European Politics > How Ukrainians do Politics; How the French do Politics (2); Can Germany Normalize Relations with Russia?

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Poroshenko returns to Ukraine, faces prosecution for ‘treason’

How Ukrainians play politics

Poroshenko returns to Ukraine, faces prosecution for ‘treason’

FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik / Stringer

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, declared wanted last month for a number of serious crimes, including high treason, has flown back to Kiev in time for a court hearing that could see him remanded in custody.

Poroshenko, who led Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, left the country last month around the same time a summons was issued for his interrogation. He is being investigated over his alleged involvement in the funding of separatist fighters in the Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, through the illegal sale of coal. This, according to the law, is illegal, and he is subsequently accused of treason and promoting terrorism.

Another suspect in the treason case is Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the political council of the Opposition Platform – For Life party, the country’s largest opposition group in Parliament. Poroshenko and Medvedchuk are the two main opposition leaders and the most significant political threats to current President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to Poroshenko, he is being persecuted for purely political reasons. His arrival is thought by many to be a precursor to a showdown between the former president and Zelensky, who faced off in the 2019 election.

After landing in Kiev, on a budget flight from Warsaw, and successfully passing through passport control, Poroshenko left the capital’s Zhuliany Airport and spoke to gathered supporters. He told the assembled thousands that he was not arrested at the airport due to the masses of people who came to support him, as well as the number of journalists present.

“In front of the whole world, [the security forces] showed cynical and irresponsible behavior,” Poroshenko said and dubbed the case against him a “challenge” to the whole of Ukraine.

Following his speech to the crowd, Poroshenko headed for Kiev’s Pechersky District Court, where he could be remanded in custody after officially being charged.

Louvre threatens to sue Marine Le Pen

How the French play politics

A tv grab taken on January 15, 2022 from the Facebook page of the Rassemblement National shows France's far-right party Rassemblement National candidate for the 2022 French presidential election Marine Le Pen delivering a speech by the Louvre Pyramid in Paris. © AFP / facebook Rassemblement National

The Louvre Museum in Paris has hit out at right-wing presidential candidate Marine Le Pen after she claimed the landmark ‘as her own’ in a campaign video. The museum has asked her to remove the advertisement.

On Sunday, the Louvre said that Marine Le Pen, the National Rally party leader, did not have permission to film her presidential campaign video in front of its infamous glass pyramid, which sits at the heart of the building’s courtyard. 

In the video, filmed on January 11, Le Pen claimed the Paris landmark “as her own,” the museum said. In the three-and-a-half minute ad, Le Pen attacks incumbent President Emmanuel Macron for his “interlude of a Macronism that’s been toxic for the country and that began here.” Macron had made his victory speech after the 2017 election from the Louvre pyramid. 

I wonder if he had permission?

Philippe Olivier, one of Le Pen’s campaign advisors, told the New York Times that the campaign video was made to show that “Macron is the opponent” and “that’s what the symbolic act of being at the Louvre is about.”

“We belong to the entire French population,” a museum spokesperson told Le Parisien, adding that “in her video clip, Le Pen claims the Louvre as her own.” 

The museum said they did not want to be part of tit-for-tat politics.

Le Pen’s campaign team said their video was in line with the museum’s official rules, which says permission is not needed when the filming isn’t for commercial purposes. The video remains online. 

The Louvre added that they were “considering what action may be taken regarding the conditions under which the video was filmed and broadcast.” 

While Macron is yet to announce his candidacy for the election in April, he remains the favorite. Le Pen faces stiff competition from other right-wing candidates who may pip her to second place in the first round of the election, thereby preventing her from reaching the run-off.

I have been watching Marine Le Pen for several years now, and there has never been a federal French election where Marine wasn't accused of something, charged with something, in court over something, that seems to disappear after the next election. This is the French way of doing politics. At least, she hasn't been charged with treason yet.

