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UK’s Sunak set to say security guarantees need for Ukraine
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday will call on world leaders to “double down” on support for Ukraine, saying arms and security guarantees are needed to protect the country and the rest of Europe from Russian aggression now and in the future.
Sunak will deliver the message in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of heads of state, defense ministers and other world leaders. This year’s meeting will focus on threats to the accepted rules of international relations a year after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
Highlighting Britain’s recent commitment to provide battle tanks, advanced air defense systems and longer-range missiles to Ukraine, Sunak will urge other nations to follow suit before Russia launches an expected spring offensive.
“Now is the moment to double down on our military support,” Sunak said in excerpts released ahead of the speech. “When Putin started this war, he gambled that our resolve would falter. Even now he is betting we will lose our nerve.”
Sunak will also call on NATO to provide long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. Such commitments are necessary to shield Ukraine from future Russian aggression and to protect the system of international rules that have helped keep the peace since the end of World War II, Sunak is expected to say.
“It’s about the security and sovereignty of every nation,” Sunak says in the excerpts. “Because Russia’s invasion, its abhorrent war crimes and irresponsible nuclear rhetoric are symptomatic of a broader threat to everything we believe in.”
Finland could join NATO ahead of Sweden: Defense minister
Finland’s defense minister said Saturday that his country will join NATO without waiting for Sweden if its Nordic neighbor’s accession is held up by the Turkish government.
Mikko Savola told The Associated Press on Saturday that Finland would prefer that that the two countries join the alliance together, but it wouldn’t hold up the process if Turkey decides to approve Finland, but not Sweden, as it has warned.
“No, no. Then we will join,” Savola said in an interview on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.
Since they broke with decades of non-alignment in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Finland and Sweden have insisted they want to join NATO together. But Turkey’s reluctance to accept Sweden unless it steps up pressure on Kurdish exile groups has made it more likely the two will have to join the alliance at different speeds.
“Sweden is our closest partner,” Savola said. “Almost every week our defense forces are practicing together and so on. It’s a very deep cooperation and we also trust fully each other. But it’s in Türkiye’s hands now.”
Speaking later Saturday at a panel in Munich, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin struck a similar note.
“Of course, we cannot influence how some country would ratify, but our message is that we are willing to join and would prefer to join together,” she said.
All NATO countries except Turkey and Hungary have already given both countries the green light to join the alliance. Hungary has said it will do so soon, but Turkey says Sweden hasn’t done enough to meet Turkish national security concerns, causing a rift in NATO at a time when the U.S. and other allies are seeking to project a united front against Russia.
In recent weeks, NATO officials have played down the significance of the two nations joining simultaneously.
“The main is issue is not whether Finland and Sweden are joining at the same time. The main issue is that Finland and Sweden join as soon as possible, and it is of course a Turkish decision whether to ratify both protocols or only one protocol,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Munich on Friday.
Savola said he hopes Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia, will become a member of the alliance before a NATO summit in July. Until then, Savola said, Finland isn’t worried about the security situation, noting Finland has a conscription army with a wartime strength of 280,000 soldiers, 95% of them reservists, and plans to buy F-35 fighter jets from the U.S., while also investing in its naval and land forces.
“We are strong and our willingness to defend the country is also strong,” Savola said.
Finland has supported Ukraine with weapons from the start of the war. Savola said the military support amounts to 600 million euros so far. The country has said it will participate in a joint effort by European countries to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, but hasn’t specified whether it will hand over any of its own tanks.
“There are many ways to join. There are those tanks, of course, training, spare parts and logistics,” he said. “We are making those decisions quite soon in Finland.”
Turkish teen filmed ‘last moments’ from quake-hit apartment
A 17-year-old high school student has captured Turkish hearts after he filmed a farewell message to his loved ones as he was trapped under the rubble of his home during last week’s earthquake.
Taha Erdem and his family were fast asleep when a 7.8 magnitude quake hit their hometown of Adiyaman in the early hours of Feb. 6.
Taha was abruptly woken by violent tremors shaking the four-story apartment building in a blue-collar neighborhood of the central Anatolian city.
Within 10 seconds, Taha, his mother, father and younger brother and sister were plunging downward with the building.
