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  1. #131
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    The Farce Is Complete: Joe Biden's Son Joins Board Of Largest Ukraine Gas Producer

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/13/2014 09:35 -0400

    The farce is complete...

    Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, has expanded its Board of Directors by bringing on Mr. R Hunter Biden as a new director.



    R. Hunter Biden will be in charge of the Holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations. On his new appointment, he commented: “Burisma’s track record of innovations and industry leadership in the field of natural gas means that it can be a strong driver of a strong economy in Ukraine. As a new member of the Board, I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”
    The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, Mr. Alan Apter, noted: “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”
    R. Hunter Biden is a counsel to Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, a national law firm based in New York, USA, which served in cases including “Bush vs. Gore”, and “U.S. vs. Microsoft”. He is one of the co-founders and a managing partner of the investment advisory company Rosemont Seneca Partners, as well as chairman of the board of Rosemont Seneca Advisors. He is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Masters Program in the School of Foreign Service.
    Mr. Biden has experience in public service and foreign policy. He is a director for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, The Center for National Policy, and the Chairman’s Advisory Board for the National Democratic Institute. Having served as a Senior Vice President at MBNA bank, former U.S. President Bill Clinton appointed him an Executive Director of E-Commerce Policy Coordination under Secretary of Commerce William Daley. Mr. Biden served as Honorary Co-Chair of the 2008 Obama-Biden Inaugural Committee.
    Mr. Biden is a member of the bar in the State of Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Court of Federal Claims. He received a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
    R. Hunter Biden is also a well-known public figure. He is chairman of the Board of the World Food Programme U.S.A., together with the world’s largest humanitarian organization, the United Nations World Food Programme. In this capacity he offers assistance to the poor in developing countries, fighting hunger and poverty, and helping to provide food and education to 300 million malnourished children around the world.
    Company Background:
    Burisma Holdings is a privately owned oil and gas company with assets in Ukraine and operating in the energy market since 2002. To date, the company holds a portfolio with permits to develop fields in the Dnieper-Donets, the Carpathian and the Azov-Kuban basins. In 2013, the daily gas production grew steadily and at year-end amounted to 11.6 thousand BOE (barrels of oil equivalent – incl. gas, condensate and crude oil), or 1.8 million m3 of natural gas. The company sells these volumes in the domestic market through traders, as well as directly to final consumers.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...e-gas-producer
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  2. #132
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    "People's Governor" Of Newly-Independent Luhansk Survives Assassination Attempt

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/13/2014 10:41 -0400

    Just 2 days after the people of the Luhansk region voted for secession to Russia - despite protestation from the West and calls for delays from Putin - the self-proclaimed "people's governor" of the region has been injured in an apparent assassination attempt this morning. A car carrying Valery Bolotov was shot at and the press office reports that "he is injured and is currently in a private hospital." Of course, it is unclear who opened fire upon the governor but it certainly won't please Putin who has vowed to protect the rights of his people in that region...
    Via Novinite,


    The self-declared People's Governor of Luhansk Region in eastern Ukraine was injured in an assassination attempt, Tuesday.

    A car carrying the Luhansk 'people's governor' Valery Bolotov was fired on Tuesday in the Luhansk region, his press office said, the CNN reports.

    "Yes, Valery Bolotov is injured, and he is currently in a private hospital," Southeastern Army spokesman Vasiliy Nikitin told RIA Novosti.

    The assassination attempt occurred in the Luhansk Region at around 11:00 am local time, he said, without specifying the perpetrator or the weapon used in the attack. Bolotov's life is not currently in danger, Nikitin added.

    The reported attack comes amid increasing tensions in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where pro-Russian separatists staged a referendum Sunday asking residents whether they should declare independence from Ukraine.


    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...nation-attempt
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  3. #133
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Ron Paul Asks "What Does The US Government Want in Ukraine?"

