Ukraine related updates – Egypt, Finland, Poland, France
The Washington Post and others are reporting that Egypt changed course on its armament sales. We knew they decided not to supply 40,000 122mm rockets to Russia per documents released by Airman (soon to be ‘inmate’, hopefully) Texeira.
Egypt was planning to manufacture rockets for Russia but then suspended that effort and decided to supply ammunition to Ukraine after talks with United States officials, The Washington Post has reported, citing leaked intelligence documents.
The Washington Post said Egypt also approved the sale of artillery ammunition to the US “for transfer to Ukraine”, calling the shift an “apparent diplomatic win” for President Joe Biden’s administration. Al Jazeera
Further examination of the leaked documents show that they will be supplying a mix of US (155mm) and Russian-sized (152mm) howitzer shells to the US for resale to Ukraine.
The documents indicate that Egypt postponed the Moscow Agreement and instead approved the sale of artillery shells, specifically 152 mm and 155 mm, to the United States for transfer to Ukraine. This latest revelation sheds light on the evolving dynamics and strategic choices of countries in the region, amidst heightened tensions and conflicts. The situation continues to be closely monitored by experts and raises questions about the shifting geopolitical landscape in the Middle East and its implications for international relations. Republic World
Realpolitik is alive and well.
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Finland has started construction of a 1300+ km fence along its border with Russia to deter illegal border crossers.
Construction of the border fence is an initiative by the border guard that was approved by Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s government amid wide political support last year. The main purpose of the three-meter (10-foot) high steel fence with a barbed-wire extension on top is to prevent illegal immigration from Russia and give reaction time to authorities, Finnish border officials say.
Who could imagine that a fence could help deter illegal border crossing? Wonder why no one else thought of that?
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Can’t stop the Poles from getting in on the act – but they are a little more serious about it.
The barrier, which will be equipped with 24-hour monitoring cameras and motion detectors, will run for 210 kilometers (130 miles) and is due to be completed in the fall.
Last year, Poland, which is an EU member, built a wall on its border with Belarus, a Russian ally, to stop a massive illegal inflow of migrants. Warsaw said the crossings were organized by the Belarus and Russian authorities to destabilize Poland and the rest of the EU.
In February, Poland put up anti-tank barriers on roads leading to border crossings with Kaliningrad. Last year, it put up a razor-wire barrier there. AP via Yahoo
Can’t hardly blame them, can you? Russia today seems to be every bit as territorially ambitious under Putin as they were under Stalin, and with essentially no natural defenses like mountains or rivers between them, any tripwire or warning Poland can get could be vital.
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Last, and certainly least: France’s premier Emmanuel Macron, is supposedly secretly working with China to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table this summer.
Emmanuel Macron is said to be drawing up secret plans with China to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table “by this summer”.
Mr Macron has tasked Emmanuel Bonne, his foreign policy adviser, to work with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, to establish a framework that could be used as a basis for future negotiations, reports have suggested. Yahoo
One can only speculate what terms might be in a French-brokered surrender peace negotiations.
Category: Foreign Policy, International Affairs, Russia, Ukraine
I guess that’s a lot of wasted time and effort there for I’m reliably told walls and fences don’t work.
The Berlin Wall worked pretty good for a while.
Then came Reagan
Yes, but they were trying to keep people in. A number of people were shot trying to escape all the way up until 1989.
I knew some young — but still hardcore communists — in Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in the early 2000’s who defended the wall, saying “when you have everything you need, why should you be allowed to go anywhere else?”
Willing slaves
American college students… 🙄
Lars?
“Yes, but they were trying to keep people in.”
It worked.
Heroic France, doing the heavy-lifting of the western world.
Now if the domestic situation wasn’t so… french.
And Belarus was just passing thru the migrants the EU attempted to foist upon them, wanting none of the slow walking suicide of Cloward-Piven.
You may be making an invalid assumption in that anyone really takes France seriously. I don’t think they do.
Yeah, I done assumed pretty hard. You’re right, my b.
Not-a-soul acts like they take France seriously.
Note: this article is state-directed propaganda, read with great suspicion. von der Leyen is serving the dying system, let’s see how this plays out.
They don’t have the degaulle….
I thought running C-WIRE at NTC was bad, but a whole border SUCKS!
who gets to pound all those pickets?
The two skinny kids.
They aren’t doing the whole thing just parts of it. The whole project only cost between $150 to 400 million dollars. This is way cheaper than the billions we were throwing away not keeping anybody out.
The border fence is actually very effective. 100% effective? Nope. But there’s no such thing as 100% effective. Still, a very effective tool on the border. A sensor or camera never stopped anything.
Concertina works best with trip flares. Lots of them.
A Red Bull can filled with gas taped to the flare was my trick;
Statute of limitations
It’s just another obstacle; worthless unless it’s backed up by people using force.
Macron seems to be taking a Vichy approach, no?
I’m sure the Egyptians didn’t just magically have a change of heart. I wonder what we promised in return for them not supplying the Russians?
Victoria Nuland and/or Samantha Power asked their politicians if they’d like another ‘mostly peaceful’ color revolution.
Good ol’ Amerikan foreign relations:
carrot andstick(s) (of varying sizes and application points).Payment for the same amount of ammo in U$ Dollars
At the end of the day we all recognize the United States is a far from perfect nation…but we never claim to be perfect. What we do claim to be is better than the other two options currently being offered in the Super Power market…we in the United States are not in the business today of rounding up and sterilizing our citizens, starving our citizens to death, or a host of other unmentionable deprivations that our adversaries are not only capable of but are actually performing each and every day on minority populations in their nations.
Egypt appears to have realized it might not be wise to make a deal with the devil at the moment….
More nations need to understand a world where China and Russia dominate is not a world that anyone really wants to live in unless they are among the power elite…
Or selling their people for parts like the Chinamen do.
Yeah, absolutely not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20most%20significant%20era%20of,legislation%20in%20the%20United%20States.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-stark-reminder-of-how-the-us-forced-american-indians-into-a-new-way-of-life-3954109/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
At least not anymore you mean. Until next time.
I get your point, and yes “anymore” is indeed what I meant.
We did expand in the west at tremendous cost to the indigenous population, it could well be determined a genocide. The US is not alone in its conflict with native populations at that time…not an excuse but a recognition that the past was a time when different societies viewed each other as subhuman enemies to be eliminated for the greater good of the victorious society…in that regard there remains some of that reality throughout the world to this day. We did not murder the Japanese we interred, it was a racially motivated state sponsored level of bigotry that should disgust Americans today for certain, but it was not state sponsored murder.
The US evolves (albeit slowly), we spend a lot of time discussing how awful we once were and what we should do about that…a debate not present in either of the Communist nations that seek to dominate the world today.
The Chinese and Russian Communists have killed tens of millions of their own citizens, the body count between the two nations is over 100 million.
There is a clear choice for other nations to make as they choose their paths forward. I stated clearly we are not perfect, we are simply a far better option than those other two….because we tend to not murder our own in the tens of millions over our politics in the last 125 years.
At least not yet as you point out…one does start to think our current political climate is one where a third of the population would kill another third while the remaining third simply looked on and recorded it.
There is always a danger when the political environment starts to define political opposition as “others” rather than fellow citizens with a different political vision.
Excellent points, VOV.
If you’re saying that our system is better than communism I agree. However; that is a very low bar. I think we can do better.
Nothing I wrote suggests we can’t be better, in fact that’s how I start my response. As the OP referenced Egypt having a change of heart as to which side they’d be aiding my point was it’s understandable as dealing with the US is usually more profitable and relatively safe compared to those other two.
None of that suggests ours is either a perfect society or in need of yet more improvement.
The United States of America, a nation so f&#ked up, millions of illegals a year risk life and limb to get here.
Millions of illegals get paid by Soros Inc to risk life and limb to get here.
A point I like to use for my liberal friends who believe we are the root of all evil…I like to remind them that the luxury of affluence affords them a viewpoint that few else in the world are privileged enough to possess.
Arguing the finer points of a progressive society hardly matters when your daily routine consists of subsistence living…where every ounce of energy expended needs to result in some sort of caloric intake to avoid starvation.
Too few of my privileged liberal friends have ever been somewhere truly third world from top to bottom and seen the level of starvation that exists, the level of exploitation that exists, and the overall despair that exists in a place where children spend their days putting rocks in a bucket so those rocks can be broken down into components for my liberal friends’ Teslas and assorted EVs…
We still represent one of the few places if not the only place where you can arrive in a foreign land where no one wants you or likes you and still find success simply by the sweat of your effort.
^This!
We have an interloper here that frequently shits out many of arbitrary ‘facts’ that ‘blue states’ have higher ‘earnings per person’ and that equates to ‘better societies’.
I say no sir! The ultimate sign of success of a society is the draw of people, animated to remove themselves of the unacceptable “level of exploitation” and integrate to places that afford them to keep the ‘sweat of [their] effort’.
This is the American story.
The luxury our friends seek is a derivative of hard work by reachers and preachers of Liberty, remind them often!!!
Not just to get here, but to get here with nothing, sometimes even in debt to their smugglers. We must be doing something right.
They come here to be part of the “oppressed” and “marginalized”, racially, ethnically, and economically.
The European settlers didn’t do anything to the Indians they didn’t do to each other; they just did it better.
Egypt selling military hardware to Russia?
Talk about a world turned upside down.
Egyptian tanks are powerful… but they can’t leave the game grid or they’ll de-rez.
And in other news that will prove to be of benefit to the Global MIC, we have this tidbit…
https://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-us-made-patriot-guided-123532061.html
Russia is going to make a tremendous effort to destroy that system. One has never been lost in combat operations. If they succeed it will be quite the coup. If they fail, they will have given up air superiority wherever it is.
What’s that old WW2 joke? Why are there so many trees in Paris?
Paris has a lot of trees because the Nazis preferred to march in the shade. / s
Because of the wool uniforms of course.
Macron is working on a settlement where both sides surrender to Germany.
In the next couple of weeks, the news will report that Biden is paying a visit to Egypt, and Hunter will accompany with him to be the bag man – all to secure their positions and payments for whatever underhanded deal they made to influence that country not to sell arms to Russia.
Did he get his teeth fixed at least?
France’s Premier, Emmanuel Macron, promised to export only their most inferior table wines to Ukraine if they didn’t surrender, to peace demands from Russia.