JohnDe
La dolce vita
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Germany outright disagreed with the SWIFT option
Germany outright disagreed with the SWIFT optionAdd to that their reluctance to exclude Russia from SWIFT, although Italy has now agreed and Germany is considering it.
Ah yes, Cypress, that bastion of ethical banking:Looks like now Cyprus is also on board with SWIFT ban.
That leaves Hungary +/- Germany.
Putin would've already known beforehand about all of these retaliation measures being imposed such as sanctions, the seizing of assets, freezing bank accounts/credit facilities etc. so he would have planned/prepared for this. I think Biden has underestimated Putin to be honest.
A complete turnaround, Europe agrees to cut off Russia from Swift and Germany is sending lethal military supplies to Ukraine. Pity this was not done a bit earlier as the supplies will now be difficult to distribute.Germany outright disagreed with the SWIFT option
A complete turnaround, Europe agrees to cut off Russia from Swift and Germany is sending lethal military supplies to Ukraine. Pity this was not done a bit earlier as the supplies will now be difficult to distribute.
Germany to hike military spending in face of Russian menace
The German government has promised to increase military spending after defence chiefs laid bare the “extremely limited” resources of Europe’s biggest economy in helping to push back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner said it was time for a “turning point” in German defence investment, long a target of criticism by Western allies.
“I worry that we have neglected the armed forces so much in the past that it can’t completely fulfil its duties,” he said.
“Falling defence spending no longer fits with the times.”
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a former defence minister under Angela Merkel, had earlier admitted Berlin was guilty of “historical failure” in not bolstering its military.
She said Germany had forgotten lessons from the past that “negotiation always comes first, but we have to be militarily strong enough to make non-negotiation not an option for the other side”.
“I’m so angry at ourselves for our historical failure. After Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin,” Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said, referring to incursions carried out by Russia while Mrs Merkel was in power.
Her outburst came as the chief of the German land army, Alfons Mais, wrote that “the options we can offer to politicians to support (NATO) are extremely limited”.
The Bundeswehr (military) “is more or less bare”, he wrote.
Western allies had “seen it coming and were not in the position to come through with our arguments, to draw the lessons from the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and to implement them”, the commander said.
“NATO territory is not directly threatened yet, even if our partners in the east feel the constantly growing pressure,” he said.
Mr Mais said it was high time to bolster the army.
“When if not now is the time to … rebuild, otherwise we will not be able to carry out our constitutional mission or our obligations to our allies with any prospect of success,” he said.
Germany’s dark past has nurtured a strong pacifist tradition, and it has often been criticised by partners for not pulling its weight in tackling crisis hot spots.
Defence officials have over the years repeatedly sounded the alarm over the army’s equipment woes – a litany of disrepair plaguing fighter planes, tanks, helicopters and ships.
At the end of 2017 all the country’s submarines were in dry dock for repairs while for some of the following year none of the air force’s A400M transport planes were airworthy.
Russia’s invasion may well force changes in priorities, with the Bundestag’s armed forces commissioner Eva Hoegl saying the army may have to switch from focusing on foreign missions to “domestic and allied (NATO) defence”.
She too admitted the Bundeswehr’s “standing-start capability is not what it should be”.
AFP
Will be very interesting to see how history judges thisA complete turnaround, Europe agrees to cut off Russia from Swift and Germany is sending lethal military supplies to Ukraine. Pity this was not done a bit earlier as the supplies will now be difficult to distribute.
Germany has been a long time opponent of allowing Ukraine to join NATOThere are 9 countries close to & around Ukraine that in the past 10-15 year's have joined NATO where military bases have been set up in as a deterrent/threat to Russia - the only country still missing from this region is Ukraine itself - reason why the US & NATO really wanted to get Ukraine added to NATO - that way Russia would be completely circled from the south west to the north west by NATO/US alliance countries.
So Putin feels threatened by NATO & the West as he sees this as provocation at his door step so to speak - imagine Russia doing the same & circling America - would America just sit back & let it happen !?!? Surely not.
