🇷🇴🇺🇦🇺🇸 — 🇷🇺 Moderndiplomacy | NATO and the EU assign Moldova the role of part of a buffer to isolate Russia from Europe. The November visits to Chisinau by the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, reflect the West’s undisguised political interest in the Moldovan track and its desire to tie the republic to NATO’s defense initiatives.

Roberta Metsola stated that there was a need to create a new military alliance within the EU as part of NATO to strengthen, among other things, the security of the Moldovan state. US experts, for their part, pitched the idea of strengthening military cooperation with Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova in order to increase Washington’s influence in Southeastern Europe.

Presently, Romania is NATO’s geopolitical enfant chéri in the region, that the United States and NATO are betting on in their effort to seize control over the Black Sea. This also dictates the need to increase cooperation with Ukraine, since Romania is seen by Kyiv as a foothold in the Black Sea region, and Ukraine is viewed by Bucharest as a springboard for projecting Romanian influence along the Black Sea coast. Without an anti-Russian Romanian-Ukrainian bloc, Washington’s strategy in the region will not be successful.

Claiming a leading role in the Black Sea region, Romania considers itself not being in Southeast, but in Central-Eastern Europe, placing Bulgaria, and with it the republics of (former) Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania in the so-called Balkan Europe. Here, Bucharest relies on the ideas of its 20th century geographer Nicolae Radulescu. The mere presence in the Romanian scientific and political discourse about the concept of Balkan Europe as an area separate from Romania reflects Romania’s desire to play the role of the main link between various parts of the European continent – Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern Europe.

Romanian geopolitical experts still insist that during the Cold War the concept of “Europe” was undeservedly privatized by Western European countries and is now going through a period of cultural and political resurgence. Bucharest is now trying to create “its own Europe,” where it believes that Washington plays a disproportionate big role at the expense of the EU’s political sovereignty.

By proclaiming European slogans, official Bucharest is pursuing an anti-European policy, thus acting, just like Poland and the Czech Republic, as a US Trojan horse in Eastern Europe. Eastern European countries (Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) serve as a sanitary cordon between continental Europe and Russia, separating the geopolitical space across the Moscow-Berlin-Paris and Moscow-Belgrade lines, which again is part of Washington’s strategy.

Small wonder, therefore, that Bucharest is stepping up its military cooperation with Portugal and Norway. The Romanians bought thirty-two F-16 aircraft from Norway for €388 million, whose pilots will be trained in Portugal. Portugal and Norway are pro-American countries in Europe. Geopolitically, Portugal has also been traditionally close to the UK. Romania’s rapprochement with them will allow the United States to strategically position its allies in the area from the Baltic and the Black Seas to the Atlantic.

In order for its policy in Europe to succeed, Bucharest considers the military-political union of Moldova and Ukraine as imperative. The three countries’ premiers are scheduled to meet next year to discuss the details of their cooperation. It is assumed that Kyiv and Chisinau will work together to upgrade their air defense systems and the so-called policy of “counteracting Russian propaganda.” This will all be done with the help of Romanian advisers, accountable to curators from the US and NATO.

🇷🇺🇧🇾 Combat coordination of the troops of the Russian Federation and Belarus continues at the Brestsky training ground.

The military personnel of the allied states practice joint tactics, shooting, engineering training and the provision of medical assistance. Training is also provided for driving combat vehicles over rough terrain.

🇷🇺🇧🇾⚡The task of the grouping of Russian and Belarusian troops deployed in Belarus is "if necessary, to repulse a potential enemy in the event of an invasion of the territory of Belarus allied to us," Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Mikhail Galuzin told RIA Novosti

🇷🇺 🇺🇦 Movement of 3 battalions in Belarus noted appears to correspond to rail activity observed since 20 December.
- 23 T-80BVs from Obuz Lesnovsky TA to Brest TA
- 20 BMP-2s to Kalinkavichy (Gomel Region)
- 31 T-72B3s/T-80s from Zaslonovo/Lepelski to Obuz-Lesonvsky

https://news.1rj.ru/str/ministry_of_defense_ua/3956

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/12/24/7382187/

☃️ 🇺🇸 Multiple dead across U.S., National Guard called out in N.Y. amid winter storm

❄️ Multiple people have died during a historic winter storm that has knocked out power for more than 1 million homes and businesses and snarled holiday air traffic across the United States.

