New US Commands in Germany
Al-Arabiya: Saudi Arabia ready to help with diplomatic solution in Ukraine: FM to Russia’s Lavrov
Saudi Arabia is ready to contribute to achieving a political solution to the Ukraine crisis, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov during their meeting in Riyadh on Tuesday, state news agency SPA reported.
Prince Faisal said the Kingdom supports efforts aimed at reaching a political solution that ends the crisis and achieves security and stability.
Lavrov arrived in Riyadh after departing from Bahrain where he met with the King and Crown Prince and discussed the war in Ukraine.
In March, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Kingdom was ready to exert all efforts to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv.
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Al-Arabiya: UN had ‘constructive’ talks in Moscow on Russian grain, fertilizer exports
A senior UN official had “constructive discussions” in Moscow with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov on facilitating Russian grain and fertilizer exports to global markets, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday.
The UN official, Rebecca Grynspan, is now in Washington for talks on the same issue “with the key aim of addressing growing global food insecurity,” Dujarric said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United States is prepared to give “comfort letters” to shipping and insurance companies to help facilitate exports of Russian grain and fertilizer.
(Comfort Letters: Comfort letter - Wikipedia / Comfort Letter – Wikipedia )
She noted that Russian grain and fertilizer were not directly sanctioned by the United States but that “companies are a little nervous and we’re prepared to give them comfort letters if that will help to encourage them.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who visited Moscow and Kyiv last month, is trying to broker what he calls a “package deal” to resume both Ukrainian food exports and Russian food and fertilizer exports.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has fueled a global food crisis with prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertilizer soaring.
Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies, while Russia is also a key fertilizer exporter and Ukraine is a major exporter of corn and sunflower oil.
Since Russia invaded on February 24, Ukrainian grain shipments from its Black Sea ports have stalled and more than 20 million tons of grain are stuck in silos, while Moscow says the chilling effect of Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the war has disrupted its fertilizer and grain exports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that?Russia was ready ?to facilitate the unhindered export of grain from Ukrainian ports in coordination with Turkey, according to a Kremlin readout of talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The Secretary General is extremely grateful for the support that Turkey is giving in addressing the situation in the Black Sea and supporting the Secretary General’s own efforts,” Dujarric said.
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WSJ: Bombed Bridges, Closed Ports Keep Ukrainian Grain From a World That Needs It
Across Ukraine, farmers are navigating mines, traversing bombed bridges and risking dangerous maneuvers at overworked ports to circumvent a Russian blockade and get their grains to a world desperate for them.
CONSTANTA, Romania—Across Ukraine, farmers are navigating mines, traversing bombed bridges and risking dangerous maneuvers at overworked ports to circumvent a Russian blockade and get their grains to a world desperate for them.
But for all their efforts, Ukraine’s strained infrastructure has little hope of being able to handle the 30 million metric tons of corn, wheat and sunflower oil that is expected after harvesting starts in June, farmers and government officials said.
Less than half of that harvest is likely to be exported, they added,?depriving the world of over 8% of all cereal exports ?and threatening to further stoke food prices and exacerbate shortages.
Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian ports ?and blocking of ships around the Black Sea has closed the route that almost all of Ukraine’s grain would usually take. That has pushed crops across roads and rail to Ukraine’s western borders or down the Danube to be loaded onto ships in Romania.
The problem has sparked a race to increase the capacity of those routes and high-stakes diplomacy as Ukraine’s Western allies seek to find alternatives.
For Ukraine, the immediate race is to fix its railways, roads and bridges faster than Russia can destroy them. Russia is deliberately targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure, said U.S. officials, who have accused Moscow of weaponizing food.
A Russian official on Wednesday said the country is?open to easing the blockade if sanctions on Moscow are lifted . However, Ukraine questioned whether Russia could be trusted and U.S and U.K officials voiced early opposition to such a deal.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian farmer Dmitry Skorniakov dispatched 5,500 tons of corn from a silo north of Kyiv to the port of Reni on the Danube.
Starting May 10, the truck journey should have taken a day. Instead it took three days. A lack of diesel meant its driver spent time searching for fuel and a partially destroyed bridge outside of Odessa slowed transit further.
At Reni, trucks had to wait eight days to discharge their load. The grain was sold to U.S. agricultural trading giant Cargill Inc. and bound for the Middle East, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Mr. Skorniakov recently attended a grain conference in Geneva and was surprised that traders appeared to believe that the export problems were temporary.
?“I said, ‘Guys, my personal advice to all of you is to buy as much food as possible and put it in storage,” he said. “This problem will not disappear.”
Igor Vovchenko, another Ukrainian farmer, also sent a cargo of corn to the port of Reni. When it arrived, more than 70 barges were waiting to berth, Mr. Vovchenko said. At least one of the waterways from Reni to the Black Sea has been mined by the Russians, he said.
