A 50-member Indian business delegation starts a four-day visit to Russia Monday as both countries seek to deepen economic ties that have grown in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

India and Russia are also in talks for a free trade deal, ministers from the two countries said earlier this week during a visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov to New Delhi.

In recent months, Moscow has become India’s largest supplier of crude oil as sanctions-hit Russia seeks more trade with Asian countries.

New Delhi has not joined U.S-led Western sanctions on Moscow or condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine outright but has been calling for a negotiated resolution of the conflict.

It is also continuing to step up its economic engagement with Russia despite Western calls to gradually distance itself from Moscow.

The Indian business delegation headed to Russia is expected to meet buyers in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“We see opportunities in Russia and that is why we put together this delegation. It is going to explore markets in food and agricultural products,” Ajay Sahai, director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations told VOA.

He said that the aim is to double Indian exports to Russia to about $5 billion this year.

Trade analysts say India is trying to step up its exports to Russia to bridge a trade deficit that has become huge as New Delhi’s crude oil imports from Moscow rise exponentially.

While India’s imports from Russia have jumped fourfold to over $46 billion since 2021, its exports to Moscow add up to less than $3 billion.

But as Russia’s trade with the West dries up, it has been seeking products from India, including manufactured goods, electronics devices and automobile components.

“It is a windfall situation. We are getting discounted oil which is a huge advantage for India. Compared to virtually nothing prior to the Ukraine invasion, India’s crude oil imports have risen to over a million barrels of oil per day from Russia,” Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation told VOA. “And now that they are under sanctions, India sees an opportunity in promoting exports also, so that will be a double advantage.”

Russia, India’s Cold War ally, was its largest defense supplier for decades. Even though New Delhi has strengthened strategic partnerships with the United States and other Western countries in the last two decades, it maintains close ties with Moscow.

Addressing a business forum with Manturov on April 17 in New Delhi, Indian External Affairs Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar called the India-Russia relationship among the “steadiest” in global relations, and said that the partnership is drawing attention not because it has changed but because it has not.

Jaishankar said Russia’s resources and technology can make a powerful contribution to India’s growth as Moscow is looking more toward Asia.

“We are looking forward to intensifying trade negotiations on a free trade agreement with India,” Manturov, who is also Russia’s industry and trade minister said.

Indian exporters however say that issues such as logistics, market access and payment difficulties pose a challenge. “The opportunity is there to grow trade, but only time will tell how far we can exploit it,” Sahai said.

While Western countries want India to decrease its reliance on Russian imports to isolate Moscow over the Ukraine war, New Delhi has remained firm in maintaining its economic engagement with Russia.

“India’s message to the West is clear. We will pursue a relationship in our self-interest and we will go wherever our interests take us,” Joshi said.

“Yes, the West would like India to pressure Russia by not buying oil from them, but they have reconciled to the position that New Delhi has taken,” he said.
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German government officials and labor unions have reached a pay deal for more than 2.5 million public-sector workers, ending a lengthy dispute and heading off the possibility of disruptive all-out strikes.

The ver.di union had pressed for hefty raises as Germany, like many other countries, grapples with high inflation. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said as the deal was announced around midnight Sunday that “we accommodated the unions as far as we could responsibly do in a difficult budget situation.”

The deal entails tax-free one-time payments totaling 3,000 euros ($3,300) per employee, with the first 1,240 euros coming in June and monthly payments of 220 euros following until February. In March, regular monthly pay for all will be increased by 200 euros, followed by a salary increase of 5.5% — with a minimum raise of 340 euros per month assured. The deal runs through to the end of 2024.

Ver.di originally sought a one-year deal with a raise of 10.5%. The deal was reached on the basis of a proposal by arbitrators who were called in after talks broke down last month.

Ver.di chair Frank Werneke said that “we went to our pain threshold with the decision to make this compromise.” He said that the raises in regular pay next year will amount to an increase of over 11% for most employees of federal and municipal governments.

The union has staged frequent walkouts over recent months to underline its demands, with local transport, hospitals and other public services hit.

Germany’s annual inflation rate has declined from the levels it reached late last year but is still high. It stood at 7.4% in March.

The past few months have seen plenty of other tense pay negotiations in Europe’s biggest economy, some of which have yet to be concluded. In a joint show of strength, ver.di and the EVG union — which represents many railway workers — staged a one-day strike last month that paralyzed much of the country’s transport network.

EVG, whose members walked off the job again on Friday, is seeking a 12% raise and has rejected the idea of negotiating a deal based on the arbitration proposal that helped resolve the public workers’ dispute. The next round of talks is set for Tuesday.

And ver.di is still in a dispute with Germany’s airport security companies association over pay and conditions for security staff. In the latest of a string of walkouts, it has called on security workers at Berlin Airport to walk out on Monday. The airport says there will no departures all day.
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New developments:

At least five Russian missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and surrounding districts Saturday night.
Russia struggles to justify the war in Ukraine to its citizens.
Russia claims to have captured three more districts in Bakhmut.
Russian billionaires’ wealth rises to more than half a trillion dollars, despite Western sanctions, Forbes reports.

Russia is looking to recruit “real men” to fight in its invasion of Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry said Sunday in its intelligence update posted on Twitter.

The ads for the new campaign on billboards, TV, and social media sites also feature the financial rewards of signing up for the Russian military, but it is “highly unlikely” that Russia will meet its target of 400,000 volunteer recruits, the British ministry said.

Ukraine announced new sanctions against individuals or legal entities who support or invest in “Russian aggression.” In his nightly video address Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv has sanctioned 322 companies that manufacture weapons and military components for Russia’s military against Ukraine.

Additional sanctions have been imposed against “individuals and legal entities that help circumvent sanctions against Russia,” he said.

“The task is to remove any opportunity for Russia to circumvent sanctions,” he added, “the tougher the sanctions against the Russian war economy, the faster the end of the aggression will be.”

So far, Western sanctions against Russia have not dampened the wealth of Russian billionaires.

According to Forbes World’s Billionaires list, the wealth of Russia’s billionaires rose to about half a trillion dollars in 2023. The overall wealth of Russian billionaires jumped from $353 billion in 2022 to $505 billion in 2023, and 22 people were added to the number of super-rich Russians, raising the total to 110. That number does not include the ultra-wealthy Russians who have renounced their Russian citizenship. The data “fly in the face of significant Western sanctions and a troubled Russian economy that shrank 2.1% last year,” Forbes says.

Missiles strike

Reuters reports that at least five Russian missiles struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and adjacent areas late Saturday night, damaging some civilian buildings, according to local officials.

Regional governor Oleh Sinegubov wrote on Telegram that one missile destroyed a house in the village of Kotliary, just south of Kharkiv, and another caused a large fire in the city.

