SVB’s failure is the biggest since Washington Mutual went under at the height of the 2008 crisis. | Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on Friday after a run on deposits drove the Northern California institution into insolvency, marking the largest bank failure since the financial crisis.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has transferred the bank’s deposits to a new entity in order to protect consumers. Policymakers including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had grown increasingly alarmed over the past 24 hours at the prospect of the bank’s failure.
That’s because nearly half of all Silicon Valley-backed startups and biotechs bank with the institution, which had roughly $175 billion of deposits as of the end of 2022. With $209 billion in assets, SVB’s failure is the biggest since Washington Mutual went under at the height of the 2008 crisis.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
ATHENS — Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was attacked in central Athens late on Friday, suffering a broken nose, cuts and bruises.
The assault, which his party DiEM25 described as a “brazen fascist attack,” took place while Varoufakis was dining in the central Exarchia district with party members from all over Europe.
“A small group of thugs stormed the place shouting aggressively, falsely accusing him of signing off on Greece’s bailouts with the troika [the country’s bailout creditors],” DiEM25 said in a statement. “Varoufakis stood up to talk to them, but they immediately responded with violence, savagely beating him while filming the scene.”
Politicians from across the political spectrum swiftly condemned the assault in Varoufakis, the motorbike-riding, leather-jacket-wearing politician who became well-known as the country’s finance minister in 2015.
As part of the left-wing Syriza-led Greek government, Varoufakis battled the so-called troika and Europe-imposed austerity. While the Greek administration eventually capitulated and signed a bailout agreement, Varoufakis quit government and founded a cross-border far-left political movement, DiEM25.
“They were not anarchists, leftists, communists or members of any movement,” Varoufakis said in a tweet early Saturday. “Thugs for hire they were (and looked it), who clumsily invoked the lie that I sold out to the troika. We shall not let them divide us.”
The Exarchia neighborhood has a reputation for being a bastion of self-styled anarchists. Varoufakis was publicly harassed in 2015 while dining in the same district at the height of the financial crisis.
Greek Minister of Citizen Protection Takis Theodorikakos said police would take all measures to identify and arrest the perpetrators of Friday’s attack. He noted that the DiEM25 leader, “at his own initiative, was not accompanied by his personal police detail” while at the restaurant.
Greece has been hit by the biggest mass demonstrations since the eurozone crisis in recent days, as Greeks have taken to the streets almost on a daily basis to protest the country’s deadliest train crash, ramping up pressure on the conservative New Democracy government ahead of coming elections. The wave of public rage follows a train collision on February 28 that killed 57 people and raised profound questions about the management of the rail system.
The train crash has also sparked deeper questions about the functioning of the Greek state and fresh anger against the political system.
“Let us please stay focused: We are mourning the 57 victims of rail privatization. We support the spontaneous youth rallies, the greatest hope that Greece can change. See you at the demonstrations,” Varoufakis tweeted, as another big rally is scheduled for Sunday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
LONDON — The U.K. government was scrambling on Sunday to limit the fallout for the British tech sector from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a big U.S. lender to many startups and technology companies.
The government is treating the potential reverberations as “a high priority” after a run on deposits drove California-based SVB into insolvency, marking the largest bank failure since the global financial crisis, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said in a statement Sunday morning. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other policymakers were on alert that problems at SVB could spread.
Hunt said the British government is working on a plan to backstop the cashflow needs of companies affected by SVB’s implosion and the halt in trading of its British unit, Silicon Valley Bank UK. The Bank of England announced on Friday that the U.K. unit is set to enter insolvency.
Silicon Valley Bank’s “failure could have a significant impact on the liquidity of the tech ecosystem,” Hunt said.
The government is working “to avoid or minimize damage to some of our most promising companies in the U.K.,” the chancellor said. “We will bring forward immediate plans to ensure the short-term operational and cashflow needs of Silicon Valley Bank UK customers are able to be met.”
Hunt told the BBC Sunday morning that the government would have a plan that deals with the operational cashflow needs of companies “in the next few days.”
Discussions between the governor of the Bank of England, the prime minister and the chancellor were taking place over the weekend, according to the statement.