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2014 22:33 -0400

    Submitted by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

    In several eastern Ukrainian towns over the past week, the military opened fire on its own citizens.
    Dozens may have been killed in the violence. Although the US government generally condemns a country’s use of military force against its own population, especially if they are unarmed protesters, this time the US administration blamed the victims. After as many as 20 unarmed protesters were killed on the May 9th holiday in Ukraine, the State Department spokesman said “we condemn the outbreak of violence caused by pro-Russia separatists.”
    Why are people protesting in eastern Ukraine? Because they do not believe the government that came to power after the US-backed uprising in February is legitimate. They do not recognize the authority of an unelected president and prime minister. The US sees this as a Russian-sponsored destabilization effort, but is it so hard to understand that the people in Ukraine may be annoyed with the US and EU for their involvement in regime change in their country? Would we be so willing to accept an unelected government in Washington put in place with the backing of the Chinese and Iranians?

    The US State Department provided much assistance earlier this year to those involved in the effort to overthrow the Ukrainian government. The US warned the Ukrainian government at the time not to take any action against those in the streets, even as they engaged in violence and occupied government buildings. But now that those former protesters have come to power, the US takes a different view of protest. Now they give full support to the bloody crackdown against protesters in the east. The State Department spokesperson said last week: “We continue to call for groups who have jeopardized public order by taking up arms and seizing public buildings in violation of Ukrainian law to disarm and leave the buildings they have seized.” This is the opposite of what they said in February. Do they think the rest of the world does not see this hypocrisy?

    The residents of eastern Ukraine have long been closer to Russia than to the US and EU. In fact, that part of Ukraine had been a part of Russia. After February’s regime change, officials in the east announced that they would hold referenda to see whether the population wanted autonomy from the US-backed government in Kiev. The US demanded that Russian President Putin stop eastern Ukraine from voting on autonomy, and last week the Russian president did just that: he said that the vote should not be held as scheduled. The eastern Ukrainians ignored him and said they would hold the vote anyway. So much for the US claims that Russia controls the opposition in Ukraine.

    Even though the Russian president followed US demands and urged the eastern Ukrainians to hold off on the vote, the US State Department announced that the US would apply additional sanctions on Russia if the vote is held! Does this make any sense?


    The real question is why the US government is involved in Ukraine in the first place. We are broke. We cannot even afford to fix our own economy. Yet we want to run Ukraine? Does it really matter who Ukrainians elect to represent them? Is it really a national security matter worth risking a nuclear war with Russia whether Ukraine votes for more regional autonomy and a weaker central government? Isn’t that how the United States was originally conceived?

    Has the arrogance of the US administration, thinking they should run the world, driven us to the brink of another major war in Europe? Let us hope they will stop this dangerous game and come to their senses. I say let’s have no war for Ukraine!

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...t-want-ukraine
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  4. #134
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    "Ukraine's Destiny Is To Go Medieval"

