Russia-Ukraine war
Ukraine president again presses West for advanced weapons
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed Western leaders again on Monday to provide more advanced weapons to help his country in its war with Russia, and he repeated his calls for Russian forces to withdraw from occupied areas of Ukraine, suggesting Christmas as a date to retreat.
During a video conference, Zelenskky told host Germany and other leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers: “It would be right to begin the withdrawal of Russian troops from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine this Christmas. If Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine, then a reliable cessation of hostilities will be ensured.”
He added: “The answer from Moscow will show what they really want there: either a further confrontation with the world or finally an end to aggression.”
The G-7 leaders supported Zelenskyy's appeal, saying in a statement after their meeting that “Russia can end this war immediately by ceasing its attacks against Ukraine and completely and unconditionally withdrawing its forces from the territory of Ukraine.”
The Kremlin has rejected all previous appeals to reverse its land grabs in Ukraine. It didn’t immediately respond to this latest one.
The two countries haven't engaged in any recent peace talks and there is no end in sight for the war, which is in its 10th month and has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people and left dozens of Ukrainian cities and towns in ruins .
Read more: Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut ‘destroyed’
Russia has illegally annexed parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, though it doesn't fully control all of them. Zelenskyy has said his goal is to reclaim all occupied territory, while Russian President Vladimir Putin insists on solidifying his forces' control over the areas.
In his address to the G-7, Zelenskyy echoed his prime minister's Sunday appeal for long-range missiles, modern tanks, artillery and missile batteries and other high-tech air defense systems to counter Russian attacks that have knocked out electricity and water supplies for millions of Ukrainians. He acknowledged that, “Unfortunately, Russia still has an advantage in artillery and missiles.”
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told French broadcaster LCI that in addition to making Ukrainians suffer, Russia wants to swamp Europe with Ukrainian refugees by striking power stations and other infrastructure. Zelenskyy told the G-7 that protecting Ukraine's energy facilities from Russian missiles and Iranian drones “will be the protection of the whole of Europe, since with these strikes Russia is provoking a humanitarian and migration catastrophe not only for Ukraine, but also for the entire EU.”
Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, said his nation already has seen an increased demand to shelter refugees.
"The number of refugees in Poland has risen (recently) to some 3 million. That will probably also mean an increase in their numbers in Germany,” Duda said following talks with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin.
Read more: Ukraine: Russia put rocket launchers at nuclear power plant
On Monday, Russian shelling again mostly focused on eastern and southern regions that Putin illegally annexed.
To defend against further strikes, Shmyhal repeated Ukrainian calls for Patriot surface-to-air missiles — a highly sophisticated system. During the LCI interview, he also asked for more German and French air-defense systems, resupplies of artillery shells and modern battle tanks.
Providing Patriot missiles to Ukraine would advance the kinds of defense systems the West is sending to help the country repel Russian aerial attacks, and would likely mark an escalation.
A U.S. official told reporters the Pentagon has no current plans to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine, but that discussions continue. The key issue is that the complex, high-tech system requires significant maintenance and training, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations in Ukraine.
Air defenses were also a topic of a phone call Zelenskyy held Sunday with U.S. President Joe Biden. Biden "highlighted how the U.S. is prioritizing efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense through our security assistance, including the Dec. 9 announcement of $275 million in additional ammunition and equipment that included systems to counter the Russian use of unmanned aerial vehicles," the White House said.
The G-7 leaders said in their statement that they've set an “immediate focus on providing Ukraine with air defense systems and capabilities.”
Even with their current systems, Ukrainian forces have already succeeded in intercepting missiles and drones, and a spokeswoman for the country's southern armed forces, Natalia Humeniuk, said Monday on Ukrainian TV that “the effectiveness of anti-aircraft defense is 85%-90%” against weaponized drones.
U.S. officials agree with Ukraine's reported success in shooting down drones and missiles, attributing the high kill rate in part to intelligence that the U.S. and other allies are providing.
Russian drones are still active. Their attacks near the Black Sea port of Odesa over the weekend destroyed several energy facilities and left all customers except hospitals, maternity homes, boiler plants and pumping stations without power.
Slovakia said that in cooperation with Germany, it has opened a center to repair Ukrainian howitzers and air defense systems of Western origin. The center is located inside a military base in the town of Michalovce, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of the border with Ukraine, the EU member nation's Defense Ministry said.
In Ukraine, the eastern Donbas region, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, again has become a focus of intense fighting, particularly around the city of Bakhmut.
Ukrainian officials said Monday the country’s forces hit a hotel in the Luhansk region that served as a headquarters of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military contractor and mercenary group that has played a prominent role in eastern Ukraine.
The region's Ukrainian governor, Serhiy Haidai, said in an unverified claim that hundreds of Russians were killed in the strike on Kadiivka on Sunday. Moscow-backed local officials in Luhansk confirmed that a Ukrainian strike destroyed a hotel building in Kadiivka but claimed it was unused.
Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of the southeastern town of Melitopol, reported that Ukraine attacked a hotel that reportedly housed analysts from Russia’s top security agency, the FSB. Moscow did not comment on that claim, and none of the reports could be independently confirmed. Russian officials, meanwhile, accused Ukrainian forces of blowing up pillars of a bridge in a suburb of Melitopol on Monday night. Various reports said Russian forces had been using the bridge to transport supplies and that traffic across it has now stopped.
Elsewhere, the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office said two civilians were killed and 10 were wounded in Russia’s shelling of the town of Hirnyk in the Donetsk region.
Yaroslav Yanushevych, the governor of the Kherson region, said a Russian strike on the southern city of the same name, which Ukraine reclaimed a month ago, killed two civilians and left five wounded Monday. He said the Russian shelling hit residential buildings and damaged power lines.
And in Skadovsk, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of Kherson where the Russian-installed Kherson regional administration had been relocated, a senior government official was lightly injured Monday in an assassination attempt, the Russian Ria-Novosti news agency reported. The driver of a car carrying the official was killed in the attack, it said.
Free for a month, Kherson still toils to clear Russian traps
A hand grenade jerry-rigged into the detergent tray of a Kherson home’s washing machine. A street sign maliciously directing passers-by toward a deadly minefield. A police station that allegedly housed a torture chamber but remains so booby-trapped that demining crews can’t even start to hunt for evidence.
Sunday marks exactly one month since Russia's troops withdrew from Kherson and its vicinity after an eight-month occupation, sparking jubilation across Ukraine. But life in the southern city is still very far from normal.
The departing Russians left behind all sorts of ugly surprises, and their artillery continues to batter the city from new, dug-in positions across the Dnieper River. The regional administration said Saturday that shelling over the past month has killed 41 people, including a child, in Kherson, and 96 were hospitalised.
Read more: Russia grinds on in eastern Ukraine; Bakhmut ‘destroyed’
Residents’ access to electricity still comes and goes, although water is largely connected, and indoor heating has only very recently been restored — and only to about 70-80% of the city — after the Russians last month blew up a giant central heating station that served much of the city.
For authorities and citizens, sifting through the countless headaches and hazards left behind by the Russians, and bracing for new ones, is a daily chore.
On Friday alone, according to the local affiliate of public broadcaster Suspilne, Russian forces shelled the region 68 times with mortars, artillery, tank and rocket fire. Meanwhile, in the last month, a total of 5,500 people have taken evacuation trains out, and work crews have cleared 190 kilometers (115 miles) of road, Suspilne reported.
When aid trucks arrived a month ago, war-weary and desperate residents flocked to the central Svoboda (Freedom) Square for food and supplies. But after a Russian strike on the square as a line of people queued to enter a bank in late November, such large gatherings have become less common and aid is doled out from smaller, more discreet distribution points.
Regional officials say some 80% of Kherson's pre-war population of about 320,000 fled after the Russians moved in, days after their invasion began on Feb. 24. With some 60,000-70,000 residents remaining, the city now has a feel of a ghost town. Those who remain mostly keep indoors because they're cautious about making forays into the streets.
“Life is getting back to normal, but there is a lot of shelling," said Valentyna Kytaiska, 56, who lives in the nearby village of Chornobaivka. She lamented the nightly “Bam! Bam!” and the unsettling uncertainty of where the Russian ordnance may land.
Normal is a relative term for a country at war. There’s no telling whether what Russia insists on calling a “special military operation” will end in days, weeks, months or even years.
In the meantime, painstaking efforts go on to establish a better sense of normalcy, like clearing the mess and mines left behind by the Russians, in tough wintertime weather.
"The difficulties are very simple, it’s the weather conditions," said one military demining squad member, who goes by the nom de guerre of Tekhnik. He said some of their equipment simply doesn't work in frost conditions “because the soil is frozen like concrete.”
Read more: Ukraine: Russia put rocket launchers at nuclear power plant
The deployment of additional teams could help ease the heavy workload, he said. “To give you an idea, during the month of our work, we found and removed several tons of mines," said Tekhnik, adding that they focused only on about 10 square kilometers (about 4 square miles).
In Kherson's Beryslavskyi district, a main road was blocked off with a sign reading “Mines Ahead” and rerouting passersby to a smaller road. In fact, it was that side road which was mined, and cost the lives of some military deminers. A few weeks later, four police officers were also killed there, including the police chief from the northern city of Chernihiv, who had come down to help Kherson regain its footing.
The general state of disrepair of weather-beaten roads helped the outgoing Russians disguise their deadly traps: Potholes, some covered with soil, provided a convenient place to lay mines. Sometimes, the Russians cut into the asphalt to make holes themselves.
Demining squads go slowly house-to-house to ensure it's safe for owners or previous residents to return. Experts say a single home can take up to three days to be cleared.
One crew turned up a hand grenade in one house, stuffed into a a washing machine — the pin placed in such a way that opening the detergent tray would set off an explosion.
The city's main police station, where detainees were reportedly tortured, is packed with explosives. When demining squads tried to work their way in, part of the building exploded — so they've shelved the project for now.
