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War threat in Ukraine

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Putin would've already known beforehand about all of these retaliation measures being imposed such as sanctions, the seizing of assets, freezing bank accounts/credit facilities etc. so he would have planned/prepared for this. I think Biden has underestimated Putin to be honest.
 
Telamelo said:
Putin would've already known beforehand about all of these retaliation measures being imposed such as sanctions, the seizing of assets, freezing bank accounts/credit facilities etc. so he would have planned/prepared for this. I think Biden has underestimated Putin to be honest.
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Most of Europe have for a decade or more, even with evidence of Russian secret service assassinations in countries across the globe.
 
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Київська міська державна адміністрація - КМДА | Kyiv

Київська міська державна адміністрація - КМДА, Kyiv, Ukraine. 82,548 likes · 1,366 talking about this · 23,870 were here. Офіційна сторінка Київської міської державної адміністрації
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Google translate works well.
 
so .. you want Russia to transact with whoever they like , , interesting

i bet North Korea will be a little happier to hear that , so might Iran and several other 'rogue nations '

given Russia's double-back on crypto-currencies even the crypto-folk might be happy Russia will be much more impressive than Salvador as a poster child

Russia ( and China ) are already happy to do direct goods swaps , i wonder if others would like that option
 
Country Lad said:
A complete turnaround, Europe agrees to cut off Russia from Swift and Germany is sending lethal military supplies to Ukraine. Pity this was not done a bit earlier as the supplies will now be difficult to distribute.
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Yes, it does appear that Europe is finally awake, however it will take many years to catch up.

“I’m so angry at ourselves for our historical failure. After Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin,” Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said, referring to incursions carried out by Russia while Mrs Merkel was in power.​
​
Her outburst came as the chief of the German land army, Alfons Mais, wrote that “the options we can offer to politicians to support (NATO) are extremely limited”.​

Germany to hike military spending in face of Russian menace​


The German government has promised to increase military spending after defence chiefs laid bare the “extremely limited” resources of Europe’s biggest economy in helping to push back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner said it was time for a “turning point” in German defence investment, long a target of criticism by Western allies.

“I worry that we have neglected the armed forces so much in the past that it can’t completely fulfil its duties,” he said.
“Falling defence spending no longer fits with the times.”

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a former defence minister under Angela Merkel, had earlier admitted Berlin was guilty of “historical failure” in not bolstering its military.

She said Germany had forgotten lessons from the past that “negotiation always comes first, but we have to be militarily strong enough to make non-negotiation not an option for the other side”.

“I’m so angry at ourselves for our historical failure. After Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin,” Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said, referring to incursions carried out by Russia while Mrs Merkel was in power.

Her outburst came as the chief of the German land army, Alfons Mais, wrote that “the options we can offer to politicians to support (NATO) are extremely limited”.

The Bundeswehr (military) “is more or less bare”, he wrote.

Western allies had “seen it coming and were not in the position to come through with our arguments, to draw the lessons from the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and to implement them”, the commander said.

“NATO territory is not directly threatened yet, even if our partners in the east feel the constantly growing pressure,” he said.

Mr Mais said it was high time to bolster the army.

“When if not now is the time to … rebuild, otherwise we will not be able to carry out our constitutional mission or our obligations to our allies with any prospect of success,” he said.

Germany’s dark past has nurtured a strong pacifist tradition, and it has often been criticised by partners for not pulling its weight in tackling crisis hot spots.

Defence officials have over the years repeatedly sounded the alarm over the army’s equipment woes – a litany of disrepair plaguing fighter planes, tanks, helicopters and ships.

At the end of 2017 all the country’s submarines were in dry dock for repairs while for some of the following year none of the air force’s A400M transport planes were airworthy.

Russia’s invasion may well force changes in priorities, with the Bundestag’s armed forces commissioner Eva Hoegl saying the army may have to switch from focusing on foreign missions to “domestic and allied (NATO) defence”.

She too admitted the Bundeswehr’s “standing-start capability is not what it should be”.

AFP
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Country Lad said:
A complete turnaround, Europe agrees to cut off Russia from Swift and Germany is sending lethal military supplies to Ukraine. Pity this was not done a bit earlier as the supplies will now be difficult to distribute.
Click to expand...
Will be very interesting to see how history judges this
 
There are 9 countries close to & around Ukraine that in the past 10-15 year's have joined NATO where military bases have been set up in as a deterrent/threat to Russia - the only country still missing from this region is Ukraine itself - reason why the US & NATO really wanted to get Ukraine added to NATO - that way Russia would be completely circled from the south west to the north west by NATO/US alliance countries.

