KYIV, March 4 (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut are facing increasingly strong pressure from Russian forces, British military intelligence said on Saturday, with intense fighting taking place in and around the eastern city.
Ukraine is reinforcing the area with elite units, while regular Russian army and forces of the private military Wagner group have made further advances into Bakhmut’s northern suburbs, the British Defence Ministry said in its daily intelligence bulletin.
The Ukraine armed forces’ general staff said in a Facebook post late on Saturday that Russian troops were trying but failing to surround Bakhmut, adding defenders had repelled numerous attacks in and around the city.
The battle has raged for seven months. A Russian victory in the city, which had a pre-war population of about 70,000 and has been blasted to ruins in the onslaught, would give Moscow the first major prize in a costly winter offensive.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
Oleh Zhdanov, a prominent Ukrainian analyst of military affairs, said late on Saturday that he could not detect any immediate signs Kyiv was going to order a retreat from the city.
A Ukrainian serviceman fires an automatic grenade launcher, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the front line city of Bakhmut, in Donetsk region, Ukraine March 3, 2023. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak
“At the moment the situation is more or less stabilized. In terms of the advancement of Russian troops, we practically stopped (it),” he said in a YouTube interview.
The British defence ministry said two key bridges in Bakhmut have been destroyed within the last 36 hours, adding that Ukrainian-held resupply routes out of the city are increasingly limited.
One of those bridges connected Bakhmut to the city’s last main supply route from the Ukrainian-held town of Chasiv Yar, about 13 km (eight miles) to the west, it said.
Russian artillery pounded the last routes out of Bakhmut on Friday, aiming to complete the encirclement of the besieged city and bring Moscow closer to its first major victory in the war in six months.
The Ukrainian general staff also said Russian attacks had been foiled in the villages of Vasyukivka, Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Dubovo-Vasylivka and Hryhorivka, all of which lie just to the north of Bakhmut’s city centre.
Russia says Bakhmut would be a stepping stone to completing the capture of the Donbas industrial region, one of Moscow’s most important objectives.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has described Bakhmut as a “fortress”, on Saturday thanked defenders in the city in a video message but gave no details of the fighting.
Reporting by Max Hunder in Kyiv, David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Jose Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Frances Kerry and Daniel Wallis
JAKARTA, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Egianus Kogoya, the dreadlocked rebel behind the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot this month in the highlands of Indonesia’s Papua region, is at the vanguard of an increasingly dangerous and media-savvy insurgency for independence.
Separatist rebels kidnapped New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens, 37, after he landed his small plane in the remote Papuan highlands on Feb 7.
Sitting in the cockpit of the plane, Kogoya, wearing a denim jacket, bone necklace and mirror shades, with a hand draped over a rifle, appeared to relish posing as his men documented their most high-profile kidnapping to date.
In a series of videos, Kogoya demanded the resource-rich region’s independence in return for Mehrtens’ release.
Fighters in the Indonesian, western half of New Guinea island have for decades waged a low-level battle for independence, but Kogoya and his gang have emerged as especially dangerous and unpredictable.
“What we are seeing is younger, new leadership among local rebel groups that is more aggressive and not necessarily strategic in the long term,” said Deka Anwar, from the Jakarta-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC).
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
The security ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the separatists but military spokesperson Kisdiyanto said attacks against Indonesian sovereignty by “a few” separatists were being handled.
The military has said it is preparing for a “law enforcement operation” but only as a last resort if negotiations to free Mehrtens fail.
Separatists say their fight is legitimate because former colonial power the Netherlands promised the region it could become independent before it was annexed by Indonesia in 1963.
Indonesia says Papua is its territory after a 1969 vote supervised by the United Nations, in which 1,025 handpicked people unanimously backed its integration.
More than a half a century later, rebels are still fighting the Indonesian republic.
An estimated 500 fighters identify as members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM).
Loosely organised and geographically fractured, the TPNPB lacks cohesion and a central leadership and command.
Instead, units in different areas operate under individual commanders, like Kogoya, who hails from a family with rebel connections – some relatives were behind the kidnapping of several foreign researchers in 1996.
For years, the separatists mounted small attacks with minimal casualties but Kogoya and his group opened a bloody new chapter in 2018 when they attacked a road-construction project killing 21 workers.
Indonesia launched a security crackdown in response, vowing to wipe out the rebels with hundreds of extra troops.