Speaking on Sky News Sunday morning, Hunt said that Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey had made it clear that there was “no systemic risk to our financial system.” But Hunt warned that there was a “serious risk” to the technology and life-sciences sectors in the U.K.
Ministers held talks with the tech industry on Saturday after tech executives in an open letter warned Hunt that the SVB collapse posed an “existential threat” to the U.K. tech sector. They called for government intervention.
Britain’s science and technology minister on Saturday pledged to do “everything we can” to limit the repercussions on U.K. tech companies.
Michelle Donelan, who heads the newly created Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said in a tweet: “We recognize that the tech sector is often not cashflow positive as they grow and I am determined to stand with them as we do everything we can to minimize impact on the sector.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said protecting the U.K. sector from the impacts of SVB’s collapse was a “high priority” | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
A bank insolvency procedure for Silicon Valley Bank UK would mean eligible depositors would be paid the protected limit of £85,000, or up to £170,000 for joint accounts.
The Bank of England said in its Friday statement that SVB UK “has a limited presence in the U.K. and no critical functions supporting the financial system.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The BJP has struck such a blow to AAP that it has become a life and death situation.
No wonder Kejriwal wants to cut all losses and save the party and his image. The first action has been to order immediate resignation from the two Ministers embroiled in corruption on charges of a serious nature.
Secondly, he plans to put in two other Ministers quickly in charge of the large number of portfolios being held by Satyendra Jain and Manish Sisodia, who have now resigned, so that it is business as usual and administrative work of the capital does not suffer particularly the forthcoming Budget.
Clearly, AAP has suffered a body blow from which it may be extremely difficult for Kejriwal to come out unscathed.
The opposition in Delhi particularly the BJP is out for the kill and unforgivingly has already started high pitched demand for the resignation of Kejriwal.
With two Ministers of his cabinet including one of them Deputy Prime Minister being arrested on graft, the moral high ground of AAP has definitely caved in.
Can Kejriwal in all honesty say today that he was completely unaware of what his Ministers were up to?
Will the CBI arrest senior Ministers just on the whim of Narendra Modi? Does not seem likely, whatever the Opposition parties may allege.
Courts too have not granted bail to Satyendra Jain even after several months. Why did the Supreme Court ask Manish Sisodia to knock on the doors of the High Court and not give him any relief? These are the kind of questions that can definitely agitate the minds of the public.
Just playing the victim card and accusing the central government of misusing the official machinery for targeting opposition leaders may not cut much ice with the public.
The evidence collected by CBI may not be in the public domain but to say that they have not got any “money” or “money trail” to nail Sisodia and therefore he must be given a clean chit is not right because whatever evidence they found, they felt it was sufficient to take him for interrogation and later arrest him.
AAP has been put in an extremely tight spot which must be galling to its members particularly because the whole party had been formed out of an anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare.
Manish Sisodia’s innovative education policies in Delhi were becoming very popular and considered a model in Delhi and abroad.
With its clean image and innovative policies AAP had been able to add another state like Punjab to its party fold and started having national ambitions, so far so that Kejriwal was being considered by some as an aspirant of the PM’s chair the next time round.
The Kejriwal model which AAP wanted to be replicated elsewhere in the country has got a severe setback with the present happenings.
The party’s national ambitions have to be clipped now because it just cannot take the high moral ground of being a party with a difference with an absolutely clean image.
The resignations by the Ministers are a two-way sword because if on the one hand, it demonstrates that AAP has zero tolerance for corruption and anyone facing any charge has to give up his job, then Satyendra Jain’s resignation is too late.
Secondly, the Opposition would be well within its right to point out the resignation itself as some kind of an admission of guilt, even though Manish Sisodia has said that he would like his name to be cleared before he holds any official post.
The present crisis could not have come at a worse possible time when the AAP party must have been looking forward to contest in the forthcoming elections in several states. Now it has first to answer all questions regarding the liquor scam, arrests, and resignations. Clearly, a very difficult position from which to contest elections unless you are able to put the entire blame on Modi’s party at center.
The problem is these cases take a long time to come to a conclusion.
Mere charges being framed put the party leaders under a cloud. As far as public perception is concerned once someone is tarnished it takes a very long time to wipe it clear. People in the public continue to have lingering doubts even after the authorities give a clean chit.
