Russia Taps Super-Giant Gas Field after 40-Year Wait, industryweek.com

Russia’s Gazprom (IW 1000/16) state energy giant on Tuesday launched production at one of the world’s largest natural gas fields some 40 years after its discovery by Soviet scientists in the frozen and hitherto inaccessible Arctic.

President Vladimir Putin formally pushed the button on the start of commercial energy production at the Arctic deposit whose discovery in the early 1970s created excitement and frustration in equal measure. […]

”The field will produce 115 billion cubic meters [4,060 billion cubic feet] of gas and that will go up to nearly 140 billion,” Putin told the field’s workers by live video link-up from Moscow.

”This is nearly the equivalent of how much we export to Europe,” he stressed. Läs artikel

India to Host 13th BRICS Summit, valdaiclub.com

Nivedita Das Kundu, Foreign Policy Analyst. Senior Research Advisor, United Service Institution of India, New Delhi.

[…] India has chosen the theme for Chairship as ‘BRICS@15: Intra-BRICS cooperation for continuity, consolidation and consensus’. Traditionally, BRICS discusses issues of common interest for all five countries. India has pitched for greater coordination among BRICS nations on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) review and giving more say to developing countries. India wants the five-nation grouping to respond to the COVID-19 crisis through policy support and enhanced international coordination. As the BRICS chair for 2021, India’s approach for the group of nations focuses on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation.

India has proposed deliverables on issues, including a waiver proposal at World Trade Organization (WTO) for uninterrupted supply of vaccines, the framework for consumer protection in e-commerce and cooperation framework to protect traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.

In Political and Security sphere: To enhance cooperation and dialogue on global and regional security issues, developments in the global political space for peace, security, and prosperity. […]

BRICS summits give both India and China an opportunity to work in close cooperation with each other. The annual BRICS summit was earlier meant for high-level delegation meeting, but for the last few years changed the format and now participants are also from the Track Two circles including think tank heads, various government officials, industrialists and experts. Läs artikel

 

 

Leadership Groups Call on China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States to Jointly Reaffirm: “A Nuclear War Cannot be Won and Must Never be Fought” , media.nti.org

We welcome the leadership shown by President Biden and President Putin in their June 16 Joint Statement on Strategic Stability reaffirming the principle that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” We are encouraged that President Putin and President Xi affirmed the same principle in their June 28 Joint Statement.
This principle is fundamental to ensuring predictability, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war. It provides a foundation for progress to reduce existential common risks, including on the climate and global public health. It is especially important as new technologies reduce decision time for leaders. Such a principle is also at the core of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) whose Preamble recognises “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need to make every effort to avert the
danger of such a war and to take measures to safeguard the security of peoples”. Läs  uttalandet

France promises further support for Chad’s military junta as leaders make a “friendship” visit to Paris, worldakkam.com

Devi Itono, who heads the so-called military transition council that seized power in the April battle after the death of his father Idriss Dévi, promised to hold a “free and transparent” election within 18 months, but internationally. Warning process without any assistance It may take some time..

On Devi’s funeral day, Macron is in France “Unwavering” friends throw his weight behind Chad’s military junta, Devi Itono.  Läs artikel

Russia’s National Security Strategy: A Manifesto for a New Era, carnegie.ru

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center

[…] The paper outlines a lengthy series of measures for dealing with a host of domestic issues, from rising poverty and continued critical dependence on imported technology to the advent of green energy and the loss of the Soviet-era technological and educational edge. This certainly makes sense. Indeed, the recent Kremlin discovery of climate change as a top-tier issue is a hopeful sign that Russia is overcoming its former denial of the problem, along with inordinately exuberant expectations of the promise of global warming for a predominantly cold country. After all, the Kremlin’s earlier embrace of digitalization has given a major push to the spread of digital services across Russia. […]

Yet here, the strategy misses a key point at the root of Russia’s many economic and social problems: the widespread absence of any values, other than purely materialistic ones, among much of the country’s ruling elite. The paper mentions in passing the need to root out corruption, but the real issue is bigger by an order of magnitude. As each of President Putin’s annual phone-in sessions with the Russian people demonstrates—including the most recent one on June 30—Russia is governed by a class of people who are, for the most part, self-serving, and do not care at all for ordinary people or the country, instead focusing single-mindedly on making themselves rich on the job. Money—or rather Big Money—has become that group’s top value, and the most corrosive element in today’s Russia. Therein lies perhaps the biggest vulnerability of modern Russia. Läs artikel

Så kan nya vapnet Patriot knyta Sverige närmare USA, dn.se

Just nu levererar USA:s armé ett helt nytt vapensystem till Sverige: luftvärnssystemet Patriot. Det ska tas i bruk redan i slutet av året .

Patriot ersätter de amerikanska Hawk-robotar som Sverige köpte in för snart 60 år sedan, men som fortfarande ingår i krigsförbanden. Hawk-luftvärnet var byggt för att bekämpa attack- och bombflygplan som flög nära sina anfallsmål.

