• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Republica Press

Your Business & Political News Source

REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

  • Home
  • BUSINESS
  • MONEY
  • POLITICS
  • REAL ESTATE
  • SCIENCE/TECH
  • US
  • WORLD

Strikes

Ryanair says less than 2% of flights affected by strike

by

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals!<<<<

A Ryanair plane prepares to take off from Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport on the first of three days cabin crew strike in Lisbon, Portugal, June 24, 2022. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes/File Photo

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

DUBLIN, June 26 (Reuters) – Less than 2% of Ryanair (RYA.I) flights scheduled between Friday and Sunday were affected by cabin crew strikes, the Irish low-cost carrier said.

Ryanair (RYA.I) cabin crew unions in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, France and Italy had announced plans for action over the weekend with crews in Spain set to strike again on June 30 and July 1-2. read more

“Less than 2% of Ryanair’s 9,000 flights operating this weekend (24/25/26 June) have been affected by minor and poorly supported crew strikes,” Ryanair said in a statement.

Unions have said the Irish airline does not respect local labour laws covering issues such as the minimum wage and have urged management to improve working conditions. read more

Ryanair, which told Reuters last week it had negotiated labour agreements covering 90% of its staff across Europe, says it offers staff competitive and fair conditions. It has said it does not expect widespread disruption this summer.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Writing by Conor Humphries. Editing by Jane Merriman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: BUSINESS Tagged With: 24, Belgium, Europe, Flights, France, Italy, Labour, Minimum Wage, Portugal, Reuters, Spain, Strikes, Summer, Unions

After Weeks of Fighting, Russia Occupies Sievierodonetsk

by

Analysts say Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, an autocrat beholden to Russia, is desperately trying to show his value to President Vladimir V. Putin.Credit…Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

In the weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, it held joint military drills with its neighbor and ally Belarus, massing tens of thousands of soldiers along the Ukrainian border even as the two countries’ leaders denied reports that the Kremlin was planning to go to war.

On Saturday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus in St. Petersburg, promising weapons capable of holding nuclear warheads which Mr. Lukashenko — dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” — said would make his country “ready for anything.”

Mr. Putin promised to deliver the Iskander-M systems, which have a range of about 300 miles and can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, “within months,” and also vowed to upgrade Belarusian Su-25 fighter jets, after Mr. Lukashenko asked the Russian leader to make its warplanes capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

“We need to be ready for anything, even the use of serious weaponry to defend our fatherland from Brest to Vladivostok,” Mr. Lukashenko said, referring to Belarus’ westernmost city and Russia’s port in the Far East.

While the men met, the Belarusian Armed Forces were once again holding “mobilization” drills in the area bordering Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, threatening to aggravate tensions in an already volatile region and prompting Ukraine to put its border guards on high alert.

“Units are being brought to higher levels of combat readiness, practical measures are being taken to accept conscripts, weapons and military equipment are being removed from storage,” a spokesman for the Ukrainian military’s operational command said in a statement this month.

Ukrainian officials and Western observers think it is highly unlikely that Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 9.4 million people, will directly join the war at this time, given the risks of provoking social unrest at home and undermining Mr. Lukashenko’s grip on power. Morale among Belarusian troops has also been shaky, according to Pavel P. Latushko, a former senior Belarusian official who fled the country.

Nevertheless, analysts believe Mr. Lukashenko, an autocrat beholden to the Kremlin, is desperately trying to show his value to Mr. Putin. He has proved a dependable friend ever since Mr. Putin bolstered his security forces to help him put down mass protests that followed an implausible landslide victory in a contested presidential election in 2020.

The former director of a Soviet collective pig farm, Mr. Lukashenko has secured his hold on Belarus over nearly three decades by maneuvering adroitly between East and West, playing each side against the other. But in the aftermath of last year’s uprising against him, he has become increasingly dependent on the Kremlin and docile to Mr. Putin.

Some analysts believe it is only a matter of time before pressure from Mr. Putin forces Mr. Lukashenko to take more direct action in the war, pushing him into an existential dilemma. Joining the conflict could undermine his support at home, but if he does not do Mr. Putin’s bidding, the Russian leader could retaliate by taking steps to force him from office.

In the early stages of the war, Belarus allowed Mr. Putin to use its territory for Russian troops to stage a shock-and-awe operation to try to capture Kyiv. The plan failed spectacularly, but with Russia now bogged down in a grinding war of attrition in Ukraine’s east, Moscow would benefit from any help Mr. Lukashenko could provide.

Mr. Lukashenko has proved himself a pliant friend. He has used Belarus’s 600-mile border with Ukraine to help place wooden “dummy tanks” in the woods, creating the illusion of impending danger; to replenish Russia’s arsenal; and to allow Moscow to stage missile strikes from within Belarusian territory.

As part of this weekend’s drills, the Belarusian army has dispatched 3,500 to 4,000 military personnel near the border, according to Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. The entire Belarusian army has about 60,000 troops, he said, although Mr. Lukashenko wants to add another 20,000.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry said its special operation forces would participate in the drills, which will take place in the country’s southeastern Gomel region, whose border is just 65 miles from Kyiv.

While Mr. Lukashenko has made it clear that his loyalties now rest firmly with Mr. Putin, he remains a mercurial leader, known for sometimes unpredictable behavior. Among other things, he has touted ice hockey, vodka, saunas and tractor-driving as remedies for Covid; sent a fighter jet to intercept a European airliner carrying a prominent dissident; and made his generals salute his teenage son.

— Marc Santora and Ivan Nechepurenko

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: Arsenal, Belarus, Ice, Ice hockey, Kyiv, Media, Men, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Russia, Stage, Strikes, Ukraine

WTO strikes global trade deals deep into overtime

by

  • Deals reached on food, health and fishing
  • Formerly defiant India joins consensus
  • Package seen boosting credibility of WTO

GENEVA, June 17 (Reuters) – The World Trade Organization agreed on the first change to global trading rules in years on Friday as well as a deal to boost the supply of COVID-19 vaccines in a series of pledges that were heavy on compromise.

The deals were forged in the early hours of the sixth day of a conference of more than 100 trade ministers that was seen as a test of the ability of nations to strike multilateral trade deals amid geopolitical tensions heightened by the Ukraine war.

Delegates, who had expected a four-day conference, cheered after they passed seven agreements and declarations just before dawn on Friday.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told them: “The package of agreements you have reached will make a difference to the lives of people around the world. The outcomes demonstrate that the WTO is in fact capable of responding to emergencies of our time.”

Earlier she had appealed to WTO members to consider the “delicate balance” required after nearly round-the-clock talks that have at times been charged with anger and accusations.

The package, which the WTO chief called “unprecedented”, included the two highest profile deals under consideration – on fisheries and on a partial waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights for COVID-19 vaccines.

The accord to curb fishing subsidies is only the second multilateral agreement on global trading rules struck in the WTO’s 27-year history and is far more ambitious than the first, which was designed to cut red tape.

At one stage, a series of demands from India, which sees itself as the champion of poor farmers and fishermen as well as developing countries, appeared set to paralyse talks but accommodations were found, trade sources said.

The WTO’s rules dictate that all decisions are taken by consensus, with any single member able to exercise a veto.

