Putin Warns Russia Will Act if NATO Crosses Its Red Lines in Ukraine

[Boats]

Putin Warns Russia Will Act if NATO Crosses Its Red Lines in Ukraine
By: Vladimir Soldatkin & Andrew Osborn of: Reuters & US News - 11-30-21
Re: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...nes-in-ukraine

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia would be forced to act if its "red lines" on Ukraine were crossed by NATO, saying Moscow would view the deployment of certain offensive missile capabilities on Ukrainian soil as a trigger.

Speaking at an investment forum in Moscow, Putin said he hoped common sense would prevail on all sides, but that he wanted NATO to be aware of Russia's own security concerns around Ukraine and how it would respond if the West continued to help Kyiv expand its military infrastructure.

"If some kind of strike systems appear on the territory of Ukraine, the flight time to Moscow will be 7-10 minutes, and five minutes in the case of a hypersonic weapon being deployed. Just imagine," said Putin.

"What are we to do in such a scenario? We will have to then create something similar in relation to those who threaten us in that way. And we can do that now."

Putin said Russia had just successfully tested a new sea-based hypersonic missile which would be in service at the start of the new year. He said it had a flight time of five minutes at nine times the speed of sound.

The Russian leader, who questioned why NATO had ignored repeated Russian warnings and expanded its military infrastructure eastwards, singled out the deployment in Poland and Romania of the Aegis Ashore missile defence system.

He made it clear he did not want to see the same launch MK41 systems, which Russia has long complained can be used to also launch offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles, in Ukraine.

"Creating such threats (in Ukraine) would be red lines for us. But I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope that a sense of common sense, responsibility for both our countries and the world community will prevail," said Putin.

Earlier on Tuesday, the United States and Britain warned Russia over any new military aggression against Ukraine as NATO met to discuss why Russia had moved troops closer to its southern neighbour.

The Kremlin annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and then backed rebels fighting government troops in the east of the country. That conflict has killed 14,000 people, according to Kyiv, and is still simmering.

Two Russian troop build-ups this year on Ukraine's borders have alarmed the West. In May, Russian troops there numbered 100,000, the largest since its takeover of Crimea, Western officials say.

Moscow has dismissed as inflammatory Western suggestions that it is preparing for an attack, said it does not threaten anyone and defended its right to deploy troops on its own territory as it wishes.

Putin said on Tuesday that Russia was worried by what he called large-scale NATO exercises near its borders, including unplanned ones. He singled out what he has said was a recent U.S. rehearsal of a nuclear strike on Russia as an example.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Tom Balmforth, Anastasia Lyrchikova, Gleb Stolyarov and Oksana Kobzeva; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Angus MacSwan)
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Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.
Tags: Ukraine, Poland, Russia, United States, Asia, European Union, Europe, Romania
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Another personal thought - what in the hell is the little Fat Man in NK doing he's
been as quite of late (as a mouse pissing on cotton). Ya knows - he's watching to
see what's going to pop - before he entertains any aggression on his country.
Will he join Putin - should an all out war begin - or will he string along with
China who is also monitoring all these events of late - hmm - only time will tell!

[Boats]

Putin sets a new red line on NATO expansion
By: Ted Snider - Responsible Statecraft News - 12-04-21
Re: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/20...ato-expansion/

Per Putin: Since its assurances not to move “one inch” outside Germany, the alliance as moved 600 miles closer to Russia.

It is possible to actually measure Washington’s dishonesty. How big is it? It’s about 600 miles.

In 1990, according to declassified documents, Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” east of Germany. Thirty years ago, that was Russia’s red line.

On December 2, that red line moved from one inch to 600 miles as Vladimir Putin said he would now seek a promise that NATO would not expand further east to Ukraine.

Since these assurances, NATO has wandered its way through Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Poland. Six hundred miles of broken pledges have brought the U.S. and NATO to the border of Ukraine.

On September 1, President Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Biden used code words for NATO encroachment when he pledged his “support for Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations” and American support for Ukraine’s “being completely integrated in Europe.” He then announced “a new $60 million security assistance package” in addition to the $400 million in security assistance the U.S. has already provided Ukraine this year.

Having retreated 600 miles from Gorbachev’s red line, Putin drew a new red line on December 2, seeking “reliable and long-term security guarantees.” Those guarantees “would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory.”

Putin is keenly aware that the red line has moved east 600 miles. At the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007, Putin asked the world, “And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

The guarantees were a deception, and the red line has moved hundreds of miles and has become a threat. Seven years later, in its review of 2014, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would note that the “ongoing eastward expansion [and] successive waves of NATO enlargement [are] contrary to the assurances issued at the highest level.” In 2015, Russia’s National Security Strategy would note that NATO’s “continued expansion and the approach of its military infrastructure to Russia’s borders, all create threat to national security.”

The first guarantee was given on February 9, 1990 when Secretary of State Baker assured Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany and Russia pulled its troops out of East Germany, NATO would not expand east of Germany. Gorbachev records in his memoirs that he agreed to Baker’s terms “with the guarantee that NATO jurisdiction or troops would not extend east of the current line.”

