Tag: nato

Is Trump Getting Ready To Cut Ukraine—and Europe—Loose?

President Donald Trump started peace negotiations over Ukraine with dramatic flair. Although he had been expected to send his envoy Keith Kellogg to present a peace plan at the Munich Security Conference this week, Trump instead had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, announcing on Wednesday morning that they “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.” Along with the peace talks, the two countries announced a surprise prisoner exchange. And Trump snubbed Kellogg, leaving him out of the announced negotiating team.

European governments panicked at the notion that they would be left out of any final deal. “Peace can only be achieved together. And that means with Ukraine, and with the Europeans,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters. “There will be no just and lasting peace in Ukraine without the participation of Europeans,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said to France’s cabinet. Leaders across Europe made similar statements.

The talks about Ukraine are about more than Ukraine, and everybody on both sides of the Atlantic knows it. The new Trump administration seems eager to draw back from America’s post-World War II role as Europe’s military protector. In a speech on Wednesday, a few hours before Trump’s announcement, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called on the other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to pick up the tab for defending Ukraine and Europe.

“Our transatlantic alliance has endured for decades. And we fully expect that it will be sustained for generations to come. But this won’t just happen. It will require our European allies to step into the arena and take ownership of conventional security on the continent,” Hegseth said. “The United States remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship that encourages dependency. Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.”

Of course, Trump talked about having European countries pay a bigger share of defense in his first term, too. He also built up U.S. forces close to Russia’s borders, and sent the first lethal military aid to Ukraine, mocking former President Barack Obama for giving Ukrainian troops only “pillows and sheets.”

The stakes, however, are different now. During Trump’s first term, the conflict was a war between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russia rebels. Since then, Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, leading to the most intense combat in Europe since World War II—and burning through U.S. resources. The threat of a direct U.S.-Russian war has loomed in the background. 

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EU/NATO Freak Out Over Trump Position On Ukraine – Zelenskiy Says Trump ‘Not Nice’

Since Ukrainian “President” Volodymyr Zelenskiy is not a legitimately elected leader at this point, we find these statements humorous.

Zelensky: The question of the elections is not at issue at the moment, it’s really not very nice that Trump called Putin first. I did not discuss joining NATO with Trump, but I know that Washington does not want us to be a member of the alliance.

We will not accept any deal between Moscow and Washington without Kyiv.

Hegseth: There is no betrayal of Ukraine. The world and the U.S. are investing in peace—through negotiations. Russian aggression was a wake-up call for NATO that it must be stronger.

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US Will Draw Down NATO Contribution, Focus On China – Europe Must Defend Itself, Rebuild Ukraine

“I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaking to NATO ministers in Europe declared:

“I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.

“Realities prevent the U.S. from being its security guarantor, and to expect a drawdown of U.S. forces in the region.

“We face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific.

“The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific. Recognizing the reality of scarcity and making the resourcing trade-offs to ensure deterrence does not fail. Deterrence cannot fail.

“European allies must lead from the front. United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency. Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.”

President Trump, when asked if he saw Ukraine as an equal partner in the peace process?, said, “Ummm… interesting question. That was not a good war to go into.”

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The Next NATO-Russia Proxy War Could Be in a Country You’ve Never Heard Of

The New Year’s Day decision by Ukraine to suspend a five-year gas transit agreement with Moscow has triggered an energy crisis in Europe and threatened to spill its ongoing conflict with Russia over into neighboring countries.

The termination of Russian gas exports to the continent via Ukrainian pipelines has already impacted several European nations reliant upon fuel from Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy giant, including Slovakia and Moldova.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt last year over his opposition to the Ukraine proxy war, has threatened to cut off electricity supplies to Kyiv in retaliation. Meanwhile, Moldova has declared a national state of emergency after the gas stoppage plunged the little-known breakaway region of Transnistria, a tiny separatist enclave landlocked along the Moldovan border with Ukraine, into a humanitarian catastrophe.

Officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), the breakaway state is internationally unrecognized and has been deadlocked in a “frozen conflict” with Moldova since the signing of an armistice in 1992 following an armed rebellion.

One of several disputed post-Soviet territories in a never-ending stalemate since the dissolution of the USSR, Transnistria faces imminent collapse as its fuel provisions continue to run out amidst freezing winter temperatures and rolling blackouts. At the same time, Moldova will no longer receive Russian gas-fired electricity from the country’s largest power plant located in the PMR.

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REPORT: Trump’s Peace Plan for Russia and Ukraine Allegedly Leaked – Talks Between Putin and Zelensky – Ceasefire by Easter – No NATO for Kiev

Remember when any talk of peace negotiations was strictly forbidden, and anyone talking about that would be branded a ‘Putin puppet’?

Well, now, hardly a day passes by without some relevant development and statement by the central players about the peace process between the US and Russia that will end the war in Ukraine.

Today, a rather sensational report emerged from the Ukrainian press, alleging to be a ‘leak’ of US President Donald J. Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine.

According to the unverified ‘plans’, Trump will force Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into a ceasefire with Russia by Easter.

Daily Mail reported:

“The unconfirmed plans, reported by Ukrainian outlet Strana, have been doing the rounds in ‘political and diplomatic circles’ in Ukraine, and will include a ceasefire by April 20 that would freeze Russia’s steady advance, a ban on Ukraine from joining NATO, and a demand for Kyiv to accept Russian sovereignty on annexed land. On top of this, Ukrainian troops will be made to leave Russia’s Kursk region, where it launched a counteroffensive in August, while a contingent of European soldiers, which could include British troops, would be asked to police a demilitarized zone. American troops will not be involved in this contingent.”

