Two months after the Berlin Wall fell, another powerful symbol opened its doors in the middle of Moscow: a gleaming new McDonald’s. 

It was the first American fast-food restaurant to enter the Soviet Union, reflecting the new political openness of the era. For Vlad Vexler, who as a 9-year-old waited in a two-hour line to enter the restaurant near Moscow’s Pushkin Square on its opening day in January 1990, it was a gateway to the utopia he imagined the West to be. 

“We thought that life there was magical, and there were no problems,” Vexler said. 

So, it was all the more poignant for Vexler when McDonald’s announced it would temporarily close that store and nearly 850 others in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. McDonald’s Russian website on Monday read, “Due to operational, technical and logistical difficulties, McDonald’s will temporarily suspend service at its network enterprises from March 14.” 

“That McDonald’s is a sign of optimism that in the end didn’t materialize,” said Vexler, a political philosopher and author who now lives in London. “Now that Russia is entering the period of contraction, isolation and impoverishment, you look back at these openings and think about what might have been.” 

McDonald’s said in a statement that “at this juncture, it’s impossible to predict when we might be able to reopen our restaurants in Russia.” But it is continuing to pay its 62,500 Russian employees. The company said this week that it expects the closures to cost around $50 million per month. 

Outside a McDonald’s in Moscow last week, student Lev Shalpo bemoaned the closure. 

“It’s wrong because it was the only affordable place for me where I could eat,” he said. 

Just as McDonald’s paved the way for other brands to enter the Soviet market, its exit led to a cascade of similar announcements from other U.S. brands. Starbucks closed its 130 outlets in Russia. Yum Brands closed its 70 company-owned KFC restaurants and was negotiating the closure of 50 Pizza Huts that are owned by franchisees. 

McDonald’s entry into the Soviet Union began with a chance meeting. In 1976, McDonald’s loaned some buses to organizers of the 1980 Moscow Olympics who were touring Olympic venues in Montreal, Canada. George Cohon, then the head of McDonald’s in Canada, took the visitors to McDonald’s as part of the tour. That same night, the group began discussing ways to open a McDonald’s in the Soviet Union. 

Fourteen years later, after Soviet laws loosened and McDonald’s built relationships with local farmers, the first McDonald’s opened in downtown Moscow. It was a sensation. 

On its opening day, the restaurant’s 27 cash registers rang up 30,000 meals. Vexler and his grandmother waited in a line with thousands of others to enter the 700-seat store, entertained by traditional Russian musicians and costumed characters like Mickey Mouse. 

“The feeling was, ‘Let’s go and see how Westerners do things better. Let’s go and see what a healthy society has to offer,'” Vexler said. 

Vexler saved money for weeks to buy his first McDonald’s meal: a cheeseburger, fries and a Coca-Cola. The food had a “plasticky goodness” he had never experienced before, he said. 

Eileen Kane visited the original McDonald’s often in 1991 and 1992 when she was an exchange student at Moscow State University. She found it a striking contrast from the rest of the country, which was suffering frequent food shortages as the Soviet Union collapsed. 

“McDonald’s was bright and colorful, and they never ran out of anything. It was like a party atmosphere,” said Kane, who is now a history professor at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut. 

McDonald’s entry into the Soviet Union was so groundbreaking it gave rise to a political theory. The Golden Arches Theory holds that two countries that both have McDonald’s in them won’t go to war, because the presence of a McDonald’s is an indicator of the countries’ level of inter-dependence and their alignment with U.S. laws, said Bernd Kaussler, a political science professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. 

That theory held until 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Kaussler said. 

Kaussler said the number of countries now withdrawing from Russia, and the speed with which they acted, is unprecedented. He thinks some, including McDonald’s, might calculate that it’s unwise to reopen, which would leave Russia more isolated and the world less secure. 

“As the Russian economy is becoming less interdependent with the U.S. and Europe, we basically have fewer domestic economic factors that could mitigate current aggressive policies,” Kaussler said. 

Vexler said the admiration for the West that caused Russians to embrace McDonald’s three decades ago has also shifted. Russians now tend to be more anti-Western, he said. 

Anastasia Chubina visited a McDonald’s in Moscow last week because her child wanted one last meal there. But she was indifferent about its closure, suggesting Russians will get healthier if they stop eating fast food. 

“I think we lived without it before and will live further,” she said. 

Entrepreneur Yekaterina Kochergina said the closure could be a good opportunity for Russian fast-food brands to enter the market. 

“It is sad, but it’s not a big deal. We’ll survive without McDonald’s,” she said. 

 
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine  
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Russian officials have said that they will move to nationalize the assets of Western companies that pull out of their country over its invasion of Ukraine, a decision that will cause significant economic harm to hundreds of businesses while, at least temporarily, preserving the jobs of the tens of thousands of Russians employed by them. 

As of Monday, at least 375 companies had announced some sort of pullback from Russia, according to a list maintained by the School of Management at Yale University. The list includes companies that have cut ties with Russia completely, as well as those that have suspended operations there while attempting to preserve the option to return. 

According to multiple media reports, dozens of Western companies have been contacted by prosecutors in Russia with warnings that their assets, including production facilities, offices, and intellectual property, such as trademarks, may be seized by the government if they withdraw from the country. 

Endorsed by Putin 

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week endorsed the proposed seizure of Western assets, a plan that was originally aired by a senior member of United Russia, the country’s dominant political party. 