The BJP being pushed to a corner on the “Adani issue” has now got sufficient fodder to smear AAP and cut it to size before it could develop into a serious contender come 2024.
BRUSSELS — The European Parliament’s Socialists are warily eyeing their colleagues and assistants, wondering which putative ally might turn out to be a liar as new details emerge in a growing cash-for-favors scandal.
Long-simmering geographic divisions within the group, Parliament’s second largest, are fueling mistrust and discord. Members are at odds over how forcefully to defend their implicated colleagues. Others are nursing grievances over how the group’s leadership handled months of concerns about their lawmaker, Eva Kaili, who’s now detained pending trial.
Publicly, the group has shown remarkable solidarity during the so-called Qatargate scandal, which involves allegations that foreign countries bribed EU lawmakers. Socialists and Democrats (S&D) chief Iratxe García has mustered a unified response, producing an ambitious ethics reform proposal and launching an internal investigation without drawing an open challenge to her leadership. Yet as the Parliament’s center left ponders how to win back the public’s trust ahead of next year’s EU election, the trust among the members themselves is fraying.
“I feel betrayed by these people that are colleagues of our political group,” said Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch S&D MEP. “As far as I am concerned, we are all political victims, and I hope we can get the truth out in the open.”
S&D MEPs are grappling not only with a sense of personal betrayal but also a fear that the links to corruption could squash otherwise promising electoral prospects.
Social democrats were looking forward to running in 2024 on the bread-and-butter issues at the top of minds around the bloc amid persistent inflation, buoyed by Olaf Scholz’s rise in Germany and the Continent-wide popularity of Finland’s Sanna Marin. Now, the group’s appeal to voters’ pocketbooks could be overshadowed by suitcases filled with cash.
“We were completely unaware of what was going on,” said García, vowing that the group’s internal inquiry will figure out what went wrong. “We have to let the people responsible [for the investigation] work.”
The ‘darkest plenary’
Shock, anger and betrayal reverberated through the 145-strong caucus in early December last year when Belgian police began arresting senior S&D figures, chief among them a former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri and Eva Kaili, a rising star from Greece who had barely completed a year as one of Parliament’s 14 vice presidents.
“The Qatargate revelations came as a terrible shock to S&D staff and MEPs,” an S&D spokesperson said. “Many felt betrayed, their trust abused and broken. Anyone who has ever become a victim of criminals will understand it takes time to heal from such an experience.”
When the S&D gathered for a Parliament session in Strasbourg days after the first arrests, few members took it harder than the group’s president, García, who at one point broke down in tears, according to three people present.
“We are all not just political machines, but also human beings,” said German MEP Gabriele Bischoff, an S&D vice chair in her first term. “To adapt to such a crisis, and to deal with it, it’s not easy.”
“I mean, also, you trusted some of these people,” she said.
An Italian court ruled that the daughter of former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri can be extradited to Belgium | European Union
In Strasbourg the group showed zero appetite to watch the judicial process play out, backing a move to remove Kaili from her vice presidency role. (She has, through a lawyer, consistently maintained her innocence.)
The group’s leadership also pressured MEPs who in any way were connected to the issues or people in the scandal to step back from legislative work, even if they faced no charges.
“It was of course the darkest plenary we’ve had,” said Andreas Schieder, an Austrian S&D MEP who holds a top role on the committee charged with battling foreign interference post Qatargate. “But we took the right decisions quickly.”
The S&D hierarchy swiftly suspended Kaili from the group in December and meted out the same treatment to two other MEPs who would later be drawn into the probe.
But now many S&D MEPs are asking themselves how it was possible that a cluster of people exerted such influence across the Socialist group, how Kaili rose so quickly to the vice presidency and how so much allegedly corrupt behavior went apparently unnoticed for years.
Like family
The deep interpersonal connections between those accused and the rest of the group were part of what made it all so searing for the S&D tribe.