‘LOT OF BUMPS’

“It was not an easy process. There were a lot of bumps, just like I predicted. It was like a roller coaster, but in the end we got there,” an exhausted but elated Okonjo-Iweala told a final news conference.

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala delivers her speech during the closing session of a World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland June 17, 2022. Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via REUTERS

The deal to ban subsidies for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing or fishing of an over-fished stock has the potential to reverse collapsing fish stocks. Though pared back significantly, it still drew approval.

“This is a turning point in addressing one of the key drivers of global over-fishing,” said Isabel Jarrett, manager of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ campaign to reduce harmful fisheries subsidies.

Okonjo-Iweala said it was the first step after 21 years of talks towards what she hoped would be a more comprehensive deal.

The deal on a partial IP waiver to allow developing countries to produce and export COVID-19 vaccines has divided the WTO for nearly two years, but finally passed. It has also drawn the fiercest criticism from campaign groups that say it barely expands on an existing exemption in WTO rules and is too narrow by not covering therapeutics and diagnostics.

“Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives,” said Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

The pharmaceutical industry was also critical of the deal, saying that there is currently a surplus of shots which governments and other authorities haven’t figured out how to distribute and administer.

“Rather than focus on real issues affecting public health, like solving supply chain bottlenecks or reducing border tariffs on medicines, they approved an intellectual property waiver on COVID-19 vaccines that won’t help protect people against the virus,” Stephen Ubl, President of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), said in an emailed statement.

One agreement also reached was to maintain a moratorium on e-commerce tariffs, which business says is vital to allow the free flow of data worldwide. read more

Overall, many observers said the deals should boost the credibility of the WTO, which was weakened by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s crippling of its ability to intervene in trade disputes, and set it on a course for reform.

European Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said the WTO meeting had clinched outcomes of global significance despite unprecedented challenges.

“The profound divergences here amply confirm that a deep reform of the organisation is urgently needed, across all its core functions,” he said, adding he would work to get it agreed at the next ministerial conference due in 2023.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Writing by Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Richard Pullin, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Toby Chopra

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: Business, COVID-19, Donald Trump, E-commerce, Exercise, Fish, Fishing, Focus, Food, Health, History, India, Industry, Intellectual Property, Next, Overtime, Property, Research, Reuters, Stage, Strikes, Supply Chain, Switzerland, trade, Ukraine, World Trade Organization

Ukraine News: As Battle Grows Desperate, U.S. Says It Won’t Push Kyiv Into Talks

by

A Ukrainian soldier crouched in position during fighting on the front line in Sievierodonetsk last week.Credit…Oleksandr Ratushniak/Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine — As the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk appears close to falling to Russia, military analysts say that Ukraine’s outgunned and outnumbered forces are trying to draw out the fight to inflict more casualties against Moscow.

Russia has been using its advantage in longer-range artillery to bombard eastern cities from a distance, leveling them and killing or driving out civilians, raising the question of whether it is worth the cost in Ukrainian soldiers’ lives to defend them. President Volodymyr Zelensky has described Sievierodonetsk as a “dead” city.

In Sievierodonetsk, the analysts say, the Ukrainians’ hope is that by drawing Russian forces into street-by-street battles, they can defuse Moscow’s heavy weapons advantage, at least for a time, since close-quarter fighting raises the risk for Russia that artillery strikes would bombard their own soldiers.

“If the Ukrainians succeed in trying to drag them into house-to-house combat, there is a higher chance of inducing casualties on the Russians that they cannot afford,” said Gustav Gressel, a Ukraine expert from the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Still, the Ukrainians are taking a chance by drawing the Russians into street fighting, risking getting trapped in the city — especially as the last bridge that would allow a fast escape has been destroyed. Mr. Zelensky has also acknowledged the cost of close combat “in terms of the number of people killed, the number of losses.”

But with Western weapons slow in coming, the Ukrainians appear to be calculating that it is worth the risk for now.

Although street fighting kills large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers — officials have estimated that Ukraine is losing up to 200 soldiers daily in battle — it also inflicts casualties on the Russians in greater numbers than uneven artillery and tank battles in the open fields.

Before the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian military had studied approaches to fighting an enemy with superior armored vehicle and artillery capabilities, including by drawing lessons from urban combat in cities such as Aleppo in the Syrian war.

In December, military instructors told volunteers preparing to defend Kyiv, the capital, to fight in urban locations at the closest possible engagement ranges, to prevent the Russians from calling in artillery without risking strikes that would hit their own soldiers, too.

These tactics were not needed within Kyiv, because Russian forces were repelled before entering the city. But Ukraine put them to use in urban combat in Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters facing much larger Russian forces were able to engage the enemy troops for weeks.

Mykhailo Samus, the deputy head of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, argued that the Ukrainian military’s dogged resistance had also bought its forces time, holding Russia off from advancing farther into eastern Ukraine as they hope that more shipments of Western weapons arrive. The goal, he said, is to “exhaust, or reduce, the enemy’s offensive capabilities.”

It is not clear, however, how long such a strategy can work in Donbas, where the largely flat plains favor Russian artillery, and as longer-range weapons from the United States and other Ukrainian allies are slow to arrive. While Ukrainian casualties mount, Mr. Zelensky has acknowledged that Russia has more troops it can use as “cannon fodder.”

In a speech this week to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum, he repeated his plea for allies to send more arms, more quickly.

“We need powerful weapons for the offensive, without which the war will only drag on and the number of victims will increase,” he said.

Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: Bridge, Cities, European Council, Kyiv, Media, Military, Russia, Strikes, The Open, Ukraine, United States

What Happened on Day 103 of the War in Ukraine

by

KHERSON REGION, Ukraine — Since Russia invaded, NATO nations have upgraded Ukraine’s arsenal with increasingly sophisticated tools, with more promised, like the advanced multiple-launch rocket systems pledged by the United States and Britain.

But training soldiers how to use the equipment has become a significant and growing obstacle — one encountered daily by Junior Sgt. Dmytro Pysanka and his crew, operating an aged antitank gun camouflaged in netting and green underbrush in southern Ukraine.

Peering through the sight attached to the gun, Sergeant Pysanka is greeted with a kaleidoscope of numbers and lines that, if read correctly, should give him the calculations needed to fire at Russian forces. However, errors are common in the chaos of battle.

More than a month ago, the commanders of his frontline artillery unit secured a far more advanced tool: a high-tech, Western-supplied laser range finder to help with targeting.

But there’s a hitch: Nobody knows how to use it.

“It’s like being given an iPhone 13 and only being able to make phone calls,” said Sergeant Pysanka, clearly exasperated.

The range finder, called a JIM LR, is like a pair of high-tech binoculars and likely part of the tranche of equipment supplied by the United States, said Sergeant Pysanka.

It may seem like a perfect choice to help make better use of the antitank gun, built in 1985. It can see targets at night and transmit their distance, compass heading and GPS coordinates. Some soldiers learned enough to operate the tool, but then rotated elsewhere in recent days, leaving the unit with an expensive paperweight.

“I have been trying to learn how to use it by reading the manual in English and using Google Translate to understand it,” Sergeant Pysanka said.

Soldiers meeting at a base near the antitank gun.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

On Monday, Britain promised to send Ukraine mobile multiple-rocket launchers, improving the range and accuracy of Ukrainian artillery, days after President Biden committed to sending similar weapons.

