Monthly Archives: July 2018

Russia/China Owning the Arctic, U.S., Allies Behind

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Hat tip to Senator Sullivan of Alaska for recognizing the mission and threat of Russia that he brought legislative attention to Russia’s military activity in the Arctic. As a side note, this activity is not without China participating with Russia. As noted below from the NDAA 2019:

Icebreakers and Arctic Policy:

Senator Sullivan included a number of provisions in the FY2019 NDAA to advance U.S. interests in the Arctic region, including the authorization of 6 Heavy Polar-class Icebreakers for the Coast Guard and a requirement that each military service – the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps – produce their own strategy for the Artic region. The NDAA also includes language to urge the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State to examine the implications of Russian military activity in the Arctic as it related to U.S. military force posture in the region.

“Two authoritarian states with very concerning track records have pushed all-in on the Arctic,” said Senator Sullivan. “While China and Russia seem to recognize the Arctic’s economic, resource, and strategic importance, unfortunately, the U.S. has been late to see it. Thankfully, that does not include my colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee and, during the markup, we voted to authorize six U.S. Coast Guard Icebreakers and require each U.S. military service to complete their own individual Arctic Strategy. Slowly but surely, we’re finally beginning to wake up to the Arctic’s growing geopolitical significance.”

This advances to the point of what is going on in the Arctic. A big railroad system. Could it be that President Trump’s announcement with the EU for the United States to sell LNG to Europe is an energy coup against China and Russia?

Russia eyes new Arctic shipping route for trade with China

Related reading: What’s behind China’s decision to invest in a Russian LNG project above the Arctic circle?

China Wants To Build a Rail Line to USA - Supply Chain 24/7

RUSSIAN Railways (RZD) and Gazprom signed an agreement on March 30 to jointly finance the construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway (NLR) in western Siberia.

The agreement was signed by the president of RZD, Mr Oleg Belozerov and the chairman of the board of Gazprom, Mr Alexey Miller. The line runs from Obskaya to Korotchaevo, stopping at Salekhard, Nadym, Pangody and Novy Urengoy.

The line will reduce the journey time to ports in the northwest and facilitate improved freight transport from the northern regions of western Siberia, carrying an estimated 23.9 million tonnes of predominately gas condensate and oil per year.

The project will be funded through a private investors under a concession scheme. RZD, Gazprom and Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the main participants, will upgrade the existing infrastructure while the new facilities will be built by SPC-Concessionaire, a subsidiary of RZD.

SPC-Concessionaire will finance, build and operate the Obskaya – Salekhard – Nadym line, with a particular focus on the bridge across the Ob River, the bridge across the Nadym River, and the new 353km Salekhard – Nadym section.

RZD will reconstruct the adjacent Konosh – Kotlas – Chum Labytnangi sections of the Northern Railway as well as the Ob station and the Pangody – Novy – Urengoy – Korotchaevo line of the Sverdlovsk Railway.

Construction of the 707km line will begin in 2018 and is expected to be completed in 2022.

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Could it be that China’s Silk Road mission is more that includes Russia? Yes.

China and Russia have reportedly agreed to jointly build an ‘Ice Silk Road’ along the Northern Sea Route in the Arctic.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss further bilateral cooperation, according to Xinhua.

Xi said Russia is an important partner in the construction of the Belt and Road initiative – referring to Beijing’s new Silk Road project – and urged the two countries to “carry out the Northern Sea Route cooperation so as to realise an ‘Ice Silk Road’, and to implement various connectivity projects”.

The Xinhua report did not give further details about the cooperation along the Northern Sea Route, which is a shipping lane running between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean along Russia’s northern coast.

The announcement however comes shortly after China formally included the Arctic Sea to its Belt and Road initiative, which seeks to boost trade through massive investments in railroads, ports and other infrastructure linking Asia to Europe and Africa.

China’s National Development and Research Commission and State Oceanic Administration said in a document published on June 20 that a “blue economic passage” is “envisioned leading up to Europe via the Arctic Ocean”.

The other two passages run through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean and through the South China Sea to the Pacific.

