Hungarian PM warns of ‘political earthquake’ in Europe
RT | November 30, 2025
Admitting Ukraine has failed in its conflict with Russia would cause a “political earthquake” in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. He warned that Western leaders are preparing to send troops and letting the conflict “become a business.”
Orban spoke a day after making a surprise trip to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine, trade, and energy. Despite the EU’s diplomatic boycott, he said Hungary has not yielded to pressure to cut ties with Russia and again offered to host peace talks.
Admitting that Ukraine has failed and that this cannot go on “would cause a fundamental earthquake in European politics,” he said during a speech on Saturday.
He warned that the West is increasingly open to direct involvement. “First they gave money, they gave weapons, and now it has emerged that if really necessary, they will also send soldiers,” Orban said.
Hungary has refused to provide weapons or troops to Ukraine and has repeatedly urged for a ceasefire. Orban’s government has frequently clashed with NATO and the EU nations’ leaders over its stance.
Orban believes diplomacy regarding the conflict has fallen prey to the defense sector. “Business circles connected to the military industry have an increasing influence on politics,” he pointed out, citing France’s deal with Kiev to purchase 100 combat aircraft and German arms factories being built in Ukraine.
Orban also claimed the West had managed to block a peace deal early in the conflict and that the move had ultimately harmed Ukraine. “The West prevented the Ukrainians from reaching an agreement, saying that time was on their side. But it turned out that it wasn’t,” he said.
“They are in a worse position today than if they had reached an agreement in April 2022,” he added, referring to the preliminary deal reached during the Istanbul talks. Kiev unilaterally walked away from those negotiations.
Kazakhstan blasts Ukraine after drone strike on oil export terminal
Al Mayadeen | November 30, 2025
Kazakhstan has issued a sharp diplomatic warning to Kiev after a Ukrainian naval drone severely damaged infrastructure at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) Black Sea terminal, forcing a halt to exports from one of the world’s most significant oil corridors.
The strike hit a Single-Point Mooring used to load tankers at the Novorossiysk facility, prompting CPC to suspend operations and remove vessels from the surrounding waters. The consortium, whose shareholders include Russian, Kazakh and US firms such as Chevron, Lukoil and ExxonMobil, said the November 29 attack left SPM-2 so badly damaged that “further operation of Single Point Mooring 2 is not possible.”
CPC transports roughly 1% of global crude supply and is responsible for almost 80% of Kazakhstan’s total oil exports, carrying millions of tonnes each year from the Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan fields to the Black Sea. Any extended disruption threatens the economic backbone of the OPEC+ producer, whose oil overwhelmingly moves through this 1,500-kilometre pipeline to the Yuzhnaya Ozereevka terminal.
Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the incident, calling it the third Ukrainian strike on the installation this year and stressing that the terminal is a civilian facility protected under international norms.
The ministry said the country “expresses its protest over yet another deliberate attack on the critical infrastructure of the international Caspian Pipeline Consortium in the waters of the Port of Novorossiysk,” adding, “We view what has occurred as an action harming the bilateral relations of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and we expect the Ukrainian side to take effective measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.”
Ukraine has not commented on the latest strike. Kiev has repeatedly targeted Russia’s energy network, including refineries and export terminals, arguing that such facilities sustain the Kremlin’s war effort. Russian officials, meanwhile, accuse Ukraine of terrorism, executed with the support of Western intelligence services that help Ukraine identify targets deep inside Russian territory.
CPC warned that the consequences extend beyond Russia alone. “We believe that the attack on the CPC is an attack on the interests of the CPC member countries,” the consortium said.
The halt comes amid escalating maritime drone warfare in the Black Sea, where Ukraine has expanded operations in an effort to erode Moscow’s revenue sources.
Türkiye condemns alleged Ukrainian attacks on tankers
RT | November 30, 2025
Türkiye has condemned recent drone attacks on two sanctioned oil tankers off its Black Sea coast, which Ukraine has reportedly claimed responsibility for.
According to Turkish officials, the Kairos and the Virat, both Gambian-flagged vessels, were struck on Friday while en route to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. The ships caught fire and at least one sustained hull damage. The crews were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.
Multiple Ukrainian and Western news outlets reported that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Navy had carried out the attack using Sea Baby drones previously deployed against Russian warships.
