Ukraine
Party of Estonian PM, strong Ukraine backer, gains big win
Voters in Estonia elected a new parliament Sunday with initial results suggesting the center-right Reform Party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine, had won overwhelmingly with nearly all votes counted.
Kallas faced a challenge from the far-right populist EKRE party, which seeks to limit the Baltic nation's exposure to the Ukraine crisis and blames the current government for Estonia's high inflation rate.
Nine political parties in all fielded candidates for Estonia’s 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu. Over 900,000 people were eligible to vote in the general election, and nearly half voted in advance.
With 99% of votes counted, Reform Party had taken 31.4% of the votes, followed by EKRE with 16.1% percent and the Center Party, traditionally favored by Estonia’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority, 15%.
“This result, which is not final yet, will give us a strong mandate to put together a good government,” Kallas told her party colleagues and jubilant supporters at a hotel in the capital, Tallinn.
“I think that with such a strong mandate, the (aid to Ukraine) will not change because other parties, except EKRE and maybe Center, have chosen the same line,” she said.
Preliminary results suggested six parties passed the 5% threshold of support needed to be in parliament, including newcomer Eesti 200, a liberal centrist party. Voter turnout was 63.7%, according to initial information.
Also Read: Estonia to get 1st female PM as government deal clinched
The initial results mean the Reform Party is in a remarkably strong position to take a leading role in forming Estonia's next government; its support translates into 37 seats in the legislature. But it will need junior partners to form a coalition with a comfortable majority to govern.
Kallas has ruled out being in a government with EKRE due to ideological differences, and is likely to turn to former coalition partner the Center Party and outgoing coalition partners - the small conservative Fatherland party and the Social Democrats - for a pact.
Newcomer Eesti 200 is also likely to be included in government talks with Reform.
National security in the wake of neighboring Russia's invasion of Ukraine and socio-economic issues, particularly the rising cost of living, were main campaign themes.
Kallas, 45, became prime minister in 2021 and has emerged as one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine during the year-long war. She is seeking a second term, with her standing enhanced by her international appeals to impose sanctions on Moscow.
A Baltic nation of 1.3 million people that borders Russia to the east, Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991 and has taken a clear Western course, joining NATO and the European Union.
Kallas' center-right Reform Party, a key player in Estonian politics since the mid-1990s, continuously held the prime minister’s post during 2005-2016 and regained it in 2021.
EKRE party leader Martin Helme, the prime minister's main challenger, faulted Kallas for the country’s inflation rate of 18.6%, one of the EU’s highest, and accused her of undermining Estonia’s defenses by giving weapons to Ukraine.
“We’ve never questioned support for Ukraine. We’ve never questioned Estonia's membership in NATO," Helme said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s just crazy talk. But we have been very critical of the government because they have not assessed the risk to Estonia and to Estonian security and defense.”
"We have basically given away all our heavy weaponry to Ukraine, and the replacement comes within two or three years. Basically, that is an invitation of aggression,” he said.
The outspoken and polarizing EKRE entered into the mainstream of Estonian politics in the 2019 election, when it emerged as the third-largest party with nearly 18% of the vote. The euroskeptic party was co-founded by Martin Helme’s father, Mart Helme, and was part of a Center Party-led government during 2019-21.
Kallas argues it’s in her country’s interests to help Kyiv. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine sparked fears in Tallinn that a Russian victory could embolden Moscow to switch its attentions to other countries it controlled in Soviet times, including Baltic nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
She says that Estonia’s defenses remain strong as the United States and other NATO allies have supplied top-notch weapons like the HIMARS rocket system to Ukraine and also to Estonia.
Germany warns of ‘consequences’ if China sends arms to Russia
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says there would be “consequences” if China sent weapons to Russia for Moscow's war in Ukraine, but he's fairly optimistic that Beijing will refrain from doing so.
Scholz's comments came in an interview with CNN that aired Sunday, two days after he met U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington.
