Last weekend Moldova voted on a plan to write applying to join the EU into its constitution. The result we are now told is very close to 50/50, not the big endorsement of membership the government expected. Transnistria, the eastern parts of Moldova, remains close to Russia with separatist government. Next weekend Georgia may re elect Georgia Dream to govern. Whilst claiming to be pro EU membership their other acts put them in disagreement with EU rules they need to obey to join. South Ossetia is under separatist control following a war where Russia helped the separatists.
These two unresolved conflicts between the EU and Russia are part of general tensions along the Russia/EU/ buffer state borders. The worst problem remains the Ukraine war. The EU sees all this as Russia seeking to use force and the distortion of democracy to expand its borders, recapturing lost Soviet Union lands. Russia sees this as a war of EU expansion where Russia goes to support pro Russian populations dragged into the EU and NATO spheres against their will. In each case the countries concerned split into pro EU and pro Russian areas and the tensions fester. Sometimes as still in Ukraine they boil over into war. The EU claim the Russian areas are the result of force and occupation. Russia claims the EU overextends, using majorities in pro EU areas to control pro Russian areas.
The US and U.K. side with the EU and offer financial support and weapons to Ukraine to fight Russia. So far Ukraine’s allies have not offered sufficient weapons to win and have limited the use of the weapons they do send. Russia is especially concerned about the wish of EU applicants to also join NATO. Russia will not accept that NATO is a defensive alliance with no wish or plan to take Russian territory by force. Russia sees NATO getting closer and closer to her borders as Sweden and Finland join alongside the Baltic Republics. There needs to be a lot of talking to find a peaceful settlement of Russia’s borders and the limits to EU expansion. It does not look as if either Ukraine or Russia are about to win the war, but there will be continuing death and destruction as each tries to.
October 21, 2024
The EU is as much at fault as Russia for the tensions. I remember dozy Cameron and that EU foreign minister (such a non entity’s I can’t remember her name) proclaiming that the EU would extend to the Urals.
The EU is a failed experiment and further expansion into these poor eastern states will probably bankrupt it. Not a bad thing.
Now we have almost left, countries like Ireland are having to contribute significant amounts to bribe the Baltic states who don’t exactly share the EU vision of open borders and mass Muslim immigration. They wish to protect their identity which is alien to Brussels
Conformity being the order of the day.
These states are unwilling to be de industrialised at the altar of net zero. Rightly seeing it as a UN/WEF scam in favour of India and China.
Putin has to be stopped but as we are finding the welfare ridden west has been compromised and is probably incapable of defending itself. The rogue states of the world are well aware of this
We need strong leadership and this is starting to manifest itself with the rise of the far right, or as should be described as the normal people wishing to protect their culture.
It’s just a pity for the time being we are 180 degrees out of step
October 21, 2024
The UK should not be involved in wars which it cannot win and in areas that are not a direct strategic threat.
The EU has not got much in the way of armed forces outside France. It can throw money at the war but that money could be better spent within the EU.
That leaves the United States. There will be pressure from the USA for the UK to follow its lead.
October 21, 2024
Catherine Ashton, now Baroness Ashton of Upholland, another of our unelected legislators-for-life.
From last December:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2023/12/14/the-ukraine-war/#comment-1424261
“I see this disastrous war as an example of “imperial overreach” – by the EU, backed up by the US and NATO.”
“The European Commission has said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will travel to Ukraine this week “to support a way out of the political crisis” … Didn’t she do well, now the combatants have maybe half a million casualties and most of the world has crippling high energy costs and retail inflation and therefore interest rates slowing recovery from the pandemic.”
October 21, 2024
The UK has been up to its neck in intrigues concerning Ukraine for a very,very long time.What,from the UK’s perspective,was the Crimean War really all about?
October 21, 2024
This is bog standard conflict between western Europe and USA versus the former USSR/WP. NATO completely missed the opportunities presented by the collapse of the WP and USSR. the containment argument of the US State Department prevailed over the security and cooperation argument of the US DoD and others so the old Iron Curtain simply shifted eastward a bit. After these NATO negotiations with Russia/WP, the EU entered the fray with its habitual expansionist aims and them NATO decided to do to Russia what the old USSR did to the USA in 1962: park nuclear weapons in its backyard, viz Ukraine instead of Cuba. Why is anyone in the least surprised at Russia’s reaction? It was the same as the USA’s reaction in 1962. No, no, no. The war with conventional forces continues but it is no longer a cultural war, communism vs democratic capitalism and Russia’s ambitions do not extend further that parts, not even all, of the old Russian empire. The cultural war, much harder for Western politicans to grasp, is between democracy and Judeo-Christian values vs political Islam and aims to overwhelm not just one or two western countries but all of them. The latter is winning thanks to its unholy alliance with the Woke Left authoritarian liberals, who hate traditional Judeo Christian based Western culture as much as the Islamists.
