Hundreds of civilians on Sunday fled Ukrainian territories under Russian control as part of an “evacuation” ahead of what’s feared to be intense fighting around an area home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
A Ukrainian mayor slammed Moscow’s move as a cover-up operation to move troops, while the U.N. nuclear watchdog raised concerns over heavy fighting during a potential spring counteroffensive when Ukrainian forces are expected to seek to regain control of territories lost to Russian control.
Russian forces announced the evacuation for 18 settlements on Friday, and over the weekend, civilians have been rushing to leave those areas. The Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, called it a “mad panic” as thousands of cars were stuck on the roads with five-hour waits, BBC reported.
Meanwhile, Russian paramilitary group Wagner’s boss on Sunday signaled that his men would continue to fight in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, a U-turn from an earlier threat — made in a video filmed alongside dead bodies — to withdraw from there as he criticized Moscow for failing to supply his group with the ammunition it needed.
Russian defense officials reportedly had reservations about over-assisting Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner mercenaries have played a key role in securing control over Ukraine’s eastern territories.
In Bakhmut, Ukraine has accused Russia of attacking the besieged city with phosphorus munitions.
Russia’s Federal Security Services claimed on Sunday they had foiled an attempt by Ukrainian intelligence to attack a military airfield in central Russia with drones stuffed with explosives. Kyiv has not responded to the accusation but previously attributed such actions to “false flag” operations or Russians opposed to President Vladimir Putin.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
KYIV — Russia launched 23 missiles at Ukraine’s sleeping cities and towns in the early hours of Friday, killing multiple civilians, including a toddler.
It was the first massive Russian barrage in weeks.
Ukraine’s Air Defense Forces reported shooting down 21 cruise missiles launched by Russian jets from the Caspian Sea.
But one Russian missile hit a nine-story residential building in Uman, a town in central Ukraine famous for its vibrant Jewish culture, destroying a large section of it. On Friday morning, 10 people were found dead and 17 others were taken to hospital, Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said in a statement. Rescuers are still working at the scene.
In Dnipro, Russia’s forces destroyed a house, killing a 31-year-old woman and a 2-year-old toddler. Three others were wounded.
“Missile strikes killing innocent Ukrainians in their sleep, including a 2-year-old child, is Russia’s response to all peace initiatives,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement. “The way to peace is to kick Russia out of Ukraine. The way to peace is to arm Ukraine with F-16s and protect children from Russian terror.”
Xi Jinping’s phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy was a long time coming, but it should not have come as a surprise. Beijing is on everyone’s shortlist when it comes to prospective peacemakers in Ukraine. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is no exception. “I know I can count on you to bring back Russia to reason and everyone back to the negotiating table,” Macron told the Chinese leader during their meeting in Beijing this month.
Though Xi replied that he would call the Ukrainian president, he was in no rush. He has no illusions about the difficulty of serving as mediator in a war where Ukraine and Russia are in diametrically opposing positions. Yet China’s recent success in bringing about the normalisation of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia may entice him to help engineer a diplomatic solution to the biggest war fought in Europe since 1945. But what would that solution look like?
The Chinese have repeatedly stressed, most explicitly in the 12-point peace proposal they released on the one-year anniversary of the war, that peace in Ukraine can be restored only through negotiations that “ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire”. Despite conventional wisdom, Beijing was not advocating a ceasefire that would freeze the current battle lines as new borders (an arrangement that would leave large swathes of Ukrainian territory in Russian hands), but rather the beginning of a political process that would “ultimately” lead to a permanent cessation of the fighting. Moreover, the proposal said nothing about the territorial terms of a settlement and indeed stressed the need for both sides to show restraint – a formulation repeated in China’s readout of Xi’s conversation with Zelenskiy. Most importantly, it stressed the need to respect the “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries, regardless of whether they were weak or strong, rich or poor”.
The phraseology is pertinent: China is meticulous about its diplomatic language, especially in public statements. Beijing certainly wants to preserve its “no limits friendship” with Moscow, but has been careful not to adopt a stance so favourable to Russia that Ukraine would be unwilling to accept China as a mediator.
