RIGZONE
"Gazprom Suspends Gas Supplies to Orsted"
by Andreas Exarheas | Rigzone Staff
Wednesday, June 01, 2022
Gazprom has announced that it has completely suspended gas supplies to Denmark’s Orsted Salg & Service A/S “due to failure to pay in Rubles”.
The announcement was made on the company’s Twitter page and included a link to a press release on the Gazprom website, although Rigzone is currently not able to access Gazprom’s site and has not been able to for some time.
In a statement posted on its website on Tuesday, Ørsted announced that Gazprom Export had informed Ørsted that the company would halt the supply of gas to Ørsted on June 1, 2022, at 6:00 CEST.
“At Ørsted, we stand firm in our refusal to pay in Rubles, and we’ve been preparing for this scenario, so we still expect to be able to supply gas to our customers,” Mads Nipper, the group president and CEO of Ørsted, said in the statement.
“The situation underpins the need of the EU becoming independent of Russian gas by accelerating the build-out of renewable energy,” Nipper added in the statement.
In a statement posted on its website on May 30, Ørsted revealed that it had repeatedly informed Gazprom Export that it would not pay for gas supplies in Rubles.
The company warned in the statement that there was a risk that Gazprom Export would stop supplying gas to Ørsted.
“Since there is no gas pipeline going directly from Russia to Denmark, Russia will not be able to directly cut off the gas supplies to Denmark, and it will thus still be possible for Denmark to get gas,” Ørsted said in the statement.
“However, this means that the gas for Denmark must, to a larger extent, be purchased on the European gas market."
"We expect this to be possible,” Ørsted added.
The company outlined in the statement that it had been preparing for this scenario to minimize the risk of its gas customers, which it pointed out are primarily “major” companies in Denmark and Sweden, experiencing shortfalls in gas supplies.
“Ørsted has storage capacity in e.g. Denmark and Germany, and we are currently filling up these storage facilities to secure gas supplies to our customers and contribute to the market’s security of supply,” Ørsted said.
“We are in ongoing dialogue with the authorities about potential scenarios, and we trust that the authorities, who have the overall overview of the supply situation in Denmark, are prepared for the situation."
"We will remain in close dialogue with the authorities regarding the situation,” the company added.
Ørsted outlined in the statement that a potential halt of gas supplies by Gazprom Export did not change its financial outlook for the 2022 financial year or the expected investment level announced for 2022 and did not change its strategic ambition and long-term financial guidance.
The company highlighted that, in the first quarter, it reduced the overall hedge level for its Gazprom Export contract to balance the risk against a scenario where the supply of Russian gas is disrupted.
Ørsted has previously announced that it will donate all 2022 net profits, if any, after hedges and tax from the Gazprom Export contract to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
On April 1, Ørsted confirmed that it had received a demand from Gazprom Export to pay for gas supplies in Rubles.
In a company statement at the time, Ørsted said it had no intention of paying in Rubles.
In a company statement back in March, Ørsted highlighted that it had a long-term take-or-pay gas purchase contract with Gazprom Export.
The contract was entered into in 2006 and expires according to its terms in 2030, Ørsted highlighted at the time.
The company revealed that the contract could not be terminated at that point in time but said it would not be extended.
A long term take-or-pay contract was the industry standard for procuring gas at the time of signing, Ørsted noted in the statement.
In February, Ørsted said the Russian aggression goes against everything that Ørsted stands for.
As a consequence of the development, Ørsted outlined that its management had undertaken a range of measures, including stopping all sourcing of biomass and coal for its power stations from Russia, not entering into new contracts with Russian companies, making sure that no direct Ørsted suppliers for the build-out of renewable energy are Russian.
In a statement posted on its Twitter page on Tuesday, Gazprom announced that it had completely suspended gas supplies to Netherlands’ GasTerra B.V. “due to failure to pay in Rubles”.
In a statement posted on its website on Monday, GasTerra said it had decided not to comply with Gazprom’s “one-sided payment requirements”.
In a market note sent to Rigzone in April, Rystad Energy analysts Kaushal Ramesh and Nikoline Bromander noted that Russia had fired the first shot back at the West with a gas embargo on Poland and Bulgaria.
https://www.rigzone.com/news/gazprom_su ... 0-article/
RUSSIA
Re: RUSSIA
BUSINESS INSIDER
"Russia's Gazprom says it's cutting off some natural gas to Germany after Shell refused to pay for it in rubles"
htan@insider.com (Huileng Tan)
1 JUNE 2022
Gazprom said it would halt its natural-gas supply to Shell, which supplies Germany.
The suspension from June 1 is due to Shell's refusal to pay for supplies in rubles, Gazprom said.
On March 31, Russian President Putin demanded natural gas payments be made in rubles.
Ratings agency S&P Global has downgraded a slew of companies since the start of the war in Ukraine.
This week, the agency cut Russia's sovereign rating deep into junk as sanctions have slammed its economy.
The agency said there are already 30 corporates that have tumbled into junk territory as a direct result of the war.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has come with a heavy price for the government.
Western sanctions have isolated it from the international financial system and choked off demand for many of its key exports.
Sanctions have cut off Russia's access to much of its foreign reserves, threatening to plunge the country into default as it could struggle to meet its foreign debt payments.
The ruble has plummeted to record lows and the country's stock market has been paralyzed for weeks.
S&P Global this week cut Russia's credit rating to "CC", which it defines as "default imminent with little prospect for recovery."
Four years ago, almost to the day, the agency awarded Russia an investment-grade "BBB-" rating.
It's not just the government that will struggle to raise capital on the global market.
Sanctions have thrown the future of many of its biggest companies into doubt.
S&P Global said this week it had made 121 changes to the ratings of companies that cited the Russia-Ukraine war, rising energy prices, or both as reasons.
Of that total, 77 were Russian.
"In terms of creditworthiness, the Russian-Ukraine conflict has had the largest impact on banks, with 28% of total related rating actions," the agency said.
And investors are taking no chances.
S&P Global Ratings noted the risk premium on European emerging-market corporate debt is now almost double its five-year average, compared to a roughly in-line reading at the start of the year.
Formerly lucrative firms, such as banks, energy producers and mining companies, have been reduced to junk status.
Commodity traders are deliberately shunning Russian shipments of key raw materials and countries are scrambling to wean themselves off Russian energy supplies.
The agency said there are already 30 "fallen angels" as a direct result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The term refers to an issuer whose credit rating has been cut from investment grade to speculative grade, also known as junk.
Shares in some of the country's biggest corporates no longer trade in New York or London, where stock in the likes of Sberbank, oil and gas producers Gazprom and Rosneft, and metal producers Norilsk and Rusal, plunged to almost $0 a couple of weeks ago.
And it won't end there.
S&P Global said there was huge uncertainty around the extent, the outcome and the consequences of Russia's war in Ukraine.
"Irrespective of the duration of military hostilities, sanctions and related political risks are likely to remain in place for some time," S&P said.
"Potential effects could include dislocated commodities markets -- notably for oil and gas--supply chain disruptions, inflationary pressures, weaker growth, and capital market volatility."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... ebafad1bc3
"Russia's Gazprom says it's cutting off some natural gas to Germany after Shell refused to pay for it in rubles"
htan@insider.com (Huileng Tan)
1 JUNE 2022
Gazprom said it would halt its natural-gas supply to Shell, which supplies Germany.
The suspension from June 1 is due to Shell's refusal to pay for supplies in rubles, Gazprom said.
On March 31, Russian President Putin demanded natural gas payments be made in rubles.
Ratings agency S&P Global has downgraded a slew of companies since the start of the war in Ukraine.
This week, the agency cut Russia's sovereign rating deep into junk as sanctions have slammed its economy.
The agency said there are already 30 corporates that have tumbled into junk territory as a direct result of the war.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has come with a heavy price for the government.
Western sanctions have isolated it from the international financial system and choked off demand for many of its key exports.
Sanctions have cut off Russia's access to much of its foreign reserves, threatening to plunge the country into default as it could struggle to meet its foreign debt payments.
The ruble has plummeted to record lows and the country's stock market has been paralyzed for weeks.
S&P Global this week cut Russia's credit rating to "CC", which it defines as "default imminent with little prospect for recovery."
Four years ago, almost to the day, the agency awarded Russia an investment-grade "BBB-" rating.
It's not just the government that will struggle to raise capital on the global market.
Sanctions have thrown the future of many of its biggest companies into doubt.
S&P Global said this week it had made 121 changes to the ratings of companies that cited the Russia-Ukraine war, rising energy prices, or both as reasons.
Of that total, 77 were Russian.
"In terms of creditworthiness, the Russian-Ukraine conflict has had the largest impact on banks, with 28% of total related rating actions," the agency said.
And investors are taking no chances.
S&P Global Ratings noted the risk premium on European emerging-market corporate debt is now almost double its five-year average, compared to a roughly in-line reading at the start of the year.
Formerly lucrative firms, such as banks, energy producers and mining companies, have been reduced to junk status.
Commodity traders are deliberately shunning Russian shipments of key raw materials and countries are scrambling to wean themselves off Russian energy supplies.
The agency said there are already 30 "fallen angels" as a direct result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The term refers to an issuer whose credit rating has been cut from investment grade to speculative grade, also known as junk.
Shares in some of the country's biggest corporates no longer trade in New York or London, where stock in the likes of Sberbank, oil and gas producers Gazprom and Rosneft, and metal producers Norilsk and Rusal, plunged to almost $0 a couple of weeks ago.
And it won't end there.
S&P Global said there was huge uncertainty around the extent, the outcome and the consequences of Russia's war in Ukraine.
"Irrespective of the duration of military hostilities, sanctions and related political risks are likely to remain in place for some time," S&P said.
"Potential effects could include dislocated commodities markets -- notably for oil and gas--supply chain disruptions, inflationary pressures, weaker growth, and capital market volatility."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... ebafad1bc3
Re: RUSSIA
RIGZONE
"U.S. Split Over Next Round Of Russia Sanctions"
by Bloomberg | Nick Wadhams
Thursday, June 02, 2022
Biden administration officials are divided over how much further the US can push sanctions against Russia without sparking global economic instability and fracturing transatlantic unity.