In his book Superpower Illusions, Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was the American ambassador to Russia at the time and was present at the meeting, confirms Gorbachev’s account, saying that it “coincides with my notes of the conversation except that mine indicate that Baker added ‘not one inch.’”

The next day, according to West German foreign ministry documents, on February 10, 1990, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher told his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze “‘For us . . . one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.’ And because the conversation revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: ‘As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.’”

Even earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had said in a major speech that there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”

The National Security Archive published the actual documents detailing what Gorbachev was promised on December 12, 2017. According to the late Stephen Cohen in his book, ”War With Russia?” the documents finally, and authoritatively, reveal that, “the truth, and the promises broken, are much more expansive than previously known: all of the Western powers involved — the US, the UK, France, Germany itself — made the same promise to Gorbachev on multiple occasions and in various emphatic ways.”

It didn’t have to be this way. Like Gorbachev before him at the end of the cold war, Putin has hoped to help create an international community that, rather than building blocs, featured cooperation among equals. He had even suggested Russian membership in NATO. Even in the speech where he drew Russia’s new red line, Putin was still suggesting a cooperative solution. He said that the “working out specific agreements” should be done “in a dialogue with the United States and its allies.” He added, diplomatically, that “we aren’t demanding any special conditions for ourselves and realize that any agreements must take interests of Russia and all Euro-Atlantic countries into account.”

While this would obviously be the least confrontational path, it is the least likely to be be taken, as the only assurances being given today come in the form of Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin, who recently reassured Georgia and Ukraine that the “door is still open” to NATO membership, much to the chagrin of Moscow.

[Boats]

Biden warns Putin he will make it 'very, very difficult' to attack Ukraine after US intelligence says Russia is planning military offensive (part 2 o2)
By: Connor Perrett - Insider News - 12-04-21
Re: https://www.businessinsider.com/bide...kraine-2021-12

Photo link: https://i.insider.com/61aba9fc35814a...jpeg&auto=webp
Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden in Geneva, Switzerland. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

* President Joe Biden said he would make it "very, very difficult' for Russia to attack Ukraine.

* US intelligence warned Russia is planning an offensive attack with as many as 175,000 troops next year, The Washington Post reported.

* Russia, meanwhile, has demanded Ukraine remain out of NATO.

President Joe Biden on Friday warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against taking military action against Ukraine after US intelligence warned of Russia's plans to launch an offensive attack as early as 2022.

"We've been aware of Russia's actions for a long time and my expectation is we're gonna have a long discussion with Putin," Biden told reporters outside Camp David in Maryland on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

A Biden administration official told the Associated Press that US intelligence has determined Russia plans to deploy 175,000 troops to the Ukraine, and about half of them are already stationed near the Ukrainian border.

"What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do," Biden also said Friday.

President Joe Biden on Friday warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against taking military action against Ukraine after US intelligence warned of Russia's plans to launch an offensive attack as early as 2022.

"We've been aware of Russia's actions for a long time and my expectation is we're gonna have a long discussion with Putin," Biden told reporters outside Camp David in Maryland on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

A Biden administration official told the Associated Press that US intelligence has determined Russia plans to deploy 175,000 troops to the Ukraine, and about half of them are already stationed near the Ukrainian border.

"What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do," Biden also said Friday.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the US intelligence information on Friday, the Kremlin is planning an offensive attack as early as next year. It's also demanding the US promise the Ukraine will not join NATO and that NATO will stay out of the region, according to the Post report.

"I don't accept anyone's red line," Biden said, per the AP.

According to the unclassified document seen by the Post, Russian troops are currently stationed in four locations with 50 battlefield tactical groups deployed with tanks and artillery, according to the Post.

"The Russian plans call for a military offensive against Ukraine as soon as early 2022 with a scale of forces twice what we saw this past spring during Russia's snap exercise near Ukraine's borders," a senior administration official told the Washington Post. "The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel, along with armor, artillery and equipment."

One Biden administration official told the Associated Press the US has seen an increase in Russian propaganda by proxies and media outlets to weaken Ukraine and NATO.

According to the AP, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the US is close to setting up a call next week between Biden and Putin.

"It certainly would be an opportunity to discuss our serious concerns about the bellicose rhetoric, about the military buildup that we're seeing on the border of Ukraine," Psaki said, according to the AP.

A source close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Biden and Zelensky were also working to set up a call next week, the AP reported.
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Personal note: When you corner the Fox he will eventually have to fight back.
There's been a lot of troop movements since those agreement were made. Since
then positions and decisions were made without consultation with all parties
involved. Hence a cornered dog will fight back and Putin isn't going just let
things happen without consultation and agreements.
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The US would do the same I'm sure - but in the last operations all parties
may or may not have been made aware of the movements? Hard to say?
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Movements of late have turned up the heat on those without authorization
or agreements - I presume. But - is this normal? I don't know? Consultation
is needed to address or access the plus's and minus's of these issues.

We do not have access to all the goings on so the leadership will have to
explain the reasons for altering any and all the prior agreements?
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