Dmitrij Medvedev, ex-president och vice ordförande i Rysslands mäktiga säkerhetsråd, tonar ned betydelsen av att Sverige och Finland skulle gå med i Nato. I en intervju med Al Jazeeras arabiska kanal, som återges av ryska medier, understryker Medvedev att Ryssland inte vill att Nato utökas över huvud taget. Men han tillägger:

– När det gäller Sverige och Finlands inträde i Nato, åtminstone under de villkor som lagts fram, så skulle det utgöra ett mindre hot mot vårt land än att Ukraina träder in.

Han säger att det för rysk del inte bara handlar om en större placering av vapen i de nordiska länderna, utan också att ett större fokus läggs på Östersjön och Rysslands gränsområden.

– Saken är den att vi inte har några territoriella problem med dessa länder och situationen i Ukraina är en annan, säger han. Läs artikel

Statsminister Magdalena Andersson (S) får på lördagen en guidad visning på det amerikanska fartyget USS Kearsarge, som sedan ett par dagar ligger förtöjt mitt i Stockholm.

Andersson får också sällskap av Centerledaren Annie Lööf under besöket.

Det amerikanska amfibiestridsfartyget USS Kearsarge anlöpte Stockholm i torsdags som ett av flera fartyg inför militärövningen Baltic Operations (Baltops), som hålls i Östersjön. Fartyget är 257 meter långt.

Baltops genomförs för 51:a gången. Årets övning består bland annat av luftförsvar, ubåtsjakt, minröjning, amfibieoperationer och sjukvårdsmoment. Årets övning genomförs också parallellt med firandet av svenska marinens 500-årsjubileum. Senast statsminister Magdalena Andersson besökte en försvarsövning var under Cold Response i Nordnorge i mars i år. Då hade hon sällskap av M-ledaren Ulf Kristersson. Läs artikel

Kremlin spokeswoman Maria Zakharova cautioned the Turkish government against launching a military intervention in northern Syria on Thursday, one day after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his intention to launch a punitive expedition into Syria targeting Kurdish militia units in two northern cities.

“We hope that Ankara will refrain from actions that could lead to a dangerous deterioration of the already difficult situation in Syria,” Zakharova said. “Such a move, in the absence of the agreement of the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic”—referring to the Damascus-based government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad—“would be a direct violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” […]

Although Turkey and Russia opposed one another in Syria for much of the country’s civil war—in which Russia supported Assad and Turkey supported anti-Assad rebels in the northwest—the two countries have cooperated since 2019, ensuring that Kurdish militia units remain away from the Turkish border and conducting joint patrols.

The United States has also objected to the proposed Turkish operation, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken claiming that “any new offensive would undermine regional stability [and] provide malign actors with opportunities to exploit instability”—referring to ISIS, which has gone underground and maintained a low-level insurgency against Kurdish forces since 2018. Läs artikel

Roskomnadzor, Kremlin’s censorship agency, on Thursday banned the Finnish public broadcaster for people inside Russia to read. Five Nordic media are now blocked and they all have one thing in common.

Roskomnadzor points to a decision by the office of the Prosecutor-General in Moscow on May 27.

YLE is then the fifth Nordic media to be blocked by Roskomnadzor. The Barents Observer was banned in February 2019 and Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat was placed on the register of banned sites in late April this year.

A month later, on May 26, Danish newspaper Politiken and Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat were both blocked.

The five Nordic media now blocked in Russia all have one thing in common: They publish web-news in Russian language. While the Barents Observer and YLE Novosti have published Russian-language news for nearly two decades, the other Nordic newspapers on the block-list all three started to publish Russian-language news after Russia’s massive military invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Läs artikel

Fredag ved 14.30-tiden sa Stortinget ja til en ny avtale mellom Norge og USA. Avtalen gir USAs militære et historisk fotfeste i Norge. Det er ikke en Nato-avtale. Den gjelder de to landene imellom.

