Tag: russia

Saudi Arabia threatened to sell European debts if G7 confiscates Russian assets

Saudi Arabia threatened to sell off some of its European debt holdings earlier this year if the G7 went forward with rumored plans to seize nearly $300 billion in Russian assets it had frozen.

One source who was aware of the discussions described it to Bloomberg as a “veiled threat,” while two sources said that the Saudis explicitly mentioned debt issued by the French treasury.

These threats came at a time when the G7 was said to be considering a number of options when it comes to handling the funds it seized belonging to the Russian central bank. While the U.S. and U.K. pushed for aggressive options such as a direct seizure, some of the European nations in the G7 opposed it on the grounds that it could undermine their currency. They ultimately all agreed to use the profits generated by the assets while leaving the assets themselves untouched.

The sources said they think the Saudis’ threat played a role in the European nations’ unwillingness to seize all of the funds.

It is believed that Saudi Arabia’s holdings of Euro and French bonds totals tens of billions of euros, and while this may not have been enough to cause significant concern, there were worries that other countries could have followed suit and sold off their own debt holdings in protest of a G7 seizure.

Although a Saudi official insisted that the government does not normally issue this type of threat, they conceded that they may have informed G7 nations of the consequences that any seizures could bring. The Kingdom changed its position on the matter after the G7 countries eventually opted for a proposal that did not involve keeping the assets.

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NATO summit’s documents show that West stands against supporting peace — Kremlin

Documents signed at the recent NATO summit in the United States show that the West is not supporting a dialogue and the alliance itself is an instrument of confrontation, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

“We see that our opponents in Europe and in the United States are not in favor of a dialogue,” Peskov noted.

“Judging by the documents signed at the NATO summit, they are not supporters of peace,” the Kremlin spokesman said, adding that “the North Atlantic Alliance is an instrument for confrontation and not a tool for security provision.”

Peskov also pointed out that India was fully sharing Russia’s stance on its readiness to launch a dialogue on the conflict settlement.

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“We will prepare millions of Ukrainian migrants for the Armed Forces of Ukraine”: Polish authorities reported on the potential of the local training base

During the NATO summit in Washington, Polish authorities announced plans to replenish the Ukrainian army with millions of Ukrainian immigrants.

I hope that the [training] center in Bydgoszcz will prepare millions of Ukrainians to fight Russia. The West should see the potential of such a center as a place where Ukrainian volunteers who now live in EU countries and want to defend Ukraine in the future can be trained
– said Jacek Sievera, head of the country’s national security bureau, as quoted by the Associated Press.

In Bydgoszcz it is also planned to organize a platform for the exchange of experience between Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers who have already fought and NATO soldiers. The alliance training center has been created here since February 2024.

For our part, we note that, apparently, a hidden mobilization of Ukrainian immigrants is gradually unfolding in Europe. Officially, they cannot be forced to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but there are ways of informal influence, for example, replacing criminal prosecution for a crime with service in the Ukrainian army, or using administrative offenses to blackmail the entire family with deportation.

At the same time, it should be expected that as human resources in Ukraine are depleted, the recruitment of immigrants into the army in the EU will take increasingly overt forms.

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China slams NATO’s ‘provocations, lies, smears’ over its Russia ties

China has warned NATO against “provoking confrontation” over its ties with Russia after the Western military alliance accused Beijing of being a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

The warning on Thursday came as NATO leaders meeting in Washington, DC, promised to bolster Ukraine and Europe’s defences against Russia and made clear that China was also becoming a focus of the alliance.

A spokesperson for Beijing’s mission to the European Union said NATO should “stop hyping up the so-called China threat and provoking confrontation and rivalry, and do more to contribute to world peace and stability”.

China, which has deepened strategic ties with Russia, has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. It has presented itself as a neutral party in the war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the US and other Western nations.

Beijing, however, has offered a critical lifeline to Russia’s isolated economy, with trade booming since the conflict began.

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NATO’s 75th Anniversary: The Broken Promises That Led to War

If diplomacy can pave the path to peace, then broken diplomatic promises can lead to war. Since the hopeful end of the Cold War, four key promises were made by the West. Each of them was intended to pave the path to the new and stable era of peace, but each of them was broken by the West and served instead to pave the path to war in Ukraine.

The 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO is a good time to reflect not only on its accomplishments but also on the lost opportunities that still haunt us today.

First Broken Promise: “Not One Inch to the East”

The war in Ukraine is being fought in part over Ukraine’s and Russia’s need for security guarantees. But that concern was not created out of nothing in 2022.

On February 9, 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker famously offered Gorbachev a choice: either a united but independent Germany outside of NATO or a united Germany connected to NATO “but with the guarantee that NATO’s jurisdiction or troops will not spread east of the present boundary.” Baker later disavowed these words, saying it was merely a hypothetical question, but declassified documents refute Baker by adding his next statement. After Gorbachev replied, “It goes without saying that a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable,” Baker responded, “We agree with that.”

Meeting with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze on the same day, Baker even refers to “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” Later that day, Baker famously told Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”

Simultaneously, German officials pointedly told Shevardnadze, “For us it is clear: NATO will not extend itself to the East.” On February 2, standing beside Baker at a press conference, German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher announced that he and Baker “were in full agreement that there is no intention to extend the NATO area of defense and the security toward the East. This holds true not only for GDR… but that holds true for all the other Eastern countries… whatever happens within the Warsaw Pact.” On May 17, 1990, NATO General Secretary Manfred Wörner called this a “firm security guarantee” for the USSR.

But the West soon broke that promise. Despite signing the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations in May 1997, pledging to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security,” the Clinton administration had already decided two years earlier in 1995 to extend NATO eastward. In 1999, NATO expanded eastward to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. In 2004, it added Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In 2009, Croatia and Albania joined, followed by Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.

