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The latest round of EU sanctions imposed on the Myanmar junta were welcomed by advocacy groups monitoring human rights violations in the Southeast Asian country.

Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for the human rights advocacy group Justice for Myanmar, said in a statement to VOA on Thursday that the sanctions were “important in catching up with sanctions already imposed by the U.S., U.K. and Canada on arms brokers and units of the military responsible for supplying and manufacturing arms.”

In a statement released Monday, Burma Campaign UK said, “This round of sanctions is well targeted, focusing on suppliers of aviation fuel, arms brokers, military procurement entities and members of the Burmese [Myanmar] military and associated bodies.”

This sixth round of EU sanctions imposed on the junta Monday includes nine individuals and seven entities the EU says have contributed to escalating violence and human rights violations in Myanmar.

According to Justice for Myanmar, or JFM, arms brokers targeted in the latest round of sanctions include Aung Hlaing Oo, Sit Taing Aung and Kyaw Min Oo, along with the companies Dynasty International, International Gateways Group and Sky Aviator Company Limited.

JFM’s statement highlights how these Myanmar arms brokers and companies are linked to companies in the EU. For instance, “Aung Hlaing Oo and Dynasty International both have business with EU companies, and future activities will be prevented through these sanctions.”

It added, “Dynasty International brokered the supply and maintenance of G120TP aircraft from the German corporation Grob Aircraft SE.” However, “the German government stated they are not aware of the sale of Grob G120TP aircraft to the Myanmar air force,” JFM said in its statement.

The new EU sanctions also apply to an aviation fuel supplier, Asia Sun Group, which brokers the supply of jet fuel to the junta. This company “stands complicit in its [the junta’s] international crimes,” the statement reads. “This will help disrupt the supply of jet fuel to the junta, which it needs for its continued indiscriminate airstrikes.”

Additionally, JFM said, the “new designations fill major gaps in the EU’s sanctions regime, targeting key arms brokers and military institutions.”

The EU has restrictive measures on 93 individuals and 18 entities. Those who are sanctioned are subject to an asset freeze and a travel ban in EU territory.

The EU announced its first round of sanctions in March 2021, after the military coup in February of the same year that ousted the democratically elected government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and sparked global outrage. Further targeted sanctions followed, with two rounds in 2021, and two more in 2022.

“These sanctions will take time to have an impact, which is why we need the EU to speed up the implementation of sanctions — two rounds a year is not enough,” Mark Farmaner, executive director of Burma Campaign UK, told VOA.

Additionally, “monitoring and implementation of EU sanctions is up to individual EU member states,” Farmaner said. “There is no transparency about how they monitor sanctions or action taken regarding breaches of sanctions.”

According to the statement by JFM, “the junta’s response to mass resistance has been the continued commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, murdering over 3,000 people, arbitrarily arresting over 19,000 more, displacing 1.1 million people and carrying out indiscriminate attacks across Myanmar, enabled by the supply of funds, arms and jet fuel.”

JFM’s Maung told VOA that “the EU, U.K., U.S., Canada and Australia need to coordinate better and speed up the pace of their sanctions designations to have a meaningful impact to cut the junta’s access to arms and funds.”

Three military arms procurement bodies, which have been sanctioned by the U.S., Britain and Canada in December 2021, also were placed under the latest EU sanctions.

These bodies were the Myanmar Office of the Quarter Master General, the Myanmar Directorate of Defense Industries and the Myanmar Directorate of Defense Procurement.

“The EU has taken the important step of sanctioning the crony conglomerate IGE [the International Group of Entrepreneurs Co. Ltd.] in 2022, but the impact of this is reduced because the EU did not also sanction Ne Aung [the owner of the IGE] and his partners, while the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia have not sanctioned IGE at all. More action is urgently needed,” said Maung.

Ne Aung’s brother, the commander of the Myanmar navy, Moe Aung, was included in the latest round of the EU sanctions. Their father, Aung Thaung, now deceased, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2014 for “perpetuating violence, oppression and corruption.”

Other individuals listed in the latest round of EU sanctions were Maung Maung Aye, chief of general staff for the Myanmar army, navy, and air force; Myo Myint Aung, Yangon region economic minister of the State Administration Council; Zin Min Htet, deputy minister for home affairs and chief of the Myanmar police force; Ko Ko Maung, regional military commander in Kachin state; and Myo Myint Oo, union minister for energy.

The Myanmar junta has not yet made any comments regarding the EU sanctions.
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While most of the world is focused on the battles still to come in Ukraine, the Czech Republic’s chief envoy in Washington says his country is already at work on the massive task of rebuilding.

“We’re sending generators to provide electricity, we have a constant flow of delegations traveling to Ukraine, to identify what is needed on the ground, evaluate those needs, and provide our help to them,” Ambassador Miloslav Stasek said in an interview this week.

Speaking at his residence adjacent to the embassy in a wooded area in northwest Washington, Stasek said his country has decided to focus its efforts on Dnipro, a major city in eastern Ukraine that has been heavily damaged by Russian airstrikes.

“It is dangerous for people to travel there, for sure,” Stasek acknowledged. “This is very close to the [battle] front, but that’s why we picked this area, because Russian forces have inflicted heavy damages [there].”

The Czech Republic’s commitment to helping Ukraine dates from the earliest days of the war a year ago, the diplomat said.

“On February 25, the second day of the conflict, we stopped issuing visas to Russians,” Stasek said, adding that his government was pleased to see some other European countries follow suit.

Stasek also pointed out that Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, together with his Slovenian and Polish counterparts, became the first foreign leaders to visit Ukraine and meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a time when “Russian forces were 60 kilometers away from Kyiv.”

On the eve of the one-year mark of the war, Fiala issued a statement in Prague recalling the journey his country undertook to support Ukraine.

“We clearly knew from the very first moment — perhaps thanks to our own historical experience — that we had to stand up for Ukraine. And we did it — not only the government, but the whole country, and it makes me truly proud,” said Fiala, who took office in November 2021.

Throughout the past year, the Ukrainian government’s message to its supporters has been consistent: weapons, weapons, and more weapons. Their requests initially were met with careful consideration — bordering on hesitation in some capitals — but Prague was quick to respond: It became the first country to deliver attack helicopters, main battle tanks, multiple rocket launchers and armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.

“We wanted to open the gate for other countries to follow suit,” explained Stasek. He said he was glad to see that his country, along with other Central and Eastern European nations, had taken the lead in answering Ukraine’s call for help.

“The ‘Zeitenwende’ brought about by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, has indeed led to a subtle but noticeable shift in the power-balance of Europe,” Martin Weiss, who served as Austria’s ambassador to the United States from 2019 to 2022 and is currently the president and CEO of the Salzburg Global Seminar, told VOA in a written interview from Austria. “Zeitenwende” is a term made famous by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last year depicting the “critical shift” in geopolitics caused by the war.

While “the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and others” are making their weight felt, the Paris-Berlin axis is now “leading from behind, to put it nicely,” Weiss said.

The war has also enhanced ties within European countries, Stasek told VOA. Having had to diversify energy supplies “almost overnight,” the land-locked Czech Republic reached an agreement with the Dutch government to lease a liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal to facilitate the delivery of American LNG through Germany.

Before the war started, nearly 99% of the Czech Republic’s gas energy needs came from Russia; that figure is now near zero, Stasek said. Nearly two-thirds of his country’s oil demand was met by Russia and that is now down to a “minimal” level.

The sudden shifts in the energy sector have had “negative side effects” for his country’s economy and social welfare, Stasek acknowledged.

“With energy prices going up, [the] price of regular stuff in the shops also goes up, as does the cost of services,” he said. Being land-locked makes it especially costly to acquire energy from new sources.

Currently the country’s inflation rate stands at about 17%, one of the highest in Europe – a fact partly attributable to decisions by its independent central bank to keep interest rates low and the Czech currency strong against both the dollar and the euro.

“Our exports are now very expensive and not as competitive in the global marketplace,” he said.

In a fact sheet examining the war and its impact on the Czech society, the Prague government acknowledged that hosting Ukrainian refugees has been a sizable burden for both the central government and local administrations.