Serhii Kostiukov said drivers from his trucking company can wait in lines of more than nine miles for up to 15 days at Reni. Before the war the wait would be a maximum of one day, he said.
“I will be honest with you: I will not go there anymore,” he said after a recent trip.
At Izmail, Ukraine’s other Danube port, the rush to unload cargoes means that rather than the grain being stored, the train wagons are sometimes hoisted over a barge to unload directly onto the vessel, according to people familiar with the matter. That could be dangerous, given that a barge would likely sink if a wagon fell onto it, the people added.
Mustafa Nayyem, Ukraine’s deputy minister of infrastructure, said that while the procedure was more dangerous, he saw port workers being accurate and careful. Mr. Nayyem said there weren’t a lot of options given current circumstances.
Barges then sail to the Romanian port of Constanta to be unloaded onto larger vessels. Ukraine has also started sending grains to Constanta by road and rail, as it has to ports in Poland and Lithuania.
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In late April, the first large cargo of Ukrainian grain to leave Constanta was celebrated as a sign of hope for exports.
But it is also having to fix existing ports, roads and bridges that have been destroyed by Russia. Kyiv estimates that 8,900 miles of roads and 300 bridges have been destroyed.
Ukrainian officials hope that big American grain traders, including?Bunge ?Ltd.?and ADM, will become key players in its effort to export more grain by investing in expanding capacity at the country’s borders.
But the U.S. traders worry any investment could be a waste of money if ports reopen.
“If we open the ports back up, that investment won’t make a lot of sense,” said Bunge CEO Greg Heckman. “The best routes are the ones that were there.”
While getting grain out of Ukraine isn’t easy or efficient, some trading companies said they will stick with it. Bunge said it plans to stay in Ukraine for the long term and rebuild, specifically in the ports and sea routes that were already in place.
“I believe we will expand there, and we will be part of the investment that helps…connect those supply chains back to the globe,” said Mr. Heckman.
Still, even after the war ends, getting Ukraine’s Black Sea ports back to full capacity may take time, given the destruction to Mariupol and mining off the coast.
“It may be possible to get some products out of [the port of] Odessa within months, but the rest have been heavily damaged and will take a hell of a time to rebuild,” said John Rich, executive chairman of MHP, a giant Ukrainian agricultural products exporter. Mr. Rich said he thinks the Black Sea ports will be closed until the end of 2023.
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Defense One. Russian Officials Talk About Unplugging the Country from the Internet. But Is That Possible?
For all its efforts, the Kremlin may still lack the capability to close off news from beyond the borders.
?Russian officials are talking about cutting their country off from the internet amid the international and domestic backlash to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But would the?systems ?developed to enable this self-isolation actually work?
“The state must control this area completely. Of course, not from the point of view of restrictions or some kind of totalitarian control, but from the point of view of the realization of national interests," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova?said ?Thursday via the TASS state-media outlet.?
Despite years of talk and?research ?into essentially closing Russia off to all outside internet traffic, Zakharova said that “the ‘socket’ into which this ‘digital plug’ is plugged is located outside our homeland, very far away, and we do not control it.”
Zakharova’s remarks were echoed Thursday by Russian senator Alexei Pushkov, who??said , “The sphere of the Internet and digital sovereignty are those areas, those areas where we must prepare for a possible negative scenario. Russia's disconnection from the global internet, I would not rule out such a scenario.”?
Since launching its attack on Ukraine, Russia has?taken steps ?to restrict or block Western social media companies. But the Kremlin has devoted more energy to persecuting expressions of dissent within Russia and making it impossible for independent media to function. While Russian state television carries Kremlin propaganda about the war without pause—part of the reason the war remains popular particularly among older people who only get their news from TV—younger people ause virtual private networks and other simple technological tricks to tap into news sources beyond Russia’s borders.
Russian officials started talking about the need to develop a closed Russian internet more than half a decade ago. In 2016, the Russian military began work on what it called the Closed Data Transfer Segment, essentially a massive military intranet. Russian government researchers?said? that they hoped that the CDTS might one day be able to carry the entirety of Russian internet traffic. Meanwhile, the Kremlin?has passed laws? requiring any company that holds data about Russian citizens to store that data in servers on Russian soil, where it could be available to Russian law enforcement and prosecutors. In 2019,?another law? began requiring internet traffic into and out of the country to run through Russian servers, which immediately alarmed human-rights advocates. And the Kremlin has?built? its own domain name system to essentially mirror that of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, allowing the state to redirect site traffic.?
Also in 2019, Russia conducted some?very limited tests ?of its ability to disconnect from the global internet. The government claimed that the tests were?“successful” ?but offered few other details.?
Western military observers, such as NSA head Gen. Paul Nakasone, have expressed skepticism that Russia would be able to completely disconnect from the global internet. In 2019, Nakasone told a crowd at the annual?RSA conference , “While we take note of what they’re trying to do, I guess I would say I’m a bit skeptical that they will be able to pull this off.”