Ukraine’s most advanced new arms are concentrated in the eastern Donbas region, where the fiercest fighting rages as President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces — approaching from the east, north and south — try to crush a pocket of Ukrainian-held territory. At the eastern tip of that pocket, the two sides have waged a seesaw battle for the devastated, mostly abandoned city of Sievierodonetsk.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian troops regained some ground in the city, according to Western analysts and Ukrainian officials. But on Monday, the Ukrainians were forced back again as the Russian military ramped up its already intense artillery attack, according to Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s administrator for the region.

A day after a risky visit to troops in Lysychansk, near Sievierodonetsk, President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday gave journalists a blunt assessment of the challenge: “There are more of them. They are more powerful. But we have every chance to fight in this direction.”

Ukraine’s leaders frequently call for high-end Western weapons and equipment, pinning their hopes for victory to requests for new antitank guided missiles, howitzers and satellite-guided rockets.

But atop the need for the tools of war, Ukrainian troops need to know how to use them. Without proper training, the same dilemma facing Sergeant Pysanka’s unit and their lone range finder will be pervasive on a much larger scale. Analysts say that could echo the United States’ failed approach of supplying the Afghan military with equipment that couldn’t be maintained absent massive logistical support.

“Ukrainians are eager to employ Western equipment, but it requires training to maintain,” said Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va. “Some things it’s not easy to rush.”

The United States and other NATO countries gave extensive training to the Ukrainian military in the years before the war, though not on some of the advanced weapons they are now sending. From 2015 to early this year, U.S. military officials say, American instructors trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center near Lviv. There were more than 150 American military advisers in Ukraine when Russia invaded in February, but they were withdrawn.

Since the beginning of the war, the United States has pledged roughly $54 billion in aid for Ukraine and supplied a bevy of weapons and equipment, most recently several advanced HIMARS mobile rocket launchers, a move greeted with swift condemnation from the Kremlin.

But to avoid a more direct confrontation with Russia, the Biden administration has so far declined to send military advisers back into Ukraine to help train Ukrainian forces to use new weapons systems, and has instead relied on training programs outside the country.

This has put enormous pressure on Ukrainian soldiers like Sgt. Andriy Mykyta, a member of the country’s border guard who, before the war, received brief training from NATO advisers on the advanced British antitank weapons, known as NLAWs.

A Ukrainian soldier covering the artillery unit’s antitank gun with camouflage.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Now he races around frontline positions trying to educate his comrades on how to use them. In many cases, he said, Ukrainian soldiers learned how to use some weapons, including NLAWs, on their own, using online videos and practice.

“But there are types of weapons that you can’t learn from intuition: surface-to-air missiles, artillery and some gear,” Sergeant Mykyta said in a telephone interview. “So we need formal courses,” he added.

Ukraine’s needs are palpable in the region where Sergeant Pysanka’s unit is dug in, just northeast of the Russian-occupied city of Kherson. The area was the site of a brief Ukrainian offensive in the past week that slowed as soon as the retreating Russians destroyed a key bridge; the Ukrainians’ lack of longer-range artillery meant they were unable to attempt a difficult river crossing in pursuit, Ukrainian military officials said.

For Sergeant Pysanka’s gun team, the only instructor available for the laser range finder is a soldier who remained behind from the last unit and had taken time to translate most of the 104-page instruction manual. But it’s still trial and error as they figure out what combination of buttons do what, while searching for ad hoc solutions to solve the lack of a mounting tripod and video monitor (both of which are advertised in the instruction manual).

“If you’re working long distances while holding it by hand, sometimes it can transmit inaccurate figures,” Sergeant Pysanka said. “It is safer,” he added, “to work when the gear is stationed on the tripod facing the enemy and the operator is working with the monitor under cover.”

The JIM LR, made by the French company Safran, looks like a cross between a virtual reality headset and traditional binoculars, and can be used alongside a mapping application on a computer tablet that Ukrainian troops use to help call in artillery strikes.

At around six pounds, it is far smaller than the four-and-a-half-ton, U.S.-supplied M777 155 mm howitzer that has recently made its way to the frontline in Ukraine’s east. But both pieces of equipment have intricacies that are reminders of the complications that come from supplying a military with foreign matériel.

The M777 is highly mobile and capable of firing long distances, but training has been a bottleneck in deploying the howitzers, Ukrainian officers say. At courses in Germany that lasted a week, the United States trained soldiers to fire the weapon and others to maintain it.

A Ukrainian gun crew fires an M777 howitzer toward Russian positions in the Donetsk region of Ukraine last month.Credit…Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

But an oversight nearly delayed all maintenance on the guns at the hard-to-reach front lines, Ukrainian officers said. The entire M777 machine is put together on the imperial system used in the United States, meaning that using a Ukrainian metric wrench on it would be difficult, and would risk damaging the equipment.

Only after sending the guns did the United States arrange for a rushed shipment of toolboxes of imperial-gauge wrenches, said Maj. Vadim Baranik, the deputy commander of a maintenance unit.

But tools can be misplaced, lost or destroyed, potentially leaving guns inoperable unless someone scrounges up a U.S.-supplied wrench.

And the JIM LR, capable of displaying extremely accurate targeting data, supplies the information, known as grid coordinates, in a widely used NATO format that Sergeant Pysanka has to convert to the Soviet-era coordinate system used on the Ukrainians’ maps. Such minor speed bumps and chances for error add up, especially when under the stress of a Russian artillery barrage.

Ukraine’s leaders frequently call for high-end Western weapons and equipment, pinning their hopes for victory to requests for new antitank guided missiles, howitzers and satellite-guided rockets.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

For now, Sergeant Pysanka is focused on learning the range finder. In his small slice of the war, Western-supplied weapons and equipment are limited to a small number of antitank rockets and first-aid kits.

“We can’t boast the same kind of resources that there are in the east,” said Maj. Roman Kovalyov, a deputy commander of the unit that oversees Sergeant Pysanka’s gun position. “What Ukraine gets, we can only see on the TV. But we believe that sooner or later it will turn up here.”

Reporting was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer from Kramatorsk, Ukraine, and Eric Schmitt from Washington State.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: Arsenal, Biden administration, Bridge, Germany, Google, Information, iPhone, Kaleidoscope, Maps, Media, Military, mobile, Nato, New York, Research, Russia, State, Strikes, Ukraine, United States, Virtual reality, Washington, Washington state, York

Fierce street fighting in Ukraine’s Sievierodonetsk, a pivotal battle for Donbas

by

  • Fierce street fighting for key eastern industrial city
  • Ukraine troops outnumbered, will not surrender-Zelenskiy
  • Eastern front under constant shelling
  • Efforts to evacuate thousands

KYIV/DRUZHKIVKA, Ukraine, June 7 (Reuters) – Ukrainian troops battled Russians street-to-street in the ruins of Sievierodonetsk on Tuesday, trying to hold onto gains from a surprise counter-offensive that had reversed momentum in one of the bloodiest land battles of the war.

The fight for the small industrial city has emerged as a pivotal battle in eastern Ukraine, with Russia focusing its offensive might there in the hope of achieving one of its stated war aims – to fully capture surrounding Luhansk province on behalf of separatist proxies.

