World
Ukraine invasion reshaped global alliances, renewed fears
Nearly a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the battlefield has narrowed and stiff resistance has forced Moscow to scale back its military goals. But the diplomatic consequences of the war still reverberate worldwide.
The fighting has reshaped global alliances, renewed old anxieties and breathed new life into NATO and the bond between Europe and the United States.
The invasion drew Moscow closer to Beijing and the pariah states of Iran and North Korea. It also raised broad questions about sovereignty, security and the use of military power, while intensifying fears about China’s designs on Taiwan.
“The war underscores the interrelationship between diplomacy and the use of force in a way that has not been thought about in quite the same fashion for many, many years,” said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund think tank.
When Russian forces invaded on Feb. 24, it “marked the complete end of the post-Cold War world,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said last month in a speech at Johns Hopkins University. “It has come to light that globalization and interdependence alone cannot serve as a guarantor for peace and development across the globe.”
Also Read: Key moments in a year of war after Russia invaded Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Ukraine is an “integral part” of Russian history that never achieved “real statehood” — a stance that echoes Chinese President Xi Jinping’s position on Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing claims as its own.
Some six months after the invasion of Ukraine, China issued a white paper on Taiwan, saying the island “has been an integral part of China’s territory since ancient times.” The paper said Beijing seeks “peaceful reunification” but “will not renounce the use of force.”
China’s designs on Taiwan date to well before the war in Ukraine, but China stepped up its pressure over the past year or more, including firing ballistic missiles over the island and into Japanese waters in August in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.
If Russia is allowed to succeed in Ukraine, it could further embolden countries like China, with its visions of an international order “that diverge from ours and that we can never accept,” Kishida said.
He pledged to use Japan’s presidency of the G7 this year to strengthen “the unity of like-minded countries” against Russian aggression.
“If we let this unilateral change of the status quo by force go unchallenged, it will happen elsewhere in the world, including Asia,” he said.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be far more complicated than Russia’s attack on Ukraine, said Euan Graham, a Singapore-based expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“Russia's incompetent performance on the battlefield in Ukraine has to give pause to any military or senior political leader in China about an adventure on a much more ambitious scale with Taiwan,” Graham said.
But the fear is real. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen extended the nation’s compulsory military service in a December announcement that referenced the war in Ukraine.
“They’ve drawn the lesson from Ukraine that you need to have a larger military reserve if there is a conflict,” Graham said.
North Korea, which has threatened to preemptively use nuclear weapons in a broad range of scenarios, was already a regional concern. But Russia’s suggestion that it could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine fueled new worries.
South Korea, which is under the protection of the American “nuclear umbrella,” last year expanded exercises with the U.S. military that had been downsized under the Trump administration. South Korea is also seeking stronger assurances that Washington will swiftly use its nuclear capabilities in the face of a North Korean nuclear attack.
North Korea has been strongly supportive of neighboring Russia. Late last year, the U.S. accused Pyongyang of supplying Russia with artillery shells.
Iran has also been helping Russia militarily, providing the bomb-carrying drones Moscow uses to strike power plants and civilian sites throughout Ukraine.
While Western allies have cooperated closely in their responses to the war, a major diplomatic challenge has been to convince much of the rest of the world of the invasion’s significance.
Only a handful of countries in Asia have taken tough action against Moscow, and many abstained from the United Nations resolution condemning the attack.
Just weeks before the invasion, China declared a “no limits” friendship with Russia. It has refused to criticize the war and has drawn closer to Russia, buying more of its oil and gas and helping Moscow to offset Western sanctions.
But there are signs of “complicated fault lines” in the China-Russia relationship, Jude Blanchette, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a call with reporters.
During September talks in Uzbekistan, the Chinese president raised unspecified “concerns” with Putin over the invasion, though at the same time promised “strong support” to Russia’s “core interests.”
“I think if Xi Jinping could snap his fingers, he would like to see the war end but in a way that Russia comes out of this with Putin in power and Russia continuing to be a strong strategic partner,” Blanchette said.
India, which is heavily reliant on Russia for military equipment, also abstained from the U.N. resolution and has continued to purchase Russian oil.
But as regional rival China moves closer to Russia, India has quietly drifted toward the U.S., especially within the four Quad nations that also include Japan and Australia, said Viraj Solanki, a London-based expert with the IISS think tank.
In Europe, the invasion has reinvigorated NATO after a barrage of criticism from Donald Trump during his presidency that led French President Emmanuel Macron to declare the alliance had experienced “brain death.”