He found himself alone and trapped under tons of rubble, with waves of powerful aftershocks shifting the debris, squeezing his space amid the mangled mess of concrete and twisted steel. Taha took out his cellphone and began recording a final goodbye, hoping it would be discovered after his death.
“I think this is the last video I will ever shoot for you,” he said from the tight space, his phone shaking in his hand as tremors rocked the collapsed building.
Showing remarkable resilience and bravery for a teenager believing he was speaking his last words, he lists his injuries and speaks of his regrets and the things he hopes to do if he emerges alive. During the video, the screams of other trapped people can be heard.
“We are still shaking. Death, my friends, comes at a time when one is least expecting it.” says Taha, before reciting a Muslim prayer in Arabic.
Also Read: Key developments in the aftermath of the Turkey, Syria quake
“There are many things that I regret. May God forgive me of all my sins. If I get out of here alive today there are many things that I want to do. We are still shaking, yes. My hand isn’t shaking, it’s just the earthquake.”
The teen goes on to recount that he believes his family are dead, along with many others in the city, and that he willsoon join them.
But Taha was destined to be among some of the first saved from the destroyed building. He was pulled from the rubble two hours later by neighbors and taken to an aunt’s home.
Ten hours after the quake, his parents and siblings were also saved by local residents who dug at the wreck of the building with their bare hands and whatever tools they could find.
When The Associated Press spoke to the family on Thursday they were living in a government-provided tent, along with hundreds of thousands of others who survived the disaster that hit southern Turkey and north Syria, killing more than 43,000.
Also Read: Turkey quake revives debate over nuclear plant being built
“This is my home,” said Taha’s mother Zeliha, 37, as she watched excavators digging up their old life and dumping it into heavy trucks.
“Boom-boom-boom, the building went down floor by floor on top of us,” she recalled, describing how she had kept yelling her son’s name while trapped under the debris in the hope that all five of them could die together as a family.
The Erdems’ younger children — daughter Semanur, 13, and 9-year-old son Yigit Cinar — were sleeping in their parents’ room when the quake hit.
But Taha could not hear his mother’s calls through the mass of concrete. Nor could she hear her son’s cries in the dark, and both believed the other was lying dead in the destroyed building.
It was only when Zeliha, her husband Ali, 47, a hospital cleaner, and the other children were taken to her sister’s home that they realized Taha had survived.
“The world was mine at that moment,” Zeliha said. “I have nothing, but I have my kids.”
The story of the Erdem family is one of many emotional tales of human fortitude to emerge from the widespread disaster area. Many vividly recount the horrors of being trapped beneath their homes.
Ibrahim Zakaria, a 23-year-old Syrian who was rescued in the coastal Syrian town of Jableh on Feb. 10, told the AP that he survived by licking water dripping down the wall next to him, slipping in and out of consciousness and losing hope of survival in his waking moments.
“I almost surrendered because I thought I will die,” he said from his hospital bed. “I thought: ‘There is no escape.’”
In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut, was trapped for four days before he was rescued. He told the private IHA news agency that he grew so thirsty that he drank his own urine.
Muhammet Enes Yeninar, 17, and his 21-year-old brother were saved after 198 hours in nearby Kahramanmaras.
He said they cried for the first two days, mostly wondering about their mother and whether she had survived, IHA reported. They later began to comfort each other — “talking about brotherhood” and eating powdered protein.
Also in Kahramanmaras, Aleyna Olmez, 17, was pulled free after 248 hours under the rubble. “I tried to pass the time on my own,” she said.
Stories of remarkable survival often emerge during disaster, especially following earthquakes, when the world’s media records the fading hope of recovering survivors as each hour ticks by.
Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, a 16-year-old girl was rescued in Port-Au-Prince 15 days after an earthquake devastated the city. Three years later, a woman trapped under a collapsed building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was saved after 17 days.
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Badendieck reported from Istanbul.
Key developments in the aftermath of the Turkey, Syria quake
Search and rescue teams have saved more survivors from the ruins of the Feb. 6 earthquake that devasted swaths of Turkey and Syria even as the window for finding people alive continues to shrink.
Here’s a look at the key developments Saturday from the aftermath of the earthquake.
THREE RESCUED IN HATAY
On the 13th day of rescue operations, three people, including a child, were extracted from under an apartment building in Antakya, the capital of Hatay province.
