🇵🇱/🇧🇾 Poland aims to fully fortify border with Belarus by mid-2025, senior official says

Poland plans to complete its fortified border wall and close the border with Belarus by next summer, aiming to curb what it sees as Russia's and Belarus's "hybrid war" through illegal migration, Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk told the Financial Times on Dec. 29.

Additional reinforcements along the 400-kilometer (250 miles) eastern border include installing night vision cameras, thermal imagers, and a new patrol road, as well as strengthening the five-meter steel fence built in 2022.

https://kyivindependent.com/poland-to-fortify-border-with-belarus-by-mid-2025/

🇪🇺 End of Ukrainian gas transit signals new energy woes for Europe

In latest act of economic self-sabotage, EU green-lights Ukraine's decision to shut down one of the last remaining Russian gas routes to Europe

Despite the war in Ukraine, over the past three years Russian gas has continued to flow to Europe — mainly to Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Italy — through a pipeline via Ukraine.

Even though the share of Ukrainian transit in EU gas imports has significantly declined compared to pre-war levels, it still made up 5 percent of EU gas imports in 2024 — out of approximately 20 percent of gas still imported from Russia (including both pipeline imports and liquified natural gas (LNG) imports).

Alongside TurkStream — which carries gas across the Black Sea to Turkey and on to Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary — Ukraine remains the only active pipeline through which Russian gas continues to arrive in the EU. Other routes to Europe have been shut down.

However, the contract governing the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine is set to expire today (December 31) — and Ukraine doesn’t intend to renew it. This means that, as of tomorrow, Europe will no longer be receiving gas through Ukraine. The consequences could be dear. The countries most affected will obviously be the direct recipients of the Ukrainian transit route gas, especially Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Italy.

The stopping of Ukrainian transit will not pose an immediate supply security risk to these countries: though the capacity of alternative pipeline routes —TurkStream, Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary — to replace the Ukrainian transit is limited, storage levels in the EU remain high and alternative supply sources exist, mainly in the form of shipped LNG.

However, the latter is significantly more expensive than pipeline gas: whereby pipeline imports are governed by long-term contracts, LNG prices are tied to global spot markets, which tend to be significantly higher, not to mention much more volatile, as they are subject to global competition as well as financial speculation, which can drive prices higher during disruptions (e.g., geopolitical conflicts, supply reductions, etc.).

The significantly higher price of LNG — especially that imported from the US — compared to Russian pipeline gas has severely impacted both European households and businesses. Indeed, the Draghi report highlighted high energy costs as one of the main reasons for the EU’s loss of competitiveness.

The report emphasises that European companies face significantly higher energy costs compared to their US counterparts: energy prices remain “2-3 times higher” for electricity and “4-5 times higher” for natural gas. These high costs have pushed large parts of Western Europe — first and foremost Germany — into recession and even outright deindustrialisation, and continue to seriously hinder industrial growth and investment.

In this context, the shutdown of the Ukrainian transit route is likely to make a bad situation worse. Even though the European Commission claims that the end of gas flows through Ukraine will have a “negligible” impact on European gas prices, the reality is that European spot prices, as determined in the TTF virtual trading hub, have shown a high sensitivity to the Ukraine transit route.

More importantly, it is a reminder of the utterly suicidal policies that the EU has implemented in its attempt to wage a self-defeating economic war against Russia, alongside its equally unsuccessful military proxy efforts — both of which run counter to the EU’s core economic and security interests. The EU’s refusal to challenge Ukraine on the shutdown of the pipeline — all while sending tens of billions to the country — is simple the latest example of how EU policy undermines the fundamental interests of its member states.

Indeed, the only real beneficiary of Ukraine’s decision to shut down the pipeline will be, once more, the US, which will be presented with yet another opportunity to deepen the bloc’s reliance on its own LNG exports.

🌍 Africa is currently facing more conflicts than at any time since 1946, according to data from Uppsala University and Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo. In 2024, the institutes recorded 28 state-based conflicts across 16 of Africa’s 54 countries—more than any other region and twice as many as 15 years ago. This conflict zone spans roughly 4,000 miles, covering 10% of sub-Saharan Africa’s land mass, an area that has doubled in just three years.

https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/africa-has-entered-a-new-era-of-war-c6171d8e

https://archive.ph/QpZu0

📎 Franz-Stefan Gady

🇨🇮❌🇫🇷❗️ — Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara announces the withdrawal of French armed forces from Côte d'Ivoire, starting in January.

➡️ Their camp in Port Bouet will be handed over to the Ivorian army.

🇨🇳🎉📹 — President Xi Jinping in his New Year address pledged to pursuit World Peace and help to promote stability and financial growth during the speech

“No matter how the international situation changes, China will remain steadfast in further comprehensively deepening reform … and promoting world peace and development,”

➡️Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed that No one can stop China's "reunification" with Taiwan, laying down a clear warning to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in RoC, which Beijing regards as pro-independence forces within and outside of the island of 23 million people.

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of Macao's return to the motherland, I visited the city again, and I was gratified to see the new progress and changes there. We will unswervingly implement the policy of One Country, Two Systems to maintain long-term prosperity and stability in Hong Kong and Macao. We Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same family. No one can ever sever the bond of kinship between us, and no one can ever stop China's reunification, a trend of the times.

🔗 Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 (@zhao_dashuai)

🇷🇺❌🇺🇦 — Russian military raised the national flag over the Kurakhovskaya/Kurakhove thermal power plant, one of the main defense points of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the city, in one of the last territory captures of 2024 AD.

🇷🇺❌🇪🇺❗️ — TASS reports that At 08:00 Moscow time, Gazprom stopped gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine in connection with the completion of the transit agreement, the holding company reported.

➡️ Gazprom is deprived of the technical and legal ability to supply gas for transit through Ukraine after the Ukrainian Government suspended the Treaty for Pan-European Gas Transit in Ukrainian territory from Russian Federation to European Union

https://news.1rj.ru/str/tass_agency/294256

🇪🇺 Europe Faces Coldest Winter Spell As Gas Supply Concerns Mount

Northwest Europe is bracing itself for what is expected to be later this week the coldest snap so far this winter, hours ahead of the expiry of the deal for Russian gas transit via Ukraine to central Europe.

Temperatures in the UK, France, and Germany are expected to plunge at the end of this week, which would raise gas demand for heating and electricity generation.

This happens as Europe is burning through its natural gas in storage at the fastest pace in years.

As of December 28, the natural gas storage sites across the EU were full at 73.5% on average, according to the latest data from Gas Infrastructure Europe. The UK, which is no longer part of the EU, had its storage sites at 56.5% full.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europe-Faces-Coldest-Winter-Spell-As-Gas-Supply-Concerns-Mount.amp.html

🏴🏴❌🇺🇸⁉️ — On the back of the Ford F-150 Lightning truck used by the man in an apparent terrorist attack, a black flag - rolled up by local police officers - can be seen, very similar to the flag used by the Salafist terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS)

🏴🏴❌🇺🇸 — Daily Mail reports that US FBI is probing on whether New Orleans militant was linked to ISIS or not

➡️ On social media, the corpse of the militant can be seen scattered on the streets of New Orleans after he was killed by the local Police department with his dead body craved with bullets