While President Joe Biden’s team rallied behind a sanctions plan it rolled out just after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the debate is more heated now that President Vladimir Putin has shrugged off the early economic penalties and is forging ahead with his war, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
The people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations, said factions have emerged over how hard to push.
One group, which includes many officials at the State Department and White House, advocates even stricter measures known as secondary sanctions in response to Russian atrocities, arguing opposition from allies can be overcome.
Another group of officials, many based at Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department, worry about further strains on a global economy already suffering from supply-chain woes, inflation, volatile oil prices and a potential food crisis.
Some fret about the looming midterm elections and Democrats’ chances if prices at the pump stay high.
They argue for a different, untested approach: a cap on oil prices that would allow countries to buy Russian energy while limiting Moscow’s income.
“We’re now just coming up to the limit of how severely you can impose sanctions against a major economy without it having such bad spillover effects that you are creating a ton of bushfires elsewhere,” said Nicholas Mulder, a Cornell University professor and author of “The Economic Weapon,” a history of sanctions policy.
The challenges have been exacerbated by the departure of Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser who was managing the administration’s sanctions rollout, according to one person familiar with the internal dynamics.
Singh had also visited India as part of US efforts to push the government further out of Russia’s orbit.
His absence will fan concerns that the US lacks an influential voice to play that role at an even more perilous time.
Officials from the State Department, Treasury Department and National Security Council all declined to comment.
But other people familiar with the dynamic characterized it as a healthy internal debate and denied any suggestion that agencies were pitted against each other.
One said that it’s Treasury’s normal role to scrutinize decisions that could disrupt economic flows.
The debate mirrors broader tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance, with agreement harder to find on how much more pain to inflict on Putin.
A harbinger of the challenges to come emerged in recent days, when the European Union agreed to pursue a ban on oil imports -- but only after granting carve-outs to Hungary -- and then were unable to decide on what to do next or how aggressively to go after gas imports.
Until now, unity had been a defining characteristic of the US and European response to the war.
“We continue to look at what other sanctions we can impose,” Jose Fernandez, the undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said in an interview.
He stressed the importance of Western unity, saying Putin faces a “solid group of countries that are dead set against the invasion.”
“You’ve got countries applying for NATO membership,” Fernandez said.
“That kind of unity -- and sanctions are part of that -- is something I don’t think he was expecting.”
One person familiar with the matter said the US focus on unity had been so all-encompassing that the Americans had even asked the UK in recent weeks not to pursue a trade battle with Ireland over Northern Ireland for fear it would give Putin a weak spot to exploit.
Yet with Putin undaunted by the economic chokehold and pressing ahead with his war, there are growing calls within the administration to test that unity by taking action against other countries and companies that help Russia evade sanctions or provide what the US calls “material support” to sanctioned entities.
They argue that such moves would be narrowly targeted, nothing like the broad sanctions campaign that sought to stifle Iran over its nuclear program by targeting almost any country or company that did business with Tehran.
Many US allies and humanitarian groups argued that approach was counterproductive.
But supporters of the harder line say that, with the war in its fourth month, its time has come.
“There’s a time and a place for considered US unilateral action,” said Edward Fishman, a former State Department official who is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
“There’s no good argument against maximizing sanctions on Russia."
"And the sooner you do it, the better because time isn’t really on our side.”
But that’s testing the limits of what sanctions can do in the face of a evidence that even crippling penalties fail to force stubborn regimes to capitulate.
Skeptics point to sanctions programs against nations such as North Korea, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba that have only entrenched adversarial leaders determined to hunker down and pass the suffering onto their own populations.
If the US goes forward with more sanctions, it might find itself largely alone in such efforts, in effect inserting the wedge between it and allies that Putin has a history of exploiting.
It could also further roil energy markets, possibly causing new pain at US gas pumps.
Some in the Biden administration seeking a more cautious approach have floated the idea of a price cap -- not restricting the flow of oil, but merely the price that would be paid for it.
That idea faces considerable skepticism given that it’s never been tried before.
Two people familiar with the matter said there was also a belief internally that the price cap idea was part of an effort to redirect clamor in Congress and among outside groups away from imposing secondary sanctions on Russian energy exports, which they fear would spur even stronger macroeconomic shocks.
The debate is also forcing a wider reassessment of the sanctions campaign.
Officials are confronting the fact that the oligarchs who have been targeted by sanctions may not wield the influence with Putin they once had.
And the administration has shifted away from its argument that sanctions could hasten the end of the war to the claim that sanctions, export controls and other restrictions will take a long time -- perhaps years -- to weaken Putin.
“I wouldn’t say the system is broken, but over-reliance on these tools to direct your foreign policy is a problem,” said Julia Friedlander, a former Treasury Department official.
“It’s an asymmetry between trying to stop a government from invading a country and doing so by following money around the world."
"I still say do it, but there are hitches in the concept itself.”
--With assistance from Daniel Flatley, Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer Jacobs.
https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/us_sp ... 3-article/
"U.S. Split Over Next Round Of Russia Sanctions"
by Bloomberg | Nick Wadhams
Thursday, June 02, 2022
Biden administration officials are divided over how much further the US can push sanctions against Russia without sparking global economic instability and fracturing transatlantic unity.
While President Joe Biden’s team rallied behind a sanctions plan it rolled out just after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the debate is more heated now that President Vladimir Putin has shrugged off the early economic penalties and is forging ahead with his war, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
The people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations, said factions have emerged over how hard to push.
One group, which includes many officials at the State Department and White House, advocates even stricter measures known as secondary sanctions in response to Russian atrocities, arguing opposition from allies can be overcome.
Another group of officials, many based at Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department, worry about further strains on a global economy already suffering from supply-chain woes, inflation, volatile oil prices and a potential food crisis.
Some fret about the looming midterm elections and Democrats’ chances if prices at the pump stay high.
They argue for a different, untested approach: a cap on oil prices that would allow countries to buy Russian energy while limiting Moscow’s income.
“We’re now just coming up to the limit of how severely you can impose sanctions against a major economy without it having such bad spillover effects that you are creating a ton of bushfires elsewhere,” said Nicholas Mulder, a Cornell University professor and author of “The Economic Weapon,” a history of sanctions policy.
The challenges have been exacerbated by the departure of Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser who was managing the administration’s sanctions rollout, according to one person familiar with the internal dynamics.
Singh had also visited India as part of US efforts to push the government further out of Russia’s orbit.
His absence will fan concerns that the US lacks an influential voice to play that role at an even more perilous time.
Officials from the State Department, Treasury Department and National Security Council all declined to comment.
But other people familiar with the dynamic characterized it as a healthy internal debate and denied any suggestion that agencies were pitted against each other.
One said that it’s Treasury’s normal role to scrutinize decisions that could disrupt economic flows.
The debate mirrors broader tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance, with agreement harder to find on how much more pain to inflict on Putin.
A harbinger of the challenges to come emerged in recent days, when the European Union agreed to pursue a ban on oil imports -- but only after granting carve-outs to Hungary -- and then were unable to decide on what to do next or how aggressively to go after gas imports.
Until now, unity had been a defining characteristic of the US and European response to the war.
“We continue to look at what other sanctions we can impose,” Jose Fernandez, the undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said in an interview.
He stressed the importance of Western unity, saying Putin faces a “solid group of countries that are dead set against the invasion.”
“You’ve got countries applying for NATO membership,” Fernandez said.
“That kind of unity -- and sanctions are part of that -- is something I don’t think he was expecting.”
One person familiar with the matter said the US focus on unity had been so all-encompassing that the Americans had even asked the UK in recent weeks not to pursue a trade battle with Ireland over Northern Ireland for fear it would give Putin a weak spot to exploit.
Yet with Putin undaunted by the economic chokehold and pressing ahead with his war, there are growing calls within the administration to test that unity by taking action against other countries and companies that help Russia evade sanctions or provide what the US calls “material support” to sanctioned entities.
They argue that such moves would be narrowly targeted, nothing like the broad sanctions campaign that sought to stifle Iran over its nuclear program by targeting almost any country or company that did business with Tehran.
Many US allies and humanitarian groups argued that approach was counterproductive.
But supporters of the harder line say that, with the war in its fourth month, its time has come.
“There’s a time and a place for considered US unilateral action,” said Edward Fishman, a former State Department official who is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
“There’s no good argument against maximizing sanctions on Russia."
"And the sooner you do it, the better because time isn’t really on our side.”
But that’s testing the limits of what sanctions can do in the face of a evidence that even crippling penalties fail to force stubborn regimes to capitulate.
Skeptics point to sanctions programs against nations such as North Korea, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba that have only entrenched adversarial leaders determined to hunker down and pass the suffering onto their own populations.
If the US goes forward with more sanctions, it might find itself largely alone in such efforts, in effect inserting the wedge between it and allies that Putin has a history of exploiting.
It could also further roil energy markets, possibly causing new pain at US gas pumps.
Some in the Biden administration seeking a more cautious approach have floated the idea of a price cap -- not restricting the flow of oil, but merely the price that would be paid for it.
That idea faces considerable skepticism given that it’s never been tried before.
Two people familiar with the matter said there was also a belief internally that the price cap idea was part of an effort to redirect clamor in Congress and among outside groups away from imposing secondary sanctions on Russian energy exports, which they fear would spur even stronger macroeconomic shocks.
The debate is also forcing a wider reassessment of the sanctions campaign.
Officials are confronting the fact that the oligarchs who have been targeted by sanctions may not wield the influence with Putin they once had.
And the administration has shifted away from its argument that sanctions could hasten the end of the war to the claim that sanctions, export controls and other restrictions will take a long time -- perhaps years -- to weaken Putin.
“I wouldn’t say the system is broken, but over-reliance on these tools to direct your foreign policy is a problem,” said Julia Friedlander, a former Treasury Department official.
“It’s an asymmetry between trying to stop a government from invading a country and doing so by following money around the world."
"I still say do it, but there are hitches in the concept itself.”
--With assistance from Daniel Flatley, Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer Jacobs.
https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/us_sp ... 3-article/
Re: RUSSIA
REUTERS
"Russia limits exports of noble gases, a key ingredient for making chips"
Reuters
June 2, 2022
June 2 (Reuters) - Sanctions-hit Russia has limited exports of noble gases such as neon, a key ingredient for making chips, until the end of 2022 to strengthen its market position, its trade ministry said on Thursday.
