Schumer presses ahead on US border-Kyiv deal; Putin’s posturing on Nato’s doorstep raises alarm

6 Feb 2024

The warnings from Moscow have been coming thick and fast lately, and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have bitter experience of what that might mean.

Russia’s seaborne crude shipments rebounded strongly from two weeks of disruptions, with record-equalling flows from the country’s main export terminals.

Schumer presses ahead on faltering US border-Ukraine deal

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is moving forward with a test vote this week on a bipartisan deal to impose new US border restrictions and unlock Ukraine war aid despite growing Republican opposition that is all but certain to sink the measure.

The New York Democrat on Tuesday ripped Republicans for rejecting the hard-fought compromise and signalled he expected the vote to fail to reach the 60-vote margin.

“Let’s vote,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “It’s urgent. We’ve spent months talking and debating.”

The deal, announced on Sunday night, quickly collapsed in the face of opposition from GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who is seeking in the run-up to his expected rematch with Joe Biden to tar the president with the worsening situation at the border.

Biden has largely been blamed in polls for the influx of migrants, which has strained services in northern cities. In taking the vote, Democrats will try to change that narrative and pin the ongoing border chaos on Republicans for torpedoing the compromise.

Read more: Swing-state voters blame Biden for migrant surge at the border

The deal, which includes $60-billion for Ukraine in its war against Russia, was negotiated over several months. It also includes $20-billion for the border, $6-billion more than the Biden administration requested.

“The American people will find out whether senators seek border security and oppose Russian expansionism or whether they stand with former President Trump in support of the chaos, and Vladimir Putin,” Schumer said.

Hawkish Republicans on Tuesday began discussing moving ahead on a Ukraine aid package without the border restrictions. Pairing the two had once been considered a way to sweeten the deal for House conservatives but has since proven divisive.

Republican senators emerged from a contentious, 90-minute meeting on Monday night arguing that a vote this week on the measure was too soon, delaying aid Ukraine says it desperately needs for at least several more weeks and leaving the worsening situation at the border unresolved.

On Tuesday, several more moderate Republican senators, including Thom Tillis of North Carolina, came out against the compromise.

“I think the proposal is dead,” Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a strong supporter of Ukraine aid, said.

James Lankford, the key Republican in the negotiations, said he expected Wednesday’s planned procedural vote to fail because senators say they want more time to consider and make changes to the Bill. He called the legislation “a work in progress” and joked he was not prepared to have a funeral yet.

Republican Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a moderate voice on immigration who has urged a deal, said he would vote against advancing the measure on Wednesday. Instead, he recommends the Senate take several weeks to review it.

Blocking the Wednesday procedural vote makes it more likely the Ukraine border Bill is delayed indefinitely, or at least past a two-week break the Senate is scheduled to begin later this week.

Read more: Tougher enforcement, more visas: inside the Senate border deal

Trump condemned the deal in a social media post on Monday as “a great gift for Democrats and a Death Wish for The Republican Party”. He also flatly rejected tying immigration to foreign aid.

Putin’s posturing on Nato’s doorstep raises alarm

A few hours’ drive east of Riga through a snow-carpeted landscape of forest, fields and frozen lakes, motorists are told in Latvian and English that they’re entering “Borderland.” Cars are forbidden from stopping and photographs are not allowed. Watch towers look out across a belt of birch and pine trees that mark the frontier with Russia.

This is the edge of the European Union and the limit of Nato’s reach. It’s a boundary bristling with the latest camera and sensor technology in anticipation that Vladimir Putin may be preparing to breach it.

The signs of apprehension are not without reason: The warnings from Moscow have been coming thick and fast lately, and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have bitter experience of what that might mean.

As he campaigns before March’s presidential election, Putin cited Latvia’s treatment of ethnic Russians as a security issue on 16 January — similar rhetoric to that used before Russia invaded Ukraine. Posters visible at the frontier with Estonia proclaim: “Russia’s borders — they never end.”

More ominously, Russia targeted Estonian cities in simulated attacks during military exercises in the summer of 2022, a few months after attacking Ukraine for real. The Russian Defence Ministry declined to comment at the time.

“They aim their weapons at us, enter all the data, but don’t actually pull the trigger,” General Martin Herem, commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, said in an interview at the headquarters of the joint military command in Tallinn. He compares the actions to those of “a thug” picking a fight on the street: “They are trying to create a pretext.”

