China's aggression is changing the nature of sovereignty.

[Boat + 1,324]

7 hours ago, Tomasz said:

So without the direct use of force on the part of Russia (emphasized WITHOUT use of force only in the light of the real threat of its use) what Russia achieved against NATO:

1) POTUS said to milion of vieved all around the world that in his humble opinion this is  something else the so-called "small incursions" on Ukraine (i.e. let's note that means Ukraine permanently loosing the Crimea Donbas and Lugansk becauase of choosing prowestern orientation) and something totally diferent seems to be a real brutal and big ground invasion like in Iraq 2003
- the NATO countries themselves seem to have quite a intense fight with each other and it is very clear now that there is at least a very serious internal crisis of interests in the alliance towards Russia
- there is currently a big energy crisis in Ukraine, that is to be honest energy crisis is all over the world. But this crisis in the advanced world is focused on the high price of the raw material and in Ukraine this is about  a the real shortage of the raw material itself
- Americans directly declare the total withdrawal of all diplomats from Ukraine as for the invasion HAS NOT EVEN TOOK PLACE YET

With all my Russophilia so Im fot sure biased towards Russia but NO INVASION YET took place so really be merciful, what more really needs Putin in the context of NATO to be happy?

AS ONLY REAL THREAT OF USE OF FORCE HAS BEEN PLAYED without direct use of force and you can see what he get.

I would say not really a bad result without direct fight with Western forces or even Ukraine army.

An energy crisis all over the world? Lol What kind of nonsense you pushing now. From time to time OPEC + Russia can and does manufacture a mini crisis. Or blame the US for slowing oil in Venezuela and Iran. Mother Nature takes a swing at humanity occasionally. Blame which group of Muslims in hot spots around the world? Fundamentally the cheapest oil to produce should supply the market. But because of those reasons and historically more, FF prices have always been volatile. But we’re talking the froth on the cream, tip of the iceberg. Like losing the AC in the office of a power plant while keeping DisneyLand going. Also fundamentally there is a plethora of FF in the ground. But cry me a river that demand will peak and then start dropping. That’s the power of tech by the woke. There is still gonna be plenty of demand for FF for decades but better options than FF will be driving that buss for transportation at minimum.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

7 hours ago, Boat said:

NATO and it’s allies should buzz the Russians with a few hundred F-35’s on the border to remind them of their actual venerability. They would need to drop smoke to let them know . 

Aren't those supposed to be invisible to us? Otherwise, we've got a missile for each.

[SUZNV + 1,197]

11 hours ago, nsdp said:

 

I would not say the US Army "won " at LZ Columbus in the Ia Drang. Nor would I say the US won at Hill 1331 or 875.  In the latter two cases Viet Minh and NVA left when they were ready. The biggest mistake was not cutting an deal with the Buddhists in the summer of 1963. They were 80% of the population. This man https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/22/from-mlk-to-silicon-valley-how-the-world-fell-for-father-of-mindfulness and the rest of the Buddhist leadership along  with Big"Minh" from the Army could and would have cut a deal with Bac Ho and Giap and Le Duan would never have been able t o remove them from real power. Without Le Duan there would never have been a Tonkin incident in 1964and  2 million dead and about 3 million injured would have lead long and happy lives.  Thích Quang Duc  would have had a peaceful death.

I should have said US Army didn't lose any battle instead. In the 3 cases above they still stayed behind but this is irregular warfare so I guess there is no objective.  Sometimes keeping a captured location is pointless and US gradually have to abandon remote area after "won" or "draw" the battle.

We will never know the end of the deal. But IMHO it would be very hard:

Firstly, Buddhism is very decentralized religion because followers believe on cause and effect and there would be no formal leader who can represent the population to make a deal.

Secondly, Le Duan started as Vietcong came to the north  with the determination of kicking the French out of south Vietnam while Ho and Giap wanted to keep the Geneva Accord 1954. Theoretically the Vietcong in the south would listen to Le  Duan only. 

Buddhism Temples were a good place for Vietcong to operate.  Although the monks would not cooperate to both side but Vietcong is the underdog so they would not turn them in because this may cause harm to others, which against the practices. They can even help the Vietcong out of passionate or came from the same village. The monk is MYOB style and decision on individual level as the elder has no rule to forbid this. Elder only can ensure his subordinate to follow Buddha teaching which including "save life", even if it is Vietcong's life. 

Diem targeted this religion because of the above but all of anti Diem on both sides wanted to get him out of the pictures so both sides had  propaganda campaigns that Diem  suppressed Buddhism and  promoted Catholic, stir up the protests. I think Thich Quang Duc burned himself because of anti Buddhism suppression more than to support Communism like later Vietnamese history wrote.

So the Buddhism in the south may have a large share of supporting Le Duan. Given that Buddhism was abandoned in the North Vietnam since 1954 under Ho and Giap as well. And it would be very very hard for the US to persuade monks following Capitalism (at least openly)  😉.  Monks teaching maybe arguably the purest form of proletarian, with minimal demand, "own nothing and be happy" style without any plan to "reset the world economy" like the delusional WEF.

However Le Duan himself suppressed Buddhism right after 1975 so lots of monks joined the boatmen.  Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled back then just because he organized rescuing boat people from boats shrinking or pirates (as you gave up Vietnam citizen when you tried to escape it on boat). 

To make matters more complicated, many organizations in the Republic of Vietnam Government was Minh and Giap's allies for the anti French and later Japanese occupations. However they was against the deal of Ho and Giap to cut Vietnam in half, along side with land reformation which made them change the alliance the the Republic of Vietnam. They wouldn't trust Ho and Giap. 

Even among Diem's catholic allies, many of them move south because they believed Communism suppressed religions and land reformation, they wouldn't trust Ho and Giap either and Diem may lose their support. 

And then Diem lost CIA support because he wouldn't want  US Marines came  in Vietnam and fight  the battles as he knew they would eventually lose the war because Vietnamese people are always very anti foreign occupation as it keeps them independent from the big neighbor in the north. The north Vietnamese didn't allow Chinese or Russian soldiers joined the war because of this as well. 

I concluded that Diem had no chance in the first place and South Vietnam would fall no matter what. The only hope to prevent the war was not letting the French back after WW2. US may even have an anti communism ally in the South East Asia just from the awareness of thousands year relationship with China.  But it is perfectly strategically understandable, that US chose their allies for the cold war with Eastern Bloc in Europe.

Bad time bad place and caught between giants, just like Ukraine, Taiwan nowadays.

See the map of French (an then EU) territory nowadays. France brought a big strategic EEZ capital to the EU. EU can have their member claim a share of resources in north pole or south pole which would be very valuable when more and more ice melting. 

Folks in NZ was nuclear free because of the anti French testing Nuclear movement in the Pacific back in from 1966 to 1996, not because they hated the US. 

Edited January 23, 2022 by SUZNV

[Boat + 1,324]

The US had political losses as they always will. Greed doesn’t elect competent politicians. Take Vietnam. It’s not that the military ran out of nuclear bombs or any style of bomb for that matter. The military was never allowed to overpower and sweep the enemy from border to border with overwhelming force like in WWII. 
If the argument was who could sustain fire power on a rock for the longest period of time and the biggest variety of ways. We could win that without political intervention.

[surrept33 + 609]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/01/23/russia-ukraine-sanctions-export-controls/

National Security

U.S. threatens use of novel export control to damage Russia’s strategic industries if Moscow invades Ukraine

 

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

 

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software.

 

And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

“This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government,” Dan Wang, a Shanghai-based technology analyst with research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm’s supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

 

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology.

 

“The power of these export controls is we can degrade and atrophy the capacity of these sectors to become a key source of growth for the Russian economy,” said a senior Biden administration official, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

 

On Sunday, the State Department ordered the departure of all family members of U.S. Embassy personnel serving in Kyiv, citing the “threat of Russian military action.” The evacuation comes as the Biden administration weighs sending thousands of U.S. forces, as well as armaments, to the Baltic states and Poland to reinforce NATO, officials said. The officials stressed that no final decision has been taken on possible troop deployments, which were first reported by the New York Times. The United States is not planning to send any additional troops to Ukraine. There are about 200 military trainers in Ukraine. Most are Florida National Guard personnel.

