Poonch,apr, 26: Over 30 people have been arrested in the Rajouri-Poonch belt in connection with the militant attack that left 5 Rashtriya Rifles soldiers dead.
An army vehicle had come under fire in the Bhatadhurian village of Poonch district last week. The army vehicle had caught fire after the attack in which 5 soldiers were charred to death and one was shifted to hospital in injured condition.
After the attack, a multi-agency operation was launched while National Investigation Agency also became part of the operation.
A police official on condition of anonymity told news agency Kashmir News Trust that at least 30 locals from the Rajouri-Poonch belt have been arrested and during questioning some of them revealed that militants were staying in the Rajouri-Poonch belt for over 3 months after they infiltrated this area from across the border.
“Before the attack, the militants stayed in the house of a local Gujjar who is in police custody,” he said adding that some locals including a local handler were in touch exchanging voice notes on their cell phones.
Choppers and drones are being continuously pressed into service during this major search operation.
‘During the investigation, it has become clear that locals provided logistics to militants and the attack was planned from Pakistan,’ police sources said adding that militants got instructions from a local handler.
Four out of five soldiers who were killed in the attack were natives of Punjab and one from Odisha. They were identified as Harkrishan Singh, Kulwant Singh, Mandeep Singh, Sewak Singh, and Debashesh Baswal.
Former Jammu Kashmir Police Chief SP Vaid said that the Poonch attack has punctured the narrative of Pakistan that non-state actors are carrying out attacks independently. He said it is clear that somebody from Pakistan establishment are helping these militants. [KNT]
But the political fervor among progressive Democrats for compulsory affordable housing attached to tax incentives for conversions could dampen developers’ interest in the costly overhauls. And it’s not clear any of the policy initiatives on the table will yield conversions on a broad enough scale to turn underpopulated downtowns into bustling residential neighborhoods. As major cities from Chicago to San Francisco to Washington also look to the overhauls, they remain expensive and logistically difficult to pursue.
“I don’t think there’s going to be as much as people think there will be, unless there were a lot of incentives for people to get there,” said Marty Burger, chief executive officer at Silverstein Properties in New York, which is pursuing some office-to-residential projects.
Three years into the pandemic, it’s become clear that remote work is not a temporary phenomenon. Just over half of Manhattan office workers are back at their desks on an average weekday, according to a recent survey of employers conducted by the Partnership for New York City, a business group.
Another recent study found hybrid work is costing Manhattan at least $12.4 billion in economic activity per year as office employees spend less money at lunch and coffee spots near their workplaces. While Manhattan office buildings — some of the most valuable real estate in the world — haven’t yet seen a significant sustained drop in valuations, long-term vacancies could be reflected in property assessments in the coming years, with potentially dire consequences for the city’s tax base. The city derives roughly 50 percent of its tax revenue from real estate.
Mayor Eric Adams has pointed to Lower Manhattan — which saw a wave of office buildings converted into apartments in the 1990s and early 2000s — as a template that could be replicated in Midtown, which has been harder hit by Covid-19 due to its reliance on the office crowd. But a range of factors limit the extent to which that success could be repeated.
“Midtown is a different building stock than lower Manhattan, so the success of lower Manhattan can’t be directly translated here,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, who led the Manhattan division of the Department of City Planning under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and now runs an architecture firm.
He noted Midtown office buildings are more likely to have structural features that complicate residential conversions, like large floor plans that make it difficult to break up buildings into individual apartments with sufficient windows. Buildings in Lower Manhattan that were converted in the last wave were largely older office properties — generally from the 1920s or earlier — that had operable windows, so a conversion wouldn’t require a complete facade replacement the way buildings from the 1960s, or onward, would.
“You can often tie that to the rise and efficiency of air conditioning, when you didn’t have to have operable windows,” said Eleanor Gorski, president and CEO of the Chicago Architecture Center and a former planning official for the city, which is pursuing a plan along the LaSalle Street corridor, a commercial thoroughfare in Chicago’s central business district. “But now turning them into residential, that’s the challenge.”
