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Kiev increasingly sees conflict ending in 2025 - WaPo


RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:05 UTC
handshake
© Mustafa Yalcin/Getty ImagesEmmanuel Macron • Donald Trump • Vladimir Zelensky (L) • Elysee Palace in Paris, France • December 7, 2024
Donald Trump's insistence on peace has forced Vladimir Zelensky to consider negotiations with Russia, an official has told the outlet.

Ukrainian officials are "starting to believe" that the conflict with Russia will be resolved next year, a senior member of Vladimir Zelensky's government has reportedly told the Washington Post. The shift in attitude is a direct result of US President-elect Donald Trump's public talk of a settlement, the official added.

Trump promised on the campaign trail to end the conflict within a day of taking office, although he has since admitted that doing so may take longer. The US president-elect has revealed few details about how he plans to achieve this, but media leaks and comments from his closest advisers suggest that he will push to freeze the fighting along the current line of contact, using the leverage of US military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky into talks with Putin.

Comment: Waltz weighs in claiming nobody is offering Kiev a blank check to fight Russia NOW!
The stances taken by EU and NATO nations on handling the Ukraine conflict have changed since Donald Trump won the US presidential elections in November, according to Representative Mike Waltz.

The President-elect has made it clear the war must end. Waltz also emphasized that part of his role, along with Trump's team, is to identify key players in peace negotiations, to bring them to the table, and to establish terms for a resolution that align with American interests.

Waltz criticized the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden, saying it wanted more funding of its Ukraine policy, but declined to define the specific outcome that pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the conflict should produce. He also said he has been receiving questions from his constituents about that. He quoted the inquiries:
"Is it in America's national interest to expect every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea? How long is that going to take? How much money is that going to cost? How many lives will be lost? Is that even a realistic goal at this point?"
Waltz claimed that Russia was seriously weakened by the fight against its NATO-backed embattled neighbour, giving Trump leverage on both Kiev and Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated last week that his nation's military is in a very good shape, supported by a reinvigorated defense industry and military technology that the West cannot match.
Who to believe...Waltz? or Putin?

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Better Earth

Seethe, Western elites: The world likes Russia despite your hate

Timofey Bordachev
RT
Sun, 22 Dec 2024 17:46 UTC
Young flag bearers
© Maksim Bogovid/File/SputnikYoung flag bearers
Moscow's friends in the global majority aren't swallowing NATO's attempts to turn Russia into a pariah.

Russia's foreign policy rightly assumes that history is on its side. The country's aspirations align with the strategic intentions of most nations outside the Western bloc - what we call the "world majority." This perspective is confirmed by the ongoing military and political confrontation between Russia and the West. Our adversaries openly seek the dissolution of Russian statehood in one form or another. Yet these ambitions clash not only with Russia's resistance but also with the interests of many nations worldwide.

At a recent Valdai Club conference attended primarily by representatives of the global majority, discussions illuminated both the common ground and the differences between Russia and its partners. While partnerships with third powers won't determine Moscow's success against the West, these relationships are critical for building a new international order - one less prone to repeating Europe's current conflicts.

The key question is how these nations, many dependent on the West economically or militarily, will act. Their likely choices will influence how much effort Russia needs to achieve its core foreign policy goals.
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Gavel

Biden commutes death sentences of child killers and mass murderers 2 days before Christmas

Steven Nelson
New York Post
Mon, 23 Dec 2024 10:22 UTC
Joe Biden
© APPresident Biden speaks during a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Dec. 16, 2024.
President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row — a list that includes at least five child killers and several mass murderers — while leaving out three notorious fiends.

In the stunning act of clemency just two days before Christmas, Biden, 82, gave the reprieve to some of the nation's most violent murderers — nine of them found too dangerous to live after butchering fellow inmates — as part of his effort at "ensuring a fair and effective justice system," the White House said.

"Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss," Biden said in a statement.

"But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted."

Biden, who opposes the death penalty, lowered each of the 37 sentences to life in prison without parole. He did not say why specifically he considered the original penalties unjust.
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USA

Trump orders Zelensky to begin planning a ceasefire


RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2024 14:16 UTC
President Donald Trump
© Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesUS President-elect Donald Trump.
US President-elect Donald Trump has sent a message to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, asking him to start thinking about a ceasefire and to abandon the territories that are currently under control of Russia, El Pais reported on Sunday.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to end the Ukraine conflict within a day of taking office, but has yet to elaborate on how he plans to achieve this. His vows have raised concerns in Kiev that it may be facing not only a decline in aid but also an audit of the billions of dollars it has received from the White House under President Joe Biden.

"You look at some of these cities and there is not a single building in good condition left. So, when you say "restore the country," restore what? This is a 110-year reconstruction," the Spanish newspaper cited Trump as saying in a "message" to Zelensky from his Florida golf club this week.
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Light Sabers

Trump confronts a rising China

Michael Klare
Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00 UTC
Xi Jinping/DTrump
© Unknown/KJNChinese President Xi Jinping • US President elect Donald Trump
Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other country has the capacity to resist his predictable antagonism with the same degree of strength and tenacity, and none arouses more hostility and outrage among MAGA Republicans. In short, China is guaranteed to put President Trump in a difficult bind the second time around: he can either choose to cut deals with Beijing and risk being branded an appeaser by the China hawks in his party, or he can punish and further encircle Beijing, risking a potentially violent clash and possibly even nuclear escalation. How he chooses to resolve this quandary will surely prove the most important foreign test of his second term in office.

