West's Provocations v Russia Continue
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: NATO ready to deploy more troops near Russia’s borders if Sweden joins NATO. Putin must be learning it doesn’t pay for Russia to pull her punches.
Speaking to Swedish state TV about Stockholm’s prospective membership application on Thursday, Stoltenberg said NATO could immediately leap into action to bolster the country’s defenses during the process, which could take up to a year to conclude.
“From the potential moment Sweden is applying, and NATO says that they want Sweden to join, there is a very strong obligation from NATO to be able to guarantee Sweden's security,” he said. “We have different ways of doing it, including through an increased presence of NATO forces in the area around Sweden and the Baltic Sea.”
The comments follow weeks of public discussion centered on Stockholm’s potential NATO application, as well as that of its neighbor Finland. Though both have remained neutral throughout the military bloc’s existence, officials have argued that Moscow’s attack on Ukraine in late February has significantly altered their thinking on regional security.
Washington – NATO’s chief military power which effectively leads the bloc – has spoken positively about membership for both Nordic states, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki echoing Stoltenberg’s remarks during a Thursday briefing.
“We are confident that we could find ways to address any concerns either country may have about the period of time between a NATO membership application and the formal accession to the alliance,” she said, suggesting the United States could offer some form of security guarantee ahead of their formal acceptance into the bloc.
Both nations are reportedly set to decide on whether to file applications sometime this month, and while lawmakers in Stockholm and Helsinki have already largely approved the idea, members of Sweden’s ruling Social Democratic Party have recently raised objections.
“We in the federal board have decided to remain in line with our congressional decisions that Sweden should be militarily non-aligned and stand outside NATO,” said Annika Strandhall, the country’s climate and environment minister and a prominent member of its women’s faction.
Stoltenberg has previously stated Sweden and Finland would be “warmly welcomed” into NATO, and that their membership could even be fast-tracked, indicating strong support for expanding the alliance to 32 members.
Moscow has vocally opposed those moves, having long rejected any further eastward expansion of the alliance (Finland’s ascension would grow the NATO-Russia border by more than 800 miles). Senior Russian officials have also warned that increased military deployments to the Baltic region – which includes NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Sweden and Finland – could even trigger the stationing of Russian nuclear and hypersonic weapons to the area to restore “balance” there.
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US War Games in the Baltics
The United States and its Western partners have embarked on two simultaneous rounds of war games in Eastern Europe as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third month.
By Kyle Anzalone: Swift Response 2022, an annual drill hosted by the US Army’s Europe and Africa component command, kicked off on Monday and is set to run until May 20. It will be carried out across locations in the Arctic High North, the Baltics, the Balkans and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Army said in a statement.
Around 9,000 soldiers – among them 2,700 Americans and 6,300 troops from 16 allied nations – will take part in the exercise. In addition to training for “arctic defense operations,” the servicemen will simulate airborne “Joint Forcible Entries” in Latvia, Lithuania and North Macedonia.
Poland, meanwhile, announced the start of the Defender Europe 2022 military drills on Sunday, noting they would take place May 1–27 in nine countries and will involve 18,000 soldiers from more than 20 nations.
“The troops’ ability to cooperate in a joint combat operation will be put to test using various training episodes including long-distance tactical marches, bridging rivers and live-fire training,” a statement from Warsaw said.
This year’s Defender Europe will be scaled back compared to prior iterations, as more than 30,000 soldiers from 27 nations participated in the drills in 2021. The previous year involved even more troops, and was reportedly one of the largest military exercises held on the continent since the Cold War.
Though Russia has repeatedly denounced such war games as aggressive posturing which “[simulate] offensive military action,” Poland claimed the Defender Europe exercise “demonstrates the United States’ unshakable commitment to NATO,” touting it as “a prime example of our collective capabilities.”
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EU Needs 10-15 Years To Replace Russian Gas With African Hydrocarbons, Energy Experts Say
Nevertheless, European Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni announced today that the EU will fully embargo Russian oil in 9 months. In the meantime it seems the Russians will continue to play the fool and keep her enemies alive by providing energy. The question is: Can the Kremlin comprehend that Russian sovereignty is inconsistent with globalism?
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