Silverstein evaluated some 2,500 office buildings in Manhattan below 96th street and found 323 were suitable for conversion based on a range of criteria. Indeed, the calculations can vary widely from property to property.
“What people may not realize is that with the office buildings, there’s so many individual building features that factor into cost,” said Basha Gerhards, senior vice president of planning at the Real Estate Board of New York. She cited the physical layout issues, but also when existing leases run out — which, in office buildings, can span ten years or more — and financial factors, like how much debt a building has and what the ownership structure is like.
The current economic environment, with high interest rates and inflation, doesn’t make the calculation any easier.
The Chicago plan, unveiled under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, seeks to create 1,000 new residential units along the LaSalle corridor, 30 percent of them affordable.
As Chicago looks to a specific office thoroughfare, officials in New York have taken a less targeted approach.
Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed legislation in her executive budget to remove zoning and building regulations that can make it harder to convert office properties into residential. She also proposed an incentive program that would offer developers a 19-year property-tax exemption if they set aside 20 percent of the residential units for low- and middle-income households.
Dan Garodnick, chair of New York’s Department of City Planning, has been careful to note the measure would simply remove barriers to conversions and incentivize affordable housing, though it will be up to the private sector how much they take advantage of the opportunity.
“While we are enabling, or what we propose to do is enable 136 million square feet to be eligible, we do not believe that 136 million square feet will take us up on the opportunity,” he said at a City Council hearing earlier this year. City officials have said 136 million square feet is roughly the amount of office space in the entire city of Philadelphia.
In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed introduced legislation last month to remove certain city requirements that can limit office-to-housing conversions. That comes as a bill before the California legislature seeks to make approvals for such conversions automatic, and offer grants to developers who pursue office-to-residential projects with a 10 percent affordable housing set-aside.
Mayor Muriel Bowser in Washington, D.C., meanwhile, set an ambitious goal earlier this year of increasing the population of the city’s downtown from 25,000 to 40,000 over five years, alongside a program that would give office owners a 20-year tax break if they converted to housing and set aside at least 15 percent of homes for low- and middle-income households.
In New York, a tax break known as 421-g was established in 1995 to help facilitate conversions in Lower Manhattan. That program, which did not require any affordable housing in exchange, generated nearly 13,000 new apartments at a cost of $1.2 billion, or $92,000 per unit, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.
Some experts argue there’s a benefit — particularly for the future financial health of Midtown — to a more direct approach, with government offering more generous incentives to actively encourage widespread conversions.
“If it’s limited to [the governor’s proposal] I don’t think much is going to happen on this, I don’t think people understand how much surgery these buildings are going to require,” Chakrabarti said. “The question for government becomes, what’s the public good that comes from these conversions, why should we incentive them so much beyond affordable housing, and I think there’s a stronger argument for that in Midtown than people are realizing.”
Other experts say it would be a mistake to allow widespread conversions to high-cost housing without including affordable housing. Vicki Been, New York’s top housing official under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, co-wrote a recent op-ed arguing any regulatory changes to make way for office conversions should require a portion of every building be set aside for income-restricted housing, rather than just offering a tax incentive for affordable units.
“If New York passes a law that will end up producing thousands of luxury apartments that only the wealthiest can afford, and resulting in zero permanently affordable homes for hard-working regular New Yorkers, then what will we have done?” Been and her co-authors wrote in Gotham Gazette.
Meanwhile, several city and state lawmakers believe the affordable housing requirements in the proposed tax break — that 20 percent of a building be affordable — would be insufficient. State Assemblymember Deborah Glick introduced an alternative to Hochul’s proposal that would lift certain state restrictions limiting conversions, but require 40 percent of new units be set aside as affordable housing.
Multiple developers cited a need for deeper incentives than what’s on the table in New York.