Ankara condemned the strikes on Saturday without blaming any country. “These incidents, which took place within our Exclusive Economic Zone in the Black Sea, have posed serious risks to navigation, human life, property, and the environment,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli wrote on X.
Keceli added that Türkiye was communicating with all parties to “prevent the spread of war and further escalation in the Black Sea.”
The West has blacklisted the Kairos and the Virat for allegedly transporting Russian oil in violation of sanctions. Moscow has denied operating a ‘shadow fleet’ designed to skirt restrictions.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which handles around 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports, said on Saturday that it suspended operations after a mooring at its terminal near Novorossiysk was heavily damaged by sea drones. The operator, whose shareholders include the US companies Chevron and Exxon Mobil, described the strikes as a “targeted terrorist attack.”
Sea drone strike halts operations at global oil terminal
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium has described the attack on its infrastructure as serving the interests of multiple countries
RT | November 29, 2025
A major crude hub on Russia’s Black Sea coast that handles around 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports has suspended operations after a mooring at its terminal near Novorossiysk was heavily damaged in an attack, its operator, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), said on Saturday.
“As a result of a targeted terrorist attack using unmanned boats at 4:06 a.m. Moscow time, Single Mooring Point 2 (SMP-2) sustained significant damage,” the CPC said in a statement on its website. “At the time of the explosion, the facility’s emergency protection systems successfully shut off the relevant pipelines. Preliminary reports indicate no oil has leaked into the Black Sea, and there are no injuries among staff.”
“Further operation of Mooring Point 2 is not possible,” it added.
There was no immediate confirmation of who carried out the strike, which follows a series of Ukrainian attacks on internationally-owned energy infrastructure in Russia. In September, Ukrainian drones hit the port of Novorossiysk, damaging the CPC’s office. In February, drones targeted the consortium-operated Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station. According to Interfax-Ukraine, citing a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) source, the most recent incident was a strike on two Russian oil tankers in the Black Sea, both hit by naval drones.
The consortium, whose shareholders include major energy companies from Russia, the United States, Kazakhstan and several Western European countries, described the incident as an attack on infrastructure serving the interests of multiple states. “No sanctions or restrictions have ever been imposed on the CPC, reflecting the company’s recognized role in safeguarding the interests of its Western shareholders,” the statement said.
Kazakhstan has activated an emergency plan to reroute crude through alternative pipelines following the disruption.
CPC said that the strike was the third act of aggression against a civilian facility protected under international law. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) director, Aleksander Bortnikov, warned in October that Ukraine was preparing further attacks and acts of sabotage against internationally-owned energy assets.
The consortium was established in 1992 to build and operate the 1,500km Caspian Pipeline, which links oil fields in western Kazakhstan to a marine terminal in Novorossiysk and is a key route for exporting Kazakh crude. Last year, the system transported around 63 million tonnes of oil, roughly 74% of it on behalf of foreign shippers.
EU sabotaged Trump’s Ukraine peace plan – Guardian
FILE PHOTO: Vladimir Zelensky and European leaders on May 10, 2025 in Kiev, Ukraine. © Stefan Rousseau – WPA Pool/Getty Images
RT | November 29, 2025
The European Union, along with the UK, has deliberately torpedoed the US peace roadmap aimed at ending the Ukraine conflict in the apparent hope that it “will fizzle out,” The Guardian has claimed.
Russia has repeatedly accused the EU of sabotaging efforts to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.
Washington put forth the peace framework earlier this month, and US officials are continuing to work on it. An allegedly leaked 28-point roadmap published by several media outlets featured requirements for Ukraine to renounce its NATO membership aspirations, as well as its claims to Russia’s Crimea and the Donbass regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Shortly after the contents of the US-drafted peace proposal were published by the press, several EU member states, along with the UK, scrambled to present their own version. Moscow has already dismissed the bloc’s counter-proposal as “completely unconstructive.”
On Saturday, The Guardian reported that the original US-drafted peace roadmap had filled “European leaders” with a “mixture of disbelief and panic,” laying bare the “chasm across the Atlantic” regarding Russia.
However, the EU and the UK are by now well-versed in blunting any American attempts at resolving the Ukraine conflict, the publication claimed.
Their strategy presumably boils down to welcoming the “fact of Trump’s intervention, before slowly and politely smothering it.”