The violence forced thousands of villagers to flee, triggering a humanitarian crisis in which more than 160 people died of sickness and starvation. But in the rugged Papuan highlands, the security forces failed to track down Kogoya and his men.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL
Rebels who once brandished bows and arrows are now increasingly carrying guns, including automatic rifles seized in raids on the security forces or bought on the black market, and conducting more frequent and more lethal attacks, the IPAC said in a July report. Fifty-two members of the security forces and 34 fighters were killed between 2018 and 2021, it said.
The rebels are also taking advantage of modern communications.
Cahyo Pamungkas, a researcher from the National Research and Innovation Agency, said the separatists are using social media to get their message out.
“Social media is a tool of resistance to deliver the stories from Papua because national media is mainly dominated by perspectives from Jakarta,” he said.
“They are really media savvy,” said IPAC’s Anwar, “They want to show they are not a rag tag rebel group but have some structure, at least at the local level.”
TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sambom said the New Zealand pilot was being well looked after and treated as “family”.
“This was his idea but we are responsible for controlling the situation,” Sambom said by telephone, referring to Kogoya’s seizure of the pilot.
Sambom vowed more violence unless the separatists’ demands were met, saying the TPNPB planned a “total revolution” by 2025 with widespread destruction and bloodshed.
The government did not respond to requests for comment on the rebel threat of escalation.
Some rights activists criticise the government’s response to the insurgency.
A project to get satellite coverage over the area that would help the security forces pinpoint Kogoya’s location has become embroiled in graft, a lawmaker with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
There are also questions about overall responsibility for policy with the government flagging a “softer approach” while the military has tended to deploy more troops in response to attacks.
“It’s not quite under the control of the civilian government there,” said Marzuki Darusman, a former attorney general turned human rights campaigner.
“It’s become military turf and that doesn’t help.”
(This story has been corrected to fix the name to Sebby Sambom, not Sebby Sambon, in paragraphs 24-26)
Additional reporting by Ananda Teresia; Editing by Robert Birsel
Efforts to nudge China to nuclear talks now harder -analysts
China warhead stocks rise but still far below U.S., Russia
Long term ‘no first use’ policy in question amid build-up
HONG KONG, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Russia’s suspension of its last remaining nuclear weapons treaty with the United States may have dashed any hopes of dragging China to the table to start talking about its own rapidly accelerating nuclear arms programmes.
Regional diplomats and security analysts had held out the prospect of China somehow being convinced to join U.S.-Russian talks on extending the New START arms control treaty ahead of its expiry in 2026 as a way of alleviating growing fears over Beijing’s rapid military modernisation.
China’s nuclear arsenal sits at the core of those concerns as it grows in size and sophistication – an expansion that the United States recently noted is now gathering pace.
The Pentagon’s annual China report released last November noted that Beijing appeared to accelerate its expansion in 2021 and now has more than 400 operational nuclear warheads – a figure still far below U.S. and Russian arsenals both deployed and in reserve.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
By 2035 – when the ruling Communist Party’s leadership wants its military to be fully modernised – China will likely possess a 1,500 nuclear warhead stockpile and an advanced array of missiles, the Pentagon says.
“Compared to traditional Russian-U.S. exchanges, China is a black box – but one getting bigger every year,” an Asian security diplomat said on Wednesday.
“Putin’s suspension may have set us further back in terms of getting China to step up to the transparency table. There is so much we need to know about its policies and intentions.”
In a speech ahead of the first anniversary on Friday of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow was suspending a treaty signed in 2010 that caps at 1,550 the number of strategic nuclear warheads the United States and Russia can each deploy while providing for mutual inspections.
Analysts said the move could imperil the delicate calculus that underpins mutual deterrence between the two countries, long the largest nuclear powers by far, and spark an arms race among other nuclear states.
Tong Zhao, a U.S.-based nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he believed Putin’s move limits the prospects of U.S.-China nuclear cooperation.
“This is only going to make China even less interested in pursuing cooperative nuclear security with the United States,” Zhao told Reuters. “Now even this last example of arms control cooperation is being seriously undermined.”
NO FIRST USE
A nuclear power since the early 1960s, China for decades maintained a small number of nuclear warheads and missiles as a deterrent under its unique “no first use” pledge.
That pledge remains official policy but the arsenal that surrounds it has grown rapidly in recent years as part of Beijing’s broader military modernization under President Xi Jinping.
The People’s Liberation Army now has the ability to launch long-range nuclear-armed missiles from submarines, aircraft and an expanding range of silos in China’s interior – a “nuclear triad” that some experts fear could be used, for example, to coerce rivals in a conflict over Taiwan.
The Pentagon also warns of possible conditions over “no first use” as the build-up continues – questions that echo many raised by regional military attaches and security scholars.
