Ukraine: Breaking !
The West placed too much faith in sanctions believing economic warfare against the total population of Russia would induce them to oust Putin.
Zelensky, Stoltenberg agree to hold urgent meeting of Ukraine-NATO Council
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KIEV, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday agreed to hold an urgent meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council.
"The Secretary General of the Alliance confirmed the convening of an extraordinary meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council at Ukraine's request," Zelensky said in a post on Telegram after a phone conversation with Stoltenberg.
The meeting at the defense ministers level will take place on Friday, Zelensky said.
"Ukraine needs immediate steps to strengthen air defense," he stressed.
At the talks, Zelensky informed Stoltenberg about Russia's missile attack on the city of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, which killed at least 17 people and injured 78 others earlier in the day.
They also discussed the implementation of initiatives to supply shells to Ukraine.
(Web editor: Tian Yi, Liang Jun)
Xi puts forth four principles to resolve Ukraine crisis
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BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday proposed four principles to prevent the Ukraine crisis from spiraling out of control and to restore peace at an early date.
Xi met with visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing and the two leaders had an in-depth exchange of views on the crisis in Ukraine during their talks.
Xi emphasized that under the current situation, in order to prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control, all parties should work together to restore peace as soon as possible. To this end, he proposed four principles.
"First, we should prioritize the upholding of peace and stability and refrain from seeking selfish gains. Second, we should cool down the situation and not add fuel to the fire. Third, we need to create conditions for the restoration of peace and refrain from further exacerbating tensions. Fourth, we should reduce the negative impact on the world economy and refrain from undermining the stability of global industrial and supply chains," Xi said.
(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)
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Ukraine is heading for defeat
By Jamie Dettmer (opinion editor at POLITICO Europe)
The West's failure to send weapons to Kyiv is helping Putin win his war.
Just ask a Ukrainian soldier if he still believes the West will stand by Kyiv “for as long as it takes.” That pledge rings hollow when it’s been four weeks since your artillery unit last had a shell to fire, as one serviceman complained from the front lines.
It’s not just that Ukraine’s forces are running out of ammunition. Western delays over sending aid mean the country is dangerously short of something even harder to supply than shells: the fighting spirit required to win.
Morale among troops is grim, ground down by relentless bombardment, a lack of advanced weapons, and losses on the battlefield. In cities hundreds of miles away from the front, the crowds of young men who lined up to join the army in the war’s early months have disappeared. Nowadays, eligible would-be recruits dodge the draft and spend their afternoons in nightclubs instead. Many have left the country altogether.
As I discovered while reporting from Ukraine over the past month, the picture that emerged from dozens of interviews with political leaders, military officers, and ordinary citizens was one of a country slipping towards disaster.
Even as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine is trying to find a way not to retreat, military officers privately accept that more losses are inevitable this summer. The only question is how bad they will be. Vladimir Putin has arguably never been closer to his goal.
“We know people are flagging and we hear it from regional governors and from the people themselves,” Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff, told POLITICO.
Yermak and his boss travel together to “some of the most dangerous places” to rally citizens and soldiers for the fight, he said. “We tell people: ‘Your name will be in the history books.’”
If the tide doesn’t turn soon in this third year of Russia’s invasion, it will be the nation of Ukraine as it currently exists that is consigned to the past.
For a war of such era-defining importance, the scale of Western leaders’ actions to help Kyiv repel Russia’s invaders has fallen far short of their soaring rhetoric. That disappointment has left Ukrainians of all ranks — from the soldiers digging trenches to ministers running the country — weary and irritable.
When POLITICO asked Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba if he felt the West had left Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind its back, his verdict was clear: “Yes, I do,” he said, in an interview in his office, an hour after another Russian mid-morning missile attack.
Zelenskyy has laid out the stakes even more starkly, saying Ukraine “will lose the war” if the U.S. Congress does not step up and supply aid.
Increasingly it looks as if Putin’s bet that he can grind down Ukrainian resistance and Western support might pay off.
Without a major step-change in the supply of advanced Western weapons and cash, Ukraine won’t be able to liberate the territories Putin’s forces now hold. That will leave Putin free to gnaw on the wounded country in the months or years ahead. Even if Russia can’t finish Ukraine off, a partial victory will leave Kyiv’s hopes of joining the EU and NATO stuck in limbo.
