Selected Russian banks banned from global payments system, while Russian central bank will find it harder to spend $500bn war chest
It has taken a week to reach this point, but western governments have put down their peashooters and wheeled out the financial howitzers against Vladimir Putin.
Far-reaching new sanctions against Russia were announced on Saturday night in a joint statement from the EU, UK, US and Canada.
Continue reading...Inflation is rising, Republicans are resurgent – and the increasingly embattled president now has a foreign policy crisis to deal with
For weeks, Joe Biden has issued urgent warnings that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen at any moment. The moment came overnight, when Russian troops began attacking Ukraine by land, air and sea.
For the US president – increasingly embattled at home by a resurgent Republican party – it was evidence that the White House had largely assessed the Ukraine crisis correctly, even though their preference would have been to be wrong about their predictions of a disastrous war in Europe.
Continue reading...Analysis: Immediate options seem limited and fraught with risk, but if Putin wants less Nato, he may ultimately end up with more
In the wake of what the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, described as Russia’s “fully fledged invasion of Ukraine”, the west has to decide how to respond to what France’s Emmanuel Macron has called a turning point in European history.
Yet can the west now offer Ukraine more than a mixture of prayers, sanctions and diplomatic demarches? Throughout this conflict western intelligence has shown it has been able to predict Putin’s next step, but less capable of stopping it. Boris Johnson told the Ukrainian people “we are with you”, but what this western solidarity means in practice is now up for debate.
Continue reading...Some congressional Republicans have attempted to blame Joe Biden’s foreign policy for enabling Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“These developments were not inevitable,” congressman Andy Barr said. “The Biden Administration’s weak and feckless foreign policy not only failed to deter this aggression, it invited this outcome.”
Continue reading...US and UK curbs on Russian banks and oligarchs are welcomed by Ukraine as strong ‘first move’; Zelenskiy rules out a general mobilisation
Ukraine’s defence minister says his country is “ready and able” to defend itself from Russia and says the world cannot be silent.
“Sanctions? Another brick in the wall? New Berlin Wall?” Oleksii Reznikov tweeted Tuesday morning local time.
Continue reading...‘We are not punishing the Taliban, we are making it worse for the people,’ says former UK foreign secretary
The west has inflicted catastrophic damage on Afghanistan and its own reputation by imposing a policy of starvation on the country, according to David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.
“If we wanted to create a failed state we could not have a more effective policy mix than the one we have at the moment,” he told the Guardian.
Continue reading...European Council urges Moscow to ‘de-escalate’ its military buildup; Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says global security architecture is failing
The Kremlin has confirmed that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron will speak by phone on Sunday, the TASS news agency reported.
A second separatist leader, Leonid Pasechnik of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), has signed a decree calling for a full military mobilisation, according to Reuters.
Russian state media say a blast has occurred in Donetsk amid multiple US warnings of false flag incidents
Sam Jones here, taking over from Samantha Lock.
One of today’s main events will be the Munich security conference, where world leaders including US vice-president Kamala Harris, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will gather to discuss the crisis.
It’s tragic and we’ll see terrible scenes unfolding. You would expect that President Putin – who obviously can’t be taken at his word – is manufacturing some sort of trigger, or is in the process of executing the final stages of his plan to go into Ukraine.
(Via Australian Associated Press)
Continue reading...Senior figures to meet next week amid US warnings that Vladimir Putin could give order to invade within days
Antony Blinken is to meet the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, next week, as the US secretary of state warned the crisis in Ukraine was a “moment of peril for the lives and safety of millions of people”.
The US state department said on Thursday night that Blinken had accepted an invitation to meet Lavrov provided there was no invasion of Ukraine. The move provides hope that diplomatic channels remained open even as US warnings of an imminent invasion grow louder.
Continue reading...Analysis: US president gives the kind of speech normally delivered on the eve of momentous action, while speaking over Putin’s head to the Russian people
Joe Biden’s speech sounded like a closing argument, one that had been honed for some time and one that suggested expectations are still high in the White House that Russia will take military action.
Biden briefly nodded to Moscow’s claims to be withdrawing before abruptly contradicting them, raising the US estimate of the number of troops surrounding Ukraine to 150,000 in a “threatening position”.
Continue reading...Latest words from Scholz as he prepares to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy:
We urgently expect signs of de-escalation from Moscow. Further military aggression would have very serious consequences for Russia. I absolutely agree with our allies on that. We are witnessing a very, very serious threat to peace in Europe.
“Ukraine is convening a meeting with Russia and all member states in the next 48 hours to discuss the reinforcement and movement of Russian forces along our border,” he wrote on Facebook.
I would like to emphasise once again that we are talking about the movement of Russian troops on Russian territory,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, once again accusing Ukraine of ramping up tensions.