U.S. officials have warned recently that China could step off the sidelines and begin providing arms and ammunition to Moscow. Ahead of his trip, Scholz had urged Beijing to refrain from sending weapons and instead use its influence to press Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
Also Read: Germany expels 2 Iranian diplomats over death sentence
Asked by CNN if he could imagine sanctioning China if it did aid Russia, Scholz replied: “I think it would have consequences, but we are now in a stage where we are making clear that this should not happen, and I’m relatively optimistic that we will be successful with our request in this case, but we will have to look at (it) and we have to be very, very cautious.”
He didn't elaborate on the nature of the consequences. Germany has Europe's biggest economy, and China has been its single biggest trading partner in recent years.
Back in Germany on Sunday, Scholz was asked after his Cabinet met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen whether he had received concrete evidence from the U.S. that China was considering weapons deliveries and whether he would back sanctions against Beijing if it helped arm Russia.
Also Read: Ausbildung in Germany for Non-EU Students including Bangladesh
“We all agree that there must be no weapons deliveries, and the Chinese government has stated that it wouldn’t deliver any," the chancellor replied. “That is what we are demanding and we are watching it."
He didn't address the sanctions question.
Von der Leyen said that “we have no evidence for this so far, but we must observe it every day.”
She said that whether the European Union would sanction China for giving Russia military aid “is a hypothetical question that can only be answered if it were to become reality and fact.”
Russian shelling hits Ukrainian town; Bakhmut battle rages
Russian shelling destroyed homes and killed one person in northern Ukraine's Kharkiv province, the region's governor said Sunday, while fighting raged in the fiercely contested eastern city of Bakhmut.
The town of Kupiansk is about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border; the region has come under frequent attacks even though Russian ground forces withdrew from the area nearly six months ago. Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said at least five homes were razed in the latest attack that left a 65-year-old man dead.
Two civilians were killed over the past day in Bakhmut, Donetsk province Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. Russian forces have spent months trying to capture the city as part of their offensive in eastern Ukraine, and the area has seen some of the bloodiest ground fighting of the war.
In recent days, Ukrainian units destroyed two key bridges just outside Bakhmut, including one linking it to the nearby town of Chasiv Yar along the last remaining Ukrainian resupply route, according to U.K. military intelligence officials and other Western analysts.
Also Read: Biden, Scholz to huddle on Ukraine war at White House
Associated Press journalists near Bakhmut on Saturday saw a pontoon bridge set up by Ukrainian soldiers to help the few remaining residents reach the nearby village of Khromove. Later, the AP team saw at least five houses on fire as a result of attacks in Khromove, a nearby settlement.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed last week that Kyiv’s actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city. It said Ukrainian troops may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.
Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks but might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press on toward other Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk province.
In southern Ukraine, a woman and two children were killed in a residential building in the Kherson region village of Poniativka, the Ukrainian president's office reported. A Russian artillery shell hit a car in Burdarky, another Kharkiv province village, killing a man and his wife, the regional prosecutor's office said.
Casualties increased from an attack earlier in the week. Ukraine’s emergency services reported Sunday that the death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-story apartment building in southern Ukraine on Thursday rose to 13.
One of the few areas where Russia and Ukraine have cooperated during the war is grain shipments. On that front, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Sunday his country is engaged in “intense efforts” to extend an agreement that allowed Ukraine to export grain from its Black Sea ports.
The deal, which the U.N. and Turkey brokered in July 2022 and was extended by four months in November, is set to expire March 18.
In a speech at the opening of the U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries in Doha, Qatar, Cavusoglu said he had discussed another extension with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The agreement, which also allows Russia to export food and fertilizers, has helped temper rising global food prices. However, Russian officials have complained that shipments of the country’s fertilizer were not being facilitated under the agreement, leaving the deal's renewal in question.
