Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine will not be granted NATO membership, but rather will serve as a “buffer” between the US-led military bloc and Russia, once the conflict with Moscow is over, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has predicted.
- Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Budapest has consistently criticized the EU’s weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The Hungarian government has long advocated engaging Moscow in dialogue instead, with Orban repeatedly calling for sanctions imposed on Russia to be lifted.
- Delivering his annual state of the nation address in Budapest on Saturday, the prime minister said that the conflict, which “is on its way to its end,” is about “bringing the territory called Ukraine, which until then was a buffer zone, a buffer state between NATO and Russia, under NATO control.”
- “Ukraine, or what remains of it, will once again be a buffer zone. It will not be a NATO member,” Orban predicted.
- “Why European and American liberals thought that the Russians would stand idly by is still a mystery,” the official remarked, claiming that the “experiment has failed.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- NATO was forced to scramble its warplanes in Poland today as Vladimir Putin used strategic bombers and missiles to attack neighboring Ukraine – even as Vladimir Putin insists he wants peace ‘as soon as possible’.
- Putin’s air force deployed Tu-95MS nuclear-capable strategic bombers to pound targets across Ukraine, causing panic in Kyiv as residents rushed for the metro underground shelters.
- Explosions were heard in Kyiv, Zhytomyr, and Sumy, as well as in several towns across the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Chernihiv. Drones were also used by Russia, with several people reportedly suffering injuries.
- Warsaw’s armed forces operation command headquarters ordered NATO jets to patrol Polish airspace as Russian bombers and missiles soared over Ukraine amid fears they could approach the Polish border.
- ‘Attention, due to the activity of long-range aviation of the Russian Federation, striking targets located, in particular, in the west of Ukraine, military aviation has begun to operate in the airspace of Poland,’ the command headquarters said.
- Ground-based air defenses and radar reconnaissance systems were also ‘put on alert’.
- It comes just one day after a US B-52 bomber flew a sortie less than 50 miles from the Russian border in a show of strength on the third anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
- The B-52 jet, which is described as providing the US with ‘immediate nuclear and conventional global strike capability’, flew from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire to the frontline NATO state and was flanked by F35s and F-A18 fighters.
- The planes jetted in formation over soldiers and tanks as a military parade of over 1,000 troops from NATO and the Estonia’s Defense Forces took place in the Estonian capital of Tallinn.
- February 24 marked three years since Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and is also Estonian Independence Day.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- A Trump administration team led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down for four hours with senior representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the first such meeting since Russia deepened an invasion of Ukraine that launched the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
- Neither Ukraine nor any European actor was invited to the talks
- “This is the start of a long process,” Rubio told reporters after the meeting.
- The two sides agreed on a “consultation mechanism to address irritants to our bilateral relationship,” the State Department said.
- They also agreed to appoint “high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.”
- President Trump, for whom foreign policy is largely transactional, has said he “just wants the killing to stop” at any cost.
- Tuesday’s meeting was a follow-up to Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin last week. Trump essentially ceded to Putin’s main demands: Ukraine will have to give up territory seized illegally by Russia, and must give up its goal of joining NATO.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Rubio and other top U.S. officials arrive in Saudi Arabia ahead of discussions with Russian envoys on how to end the war in Ukraine
- The talks would be “devoted primarily to restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations,” the Kremlin said, but would also involve preparations for negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement, Russian state news agency TASS said.
- “We’re moving along,” President Trump told reporters in Florida on Sunday of the coming talks. “We’re trying to get peace with Russia, Ukraine, and we’re working very hard on it.”
- Rubio, who was in Jerusalem over the weekend, is also expected to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday for discussions on the Middle East. The trip comes as Arab leaders have pushed back against Trump’s plan to move Palestinians out of Gaza, and the prospects for extending the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas remain in the balance.
- The arrangements for the U.S.-Russia meeting were firmed up following a Friday call between Rubio and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, which Moscow said was at the initiative of the Americans. The State Department said the two diplomats had discussed “the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues.”
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign-policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were heading to Riyadh for the talks.
- The rapid push to convene U.S.-Russian talks followed a call last week between Trump and Putin.
- Trump said the conversation led him to believe Putin wants a settlement. “We spoke long and hard,” Trump said. “Steve Witkoff was with him for a very extended period, like about three hours. I think [Putin] wants to stop fighting.”
- Zelensky said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Ukraine must be at the table and that it was important that European nations be represented as well.
- The Trump administration’s Ukraine envoy, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, said at a security conference in Munich on Saturday that he didn’t foresee a direct role for European nations in the talks but that Ukraine would be at the negotiating table when formal peace talks are held.
- Those comments alarmed European officials, who say that the outcome of the Ukraine war is a paramount concern for security on the continent.
- French President Emmanuel Macron is set to host a meeting of European leaders on Monday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and European security. The meeting will include the leaders of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as the secretary-general of NATO, among others.