“I think it’s a mistake to tie it to affordable [housing],” Scott Rechler, CEO of the development firm RXR, said of a potential tax incentive for conversions. “I think addressing the tax incentive and broadening what is in those incentives would be valuable.”
For now, owners pursuing conversions should be aware it’s a risk.
“We don’t want people that just think that they can take any building, convert it, and then they’re in the middle of this thing, and now you have a building that was an office building, was trying to be converted, and now it’s nothing,” Burger, of Silverstein, said. “Because then you just have to blow the thing up.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi; Congress on Thursday alleged that farm laws, which were withdrawn by the Centre in 2021, were brought in to give benefits to the Adani group.
Jairam Ramesh, Congress General Secretary, who has started a series of questions, said “It’s related to the hard work the government has put into handing over India’s foodgrain logistics to the Adani Group, a conspiracy that it seems was only temporarily foiled by the farmer agitation of 2020-21 that forced you to withdraw the black farm laws.”
He said, “one of the biggest beneficiaries of the farm laws would have been Adani Agri Logistics which has become the major beneficiary of the Food Corporation of India’s silo contracts, the most recent award being one to set up 3.5 lakh metric tonnes of storage in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.”
He alleged that Adani Farm-Pik was allowed to build a near-monopoly on apple procurement in Himachal Pradesh.
A lap of honour around the stadium he got named after himself in his own lifetime is a good occasion for heralding a quarter century of pointed questions with HAHK( Hum Adanike Hain Kaun)-25
“Is India’s public sector, painstakingly built over the past 70 years, now reduced to being a vehicle for the enrichment of your corporate friends,” he asked.
He said the Supreme Court observed that the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution had supported the Central warehousing corporation stand while the Ministry of Commerce and Industry had aided Adani’s bid to take control of two major CWC warehouses near Mundra port by not supporting the denotification of the warehouses as part of the Adani SEZ.
“The entire country knows that the motivation behind your ill-conceived farm laws was to hand over India’s agricultural logistics to a few of your close corporate cronies,” Ramesh added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
ATHENS — Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was supposed to be preparing to call an early election — instead he’s dealing with protestors throwing Molotov cocktails at police as a wave of public rage convulses Greece following a train crash that killed 57 people.
Last week’s train collision was caused when a freight train and a passenger train were allowed on the same rail line. The station-master accused of causing the crash was charged with negligent homicide and jailed Sunday pending a trial.
The crash has raised deeper questions about the functioning of the Greek state, following reports that Athens hadn’t updated its rail network to meet EU requirements and that the state rail company was accused of mismanagement.
Mitsotakis initially blamed the incident on “tragic human error” but was forced to backtrack after he was accused to trying to cover up the government’s role. The first political victim was Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis, who resigned soon after the accident. Mitsotakis put out a new message over the weekend saying: “We cannot, will not and must not hide behind human error.”
“As prime minister, I owe everyone, but above all the relatives of the victims, a big SORRY. Both personal, and in the name of all those who have ruled the country for years,” Mitsotakis wrote on Facebook.
His conservative New Democracy party is now weighing the political implications of the crash.
Before Tuesday’s deadly event, it was widely expected that the government would hold a final Cabinet meeting where it would announce a rise in the minimum wage. Mitsotakis would then dissolve parliament, with the likeliest election date being April 9.
But that’s now very uncertain. If the April 9 date slips away, alternatives range from a first round vote later in April, May or even July.
“Anyone who hinted to the prime minister these days that we need to see what we do about the elections was kicked out of the meeting,” government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou told Skai local TV. “It is not yet time to get into that kind of discussion.”
Instead of election plans, the government is dealing with a massive outpouring of public rage at the accident that has seen large protest rallies and clashes between demonstrators and police.
“When a national tragedy like this is underway, it is difficult to assess the political consequences,” said Alexis Routzounis, a researcher at pollster Kapa Research. “Society will demand clear explanations, and a careful and discreet response from the political leadership is paramount. For now, the political system is responding with understanding.”
