Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Spice drug fix needed
Eastern superpowers join forces in massive war games show of strength
The £5-a-bag drug is ruining lives and putting the NHS and jails under great strain.
But locking users up clearly isn’t the answer in most cases – treatment is.
We also need to know why so many folk are trying to escape the reality of their lives.
Austerity has played a part by creating a perfect storm of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, despair and police cuts.
The grim choice is to act decisively now, belatedly making up for badly lost time, or sit back and watch as more people are sucked into a miserable world of addiction.
Drugs ruin the lives and of the people taking them and also their nearest and dearest.
Together we can crack the spice problem but the Government must acknowledge the role it has played and become a solution rather than part of the problem. VLADIMIR Putin put on a chilling show of strength yesterday as Russia linked up with China to launch its biggest military exercise in almost four decades.
Moscow and Beijing are partners in Operation Vostok 18 – a mock invasion in which 300,000 troops backed by fighter jets and warships will blaze eastwards across seven time zones in just seven days.
Analysts believe the two leaders are using the exercise to send a blunt warning to the West amid rising political tensions.
More than 300,000 Russian “Red Army” infantrymen have joined up with 4,000 Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops to tackle a 5,000mile battlefield.
The area the army will cover is thought to be the size of India.
Moscow has sent two fleets from its navy to support the exercise, along with 1,000 warplanes. Some 36,000 armoured tanks are also involved and hardware includes “lung-busting” superheat explosion missiles.
China’s government yesterday confirmed it has sent 24 battle helicopters and six jets. Mongolian forces have also been sent to join the war game, which is being spearheaded by Spetsnaz special forces and the GRU – the spy agency that carried out the novichok strike on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March. It is even feared Moscow’s “nukecapable” missiles will be tested to see how they fire, sparking fears it could be the prelude to a confrontation between East and West. A British military intelligence source told the Daily Mirror last night: “In this exercise they are heading east – if they headed west they would going towards Europe. But the message is clear. Putin is signalling to the West that he could roll-up Europe in a matter of days, despite the presence of NATO defences throughout. This is about projecting power and military strength and is as much about showing it all off to the supporters at home as it is to the West.”
It is believed much of the exercise will be carried out beyond the range of spy satellites and other British GCHQ listening systems and American National Security Agency observation methods.
The exercise kicked off as Putin held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at an economic forum in Russian port city Vladivostok.
Relations between Moscow and Beijing have long been marked by mutual wariness, with Russian From tomorrow, Russian and Chinese forces will roll across an area stretching 5,000 miles and covering seven time zones in days. Nuclear-capable tactical ballistic missiles and hypervelocity Zircon missiles are expected to be tested. Smerch and Urugan multilaunch rocket systems will be fired. A volley can destroy one square kilometre.
The thermobaric warheads create immense heat and lung-ripping reverse vacuum.
nationalists warning of encroaching Chinese influence in the country’s mineral-rich far east.
But Russia pivoted towards China following sanctions by the West over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and trade links between the two have blossomed since.
Xi’s country is now locked in an escalating trade row with the US and he was reported by the Kremlin as saying: “In a rapidly changing international situation with growing instability and unpredictability, cooperation between Russia and China takes on even more importance.
“Together with the international community we will advance political solutions to problems,