Civilians flee embattled town as Ukrainian pullout looms
Pressure from Russian forces mounted Saturday on Ukrainians hunkered down in Bakhmut, as residents attempted to flee with help from troops who Western analysts say may be preparing to withdraw from the key eastern stronghold.
A woman was killed and two men were badly wounded by shelling while trying to cross a makeshift bridge out of the city in Donetsk province, according to Ukrainian troops who were assisting them.
A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it was now too dangerous for civilians to leave Bakhmut by vehicle and that people had to flee on foot instead.
Bakhmut has for months been a prime target of Moscow’s grinding eastern offensive in the war, with Russian troops, including forces from the private Wagner Group, inching ever closer.
An AP team near Bakhmut on Saturday saw a pontoon bridge set up by Ukrainian soldiers to help the few remaining residents reach the nearby village of Khromove. Later they saw at least five houses on fire as a result of attacks in Khromove.
Also Read: A year into Ukraine war, bodies dug up in once occupied town
Ukrainian units over the past 36 hours destroyed two key bridges just outside Bakhmut, including one linking it to the nearby town of Chasiv Yar along the last remaining Ukrainian resupply route, according to U.K. military intelligence officials and other Western analysts.
The U.K. defense ministry said in the latest of its regular Twitter updates that the destruction of the bridges came as Russian fighters made further inroads into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late on Friday that Kyiv's actions may point to a looming pullout from parts of the city. It said Ukrainian troops may “conduct a limited and controlled withdrawal from particularly difficult sections of eastern Bakhmut,” while seeking to inhibit Russian movement there and limit exit routes to the west.
Capturing Bakhmut would not only give Russian fighters a rare battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it might rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and allow the Kremlin’s forces to press toward other Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region.
Civilians spoke about daily struggles as the fighting raged on nearly nonstop, reducing much of Bakhmut to rubble. Husband and wife Hennadiy Mazepa and Natalia Ishkova, who chose to remain in the city, said they lack food and basic utilities.
“Humanitarian (aid) is given to us only once a month. There is no electricity, no water, no gas," Ishkova told AP on Saturday.
“I pray to God that all who remain here will survive,” she added.
At the United Nations on Friday, deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said U.N. humanitarian staff reported “intensive hostilities” near Bakhmut and the few humanitarian partners on the ground were focusing on evacuating the most vulnerable.
Also Saturday, Russia’s defense chief traveled to eastern Ukraine to inspect troops and award them with state decorations, the Defense Ministry said.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited a command post where he was briefed by regional commander Rustam Muradov, according to a video published by the ministry. It did not disclose the command post's location.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s emergency services reported in the morning that the death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-story apartment building in southern Ukraine on Thursday rose to 11.
Emergency services said in an online statement that rescuers pulled three more bodies from the wreckage overnight, some 36 hours after a Russian missile tore through four floors of the building in the riverside city of Zaporizhzhia. A child was among those reported killed, and the rescue effort was ongoing.
Russian shelling on Saturday also killed two residents of front-line communities in the surrounding Zaporizhzhia region, the local military administration reported.
A 57-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man also died in Nikopol, a town farther west near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as Russian forces fired artillery shells and rockets at Ukrainian-held territory across the Dnieper river, regional Gov. Serhiy Lysak reported.
In the western city of Lviv, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Saturday with the head of the European Union parliament. Hours earlier, Zelenskyy held talks with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and top European legal officials on how to hold Russia accountable for its actions in Ukraine.
In a joint press briefing with Zelenskyy, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said that “all those responsible” for suspected Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, must be brought to justice before a durable peace is achieved.
Metsola voiced support for the EU’s announcement Thursday that an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression — the act of invading another country — would be set up in The Hague.
She also called for Ukraine to start negotiations on joining the 27-nation bloc as early as this year and urged Western nations to keep arming Kyiv as it battles Russian forces in the east and south.