Together they have provided free health care and education for a peak number of almost 490,000 refugees, according to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), which is equivalent to a sudden expansion of the Czech population by 6%.

Stasek expressed satisfaction that his country didn’t have to build shelters for the refugees. “People opened their hearts and their homes” to bring them in, he said, noting that Ukrainians already represented “the biggest minority group in our country,” totaling 200,000 people before the war started.

Stasek pointed out that his country played a significant role in forging a united European Union response to the severe challenges brought on by the war during Prague’s rotating EU presidency in the second half of 2022.

“For us, the biggest task was to keep the unity of the European Union and strengthen transatlantic ties, to not allow Russia to divide us,” he said. To that end, “we were able to keep everybody together, and [together] put a ceiling to energy prices.”

Toward the end of its rotating presidency, Prague urged the bloc to consider negotiating energy prices as a single entity in order to put pressure on suppliers and get the price down for member states.

But, he maintained, inflation and the other stresses caused by the war have not deterred the Czechs from doing their best to help the Ukrainians. “This is the price we have to pay,” he said.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday his nation will be victorious against Russia as the war with the neighboring country entered its second year with no apparent end in sight.

“We endured.  We were not defeated. And we will do everything to gain victory this year,” Zelenskyy said in a statement released on social media. “Ukraine has inspired the world. Ukraine has united the world,” he added.

Leaders of the Group of 7 were set to meet virtually Friday to announce new sanctions against those aiding Russia’s war effort.

The White House said Friday it is imposing sweeping new sanctions targeting banking, mining and defense sectors as well as “over 200 individuals and entities, including both Russian and third-country actors across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East that are supporting Russia’s war effort.”

The White House also announced Friday an additional $2 billion in assistance to Ukraine. “Specifically, the United States is committing additional Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and counter-UAS and electronic warfare detection equipment, as well as critical ammunition stocks for artillery and precision fires capabilities that will bolster Ukraine’s ability to repel Russian aggression,” the White House said in a statement.

The United Nations approved a resolution Thursday demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russia troops from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, China on Friday called for a cease-fire and the opening of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. It was part of a 12-point proposal that also urged the end of Western sanctions against Russia, suggested measures to prevent attacks on civilian infrastructure, ensure the safety of nuclear facilities and establish corridors for the delivery of humanitarian aid.  China has sought to be seen as neutral in the conflict but has refused to criticize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The diplomatic moves come against the backdrop of continued fighting in eastern Ukraine.  Ukraine said Thursday it has repelled attempted Russian advances along the length of the front line of fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine, leaving the war in a stalemate a day ahead of the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion.

Russia controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, far short of the quick, countrywide takeover many military analysts predicted a year ago as Moscow’s tanks rolled into Ukraine’s eastern flank.

In the most recent fighting, Moscow’s forces have made progress trying to encircle Bakhmut, with Ukrainian military spokesperson Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov saying Moscow was trying to use its manpower advantage to exhaust Kyiv’s forces.

“The enemy, despite significant losses, does not abandon attempts to surround Bakhmut,” he said.

But Ukraine said Russian troops have failed to break through Ukrainian lines to the north near Kreminna and to the south at Vuhledar, where they have sustained heavy losses assaulting across open ground.

Gromov said Ukrainian forces repelled 90 Russian attacks in the northeast and east in the last day.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Fresh from a meeting with China’s top diplomat and a U.N. Security Council session regarding Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Central and South Asia next week for international talks that will put him in the same room as his Chinese and Russian counterparts.

The State Department announced late Thursday that Blinken would travel to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan before going to India for a meeting of the Group of 20 foreign ministers from the world’s largest industrialized and developing countries, including China and Russia.

The trip comes as tensions have soared between the U.S. and Russia and between the U.S. and China over Russia’s war in Ukraine and Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. All three countries are competing fiercely to outdo each other in global influence.

U.S. officials have been tight-lipped about the prospects for Blinken having sit-down talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang or Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New Delhi. But all three will be present in the Indian capital for the G-20 meeting. The State Department has said only that no meetings are scheduled.

The last time the group met — in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022 — Blinken held extensive talks with China’s then-foreign minister, Wang Yi, that led to a summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November.

And Wang, who has since been promoted, met with Blinken last weekend on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, the first high-level talks since the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon and Blinken postponed a much-anticipated trip to Beijing.

A meeting between Blinken and Qin, who was formerly China’s ambassador to the U.S., would be their first in Qin’s current capacity.

The broader G-20 meeting is expected to focus on food and energy security, especially for developing countries, which have been hit by fallout from the Ukraine conflict. In Bali, a number of nations that have not outright condemned Russia for the war expressed deep concern about its impact on the prices and supply of food and fuel.

Before traveling to Delhi, Blinken will visit the Kazakh capital of Astana for talks with leaders there as well as a meeting of the so-called C5+1 group, made up of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and the United States.

At that meeting, he will stress the U.S. “commitment to the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Central Asian countries,” the State Department said in a statement that mirrors the wording it has been using to support Ukraine against Russia.

Blinken will then go to Tashkent for talks with Uzbek officials.

 
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The extensive sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine one year ago have not led to the decimation of the Russian economy, as many experts had predicted. As recently as last fall, according to new polling data, many Russians actually believed they were better off economically than they had been before the war started.

According to data gathered by the Gallup organization, the share of Russians reporting they were satisfied with their standard of living increased by 15 percentage points, to 57% in 2022. For the first time in the poll’s history, satisfaction with living standards was above 50% in every region of the country.

The number of Russians reporting that their economic conditions were improving grew to 44% from 40%, while the number who said their economic prospects were declining plummeted to 29% from 50%.

Similarly, the percentage of Russians reporting that they were satisfied with the country’s leadership surged to 66%, up from 50% in 2021, while the share reporting that they were dissatisfied fell from just under half to only 21%.

The survey is part of Gallup’s expansive annual World Poll, which conducts large-scale polling in dozens of countries around the world every year. The poll of Russian citizens was taken between mid-August and early November of last year, and therefore cannot have captured any changes in attitudes since the fall. The survey involved in-person interviews with a random sample of 2,000 individuals ages 15 or older, living in Russia. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Surprising resilience

Recent data has demonstrated that the impact of international sanctions on Russia was not nearly as dramatic as the 10% contraction that many economists were foreseeing in 2022. The Russian economy contracted by a relatively mild 2.1% in 2022, and the International Monetary Fund has predicted that it will post small, but positive growth of 0.3% in 2023.

Russia began the war with a financial system braced for sanctions. The Russian central bank used currency controls and sharp interest rate hikes to stabilize the ruble early in the first year of the war. At the same time, Russian businesses began exploring deeper ties with countries such as China, India and Turkey, which allowed trade in goods and commodities to largely recover from initial dips at the outset of the conflict.

The biggest reason for Russia’s surprising resilience, however, was that it was allowed to continue selling petroleum products, far and away its largest source of pre-war revenue, on global markets. Prices were elevated at the outset of the fighting, and a slow move by many Western nations away from Russian oil and gas gave Russian firms time to broaden their sales to countries such as India and China.

In an address to the nation this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin touted the country’s economic performance.

“The Russian economy and system of governance proved to be much stronger than the West supposed,” he said. “Their calculation did not come to pass.”

‘Rally’ effect

Benedict Vigers, a consultant with Gallup, told VOA that the better-than-expected performance of the Russian economy may explain some of the economic optimism. However, a strong “rally-round-the-flag” effect is probably also in place.

When two countries go to war, there is a tendency for the people in both countries to demonstrate stronger affection for and satisfaction with their respective homelands, Vigers said.

“It is a well-known effect in Russia,” he said. “We have seen it historically, and it is happening now, in conjunction, to some degree, with Russia’s broader ability to evade some of the worst impacts of Western sanctions.”

He pointed out a similar spike in Russians reporting optimism about the economy and satisfaction with their government in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Repression of dissent

Another factor potentially coloring the responses to the Gallup survey is the fact that the Russian government aggressively punishes public criticism of the government, and has done so with more frequency in the months since launching its invasion of Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Russian citizens have been arrested for protesting against the war.

