PARIS — Vegetarian sushi and rugby brought the leaders of Britain and France together after years of Brexit rows.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday held the two countries’ first bilateral summit in five years, amid warm words and wishes for closer post-Brexit cooperation.
“This is an exceptional summit, a moment of reunion and reconnection, that illustrates that we want to better speak to each other,” Macron told a joint press conference afterward. “We have the will to work together in a Europe that has new responsibilities.”
Most notably from London’s perspective, the pair agreed a new multi-annual financial framework to jointly tackle the arrival of undocumented migrants on small boats through the English Channel — in part funding a new detention center in France.
“The U.K. and France share a special bond and a special responsibility,” Sunak said. “When the security of our Continent is threatened, we will always be at the forefront of its defense.”
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission, putting an end to a long U.K.-EU row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland, and stressing it marks a “new beginning of working more closely with the EU.”
“I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you and incredibly excited about the future we can build together. Merci mon ami,” Sunak said.
It has been many years since the leaders of Britain and France were so publicly at ease with each other.
Sunak and Macron bonded over rugby, ahead of Saturday’s match between England and France, and exchanged T-shirts signed by their respective teams.
Later, they met alone at the Élysée Palace for more than an hour, only being joined by their chiefs of staff at the very end of the meeting, described as “warm and productive” by Sunak’s official spokesman. The pair, who spoke English, had planned to hold a shorter one-to-one session, but they decided to extend it, the spokesman said.
They later met with their respective ministers for a lunch comprising vegetarian sushi, turbot, artichokes and praline tart.
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking on the Eurostar en route to Paris, Sunak told reporters this was the beginning of a “new chapter” in the Franco-British relationship.
“It’s been great to get to know Emmanuel over the last two months. There’s a shared desire to strengthen the relationship,” he said. “I really believe that the range of things that we can do together is quite significant.”
In a show of goodwill from the French, who pushed energetically for a hard line during Brexit talks, Macron said he wanted to “fix the consequences of Brexit” and opened the door to closer cooperation with the Brits in the future.
“It’s my wish and it’s in our interests to have closest possible alliance. It will depend on our commitment and willingness but I am sure we will do it,” he said alongside Sunak.
Tackling small boats
Under the terms of the new migration deal, Britain will pay €141 million to France in 2023-24, €191 million in 2024-25 and €209 million in 2025-26.
This money will come in installments and go toward funding a new detention center in France, a new Franco-British command centre, an extra 500 law enforcement officers on French beaches and better technology to patrol them, including more drones and surveillance aircraft.
The new detention center, located in the Dunkirk area, would be funded by the British and run by the French and help compensate for the lack of space in other detention centers in northern France, according to one of Macron’s aides.
According to U.K. and French officials, France is expected to contribute significantly more funding — up to five times the amount the British are contributing — toward the plan although the Elysée has refused to give exact figures.
A new, permanent French mobile policing unit will join the efforts to tackle small boats. This work will be overseen by a new zonal coordination center, where U.K. liaison officers will be permanently based working with French counterparts.
Sunak stressed U.K.-French cooperation on small boats since November has made a significant difference, and defended the decision to hand more British money to France to help patrol the French northern shores. Irregular migration, he stressed, is a “joint problem.”
Ukraine unity
Sunak and Macron also made a show of unity on the war in Ukraine, agreeing that their priority would be to continue to support the country in its war against Russian aggression.
The French president said the “ambition short-term is to help Ukraine to resist and to build counter-offensives.”
“The priority is military,” he said. “We want a lasting peace, when Ukraine wants it and in the conditions that it wants and our will is to put it in position to do so.”
The West’s top priority should remain helping Ukrainians achieve “a decisive battlefield advantage” that later allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin from a stronger position, Sunak said en route to the summit.
“That should be everyone’s focus,” he added. “Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table. But that’s a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them.”
The two leaders also announced they would start joint training operations of Ukrainian marines.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MESEBERG, Germany — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday said China had declared it won’t supply Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine, suggesting that Berlin has received bilateral assurances from Beijing on the issue.
Scholz was speaking at a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who told reporters that the EU has received “no evidence” so far from the U.S. that Beijing is considering supplying lethal support to Moscow.
Senior U.S. officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have expressed deep concern in recent weeks that China could provide weapons such as kamikaze drones to Russia, which in turn triggered warnings to Beijing from EU politicians. Scholz himself urged Beijing last week to refrain from such actions and instead use its influence to convince Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
Yet speaking at Sunday’s press conference, which was held at the German government retreat in Meseberg north of Berlin, Scholz claimed that China had provided assurances that it would not send weapons to Russia.
“We all agree that there should be no arms deliveries, and the Chinese government has declared that it will not deliver any either,” the chancellor said in response to a question by POLITICO. “We insist on this and we are monitoring it,” he added.
Scholz’s comments came as a surprise because China has not publicly rejected the possibility of weapons deliveries to Russia. The chancellor appeared to suggest that Beijing had issued such reassurances directly to Germany.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell received similar private assurances last month. Borrell told reporters that China’s top diplomat Wang Yi had told him in a private discussion at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February that China “will not provide arms to Russia.”
“Nevertheless, we have to remain vigilant,” Borrell said.
Von der Leyen, who attended the first day of a two-day German government retreat in Meseberg, told reporters that the EU still had not seen any proof that China is considering sending arms to Russia.
“So far, we have no evidence of this, but we have to observe it every day,” the Commission president said. She did not reply to the question on whether the EU would support sanctions against China should there be such weapon deliveries, saying that was a “hypothetical question” she would not answer.
Stuart Lau contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
MOSCOW — As Russia enters the second year of its war against Ukraine, fans of Joseph Stalin are enjoying a renewed alignment with the Kremlin.
