The EU will send a civilian mission to Moldova to help the Eastern European nation combat growing threats from abroad, officials have confirmed, following a string of reports that the Kremlin is working to destabilize the former Soviet Republic.
In a statement issued Monday, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that the mission, under the Common Security and Defence Policy, would step up “support to Moldova [to] protect its security, territorial integrity and sovereignty” against Russia.
Officials confirmed that the mission will focus on “crisis management and hybrid threats, including cybersecurity, and countering foreign information manipulation and interference.”
In February, the president of neighboring Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Kyiv’s security services had intercepted Russian plans to “break the democracy of Moldova and establish control over Moldova.” The country’s pro-EU leader, President Maia Sandu, later alleged that “the plan included sabotage and militarily trained people disguised as civilians to carry out violent actions, attacks on government buildings and taking hostages.”
According to Vlad Lupan, Moldova’s former ambassador to the U.N. and a professor at New York University, Brussels’ move comes after “multiple signals Moldova would not be able to deal with Russian influence operations alone.” He told POLITICO that the mission would now have to focus on “communicating why the EU’s rule of law and democracy brings both respect and prosperity to the people compared to the Russian autocratic model.”
Home to just 2.6 million people, Moldova was for decades one of Moscow’s closest allies, and 1,500 Russian troops are currently stationed in the breakaway region of Transnistria. Elected in 2020, Sandu has repeatedly condemned the Kremlin for invading Ukraine and called for the withdrawal of its forces from her country. In June last year, EU leaders announced Moldova, as well as Ukraine, would be granted candidate status, beginning the process for its accession to become a new member state.
However, Moscow still maintains a significant hold on the country, operating several popular Russian-language state media outlets and supplying almost all of its natural gas. After the Russian energy giant Gazprom announced last year it would raise prices, as well as turn off the taps unless past debts were paid in full, Moldova, one of the Continent’s poorest countries, has turned to Brussels for support in diversifying its supplies.
[ad_2]
#deploy #mission #Moldova #combat #threats #Russia
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The Group of Seven richest countries set higher 2030 targets for generating renewable energy, amid an energy crisis provoked by Russia’s war on Ukraine, but they set no deadline to phase out coal-fired power plants.
At a meeting hosted by Japan, ministers from Japan, the U.S., Canada, Italy, France, Germany and the U.K. reaffirmed their commitment to reach zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and said they aimed to collectively increase solar power capacity by 1 terawatt and offshore wind by 150 gigawatts by the end of this decade.
“The G7 contributes to expanding renewable energy globally and bringing down costs by strengthening capacity including through a collective increase in offshore wind capacity … and a collective increase of solar …,” the energy and environment ministers said in a 36-page communiqué issued after the two-day meeting.
“In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it’s important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time,” Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference, according to Reuters.
The ministers’ statement also condemned Russia’s “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine and its “devastating” impact on the environment. The ministers vowed to support a green recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine.
They also published a five-point plan for securing access to critical raw materials that will be crucial for the green transition.
Before the meeting, Japan was facing criticism from green groups over its push to keep the door open to continued investments in natural gas, a fossil fuel. The final agreed text said such investments “can be appropriate” to deal with the crisis if they are consistent with climate objectives.
The ministers’ meeting in the northern city of Sapporo comes just over a month before a G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima.
[ad_2]
#vows #effort #renewables #sets #coal #phaseout #deadline
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s marathon three-day visit to Moscow was hailed by the Kremlin as the dawn of a new age of “deeper” ties between the two countries, as Russia races to plug gaping holes left in its finances by Western energy sanctions.
But while Vladimir Putin insisted a new deal struck during the negotiations on Wednesday will ensure Russia can weather the consequences of its invasion of Ukraine, analysts and European lawmakers say he’s overestimating just how much Beijing can help him balance the books.
Prior to the full-blown invasion, Russia’s oil and gas sector accounted for almost half of its federal budget, but embargoes and restrictions imposed by Western countries have since created a multi-billion dollar deficit.
With the country’s ever-influential oligarchs estimated to be out of pocket to the tune of 20 percent of their wealth — and industry tycoon Oleg Deripaska warning the state could run out of money as soon as next year — Putin is seeking to reassure them he’s opened up a massive new market.
“Russian business is able to meet China’s growing demand for energy,” Putin declared Tuesday, ahead of an opulent state banquet.
But analysts and Ukrainian officials have been quick to point out that actually stepping up exports of oil and gas to China will be a technical challenge for Moscow, given most of its energy infrastructure runs to the West, not the East.
Putin on Wednesday announced a major new pipeline, Power-of-Siberia 2, that will carry 50 billion cubic meters of gas to China via Mongolia to fix that problem.
But “in reality, it’s pretty unclear what has actually been agreed,” said Jade McGlynn, a Russia expert at King’s College London. “When it comes to terms and pricing, Beijing drives a hard bargain at the best of times — right now they know Russia’s not got a strong hand.”