NATO member countries and allies have rallied to support Ukraine, with several changing policies that prohibited the export of weapons to countries in conflict. Perhaps most remarkably, Germany shed post-World War II taboos and provided Leopard battle tanks.
The war also prompted Finland and Sweden to seek NATO membership, which most experts think will be approved this year.
NATO last year singled out China for the first time as a strategic challenge, although not a direct adversary. The alliance warned about China’s growing military ambitions, its confrontational rhetoric and its increasingly close ties to Russia.
Beyond NATO, the war has also underscored the importance of the relationship between the U.S. and European Union, which Lesser said has been “absolutely critical” to sanctions and export controls.
China insists that it is the U.S. that started the Ukraine crisis, partially through NATO’s expansion into more Eastern European countries. Beijing has also criticized the alliance for suggesting the war could influence China’s actions in Asia.
“NATO claims to be a regional defense organization, but it keeps breaking through the territory and field, stirring up conflicts, creating tension, exaggerating threats and encouraging confrontation,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin said Thursday.
The war’s long-term effects on global diplomacy are difficult to predict. But Lesser said one thing is certain: It will be “very hard for Russia to recover from the damage to its reputation on many levels.”
A core group of countries such as Syria, North Korea, Iran and Venezuela “may be inclined to stick with Russia,” he said. But in terms of broader diplomacy, Russia’s reputation ”has experienced an enormous blow.”
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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Turkey quake revives debate over nuclear plant being built
A devastating earthquake that toppled buildings across parts of Turkey and neighboring Syria has revived a longstanding debate locally and in neighboring Cyprus about a large nuclear power station being built on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coastline.
The plant’s site in Akkuyu, located some 210 miles (338 kilometers) to the west of the epicenter of the Feb. 6 quake, is being designed to endure powerful tremors and did not sustain any damage or experience powerful ground shaking from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and aftershocks.
But the size of the quake — the deadliest in Turkey’s modern history — sharpened existing concerns about the facility being built on the edge of a major fault line.
Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned company in charge of the project, says the power station is designed to “withstand extreme external influences” from a magnitude 9 earthquake. In nuclear power plant construction, plants are designed to survive shaking that is more extreme than what’s been previously recorded in the area they’re sited.
The possibility of a magnitude 9 earthquake occurring in the vicinity of the Akkuyu reactor “is approximately once every 10,000 years,” Rosatom told The Associated Press via email last week. “That is exactly how the margin of safety concept is being implemented.”
An official with Turkey’s Energy Ministry, when contacted by the AP, said there were no immediate plans to reassess the project. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol. Some activists, however, still say the project — the first nuclear power plant in Turkey — poses a threat.
Nuclear facilities are constructed of heavily reinforced concrete, sized for significant earthquake shaking and far more robust than commercial buildings, said Andrew Whittaker, a professor of civil engineering at the University at Buffalo who is an expert in earthquake engineering and nuclear structures.
The fact that it’s sited off the western end of the East Anatolian Fault, which was linked to last week’s powerful tremor, suggests that the design would have been checked for significant shaking, Whittaker added.
Still, Whittaker said, it would be prudent to reassess seismic hazard calculations in the region for all infrastructure, including the plant.
“There’s no reason to be concerned, but there’s always a reason to be cautious,” he said.
That’s little comfort to activists in Turkey and on both sides of ethnically divided Cyprus. They’ve renewed their calls for the project to be scrapped, saying that the devastating earthquake is clear proof of the great risk posed by a nuclear power plant near seismic fault lines.
In a statement to the AP, the Cyprus Anti-Nuclear platform, a coalition of over 50 Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot environmentalist groups, trade unions and political parties, said it “calls on all political parties, scientific and environmental organizations and the civil society to join efforts and put pressure on the Turkish government to terminate its plans for the Akkuyu nuclear power plant.”
Cypriot European Parliament member Demetris Papadakis asked the European Commission what immediate actions it intends to take to halt the plant because of the dangers posed by building a nuclear power station in a seismic zone so close to Cyprus.
Nuclear power plants worldwide are designed to withstand earthquakes and shut down safely in the event of major earth movement — about 20% of nuclear reactors are operating in areas of significant seismic activity, according to the World Nuclear Association.
For example, Japanese nuclear plants, including the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant, are in regions where earthquakes of up to magnitude 8.5 may be expected, the association said. Stricter safety standards were adopted after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when a tsunami crashed into the Daichi plant, melting three reactors and releasing dangerous levels of radiation. And the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California was designed to safely withstand earthquakes, tsunamis and flooding that could potentially occur in the region too, according to its operator.
