Finally AND THANKS TO WESTERN ALLIES, RUSSIA GOT CRIMEA WITHOUT FIRING ALMOST SINGLE BULLET AND ALMOST IDENTICAL BUT SURE ENOUGH WITHOUT MUCH RESISTANCE DONETSK WAS CONFISCATED AND FOR ALL THAT WEST IS STILL UNSURE ABOUT WHAT ACTIONS(sanctions if any after 8 years of occupation) AGAINST RUSSIA ONE SHOULD FINALLY TAKE IN CONSIDERATION
Bizarre situation when observing Russian warships/ military equipped with American and British technology for which German oil purchase paid in for. Considering Russia hasn't fought real war with Ukraine yet and one instead was WELL WELL awarded for occupation of Crimea/Donetsk, I don't see from side of Russia why one wouldn't take conflict step further and finally begun its first real open war assault on Ukraine...perhaps media should instead discuss rewards for Russia if one would get to Kiev !!?????
With allies like this, you sure don't need no enemies and world took note.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/top-stories/russia-sees-room-for-diplomacy-over-ukraine/ar-AATEeOr?ocid=msedgntp
Russia sees room for diplomacy over Ukraine
2 hrs ago
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Russia's EU ambassador has told the BBC his country still believes diplomacy can help de-escalate the crisis over Ukraine.
© Reuters Emmanuel Macron has led diplomatic efforts this week to defuse tensions with Russia over UkraineVladimir Chizhov said his country had no intention of invading anybody, but warned it was important not to provoke Russia into changing its mind.
It comes after a flurry of diplomatic activity on Monday and Tuesday.
Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine.
But with well over 100,000 troops massed near the Ukrainian border, some Western countries including the US have warned that a Russian attack could come at any time.
Reviving peace talks
After two days of intense diplomacy led by French President Emmanuel Macron, there is some suggestion that a renewed focus on the so-called Minsk agreements - which aim to end the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine - could be used as a basis to defuse the current crisis.
Some diplomats agree that the agreements could offer a route to de-escalation, with France's ambassador to the United States, Philippe Etienne, tweeting they should be used to "build a viable political solution".
President Macron said talks would be revived as early as Thursday and include Russia and Ukraine along with France and Germany - known as the Normandy quartet.
Mr Chizhov did not say whether Russia planned to move troops away from Russia's border with Ukraine, and instead asked why no-one was talking about the number of Ukrainian soldiers directly facing Russia.
But he was clear that further talks could still produce results.
"We certainly believe there is still room for diplomacy," he told the BBC's Europe Editor Katya Adler.
© BBC Vladimir Chizhov told Katya Adler that Nato's expansion in Eastern Europe was key to any talksRussian President Vladimir Putin made similar comments on Monday after a meeting with President Macron, promising that Russia would do "everything to find compromises that suit everyone".
Russia has made a series of demands to the West over European security, including a guarantee that Ukraine never becomes a member of the West's defensive military alliance, Nato.
This demand has been flatly rejected, with Western countries insisting that only Ukraine can make decisions about its own security arrangements.
But Russia's EU ambassador made clear that Russia still saw Nato's eastern expansion as a key point in any negotiation.
"We are not going to forget it. And we cannot afford to forget it. Five waves of Nato expansion, that was not the evolution that we expected," Mr Chizhov told the BBC.
Minsk agreements
The envoy's apparent optimism for continued diplomacy followed two days of frenzied diplomacy from European leaders seeking to end Russia's military escalation.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been at the forefront of those efforts, visiting Moscow, Kyiv and Berlin.
After his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday, Mr Macron said both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders had recommitted to implementing the so-called Minsk peace agreements.
The agreements - backed by Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany in 2014-15 - aim to bring an end to the Russian-backed separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, which continues today.
President Zelensky has in the past criticised the agreement, which was signed by his predecessor, saying that it gives too much away to the rebel groups which control parts of Ukraine's Donbas region.
Moscow has long accused the Ukrainian government of failing to implement the agreements, and at Monday's news conference the Russian president urged Ukraine to respect them: "Like it or not, my beauty, you have to put up with it," Mr Putin said.
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that there were "positive signals that a solution to Ukraine could be based only on fulfilling the Minsk agreements".
However, Ukraine and Russia disagree over what the agreements mean in practice, and Kyiv fears that the accords would give too much autonomy to the eastern regions currently under rebel control, with Moscow retaining significant influence there.
At a meeting in Berlin on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany and Poland backed the Minsk agreements and reaffirmed their support for Ukraine's sovereignty.
