I asked #NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg after the fall of Kabul whether the Taliban won the war.
He deflects that question (x 2) and insists the international community maintains significant leverage over the Taliban to hold it to its word(s).
https://t.co/ULj8pScjJZ
At present, we are not seeing any indication that the Starlink restrictions have been lifted.
There are isolated cases where a Starlink terminal may operate somewhat faster than the imposed limit, but this is most likely due to SpaceX’s algorithms or specific operating conditions, rather than the restriction being removed.
(Quoting Zelensky's miltech advisor)
This is an incredible, thorough and thoroughly disturbing scoop by @apsyrtus. Everyone should read it. FFS someone should be investigating it.
(One of the alleged Russian assets lives in a chateau in my own village 😳)
De Belgische veiligheidsdienst staat er al niet zo best op.
‘Leaked WhatsApps between ex-EU commissioner Reynders and senior Belgian spy reveal attempts to bury allegations of his [Reynders, red.] possible Russia ties’
Gift link: https://t.co/JhbwtANO2T
Putin personally ordered a new wave of attacks on @NATO countries in Europe. The Leipzig airport plot was one of the opening shots.
Putin was driven by frustration with the stalled negotiations and Ukraine’s deep strikes.
My report via @WSJ
https://t.co/OQkMSAvLot
Steve Witkoff to Putin:
You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian.
You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.
“The Ukrainians are not going to fold. They're not going to surrender. You can cut off their Patriots, you can cut off their intelligence. But people don't like to live on their knees. Ukrainians are not going to give up their territory because doing so would condemn all the people in that territory to torture, rape and murder. So it's not going to happen.”
“So what President Trump has actually done is he's undermined his own objective, to get to a quick resolution of the war, which I think he really wants, by pursuing a strategy which is to lower pressure on Putin and to raise pressure on Ukraine, which is going to achieve the opposite result.”
“So, it's not going to work, because you can't choose a country's fate without including that country and its people. 44 million people who have a right to dignity and sovereignty and a say over how they live. And none of those people want to live under the cruel rule of Vladimir Putin, no matter what President Trump thinks about it.”
“And then you add the fact that Trump is actively aiding Putin, by promoting a narrative of the war that is false, exactly matches Russian propaganda, and places Zelensky in a terrible position where he's got to either decide to live in Trump's reality, which is a bunch of lies about how the war started and how how it's going, or to defend his people and do his job as the president of the country.”
“You add all those things together, it's a perfect storm of toxicity whereby the president is putting America on the side of the aggressor and the war criminals and against the side of the victims of this conflict. And it's bizarre. And there's no way to to look at that and to say that's anything that America has ever stood for in the past. Yet, here we are.”
“And the result is very predictable and predicted. He's going to get a lot of Ukrainians killed without actually solving the problem. And that's a tragedy.”
"Surveys show that most Americans stand with Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia, view Putin as a dangerous threat who shouldn’t be trusted, and want to see the United States offer more assistance to Ukraine," writes David J. Kramer, Executive Director of the Bush Institute along with John Herbst and William Taylor, both former U.S. Ambassadors to Ukraine.
Read more in their recent article for @TheAtlantic: https://t.co/QCz06te4QR
@jonasgahrstore@peterbakernyt@SecRubio In the meantime, Støre said he and Stubb will remain engaged. "There needs to be a discussion on European security order [and] Europe needs be at the table," he said. "There has been a weakness that Europe has not been enough central to this." 8/8
JUST IN:
Norwegian PM @jonasgahrstore says proposals have been worked out between Ukraine, US and European representatives and will now be carried by Steve Witkoff to St. Petersburg and "Russian leadership." 1/
@jonasgahrstore@peterbakernyt he says they were discussed earlier today in a phone call with @SecRubio. "He will come back [to it]," Zelenskyy said. "And I think that we will have good result." 7/
@jonasgahrstore NYT's @peterbakernyt points out the trilateral meeting being proposed is Trump/Putin/Xi. "Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine," Zelenskyy insists.
Interesting that Støre jumps in to say "what matters now is to look ahead", not at "what was said yesterday or a week ago." 5/
I am honestly surprised, after not just the outrage but the FACT-CORRECTIONS previous such US misstatements produced, that this is being repeated.
I too was “in Afghanistan”. Six times in fact, five with #NATO troops from all over.
Hegseth on Afghanistan:
I was a captain in Afghanistan, and we would go to the headquarters in Kabul, and there would be 50 flags at the headquarters.
It was a beautiful thing to see 50 different countries contributing to the NATO alliance and the ISAF mission there.
Except there were like maybe five that contributed. It was actually closer to one or two that, by the end, were actually involved in kinetic operations.
In fact, the ISAF patch, we would joke that it meant "I Saw Americans Fighting."
As part of the team from @ChathamHouse, I contributed evidence to the House of Common's Foreign Affairs Committee looking at 'the likelihood that Russia will seek to test NATO’s collective defence arrangements'.
I conclude that probing and testing NATO's cohesion is highly likely. This is because the potential political gain to Russia of dividing the alliance is significant, with risks that can be managed below the threshold of open conflict.
But the likelihood of a deliberate conventional attack designed specifically to test Article 5 is much lower. Such an attack would require Moscow to believe not only that NATO was politically divided, but that Russia could control any escalation that followed.
At present, it is unable to make that judgement with any confidence.
https://t.co/sSnzmtdYu0
Sparred with Rubio for a bit over Starlink/Starshield as we left for Uzbekistan 🇺🇿
Raised as many questions as were answered quite frankly. Hard to remember such a lack of official answers over such a consequential natsec matter that has lasted so long
🚨BREAKING: This new chart from @TheStudyofWar overlays Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries with the price of diesel fuel. There is NO CORRELATION between strikes on Russian refineries and spikes in the price of diesel here in the U.S. They are not driving up prices here.