 

The effort to use export controls could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That’s because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

 

“It’s like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. “Other countries will say, ‘Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We’d better find alternatives.’”

 

Russia is vulnerable because it doesn’t produce consumer electronics or chips in large quantities, analysts say. In particular, it doesn’t make the highest-end semiconductors needed for advanced computing, an area dominated by Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, Europe and Japan.

Cutting off the country’s chip imports “would invariably hit the Russian leadership’s high-tech ambitions, whether in artificial intelligence or quantum computing,” said Will Hunt, an analyst with Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

 

The administration has not yet decided whether to restrict the export control to strategic sectors or extend it to everyday devices, officials said. Either way, said Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at the Eurasia Group, “this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country.”

 

The pairing of financial sanctions with export controls would inflict pain immediately and over time. The impact of financial sanctions, which could apply to Russia’s largest banks as well as to civilian aerospace, maritime or emerging tech firms, would probably be felt first, experts say. Banking sanctions in particular probably would drive up Russian inflation and trigger a devaluation of the ruble, they say. Export controls, on the other hand, build over time as the cumulative effect of companies shutting off sales to Russia begins to hurt industrial production.

“If the objective is to impose severe and overwhelming costs on Russia’s economy, the combination of sanctions on major Russian banks and the export control would go a long way towards that, absolutely,” said Kevin Wolf, a former senior Commerce Department official who once headed the agency that implements export controls.

 

If the restrictions are applied broadly, they could also drive up prices for consumer electronics in Russia, analysts said.

The administration says it also may hit Russia with an export ban similar to those against Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. Such a ban, experts say, probably would apply to basic electronics, aircraft parts, telecommunications items and software. But the United States exports relatively little in this area to Russia, so the measure would have limited effect unless other countries impose similar bans of their own.

 

Germany, which is Russia’s largest trading partner in Western Europe and is highly dependent on Russian energy, is in close” discussions with the United States on sanctions, said a German Embassy official, declining to comment further.

 

Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia’s military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence.

If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a “devastating effect,” Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that it has a “rigorous export control system in place … to ensure export control restrictions are followed.”

 

Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules. The United States also has a powerful stick to compel compliance: It could place any scofflaw companies on the Commerce Department Entity List, a blacklist of sorts that effectively bars U.S. firms from selling them their technology.

 

Russian government officials downplayed the potential impact.

The Russian state-owned defense and tech industry conglomerate Rostec said in a statement that while some foreign components are used in civilian products, Russia has begun to make many components on its own. “The possible imposition of additional sanctions will primarily hit the interests of American companies working for export,” Rostec said. “But we have managed and will manage again, albeit not immediately, but very quickly — we have proven this more than once.”

China could also provide an escape valve for Russia, analysts say.

The country is a big supplier of electronics to Russia. In 2020, it accounted for some 70 percent of Russia’s computer and smartphone imports, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Three of the top five smartphone brands in Russia are Chinese, according to market-research firm International Data Corporation.

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, suggested that Beijing would not look kindly on extraterritorial control by the United States. “China is always opposed to any country’s unilateral sanctions and so-called long-arm jurisdiction on other countries based on domestic law,” he said in a statement.

Chinese manufacturers could choose to continue selling to Russia even if they use U.S. technology in their products, and it would be difficult, for instance, to monitor Chinese smartphone sales to Russia, IDC analyst Simon Baker said.

Experts, however, said there are ways to police noncompliance. The Commerce Department often gets tips from firms about rule-breaking competitors. Its investigators scan shipping data. They also get intelligence shared from other U.S. agencies.

If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods.

After the Trump administration applied the foreign direct product rule to Huawei in August 2020, the company’s smartphone sales plummeted. Earlier in 2020, it led the world in such sales. Today, it’s fallen to 10th place, according to IDC.

The most important goal now is deterrence, officials and analysts said, and that means threatening the most severe sanctions — such as severing the largest Russian banks from the U.S. financial system, said Edward Fishman, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Export controls wouldn’t have as immediate an effect, said Fishman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration.

But, he said, they are a good move.

“The United States has no interest in aiding Russia’s technological and industrial capacity,” he said, “so long as Putin is using it to bully neighbors and attack democracy.''

Isabelle Khurshudyan and Mary Ilyushina in Moscow contributed to this report.

[frankfurter + 562]

1 hour ago, surrept33 said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/01/23/russia-ukraine-sanctions-export-controls/

National Security

U.S. threatens use of novel export control to damage Russia’s strategic industries if Moscow invades Ukraine

 

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

 

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software.

 

And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

“This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government,” Dan Wang, a Shanghai-based technology analyst with research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm’s supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

 

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology.

 

“The power of these export controls is we can degrade and atrophy the capacity of these sectors to become a key source of growth for the Russian economy,” said a senior Biden administration official, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

 

On Sunday, the State Department ordered the departure of all family members of U.S. Embassy personnel serving in Kyiv, citing the “threat of Russian military action.” The evacuation comes as the Biden administration weighs sending thousands of U.S. forces, as well as armaments, to the Baltic states and Poland to reinforce NATO, officials said. The officials stressed that no final decision has been taken on possible troop deployments, which were first reported by the New York Times. The United States is not planning to send any additional troops to Ukraine. There are about 200 military trainers in Ukraine. Most are Florida National Guard personnel.

 

The effort to use export controls could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That’s because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

 

“It’s like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. “Other countries will say, ‘Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We’d better find alternatives.’”

 

Russia is vulnerable because it doesn’t produce consumer electronics or chips in large quantities, analysts say. In particular, it doesn’t make the highest-end semiconductors needed for advanced computing, an area dominated by Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, Europe and Japan.

Cutting off the country’s chip imports “would invariably hit the Russian leadership’s high-tech ambitions, whether in artificial intelligence or quantum computing,” said Will Hunt, an analyst with Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

 

The administration has not yet decided whether to restrict the export control to strategic sectors or extend it to everyday devices, officials said. Either way, said Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at the Eurasia Group, “this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country.”

 

The pairing of financial sanctions with export controls would inflict pain immediately and over time. The impact of financial sanctions, which could apply to Russia’s largest banks as well as to civilian aerospace, maritime or emerging tech firms, would probably be felt first, experts say. Banking sanctions in particular probably would drive up Russian inflation and trigger a devaluation of the ruble, they say. Export controls, on the other hand, build over time as the cumulative effect of companies shutting off sales to Russia begins to hurt industrial production.

“If the objective is to impose severe and overwhelming costs on Russia’s economy, the combination of sanctions on major Russian banks and the export control would go a long way towards that, absolutely,” said Kevin Wolf, a former senior Commerce Department official who once headed the agency that implements export controls.

 

If the restrictions are applied broadly, they could also drive up prices for consumer electronics in Russia, analysts said.

The administration says it also may hit Russia with an export ban similar to those against Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. Such a ban, experts say, probably would apply to basic electronics, aircraft parts, telecommunications items and software. But the United States exports relatively little in this area to Russia, so the measure would have limited effect unless other countries impose similar bans of their own.

 

Germany, which is Russia’s largest trading partner in Western Europe and is highly dependent on Russian energy, is in close” discussions with the United States on sanctions, said a German Embassy official, declining to comment further.

 

Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia’s military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence.

If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a “devastating effect,” Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that it has a “rigorous export control system in place … to ensure export control restrictions are followed.”

 

Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules. The United States also has a powerful stick to compel compliance: It could place any scofflaw companies on the Commerce Department Entity List, a blacklist of sorts that effectively bars U.S. firms from selling them their technology.

 

Russian government officials downplayed the potential impact.

The Russian state-owned defense and tech industry conglomerate Rostec said in a statement that while some foreign components are used in civilian products, Russia has begun to make many components on its own. “The possible imposition of additional sanctions will primarily hit the interests of American companies working for export,” Rostec said. “But we have managed and will manage again, albeit not immediately, but very quickly — we have proven this more than once.”

China could also provide an escape valve for Russia, analysts say.

The country is a big supplier of electronics to Russia. In 2020, it accounted for some 70 percent of Russia’s computer and smartphone imports, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Three of the top five smartphone brands in Russia are Chinese, according to market-research firm International Data Corporation.

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, suggested that Beijing would not look kindly on extraterritorial control by the United States. “China is always opposed to any country’s unilateral sanctions and so-called long-arm jurisdiction on other countries based on domestic law,” he said in a statement.

