Obama Defense Nominee Favors Lethal Military Aid for Ukraine | Russia's Nuclear Strategy Raises Concerns in NATO

US says future of Guantánamo Bay is not on the table in Cuba talks 

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After Raúl Castro called publicly for the return of Guantánamo Bay to Cuba, US officials insisted the base’s status was not being negotiated in diplomatic talks
The US official leading negotiations with Cuba said on Wednesday that the issue of Guantánamo Bay is not a part of diplomatic conversations with the country, despite Cuban president Raúl Castro’s demand last week that the US return the base.
Roberta Jacobson, the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs,testified at a House of Representatives hearing about Cuba on Wednesday.
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Defense Secretary nominee signals support for arming Ukrainians - CBS News

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CBS News

Defense Secretary nominee signals support for arming Ukrainians
CBS News
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's pick to run the Pentagon said Wednesday he's inclined to back increased U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal arms, to fight anti-government rebels backed by neighboring Russia. The White House is ...
Obama Pentagon nominee Carter leans toward arming UkraineReuters
Obama Pentagon pick Carter says he won't bend to White House pressure to ...Fox News
'Soon-to-be' defense secretary glides through hearingMSNBC
Al Jazeera America -Bloomberg -BBC News
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Pentagon nominee supports arming Ukraine

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Ashton Carter hints at US shift on military aid

Pentagon Nominee Vows to Resolve Jordan Arms Sales Delays

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President Barack Obama's nominee for defense secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday vowed to cut through "red tape" slowing U.S. arms deliveries to Jordan, which plans to step up its fight against Islamic State after the killing of a captured Jordanian pilot. Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee it was important for Jordan to be able to acquire the weapons it needed, and he would work to address concerns raised by King Abdullah during a meeting with committee...

Moussaoui calls Saudi princes patrons of al-Qaida - Times of India

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Times of India

Moussaoui calls Saudi princes patrons of al-Qaida
Times of India
WASHINGTON: In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for al-Qaida has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia's royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he ...

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Obama aide Pfeiffer to leave White House - USA TODAY

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USA TODAY

Obama aide Pfeiffer to leave White House
USA TODAY
Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer will leave the White House next month, President Obama and aides said Tuesday. "Dan has been beside me on every step of this incredible journey, starting with those earliest days of the campaign in 2007," Obama said in a ...
Top Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer to leave White HouseThe Week Magazine
Top Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer to step down: White HouseReuters
Longtime Obama Adviser Pfeiffer Plans to Leave White HouseBloomberg
Washington Post (blog) -WPTZ The Champlain Valley -National Journal
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Page 11

Argentina's president asked to testify about mysterious death of prosecutor 

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  • Judge to decide whether to compel Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to testify
  • Lawyer’s petition also seeks testimony from intelligence chief
Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been asked to testify in court on the death of Alberto Nisman, the crusading prosecutor who had accused her of conspiring to cover up Iranian involvement in the country’s worst terror attack four days before he died.
A lawyer representing Diego Lagomarsino – the computer technician who gave Nisman the gunwhich killed him – said that the president may be able to shed light on the mysterious death, which has shocked Argentina.
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NATO ministers to meet on Russia, upgrading response force - azcentral.com

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MiamiHerald.com

NATO ministers to meet on Russia, upgrading response force
azcentral.com
With NATO officials calling Russia more unpredictable now than during the Cold War, alliance defense ministers on Thursday are expected to approve further measures to enhance the organization's ability to deter and, if necessary, respond to military threats ...
NATO ministers meet on Russia to upgrade response forceThe Indian Express
Ukrainian rebel push reveals Russian power grab to Czech generalChicago Tribune
NATO's leader to meet Russia's foreign minister for 1st timeU-T San Diego
Voice of America
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Jeb Bush lashes out at 'liberal mindset' in presidential appeal to middle class 

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In Detroit speech, Bush hints at platform that distances himself from family dynasty with focus on Americans who ‘live on the edge of economic ruin’
In a leap from the blocks at the earliest presidential campaign starting gun in American history, Jeb Bush attempted a major rebranding of his family and his party’s political legacy on Wednesday.
The former Florida governor presented “a new vision” and a “plan of action” on behalf of economically struggling families, including digs at government regulation and Amtrak – while establishing his position on the ongoing vaccination debate.
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Russia leads U.N. initiative to target Islamic State financing

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia is leading a U.N. Security Council initiative to ratchet up pressure on countries to cut off the cash flow to Islamic State militants, Russia and council diplomats said on Wednesday.