Details of the financing and construction of the project have not yet been revealed.
And with predictions of a financial downturn swirling, Beijing may not need more energy to power sluggish industries, McGlynn added.
Yuri Shafranik, a former energy minister under Boris Yeltsin who now heads Russia’s Union of Oil and Gas Producers, suggested China’s appetite for natural gas “will certainly increase” in the coming years, and pointed out that Beijing would not have signed a pipeline agreement if it didn’t need the resources.
But, if the Kremlin was hoping to replace Europe as a reliable customer, it may end up disappointed, said Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP who serves as chair of the Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defense.
“They chose to use energy to blackmail Europe even before the war,” she said. “Now, Russia has to find new markets and must accept terms and conditions imposed by others. China is taking advantage of the situation.”
In a bid to sweeten the terms, Putin invited all of Asia, Africa and Latin America to buy Russian oil and gas in China’s domestic currency, the renminbi, at the close of Xi’s speech on Tuesday. This came after Xi had already indicated at the China-Arab Summit in December in Riyadh that he would welcome the opportunity to trade oil and gas with Saudi Arabia on similar terms.
The outreach is a nod to the 1974 pact between then-U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Saudi kingdom to accept dollars in exchange for oil, which would in turn be spent on Western goods, assets and services. Non-Western nations have, however, been threatening to move away from dollar pricing in energy markets for years to no effect.
Still, Russia’s efforts to peel away from Western-dominated energy markets are unlikely to make much difference to its fortunes in the long run, according to Simone Tagliapietra, a research fellow at the Bruegel think tank.
“What we are seeing is it’s proving extremely difficult for Russia to diversify away from Europe, and they’ve been forced to become a junior partner of China,” Tagliapietra said. “After this, Moscow won’t be an oil and gas superpower as it was before, not just because of sanctions but also because of the green transition.”
[ad_2]
#Cut #Europe #Putin #pins #hopes #powering #China
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russia’s year-long war in Ukraine has led to thousands of casualties, millions of refugees and billions of dollars in damages to the country’s economy, environment and infrastructure.
At home, Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing the narrative of a just war against the West and crushing dissenting voices, while his country’s economy feels the bite of sanctions — though their effect has been more nuanced than expected. Yet, despite their proclaimed support for Ukraine, some European countries have been reluctant to cut ties with Moscow.
Across the EU, citizens have been hurt by skyrocketing energy prices, and all the while trade flows with Russia have transformed in a matter of months.
Here are 12 months of war summed up, in figures and charts.
[ad_2]
#days #war #Ukraine #numbers
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Europe is on track to kick its addiction to Russian fossil fuels, but can’t seem to replicate that success with nuclear energy a year into the Ukraine war.
The EU’s economic sanctions on Russian coal and oil permanently reshaped trade and left Moscow in a “much diminished position,” according to the International Energy Agency. Coal imports have dropped to zero, and it is illegal for Russian crude to be imported by ship; only four countries still receive it by pipeline.
That’s compared to the bloc getting 54 percent of its hard coal imports and one-quarter of its oil from Russia in 2020.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to turn off the gas taps while the EU turned increasingly to liquefied natural gas deliveries from elsewhere caused the reliance on Moscow to tumble from 40 percent of the bloc’s gas supply before the war to less than 10 percent now.
But nuclear energy has proved a trickier knot for EU countries to untie — for both historical and practical reasons.
As competition in the global nuclear sector atrophied following the Cold War, Soviet-built reactors in the EU remained locked into tailor-made fuel from Russia, leaving Moscow to play an outsized role.
In 2021, Russia’s state-owned atomic giant Rosatom supplied the bloc’s reactors with 20 percent of their natural uranium, handled a quarter of their conversion services and provided a third of their enrichment services, according to the EU’s Euratom Supply Agency (ESA).
That same year, EU countries paid Russia €210 million for raw uranium exports, compared to the €88 billion the bloc paid Moscow for oil.
The value of imports of Russia-related nuclear technology and fuel worldwide rose to more than $1 billion (€940 billion) last year, according to research from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). In the EU, the value of Russia’s nuclear exports fell in some countries like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic but rose in others, including Slovakia, Hungary and Finland, RUSI data shared with POLITICO showed.
“While it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions from what is ultimately a time-limited and incomplete dataset, it does clearly show that there are still dependencies on, and a market for, Russian nuclear fuel,” said Darya Dolzikova, a research fellow at RUSI.
Although uranium from Russia could be replaced by imports from elsewhere within a year — and most nuclear plants have at least one-year extra reserves, according to ESA head Agnieszka Kaźmierczak — countries with Russian-built VVER reactors rely onfuel made by Moscow.