The fact is that the EU is an expansionist empire. Anyone who doesn’t understand this is not in the real world. Recently Von Der Leyen declared that post-war reconstruction of Ukraine will be directed towards supporting EU Green Energy – led by Germany and its Energiewende, to reduce dependency on China. Plans are already being published. The prize is EU control of Ukraine’s vast mineral resources, of which lithium and rare earths alone have been valued at up to US$13 trillion. This was the Faustian deal on 27 Feb 2022, 3 days after the Russian invasion, by which Germany reversed its policy of restricting support of Ukraine to blankets and steel helmets: tanks and weapons now in exchange for EU sovereignty over Ukraine.
Since then, of course, development of rare earths, lithium and other critical minerals has started elsewhere.
While the war in Ukraine drags on its importance is dwarfed by the existential war on Western culture being progressed day in and day out by political Islam and the Woke Left. This is what is destroying the West, not Putin and it never will be Putin. Politicians do not grasp the existential nature of this because they no longer do God, to quote Alistair Campbell. Etc Ed
October 21, 2024
+1 PG
October 21, 2024
Yes indeed, PG, though it should not be forgotten that the reason why the former USSR parked nuclear weapons in Cuba was actually a response to the USA having previously parked its own similar weapons in Turkey next door to Russia. At the time of the Cuban Crisis there was a tangible fear all over the world of a nuclear armageddon, and as a young man I myself joined in the protest march in London. Yet I can assure you that this important knowledge about the real origins of the crisis was not mentioned in the MSM at the time and the fact that the US removed its nuclear weapons from Turkey as part of the resolution of the crisis was also not widely reported on. As a result, even today, most people still think that it was Russia who was entirely responsible for starting the crisis when the truth offers a somewhat different perspective as to who actually began it.
October 21, 2024
the way you describe it seems credible. It is also a basis for a cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement.
Neither Russia nor the EU are whiter than white in this conflict, both need to stand back, end EU ambitions of expansion and end Russian aggression to political threat. Fix the border in fact.
Seeing the reality of the above I can understand both Finland and Sweden wishing to belong to NATO, with neither having any ambition to encroach on Russia.
My advice to UK politicians is to stick with NATO and avoid closer military involvement with the EU. History and the past decade should tell you that they are not to be trusted politically and that currently they are built on very rocky foundations. Their form of democracy is a sham.
I see the return of Donald Trump to the White House as the catalyst for resolution. He and Putin are better minded to understand each other as businessmen and draw a line in the sand where conventional politics has failed.
October 21, 2024
All rather depressing and hard to see any rapid solutions .
When Wes Streeting first came to my attention he seemed relatively sensible and bright for a Labour MP anyway. True he has tweeted things in the past rather worse than the woman sent to jail for 31 months. But he said the odd sensible thing about the dire NHS and was against Blair’s counter productive wars.
But then he started telling people to shut up about the clearly unsafe conviction of Lucy Letby so as to protect alleged “victims” feelings – rather an evil suggestion in my view. But yesterday he really showed us how daft he is:- He said people need to go to GPs who cost £40 per visit and not A&E which costs £400.
Why, if someone, who only needs a GP visit goes to A&E why should it cast anymore for them to get 5 mins with a doctor and perhaps a prescription at A&E. Let alone 10 times as much as it does at the GP? Junior doctors are paid less than GPs too.
This the man who is in charge of NHS reforms. He has other rather silly gimmicks & other talking shop plans too.
October 21, 2024
Come on Lifelogic, you know the reason why a visit to A&E is more expensive, because the Department is located in part of a very expensive building, and has many more knowledgeable and trained staff and expensive equipment than a simple local doctors surgery, often located in a far more simple and less costly building, where the only trained person is the actual Doctor, who does nothing more than write prescriptions, or refers you on to another more experienced Hospital Doctor/Consultant, after having made a diagnosis (if they can make one)
The problem for the NHS and the patient, is people turn up at A&E because they cannot get an appointment at their local surgery.
