U.S. - Russian Talks Show Signs Of Progress

It feels weird to watch the delusional talk of the United States towards Russia.

How can people who are as wrong as Biden and Blinken be at the top of a state?

President Biden said on Wednesday that he now expected President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would order an invasion of Ukraine, delivering a grim assessment that the diplomacy and threat of sanctions issued by the United States and its European allies were unlikely to stop the Russian leader from sending troops across the border.

“Do I think he’ll test the West, test the United States and NATO, as significantly as he can? Yes, I think he will,” Mr. Biden told reporters during a nearly two-hour news conference in the East Room of the White House. He added, almost with an air of fatalism: “But I think he will pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him. And I think he will regret having done it.”

Asked to clarify whether he was accepting that an invasion was coming, Mr. Biden said: “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.”

 

Iran-Russia hit maximum strategy

Three ain’t a crowd: The Iran-Russia summit this week, concurrent with RIC military drills in the Sea of Oman, in advance of a Xi-Putin meeting in two weeks, suggests a rapidly-advancing strategic vision for the three Eurasian powers.

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and cross-posted with The Cradle

 

Mysteries Of The Failed Rebellion In Kazakhstan

 

Fateful Collision: NATO’s Drive to the East Versus Russia’s Sphere of Influence

 

In December 2021, Russia demanded of the United States and NATO that they sign a formal agreement that they would cease their activities to bring certain countries, particularly Ukraine and Georgia, into NATO membership and to place offensive weapons, particularly missile systems, within a broader range of countries within Central and Eastern Europe.¹ As news headlines around the world proclaim, the Russians have backed up these demands by deploying 100,000 troops near Russia’s border with Ukraine.

This ultimatum represents by far the most fundamental and gravest Russian challenge to the way that NATO has conceived of its mission and conducted its activities since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the accompanying end of the Cold War. The actual content of Russia’s demands, however, is not at all new. Ever since the first post-Cold War expansion of NATO eastward in 1999 (i.e., the admission to membership of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary), Russia has been clear and consistent in objecting to NATO’s expansion to the East as a threat to its vital security interests. They have been especially sensitive to any expansion into the former republics of the Soviet Union. These include not only Ukraine and Georgia, which are the current subjects of dispute, but also the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which became full members of NATO as early as 2004.

 

 

Russia’s ultimatum to the West (IMPORTANT UPDATE)

 

Two years on, the Soleimani Spirit gathers clout

by Pepe Escobar