RIYADMEDIA

Germany must introduce regulations to require its privately operated gas storage facilities to reach full capacity before winter to avoid the kind of energy crunch now gripping the country, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Monday. 

Germany’s gas storage facilities are at historically low levels and fears that a possible war between Russia and Ukraine could worsen an energy crisis in Europe has raised the pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to secure supplies. 

“The storage facilities should be full, and we must have an option to control the filling up of the reserves,” Habeck said in a speech to business leaders in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. 

Germany, which relies mainly on Russian gas for heating and manufacturing, fears that Russia could retaliate against any Western sanctions over Ukraine by cutting supplies to Europe. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a decree recognizing the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent entities, raising the risk of Russian troops entering Ukraine and sparking a war. 

An energy crunch in Europe that drove up prices resulted in Germany entering the winter months with low reserves, which at the start of February stood at just under 35% full, the lowest ever for this time of the year. 

The storage industry is privately organized but handling fees for storage services are regulated. 

Habeck said regulation requiring the private sector to ensure storage facilities are full was a better option than the state buying gas to secure supplies. He said there was enough gas for this winter. 

Options for the state to intervene in boosting storage and withdrawals are limited under current rules. 

High prices and low gas stocks have also stoked fears that industry and households could run short, or pay over the odds, for supplies. 

Germany’s 24 billion cubic meters of gas storage capacity equates to about a quarter of annual domestic consumption. 

 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday recognized the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as independent states, signing documents declaring them no longer part of Ukraine. Hours earlier, the separatist leaders of the regions made a video appeal for the independence declaration. 

Location 

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions — collectively known as the Donbas — are in eastern Ukraine, near the border with Russia. The region comprises both Kyiv-controlled parts as well as separatist-controlled areas. Its main industries are coal mining and steel production. 

Population 

Most of the 3.6 million people living in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions speak Russian, a result of a migration of Russian workers to the regions after World War II, during the Soviet era. Moscow has in recent years issued more than 720,000 Russian passports to roughly one-fifth of the region’s population, according to The Associated Press. 

Rebel control 

Pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions took over government buildings in 2014 and proclaimed the regions as independent “people’s republics.” The move followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. 

Fighting  

Since 2014, more than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting in the Donbas region between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of backing the separatists both militarily and financially, a charge Moscow denies.  

Amid the fighting, a Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board. International investigators concluded the missile was supplied by Russia and fired from an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Russia has denied involvement. 

Independence 

After separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions took power in 2014, they held a vote to declare independence. Until now, no country recognized their bid. On Monday, Putin announced the independence of the regions after meeting with the Russian Security Council. His announcement followed a video appeal by the regions’ separatist leaders for the recognition of independence.  

Regional leaders 

Each of the regions has its own self-proclaimed president. In a vote disputed by Kyiv, Denis Pushilin was elected in 2018 to lead the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, while Leonid Pasechnik is the leader of the Luhansk separatist region. 

Minsk peace process 

Russia’s recognition of the regions effectively ends the Minsk peace agreements, which were never fully implemented. The agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015, had called for a large amount of autonomy for the two regions inside Ukraine. 

Other breakaway regions 

Russia has previously recognized the independence of two Georgian breakaway regions — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — after a brief war with Georgia in 2008. Russia has since stationed troops in those regions and offered Russian citizenship to their populations. 

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

 
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Northern Britain and parts of France and Germany were battered Sunday and Monday by Franklin — the third major storm to strike the region in less than a week. The severe weather has flooded roads, knocked out power and left at least 14 people dead. 

Storm Franklin brought heavy rains and high winds that disrupted travel and prompted more than 140 flood warnings across England and Wales as of Monday.  

The storm moved through Northern Ireland and northern Britain before moving on to France, where a couple in their 70s died Sunday after their car was swept into the English Channel near a small town in Normandy.  

Franklin struck even as crews were attempting to clear fallen trees and restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes hit by storms Dudley and Eunice last week.  

Authorities in England issued more than 300 flood warnings and alerts, while insurers in Germany and the Netherlands estimated the damage from those storms to be at more than $1.7 billion. The German Aerospace Center said the storms would likely result in widespread damage to Europe’s already weakened forests. 

The AccuWeather news service reports this is the first time three such storms have struck Britain and northern Europe in less than a week since Britain’s Meteorological Office began naming storms in 2015. 

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

 
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Russia has drawn the world’s attention with its aggressive stance toward Ukraine. The former Soviet power has been rebuilding ties with Africa more quietly, strengthening economic and military cooperation, but also raising Western concerns about its tactics and goals there.

Russian flags waved in Burkina Faso’s capital following January’s military coup in the West African nation. A statue unveiled in the Central African Republic last fall shows local soldiers, backed by Russian fighters, protecting civilians.

Those are the more obvious symbols of Russia’s resurgent presence on the continent. Africa is a foreign policy priority, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the first Russia-Africa summit of political and business leaders in 2019.

“We are not going to participate in a new ‘repartition’ of the continent’s wealth,” he said. “Rather, we are ready to engage in competition for cooperation with Africa.”

A second summit is planned for St. Petersburg in October. The first, at the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, generated diplomatic agreements and billions of dollars in deals involving arms, energy, agriculture, banking and more, said the organizer, the Roscongress Foundation.

Moscow has been building new ties and refreshing alliances forged during the Cold War, when the former Soviet Union supported socialist movements across Africa. After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, it largely withdrew from the continent.

Since at least 2007, especially in the last few years, Russia has been increasing military and other economic involvement in Africa. The 2019 summit produced contracts with more than 30 African countries to supply military armaments and equipment. Businesses, including state-backed commercial interests, have invested heavily in security sectors, technology and industries that extract natural resources such as oil, gas, gold and other minerals.

Rusal is a company that excavates minerals for aluminum in Guinea and nuclear group Rosatom seeks uranium in Namibia. Alrosa, the world’s largest diamond mining company, has pushed to expand operations in Angola and Zimbabwe, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Russia is clearly interested, in search of new economic markets and geopolitical influence in Africa,” said Tatiana Smirnova, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Quebec’s Centre FrancoPaix and an associate with the University of Florida’s Sahel Research Group. “It’s important for Russia.”

Trade between Russia and African countries has doubled since 2015, to about $20 billion a year, African Export-Import Bank President Benedict Oramah said in an interview last fall with Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency, cited by the Russia Briefing investment news site. He said Russia exported $14 billion worth of goods and services and imported roughly $5 billion in African products.

However, Africa does more business with other countries, notably China, its biggest trading partner in recent years.

Russia’s overtures in recent years offer cooperation without the “political or other conditions” imposed by Western countries, Putin has said.

“Russia provides, as did the Soviet Union before, an alternative vision for African nations” based on “this common anti-Western critique,” said Maxim Matusevich, a history professor who directs Russian studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

However, while the Soviets tried to sell socialist ideas of modernization in Africa, Russians today “are not offering any ideological vision,” he said. “What they’re essentially doing is they’re contracting with African elites on a one-on-one basis. … They insist on the importance of sovereignty and contrast that with the West, which is trying to impose its values, such as transparency, honest governance, anti-corruption legislation. Again, I’m not saying the West is always sincere doing that, but that’s the official message – and they [Russians] are not doing any of that.”

