Russia’s President Vladimir Putin should be tried in The Hague for war crimes, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a surprise visit to the Netherlands.
“We all want to see a different Vladimir here in The Hague,” Zelenskyy said. “The one who deserves to be sentenced for these criminal actions right here, in the capital of international law.”
The Ukrainian president spoke in The Hague, where he traveled unexpectedly Thursday. He is expected to meet Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo later in the day.
In March, the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an international arrest warrant against Putin over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow has previously said it did not recognize the court’s authority, but the warrant means that the ICC’s 123 member countries are required to arrest Putin if he ever sets foot on their territory, and transfer him to The Hague.
The warrant’s existence has already caused a stir in South Africa, where the Russian president could attend the next BRICS summit in August.
Last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country should leave the ICC — but his office backtracked a few hours later, stressing South Africa remained part of the court.
In spite of numerous reports that Russian forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine — including a recent U.N. investigation which said that Russia’s forced deportation of Ukrainian children amounted to a war crime — the Kremlin has denied it committed any crimes.
In his speech Thursday, Zelenskyy said Russian forces had committed more than 6,000 war crimes in April alone, killing 207 Ukrainian civilians.
The Ukrainian president renewed his call to create a Nüremberg-style, “full-fledged” tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression and deliver “a full justice” — and lasting peace.
“The sustainability of peace arises from the complete justice towards the aggressor,” Zelenskyy said.
Speaking shortly before Zelenskyy, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said the Netherlands was “ready and willing” to host that court, as well as registers of the damages caused by Russia’s invasion, echoing similar statements he made in December.
“Illegal wars cannot be unpunished,” Hoekstra said. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that Russia is held to account.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
KYIV — From the glass cage in a Kyiv courtroom, Roman Dudin professed his innocence loudly.
And he fumed at the unusual decision to prevent a handful of journalists from asking him questions during a break in the hearing.
The former Kharkiv security chief is facing charges of treason and deserting his post, allegations he and his supporters deny vehemently.
“Why can’t I talk with the press?” he bellowed. As he shook his close-cropped head in frustration, his lawyers, a handful of local reporters and supporters chorused his question. At a previous hearing Dudin had been allowed during a break to answer questions from journalists, in keeping with general Ukrainian courtroom practice, but according to his lawyers and local reporters, the presence of POLITICO appeared to unnerve authorities.
Suspiciously, too, the judge returned and to the courtroom’s surprise announced an unexpected adjournment, offering no reason. A commotion ensued as she left and further recriminations followed when court guards again blocked journalists from talking with Dudin.
***
Ukraine’s hunt for traitors, double agents and collaborators is quickening.
Nearly every day another case is publicized by authorities of alleged treason by senior members of the security and law-enforcement agencies, prosecutors, state industry employees, mayors and other elected officials.
Few Ukrainians — nor Western intelligence officials, for that matter — doubt that large numbers of top-level double agents and sympathizers eased the way for Russia’s invasion, especially in southern Ukraine, where they were able to seize control of the city of Kherson with hardly any resistance.
And Ukrainian authorities say they’re only getting started in their spy hunt for individuals who betrayed the country and are still undermining Ukraine’s security and defense.
Because of historic ties with Russia, the Security Service of Ukraine and other security agencies, as well as the country’s arms and energy industries, are known to be rife with spies. Since the 2013-14 Maidan uprising, which saw the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow’s satrap in Ukraine, episodic sweeps and purges have been mounted.
As conflict rages the purges have become more urgent. And possibly more political as government criticism mounts from opposition politicians and civil society leaders. They are becoming publicly more censorious, accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his tight-knit team of using the war to consolidate as much power as possible.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said authorities were investigating more than 650 cases of suspected treason and aiding and abetting Russia by officials | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Last summer, Zelenskyy fired several high-level officials, including his top two law enforcement officials, prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova and security chief Ivan Bakanov, both old friends of his. In a national address, he said authorities were investigating more than 650 cases of suspected treason and aiding and abetting Russia by officials, including 60 who remained in territories seized by Russia and are “working against our state.”
“Such a great number of crimes against the foundations of national security and the connections established between Ukrainian law enforcement officials and Russian special services pose very serious questions,” he said.
