Posted on 01/27/2022 3:26:09 AM PST by EBH
10m ago 06:11 A senior Russian official has said a nuclear missile crisis between Moscow and Washington was unavoidable without measures to ensure restraint and predictability.
The Russian state news agency Tass was quoting Vladimir Ermakov, a senior Russian foreign ministry official. According to Tass, he said Moscow thought the United States was preparing to deploy short and intermediate range missiles to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
FacebookTwitter 25m ago 05:56 Philip Oltermann Philip Oltermann Germany’s restrictive stance on exporting weapons or military equipment to Ukraine is causing consternation in Kyiv and elsewhere in Europe, but the position has popular support among the German population.
In a new YouGov poll published on Thursday morning, 59% of respondents supported not sending lethal weapons to help Ukraine protect itself against a Russian attack.
Only 20% said they supported weapons exports, 21% declined to answer. Support for restricting the export of German weapons to Ukraine was strongest amongst supporters of leftwing Die Linke and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, weakest among supporters of the Green party and the liberal FDP, the two junior partners in the German coalition government.
Germany is one of the world’s top five arms exporters, with deals reaching a new record of almost €5 billion last year. Importers of arms produced in Germany include Egypt, which is tied into conflicts in Yemen and Libya.
Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, announced on Wednesday that Berlin would supply Ukraine with 5,000 military helmets. She said the offer sent “a very clear signal: we are on your side”.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and a former world heavyweight boxing champion, who previously lived in Germany, described the offer as a “joke”.
Updated at 5.58am EST
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
45m ago 05:37 Kremlin 'not optimistic' and 'won't rush' its response to US paper The Kremlin has said there is room to continue talking to the United States, but “won’t rush” with its assessment of the response from Washington to its proposals to re-write the post cold-war security order.
The Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would take time for Moscow to review the US document, after Washington issued a formal response on Wednesday to Russian demands for a veto on future Nato enlargement and a rollback of alliance forces.
The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth has sent this quote from Peskov:
“You heard what the US state secretary and the NATO secretary general said yesterday: they were loud and clear about non-acceptance of the main concerns expressed by Russia...
So there isn’t much reason to be optimistic. But I would still avoid any conceptual opinions.
Here is a bit more via Reuters:
Based on what our colleagues said yesterday it’s absolutely clear that on the main categories outlined in those draft documents... we cannot say that our thoughts have been taken into account or that a willingness has been shown to take our concerns into account.
But we won’t rush with our assessments.
Speaking separately, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said there was a hope of dialogue on secondary issues, but the US had not given a positive reaction to Russia’s most important question, namely the expansion of Nato.
Updated at 6.06am EST FacebookTwitter 1h ago 05:19 "Good news" that Russia wants to talk - Ukraine's Kuleba Ukraine has welcomed Russia’s offer to continue talks in early February as “good news” and a sign that Moscow wants a diplomatic solution to the current crisis.
Senior Russian and Ukrainian officials met on Wednesday in Paris with representatives of France and Germany. The four countries have agreed to meet again in two weeks time in Berlin.
As AFP reports, Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said
The good news is that advisers agreed to meet in Berlin in two weeks, which means that at least for the next two weeks, Russia is likely to remain on a diplomatic track.
Nonetheless, he called for the West to strengthen its military and defence cooperation with Kyiv.
While I am a big fan of soft power, I’m afraid that this is really the time for hard power to be used.
Kuleba was speaking after a meeting with his Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod in Copenhagen, as part of Ukraine’s continuing diplomatic outreach.
Denmark is a Nato member and on Thursday promised further funds to help Ukraine carry out reforms.
1h ago 04:59 "No positive reaction" from US to Russia's main security question - Lavrov The United States has not given a positive response to Russia’s most important security question, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
The Russian news agency Ria Novosti quotes Lavrov as telling reporters that there was “no positive reaction” on the main question.
On the main question in this document [from the US] there is no positive reaction. The main question is our clearly-stated position about the admissibility of further expansion of Nato to the east and deployment of strike weapons that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation.
Lavrov is referring to the US government’s formal response on Wednesday to the Kremlin’s security demands set out last month.
President Vladimir Putin “will decide on Russia’s next steps with regard to the US and Nato responses to the security proposals” Lavrov is quoted as saying in a Reuters snap.
Updated at 4.59am EST FacebookTwitter 2h ago 04:36 The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell has welcomed the US response to Russia’s security demands.
Writing on Twitter, the EU high representative for foreign and security policy urged Russia to take the diplomatic path.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Wednesday set out the US’s formal response to the Kremlin’s maximalist security demands issued in December. In a written reply, Blinken reiterated US support for Ukraine’s right to join Nato, although no one thinks that will happen anytime soon.
The EU has been accused of being absent from the main diplomatic manoeuvres. EU leaders, including Borrell, reject this charge and are keen to project a united front with the US. European diplomats have also praised their US counterparts for extensive briefings and sharing information.
2h ago 04:24 “My heart is hurting. Why did Russia do this?” This are the words of Ulshin, a Ukrainian army commander, surveying the wreckage of what was once a school in Shyrokyne, in eastern Ukraine, on the frontline between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian forces.
He was talking to Luke Harding, a Guardian foreign correspondent, who has been reporting extensively from the frontline, where he has found echoes of world war one in the muddy stalemate.
Here is his video report from the coastal city of Mariupol on preparations for a potential Russian attack. It’s also a powerful reminder that Ukraine has been at war with Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region since 2014, with at least 14,000 lives lost.
