A new round of peace talks aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began Tuesday in Turkey as Ukrainian soldiers appear to have retaken more towns from Russian ground forces whose advances have stalled amid fierce opposition by Ukrainian fighters.

Addressing negotiators from Russia and Ukraine before the start of talks in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised speech, it was up to both sides to reach a concrete agreement and “stop this tragedy.”

The Russian negotiating team included billionaire Roman Abramovich, who suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning, along with at least two senior members of the Ukrainian team, after a meeting in Kyiv earlier this month.

Speaking about the peace talks, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on national television Monday that “the minimum program will be humanitarian questions, and the maximum program is reaching an agreement on a cease-fire.”

During an interview Sunday in a call with Russian journalists, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was open to adopting neutral status as part of a peace deal if it came with third-party guarantees and was put to a referendum.

Hours before the negotiations began, President Zelenskyy insisted that sanctions imposed by Western nations against Moscow need to be “effective and substantial” in order for them to have the intended effect on Russia’s economy. According to The New York Times, Zelenskyy said if Russia manages to “circumvent” the sanctions, “it creates a dangerous illusion for the Russian leadership that they can continue to afford what they are doing now. And Ukrainians pay for it with their lives. Thousands of lives.”

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. defense official has told reporters that Ukrainian troops have retaken the town of Trostyanets, located near the northeastern city of Sumy, while Zelenskyy said in his Monday night speech that Ukrainian troops have liberated Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv.

But just as the talks were getting underway in Istanbul, a Russian airstrike destroyed a government building in the port city of Mykolaiv. Governor Vitaly Kim says several people are trapped in the rubble.

And Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced in a video message posted on the social media site Telegram that her country has reopened and evacuated civilians from war-scarred regions after a one-day pause over what Kyiv called possible Russian “provocations.”

The United Nations says that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed 10 million people out of their homes and that more than 3.8 million have fled the country.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s whirlwind diplomatic tour of Europe might be most remembered by his words about Russian President Vladimir Putin: “This man cannot remain in power.” Two days after his utterance, Biden clarified that although he won’t back down from the sentiment, the U.S. did not plan to take Putin out of office. VOA’s Anita Powell reports, from the White House, on what this means as this Ukraine conflict enters a second month.
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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In a sign that sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine may be starting to bite, Russian tanker ships carrying oil and petroleum products have been observed turning off systems that broadcast their identity and location, a practice known as “going dark” and which is often associated with efforts to evade sanctions. 

In the days and weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States and a broad coalition of other countries imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian goods, including petroleum products. Experts say that by going dark, ships may be able to discharge cargo, often via ship-to-ship transfers at sea, without attracting the attention of law enforcement authorities. 

According to data gathered by Windward Ltd., an Israeli firm that uses artificial intelligence to assess maritime risk, the number of incidents of Russia-affiliated ships going dark on a daily basis has increased dramatically since the introduction of sanctions. 

This is especially true with regard to tankers carrying Russian crude oil. Prior to the invasion, Windward tracked two or three incidents per day of tankers loaded with Russian crude disabling their identification systems. It is now documenting about 20 a day. 

“We’re seeing a synchronized effort across Russian shipping and trading to systemically hide where their cargoes are going,” Ami Daniel, Windward CEO, told VOA. 

That is not to say the practice of “going dark” is being dictated by the Kremlin. The ships involved are almost all privately owned and not technically answerable to the government in Moscow. Neither the Russian government nor the various companies who own the ships in question have issued public statements about the practice. 

Automatic Identification System 

A treaty, known as the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, requires large ships to have an Automatic Identification System (AIS) in operation at all times, with some specific exceptions. The AIS provides other ships and coastal authorities with the vessel’s name, heading, speed and other information.

“AIS should not be turned off, as a general matter,” Attorney Neil Quartaro, a partner in the trade and transportation group at the law firm Cozen O’Connor, told VOA. 

Quartaro said that the few exceptions include areas where broadcasting details about a ship’s speed and heading could create a security risk.  

“The primary area where it is acceptable to turn off your AIS is in something called the ‘high risk area,’ which is essentially the area off the coast of Somalia,” Quartaro said. Pirate activity is prevalent in that region, as well as a few other spots around the world, where cargo ships have been boarded and the crews held for ransom. 

Ship-to-ship transfers 

Quartaro said that it is not uncommon for ships attempting to evade sanctions to turn off their AIS equipment while, for instance, performing a ship-to-ship transfer of crude oil that originated in a sanctioned country.  

“If you’re operating in the Gulf of Mexico, and you’re anywhere close to Trinidad and Tobago or Aruba, and you turn off your AIS, anybody looking at that is going to suspect that you’re engaging in an illegal transfer of oil product out of Venezuela, which happens all the time,” Quartaro said. 

Similarly, he said, it is common for empty tankers to leave a port in the Middle East, turn off their AIS equipment, and then reappear a few days later with a load of crude oil bound for Pakistan. In such cases, he said, the oil probably originated in Iran, which is under heavy sanctions. 

Deceptive shipping practices 

In 2020, the U.S. departments of State and Treasury, as well as the Coast Guard, issued an advisory that included seven different shipping practices that were characterized as “deceptive” and associated with illicit shipping and the evasion of sanctions.  

No. 1 on the list is disabling or manipulating AIS equipment.  