Belgian authorities’ initial sweep nabbed not only Panzeri and Kaili but also Kaili’s partner, a longtime parliamentary assistant named Francesco Giorgi, who had spent years working for Panzeri. Suddenly every former Panzeri assistant still in Parliament was under suspicion. Panzeri later struck a plea deal, offering to dish on whom he claims to have bribed in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Maria Arena, who succeeded Panzeri as head of the Parliament’s human rights panel in 2019, also found herself under heavy scrutiny: Her friendship with her predecessor was so close that she’d been spotted as his plus-one at his assistant’s wedding. Alessandra Moretti, another S&D MEP, has also been linked to the probe, according to legal documents seen by POLITICO.
The appearance of Laura Ballarin, García’s Cabinet chief, raising a glass with Giorgi and vacationing on a Mediterranean sailboat with Kaili, offered a tabloid-friendly illustration of just how enmeshed the accused were with the group’s top brass.
“I was the first one to feel shocked, hurt and deeply betrayed when the news came out,” Ballarin told POLITICO. “Yet, evidently, my personal relations did never interfere with my professional role.”
Making matters worse, some three months later, the scandal has largely remained limited to the S&D. Two more of its members have been swallowed up since the initial round of arrests: Italy’s Andrea Cozzolino and Belgium’s Marc Tarabella — a well-liked figure known for handing out Christmas gifts to Parliament staff as part of a St. Nicholas act. Both were excluded, like Kaili, from the S&D group. They maintain their innocence.
Whiter than white
That’s putting pressure on García, who is seen in Brussels as an extension of the power of her close ally, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is one of S&D chief Iratxe García most important allies | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
However, she has not always been able to leverage that alliance in Brussels. A prime example is the backroom deal the political groups made to appoint the Parliament’s new secretary-general, Alessandro Chiocchetti, who hails from the center-right European People’s Party. García emerged mostly empty-handed from the negotiations, with the EPP maneuvering around her and The Left group securing an entirely new directorate general.
Kaili, from a tiny two-person Greek Socialist delegation, would also have never gotten the nod to become vice president in 2022 without García and the Spanish Socialists’ backing.
Yet when it comes to trying to clean house and reclaim the moral high ground, the Socialist chief has brought people together. “She deserves to be trusted to do this correctly,” said René Repasi, a German S&D lawmaker.
In the new year, the S&D successfully pushed through the affable, progressive Luxembourgish Marc Angel to replace Kaili, fending off efforts by other left-leaning and far-right groups to take one of the S&D’s seats in the Parliament’s rule-making bureau. In another move designed to steady the ship, the Socialists in February drafted Udo Bullmann, an experienced German MEP who previously led the S&D group, as a safe pair of hands to replace Arena on the human rights subcommittee.
And in a bid to go on the offensive, the Socialists published a 15-point ethics plan (one-upping the center-right Parliament president’s secret 14-point plan). It requires all S&D MEPs — and their assistants — to disclose their meetings online and pushes for whistleblower protections in the Parliament. Where legally possible, the group pledges to hold its own members to these standards — for example by banning MEPs from paid-for foreign trips — even if the rest of the body doesn’t go as far.
Those results were hard won, group officials recounted. With members from 26 EU countries, the group had to navigate cultural and geographic divisions on how to handle corruption, exposing north-south fault lines.
“To do an internal inquiry was not supported in the beginning by all, but we debated it,” said Bischoff, describing daily meetings that stretched all the way to Christmas Eve.
The idea of recruiting outside players to conduct an internal investigation was also controversial, she added. Yet in the end, the group announced in mid-January that former MEP Richard Corbett and Silvina Bacigalupo, a law professor and board member of Transparency International Spain, would lead a group-backed inquiry, which has now begun.
The moves appear to have staved off a challenge to García’s leadership, and so far, attacks from the Socialists’ main rival, the EPP, have been limited. But S&D MEPs say there’s still an air of unease, with some concerned the cleanup hasn’t gone deep enough — while others itch to defend the accused.
Some party activists quietly question if the response was too fast and furious.
Arena’s political future is in doubt, for example, even though she’s faced no criminal charges. Following mounting pressure about her ties to Panzeri, culminating with a POLITICO report on her undeclared travel to Qatar, Arena formally resigned from the human rights subcommittee. The group is not defending her, even as some activists mourn the downfall of someone they see as a sincere champion for human rights causes.
Vocal advocacy for Kaili has also fueled controversy: Italian S&D MEPs drew groans from colleagues when they hawked around a letter about the treatment of Kaili and her daughter, which only garnered 10 signatures.