Just about an hour’s drive away, across the border in Russia, at least 3,000 evacuees returned to their homes Saturday in the city of Belgorod. They had evacuated while military experts disposed of a bomb.

A Russian Sukhoi-34 supersonic warplane accidentally fired on Belgorod on Thursday, and the blast injured three people, Russian officials said.

Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram that “operational headquarters decided to evacuate 17 apartment buildings within a radius of 200 meters” before explosive experts began their work.

Russia expels German diplomats

Russia announced Saturday it was expelling more than 20 German diplomats. According to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency, the Kremlin’s decision was made in response to Germany’s expulsion of more than 20 Russian diplomats.

A German Foreign Ministry official said the two countries had been looking to reduce their staffing, with Germany interested in reducing Russia’s intelligence presence, according to Reuters.

“Today’s departure of Russian embassy staff is related to this,” the official told Reuters. The German ministry declined to say how many Russian diplomats had left.

“The German authorities have decided on another mass expulsion of employees of Russian diplomatic missions in Germany,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We strongly condemn these actions by Berlin, which continues to demonstratively destroy the entire array of Russian-German relations,” it said.

Relations between the two countries have been frosty since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before the invasion, Germany was Russia’s biggest oil and gas importer.

Russia’s war justification faltering

In its daily intelligence update on Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russia is “struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative it uses to justify the war in Ukraine.” The narrative is that the invasion of Ukraine is similar to the Soviet experience in World War II.

Earlier this month, Russia cited safety issues as the reason for canceling the annual observance of the Immortal Regiment “Great Patriotic War” remembrance marches. “In reality,” the ministry said,” the authorities were highly likely concerned that participants would highlight the scope of recent Russian losses.”

The Russian military downplays the number of Russian soldiers killed in battle. According to RFE/RL of the 400 soldiers killed by a Ukrainian strike in the eastern city of Makiyivka four months ago, only 89 were documented. The government’s lack of transparency has led many Russians to desperately seek answers about their missing relatives at the war front, the article says.

“Maybe in 10 years we will learn the truth,” said a woman whose brother was killed in Makiyivka.

Another part of the Russian saga justifying its invasion against Ukraine, is its alleged de-Nazification operation there. But even Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Wagner Group and a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly questioned the existence of Nazis in Ukraine, contradicting Russia’s justification for the invasion, the British ministry said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Russian assault troops had captured three more districts in the western part of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Reuters reports. Russia’s regular forces and fighters from the Wagner private military company are launching nonstop assaults on the ravaged city Ukrainian commanders on the front lines told CNN.

Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play.

“The situation is tense, but under control,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on Telegram.

Malyar made the comments after Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv’s forces.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Saturday he did not want to “please anyone” with his views about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, after provoking criticism in the West for suggesting Kyiv shared the blame for the war.

Speaking in Lisbon at the start of his first visit to Europe since being elected president, Lula said his aim was to “build a way to bring both of them (Russia and Ukraine) to the table.”

“I want to find a third alternative (to solve the conflict), which is the construction of peace,” he told a news conference.

Last week he said the United States and European allies should stop supplying arms to Ukraine, arguing that they were prolonging the war.

“If you are not making peace, you are contributing to war,” Lula said.

The White House accused Lula of parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who accompanied Lula at the news conference, said their countries’ stances on the war were different.

Portugal is a founding member of the Western NATO defense alliance and has sent military equipment to Ukraine. Rebelo de Sousa said Ukraine had the right to defend itself and recover its territory.

Lula arrived in Portugal on Friday for a five-day visit as he strives to improve foreign ties after Jair Bolsonaro’s four years in office, during which Brazil’s relations with many countries including its former colonial power frayed.

Bolsonaro did not visit Portugal, home to about 300,000 Brazilians, during his time in office.

“I wanted to tell you how happy I am,” Lula, standing next to Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, told a room packed with government officials and reporters. “Brazil spent almost six years, especially the last four, isolated from the world.

“Brazil is back, to improve our relationship,” he said.

Lula signed 13 agreements on technology, energy transition, tourism, culture and education with Costa.

Brazil has said Portugal could be an important ally in helping South America’s Mercosur bloc to negotiate a free trade deal with the European Union.

“Small adjustments are needed but we will do it,” Lula said.
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France is trying to limit the diplomatic fallout after President Emmanuel Macron said Europe should reduce its dependence on the U.S. and avoid “getting caught up in crises that are not ours,” following a state visit to China earlier this month.

Critics said Macron’s remarks undermined the transatlantic relationship at a time of dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Macron was in Beijing April 5-8, alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, partly to seek China’s help in ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They were accompanied by dozens of European business leaders, who signed a series of commercial deals during the visit.

So far, China has refused to condemn Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. President Xi Jinping again refrained from criticizing Moscow during Macron’s visit. Nevertheless, Macron later wrote on Twitter: “Long live the friendship between China and France!’”

In an official statement, China described the visit as “successful and rewarding with fruitful outcomes.”

Beijing has since vowed not to send any weapons to Russia. “China will not provide weapons to relevant parties of the conflict and will manage and control the exports of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations,” Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said at an April 14 news conference, alongside his visiting German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock.

Taiwan focus

Just two days after Macron and von der Leyen’s visit to Beijing, the Chinese military conducted live fire exercises encircling Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory.

On the flight home to Paris, Macron gave interviews to journalists from Les Echos and Politico, in which he reportedly said the great risk Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy.”

“The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron was reported as telling Politico.

Macron was questioned about his remarks during a visit to The Hague on April 12.

“France is for the status quo in Taiwan. France supports the ‘One China’ policy and the search for a peaceful settlement of the situation. This is, moreover, the position of the Europeans, and it is a position which has always been compatible with the role of ally,” Macron told reporters.

“But it is precisely here that I insist on the importance of strategic autonomy. Being allies does not mean being a vassal. It is not the case that because we are allies, because we do the things together that we decide to do, that we no longer have the right to think alone.” he added.

Fierce pushback

There has been a strong backlash on both sides of the Atlantic.

Marcin Przydacz, a foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, said Warsaw was not in favor of any shift away from Washington. “We believe that more America is needed in Europe. … Today, the United States is more of a guarantee of safety in Europe than France,” Przydacz told Polish broadcaster Radio Zet.

In Washington, Republicans on Capitol Hill also strongly criticized Macron’s remarks. In a video posted on Twitter, Senator Marco Rubio said if Europe refuses to “pick sides between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, then maybe we shouldn’t be picking sides either [on Ukraine].”

Timing questioned

Macron’s timing was unwise, said Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States and the United Nations and now an analyst with the Atlantic Council.