Presidential hopeful fined for inciting hatred

It's not just Marine Le Pen who is abused, but anyone on France's far right

 

Eric Zemmour at a campaign event in Villepinte, France, December 2021. © AP/Rafael Yaghobzadeh

Journalist and essayist Eric Zemmour, who is running in the 2022 French presidential election, was fined €10,000 ($11,400) on Monday for inciting hatred against migrants on TV. 

A Paris court tried Zemmour for the remarks he made on a TV show in September 2020. 

While speaking about unaccompanied minors entering the country, the journalist said: “They’ve got no reason being here, they are thieves, they are killers, they are rapists, that’s all they do, they should be sent back.”

The broadcast took place days after a Pakistani-born Islamist went on a stabbing spree outside the former office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, wounding two people. 

The prosecution argued that Zemmour “crossed the limits of the freedom of expression.”  

Zemmour’s lawyer Olivier Pardo said his client will appeal Monday’s verdict. He added that Zemmour was voicing his political views and describing “the reality,” sometimes “in a brutal way.” 

The presidential candidate himself dismissed the ruling as “ideological and stupid.” 

Zemmour, known for his anti-migrant and anti-Islam statements, is a highly divisive figure in France. He was prosecuted around 15 times and convicted of incitement of hatred in 2011 and 2019. An appeal of the 2019 ruling will be decided on Thursday.

The French will vote for their president in April. 

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Kremlin identifies ‘red line’ in NATO-Russia relations

NATO created a situation Russia “couldn’t tolerate any more,” Putin's spokesman claims

©  Sputnik / Stringer

NATO’s “gradual invasion” into Ukraine has brought the US-led bloc right up to Moscow’s “red line,” the Kremlin has told CNN. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman says the situation poses an imminent threat to European security.

In an interview aired on Sunday, Dmitry Peskov cited documented Western promises, which, he noted, have never been “fixed in a legally binding way,” that NATO would not expand further eastwards into the former Soviet bloc. In contrast to these pledges, over the past few years, NATO has used its ‘open door policy’ to absorb several former Warsaw Pact countries.

Moscow has drawn the line at Ukraine, Peskov told the American broadcaster.

“First, there were just words but with time we have seen the gradual invasion of NATO into Ukrainian territory, with its infrastructure, with its instructors, with supplies of defensive and offensive weapons, teaching [the] Ukrainian military and so on,” Peskov said. 

Putin's long time spokesman went on to say that these moves have brought NATO directly “to the red line,” creating a situation which constitutes a “real threat” both for Russia and for the whole “European [security] architecture.” Russia has a 3,000-km border with Ukraine, which, until the Ukrainian war broke out in 2014, was almost completely unfortified. 

These circumstances, which Moscow “couldn’t tolerate anymore,” prompted Putin's team to come up with a set of proposals to improve collective security, Peskov said.

The proposals include guarantees that NATO will not expand eastwards and that no former Soviet country bordering Russia would be permitted to join the alliance. The US, as well as NATO – which Peskov called “a weapon of confrontation” on Sunday – have already rejected these particular proposals. Unless a compromise is found, Peskov said tensions will only escalate further.

Peskov also said during the interview that Moscow “will be ready to take counter-actions” should NATO deployments to Ukraine continue, though he stressed that this does not mean all-out military action. 

At the start of the interview, Zakaria told Peskov that, according to “some people,” Russia has “created this crisis” itself. Kiev and Washington have insisted for months that Russia has been amassing troops at the Ukrainian border, in preparation for an invasion. Moscow has repeatedly denied having plans to invade its neighbor. Peskov once again dismissed the idea on Sunday, pointing the finger at NATO instead for threatening Russia’s security over the past two decades.

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Germany wants to 'normalize' relations with Russia – Baerbock

Berlin’s foreign minister emphasized that there is a “long list” of issues to resolve

Annalena Baerbock © Riccardo De Luca / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Germany is still intent on normalizing relations with Russia, the country’s top diplomat has said before a planned visit to Moscow, insisting that recent bilateral talks can’t be expected to solve every problem at once.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock downplayed the breakdown of talks between Russia and the West, arguing that productive diplomacy between the two sides is still very much possible.

