Russia will seek guarantees that Nato will exclude Ukraine from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral in any peace deal, a Russian deputy foreign minister said.
“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Alexander Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia.
“Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the alliance,” he said.
US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will speak in coming days, as talks continue over a possible ceasefire in the three-year war in Ukraine.
US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Putin on Thursday in Moscow, told CNN that he expected that “there will be a call with both presidents this week”.
“We’re also continuing to engage and have conversation with the Ukrainians,” he added. “We’re advising them on everything we’re thinking about.”
Vladimir Putin has told Donald Trump he backs the “idea” of a ceasefire in Ukraine, but he would only agree to one on his own terms.
The Russian president knocked back the US proposal for an immediate 30-day pause in the fighting on Thursday, saying he had “serious questions” about how it would be implemented that he needed to discuss with Mr Trump.
Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Putin said he wanted any deal to “lead to long-term peace” and “eliminate the original causes of this crisis”, suggesting he was unwilling to relent on his evisceration of the Ukrainian state.
It is “premature” for Germany to consider sending its soldiers to Ukraine, warns the Armed Forces Commissioner.
A new report released this week gives a damning assessment of the capabilities of the German army, highlighting its “disastrous” infrastructure, and calling it “premature” for its soldiers to be sent on a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine.
Presenting the report on Tuesday, March 11th, Eva Högl, the Armed Forces Commissioner of the Bundestag, said the Bundeswehr (armed forces) “still has too little of everything” despite a €100-billion special fund, established in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to improve recruitment, develop infrastructure, and speed up new weapons procurement.
Yesterday’s pacifists are today’s Rambos, it seems: 442 lawmakers in the 720-seat European Parliament just agreed to a joint declaration that “strongly deplores any attempts at blackmailing Ukraine’s leadership into surrender to the Russian aggressor for the sole purpose of announcing a so-called ‘peace deal.’”
President Donald Trump has threatened ‘devastating’ consequences for Russia if Vladimir Putin does not agree to a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine.
Trump issued the ultimatum while discussing his team’s efforts to bring an end to the brutal conflict, which he said could lead to World War III.
When asked what the U.S. could do to pressure Russia into peace, he said: ‘There are things that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense. I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.’
Ukraine has said it is ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire with Russia proposed by the US, after a day of US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would present the offer to Russia and that “the ball is in their court” – Moscow is yet to publicly comment on the issue.
Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky said it was now up to the US to convince Russia to agree to the “positive” proposal.
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — The Trump administration will immediately lift its pause on military and intelligence support for Ukraine after Kyiv’s endorsement of a U.S. ceasefire proposal, according to a joint statement by Ukraine and the United States.
“Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” the statement says. “The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace.”
Elon Musk pointed the finger at Ukraine after claiming that a “massive cyberattack” had caused severe disruption on his social media site X.
Users began reporting problems at about 5.30am ET (9.30am GMT) on Monday, according to the website DownDetector, which tracks internet outages. The problems appeared to abate before another wave of complaints at 10am ET (2pm GMT), with some 40,000 users reporting that the platform would not load. The problems returned at 12.30pm ET (4.30pm GMT), prompting Musk to issue a statement.
America’s decision to cut weapons deliveries and aid to Ukraine, as well as the dressing down of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, has triggered understandable outrage amongst Western allies.
But perhaps they shouldn’t be surprised.
Mr Trump’s tactic to bring Ukraine to heel and force the country to negotiate on peace follows a careful plan written and published in black and white last summer by none other than the president’s Kyiv envoy.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk have clashed with Poland’s foreign minister over the use of the tech billionaire’s Starlink satellite internet system in Ukraine.
Musk said on X that Ukraine’s “entire front line” would collapse if he turned the system off. Radoslaw Sikorski responded, saying his country paid for its use in Ukraine and a threat to shut it down would result in a search for another network.
Rubio dismissed Sikorski’s claims and told him to be grateful, while Musk called him a “small man”.
Just remember that Germany’s railway infrastructure is currently in too poor a state to transfer tanks and other military hardware across the country.
Last time military Keynesianism was back in fashion we were well down the road towards a world war. This time European rearmament is principally geared towards restructuring its ailing economy. Its advocates have decided that defense is a better focus for economic regeneration than investing in useless net zero technology to save the day.
As this post on X from the European Commission shows, they have become gung-ho military Keynesians.
“The US has reversed its alliances to side with Russia against Europe!” This is the idea that many commentators in Britain, France and Germany have been hammering in for the past week.
The Washington Post went even further: “For Europe, this is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency moment. The United States, which has guaranteed European security against Russia for 80 years, appears to have switched sides under President Donald Trump.”
Apparently sharing that analysis, the European Union organized two summits that included Great Britain as an ad hoc member.
A significant portion of the money the U.S. allocated for Ukraine aid was indeed spent within the U.S., particularly with the military-industrial complex, rather than being directly transferred to Ukraine as cash. Here’s how it breaks down based on available information:
The U.S. has committed substantial aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, with Congress approving around $175 billion in emergency funding by mid-2024. This aid includes military, economic, and humanitarian support. However, the military component—channeled through mechanisms like the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI)—is where the connection to the U.S. military-industrial complex becomes clear.
This is a Grok answer.
Europe seeks economic salvation via rearmament.
h/t XC
Business deals inform the nation’s politics
Mounted atop a former warehouse in Hamburg’s industrial-era docklands, the billowing form of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall rises above Germany’s second-largest city like an ocean wave. The glass-panelled building crowns a new, forward-looking section of the city, a modern and elegant counterpoint to the seedy Reeperbahn nearby. Built with the help of taxes raised from round-the-clock trade from the sprawling port it overlooks, it’s a testament to the country’s remarkable success as a trading nation, as globalisation opened new markets for “Made in Germany” goods.
The building’s scope and ambition echo the Victorian grandeur that can be found in Liverpool and London, and the epic public buildings of Paris, Antwerp and Amsterdam. It’s a building that marks a golden age. Its foundation stone was laid in 2007, when Germany was still Exportweltmeister (world’s top exporter) and before the convulsions of Brexit, Donald Trump’s trade wars, and Vladimir Putin’s efforts to carve up and control Ukraine. The opulent venue was finally finished in 2017, the same year Angela Merkel secured her final term as chancellor and the far-Right AfD showed signs of its political potential. Less than a decade later, it looks like a totem to a bygone era.
