I updated Ukrainian President @ZelenskyyUA today on our engagements with Russia last week and stressed there will be nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine. I applaud Ukraine's commitment to a peaceful resolution and urge Russia to pursue diplomacy as the only way forward. pic.twitter.com/A0cNX7k23m

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) January 19, 2022

A carefully worded statement from Blinken ...

Had some harsh words for the government of Ukraine to end corruption and improve judiciary. Ukrainians need to stick together, unify the nation in their shared national interest.

Ukraine is in the center of two weeks of talks ... nothing is done without your government all Ukrainians should place trust in a political way forward.

Russia tries to divide, place a financial burden on Ukraine. Blinken spoke about a path forward with the Bucharest Nine and talks in Normandy format Germany and France.

The Bucharest Nine (B9) was established on Poland's and Romania's initiative. It comprises countries on NATO eastern border - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania Slovakia and Hungary.

* Rumsfeld called the group New Europe

From my earlier diary ...

Blinken In Kyiv, Hotspot Ukraine

'Sapere aude'

Maybe it's about the NATO that bombed Yugoslavia (without provocation), Libya (without provocation) or Afghanistan (you get the point by now...).
Maybe it's about the NATO that has sanctioned the crap out of Russia, mostly with imaginary pretexts.
Maybe it's about NATO leader unilaterally pulling out of every possible treaty meant to keep the peace, while positioning it's arms closer and closer to Russia.
Maybe it's about NATO that pours weapons, trainers and special forces to a country that claims to be at war with Russia.
Maybe it's about NATO that cheers when Ukraine bans Russian language from public places or closes Russian language media or arrests politicians who are not hell bent to have a war with Russia.
You tell me.

In any case it's not Putin, it's the great majority of the Russians. Heck, even Yeltsin (when he was sober enough) complained about NATO enough to piss Clinton off totally, and he was probably the most West's-ass-licking Russian politician ever (including Navalny).

Russians are not asking Germany to do anything. They know Washington calls the shots in NATO (and thus pretty much in the EU [and thus pretty much in the OCSE]). Germany can't decide to remove the cruise missiles from Poland or Romania. Germany can't stop the USAF from flying to Russian borders "to send a message". Germany won't even tell the US to cut it out to de-escalate before we get WW3.

Thus Germany is meaningless, just like the rest of Europe, until we can figure out our own security policy, one that is not run from Washington and has Russia as a part of it. And that can't happen while NATO exists. Which is weird, since NATO is not aggressive, I'm told - it just can't create neither peace nor security. For some reason.