On Sunday, the hundreds of Stalinists who came to Red Square to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet dictator’s death were full of bravado and admiration for a man responsible for mass executions, a network of labor camps and forced starvation.
But that was not a side of the dictator that was at the forefront of the minds of those who showed up to commemorate him.
“Stalin stood up to Nazism,” Maxim, a 19-year-old medical student in a blue wooly hat, who like others interviewed for this article declined to give his last name, told POLITICO. “And now our current president has led the charge to take it on again.”
Irina, a 35-year-old marketer, brought a bouquet of red carnations to lay at Stalin’s grave at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. On February 24 last year when President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine, a triumphant Irina posted a picture of a hammer and sickle on Instagram. “That symbol for me said it all.”
Standing in front of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square, longtime Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told journalists Putin could learn “lessons” from Stalin: “It’s time to take action and start fighting in a real way.”
But as Stalin’s reputation undergoes this rehabilitation, those dedicated to documenting Soviet-era mass repression have felt the full force of the state apparatus used against them.
Across town from Red Square, in Moscow’s north-eastern Basmanny district, about two dozen people gathered outside a faded yellow four-storey building on Sunday. They came to install a plaque commemorating the site as the last home of Vladimir Maslov, an economist accused of spying for Poland in a fabricated case and shot at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge. One of the attendees wore an olive-green jacket adorned with a Dove of Peace — a risky political statement in Putin’s Russia.
The “Last Address” campaign, which attaches the plaques to the former homes of the victims of Soviet repression, is one of very few such projects remaining after a merciless purge of Russia’s most established human rights groups — Memorial, the Sakharov Center and the Moscow Helsinki Group have all been forced to close.
For now, their loosely organized volunteers, armed with drills and step stools to attach the plaques on façades, have been spared. But they face increasing hurdles: The required unanimous consent of a particular building’s residents has become harder to come by; plaques have even been taken down.
“People have become more careful, they are scared that acknowledging the dark episodes of the past will be taken as a nod to what’s going on today,” said volunteer Mikhail Sheinker. “In times like these, past and present converge until they almost blend together.”
The day Stalin’s death was announced — March 6, 1953 — is seared into Sheinker’s memory: “I was four at the time and was making the usual ruckus, but my mother told me to be quiet out of respect.”
Russian Communist party supporters march to lay flowers to the tomb of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
Today, in wartime Russia, the specter of Stalin could once again be used to further silence dissent.
On Sunday, state-run news agency RIA Novosti published an opinion piece headlined: “Stalin is a weapon in the battle between Russia and the West” arguing criticizing Stalin is “not just anti-Soviet but is also Russophobic, aimed at dividing and defeating Russia.”
But while World War II — which Russians refer to as “the Great Patriotic War” — continues to be a central trope of Putin’s rhetoric when it comes to his invasion of Ukraine, the president casts himself more as a successor to the czars than Soviet leaders. Accordingly, state media paid relatively little attention to the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s death.
Former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov said that’s because Stalin is still too divisive and Russia’s ruling elite is loathe to commit to any specific ideology. But “if Russia is going to suffer further setbacks [in Ukraine], Stalin will become a main theme,” Markov wrote on Telegram.
Strange bedfellows
The alliance between Putin’s Kremlin and revanchist Communists is an uneasy one.
In Russia’s lower house, or the State Duma, the Communist Party closely toes the Kremlin line — but at a regional level, its members are at times less disciplined.
Last month, Mikhail Abdalkin, a Communist lawmaker in the region of Samara, posted a video of himself listening to Putin’s annual address to the entire ruling elite with noodles hanging from his ears. It was a nod to a Russian idiom “hang noodles on one’s ears” that refers to being taken for a ride or being fed nonsense.
A Russian Communist party supporter holds a portrait of late Soviet leader Joseph Stalin | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Last week, Abdalkin said he had been charged with discrediting Russia’s armed forces, with the case to be heard on March 7. If he’s convicted, Abdalkin could be fined.
On Red Square on Sunday, some Communist supporters volunteered criticism of Putin, too — but not of his war on Ukraine.
“Stalin gets criticized for having blood on his hands. But what about Putin’s policies? Outside big cities, people need to travel hundreds of kilometers on muddy roads to get health care,” said Alexander, a pensioner in his 60s.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BERLIN — German prosecutors have found “traces”of evidence indicating that Ukrainians may have been involved in the explosions that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022, according to German media reports Tuesday.
Investigators identified a boat that was potentially used for transporting a crew of six people, diving equipment and explosives into the Baltic Sea in early September. Charges were then placed on the pipelines, according to a joint investigation by German public broadcasters ARD and SWR as well as the newspaper Die Zeit.
The German reports said that the yacht had been rented from a company based in Poland that is “apparently owned by two Ukrainians.”
However, no clear evidence has been established so far on who ordered the attack, the reports said.
In its first reaction, Ukraine’s government dismissed the reports.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied the Ukrainian government had any involvement in the pipeline attacks. “Although I enjoy collecting amusing conspiracy theories about the Ukrainian government, I have to say: Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no information about ‘pro-Ukraine sabotage groups,'” Podolyak wrote in a tweet.
Three of the four pipes making up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 undersea gas pipelines from Russia to Germany were destroyed by explosions last September. Germany, Sweden and Denmark launched investigations into an incident that was quickly established to be a case of “sabotage.”
The German media reports — which come on top of a New York Times report Tuesday which said that “intelligence suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group” sabotaged the pipelines — stress that there’s no proof that Ukrainian authorities ordered the attack or were involved in it.