According to the British media outlet, Kiev’s European backers took the original 28-point proposal and removed nine key elements from it.
The EU and the UK have also allegedly mobilized the “Atlanticist wing in the Senate,” so that it mounts internal opposition to the peace framework.
Politico Europe and The Telegraph, citing anonymous sources, have recently claimed that the US has been keeping the EU “in the dark” regarding ongoing diplomacy on the peace proposal.
In an interview with the France-Russia Dialogue Association on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “no one listens to… the European elites” due to their warmongering attitudes.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed a readiness to give the EU formal security guarantees that Moscow would not attack the bloc, even though the allegations are obviously “nonsense.”
Ukraine’s UOC Metropolitan Poisoned, Presumably With Heavy Metals – Orthodox Journalists
Sputnik – 29.11.2025
Hospitalized Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kanev of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), who is under investigation for treason in Ukraine, has been poisoned, presumably with heavy metals, the Union of Orthodox Journalists said on Saturday.
On Friday, the union said that the metropolitan had been hospitalized in a critical condition.
“Details regarding the health of Metropolitan Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kanev and possible reasons for his critical condition have become known. There is reason to believe that the religious leader was poisoned … Doctors say that during the diagnosis and treatment, they will test his body for a wide range of toxic substances. The metropolitan has been poisoned, presumably, with heavy metals,” the union said.
Orthodox journalists also said, citing the Cherkasy Diocese, that just over a month ago, the metropolitan had begun to show signs of an unusual illness, which was neither hypertension nor heart disease, which had plagued him for years. His body temperature rose frequently, and sharp jumps in blood pressure, from very high readings to critically low ones, were observed, the journalists said.
This week, the metropolitan’s health declined sharply, and his physician suggested immediate hospitalization, the union said.
“He still has severe intoxication. His condition is relatively stable, but the metropolitan remains hospitalized. Toxicology testing may take about a month,” a source in the hospital told journalists on the condition of anonymity.
In the spring of 2023, a court in Cherkasy placed Metropolitan Theodosius under house arrest provided that he wear an electronic bracelet. In December 2023, the court lifted his round-the-clock detention, leaving him under nightly house arrest. The metropolitan is charged with inciting religious hatred. In June 2024, another Ukrainian court imposed a 60-day, round-the-clock house arrest on Metropolitan Theodosius. In late October, the Union of Orthodox Journalists said that his pretrial detention had once again been extended for two months.
Since 2022, the Ukrainian authorities have been waging the largest wave of persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is recognized as canonical by the Russian Orthodox Church, in the country’s modern history — the authorities are imposing state sanctions against members of the clergy, organizing searches in churches, arresting clergy, initiating criminal cases, banning the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in various regions of the country, seizing monasteries and parishes.
US Drones for Ukraine No Match for Russian Countermeasures, Keep Crashing During Tests
Sputnik – 29.11.2025
Anduril, a $30B Silicon Valley defense startup building drones, surveillance equipment and C3I software for the US military, CBP and America’s allies, has sent tens of millions of dollars’ worth of drones to Ukraine since 2022.
But there’s a problem: Its products keep crashing before they can even be deployed.
Air Force testing this month involving two Anduril Altius multipurpose spy, communications, cyberwar and strike drones saw them ascend and slam into the ground. Summer testing of Anduril’s new Fury unmanned fighter damaged its engine before it could even take off, while an August test of the Anduril Anvil antidrone system caused a 22-acre fire in Oregon.
The US Navy has reported similar problems, with 30 drone boats operated by Anduril’s Lattice software shutting down during a deployment off California in May. Sailors said in a report that Anduril’s products suffered from “continuous operational security [and] safety violations, and contracting performer misguidances,” posing an “extreme risk” to US military personnel.
US Army drilling in Germany in January saw a Ghost spinning out and crashing near troops, with an Army spokesman confirming the drone’s issues with power management in cold temperatures.
And there’s another problem.
Although Ukraine’s military remains tightlipped about the performance of its Anduril equipment, an informed source told Reuters that the dozens of Ghost drones the company deployed in 2022 proved no match for Russian electronic warfare countermeasures, which jammed their satnav systems.
