Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has urged the Western leaders to impose strong economic sanctions on Myanmar to expedite the Rohingya repatriation efforts. He also urged the ASEAN leaders to strengthen their ongoing efforts to help create a conducive environment within Myanmar to help the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals return to their homeland. Momen made the call while speaking at the 29th Meeting of ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) under the theme "ASEAN ACT: Addressing Challenges Together" held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Friday. He said it is now the fifth year of the Rohingya crisis but not a single forcibly displaced Myanmar national has been repatriated to Myanmar. The Foreign Minister, who led the Bangladesh delegation to the 29th ARF meeting, said strengthening ongoing efforts to help create an environment within Myanmar will encourage the Rohingyas to return. Momen raised the issue of the high foreign direct investment (FDI) Myanmar secured despite the genocide it committed and atrocities it did. Read: Rohingya repatriation: Bangladesh wants more coordinated, proactive support from ASEAN He also pointed out that after the 2017 Rohingya invasion, even the European Union (EU) countries’ trade and investment increased substantially. In terms of foreign direct investment, the EU was the 5th largest foreign investor following other Asian countries, Momen said. He also recalled the history that during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, there was economic sanction on Myanmar and therefore, they repatriated thousands of their nationals in the 1970s and 1990s through dialogue and discussions. Momen said unless economic sanction is imposed on Myanmar, Myanmar is unlikely to listen to world leadership, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Meanwhile, he pointed out that delaying the repatriation process may pose a security threat to the entire region and beyond. He highlighted some key challenges including recurring waves of new variants of Covid -19, global turmoil due to conflict in Europe, climate change, economic recession, and food and commodity crises that can only be adequately and effectively addressed through mutual trust and cooperation underpinned by multilateral arrangements like ARF. Momen said the Bangladesh government is working relentlessly under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to transform Bangabandhu's vision into a reality. On Saturday morning, Momen met Foreign Minister of Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) Saleumxay Kommasith reviewed the whole gamut of the existing excellent bilateral relations. During the meeting, he invited Laos to invest in different sectors, particularly in priority sectors in the Economic Zones, agriculture and ICT sectors of Bangladesh. Momen also proposed the regular exchange of trade delegation and trade related offer in order to create opportunities and potentials for bilateral trade and investment which is essential for both countries. Read: MPs urge ASEAN to put strong pressure on Myanmar He urged the Foreign Minister of Lao PDR to play a more proactive role in bringing a sustainable solution to the protracted Rohingya crisis by initiating a speedy, safe and dignified repatriation of the forcibly displaced people back to their motherland Myanmar. He requested Lao PDR to exert its friendly influence on Myanmar to take its citizens back to Myanmar.

Russia shattered weeks of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital with long-range missiles fired toward Kyiv early Sunday, an apparent Kremlin show-of-force as Western leaders meet in Europe to strengthen their military and economic support of Ukraine. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the missiles hit at least two residential buildings, and President Volodymr Zelenskyy said a 37-year-old man was killed and his 7-year-old daughter and wife injured. Associated Press journalists saw emergency workers battling flames and rescuing civilians. Read:G-7 to ban Russian gold in response to Ukraine war: Biden The strikes also damaged a nearby kindergarten, where a crater pocked the courtyard. U.S. President Joe Biden called the attacks “barbarism” after he arrived in Germany for a Group of Seven summit. Later Sunday, a local official reported a second death, telling the Unian news agency that a railroad worker was killed and several others were injured in the attacks while servicing rail infrastructure. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said the first air-launched weapons successfully to target the capital since June 5 were Kh-101 cruise missiles fired from warplanes over the Caspian Sea, more than 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away. Kyiv's mayor told journalists he thought the airstrikes were “maybe a symbolic attack” ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid that starts Tuesday. A former commander of U.S. forces in Europe said the strikes also were a signal to the leaders of G-7 nations meeting Sunday in Germany. “Russia is saying, ‘We can do this all day long. You guys are powerless to stop us,’” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said. “The Russians are humiliating the leaders of the West.” The G-7 leaders were set to announce the latest in a long series of international economic steps to pressure and isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine: new bans on imports of Russian gold. Standing with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the three-day meeting's host, Biden said of the missile strikes on Kyiv: “It’s more of their barbarism.” Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, appealed to the G-7 leaders for more help, saying stopping Russian aggression “is possible only if we get everything we ask for, and in the time we need it - weapons, financial support and sanctions against Russia.” A Ukrainian parliament member, Oleksiy Goncharenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that preliminary information indicated that Russia launched 14 missiles toward the capital region and Kyiv itself. Zelenskyy said some were intercepted, and he vowed revenge against “all pilots, dispatchers, technicians and other people who ensure the launch of missiles in Ukraine.” “We will find you all. Each of you will be responsible for these blows,” Zelenskyy vowed. “And if someone thinks he will evade responsibility by saying that this was an order, you are wrong. When your missiles hit homes, it’s a war crime. The court is what awaits you all. And you will not hide anywhere - neither on the shores of the Caspian Sea, over which your missiles are launched, nor in Belarus ... Nowhere.” In a phone interview, retired U.S. general Hodges told The Associated Press that Russia has a limited stock of precision missiles and “if they are using them, it’s going to be for a special purpose,” Russia has denied targeting civilians during the 4-month-old war, and Hodges said it was hard to know if the missiles launched Sunday were intended to strike the apartments buildings. Russian forces tried to seize control of Kyiv early in the war. After Ukrainian troops repelled them, the Kremlin largely shifted its focus to southern and eastern Ukraine. Russian rocket strikes in the city of Cherkasy, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kyiv, killed one person and injured five, regional governor Ihor Taburets said Sunday. In the east, Russian troops fought to consolidate their gains by battling to swallow up the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk province. Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Sunday that Russia was conducting intense airstrikes on the city of Lysychansk, destroying its television tower and seriously damaging a road bridge. “There’s very much destruction. Lysychansk is almost unrecognizable,” he wrote on Facebook. For weeks, Lysychansk and the nearby city of Sievierodonetsk have been subject to a bloody and destructive offensive by Russian forces and their separatist allies aimed at capturing all of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Read:Russia fires missiles across Ukraine, cements gains in east They have made steady and slow progress, with Haidai confirming Saturday that Sievierodonetsk, including a chemical plant where hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians were holed up, had fallen. Commenting on the battle for Sievierodonetsk, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said late Saturday that Russian and Moscow-backed separatist forces now control not only the city but the villages surrounding it. He said the Russian military had thwarted Ukrainian forces' attempt to turn the Azot chemical plant into a “stubborn center of resistance.” Capturing Lysychansk would give Russian and separatist forces control of every major settlement in Luhansk. At last report, they controlled about half of Donetsk, the second province in the Donbas. On Saturday, Russia launched dozens of missiles on several areas across the country far from the heart of the eastern battles. Some of the missiles were fired from Russian long-range Tu-22 bombers deployed from Belarus for the first time, Ukraine’s air command said. Reacting to the shelling from the Russian bombers, Zelenskyy appealed to the people of Belarus to resist cooperation with the Russian military. “The Russian leadership wants to draw you - all Belarusians - into the war, wants to sow hatred between us,” he said in his video address Sunday. “You can refuse to participate in this war. Your lives belong only to you, not to someone in the Kremlin.” Belarus hosts Russian military units and was used as a staging ground before Russia invaded Ukraine, but its own troops have not crossed the border. In a meeting Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system. On the economic front, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said banning imports of Russian gold would represent a significant escalation of sanctions. “That is the second-most lucrative export that Russia has after energy.” Blinken told American news channel CNN. “It’s about $19 billion a year. And most of that is within the G-7 countries. So cutting that off, denying access to about $19 billion of revenues a year, that’s significant.” Russia is poised to default on its foreign debt for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, further alienating the country from the global financial system following international sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine. The country faces a Sunday night deadline to meet a 30-day grace period on interest payments originally due May 27. But it could take time to confirm a default. Russia calls any default artificial because it has the money to pay its debts but says sanctions have frozen its foreign currency reserves held abroad.

