Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Britain, European Union, Foreign Affairs, Government, Military, NATO, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United Nations, United States

Russian troops amass on Ukraine’s border…

UKRAINE

Intro: As world leaders tell Vladimir Putin to back off, 80,000 Russian soldiers have amassed on Ukraine’s borders. The fear now is that there could be a full-scale invasion…

Ukraine has warned that 80,000 Russian troops have amassed on its borders and could invade. World leaders have told Vladimir Putin to back off.

A senior security chief in Kiev said Moscow could launch a full-scale invasion and Russian troops would be in the Ukrainian capital within ‘two or three hours’ of the order to advance.

Photographs of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers close to Ukraine’s borders are adding to the tensions.

British officials have been receiving reports about Russian troops massing on the border since Tuesday and are concerned by the show of force.

British intelligence is unsure whether the movements are intended to back up the annexation of Crimea, preparation for an invasion or simply defensive.

Moscow’s show of force started earlier this week as Ukraine’s prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, met Barack Obama in the Oval Office and NATO continued military exercises in Poland.

During a week of rising tensions, G7 leaders, including David Cameron and Mr Obama, warned Russia not to annex the Crimea after a referendum in the province, tomorrow, which has been taken over by pro-Putin troops.

Their statement warns the Russian president to ‘cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law’ and threatens ‘further action’ if Moscow seizes Crimea.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Russian MPs who voted to use force in Ukraine and Kremlin officials behind the invasion would be hit with asset freezes and a travel ban to the European Union – most likely to be issued at a Brussels summit on Monday.

But the main concern of Western leaders is to deter Russia from seizing the rest of Eastern Ukraine.

Andriy Parubly, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, has said that even Kiev may not be safe from Putin’s troops, who were regrouping in ‘an offensive manner’.

Mr Parubly claimed that forces massing included ‘over 80,000 personnel, up to 270 tanks, 180 armoured vehicles, 380 artillery systems, 18 multiple-launch missile systems, 140 combat aircraft, 90 combat helicopters and 19 warships and cutters’. He added: ‘Critical is the situation not only in Crimea, but along the entire north-eastern frontier. In fact, Russian troop units are two or three hours of travel from Kiev.’

Former Putin adviser Andrey Illarionov has predicted that in addition to Crimea, Putin may move to annex other major cities in Ukraine – including Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Odessa.

Pictures of Russian armoured vehicles on the move in regions close to the Ukrainian border include motorised infantry vehicles and tanks. The military movements are also said to include Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launch vehicles. Tanks have also been pictured being carried by rail in Belgorod, and are reported to be parked in a village just 12 miles from the border.

The moves came as the Russian armed forces announced a huge military exercise by its airborne troops. The three-day exercise ordered by Putin involved a vast ‘landing operation’ by 4,000 paratroopers.

NATO has conducted its own show of force to reassure countries in Eastern Europe. The US and Poland began war games during the week that involved at least 12 American F-16 fighter jets. A joint naval exercise of US, Bulgarian and Romanian naval forces in the Black Sea also started.

Events have been building to a crunch point when tomorrow Crimea will vote on whether to join Russia. If Putin recognises the province as Russian, sanctions will follow.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met in London yesterday, but as expected those talks failed to make any progress on the crisis.

Infographic:

Geo-political infographic of Ukraine and of Crimea.

Geo-political infographic of Ukraine and of Crimea

 

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Government, NATO, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

Tensions rise in the Crimea…

UKRAINE

Intro: Tensions rise in Ukraine following the storming of a key compound post by Russian troops in the Crimea

The crisis in Ukraine has taken a dramatic turn as Russian troops have stormed a key compound post in the Crimea.

While no shots were fired, it is the first time the Russians have used force to increase their grip on the disputed peninsula. The act of aggression took place in the strategic port of Sevastopol.

Tensions are increasing as a US warship arrived in the Black Sea. The arrival of the guided missile destroyer USS Truxton has officially been described as ‘routine’ by Washington.

The presence of the US warship, however, is seen as hugely significant just hours after the Pentagon unveiled a large increase in air power in the region. Six F-15 Eagle fighters and one KC-135 aerial refuelling tanker have boosted the four NATO warplanes based in Poland. Twelve more F-16 Fighting Falcons will arrive next week.

The US has been dispatching warplanes in an effort to reassure allies alarmed by Russia’s effective seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

The increase in US military muscle, which will join NATO patrols in the Baltics, came as the Turkish Air Force scrambled six F-16 fighter jets after a Russian surveillance aircraft flew along its Black Sea coast. Georgia has also sent up its warplanes, too.