Longer term questions remain: Kherson sits in an agricultural region that produces crops as diverse as wheat, tomatoes, and watermelon — a regional symbol. The fields are so heavily mined that about 30% of arable land in the region is unlikely to be planted in the spring, Technik the deminer said. A cursory look reveals the tops of anti-tank mines poking up in the fields.
Even so, after a night of shelling from Friday evening into Saturday, Kherson resident Oleksandr Chebotariov said life had been even worse under the Russians for himself, his wife and 3-year-old daughter.
“It's easier to breathe now,” the 35-year-old radiologist said — only to add: “If the banging doesn’t stop before the New Year, I’m going on vacation.”
Russian airfield hit, a day after drone strikes on bases
A fire broke out early Tuesday at an airport in Russia’s southern Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, the regional governor reported, blaming a drone attack.
The fire occurred the day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for drone strikes on two air bases deep inside Russia and launched another wave of missile strikes on Ukrainian territory.
“As a result of a drone attack, an oil reservoir caught on fire in the area of Kursk airport. The fire is being contained. All emergency services are working on the spot,” Kursk Governor Roman Starovoy said in a Telegram post.
Read more: Russia claims Kyiv hit its air bases, fires more missiles
Ukrainian officials have not formally confirmed carrying out the attacks.
The unprecedented attacks in Russia threatened a major escalation of the nine-month war. One of the airfields that was hit houses bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
The attacks showed the vulnerability of some of Russia’s most strategic military sites, raising questions about the effectiveness of their air defenses if drones could come so close to them.
The ministry didn’t say where the drones had originated, but Russian military bloggers said they likely were launched by Ukrainian scouts.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down two Ukrainian drones. It said three Russian servicemen were killed and four others wounded by debris, and that two aircraft were slightly damaged.
Read more: Ukrainians hid orphaned children from Russian deportation
The attacks on the Engels base in the Saratov region on the Volga River and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia were part of Ukraine’s efforts to curtail Russia’s long-range bomber force, the ministry said.
The Engels base, located more than 600 kilometers (more than 370 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, houses the Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine. The Dyagilevo air base, which houses tanker aircraft used to refuel other planes in flight, is about 500 kilometers (over 300 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian border.
Europe can’t put its energy needs first while requesting India to act otherwise: Jaishankar
With the G7 price ceiling on Russian crude oil at USD 60 per barrel taking effect, India on Monday (December 05, 2022) vehemently defended its acquisition of crude oil from Russia during the ongoing Ukraine war – claiming that New Delhi’s purchase was just one-sixth of the European buy in the previous nine months.
At a press conference following lengthy discussions with the visiting German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that Europe cannot decide to put its energy needs first while requesting New Delhi to take another action, claiming that talks between India and Russia to increase trade began long before the war in Ukraine, NDTV reports.
Jaishankar said: “I understand that there is a conflict situation (in Ukraine). I also understand that Europe has a point of view and Europe will make the choices it will make that is Europe’s right. But for Europe to make choices which prioritises its energy needs and then ask India to do something else…”
Read: Russian oil shipments to central Europe expected to resume
Jaishankar also said that pressure on pricing is also being exerted by Europe’s purchases of Middle Eastern crude oil.
The Indian foreign minister commented, “And bear in mind, today, Europe is buying a lot (of crude oil) from the Middle-East. The Middle-East was traditionally a supplier for an economy like India. So it puts pressure on prices in the Middle-East as well. We have been very very understanding of the European choices and European policies.”
He was quoted by NDTV as saying: “I think first we need to establish the facts very clearly. Between February 24 and November 17, the European Union has imported more fossil fuel from Russia than the next 10 countries combined. The oil import in the European Union is like six times what India has imported. Gas is infinite because we do not import it while the European Union imported 50 billions Euros worth (of gas).”
Read: Bangladesh may prefer to import Russian oil via third country
While pledging to further cooperate in the areas of defence and security, commerce, climate change, and renewable energy, the two foreign ministers also signed a bilateral mobility agreement that would make it simpler for individuals to study and work in each other’s countries.
The German foreign minister stated at the joint news conference that China has changed significantly in recent years and “the whole region can see this and feel this”, in reference to the country’s “growing aggressiveness”.
Baerbock, who was in India for a two-day visit, also promised to shorten the wait time for visas. The talks also touched on Pakistani cross-border terrorism, the situation in Afghanistan, and developments in the Indo-Pacific, according to the NDTV report.
Read: Fuel import from India through pipeline to start from 2023: PM
Russian oil imports into India have significantly increased during the past few months. According to New Delhi, it is its essential responsibility to make sure that Indian consumers have the greatest possible access to the worldwide markets on the most favourable conditions.
Ukrainians hid orphaned children from Russian deportation
Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, health staff at a children’s hospital in the south started secretly planning how to save the babies.
Russians were suspected of seizing orphan children and sending them to Russia, so staff at the children’s regional hospital in Kherson city began fabricating orphans’ medical records to make it appear like they were too ill to move.
