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No economic ‘knockout’ yet from West’s sanctions on Russia
One month into the invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden stood in the courtyard of a grand Polish castle and laid out the punishing economic costs that the U.S. and its allies were inflicting on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, declaring that the ruble is almost immediately “reduced to rubble.”
Russia is now the world’s most heavily sanctioned country, according to U.S. officials. The ruble did in fact take a temporary dive and has been slipping again in recent months. But as the war nears its one-year mark, it’s clear the sanctions didn’t pack the instantaneous punch that many had hoped.
The ruble trades around the same 75-per-dollar rate seen in the weeks before the war, though Russia is using capital controls to prop up the currency. And while Russia’s economy did shrink 2.2% in 2022, that was far short of predictions of 15% or more that Biden administration officials had showcased. This year, its economy is projected to outperform the U.K.’s, growing 0.3% while the U.K. faces a 0.6% contraction, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The West’s export controls and financial sanctions appear, instead, to be gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, even as its oil and other energy exports last year enabled it to keep funding a catastrophic war.
Also Read: EU prepares more Russia sanctions; Kremlin readies offensive
Large American multinationals like McDonald’s, Citibank and General Electric fled the country, and some of the country’s richest citizens are forbidden from traveling to the U.S. But if Muscovites can’t get a latte at Starbucks, there’s an imitation waiting for them at the knockoff Stars Coffee as Russia has adapted.
U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo stressed in an interview that the Western sanctions are only one “tool as part of a larger strategy” and that the U.S. continues to adjust its sanctions to outmaneuver Russia’s own shifts in strategy.
“You look at the exodus, the brain drain from Russia,” Adeyemo said. “The Russian economy is far smaller, far more closed and will look more like Venezuela, North Korea and Iran than like a major G-7 economy.”
Still, a December Congressional Research Service report drew an underwhelming conclusion from all the economic parrying, stating that “the sanctions have created challenges for Russia but to date, have not delivered the economic ‘knockout’ that many predicted.”
A closer look at what’s been done so far and what lies ahead:
WHAT’S BEEN SANCTIONED, BY WHOM AND WHY?
Biden last year called the West’s sanctions “a new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage that rivals military might.”
The sanctions, imposed largely through executive orders, are meant to punish Russia and block its access to the international financial systems and bank accounts that it needs to finance its war effort. Export controls also limit its access to computer chips and other products needed to equip a modern military.
Simultaneously, the U.S. and its allies devoted billions to provide Ukraine with weapons, munitions and other military aid and direct financial assistance.
More than 30 countries, including the U.S., EU nations, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan and others — representing more than half the world’s economy — are part of the unprecedented effort. They’ve imposed price caps on Russian oil and diesel, frozen Russian Central Bank funds and restricted access to SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
Beyond targeting key institutions and economic sectors, the West has directly sanctioned roughly 2,000 Russian firms, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions are depriving them of access to their American bank accounts and financial markets, preventing them from doing business with Americans and traveling to the U.S, and more.
Unlike the countrywide sanctions on Iran and North Korea, the restrictions placed on Russia target specific industry sectors, firms and individuals. This approach was designed to keep Russian oil and natural gas flowing, in order to limit disruptions to the wider global economy. But energy exports also enabled Russia to replenish its finances and stave off a sharp decline.
An industrialized country of its size — the 11th largest economy in the world in 2021 — has never faced such financial pressure. Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said that “policy making of this kind is always a shot in dark.”
“You’re looking for hits on the Russian economy, it doesn’t happen overnight,” Fried said, noting that military aid was far more important as Ukrainian troops have performed better in repelling Russian attacks than U.S. and European officials expected.
DIFFERENCES EMERGE
While there has largely been unity among Western governments on the necessity to punish Russia, there have been differences in the lengths to which countries are willing to go.
European and Asian countries are more dependent on Russian oil and natural gas than was the U.S. That made a ban on Russian exports hard for the alliance and forced compromises that took months to forge.
Ultimately, the countries in December settled on a $60 price cap, which some critics said came too late and was too high to significantly hurt Russia.
Experts and administration officials have said putting greater downward pressure on the sale of oil and other energy products from Russia would make sanctions more effective.
To Marshall Billingslea, assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing in the Trump administration, the sanctions were far from bulletproof and easy for the Kremlin to elude.
“Russia has shot holes through the administration’s sanctions,” Billingslea said.
Tom Firestone, a sanctions attorney, said more time is needed for the sanctions to take their course.
“Anyone who expects massive sanctions on Monday, and on Tuesday the Russian regime would fall is not reasonable,” Firestone said. “It’s a large economy that has large reserves. It has a large variety of trading partners. What we’re seeing and what the government is saying is they’re on track and it’s seriously curtailed Russia’s ability to operate.”
Russia is also seeking deeper ties with countries that have refused to join the sanctions effort. Its exports to Brazil, China, India and Turkey have increased by at least 50% since the war started compared with the previous year, according to the Congressional Research Service.
