No Public Breakthrough at Ministers' Talks on Ukraine CrisisST. PETERSBURG, Russia—The highest-level visit of European Union diplomats to Russia since the Ukraine crisis erupted produced no public breakthroughs, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov continued to send mixed signals of accommodation and confrontation over the continuing separatist violence in eastern Ukraine.
Mr. Lavrov said Russia would support new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's plans to halt violence in eastern Ukraine, including "humanitarian corridors" that would allow people to flee rebel-held areas to other parts of the country.
But Mr. Lavrov said Russia continued to insist that Kiev needed to stop military operations against separatists in the country's east if it wanted the separatists to lay down their arms. And he repeated warnings that Ukraine faced negative consequences in trade with Russia if it signed a trade deal with the EU.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski tried to highlight Russian signals that the Kremlin was ready to take a more accommodating posture in the crisis. Those signs have included Russia taking steps to recognize the election of Mr. Poroshenko, whom Mr. Lavrov at one point called "President Poroshenko."
"There is, possibly, a small light at the end of the tunnel," Mr. Steinmeier said. "In recent days, since the presidential election in Ukraine, one can feel the crisis being defused."
Mr. Steinmeier called on Russia to use its influence to stop separatist violence in the east and said a "key question" was what Russia would do to stop weapons and fighters from crossing its border into Ukraine.
Mr. Lavrov said Russia was ready to work with Mr. Poroshenko and the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to halt the violence.
But Mr. Lavrov said it was up to Kiev to stop military operations. Otherwise, he suggested, the separatists would keep fighting.
"You can't blame people for wanting to defend the cities and towns where their children live," Mr. Lavrov said when asked why the Kremlin wasn't publicly saying it didn't support the separatists. "The key for us is the end of military operations against the protesters."
Mr. Lavrov also repeated a warning from Russian President Vladimir Putin last week that Ukraine faced consequences in its trade with Russia if it signed a trade deal with the European Union, which is expected to happen on June 27. Doing so, Mr. Lavrov said, would mean that Ukraine would lose previously agreed-to benefits in its trade deals with Russia.
Western officials had considered canceling Tuesday's long-planned talks, which are a part of a series of meetings between Poland, Russia, and Germany that the countries launched seven years ago and were initially aimed at discussing their countries' World War II histories.
In recent weeks, with the Russian side sounding a more accommodating tone than it previously had in Ukraine crisis, Germany and Poland decided to go ahead with Tuesday's meeting.
At the meeting, Mr. Steinmeier, who has sounded upbeat notes in recent days on an opportunity to resolve the crisis, referred to Mr. Lavrov as "dear Sergei" at the outset of a joint news conference of the three ministers. But tensions between Russia and the West remained apparent.
In opening statements as all three diplomats were seated at a round table, Mr. Sikorski said he was heartened to hear from Mr. Lavrov that Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea "will not be repeated" elsewhere.
Russian officials have said in the past that Russia has no plans to invade eastern Ukraine. But Mr. Lavrov responded to Mr. Sikorski's comment with a deep, loud laugh.
Source.
Ryan Dawson, RT’s “Human Rights Activist,” A Holocaust Denier Who’s Friends With Hate Criminals
Ryan Dawson uses the internet to promote bigotry and Holocaust denial, but on RT, he’s a “geopolitical analyst”, “human rights activist” and “Asian affairs expert.”
In 2007, a man named Eric Hunt cornered Elie Wiesel in the elevator of San Francisco’s Argent Hotel, grabbed him and pulled him off the elevator into a hallway. Hunt there held Wiesel against his will while subjecting him to an extended harangue, demanding that Wiesel admit that the Holocaust was just a Zionist myth. After Wiesel cried out for help, Hunt fled, but was subsequently found by police and arrested. He was later convicted of false imprisonment as a felony hate-crime.
His attorney defended him in interviews after the trial, saying that Hunt wasn’t really a Holocaust denier or bigot, but at the time of the attack was merely suffering from a bipolar episode from which he had since recovered. Hunt served 19 months of a three-year sentence before being released early for good behavior.
One might have assumed that was the last the world would hear from Hunt — that he would get on the appropriate medication and disappear into obscurity — but that would have been wishful thinking. In fact, as the result of his videos, which have had tens of thousands of hits on YouTube and other sites (including Internet Archive), Hunt has achieved considerable notoriety within the world of Holocaust denial since his release. What does he say in his videos? The ADL reports that Hunt’s 2009 video The Jewish Gas Chamber Hoax “describes the Holocaust as ‘the greatest hoax of human history,’ (and) uses clips of Holocaust survivors’ testimonies from Steven Spielberg’s 1998 documentary The Last Days … portraying these testimonies as ‘fraudulent.’” The video claims that bodies shown in films and photos of concentration camps were killed by the Allies, and that “Zyklon B was actually used to save Jewish lives.” A 2010 video “Where’s Wiesel’s Tatoo?” charged that Elie Wiesel is lying about having survived the Holocaust.
