The success of Turkish-made drones in Ukraine is the most obvious sign of Ankara’s backing for Kyiv, but fear of Russian backlash is making Turkey tread lightly.
Imagery of a burned-out Russian military convoy in Ukraine shared on social media over the weekend credited its destruction to Turkish-made drones.
Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s second-largest city on Monday, rocking a residential neighborhood, and closed in on the capital, Kyiv, in a 17-mile convoy of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles, as talks aimed at stopping the fighting yielded only an agreement to keep talking.
NATO member Turkey changed its rhetoric to call Russia’s assault on Ukraine a “war” on Sunday and pledged to implement parts of an international pact that would potentially limit the transit of Russian warships from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, Reuters reported.
The U.S. and allies on Saturday attempted to slam the brakes on Russia’s economy and banking systems by expelling selected Russian banks from the global bank-to-bank payment system known as SWIFT, the next step in a series of increasing sanctions punishing President Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Germany – Federal Government
Sunday, 27 February 2022
Translation of advance text
Madam President,
Distinguished colleagues,
Fellow citizens,
Russian nuclear deterrent forces are on high alert ahead of an emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday called to increase diplomatic pressure on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
The Western nations and especially the United States awoke today to a new world today.
After decades of hearing US politicians boastingly describe the US as the “exceptional nation,” justifying its repeated violation of international law with invasions of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, El Salvador, and “regime change interventions in a host of other countries, because it could, all the while telling the rest of the nations of the world that they had to strictly obey the “rules-based order” of international relations, that countries do not invade or violate the borders of other countries, suddenly there is another nation that has decided it is “exceptional.”
With Russia launching a military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the corporate press has grown shrill in its calls for punishing Russia with draconian sanctions, supplying Ukraine with increased military aid, and diplomatically isolating the Eurasian power as much as possible. The Two Minutes Hate against Russia has been cranked up to eleven, making any nuanced analysis of why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has reached such a point almost impossible.
Vladimir Putin has professed many justifications for Russia’s assault on Ukraine, from wild claims about “de-Nazifying” the country to anger at Kyiv’s desire to join NATO, the Western treaty alliance.
It may also be a way for him to highlight the weakness of democratic systems – while ridding Moscow of an inconvenient neighbor.
Blaming the West and what he sees as its Kyiv proxies, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced what amounts to a war of regime change, aimed at destroying Ukraine’s military potential and changing its geopolitical alignment. But he claimed his goal is not to permanently occupy the country.