason why blames for Nigerians’ pervasive hunger should be pointed in Aso Rock’s direction. The Tinubu government’s fiscal reforms, they also argue, have benefited state governors’ coffers tremendously. It is an argument flushed down general lavatories which has saturated national sewages. Only a deeper thought can defrost the argument of its cants and sophistry. True as it is that many governors go on a binge with their monthly allocations, what was the worth of the state allocations before now and today, with the Tinubu chaotic economy? How much is the worth of those allocations today as Tinubu’s Naira engages in Atilogwu dance? For those who inherited foreign debts from their predecessors among the governors, what is the worth today of those debts which they pay from their federal allocations? Do states pay the same salaries now as before the reforms?
In my thinking, in pursuit of this general scape-goating agenda, a willing recruit needed to be found. No one fitted the bill than Akpabio. He wears on his lapel the unenviable pedigree of a reversible chameleon. Even before his recent Odarawu journey, like Nostradamus,
Thisday’s Segun Adeniyi had appropriately dimensioned him. In his last week’s piece entitled Akpabio: A man for every new season, which is a summary of the reversible political life of the former Akwa Ibom state governor, Adeniyi fittingly attired the Senate president the garment of sanctimony. In the piece, he effectively derobed him of any flavor of virtues of leadership. In its place, Adeniyi wore on Akpabio a befitting garment of an all-weather politician who follows the tide of power and office.
The truth is, characters like Akpabio get away with their insurrectionist statements because the people move on after each Intifada. Since the N30b Intifada, Akpabio has gone into his shells; no remorse, no apologies to the over 200 million Nigerians whose emotions he provoked needlessly by such gross lie. In saner societies, such a leader would be sorry; or, be made to be sorry.
Growing your faith to move mountains! - Taiwo Akinola
We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth ~ 2 Thessalonians 1:3.
Introduction:
Faith is a quintessential faculty that must be allowed to fully develop in us. It’s the incontestable means by which we can offer remarkable kingdom services, develop an honorable character, and obtain a good report in God’s trustworthy assessment.
Faith is a living thing; indeed, a living power from heaven: “faith is…”(Hebrews 11:1). It’s firm trust and sound confidence in God and the integrity of His Word (Hebrews 3:14). Faith substantiates the promises of God, making them present realities to us.
The assurance of the things hoped for, whatever they are, is available to us through the assent of faith because faith infers the reality of the objects believed for (Hebrews 6:5-6). Faith is an agreement with the truth that’s credible upon the testimony of God as found in the Bible.
Faith deals with spiritual and invisible things. It proves to the mind the reality of things hoped for, and gives the believers the “convincing proof” of things not yet seen.
By faith, our souls can see the buried past, the unseen present and the unpredictable future. Faith is a firm persuasion and an unyielding expectation that God will perform all He has promised to us in Christ.
There are different levels/kinds of faith: little faith (Matthew 6:30; 14:31), mustard seed faith (Matthew 17:20), great faith (Matthew 15:28), strong faith (Romans 4:20), living faith (Galatians 2:20), steadfast faith (Colossians 2:5), and sound faith (Titus 1:3).
Every believer has faith in a measure, as a gift from God (Romans 12:3). However, our faith must grow adequately for it to produce our desired expectations (Romans 1:17). It must be bold in speaking forth God’s promises (1Timothy 3:13; Romans 1:8).
We must develop our faith, otherwise it will naturally ebb away because of the unpalatable winds that occasionally blow around us (Matthew 7:25-27).
Faith is never static. It is either growing, diminishing or withering. Sadly, faith can wither without the owner knowing that something precious is slipping away from him. Hence, our Lord Jesus Christ warned the Laodicean church against such an ugly scenario (Revelation 3:14-22).
We cannot truly live without faith (Habakkuk 2:4). Yet, the devil incessantly hunts it in order to rubbish our Christian testimony (Hosea 7:8-10)! We must therefore never become careless with our faith; rather, we must always strive to maintain and even grow it.
In Matthew 17:14-21, a man took his son, who was tormented by the spirit of lunacy, to Jesus' disciples for healing. But they couldn't cure him. The man then went to Jesus, and He immediately cast out the devil with a mastery touch of authority.
Now, just like every serious-minded learner would make recourse to his teacher whenever the occasion demands, Jesus’ disciples privately asked Him why they weren’t able to cast out the despicable spirit from the boy.
Jesus told them that it was their unbelief that made it impossible for them to cure the boy. This is always the case with us when we refuse to grow our faith as we ought to.
Unarguably, the disciples then were on a learning curve, and hadn’t attained a spiritual level of faith required to heal the boy. Nevertheless, Jesus still reprimanded them, calling them a “faithless and perverse generation”, because He had expected they would learn fast enough to grow their faith to a degree of kingdom relevance (2Timothy 3:5-7).
Understanding The Mustard Seed Faith!
Of a truth, Jesus clearly said that anyone with “faith as a grain of mustard seed” can move mountains (Matthew 17:20). But, this is one of the most commonly misunderstood passages in the entire Bible.
The “mustard seed” kind of faith is often roughly interpreted as “just a little bit of faith to do great exploits”. Some people therefore become content with their ground-level, puny faith. Undoubtedly, this wasn’t the intention here.
Jesus didn’t mean that our faith should be small, and remain so. Little faith doesn’t accomplish big things, only big faith does. Anything beyond your faith level remains undone! It certainly takes full-grown faith to move mountains (Matthew 17:16).
“Mustard seed faith” refers to the kind of faith that can grow to the extent that it can produce signs: heal the sick, cast out demons and wrought wonders. It’s that “little faith” that grows and eventually moves mountains.
Jesus explained this in Matthew 13:31-32, saying, “The Kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof”.
Our faith is expected to grow to the extent that our lives become a pleasant fragrance of God's grace, that we become solution-bringers to our world, and that we begin to touch other destinies just like birds of the air find a haven in the enormous tree that grew out of the tiny mustard seed.
Faith has always been the mark of God’s servants, from time immemorial. The disciples had faith, otherwise they wouldn’t have prayed at all. It was just not enough. We must be determined to develop our faith!
At the onset, we don't have to go in at the deep end, but we must start where we are and steadily increase in it by believing God for small things and then graduating to higher things. Thereafter, our faith can move any mountain (Mark 11:22-23).
Necessary Conditions for Faith To Grow
Faith isn’t a matter of works, soulical activities, or something that comes about as a result of our emotional rollercoaster. Developing our faith is about being increasingly focused on God's Word, relying on His grace and following Him in intentional fellowship (Ephesians 2:8-9).
A conducive atmosphere is highly essential here; otherwise, our mustard seed faith won’t grow. It may even lose its potential. The soil is certainly important. It must be fertile and very nourishing. This refers to a well-prepared and well-watered heart, always eager to hear the Word (Ephesians 5:26).
Albeit, hearing the Word is more than a mere audible perception. It entails obeying it as well (James 1:22). Disobedience hinders growth. Your faith cannot grow beyond your obedience.