The document said China hopes to work with all parties to conduct research of navigational routes as well as climatic and environmental changes in the Arctic, and to explore the region’s potential resources.

It also encouraged Chinese companies to take part in the commercial use of the Arctic route and stated that China will actively participate in the events organised by Arctic-related international organisations.

China-Russia cooperation in the Arctic

Xi’s visit to Russia follows Beijing’s increased diplomacy in recent months with Arctic countries, including Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland.

Although China is not a littoral Arctic state, it has shown interest in exploring and developing the region, which is estimated to hold 13 percent of the worlds undiscovered oil resources and a third of its undiscovered natural gas resources. More here.

 

Putin’s Threat During the Press Conf with President Trump

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London – The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.

Politics: Natalia Veselnitskaya, Lawyer Who Met Trump Jr ... photo

The data was obtained through Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s London-based investigative unit, the Dossier Center, that is compiling profiles of Russians it accuses of benefiting from corruption. The data was later shared with journalists at the AP, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Greek news website Inside Story and others.

Veselnitskaya has denied acting on behalf of Russian officialdom when she met with the Trump team, telling Congress that she operates “independently of any government bodies.”

But recent reporting has cast doubt on her story. In an April interview with NBC News, Veselnitskaya acknowledged acting as an “informant” for the Russian government after being confronted with an earlier batch of emails obtained through the Dossier Center.

Meanwhile, Putin carries through on those comments he made during the press conference with President Trump. More details below.

Translated: MOSCOW, July 17 – RIA Novosti. The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation on Tuesday announced the names of American citizens who need to be interrogated in the case of the head of the Hermitage Capital foundation, William Browder, convicted in Russia. Among them, the head of the Office of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Alexander Kurennoy, called the former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, several US intelligence personnel, two ex-assistants to the US Secretary of State, US financiers of the Siff brothers. The list also included an agent of the British Mi-6 Christopher Steel.

These names were announced by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office the day after the Russia-US summit in Helsinki, where Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference asked US investigators to make inquiries to Russia for questioning 12 alleged Russian intelligence agents, “and maybe even come to Russia for survey “. At the same time, the Russian president stressed that then the American side expects similar steps on the principle of reciprocity: in response, the Russian side will wait that in the US in the presence of Russian investigators will question those individuals, including representatives of the US special services, whom Moscow suspects of committing crimes in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Earlier, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that the US Justice Department put forward new charges against 12 Russians allegedly working for the GRU in the framework of the investigation conducted by the special prosecutor Robert Muller on the imputed Russian interference in the elections in the US.

Representatives of the State Department and special services

“We are ready to send another request to the US asking them to interrogate these people, as well as other employees of American special services, a number of state employees and entrepreneurs,” the head of the Office of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Alexander Kurennoy, told reporters.

Among American officials, whom Russia would like to interrogate in the case of the head of the Hermitage Capital foundation William Browder, Kurennoy called the former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. He noted that under the leadership of McFaul “in 2009-2010, compiled a memorandum to the US State Department from Moscow on the progress of the investigation in the Magnitsky case.”

The head of the RF State Department also called the employees of the US National Security Agency Todd Hayman, Svetlana Engert and Alexander Shvartsman, CIA agent Jim Roth.

“These are the employees of the US National Security Agency Todd Hyman, he signed an oath to the US court on Browder’s words, Svetlana Engert – took the stolen materials of the criminal case from Russia, Alexander Shvartsman, took care of Browder during his stay in the US Jim Root, CIA agent , the financial manager of Browder, “- said Kurennoy.

The list includes two former assistants to the US Secretary of State, David Kramer and Jonathan Wiener, and Robert Otto, “until January 2017 – deputy head of the intelligence department of the US State Department, headed the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US Department of State on Russian domestic policy in the department for Russia and Eurasia” . In addition, the RF GP would like to interrogate and who was in 2009 an employee of the US Helsinki Commission Kayla Parker.

Browder’s “Trustees”

Kurennoy explained that the Prosecutor General’s Office wants to question the employees of the US special services who swore false allegations against businessman Denis Katsyv and guarded the head of the Hermitage Capital William Browder, convicted in the Russian Federation.