After withdrawing from nearly all the city in the face of the Russian advance, Ukrainian forces staged a surprise counter-attack last week, driving the Russians from a swath of the city centre. Since then, the two armies have faced off across boulevards, both claiming to have inflicted huge casualties.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

“Our heroes are not giving up positions in Sievierodonetsk,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an overnight video address, describing fierce street fighting in the city. Earlier, he told reporters at a briefing the Ukrainians were outnumbered but still had “every chance” of fighting back.

Before Ukraine’s counter-offensive, Russia had seemed on the verge of encircling Ukraine’s garrison in Luhansk province, cutting off the main road to Sievierodonetsk and its twin city Lysychansk across the Siverskiy Donets river.

But following the counter-offensive, Zelenskiy made a surprise visit to Lysychansk on Sunday, personally demonstrating that Kyiv still had an open route to its troops’ redoubt.

Ukraine’s defence ministry said Russia was throwing troops and equipment into its drive to capture Sievierodonetsk. Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Monday the situation had worsened since the Ukrainian defenders had pushed back the Russians over the weekend.

REFOCUS

Luhansk and neighbouring Donetsk province, together known as the Donbas, have become Russia’s main focus since its forces were defeated at the outskirts of Kyiv in March and pushed back from the second biggest city Kharkiv last month.

Russia has been pressing from three main directions – east, north and south – to try to encircle the Ukrainians in the Donbas. Russia has made progress, but only slowly, failing to deal a decisive blow or to encircle the Ukrainians.

In its nightly update, the Ukrainian military said two civilians were killed in Russian shelling in the Donbas and Russian forces had fired at more than 20 communities, using artillery and air strikes.

In Druzhkivka, in the Ukrainian-held pocket of Donetsk province, residents were picking through the wreckage of houses obliterated by the latest shelling.

“Please help, we need materials for the roof, for the house, there are people without shelter,” shouted Nelya, outside her home where the roof had been shredded. “My niece, she has two small children, she had to cover one of her children with her own body.”

A Ukrainian service member shoots from an automatic grenade launcher at a position on the front line, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near Bakhmut, Donbas region, Ukraine June 5, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

Nearby, Nadezhda picked up a children’s pink photo album and kindergarten exercise book from the ruins of her house, and put them on a shelf somehow still standing in the rubble.

“I do not even know where to start. I am standing here looking but I have no idea what to do. I start crying, I calm down, then I cry again.”

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, in what it calls a “special military operation” to stamp out what it sees as threats to its security. Ukraine and its Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war to grab territory.

CONSTANT SHELLING

Britain’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that Russia was still trying to cut off Sievierodonetsk by advancing from the north near Izium and from the south near Popasna. It said Russia’s progress from Popasna had stalled over the last week, while reports of heavy shelling near Izium suggested Moscow was preparing a new offensive there.

“Russia will almost certainly need to achieve a breakthrough on at least one of these axes to translate tactical gains to operational level success and progress towards its political objective of controlling all of Donetsk Oblast,” it said.

The Donetsk regional governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, told Ukrainian television there was constant shelling along the front line, with Russia attempting to push towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two biggest Ukrainian-held cities in Donetsk.

Kyrylenko said efforts were underway to evacuate people from several towns, some under attack day and night, including Sloviansk where about 24,000 residents, around a quarter of the population, still remains.

“People are now understanding, though it is late, that it is time to leave,” he said.

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of grain, and Western countries accuse Russia of creating risk of global famine by shutting Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Zelenskiy said Kyiv was gradually receiving “specific anti-ship systems”, and that these would be the best way to break a Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports.

Moscow denies blame for the food crisis, which it says was caused by Western sanctions.

Russia’s U.N. envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, stormed out of a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday as European Council President Charles Michel, addressing the 15-member body, accused Moscow of fueling the global food crisis with its invasion of Ukraine. read more

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would respond to Western deliveries of long-range weapons by pushing Ukrainian forces further back from Russia’s border.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Peter Graff
Editing by Gareth Jones
Editing by Gareth Jones

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: 24, Black Sea, Children, Cities, Communities, European Council, Exercise, Famine, Focus, Food, Global food crisis, Grain, Kyiv, Military, Population, Ports, Reuters, Russia, Strikes, Television, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy

What Happened on Day 100 of the War in Ukraine

by

One hundred days ago, before sunrise, Russia launched artillery strikes on Ukraine before sending troops racing toward major cities, beginning a war against a much smaller country and outnumbered military that seemed destined to quickly topple the government in Kyiv.

But the brutal invasion has ripped apart those predictions, reawakening old alliances, testing others and spreading death and destruction across the country. Both armies are now locked in fierce and bloody battles across a 600-mile-long front for control of Ukraine’s east and to gain the upper hand in the conflict.

The winner, if there is one, is not likely to emerge even in the next 100 days, analysts say. Some foresee an increasingly intractable struggle in eastern Ukraine and a growing confrontation between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the West.

New Western arms promised to Ukraine — such as long-range missiles announced by President Biden this week — could help it reclaim some towns, which would be significant for civilians in those areas, said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting organization. But they are unlikely to dramatically alter the course of the war, he said.

Ukrainian soldiers from the 95th Air Assault Brigade carrying water near their base in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, on Friday.Credit…Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Squeezed by tightening Western sanctions, Russia, he said, was likely to retaliate with cyberattacks, espionage and disinformation campaigns. And a Russian naval blockade of Ukrainian grain is likely to worsen a food crisis in poor countries.

“What we’re looking at now is what the war in Ukraine is likely to look like in 100 days, not radically different,” Mr. Bremmer said. “But I think the confrontation with the West has the potential to be significantly worse.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said defiantly Friday that “victory will be ours,” and noted overnight that 50 foreign embassies had resumed “their full-fledged activities” in Kyiv, a sign of the fragile sense of normalcy returning to the capital.

Nevertheless, more than three months into a war that has radically altered Europe’s security calculus, killed thousands on both sides, displaced more than 12 million people and spurred a humanitarian crisis, Russian forces now control one-fifth of the country — an area greater than the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg combined.

Asked during a briefing with reporters what Russia had achieved in Ukraine after 100 days, Dmitri S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, said that many populated areas had been “liberated” from the Ukrainian military, whom he described as “Nazi-minded,” doubling down on a false narrative the Kremlin has used to justify the invasion.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday that the invasion had caused destruction that “defies comprehension,” adding, “It would be hard to exaggerate the toll that the international armed conflict in Ukraine has had on civilians over the last 100 days.”

Antonina Morgun cleaning up the garden near the remnants of her mother-in-law’s destroyed home in Kukhari, Ukraine, on Friday.Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since Feb. 24, according to U.N. estimates. Ukrainian officials place the death toll much higher.

The war has also set off the largest exodus of refugees in Europe since World War II. More than 8 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, and more than 6.5 million have fled to other countries, according to the United Nations.

Half of Ukraine’s businesses have closed and 4.8 million jobs have been lost. The U.N. estimates the country’s economic output will fall by half this year. Ninety percent of the population risks falling near or below the poverty line. At least $100 billion in damage has been done to infrastructure.

“We may not have enough weapons, but we are resisting,” said Oleh Kubrianov, a Ukrainian soldier who lost his right leg fighting near the front line, speaking in a raspy voice as he lay in a hospital bed. He still had shrapnel lodged in his neck. “There are many more of us, and we are motivated, and convinced by our victory,” he said.