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2014 17:15 -0400

    Authored by James H. Kunstler,

    My country can cry all it likes about yesterday’s referendum vote in eastern Ukraine, but we set the process in motion by sponsoring the overthrow of an elected Kiev government that was tilting toward Russia and away from NATO overtures. The president elected in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, might have been a grifter and a scoundrel, but so was his opponent, the billionaire gas oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko. The main lesson that US authorities have consistently failed to learn in more than a decade of central Asian misadventures: when you set events in motion in distant lands, events, not policy planners at the State Department, end up in the driver’s seat.
    And so now they’ve had the referendum vote and the result is about 87 percent of the voters in eastern Ukraine would prefer to align politically with Russia rather than the failing Ukraine state governed out of Kiev. It’s easy to understand why. First, there’s the ethnic divide at the Dnieper River: majority Russian-speakers to the east. Second, the Kiev government, as per above, shows all the signs of a failing state — that is, a state that can’t manage any basic responsibilities starting with covering the costs of maintaining infrastructure and institutions. The Kiev government is broke. Of course, so are most other nations these days, but unlike, say, the USA or France, Ukraine doesn’t have an important enough currency or powerful enough central bank to play the kind of accounting games that allow bigger nations to pretend they’re solvent.
    Kiev owes $3.5 billion to Russia for past-due gas bills and Moscow has asked Kiev to pre-pay for June deliveries. This is about the same thing that any local gas company in the USA would demand from a deadbeat customer. The International Monetary Fund has offered to advance a loan of $3 billion, of which Kiev claims it could afford to fork over $2.6 billion to Russia (presumably needing the rest to run the country, pay police salaries, et cetera). Ukraine is in a sad and desperate situation for sure, but is Russia just supposed to supply it with free gas indefinitely? As wonderful as life is in the USA, the last time I checked most of us are expected to pay our heating bills. How long, exactly, does the IMF propose to pay Ukraine’s monthly gas bill? In September, the question is liable to get more urgent — but by then the current situation could degenerate into civil war.
    The USA and its NATO allies would apparently like to have Ukraine become a client state, but they’re not altogether willing to pay for it. This kind of raises the basic question: if Russia ultimately has to foot the bill for Ukraine, whose client state is it? And who is geographically next door to Ukraine? And whose national histories are intimately mingled?
    I’m not persuaded that Russia and its president, Mr. Putin, are thrilled about the dissolution of Ukraine. Conceivably, they would have been satisfied with a politically stable, independent Ukraine and reliable long-term leases on the Black Sea ports. Russia is barely scraping by financially on an oil, gas, and mineral based economy that allows them to import the bulk of their manufactured goods. They don’t need the aggravation of a basket-case neighbor to support, but it has pretty much come to that. At least, it appears that Russia will support the Russian-speaking region east of the Dnieper.
    My guess is that the Kiev-centered western Ukraine can’t support itself as a modern state, that is, with the high living standards of a techno-industrial culture. It just doesn’t have the fossil fuel juice. It’s at the mercies of others for that. In recent years, Ukraine has even maintained an independent space program (which is more than one can say of the USA). It will be looked back on with nostalgic amazement. Like other regions of the world, Ukraine’s destiny is to go medieval, to become a truly post-industrial agriculture-based society with a lower population and lower living standards. It is one the world’s leading grain-growing regions, a huge advantage for the kind of future the whole world faces — if it can avoid becoming a stomping ground in the elephant’s graveyard of collapsing industrial anachronisms.
    Ukraine can pretend to be a ward of the West for only a little while longer. The juice and the money just isn’t there, though. Probably sooner than later, the IMF will stop paying its gas bills. Within the same time-frame, the IMF may have to turn its attention to the floundering states of western Europe. That floundering will worsen rapidly if those nations can’t get gas from Russia. You can bet that Europe will think twice before tagging along with America on anymore cockamamie sanctions.
    Meanwhile, the USA is passing up the chance to care for a more appropriate client state: itself. Why on earth should the USA be lending billions of dollars to Ukraine when we don’t have decent train service between New York City and Chicago?


    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...ny-go-medieval

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  5. #135
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Donetsk Warns Ukraine Army Located In The East To "Leave In 48 Hours" Or Face War

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2014 14:37 -0400

    Update: And just to make sure Russia has a catalyst:


    • UKRAINE FORCES ATTACK EASTERN CITY OF SLOVYANSK, INTERFAX SAYS

    * * *
    With the US having voiced its support for Ukraine's "anti-terrorist" operations, and Russia strongly supportive of pro-Russian people's decisions to regional self-determination, the threats coming from the newly independent regions are a concern (that markets clearly do not care about):

    • DONETSK ARMY SAYS WILL FIGHT UKRAINE FORCES IF DEADLINE IGNORED

    Ukrainian military forces have 48 hours to leave the region or Donetsk own "anti-terrorist" forces will fight. Of course, with the US already saying the referendums are illegal and not recognizing them, we suspect it will be time for more sanctions soon (despite the lessons below).