United Russia’s proposal went beyond asset seizures, advocating a policy of arresting executives of foreign business who criticize the actions of the Russian government. According to Reuters, another proposal under consideration would target public companies if more than 25% of their shares are held by individuals from “unfriendly states.” A bill put forward by United Russia legislators would allow the government to force such firms into “external administration,” leading to the elimination of existing shareholder rights and the auctioning of new shares recognized by the Russian government. 

On Twitter last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki warned that Russia could face further sanctions or legal action if it goes forward with the nationalization plan. “Any lawless decision by Russia to seize the assets of these companies will ultimately result in even more economic pain for Russia,” she wrote. 

New sort of expropriation 

There is a long history of governments expropriating the assets of foreign firms, but experts said that what Russia is threatening falls outside the typical pattern. In the past, governments have nationalized foreign businesses in the name of ideology, as Cuba did in the wake of the Communist revolution there, or because they want to capture the revenue going to private enterprise, as with Iran in the nationalization of its oil industry in 1951. 

Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA that is not what is happening in Russia. 

“It’s not about Russia saying, ‘Well, we think we can run these companies better on our own,'” she said. “It’s really about punishing those companies, which makes it so different from various revolutionary governments that have seized Western companies’ assets in the past.” 

In other cases of nationalization, Braw said, the government seizing assets typically did so strategically. They chose business sectors, at least in part, based on the assumption that they had, or could quickly develop, the capacity to operate them independently. 

But Russia’s threat of blanket nationalization of foreign companies that leave the country would effectively put the Kremlin into the role of operating everything from McDonald’s fast-food franchises to Gillette razor factories to Mercedes-Benz car manufacturing plants. 

Success unlikely 

Experts said that Russia is likely to have a difficult time finding people with the expertise to run many of the foreign firms that might be subject to nationalization. The management ranks of most non-Russian firms have historically been heavily weighted with expatriates, many of whom have been rushing to get out of the country. 

“Some businesses, some manufacturing operations, might well fit the Russian model,” James O’Rourke, a professor of Management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, told VOA. 

Certain kinds of companies, he said, “might be run by an oligarch or a friend of the regime, and it might work out. But I don’t think most of them will.” 

O’Rourke said that even if Russia were able to find the managers needed to keep foreign businesses running, supply chain problems may prove insurmountable. McDonald’s, for example, sources its produce and baked goods from multiple different countries, most of which are actively engaged in the international effort to cut off trade with Russia. Gillette’s manufacturing facilities in Russia use machines made in the U.S. and Germany, which will be unwilling to supply spare parts. 

Political benefits 

The Russian government might be able to score a short-term public relations victory with its own people if it can portray the nationalization of Western businesses as an effort to retain jobs that might otherwise have been lost, said Braw, of the American Enterprise Institute. 

However, she said, unless the Kremlin can find a way to successfully perpetuate the companies’ operations without Western expertise or supplies, the PR benefits of nationalization are likely to be short-lived. 

 
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An anti-war protester interrupted the main news program on Russian state TV Channel One on Monday, holding up a sign behind the studio presenter with slogans denouncing the war in Ukraine.

The sign, in English and Russian, read: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They are lying to you here.” Another phrase, which looked like “Russians against war,” was partly obscured.

The extraordinary protest took place on day 19 of the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what it calls a special military operation.

“Stop the war. No to war,” the woman protester could be heard shouting, as the news anchor continued to read from her teleprompter.

The protester could be seen and heard for several seconds before the channel switched to a different report to remove her from the screen.

“Wow, that girl is cool,” Kira Yarmysh, spokesperson for jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, wrote on Twitter.

She posted a video of the incident, which quickly racked up nearly 180,000 views.

State TV is the main source of news for many millions of Russians and closely follows the Kremlin line that Russia was forced to act in Ukraine to demilitarize and “denazify” the country, and to defend Russian speakers there against “genocide.” Ukraine and most of the world have condemned that as a false pretext for an invasion of a democratic country.

The woman was named by OVD-Info, an independent protest-monitoring group, and by the head of the Agora human rights group, as Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of the channel.

Pavel Chikov, head of Agora, said she had been arrested and taken to a Moscow police station.

Tass said she may face charges under a law against discrediting the armed forces, citing a law enforcement source.

On March 4, Russia’s parliament passed a law making public actions aimed at “discrediting” Russia’s army illegal and banning the spread of fake news, or the “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.” The offense carries a jail term of up to 15 years.
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The chairperson of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Monday that Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian civilians, as well as schools and hospitals, is “state terrorism.”

“The invading force started to target the civilian population and infrastructure in an attempt to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people,” Zbigniew Rau said. “This is deplorable and shameful and amounts to state terrorism. Schools, hospitals and kindergartens are being deliberately targeted with internationally banned weapons.”

The United Nations has said it has credible reports that Russian forces are using cluster munitions in populated areas.

Rau, who is Poland’s foreign minister, addressed the U.N. Security Council Monday in his capacity as the chairperson-in-office of the OSCE for 2022.

Russia is an OSCE member, and Rau said Moscow has accused him of bias in response to the conflict.

“I have only one response to this kind of allegation: The impartiality ends where blatant violations of international humanitarian law start,” he said.

Rau urged Russia and Belarus, which is hosting Russian troops on its territory and has been accused of allowing missiles to be fired from its soil, to stop this “cruel endeavor.” He said it serves neither their government nor their people’s interests and will only further isolate both countries internationally.

