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Hi Diane, it appears your belief in Trump has grown. I agree he appears to be going in the right direction in relation to Ukraine & Russia (wearing blue suit with yellow tie to the opening of the Notre Dame was good) but I will reserve judgement until after his inauguration plus 6 months. After all he wasn’t voted in because of his support for Ukraine and his proposed cabinet appears divided on this issue.

I agree that Ukraine need guarantees from NATO that it will be invited to join, sooner rather than later. As I have mentioned before, I think it would be a mistake to ceded any territory to Russia. The resources that Ukraine has, may be the justification that the EU & US need to act against Russia, then again it may be a reason for Russia to not give up.

Russia’s dire economic situation may force its hand, after all it could not do anything in Syria, but as you have noted Russia is a dictatorship.

The findings of the NCA in Britain are significant and hopefully will impact on Russia’s ability to finance its economy. The fact that many of the transfers took place in the crypto market should act as a warning to Trump of the dangers associated with making crypto currencies available to a wider market. It would mean going against his crypto bros. Also the fact that Chinese/Russian companies/investors can buy property in Ukraine and throughout the world for that matter, points to the issue of why these sorts of purchases can take place without revealing who is actually the buyer/owner of these assets. The enablers of these transactions should be held accountable for starters.

Finally, who knows what is going to happen now that Syria/Assad has fallen. Hopefully there won’t be a civil war. It would appear that both Iran & Russia have been weakened and Turkey will want to avoided another refugee crisis, but there are still wannabe dictators (ie Libya) around who believe they have something to offer Russia, if Russia can offer them a degree of protection, a big if. Who knows, perhaps the fall of Syria will lead to the fall of the dictators of Iran and Belarus.

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Insightful your view of political players as dealmakers here, motivated in part by strategies to exploit long term business deals while negotiating a truce. Anyone watching knows that trump will go with whatever he thinks will make him look good so he can stake a claim, irrespective of facts, that it was a winner deal for America.

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Thank you for your insight. It is appreciated.

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