“Although safety issues may at times prompt legitimate disablement of AIS transmission, and poor transmission may otherwise occur, vessels engaged in illicit activities may also intentionally disable their AIS transponders or manipulate the data transmitted in order to mask their movement,” the advisory warned. 

Others deceptive practices include falsifying registrations and cargo manifests, creating intentionally complex ownership structures, and making unscheduled stops and detours. 

Sign of desperation 

The potential downside of engaging in deceptive shipping practices is significant, which suggests that willingness to engage in it could be a sign of desperation. 

Large companies that have significant business interests in the United States, for example, do not want to get caught up in an investigation of sanction evasion. For that reason, they pay companies like Windward to identify vessels that have engaged in suspicious activity, in order to avoid doing business with them in the future. 

However, the importance of oil exports to the Russian economy may make some shippers more willing to take risks. 

Russia’s exports of petroleum products are a large contributor to the economy. In 2021, according to figures released by the Russian central bank, the country took in $490 billion from petroleum sales. Crude oil accounted for $110 billion of the total, and other oil products made up an additional $69 billion. 

Daniel, of Windward, said his company expects to see Russian shippers resorting to additional methods of bypassing sanctions in the near future. 

“We expect Russia to adopt many of these deceptive shipping practices, and not just in the tanker segments. Across all the segments, because of the huge pressure they’re under,” he said. 

 
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Indigenous leaders from Canada and survivors of the country’s notorious residential schools met with Pope Francis on Monday and told him of the abuses they suffered at the hands of Catholic priests and school workers. They came hoping to secure a papal apology and a commitment by the church to repair the harm done.

“While the time for acknowledgement, apology and atonement is long overdue, it is never too late to do the right thing,” Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told reporters in St. Peter’s Square after the audience.

This week’s meetings, postponed from December because of the pandemic, are part of the Canadian church and government’s efforts to respond to Indigenous demands for justice, reconciliation and reparations — long-standing demands that gained traction last year after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves outside some of the schools.

More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture and Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous Canadian governments considered superior.

Francis set aside several hours this week to meet privately with the delegations from the Metis and Inuit on Monday, and First Nations on Thursday, with a mental health counselor in the room for each session. The delegates then gather Friday as a group for a more formal audience, with Francis delivering an address.

Symbolic gestures

The encounters Monday included prayers in the Metis and Inuit languages and other gestures of deep symbolic significance. The Inuit delegation brought a traditional oil lamp, or qulliq, that is lit whenever Inuit gather, and it stayed lit in the pope’s library throughout the meeting. The Inuit delegates presented Francis with a sealskin stole and a sealskin rosary case.

The Metis offered Francis a pair of red beaded moccasins, “a sign of the willingness of the Metis people to forgive if there is meaningful action from the church,” the group explained. The red dye “represents that even though Pope Francis does not wear the traditional red papal shoes, he walks with the legacy of those who came before him, the good, the great and the terrible.”

In a statement, the Vatican said each meeting lasted about an hour “and was characterized by desire on the part of the pope to listen and make space for the painful stories brought by the survivors.”

The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant at the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. The legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction on Canadian reservations.

Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Catholic missionary congregations.

Last May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 gravesites near Kamloops, British Columbia, that were found using ground-penetrating radar. It was Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school, and the discovery of the graves was the first of several similar grim discoveries across the country.

Caron said Francis listened intently Monday as three of the many Metis survivors told him their personal stories of abuse at residential schools. The pope showed sorrow but offered no immediate apology. Speaking in English, he repeated the words Caron said she had emphasized in her remarks: “truth,” “justice” and “healing.”

“I take that as a personal commitment,” Caron said, surrounded by Metis fiddlers who accompanied her into the square.

What needs to follow, she said, is an apology that acknowledges the harm done, the return of Indigenous artifacts, a commitment to facilitating prosecutions of abusive priests and access to church-held records of residential schools.

Canadian Bishop Raymond Poisson, who heads the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, insisted the Vatican holds no such records and said they more likely were held by individual religious orders in Canada or at their headquarters in Rome.

Demands for ‘specific actions’ 

Even before the gravesites were discovered, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically had called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil for the church’s role in the abuses. Francis has committed to traveling to Canada, though no date for such a visit has been announced.

“Primarily, the reconciliation requires action. And we still are in need of very specific actions from the Catholic Church,” said Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, who led the Inuit delegation.

He cited the reparations the Canadian church has been ordered to pay, access to records to understand the scope of the unmarked graves, and Francis’ own help to find justice for victims of a Catholic Oblate priest, the Rev. Johannes Rivoire, who has been accused of multiple cases of sexual abuse and is living in France.

“We often as Inuit have felt powerless over time to sometimes correct the wrongs that have been done to us,” Obed said. “We are incredibly resilient, and we are great at forgiving. … But we are still in search of lasting respect and the right to self-determination and the acknowledgement of that right by the institutions that harmed us.”

As part of a settlement of a lawsuit involving the government, churches and the approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities.

The Catholic Church, for its part, has paid over $50 million and now intends to add $30 million more over the next five years.

The Metis delegation made clear to Francis that the church-run residential school system, and the forced removal of children from their homes, facilitated the ability of Canada authorities to take Indigenous lands while also teaching Metis children “that they were not to love who they are as Metis people,” Caron said.

