Geo Political Risk

[Davexl]

Serious food for thought at this time...

World War III is far more likely than anyone is prepared to admit

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/3005...pared-to-admit

[Davexl]

3h ago07.01

In case you missed our earlier report, the world’s largest security body has said it is officially winding up its observer mission in Ukraine after eight years, after Russia vetoed its extension.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said it would “take immediate steps” to close the mission after members failed to find a way around Russia’s objections during a meeting last month, AFP reports.
Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, whose country holds the rotating OSCE chairmanship, said the organisation had tried all options but “the position of the Russian Federation left us with no choice”.

The Vienna-based OSCE’s mission to Ukraine began in 2014 after Russia-backed separatists launched an insurgency in the east. The organisation was the only international body monitoring the conflict on the ground, according to AFP.

OSCE monitors were largely withdrawn from the country following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. But administrative staff were left behind, and four of them have since been detained.

The OSCE secretary general, Helga Maria Schmid, said the organisation would continue to push for an “end to the detentions, intimidation, and disinformation that are so dangerous for our national mission members”.

[Davexl]

1h ago08.43

China’s ministry of foreign affairs has accused Nato of messing up Europe and stirring up conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region, after the UK’s foreign secretary told China it should “play by the rules”.

In a speech at Mansion House in London on Wednesday, Liz Truss renewed calls to boost Nato in the wake of the Ukraine war. Truss also delivered a direct warning to China. “Countries must play by the rules. And that includes China,” she said.

On Thursday, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, dismissed Truss’s comments and accused Nato of demanding other countries abide by basic norms while it has “wantonly waged wars and dropped bombs in sovereign states, killing and displacing innocent civilians”.

“Nato, a military organisation in the North Atlantic, has in recent years come to the Asia-Pacific region to throw its weight around and stir up conflicts,” Wang said.
“Nato has messed up Europe. Is it now trying to mess up the Asia-Pacific and even the world?”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...n-asia-pacific

[Davexl]

48m ago09.20

Ukraine says 'operation is planned today to get civilians out of' Azovstal plant

Ukraine hopes on Friday to evacuate civilians who are holed up in a vast steel works with the last fighters defending the southern city of Mariupol.

“An operation is planned today to get civilians out of the plant,” president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said without giving details.

There have been regular announcements from both Ukraine and Russia that humanitarian corridors would be set up, but as yet none have succeeded. Russia did not immediately comment on the Ukrainian presidency’s remarks.

“We are depending on the goodwill of all parties and we are in this together,” United Nations crisis coordinator Amin Awad told Reuters this morning.

[Bjauck]

The horrible story of a civilian hospital employee dragged by Russian soldiers from the basement of his house near Kyiv. He was tortured, taken to Russia, mistreated and used for prisoner exchange. So many Russian war crimes just in this one man's story...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61249158

[Panda-NZ-]

Russian soldiers don't fare much better.

I imagine the deserters will be thrown into that mobile crematorium truck.

[ananda77]

Colonel Wilkerson was the Chief of Staff for Colin Powell at the State Department. He worked with Powell at the Joint Chiefs. A conversation with Jay Paul - the Analysis.news.com

https://podbay.fm/p/theanalysisnews/e/1651261392

Paul Jay
One more thing about Putin, which is part of the story. When he was asked, I think, by NBC about if there was a limited first strike against Russia with a nuclear weapon and you knew that your retaliation second strike would cause the end of the world, would you do it? He says, well, what’s the point of a world without a Russia? Well, I think the American elites have the same feeling. What’s the point of a world without an American-dominated world?

Lawrence Wilkerson
You would have no trouble whatsoever in convincing me that there could be a confluence of leadership that would start a world Holocaust. No difficulty convinced me at all.

I’ve been there. I’ve seen how these people make decisions. I’ve seen how irrational they can be in their decision-making. I’ve seen how self-interested they can be in their decision-making. Frankly, Paul, I’ve seen how stupid they are. I do mean that, how stupid they are. We do not elect great leaders. Russia does not have the privilege of saying it elects great leaders either.

As a matter of fact, I firmly believe that the leadership in the West right now, with some exceptions, is one of the worst sets of leadership that we’ve ever had.

That said, I think the situation is made doubly dangerous by the fact that we have so many interests playing around in Ukraine right now in things that have nothing to do with Ukraine. So many people, mainly because of the media in every major capital in the world, are teaching the people this and know nothing of this. They think it’s all about white Christians being abused by Slavic raiders, whatever their image is. They think that’s what it’s all about.