  

Saudi princes 'supported al-Qaeda before 9/11' claims twentieth hijacker - Telegraph.co.uk

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Telegraph.co.uk

Saudi princes 'supported al-Qaeda before 9/11' claims twentieth hijacker
Telegraph.co.uk
Senior members of the Saudi royal family were major al-Qaeda donors and were intimately involved with Osama bin Laden's terror network in the 1990s, one of the group's former members has testified to a New York court. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called ...
Moussaoui calls Saudi princes patrons of al-QaidaTimes of India
War with Isis: If the Saudis aren't fuelling the militant inferno, who is?The Independent
Lawyers: Evidence shows Saudi Arabia aided 9/11 hijackersBryan-College Station Eagle
The Straits Times
all 81 news articles »

Donetsk rebel chief claims Ukraine is ‘run by Jews’

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Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel chief on Monday branded the country’s leaders “miserable” Jews in an apparent anti-Semitic jibe.
Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed that Kiev’s pro-Western leaders were “miserable representatives of the great Jewish people”.
“I can’t remember a time when Cossacks were led by people who have never held a sword in their hands,” Zakharchenko told a press conference in the eastern rebel stronghold of Donetsk, in a reference to Ukraine’s nationalist forebears, the Cossacks.
Zakharchenko said that the country’s historical nationalists “would turn in their graves if they could see who is running Ukraine.”
Anti-Semitic sentiment remains widespread in Ukraine, where most of its leaders are Jewish, including the highest possible state ranks, such as the president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament Volodymyr Groysman.
The comments by Zakharchenko, who was flanked by the leader of the neighbouring rebel-held region of Lugansk, Igor Plotnitsky, were carried live by Russian news channel Rossiya-24.
The rebels leaders on Monday announced a mass call-up, aimed at bolstering their forces to 100,000 troops.
Fighting between Ukrainian forces and the pro-Russian rebels, which has claimed 5,100 lives since April, has surged in recent weeks after the collapse of a tenuous ceasefire deal.
        
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Page 12

Russia's Nuclear Strategy Raises Concerns in NATO

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Concern is growing in NATO over Russia's nuclear strategy and indications that Russian military planners may be lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons in any conflict, alliance diplomats say. NATO officials have drawn up an analysis of Russian nuclear strategy that will be discussed by alliance defense ministers at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday. The study comes amid high tension between NATO and Russia over the Ukraine conflict and rising suspicions on both sides that...

Foreign exodus from Russia gathers pace

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Political stand-off with the west and struggling economy spur increase in departures

HIV Accused Argues Homosexual Acts 'Not Sex'

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Gary Debaun is charged in Florida with not providing information about his HIV status to a male sexual partner.

Kremlin pursues military modernization despite economic woes

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MOSCOW (AP) -- Hundreds of new Russian aircraft, tanks and missiles are rolling off assembly lines. Russian jets roar through European skies under NATO's wary eye. Tens of thousands of troops take part in war games showing off the military's readiness for all-out war....

Arab World Unites in Anger After Burning of Jordanian Pilot

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There was one feeling that many of the Middle East’s clerics, competing ethnic groups and warring sects could agree on: a sense of revulsion at the Islamic State’s latest video.

Arab World Unites in Anger After Burning of Jordanian Pilot - New York Times

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The Guardian

Arab World Unites in Anger After Burning of Jordanian Pilot
New York Times
In a way that the beheadings of hostages had not, the immolation of Lieutenant Kasasbeh united the Arab world in an explosion of anger and disgust at the extremists, also known as ISIS or ISIL, or to most Arabs by the word “Daesh,” derived from the ...
Jordan's King Abdullah vows 'relentless' war against IsisThe Guardian
Till we run 'out of fuel and bullets': Jordan's king vows to crush ISISFox News 
Jordan executes Al Qaeda captives after ISIS torches pilotNew York Daily News

CNN-San Jose Mercury News -USA TODAY
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Page 13

Obama: Immigration Opponents Fail to Consider Consequences of Deportations

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President Barack Obama says opponents of his efforts to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported fail to consider the "human consequences." The American leader met Wednesday at the White House with six young people brought to the United States at an early age by parents who slipped into the country illegally. Under a 2012 order, Obama protected more than 1 million young people from being deported so they could attend college or start businesses in the...

