The US now says "all options" are on the table in response to an alleged Russian troop build-up near its border with Ukraine. Top officials are set to meet with NATO next week to decide what further steps to take, according to Reuters.
"As you can appreciate, all options are on the table and there’s a toolkit that includes a whole range of options," the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Karen Donfried, told reporters Friday.
Widespread media reports in the West have for more than a past week been warning that about 100,000 Russian troops are mustered near Ukraine's eastern border, poised for an invasion, as an initial Nov.11 Bloomberg story headlined. The Kremlin has repeatedly slammed this as disinformation and part of manufactured attempts at ramping up political pressure against Moscow.
"It's now for the alliance to decide what are the next moves that NATO wants to take," Donfried said. "Next week, we will talk about our assessment of what's happening on Russia's border with Ukraine and we will begin that conversation of what are the options that are on the table and what it is that NATO as an alliance would like to do together," she added.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to be in Latvia Monday for the NATO foreign ministerial meeting - this after some sharp words from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who warned Russia on Friday, "If Russia uses force against Ukraine that will have costs, that would have consequences."
However, there's been agreement on all sides that a de-escalation of tensions is urgently needed, though Washington's "all options on the table" rhetoric likely isn't helping, given the phrase in the past has basically pointed to the military option.
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REMINDER:
"At the time of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including an estimated 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 44 strategic bombers. By 1996, Ukraine had returned all of its nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for economic aid and security assurances, and in December 1994, Ukraine became a non-nuclear weapon state party to the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The last strategic nuclear delivery vehicle in Ukraine was eliminated in 2001 under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). It took years of political maneuvering and diplomatic work, starting with the Lisbon Protocol in 1992, to remove the weapons and nuclear infrastructure from Ukraine."
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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky believes that he should have taken a more active position within the agreements with Russia.
"These are my global mistakes, they exist. And not only. I believe that I needed to act more strongly, despite the fact that it depended and depends on 99% of Russia, but I think I needed to act more strongly from the point of view of our agreements. I should have risked more," Zelensky said at a press marathon in Kyiv on Friday.
"I am sure it is fixable. It is just a matter of solving some [problems] in a sprint way, but there is a solution to problems in a stayer way. I really wanted to sprint and win it, but I moved from the sprint to a longer program," he said.
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Western governments and independent researchers say Moscow has been moving arms and troops towards the Ukrainian border in recent weeks, with Washington saying it has "real concerns" over the troop build-up.
If Russia decides to take action, Zhura says he and his battle-hardened compatriots will fight back.
"We will give a worthy response to the enemy."
Speculation has been rife of new moves in the longstanding conflict between Russia and its ex-Soviet neighbour, though Moscow has denounced reports of an invasion plan as Western "hysteria".
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that Ukraine was "entirely prepared for an escalation".
"We need to depend on ourselves, on our army. It is powerful," he told a press conference.
Zhura says the area of the frontline where he is deployed, near the village of Talakivka in the eastern Donetsk region, has been relatively calm in recent weeks.
"But it's only here," he said. "In the direction of another brigade, shelling is heard every day and it is quite strong."
Ukrainian forces are spread along a frontline that stretches along two separatist regions, Donetsk and Lugansk, that broke from Kiev's control after Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
Though full-scale fighting has subsided, there are regular skirmishes along the front, with more than 60 Ukrainian soldiers killed this year.
The new buildup of forces follows a similar surge in the spring, when Russia gathered around 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders.
'Calm before the storm'
Moscow later announced a drawdown, and some experts at the time said the troop movements may have been posturing ahead of Putin's high-profile summit with US President Joe Biden in June.
Armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, another Ukrainian soldier takes part in a shooting exercise a few kilometres away from Zhura's position.
"It's pretty quiet right now, but it may be the calm before the storm," 21-year-old Anatoliy, from the western region of Chernivtsi, told AFP.
Anatoliy, who did not give his last name, said he believes there is a "very high" risk of all-out war with Russia.
"Everything depends on the Ukrainian authorities and the international community, and if they support Ukraine," he added.
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The UN envoy to Afghanistan on Wednesday said that the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group now appears present in nearly all Afghan provinces and “increasingly active”. Briefing on the Afghanistan situation following the Taliban’s takeover, Deborah Lyons, UN special representative for Afghanistan, told the UN Security Council that the Taliban “appears to rely heavily on extra-judicial detentions and killings” in its response against suspected Islamic State-Khorasan members. “Another major negative development has been the Taliban’s inability to stem the expansion of the Islamic State in Iraq and in Levant Khorasan Province. Once limited to a few provinces and Kabul, ISILKP now seems to be present in nearly all provinces and increasingly active,” Lyons told the Council. IS‑K, a sworn enemy of the Taliban, has been responsible for a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport in August and recent multiple bombings in Shia mosques.