“Our children came home hating who they were, hating their language, hating their culture, hating their tradition,” Caron said. “They had no love. But our survivors are so resilient. They are learning to love.”

The Argentine pope is no stranger to offering apologies for his own errors and what he himself has termed the “crimes” of the institutional church.

During a 2015 visit to Bolivia, he apologized for the sins, crimes and offenses committed by the church against Indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. In Dublin, Ireland, in 2018, he offered a sweeping apology to those sexually and physically abused over generations.

That same year, he met privately with three Chilean sex abuse survivors whom he had discredited by backing a bishop they had accused of covering up their abuse. In a series of meetings that echo those now being held for the Canadian delegates, Francis listened and apologized. 
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Delegation members attending peace talks between Ukraine and Russia suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning after a meeting in Kyiv earlier this month, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.  

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and at least two senior members of the Ukrainian team, including Crimean Tatar lawmaker Rustem Umerov, were affected, according to the paper, which cited people familiar with the matter. 

It said the delegation members showed symptoms that included red eyes, constant and painful tearing, and peeling skin on their faces and hands. Those affected have since improved their health, and their lives are not in danger, according to the report. 

Investigators for the open-source collective Bellingcat were also involved in sourcing the Journal’s report. 

Bellingcat said its sources have confirmed the events, and cited experts who investigated the matter and concluded that “poisoning with an undefined chemical weapon” was the most likely cause. 

The experts said the choice of toxin and dose indicates it “most likely was intended to scare the victims, as opposed to cause permanent damage.” 

The Wall Street Journal said it was not clear who was behind the suspected poisoning but said those targeted blamed hard-liners in Moscow seeking to disrupt the negotiations. 

Asked Monday about the report, Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said, “There is a lot of speculation, various conspiracy theories,” according to Reuters. 

Reuters reported that Umerov, who was cited as one of the targets of the suspected poisoning in the Journal report, urged people not to trust “unverified information.” 

The Kremlin has not commented on the report. 

Abramovich is a billionaire Russian businessman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is one of numerous oligarchs under sanctions from Western countries. 

Last week, the Journal reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked U.S. President Joe Biden not to include Abramovich in Western sanctions, arguing that the Russian could help to negotiate a peace deal. 

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
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Russian troops have stopped ground advances toward the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv as they appear refocused on regions in eastern Ukraine, according to a senior U.S. Defense official. 

“They clearly are not moving on Kyiv anymore,” said the official, who spoke to reporters Monday on condition of anonymity. “What we are seeing is this continued reprioritization on the Donbas.” 

Moscow’s latest military shift appears to be an effort to cut off Ukrainian forces in the eastern region, according to the official, adding that the move “could be an attempt by the Russians to gain negotiating leverage” in peace talks with Ukrainian representatives trying to end the war. 

Russia has been backing separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine since 2014, when Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.  

Ukrainian forces have stopped Russian troops from taking most major cities.  

Nearly 5,000 people, including more than 200 children, have been killed in the southern city of Mariupol, which has been pounded by Russia with heavy bombardment since the Russian invasion started last month, according to the mayor’s office. 

Mariupol’s mayor on Monday called for evacuation of the remaining 160,000 residents. However, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said no humanitarian corridors would open due to intelligence reports of potential Russian assaults on the routes. 

“We’ve seen the Russians announce humanitarian corridors and then promptly shell them, or mortar them, or strike them,” the senior U.S. Defense official said Monday in response to a question from VOA, without speaking to Ukraine’s recent assertions. 

Near Kyiv, the large suburb of Irpin has been liberated from Russian forces, according to Mayor Alexander Markushin. 

“We understand that our city will be attacked more. We will protect it,” he said. 

Last week, the deputy chief of the Russian armed forces’ General Staff said Russia’s “main tasks” of the invasion of Ukraine were complete. 

“The combat capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces have been substantially reduced, which allows us to concentrate our main efforts on achieving the main goal – the liberation of Donbas,” Sergei Rudskoi said.  

However, last week a senior U.S. Defense official said Ukrainians still have more than 90% of their combat power, in part because the U.S. and other allies have replenished them “in real time.” 

Peace talks 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” are a priority as Ukraine and Russia head into a new round of peace talks.  

“We are looking for peace, really, without delay,” Zelenskyy said in a video address late Sunday. “There is an opportunity and a need for a face-to-face meeting in Turkey. This is not bad. Let’s see the outcome.”  

Earlier Sunday, in call with Russian journalists, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was open to adopting neutral status as part of a peace deal, if it came with third-party guarantees and was put to a referendum.  

Turkey is set to host the latest talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Erdogan’s office saying he stressed the need for a cease-fire and more humanitarian aid in the region.  

The United Nations says the Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed 10 million people to leave their homes, with more than 3.8 million fleeing the country.  

In response to the invasion, the NATO alliance has increased defenses on its eastern flank, announcing four new battlegroups to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia last week. Individual NATO members have also unilaterally sent troops and equipment to allied countries including Poland and the Baltic states, which neighbor Russia and have hosted NATO battlegroups since 2017. 

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby announced that six U.S. Navy EA-18G Growler aircraft and about 250 air crew would arrive in Germany on Monday to bolster NATO’s defenses. 