– Patriot är konstruerat för att operera ihop med andra Patriot-system. Så det är mycket enkelt att länka samman Patriot-systemen i olika länder, säger den amerikanske generalen Christopher Cavoli till DN när han besökte Gotland på tisdagen. Läs artikel

Ryska folket upplever sig bli respektlöst behandlade av väst, etidning.varldenidag.se

Om en krigssituation skulle uppstå i Östersjöregionen kommer Sverige att ligga illa till. Den förutsägelsen gjorde mångårige diplomaten och Moskvaambassadören Sven Hirdman i ett uppmärksammat Hotspot-samtal med Marco Strömberg nyligen. […]

Hirdman konstaterar att konfliktytorna, som under kalla kriget låg i Västeuropa, har flyttat till vårt område. Nato har flera nya baser i Nordnorge, och Sverige har ett allt närmare militärt samarbete med Nato. Polen, Finland och Baltstaterna är medlemmar i såväl EU som Nato.
Ryssland har svarat med egna militära rustningar och atomubåtar i ishavet.
Det är inte sannolikt att Ryssland har ambition att inleda ett angreppskrig, menar Hirdman, men historien visar att krig kan startas av misstag eller av missförstånd.
– I en sådan situation kommer Ryssland att agera snabbt och aggressivt. De har så många gånger upplevt att krig utspelas på deras mark och är nu beslutna att i en krigssituation göra allt för att det inte ska upprepas, menar han, och beklagar de hårda motsättningar som råder mellan väst och Ryssland.
– Det är kontraproduktivt att ständigt komma med kritik, avbryta förbindelser och tillgripa sanktioner. Enda effekten av detta blir att man stärker de krafter som man inte vill stärka.
De ryska medborgarna i gemen drömmer inte om en återupprättad rysk stormakt, men de vill ha respekt och bli vänskapligt bemötta.
– Det finns en växande känsla bland folk allmänhet att Ryssland behandlas fientligt och respektlöst. De vill kunna resa, röra sig fritt, men begränsas av allt strängare visumregler från kontakt med andra länder. Och en naturlig reaktion när man möter motstånd är dels att sluta sig samman, dels att söka samarbete på annat håll. Läs artikel

John Quincy Adams on freedom, independence and peace, warontherocks.com

Editor’s Note: On July 4, 1821, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams gave the following Independence Day speech.

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. Läs talet

Läs också presentation på den här sajten av Quincy Institute.

Sverige i USA:s och Ukrainas Svartahavsmanöver

Utgivarna

I skymundan kan man i internationell press hitta uppgifter om att Sverige är ett av de deltagande länderna i USA:s och Ukrainas kontroversiella övning Sea Breeze 2021 som äger rum 28 juni–10 juli.

I vanliga fall brukar Försvarsmakten vara snabb med att informera om svenskt deltagande i övningar, men nu fick man noggrant läsa i amerikanska flottans Navy News (21/6) för att få reda på att Sverige var med. Sverige räknas där upp som ett av de 32 länder som deltar.

På samma sätt har det varit under tidigare års Sea Breeze-övningar. Försvarsmakten har varit tyst, likaså Försvarsdepartementet. Liksom tidigare får man också söka förgäves efter information om övningen i svenska media.

Läs mer

Attorney: U.S. Case Against Julian Assange Falls Apart, As Key Witness Says He Lied, realclearpolitics.com

One of the main witnesses in Julian Assange’s extradition case has admitted he made false claims against Assange in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a bombshell revelation that could have a major impact on the WikiLeaks founder’s fate. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if brought to the U.S., where he was indicted for violations of the Espionage Act related to the publication of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes.

According to a new article in the Icelandic newspaper Stundin, the convicted hacker Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson falsely claimed he was a prominent WikiLeaks representative instructed by Assange to carry out hacking attacks, but he was in fact only tangentially involved with the organization. The article suggests the U.S. Justice Department collaborated with Thordarson to generate the indictment for Assange that was submitted to the British courts. “This is just the latest revelation to demonstrate why the U.S. case should be dropped,” says Jennifer Robinson, a human rights attorney who has been advising Assange and WikiLeaks since 2010. “The factual basis for this case has completely fallen apart.” Läs artikel

Putin Doubts NATO Can Stand Up to Russia in the Black Sea, nationalinterest.org

Mark Episkopos, national security reporter for The National Interest

Kiev and several western powers have taken symbolic steps in recent years to assert Ukraine’s territorial integrity, conducting military exercises near or innocent passage operations through Black Sea waters claimed by Russia. The Kremlin has responded with increasing firmness to these sporadic incursions, which it calls “provocations.” Late last month, the Coast Guard and Black Sea fleet fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of the British Type 45 Destroyer HMS Defender to chase the warship away from Russia’s claimed territorial waters off the Crimean coast. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a subsequent TV appearance that Russia’s military could have sunk the Defender without triggering a large-scale war because, in his words, the west knows it cannot win such a conflict.

Putin’s confidence may not be entirely misplaced. In the years following Crimea’s annexation, Russia has steadily built up its Black Sea Fleet. The fleet has received three modernized Guided Missile Frigates from the Admiral Grigorovich class, as well as a slew of diesel attack submarines from the improved Kilo (Project 636.3) series. These new warships are but one part of the drastic growth of Russian anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the Black Sea region, which also include a sprawling web of missile defenses operating out of Crimea. Yet another headache for NATO are Russia’s newest tactical weapons: the Tsirkon winged, hypersonic cruise missile curtails the ability of carrier strike groups (CSG’s) to project power deep into Russian territory, as does the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile. Läs artikel

Veckans citat

”Jeg ser ingen grunn til at Norge og Nato skulle la seg trekke inn i en militær konflikt på andre siden av jordkloden. Vestens politikk overfor Kina må være en blanding av rivalisering, konkurranse og samarbeid. Den siste komponenten – samarbeid – er blant annet avgjørende for at vi skal løse klimakrisen. Evnen til samarbeid vil avhenge av at rivaliseringen holdes under kontroll.

Nato er ikke en global politimann. Det er et transatlantisk fellesskap. Den må alltid være under utvikling. Men når Nato har forsøkt å strekke seg vidt og bredt, har det oftest gått galt.

Det bør alliansen lære av.”

Kai Eide. tidligere Nato-ambassadør , NRK 13 juni