Israel faces a perfect storm of problems if Russia chooses large-scale military aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s quiet but critical partner
3,000 kilometers separate Jerusalem and Kyiv. And that distance is probably why most Israelis don’t know how much their normal everyday life is already connected to Ukraine, or how much of what they take for granted actually depends on peace and stability in Ukraine.
The U.S. aim is to keep them from trading with China and Russia
The Iron Curtain of the 1940s and ‘50s was ostensibly designed to isolate Russia from Western Europe – to keep out Communist ideology and military penetration. Today’s sanctions regime is aimed inward, to prevent America’s NATO and other Western allies from opening up more trade and investment with Russia and China. The aim is not so much to isolate Russia and China as to hold these allies firmly within America’s own economic orbit. Allies are to forego the benefits of importing Russian gas and Chinese products, buying much higher-priced U.S. LNG and other exports, capped by more U.S. arms.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in Brussels today for a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Their meeting follows a busy diplomatic week full of high-level meetings aimed at preventing the outbreak of war near the European Union’s borders. But with the week drawing to a close, it remains to be seen how much closer to a peaceful resolution of the crisis the parties have come.
Vladmir Putin’s recent visit to China, to attend the opening of the Winter Olympics in China and display solidarity with Xi Jinping against the Western diplomatic boycott of the games, was hailed as an economic as well as diplomatic success. The support of the economic giant next door is an important reassurance to Russia, against the threat of crippling Western sanctions in the event that Russia invades Ukraine. As the political scientist and columnist George Bovt put it: “[The solidarity on display] will allow the Russian leadership to feel a bit more confident in the upcoming new rounds of talks with the West, as well as to more soundly assess the consequences of the implementation of the numerous sanctions’ threats, via which attempts are being made to prompt Moscow to make concessions on Ukraine.
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.