Meanwhile, sources told the Wall Street Journal that Anduril Altius drones were so problematic for Ukraine’s military that it stopped using them altogether in 2024.
The UK signed a $40M deal with Anduril in March for more Altius drones for Ukraine.
Daniel Davis: The War Is Lost & Europe Escalates
Lt. Col. Daniel Davis is a 4x combat veteran, the recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, and is the host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive YouTube channel. Lt. Col. Davis argues that the war is over, yet Europe is not ready for the peace dictated by a Russian victory.
Daniel Davis Deep Dive: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielDavisDeepDive/videos
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NATO members terrorizing their own people – Russian envoy
RT | November 28, 2025
European NATO members are instilling a false fear of Russia in their citizens in order to drum up support for militarization and a potential confrontation, Moscow’s envoy to Belgium, Denis Gonchar, has said.
Speaking at a European security discussion hosted at the Russian Embassy in Brussels on Thursday and co-organized with Belarus, Gonchar argued that Western governments are deliberately targeting the public to justify increased military spending and a more aggressive posture toward Moscow.
“NATO, which is terrorizing its own population with the Kremlin’s non-existent plans to attack the allies, is preparing for a big war with Russia, as crazy as it sounds,” he said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.
“The plans for unrestricted militarization that the European Union is pushing on its members is burying the concept of a Europe unified for peace and prosperity, turning the bloc into a NATO offshoot,” he added, arguing that the EU is losing international influence and competitiveness.
According to Gonchar, Western efforts to weaken Russia extend beyond Europe and target Russia’s neighbors as well as countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. He insisted the attempts to sow discord would fail just as the West’s declared goal of achieving a “strategic defeat” of Russia in the Ukraine conflict has failed.
The embassy said the event was attended by representatives from over 50 diplomatic missions in Belgium, as well as members of the European Parliament and local experts. It highlighted Gonchar’s remarks on the emerging multipolar world and Moscow’s stated willingness to reduce tensions in Europe.
Russian officials have repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war designed to hinder Russia’s development. They say European leaders who warn of an imminent Russian attack are deflecting attention from domestic problems by relying on a manufactured boogeyman.
George Beebe: Ukraine Faces Destruction if Europe Derails Peace
Glenn Diesen | November 27, 2025
George Beebe is the former CIA Director for Russia Analysis and currently Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. Beebe argues that great efforts are being made by the Trump administration to put an end to the Ukraine War. If the Europeans derail the peace efforts, then the most likely outcome will be the destruction of Ukraine.
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NATO demonstrates it can’t even beat Ukrainians, let alone Russia
By Drago Bosnic | November 27, 2025
One of the political West’s most common propaganda narratives is that NATO is “the best-trained and best-equipped military force on the planet”. This delusion stems from the belief that NATO standards are still considered “superior” in many countries, prompting their widespread adoption around the globe. However, while the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel has ample battlefield experience due to its perpetual aggression against the world, it’s largely useless against military superpowers. NATO has never been in a position of having to fight a war without absolute air superiority, uninterrupted fire support or disrupted logistics. On the contrary, Western troops would often request “overkill” airstrikes against just one or two Taliban fighters, which is virtually unimaginable in hotspots such as the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict.
Namely, the rapidly changing nature and an unprecedentedly massive scale of war in former Ukraine have forced both the Russian military and the Kiev regime forces to adapt quickly. Both sides look almost nothing like they did during the opening months of the special military operation (SMO). Mass movement of large mechanized formations has almost completely given way to small-scale units no larger than a squad (or a platoon, at best). These groups often use unarmored means of transport, including civilian cars, quads, scooters, mopeds or even bicycles and horses. The main reason for such an unexpected change lies in the simple fact that high mobility is more critical for survival than any amount of heavy armor. Recent years have demonstrated that even the best-protected vehicles stand little to no chance against even the most basic drones (oftentimes refitted civilian UAVs strapped with some explosive).
Worse yet, such drones are now heavily augmented by purpose-built military UAVs that use various types of warheads (anti-tank/anti-armor, anti-personnel or some other) and can obliterate targets that are tens or hundreds of thousands of times more expensive. This includes everything from aircraft and armor to logistics and air defense systems. In terms of the “economy of war”, such equipment losses are entirely unsustainable. Thus, you’d expect that “the best-trained and best-equipped military force on the planet” would use its extensive ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities to learn as much as possible about the ongoing conflict. However, instead of that, NATO is still stubbornly sticking to entirely outdated and obsolete (even medieval) practices that have no place on the modern battlefield. Worse yet, they’re trying to force Ukrainians to do the same.