Belarus exercises
Thousands of Russian troops are due to take part in military exercises that start in Belarus on Thursday, in a further escalation of tensions close to Ukraine's borders.
Belarus is a close ally of Russia and Nato has warned as many as 30,000 Russian troops could take part.
The Kremlin spokesman admitted the joint drills were serious but he pointed out the nature of threats was higher than before. Mr Chizhov told the BBC that Russian troops currently stationed in Belarus would return to their permanent bases.
He also repeated Russia's insistence that it had no intention of invading anybody, but added that "the important thing is not to provoke Russia into changing its mind".
Ex-White House staffer Vindman says Biden has done 'too little, too late' to deter Russian invasion
The former U.S. Army officer who oversaw Ukraine policy in the Trump White House criticized the Biden administration for doing “too little, too late” to deter a Russian invasion of that country and predicted it will be “catastrophic” for the United States and its European allies.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who last week sued four former Trump associates for conducting a campaign of “intimidation and retaliation” against him, also expressed fears that a Russian incursion into Ukraine could rapidly escalate into a military and cyber conflict far beyond that country’s borders.
“This could very well not end up being a limited war,” Vindman said in an interview for the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. “We already have NATO allies — the Baltics, Poland, the U.K. — saying that they’re prepared to support Ukraine. Russia has to contend with that. There’s a chance that based on the fact that there are safe havens outside of Ukraine, the Russians might feel like they’re backed into a corner, especially if they’re suffering heavy casualties and need to respond.”
Equally worrisome, Vindman said, is what he called “the spillover effect.”
“So you could envision it as a legitimate scenario — this is not a far-fetched hypothetical — in which Russia conducts a major cyber offensive against Ukraine in preparation for its conventional war. It seeks to attack and disrupt Ukrainian critical infrastructure communications, power grids, all the kinds of utilities.” That, he said, is “absolutely going to spill over as they have in the past to Europe and to the U.S. Then the U.S. is forced to respond. ... That could escalate very quickly, too easily, the entire European theater. ... It has the very real possibility of spilling over in a big way, whether that’s in cyber or in actual military confrontation. It has the real probability of really destabilizing Europe because thousands and thousands of refugees are going to be flowing into Europe. It has the real probability of potentially expanding with greater Russian aspirations, casting eyes on the Baltics or something of that nature. And all these things are really detrimental to U.S. interests.”
Vindman’s sharp words about the Biden administration during the “Skullduggery” interview was especially noteworthy given the high-profile role he played as a star witness against Trump in his first impeachment proceeding, prompting vicious attacks on his loyalty and character by the president’s allies. As a National Security Council official, Vindman listened in on the July 25, 2019, phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the president asked the newly elected foreign leader to do him a favor by launching investigations into Joe Biden and the Democrats.
But while top Democrats praised Vindman at the time for blowing the whistle on Trump’s conduct, and reporting the phone call to a White House lawyer, the former Army officer didn’t hesitate to call out Biden and the White House for failing to more forcefully respond to the Russian threat to Ukraine. “The senior policymakers didn't seem to come around to this threat until really quite late,” Vindman said. “You only start seeing [them] take things seriously in the November and December [2021] time frame.”
And when they did, he added, the Biden White House mainly spoke about sanctions and other nonmilitary responses that likely have had little impact on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations about what he can get away with. “We should have been providing Ukrainians with a lot more advanced military capability,” Vindman said.
But Biden’s biggest mistake in Vindman’s view was to publicly take off the table the idea that U.S. combat troops would help defend the Ukrainians.
“Imagine if we dispensed with our strategic ambiguity around Taiwan? How would that affect the Chinese calculus around conducting an operation in Taiwan? Probably advance it, right? It’s the same thing here. We didn't need to do that.”
Vindman’s lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Washington, D.C., accuses Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and two other White House aides — social media director Dan Scavino and communications aide Julia Hahn — of a conspiracy to discredit him with leaks and memos that were fed to conservative media outlets as retaliation for testifying against Trump about the Zelensky phone call.
In the lawsuit, he draws a direct line between those alleged actions and what he describes as the organized effort by Trump and his allies to intimidate former aides from testifying against him in the Jan. 6 investigation.
“So, I mean, it’s a pretty darn comprehensive effort to encourage or compel actors to carry the president’s water,” Vindman said. “If enablers feel the pain, suffer the consequences of participating in this corrupt enterprise in this case, then they will think twice. They will think twice about the benefits and they will think twice about the cost. And that’s why this case, I think, is so important.”
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