Turkish nuclear regulators provided the license for the plant’s construction in Akkuyu in 1976 following eight years of seismic studies to determine the most suitable location, but the project was slowed down after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. Construction of the first reactor started in 2018. Large nuclear power plants have traditionally taken a while to build because of the size, scale and complexity of the infrastructure, and delays associated with first-of-a-kind plants.
According to Rosatom, a study by Turkey’s Office for the Prevention and Elimination of Consequences of Emergency Situations indicates that the site in Akkuyu – some 60 miles (95 kilometers) from Cyprus’ northern coastline – is located in the fifth degree earthquake zone, which is considered the safest region in terms of earthquakes.
The plant design includes an external reinforced concrete wall and internal protective shell made of “prestressed concrete,” with metal cables stretched inside the concrete shell to give additional solidity to the structure, the company said. And the modern reactor design, Russia’s VVER-1200, includes an additional safety feature — a 144 ton steel cone called the “core catcher” that in an emergency, traps and cools any molten radioactive materials, Rosatom added.
The company emphasized that power units with VVER-1200 reactors comply with the post-Fukushima requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
There’s a political dimension to qualms about the plant: Cyprus has accused Turkey of augmenting the Turkish Cypriots’ dependence on it in order to entrench the island’s ethnic division. Turkey has said it would supply the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island with electricity through an undersea cable. A pipeline suspended a couple of hundred meters under the Mediterranean’s surface is already supplying the north with water.
The plant, whose first of four reactors is scheduled to go online later this year, will have a total capacity of 4,800 megawatts of electricity, providing about 10% of Turkey’s electricity needs. According to government figures, if the power plant started operating today, it could singlehandedly provide enough electricity for a city of about 15 million people, such as Istanbul, Rosatom added.
It’s estimated to cost $20 billion. Rosatom has a 99.2% stake in the project, and is contracted to build, maintain, operate and decommission the plant.
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McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Suzan Fraser, in Ankara, Turkey, contributed.
Turmoil in courts on gun laws in wake of justices’ ruling
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment is upending gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books.
The high court's ruling that set new standards for evaluating gun laws left open many questions, experts say, resulting in an increasing number of conflicting decisions as lower court judges struggle to figure out how to apply it.
The Supreme Court’s so-called Bruen decision changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. Judges should no longer consider whether the law serves public interests like enhancing public safety, the justices said.
Under the Supreme Court's new test, the government that wants to uphold a gun restriction must look back into history to show it is consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation."
Courts in recent months have declared unconstitutional federal laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,felony defendants and people who use marijuana. Judges have shot down a federal ban on possessing guns with serial numbers removed and gun restrictions for young adults in Texas and have blocked the enforcement of Delaware's ban on the possession of homemade “ghost guns."
In several instances, judges looking at the same laws have come down on opposite sides on whether they are constitutional in the wake of the conservative Supreme Court majority's ruling. The legal turmoil caused by the first major gun ruling in a decade will likely force the Supreme Court to step in again soon to provide more guidance for judges.
"There’s confusion and disarray in the lower courts because not only are they not reaching the same conclusions, they’re just applying different methods or applying Bruen's method differently," said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine University's law school who focuses on firearms law.
“What it means is that not only are new laws being struck down ... but also laws that have been on the books for over 60 years, 40 years in some cases, those are being struck down — where prior to Bruen — courts were unanimous that those were constitutional," he said.
The legal wrangling is playing out as mass shootings continue to plague the country awash in guns and as law enforcement officials across the U.S. work to combat an uptick in violent crime.
This week, six people were fatally shot at multiple locations in a small town in rural Mississippi and a gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others at Michigan State University before killing himself.
Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, including in California, where 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans. Last year, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The decision opened the door to a wave of legal challenges from gun-rights activists who saw an opportunity to undo laws on everything from age limits to AR-15-style semi-automatic weapons. For gun rights supporters, the Bruen decision was a welcome development that removed what they see as unconstitutional restraints on Second Amendment rights.
“It’s a true reading of what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights tells us,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “It absolutely does provide clarity to the lower courts on how the constitution should be applied when it comes to our fundamental rights."
Gun control groups are raising alarm after a federal appeals court this month said that under the Supreme Court's new standards, the government can’t stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the law “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society." But the judges concluded that the government failed to point to a precursor from early American history that is comparable enough to the modern law. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the government will seek further review of that decision.
Gun control activists have decried the Supreme Court's historical test, but say they remain confident that many gun restrictions will survive challenges. Since the decision, for example, judges have consistently upheld the federal ban on convicted felons from possessing guns.