The man, woman and child were transferred to ambulances after spending 296 hours buried under the Kanatli apartment block in the center of the city, local TV reported. Footage showed medics fixing an IV drip to the man’s arm as he lay on a stretcher.
Also Read: Turkey quake revives debate over nuclear plant being built
Hatay is one of the worst hit of the 11 provinces in the Turkish disaster zone. On Friday evening, Turkey's death toll was 39,672, taking the number of recorded fatalities across both countries to 43,360.
MISSING GHANAIAN SOCCER PLAYER’S BODY FOUND
Search teams have recovered the body of Ghanaian international soccer player Christian Atsu in the ruins of a building that collapsed during the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, his manager said Saturday.
The remains of the soccer star, who had been playing for Turkish Super Lig club Hatayspor, were found in what was left of a luxury 12-story building where he had been living in the hard-hit city of Antakya, Hatay province.
“Atsu’s lifeless body was found under the rubble. At the moment, his belongings are still being removed,” manager Murat Uzunmehmet told private news agency DHA.
The death toll from the 7.8-magnitude quake on Feb. 6 in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria passed 43,000 on Friday and was certain to increase as search teams find more bodies.
The 31-year-old Atsu, who previously played for English Premier League clubs Chelsea, Newcastle United, Everton and Bournemouth, signed for Hatayspor from a Saudi side late last year.
Hatayspor said Atsu’s body was being repatriated to Ghana. “There are no words to describe our sadness,” the club tweeted.
Reports a day after the quake struck had said that Atsu was pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building and taken to a hospital for treatment. The club, however, announced days later that Atsu and the club’s sporting director, Taner Savut, were still missing. Savut has not yet been found.
The contractor of the luxury 12-story Ronesans Rezidans building — where Atsu and Savut lived — was detained at Istanbul Airport a week ago, apparently trying to leave the country.
Russia to test new hypersonic missile in drills with China and South Africa
Russia, China and South Africa are set to begin naval drills off South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast Friday in a demonstration of the three countries’ close ties amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s tense relationship with the West.
The 10 days of exercises, named Mosi II, will coincide with the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
A Russian frigate, the Admiral Gorshkov, arrived in Cape Town earlier this week sporting the letters Z and V on its sides, letters that mark Russian weapons on the front lines in Ukraine and are used as a patriotic symbol in Russia.
In protest, a small yacht flying Ukraine’s flag sailed by the Russian frigate in Cape Town’s harbor. South African protesters opposed to the exercises are expected to demonstrate at the Russian Consulate in Cape Town on Friday.
The arrival of the Admiral Gorshkov has stirred considerable controversy because it is armed with the latest Zircon hypersonic missiles, a weapon that Russia says can penetrate any missile defenses to strike targets at sea and on land.
The warship is set to test-fire a Zircon missile during the joint naval drills, according to Russian state news agency Tass. The test will be the first launch of the missile in an international exercise.
In addition to the Admiral Gorshkov, other ships participating in the maritime exercises will include a Russian oil tanker for refueling, a South African frigate and three Chinese ships - a destroyer, a frigate and a support vessel, according to a South African military statement.
The joint naval exercises also come as China’s relations with Washington are tense after its balloon sailed across the U.S. and was eventually shot down by the U.S.
The maritime exercises will be staged from Durban and Richards Bay, ports in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.
Media coverage of the drills has been restricted.
South Africa has faced domestic criticism for participating in the drills. The opposition Democratic Alliance said it shows South Africa is not neutral in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The South African National Defence Force has described the naval exercises with China and Russia simply as “a multinational maritime exercise.” The naval drills will “strengthen the already flourishing relations between South Africa, Russia and China” with the aim of sharing “operational skills and knowledge,” the military said in a statement.
At least 350 members of South Africa’s navy and other military branches are expected to participate in the exercise, the government has said.
The three countries previously held the Mosi I naval drills in Cape Town in 2019.
South Africa is among many African countries that have friendly relations with Moscow and abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russia and the United States have courted support from South Africa since the war in Ukraine started, indicating Pretoria’s influence as a strategic partner on the continent. The two super powers have vied for influence in Africa, sending top officials on diplomatic missions to the continent in recent months.
High-ranking U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, recently visited South Africa to deepen diplomatic, political and economic ties. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House in September 2022.