Indeed, a recent poll found that almost 80 percent of Ukrainians believe the country is “moving in the right direction.”

“The idea of Ukrainian identity expanded,” said Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian writer, describing the national sentiment. “More people feel themselves Ukrainian, even those who were doubting their Ukrainian and European identity.”

The legendary bomb-sniffing dog Patron arriving at the the Dynamo Stadium in Lviv, during celebration of International Children’s Day on Wednesday.Credit…Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Russia, too, is suffering from the invasion, geopolitically isolated and facing years of economic dislocation. Its banks have been cut off from Western finance, and with oil production already off by 15 percent, it is losing energy markets in Europe. Its industries are grappling with developing shortages of basic materials, spare parts and high-tech components.

The decisions by Finland and Sweden to abandon more than 70 years of neutrality and apply for membership in NATO have underscored the disastrous strategic costs of the invasion for Russia.

Major Western companies like McDonald’s, Starbucks and Nike have vanished, ostensibly to be replaced by Russian brands. The impact will be less noticeable outside major cities, but with nearly 1,000 foreign companies having left, some consumers have felt the difference as stocks ran low.

While existing stocks have kept much of the country ticking, Russia will soon have much more of a Soviet feel, reverting to an era when Western goods were nonexistent. Some importers will make a fortune bringing in everything from jeans to iPhones to spare engine parts, but the country will become much more self-contained.

“In Russia, the most important economic thing in the last 100 days is that Putin and the elite firmly settled on an autocratic, isolationist course, and the wider elite and public seem supportive,” said Konstantin Sonin, a Russian economist at the University of Chicago.

“It seems that the course is settled, and it will be hard to reverse even if the war ended miraculously quickly,” he added. The next step will likely be a return to more centralized economic planning, he predicted, with the government setting prices and taking over the allocation of certain scarce goods, particularly those needed for military production.

The war is reverberating globally as well. On Friday, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal and chairman of the African Union, appealed directly to Mr. Putin to release Ukraine’s grain as countries across Africa and the Middle East face alarming levels of hunger and starvation.

A grain warehouse at a farm outside Lviv, in western Ukraine.Credit…Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

At a news conference with Mr. Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Mr. Sall also blamed Western sanctions on Russia for compounding Africa’s food crisis.

“Our countries, although they are far from the theater,” Mr. Sall said, “are victims of this crisis on an economic level.”

Tens of millions of people in Africa are on the brink of severe hunger and famine.

On Friday, Chad, a landlocked nation of 17 million people, declared a food emergency and the United Nations has warned that nearly a third of the country’s population would need humanitarian assistance this year.

For now, peace in Ukraine appears to be nowhere in sight.

On Friday, the skies around Sievierodonetsk, the last major city in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine still under Ukrainian control, were heavy with smoke as both armies traded blows in a fierce battle.

Ukrainian troops were moving heavy guns and howitzers along the roads toward the frontline, pouring men and armor into the fight. Russian rockets pummeled an area near Sievierodonetsk late Friday afternoon, landing with multiple heavy explosions that were audible from a nearby village. Missiles streaked through the sky from Ukrainian-held territory toward Russian positions.

A Ukrainian armored column in a tree line near the cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, on Wednesday.Credit…Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said both sides could become bogged down for months or years in a war of “positions,” rather than movement.

“This is not a bad scenario for Russia, which would maintain its country in a state of war and would wait for fatigue to win over the Westerners,” Mr. Tertrais wrote in a paper for the Institut Montaigne. Russia would already win to some degree, “by putting the occupied regions under its thumb for a long time.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Tertrais believes a progressive material and moral collapse of the Russian effort remains more probable, given Russian troops’ low morale and Ukraine’s general mobilization.

Amin Awad, the United Nations’ crisis coordinator for Ukraine, said that regardless of who wins the conflict, the toll has been “unacceptable.”

“This war has and will have no winner,” Mr. Awad said in a statement. “Rather, we have witnessed for 100 days what is lost: lives, homes, jobs and prospects.”

Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Dan Bilefsky, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Cassandra Vinograd, Elian Peltier and Kevin Granville.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: 24, Africa, African Union, Armor, Belgium, Black Sea, Chad, Chicago, Cities, Energy, Espionage, Europe, Famine, Finland, Food, Government, Grain, Homes, Hunger, Industries, Infrastructure, Jobs, Kyiv, Luxembourg, Media, Men, Middle East, Military, Moving, National, Nato, Netherlands, New York, Next, Nike, Oil, Population, Poverty, Production, Refugees, Research, Russia, Senegal, Shortages, Starbucks, State, Strikes, Sweden, Theater, Ukraine, United Nations, Water, York

Ukraine says Russian advances could force retreat in part of east

by

  • Russian forces advance in east, shifting momentum
  • EU eyes deal on banning oil shipments from Russia
  • Putin says food crisis can be solved by lifting sanctions

KYIV, May 28 (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces may have to retreat from their last pocket in the Luhansk region to avoid being captured, a Ukrainian official said, as Russian troops press an advance in the east that has shifted the momentum of the three-month-old war.

A withdrawal could bring Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of capturing eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions in full. His troops have gained ground in the two areas collectively known as the Donbas while blasting some towns to wastelands.

Luhansk’s governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said Russian troops had entered Sievierodonetsk, the largest Donbas city still held by Ukraine, after trying to trap Ukrainian forces there for days, though adding that Russian forces would not be able to capture the Luhansk region “as analysts have predicted”.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

“We will have enough strength and resources to defend ourselves. However, it is possible that in order not to be surrounded we will have to retreat,” Gaidai said on Telegram.

Gaidai said 90% of buildings in Sievierodonetsk were damaged with 14 high-rises destroyed in the latest shelling.

Speaking to Ukrainian television, Gaidai said there were some 10,000 Russian troops based in the region and they were “attempting to make gains in any direction they can”. read more

He said several dozen medical staff were staying on in Sievierodonetsk but that they faced difficulty just getting to hospitals because of the shelling.

Reuters could not independently verify the information.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was protecting its land “as much as our current defence resources allow”. Ukraine’s military said it had repelled eight attacks in Donetsk and Luhansk on Friday, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles.

“If the occupiers think that Lyman and Sievierodonetsk will be theirs, they are wrong. Donbas will be Ukrainian,” Zelenskiy said in an address.

‘PERFORMED POORLY’

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Saturday Ukrainian forces had repelled eight assaults in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the previous 24 hours. Russia’s attacks included artillery assaults in the Sievierodonetsk area “with no success”, it said.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said while Russian forces had begun direct assaults on built-up areas of Sievierodonetsk, they would likely struggle to take ground in the city itself.

“Russian forces have performed poorly in operations in built-up urban terrain throughout the war,” they said.

Russian troops advanced after piercing Ukrainian lines last week in the city of Popasna, south of Sievierodonetsk. Russian ground forces have captured several villages northwest of Popasna, Britain’s defence ministry said.

Reached by Reuters journalists in Russian-held territory on Thursday, Popasna was in ruins. The bloated body of a dead man in combat uniform could be seen lying in a courtyard.

Resident Natalia Kovalenko had left the cellar where she was sheltering in the wreckage of her flat, its windows and balcony blasted away. She said a shell hit the courtyard, killing two people and wounding eight.

