Co-Chair European Council on Foreign Relations
@ecfr
. World Health Organization Special Envoy for ACT-Accelerator
@who
@ACTAccelerator
. På svenska på
@cbildt
.
Putin has obviously suppressed any memory of this, but these are the numbers for the Yes vote in the 1991 referendum in 🇺🇦 on independence. Every single region voted clearly for independence.
Incredible. Now Berlusconi 🇮🇹 defending his friend said that “Putin just wanted to replace the Zelensky government with a government of decent people.” This man is a disgrace.
All of us must now face the reality that we will not have peace in Europe until there is regime change in Russia. Then we should seek to welcome a new Russia as a partner for peace.
These are the scenes that the Kremlin 🇷🇺 did their utmost to prevent. It requires courage by citizens to go there and show their emotions - they are certain to have been recorded by the regime security service.
A 🇺🇦 soldier is now equipped with 🇸🇪-supplied AT4 light anti-tank weapon. 5.000 will be delivered, and if 20% of those score a hit at some point a thousand 🇷🇺 vehicles will be destroyed.
Now there is a publicity campaign in Moscow 🇷🇺 saying that 🇸🇪 is a country of Nazis. Are there any limits to these guys? Or are they preparing a ”denazifying” operation against 🇸🇪 as well? I think this will further solidify support for 🇸🇪 joining
@NATO
.
It’s indisputable that 🇷🇺 is using indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire against civilian targets in cities in 🇺🇦. These photos from the center of the country’s second largest city shows clearly what is happening.
Two SU27 fighters and two SU24 fighter-bombers from 🇷🇺 air force briefly violated 🇸🇪 airspace East of the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea today. They were intercepted by 🇸🇪 Gripen fighters.
Kherson 🇺🇦 right now - a picture Vladimir Putin said would never happen. It’s his third major defeat in this war - Kyiv, Kharkiv and now Kherson. At the end, he will lose the Kremlin as well.
In the one country after the other what was unthinkable yesterday becomes necessary today. 🇸🇪 now announces sending also 5.000 AT4 antitank weapons to 🇺🇦. That’s substantial. It’s an effective weapon highly regarded by also the US Army.
George Orwell couldn’t have done it better… This is Sergey Lavrov answering the question on whether 🇷🇺 will invade other countries: “Are we planning to attack other countries? No, we're not planning to. We didn't attack Ukraine."
I see that 🇷🇺 continues to demand demilitarization or severe limits on 🇺🇦 armed forces in the future. It’s not too difficult to understand what’s behind that demand. After one invasion will come another - that’s the pattern so far, and the one that must be stopped for the future.
In informal talks 🇷🇺 is rumored to ask for 🇺🇦 to reduce its army to a fifth. That’s resonable only if the 🇷🇺 army is reduced to less than a fifth of its previous size. Otherwise it’s just an effort by 🇷🇺 to prepare for its next wave of aggression and ought to be treated as such.
Words fail me that this loathsome man actually just compared the Ukrainian people's current quest for freedom to the UK voting for Brexit
Just when you thought he couldn't sink to new depths 👇
The 🇪🇺 Ambassador to 🇷🇺 lays flower at the small memorial in Moscow to those that died under repression. You will not see that reported in any 🇷🇺 media. The authorities are afraid.
Chilling. Prisoner transport vehicles lining up in Kherson 🇺🇦 after the city was captured by 🇷🇺 after several days of fighting. Darkness descends. An empire of evil has come.
The attack on 🇮🇱 tonight was of a magnitude that 🇺🇦 suffers on a fairly regular basis. Same drones. Similar missiles. Week after week. Month after month.
This guy - Matteo Salvini - has just contributed to bringing down the Draghi government in 🇮🇹, and now hopes that a new election will bring him to power. Corks are popping in the Kremlin.
Today 🇸🇪 announces that it will deliver a second batch of 5.000 anti-armor AT4 weapons to 🇺🇦. That makes for a total of 16.000 AT4 from 🇸🇪 and 🇺🇸 to help 🇺🇦 stop the aggression. I hope other 🇪🇺 countries are also prepared to step up deliveries.
There are many confusing discussions on conditions for 🇷🇺🇺🇦 peace. On neutrality it should be remembered that 🇺🇦 had neutrality in its constitution when 🇷🇺 invaded in 2014. And 🇷🇺 had guaranteed its territorial integrity in Budapest memorandum in 1994 as well as other documents.
Sergey Lavrov 🇷🇺 wasn’t allowed to the
@OSCE
ministerial meeting in 🇵🇱 and had to restrict himself to a live press conference in Moscow that seems to have attracted 13 viewers.
Bernie Sanders was lucky to be able to get to the Soviet Union in 1988 and praise all its stunning socialist achievements before the entire system and empire collapsed under the weight of its own spectacular failures.
I don’t think Putin 🇷🇺 gets many awards these days, and whether he’ll appreciate this one might of course be slightly doubtful. But there is little doubt that he fully deserves it.
As 🇮🇹 approaches its election it should not be forgotten that Silvio Berlusconi joined Vladimir Putin in visiting Crimea after it had been occupied and annexed by 🇷🇺, explicitly endorsing what 🇪🇺 has unanimously condemned.
