Tag Archives: foreign policy

Who is the EU Backing, Really?

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EU member nations, including those that also are members of NATO, are loudly supporting economic sanctions against Russia—except for Russian oil and natural gas—and sending arms to Ukraine—except for fighter jets and tanks and other armored weapons (Czech Republic is a notable and honorable exception) needed to drive the barbarian completely from Ukraine—in enthusiastically outspoken response to Vladimir Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Now we see the graphic evidence of the atrocities that the Russian invaders are inflicting, as a matter of state policy, on Ukrainian civilians, including women and children. Bucha is just one example. Another is Putin’s targeting of a train station in Kramartorsk, waiting until it was filled with civilians trying to evacuate from the city before sending in the strike.

And yet,

But the shame is that the EU still won’t ban the import of Russian oil and gas. This means that each day Europe is subsidizing Russia’s war by financing the Kremlin.

Each day that the EU subsidizes Putin’s war on Ukraine, the EU is consciously subsidizing Putin’s campaign of butchery, rape, war crimes.

I ask again: Who is the EU backing, really?

Where Is Joe Biden?

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Turkey is reopening its embassy in Kyiv.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell went to Kyiv, along with Matti Maasikas, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, last week to meet face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Maasikas said he’d stay, reopen delegation facilities, and assess the safety of returning staff to the facilities.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kyiv Saturday and met face-to-face with Zelenskyy.

Italy intends to reopen its facility in Kyiv right after Easter—17 April.

Where’s President Joe Biden (D)? Oh, yeah—he still has his embassy hiding out in Poland. And neither Biden nor his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion and apparently have no plans to go.

Biden is channeling Sallah: Russians. Very dangerous. You go first.

Biden’s Timidity on International Display

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President Joe Biden’s (D) timidity before Russian President Vladimir Putin is illustrated internationally by his embassy moves.

Recall that when Putin invaded Ukraine and threatened Kyiv, Biden ordered his American embassy to cut and run relocate west to Lviv. When Lviv came under air attack, Biden ordered his American embassy to quit Ukraine altogether and run off relocate to Poland.

Recall further that the Prime Ministers of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia, along with the EU’s President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola—while Kyiv still was under threat of Russian capture—visited with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. Biden, on the other hand, even though he went to Europe while Kyiv was under siege—to Brussels and later to Rzeszow, Poland—was too timid to travel to Kyiv and meet with Zelenskyy on Zelenskyy’s (besieged) home ground.

It gets worse.

Now that the barbarian has withdrawn from the vicinity of Kyiv and Ukrainian forces have retaken and are consolidating national control over much of northern Ukraine [emphasis added]

Turkey…became the first major nation to send diplomats back to Kyiv….
Turkey’s embassy, which had relocated to the western Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi [never leaving Ukraine], reopened in Kyiv and will resume consular services, it said on social media. The US, by contrast, currently doesn’t have any diplomatic presence on Ukrainian soil, with embassy staff operating from Poland.

Even with Kyiv safe from Russian occupation, Biden has no intention of having his State Department move his embassy back to Kyiv. Biden has no intention of visiting with Zelenskyy in the latter’s Presidential Office Building, or even of sending his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or CJCS General Mark Milley to meet with the leaders of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, whose offices also are in the Presidential Office Building.

The Biden-Harris administration is an utter embarrassment to our nation.

The Barbarian on His Redeployment

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is redeploying some of his forces away from the vicinity of Kyiv. He’s also ordering his hordes to lay booby traps that would do Daesh proud.  Per Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (as cited by The Wall Street Journal):

[R]etreating Russian forces had placed mines in houses, laid trip wires and booby-trapped corpses.

And this:

The [Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv] city council said a confectionery factory in Bucha had been mined by the Russian military before it departed.

Never mind the lack of military importance of this sort of installation. Certainly, sugar can be used to make a variety of bombs, but to the extent that’s the case, the militarily appropriate act would have been simply to destroy the factory. This was done solely to inflict more civilian casualties.

And at a private residence in Velyka Dymerka, a village just northeast of Kyiv, a returning resident filmed the damage done by Russians:

In a kennel outside, his dog lay dead, apparently shot. “Why would you kill it?”

Because barbarism.

NATO Member Nations’ “Commitment”

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has gotten NATO members to step up their military budgets. Or so is the hopeful assessment of those member nation governments’…claims.

NATO members outside the US are set to boost their military spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to alliance Secretary-General [and former Norway Prime Minister] Jens Stoltenberg and pledges from member countries.

However [emphasis added].

Only eight countries, including the US, already cross the 2% threshold, according to NATO’s report, a decline from the previous annual report, in which 11 countries met the target.

And

The percentages are subject to changes in both defense budgets and to economic activity, which has been buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic over the past two years.

Indeed. There’s always an excuse for walking away from an inconvenient commitment.

Stoltenberg, as cited by The Wall Street Journal, said:

…it is hard for governments to allocate more money for defense. “But when we see a new security reality, we all realize the need to invest in our security,” he said.

No, it’s not hard at all. Either the nations’ governments honor their commitments to defend each other, either the nations’ governments honor their obligation to defend their own people (which is enhanced—or would be—by that mutual defense commitment), or they do not. The only hard part is finding the moral courage actually to do what they say they will do. The rest is just allocation of monies.

On that note, this:

But Germany and other countries that fall short have recently announced new plans to increase military spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Germany is a prime example of this. During the Trump administration, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to increase Germany’s military spending to 2% of GDP or more, and thereby honor Germany’s commitment to that 2% threshold—a commitment Germany had been dishonoring since the NATO-wide commitment’s inception in 2014. Then Germany continued to dishonor its commitment under Merkel: the budget she submitted next after her commitment to Trump welched anew; her budget allocated less than 1.6% of GDP to Germany’s military.

Now Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made the Merkel commitment, but there’s no reason to believe he has any more intention than Merkel had of honoring the promise.

Those other 20+ countries who’ve been dishonoring their commitments all along? Sure. Italy already has walked away again; the others likely will simply be quiet about their continued decision to not spend on military needs.

There’s always an excuse.