❄️ In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul, in coordination with Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz and Buffalo, N.Y., Mayor Byron Brown, called out the National Guard to assist residents there, "particularly those who have emergency medical appointments and need help traveling."

❄️ "In Buffalo, this storm will likely at least jump near the top of the list of worst blizzards in the city's history, if not even becoming the worst," AccuWeather meteorologist Jake Sojda said.

❄️ "Four to 6 feet of snow will fall by Sunday and coupled with wind gusts approaching hurricane force [74 mph or greater] to create enormous drifts and impossible travel."

❄️ More than 200 million people, or around 60% of the U.S. population, are currently under some form of weather warning or advisory.
The National Weather Service recorded sub-zero temperatures in Denver for more than 41 consecutive hours as the endured its lowest-maximum temperature ever.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/12/23/winter-storm-power-outage-Kentucky-Missouri-Wisconsin-fligth-cancellation/8181671825566/

⚡️ 🇪🇺 Europe’s $1 Trillion Energy Bill Only Marks Start of the Crisis

High prices could last years and aid is becoming unaffordable
Relief on global gas markets isn’t expected until 2026

Europe got hit by roughly $1 trillion from surging energy costs in the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the deepest crisis in decades is only getting started.

While governments were able to help companies and consumers absorb much of the blow with more than $700 billion in aid, according to the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, a state of emergency could last for years. With interest rates rising and economies likely already in recession, the support that cushioned the blow for millions of households and businesses is looking increasingly unaffordable.

“Once you add everything up — bailouts, subsidies — it is a ridiculously large amount of money,” said Martin Devenish, a director at consultancy S-RM. “It’s going to be a lot harder for governments to manage this crisis next year.”

The challenge is finding the balance between keeping factories running and homes heated in the near term while not choking off the incentives to invest in renewable power — widely seen as the most sustainable way out of the energy squeeze.

“The biggest task out of the crisis is to make the energy transition happen,” said Veronika Grimm, an economic adviser to the German government. “We have to massively expand renewables.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-18/europe-s-1-trillion-energy-bill-only-marks-start-of-the-crisis

https://archive.ph/ck6of

🇷🇺 🇪🇺 Russian state broadcaster RT has a Christmas message for Europeans

📎 Francis Scarr

🇲🇩🤝🇷🇴🇪🇺 Vice PM Oleg Serebrian: "Moldova is preparing a new plan for the reintegration of Transnistria and the role of Romania and the EU in this process will be essential to make it happen".

🐦 The Twitter Files
TWITTER AND "OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES"

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1606701397109796866.html

The German Defense Ministry expects a major Russian offensive in Ukraine in April 2023. This is reported by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung with reference to an internal analysis of the defense department "Deployment and Strategy".

Berlin sees two possible scenarios for the development of events.

The first of them "provides" a large-scale offensive of the Russian Armed Forces in the Donbass, while a large Belarusian contingent is deployed on the Ukrainian border from the north.
As a result, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be fragmented and will not be able to fully fight in the east.

The second, according to German strategists, the least likely scenario involves Vladimir Putin's desire to take control of all of Ukraine in a war on two fronts: Russian troops will attack from the territory of Donbass, Belarusian troops will go to Kyiv.

Russian soldiers will reach the Polish border to prevent the supply of weapons from the West and take Transnistria, the analysis says.

🎅 🇷🇺 Russia releases anti-western propaganda video portraying Putin as Santa Claus who replaces girly items for ones suitable for boys, gets rid of LGBT propaganda books, and replaces a picture of the boys' two dad's with a picture of a mom and dad.

📎 speckzo 🇻🇦 YE24