The ramifications of such an outcome will be serious for the world. Putin will claim victory at home, and, emboldened by exposing Western weaknesses, he may reinvigorate his wider imperial ambitions abroad. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are especially fearful they are next on his hit list. China, already an increasingly reliable partner for Moscow, will see few reasons to alter its stance.
Putin’s big target is Ukraine’s second largest city
Right now, Ukraine’s most urgent need is for artillery shells — millions of them. Moreover, Ukraine says it needs at least two dozen Patriot air-defense systems to protect troops on the front lines and to defend Kharkiv, the country’s biggest city after Kyiv, which has been under ferocious missile and artillery attack for weeks.
Fears are growing that Russia may target Ukraine’s second city for a ground offensive soon.
“It’s symbolic because they say that Kharkiv was the first capital of Ukraine. It’s a big target,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with POLITICO’s parent company Axel Springer media outlets last week.
Ukraine’s military is braced for more losses in the coming months. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander in chief of the armed forces, has warned that the situation on Ukraine’s eastern front has “significantly deteriorated in recent days.” As Zelenskyy himself put it elsewhere, “We are trying to find some way not to retreat.”
The fears about the fragility of the front lines are only compounded by an unprecedented barrage of Russian attacks intended to knock out Ukraine’s electricity networks.
In recent meetings with POLITICO, the country’s political leaders acknowledged that public spirits are sagging, and although they all tried to stay upbeat, frustration with the West came through in every conversation.
“Give us the damn Patriots,” snapped Kuleba, Ukraine’s chief diplomat. Sitting for an interview in the foreign ministry, he couldn’t hide his exasperation with the delays, and the strings that come attached to Western weaponry — like not striking Russian oil facilities.
Kuleba, of course, offered his unconditional gratitude for all the support that has come from the Western allies over the past two years. But he warned that Ukraine is trapped in a vicious cycle: The weapons it needs are withheld or delayed; then Western allies complain that Kyiv is on the retreat, making it less likely they’ll send more aid in future. (Since POLITICO’s meeting with Kuleba, Germany has agreed to supply Patriots, but the question still remains whether they will prove sufficient.)
The mood in the senior ranks of the military is even darker than Kuleba’s.
Several senior officers talked to POLITICO only on the understanding they would not be named so they could talk freely. They painted a grim forecast of frontlines potentially collapsing this summer when Russia, with greater weight of numbers and a readiness to accept huge casualties, launches its expected offensive. Perhaps worse, they expressed private fears that Ukraine’s own resolve could be weakened, with morale in the armed forces undermined by a desperate shortage of supplies.
Ukrainian commanders are crying out for more combat soldiers — one estimate from the former top commander, Valeriy Zaluzhny suggested they’d need an extra 500,000 troops.
But Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian parliament are hesitant about ordering a massive fresh call-up. In an interview with POLITICO, Yermak, the powerful Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, offered an important — and to outsiders perhaps surprising — reason for not launching a mass mobilization: such a call-up wouldn’t have the backing of the people. Zelenskyy is still “president of the people,” he said. “For him, that’s very important, and it’s very important that the people do something not just because they’re ordered to do it.”
And there’s the rub. The West has failed to come up with what’s needed, and it in turn is undermining Ukraine’s will to do what it takes.
The country is facing an existential crisis — Putin literally wants to scratch it from the map — and yet there apparently isn’t enough public support for a new draft.
Young Ukrainians are dodging the military draft
Admittedly, Ukraine is no different from its neighboring European countries where recent opinion polls suggest large numbers would refuse to be conscripted even if their nations were under attack. But Ukraine is the country at war. An existential fight like this can’t be won without mobilizing the entire nation.
And yet, as the conflict continues, Ukrainians living in Kyiv and the center and west of the country — away from the front lines — appear in some ways to be ready to put up with war raging in the east, as long as they can get back to their normal lives.
Hence, there is draft-dodging: eligible young recruits find other things to do with their time, packing into hipster bars and techno clubs in the late afternoons.
Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion now serving as Kyiv’s mayor, said he understood why people wanted to get back to normal, arguing that it is healthy. He told POLITICO the desire to resume daily activities was an expression of defiance in the face of Putin’s attempts to wear the people down.
Maybe so. But faced with a relentless enemy, driving home its advantage against a badly equipped army of defenders, such a hands-off attitude seems high risk.
As Ukraine’s ousted chief commander Zaluzhny found to his cost, rational warnings that things may not turn out well can get commentators and analysts in trouble. But suspending critical thinking won’t win this war either.