Obama meets with young undocumented immigrants at White House 

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US President Barack Obama meets with a group of young undocumented immigrants at the White House, and warns he will veto any bill that would "take away their chance to contribute to the country."...
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Two Cuban Baseball Players Defect in Puerto Rico

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Two Cuban baseball players defected in Puerto Rico, where a squad from their country is playing in the Caribbean Series against four other Latin American teams, Cuban sports officials said on Wednesday. Pitcher Vladimir Gutierrez, 19, rookie of the year in the Cuban league last year, and shortstop Dainer Moreira, 30, left the team after Tuesday night's game in San Juan, said two Cuban sports officials, who requested anonymity because they are unauthorized to speak publicly. The...

Pledge weapons for Ukraine or the violence will go on - Financial Times

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MiamiHerald.com

Pledge weapons for Ukraine or the violence will go on
Financial Times
here is no military solution to the Ukraine crisis: this is what western leaders have been saying for months. This is correct — but only from their point of view. The west has excluded a military option while the separatists in eastern Ukraine and Moscow have ...
US considers arming Ukraine as military struggles to fight off Russian-backed ...National Post
Pentagon 2008 study claims Putin has Asperger's syndromeUSA TODAY
For $37, you can buy this toy of Vladimir Putin riding a bearMarketWatch
Wall Street Journal -CNN
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Obama Defense Nominee Favors Lethal Military Aid for Ukraine

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President Barack Obama’s pick to be America’s next secretary of defense says he favors sending U.S. military aid to Ukraine and speeding arms sales to Jordan -- and lists Iran and the Islamic State as major threats in the Middle East. Ashton Carter testified at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, now controlled by some of Obama’s fiercest Republican critics on global security matters. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports.

Obama Defense Nominee Favors Lethal Military Aid for Ukraine

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President Barack Obama's pick to be America's next secretary of defense says he favors sending U.S. military aid to Ukraine and speeding arms sales to Jordan -- and lists Iran and the Islamic...
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Page 14

Conservative party ‘bankrolled by hedge fund managers’

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Labour says its analysis shows that 27 of the 59 wealthiest fund managers have donated more than £19m to Tory coffers
Nearly half of Britain’s wealthiest hedge fund managers are helping to bankroll the Conservative party, according to a Labour analysis of Tory donors which shows the party’s dependence on the City of London.
Lucy Powell, the vice-chair of Labour’s general election campaign, accused David Cameron of debasing politics by refusing to answer questions about the Tories’ reliance on hedge fund managers.
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Antisemitic attacks in UK at highest level ever recorded

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Community Security Trust recorded 1,168 incidents against Britain’s Jewish population in 2014, more than double that of the previous year
The number of antisemitic incidents in the UK has reached the highest level ever recorded, with reports of violence, property damage, abuse and threats against members of Britain’s Jewish population more than doubling last year .
The Community Security Trust, a Jewish security charity which runs an incident hotline, recorded 1,168 antisemitic incidents against Britain’s 291,000 Jews in 2014, against 535 in 2013 and 25% up on the previous record in 2009.
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Britain must play a greater role in fighting Islamic State in Iraq, say MPs 

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Commons defence committee’s scathing report says government should give Iraqi army equipment and training and send drones into region
Britain needs to play a greater role in the fight in Iraq against Islamic State, according to a scathing report published on Thursday by the cross-party Commons defence committee, which describes the UK contribution so far as “strikingly modest”.
Against a background of widespread public horror over Isis’s brutal murder of the Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh, MPs express dismay over Britain’s limited involvement and contrasts this position unfavourably with allies such as the US, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia.
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Peru Declares No-fly Zone in Coca-growing Region

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Peru established a no-fly zone over its most lawless coca-producing region in a bid to stop a growing number of small planes from smuggling cocaine to neighboring countries, the government said on Wednesday. The move advances President Ollanta Humala's plan to start forcing down unauthorized flights for the first time since 2001, when the military accidentally shot down a plane carrying a U.S. missionary and her baby. The no-fly zone bars civilian aircraft without prior military...