“I do not believe it was necessary,” García said of the letter. “[If] I worry about the situation in jails, it has to be for everyone, not for a specific MEP.”
The letter also did nothing to warm relations between the S&D’s Spanish and Italian delegations, which have been frosty since before the scandal. The S&D spokesperson in a statement rejected the notion that there are tensions along geographical lines: “There’s no divide between North and South, nor East and West, and there’s no tension between the Italian and Spanish delegations.”
In another camp are MEPs who are looking somewhat suspiciously at their colleagues.
Repasi, the German S&D member, said he is weary of “colleagues that are seemingly lying into your face” — a specific reference to Tarabella, who vocally denied wrongdoing for weeks, only to have allegations surface that he took around €140,000 in bribes from Panzeri, the detained ex-lawmaker.
Repasi added: “It makes you more and more wonder if there is anyone else betting on the fact that he or she might not be caught.”
Jakob Hanke Vela, Karl Mathiesen and Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The yellow-and-blue flag of Ukraine has become a powerful symbol for millions of people across the Western world who want to express their solidarity with the victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Adopted officially in 1992, the year after Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the banner represents the country’s pride in its status as Europe’s bread basket — just picture endless wheat fields under blue skies.
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the colors were displayed on some of Europe’s most famous landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower to the Brandenburg Gate.
Over the course of the year since, the flag has spread to all corners of the Continent and beyond, in the hands of protesters, on official government buildings in London and Washington, and in the windows of private homes and cars.
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin | John Mcdougall/AFP via Getty ImagesEuropean Commission headquarters | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP via Getty ImagesMunich’s television tower | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Eiffel Tower | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
The flag not only came to signify Ukraine’s brave resistance in a war that ended decades of peace in Europe — it quickly became the hallmark of European unity in the face of the biggest state-backed threat to the Continent’s security this century.
On a visit to Kyiv in January, Charles Michel, the European Council’s president, captured the point.
“With the Maidan uprising, 22 years after gaining your independence, you, Ukrainians said: We are European,” Michel said. “So today, I have come to Ukraine to tell you: We are all Ukrainian.”
Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty ImagesNancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris and Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesJulien De Rosa/AFP via Getty ImagesBulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images
Beyond political symbols, Putin’s invasion triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Within weeks, European governments rushed to welcome in millions of Ukrainians, skipping administrative procedures at a speed that caused some to raise eyebrows.
Benedicte Simonart was one of the founders of a Brussels-based NGO BEforUkraine, whose logo features the Belgian and Ukrainian flags side by side. She was “struck” by the solidarity of those early days. “It was unbelievable: People kept coming to us, they were so eager to help,” she said.
“We felt very close to the Ukrainians,” she added. “Ukraine is the door to Europe, it’s almost as if it was our home.”
As the war has dragged on, European resolve has remained stable at a political level and in surveys of public opinion. The question is how long this will last if the conflict continues.
“One year ago, Europe came together very strongly and very supportively,” said Erik Jones, director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
“I’m very interested to see what this is going to do over the longer term in the way Europeans think about themselves,” Jones added. “As we approach this one-year anniversary, I think it’s really important to ask: Do we have the same power as a community to support Ukraine through what may be a very long conflict?”
For now at least, Europe and Ukraine seem closer than ever. Ukrainians, through the voice of their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, make no secret of their desire to join the EU — the sooner, the better.
And the powerful symbolism of the flag continues to color European towns and cities, a gesture that’s welcomed by Ukrainians who are now living in Europe.
“The flag is very important: it’s the symbol of Ukraine, and we need to keep displaying it, to talk about it, to remind people,” said Artem Datsii. “Because the war goes on.”
Datsii, 21, is a student at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where he moved before the war. He has not seen his parents, who live in Kyiv, for a year, but they speak regularly over the phone.
“At home, everyone is afraid that something will happen on the 24th,” Datsii said, referring to the invasion’s one-year marker. “The Russians love anniversaries.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls were rolling in. Russian tanks were barreling into Ukraine and missiles were piercing the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled above.