“Beijing probably would also consider nuclear use to restore deterrence if a conventional military defeat gravely threatened PRC survival,” the Pentagon report notes, using the initials for China’s official name.
A month earlier, Washington’s Nuclear Posture Review said Beijing is reluctant to engage in strategic nuclear discussions but that both bilateral and multilateral talks are needed.
“The scope and pace of the PRC’s nuclear expansion, as well as its lack of transparency and growing military assertiveness, raise questions regarding its intentions, nuclear strategy and doctrine, and perceptions of strategic stability,” it said.
Some experts believe Beijing has long been wary of being bound by any three-way talks with Russia and the United States given how far it remains behind U.S. capabilities, at least for another decade or more.
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
Academics familiar with once-regular unofficial and semi-official exchanges – so-called Track 2 and Track 1.5 discussions – with Chinese counterparts over nuclear policy say they have dried up over the last five years amid wider political tensions.
Singapore-based strategic adviser Alexander Neill said he believed China might increasingly support Russia’s position rhetorically, while feeling emboldened to further accelerate its own build-up.
That would make it harder for the United States and its allies to engage Beijing on its nuclear doctrine, particularly on “no first use”.
“China has been consistent in supporting arms control between the U.S. and Russia and has long wanted to maintain the image of being a responsible stakeholder – but there are growing questions about the future,” said Neill, an adjunct fellow with Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think-tank.
“The aim of the U.S. and its allies is to get crystal clarity over its ‘no first use’ policy because there’s the Taiwan question,” he said, referring to the democratically governed island that Beijing sees as its own territory.
Carnegie’s Zhao said Putin’s announcement might increase the risk of inciting other nuclear powers to expand their nuclear arsenals and break long-held commitments not to stage fresh tests.
“If that happens, it is a very negative development in terms of international … nuclear order.”
Reporting By Greg Torode in Hong Kong and Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing; editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich
BENGALURU, Feb 22 (Reuters) – India does not want the G20 to discuss additional sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine during New Delhi’s one-year presidency of the bloc, six senior Indian officials said on Wednesday, amid debate over how even to describe the conflict.
On the sidelines of a G20 gathering in India, financial leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations will meet on Feb. 23, the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion, to discuss measures against Russia, Japan’s finance minister said on Tuesday.
The officials, who are directly involved in this week’s G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs, said the economic impact of the conflict would be discussed but India did not want to consider additional actions against Russia.
“India is not keen to discuss or back any additional sanctions on Russia during the G20,” said one of the officials. “The existing sanctions on Russia have had a negative impact on the world.”
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
Another official said sanctions were not a G20 issue. “G20 is an economic forum for discussing growth issues.”
Spokespeople for the Indian government and the finance and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Wednesday, the first day of meetings to draft the G20 communique, officials struggled to find an acceptable word to describe the Russia-Ukraine conflict, delegates of at least seven countries present in the meetings said.
India tried to form a consensus on the words by calling it a “crisis” or a “challenge” instead of a “war”, the officials said, but the discussions concluded without a decision.
These discussions have been rolled over to Thursday when U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be part of the meetings.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has previously said the war has disproportionately hit poorer countries by raising prices of fuel and food.
India’s neighbours – Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh – have all sought loans from the International Monetary Fund in recent months to tide over economic troubles brought about by the pandemic and the war.
U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Tuesday that Washington and its allies planned in coming days to impose new sanctions and export controls that would target Russia’s purchase of dual-use goods like refrigerators and microwaves to secure semiconductors needed for its military.
The sanctions would also seek to do more to stem the trans-shipment of oil and other restricted goods through bordering countries.
In addition, Adeyemo said officials from a coalition of more than 30 countries would warn companies, financial institutions and individuals still doing business with Russia that they faced sanctions.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has not openly criticised Moscow for the invasion and instead called for dialogue and diplomacy to end the war. India has also sharply raised purchases of oil from Russia, its biggest supplier of defence hardware.
Jaishankar told Reuters partner ANI this week that India’s relationship with Russia had been “extraordinarily steady and it has been steady through all the turbulence in global politics”.
Additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik; Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie
CHISINAU, Feb 22 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin revoked on Tuesday a 2012 decree that in part underpinned Moldova’s sovereignty in resolving the future of the Transdniestria region – a Moscow-backed separatist region which borders Ukraine and where Russia keeps troops.
The decree, which included a Moldova component, outlined Russia’s foreign policy 11 years ago which assumed Moscow’s closer relations with the European Union and the United States.
The order revoking the 2012 document was published on the Kremlin’s website and states that the decision was taken to “ensure the national interests of Russia in connection with the profound changes taking place in international relations”.