“There have been no joint talks with Russia within the framework of NATO for two years,” she explained. “I don’t think anyone came to the negotiating table and thought: ‘We haven’t talked to each other for two years, now we’ll solve in a few hours everything that hasn’t been discussed in the last few years.’”

The foreign minister, who will be traveling to Moscow and Kiev this week for negotiations, emphasized that solving problems diplomatically is rarely easy. “Diplomacy, especially in times of crisis, is characterized by the fact that it requires a lot of perseverance, a lot of patience, and strong nerves,” she said. “We are doing everything we can to ensure that there is no further escalation.”

On Monday, Baerbock indicated that she will be arriving in Moscow with a “long list” of issues to discuss, and said that she will make clear Germany’s position. She named science, culture, trade, renewable energy, and climate issues as possible subjects.

No technology security? 

“Cooperation between civic communities is particularly important to us,” she went on. “I also want to talk to my Russian colleague about these opportunities and how we can create the conditions to use them more effectively,” she added, saying that she will also listen attentively to her interlocutors in both Moscow and Kiev.

Baerbock’s comments come after a series of talks held last week between diplomats from Russia, the US, and NATO on the subject of security in Europe. Moscow has requested written guarantees that the US-led military bloc will not expand into Ukraine, an agreement that Western leaders have said is off the table. Meanwhile, American intelligence services have been warning for months that they fear an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin has dismissed as misinformation.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that he expected the Western powers to make a written reply to Moscow’s security proposals within a week.

In an exclusive television interview with RT in December, Lavrov said Russia was eager for diplomacy with Germany, but that some factions in Berlin were more interested in lecturing Moscow than finding common ground. “The approach they have that one side is doing everything perfectly, and the other side should change its behavior altogether – well, you understand that that cannot happen,” he commented.

Pride and arrogance have no place in negotiations.

Military Madness > NATO Determined to Provoke Russia; NYT Finds Hundreds of Civilian Casualties in US Strikes; USA War-Gaming the '24 Election? Russia Threatens Military Response

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NATO promises to keep expanding, despite Russian objections

16 Dec, 2021 19:57

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the NATO Foreign Ministers summit in Riga,

Latvia, December 1, 2021. © REUTERS / Ints Kalnins

NATO expansion will continue whether Russia likes it or not, the US led bloc's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has declared, insisting that despite Moscow’s objections, his organisation does not pose a threat.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Stoltenberg addressed the possibility of Ukrainian membership, an outcome that Kiev has pushed for, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has described as a “red line.”

The ex-Norwegian prime minister said that whether Ukraine joins NATO is up to the bloc’s member states and its leadership, and that Moscow shouldn’t have input into the decision. He also emphasized that NATO is already supporting the eastern European nation militarily.

“NATO countries are already training Ukrainian troops and consulting with them,” he explained. “They are conducting joint exercises and providing military supplies and technology. The alliance’s support for Ukraine is not a threat to Russia.”

So, he's saying we are preparing Ukraine for war against Russia, but we are no threat to Russia. What kind of absurdity is that?

Stoltenberg added that a possible partnership with Ukraine would be the chief item on the agenda at the upcoming NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022. On the subject of whether the bloc would keep growing, he said, “NATO is continuing the process of expansion. We already took Montenegro and North Macedonia, regardless of Russia’s protests.” He promised that NATO would not look to compromise with Moscow, which has demanded that the bloc rethink a promise it made in 2008 to induct Ukraine and Georgia “in time.”

The official insisted that he wants to have a substantive dialogue with Russia. The Kremlin, however, has said that this has been practically impossible since NATO expelled a group of Russian diplomats from Brussels in October, effectively closing Moscow’s permanent mission with the alliance.

So, he says NATO would not look to compromise with Russia, but he wants substantive dialogue with them, while he expels anyone with whom he might have dialogue. George Orwell would be so proud of him.