    Insurgent group army of so-called Donetsk People’s Republic “will start its own anti-terrorist operation in Donetsk region” against Ukrainian military forces if they don’t heed seperatist army chief Igor Girkin’s 48-hour ultimatum to leave or obey him, head of seperatist group, Denis Pushilin, says by phone.
    So... buy stocks?
    And a different perspective on which the western approach to resolving the Ukraine crisis may not be exactly "working."
    Lessons on Sanctions Based on Past Experience (via PIIE)
    1. Don’t overreach. Policymakers should avoid inflated expectations of what sanctions can accomplish. Sanctions seldom impair the military potential or change the policies of an important targeted power. Modest goals contribute to successful outcomes. Thus it may make more sense to achieve the modest goal of thwarting an impending invasion of Eastern Ukraine than to try to reverse the fait accompli of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
    2. Russian economic integration with the West is an advantage. Economic sanctions are most effective when aimed against close trading partners with more to lose.
    3. Don’t count on Russian public opinion. It is hard to “bully a bully” with economic measures. Democratic regimes are more susceptible to economic pressure than autocratic regimes like Russia.
    4. Slam the hammer; don’t turn the screw. Economic sanctions are best deployed with maximum impact. Gradually imposed steps may simply strengthen the target national government’s resolve. In the present case, threatening very heavy sanctions if Russian armed forces cross the Ukrainian border has the best chance of deterrence.
    5. International cooperation is not always essential, but in the case of Russia, it probably is. A large coalition of sanctioning countries does not necessarily make the sanctions highly likely to succeed. Financial sanctions against Iran, on the other hand, succeeded in large part because they were backed by an international coalition of countries willing to forgo Iranian oil imports and dealings with Iranian banks. To be sure, the effort to gain international support can dilute their scope. But the United States has little choice but to gain the cooperation of Western Europe in this case.
    6. Choose the right tool. Sanctions deployed in conjunction with other measures, such as covert action or military operations, increase chances of success. So far, the United States has been reluctant to provide substantial military assistance to Ukraine, out of concern that Russia will escalate its own intervention. Instead, the military dimension of US support has been limited to greater assistance to NATO allies in the region, especially Poland.
    7. Don’t be a cheapskate or spendthrift. Sanctioning governments must balance the benefits against the costs borne domestically to sustain public support at home. At present, the United States, but especially Europe, are facing the resistance of major business firms over the possibility of severe energy and financial sanctions.
    8. Look before you leap. Sanctioning governments should weigh their means and objectives against unintended costs and consequences. In the Ukrainian case, all signs indicate that President Obama and his European counterparts (especially Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany) are giving each step of the sanctions regime their carefully guarded attention.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...rs-or-face-war
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  6. #136
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Seen On The New Donetsk Republic Leader's Wall...

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2014 10:53 -0400

    Just a few days ago we highlighted what some had outlined as "Novorossiya" (New Russia) - the new territory being 'created' by the Russian Spring... today courtesy of @kdzieciol, we see it from a slightly different angle - on the wall of Denis Pushilin's office - the leader of the new independent Donetsk Republic...


    "Map of #Ukraine redrawn at Donetsk Peoples' Republic leader Denis Pushilin's office. Room 1007"
    Angle not clear enough? Here it is again:



    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...c-leaders-wall
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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    East Ukraine's Donetsk Declares Itself Sovereign: Asks Putin To "Consider Absorption" Of Newly Independent State

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2014 10:44 -0400

    Just as we predicted last week, Crimea 2.0 is officially here.