HOW RUSSIA HAS BEEN IMPACTED
“Russia is a different country today than it was just a year ago,” says Adeyemo, “and they’ve given up almost 30 years of progress in terms of their economic policy in the course of one year.”
But on a day-to-day consumer level, it’s a mixed picture.
Shopping centers have a lot of shuttered shops, but Russian entrepreneurs are helping fill the gaps. One Russian startup has created a reasonably convincing analogue of McDonald’s.
Some sectors have suffered greatly from sanctions and the departure of foreign companies.
Russia’s automobile sector, for example, has taken a particular hit. A market analysis from the Association of European Businesses, representing European companies in Russia, said sales of new cars in January were 63% lower than a year earlier.
Still, Russia continues to export some lumber, aluminum and other goods to the U.S., based on the need for the products in America.
Russian goods imported to the U.S. totaled $14.5 billion in 2022. That’s less than 1% of all U.S. imports and about half the $30 billion imported from Russia in 2021.
The Justice Department last year formed a task force to target the ill-gotten proceeds of Russian oligarchs, whom the U.S. sees as enabling Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
As part of that effort, the department has seized two luxury yachts — in Fiji and Spain — alleged to belong to oligarchs. Prosecutors have also brought criminal charges against oligarchs accused of sanctions violations, including Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and close Putin associate. Deripaska remains at large.
WHAT COMES NEXT
The U.S. government is not finished by any means.
Expect the Treasury Department to impose another large round of sanctions on Russia around the invasion’s anniversary on Friday, with a likely focus in 2023 on logistics and manufacturing firms.
Daniel Pickard, a sanctions attorney, said it’s a safe bet that sanctions “will continue to be used with greater frequency with this administration and other administrations. It allows the president to take action without having to consult Congress and can be adjusted with regard to changing events on the ground.”
Ruins of Turkish city of Antakya tell story of a rich past
For nearly two weeks, Mehmet Ismet has lived in the ruins of Antakya’s most beloved historic mosque, a landmark in a now-devastated city that was famed for thousands of years as a meeting place of civilizations and revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.
The 74-year-old took refuge in the Habib Najjar mosque after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed tens of thousands in Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6. He has slept and prayed under the few arches still standing, mourning the future of a city renowned for its past.
The destruction in Antakya was nearly total. Much of the city is rubble. What’s still standing is too unsafe to live in. Almost everyone has left. On Monday, a new 6.4 magnitude earthquake, centered in Hatay province where Antakya is located, struck again, killing people, injuring more than 200 and causing more buildings to collapse, in some cases trapping people.
Also Read: Death toll rises to 8 from new Turkey-Syria earthquake
“It can be rebuilt. But it will not be like the old one,” said Ismet, pointing to the destruction of the mosque, where he sat in the courtyard with a friend by a wood-burning heater. “The old is gone. Only the name remains.”
Antakya, known as Antioch in ancient times, has been repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt over history. But residents fear it will be a long time before it recovers from this one, and that its unique historical identity may never be fully restored. The destruction is so great, and they say the government cares little for this area.
Antioch, built in 300 B.C. by a general of Alexander the Great in the Orontes River valley, was one of the biggest cities of the Greco-Roman world, rivaling Alexandria and Constantinople. Saints Peter and Paul are said to have founded one of the oldest Christian communities here, and it’s here that the word “Christian” first came into use. It later drew Muslim and Christian Crusader invaders.
The melding of faiths is part of the city’s character.
A parable from the Quran kept running through Ismet’s mind. Three messengers from God came to a town, urging its sinful people to follow His word. They refused, and God destroyed the city with a mighty blast. The Quran doesn’t name the town, but many traditions say it was ancient Antioch.
Ismet saw a new lesson from the present-day devastation.
“All religions are here. We were living well. Then politics and hypocrisy prevailed, and disagreement followed,” Ismet said. “People... have disagreed and are robbing each other. God is punishing them.”
Also read: Turkey: Couple saved 296 hours after quake, but children die
The mosque can now be reached only by clambering over heaps of concrete and old stones that were once Antakya’s old city. It traces Antakya’s many histories: The site originally held an ancient pagan temple, then a church, before finally settling as a mosque, built in the 13th century. The mosque was destroyed in an earthquake in 1853 and rebuilt four years later by the Ottomans.
Even the legends surrounding Habib Najjar, the mosque’s unknown namesake, are intertwined with multiple faiths.
Ismet recounted one popular story: Najjar was a resident of Antioch who urged locals to believe God’s messengers referred to in the Quran. They beheaded him, and his head rolled down the mountain to the spot where the mosque now stands. Another version of the legend says Najjar was a believer in Jesus, whose disciples cured his son of leprosy, and was killed for promoting the new Christian faith.
Modern Antakya was already a shadow of its ancient self.
