[Cheese]

I get daily emails from the Ukrainian Canadian congress with updates from Ukraine. (Not "The Ukraine")


A couple of paragraphs of interest here, and of course all on the political/diplomatic front which likely has little meaning:


The White House stated on January 2, “President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. President Biden made clear that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine. The leaders expressed support for diplomatic efforts, starting next week with the bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue, at NATO through the NATO-Russia Council, and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. President Biden underscored the commitment of the United States and its allies and partners to the principle of ‘nothing about you without you.’ He reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.



Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wrote for Politico, “When I met Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time as NATO secretary-general, he opened our meeting by telling me he wanted to disband NATO.

If NATO allies engage with Russia’s most recent proposals for a new security relationship in Europe, they will be directly helping him move a step closer to achieving his goal, giving Russia the whip hand over the security of Central and Eastern Europe.

Under the new Russian proposals, NATO would have to seek consent from Moscow to deploy troops in Central and Eastern Europe, refrain from ‘any military activity’ across Eastern Europe, the southern Caucuses and Central Asia, and halt any NATO drills near Russia. The agreement also demands a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be offered NATO membership, and a draft treaty with the United States would ban it from sending warships and aircrafts to “areas where they can strike targets on the territory of the other party,” like the Baltics and the Black Sea.

This is not a serious proposal from a man who wants peace. […]

Putin is skilled at creating crises only to later extinguish them, like a firefighter trying to douse his own arson attack, and by threatening to invade Ukraine, he has calculated that the U.S. and other Western powers might negotiate directly with the Kremlin — potentially over their Eastern European and Baltic allies — offering concessions and allowing him to maintain influence over former Soviet countries in exchange for peace.

Putin plays a bad hand well — but his tactics will only work if we fold. And it’s time for NATO to call Putin’s bluff.

Under no circumstances should the U.S. or NATO give commitments on future enlargement, real or de facto. Russia has already signed up to the 1999 OSCE Charter, which grants ‘the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve.’

This also means we should end Putin’s de facto veto on Ukraine and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations, achieved by fomenting low-level conflicts in these countries, the intensity of which he turns up and down to suit his agenda.