“The door to diplomacy is still open, and I call on Russia to engage in a meaningful and substantial dialogue to seek a peaceful solution to the current crisis,” Rau said.

Rau said he expects Moscow to honor its international obligations and commitments, adding that any sustainable political solution “must fully respect sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”

Russia’s envoy dismissed the OSCE chairperson’s offer for diplomacy, saying he had picked a side in the conflict and was, therefore, not an honest broker.

“The point of the work of the chairperson in office is precisely to solve disagreements between participating states and to bring positions closer; it is in no way to take biased steps which further inflame confrontation, and especially not to head up an anti-Russian campaign in the OSCE,” Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council.

Situation worsening on the ground

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the meeting that the situation worsened over the weekend, with Russian forces launching deadly strikes in the west of the country.

“Ukrainian cities are under unrelenting shelling and bombardment, with many civilians killed daily,” she said.

The U.N. human rights office put its verified toll since the start of the conflict at 636 civilians killed and 1,125 injured as of midnight Sunday but acknowledges that it is likely much higher. Meanwhile, nearly 2 million people have become displaced inside the country and 2.8 million have fled to neighboring countries.

“We must not allow any questioning of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders,” DiCarlo added.

Her boss, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, addressed reporters outside of the Security Council chamber. He announced $40 million from the U.N. central emergency response fund for meeting urgent needs in Ukraine, where food, water and medicine are growing scarce.

“This war goes far beyond Ukraine,” he warned of the humanitarian implications.

Guterres said it is threatening food security for millions in the developing world, as Russia and Ukraine are responsible for nearly one-third of the planet’s wheat trade and more than half the world’s supply of sunflower oil for cooking.

“Now their breadbasket is being bombed,” Guterres said.

It is especially concerning for the United Nations, as Ukraine supplies the World Food Program with more than half of its wheat supply. With 41 million people on the brink of famine in 43 countries, a poor or nonexistent harvest from Ukraine will make it much harder to feed them.

The Kyiv government has made repeated appeals for the West to close the skies over Ukraine with a no-fly zone. Asked about this, Guterres said a number of countries have analyzed that possibility, but that it could risk escalating the conflict into a global one.

“It is based on that analysis, that I think we need to be prudent, even if I understand the dramatic appeal of the Ukrainian government,” he said.

The U.N. chief repeated his calls for the war to stop and dialogue to begin.

“We need peace. Peace for the people of Ukraine. Peace for the world,” he said. “We need peace now.”

Meanwhile, the sponsors of a draft Security Council resolution on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, which has been in negotiation for two weeks, said they will not seek a vote in the council but will take it to the wider membership in the General Assembly.

“Obviously, it would have been difficult in the Security Council, no need to explain to you why,” France’s envoy Nicolas de Riviere said in response to a reporter’s question.

Russia holds a veto in the 15-nation council.

“We think it’s time to take action to move to the General Assembly and have the whole membership supporting an initiative on humanitarian access, on cessation of hostilities, on respect of international humanitarian law, on respect of the Geneva Conventions,” Ambassador de Riviere said. “So we are very optimistic we can do that. The sooner the better. The situation on the ground deteriorates by the hour.”
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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been denied permission to appeal at the Supreme Court against a decision to extradite him to the United States, the court said on Monday.

U.S. authorities want Australian-born Assange, 50 to face trial on 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks’ release of vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables which they said had put lives in danger.

In December, the High Court in London overturned a lower court’s ruling that he should not be extradited because his mental health problems meant he would be at risk of suicide.

High Court judges then refused him permission for a direct appeal to the Supreme Court on their decision, leaving the decision with the Supreme Court itself over whether to hear his challenge.

“The application has been refused by the Supreme Court and the reason given is that application did not raise an arguable point of law” a supreme court spokesperson said.

The extradition decision will now need to be ratified by interior minister Priti Patel, after which Assange can try to challenge the decision by judicial review. A judicial review involves a judge examining the legitimacy of a public body’s decision.
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German prosecutors said Monday they have charged Wirecard’s former chief executive Markus Braun and two other high-ranking managers for the colossal commercial fraud that led to the collapse of the payment company.

The trio are accused of market manipulation, embezzlement and gang fraud on a commercial scale, said prosecutors, noting that the indictment itself runs to 474 pages.

The German fintech company, once touted as a shining star of innovative start-ups, crashed in June 2020 after admitting that a missing 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) from its balance sheets likely didn’t exist.

The time it took for prosecutors to file formal charges underlined the intricate and complex web of fraudulent transactions that investigators travelled across the world to unravel.

Among victims of the fraud were banks that had provided credit of 1.7 billion euros to Wirecard. Bonds worth 1.4 billion euros had also been issued, which are unlikely to be repaid.

“All the accused group members were acting in an industrial fashion in these six cases of fraud, because that is how they secured their own salaries, including partially profit-related portions,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Braun for instance, received at least 5.5 million euros in dividends, they said.

Wirecard’s troubles began in January 2019 with a series of articles in the Financial Times alleging accounting irregularities in its Asian division, headed by chief operating officer Jan Marsalek.

But the financial technology company was able, at that time, to repeatedly fend off claims and the FT’s journalists themselves came under investigation over the reports. 

The huge scam unravelled in June 2020 when auditors Ernst & Young said they were unable to find 1.9 billion euros of cash in the company’s accounts.

The sum, which made up a quarter of the balance sheet, was supposedly held to cover risks in trading carried out by third parties on Wirecard’s behalf and was meant to be sitting in trustee accounts at two Philippine banks.