In recent years, it witnessed steep economic decline and growing emigration to Europe and the Gulf. Tension had been growing between the shrinking local population, which included Christian and Alevi communities, and a growing Syrian population that fled its country’s civil war.
Some city residents complain of neglect from a central government busy with helping other provinces where it has a stronger voting base. With little evidence, locals accused Syrian refugees of stealing from stores and the government of downplaying the death toll. Many worry more people could leave if Antakya is not rebuilt quickly.
In the face of rising criticism from several quake-hit cities, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials have recognized delays in the response. No one addressed Antakya’s woes in particular.
“Maybe in one month, we will start the renovation or organization,” Yahya Coskun, deputy director general of Turkey’s museums and cultural heritage, said about the destruction to the city’s landmarks.
“Antakya’s destruction is a loss to humanity,” said Jan Estefan, a silversmith and one of the city’s few remaining Christians. “We still want to live here. We have no intention of leaving.”
Antakya’s Greek Orthodox Church was destroyed. The church, which was the seat of the Greek Orthodox patriarch up until the 14th century, was leveled in an 1872 earthquake and rebuilt.
“History has once again been wiped out,” said Fadi Hurigil, chairman of the board of directors of Antakya Greek Orthodox Church Foundation.
Old mosques were cut off by mountains of rubble. The old bazaar lay in ruins. Crushed buildings line Kurtulus Street, said to have been the world’s first illuminated street when it was lit with torches at night in Roman times. Parts of the archaeological museum have been damaged.
Outside the city center, Mount Starius protected one of Christianity’s earliest churches — St. Pierre — which is built in a cave in the mountain and has sections dating to the 4th century. A set of stairs leading to it was damaged.
There were cracks in the walls of the Synagogue of Antakya, home to the area’s 2,500-year-old Jewish community. The president of the city’s Jewish community and his wife didn’t survive. About a dozen Jewish residents and the synagogue’s Torah scrolls were temporarily relocated to Istanbul, said Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States.
Chitrik said it will hard for the small, elderly community, whittled down by years of emigration, to rebuild. “However, I am certain that it will come back.”
Many residents seem to have accepted it is their city’s fate to return from disaster.
“After seven times, they rebuilt and brought it to life again. Now is the eighth time, and God willing ... we will live in it again,” said Bulent Cifcifli. His mother was killed in the quake, and it took a week to dig her body out.
In one shape or another, Antakya will survive, he said.
“Death is unavoidable. We will die and new people will come,” he said, choking on tears. “Who is Antakya? Today it is us. Tomorrow someone else.”
Nearly 1 million asylum requests in the EU in 2022
Nearly 1 million people applied for international protection in the European Union in 2022, according to data published Wednesday, bringing the number of asylum requests to a level not seen since the refugee crisis of 2015-2016.
The EU agency for asylum said 966,000 asylum applications were made in the 27 EU countries as well as in Norway and Switzerland last year, up 50% from 2021. That doesn't include more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees who were granted temporary protection in the EU, a special mechanism activated to avoid collapsing already backlogged asylum systems.
The European agency linked the increase to continuing easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions, increasing food insecurity and conflicts in many parts of the world. Though most asylum-seekers enter the EU legally, mainly by plane with travel visas, some also crossed the EU's land and sea borders without permission, mainly through the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean.
After more than a decade of war and economic collapse in their country, Syrians continued to be the top nationality of asylum-seekers in Europe with more than 130,000 applications. They were followed closely by Afghans fleeing the spiraling security, humanitarian and financial troubles that followed the Taliban takeover in August 2021, with 129,000 requests.
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Coming in third were applicants from Turkey who doubled in numbers with 55,000 requests. Soaring inflation and “democratic backsliding” were among the factors believed to have caused the increase, the agency said.
In many places, reception centers are overwhelmed, leaving asylum-seekers in the streets.
The recent earthquake that killed nearly 46,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless in Turkey and Syria has raised fears of a potential surge in irregular border crossings into Greece. Germany offered earlier this month to temporarily ease visa restrictions to some quake survivors while Spain promised to resettle a small group of 100 vulnerable Syrian refugees from Turkey, which is home to 4 million refugees.
Venezuelans, Colombians, Bangladeshis and Georgians applied for asylum in record numbers last year, as did Moroccans, Tunisians and Egyptians. Some 4% of asylum-seekers in 2022 claimed to be unaccompanied minors.
The European agency didn't say which EU countries received the most applications last year. But an internal EU migration report seen by the Associated Press lists Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Italy as the top five.
Asylum authorities issued decisions on more than 600,000 applications last year but they received even more new cases, adding to the existing backlog. Of the applications analyzed, 40% were granted refugee status or subsidiary protection, mostly for Syrian, Belarusian, Eritrean, Yemeni, and Malian applicants, as well as for most of the Ukrainians who chose to apply for asylum instead of temporary protection.
Global impact: 5 ways war in Ukraine has changed the world
War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. The world is a more unstable and fearful place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.