“We are just right now fighting — all of us, together, behind the Americans — we are fighting the Russian aggression in Ukraine. And I do understand that for a lot of our partners, it was not the right moment, frankly, to raise the issue of our transatlantic alliance,” Araud told VOA in an interview Tuesday.

Others fear the fallout could be more damaging, as Macron’s comments undermine the transatlantic alliance just as the West tries to counter Russian aggression and stand up to an increasingly assertive China.

“The way Macron framed it made it sound as if it is a project of equidistance — of having sort of the same distance to the United States and to China,” said Liana Fix, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “And it also created the impression that it is the United States which is pushing confrontation, and not China. The feedback from China was very positive, because it confirmed Chinese thinking that it’s possible to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.”

“From the perspective of central and eastern Europeans, these remarks basically confirmed their most fundamental fears: that Macron’s pledge for European strategic autonomy or more independence is just a pledge for more French power in Europe. It’s a pledge to decouple from the United States,” Fix told VOA on Monday.

Mending ties

In the wake of a growing diplomatic storm, a delegation from the French parliament visited Taiwan last week to reassure them of French support.

“This is very important for us to be here and just saying to all the people from Taiwan, we stand to you, we are close to you,” the head of the delegation, Eric Bothorel, told reporters in Taiwan.

Analyst Renaud Foucart of Britain’s Lancaster University argued that Macron was simply trying to avert wider confrontation.

“China is asking for a multilateral world. And Macron is coming and saying, ‘OK, if you don’t arm Russia, we can be France and claim that we are not a vassal to the U.S., we can claim that we are all different blocs, that we have our own sensitivities to the ‘One China’ policy of Taiwan, and all those things.

“But if you start yourself, China, to create a bloc with Russia — to start to arm Russia— then we cannot be the multilateral world. We need to be together with the U.S. And this is going to be our natural allies in that in that framework.’”

It is disingenuous to suggest that Macron supports China over Taiwan, Foucart asserted.

“At the same time that Macron was making these comments about China and Taiwan … there were military boats of France cruising the Taiwan Strait at the same time as the Chinese were having their [military] training,” he said. “So, the French have their own interest in the Indo-Pacific.”

US election

The United States is set to hold presidential elections in 2024. That could usher in a new administration less keen than Joe Biden to spend money arming Ukraine or defending Europe, said Araud, the former French ambassador to the U.S.

“For the moment, as long as the U.S. administration is strongly supporting the defense of Europe, there will be no question about strategic autonomy on European defense,” said Araud. “If [Donald] Trump is elected president, I think that the debate would be reopened by force. The Europeans who want to sleep under the American flag will be obliged to wake up.”
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France is trying to limit the diplomatic fallout after President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe should reduce its dependence on the U.S. and avoid ‘getting caught up in crises that are not ours’ after a state visit to China earlier this month. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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VOA Azerbaijani Service journalists Idrak Jamalbeyli and Seymur Shikhaliyev received shrapnel wounds Saturday when a booby trap left by Russian soldiers exploded as they were reporting in the previously Russian-occupied trenches near the village of Myrne in the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine.

Ukrainian volunteers were showing Jamalbeyli and Shikhaliyev extensive trenches dug by Russian troops in the area when the explosion was ignited by a trap set up by the departed Russian soldiers.

Jamalbeyli was wounded by some shrapnel in one of his legs, and one of Shikhaliyev’s arms was hit, also by shrapnel. Both are recovering, and they did not sustain serious injuries. One of the Ukrainian volunteers also received light wounds on his face.
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The Sudanese army said Saturday it was coordinating efforts to evacuate diplomats from the United States, Britain, China and France out of the country on military airplanes, as fighting persisted in the capital, including at its main airport.

The military said that army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan had spoken to leaders of various countries requesting safe evacuations of their citizens and diplomats from Sudan. The country has been roiled by bloody fighting for the past week that has killed more than 400 people so far, according to the World Health Organization.

Foreign countries have struggled in vain to repatriate their citizens, a task deemed far too risky as clashes between the Sudanese army and a rival powerful paramilitary group have raged in and around Khartoum, including in residential areas.

The main international airport near the center of the capital has been the target of heavy shelling as the paramilitary group, known as the Rapid Support Forces, has tried to take control of the complex, complicating evacuation plans. With Sudan’s airspace closed, foreign countries have ordered their citizens to simply shelter in place until they can figure out evacuation plans.

Burhan said that some diplomats from Saudi Arabia had already been evacuated from Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport on the Red Sea, and airlifted back to the kingdom. He said that Jordan’s diplomats would soon be evacuated in the same way.

Even as questions persisted over how the mass evacuation of foreign citizens would unfold, the Saudi Foreign Ministry announced Saturday that it had started arranging the evacuation of Saudi nationals out of the country. Officials did not elaborate on the plans.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it was moving additional troops and equipment to a Naval base in the tiny Gulf of Aden nation of Djibouti to prepare for the possible evacuation of U.S. Embassy personnel from Sudan.

On Friday, the U.S. said it had no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of an estimated 16,000 American citizens trapped in Sudan, and continued to urge Americans in Sudan to shelter in place. 
…

New developments:

The Wagner Group founder is concerned about a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The United States will be training Ukrainian soldiers on Abrams tanks, while Germany will build a tank repair hub in Poland.
Ukraine grain exports are still banned by European countries.

In its daily intelligence update on Ukraine, then British Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russia is “struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative it uses to justify the war in Ukraine.” The narrative is that the invasion of Ukraine is similar to the Soviet experience in World War II.

Earlier this month, Russia cited safety issues as the reason for canceling the annual observance of the Immortal Regiment “Great Patriotic War” remembrance marches. “In reality,” the ministry said,” the authorities were highly likely concerned that participants would highlight the scope of recent Russian losses.”

Another part of the Russian narrative is the rallying cry that there are Nazis in Ukraine.  But now, however, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is the chief of the Wagner Group and also a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly questioned the existence of Nazis in Ukraine, contradicting Russia’s justification for the invasion, the British ministry said.  

In his nightly video address Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was readying for a counteroffensive.

“The front line is priority No. 1,” he said Friday. “We are also actively preparing new brigades and units that will show themselves at the front.”

Zelenskyy thanked the allies for their commitment to Ukraine’s defense.

A U.S.-hosted meeting Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany focused on air defense and ammunition in Ukraine. The United States said it would soon start training Ukrainian troops to operate Abrams tanks, while Germany announced that it was building a tank repair hub in Poland for tanks deployed in Ukraine.

During the meeting, allies also reassured Kyiv of their unconditional support and backed Ukraine’s bid to join NATO in the future.