“As part of the investigation of one of the criminal cases against Browder, which continues to be investigated by the investigative authorities in Russia, and his criminal group, we are ready to send another request to our American colleagues in order to question these officers of the US intelligence services, a number of government employees, entrepreneurs and other persons involved to the illegal activities of Browder.All that I said above, we can confirm the documents, and if colleagues from the US will turn to us for relevant information, then we are within the framework of the international legal cooperation are ready to provide the necessary assistance and assistance, but I will emphasize on a parity basis, and not unilaterally, “Kurennoy said.

He added that they refer to those employees of the US special services who participated in the formation of false evidence of the guilt of the “citizen of Russia” in the US legal proceedings against Prevezon and took care of convicted businessman Browder.

Partners in crime

The list also includes American financiers brothers Ziff, whom the official spokesman of the RF State Duma called Browder’s “partners” for “criminal business.”

“They are recipients of illegal incomes, the Ziff brothers themselves, long-term partners in the criminal business of Browder,” Kurennoy said, referring to people whom he would like to interrogate the RF State Duma.

Not only Americans

Among those whom the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office would like to interrogate before the Browder case, not only US citizens, but also an employee of the British special service Mi-6 Christopher Steel.

“By the way, we have questions not only for US citizens, but I would also like to mention the employees of the special services of other countries who interacted with the people I mentioned earlier, for example, I would like to talk with Christopher Steele, an agent of the British Mi- 6. For a long period of time, he had contacts with a group of lobbyists of the “Magnitsky Act” and, interestingly, it was through this person that the very investigation of the special prosecutor (Robert) Müller, who is known as “Trump Dossier”, was initiated.

400 thousand instead of 400 million

Kurennoy also said that the criminal group Browder had withdrawn from Russia over 1.5 billion US dollars, of which about 400 thousand dollars, and not 400 million, as it was said earlier, fell on the accounts of the US Democratic Party.

“Browder’s criminal group with the help of offshore schemes withdrew money and shares from the Russian Federation for a total of more than $ 1.5 billion, of which $ 400,000 were transferred to the accounts of the Democratic Party,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a news conference on Monday after talks with US President Donald Trump in Helsinki that Browder’s business partners illegally earned more than $ 1.5 billion in Russia and sent $ 400 million to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

“Later, the president asked us to correct his reservation, which he made yesterday, not 400 million, but 400,000, but that’s quite a huge sum,” he said.

The Browder case

Browder is an international financier and investor, a former employer of the auditor Sergei Magnitsky. In 1995-2007, Browder was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, now lives in London, Russia is declared an international wanted list.

In 2013, Browder was convicted in Russia for tax fraud. The court found that Magnitsky in the interests of Browder in 1997-2002 implemented an illegal scheme of tax evasion, using companies registered in Kalmykia and managed by Hermitage Capital. He is not going to return to Russia, so the verdict is in absentia – the opportunity to execute it will appear only if Browder is in Russia.

At the end of 2017, the Tverskoi Court of Moscow found Browder guilty of tax evasion and the bankruptcy of the Dalny Steppe enterprise, but did not tighten the sentence at the age of nine that was obtained under the previous sentence.

 

Mass Graves Covered up in Iran

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Iran: Road to be built over individual and mass graves

The families of political dissidents who were forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially killed in Ahvaz, southern Iran, in the 1980s are suffering untold mental anguish and distress as the authorities are destroying the individual and mass graves of their loved ones. They are afraid of facing further persecution if they speak out.

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Amnesty International reports that Iran’s regime is destroying a mass grave of the victims of the 1988 massacre. According to estimates from the opposition, these victims number in the 10s of 1000s (the vast majority from the MEK).

Meanwhile:

The Trump administration must now prepare for near-term Iranian terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland, because the leader of Iran’s revolutionary guards, or IRGC, external action force gave a very aggressive speech on Thursday.

Addressing followers in the ancient city of Hamedan (a location probably chosen as a metaphor of Iranian durability), Qassem Soleimani warned Americans, “We are closer to you than what you think. You should know that I am your foe. The Quds Force alone and not all the Armed Forces is enough to be your rival. You are aware of Iran’s power in asymmetric war.”