That is not what it’s about. It’s not about NATO. It’s not about NATO membership. It’s not like Finland and Sweden, and Norway becoming members of NATO. It’s about none of that.

It’s about interests that are profiting from what’s going on, either politically, financially, economically, or geopolitically. That latter being the most dangerous one of them all. This all involves bringing Putin down, destabilizing Russia, and clearing that flank for a war with China. That’s the grand strategic thing that’s driving this. They do not give a dang about a single baby, a single woman, or a single person in Ukraine. They will use every one of them if they can or have to get to Putin and to get to their ultimate objective. That’s why this is so dangerous.

Paul Jay
I’d only add to that a lot of the same motivations on the Russian side.

excerpts of the conversation [ed.]

[Panda-NZ-]

This all involves bringing Putin down, destabilizing Russia, and clearing that flank for a war with China. That’s the grand strategic thing that’s driving this. They do not give a dang about a single baby, a single woman, or a single person in Ukraine. They will use every one of them if they can or have to get to Putin and to get to their ultimate objective. That’s why this is so dangerous.

Wouldn't that be nice.

Russia would be in the EU and an ally, which would be great for Russia (not so much Putin, the kgb and oligarchs).

[ananda77]

Wouldn't that be nice.

Russia would be in the EU and an ally, which would be great for Russia (not so much Putin, the kgb and oligarchs).

No it would not be. To imagine an unilateral global set-up dominated by US interests to me is the worst kind scenario.
It is also completely delusional thinking that Russia can be brought to it's knees without destroying the globe.
In the current set of geo-political parameters, a duo-polar world, the US and it's allies on one side and a unified Eurasia on the other, to me, is the most acceptable scenario without leading to global destruction.

[Davexl]

4h ago19.00

Summary

It is 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand:

• Ukraine acknowledged heavy losses from Russia’s attack in the east as Moscow’s forces, having failed to seize the capital, redoubled their efforts to fully capture the eastern Donbas region. But Ukraine said casualties in the invading army were even worse. “We have serious losses, but the Russians’ losses are much much bigger … They have colossal losses,” a Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said.

• European Union countries are likely to approve a phased embargo on Russian oil as early as next week, according to EU officials. European ambassadors are reportedly expected to give their approval of a finalised proposal by the end of next week after meeting on Wednesday, according to several EU officials and diplomats involved in the process.

• The US does not believe the threat of Russia using nuclear weapons despite a recent escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric, a senior US defence official said. Russia is days behind its schedule on its military operations in Ukraine’s Donbas region, a US defence official said, adding that the US believes that Russia’s fighting with Ukraine in the Donbas region will be a potential “knife fight”.
• Moscow has confirmed it carried out an airstrike on Kyiv during a visit by the UN secretary general, António Guterres. The defence ministry said two “high-precision, long-range air-based weapons” had destroyed the production buildings of the Artyom missile and space enterprise in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday night.

• The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, however, said a 25-storey residential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district was hit in the strike. Klitschko said one body had been recovered. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said one of its staff, the journalist and producer Vera Gyrych, had died “as a result of a Russian missile hitting the house where she lived” during Guterres’ visit.

• The situation inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the city of Mariupol is “beyond a humanitarian catastrophe”, a Ukrainian commander inside the facility has said. Serhiy Volyna, from the 36th separate marine brigade, said there were hundreds of people in the steelworks, including 60 young people, the youngest of whom is four months old. Ukraine hopes to evacuate civilians who are holed up in the steel plant with the last fighters defending the southern city, Zelenskiy’s office said.

• Two British aid workers who have reportedly been captured by Russian forces in Ukraine have been named. Presidium Network, a UK-based NGO that says it carries out evacuations of families and individuals from war zones, identified Paul Urey and Dylan Healy as the captured men. The Foreign Office said it was seeking further information about claims the two men who went to Ukraine to provide humanitarian aid have been captured.

• A former US Marine has been killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, the first US citizen known to have died in combat in the war with Russia. Willy Joseph Cancel, 22, was killed on Monday while working for a military contracting company that sent him to Ukraine, his mother told CNN. The US defence department warned US citizens that they should not go to Ukraine to fight.

• The US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, says the House will vote to pass Joe Biden’s $33bn request for aid for Ukraine “as soon as possible”. Speaking at her weekly press briefing on Friday morning, the House speaker framed the administration’s request as one of a number of “emergencies” Congress needed to address urgently.

• Britain will send investigators to Ukraine to help gather evidence of war crimes, including sexual violence, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said. Ukrainian prosecutors and the international criminal court (ICC) have been investigating potential war crimes in Ukraine since Russia’s 24 February invasion.