Russia remains, for now, still very connected and increasingly vulnerable, especially as more and more Western technology companies?shun ?the new pariah state.
“Russia's previous concerns about its dependence on imported technology and international processes for key domestic digital infrastructure are now in visceral focus as the Russian state is seeking to pivot to domestic technology to replace imported tech, while maintaining that Russia is not seeking to close itself off from the outside world,” said Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and an adviser at the CNA Corporation. “I know that Russia is looking to China and India for many IT solutions.”
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NZZ: Die Nato-Streitkr?fte erhalten einen ausgesprochenen Europa-Kenner als ihren Oberbefehlshaber
Trotz der angespannten Lage in der Ukraine schicken die USA gleich zwei neue Oberbefehlshaber für ihre Truppen in Europa und Afrika nach Stuttgart. Mit Michael Langley erhalten die Marines ihren ersten nichtweissen Viersternegeneral.
Ungeachtet des Krieges in der Ukraine werden gleich zwei hohe Kommandostellen in Europa neu besetzt. Der Viersterngeneral des Heeres, Christopher Cavoli, wird neuer Oberbefehlshaber der amerikanischen Streitkr?fte in Europa mit Hauptquartier in Stuttgart. Zudem wird er in Personalunion neuer Oberbefehlshaber der Nato in Europa.
General Michael Langley, ein Marine, wird neuer Oberbefehlshaber des US Africa Command, ebenfalls mit Sitz in Stuttgart.
Das eher konservative US Marine Corps hat mit der Ernennung eines Schwarzen in den h?chsten Grad einiges l?nger gebraucht als alle anderen Teilstreitkr?fte, die wie das Heer oder die Luftwaffe schon seit vielen Jahren Nichtweisse in h?chste R?nge bef?rdert haben. Pr?sident Biden und der ebenfalls schwarze Verteidigungsminister Austin setzen mit der Bef?rderung ein Zeichen, das nicht zuletzt auch angesichts latent vorhandener Rassenunruhen l?ngst f?llig war.
Ein Kenner Europas führt die Nato-Streitkr?fte
Cavoli kennt Europa sehr gut, denn er wurde als Sohn eines amerikanischen Offiziers italienischer Herkunft in Würzburg geboren und lernte die Stationen seines Vaters in Rom, Verona, Vicenza und Giessen kennen. Cavoli spricht neben Englisch Italienisch, Russisch und Franz?sisch. Er weist beeindruckende Voraussetzungen für seine neue Funktion auf. Dies in einer Zeit, da das Verst?ndnis für europ?ische und vor allem russische Fragen seitens der milit?rischen Führung der amerikanischen Streitkr?fte besonders gefragt ist.
In einem Hearing vor dem Streitkr?fteausschuss des Senats hat sich der Offizier angesichts des Ukraine-Krieges dafür ausgesprochen, keine zus?tzlichen Heerestruppen fest in Europa zu stationieren. Allerdings sei es erforderlich, vermehrt Gewicht auf tempor?re Verlegungen und Truppenrotationen zu legen. Cavoli ist zudem ein Befürworter verst?rkter Nato-Aktivit?ten in der Ostsee und im Nordatlantik. Das sei nicht nur eine Antwort auf Putins aggressive Politik in der Ukraine, sondern generell eine Reaktion auf die steigenden Ambitionen Russlands n?rdlich des Polarkreises. Damit demonstriere die Nato zudem ihre Entschlossenheit gegenüber den baltischen und skandinavischen Staaten.
Der erste schwarze Viersternegeneral der Marines
Erstmals in der Geschichte des US Marine Corps wird mit General Michael Langley ein Schwarzer Viersterngeneral. Seit 1942 erstmals schwarze Marines in den Streitkr?ften zugelassen wurden, hatten 73 weisse Marines diesen Generalsrang inne. Der ehemalige Artillerist Langley übernimmt das US Africa Command, das mangels geeigneter Standorte auf dem schwarzen Kontinent sein Hauptquartier bis auf weiteres ebenfalls in Stuttgart hat.
Auch Langley kennt Europa bereits, denn bisher hat er die für Eins?tze in Europa wie auch in Afrika bestimmten Marines geführt. Er wird nun die sicherheitspolitischen Interessen seines Landes in Afrika wahrnehmen, wo sich die USA vor allem auf Massnahmen von Soft Power, das Markieren von Pr?senz, auf Beratungs- und Ausbildungsaufgaben sowie den gelegentlichen Einsatz von Spezialkr?ften beschr?nken. Damit versuchen sie, regionale Schwelbr?nde sowie Avancen Russlands und Chinas zu unterbinden beziehungsweise zu kontrollieren.
About Africa Command: United States Africa Command (africom.mil)
About LtGen Michael E. Langley: Michael Langley - Wikipedia
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