Russia says it will scale back near Kyiv as talks progress

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 29 March 2022

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ANKARA - Russia’s military announced Tuesday it will “fundamentally" scale back operations near Ukraine’s capital and a northern city, as talks brought the outlines of a possible deal to end the grinding war into view.

Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said the move was meant to increase trust in the talks after several rounds of negotiations failed to halt what has devolved into a bloody campaign of attrition.

The announcement was met with skepticism from the U.S. and others.

While Russia portrayed it as a goodwill gesture, it comes as the Kremlin’s troops have become bogged down in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance that has thwarted President Vladimir Putin’s hopes for a quick military victory. Late last week, and again on Tuesday, Russia seemed to roll back its war aims, saying its “main goal” now is gaining control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had not seen anything indicating talks were progressing in a “constructive way,” and he suggested Russian indications of a pullback could be an attempt by Moscow to “deceive people and deflect attention.”

“There is what Russia says and there is what Russia does, and we’re focused on the latter,” Blinken said in Morocco. “And what Russia is doing is the continued brutalization of Ukraine.”

He added, “If they somehow believe that an effort to subjugate only the eastern part of Ukraine or the southern part of Ukraine ... can succeed, then once again they are profoundly fooling themselves.”

Fomin said Moscow has decided to “fundamentally ... cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” to “increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations.” He did not immediately spell out what that would mean in practical terms.

Ukraine’s military said it has noted withdrawals of some forces around Kyiv and Chernihiv. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN “we haven’t seen anything to corroborate” reports of Russia withdrawing significant forces from around Kyiv. “But what we have seen over the last couple of days is they have stopped trying to advance on Kyiv.”

Rob Lee, a military expert at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, tweeted: “This sounds like more of an acknowledgment of the situation around Kyiv where Russia’s advance has been stalled for weeks and Ukrainian forces have had recent successes. Russia doesn’t have the forces to encircle the city.”

Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine met Tuesday in Istanbul, their first face-to-face talks in two weeks. Earlier talks, held in person in Belarus or by video, made no progress toward ending the more than month-long war that has killed thousands and driven over 10 million Ukrainians from their homes, including almost 4 million who have fled the country.

Fomin suggested there had been progress Tuesday, saying “negotiations on preparing an agreement on Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear status, as well as on giving Ukraine security guarantees, are turning to practical matters.”

Ukraine’s team, meanwhile, set out a detailed framework for a peace deal under which the country would remain neutral but its security would be guaranteed by a group of third countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, Turkey, China and Poland, in an arrangement similar to NATO’s "an attack on one is an attack on all” principle.

Ukraine said it would also be willing to hold talks over a 15-year period on the future of the Crimean Peninsula, which was seized by Russia in 2014, with both countries agreeing not to use their armed forces to resolve the issue in the meantime.

Russia’s views on the proposals were not immediately clear.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the talks had made “meaningful” progress and the two sides had reached “a consensus and common understanding” on some issues.

He said the meeting would be followed by a one between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers at an unspecified time. A meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents is also “on the agenda,” he said.

Moscow has demanded, among other things that Ukraine drop any hope of joining the NATO alliance, which it sees as a threat.

Ahead of the talks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country was prepared to declare its neutrality. Zelenskyy also said he was open to compromise over the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years.

But even as the negotiators assembled in Istanbul, Russian forces hit an oil depot in western Ukraine late Monday and blasted a gaping hole Tuesday morning in a nine-story government administration building in the southern port city of Mykolaiv. At least seven people were killed in that attack, Zelenskyy said.

“It’s terrible. They waited for people to go to work” before striking the building, said regional governor Vitaliy Kim. “I overslept. I’m lucky.”

In other developments:

— The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency arrived in Ukraine to try to ensure the safety of the country’s nuclear facilities. Russian forces have taken control of the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, site in 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear accident, and of the active Zaporizhzhia plant, where a building was damaged in fighting.

— Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east, Ukraine’s military said.

— Bloomberg said it has suspended operations in Russia and Belarus. Customers in the two countries won’t be able to access any Bloomberg financial products, it said.

— In the room at the Istanbul talks was Roman Abramovich, a longtime ally of Putin who has been sanctioned by Britain and the European Union. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Chelsea soccer team owner has been serving as an unofficial mediator approved by both countries. But mystery about his role has been deepened by news reports that he may have been poisoned during an earlier round of talks.

In fighting that has devolved into a back-and-forth stalemate, Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, a key suburb northwest of the capital, Kyiv, Zelenskyy said late Monday. But he warned that Russian troops were regrouping to take the area back.

Ukrainian forces also seized back control of Trostyanets, south of Sumy in the northeast, after weeks of Russian occupation that left a devastated landscape.

Arriving in the town Monday shortly afterward, The Associated Press saw the bodies of two Russian soldiers in the woods, and Russian tanks sat burned and twisted. A red “Z” marked a Russian truck, its windshield fractured, near stacked boxes of ammunition. Ukrainian forces on top of a tank flashed victory signs. Dazed residents lined up amid charred buildings, seeking aid.

It was unclear where the Russian troops went and under what circumstances they fled.