Putin decided to take matters into his hand as a result & try to re-claim Ukraine as the jigsaw puzzle country Russia couldn't afford to let NATO take control of.
Also, the US simply don't want Russia supplying oil & gas to Europe - can't have Russia being close to Europe supplying much needed gas to them !? that is too kind of them to do so helping out Europe in this way.
So another reason for the unfortunate escalation of Ukraine crisis that we see.
I hate war and unfortunately mankind hasn't learnt anything from previous war's - there are no winner's in war ever just misery & devastation. It's quite terrible & sad to see that mankind can't live peacefully together.
We really are a stupid species when you look at history & repeated mistakes we continually make thinking agression & war is the solution.
Germany has been a long time opponent of allowing Ukraine to join NATO
NATO Won’t Let Ukraine Join Soon. Here’s Why.
Ukraine, with Russian troops on its borders, is pressing for membership. But President Biden and European leaders are not ready for that step.
The tense talks this week among the United States, Russia and European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have made one thing clear: While the Biden administration insists it will not allow Moscow to quash Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO, it has no immediate plans to help bring the former Soviet republic into the alliance.
If Ukraine were a NATO member, the alliance would be obligated to defend it against Russia and other adversaries. U.S. officials say they will not appease President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia by undermining a policy enshrined in NATO’s original 1949 treaty that grants any European nation the right to ask to join.
“Together, the United States and our NATO allies made clear we will not slam the door shut on NATO’s open door policy — a policy that has always been central to the NATO alliance,” Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, said on Wednesday.
But France and Germany have in the past opposed Ukraine’s inclusion, and other European members are wary — a deal breaker for an alliance that grants membership only by unanimous consent. American and Russian leaders know this. With Russian troops amassed on Ukraine’s eastern border, some current and former American and European officials say Mr. Putin might just be raising the NATO issue as a pretext for an invasion.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has suggested that Mr. Putin is trying to distract from more urgent matters. “Everybody’s talking about NATO expansion,” Mr. McFaul said on a podcast by the Center for a New American Security that was released on Tuesday. “Suddenly, we’re debating this issue that wasn’t even an issue. That’s a great advantage to him.”
Like European leaders, President Biden remains uninterested in Ukrainian membership in NATO. Here are four reasons.
Biden has grown skeptical of expanding U.S. military commitments.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Biden successfully urged NATO to accept Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as member states in the late 1990s. The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, Mr. Biden said that turning the former Cold War adversaries into allies would mark the “beginning of another 50 years of peace” for Europe. He added that the move would right a “historical injustice” perpetrated by Stalin.
But over the course of two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, experts said, Mr. Biden’s fervor for expanding NATO cooled considerably. In 2004, seven Eastern European countries joined the alliance, and in 2008, President George W. Bush pushed NATO to issue a declaration that Ukraine and Georgia would become members in the future despite reservations from U.S. intelligence agencies. However, the alliance has never offered either country a formal action plan to join, a necessary step for them to do so.
As recently as June, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told senators that “we support Ukraine membership in NATO.” Mr. Biden, however, has been far more circumspect in his public comments and “has soft-pedaled talk of extending NATO membership to Ukraine,” two foreign policy scholars, Joshua Shifrinson and Stephen Wertheim, wrote in September in Foreign Affairs.
Editors’ Picks
In 2014, as vice president, Mr. Biden told officials in Ukraine during a visit there that any U.S. military support would be small, if given at all, according to a biography of Mr. Biden by Evan Osnos, a New Yorker writer who was on the trip. Russia had just invaded and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and Ukrainian officials were unhappy with Mr. Biden’s message.
“We no longer think in Cold War terms,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Osnos, adding that “there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.”
Last June, Mr. Biden told journalists at NATO headquarters in Brussels that “school is out on that question” when asked whether Ukraine could join the alliance.
Biden wants Ukraine to improve its political and legal systems.
To meet one of the three main criteria for entry into NATO, a European nation must demonstrate a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law. While Ukrainian leaders say they have met that threshold, some American and European officials argue otherwise.