***
But while there’s considerable evidence of treason and collaboration, there’s growing unease in Ukraine that not all the cases and accusations are legitimate.
Some suspect the spy hunt is now merging with a political witch hunt. They fear that the search may be increasingly linked to politicking or personal grudges or bids to conceal corruption and wrongdoing. But also to distract from mounting questions about government ineptitude in the run-up to the invasion by a revanchist and resentful Russia.
Among the cases prompting concern when it comes to possible concealment of corruption is the one against 40-year-old Roman Dudin. “There’s something wrong with this case,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a former Ukrainian deputy prime minister and now opposition lawmaker, told POLITICO.
And that’s the view of the handful of supporters who were present for last week’s hearing. “This is a political persecution, and he’s a very good officer, honest and dignified,” said 50-year-old Irina, whose son, now living in Florida, served with Dudin. “He’s a politically independent person and he was investigating corruption involving the Kharkiv mayor and some other powerful politicians, and this is a way of stopping those investigations,” she argued.
Zelenskyy relieved Dudin of his duties last May, saying he “did not work to defend the city from the first days of the full-scale war.” But Dudin curiously wasn’t detained and charged for a further four months and was only arrested in September last year. Dudin’s lead lawyer, Oleksandr Kozhevnikov, says neither Zelenskyy nor his SBU superiors voiced any complaints about his work before he was fired.
“To say the evidence is weak is an understatement — it just does not correspond to reality. He received some awards and recognition for his efforts before and during the war from the defense ministry,” says Kozhevnikov. “When I agreed to consider taking the case, I told Roman if there was any hint of treason, I would drop it immediately — but I’ve found none,” he added.
The State Bureau of Investigation says Dudin “instead of organizing work to counter the enemy … actually engaged in sabotage.” It claims he believed the Russian “offensive would be successful” and hoped Russian authorities would treat him favorably due to his subversion, including “deliberately creating conditions” enabling the invaders to seize weapons and equipment from the security service bases in Kharkiv. In addition, he’s alleged to have left his post without permission, illegally ordered his staff to quit the region and of wrecking a secure communication system for contact with Kyiv.
But documents obtained by POLITICO from relevant Ukrainian agencies seem to undermine the allegations. One testifies no damage was found to the secure communication system; and a document from the defense ministry says Dudin dispersed weapons from the local SBU arsenal to territorial defense forces. “Local battalions are grateful to him for handing out weapons,” says Kozhevnikov.
And his lawyer says Dudin only left Kharkiv because he was ordered to go to Kyiv by superiors to help defend the Ukrainian capital. A geolocated video of Dudin in uniform along with other SBU officers in the center of Kyiv, ironically a stone’s throw from the Pechersk District Court, has been ruled by the judge as inadmissible. The defense has asked the judge to recuse herself because of academic ties with Oleh Tatarov, a deputy head of the presidential administration, but the request has been denied.
According to a 29-page document compiled by the defense lawyers for the eventual trial, Dudin and his subordinates seem to have been frantically active to counter Russia forces as soon as the first shots were fired, capturing 24 saboteurs, identifying 556 collaborators and carrying out reconnaissance on Russian troop movements.
Roman Dudin is facing charges of treason and allegations that he eased the way for Russian invaders | Jamie Dettmer for POLITICO
Timely information transmitted by the SBU helped military and intelligence units to stop an armored Russian column entering the city of Kharkiv, according to defense lawyers.
“The only order he didn’t carry out was to transfer his 25-strong Alpha special forces team to the front lines because they were needed to catch saboteurs,” says Kozhevnikov. “The timing of his removal is suspicious — it was when he was investigating allegations of humanitarian aid being diverted by some powerful politicians.”
***
Even before Dudin’s case there were growing doubts about some of the treason accusations being leveled — including vague allegations against former prosecutor Venediktova and former security chief Bakanov. Both were accused of failing to prevent collaboration by some within their departments. But abruptly in November, Venediktova was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to Switzerland. And two weeks ago, the State Bureau of Investigation said the agency had found no criminal wrongdoing by Bakanov.
The clearing of both with scant explanation, after their humiliating and highly public sackings, has prompted bemusement. Although some SBU insiders do blame Bakanov for indolence in sweeping for spies ahead of the Russian invasion.