Opposition parties have so far kept a low profile, but that is starting to change.
“Mitsotakis is well aware that the debate on the causes of the tragedy will not be avoided by the resignation of his [transport] minister, but becomes even more urgent,” the main opposition Syriza party said.
Before the crash, New Democracy was comfortably ahead of its rivals, according to POLITICO’s poll of polls.
GREECE NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.
That lead came despite a growing series of problems, including high inflation, skyrocketing food prices, financial wrongdoing by conservative MPs, a wiretapping scandal and reports of a secret offer by Saudi Arabia to pay for football stadiums for Greece and Egypt if they agreed to team up and host the 2030 World Cup.
“The government has managed to weather previous crises, including devastating wildfires in 2021 and the recent surveillance scandal, while suffering only a minor impact to its ratings,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.
He added that the government is now scrambling to ensure it’s not hurt politically by the crash.
“It is following a similar strategy in wake of the train crash, with Mitsotakis playing a central role in establishing the narrative and swiftly announcing action aimed at getting ahead of the story,” Piccoli said.
Missed warnings
People are especially outraged because the tragedy appears to have been avoidable.
The rail line was supposed to use a modern electronic light signaling and safety system called ETCS that was purchased in the early 2000s, but never worked.
Even the current outdated system was not fully operational, with key signal lights always stuck on red due to technical failure and station managers only warning one another of approaching trains via walkie-talkie.
The rail employees’ union sent three legal warning notes in recent months to the transport minister and rail companies asking for speedy upgrades to railway infrastructure.
“We will not wait for the accident to happen to see them shed crocodile tears,” said one sent on February 7.
In mid-February, the European Commission referred Greece to court for the eight-year delay in signing and publishing the contract between the national authorities and the company that manages rail infrastructure.
Last April, the head of the automated train control system resigned, complaining that trains were running at 200 kilometres per hour without the safety system.
The government even voted to allow Hellenic Train a five-year delay in paying any compensation for an accident or a death, while EU rules call for a 15-day time limit. The company said on Sunday it would not use the exemption.
On Monday, Mitsotakis met with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and she pledged that Brussels would help Greece “to modernize its railways and improve their safety.”
All of that is grim news for a party aiming to win a second term in office.
“Historically, when the state, instead of stability, causes insecurity, it is primarily the current government that is affected, but also all the governing parties, because the tragedy brings back memories of similar dramas of the past,” Routzounis said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Bengaluru: Amazon on Friday announced that it will integrate its logistics network (from pickup to delivery) and SmartCommerce services with the government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform.
This will be Amazon’s initial collaboration with ONDC as the company continue to explore other potential opportunities for stronger integration between the two in future.
“We are excited about the opportunities to mobilise Amazon’s industry-leading infrastructure and technology, including logistics, and small business digitisation tools, to help the ONDC accelerate its objectives. We remain committed to being a catalyst for India’s digitisation efforts throughout the economy,” Manish Tiwary, Country Manager, India Consumer Business, Amazon India, said in a statement.
Moreover, the company said that the integration will provide greater technology support to the seller community and further empower small businesses, also it will benefit crores of consumers with wider choices.
The integration would be a significant step towards the ONDC’s goal of democratising e-commerce nationwide.
“We are happy that Amazon has a definite roadmap to being a part of the ONDC network and is taking its first step in coming in as the logistics partner in the ONDC network which is a globally pioneering idea established with a view to democratise digital commerce in India, and we also hope that the buyer and seller platforms are onboarded as early as possible,” T Koshy, MD & CEO of ONDC, said in a statement.
Amazon has consistently leveraged technology and innovation on behalf of Indian customers and sellers, and has digitised over 4 million small businesses and kirana stores in India, giving them access to cutting-edge technology for online selling, the company mentioned.