Russia's export curbs could worsen the supply crunch in the global chips market.
Ukraine was one of the world's largest suppliers of noble gases until it suspended production at its plants in the cities of Mariupol and Odesa in March.
Exports of noble gases, which Russia used to supply to Japan and other countries, will be allowed only with special state permission until Dec. 31, the Russian government said on May 30.
The move will provide an opportunity to "rearrange those chains that have now been broken and build new ones," Deputy Trade Minister Vasily Shpak told Reuters via the ministry's press service on Thursday.
Russia accounts for 30% of the global supply of noble gases, according to the ministry's estimate.
Taiwan, the world's leading producer of chips, imposed curbs on exports of this product to Russia after Moscow sent thousands of troops to Ukraine on Feb. 24.
"We plan to increase our production capacity (of noble gases) in the near future."
"We believe that we will have an opportunity to be heard in this global chain, and this will give us some competitive advantage if it is necessary to build mutually beneficial negotiations with our colleagues," Shpak said.
Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Richard Chang
https://www.reuters.com/technology/russ ... 022-06-02/
"Russia limits exports of noble gases, a key ingredient for making chips"
Reuters
June 2, 2022
June 2 (Reuters) - Sanctions-hit Russia has limited exports of noble gases such as neon, a key ingredient for making chips, until the end of 2022 to strengthen its market position, its trade ministry said on Thursday.
Russia's export curbs could worsen the supply crunch in the global chips market.
Ukraine was one of the world's largest suppliers of noble gases until it suspended production at its plants in the cities of Mariupol and Odesa in March.
Exports of noble gases, which Russia used to supply to Japan and other countries, will be allowed only with special state permission until Dec. 31, the Russian government said on May 30.
The move will provide an opportunity to "rearrange those chains that have now been broken and build new ones," Deputy Trade Minister Vasily Shpak told Reuters via the ministry's press service on Thursday.
Russia accounts for 30% of the global supply of noble gases, according to the ministry's estimate.
Taiwan, the world's leading producer of chips, imposed curbs on exports of this product to Russia after Moscow sent thousands of troops to Ukraine on Feb. 24.
"We plan to increase our production capacity (of noble gases) in the near future."
"We believe that we will have an opportunity to be heard in this global chain, and this will give us some competitive advantage if it is necessary to build mutually beneficial negotiations with our colleagues," Shpak said.
Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Richard Chang
https://www.reuters.com/technology/russ ... 022-06-02/
Re: RUSSIA
BLOOMBERG
"Biden’s New Weapons for Ukraine Are Called Escalation by Moscow"
Jennifer Jacobs and Chelsea Mes
1 JUNE 2022
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said he’ll give Ukraine advanced rocket systems and other weapons, as US officials rejected Russian claims that the move will escalate the war that’s dragging into its fourth month.
The package of weapons includes missiles that will let Ukraine strike locations as far as 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
World leaders including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have publicly called for such a move in recent weeks.
“Thanks to the additional funding for Ukraine, passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in the US Congress, the United States will be able to keep providing Ukraine with more of the weapons that they are using so effectively to repel Russian attacks,” Biden said in a statement.
The decision comes more than three months after President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, with the conflict now shifting into a brutal town-by-town grind as Russia tries to consolidate territory in the east rather than seize control of the entire country.
That change in strategic goals has altered how the war is waged, with longer-range bombardment including by artillery increasingly a part of the fighting.
One concern in Washington and some European capitals about supplying longer-range weapons and munitions was whether Ukraine would strike targets inside Russia.
That would risk expanding the war and pulling in NATO nations that have sought to draw a line between delivering defensive aid and engaging more aggressively in the conflict.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Washington Wednesday that “the Ukrainians have given us assurances that they will not use these systems against targets on Russian territory."
"There is a strong trust bond between Ukraine and the United States, as well as with our allies and partners.”
But the Kremlin isn’t convinced by Ukraine’s assurances, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The new weapons deliveries “are pouring fuel on the fire,” he said on a conference call.
The senior US official told reporters that the new package will include the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. says on a website that the wheeled vehicle can carry a “six-pack” of rockets and can “shoot and scoot” in “high threat environments.”
In its latest tranche, the US stopped short of agreeing to send its longest-range munitions while highlighting previous shipments of other advanced systems, including howitzers and antitank weapons.
The White House plans to detail the new $700 million security assistance package on Wednesday, US officials said.
Since the war began, the US has supplied more than $4.5 billion in military aid.
Biden administration officials have vowed to weaken Russia so that it can’t again attack a neighbor, imposing a slew of sanctions on Moscow and bolstering Ukraine’s military with billions of dollars in arms.
But the goal of evicting Russian forces from Ukraine seems more distant, even after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s military forced Moscow to scale back its early ambitions to capture Kyiv and quickly replace the government.
“If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries,” Biden wrote.
“It could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... fde2416b61
"Biden’s New Weapons for Ukraine Are Called Escalation by Moscow"
Jennifer Jacobs and Chelsea Mes
1 JUNE 2022
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said he’ll give Ukraine advanced rocket systems and other weapons, as US officials rejected Russian claims that the move will escalate the war that’s dragging into its fourth month.
The package of weapons includes missiles that will let Ukraine strike locations as far as 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
World leaders including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have publicly called for such a move in recent weeks.
“Thanks to the additional funding for Ukraine, passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in the US Congress, the United States will be able to keep providing Ukraine with more of the weapons that they are using so effectively to repel Russian attacks,” Biden said in a statement.
The decision comes more than three months after President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, with the conflict now shifting into a brutal town-by-town grind as Russia tries to consolidate territory in the east rather than seize control of the entire country.
That change in strategic goals has altered how the war is waged, with longer-range bombardment including by artillery increasingly a part of the fighting.
One concern in Washington and some European capitals about supplying longer-range weapons and munitions was whether Ukraine would strike targets inside Russia.
That would risk expanding the war and pulling in NATO nations that have sought to draw a line between delivering defensive aid and engaging more aggressively in the conflict.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Washington Wednesday that “the Ukrainians have given us assurances that they will not use these systems against targets on Russian territory."
"There is a strong trust bond between Ukraine and the United States, as well as with our allies and partners.”
But the Kremlin isn’t convinced by Ukraine’s assurances, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The new weapons deliveries “are pouring fuel on the fire,” he said on a conference call.
The senior US official told reporters that the new package will include the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. says on a website that the wheeled vehicle can carry a “six-pack” of rockets and can “shoot and scoot” in “high threat environments.”
In its latest tranche, the US stopped short of agreeing to send its longest-range munitions while highlighting previous shipments of other advanced systems, including howitzers and antitank weapons.
The White House plans to detail the new $700 million security assistance package on Wednesday, US officials said.
Since the war began, the US has supplied more than $4.5 billion in military aid.
Biden administration officials have vowed to weaken Russia so that it can’t again attack a neighbor, imposing a slew of sanctions on Moscow and bolstering Ukraine’s military with billions of dollars in arms.
But the goal of evicting Russian forces from Ukraine seems more distant, even after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s military forced Moscow to scale back its early ambitions to capture Kyiv and quickly replace the government.
“If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries,” Biden wrote.
“It could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... fde2416b61
Re: RUSSIA
BLOOMBERG
"Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Forces Biden to Rewrite US Security Plan"
Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs
3 JUNE 2022
(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a major rewrite of the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, according to people familiar with the matter.
Early versions of the text, which is still being finalized, show how the administration’s priorities are shifting in response to Putin’s war in Ukraine and the burgeoning partnership between Beijing and Moscow.
The document’s publication, originally slated for this past January, was delayed after US officials came to believe that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was likely.
It is now being substantially rewritten to reflect the ways the world has changed since the war began, the people said.
It’s not yet clear when it will be published, and one of the people emphasized it may still undergo changes.
The new draft emphasizes the importance of both Europe and Asia to US national security interests, a shift from an earlier version that focused more squarely on China and Asia.
Rather than downplaying the importance of China, the document argues that events in Europe and Asia are intricately connected, according to the people.
Produced by every administration since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the National Security Strategy provides one of the most important windows into the White House’s thinking on foreign policy issues.
The document, mandated by Congress, is designed to help lawmakers evaluate the administration’s budget priorities for national security; to clarify US relationships with allies, partners, and adversaries; and to ensure that representatives from across the US national security apparatus speak to foreign counterparts with one voice.
Spokespersons at the National Security Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent speech on US policy toward China suggests one potential formulation for the way the document will weigh threats from Beijing and Moscow.
Russia, Blinken said, is a “clear and present threat,” whereas China is “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.”
More fundamentally, the strategy is likely to argue that neither Russia’s challenge in Europe nor China’s in Asia can be dealt with in isolation.
“For us, there is a certain level of integration and a symbiosis in the strategy we are pursuing in Europe and the strategy we’re pursuing in the Indo-Pacific,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on May 18.
“President Biden’s unique capacity to actually stitch those two together is, I think, going to be a hallmark of his foreign policy presidency.”
In particular, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought China’s ambitions toward the democratically-governed island of Taiwan into sharp focus for US policy makers.
Even before the war began, Biden officials argued that China would likely view America’s response to the Ukraine crisis as a proxy for how it would deal with more aggressive action by Beijing against Taiwan.
Since the war began, American officials have viewed several developments as sending a powerful message to Beijing, including the rapid deployment of sanctions against Russia in partnership with European allies, the bolstering of European defense budgets and the willingness of NATO allies to abandon decades of more cautious policies to aid Ukraine with financial and military support.
“The Chinese are going to watch this very, very carefully,” Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said last month of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“It’s going to take some time for them to sort out.”
Officials in President Xi Jinping’s government have repeatedly rejected accusations that they seek to attack Taiwan, which China views as part of its territory despite never controlling it.
At the same time, Xi’s government has warned that the US is taking a “Cold War” approach toward Asia.
Beijing has sought to counter that by bolstering ties with Pacific Island nations while reiterating its claims to disputed areas of the South China Sea.
The Biden administration’s focus on the interconnected nature of Europe and Asia has also been driven by a growing recognition of the partnership between Beijing and Moscow, as well as the willingness of Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea to sanction Moscow over the invasion, the people said.
The result has been a burgeoning US dialog with Asian nations about events in Europe and with European countries about events in Asia, officials say.
