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.”
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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.
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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”
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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.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia is rearming faster than first thought for a potential attack on Nato, Germany’s military pointman on Ukraine has warned.
- On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, Maj Gen Christian Freuding said that Russia had already replaced missiles and tanks lost in its invasion of Ukraine.
- “The Russian armed forces are not just able to compensate for their enormous personnel and material losses… they are successfully rearming,” he told Die Welt newspaper.
- Vladimir Putin has reorientated the Russian economy to feed his war machine and has also bought extra supplies from Iran and North Korea which Maj Gen Freuding, who is head of the German military’s task force, said was helping Russia replenish its tanks, missiles and drones.
- He warned that although it was not clear that Putin had plans to attack Nato, he was “clearly creating the conditions for it”.
- “Production is growing, the supplies in the depots are growing,” he said.
- Germany is locked in a debate ahead of a national election next month on whether to back a £2.5 billion aid package for Ukraine.
- In Ukraine, Russian forces have surrounded the fortress town of Pokrovsk and are on the brink of capturing one of the last Ukraine-held villages in south Donetsk.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held his annual press conference in Moscow, and although he had criticism toward the UDS on a range of subjects, he did bring warm words of praise towards new President Trump.
- He especially commended Trump’s analysis pointing at NATO’s plan to include Ukraine as one of the root causes of the conflict.
- Lavrov reiterated that peace talks have to include ‘broader arrangements for security in Europe’.
- Associated Press reported:
- “Trump said Russia had it ‘written in stone’ that Ukraine’s membership in NATO should never be allowed, but the Biden administration had sought to expand the military alliance to Russia’s doorstep. Trump added that, ‘I could understand their feelings about that’.”
- Trump’s comments lift the seriousness of discussion, moving away from the tired old trope of denouncing Russia’s action as ‘an unprovoked act of aggression’.
- “’NATO did exactly what it had promised not to do, and Trump said that’, Lavrov said. ‘It marked the first such candid acknowledgement not only from a U.S. but any Western leader that NATO had lied when they signed numerous documents. They were used as a cover while NATO has expanded to our borders in violation of the agreements’.”
- “Lavrov also praised comments by Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who said Sunday it’s unrealistic to expect that Ukraine could drive Russian forces ‘from every inch of Ukrainian soil’.
- ‘The very fact that people have increasingly started to mention the realities on the ground deserves welcome’, Lavrov said during his annual news conference in Moscow.”
- “’Threats on the western flank, on our western borders, must be eliminated as one of the main reasons (of the conflict)’, he said. ‘They can probably be eliminated only in the context of some broader agreements’.”
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Important Takeaways:
- NATO scrambled its warplanes early today in response to a fierce Russian bombardment of Ukraine close to its border with Poland.
- The Russian strikes – hitting vital energy facilities in the coldest weeks of winter – were led by Vladimir Putin’s Tu-22 and Tu-95 strategic bombers.
- The onslaught was seen as instant revenge for Tuesday’s Ukrainian aerial strikes on Russia, the heaviest of the almost three-year war.
- In particular, Putin was rattled by Ukraine’s use of British Storm Shadow and American ATACMS missiles which hit key defense facilities including a chemical plant in Bryansk region.
- NATO forces went on full alert in Poland with warplanes scrambled, the country’s operational command headquarters said.
- ‘Duty fighter pairs have been scrambled, and the ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have reached the highest state of readiness,’ said a statement.
- ‘The steps taken are aimed at ensuring security in the areas bordering the threatened areas.’
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Important Takeaways:
- President Biden on Wednesday denounced Russia’s large-scale Christmas Day attacks on Ukraine that damaged critical energy infrastructure and vowed to continue a U.S. surge in weapons deliveries to Kyiv.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X called the attacks “inhumane,” while Russia’s Defense Ministry said the “long-range precision weapons and strike drones on critical energy infrastructure facilities” in Ukraine had achieved the goal of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s forces.
- “The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardize the safety of its grid,” Biden said in a statement.
- “I have directed the Department of Defense to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and the United States will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in its defense against Russian forces.”
- Trump’s pick for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia also criticized the assault. “Christmas should be a time of peace, yet Ukraine was brutally attacked on Christmas Day,” Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg said on X.
- “Launching large-scale missile and drone attacks on the day of the Lord’s birth is wrong. The world is closely watching actions on both sides. The U.S. is more resolved than ever to bring peace to the region.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 came down on Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from an area of southern Russia in which Moscow has used air defense systems against Ukrainian drone strikes in recent days.
- The Embraer (EMBR3.SA), opens new tab passenger jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, before veering off hundreds of miles across the Caspian Sea.
- It crashed on the opposite shore of the Caspian after what Russia’s aviation watchdog earlier said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike.
- Officials did not explain why it had crossed the sea, but the crash occurred after Ukrainian drone strikes this month hit Chechnya. The nearest Russian airport on the plane’s flight path was closed on Wednesday morning.
- Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Qanat Bozymbaev said he could neither confirm nor deny the thesis that Russian air defenses downed the plane.
- The Kremlin said that an investigation was ongoing and that it would be improper to comment until the inquiry came to its own conclusions.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine targets Russia’s mercenaries saying ‘there is no reason for Koreans to fight and die for Putin’
- “Today, we already have preliminary data that the Russians have begun to use North Korean soldiers in their assaults. A significant number of them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday.
- Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR) reported the North Koreans were embedded with Russian Marines and Airborne troops – elite units – in the Russian region of Kursk, which Ukraine has counter-invaded.
- Zelenskyy posted that Russia was adopting gruesome tactics to obscure the loss of North Korean soldiers.
- “After the battles with our guys, the Russians are also trying to… literally burn the faces of the killed North Korean soldiers,” he wrote on Telegram.
- He added, “There is no reason for Koreans to fight and die for Putin. And even after their death, all that awaits them from Russia is mockery.”
- There were no statements from Russia or North Korea on these first casualties of Korean mercenaries.
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