Europe should switch from promises to real action to help Ukraine out of the economic chaos, says Russia’s President Putin. “What’s the problem for the near future? It’s that Russia can’t bear the brunt [of helping Ukraine] in a one-way fashion,” Vladimir Putin told the Security Council meeting on Friday. That was the main reason President Putin decided to send a letter to his European counterparts on Thursday, in which he urged them to hold an immediate meeting to decide on a game plan to help the Ukrainian economy out of the crisis. If somebody treats Ukraine kindly, he should make a real contribution to help avoid a default, Putin said. “Giving out pies in Maidan is not enough to support the Ukrainian economy and prevent chaos there,” he added. The address to Russia’s Security Council largely echoed his Thursday letter, where he also stressed that Russia has so far been the only country to provide real help to the Ukrainian economy.
Category: Specials
World View: New claims say Ankara worked with the US and Britain to smuggle Gaddafi’s guns to rebel groups The US’s Secretary of State John Kerry and its UN ambassador, Samantha Power have been pushing for more assistance to be given to the Syrian rebels. This is despite strong evidence that the Syrian armed opposition are, more than ever, dominated by jihadi fighters similar in their beliefs and methods to al-Qa’ida. The recent attack by rebel forces around Latakia, northern Syria, which initially had a measure of success, was led by Chechen and Moroccan jihadis. America has done its best to keep secret its role in supplying the Syrian armed opposition, operating through proxies and front companies. It is this which makes Seymour Hersh’s article “The Red Line and The Rat Line: Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian rebels” published last week in the London Review of Books, so interesting.
The United States has always tried to do its best to weaken Russia. Driving a wedge between Russia and the European Union is a priority mission. But Crimea and Ukraine frustrate the plans. Entangled in the Ukrainian crisis, Europe starts to doubt the expediency of following the US policy and displays its unwillingness to escalate the confrontation with Russia. As they say «Mutiny on the Bounty» is getting ripe, though most likely the revolt will go no further than undermining some US initiatives… Looks like Brussels is going to quietly let Ukraine go. Revolutionary frenzy behind, the EU is not prone to take further anti-Russian actions. They gradually start to listen to the Kremlin. Russia has taken diplomatic initiative away from Washington and takes a more adamant stand insisting that an all-Ukraine dialogue should be a foundation for crisis management. The Western hopes for Moscow’s at least indirect recognition of the illegal government in Kiev are getting stymied.
Gage Skidmore/Flickr As the ex-veep blasts Paul for being an isolationist, old video shows the Kentucky senator charging that Cheney used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq and benefit his former company. …
N. Korea blasts reunification offer as ‘psychopath’s daydream’ Seoul (AFP) – North Korea on Saturday blasted South Korean President Park Geun-Hye’s proposal on laying the groundwork for reunification through economic exchanges and humanitarian…
The UN and the United States have laid blame squarely on the Syrian government for blocking international aid convoys from reaching victims of Syria’s ongoing conflict. The BBC in its article, “Syria crisis: UN says…
After a series of headline-grabbing statements about the possibility of “switching” European consumers over to American gas, the US media hastened to announce the launch of Obama’s oil and gas offensive against Russia. In reality…
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout) Under the regime of neoliberalism, especially in the United States, war has become an extension of politics as almost all aspects of society have been transformed into a combat…
This week NATO marks a triple anniversary: 15 years since Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined the Alliance; 10 years since the accession of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia…
NATO Sets PACE of Aggression towards Russia with ‘Fogh’ of War When asked on the foundational purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, its first Secretary General, Britain’s Lord Ismay, famously said: “To keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. Ismay, the military advisor to Britain’s World War II leader Winston Churchill, was like his pugnacious boss an ardent imperialist, anti-communist and pro-American. His refreshing, if distasteful, candor about the strategic purpose of NATO has since been varnished over down through the decades. The US-dominated military pact has been reinvented as a humanitarian mission with faux political correctness and spurious lofty claims of maintaining world peace. But Ismay’s terse words on NATO’s more sinister foundational purpose are starkly pertinent to present developments.