Any potential involvement by Kyiv in the attack would risk straining relations between Ukraine and Germany, which is one of the most important suppliers of civilian and military assistance to the country as it fights against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
According to the investigation by German public prosecutors that is cited by the German outlets, the team which placed the explosive charges on the pipelines was comprised of five men — a captain, two divers and two diving assistants — as well as one woman doctor, all of them of unknown nationality and operating with false passports. They left the German port of Rostock on September 6 on the rented boat, the report said.
It added that the yacht was later returned to the owner “in uncleaned condition” and that “on the table in the cabin, the investigators were able to detect traces of explosives.”
But the reports also said that investigators can’t exclude that the potential link to Ukraine was part of a “false flag” operation aiming to pin the blame on Kyiv for the attacks.
Contacted by POLITICO, a spokesperson for the German government referred to ongoing investigations by the German prosecutor general’s office, which declined to comment.
The government spokesperson also said: “a few days ago, Sweden, Denmark and Germany informed the United Nations Security Council that investigations were ongoing and that there was no result yet.”
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed the reports of Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream bombings, saying in a post on the Telegram social media site that they were aimed at distracting attention from earlier, unsubstantiated, reports that the U.S. destroyed the pipelines.
Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Vladimir Putin said “Russia and China are reaching new levels of cooperation” after meeting Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Moscow on Wednesday.
The Russian president hailed the relationship between Beijing and Moscow as important to “stabilize the international situation,” adding that he awaits a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the BBC.
Shortly before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and Xi signed a statement proclaiming that there were “no limits to Sino-Russian cooperation.” While Russia has become economically more dependent on China since the start of the conflict, Beijing has refused to publicly provide military support.
Wang told Putin that the relationship between China and Russia would “not succumb to pressure from third parties,” and pledged to deepen strategic cooperation with Moscow.
Earlier Wednesday, China’s top foreign policy official also met Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, at the end of a tour of European capitals.
Shortly after meeting Wang, Putin spoke at a rally at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium to mark the one-year anniversary of launching his war on Ukraine, which falls on Friday. He praised Russian soldiers who “fight heroically, courageously, bravely” and said the war is taking place on Russia’s “historical frontiers.”
KYIV — As the distant howl of air raid sirens echoes around them, a dozen Ukrainian soldiers clamber out of camouflaged tents perched on a hill off a road just outside Kyiv, hidden from view by a thick clump of trees. The soldiers, pupils of a drone academy, gather around a white Starlink antenna, puffing at cigarettes and doomscrolling on their phones — taking a break between classes, much like students around the world do.
But this isn’t your average university.
The soldiers have come here to study air reconnaissance techniques and to learn how to use drones — most of them commercial ones — in a war zone. Their training, as well as the supply chains that facilitate the delivery of drones to Ukraine, are kept on the down low. The Ukrainians need to keep their methods secret not only from the Russian invaders, but also from the tech firms that manufacture the drones and provide the high-speed satellite internet they rely on, who have chafed at their machines being used for lethal purposes.
Drones are essential for the Ukrainians: The flying machines piloted from afar can spot the invaders approaching, reduce the need for soldiers to get behind enemy lines to gather intelligence, and allow for more precise strikes, keeping civilian casualties down. In places like Bakhmut, a key Donetsk battleground, the two sides engage in aerial skirmishes; flocks of drones buzz ominously overhead, spying, tracking, directing artillery.
So, to keep their flying machines in the air, the Ukrainians have adapted, adjusting their software, diversifying their supply chains, utilizing the more readily available commercial drones on the battlefield and learning to work around the limitations and bans foreign corporations have imposed or threatened to impose.
Enter: The Dronarium Academy.
Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army. Dronarium, which before Russia’s invasion last year used to shoot glossy commercial drone footage and gonzo political protests, now provides five-day training sessions to soldiers in the Kyiv Oblast. In the past year, around 4,500 pilots, most of them now in the Ukrainian armed forces, have taken Dronarium’s course.
What’s on the curriculum
On the hill outside Kyiv, behind the thicket of trees, break time’s over and school’s back in session. After the air raid siren stops,some soldiers grab their flying machines and head to a nearby field; others return to their tents to study theory.
A key lesson: How to make civilian drones go the distance on the battlefield.
“In the five days we spend teaching them how to fly drones, one and a half days are spent on training for the flight itself,” a Dronarium instructor who declined to give his name over security concerns but uses the call sign “Prometheus” told POLITICO. “Everything else is movement tactics, camouflage, preparatory process, studying maps.”
Drone reconnaissance teams work in pairs, like snipers, Prometheus said. One soldier flies a drone using a keypad; their colleague looks at the map, comparing it with the video stream from the drone and calculating coordinates. The drone teams “work directly with artillery,” Prometheus continued. “We transfer the picture from the battlefield to the servers and to the General Staff. Thanks to us, they see what they are doing and it helps them hit the target.”
Private drone schools and nongovernmental organizations around Ukraine are training thousands of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots for the army | John Moore/Getty Images
Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many of these drone school students were civilians. One, who used to be a blogger and videogame streamer but is now an intelligence pilot in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas, goes by the call sign “Public.” When he’s on the front line, he must fly his commercial drones in any weather — it’s the only way to spot enemy tanks moving toward his unit’s position.
“Without them,” Public said, “it is almost impossible to notice the equipment, firing positions and personnel in advance. Without them, it becomes very difficult to coordinate during attack or defense. One drone can sometimes save dozens of lives in one flight.”
The stakes couldn’t be higher: “If you don’t fly, these tanks will kill your comrades. So, you fly. The drone freezes, falls and you pick up the next one. Because the lives of those targeted by a tank are more expensive than any drone.”
Army of drones
The war has made the Bayraktar military drone a household name, immortalized in song by the Ukrainians. Kyiv’s UAV pilots also use Shark, RQ-35 Heidrun, FLIRT Cetus and other military-grade machines.
