White House quits asking Saudis for more oil after verbal dust-up with top official: report

The Saudis have reportedly cancelled multiple meetings with Biden cabinet members

April 20, 2022 12:12pm EDT

The United States has reportedly stopped asking Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to combat market disruption from Russia’s war with Ukraine as the relationship between the U.S. and the oil rich kingdom is said to have hit a new low.

President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan brought up the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman which angered the crown prince to the pointwhere he told Sullivan never to mention it again and to forget about Saudi Arabia increasing its oil production, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday,

(These people are stupid, Jake Sullivan threatening the Saudi Prince is nuts)

The report states that the Biden administration has since asked Saudi Arabia to increase production as gas prices soar in the United States amid Russia’s war with Ukraine and the conversations have gone nowhere.

A senior U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal that the White House has now stopped asking for more oil production from Saudi Arabia and now asks only that the country avoid actions that hurt U.S. interests in Ukraine.

The Saudis reportedly cut short a visit with a high-level Biden administration military delegation last summer while also canceling a visit with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last fall and Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month.

Despite the perceived tension, a Saudi official at the country’s Washington embassy told the Wall Street Journal the relationship between the two nations remains strong, cordial, and respectful.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.

Karl Rove, a former George W. Bush adviser, told Fox News on Tuesday that a recent skit mocking Biden on Saudi television is a signal of the rift between the two countries that has also been exacerbated by the Biden administration’s negotiations with Iran on a nuclear deal.

"It's not because of personal relationships, it's because of the actions that we have taken that they don't like," Rove said. "We've cut back the military assistance they think is vital. We've engaged in negotiations with Iran, their archenemy, to restart the so-called nuclear deal."

Rove continued, "I think the bigger issues are these three, and they feel like the new administration in the last year-and-a-half has not been working with them, but is working against the interests of their country. And they don't understand why — they think of themselves as a strong ally and they know that we want help from them on energy issues, and they can't understand why we have on all these big issues: Yemen, Iran, nuclear deal and military assistance to Saudi Arabia been less than forthcoming in this administration."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-quits-asking-saudis-more-oil-verbal-dust-up-top-official

https://twitter.com/StephenM/status/1517145854758424577?s=20&t=k6t0qv1NqkAdnbr0-dgW6Q

https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1516921654785593345?s=20&t=-BD8Eqjb4VxYwPfJgYU3_g

SeeEyeAye exposing tax returns of conservative wealthy to Pro Publica

https://twitter.com/SaysSimonson/status/1516402690502406148?s=20&t=-BD8Eqjb4VxYwPfJgYU3_g

https://twitter.com/realchrismanion/status/1516848979450941442?s=20&t=Zw9mJWv5v2kZz-_iRvxJPA

Glenn Greenwald gets payback

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1516856672278433799?s=20&t=Zw9mJWv5v2kZz-_iRvxJPA

>>16120384

Is McCarthy trying to get kicked out? He should ho with Mitch

RUSSIA SANCTIONS MARK ZUCKERBERG

21 Apr, 2022 14:08

Kremlin puzzled why Zelensky is unaware of Russia’s peace proposals

Ukrainian leader’s remarks “raise certain questions,” Putin’s spokesman said

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claims that he has not received a peace proposal from Moscow “raise certain questions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

The day before, Peskov announced that Russia had sent a draft agreement to Kiev, adding that “the ball was now with the Ukrainian side.” However, later that day, Zelensky, speaking at a press conference with EU Parliament President Charles Michel, said that he “hadn’t seen anything” and “didn’t hear anything.” “I’m sure they (Moscow) didn’t give us anything,” he claimed.

The Kremlin spokesman, responding to those remarks, said that they “raise certain questions why President Zelensky was not informed about our text proposals.” Peskov added that, nevertheless, Moscow would expect the Ukrainian negotiators’ response.

“Our latest draft was handed over to… the Ukrainian negotiating delegation, so we will continue to wait for an answer,” he told the media.

Zelensky, meanwhile, on Wednesday not only said that he had not received proposals from Moscow but also commented on Peskov’s remark about the ball.

“The ball is on our side? At some point I used to play football well. There is a rule - there are two teams and there is a ball. It seems to me that he (Peskov) Is playing by himself. You can’t play with such serious things. We will definitely show how we hit the goal when we are given the ball,” – the Ukrainian leader said.

Since the launch of Russia’s military attack on Ukraine on February 24, Moscow and Kiev have held several rounds of negotiations aimed at resolving the crisis. March 29 was the last time when the two negotiating teams met in person. On April 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the talks had reached deadlock. He explained that Ukraine had refused to fulfill some of Russia’s key requests - to recognize Crimea as Russian and the Donbass republics as independent.

https://www.rt.com/russia/554280-kremlin-puzzled-zelensky-proposals/

21 Apr, 2022 13:54

UK promises not to lecture India

PM Johnson said that Moscow-New Delhi relations will be one of the key topics of discussions during his visit to the Asian country

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that relations between Moscow and New Delhi will be one of the key topics up for discussion during his two-day visit to India to meet with his counterpart Narendra Modi.

The UK has been trying to persuade India to reconsider its close ties to Russia in light of the military conflict in Ukraine, as New Delhi has so far refused to condemn Moscow for attacking its neighbor. However, Johnson will apparently refrain from trying to “lecture” Modi during his visit, according to the PM’s spokesperson.

“The UK would not seek to lecture other democratically elected governments on what course of action was best for them. Rather we would look to offer new opportunities which benefited both the people of UK and India,” said Boris Johnson’s spokesperson Max Blain on Tuesday, ahead of the PM’s visit to India.

Blain added that Britain would “work with other countries to provide alternative options for defense procurement and energy for India to diversify its supply chains away from Russia.”

Meanwhile, Indian importers have recently announced plans to increase purchases of Russian crude oil and coal at a discount as Indian coal stockpiles have been experiencing shortages and Moscow’s prices have proven to be much lower than those of Australian and South African coal.

Nevertheless, Johnson insists that both India and the UK should also work to decrease their dependence on foreign energy imports, and suggested the two countries work together to achieve that goal, adding that there are many opportunities for London and New Delhi to increase cooperation in defense and security.

Johnson is also set to discuss trade agreements with the Indian side, which will include cooperation across industries such as technology, software engineering, healthcare and joint satellite launches, with potential deals reportedly worth £1bn ($1.3bn) to the British economy, and promising 11,000 jobs in the UK as a result. The UK also hopes to strike a post-Brexit free trade agreement with India, hoping to sign it “by the autumn,” according to Johnson.

Although India has called for an end to violence in Ukraine, it has refrained from outright condemning Moscow and has chosen instead to focus on stabilizing its economic ties with Russia.

“We have an established economic relationship with Russia. Given the current circumstance post development in Ukraine, I think there is an effort by both sides to ensure that this economic relationship remains stable," said Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi earlier this month.

Russia and India have also reportedly been working to create a new transaction mechanism for bilateral trade, which would allow for settlements in national currencies, rubles and rupees. After western countries cut off Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging network. Reports have claimed that Moscow and New Delhi may opt for adopting the Russian Financial Message Transfer System (SPFS) for bilateral trade, which would further deepen economic ties between the two countries.

According to analysts, a rupee-ruble trade mechanism is key to continued trade growth between the two countries, as India’s economy needs Russian energy and commodities to grow and Russia needs the huge Indian market to offset the impact of Western sanctions.

(It seems BoJo is a worse war monger than Blair and Bush, who knew)

https://www.rt.com/news/554275-uk-india-russia-energy/