Chinese manufacturers could choose to continue selling to Russia even if they use U.S. technology in their products, and it would be difficult, for instance, to monitor Chinese smartphone sales to Russia, IDC analyst Simon Baker said.

Experts, however, said there are ways to police noncompliance. The Commerce Department often gets tips from firms about rule-breaking competitors. Its investigators scan shipping data. They also get intelligence shared from other U.S. agencies.

If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods.

After the Trump administration applied the foreign direct product rule to Huawei in August 2020, the company’s smartphone sales plummeted. Earlier in 2020, it led the world in such sales. Today, it’s fallen to 10th place, according to IDC.

The most important goal now is deterrence, officials and analysts said, and that means threatening the most severe sanctions — such as severing the largest Russian banks from the U.S. financial system, said Edward Fishman, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Export controls wouldn’t have as immediate an effect, said Fishman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration.

But, he said, they are a good move.

“The United States has no interest in aiding Russia’s technological and industrial capacity,” he said, “so long as Putin is using it to bully neighbors and attack democracy.''

Isabelle Khurshudyan and Mary Ilyushina in Moscow contributed to this report.

Thanks for posting this.

For those who think this is a winning strategy, please raise your hands.

 

[SUZNV + 1,197]

12 hours ago, Boat said:

 Take Vietnam. It’s not that the military ran out of nuclear bombs or any style of bomb for that matter. The military was never allowed to overpower and sweep the enemy from border to border with overwhelming force like in WWII. 
 

-"sweep the enemy from border to border with overwhelming force like in WWII" wouldn't work,  not in North Korea nor North Vietnam nor Afghan. The French did occupied  the North since 1945 to 1954 and still had to withdrawn in 1954. It would only cost US much more money because the border to defense get much bigger and withdrawn sooner. Half of the war is fought at the logistic side and what Vietnamese people back then has anything to lose but their life? Precisely this attitude made the same mistake in Afghan again. It's not like super powers fighting head to head on for supremacy and surrender when the Capital is lost, just look at the history of these countries. 

Give the wrong solution to the problem US politicians thought  they could solve. It is not greed but ignorance that brought these politicians on power because wars doesn't help US stock or economy but future taxes.

" It’s not that the military ran out of nuclear bombs" This may work but for what excuse for US to use on Vietnam War? Unlike Japan who was stupid enough to attack US  first and dragged US into WW2, US couldn't nuke a country while the native people was fighting for independent just because "We hate Communism and want to liberate native people out of that regime and give them democracy, so we nuke them". What made this different with nazi holocaust ? US would have lost all of the credit in WW2 and WW1 and every other country or rush to USSR side or at least stop being US' allies.

If military might is everything, then US wouldn't get independent in the first place. 

Edited January 24, 2022 by SUZNV

[SUZNV + 1,197]

8 hours ago, surrept33 said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/01/23/russia-ukraine-sanctions-export-controls/

National Security

U.S. threatens use of novel export control to damage Russia’s strategic industries if Moscow invades Ukraine

 

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

 

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software.

 

And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

“This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government,” Dan Wang, a Shanghai-based technology analyst with research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm’s supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

 

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology.

 

“The power of these export controls is we can degrade and atrophy the capacity of these sectors to become a key source of growth for the Russian economy,” said a senior Biden administration official, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

 

On Sunday, the State Department ordered the departure of all family members of U.S. Embassy personnel serving in Kyiv, citing the “threat of Russian military action.” The evacuation comes as the Biden administration weighs sending thousands of U.S. forces, as well as armaments, to the Baltic states and Poland to reinforce NATO, officials said. The officials stressed that no final decision has been taken on possible troop deployments, which were first reported by the New York Times. The United States is not planning to send any additional troops to Ukraine. There are about 200 military trainers in Ukraine. Most are Florida National Guard personnel.

 

The effort to use export controls could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That’s because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

 

“It’s like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. “Other countries will say, ‘Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We’d better find alternatives.’”

 

Russia is vulnerable because it doesn’t produce consumer electronics or chips in large quantities, analysts say. In particular, it doesn’t make the highest-end semiconductors needed for advanced computing, an area dominated by Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, Europe and Japan.

Cutting off the country’s chip imports “would invariably hit the Russian leadership’s high-tech ambitions, whether in artificial intelligence or quantum computing,” said Will Hunt, an analyst with Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

 

The administration has not yet decided whether to restrict the export control to strategic sectors or extend it to everyday devices, officials said. Either way, said Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at the Eurasia Group, “this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country.”

 

The pairing of financial sanctions with export controls would inflict pain immediately and over time. The impact of financial sanctions, which could apply to Russia’s largest banks as well as to civilian aerospace, maritime or emerging tech firms, would probably be felt first, experts say. Banking sanctions in particular probably would drive up Russian inflation and trigger a devaluation of the ruble, they say. Export controls, on the other hand, build over time as the cumulative effect of companies shutting off sales to Russia begins to hurt industrial production.

“If the objective is to impose severe and overwhelming costs on Russia’s economy, the combination of sanctions on major Russian banks and the export control would go a long way towards that, absolutely,” said Kevin Wolf, a former senior Commerce Department official who once headed the agency that implements export controls.

 

If the restrictions are applied broadly, they could also drive up prices for consumer electronics in Russia, analysts said.

The administration says it also may hit Russia with an export ban similar to those against Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. Such a ban, experts say, probably would apply to basic electronics, aircraft parts, telecommunications items and software. But the United States exports relatively little in this area to Russia, so the measure would have limited effect unless other countries impose similar bans of their own.

 

Germany, which is Russia’s largest trading partner in Western Europe and is highly dependent on Russian energy, is in close” discussions with the United States on sanctions, said a German Embassy official, declining to comment further.

 

Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia’s military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence.

If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a “devastating effect,” Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that it has a “rigorous export control system in place … to ensure export control restrictions are followed.”

 

Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules. The United States also has a powerful stick to compel compliance: It could place any scofflaw companies on the Commerce Department Entity List, a blacklist of sorts that effectively bars U.S. firms from selling them their technology.

 

Russian government officials downplayed the potential impact.

The Russian state-owned defense and tech industry conglomerate Rostec said in a statement that while some foreign components are used in civilian products, Russia has begun to make many components on its own. “The possible imposition of additional sanctions will primarily hit the interests of American companies working for export,” Rostec said. “But we have managed and will manage again, albeit not immediately, but very quickly — we have proven this more than once.”

China could also provide an escape valve for Russia, analysts say.

The country is a big supplier of electronics to Russia. In 2020, it accounted for some 70 percent of Russia’s computer and smartphone imports, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Three of the top five smartphone brands in Russia are Chinese, according to market-research firm International Data Corporation.

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, suggested that Beijing would not look kindly on extraterritorial control by the United States. “China is always opposed to any country’s unilateral sanctions and so-called long-arm jurisdiction on other countries based on domestic law,” he said in a statement.

Chinese manufacturers could choose to continue selling to Russia even if they use U.S. technology in their products, and it would be difficult, for instance, to monitor Chinese smartphone sales to Russia, IDC analyst Simon Baker said.

Experts, however, said there are ways to police noncompliance. The Commerce Department often gets tips from firms about rule-breaking competitors. Its investigators scan shipping data. They also get intelligence shared from other U.S. agencies.

If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods.

After the Trump administration applied the foreign direct product rule to Huawei in August 2020, the company’s smartphone sales plummeted. Earlier in 2020, it led the world in such sales. Today, it’s fallen to 10th place, according to IDC.

The most important goal now is deterrence, officials and analysts said, and that means threatening the most severe sanctions — such as severing the largest Russian banks from the U.S. financial system, said Edward Fishman, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Export controls wouldn’t have as immediate an effect, said Fishman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration.

But, he said, they are a good move.

“The United States has no interest in aiding Russia’s technological and industrial capacity,” he said, “so long as Putin is using it to bully neighbors and attack democracy.''

Isabelle Khurshudyan and Mary Ilyushina in Moscow contributed to this report.

For HuaWei, China and chip manufacturer simply got around by reroute the chip buying to another phone branch ( I don't remember the name). HuaWei now is just the empty shell. The only real damage is the Covid19, real estate bubble not google play service is not available in China. 