The e-commerce giant has over 11 lakh sellers with more than 50 per cent coming from tier 2 cities and below in the country.
The company also plans to digitise 1 crore small businesses by 2025.
ONDC, a Ministry of Commerce initiative, will enable sellers to tap this massive market by offering an equitable and secure platform that integrates multiple sellers, buyers and logistics players.
“I am wicked and scary with claws and teeth,” Vladimir Putin reportedly warned David Cameron when the then-British prime minister pressed him about the use of chemical weapons by Russia’s ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, and discussed how far Russia was prepared to go.
According to Cameron’s top foreign policy adviser John Casson — cited in a BBC documentary — Putin went on to explain that to succeed in Syria, one would have to use barbaric methods, as the U.S. did in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. “I am an ex-KGB man,” he expounded.
The remarks were meant, apparently, half in jest but, as ever with Russia’s leader, the menace was clear.
And certainly, Putin has proven he is ready to deploy fear as a weapon in his attempt to subjugate a defiant Ukraine. His troops have targeted civilians and have resorted to torture and rape. But victory has eluded him.
In the next few weeks, he looks set to try to reverse his military failures with a late-winter offensive: very possibly by being even scarier, and fighting tooth and claw, to save Russia — and himself — from further humiliation.
Can the ex-KGB man succeed, however? Can Russia still win the war of Putin’s choice against Ukraine in the face of heroic and united resistance from the Ukrainians?
Catalog of errors
From the start, the war was marked by misjudgments and erroneous calculations. Putin and his generals underestimated Ukrainian resistance, overrated the abilities of their own forces, and failed to foresee the scale of military and economic support Ukraine would receive from the United States and European nations.
Kyiv didn’t fall in a matter of days — as planned by the Kremlin — and Putin’s forces in the summer and autumn were pushed back, with Ukraine reclaiming by November more than half the territory the Russians captured in the first few weeks of the invasion. Russia has now been forced into a costly and protracted conventional war, one that’s sparked rare dissent within the country’s political-military establishment and led Kremlin infighting to spill into the open.
The only victory Russian forces have recorded in months came in January when the Ukrainians withdrew from the salt-mining town of Soledar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. And the signs are that the Russians are on the brink of another win with Bakhmut, just six miles southwest of Soledar, which is likely to fall into their hands shortly.
But neither of these blood-drenched victories amounts to much more than a symbolic success despite the high casualties likely suffered by both sides. Tactically neither win is significant — and some Western officials privately say Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been better advised to have withdrawn earlier from Soledar and from Bakhmut now, in much the same way the Russians in November beat a retreat from their militarily hopeless position at Kherson.
For a real reversal of Russia’s military fortunes Putin will be banking in the coming weeks on his forces, replenished by mobilized reservists and conscripts, pulling off a major new offensive. Ukrainian officials expect the offensive to come in earnest sooner than spring. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov warned in press conferences in the past few days that Russia may well have as many as 500,000 troops amassed in occupied Ukraine and along the borders in reserve ready for an attack. He says it may start in earnest around this month’s first anniversary of the war on February 24.
Other Ukrainian officials think the offensive, when it comes, will be in March — but at least before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Zelenskyy warned Ukrainians Saturday that the country is entering a “time when the occupier throws more and more of its forces to break our defenses.”
All eyes on Donbas
The likely focus of the Russians will be on the Donbas region of the East. Andriy Chernyak, an official in Ukraine’s military intelligence, told the Kyiv Post that Putin had ordered his armed forces to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of March. “We’ve observed that the Russian occupation forces are redeploying additional assault groups, units, weapons and military equipment to the east,” Chernyak said. “According to the military intelligence of Ukraine, Putin gave the order to seize all of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
Other Ukrainian officials and western military analysts suspect Russia might throw some wildcards to distract and confuse. They have their eyes on a feint coming from Belarus mimicking the northern thrust last February on Kyiv and west of the capital toward Vinnytsia. But Ukrainian defense officials estimate there are only 12,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus currently, ostensibly holding joint training exercises with the Belarusian military, hardly enough to mount a diversion.