Treason often seems the go-to charge — whether appropriate or not — and used reflexively.
Last month, several Ukrainian servicemen were accused of treason for having inadvertently revealed information during an unauthorized mission, which enabled Russia to target a military airfield.
The servicemen tried without permission to seize a Russian warplane in July after its pilot indicated he wanted to defect. Ham-fisted the mission might have been, but lawyers say it wasn’t treasonable.
Spy hunt or witch hunt? With the word treason easily slipping off tongues these days in Kyiv, defense lawyers at the Pechersk District Court worry the two are merging.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russia hammered Ukraine with a new barrage of missiles and drones in the early hours of Monday morning, as Moscow gears up to celebrate victory over the Nazis in World War II.
In the Kyiv region, Ukrainian air defense shot down 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones, according to Ukraine’s air force. But the debris damaged several buildings and injured civilians. Russian bombers also fired at least eight cruise missiles at the Odesa region, leaving food warehouses destroyed.
Russia celebrates the Soviet triumph over Hitler on May 9 annually, and President Vladimir Putin has used the holiday to boost his strongman image during his decades in power.
But this year’s celebrations will be somewhat muted, with Putin canceling parades in Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, which border Ukraine, and in Russian-occupied Crimea, citing security concerns. Moscow is now in the second year of its full-scale war on Ukraine and there’s no sign of imminent victory, while even the Kremlin is no longer completely safe after last week’s drone attack.
Ukraine said all the drones were shot down, but falling debris still caused destruction. At least five people were injured, reported Sergiy Popko, head of Kyiv region’s military administration. Several cars were destroyed, and residential buildings, a diesel reservoir and a gas pipe were damaged.
Ukraine’s southern Odesa region also came under fire. The Ukrainian army reported that Russia fired at least eight cruise missiles at the region.
“X-22 type missiles hit the warehouse of one of the food enterprises and the recreational zone on the Black Sea coast,” the Ukrainian military said. “Emergency services work at the scene. Three people, all workers of the warehouse, got minor injuries. One person is missing,” Yuriy Kruk, head of Odesa district military administration, reported.
On the eve of Russia’s V-Day, the strikes come as the Kremlin struggles to break a stalemate in Bakhmut, which it has spent months attacking. Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has veered wildly in recent days, first threatening to pull his forces out of Bakhmut over a row with the Kremlin’s top military officials — then announcing his troops would remain on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s top priority is to hold Bakhmut through May 9 — and embarrass Putin in the process.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The Ukrainian military shot down a hypersonic Russian missile over Kyiv using the newly acquired Patriot missile defense system, an air force commander confirmed on Saturday.
It’s the first time Ukraine has been known to intercept one of Moscow’s most sophisticated weapons, after receiving the long-sought, American-made defense batteries from the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands.
“Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram, referring to a Kh-47 missile, which flies at 10 times the speed of sound. “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”
Ukraine confirmed that two Patriot batteries were operational last month, following training on the system from the U.S. and Germany, according to the Kyiv Independent. The interception of the hypersonic missile also represents a major success for the Patriot technology, in use on the battlefield after 20 years of upgrades.
Kyiv had initially denied that it had shot down the Kinzhal missile.
Ukraine first asked Washington for Patriot systems in 2021, well before Russia’s current war of aggression began in February 2022. The U.S. and Germany have each sent at least one Patriot battery to Ukraine; and the Netherlands said it has provided two.
Separately, a well-known Russian nationalist writer was injured in a car bomb, reported TASS, Russia’s state-owned news service. Zakhar Prilepin was wounded in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, in a blast that killed one person, according to the report.
A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said the blast was the “direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain,” without providing evidence, according to Reuters.
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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.”
Russia on Friday launched a wave of missile attacks across many of Ukraine’s biggest cities, killing a mother and young child in the port city of Dnipro, and three people at a high-rise apartment building in the central city of Uman. Air raid alarms were active across the country in the early hours of Friday morning, while explosions were heard in Kyiv, and southern Mykolaiv was targeted again.
At least seven civilians were killed and 33 injured between Wednesday and Thursday, Ukraine’s presidential office said, including one person killed and 23 wounded when four Kalibr cruise missiles hit the southern city of Mykolaiv.