Ukraine pressed its allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition ahead of the counteroffensive against Russian troops, which is expected in the coming weeks or months.

Prigozhin concerned

Following Zelenskyy’s remarks Friday, Yevgeni Prigozhin, chief of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, expressed concerns about an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive with highly trained Ukrainian forces.

“Today we are killing those who were trained in Ukraine, but the ones coming from Germany will be technologically educated,” he said in an audio recording released on his Telegram channel.

He was referring to those Ukrainian soldiers who will train in Germany to use U.S. Abrams tanks.

Prigozhin predicted that Ukraine would counterattack after the spring rains, when the ground is firm.

“They will attack … they will come and try to tear us apart, and we must resist,” he said.

Russia relies heavily on the Wagner forces in Bakhmut, where fighting is still raging.

Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play. “The situation is tense, but under control,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Malyar made the comments after Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv’s forces.

EU-Ukraine grain

Four European Union member states have banned Ukraine’s food exports to protect their own markets. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria say that an influx of Ukrainian food imports is harming their own farmers, who can’t compete with Ukraine’s low prices. The Polish government approved $2.4 billion in aid for its agricultural sector, criticizing the European Commission on Friday for not doing enough to help resolve the problem.

“What the EU is offered with a delay, it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.

The European Commission has offered $110 million of aid for central European farmers, in addition to an earlier $61.5 million package. It has also said it will take emergency preventive measures for other products — like wheat, corn and sunflower seeds — but the central European states want this list to be broadened to include honey and some meats, Reuters reported.

Ukraine’s economy is heavily dependent upon agriculture, and the European ban will put a significant dent in its sales, Bloomberg reported, citing UkrAgroConsult.

Romania has for now decided not to participate in the ban, while allowing transit of Ukraine exports through its Black Sea port of Constanta.

Several central European countries became the gateway to a glut of Ukraine’s food exports after Ukrainian grain was stranded in Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia. The Black Sea Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey has allowed safe transit of grain shipments through that corridor, though Russia is threatening not to renew after the deal expires on May 18.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that the renewal of the deal depended on whether the West would lift restrictions affecting Russia’s agricultural exports. The Kremlin said Friday that it was monitoring reports of a possible ban on Russian exports and that new Western sanctions would damage the global economy.

“We are aware that both the U.S. and the EU are actively considering new sanctions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We believe that both the current sanctions against the Russian Federation and the new additional steps that the U.S. and the EU may be thinking about now will, of course, also hit the global economy.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The European Union is reportedly preparing emergency curbs on Ukrainian food products. Some Eastern European states have imposed their own import bans in recent days, complaining that a glut of cheap Ukrainian produce is hitting their own farmers. Ukraine’s struggles to export grain following Russia’s February 2022 invasion have raised fears of a global shortage, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

The European Union is reportedly preparing emergency curbs on Ukrainian food products after several member states bordering Ukraine imposed their own import bans in recent days, complaining that a glut of cheap produce is hitting their own farmers.

Following a virtual meeting with EU officials on Wednesday, Romanian Minister of Agriculture Petre Daea outlined the bloc’s plans.

“The [European] Commission is making available to the five countries [Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia] 100 million euros [$109.32 million] from its crisis reserve. … It provides for the activation of exceptional safeguarding mechanisms, which means stopping imports until June 5 for the following products: wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and rapeseed,” Daea told reporters.

He added that the deal would be made available only when member states had withdrawn their own unilateral import bans.

The EU has yet to confirm details of the planned support package.

Ukraine grain

Ukraine, the world’s fifth-biggest grain exporter, has struggled to ship agricultural produce from its Black Sea ports to world markets following Russia’s invasion last year.

The European Union ended quotas and tariffs on Ukrainian goods after the outbreak of the war to shore up the Ukrainian economy. Eastern European states claim this has led to cheap grain imports being dumped on their domestic markets.

In the past week, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria have banned the import of Ukrainian grain and other products, in an apparent breach of EU trade law. Bulgarian Prime Minister Galab Donev said Wednesday that the measures were necessary.

“A significant amount of [Ukrainian] food has remained in the country and disrupted the main production and trade chains,” Donev told reporters. “If this trend persists and even increases, it is possible to reach extremely serious consequences for the Bulgarian business.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki outlined a $2.4 billion support package for farmers and said the European Union response had been inadequate.

“What the EU is offering us is offered with a delay; it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Morawiecki told a news conference Friday in Warsaw.

Protests

Farmers have staged protests in several countries bordering Ukraine, including Romania.

“Our fear is that this unfair competition coming from our colleagues in Ukraine cannot be borne by the Romanian farmers. We will witness a chain of bankruptcies of Romanian farmers,” warned Liliana Piron of the League of Romanian Agriculture Producers Associations at a protest in Bucharest earlier this month.

Brussels warned this week that the import bans violated EU law.

“Unilateral action is not possible under EU trade policy,” European Commission spokesperson Miriam Garcia Ferrer said Wednesday. Nevertheless, it appears the EU is preparing to approve emergency curbs on Ukrainian imports for certain countries.

Domestic politics

The dispute has taken many by surprise, said Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform, an analyst group.

“In the case of Poland, what’s so strange is that this is so much at odds with the assistance that Poland has given Ukraine in other ways,” Bond told VOA.

“So, this is entirely driven by domestic political considerations to do with protests by Polish farmers, and the risk that government obviously feels that the farmers might defect and vote for some other party in the next elections,” Bond said.

Ukraine reaction

For Ukrainian farmers, the import bans add to the troubles caused by Russia’s invasion. Volodymyr Bondaruk, executive director of the Pearl of Podillia, a mixed dairy and arable farm near Ternopil in western Ukraine, said, “I would like farmers and the agricultural lobby in the Eastern [European] countries to understand that we face similar problems. We don’t ask for subsidies; we don’t want anything like that. Just help us to sell our goods,” Bondaruk told Reuters.

“We have leftovers from the 2022 harvest. In the previous years, we exported a lot of corn, wheat and other grains to the Middle East countries, African countries. But today because of the war, ports do not accept large amounts of goods,” he added.

Black Sea

The glut of Ukrainian grain in Europe is the result of reduced exports through the Black Sea since Russia’s invasion. A deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to reopen the shipping route, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, came into force last August. However, Russia is threatening to end the deal when it’s up for renewal next month.

The ban on imports of Ukrainian grain by some countries in Europe could play into Moscow’s hands, analyst Bond said.

“It seems to me that this increases the chances that Russia will see this as a pressure point and will try to use it as a way of saying, ‘Well, we’re not going to renew the grain deal unless you agree to completely unacceptable conditions.’”

While its domestic import ban remains in place, Poland resumed the transit of Ukrainian products across its territory on Friday.

