Geo Political Risk

[Davexl]

Bit more detail...

3h ago21.36

The US congress has approved a measure extending a World War II-era military lend-lease program to send aid to Ukraine.
The AP reports: .

The measure, which passed by an overwhelming 417-10 vote, now goes to the White House for President Joe Biden to sign into law.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Gregory Meeks of New York said with unified support from the US Congress, “Ukraine will win.”
The bill is the latest from Congress, which is steadily churning out resolutions and resources to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and help the country and its President Volodymyr Zelenskiy fight back. The Biden administration announced Thursday it will seek another $30 billion from Congress in military and humanitarian aid, on top of the nearly $14 billion Congress approved last month to help Ukraine fight the war.

Months in the making, the bipartisan bill was first introduced in January as part of the U.S.’s posture of deterrence to warn off Putin’s aggression towards Ukraine.
The measure would update the 1941 legislation Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law to help allies fight Nazi Germany. At the time, the then-U.S. president ushered the Lend-Lease Act through Congress, responding to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s appeal for aid, even as America initially remained neutral in the war, according to the U.S. National Archives.

Biden is expected to sign the bill into law, giving the administration greater leeway to send military equipment to Ukraine and neighboring allies in Eastern Europe.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave nod to the moment, saying the war is a battle between democracy and autocracy, and echoed Roosevelt’s call on Americans to provide the fuel to keep light of democracy burning.

“Our task today remains the same,” she said. “The Ukrainian people are making the fight for all of us.”

[Davexl]

The machinations of replacing those Javelins...

U.S. Missiles Sent to Ukraine Aren’t Easily Replaced, Panel Tells Senate

https://news.usni.org/2022/04/27/u-s-missiles-sent-to-ukraine-arent-easily-replaced-panel-tells-senate?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=f48bcabee 1-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1 450b-f48bcabee1-234966018&ct=t%28USNI_NEWS_DAILY%29&mc_cid=f48bcab ee1&mc_eid=cc0f71bf89

"The United States has shipped about a third of its existing arsenal of Stinger anti-air and Javelin anti-armor missiles to Ukraine – systems that are not quickly replaced – two experts on Pentagon buying said Tuesday."

"Lord suggested another option to rebuild necessary weapons stocks quickly would be to ease regulations and laws covering manufacturing by trusted allies like Australia."

[Davexl]

China Scores a Victory In the New Battle of the South Pacific

James Stavridis

A murky defense pact between the Solomon Islands and Beijing shows how complacency threatens U.S. and Australian naval dominance.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...uthor_15333522

[Davexl]

49m ago03.46

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Finland and Sweden would be “warmly welcomed” should they decide to join the 30-nation military organisation and any membership process could “go quickly”.

“It’s their decision,” Stoltenberg said. “But if they decide to apply, Finland and Sweden will be warmly welcomed, and I expect that process to go quickly.”

He gave no precise time frame, but did say that the two could expect some protection should Russia try to intimidate them from the time their membership applications are made until they formally join.

Stoltenberg said he’s “confident that there are ways to bridge that interim period in a way which is good enough and works for both Finland and Sweden.”

Nato’s collective security guarantee ensures that all member countries must come to the aid of any ally under attack. Stoltenberg added that many Nato allies have now pledged and provided a total of at least $8 billion in military support to Ukraine.

[Davexl]

2h ago02.59

Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy has spoken of how Russian troops came within minutes of finding him and his family in the first hours of the war in an interview with Time magazine.

Reporter Simon Shuster interviewed the Ukrainian leader while spending two weeks in the presidential compound in Kyiv earlier this month.
On the first day of war, Shuster writes that officials attempted to seal the compound “with whatever they could find” as Ukrainian troops fought the Russians in the streets.

“Russian troops came within minutes of finding him and his family in the first hours of the war, their gunfire once audible inside his office walls,” he added.
The military reportedly informed Zelenskiy that Russian strike teams had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture him and his family.

As night fell that first evening, gunfights broke out around the government quarter. Guards inside the compound shut the lights and brought bulletproof vests and assault rifles for Zelenskiy and about a dozen of his aides. Only a few of them knew how to handle the weapons,” Shuster said.

Russian troops made two attempts to storm the compound, Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service and a senior presidential advisor, told the reporter. Zelenskiy later added that his wife and children were still there at the time.

The US offered to evacuate the President and his team and help them set up a government in exile, most likely in eastern Poland. Speaking on a secure landline with the Americans, Zelenskiy responded: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

As the war rages on two months later and casualties rise, the president said he has aged in the face of such brutality.

I’ve gotten older. I’ve aged from all this wisdom that I never wanted. It’s the wisdom tied to the number of people who have died, and the torture the Russian soldiers perpetrated...To be honest, I never had the goal of attaining knowledge like that...

People see this war on Instagram, on social media. When they get sick of it, they will scroll away.”

[Davexl]

3h ago02.08

Summary

If you have just joined our live coverage of the war in Ukraine, here is a quick re-cap of where things currently stand.

