Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama's aides and top commanders are seriously considering providing arms and more military equipment to Ukraine as its army struggles against pro-Russian separatists, officials said Monday.

The Obama administration had previously ruled out sending weapons to Ukraine's government but the failure of economic sanctions to persuade Russia to halt military assistance for the separatists has prompted a second look at the option, officials told AFP.

Some senior figures in the administration now backed the move despite earlier concerns about triggering a dangerous escalation with Russia, officials said.

Washington so far has provided non-lethal assistance to Ukraine, including flak jackets, medical supplies, radios and night-vision goggles.

"What's being discussed is perhaps we should begin providing defensive weapons, defensive equipment, to Ukraine," a senior defense official said.

The view on what to provide Ukraine "has matured" given Russia's backing of the separatists and recent violations of a ceasefire agreement, a second official said.

The discussion inside the administration comes as Russia has ramped up deliveries of tanks and other military hardware to separatists in eastern Ukraine over the past month, officials said.

The New York Times first reported the policy shift, which coincided with an appeal by a group of former senior civilian and US military leaders urging Washington to supply arms to the Ukrainian government.

Authors of the report included officials with close ties to the White House, including the former number-three-ranking civilian at the Pentagon, Michele Flournoy, and the former US ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder.

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A tank crew drives along the road near the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Febuary 2, 2015 (AFP …

"The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive," said the report published by the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

"That requires providing direct military assistance -- in far larger amounts than provided to date and including lethal defensive arms -- so that Ukraine is better able to defend itself," said the report, which was signed by former NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis and the former deputy commander for US forces in Europe, General Charles Wald.

The report called for $3 billion in military assistance over the next three years, including providing light-armor missiles and armored Humvee vehicles.

- Countering jamming, artillery fire -

The head of US Army forces in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, said last week that the Ukrainian forces faced difficulties on the battlefield because they lacked radar and drones to track incoming artillery fire and equipment to safeguard their communications against jamming.

General Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander, was among those advocating arms deliveries for Kiev, according to The New York Times.

His spokesman declined to say whether the general favored a change in approach.

"General Breedlove ‎has repeatedly stated that he supports the pursuit of a diplomatic solution as well as considering practical means of support to the government of Ukraine in its struggle against Russian-backed separatists," Captain Gregory Hicks said.

Breedlove backed efforts by US and Ukrainian officials "to improve the capability and capacity of Ukraine's armed forces," he said.

Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Kiev this week for talks and the State Department said Washington is keeping all options open.

His spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said: "We are constantly assessing our policies on Ukraine to ensure they are responsive, appropriate, and calibrated to achieve our objectives."

Washington was "particularly concerned about recent escalating separatist violence and separatist attempts to expand the territory they control," Psaki told reporters.

But she said no decisions had been taken on the issue.

Psaki refused to go into "internal policy discussions" but stressed Washington was taking into account "events on the ground."

"I don't think anybody wants to get into a proxy war with Russia. And that is not the objective. Our objective here is to change the behavior of Russia," she added.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed on Sunday that it was “inevitable” that Israel would have to fight future wars with Shi’ite militant group, Hezbollah, and Palestinian militant group, Hamas.

In an interview with Israeli outlet Ynet News, the official website of the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth, Lieberman accused Hamas of feigning desperation in order to rebuild their capabilities and carry out attacks against Israel.

“A fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, just as a third Lebanon war is inevitable," he said.

"Don't let them tell us stories about how Hamas is begging and they're on their knees. We saw 10 rockets being fired at the sea last week. We see every week how they're rebuilding [their arsenal]."

Israel’s top diplomat moved on to argue that Hezbollah is becoming bolder and “more determined” in its actions against Israel.

“There's no doubt the rules of the game have been changed, what Hezbollah forced upon us. We don't respond, but rather decide to contain this incident. I think that's completely unreasonable,” Lieberman said. “Hezbollah is bolder, more determined, more provocative.”

He also asserted that Israel’s response to last week’s Hezbollah missile attack, which killed two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and wounded seven others, was insufficient as it only sought to “contain this incident” instead of responding with strength.