There must also be good “sunlight” for our mustard seed faith to grow (Malachi 4:2). When our lives are exposed to Jesus' light, we become energized by love, and we certainly produce bountiful yields (Galatians 5:6).
Furthermore, prayer and fasting are very essential to the administration of faith and power in the Holy Ghost. Prayer and fasting speak to death. Before our mustard seed faith will sprout, grow and produce, it must die first. The way up is the way down!
Prayer and fasting require a lot of discipline, diligence, determination and perseverance! Fasting is a valid means of dying to the flesh, and when it’s coupled with prayers, we become finely-honed to pick the signals from the invisible realm.
Friends, your faith is very precious! The glory of God shows in your life only to the extent that you have grown your faith. Guard it jealously; don't trifle with it, and don't allow anyone (or anything) to steal it!
Faith grows by speaking right words (Revelation 12:11). If your faith is not sown, it will lie dormant and useless. There’s an incredible power in the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). Moreover, the mouth of the righteous is a well of life (Proverbs 10:11).
Never side with Satan! Take side with God by saying what He says. Believe also what you speak. Your faith will grow big, and it shall produce bountiful harvests for you. You won’t miss it, in Jesus name. Amen. Happy Sunday!
____________________
Bishop Taiwo Akinola,
Rhema Christian Church,
Otta, Ogun State, Nigeria.
Connect with Bishop Akinola via these channels:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bishopakinola
SMS/WhatsApp: +234 802 318 4987
Article of Faith: The God Christians cannot trust - Femi Aribisala
The beginning of the year is the season when the merchants of God tell the tallest tales about God. They tell us to trust God for all kinds of things in the coming year. They tell us God will buy us cars; He will build us houses; He will even buy our pastors jets so they can evangelise and save the world.
These motivational preachers, who often require down payments for God’s promises in their bank accounts, are snake-oil salesmen and women. What they conveniently fail to tell us is the truth that God cannot be trusted to fulfil our vanities.
Be careful what you trust God for. Otherwise, you will conclude that God is not trustworthy. God is often not inclined to do what we want. His thoughts are not amenable to our vainglories. His ways are not conducive to our pride of life.
Do not buy the lie. Yes, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. (2 Corinthians 5:19). But only so that the world might ultimately be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:20). God says to man: “Not your will but mine be done.” He says: “Not your method but mine. Not your timing but mine.”
Can we trust God enough to accept this?
God will only act when He chooses to act. He will only do things His way. That makes Him untrustworthy to the Frank Sinatra who want things their way.
“As for me,” says the psalmist, “I trust in you, O LORD; I say, ‘You are my God. My times are in your hand.” (Psalm 31:14-15).
Commanding God
As a new believer, I was misled by a King James Bible translation that reads:
“Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his maker, ‘Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My hands command ye Me.’” (Isaiah 45:11).
I went around barking commands at God in the altar of prayer. It took me a while to realise that the correct translation means the exact opposite of that KJV version:
“The LORD, the holy God of Israel, the one who shapes the future, says: ‘You have no right to question Me about My children or to tell Me what I ought to do!’”
God cannot be trusted to fulfil our dreams. He cannot be trusted to fulfil our purposes. The fact that you want a car does not mean you can trust God to get one for you. God can only be trusted to fulfil His promises. He cannot be trusted to fulfil our agendas.
That is why it is important to have a relationship with God. That way, we can hold God to the promises He makes to us and not even assume the promises He made to others in biblical days automatically apply to us. When we read the Bible without understanding, we conclude foolishly that letters addressed to others are automatically meant for us.
Trust Without Understanding
Think this through with me. Can you really trust Someone who kills off Ezekiel’s wife just to make a point to Israel? Can you trust Someone who did nothing to prevent Herod from chopping off John the Baptist’s head? Can you trust a Doctor who deliberately stays back when told His friend is sick and finally arrives four days’ late after the man has died?
Can you trust a Physician who could heal you immediately but decides instead to nurse you back to health? Can you trust Someone who would shut His face from His Son when He is dying on the cross? Can you trust the bosom Friend who invited the devil into Job’s situation and allowed him to kill his children, destroy his business and adversely affect his health?
Job himself provides the implausible answer. He persists in trusting God despite his ordeal. He did not succumb to the entreaties of his wife to curse God. Instead, he declares:
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” (Job 13:15).
Trusting God does not always mean we will understand what He is doing or why He is doing it. The wise man counsels:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes.” (Proverbs 3:5-7).
Work of Faith
What we are called to do is to stand on the word of God, irrespective of whatever situation we find ourselves. We are not to trust God for things. We are to trust God in all things.
God is not only good when the going is good. He is the same yesterday and today and forever when the going is bad. (Hebrews 13:8). We mouth vain platitudes that “God is good all the time.” But then we nevertheless feel betrayed when times are bad.
Peter trusted Jesus to walk on water. But when the waves turned, he doubted and began to sink. (Matthew 14:29). The disciples trusted Jesus to cross over to the other side. But when the storm arose, they doubted and complained that He did not care if they perished. (Mark 4:38).
Trust in God is not inherited: it is learnt. It does not come because of the “completed work of Christ on the cross.” We learn to trust God by trusting Him. For us to learn to trust God, He must put us through some hair-raising situations. If God does everything we want the way and when we want it; we would never develop real trust in Him.
How much work do we have to do when we are trusting God? James says:
“As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:26).
What then is the nature of the work of faith?
Sometimes it is not doing what we would normally do. When we put our trust in the Lord, we do not have to scheme to get a husband. We do not have to backstab to get promoted. We do not need to be evil to get ahead. We do not need to hoard to keep. God gives His beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2).
God is Trustworthy
Do not believe the lie: Jesus did not become poor that we, through His poverty, might become wealthy and filthy rich. That is a misunderstanding of Paul. (2 Corinthians 8:9). We do not need Jesus to become rich: we need Him to become poor. God cannot be trusted to make us rich. But He can be trusted to meet our needs. (Psalm 23:1).
He will, indeed, give us the desires of our hearts. (Psalm 37:4). But that means He will determine what those desires should be. God cannot be trusted to give us another man’s husband. He can be trusted to give us ours. He cannot be trusted to give us the world. He can be trusted to give us His kingdom.
Jesus says:
“Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32).
God can be trusted to meet and exceed only our righteous expectations.
If our prayer is “Father, thy will be done,” we will not be disappointed. As we carry our crosses daily, we should be mindful of Jesus’ example at Gethsemane where He prayed:
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42).
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; www.femiaribisala.com
The man who works towards living forever
In a neat little neighborhood in Venice, Calif., there’s a block of squat, similar homes, filled with mortals spending their finite days on the planet eating pizza with friends, blowing out candles on birthday cakes, and binging late-night television. Halfway down the street, there’s a cavernous black modern box. This is where Bryan Johnson is working on what he calls “the most significant revolution in the history of Homo sapiens.”