Galina Zapryanova, Gallup’s regional director for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, told VOA in an email that the company cannot rule out the possibility that fear of reprisal affects peoples’ answers to poll questions.

“It is certainly possible that some people would not give a truly honest answer on questions related to approval of government policies, etc. — they may give the ‘safest’ answer that they consider most appropriate,” she wrote.

“This is a risk in all survey research in countries that are not entirely free, but we need to try our best to obtain representative data, while keeping in mind that a portion of any trend could be due to self-censorship by respondents.”

However, she noted that on the question of how Russians feel about the future of the economy, 56% opted for a response other than the seemingly “safe” option of declaring themselves optimistic.

Economic data suppressed

Another potentially complicating factor is that since the invasion in February 2022, the Kremlin has significantly closed off access to economic data that used to be public information.

“As far as mass media is concerned, economic information just recently fell victim to censorship,” Vasily Gatov, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, told VOA. “Until spring last year, the Kremlin literally didn’t control narratives and the way people were writing about the economy in general.”

Gatov, who studies Russian media, said that since then, the government has blocked access to many reports on economic activity, making it more difficult for journalists and academics to get a full picture of what is happening with the Russian economy.

However, Gatov said, while it may be possible for the Kremlin to control access to some information, much of people’s perception about the economy comes from their own lived experiences.

“People receive economic information from various sources, and not always media sources,” he said. “One of them is their bank account. Another is prices at the gas station or grocery store.”

Without addressing the Gallup findings specifically, Gatov said that in his view, Russians “read between the lines” of information coming from the Kremlin and Kremlin-controlled media sources.

He said that they see major international brands refusing to do business in their country and are experiencing infrequent but serious shortages such as an ongoing lack of Western-produced drugs like insulin. “Russians are skeptical about the economic future of the country.”
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Ukrainians living in South Africa are marking one year since Russia’s invasion with a dance production titled ‘We Stand for Freedom.’ The performance, supported by the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, draws parallels between racial oppression under apartheid and Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Vicky Stark meets some Ukrainians who fled the war in this report from Cape Town, South Africa.
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There are fears of a new global nuclear arms race after Russia’s president announced this week that he would suspend the country’s participation in the New START treaty, which limits the number of warheads deployed by Russia and the United States. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Ukraine’s power grid has been a target of Russian attacks since mid-October. The United States now is in the process of sending a third round of assistance to help restore damaged infrastructure.

But the ultimate goal is to help Ukraine build a new “war-proof” distributed power grid, said Jennifer Granholm, the U.S. secretary of Energy.

As Ukraine marks one year since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Secretary Granholm talked to VOA’s Iuliia Iarmolenko about the U.S. assistance, Ukrainian resilience, and a clean energy future.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: It has been a year since Russia launched a full-scale war and it’s been at least four months since Russia started this campaign of brutal attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector. How do you assess the current situation with Ukraine’s energy grid?

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm: Well, I do know that the president — President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy — has really expressed a desire to have a different grid. A grid that is distributed, that has clean energy, but also that isn’t so centralized so that it becomes a target. And that is very encouraging, that’s something we very much want to work with Ukraine on and we have labs that are already … our national labs that are already preparing strategies to be able to get to that.

Ultimately you want to basically war-proof an electric grid. What we have been doing is sending … We’ve been scanning for high-voltage equipment that would be compatible with Ukraine’s electric grid. It’s a Soviet-era grid, and so, therefore, it’s difficult for our transformers for example aren’t compatible. So, we’re canvassing around the world and all of our utilities to see what equipment can we send.

Where we are in the process now of sending the third tranche of equipment to Ukraine so that they can replace what has been damaged. But ultimately in the long term, what we need to do is to fulfill the president’s goals to get a distributed electric grid so that if one section is damaged, it doesn’t bring down a whole region.

VOA: You mentioned that Russia’s goal is to destroy energy grids, and — as some U.S. officials said — to freeze Ukrainians into submission. And it seems that the winter is almost over, and Russia seems to be failing to achieve at least this goal to freeze Ukrainians to submission. Does it give you some grounds for optimism and do you think that the darkest days are behind us?

Granholm: Well, I certainly hope so, and it definitely gives me grounds for optimism. It makes … you know, looking at how Ukraine, Ukrainian people have had steel injected into their spines … I mean they have spines of steel. And perhaps that makes us steel as well, our spines full of steel to be able to support such courage and determination to not give up their territory, to not give up their nation.

So I should say Russia’s goal is not just to destroy. It’s to take back, right? To take the land to take the country. And, you know, we’re not … We, the united members of this coalition, are not going to allow that to happen. And we want to support Ukraine and its territorial integrity. And the people have been so fierce in their determination to not allow their land to be taken.

VOA: Recently, Canadian Cameco Corporation announced a major uranium deal with Ukraine Energoatom and that should meet Ukraine’s nuclear fuel needs until 2035. How significant do you think this is? And was there any cooperation or coordination between the United States and Canada on this? I know you were talking about the transition to renewable energy. But right now, Ukraine still has many nuclear reactors?

Granholm: Absolutely. In the immediate, it’s really important to get power right and clean power is very important. Ukraine has been a leader in nuclear energy. Obviously, Zaporizhzhia is the biggest nuclear power plant in all of Europe. Moving into the future, I think a lot of the Central Eastern European countries are very interested in small modular reactors, next generation nuclear, as well as some of the bigger reactors as well. But they don’t want to be under the thumb of Russian reactors or Russian uranium.

And so, this is the, I think, the next generation of questions. We just saw an agreement with Poland for example, to be able to have a series of three reactors that are built in partnership with Westinghouse. We’ve got to make sure that those reactors are fed, but not by Russian uranium.

VOA: I want to come back to something that you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation: that Ukraine wants to change their power grid. And, of course, war is a tremendous tragedy, but it also creates some opportunity to build better and to build something new. How do you think the United States can help Ukraine with reconstruction efforts, and with efforts to actually build something better in the energy sector with new technology and to abandon the Soviet era technology?

Granholm: Yeah, we are very excited about the possibility of working with Ukraine. In fact, I’ve been working with minister [Herman] Haluschenko, who is my counterpart in Ukraine, energy minister, who is very interested in working with … our labs, for example the National Renewable Energy Lab, has been doing these roadmaps for countries that have expressed interest in going 100 percent renewable for example, 100 percent clean, zero carbon emitting. And we want to work with Ukraine on its desires to be able to do that to provide technical roadmaps on how to get there.

What’s the best way if you incorporate all of the assets that Ukraine has? How much solar, how much wind, how much hydroelectric power, how much nuclear power? What’s the mix that’s good for Ukraine and lives up to what Ukraine wants? We are very eager to partner on that future road map and on any assistance that we can to allow Ukraine to live up to its own ambition.

VOA: Given the current state of the power grid, do you think Ukraine still has potential?

Granholm: Totally, yes. … If you’re going to build back, let’s build back in a way that allows you to be resilient and to have energy security. And energy security, of course, through clean, which is exactly what President Zelenskyy has said he wants to do. And so, we stand totally ready and we’re working already on the plans with Ukraine so that once this is over, you can build that future for Ukraine and for Ukraine’s economy as well. But most importantly, for Ukraine’s own security to be energy independent.
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The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly supported a resolution Thursday calling for “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” as soon as possible in Ukraine, in line with the principles in the U.N. Charter.

In a vote of 141 in favor, seven against and 32 abstentions, nations supported the text submitted by Ukraine that underscored the importance of finding peace. It also reiterated the assembly’s demand that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders” and called for “a cessation of hostilities.”

“Today’s vote is another evidence that it is not only the West that supports Ukraine, the support is much broader, and it will only continue to be consolidated and to be solidified,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters after the vote.

The special emergency session of the U.N. General Assembly, which opened on Wednesday and continued into Thursday culminating with the vote, was called to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion. Kuleba appealed to the international community to stand by his country.

“We need to send a strong and clear message that the U.N. Charter, including the principles of sovereign equality and territorial integrity of states, should serve as the basis for the process of peaceful resolution,” Kuleba said during the debate.

“Today, we refuse to give up on hope. We refuse to give up on the potential of diplomacy, the power of dialogue and the urgency of peace,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in welcoming the result.