Suppression of Islamic State more realistic than elimination: UK lawmakers

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LONDON (Reuters) - Containing Islamic State may be a more realistic strategy than defeating it, a committee of British lawmakers said, calling on Britain to play a greater role in the fight against the militants in Iraq and Syria.
  

Foreign exodus from Russia gathers pace

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Political stand-off with the west and struggling economy spur increase in departures
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Page 15

Dangerous plan to arm Ukraine | Letters: Pofessor Richard Sakwa and Denis MacShane 

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Timothy Garton Ash suggests it is time to arm Ukraine against the insurgency in the Donbass and to counter Russian propaganda (Sometimes only guns will stop guns. And Putin must be stopped, 2 February). This is as ill-conceived as it is dangerous and represents a fundamental misreading of the situation. It will only pile logs onto a burning fire, which will only exacerbate the situation. First, it assumes that the insurgency is simply a creature of Moscow’s will, whereas in fact the local leaders have consistently pursued their own interests and agendas, often against Moscow’s wishes. This is a classic case of the client tail wagging the sponsor dog. It was Moscow that stopped the advance on Mariupol in September (much to the chagrin of the insurgents), which could easily have been taken at that time and instead sponsored the Minsk peace process.
Second, despite repeated claims that Russia has engaged in a full-scale invasion, even Ukrainian Colonel-General Viktor Muzhenko, chief of the general staff, recently admitted that there is no Russian invasion of Ukraine. Material and technical support yes, but invasion, no. Third, misplaced analogies of Putin with Hitler, and now with Milosevic, not only add little to our understanding but provide easy explanations for a complex conflict. Fourth, while the shelling of Mariupol was monstrous, the whole war has been accompanied by an endless series of atrocities by both sides. It is time for us to do all that we can to put an end to the suffering. This is effectively a civil war, with the great powers once again lining up on different sides. We should give diplomacy a chance, before the fire consumes us all.
Professor Richard Sakwa
University of Kent 
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Some Near Putin ‘Quietly Searching for a Successor’ But Fear ‘Time of Troubles’ Afterwards 