The EU agreed in June to put Ukraine on a path toward membership, setting in motion a process that could take years or even decades. However, Moscow’s invasion and Ukraine’s request for fast-track consideration have lent urgency to the negotiations.
“Ukraine’s future is in the European Union. We will walk all the way with you,” Metsola said on Twitter late Friday.
PM meets Guterres in Doha, discusses Ukraine, Rohingyas
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday asked United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to take a special initiative to stop the Russia-Ukraine war soon.
She made the call at a meeting with António Guterres at the bilateral meeting Room of Qatar National Convention Centre here in Doha.
The premier said the world’s people are suffering due to the war, particularly economic sanctions as the disturbance in the international commodity supply raised inflation.
“She has asked the UN Secretary-General to take a special initiative for stopping the war soon,” said Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen while briefing reporters after the meeting.
Sheikh Hasina said it will be good for all if the war can be stopped as soon as possible.
“Those who make much profit because of the war should help the affected countries,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina said her government is providing some 10 million people with food at subsidized prices in Bangladesh.
The PM praised the UN Secretary-General for his ‘Black Sea Grain Initiative’ (the Initiative on the Safe Transportation of Grain and Foodstuffs from Ukrainian ports) and his initiatives taken during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read: PM Sheikh Hasina arrives in Qatar to join UN conference on LDCs
Regarding the Rohingya issue, both the PM and the UN Secretary-General agreed that the displaced Rohingya people should return to their homeland soon, not waiting for the political changeover in Myanmar.
Noting that the time of political change in Myanmar is an uncertain matter, Sheikh Hasina asked António Guterres to take a special initiative for the repatriation of the Rohingya people.
She also sought assistance from the United Nations and the international community to relocate more Rohingya people to Bhashan Char Island from camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Housing for one lakh people was built in Bhasan Char with the own fund of Bangladesh and only 30,000 people have so far been moved there.
The PM said Bangladesh prepared accommodation for Rohingyas with its own funds and still there is huge land in Bhashan Char to create housing for the displaced Myanmar nationals there.
“If you help us, we can shift many more people to the place (Bhashan Char),” she was quoted.
In this context, the UN Secretary-General said the Bangladesh PM can take an initiative in this regard.
Turning to extremism, he said fanaticism is being carried out in the name of religion in different places.
In this regard, the PM said those who are fanatics have no religion and no boundary. So, all should work together to fight fanaticism, she said.
About the climate issue, she said focus should be given on the disbursement of the committed climate fund.
During the meeting, António Guterres highly appreciated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for her unprecedented successes in development, diplomacy and in tackling the Covid pandemic. It (the achievement) is very encouraging, he said
He said the UN Secretary General said they are proud of a leadership like Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who very successfully tackled the Covid situation and advanced Bangladesh even facing the crisis due to the Ukraine war.
Later, the Bangladesh premier sat in a separate meeting with President of the UNGA-Csaba Korosi at Qatar National Convention Center.
In the meeting, Sheikh Hasina proposed to form an international forum with foreign development ministers of the South-South countries to find the problems and potentials and then cooperate among the southern countries in this regard as the developed nations do not help as per their commitments.
In this regard, she sought cooperation of the UNGA in holding a daylong international conference on this issue.
In response, the UNGA President opined that the initiative should be taken before July next as they would be engaged in the pre-activities of the next general assembly session from July-September.
During the meeting, the UNGA President also highly lauded the economic progress of Bangladesh under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina saying it is a miracle and the economic progress of Bangladesh is very good even amid the tough time in the world.
Other issues like water management and climate change came up for discussion.
Foreign (Sr) Secretary Masud Bin Momen was present at the press briefing.
Biden, Scholz to huddle on Ukraine war at White House
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting the White House on Friday for a private meeting with President Joe Biden as both allies become increasingly vocal about their concerns that China may step off the sidelines and supply weapons to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Such a step could dramatically change the war’s trajectory by allowing Moscow to replenish its depleted stockpiles.