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has voted that the forced detention and deportation of children from Russian occupied territories of Ukraine is genocide.
Russia said its patience should not be tested over nuclear weapons in another repeat of hardline rhetoric. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia will do “everything to prevent the development of events according to the worst scenario … but not at the cost of infringing on our vital interests”.
The Biden administration is sanctioning Russia’s Federal Security Service for wrongfully detaining Americans. The sanctions are largely symbolic, since the organisation is already under sweeping existing sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia welcomed anything that could hasten the end of the Ukraine conflict when asked about Wednesday’s phone call between the Chinese and Ukrainian leaders. But Russia still needed to achieve the aims of its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The Kremlin said relations with European countries were at their “lowest possible level” amid more expulsions of diplomats.
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, welcomed the discussion between China’s President Xi and Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy and repeated the possibility of the war ending at the “negotiating table”.
Stoltenberg said 98% of promised combat vehicles had been delivered to Ukraine, comprising 1,550 armoured vehicles and 230 tanks. This equates to nine new Ukrainian brigades.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its forces had taken four blocks in north-western, western and south-western Bakhmut, Russia state-owned news agency RIA reported.
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Thursday he had been joking when he said his men would suspend artillery fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.
Putin has ordered the Russian government to create museums dedicated to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, according to instructions published on the Kremlin website.
A Moscow court on Thursday ordered the dissolution of a prominent research centre specialising in racism and xenophobia in Russia, in the latest move against critical voices since the start of the Ukraine conflict.
Russia’s foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May. It said the measure was taken in response to Washington’s failure to process visas for “representatives from the journalistic pool” of the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, during his visit to the United Nations on Monday.
The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has invited Pope Francis to visit Ukraine. During a visit to the Vatican, he asked the pontiff for help to return children from the east of Ukraine who have been forcibly taken to Russia by Kremlin forces.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that the Black Sea grain deal could only be saved by fully implementing it and that it was not “a buffet you can pick and choose from”. Moscow says parts of the deal meant to allow it to export its own agricultural goods are not being honoured.
Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s former ambassador to Berlin, has said Germany is still failing to provide the support it should. “The Germans are helping much more than they were, and for that we Ukrainians are very grateful, but the government is only delivering as much as it feels it should,” he told Die Zeit.
Russia has reinforced its defences ahead of a much-expected counterattack by Ukrainian forces, analysts have suggested. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the 500 miles (800km) of Russian lines protecting occupied Ukraine have been triple-fortified and received a “gush of manpower”. The timing comes as the usual winter freeze has begun to thaw and dry, making mobilisation more likely.
Britain’s opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcement since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The early focus on book banning is part of the campaign’s attempt to reinforce a broader message, said one Democratic adviser involved in the effort: Biden is the only one standing between the American people and a Republican Party determined to roll back rights and limit freedoms.
“People just don’t understand why we should ban books from libraries,” said the adviser, who spoke with candor about the campaign’s strategy on the condition of anonymity. “So it’s a measure of extremism and another thing [Republicans] are trying to take away.”
Biden’s message is based on mounds of research by Democratic pollsters over the last several months, as the president’s advisers and the Democratic National Committee have expanded the constellation of pollsters and data analysts tracking voter attitudes and the effectiveness of certain messages.
The potency of book bans, along with issues like abortion and gun safety, is quite clear, according to multiple people familiar with the campaign’s data.
“Book banning tests off the charts,” said Celinda Lake, one of the Democratic pollsters who tested the issue for Democrats. “People are adamantly opposed to it and, unlike some other issues that are newer, voters already have an adopted schema around book banning. They associate it with really authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany.”
The campaign’s private research aligns with public polling on the issue. A CBS News/YouGov poll in February found that more than 8 in 10 Americans opposed GOP efforts to ban books that focus on slavery, the civil rights movement and an unsanitized version of American history. And a Fox News survey this week found that 60 percent of Americans — including 48 percent of Republicans — find book bans problematic.
Republicans led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appears likely to run for president, have leaned into the culture wars by leading efforts to bar those books, and others about LGBTQ topics. They’ve framed the push as an effort to protect social indoctrination via school curriculum. Lake sees it as a political gift to Biden.