“It is difficult to have an advantage over Russia in the number of manpower and weapons. Russia uses its soldiers as meat,” Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said earlier this month. But every Ukrainian life, he continued, “is important to us. Therefore, the only way is to create a technological advantage over the enemy.”
Until recently, the Ukrainian army didn’t officially recognize the position of drone operator. It was only in January that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi ordered the army to create 60 companies made up of UAV pilots, indicating also that Kyiv planned to scale up its own production of drones. Currently, Ukrainian firms make only 10 percent of the drones the country needs for the war, according to military volunteer and founder of the Air Intelligence Support Center Maria Berlinska.
In the meantime, many of Ukraine’s drone pilots prefer civilian drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI — Mavics and Matrices — which are small, relatively cheap at around €2,500 a pop, with decent zoom lenses and user-friendly operations.
Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor. “Larger drones with wings fly farther and can do reconnaissance far behind enemy lines. But at some point, you lose the connection with it and just have to wait until it comes back. Mavics have great zoom and can hang in the air for a long time, collecting data without much risk for the drone.”
But civilian machines, made for hobbyists not soldiers, last two, maybe three weeks in a war zone. And DJI last year said it would halt sales to both Kyiv and Moscow, making it difficult to replace the machines that are lost on the battlefield.
In response, Kyiv has loosened export controls for commercial drones, and is buying up as many as it can, often using funds donated by NGOs such as United24 “Army of Drones” initiative. Ukraine’s digital transformation ministry said that in the three months since the initiative launched, it has purchased 1,400 military and commercial drones and facilitated training for pilots, often via volunteers. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation said it has purchased more than 4,100 drones since Russia’s full-scale invasion began last year — most were DJI’s Mavic 3s, along with the company’s Martice 30s and Matrice 300s.
But should Ukraine be concerned about the fact many of its favorite drones are manufactured by a Chinese company, given Beijing’s “no limits” partnership with Moscow?
Choosing between a military drone and a civilian one “depends on the goal of the pilot,” said Prometheus, the Dronarium instructor | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
DJI, the largest drone-maker in the world, has publicly claimed it can’t obtain user data and flight information unless the user submits it to the company. But its alleged ties to the Chinese state, as well as the fact the U.S. has blacklisted its technology (over claims it was used to surveil ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang), have raised eyebrows. DJI has denied both allegations.
Asked if DJI’s China links worried him, Prometheus seemed unperturbed.
“We understand who we are dealing with — we use their technology in our interests,” he said. “Indeed, potentially our footage can be stored somewhere on Chinese servers. However, they store terabytes of footage from all over the world every day, so I doubt anyone could trace ours.”
Dealing with Elon
Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced it had moved to restrict the Ukrainian military’s use of its Starlink satellite internet service because it was using it to control drones. The U.S. space company has been providing internet to Ukraine since last February — losing access would be a big problem.
“It is not that our army goes blind if Starlink is off,” said Prometheus, the drone instructor. “However, we do need to have high-speed internet to correct artillery fire in real-time. Without it, we will have to waste more shells in times of ongoing shell shortages.”
But while the SpaceX announcement sparked outcry from some of Kyiv’s backers, as yet, Ukraine’s operations haven’t been affected by the move, Digital Transformation Minister Fedorov told POLITICO.
Prometheus had a theory as to why: “I think Starlink will stay with us. It is impossible to switch it off only for drones. If Musk completely turns it off, he will also have to turn it off for hospitals that use the same internet to order equipment and even perform online consultations during surgeries at the war front. Will he switch them off too?”
And if Starlink does go down, the Ukrainians will manage, Prometheus said with a wry smile: “We have our tools to fix things.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
One year of war in Ukraine has left deep scars — including on the country’s natural landscape.
The conflict has ruined vast swaths of farmland, burned down forests and destroyed national parks. Damage to industrial facilities has caused heavy air, water and soil pollution, exposing residents to toxic chemicals and contaminated water. Regular shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, means the risk of a nuclear accident still looms large.
The total number of cases of environmental damage tops 2,300, Ukraine’s environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, told POLITICO in an emailed statement. His ministry estimates the total cost at $51.45 billion (€48.33 billion).
Of those documented cases, 1,078 have already been handed over to law enforcement agencies, according to Strilets, as part of an effort to hold Moscow accountable in court for environmental damage.
A number of NGOs have also stepped in to document the environmental impacts of the conflict, with the aim of providing data to international organizations like the United Nations Environment Program to help them prioritize inspections or pinpoint areas at higher risk of pollution.
Among them is PAX, a peace organization based in the Netherlands, which is working with the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) to record and independently verify incidents of environmental damage in Ukraine. So far, it has verified 242 such cases.
Left: Hostomel, Ukraine, after a Russian assault. Right: Port of Mykolaiv after a Russian strike | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
“We mainly rely on what’s being documented, and what we can see,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a humanitarian disarmament project leader with PAX. Information comes from social media, public media accounts and satellite imagery, and is then independently verified.
“That also means that if there’s no one there to record it … we’re not seeing it,” he said. “It’s such a big country, so there’s fighting in so many locations, and undoubtedly, we are missing things.”
After the conflict is over, the data could also help identify “what is needed in terms of cleanup, remediation and restoration of affected areas,” Zwijnenburg said.
Rebuilding green
While some conservation projects — such as rewilding of the Danube delta — have continued despite the war, most environmental protection work has halted.
“It is very difficult to talk about saving other species if the people who are supposed to do it are in danger,” said Oksana Omelchuk, environmental expert with the Ukrainian NGO EcoAction.