Shifting dynamics

The spread of militant Islamist extremism and other violence in Africa has created more openings for Russian military involvement. For instance, five nations in the volatile Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – solicited Moscow’s military support in 2018. Russian fighters also have been engaged in Mozambique and Angola.

France’s planned drawdown of troops from Mali, its former colony and partner in the fight against jihadists since 2013, leaves still more room.

Last Thursday, France and its security partners announced they would exit Mali, citing “multiple obstructions” by the military junta that took power in 2020. France will redeploy its 2,400 troops elsewhere in the Sahel.

Private military contractors also are helping advance Moscow’s agendas in Africa, Western observers say. These include fighters in the shadowy Wagner Group, allegedly controlled by Putin associate Yevgeny Prigozhin. Putin has denied any connection with the group.

“It’s not the state,” Putin said. “… It’s private business with private interests tied to extracting energy resources, including various resources like gold or precious stones.”

Those private fighters operate in parallel with the Kremlin, said Joseph Siegle, who directs research for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, part of the U.S. Defense Department. He said they are part of Moscow’s tool kit to prop up weak African leaders in exchange for economic or other advantages.

“Every place we’ve seen Wagner deployed around the world and in Africa – be it Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, Central African Republic – it has been a destabilizing force,” Siegle said. “What Russia has been doing has been deploying mercenaries, disinformation, election interference, arms-for-resources deals, opaque contracts … aimed at capturing wider influence.”

That influence can protect Russia’s interests in international circles, Matusevich said, citing Russia’s 2014 seizure of the Crimean Peninsula.

“We know that in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, when Russia was sanctioned in the United Nations, a lot of African nations abstained from the vote,” he said. “So, they are gaining diplomatic support and alternative diplomatic blocs that they can count on.”

The United Nations is investigating reports of “grave” human rights abuses in the Central African Republic, allegedly committed by private military personnel. Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries are glorified as public protectors amid a coup attempt in the 2021 Russian film The Tourist. The movie, set in the Central African Republic, reportedly was funded by Putin ally Pregizhin.

Security concerns

In Mali, the leaders of a 2020 military coup brought in Russian military trainers – and what U.S. and French authorities say are Wagner mercenaries.

Some in Mali welcomed them by waving Russian flags, reflecting not only the country’s historic ties with the former USSR but also public impatience over continued insecurity, said Niagalé Bagayoko, a Paris-based political scientist who chairs the African Security Sector Network. The organization seeks security and justice reforms, and is among advocates for more protections for civilians in the Sahel and more transparency and accountability for military operations there.

“In 2013, the whole Malian population [was] enthusiastic when the French arrived … today they are rejecting their presence,” Bagayoko said.

“To be honest, I would not be very surprised if, in two years or so, the same could happen with the Russian presence,” she said.

African countries are showing a willingness to look beyond a single foreign partner in their efforts to find stability and security, she said. “There is the realization … that being only engaged with single actors …. is restricting the possibility for diplomacy, but also for military apparatus.”

Russia is not the only foreign government trying to broaden influence in Africa, home to vast resources including a surging youth population.

The White House plans a second U.S.-Africa leadership summit later this year, following up on an initial Washington gathering in 2014 and the European Union has announced a new $172 million investment in infrastructure, countering China’s Belt and Road initiative.
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While the ongoing situation in Ukraine is the world focus, Russia has been rebuilding ties with Africa more quietly, strengthening economic and military cooperation on the continent. That is raising Western concerns about its tactics and goals there, as VOA’s Carol Guensburg reports. Contributor: Danila, Joad. Videographer: Betty Ayoub 
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WASHINGTON — The United States has warned the United Nations it has information that Russia has lists of Ukrainians “to be killed or sent to camps” in the event of an invasion, according to a letter sent to the U.N. rights chief and obtained by AFP Sunday.

The letter, which came as Washington warned of an imminent invasion by Russian troops massed near the Ukrainian border, says the United States is “deeply concerned” and warns of a potential “human rights catastrophe.”

The United States has “credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation,” the letter says. 

“We also have credible information that Russian forces will likely use lethal measures to disperse peaceful protests or otherwise counter peaceful exercises of perceived resistance from civilian populations,” says the message, addressed to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.

The note, signed by Bathsheba Nell Crocker, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, warns a Russian invasion of Ukraine could bring with it abuses such as kidnappings or torture, and could target political dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities, among others.

Russia has placed more than 150,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders in recent weeks, the United States and Western allies have estimated.

Moscow denies it plans to attack its neighbor, but is seeking a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the Western alliance will remove forces from Eastern Europe, demands the West has refused. 
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US has warned of an imminent Russian invasion, saying Moscow would face ‘severe consequences’
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Greek emergency workers rescued a Belarussian truck driver Sunday from a burning ferry off the island of Corfu and found the body of another man as they combed the wreckage for missing passengers. The discoveries left 10 people still unaccounted for. 

The truck driver, in his 20s, was able to make his way up to the left rear deck on his own, and told rescue workers he heard other voices below. There were no further details identifying the victim, the first body recovered from the ship.  

“The fact that this man succeeded, despite adverse conditions, to exit into the deck and alert the coast guard … gives us hope that there may be other [survivors],” coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told state broadcaster ERT. 

The Italian-owned Euroferry Olympia, which was carrying more than 290 passengers and crew as well as 153 trucks and 32 cars, caught fire Friday, three hours after it left the northwestern Greek port of Igoumenitsa bound for the Italian city of Brindisi. The Greek coast guard and other boats evacuated about 280 people to the nearby island of Corfu.  

The ferry has been towed to the port of Kassiopi, in northeastern Corfu. Firefighters were still battling the blaze in spots Sunday and a thick smoke still blanketed the ship. 

Alexiou said his understanding was that the truck driver hadn’t heard any voices just before making his way onto the deck but added “the situation is evolving.” The survivor was taken to a hospital for a medical exam. 

The extreme temperatures in some parts of the ship have impeded the Greek fire service’s Disaster Management Unit and a team of private rescuers from searching the whole ship. The ferry is slightly listing from the tons of water poured into it to douse the fire but authorities say it’s not in danger of capsizing. 

Two passengers were rescued Saturday. One wasn’t on the ship’s manifest and was presumably a migrant. The other person, a 65-year-old Bulgarian truck driver, had respiratory problems and is on a ventilator in a Corfu hospital’s intensive care unit. 

A Greek prosecutor on Corfu has ordered an investigation into the cause of the fire. The Italy-based company that operates the ferry said the fire started in a hold where vehicles were parked. 

The ship’s captain and two engineers were arrested Friday but were released the same day, authorities said. 

Passengers described the initial evacuation as dramatic. 

“We heard the alarm. We thought it was some kind of drill. But we saw through the portholes that people were running,” truck driver Dimitris Karaolanidis told The Associated Press. “You can’t think something at the time [other than] your family … When I hit the deck, I saw smoke and children. Fortunately, they [the crew] acted quickly.” 
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Russia on Sunday extended its military drills in Belarus, along Ukraine’s northern border, after two days of sustained shelling in eastern Ukraine between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces.