“You’ll see Democrats up and down the ticket running on this,” she said.
But book bans don’t just rankle parents of children under 18, who account for just less than 30 percent of the electorate. Some of the strongest responses in focus groups to GOP book bans came from Baby Boomers.
The Biden campaign has leaned hard into the contrast of “more freedom or less freedom,” as the president put it in his announcement video, co-opting a quintessentially American idea and a political theme more traditionally emphasized by Republicans.
In the TV spot pushed out Wednesday, Biden pointed to GOP restrictions in many areas — abortion rights, voting rights — election denialism and the party’s inaction on gun safety all under the umbrella of freedom. But polling and focus group research found that the messaging around book bans appealed in particular to moderates and swing voters who may have nuanced views on gender and identity but are far more clear-eyed about being told what books they can or can’t read.
Those voters — which include moderate Republicans, suburban voters and college-educated white people — are among the demographics that Biden’s team believes will be critical to win. They are also more likely to live in areas where conservatives have sought to impose restrictions on libraries and school boards.
“Americans have a libertarian streak about them, and this is an absolute affront to that tendency,” the adviser said. “This is much more about reassembling the coalition from 2020.”
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist prominent within her party’s more outspoken cadre of Never Trump activists, said that book bans have occasionally come up in her focus groups with voters.
“When we talk about them, usually in the context of DeSantis, these are the things that play very poorly with educated suburban voters,” she said, surmising that the campaign’s emphasis on book bans is at least partly about laying the groundwork for a general election match-up with DeSantis.
“They are positioning themselves to take on any candidate and to fight for those swing voters who put them over the top in 2020 and who are uncomfortable with some of the more extreme positions DeSantis and others are embracing,” Longwell said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Secretary of State Antony Blinken would be the obvious first choice on the American side, but he is currently persona non grata in Beijing for canceling a visit in February after the U.S. shot down China’s alleged spy balloon. He annoyed China further by using a meeting shortly afterward in Munich with China’s top foreign affairs official to publicly warn China not to arm Russia in its Ukraine war.
That’s provided an opening for both Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to become the lead envoy, according to current and former U.S. officials and China experts close to the administration. Both have said they wanted to travel to China, and, unlike Blinken, both have received public invitations from Chinese cabinet agencies. Treasury and Commerce have dispatched officials to Beijing to scout out possible meetings, although neither session is far along in planning. Yellen had expected to go to China in March until the balloon incident put the kibosh on that visit.
The bureaucratic wrangling has been fairly civil thus far by Washington standards, but the Biden administration is eager to tamp down any notion of internal conflict.
“The Administration has been clear about maintaining channels of communication with Beijing to manage competition responsibly,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in a statement. “The engagements Secretary Blinken, Secretary Yellen, Secretary Raimondo and others will have in the coming months will all be a part of that.”
It’s also not as simple as who the U.S. may want to send. Chinese officials are also jostling over who should meet an American emissary, and it’s uncertain whether any of the Americans could score a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, as friction grows between the two superpowers, some wonder if detente is even possible at this point.
“We have left strategic competition behind,” said Christopher K. Johnson, a former CIA China analyst. “We’re in strategic rivalry and are at the risk of careening toward strategic enmity.”
Last November, the two sides looked as if they wanted an accommodation. Biden and Xi met in Bali and, despite their many differences, agreed that the two sides should work together on economic stability, food security, climate and other issues.
But follow-up meetings were scrapped after the balloon saga embarrassed Beijing. Then, China launched military drills around Taiwan after the island’s leader met with Speaker Kevin McCarthy in early April, which outraged Washington.
Since March, the Chinese have sent conflicting signals about their interest in warming ties with the U.S. On the one hand, Chinese leaders have used mainland economic conferences to welcome U.S. business investment. On the other, Beijing has raided an American financial analysis firm in Beijing and slowed merger approvals needed by American companies. Xi accused the U.S. by name — a breach of Chinese etiquette — of “all-round containment, encirclement and suppression.”
