Russian drone strikes immediately follow Trump-Putin talks

A hospital in Sumy was bombed in a wave of attacks on Ukraine … The Kremlin said after Trump and Putin’s call that the Russian president had given immediate orders for such strikes to stop.

Such agreements work if you have neighbors who are committed to human rights and the international law. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

This is a direct consequence of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, very much like Finland and Sweden’s Nato membership.

I am not even sure if Finland could help. How many eggs can a relatively small country like Finland (or Denmark that was asked last week to deliver eggs) deliver to a large country as the U.S.? What difference could that make?

Thanks, done.

In other news last week, a man was charged with setting fire to Warsaw store as part of Russian sabotage campaign in Poland

A Belarusian man has been charged in Poland with carrying out a terrorist act on behalf of Russia. The suspect, who reportedly posed as a Belarusian oppositionist seeking refuge in Poland, is accused of setting fire to a large retail store in Warsaw as part of a broader sabotage campaign orchestrated by Moscow.

The incident in question happened just a month before an even larger fire that destroyed Warsaw’s largest shopping centre, and which the Polish authorities have also attributed to Russia […]

Let them join the EU!

“Putin is not seeking a truce, ceasefire or peace,” Finnish President Stubb said after the virtual meeting

Finnish President Alexander Stubb is took part in a Ukraine support summit on Saturday. The meeting was held remotely, hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as a follow-up to one held in London on 2 March.

Starmer’s office said that 26 leaders including European partners, the EU commission, Nato, Ukraine, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others – dubbed the ‘coalition of the willing’ – took part in the summit. As with the previous meeting, there was no representative from the United States […]

Putin is not seeking a truce, ceasefire or peace. His fundamental goal, namely the destruction of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, has not changed at all," Stubb [said].

The law and politics of a hypothetical application by a country geographically outside of Europe

[…] a European state does not mean one limited to the continent of Europe. Before 1985, Greenland was—via Denmark—part of the European Union’s predecessor the European Economic Community (EEC) despite being on the North American continental shelf […] Indeed, the European Union expressly recognises nine “outermost regions”—some as far away as the Indian Ocean—as part of the European Union. And in addition to this there are 13 overseas territories with a special relationship with the EU, including Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, which is just off the coast of, well, Canada […]

In essence, a European state need not, from a geographic perspective, be confined to Europe or even part of Europe. It would appear being European is state of mind […]

The real answer is not formal, but political. If Canada really wanted to join, and the member states and the European institutions wanted Canada to join, then a way would be found. The definition of “European state” could be fudged […]

What could […] evolve [as an alernative to Canada’s EU membership] is an entity that joins together the European Union with Canada and other non-members such as the UK, Norway and Iceland—and perhaps even Greenland—and that this entity could be placed on a formal footing. This would be outwith the EU treaties but would complement the EU bloc. And it would not then matter if the “Europe” label applied or not.

Yeah, don’t know how to remove this text, unfortunately. Is there a way?

Whatever we call it, it’s an alleged criminal act by Huawei which is backed by a dictatorship. But, yes, I would even say the article misses the point completely. It’s cheap whataboutery trying to distract from China.

[Edit for clarity.]

There’s no substance. This article contains not a single number, not fact, nothing but an opinion out of the blue and supposedly aiming to sow division between Western allies.

What an absurdly derailed op-ed. It follows the same whataboutism that is so widespread among Chinese propagandists. Just because there is one traitor in Hungary does not mean that the traitors from China are better. Huawei should have been banned from Europe long time ago, and this ‘incident’ is yet another reason to not trust this company and the totalitarian regime behind it.

Addition: I hope the bribery nvestigations regarding the corrupt MEPs and Huawei managers will also take into account the relations between Huawei’s lobby office in Brussels and the offices in EU member states like Germany, Italy, France, and all the others. For national member states are important lobbying centers for China.

[Edit typo.]

Ukraine won’t recognize occupied territories as Russian as part of any peace deal, Zelensky says

Ukraine will not recognize any occupied territories as part of Russia under a potential future peace agreement with Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelensky told journalists on March 12.

“We are fighting for our independence. Therefore, we will not recognize any occupied territories as Russia’s. This is a fact,” Zelensky said.

Russia doesn’t want Ukraine to be the staging ground for an invasion.

The same Russian propaganda rubbish over and again. No one wants (and wanted) to invade Russia, this is completely out of touch. Russia isn’t afraid of an invasion but of a country like Ukraine (or Georgia, Moldova, the Baltics, and many others) near its borders that strive in a free society. If Russians see there is an alternative state model that gives people a say and hold politicians accountable, it would threaten Russian current dictatorial government. Democracy is Putin’s only enemy.

This is, however, not likely to benefit Ukraine in the long term. Ukrainian government agencies have in recent years purged Chinese telecoms equipment like Huawei from their networks since the start of the war.

Chinese companies routinely provide Russia with high-tech services and equipment that the U.S. and EU ban. In January, [Chinese rival to Starlink] SpaceSail set up a subsidiary in Kazakhstan, a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States and a long-time eager intermediary for Russian sanctions evasion.

SpaceSail’s ongoing launches are consequently more likely to give Russian soldiers in Ukraine internet services that Ukrainian soldiers have long enjoyed than they are to help Ukraine move beyond Starlink.

Addition: The headline could easily be misinterpreted imho. What is meant is that China has more satellites in space at the moment which makes it technologically more competitive to Starlink as of now. It would be not a good idea for Ukraine to turn to choose China given the Chinese governments support for Russia in its aggression, however, and this is also what the article eventually suggests.

Yes, there’s a lot of evidence that the problem is not only with Russia, and not only with measles vaccines, e.g.:

Russia, China sow disinformation to undermine trust in Western vaccines: EU – (2021)

Russian and Chinese media are systematically seeking to sow mistrust in Western COVID-19 vaccines in their latest disinformation campaigns aimed at dividing the West, a European report said on Wednesday […]

“Both Russia and China are using state-controlled media, networks of proxy media outlets and social media, including official diplomatic social media accounts, to achieve these goals,” the report said, citing 100 Russian examples this year [2021 …]

“Both Chinese official channels and pro-Kremlin media have amplified content on alleged side-effects of the Western vaccines, misrepresenting and sensationalising international media reports and associating deaths to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Norway, Spain and elsewhere,” the report said […]

Reports like that one appear to have been increasing in recent years.

Addition for a really good study I read years ago and found again now:

Influence-enza: How Russia, China, and Iran Have Shaped and Manipulated Coronavirus Vaccine Narratives – (2021)

Does Putin’s Russia want peace? The Russian Federation has violated about 400 international treaties since 2014

[Edit broken link.]

If someone had told me ten years ago that in 2025 the UK would have long left the EU and we were talking about a membership of Canada, I would have declared them bewildered. LOL.

Yeah, and not only the Budapest Memorandum. The Russian Federation has violated about 400 international treaties since 2014