The Russian exercises with Belarusian forces had been scheduled to end Sunday. They were extended amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s show of force along the Ukrainian border with the massing of some 150,000 troops, accompanied by naval exercises in the Black Sea to the south of Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the sharp increase in Russian troop deployments in recent weeks, cyberattacks on the Ukrainian defense ministry and major banks last week and now the new outbreak in fighting in eastern Ukraine that killed two Ukrainian soldiers, signal that Moscow is “following its playbook” ahead of large-scale warfare.

“Everything leading up to the invasion is already taking place,” Blinken said.

The separatists in eastern Ukraine have claimed that Kyiv’s forces are planning an attack there, which Ukraine denies.

At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy questioned why the United States and its Western allies, who have vowed to impose swift and tough economic sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, are not already doing so.

Blinken said, “As soon as you impose them, you lose the deterrence” to try to prevent an invasion, and if the West were to announce specific sanctions it would impose, Russia “could plan against them.”

The top U.S. diplomat said, however, “Until the tanks are moving” and missiles launched, Western leaders will “try to do everything to reverse” Putin’s mind, “to get him off the course he’s decided.”

Asked whether Putin might be bluffing an invasion with his military buildup, Blinken said, “There’s always a chance.” But Blinken added, “He’s following the script to the letter on the brink of an invasion.”

Still, Blinken said he would meet with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Europe on Thursday for more negotiations, on condition that Moscow has not launched an invasion before then.

On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” show, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said, “There [are] no such plans” for an invasion.

He said Russia has “our legitimate right to have our troops where we want on Russian territory.”

Antonov said Russia has withdrawn some troops from near Ukraine “and nobody even said to us, ‘thank you.’” The West says its monitoring of the terrain near Ukraine shows that Russia has not begun to send its troops back to their bases.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who said Friday he is “convinced” Putin plans to invade, is meeting Sunday with his National Security Council to discuss the latest developments.

The U.S. and its NATO allies fear that the Russian forces in Belarus could be deployed in an attack southward on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, while tens of thousands more troops could invade from the east and south into Ukraine.

Despite their belief that Putin has his mind made up to invade, Biden and other Western leaders are holding out hope for a settlement to the crisis, 11th hour diplomacy to avert the first massive warfare in Europe since the end of World War II.

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said Sunday, “The big question remains: Does the Kremlin want dialogue?”

“We cannot forever offer an olive branch while Russia conducts missile tests and continues to amass troops,” Michel said at the Munich Security Conference. “One thing is certain: if there is further military aggression, we will react with massive (economic) sanctions.”

Some of the Western allies, including the U.S., have shipped arms to Ukraine, but none of its leaders is planning to deploy troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces in the event of an invasion.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday the United Kingdom will use the “toughest possible” economic sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine.

Johnson told the BBC the sanctions would not only target Putin and his associates, “but also all companies and organizations with strategic importance to Russia.”

The British leader said, “We are going to stop Russian companies raising money on U.K. markets, and we are even with our American friends going to stop them trading in pounds and dollars.”

French President Emmanuel Macron had a telephone conversation with Putin Sunday, with Macron’s office saying afterward that the two leaders agreed on the need to find a diplomatic solution.

The two countries’ foreign ministers will meet in the coming days to work on a possible summit involving Russia, Ukraine and allies to establish a new security order in Europe.

Western allies say they are willing to discuss their missile positioning and military exercises in Europe but have balked at Putin’s demand to rule out possible NATO membership for Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

“We need to stop Putin because he will not stop at Ukraine,” Liz Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, said in an interview Sunday in The Daily Mail about Putin’s apparently imminent invasion of Ukraine.

“Putin has said all this publicly, that he wants to create the Greater Russia, that he wants to go back to the situation as it was before where Russia had control over huge swaths of eastern Europe.”

Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union’s executive commission, said, “The Kremlin’s dangerous thinking, which comes straight out of a dark past, may cost Russia a prosperous future.”

She said if Russia invades Ukraine, Moscow would have limited access to financial markets and tech goods, according to the sanctions package being prepared.
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Firefighters are struggling to put out a fire that broke out on Wednesday on a vessel carrying thousands of luxury cars, which is adrift off the coast of Portugal’s Azores islands, a port official said, adding it was unclear when they would succeed.

The Felicity Ace ship, carrying around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, some electric with lithium-ion batteries, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday. The 22 crew members on board were evacuated on the same day.

“The intervention [to put out the blaze] has to be done very slowly,” João Mendes Cabañas, captain of the nearest port in the Azorean island of Faial, told Reuters late on Saturday. “It will take a while.”

Lithium-ion batteries in the electric vehicles on board are “keeping the fire alive,” Cabañas said, adding that specialist equipment to extinguish it was on the way.

It was not clear whether the batteries sparked the fire.

Volkswagen, which owns the brands, did not confirm the total number of cars on board and said on Friday it was awaiting further information. Ship manager Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cabañas previously said that “everything was on fire about five meters above the water line” and the blaze was still far from the ship’s fuel tanks. It is getting closer, he said.

“The fire spread further down,” he said, explaining that teams could only tackle the fire from outside by cooling down the ship’s structure as it was too dangerous to go on board.

They also cannot use water because adding weight to the ship could make it more unstable, and traditional water extinguishers do not stop lithium-ion batteries from burning, Cabañas said.

The Panama-flagged ship will be towed to a country in Europe or to the Bahamas but it is unclear when that will happen.
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Queen Elizabeth, 95, has tested positive for COVID and is experiencing mild symptoms but expects to continue light duties this week, Buckingham Palace said on Sunday.

“The queen has today tested positive for COVID,” the Palace said. “Her Majesty is experiencing mild cold like symptoms but expects to continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week.”

“She will continue to receive medical attention and will follow all appropriate guidelines,” the Palace said.

Charles, 73, the heir to the throne, earlier this month pulled out of an event after contracting coronavirus for a second time. A palace source said he had met the queen just days before.

The health of the queen, the world’s oldest and longest-reigning monarch, has been in the spotlight since she spent a night in hospital last October for an unspecified ailment and then was advised by her doctors to rest.

Elizabeth on Wednesday quipped to members of the royal household that she could not move much as she carried out her first in-person engagement since Charles tested positive.
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Has U.S. President Joe Biden been boxing in his Russian counterpart, making it awkward for Vladimir Putin to order a “shock and awe” invasion of Ukraine?

The Biden administration’s tactic of publicly disclosing real-time intelligence has raised the eyebrows of some spies, who favor more reticence, but it is drawing praise from information-war specialists and Western diplomats.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said on Twitter that he thinks the administration may have surprised the Kremlin with how it has competed in an information war that is shaping public perceptions and, possibly, decision-making and even real war planning.

After Biden told reporters in Washington that he is now convinced Putin has chosen to invade Ukraine, including striking at Kyiv, McFaul and other former and current diplomats speculated about whether Biden was carefully hemming in his Russian adversary.

“Biden has given Putin a brilliant off-ramp,” McFaul tweeted. “By announcing to the world that Putin plans to invade, Putin can now embarrass Biden by not invading and blaming the West for beating the ‘drums of war.’ Take it Mr. Putin. Embarrass my president!  (Small price to pay for avoiding war),” he added.

Earlier this month, U.S. and British officials pointed to Feb. 15 or 16 as the likely start date for a Russian invasion of Ukraine. When the invasion did not happen, Kremlin officials quickly ridiculed Washington for its prediction.