Xi doubtless realises by now that Russia cannot achieve its territorial objectives – which, at minimum, are to partition Ukraine – by winning the war militarily, and that the fighting can only end through an agreement based on mutual compromise by the two parties. As important as Russia is for Beijing, Xi also wants to protect Chinese economic interests in Ukraine over the long term: China remains Ukraine’s largest foreign trading partner and has ploughed money into major infrastructure projects, including the modernisation of Mykolaiv port and the construction of a new subway line in Kyiv.
The US and some of its European allies will probably dismiss Xi’s overtures to Zelenskiy as yet another stunt to obscure Beijing’s political and economic support for Putin during the war – for instance by importing Russian crude oil, which reached a 33-month high in March, and refusing to support UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion. This, in part, explains Washington’s rejection of Beijing’s 12-point plan.
Yet China’s careful moves to position itself as the broker of a diplomatic settlement in Ukraine ought not to be dismissed summarily. Xi would not have wasted time having a long conversation with Zelenskiy to no end. Nor would the Chinese have announced their readiness to send “a special representative for Eurasian affairs to Ukraine and other countries” purely as a public relations gambit. China also would not go to such lengths if it didn’t have support from Russia and Ukraine for a diplomatic initiative. Tellingly, Zelenskiy was quick to characterise his call with Xi as “meaningful” and positive, and the Russian foreign ministry commended Xi for his “readiness to strive to establish” a diplomatic track.
We should be under no illusions: while China may be interested in jump-starting a negotiating process between Kyiv and Moscow, reaching an agreement that ends the war will not happen quickly, and it may even be unattainable. Xi can read the battlefield and the positions of the combatants as well as anyone,and he understands the blunt reality that there will be more, not less, war over the short term. The Ukrainian military is in the closing stages of preparing for a major counteroffensive against Russian positions in the south and east. The US and its Nato allies continue to coordinate efforts to ensure that Kyiv possesses the weaponry – including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, mine-clearing equipment and air defence systems – required for a successful campaign. The Russian military has spent months solidifying its defensive positions in the roughly 20% of Ukraine it controls, even as the Wagner mercenary group tries to capture Bakhmut after an eight-month slog. Neither Ukraine nor Russia will therefore rush to the bargaining table any time soon. And even if they do eventually sit down for talks, efforts at mediation could prove to be a fool’s errand given how far part Russia and Ukraine are on the minimal terms for a deal.
Still, Xi’s call with Zelenskiy, and Kyiv and Moscow’s positive reaction to it, might at least stimulate creative thinking about ways to end the war. Without that, the death and destruction will drag on indefinitely.
Rajan Menon is the director of the grand strategy programme at Defense Priorities, a professor emeritus at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, and co-author of Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order
Daniel R DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
For more than 80 days, Mariupol endured a brutal and unrelenting bombardment, as Russian forces determined to take the port city reduced much of it to rubble.
In March 2022, a few days after the war began, Russian forces cut off electricity, water and gas supplies, forcing residents to melt snow for water and cook outside over open flames. Mariupol was encircled and the relentless bombing of the city began.
After a maternity ward was shelled and images of bloodied, heavily pregnant women were broadcast across the world, the siege of Mariupol became emblematic of the brutality of the Russian invasion.
Updated satellite imagery from Google Maps has revealed the scale of the destruction across large sections of the Ukrainian city – and the Russian efforts to erase any evidence of the atrocities that took place there.
Google maps imagery shows the Ukrainian city of Mariupol before and after the Russian invasionGoogle maps imagery from the centre of Mariupol
Weeks into the siege, as homes became uninhabitable and routes out of the city were closed off, many residents moved into public shelters. More than a thousand took refuge in the central drama theatre, which had once been a focal point of city life.
As more residents gathered in the basement, someone spelled out the word DETI – children – in giant Russian letters in front of the building.
Around 10am on 16 March, Russia bombed the building. It’s thought that about 1,200 people were inside. At the time, authorities said 300 people had been killed, but the Associated Press said their investigations put the number closer to 600.