Current administration doesn't know how to bluff or even have an effective solution. Release the SPR empty threat , even left weapons and equipment behind in Afghan worth 83 billions. He represents the true ability of a  life time career politician in tough time. 

Edited January 24, 2022 by SUZNV

[Hotone + 412]

On 12/4/2021 at 5:13 PM, Boat said:

Russia is the tail that tries to wag the dog. China and Russia together spend less than 1/2 compared to the US military. Yes Russia is champion at propaganda demonstrated here at Peak Oil. If I were You I would stick to BS rather than piss off the air force. Reminds me of a song, something has a hold on you. 
 

https://youtu.be/TCc4Yjri3pc

Yes, Jesus granted the US air superiority in 1945 🤣.  Watch around 1:30 

https://youtu.be/0b2gmcD79vM

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

12 hours ago, surrept33 said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/01/23/russia-ukraine-sanctions-export-controls/

National Security

U.S. threatens use of novel export control to damage Russia’s strategic industries if Moscow invades Ukraine

 

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

 

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software.

 

And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

“This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government,” Dan Wang, a Shanghai-based technology analyst with research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm’s supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

 

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology.

 

“The power of these export controls is we can degrade and atrophy the capacity of these sectors to become a key source of growth for the Russian economy,” said a senior Biden administration official, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

 

On Sunday, the State Department ordered the departure of all family members of U.S. Embassy personnel serving in Kyiv, citing the “threat of Russian military action.” The evacuation comes as the Biden administration weighs sending thousands of U.S. forces, as well as armaments, to the Baltic states and Poland to reinforce NATO, officials said. The officials stressed that no final decision has been taken on possible troop deployments, which were first reported by the New York Times. The United States is not planning to send any additional troops to Ukraine. There are about 200 military trainers in Ukraine. Most are Florida National Guard personnel.

 

The effort to use export controls could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That’s because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

 

“It’s like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. “Other countries will say, ‘Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We’d better find alternatives.’”

 

Russia is vulnerable because it doesn’t produce consumer electronics or chips in large quantities, analysts say. In particular, it doesn’t make the highest-end semiconductors needed for advanced computing, an area dominated by Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, Europe and Japan.

Cutting off the country’s chip imports “would invariably hit the Russian leadership’s high-tech ambitions, whether in artificial intelligence or quantum computing,” said Will Hunt, an analyst with Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

 

The administration has not yet decided whether to restrict the export control to strategic sectors or extend it to everyday devices, officials said. Either way, said Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at the Eurasia Group, “this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country.”

 

The pairing of financial sanctions with export controls would inflict pain immediately and over time. The impact of financial sanctions, which could apply to Russia’s largest banks as well as to civilian aerospace, maritime or emerging tech firms, would probably be felt first, experts say. Banking sanctions in particular probably would drive up Russian inflation and trigger a devaluation of the ruble, they say. Export controls, on the other hand, build over time as the cumulative effect of companies shutting off sales to Russia begins to hurt industrial production.

“If the objective is to impose severe and overwhelming costs on Russia’s economy, the combination of sanctions on major Russian banks and the export control would go a long way towards that, absolutely,” said Kevin Wolf, a former senior Commerce Department official who once headed the agency that implements export controls.

 

If the restrictions are applied broadly, they could also drive up prices for consumer electronics in Russia, analysts said.

The administration says it also may hit Russia with an export ban similar to those against Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. Such a ban, experts say, probably would apply to basic electronics, aircraft parts, telecommunications items and software. But the United States exports relatively little in this area to Russia, so the measure would have limited effect unless other countries impose similar bans of their own.

 

Germany, which is Russia’s largest trading partner in Western Europe and is highly dependent on Russian energy, is in close” discussions with the United States on sanctions, said a German Embassy official, declining to comment further.

 

Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia’s military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence.

If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a “devastating effect,” Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that it has a “rigorous export control system in place … to ensure export control restrictions are followed.”

 

Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules. The United States also has a powerful stick to compel compliance: It could place any scofflaw companies on the Commerce Department Entity List, a blacklist of sorts that effectively bars U.S. firms from selling them their technology.

 

Russian government officials downplayed the potential impact.

The Russian state-owned defense and tech industry conglomerate Rostec said in a statement that while some foreign components are used in civilian products, Russia has begun to make many components on its own. “The possible imposition of additional sanctions will primarily hit the interests of American companies working for export,” Rostec said. “But we have managed and will manage again, albeit not immediately, but very quickly — we have proven this more than once.”

China could also provide an escape valve for Russia, analysts say.

The country is a big supplier of electronics to Russia. In 2020, it accounted for some 70 percent of Russia’s computer and smartphone imports, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Three of the top five smartphone brands in Russia are Chinese, according to market-research firm International Data Corporation.

Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, suggested that Beijing would not look kindly on extraterritorial control by the United States. “China is always opposed to any country’s unilateral sanctions and so-called long-arm jurisdiction on other countries based on domestic law,” he said in a statement.

Chinese manufacturers could choose to continue selling to Russia even if they use U.S. technology in their products, and it would be difficult, for instance, to monitor Chinese smartphone sales to Russia, IDC analyst Simon Baker said.

Experts, however, said there are ways to police noncompliance. The Commerce Department often gets tips from firms about rule-breaking competitors. Its investigators scan shipping data. They also get intelligence shared from other U.S. agencies.

If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods.

After the Trump administration applied the foreign direct product rule to Huawei in August 2020, the company’s smartphone sales plummeted. Earlier in 2020, it led the world in such sales. Today, it’s fallen to 10th place, according to IDC.

The most important goal now is deterrence, officials and analysts said, and that means threatening the most severe sanctions — such as severing the largest Russian banks from the U.S. financial system, said Edward Fishman, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Export controls wouldn’t have as immediate an effect, said Fishman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration.

But, he said, they are a good move.

“The United States has no interest in aiding Russia’s technological and industrial capacity,” he said, “so long as Putin is using it to bully neighbors and attack democracy.''

Isabelle Khurshudyan and Mary Ilyushina in Moscow contributed to this report.

Death throes of a dying hegemony.

[nsdp + 449]

On 1/23/2022 at 9:28 AM, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Aren't those supposed to be invisible to us? Otherwise, we've got a missile for each.

Yes, but the Dutch sent some Eurofighters over the Ukraine/Donbass border yesterday. Today we have :

The USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, along with its strike group and air wing, joined patrolling activities across the Mediterranean Sea on Monday, the first time since the cold war that a full US carrier group has come under Nato command.

Kirby said: “In the event of Nato’s activation of the NRF or a deteriorating security environment, the United States would be in a position to rapidly deploy additional brigade combat teams, logistics, medical, aviation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, transportation and additional capabilities into Europe.”

Any deployment in Europe, he said, “is really about reassuring the eastern flank of Nato” of the US readiness to come to the defence of alliance members. The force would not be deployed in Ukraine, which is not a Nato member. There are currently about 150 US military advisers in the country, and Kirby said there were no plans at present to withdraw them.

Jen Psaki, the White House spokesperson, said the US had “a sacred obligation to support the security of our eastern flank countries”.

“We are talking to them about what their needs are and what security concerns they have. So I wouldn’t say it’s a response to an abrupt moment. It’s a part of an ongoing contingency planning process and discussion,” Psaki said.

Earlier on Monday, Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said the “deteriorating security situation” had driven the military alliance to bolster its “collective defence”.

 

Rising costs of Ukraine gamble could force Russia’s hand

Read more

Denmark is sending a frigate to the Baltic Sea and four F-16 fighter jets to Lithuania. Spain has offered to send a frigate to the Black Sea and Eurofighter planes to Bulgaria. The Netherlands will also send two F-35 warplanes to Bulgaria. Emmanuel Macron has expressed his government’s readiness to send French troops to Romania under Nato command.

 

“Nato will continue to take all necessary measures to protect and defend all allies, including by reinforcing the eastern part of the alliance. We will always respond to any deterioration of our security environment, including through strengthening our collective defence,” Stoltenberg said.