“These Growlers … specialize in conducting electronic warfare missions, using a suite of jamming sensors to confuse enemy radars,” Kirby told reporters. 

“They are there to reinforce deterrence capabilities of the alliance on the eastern flank. They’re not there to engage Russian assets. That is not the goal,” a senior U.S. Defense official added. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.  

 
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Jeff Horenstein has seen his fair share of injury and death as an emergency room physician in Massachusetts — and ironically far more than working as a medical volunteer on the Polish side of the border across from the western Ukraine town of Lviv at a refugee reception camp run by NGOs at Medyka in south-east Poland.

“Most people we see here are dehydrated or their elderly and want us to check them out and need reassurance; they are worried they are running low on their medications,” he says. “Serious cases bypass us. We get kids complaining of belly-ache,” he adds. He’s also treated a couple of foreign fighters, who sustained shrapnel wounds in shelling in eastern Ukraine. “They decided not to go back in,” he says.

What takes the physician aback aren’t the injuries or ailments he gets to see working with the NGO Sauveteurs Sans Frontières, or Rescuers Without Borders, but the stories Ukrainian refugees tell him.

The physician from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston shakes his head as he tells me about an 81-year-old woman from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city which has been besieged since Russia invaded on February 24 and has been pummeled daily with shelling and missiles.

“She decided to get out because she figured she would die, if she stayed,” he said. “And she went up to a Russian soldier and told him she wanted to go to Poland and could give him $20,000 in cash, her life savings. She said she had no idea whether he would shoot her or not. He took the money, and after a while came back and handed her back $2000, took her to the next checkpoint, hugged her and she was passed on checkpoint by checkpoint until she reached Ukrainian-controlled territory,” he added. “She told me that she felt bad that she didn’t take the neighbors’ kids but hadn’t wanted to get them killed, if things had gone wrong,” he says.

Hope

As Jeff tells me this, one of his colleagues interrupts saying, “You don’t see that every day,” as he took a quick snap of a man walking by pulling a 12-foot wooden cross aided by a small wheel attached to the bottom with the top of the crucifix resting on his shoulder. Oklahoma-native Keith Wheeler has been carrying his cross across the world for 37 years passing through 185 countries and more than 40 war zones.

“Here’s the thing,” the disarmingly charming 61-year-old Wheeler tells me. “People need food, people need water, people need medicine. But more than anything people need hope. And you can’t put a price tag on hope,” he adds. In recent years the self-styled pilgrim cross-bearer has trudged through lands that are, as he puts it, traditionally hostile toward Christians, including Libya and Syria, where some jihadists considered abducting him, but thought better of it. He shows me a picture of them. He has been beaten in some countries, including the United States. He often ends up roughing it, sleeping under bridges. But strangers are often hospitable and invite him into their homes, including once in a royal palace in the Gulf, where he was befriended by a prince.

“I should be dead,” he says. “Peace starts with forgiveness,” he says as a parting gift to me.

Wars attract all sorts and every sort, from the charitable and kindly to criminals and opportunists; oddballs to philanthropists; pacifists to war junkies. And they can all be encountered in the bedraggled, improvised camp just across from Ukraine that sometimes seems a cross between a chaotic local craft fair and the kind of circus that springs up around rock music festivals. The difference is no one is selling anything but giving things away — from freshly cooked food to steaming cups of tea and coffee, from blankets and clothing to toys and candy for the kids.

“Hold on,” shouts a frustrated British volunteer to his companions after they have trouble persuading kids to take proffered candy. “Wait till I have looked up how to say For Free in Ukrainian.” Already dazed refugees emerge from Ukraine into a winding path of tents and small marquees, and they run a gauntlet of charity and hospitality, which at first adds to their disorientation, but as they relax it prompts smiles. They are offered, too, counsel on how to reach where they want to go.

There is a cacophony of languages. The volunteers and charities come from the four corners of the earth — from across Europe, the United States, Australia, Latin America, Israel; there are Sikhs from India and diaspora Chinese opponents of China’s communist government. The camp is semi-organized anarchy, and some volunteers acknowledge its shortcomings and impracticality, and they say more systemization is needed at every level of the humanitarian effort, but its point, they say, is to show Ukrainians they aren’t alone.

And who are these volunteers? They are from all walks of life and all ages. Some are idealistic; others highly realistic. Most are a mixture of both. Some have reached crossroads in their own lives. One European woman told me she was going through a midlife crisis. “I could brood on a beach somewhere, or come here and be useful,” she said. Some volunteers have connections with Ukraine; many have none at all. All are moved by the plight of those caught up in the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War.

There’s John, a firefighter from New Jersey, who collected $70,000 from relatives, co-workers and neighbors and joined a friend who set up a feeding station for refugees. He can fix most mechanical problems. “Sometimes I just slip a little money in the bags of the elderly when they aren’t looking,” he says.

And there’s Texan mother-of-four Katie Stadler, a 38-year-old, who once tried but was unable to adopt a Ukrainian teenager who subsequently died. “I was already involved with Ukraine— it has a big orphan crisis. And so, I had already fallen in love with the country and the people. I couldn’t watch what was happening and not do something to help,” she says.