Whereas discussions with European nations about the Indo-Pacific during the Obama administration were “difficult, challenging, often suspicious,” they are now “deeply productive,” White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell told the Center for Strategic and International Studies on May 9.
The revised security document is also expected to feature a clearer articulation of the link between emerging transnational threats such as climate change and traditional geopolitical competition, one of the people said.
Outer-space, for example, is both a transnational issue as well as a venue where geopolitics plays out, the person said.
The Trump administration published its National Security Strategy, which focused on “American sovereignty,” in December 2017.
The Biden administration published its “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance” in March 2021, but is yet to publish its full-fledged National Security Strategy.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pu ... 08b2a8d102
"Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Forces Biden to Rewrite US Security Plan"
Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs
3 JUNE 2022
(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a major rewrite of the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, according to people familiar with the matter.
Early versions of the text, which is still being finalized, show how the administration’s priorities are shifting in response to Putin’s war in Ukraine and the burgeoning partnership between Beijing and Moscow.
The document’s publication, originally slated for this past January, was delayed after US officials came to believe that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was likely.
It is now being substantially rewritten to reflect the ways the world has changed since the war began, the people said.
It’s not yet clear when it will be published, and one of the people emphasized it may still undergo changes.
The new draft emphasizes the importance of both Europe and Asia to US national security interests, a shift from an earlier version that focused more squarely on China and Asia.
Rather than downplaying the importance of China, the document argues that events in Europe and Asia are intricately connected, according to the people.
Produced by every administration since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the National Security Strategy provides one of the most important windows into the White House’s thinking on foreign policy issues.
The document, mandated by Congress, is designed to help lawmakers evaluate the administration’s budget priorities for national security; to clarify US relationships with allies, partners, and adversaries; and to ensure that representatives from across the US national security apparatus speak to foreign counterparts with one voice.
Spokespersons at the National Security Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent speech on US policy toward China suggests one potential formulation for the way the document will weigh threats from Beijing and Moscow.
Russia, Blinken said, is a “clear and present threat,” whereas China is “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.”
More fundamentally, the strategy is likely to argue that neither Russia’s challenge in Europe nor China’s in Asia can be dealt with in isolation.
“For us, there is a certain level of integration and a symbiosis in the strategy we are pursuing in Europe and the strategy we’re pursuing in the Indo-Pacific,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on May 18.
“President Biden’s unique capacity to actually stitch those two together is, I think, going to be a hallmark of his foreign policy presidency.”
In particular, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought China’s ambitions toward the democratically-governed island of Taiwan into sharp focus for US policy makers.
Even before the war began, Biden officials argued that China would likely view America’s response to the Ukraine crisis as a proxy for how it would deal with more aggressive action by Beijing against Taiwan.
Since the war began, American officials have viewed several developments as sending a powerful message to Beijing, including the rapid deployment of sanctions against Russia in partnership with European allies, the bolstering of European defense budgets and the willingness of NATO allies to abandon decades of more cautious policies to aid Ukraine with financial and military support.
“The Chinese are going to watch this very, very carefully,” Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said last month of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“It’s going to take some time for them to sort out.”
Officials in President Xi Jinping’s government have repeatedly rejected accusations that they seek to attack Taiwan, which China views as part of its territory despite never controlling it.
At the same time, Xi’s government has warned that the US is taking a “Cold War” approach toward Asia.
Beijing has sought to counter that by bolstering ties with Pacific Island nations while reiterating its claims to disputed areas of the South China Sea.
The Biden administration’s focus on the interconnected nature of Europe and Asia has also been driven by a growing recognition of the partnership between Beijing and Moscow, as well as the willingness of Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea to sanction Moscow over the invasion, the people said.
The result has been a burgeoning US dialog with Asian nations about events in Europe and with European countries about events in Asia, officials say.
Whereas discussions with European nations about the Indo-Pacific during the Obama administration were “difficult, challenging, often suspicious,” they are now “deeply productive,” White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell told the Center for Strategic and International Studies on May 9.
The revised security document is also expected to feature a clearer articulation of the link between emerging transnational threats such as climate change and traditional geopolitical competition, one of the people said.
Outer-space, for example, is both a transnational issue as well as a venue where geopolitics plays out, the person said.
The Trump administration published its National Security Strategy, which focused on “American sovereignty,” in December 2017.
The Biden administration published its “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance” in March 2021, but is yet to publish its full-fledged National Security Strategy.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pu ... 08b2a8d102
Re: RUSSIA
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JUNE 4, 2022 AT 9:31 PM
Paul Plante says:
To put things in to their proper historical perspective here, and it is interesting that only the Cape Charles Mirror is willing to do that, to dig deeper into this matter so the whole story can be put forth, that of Joe Biden and his crowd being treaty breakers, as opposed to the false narrative being put out by the propagandists of the Biden regime that this is all on Putin, with no provocation whatsoever from Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland and Ukraine itself, we need to go back to a document on the United States Department of State website titled “NATO-Russia Founding Act – Fact sheet released by the White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, DC, May 15, 1997,” where we have the following statement to consider, to wit:
Commitment by NATO and Russia to work for prompt adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to reflect the changed security environment since CFE was completed in 1990.
end quotes
And once again, for all practical purposes, NATO is the United States of America, so that sentence really should read as follows:
Commitment by the United States of America and Russia to work for prompt adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to reflect the changed security environment since CFE was completed in 1990.
end quotes
But was it really a commitment by the United States of America to work for prompt adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to reflect the changed security environment since CFE was completed in 1990?
Or is that horse****?
Let’s dig a bit deeper and see what we can see on that subject by going to an article on the Arms Control Association titled “The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and the Adapted CFE Treaty at a Glance,” Fact Sheets & Briefs last Reviewed August 2017, where the first thing we see is the list of CFE States-Parties, to wit:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
end quotes
So there we see Ukraine and all of Joe Biden’s crowd who are today fomenting war against Russia by pouring arms into Ukraine being for arms reduction and peace with Russia back then.
So what has changed?
And that answer is Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and the half-pint twerp Zelensky of Ukraine.
They are what has changed, which takes us back to that article for essential background, to wit:
Negotiated during the final years of the Cold War, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty is often referred to as the “cornerstone of European security.”
end quotes
And now that the Biden regime is in power not only in America but in the world as well, that treaty is no longer the cornerstone of European security, which “European security” no longer exists thanks to Biden, Blinken and the dimwitted mouth runner Jake Sullivan, who was just quoted in a Bloomberg article titled “Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Forces Biden to Rewrite US Security Plan” by Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs on 3 June 2022, as follows with regard to Joe Biden single-handedly keeping the world safe from Russia and China, to wit:
“For us, there is a certain level of integration and a symbiosis in the strategy we are pursuing in Europe and the strategy we’re pursuing in the Indo-Pacific,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on May 18.
“President Biden’s unique capacity to actually stitch those two together is, I think, going to be a hallmark of his foreign policy presidency.”
end quotes
The only hallmark of Joe Biden’s foreign policy presidency is stupidity and idiocy, which takes us back to the CFE treaty article, to wit:
The treaty, signed on November 19, 1990, eliminated the Soviet Union’s overwhelming quantitative advantage in conventional weapons in Europe by setting equal limits on the amount of tanks, armored combat vehicles (ACVs), heavy artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters that NATO and the Warsaw Pact could deploy between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains.
The CFE Treaty was designed to prevent either alliance from amassing forces for a blitzkrieg-type offensive, which could have triggered the use of nuclear weapons in response.
Although the threat of such an offensive all but disappeared with the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, member states have repeatedly touted the enduring value of the treaty’s weapons limits and inspection regime, which provides an unprecedented degree of transparency on military holdings.
end quotes
And thanks to this idiot Biden and his morons Blinken and Sullivan, all of that is now gone, and the world is the worse for it, as Joe Biden and “TOODLES” Yellen and Wally Ademyemo work diligently to totally upend and destroy the world’s economic system.
Going back to the original CFE Treaty, its principal features were:
Treaty Limited Equipment (TLE): NATO and the former Warsaw Pact were each limited to 20,000 tanks, 30,000 ACVs, 20,000 heavy artillery pieces, 6,800 combat aircraft, and 2,000 attack helicopters for the treaty’s area of application.
Member states of each alliance then divided their respective “bloc” limit among themselves, in effect creating national limits.
(The Soviet Union’s limits were subsequently parceled out among eight of its successor states in 1992.)
end quotes
And that note about the Soviet Union’s limits being subsequently parceled out among eight of its successor states in 1992 takes us to the website of the Office of the Historian of the United States Department of State, the same agency now headed up by the vacuous Tony Blinken, and an article titled “The Collapse of the Soviet Union” where we have some relevant history that must be considered as we assess the responsibility Joe Biden has for getting this war going in Ukraine, which is clearly Joe Biden’s war of choice, while Putin is merely his dance partner, following Joe’s lead, to wit:
After his inauguration in January 1989, George H.W. Bush did not automatically follow the policy of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, in dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.
Instead, he ordered a strategic policy re-evaluation in order to establish his own plan and methods for dealing with the Soviet Union and arms control.
Conditions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, however, changed rapidly.
Gorbachev’s decision to loosen the Soviet yoke on the countries of Eastern Europe created an independent, democratic momentum that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and then the overthrow of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe.
While Bush supported these independence movements, U.S. policy was reactive.
Bush chose to let events unfold organically, careful not to do anything to worsen Gorbachev’s position.
With the policy review complete, and taking into account unfolding events in Europe, Bush met with Gorbachev at Malta in early December 1989.
They laid the groundwork for finalizing START negotiations, completing the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, and they discussed the rapid changes in Eastern Europe.
end quotes
And there we see the CFE popping up as an important treaty to the United States, this at a time when Joe Biden, a worthless hack politician who never held a real job in his life because he could not cut it in the real world, was in the senate where he served for thirty-six years from 1973 to 2009, and according to his bio, during those 36 years, Biden served in leading roles on both the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, including eight years as chair of the Judiciary Committee and four years as chair of the Foreign Relations, so clearly, Joe would be as aware of this basic American history as I am, which makes what he has done since to completely dismantle that forward progress totally reprehensible, which takes us back to the article of the Office of the State Department Historian, as follows:
Bush encouraged Gorbachev’s reform efforts, hoping that the Soviet leader would succeed in shifting the USSR toward a democratic system and a market oriented economy.