The Supreme Court noted that cases dealing with “unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach.” And the justices clearly emphasized that the right to bear arms is limited to law-abiding citizens, said Shira Feldman, litigation counsel for Brady, the gun control group.
The Supreme Court's test has raised questions about whether judges are suited to be poring over history and whether it makes sense to judge modern laws based on regulations — or a lack thereof— from the past.
“We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791. Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication,” wrote Mississippi U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Some judges are “really parsing the history very closely and saying ‘these laws aren’t analogous because the historical law worked in a slightly different fashion than the modern law’,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.
Others, he said, "have done a much more flexible inquiry and are trying to say ‘look, what is the purpose of this historical law as best I can understand it?'"
Firearm rights and gun control groups are closely watching many pending cases, including several challenging state laws banning certain semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. Already, some gun laws passed in the wake of the Supreme Court decision have been shot down.
A judge declared multiple portions of New York’s new gun law unconstitutional, including rules that restrict carrying firearms in public parks and places of worship. An appeals court later put that ruling on hold while it considers the case. And the Supreme Court has allowed New York to enforce the law for now.
Some judges have upheld a law banning people under indictment for felonies from buying guns while others have declared it unconstitutional.
A federal judge issued an order barring Delaware from enforcing provisions of a new law outlawing the manufacture and possession of so-called “ghost guns" that don't have serial numbers and can be nearly impossible for law enforcement officials to trace. But another judge rejected a challenge to California's “ghost gun" regulations.
In the California case, U.S. District Judge George Wu, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, appeared to take a dig at how other judges are interpreting the Supreme Court's guidance.
The company that brought the challenge —“and apparently certain other courts" — would like to treat the Supreme Court’s decision “as a ‘word salad,’ choosing an ingredient from one side of the ‘plate’ and an entirely-separate ingredient from the other, until there is nothing left whatsoever other than an entirely-bulletproof and unrestrained Second Amendment,” Wu wrote in his ruling.
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Richer reported from Boston.
Why balloons are now in public eye — and military crosshairs
Wafting across the United States and into the attention of an alarmed national and global public, a giant Chinese balloon has changed Americans' awareness of all the stuff floating in the air and how defense officials watch for it and respond.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that the U.S. is updating its guidelines for monitoring and reacting to unknown aerial objects. That's after the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon transiting the country triggered high-stakes drama, including the U.S. shootdowns of that balloon, and three smaller ones days later.
Biden said Thursday that officials suspect the three subsequent balloons were ordinary ones. That could mean ones used for research, weather, recreational or commercial purposes. Officials have been unable to recover any of the remains of those three balloons, and late Friday the U.S. military announced it had ended the search for the objects that were shot down near Deadhorse, Alaska, and over Lake Huron on Feb. 10 and 12.
In all, the episodes opened the eyes of the public to two realities.
One: China is operating a military-linked aerial surveillance program that has targeted more than 40 countries, according to the Biden administration. China denies it.
Two: There’s a whole lot of other junk floating up there, too.
A look at why there are so many balloons up there — launched for purposes of war, weather, science, business or just goofing around; why they're getting attention now; and how the U.S. is likely to watch for and respond to slow-moving flying objects going forward.
WHAT ARE ALL THOSE BALLOONS DOING UP THERE?
Some are up there for spying or fighting. Humans have hooked bombs to balloons since at least the 1840s, when winds blew some of the balloon-borne bombs launched against Venice back on the Austrian launchers. In the U.S. Civil War, Union and Confederate soldiers floated up over front lines in balloons to assess enemy positions and direct fire.
And when it comes to peacetime uses, the cheapness of balloons makes them a favorite aerial platform for all kinds of uses, serious and idle. That includes everything down to "college fraternities with nothing better to do and $10,000,” joked Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Himes' role on the committee involved him in a congressionally mandated intelligence and military review of the most credible of sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UFOs. That review also drove home to him and other lawmakers ”how much stuff there is floating around, in particular balloons," Himes said.
For the National Weather Service, balloons are the main means of above-ground forecasting. Forecasters launch balloons twice daily from nearly 900 locations around the world, including nearly 100 in the United States.
High-altitude balloons also help scientists peer out into space from near the edges of the Earth's atmosphere. NASA runs a national balloon program office, helping coordinate launches from east Texas and other sites for universities, foreign groups and other research programs. School science classes launch balloons, wildlife watchers launch balloons.
Commercial interests also send balloons up — such as Google's effort to provide internet service via giant balloons.