Putin’s ground forces have been thwarted not just by stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, but by what Western officials say are Russian tactical missteps, poor morale, shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, and other problems.

Reinforcing what the military said last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that “liberating Donbas” is now Moscow’s main objective.

While that presents a possible face-saving exit strategy for Putin, it has also raised Ukrainian fears the Kremlin aims to split the country and force it to surrender a swath of its territory.

Biden, Western allies open 1st of 3 summits on Russian war

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 24 March 2022

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By CHRIS MEGERIAN, LORNE COOK and AAMER MADHANI

BRUSSELS — U.S. President Joe Biden and world leaders opened a trio of emergency summits on Thursday with a sober warning from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that the alliance must boost its defenses to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “respond to a new security reality in Europe.”

Stoltenberg commented as he called to order a NATO summit focused on increasing pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin over the assault on Ukraine while tending to the economic and security fallout spreading across Europe and the world.

“We gather at a critical time for our security,” Stolenberg said, addressing the leaders seated at a large round table. “We are united in condemning the Kremlin’s unprovoked aggression and in our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

He said the alliance is “determined to continue to impose costs on Russia to bring about the end of this brutal war.”

Over the course of Thursday, the European diplomatic capital is hosting the emergency NATO summit, a gathering of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and a summit of the European Union. Biden will attend all three meetings and hold a news conference afterward.

The schedule left Brussels interlaced with multiple police checkpoints and road closures to help motorcades crisscross the city as the leaders go from one meeting to the next.

Biden arrived late Wednesday with the hopes of nudging allies to enact new sanctions on Russia, which has seen its economy crippled by several weeks of bans, boycotts and penalties.

While the West has been largely unified in confronting Russia after it invaded Ukraine, there’s wide acknowledgement that unity will be tested as the costs of war chip at the global economy.

The bolstering of forces along NATO’s eastern flank, almost certainly for at least the next five to 10 years if Russia is to be effectively dissuaded, will also put pressure on national budgets.

“We need to do more, and therefore we need to invest more. There is a new sense of urgency and I expect that the leaders will agree to accelerate the investments in defense,” Stoltenberg said before the summit.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the U.S. wants to hear “that the resolve and unity that we’ve seen for the past month will endure for as long as it takes.”

The energy crisis exacerbated by the war will be a particularly hot topic at the European Council summit, where leaders from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are hoping for an urgent, coordinated bloc-wide response. EU officials have said they will seek U.S. help on a plan to top up natural gas storage facilities for next winter, and they also want the bloc to jointly purchase gas.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed calls to boycott Russian energy supplies, saying it would cause significant damage to his country’s economy. Scholz is facing pressure from environmental activists to quickly wean Germany off Russian energy, but he said the process will have to be gradual.

“To do so from one day to the next would mean plunging our country and all of Europe into recession,” Scholz said Wednesday.

Poland and other eastern flank NATO countries will also be looking for clarity on how the United States and fellow European nations can assist in dealing with their growing concerns about Russian aggression as well as a spiraling refugee crisis. More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine in recent weeks, including more than 2 million to Poland.

Biden is scheduled to visit Poland on Friday, where both issues are expected to be at the center of talks with President Andrzej Duda. Another significant moment could come shortly before Biden returns to Washington on Saturday. The White House said he plans to “deliver remarks on the united efforts of the free world to support the people of Ukraine, hold Russia accountable for its brutal war, and defend a future that is rooted in democratic principles.”

Sullivan said Biden and fellow leaders would aim to “set out a longer-term game plan” for what forces and capabilities are going to be required for the alliance’s eastern flank countries.

Four new NATO battlegroups, which usually number between 1,000-1,500 troops, are being set up in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is expected to address the NATO summit by video, said late Wednesday that he wants the alliance to “declare that it will fully assist Ukraine to win this war” by supplying any weapons necessary.

All the while, national security officials from Washington to Warsaw are increasingly worried that Putin might deploy chemical, biological or even nuclear weaponry. Sullivan said the allies would consult on how to respond to “potential contingencies” of that sort.

Biden said this week that the possibility of Russia deploying chemical weapons was a “real threat.”

Stoltenberg declined Thursday to discuss whether such a strike is a red line that would draw the alliance into war with Russia. “I will not speculate beyond the fact that NATO is always ready to defend, to protect and to react to any type of attack on a NATO allied country,” he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a CNN interview this week said that Russia could consider using its nuclear weapons if it felt there was “an existential threat for our country.”

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union’s executive arm, said before Biden’s visit that she wants to discuss the possibility of securing extra deliveries of liquefied natural gas from the United States for the 27-nation bloc “for the next two winters.”

The EU imports 90% of the natural gas used to generate electricity, heat homes and supply industry, with Russia supplying almost 40% of EU gas and a quarter of its oil. The bloc is looking at ways to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by diversifying suppliers.

Sullivan said the United States was looking for ways to “surge” LNG supplies to Europe to help.

Biden, for his part, was expected to detail plans for new sanctions against Russia and humanitarian assistance for the region.