October 21, 2024
The average cost might well be £400 per person (as many need loads of tests and interventions and emergency operations) but that does not mean that the marginal cost of an extra few (needing GP care only) patient should cost any more at A&E to see a doctor for a few minutes than it does at a GPs! If the A&E is run well it should cost less not more than £40. The way GPs are paid (not per visit) means they deter patients with queuing systems, rationing and endless delays.
Similarly the NHS endlessly complain about bed blockers who cannot be released due to lack of social care. Simple get the NHS hospitals to open a wards with cheaper only convalescent/nursing home care for these people. Rather than arguing with local authorities about the social care costs needed. Must be cheaper to care for 20 people in one place than 20 people in twenty different houses all over the place! Government pays anyway so why have this battle between LEAs, GPs and the NHS?
October 21, 2024
Would agree ref Convalescent type homes for those who are in the process of recovery and needing physio etc etc.
Likewise cottage hospitals/centres with a simple X Ray machines that could be used as minor injury/accident centres would also be useful, even if only open during normal working hours.
Unfortunately many closed due to cost pressures, internal politics, and manning requirements.
Same happened with the Nightingale Wards.
Unfortunately no joined up thinking, with a bigger picture in mind, by those who would oversee such.
October 21, 2024
The Nightingale wards were clearly an expensive and pointless political stunt. They never had any spare staff for them. Politicians wanting to be seen doing something however pointless or damaging it is. Rather like Net Zero, the lockdowns, net harm Covid vaccines HS2, the Millennium Dome, the ERM, Blair’s idiotic wars…
October 21, 2024
Unfortunately, hospitals cannot operate successfully without a large number of Arts graduates and people without any qualifications at all making all the important decisions so these are a necessary overhead for the NHS because simple doctors are not as clever or as skilled as people who have spent three years studying for a degree in a subject that many countries do not regard as pertinent academic work at all.
October 21, 2024
PPE & History for Heath Ministers and Modern History for the current rather dire CEO. So you get dopes like Wes who make the entirely bogus £40 for a GP and £400 for A&E visits point as above (not understanding marginal costs or that what can be done at a GPs for £40 can be done at A&E for the same or less. He even thinks unsafe convictions should not be questioned less it upsets the “victims” or put blame onto the dreadfully run NHS.
October 21, 2024
Too many people I know tell me they phone their GP surgery, they hold for 30 minutes then when they get through all that days appointments have gone, they try to book for the following day to be told they have to phone tomorrow morning. If their symptoms worsen, they call 111 or go to A&E, if you’ve not phoned 111 before heading off to A&E our A&E turn you away! The 2004 GP contract is responsible for most of the problems, the idea was that A&Es would have an out-of-hours and weekend GP clinic, the distance from most people’s homes then would stop them over-using the system, only now because you can’t get in to see your GP those services are overwhelmed too. If people put off going, they often end up in an ambulance in emergency.
October 21, 2024
a-tracy
Same situation with ours, unless you call in in person, and make an appointment with the counter staff directly for a few days/weeks ahead.
They wonder why some people then do not turn up for a pre arranged appointment, probably because they would have to ring the same number, and hang on for an hour to cancel it !
Would be so much easier if they had a different number, an e mail address or text system in operation simply for cancellations.
Our surgery of 14 Doctors does not even have its e mail address on its own website !!!!!!!
October 21, 2024
Well they are paid per capita regardless so the more patients they can deter from bothering them the better off they are. So that is what they design their systems to do. With VETs however no problem at all getting a “GP” visit and an MRI scan etc. the same day.
October 21, 2024
‘clearly unsafe conviction’.
(Well was Shipman caught by more than one witness injecting a labelled syringe with ‘morphine’ typed on it?
And how would they know that the amount was a threat to life, not just pain relieving?)
Since the conviction in question a number of other incidents have been questioned and investigations begun.
When overwhelming numbers of extreme baby collapses and sadly deaths, subsequently proven by medical science not to be of a natural cause, related to who was the nurse in charge or incident developing soon after her visit to the child, plus the witnessed inaction at the baby’s cot as alarm signals began, then the evidence could be called ‘the smoking gun’.
October 21, 2024
No convincing evidence at all. It is not even clear that any crime at all was committed, let alone one by Letby.
October 21, 2024
The rapid solution is pellucidly clear. It will be an unconditional surrender to the Russian Federation within weeks or maybe a month.