China is Germany’s top trading partner, and European nations have generally been more cautious than the United States in taking a hard line with Beijing. However, there are signs that may be shifting as global rivalries grow more tense.
In a speech to the German parliament on Thursday, Scholz called on China to “use your influence in Moscow to press for the withdrawal of Russian troops, and do not supply weapons to the aggressor Russia.”
The U.S. and Germany have worked closely together to supply Ukraine with military and humanitarian assistance. But there has also been friction over issues such as providing tanks, and Washington has occasionally grown frustrated with Berlin's hesitance.
Also Read: US to send more ammo, folding armored bridges to Ukraine
Maintaining a steady flow of weapons to Kyiv will be critical in the war's second year, especially with both sides planning spring offensives.
“We’re proud of the collective efforts that we’ve taken together," John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said Thursday.
He said the U.S. has not seen any indication that China has made a decision on whether to provide weapons to Russia.
Scholz last visited the White House a little more than a year ago, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. Very little of Friday's meeting will be open to the public, and no announcements are expected afterward.
Unlike formal state visits, such as when French President Emmanuel Macron came to Washington last year, there will be no pomp and ceremony. Scholz's trip will lack the customary press conference where the two leaders take questions from reporters representing both countries.
Kirby described it as a “true working visit between these two leaders."
The meeting will be intimate, according to a senior German official and a U.S. official. Rather than being constantly flanked by advisers, the officials said, Biden and Scholz are likely to be the only people in the room for much of the time. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the talks.
In an interview with German broadcaster Welt, opposition leader Friedrich Merz accused Scholz of being secretive about his trip to Washington, which will take place without the customary press pack in tow. Merz suggested that Scholz had to smooth ruffled feathers over the deal to provide tanks to Ukraine.
Scholz dismissed any notion of discord between allies.
Asked by The Associated Press about the circumstances of his visit, Scholz said he and Biden “want to talk directly with each other," and he described “a global situation where things have become very difficult."
“It is important that such close friends can talk about all of these questions together, continually,” he said.
Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, hinted at some tension between the two countries on Sunday when appearing on ABC's “This Week.”
He said Biden originally decided against sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine, believing they wouldn't be immediately useful for Ukrainian forces. However, Sullivan said, Germany would not send its Leopard tanks “until the president also agreed to send Abrams.”
“So, in the interest of alliance unity and to insure that Ukraine got what it wanted, despite the fact that the Abrams aren’t the tool they need, the president said, ‘OK, I’m going to be the leader of the free world,’” Sullivan said. “'I will send Abrams down the road if you send Leopards now.' Those Leopards are getting sent now.”
Scholz's government has denied there was any such demand made of the U.S.
Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who leads the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. has often wanted Germany, the world's fifth-largest economy, to be more forceful on the global stage.
“There’s a hope that, instead of us having to push all the time, that Germany would take a leadership role," he said.
Bergmann said Germany has gone a long way toward strengthening its defense, but added that there's more work to do.
“The German way of seeing the world doesn’t always align with the U.S. way of seeing the world,” he said.
A year into Ukraine war, bodies dug up in once occupied town
The freshly exhumed remains of three men lie in black body bags on the edge of the small cemetery in a town not far from Ukraine's capital, waiting to be taken to a morgue. None has yet been identified.
Ukrainian authorities are still unearthing people who were hastily buried in makeshift graves during Russia's brief but brutal occupation of villages and towns near Kyiv. Almost 200 bodies remain unidentified, while 280 people are listed as missing.
Oleksander Pinchuk’s mother, Halyna, is among them. They never found her body in the wreckage of her apartment building, which took a direct hit from an airstrike a year ago. Pinchuk had walked out of the building just eight hours earlier, and has not seen his mother since, he said.
On Thursday, Pinchuk stood in the winter chill, grim-faced among a small group of mourners who gathered for a religious service to commemorate the anniversary of the strike in the town of Borodyanka.