“Large-scale movements of Ukraine’s armed forces are also carried out in the border zone on Ukrainian territory, moreover, in the area that borders on the territory of the self-proclaimed republics, which leads to escalation of the situation”
Continue reading...Move suggests Putin could extend crisis for weeks as Johnson and Biden agree ‘crucial window for diplomacy’ still exists
Russia is sending thousands more troops to its border with Ukraine in a sign that Vladimir Putin could extend the crisis for weeks, as Boris Johnson warned the situation had become “very, very dangerous”.
British officials estimate that a further 14 Russian battalions are heading towards Ukraine, each numbering about 800 troops, on top of the 100 battalions massed on the borders – a force already believed capable of launching an invasion.
Continue reading...Joint statement from US, Japan and South Korea urges Pyongyang to return to negotiations and stop its recent spate of ‘destabilising’ missile launches
The top diplomats of Japan, South Korea and the United States declared their unity against North Korea on Saturday after a series of ballistic missile launches by Pyongyang.
After a day of meetings in Honolulu, US secretary of state Antony Blinken, South Korean foreign minister Chung Eui-yong, and Japanese foreign minister Hayashi Yoshimasa condemned the series of seven launches as “destabilising” in a joint statement.
Continue reading...The US has warned of the “very distinct possibility” of a Russian invasion of Ukraine in the next few days, potentially involving an overwhelming attack on Kyiv, and told all remaining Americans to leave the country in the next 48 hours.
Joe Biden is due to speak to Vladimir Putin by phone on Saturday. Diplomatic sources said that Biden had told allied leaders in a call that Vladimir Putin had taken a decision to go ahead with an invasion, but Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said: “We have not seen anything come to us that says a final decision has been taken, [that] the go order has been given.”
Continue reading...Money would go toward humanitarian efforts for Afghan people and to US victims of terrorism, keeping it out of hands of Taliban
Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday releasing $7bn in frozen Afghan reserves to be split between humanitarian efforts for the Afghan people and American victims of terrorism, including relatives of 9/11.
In a highly unusual move, the convoluted plan is designed to tackle a myriad of legal bottlenecks stemming from the 2001 terrorist attacks and the chaotic end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which ignited a humanitarian and political crisis, the New York times reports.
Continue reading...American Foreign Service Association chief Eric Rubin says syndrome, which remains a mystery, has affected recruitment
The spread of Havana syndrome has “dramatically hurt” morale in the US diplomatic corps and affected recruitment, according to the head of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA).
Eric Rubin, whose association represents nearly 17,000 current and former diplomats and foreign aid workers, said it was getting harder to find young people to work abroad, because of concerns about Havana syndrome – and about whether the government would look after them if they got sick.
Continue reading...Worsening Sino-US ties, strict Covid rules and the crackdown on dissent have dented the territory’s fabled allure as a business hub, say expats
In July 2018, Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, wrote an article in the best-known local English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, stressing to Americans the territory’s unique position as an Asian business hub.
“The US is forgetting the differences between Hong Kong and China. Let’s remind them,” she wrote. “Hong Kong continues to have a robust and hearty infrastructure of values, practices and institutions that could not contrast more starkly with those of the mainland system.”
Continue reading...Fifty years after Nixon and Mao’s historic handshake, the geopolitical world order is again being reshaped
When the leaders of China and Russia meet in Beijing this Friday shortly before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, observers of the bilateral relationship will be looking for insights into how this 21st century quasi-alliance is reshaping the postwar world order.
It was 50 years ago this month, on 21 February 1972, that the historic handshake between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong changed the geometry of the cold war. Historians called the visit “the week that changed the world”. It later influenced Washington’s subsequent movement towards détente with Moscow.
Continue reading...Joe Biden says military has removed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi from the battlefield
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of Islamic State and one of the world’s most wanted men, has been killed during an overnight raid by US special forces in north-west Syria.
The pre-dawn attack on a house in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, led to up to 13 casualties, among them women and children. It also resulted in the destruction of a US helicopter, which had been used to carry special forces troops from Erbil in Iraq.
Continue reading...Moscow says US deployments in eastern Europe increase tensions, as Nato says Russia has moved 30,000 troops to Belarus
The US decision to deploy more than 3,000 US troops in Germany, Poland and Romania is a “destructive step” that makes it harder to reach a compromise over Ukraine, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said, as Moscow continues to build up its forces.
Alexander Grushko said the move by the US president, Joe Biden, would “increase military tension and reduce scope for political decision”, and would “delight” Ukrainian authorities, who would continue sabotaging the Minsk agreement “with impunity”. The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were designed to reach a political settlement in the east of Ukraine, including greater autonomy.
Continue reading...