October 21, 2024
The EU’s medium term ambition is to take over the European side of NATO. It intends to introduce QMV in place of unanimity in foreign affairs, security and defence. It will then represent all the European countries in NATO in the same way it represents them in the WTO. Forces wil be committed to NATO operation by EU edict, not by national governments. Ironically, having crushed the sovereignty of its member states the EU will itself become in effect a nation state. The destination of ever closer union is to formalise that as the Federal State of Europe.
October 21, 2024
The EU will remain a US vassal until it collapses.
October 21, 2024
It is generally accepted in the west now that Ukraine has lost the war, i.e that Russia has won the war.
I would never side with the EU against any nation state given the experience of the EU we endured in the UK.
The west has stated openly that it wishes to balkanise Russia in 12 small states.
Russia has never expressed any intention to interfere in any way in the EU.
A buffer zone of neutral states between the Russian Federation and the west was the agreed solution after the collapse of the USSR. Look at the border then and now, and tell me that the EU and NATO are not expansionist.
This article is not up to your usual standard. It’s one thing to be factual and quite another to blur the facts which are pellucidly clear to every sentient person.
NATO gave it it’s best shot short of nukes. NATO is beaten by Russia alone, face that fact!
October 21, 2024
Lynn, NATO isn’t beaten by Russia it’s just there is no appetite in the west to protect ourselves. Germany for one has abysmal armed forces yet it makes billions manufacturing and selling arms.
America is fed up of Europe expecting them to provide security when the EU states refuse to spend on their military.
Israel is the only state willing to protect itself while we keep Importing fifth columnists on the instructions of the WEF/UN
Overthrowing Putin should have been relatively easy but our leaders have no backbone plus many are on Putins side.
October 21, 2024
Totally clueless!”Overthrowing Putin should have been relatively easy”.Well,it wasn’t easy for Karl XII of Sweden,Napoleon or Hitler-and they came with large,well equipped armies.
NATO is beaten,its credibility is shot.
October 21, 2024
agreed.
October 21, 2024
NATO is tapped out of weapons apart from Nukes. Do you not know this? Putin has an 80 percent approval rating, Russians who voted in London came out as over 80 Putin voters – and no coercion in London surely?
All democrats have to accept democratic decisions, have the humility to accept that people in the USA or the Russian Federation are more aware of the choices open to them and vote accordingly.
Russian friends are horrified that the Uk is lumbered with an aggressive government that garnered t( support of 20%.
Britain is out of the top 10 industrialised nations for the first time ever. Let’s take a tip from trump and try to stop running ourselves into the ground before we tell everybody else how they should live.
October 21, 2024
LA +1. It’s surprising how restrained Russia has been, in the face of Western aggression and provocation. The Russian policy is working, though.
October 21, 2024
It looks like,through Russia’s mediation,a settlement of the longrunning India-China border dispute may be announced at this week’s BRICS summit.
Together with:The Economist,20/10/24:”Putin’s plan to defeat the dollar”.The blockchain-based BRICSPay card was launched last week.
And,just reported,Iran,Russia and Oman will shortly be conducting joint regional naval drills;nine other nations will be present as observers.In November there will also be the first full scale naval exercises involving Russia and Indonesia,a BRICS membership candidate.The Indian Ocean as a BRICS lake!
October 21, 2024
Who has ever said this?
October 21, 2024
Look it up. At several international western conferences they displayed and published maps of the proposed 12 new Russian states complete with new flags and names concocted in the west.
This is very old news. Now wonder you are rudderless if you have no basic facts.
October 21, 2024
I tried looking it up. No luck. Do you have a link to one of these ‘international western conferences’ and a date/venue?
October 21, 2024
From March 2014:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2014/03/07/wither-the-merkel-alliance/#comments
“… it was a foolish and dangerous idea that Russia under a strong leader like Putin would stand idly by and not react in any way when the NATO-backed EU was openly setting out plans for a southern encirclement, not just around the Black Sea but around the Caspian Sea and as far as the Urals, as Cameron told his audience last July when he was in the Kazakhstan capital Astana, 1200 miles east of Stalingrad and actually beyond the line of the Urals.”
October 21, 2024
Ukraine wanted to remain neutral as an independent buffer state. But Angela Merkel gave it an ultimatum: choose between the EU and Russia, one or the other. Swamped with EU propaganda and facing rioters in the Maidan supported by the EU and Nancy Pelosi et al it chose the EU. But one thing is certain. Ukraine will never gain the independent sovereignty and democratic freedoms it is fighting for. If Russia is beaten Ukraine will be subservient to a bunch of foreign technocrats in Brussels whose main interest is expanding their empire and getting their hands on Ukraines vast mineral reserves.