There are two strands of thought among the Chinese leadership, said Harvard University’s Graham Allison, a prominent political scientist who recently met with top Chinese leaders in Beijing. “One strand is fatalistic,” he said. “The second strand says, ‘We can’t let things remain this way. We need to get back to Bali, with private conversations about the flashpoints that matter most.’”
The U.S. has tried to pick up on that second strand but hasn’t gotten very far. Meetings of U.S. and Chinese officials are “like being trapped in a bad episode of ‘Seinfeld’ where the ‘Festivus airing of grievances’ is a year-round holiday,” said Johnson, who now heads the political-risk consultancy China Strategies Group.
Administration officials acknowledge Blinken hasn’t had much luck changing that dynamic, but they argue China’s top foreign affairs official, Wang Yi, and others are at least as much at fault for the downward spiral. The Financial Times also recently reported that Chinese officials are worried that the FBI would release a report on the balloon incident if Blinken visited Beijing, once again embarrassing them. Still, the bad vibes have Washington weighing the pros and cons of various potential envoys.
So far, Yellen hasn’t been at the center of China policymaking. The National Security Council plays an outsized role there, with the State Department also having an important voice. But issues fundamental to Treasury — global economic growth, financial sector stability — are among those China wants to discuss with the U.S. even as the two countries tangle over Taiwan, Russia and technology.
There’s also precedent for Yellen taking a lead on China. In the past, Treasury secretaries have played important roles as China envoys. In 1999, the U.S. mistakenly bombed China’s embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War, igniting protests across China. President Bill Clinton dispatched Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to meet China’s premier in the dusty city of Lanzhou in western China. Summers carried a letter from Clinton pledging to help China join the World Trade Organization. The tactic worked and the two sides soon started negotiating again.
Nine years later, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who had long been friends with Chinese leaders, helped convince Beijing to work closely with President George W. Bush in fighting the global financial crisis. China’s economic officials in turn pressed Paulson to protect China’s stash of $1 trillion in U.S. government debt.
But Summers and Paulson were close to the White House and had something China wanted from the U.S. — WTO membership in Summers’ case, cash preservation in Paulson’s. Yellen has neither advantage. In many parts of the administration, the former Fed chair is still seen as academic and politically naive. Notably, she publicly criticized the heavy tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by the Trump administration, which Biden so far has decided to keep.
“She is afflicted with honesty,” said Ryan Hass, an Obama White House China expert now at the Brookings Institution.
Treasury is also viewed elsewhere in the government as holding on to the idea that a formal economic “dialogue” between the two nations would be useful, although the Biden White House has picked up Trump’s position that the Chinese used earlier dialogues, where senior officials met regularly, to filibuster a subject. Some at Treasury make sure not even to use the word “dialogue” when asking for White House approval to call or meet with Chinese counterparts.
“Yellen has been somewhat dovelike,” said a senior Biden foreign policy official. “On a number of key issues, she and the president aren’t on the same page. That will play a role where this ends up.”
During a speech last week at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Yellen gave a tough-minded preview of the kinds of conversations she anticipated having with the Chinese. The speech had two audiences: Beijing and those in Washington and the allied capitals that doubted the White House fully trusted her.
National security is of “paramount importance,” she said, with the U.S. focusing on keeping leading-edge technology from reaching the Chinese military and security establishment. But she tried to assure her Chinese listeners that the U.S. doesn’t want to decouple entirely from the Chinese economy, which, she said, “would be disastrous for both countries.”
“These national security actions are not designed for us to gain a competitive economic advantage, or stifle China’s economic and technological modernization,” Yellen said.
In other words, the two nations would disagree on many fronts, but there were still plenty of areas where they could profitably work together.
Within the White House, no decision has been made on whether Blinken, Yellen or Raimondo will be the initial envoy to Beijing. One consideration: Which of them would wrangle a meeting with the highest-ranking Chinese official?
That makes Raimondo a long shot for the first trip to Beijing. Commerce secretaries traditionally rank low in the Washington hierarchy and have been generally treated in Beijing as salespeople for corporate America. However, Raimondo plays a critical role in sanctioning Chinese companies and overseeing U.S. industrial policy — areas the Chinese want to discuss. Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, one of the seven members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, is expected to oversee technology issues for Beijing and would be a high-profile interlocutor on the Chinese side.