Johnson, 46, is a centimillionaire tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the last three years in pursuit of a singular goal: don’t die. During that time, he’s spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint, in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors, who use data to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his “biological age.” That system includes downing 111 pills every day, wearing a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, collecting his own stool samples, and sleeping with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections. Johnson thinks of any act that accelerates aging—like eating a cookie, or getting less than eight hours of sleep—as an “act of violence.”
Johnson is not the only ultra-rich middle-aged man trying to vanquish the ravages of time. Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel were both early investors in Unity Biotechnology, a company devoted to developing therapeutics to slow or reverse diseases associated with aging. Elite athletes employ therapies to keep their bodies young, from hyperbaric and cryotherapy chambers to “recovery sleepwear.” But Johnson’s quest is not just about staying rested or maintaining muscle tone. It’s about turning his whole body over to an anti-aging algorithm. He believes death is optional. He plans never to do it.
Outsourcing the management of his body means defeating what Johnson calls his “rascal mind”—the part of us that wants to eat ice cream after dinner, or have sex at 1 a.m., or drink beer with friends. The goal is to get his 46-year-old organs to look and act like 18-year-old organs. Johnson says the data compiled by his doctors suggests that Blueprint has so far given him the bones of a 30-year-old, and the heart of a 37-year-old. The experiment has “proven a competent system better at managing me than a human can,” Johnson says, a breakthrough that he says is “reframing what it means to be human.” He describes his intense diet and exercise regime as falling somewhere between the Italian Renaissance and the invention of calculus in the pantheon of human achievement. Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel; Johnson has his special green juice.
But when I showed up at Johnson’s house one Monday in August, I wasn’t really there to figure out if his elaborate age-defying strategies actually worked. I assumed that given my family history of cancer and personal fondness for pepperoni pizza, I probably won’t live long enough to find out. Instead, I spent three days observing Johnson to learn what a life run by an algorithm would look like, and whether the “next evolution of being human” would have any real humanity at all. If living like Johnson meant you could live forever—a big if!—would it even be worth it?
Kate Tolo opens the door to Johnson’s house and welcomes me inside. Tolo, a 27-year-old former fashion strategist who is originally from Australia, is Johnson’s chief marketing officer and most loyal disciple. Two months ago, she became the first person aside from Johnson to commit to Blueprint, making her the first test of how Blueprint works on a female body. Tolo is known as “Blueprint XX.”
The home is beautiful and devoid of clutter, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the pool and lush greenery outside. It reminds me of an Apple Store in a jungle. Tolo offers me a little bowl of special chocolate, which had been “un-dutched,” stripped of heavy metals, and sourced only from regions with high polyphenol density. It tastes like a foot. She also makes me a juice-like concoction that contains chlorella powder with spermidine, amino complex, creatine, collagen peptides, cocoa flavanols, and ceylon cinnamon. Tolo and Johnson call it the Green Giant, but it looks almost black, like the stuff that washes off a duck after an oil spill. She manages to mix it without getting any of the dark sludge on her immaculate white jumpsuit. “It moves through some people’s digestive system faster than others,” she chirps, gesturing to the nearby bathroom. I take a tentative sip. It tastes like Gatorade, but sandy.
Johnson walks into the room, wearing a green T-shirt and tiny white shorts. He has the body of an 18-year-old and the face of someone who had spent millions attempting to look like an 18-year-old. His skin is pale and glowing, which is partly because of the multiple laser treatments he’s done, and partly because he had no hair on his entire body. The hair on his head is “not dyed,” Johnson says, but he does use a “gray-hair-reversal concoction” which includes “an herbal extract” that colors the hair a darkish brown. He gestures to my Green Giant, and then toward the bathroom. “Did you warn her?” he asks Tolo. I pretend to take another sip.
The next day, Johnson walks me through his morning routine, step-by-step. He woke up at 4:53 a.m, but delayed most of his routine until I arrive at 7 a.m. to observe him. His bedroom has almost nothing in it: no photos, no books, no television, no glass of water, no phone charger, no chair with piled-up clothes he tried on once, no dry cleaning he meant to put away, no towels, no mirror, no nothing. “I only sleep in here,” he says. “No work, no reading.” The only two objects in the room besides his bed are a laser face-shield he uses for collagen growth and wrinkle reduction, and the device he wears on his penis while he sleeps to measure his nighttime erections. “I have, on average, two hours and 12 minutes each night of erection of a certain quality,” he says. “To be age 18, it would be three hours and 30 minutes.” Nighttime erections, he says, are “a biological age marker for your sexual function,” one that also has implications for cardiovascular fitness. The erection tracker looks like a little AirPods case with a turquoise strap, like a purse worn by a penis. (No penises were viewed in the reporting of this article.)
When Johnson wakes up and removes the device, he weighs himself on a scale that uses “electrical impedance” to measure his weight, body-mass index, hydration level, body fat, and something called “pulse wave velocity,” which he explained but I didn’t quite grasp. “I’m in the top 1% of ideal muscle fat,” he says. Then he turns on his light-therapy lamp (which mimics sun exposure) for two to three minutes to reset his circadian rhythm. He takes his inner-ear temperature to monitor changes in his body, and starts off with two pills of ferritin to boost his iron, along with some vitamin C. He washes his face, uses a cream to prevent wrinkles, and puts on a laser light mask for five minutes, with red and blue lights designed to stimulate collagen growth and control blemishes. By this time, it’s typically about 6 a.m., and Johnson walks downstairs to start his day.
The Blueprint supplement regimen is arranged on Johnson’s kitchen counter, organized from left to right. He begins with eye drops for his pre-cataracts, then uses a little vibrating device against the side of his nose to stimulate a nerve that apparently helps his eyes create tears. Johnson makes his Green Giant, then starts taking more pills in between sips of dark-green sludge. “It’s what my body has asked for,” he says. Does he ever miss coffee, even a little? “I love coffee, it’s so fun,” he says. “It’s an addictive escalation drug for me.”
At this point, he begins doing special exercises to increase his grip strength. Then he heads to his home gym—decorated with a floor-to-ceiling wallpaper photograph of a forest—and starts an hour-long routine. Johnson can leg-press 800 lbs., but his daily workout isn’t much more advanced than something you’d see from a very enthusiastic guy at the gym: a series of weights, planks, and stretches. He does this seven days a week; he adds on a high-intensity workout three days a week. Occasionally, during these high-intensity workouts, he’ll wear a plastic mask to measure his VO2 max, or the maximum rate of oxygen consumption during physical exercise. Johnson’s VO2 Max is in the top 1.5% of 18-year-olds, he says.
After his workout, Johnson eats a meal of steamed vegetables and lentils that have been blended until they resemble a mush the color of a sea lion. He and Tolo don’t name their meals “breakfast,” “lunch,” or “dinner.” They call them “first meal,” “second meal,” and so on. This is first meal. He offers me some “nutty pudding,” which is made from macadamia-nut milk, ground macadamia and walnuts, chia seed, flaxseed, Brazil nuts, sunflower lecithin, ceylon cinnamon, and pomegranate juice. It’s the color of a pencil eraser and tastes a little dusty, but it’s not too different from a vegan yogurt, if you like that sort of thing.