October 21, 2024
The Ukrainian PEOPLE did not choose the EU. Zelensky was elected overwhelmingly on a ‘friends with Russia’ platform.
Zelensky and his production team were bought, they cost more than Navalney who only got USD 12 million and managed to come second in the election for Moscow Mayor. Some challenge to Putin 😂
October 21, 2024
Do you have a link for that? I couldn’t find any evidence for that. He was elected for his anti corruption stand.
October 21, 2024
NATO is the mirror image of the Warsaw Pact by which the East European states occupied by Stalin after WWII were induced to co-operate in their own occupation, so under NATO we whilst purportedly opposing the Warsaw pact, no longer in existence, sent our own forces, firstly to occupy West Germany and subsequently to re-enforce the US hegemony over its European satrapies some of whom are naive enough to believe that we are protecting ourselves rather than the new American empire striving for world domination following the USSR’s demise; as NATO ‘pivots’ to Asia (Far East) after being parried in Ukraine, China is now seen as the threat to be contained in a region as far removed from North America as is possible. Will the US start a World War as we did in 1914 to maintain our presumed hegemony? If it does and the world survives it will presage the end of American supremacy.
October 21, 2024
If we don’t know who to blame then I see no point in even discussing it.
Reply I increasingly see no point in you coming to this site as you dislike it so much. I want contributors who put their views in well researched and sensible language to help inform us.
October 21, 2024
Reply to Reply,
Let’s face it SJR all our opinions are based on manipulated/adjusted fact, so as opinions they might be absolute, but as reflections of truth they could be less so. I would want to be sat at the russian desk in MI6 and the CIA to feel I was anywhere near the truth, but in such a position I could only pass what I knew to politicians who would then nuance it to drive their own agenda. It is why I feel that Trump, a business mogul, could more easily talk turkey with Putin than any committee nurtured politician.
I don’t see DOM as being quite as malign as you seem to. I read submissions here from time to time that are much more contraversial.
October 21, 2024
We have friends in the Russian Government, also in the Armenian Government. I write what they indicate in general terms to us. They are both long-standing admirers of all things British, indeed they probably have a better appreciation of British culture than do most British people in these dire times. Both are devout Christians. Both are horrified at the shadow that Britain has become of its former self.
The Armenian speaks Hebrew and Aramaic.
October 21, 2024
blame is often attributed according to which side of the divide you start from!
October 21, 2024
“There needs to be a lot of talking to find a peaceful settlement of Russia’s borders and the limits to EU expansion.”
Yes, but…
Russia can’t trust the West. It was promised no more NATO expansion. It had the Minsk Accords. Western nations reneged on these, and even openly admitted they’d agreed to some of this simply to buy time, and had no intention of sticking to what they’d promised.
The EU meddles in its own nations’ affairs and that of non-members. It is a grasping undemocratic power structure that stifles freedom and forments conflict within its nations, between them, and with outsiders. Divide and rule.
The wider world is splitting into US/EU versus BRICS+, as US hegemony wains. Britain had a chance to distance itself from the US/EU orbit, but it’s blown it. We’re in the hands of the globalist autocracy.
We are quite as belligerent as the rest of the Western block and hold a fair amount of the blame for there being no peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict (our exPM having been a willing messenger for the US in telling Zelensky not to sign the peace deal).
October 21, 2024
Russia is Putin and Putin is a thug. Stop appeasing thugs.
October 21, 2024
Putin is a lawyer, a very careful one to the chagrin of many in Russia. He has an economics degree. He is an intellectual who has just given a two hour press conference on the SMA to the world’s Press. No pre-submitted questions. He speaks off the cuff as Mrs T did.
Every year he gives a 4 hour Press Conference on the State of Russia to the Worlds Press. You should watch. It’s impressive.
My husband has been to the annual economic conference in St Petersburg. My husband is a monetarist – he was impressed not only by Putin but the level of debate. He also lectured economics students as a university and the standard of students was impressive.
We are going to have to pull our socks up to maintain our place in the world.
October 21, 2024
Yes, that’s my observation; Dictators- individuals, start wars. To say ‘Russia’ is the belligerent is incorrect. Watch out for Xi, he’s itching to get his name in the history books and damn the casualties.