“We are tired of being so scared,” she said.

Russia’s eastern gains follow the withdrawal of its forces from approaches to the capital, Kyiv, and a Ukrainian counter-offensive that pushed its forces back from Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv.

Russian forces shelled parts of Kharkiv on Thursday for the first time in days killing nine people, authorities said. The Kremlin denies targeting civilians in what it calls its “special military operation”.

Ukraine’s General Staff said on Saturday while there was no new attack on the city, there were multiple Russian strikes on nearby communities and infrastructure.

In the south, where Moscow has seized a swath of territory since the Feb. 24 invasion, including the port of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials say Russia aims to impose permanent rule.

STRUGGLING TO LEAVE

In the Kherson region in the south, Russian forces were fortifying defences and shelling Ukraine-controlled areas, the region’s Ukrainian governor told media. Another official said Russian forces had shelled the town of Zelenodolsk.

On the diplomatic front, European Union officials said a deal might be reached by Sunday to ban deliveries of Russian oil by sea, accounting for about 75% of the bloc’s supply, but not by pipeline, a compromise to win over Hungary and clear the way for new sanctions. read more

Zelenskiy has accused the EU of dithering over a ban on Russian energy, saying the bloc was funding Russia’s war and delay “merely means more Ukrainians being killed”.

In a telephone call with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, Putin stuck to his line that a global food crisis caused by the conflict can be resolved only if the West lifts sanctions.

Nehammer said Putin expressed readiness to discuss a prisoner swap with Ukraine but added: “If he is really ready to negotiate is a complex question.”

Both Russia and Ukraine are major grain exporters, and Russia’s blockade of ports has halted shipments, driving up global prices. Russia accuses Ukraine of mining the ports.

Russia justified its assault in part on ensuring Ukraine does not join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. But the war has pushed Sweden and Finland, both neutral throughout the Cold War, to apply to join NATO in one of the most significant changes in European security in decades.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Reporting by Natalia Zinets, Conor Humphries, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv, Vitaliy Hnidyi in Kharkiv and Reuters journalists in Popasna; Writing by Rami Ayyub and Robert Birsel; Editing by Grant McCool and William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: 24, Assaults, Cold war, Communities, Energy, European Union, Finland, Food, Global food crisis, Grain, Hospitals, Hungary, Information, Infrastructure, Kyiv, Lying, Media, Military, Mining, Nato, Oil, Ports, Reuters, Russia, Strikes, Sweden, Television, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Live Updates: War Raises Famine Fears as Russia Chokes Off Ukraine’s Grains

by

DAVOS, Switzerland — Fears of a global food crisis are swelling as Russian attacks on Ukraine’s ability to produce and export grain have choked off one of the world’s breadbaskets, fueling charges that President Vladimir V. Putin is using food as a powerful new weapon in his three-month-old war.

World leaders called on Tuesday for international action to deliver 20 million tons of grain now trapped in Ukraine, predicting that the alternative could be hunger in some countries and political unrest in others, in what could be the gravest global repercussion yet of Russia’s assault on its neighbor. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where worries about the war’s consequences have eclipsed almost every other issue, speakers reached for apocalyptic language to describe the threat.

“It’s a perfect storm within a perfect storm,” said David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, a United Nations agency. Calling the situation “absolutely critical,” he warned, “We will have famines around the world.”

The world’s food distribution network was already strained by pandemic-related disruptions, and exports from Ukraine, ordinarily among the world’s biggest suppliers, have plummeted because of the war. Russia has seized some the country’s Black Sea ports and blockaded the rest, trapping cargo vessels laden with corn, wheat, sunflower seeds, barley and oats.

Russian forces have taken control of some of Ukraine’s most productive farmland, destroyed Ukrainian infrastructure that is vital to raising and shipping grain, and littered farm fields with explosives. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive branch, told the political and business leaders gathered in Davos that Russia — an even bigger exporter — had confiscated Ukrainian grain stocks and agricultural machinery.

“On top of this,” she said, “Russia is now hoarding its own food exports as a form of blackmail, holding back supplies to increase global prices, or trading wheat in exchange for political support.”

A tractor working a field at a farm near Lviv, in western Ukraine.Credit…Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

The fighting in Ukraine is increasingly concentrated in a small pocket of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where Russia’s battered forces are making slow, bloody progress as they try to encircle the strategically important city of Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost Ukrainian stronghold.

Within the city, once an industrial hub, the devastation from Russian artillery is evident on every street in the form of shattered buildings, burned-out vehicles and cratered pavement. Russian pincers approaching the city from the north and south are separated by just 16 miles, but face “strong Ukrainian resistance,” the British Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

Three months into the war, the United States and its allies have shown remarkable solidarity so far in supporting Ukraine with weapons and other aid, and in punishing Russia with economic sanctions, but the limits of that unity are being tested. Finland and Sweden have signaled that they want to abandon their long-held neutrality to join NATO, but that plan is being held up by one member country, Turkey. At the same time, Hungary is blocking an E.U. plan to embargo imports of Russian oil.

Within both blocs, officials have offered assurances, without specifics, that the roadblocks will soon be overcome. Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said Tuesday that he was confident Sweden and Finland would join the alliance, though “I cannot tell you exactly how and when.” Diplomats from the two Nordic countries traveled to Turkey for talks on the issue.

The European Union, heavily dependent on Russian fuels, has already agreed to a phased embargo on natural gas from Russia, and the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, warned that Europe could face gas rationing next winter.

“I’m advising several European governments to prepare a contingency plan,” Mr. Birol said at Davos. He added that “Europe is paying for its over-dependence on Russian energy.”

Ukraine has applied to join the European Union, and on Tuesday its government rejected a French proposal for something short of full membership. Russia has vehemently opposed any expansion of NATO and E.U. membership for Ukraine, but its aggression has backfired, making those associations more attractive to its neighbors.

Increasingly isolated, the Kremlin has looked to Beijing for support, and Russia held joint military maneuvers on Tuesday with China, their first since the war in Ukraine began. The show of force included bomber flights over the Sea of Japan, while President Biden was not far away, in Tokyo, for meetings with world leaders.

A damaged street corner in the city of Sievierodonetsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday.Credit…Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

But the food crisis took center stage at Davos, where President Andrzej Duda of Poland warned that famine in Africa and elsewhere would prompt a flood of migration to Europe, where searing memories are fresh of the 2015-2016 migration wave that strained E.U. unity and empowered xenophobic nationalist movements.

Ukraine and Russia ordinarily account for about one-quarter of the grain traded internationally; in recent years, Ukraine had exported an average of about 3.5 million tons of per month. In March, only 300,000 tons were shipped out, though exports rebounded somewhat to more than a million tons in April and could reach 1.5 million tons in May, said Roman Slaston, the chief of Ukraine’s agricultural industry group.

Ukraine’s agriculture ministry says that the Black Sea blockade has prevented 14 million tons of corn, 7 million tons of wheat and 3 million tons of sunflower seeds from reaching world markets. Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of stealing Ukraine’s produce and then selling it abroad as Russian.

Western officials are circulating proposals for getting grain out of Ukraine, such as having multiple countries send warships to escort cargo ships from Ukrainian ports and run the blockade, but that runs the danger of a shooting confrontation with Russian vessels. Sending ships from NATO countries is considered particularly risky — like the rejected idea of having NATO members enforce a no-fly zone to keep Russian warplanes away from Ukraine — so much of the talk has been about countries outside the alliance taking part.

