Claire's tests came out fine. Thanks to those who emailed.
"A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country." -- Texas Guinan. 19th century American businessman
News about NATO
Increasingly, military leaders are admitting Ukraine’s inability to carry out the fight under its current military circumstances. In a recent statement, the head of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, stated that the West needs to be prepared to receive “bad news” from Ukraine, belatedly recognizing the reality that many analysts had already reported before.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that the Western military alliance should be ready for bad news from the Ukrainian front as Kyiv continues to defend against Russia’s all-out invasion.
The U.S.-led NATO alliance held its first NATO-Ukraine Council meeting this week in Brussels. As usual, the cliched promises of supporting the Kiev regime to the end were trotted out by all and sundry.
In truth, these NATO events for Ukraine, and more generally, are becoming yawn fests.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov faced Western critics while attending international security talks Thursday in Northern Macedonia, where he blamed “NATO’s reckless expansion to the East” for war returning to Europe.
When people reach the ripe old age of 75, there is usually a tendency to slow down and take things easier; often there’s a lack of cohesion, sentences often aren’t completed, delusion and incompetence become more noticeable if not plain idiocy on a scale not previously seen. In some cases, relatives might even talk of assisted suicide to put the old bugger out of his misery, with some even as going as far to talk about being “brain dead”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken came a away from a NATO meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday with the conclusion that the alliance is holding strong on supporting Ukraine, despite the avalanche of negative reports on how Ukrainian forces are fairing on the battlefield.
Kiev authorities are preparing a military provocation against Poland in the event of a critical decline in Western support, Acting Kherson Region Governor Vladimir Saldo has told Sputnik.
"According to the data received from our sources in Ukraine, we are talking about a provocation involving an attack with Western or [Ukraine's] own converted missiles, on the parts of which they want to put Russian markings to further blame Russia.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Tuesday that a consensus among NATO countries persists that it is impossible for Ukraine to join the alliance now, but it may be possible in the future if conditions are met and the allies agree.
"There is agreement at least that Ukraine's accession to NATO is impossible for now," Szijjarto told journalists after the end of the first day of NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.
Ukraine’s failure to breach Russian lines for the last year demonstrates that NATO should “never underestimate Russia,” the bloc’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday.
Speaking to the press ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, he was asked whether the US-led bloc would be able and willing to arm Ukraine for another counteroffensive against Russian forces in the spring.
David Arakhamia, a high-ranking member of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People political party, said that Kyiv could have ended the war with Russia after a month if it agreed not to join NATO. The official said that Moscow was not concerned about other issues, such as “denazification,” but only wanted Kyiv to agree to neutrality.
