Ukraine denies claim
UKRAINE - Ukraine’s military has rejected as untrue a Russian claim to have captured more than 80 per cent of the devastated Bakhmut in the east. Ukrainian forces have hung on for months in Bakhmut, where the fiercest fighting of Moscow’s full-scale invasion has killed thousands of soldiers and been dubbed the ‘meat-grinder’. Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Tuesday that his forces controlled most of Bakhmut including the whole administrative centre, factories, warehouses and municipality buildings. Mercenary unit, Wagner, has played a key role in Russia’s invasion.
IRELAND - The White House has been forced to correct Joe Biden to quell a fresh row after he jibed about the ‘Black and Tans’ during a pub visit in Ireland.
The US president risked a backlash over his ‘anti-British’ stance with remarks to a packed bar in Dundalk, County Louth, last night.
Biden said he was wearing a shamrock tie given to him by rugby-player Rob Kearney - a distant relative - saying approvingly that he ‘beat the hell out of the Black and Tans’.
That was an auxilliary police force sent to Ireland in the 1920s to counter IRA extremism - pilloried in Republican folk songs for their brutality.
However, the White House website attempted to smooth over the situation by clarifying its official record to refer to the All Blacks - the New Zealand Rugby team.
The comment drew laughter in the pub, with Biden’s reputation as a gaffe machine leaving room for doubt about whether it was intentional or merely a slip.
The incident threatens to inflame tensions over Biden’s ‘partisan’ stance towards Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Former DUP leader Baroness Foster said on the eve of his arrival that the US president ‘hates the UK’ - forcing Biden’s senior aide, Amanda Sloat, to insist he is ‘not anti-British’.
The 80-year-old is considered the most Irish of all US presidents, with 10 of his 16 great great grandparents coming from the Emerald Isle.
Speaking at a pub in Dundalk, just south of the Northern Ireland border, Biden proudly declared that Kearney, who won 95 caps for the Irish team from 2007-19, had given him the shamrock tie he was wearing.
‘‘This was given to me by one of these guys, right here, was a hell of a rugby player,’’ said Biden.
‘‘He beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.’’
Kearney, voted Europe’s best player in 2012, played a pivotal role in Ireland’s defeat of the All Blacks - the New Zealand national team - in November 2016, in Chicago.
It was the first time that Ireland had ever beaten the New Zealand side.