But Mr. Stoltenberg, the NATO chief, warned that breaking the Black Sea blockade would be very hard.

“Is it possible to get it out on ships? That is a difficult task. It’s not an easy way forward,” he said.

Ukraine has continued to ship grain overland through Europe, and work is underway to expand such routes, Ms. von der Leyen and Mr. Slaston said — but doing so on a scale great enough to replace seagoing shipment would be very difficult. The railways in Eastern Europe use different gauges, which means switching equipment when going long distances, and many of Ukraine’s railroads, highways and bridges have been damaged by Russian attacks.

“I do feel responsible for my people to make products and to give them something to eat”, says Andriy, right, at the farm near Lviv where he has worked for six years.Credit…Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

One farmer said he lost 50 rail cars full of grain when his cargo got stranded between Russian airstrikes in front of and behind the train.

But the problem is not limited to shipping — farming, itself, has been greatly diminished by the war. In some places, fighting has simply made the work too dangerous. In others, Russian strikes on fuel depots have left farmers unable to power their tractors.

Farmers accuse Russian forces of regularly targeting their grain silos and seizing their grain stores, particularly in the south.

And perhaps most frightening are the countless mines left by retreating Russian forces, especially in the north. The Ukrainian Deminers Association, a group that locates and removes explosives, says nearly 45 percent of the fields it has inspected in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions were mined.

Gordie Siebring, a farmer based near the Belarusian border, said Ukrainian military authorities warned him he could not sow the fields closest to the frontier because of the mine threat, meaning he has been unable to plant 8 to 10 percent of his field. Neighboring farmers have it much worse, he said, because Russian mines have made over two-thirds of their fields too dangerous to use.

“If they are as close as 10 to 15 kilometers away, they can launch mines with artillery,” he said. “These mines have small parachutes and land in the fields and have sensors that cause detonation later. Those are really causing havoc.”

Another threat to global supplies, experts say, is that countries will hoard their own food stocks. Robert Habeck, the vice chancellor and minister of economic affairs of Germany, said countries should curb their use of grain to make biofuel and to feed livestock.

“Markets have to stay open,” Mr. Habeck said in an interview. “The worst thing that can happen now is that every country cares for its own supply, saves all the wheat, saves all the food, and does not give it to the market, because then we have no chance of securing the food supply.”

A crowd gathering to receive food supplies in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv last week.Credit…Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Before the war, droughts in North America and the Horn of Africa, poor harvests in China and France, and the pandemic were already squeezing food supplies, leaving the world uncommonly vulnerable. By December, global wheat prices had risen about 80 percent in a little over a year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Even before Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s border, experts were warning of “a massive surge in food insecurity and the threat of famine,” said Adam Tooze, director of the European Institute at Columbia University.

The war, he said, is “impacting an incredibly fragile food system.”

At the same time, the spike in oil and gas prices caused by the war has triggered an even sharper increase in the cost of fertilizers made in part from those fuels.

Ms. von der Leyen said E.U. countries were increasing their own grain production and working with the World Food Program to ship available stocks to vulnerable countries at affordable prices.

“Global cooperation is the antidote to Russia’s blackmail,” she said.

Mark Landler, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Patricia Cohen reported from Davos, Switzerland, and Erika Solomon from Lviv, Ukraine. Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall from Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine; Edward Wong from Washington; Matthew Mpoke Bigg from Krakow, Poland; and Monika Pronczuk from Brussels.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: Africa, Agriculture, Aid, Beijing, Black Sea, Breaking, Business, China, Columbia University, Davos, Eastern Europe, Energy, Europe, European Union, Exports, Famine, Farming, Finland, Flights, Food, Food Insecurity, France, Gas, Germany, Global food crisis, Government, Grain, Horn of Africa, Hungary, Hunger, Industry, Infrastructure, International Energy Agency, International Monetary Fund, Kyiv, Language, Media, Migration, Military, Nato, Natural Gas, neighbors, New York, Next, Nordic Countries, North America, Oil, Poland, Ports, Production, Railroads, Russia, Stage, Strikes, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Nations, United States, Ursula von der Leyen, Washington, winter, World Economic Forum, World Food Program, York

Live Updates: Russian Pullback Seen Near Kharkiv, Despite Victory Day Push for Gains

by

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine — Russia’s push to give its president a showcase victory in Ukraine appeared to face a new setback on Saturday, as Ukrainian defenders pushed the invaders back toward the northeast border and away from the city of Kharkiv, with the Russians blowing up bridges behind them.

With less than 48 hours before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia aimed to lead his country in Victory Day celebrations commemorating the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany, the apparent Russian pullback from the area around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, contradicted the Russian narrative and illustrated the complicated picture along the 300-mile front in eastern Ukraine.

The Russians have been trying to advance in eastern Ukraine for the past few weeks and have been pushing especially hard as Victory Day approaches, but Ukrainian forces — armed with new weapons supplied by the United States and other Western nations — have been pushing back in a counteroffensive.

The destruction of three bridges by Russian forces, about 12 miles northeast of Kharkiv, reported by the Ukrainian military, suggested that the Russians not only were trying to prevent the Ukrainians from pursuing them, but had no immediate plans to return.

A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the fighting, said Russian forces were destroying bridges not to retreat but because “we are pushing them out.”

Ukrainian soldiers firing 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers near Kharkiv on Saturday.Credit…Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters

He said the fight for Kharkiv was not over, and that although “at the moment we are dominating,” Russian forces were trying to regroup and go on the offensive.

Some military analysts said the Russian actions were similar to what Russia’s military had done last month in a retreat from the city of Chernihiv north of Kyiv.

Frederick W. Kagan, a military historian and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based public policy research group, said Russia’s strategy near Kharkiv could be an indicator that “the order to retreat to somewhere had been given and they were trying to set up a defensive line.”

Ukrainian forces have retaken a constellation of towns and villages in the outskirts of Kharkiv this past week, putting them in position to unseat Russian forces from the region and reclaim total control of the city “in a matter of days,” according to a recent analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group.

The setback is now forcing the Russian military to choose whether to send reinforcements intended for elsewhere in eastern Ukraine to help defend the positions on the outskirts of Kharkiv, the institute said.

The back-and-forth around Kharkiv is part of a more complex battlefield in eastern Ukraine that has left an increasing number of towns and cities trapped in a “gray zone,” stuck between Russian and Ukrainian forces, where they are subject to frequent, sometimes indiscriminate, shelling.

Damage from a Russian missile strike in Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on Saturday.Credit…Jorge Silva/Reuters

“The Russian occupiers continue to destroy the civilian infrastructure of the Kharkiv region,” the region’s governor, Oleh Sinegubov, said in a Telegram post on Saturday, adding that shelling and artillery attacks overnight had targeted several districts, destroying a national museum in the village of Skovorodynivka.

For Russia, perhaps the best example of anything resembling a victory was the long-besieged southeastern port city of Mariupol. Although much of the city has been destroyed by Russian bombardments, there were growing indications on Saturday that Russia’s control of the city was nearly complete.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s intelligence directorate said in a Saturday statement that Russian officers were being moved from combat positions and sent to protect a Russian military parade being planned in Mariupol.