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Staunton, February 4 – Even though many of those around Vladimir Putin fear that his ouster would lead to a new time of troubles, some of them have become convinced that the situation now is already so dire that he must be replaced and are “quietly searching” for a possible successor, according to Moscow analyst Andrey Okara.
In an interview with Ukraine’s Gazeta, Okara, director of the Moscow Center for East European Research, says that the Russian elite is deeply split with some believing everything the Kremlin propagandists say and others certain that the reverse is true and even leaving the country.
Relatively few of the latter are speaking out in the Russian capital, the Moscow analyst adds, but they are speaking with their feet, leaving if they can and even transforming Kyiv into “a center of the Russian emigration.” But the most interesting developments are taking place among those who are not speaking out and who appear to be in Putin’s good graces.
Among Russia’s oligarchs, Okara says, dissatisfaction with Putin is growing. Their business is suffering and “they talk about this openly but are not able to influence Putin. Otherwise they risk suffering the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was in prison for ten years. In Russia, you are either with the president” or else.
Nonetheless, he continues, “in Putin’s entourage,” there are people who today “are quietly searching” for a successor, with the names of Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu and Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin being the most often mentioned. “But for the time being there are no alternatives to Putin” in fact.
Public support for Putin has not fallen, Okara says, but Russians are no longer laughing about sanctions. They are patient because most of them still are convinced that the situation will improve quickly, with sanctions being lifted and Russia’s earlier advantages as an oil and gas exporter returning.
At the same time, however, “the authorities are trying to merge all negative protest attitudes by creating the ‘Anti-Maidan’ organization,” but that act allows one to be “certain that a Maidan in Russia must at some point appear,” Okara continues.
Putin’s strategy with regard to Ukraine remains unchanged: he wants it to be within the Russian sphere of influence and not to have any independent geopolitical role. But his resources are “much less” than many believe: Moscow does not have enough forces to march on Kyiv, but it does in order to prosecute a war like the one going on now for five years.
According to the Moscow analyst, “Putin cannot retreat. A retreat would mark his end as a political figure.” Therefore, Okara says, there are three possible scenarios for the end of the war now that “all bridges have been burned” with the shelling of Mariupol and the start of an open armed invasion.
In the first, Russia wins and Ukraine is dismembered into “several puppet states.” In the second, Russia loses and Russia is split up as Germany was after 1945. In that case, Russians go through what Germans did, Ukraine develops successfully, and possibly part of Russia becomes “a satellite of Ukraine with the rights of an autonomous formation.”
The third scenario, Okara says, is “a nuclear conflict with unpredictable consequences.”
Asked which of these was “the most likely,” Okara responds that “if the Ukrainian elite were mature and educated, then Ukraine now would be making world history,” but unfortunately, it lacks one. “All that civil society is doing is effective,” but “almost all tha the state is doing is idiotic.”
Asked if Putin is prepared for a compromise, the Moscow analyst says that the West’s “silent acceptance” of the annexation of Crimea seemed to open the way for that as there were no sanctions then in place. He adds, however, that there is one “obligatory condition: Russia must be recognized as a world power and Putin as equal” to the leaders of the other powers.
“But after the shooting down of the Boeing, Volnovakha, and the shelling of Mariupol, no compromises are possible,” Okara says.
And that creates a most dangerous situation: “when a rat is driven into a corner, he may snap at you.” Right now, “the ‘collective Putin’ feels itself to have been driven into a dead end.” As a result, people near the top are talking about the use of nuclear weapons as if that were simply another choice. What Putin thinks about that is uncertain.
Moscow has sufficient resources to hold on for 18 months to two years, Okara says, and therefore, Russia isn’t about to collapse or disintegrate “today or tomorrow.” Indeed, it is still “unknown who will fall apart: Russia or Ukraine, especially given the policies in place now.” Russia would be at greater risk if Putin ceased to be president.
“If Ukraine does not fall apart, then it will become very strong, a center of gravity on the East European and post-Soviet spaces,” Okara says. And if Russia does, then “tens of millions of Russians will flee to Ukraine.”
In short, the Moscow analyst concludes, “Russia without Putin” will be a new “time of troubles,” because Putin has done everything he can to ensure that there is no real opposition or alternative to himself. “Therefore, after Putin will be a flood and global political chaos.” Fear of that is thus acting as a constraint on those who disagree with him.
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Helping Ukraine Prevents Rather Than Promotes Disaster