“There are 18 Russian-designed nuclear power plants in [the EU] and all of them would be affected by sanctions,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior fellow at Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. “This remains a deeply divided issue in the European Union.”
That’s why the bloc has struggled over the past year to target Russia’s nuclear industry — despite repeated calls from Ukraine and some EU countries to hit Rosatom for its role in overseeing the occupied Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and possibly supplying equipment to the Russian arms industry.
“The whole question of sanctioning the nuclear sector … was basically killed before there was ever a meaningful discussion,” said a diplomat from one EU country who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The most vocal opponent has been Hungary, one of five countries — along with Slovakia, Bulgaria, Finland and the Czech Republic — to have Russian-built reactors for which there is no alternative fuel so far.
Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have signed contractswith U.S. firm Westinghouse to replace the Russian fuel, according to ESA chief Kaźmierczak, but the process could take “three years” as national regulators also need to analyze and license the new fuel.
The “bigger problem” across the board is enrichment and conversion, she added, due to chronic under-capacity worldwide. It could take “seven to 10 years” to replace Rosatom — and that timeline is conditional on significant investments in the sector.
While Finland last year scrapped a deal to build a Russian-made nuclear plant on the country’s west coast — prompting a lawsuit from Rosatom — others aren’t changing tack.
Slovakia’s new Mochovce-3 Soviet VVER-design reactor came online earlier this month, which Russia will supply with fuel until at least 2026.
Russia’s nuclear energy was not initially included in EU sanctions over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine | Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images
Hungary, meanwhile, deepened ties with Moscow by giving the go-ahead to the construction of two more reactors at its Paks plant last summer, underwritten by a €10 billion Russian loan.
“Even if [they] were to come into existence, nuclear sanctions would be filled with exemptions because we are dependent on Russian nuclear fuel,” said a diplomat from a second EU country.
This article has been updated with charts depicting Russia’s nuclear exports.
[ad_2]
#Russian #nuclear #fuel #habit #Europe #break
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Australia was, until recently, an international pariah on climate change and a punchline in Brussels. But a new government in Canberra coupled with Europe’s energy and economic woes mean a better relationship is now emerging — one that could fuel Europe’s transition to a clean economy, while enriching Australia immensely.
“Europe is energy hungry and capital rich, Australia’s energy rich and capital hungry, and that means that there’s a lot that we can do together,” said Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.
A little over a year ago, relations between Australia and the EU were in a parlous state. The government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison had reneged on a nuclear submarine contract — a decision the current government stands by — incensing the French and by extension the EU. Equally as frustrating for many Europeans was Australia’s climate policy, which was viewed as outstandingly meager even in a lackluster global field.
The election of Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — whose father was Italian — last May brought a change in tone, as well as a new climate target and a trickle of policies designed to cut greenhouse gas pollution that heats up the planet.
Those moves were “the entry ticket” to dealings with Europe, Bowen told POLITICO in Brussels, the second-last stop on a European tour. “Australia’s change of climate positioning, climate policy, has changed our position in the world.”
That’s been most notable in progress on talks on a free trade agreement with the EU. Landing that deal would be a “big step forward,” said Bowen. Particularly because when it comes to clean energy, Australia wants to sell and Europe wants to buy.
Using the vast sunny desert in its interior, Australia could be a “renewable energy superpower,” Bowen argued. Solar energy can be tapped to make green hydrogen and shipped to Europe, he said.
European governments are listening closely to the pitch. Bowen was in Rotterdam on Monday, inspecting the potential to use the Netherlands port as an entry for antipodean hydrogen. He signed a provisional deal with the Dutch government to that end. Last week, Bowen announced a series of joint investments with the German government in Australian hydrogen research projects worth €72 million.
It’s not just sun, Australia has tantalum and tungsten and a host of minerals Europe needs for building clean tech, but that it currently imports. In many cases those minerals are refined or otherwise processed in China, a dependency that Brussels is keen to rapidly unwind — not least with its Critical Raw Materials Act, expected in March.
According to a 2022 government report, Australia holds the second-largest global reserves of cobalt and lithium, from which batteries are made, and is No. 1 in zirconium, which is used to line nuclear reactors.
Asked whether Australia can ease Europe’s dependence on China, Bowen said: “We want to be a very strong factor in the supply chains. We’re a trusted, reliable trading partner. We have strong ethical supply chains. We have strong environmental standards.”
But Australia has its own entanglements.
Certain Australian minerals, notably lithium, are largely refined and manufactured in China. Bowen said he was keen on bringing at least some of that resource-intensive, polluting work back to Australia.
While its climate targets are now broadly in line with other rich nations, the rehabilitation of Australia’s climate image jars with its role as one of the biggest fossil fuel sellers on the planet.
Australia’s coal exports, when burned in overseas power plants, generate huge amounts of planet-warming pollution — almost double the amount produced annually by Australians within their borders. Australia is also the third-largest exporter of natural gas, including an increasing flow to the EU. At home, the government is facing calls from the Greens party and centrist climate independents to reject plans formore than 100 coal and gas developments around the country.