“We deliberately wrote false information that the children were sick and could not be transported,” said Dr. Olga Pilyarska, head of intensive care. “We were scared that (the Russians) would find out … (but) we decided that we would save the children at any cost.”
Throughout the war Russians have been accused of deporting Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories to raise them as their own. At least 1,000 children were seized from schools and orphanages in the Kherson region during Russia’s eight-month occupation of the area, say local authorities. Their whereabouts are still unknown.
But residents say even more children would have gone missing had it not been for the efforts of some in the community who risked their lives to hide as many children as they could.
At the hospital in Kherson, staff invented diseases for 11 abandoned babies under their care, so they wouldn’t have to give them to the orphanage where they knew they’d be given Russian documents and potentially taken away. One baby had “pulmonary bleeding”, another “uncontrollable convulsions” and another needed “artificial ventilation,” said Pilyarska of the fake records.
On the outskirts of Kherson in the village of Stepanivka, Volodymyr Sahaidak the director of a center for social and psychological rehabilitation, was also falsifying paperwork to hide 52 orphaned and vulnerable children. The 61-year-old placed some of the children with seven of his staff, others were taken to distant relatives and some of the older ones remained with him, he said. “It seemed that if I did not hide my children they would simply be taken away from me,” he said.
Read: Russian oil cap begins, trying to pressure Putin on Ukraine
But moving them around wasn’t easy. After Russia occupied Kherson and much of the region in March, they started separating orphans at checkpoints, forcing Sahaidak to get creative about how to transport them. In one instance he faked records saying that a group of kids had received treatment in the hospital and were being taken by their aunt to be reunited with their mother who was nine months pregnant and waiting for them on the other side of the river, he said.
While Sahaidak managed to stave off the Russians, not all children were as lucky. In the orphanage in Kherson — where the hospital would have sent the 11 babies — some 50 children were evacuated in October and allegedly taken to Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, a security guard at the institution and neighbors told The Associated Press.
“A bus came with the inscription Z (a symbol painted on Russian vehicles) and they were taken away,” said Anastasiia Kovalenko, who lives nearby.
At the start of the invasion, a local aid group tried to hide the children in a church but the Russians found them several months later, returned them to the orphanage and then evacuated them, said locals.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Russia is trying to give thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian families for foster care or adoption. The AP found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without consent, lied to them that they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda, and given them Russian families and citizenship.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, says Russian officials are conducting a deliberate depopulation campaign in occupied parts of Ukraine and deporting children under the guise of medical rehabilitation schemes and adoption programs.
Russian authorities have repeatedly said that moving children to Russia is intended to protect them from hostilities. The Russian Foreign Ministry has rejected the claims that the country is seizing and deporting the children. It has noted that the authorities are searching for relatives of parentless children left in Ukraine to find opportunities to send them home when possible.
Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova personally oversaw moving hundreds of orphans from Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine for adoption by Russian families. She has claimed that some of the children were offered an opportunity to return to Ukraine but refused to do so. Her statement couldn’t be independently verified.
Read: Can Ukraine pay for war without wrecking economy?
UNICEF’s Europe and Central Asia child protection regional adviser, Aaron Greenberg, said that until the fate of a child’s parents or other close relatives can be verified, each separated child is considered to have living close relatives, and an assessment must be led by authorities in the countries where the children are located.
Local and national security and law enforcement are looking for the children who were moved but they still don’t know what happened to them, said Galina Lugova, head of Kherson’s military administration. “We do not know the fate of these children … we do not know where the children from orphanages or from our educational institutions are, and this is a problem,” she said.
For now, much of the burden is falling on locals to find and bring them home.
In July, the Russians brought 15 children from the front lines in the nearby region of Mykolaiv to Sahaidak’s rehabilitation center and then on to Russia, he said. With the help of foreigners and volunteers, he managed to track them down and get them to Georgia, he said. Sahaidak would not provide further details about the operation for fear of jeopardizing it, but said the children are expected to return to Ukraine in the coming weeks.
For some, the threat of Russia deporting children has brought unexpected results. In October when there were signs that the Russians were retreating, Tetiana Pavelko, a nurse at the children’s hospital, worried they’d take the babies with them. Unable to bear children of her own, the 43-year-old rushed to the ward and adopted a 10-month-old girl.
Wiping tears of joy from her cheeks, Pavelko said she named the baby Kira after a Christian martyr. “She helped people, healed and performed many miracles,” she said.
Turkish strikes on US Kurd allies resonate in Ukraine war
Biden administration officials are toughening their language toward NATO ally Turkey as they try to talk Turkish President Recep Erdogan out of launching a bloody and destabilizing ground offensive against American-allied Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria.
Since Nov. 20, after six people died in an Istanbul bombing a week before that Turkey blamed, without evidence, on the U.S. and its Kurdish allies in Syria, Turkey has launched cross-border airstrikes, rockets and shells into U.S.- and Kurdish-patrolled areas of Syria, leaving Kurdish funeral corteges burying scores of dead.