“Containing the event and the lack of an Israeli response means that Israel is agreeing to terms set by Hezbollah,” Lieberman wrote on Facebook in comments made before his Ynet interview. “It’s a serious blow to Israel’s deterrence capabilities.”

However, Hezbollah argue that the attack on the Israeli military vehicle was in response to an Israeli air strike conducted in southern Syria on January 18, killing a number of Hezbollah members and an Iranian general.

On the credence of Lieberman’s comments about the future conflicts, President of the Tel Aviv-based geopolitical risk consultancy the Levantine Group, Daniel Nisman, said that the “current conditions now make a war in both areas more likely than less likely”.

At the end of the 50-day summer conflict with Israel, which saw over 2,100 Palestinians and 68 Israelis killed, Hamas failed to achieve most of its demands and the failure of promised international aid into the enclave is fostering conditions for another war, says Nisman.

“Hamas is struggling to survive so it uses conflict with Israel as a function to achieve political and economic goals which it otherwise would not be able to achieve. That’s what we saw in the last conflict. The same conditions are in place for another conflict, it’s just about when Hamas feels that it is ready.”

On the subject of Hezbollah, Lieberman’s claim that the group are becoming bolder in their actions against Israel also rings true, according to Nisman.

“Yes they are. One of the ways I would say they are definitely growing bolder is their willingness to attack Israel from Lebanese territory in the way that they did, which is unprecedented since 2006 [the last Israeli-Lebanese War],” he said.

Despite the likelihood of these conflicts, vice-president of the Levantine Group, Ron Gilran, believes that Lieberman is making such statements “because of the [Israeli] election” which is scheduled for next month.

“The timing is related to elections as he took a centrist turn [from the right]. Every campaign he chooses to bring forward something else,” says Gilran.

“This time he chose to put his more pragmatic views up front because of the view that his leeway with the right-wing is almost exhausted entirely.”

“Why? Because Bibi [Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and Naftali Bennett [leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party] are there.”

Lieberman, a Moldovan-born Israeli, has seen his right-wing Yedioth Aharonoth party’s poll numbers slide ahead of the Israeli election on March 17 after a corruption scandal implicated high-ranking members of the party.

Polls show the party on course to obtain between four and six seats in the Knesset down from the 13 seats it holds today.

(Newsweek)

After scrutinizing intelligence and every frame of videos featuring high-profile ISIShostages, many counter-terrorism analysts and experts have concluded that some captives appeared compliant before being killed because they had already faced repeated mock executions on camera, current and former counter-terrorism officials told ABC News.

The staged executions were possibly made under the guise of an effort to scare their families and governments into meeting the terrorists' demands, the sources said.

Since ISIS slaughtered Japanese journalist Kenji Goto in a video released Saturday -- its seventh high-profile hostage beheaded -- government analysts have been looking for clues in the images about the location of other hostages and the British spokesman called "Jihadi John," who has presented himself as each victim's executioner wielding a notched blade, officials said.

But if Jihadi John did kill any hostages it may not have been on camera, as ISIS would have the public believe, according to the current and former officials familiar with the long investigation of the group's complex kidnapping and ransom operations.

"That was the assessment of why Foley was so compliant," a former law enforcement official close to the case told ABC News.Many analysts and investigators have assessed, based in part on some freed hostages' debriefings and also on intelligence collection, that the seven ISIS killings were likely perpetrated off camera, after hostages were subjected to repeated staged executions before lights and cameras set up in the desert just south of the ISIS stronghold in the city of Raqqa.

The captives may have become conditioned to being returned to their cells after making the terrifying videos, which are not believed to have ever been sent to their families.

"The point was to eventually have compliant hostages on camera," said one counter-terrorism official.

This was suspected in August when officials involved in hostage response saw the first ISIS video with American journalist James Foley, whose cooperation appeared to be because he'd been marched out previously to videotape messages about his possible death if a whopping $130 million ransom demand by ISIS sent to his family wasn't paid.