The Baltics are used to intimidation by Moscow, something that membership of the EU and Nato had helped to blunt. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the equation. Now the West’s faltering efforts to aid Kyiv and Russia’s inexorable shift to a war economy while maintaining public support are creating the sense that a new threat is emerging.

What’s become clear in the last six months is that Russia is capable of producing many times more ammunition than was previously assumed, according to Herem, who cited a volume of several million shells per year. Plus, it has no problem finding troops, he said. At his press conference in December, Putin said Russia was recruiting 1,500 volunteers a day.

“Military specialists haven’t had any illusions in the last two years, but we lacked facts,” said Herem, who entered service in 1992, the year after Estonia’s independence, and habitually wears camouflage fatigues. “Now, we can back up our instincts with concrete facts and no one can accuse us of warmongering.”

The three Baltic countries have long been hawkish on Russia, warning of Moscow’s aggression long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Their leaders have since spearheaded the calls to stand by Ukraine and bolster defences, forging ahead with purchases of military hardware from missiles to drones while fortifying the border.

No one expects Putin to launch an immediate attack, not least because Russia is fully engaged in Ukraine and is busy trying to replenish its military personnel and hardware.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on 30 January that Western claims that the Baltics, Sweden and Finland would follow the “special operation” in Ukraine were an “absurdity”. Putin has also said Russia has no “reason or interest” in a fight with Nato countries.

But Baltic officials see Putin as emboldened to consider expanding his imperialistic ambitions. As small former Soviet republics bordering Russian territory containing sizeable Russian-speaking minorities, they say they are prime candidates to be next in the line of fire.

Nato, meanwhile, is bolstering its presence through battle groups in each of the three Baltic states. But leaders complain that some Nato members still don’t seem to appreciate the threat. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas bemoaned the fact that a decade after alliance allies agreed to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defence, many are still well short despite the war.

The Baltics are not waiting around for others. They are boosting defence spending, buying air and coastal defence systems and Himars rocket launchers and considering wider conscription.

They have also taken other action. Latvia tightened residency criteria for some Russians, while Estonia expelled the head of the Orthodox church in Tallinn in January for activities against the state.

Moscow is watching closely. “The events that are taking place in Latvia and other Baltic countries now, when the Russian people are being thrown out, are very serious and directly affect the security of our country,” Putin said, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

While raising Baltic government actions to the status of a national security issue for Russia rings alarm bells, Western intelligence services put a timeframe of three to five years before Russia could pose a threat after rebuilding its military machine, assuming a halt to hostilities in Ukraine.

US sanctions halt delivery of new vessels to Russian LNG plant

The delivery of specialised ships to a new Russian liquefied natural gas facility is being upended by US sanctions, according to Mitsui OSK Lines, threatening exports.

The Japanese shipping line can no longer charter the three ice-breaker LNG ships to the Arctic LNG 2 project due to US restrictions, and efforts to sell them could be challenging, President Takeshi Hashimoto said in an interview.

The start of the plant, a key venture for Russia, has been hit by US measures as Washington penalises Moscow for the war in Ukraine. Operator Novatek had planned to use the vessels to pick up fuel from the site, and without them, it would be challenging to operate at the intended capacity. Novatek has already delayed the facility’s maiden voyage and is struggling to find buyers.

“Our contractual obligation is that if we cannot provide the service to Arctic 2, we have to sell our vessel to Arctic 2,” Hashimoto said in an interview in Goa, India, on Tuesday. However, “there is a sanction that says we should not do that deal with Arctic. So it’s a bit complicated.”

Russia’s seaborne crude exports surge after disruptions end

Russia’s seaborne crude shipments rebounded strongly from two weeks of disruptions, with record-equalling flows from the country’s main export terminals.

Eleven tankers completed loading the country’s ESPO crude at the Pacific port of Kozmino, recovering after a storm halved exports the week before and matching previous highs. Volumes from the Baltic port of Ust-Luga also gained in the week to 4 February, after maintenance work cut flows late last month, while shipments from Primorsk equalled the previous week’s record.

The bounceback saw weekly average shipments surge by about 880,000 barrels a day to the highest this year. That put flows 400,000 barrels a day above the level Moscow has pledged to its Opec+ partners for the first quarter on a weekly basis, though 100,000 barrels a day below that target on a four-week measure, which helps to smooth out short-term factors. DM

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World

Schumer presses ahead on faltering US border-Ukraine deal

Putin’s posturing on Nato’s doorstep raises alarm

US sanctions halt delivery of new vessels to Russian LNG plant

Russia’s seaborne crude exports surge after disruptions end