It is part of a series of anti-Western moves announced by Putin on Tuesday.
Alexandru Flenchea, Moldovan chairman of the joint control commission in the security zone around Transdniestria, said the cancellation did not mean that Putin was abandoning the notion of Moldovan sovereignty.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
“The decree is a policy document that implements the concept of Russia’s foreign policy,” Flenchea told Publika-TV. “Moldova and Russia have a basic political agreement that provides for mutual respect for the territorial integrity of our countries.”
The Kremlin has said that Russia’s relations with Moldova, which last week approved a new pro-Western prime minister that vowed to pursue a drive to join the EU, were very tense. It accused Moldova of pursuing an anti-Russian agenda.
Wedged between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest nations, has been led since 2020 by President Maia Sandu with strong U.S. and European Union backing. U.S. President Joe Biden met her in Poland on Tuesday affirming his support.
The 2012 decree committed Russia to seeking ways to resolve the separatist issue “based on respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and neutral status of the Republic of Moldova in determining the special status of Transdniestria”.
The Russian-speakers of Transdniestria seceded from Moldova in 1990, one year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, amid fears that Moldova would merge with Romania, whose language and culture it broadly shares.
A brief war pitted newly independent Moldova against the separatists in 1992. But there has been virtually no violence in the past 30 years, with Russian “peacekeepers” still posted in the tiny sliver of land, which has no international recognition.
Moldova’s foreign ministry said it would “carefully study” the document.
Reporting by Alexander Tanas, Lidia Kelly and Ron Popeski; Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Michael Perry
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Marking one year of war, Ukraine and Russia lobbied countries at the United Nations on Wednesday for backing ahead of a vote by the 193-member General Assembly that the United States declared will “go down in history.”
“We will see where the nations of the world stand on the matter of peace in Ukraine,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the General Assembly.
The General Assembly appeared set to adopt a resolution on Thursday, put forward by Ukraine and supporters, stressing “the need to reach, as soon as possible, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in line with the founding U.N. Charter.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced Russia’s invasion and said the Charter was “unambiguous,” citing from it: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Ukraine and its supporters hope to deepen Russia’s diplomatic isolation by seeking yes votes from nearly three-quarters of the General Assembly to match – if not better – the support received for several resolutions last year.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
They argue the war is a simple case of one unprovoked country illegally invading another, while Russia portrays itself as battling a “proxy war” with West, which has been arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Moscow since the invasion.
“The West has … brazenly ignored our concerns and continue bringing the military infrastructure of NATO closer and closer to our borders,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the General Assembly.
[1/6] United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly to mark one year since Russia invaded Ukraine and to consider the adoption of a resolution on Ukraine at U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., February 22, 2023. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
‘VERY SIMPLE’
Nebenzia said Moscow “had no other option” but to launch what it has called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24 last year to defend Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and ensure “the safety and security of our country, using military means.”
The draft U.N. resolution, which is non-binding, but carries political weight, mirrors a demand the General Assembly made last year for Moscow to withdraw troops and halt the hostilities. Russia has described the text as “unbalanced and anti-Russian” and urged countries to vote no.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters Ukraine was exercising its right to self-defense as enshrined in the U.N. Charter and that “when you are sending weapons to Ukraine, you are helping Ukraine to defend U.N. Charter.”
“Russia violated the U.N. Charter by becoming an aggressor,” he said at the United Nations. “When you are sending weapons to them, you are helping to destroy the U.N. Charter and everything that the United Nations stand for. It’s very simple.”
The General Assembly has been the focus for UN action on Ukraine, with the 15-member Security Council paralyzed due to veto power by Russia and the United States along with China, France and Britain.
The Security Council has held dozens of meetings on Ukraine in the past year and will again discuss the war on Friday at a ministerial gathering, due to be attended by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Diplomats say Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is not scheduled to attend.
Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by Kanishka Singh and David Gregorio
UBE, Japan, Feb 13 (Reuters) – On a crisp February morning, four elderly Korean men bowed their heads towards Japan’s Seto Inland Sea as the surf lapped near their shoes.
They were paying respects to relatives entombed in a coal mine deep beneath their feet 80 years ago – among thousands of Korean bodies scattered across Japan in an enduring symbol of a colonial past that has long blighted ties between the neighbours.
But with renewed diplomatic efforts to improve relations, families of the men drafted to support Japan’s war effort in what is known as the Chosei mine during its 1910-45 occupation of the Korean peninsula, see a last chance for closure.
“It is now or never,” said 75-year-old Yang Hyeon, whose uncle was among 136 Koreans and 47 Japanese killed when the leaky mine beneath the seabed on southern Japan’s coast collapsed and flooded in 1942.
