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Europe
Russia
12.19.2024 It was reported last month that Russia's President Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kiev abandon its ambitions to join NATO. He is ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with Trump on ending the war and that Russian forces were moving towards achieving their primary goals on the battlefield, Putin has said, fielding questions on state TV today during his annual question and answer session with Russians. We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises, Putin said after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine. "Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises." (Source: TRT World - Turkey)
Dec 19, 2024, 09:21 PM Russian President Putin, addressing multiple questions on Syria at a marathon annual news conference, denied today that Russia's nine-year intervention in Syria had been a failure, saying its military intervention in Syria since 2015 had helped prevent the country from becoming a "terrorist enclave. He said Israel was the main beneficiary of the current situation. Putin expressed concern about Israel's military operations there since the toppling of his ally Assad. Russia condemns the seizure of any Syrian territories. This is obvious, he said. Israel had penetrated to a depth of 25 km and got as far as fortifications that were built for Syria by the former Soviet Union. "I have the impression that not only are they not going to leave, but they are going to reinforce there". He said Turkey was also intervening in pursuit of its own security interests with regard to Kurdish fighters in Syria whom Ankara regards as terrorists. But we are on the side of international law and for the sovereignty of all countries, while respecting their territorial integrity, meaning Syria, Putin said. Putin had made proposals to the new rulers in Damascus to maintain Russia's air and naval bases in the country. He said most people in Syria with whom Russia had been in contact about the future of its two main military bases in Syria were supportive of them staying, but that talks were ongoing. Russia had proposed using its Hmeimim air base to deliver humanitarian aid, and had also evacuated 4,000 Iranian fighters from Syria via that route, he said. In his first public comments on the subject, he said he had not yet met Assad since the former president fled to Moscow earlier this month, but that he planned to do so. In response to a question on the subject from a U.S. journalist, Putin said he would ask Assad about the fate of U.S. reporter Tice, who is missing in Syria, and was ready to ask Syria's new rulers about Tice's whereabouts too. (Source: The Straits Times – Singapore / Reuters - United Kingdom)
Europe
December 19, 2024 President-elect Trump is reportedly advancing the idea that a large and heavily armed peacekeeping force from Europe (but including NATO members) could be introduced into Ukraine as part of a peace settlement there. According to the Wall Street Journal and Le Monde, this idea first emerged in private talks between French and British officials in November. It was discussed on Thursday by NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. Trump made the suggestion to French President Macron and President Zelensky at a meeting in Paris on December 7. Macron then traveled to Warsaw to discuss a plan for 40,000 heavily armed European 'peacekeepers' with the Polish government. 'At the moment we’re not planning such activities,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk gave a cool public response. Merz of the German Christian Democrats, almost certain to be chancellor after the elections due in February, has also distanced himself from the idea. The appearance of this idea suggests that Trump and the European governments involved have received highly inaccurate information from their advisers about basic Russian positions. This suggests either extremely poor intelligence, or on the other hand that the advisers concerned are setting out deliberately to wreck a peace settlement. If so, then they are no friends to Ukraine; for every indication suggests that the longer this war goes on, the worse Ukraine’s position will become. The idea of Western troops in Ukraine is just as unacceptable to the Russian government and establishment as NATO membership for Ukraine itself. Indeed, the Russians see no essential difference between the two. Seen from Moscow, such a Western “peacekeeping force' would be simply a NATO advance guard that would provide cover for the gradual introduction of more and more NATO forces. If this proposal is put forward by General Kellogg, President-elect Trump’s choice as his Ukraine envoy, in negotiations, the Russian side will therefore reject it out of hand; and if it is insisted on, the talks will fail. Once European establishments - and populations - have had time to think about this idea, they will in fact let it drop. When Macron first suggested French troops for Ukraine earlier this year, opinion polls showed overwhelming majorities of French citizens opposing the idea. The dangers should indeed be obvious. On the one hand, Ukrainians determined to regain Ukraine’s lost territories by provoking a direct war between NATO and Russia would have every incentive to try to create armed clashes into which the Western “peacekeepers” would be drawn. If Moscow really wanted to test NATO and take advantage of future internal splits in the West, how better to do it than to threaten NATO “peacekeepers" in Ukraine rather than on NATO territory and thus not covered by NATO’s Article 5? In order for European governments and their military chiefs to agree to such a proposal even in principle, they would require ironclad and public guarantees from the Trump administration that the U.S. military would intervene with full force to rescue their “peacekeepers” if they did come under Russian attack. This would mean very much the kind of commitment to Ukraine and to potential war with Russia that Trump and leading members of his team are determined to avoid. It is important that this very ill-thought-out, horrible idea be shot down before it does serious damage to the prospects for an early peace and causes Ukraine still further human, economic and territorial loss. (Source: ZNetwork / Responsible Statecraft = U.S.)