One new sanctions option that Biden is weighing is to target members of the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The new sanctions would be rolled out in coordination with Western allies.

Biden arrived in Brussels with Americans increasingly accepting of the need for the U.S. to help stop Putin, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

But even as concern among Americans has swelled and and support for a major U.S. role in the conflict strengthened in the last month, Biden’s negative approval rating has not budged, the AP-NORC poll found. Few are very confident that he can handle a crisis, and a majority thinks he lacks toughness in dealing with Russia.

Biden promised voters that he had the experience to navigate a complicated international emergency like the one unfolding in Europe and his trip will be the latest test of that proposition as he tries to maintain unity among Western allies and brace for potentially even bigger challenges.

Spain backs Moroccan rule in Western Sahara

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 19 March 2022

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By ARITZ PARRA

MADRID — Spain on Friday declared “a new stage” in its strained relations with Morocco after the Spanish prime minister wrote to the Moroccan king, agreeing that having Western Sahara operate autonomously under Rabat’s rule is “the most serious, realistic and credible” initiative for resolving a decades-long dispute over the vast African territory.

This marked an enormous departure from Spain’s earlier stance of considering Morocco’s grip on Western Sahara an occupation. The shift followed months of frosty diplomatic relations and led to the announcement of a flurry of visits by Spanish officials to its southern neighbor.

It also opened up disputes within Spain’s left-to-center governing coalition.

The United Nations has continued to regard Madrid as the colonial administrative power for Western Sahara, even after its annexation by Morocco immediately after Spain abandoned its African province in 1975. Over the years, the Spanish government’s official position, along with the European Union’s, has been to support a U.N.-sponsored referendum to settle the territory’s decolonization.

But according to a statement issued by Morocco’s royal palace on Friday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recognized “the importance of the Sahara issue for Morocco” in a letter to King Mohammed VI.

“Spain considers the autonomy initiative presented by Morocco in 2007 as the basis, the most serious, realistic and credible, for resolving the dispute,” the royal palace quoted Sánchez.

Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares confirmed the Moroccan announcement.

“Today we begin a new stage in our relations with Morocco and finally close a crisis with a strategic partner,” he told reporters. He added that the new chapter was “based on mutual respect, compliance with agreements, the absence of unilateral actions and transparency and permanent communication.”

Relations between Spain and Morocco hit a historical low last year after Spain secretly hosted for medical treatment the leader of the Polisario Front, which has led the yearning for independence by many Saharawis.

But when media affiliated with the Moroccan government revealed Brahim Ghali’s presence in Spain, Rabat allowed 10,000 people to cross the border into Ceuta, a Spanish city on the coast of North Africa. That leashed an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Morocco also recalled its ambassador in Madrid and hasn’t reinstated her.

Abdulah Arabi, who represents the Polisario in Spain, said Sánchez “succumbs to the pressure and blackmail” from Morocco by paying “a toll” to mend their damaged political and diplomatic ties. He said having Western Sahara be autonomous under Morocco is only one of many options that should be voted upon in a referendum.

“The solution has to be based on the choice voted by the Saharawi people,” Arabi said.

Some 176,000 Saharawi are believed to live in five refugee camps on Algerian soil, east of Western Sahara, in a sweltering desert that many consider no man’s land. They rely on humanitarian help and goods from international aid agencies, under the governance of the Polisario Front, which presides over an exiled Sahrawi republic.

In late 2020, their frustration over three decades in limbo led to the end of a cease-fire and new hostilities between Polisario forces and the Moroccan army.

Morocco departed from the agreement to hold a referendum for Western Sahara when it introduced its 2007 proposal of greater autonomy under its sovereignty. Using its leverage in keeping extremism in North Africa at bay and controlling the flow of African migrants towards the EU, Rabat has increasingly scored support for its proposal. First it was backed by France, then in late 2019 by the United States under former President Donald Trump, and more recently from Germany.

Western Sahara sits on vast phosphate deposits and faces rich fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of Sahrawis live in the Moroccan-controlled areas, where authorities keep a tight grip on dissent according to human rights groups.

A more assertive Morocco has also irked its regional foe, Algeria, a long-standing supporter of the Polisario that late last year severed diplomatic ties with Rabat.

Albares, the Spanish foreign minister, has been invited for meetings in Rabat later this month and officials were scheduling a visit by Sánchez himself, the Moroccan ministry of foreign affairs said.

In its statement, the Spanish government welcomed the invitations and said it wanted to face “common challenges” together with Rabat, “especially cooperation in the management of migratory flows in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.”

According to the Moroccan royal palace, in his message to the king, Sánchez wrote that Spain’s goal is “to act with the absolute transparency that corresponds to a great friend and ally.”

Sánchez, leader of Spain’s Socialists, has been at the helm of a fragile coalition with the far-left United We Can (Unidas Podemos) party, with the two sides often clashing over their views on feminism, social spending and foreign policy.

Soon after Morocco’s announcement, the junior partner’s most prominent leader, Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, tweeted that she was committed “to the defense of the Saharawi people and to the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.”

“Any solution to the conflict must go through dialogue and respect for the democratic will of the Saharawi people,” Díaz added.