Soleimani means for his words to be taken as references to terrorist attacks. In specific terms, IRGC modus operandi and tactical capability render “closer to you than what you think” and “asymmetric war” as references to Quds force attack cells and cyber-strike teams in the U.S. homeland, South America, and Europe.

But Soleimani wasn’t done there.

Again emphasizing “We are so close to you in places that you might not even think of,” Soleimani declared “You should know that there is not even a single night that we don’t think of destroying you.” Soleimani also drew a sharp reference to his role subjecting U.S. forces in Iraq to explosively formed penetrator attacks, stating “”have you forgotten when you had provided adult-size diapers for your battle tank crews?” EFP attacks killed hundreds of Americans and wounded many more.

Soleimani loved the EFPs for their brutality. In David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, we hear about U.S. Army Specialist Joshua Reeves, whose vehicle was hit by an EFP in Baghdad. Reeves “wasn’t breathing, his eyes weren’t moving, his left foot was gone, his backside was ripped open, his stomach was filling with blood …” Reeves died the same day that his wife had told him that she had given birth.

And in a reference to Iranian martyrdom ideology, deeply vested in the revolution’s theological appropriation of the Battle of Karbala, Soleimani concluded, “We are thirsty for martyrdom and annihilation of arrogant powers.”

He wants the U.S. to know the IRGC will proudly die for their cause.

The U.S. may now have to help them on that course, because the U.S. must respond deliberately to this speech.

First off, President Trump should recognize that the Iranians aren’t playing around here. Soleimani has the pedigree to render very bloody terrorist attacks into action. He also has no qualms about massacring U.S. civilians (the Quds force nearly blew up a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2011) and recently tried to blow up a Paris conference attended by U.S. officials. Indeed, Soleimani’s words exemplify why we argued this week that Trump must be more focused in his red-line warnings to Iran.

But what specifically should be done?

Both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo should take the lead in warning that any terrorist attacks on the U.S. will result in two immediate effects.

First, aggressive U.S. military strikes on IRGC infrastructure belonging to the Quds force and the IRGC at large. Pompeo’s role is important here because the former CIA director took a tough line against the IRGC, and Soleimani knows he means business.

Second, the U.S. should make clear that Soleimani and his senior leadership figures will be personally targeted. While some, like former Obama administration official Tommy Vietor, believe such threats would be outrageous, it is important that the Iranian hardliners know any terrorist attacks will not meet a standard fare response. They must know that the U.S. will metaphorically gut them if they come for our citizens. If Soleimani and his cadre do not understand that U.S. deterrent posture, they will kill innocent Americans. Evidencing their willingness to up the ante, the Quds Force directed Houthi rebel forces in Yemen to target cargo vessels passing through the Red Sea on Wednesday.

But the Trump administration should also be clear about where this is heading. As it attempts to destabilize the Iranian regime with economic pressure, the Iranian regime is showing that it will not go down without a fight.

Ultimately, Qassem Soleimani’s threats should be taken very seriously. He is a skilled commander with significant terrorist capabilities and an ideologically vested hatred for America. He must be dealt with as such.

 

 

United Front, China’s Weapon Against the West/Allies

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“United Front Work is an important magic weapon for the victory of the party’s cause.”
                                     – Xi Jinping, October 2017

Related reading: A Weapon Without War: China’s United Front Strategy

A Weapon Without War: China’s United Front Strategy ... photo

Senators Cruz and Rubio have been sounding the alarms on the Confucius Institution that has found homes on U.S. college campuses. They have both done the same with regard to the Chinese Students Association.

Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Taiwan and New Zealand are sounding the same warnings.

Xi Jinping’s rule to date has been characterised by, among other things, a return to the basics of Party rule as established by Mao. These include a renewed emphasis on United Front 统战 work, which Mao called one of the ‘three secret weapons’ 三个大法宝 (along with the armed forces and Party-building) that helped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to power in 1949. (For an overview of the United Front, see the China Story Yearbook 2014: Shared Destiny, pp.128–132.) The year 2015 was the most important one since 1990 for the United Front, a collection of strategies overseen by the United Front Work Department (UFWD) 统战部 by which the Party seeks to strengthen its authority and legitimacy, especially among the more marginalised, independent, and minority sectors of the Chinese population.