“A repeat assault on Kyiv makes little sense,” Michael Kofman, an American expert on the Russian Armed Forces and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. “An operation to sever supply lines in the west, or to seize the nuclear powerplant by Rivne, may be more feasible, but this would require a much larger force than what Russia currently has deployed in Belarus,” he said in an analysis.
But exactly where Russia’s main thrusts will come along the 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region is still unclear. Western military analysts don’t expect Russia to mount a push along the whole snaking front — more likely launching a two or three-pronged assault focusing on some key villages and towns in southern Donetsk, on Kreminna and Lyman in Luhansk, and in the south in Zaporizhzhia, where there have been reports of increased buildup of troops and equipment across the border in Russia.
In the Luhansk region, Russian forces have been removing residents near the Russian-held parts of the front line. And the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, believes the expulsions are aimed at clearing out possible Ukrainian spies and locals spotting for the Ukrainian artillery. “There is an active transfer of (Russian troops) to the region and they are definitely preparing for something on the eastern front,” Haidai told reporters.
Reznikov has said he expects the Russian offensive will come from the east and the south simultaneously — from Zaporizhzhia in the south and in Donetsk and Luhansk. In the run-up to the main offensives, Russian forces have been testing five points along the front, according to Ukraine’s General Staff in a press briefing Tuesday. They said Russian troops have been regrouping on different parts of the front line and conducting attacks near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka in eastern Donetsk.
Combined arms warfare
Breakthroughs, however, will likely elude the Russians if they can’t correct two major failings that have dogged their military operations so far — poor logistics and a failure to coordinate infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually complementary effects, otherwise known as combined arms warfare.
When announcing the appointment in January of General Valery Gerasimov — the former chief of the defense staff — as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry highlighted “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare.
Kofman assesses that Russia’s logistics problems may have largely been overcome. “There’s been a fair amount of reorganization in Russian logistics, and adaptation. I think the conversation on Russian logistical problems in general suffers from too much anecdotalism and received wisdom,” he said.
Failing that, much will depend for Russia on how much Gerasimov has managed to train his replenished forces in combined arms warfare and on that there are huge doubts he had enough time. Kofman believes Ukrainian forces “would be better served absorbing the Russian attack and exhausting the Russian offensive potential, then taking the initiative later this spring. Having expended ammunition, better troops, and equipment it could leave Russian defense overall weaker.” He suspects the offensive “may prove underwhelming.”
Pro-war Russian military bloggers agree. They have been clamoring for another mobilization, saying it will be necessary to power the breakouts needed to reverse Russia’s military fortunes. Former Russian intelligence officer and paramilitary commander Igor Girkin, who played a key role in Crimea’s annexation and later in the Donbas, has argued waves of call-ups will be needed to overcome Ukraine’s defenses by sheer numbers.
And Western military analysts suspect that Ukraine and Russia are currently fielding about the same number of combat soldiers. This means General Gerasimov will need many more if he’s to achieve the three-to-one ratio military doctrines suggest necessary for an attacking force to succeed.
Ukrainian officials think Russia’s offensive will be in March, before the arrival of Leopard 2 and other Western tanks | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images
But others fear that Russia has sufficient forces, if they are concentrated, to make some “shock gains.” Richard Kemp, a former British army infantry commander, is predicting “significant Russian gains in the coming weeks. We need to be realistic about how bad things could be — otherwise the shock risks dislodging Western resolve,” he wrote. The fear being that if the Russians can make significant territorial gains in the Donbas, then it is more likely pressure from some Western allies will grow for negotiations.
But Gerasimov’s manpower deficiencies have prompted other analysts to say that if Western resolve holds, Putin’s own caution will hamper Russia’s chances to win the war.