Following a virtual meeting with Putin earlier this month, US President Joe Biden called for talks to ease tensions between NATO and Russia. Bloomberg reported that several eastern European members of the bloc were uneasy with Biden’s proposal, fearing that the American leader was prepared to make concessions that would put “curbs on NATO’s freedom of movement,” in the words of one anonymous diplomat, it quoted. 

'One anonymous diplomat' representing Deep State, of course.

NYT investigation reveals ‘hundreds’ of civilian deaths

uncounted in US strikes

19 Dec, 2021 04:34

FILE PHOTO: A frontline position during clashes with Islamic State fighters in western Mosul, Iraq April 26, 2017. © REUTERS/Marius Bosch

An investigation by the New York Times has found that the Pentagon severely downplayed the civilian death toll from its “precision” strikes in Syria and Iraq, while failing to investigate reports of potential civilian casualties.

The New York Times investigation, the first part of which was released on Monday, draws on over 1,311 casualty assessment reports that were previously kept under wraps by the Pentagon. Having reviewed the files and visited “nearly 100 casualties sites” in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the Times reported that the US military often dismissed reports of civilian casualties as non-credible, despite failing to visit the sites or speak to the witnesses. 

The Times revealed that in 216 instances in which the Pentagon found reports of civilian casualties credible, its investigators visited the actual site of the bombing in only one case. None of the investigations resulted in any penalties for those responsible for the strikes, and only one “possible violation” in mapping out a strike was identified by the Pentagon.

The Times investigation also revealed that trigger-happy US troops tended to rely on “incorrect or incomplete” intelligence to hit terrorist targets, sometimes killing dozens of civilians instead. Confirmation bias was said to play a role in troops interpreting scant intelligence in a way that affirms their “pre-existing beliefs” about the targets.

For instance, during a strike in Iraq in 2015, US forces killed a child after identifying him as “an unknown heavy object” who was being “dragged” to a supposed Islamic State position by an alleged militant.

Sloppy targeting practices resulted in around 120 Syrian villagers dying in a US strike on July 19, 2016, according to the investigation. At the time of the strike, the Pentagon apparently thought that 85 militants were killed in the bombing instead, even though it took place “far from the front line.” In another botched strike, a warplane killed an entire family escaping West Mosul in 2017, mistaking the civilian vehicle with two children for a car bomb. 

Even in instances in which the US acknowledged civilian casualties, it was not in a hurry to pay compensation to the victims, with the Times reporting that “fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made.”

The Times points out that the multiple lapses in the US air campaign cannot be discounted as “outliers,” but rather represent a common trend in “a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs.” 

“Since 2014, the American air war has been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children.”

While the Pentagon claims that a total of 1,417 civilians died as result of the US bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq, and 188 civilians were killed since 2018 in Afghanistan, the Times estimates the civilian death toll to be significantly higher.

“Many allegations of civilian casualties had been summarily discounted, with scant evaluation. And the on-the-ground reporting – involving a sampling of cases dismissed, cases deemed ‘credible’ and, in Afghanistan, cases not included in the trove of Pentagon documents – found hundreds of deaths uncounted.”

And some Americans can't understand why some people don't like them. If the reverse were happening and enemies were dropping bombs on American citizens, there would be hell to pay. 

Retired generals warn of ‘lethal chaos’ in US military after 2024 vote

Airs of Turkey or Ukraine in this madness by 3 Generals

20 Dec, 2021 02:24 

Riot damage can be seen after the Jan. 6 events at the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, U.S.

February 2, 2021. © REUTERS/Brendan Smialowski

Three retired US Army generals have argued that a civil war might break out if the Pentagon does not weed out “potential mutineers,” as there is a high chance of “another insurrection” if Republicans retake the White House.

In a scathing op-ed published in the Washington Post on Friday, retired US Army Major General Paul D. Eaton, retired US Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, and retired US Brigadier General Steven M. Anderson called on the Pentagon to “war-game the next potential post-election insurrection or coup attempt to identify weak spots.”