The European Union said it planned to organize alternative transport, including convoys of trucks, trains and barges, to take grain from Ukraine’s land borders to ports where it could be shipped to the world market.
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New developments:

Kyiv acknowledges Russian advances in Bakhmut.
U.S. will be training Ukrainian soldiers on Abrams tanks, while Germany will build a tank repair hub in Poland.
Britain sanctions a Russian judge and four others linked to the arrest and alleged poisoning of Kremlin critic and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years for alleged treason and other offenses.

Four European Union member states have banned Ukraine’s food exports to protect their own markets. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria say that an influx of Ukrainian food imports is harming their own farmers, who can’t compete with Ukraine’s low prices. The Polish government approved $2.4 billion in aid for its agricultural sector, criticizing the European Commission on Friday for not doing enough to help resolve the problem.

“What the EU is offered with a delay, it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.

The European Commission has offered $110 million of aid for central European farmers, in addition to an earlier $61.5 million package. It has also said it will take emergency preventive measures for other products — like wheat, corn and sunflower seeds — but the central European states want this list to be broadened to include honey and some meats, Reuters reported.

Ukraine’s economy is heavily dependent upon agriculture, and the European ban will put a significant dent in its sales, Bloomberg reported, citing UkrAgroConsult.

Romania has for now decided not to participate in the ban, while allowing transit of Ukraine exports through its Black Sea port of Constanta.

Several central European countries became the gateway to a glut of Ukraine’s food exports after Ukrainian grain was stranded in Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia. The Black Sea Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey has allowed safe transit of grain shipments through that corridor, though Russia is threatening not to renew after the deal expires on May 18.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that the renewal of the deal depended on whether the West would lift restrictions affecting Russia’s agricultural exports. The Kremlin said Friday that it was monitoring reports of a possible ban on Russian exports and that new Western sanctions would damage the global economy.

“We are aware that both the U.S. and the EU are actively considering new sanctions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We believe that both the current sanctions against the Russian Federation and the new additional steps that the U.S. and the EU may be thinking about now will, of course, also hit the global economy.”

Bakhmut fighting

Fighting in Bakhmut is raging and Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play. “The situation is tense, but under control,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Malyar made the comments after Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv’s forces.

US tank training

The U.S. hosted a meeting Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany focused on air defense and ammunition in Ukraine. The United States said it would soon start training Ukrainian troops on driving Abrams tanks, while Germany announced that it was building a tank repair hub in Poland for tanks deployed in Ukraine.

During the meeting, allies also reassured Kyiv of their unconditional support and supported Ukraine’s bid to join NATO in the future.

Ukraine pressed its allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition ahead of a counteroffensive against Russian troops that is expected in the coming weeks or months.

NATO members Denmark and the Netherlands announced Thursday that they were partnering to buy and refurbish 14 Leopard 2-A4 tanks to send to Ukraine.

The Dutch and Danish defense ministries said the tanks would be ready for delivery to Ukrainian forces early next year. Denmark and the Netherlands will share the $180 million cost.

Belgorod blast

Late Thursday, Russian authorities reported an explosion in Belgorod, close to the border with Ukraine, saying it had left a crater 20 meters wide in the city center.

Neither the region’s governor nor the city’s mayor said what caused the explosion. A report from the Russian state news outlet Tass, however, cited Russia’s defense ministry as saying a Russian warplane was to blame.

“As a Sukhoi Su-34 air force plane was flying over the city of Belgorod, there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition,” Tass cited the Defense Ministry as saying.

The Belgorod region, including the city of the same name, has been frequently hit by shelling since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Ukrainian women from all walks of life have joined the armed forces to fight for their homes and country. Anna Kosstutschenko met with some near Bakhmut. Video: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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Russia’s military acknowledged that a bomb accidentally dropped by one of its warplanes caused a powerful blast in a Russian city not far from Ukraine’s border, injuring two and scaring local residents.

Belgorod, a city of 340,000 located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks during Russia’s current military operation in Ukraine. Russian authorities blamed the earlier strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.

The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.

It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined avenue flanked by apartment blocks, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third person was later hospitalized with hypertension, authorities said.

Immediately after the explosion, Russian commentators and military bloggers were abuzz with theories about what weapon Ukraine had used for the attack. Many of them called for strong retribution.

But about an hour later, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that a weapon accidentally released by one of its own Su-34 bombers caused the blast. The ministry did not provide any further details, but military experts said the weapon likely was a powerful 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bomb.

Military experts charged that the weapon appeared to have been set to explode with a small delay after impact that would allow it to hit underground facilities.

Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said local authorities decided to temporarily resettle residents of a nine-story apartment building while it was inspected to make sure it hadn’t suffered structural damage that rendered it unsafe to live in.

In an editorial gaffe, an anchor on Russian state television followed the news about the local authorities dealing with the explosion’s aftermath by declaring that “modern weapons allow Russian units to eliminate extremists in the area of the special military operation from a minimal distance.” The anchor looked visibly puzzled by the text that he had just read.

Russian commentators questioned why the warplane flew over Belgorod and urged the military to avoid such risky overflights in the future.

Some alleged that the bomb that was accidentally dropped on Belgorod could be one of a batch of modified munitions equipped with wings and GPS-guided targeting system that allows them to glide to targets dozens of kilometers (miles) away. The Russian air force has started using such gliding bombs only recently, and some experts say that they could be prone to glitches.

In October, a Russian warplane crashed next to a residential building in the port city of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov, killing 15 people. Yeysk hosts a big Russian air base with warplanes that fly missions over Ukraine.

Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights have increased sharply during the fighting, so have crashes and misfires.

In another deadly incident in the Belgorod region, two volunteer soldiers fired at Russian troops at a military firing range, killing 11 and wounding 15 others before being shot dead.
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Germany’s train system came to a standstill Friday when railway workers went on strike for eight hours. 

EVG, the union representing the state-owned Deutsche Bahn workers, says its members need a raise to counter inflation.  

Long distance and regional trains were affected by the strike, which lasted from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m.  

The railway strike coincided with a walkout at four major German airports, affecting hundreds of flights. Reuters news agency reports 700 flights were canceled.
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U.S.-made M1A1 Abrams tanks will arrive in Germany in May, and Ukrainians will start training on them soon after, according to senior military officials.

Thirty-one Abrams tanks will arrive at a base in Grafenwöhr, Germany next month so that Ukrainians can start a 10-week course on how to operate the tanks. Additional force-on-force training and maintenance courses will be held at either Grafenwöhr or another base in Hohenfels, Germany, the officials said.

The U.S.-led training will involve about 250 Ukrainians, and officials say 31 Abrams tanks will be delivered to Ukraine by the end of this year.