The West has placed too much faith in sanctions, believing they’d bring Russia to heel. There’s also beenwishful thinking about Russians turning on Putin over casualty figures, or hopes he may be ousted in a Kremlin coup. Instead Russia’s economy has remained resilient and Putin has strengthened his grip on power.
It’s true that before launching the 2022 invasion, the Russian leader may have been misled by his bungling intelligence chiefs into believing a short war would offer a quick win.
But Putin can afford to wait. Last month he awarded himself another six-year term as president. He can settle for a stalemate: Keeping Ukraine stuck between victory and defeat, shut out of both NATO and the EU, would still amount to a win.
And what would a deadlocked conflict do to Ukrainian resilience?
The early burst of patriotic fervor which saw draft centers swamped with volunteers has evaporated. An estimated 650,000 men of fighting age have fled their country, most by smuggling themselves across the border.
Two years ago, the trains heading out of Ukraine were almost exclusively carrying women, children and the elderly to seek refuge. This week, around a third of the passengers on one train carrying this correspondent out of the country were men of fighting age. Somehow they’d managed to get waiver papers to leave.
In Zelenskyy’s presidential office in Bankova Street, his officials insist they are still positive. But that Western aid, especially President Joe Biden’s long-delayed $60 billion package of support, can’t wait much longer.
What would Putin do if Ukraine doesn’t get the Western help it needs to win? “He would completely destroy everything. Everything,” Zelenskyy told Axel Springer media. Ukrainian cities will be reduced to rubble; hundreds of thousands will die, he said.
“People will not run away, most of them, and so he will kill a lot of people. So how it will look like? A lot of blood.”
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Who is protracting the Russia-Ukraine conflict?
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The Ukraine crisis is putting even bigger pressure on the already-sluggish world economy. However, a former official of the U.S. Department of Defense disclosed that many in the lobbying firms, the defense industry, and the Capitol are opening champagne bottles for celebration.
Statistics indicated that the stock price of Lockheed Martin rose more than 13 percent between Feb. 24 and March 28, and the figures were respectively 13.4 percent and nine percent for Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
Such a big rise came just after Russia and Ukraine started the war. Who is making a fortune out of it and who is willing to see the war protracted? The answers are clear.
Philip Zimbardo, a retired professor of Stanford University, says in his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil that wars are prepared and "cooked" by some people, without whom wars cannot be launched.
There happens to be a "beast" in U.S. politics that is obsessed with "cooking" wars - the military-industrial complex. It is a huge interest group consisting of military departments, weapon manufacturers, legislators, defense research institutes and think tanks. It is constantly attempting to destabilize American diplomacy to reap gigantic profits from the wars, conflicts, and arms races it provokes.
According to an article recently published by Spanish news site Rebelion, it is critical for the U.S. and its media, as well as the military-industrial complex that to a large extent dominates the country, to have some fabricated enemies that are able to be manipulated.
Provoking a conflict between Russia and Ukraine and seeking private gains from it, the U.S. military-industrial complex is just counting its chickens before they are hatched. It forces U.S. foreign polices to challenge Russia through interest groups, and sells security anxiety by exaggerating Russia's "military threat," so as to exacerbate the necessity for European countries to increase defense expenditure and enhance military deterrence.
According to a report by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. has provided more than $2.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014. It also agreed to offer lethal weapons for Ukraine in 2017. Statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of State showed that in just the past year, the U.S. provided more than $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.
Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, the U.S. military-industrial complex has been taking the war as a huge market and advertising place. As a result, Germany, Finland, Poland and some other European countries all declared to raise their defense budgets, and to acquire enormous weaponry from the U.S. The U.S. defense industry benefits the most from these purchases.
More than 60 years ago, former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had warned the U.S. public to be vigilant about the military-industrial complex's detrimental effects on the U.S. However, this "beast" remains uncontrollable by these days. It is manipulating U.S. domestic politics, diplomacy and military policies even more unscrupulously.
Over the last two decades, defense contractors spent $2.5 billion on lobbying according to U.S.-based nonprofit organization OpenSecrets. The "revolving door" is also contributing to the development of the defense industry. From 2014 to 2019, over 1,000 senior officials and purchasers from the U.S. Department of Defense, including former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, had jumped to military enterprises that benefited enormously from these individuals' relationships.
The military-industrial complex reveals why the U.S. is addicted to wars and why the country always ranks first in the world in terms of military spending. In the fiscal year 2022, the U.S. is expected to spend $782 billion on defense-related projects, $42 billion more from a year ago, and $52 billion higher than non-defense projects. Recently, the U.S. proposed a $813 billion budget for 2023.