One year on, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy.
Here are five ways the war has changed the world:
THE RETURN OF EUROPEAN WAR
Three months before the invasion, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at suggestions that the British army needed more heavy weapons. “The old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European landmass,” he said, “are over.”
Johnson is now urging the U.K. to send more battle tanks to help Ukraine repel Russian forces.
Despite the role played by new technology such as satellites and drones, this 21st-century conflict in many ways resembles one from the 20th. Fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region is a brutal slog, with mud, trenches and bloody infantry assaults reminiscent of World War I.
Read more: Biden to meet eastern flank NATO leaders amid Russia worries
The conflict has sparked a new arms race that reminds some analysts of the 1930s buildup to World War II. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of conscripts and aims to expand its military from 1 million to 1.5 million troops. The U.S. has ramped up weapons production to replace the stockpiles shipped to Ukraine. France plans to boost military spending by a third by 2030, while Germany has abandoned its longstanding ban on sending weapons to conflict zones and shipped missiles and tanks to Ukraine.
Before the war, many observers assumed that military forces would move toward more advanced technology and cyber warfare and become less reliant on tanks or artillery, said Patrick Bury, senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath.
But in Ukraine, guns and ammunition are the most important weapons.
“It is, for the moment at least, being shown that in Ukraine, conventional warfare — state-on-state — is back,” Bury said.
ALLIANCES TESTED AND TOUGHENED
Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped the invasion would split the West and weaken NATO. Instead, the military alliance has been reinvigorated. A group set up to counter the Soviet Union has a renewed sense of purpose and two new aspiring members in Finland and Sweden, which ditched decades of nonalignment and asked to join NATO as protection against Russia.
The 27-nation European Union has hit Russia with tough sanctions and sent Ukraine billions in support. The war put Brexit squabbles into perspective, thawing diplomatic relations between the bloc and awkward former member Britain.
“The EU is taking sanctions, quite serious sanctions, in the way that it should. The U.S. is back in Europe with a vengeance in a way we never thought it would be again,” said defense analyst Michael Clarke, former head of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
NATO member states have poured weapons and equipment worth billions of dollars into Ukraine. The alliance has buttressed its eastern flank, and the countries nearest to Ukraine and Russia, including Poland and the Baltic states, have persuaded more hesitant NATO and European Union allies, potentially shifting Europe’s center of power eastwards.
There are some cracks in the unity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s closest ally in the EU, has lobbied against sanctions on Moscow, refused to send weapons to Ukraine and held up an aid package from the bloc for Kyiv.
Western unity will come under more and more pressure the longer the conflict grinds on.
“Russia is planning for a long war,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of 2022, but the alliance was also ready for the “long haul.”
A NEW IRON CURTAIN
The war has made Russia a pariah in the West. Its oligarchs have been sanctioned and its businesses blacklisted, and international brands including McDonald’s and Ikea have disappeared from the country’s streets.
Yet Moscow is not entirely friendless. Russia has strengthened economic ties with China, though Beijing is keeping its distance from the fighting and so far has not sent weapons. The U.S. has recently expressed concern that may change.
China is closely watching a conflict that may serve as either encouragement or warning to Beijing about any attempt to reclaim self-governing Taiwan by force.
Putin has reinforced military links with international outcasts North Korea and Iran, which supplies armed drones that Russia unleashes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow continues to build influence in Africa and the Middle East with its economic and military clout. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has grown more powerful in conflicts from the Donbas to the Sahel.
In an echo of the Cold War, the world is divided into two camps, with many countries, including densely populated India, hedging their bets to see who emerges on top.
Tracey German, professor of conflict and security at King’s College London, said the conflict has widened a rift between the “U.S.-led liberal international order” on one side, and angry Russia and emboldened rising superpower China on the other.
A BATTERED AND RESHAPED ECONOMY
The war’s economic impact has been felt from chilly homes in Europe to food markets in Africa.
Before the war, European Union nations imported almost half their natural gas and third of their oil from Russia. The invasion, and sanctions slapped on Russia in response, delivered an energy price shock on a scale not seen since the 1970s.
The war disrupted global trade that was still recovering from the pandemic. Food prices have soared, since Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of wheat and sunflower oil, and Russia is the world’s top fertilizer producer.
Grain-carrying ships have continued to sail from Ukraine under a fragile U.N.-brokered deal, and prices have come down from record levels. But food remains a geopolitical football. Russia has sought to blame the West for high prices, while Ukraine and its allies accuse Russia of cynically using hunger as a weapon.
The war “has really highlighted the fragility” of an interconnected world, just as the pandemic did, German said, and the full economic impact has yet to be felt.
The war also roiled attempts to fight climate change, driving an upsurge in Europe’s use of heavily polluting coal. Yet Europe’s rush away from Russian oil and gas may speed the transition to renewable energy sources faster than countless warnings about the dangers of global warming. The International Energy Agency says the world will add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20.