Gorbachev’s decision to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a presidency for the Soviet Union began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
end quotes
This, people, is basic high school history we are talking here.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in poly sci from Harvard or Yale or Princeton to
understand it, it is that basic, and I was alive when this was all happening, and I clearly recall it, so why doesn’t Joe Biden?
Anyway, who were the eight successor states to the Soviet Union in 1992?
Let’s see what the Office of the Historian of the State Department has to say about that:
In early December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus met in Brest to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), effectively declaring the demise of the Soviet Union.
end quotes
And hey, look, everybody, there is Ukraine, the same Ukraine that Joe now claims as a jewel in his crown as LEADER OF THE WORLD, which takes us back to that article as follows:
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor.
Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.
People all over the world watched in amazement at this relatively peaceful transition from former Communist monolith into multiple separate nations.
end quotes
And believe me, having grown up with all this constant hysterical BULL**** back then about what a threat the Soviet Union was to us, having to endure drills where we sat under our desks in school as if a Soviet nuclear strike was coming, and sitting under your desk was the surest way to survive, I was one of those people and I welcomed that peaceful transition, as did the world.
And Joe Biden and his pack of morons have put an end to that, big time, which again takes us back to the Office of the Historian of the State Department, to wit:
With the dissolution of Soviet Union, the main goal of the Bush administration was economic and political stability and security for Russia, the Baltics, and the states of the former Soviet Union.
Bush recognized all 12 independent republics and established diplomatic relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
end quotes
And here we are coming to what clearly could be construed as a betrayal by Joe Biden, because as a member state of the “bloc” that included Russia, the former limits on arms of the Soviet Union were subsequently parceled out among eight of its successor states in 1992, which included Ukraine, which takes us back to the Arms Control article to wit:
To prevent any country from amassing a significant asymmetrical stockpile of weapons, the treaty prohibits a single state from possessing more than a third of the TLE total.
As of January 2007, NATO’s 22 CFE states-parties claimed collective holdings of 61,281 TLE versus a cumulative limit of 101,697.
Russia reported holdings of 23,266 TLE against limits of 28,216. [2]
From 1992 through 2008, CFE states have reduced more than 52,000 pieces of conventional armaments under the treaty.
Many states reduced their holdings more than required – with over 17,955 voluntary reductions or conversions below treaty limits.
end quotes
And then along came Joe Biden and his pack of morons who started to pour weapons into Ukraine, and in the process, have blundered their way into getting us on the verge of WWIII while wrecking the economy of the world.
And let me rest there a moment, because there is a lot yet to consider here, too much for one post, so stay tuned, and with the courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, we shall develop this history of Joe Biden as a treaty breaker further.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-626424
Paul Plante says:
To put things in to their proper historical perspective here, and it is interesting that only the Cape Charles Mirror is willing to do that, to dig deeper into this matter so the whole story can be put forth, that of Joe Biden and his crowd being treaty breakers, as opposed to the false narrative being put out by the propagandists of the Biden regime that this is all on Putin, with no provocation whatsoever from Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland and Ukraine itself, we need to go back to a document on the United States Department of State website titled “NATO-Russia Founding Act – Fact sheet released by the White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, DC, May 15, 1997,” where we have the following statement to consider, to wit:
Commitment by NATO and Russia to work for prompt adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to reflect the changed security environment since CFE was completed in 1990.
end quotes
And once again, for all practical purposes, NATO is the United States of America, so that sentence really should read as follows:
Commitment by the United States of America and Russia to work for prompt adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to reflect the changed security environment since CFE was completed in 1990.
end quotes
But was it really a commitment by the United States of America to work for prompt adaptation of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty to reflect the changed security environment since CFE was completed in 1990?
Or is that horse****?
Let’s dig a bit deeper and see what we can see on that subject by going to an article on the Arms Control Association titled “The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and the Adapted CFE Treaty at a Glance,” Fact Sheets & Briefs last Reviewed August 2017, where the first thing we see is the list of CFE States-Parties, to wit:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
end quotes
So there we see Ukraine and all of Joe Biden’s crowd who are today fomenting war against Russia by pouring arms into Ukraine being for arms reduction and peace with Russia back then.
So what has changed?
And that answer is Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and the half-pint twerp Zelensky of Ukraine.
They are what has changed, which takes us back to that article for essential background, to wit:
Negotiated during the final years of the Cold War, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty is often referred to as the “cornerstone of European security.”
end quotes
And now that the Biden regime is in power not only in America but in the world as well, that treaty is no longer the cornerstone of European security, which “European security” no longer exists thanks to Biden, Blinken and the dimwitted mouth runner Jake Sullivan, who was just quoted in a Bloomberg article titled “Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Forces Biden to Rewrite US Security Plan” by Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs on 3 June 2022, as follows with regard to Joe Biden single-handedly keeping the world safe from Russia and China, to wit:
“For us, there is a certain level of integration and a symbiosis in the strategy we are pursuing in Europe and the strategy we’re pursuing in the Indo-Pacific,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on May 18.
“President Biden’s unique capacity to actually stitch those two together is, I think, going to be a hallmark of his foreign policy presidency.”
end quotes
The only hallmark of Joe Biden’s foreign policy presidency is stupidity and idiocy, which takes us back to the CFE treaty article, to wit:
The treaty, signed on November 19, 1990, eliminated the Soviet Union’s overwhelming quantitative advantage in conventional weapons in Europe by setting equal limits on the amount of tanks, armored combat vehicles (ACVs), heavy artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters that NATO and the Warsaw Pact could deploy between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains.
The CFE Treaty was designed to prevent either alliance from amassing forces for a blitzkrieg-type offensive, which could have triggered the use of nuclear weapons in response.
Although the threat of such an offensive all but disappeared with the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, member states have repeatedly touted the enduring value of the treaty’s weapons limits and inspection regime, which provides an unprecedented degree of transparency on military holdings.
end quotes
And thanks to this idiot Biden and his morons Blinken and Sullivan, all of that is now gone, and the world is the worse for it, as Joe Biden and “TOODLES” Yellen and Wally Ademyemo work diligently to totally upend and destroy the world’s economic system.
Going back to the original CFE Treaty, its principal features were:
Treaty Limited Equipment (TLE): NATO and the former Warsaw Pact were each limited to 20,000 tanks, 30,000 ACVs, 20,000 heavy artillery pieces, 6,800 combat aircraft, and 2,000 attack helicopters for the treaty’s area of application.
Member states of each alliance then divided their respective “bloc” limit among themselves, in effect creating national limits.
(The Soviet Union’s limits were subsequently parceled out among eight of its successor states in 1992.)
end quotes
And that note about the Soviet Union’s limits being subsequently parceled out among eight of its successor states in 1992 takes us to the website of the Office of the Historian of the United States Department of State, the same agency now headed up by the vacuous Tony Blinken, and an article titled “The Collapse of the Soviet Union” where we have some relevant history that must be considered as we assess the responsibility Joe Biden has for getting this war going in Ukraine, which is clearly Joe Biden’s war of choice, while Putin is merely his dance partner, following Joe’s lead, to wit:
After his inauguration in January 1989, George H.W. Bush did not automatically follow the policy of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, in dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.
Instead, he ordered a strategic policy re-evaluation in order to establish his own plan and methods for dealing with the Soviet Union and arms control.
Conditions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, however, changed rapidly.
Gorbachev’s decision to loosen the Soviet yoke on the countries of Eastern Europe created an independent, democratic momentum that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and then the overthrow of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe.
While Bush supported these independence movements, U.S. policy was reactive.
Bush chose to let events unfold organically, careful not to do anything to worsen Gorbachev’s position.
With the policy review complete, and taking into account unfolding events in Europe, Bush met with Gorbachev at Malta in early December 1989.
They laid the groundwork for finalizing START negotiations, completing the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, and they discussed the rapid changes in Eastern Europe.
end quotes
And there we see the CFE popping up as an important treaty to the United States, this at a time when Joe Biden, a worthless hack politician who never held a real job in his life because he could not cut it in the real world, was in the senate where he served for thirty-six years from 1973 to 2009, and according to his bio, during those 36 years, Biden served in leading roles on both the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, including eight years as chair of the Judiciary Committee and four years as chair of the Foreign Relations, so clearly, Joe would be as aware of this basic American history as I am, which makes what he has done since to completely dismantle that forward progress totally reprehensible, which takes us back to the article of the Office of the State Department Historian, as follows:
Bush encouraged Gorbachev’s reform efforts, hoping that the Soviet leader would succeed in shifting the USSR toward a democratic system and a market oriented economy.
Gorbachev’s decision to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a presidency for the Soviet Union began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
end quotes
This, people, is basic high school history we are talking here.
You don’t need a Ph.D. in poly sci from Harvard or Yale or Princeton to
understand it, it is that basic, and I was alive when this was all happening, and I clearly recall it, so why doesn’t Joe Biden?
Anyway, who were the eight successor states to the Soviet Union in 1992?
Let’s see what the Office of the Historian of the State Department has to say about that:
In early December, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus met in Brest to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), effectively declaring the demise of the Soviet Union.
end quotes
And hey, look, everybody, there is Ukraine, the same Ukraine that Joe now claims as a jewel in his crown as LEADER OF THE WORLD, which takes us back to that article as follows:
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor.
Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.
People all over the world watched in amazement at this relatively peaceful transition from former Communist monolith into multiple separate nations.
end quotes
And believe me, having grown up with all this constant hysterical BULL**** back then about what a threat the Soviet Union was to us, having to endure drills where we sat under our desks in school as if a Soviet nuclear strike was coming, and sitting under your desk was the surest way to survive, I was one of those people and I welcomed that peaceful transition, as did the world.
And Joe Biden and his pack of morons have put an end to that, big time, which again takes us back to the Office of the Historian of the State Department, to wit:
With the dissolution of Soviet Union, the main goal of the Bush administration was economic and political stability and security for Russia, the Baltics, and the states of the former Soviet Union.
Bush recognized all 12 independent republics and established diplomatic relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
end quotes
And here we are coming to what clearly could be construed as a betrayal by Joe Biden, because as a member state of the “bloc” that included Russia, the former limits on arms of the Soviet Union were subsequently parceled out among eight of its successor states in 1992, which included Ukraine, which takes us back to the Arms Control article to wit:
To prevent any country from amassing a significant asymmetrical stockpile of weapons, the treaty prohibits a single state from possessing more than a third of the TLE total.