– Avtalen har avgjørende betydning for norsk sikkerhet. En amerikansk sikkerhetsgaranti er avgjørende for vår evne til avskrekking og forsvar av landet. […]

Fredag ved 14.30-tiden sa Stortinget ja til en ny avtale mellom Norge og USA. Avtalen gir USAs militære et historisk fotfeste i Norge. Det er ikke en Nato-avtale. Den gjelder de to landene imellom.

– Avtalen har avgjørende betydning for norsk sikkerhet. En amerikansk sikkerhetsgaranti er avgjørende for vår evne til avskrekking og forsvar av landet.

De skal ifølge avtalen ha «uhindret tilgang til og bruk av» disse områdene.

Til gjengjeld skal USA respektere at de er på norsk territorium. De kan ikke lagre atomvåpen, landminer eller klasevåpen i Norge. De skal følge norske lover. Og rammen for aktiviteten i Norge skal godkjennes av Norge. Läs artikel

In joint training above the skies along the coastline to the North Atlantic, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish fighter jets demonstrate what will be NATO’s new powerful capacities in the north.

“The main objectives of this activity is to train planning and leadership of allied forces in the north, as well as to demonstrate NATO’s ability to conduct air power in a complicated scenario over large distances,” said Chief Communication officer with the Norwegian Air Force, Lt Col Stine Barclay Gaasland to the Barents Observer.

She said about 45 aircraft took part in the training, including fighter jets, tankers, a surveillance plane (AWACS) and transport planes.

In addition to the fighter jets from Sweden, Finland and Norway, participating NATO countries in the drill on June 2 included Belgium, France, Germany and Great Britain. The training happened along the west coast of Norway, from Møre in the south to Nordland above the Arctic Circle in the north.

This is the first time we are conducting such an advanced exercise with NATO and partner nations, which also includes Sweden and Finland,” said Chief of the Air Force, Major General Rolf Folland in a prepared statement.

The joint Nordic air force capacities in northernmost Europe will become very powerful. Last week, Finland decided to base the first new F-35 fighter jets at Rovaniemi Air Base located on the Arctic Circle and less than 400 kilometers from Russia’s submarine bases on the Kola Peninsula. Sweden has an air base in Luleå and the three Nordic countries have said the advantage of NATO membership is strengthening shared military capacities. Läs artikel

New Erdogan’s decree, published by the daily, appointed ambassadors to 25 countries and replaced ambassadors to Sweden and Finland.

Thus, Deniz Cakar, who had been the general manager of international promotion and culture, was appointed ambassador to Finland, and Can Tezel, who had been the general director of bilateral political affairs at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, was picked as ambassador to Sweden.

On May 18, Sweden and Finland submitted their NATO membership applications to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, abandoning decades of neutrality and citing a shift in the security situation in Europe caused by the Ukraine crisis.

Turkey blocked the applications’ review process due to the countries support of the Kurdistan movement, which Turkey regards as terrorist and deems as a serious threat to its national security. Läs artikel

[…] Certainly, the war has already exacted significant human and economic costs. Ukraine’s infrastructure has been decimated. A little over a month ago, in late April, Zelensky claimed that 1,500 educational facilities had been destroyed or damaged, as well as 350 medical outfits, 1,500 miles of road, and 300 bridges. The Ukrainian president added that around 32 million square meters of housing had been compromised by the war. Current projections from the World Bank suggest that the Ukrainian economy will contract by nearly half this year.[…]

“All of us see images of total destruction in Ukraine. You look at big cities like Kharkiv, Mariupol, and barely any building is not damaged,” Gorodnichenko told NPR. On estimating the cost of repairing the destruction, Gorodnichenko said, “One way to look at this is to do an inventory of damaged bridges, buildings, and so on, and calculate the cost of replacement. That would be easily somewhere between $100 and $200 billion.”