Amnesty International condemned the bombing as “a clear war crime”. By December, Russia had begun to demolish the building’s remains. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the city’s exiled mayor, has said Russia destroyed what remained of the theatre to “hide war crimes”.
Google maps imagery shows the Ukrainian city of Mariupol before and after the Russian invasionMariupol’s drama theatre, the site of one of the most deadly single attacks of the war
In mid-April, all remaining Ukrainian troops defending the city were ordered to regroup at Azovstal, the city’s huge steel plant. The factory’s employees and their families also took refuge there, where they became the target of heavy bombardment for a number of weeks.
After some time, food and water began to grow scarce and the plight of those sheltering at Azovstal became the centre of international attention. On 1 May, the UN and Red Cross facilitated an agreement that secured the release of the civilians; and then two weeks later the remaining troops were ordered to surrender.
A total of 2,439 fighters gave themselves up to the Russian forces outside the plant and with that, the city of Mariupol had finally fallen.
Google maps imagery shows the Ukrainian city of Mariupol before and after the Russian invasionMariupol’s Azovstal steel plant where thousands of Ukrainian civilians and troops took shelter
Mariupol’s suburbs were not spared, with the latest images showing the extent of the damage to residential areas.
46% of the city’s building were damaged or destroyed in the siege, according to one estimate. In a city that was once home to more than 400,000, the UN estimates that up to 90% of its multi-storey residential building have been damaged or destroyed.
Google maps imagery shows the Ukrainian city of Mariupol before and after the Russian invasionResidential housing in Mariupol’s east
Andryushchenko estimates that the updated Google satellite images were captured on different dates after March 2022. Writing on Telegram, he has claimed that the pictures reveal a new mass burial site at the city’s Novotroitsky cemetery.
Associated Press has reported that at least 10,000 new graves are scattered across the city and the death toll is estimated to be at least 25,000.
Google maps imagery shows the Ukrainian city of Mariupol before and after the Russian invasionA former official has claimed Mariupol’s Novotroitsky cemetery is the location of a new mass burial site
In March, Vladimir Putin travelled to Mariupol for the first time since the war began. Russian media reported that he visited several sites, spoke to residents and was presented with a report on the city’s reconstruction.
Russian authorities have said they hope to entice some of the hundreds of thousands who fled to return. They claim that hundreds of apartments have already been rebuilt, but reports from former residents who have returned show that many of the new buildings were built hurriedly and are of poor quality.
Google maps imagery shows the Ukrainian city of Mariupol before and after the Russian invasionDestruction in the centre of Mariupol
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“This tank story is not satisfactory,” he added. “The decision’s been made, OK. Then let’s get ready to execute it and cut through whatever the red tape is.”
The independent, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, said there is a “bipartisan concern” over the time frame, warning that not sending the tanks soon could prove to be “a tragic mistake.”
“Our country has thousands of main battle tanks,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said earlier in the hearing. “It would seem like it’s not that hard to find 31 and get them there.”
Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill had long pressed President Joe Biden to send Kyiv U.S.-made main battle tanks, a move the administration finally agreed to in January. On Thursday, during a hearing with U.S. European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli, and U.S. Transportation Command’s Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, senators were animated about why the administration can’t get them there much sooner.
The initial January announcement said the U.S. would provide M1A2 tanks, which would need to be overhauled in a process that could take as long as two years. But the Pentagon said in March the military would pull out some of its older M1A1 Abrams that need less refurbishment and would arrive by the fall.
A separate tranche of tanks is set to arrive in Germany next month for Ukrainian troops to begin training.
The Army and defense contractor General Dynamics are working on the tanks slated to be sent this year, which have been pulled from Army depots to send to Ukraine this spring and summer.
The armor on the tank’s turret and the optical sights are not eligible for export, so they need to be swapped out before they are sent overseas, something that can happen within weeks.
The work is being done at the Army’s facility at Lima, Ohio. The line has been exceptionally busy in recent months, with tanks for Poland and Taiwan — along with other allies — going through the upgrade process side-by-side.