The news comes as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is hosting another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday, where military leaders from more than 50 nations are focusing on the Ukrainian military’s armor, air defense and ammunition needs.

Austin is expected to announce that the Abrams will arrive in Germany in the coming weeks during a Friday press conference.

Speaking at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he first convened the group last April, Austin said the groups’ members had provided more than $55 billion in security assistance for Ukraine.

“More than a year later, Ukraine is still standing strong. Our support has not wavered, and I’m proud of the progress that we have made together,” he said.

In the past few months, members of the group have provided enough equipment and training to support nine additional armored brigades, according to Austin.

Abrams tanks, in particular, have been a long-awaited addition to the fight. The tank’s thick armor and 1,500-horsepower turbine engine make it much more advanced than the Soviet-era tanks Ukraine has been using since the war’s beginning.

The Biden administration announced in January that it would send a newer version of the Abrams tanks, known as M1A2, to Ukraine after they were procured and built, a process that could potentially take years.

In March, the administration pivoted to provide M1A1 Abrams tanks instead, in order to get the tanks “into the hands of the Ukrainians sooner rather than later,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at the time.

The U.K. was the first to promise Western-style tanks for Ukraine, sending its Challenger 2 tanks to aid in the fight. After the U.S. Abrams announcement in January, Germany announced it would provide Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and allow other allies with German tanks, such as Poland, to do the same.

Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov spoke to members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group Friday in order to update leaders on the state of the battlefield and Ukraine’s most urgent military needs. Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Kyiv is preparing for a massive counteroffensive that is expected to begin in the coming days or weeks.

The U.S. has now provided more than $35 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, which Austin called “an unprovoked and indefensible war of aggression.”

Some countries, including Estonia and Latvia, have donated more than 1% of their GDP to Ukraine’s defense.

Ahead of the meeting, Austin addressed the massive Pentagon leak of classified documents detailing sensitive intelligence on the war in Ukraine, Russian intelligence and intelligence gleaned from spying on allies.

Austin said he took the issue very seriously and would continue to work with “our deeply valued allies and partners.”

“I’ve been struck by your solidarity and your commitment to reject efforts to divide us. And we will not let anything fracture our unity,” he said.

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group has worked better than predicted in terms of maintaining supplies for Ukraine, showing Western resolve to face down Russian aggression and having “Ukraine’s back even without having forces on the battlefield,” according to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The U.S. and allies have vowed to support Ukraine in defending its sovereign territory for “as long as it takes,” which O’Hanlon says may extend through all of 2024.

“I’m afraid that’s a distinct possibility,” he said.
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They are called mercenaries or contractors or volunteers, and they fight on both sides in the war in Ukraine. But whether they are regarded as villains or heroes, their presence is having an unquestionable impact on the battlefield.

The dark side of the irregular fighting forces assisting and resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion was driven home this week when two ex-convicts told a human rights group they had deliberately killed Ukrainian children and civilians while serving as commanders in Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group last year.

In videos posted online by Russia’s Gulagu.net, Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev described their brutality in graphic detail.

“I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out alive, because my command was to kill anything in my way,” said Uldarov, describing how he fatally shot a 5- or 6-year-old girl.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company whose convict-bolstered ranks have been instrumental in the months-long battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, has denied those allegations and threatened retribution.

But Sean McFate, a former American officer and private military contractor who is now a professor at the National Defense University, said no one should be surprised to see atrocities committed by a military force staffed largely with convicts.

“When you are … opening 11 time zones of jails and dumping into Ukraine … you’re creating a labor pool of psychotic armed men who are running around Ukraine and that region and that doesn’t end well,” he said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian.

McFate added that the use of mercenaries often goes hand in hand with the arms trade and other illicit practices including human trafficking and narcotics.

Robert Young Pelton, a veteran war journalist who has covered more that four dozen conflicts around the world, argued in an interview that the Wagner Group has become an embarrassment not only to Russia’s regular forces but to their country as a whole.

“Russia has professional soldiers that have some of the finest spetsnaz, special operations people,” Pelton told VOA Ukrainian. But by unleashing the Wagner Group in Ukraine, Russia has created an especially dangerous precedent as they legally are “not answerable to anyone.”

“There’s no one going to investigate Wagner and judge them for being good or bad because they’re technically not a part of a state apparatus [or] any state-sanctioned organization,” said Pelton, whose reporting has taken him to Afghanistan, Chechnya and Liberia and brought him into contact with the Taliban and Blackwater security contractors in Iraq.

“We now have Russians murdering people inside Ukraine … and are not really held accountable, and yet they’ll integrate back into society inside Russia.”

On the other side of the paramilitary ledger, Ukraine is supported in its defense of its homeland by several outside groups, some playing a direct role in the fighting.

Among these are the American veteran-led donor-funded organization Project Dynamo that saves civilians from war zones in Ukraine and Afghanistan, and a now-disbanded international Mozart Group that was evacuating civilians and training Ukrainian soldiers.

Some of its former members reorganized under a new name, Sonata, and continue to operate in Ukraine more discreetly, coordinating both with Ukraine’s high-level military officers and battlefront units to understand operational issues and provide technical solutions.

Kyiv does not reveal the numbers but based on media estimates, roughly from 1,000 to 3,000 foreign volunteers are defending Ukraine now, most of them serving in three battalions of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.

The legion was formed shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for the help of “every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country.”

In a written statement to VOA Ukrainian, the legion said that multiple foreigners in the regiment fought bravely and earned high praise from their comrades and commanders, as well as state honors. Some foreign nationals who as part of other battalions served in the weekslong siege at the Azovstal steel plant and in Mariupol also received state honors.

But not all of the foreigners who have flocked to Kyiv’s defense have served so honorably.

The New York Times has reported that some foreign volunteers ended up undermining the war effort, wasting money or even defecting to Russia. The Kyiv Independent has also reported on misconduct within the International Legion leadership that included physical abuse, threats and sending soldiers on reckless “suicidal” missions.

“The problem is, during the war you get what we call ‘the ash and trash,’ people who don’t know what else to do in their life,” McFate said.

“The good ones tend to leave because they don’t want to get killed with the bad ones. And what you are left with are a refuse from the other wars in Iraq, Afghanistan. And not all of them are bad, but this is a common problem of private warfare,” he said.

When asked how the Ukrainian Foreign Legion screens its volunteers, VOA Ukrainian was told that all the soldiers undergo an examination by recruiters, background checks by the government and training before being deployed to the battlefield.

But Pelton said that private contractors “always muddy the water” when brought into a war. “Within that very narrow segment of foreigners fighting in Ukraine, they’re more of a problem than a help because they bring international condemnation, confusion, and sort of a moral question to why these foreigners are here.”

