Ukraine
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Macron speech today.
He announced that France would host a new meeting of UK, German and other European leaders in the coming days to discuss these responsibilities, with or without the involvement of the U.S.
“I want to believe that the U.S. will stay with us, but we need to be ready if it’s not the case,” he said.
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Link to video
The draft-- Ukrainian style!
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On Wednesday, Politico reported that four senior members of Trump's team held "secret" talks with Zelensky's top election rivals—Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko—and discussed whether the country could hold wartime elections.
Both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko confirmed on Thursday that they have been in touch with Trump administration officials, but said they oppose elections taking place during the country's war with Russia.
Elections were suspended in Ukraine in February 2022 under martial law that was imposed in response to Russia's full-scale invasion, but Trump and Putin have pressured Ukraine in recent weeks by questioning Zelensky's legitimacy as a leader.
https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-trump-secret-talks-rivals-2040520
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The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the temporary legal status of 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the U.S. from Russia's invasion, potentially paving the way for their deportation, Reuters reported on March 6, citing four undisclosed sources.
The plan predates U.S. President Donald Trump's public spat with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 28 and is part of broader efforts to revoke the legal status of more than 1.8 million people staying in the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, the news agency noted.
The move, which is expected as soon as April, would nevertheless threaten to further widen the rift between Kyiv and Washington after the U.S. paused military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
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Meanwhile Ukraine is actually taking back some territory around Pokrovsk.
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Meanwhile, in Germany.
Trump’s Embrace of Putin Has Germany Thinking of Nuclear Weapons
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Small arsenals, high costs, and production backlogs have been a hindrance as Europe arms Ukraine.
Denmark found a way to get Ukraine weapons that bypassed these issues.
It funds the weapons manufacturing in Ukraine so that they reach soldiers faster and for lower cost.
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Perfectly sensible, except for the risk that Russian cruise missiles blow up the production capacity.
On Germany, I would be acquiring nuclear weapons capacity really fast. They need to scrap the nuclear arms proliferation pact pronto and publicly announce that Germany will join the nuclear armed club and move to develop platforms to deliver them.
They also need to rebuild their military and put double the number of young people under arms as professional soldiers, i.e. 400K, not 180K.
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The Finnish president. A lesson in leadership and diplomacy that a
couplebunch of someones in the US need to see and learn from, but of course won't.Totally inspiring.
video and transcript:
Made my day. There's hope for the world.
The Finnish president. A lesson in leadership and diplomacy that a
couplebunch of someones in the US need to see and learn from, but of course won't.Totally inspiring.
video and transcript:
Made my day. There's hope for the world.
I wrote an email to Mr Stubb last week expressing my support for what he said in his speech to Zelensky. Today I got a very nice thank you email from his domestic affairs adviser, Tuomas Telkkä. well, probably some low level staffer, but still....
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US President Donald Trump’s phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, didn’t take a tangible step towards ending the hostilities in Ukraine, let alone finding an enduring peace. Rather, it provided further evidence of Putin’s ability to string along and outsmart Trump.
For starters, Putin sent a signal by making Trump wait for more than an hour to talk. Putin was speaking at a televised conference with Russian businesspeople and even made a joke about the delay when told the time for his call was approaching.
This was clearly designed to show his alpha status, both to Trump and the Russian public. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, was reportedly made to wait eight hours by Putin when he arrived in Moscow last week for talks.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Trump doesn’t seem to be in touch with US intelligence agencies.
Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk have lost ground in recent days but are not encircled by Russian forces, contrary to recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to three U.S. and European officials familiar with their governments' intelligence assessments.
U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, have shared that assessment with the White House over the past week, a U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter said. However, Trump has continued to claim that Ukrainian troops are surrounded in western Russia's Kursk region. -
US President Donald Trump’s phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, didn’t take a tangible step towards ending the hostilities in Ukraine, let alone finding an enduring peace. Rather, it provided further evidence of Putin’s ability to string along and outsmart Trump.
For starters, Putin sent a signal by making Trump wait for more than an hour to talk. Putin was speaking at a televised conference with Russian businesspeople and even made a joke about the delay when told the time for his call was approaching.
This was clearly designed to show his alpha status, both to Trump and the Russian public. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, was reportedly made to wait eight hours by Putin when he arrived in Moscow last week for talks.
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China Considering Sending Peacekeepers to Ukraine, German Media Say