• Russia attacked western Kyiv with two cruise missiles during a visit by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to the Ukrainian capital. Two loud explosions rocked Kyiv on Thursday evening after Guterres visited the site of massacres and mass graves on the city’s outskirts. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the strikes happened “immediately after” his talks with the UN chief.
• Ten were injured in the blast, which hit the central Shevchenkivskyi district, and three people were hospitalised, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service. A 25-storey residential building was partially destroyed.
• In his latest address, Zelenskiy addressed the strike on Kyiv, saying that Ukraine could not let its guard down. “Moscow claimed they had allegedly ceased fire in Mariupol. But the bombing of the defenders of the city continues,” he said. “This is a war crime committed by the Russian military literally in front of the whole world.”
• The UK will send 8,000 soldiers to eastern Europe on expanded exercises to combat Russian aggression in one of the largest deployments since the cold war. Dozens of tanks will be deployed to countries ranging from Finland to North Macedonia between April and June.
• Joe Biden has called for a giant $33bn package of military and economic aid to Ukraine, more than doubling the level of US assistance to date. The package would include over $20bn in military aid, including heavy artillery and armoured vehicles, greater intelligence sharing, cyberwarfare tools and many more anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. “We’re not attacking Russia. We’re helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression,” Biden said.
• A British citizen has been killed in Ukraine and a second is missing, the Foreign Office has confirmed, amid reports that both were volunteers who had gone to fight in the country. The Briton who died was understood to be Scott Sibley, a former British soldier who had served in Iraq.
• Russian forces have been hitting the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol with the heaviest strikes yet, a local official said.
  Meanwhile, a senior US defence official said the US had seen indications that some Russian forces were leaving Mariupol and moving towards the north-west, even as fighting for the Ukrainian port city continued.
• The UN secretary general, Guterres, said the UN was “doing everything possible” to evacuate people from the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. “They need an escape route out of the apocalypse,” Guterres said. Zelenskiy added that he believed that a “successful result” was still possible “in terms of deblocking” the Mariupol plant.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was probing a report that a missile had flown directly over a nuclear power station, adding it would be “extremely serious” if true. The IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, said Kyiv had formally told the agency the missile flew over the plant in southern Ukraine on 16 April. The facility is near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk, 350km (220 miles) south of Kyiv.
• The UN general assembly will vote on 11 May on a country to replace Russia on the world organisation’s leading human rights body after its suspension over allegations of rights violations by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Assembly spokeswoman Paulina Kubiak said the Czech Republic was the only candidate for the seat on the 47-member human rights council.
• Ukraine’s prosecutor general has named 10 Russian soldiers allegedly involved in human rights abuses during the month-long occupation of Bucha. There were 8,653 alleged war crimes under investigation, according to the prosecutor’s office.
• Guterres described the war as “an absurdity” in the 21st century on a visit to the scene of civilian killings outside Kyiv. Guterres was touring Borodianka, where Russian forces are accused of massacring civilians before their withdrawal, on his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the invasion.
• Moldova’s deputy prime minister, Nicu Popescu, said the country was facing “a very dangerous new moment” as unnamed forces were seeking to stoke tensions after a series of explosions in the breakaway region of Transnistria this week. Popescu said his government had seen “a dangerous deterioration of the situation” in recent days amid attacks in the region.
• The European Union will consider it as a violation of sanctions if European energy companies comply with Moscow’s requirement to open a payment account in roubles with Gazprombank, EU officials warned. The EU “cannot accept” that payments in euros for Russian gas are considered completed by Moscow only after they are converted into roubles, an official said.
• Nato said it was ready to maintain its support for Ukraine in the war against Russia for years, including help for Kyiv to shift from Soviet-era weapons to modern western arms and systems. “We need to be prepared for the long term,” Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, told a summit in Brussels. “There is absolutely the possibility that this war will drag on and last for months and years.”

[Davexl]

7m ago05.12

UN chief admits Security Council failed to prevent and end war

The UN Secretary General has criticised his own organisation’s Security Council while on visit to Kyiv.
During a press conference with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Antonio Guterres said the council had failed to prevent or end the war in Ukraine.

Let me be very clear. The Security Council failed to do everything in its power to prevent and end this war.

This is a source of great disappointment, frustration and anger.”

Guterres pledged that he would “boost our efforts across the board” and expand the council’s cash assistance – distributing $100 million per month, reaching 1.3 million people by May and covering 2 million by August.
The 15-member UN Security Council is specifically tasked with ensuring global peace and security and has faced criticism for failing to act since Russia’s invasion began in February.


The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the council had failed to prevent or end the war in Ukraine. Photograph: Ukraine Presidency/ZUMA Press Wire Service/REX/Shutterstock


20m ago23.59

Russia is preventing wounded Ukrainian fighters from being evacuated from the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol because it wants to capture them, the local officials say.

Reuters reports Pavlo Kyrylenko as telling a briefing:

They (want to) use the opportunity to capture the defenders of Mariupol, one of the main (elements) of whom are the... Azov regiment.

Therefore the Russian side is not agreeing to any evacuation measures regarding wounded (Ukrainian) troops.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had been quite clear that while civilians could leave the plant, the defenders had to lay down their arms, Tass news agency said.
“What could be the topic of negotiations in this case?” the agency quoted him as saying.

Mariupol city council said about 100,000 city residents were “in mortal danger” because of Russian shelling and unsanitary conditions. It said the shortage of drinking water and food was “catastrophic”.

[Davexl]

More detail...

Russia Crisis Military Assessment: The race to resupply Ukraine

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blog...eATbmg8RlEXClw

[Davexl]

The West is on the Up...

On a knife-edge: China is facing double disaster between COVID and Putin
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

https://www.smh.com.au/business/mark...29-p5ah24.html

Excerpt:

"China should abandon all illusions that the West is in terminal decline, or that a new world order of authoritarian regimes is dawning.

It should ditch Vladimir Putin immediately. The country should not be tainted by the retrograde adventurism of a loser. Beijing should instead seek a new concordat with Washington, acting as a conciliatory stakeholder power."

[Davexl]

More discord bubbling away...

Solomon Islands prime minister lashes Australia over AUKUS security pact

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fede...29-p5ah7x.html