The total could get much higher than $200 billion, however, which is already a pretty penny—$15 billion more than the U.S. Department of Education’s projected budget for 2023. A study from the Kyiv School of Economics estimated that Ukraine’s infrastructure suffers about $4.5 billion of war-related damage every week. The researchers estimate that losses could total about $600 billion. […]

About 40 percent of U.S. aid thus far has been devoted to bolstering Ukraine’s capacity to wage conventional war against the Russians. It seems the U.S. approach to Ukraine is to use American taxpayer dollars to fund Ukraine’ destruction, before forking over billions more for its reconstruction. Läs artikel

[…]John Quincy Adams served a sole term as commander in chief from 1825 to 1829, but he brought to the land’s highest office a breadth of diplomatic experience no other presidential candidate has come close to amassing. Through the Republic’s early decades, he served as U.S. minister—the era’s equivalent of ambassador—to the Netherlands, Russia, Prussia, and the U.K., and then as President Monroe’s secretary of State from 1817 to 1825, helping articulate the doctrine opposing European colonialism in the Western hemisphere that would bear his name. That circuitous career was interspersed with stints as a senator and House member for Massachusetts, all whilst immortalizing his realist worldview in countless diaries and letters addressed to fellow statesmen and politicians.

Codevilla sums up Adams’ worldview as “fully minding our own business while leaving other people to mind theirs,” or “to seek peace by practicing peace while being ready to make war to keep powerful foreigners away.” It also goes by a catchy slogan in his book, America First, “the most concise description possible,” Codevilla writes, “of the studied complex of objectives, reasoning, and actions by which America’s founders related to other nations.” That complex guided later statesmen throughout the 19th century, from Hamilton and Clay’s vision of economic development to Lincoln’s call for “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations” in his second Inaugural. Läs artikel

To sitater, ett fra en brite, det andre fra en russer. Winston Churchill og Fjodor Tjuttsjev har lite til felles ellers, men en synes de å være enige om; å prøve å forstå seg på Russland er fåfengt.

Dette er et bilde av Russland som fremdeles henger i.

Ikke minst dyrkes det av russerne selv; Russland som et mytisk sted hinsides det rasjonelle. Et kristent ur-land, en nasjon der troen er viktigere enn fornuften, et bolverk mot moderne dekadanse og forfall.

Dette dypt konservative bildet av Russland deles også av høyresiden i USA og Europa.

Deri ligger mye av Putins tiltrekningskraft: Han forsvarer evige, kristne verdier, verdier som på hjemmebane utfordres av liberale krefters kamp for seksuell og sosial frigjøring. Läs artikel

[…] Hans Blix fördömer förstås Putins agerande: detta blånekande om att kriget i Ukraina skulle vara ett krig, dessa förgiftningar av meningsmotståndare, denna skenhelighet. Han tycker att Putin är ”reckless”, ansvarslös när han hotar med kärnvapen.
Men samtidigt, tycker han, måste man försöka begripa Putins skäl till att gå i krig mot Ukraina – även om man därmed riskerar att bli kritiserad för att vara ”en nyttig idiot” för Putin.
Så han ansluter sig i stort sett till den uppfattning som till exempel den amerikanske statsvetaren John Mearsheimer ofta framfört och som går ut på att USA och NATO genom sitt agerande gentemot Ukraina mer eller mindre bäddat för Rysslands och Putins aggressiva beteende.
– Det började med den första Nato-utvidgningen, efter murens fall, då de tidigare Warszawa-paktsländerna blev Nato-länder. Detta irriterade förstås Ryssland. Sedan kom ytterligare Nato-utvidgningar med de baltiska staterna. Det är jag positiv till, dessa länder låg i farozonen, det är bra att de kom med.
Hans Blix ser Nato-paktens toppmöte i Bukarest 2008 som en början till den nuvarande krisen. Då pressade den amerikanske presidenten George W Bush på organisationen för att släppa in Georgien och Ukraina. Tyskland och Frankrike motsatte sig detta. Resultatet blev en kompromiss. I protokollet står att Georgien och Ukraina ska bli medlemmar, men det sägs inte när detta ska ske. […]

Men i en viktig fråga är han inte alls överens med sitt parti. Det gäller den nu så intensiva debatten om svenskt medlemskap i Nato.
– Jag tycker att Liberalerna går helt fel där. Och när jag för några år sedan i en debatt på utrikespolitiska institutet sa att det ju ändå var Nato som hade expanderat efter kalla krigets slut, inte Ryssland, utnämndes jag i Dagens Nyheter till en av de nyttiga idioterna… Läs intervjun