Even before flying to Poland from her home town of Fort Worth, Katie was funneling money to a pastor in the Odessa region, who bought a van and drove food kits around to people who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave and took other people who did want to leave to the borders. After two weeks she was “laying in bed one night and I said to my husband Matt, ‘I’m going to go over there’ and he said, ‘I was waiting for you to say that.'”

In Warsaw one ex-Special Forces humanitarian worker questioned why Katie, who had no experience as an aid worker, had come. He growled: “Why are you here?” But Katie has earned plaudits for her energy and enthusiasm from some experienced charity workers, including Heath Donnelly, CEO of the charitable foundation of movie producer and international restaurateur Ciro Orsini and actor Armand Assante. “She has kick started a lot of things done here,” he says.

At Warsaw’s central train station, Katie says she “made friends with the volunteers (who) are running the transportation kiosk and when people can’t pay and there’s no way for them to utilize government funds, I pay with my PayPal,” she says. With donations from friends, relatives and neighbors, she has helped 12 families being sheltered at a church in Warsaw and paid the air fares for 30 families.  On the border, she helps Heath. “These kids and these families that are coming out need to see that humanity is still good and people are still good,” she says.
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THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS — Dutch brewer Heineken announced on Monday it was pulling out of Russia, becoming the latest Western firm to exit the country in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The beer company had already halted the sale and production of its Heineken brand in Russia, as well as suspended new investments and exports to the country earlier this month. 

“We are shocked and deeply saddened to watch the war in Ukraine continue to unfold and intensify,” Heineken said in a statement. 

“Following the previously announced strategic review of our operations, we have concluded that Heineken’s ownership of the business in Russia is no longer sustainable nor viable in the current environment,” the statement said.

“As a result, we have decided to leave Russia.” 

Heineken said it would aim for an “orderly transfer” of its business to a new owner in compliance with international and local laws and would not take any profit from the transaction, which will cost the company 400 million euros ($438 million) in exceptional charges. 

The company said it would continue on reduced operations during a transition period to reduce the risk of nationalisation and “ensure the ongoing safety and wellbeing of our employees.” 

“In all circumstances we guarantee the salaries of our 1,800 employees will be paid to the end of 2022 and will do our utmost to safeguard their future employment.” 

Hundreds of Western firms have closed shops and offices in Russia since the war started, a list that includes famous names such as Ikea, Coca-Cola and MacDonald’s. 
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Turkey is hosting latest round of peace talks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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Malta’s Prime Minister Robert Abela promised “greater humility” Sunday as his Labour Party claimed they were headed for a landslide win in elections to secure a third term in government, despite a legacy of corruption and the lowest turnout in decades.

Official results are not expected until early Monday morning, but Labour Party officials briefed reporters that they were heading for a big win based on preliminary results, while the opposition Nationalist Party conceded defeat.

“The public decided that Malta must continue moving forward,” Abela told reporters at the counting center in the town of Naxxar, as supporters nearby chanted his name.

“It is a result which brings a greater responsibility, and which we must translate into greater humility,” he added, vowing to work “with a sense of national unity… in the interests of everyone.”

Abela had campaigned on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Labour’s economic record during nine years in power. By contrast, the opposition Nationalist Party has been hamstrung by internal divisions.

But turnout was lower than expected after a lackluster campaign limited by coronavirus restrictions, dogged by worries about the war in Ukraine and perhaps some resignation among voters after opinion polls indicated a Labour landslide.

The Electoral Commission estimated turnout at 85.5%, the lowest in a Maltese general election since 1955 — and the first time it has dropped below 90% since 1966.

However Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne told AFP the turnout was “high by European standards.”

Labour is still tainted by the high-level corruption exposed by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb near her home in October 2017, in a murder that shocked the world.

Seven men have either been accused or admitted complicity in her murder, but a public inquiry last year said the state under then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat must bear responsibility for having created a “culture of impunity” in which her enemies felt they could silence her.

Muscat had already stepped down in January 2020, after public protests at his perceived attempts to shield allies from the probe into her death. Abela replaced him following a Labour party vote.

The 44-year-old lawyer has since moved to strengthen good governance and press freedom, including by reducing the prime minister’s powers over judges and the police.

Caruana Galizia’s family says he has not gone far enough, however.

The Nationalist Party had pressed the issue of corruption on the campaign trail, highlighting the gray-listing last year of Malta by an international money-laundering watchdog, the FATF.

Despite few natural resources, Malta built a thriving economy based largely on tourism, financial services and online gaming, but it has long fought allegations it acts as a quasi-tax haven.

It has also been criticized by the EU and anti-corruption campaigners for its “golden passports” scheme, which awards citizenship to wealthy investors.

Under political pressure, Abela suspended the scheme for Russians and Belarusians after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Politics is hugely important in Malta, a Catholic-majority country of around 516,000 people living in 316 square kilometers (122 square miles) off the coast of Sicily.

Labour agents attending the election count had earlier erupted into cheers at news of victory, jumping for joy and banging the Perspex screens through which they had been monitoring the officials checking ballots.

As the day wore on, cars decorated in Labour’s red and white flags filled the roads, honking their horns, while outside the party’s headquarters supporters gathered dancing and cheering.

Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech later visited the count center to thank his own supporters, where he vowed to keep working for “those people who are not happy with the current government.”

Aside from the economy, the environment was a big issue on what is the smallest and most densely populated country in the European Union.