Foley may have been forced in front of ISIS's cameras many times before he was shown beheaded on the desert floor in light that indicated a different time of day, the current and former officials said.

Another indication the executions were carried out off camera is that Jihadi John has never drawn blood despite being shown a half-dozen times crossing his blade across the neck of a Western or Japanese hostage -- even when he has delivered as many as eight strokes with his large combat knife. Each time, the screen darkens just as he begins to cut and then jumps to a scene with the victim's head atop their body.

"The fade to black is a telling sign," a senior counter-terrorism official told ABC News, concurring with the other current and former officials.

One exception was a video released on Nov. 16. In that footage, Jihad John, along with a group of ISIS fighters, beheaded Syrian troops in a cinematic slaughter in which each killer's knife immediately spills blood with the first stroke until the horrific job was completed.

The bloody and decapitated head of American medical aid worker and former U.S. Army Ranger Peter "Abdul-Rahman" Kassig -- who was previously shown alive -- appears in an oddly juxtaposed ending to the video, shown at Jihadi John's feet in Dabiq, a religiously significant area in northern Syria near Iraq, but with no sign of Kassig's body.

Jihadi John's identity is known to American and British officials but has not been revealed publicly.

A spokesman for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on intelligence collection or assessments regarding the ISIS hostages, of which one American woman is known to remain in captivity.

Last month, Kenji Goto was shown blinking his eyelids in an odd manner in a video with Jihadi John demanding an absurd $200 million ransom. Some officials initially considered that Goto may have been trying to communicate in code but "nobody could determine that he was saying anything at all," another counter-terrorism official told ABC News. A senior counter-terrorism official said Goto may have been drugged before his appearance on camera.

The last best chance to rescue the western hostages was at an oil refinery site near Raqqa in a massive Delta Force raid over the Independence Day weekend. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey later described the operation as one of the largest and most complex ever attempted by U.S. special operations forces.

Multiple sources said that intelligence pointed to the complex set back from a river as the most recent place the Westerners were held. But they were never spotted by overhead spy drones or satellites before the special operations soldiers found out it was a "dry hole" and none of the hostages were there.

All indications are that the hostages were evacuated days before the July 4 raid and then split up afterward, officials said.

by ZERO HEDGE | FEBRUARY 2, 2015

With Ukraine, Germany, and France all expressing their concern this morning about “conflict escalation” between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukraine military, the so-called “truce” appears to be hanging by a thread of semanticism (despite OSCE’s please for respect of the cease-fire and the demarcation line). Today’s triple whammy of ‘escalation’ appears more focused on the non-Russian side as first, France begins sending tanks into Poland; second, Ukraine shifts its tanks to the front-line; and third – and potentially most inflammatory for Putin –NATO has confirmed plans to create permanent command centers in Eastern Europe. Putin has not responded yet but reports of ‘nuclear bombers’ flying above the English Channel “with transponders turned off,” suggests the sabre rattling continues.

Ukrainian civilians are being evacuated:

• *UKRAINE EVACUATED 1,000 PEOPLE FROM DEBALTSEVE YDAY
• *7 CIVILIANS DEAD, 4 WOUNDED IN DONETSK REGION IN 24 HRS: POLICE
• *11 SERVICEMEN ALSO INJURED IN MILITARY CAMP BLAZE, IFX SAYS

The OSCE is calling for the truce to stand…

• *OSCE’S DACIC SAYS MAXIMUM EFFORTS MADE TO END UKRAINE VIOLENCE
• *OSCE CALLS FOR CEASE-FIRE, RESPECT FOR DEMARCATION LINE: DACIC
• *OSCE’S DACIC SAYS NO ONE CONSIDERING NEW UKRAINE PLAN FOR NOW

Everyone is “concerned”

• *POROSHENKO, MERKEL, HOLLANDE DISAPPOINTED BY MINSK TALKS
• *POROSHENKO CALLS FOR RUSSIAN REACTION TO UKRAINE TALKS FAILURE
• *UKRAINE, GERMANY, FRANCE CONCERNED ABOUT CONFLICT ESCALATION

Leaders call for immediate “cease-fire” to fighting in east Ukraine after speaking on the phone today, AFP says, citing the French president’s staff.

