© KommersantRussian President Vladimir Putin escorted by Defense Minister Sergeooi Shoigu (R) and Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov (L).
Machine translation from Russian:
"Behind closed doors, more radical ideas are also discussed."
Russia simply has nowhere else to retreat, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the final press conference. Therefore, Moscow went on the offensive. So far, it is happening on the diplomatic front. The active phase will begin without swinging:
in January, the first round of negotiations with the West on security guarantees will be held. It depends on them whether geopolitical tensions will increase, or the temperature will be brought down.The Ukrainian Dead EndIn 2021, hopes that negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in the Donbass could end with solid agreements
finally collapsed. Those hopes really were there. They appeared after the change of power in Kiev and Volodymyr Zelensky became the president of the country, declaring his main goal to achieve peace. There were many signals that Moscow fully admitted the possibility of rapid progress on the Minsk agreements.
The preparatory work included significant exchanges of detainees in 2019. Among others, the director Oleg Sentsov, convicted in Russia, went home then, as well as Ukrainian sailors detained after the incident in the Kerch Strait in November 2018. The Russian side did not meet the previous Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko halfway in these matters. And Volodymyr Zelensky played along.
In December 2019, a summit was held in Paris in the "Normandy format" (Germany, Russia, Ukraine, France) -
the first for Mr. Zelensky. And for now, the last one. The quartet leaders approved a list of steps that should be taken to implement the Minsk agreements.
Comment: The EU recently threatened to withhold desperately needed financial aid from Romania and Hungary after they rejected the supremacy of EU law over their national judiciary, and so is it any wonder that people are concerned of their country being subsumed by the EU behemoth?
- Romania's Constitutional Court rejects primacy of European law, follows similar refusal by Poland
- Hungary blasts 'arrogant' Brussels threats to penalize Poland for judicial reform, accuses EU of empire-building
- Berlin wants EU to be 'Fourth German Reich', says Poland's populist leader
As an aside, The Guardian reported a month ago that the shade of blue used for France's national flag was changed to a darker blue, no announcement or clear reasoning was given as to why, and apparently few noticed the change had even occurred.