That’s unlikely to change in the near future, she added, pointing out that the environment is littered with mines.
Before and after flooding in the Kyiv area, Ukraine | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Agricultural land is particularly affected, blocking farmers from using fields and contaminating the soil, according to Zwijnenburg. That “might have an impact on food security” in the long run, he said.
When it comes to de-mining efforts, residential areas will receive higher priority, meaning it could take a long time to make natural areas safe again.
The delay will “[hinder] the implementation of any projects for the restoration and conservation of species,” according to Omelchuk.
And, of course, fully restoring Ukraine’s nature won’t be possible until “Russian troops leave the territory” she said.
Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol before and after a Russian attack |Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Meanwhile, Kyiv is banking that the legal case it is building against Moscow will become a potential source of financing for rebuilding the country and bringing its scarred landscape and ecosystems back to health.
It is also tapping into EU coffers.In a move intended to help the country restore its environment following Russia’s invasion, Ukraine in June became the first non-EU country to join the LIFE program, the EU’s funding instrument for environment and climate.
Earlier this month, Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius announced a €7 million scheme — dubbed the Phoenix Initiative — to help Ukrainian cities rebuild greener and to connect Ukrainian cities with EU counterparts that can share expertise on achieving climate neutrality.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BERLIN — In an earlier life as a reporter in Moscow, I once knocked on the door of an apartment listed as the home address of the boss of company that, our year-long investigation showed, was involved in an elaborate scheme to siphon billions of dollars out of Russia’s state railways through rigged tenders.
To my surprise, the man who opened the door wore only his underwear. He confirmed that his identity had been used to register the shell company. But he wasn’t a businessman; he was a chauffeur. The real owner, he told us, was his boss, one of the bankers we suspected of masterminding the scam. “Mr. Underpants,” as we called him, was amazed that it had taken so long for anyone to take an interest.
Mr. Underpants leapt immediately to mind when, nearly a decade on, I learned that a sulfurous academic dispute had erupted over whether foreign companies really are bailing out of Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent international sanctions.
Attempting to verify corporate activity in Russia — a land that would give the murkiest offshore haven a run for its money — struck me as a fool’s errand. Company operations are habitually hidden in clouds of lies, false paperwork and bureaucratic errors. What a company says it does in Russia can bear precious little resemblance to reality.
So, who are the rival university camps trying to determine whether there really is a corporate exodus from Russia?
In the green corner (under the olive banner of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland) we have economist Simon Evenett and Niccolò Pisani of the IMD business school in Lausanne. On January 13, they released a working paper which found that less than 9 percent of Western companies (only 120 firms all told) had divested from Russia. Styling themselves as cutting through the hype of corporate self-congratulation, the Swiss-based duo said their “findings challenge the narrative that there is a vast exodus of Western firms leaving the market.”
Nearly 4,000 miles away in New Haven, Connecticut, the Swiss statement triggered uproar in Yale (the blue corner). Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, from the university’s school of management, took the St. Gallen/IMD findings as an affront to his team’s efforts. After all, the headline figure from a list compiled by Yale of corporate retreat from Russia is that 1,300 multinationals have either quit or are doing so. In a series of attacks, most of which can’t be repeated here, Sonnenfeld accused Evenett and Pisani of misrepresenting and fabricating data.
Responding, the deans of IMD and St. Gallen issued a statement on January 20 saying they were “appalled” at the way Sonnenfeld had called the rigor and veracity of their colleagues’ work into question. “We reject this unfounded and slanderous allegation in the strongest possible terms,” they wrote.
Sonnenfeld doubled down, saying the Swiss team was dangerously fueling “Putin’s false narrative” that companies had never left and Russia’s economy was resilient.
That led the Swiss universities again to protest against Sonnenfeld’s criticism and deny political bias, saying that Evenett and Pisani have “had to defend themselves against unsubstantiated attacks and intimidation attempts by Jeff Sonnenfeld following the publication of their recent study.”
How the hell did it all get so acrimonious?
Let’s go back a year.
The good fight
Within weeks of the February 24 invasion, Sonnenfeld was attracting fulsome coverage in the U.S. press over a campaign he had launched to urge big business to pull out of Russia. His team at Yale had, by mid-March, compiled a list of 300 firms saying they would leave that, the Washington Post reported, had gone “viral.”
Making the case for ethical business leadership has been Sonnenfeld’s stock in trade for over 40 years. To give his full job titles, he’s the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies & Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management, as well as founder and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit focused on CEO leadership and corporate governance.
And, judging by his own comments, Sonnenfeld is convinced of the importance of his campaign in persuading international business leaders to leave Russia: “So many CEOs wanted to be seen as doing the right thing,” Sonnenfeld told the Post. “It was a rare unity of patriotic mission, personal values, genuine concern for world peace, and corporate self-interest.”
Fast forward to November, and Sonnenfeld is basking in the glow of being declared an enemy of the Russian state, having been added to a list of 25 U.S. policymakers and academics barred from the country. First Lady Jill Biden topped the list, but Sonnenfeld was named in sixth place which, as he told Bloomberg, put him “higher than [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell.”
Apparently less impressed, the Swiss team had by then drafted a first working paper, dated October 18, challenging Sonnenfeld’s claims of a “corporate exodus” from Russia. This paper, which was not published, was circulated by the authors for review. After receiving a copy (which was uploaded to a Yale server), Sonnenfeld went on the attack.
Apples and oranges
Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and look at what the Yale and Swiss teams are trying to do.
Sonnenfeld is working with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which launched a collaborative effort to track whether companies are leaving Russia by monitoring open sources, such as regulatory filings and news reports, supported where possible through independent confirmation.