And $12 gets hobby balloonists — who use balloons for ham radio or just for the pleasure of launching and tracking — balloons capable of getting up to 40,000 feet and higher.
That's roughly around the altitude that the U.S. military says the three smaller balloons were at when U.S. missiles ended their flights.
Most pilots probably wouldn't even be aware of a collision with such a balloon, said Ron Meadows, who produces balloons — with transmitters the size of a popsicle stick — for middle schools and universities to use for science education.
All it “does is report its location and speed,” Meadows said. “It's not a threat to anyone.”
Among hobby balloonists, there are suspicions that a balloon declared missing by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Brigade was one of the ones shot down, as the publication Aviation Week Network first reported. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday the administration was not able to confirm those reports
And it's not just the United States' Mylar, foil and plastic overhead. Wind patterns known as the Westerlies sweep airborne things ranging from Beijing's tailpipe soot and the charred chunks of Siberian forest fires swinging over the Arctic and into the United States. China says its big balloon was a meteorological and research one that got picked up by the Westerlies. The U.S. says the balloon was at least partly maneuverable.
WHY ARE WE JUST NOW SPOTTING ALL THESE BALLOONS?
Short answer: Because we are just now looking for them.
Balloons' rise to global prominence got a lift starting in the past few years. Congress directed the Director of National Intelligence to pull together everything the government has learned about unidentified aerial phenomena. That included creating a Defense Department UAP task force.
Last year, in the first congressional hearing on unidentified airborne objects in a half-century, Scott W. Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, told lawmakers that improved sensors, an increase in drones and other non-military unmanned aerial systems, and yes, “aerial clutter” including random balloons were leading to people noticing more unidentified airborne objects.
That awareness kicked into overdrive this month, after the U.S. military and then the U.S. public spotted the Chinese balloon floating down from the High North. While the U.S. says previous Chinese balloons have entered U.S. territory, this was the first one of them to slowly cross the United States in plain view of the public.
That balloon, and what had been growing official awareness of a Chinese military-linked balloon surveillance campaign that had targeted dozens of countries, led U.S. officials to change radar and other sensor settings, screening more closely for slow-moving objects in the air as well as fast ones.
SIDEWINDER MISSILES: A LONG-TERM BALLOON STRATEGY?
Post big Chinese balloon, U.S. defense officials are expected to keep up broader monitoring so that balloons remain on the radar, but fine-tune the response.
Biden's order to the Air Force to shoot down the three smaller airborne objects with Sidewinder missiles left him fending off Republican accusations he was too trigger-happy. Biden says all four shootdowns were warranted since the balloons could have posed dangers to civilian aircraft. Hobby balloons with payloads of only a few pounds are not covered by many FAA airspace rules.
Biden says the U.S. is developing “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects.
He directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an interagency team to review the procedures.
Russian envoy claims West is determined to destroy Russia
A week before the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s U.N. ambassador claimed that the West is driven by its determination to destroy Russia and declared: “We had no choice other than to defend our country — defend it from you, to defend our identity and our future.”
Western ambassadors shot back, accusing Russia of using a Security Council meeting it called on lessons learned from the failure to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists that began in 2014 to justify what France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere called “the unjustifiable” – Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.
Friday's meeting in the council — the only international venue where Russia regularly faces Ukraine and its Western supporters — put a spotlight on the deep chasm between the warring parties as the conflict moves into its second year with no end in sight, tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, and new military offensives expected.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused Western nations including France and Germany of “holding back” on implementing the Minsk agreements brokered by the two countries to end the conflict between Ukraine and the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk in the country’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east that flared in April 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
“You knew very well that the Minsk process for you is just a smoke screen, so as to rearm the Kyiv regime and to prepare it for war against Russia in the name of your geopolitical interest,” Nebenzia said.
U.S. deputy ambassador Richard Mills accused Russia of failing to implement “a single commitment it made” in the Minsk agreements while the other signatories — France, Germany, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — “sought to implement them in good faith.”
France’s De Riviere said his country and Germany have worked “tirelessly” since 2015 to promote dialogue between parties. “The difficulties encountered in implementing these agreements can never serve as justification or mitigating circumstances for Russia’s choice to end the dialogue with violence,” he stressed.
De Riviere recalled that exactly a year ago, on Feb. 17, 2022, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin reaffirmed to the council that the Minsk agreements were “the only international legal basis” to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, and that rumors of Russian military intervention were unfounded and stemmed from Western paranoia. Four days later, Russia recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and on Feb. 24 it invaded Ukraine.
