James Stavridis said Ankara should obey its role as a US-led military bloc’s member..
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has claimed that there was no justification for Ankara to prevent a fellow bloc member from donating its warships to Ukraine.
The Turkish government said on Tuesday that it will not allow minesweeping vessels that the UK has pledged to Ukraine to pass through Bosphorus. Ankara, which controls the straits linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, shut down access to foreign warships when the conflict in Ukraine began in 2022.
However, Stavridis claimed that “there is sufficient discretion” under the 1936 Montreux Convention, and Ankara should have used a loophole to allow the passage of “purely defensive” warships.
“This is the clear NATO position, agreed by Turkey as part of its role in NATO,” the retired US admiral told Politico. He went on to claim that Ankara “should fully lean into its role as a NATO member,” instead of “trying too hard to strike a balance” with its relations with Moscow and the West.
NATO state won't let UK send minesweepers to Ukraine.....more below
https://www.rt.com/news/590209-anakara-british-warships-ukraine/
Any moment now I am expecting John Cleese (a veteran of Monty Python) to jump out of the bushes and announce the creation of the Ministry of Silly Wars, with Donald Trump as the deranged leader. For you youngsters out there, Monty Python’s skit, The Ministry of Silly Walks, helped make the members of MP legends. I had to reference Monty Python because the line of bullshit the Trump administration is feeding the American people and the world about the amazing, obliterating US attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday morning, is more ridiculous that all of the silly walks pictured in the following video:
My hopes that Donald Trump would finally act like a responsible adult are dashed. He’s a dangerous buffoon. While the team around him are working frantically to maintain the fiction that Trump has a vision and is calling the shots on the foreign policy front, he is careening around the globe like an out-of-control cue ball on a billiards table. It started a week ago… first, he claimed...
Tuesday marks the third anniversary of the launch of the Fujian, China's first aircraft carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults. Official media said China is about to enter a three-aircraft-carrier era, with the Fujian expected to enter service by 2025.
After the launch of the Fujian on June 17, 2022, it carried out its first sea trial from May 1 to 8 in 2024. Since then, the Fujian has completed multiple sea trials, accumulating more than 100 days of sea trial, China Central Television (CCTV) News reported on Tuesday.
Wei Dongxu, a Chinese military affairs commentator, said that the aircraft carrier Fujian has been making steady progress in sea trials, and is expected to be commissioned within this year, CCTV News reported.
With a full displacement of more than 80,000 tons, the Fujian is the world's first conventionally powered aircraft carrier to feature electromagnetic catapult technologies, according to CCTV News. The report noted that it will carry a wide variety of carrier-borne...
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China and Central Asian countries have explored and formed the China-Central Asia Spirit, which features mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual benefit, mutual assistance, and the pursuit of common modernization through high-quality development.
Xi made the remarks in his speech at the second China-Central Asia Summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
Xi said that the Chinese side has decided to establish three cooperation centers and a trade facilitation platform within the China-Central Asia cooperation mechanism.
When addressing the summit, Xi said these institutions include the China-Central Asia poverty reduction cooperation center, the China-Central Asia education exchange cooperation center, the China-Central Asia desertification control cooperation center, as well as the China-Central Asia trade facilitation cooperation....more below
