more than 80% of Ukraine’s exports go through the Sea of Azov

 more than 80 percent of Ukraine’s exports go through the Sea of Azov, which makes it vital to an independent Ukraine.  It’s also an important fishing hub that provides both food for the region and an economic boon.

“Russia has been engaged in a policy of creeping annexation in the Sea of Azov ever since it completed construction of the Kerch Bridge,” Michael Carpenter, a top Pentagon official for Ukraine and Russia from 2015 to 2017, told me.  Russia started by harassing Ukraine’s commercial ships, Carpenter said.  Then it grew its naval capabilities in the region.  Now it’s taken the next step: firing on and boarding Ukrainian ships while denying them further access to the waterway.https://www.vox.com/world/2018/11/26/18112426/russia-ukraine-ships-kerch-strait-azov-sea-trump-putin

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   Russia uses the Moscow Patriarchate as an instrument of foreign policy, says Michael Carpenter. The former assistant to the deputy head of the Pentagon and director of Biden Analytical Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Michael Carpenter, called the Moscow Patriarchate Russia's military propaganda and an instrument of its foreign policy.

“It was actually a kind of wedge in the cultural and religious spheres, almost military propaganda against the Ukrainian population,” he described the purpose of the existence of the Moscow Patriarchate in an interview with Ukrinform.     http://spzh.news/en/news/56708-byvshij-chinovnik-pentagona-nazval-upc-instrumentom-vojennoj-propagandy-rf

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  America can either enter into a real defense relation with Ukraine or else keep allowing Russia to march toward a renewed Soviet Union with missiles in Cuba again.   America can now consider blowing up Putin's bridge to Crimea or very seriously consider letting Putin write his will across Europe and so forth.    

 -r, mt. shasta

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