“The one and only lesson to be learned here is that Russia, by attacking Ukraine, has chosen alone, to put an end to dialogue and negotiation,” De Riviere said. “It took the decision alone to shatter the Minsk agreements, whose main objective, let us remember, was the reintegration of some regions of Donetsk and Luhansk under full Ukrainian sovereignty, in exchange for broad decentralization.”
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward also cited Vershinin’s statement to the council that allegations of a Russian attack were baseless a week before President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, and said the United Kingdom had learned some lessons.
“Russia lied when we warned of its intention to attack Ukraine,” she said. “Russia was planning for war while we called for diplomacy and de-escalation, and Russia continues to choose death and destruction while the world calls for a just peace.”
Russia’s Nebenzia blamed “a criminal policy by the Ukrainian leadership which was goaded by the collective West” for refusing to implement the Minsk agreements.
After a year of war, he told Western members of the Security Council, “Obviously, we will not be able to live in the future the way we did in the past.”
Nebenzia accused the West of “deep Russophobia," and a “determination to destroy my country, using others if possible.” And he claimed it is not interested “in building a European and Euro-Atlantic security system together with Russia” because “for you such a system can only be aimed against Russia.”
“We have no trust left in you and we are not able of believing any promises you make — not as regards a non-expansion of NATO in the east, or your desire not to interfere in our internal affairs, or your determination to live in peace,” Nebenzia said.
“You have shown that it’s impossible to negotiate with you," he said. “You’ve shown how treacherous you are by creating on our borders a neo-Nazi, neo-nationalist beehive and then stirring it up.”
Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya accused Russia of violating the Minsk agreements, citing as an example the Minsk memorandum of Sept. 19, 2014 ordering all military, militias and mercenaries to leave Ukraine that was never implemented.
“The truth is that Putin has proved once and for all to be impossible to negotiate with,” he said. “Russia’s consistent undermining and final killing of the Minsk agreements make that crystal clear.”
Ukraine urges “healthy forces in Russia, if there are any, to come to their senses and force Putin to implement the demands of the U.N. General Assembly to immediately cease the use of force and to withdraw Russian military forces from Ukraine,” Kyslytsya said. “The dictator should give up and recede into the past.”
Together for Turkiye
The event – Together for Turkiye – was hosted by Agile Minds Corporation in collaboration with
· The Turkish Embassy in Bangladesh
· TIKA (Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency)
· AFAD (an on-the-ground Turkish NGO which will help with logistical and installation aspects)
· The Earth Identity Project - NGO no. 1969 (which will help with local fund collection)
· THRIVE (a US-registered NGO that will, in due course, provide food packages for the earthquake victims)
Read More: Banglalink donates relief items for Turkey earthquake victims
Mishal Karim, Chairman of Agile Minds Corporation, started his speech with a quote by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
He then stated, “Our initiative will attempt to deliver a functional field hospital with all the required elements: 2 Air Domes - each 4,380 Square Feet, with a connecting channel of 459 Square Feet. The 2 Air Domes come with a 30KW Generator required for their operations. Furthermore, we are arranging for the donation of Sleeping bags, Battery-powered Heaters, Power banks, and Tent mats.”
N. Korea threatens unprecedented response to South-US drill
North Korea threatened Friday to take “unprecedently” strong action against its rivals, soon after South Korea announced a series of planned military drills with the United States to hone their joint response to the North’s increasing nuclear threats.
North Korea has halted weapons testing activities since its short-range missile firing on Jan. 1, though it launched more than 70 missiles in 2022 — a record number for a single year. Friday’s warning suggests the North's testing could resume soon over its rivals’ military training, which it views as an invasion rehearsal.
“In case the U.S. and South Korea carry into practice their already announced plan for military drills that (North Korea), with just apprehension and reason, regards as preparations for an aggression war, they will face unprecedentedly persistent and strong counteractions,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
The statement accused South Korea and the United States of planning more than 20 rounds of military drills, including their largest-ever field exercises. It called South Korea and the United States “the arch-criminals deliberately disrupting” regional peace and stability.
“This predicts that the situation in the Korean Peninsula and the region will be again plunged into the grave vortex of escalating tension,” the statement said.
It didn’t specify which U.S.-South Korean military trainings it was referring to. But North Korea has typically slammed all major regular military drills between Washington and Seoul as a practice to launch an invasion and responded with its own weapons tests.
Some experts say North Korea has used various South Korea-U.S. drills as a chance to test and perfect its weapons systems. They say North Korea would eventually aim to use its enlarged nuclear arsenal to win international recognition as a legitimate nuclear state and win sanctions relief and other concessions.