Asia
Gaza
December 19, 2024, 12:23 PM Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Israel's restriction of water supply in Gaza amounts to acts of genocide. In its statement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said it has continued the operation of four water pipelines as well as water pumping and desalination facilities, and allowed international aid groups to deliver water in tankers. HRW's report came two weeks after Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. (Source: ABC News / AP = U.S.)
Israel
024-12-19 20:00:15 A missile launched by Yemen's Houthi forces struck a school in central Israel today. The missile, identified by the Houthis as a hypersonic 'Palestine-2' missile, triggered air raid sirens across central Israel overnight and struck the school in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The missile attack from Yemen followed an Israeli air offensive targeting major ports in Yemen and the capital, Sanaa. Local media reported at least nine people were killed in the Israeli strikes. (Source: Xinhua - China)
19 December, 2024 In the Israeli-annexed Golan, the yellow gates of Trump Heights slowly open for cars, passing a golden-lettered sign honouring the US president-elect. Emblazoned with Israeli and US flags, the settlement is an homage to Trump who in 2019 recognised Israel's sovereignty over the strategic plateau, making the United States the first, and so far only, country to do so. Countries including Israel ally Germany say Israel's presence in the Golan is unlawful. Five years after its inauguration, the modest settlement is home to some 26 Jewish families - a mix of religious and secular Jews - living in a cluster of makeshift homes and caravans, though they have plans to substantially expand it. The community now has around 70 adults and more than 60 children under 13. Within the next year, Trump Heights, or Ramat Trump, will double its population, community leader Freimann told on Tuesday, and in three years he expects 99 families to move into new homes on spacious plots with new infrastructure to match. Freimann may soon have official support, with the Israeli government approving a plan on Sunday to spend 40 million shekels ($11 million) to double the Jewish population in the Golan. The plan followed the overthrow of president Assad in neighbouring Syria last week, and a subsequent decision to move Israeli troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Syrian-held area of the Golan. Israel conquered most of the Golan from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed the two-thirds it controls in 1981. Selavan, deputy head of the Golan Heights Regional Council said that a strategic plan is already in motion to develop the area, whose Jewish population numbers around 30,000. They live alongside some 23,000 Druze, whose presence predates the occupation and who largely remain loyal to Syria. In addition to improving roads and other infrastructure and expanding existing settlements, the plan includes the creation of three new communities, one beside Trump Heights and another, potentially, on a controversial stretch of land disputed with Lebanon. "We actually just got the papers from the Israel Land Authority," Selavan said, pointing on a map to the area Israelis call Mount Dov and the Lebanese know as the Shebaa Farms. He said a team was already preparing to explore the possibility of building there. In Trump Heights, beyond the temporary structures, the earth has already been cleared to lay the foundations of around 50 new homes. (Source: The New Arab – based in London, United Kingdom, owned by a Qatari company)
Syria
12/19/2024, 16.57 Four incidents raise concern over the fate of Syria’s Christian minority, especially at a time of hope and uncertainty, in the wake of the ouster of the dictator, Assad, and the rise to power of the opposition led by the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, once affiliated with the al-Nusra front (formerly al-Qaeda). Yesterday, in an interview with the BBC the leader of the group, Sharaa, denied that he wants to turn Syria into a new Afghanistan, stressing that the two countries are different, with different traditions. Speaking about the situation, an anonymous government source told that the Greek Orthodox have been targeted, largely because they are the Christian group closest to Moscow, and have been linked to the Russian Orthodox Church since the 18th century. The worst incident reported took place in a Greek Orthodox village, al-Jamasliyye, in Wadi al-Nasara, the so-called Valley of Christians, Homs Governorate. A Christian couple, Satme and Helena Khashouf, were brutally murdered on 13 December: the man was beheaded, while the woman was shot in cold blood. Some people remember similar murders in the past that were clearly motivated by religious bias. The funeral service was held at the Church of Saint Simeon Stylites in Haba. On Tuesday, in Hama, HTS members vandalised a local Christian cemetery, looting, desecrating graves, destroying some crosses, and beheading a statue of Our Lady. Earlier, a car with HTS members