In a 2020 analysis, Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index, lower than any NATO nation.
Officials in European nations with stronger liberal governance — notably in Sweden and Finland — have also floated the possibility of joining NATO, despite years of determined nonalignment. That is a discussion “we are ready to do,” Victoria J. Nuland, the State Department’s under secretary for political affairs, told journalists on Tuesday. “Obviously, they are longtime, established, stable democracies.”
She signaled that might not be the case with Ukraine. “That conversation would be slightly different than it is with countries that are making the transition to democratic systems and dealing with intensive problems of corruption and economic reform and democratic stability, etc.,” Ms. Nuland said.
Her comments echoed those of Mr. Biden on his 2014 visit to Ukraine. “To be very blunt about it, and this is a delicate thing to say to a group of leaders in their house of parliament, but you have to fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system right now,” Mr. Biden told Ukrainian officials then.
Some Western officials also question whether Ukraine could meet a second set of criteria: contributing to the collective defense of NATO nations. But Ukraine sent troops to the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There are steps that Ukraine needs to take,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in September after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with Mr. Biden in the Oval Office. “They’re very familiar with these: efforts to advance rule of law reforms, modernize its defense sector and expand economic growth.”
NATO wants to avoid greater Russian hostility.
After annexing Crimea, Mr. Putin invaded eastern Ukraine and gave military aid to a separatist insurgency there. He did something similar in Georgia in 2008. The message has been clear: If these two nations join NATO, the United States and European countries will have to grapple directly with ongoing Russian-fueled conflicts.
Russia could also impose other costs on Europe, such as withholding gas exports. And Germany and many other NATO nations prefer to choose their battles with Russia, given its proximity and Mr. Putin’s aggressive nature. They know he and other Russian officials are obsessed with Ukraine.
Given all that, Ukraine would almost certainly be unable to meet the third main criterion to join NATO: approval from all 30 members.
“The principal objection would be: Does such a move actually contribute to the stability in Europe, or would it contribute to destabilization?” said Douglas E. Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “I think it’s indisputable there wouldn’t be consensus among the 30 members, even though all allies agree that Ukraine has the right to aspire to become a NATO member.”
Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, said that even in the 1990s, when NATO enlargement was first proposed, many prominent American strategists opposed it for this reason. “That was the concern all along — it wouldn’t be easy to do this in a way that wouldn’t threaten Russia,” he said.
Ukrainian leaders have waffled on NATO membership.
Ukrainian leaders have not always pushed hard to join NATO, and that has shaped the American approach.
Former President Viktor Yushchenko wanted entry into the alliance, but Ukrainians became more reluctant after Russia invaded Georgia. His successor, Viktor Yanukovych, dropped any drive for membership and promoted closer ties with Russia, even agreeing to allow Moscow to continue leasing a Black Sea naval port in Crimea.
During the Obama administration, American officials encouraged Ukraine to sign a formal association agreement with the European Union rather than try to join NATO. Mr. Putin pressured Mr. Yanukovych to reject the agreement, which led to the Euromaidan protests in 2013 that eventually ousted Mr. Yanukovych.
“A lot of the U.S. policy has been quite reactive due to circumstances,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution who was a senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council under President Donald J. Trump. “It has also changed due to changes in Ukraine itself toward this.”
“By now, you’ve got much more sentiment in Ukraine for joining NATO,” she added.
Mr. Zelensky has pressed Mr. Biden repeatedly on membership, including during his visit to the White House in September. “I would like to discuss with President Biden here his vision, his government’s vision of Ukraine’s chances to join NATO and the time frame for this accession, if it is possible,” he said as he sat next to Mr. Biden.
Mr. Biden blew past those comments without responding.
Could easily encircle part of it. Flush with success maybe Putin will be silly enough to want Alaska back. Soon, with climate change, he can invade Alaska by rowboat.imagine Russia doing the same & circling America - would America just sit back & let it happen !?!? Surely not.
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