Alleging that the US military ranks are brimming with potential mutineers, they demanded the Pentagon “identifies, isolates and removes” them from the force before it’s too late for purges, while pointing to the “disturbing number of veterans and active-duty members of the military” who were involved in the January 6 events at the Capitol.

Assessing “the potential for a military breakdown” as “very real,” the generals wrote that they have been “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military."

As an example of such “mutiny,” the generals referred to the Oklahoma National Guard’s standoff with the Pentagon over the Covid-19 vaccination mandate, calling it “perhaps [a] more worrying” sign of a brewing military breakdown than members of the military taking part in the Capitol riot. Brigadier General Thomas Mancino openly defied the military vaccination mandate, promising that Oklahoma National Guard members would not be punished if they refused to get the jab despite the Pentagon’s threat to withdraw funding from the force.

The generals appeared to suggest the denigration of the US military might only happen if Republicans claim victory in the next presidential race, seemingly ruling out the possibility that US President Joe Biden won’t be re-elected.

A doomsday scenario, as laid out by the generals, would see “competing commanders in chief — a newly re-elected Biden giving orders, versus Trump (or another Trumpian figure) issuing orders as the head of a shadow government.”  

In a contested election, with loyalties split, some might follow orders from the rightful commander in chief, while others might follow the Trumpian loser

The generals also suggested that anti-Biden politicians “at state and federal level” might want to close ranks behind “a losing candidate” in an attempt to install them as president. The resulting chaos may pave the way for a “civil war” which will undermine US security and can be exploited by America’s “enemies” to carry out an “all-out assault” on US assets or that of its allies, the generals warned in their chilling message.

A crowd of supporters of ex-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol on January 6, seeking to block the certification of the 2020 presidential elections results for Democrat Joe Biden. While hundreds have been arrested following the riot, none were charged with inciting “insurrection.” This week, Washington, DC filed a lawsuit against 31 alleged pro-Trump activists for “causing extensive damage to the District.”

Russia promises 'military response' to any further NATO expansion

20 Dec, 2021 15:16 

By Layla Guest

FILE PHOTO. © AFP / JOHN THYS

NATO must be aware that pushing further into Eastern Europe, past Moscow’s declared red lines, will make a military response inevitable, a top Russian diplomat has warned, amid escalating tensions with the US-led bloc.

Speaking to Rossiya 24 TV on Monday, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation to the Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control in Vienna said Washington was obliged to engage in a dialogue with Moscow on security guarantees for the sake of peace on the continent, whether officials wanted it or not.

“The conversation must be serious, and everyone in NATO is well aware, despite all the power and strength, that it is necessary to take concrete political actions, otherwise the alternative is a … military response from Russia,” he explained.

Gavrilov’s comments came shortly after Moscow issued two documents, one for NATO and the other for US officials, requesting a wide range of assurances it said were aimed at enhancing the security of all parties.

The proposal to NATO focuses mainly on the movement of personnel and hardware, and includes the requirement that Kiev’s long-held ambition to join the bloc would not be realized. A separate clause calls for the current members to renounce any military activity on the territory of Ukraine, as well as in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.

In its proposition to Washington, Moscow requested that officials commit to ruling out expansion into former Soviet republics. Concerns over the US-led military bloc’s potential widening into Eastern Europe have been reignited in recent weeks. Speaking via video link earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his US counterpart, Joe Biden, his country was “seriously interested” in getting “reliable and firm legal guarantees” that would prohibit NATO’s expansion further eastwards, as well as the deployment of “offensive strike weapons systems” nearby.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned at the beginning of December that further enlargement of the bloc in the direction of Russia was a red line for Moscow, and that Ukraine’s hopes of joining its ranks were unacceptable. The US was pulling Kiev into the orbit of NATO and turning it into a “bridgehead” of confrontation with Russia, she said, in a move that could destabilize Europe.

Now we will see if NATO and the USA are more afraid of a war with Russia than ticking-off their war-industry oligarchs.