Any peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine will only last if Moscow makes real concessions, including limiting the size of its armed forces and curbing its growing military budget, the EU’s top diplomat has said.
In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera published on Friday, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, warned that without meaningful concessions from Moscow, Europe risks facing new conflicts elsewhere.
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The problem for peace is Russia,” Kallas said, adding: “Even if Ukraine received security guarantees, without concessions from the Russian side, we would have other wars, perhaps not in Ukraine but elsewhere.”
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Kallas said that Kyiv and its allies “certainly welcome the momentum toward peace that the U.S. administration is showing,” but cautioned that Russia lacks a “genuine will for peace.”
“It [Russia] is constantly bombing Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she told Corriere della Sera, stressing that “first we need to see a ceasefire.”
She said that in order to achieve sustainable peace, it is necessary to ensure that “Russia does not attack again”, adding that this requires clear concessions from Moscow.
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"We need concessions from Russia, whether that means limiting its army or restraining its military budget,” said Kallas, who served as Estonia’s prime minister from 2016 to 2021.
Moscow has significantly increased its military budget in recent years, diverting vast resources toward the defense industry to sustain its war in Ukraine.
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China has said that they cannot afford Russia to lose. It must mean that they don’t want to have potentially Western oriented republics on their land border.
This demand makes sure that China will fully back Russia.
I think a more material iterpretation is they can’t afford the loss of resource supply Russia provides them in the face of military threat from the US. Western oriented republics is an unlikely scenario to follow a power vaccuum left by a Russian power withrawal. Instead it’s more likely that local oligarchies take power. Conflicts could break out too. All that is a more challenging environment for keeping the resources flowing into China, especially during an armed confrontation that’s cut off supplies by sea.
Soviet union split up, the Russian Federation can too. It won’t make much difference on the Chinese borders. Mongolia and Kazakhstan is by far the greatest border, and none of them are in the Russian Federation.
But Mongolia is landlocked and the Russian part is much closer to the important cities. My assumption is that it would make defending China much more difficult,
Defend from what exactly?
A systemic rival.