A NEW AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
The conflict is a stark reminder that individuals have little control over the course of history. No one knows that better than the 8 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee homes and country for new lives in communities across Europe and beyond.
For millions of people less directly affected, the sudden shattering of Europe’s peace has brought uncertainty and anxiety.
Putin’s veiled threats to use atomic weapons if the conflict escalates revived fears of nuclear war that had lain dormant since the Cold War. Fighting has raged around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising the specter of a new Chernobyl.
But the conflict has also brought reminders that, sometimes, individual human actions make all the difference. Defense analyst Clarke said one such moment occurred a day after the invasion, when Zelenskyy filmed himself outside in Kyiv and vowed not to leave the city.
“That was critical in showing that Kyiv would fight,” Clarke said. “And with that, of course, the United States, Joe Biden fell in behind it. If those two things hadn’t happened — Zelenskyy and then Biden’s decision — the Russians would have won.
“That Zelenskyy moment will go down in history as very, very important.”
Biden to meet eastern flank NATO leaders amid Russia worries
President Joe Biden is wrapping up his whirlwind, four-day visit to Poland and Ukraine by reassuring eastern flank NATO allies that his administration is highly attuned to the looming threats and other impacts spurred by the grinding Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Before departing Warsaw on Wednesday, Biden will hold talks with leaders from the Bucharest Nine, a collection of nations on the most eastern parts of the NATO alliance that came together in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
As the war in Ukraine drags on, the Bucharest Nine countries’ anxieties have remained heightened. Many worry Putin could move to take military action against them next if he’s successful in Ukraine. The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said in an address from the foot of Warsaw's Royal Castle on Tuesday to mark the somber milestone of the year-old Russian invasion. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested.”
Biden met Tuesday in Warsaw with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who last week claimed Moscow was behind a plot to overthrow her country’s government using external saboteurs.
Sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania and one of Europe’s poorest countries, the Eastern European nation has had historic ties to Russia but wants to join the 27-nation European Union. Biden in his remarks endorsed Moldova's bid to join the EU
“I’m proud to stand with you and the freedom-loving people of Moldova,” Biden said of Sandu and her country in his Tuesday address.
Read more: Putin raises tension on Ukraine, suspends START nuclear pact
Since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million people, has sought to forge closer ties with its Western partners. Last June, it was granted EU candidate status, the same day as Ukraine.
Sandu spoke out last week about a Russian plot “to overthrow the constitutional order.” She spoke out after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova. Those claims were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials.
Biden's speech on the Ukraine war came one day after he made a surprise visit to Kyiv, a grand gesture of solidarity with the Ukraine. The address was part affirmation of Europe's role in helping Ukraine repel Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and part sharply worded warning to Putin that the U.S. won't abide Moscow defeating Ukraine.
The White House has praised several eastern flank countries, including Lithuania, Poland and Romania, over the last year for stepping up efforts to back Ukraine with weapons and economic aid and taking in refugees.
Biden has given particular attention to Poland's efforts. The country is hosting about 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees and has committed $3.8 billion in military and economic assistance to Kyiv.
"The truth of the matter is: The United States needs Poland and NATO as much as NATO needs the United States," Biden said during talks with Duda on Wednesday.
N Korea calls UN chief's remarks on missile test 'unfair'
North Korea on Wednesday accused U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of “an extremely unfair and imbalanced attitude,” as it lambasted him for condemning its recent missile test but ignoring alleged U.S. hostility against the North.
After the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile test on Saturday, Guterres strongly condemned the launch and reiterated his call for the North to immediately desist from making any further provocations. In a statement, Guterres also urged North Korea to resume talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
“To be most deplorable, the U.N. secretary-general is going on the rampage of illogical and miserable remarks, which are little different from those of U.S. State Department officials over the years,” Kim Son Gyong, the North’s vice foreign minister for international bodies, said in a statement carried by state media.
Kim said North Korea’s ICBM test was a response to the security threat the U.S. posed to the North by temporarily deploying long-range bombers for joint training with South Korea earlier this year. Kim said the test was also a warning to the earlier convocation of the U.N. Security Council on the North.
North Korea views U.S.-South Korea military drills as an invasion rehearsal and is particularly sensitive to the U.S. mobilization of B-1B bombers that can carry a massive conventional payload of both guided and unguided weapons. After the North’s ICBM test, the United States flew B-1B bombers again for separate drills with South Korean and Japanese warplanes.
Read more: US urges UN to condemn North Korea; China, Russia blame US
“The U.N. secretary-general should clearly understand that his unreasonable and prejudiced stand on the Korean Peninsula issue is acting as a factor inciting the hostile acts of the U.S. and its followers against (North Korea),” Kim said.
Last November, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui called Guterres “a puppet of the United States” for condemning an earlier ICBM test by the North.