October 21, 2024
I see the usual EU fanatic commentators are dismissing the result of the Moldovan vote in advance due to “Russian interference” – I suppose if it is a wafter thin majority to join they’ll shut up. No complaints about “EU interference”. Here’s a typical headline from the Politico website “Moldova’s EU dream hangs in balance as referendum result narrows” – so joining the EU is a “dream” under threat from 50% of voters. It’s equally valid to say “Moldova’s EU nightmare may be averted as polls narrow”. Just incidentally Moldovan wine is rather good, if a little expensive – I recommend you try it.
October 21, 2024
The vote is not binding as I understand it.There have also been interesting developments in Georgia in the past few weeks.The leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party has said improving relations with Russia will be the priority for the next term.He’s also talking about a ‘Nuremberg Trials’ style reckoning for those who initiated the 2008 war with Russia(the PM at the time Saakashvili is currently in prison in Georgia-arrested as soon as he returned after a period meddling in Ukraine in Oct 2021,hoping to lead a colour revolution).In addition,he’s talking of welcoming his ‘brothers and sisters in Abkhazia and South Ossetia’ back in a possible confederation arrangement;as these territories are Russian protectorates,Georgia itself would have to enter into some form of confederation with Russia.He’s also introduced a family values bill which limits the activities of the lgbtq lobby-that’s really upset the EU!
October 21, 2024
The EU’s traditional method of expansion is to offer shed loads of other people’s money and false promises of freedom and democracy. The accession states enjoy and benefit from the money and only after it is too late do they discover how false are the promises of freedom and democracy.
October 21, 2024
It takes two to create a conflict. The USA/EU is as much to blame as Russia for the conflict in Ukraine and along the EU/Russia borders.
The USA would not tolerate what it sees as a significant military alliance (and therefore threat) systematically creeping closer through the countries of Latin America and finally setting up shop in Mexico.
What I do know is that, if it ever came to a full-scale war, the Russian people will fight to the death to protect their country. But the people ruled over by the EU wouldn’t.
October 21, 2024
Could it be that typically Russians are patriotic and have been regularly fed the need for patriotism?
The people by enlarge of EU are still patriotic to their country, and do not recognise the EU as a cause to put life on the line.
October 21, 2024
Precisely.
October 21, 2024
Good last point Donna, regarding the EU. Who would fight for Starmer’s Britain, if it came to that?
October 21, 2024
There is no such thing as a “buffer” state, two states have a shared border, neither state controls activities on the other side of this border except by joint agreement. There is no possibility of reaching a reliable agreement with Putins’ Russia, at best achieving a temporary relief in the fighting, until the next time. We need the total victory of Ukraine to maintain European security. Lets get on with it.
October 21, 2024
Correct. People who think we can do a deal with Putin and that he will stick to it obviously know nothing of our history. 1930s anyone?
October 21, 2024
Exactly.
There’s no easy solution either. But supporting Ukraine is the only option.
Sadly, our political leaders seem to get it so wrong. Supporting a daft war in Afghan millions of miles away. And supporting another daft war in Iraq, half a million miles away.
Not going into Afghan and Iraq were no brainers (even at the time). But still our government supported those daft wars. Power really does go to people’s heads.
October 21, 2024
What is your plan B when Ukraine surrenders unconditionally very shortly?
October 21, 2024
The craziest thing of all is obstructing the Israelis from winning against Iran and her poisonous proxies. They don’t need us to fight with them or give them our arms, just to support them and stop sabotaging them.
October 21, 2024
Exactly!
October 21, 2024
I see no sensible answer until politicians of all sides give up on the idea of expansion and control.
The only reason more Countries want to join the EU is for hand outs, if all Countries had to actually pay in to join the Club/EU, and give up their Sovereignty and individual power to do so, perhaps fewer would want to join.
Those Nations who pay in seem to have populations who are less positive about membership, than those who take out.
As for Russia nothing will change until Putin has gone and replaced with a more moderate leader, in the meantime Russia has been coping even with all of the so called sanctions against them, simply because they have figured out a way around them with the help of friendly Countries who profit from sanction busting.
October 21, 2024
I was going to ask why the EU must expand into Moldova. I also agree they only want to join for money, the EU isn’t exactly flush with funds for another poor member right now. The big firms in the USA have accused the EU of fining them to keep this expansion project going.