Some criticized the initial muted U.S. response to the near-daily Turkish bombardment — a broad call for “de-escalation” — as a U.S. green light for more. With Erdogan not backing down on his threat to escalate, the U.S. began speaking more forcefully.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Turkish counterpart on Wednesday to express “strong opposition” to Turkey launching a new military operation in northern Syria.
And National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday made one of the administration's first specific mentions of the impact of the Turkish strikes on the Kurdish militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, that works with the United States against Islamic State militants bottled up in northern Syria.
How successfully the United States manages Erdogan’s threat to send troops in against America's Kurdish partners over coming weeks will affect global security concerns far from that isolated corner of Syria.
Read more: Biden, Macron vow unity against Russia, discuss trade row
That's especially true for the Ukraine conflict. The Biden administration is eager for Erdogan's cooperation with other NATO partners in countering Russia, particularly when it comes to persuading Turkey to drop its objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
But giving Turkey free rein in attacks on the Syrian Kurds in hopes of securing Erdogan's cooperation within NATO would have big security implications of its own.
U.S. forces on Friday stopped joint military patrols with the Kurdish forces in northern Syria to counter Islamic State extremists, as the Kurds concentrate on defending themselves from the Turkish air and artillery attacks and a possible ground invasion.
Since 2015, the Syrian Kurdish forces have worked with the few hundred forces the U.S. has on the ground there, winning back territory from the Islamic State and then detaining thousands of Islamic State fighters and their families and battling remnant Islamic State fighters. On Saturday, the U.S. and Kurds resumed limited patrols at one of the detention camps.
“ISIS is the forgotten story for the world and the United States, because of the focus on Ukraine,” said Omer Taspinar, an expert on Turkey and European security at the Brookings Institution and the National War College. ISIS is one widely used acronym for the Islamic State.
“Tragically, what would revive Western support for the Kurds ... would be another ISIS terrorist attack, God forbid, in Europe or in the United States that will remind people that we actually have not defeated ISIS,” Taspinar said.
Turkey says the Syrian Kurds are allied to a nearly four-decade PKK Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people on both sides. The United States' Syrian Kurdish allies deny any attacks in Turkey.
U.S. Central Command, and many in Congress, praise the Syrian Kurds as brave comrades in arms. In July, Central Command angered Turkey by tweeting condolences for a Syrian Kurdish deputy commander and two other female fighters killed by a drone strike blamed on Turkey.
In 2019, a public outcry by his fellow Republicans and many others killed a plan by President Donald Trump, which he announced after a call with Erdogan, to clear U.S. troops out of the way of an expected Turkish attack on the Kurdish allies in Syria.
Read more: Biden strengthening US policy to stem sexual violence in war zones, including in Ukraine
Then-presidential contender Joe Biden was among those expressing outrage.
“The Kurds were integral in helping us defeat ISIS — and too many lost their lives. Now, President Trump has abandoned them. It’s shameful,” Biden tweeted at the time.
The measured U.S. response now — even after some Turkish strikes hit near sites that host U.S. forces — reflects the significant strategic role that Turkey, as a NATO member, plays in the alliance's efforts to counter Russia in Europe. The State Department and USAID did not immediately answer questions about whether the Turkish strikes had hindered aid workers and operations that partner with the United States.
Turkey, with strong ties to both Russia and the United States, has contributed to its NATO allies' efforts against Russia in key ways during the Ukraine conflict. That includes supplying armed drones to Ukraine, and helping mediate between Russia and the United States and others.
But Turkey is also seeking to exert leverage within the alliance by blocking Finland and Sweden from joining NATO. Turkey is demanding that Sweden surrender Kurdish exiles that it says are affiliated with the PKK Kurdish insurgents.
Turkey’s state-run news agency reported that Sweden extradited a member of the PKK and he was arrested Saturday upon arrival in Istanbul.
Turkey is one of only two of the 30 NATO members not to have signed off yet on the Nordic countries' NATO memberships. Hungary, the other, is expected to do so.
At a gathering of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania, this past week, NATO diplomats refrained from publicly confronting Turkey, avoiding giving offense that might further set back the cause of Finland's and Sweden's NATO membership.
Turkey's foreign minister made clear to his European counterparts that Turkey had yet to be appeased, when it came to Finland or Sweden hosting Kurdish exiles there.
“We reminded that in the end, it’s the Turkish people and the Turkish parliament that need to be convinced,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters on the sidelines.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to talk Thursday with Finland's and Sweden's foreign ministers on dealing with Turkey's objections to their NATO accession.
Experts say the Biden administration has plenty of leverage to wield privately in urging Erdogan to relent in the threatened escalated attack on Syrian Kurds. That includes U.S. F-16 fighter sales that Turkey wants but have been opposed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and others in Congress.
There's a third big security risk in the U.S. handling of Turkey's invasion threat, along with the possible impact on the Ukraine conflict and on efforts to contain the Islamic State.
That's the risk to Kurds, a stateless people and frequent U.S. ally often abandoned by the U.S. and the West in past conflicts over the past century.