- In an article for a British daily newspaper Monday, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said for the first time that Britain was ready to put its own troops on the ground in Ukraine should it be necessary to guarantee that country’s security.
- Trump on Sunday said Zelensky would be involved in the talks, though he didn’t say at what stage, and insisted that both the Ukrainian and Russian leaders wanted to end the war.
- “They want to end it fast, both of them, and Zelensky wants to end it too,” he said.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.
- Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.
- “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
- “We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.
- While the U.S. and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.”
- He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he will only agree to meet in person with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after a common plan is negotiated with U.S. President Trump.
- Zelenskyy also said he believes Trump is the key to ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and said the U.S president gave him his telephone number before Friday’s opening of the Munich Security Conference.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the war between Ukraine and Russia “must end,” that Kyiv joining NATO is unrealistic and that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security as the Trump administration shifts its attention to securing the US’ own borders and deterring war with China.
- In remarks before a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Hegseth also said that European troops should be the primary force securing a post-war Ukraine—something US troops will not be involved in, he added.
- “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said. And he added that any security guarantees offered to Ukraine “must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.”
- “To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” he said.
- “We’re also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe,” he said
- Hegseth emphasized that the US “remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Forget Europe or the hotspots of East Asia and the Middle East, Marco Rubio’s first foreign trip as secretary of state took him to one Caribbean and four Central American states. The tour tells us that the Trump foreign policy is focusing on the region closest to the American homeland.
- It is not clear when China first started collecting signals intelligence, commonly termed SIGINT, in Cuba, but it was evident that the effort began more than a decade before 2019.
- The CSIS study identifies four likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There are two from the Soviet era…
- China wants to do more than just collect SIGINT. “China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida’s coast,” reported the Wall Street Journal in June 2023.
- Cuba provides the Chinese one an ideal location to surveil America. “Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report states. “The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites.”
- China denied the Wall Street Journal reporting, calling it “totally mendacious and unfounded.” In any event, since the paper’s article, there has been no confirmation that the Chinese military has actually built or obtained access to such a site.
- Perhaps one explanation is that the Biden administration pressured both Havana and Beijing to back off.
- At the moment, Cuba needs Chinese cash and might therefore accede to granting China greater access to the island. The Cuban regime, after all, is enduring its worst economic crisis since at least the Soviet collapse. Russia, its old patron, is tied down by the war in Ukraine and troubled by recent setbacks in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin, therefore, is not able to help much.
- It is not clear, therefore, how far the Chinese friends will go in rescuing their Cuban comrades.
- China made great strides in the Caribbean when the United States was not paying attention.
- Rubio, however, is focused on the Caribbean basin, as the itinerary for his first trip shows. Moreover, the new secretary of state is apparently willing to use raw American power to strong-arm countries.
- The United States is unlikely to use force against Cuba over listening posts, but President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are not about to let the Chinese military take control of a country so close to the American homeland. Cuba should expect intense pressure, so China is probably at high tide in that country.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine gave up its Cold War-legacy nuclear arsenal in the 1990s “for nothing” and would seek to acquire nuclear bombs again if it wasn’t able to quickly join NATO in the aftermath of the present war or a ceasefire, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday.
- The Ukrainian president told British broadcaster Piers Morgan in an interview published on Tuesday night that, from his perspective, letting Ukraine into the NATO alliance would be a considerably better deal for its members because it would be so much cheaper. With NATO membership, Russia would not dare invade, he believes, but the level of security guarantees required to keep Moscow polite otherwise would be ruinously expensive.
- To keep Ukraine secure without NATO would mean Ukraine’s allies funding a million-man army, including troop “contingents” from Western nations as peacekeepers or reinforcements, funding missile systems to keep the skies clear, and Ukraine acquiring its own nuclear deterrent.
- He said, per the Piers Morgan show’s translation: “If not NATO, we will need to sustain a million [man] army, but the hundreds of thousands that we have will not be enough, they are on the offense and we do not have enough… That is huge money… so that’s why I think NATO is the cheapest option. If not NATO, then we must [build] this huge army with huge money, that means contingents from our partners, and undoubtedly that is a big deterrence missile package against the Ruskis”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s development of 50-qubit ion-based and rubidium neutral atom quantum computers in 2024 marks a key step in its quantum project roadmap.
- The next phase is going to be unveiled in Moscow on February 8.
- By 2030, Rosatom intends to build a viable quantum industry in Russia, which entails industrial-scale manufacturing of quantum computers.
- Quantum computing is expected to benefit Russia in the following areas:
- Healthcare and pharmaceuticals: development of new medicines thanks to the ability to model complex molecules, and prediction of future epidemics.
- Transportation and logistics: charting optimal transport routes and prevention of traffic congestion.
- Financial sector: minimization of risks and more accurate evaluation of credit ratings of various entities.
- Artificial intelligence: boosting machine learning, image recognition and data processing capabilities of AIs.
Read the original article by clicking here.