The Polish order in particular is a rush job, with Warsaw slated to begin receiving its 116 M1A1 tanks that it ordered in January by this spring.
While the timeline for the Ukraine-bound tanks has been sped up, the autumn delivery schedule still didn’t sit well with senators.
Cotton accused the Biden administration of dragging its feet on following through on the January decision to provide the Abrams, which it had initially resisted but announced in tandem with a decision by Germany to send its own Leopard 2 tanks.
“I think the main reason for that is [also] the main reason why we didn’t even agree to supply the tanks for a year, which is that President Biden didn’t want to supply them,” Cotton said. “And again, I think we could supply them faster than eight or nine months if there was the political will.”
Cavoli, quizzed by Cotton about when tanks will arrive beyond those that will be used for training Ukrainians, said military planners were moving to speed up the process.
“The dates are moving right now,” Cavoli said. “We’re trying to accelerate it as much as we can.”
Another GOP senator, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, pressed Cavoli and Van Ovost on whether the nearly three dozen Abrams tanks had been identified, if they were located in the U.S. or in Europe and how quickly they could be delivered once ready. Van Ovost, who oversees the movement of military equipment and personnel around the globe, said her command has “multiple avenues to deliver Abrams tanks by air or by sea” and could do so quickly once given orders to transport tanks.
Rounds argued the holdup amounts to “a policy decision that [the administration is] not prepared to deliver 31 Abrams tanks at this time.”
“The bottom line is, if we needed those tanks, it shouldn’t take eight months for the United States Army to be able to access 31 Abrams tanks,” Rounds said. “If we needed them tomorrow, we’d get them very very quickly.”
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
A UK company has been set up in the name of one of Vladimir Putin’s top officials in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine despite him being under sanctions.
Volodymyr Saldo, a notorious puppet of the Kremlin in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, is listed as the owner of a UK company registered in November, five months after his name was added to the sanctions list.
The UK government has made economic pressure a central part of its attempts to undermine Putin’s war in Ukraine. But more than a year after the invasion, proposals that would make it a crime for people under sanctions to set up UK companies have yet to become law.
In June 2022 the government imposed a freeze on any UK assets Saldo owns and banned him from entering the country. British officials accuse him of “promoting policies and actions which destabilise Ukraine and undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine”.
Yet since November he has been listed as the proprietor of a British company with an address in the Hatton Garden district of central London.
Companies House, the UK corporate registry, does not require proof of identity when people form companies. Saldo did not respond to questions about his involvement in the company, Grainholding Ltd.
But his entry on the sanctions list has been updated since Grainholding was registered, to draw in details from the company’s incorporation documents, suggesting that the UK authorities were aware of its existence and regarded the paperwork as genuine.
A government spokesperson declined to say whether any action had been taken against Grainholding, which remains listed as an active company. “We do not comment on individual cases,” he said.
Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP pushing to strengthen sanctions enforcement, said: “Does this company make money? We don’t know. Does it have a UK bank account? We don’t know. Does law enforcement know about this? We don’t know. And have they frozen this asset? We don’t know that either. This system is a mess from start to finish.”
The company documents say Grainholding has £1m in capital, with Saldo owning half the shares and another Ukrainian the rest. According to the independent news site Meduza, Saldo is the “most influential regional politician to support Russia’s occupation of southern Ukraine”.
A gaunt man in his 60s, he had been Kherson’s mayor for 10 years before being elected in 2012 to the national parliament for the party of the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Saldo’s political career later waned. In 2016 he was accused of having cut deals with Russian intelligence but no charges resulted.
When Russian troops surged into Ukraine in February 2022, Kherson was a prize. It formed part of the “land bridge” linking Russia to Crimea. Within weeks, Saldo had been named head of the region’s “military-civilian administration”. He has presided over rampant looting.
When he became one of the first Ukrainians in occupied territory to accept Putin’s offer of a Russian passport, Saldo declared: “I have always thought that we are one country and one people.”
After falling ill – his aides denied reports he had been poisoned – Saldo resumed his duties. But late last year a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian forces to withdraw from Kherson to the far bank of the Dnipro river.