Johnson insists all this is about something much bigger than getting ripped and maintaining a youthful glow. “Most people assume death is inevitable. We're just basically trying to prolong the time we have before we die,” he says. Until now, he adds, “I don't think there's been any time in history where Homo sapiens could say with a straight face that death may not be inevitable.”
Experts strongly disagree. “Death is not optional; it’s written into our genes,” says Pinchas Cohen, dean of the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. Cohen emphasizes that living longer in the future is certainly possible: over the course of the 20th century, human life expectancy rose from around 50 to more than 80. But living forever is not. “There’s absolutely no evidence that it’s possible,” Cohen says, “and there’s absolutely no technology right now that even suggests that we’re heading that way.”
“If you want immortality, you should go to a church,” adds Eric Verdin, CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. “If I believed even a little bit that it would be possible, I would be excited. It’s a pipe dream.” Verdin isn’t just skeptical of Johnson’s claims that he can achieve immortality; he’s skeptical of his claims of age-reversal altogether. “He professes to make everything transparent, but as a scientist it’s really impossible to understand the tools he’s using to assess his age,” Verdin says, adding that the Buck Institute reached out to Johnson to collaborate on some research, but never heard back. Johnson’s lack of interest in collaboration with independent scientists made Verdin even more skeptical. “I think if he wants to convince all of us that what he’s doing is valid, then he’s going to have to accept being challenged by colleagues,” he says. (Johnson doesn’t remember ignoring Verdin’s invitation, and says that he and Verdin have recently exchanged friendly emails.)
Some scientists do believe that limited age-reversal is possible. In still controversial and contested work, researchers at Harvard Medical School have claimed they've rejuvenated older mice, and are currently testing whether the aging clock can be turned back in human skin and eye cells. But those experiments are being done according to established scientific conventions. Johnson, in contrast, has made himself a human guinea pig, adopting nearly every age-related treatment at once and seeing what works.
It’s not just that medical professionals are skeptical of Blueprint’s ability to achieve immortality. They’re not even convinced Johnson’s routine is particularly healthy. Nir Barzilai, the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, met Johnson in May, at the annual retreat for the Academy for Health & Lifespan Research. Barzilai recalls that when Johnson showed up, the doctors present were concerned. “He looked sick. He was pale. I don’t know what he did with his face,” Barzilai says, adding that he was alarmed by Johnson’s lack of fat, which plays an important role in the body. “All these MDs, we all kind of agreed that he didn’t look so great.”
Barzilai also has serious reservations about Johnson taking so many supplements and treatments at once, warning that all the different pills could interact with one another in dangerous ways. “What he’s doing hasn’t proven to be safe, because some of the treatments he’s taking are actually antagonizing to each other,” he says, adding that doctors normally research the effects of one drug at a time, rather than the cumulative effects of more than 100 pills at once. “Even if it works for him, how do you know it works for you?” Barzilai says. Blueprint, he adds, is “not an experiment that we accept as scientists or doctors.”
Johnson did not make his own doctors available for an interview, nor did he provide details about his team. But he intends to bring Blueprint to the masses. Johnson puts all of his biological measurements online—from his resting heart rate to his plaque index to images of his intestines taken with a “small bowel camera”—and his YouTube videos about his exercise regimen and therapeutic experiments have been viewed by millions of people. Roughly 180,000 people signed up for his newsletter in the first five months, Tolo says. Blueprint’s first commercial product, sold on his website, is an allegedly cholesterol-reducing olive oil, sold in a black box emblazoned with a red-lit photo of Johnson and the slogan “Build your autonomous self.” Fifteen percent of Johnson’s daily diet consists of this olive oil. Two 25 oz. bottles cost $75. Tolo says they’ve sold out.
As Johnson, Tolo and I settle in to eat our “first meal” on his massive rust-colored couch, Johnson gestures to a bookshelf full of biographies: Ben Franklin, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Napoleon. “I have a relationship with the 25th century more than I have a relationship with the 21st century,” he says. “I don't really care what people in our time and place think of me. I really care about what the 25th century thinks.”
Artificial intelligence “is clearly the most significant event in this part of the galaxy,” he says. “What is the equivalent response for humans to have to AI?” Given the looming AI revolution, Johnson argues that outsourcing the management of the body to an algorithm is the ultimate form of human-AI “alignment.” If everything from marketing to legal research to retail will soon be optimized by algorithms, why shouldn’t algorithms run our bodies as well? Johnson argues that automating the physical body is a form of evolutionary adaptation to what he believes is an inevitable, AI-dominated future.
But all this talk about the scope of history, and the march of technology, and the benefits of un-dutched chocolate seemed to be missing something, I say. Aren’t humans more than just brains and meat? Isn’t there some other ineffable element that makes us human: the feeling of watching your toddler play in a lake, the joy of popcorn with girlfriends at the movie theater, the grief of losing a family member, the frustration at a lost earring? Surely, there must be more to living than simply maintaining adequate oxygen in your spleen.
He doesn’t see it that way. “Whether we're talking about falling in love, or having sex, or going to the baseball game, you're talking about biochemical states in the body,” Johnson says. “You can remove everything and just say, ‘I'm experiencing this kind of electrical activity in my body and these kinds of hormones.’ We have a whole bunch of ideas about what it means to exist, we have all these ideas about what is happiness, and other things. We're walking into a future where we no longer have control,” he continues. Which means “we are willing to divorce ourselves from all human custom. Everything: all philosophy, all ethics, all morals, all happiness.”
I try another approach. Let’s say you’re right, I ask Johnson. What if you do live forever? That means you’d outlive everybody you’d ever known on the planet. You’d watch your children and grandchildren and all your friends die before you. What would that be like? Is a life without the people you love worth living?
Johnson says that question reminds him of “senior night” before graduating from high school. “We say goodbye, we have been together all these years, and we're probably not going to see each other again,” he says. “At every stage in life, we move through these transition states of relationships and new experiences,” he continues. “And at every stage, you could certainly pose that question, because the circumstances are going to change. Is it worth it to carry on?”
It strikes me as a weird way to answer a question about watching his own children die, but I turn to Tolo, who was silently eating her nutty pudding in a different corner of the couch. I ask her what she thought about the possibility of watching everyone she loves die before she does. It doesn’t seem like she’s considered this. “Hopefully they wouldn’t,” she says. “I really hope that as many people as possible can come along that journey.”
Johnson chimes in again. “I think your question reflects Homo sapiens for the 21st century,” he says. “The underlying assumption is, they have roughly 70 years of life. That's their starting frame: I'm going to die soon, and I can't do anything about it. So I'm optimizing in this window of time… If you change the frame, and death is not inevitable, none of the previous practiced thought patterns work.”
My 21st century Homo sapien brain was not convinced. Johnson seemed to suggest that for humans to survive in an AI-aligned future, they may need to sacrifice part of what makes them human in the first place. I thought of Tuck Everlasting, the 1975 children’s novel about an immortal family whose inability to age sets them apart from the world, adrift from the life of everyone they meet, forever alone.