Read more: S. Korea, US to hold simulated drill on North use of nukes
Seoul and Washington have said their training is defensive in nature.
Earlier Friday, Heo Tae-keun, South Korea’s deputy minister of national defense policy, told lawmakers that Seoul and Washington will hold an annual computer-simulated combined training in mid-March. Heo said the 11-day training would reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats, as well as unspecified lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War.
Heo said the two countries will also conduct joint field exercises in mid-March that would be bigger than those held in the past few years.
The allies had downsized or canceled some of their regular drills in recent years to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic and support now-dormant diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Earlier Friday, Seoul officials said that South Korea and the U.S. will hold a one-day tabletop exercise next week at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, to sharpen a response to a potential use of nuclear weapons by North Korea. The exercise, scheduled for Wednesday, would set up possible scenarios where North Korea uses nuclear weapons, explore how to cope with them militarily and formulate crisis management plans, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Seoul's security concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program deepened after Pyongyang last year adopted a law that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, and tested nuclear-capable missiles that put South Korea within striking distance.
In response to the intensifying North Korean threats, South Korea and the United States have expanded their joint military drills and stepped up pressure on the North to abandon its nuclear program. In January, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the U.S. would also increase its deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula.
During their annual meeting in November, Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup agreed to conduct tabletop exercises annually and further strengthen the alliance’s information sharing, joint planning and execution. Austin reiterated a warning that any nuclear attack against the U.S. or its allies would result in the end of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's regime.
Bodies of 18 migrants found in abandoned truck in Bulgaria
Police in Bulgaria on Friday discovered an abandoned truck containing the bodies of 18 migrants, who appeared to have suffocated to death.
The Interior Ministry said that according to initial information, the truck was carrying about 40 migrants and the survivors were taken to nearby hospitals for emergency treatment.
Bulgarian Health Minister Assen Medzhidiev said most of the survivors were in very bad condition.
“They have suffered from lack of oxygen, their clothes are wet, they are freezing, and obviously haven’t eaten for days,” Medzhidiev said.
The truck was found abandoned on a highway near the capital, Sofia. The driver was not there, but police discovered the passengers in a secret compartment below a load of timber.
Authorities did not immediately give the nationalities of the migrants. Bulgarian media reported they all were from Afghanistan.
Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7 million and the poorest member of the European Union, is located on a major route for migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan seeking to enter Europe from Turkey. Very few plan to stay, with most using Bulgaria as a transit corridor on their way westward.
Bulgaria has erected a barbed-wire fence along its 259-kilometer (161-mile) border with Turkey, but with the help of local human traffickers many migrants still manage to enter.
Read more: 37 Bangladeshi migrants feared dead trying to reach Europe: Govt
In Britain in October 2019, police found the bodies of 39 people inside a refrigerated container that had been hauled to England. British police said all the victims, who ranged in age from 15 to 44, came from impoverished villages in Vietnam and were believed to have paid smugglers to take them on a risky journey to better lives abroad.
Police said they died of a combination of a lack of oxygen and overheating in an enclosed space. The truck discovered in the town of Grays, east of London, had arrived in England on a ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium.
Sheriff: Gunman kills 6 including ex-wife in Mississippi
A lone gunman killed six people including his ex-wife and stepfather Friday at multiple locations in a tiny rural community in northern Mississippi, the sheriff said, leaving investigators searching for clues to what motivated the shocking rampage.
Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum opened fire at about 11 a.m. and killed a man in the driver's seat of a pickup truck parked outside a convenience store in Arkabutla, near the Tennessee state line, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance said.
Deputies were working the crime scene when a second 911 call alerted authorities to another shooting a few miles away. After arriving at a home, they found a woman, whom the sheriff identified as Crum's ex-wife, shot dead and her current husband wounded.
Lance said deputies caught up with Crum outside his own home and arrested him. Behind the residence they found two handymen slain by gunfire — one in the road, another in an SUV. Inside a neighboring home, they discovered the bodies of Crum's stepfather and his stepfather's sister.
“Everybody has crime, and from time to time we have violent crime, but certainly nothing of this magnitude,” Lance said in an interview. He added: “Without being able to say what triggered this, that’s the scary part.”
Crum, 52, was jailed without bond on a single charge of capital murder, and Lance said investigators were working to bring additional charges. It was not immediately known if Crum had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
That initial murder charge was for the killing of Chris Eugene Boyce, 59, the man who was shot outside the store. Boyce's brother was in the truck with him at the time and fled, according to the sheriff. Lance added that Crum chased the brother through a wooded area before he escaped unharmed.