Before the city fell, Saldo responded by shepherding civilians to the area still under Russian control, where he has announced the construction of a new town. The house he left behind was searched by Ukrainian police. He has been charged with treason in Ukraine.
Saldo’s personal business interests are reported to range from construction to the manufacture of yoga kit. The entry on the official UK registry for Grainholding, the company founded with Saldo as a listed owner, suggests he may have expanded into Ukraine’s lucrative trade in agricultural commodities.
This month, Saldo travelled to Moscow for an audience with Putin at the Kremlin. According to an official transcript of their meeting, Saldo asked for assistance with gas supplies and 25bn roubles, or about $300m, for a warehouse to help Kherson supply Russia with vegetables. “We will certainly help you,” Putin replied. Days later, Putin visited parts of the Kherson region still under Russian control.
There is no suggestion that Saldo or Grainholding have been involved in corruption or money laundering. However, the fact that the firm was created in the name of a Putin official under sanctions raises wider questions about the lack of oversight of UK companies.
Vladimir Putin with Saldo at the Kremlin this month. Photograph: Sputnik/Reuters
Shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, Graeme Biggar, then head of economic crime at the National Crime Agency, gave evidence to MPs about so-called “laundromat” techniques for moving dirty money out of the former Soviet Union. He said “a disturbing proportion of the money that comes out of those laundromats – not much shy of 50% in one case – were laundered through UK corporate structures”.
UK companies were used in 52 of the biggest corruption and money laundering schemes that have come to light worldwide, cumulatively involving about £80bn in illicit wealth, Transparency International found in 2017.
So lax are the controls at Companies House that the incorporation documents alone are not confirmation that Saldo actually formed Grainholding. The government has proposed obliging people forming companies to prove their identity. But because the proposals are yet to be enacted, a new venture’s named owners do not have to prove they are who they say they are.
Get in touch
Grainholding has no connection with the Hatton Garden office block given as its address in the incorporation documents, a representative of the corporate services firm that runs the building told the Guardian.
She said the corporate services firm had alerted Companies House to what she said was the unauthorised use of its address shortly after Grainholding appeared in the registry in November. Only five months later, when the Guardian began to make inquiries in April, was the address altered in a public filing by the registrar.
Even if Saldo’s Grainholding stake or its assets were frozen, simply possessing a UK company could have benefits for foreign owners, said Tom Mayne, a research fellow at the University of Oxford who specialises in the former Soviet Union. “It confers a sense of legitimacy, having a UK company, that can be used elsewhere to move money. It gives you the keys to the getaway car by allowing you access to our company registration system.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
When 26-year-old documentary photographer Sebastian Wells travelled from Berlin to Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to do. “Many of my colleagues went directly to the frontline,” he explains from a sunny cafe in Kyiv. “I knew that wouldn’t be my role, but I didn’t know what else I should do. I spent two weeks in Kyiv getting frustrated and feeling like some kind of war tourist, and that’s when I started trying to find young creative people in the city.”
His first meeting was with 22-year-old fashion photographer Vsevolod Kazarin, and together the pair set about taking pictures of young people on the streets of Kyiv. Sharing a camera and an SD card, they assembled a series of street-style images, with their subjects photographed alongside sandbags, concrete barricades and anti-tank obstacles.
They thought they could maybe use their images to create propaganda posters that they could send to friends in European cities, building bridges with young people across the EU and encouraging them to donate to Ukraine.
But then they came across illustrations by the 18-year-old artist Sonya Marian that rework Soviet-era Russian paintings to explore the origins of Russian aggression. They read the text that Andrii Ushytskyi, 22, posted to his Instagram account, reflecting on his personal experiences of the war – and as the texts and imagery came together, they realised they had something much more substantial than a series of posters.
The first issue of Solomiya was published in August 2022 as a big, beautiful and defiant piece of print, with the second issue printed last month. It has come a long way from the early idea of posters but the mission has stayed the same. Reading Solomiya gives an intimate account of what life is like for young people in Kyiv. It also makes it easy for readers to send support – the magazine gives details of charities and organisations run by young Ukrainians alongside QR codes for donating to them.