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China on Wednesday hit out at U.S. President Joe Biden’s inclusion of democratic Taiwan in his forthcoming online democracy summit, with no invitation extended to Beijing, while fining Taiwanese companies that have donated to the island’s “secessionist” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“China firmly opposes the U.S.’s invitation to the Taiwan authorities to participate in the so-called Democracy Summit,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular media briefing in Beijing.
“We solemnly urge the U.S. to … stop providing a platform to “Taiwan independence” forces,” Zhao said, adding: “Those who play with fire get burned.”
Zhao’s comments came after China launched a nationwide probe into the activities of companies under Taiwan’s Far Eastern Group, which is a donor to Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the party of president Tsai Ing-wen.
Some of the companies had been fined for environmental and other violations, amid a crackdown on “diehard secessionists.”
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China’s massive investment in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may show China is preparing to fundamentally change the status quo and preparing for possible war with the United States over Taiwan. To deter China, the United States must rapidly build up its forces in the Pacific, continue to strengthen military alliances in the region to ensure access to bases in time of conflict, and accelerate deliveries of purchased military equipment to Taiwan.
Taiwan is of vital geopolitical importance to the United States. Its thriving democracy is one of the freest societies on the planet. As World War II U.S. Navy Adm. Ernest King said, Taiwan is the “cork in the bottle” for Japan. Whoever controls Taiwan will control Japan and the Republic of Korea’s shipping lifelines. Chinese control of Taiwan will give it enormous influence over both Japan and Korea, fundamentally altering the strategic calculus in East Asia and give China its long sought-after opportunity to Finlandize both countries.
Perhaps most importantly, Taiwan is the center for advanced semiconductor production; the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) boasts that it has the most advanced foundry in the world. Chinese control of TSMC would provide it enormous economic benefit and would result in the world being dependent on an authoritarian regime for advanced semiconductors — and all that would mean for the integrity of supply chains. Advanced semiconductors are the petroleum of the digital age. America must not let an authoritarian regime bent on supplanting the United States seize these vital production facilities.
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Two weeks ago marked 80 years since the Congress last issued a declaration of war as required by Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution: The Congress shall have power to declare war. Invoked to launch or defend against wars 3 times in the 19th and twice in the 20th century, that Constitutional requirement has become as outdated as a dial telephone used to spread the news of the last one, December 8, 1941.
Once established as the world’s supreme superpower, American presidents, beginning with Harry Truman in 1950, decided to abandon the need to ask Congress to declare war. Incredibly, Congress went along with this enormous transfer of the war power to the president. When Truman decided to intervene in the Korean conflict, he simply called it a police action and began a military campaign that took several million Korean lives as well inflicting 128,000 U.S. casualties, of which 36,500 died. That’s some 'police action'.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters at a Nov. 26 press briefing in Kyiv that his country’s intelligence services have uncovered plans for a Russia-backed coup, prompting the Kremlin to deny the allegations.
Zelensky claimed at the briefing that Ukrainian intelligence unearthed evidence of an imminent coup plot planned for Dec. 1 or 2, calling the development “important.”
He added that, in addition to the coup threat assessment by Ukrainian intelligence, audio recordings have emerged of an alleged meeting between Russian and Ukrainian officials discussing plans for the coup, which was allegedly to be funded by one of Ukraine’s richest oligarchs, Rinat Akhmetov.
“I think they’re trying to set up” Akhmetov, the Ukrainian president said. “I think that this is an operation and they’re trying to drag him into a war against Ukraine,” Zelensky added, with his remarks coming in the context of a Russian military buildup near its border with Ukraine, sparking fears of a possible military invasion.
Calling Akhmetov’s alleged involvement a “great mistake,” Zelensky said he would not, unlike his ousted predecessor Victor Yanukovich, flee the country if push comes to shove.
Akhmetov, whose fortune is estimated at around $7.5 billion, called Zelensky’s allegations “an absolute lie.”
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Escalating Russian military activity on the border with Ukraine is rattling foreign investors, pushing prices of Ukrainian government bonds to their lowest levels in more than a year.
Warnings by U.S. government officials about the potential threat of a Russian invasion worsened the selloff in recent days.
The price of Ukraine’s $1.3 billion 7.75% bond due 2024 fell to around 100 cents on the dollar on Wednesday from around 107 cents two weeks earlier, its lowest level since October 2020, according to Advantage Data. A bond due 2040 with payments linked to Ukraine’s economic performance has fallen about 16% since mid-November to 89 cents on the dollar.