During a visit to South Africa last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the West’s actions in support of Ukraine and emphasized Russia’s strong ties with South Africa and other nations on the continent.
S. Korea says N. Korea fires missile as allies ready drills
South Korea’s military said North Korea on Saturday fired one suspected long-range missile from its capital toward the sea, a day after it threatened to take strong measures against South Korea and the U.S. over their joint military exercises.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said the ballistic missile was fired at around 5:22 p.m. from an area in Sunan, the site of Pyongyang's international airport. It didn't immediately say where the weapon landed.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday threatened with "unprecedently" strong action against its rivals, after South Korea announced a series of planned military exercises with the United States aimed at sharpening their response to the North’s growing threats.
Toshiro Ino, Japan’s vice minister for defense, said the missile was expected have landed in waters within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Oshima island. Oshima lies off the western coast of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido.
“We are doing our utmost, working closely with the U.S., to gain information, analyze and take appropriate vigilance and surveillance measures to protect the lives and property of our people,” he told reporters.
The launch was North Korea’s first since Jan. 1, when it test-fired a short-range weapon. It followed a massive military parade in Pyongyang last week, where troops rolled out more than a dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles as leader Kim Jong Un watched in delight from a balcony.
The unprecedented number of missiles underscored a continuation of expansion of his country’s military capabilities despite limited resources while negotiations with Washington remain stalemated.
Those missiles included a new system experts say is possibly linked to the North’s stated desire to acquire a solid-fuel ICBM. North Korea’s existing ICBMs, including Hwasong-17s, use liquid propellants that require pre-launch injections and cannot remain fueled for prolonged periods. A solid-fuel alternative would take less time to prepare and is easier to move around on vehicles, providing less opportunity to be spotted.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Saturday’s launch involved a solid-fuel system.
“North Korean missile firings are often tests of technologies under development, and it will be notable if Pyongyang claims progress with a long-range solid-fuel missile,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “The Kim regime may also tout this launch as a response to U.S. defense cooperation with South Korea and sanctions diplomacy at the United Nations.”
North Korea is coming off a record year in weapons demonstrations with more than 70 ballistic missiles fired, including ICBMs with potential range to reach the U.S. mainland. The North also conducted a slew of launches it described as simulated nuclear attacks against South Korean and U.S. targets in response to the allies’ resumption of large-scale joint military exercise that had been downsized for years.
North Korea’s missile tests have been punctuated by threats of preemptive nuclear attacks against South Korea or the United States over what it perceives as a broad range of scenarios that put its leadership under threat.
Kim doubled down on his nuclear push entering 2023, calling for an “exponential increase” in the country’s nuclear warheads, mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons targeting “enemy” South Korea and the development of more advanced ICBMs.
The North Korean statement on Friday accused Washington and Seoul of planning more than 20 rounds of military drills this year, including large-scale field exercises, and described its rivals as “the arch-criminals deliberately disrupting regional peace and stability.”
The statement came hours after South Korea’s Defense Ministry officials told lawmakers that Seoul and Washington will hold an annual computer-simulated combined training in mid-March. The 11-day training would reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats, as well as unspecified lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Heo Tae-keun, South Korea’s deputy minister of national defense policy.
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.
South Korea and the U.S. will also hold a one-day tabletop exercise next week at the Pentagon 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.
North Korea has traditionally described U.S.-South Korea military exercises as rehearsals for a potential invasion, while the allies insist that their drills are defensive in nature.
The United States and South Korea had downsized or canceled some of their major drills in recent years, first to support the former Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang and then because of COVID-19. But North Korea’s growing nuclear threats have raised the urgency for South Korea and Japan to strengthen their defense postures in line with their alliances with the United States.
South Korea has been seeking reassurances that United States will swiftly and decisively use its nuclear capabilities to protect its ally in face of a North Korean nuclear attack. In addition to expanding and evolving military exercises with South Korea, the United States has also expressed commitment to increase its deployment of strategic military assets like fighter jets and aircraft carriers to the Korean Peninsula in a show of strength.
In December, Japan made a major break from its strictly self-defense-only post-World War II principle, adopting a new national security strategy that includes preemptive strikes and cruise missiles to counter growing threats from North Korea, China and Russia.
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Associated Press writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to the report.