Another magazine on its second issue is Telegraf, which was first published in May 2021 as a journal for the Ukrainian design community. The second issue was initially focused on Ukrainian digital product design and was nearing completion when Russia invaded. Priorities suddenly shifted.
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“From the first days of the full-scale invasion we have seen a huge surge of activity by designers, illustrators, artists and all other creatives,” says editor-in-chief Anna Karnauh. “These artworks have become a huge inspiration for many Ukrainians. We realised that we simply had to collect them and to tell the real story of how creatives lived and worked during this war.”
Now on its third print run, Telegraf’s war issue is a remarkable object, with each cover customised by hand and slogans printed on the fore-edges of the pages so that either “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine) or “Heroiam Slava” (Glory to the heroes) appears on the edge of the magazine depending on which way it’s held. It is only available in Ukrainian so far, but an English version will be published in the coming months, and Karnauh and her team hope to reach a wider audience with it.
The war has inspired magazine-makers on the Russian side, too – BL8D (pronounced “blood”) is published by a group of Russian artists and creatives who oppose Vladimir Putin’s regime, and, like Telegraf, it resulted from a sudden change of plan. Originally intended as a trendbook that searched for the essence of Russian culture, the project was ready to print when Russia invaded. The team responded by scrapping their PDFs and setting to work on an anti-military manifesto, condemning the war and looking forward to a day after Putin’s regime has been toppled.
The magazine is based on two long interviews probing deep into Russian identity – one with art historian Tata Gutmacher and one with museum researcher Denis Danilov. The interviews are presented alongside photography and illustration that create a stark and striking picture of “Russianness” and argue that a different reality is possible.
“The entire Putin regime rests on the myth that Europe hates Russia and nothing good awaits a person outside,” says creative director and editor-in-chief Maria Azovtseva. “We decided to create our own weapon – an art book about the imminent death of the Putin myth.”
Art and soul: images from the new magazines
A spread from Solomiya from 30 April 2022. Photograph: Sebastian Wells/Ostkreuz and Vsevolod Kazarin
Solomiya “If we were to describe life in times of war, we would use the word ‘but’, because it evokes a feeling of discomfort and ambiguity that emerges when discussing something that is far beyond our control. Ukrainians have to keep living, but must also remember that death may come at any second.” Taken from editor’s letter.
BL8D “[The magazine is] our voice against the war. It is our anger and our rage towards those who started this war, and those who still support it … It is our fears and an attempt to look at ourselves in the mirror to understand how this could have happened to all of us.” Taken from editor’s letter.
A spread from Telegraf.
Telegraf “We have collected iconic images that arose during the full-scale war,” says editor Anna Karnauh, ”together with personal stories of people who lived in and fled out of the occupation, who instead of working in the office or sipping oat lattes on the way to design meetups, are now defending their country on the frontline.”
Steven Watson is the founder of stackmagazines.com
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The U.S., meanwhile, has some big asks for the government in Seoul as it works to cement South Korea as a regional cornerstone in its effort to rally democracies against China, Russia and other autocratic countries.
A Nuclear Pact
The U.S. and South Korea announced a new agreement on Wednesday that reinforces the U.S. commitment to defend Seoul in the event of an attack by Pyongyang, just ahead of Biden and Yoon’s meeting at the White House.
In the agreement, called the Washington Declaration, the U.S. commits to taking steps to strengthen its military support for South Korea, while Seoul publicly disavows any intention to develop nuclear weapons, said senior administration officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.
One commitment the U.S. has made is to regularly dispatch “U.S. strategic assets” into South Korean waters, including an upcoming port visit by a U.S. nuclear ballistic submarine, the first such deployment since the 1980s, one of the officials said. The countries have also agreed to create a joint U.S.-South Korean Nuclear Consultative Group designed to provide transparency to Seoul on U.S. military planning.