“February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day when Western war propaganda failed,” said Maria Zakharova, the combative Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson, on social media.

“They were humiliated and defeated without a single shot,” she added.

“I’d like to ask,” she later wrote, “if US and British sources of disinformation … could publish the schedule of our upcoming invasions for the year. I’d like to plan my holidays.”

The Kremlin has consistently denied it is planning to invade Ukraine and has accused Western leaders of whipping up “hysteria.” Kremlin-directed media have been telling their domestic Russian audiences that NATO has been fomenting alarmism and is working to shape a false pretext to attack Russia.

Other Western diplomats say the mockery is worth enduring, if it prevents Putin from ordering a re-invasion of Ukraine or disrupts his planning.

“I think Biden and his team have been making a good job of it and waging an information war that must have taken the Kremlin by surprise,” a senior U.N. diplomat told VOA on condition of anonymity.

“It has been fascinating to watch the back and forth: Washington has been forward-leaning and anticipatory and been quick to counter Russian disinformation. And I suspect they have upset some Kremlin plans by highlighting them early,” he added.

He cited the quick calling out of Russia after the Kremlin last week said it was withdrawing forces from the Ukraine’s borders. U.S. and NATO officials were aided in labeling the pullback a ruse by independent commercial satellite surveillance and Earth observation companies, like Maxar, that have been plotting Russia’s military buildup and sharing images with the international media.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, though, has been critical of Washington’s information tactics, and earlier last week he distanced himself from American and British warnings of an imminent invasion, straining Kyiv’s relations with Washington. He also half-mocked Western predictions, saying in a national broadcast: “We are told that the Russian invasion will begin on February 16. I therefore declare that this day will be the day of unity in Ukraine.”

That was not the first time Zelenskyy differed with NATO since the crisis began. Occasionally the rift has appeared awkward, considering that Kyiv depends on the Western alliance for military aid and diplomatic support, and has called for new and punitive Western sanctions to be imposed now, and not after an invasion, analysts say.  

Zelenskyy returned to the West’s ominous predictions at the Munich Security Conference, complaining to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris about the frequency of the grave warnings, saying the tactic is damaging Ukraine’s economy and risks demoralizing Ukrainians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is unapologetic about how Washington is competing with Russia in the information war.

He told reporters Sunday, “We’re very confident in the information that we have.  And as I said at the United Nations Security Council the other day, I recognize that in the past, sometimes we’ve come forward with information that’s turned out to be inaccurate.  We’re very confident in the information we have, and we bring it forward not to start a war, but to prevent a war — a war that’s in no one’s interests.”

Some former and current Western intelligence officials worry about the publicizing of raw real-time intelligence appraisals, saying that if predictions are not borne out then the public will conclude the spies got it wrong, lose faith in them and dismiss the reliability of intelligence, when in fact the disclosure may have prevented something from happening.

American and British intelligence agencies remain under a cloud for their inaccurate assessments of how close Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was to making a nuclear bomb and hiding and developing weapons of mass destruction. Those appraisals were used by Washington and London in part to justify the invasion of Iraq and were cited famously by then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a presentation to the U.N. in February 2003.

Nonetheless, Blinken stands by the intelligence the administration is receiving, saying the scenarios that have been outlined by U.S. intelligence agencies are convincing.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with the National Security Council on Sunday, the White House announced Saturday as it reaffirmed that “Russia could launch an attack against Ukraine at any time,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Psaki said Biden was briefed Saturday on Vice President Kamala Harris’ meetings at the Munich Security Conference. Harris met Saturday with Western leaders, among them NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over military drills Saturday as shelling escalated in eastern Ukraine.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported more than 1,500 cease-fire violations in east Ukraine on Saturday, the highest single-day number this year.

Russia’s defense ministry said Saturday’s exercises, which the Kremlin says were previously planned to check readiness, involved practice submarine launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, with Putin and the president of Belarus looking on.

‘Poised to strike’

Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the more than 150,000 Russian troops that have massed at Ukraine’s border “are now poised to strike,” as he spoke with reporters in Lithuania, where Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda called for an increased U.S. troop presence.

At the Munich Security Conference, Harris warned that Russia’s plan was already unfolding.

“There is a playbook of Russian aggression, and this playbook is too familiar to us all. Russia will plead ignorance and innocence. It will create false pretext for invasion, and it will amass troops and fire power in plain sight,” said Harris, who added a Russian invasion would trigger sanctions that include far-reaching financial sanctions and export controls.

She also said the U.S. would bolster NATO’s eastern flank as another deterrent to a Russian military invasion.

Speaking at the conference earlier Saturday, Stoltenberg said Russia, in threatening Ukraine, “will get more NATO” instead of the smaller NATO footprint Putin says he is seeking.

Stoltenberg also said he has sent a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calling for a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council to avert a conflict in Ukraine. Stoltenberg told the Munich Security Conference that there is no evidence that Russia has withdrawn any of its troops from Ukraine’s borders and there is a real risk of conflict.

“We are extremely concerned because we see that they continue to build up, they continue to prepare. And we have never in Europe seen since the end of the Cold War, such a large concentration of combat-ready troops,” Stoltenberg said.

Ukraine’s Zelenskiy met on the sidelines with Harris, as he sought to rally more military and financial support from Western allies.

As he addressed the audience of high-level officials and security experts from around the world, Zelenskiy pushed back against U.S. predictions of an imminent Russian invasion, declaring “We do not think we need to panic,” Agence France-Presse reported.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, however, told the BBC that evidence points to Russia planning “the biggest war in Europe since 1945.”

Fresh attacks

Ukraine’s military accused separatists in two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine – the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics – of carrying out a new wave of attacks Saturday.

The separatists, who also accused Ukraine’s military of carrying out new attacks Saturday, signed mass military mobilization decrees. The head of one of the territories urged all able-bodied men to take up arms against what he claimed is Kyiv’s aggression. The regions have also begun evacuating some civilians from border areas.

Biden said the move was a result of Russian misinformation, saying that it “defies basic logic” that people in Ukraine would “choose this moment” to engage in combat with more than 150,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders.

Ukraine’s military said two of its soldiers were killed Saturday in shelling from pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to AFP, after initially reporting one fatality.

Should Moscow invade Ukraine, it will be critical for the United States to convince the world that Russia is the aggressor and that it did so unprovoked, Max Bergmann, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told VOA.

“This was a master class from the Biden administration in how to win an information war with Russia,” Bergmann said. “The Biden administration has read the Kremlin playbook and they are exposing Russian disinformation as they come across it.”

However, Biden is still offering Putin a de-escalation off-ramp, saying that diplomacy is “always a possibility.” He said, based on the “significant intelligence capability” of the U.S., he has reason to believe Putin will still consider the diplomatic option.

Diplomatic channels

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to meet in person with Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, on Feb. 24.

In the event of an invasion, Western allies must resolve differences over the timing and severity of sanctions against Moscow. For example, the initial package likely will not include banning Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, system used by 200 countries for international financial transfers.

“We have other severe measures we can take that our allies and partners are ready to take in lockstep with us, and that don’t have the same spillover effects,” said Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics, who spoke to reporters during Friday’s White House briefing. “But we always will monitor these options and we’ll revise our judgments as time goes on.”