So the following takes place:

1) France starts sending tanks into Poland…

France is pledging tanks and armored vehicles to bolster NATO forces in Poland, where leaders are increasingly uneasy about Russia.

In a joint statement Friday after a meeting between French President Francois Hollande and Polish Prime Minister Eva Kopacz, the two governments also called for a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has intensified between pro-Russia separatists and government troops.

NATO has no permanent presence in Eastern Europe but since last April members have been cycling forces and military equipment through the region in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The French military equipment is expected to remain in Poland for two months.

2) Ukraine begins moving its tanks to the front-line in Eastern Ukraine

and 3) NATO Plans New Permanent Command Centers in Eastern Europe

NATO said Friday it will deploy small units in six eastern European nations to help coordinate a spearhead force set up in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the units in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania will be the first of their kind there.

Defense ministers from the 28-nation military alliance will discuss the full force, which can react quickly to any hotspots in Europe, when they meet on Feb. 5.

Stoltenberg said countries responsible for providing the several thousand troops should be known next week.

The forward units will comprise a few dozen troops only. They will plan and organize military exercises, and provide command and control for any reinforcements the force might require.

“They’re going to plan, they’re going to organize exercises, to provide … some key command elements for reinforcements,” Stoltenberg said.

* * *

Russia has been very quiet today as all of this has occurred but we suspect the last move – NATO bases so close to Russia’s border – will warrant some response very rapidly… or perhaps Putin already pre-empted it…

Putin Sends Nuclear Bombers Over English Channel: “Transponders Turned Off… Invisible to Air Traffic Control”

The U.K.’s Royal Air Force scrambled fighter jets on Thursday after a pair of nuclear-capable Russian bombers flew across a busy civilian air traffic corridor above the English Channel.The bombers had their transponders turned off, British officials said, making them invisible to many air traffic control systems. The incident disrupted multiple flights – and ended with the U.K. government demanding the Russian ambassador appear at the Foreign Office to explain the actions.

* * *

This is not going to end well.


(INFOWARS.COM)

Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, according to the UN World Meteorological Organisation, as rising carbon emissions continue to trap heat and drive climate change.

The WMO’s new analysis narrowly places 2014 as the hottest recorded since 1850, as have recent analyses from other organisations. The WMO analysis is particularly authoritative as it brings together a number of leading temperature records, as well as alternative ways of estimating the warmth of the globe.

The average global air temperatures over land and sea in 2014 were 0.57C above the average of 14.00C for the 1961-1990 reference period. The record temperature was above those in 2005 and 2010, the next hottest years, but only by a small amount which was within the margin of uncertainty in the calculations.

“The overall warming trend is more important than the ranking of an individual year,” said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud. “2014 was nominally the warmest on record, although there is very little difference between the three hottest years.”

“We expect global warming to continue, given that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the increasing heat content of the oceans are committing us to a warmer future,” he said. “In 2014, record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods in many countries and drought in some others – consistent with the expectations of a changing climate.”

Global sea-surface temperatures reached record levels in 2014, which is significant because 93% of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and other human activities ends up in the oceans.

The WMO said it was notable that 2014’s record temperatures occurred without a fully-developed El Niño event.

These occur when warmer than average seas in the eastern tropical Pacific combine, in a feedback loop, with weather systems to drive up temperatures. The high temperatures in 1998, the hottest year of the 20th century, occurred during a strong El-Niño. On land, England saw its hottest year in three and a half centuries, according to the Central England Temperature data set.

The confirmation of 2014’s extreme heat comes ahead of the next round of preparatory UN climate change negotiations in Geneva, starting on 9 February. These are intended to pave towards a global agreement to tackle climate change, the deadline for which is a summit in Paris in December.

The WMO analysis is based, amongst others, on three datasets - Hadcrut, NOAAand NASA - and the analysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.