But the Philippines’ central bank has said the cash never entered its monetary system and both Asian banks, BDO and BPI, denied having a relationship with Wirecard.

While key figures in the company have since been detained, including Braun, the company’s former COO Marsalek, who is wanted by German prosecutors, remains at large.
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Marina, a 34-year-old mother of a seven-year-old boy, waves a hand in what she thinks is the direction of Ukraine. “I have to stay near Ukraine, and my husband, that is where my heart is,” she says. “America, Britain, Spain, Italy, what would I do there without him,” she says, after I ask her whether she will leave Poland to settle somewhere else, if Russia’s war on her country drags on.

It took Marina more than a day to reach the Polish border on the train from just west of Kyiv. She says it was stultifying and claustrophobic in the packed train mainly full of women and children; the windows were shut tight and during the night hours and the lights were off to ensure the train wasn’t targeted. The babies wailed; younger children complained on the journey to safety.  

Because of the ban on men of fighting age leaving Ukraine, Marina, like hundreds of other Ukrainian women, had to leave her partner behind, and it clearly pains her. “I did it for my son,” she says. “We were scared for him. There was terrible shelling. I was very frightened,” she says. She tells me this as she cleans my hotel room. She was the head of procurement for a Ukrainian company and with remarkable speed got this cleaning job. “Needs must,” she shrugs.

Many businesses in Warsaw and other Polish towns are going out of their way to employ Ukrainians, if just for temporary work. Ukraine’s neighbors have flung open their doors and hearts to fleeing Ukrainians, offering aid, free transport and accommodation as a wave of dispossessed humanity arrives hour after hour at border crossings and at train and bus stations in-country.

They are met by yellow or orange-vested volunteers as well as government workers. In Warsaw firefighters are taking a lead. They dole out hot meals, bottled water and blankets and help move them on to reception centers or distribute them among charitable Polish families to shelter. Mobile telephone operators T-Mobile and Orange offer free SIM cards that allow the refugees to contact relatives back home at no cost.

Warsaw’s central railway station is packed on the chilly evening I visit. Two trains have arrived from the border and disgorge a mass of disheveled, tired people, and blinking children, to join the already jam-packed main entrance hall, where families clutch bowls of soup and bottled water proffered by the volunteers.  

On the trains, there was no food but “people would get bottled water into the train at station stops,” 25-year-old Yulia says. She has arrived with her eight-year-old sister and mother. They took a day to get by train to Lviv from Kyiv, where their neighborhood was under intense bombardments, and then they had a 13-hour bus ride from the border to Warsaw. “We had no plan when we traveled,” she said. “But on a Facebook forum I found someone in Warsaw offering a room even before we got here,” she added proudly. She had a job with DHL and they are carrying on paying her. “Not just a little but all my wages. Isn’t that unbelievable,” she says.

Most refugees aren’t as lucky or as organized. At the central station, they try to make sense of their surroundings; try to get the bearings on a future that’s unknown and unknowable; they struggle to take in the immediate options outlined by the volunteers, and their eyes dart to the commotion around them. Others take a blanket and gather belongings — a battered suitcase, plastic bags — and find some space to rest. One older woman sits slumped, sleeping on a stair. In a corner a play area has been set up and the toddlers and younger children become absorbed with a doll or a car or a balloon.

Outside the station others crowd into a marquee set up by a group of charitable groups. “We served 30,000 meals today,” a volunteer tells me. Other refugees file up for buses laid on by Warsaw’s firefighters to ferry them to reception centers. A skyscraper looms over the dystopian scene, with the LG brand lit up, flashing the marketing tag, “The Future Is Here.”

Stores and buses in Warsaw have taken to displaying the yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag. The welcome stands in stark contrast to how Poland, along with neighbors Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, responded during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis. All resisted taking in asylum-seekers from the Middle East or burden-sharing with other more hard-pressed European Union countries.  

Empathy, and history

There are historical reasons for the different treatment, Poles say, pointing to Ukraine’s proximity and the cultural and linguistic ties linking the two countries. But there’s also an underlying sense of what could be described as preemptive empathy. When asked, Polish volunteers of all ages say they are helping because of a compelling moral duty, but many also mention anxieties about the war spilling over. Some even worry they could suffer a similar plight to the hordes of Ukrainians they are trying to assist.  

An historical anxiety feeds Polish alarm. Eastern European borders were decided on the battlefields of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and western Russia the past century. Historian Timothy Snyder has dubbed the region the bloodlands, noting in his book of the same name: “In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people.” He adds: “Mass violence of a sort never before seen in history was visited upon this region,” he notes. With that history lodged in the background, Poland is undergoing a genetic shudder.  

But as the numbers of Ukrainian evacuees climb remorselessly, some worry Poland’s welcome mat for Ukrainians may start to become threadbare.

In a sense it already is — not because of any hardening of hearts, although some fear that might happen if the numbers of refugees climb as high as some predict. Financial resources are short. On Saturday the Polish government approved an $1.82 billion fund to help cover the costs of the mass Ukrainian influx. Polish families will get $274 a month for the next two months for housing Ukrainians; and every refugee will get $70 a month.  

But Polish politicians acknowledge this isn’t enough and volunteers are already complaining much more has to be done for the dazed and disoriented refugees turning up in Poland. Much of the burden is being carried by volunteers.

