Laure Mandeville

Tymofiy Mylovanov Verified account @Mylovanov · 12h

Trump's former Deputy Sec of State Stephen Biegun:

We wasted a lot of time in Trump's first term on probes into Russian kompromat. Trump formed his views of Russia in the 1980s

The more worrying part: he has sympathy, if not envy, for authoritarians like Putin, Ergodan, Xi 1/

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Eerik N Kross 🇪🇪🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇺 Verified account @EerikNKross · 2d

Moscow’s offer of separate “non-aggression” pacts is a naked attempt to divide NATO by making each member wonder whether abandoning its allies might buy it safety. Describing this as an offer of “additional security guarantees” accepts the Kremlin’s premise: that Russia is entitled to threaten European countries and then offer selected governments exemption from its aggression.

Russia has no right to attack any of them in the first place. Peaceful coexistence is an obligation, not a favour Moscow can sell in exchange for political obedience.

The proposal targets the foundation of NATO: the certainty that an attack on one ally will bring assistance from the others. Separate bargains would introduce doubt about who would help, who would stand aside and whose cooperation Moscow had already secured. That uncertainty would weaken deterrence before a single shot was fired.

The Washington Treaty expressly guards against this. Article 8 requires every ally “not to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.” Article 5 requires assistance to an attacked ally, while Article 3 requires members to maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist attack. A pact requiring an ally to withhold assistance, obstruct collective defence or accept restrictions incompatible with those duties would violate the Treaty. Calling it “non-aggression” would change nothing.

The proposals reported so far distinguish non-aggression pacts from commitments not to assist another party’s adversaries. We should not pretend that an unpublished treaty already contains the latter. But that is precisely the test any actual agreement must face: does it preserve allied obligations in full, or purchase Russian promises by compromising them?

For NATO, accepting security based on separate accommodations with Moscow would be strategic suicide. For individual members, it would mean weakening the collective protection on which their own security depends and replacing it with a promise from the power threatening them. A government might imagine it had purchased an exception. It would have helped dismantle the protection it would need when that exception expired.

The moral failure would be equally stark. While Russia occupies Ukrainian territory and attacks European security, bargaining for personal exemption would reward coercion and leave others to bear its costs. No European government should purchase apparent safety by making its neighbours less safe.

If Moscow wants to demonstrate non-aggression, it can withdraw from Ukraine, end its threats and hostile operations against Europe, and respect the sovereignty of its neighbours. It does not need separate treaties to stop doing what it has no right to do.

Europe’s security cannot depend on which countries Russia, famous for breaking all treaties and every promise, temporarily promises to spare.

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Martin Raph Verified account @martinraphiw · 19h

🚨 NOUVEAU SONDAGE : DAVID LISNARD SUR LE POINT DE PASSER DEVANT PHILIPPE

👉 Philippe perd 3 points en un mois
👉 Lisnard à 1 point de Philippe dans toutes les hypothèses

Il se passe quelque chose 📈🇫🇷

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Boris Bondarev Verified account @Vizlypuzly1 · 1d

Moscow has now spelled it out. Alexey Drobinin, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, said that Russia could conclude nonaggression pacts with individual NATO member states and offer them “additional individual security guarantees.” At the same time, Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky called a new European security framework the central topic of the talks in Abu Dhabi.

Moscow put its December 2021 demands back on the table.

Europe opened this door itself. By agreeing to discuss a new “security architecture” with Moscow, it agreed to negotiate the non-negotiable: its own collective defence. The Kremlin’s answer is to deal with each European country alone, face to face with Russia.

Every European country that faces Russia one-on-one will lose. Inevitably. This applies to the nuclear powers too: neither Britain nor France can stand alone against Russia’s pressure. Europe can stand only united, only together. Countries that pursue individual pacts with Moscow will end up as Russian satellites.

Time to Win the War describes where this leads:

“Collective defence would give way to individual attempts at survival. Every government that tried to secure itself separately would make Article 5 less credible for everyone else, which in turn would push more governments towards separate arrangements with Moscow or Beijing. European defence could collapse politically without Russia having to defeat NATO forces on the battlefield.”

An “individual security guarantee” from Moscow is worth exactly as much as the one Russia gave Ukraine in Budapest in 1994. Any European government tempted by such an offer should remember how that ended.

Link in the first comment.

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