“Putin’s hesitant wartime decision-making demonstrates his desire to avoid risky decisions that could threaten his rule or international escalation — despite the fact his maximalist and unrealistic objective, the full conquest of Ukraine, likely requires the assumption of further risk to have any hope of success,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an analysis this week.
Wicked and scary Putin may be but, as far as ISW sees it, he “has remained reluctant to order the difficult changes to the Russian military and society that are likely necessary to salvage his war.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BRUSSELS — With Ukraine’s partners racing to send more weapons to Kyiv amid an emerging Russian offensive, fulfilling Ukrainian requests is becoming trickier.
Ukraine is still waiting for promised deliveries of modern tanks. Combat jets, though much discussed, are mired in the throes of government hesitation.
On top of that, Kyiv is using thousands of rounds of ammunition per day — and Western production simply can’t keep up.
As members of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group gather in Brussels on Tuesday to coordinate arms assistance to Ukraine, they face pressure to expedite delivery and provide even more advanced capabilities to Ukrainian forces.
“We have received good signals,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address following visits to London, Paris and Brussels.
“This applies both to long-range missiles and tanks, and to the next level of our cooperation — combat aircraft,” he said, however adding, “We still need to work on this.”
And while most of Ukraine’s partners are committed to responding to Zelenskyy’s stump tour with expanded support as the conflict threatens to escalate, Western governments will have to overcome political and practical hurdles.
“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. “Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield.”
Existing and future supply of weapons to Ukraine will both be on the table when the defense group — made up of about 50 countries and popularly known at the Ramstein format — meets at NATO headquarters.
NATO allies will also hold a meeting of defense ministers directly afterward to hear the latest assessment from Ukrainian counterparts and discuss the alliance’s future defense challenges.
Ukrainian officials will use the session, which would typically be held at the U.S. base in Ramstein, Germany, to share their latest needs with Western officials — from air defense to ground logistics — while it will also be a venue for Kyiv’s supporters to check in on implementation of earlier pledges and availabilities in the near future.
The aim of the session, said a senior European diplomat, is “to step up military support as much as needed — not only commitments, but actual speedy deliverables is of particular significance.”
“Tanks are needed not on paper but in the battlefield,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of discussions.
Ammo, ammo, ammo
One of the most pressing issues on the table in Brussels this week is how to keep the weapons already sent to Ukraine firing.
“Of course it is important to discuss new systems, but the most urgent need is to ensure that all the systems which are already there, or have been pledged, are delivered and work as they should,” Stoltenberg said.
During meetings with EU heads on Thursday, Zelenskyy and his team provided each leader with an individualized list requesting weapons and equipment based on the country’s known stocks and capabilities.
But there was one common theme.
“The first thing on the list was, everywhere, the ammunition,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.
“If you have the equipment and you don’t have the ammunition, then it’s no use,” the Estonian leader told reporters on Friday.
And while Ukraine is in dire need of vast amounts of ammo to keep fighting, Western countries’ own stocks are running low.
“It’s a very real concern,” said Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe. “None of us, including the United States, is producing enough ammunition right now,” he said in a phone interview on Sunday.
Munitions will also be top of mind at the session of NATO defense ministers on Wednesday, who will discuss boosting production of weapons, ammunition and equipment, along with future defense spending targets for alliance members.
Boosting stockpiles and production, Stoltenberg emphasized on Monday, “requires more defense expenditure by NATO allies.”
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty images
And while the NATO chief said some progress has been made on work with industry on plans to boost stockpile targets, some current and former officials have expressed frustration about the pace of work.
Kallas last week raised the idea of joint EU purchases to help spur production and hasten deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, although it’s not clear whether this plan would enjoy sufficient support within the bloc — and how fast it could have an impact.
Hodges thinks companies need a clearer demand signal from governments. “We need industry to do more,” he said.
But he noted, “These are not charities … they are commercial businesses, and so you have to have an order with money before they start making it.”