Huge development projects lined Malta’s coastline, green spaces are squeezed, concrete trucks cause gridlock on the streets and the sound of construction fills the air.

There is a green party, the ADPD, but no third party has held even a single seat in Malta’s parliament since before independence from Britain in 1964.
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Globalization, which has both fans and detractors alike, is being tested like never before after the one-two punch of COVID and war.

The pandemic had already raised questions about the world’s reliance on an economic model that has broken trade barriers but made countries heavily reliant on each other as production was delocalized over the decades.

Companies have been struggling to cope with major bottlenecks in the global supply chain.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has raised fears about further disruptions, with everything from energy supplies to auto parts to exports of wheat and raw materials under threat.

Larry Fink, the head of financial giant BlackRock, put it bluntly: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades.”

“We had already seen connectivity between nations, companies and even people strained by two years of the pandemic,” Fink wrote in a letter to shareholders Thursday.

But U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen disagrees.

“I really have to push back on that,” she told CNBC in an interview. 

“We’re deeply involved in the global economy. I expect that to remain, it is something that has brought benefits to the United States, and many countries around the world.”

‘An animal that evolves’

Shortages of surgical masks at the outset of the pandemic in 2020 became a symbol of the world’s dependence on Chinese factories for all sorts of goods.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has raised concerns about food shortages around the globe as the two agricultural powerhouses are among the major breadbaskets of the world.

It has also put a spotlight on Europe’s — and especially Germany’s — heavy dependence on gas supplies from Russia, now a state under crippling sanctions.

“A number of vulnerabilities” have emerged that show the limits of having supply chains spread out in different locations, the former director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, told AFP.

The global trade tensions have prompted the European Union, for instance, to seek “strategic autonomy” in critical sectors.

The production of semiconductors — microchips that are vital to industries ranging from video games to cars — is now a priority for Europe and the United States.

“The pandemic did not bring radical changes in terms of reshoring (bringing back business from overseas),” said Ferdi De Ville, professor at Ghent Institute for International & European Studies.

“But this time it might be different because (the conflict) will have an impact on how businesses think about their investment decisions, their supply chains,” he said.

“They have realized that what was maybe unthinkable before the past month has now become realistic, in terms of far-reaching sanctions,” said de Ville, author of an article on “The end of globalization as we know it.”

The goal now is to redirect strategic dependence towards allies, what he coined as “friend-shoring” instead of “off-shoring.”

A U.S.-EU agreement Friday to create a task force to wean Europe off its reliance on Russian fossil fuels is the most recent example of friend-shoring.

For Lamy, this shows “there is no de-globalization.”

Globalization, he said, is “an animal that evolves a lot.”

Decoupling from China

Globalization had already faced an existential crisis when former U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, triggering a tit-for-tat exchange of punitive tariffs.

His successor, Joe Biden, invoked the need to “buy American” in his sweeping investment plan to “rebuild America.”

“We will buy American to make sure everything from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on highway guardrails are made in America,” he said in his State of the Union speech.

One concept that emerged during the Trump years was “decoupling” — the idea of untangling the U.S. and Chinese economies.

The threat has not subsided, especially with China refusing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United States has warned the world’s second-biggest economy would face “consequences” if it provides material support to Russia in its war in Ukraine.

China already had other contentious issues with the West, such as Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy which Beijing has vowed to seize one day, by force if necessary.

“It is not in China’s interest for now to go into competition with the West,” said Xiaodong Bao, portfolio manager at the Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management firm.

But the war in Ukraine is a chance for China to reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar. The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing is in talks with Saudi Arabia to buy oil in yuan instead of dollars.

“China will continue to build foundations for the future,” Bao said. “The financial decoupling is accelerating.” 
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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The United States intends to provide Ukraine with an additional $100 million in civilian security assistance, the State Department said Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the assistance would be to build the capacity of the Ukrainian ministry of internal affairs with a view to aid “border security, sustain civil law enforcement functions, and safeguard critical governmental infrastructure.”
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President Joe Biden aimed squarely at Vladimir Putin in an impassioned address in Warsaw directed at Ukrainians, Europeans and the global community, blaming the Russian president for the monthlong siege on Ukraine and saying, “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

By doing so, Biden finally drew a red line that Ukrainians have been begging him to draw – but not through the tanks, jets, air support and military action Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked of the West.

Such strong words by the U.S. president Saturday effectively end any further chance of U.S.-Russia diplomacy, and they set the U.S. and Russia again on opposite sides in an ideological divide that Biden warned would “not be won in days or months,” invoking the painful struggles of former communist nations – including Poland – to separate from the former USSR.

But just minutes later, Biden’s administration walked back some of his rhetoric, with a senior administration telling reporters: “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

The Kremlin was dismissive of the president’s remarks when asked about them after the speech. Its chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russians would decide who their leader should be.

“That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians.”

Biden also praised the Ukrainian people, who have conscripted every able-bodied adult male to the fight, which recently passed the one-month mark.

“Their brave resistance is part of a larger fight for essential democratic principles that unite all free people: the rule of law; fair and free elections; the freedom to speak, to write and assemble; the freedom to worship as one chooses; the freedom of the press: these principles are essential in a free society,” Biden said to the crowd of nearly 1,000 people. It included Ukrainian and Polish officials, ordinary citizens and diplomats who crowded in the courtyard in the biting cold at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, which was lit in the colors of the Ukrainian and Polish flags, blue and yellow, red and white.