Petro Andrushchenko, an adviser to the city council, posted a series of photos to Telegram on Friday that appeared to show how Russian forces were restoring “monuments of the Soviet period” across the city.

A statue being removed from a museum that was damaged in a Russian strike in Skovorodynivka, near Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Saturday.Credit…Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

One image appeared to show a Russian flag flying above an intensive care hospital. Another image, posted on Thursday, showed municipal workers replacing Ukrainian road signs with signs in Russian script. The images could not be verified.

On Friday, 50 people were evacuated from the city’s Azovstal steel plant, the final holdout of Ukrainian forces and a group of civilians in the city. Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed on Friday during an attempt to evacuate civilians from the plant, said Mikhailo Vershinin, the chief of the city’s patrol police.

Mr. Vershinin, who was at the plant, said via a messaging app on Saturday that a rocket and a grenade were to blame. “Six were wounded, some seriously,” he said, and in the factory’s makeshift hospital, “there is no medicine, no anesthesia, no antibiotics and they may die.”

Both Ukrainian and Russian officials said Saturday that all civilian evacuations from the Mariupol factory had been completed.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Red Cross or United Nations, which have been helping to coordinate recent evacuations from the factory. A spokeswoman for the Red Cross said earlier on Saturday that efforts to evacuate the remaining civilians were “ongoing.”

Civilians who had evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol boarding a bus as Russian soldiers stand nearby on Friday.Credit…Alessandro Guerra/EPA, via Shutterstock

Elsewhere, Russia launched six missile strikes on Saturday aimed at Odesa, Ukraine’s Black Sea port, according to the city council. Four hit a furniture company and destroyed two high-rise buildings in the blast, and two missiles were fired on the city’s airport, which already had been rendered inoperable by a Russian missile that knocked out its runway last week.

The goal of Russian forces — for now at least — appears to be seizing as much of the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas as possible, by expelling Ukrainian forces that have been fighting Russian-backed separatists for years in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Since Russia’s invasion began on Feb. 24, about 80 percent of those two provinces have fallen under the Kremlin’s control.

The regional governor of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Serhiy Haidai, said on Facebook on Saturday that a Russian bomb hit a school in the village of Bilogorivka where about 90 people had taken shelter. About 30 people have been rescued so far, he said. The bodies of at least two people were recovered from the rubble, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Rescue operations were suspended on Saturday night and were to resume on Sunday, officials said.

Russian forces are trying to break through Ukrainian lines and encircle troops defending the area around the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk but are for now being held in check, Mr. Haidai said on Saturday.

“It is a war, so anything can happen, but for now the situation is difficult but under control,” Mr. Haidai said in a telephone interview. “They have broken through in some places and these areas are being reinforced.”

The Russians seemed “unlikely to successfully surround the town,” according to the latest update from the Institute for the Study of War.

A warehouse in Sievierodonetsk, shelled by Russian forces earlier this week.Credit…Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The apparent aim of Russia’s military is to seize Sievierodonetsk or cut it off from the bulk of Ukrainian forces fighting in the east, and continue a push south to the major industrial city of Kramatorsk.

Mr. Haidai said Russia’s military had deployed units with better training and more combat experience than the Russian soldiers who were initially thrown into the invasion.

“In the beginning, they sent in newly mobilized soldiers from occupied territory,” he said. “But they can’t fight. They aren’t dressed in flack jackets. And so they just died by the dozen or the hundred. But they’re running out of these.”

Mr. Haidai said he had urged anyone who could to evacuate, but that about 15,000 people remained in Sievierodonetsk. Some, he said, are older and “want to die in the place where they were born.”

By contrast in the capital, Kyiv, and much of the country’s west, the atmosphere seemed worlds away from the constant bombardment of the war — despite the occasional and unpredictable Russian missile strikes. Cars have returned to Kyiv’s streets and people living there have resumed some semblance of their normal routines.

In an apparent concern over complacency, President Volodymyr Zelensky reminded residents to heed local curfews and take air raid sirens seriously.

“Please, this is your life, the life of your children,” he implored Ukrainians in an overnight address.

Residents of towns and villages in the country’s east have often been shaken awake with bomb attacks, typically between 4 and 5 a.m.

On Saturday morning, the small village of Malotaranivka became a target. A bomb struck at about 4:15 a.m., blasting apart homes and a small bakery, leaving a crater at least 15 feet deep and a wide radius of destruction. While no one was killed, residents expressed fury at the Russians.

A large crater from a Russian strike in Malotaranivka on Saturday.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

“What kind of military target is this?” said Tatyana Ostakhova, 38, speaking through the gaping hole in her goddaughter’s apartment where she was helping to clean up. “A store that bakes bread so people don’t die of hunger?”

Such strikes have occurred with more frequency in the prelude to Victory Day in Russia, which Mr. Putin was expected to use as a platform for some kind of announcement about what he has called the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“It’s like we’re in a dream,” said Svetlana Golochenko, 43, who was cleaning up the remnants of her son’s house. “It’s hard to imagine that this is happening to us.”

Malotaranivka is a small village of single-family homes and wood-framed apartment buildings about eight miles from Kramatorsk. Residents said that aside from a few checkpoints there was no military presence in the area, making the bombings by Russians even more incomprehensible.

“Who knows what they have in their empty heads,” said Artur Serdyuk, 38, who was covered in dust and smoking a cigarette after spending the morning cleaning up what was left of his home.

Mr. Serdyuk said he had just returned to bed after going out for a middle-of-the-night cigarette when the explosion hit. The blast blew the roof off his home and incinerated his outhouse, leaving nothing but a roll of toilet paper sitting in a pile of dust near the hole for the latrine.

His neighbor’s home was opened like a dollhouse, allowing a reporter to peer into the remains of the kitchen decorated with wallpaper featuring green peacocks.

Artur Serdyuk in his home in Malotaranivka on Saturday.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Michael Schwirtz reported from Sloviansk, and Cora Engelbrecht and Megan Specia reported from London. Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Tblisi, Georgia.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: WORLD Tagged With: 24, Black Sea, Children, Cities, Curfews, Facebook, Furniture, Georgia, Germany, Homes, Hunger, Infrastructure, Kyiv, London, Media, Medicine, Military, National, nazi, New York, Police, Policy, Research, Running, Russia, Smoking, State, Strikes, Ukraine, United Nations, United States, York

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 11
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

More to See

Game Plan Launches Groundbreaking College Athlete Career Development ‘Academies’ Program

GREENVILLE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Employers aiming to win the war on talent have a new “A” team to tap into: college and professional athletes. … [Read More...] about Game Plan Launches Groundbreaking College Athlete Career Development ‘Academies’ Program

Mortgage demand sinks even as rates drop

People wait to visit a house for sale in Floral Park, Nassau County, New York.Wang Ying | Xinhua News Agency | Getty ImagesMortgage rates dropped for … [Read More...] about Mortgage demand sinks even as rates drop

Mortgage Rates May Stay on the Up Escalator in July

Mortgage rates are likely to rise in July, extending a seven-month streak. High inflation, and the Federal Reserve's efforts to control it, have … [Read More...] about Mortgage Rates May Stay on the Up Escalator in July

Copyright © 2022 · Republica Press · Log in · As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy