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55754 |
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Date: September 28, 2024 at 11:13:15
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a nuclear po |
URL: Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a nuclear power' |
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Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a nuclear power'
By Simon Lewis and Michelle Nichols
September 28, 202412:17 PM CDTUpdated an hour ago
World leaders take part in the 79th annual U.N. General Assembly high-
level debate
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov on Saturday told the United Nations that it was senseless to ignore
alternatives to Ukraine's peace proposals, warning the West of the danger
of trying to "fight to victory with a nuclear power."
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Lavrov took aim at backers of
Ukraine who support Kyiv's peace proposal.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Nine months later Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced a 10-point peace plan to bring
a just end to the war on the basis of the founding U.N. Charter and
international law. Moscow rejected the plan.
"I'm not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the
very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what
Russia is," Lavrov said.
"Equally senseless, the Western backers of Kyiv swearing that there is no
alternative to negotiations based on the infamous peace formula."
Invoking Western allies' plans in the 1940s to "destroy" the Soviet Union,
he accused the West of trying to deal a "strategic defeat" to Russia in
Ukraine.
"The current Anglo-Saxon strategists are not hiding their ideas. For now
they do, it's true, hope to defeat Russia using the illegitimate neo-Nazi
Kyiv regime, but they're already preparing Europe for it to also throw itself
into this suicidal escapade," Lavrov said.
Russia is also concerned by the Israeli strike in Beirut that killed
Hezbollah's leader, and such "political killings" had become
commonplace, Lavrov said.
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Date: September 28, 2024 at 12:26:26
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a... |
URL: https://www.politico.eu/article/west-should-set-its-own-red-lines-not-just-accept-putin-wolfgang-ischinger-veteran-diplomat-munich-security-conference/ |
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West should set its own red lines, not just accept Putin’s, argues veteran diplomat
Former German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger says Western leaders should be making more threats and be willing to follow them through.
September 28, 2024 12:59 pm CET
By Jamie Dettmer
KYIV — The West should spend less time fretting about Russian President Vladimir Putin's red lines and set its own, says veteran German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger.
“Russia keeps saying, if you do this, if you cross this or that red line, we might escalate,” said the 78-year-old onetime chairman of the Munich Security Conference. “Why don't we turn this thing around and say to them: ‘We have lines and if you bomb one more civilian building, then you shouldn't be surprised if, say, we deliver Taurus cruise missiles or America allows Ukraine to strike military targets inside Russia’?”
That way the onus will be on Moscow to decide whether to cross the red lines — or face the consequences.
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Talking with POLITICO on the margins of the recent annual Yalta European Strategy conference, a high-level gathering of Ukrainian and Western leaders and officials, Ischinger, added with a chuckle: “Of course, as many of my friends remind me, the problem, is that if you paint a red line you've got to stick to it. You can’t do what Barack Obama did with his Syrian red line against the use of chemical weapons, which he then didn’t enforce.”
Ischinger is no warmonger. His thinking is also bent towards kick-starting peace negotiations and how to shape the circumstances for a resolution to the war which maintains Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty and advances its ambitions to join the European Union. He sees India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, as someone who can play a key role as an intermediary in a contact group, which would need to include the Europeans, the Chinese, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks.
Ischinger held a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this month to discuss a follow-up peace summit to the one held in Switzerland in June. That summit involved a hundred countries and organizations but without Russian or Chinese participation. China refused to attend due to Russia's absence and instead pitched an alternative peace plan.
Kyiv is planning to arrange a second global peace summit before the end of 2024 and hopes to develop a new joint peace plan based on Zelenskyy's long-standing 10-point peace proposal.
'Russians do respect strength'
Ischinger has deep experience in getting warring parties to talk, having been a German negotiator during the Balkans wars, working alongside the likes of America’s Richard Holbrooke in the 1990s. But he doesn’t underplay the importance of negotiating from a position of strength.
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"We need to remind ourselves that Russia, because of its history, because of its own experience and because of its cultural behavior, it doesn’t respect concessions or weakness; but Russians do respect strength,” he said.
He argued that Washington and Moscow would have to set the overall framework for any talks. And that isn’t going to happen this side of the November elections in the U.S., he reckoned.
In the meantime, Ischinger added: “If we want to encourage movement in that direction in Russian thinking, the right thing to do is to make sure the Ukrainians don't lose more territory in the Donbas and to help them weather this winter.”
“If there is going to be a process, it will be first sketched out between Moscow and Washington,” he said. He doesn’t believe that Putin and his cronies will want to make arrangements with either German Chancellor Olaf Scholz or French President Emmanuel Macron.
“They regard Europeans as vassals of Washington,” he said.
But he could imagine that, after November, some tentative discussions could start, if there were not already some secret exchanges.
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He saw some fundamental questions being examined in any U.S.-Russian conversations to shape a framework. “What about NATO membership for Ukraine? Is that negotiable or non-negotiable? What about territory and borders? How do we deal with those? And what about arms control? Could, at some second or third stage, some arms control talks emerge? But some discussions between Washington and Moscow will be the first step that I think will need to be taken,” Ischinger reckoned.
“What I learned when I was the German negotiator during the Balkan wars, you have to try to start with something that's really easy, and you go from the very easy to the less easy to the very difficult. The diplomatic textbooks outline that approach but I learned it first hand. In other words, don't talk about territory at the start. Talk about, for example, the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia and making it safe. If it goes up in flames it will kill as many Russians as Ukrainians. You talk about more POW exchanges and food transport in the Black Sea, these are the types of issues you can begin with and progress towards the more difficult questions,” he said.
And that’s where a contact group of intermediaries and facilitators will be needed — with China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and India all playing roles.
How would the U.S. election result change things? “It will make a difference, yes. It will make a difference whether it is [Kamala] Harris or [Donald] Trump. But if the latter, the risk I see is that Trump would think he can do it himself by just calling Vladimir,” he added.
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Date: September 28, 2024 at 14:38:09
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a... |
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a big part of the dangerous current state of the world is our lack of
leadership. biden has drawn red lines such as “ If you harm an American,
we will respond.” and how did that work out? no one is going respect any
red lines the clown in the white house draws
“Of course, as many of my friends remind me, the problem, is that if you
paint a red line you've got to stick to it. You can’t do what Barack Obama
did with his Syrian red line against the use of chemical weapons, which he
then didn’t enforce.”
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[55759] [55761] |
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55759 |
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Date: September 28, 2024 at 15:25:59
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a... |
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it's obviously a clown car...on both sides...
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Date: September 28, 2024 at 15:34:42
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Russia's Lavrov warns West against 'fight to victory with a... |
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agreed, clowns with nukes on both sides. what could possibly go wrong?
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