Paradoxen: Natochansen ökar om Erdogan vinner
SvD skrev:Utmanaren Kiliçdaroglu har sagt att Sverige nu borde släppas in i Nato, medan Erdogan ännu inte gett något besked om när det kan bli aktuellt. Ann Linde hoppas att utmanaren Kiliçdaroglu, som företräder socialdemokratiska CHP, vinner den andra omgången. Men samtidigt tror hon, paradoxalt nog, att det skulle kunna gynna Sverige om Erdogan tar hem segern.
– I och med att vi redan vet hur det ser ut i parlamentet, där Erdogans parti och stödpartier har majoritet. Det betyder ju att det kan bli olika politiska diskussioner mellan president och parlamentet om Kiliçdaroglu vinner. Det är lättare för Erdogan att fatta ett beslut.
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Bildt menar vidare att en seger för Kiliçdaroglu skulle kunna leda till en ”dragkamp” mellan president och parlament där Sveriges Nato-ansökan kan ”en av flera spelbrickor”.
Ingen av kandidaterna i det turkiska presidentvalet nådde 50 procent av rösterna. Därmed blir det ett omval den 28 maj. Ann Linde (S) och Carl Bildt (M), båda tidigare utrikesministrar, hävdar att en seger för Erdogan i den andra omgången kan gynna Sveriges möjligheter att släppas in i Nato innan eller i samband med Nato-toppmötet i Vilnius den 11–12 juli. Priset blir dock en fortsatt autokratisering av Turkiet.
NATO races to bridge divisions over Ukraine membership
Washington Post skrev:The disconnect among NATO members — 15 years after the United States spearheaded a push to declare that Ukraine would eventually join the alliance — highlights the risks such steps could entail at a fraught moment in the West’s standoff with Russia. It also underscores the potential for longer-term challenges within NATO despite the cohesion that has characterized the alliance’s response to the war.
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Countries that support faster action argue that making membership conditional on Ukraine’s ability to repel Russia’s full-scale invasion effectively gives Putin a veto — not the message NATO wants to send.
They say history shows that only membership, not the promise of it, can deter Russia’s use of force. Months after NATO’s 2008 declaration of eventual accession for Ukraine and Georgia, another former Soviet republic, Putin sent Russian forces into Georgia to seize territory. Ukraine’s slow steps toward NATO accession likewise did not deter Putin’s illegal seizure of Crimea in 2014 or its full-scale invasion last year.
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One official from Eastern Europe said there is “something of a ping-pong between Germany, France and the U.S.,” in which each country indicates that the others are the ones with the most significant reservations. The French and German governments declined to provide comment for this article.
USA, Frankrike och Tyskland tvekar fortfarande över att ge Ukraina en formell inbjudan till Nato, men många mindre europeiska länder är kritiska.
“A defeat for Russia is not a victory for Ukraine.” An interview with military analyst Michael Kofman
Mediazona skrev:History is not a perfect guide, but it tells us that when wars last this long, they are typically very difficult to end. Whether they end via negotiations, which can take years, or there are no negotiations and the war continues beyond any decisive period of combat operations, or even when one side attains a fairly clear military victory, they may not be able to quickly translate that victory into a political one, because it’s often up to the loser to decide when the war is over. So even if a decisive battlefield victory or a series of victories are attained, the war can go on as a cross-border war, or a war of attrition between two countries. That’s why it’s important to disambiguate between military victory for Ukraine, defeat for Russia, and war termination.
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But in general, I think we understand much better now that the initial Russian invasion was heavily premised on political assumptions that within a matter of days, Ukraine could be forced to surrender and the Ukrainian political leadership could be decapitated. And that the Russian military did not prepare for a prolonged combat operation, didn’t organise for a sustained war, and did not take the Ukrainian military seriously in terms of Ukrainian will to fight. In many respects, what Russian leadership was attempting to do was recreate a much larger version of the annexation of Crimea, having actually learned very little, it seems, about Ukraine since 2014.
That said, as a caveat, despite the profoundly unrealistic political assumptions of the Russian leadership behind the operation, the irrational employment of force, the lack of planning for a real war, and the general shambolic organisation of this invasion, the outcome in the early days was far from overdetermined. It was actually a fairly close-run affair. And the more we learn about the early days of the war, the clearer it is that much hinged on those first hours, on individual decisions made by Ukrainian leadership, by commanders, and by many Ukrainian volunteers and Ukrainian society. In short, we are fortunate to be living in this timeline of events.
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I think the more important question, the more important objective, is avoiding a scenario where most can agree that the war has been a defeat for Russia, but not necessarily a clear victory for Ukraine, or the West.
Kofman upprepar behovet av planering för ett utdraget krig. Putin är sannolikt inte redo för förhandlingar, och det räcker inte att hoppas på det bästa.
Major blow for Putin as Moldova withdraws from Russia-led alliance after 30 years
Daily Express skrev:In a major blow to Russia and Vladimir Putin, Grosu said: "After 30 years, it became clear that the presence of the Republic of Moldova in the structures of the CIS did not help us to remove the Russian army from the territory of the Republic of Moldova, to resolve the Transnistrian conflict. Being in the CIS did not protect us from blackmail in the middle of winter.
"Withdrawal from the CIS Assembly is a first step. Ukraine left this organisation. The Republic of Moldova is a free country to make sovereign decisions. We demonstrated that we want democracy, freedom at home.
"In the next meeting of the Parliament's office, we will make an approach to Prime Minister Recean regarding the termination of the Agreement.
Moldavien vill lämna det sjunkande skeppet CIS, ett samvälde bestående av de tidigare sovjetrepublikerna, förutom baltstaterna, Georgien och Ukraina.
EU plans Black Sea internet cable to reduce reliance on Russia
Financial Times skrev:The EU is planning an undersea internet cable to improve connectivity to Georgia and reduce dependence on lines running through Russia, amid growing concerns about vulnerabilities to infrastructure transmitting global data.
The €45mn cable will link EU member states to the Caucasus via international waters in the Black Sea, stretching a span of 1,100km. The project aims to reduce the region’s “dependency on terrestrial fibre-optic connectivity transiting via Russia”, the European Commission said in a policy document.
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Vodafone is also exploring the possibility of developing a cable route across the Black Sea, according to two people briefed on the plan. The project, called Kardessa, would connect Ukraine to Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia and then continue under land to Armenia, Kazakhstan and onwards to Asia.
Rysslands intressesfär minskar dag för dag. Om några dagar hålls ett toppmöte i Xi'an mellan China och de centralasiatiska republikerna - utan Ryssland.