Singh said U.S. measures are not designed to reduce Russia’s ability to supply energy to the world but that it would be “a strategic mistake” for Putin to retaliate against Western sanctions by cutting back energy supplies to Europe.

“Two-thirds of Russia’s exports and half of its budget revenues come from oil and gas, and if Putin were to weaponize his energy supply, it will only accelerate the diversification of the world away from Russian energy consumption,” he said.

Singh added Moscow would be unable to replace technology imports from other countries, including China, if Washington also were to impose tough export controls that it has threatened.

Russian officials have denied they plan to invade Ukraine, but diplomatic talks with Western officials have led to a standoff. Russia has demanded that the U.S. and its allies reject Ukraine’s bid for membership in NATO.

The West has rejected that as a nonstarter but has said it is willing to negotiate with Moscow over missile deployment and troop exercises in Eastern European countries closest to Russia.

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

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Saturday that “now is the moment of truth” to determine whether Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers can be salvaged, and the Iranian leadership needs to make a choice.

Iran’s foreign minister, though, said that it’s up to Western countries to show flexibility and “the ball is now in their court.”

Negotiators from Iran and the remaining parties to the agreement — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — are working in Vienna to restore life to the accord, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

The United States has participated indirectly in the talks because it withdrew from the deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden has signaled that he wants to rejoin the deal.

Under Trump, the U.S. reimposed heavy sanctions on Iran. Tehran has responded by increasing the purity and amounts of uranium it enriches and stockpiles, in breach of the accord — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

Scholz told participants at the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday that Iran nuclear talks have come a long way over the past 10 months and “all elements for a conclusion of the negotiations are on the table.” But he also criticized Iran for stepping up its enrichment and restricting inspections by monitors from the U.N. nuclear agency.

“We now have the opportunity to reach an agreement that makes it possible for sanctions to be lifted,” Scholz said. “At the same time, it’s the case that if we don’t succeed very quickly in this, the negotiations threaten to fail.”

“The Iranian leadership now has a choice,” the chancellor said. “Now is the moment of truth.”

Speaking a few hours later at the same Munich conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said that “we are ready to achieve a good deal at the earliest possible time — if the other side makes the needed political decision.”

Amirabdollahian insisted that “we are in a hurry” to reach a deal. But he made clear that the issue of guarantees from the U.S. about a restored deal’s future remains a sticking point.

“We have never been this close to a deal,” he said. “It is the Western side that has to present its initiatives and show flexibility … they have not shown any flexibility so far.”

Iran so far has declined to talk directly to the United States. The foreign minister suggested that direct talks would only make sense if the U.S. lifts some sanctions or releases some Iranian assets frozen in foreign banks.

Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful. But the country’s steps away from its obligations under the 2015 accord have alarmed its archenemy Israel and world powers.

Tehran has since started enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short technical step from the 90% needed to make an atomic bomb, and spinning far more advanced centrifuges than those permitted under the deal. 
…

Rescue teams in Greece searched a burning ferry Saturday for 12 people believed to be missing after it caught fire in the Ionian Sea while enroute to Italy. 

After working all night to try to extinguish the blaze that broke out Friday, firefighting vessels surrounded the Euroferry Olympia, which was carrying more than 290 passengers and crew. The Greek coast guard and other boats evacuated about 280 of them to Corfu. 

Passengers described a frightening evacuation from the ship. 

“When we got into the boats, I said ‘I escaped hell,'” truck driver Dimitris Karaolanidis told The Associated Press. 

Photos taken Saturday morning showed thick smoke hanging over the ship, which was transporting 153 trucks and 32 cars. 

A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told The Associated Press on Saturday afternoon that none of the 12 missing people had been found, although she said only small pockets of fire were active in the ferry.  

A Greek prosecutor on the island of Corfu has ordered an investigation into the cause of the fire, which broke out three hours after the ferry left the port of Igoumenitsa, on the mainland in northwest Greece across from Corfu, for the Italian port of Brindisi.  

The Italy-based company that operated the ferry said the fire started in a hold where vehicles were parked. 

The ship’s captain and two engineers were arrested Friday but were released the same day, authorities said. 

Passengers described a dramatic rescue. 

“We heard the alarm, we thought it was some kind of drill. But we saw through the portholes that people were running,” Karaolanidis told the AP. “You can’t think something at the time (other than) your family. … When I hit the deck, I saw smoke and children. Fortunately, they (the crew) acted quickly.”  

“The moments were tragic. It was difficult, guys. Very difficult,” said another truck driver, Dimitris Karavarnitis. “Thankfully the guys responded quickly and … we will return to our families. That’s what matters.”  

On Friday, authorities increased the number of missing from 11 to 12 after discovering that one person from the ferry was not listed on the passenger manifest. 

The other missing passengers were believed to be mostly from Bulgaria. Officials said the people rescued included citizens of Albania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Italy, and Lithuania.  
…

Crews cleared fallen trees and worked to restore power to about 400,000 people in Britain as Western Europe cleaned up Saturday after one of the most damaging storms in years. 

At least 12 people were killed, many by falling trees, in Ireland, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Named Storm Eunice by the British and Irish weather services, and Storm Zeynep in Germany, Friday’s storm was the second to hit the region in a week.  

Winds toppled the spire of a church in Wells, southwest England, ripped off parts of the domed roof of London’s O2 Arena and left a trail of felled trees and damaged buildings across several countries. 

A gust of 196 kilometers per hour (122 miles per hour) was provisionally recorded Friday on the Isle of Wight. If confirmed, it would be the highest ever in England. Hurricane-force winds begin at 74 mph. 

The Met Office weather service said more strong winds would hit the southern coasts of England and Wales on Saturday, with the potential for further damage, while snow and ice could cause disruption further north. 

The U.K.’s National Rail association said “routes across most of Great Britain” remained affected by the weather on Saturday morning, with disruptions to continue throughout the day. 

Transport in Germany also remained severely disrupted, with railway operator Deutsche Bahn saying no long-distance trains would operate north of Dortmund, Hannover and Berlin until at least 6 p.m. 

The storm left at least three people dead in Germany, including a man who fell as he was trying to repair a damaged roof and a driver whose car crashed into a tree that had fallen across a road. 

In the northwestern city of Bremen, a 55-meter (180-foot) crane fell onto an unfinished office building. 

A cleanup also was underway in the Netherlands, where four people died as Eunice tore across the country on Friday. 

Train services, halted during the storm, remained disrupted with the company responsible for rail infrastructure saying that it was working hard to repair extensive damage to tracks and overhead power lines. 

Engineers were expected to assess damage to the roof of a stadium in The Hague where professional soccer team ADO The Hague plays its home matches after parts of the structure were blown loose. 

Across the country, teams were shifting fallen trees and beginning to repair roofs damaged by the storm. 
…

As Ukraine braces for a possible attack from Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday he wanted to convene a meeting of world powers to secure new security guarantees for his country as the current global system is no longer fit for the purpose.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Zelenskiy also called on NATO members to be honest about whether they wanted Ukraine to join the alliance or not.

The 44-year-old leader received a standing ovation before starting remarks in which he called on the world to learn the “terrible lessons from history” and chided the international community for what he said was the appeasing of Russia.