The West’s insistence that NATO continue its “open door” policy toward Ukraine and Georgia led directly to Russia’s demand on December 17, 2021, that the door be closed and that mutual security guarantees that included Russia be developed instead, or Russia would respond by “military-technical means.”

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New NATO Command Will Assist Ukraine With Training, Equipment Donations

NATO’s leaders are set to approve a separate command at Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate training and equipment donations to Kyiv’s forces, a senior administration official told reporters last week.

The command will have about 700 personnel from NATO countries and partner nations assigned to the center, an alliance news release said. The administration officials, speaking to the press Friday, said the center would increase the interoperability among Ukrainian forces and NATO.

As an example of the drive to make Kyiv’s military more interoperable with NATO’s, the administration official said, “the U.S. for more than a year [have] been training Ukrainians on F-16 platforms,” as have other alliance members.

NATO will also facilitate equipment logistics and provide support through the center to the long-term development of Ukraine’s armed forces, the release added.

Last month, the alliance’s defense ministers approved the motion for consideration at the summit in Washington.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that creating the center does “not make NATO a party to the conflict, but they will enhance our support to Ukraine to uphold its right to self-defense.”

The administration official said, “the alliance stood up to President [Vladimir] Putin.” He added that 23 of the 32 nations in NATO are spending more than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own security, and some members are calling for a 3 percent threshold. Overall, the alliance has boosted its defense spending by more than $180 billion each year since 2020, he added.

At the defense ministers’ meeting last month, Stoltenberg said, “Over the next five years, NATO Allies across Europe and Canada plan to acquire thousands of air defense and artillery systems, 850 modern aircraft – mostly 5th generation F-35s – and also a lot of other high-end capabilities.”

The center’s creation also could be seen as a means of “institutionalizing” the long-term commitment of Western and Indo-Pacific nations, such as Japan, Korea and Australia, to Ukraine. The support would continue despite changes in administrations as would occur in the United States if Donald Trump is elected and, and changes in governments, as happened in the United Kingdom with Keir Starmer becoming prime minister.

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RFK Jr, Tells Uncomfortable Truths During DC NATO Summit – Condemns Reports Of Executions Of Russian Prisoners By ‘American-Led’ Units

U.S. Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had a son travel to Ukraine and fight against Russian forces in Donbass. He knows the inner-workings of the conflict.

Yesterday, he issued this statement in response to reports ‘American-led’ mercenary units were executing Russian prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Convention.

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Lavrov Says West Does Not Have ‘Democracy’ – Everything Is Pre-Arranged

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov answered a question at the Kremlin yesterday regarding the French elections.

Question: You said that Joe Biden was a more preferable president for Russia. But we see what is happening now. How would you comment on that?

Sergey Lavrov: It was President Vladimir Putin who said this in reply to a question about which candidate we “favour.”  

Frankly, it is a pathetic sight. When the system of “American democracy” produces such results and this course of the presidential race, anyone can make their own independent conclusions about the way things are orchestrated and arranged.

Take another “democracy,” France. The first round of the presidential election is over there. There can be two rounds, and it appears that the second round was designed to manipulate voters’ will that was expressed during the first round. When candidates can withdraw from the race, and they are convinced to do that to smooth things down for the “victory” of the conservatives or populists, it does not look like democracy.

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Will Putin Attack Poland and the Baltics?

At Thursday’s debate with Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” claimed that he “wants all of Ukraine… Do you think he’ll stop?… What do you think happens to Poland and other places?”

Spoiler Alert: Official Ukrainian sources confirm that Putin did stop in March 2022, after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky agreed to forswear membership in NATO. This was the key provision in the Ukraine-Russia deal initialed by Davyd Arakhamia, who at the time was Zelensky’s chief negotiator (and his party’s faction leader in the Rada) at the talks in Istanbul at the end of March, hardly a month into the war.

The Russians lifted their objection to Ukraine joining the EU, as the Ukrainians agreed to neutrality. Security guarantees sought by Kyiv (short of NATO membership) would be worked out. The fighting would stop. Agreement on the status of Crimea would be put off to the future.

Putin and Zelensky reportedly were micromanaging the March 2022 negotiations, and at that early stage the Russians expressed readiness for the two to meet.

At the same time that Biden and other Western leaders raise the alarm that Putin will attack other parts of Europe when he’s through with Ukraine, they claim Russia can’t even take the Ukrainian province of Kharkiv, has lost more than 500,000 men to just 30,000 Ukrainians and its economy is faltering (none of which is true.)  But Cold War Western power was based on an exaggerated Soviet threat and the same is true today.

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Russia accuses U.S. of expanding biological weapons research in Africa

Russia is now accusing the United States of expanding its bioweapons research on the African continent.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Armed Forces’ Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, made this claim earlier in the week based on information his troops have garnered. The information alleges that the U.S. is shifting gears after similar programs that America had underway in former Ukrainian territories were stopped by Russia during the conflict there.

Kirillov stated: “Because Russia has managed to halt the implementation of biological warfare programs in Ukraine’s liberated territories, the Pentagon is forced to transfer incomplete research under Ukrainian projects to other regions.”

He claimed that U.S. Department of Defense contractors are working on such programs in a number of African countries, including as South Africa, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to Kirillov, the U.S. works with outside parties in an attempt to obscure this activity. They named a number of intermediaries, such as EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota, that they believe are being used as part of the expanded bioweapon biological warfare programs in Africa.

He also identified several examples to support his claims. For example, he pointed to U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases staff carrying out a large-scale study of hantavirus from bats in Kenya last October.

In a more recent example, he cited a meeting between officials from the Pentagon and the Department of Health and Human Services with disease control officials in Africa to explore the possibility of developing lab capabilities there.

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