Seventy-five countries participated in the debate, including Russia.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia urged countries to vote against the draft resolution, saying it lacked substance and was “divorced from reality.” Moscow’s ally, Belarus, proposed two amendments to the text — one excluding the words “full scale invasion of Ukraine” and “aggression by the Russian Federation,” and the other calling for states to refrain from sending weapons to the conflict zone. But they were roundly voted down by the assembly.

Nebenzia insisted that Moscow is not obstructing peace.

“We are ready for a search for a serious and long-term diplomatic solution. We have stated this on many occasions,” he said. “Our opponents have not yet recovered from their futile illusions that they could defeat a nuclear power.”

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Russia had tried the entire week to distract and disrupt U.N. efforts.

“Once again, it has failed. We see that clearly in the vote,” he told reporters, flanked by many EU foreign ministers who had flown to New York for the meeting. “On the Russian side, there is a small handful of votes confirming that in the eyes of the world, the aggression against Ukraine needs to stop — and it needs to stop now and open the door to a just, sustainable and comprehensive peace.”

The countries that supported Russia’s position were those that have mostly stood by it since the start of the war last year: Belarus, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria.

There have been five other resolutions adopted in the U.N. General Assembly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, all with strong support. China abstained on three of them and voted with Russia on resolutions calling for Moscow’s suspension from the U.N. Human Rights Council and for Moscow to pay reparations to Ukraine. On Thursday, China abstained again.

Days after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that Beijing may be considering providing arms to Russia, China’s envoy urged countries not to arm the combatants.

“One year into the Ukraine crisis, brutal facts have offered ample proofs that sending weapons will not bring peace,” Deputy Ambassador Dai Bing said during the debate. “Adding fuel to the fire will only exacerbate tensions. Prolonging and expanding the conflict will only make ordinary people pay an even heftier price.”

Asked about it by a reporter, Kuleba said it would be a huge mistake for any country to provide Russia with weapons.

“Because by providing Russia with weapons, that country helps aggression and blatant violation of the U.N. Charter,” Kuleba said. “As of now, China has been standing in defense of the charter and especially the principle of territorial integrity.”

China’s top diplomat was in Moscow this week, fueling speculation that the two allies are discussing a Chinese peace proposal.

“China will soon issue a position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis,” Dai told the General Assembly. Some reports speculate it could come as early as Friday.

On Friday, the anniversary of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the U.N. Security Council will meet. One year ago, members were in a session trying to prevent the outbreak of hostilities when word came that Russian troops had moved across the border into Ukraine.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday that Washington is seeking to strengthen sanctions against Russia and called for more support for Ukraine as it resists Moscow’s invasion.

She was speaking in India’s technology hub of Bengaluru, where finance leaders of the Group of 20 leading economies have gathered to discuss challenges such as high debt and inflation that confront many low-income countries. She made her comments one day before the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden has said, we will stand with Ukraine in its fight – for as long as it takes,” she told a news conference ahead of the G-20 meeting.

Yellen, who called Russia’s war in Ukraine a “strategic failure for the Kremlin,” said that American military and economic assistance is making it possible for Ukraine to resist the invasion and that “continued and robust” support for the embattled country will be a major topic of discussion during the G-20 meeting.

She said that in the coming months, the U.S. expects to provide around $10 billion in additional economic support for Ukraine and wants the International Monetary Fund to negotiate an agreement to lend to Ukraine.

Western sanctions imposed on Moscow are having a “very significant negative effect on Russia so far,” according to Yellen.

“While by some measures the Russian economy has held up better than might initially have been expected, Russia is now running a significant budget deficit,” Yellen said.

“It is finding it extremely difficult because of our sanctions and our export controls to obtain the material it needs to replenish its munitions and to, for example, repair 9,000 tanks that have been destroyed because of the war,” according to the Treasury secretary.

Saying that the Russians were seeking alternative ways to replace and repair weapons damaged in the war, she said that “working with our partners, we are seeking to strengthen sanctions and make sure that we address violations of sanctions.”

Yellen also warned that providing any material support to Russia’s war effort would be “a very serious concern.” Her remark came a day after Russia and China forged closer ties during a visit by Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, to the Kremlin. The U.S. has expressed concern that China could supply weapons to Moscow to aid its war effort.

Yellen struck an optimistic note on the global economy, saying, “It is in a better place today than many predicted just a few months ago.” But, she cautioned, “We are not out of the woods yet.”

There had been widespread fears that the world would experience a sharp downturn in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which led to a disruption in oil and food supply chains and high inflation that hurt many countries.

As many countries grapple with mounting debt, however, Yellen said that it was important for G-20 countries to ease their financial distress.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that about 15% of low-income countries are in “debt distress.” They range from countries such as Sri Lanka, Laos and Afghanistan in Asia to Zambia in Africa and Venezuela and Argentina in South America.

Yellen said she was hopeful that China would cooperate with other nations in providing debt relief to distressed countries, especially Zambia and Sri Lanka.

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven, or G-7, leading industrialized economies are also meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 talks. They will discuss possible new sanctions against Moscow, according to the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, who is also in Bengaluru.

India, which has maintained a neutral stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine and continues to purchase oil from Moscow, is not likely to want the issue of additional sanctions to be discussed at G-20 meetings.

The gathering of the finance ministers that begins Friday is the first major meeting of India’s year-long presidency of the bloc.
…

As Russian tanks rolled into eastern Ukraine a year ago, millions of Ukrainians fled to Poland. Many came by foot through the Medyka border crossing – where aid agencies mounted a huge emergency response. Twelve months on, VOA’s Henry Ridgwell returned to Medyka to see what has changed – and how authorities are preparing for a possible new wave of refugees.

Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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Vitaly Antyshchuk was a Ukrainian soldier who died in a Russian missile strike in the Zaporizhzhia region in May. He left behind his wife, Yulia, and their 6-year-old daughter, Alyssa. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb met up with them in Warsaw, Poland, where they fled to escape the war.
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Residents along the Turkey-Syria border were just beginning to return home to inspect the damage from the massive Feb. 6 earthquake when another tremor struck this week, said Myanmar psychology student Aung Naing Shwe, who is in the region serving as a humanitarian aid volunteer.

“It went on for what felt like 10 minutes,” Aung said in a Zoom interview with VOA from Hatay, the city hit hardest by the earlier quake.

“We looked on in shock as we saw debris caused by collapsed structures, women crying and people fleeing their homes into the middle of the road,” he said. “It happened right at a time when people were starting to come back to buildings that had already been damaged, sifting through what used to be their homes, looking for possessions.”

“Seeing this kind of disaster happen again,” he told VOA, was “terrifying for everyone, myself included. People who were just a few days ago living out in the streets under tents were again outside reliving all of the trauma of living through the earthquakes. … So, it is an incredible concern for everybody who is here, especially those trying to rebuild their lives.”

Aung and his team from the nonprofit International Youth Forum in Ankara originally came to the hard-hit border area to help survivors of the Feb. 6 earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria, killing more than 45,000 people.

A large number of people are still missing in the rubble of the thousands of apartment buildings. Aung said he and his fellow humanitarian workers “never could have imagined that during our five-day mission, we would witness another quake up close.”

Aung, who is currently studying for a doctorate, is based in Ankara. His fellow International Youth Forum members flew in from Malaysia, along with several other international nongovernmental organizations to assist the earthquake-torn regions of Hatay, Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras.

From Ankara, the group of young volunteers traveled together to the Turkey-Syria border where they built temporary shelters and tents for refugees, helped survivors move their belongings and provided food, bottled water and clothes. They also assisted with logistics, distributing necessary materials to different areas and other distribution points.

Aung said his studies as a psychologist have helped him connect with quake victims. In one instance, an elderly female survivor shared her story of losing her family, her home and all of her possessions.

“I called her ‘grandmother’ and asked her how I could help. She said she just needed to talk to someone. ‘I had everything, and now I have lost it all,’ she said. Then she held me, and we cried together. It was terrible and very moving,” Aung said.

“Currently, the most important thing for the earthquake victims is survival. The cold weather has increased the need for items such as clothing, blankets, portable stoves, cookware, shoes and jackets,” Aung told VOA.