If the U.S. stands by while Turkey escalates attacks on the Syrian Kurds who were instrumental in quelling the Islamic State, “especially in the aftermath of Afghanistan, what message are we sending to the Middle East?" asked Henri J. Barkey, an expert on Kurds and Turkey at the Council on Foreign Relations and at Lehigh University.
“And to all allies in general?" Barkey asked.
An ethnic group of millions at the intersection of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Kurds lost out on a state of their own as the U.S. and other powers carved up the remnants of the Turkish Ottoman Empire after World War I.
Saddam Hussein and other regional leaders used poison gas, airstrikes and other tools of mass slaughter over the decades to suppress the Kurds. As under U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1991 after the Gulf War, the United States at times encouraged popular uprisings but stood by as Kurds died in the resulting massacres.
On Nov. 28, hundreds of Syrian Kurds gathered for the victims of one of the Turkish airstrikes — five guards killed securing the al-Hol camp, which holds thousands of family members of Islamic State fighters.
Relatives of one of the Kurdish guards, Saifuddin Mohammed, placed his photo on his grave.
“Of course, we are proud,” said his brother, Abbas Mohammed. “He defended his land and his honor against the Turkish invading forces.”
Russia rejects $60-a-barrel cap on its oil, warns of cutoffs
Russian authorities rejected a price cap on the country's oil set by Ukraine’s Western supporters and threatened Saturday to stop supplying the nations that endorsed it.
Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States and the 27-nation European Union agreed Friday to cap what they would pay for Russian oil at $60-per-barrel. The limit is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia needed to analyze the situation before deciding on a specific response but that it would not accept the price ceiling. Russia's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, warned that the cap's European backers would come to rue their decision.
“From this year, Europe will live without Russian oil," Ulyanov tweeted. "Moscow has already made it clear that it will not supply oil to those countries that support anti-market price caps. Wait, very soon the EU will accuse Russia of using oil as a weapon.”
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, called Saturday for a lower price cap, saying the one adopted by the EU and the Group of Seven leading economies didn't go far enough.
“It would be necessary to lower it to $30 in order to destroy the enemy’s economy faster,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, wrote on Telegram, staking out a position also favored by Poland — a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.
Read more: Can Ukraine pay for war without wrecking economy?
Under Friday's agreements, insurance companies and other firms needed to ship oil would only be able to deal with Russian crude if the oil is priced at or below the cap. Most insurers are located in the EU and the United Kingdom and could be required to observe the ceiling.
Russia’s crude has already been selling for around $60 a barrel, a deep discount from international benchmark Brent, which closed Friday at $85.42 per barrel.
The Russian Embassy in Washington insisted that Russian oil "will continue to be in demand" and criticized the price limit as “reshaping the basic principles of the functioning of free markets.” A post on the embassy's Telegram channel predicted the per-barrel cap would lead to “a widespread increase in uncertainty and higher costs for consumers of raw materials.”
“What happens in China will help shape whether the price cap has any teeth,” said Jim Burkhard, an oil markets analyst with IHS Markit. He said dampened demand from China means most Russian crude exports are already selling below $60.
The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia's forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 airstrikes and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine's military positions and civilian infrastructure.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president's office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region. According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, Russian forces “continue to invest a large element of their overall military effort and firepower” around the small Donestsk city of Bakhmut, which they have spent weeks trying to capture.
Read more: Russia rejects pullout from Ukraine as condition for talks
In southern Ukraine's Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.
Russian forces pulled back to the river's eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who "did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory.” His announcement cited a “possible intensification of hostilities in this area.”
Kherson is one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September and vowed to defend as Russian territory. From their new positions, Russian troops have regularly shelled Kherson city and nearby infrastructure in recent days, leaving many residents without power. Running water remained unavailable in much of the city — and one resident was seen scooping up water from a dirty puddle.
The city continued to suffer heavy shelling Saturday that left many residents disoriented, toppled power lines and dumped torn-off tree branches on the roads.
“When we start to repair (electricity networks), the shelling starts immediately,” said Oleksandr Kravchenko, who is in charge of high-voltage networks in Kherson. “We just repair electric lines and on the next day we have to repair lines again.”
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region, which Russia's soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.
The mayor of the city of Kharkiv, which remained under Ukrainian control during Russia's occupation of other parts of the region, said some 500 apartment buildings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 220 schools and kindergartens were damaged or destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at $9 billion.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu met Saturday in Minsk with the president and defense minister of Belarus, which hosts Russian troops and artillery. Belarus has said its own forces are not taking part in the war, but Ukrainian officials have frequently expressed concern that they could be be induced to cross the border into northern Ukraine.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said at the meeting that his troops and Russian forces train in coordination. “We ready ourselves as one grouping, one army. Everyone knows it. We were not hiding it,” he was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.
Official says over 10,000 Ukrainian troops killed in war
A top adviser to Ukraine’s president has cited military chiefs as saying 10,000 to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the country’s nine-month struggle against Russia’s invasion, a rare comment on such figures and far below estimates of Ukrainian casualties from Western leaders.