After meetings with the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and her counterparts from Finland and Sweden, Stoltenberg said Nato was also considering “deployment of additional Nato battlegroups” to supplement the four that were deployed to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/24/nato-reinforces-eastern-borders-as-ukraine-tensions-mount

 For those who don't understand, the Harry Truman is a Pacific Fleet carrier and she is not returning to Pearl after refit at Newport News the last two years,  This means we have six carrier groups in the Atlantic, one in the Indian Ocean (THAT CAN STRIKE THE DONAS IN THE REAR) and 4 in the Pacific.  Usual is six in the Pacific. (sometimes one carrier on loan to Indian ocean), One in the Indian Ocean and 4 in the Atlantic/Med. This is the most carriers in the Atlantic/Med since October 1973. 

Sweden is not part of NATO but is coordinating. . Has sent two squadrons of JS-39 Grippen  to Gotland(15 minute flight to Leningrad (going to have to pull some SAMS back).   Putin will have to face being surrounded (Ronald Reagan's group is  based at Yokohama).Japan and Korea have 14 SSK class subs waiting for the Russian Pacific fleet.  that does not include Japan's surface fleet under SEATO.  Looks like Napoleon at Leipzig.

 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

28 minutes ago, nsdp said:

Yes, but the Dutch sent some Eurofighters over the Ukraine/Donbass border yesterday. Today we have :

The USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, along with its strike group and air wing, joined patrolling activities across the Mediterranean Sea on Monday, the first time since the cold war that a full US carrier group has come under Nato command.

Kirby said: “In the event of Nato’s activation of the NRF or a deteriorating security environment, the United States would be in a position to rapidly deploy additional brigade combat teams, logistics, medical, aviation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, transportation and additional capabilities into Europe.”

Any deployment in Europe, he said, “is really about reassuring the eastern flank of Nato” of the US readiness to come to the defence of alliance members. The force would not be deployed in Ukraine, which is not a Nato member. There are currently about 150 US military advisers in the country, and Kirby said there were no plans at present to withdraw them.

Jen Psaki, the White House spokesperson, said the US had “a sacred obligation to support the security of our eastern flank countries”.

“We are talking to them about what their needs are and what security concerns they have. So I wouldn’t say it’s a response to an abrupt moment. It’s a part of an ongoing contingency planning process and discussion,” Psaki said.

Earlier on Monday, Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said the “deteriorating security situation” had driven the military alliance to bolster its “collective defence”.

 

Rising costs of Ukraine gamble could force Russia’s hand

 

Read more

Denmark is sending a frigate to the Baltic Sea and four F-16 fighter jets to Lithuania. Spain has offered to send a frigate to the Black Sea and Eurofighter planes to Bulgaria. The Netherlands will also send two F-35 warplanes to Bulgaria. Emmanuel Macron has expressed his government’s readiness to send French troops to Romania under Nato command.

 

“Nato will continue to take all necessary measures to protect and defend all allies, including by reinforcing the eastern part of the alliance. We will always respond to any deterioration of our security environment, including through strengthening our collective defence,” Stoltenberg said.

After meetings with the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and her counterparts from Finland and Sweden, Stoltenberg said Nato was also considering “deployment of additional Nato battlegroups” to supplement the four that were deployed to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/24/nato-reinforces-eastern-borders-as-ukraine-tensions-mount

 For those who don't understand, the Harry Truman is a Pacific Fleet carrier and she is not returning to Pearl after refit at Newport News the last two years,  This means we have six carrier groups in the Atlantic, one in the Indian Ocean (THAT CAN STRIKE THE DONAS IN THE REAR) and 4 in the Pacific.  Usual is six in the Pacific. (sometimes one carrier on loan to Indian ocean), One in the Indian Ocean and 4 in the Atlantic/Med. This is the most carriers in the Atlantic/Med since October 1973. 

Sweden is not part of NATO but is coordinating. . Has sent two squadrons of JS-39 Grippen  to Gotland(15 minute flight to Leningrad (going to have to pull some SAMS back).   Putin will have to face being surrounded (Ronald Reagan's group is  based at Yokohama).Japan and Korea have 14 SSK class subs waiting for the Russian Pacific fleet.  that does not include Japan's surface fleet under SEATO.  Looks like Napoleon at Leipzig.

 

The carrier is staying in the Med. The bridge over Bosporus near Istanbul is only 57m high, the useless barge won't fit under.

Anywhere else near Russian waters cannot launch planes - steam catapults freeze over. Completely useless barges.

The SAMs are staying where they are, and so are Bastion-P anti-ship batteries. Anything floating in Black Sea is insta-sinkable from Crimea, anything floating in the Baltic from Kaliningrad. Got a missile for every ship, too.

[nsdp + 449]

https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/

On 1/24/2022 at 6:01 PM, Andrei Moutchkine said:

The carrier is staying in the Med. The bridge over Bosporus near Istanbul is only 57m high, the useless barge won't fit under.

Anywhere else near Russian waters cannot launch planes - steam catapults freeze over. Completely useless .

The SAMs are staying where they are, and so are Bastion-P anti-ship batteries. Anything floating in Black Sea is insta-sinkable from Crimea, anything floating in the Baltic from Kaliningrad. Got a missile for every ship, too.

Stupid, that is not the way it is done.  First no one has ever achieved 100% accuracy.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What makes you so sure Kaliningrad will be able to conduct offensive operations. Poland could flatten that before anything else happened while Sweden hits the area from the rear. Kaliningrad is surrounded.  If it attacks anywhere  it should immediately surrender because there will be no resupply  It is like the problem of units in the Donbas being attached from the rear from the carrier in the Indian Ocean.   Is Russia prepared to write off all Russian troops in Syria and the Syrian government(supply lines)?  Black Sea is for submarines not surface ships including Russian surface ships.  Kilos are good but they cannot stay down continuously without snorkeling for  three weeks like the Turkish, Greek, Italian and Spanish subs can.https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/ All of them can launch US/UK/French or German missiles and go home and reload.  That doesn't count 92 US subs or the UK, France or Netherlands.   Russia has too many miles of borders and no one to defend them all or resupply them if some one was there.  Who is going to defend the Arctic coast against the converted Nebraska class subs each with 150 cruise missiles.  Same problem that the Confederacy had, long coast with no one to defend it all.  Union plan was the Anaconda Plan.   Surround the Confederacy and squeeze it to death.  What is Russia's plan for non nuclear defense. You can't be strong every where.

Steam catapults worked for the US, Royal, and Australian navies for years in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan from 1950 to 1953. Don't forget about wrecking the Trans Siberia Rail Road.  That cuts Russia's throat because it will stay cut.  No supplies to or from eastern Russia because you can't defend every meter of line.

"Amateurs study strategy and tactics. Professionals study logisitics. " Omar Bradley.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

6 hours ago, nsdp said:

https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/

Stupid, that is not the way it is done.  First no one has ever achieved 100% accuracy.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What makes you so sure Kaliningrad will be able to conduct offensive operations. Poland could flatten that before anything else happened while Sweden hits the area from the rear. Kaliningrad is surrounded.  If it attacks anywhere  it should immediately surrender because there will be no resupply  It is like the problem of units in the Donbas being attached from the rear from the carrier in the Indian Ocean.   Is Russia prepared to write off all Russian troops in Syria and the Syrian government(supply lines)?  Black Sea is for submarines not surface ships including Russian surface ships.  Kilos are good but they cannot stay down continuously without snorkeling for  three weeks like the Turkish, Greek, Italian and Spanish subs can.https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/ All of them can launch US/UK/French or German missiles and go home and reload.  That doesn't count 92 US subs or the UK, France or Netherlands.   Russia has too many miles of borders and no one to defend them all or resupply them if some one was there.  Who is going to defend the Arctic coast against the converted Nebraska class subs each with 150 cruise missiles.  Same problem that the Confederacy had, long coast with no one to defend it all.  Union plan was the Anaconda Plan.   Surround the Confederacy and squeeze it to death.  What is Russia's plan for non nuclear defense. You can't be strong every where.

Steam catapults worked for the US, Royal, and Australian navies for years in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan from 1950 to 1953. Don't forget about wrecking the Trans Siberia Rail Road.  That cuts Russia's throat because it will stay cut.  No supplies to or from eastern Russia because you can't defend every meter of line.

"Amateurs study strategy and tactics. Professionals study logisitics. " Omar Bradley.

You do realize that average depth of the Baltic is some 50m?

Steam catapults do not work below freezing temps or even close to them.