So Putin feels threatened by NATO & the West as he sees this as provocation at his door step so to speak - imagine Russia doing the same & circling America - would America just sit back & let it happen !?!? Surely not.

Putin decided to take matters into his hand as a result & try to re-claim Ukraine as the jigsaw puzzle country Russia couldn't afford to let NATO take control of.

Also, the US simply don't want Russia supplying oil & gas to Europe - can't have Russia being close to Europe supplying much needed gas to them !? that is too kind of them to do so helping out Europe in this way.

So another reason for the unfortunate escalation of Ukraine crisis that we see.

I hate war and unfortunately mankind hasn't learnt anything from previous war's - there are no winner's in war ever just misery & devastation. It's quite terrible & sad to see that mankind can't live peacefully together.

We really are a stupid species when you look at history & repeated mistakes we continually make thinking agression & war is the solution.
 
Telamelo said:
There are 9 countries close to & around Ukraine that in the past 10-15 year's have joined NATO where military bases have been set up in as a deterrent/threat to Russia - the only country still missing from this region is Ukraine itself - reason why the US & NATO really wanted to get Ukraine added to NATO - that way Russia would be completely circled from the south west to the north west by NATO/US alliance countries.

So Putin feels threatened by NATO & the West as he sees this as provocation at his door step so to speak - imagine Russia doing the same & circling America - would America just sit back & let it happen !?!? Surely not.

Putin decided to take matters into his hand as a result & try to re-claim Ukraine as the jigsaw puzzle country Russia couldn't afford to let NATO take control of.

Also, the US simply don't want Russia supplying oil & gas to Europe - can't have Russia being close to Europe supplying much needed gas to them !? that is too kind of them to do so helping out Europe in this way.

So another reason for the unfortunate escalation of Ukraine crisis that we see.

I hate war and unfortunately mankind hasn't learnt anything from previous war's - there are no winner's in war ever just misery & devastation. It's quite terrible & sad to see that mankind can't live peacefully together.

We really are a stupid species when you look at history & repeated mistakes we continually make thinking agression & war is the solution.
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Germany has been a long time opponent of allowing Ukraine to join NATO
 
MovingAverage said:
Germany has been a long time opponent of allowing Ukraine to join NATO
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So have others.

13 Jan 2022 -

NATO Won’t Let Ukraine Join Soon. Here’s Why.
Ukraine, with Russian troops on its borders, is pressing for membership. But President Biden and European leaders are not ready for that step.

The tense talks this week among the United States, Russia and European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have made one thing clear: While the Biden administration insists it will not allow Moscow to quash Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO, it has no immediate plans to help bring the former Soviet republic into the alliance.

If Ukraine were a NATO member, the alliance would be obligated to defend it against Russia and other adversaries. U.S. officials say they will not appease President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia by undermining a policy enshrined in NATO’s original 1949 treaty that grants any European nation the right to ask to join.

“Together, the United States and our NATO allies made clear we will not slam the door shut on NATO’s open door policy — a policy that has always been central to the NATO alliance,” Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, said on Wednesday.

But France and Germany have in the past opposed Ukraine’s inclusion, and other European members are wary — a deal breaker for an alliance that grants membership only by unanimous consent. American and Russian leaders know this. With Russian troops amassed on Ukraine’s eastern border, some current and former American and European officials say Mr. Putin might just be raising the NATO issue as a pretext for an invasion.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has suggested that Mr. Putin is trying to distract from more urgent matters. “Everybody’s talking about NATO expansion,” Mr. McFaul said on a podcast by the Center for a New American Security that was released on Tuesday. “Suddenly, we’re debating this issue that wasn’t even an issue. That’s a great advantage to him.”

Like European leaders, President Biden remains uninterested in Ukrainian membership in NATO. Here are four reasons.

Biden has grown skeptical of expanding U.S. military commitments.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Biden successfully urged NATO to accept Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as member states in the late 1990s. The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, Mr. Biden said that turning the former Cold War adversaries into allies would mark the “beginning of another 50 years of peace” for Europe. He added that the move would right a “historical injustice” perpetrated by Stalin.

But over the course of two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, experts said, Mr. Biden’s fervor for expanding NATO cooled considerably. In 2004, seven Eastern European countries joined the alliance, and in 2008, President George W. Bush pushed NATO to issue a declaration that Ukraine and Georgia would become members in the future despite reservations from U.S. intelligence agencies. However, the alliance has never offered either country a formal action plan to join, a necessary step for them to do so.