Despite the moral and legal uncertainties, some experienced American warriors say they are still willing to fight for the right cause.

One of these is Dan Hampton, one of America’s most decorated combat pilots with 151 missions in F-16s. He is also the author of several books and the CEO of MVI International, a private military company based in the western U.S. state of Colorado.

“This is the pivotal issue of the Ukraine’s fight against Russia, this is a black and white conflict. … I’ll go myself, I’m – one, you can count me in,” Hampton said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian on March 9.

Hampton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor and a Purple Heart, suggested that American contractors could help Ukraine with one of its most vexing problems — its need for an enhanced air combat capability.

Ukraine has for months appealed for the United States and its allies to provide the country with F-16 fighters, but the U.S. has so far refused, arguing that the planes are so complex that it would take months if not years for Ukrainian pilots to become proficient in them.

Hampton suggested that if F-16s were provided, experienced foreign pilots could fly them while Ukrainian pilots train or continue to fly their existing aircraft.

This article originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.
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The outcome of Turkey’s presidential elections next month is growing more uncertain, with a populist outsider entering the race and threatening to split the opposition vote — something that would help longtime incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Before the war, before it was occupied by Russia, and before the bitter battle that ended with Ukraine retaking control of Lyman in October, locals called this city “The Gates of Donbas.” It was an export hub for regional commodities such as coal, salt and sand.

Now, it is bombed weekly. Residents say they often don’t bother trying to make home repairs because the violence never ceases.

Lida, 85, shows what’s left of her top-floor apartment after it was hit by bombs.

“This is my apartment,” she says, breathless after walking up four normal flights of stairs and the crumbled remains of the fifth flight. “There is nothing left. Fire destroyed everything. … I would not have believed it if I didn’t see it.”

Some residents say perhaps it is too late for Lyman to ever return to normalcy. Entire neighborhoods are flattened, factories are closed and the railway, where about 35% of the population used to work, is no longer operational.

“I regret not leaving,” says Anna, a 65-year-old former railway worker. “But still, there is no money, and where would I go? I know a lot of people, but no one offered me a safe place. People ask why I didn’t evacuate. But to where?”

Few left in Torske

About 15 kilometers from Lyman and only a few more from the front lines is the village of Torske, which is almost entirely abandoned. Ukrainian soldiers whizzing by in military vehicles say the town is still in full view of Russian fighters and frequently hit.

The Russian fighters left behind cars, uniforms and personal items when they moved out of Torske. There is almost no one left to clean up.

A man passes on a bicycle. He pauses but declines to explain why he remains alone in his destroyed home just outside of Torske. He says life here is a little better recently because the clamor of battle has moved a bit out of town.

“Things got really bad here,” he adds, remounting his bike.

Fighting continues nearby

In the nearby battle zones, Ukraine and Russia both engage in brutal fighting to take or retain Torske and other villages on the way to Lyman’s strategic crossroads. Besides being a critical transportation hub, it also sits between the areas occupied by Russia and the city of Kramatorsk, the regional capital under Ukrainian control.

Ukraine is expected to launch a massive counteroffensive this spring, and Russia has built up defenses on the borders of the territories it now occupies inside Ukraine. Lyman residents say if the battles return to their city, they have no resources left to help them survive.

A year and half ago, Lyman had more than 20,000 people. Now, the few thousand remaining survive only on aid brought in from out of town.

“I had to flee wearing my robe and slippers,” says Lida, after showing us the dark, underground shelter where she now lives. “I lost everything. I’ve now been living in the basement since last year.”
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In part three of our series on Ukraine’s battle zones, VOA travels to the formerly occupied city of Lyman, a strategic crossroad known locally as “Gates of Donbas.” Not far from towns that have been reduced to rubble, residents of the once-thriving city now sleep in the basements of abandoned factories and rail yards. Heather Murdock reports from Lyman with videographer Yan Boechat. 
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Sweden’s public radio said this week that it would stop being active on Twitter, but it did not blame new labels that Elon Musk ‘s social media platform has slapped on public broadcasters, leading some major North American outlets to quit tweeting.

Sveriges Radio said on its blog that Twitter has lost its relevance to Swedish audiences.

National Public Radio and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, meanwhile, have pointed to Twitter’s new policy of labeling them as government-funded institutions, saying it undermines their credibility.

“For a long time, Sveriges Radio has de-prioritized its presence on Twitter and has now made the decision to completely stop being active on the platform, at the same time that we are shutting down a number of accounts,” said Christian Gillinger, head of the broadcaster’s social media activities.

He cited a recent study showing only some 7% of Swedes are on Twitter daily and said the platform “has simply changed over the years and become less important for us.”

“The audience has simply chosen other places to be. And, therefore, Sveriges Radio now chooses to deactivate or delete the last remaining accounts,” Gillinger said.

The broadcaster’s news service, SR Ekot, which has been labeled “publicly funded media,” will remain on Twitter but has been marked inactive.

Sveriges Radio, which has been active on Twitter since 2009, also noted the “recent turbulence” around Twitter’s operations and said it was worrying that the social media platform has reduced its workforce “dramatically.”

“We believe that it may in the long run affect the company’s capacity to handle, for example, fake accounts, bots and disinformation but also hate messages and threats,” Gillinger said.

The labels for public broadcasters have unleashed a new battle between reporters and Musk, who has said he wants to elevate the views and expertise of the “average citizen.”

Canada’s CBC said Monday that it would pause its activities on Twitter after it was labeled as “government-funded” because it “undermines the accuracy and professionalism” of its journalists’ work “to allow our independence to be falsely described in this way.”

U.S. broadcasters NPR and Public Broadcasting Service made similar decisions earlier this month for related reasons.

CBC received C$1.24 billion ($925.86 million) in government funding in the 2022 financial year, compared with revenue from advertising, subscriptions and other sources of C$651.4 million ($485,000,000) according to its annual report, Reuters reported this week.

Reuters quoted Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon as saying, “The real issue is that Twitter’s definition of government-funded media means open to editorial interference by government. As the editor-in-chief of CBC News has said, the government has no — zero — involvement in our editorial content or journalism.”
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By day, Jessica Wade spends her time in a laboratory at Imperial College London surrounded by spectrometers, oscilloscopes — and men.

At night, she writes biographies on Wikipedia about women researchers like her who don’t have an online presence.

“We can’t just do the shouting about how we need more women in science. We have to do the point of honoring and celebrating the women scientists that we have,” she told AFP.

“And I think writing their stories, making sure the world recognizes what they’ve done is a really important way to do that.”

Wade, 34, has worked at Imperial’s imposing campus in west London since 2016.