Russian forces kept up rocket attacks on infrastructure and airstrikes against Ukrainian troop positions along the contact line, the Ukrainian general staff said Friday, adding that Moscow’s military push has focused on a dozen towns including Bakhmut and Avdiivka — key targets for Russia in the embattled east.
Read more: EU proposes UN-backed court to investigate Russia's war crimes in Ukraine
Late Thursday, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, relayed new figures about Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle, while noting that the number of injured troops was higher and civilian casualty counts were “significant.”
“We have official figures from the general staff, we have official figures from the top command, and they amount to between 10,000 and 12,500-13,000 killed,” Podolyak told Channel 24. The Ukrainian military has not confirmed such figures and it was a rare instance of a Ukrainian official providing such a count. The last dates back to late August, when the head of the armed forces said that nearly 9,000 military personnel had been killed. In June, Podolyak said that up to 200 soldiers were dying each day, in some of the most intense fighting and bloodshed this year.
On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive Commission, said 100,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed before her office corrected her comments — calling them inaccurate and saying that the figure referred to both killed and injured.
Last month, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and “well over” 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war so far. He added that it was the “same thing probably on the Ukrainian side.”
Read more: Lull in Russian attacks against Ukraine energy, aid pledged
The U.N. human rights office, in its latest weekly update published Monday, said it had recorded 6,655 civilians killed and 10,368 injured, but has acknowledged that its tally includes only casualties that it has confirmed and likely far understates the actual toll. Ukrainians have been bracing for freezing winter temperatures as Russia’s campaign has recently hit infrastructure including power plants and electrical transformers, leaving many without heat, water and electricity.
Ukraine has faced a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks since early October. The shelling has been especially intense in southern Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine’s army reclaimed the southern city almost three weeks ago.
Local authorities said about two-thirds of the city of Kherson had electricity as of Thursday night, after new Russian strikes had cut power that had recently been restored.
Biden, Macron vow unity against Russia, discuss trade row
Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron vowed to maintain a united front against Russia on Thursday amid growing worries about waning support for Ukraine’s war effort in the U.S. and Europe. Biden also signaled he might be willing to tweak aspects of his signature climate legislation that have raised concerns with France and other European allies.
Biden honored Macron with a grand state dinner Thursday evening — the first of the U.S. president’s COVID-19 shadowed presidency for a foreign leader. But following up on Biden’s upbeat comments might not go as smoothly as that fancy affair. Republicans who are about to take control of the House have shown less willingness than Biden to spend billions on Ukraine, and Democratic lawmakers said Thursday they were not about to jump back into the climate legislation.
In fact, for all the positive statements, Macron’s visit to Washington has been tempered by his criticism of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and the challenges both leaders face amid the mounting costs of keeping military and economic aid flowing to Kyiv with no end in sight for the Russian invasion.
Despite the differences, Biden and Macron sought to underscore that the U.S.-France alliance remains solid and that the West must hold steadfast against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Read more: Biden, Macron ready to talk Ukraine, trade in state visit
“Today, we reaffirm that, as I said, we’re going to stand together against this brutality,” Biden said. “Putin thinks that he can crush the will of all those who oppose his imperial ambitions by attacking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, choking off energy to Europe to drive up prices, exacerbating the food crisis. That’s hurting very vulnerable people not just in Ukraine but around the world and he’s not going to succeed.”
Both leaders at an outdoor welcoming ceremony paid tribute to their countries’ long alliance. But they acknowledged difficult moments lay ahead as Western unity shows some wear nine months into the war in Ukraine.
In Washington, Republicans are set to take control of the House, where GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has said his party’s lawmakers will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine. Across the Atlantic, Macron’s efforts to keep Europe united will be tested by the mounting costs of supporting Ukraine in the war and as Europe battles rising energy prices that threaten to derail the post-pandemic economic recovery.
Macron stressed that the issue has ramifications far beyond Ukraine’s borders.
“What is at stake in Ukraine is not just very far from here, in a small country somewhere in Europe,” he declared. “But it’s about our values. And about our principles.”
“Our two nations are sisters in the fight for freedom,” he said.
Biden indicated he would be willing to talk with Putin if the Russian leader demonstrated that he seriously wanted to end the invasion. But the U.S. president, as always, conditioned such talks on support by NATO allies.
“I’m prepared to speak with Mr. Putin if in fact there is an interest in him deciding that he’s looking for a way to end the war,” Biden said. “He hasn’t done that yet.”
In addition to their talk of Ukraine — what White House officials said was at the top of the agenda — the two leaders discussed Macron’s and other leaders’ concerns about the recently enacted clean energy law.
Macron has made clear that he and other European leaders are opposed to incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act that favor American-made climate technology, including electric vehicles.
Biden acknowledged “glitches” in the legislation but said “there’s tweaks we can make” to satisfy allies.
“The United States makes no apology. And I make no apologies since I wrote it for the legislation we’re talking about,” Biden added.
However, Macron said that while the Biden administration’s efforts to curb climate change should be applauded, the subsidies would be an enormous setback for European companies.