[frankfurter + 562]

11 hours ago, nsdp said:

https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/

Stupid, that is not the way it is done.  First no one has ever achieved 100% accuracy.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What makes you so sure Kaliningrad will be able to conduct offensive operations. Poland could flatten that before anything else happened while Sweden hits the area from the rear. Kaliningrad is surrounded.  If it attacks anywhere  it should immediately surrender because there will be no resupply  It is like the problem of units in the Donbas being attached from the rear from the carrier in the Indian Ocean.   Is Russia prepared to write off all Russian troops in Syria and the Syrian government(supply lines)?  Black Sea is for submarines not surface ships including Russian surface ships.  Kilos are good but they cannot stay down continuously without snorkeling for  three weeks like the Turkish, Greek, Italian and Spanish subs can.https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/ All of them can launch US/UK/French or German missiles and go home and reload.  That doesn't count 92 US subs or the UK, France or Netherlands.   Russia has too many miles of borders and no one to defend them all or resupply them if some one was there.  Who is going to defend the Arctic coast against the converted Nebraska class subs each with 150 cruise missiles.  Same problem that the Confederacy had, long coast with no one to defend it all.  Union plan was the Anaconda Plan.   Surround the Confederacy and squeeze it to death.  What is Russia's plan for non nuclear defense. You can't be strong every where.

Steam catapults worked for the US, Royal, and Australian navies for years in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan from 1950 to 1953. Don't forget about wrecking the Trans Siberia Rail Road.  That cuts Russia's throat because it will stay cut.  No supplies to or from eastern Russia because you can't defend every meter of line.

"Amateurs study strategy and tactics. Professionals study logisitics. " Omar Bradley.

Whatever your arguments, one fact is clear: you and the other amurcuns, brits, auzzies here have written incessantly about the tactics and logistics of war.  What NONE of you vile miscreants have ever written about is HOW TO ACHIEVE PEACE.  You all have the vile attitude you have a right given to you by some supreme power to rule over others and dictate terms. Why are you all so eager to have war? You think 300 million dead in Europe is some sort of game for your pleasure?  Why can you amurcuns not leave Ukraine and other countries alone? Ukraine has zero resource value for the USSA: its value is as a forward attack base, only. Why would you think anybody would want that position imposed upon them?  You have bombed so many countries since 1949, even the well-schooled amurcun cannot list them all. Vile, purely vile.

[Tomasz + 1,608]

There will be no war - Russia shows a fake armed demonstration and the West is aiming at fake media hysteria so to achieve that even Ukrainian nationalists finally will accept the so-called Minsk agreements and Ukrainian federalization.

Today, at a meeting with Russians in the Normandy format, the Ukrainians finally started talks on this topic seriously enccouraged by the West

The conflict beats Ukraine much harder than Russia economically.

Nobody in Ukraine will simply invest now and NO FDI is granted in coming years.

And Russia? And Russia apart of falling rouble also currently has oil for almost $ 100 and gas for $ 600-800 for 1,000 m3, and she doesn't give a shit about the sanctions of the West who will  impose them only when Russia attacks.

Russia care about western attitute or FDI or money much less when we have a new commodity boom - thats all why Russia is agressive now but not in last few years.

https://stooq.pl/q/?s=^cry&c=2y&t=l&a=lg&b=0

But Russia will not attack Ukraine because time is on her side. 

The West is also faking some strong response because West also knows that it is a fake tug of war with a diplomatic game against Ukraine.

Rather, the point is to silence this conflict finally at minsk agreements.

Some of you really think that the West wants Ukraine and Georgia in NATO at all costs?

Even if the final price was to be the Chinese full entry into the entire Russian Siberia and the Arctic?

 And now the US is already losing to China and that would be suicide on the part of the West.

USA doesnt like German-Russian cooperation? Its still better than russian-chinese alliance.

Putin made his point already clear to Biden: Finlandize Ukraine or we will come and do it ourselves.

Russia absolutely wants a buffer towards NATO and it will make sure that it gets it

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Tomasz

[frankfurter + 562]

To illustrate the dangers of the USSA republic versus a democracy, consider...

Almost Half of Democrats Favor Concentration Camps for Vaccine Refusers

48% of Democrats polled think the government should “fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.”

Such tyranny is possible when a country's constitution permits power to be concentrated into a handful of people colluding together, and the citizens are too drugged-up, dumbed-down, apathetic, indoctrinated, ignorant, lazy, divided by race, colour, gender,,, to give a f*** about anything.

This plandemic was designed and effected by the USSA. It is a genocide.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated

 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Quote

United States got weapons to Ukraine faster than Covid tests to its citizens. Funny how they can happily deliver “lethal aid” anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice but actual aid in our own country takes weeks, months or even years with lots of grumbling about cost.

Its from Twitter.

Quote

Stephen Cohen: 'The idea that we have to fight Russia is now very profitable; everybody will give you money. And if you don’t have a particularly big brain, it’s a good way to pretend you’re an intellectual and get paid for it.

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Tomasz

[frankfurter + 562]

4 hours ago, Tomasz said:

There will be no war - Russia shows a fake armed demonstration and the West is aiming at fake media hysteria so to achieve that even Ukrainian nationalists finally will accept the so-called Minsk agreements and Ukrainian federalization.

Today, at a meeting with Russians in the Normandy format, the Ukrainians finally started talks on this topic seriously enccouraged by the West

The conflict beats Ukraine much harder than Russia economically.

Nobody in Ukraine will simply invest now and NO FDI is granted in coming years.

And Russia? And Russia apart of falling rouble also currently has oil for almost $ 100 and gas for $ 600-800 for 1,000 m3, and she doesn't give a shit about the sanctions of the West who will  impose them only when Russia attacks.

Russia care about western attitute or FDI or money much less when we have a new commodity boom - thats all why Russia is agressive now but not in last few years.

https://stooq.pl/q/?s=^cry&c=2y&t=l&a=lg&b=0

But Russia will not attack Ukraine because time is on her side. 

The West is also faking some strong response because West also knows that it is a fake tug of war with a diplomatic game against Ukraine.

Rather, the point is to silence this conflict finally at minsk agreements.

Some of you really think that the West wants Ukraine and Georgia in NATO at all costs?

Even if the final price was to be the Chinese full entry into the entire Russian Siberia and the Arctic?

 And now the US is already losing to China and that would be suicide on the part of the West.

USA doesnt like German-Russian cooperation? Its still better than russian-chinese alliance.

Putin made his point already clear to Biden: Finlandize Ukraine or we will come and do it ourselves.

Russia absolutely wants a buffer towards NATO and it will make sure that it gets it

 

Agree. Astute observation. But the question is not will we have war, but have we a genuine risk of war? I say indeed we do have a major risk. EU is now in dynamics similar to pre-WW1. The difference is today the EU is controlled and pushed by the Zionists who control/push the USSA. Ukraine was a democracy, until Nuland led the USSA colour revolution to push Ukraine into a chaotic state. Why?  To ensure control over EU. The USSA MUST have control over EU, lest it be lost permanently to the Russian sphere, which is now becoming the Sino-Russo sphere. A non-aligned EU weakens the USSA greatly; the USSA cannot stand on its own, it must have AUKUS and other mobs. By creating a real fear of war, where the EU is hairline close to the prospect of true devastation, the EU is brought to heel by fear. The old tactic of divide and conquer is working very well for the Zionists against the EU. Divide by races, ideology, religion, wealth. Conquer by imposing unelected institutions of the USSA Fed, the ECB, NATO, crushing taxes. What can go wrong? Plenty. WW1 was ignited unintentionally by a lone assassin. Some other unintended event can easily ignite another war; such as a failure of a semiconductor.  Vile.

Edited January 27, 2022 by frankfurter
typos

[Boat + 1,324]

On 1/23/2022 at 11:38 PM, frankfurter said:

Thanks for posting this.

For those who think this is a winning strategy, please raise your hands.