Biden also appealed to the Russian people, saying, “This is not who you are. This is not the future reserve you deserve for your families, and your children. I’m telling you the truth. This war is not worthy of you, the Russian people.”

The speech comes at the very end of a whirlwind diplomatic tour, in which Biden met with NATO, European and G-7 leaders in Brussels and then headed to southeastern Poland, where Patriot missiles were prominently parked near a temporary U.S. base, within easy range of western Ukraine.

The city of Lviv, just 50 miles from the Polish border, has come under increasing attack in recent days and was struck by rockets in two attacks Saturday. When asked earlier in the day if Putin has adjusted his bold, all-fronts conventional warfare strategy on Ukraine, Biden replied, “I don’t think he has.”
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More than 10 million Ukrainians, nearly a quarter of the population, have been displaced since Russia invaded the country a bit more than one month ago, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says.

An estimated 3.7 million people have fled to neighboring countries, while more than 6.5 million have been displaced inside Ukraine since the Russian invasion began February 24. U.N. refugee officials say another 13 million are stranded in conflict areas, unable to leave because of the danger.

From the western city of Lviv, UNHCR Ukraine representative Karolina Lindholm Billing says everything has changed for Ukraine in the past month.  She says development projects, homes, and social structures have been turned into rubble under the relentless Russian bombing.

She says the past month has reversed and set back the many development gains that have been achieved for disabled children, the elderly, and many other vulnerable people over the past eight years.

“We are today confronted with the realities of a massive humanitarian crisis, which is growing by the second.  And the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine cannot be overemphasized.  Overnight, lives have been shattered and families ripped apart.  And today, these millions of people in Ukraine live in constant fear of indiscriminate shelling and heavy bombardment,” she said.

Lindholm Billing says UNHCR staff is working around the clock to deliver as much humanitarian aid as it can to wherever possible.

Russian forces have become bogged down around the capital, Kyiv, and have suffered setbacks elsewhere in the country.  Media reports suggest Russian President Vladimir Putin is changing tactics and plans to concentrate on the so-called liberation of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Russian-backed rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions have been fighting a war of separation from Ukraine for eight years. 

Matilda Bogner, who heads the U.N. Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, says Russian bombers do not distinguish between people living on either side of the 500-kilometer contact line separating government- and rebel-held territories.

“People are dying on what was before both sides of the contact line.  Now, there is no clear contact line.  There is a sort of front of fighting there, but people are dying in the areas that are controlled by the Russian-affiliated armed groups and they are dying in the areas of the East that are controlled by the government,” she said.   

Bogner says all civilians in this area are victims.  

Putin’s justification for waging war in Ukraine was to stop the alleged mistreatment and so-called genocide of Russian speakers in the Donbas.
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Relatives of Nigerian students trapped in the besieged Black Sea port city of Kherson are calling on authorities to do more to return them home safely. Over the past three weeks, some of the estimated 80 students trapped in Kherson have tried to reach safety in neighboring countries. But not everyone got lucky. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja. Camera – Emeka Gibson. 
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Just days ago, Artem Gorelov was trying to survive in one of the most brutal parts of Ukraine, the Russian-occupied Kyiv suburb of Bucha. Now he stands in a quiet room in the late afternoon sunlight, hand-making hats for a local fashion brand worn by Madonna and Ukraine’s first lady.

Gorelov has joined Ukrainians’ massive migration west to the city of Lviv, near Poland. And, unusually, the 100-employee company he works for arrived with him. Searching for safety but determined not to leave Ukraine, the brand Ruslan Baginskiy is among the businesses that are uprooting amid war.

Two months ago, first lady Olena Zelenska was in the hat-maker’s showroom in Kyiv. Now the company operates in two borrowed classrooms of a school, its workers delicately piecing together materials near students’ decades-old sewing machines.

It is a slower process, but clients like Nieman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s have expressed support, said co-owner Victoria Semerei, 29.

She was among the Ukrainians who didn’t believe Russia would invade. She recalled being in Italy the day before the invasion and telling partners that war wasn’t possible. 

Two hours after her plane landed back in Kyiv, the bombardment began.

Daily bombings led the company’s three co-founders to make the decision to flee. While some employees scattered to other parts of Ukraine or to other countries, about a third moved the company’s essentials to Lviv two weeks ago.

“Normal life will resume one day,” Semerei said. “We need to be prepared.”

The company threw itself into the national wartime effort that has seized Ukraine, donating money to the army and turning its Instagram feed from brand promotion to updates on the war.

“This is not the time to be shy. Not anymore,” co-founder and creative director Ruslan Baginskiy said. The company once had Russian clients, but that stopped long before the invasion as regional tensions grew. “It’s not possible to have any connections,” he said. “It’s all political now.”

As part of that spirit, Semerei rejected the idea of moving the company to a safer location outside Ukraine. “We have our team here, the most precious team we have,” she said.  “Talented, all of them.”

Past brand campaigns for the company have identified closely with Ukraine, photographed in placed like Kherson, now under Russian occupation. Cities that the hat-maker’s employees once called home have been torn apart.

“So many Russian troops,” said Gorelov, who fled Bucha near the capital. “It was not even possible to defend.”