    • DONETSK PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC DECLARES ITSELF SOVEREIGN STATE: RIA
    • UKRAINIAN SEPARATIST LEADER PUSHILIN SAYS ASKING MOSCOW TO CONSIDER THE ABSORPTION OF DONETSK REGION INTO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

    While Putin has not yet confirmed it will, begrudgingly, annex Donetsk as a reminder earlier today the Kremlin said it "respects" the independence vote and calls for a "civilized implementation." And what could be more civilized than annexing two regions of Ukraine in under two months without firing a single shot?
    Here is the official announcement by Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin:



    As a reminder from last week:
    Look no further than the Crimea case study:

    1. Donetsk declares independence
    2. Kiev, the west and NATO condemn the results, sternly refuse to accept the outcome, and issue more sanctions against Russian politicians and oligarchs
    3. Newly "independent" Donetsk requests military support from friendly Russia to defend its population, and the Russian tanks roll across the border

    And as other regions in east and south Ukraine follow in the Donetsk' footsteps, assuring Russia a land connection to Crimea and cutting off Kiev from the Donbas industrial zones and the Slavyansk shale gas, Putin wins again.


    In the meantime, while we await Russia's latest bearhug embrace of a formerly Ukrainian territory, here is Gazprom's take:

    • RUSSIAN PREMIER MEDVEDEV SAYS GAVE ORDER TO GAZPROM ON UKRAINE
    • GAZPROM TO MOVE UKRAINE TO PREPAYMENTS FOR GAS TOMORROW
    • GAZPROM TO HALT GAS SUPPLY TO UKRAINE JUNE 3 IF NO PAYMENT: CEO

    It is amazing what one can achieve when one has all the commodity leverage.


    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...bsorption-new-
    Last edited by AirborneSapper7; 05-15-2014 at 05:29 AM.
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  8. #138
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Putin Speaks On Ukraine Independence Vote: "Respects" Result, Calls For "Civilized Implementation"

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2014 08:02 -0400

    As previously reported, the key event of the weekend was the east Ukraine independence referendum which, as expected, passed by a landslide. Of course, the outcome of the referendum itself was largely irrelevant: all that mattered was that it happened, and that it gave the Kremlin the necessary and sufficient justification to intervene and enter the eastern territory when so needed. And hours ago, in its first official statement on the referendum, the Kremlin said Monday "it respects the secession referendum in eastern Ukraine and hopes for a "civilized implementation" of the results through talks between Kiev and representatives in the east." In other words, at least in the eyes of Putin, Ukraine no longer has a legitimate claim to remain in east Ukraine.
    From the WSJ:


    Pro-Russian separatists declared victory in Sunday's vote, ratcheting up tensions between the West and Moscow. In its first comments since the referendum, the Kremlin appears to challenge the West and Kiev's standpoint that it was illegitimate. (Read the latest updates on the crisis in Ukraine.)

    The Kremlin said in a statement that Moscow welcomes all possible efforts to start negotiations between Kiev and separatist regions with the involvement of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    "Moscow views with respect the expression of the will of the people of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and expects that the practical implementation of the outcome of the referendums will be carried out in a civilized manner without any recurrence of violence, through dialogue between representatives of Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk," the statement said.
    And while the EU promptly proceeded with another round of largely meaningless sanctions, announced moments ago...

    • EU FOREIGN MINISTERS ADOPT SANCTIONS ON 2 CRIMEAN COMPANIES, 13 PEOPLE OVER UKRAINE CRISIS -EU DIPLOMAT

    ... Russia continued to rub it in, when soon after the Kremlin statement was released, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov read it aloud during a live television broadcast. Mr. Lavrov said that Moscow sees no sense in a new round of four-way meetings akin to the Geneva talks in April between Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and the EU, saying the Kiev government instead needs to directly negotiate with representatives of its eastern regions.
    Following the Kremlin statement, Donetsk was ecstatic:


    "This is great news, very happy news. Excellent, excellent," Miroslav Rudenko, one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said in response to the Kremlin's statement, which rebels in Ukraine's southeast see as a sign of support.
    And while we previously reported that a Russian annexation vote (coupled with the implementation of the Ruble as currency), could come as early as next weekend, for now things are not quite clear on how long until Russia becomes the de facto land owner:


    Mr. Rudenko described as unlikely the Crimea scenario—in which Russia quickly followed up a popular referendum with annexation—and said the Donetsk People's Republic therefore would take steps to develop as a sovereign state. Those include "integration steps" such as joining a Kremlin-run customs union with former Soviet republics and building relations with the neighboring Luhansk People's Republic, he said.