October 21, 2024
This is why the EU wants us back – to pay the bill. Starmer will no doubt oblige. That is what he has been put in for, and why Corbyn and Boris and Miss Truss were despatched.
October 21, 2024
They do give up their sovereignty but thanks to the success of EU propaganda they only find out after it is too late. No member state of the EU is sovereign. The EU could not work if any were.
October 21, 2024
Putin i# the ‘moderate leader’ – ask any Russian😊
October 21, 2024
The official photo of the recent Quads meeting in Berlin raises more questions – coming with the display of the four flags, the US, France, Germany and the UK there sat the EU flag and am puzzled as to why? so what has Quads business got to do with the EU – if anything?
It was very likely Germany’s call to include the EU flag and am just wondering why?
October 21, 2024
Without German funding, could the EU continue?
October 21, 2024
The EU is a German empire or racket. Didn’t you know?
October 21, 2024
Absolutely! We call it ‘German Europe’ in this household.
October 21, 2024
A lot of Moldovan society is rural based and the old people especially are still yearning for the old Soviet Union times when they were much more sure of everything – so it’s understandable.
October 21, 2024
Better late than never – some western commentators have now recognized how sensitive Russia is to its buffer zone countries becoming NATO members, or even part of the EU.
It’s just a shame that the other main reason for the Ukraine war is being ignored. US interests in Ukraine have not rang any alarm bells, but they should have. There is corruption at the highest levels, and without this self interest the war would have petered out long ago.
Russia sees itself as defending it’s right to survive without interference from foreign states or NATO. With the EU enticing small countries to join the EU – and we all know how the EU spends a tidy fortune on this — conflict is inevitable, but it seems that this is what the western war machine wants!
October 21, 2024
Why would any Peoples from one Socialist Soviet block want to join another Socialist Soviet? Surrendering the right to self determination is not compatible with Democratic Government.
October 21, 2024
EU propaganda is very convincing. Nearly 50% of Brits believe it, too.
October 21, 2024
Where is there a Socialist Soviet Bloc – not counting the EU of course.
October 21, 2024
As Gorbachev pointed out.
October 21, 2024
Sir John, You have not mentioned Baroness Ashton’s role in the Ukraine conflict.
That omission is significant for all the reasons you know and anyone wishing to find out can easily do so.
Te destabilisation of the Eastern European region, was baked into EU foreign policy when Baroness Ashton was High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs at the EU.
The rest is as they say recent history.
October 21, 2024
Trump wins…
New UKR/Russia boundaries negotiated & agreed, somewhat unsatisfactory for both sides…
DMZ installed and peacekeepers deployed…
It’s a peace and importantly it stops further people dying and getting maimed….
Folk can then get on with rebuidling their lives – the politics / political level is irrelevant for most of them
October 21, 2024
No chance!
October 21, 2024
Not for want of trying – on 17h. Mr. Trump said if and as soon as he is president-elect he would commence action to end the war.
October 21, 2024
The ultimate cause of the Ukraine war is Putin’s paranoia fueled by EU expansion, particularly under the totally unsuitable and inexperienced Catherine Ashton, who had no idea what she was doing, blundering arounds Eastern Europe shaking Russia’s tail. She was warned, by Nigel Farage, amongst others but even ignored the wise council of the French and British Foreign Offices.
The EU needs to drop its expansionist Empire Building and should not continue trying to entice the remaining former Soviet states to take up full membership of the EU. Instead it should offer them trade agreements which would be the quickest route to prosperity for everyone.
The few remaining net contributors to the EU budget cannot afford the subsidies they would require to become full members in any case it would be decades before they could qualify for EU membership, particularly when it would require the virtual elimination of corruption and the profound changes necessary to introduce proper democracy.
October 21, 2024
We are in a proxy war with nuclear armed Russia (and all the hardships that have led us to a socialist government) because of Ukraine’s right to join the EU – for that is what the Maidan Square revolt was about.
Yet we were forced to remain in the EU because of IRA terrorists armed with pistols and Semtex.
Whatever the EU is meant to have been it is not a force for happiness and stability. It has caused a major war on its border and it has led itself to its own cultural destruction through its open borders.
October 21, 2024
Russia’s Chinese border (in Soviet times c. 5,000 miles, now c. 2,600) has long given rise to problems too but it seems to cope there (having obtained resolution of disputes through treaties with China, concluding some twenty years ago) and elsewhere without buffer states (so called) so I find suppositions those are needed or wanted along its western margins dubious.
