- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
Any peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine will only last if Moscow makes real concessions, including limiting the size of its armed forces and curbing its growing military budget, the EU’s top diplomat has said.
In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera published on Friday, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, warned that without meaningful concessions from Moscow, Europe risks facing new conflicts elsewhere.
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The problem for peace is Russia,” Kallas said, adding: “Even if Ukraine received security guarantees, without concessions from the Russian side, we would have other wars, perhaps not in Ukraine but elsewhere.”
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Kallas said that Kyiv and its allies “certainly welcome the momentum toward peace that the U.S. administration is showing,” but cautioned that Russia lacks a “genuine will for peace.”
“It [Russia] is constantly bombing Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she told Corriere della Sera, stressing that “first we need to see a ceasefire.”
She said that in order to achieve sustainable peace, it is necessary to ensure that “Russia does not attack again”, adding that this requires clear concessions from Moscow.
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"We need concessions from Russia, whether that means limiting its army or restraining its military budget,” said Kallas, who served as Estonia’s prime minister from 2016 to 2021.
Moscow has significantly increased its military budget in recent years, diverting vast resources toward the defense industry to sustain its war in Ukraine.
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And russia should also give away its nuclear weapons and we’ll give them “guarantee” that no one will invade them.
No, we can do better than mere “guarantees”: we can comitt to not invading them, and to call the UNSC if someone does. That’s foolproove, as history shows.
They’re on it I hear
Savage.
I love Kallas but nah.
Russia is an empire and behaves like an empire, the Russian federation needs to be split up into all its member states.
Of course this automatically gives back all territories to Ukraine including Crimea, but it also ensures for instance Georgian independence along with many states oppressed and manipulated through Russian propaganda.Let’s see how much Russia is willing to spend on military, when they have to pay for it themselves…
PS:
Russia actually has a lot of cool legislation and principles in their society that give rights and protect citizens, but it’s all ruined by Putin, corruption and the FSB. Not unlike how Trump is ruining USA ATM.
If both could get rid of the corruption and have real democracy, they could both be very good societies, equaling the best in the world like Scandinavia, Japan, Switzerland etc.
Imagine how wonderful that would be! Instead the people are allowing them to be racing towards a dystopia. 😒the Russian federation needs to be split up
China has said that they cannot afford Russia to lose. It must mean that they don’t want to have potentially Western oriented republics on their land border.
This demand makes sure that China will fully back Russia.
It must mean that they don’t want to have potentially Western oriented republics on their land border.
I think a more material iterpretation is they can’t afford the loss of resource supply Russia provides them in the face of military threat from the US. Western oriented republics is an unlikely scenario to follow a power vaccuum left by a Russian power withrawal. Instead it’s more likely that local oligarchies take power. Conflicts could break out too. All that is a more challenging environment for keeping the resources flowing into China, especially during an armed confrontation that’s cut off supplies by sea.
Soviet union split up, the Russian Federation can too. It won’t make much difference on the Chinese borders. Mongolia and Kazakhstan is by far the greatest border, and none of them are in the Russian Federation.
But Mongolia is landlocked and the Russian part is much closer to the important cities. My assumption is that it would make defending China much more difficult,
Defend from what exactly?
A systemic rival.
kallas and the estonian reform party is unpopular in general for raising taxes when they promised not to do so, I’d recommend listening to the song “maksusaun” (tax sauna). but one of the things reform has done right is it’s anti russia policy.
Well the good folks in Ukraine have been doing their level best to shrink the Russian military.
If we gave them more than a knife from the get go, they may have done significantly better. But then the war would have stopped quickly and a lot less shells would have been made and sold overall.
That’s hardly fair. The west has given a ton of weapons and aid. What would be fair is to state that those were given piecemeal and we probably should have given more and earlier. Not to mention that Europe needs to step up and do more now and in the coming years, because this war isn’t ending anytime soon.
That’s what I meant - slower delivery over longer period. It’s why I said we didn’t give more from the get go. Which is likely resulting in more total weapons expended, along with the people firing them.
Oh and this is not just a European phenomenon which is why I’m not singling out the EU.
Down to about a thousand.
Why is Kallas the only EU politician who has aggressive worda against Russia?
How are her words aggressive? It’s common sense. No one is planning on attacking Russia, but they’ve been building their imperial army like it’s their whole purpose in life.
Would be nice if they did something to better the world instead.
He’s not the only one.
Urkraine needs to start asking for land. Perhaps that little strip of land north of Crimea
They’ve spent years brutalising their own population and turning them into orcs who will commit atrocities with glee. If they demobilised them, there’d be thousands of ex-soldiers primed to kill but suddenly denied targets and told to reintegrate into civilian society.
Basically Russia’s army is a weapon which can be pointed outwards or inwards. If they’re not conquering Ukraine (and after that Poland and Finland and Berlin and down the Champs-Elysees), they’re raping and murdering random people in Russia. Which is incentive for Putin or any successor to keep it pointed outwards until some superior force physically stops them.
The same Kaja Kallas who didn’t seem to know that Russia and China fought in WW2?
The problem for peace is Europe isn’t stronger than Russia 🙄
Europe probably has more raw capacity for power in terms of labour and technology but it’s much less capable of marshalling it towards a goal. The fact that you have to go through the market economy makes all the resources needed to exercise power more expensive. Russian shells cost 4x less than Europe’s. More centrally managed economies tend to outcompete at this. Having to go through the 27 countries democracies to direct it is another challenge. All Russia has to do is get several Orbans in domestic governments to keep the power level low. In effect Europe is less strong than Russia even though it could be much stronger. And this doesn’t stop with milirary power. Even simple stuff like tackling internal security from sabotage, economic security etc.
There’s also other structural blockers to projecting power, like the external energy dependence. Europe was critically dependdnt on Russian fossil fuels. Now a significant portion has been shifted to the US. As a result, uncle Donnie has a significant say in EU’s ability to exercise power over entities he likes.
This is why Kallas’es statements look more like stern finger wagging than anything real to anyone aware of these issues. Or Germany’s stern warnings to the Russian ambassador. Kaja gives good strong vibes to the EU citizenry but it’s not changing the material reality. Eventually it would stop working. My guess is that’s gonna happen quickly once uncle Donnie decides to go through with taking Russia’s reserve money under her nose and giving it to his corporations to invest in Russia, like they’re planning to.