He urged the international community to help in any way they can.

According to the Turkish government’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, 9 million people have been affected in some way, and 47,000 buildings have been destroyed or damaged. The government is still scrambling to provide shelter for at least 1 million homeless survivors who are in urgent need of sanitary facilities two weeks after the two massive earthquakes.

Aung praised the Turkish government’s efforts.

“The government is well-organized in the relief effort. For example, requesting humanitarian aid and rescue teams from the international community and organizing and sending that aid to those who need it most. The government has been providing free food and water for anyone who needs it.

“They are also supplying free food at the checkpoints in Hatay, along the Syrian border. Those checkpoints were very strictly controlled by the Turkish military, but they have opened them for earthquake survivors in the region,” he said.

Explaining why he volunteered to do humanitarian aid work in Turkey, Aung said, “Turkey has provided educational support to Rohingya students like myself, so I feel that it’s my responsibility to help the Turkish people in any way I can.

“As a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar, and a human rights activist, I also understand the feelings of people who are victims of forces beyond their control. I feel happy when I can offer support to others in need,” he said.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday attended a summit in Warsaw of the Bucharest Nine countries on NATO’s eastern flank, seeking to lessen anxiety about Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports from Warsaw.
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Ukrainian marine Artem Dyblenko spent more than four months as a Russian prisoner of war. On Wednesday, he appealed to the international community to help bring home the thousands of soldiers and non-combatants who remain in captivity and seek justice for all who have suffered human rights violations at the hands of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine nearly one year ago.

“I was 125 days in Russian captivity; this is about 3,000 hours,” Dyblenko, who was twice decorated for bravery, told a special meeting organized by Ukraine at the United Nations to discuss gross human rights violations caused by Russia’s war.

“Three thousand hours of physical, moral, and psychological abuse,” he said. “Three thousand hours of Russian hell.”

Illia Samoilenko was the deputy commander of the National Guards of Azov. In the place of the young, bearded officer’s left hand is a metal prosthetic. He said his men fought for 86 days defending Mariupol. He was also captured, and said he is often asked what Russian captivity was like.

“Have you ever seen the movies about Gulag? Just imagine that, but worse,” Samoilenko said.

Dyblenko, the marine, who also served in the besieged southern city of Mariupol and later the ill-fated Azovstal steel plant, displayed a photo of his emaciated body when he was released a few months ago. He said no words could convey the horrors that happened to the prisoners of war.

“Today, I am looking for justice in this building,” Dyblenko said.

His appeal followed a video message to the meeting from Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, who asked for justice.

“Justice for Ukraine is justice for the entire world,” she said. “That’s why we call on the United Nations to establish a special tribunal for the crimes of Russian aggression. It’s not only us who need it. We need that for everyone, so it will never be repeated again.”

Tens of thousands of allegations

Ukraine’s prosecutor general so far has opened more than 60,000 investigations of suspected human rights violations since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022, and the list continues to grow.

Russia, which has sought to justify the invasion of Ukraine by accusing Ukraine of carrying out “genocide” in eastern Ukraine, has questioned the proposed tribunal’s legitimacy.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the suspected crimes include forcible deportation, filtration camps, enforced disappearances, torture, summary executions, sexual violence and attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

“But the most deplorable crime is the forcible transfers and deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia away from their families and caregivers,” Kuleba told the meeting. “Hundreds of orphans and children without parental care were given to Russian families for adoption.”

He said 16,000 children have been sent to Russia or to the occupied Ukrainian territories.

Kuleba warned that crimes recur when perpetrators feel they can get away with it. He said the only cure for Russian crimes is justice.

“The accounts that we have seen fortify the conclusion, manifestly and ever more vividly, we are certain that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Rome Statue crimes appear to have been committed in Ukraine,” Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, told the meeting during a remote briefing.

The Rome Statute created the court in 2002 to deal with the most heinous crimes, including crimes against humanity and genocide.

‘The evidence is overwhelming’

This week and last, the United States said it believes Russian forces have committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

“This is not a determination we make lightly, but in this case, the evidence is overwhelming,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.

According to Ihor Sybiga, a former Ukrainian diplomat who now works for the government assisting prisoners of war and their families, Kyiv has gained the release of almost 2,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war, of whom 107 were civilians and 180 were women.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s delegation to the U.N. said all prisoners of war are entitled to receive regular visits from ICRC representatives. There have been some visits, but they need unimpeded, private access to prisoners.

“For the thousands of people that we have not visited yet, we also want to shed light on their right to receive such visits for us to assess their condition and treatment, to share awaited news to their families and also to provide essential assistance,” said Laetitia Courtois, ICRC’s permanent observer to the U.N.

“Thousands of lives of Ukrainian prisoners of war are under threat every day, every minute,” said Nataliya Husak, the wife of a Ukrainian POW. “We live in constant stress every second. We worry and fear about the lives of our defenders – children, husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters.”

She said families are not accorded their rights under the Geneva Conventions and they lack information about the health and conditions of the detention of their loved ones.

“Please save the lives of our dearest relatives,” Husak said, choking back tears.
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Nearly a year has passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent millions of Ukrainians fleeing to other countries, including to neighboring Poland. Lesia Bakalets reports from Warsaw on how some Ukrainians have adapted to life in Poland and are affecting the economy. Camera: Daniil Batushchak.
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Both houses of Russia’s parliament on Wednesday endorsed President Vladimir Putin’s suspension of Moscow’s participation in the 2010 New START nuclear arms treaty with the United States, casting it as a rebuke to the U.S.-led Western alliance arming Ukraine in its bid to fend off Russia’s year-long invasion. 

Putin announced suspension of Russia’s involvement in the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. during his state-of-the-nation speech on Tuesday. The pact, set to expire in 2026, limits each country to a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads.  

Putin said Russia can’t accept U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites under the pact while Washington and its NATO allies have called for Russia’s defeat in Ukraine. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said the country would respect the caps on nuclear weapons set under the treaty. 

U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in Warsaw where he was meeting with the leaders of the eastern flank of NATO countries closest to Russia, called Putin’s suspension of the nuclear pact a “big mistake.”  

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council that is chaired by Putin, said Wednesday that the suspension of Russia’s participation in the pact signaled to the U.S. that Moscow is ready to use nuclear weapons to protect itself. 

“If the U.S. wants Russia’s defeat, we have the right to defend ourselves with any weapons, including nuclear,” Medvedev said on his messaging app channel. “Let the U.S. elites who have lost touch with reality think about what they got. If the U.S. wants Russia to be defeated, we are standing on the verge of a global conflict.” 

Leonid Slutsky, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house, the State Duma, emphasized that the suspension is “reversible and can be reviewed if our Western opponents come back to reason and realize their responsibility for destroying the global security system.” 

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said it would be up to Putin to decide whether Moscow could return to the pact. “The president will determine if and when the conditions for reviewing or clarifying [Tuesday’s] decision emerge,” he told reporters. 

The diplomat noted that Russia’s satellite surveillance capability will allow it to keep track of U.S. nuclear forces even without exchanges of data and inspections that were envisaged by the treaty. 
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Millions of Ukrainians fled into Poland in the first months of Russia’s invasion. A year on, the chaotic scenes at the border have eased – and many Ukrainians now cross back and forth from their home country. As Henry Ridgwell reports from the border town of Przemyśl, Poland is braced for a new influx of refugees as the fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine. Videographer: Henry Ridgwell
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Poland is braced for a spike in the number of refugees arriving from Ukraine, as fighting intensifies in the east ahead of the anniversary of Russia’s invasion on February 24.

Millions of Ukrainians fled into Poland in the first weeks of the war as a huge Russian column bore down on the capital, Kyiv. Every day, tens of thousands of refugees arrived in the Polish border city of Przemyśl by road, rail or on foot.

Ukraine successfully defended the capital and pushed back Russian forces in the ensuing months, eventually recapturing swathes of territory around Kharkiv and Kherson. As spring approaches, both Russia and Ukraine are preparing to launch new offensives, which could force thousands more Ukrainians to flee their homes.