“Just look at what the Russians brought to us and what they did to our beautiful town,” said Dmytro Koshka, the priest conducting the service at the former site of the residential building. “How could we ever forget and forgive?”
Nothing remains of the structure except the outline of where it once stood. Behind it is another apartment building, blackened and empty but still standing.
Pinchuk said rescue crews only managed to get to the building last April, after Ukrainian forces retook control of Borodyanka. The crews dug through the rubble for about two weeks and located the remains of 15 people. But they found no trace of dozens more believed to have been inside the 108-apartment building.
Also Read: Kremlin accuses Ukrainian saboteurs of attack inside Russia
“We still have hope for at least some of them, but the rest, they just burned alive,” Pinchuk said, his gaze fixed, the pain of loss visible in his eyes.
Without a body to mourn over and bury, the 43-year-old hopes against hope that his mother is still alive. He heard rumors that Russian troops took more than 100 people from Borodyanka to Belarus. Perhaps she was among them.
“Until the last moment, I will think of her as alive,” he said.
The exhumation of the three bodies Thursday from two makeshift graves on the edge of Borodyanka’s cemetery meant that some families may have a chance to learn what became of their loved ones.
A passer-by found the three in early March 2022, when Russia forces still occupied the town, and he buried the bodies with the help of another man, according to Andrii Nebytov, the head of the Kyiv region's police department.
The passer-by then fled the region. He only just recently returned and told authorities about the burials, the police chief said.
One of the dead is believed to be a 50-year-old local man who was shot and partially burned in his car, but DNA tests are needed to confirm that. Nobody knows who the other two are.
There’s not much to go on to identify them. A green pencil is all that was found on one, packets of cigarettes and key fobs on another. The remains are so decomposed that identification and determining exactly how they died will require forensic tests.
The exhumations bring the number of civilian bodies found in previously Russian-occupied areas of the Kyiv region to 1,373, Nebytov said. Of that number, 197 have yet to be identified.
India can be a mediator in resolving the Ukraine war: Momen tells Indian media
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has said that India can play a mediator's role and help end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Momen, now in New Delhi to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting, also said India can play a significant role in resolving the Rohingya issue.
On Bangladesh-India ties, the foreign minister said they have resolved their issues without “firing a single bullet” as he spoke about border issues.
Read more: Geographies have destined us to take benefit of nature, including rivers: Momen
"We maintain a balanced foreign policy," he said when talking about maintaining ties with both India and China.
He, however, said India is a friendly country to Myanmar.
The foreign minister made the remarks in an interview with Indian media outlet WION.
Blinken warns Central Asia of dangers from war in Ukraine
The Biden administration on Tuesday pledged to support the independence of the five Central Asian nations, in a not-so-subtle warning to the former Soviet states that Russia’s value as a partner has been badly compromised by its year-old war against Ukraine.
In Kazakhstan for meetings with top Central Asian diplomats, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said no country, particularly those that have traditionally been in Moscow’s orbit, can afford to ignore the threats posed by Russian aggression to not only their territory but to the international rules-based order and the global economy. In all of his discussions, Blinken stressed the importance of respect for “sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”
The Central Asian states have hewed to a studied position of neutrality on Ukraine, neither supporting Russia’s invasion nor U.S. and Western condemnations of the war.
“Ever since being the first nation to recognize Kazakhstan in December of 1991, the United States has been firmly committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Kazakhstan and countries across the region,” Blinken said after meeting in Astana with the foreign ministers of the so-called C5+1 group, made up of the U.S. and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Also Read: Blinken tours Turkey’s earthquake zone, pledges $100M in aid
“In our discussions today, I reaffirmed the United States’ unwavering support for Kazakhstan, like all nations, to freely determine its future, especially as we mark one year since Russia lost its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a failed attempt to deny its people that very freedom,” Blinken told reporters at a news conference with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi.