“We want to succeed together, not one against the other,” Macron added. He said the U.S. and France would “resynchronize” their clean energy efforts to ensure there’s no “domino effect” that undermines clean energy projects in Europe.
On Capitol Hill, despite Biden’s talk of possible changes in the law, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, one of the bill’s main architects, said, “Congress passed a law to rev up the American electric automobile industry, create good-paying American jobs and tackle climate change at the same time. I have no intention of reopening it.”
Read more: Biden strengthening US policy to stem sexual violence in war zones, including in Ukraine
The European Union has also expressed concern that tax credits in the law would discriminate against European producers and break World Trade Organization rules.
The leaders, with aides, met for about three hours after taking part in a formal ceremony with hundreds of people gathered on the South Lawn on a sunny, chilly morning. There was a 21-gun salute and review of troops, and ushers distributed small French and American flags to the guests.
Both Biden and Macron in their public comments sought to keep the focus on the situation in Ukraine.
The state visit should provide a boost to Macron diplomatically that he can leverage back in Europe. His outspoken comments help him demonstrate that he’s defending French workers, even as he maintains a close relationship with Biden. The moment also helps Macron burnish his image as the European Union’s most visible and vocal leader, at a time when Europe is increasingly concerned that its economy will be indelibly weakened by the Ukraine war and resulting energy and inflation crises.
To that end, Biden praised Macron as “not just the leader of France” and for being “very outspoken and very, very commanding in Europe.” In his public comments, Macron repeatedly referred to the U.S. president as “dear Joe.”
Still, at moments, Macron’s rhetoric has rankled U.S. and Ukrainian officials, with calls for Ukraine and Russia to meet at the negotiating table. White House officials have publicly maintained that it is solely up to Ukraine’s leadership to decide when it’s appropriate to engage the Russians and have stressed the war could end immediately if Putin ended his invasion.
Macron also raised eyebrows earlier this month in a speech at a summit in Bangkok when he referred to the U.S. and China as “two big elephants” that are on the cusp of creating “a big problem for the rest of the jungle.” His visit to Washington came as both the U.S. and France are keeping their eyes on China after protests have broken out in several mainland cities and Hong Kong over Beijing’s “zero COVID” strategy.
The state visit marked a return of a White House tradition of honoring close foreign allies that dates back to Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency.
Macron and his wife, Brigitte, came to the U.S. bearing gifts carefully tailored to their American hosts, including a vinyl record and CD of the original soundtrack from the 1966 film “Un Homme et une Femme,” which the Bidens went to see on their first date, according to the palace.
Among the gifts Biden and first lady Jill Biden presented the Macrons was a mirror framed by fallen wood from the White House grounds and made by an American furniture maker.
Vice President Kamala Harris hosted Macron for a lunch at the State Department before the evening state dinner in an enormous tented pavilion constructed on the White House South Lawn. The dinner for hundreds attracted big names from fashion, entertainment, business and politics.
EU proposes UN-backed court to investigate Russia's war crimes in Ukraine
The European Union proposed Wednesday to set up a U.N.-backed specialized court to investigate possible war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, and to use frozen Russian assets to rebuild the war-torn country.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the EU will work with international partners to get “the broadest international support possible" for the tribunal, while continuing to support the work of the International Criminal Court.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, his military forces have been accused of abuses ranging from killings in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha to deadly attacks on civilian facilities, including the March 16 bombing of a theater in Mariupol that an Associated Press investigation established likely killed close to 600 people.
Read more: Lull in Russian attacks against Ukraine energy, aid pledged
Investigations of military crimes committed during the war in Ukraine are underway around Europe, and the Hague-based International Criminal Court has already launched investigations.
Von der Leyen said it is estimated that more than 20,000 Ukrainian civilians and more than 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed since the start of the war.
Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska on Tuesday also urged that Ukraine’s invaders be held account as she addressed lawmakers in London.
“Victory is not the only thing we need. We need justice,” she said, comparing Russian war crimes to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany in World War II.
She called on Britain to lead efforts to set up a criminal tribunal to prosecute senior Russians over the invasion, similar to the postwar Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis.
Read more: Pockets of shelling across Ukraine as wintry warfare looms
Von der Leyen on Wednesday added that the 27-nation bloc wants to make Russia pay for the destruction it caused in neighboring Ukraine by using Russian assets frozen under sanctions.
She estimated the damage to Ukraine at 600 billion euros.
“Russia and its oligarchs have to compensate Ukraine for the damage and cover the costs for rebuilding the country," von der Leyen said. “We have the means to make Russia pay."
Von der Leyen said 300 billion euros of the Russian central bank reserves has been immobilized, and that 19 billion euros of Russian oligarchs' money has been frozen.
“In the short term, we could create with our partners a structure to manage these funds and invest them," she said. “We would then use the proceeds for Ukraine, and once the sanctions are lifted, these funds should be used so that Russia pays full compensation for the damages caused to Ukraine."
The EU said the lifting of the restrictions on Russian assets could be linked to conclusion of a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia that would settle the question of damages reparation.