“I have had so far 20 Ukrainians overnighting with me since Russia invaded,” says Mia, a human resources manager. “Last night I had a woman who cried a lot, but I could see she was trying to control her emotions so as not to upset her two children. Another one a few days ago also had children but could not stop weeping. She kept showing me photographs, saying, ‘these are my dogs and cats, this was my house two weeks ago and this is my house now.’ It was destroyed,” she added.   

Joanna Niewczas, a volunteer coordinator at the Torwar conference hall in central Warsaw, which has been transformed into a refugee center, catalogued last week in an open letter serious deficiencies in the aid effort. She warned the crowded and unhygienic facilities posed a “huge risk of an epidemic due to the lack of sanitary requirements.” She complained: “Volunteers are responsible for organizing several thousand meals a day by calling restaurants and asking for donations; we are not able to provide meals to refugees because of the number of them. We have not been given funds.”

The UN says about 2.5 million Ukrainians have fled their country so far. About 1.7 million have gone to Poland alone – the largest influx of refugees the country has seen since World War II. More than 214,160 have crossed into Hungary, 165,199 into Slovakia and around 90,000 into Romania. More than 300,00 have entered tiny Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, since February 24 and on Saturday its foreign minister, Nicu Popescu, said the country was facing a “humanitarian catastrophe” and had reached breaking point with its health and social services overwhelmed.

And Poland, wealthier and larger, is also struggling. Rafal Trzaskowski, Warsaw’s mayor, has warned the city’s ability to absorb refugees was “at an end,” and that unless an international relocation system was established it would be overwhelmed soon, too.
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Canberra says super-rich have profited from Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014 annexation of Crimea
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BERLIN — Germany will purchase F-35 fighter jets built by U.S. firm Lockheed Martin LMT.N to replace its aging Tornado aircraft, according to two government sources, with one of the sources saying Berlin aims to buy up to 35 of the stealth jets. 

A German defense source told Reuters in early February that Germany was leaning toward purchasing the F-35 but a final decision had not been taken.  

The Tornado is the only German jet capable of carrying U.S. nuclear bombs, stored in Germany, in case of a conflict. 

But the air force has been flying the jet since the 1980s, and Berlin is planning to phase it out between 2025 and 2030. 

The F-35 buy will be a blow for Boeing BA.N, whose F-18 was favored by former German defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to replace the Tornado. 

The decision could also upset France. Paris has watched Germany’s deliberations over the F-18 or more advanced F-35, concerned a deal could undermine the development of a joint Franco-German fighter jet that is supposed to be ready in the 2040s. 

Chancellor Olaf Scholz two weeks ago backed the ongoing joint program with Paris. 

At the time, Scholz also announced that the Eurofighter jet, built by Franco-German Airbus AIR.PA, would be developed further to be capable of electronic warfare, a role the Tornado also fulfills. 
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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Russia may default on its debts in the wake of unprecedented sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, but that would not trigger a global financial crisis, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday.

Georgieva told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program that sanctions imposed by the United States and other democracies were already having a “severe” impact on the Russian economy and would trigger a deep recession there this year.

The war and the sanctions would also have significant spillover effects on neighboring countries that depended on Russian energy supplies and had already resulted in a wave of refugees compared to that seen during World War II, she said.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation.”

The sanctions were also limiting Russia’s ability to access its resources and service its debts, which meant a default was no longer viewed as “improbable,” Georgieva said.

Asked if such a default could trigger a financial crisis around the world, she said, “For now, no.”

The total exposure of banks to Russia amounted to around $120 billion, an amount that while not insignificant, was “not systemically relevant,” she said.

Asked if Russia could access the $1.4 billion in emergency IMF funding approved for Ukraine last week if Moscow won the war and installed a new government, Georgieva said the funds were in a special account accessible only by the Ukrainian government.

An IMF official said that referred to the “internationally recognized government of Ukraine.”

The IMF last year blocked access to Afghanistan’s funds by the Taliban after they seized control of the government, citing lack of clarity over recognition of the Taliban rulers within the international community.

Georgieva last week said the IMF would downgrade its previous forecast for 4.4% global economic growth in 2022 as a result of the war, but said the overall trajectory remained positive.

Growth remained robust in countries like the United States that had been fast to recover from COVID-19 pandemic, she told CBS.

The impact would be most severe in terms of driving up commodity prices and inflation, potentially leading to hunger and food insecurity in parts of Africa, she said.
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U.S. officials say Russia’s lethal shelling in the western part of Ukraine on Sunday, close to the border with Poland, is something that they had anticipated.

“This does not come as a surprise to the American intelligence and national security community,” said U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan during a Sunday morning appearance on CNN. “What it shows is that Vladimir Putin is frustrated by the fact that his forces are not making the kind of progress that he thought that they would make.”

At least 35 people died and 134 were wounded early Sunday when Russia fired cruise missiles at the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, a military base in western Ukraine.

The facility, not far from Lviv, is where NATO units train with Ukrainian troops.

NATO troops in Poland are a scant 25 kilometers away, prompting concern that even a misstep by Russia’s military could cause the war to further widen.

“If Russia attacks, fires upon, takes a shot at NATO territory, the NATO alliance would respond to that,” warned Sullivan in an interview on the CBS network’s “Face the Nation” program.

Sullivan and officials from the National Security Council and State Department are scheduled to be in Rome on Monday to meet Chinese Communist Party Politburo Member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Yang Jiechi.