South Korea has been looking for such assurances amid Pyongyang’s nuclear saber rattling. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened an “exponential” increase in nuclear weapons targeting Seoul in January, and urged the mass-production of short-range missiles that could menace the south. South Korea lost its decades-long positioning of U.S. nuclear weapons on the peninsula in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush ordered their removal in a failed effort to encourage North Korea to abandon its own then-nascent nuclear weapons program.
The new declaration outlines “a series of steps that are designed to strengthen U.S. extended deterrence commitments and strengthen the clarity by which they’re seen by the Korean public as well as by neighbors in the face of advancing [North Korean] nuclear missile capabilities,” the official said.
The Biden administration’s requirement that Seoul renounce the development of nuclear weapons reflects nervousness that South Korea is considering doing just that.
In January, Yoon floated the possibility of South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons capability as a deterrent to Pyongyang’s threats. He walked back that idea a week later, but South Korean concerns about the country’s vulnerability to North Korean attack persist. Those concerns are partly due to “a lack of confidence in the U.S as a committed ally,“ said former ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris.
Public polling last year found that more than 70 percent of South Koreans wanted a nuclear weapons capacity to counter North Korea’s.
Former national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to reposition tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea as a deterrence message to North Korea. The Biden administration says that’s not going to happen. “There is no vision of returning U.S. tactical or any other kind of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula as there was in the Cold War,” a second senior administration official told reporters at the briefing.
The Biden administration faults Beijing for not using its diplomatic and economic leverage to curb North Korea’s threats to South Korea. “We have been disappointed that China has been unprepared to use its influence and good offices to weigh in clearly with North Korea about its many provocations,” the first senior administration official said. To mitigate any potential misunderstandings the Chinese might have about the expanded U.S. military presence, the administration is briefing Beijing on its details “and laying out very clearly our rationale for why we are taking these steps,” said the official.
Arming Ukraine
But Yoon can also expect pressure from Biden to supply munitions to Ukraine. South Korea provided Ukraine $100 million last year and responded to Biden’s call for more such assistance with a $130 million pledge last month to support Kiev’s energy infrastructure and humanitarian needs.
But Ukraine’s depleted ammunition stocks have prompted both NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg and the Biden administration to push Seoul to provide Kyiv munitions. Seoul says its Foreign Trade Act bars selling weapons to countries at war or for re-export to third countries.
“President Biden will hope to have a conversation with President Yoon about what it means for all like-minded allies who continue to support Ukraine through a difficult few months and will want to know what Seoul is thinking about what the future of their support might look like,” said the second senior administration official.
Biden may make Yoon’s agreement to override that restriction “part of the price of admission,” to his White House meeting, said David Rank, former Charges d’Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Beijing and veteran Korea desk official at the State Department.
Seoul “has been historically good at helping out quietly when the U.S. asks it to,” Rank said.
Tackling Tech and China
The two sides will also have to navigate some thorny economic issues spawned by recent Biden administration legislation. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 included a provision that reserved a tax credit for electric vehicles to domestically produced cars, locking out EV imports from South Korean automakers including KIA and Hyundai.
The Biden administration also wants Yoon to block South Korean semiconductor manufacturers from filling any shortfall in chips created by Beijing’s possible ban on sales by the U.S. company Micron, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Yoon is looking for reassurance that “Biden’s economic agenda is not a protectionist one and we’re going to work together on issues like export controls and friend-shoring,” said Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.
Those issues are on the Biden-Yoon agenda, but there is no hint of any breakthroughs. “The leaders will be discussing semiconductors and mutual [economic] approaches tomorrow,” the first senior administration official said, declining to provide more details.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BRUSSELS — Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday reassured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Beijing would not add “fuel to the fire” of the war in Ukraine and insisted the time was ripe to “resolve the crisis politically.”
While Xi’s remarks — as reported by the state’s Xinhua news agency — made no specific reference to international fears that China could send arms to Russia’s invading forces in Ukraine, his words will be read as a signal that Beijing won’t give direct military assistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Xi was making his first call to Zelenskyy more than 400 days into the Russian war against Ukraine, and he suggested that Kyiv should pursue “political resolution” through dialogue — presumably with Russia — to bring peace to Europe.
