🏳🛬🇧🇾 — 📰 The New York Times | A Quick, Quiet Trip to Belarus Signals a Turn in U.S. Policy | After years of the U.S. trying to isolate Russia’s closest ally, a meeting with Belarus’s president points to better relations, raising hopes of loosening his repression and his embrace of Moscow | February 15, 2025:

"The senior American diplomat slipped quietly into Belarus, a police state run by a strongman reviled for decades in the West, traveling by car across the border for meetings with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and the head of his KGB security apparatus.

It was Mr. Lukashenko’s first meeting with a senior State Department official in five years, and the start of what could be a highly consequential thawing of frozen relations between the United States and Russia’s closest ally.

The below-the-radar American visit to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, on Wednesday came just a day after President Trump had a long telephone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Both events signaled Washington’s departure from a yearslong policy of trying to isolate leaders out of favor in the West because of their repressive policies and the war in Ukraine.

(...)

The next step, Mr. Smith told a gathering of Western diplomats on Thursday in Vilnius, according to people who attended, is a possible grand bargain under which Mr. Lukashenko would release a slew of political prisoners, including prominent ones. In return, the United States would relax sanctions on Belarusian banks and exports of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, of which Belarus is a major producer.

(...)

Belarus, which usually gloats over any sign that it is breaking out of its isolation, has also been mostly silent, though an anchor on state television, Igor Tur, introduced a note of mystery, suggesting that Mr. Smith was not the real leader of the American delegation and that a more senior official also took part."

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🇺🇸💬🇺🇦🤝🪖 — 📰 Reuters | NATO membership for Ukraine not off the table, US official says | February 13, 2025:

"MUNICH, Feb 13 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official on Thursday said the United States had not ruled out potential NATO membership for Ukraine or a negotiated return to its pre-2014 borders, contradicting comments made this week by the U.S. defense secretary ahead of possible peace talks to end the Ukraine war.

"Right now, that is still on the table," said John Coale, President Donald Trump's deputy Ukraine envoy, when asked whether the U.S. had ruled out possible NATO membership for Ukraine. Speaking in an interview with Reuters in Munich, he added that a possible return to Ukraine's pre-2014 lines was also still on the table.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a different message, telling Ukraine's military allies in Brussels that a return to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and that the U.S. does not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the nearly three-year-old Ukraine war. His comments sparked concern that the U.S. had made concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin even before the start of talks."

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🇺🇸❗️🇪🇺— 🇬🇧 Financial Times | Vance’s real warning to Europe | Europeans need to reduce their dangerous dependence on an adversarial America | February 17, 2025:

"When JD Vance took the stage at the Munich Security Conference last week, he issued a stern warning. The US vice-president told the assembled politicians and diplomats that free speech and democracy are under attack from European elites: “The threat I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s . . . the threat from within.

(...)

Trump clearly intends to cut a deal on Ukraine with Putin over the heads of Zelenskyy and the Europeans. That could have tragic consequences for Ukraine, which may soon be asked to accept loss of territory without security guarantees for the future. The alternative would be to try to fight on without American help.

The implications for the rest of Europe are also alarming. Putin wants Nato troops removed from the whole of the former Soviet empire. European officials believe Trump is likely to agree to withdraw US troops from the Baltics and perhaps further west, leaving the EU vulnerable to a Russian army that Nato governments warn is preparing for a larger conflict beyond Ukraine."

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📰🥴🗯🗣 — - #VÆ: Remember, most of all theses so-called "journals" are just liberal-green-globohomo mouthpieces crying out loud because of Trump's team cold water on their globalist agenda, like in this quoted piece, in which they're just guessing what negative outcomes could happen — and, without our watch, will be took as 100% true for sure with no reliable base on any actual fact.

👤🛬🇹🇷 — 🇺🇦 President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky:

"Official visit with the First Lady to Turkey. Meetings with President Erdogan and First Lady Emine Erdogan.

Exchange issues: all efforts to bring our people home will continue. Food security issues. The First Lady's educational and cultural diplomacy.
Welcome to Turkey!"

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February so far in Europe:

🇳🇱 Moroccan stabs an 11-year-old girl to death in the Netherlands

🇧🇪 Three separate AK-47 shootings near the same subway station in Brussels

🇮🇪 Brazillian migrant stabs three strangers at their doors in Dublin

🇩🇪 Afghan asylum seeker drives a car through a crowd in Munich, killing a 2-year-old girl and her mother

🇫🇷 12 people injured by a grenade thrown into a bar in Grenoble

🇬🇷 2 stabbed by Palestinian asylum-seekers in Athens

🇮🇪 African stabs a man to death in the center of Dublin

🇦🇹 Syrian asylum seeker stabs a 14-year-old to death and injures five others in a terror attack in Austria

We can't go on living like this. Nothing but mass-remigration will save Europe.

🔗 Keith Woods

🇷🇺🇪🇺 Russia says no point in inviting Europeans to Ukraine talks

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he saw no reason for Europeans to take part in Ukraine truce talks, accusing them of wanting to “continue war” in Ukraine.

Lavrov’s comments came ahead of his visit to Saudi Arabia to meet US officials and as European leaders convene in Paris for an emergency summit on Ukraine, amid alarm at Washington’s diplomatic outreach to Moscow.

https://insiderpaper.com/russia-says-no-point-in-inviting-europeans-to-ukraine-talks/

🇺🇸🇷🇺The negotiations between Russian and U.S. delegations have begun in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

🔗 Clash Report

🇩🇪🇺🇦🇬🇧Germany to reject Starmer’s plan for troops in Ukraine as Europe splits over peace deal

Germany is likely to reject Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to deploy a European peacekeeping force to Ukraine, throwing the proposals into disarray.

As European leaders prepared to meet on Monday afternoon in Paris, a split emerged. The UK and France were set to propose sending soldiers to Kyiv, with Germany and Poland more likely to not participate. Other countries, including Italy and Norway, are so far undecided.

On Sunday, the Prime Minister announced that he was “ready and willing” to put British boots on the ground to enforce any peace deal.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/02/17/germany-reject-starmer-plan-troops-ukraine-russia-war-trump/

🧑‍💻New junior developers can't actually code.

Fantastic blog where the author argues that AI is preventing devs from understanding anything

Unlike the internet which only replaced fact lookups but adds explanations, AI replaces all reasoning.

https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-and-learning

🔗 Deedy

💰📈🔌🔋🇦🇷🇧🇷🇺🇾Tether plans to acquire a 51% stake in South American energy firm Adecoagro in a deal worth $1.24 billion.

Tether plans to acquire a majority stake in South American agribusiness firm Adecoagro, expanding its investments amid record profits and growing financial influence.

Tether, the issuer of the USDt stablecoin, is seeking to expand its investment portfolio by acquiring a majority stake in South American firm Adecoagro.

Adecoagro, an agro-industrial company operating in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, received an “unsolicited non-binding proposal” from Tether’s venture division, Tether Investments, to purchase a majority stake in the firm, according to an announcement on Feb. 18.

As part of the deal, Tether would acquire outstanding common Adecoagro shares at $12.41 each.

The stablecoin issuer is already a shareholder of Adecoagro, holding about 19.4% of its outstanding shares, the announcement noted.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-plans-majority-stake-acquisition-adecoagro

@FelipeChannel