Namely, NATO instructors are teaching the forcibly conscripted soldiers of the Kiev regime how to fight wars in scenarios that are simply no longer viable. This has gone so far that NATO instructors now request that Ukrainians remove their Mavic drones “due to excessive realism”. Ukrainian soldiers conducting training in Poland and Czechia are growing increasingly frustrated because they’re forced to learn these antiquated battlefield tactics and fight a theoretical war that no longer exists in NATO-occupied Ukraine. Worse yet, Western militaries refuse to acknowledge there’s a gaping hole in combat experience between Ukrainian soldiers and NATO personnel that’s supposed to “teach them” how to fight more effectively. However, the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel refuses to accept new battlefield realities and revise its training manuals.
Most of the courses are based on old (First) Cold War era tactics, while the newer ones draw on the experience gained during the truly unprovoked NATO invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Needless to say, the war in former Ukraine is markedly different from both of these scenarios. NATO instructors also kept insisting on the so-called “golden hour” rule for evacuating wounded personnel, with the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel refusing to acknowledge that such rules cannot possibly be implemented on a modern battlefield. Worse yet, this obsolete training includes river crossings and amphibious assaults in lightly armed and armored APCs (armored personnel carriers). Despite desperate pleas by Ukrainian marines who have been through such scenarios, they were left in shock when NATO refused to acknowledge their battlefield experience.
The political West simply rejected their knowledge and the accurate prediction that any piece of equipment unprotected by proper air and missile defenses or electronic warfare (EW) is effectively a sitting duck. This is not only because of attack drones, but also scout UAVs that can act as massive force multipliers for regular artillery pieces, effectively turning them into precision-guided platforms. Ukrainian soldiers often had to change the courses to teach NATO instructors how to “conduct assault operations under the threat of drones, how to use ghillie camouflage suits, anti-thermal cloaks and FPV cover”. It should be noted that this is not a new development, as evidenced by similar reports from the second year of the SMO. Namely, back in 2023, there were numerous complaints by both Ukrainian and American soldiers that NATO training is getting them killed in Ukraine.
Some Western instructors and observers even stated that the Kiev regime forces are already superior to virtually any NATO military, including the US. In addition, the robust Soviet-era weapon systems that the Neo-Nazi junta mainly used at the beginning of the SMO proved far deadlier than any grossly overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced Western weapon system. This certainly doesn’t bode well for either the Pentagon or Brussels.
If hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened Ukrainians have such an unprecedented casualty ratio of losses fighting the Russian military, but are still beating Western instructors even in basic tactics, then what chance could NATO possibly have against the Eurasian giant? Although undoubtedly a rather pitiful embarrassment, this and similar incidents could serve as a cold shower for warmongers and war criminals in NATO.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
European leaders are desperate for the war in Ukraine to continue
By Ian Proud | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 27, 2025
Left to their own devices, European leaders would be happy for the war in Ukraine to continue, with little regard for the enormous human cost involved, the continued destruction of infrastructure, nor the increasingly corrupt and repressive tendencies of Zelensky and his government.
It came as little surprise, therefore, that the Europeans have been working hard to derail President Trump’s efforts – which are already enormously challenging – to bring the war to an end. The U.S. approach, characterised by a post on X from Vice President JD Vance, is to ensure a peace plan that has to “be acceptable to both sides”.
That is a basic principle of diplomacy. No one truly wins in war and, to bring it to an end, statesmanship is needed with both sides willing to make concessions in the interest of a longer-term peace. Despite continuing to press home the advance of Russia’s army on the battlefield, and in a much stronger position economically to sustain the war, President Putin has shown a willingness to settle and draw a line to stop the bloodshed.
Yet, and as Vance said in his post, “There is a fantasy [in Europe, Kyiv and among some quarters in Washington] that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand. Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land. It might be made by smart people living in the real world.”
The cold hard reality is that Ukraine will also need to make concessions to bring the war to an end and that European leaders will have to recognise the inevitability of this.
