Sabtu, 02 April 2022
Russian forces leaving traps during retreat, warns Ukrainian president - Guardian News
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2022-04-02 10:34:19Z
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Eastern Europeans push for new penalties as EU sanctions fail to end Putin’s war - POLITICO Europe
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Poland and the Baltic countries are proposing new punitive measures against the Russian economy, arguing that initial rounds of EU sanctions have failed in their stated goal of ending President Vladimir Putin's ability to wage war.
In the days after the invasion, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised to “cripple Putin’s ability to finance his war machine” and to ruin Russia’s economy. But frustration is running high that the Russian leader is still keeping his head well above water financially; Europe still pays Russia hundreds of millions of euros a day for energy, and the ruble has bounced back to pre-war levels.
“Some EU leaders are treating the sanctions as a smokescreen for their inaction,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted today. “The sanctions are supposed to bring Ukraine peace, not to appease Europe’s guilty conscience.”
The Central and Eastern Europeans are at odds with their Western European counterparts over how hard to turn the screws now. Poland is proposing a prohibitively high tariff on Russian fuels, while Estonia is suggesting a special escrow account that will hold some of the payments for Russian energy until Russian forces withdraw from Ukraine.
The Western Europeans, by contrast, want to avoid such drastic steps and officials in Brussels are now preparing compliance measures to enforce existing penalties. European leaders last week agreed only to focus on implementation of the current sanctions and closing loopholes in them. “All our efforts should be on enforcing these sanctions and preventing circumvention and evasion,” von der Leyen said last week.
As far as Poland and the Baltic nations see it, it is a mistake not to ramp up the pressure now. They point to the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine and to demands from the Ukrainian government itself. “Russia keeps bombing Ukrainian cities and murdering civilians, therefore sanctions must further increase,” Ukrainian Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told his French counterpart this week.
“We have taken a bit of a pause, but the feeling from our point is that the pause is lasting too long,” said one senior EU diplomat. “We have to continue putting pressure on the Russian regime.”
Second-best options
Calls from Poland and the Baltics for an all-out ban on Russian energy — or at least an embargo on Russian oil — are being blocked by Germany and others, so they are now scrambling for second-best options.
“Far-reaching sanctions such as an energy ban will probably stay in the fridge for now,” the senior diplomat said. “There is no unity to move further. But that doesn’t mean we can’t move ahead with other things.”
This week, Morawiecki said Poland will end all imports of Russian energy by the end of the year. The government will move first with a ban on coal, which Poland wants to enter into force in April or May at the latest. He called on other EU countries to do the same. “This is our plan for the EU — to snatch this weapon from Putin’s hands, from Russia’s hands,” Morawiecki said.
The European Commission is currently “assessing” the announcements from the Polish government, a Commission spokesperson said.
Poland also called on the European Commission to introduce a tariff on Russian fossil fuels, as Brussels has exclusive competences over the EU’s trade policy. A Polish official said “detailed proposals on this solution are being prepared.”
“We would like to make import of Russian fossil fuels unprofitable; this is where these proposals are coming from. However, we’ll keep on convincing our partners to support an embargo on Russian fossil fuels,” the official added.
Estonia is pushing another compromise, urging Brussels to hold back part of Russia’s energy income in a special account that Moscow could only access once Russia had pulled back its army. Fulminating that the EU had paid Russia €22 billion since the beginning of the war, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas this week wrote a letter to von der Leyen, seen by POLITICO, proposing the escrow system after she unsuccessfully pushed for the idea in last week’s European Council meeting with fellow heads of state and government.
Poland and the Baltics also called on the Commission for a ban on truck traffic to and from Russia and Belarus and restrictions on vessels’ access to EU ports. In a letter to the Commission last week and obtained by POLITICO the countries also asked that Russia and Belarus be excluded from international arrangements aimed at easing cross-border truck traffic.
New sanctions packages
Despite this mounting pressure from countries feeling the heat of Russian aggression, the focus in Brussels remains on closing the loopholes of the sanctions already in place.
“We have to look backwards to see what kind of impact the measures that we have already taken” have had, Portugal's outgoing Ambassador to the EU Nuno Brito said, and “what kind of loopholes we still have.”
Therefore, the European Commission is preparing a “compliance package,” according to four EU diplomats and officials.
Amongst other things, this could focus on listing family members of oligarchs to avoid circumvention of the sanctions, the strengthening of export controls and potentially more sanctions against Russian propaganda channels, on top of the earlier sanctions against Kremlin-backed media RT and Sputnik.