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BRUSSELS — China’s attempt to style itself as a neutral peacemaker in the Ukraine war fell flat on Friday when NATO and the EU both slammed its playbook for ending the conflict one year after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Beijing is a key strategic ally of Russia, which it sees as a useful partner against the West and NATO. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Chinese companies are already supplying “non-lethal” aid to Russia, but added there are indications that China is weighing up sending arms — something Beijing denies.
Earlier on Friday, the Chinese foreign ministry published a 12-point, 892-word “position paper” with a view to settling what it calls the “Ukraine crisis,” without referring to it as a war.
“China’s position builds on a misplaced focus on the so-called ‘legitimate security interests and concerns’ of parties, implying a justification for Russia’s illegal invasion, and blurring the roles of the aggressor and the aggressed,” Nabila Massrali, the EU’s foreign policy spokeswoman, said in a press briefing.
“The position paper doesn’t take into account who is the aggressor and who is the victim of an illegal and unjustified war of aggression,” Massrali, said, calling the Chinese position paper “selective and insufficient about their implications for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said China’s stance was anything but neutral.
“It is not a peace plan but principles that they shared. You have to see them against a specific backdrop. And that is the backdrop that China has taken sides, by signing for example an unlimited friendship right before Russia’s invasion in Ukraine started,” she said at a press conference in Estonia. “So we will look at the principles, of course. But we will look at them against the backdrop that China has taken sides.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also joined officials in pouring cold water on Beijing.
“China doesn’t have much credibility,” he told reporters on Friday, responding to the latest official document. “They have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg added that there have been “signs and indications that China may be planning and considering to supply military aid to Russia,” although NATO has not seen “any actual delivery of lethal aid.”
China has been hoping to improve ties with the Europeans, as it doubles down on efforts to discredit the U.S.
Assistant Foreign Minister Hua Chunying, for instance, accused the U.S. of benefiting from the war. Wang Lutong, the head of European affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, appealed directly to the European Union: “China is willing to make joint efforts with the EU and continue to play a constructive role on Ukraine,” Wang said in a tweet, adding a screenshot of the latest proposal.
More doubts
Merely five lines into China’s newly unveiled official plan on resolving the “Ukraine crisis” — released on Friday marking the first-year point of what Beijing studiously refuses to call a war — Russian propaganda appears.
“The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs,” the Chinese foreign ministry position paper reads, supporting the Russian claim that war broke out in order to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
The next point in the Chinese plan: “All parties must … avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions.” Chinese diplomats have in recent weeks accused the U.S. of being the biggest arms supplier for Ukraine, while it faces mounting pressure not to provide Russia with weapons.
Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, called China’s position “hypocritical.”
“[China’s proposal] is very reminiscent of the hypocritical Soviet rhetoric of ‘fight for peace,’” said Merezhko. “It’s a set of declarative empty slogans; it’s not backed by specifics or an implementation mechanism.”
Paramedics carry an injured Ukrainian serviceman who stepped on an anti-personnel land mine | Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
Merezhko also asked Europe not to fall for China’s charm offensive as it seeks to split the transatlantic unity on assisting his country. “China, just like Russia, is trying to split the EU and the U.S. and to undermine transatlantic solidarity,” he told POLITICO in response to the Chinese proposal. “It’s very dangerous.”
Central and Eastern European countries, the most vocal supporters of arming Ukraine further, are equally dismissive of Beijing’s rhetoric.
“China’s plan is vague and does not offer solutions,” Ivana Karásková, who heads the China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe think tank based in Prague. “The plan calls on Russia and Ukraine to deal with the issue themselves, which would only benefit Russia; China continues to oppose what it calls unilateral sanctions and asks for the sanctions to be approved by the UN Security Council — well, given the fact that the aggressor is a permanent UNSC member with a veto right, this claim is beyond ridiculous.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
In the packed meeting rooms and hallways of Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof last weekend, back-slapping allies pushed an agenda with the kind of forward-looking determination NATO had long sought to portray but just as often struggled to achieve. They pledged more aid for Ukraine. They revamped plans for their own collective defense.
Two days later in Moscow, Vladimir Putin stood alone, rigidly ticking through another speech full of resentment and lonely nationalism, pausing only to allow his audience of grim-faced government functionaries to struggle to their feet in a series of mandatory ovations in a cold, cavernous hall.