I left Johnson’s house and drove to the DoubleTree hotel in Marina Del Rey. The woman at the front desk handed me a chocolate chip cookie, as they usually do at DoubleTrees (which is why I stay there). My rascal brain wanted it. But it was an act of violence that would accelerate my inevitable death. I abandoned it on the counter and took my Blueprint-approved dinner—steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and lentils, with $75 dollar olive oil and absolutely no flavor—up to my room.
Johnson wasn’t always like this. He grew up in a small Mormon community in Utah. His grandfather owned a farm with horses, and Johnson and his four siblings spent most of their time outside, helping to harvest alfalfa and corn. Johnson served his Mormon mission in Ecuador, then went to Brigham Young University, followed by business school at the University of Chicago. He got married, had three children, and in 2007 he founded Braintree, a payment-processing company. Braintree acquired Venmo five years later. In 2013, the combined entity was sold to PayPal for roughly $800 million. Johnson walked away with more than $300 million.
Despite his financial success, Johnson recalls this as a painful time. He says he fell into a deep depression in 2004 and stayed there for 10 years. He was overwhelmed by building his company while raising three young children. Medication and therapy didn’t help. He was 50 pounds overweight and miserable, he says.
Within a year of selling his company, Johnson ended his marriage and left the Mormon church. In 2014, he plowed $100 million into the creation of the OS Fund, which invests in companies working in what Johnson calls the “programmable physical world”—his term for companies that use AI and machine learning to develop new technologies for therapeutics, diagnostics, and synthetic biology. In 2016, Johnson founded Kernel, a neurotechnology company that uses a specially designed helmet to measure brain activity. Its goal is to detect cognitive impairment at the earliest stages; for now, the company is looking for biomarkers for psychiatric conditions. It can also be used, as a fun side hobby, to measure the age of his brain.
One day during my visit, we drive to the company’s offices, which are about 20 minutes from Johnson’s home. Even though his mission in life is to “not die,” he still drives himself around LA in an electric Audi. (Extremely slowly.) Before he pulls out of his driveway, he utters his pre-driving mantra to himself: “Driving is the most dangerous thing we do.” Johnson is aware that his singular focus on living forever might make an accidental death somewhat embarrassing. “What would be more beautiful irony than me getting hit by a bus and dying?” he says.
In Kernel’s open-plan office, I’m brought into a small room, where a technician fits my head with what looks like a ski helmet with dozens of circular probes inside. I’m instructed to sit and watch a screensaver-type video of soft crystalline shapes morphing into each other. Later that day, my results appear in my email. It tells me that although I am 34, my brain age is 30.5.
On the way home, Johnson utters his pre-driving mantra again before inching through the streets of LA at about 16 m.p.h. As he’s explaining again why Blueprint is “the most significant revolution in the history of Homo sapiens,” a black Chevy truck pulls out of a Trader Joe’s parking lot. He swerves to avoid it, barely taking a breath before returning to comparing himself to Magellan and Lewis and Clark. “I'm not a biohacker. I'm not an optimization person,” he tells me. “I'm an explorer, about the future of being human.”
Even futuristic humans were mere mortals once. Tolo first reached out to Johnson in 2016, when she was working in fashion in New York City. The AI revolution was beginning to come into view. “I felt so strongly that the only way we could proceed as species would be to kind of latch ourselves onto AI,” she says. She saw a quote from Johnson in a tech newsletter, advocating for humans to “merge with AI,” and decided she wanted to work for him. After years of entreaties, a job finally opened up, and Tolo took a title and pay cut to become Johnson’s assistant at Kernel. “We'd spend hours in his office, just chatting about the future of humanity,” she says.
When she first started working for Johnson, Tolo was a typical twentysomething. She drank alcohol and milky lattes, ate fast food, and stayed up too late dancing with her friends. But early this year, she and Johnson began discussing whether she should try Blueprint as well, to see how the routine would affect a female body. Before committing, Tolo requested a 30-day trial period. That trial included committing to a rigorous sleep routine, adopting Johnson’s exact diet protocol, taking more than 60 pills a day, and doing 13 minutes of intense exercise and 39 minutes of moderate exercise every day. She also measured her ovulation and her menstrual cycle.
“When I was in my trial period, I would go out to brunch with friends, and I would bring my Blueprint food, and there is a bit of sadness,” Tolo says. “Because everyone else at the table is like, ‘Oh my God, this breakfast burrito is so good.’” Ultimately Tolo decided to commit to Blueprint for good. She concluded the health benefits outweighed the lifestyle costs. Tolo says her friends have adjusted to her Blueprint lifestyle. She’s moved her social life earlier in the day to protect her sleep schedule, and they’ve gotten used to her habit of bringing her own vegetable mush to restaurants. The decision, once made, was permanent. “It would also be the final decision in a way,” she says. “It's like, I'm deciding to no longer decide again.”
Now, as Blueprint XX, she has given up “all the things that I've come to cherish in small ways about my life,” she says. She and Johnson think of themselves as a sort of futuristic Adam and Eve. They had even planned an Adam-and-Eve themed photoshoot to help people understand that they’re “talking about a revolution on the scale of the whole human race,” Johnson says. Even though Tolo is apparently as important to the future of humanity as Eve herself, she plated and served all the meals I ate on my visit, and, at least while I was there, seemed to do most of the dishes.
Johnson is currently single. His older son is serving a mission for the Mormon church, and his younger daughter is 13 and lives with her mother. So Johnson spends much of his time with his 18-year-old middle son, Talmage, who commits to the Blueprint diet, rest, and exercise routines, but skips the anti-aging therapies. He briefly donated blood plasma to Johnson in order to test whether it had a measurable impact on his father's aging, but stopped once Johnson decided it didn’t work. Talmage, who is about to start his freshman year of college, says that he’s adopted many of his dad’s attitudes towards lifestyle and life extension. “The idea of having pizza is more painful than pleasurable for me,” he says.
Johnson says his lifestyle makes it very difficult for him to date, rattling off what he calls the “10 reasons why [women] will literally hate me.” The reasons include: eating dinner at 11:30 a.m., no sunny vacations, bed at 8:30pm, no small talk, always sleeping alone, and, of course, “they’re not my number one priority.”
Throughout my visit with Johnson, I could feel my rascal brain buzzing to life. Johnson venerates what he calls “the emergent self,” which is driven “more by computational guidance and less by human want.” And yet wanting, I thought, is what humans do. There is almost no experience more human than the experience of want. As I watched Johnson drink his immortality gruel and explain his religious commitment to bedtime, I was wondering: What did he want? Did he miss eating birthday cake? Staying up late dancing? Baseball games that stretch into long nights filled with hot dogs and beer? Johnson wanted an eternal life. But what is life without wanting?