Kyiv keeps score on its Leave Russia site, which at the time of writing said that, of 3,096 companies reviewed, 196 had already exited and a further 1,163 had suspended operations.
Evenett and Pisani are setting a far higher bar, seeking an answer to the binary question of whether a company has actually ditched its equity. It’s not enough to announce you are suspending operations, you have to fully divest your subsidiary and assets such as factories or stores. This is, of course, tough. Can you find a buyer? Will the Russians block your sale?
The duo focuses only on companies based in the G7 or the European Union that own subsidiaries in Russia. Just doing business in Russia doesn’t count; control is necessary. To verify this, they used a business database called ORBIS, which contains records of 400 million companies worldwide.
The first thought to hold onto here, then, is that the scope and methodology of the Yale and Swiss projects are quite different — arguably they are talking about apples and oranges. Yale’s apple cart comprises foreign companies doing business in Russia, regardless of whether they have a subsidiary there. The Swiss orange tree is made up of fewer than half as many foreign companies that own Russian subsidiaries, and are themselves headquartered in countries that have imposed sanctions against the Kremlin.
So, while IKEA gets an ‘A’ grade on the Yale list for shutting its furniture stores and letting 10,000 Russian staff go, it hasn’t made the clean equity break needed to get on the St. Gallen/IMD leavers’ list. The company says “the process of scaling down the business is ongoing.” If you simply have to have those self-assembly bookshelves, they and other IKEA furnishings are available online.
The second thing to keep in mind is that ORBIS aggregates records in Russia, a country where people are willing to serve as nominee directors in return for a cash handout — even a bottle of vodka. Names are often mistranslated when local companies are established — transliteration from Russian to English is very much a matter of opinion — but this can also be a deliberate ruse to throw due diligence sleuths off the trail.
Which takes us back to the top of this story: I’ve done in-depth Russian corporate investigations and still have the indelible memory of those underpants (they were navy blue briefs) to show for it.
Stacking up the evidence
The most obvious issue with the Yale method is that it places a lot of emphasis on what foreign companies say about whether they are pulling out of Russia.
There is an important moral suasion element at play here. Yale’s list is an effective way to name and shame those companies like Unilever and Mondelez — all that Milka chocolate — that admit they are staying in Russia.
But what the supposed good kids — who say they are pulling out — are really up to is a murkier business. Even if a company is an A-grade performer on the Yale list, that does not mean that Russia’s economy is starved of those goods during wartime. There can be many reasons for this. Some companies will rush out a pledge to leave, then dawdle. Others will redirect goods to Russia through middlemen in, say, Turkey, Dubai or China. Some goods will be illegally smuggled. Some companies will have stocks that last a long time. Others might hire my old friend Mr. Underpants to create an invisible corporate structure.
A stroll through downtown Moscow reveals the challenges. Many luxury brands have conspicuously shut up shop but goods from several companies on the Yale A list and B list (companies that have suspended activities in Russia) were still easy to find on one, totally random, shopping trip. The latest Samsung laptops, TVs and phones were readily available, and the shop reported no supply problems. Swatch watches, Jägermeister liquor and Dr. Oetker foods were all also on sale in downtown Moscow, including at the historic GUM emporium across Red Square from the Kremlin.
Swatch watches, Jägermeister liquor and Dr. Oetker foods can all be bought in downtown Moscow, including at the historic GUM emporium across Red Square from the Kremlin | POLITICO
All the companies involved insisted they had ended business in Russia, but acknowledged the difficulties of continued sales. Swatch said the watches available would have to be from old stocks or “a retailer over which the company has no control.” Dr. Oetker said: “To what extent individual trading companies are still selling stocks of our products there is beyond our knowledge.” Jägermeister said: “Unfortunately we cannot prevent our products being purchased by third parties and sold on in Russia without our consent or permission.” Samsung Electronics said it had suspended Russia sales but continued “to actively monitor this complex situation to determine our next steps.”
The larger problem emerging is that sanctions are turning neighboring countries into “trading hubs” that allow key foreign goods to continue to reach the Russian market, cushioning the economic impact.
Full departure can also be ultra slow for Yale’s A-listers. Heineken announced in March 2022 it was leaving Russia but it is still running while it is “working hard to transfer our business to a viable buyer in very challenging circumstances.” It was also easy to find a Black & Decker power drill for sale online from a Russian site. The U.S. company said: “We plan to cease commerce by the end of Q2 of this year following the liquidation of our excess and obsolete inventory in Russia. We will maintain a legal entity to conduct any remaining administrative activities associated with the wind down.”
And those are just consumer goods that are easy to find! Western and Ukrainian security services are naturally more preoccupied about engineering components for Putin’s war machine still being available through tight-lipped foreign companies. Good luck trying to track their continued sales …
Who’s for real?
Faced with this gray zone, St. Gallen/IMD sought to draw up a more black-and-white methodology.
To reach their conclusions, Evenett and Pisani downloaded a list of 36,000 Russian companies from ORBIS that reported at least $1 million in sales in one of the last five years. Filtering out locally owned businesses and duplicate entries whittled down the number of owners of the Russian companies that are themselves headquartered in the G7 or EU to a master list of 1,404 entities. As of the end of November, the authors conclude, 120 companies — or 8.5 percent of the total — had left.
The Swiss team was slow, however, to release its list of 1,404 companies and, once Sonnenfeld gained access to it, he had a field day. He immediately pointed out that it was peppered with names of Russian businesses and businessmen, whom ORBIS identified as being formally domiciled in an EU or G7 country. Sonnenfeld fulminated that St. Gallen/IMD were producing a list of how few Russian companies were quitting Russia, rather than how few Western companies were doing so.
