Down by the harbour in Longyearbyen, the crew of the Polargirl prepared for the day’s voyage, a round trip across the fjord to the Russian coal-mining settlement of Barentsburg on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.
One would-be traveller, her suitcase set down in the snow, explained that she planned to spend the night in Barentsburg and return the next day before Masha, the Russian guide, shook her head sadly.
Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy knows how to end the greatest threat to American national security. That threat would be the combination of the world’s two most dangerous states: China and Russia.
“I would freeze the current lines of control,” the candidate told Fox News’s Jesse Watters during his prime time show, referring to the battlefields in Ukraine. “I would further make a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. That’s enough to get Putin to do the deal.”
The countries on Nato’s eastern flank have as little as three years to prepare for the possibility of a Russian attack, the head of a Polish national security agency said.
As Ukraine suffered a series of setbacks in its defensive war against Russia, and Europe and the United States have struggled to secure their next packages of military aid to Kyiv, attention is turning to the threat the Kremlin will pose to Nato if the conflict becomes “frozen”.
Russia is exploiting and fomenting a wave of Islamist propaganda against Sweden, the head of Sweden’s counter-disinformation agency has told The Times.
Sweden has been confronted with a storm of anger across large parts of the Islamic world, driven by a series of Quran burnings and conspiracy theories claiming that the Swedish authorities are forcibly removing children from Muslim families.
Moscow and Beijing seek to ride the wave of solidarity with Palestinians while taking advantage of American distraction
DUBAI—The war between Israel and Hamas isn’t just risking a regional conflagration. It is also affecting the global balance of power, stretching American and European resources while relieving pressure on Russia and providing new opportunities to China.
The long-term effect of the Middle East flare-up is hard to predict. It depends, first of all, on whether Israel is ultimately successful in its stated goal of eliminating Hamas as Gaza’s main military and political force. Another critical issue is whether Israel’s diplomatic relationships in the region and the global standing of its Western supporters can survive the rising civilian casualties in Gaza and the looming horrors of urban warfare in the densely populated enclave.
Russia has responded to Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians with silence, false equivalencies and, in some cases, outright glee. At this point it seems obvious that the Kremlin is no friend of Israel’s and that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic courtship of Moscow was a mistake.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, he made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with Israel. To this end, he helped establish visa-free travel between the two countries in 2008 and promoted Russo-Israeli cultural ties.
It is more than twenty years since then US President George W. Bush first identified an “axis of evil” of rogue states that threatened global security, and now a new alliance of malign states is taking shape with Russia and China acting as its new lynchpins.
Back in 2002, when Bush first articulated his notion of rogue nations in his State of the Union address made in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as states that, together with their terrorist allies, “constitute an axis of evil…by seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.”
Not only is the Biden administration turning a blind eye on the growing alliance between Iran, Russia, China and North Korea, and looking the other way on their evasions of sanctions, it is also financing the ruling mullahs of Iran with billions of dollars to put the finishing touches on the country’s nuclear program and for delivering more weapons to Russia with which to attack Ukraine.
What brought the presidents of Turkey and Russia into an alliance with no name? Their geo-political opportunism was part of it, but mainly it was the inherent ideological hatred of Western civilization that eventually made the Turkish president a useful instrument in the Russian president’s reckless campaign to harm the interests of the West.
America has fewer icebreakers than China or Russia. Does that leave us vulnerable?
As melting ice opens up trade routes in the Arctic Ocean, the Far North is becoming another geopolitical battlefield between the United States and its adversaries. The U.S. Coast Guard has fewer ships able to puncture through the frozen sea than China or Russia, and some writers fear that America’s Arctic interests are becoming vulnerable to authoritarian expansion. Washington might end up like a nervous boy on a first date — unable to break the ice.
“Both Putin and Xi have made clear,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said, “that the High North is key to their strategic interests.” Indeed, Wall Street Journal reporters William Mauldin and Alan Cullison have highlighted the authoritarians’ Arctic activity, including Russia’s increased presence in the region and Beijing’s use of its intelligence network to back Moscow’s activities in the area.
Interesting that these articles from the Spectator & the WSJ mention Canada only in passing.
China and Russia launched an unprecedented joint naval drill near US waters earlier this week, sparking a major response from the US Navy, officials have said.
Eleven Russian and Chinese ships steamed close to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska in a ‘highly provocative’ move amid escalating tensions with the US.
It is believed to be the largest such flotilla to have approached American shores.
The emerging Sino-Russian alliance controls a huge swath of central Asia, the potential seat of a world empire.
Adm. John Aquilino is a warrior who intuitively understands global geopolitics. A 1984 graduate of the Naval Academy with a degree in physics, Aquilino is a naval flyer who was deployed in support of Operation Deny Flight, Deliberate Force, Southern Watch, Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom, earning the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Air Medal, the Bronze Star Medal, and unit and campaign citations. Since May 2021, Aquilino has served as commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, which includes 380,000 servicemen and servicewomen in a region that encompasses 36 countries and more than 50 percent of the world’s population. Aquilino recently sounded the alarm about the danger of the emerging Sino-Russian alliance. “I only see the [Sino-Russian] cooperation getting stronger,” Aquilino told the Aspen Forum, “and boy, that’s concerning. That’s a dangerous world.”
In a sign of growing hostility towards the West since the coup in Niger, a businessman proudly shows off his outfit in the colours of the Russian flag in the traditional heartland of deposed President Mohamed Bazoum.
Since the coup, there has been a war of words between the military and the West.
Mr Bazoum was a staunch ally of the West in the fight against militant Islamists, and was a strong economic partner as well.
Niger hosts a French military base and is the world’s seventh biggest producer of uranium. The fuel is vital for nuclear power with a quarter of it going to Europe, especially former colonial power France.
The Biden regime does not enjoy widespread support for the Ukraine intervention or for it’s desire to isolate China.
What’s behind SE Asia’s muted Ukraine response?
Macron blocks NATO outpost in Japan amid Chinese complaints
Germany and France do not share a desire to isolate China which is considered an important trading partner.
In Italy Meloni has yet to withdraw the state from China’s Belt & Road Initiative.
Alleged agents posing as Brazilians have caught the eye of the U.S. and Norway—and could be candidates in any prisoner exchange
PADRE BERNARDO, Brazil—The double life of a suspected Russian spy arrested in the far north of Norway began more than a decade earlier in this corn-and-soybean producing town a half a world away, Brazilian authorities say.
Norwegian authorities say a university researcher carrying Brazilian documentation is actually a deep-cover agent for Moscow, charging him with espionage. Investigators traced his Brazilian citizenship to a fraudulently obtained birth certificate from Padre Bernardo, in what has become a familiar pattern of identity theft and spycraft originating from this South American country.
China recently hosted a summit of the leaders of Central Asia’s former Soviet Republics in Xi’an, China, the site of the start of the ancient Silk Road. The symbolism attached to Xi’an as the site for the 18-20 May gathering underscores China’s intent to remind Central Asian leaders that Chinese civilization’s relationship with the region predates ties to Russia by centuries. It also might demonstrate China’s resolve to replace Russia as Eurasia’s hegemon. China, in fact, did not even invite Russia to the conference.