But how many of Bowen’s counterparts raised the issue of Australia’s emissions during his travels around Europe? “Nobody,” he said. “We are here to help.”
Antonia Zimmermann contributed reporting.
[ad_2]
#coal #Australia #sheds #climate #pariah #status #Europe
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The EU’s energy war with Russia has entered a new phase — and there are signs that the Kremlin is starting to feel the pain.
As of Sunday, it is illegal to import petroleum products — those refined from crude oil, such as diesel, gasoline and naphtha — from Russia into the EU. That comes hot on the heels of the EU’s December ban on Russian seaborne crude oil.
Both measures are also linked to price caps imposed by the G7 club of rich democracies aimed at driving down the price that Russia gets for its oil and refined products without disrupting global energy markets.
Those actions appear to have bitten into the Kremlin’s budget in a way other economic penalties levied in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not.
The Kremlin’s tax income from oil and gas in January was among its lowest monthly totals since the depths of COVID in 2020, according to Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Kluge noted that while Russia’s 2023 budget anticipates 9 trillion rubles (€120 billion) in fossil fuel income, in January it earned only 425 billion rubles from oil and gas taxes, around half compared to the same month last year.
It’s only one month’s figures and the income does fluctuate, but Kluge called it “a bad start.”
Russia’s gas sales to Europe have also collapsed — in part as a result of Moscow’s own energy blackmail — with its share of imports declining from around 40 percent throughout 2021 to 13 percent for November 2022, according to the latest confirmed European Commission monthly figure.
But it’s oil that matters most to Kremlin coffers.
On Friday, EU countries struck a deal on two price caps which will come into full force later this year following a 55-day transition period. A cap of $100 will apply to “premium” oil products, including diesel, gasoline and kerosene. A cap of $45 will be enforced on “discount” products, such as fuel oil, naphtha and heating oil.
The EU ban and the G7 price caps are meant to work in tandem. While the EU bans Russian oil, cutting off a vital market, the price caps ensure that insurance and shipping firms based in the EU and other G7 countries aren’t completely blocked from facilitating the global trade in Russian oil. They still can, but it must be under the price caps. This way — so the theory goes — Russia’s fossil fuel revenue will take a hit without disrupting the global oil market in a way that could endanger supply and drive up the price for everyone.
Squeezing the Kremlin
Russia is selling more crude to China and India to make up for the lost trade with the EU | iStock
So far, EU leaders think, it’s working.
Buyers in China and India and other countries are hoovering up more Russian crude, making up for the lost trade with Europe. But knowing that Russia has few alternative markets, buyers have been able to drive down the price. “The discounts that Russia has to give, that its partners can demand, are strong and are here to stay,” said one senior European Commission official. Russian Urals crude is trading at around $50 per barrel, around $30 below the benchmark Brent crude price.
“I think in general the EU and the G7 can be quite happy with how things have unfolded with regards to the oil embargo and the price cap up to now,” said Kluge. “There has been no turbulence on global oil markets and at the same time Russia’s revenues have gone down considerably. The key reason here is that the price which Russia receives for its crude has gone down.”
The question is whether the EU can keep up the economic pressure on Russia without harming itself in the process.
So far, at least as far as oil is concerned, it’s been plain sailing. Oil markets have proved remarkably flexible since the EU’s crude ban in December, with export flows simply shifting: Asia now takes more Russian crude — often at a discount — while other producers in the Middle East and the U.S. step in to supply Europe.
So far, it is looking likely that a similar “reshuffle” of global trade will take place with oil products like diesel, said Claudio Galimberti, senior vice president of analysis at Rystad Energy.
The nature of the oil product sanctions means that there’s nothing to stop Russian crude from being exported to a third country, refined, and then re-exported to the EU, meaning that India and other countries are becoming more important oil product suppliers to the West.
China and India, as well as others in the Middle East and North Africa, also look likely to snap up Russian oil products that are no longer going straight into Europe, freeing up their own refining capacity to produce yet more product that they can sell into Europe and elsewhere.
“There is a reshuffle of product the same way there was a reshuffle of crude,” Galimberti said.
There could still be problems, however. “Europe is not going to import Russian diesel, so it needs to come from somewhere else,” Galimberti said, pointing to two major refineries in the Middle East — Kuwait’s Al-Zour and Saudi Arabia’s Jazan — upon which European supply will now be increasingly dependent.
“If you had a blip in one of these refineries you could see a price response in Europe,” said Galimberti. But for now, after a glut of imports in advance of Sunday’s ban, “inventories of distillates are full,” he added.
“Europe is in good shape.”
[ad_2]
#Russias #oil #revenues #plunge #EUs #oil #war #enters
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