With the war in Ukraine now one year old, and no clear path to peace at hand, a newly unified NATO is on the verge of making a series of seismic decisions beginning this summer to revolutionize how it defends itself while forcing slower members of the alliance into action.
The decisions in front of NATO will place the alliance — which protects 1 billion people — on a path to one the most sweeping transformations in its 74-year history. Plans set to be solidified at a summit in Lithuania this summer promise to revamp everything from allies’ annual budgets to new troop deployments to integrating defense industries across Europe.
The goal: Build an alliance that Putin wouldn’t dare directly challenge.
Yet the biggest obstacle could be the alliance itself, a lumbering collection of squabbling nations with parochial interests and a bureaucracy that has often promised way more than it has delivered. Now it has to seize the momentum of the past year to cut through red tape and crank up peacetime procurement strategies to meet an unpredictable, and likely increasingly belligerent Russia.
It’s “a massive undertaking,” said Benedetta Berti, head of policy planning at the NATO secretary-general’s office. The group has spent “decades of focusing our attention elsewhere,” she said. Terrorism, immigration — all took priority over Russia.
“It’s really a quite significant historic shift for the alliance,” she said.
For now, individual nations are making the right noises. But the proof will come later this year when they’re asked to open up their wallets, and defense firms are approached with plans to partner with rivals.
To hear alliance leaders and heads of state tell it, they’re ready to do it.
“Ukraine has to win this,” Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We cannot allow Russia to win, and for a good reason — because the ambitions of Russia are much larger than Ukraine.”
All eyes on Vilnius
The big change will come In July, when NATO allies gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their big annual summit.
Gen. Chris Cavoli will reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
NATO’s top military leader will lay out a new plan for how the alliance will put more troops and equipment along the eastern front. And Gen. Chris Cavoli, supreme allied commander for Europe, will also reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice.
The changes will amount to a “reengineering” of how Europe is defended, one senior NATO official said.
The plans will be based on geographic regions, with NATO asking countries to take responsibility for different security areas, from space to ground and maritime forces.
“Allies will know even more clearly what their jobs will be in the defense of Europe,” the official said.
NATO leaders have also pledged to reinforce the alliance’s eastern defenses and make 300,000 troops ready to rush to help allies on short notice, should the need arise.Under the current NATO Response Force, the alliance can make available 40,000 troops in less than 15 days. Under the new force model, 100,000 troops could be activated in up to 10 days, with a further 200,000 ready to go in up to 30 days.
But a good plan can only get allies so far.
NATO’s aspirations represent a departure from the alliance’s previous focus on short-term crisis management. Essentially, the alliance is “going in the other direction and focusing more on collective security and deterrence and defense,” said a second NATO official, who like the first, requested anonymity to discuss ongoing planning.
Chief among NATO’s challenges: Getting everyone’s armed forces to cooperate. Countries such as Germany, which has underfunded its military modernization programs for years, will likely struggle to get up to speed. And Sweden and Finland — on the cusp of joining NATO — are working to integrate their forces into the alliance.
Others simply have to expand their ranks for NATO to meet its stated quotas.
“NATO needs the ability to add speed, put large formations in the field — much larger than they used to,” said Bastian Giegerich, director of defense and military analysis and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
East vs. West
An east-west ideological fissure is also simmering within NATO.
Countries on the alliance’s eastern front have long been frustrated, at times publicly, with the slower pace of change many in Western Europe and the United States are advocating — even after Russia’s invasion.
Joe Biden traveled to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
“We started to change and for western partners, it’s been kind of a delay,” Polish Armed Forces Gen. Rajmund Andrzejczak said during a visit to Washington this month.
Those concerns on the eastern front are being heard, tentatively.
Last summer, NATO branded Russia as its most direct threat — a significant shift from post-Cold War efforts to build a partnership with Moscow. U.S. President Joe Biden has also conducted his own charm offensive, traveling to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights.
Still, NATO’s eastern front, which is within striking distance of Russia, is imploring its western neighbors to move faster to help fill in the gaps along the alliance’s edges and to buttress reinforcement plans.
It is important to “fix the slots — which countries are going to deliver which units,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, adding that he hopes the U.S. “will take a significant part.”