Saturday’s ICBM test, the North’s first missile test since Jan. 1, was made on a steep angle to avoid neighboring countries. The reported launch details again suggested the North has missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland. But many foreign experts say the North still must develop some last remaining technologies to acquire functioning nuclear-tipped missiles, such as one shielding missiles from the harsh conditions during atmospheric reentry.
In response to the latest U.S. deployment of B1-B bombers on Sunday, North Korea said its 600-millimeter multiple rocket launcher fired two rounds off its east coast the next day. North Korea has said its rockets can carry nuclear warheads. South Korea views the weapons as a short-range ballistic missile.
South Korea and the United States are to hold a set of joint military drills in coming weeks, including a table-top exercise set to take place at the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Last year, North Korea test-launched more than 70 missiles, the most ever in a single year, as part of its efforts to enlarge its weapons arsenal. Observers say the North would eventually want to win international recognition as a legitimate nuclear state and use that status as a way to get U.N. and other international sanctions on it lifted.
Brazil deluge toll hits 44 as search continues for missing
The death toll from flooding and landslides in Brazil’s southern state of Sao Paulo reached 44 on Tuesday as searches continued for dozens still missing.
Most of the search was concentrated in the mountainous coastal municipality of Sao Sebastiao where 43 deaths have been recorded. Firefighters still hoped to find people alive in the rubble of houses slammed by landslides during a weekend deluge, said Sao Sebastiao city hall worker Pedro de Rosario.
“Hope is the last thing that dies, so we have a lot of hope," de Rosario said. “There are still people buried.”
Seven bodies have been identified and released for burial, while nearly 800 people are homeless and 1,730 people have been displaced, the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement.
Members of the armed forces joined the search and rescue efforts, and starting Thursday the Navy will build a hospital with up to 300 beds to help relief efforts, Gov. Tarcisio de Freitas said at a news conference in Sao Sebastiao on Tuesday.
Authorities are digging through the mud and clearing roads, but parts of the highway connecting Rio de Janeiro state with Sao Paulo’s port city of Santos are still blocked by landslides. Another road connecting the city of Bortiga to inland Sao Paulo remains completely blocked.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited the region on Monday. In remarks to reporters, he called for people living in the hillside areas to be relocated to safer regions.
Precipitation in Sao Sebastiao surpassed 600 millimeters (23.6 inches) during a 24-hour period over the weekend, among the largest such downpours ever in such a short period in Brazil.
Around 7.5 tons of aid items including food, water and hygiene kits have already been distributed to the victims, the state government of Sao Paulo said.
The affected area, on the northern coast of Sao Paulo state and famous for beach resorts flanked by mountains, is a frequent Carnival destination for wealthy tourists who prefer to stay away from massive street parties in big cities.
Putin raises tension on Ukraine, suspends START nuclear pact
Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States, announcing the move Tuesday in a bitter speech in which he made clear he would not change his strategy in the war in Ukraine.
Putin emphasized, however, that Russia isn’t withdrawing from the pact yet, and hours after his address the Foreign Ministry said Moscow would respect the treaty's caps on nuclear weapons. It also said Russia would continue to exchange information about test launches of ballistic missiles per earlier agreements with the United States.
In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast his country — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said it was Russia, not Ukraine, fighting for its very existence.
“We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said ahead of the war’s first anniversary Friday. “The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”
The speech reiterated a litany of grievances he has frequently offered as justification for the widely condemned military campaign, while vowing no military letup.
Along with limits on the number of nuclear weapons, the 2010 New START envisages broad inspections of nuclear sites. Putin said Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so, a move that would end a global ban on such tests in place since the Cold War era.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded by calling for Russia and the United States to return to dialogue immediately because “a world without nuclear arms control is a far more dangerous and unstable one.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Moscow’s decision to suspend participation in the treaty as “really unfortunate and very irresponsible."
Read more: Biden in Poland: US, allies 'will never waver' in Ukraine
“We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does,” he said while visiting Greece.
China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun called on the U.S. and Russia to “continue to negotiate with each other in finding a good solution.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in Poland a day after his surprise visit to Ukraine, did not mention the START suspension but blasted Putin for the invasion. He pledged continued support for Ukraine despite “hard and bitter days ahead.”
“Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow and forever,” Biden said at Warsaw's landmark Royal Castle before a cheering crowd of Poles and Ukrainian refugees.
Putin's announcement was the second time in recent days the Ukraine war showed it could spread into perilous new terrain, after Blinken told China over the weekend that it would be a “serious problem” if Beijing provided arms and ammunition to Russia.
China and Russia have aligned their foreign policies to oppose Washington. Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion or atrocities against civilians in Ukraine, while strongly criticizing Western economic sanctions on Moscow. Late last year, Russia and China held joint naval drills.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s intelligence service, Vadym Skibitskyi, told The Associated Press his agency hasn’t seen any signs so far that China is providing weapons to Moscow.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and made a dash toward Kyiv, apparently expecting to overrun the capital quickly. But stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces — supported by Western weapons — turned back Moscow's troops. While Ukraine has reclaimed many areas initially seized by Russia, the sides have become bogged down elsewhere.