As of January 2007, NATO’s 22 CFE states-parties claimed collective holdings of 61,281 TLE versus a cumulative limit of 101,697.
Russia reported holdings of 23,266 TLE against limits of 28,216. [2]
From 1992 through 2008, CFE states have reduced more than 52,000 pieces of conventional armaments under the treaty.
Many states reduced their holdings more than required – with over 17,955 voluntary reductions or conversions below treaty limits.
end quotes
And then along came Joe Biden and his pack of morons who started to pour weapons into Ukraine, and in the process, have blundered their way into getting us on the verge of WWIII while wrecking the economy of the world.
And let me rest there a moment, because there is a lot yet to consider here, too much for one post, so stay tuned, and with the courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, we shall develop this history of Joe Biden as a treaty breaker further.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-626424
Re: RUSSIA
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"U.S. Warship Arrives in Stockholm for Military Exercises, and as a Warning"
4 JUNE 2022
ABOARD U.S.S. KEARSARGE, in the port of Stockholm — If ever there was a potent symbol of how much Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has altered Europe, the sight of this enormous battleship, bristling with 26 warplanes and 2,400 Marines and sailors, moored among the pleasure craft and tour boats that ply this port, would certainly be it.
“No one in Stockholm can miss that there is this big American ship here in our city,” said Micael Byden, the supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, standing on the amphibious assault ship's deck in the shadow of a MV-22 Osprey under a clear sky on Saturday.
“There are more capabilities on this ship,” he marveled, “than I could gather in a garrison.”
In this perennially neutral country that is suddenly not so neutral, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which showed up just two weeks after Sweden and Finland announced their intention to seek membership in NATO, is the promise of what that membership would bring: protection if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia turns his ire toward his Nordic neighbors.
But the ship is also a warning to Sweden and Finland of their own potential obligations should a conflict arise, as Gen. Mark Milley, America’s most senior military commander, made clear during a visit Saturday.
“The Russians have their Baltic fleet,” General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, but NATO would have its own slew of member countries wrapped around the Baltic Sea once Sweden and Finland join.
In essence, the Baltic would become a NATO lake, save for St. Petersburg and Kalingrad.
“From a Russian perspective, that would be very problematic for them, militarily speaking,” General Milley said.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden, appearing in a shipboard news conference beside General Milley, sought to emphasize the defensive nature of NATO.
But military experts say that there is a clear expectation that Sweden and Finland’s accession to the alliance means that they would contribute to any maritime chokeholds that NATO might put in place in the Baltic Sea in the event of a war with Russia, a potentially tall order for the historically nonaligned countries.
Both countries want security assurances, particularly from the United States and other NATO allies, during this interim period while negotiations with Turkey are holding up their formal membership to the military alliance.
Sweden’s Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told reporters in Washington two weeks ago that the Pentagon had pledged several interim security measures: U.S. Navy warships steaming in the Baltic Sea, Air Force bombers flying over Scandinavian skies, army forces training together and American specialists helping to thwart any possible Russian cyberattacks.
But while President Biden has pledged that the United States would help defend Sweden and Finland before they join the alliance, American officials have refused to say specifically what form that help would take, beyond what General Milley characterized Saturday as a “modest increase” in joint military exercises.
The refusal of any NATO country to send actual troops into Ukraine, Nordic officials acknowledged, lays bare the difference between promises of military help for friendly countries versus that under a Senate-ratified treaty that says an attack on one is an attack on all — NATO’s famous Article 5.
Still, the Kearsarge is in the Baltic Sea to take part in exercises meant to teach NATO, Swedish and Finnish troops how to carry out amphibious assaults — storming land that has been seized by, say, Russia.
It is a hugely complex kind of war operation — think the D-Day landing during World War II — that requires coordination between air, land and naval units in what military planners call a “combined arms” mission.
If the exercises go according to plan, thousands of marines, sailors, pilots and other troops from 16 different countries will be seizing a beach head in the Stockholm archipelago.
It is exactly the kind of military operation that Russia has not managed to pull off yet in Ukraine, and that inability to do so, military experts say, is a big part of why Russia has not managed to take the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
Pentagon officials note that when thousands of Russian marines landed in southern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov coastline on Feb. 25 to target Mariupol, they did so some 43 miles to the east of the city, avoiding having to do an actual contested amphibious assault.
Along with the rupturing of the notion that the Russian military is an efficient machine, the request by Sweden and Finland to join NATO is perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of Mr. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Instead, Mr. Putin is now facing the prospect of a NATO military alliance that is not just on his doorstep but wrapped around part of the house.
The 2004 accession of Latvia and Estonia to NATO stretched its Baltic border with Russia for just over 300 miles; Finland’s joining the alliance would add another 830 miles, putting St. Petersburg almost within artillery range.
Sweden, meanwhile, shares a maritime border with Russia, as does Finland.
Within a day of Finland’s leaders announcing their country should apply for NATO membership, the Kearsarge, named after a Civil War Union sloop famous for sinking Confederate ships, was heading to join Finnish and Swedish navies for training.
In fact, NATO has scheduled many shows of force with Sweden and Finland.
“A whole host of exercises that didn’t exist on the exercise schedule are there now,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a military expert with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki.
The emerging partnership is a two-way street.
For NATO, beyond wrapping the alliance all around Russia’s western border, the entry of Sweden and Finland allows military planners to reconceptualize all of northern European defenses.
In the past, the alliance had to make compromises about where to concentrate troops, headquarters and command and control to provide to best advantage.
All of this will undoubtedly draw the ire of Mr. Putin, who has long complained about the expansion of the military alliance into what he sees as his own sphere of influence.
“There’s going to be an almost continuous presence of non-Finnish military units in Finland,” Mr. Salonius-Pasternak said.
“Are they the key to Finnish defense?"
"No."
"But it probably adds to the calculus of our eastern neighbor.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u- ... 40815539c4
"U.S. Warship Arrives in Stockholm for Military Exercises, and as a Warning"
4 JUNE 2022
ABOARD U.S.S. KEARSARGE, in the port of Stockholm — If ever there was a potent symbol of how much Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has altered Europe, the sight of this enormous battleship, bristling with 26 warplanes and 2,400 Marines and sailors, moored among the pleasure craft and tour boats that ply this port, would certainly be it.
“No one in Stockholm can miss that there is this big American ship here in our city,” said Micael Byden, the supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, standing on the amphibious assault ship's deck in the shadow of a MV-22 Osprey under a clear sky on Saturday.
“There are more capabilities on this ship,” he marveled, “than I could gather in a garrison.”
In this perennially neutral country that is suddenly not so neutral, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which showed up just two weeks after Sweden and Finland announced their intention to seek membership in NATO, is the promise of what that membership would bring: protection if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia turns his ire toward his Nordic neighbors.
But the ship is also a warning to Sweden and Finland of their own potential obligations should a conflict arise, as Gen. Mark Milley, America’s most senior military commander, made clear during a visit Saturday.
“The Russians have their Baltic fleet,” General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, but NATO would have its own slew of member countries wrapped around the Baltic Sea once Sweden and Finland join.
In essence, the Baltic would become a NATO lake, save for St. Petersburg and Kalingrad.
“From a Russian perspective, that would be very problematic for them, militarily speaking,” General Milley said.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden, appearing in a shipboard news conference beside General Milley, sought to emphasize the defensive nature of NATO.
But military experts say that there is a clear expectation that Sweden and Finland’s accession to the alliance means that they would contribute to any maritime chokeholds that NATO might put in place in the Baltic Sea in the event of a war with Russia, a potentially tall order for the historically nonaligned countries.
Both countries want security assurances, particularly from the United States and other NATO allies, during this interim period while negotiations with Turkey are holding up their formal membership to the military alliance.
Sweden’s Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told reporters in Washington two weeks ago that the Pentagon had pledged several interim security measures: U.S. Navy warships steaming in the Baltic Sea, Air Force bombers flying over Scandinavian skies, army forces training together and American specialists helping to thwart any possible Russian cyberattacks.
But while President Biden has pledged that the United States would help defend Sweden and Finland before they join the alliance, American officials have refused to say specifically what form that help would take, beyond what General Milley characterized Saturday as a “modest increase” in joint military exercises.
The refusal of any NATO country to send actual troops into Ukraine, Nordic officials acknowledged, lays bare the difference between promises of military help for friendly countries versus that under a Senate-ratified treaty that says an attack on one is an attack on all — NATO’s famous Article 5.
Still, the Kearsarge is in the Baltic Sea to take part in exercises meant to teach NATO, Swedish and Finnish troops how to carry out amphibious assaults — storming land that has been seized by, say, Russia.
It is a hugely complex kind of war operation — think the D-Day landing during World War II — that requires coordination between air, land and naval units in what military planners call a “combined arms” mission.
If the exercises go according to plan, thousands of marines, sailors, pilots and other troops from 16 different countries will be seizing a beach head in the Stockholm archipelago.
It is exactly the kind of military operation that Russia has not managed to pull off yet in Ukraine, and that inability to do so, military experts say, is a big part of why Russia has not managed to take the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
Pentagon officials note that when thousands of Russian marines landed in southern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov coastline on Feb. 25 to target Mariupol, they did so some 43 miles to the east of the city, avoiding having to do an actual contested amphibious assault.
Along with the rupturing of the notion that the Russian military is an efficient machine, the request by Sweden and Finland to join NATO is perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of Mr. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Instead, Mr. Putin is now facing the prospect of a NATO military alliance that is not just on his doorstep but wrapped around part of the house.
The 2004 accession of Latvia and Estonia to NATO stretched its Baltic border with Russia for just over 300 miles; Finland’s joining the alliance would add another 830 miles, putting St. Petersburg almost within artillery range.
Sweden, meanwhile, shares a maritime border with Russia, as does Finland.
Within a day of Finland’s leaders announcing their country should apply for NATO membership, the Kearsarge, named after a Civil War Union sloop famous for sinking Confederate ships, was heading to join Finnish and Swedish navies for training.
In fact, NATO has scheduled many shows of force with Sweden and Finland.
“A whole host of exercises that didn’t exist on the exercise schedule are there now,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a military expert with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki.