There were so many things I wanted to do, even if I knew that each indulgence could bring me closer to death. I wanted to meet a friend for cocktails in Santa Monica. I wanted to snuggle into my hotel bed and watch And Just Like That, and I wanted to stay up too late texting my friends about it. I wanted to FaceTime my daughter, the one who had caused me to gain 30 happy pounds when I ate only butter pasta and cheese pizza for most of my pregnancy. I wanted to take the first plane home, even if it meant landing at 1 a.m. and getting four hours of sleep, so that I could be there when she wakes up and says “Up!” with the force of a commanding officer. I wanted eggs and bacon for breakfast. I didn’t want to stop wanting. Life’s too short.
Time
Today’s video: Russia-Ukraine war: Why the USA doesn’t want the conflict to end just yet
CBN sets new guidelines, capital requirements for BDCs
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released guidelines for the sale of foreign exchange (Forex) by Bureau De Change (BDC) operators within the country.
CBN said the guidelines will enhance the regulatory framework for the operations of BDCs as part of the ongoing reforms of the Nigerian foreign exchange market.
The apex bank disclosed this on Friday in a document titled ‘Revised Regulatory and Supervisory Guidelines for Bureau De Change Operations in Nigeria’.
A BDC is a company licensed by the CBN to carry out only retail foreign exchange business in Nigeria.
According to the CBN, the guidelines revise the permissible activities, licensing requirements, corporate governance and anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) provisions for BDCs.
“It also sets out new record-keeping and reporting requirements, among others,” the financial regulator said.
“No person shall carry on the business of BDC in Nigeria except with the prior authorization of the CBN.”
According to the circular, commercial, merchant, non-interest, and payment service banks shall not be allowed to participate in the ownership of BDCs — directly or indirectly.
Also, CBN said other financial institutions (OFIS), including holding companies and payment service providers are not permitted to own BDCs.
Other ineligible entities, the apex bank said, include non-governmental organisations, serving staff of financial services regulatory and supervisory agencies, governments at all levels, public officers, and cooperative societies, among others.
‘CUSTOMERS WITH $10,000 AND ABOVE MUST DECLARE SOURCE OF FX’
CBN said sellers of the equivalent of $10,000 and above to BDCs are required to declare the source of the foreign exchange “and comply with all AML/CFT/CPF regulations and foreign exchange laws and regulations”.
“Customers may transfer foreign currencies from their individual domiciliary accounts with Nigerian banks to BDCs,” the apex bank said.
“All digital/transfer purchases of foreign currencies shall be credited to the BDC’s Nigerian domiciliary account.
“Payments for all digital/transfer purchases of foreign currency by a BDC shall be by transfer to the customer’s Naira account. If the customer is non-resident (whether Nigerian or not), a BDC may issue the customer a prepaid NGN card.
“Where such a card is issued, relevant maximum credit and cumulative limits, in line with relevant Know Your Customer requirements, shall apply.
“Payments to customers for cash purchases of foreign currency, the equivalent of above USD500, shall be by transfer to the customer’s Naira bank account.”
If the customer is a non-resident (whether Nigerian or not), according to the circular, a BDC shall issue the customer a prepaid naira card.
Where such a card is issued, CBN said relevant maximum credit and cumulative limits, in line with relevant know your customer (KYC) requirements, shall apply.
SALE OF FOREIGN CURRENCY
The financial regulator said forex sales by BDCs must fall within the scope of personal travel allowance (PTA), and business travel allowance (BTA), “provided that a person who receives BTA on behalf of a non-individual entity shall not be entitled to PTA for the same period”.
Others listed by CBN include payment of medical bills, payment of school fees, and the repurchase of unused naira from a non-resident from whom the BDC had sourced foreign currency in the course of the visit.
‘75% OF FX SALE BY BDCS MUST BE TRANSMITTED ELECTRONICALLY’
A beneficiary of BTA or PTA shall receive up to 25 percent of the foreign currency in cash, according to the CBN, and the remaining 75 percent shall be transferred to the customer electronically (to the customer’s Nigerian domiciliary account or prepaid card).
“Payments for all sales of foreign exchange by BDCS shall be by transfer to the BDC’s Naira account,” CBN said.
However, the apex bank said beneficiaries of BTA or PTA of $500 or less can receive the forex in cash.
In the same vein, the financial regulator said payments to customers for cash purchases of forex of the equivalent of $500 and below may be made in cash.
Furthermore, CBN said BDC operators can not engage in street trading, maintenance of any type of account for the public, and opening or maintaining any account with any financial institution outside Nigeria.
They are also banned by the CBN from engaging in offshore business, financing political activities, and selling FX on credit to customers.
The apex bank restricted the BDCs from dealing in gold or precious metals, granting loans, as well as international inward transfers (except for operators that serve as cash-out points for International Money Transfer Operators).
CBN also said the minimum capital requirement for tier 1 BDCs is N2 billion and N500 million for tier 2 BDCs.
The financial regulator raised the minimum capital requirement from N35 million previously set for all BDCs.
The Cable
Here’s the latest as Israel-Hamas war enters Day 141
Netanyahu seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in Gaza in new postwar plan
A long-awaited postwar plan by Israel’s prime minister shows that his government seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip. That was swiftly rejected Friday by Palestinian leaders and runs counter to Washington’s vision for the war-ravaged enclave.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the two-page document to his security Cabinet late Thursday for approval.
Deep disagreements over Gaza’s future have led to increasingly public friction between Israel and the United States, its closest ally. The Biden administration seeks eventual Palestinian governance in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to Palestinian statehood, an outcome vehemently opposed by Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Netanyahu’s plan envisions hand-picked Palestinians administering Gaza.
Separately, cease-fire efforts appeared to gain traction, with mediators to present a new proposal at an expected high-level meeting this weekend in Paris. The U.S., Egypt and Qatar have been struggling for weeks to find a formula that could halt Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza, but now face an unofficial deadline as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches.
In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes in the center and south of the territory killed at least 92 Palestinians, including children and women, overnight and into Friday, health officials and an Associated Press journalist said. Another 24 bodies remained trapped under the rubble.
After a strike levelled his apartment building in the central town of Deir al-Balah, online video showed Mahmoud Zueitar — a comedian well known in Gaza for his appearances in TV commercials — rushing into the hospital holding his young sister, who was screaming and covered in blood. At least 25 people were killed in the strike, 16 of them women and children.
Throughout the war, Zueitar has been posting upbeat and cheerful videos on social media, joking with people about ways they endure bombardment and displacement, praising Palestinian culture and assuring those around him that one day things will be better.
Another video at the hospital showed him cradling his wounded sister in his lap. “I always say, ‘God, may they not force us out of Gaza,’ that’s how much I love it and its people,” he says, crying. “But it looks like they want us to leave Gaza.” Earlier at the hospital, relatives wept over bodies laid out in burial shrouds in the courtyard, and a man cradled a dead infant.