Explain the primary role of the United Front Work in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The United Front Work Department of the CCP is an integral part of the Party structure, down to sometimes the lowest levels and coordinated at the very top by a United Front Leading Small Group initiated by Xi Jinping. The Department works to reach out, represent, and guide key individuals and groups within both the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and greater China, including Chinese diasporas. The goals include to have all such groups accept CCP rule, endorse its legitimacy, and help achieve key Party aims. Because United Front Work has officially been extended to those who emigrated after 1979 as well as those Chinese studying abroad, some 50 million or more, United Front Work is now of direct relevance and sometimes concern to an increasing number of foreign governments, notably Australia, Zealand, Canada and the United States. United Front Work abroad is not limited to only these countries though.

Related reading: China Built an Army of Influence Agents in the U.S.

How does the United Front Work fashion China’s image and influence overseas?    

An important role of United Front Work since Xi Jinping became CCP general secretary in 2012 has been to help tell the CCP’s preferred “China story” by encouraging overseas Chinese of all sorts to become active promoters of the Party-state’s views in their own domiciles. This promotion includes using material from China in publications, forming associations to highlight positions on issues like Taiwan or more recently, the One Belt, One Road policy, meeting local politicians and winning them over, and using the status of voters in democracies to influence domestic policies in ways that promote CCP interests.

The promotion of Confucius Institutes to win greater influence over what and how Chinese is taught has been yet another success story, particularly in the developing world where this initiative allows Party-state views much more leeway.

Encouraging all of sorts of influential foreigners to visit China under supervision has also been a very successful tactic. Such visitors are treated lavishly and often come to modify their positions or end up airing official Chinese positions despite themselves. Even retired politicians are seen as valuable because of their institutional knowledge and the assumption, usually valid, that they can still wield significant influence in their party or more broadly.

Explain the function of CCP propaganda machinery in Chinese foreign policy.  

The current CCP propaganda push abroad can be summed up as helping ‘make the international environment safe for achieving the Party-state’s goals’ and shifting the terms of discussion of China to ones that the CCP prefers. Even forcing or achieving small shifts in language can be very significant.

The recent attacks on Marriott Hotels and foreign airlines for using terms such as Taiwan and thus treating Taiwan as an independent country have been rewarded with immediate backtracking by the companies concerned. The result of these efforts is to help isolate and delegitimize Taiwan’s status in the eyes of foreign publics. Note that these effects are the opposite of how the CCP uses United Front Work and propaganda in regards to itself, but isolation and delegitimization or at least neutralization of real and perceived enemies are important goals of both. The success of these efforts would be to reduce the costs of other actions intended to bring Taiwan under PRC sovereignty, such as boycotts, blockades, or even invasion.

The CCP would emphasize any such actions as merely “internal” affairs. This “legitimacy” would be repeated by innumerable Chinese diaspora groups around the world, not least by the Associations for the Peaceful Reunification of China – run out of Beijing but now spread worldwide. Even the translation from Chinese of tongyi or “unification” as “reunification” is an effective almost subliminal technique of reframing the issue in the CCP’s favor. Another salient example of the success of these techniques is how foreign news organizations and broadcasters now often feel the need to add a rider to any discussions of Taiwan, adding, “which China regards as a renegade province.” It might be true at one level, but is deeply wrong and misleading at another.

Why are Chinese influence efforts increasingly under government scrutiny in Australia?

The CCP’s United Front Work and stepped up propaganda activities in Australia have been only belatedly recognized as potentially dangerous at a number of levels. These include the emergence of a new group of wealthy Chinese who, having made their fortunes in China, were seeking political access and influence in Australia. The major problem has been with the sometimes very strong United Front links of such people and hence the motives of their actions were called into question. The influence of some of these people on Chinese media in Australia, now almost overwhelmingly pro-Beijing, was another worry as it left only a few independent voices speaking directly to Chinese communities in Chinese and promoting values not in line with Beijing’s.