Officials and experts agree that these changes are needed for the long haul.
“If Ukraine manages to win, then Ukraine and Europe and NATO are going to have a very disgruntled Russia on its doorstep, rearming, mobilizing, ready to go again,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Ukraine loses and Russia wins,” he noted, the West would have “an emboldened Russia on our doorstep — so either way, NATO has a big Russia problem.”
Wakeup call from Russia
The rush across the Continent to rearm as weapons and equipment flows from long-dormant stockpiles into Ukraine has been as sudden as the invasion itself.
After years of flat defense budgets and Soviet-era equipment lingering in the motor pools across the eastern front, calls for more money and more Western equipment threaten to overwhelm defense firms without the capacity to fill those orders in the near term. That could create a readiness crisis in ammunition, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and anti-armor weapons.
A damaged Russian tank near Kyiv on February 14, 2023 | Sergei Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE
NATO actually recognized this problem a decade ago but lacked the ability to do much about it. The first attempt to nudge member states into shaking off the post-Cold War doldrums started slowly in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
After Moscow took Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014, the alliance signed the “Wales pledge” to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense by 2024.
The vast majority of countries politely ignored the vow, giving then-President Donald Trump a major talking point as he demanded Europe step up and stop relying on Washington to provide a security umbrella.
But nothing focuses attention like danger, and the sight of Russian tanks rumbling toward Kyiv as Putin ranted about Western depravity and Russian destiny jolted Europe into action. One year on, the bills from those early promises to do more are coming due.
“We are in this for the long haul” in Ukraine, said Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, a body comprising allies’ uniformed defense chiefs. But sustaining the pipeline funneling weapons and ammunition to Ukraine will take not only the will of individual governments but also a deep collaboration between the defense industries in Europe and North America. Those commitments are still a work in progress.
Part of that effort, Bauer said, is working to get countries to collaborate on building equipment that partners can use. It’s a job he thinks the European Union countries are well-suited to lead.
That’s a touchy subject for the EU, a self-proclaimed peace project that by definition can’t use its budget to buy weapons. But it can serve as a convener. And it agreed to do just that last week, pledging with NATO and Ukraine to jointly establish a more effective arms procurement system for Kyiv.
Talk, of course, is one thing. Traditionally NATO and the EU have been great at promising change, and forming committees and working groups to make that change, only to watch it get bogged down in domestic politics and big alliance in-fighting. And many countries have long fretted about the EU encroaching on NATO’s military turf.
But this time, there is a sense that things have to move, that western countries can’t let Putin win his big bet — that history would repeat itself, and that Europe and the U.S. would be frozen by an inability to agree.
“People need to be aware that this is a long fight. They also need to be brutally aware that this is a war,” the second NATO official said. “This is not a crisis. This is not some small incident somewhere that can be managed. This is an all-out war. And it’s treated that way now by politicians all across Europe and across the alliance, and that’s absolutely appropriate.”
Paul McLeary and Lili Bayer also contributed reporting from Munich.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
At least 43 migrants drowned on Sunday after the fishing boat on which they were traveling sank off the coast of the Italian region of Calabria.
According to local authorities, some 250 migrants were crammed aboard the ship, which broke in two about 20 kilometers from the city of Crotone. Over 100 passengers have been rescued, but at least 70 of the people who were aboard the ship remain missing.
Over the course of the morning, bodies, including those of children and at least one newborn baby, have washed ashore in the resort town of Steccato di Cutro, according to local reports.
Although the ship’s port of origin was in Turkey, authorities say the majority of the migrants that have been rescued are from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the disaster was “a huge tragedy that demonstrates how necessary it is to oppose the chains of irregular migration,” adding that more needed to be done to clamp down on “unscrupulous smugglers” who, “in order to get rich, organize improvised trips with inadequate boats and in prohibitive conditions.”
Calabrian President Roberto Occhiuto slammed EU authorities for their inaction in addressing the migration crisis and asked “what has the European Union been doing all these years?”
“Where is Europe when it comes to guaranteeing security and legality?” he asked, adding that regions like his were left on their own to “manage emergencies and mourn the dead.”
According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, at least 2,366 migrants lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year; at least 124 have been reporting missing in its waters since the beginning of this year.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