In any event, do buffer states work in the modern era? Once a buffer could of course limit the transfer of economic, social and cultural influences of powers sharing its borders to one another but in today’s interconnected world that is ever less true whilst borders remain open. Likewise, the shield a buffer might afford from surprise attack is much diminished now offensive action is typically airborne first.
October 21, 2024
So well done Moldova and against foreign interference they have succeeded – this should give encouragement to others also like Georgia that there is a future to be had outside of Putins reach
October 21, 2024
You cannot fight and win a defensive war except for a short period of time. That time has come for Ukraine, and the US, UK, and EU need to allow Ukraine to use offensive, long-range weapons inside Russia. That is the only thing that will bring them to the negotiating table.
Russia has utterly destroyed Cities, Towns and villages, together with vital infrastructure in Ukraine, and the US, UK, and EU need the ruthlessness to let Ukraine do the same to Russia. Putin will only be defeated by the Russian people rising up against him. Then his survival instinct will kick in, and he will compromise for peace, even if he sees it as a time to refresh, re-arm and retrain his army.
October 21, 2024
The Russian people took 27 million dead in the last German War and never surrendered. You say Russian has wrought much destruction, impressive as we were told they were fighting with shovels and chips out of washing machines. Imaging what would happen if they could out manufacture the entire western world or if they had more Nukes than any other country including the USA?
You think bombing them will make them surrender?
BTW we forced Russia to give up trading in the USD. Now more than 94% of their trade is NOT conducted in western currencies.
October 21, 2024
What puzzles me is why those boarder states should want to exchange one historic overlord (Soviet Russia) with a bureaucratic overlord (the EU) when the UK has left the EU (in name at least) and some EU member states are getting dissatisfied with the EU.
October 21, 2024
It is very difficult to assert that NATO is purely defensive in the wake of the Clinton/Blair Kosovo war in which a terrorist tail wagged the NATO dog. This must have been the shocking turning point for Russia, not the Ukraine.
October 21, 2024
It was a shock to me! The RAF was in the air with the Luftwaffe bombing our wartime anti-Nazi allies, the Serbs. We demonstrated in Whitehall for the full duration of the bombing, 3 weeks I believe, day and night (you have to keep it going because you are allowed only one demonstration).
The Serbs were shocked, but I pointed out that you can survive bombing – the fact that we were bombing them in formation with the Luftwaffe proved that we had lost Britain completely. You can’t survive that.
October 21, 2024
What a choice though! Along with the others awaiting membership… Between the devil and the deep blue sea.
October 21, 2024
Off Topic. from Joe Pike, Political Investigations Correspondent.
(shades of SNP missing funds?).
The Serious Fraud Office is investigating the construction of a hotel and conference centre owned by one of the UK’s biggest trade unions, the BBC can reveal. Unite the Union spent a total of £112m of its members’ money on the project in Birmingham.
The building has since been valued at just £29m, suggesting £83m has been wasted.
A KC-led inquiry commissioned by Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham also identified a missing £14m which has been described as a “mystery” and does not feature in the project’s final accounts.
Unite has told the BBC the case is “now with the Serious Fraud Office” and Ms Graham, who took over as Unite general secretary in 2021, would “leave no stone unturned in finding out if there was any financial wrongdoing”.
An SFO spokesperson said: “In line with long established practice to avoid prejudice to law enforcement activity, we can neither confirm nor deny any investigation into this matter.”
The Birmingham project was intended to be an investment for Unite as well as saving the union money with hotel and conference costs.
October 21, 2024
Can’t remember a problem there when Donald Trump was POTUS.
October 21, 2024
Completely off topic, Arleen Foster has rather belatedly seen the light:
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/baroness-foster-says-brexit-decision-to-put-no-border-in-ireland-was-mistake/a406887978.html
“Baroness Arlene Foster has branded the decision to rule out a border on the island of Ireland during Brexit negotiations as a “mistake”.
On the BBC’s Surviving Politics with Michael Gove podcast, Baroness Foster criticised former prime ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson for their role in the agreement that saw the UK withdraw from the EU.”
So I have recirculated this comment from three years ago:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/10/19/the-state-of-the-union-2/#comment-1269030
with the heading “FULL TEXT OF LETTER ON EXPORT LICENCES TO PROTECT EU SINGLE MARKET”.
October 21, 2024
I am so pleased you have become a member of the GB News family. Their hearts are in the right place but they really need your intellectual and analytical powers to lift up their viewers into enlightenment.