He also recently visited South Africa, Eswatini, Angola and Eritrea.įor context: Russia has made concerted efforts to secure closer ties with China, India, Arab and African nations and others that have refrained from joining the sweeping economic sanctions while calling for peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv.įoreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova today said Russia would closely follow any move by the United States to deploy hypersonic weapons in Japan, saying this would "mean for us a qualitative change in the regional security situation". The veteran foreign minister's latest trip took him to Mali, Mauritania, Sudan and Iraq. "Despite the anti-Russian orgy orchestrated by Washington, London and Brussels, we are strengthening good neighbourly relations in the widest sense of this concept with the international majority," he said. "Today we can affirm that the West's plans to isolate Russia by surrounding us with a sanitary cordon have been a fiasco," Sergei Lavrov told Russian diplomats at an event at his ministry after returning from a nearly week-long tour of Africa. Russia's foreign minister has claimed the West's efforts to "isolate" his country had completely failed and Moscow was building stronger relations with countries in Africa, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific and elsewhere. Kyiv "has enough to limit the Russian success," he added, saying this would still be "costly" in terms of casualties and ammunition. "They don't have the armoured forces, the ability to break through," he said, adding that the existing campaign was not going to change the "overall operational environment" in Ukraine. Gen Hodges - who was in charge of US forces in Europe from 2014 to 2018 - said Russia did not have the capability to launch a "major" surge despite its current efforts to stage a significant offensive in the conflict. Others have argued that any realistic hope of achieving a peace deal between the two sides would inevitably involve compromise over the region from Ukraine. Gen Hodges said he believed the the only "red line" for US involvement in Ukraine is "boots on the ground."Īnd, in a view that taps into a key source of debate among commentators, he insisted that Kyiv must retake Crimea to preserve the "international rules-based order" and the "UN Charter." He said fears over training and runway compatibility issues did not make it "unfeasible" to provide Kyiv with the "capability" to use the aircraft - and praised the UK for being "in the lead" in providing several forms of military support to Ukraine. "The sooner we deliver them the capability to achieve a decisive outcome, the sooner that could be over," he told DW. "Once Russia can only sell gas to China, Beijing will be in a position to decide the price."ĭespite reports that Russian forces have made small advances due to a renewed offensive, a former commanding US general in Europe has insisted that Ukraine could secure a relatively quick victory if the West provides it with fighter jets.īen Hodges predicted the planes could lead to a conclusive triumph for Kyiv within a year - but would take up to five based on the existing level of military support. "Russia has lost its biggest customer forever, and it will take at least a decade to bring enough pipelines to Asia," he said. in the same way he miscalculated how Ukraine would fight back and the West would be united." He said the Russian president had made a "massive miscalculation over who had the leverage. "Now that Europe is getting used to living without Russian gas why would they ever go back?" There's no more fear of an energy crisis. "If gas prices stay here there will be much less worry about inflation and interest rates rises. "Very high natural gas and power prices in Europe were extremely bad for the world economy but now they have come back to a more reasonable level. "I think Putin lost the energy war," Pierre Andurand said in an interview with the Financial Times. Ever since Russia's invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, a multitude of commentators have suggested the decision was a major strategic error from Vladimir Putin.Īnd just as Moscow's forces have become mired in a series of setbacks over the last 12 months, a man said to be one of the world top-performing traders in the energy sector says the long term damage to Russia is far from confined to its military.
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