Biden wasn’t initially sold on sending the tanks, despite pressure to do so to give cover to Germany to send Ukraine some Leopard 2 tanks, the officials said. He warmed to the idea after Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented him with potential solutions to an issue that was very publicly exposing divisions within the U.S.-European alliance, the officials said.
When Vietnam hosted this month its first-ever International Defense Expo at a military airstrip in Hanoi, the event signaled a quiet but evolving shift in the communist nation’s defense policy.
Military arms are displayed at the Vietnam International Defence Expo 2022, in Hanoi, Vietnam, December 8, 2022. REUTERS/Khanh Vu
HANOI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – U.S. and Russian defence firms on Thursday displayed weapons and promoted models of aircraft at Vietnam’s first large-scale arms fair, as the two powers vie for influence and arms sales in the strategic Southeast Asian country that borders China.
The event at a Hanoi airbase attracted 174 exhibitors from 30 countries, including all large arms-making nations except China.
nikkei – Murky origins plague furniture sector coming down from COVID-fueled buying spree
A company displays lumber in Vietnam, whose wood products industry is grappling with risks ranging from the Ukraine war to fake forest certificates and U.S. trade probes. (Photo by Lien Hoang)
HO CHI MINH CITY — Reputational risks are piling up for a Vietnamese lumber industry already beset by a falloff in demand from the heights of the pandemic.
One of the world’s biggest wood and furniture exporters, Vietnam enjoyed a surge in orders when overseas buyers spent COVID lockdowns renovating their home offices and kitchens.
But the Southeast Asian country faces accusations of importing Chinese goods for re-export with “Made in Vietnam” labels since the onset of the China-U.S. tariff war in 2018. Now an actual war in Ukraine is stoking concern that sanctioned products from Russia may be routed through Vietnam, which maintains a neutral stance on the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow, as it does with Beijing and Washington. A third concern, about logging of fuel wood, has added to the pressure.
Plywood allegedly made from Russian birch is being loaded on a ship in Haiphong, Vietnam, for export to the United States in May 2022. (Obtained by Environmental Investigation Agency)
October 1, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EDT
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Russian birch wood has continued to flow to American consumers, disguised as Asian products, despite U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, a new report says.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a nonprofit watchdog group based in Britain, has found that most birch products currently being exported from Vietnam to the United States originate in Russia. According to Vietnam customs data, roughly 40,000 cubic meters of birch wood is transported every month from Russia andChina into Vietnam, where it’s assembled into furniture and plywood.
YOHEI MURAMATSU and TOMOYA ONISHI, Nikkei staff writers
September 6, 2022 04:22 JST
BANGKOK/HANOI — From wooing more Russian tourists to boosting trade, Southeast Asian nations are bolstering economic ties with Russia in hopes of curbing inflation and spurring their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. and European countries have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. But these efforts could be hindered by emerging nations as they prioritize addressing their own economic headwinds.
Days after U.S. President Joe Biden made his tour of the Middle East, the leaders of Iran, Russia, and Turkey meet in Tehran for a three-way summit.
Raisi and Putin are trying to talk Turkey out of war. With Russia engaged in Ukraine, Turkey is planning its own “special military operation”—this time against the Kurds in Syria’s north.
The United States is principally responsible for creating the crisis in Ukraine, according to University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer, and it has no current interest in reaching a negotiated settlement now.
Mearsheimer sees US sanctions against Moscow as an attempt to knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers.
The way he sees it, the US has declared war against Russia, in effect, but the Ukrainian people are doing the fighting.
Join host Steve Clemons for this wide-ranging conversation about how both sides consider themselves locked in an existential threat, with no way out.
TTCT – Để hiểu được cuộc xung đột ở Ukraine hiện tại, không thể không nhìn lại một lịch sử rất dài, ít ra là từ những ngày ngay sau cuộc chiến lớn gần nhất ở châu Âu.