The discussion will be “part of our ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication between the United States and the People’s Republic of China [PRC]. The two sides will discuss ongoing efforts to manage the competition between our two countries and discuss the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on regional and global security,” according to NSC spokesperson Emily Horne.

Sullivan on Sunday also responded to growing concern Russia will use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

“We can’t predict a time and place,” said Sullivan on CBS, noting an escalation of rhetoric from Moscow falsely accusing the United States and Ukraine of developing chemical or biological weapons to use against Russian troops.

“That’s an indicator that the Russians are getting ready to do it” and blame it on others, according to Sullivan.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sullivan said, “We’ve consulted with our allies and partners about it, and we are prepared for that eventuality.” He echoed U.S. President Joe Biden’s warning from last week that Russia would face severe consequences if such weapons are deployed.

In a video released shortly early Monday local time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed a plea for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over his country, predicting if that does not happen “it is only a matter of time before Russian rockets fall on your territory, on NATO territory.” 

In recent days, satellite imagery and media reporters have indicated Russian armored units are poised to relaunch a major offensive to attempt to take Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, after a lull.

An award-winning American filmmaker and journalist is among the latest casualties of the conflict near the capital.

Brent Renaud died in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, according to officials.

“It is one more example of the brutality of Vladimir Putin and his forces as they’ve targeted schools and mosques and hospitals and journalists,” said Sullivan on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

Renaud, who had previously worked for The New York Times, NBC and HBO, “paid with his life for attempting to expose the insidiousness, cruelty and ruthlessness of the aggressor,” said a statement from Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister.

In recent days, the focus of the invasion has shifted to the besieged southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

“We have already evacuated almost 125,000 people to the safe territory through humanitarian corridors,” President Zelenskyy said in a video address released earlier Sunday. “We’re doing everything to counter occupiers who are even blocking Orthodox priests accompanying this aid, food, water and medicine. There are 100 tons of the most necessary things that Ukraine sent to its citizens.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry tweeted Saturday that Russian forces had shelled a mosque in Mariupol where 80 people were sheltering, including some from Turkey.

Seven civilians, including a child, were killed Saturday in a designated humanitarian corridor when Russia struck the convoy, forcing the civilians to turn around, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said only nine of 14 humanitarian corridors were open Saturday.

About 13,000 people were evacuated along the routes that had been agreed upon as safe passage exits for civilians, according to Vereschuk.

Also Saturday, a Russian missile attack destroyed a Ukrainian air base in the city of Vasylkiv, according to Mayor Natalia Balasynovych who said an oil depot also was destroyed.

Russia’s Interfax News Agency quoted Balasynovych as saying Russian rockets also destroyed an ammunition depot near Vasylkiv.

Jeff Seldin and Cindy Saine contributed to this report. Some information also came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

 
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Tens of thousands of people rallied Sunday in cities across Europe to protest against Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, with small vigils taking place in Russia as well despite a crackdown by authorities against such demonstrations.
German trade unions called a protest in Berlin, where sunny weather boosted the turnout. The march led from the city’s Alexanderplatz — a large square named after Russian Czar Alexander I — to a site near the Brandenburg Gate.

Many participants carried flags in the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine, while others bore banners reading “Stop the War” and “Peace and Solidarity for the people in Ukraine.”

Norbert Herring, who held up a sign that read “What are you doing to your neighbor?” as the crowds filed past the Russian Embassy, said the images from Ukraine reminded him of the bombing of cities during World War II.

Several participants at the Berlin protest said they were Russians ashamed about what their country was doing.

“We’re against this war so we wanted to show our solidarity,” said Aleksandra Belozerova, a Russian studying in Germany. “It’s the least we can do in this situation.”

Her friend, Aliia Biktagirova, held a sign with letters for the Russian phrase for “No War” represented as asterisks to reflect the censorship she said is taking place in Russia concerning the conflict.

In Russia, where demonstrations against the war in Ukraine have been typically met with a heavy police response, rights group OVD-Info said more than 668 people had been detained in 36 cities as of late afternoon Moscow time.

There was a heavy police presence at central locations including Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin, with officers carrying demonstrators away to waiting police vans, in footage posted by Russian media. The number of people protesting nationwide appeared to be far fewer than the last major protests a week ago, when OVD-Info listed more than 5,000 people who were detained.

Anti-war protests were also staged in Warsaw, London and the German cities of Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart.

A small far-right party organized a protest in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The occupants of dozens of cars waved Russian and Serbian flags, honked horns and chanted slogans in favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some cars had “Z” painted on them — the letter is used on Russian armored vehicles in Ukraine and is now a symbol of support for Russian troops.

Despite formally seeking European Union membership, Serbia has refused to join international sanctions against its ally Russia despite voting in favor of the U.N. resolution condemning Moscow’s aggression. The country’s dominant state-controlled media carry frequent pro-Russia reports about the war.

One day after rallies in Florence and Naples, Italians and Ukrainians who live in Italy turned out for protests in Milan and Rome on Sunday against the war in Ukraine.

In the first row of a march in Milan, Italy’s financial capital, protesters held bloodied cloth bundles to represent children killed in Russian attacks on Ukrainians. Some children held drawings, and many marchers streaked their cheeks in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Before the march, protesters stretched out an enormous, rainbow-colored peace flag in a Milan square.

In Rome’s march, one of the participants held a cardboard sign that read, “Close the Sky,” an apparent reference to Ukraine’s plea to NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine against Russian warplanes. Italy’s government, like that of fellow NATO allies, have ruled out a no-fly zone option, contending such a move would risk vastly widening the conflict in Europe.