His arrival in Lviv, where life goes on and fashionable shops remain open, was surreal. It took days to adjust. Now “I feel relaxed doing this,” he said, a new hat in the making on the table before him.

In another corner of the makeshift workspace, Svetlana Podgainova worried about her family back in the separatist-held territory of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting for control for nearly eight years. It was already difficult to visit with family even before the invasion. Now her brother can’t leave the region.

She feels horrible seeing her colleagues from other parts of Ukraine pulled into the war and wishes that normal life would return for them all. Until then, “I wanted to come back to work so much,” she said. It occupies her mind and makes her feel less alone in a new city, and she calls her colleagues a “big family.”

The hat-maker’s employees are among the estimated 200,000 displaced people now living in Lviv, with the co-founders now sharing an apartment with several other people.

Considering the challenges, this year probably will be the worst in the company’s six-year history, Semerei said. But “this is something we’ll go through and hopefully be even stronger.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand for Europe to pay for gas in rubles as he accused Moscow of trying to sidestep sanctions over its war on Ukraine.

Macron told journalists after an EU summit in Brussels that the Russian move “is not in line with what was signed, and I do not see why we would apply it.”

Putin made the demand this week as Moscow struggles to prop up its economy in the face of debilitating sanctions imposed by the West over his invasion of Ukraine.

Macron said that “we are continuing our analysis work” following the Kremlin’s maneuver.

But he insisted “all the texts signed are clear: it is prohibited. So European players who buy gas and who are on European soil must do so in euros.”

“It is therefore not possible today to do what is requested, and it is not contractual,” he said.

The French leader said he believed Moscow was using the step as “a mechanism to circumvent” EU sanctions against it for the assault on Ukraine.

Major gas buyer Germany has denounced the move and Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday reiterated that the contracts clearly stipulated how the gas should be paid for.

Europe is scrambling to reduce its reliance on Russian gas. It continues to funnel hundreds of millions of euros each day to Moscow in energy payments, which are currently outside the scope of the sanctions.

Some EU nations have called for the bloc to ban Moscow’s key energy exports, but the move has so far been stymied by countries including Germany that remain too wary of the cost of cutting the cord.
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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The United Nations says more than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion started a month ago, and Thursday the Biden administration promised to accept 100,000 Ukrainians displaced by the war in the United States.  Mike O’Sullivan reports from Tijuana, Mexico, where many Ukrainians are arriving to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. They welcome the news but are worried about family members left behind.
Camera: Mike O’Sullivan
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Police in Northern Ireland said they removed Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney from an event in Belfast on Friday because of a security concern. 

Coveney was delivering a speech at a peace process event in the city when the alert was sounded, and the event venue was evacuated. 

In a statement posted to its Twitter account, Police North Belfast had declared a “security alert” during the event. Local media reported the incident involved a van that had been hijacked at gunpoint, with the driver forced to drive to the parking lot of the venue where Coveney was speaking.  

Organizers of the event told the Reuters news service a suspicious device was found in the van. Local media reports say the van was found abandoned in the parking lot with the driver inside unharmed. It is unclear what happened to the assailant. Police reportedly remained at the scene and urged the public to avoid the area. 

Coveney, who reportedly had been speaking about the importance of reconciliation in Northern Ireland, was about five minutes into his remarks when he was interrupted. 

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Coveney was taken to a safe location. From his Twitter account, Coveney thanked police for their work and said he was “saddened and frustrated that someone has been attacked & victimised in this way and my thoughts are with him and his family.” 

The incident comes three days after Britain lowered its Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat level for the first time in more than a decade, with police saying operations against Irish nationalist militants were making attacks less likely. 

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

 
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U.N. human rights monitors in Ukraine are condemning the use of explosive weapons and indiscriminate attacks by Russian military forces on civilians and civilian infrastructure as a probable violation of international humanitarian law.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine one month ago the United Nations human rights office reports at least 1,035 civilians have been killed and some 1,650 injured. It says it is difficult to get an accurate count on the number of casualties during a brutal, ongoing war.

However, what is certain is that the death toll and human suffering in cities, towns, and villages across Ukraine is increasing day after day. The head of the human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, says the biggest area of concern is the wide use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Speaking on a video link from the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, Bogner says Russian military forces have widely used missiles, heavy artillery shells, rockets, and other explosive weapons, as well as airstrikes in or near populated areas.

“Private houses, multi-story residential buildings, administrative buildings, medical and education facilities, water stations, electricity systems have all been destroyed on a massive scale, with disastrous effects on civilians and their human rights, including their rights to health, food, water, education and housing.”

Bogner confirms the use of cluster munitions by Russia and says monitors are looking into allegations of their use by Ukrainian armed forces. She says the attacks cause immeasurable suffering and may amount to war crimes.

“Since the 24th of February, we have received allegations of Russian forces shooting at and killing civilians in cars during evacuations, without taking feasible precautions or giving effective advance warning. We are also following up on other allegations that Russian forces have killed civilians, including during peaceful assemblies.”

Bogner says monitors are looking into allegations that thousands of people who have fled the city of Mariupol and other areas have been forcibly deported to the Russian Federation and, supposedly, are being held hostage by Russian authorities. She says U.N. monitors so far have not been able to verify whether Ukrainian civilians who have gone to Russia have been forcibly moved there.
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