“That hundreds of Russian oligarchs and Russian companies constitute THEIR dataset of ‘1,404 western companies’ is egregious data misrepresentation,” Sonnenfeld wrote in one of several emails to POLITICO challenging the Swiss findings.
Fair criticism? Well, Sonnenfeld’s example of Yandex, the Russian Google, on the list of 1,404 is a good one. Naturally, that’s a big Russian company that isn’t going to leave Russia.
On the other hand, its presence on the list is explicable as it is based in the Netherlands, and is reported to be seeking Putin’s approval to sell its Russian units. “Of course, a large share of Yandex customers and staff are Russian or based in Russia. However, the company has offices in seven countries, including Switzerland, Israel, the U.S., China, and others. What criteria should we use to decide if it is Russian or not for the purpose of our analysis?” St. Gallen/IMD said in a statement.
Answering Sonnenfeld’s specific criticism that its list was skewed by the inclusion of Russian-owned companies, the Swiss team noted that it had modified its criteria to exclude companies based in Cyprus, a favored location for Russian entrepreneurs thanks to its status as an EU member country and its business-friendly tax and legal environment. Yet even after doing so, its conclusions remained similar.
Double knockout
Sonnenfeld, in his campaign to discredit the Swiss findings, has demanded that media, including POLITICO, retract their coverage of Evenett and Pisani’s work. He took to Fortune magazine to call their publication “a fake pro-Putin list of Western companies still doing business in Russia.”
Although he believes Evenett and Pisani’s “less than 9 percent” figure for corporates divesting equity is not credible, he bluntly declined, when asked, to provide a figure of his own.
Instead, he has concentrated on marshaling an old boys’ network — including the odd ex-ambassador — to bolster his cause. Richard Edelman, head of the eponymous public relations outfit, weighed in with an email to POLITICO: “This is pretty bad[.] Obvious Russian disinformation[.] Would you consider a retraction?” he wrote in punctuation-free English. “I know Sonnenfeld well,” he said, adding the two had been classmates in college and business school.
Who you were at school with hardly gets to the heart of what companies are doing in Russia, and what the net effect is on the Russian economy.
The greater pity is that this clash, which falls miles short of the most basic standards of civil academic discourse, does a disservice to the just cause of pressuring big business into dissociating itself from Putin’s murderous regime.
And, at the end of the day, estimates of the number of companies that have fully left Russia are in the same ballpark: The Kyiv School of Economics puts it at less than 200; the Swiss team at 120.
To a neutral outsider, it would look like Sonnenfeld and his mortal enemies are actually pulling in the same direction, trying to work out whether companies are really quitting. Yet both methodologies are problematic. What companies and databases say offers an imprecise answer to the strategic question: What foreign goods and services are available to Russians? Does a year of war mean no Samsung phones? No. Does it mean Heineken has sold out? Not yet, no.
This has now been submerged in a battle royal between Sonnenfeld and the Swiss researchers.
Appalled at his attacks on their work, St. Gallen and IMD finally sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sonnenfeld.
Yale Provost Scott Strobel is trying to calm the waters. In a letter dated February 6 and seen by POLITICO, he argued that academic freedom protected the speech of its faculty members. “The advancement of knowledge is best served when scholars engage in an open and robust dialogue as they seek accurate data and its best interpretation,” Strobel wrote. “This dialogue should be carried out in a respectful manner that is free from ad hominem attacks.”
With reporting by Sarah Anne Aarup, Nicolas Camut, Wilhelmine Preussenand Charlie Duxbury.
Douglas Busvine is Trade and Agriculture Editor at POLITICO Europe. He was posted with Reuters to Moscow from 2004-08 and from 2011-14.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The yellow-and-blue flag of Ukraine has become a powerful symbol for millions of people across the Western world who want to express their solidarity with the victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Adopted officially in 1992, the year after Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the banner represents the country’s pride in its status as Europe’s bread basket — just picture endless wheat fields under blue skies.
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the colors were displayed on some of Europe’s most famous landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower to the Brandenburg Gate.
Over the course of the year since, the flag has spread to all corners of the Continent and beyond, in the hands of protesters, on official government buildings in London and Washington, and in the windows of private homes and cars.
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin | John Mcdougall/AFP via Getty ImagesEuropean Commission headquarters | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP via Getty ImagesMunich’s television tower | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Eiffel Tower | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
The flag not only came to signify Ukraine’s brave resistance in a war that ended decades of peace in Europe — it quickly became the hallmark of European unity in the face of the biggest state-backed threat to the Continent’s security this century.
On a visit to Kyiv in January, Charles Michel, the European Council’s president, captured the point.
“With the Maidan uprising, 22 years after gaining your independence, you, Ukrainians said: We are European,” Michel said. “So today, I have come to Ukraine to tell you: We are all Ukrainian.”
Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty ImagesNancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris and Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesJulien De Rosa/AFP via Getty ImagesBulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images
Beyond political symbols, Putin’s invasion triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Within weeks, European governments rushed to welcome in millions of Ukrainians, skipping administrative procedures at a speed that caused some to raise eyebrows.
Benedicte Simonart was one of the founders of a Brussels-based NGO BEforUkraine, whose logo features the Belgian and Ukrainian flags side by side. She was “struck” by the solidarity of those early days. “It was unbelievable: People kept coming to us, they were so eager to help,” she said.
“We felt very close to the Ukrainians,” she added. “Ukraine is the door to Europe, it’s almost as if it was our home.”
As the war has dragged on, European resolve has remained stable at a political level and in surveys of public opinion. The question is how long this will last if the conflict continues.
“One year ago, Europe came together very strongly and very supportively,” said Erik Jones, director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
“I’m very interested to see what this is going to do over the longer term in the way Europeans think about themselves,” Jones added. “As we approach this one-year anniversary, I think it’s really important to ask: Do we have the same power as a community to support Ukraine through what may be a very long conflict?”
