{"id":44292,"date":"2019-03-08T07:25:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T12:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44292"},"modified":"2019-03-08T07:25:51","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T12:25:51","slug":"pence-urged-germany-to-provoke-russian-navy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44292","title":{"rendered":"Pence Urged Germany To Provoke Russian Navy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2019-03-07\/pence-urged-germanys-merkel-provoke-putin-sending-warships-through-kerch-strait\">Pence Urged Germany To Provoke Russian Navy\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Bloomberg dropped a bombshell on Thursday, citing three high level sources familiar with US-German talks at last month&#8217;s&nbsp;Munich Security Conference who&nbsp;revealed US Vice President Mike Pence tried to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to&nbsp;<strong>directly provoke Russia by sending German ships through the Kerch Strait<\/strong>, the two mile wide flashpoint off Crimea which saw Russia seize Ukrainian vessels and their crew members on November 25.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Merkel reportedly rebuffed the efforts which&nbsp;<em>Bloomberg&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-03-07\/merkel-is-said-to-reject-u-s-pressure-to-provoke-russia-s-navy\">described as<\/a>&nbsp;&#8220;a naval maneuver in Russia&#8217;s backyard&nbsp;<strong>aimed at provoking President Vladimir Putin<\/strong>.&#8221; Merkel declined Pence&#8217;s urging while citing reservations voiced by&nbsp;Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who viewed such an act as &#8220;not enough&#8221; to ensure Russia opens the strait permanently, according to the sources. Sources said Pence&#8217;s plan was designed&nbsp;<strong>&#8220;to show Putin that Western powers won\u2019t surrender their access to those waters.&#8221;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/kerch%20strait%20crimea.jpg?itok=4z_VeMYl\"><em>Image source: Reuters<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interestingly, Merkel&#8217;s stance wasn&#8217;t based on any principled desire to promoted peace or prevent needless provocations which could potentially spark regional war between Ukraine and Russia and western allies, but out of concern it essentially&nbsp;<strong>&#8220;wasn&#8217;t enough&#8221;<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-03-07\/merkel-is-said-to-reject-u-s-pressure-to-provoke-russia-s-navy\">Bloomberg<\/a>:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>Merkel had indicated she was willing, in coordination with the French, to send a convoy through the waterway as a one-time maneuver but Poroshenko said that wasn&#8217;t enough to solve his problem<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2014 he wants to ensure the strait is open permanently, the people said. France also refused to take part,&nbsp;<strong>judging the idea as an unnecessary provocation<\/strong>, according to another official who declined to be identified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the controversial 2014 Crimean status referendum, which resulted in the peninsula coming under Russian&nbsp;suzerainty, Russia has been accused of choking&nbsp;off Ukrainian naval access&nbsp;to its ports on the Sea of Azov to the north of the Kerch Strait.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pence Urged Germany To Provoke Russian Navy\u00a0 Bloomberg dropped a bombshell on Thursday, citing three high level sources familiar with US-German talks at last month&#8217;s&nbsp;Munich Security Conference who&nbsp;revealed US Vice President Mike Pence tried to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to&nbsp;directly provoke Russia by sending German ships through the Kerch Strait, the two mile wide [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1890,83,359,23216,16089,827,857],"class_list":["post-44292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-angela-merkel","tag-bloomberg","tag-germany","tag-kerch-strait","tag-mike-pence","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44293,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44292\/revisions\/44293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}