As Western leaders congratulate themselves for their speedy and severe responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they’re also scratching their heads with uncertainty about what their actions will accomplish. The U.S., NATO and the European Union have focused on strangling Russia’s economy and arming Ukrainian fighters. But it’s unclear how this will stop the war. No one knows what President Vladimir Putin is thinking, but there’s no reason to believe that even the toughest measures will shatter his determination to force the Western-leaning former Soviet republic back into Moscow’s orbit. They may not say it publicly, but U.S. officials and their NATO allies don’t see a breaking point for Putin — either an economic toll so severe or battlefield losses so devastating — that would convince him to order his troops home and allow Ukraine’s leaders to govern in peace. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Putin,” Biden said as he announced a U.S. ban on Russian energy imports on Tuesday. But Ukraine might not be a complete defeat for Putin either. Read:US, allies to revoke 'most favored nation' status for Russia The sanctions and military aid may have been effective in slowing the Russian advance in Ukraine and perhaps discouraging Putin from targeting other countries. They may serve as a warning for other powerful countries tempted to target weaker neighbors. But Western officials have been vague about how the actions will end the fighting. One of the most direct answers came from the third-ranking U.S. diplomat, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. She said Tuesday that internal, rather than external, pressure on Putin will be more effective. “The way this conflict will end is when Putin realizes that this adventure has put his own leadership standing at risk with his own military, with his own people,” she testified before Congress. “He will have to change course, or the Russian people take matters into their own hands.” A more provocative remark came from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who called for the Russian people to assassinate Putin. The White House quickly distanced itself from that comment. In fact, there is no sign yet that his grip on power has loosened. There’s also the frightening uncertainty about how a nuclear-armed Putin, if cornered, would respond to a genuine threat to his power if one were to arise. And no one is counting on an outright military victory by Ukraine. While Ukrainian fighters have put up a remarkable defense and are determined to fight for as long as Russian forces remain on their soil, they are badly outgunned and would be hard-pressed to push Russian troops back across the border. Meanwhile, NATO nations aren’t about to risk triggering World War III by joining the fight in defense of a non-member state. Against this backdrop, a diplomatic solution appears unlikely. Russia has only hardened its demands since launching the invasion last month and attempts at diplomacy by French, Israeli and Turkish leaders have thus far proven fruitless. The top U.S. and Russian diplomats aren’t even talking to each other and recent lower-level communications have focused almost entirely on the expulsions of diplomats from their two countries. “Nobody knows how this is going to end and it’s going to take some time to see how the Russians decide to react to the obvious dead-end that they’ve got themselves into,” said Jeff Rathke, a European expert and president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “Until the Russians are ready to negotiate something serious and real, there’s not much you can do,” he said. He added that the U.S. and Europe should resist the temptation to negotiate themselves with Putin over Ukraine, especially as the economic costs of isolating Moscow mount, particularly in Europe. “The endgame has to be decided by the Ukrainians in terms of what they will accept,” he said. Read:China amplifies unsupported Russian claim of Ukraine biolabs “I can’t see this ending in any way good for Ukraine as long as Putin is in power,” said Ian Kelly, a retired U.S. diplomat and former ambassador to Georgia who now teaches international relations at Northwestern University. “He’s put out his maximalist goal, which is basically surrender, and that’s something the Ukrainians aren’t going to be able to accept and the Russians are not going to be able to implement.” “Withdrawal for him is death. It’s too weak,” Kelly said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged the limits of the West’s ability to end the conflict. “What we’re looking at is whether or not President Putin will decide to try to finally cut the losses that he’s inflicted on himself and inflicted on the Russian people. We can’t decide that for him,” he said Wednesday. Appearing beside Blinken, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss suggested the Western response may go beyond hopes of getting Russia out of Ukraine. “Putin must fail,” she said. “We know from history that aggressors only understand one thing, and that is strength. We know that if we don’t do enough now, other aggressors around the world will be emboldened. And we know that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, there will be terrible implications for European and global security.” With the uncertainty, U.S. officials have said they are convinced of only one thing: that an angry and frustrated Putin will pour more troops and firepower into Ukraine and the bloodshed will get worse before the situation approaches any return to normalcy. CIA Director William Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, told lawmakers this week he believes Putin has profoundly miscalculated the resistance and determination that his forces would meet from Ukrainians. He also said it may soon dawn on Putin that he will not be able to occupy Ukraine or impose a Russia-friendly regime there without facing years, if not decades, of fierce and bloody opposition. “Where that leads, I think, is for an ugly next few weeks in which he doubles down with scant regard for civilian casualties, in which urban fighting can get even uglier,” Burns said.