The overall Palestinian death toll since the start of the war rose to more than 29,500, with close to 70,000 people wounded, Gaza health officials said. The death toll amounts to close to 1.3% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
NETANYAHU’S VISION FOR GAZA
Netanyahu’s plan, while lacking specifics, marks the first time he has presented a formal postwar vision. It reiterates that Israel is determined to crush Hamas, the militant group that overran the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Polls have indicated that a majority of Palestinians don’t support Hamas, but the group has deep roots in Palestinian society. Critics, including some in Israel, say the goal of eliminating Hamas is unattainable.
Netanyahu’s plan calls for freedom of action for Israel’s military across a demilitarized Gaza after the war to thwart any security threat. It says Israel would establish a buffer zone inside Gaza, which is likely to provoke U.S. objections.
The plan also envisions Gaza being governed by local officials who it says would “not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them.”
It’s not clear if any Palestinians would agree to such sub-contractor roles. Over the past decades, Israel has repeatedly tried and failed to set up hand-picked local Palestinian governing bodies.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Friday denounced Netanyahu’s plan as “colonialist and racist,” saying it would amount to Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintained control of access to the territory.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had not seen details of the plan. But he said any plan should be consistent with basic principles the U.S. had set out for Gaza’s future, “including that it cannot be a platform for terrorism, there should be no Israeli re-occupation of Gaza, the size of Gaza’s territory should not be reduced.”
The Biden administration wants to see a reformed Palestinian Authority govern both Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward Palestinian statehood. It has sought to chip away at Netanyahu’s resistance by holding out the prospect of the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which demands a Palestinian state as a precondition.
THE WAR DRAGS ON
U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials are expected to meet in Paris this weekend to discuss cease-fire efforts. A senior Egyptian official said Egypt and Qatar would bring an understanding reached with Hamas leaders that calls for a six-week cease-fire and the release of elderly and sick hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. During the cease-fire, details would be worked out on a further stage.
Hamas has demanded a complete halt to Israel’s offensive and a withdrawal of its troops from Gaza in return for releasing all its remaining hostages, as well as the freeing of Palestinians held by Israel, including top militants. Netanyahu has rejected those demands.
Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 7, after the militants stormed into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were freed in a weeklong cease-fire in late November.
Since the start of the war, 29,514 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s offensive and close to 70,000 were wounded, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday. Two-thirds of those killed have been women and children, said the ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Israel says it has killed at least 10,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence for its count. It holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties because the group operates and fights from within civilian areas.
The Israeli offensive has inflicted immense suffering in Gaza. About 80% of the population have been displaced, infectious diseases run rampant and hundreds of thousands of people are facing hunger.
In the West Bank, two Palestinians killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car were buried Friday in the Jenin refugee camp. The two bodies were wrapped in flags of the militant group Islamic Jihad and carried on stretchers during the funeral procession.
Israel says one of those killed was previously involved in shooting attacks on Israeli settlements and army posts, and was about to carry out another attack when he was killed in the drone strike late Thursday.
AP
What to know after Day 730 of Russia-Ukraine war
WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine's defences under strain as war enters its third year
Ukraine marks the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion on Saturday looking more vulnerable than at any time since the early days of Europe's most deadly conflict since World War Two.
The former Soviet republic's 40 million people defied expectations - and the Kremlin's best-laid plans - by repelling a much larger enemy and preventing outright defeat in the days and weeks after Russian tanks and soldiers rolled towards Kyiv.
But as the war enters its third year, international aid and military supplies have slowed, impacting the battlefield where Kyiv's summer counteroffensive floundered and Moscow is grinding out territorial gains.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy still has plenty of friends. On Saturday he welcomes Western leaders to discuss security guarantees, sanctions against Russia and other pressing issues.
U.S. President Joe Biden remains a staunch ally, although $61 billion in aid is being held up by political bickering in Washington.
Looking to the end of 2024, U.S. elections could bring a change in president and in policy towards Ukraine and its war with Russia, clouding the outlook for the coming years.
During a trip to the United States in November, Zelenskiy invited Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump - a vocal critic of U.S. support for Kyiv - to Ukraine to see for himself the damage wrought by Russia's war.
Zelenskiy also told U.S. politicians that Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, may not stop at Ukraine's borders if it emerges victorious.
Putin dismisses such claims as nonsense. He casts the war as a wider struggle with the United States, which the Kremlin elite says aims to cleave Russia apart. The West sees the invasion as an unjustified act of aggression that must be repelled.
OLD WAR AND NEW
As well as hosting foreign dignitaries, Zelenskiy will take part in a call with G7 leaders on Saturday. There will be events across Ukraine including a commemoration service for those who died in Bucha, north of Kyiv - scene of some of the worst alleged war crimes of the conflict.
Ukraine's prosecutor general said on Friday it had launched investigationsinto more than 122,000 suspected war crimes cases in the last two years. Russia denies carrying them out.
The initial shock of the invasion gradually morphed into familiarity and then fatigue, as the world watched initial Russian gains and a stunning Ukrainian counteroffensive in late 2022 slow into grinding, attritional trench warfare.
In scenes reminiscent of the battlefields of World War One, soldiers under heavy artillery fire are dying in their thousands, sometimes for a few kilometres of land.
Meanwhile, both sides have developed huge and increasingly sophisticated fleets of air, sea and land drones for surveillance and attack, an unprecedented use of unmanned vehicles that could point the way to future conflicts.
Russia, with a much bigger population to replenish the army's ranks and a larger military budget, might favour a drawn-out war, although the costs have been huge for Moscow as it seeks to navigate sanctions and a growing reliance on China.
Ukraine's position is more precarious. Villages, towns and cities have been razed, troops are exhausted, ammunition is running low and Russian missiles and drones rain down almost daily.
Earlier in February, Russia registered its biggest victory in nine months when it captured the eastern town of Avdiivka, ending months of deadly urban combat.
Yet Zelenskiy remained defiant ahead of the anniversary.
"I am convinced that victory awaits us," he told diplomats in Kyiv this week in an emotional address. "In particular, thanks to unity and your support."
Tens of thousands of troops have been killed on both sides and tens of thousands more wounded, while thousands of Ukrainian civilians have perished. Moscow says it only aims at military and strategic targets.
RISING COSTS
The scale of devastation in Ukraine is staggering.
A recent World Bank study said that rebuilding Ukraine's economy could cost nearly $500 billion. Two million housing units have been damaged or destroyed, and nearly 6 million people have fled abroad.
In addition to raising money and arms to continue the war, Zelenskiy is pushing legislation through parliament allowing Ukraine to mobilise up to half a million more troops - a target some economists say could paralyse the economy.
Russia's finances have proved resilient so far to unprecedented sanctions. While natural gas exports have slumped, shipments of oil have held up, thanks largely to Indian and Chinese buying.
Russia's GDP expanded 3.6% in 2023, although some Russia-based economists warned that this was driven by a leap in defence spending and that stagnation or recession loom.
That will not jeopardise Putin's victory in elections in March, which he is set to win by a landslide amid broad support for his performance and for the war, described by the Kremlin as a "special military operation".