Chaos

A year since the start of the invasion, the chaotic scenes in Przemyśl have eased. Many Ukrainians still travel through the city to cross back and forth from their home country.

“There’s quite a steady flow going both ways,” said Charlotte Farrar, an American volunteer with the charity Fastlane Ukraine, which operates in Przemyśl. “In recent days… we saw quite a spike in first time refugees, especially coming out of Kyiv, which is quite unusual.”

“We’re thinking maybe that has something to do with the upcoming anniversary. Either people feeling afraid of what’s to come, or sort of having the gravity of what’s been happening for the past year hit them all over again as they’ve been struggling through the winter without electricity, heating, clean water and so on,” Farrar told VOA.

“Quite a bit we see people coming out of de-occupied zones, where they might not have been able to leave for quite a few months. But I would still say probably at least 50 percent of people coming out have been out of Ukraine since February 24th [2022] and have gone back for some reason and are leaving again,” Farrar said.

Psychological toll

Among the dozens of Ukrainians lining up at Przemyśl station for the train to Lviv, just over the border in Ukraine, was 55-year-old Olga Schust. She works in Poland but frequently returns to look after her parents, who are too old to escape the war. Fighting back tears, she told VOA that 12 months of brutal fighting and displacement have taken a toll on her mental health.

“Psychologically, I can’t stand it all. I’m helping as much as I can. I help at the Orthodox church. We’re collecting [aid] and helping as much as we can at a time like this, because what more can we do?”

“How can you kill other people like that? The 21st century, everything is moving forward, and here is such despair. People at my age have their lives laid out, they have plans for the future. And it’s all destroyed,” Schust told VOA.

Returning home

Nearby, Anna Federova and her two young children are also preparing to board the train to return home to Zaphorizhia, just tens of kilometers from the front line. The husband and father, Andriy, has brought them to Przemyśl station. He is staying in Poland, where he works as a driver. The family won’t meet again for at least another month.

“The war is close by, but I still want to go home,” Anna told VOA. “The children, for a while, were very worried, very afraid. But then, I guess everyone just got used to it, you know. Even when you walk and feel the explosions, somehow it is accepted more calmly.”

Coping with the war and getting Stronger

Taisiia, who did not want to give her family name, and her infant daughter Juliana, had just arrived in Przemyśl from Kyiv. After a year of traveling back and forth, she said she is learning to cope with the war.

“I’m stronger. And it’s not so scary anymore. And there is hope that everything will end soon. There was so much unknown – it seemed that nothing would work anymore. But we continue to live, to work, we continue to move. There is hope that everything will be fine soon.”

Extraordinary optimism in the face of extreme hardship. Early fears among the refugees that Ukraine would fall to Russia’s invasion are mostly gone – replaced by a stoic determination to survive and adapt as the war enters its second year.
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Pope Francis Wednesday noted what he called the “sad anniversary” of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Speaking during his weekly general audience, the pope called the conflict an “absurd and cruel war.” 

“Let us remain close to the martyred Ukrainian people and ask ourselves: has everything possible been done to stop the war?” the pope said.  “I appeal to those in authority over nations to make concrete efforts to end the conflict, to reach a cease-fire and to start peace negotiations.” 

Pope Francis has repeatedly called for peace since Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on February 24 last year.  The day before the invasion, he urged all parties to avoid any actions that would cause people more suffering and said the threat of war had brought “great pain in my heart.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Tuesday accused Russia of “mercilessly killing” civilians in the southern city of Kherson following a missile strike that left five people dead and 16 others injured.  

“A vehicle park, residential areas, a high-rise building, and a public transport stop were hit,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram social messaging app. “The Russian army is heavily shelling Kherson. Again, mercilessly killing the civilian population.”  

“The world has no right to forget for a single moment that Russian cruelty and aggression know no bounds,” the Ukrainian leader said. He posted photographs online showing corpses lying in the street.  

Russia has denied targeting civilians.  

Ukraine recaptured Kherson in November after eight months of Russian occupation, forcing Russian forces to abandon the only regional capital they had seized since invading Ukraine on February 24 of last year. But Moscow’s shelling of the city continues.  

Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration, said Russian troops had targeted the city “probably by Grad” multiple rocket-launchers and that 20 explosions were heard.  

The attack came as Russian President Vladimir Putin was defending the invasion in a speech before the Russian parliament in Moscow, and a day after U.S. President Joe Biden made a historic visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, to assure Zelenskyy of the continued support of the United States and its Western allies.        

 

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden meets Wednesday with leaders from NATO’s eastern flank to show support for their security.

The so-called Bucharest Nine includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, and most are among the strongest supporters of military aid to Ukraine.

Biden Tuesday used a speech in Poland’s capital, Warsaw, to defend NATO’s year-long effort to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion and vowed it would not stop.

“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden told the over ten thousand Poles gathered outdoors at Poland’s Royal Castle complex. “Well, I’ve just come from a visit to Kyiv, and I can report Kyiv stands strong. It stands tall. And most important, it stands free.”

Biden promised that support for Ukraine will not waver, and NATO will not be divided. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never,” he declared, saying the alliance is “more resolved than ever” in supplying munitions and humanitarian aid to non-NATO member Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia.

Fresh off his dramatic visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Monday, Biden assailed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion he launched a year ago this Friday and said the Russian leader could just as easily end the warfare. “The West is not plotting to attack Russia as Putin said today,” Biden declared.

“The democracies of the world have grown stronger” in their pushback against Russian aggression, Biden said, adding “The autocracies of the world have grown weaker.”

Biden used part of his speech in front of an applauding crowd to reiterate what Vice President Kamala Harris announced just days earlier at the Munich Security Conference, that the U.S. has determined Moscow has committed “crimes against humanity” and “atrocities” against the Ukrainian people.

“They’ve committed depravity, crimes against humanity without shame or compunction,” Biden said.

Specifically, he accused Russia of “targeting civilians with death,” using rape as “a weapon of war,” stealing Ukrainian children by forcibly removing them from their homeland and launching airstrikes against train stations, maternity wards, hospitals, schools and orphanages.

“No one, no one can turn away their eyes from the atrocities Russia is committing against the Ukrainian people. It’s abhorrent,” Biden said.

Russia has denied targeting civilians.

The administration pushed back against Moscow’s claim, made by Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev on his Telegram channel Monday, that “Biden, having previously received security guarantees, finally went to Kiev.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told VOA in a briefing to reporters Tuesday that the U.S. did not receive such guarantees. Sullivan said the U.S. informed Moscow of the security accompanying Biden to ensure they know “what they would be seeing and what President Biden would be doing.”

“Just to let them know he would be there in this time period and the means by which he was traveling and that he would be out on this timetable, the means by which he was traveling out,” he said. “We conveyed that information. They acknowledged receipt. End of story.”

US-Poland ties

Earlier Tuesday, Biden began his second trip to Poland in a year by meeting with President Andrzej Duda, thanking the Polish leader for his support for Ukraine and calling U.S.–Poland ties a “critical relationship.” He underscored Washington’s commitment to the principle of collective defense in Article 5 of the NATO charter and assured Duda that the alliance will respond if Russia expands its war beyond Ukraine and launches an attack on Poland.

“And we reaffirmed our ironclad commitment to NATO’s collective security, including guaranteeing that the command headquarters for our forces in Europe are going to be in Poland, period,” he said.

Biden said the two countries are launching “a new strategic partnership” with plans to build nuclear power plants and bolster Poland’s energy security.

Poland has been an unwavering ally of Ukraine, its neighbor, providing billions of dollars in weapons and humanitarian assistance to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, welcoming Ukrainian refugees and providing a critical logistics hub for military assistance for Kyiv.

On Monday Biden announced $460 million in new military aid for Ukraine and said his administration will soon announce another new wave of sanctions against individuals and companies “that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine.”

Geopolitical symbolism

The speech in Warsaw delivered by the American president to mark the war anniversary carries significant geopolitical symbolism. During the Cold War, Poland was locked behind the Iron Curtain as a signee of the Warsaw Pact, a military treaty established in 1955 by the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries to counterbalance NATO, the Western military alliance. The Warsaw pact was dissolved on July 1,1991.