The emerging partnership is a two-way street.
For NATO, beyond wrapping the alliance all around Russia’s western border, the entry of Sweden and Finland allows military planners to reconceptualize all of northern European defenses.
In the past, the alliance had to make compromises about where to concentrate troops, headquarters and command and control to provide to best advantage.
All of this will undoubtedly draw the ire of Mr. Putin, who has long complained about the expansion of the military alliance into what he sees as his own sphere of influence.
“There’s going to be an almost continuous presence of non-Finnish military units in Finland,” Mr. Salonius-Pasternak said.
“Are they the key to Finnish defense?"
"No."
"But it probably adds to the calculus of our eastern neighbor.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u- ... 40815539c4
Re: RUSSIA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Russian missiles strike Kyiv, shattering sense of calm"
By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press
5 JUNE 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A barrage of Russian cruise missiles shattered five weeks of eerie calm in Ukraine’s capital early Sunday, with plumes of smoke billowing into the skies as railway facilities and other infrastructure were hit.
Authorities said one person was hospitalized with injuries.
Kyiv hadn’t faced any such strikes since the April 28 visit of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
The early morning attack triggered air raid alarms and showed that Russia still had the capability and willingness to hit at Ukraine’s heart since abandoning its wider offensive across the country to instead focus its efforts in the east.
The strikes appeared aimed at thwarting the resupplying of Ukrainian fighters, a rising concern in Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used a televised interview on Sunday to make a veiled warning to Western nations who have supplied weapons to Ukraine, saying Russia would use ”our means of destruction” to hit "objects that we have not yet struck” if Ukraine gets longer-range rocket systems.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Putin was referring to new targets within or outside Ukraine’s borders.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has led to untold tens of thousands of civilian and troop deaths, driven millions from their homes, sparked vast sanctions against Putin's government and allies, and strangled exports of critical wheat and other grains from Ukraine through Black Sea ports — limiting access to bread and other products in Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
The missiles hit Kyiv’s Darnytski and Dniprovski districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app, punctuating the Kremlin’s recently reduced goal of seizing the entire Donbas region in the east.
Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the Donbas and established self-proclaimed republics.
In recent days, Russian forces have focused on capturing the city of Sievierodonetsk.
A billowing pillar of smoke filled the air with an acrid odor in Kyiv's eastern Darnystki district, and the charred, blackened wreckage of a warehouse-type structure was smoldering.
Police near the site told an Associated Press reporter that military authorities had banned the taking of images.
Soldiers also blocked off a road in a nearby area leading toward a large railway yard.
The sites struck included facilities for the state rail company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, on Telegram.
Russian strikes have repeatedly targeted railway facilities, seemingly aimed at slowing the provision of weapons to Ukrainian forces on the front lines.
The cruise missiles appeared to have been launched from a Tu-95 bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, the Air Force Command said on Facebook.
It said air defense units shot down one missile.
In a television interview on Sunday, Putin lashed out at Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, saying they aim to prolong the conflict.
“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: To drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said, alluding to U.S. plans to supply multiple launch rocket systems to Kyiv.
He insisted such supplies were unlikely to change much for the Ukrainian government, which he said was merely making up for losses of rockets of similar range that they already had.
If Kyiv gets longer-range rockets, he added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we have not yet struck.”
Elsewhere, Russian forces continued their push to take ground in eastern Ukraine, with missile and airstrikes carried out on cities and villages of the Luhansk region, with the war now past the 100-day mark.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram that “airstrikes by Russian Ka-52 helicopters were carried out in the areas of Girske and Myrna Dolyna, by Su-25 aircraft - on Ustynivka,” while Lysychansk was hit by a missile from the Tochka-U complex.
A total of 13 houses were damaged in Girske, and five in Lysychansk.
Another airstrike was reported in the eastern city of Kramatorsk by its mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko.
No one was killed in the attack, he said, but two of the city’s enterprises sustained “significant damage.”
On Sunday morning, Ukraine’s General Staff accused Russian forces of using phosphorus munitions in the village of Cherkaski Tyshky in the Kharkiv region.
The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
The update also confirmed strikes on Kyiv, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday.
It wasn’t immediately clear from the statement which infrastructure facilities in Kyiv were hit.
The General Staff said Russian forces continue assault operations in Sievierodonetsk, one of two key cities left to be captured in the Luhansk region of the Donbas.
The Russians control the eastern part of the city, the update said, and are focusing on trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in the area and “blocking off main logistical routes.”
The U.K. military said in its daily intelligence update that Ukrainian counterattacks in Sieverodonetsk were “likely blunting the operational momentum Russian forces previously gained through concentrating combat units and firepower.”
Russian forces previously had been making a string of advances in the city, but Ukrainian fighters have pushed back in recent days.
The statement also said Russia’s military was partly relying on reserve forces of the Luhansk region.
“These troops are poorly equipped and trained, and lack heavy equipment in comparison to regular Russian units,” the intelligence update said, adding that “this approach likely indicates a desire to limit casualties suffered by regular Russian forces.”
Far from the battlefield, Ukraine's national soccer players are hoping to secure a World Cup spot when the team takes on Wales later Sunday in Cardiff.
On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was heading to Serbia for talks with President Aleksandar Vucic early this week, followed by a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, where the Russian envoy is expected to discuss Ukraine with his Turkish counterpart.
Turkey has been trying to work with U.N. and the warring countries to help clear the way for Ukrainian grain to be exported to Turkish ports, though no deal on the issue appeared imminent.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to Sunday's missile attacks.
Mykhailo Podolyak referenced remarks Friday by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Putin had made a “historic error” by invading Ukraine, but that world powers shouldn’t “humiliate Russia" so that a diplomatic exit could be found when the fighting stops.
“While someone asks not to humiliate, the Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks,” Podolyak tweeted.
“Each of such terrorist attacks must face a tough response from European capitals: more sanctions, more weapons.”
Ukrainian officials have denounced the remark, and have criticized France and some other European countries for continuing to speak to Putin and talking about diplomatic solutions instead of working to push Russia out of Ukraine militarily.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ru ... ca19ae8478
"Russian missiles strike Kyiv, shattering sense of calm"
By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press
5 JUNE 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A barrage of Russian cruise missiles shattered five weeks of eerie calm in Ukraine’s capital early Sunday, with plumes of smoke billowing into the skies as railway facilities and other infrastructure were hit.
Authorities said one person was hospitalized with injuries.
Kyiv hadn’t faced any such strikes since the April 28 visit of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
The early morning attack triggered air raid alarms and showed that Russia still had the capability and willingness to hit at Ukraine’s heart since abandoning its wider offensive across the country to instead focus its efforts in the east.
The strikes appeared aimed at thwarting the resupplying of Ukrainian fighters, a rising concern in Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used a televised interview on Sunday to make a veiled warning to Western nations who have supplied weapons to Ukraine, saying Russia would use ”our means of destruction” to hit "objects that we have not yet struck” if Ukraine gets longer-range rocket systems.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Putin was referring to new targets within or outside Ukraine’s borders.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has led to untold tens of thousands of civilian and troop deaths, driven millions from their homes, sparked vast sanctions against Putin's government and allies, and strangled exports of critical wheat and other grains from Ukraine through Black Sea ports — limiting access to bread and other products in Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
The missiles hit Kyiv’s Darnytski and Dniprovski districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app, punctuating the Kremlin’s recently reduced goal of seizing the entire Donbas region in the east.
Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the Donbas and established self-proclaimed republics.
In recent days, Russian forces have focused on capturing the city of Sievierodonetsk.
A billowing pillar of smoke filled the air with an acrid odor in Kyiv's eastern Darnystki district, and the charred, blackened wreckage of a warehouse-type structure was smoldering.
Police near the site told an Associated Press reporter that military authorities had banned the taking of images.
Soldiers also blocked off a road in a nearby area leading toward a large railway yard.
The sites struck included facilities for the state rail company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, on Telegram.
Russian strikes have repeatedly targeted railway facilities, seemingly aimed at slowing the provision of weapons to Ukrainian forces on the front lines.
The cruise missiles appeared to have been launched from a Tu-95 bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, the Air Force Command said on Facebook.
It said air defense units shot down one missile.
In a television interview on Sunday, Putin lashed out at Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, saying they aim to prolong the conflict.
“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: To drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said, alluding to U.S. plans to supply multiple launch rocket systems to Kyiv.
He insisted such supplies were unlikely to change much for the Ukrainian government, which he said was merely making up for losses of rockets of similar range that they already had.
If Kyiv gets longer-range rockets, he added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we have not yet struck.”
Elsewhere, Russian forces continued their push to take ground in eastern Ukraine, with missile and airstrikes carried out on cities and villages of the Luhansk region, with the war now past the 100-day mark.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram that “airstrikes by Russian Ka-52 helicopters were carried out in the areas of Girske and Myrna Dolyna, by Su-25 aircraft - on Ustynivka,” while Lysychansk was hit by a missile from the Tochka-U complex.
A total of 13 houses were damaged in Girske, and five in Lysychansk.
Another airstrike was reported in the eastern city of Kramatorsk by its mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko.
No one was killed in the attack, he said, but two of the city’s enterprises sustained “significant damage.”
On Sunday morning, Ukraine’s General Staff accused Russian forces of using phosphorus munitions in the village of Cherkaski Tyshky in the Kharkiv region.
The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
The update also confirmed strikes on Kyiv, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday.
It wasn’t immediately clear from the statement which infrastructure facilities in Kyiv were hit.
The General Staff said Russian forces continue assault operations in Sievierodonetsk, one of two key cities left to be captured in the Luhansk region of the Donbas.
The Russians control the eastern part of the city, the update said, and are focusing on trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in the area and “blocking off main logistical routes.”
The U.K. military said in its daily intelligence update that Ukrainian counterattacks in Sieverodonetsk were “likely blunting the operational momentum Russian forces previously gained through concentrating combat units and firepower.”
Russian forces previously had been making a string of advances in the city, but Ukrainian fighters have pushed back in recent days.
The statement also said Russia’s military was partly relying on reserve forces of the Luhansk region.
“These troops are poorly equipped and trained, and lack heavy equipment in comparison to regular Russian units,” the intelligence update said, adding that “this approach likely indicates a desire to limit casualties suffered by regular Russian forces.”