In the last two years, authorities have cracked down hard on any form of dissent over the conflict. On Feb. 16, Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 30-year sentence.
On Friday, Putin addressed troops fighting in Ukraine as Russia marked Defender of the Fatherland Day, hailing them as heroes battling for "truth and justice."
He laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the foot of the Kremlin wall to honour those who have died in battle.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Russian forces hit Patriot SAM launcher, missile reload trailer transporter
Russian missile forces have hit a launcher, ammunition and other components of the US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system during the special military operation in Ukraine over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
"As a result of a group strike, the Missile Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have hit a launcher, a truck, ammunition and a missile reload trailer transporter of the US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system," the statement said.
Donetsk area
Russian forces have liberated Pobeda and took more advantageous positions in the Donetsk area over the past week, and 12 Ukrainian counterattacks have also been also repelled, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"In the Donetsk area, Battlegroup South units have liberated the populated locality of Pobeda and gained more advantageous positions. Near Georgievka, Leninskoye, Bogdanovka and Novgorodskoye, 12 counterattacks carried out by assault groups of Ukraine’s 79th airborne assault, 24th and 42nd mechanized brigades have been repelled," the ministry said.
The Ukrainian armed forces have suffered losses of up to 1,195 troops and six tanks in the South Donetsk area over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
The Defense Ministry pointed out that in that area, the Battlegroup Vostok (East) units had improved their frontline positions and inflicted a defeat on units of Ukraine’s 72nd mechanized brigade as well as its 102nd, 108th, 127th, and 128th brigades of territorial defense near Vodyanoye, Novodonetskoye, Staromayorskoye, and Urozhaynoye of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as Chervonoye, Priyutnoye, and Lugovskoye of the Zaporozhye Region.
"Four attacks conducted by assault groups of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 58th motorized infantry brigade near Novodonetskoye and Shevchenko in the Donetsk People’s Republic were repelled. The Ukrainian military suffered losses of up to 1,195 troops, six tanks, six armored fighting vehicles, 23 motor vehicles and 16 field artillery guns," the ministry added.
The Russian Armed Forces carried out 37 group strikes over the past week, using precision weapons, to hit Ukrainian military structures, military industrial enterprises, ammunition and fuel depots, airfield infrastructure, and deployment sites of Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries, as a result, all the designated targets were hit, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"Between February 17 and 23, 2024, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation conducted 37 group strikes using precision weapons, including air-to-surface long-range ones, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, to hit facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, infrastructure of military airfields, arsenals, and fuel storage bases," the ministry said.
"Moreover, the deployment areas of the Ukrainian armed forces’ units, nationalists’ formations and foreign mercenaries have been struck. All the assigned targets have been engaged," the ministry added.
Russian aircraft and air defenses have shot down Ukraine’s MiG-29 fighter jet and Mi-8 helicopter over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
"Over the past week, aircraft and air defense systems brought down a MiG-29 fighter jet and a Mi-8 helicopter of the Ukrainian air force," the statement said.
The Ukrainian armed forces have suffered losses of 12 tanks, 31 armored fighting vehicles and more than 2,560 troops in the Donetsk area over the past week, the Russian Defense Minsitry said.
"Units of Battlegroup South have hit the Ukrainian armed forces’ manpower and equipment near Belogorovka, Grigorovka, Krasnoye, Kleshcheevka, Kurdyumovka, Razdolovka, Novomikhailovka, Nevelskoye and Krasnogorovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The enemy has lost more than 2,560 service members, 12 tanks, 31 armored fighting vehicles, 58 vehicles, 13 field artillery guns and a Grad MLRS combat vehicle," the ministry said.
Kherson area
The Ukrainian armed forces have suffered losses of more than 460 troops, five tanks, six boats and 14 field artillery guns in the Kherson area over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"The enemy has suffered losses of over 460 service members, five tanks, six armored fighting vehicles, 33 motor vehicles, six boats and 14 field artillery pieces," the ministry said, adding that three attacks of Ukraine’s 82nd mountain assault brigade were also repelled outside Rabotino in the Zaporozhye Region.
According to the ministry, in the Kherson area, Russian troops have taken control of Krynki, gained more advantageous positions and conducted strikes on the manpower and equipment of the 28th, 65th and 118th mechanized brigades; the 35th and 37th marine brigades; the 121st and 126th territorial defense brigades outside Malaya Tokmachka, Verbovoye, Orekhov, Shcherbaky, Lugovoye in the Zaporozhye Region as well as near Zolotaya Balka, Mikhailovka, Ivanovka, Tyaginka and Zmeyevka in the Kherson Region.
Over the past week, Russian aircraft and air defense systems have shot down seven Storm Shadow missiles, a Patriot missile, four S-200 missiles and 652 drones belonging to the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"Over the past week, aircraft and air defenses have brought down seven Storm Shadow cruise missiles, a Patriot surface-to-air guided missile, four S-200 surface-to-air guided missiles modified to hit ground targets, three HARM anti-radar missiles, six JDAM precision-guided bombs and 42 rockets of HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, as well as 652 unmanned aerial vehicles," the ministry said.
Kupyansk area
Units of Battlegroup Zapad (West) have improved their frontline positions in the Kupyansk area, where 25 Ukrainian counterattacks were also repelled, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
"Over the past week, the Battlegroup Zapad (West) units took active action and improved their position along the frontline in the Kupyansk area, and also repelled 25 enemy counterattacks near Sinkovka in the Kharkov Region and Terny in the Donetsk People’s Republic. In addition, the military personnel and equipment of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 30th and 66th mechanized, 10th mountain assault, and 25th airborne brigades, as well as 125th brigade of territorial defense were hit near Chugunovka, Petropavlovka, Kislovka in the Kharkov Region; Yampolovka and Torskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic; and Stelmakhovka and Chervonaya Dibrova in the Lugansk People’s Republic," the ministry said.
According to the Defense Ministry, the enemy losses were over 390 troops, four tanks, 13 armored fighting vehicles, 21 vehicles and 25 field artillery pieces altogether.
Avdeyevka area
Russian forces continue to advance westward in the Avdeyevka area, repelling 39 Ukrainian counterattacks over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said adding that the enemy lost more than 2,900 troops.
"In the Avdeyevka area, units of Battlegroup Tsentr (Center) liberated the town of Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic and continued to advance westwards," the ministry said. "A total of 39 counterattacks launched by assault detachments of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 71st <…> brigade; 47th and 53rd mechanized, 59th motorized infantry and 3rd assault brigades were repelled near Berdychy, Lastochkino and Pervomaiskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Over the past week, the enemy suffered over 2,900 casualties in this area," the ministry said.
The battlegroup’s units, supported by aircraft and artillery, inflicted losses on amassments of Ukrainian military personnel and equipment near Orlovka, Solovyevo, Semyonovka, Tonenkoye, Yevgenovka and Mirolyubovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Ukrainian military lost four tanks, 37 armored fighting vehicles, 90 vehicles, eight field artillery pieces and a Grad MLRS combat vehicle.
Reuters/Tass