The backdrop of Biden’s speech was Warsaw’s Royal Castle, whose construction began in the 1300s and has witnessed many notable events in Poland’s history, including the drafting of the first constitution of a European state in 1791. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the castle was destroyed by Nazi Germany during World War II and later rebuilt.

Warsaw is an appropriate place to reiterate U.S. commitment to European security, said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund.

“Poland is very much on the front line and will remain so whatever the course of the war in Ukraine. The country occupies a critical position in allied deterrence and defense and is the key logistical hub for assistance headed to Ukraine,” he told VOA. “The fact that the president’s speech takes place in the Cold War birthplace of the Warsaw Pact will not be lost on observers, not least Russians.”

A few hours before Biden’s speech, President Vladimir Putin delivered remarks to Russia’s Federal Assembly in which he blamed Western countries for provoking conflict and announced that Moscow will stop participating in the new START (Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty), the last major remaining nuclear arms control agreement with the U.S.

Putin also said Western economic sanctions against Russia had not “achieved anything and will not achieve anything.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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As Turkey continues to mourn the tragic loss of human life caused by two powerful back-to-back earthquakes two weeks ago, there are emerging assessments of the cost of rebuilding, plus the broader financial toll it has taken on the vulnerable economy. 

The Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation estimated the cost of reconstruction at more than $80 billion in its preliminary report issued four days after the quakes.

U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley put the housing costs alone at around $38 billion, while JPMorgan said the estimated cost of rebuilding houses and infrastructure would be around $25 billion.

Those tallies do not account for the economic damage to businesses in the disaster zone, where some 13.5 million people lived and worked, accounting for nearly 10% of the country’s economic activity. 

For comparison, in 1999, a massive tremor shook Izmit, Turkey’s industrial heartland, which at the time accounted for more than 30% of the country’s GDP.

Following that quake, the country’s economic growth shrank by 3.3%. 

World Bank economists tell VOA, while it’s too early to forecast the toll from the recent quakes, they are watching several key factors. 

Slower growth expected

The IMF had predicted the Turkish economy would grow at a rate of 3% this year. But many experts say the earthquakes, the most powerful to hit Turkey in almost a century, could reduce that by at least one-third.

Speaking to VOA from London, Timothy Ash, a Turkey analyst from BlueBay Asset Management, says the direct economic impacts are likely to be more moderate in comparison to the 1999 earthquake, because quakes mostly affected agricultural and rural areas this time.

Once the immediate aftermath of the disaster passes, he expects to see a growth boost in the medium term when reconstruction begins.

World Bank economists say that typically, reconstruction by the private and public sectors in the aftermath of a major disaster is recorded as investment in the economy. Thus, the rebuilding effort might limit the impact.

Problems rooted in economic policy

While initial analyses by financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, indicate that financing the economic loss appears manageable, experts warn that the rooted problems in Turkey’s macro-economic policy framework can make things more difficult.

Turkey was already facing challenges with an annual inflation of more than 60% and a staggering depreciation in its currency. 

“While Turkey’s economy is estimated to have grown rapidly in real terms in 2022, and fiscal space remains, inflation climbed to a 24-year high, the lira depreciated, the current account deficit widened; banks’ capital buffers declined, Humberto Lopez, the World Bank country director for Turkey, told VOA.

Speaking to VOA last week, Selva Demiralp, professor of economics from Koc University in Istanbul, argued Turkey would have been better positioned to deal with the economic fallout from the earthquake if it had not already been suffering significant vulnerabilities largely blamed on the macro-economic policies of the government.

“If we were not facing such a high level of inflation and narrowed monetary policy, we would be better placed to provide extensive support and handle this more easily,” she told VOA.

Turkey is also confronted with growing external financing requirements. Ash says, depending on how much money would be needed to fund the reconstruction effort, Turkey might need some external financing in the form of loans.

Political uncertainty concerns

According to analysts, the bigger concern for the economy is the perceived political uncertainty.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced last month that the presidential and parliamentary elections were to be held May 14.

However, a recent statement posted on social media by Bulent Arınc, a former founder of the ruling AK Party and former speaker of the Turkish parliament, sparked a debate about a possible delaying of the elections in the wake of the massive devastation caused by the earthquakes. It was firmly dismissed by the opposition bloc.

International investors are monitoring Turkey’s economic and political situation. Most foreigners had exited local markets because of the government’s unorthodox economic policies.

“They are waiting to see the results of the elections scheduled for 14th May. We’ll have to wait and see if it will be held on that day. Foreigners want to see credible and orthodox policy whether it is with this administration or the next one,” Turkey analyst Ash argues.

The government was criticized for what many in the disaster zone described as a slow response and lack of coordination.

Ash says he believes the outcome of the elections depends on the quality of the disaster response and the recovery phase.

“The results of the elections and possible policy changes depending on the outcome are important for investors,” he says. 

“The earthquake will be a decisive factor in determining who wins.”

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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In December, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy summoned his ambassadors from around the world to discuss his foreign policy priorities for the new year.

Meeting in Kyiv, Zelenskyy gave the assembled diplomats “tasks and assignments” for the coming year, recalled Ukraine Ambassador-at-Large Anton Korynevych.

One of his main priorities for Ukrainian diplomacy, Zelenskyy told the group, was the creation of “an ad hoc special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine,” according to Korynevych, who is Ukraine’s point person on the issue.

This was not the first time Zelenskyy was demanding accountability for Russia’s aggressive war, without which, Ukrainian officials say, other crimes such as the atrocities in Bucha and Irpin would not have happened.

Going back to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, Kyiv has turned to every available international court to push legal claims against Moscow; the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

“We’re in all the courts, but we see that these mechanisms and tools are not enough,” Korynevych said during a recent panel discussion at the New York City Bar Association. “There is no international court or tribunal which can try … Russian political and military leadership for the commission of the crime of aggression against Ukraine.”

Considered a “leadership crime,” the crime of aggression is defined as the “planning, preparation, initiation or execution” of an act of aggression such as an armed invasion by a country’s top political and military leadership. In the case of the Ukraine conflict, as many as 20 officials could be implicated, according to Korynevych.

In contrast to the painstakingly difficult-to-prove war crimes and crimes against humanity, proving the crime of aggression is relatively straight-forward. The evidence, according to the State Department’s top war crimes adviser, can be seen “on our front pages every day.”

Prosecuting the crime of aggression

To show what a case against Russia would look like, the Open Society has drafted a 65-page “model indictment” that names Russian President Vladimir Putin and seven subordinates. Others have suggested including Belarusian officials since Belarus has allowed Russian forces to stage attacks on Ukraine from its soil.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), created in 2002 to deal with crimes of war, has the power to prosecute the crime of aggression but it can’t investigate Russian officials for aggression because of a legal quirk: Russia is not a “state party” to the Rome Statute that established the court. While the United States played a central role in the establishment of the Rome Statute that created the ICC, the U.S. isn’t a “state party” either.

Ukrainian courts face a legal hurdle of their own.

While the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office has been investigating senior Russian officials for their alleged complicity in the crime, prosecutors can’t bring charges in the case because under international law top Russian officials enjoy immunity in Ukrainian courts.

Hence, Ukraine’s call for a special court to prosecute the crime.

A special international tribunal is the “most feasible and efficient route for accountability,” Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said during a recent event at Georgetown Law Center. The center works closely with Kostin’s office.

Ukraine’s push for a special tribunal, like its plea for tanks and fighter jets, was once seen as a long shot.

But as Western nations amp up efforts to beat back the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s advocacy of “no peace without justice” is finding increasingly receptive ears among its international backers.

In recent months, the proposal for a special tribunal has been endorsed by the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, NATO, as well as several foreign governments such as Britain and Germany.

As a precursor to the tribunal, the European Commission this month announced plans to launch a prosecutor’s office in The Hague to investigate the crime of aggression and identify potential defendants.

All that has imbued Ukrainian officials with renewed optimism that their once seemingly elusive goal may be closer at hand.

“Now is the momentum for the international community to hold Russian aggressors accountable for the most flagrant act committed on European soil since 1945,” Kostin said.