    A poll by Kiev International Sociology Institute showed last month that less than a quarter of the people polled like the idea of federalization of Ukraine. This idea was supported more widely in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
    To be sure Donetsk now can afford to wait - all it needs are a few more provocations by the Ukraine army to make up Kremlin's mind for it. One party whose time may have run out, however, is the Kiev government, whose IMF lifeline was conditional on keeping the country together. It failed. And now we wait to see what the IMF response will be since it is Russia, not the west, which continues to win the proxy war in Ukraine.


    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...implementation
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    France’s Sale of 2 Ships to Russians Is Ill-Advised, U.S. Warns

    By MICHAEL R. GORDONMAY 14, 2014


    Photo

    The Vladivostok warship, one of two ships ordered by the Russian Army, in France last week. Credit Jean-Sebastien Evrard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

    WASHINGTON — In a closed-door meeting in February 2010, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urged his French counterpart not to proceed with the sale of two amphibious assault ships to Russia because it “would send the wrong message to Russia and to our allies in Central and East Europe.”

    The French official, Hervé Morin, acknowledged that each of the ships — so-called Mistral-class vessels built for the French Navy to carry troops, landing craft, and helicopters — was “indeed a warship for power projection,” according to a confidential diplomatic cable on the meeting, which was made public by WikiLeaks. But Mr. Morin “asked rhetorically how we can tell Russia we desire partnership but then not trust them,” the cable added.
    Related Coverage



    With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and some 40,000 Russian troops deployed near Ukraine, Western officials are no longer putting their trust in Russia’s intentions. But despite American objections, the sale is still on track, and the first ship is scheduled for delivery late this year.

    During a visit here on Tuesday, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said his government would decide in October whether to proceed with the delivery of two of the ships, and asserted that France had struck the right balance between “dialogue and firmness” in its dealings with Moscow. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated in his meeting with Mr. Fabius that the sale was not helpful, seeking a way to prevent it, according to a State Department official. But Mr. Fabius later asserted to reporters that

    Mr. Kerry had not demanded that France cancel the sale.
    To critics, the 1.2 billion euro, or more than $1.6 billion, deal that France struck with Russia has emerged as a classic instance in which a European nation has elevated its business dealings with Moscow over exhortations by the United States to take a firm line on Russian meddling in Ukraine.

    But the cables obtained by WikiLeaks show that the United States had concerns about the way Russia was obtaining the ships since 2009. In an appearance before Congress last week, Victoria Nuland, the senior State Department official for European