For months, Xi had resisted pressure from the West — and pleas from Zelenskyy — for the two of them to have a direct chat. Instead, he held multiple meetings with the diplomatically isolated Putin, including in the Kremlin.
Wednesday’s call, which according to Ukrainian officials lasted an hour, could ease tension between China and the West over Beijing’s precarious position which has been largely in favor of Putin, analysts and diplomats say. But they also caution that this would not change Xi’s fundamental vision of a stronger relationship with Russia to fend off U.S. pressure, calling into question Beijing’s ability to broker peace satisfactory to both sides.
In Zelenskyy’s own words, the call with Xi served as a “powerful impetus” for their bilateral relationship.
“I had a long and meaningful phone call with [Chinese] President Xi Jinping,” Zelenskyy tweeted. “I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine’s ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations.”
Xi, for his part, used the call to reject the West’s criticisms of China amid worries that Beijing was preparing to provide Moscow with weapons.
“China is neither the creator nor a party to the Ukraine crisis,” he said, as reported by state media Xinhua. “As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and a responsible great power, we would not watch idly by, we would not add fuel to the fire, and above all we would not profiteer from this.”
The call came just days after China’s Ambassador to France Lu Shaye made an explosive remark during a TV interview saying former Soviet countries have no “effective status” in international law and disputed Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea, causing an international uproar and forcing Beijing to disavow him in an effort to mend ties with Europe.
Old splits, new bridges
One major difference, though, existed between the two.
Zelenskyy has been clear about the need for resistance to continue as Putin has shown no signs of easing the Kremlin’s military aggression, insisting that negotiations would not be possible while parts of Ukraine remain under Russian occupation.
Xi, however, said now would be the time for all sides to talk.
“Now [is the moment] to grasp the opportunity to resolve the crisis politically,” he said. “It’s hoped that all sides could make profound reflection from the Ukraine crisis, and jointly seek a way toward long-lasting peace in Europe through dialogue.”
Xi announced plans to send a special envoy to Ukraine to “conduct in-depth communication” on “politically resolving the Ukraine crisis.”
On the other hand, Beijing also accepted the request by Kyiv to send over a new ambassador. Pavlo Riabikin, former minister of strategic industries, was named in a Ukrainian presidential decree Wednesday to take over the ambassadorship left vacant for more than two years since Serhiy Kamyshev died of a heart attack.
Riabikin is expected to have smoother channels in Beijing, given that the chargé d’affaires, the second-in-command of the embassy, had been given limited access to the Chinese foreign ministry officials since the war began, according to two European diplomats with knowledge of the matter who spoke privately to discuss a sensitive topic.
‘Good news’ for Europe
Europe has piled pressure on China to act responsibly as a top U.N. member — and it reacted with cautious optimism to Xi’s call.
“Good news,” Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said in a tweet regarding Zelenskyy’s announcement of the call.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly hatched a plan with Beijing to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table this summer after his recent visit to Beijing — and his office claimed an assist for making the call happen.
“We encourage any dialogue that can contribute to a resolution of the conflict in accordance with the fundamental interests of Ukraine and international law,” an Elysée official told media in response to the call. “This was the message conveyed by [Macron] during his state visit to China, during which President Xi Jinping told the head of state of his intention to speak with President Zelenskyy.”
Chinese officials have also been emboldened by their success in brokering a recent deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, casting a keen eye on playing a role also between Israel and the Palestinians. For Chinese diplomats, this showed the appeal of Xi’s brand new “Global Security Strategy,” wooing third countries away from the U.S. orbit wherever possible.
One country, though, sounded less than enthusiastic about Xi’s latest moves.
“We believe that the problem is not a lack of good plans … [Kyiv’s] actual consent to negotiations is conditioned by ultimatums with knowingly unrealistic demands,” Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova told journalists, adding that she “noted” Beijing’s willingness to put in place a negotiation process.
Stuart Lau and Nicolas Camut reported from Brussels; Veronika Melkozerova reported from Kyiv; Clea Caulcutt reported from Paris.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