Statistics showed that at least 1/3 of the U.S. military spending flows to arms dealers. According to a recent report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the global transfers of major arms saw a slight drop of 4.6 percent between 2012-16 and 2017-21, while the United States boosted its exports by 14 percent, increasing its global share from 32 percent to 39 percent.
It is reasonable to say that wherever there is a war, there are U.S. weapons and traces of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Massive revenues would keep on flowing to military enterprises as long as wars continue.
The U.S. has long taken itself as a "beacon of democracy" and been hyping the false narratives of democracy versus authoritarianism in recent years. However, the stark contrast between the insufficient COVID-19 response fund in the country and the bloody wealth amassed by U.S. military enterprises, as well as the misdeeds done by the U.S. provoking wars and conflicts all over the world, have long tarnished the image of the U.S. as a democratic and pro-human rights country.
Blackmailed by the military-industrial complex and other interest groups, the U.S. has already been corroded by the thirst for money. It is bringing only turbulences to and jeopardizing the world and its own citizens.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People's Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)
(Web editor: Sheng Chuyi, Bianji)
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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 784
As the war enters its 784th day, these are the main developments.
Fighting
At least 17 people were killed in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv after it was struck by three Russian missiles. Emergency services said 60 people, including three children, were injured. About 250,000 people live in Chernihiv, which is about 150km (90 miles) north of the capital, Kyiv.
One woman was injured by falling debris after Russian forces brought down a done over the Voronezh region. Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said air defence also destroyed 14 airborne targets over the southern Belgorod region. No injuries were reported.
The BBC reported the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine had topped 50,000. The data was compiled by BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers.
Colonel Serhii Pakhomov, acting head of the Ukrainian military’s atomic, biological and chemical defence forces, told the Reuters news agency that Kyiv had recorded about 900 uses of riot control agents on the front line by Russia in the past six months. The gases, banned for use on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention, are being used to try and clear trenches, Pakhomov said. Some 500 troops had required medical help after exposure to toxic substances on the battlefield and at least one soldier died after suffocating on tear gas, he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian military attacked a large Russian airfield at Dzhankoi in the north of occupied Crimea. A series of explosions were reported at the base. There were no reports of damage.
Politics and diplomacy
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would hold a long-delayed vote on a $60bn aid package for Ukraine on Saturday. The bill, passed by the Senate in February, has been held up amid objections from far-right members of Johnson’s Republican party.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, US President Joe Biden urged Congress to approve the package saying the conflict was at a “pivotal moment”.
China said that “a lot of work” would need to be done before a planned peace conference on the Ukraine war could take place in Switzerland. It did not say whether it would attend the meeting, which is expected to take place in June.
Russia’s FSB security service arrested four people, accusing them of sending money to Ukrainian armed forces and planning to join the country’s military.
France appointed investigating magistrates to run a war crimes investigation into the death of Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, a dual French-Irish national, who was killed covering the war in Ukraine in March 2022. Producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova was also killed when the news team’s vehicle came under fire in Horenka near Kyiv. Correspondent Benjamin Hall was badly injured.
Cybersecurity firm Mandiant warned a cyber group known as Sandworm, with links to Russian military intelligence, is emerging as a significant global threat after playing an increasingly critical role in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Sandworm “is actively engaged in the full spectrum of espionage, attack, and influence operations”, Mandiant said.
Weapons
President Zelenskyy, addressing the European Council by videolink hours after the Chernihiv attack, pleaded for more defence systems. Zelenskyy said Ukraine should enjoy the same cover from aerial attacks as Israel, which was able to intercept a barrage of drones and missiles fired by Iran last weekend. “Our Ukrainian sky, the sky of our neighbours deserves the same level of defence,” he said. “All lives are equally valuable.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior German officials pressed fellow European Union members to take action as soon as possible to boost Ukraine’s air defences. On Saturday, Germany announced it was sending an additional Patriot air defence system to Ukraine.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the NATO-Ukraine Council will meet on Friday to discuss ways on how to provide more air defence systems for Kyiv.
A crowdfunding initiative launched by a Slovak group on Monday has so far raised 750,000 euros ($798,000) from members of the public. The group, Peace for Ukraine, hopes to raise one million euros ($1.07 million) for the Czech Republic’s initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine. Slovakia’s government has refused to send military aid to Kyiv.
Read more here.