“The rules that the world agreed on decades ago no longer work. They do not keep up with new threats. Not effective for overcoming them. This is a cough syrup when you need a coronavirus vaccine,” he said.

“The security system is slow. It crashes again. Because of selfishness, self-confidence, irresponsibility of states at the global level,” he said.

Calling the global security architecture “almost broken,” Zelenskiy said he wanted to convene a meeting of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which includes Russia, and Germany and Turkey to provide new guarantees for Ukraine.

Zelenskiy said if the West was so sure that Russia was about to attack, it should impose sanctions on Moscow now, rather than threatening to impose them after an attack. Sanctions would be of no use once bombs started raining down on Ukraine, he said.

‘Attempts at appeasement’

“What do attempts at appeasement lead to?” Zelenskiy said, going on to refer to a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the same conference in 2007.

“Fifteen years ago, it was here that Russia announced its intention to challenge global security. What did the world say? Reconciliation. Result? At least the annexation of Crimea and aggression against my state,” he said.

The United States has warned that Russia could be poised to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine after massing tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s borders in recent weeks. Ukraine has played down the threat of a huge offensive but said it was ready for any possibility.

Russia has denied planning any sort of attack but has demanded its own security guarantees from NATO and the United States, which include a permanent bar on Ukraine joining NATO.

Zelenskiy said countries should be transparent about whether they wanted Ukraine, a country of 41 million on the European Union’s eastern borders, to join the EU and NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“If not all members of the alliance want to see us or all members of the alliance do not want to see us, be honest,” he said. “Open doors are good, but we need open answers, not closed questions for years.”
…

Shelling and mortar fire picked up tempo overnight Saturday in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, with the heavy bombardment spurring fears a major military clash is in the offing.

The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic Saturday issued a mobilization order for able-bodied males to present themselves to “military commissars” to sign up with local militias. Men aged between 18 and 55 also are being barred from leaving the pro-Russian self-styled republic on the eastern edge of Ukraine.

And in another alarming development, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Saturday calling up army reservists for training and drills. Some analysts pointed out this is an annual event, but that it is normally conducted in April, not February. Yevhen Fedchenko, an Ukrainian academic who studies disinformation, says, “it’s one more tool to sow uncertainty.”

Speaking at the Munich security conference Saturday, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said a Russian plan already was unfolding. “There is a playbook of Russian aggression, and this playbook is too familiar to us all. Russia will plead ignorance and innocence. It will create false pretext for invasion, and it will amass troops and firepower in plain sight,” she told leading politicians and security ministers gathered for the annual meeting in the Bavarian capital.

Later at the conference, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the shock of any invasion of Ukraine by Russia would “echo around the world.” The British leader warned “the omens are grim.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported on Saturday more violations of an often-broken ceasefire agreed to in 2015 in the Donbas than a previous high on February 12.

Parts of the Donbas, which also includes the self-proclaimed republic of Luhansk, have been under de facto Russian occupation for the past eight years.

The OSCE reported more violations around Luhansk than Donetsk during the past two days, but even so, longtime observers say the shelling in and around Donetsk is the most intense they have seen in years.

On Friday the pro-Moscow separatist leaders, who are seen by Ukraine as puppets of the Kremlin, ordered a mass evacuation of civilians in posted videos, saying the Ukrainian army was planning an attack — an accusation vehemently denied by Kyiv.

According to the metadata of the videos, analyzed by experts, the broadcasts were prerecorded two days before, suggesting the evacuation, renewed shelling and other events, including an inexplicable car bombing, in Donbas are being orchestrated by the Kremlin, say Ukrainian officials, Western leaders and independent observers.

They accuse Moscow of building up a pretext for launching an offensive on Ukraine. Kremlin officials deny this, with Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russian diplomats accusing Western leaders of “hysteria” and “alarmism.” Saturday, Russian authorities claimed a shell, allegedly fired by Ukraine, exploded on Russian territory near a house in the village of Mityakinskaya in the southern Rostov region.

Western intelligence officials say the evacuation and mobilization orders and intensifying artillery and mortar fire, which they blame on the Russian separatists, are consistent with warnings that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made at a midweek presentation to the United Nations Security Council, where he accused Moscow of preparing ‘false flag’ operations that could be blamed on Kyiv but are in fact ordered by the Kremlin and conducted by its own forces or proxies.

Russian President Putin has maintained a drumbeat of accusations against Ukraine, accusing it of genocide against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and backing of armed proxies the same year in the Donbas was justified by the Kremlin on the grounds that it had to protect ethnic Russians. It was the same reason given for invading Georgia in 2008.

A Kremlin critic, Bill Browder, a British-American financier who was once based in Moscow, noted Friday that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tweeted word-for-word this week exactly the same remark he made on the eve of the Georgia invasion blaming the Kremlin’s foes for “provocative actions that have only intensified in the last day.”

However, independent analysts and military strategists are still split on whether what they describe as staged events in the Donbas are a prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, something U.S. President Joe Biden warned about Friday, saying he is now convinced that Putin has decided to invade Ukraine in coming days and that Russian forces will launch an assault on the capital, Kyiv.

“As of this moment, I’m convinced he’s made the decision. We have reason to believe that,” Biden told reporters in Washington. His comments marked the first time the United States has said categorically Putin has made up his mind to invade.

Analyst and longtime Kremlin-watcher Dmitri Trenin of the Moscow Carnegie Center, a think tank, suspects the Kremlin is creating “strategic tension” with its actions in the Donbas along with planned nuclear-force drills Saturday and Sunday in Belarus, a Russian ally.

“Moscow’s objective appears to be coercing Ukraine into talking directly with Donetsk and Luhansk,” he tweeted Saturday, with the goal of intimidating Kyiv into accepting a 7-year-old peace deal, the Minsk Accord, which is highly unpopular in Ukraine and was signed when the Ukrainian army was suffering severe setbacks on the battlefield in Donbas.

Military strategist Edward Luttwak has adjusted his thoughts on the unfolding and dizzying events. Luttwak has been skeptical for weeks that the Kremlin is planning a deeper re-invasion of Ukraine, maintaining Russia didn’t have sufficient forces in place to carry out and sustain such a massive armed endeavor.

But with Western estimates of the Russian forces now deployed on three sides of Ukraine rising from 100,000 to 130,000 in January to 190,000 now, Luttwak tweeted Saturday: “Russia troops could reach 200K enough to control central Kyiv.” He noted, though, that that would mean leaving much of Ukraine in the hands of the decapitated Ukrainian regular forces and insurgents “willing to shoot at vulnerable Russians.”

However, he, too, suggests Putin likely favors using threats to subjugate Ukraine rather than invading.

With the crisis worsening rapidly, Britain Friday ordered its ambassador and the few remaining British diplomats in Kyiv to join the bulk of the staff who were relocated earlier in the month to Lviv in western Ukraine.

The Institute for the Study of War, a security think tank based in Washington, D.C., warns that Russia “will likely attack Ukraine before February 21, 2022. In its latest assessment the institute says: “The Kremlin has deployed sufficient military forces and set informational conditions to conduct offensive operations including limited incursions into unoccupied Ukraine, a comprehensive air and missile campaign, and large-scale mechanized drives on Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities.”
…

President Joe Biden says he is “convinced” that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, but that diplomacy is still on the table until that happens.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
…

China’s deepening ties with Russia will come with heavy geopolitical and economic consequences should the Ukraine crisis escalate, analysts say.