“I heard the gunshot from inside my house,” Ethan Cash, who lives near the store, told WREG-TV. “I had just woken up and I look back here, and I see dude walking back here with a shotgun.”
Cash said he went to the scene and found one person who had been shot. He said he checked for a pulse but found none.
Read more: Gunman kills 3, then himself at Michigan State University
In the lobby of the Sheriff’s Office, Norma Washington told The Associated Press that Chris Boyce was her nephew and he was from Florida. She said he and the brother, Doug, who lives in Alaska, had been in town cleaning up a property they inherited from their deceased uncle.
“I lost my brother, and now this one,” Washington said. “This has been something else.”
It was unclear whether Crum knew either of the brothers.
The killings stunned residents of Arkabutla, home to 285 people and located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Memphis, Tennessee. It's the hometown of famed actor James Earl Jones, and nearby Arkabutla Lake is a popular fishing and recreational destination.
An elementary school and a high school in nearby Coldwater both went on lockdown while the suspect was being sought, according to the Coldwater Elementary School Facebook page. A short time later, a second post on the page said the lockdown had been lifted and “all students and staff are safe.”
April Wade, who lives in Arkabutla and grew up in Coldwater, said both are small communities where most people know each other, “but if you don’t, you know somebody who knows somebody.”
Speaking from a local tire store in the afternoon, Wade said she and her husband were aware of the shootings but had not yet heard the names of the suspect or victims.
“I think it’s crazy,” Wade said. “You do not expect something like that to happen so close to home.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said its agents were providing assistance to the sheriff’s department and state investigators. Lance said one of their top priorities was to determine a motive.
Read more: LA mass shooting suspect kills 10 near Lunar New Year fest
The sheriff, who has lived in the area his entire life and served in law enforcement for 25 years, said he could recall no prior problems with Crum.
The shootings are the first mass killing in the U.S. since Jan. 23, which saw the last of six in a three-week period, according to an Associated Press/USA Today database. It defines a mass killing as four or more people dead, not including the perpetrator.
Military finishes recovering Chinese balloon debris
The U.S. has finished efforts to recover the remnants of the large balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, and analysis of the debris so far reinforces conclusions that it was a Chinese spy balloon, U.S. officials said Friday.
Officials said the U.S. believes that Navy, Coast Guard and FBI personnel collected all of the balloon debris off the ocean floor, which included key equipment from the payload that could reveal what information it was able to monitor and collect.
U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that the recovery operations ended Thursday and the final pieces are on their way to the FBI lab in Virginia for analysis. It said air and maritime restrictions off South Carolina have been lifted.
The announcement capped three dramatic weeks that saw U.S. fighter jets shoot down four airborne objects — the large Chinese balloon on Feb. 4 and three much smaller objects about a week later over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron. They are the first known peacetime shootdowns of unauthorized objects in U.S. airspace.
The officials also said the search for the small airborne object that was shot down over Lake Huron has stopped, and nothing has been recovered. U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. The U.S. and Canada have also failed to recover any debris so far from the other two objects which were shot down over the Yukon and northern Alaska.
While the military is confident the balloon shot down off South Carolina was a surveillance airship operated by China, the Biden administration has admitted that the three smaller objects were likely civilian-owned balloons that were targeted during the heightened response, after U.S. homeland defense radars were recalibrated to detect slower moving airborne items.
Due to their small size and the remote areas where they were shot down, officials acknowledge that recovering any debris is difficult and probably unlikely. Those last two searches, however, have not been formally called off.
Much of the Chinese balloon fell into about 50 feet (15 meters) of water, and the Navy was able to collect remnants floating on the surface, and divers and unmanned naval vessels pulled up the rest from the bottom of the ocean. Northern Command said Friday that all of the Navy and Coast Guard ships have left the area.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an interagency team to establish “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects.
Meanwhile, key questions about the Chinese balloon remain unanswered, including what, if any, intelligence it was able to collect as it flew over sensitive military sites in the United States, and whether it was able to transmit anything back to China.
The U.S. tracked it for several days after it left China, said a U.S. official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It appears to have been blown off its initial trajectory, which was toward the U.S. territory of Guam, and ultimately flew over the continental U.S., the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have been previously spotted over Guam, a strategic hub for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It’s unclear how much control China retained over the balloon once it veered from its original trajectory. A second U.S. official said the balloon could have been externally maneuvered or directed to loiter over a specific target, but it’s unclear whether Chinese forces did so.
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Copp reported from aboard a U.S. military aircraft.