Tileuberdi thanked Blinken for the U.S. commitment to Kazakhstan’s freedom, but signaled that his country was unlikely to adopt either a pro-Russian or pro-Western position. Tileuberdi said Kazakhstan would continue to act in its own national interest given “the complex international situation.”
“Our country continues a balanced multilateral foreign policy,” he said.
Tileuberdi noted that while Kazakhstan has very close and historic ties with both Russia and Ukraine, it would not allow its territory to be used for any Russian aggression or sanctions evasion. He added that even though Kazakhstan shares the world’s longest land border with Russia, it did not see a threat from Moscow.
Blinken also held separate meetings in Astana with the foreign ministers of Kyrgyzstan, Tajiistan and Turkmenistan. After visiting Kazakhstan, Blinken arrived in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, on his first trip to Central Asia as secretary of state.
None of the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia, traditionally viewed as part of the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, publicly backed the Russian invasion. Kazakhstan welcomed tens of thousands of Russians fleeing from the military call-up last fall. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has spoken by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy three times since Russian troops rolled into Ukraine last February, calling for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict in accordance with the U.N. charter and international law.
However, all five Central Asian republics, along with India, which Blinken will visit next after Uzbekistan, abstained in a vote to condemn the invasion as a violation of core international principles last week at the U.N. General Assembly, on the first anniversary of the war.
“If we allow (those principles) to be violated with impunity, that does open the prospect that Russia itself will continue to consider further aggression against other countries, if it sets its sights on them, or other countries will learn the wrong lesson and would-be aggressors in every part of the world will say ’well, if Russia can get away with this, then we can too,’” Blinken said. “That’s a recipe for a world of conflict, a world of instability, a world that I don’t think any of us want to live in.”
“So, that’s why it’s been so important for so many countries to stand up and say, no we don’t accept this,” he said.
The U.S. has for decades sought — without great success — to wean the former Soviet nations of the region from Moscow’s influence. Some, notably Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, assisted the U.S. logistically during its 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, but their ties to Russia remain deep and extend to the economic, military and diplomatic spheres as members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Moscow-dominated grouping of ex-Soviet nations.
UNGA resolution on Ukraine: Dhaka says ‘constrained to abstain’
Bangladesh has said it believes that any meaningful and sustainable solution to the current conflict must need “intensive” diplomatic engagement and “dialogue” between the parties involved in the conflict.
“To our opinion, this important practical point is missing in the resolution. Therefore, we were constrained to abstain,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Seheli Sabrin told reporters today.
Sharing Dhaka’s arguments in favour of abstention on UNGA resolution on “just peace in Ukraine,” she said guided by Bangabandhu’s philosophy of “friendship to all and malice towards none,” Bangladesh pursues a peace-centric foreign policy, which is based on the principles of respect for sovereign equality and territorial integrity of all states, peaceful settlement of international disputes, and respect for the principles enunciated in the Charter of the United Nations.
Bangladesh continues to remain concerned over the situation in Ukraine, particularly the loss of civilian lives, deteriorating humanitarian situation in conflict zone, and consequential socio- economic fallout around the globe, Sabrin said.
Also Read: UNGA Resolution on Ukraine: 32 countries including Bangladesh, India and China abstain
“We call for a cessation of hostilities and remain steadfast in our commitment that purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be upheld at any cost,” she said.
In this regard, the foreign ministry spokesperson said they see the importance of urging the UN Secretary-General and Member States to promote a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine in the proposed resolution.
“We also firmly believe that peaceful settlement of international disputes must be complied with universally for everyone, everywhere under all circumstances, without exception,” she said.
The ultimate objective of the latest resolution was to seek a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Thursday that demands Russia leave Ukraine.
Thirty-two countries including Bangladesh, India, China, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka abstained from voting while seven countries including Russia voted against the resolution.
A total of 141 countries voted in favour of the resolution.