In Baltics, Poland, grassroots groups strive to help Ukraine
In a dusty workshop in northern Lithuania, a dozen men are transforming hundreds of wheel rims into potbelly stoves to warm Ukrainians huddled in trenches and bomb shelters. As the sparks subside, one welder marks the countertop: 36 made that day. Hours later, they've reached 60.
People from across Lithuania send old wheel rims to the volunteers gathering weekly in Siauliai, the Baltic country’s fourth-largest city. Two cars loaded with wood stoves wait outside the workshop ahead of the long night drive south.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — three states on NATO’s eastern flank scarred by decades of Soviet-era occupation — have been among the top donors to Kyiv.
Linas Kojala, director of the Europe Studies Center in Lithuania's capital Vilnius, said Ukraine’s successful resistance “is a matter of existential importance” to the Baltic countries, which share its experience of Russian rule.
“Not only political elites, but entire societies are involved in supporting Ukraine,” Kojala told the AP.
In Siauliai, Edgaras Liakavicius said his team has sent about 600 stoves to Ukraine.
“Everybody here ... understands the situation of every man, every soldier, the conditions they live in now in Ukraine,” Liakavicius, who works for a local metal processing plant, told the AP.
Jaana Ratas, who heads an effort in Tallinn, Estonia to make camouflage nets for Ukrainian soldiers, echoed his words.
“My family and most Estonians, they still remember (the Soviet occupation),” she said.
Also Read: Ukrainian refugees safe, but not at peace, after year of war
Ratas chose a symbolic location for her project. Five days a week, Estonian and Ukrainian women gather at Tallinn’s Museum of Occupations and Freedom to weave the nets from donated fabrics.
Lyudmila Likhopud, a 76-year-old refugee from Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, said the work has lifted her out of depression.
“I started feeling that I can be useful,” she told the AP.
In Latvia’s capital of Riga, Anzhela Kazakova — who ran a furniture store in the Black Sea port of Odesa — is one of 30 Ukrainian refugees working for Atlas Aerospace, a drone manufacturer that has supplied more than 300 kits to the Ukrainian army.
Ivan Tolchinsky, Atlas Aerospace’s founder and CEO, grew up in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, held by Kremlin-backed separatists since 2014. He had long petitioned both the EU and Ukraine to supply drones to Kyiv’s forces fighting the separatists. Final permission arrived a day before Moscow’s full-scale invasion, he said.
Atlas Aerospace has since increased production 20-fold, Tolchinsky said, and is planning to open a site in Ukraine despite withering Russian strikes on infrastructure.
Tolchinsky’s drones are just some of the weapons flowing to Kyiv from its Baltic allies. Together with their southern neighbor Poland — another NATO and European Union member with a history of Soviet oppression — the three small states rank among the biggest donors per gross domestic product helping Ukraine.
Lithuania, with a mere 2.8 million inhabitants, was the first country to send Stinger air defense missiles, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
One of the latest Lithuanian initiatives is a crowdfunding drive to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian drones and missiles. Launched in late January, it initially aimed to raise 5 million euros by the Feb. 24 first anniversary of the invasion. That goal was reached within weeks, and organizers have since doubled it as donations keep flowing.
One fundraising group has grown into a major player that participates in international tenders purchasing military equipment for Kyiv.
“We have expanded 10 times in less than a year. (We used to supply) five drones in one batch, but now it’s 50 or more,” said Jonas Ohman, founder of the nongovernmental organization Blue/Yellow. The group recently won a bid for military optics, edging out rivals including the Indian military, and clinched a contract with an Israeli company for multi-purpose high sensitivity radars for Kyiv.
“It’s entirely another level now,” Ohman said.
In Poland, millions of zlotys have been raised to fund everything from advanced weapons to treating the wounded. Backed by over 220,000 contributors, journalist Slawomir Sierakowski was able to gather almost 25 million zlotys ($5.6 million) to buy an advanced Bayraktar drone for Ukraine.
Ohman, the head of the Lithuanian NGO, drew parallels between his compatriots’ readiness to help Kyiv and local partisan movements fighting Soviet rule after World War II.
“It is about personal responsibility in tough times," he said. “Just like in 1945 when (the) Soviets returned, the government was gone, but the struggle for freedom continued in the woods for years.”
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Associated Press writer Joanna Kozlowska contributed to this report from London.
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.