In parallel, the Commission is also preparing further-reaching sanctions in case the EU needs to move fast, for example as a reaction to a chemical attack by Russia. But how such a broader sanctions package would go depends on the trigger and more consultation with EU countries, taking into account their sensitivities.
“There are a lot of ideas floating around but it’s unclear for us which measures will be part of the next package and which won’t. It will also depend on the trigger of course,” said another EU diplomat.
Zosia Wanat, Zia Weise, Hanne Cokelaere, Stuart Lau and Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.
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2022-04-02 05:20:00Z
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Jumat, 01 April 2022
BREAKING: England draw US, Iran and Scotland/Wales or Ukraine in World Cup - Sky News
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2022-04-01 17:41:45Z
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Ukrainian helicopters 'hit fuel depot on Russian soil' - The Times
Ukrainian helicopters are alleged to have attacked a fuel storage facility in Russia as Kyiv’s forces continue their counterattack against President Putin’s invasion.
At least two people were injured as a depot near the Russian city of Belgorod was hit by missiles on Friday, local officials said, after the helicopters were seen flying low across the border. The Ukrainian defence ministry would not confirm or deny responsibility.
It would mark the first such airstrike on Russian soil during the war, although Ukraine has previously fired missiles and artillery shells over the frontier. Russia released video of the plant ablaze and said that the incident would not help peace talks, which continued remotely today.
In other developments:
• A new attempt to send aid to Mariupol
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2022-04-01 14:12:57Z
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Russian firefighters tackle blaze after fuel depot strike - Financial Times
Russian firefighters were battling a huge blaze at a fuel depot near the border with Ukraine on Friday after an explosion at the facility that the local governor blamed on the Ukrainian military.
Videos on social media showed two helicopters flying at low altitude before firing missiles at the depot in the city of Belgorod, causing a fire that sent clouds of smoke billowing into the sky. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the attack.
Viacheslav Gladkov, Belgorod’s governor, said in a statement on messaging app Telegram that the helicopters flew low into Russian territory to carry out the strike in the early morning. Two depot workers suffered non-life threatening injuries, Gladkov added.
The incident in Belgorod, which is 40km from the Ukrainian border, would be the first Ukrainian strike on Russian soil since Vladimir Putin invaded the country in February.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Putin had been informed of the attack.
“Obviously this is not something you can say creates friendly conditions for holding negotiations,” Peskov told reporters, according to Russian news agency Interfax. He said Russia had “air dominance, that’s an absolute fact” and denied to comment further on the strike.
Russia’s emergencies ministry released footage showing firefighters working to extinguish the blaze at the depot, which is owned by Rosneft. The state-run oil company said it had evacuated its staff.
It came two days after an explosion at an ammunition depot in Belgorod, which is just over the border from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. No cause has been given for the explosion.
Russia has carried out several air strikes on fuel and food depots across Ukraine with cruise missiles, a tactic Kyiv said was aimed at forcing it to distribute its stock and ruin the planting season.
Russian and Ukrainian military claims cannot be independently verified.
Separately, Ukraine said Russian forces were seeking to form “occupation administrations” in Moscow-controlled parts of the country as president Volodymyr Zelensky warned of “powerful strikes” on the region.
The Ukrainian military said on Friday that Russia was trying to set up governance structures in the “temporarily occupied” districts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and parts of Zaporizhzhia.
The statement followed days of warnings that Moscow was preparing to intensify its attacks. Russia has increased the number of troops in the Donbas region while continuing its military assault in the south of the country. UK intelligence services said Russia was redeploying forces from Georgia to fight in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military said: “In the temporarily occupied territories, the Russian enemy continues its illegal actions, restricting the movement of civilians, using the houses and apartments of local residents to accommodate personnel, and holding local residents and activists hostage. Marauding and violence against Ukrainian citizens continues.”
Zelensky also said he had stripped two generals of their military ranks. The Ukrainian president called the former internal security chief at the SBU, Ukraine’s intelligence service, and a general previously in charge of security for the SBU in the Kherson region, “traitors” and “anti-heroes”.
Ukrainian forces have prevented Russia from capturing any big cities, including Kyiv, where Moscow has pulled out some troops that were fighting near the capital. But the war is raging in the east and the south, where Russian forces are pounding the besieged port of Mariupol despite pledges that it would implement a ceasefire.
Moscow has said it was moving into the “final phase” of operations after “achieving all the main tasks” in northern Ukraine and would focus on the Donbas region in the east, where it has already taken over territory.