Court models for a possible war tribunal

The last time the crime of aggression was prosecuted was in the 1940s when German and Japanese leaders were tried in Nuremberg and Tokyo for what the International Military Tribunal called the “supreme international crime.”

Western officials say the quest for Russian accountability is not just about Ukraine. At stake is the future of a rules-based international order that has largely held since the Second World War.

“No one in the 21st century,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in The Hague last month, “must be allowed to wage a war of aggression and go unpunished.”

Yet even as Germany and other Western nations have thrown their weight behind a tribunal, they remain split over the form it should take.

In recent discussions among Ukrainian and Western officials, two competing models have emerged, according to experts involved in the discussions.

A so-called “hybrid” model, proposed by Germany, envisions “a court that derives its jurisdiction from Ukrainian criminal law.”

To ensure its legitimacy, Baerbock said, the court would be located outside Ukraine, and include international prosecutors and judges. Rather than weaken it, it would strengthen the ICC, she said.

Another hybrid model, backed by the U.K. envisages a court “integrated into Ukraine’s national justice system with international elements.” It’s unclear where this court would be based.

Competing with the composite model is a proposal for a “fully international” tribunal established through negotiations between Ukraine and the United Nations and recommended by the U.N. General Assembly.

Modeled on U.N.-backed tribunals for Sierra Leone and Cambodia, the proposed court is being backed by a group of prominent international law experts and veterans of other international tribunals who say a hybrid structure would likely “immunize” Russian leaders and potentially run afoul of the Ukrainian Constitution.

“You need an international tribunal if you’re going to go at the highest level,” said Jennifer Trahan, a law professor at New York University and convener of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression.

To get it up and running, Ukraine would make a formal request to the United Nations. Once the U.N. General Assembly makes a recommendation, the United Nations and Ukraine would engage in talks to create the tribunal through a mutual treaty.

Though no government has publicly endorsed this model, Trahan said it has the support of “a handful of countries,” with “more support growing.”

The U.S., which is part of a “core group” of more than 20 countries studying proposals for a tribunal, hasn’t taken a public stand.

Nor has Ukraine made a formal request to the United Nations. Although Kyiv hasn’t ruled out other options, Korynevych voiced support for involving the United Nations in the process.

Saying U.N. support is critical for the legitimacy of any tribunal, Korynevych added, “That is why we’ll use the possibilities of the United Nations, in particular the General Assembly, in order to sound this issue, and in order to get the support of the United Nations in relation to this endeavor.”

The proposed tribunal has been met with some skepticism. For one, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has pushed back against the notion, warning about the potential for “fragmentation.”

An ICC spokesperson said the ICC as a court has “never made any statement about potential ad hoc tribunals.”

Other critics have raised concern that establishing a special tribunal could undercut efforts to end the Ukrainian conflict by making Russian leaders less amenable to peace.

“Someone who is fighting a war is less likely to prosecute a peace or to engage in peace talks if he thinks, ‘Hmmm, if there is peace, we’re going to The Hague,’” Senator Rand Paul, a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy, said during a recent Senate hearing.

Responding to Paul, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said both goals — peace and justice — could be pursued simultaneously.

“I’d cite the precedent of Kosovo, of Bosnia, of Rwanda where we’ve successfully supported wars winding down through diplomatic means while also pursuing justice,” Nuland said.

Russia, which has sought to justify the invasion of Ukraine by accusing Ukraine of carrying out “genocide” in eastern Ukraine, has questioned the proposed tribunal’s legitimacy.

Ultimately, even if a fully international tribunal is created, it’s unclear if it would be able to conduct much of a trial while Putin holds power.

To other would-be aggressors, critics say, that failure would convey the message that they can commit aggression and get away with it.

But that’s not a reason not to pursue a mechanism for accountability, Trahan said, noting that the U.N. Security Council created an ad hoc tribunal for the former Yugoslavia not knowing that Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic would ever end up in The Hague.

But he did. In 2001, a new Serbian government arrested and handed Milosevic over to the Tribunal.

Though he died five years later before his trial was to conclude, the court eventually convicted a number of his co-conspirators, giving his victims a measure of justice.

“Never say never,” she said.
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South Africa is under fire for hosting joint naval exercises with Russia during the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, with critics saying it will be a propaganda victory for Moscow. But what does the third participant in the drills, China, have to gain from the tripartite exercises taking place this week?

Some analysts told VOA that, in China’s case, Exercise Mosi II, off South Africa’s east coast, is less about a real exchange of military prowess and more about important political and diplomatic optics.

“China has a lot to gain from these exercises,” said Paul Nantulya, from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. “It is sending a very powerful signal to other African countries that in-person military training is now back on the table. … China and [its] People’s Liberation Army are basically back” after years of closed borders during the pandemic.

He said the drills were also sending a message to China’s competitors, namely the U.S., that Beijing has military clout in the region. The South Africa war games are taking place at almost the same time as the U.S. Army’s Exercise Justified Accord in Kenya and just after U.S.-led maritime exercises off the Gulf of Guinea.

They also take place amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing in the wake of the U.S. shooting down an alleged Chinese spy balloon and after Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that China is considering supplying Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine.

Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, had a similar assessment.

“This assists Beijing in illustrating to the West [and the world in general] that it has a foothold in the South Indian Ocean through its strong relations with South Africa. I believe this may be important to China, given the geopolitical contestations being played out across the Indian Ocean region,” Singh said in an email to VOA.

“I believe that the decision to proceed with these exercises was primarily driven by political considerations. Navies play important diplomatic and symbolic roles,” Singh’s ISS colleague Denys Reva added.

Darren Olivier, director at the African Defense Review, pointed out this week’s naval exercises off South Africa are limited in nature and “focused mostly on basic maneuvers and light gunnery.”

“It’s important to note that South Africa has a NATO-oriented operational and tactical doctrine that’s dissimilar to that of Russia and China, which inherently limits what can be done jointly, and unsurprisingly as a result, the exercise as described will not feature in-depth exploration or testing of any serious combat capabilities or procedures,” he said.

Asked by VOA what China seeks to gain from the exercises, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. said “the joint maritime exercise held by the navies of the three countries in the southern waters of Africa is of great significance.”

“It will help deepen the exchanges and cooperation among the navies, improve their ability to jointly respond to maritime security threats, demonstrate their determination to maintain regional maritime peace and stability and their good will and strong capabilities to actively promote the building of an ocean community with a shared future.”

China, Russia and South Africa are all members of the BRICS grouping of emerging economies, which also includes India and Brazil.

Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, said that for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to join their Russian counterparts “in an exercise far away from China is highly beneficial,” as the Russian navy is more modernized.

Asked whether such exercises could act as preparation for an invasion of Taiwan, Tsang said they were too different, but added that “enhancing the capacity of the PLAN to operate long-distance will be beneficial in general terms to enhancing its capacity in a Taiwan Strait crisis in the future.”

The PLAN “need to train for long-distance deployments, particularly off Africa, where China is building up its interest,” he said. China has invested heavily in the continent through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Infrastructure Initiative and is Africa’s biggest trade partner.

But there are more than economic reasons for China to join the exercises, according to Nantulya. They include having the ability to protect the many Chinese nationals working in Africa — the Chinese have been engaged in anti-piracy operations off Africa’s East coast for years — and maintain stability in countries that host Chinese peacekeepers or strategic investments.

Also, Nantulya said, it’s possible Beijing — which has only one military base in Africa, in Djibouti — is looking to establish additional bases on the continent in the next decade.

The U.S. has raised concerns about a possible Chinese base in Equatorial Guinea on the Atlantic coast.

“In terms of Russia, I think it’s quite obvious that what China has been doing is trying to provide Russia some form of platform to be able to continue conducting international relations despite the fact that it’s been heavily sanctioned,” Nantulya said. The war games that have been heavily criticized for taking place amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. State Department has told VOA by email, “We note with concern South Africa’s plan to hold joint naval exercises with Russia and the PRC. … We encourage South Africa to cooperate militarily with fellow democracies that share our mutual commitment to human rights and the rule of law.”

According to Chinese state media, China has sent a destroyer, a frigate and a defense ship to the exercises in South Africa, which run until February 27.
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