Pope Francis decried the “barbarianism” of the killing of children and other defenseless civilians in Ukraine. He told a crowd estimated by the Vatican to number 25,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his customary Sunday noon appearance that the attacks must stop “before cities are reduced to cemeteries.”

In Cyprus, dozens of Russian nationals joined Ukrainians in the coastal resort town of Limassol Sunday to protest the war in Ukraine. About 50 Russians converged on Limassol’s promenade before joining with other protesters to chant slogans such as “Stop the war, stop Putin” and waving blue and white flags they said where the Russian national flag without the red stripe that represented “blood and violence.”

Protester Evgeniya Shlykova, who has been living and working in Cyprus for five years, told The Associated Press that despite Russian propaganda, Ukraine “didn’t deserve this action from our government” and that protesters demand an immediate end to the war “that we don’t support.”

“I do believe that the person who did the most to make Russia weak and not united is Putin himself,” said Shlykova who faulted the Russian president and his supporters for bringing the world’s wrath on Russia that is proud of its humanistic values and culture. “But now Russia is the aggressor for the whole world, and we protest it.”

Earlier Sunday, Ukrainian nationals in Taiwan and supporters also staged a march in Taipei to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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For many Ukrainians, staying online has been daunting as Russia attacks telecoms and power supplies, but some people, like Oleg Kutkov, a software and communications engineer, are testing out a new way to stay connected.

In a FaceTime interview with VOA Mandarin from Kyiv, Kutkov held up the components of the two-part terminal needed to connect via Starlink, an internet constellation of some 2,000 satellites operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s private firm SpaceX, one of a growing number of enterprises supporting Ukraine.

The Starlink dish and modem setup is easy to use, according to Kutkov, who is in his mid-30s.

“You just place the receptor outside, power on, wait a few minutes, and then you can go online without any additional tuning,” he told VOA Mandarin on Monday.

Kutkov said, “Our government is communicating with citizens using social (media) channels, and we are getting all the information from them on the internet. Not from TV or radio, but the internet. So [having connectivity] is very important.”

Skylink arrived in Ukraine with next-generation speed. On Feb. 26, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, tweeted to Musk, “while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.”

Hours later, Musk tweeted that Ukraine would soon have Starlink service and despite criticism that he was using the crisis as a marketing stunt, the hardware began arriving there on Feb. 28.

Fedorov tweeted on March 9 that a second shipment of Starlink equipment had arrived as the situation in Ukraine continued to deteriorate.

According to NetBlocks, a London-based organization tracking internet outages around the world, several major cities in southern Ukraine, including Kherson and Mariupol, have experienced severe internet disruption due to attacks on infrastructure and power supplies.

In other areas, including Kharkiv and Kyiv, internet connections were disrupted as Russian troops launched cyber assaults targeting financial and government websites in Ukraine.

And even though Musk has cautioned the Skylink connection is being used by Russia to target users, Kutkov has been sharing his experiences with the service on Twitter. He told VOA Mandarin that he has received requests for support from across the country, including from ordinary citizens, companies and even those in the military.

“Ukraine is a highly digitized country,” Kutlov said. “We have everything online.”

SpaceX is one of a growing number of private companies that began taking an active role in supporting Ukraine in the fight against Russia almost as soon as Russia began missile and artillery attacks on Feb. 24.

Mobile phone carriers including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon have waived charges for calls and texts to and from Ukraine.

Tesla is allowing any electric vehicles to use its charging stations along the borders of Ukraine with Poland and Hungary.

Airbnb, the online marketplace for lodging, stepped up to organize free short-term accommodation for 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.

Google and Facebook have banned Russian state media from their European platforms while working with European governments to combat the spread of disinformation from the Kremlin. Twitter began labeling all tweets containing content from Russian state-affiliated media outlets on Feb. 28.

As of Friday, more than 340 companies have announced their withdrawal from Russia’s economy in protest of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the Yale School of Management.

Russia has threatened to counter that exodus by nationalizing foreign-owned businesses that have decided to flee the country in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Eli Dourado, a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, told VOA Mandarin the reason that so many private companies have taken action is that Russia’s invasion has “shocked and disgusted much of the world.”

He said the circumstances of the conflict have left a lot of people feeling that “it’s almost pure good versus evil.”

Abishur Prakash, co-founder and geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future, a Toronto-based advisory firm, said one of the reasons Western corporations, especially tech companies, are taking sides is “because the global landscape has now permanently shifted.”

“The West is trying to permanently decouple from Russia, and Western tech firms are more than complying,” said Prakash, author of The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization, in an emailed response to VOA Mandarin. “There is a tacit acceptance in the boardrooms of technology companies that Russia has become ‘off limits.'”
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Demonstrations are taking place in many locations across Russia on Sunday to protest Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with nearly 300 detained by police so far.

OVD-Info, which monitors arrests during protests, said police had detained 292 people during demonstrations in 25 Russian cities.

An AFP journalist present at a protest in the capital Moscow witnessed at least a dozen arrests and said police were taking away anybody without press papers.

A young woman was shouting “peace to the world” as she was taken away by two policemen, AFP reported.

In Russia’s second city, Saint Petersburg, AFP saw multiple arrests, including a protester being dragged across the ground.

The city’s central Nevsky Avenue was closed off by police with a dozen police vans parked along the road.