The war has revived the divide between Russia and the West, reinvigorated the NATO alliance, and created the biggest threat to Putin's rule of more than two decades.
In Tuesday's speech, Putin again offered his own version of recent history, discounting Ukraine's arguments that it needed Western help to thwart a Russian military takeover. He has repeatedly depicted NATO’s expansion to include countries close to Russia as an existential threat to his country.
“It’s they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,” he said before an audience of lawmakers, officials and soldiers, and broadcast on all state TV channels.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who was in Ukraine on Tuesday, said she wished Putin had taken a different approach.
“What we heard this morning was propaganda that we already know,” Meloni said in English. “He says (Russia) worked on diplomacy to avoid the conflict, but the truth is that there is somebody who is the invader and somebody who is defending itself.”
Also meeting with Zelenskyy was the newly appointed chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, who led a delegation for the first time since the start of the war and since Republicans won control of the House of Representatives.
Chairman Mike McCaul and a handful of other GOP lawmakers said they had a productive meeting about what Zelenskyy needs for winning the war. He provided them with a list of weapons, including longer-range artillery and air-to-surface systems.
The meeting comes as some hard-right Republicans are vowing to block future U.S. aid to Ukraine. “We have seen time and again the majority of Republicans and Democrats support our assistance to Ukraine,” McCaul said in a statement. “But the Biden administration needs to lay out their long-term strategy.”
Putin denied any wrongdoing in Ukraine, even after Kremlin forces struck civilian targets, including hospitals, and are widely accused of war crimes.
Zelenskyy cited fresh attacks on Ukrainian civilians Tuesday, and downplayed Putin’s speech.
“I have not watched it, because during this time there were missile strikes on Kherson. Twenty-one people were wounded and six were killed,” he said.
Putin also accused the West of taking aim at Russian culture, religion and values. He fired another broadside at Western gender policies that he described as efforts to destroy “traditional” values.
And he said Western sanctions hadn’t “achieved anything and will not achieve anything.” He blasted Russian tycoons who kept their assets in the West and saw them confiscated or frozen as part of the sanctions.
“Believe me, ordinary people had no sympathy for those who lost their yachts, palaces and other assets abroad,” Putin said.
While Russia’s Constitution mandates that the president deliver the state-of-the-nation speech annually, Putin never gave one in 2022. Last year, the Kremlin also canceled two other big annual events — Putin’s news conference and a highly scripted phone-in marathon taking questions from the public.
Reflecting the Kremlin's clampdown on free speech and press, it barred in-person coverage of the address by media from “unfriendly” countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and those in the European Union.
Fears, questions about N. Korea's growing nuclear arsenal
North Korea's latest missile launches are a demonstration of the country's avowed ability to use nuclear force against South Korea and the mainland U.S. How immediate is that threat?
North Korea claims its nuclear forces are capable of destroying its rivals, and often follows its provocative weapons tests with launch details. But many foreign experts call the North’s claims propaganda and suggest that the country is not yet capable of hitting the United States or its allies with a nuclear weapon.
There’s no question that North Korea has nuclear bombs, and that it has missiles that place the U.S. mainland, South Korea and Japan within striking distance. What’s not yet clear is whether the country has mastered the tricky engineering required to join the bombs and the missiles.
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ICBMs
North Korea has demonstrated that it has missiles that could fly far enough to reach deep into the continental U.S., but it's not clear whether they can survive reentering the Earth's atmosphere on arrival.
North Korea said it launched a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile on Saturday to verify the weapon’s reliability and the combat readiness of the country’s nuclear forces. It’s one of three kinds of ICBMs the country has developed, along with the Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-17. All three are liquid-fueled, and North Korea has portrayed them all as nuclear-capable.
Launched almost straight up to avoid the territories of neighbors, the weapon reached a maximum altitude of about 5,770 kilometers (3,585 miles) and flew 990 kilometers (615 miles), according to North Korean state media. The reported flight details suggest the missile could travel 13,000 kilometers (8,080 miles) or beyond if launched on a normal trajectory.
“These days, North Korea has been disclosing information about its launches in a very detailed manner to try to let others believe what they’ve done is genuine,” analyst Shin Jong-woo at South Korea’s Defense and Security Forum said. “But I think that’s part of their propaganda.”
There are questions on whether North Korea has acquired the technology to shield warheads from the high-temperature, high-stress environment of atmospheric reentry.
A South Korean biennial defense document released last week said it’s not clear whether the missiles can survive reentry, because all of North Korea’s ICBM tests have so far been made on high angles.
Read more: US urges UN to condemn North Korea; China, Russia blame US
Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, said a normal trajectory would cause greater stress, as a warhead would spend a longer time passing through altitudes with high air density.
North Korean state media said the launch was made “suddenly” after a surprise order from leader Kim Jong Un.