As a physicist, she is involved in developing new generations of carbon-based semi-conductors to make optical and electronic devices such as televisions and solar panels more energy efficient.

She leads a team of five people in a wider team of about 15. Of them, only one other scientist is a woman.

Science “is very male dominated,” Wade said, lamenting the lack of interest in it among girls whose parents are not scientists.

“As soon as I walked into a physics department that had a majority of men and a majority of people from white privileged backgrounds, I suddenly realized that not everyone’s getting the opportunity to study physics, not everyone’s getting excited about it,” she added.

“That lack of diversity impacts the science we do, the questions we ask, the directions we go in, the way we translate our innovations into society, where those kinds of devices are actually used in the world and who they benefit.”

Visibility

Wade now seeks to “take science to more people” but came across “knowledge gaps” in the internet’s free, multilingual, collaborative encyclopedia.

“Wikipedia is an amazing platform because it’s used by everyone in society,” she said.

“It’s used by 15 billion access points a month. Parents, teachers, policymakers, journalists, scientists, Amazon, Alexa, Google Home, they all use Wikipedia when they’re looking for information.”

But there is one big problem, she added: “About 90% of Wikipedia contributors and editors are men, and about 19% of the biographies on English language Wikipedia are about women.”

Wade set out to redress the imbalance in 2018 and has since written almost 2,000 pages by herself at the rate of one a night, at home, after dinner.

“They take more than one hour each, so that’s already too many hours of my life,” she laughed.

But she is undeterred by the daunting task.

“I don’t see it stopping anytime soon,” she said.

In fact, the research itself creates more work, as she often discovers more women scientists when writing another biography.

Wades’ first Wikipedia biography entry was the American climatologist Kim Cobb.

She saw her at a conference but after looking her up on Wikipedia found there was nothing on her oceanographic research.

Acknowledgement

Wade, who is now part of a network of women editors and leads workshops on how to write for Wikipedia, says a person’s presence and their work on the internet means they are discoverable.

“Little girls who are googling something, let’s say about sea urchins, will click through and then land on a Wikipedia page about an awesome woman scientist who had contributed to that,” she said.

“If you’re trying to nominate someone for an award or to become a fellow or to invite someone to give a lecture, you always google them and if they’ve got a biography nicely summarized on somewhere like Wikipedia, it’s so much easier to write someone’s citation or reference.”

That happened for Gladys West, a 92-year-old black American mathematician, whose profile was one of Wade’s first.

Starting in 1956, when racial segregation was still imposed in the United States, she worked for 42 years on navy navigation systems. Her calculations eventually led to the development of GPS.

“I researched Gladys to write her page and there was so little about her online, she was almost 90 and no one had celebrated her,” she said.

“I put her Wikipedia page online in February 2018 and in May 2018 she was in the BBC top 100 women in the world.

“And then she was inducted to the US Air Force Hall of Fame, and she won the Royal Academy of Engineering Prince Philip medal, which had never before gone to a woman.”
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Russia’s invading forces are deliberately using rape, torture and kidnapping to try to sow terror among civilians in Ukraine, the top prosecutor in Ukraine told U.S. lawmakers in graphic testimony Wednesday.

Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said nearly 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

Focusing on just one area of the country that has felt the brunt of the war, Kostin described some of the discoveries made when the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson last November. He said about 20 torture chambers were found and more than 1,000 survivors have reported an array of abuses, including the use of electric shocks, waterboarding, being forced to strip naked and threats of mutilation and death.

Kostin said more than 60 cases of rape were documented in the Kherson region alone. In areas still controlled by Russian forces, residents, including children, are being forcefully relocated to other occupied territories or to Russia.

“Such evil cannot let be,” Kostin said.

He was asked about the motivations behind Russia’s tactics, but said he struggles to understand the brutality of the Russian forces in targeting civilians.

“The only possible explanation is that they just want to erase Ukraine and Ukrainians from the land,” Kostin said. “Maybe because they want to really kill all of us.”

Russian officials have consistently denied committing war crimes in what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

The United States House Foreign Affairs Committee invited Kostin to testify. The chairman, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, believes that spotlighting the brutality of Russia’s actions will show lawmakers and voters why the U.S. is in the right in supporting Ukraine.

“This is happening right now. They are monsters and they need to be brought to justice,” McCaul said. “These are more than war crimes. These are more than crimes against humanity. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is genocide.”

McCaul also issued a challenge to fellow lawmakers, saying “history will judge us by what we do here and now.”

“No country can remain neutral in the face of such evil,” McCaul said.

US leader pushes to provide F-16 jets

Congress approved about $113 billion in economic, humanitarian and military spending in 2022 to assist Ukraine. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel the Russian invasion, though support for that aid has softened, polling shows.

Congressional leaders anticipate that Ukraine will need billions of dollars in additional assistance in the months ahead.

Ukraine is preparing to launch a counteroffensive in an attempt to regain territory lost to Russian troops. McCaul said he would like to see the U.S. back Ukraine’s efforts to retake Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014, so it could negotiate for a cease-fire from a stronger position. He is pushing for the U.S. and its allies to provide Ukraine with long-distance artillery and F-16 fighter jets for the counteroffensive.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that he spoke by telephone with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, and thanked him for bipartisan support from Congress. Zelenskyy also outlined the “situation at the front” and Ukraine’s “urgent defense needs in armored vehicles, artillery, air defense & aircraft.”

The House committee also heard from a war crimes survivor, a 57-year-old woman, who said she was taken to a torture chamber for five days, beaten, forced to strip and endured threats of rape and murder. At one point, she was forced to dig her own grave. She said her house was looted. She has escaped, but other Ukrainians still experience such treatment in Russian-controlled territories, she said.

“These terrible crimes need to be stopped,” she told lawmakers. Her identity was not revealed out of concerns about retribution.

Prosecutor calls for reparations

Kostin said exposing atrocities is not enough.

“Only with discovering and determining truth, bringing perpetrators to responsibility and providing adequate reparations to victims and survivors, we can say justice has been done,” Kostin said.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last month for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. But the practical implications are limited as the chances of Putin facing trial at the court are highly unlikely because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals.

McCaul told The Associated Press he will press for the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI agents to assist prosecutors in Ukraine, even as he doubts there will ever be a full reckoning for the war crimes.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, how this is going to end,” McCaul said. “But at least there’ll be historical documentation about what they did, for generations to read about the atrocities.”
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his Swedish counterpart outside Stockholm Wednesday, a rare visit intended to show Washington’s support for Sweden’s bid to join NATO. VOA’s Pentagon correspondent, Carla Babb, is traveling with the secretary and has this report from a Swedish naval base.
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