Last weekend, police arrested more than 5,000 protesters across Russia.

Protesters risk fines and possible prison sentences by taking to the streets.

Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, more than 14,200 people have been arrested in Russia for taking part in anti-war protests.

Information from AP and AFP was used in this report.
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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Turkey and Armenia have pledged to pursue the normalization of ties in what the Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described as a “productive and constructive” meeting on Saturday.

After talks with his Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, Cavusoglu said that Azerbaijan also “supports the process” of normalization.

Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations, a closed land border and a deep-seated hostility rooted in the mass killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

But in December, the two countries appointed special envoys to normalize relations, spurred by support from regional powerbroker Russia and Armenia’s arch-foe Azerbaijan.

The push came a year after Azerbaijan used the help of Turkish combat drones to recapture most of the territory it lost to ethnic Armenians in a 1990s war in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A Russian-brokered truce that ended the second conflict removed Turkey’s main objection to talking to Armenia — namely, Yerevan’s support for the local Nagorno-Karabakh government’s claim of independence from Azerbaijan.

The first commercial flights for two years resumed in early February between Turkey and Armenia, but the land border between the two countries has remained closed since 1993, forcing trucks to transit through Georgia or Iran.
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One man was detained in Poland suspected of raping a 19-year-old refugee he’d lured with offers of shelter after she fled war-torn Ukraine. Another was overheard promising work and a room to a 16-year-old girl before authorities intervened.

Another case inside a refugee camp at Poland’s Medyka border, raised suspicions when a man was offering help only to women and children. When questioned by police, he changed his story.

As millions of women and children flee across Ukraine’s borders in the face of Russian aggression, concerns are growing over how to protect the most vulnerable refugees from being targeted by human traffickers or becoming victims of other forms of exploitation.

“Obviously all the refugees are women and children,” said Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, the UNHCR’s head of global communications, who has visited borders in Romania, Poland and Moldova.

“You have to worry about any potential risks for trafficking — but also exploitation, and sexual exploitation and abuse. These are the kinds of situations that people like traffickers … look to take advantage of,” she said.

The U.N. refugee agency says more than 2.5 million people, including more than a million children, have  fled war-torn Ukraine in what has become an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Europe and its fastest exodus since World War II.

In countries throughout Europe, including the border nations of Romania, Poland, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia, private citizens and volunteers have been greeting and offering help to those whose lives have been shattered by war. From free shelter to free transport to work opportunities and other forms of assistance — help isn’t far away.

But neither are the risks.

Police in Wrocław, Poland, said Thursday they detained a 49-year-old suspect on rape charges after he allegedly assaulted a 19-year-old Ukrainian refugee he lured with offers of help over the internet. The suspect could face up to 12 years in prison for the “brutal crime,” authorities said.

The Migration Data Portal notes that humanitarian crises such as those associated with conflicts “can exacerbate preexisting trafficking trends and give rise to new ones” and that traffickers can thrive on “the inability of families and communities to protect themselves and their children.”

Security officials in Romania and Poland told The Associated Press that plain-clothed intelligence officers were on the lookout for criminal elements. In the Romanian border town of Siret, authorities said men offering free rides to women have been sent away.

Human trafficking is a grave human rights violation and can involve a wide range of exploitative roles. From sexual exploitation — such as prostitution — to forced labor, from domestic slavery to organ removal, and forced criminality, it is often inflicted by traffickers through coercion and abuse of power.

A 2020 human trafficking report by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, estimates the annual global profit from the crime is 29.4 billion euros ($32 billion). It says that sexual exploitation is the most common form of human trafficking in the 27-nation bloc and that nearly three-quarters of all victims are female, with almost every fourth victim a child.

A large proportion of the refugees arriving in the border countries want to move on to friends or family elsewhere in Europe and many are relying on strangers to reach their destinations.

“The people who are leaving Ukraine are under emotional stress, trauma, fear, confusion,” said Cristina Minculescu, a psychologist at Next Steps Romania who provides support to trafficking victims. “It’s not just human trafficking, there is a risk of abduction, rape … their vulnerabilities being exploited in different forms.”

At Romania’s Siret border after a five-day car journey from the bombed historical city of Chernihiv, 44-year-old Iryna Pypypenko waited inside a tent with her two children, sheltering from the cold. She said a friend in Berlin who is looking for accommodations for her has warned her to beware of possibly nefarious offers.

“She told me there are many, very dangerous propositions,” said Pypypenko, whose husband and parents stayed behind in Ukraine. “She told me that I have to communicate only with official people and believe only the information they give me.”

Vlad Gheorghe, a Romanian member of the European Parliament who launched a Facebook group called United for Ukraine that has more than 250,000 members and pools resources to help refugees, including with accommodations, says he is working closely with the authorities to prevent any abuses.

“No offer for volunteering or stay or anything goes unchecked, we check every offer,” he said. “We call back, we ask some questions, we have a minimal check before any offer for help is accepted.”

At Poland’s Medyka border, seven former members of the French Foreign Legion, an elite military force, are voluntarily providing their own security to refugees and are on the lookout for traffickers.

“This morning we found three men who were trying to get a bunch of women into a van,” said one of the former legionnaires, a South African who gave only his first name, Mornay. “I can’t 100% say they were trying to recruit them for sex trafficking, but when we started talking to them and approached them — they got nervous and just left immediately.”

“We just want to try and get women and kids to safety,” he added. “The risk is very high because there are so many people you just don’t know who is doing what.”
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