Author: M Barbu

The Black Sea basin has become a flashpoint due to Russia’s interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. This has implications not only for European security, but also for Mediterranean security as well. As the prospect of a larger conflict between Ukraine and Russia looms, close attention should be paid to its possible effects on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The ties between the conflict in Ukraine and the MENA region are more complex than they may seem at first glance. Regional states have a direct interest in preventing escalation and, in the case of heightened conflict, in minimizing its consequences as quickly as possible.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that a Russian military invasion of Ukraine could begin at any time and urged Americans in Ukraine to leave now.

The U.S. State Department has ordered almost all of the embassy staff in Kyiv to depart. Consular services will also be suspended on Sunday, according to an advisory. In January, the department had ordered family members of embassy staff to leave Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine said they had failed to reach any breakthrough in a day of talks with French and German officials aimed at ending an eight-year separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The lack of progress marked a setback for efforts to defuse the wider Ukraine crisis in which Russia has massed more than 100,000 soldiers near Ukraine’s borders, raising fears of a war.

Given its geographical remoteness, the Maghreb did not constitute – unlike the Middle East – a pole of major strategic interest for the Soviet Union, and this until the period of decolonization in the 1950s. From this point on, and especially with the Algerian war of independence, Moscow began to invest in this sub-region of the Arab world. In fact, as in the Mashreq, the Soviet position strategic criteria, which explained the choice of a partnership with Algeria as early as 1962, (1) and then, to a lesser extent, with Colonel Qadhafi’s Libya after he took power in 1969.

The first of 350 British marines have flown to Poland to bolster NATO’s eastern flank amid tensions over a Russian military build-up around Ukraine. The same day, Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Poland to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the region with his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki.

After Germany’s trade volume with Russia rose by more than a third in 2021, businesses have called on the government to maintain good economic relations with President Vladimir Putin.

Easing tensions with Russia would be key to continuing the upward trend in Germany’s Eastern trade, the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations – a business organisation that aims to improve the framework conditions in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia – said on Thursday.

The Biden administration on Friday escalated dire warnings of a possibly imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying it could happen at any moment, even as emergency diplomatic efforts continued. U.S. officials said the United States is preparing to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv, and Americans in Ukraine are being told to leave within the next 48 hours.

With Russia carrying out a massive military buildup near Ukraine and the West roundly rejecting Moscow’s security demands, a window for diplomacy in the crisis appears to be closing.

But even as Moscow continues to bolster its forces and holds sweeping war games, President Vladimir Putin is keeping the window open for more negotiations in a calculated game of brinkmanship intended to persuade Washington and its allies to accept Russia’s demands.