Jets fight fails to take off (for now)
Fighter jets are a priority ask for Ukrainian officials, although Western governments seem not yet ready to make concrete commitments.
Numerous countries have expressed openness to eventually providing Ukraine with jets, indicating that the matter is no longer a red line. Regardless, hesitation remains.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg | Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
The U.K. has gone the furthest so far, announcing that it will train Ukrainian pilots on fighter jets. But when it comes to actually providing aircraft, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace cautioned that “this is not a simple case of towing an aircraft to the border.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda, meanwhile, said sending F-16 aircraft would be a “very serious decision” which is “not easy to take,” arguing that his country does not have enough jets itself.
For some potential donors, the jets debate revolves around both timing and utility.
“The essential question is: What do they want to do with planes? It’s not clear,” said one French diplomat, who was unauthorized to speak publicly. “Do they think that with 50 or 100 fighter jets, they can retake the Donbas?” the diplomat said.
The diplomat said there is no point in training Ukrainians on Western jets now. “It’ll take over six months to train them, so it doesn’t respond to their immediate imperatives.”
But, the diplomat added, “maybe some countries should give them MiGs, planes that they can actually fly.”
Slovakia is in fact moving closer to sending MiG-29 jets to Ukraine.
“We want to do it,” said a Slovak official who was not at liberty to disclose their identity. “But we must work out the details on how,” the official said, adding that a domestic process and talks with Ukraine still need to take place.
No big jet announcements are expected at the Tuesday meeting, though the issue is likely to be discussed.
Where are the tanks?
And while Western governments have already — with great fanfare — struck a deal to provide Ukraine with modern tanks, questions over actual deliveries will also likely come up at Tuesday’s meeting.
Germany’s leadership in particular has stressed it’s time for countries that supported the idea of sending tanks to live up to their rhetoric.
“Germany is making a very central contribution to ensuring that we provide rapid support, as we have done in the past,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last week.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is shown an anti-aircraft gun tank Gepard | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images
“We are striving to ensure that many others who have come forward in the past now follow up on this finger-pointing with practical action,” he went on. Germany’s goal is for Ukraine to receive tanks by the end of March, and training has already begun.
Along with tanks, another pending request that Ukrainian officials will likely bring up this week is long-range missiles.
Hodges, who has been advocating for the West to give Ukraine the weapons it would need to retake Crimea, said he believes long-range precision weapons are the key. “That’s how you defeat mass with precision.”
Any such weapon, he argued, “has got to be at the top of the list.”
Clea Caulcutt contributed reporting from Paris and Hans von der Buchard contributed from Berlin.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New Delhi: Cloud major Oracle is introducing new logistics capabilities within its Fusion Cloud Supply Chain and Manufacturing (SCM) offerings, that will help customers cut costs, improve accuracy and automate regulatory compliance.
Logistics leaders are overwhelmed with a recent buildup of port and shipping delays, fluctuating fuel costs, and evolving trade regulations while also being at the forefront of efforts to reduce carbon emissions of goods in transit.
“The last few years tested the flexibility of global logistics operations and many organisations have struggled to keep pace with the changing market,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president of supply chain management product strategy, Oracle.
“With Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Global Trade Management, organisations can rapidly adapt to changes in their supply chain and logistics network,” he added.
The new capabilities help customers validate Certificate of Origin, reduce tariffs, and enter new markets.
With a deep view into the bill of materials, Trade Agreement Qualification enables customers to comply with labor regulations and prove where goods were produced via auditable records, said Oracle.
“As an increasing number of Indian businesses continue to expand overseas, the ability to respond quickly to changing demand, supply, and market conditions can be a huge competitive advantage,” said Kaushik Mitra, senior director, Cloud ERP, Oracle India.
With the new logistics capabilities, supply chain professionals will gain real-time insights across the entire supply network to make critical business decisions and respond to any global change with confidence, Mitra added.