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Russia Says NATO About To Throw Zelenskiy Under Bus By Disclosing Embezzlement Of Billions

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has released a theory about the coming election of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The information released is very self-serving for the Russian propaganda machine in the war, but there is truth.

Tsarizm has been actively talking about corruption in the Ukrainian government and the siphoning of funds from the war effort for years.

The following is from Russian state news entity TASS.

“NATO would like to see the head of the Kiev regime gone, ideally by way of a pseudo-democratic election. The alliance reckons that this election will be held in Ukraine no later than this fall. Ahead of the election campaign, the NATO headquarters is hatching plans on a massive smear campaign to undermine Zelensky’s credibility,” the SVR said.

Thus, according to the SVR, the plan is to “make public information that the ‘president’ and his inner circle have embezzled more than $1.5 billion from funds meant to buy munitions.” Additionally, the plan reportedly includes “exposing a scheme in which payments meant for 130,000 fallen Ukrainian soldiers—who remain officially listed as active-duty personnel—have been funneled abroad by Zelensky and his associates,” the SVR said. “They also plan to pull the curtain down on repeated instances of the ‘Ukrainian supreme commander-in-chief’s’ involvement in selling large quantities of Western-donated weapons and vehicles to various armed groups in African countries,” writes Russian state news entity TASS.

So, “even NATO realizes that Zelensky’s time is up. It’s just unfortunate that this realization came at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens,” it stated.

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NATO: The Case To Get Out Now

The case for getting out of NATO now encompasses four fundamental propositions:

  • First, the Federal budget has become a self-fueling fiscal doomsday machine, even as the Fed has run out of capacity to monetize the skyrocketing public debt.
  • Second, the only viable starting point for fiscal salvation is slashing the nation’s elephantine Warfare State by at least $500 billion per year.
  • Third, the route to that end is a return to the “no entangling alliance” wisdom of the Founders, which means bringing the Empire Home, closing the 750 US bases abroad, scuttling much of the US Navy and Army and withdrawing from NATO and similar lesser treaties and commitments in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.
  • Fourthly, canceling NATO and its clones requires debunking its Origins Story and the false claim that it brought peace and security to post-war America when what it actually did was transform Washington into a planetary War Capital dominated by a panoptic complex of arms merchants, paladins of foreign intervention, neocon warmongers and a vast Warfare State nomenklatura.

As to the impending fiscal calamity, just recall this sequence. When Ronald Reagan campaigned against the soaring Federal deficits in 1980 the public debt was $930 billion and about 30% of GDP. But it had erupted to $20 trillion by Donald Trump’s first election, now stands at $36 trillion and 125% of GDP and will be hitting $62 trillion by the mid-2030s.

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NATO Was Never About American Security

The evidence from the Soviet archives shows that Stalin’s policy during the 1947 pivot to Cold War was largely defensive and reactive. But even that departure from the cooperative modus operandi of the wartime alliance arose from what might well be described as an unforced error in Washington.

We are referring to the latter’s badly misplaced fears that deteriorating economic conditions in Western Europe could lead to communists coming to power in France, Italy and elsewhere. The truth of the matter, however, is that even the worst case – a communist France (or Italy or Belgium) – was not a serious military threat to America’s homeland security.

As we pointed out in Part 2, the post-war Soviet economy was a shambles. Its military had been bled and exhausted by its death struggle with the Wehrmacht and its Navy, which embodied but a tiny fraction of the US Navy’s fire-power, had no ability whatsoever to successfully transport an invasionary force across the Atlantic. Even had it allied with a “communist” France, for example, the military threat to the American homeland just wasn’t there.

To be sure, communist governments in Western Europe would have been a misfortune for electorates who might have stupidly put them in power. But that would have been their domestic governance problem, not a mortal threat to liberty and security on America’s side of the Atlantic moat.

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NATO, Sweden, Latvia On High Alert After Baltic Undersea Data Cable “Damaged”

The third severing of an undersea cable in just three months occurred on Sunday, this time between Latvia and Sweden in the Baltic Sea. The incident has prompted a criminal investigation and heightened concerns of potential sabotage by Russia or China.

Latvia’s State Radio and Television Center, a data transmission provider, released this statement about the damaged cable connecting Ventspils in Latvia and Sweden’s Gotland island:

In the early morning of January 26, the submarine fiber optic cable of the Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (hereinafter – LVRTC) in the Baltic Sea was damaged. The LVRTC Data Transmission Monitoring System recorded disruptions in data transmission services on the Ventspils – Gotland (Fårösund) section. LVRTC continues to provide services using other data transmission routes. Currently, there is a possible delay in data transmission speed, but it does not affect end users in Latvia for the most part.

Prime Minister Evika Silina commented about the incident on X:

Early morning today we received information that the data cable from Latvia to Sweden was damaged in the Baltic Sea, in the section that is located in the Exclusive economic zone of Sweden. We are working together with our Swedish Allies and NATO on investigating the incident, including to patrolling the area, as well as inspecting the vessels that were in the area. Authorities have intensified information exchange and started criminal investigation.

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Strava Security Breach Scandal: NATO Soldiers in Poland Expose Sensitive Data by Negligent Usage of Fitness App

The worldwide scandal involving security breaches connected to the popular fitness app Strava continues to gain global headlines.

Initially reported by the French paper Le Monde, investigations over the usage of this app revealed glaring security failures involving security personnel for leaders like Macron, Biden and Trump.

A second report also showed how French nuclear submarine crews were giving away sensitive information by using the app.

Now, it’s revealed that NATO soldiers stationed in Poland are also suspected of the same security breaches.

News portal Służby i Obywatel, reports soldiers at Polish bases unknowingly shared information about their travel routes by their Strava usage.

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