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Making Putin a Pariah Among Allies | Chicago Council on Global Affairs | Ivo Daalder - 30 Mar. 2022 |

"Making Putin a true pariah internationally is something that we spend a lot of time on," Council President Ivo Daalder told Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room.

"In the NATO summit, for example, a statement pointed out that countries really can't sit on the sidelines, and specifically called on China and Xi Jinping to condemn what has happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And to make sure that they didn't support Russia materially, because if they did there would be real consequences. So there is this attempt really to try to isolate Russia politically. I think trying to get them out of the G20 is exactly the right thing to do."

He added, "At least the West is united; now we need to get the rest on board."

Will expand in a new diary soon ...

Kerry Preaching Policy Contra Russia @Atlantic Council | Oui @BooMan on 30 April 2014 |

Kerry Preaching Policy Contra Russia @Atlantic Council

Kerry should experience a warm bath here as I have referred to the right-wing Atlantic Council and its harsh statements of containment for Putin's Russia in a New Cold War. The US wants to reduce its military presence in Europe and has set policy for NATO members to increase investments in its military: Navy, Air Force and Army. The Ukraine is an ideal nation to illustrate the "Imperial Danger" of the Russian Bear. A dangerous path to create division between new and old Europe, when did we take this path before? Rumsfeld in the lead-up to the Iraq War ...

[...]

Popped up over @ProgressPond in my search of article w broken link ... America's New Cold War | 28 June 2006 |

Reprise: What is it called when everyone votes for a dictatorship? | by poemless - 30 Nov. 2007 |

Russia Send ’Empty Heads’ to the Istanbul Talks

Zelensky preaching to his own circle of European delegates including President Erdogan of Türkiye in Albania. Türkiye taking sides with Europe and his NATO partners. Crimea is the prize for the new Ataturk … playing a dangerous game of bluff.

Speaking at a European summit in Albania, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged a “strong reaction” from the world if the talks fail, including new sanctions.

The two sides spent the 24 hours before the talks slinging insults at each other, with Zelensky accusing Moscow of sending “empty heads” to the negotiating table.

– Putin ‘afraid’ –

Nevertheless, the fact that the meeting was taking place at all was a sign of movement, with both sides having come under steady pressure from Washington to open talks.

Antiquity: Crimea As Imperial Prize

Crimea As Imperial Prize — Ottomans And Tsars To Napoleon III, Putin And Now Trump

DIE ZEIT • English edition • May 5, 2025

Ukraine’s tragic geography has long made it the target of imperial ambitions, epitomized by the prize of Crimea. As the war drags on, the battle for Ukrainian sovereignty exposes not just Russia’s hunger for power — but also the West’s uneasy past and present complicity.

Honour guards line up before the Memorial to the Nine Heroes of the Soviet Union in the village of Geroiskoye, Crimea, to mark the upcoming 80th anniversary of the Great Victory. (Credit: SergeiMalgavko/TASS/ZUMA)

BERLIN — Even geopolitical ideas have their own history. One of the great misunderstandings is to treat geopolitics as nothing more than a mix of geography and a hunger for power — both somehow untouched by historical change. And yet, many still believe exactly that.

But history comes into play the moment economic considerations enter the picture. Access to raw materials, for instance, depends on the level of technological and economic development: before the Industrial Revolution, oil reserves were irrelevant. Our reliance on rare earths and critical minerals only emerged with the digital age.

Long before that, railroads began to shrink continental distances, just as ocean-worthy ships had done centuries earlier across the seas. In other words, distance is not a constant in geopolitical space — it changes with every technological leap that alters how we cross, exploit and use that space.

As such, our geopolitical perceptions shift too.

What was once peripheral can suddenly become the center, and places that once saw themselves as the heart of the world may soon be pushed to the margins.

The anticipated melting of the polar ice caps will have far-reaching geostrategic consequences. The scramble to capitalize on this change is already a major source of global instability — one that will reorder the hierarchy of global powers.

And then there are certain regions that have always drawn the ambitions of empires — zones where controlling the land promises a disproportionate boost in power.

Crimea is one such place. Whoever controls it, dominates the Black Sea, and stands poised to control the straits on the opposite shore — effectively holding the gateway to the Aegean and Mediterranean. It also opens up the potential to extend control across both banks of the Dnieper River.

Now the U.S. wants a piece of the pie

It’s no coincidence, then, that Crimea and the regions surrounding it — the Black Sea to the south and what we now call Ukraine to the north — have been fiercely contested since antiquity.