On Thursday, a US official said Russia had stepped up its air strikes, casting further doubt on Moscow’s claims that it was de-escalating and relocating forces in Ukraine. The strikes were concentrated around Kyiv, Chernihiv, Izyum, Mariupol and the Donbas. “For all this talk of de-escalation and moving away, Kyiv is very much under threat from air strikes,” the official said.
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2022-04-01 11:08:32Z
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Kamis, 31 Maret 2022
Putin 'massively misjudged' Ukraine war, says UK spy chief - Financial Times
Vladimir Putin “massively misjudged” the invasion of Ukraine according to a British spy chief who said that Russian soldiers were refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and had mistakenly shot down their own aircraft.
Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ, said Putin had “overestimated the abilities of his military to secure a rapid victory” and that his advisers were “afraid to tell him the truth” about a campaign that was “beset by problems”.
“We’re now seeing Putin trying to follow through on his plan. But it is failing. And his plan-B has been more barbarity against civilians and cities,” Fleming said in a speech to the Australian National University. “We’ve seen Putin lie to his own people in an attempt to hide military incompetence.”
The British intelligence chief said that Russian soldiers who were rejecting orders and damaging their own equipment were “short of weapons and morale”, adding: “It increasingly looks like Putin has massively misjudged the situation.”
“It’s clear he misjudged the resistance of the Ukrainian people. He underestimated the strength of the coalition his actions would galvanise. He underplayed the economic consequences of the sanctions regime.”
American officials concurred that Putin aides were withholding information from the president. “We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions,” a US official said.
Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, said: “One of the Achilles heels of autocracies is that you don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or who have the ability to speak truth to power. And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia.”
Fleming said that mercenaries, including the Russia-backed Wagner Group, were sending more foreign personnel to the region. “These soldiers are likely to be used as cannon fodder to try to limit Russian military losses,” he said.
On China, the GCHQ head warned that Beijing’s global interests were “not well served” by siding with Moscow.
“We know both presidents Xi [Jinping] and Putin place great value on their personal relationships . . . but there are risks to them both, and more for China, in being too closely aligned.”
Beijing “wants to set . . . the norms for a new global governance”, he noted, yet Russia was a regime “that wilfully and illegally ignores them all”.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to the Australian parliament on Thursday and called for further military assistance, including Australian Bushmaster armoured vehicles, and even stricter sanctions against Russia.
He warned MPs that the Russian invasion represented a danger to Australia because of the threat of nuclear war and of other countries feeling emboldened to act in a similar way. “Unpunished evil comes back with a feeling of almightiness,” he said through a translator.
In a video address late on Wednesday, Zelensky warned that Russia was massing troops to launch new strikes in eastern Ukraine after Moscow said it had moved to “to fully liberate” the Donbas region.
Earlier this week Russia’s defence ministry said it was pulling out of big cities in Ukraine’s north and west, including the capital Kyiv and Chernihiv, in order to focus on the east of the country.
Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for Russia’s defence ministry, said on Wednesday that the military was moving into the “final phase” of its operations in eastern Ukraine in order to “complete the operation to fully liberate the Donbas”, the mostly Russian-speaking border region in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky said: “We do not believe anyone — we do not trust any beautiful verbal constructions.”
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2022-03-31 07:21:29Z
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Ukraine war: Ukraine sends buses to Mariupol for rescue effort - BBC
Fresh efforts are under way to evacuate civilians trapped by Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a convoy of 45 Ukrainian buses was on its way to the besieged southern city.
She said the International Committee of the Red Cross had confirmed that Russia had agreed to open a humanitarian corridor to Mariupol.
Tens of thousands of civilians remain there after weeks of bombardment.
Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said the United Nations refugee agency and the Red Cross would assist in the evacuation of civilians, which would begin at 10:00 local time (08:00 BST).
It said a ceasefire would allow people to travel westwards to Zaporizhzhia via the Russian-controlled port of Berdyansk.
Although some residents have escaped, all previous attempts to establish a ceasefire in Mariupol have collapsed amid accusations of bad faith from both sides.
Russia has also been accused of forcibly relocating thousands of civilians to Russia or Russian-controlled areas.
Capturing the city would give Russia control of the Azov Sea coastline between Russia and Crimea.
The announcement of a truce follows a telephone call on Tuesday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.
During the conversation, Mr Putin said that shelling of Mariupol would not end until Ukrainian troops surrendered.
War in Ukraine: More coverage
- LIVE: Latest updates from Ukraine
- BATTERED CITY: Mariupol refugees carry wounds
- WATCH: Syrians signing up for Russia
- BASICS: What does Putin want?
- READ MORE: Full coverage of the crisis
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2022-03-31 07:38:13Z
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