While the two powers have recently intensified their so-called comprehensive strategic partnership, Beijing has not offered its full support for Moscow’s military encirclement of its neighbor.

And there have been signs Beijing is worried that a Russia-Ukraine confrontation might not be in China’s national interest while its relationship with the West is deteriorating and its economy is slowing down.

The country called again Friday for a political resolution of the crisis. “Efforts should be made on the basis of the Minsk-2 agreement to properly treat the reasonable security concerns of all sides including Russia through dialogue and negotiation,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

Debate on response

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Beijing is weighing how much it will support Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. According to people with knowledge of the matter, the report said, China’s top leaders have debated how to respond to the crisis without hurting China’s own interests.

“I can’t see how China could support Russia in any sort of meaningful way and not do rather significant damage to the U.S.-China relationship,” said Michael Hunzeker, an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He spoke to VOA in a telephone interview.

The U.S. has recently strongly criticized China’s support for Russia.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan accused China of giving a “wink and a nod” to a Russian invasion of Ukraine and said, “I believe that China will ultimately come to suffer consequences as a result of that in the eyes of the rest of the world, most notably in the eyes of our European partners and allies.”

Dustin Walker, a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA he believed that Europe would see China’s support for Putin’s brinksmanship on Ukraine as further evidence that China is a systemic rival, leading the region to “rethink its relationship with China.”

Testing ties

A possible Russian-Ukrainian confrontation would also test the relationship between Beijing and Moscow. If China, fearing repercussions for its own economy, were to comply with Western sanctions against Russia, Walker noted, it would be seen by Moscow as an unreliable partner.

Walker pointed out that in the joint statement issued after Xi and Putin met at the Beijing Olympics, China explicitly opposed NATO enlargement for the first time, but didn’t mention Ukraine.

That “has to raise the question whether Putin asked for something that he didn’t get from China,” Walker said.

Experts also note that China did not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, as it places fighting against separatism at the heart of its national security.

In Beijing’s diplomatic parlance, China and Russia maintain a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.” Russia remains the first and only major country to establish this type of partnership with China, said Craig Singleton, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

With China’s economy rapidly cooling, Xi will be focused, at least for the foreseeable future, on maintaining economic stability, which is something that Putin may or may not be inclined to respect as he pursues his interests in Ukraine, Singleton said in an email exchange with VOA. “China and Russia will find it incredibly difficult to synchronize their strategies,” he wrote.

War undermines stability

China also has important financial ties with Ukraine. It is Kyiv’s largest trading partner, and the two countries have had a strategic partnership since 2011. Ukraine joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure plan, even before Russia did.

While China is also the EU’s largest trading partner, the relationship is believed to be at its lowest point in decades. When Beijing began trying to sanction EU member state Lithuania over its policies toward Taiwan, the EU rallied to Vilnius’ defense, suing China for coercive trade practices at the World Trade Organization.

China exports almost 10 times as much to the European Union and Britain as it does to Russia, noted Singleton in a recent article published by Foreign Policy. He said Xi, in recent months, has personally stepped in to try to soothe relations with Europe because China needs enhanced ties to help it weather the current economic storm.

Some analysts believe that an extended showdown with Moscow over Ukraine could distract the United States from its vaunted “pivot to Asia,” leaving China more space to expand its influence in the region.

Hunzeker, the George Mason University professor, acknowledged that such a development would be advantageous to China. But, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to play into that sort of mistake.”
…

Eight years after an uprising in Ukraine that led to the fall of the Russian-backed government, activists gather to mark that victory, saying they are now preparing for what may be their country’s next great struggle. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Kyiv.

Camera: Yan Boechat.
…

The military government of Mali says France’s decision to withdraw troops is a violation of bilateral accords.  At the same time, the government says it wants French forces to leave Mali immediately.

During an address from Elysee Palace Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the withdrawal of French and European forces from Mali would take between four and six months.

But Mali’s military government has now asked that forces with Operation Barkhane and the Takuba Task Force depart immediately. 

Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, a spokesperson for Mali’s military government, read the government’s statement on Mali’s state television station ORTM.

Maiga called France’s move a “unilateral decision,” similar to decisions that France announced last June suspending joint operations with the Malian army and ending Operation Barkhane.

These decisions, he said, were made without consultation with the Malian side and constitute flagrant violations of French-Malian agreements.

Maiga said that in view of these repeated breaches of the defense agreements, the government asks the French authorities to withdraw, without delay, Barkhane and Takuba forces from national territory, under the supervision of Malian authorities.

The French first intervened in Mali in 2013, in Operation Serval, which was aimed at taking back control of northern Mali from Islamists. Operation Serval was replaced by anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane.

The Takuba task force is a French-led European military operation of about 800 troops that was deployed in 2020. There are around 2,400 French troops currently in Mali.

Tensions between the French and Malian governments have been rising for months. France has accused Mali of working with Russian mercenaries, and Mali expelled the French ambassador in January after France’s foreign minister called Mali’s government “illegitimate.”

Mali suffered military coups in 2020 and 2021 and has been suspended from the African Union.
…

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday of Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, that it is “high time to seriously de-escalate.” 

“I still think it will not happen,” he told Western leaders gathered in Germany for the Munich Security Conference about a possible Russian invasion of its southwestern neighbor. “But if it did, it would be catastrophic.” 

Guterres has repeatedly called for de-escalation, diplomacy and dialogue, warning that the price of armed conflict in human suffering, destruction and damage to European and global security is too high to even contemplate. 

He said that he is often asked if the world is experiencing a new Cold War. 

“My answer is that the threat to global security now is more complex and probably higher than at that time,” the U.N. chief said, referring to the period from the end of World War II until the Soviet Union’s break up in 1991. 

He noted that during the Cold War, there were mechanisms such as back channels to prevent crises. 

“Today, many of those systems no longer exist and most of the people trained to use them are no longer here with us,” he noted. “So, miscommunication and miscalculation can make a minor incident between powers escalate out of control, causing incalculable harm.” 

The United States and some Western allies say Moscow has amassed more than 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders. Russia dismisses claims it is planning an imminent invasion as Western hysteria. 

The U.N. chief reminded leaders of their commitments under the organization’s charter to settle disputes by peaceful means and not to use force, or the threat of it, against another state. 

“I urge all parties to be extremely careful with their rhetoric,” he added. “Public statements should aim to reduce tensions, not inflame them.” 

Guterres added that geopolitical divides are rarely solved, but “they can and must be managed.” 

Humanitarian operations continue in eastern Ukraine and the United Nation’s local and international staff and their dependents remain, despite the decision of several countries to evacuate their nationals.  

The U.N. says there are 2.9 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection due to the eight-year-old conflict in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The organization has appealed for $190 million this year to reach 1.8 million of the most vulnerable people with assistance. 
…

Western leaders and Russia maintained a withering war of words Friday in the weeks-long standoff over Ukraine and amid Kremlin threats to retaliate militarily unless NATO agrees to withdraw the small level of forces it has stationed in the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe, now members of the Western alliance.  