Việc mở rộng NATO là một trong những vướng mắc lớn nhất của quan hệ Nga – Mỹ suốt thời gian ông Putin cầm quyền, trải 5 đời tổng thống Mỹ. Ảnh: The New York Times
Ngày 5-3-1946, trong bài phát biểu tại Đại học Westminster, bang Missouri, Mỹ, Thủ tướng Anh Winston Churchill, người kiên định sự nghi kỵ không giới hạn với nhà lãnh đạo Liên Xô Joseph Stalin (ngược lại cũng thế), tuyên bố: “Từ Stettin ở Baltic tới Trieste ở Adriatic, một bức màn sắt đã buông xuống trên khắp lục địa”.
NEW YORK — Welcome to Nikkei Asia’s podcast: Asia Stream.
Every week, Asia Stream tracks and analyzes the Indo-Pacific with a mix of interviews and original reporting by our correspondents from across the globe.
Russian troops seize Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, after attack sparks fire.
Published On 4 Mar 20224 Mar 2022
Russian forces have captured Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, according to regional officials.
Ukrainian authorities said on Friday Russian shelling had caused a fire at a building in the plant complex that was later put out. The blaze raised alarm from leaders worldwide of a potential massive disaster. Russia blamed the attack on Ukrainian saboteurs, calling it a “monstrous provocation”.
Here is what we know so far:
Where is it located?
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located in the southern Ukraine steppe on the Dnieper River, some 550 kilometres (342 miles) southeast of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and about 525km (325 miles) south of Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident in 1986, which has also now been seized by Russian forces.
The plant has a total capacity of about 6,000 megawatts, enough to power about roughly four million homes.
On Wednesday, residents carrying Ukrainian flags had blocked the road to the plant, in an apparent standoff with Russian forces.
What happened?
But on Friday Russian troops were accused of attacking the plant, in an assault Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy branded “nuclear terror” and said could endanger the continent.
A video feed from the plant showed shelling and smoke rising near a building at the plant compound.
It is the first time in 40 years the security council has referred a crisis to the assembly and only the 11th time an emergency session of the UN general assembly has been called since 1950.
The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly for a resolution deploring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for the immediate withdrawal of its forces, in a global expression of outrage that highlighted Russia’s increasing isolation.
In an emergency session of the UN’s general assembly, 141 of the 193 member states voted for the resolution, 35 abstained, and five voted against. The only countries to vote no in support of Moscow were Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria. Longstanding allies Cuba and Nicaragua joined China in abstaining.
The resolution said the UN “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine”. It demanded that “the Russian Federation immediately cease its use of force against Ukraine” and “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces”.
The resolution is not legally binding, but is an expression of the views of the UN membership, aimed at increasing pressure on Moscow and its ally, Belarus.
“It isn’t going to stop Russian forces in their stride, but it’s a pretty enormous diplomatic win for the Ukrainians and the US, and everyone who has got behind them,” Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group, said.
Speaking before the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, compared the Russian invasion to the Nazi conquest of Europe.
“A few of the eldest Ukrainians and Russians might recall a moment like this, a moment when one aggressive European nation invaded another without provocation to claim the territory of its neighbour, a moment when a European dictator declared he would return his empire to its former glory and invasion that caused a war so horrific, that it spurred this organization into existence,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
JANUARY 19, 2022, 5:49 AM
The situation in Ukraine is bad and getting worse. Russia is poised to invade and demanding airtight guarantees that NATO will never, ever expand farther to the east. Negotiations do not appear to be succeeding, and the United States and its NATO allies are beginning to contemplate how they will make Russia pay should it press forward with an invasion. A real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens.
SH – Rút quân khỏi Iraq tiếp sau Afghanistan, Washington đang điều chỉnh lại chiến lược toàn cầu, tập trung đối đầu với Trung Quốc và Nga.
Ngày 27/7/2021, tại Washington, Tổng thống Mỹ Joe Biden và Thủ tướng Iraq Mustafa Al-Kadhimi đã ký Thỏa thuận về việc chấm dứt nhiệm vụ chiến đấu của quân đội Mỹ tại Iraq vào cuối năm nay.
CVD 