Hunt recently resurfaced in an extensive interview on the podcast of one Ryan Dawson for a discussion of his new video, “The Treblinka Archaeology Hoax”. According to the ADL, in that video, Hunt calls the Holocaust a “hoax”, and “describes the death camps as ‘work camps’ where the Jews got what they deserved. Hunt states that the Jews in the camps ‘were living off interest rates, usury, etc. and if you read Mein Kampf, of course, basically Hitler said that they should be working. They shouldn’t be living off people they’re scamming.’”
Check out the associated links here. "Germans Double Troops to Poland in Response to Russia's Ukraine Thrusts."
You haven't read that before. But German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, in a self-proclaimed show of solidarity with NATO's eastern allies, pointed to the numbers last week. Her ministry indicated the German contingent at the multinational force outpost in Szczecin, Poland would grow to 118 from 59.
Take that, Vladimir Putin. This was the minimalist message of resolve to the Russians from the European country with the most influence and practical leverage for confronting what U.S. President Barack Obama described as Russian "aggression" at NATO's borders.
Done with the tough stuff, the first palpable signals arrived that Germany was veering back toward business-as-usual.
This process permits Europe's leading nation to not demand that Russia return Crimea to Ukraine as a requirement for a return to normalcy; and to not set up specific tripwires for new, nastier sanctions if the coming weeks of diplomatic maneuvering doesn't move Mr. Putin.
While Mr. Obama was on what developed into a de-isolation tour for the Russian president, Ms. Von der Leyen announced that Germany would neither furnish military equipment to the new Ukranian government—America seems to have the monopoly on night-vision goggles—nor increase its defense budget.
The world's third-biggest arms dealer was saying, in effect, that it feared inciting Russia if it put new money into its current military expenditures (1.3% of gross national product), which rank 14th from the top out of NATO's 28 members.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen European Pressphoto Agency
Heard about a revitalized Alliance now energized by a Germany willing to more actively take sides? In fact, Ms. Von der Leyen's efforts included calling for a show of "prudence" from the Baltic states, as if Estonia or Latvia's playbooks included planned anti-Russian provocations.
But for grating, misplaced public advice, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier took charge. As Petro Poroshenko was inaugurated as Ukraine's president, against the background of Ukrainian soldiers battling pro-Russian separatists, Mr. Steinmeier admonished that it would be "smart to be cautious in the deployment of military force and have a sense of proportion," in comments published by the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspaper.
This is not an approach about to shake any Russian timbers—even if a high Western security official, after Allied meetings with Mr. Putin in Normandy, described the Russian to me as giving the impression that "his Ukraine bubble has burst," and insisting that he "was not in full control" of the pro-Moscow fighters.
Take this for more certain: The Russian leader could not have failed to pick up on Chancellor Angela Merkel's little-noticed public remark that "there are no automatic" elements in her conception of the Western position on Ukraine. Which would mean that for Germany, regardless of the interpretations of other allies, there are no strict red-lines, or fail-safe deadlines for imposing really serious sanctions against Russia.
This hesitancy disregards a startling (and barely reported) evaluation published last month by Deutsche Bank, titled "The economics of sanctions: The West can afford to be tough." The bank foresees no Germany calamity, saying instead that in the event of a Russian recession, the impact on the German economy "would be in the order of 0.5 [percentage points]: certainly not negligible, but manageable."
Regardless, German public opinion points away from resolve. Mr. Putin would have happily noticed a poll reporting last week that 75% of Germans reject a stronger NATO presence in Eastern Europe.
"They have the vapors," exclaimed John Kornblum, a former Clinton Administration ambassador to Germany, in a recent phone conversation.
So much for the Gauck Doctrine—the call earlier this year by federal President Joachim Gauck for new German responsibility in international security matters, and an end to the country's excuses for hiding from firm engagement. Now Mr. Gauck has given ground, asking Polish students in Warsaw last week to understand that Germany, because of its "warlike past," had to avoid moving "too quickly into confrontation."
An eventually existential clash within the West about its own defense arises here.
On one side, and not alone, is rich, reasonable, non-reckless Norway, where Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide has spoken of the necessity to accept "permanently changed relations" with Russia. She said it has demonstrated "the ability and the will" to go on the attack inside Europe.
On the other side, Mrs. Merkel. Asked recently by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for a response to the expansionist policies of Mr. Putin, who has explicitly granted himself the right to armed intervention in Ukraine, the chancellor said, "I see no need for a brand new political formulation.''
Rarely is a member of a profoundly self-involved, comfort-oriented German government willing to face up to this essential problem. But Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has seemingly taken a shot at its avoidance of reality. "The current dispute with Russia has a political dimension that goes beyond what is happening in Ukraine," Mr. Schäuble told Spiegel in late May, adding that Mr. "Putin appears intent on belittling the liberal democratic order."
The only possibly credible defender of that Western system of freedom is the United States.
But pressure must be placed on Germany to stop doing nothing of sufficient force to help in the process. It's a requirement for America's capacity to check Russia—and for halting further U.S. strategic retreat.
Source.
EPT