As recently as June, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told senators that “we support Ukraine membership in NATO.” Mr. Biden, however, has been far more circumspect in his public comments and “has soft-pedaled talk of extending NATO membership to Ukraine,” two foreign policy scholars, Joshua Shifrinson and Stephen Wertheim, wrote in September in Foreign Affairs.
Editors’ Picks

In 2014, as vice president, Mr. Biden told officials in Ukraine during a visit there that any U.S. military support would be small, if given at all, according to a biography of Mr. Biden by Evan Osnos, a New Yorker writer who was on the trip. Russia had just invaded and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and Ukrainian officials were unhappy with Mr. Biden’s message.

“We no longer think in Cold War terms,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Osnos, adding that “there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.”

Last June, Mr. Biden told journalists at NATO headquarters in Brussels that “school is out on that question” when asked whether Ukraine could join the alliance.

Biden wants Ukraine to improve its political and legal systems.

To meet one of the three main criteria for entry into NATO, a European nation must demonstrate a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law. While Ukrainian leaders say they have met that threshold, some American and European officials argue otherwise.

In a 2020 analysis, Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index, lower than any NATO nation.

Officials in European nations with stronger liberal governance — notably in Sweden and Finland — have also floated the possibility of joining NATO, despite years of determined nonalignment. That is a discussion “we are ready to do,” Victoria J. Nuland, the State Department’s under secretary for political affairs, told journalists on Tuesday. “Obviously, they are longtime, established, stable democracies.”

She signaled that might not be the case with Ukraine. “That conversation would be slightly different than it is with countries that are making the transition to democratic systems and dealing with intensive problems of corruption and economic reform and democratic stability, etc.,” Ms. Nuland said.

Her comments echoed those of Mr. Biden on his 2014 visit to Ukraine. “To be very blunt about it, and this is a delicate thing to say to a group of leaders in their house of parliament, but you have to fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system right now,” Mr. Biden told Ukrainian officials then.

Some Western officials also question whether Ukraine could meet a second set of criteria: contributing to the collective defense of NATO nations. But Ukraine sent troops to the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There are steps that Ukraine needs to take,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in September after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with Mr. Biden in the Oval Office. “They’re very familiar with these: efforts to advance rule of law reforms, modernize its defense sector and expand economic growth.”

NATO wants to avoid greater Russian hostility.

After annexing Crimea, Mr. Putin invaded eastern Ukraine and gave military aid to a separatist insurgency there. He did something similar in Georgia in 2008. The message has been clear: If these two nations join NATO, the United States and European countries will have to grapple directly with ongoing Russian-fueled conflicts.

Russia could also impose other costs on Europe, such as withholding gas exports. And Germany and many other NATO nations prefer to choose their battles with Russia, given its proximity and Mr. Putin’s aggressive nature. They know he and other Russian officials are obsessed with Ukraine.

Given all that, Ukraine would almost certainly be unable to meet the third main criterion to join NATO: approval from all 30 members.

“The principal objection would be: Does such a move actually contribute to the stability in Europe, or would it contribute to destabilization?” said Douglas E. Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “I think it’s indisputable there wouldn’t be consensus among the 30 members, even though all allies agree that Ukraine has the right to aspire to become a NATO member.”

Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, said that even in the 1990s, when NATO enlargement was first proposed, many prominent American strategists opposed it for this reason. “That was the concern all along — it wouldn’t be easy to do this in a way that wouldn’t threaten Russia,” he said.

Ukrainian leaders have waffled on NATO membership.

Ukrainian leaders have not always pushed hard to join NATO, and that has shaped the American approach.

Former President Viktor Yushchenko wanted entry into the alliance, but Ukrainians became more reluctant after Russia invaded Georgia. His successor, Viktor Yanukovych, dropped any drive for membership and promoted closer ties with Russia, even agreeing to allow Moscow to continue leasing a Black Sea naval port in Crimea.

During the Obama administration, American officials encouraged Ukraine to sign a formal association agreement with the European Union rather than try to join NATO. Mr. Putin pressured Mr. Yanukovych to reject the agreement, which led to the Euromaidan protests in 2013 that eventually ousted Mr. Yanukovych.

“A lot of the U.S. policy has been quite reactive due to circumstances,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution who was a senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council under President Donald J. Trump. “It has also changed due to changes in Ukraine itself toward this.”

“By now, you’ve got much more sentiment in Ukraine for joining NATO,” she added.

Mr. Zelensky has pressed Mr. Biden repeatedly on membership, including during his visit to the White House in September. “I would like to discuss with President Biden here his vision, his government’s vision of Ukraine’s chances to join NATO and the time frame for this accession, if it is possible,” he said as he sat next to Mr. Biden.