2h ago 04:04 China has told the United States it wants to see all sides involved in Ukraine remain calm and avoid increasing tension, Reuters has reported.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about tensions over Ukraine in a telephone on Wednesday.
“We call on all parties to stay calm and refrain from doing things that agitate tensions and hype up the crisis,” Wang told Blinken, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The US state department quoted Blinken as having “conveyed that de-escalation and diplomacy are the responsible way forward”.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin is to meet the Chinese president Xi Jinping at the opening session of the winter olympics in Beijing on 4 February. Some analysts believe if an attack happens it would be after this date.
I often ask the “Remember the Donbas” battle cry crowd what stopping the Russians here actually looks like. First, how many trillions are they willing to print to finance the Eurasian Security Treaty Organization? How quickly can they airlift the beginnings of Desert Shield 2.0 to Ukraine? Or do these neocons and dog waivers want to do it on the cheap, theater nukes in Ukraine tomorrow. With the DC traitors and dipsh!ts running things and the general bipartisan warmongering going on, this can go south very quickly.
“Germany’s defence minister, Kristine Lambrecht “. I think I see their problem.
Yup!
I was grateful I found a running news-blog of events, instead of having to hunt through twitter feeds with half-baked information.
Putin’s just playing a waiting game. He is going to invade and nuclear use is on his table. The question is, is it on ours and who will use it first.
Tick, tick, tick...
Kremlin ‘not optimistic’ and ‘won’t rush’ its response to US paper
The Kremlin has said there is room to continue talking to the United States, but “won’t rush” with its assessment of the response from Washington to its proposals to re-write the post cold-war security order.
The Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it would take time for Moscow to review the US document, after Washington issued a formal response on Wednesday to Russian demands for a veto on future Nato enlargement and a rollback of alliance forces.
The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth has sent this quote from Peskov:
“You heard what the US state secretary and the NATO secretary general said yesterday: they were loud and clear about non-acceptance of the main concerns expressed by Russia...
So there isn’t much reason to be optimistic. But I would still avoid any conceptual opinions.
Here is a bit more via Reuters:
Based on what our colleagues said yesterday it’s absolutely clear that on the main categories outlined in those draft documents... we cannot say that our thoughts have been taken into account or that a willingness has been shown to take our concerns into account.
But we won’t rush with our assessments.
Speaking separately, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said there was a hope of dialogue on secondary issues, but the US had not given a positive reaction to Russia’s most important question, namely the expansion of Nato.
Thanks for posting this.
27m ago
09:28
Nato is considering sending some troops to Slovakia, according to the country’s foreign minister Ivan Korčok.
He said no decisions had been taken, but discussions were underway, according to the website aktuality.sk.
His comments come as the US has asked other Nato allies to consider deploying hundreds more troops in Europe
Nato deployed battlegroups to Poland and the Baltic states, after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The US wants further reinforcements in the Baltics, as well as Romania and Bulgaria.
45m ago
09:10
The Russian currency continued to make gains on Thursday, after a senior Russian official said the idea of war with Ukraine was unacceptable.
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexei Zaitsev said “our country does not intend to attack anyone. We consider even the thought of a war between our people to be unacceptable.”
By 1322 GMT the rouble was 1.9% stronger against the dollar, pulling away from a near 15-month low.
The trigger for the first rise may have been Belarus saying Russian troops would leave its territory once military drills, scheduled to end in February, are over, Reuters reports.
A dealer at a large Russian bank told the agency:
There was already active dollar selling since this morning, but the news from Belarus accelerated this process.
Zaitsev’s later comments lifted the rouble further. Investors have been unnerved by the prospect of sweeping sanctions on Russian, including Russian banks being cut off from the Swift interbank messaging system, if the Kremlin orders an invasion. Western countries are also looking at export bans on key civilian technologies, as part of a sanctions package intended to deter an attack.
1h ago
08:52
Europe’s dependence on Russian gas has once again been thrust into the spotlight as tensions over Ukraine have mounted.
But the US has a plan. White House officials said earlier this week that the Biden administration is preparing to finalise a deal to “ensure Europe is able to make it through the winter and spring” by brokering a deal for major gas producing countries to send liquified natural gas (LNG) by tanker to Europe.
As the Guardian’s energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose reports, it is not a plan without challenges.
The global gas supply crunch which emerged as economies began to rebound following the Covid-19 slump means there is little spare gas to go around, according to analyst Xi Nan from Rystad Energy.
The US has said that its conversations are “really broad, with a lot of companies and countries around the world” so that it wouldn’t need “to ask any one individual company or country to surge exports by significant volumes, but rather smaller volumes from a multitude of sources”.
“The question,” said Helima Croft at RBC Capital, “is whether the US can find any slack in the system”.
Read Jillian’s full report: Energy crisis: where could Europe’s gas come from if Russia cuts exports?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/27/energy-crisis-where-could-europes-gas-come-from-if-russia-cuts-exports
Ukraine is struggling to borrow on international capital markets because of borderline “hysteria” over a Russian attack, an adviser to Ukraine’s president has told Reuters.
Oleg Ustenko, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told the news agency in Kyiv that borrowing had become “not impossible, but extremely difficult”.
He said:
In the context of a sharp increase in the degree of discussions around issues related to the security of Ukraine, which sometimes border on hysteria, the country’s opportunities for entering foreign capital markets are limited.
Under such conditions, he said, Ukraine had to secure its “financial cushion” through sources other than financial markets. He said Ukraine hoped to borrow $5bn from other countries, European and international institutions.
Earlier this week, the EU promised Kyiv €1.2bn in financial aid, adding to the €17bn the EU and its financial institutions have provided in grants and loans since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.