A leader of the Russia-backed separatists in Donbas called Friday for civilians to evacuate from Donetsk to Russia.

Many of the sharpest exchanges focused on a shelling Thursday in eastern Ukraine that damaged a kindergarten and injured five civilians in the small town of Stanytsia Luhanska in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in Donbas.

Separatists in the Luhansk region attempted to blame the Ukrainian government for the shelling, adding that rebel forces returned fire, according to the Associated Press. However, Ukraine disputed the claim, saying Russia-backed separatists had shelled its forces, but they didn’t fire back. The Ukrainian military command said the shelling wounded two teachers and cut power to half the town, according to media reports.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a visit to Poland Friday that an invasion of Ukraine could see tens of thousands of war refugees fleeing to Poland “trying to save themselves and their families from the scourge of war.”  

He said the U.S. is continuing to provide military aid to Ukraine and is boosting the military capability of NATO’s Central European states. “It is ironic that what Mr. Putin did not want to see happen was a stronger NATO on his flank — and that’s exactly what he will see going forward.” 

Poland’s defense minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, welcomed at a joint press conference in Warsaw the Biden administration’s decision to provide 250 M1-A1 Abrams tanks to Poland.

He rebuked Russia for revanchism, saying the “best response” is “not appeasement from the side of the free world, but deterrence.”

Ukraine and the Western allies blame Moscow-backed separatists in the disputed Donbas region for additional artillery and mortar salvos, as well as the strike on the kindergarten. They say the salvos signal Moscow’s intentions to launch a major attack, possibly in the next few days.

False-flag accusations

Citing the shelling, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused Russia of orchestrating “false flag” attacks in eastern Ukraine and said Moscow was behind the shelling. He described the situation as “very grim.” 

The Ukrainian military said separatists opened fire on more than 10 settlements Thursday, using heavy artillery, mortars and a tank. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has dubbed the military action a “big provocation.”

Meanwhile, Russia and its armed proxies in Donbas say Ukrainian forces are responsible for Thursday’s shelling across a cease-fire line that has separated the rival forces since 2015, prompting Western officials to warn the Kremlin is preparing an excuse to invade Ukraine. 

The Moscow-backed separatists and Ukrainian authorities again made competing claims over three further salvos of artillery and mortar fire Friday, just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the U.N. Security Council that Russia is planning “a fake, even a real, attack.”

“Russia may describe this event as ethnic cleansing or a genocide. This could be a violent event that Russia will bring on Ukraine or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government,” he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed reports of a planned Russian invasion but said the situation in eastern Ukraine is “escalating.” He told reporters, “We have repeatedly warned that the excessive concentration of Ukrainian armed forces in the immediate vicinity of the line of demarcation, coupled with possible provocations [by Ukraine], could pose a terrible danger. Now we see that these provocations are taking place.”

A flurry of meetings between Western leaders began Friday, with U.S. President Joe Biden hosting a call involving, among others, the leaders of Ukraine’s neighbor Poland, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, the European Union and NATO. 

Harris in Munich

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Munich for a summit and two days of talks with global leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Zelenskiy.

“I will join other world leaders to underscore our commitments to our allies and partners and demonstrate our unity in the face of Russian aggression on Ukraine’s borders,” Harris tweeted on arrival in Germany.

Ahead of the meetings, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, accused the Kremlin of trying to set the clock back to the Soviet era and criticized what she described as Russia’s “Cold War demands.”

Russia has been demanding “security guarantees” from the West, including a legally binding assurance that Ukraine will never join NATO. Western leaders have rejected the demand for guarantees, on the grounds that Moscow has no right to dictate to independent nations and is only willing to discuss arms control and confidence-building measures.

The Ukrainian military said Friday it had recorded at least 60 cease-fire violations by pro-Russian separatists in the previous 24 hours, with one soldier injured. It accused Russia’s armed proxies of using weapons banned under a cease-fire agreement struck in 2015 under the Minsk Accord, which was brokered by France and Germany.  

Kyiv also says pro-Russian forces have used small drones to drop explosives on Ukrainian positions. It warned Friday that pro-Russian separatist authorities are preparing to evacuate civilians from towns they control, including the city of Donetsk, in preparation for a possible escalation of hostilities.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Gen. Valery Zaluzhniy, Ukraine’s top general, said he had “information from the occupied territories” about an evacuation. He denied his forces have any offensive plans. 

“I officially declare: the armed forces of Ukraine continue to observe the Minsk agreement and the rules of international humanitarian law, and do not plan any offensive operations or the shelling of civilians,” he said.

Separatist fighting

Separatist leaders in Donbas, however, accuse Ukraine of violations and offensive plans, although they concur with Kyiv there has been an uptick in breaches of the cease-fire. 

“The situation has tangibly worsened on the contact line over the past day. The enemy is trying to escalate the conflict on direct orders from the Kyiv military and political leadership,” the militia spokesperson of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, Yan Leshchenko, told reporters. 

Militia leaders in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic also said in a statement there has been a “sharp escalation on the contact line.” 

Fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces has been flaring and simmering, escalating and de-escalating for eight years. Mostly low-level skirmishes are routine and a daily occurrence. But some Ukrainian officials say Thursday’s bombardment was different and more menacing because it involved multiple bombardments coordinated along the 250-kilometer frontline.

Other officials, though, disagree, saying coordinated artillery and mortar has been seen before. 

While both sides say there has been a significant uptick in military activity the past 48 hours, assertions repeated by media outlets, reports from a monitoring team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe don’t altogether confirm that.

On Thursday, the OSCE recorded 189 ceasefire violations, including 128 explosions in the Donetsk region, and in the Luhansk region the mission recorded 402 ceasefire violations, including 188 explosions. 

That was an increase on the previous 24-hour reporting period when the mission recorded 24 violations in Donetsk and 129 in Luhansk. 

Cease-fire violations

But on February 11 the OSCE recorded almost 1,000 cease-fire violations across both Donetsk and Luhansk. 

The OSCE has been monitoring military activity in Donbas since 2016, and its remit doesn’t allow it to apportion blame for cease-fire violations, but most are committed by pro-Moscow separatists, former members of the mission tell VOA.

And last year saw a marked decrease in cease-fire violations with the mission recording 93,902, down from 134,767 in 2020. Sixteen civilians were killed and 75 injured in 2021. The worst year for breaches of the cease-fire was in 2017, when the OSCE reported 401,336 violations. 

The OSCE has reported this week some serious obstacles placed by combatants on the freedom of movement of their monitoring teams. On Wednesday 27 kilometers southwest of Luhansk, monitors were told by separatists to leave the area and were instructed to seek prior authorization before trying to visit again. 

On Wednesday, too, the mission’s freedom of movement was restricted at a heavy weapons storage facility controlled by Ukrainian forces in the Luhansk region and later at a storage site in a separatist controlled area in Donetsk. The OSCE also says its drones have been targeted by GPS signal interference “caused by probable jamming.”

Western allies are fearful Russia might try repeat a tactic it was accused of using in 2008 to provoke a military reaction from Georgia and to trigger the first European war of the 21st century. Pro-Russian volunteer paramilitaries, mainly Chechens, prompted confrontations with the Georgians giving the Kremlin a pretext for intervention to defend the breakaway republics of the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
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