For now at least, Europe and Ukraine seem closer than ever. Ukrainians, through the voice of their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, make no secret of their desire to join the EU — the sooner, the better.
And the powerful symbolism of the flag continues to color European towns and cities, a gesture that’s welcomed by Ukrainians who are now living in Europe.
“The flag is very important: it’s the symbol of Ukraine, and we need to keep displaying it, to talk about it, to remind people,” said Artem Datsii. “Because the war goes on.”
Datsii, 21, is a student at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where he moved before the war. He has not seen his parents, who live in Kyiv, for a year, but they speak regularly over the phone.
“At home, everyone is afraid that something will happen on the 24th,” Datsii said, referring to the invasion’s one-year marker. “The Russians love anniversaries.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
KANKAANPÄÄ, Finland — In October, three Russian citizens arrived in the border town of Imatra and filed the paperwork to buy a rambling former old people’s home outside the small town of Kankaanpää, a five-hour drive away in Finland’s southwestern reaches.
The applicants ticked a box saying the property would be used for “leisure or recreational purposes” and all gave the same contact email and street address: a nondescript suburban apartment block in Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg.
The story didn’t fly.
Two months later, the Finnish defense ministry announced it had blocked the purchase, citing national security concerns to justify the move — the first time such reasoning had been used during the war on Ukraine.
The authorities’ problem with the transaction was a simple one: the building was a stone’s throw from the Niinisalo Garrison, an army training center for troops assigned to national defense and overseas operations. In May last year, the joint Finnish and NATO training exercise Arrow 22 — testing the readiness of armored brigades — was run out of the garrison.
On a recent weekday, green military transport vehicles could be seen entering and exiting the Niinisalo base. The old people’s home had a clear view of some of the roads in and out.
In the nearby town of Kankaanpää, locals were bemused by the Russians’ attempt to buy the old people’s home. Juhani Tuori, an estate agent, said he had heard about the planned deal and thought it odd. Tuori said he had been involved in trying to sell the old people’s home before, but had no role this time.
“I wondered why such a trade was made,” he said. “Especially given the state of the world.”
In a statement, the Finnish government said the transaction had been rejected because of the “special role” the city of Kankaanpää plays in securing Finland’s national defense.
“According to the Ministry of Defence, it is possible that the large property in the vicinity of the Niinisalo Garrison could be used in a manner that could hinder the organization of national defense and safeguarding of territorial integrity,” the statement said.
The Russian buyers did not respond to an emailed request for comment sent to the address they provided on their application to the defense ministry. They had 30 days from the date of the decision to appeal. As of February 9, they had not done so.
New suspicion
The Kankaanpää case shows how suspicions about Russian activity — official and civilian — have spiked in neighboring states as the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine looms.
For more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, Russians enjoyed increased freedom to buy assets across much of Europe, and Finland was no exception, despite a bloody recent history that saw Finland fight two wars with the Soviet Union in the middle of the last century.
Three Russian billionaires bought a leading Finnish ice hockey team and entered it in the Russian league. A Finnish energy company announced a joint plan with Russian state-run firm Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in Finland.
Across the Nordic state, Russians also snapped up holiday homes in forests, on picturesque lake shores, and on remote Baltic Sea archipelagos in what were widely seen at the time as innocent investments in an economically stable neighboring state.
But now, with the Russian army’s aggression in Ukraine intensifying and the activities of its intelligence wing the GRU increasingly visible across Europe, Russian property purchases are being viewed with much greater skepticism.
Finland, which has a 1,340 km border with Russia, sees itself as especially vulnerable to covert Russian operations and has begun to take a much greater interest in which Russians are buying what assets: a Finn recently bought back the ice hockey team and the nuclear power plant plan was scrapped last year.
The defense ministry was granted powers in 2020 to block property sales to Russians and other citizens from outside the EU and the European Economic Area, but had never used them before the Kankaanpää case on national security grounds, a spokesman for the ministry said. The only other application rejection was because of an unpaid processing fee.
Experts say the officials are likely concerned the old people’s home could have been used as a base for special forces on covert missions, or more routinely as a place to run monitoring of comings and goings around the army base.
“This kind of place would not necessarily be part of some Russian masterplan, but could theoretically be there in case it was needed,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a researcher at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, a think tank.
In its ruling, the Finnish defense ministry said the Russian would-be buyers of the old people’s home had changed their story several times about what they intended to use the building for. Their explanations were “not credible,” the ministry said.
Visited on a recent weekday, the empty old people’s home, standing unheated in sub-zero temperatures, was clearly in need of some attention. The front door was yellow with rust. The driveway was covered in thick ice.
The old people’s home appeared to have around 100 bedrooms as well as extensive parking and other surrounding land. It could be accessed by vehicle from two sides with the edge of the Niinisalo Garrison area accessible from the property via wooded back roads as well as the main approach.
The tightening of Finnish property policy comes at a sensitive time for the Nordic country as it proceeds with applications to join NATO alongside nearby Sweden.
Vladimir Putin has threatened what he called a “military-technical response” to those bids, which has led to calls for heightened vigilance in both states.
Officials in Sweden, where there has been a flurry of arrests recently of suspected Russian spies, are likely watching closely to see what lessons can be learned from the Finnish rule change, experts say.
The state-run Swedish Defense Research Agency recently produced a report taking stock of Russian investments in Sweden.
In Finland, security experts have welcomed the country’s new property rules as part of a reckoning with Russian investment in the country, which some suggest was overdue.
“This is a problem which has long been recognized and now there are tools to at least fix some of it,” said researcher Salonius-Pasternak.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