Tensions have continued to rise following a declaration from Ukraine that ‘no one in the civilised world’ would recognise a planned referendum by the Crimean parliament on joining Russia. Vladimir Putin has again rebuffed a warning from US President Barack Obama over Moscow’s military intervention in Crimea, insisting that the Kremlin could not ignore calls for help from Russian speaking people in Ukraine.

Mr Putin has said that Moscow and Washington were ‘still far apart’ on the situation in the former Soviet republic, where he said the new authorities had taken ‘absolutely illegitimate decisions on the eastern, south eastern and Crimea regions’. ‘Russia cannot ignore calls for help and it acts accordingly, in full compliance with international law,’ he said.

Moscow is now believed to have poured more troops into the southern peninsula where Russian forces have seized control. According to one source there are now 30,000 Russian soldiers in Crimea, compared to 11,000 permanently based in the port of Sevastopol before the crisis began.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that Ukraine was open to talks with Russia as long as it withdrew its troops and abided by international agreements. In a warning to the ‘separatist and other traitors of the Ukrainian state’ he said: ‘Any decision of yours is deliberately unlawful and unconstitutional and no-one in the civilised world will recognise the decision of the so-called referendum by the so-called Crimean authorities.’

Observers from the Organisation for the Security and Co-operation in Europe, including three British Army officers, have been refused entry to Crimea by armed militia which are said to have been growing in numbers in recent days.

It has been reported that Serbian nationalists and paramilitaries had travelled to the area and were now patrolling the streets alongside Russian Cossacks. Reports indicate they were seen wearing ‘Chetnik’ badges of the Serbian nationalist guerrilla force blamed for carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ during the Bosnian war in the 1990s.

In a sign of further Russian pressure on the interim government in Kiev, Russian energy giant Gazprom said it would cut off gas exports if a £1.3 billion debt was not settled by Ukraine. Chief executive Alexi Miller warned: ‘We cannot deliver gas for free.’ Moscow last cut off Ukraine’s gas in 2009, halting supplies to much of the EU, which also caused disruptions in Britain.

Russia’s foreign ministry said NATOs decision to curb its co-operation with Moscow showed a ‘biased and prejudiced approach’ over Ukraine.

China has also stepped in to say that a political solution rather than sanctions against Russia was the best way to resolve the crisis.

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Britain, Government, Iran, United Nations, United States

The Iranian deal exposes concerns but it’s worth the risk…

GENEVA AGREEMENT

Whilst the initial period of the Geneva agreement lasts only six months, and much of what has been agreed is based on trust, there is no doubt that Iran could have been in a position to assemble a nuclear device by next summer. Even a modest hiatus in its atomic preparations should be embraced as it pretty much ensures Israel will take no precipitate action.

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The interim agreement is a good way of testing if Iran can be trusted to keep its word. Tehran has agreed to give UN and IAEA inspectors’ better access to its reprocessing facilities, a promise that will be difficult to fudge or renege on without exposing bad faith or some covert hidden agenda. Critics are right in their assertions that the accord does nothing to dismantle Tehran’s capability to process weapons grade uranium whenever it wants, but securing the right to inspect the regime’s nuclear plants is a necessary and vital concession. This establishes a clear diplomatic tripwire that Tehran crosses at its peril.

There is, though, still much to worry about in this deal. The Iranian economy has been brought to its knees by western sanctions and the regime has been more than desperate to win a respite to mollify internal dissent and unrest. In many ways, President Hassan Rouhani has achieved that objective at comparatively modest cost, and has subsequently strengthened the grip of Iran’s religious dictatorship.

Israeli fears are well known in letting Iran off the hook. But others, too, notably Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, have greeted the Geneva agreement with stony silence. They fear that a diplomatic win for Tehran will strengthen the resolve even further of President Assad in Syria, Iran’s client state and political ally.

On the balance of things, the Geneva deal should be deemed a worthy risk. Tehran has felt the full throttle of western sanctions and the sharpness of its teeth. It must also realise that having offered Iran diplomatic concessions and held Israel in check, President Obama will have no option but to take punitive military action if Iran reneges on its nuclear promises.

The onus in turning this interim deal into something permanent is now on Barack Obama and William Hague, Britain’s Foreign Secretary. Their job will be to tame and dismantle Tehran’s nuclear threat once and for all. Any final agreement must see Iran disband its tens of thousands of uranium processing centrifuges – far more than is needed for any purely civilian atomic energy programme. Iran’s plant for making plutonium – which can only have a military intent – must also be dismantled. It would also make sense for Tehran to dispose of the excessive amounts of low enriched uranium it already possesses – enough to make at least six atomic bombs if those stocks were sufficiently enriched to weapons grade material.

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