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Staunton, February 4 – Many in the West fear that providing military assistance to Ukraine would open the way for disasters ranging from the potential loss of an American helicopter as happened in Somalia to a possible nuclear exchange between Russia and the West as Vladimir Putin has threatened.
But such arguments, as emotionally compelling as they may be, look at only one side of the ledger and fail to address the other and more important side: what will happen if Putin’s aggression in Ukraine succeeds while the West stands by and does little or nothing — and not just on the former Soviet space but around the world?
On Novy Region 2 today, Kseniya Kirillova says that while the concerns about the risks involved are understandable, they are misplaced because they ignore the fact that the consequences of not assisting Ukraine will be far worse than any of those from doing so.
The biggest fear some in the West and especially in Europe have is that providing assistance would provoke Putin, lead to an escalation of the conflict, and possibly open the way to the use of nuclear weapons. But “the chief paradox” of the situation is in fact that not providing Ukraine with military help may make that more likely, Kirillova says.
She notes that Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons on its territory in exchange for a guarantee of security as offered in the December 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed not only by Ukraine but also by Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
That agreement in turn is part of the more general security system in Europe, a system “build on guarantees.” But “if such guarantees are barbarously violated, and Europe and the US do nothing to defend them, then we will get the destruction of the entire existing world order” and enter into a Hobbesian world in which each will look to its own defense.
In that event, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons will come not just from Moscow. Other governments, “uncertain that they can defend themselves” or that anyone else will defend them, will be less willing to give up nuclear weapons if they have them and more inclined to try to develop them if they don’t.
A world in which a large number of countries do so will not be a stable one. Instead, it will be one in which at some point either through miscalculation or otherwise, someone will use them and someone else will have to respond.
Those who argue against providing military assistance to Ukraine “frequently forget,” Kirillova says, that they are in fact “acknowledging ‘the right of the strong’ to violate the territorial integrity of any weaker states by those which have important economic or political significance for the West or simply are more effective in using blackmail.”
And that means, she continues, that “the potential victims of aggression will begin to search for their own means to blackmail their opponents – if they do not see any other means for the defense of their interests” in a world in which guarantees have no meaning. Unfortunately, in today’s anything but stable world, there are a large number of countries likely to do so.
Iran is the most obvious, but it is hardly alone. Among others Kirillova lists are the Kurds, Serbia and Kosovo, Ukraine itself, Belarus, and Central Asian countries fearful of the Islamist threat; but that list would grow if others ceased to believe that they were protected or alternatively restrained by Western guarantees.
She notes that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has already said that it was a mistake for his country to have allowed the nuclear weapons on its territory to be removed and that he has no intention of repeating it by allowing weapons-grade uranium to be taken as well. “If we had [such] arms now, people would be speaking with us in a different way,” he says.
“The world could turn out to be on the edge of complete mutual destruction,” the commentator says. Helping Ukraine would slow and possibly stop “such a development of events and not accelerate it as some European leaders fear.” Had the West taken a tougher line last year, it would have required less of an effort than it will now.
But “it is not too late to correct the situation even now.” And as the risks of doing nothing are so much greater than those of taking action, Kirillova concludes, “let us hope that despite all the warnings of the German side, the United States will provide the victim of aggression with the help it is asking for” lest the aggressor and potential victims decide that aggression works.
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Not Only Labor Migrants Are Fleeing Russia, Westerners Are Too 

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Staunton, February 4 — The exodus from Russia of Central Asian labor migrants and even the recent decline in the number of Ukrainians who fled to Russia last year after the start of the conflict there have attracted a great deal of attention, but outflow, this of people from Western countries, has attracted much less even though it may prove more important.
According to an investigation by RBC journalists Stepan Opalyev and Elena Myazina, this exodus has been partially obscured by the inflow of Ukrainians. But beginning from January of last year, “at a minimum, half a million citizens of European countries (excluding the former USSR states but including the Baltics), North America, Australia and New Zealand left Russia.”
Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) notes that the number of such people in Russia in January 2014 was 1.73 million but only 1.23 million in January 2015 and reports that three quarters of that half million did so in the second half of last year after hostilities in Ukraine began.
Germans, Americans and British subjects formed the largest number of those departing, with 98,000, 79,000, and 69,000 exiting respectively. In percentage terms, the largest departures were the Norwegians, 48 percent of whom left, the Swedes, 47 percent of whom left, the Spanish, 41 percent, the Finns, 39 percent, and the Danes, 38 percent.
The two journalists note that Latvian non-citizens, most of whom are Russian speakers, came to Russia in large numbers in the first half of 2014 boosting their number by 782 but then left in the second half by only slightly fewer, 560, leaving that group in Russia up by 222 for the year as a whole.
Artur Shamilov, head of the Top Contact company, said that the departure of these people is having an impact on Russian companies, but he told the RBC journalists that their departure had been triggered not only by the geopolitical crisis but also by “the increasing qualifications of Russian managers who are gradually replacing the foreign specialists,” a trend since 2008.
But Konstantin Kalachev, a Moscow political analyst, told the journalists that people from developed countries have ceased to view Russia as a country with prospects even though they, because most are paid in dollars or euros, have actually benefitted from the ruble’s devaluation.
He said that what is happening is that Western firms are winding down their operations in Russia because of sanctions and the new East-West tensions, developments that he says “foreigners feel more than Russians.” He notes that some in the top elite are even pleased with the departure of such people because that opens the way for Russian managers.

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