Another concern has been around fears of stepped up activities and surveillance of Chinese students on Australian campuses. This followed the formalization of PRC students abroad as a specific united front work target in 2015 and a number of well publicized incidents where Chinese students had confronted lecturers about, for example, treating Taiwan as a country.

While much of this work with students and post graduates is likely aimed at surveillance to ascertain whether students are being attracted to Western ideals and values, Christianity, or Falun Gong, the potential clearly exists to push universities or teachers to tone down or omit courses which teach things the CCP regards as dangerous or subversive. Similarly, there are recurrent concerns that the Confucius Institutes on university campuses may pose dangers to academic freedom and promote pro-Beijing lines.

Perhaps the latest and largely unspoken concern relates to a growing realization that the dramatic increases in Chinese emigration to places like Australia and New Zealand etc., particularly since the 2000s, have given rise to large groups of citizens with voting power and sometimes able to sway even general elections, who often remain largely under the sway of the PRC Party-state via its propaganda and United Front Work. Having left China as beneficiaries of the reform period, these groups have no reason to oppose it and many good reasons to support it even if they had no vote there. This is very different, for example, from those who migrated or fled in the wake of the brutal suppression of the student movement of 1989. Moreover, these new migrants are often highly educated and economically successful, unlike many of the generations of Chinese before them, and hence much more able and likely to demand commensurate influence more or less immediately. There is no need for a transitional generation to build up such social, political, and economic capital. This unforeseen consequence of business and student migration is only now becoming obvious to local politicians but how to respond is unclear.

Pompeo put Crimea Back in the Headlines

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and rightly so.

Primer: 75 years since the US refusal to accept annexation of ...

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday the United States would never recognize Russia’s annexation in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimea. “As we did in the Welles Declaration in 1940, the United States reaffirms as policy its refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claim of sovereignty over territory seized by force in contravention of international law … [T]he United States rejects Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea and pledges to maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored,” Pompeo said in a statement.

The remarks will almost certainly dispel any ambiguity over whether the Trump administration was planning to recognize Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, a Ukrainian territory with close cultural and historic relations with Russia. Pompeo rooted his remarks in the Welles Declaration, which refused to recognize the then-Soviet Union’s invasion of the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The declaration, named for Sumner Welles, the U.S. diplomat who crafted it, remained a cornerstone of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next five decades, and empowered Baltic citizens who wished for independence from the Kremlin.

The Soviet invasion of the Baltic states came after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the 1939 nonaggression accord between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Following that agreement, the Soviets gained influence in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three countries that the Soviets feared Germany would use as a staging ground for an invasion of the USSR. At first, the Soviet Union only signed mutual-assistance pacts with the three countries, but a year after those accords were signed, Stalin annexed the Baltic states. (Hitler ultimately betrayed Stalin, who joined the Allied nations to defeat the Nazis.) More here.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesperson
For Immediate Release
STATEMENT BY SECRETARY POMPEO
July 24, 2018

Crimea Declaration

Russia, through its 2014 invasion of Ukraine and its attempted annexation of Crimea, sought to undermine a bedrock international principle shared by democratic states:  that no country can change the borders of another by force. The states of the world, including Russia, agreed to this principle in the United Nations Charter, pledging to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State.  This fundamental principle — which was reaffirmed in the Helsinki Final Act — constitutes one of the foundations upon which our shared security and safety rests.

As we did in the Welles Declaration in 1940, the United States reaffirms as policy its refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claims of sovereignty over territory seized by force in contravention of international law.  In concert with allies, partners, and the international community, the United States rejects Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea and pledges to maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.

The United States calls on Russia to respect the principles to which it has long claimed to adhere and to end its occupation of Crimea.  As democratic states seek to build a free, just, and prosperous world, we must uphold our commitment to the international principle of sovereign equality and respect the territorial integrity of other states.  Through its actions, Russia, has acted in a manner unworthy of a great nation and has chosen to isolate itself from the international community.