allegedly fired at the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Archbishopric in Hama, targeting the cross. Local sources note that the group then broke into the Church St George, destroying some crosses. In Damascus, anti-Assad opponents were seen and threatening words against the Christian minority are spotted in a car with a sign on the dashboard that reads: ’Your time is near, O servants of the cross’. Meanwhile, the Christian blog "Ora Pro Siria" relayed a message from the Trappist nuns of A'zer, in which they say they are "fine" and that, in their area, ’there is not too much violence and there is enough respect". By contrast, ’elsewhere the situation is more problematic’ and it is ’a miracle that there was no more chaos in the first few days, even if the situation is still very precarious. It is imperative that a police service be established as soon as possible everywhere, even in the suburbs.’ For the Trappist nuns, the new leaders made ’two mistakes: emptying all the prisons, releasing all sorts of criminals, and dissolving the local police. For now, no one is in full control.’ With respect to the future, they note that, everything will depend on whether the promises of a moderate state respectful of the various minorities are kept or not. (Photo) /Source: AsiaNews, an official press agency of the Catholic Church's Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME)/
by Salvi
Note: „Send to a friend”
Yemen
Thursday, December 19, 2024 Israeli bombers pound Yemen and Gaza. (Source: Morning Star - United Kingdom)
United States
12/19/2024 How the White House functioned with a diminished Biden in charge (Source: MSN / WSJ = U.S.)
December 19, 2024 12:41 PM Since 2000, Congress has required the Department of Defense to submit an annual report - classified and unclassified - on the development of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA). The latest document was released amid flaring tensions between the two powers over a range of issues and just weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Trump. The United States views China, which Defense Secretary Austin previously called the country's pacing challenge, as the only nation capable of competing with it in the military, economic, technological and geopolitical domains. A major focus of the report is China's expanding nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon estimates that China had over 600 operational warheads earlier this year - about 100 more than in 2023 - and is projected to surpass 1,000 by 2030. The 2024 edition of the Pentagon's China Military Power Report, released yesterday, has drawn fire from the Chinese embassy, with spokesperson Liu criticizing the 166-page report's Cold War and zero-sum thinking. China has always firmly adhered to a nuclear strategy of self-defense, following a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons and maintaining its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security, Liu said. He noted that China is the only nuclear power to have made this commitment. He also pointed to China's participation in multilateral arms control initiatives. The report also highlighted China's increasing pressure on Taiwan, that Beijing claims as its territory. The U.S. has long acknowledged China's position without endorsing it while maintaining unofficial diplomatic relations with Taiwan and providing the island with arms. U.S. intelligence and defense officials believe President Xi has directed the PLA to be capable of moving against Taiwan by 2027. On Taiwan, Liu called the report a blatant violation of China's internal affairs. He added: The one-China principle is unwavering, the trend toward reunification is unstoppable, and 'Taiwan independence' is a dead end. The report examined China's ties with Russia, describing their relationship as a no-limits partnership. The document said that Beijing has echoed Kremlin narratives blaming the U.S. and NATO for Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine; bolstered Russia's economy with oil and natural gas purchases and record-high trade; and exported electronics, machine tools, and other dual-use goods that fuel Moscow's war machine. Regarding support for Russia, Liu said: China has always strictly controlled the export of dual-use items. He insisted that China's relationship with Russia is aboveboard, in line with World Trade Organization rules and market principles and not targeted at any third party. Liu accused the U.S. of hypocrisy for sanctioning Chinese companies over alleged support for Russia's military efforts. Liu's comments follow Xi's meeting with President Biden last month in Lima, Peru. During the meeting, Xi laid down clear red lines, widely interpreted as a message for the incoming administration of President-elect Trump. Xi urged the U.S. to unequivocally oppose Taiwan independence and to steer clear of human rights issues and China's territorial disputes in the South China Sea, such as those with U.S. defense treaty ally Philippines. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)
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