The US President is now in open conflict with the US Congress, the US Federal Reserve, the US Secretary of Defense, China, the EU, the World Trade Organisation and a couple of others. Otherwise it’s OK.
I hear assessments here in DC that after two weeks up towards a quarter of 🇷🇺 military equipment in the 🇺🇦 invasion has been destroyed or disabled. I remember from my old military days that a military unit which has losses of a third is considered unusable.
The rule of the law applies to everyone equally and is exercised by an independent judiciary. That’s the way it is in the US, and that’s certainly the way it is in Sweden. Political interference in the process is distinctly off limits! Clear?
Very disappointed in Prime Minister Stefan Löfven for being unable to act. Sweden has let our African American Community down in the United States. I watched the tapes of A$AP Rocky, and he was being followed and harassed by troublemakers. Treat Americans fairly!
#FreeRocky
I remember how cold it was in Tallinn and Riga when the then Soviet Republics sought independence and Moscow cut the gas in order to force them back into the fold. Politically it back fired with a vengeance. People got every more determined. Today 🇱🇹 🇱🇻 🇪🇪 are free countries.
For the first time the 🇸🇪 Chief of Defense sits around the table when all the NATO military commanders meet - this time in nearby Tallinn 🇪🇪. Also 🇫🇮 makes its debut.
It’s really preposterous when 🇷🇺 tells 🇹🇷 that it had nothing to do with the missile attack against the Odessa port. Kalibr cruise missiles are sophisticated weapons launched from ships and submarines of the 🇷🇺 navy and from nowhere else.
It’s difficult to see this morning’s missile attack against residential areas of Kyiv 🇺🇦 as anything but a deliberate 🇷🇺 escalation and a signal to the G7 meeting in Elmau today.
A brutal honesty in this message from the 🇷🇺 Kremlin - 🇺🇦 should be erased from the map. A country that’s chairing the 🇺🇳 Security Council this month simply denies another country its right to exist. I think this is unique in the annals of international behavior in modern times.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev believes that no-one in the world needs Ukraine, therefore it will cease to exist, he said in his post on social media:
The
@navalny
protests in 🇷🇺 today are undoubtedly the largest since the Bolotnaya protests in 2011-2021. Numbers are difficult to compare, but these now seem to be far more spread all over the country. It’s no longer just Moscow.
With the arrest of Leonid Gozman I have to note that all my friends in the politics of 🇷🇺 in the pre-Putin years are now murdered, in prison or in exile - a brilliant generation that could have made 🇷🇺 a great, prosperous and respected country. It’s a tragedy in every sense.
Important lesson: my direct experience with the 🇷🇺🇺🇦 crisis of 2014 is that there is a distinct disconnect between the diplomacy of 🇷🇺 and what they actually do. Their diplomatic noise then had virtually no relation to what they really did on the ground.
This picture will enter the history books of this age of COVID-19. The Pope is blessing the world alone at a deserted St Peter’s Square in Rome yesterday evening.
In the morning news from back home I see that there is emerging a clear majority in the 🇸🇪 parliament for NATO membership when 🇫🇮 asks for the same. A solid security analysis is obviously needed, and modalities during the next few weeks remain to be sorted out. But that’s it.
This is the planned departures from Moscow SVO 🇷🇺 airport tomorrow. A city in deepening isolation. A tragedy for which one person is solely responsible.
This is the worst that’s been seen in 🇽🇰 for many years. Serb militants in northern 🇽🇰 attack Nato forces and wound eleven of them. The cycle of escalation must be broken quickly!
I hear that 🇷🇸 has invited 🇷🇺 FM Lavrov to visit Belgrade in the next few days. If President Vucic was to sink his prospects with the 🇪🇺 that’s of course a perfect move. It’s a move in direct contradiction to the 🇪🇺 accession process and should be treated as such.
Looking back we should recognize how important it was that 🇱🇹 🇱🇻 🇪🇪 were able to join NATO nearly two decades ago. If they today had been outside in some sort of grey zone, there would have been an imminent danger of them become part of a war zone. Now, NATO gives them security.
Putin’s language in his rambling TV speech today on “scums and traitors” and how to deal with them start to approach the language of the times of the purges of Stalin. This will not end well.
This is the first great crisis of the post-American world. The UN Security Council is nowhere to be seen, G20 is in the hands of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and the White House has trumpeted America First and Everyone Alone for years. Only the virus is globalized.
“Europe must wake up. We do not need investments in military production solely to provide necessary assistance. It is needed as a means to convince that Europe is strong. Strong not to wage wars but to secure peace.” 🇫🇮
@niinisto
Giving speeches in Brussels 🇪🇺 on “strategic autonomy” and “global role”is one thing, but when it really matters for the security of Europe it’s the 🇺🇸 that steps in. Embarrassing.
There are many reasons to remember the 🇷🇺 shooting down of MH17. One is the total refusal of 🇷🇺 to accept obvious facts and its practice of massive disinformation efforts to avoid responsibility. That’s a pattern we see repeated day by day in its aggression against 🇺🇦 today.
News reports speak of 🇷🇺 firing up to 60.000 artillery rounds and rockets against 🇺🇦 forces every day. And 🇺🇦 urgently needs ammunition resupply to be able to fire back.