Far from the battlefield, Ukraine's national soccer players are hoping to secure a World Cup spot when the team takes on Wales later Sunday in Cardiff.
On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was heading to Serbia for talks with President Aleksandar Vucic early this week, followed by a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, where the Russian envoy is expected to discuss Ukraine with his Turkish counterpart.
Turkey has been trying to work with U.N. and the warring countries to help clear the way for Ukrainian grain to be exported to Turkish ports, though no deal on the issue appeared imminent.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to Sunday's missile attacks.
Mykhailo Podolyak referenced remarks Friday by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Putin had made a “historic error” by invading Ukraine, but that world powers shouldn’t “humiliate Russia" so that a diplomatic exit could be found when the fighting stops.
“While someone asks not to humiliate, the Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks,” Podolyak tweeted.
“Each of such terrorist attacks must face a tough response from European capitals: more sanctions, more weapons.”
Ukrainian officials have denounced the remark, and have criticized France and some other European countries for continuing to speak to Putin and talking about diplomatic solutions instead of working to push Russia out of Ukraine militarily.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ru ... ca19ae8478
Re: RUSSIA
CNBC
"Russia thinks it has found a way around Washington’s dollar bond payment blockade"
Elliot Smith @ELLIOTSMITHCNBC
KEY POINTS
* The country is exposed to a historic debt default after the U.S. Treasury Department last week allowed a key sanctions exemption to expire.
* The waiver had allowed Russia to process payments to foreign bondholders in dollars through U.S. and international banks, thereby avoiding default.
* Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reportedly told Russian newspaper Vedomosti on Monday that Moscow will continue to service external debts in rubles, but foreign eurobond holders will need to open ruble and hard currency accounts with Russian banks in order to receive payments.
Russia is exploring a new way of circumventing U.S. sanctions preventing Moscow from servicing its dollar-denominated bond payments to foreign investors.
The country is exposed to a historic debt default after the U.S. Treasury Department on May 25 allowed a key sanctions exemption to expire.
The waiver had allowed Russia to process payments to foreign bondholders in dollars through U.S. and international banks, thereby avoiding default.
On Friday, the Russian Finance Ministry wired $100 million in interest payments on two eurobonds in rubles to its domestic settlement house, but unless the money finds its way to the bank accounts of overseas bondholders, it may constitute a default.
The payments carry a 30-day grace period, after which Russia could be declared to have defaulted on its foreign currency debt for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, despite the Kremlin claiming to have ample cash to pay — an unprecedented situation for a major economy.
A further $2 billion in payments is due before the end of the year, though some of the bonds issued after 2014 are permitted to be paid in rubles or other alternative currencies, according to the contracts.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reportedly told Russian newspaper Vedomosti on Monday that Moscow will continue to service external debts in rubles, but foreign eurobond holders will need to open ruble and hard currency accounts with Russian banks in order to receive payments.
“As happens with paying for gas in roubles: we are credited with foreign currency, here it is exchanged for roubles on behalf of (the gas buyer), and this is how the payment takes place,” he said, according to a Reuters translation.
The settlement mechanism would operate in the same fashion, but in the opposite direction, and would be channeled through Russia’s National Settlement Depository, Siluanov suggested.
The NSD, unlike other major Russian financial institutions, is not currently subject to U.S. sanctions.
However, the European Union on Friday imposed sanctions on the NSD, which was meant to process the bond payments, further complicating matters for Russia.
‘The rope is going to run out’
Timothy Ash, senior emerging market sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, told CNBC on Wednesday that foreign investors are unlikely to acquiesce to Moscow’s requests to open Russian accounts.
“I think that’s unlikely."
"You’re talking about international companies, U.S. banks, international banks, and this is pretty peripheral in the end,” he said.
“They’re not going to damage their reputation or give themselves compliance risks by going through this process for a couple of hundred million bucks."
"They don’t want to get caught by secondary sanctions from the Americans.”
Ash was also skeptical as to whether Russia’s plan would allow it to avoid being designated in default by ratings agencies and international bodies.
He suggested that as all ruble payments will be blocked by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, foreign investors will not be paid.
“One way or another, the rope is going to run out for the Russians,” he said, adding that Russia may, in fact, already be in default, as two coupon payments on ruble-denominated OFZ bonds in early March have yet to reach bondholders.
There are also further questions as to how foreign investors, whether individuals or institutions, would go about opening accounts with Russian banks given the current sanctions, or how funds held with any Russian financial institution can be repatriated without violating sanctions.
Bondholders may be unwilling to take that chance and prefer to stay within the sanctions rules while going through legal default proceedings.
“Typically, bondholder consent is required to make any changes to the time, place or manner of payment, so non-participating holders may still have potential claims,” Adam Solowsky, partner in the financial industry group at international law firm Reed Smith, told CNBC on Friday.
Contagion effect?
However, when asked if there would be a broader contagion effect if Russia is eventually declared in default, Ash said the impact would be limited compared with the Russian financial crisis in 1998.
“In ’98, there was $60 billion of foreign exposure in the GKO (Russian short-term zero-coupon government bonds) market and there was probably about the same in the external debt market, so that was a bigger event,” he said.
Once Russia enters default, it could remain there for a long time.
That’s because of the nature of the sanctions and the lack of an imminent resolution to the war in Ukraine.
Ash suggested this is why the Kremlin is fighting the designation.
“The Americans have said ‘we want Russia to go into default’ so they can only come out of default when America says ‘we’re happy now, you can negotiate with bondholders, all is forgiven’ — so it will remain in default for a long time, so it’s very, very bad for Russia, bottom line,” he said.
“While they’re not in default, there is a chance of someone lending to them, like the Chinese."
"Once they’re in default, it changes everything."
"Even the Chinese would be reluctant.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/06/russia- ... ckade.html
"Russia thinks it has found a way around Washington’s dollar bond payment blockade"
Elliot Smith @ELLIOTSMITHCNBC
KEY POINTS
* The country is exposed to a historic debt default after the U.S. Treasury Department last week allowed a key sanctions exemption to expire.
* The waiver had allowed Russia to process payments to foreign bondholders in dollars through U.S. and international banks, thereby avoiding default.
* Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reportedly told Russian newspaper Vedomosti on Monday that Moscow will continue to service external debts in rubles, but foreign eurobond holders will need to open ruble and hard currency accounts with Russian banks in order to receive payments.
Russia is exploring a new way of circumventing U.S. sanctions preventing Moscow from servicing its dollar-denominated bond payments to foreign investors.
The country is exposed to a historic debt default after the U.S. Treasury Department on May 25 allowed a key sanctions exemption to expire.
The waiver had allowed Russia to process payments to foreign bondholders in dollars through U.S. and international banks, thereby avoiding default.
On Friday, the Russian Finance Ministry wired $100 million in interest payments on two eurobonds in rubles to its domestic settlement house, but unless the money finds its way to the bank accounts of overseas bondholders, it may constitute a default.
The payments carry a 30-day grace period, after which Russia could be declared to have defaulted on its foreign currency debt for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, despite the Kremlin claiming to have ample cash to pay — an unprecedented situation for a major economy.
A further $2 billion in payments is due before the end of the year, though some of the bonds issued after 2014 are permitted to be paid in rubles or other alternative currencies, according to the contracts.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reportedly told Russian newspaper Vedomosti on Monday that Moscow will continue to service external debts in rubles, but foreign eurobond holders will need to open ruble and hard currency accounts with Russian banks in order to receive payments.
“As happens with paying for gas in roubles: we are credited with foreign currency, here it is exchanged for roubles on behalf of (the gas buyer), and this is how the payment takes place,” he said, according to a Reuters translation.
The settlement mechanism would operate in the same fashion, but in the opposite direction, and would be channeled through Russia’s National Settlement Depository, Siluanov suggested.
The NSD, unlike other major Russian financial institutions, is not currently subject to U.S. sanctions.
However, the European Union on Friday imposed sanctions on the NSD, which was meant to process the bond payments, further complicating matters for Russia.
‘The rope is going to run out’
Timothy Ash, senior emerging market sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, told CNBC on Wednesday that foreign investors are unlikely to acquiesce to Moscow’s requests to open Russian accounts.
“I think that’s unlikely."
"You’re talking about international companies, U.S. banks, international banks, and this is pretty peripheral in the end,” he said.
“They’re not going to damage their reputation or give themselves compliance risks by going through this process for a couple of hundred million bucks."
"They don’t want to get caught by secondary sanctions from the Americans.”
Ash was also skeptical as to whether Russia’s plan would allow it to avoid being designated in default by ratings agencies and international bodies.
He suggested that as all ruble payments will be blocked by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, foreign investors will not be paid.
“One way or another, the rope is going to run out for the Russians,” he said, adding that Russia may, in fact, already be in default, as two coupon payments on ruble-denominated OFZ bonds in early March have yet to reach bondholders.
There are also further questions as to how foreign investors, whether individuals or institutions, would go about opening accounts with Russian banks given the current sanctions, or how funds held with any Russian financial institution can be repatriated without violating sanctions.
Bondholders may be unwilling to take that chance and prefer to stay within the sanctions rules while going through legal default proceedings.
“Typically, bondholder consent is required to make any changes to the time, place or manner of payment, so non-participating holders may still have potential claims,” Adam Solowsky, partner in the financial industry group at international law firm Reed Smith, told CNBC on Friday.
Contagion effect?
However, when asked if there would be a broader contagion effect if Russia is eventually declared in default, Ash said the impact would be limited compared with the Russian financial crisis in 1998.
“In ’98, there was $60 billion of foreign exposure in the GKO (Russian short-term zero-coupon government bonds) market and there was probably about the same in the external debt market, so that was a bigger event,” he said.
Once Russia enters default, it could remain there for a long time.
That’s because of the nature of the sanctions and the lack of an imminent resolution to the war in Ukraine.
Ash suggested this is why the Kremlin is fighting the designation.
“The Americans have said ‘we want Russia to go into default’ so they can only come out of default when America says ‘we’re happy now, you can negotiate with bondholders, all is forgiven’ — so it will remain in default for a long time, so it’s very, very bad for Russia, bottom line,” he said.
“While they’re not in default, there is a chance of someone lending to them, like the Chinese."
"Once they’re in default, it changes everything."
"Even the Chinese would be reluctant.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/06/russia- ... ckade.html