    Affairs, said that the Obama administration had “consistently expressed our concerns about this sale.”
    Yet the security relationship between the United States and France in recent years has generally been strong. As Mr. Fabius hastened to remind reporters this week, France was poised to participate in an American-led military strike on Syria last year in response to the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons, until Mr. Obama halted the military option in return for an agreement that Syria destroy its chemical arsenal.
    The ships were on the back burner in discussions with the French government. But with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, they re-emerged as a major issue.
    If they are delivered, the ships would augment the Russian military’s capabilities against the very nations that now appear to be most vulnerable to the Kremlin’s pressure — namely the Black Sea states of Ukraine and Georgia and the Baltic states that belong to NATO.
    “The technology and capability represented by the Mistral should not be passed to a Russian Federation that continues to threaten its neighbors,” said James G. Stavridis, the retired admiral who served as NATO’s top commander from 2009 to 2013.
    “Russia has nothing like it, and without French help could not build it anytime soon,” said Stephen J. Blank, an expert on the Russian military at the American Foreign Policy Council.
    “Since helicopters can also be armed with missiles, it can be a platform for a heliborne missile attack as well as what we in the States call an air assault or heliborne landings or amphibious landings,” Mr. Blank added.
    The French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, has played down the significance of the pending sale, saying that France would only be delivering unarmed “civilian hulls.”
    But Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and three other lawmakers said in a recent letter to President Obama that each of the ships would be able to carry 16 helicopters, four landing craft, 60 armored vehicles, 13 tanks and up to 700 soldiers.
    The Kremlin has joined the debate as well. Dmitri O. Rogozin, a deputy prime minister, recently suggested that a decision to derail the deal would hurt France more than Russia. “France is starting to undermine trust in itself as a reliable supplier,” he said on his Twitter account. “Probably our colleague is not aware of the number of jobs created in France thanks to our partnership.”
    French officials first informed their Western counterparts in 2009 that Nicolas Sarkozy, who was president at the time, was interested in selling the warships to Russia. That December, a cable from the American Embassy in Paris outlined the economic logic behind the deal. The Russians, an embassy economic officer wrote, had little confidence in their own shipyards, and Mr. Sarkozy was interested in lining up new clients for France’s ailing shipbuilding industry.
    Continue reading the main story Recent Comments

    Jeff Hackney

    9 minutes ago Given American arms sales to countless repressive regimes - including but not limited to Egypt with its mass executions and Israel with its...
    Carolyn

    11 minutes ago The French realize that the delivery of war ships is not going to affect the outcome in Ukraine. It's just a question of whether the French...
    Gaston

    11 minutes ago Business is business. If anyone ought to understand this, it would be the Americans.


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    Georgia, whose breakaway regions were occupied by Russian troops in 2008, was worried by the potential sale, especially after a Russian naval commander was quoted as saying Russia’s Black Sea Fleet could have carried out its mission during that conflict “in 40 minutes” if it had possessed a ship like the Mistral.
    In a November 2009 cable, John R. Bass, the American ambassador to Georgia, described the deal as “the wrong ship from the wrong country at the wrong time.”
    “Not only on the symbolic level is the sale problematic; this type of ship will give Russia a new capability to enforce, or threaten to enforce, its will in the Black Sea,” wrote Mr. Bass, who currently serves as a top aide to Mr. Kerry.
    In a January 2010 meeting, William J. Burns, who was serving at the time as the third ranking State Department official, and Michèle A. Flournoy, then the senior Pentagon policy official, pressed the issue in a meeting in Paris with their French counterparts.
    Michel Miraillet, a French defense official at the time, argued that the sale would be a “gesture of good will to Russia” as its navy was “in dire condition,” according to a cable describing the meeting. If France did not make the sale, he argued, the Netherlands or Spain would sell a similar ship.
    But Ms. Flournoy responded that the sale would “fly in the face” of Mr. Sarkozy’s role in resolving the 2008 confrontation between Russia and Georgia and would send a “confusing signal” to Russian and European nations, the cable noted. If France wanted to engage Moscow it should “find a different confidence-building measure than a Mistral sale,” she added.
    Nonetheless, in 2011 France went ahead and signed a contract with Russia for two ships. Russia is considering buying another two Mistral-class ships after the first two are delivered.
    With more than 1,000 jobs at stake and President François Hollande of France vowing not to run for re-election if unemployment does not improve, there appears to be little interest within the French government in canceling the sale. One option, some Western diplomats say, might be for the French Navy to buy the ships, but that would add substantially to the French military budget in a time of austerity.
    After the delivery to Russia of the first ship, which is named the Vladivostok, the second ship is to be handed over by 2016. In a paradoxical twist of history, that ship is named the Sevastopol, after the city in Crimea.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/wo...s-us.html?_r=1
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    In more other news, Bush/Cheney have still not been arrested for war crimes and invading Iraq.


    Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war - CNN.com
    www.cnn.comPresident Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.

    They are ALL Screwed in the Head
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