 

I haven’t talked specific trade elements but ending trade with Russia as an overall strategy is good for both countries. There is less to disagree with if there is less involvement. Unlike border hype remember there is major firepower held by both sides that has over 1,300 miles of range coming from a host of sources. Troops, tanks etc are a fodder smoke screen in todays battle field. If you want war you better move troops out of the battle area because they gonna poof quick. Putin is not going to get his pipeline and a military disengagement. The brilliant Putin did an oops with this theatrical display

[Boat + 1,324]

7 hours ago, frankfurter said:

Agree. Astute observation. But the question is not will we have war, but have we a genuine risk of war? I say indeed we do have a major risk. EU is now in dynamics similar to pre-WW1. The difference is today the EU is controlled and pushed by the Zionists who control/push the USSA. Ukraine was a democracy, until Nuland led the USSA colour revolution to push Ukraine into a chaotic state. Why?  To ensure control over EU. The USSA MUST have control over EU, lest it be lost permanently to the Russian sphere, which is now becoming the Sino-Russo sphere. A non-aligned EU weakens the USSA greatly; the USSA cannot stand on its own, it must have AUKUS and other mobs. By creating a real fear of war, where the EU is hairline close to the prospect of true devastation, the EU is brought to heel by fear. The old tactic of divide and conquer is working very well for the Zionists against the EU. Divide by races, ideology, religion, wealth. Conquer by imposing unelected institutions of the USSA Fed, the ECB, NATO, crushing taxes. What can go wrong? Plenty. WW1 was ignited unintentionally by a lone assassin. Some other unintended event can easily ignite another war; such as a failure of a semiconductor.  Vile.

Lol at the US can’t stand on their own. Kinda false scenario since it’s the US supporting Europe. I thought the Republicans were the Zionists and the war starters. It’s the Dems who Putin push that use anti war to get elected. You guys kinda twist and turn US politics. It shows you don’t follow US politics. 
 

[Boat + 1,324]

PS, the US participates in propionate response. It’s not real war. It just means we will hurt you more than your actions hurt us. We don’t land grab. We have no goal to conquer. But for example you manipulate FF prices over the decades at least the Dems will make FF less relevant. The Republicans can’t buy into that reasoning because they have the oil oligarchs to deal with but the black man Obama will eventually take FF out of most transportation striking a blow to Russia and the Middle East. This is a conspiracy theory of course so pay no mind. Lol

The Ukraine will be a proportionate response war. Whatever Putin does will be responded to in kind, just more devastating. Y’all call that weak, you call it losing. Y’all dream up lots of propaganda. But at the end of the day the US is still the Alfa dog and our allies still look to us. 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Boat

[SUZNV + 1,197]

7 hours ago, frankfurter said:

Agree. Astute observation. But the question is not will we have war, but have we a genuine risk of war? I say indeed we do have a major risk. EU is now in dynamics similar to pre-WW1. The difference is today the EU is controlled and pushed by the Zionists who control/push the USSA. Ukraine was a democracy, until Nuland led the USSA colour revolution to push Ukraine into a chaotic state. Why?  To ensure control over EU. The USSA MUST have control over EU, lest it be lost permanently to the Russian sphere, which is now becoming the Sino-Russo sphere. A non-aligned EU weakens the USSA greatly; the USSA cannot stand on its own, it must have AUKUS and other mobs. By creating a real fear of war, where the EU is hairline close to the prospect of true devastation, the EU is brought to heel by fear. The old tactic of divide and conquer is working very well for the Zionists against the EU. Divide by races, ideology, religion, wealth. Conquer by imposing unelected institutions of the USSA Fed, the ECB, NATO, crushing taxes. What can go wrong? Plenty. WW1 was ignited unintentionally by a lone assassin. Some other unintended event can easily ignite another war; such as a failure of a semiconductor.  Vile.

You have to ask yourself what is the EU have to put on the table that a  US (normal citizens or politicians/elites) need before going too far into conspiracy theory. 

1 It was both Western and Eastern Europe that persuaded Clinton in the normalization in Russia's Yeltsin era. Both of them didn't trust Russia in the first place. 

2 Export Socialism/Liberalism to US so big centralized government leaning Presidents like Clinton, Obama, Biden and many Dems politicians can use as example to gather votes from US citizens. Even most of the Rep nowadays are not really Conservatives because USD is reserve currency by Bretten Wood and tied to oil by Nixon in 1970s . The longer politicians in politics, the more power hungry they are and the bigger the governments.

This is why US people chose Trump in 2016 despite mainstream narrative over both sides of careered politicians, which mean they didn't want this situation they are in either. Do EU really love his friendliness with Putin and  his MYOB attitude to bring jobs back to the US and reduce troops in EU? No. 

US outsourced their commercial manufacturing was the main reasons for Western Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China economy miracles. Instead of manufacturing competition which US clearly had the advantage with their manufacturing in tact in WW1 and WW2. US move up to more R&D tech and patterns rather than  manufacturing which made more US people lack behind and they want "liberalism".

AUKUS is the consequence of France screwed up their contracts  and tried milking Australian gov budget (Australia people tax money): longer time to deliver, more expensive, just like China in their projects in other developing countries. This prove the manufacturing capability of the US and UK are better than France. Canada and NZ were furious for being left out, just like EU but both of them are too progressive and depend on Australia or US to protect their countries. 

How do the "Zionists" control Western now if Western people didn't vote for these politicians? Who voted for joining more welfare, higher tax, more regulations style and common EU and ECB and were proud of their democracy/health care over US people  in good time ? Higher student loan, higher healthcare, less regulations and don't trust Government for retirement made US people are more commitment to work longer hours and upgrade skills to secure their jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_European_Unionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_European_Union

In the information technology/internet era, EU could have move up higher as well and not depending on physical resources but because of its tax/regulation/welfare/ monetary policies structures that made EU entrepreneurs afraid to taking risk and keeping the manufacturing is the best way to keep the "equality". Democracy gave EU no excuse to blame others. Career politicians use welfare to trap EU in the zoo and US was half way inside but thanks to the US states decentralized system they still can choose to fully enter the welfare zoo or not. 

 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

On 1/26/2022 at 3:16 AM, nsdp said:

https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/

Stupid, that is not the way it is done.  First no one has ever achieved 100% accuracy.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. What makes you so sure Kaliningrad will be able to conduct offensive operations. Poland could flatten that before anything else happened while Sweden hits the area from the rear. Kaliningrad is surrounded.  If it attacks anywhere  it should immediately surrender because there will be no resupply  It is like the problem of units in the Donbas being attached from the rear from the carrier in the Indian Ocean.   Is Russia prepared to write off all Russian troops in Syria and the Syrian government(supply lines)?  Black Sea is for submarines not surface ships including Russian surface ships.  Kilos are good but they cannot stay down continuously without snorkeling for  three weeks like the Turkish, Greek, Italian and Spanish subs can.https://www.naval-technology.com/projects/type_212/ All of them can launch US/UK/French or German missiles and go home and reload.  That doesn't count 92 US subs or the UK, France or Netherlands.   Russia has too many miles of borders and no one to defend them all or resupply them if some one was there.  Who is going to defend the Arctic coast against the converted Nebraska class subs each with 150 cruise missiles.  Same problem that the Confederacy had, long coast with no one to defend it all.  Union plan was the Anaconda Plan.   Surround the Confederacy and squeeze it to death.  What is Russia's plan for non nuclear defense. You can't be strong every where.

Steam catapults worked for the US, Royal, and Australian navies for years in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan from 1950 to 1953. Don't forget about wrecking the Trans Siberia Rail Road.  That cuts Russia's throat because it will stay cut.  No supplies to or from eastern Russia because you can't defend every meter of line.

"Amateurs study strategy and tactics. Professionals study logisitics. " Omar Bradley.

The antiship missiles should be close to 100% accurate, they've got dedicated satellite guidance.

You never ever have more than 4 CSGs out at sea. (It is just 3 now)

https://worldview.stratfor.com/topic/tracking-us-naval-power

Presumably, this is how many sane sailors you can find?

The Emperor got no clothes.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Andrei Moutchkine

[Tomasz + 1,608]

This article says it all.