Make no mistake: China truly is considered The Big One by those in Trump's entourage responsible for devising foreign policy. While they imagine many international challenges to their "America First" strategy, only China, they believe, poses a true threat to the continued global dominance of this country.
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USA

Energy chaos: How the U.S. leverages crises for global dominance and profit

Henry Kamens
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:01 UTC
NS2 image
© unknown
Most revealing, Former Peace Corp Volunteer, AKA, Miami Financier Wants to Buy the Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline.

I'm not sure how the international sanctions regime would handle it, though. The US government works in mysterious ways, and it is about controlling and selling energy more than anything related to geopolitical saber-rattling. It seems increasingly likely that this was the plan all along: to shift Europe's energy dependence from Russia to the U.S., forcing Europeans to "suck the hind teat" for energy and pay a high premium for the opportunity.

Most revealing, however, is the involvement of a former Peace Corps volunteer — now a Miami financier — who reportedly wants to buy the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Trump might allow such a deal to proceed, but Biden will block it as long as he's in office. The international sanctions regime complicates things further; this makes it unclear how such a transaction would be managed, or even allowed at all. Needless to say, the endless hypocrisy of the US Federal government would find some way to cut the Gordian knot of its own making.

Interestingly, the prospective buyer, identified in The Wall Street Journal as Stephen P. Lynch, has kept a low profile but argues that acquiring the Russian pipeline aligns with long-term U.S. interests.
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Clipboard

How Donald Trump could reshape US policies and politics in 2025

Darren Lyn
AA
Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00 UTC
DTrump
© UnknownUS President-elect Donald Trump
US President-elect Donald Trump has high expectations from American voters after being elected to his second term in the White House, but the journey to achieving those goals is going to be a challenging one from the moment he is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

The economy was the number one issue facing Americans during Trump's presidential campaign, specifically inflation and high prices at the grocery store.

"They're going to be affording their groceries very soon," Trump said at a ceremony honoring him as Time Magazine's Person of the Year on Dec. 12 in New York City. But that may not be the case, at least not immediately, according to Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston's Department of Economics.

Trump has said he plans to slap tariffs of up to 25% on goods imported from the United States' top trade partners, including Mexico and Canada. If he follows through on his campaign promises to raise import taxes, Hirs told Anadolu that the result may end up being higher prices for American consumers.

Comment: The article of 'could reshape' is more the article of 'difficulties to do so'. What isn't stated is the overwhelming backing of constituents to support a critical realignment of US structure, given this president-elect's proclivity to do so. Trump's mountain awaits: Given the ends justify the means, as per the accumulated outcome of strategic shifts and balances.

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Arrow Up

Make Europe great again

David P. Goldman
The America Mind
Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00 UTC
Bundestag
© Getty ImagesGerman Bundestag
European self-defense depends on conservative parties, not liberal cowards.

My advice to President Trump on how to deal with the mess in Ukraine is simple: you should pull the plug on the Biden Administration's flailing European peanut gallery. Your friends and allies in Europe want to shoulder the burden of their own defense, but they don't want to pour money down the drain and risk World War III in Ukraine. Get an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, a war which no sane European wants to fight, and let the sovereigntist parties of the New Right mop up the globalist Left. They believe in their countries and will fight to protect them, unlike the Brussels liberals cowering behind the skirts of Mother America.

Ending the war won't happen without an agreement to keep Ukraine neutral and out of NATO. The Deep State will try to convince you that NATO can't afford to back down on eventual Ukraine membership, and that Russia is bleeding out and ready to fold. But the opposite is true: Europe's willingness to defend itself depends on a revival of nationalism and the ascent of the sovereigntist parties on the Right. Freeze the fighting and deliver a political victory to European patriots whose watchword is "Make Europe Great Again."

Comment: Even wars have 'bottom lines'. Trump has acknowledged his.

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Handcuffs

Poland threatens to arrest Netanyahu at Auschwitz


RT
Mon, 23 Dec 2024 14:21 UTC
Benjamin Netanyahu
© Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he attends next month's ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland, the EU country's deputy foreign minister, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, told newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Friday.

Warsaw's top diplomat stated that Poland, as a signatory of the Rome Statute, is obligated to comply with the directives of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In November, ICC issued warrants for the arrests of Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, citing alleged war crimes related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The court accused Netanyahu and Gallant of using starvation as a method of warfare, alleging they deliberately deprived civilians in Gaza of food, water, and medicine. There was "no obvious military necessity" for such actions, which amount to violations of international law, according to prosecutors.
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Mr. Potato

Romanian authorities find pro-Western party - not Russia - funded Calin Georgescu


RT
Sun, 22 Dec 2024 14:07 UTC
Calin Georgescu
© Andrei Pungovschi/Getty ImagesCalin Georgescu
An investigation launched by Romanian authorities has discovered that the social media campaign that contributed to last month's surprise first-round win by independent candidate Calin Georgescu in the country's presidential election was not funded by Russia but rather by the pro-Western National Liberal Party (PNL), the media outlet Snoop has reported.

A critic of NATO and the EU and a staunch opponent of sending aid to Ukraine, Georgescu topped the first-round vote in Romania with 22.94%, beating other liberal leftist and democrat candidates.

However, Romania's Constitutional Court annulled the results ahead of the second-round vote, declaring the process would repeat itself at a later date. It cited declassified intelligence documents which have allegedly found irregularities in Georgescu's performance.

Comment: Also see:

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