And yet, after the U.S. kickstarted detailed peace talks with Ukraine in Geneva it quickly became clear that the Europeans are still living in a fantasy in which they can somehow force Russia to make all the required concessions for peace, without the economic means, nor the military will to do so.
Following publication of an initial draft 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, western media were quick to circulate a new version that had been edited by the National Security Advisers of Germany, France and the UK. (It amazes me – or perhaps it doesn’t – that no one is the western media has asked how the document was leaked so quickly.)
The initial 28-point U.S. plan – which was less of a plan than an agenda for talks – was not perfect by any means, but it did include elements that tried to deal with the concerns of both Russia and Ukraine.
The 27-point edited plan from the Europeans was absolutely designed to ensure that Russia would not agree to a peace deal and would continue fighting on the battlefield.
By far the biggest reason for this centred around NATO. The U.S. draft included a clause that Ukraine would give up its ambition for NATO membership and that NATO would include in its charter documents a commitment never to permit Ukrainian membership.
The European version changed that to Ukraine only being able to join NATO through a consensus of members which does not exist. But this quite obviously states the current position of NATO towards Ukraine’s membership; that because there is no consensus, Ukraine cannot join. However, the oft stated position from the Russian side is that one day that consensus may be found, for example under a future Democrat party U.S. President. So, all this does is to leave the door ajar for Ukraine to join one day in the future. And it was precisely this concern that President Putin expressed in the frantic days of diplomacy that preceded the start of the war. “If not tomorrow, then what about the day after tomorrow?” Notably, clause 3 in the draft U.S. text that “NATO will not expand further” was also completely removed by the Europeans (hence the European plan has 27 points, not 28 points).
Moreover, other language in the U.S. draft was watered down. Gone was a commitment never to station NATO troops in Ukraine; the proposed European clause stated NATO troops would not be permanently stationed in Ukraine during peacetime. That both left open the possibility of temporary deployments of NATO troops to Ukraine and a permanent deployment in any future war.
On the basis that the proposal is to bring peace to Ukraine, adding in a text that allows for the temporary deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine when peace breaks out seems designed to ensure that peace won’t happen. Not least as the U.S. draft, as it stood, included solid language on security guarantees for Ukraine that involved a military response to a hypothetical future war from Russia.
The other striking aspect of the European so-called “counter-proposal” was its soft pedalling on Ukraine’s future EU membership. While the U.S. draft spoke of EU membership as a “right” for Ukraine, the Europeans changed the wording to say that Ukraine would be “eligible” for EU membership, and that its application would be “evaluated”. This is diplomatic weasel wording for “membership is not guaranteed”. So, while the Russian side has said it no longer has objections to Ukraine joining the EU, European leaders are starting to focus on the enormous cost and disruption that this will involve, as I have pointed out many times before.
Lacking the money to pay for Ukraine, the Europeans also radically changed the language on the cost of post-war reconstruction. Out, the U.S. language to divide and invest some part of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets. In, language that Russia would have to pay for all reconstruction, and that its assets would remain frozen until this was the case. Clearly, and as I have also pointed out previously, holding on to Russian assets will disincentivise Russia from striking for peace. Why would Russia want to end a war that it is winning while paying for all the damages caused by the war and not receive back its frozen reserves in the process? It would arguably be less expensive to keep fighting.
There were other curious additions by the Europeans too. One addition removed the U.S. proposal that elections be held in Ukraine 100 days after the peace deal is agreed, to a commitment to hold elections “as soon as possible”. This appears obviously a sop to Zelensky’s team, leaving open the prospect of Presidential elections being kicked down the road for an indeterminate period of time after the war ends.
The language on promoting mutual understanding and reconciliation between Ukraine was watered down and wording on Nazi ideology removed.
On paper, the U.S. 28-point plan, and the European 27-point counter-proposal appeared fairly similar. Yet, read closely, the U.S. plan appears one for peace, while the European is one for more war.
Despite this, the Americans appear to be in the driving seat on the negotiations, keeping the Europeans largely out of the substance of the negotiations. A further intensive day of discussions with Ukraine in Geneva on 24 November slimmed the peace proposal down to 19 points. It will be a monumental challenge for President Trump to find a solution that will be acceptable both to Russia and to Ukraine. But he has a far greater chance than anyone in Europe.
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The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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