The State Department argues that Blinken should go first because State has a wider portfolio of issues than Treasury, including Taiwan, Russia’s war against Ukraine, military cooperation, fentanyl exports, imprisoned Americans and climate talks.
Some at State also are concerned that the Chinese could look to splinter the U.S. government by favoring Treasury and trying to cut out the State Department. In the Trump administration, for instance, the Chinese focused their lobbying on Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to try to sideline the uber-hawkish U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who was pressing a trade war between the two nations.
It didn’t work under Trump, and U.S. officials say it wouldn’t work now. Beijing “won’t find a way to divide what we’re doing,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. “What we are trying to do is make it clear that we are going to protect our national security, but our goal is not to constrain China’s economy from growing.”
Before the balloon incident, Blinken intended to fly to Beijing to discuss a range of issues with his Chinese counterparts, including macroeconomic issues — but no dialogues — and expected to get a meeting with Xi Jinping. Treasury secretaries rarely meet with the top leader in one-on-one sessions. Instead, they often get time with China’s premier, the number two official who is usually in charge of running the economy. At the very least, Yellen would expect to meet with He Lifeng, China’s new vice minister in charge of trade and macroeconomics. In his previous job, He oversaw domestic economic planning and didn’t meet much with U.S. officials.
For all the aggravation with Blinken in Beijing, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also has been throwing up some roadblocks to an early Yellen visit, said several China experts who have recently visited Beijing. Presumably, that’s for reasons similar to those in Washington; each ministry wants to assert its preeminence and have its ministers host the first U.S. cabinet visit since the balloon imbroglio. That’s especially important now in Beijing where Xi has reshuffled top government and Communist Party officials.
“There is a little bit of staking out one’s turf,” said former Clinton trade representative Charlene Barshefsky, who closely tracks Chinese politics. “There is a new set of ministers. They are letting it be known their jurisdiction and their predilections for policy.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said in a statement that the U.S. “should follow through on the common understandings between the two heads of state in Bali, so as to create the conditions and atmosphere needed for high-level exchanges and bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track.”
In the end, who Biden chooses to make the first cabinet-level trip to Beijing may come down to who is available to travel when preparations are completed. The U.S. envoy may carry a letter from Biden during the trip. An important goal of this round of diplomacy is promoting a summit between Biden and Xi in November in San Francisco when the U.S. hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, an organization of 21 major economies, including the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.
But it’s far from clear that cabinet-level meetings will be enough for China to start modulating its policies. The U.S. has plenty it could offer China as inducements — cuts to tariffs that even Biden criticized when he was running for president in 2020, limiting U.S. export controls, backing away from banning TikTok in the U.S., among many other possibilities.
“At this moment, we need deeds as well as words,” said Summers, the former Treasury secretary.
But across the government, U.S. officials say the focus now is on restarting talks, not about making changes in policy — particularly anything resembling a concession that could be criticized by Republicans.
“We want senior empowered channels of communication,” said a senior State Department official. “We want to engage regularly.”
For Washington, in other words, the meetings are the message.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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 )
Florida’s Republican governor and wannabe presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he supported the idea of a ceasefire in Ukraine — a move long opposed by Kyiv, which has set reclaiming its lost territory as a precondition for any talks with Russia.
“It’s in everybody’s interest to try to get to a place where we can have a ceasefire,” DeSantis said in an interview with the Japanese, English-language weekly Nikkei Asia.
“You don’t want to end up in like a [Battle of] Verdun situation, where you just have mass casualties, mass expense and end up with a stalemate,” he added, referring to the longest battle of World War I, in which around 700,000 were killed.
The idea is likely to get the cold shoulder from Kyiv, where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said a ceasefire would only allow Russia to regroup its forces, and make the war last longer.
In his 10-point peace plan presented last November at a G20 summit, Zelenskyy set the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a precondition for peace, stressing that point was “not up to negotiations.”
DeSantis’ remarks are the latest in a series of controversial comments made by the Florida governor — who has yet to formally announce his bid for the 2024 presidential election — on the war in Ukraine.
Last month, he sparked fury even within his own Republican Party after calling the conflict a “territorial dispute,” and said becoming “further entangled” in Ukraine was not part of the U.S.’s “vital national interests.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