Mr. Biden blew past those comments without responding.
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www.nytimes.com

NATO Won’t Let Ukraine Join Soon. Here’s Why. (Published 2022)

Ukraine has pressed for membership to defend against Russia. But President Biden and European leaders are not ready for that step.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
And from February 16, 2021 -

Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?​

​
In a recent interview with Axios on HBO, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would like to ask US President Joe Biden, “Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?”​
​
President Zelenskyy’s question generated a lot of debate and ended up reaching a wide audience. Ever since, Ukrainian journalists have been asking me, “So why is Ukraine still not in NATO?” As I answered this question for the third or fourth time, I realized how satisfied I actually was with the way this discussion is evolving.​
​
Why, indeed, is Ukraine not in NATO? ​
​
Today’s Ukraine is not only a security recipient, but a security donor in its region. Ukraine has been successfully countering Russian aggression for almost seven years now, protecting not only itself but a wider region between the Baltic and Black Seas. Ukraine has gained invaluable experience deterring Russian aggression on the traditional military battlefield and in the realm of hybrid warfare, which extends from cyber to disinformation and beyond. These factors would appear to make Ukraine a strong candidate for NATO membership.​
​
That is the rational side to answering President Zelenskyy’s question. However, there is also an emotional side to consider. Perhaps the best way to understand this dialectic is by adopting a neuroscientific approach and exploring both the rational and the emotional approaches to Ukraine’s future membership in NATO.​
​
Any rational analysis would include the need to further elevate the interoperability of the Ukrainian armed forces with their NATO colleagues. It would involve completing the implementation of NATO standards and continuing with the broader process of Euro-Atlantic reforms.​
​
This is a challenging to-do list, but all of these stated objectives are absolutely achievable. Indeed, Ukraine has already made considerable progress along this path since 2014, and the process has recently gained added momentum in many areas.​
​
The emotional side of the equation is far less straightforward. A combination of myths and fears immediately activates whenever the words “Ukraine” and “NATO” appear in the same sentence. Frequently, this hurricane of emotions overrides all logic or reason. Unlike the entirely rational to-do list, this emotional response is dangerously misleading and must be addressed accordingly.​
​
In recent years, Russia has combined military operations with disinformation campaigns that are designed to justify its aggressive actions. A key theme has been the idea of a fundamentally defensive Russia forced to protect its borders from “NATO expansion.”​
​
This entire narrative is based on long-debunked claims of a “pledge” made by the West to the Soviet Union not to expand NATO eastwards following the fall of the Berlin Wall. According to the Russian version of events, US Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not move east if the USSR allowed the reunification of East and West Germany.​
​
Archive documents prove that no such pledge was ever made. Even Gorbachev himself stated in October 2014 that the topic was not discussed at the time.​
​
This makes sense. In early 1990, nobody would have considered the possibility of any Warsaw Pact countries even theoretically aspiring to NATO membership. Instead, the only discussions on NATO enlargement referred specifically to East Germany.​
​
This somewhat primitive yet entirely characteristic deception has allowed Moscow to promote the myth of a duplicitous and expansionist NATO. Meanwhile, Russia is conveniently cast in the role of victim, forced to protect itself by occupying the lands of its neighbors. Unfortunately, many people around the world continue to be taken in by this hoax.​
​
The myth of a besieged Russia gallantly defending itself against expansionist NATO forms a central part of the broader argument that the Western world should seek to avoid “provoking” Russia. One key lesson of the 2000s and 2010s is that nothing invites Kremlin aggression more than calls “not to provoke” Russia.​
​
In reality, Moscow has always been good at selling fear. We should listen to Russia’s signals carefully, but we must not allow those signals to guide our hand on strategic decisions. In neuroscientific terms, Russia has always stimulated the limbic emotional system of NATO allies, while Ukraine has appealed to their frontal rational lobes. The limbic system is important, but it is the frontal lobes that move mankind forward...........​

www.atlanticcouncil.org

Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently that he'd like to ask US President Joe Biden, "Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?" Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba agrees that this question has never been more pertinent.
www.atlanticcouncil.org www.atlanticcouncil.org
 
Telamelo said:
imagine Russia doing the same & circling America - would America just sit back & let it happen !?!? Surely not.
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Could easily encircle part of it. Flush with success maybe Putin will be silly enough to want Alaska back. Soon, with climate change, he can invade Alaska by rowboat.
 
Enviromental crimes -

Russians blow up oil depot south of Kyiv​

Ukraine media is reporting that Russian forces have bombed an oil depot at Vasylkiv, 40km south of Kyiv.​
​
Local authorities are urging residents to shut their windows as toxic smoke is sent into the air.​
​
Vasylkiv mayor Nataliia Balasynovych has confirmed the explosion at the oil depot.​
​
Screen Shot 2022-02-27 at 12.07.44 pm.png​
 

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