It’s also no accident that Vladimir Putin chose this as the starting point for his project to resurrect the Russian Empire. Nor that, since taking office, Donald Trump has tried to ensure that Russia isn’t the only one profiting from the conflict in Ukraine.

By pushing Ukraine toward a peace deal, Trump’s aim is for American billionaires to share in the spoils — namely, the country’s mineral wealth, nuclear plants and agricultural output.

Trump talks constantly about peace — but what he really wants is a deal. And “deal” is the right word for a pact disguised as peace: a bargain between two plunderers, struck at the expense of the country under attack.

The West isn’t ready to give Ukraine the security pledges it wants | Politico – 8 June 2023 |

No one in the West is ready to guarantee the security of a country in transition. And Ukraine has plenty of pretty nasty oligarchs who would love to be in Ivanishvili’s shoes. Indeed, even the war hero Zelenskiy was brought to power thanks to the backing of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s very nastiest oligarchs (who Zelenskiy has since thrown in jail).

Article 5 borders

Another thing that makes me think talks are around the corner is the introduction of the “Article 5 lines” into the conversation. Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg just gave a “lunch with the FT” interview, who is only the latest to bring this up, mentioning both Finland and West Germany.

NATO membership, and security deals in Finland’s case until recently, doesn’t necessarily include protecting the whole country. In Germany’s case, when it joined NATO, the Article 5 clause did not cover East Germany. Stoltenberg also pointed out that Finland lost 10% of its territory in its war with the Soviet Union but “gained a stable border.”

Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg: ’So far we have called Putin’s bluff’ | FT interview – 4 Oct. 2024 |

Former Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg: ‘So far, we have called Putin’s bluff’ [_link]

— Financial Times (@FT) October 4, 2024

Roosevelt – Stalin – Churchill Meet @Yalta 1945

80 Years ago this month: YALTA conference on Crimea.

This WWII film from the US National Archives was produced by the War Department as an "Official Pictorial Record" of the historic conference, the events leading up to it, and President Roosevelt's subsequent report to the US Congress, which ended up being his final address on Capitol Hill. He died in April, about a month later.

Aim of the conference was to shape a postwar peace that represented not only a collective security order, but also a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of Europe. Intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe, within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, the conference became a subject of intense controversy.

A jovial version of Winston … pure British comedy.

PM at Lebedev party sparks controversy | 30 Dec. 2019 |

It was the equivalent of a V-sign cheerfully flashed at his critics. The day after his landslide election victory, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds dropped into a caviar-fuelled Christmas party in London hosted by former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny.

Trump Setting Aside FDR’s Post World War II UN World Order ..

• Lebensraum ... Hitler - Biden/Trump – Netanyahu | 8 Jan. 2025 |
• VE Day Winston Churchill 1945

[Update-1]

DONALD TRUMP IS NOT A WORLD WAR TWO HISTORIAN

It is incredible that, at 78, Donald Trump has never learned anything about history. Trump is ignorant when he says "Russia was absolutely a major factor. But there was no major factor like us. We won the war." Let's see what someone who knows something says.
"The Red Army… [_link]

— Laurence (Larry) Boorstein (@LarryBoorstein) May 7, 2025

Donald Trump is Not a World War Two Historian | BooMan23 |

It’s a fool’s errand to argue with Donald Trump about historical facts, but I’m going to do it anyway. Earlier in May, Trump decided to goof around a bit.

[…]
Is all that confusing? Maybe. But, in any case, May 8 is not the anniversary of victory in World War Two so it doesn’t make sense to call it “Victory Day for World War II.”

And it gets worse.

In his post last week, Mr. Trump referenced the celebrations by America’s allies to mark V-E Day, for “Victory in Europe,” this year. “We did more than any other” country, he said, to achieve an Allied victory in World War II, a conflict that devastated most of Europe and huge parts of Asia.

Here I am going to reference a document that was created for the First Quebec Conference, “a highly secret military conference held during World War II by the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States” in Quebec City on August 17–24, 1943. On the first day of the conference, the U.S. and U.K. completed the capture of Sicily.

The document is a memorandum prepared by the Executive of the President’s Soviet Protocol Committee, Major General J.H. Burns, for FDR’s Special Assistant Harry Hopkins. The topic is how to deal with the Soviet Union both in the present and in the coming post-war environment.