The West and Russia play bad and good policemen against the Ukrainians

Objective

-NATO cannot officially resign from its treaty provisions under pressure from Russia because then there is practically no NATO as an organization, since it can be forced to disregard its own treaty provisions by a simple military demonstration

-The West, on the other hand, speaks very clearly to Ukraine itself - you know you must finally understand that we cannot and absolutely will not defend you militarily because it is what it is

-its high time to start to implement the Minsk agreements to achieve finally peace because Russia as a richer and more powerful country, sooner or later will destroy you economically by expensive oil, expensive coal, and very expensive gas

The proverb says that before the fat one loses weight, the skinny one dies

When Ukraine finally starts implementing the agreements, it will turn out that it is not the West as a whole that gives way to Putin's demands, that is, it is not some kind of new Munich 1938 which is not popular policy nowadays , but thats just  the Ukrainians simply by sovereign decision does not want to join the Union and NATO any longer

Quote

 

Why the Minsk agreements will not become peaceful in any way

The countries of the "Normandy format" returned to the discussion of the Minsk agreements. There is nothing new and sensational in this fact itself, but the context has changed: for the first time, the West is almost openly putting pressure on Kiev in the matter of following the agreements. However, this does not guarantee the success of the negotiations. “Kommersant” figured out why the seemingly simple plan to end the war in the Donbass is almost impossible.

US President Joe Biden and his administration officials have recently appeared more interested in Ukraine's implementation of the Minsk agreements than Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky

US President Joe Biden and his administration officials have recently appeared more interested in Ukraine's implementation of the Minsk agreements than Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky

If you want Minsk, prepare for war

The meeting of political advisers to the leaders of the Normandy Format countries in Paris on January 26 is news from the category of scarce news. The negotiations broke down in August, and since then the situation around the Donbass and Ukraine in general has only heated up .

Reports of a concentration of Russian troops near the borders of a neighboring country, satellite images of field camps set up outweighed Moscow's assurances that it was not going to attack Ukraine. Russia counterattacked with statements that Kiev could take a forceful solution to the problem of uncontrolled territories.

The restart of the Normandy Format had an antipyretic effect . Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the President of Ukraine, called it a "powerful signal", announced that Kiev was ready to discuss every point of the Minsk agreements, and expressed hope for a constructive dialogue. Moscow, however, refrained from making any predictions about the meeting.

Coincidentally or not, this time the Paris talks will be held on the same day as the first meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group this year to resolve the situation in eastern Ukraine. This means that if compromises are reached, political advisers will be able to promptly bring them to the representatives of the parties in the contact group.

According to Kommersant's information, Kiev intended to submit for discussion by its Quartet colleagues its finalized draft of the so-called key clusters for the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

The term "clusters" appeared in negotiations at the end of 2020 at the suggestion of Germany and France. To move forward the stalled negotiation process, Berlin and Paris proposed dividing the “Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements” into clusters, agreeing them within the “Normandy Four” and then lowering them to the level of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) to resolve the situation in eastern Ukraine to prepare on their basis of the final peace settlement plan. But the process of discussing clusters by the spring of 2021 also reached an impasse .

As a result, according to an informed interlocutor of Kommersant, during a telephone conversation between Messrs. Yermak and Kozak (Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation) in the first half of January, the latter insisted that it was necessary not to multiply documents, but to discuss what had been lying for a long time. on the table, that is, the Minsk agreements.

Just to the point of impossibility

Moscow, Kommersant's interlocutors participating in the negotiation process in Russian government agencies, are assured that it has a position that it has not changed since the Minsk agreements appeared: they should be implemented to the point and in the form in which they were signed. And it is up to Kiev and Donbass to do this.

The Minsk agreements are a package of documents. But Russia always has only one in mind: "A set of measures to implement the Minsk agreements."

This is important because the first of them, the protocol agreed on September 5, 2014, never specifies who the contracting parties in the conflict are. For example, its first paragraph reads: "Ensure an immediate bilateral cessation of the use of weapons," but to whom this refers is not deciphered.

A clear indication of this appeared only in the “Package of Measures…”, agreed in February 2015. It already clearly states that the Ukrainian side and the armed formations of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions (ORDLO) should withdraw their forces. The negotiation subjectivity of CADLO is also fixed in other points.

The special status of Donbass within Ukraine should be coordinated with Donetsk and Luhansk, the issue of adopting a law on local self-government in ORDLO and holding local elections there should be resolved according to the same scheme. The restoration by Kiev of control over the segment of the border with Russia, which was lost in 2014, should again take place “in consultations and in agreement” with representatives of ORDLO within the framework of the TCG.

Moscow considers the “Package of Measures…” its important diplomatic victory for two reasons. Although Russia's participation in the Donbass conflict is obvious, and it does not hide its support for the unrecognized DPR and LPR, there are no documents fixing any obligations of the Russian side regarding the settlement. Secondly, the “Complex of Measures…” gained the weight of an international document — it was approved by the UN Security Council Resolution No. 2202 of February 17, 2015.

If the “Complex of Measures…” was signed with the approval of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, which the current Ukrainian government constantly blames him for, then in 2019 Volodymyr Zelensky officially agreed with this document.

At the Paris summit in the Normandy format in December 2019, he, together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French and Russian Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin, approved the final document of the meeting, which states that the Minsk agreements are the basis of the work of the Normandy format.

Despite this, in the past two years, Kiev has repeatedly raised the issue of the need to revise the document or at least change the sequence of implementation of its points. In particular, to swap the holding of local elections in ODRLO and the restoration of control over the border (according to the Minsk agreements, first elections, and then control).

The Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry did not even agree to discuss this. The meaning of the sequence of points is to first create a government recognized by Kiev in the ODRLO, and with its own power component in the form of a people's militia, and only then transfer the border to the disposal of the central government.

“The sequence of points was scrupulously worked out. A smooth transition is prescribed so that one step does not anticipate another, but provides preparation and prerequisites for moving forward, ”one of the Russian negotiators explained to Kommersant.

For Kiev, the implementation of the "Complex of Measures ..." is a big problem.

Any movement forward can be perceived as a capitulation by the passionate and nationalist part of Ukrainian society, which is easy to rise to the Maidan, which in recent years has been repeatedly demonstrated by noisy actions under the walls of the office of the head of state. The team of Mr. Zelensky and himself take these sentiments into account. This, among other things, explains the change that happened to the Ukrainian leader less than a year after he was elected president. He came to power in the guise of a peacemaker and promised to bring a speedy and lasting peace. But pretty soon he became a "hawk".

Abroad will not help

It is more difficult and more painful to move from hawkish positions in the opposite direction than vice versa: any step in this direction is read as a surrender of positions. This happened with the recent withdrawal from the Verkhovna Rada of the bill "On the state policy of the transitional period", which, among other things, assumed the legislative consolidation of the status of an "aggressor state" for Russia. The bill, severely criticized by Moscow, was withdrawn by the Ukrainian government on Monday, on the eve of the Paris meeting of the Normans, thus fulfilling the Russian demand.

Kiev has previously refused such concessions. But now the context has changed. Moscow has raised the stakes sharply, and not just through a show of force. In February, the State Duma is preparing to consider an appeal from the Communist Party faction to President Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the DNR and LNR. The signal can be deciphered as follows: if Russia continues to be called a party to the conflict and demand from it the implementation of the Minsk agreements, which, among other things, stipulate the granting of a special status to Donbass, then it can fulfill them, granting such a status at its discretion.

But the point here is not only Moscow's intransigence. The West has actively joined the process.

On the one hand, the US and the EU threaten Russia with consequences if it encroaches on the territorial integrity of Ukraine or uses force against its neighbor, but on the other hand, they are playing a diplomatic game and are already clearly trying to influence Kiev on the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke openly about this. He called the document the only way to resolve the conflict and spoke out against its revision.

Kommersant's diplomatic interlocutors confirm that Washington is working with the Ukrainian authorities to move the negotiations forward. Insiders even make cautious assumptions that things may come to a substantive discussion of the autonomy of Donbass.

It is difficult to perceive the negotiations on Donbass separately from the discussion between Russia and the West on security guarantees launched against the backdrop of the expectation of a real big war. Although it concerns security in the broadest sense, the Ukrainian issue is not in last place. For Moscow, the maximum program is to permanently close Ukraine's road to NATO. Moreover, the alliance itself must guarantee this.

But such a concession would be too humiliating for the West and does not look very realistic. Another thing is the reintegration of Donbass into Ukraine on special conditions prescribed in the Minsk agreements. Formally, neither the US, nor the EU, nor NATO concedes anything here: the Ukrainian authorities are responsible for themselves. But it is clear that in this scenario, ORDLO will become a serious obstacle on the way of Kiev to the Euro-Atlantic structures, which may suit Russia. It remains to explain to the Ukrainian authorities why they need to agree to everything.

 

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5182121

Edited January 27, 2022 by Tomasz