“The Kim regime’s claims of short-notice launches are thus intended to demonstrate not only the development of strategic and tactical nuclear forces but also the operational capability to use them,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said.
In a military parade earlier this month, North Korea showcased around a dozen ICBMs, an unprecedented number that suggested progress in its efforts to mass-produce powerful weapons.
Among them were huge canister-sealed missiles that experts say were likely a version of a solid-fuel ICBM that North Korea has been trying to develop in recent years. Solid-fueled systems allow missiles to be mobile on the ground and make them faster to launch.
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WARHEADS
North Korea likely has dozens of nuclear warheads. The question is whether they are small enough to fit on a missile.
North Korea has so far performed six underground nuclear test explosions to manufacture warheads that it can place on missiles. Outside estimates of the number of North Korean nuclear warheads vary widely, ranging from 20-60 to up to about 115.
In a 2021 interview with 38 North, a North Korea-focused website, renowned nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker, who has visited North Korea’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex numerous times, said that “20 to 60 is possible, with the most likely number being 45.”
Some experts argue that North Korea has likely already built miniaturized nuclear warheads to be mounted on missiles, citing the number of years the country has spent on its nuclear and missile programs. But others say North Korea is still years away from producing such warheads.
“After its sixth nuclear test, people accepted that North Korea really will have nuclear weapons. But they are still debating whether it has warhead miniaturization technology,” Shin, the analyst, said.
The North described its sixth nuclear test in 2017 as a detonation of a thermonuclear bomb built for ICBMs. It created a tremor that measured magnitude 6.3, and some studies put its estimated explosive yield at about 50 to 140 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the pair of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — which killed a total of more than 210,000 people — yielded explosions equivalent to about 15 and 20 kilotons of TNT, respectively.
The biennial South Korean defense document said North Korea is estimated to have 70 kilograms (154 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium. Some observers say that's enough for about 9-18 bombs. The document estimated that North Korea has “a considerable amount of” highly enriched uranium as well.
North Korea’s Yongbyon complex has facilities to produce both plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the two main ingredients to build nuclear weapons.
Plutonium plants are generally large and generate a lot of heat, making them easier to detect. But a uranium enrichment plant is more compact and can be easily hidden from satellite cameras. North Korea is believed to be running at least one additional covert uranium enrichment facility, in addition to one at its Yongbyon complex.
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SHORT-RANGE WEAPONS
Following the collapse of diplomacy with then-U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019, Kim sped up the development of short-range solid-fuel, nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike key targets in South Korea, including U.S. military bases there.
The so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons include what North Korea calls “super-large” 600-millimeter multiple rocket launchers that it tested Monday. South Korea describes the weapon as a short-range missile system.
North Korean state media said its new artillery system can carry nuclear warheads, and that four rockets would be enough to wipe out an enemy airfield. The statement drew quick outside doubts about whether the weapons are indeed nuclear-capable.
“The North Korean claim doesn’t make sense to some extent. ... Why do they need four tactical nuclear weapons to destroy just one airfield?” Shin, the analyst, said. “Also, which country would disclose such attack scenarios via state media?”
Other new North Korean short-range systems include missiles that were apparently modeled after the Russian Iskander mobile ballistic system or outwardly resemble the U.S. MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System. Launched from land vehicles, these missiles are designed to be maneuverable and fly at low altitudes, theoretically giving them a better chance of defeating South Korean and U.S. missile defense systems.
Whether North Korea has an ability to arm short-range missiles with nuclear warheads has not been independently confirmed.
While North Korea may be able to place simple nuclear warheads on some of its older missiles, including Scuds or Rodong missiles, it would likely require further technology advancements and nuclear tests to build smaller and more advanced warheads that can be installed on its newer tactical systems, said Lee, the expert.
North Korea also has an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable Hwasong-12 missile capable of reaching Guam, a major U.S. military hub in the Pacific. It has been developing a family of mid-range, solid-fuel Pukguksong missiles which are designed to be fired from submarines or land vehicles.
Police: Woman, 44, killed in skydiving accident in Oklahoma
Police in eastern Oklahoma say a 44-year-old woman was killed after crashing to the ground while skydiving.
Heather Glasgow of Poteau died at a hospital after the fall Saturday afternoon, according to police in Sallisaw.
“An unknown issue arose during the skydive,” according to a statement from Sallisaw police.
Witnesses told investigators that Glasgow’s parachute had opened, but she was spinning and did not recover before hitting the ground in Sallisaw, near the Arkansas state line and about 150 miles (240 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City, police said.
It was not clear how far Glasgow fell and a police spokesman was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
Police said Glasgow had completed a tandem jump before the solo jump in which she fell to her death,
The Federal Aviation Administration is assisting in the investigation.
The FAA said in a statement that it is investigating the packing of the main and reserve parachutes while local authorities are in charge of other aspects of the investigation.