“Now that things are apparently getting better with Japan, I’m asking the two governments to think about us.”
Yang, who attended the low-key ceremony in the town of Ube on Feb. 4, is part of a group of family members and residents urging the two governments to dig up the bodies and send them home.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
The remains of as many as 10,000 Koreans who died in forced labour, digging mines or building dams, are still in Japan, according to South Korean government estimates. Japan says it has identified 2,799 remains of Korean wartime labourers.
Efforts to repatriate them have gone nowhere for more than a decade but since taking office last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has sought to settle historic issues with Japan and focus on shared, present-day threats such as nuclear-armed North Korea and China.
Those overtures, which resulted in the first talks between the country’s leaders in years in September, have given hope to the elderly relatives of the Chosei miners that they may still live to see their loved ones’ remains returned home.
“We’re running out of time,” said Son Bong-soo, a grandson of one of the victims, who at 65 is the youngest family member in the group. “Once we die, no one will care.”
In 2005, Japan announced a push to return the remains of Korean wartime labourers, but the initiative made little progress and petered out several years later amid souring relations.
“We expect to have a positive conversation with Japan over repatriation of the remains as now South Korea and Japan both have a strong will to resolve the forced labour issues,” South Korea’s interior ministry, which handles colonial-era forced labour disputes, said in a statement.
The ministry said it had not discussed specific cases such as the Chosei miners.
Japan’s foreign ministry said it had been in communication with South Korea about wartime labour issues but could not disclose details.
GRIM CONDITIONS
One of the challenges at Chosei is the expense and logistics of excavating bodies from a submerged mine that extends at least 1 km out to sea and nearly 40 metres underground.
[1/10] South Korean relatives of workers killed in a disaster at the Chosei coal mine, bow toward an altar for the victims at a mourning ceremony, in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, February 4, 2023. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Japan’s labour ministry, which said it had previously conducted a study of the incident, told Reuters the cost of an excavation would likely run into millions of U.S. dollars.
But campaigners argue that is a price worth paying to recognise the hardship and injustice that the families endured.
According to a 2007 report on the Chosei mine commissioned by South Korea, workers mainly drafted from poor farming towns in Korea lived in packed dormitories surrounded by high fencing and were regularly beaten by Japanese supervisors.
Living conditions were so desperate that in 1939, more than 200 workers staged a protest, breaking windows and a telephone inside the mine’s management office, the report said referring to a Japanese government statement at the time.
In the months before the mine collapsed, there were constant leaks and pumps were installed to draw water out of the shaft to keep it operational, according to testimonies of surviving miners cited in the report.
‘NEW PATH’
Now 89 and using a hearing aid and walking stick, Jeon Seok-ho vividly remembers the morning his father died in the mine when he was eight years old.
His teacher told him that there had been an accident and to go straight home. As he rushed back along the shore, he spotted columns of water spouting from the sea above the mine. Then he heard the wail of the villagers as they watched the waters rise up to the mine entrance, he recalled.
“It ended just like that. I lost my dad,” Jeon said.
After the war, Jeon returned to Korea but his family struggled to live off the meagre income his mother made selling rice cakes and what he could muster driving cattle for farmers.
Growing up, he said he often thought of his father, trapped in the water so far away, but as the years pass he is losing hope of ever bringing him home.
“The governments are paying lip service to us but actually have done nothing,” he said as he watched a video of the recent ceremony on YouTube at his home in Daegu, South Korea.
His mood lifted when Yoko Inoue, the 72-year-old Japanese head of the campaign group pressing to retrieve the remains, appeared on screen.
“Inoue-san, hang in there!” Jeon shouted, breaking into Japanese.
Back in Ube, Inoue told Reuters that if left untouched, the bodies at Chosei would forever be a symbol of the two countries’ bitter past. But if recovered, they would serve as a show of unity.
“We have a great opportunity,” she said. “There’s momentum now, and the Japanese and Korean governments are trying to reconcile their differences.”
“That also means unearthing historical problems. But given that there are both Japanese and Korean people there, this could forge a new path if both governments could work together.”
Reporting by Sakura Murakami in Ube, Japan and Ju-min Park in Daegu, South Korea; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Robert Birsel
JANDARIS, Syria, Feb 12 (Reuters) – An eerie silence lay over the courtyard of Ramadan al-Suleiman’s nursery in northern Syria on Sunday as he picked his way through smashed cinderblocks, twisted metal and broken plastic swings.
The modest nursery in the town of Jandaris – about 70 km (44 miles) from the city of Aleppo – once hosted 100 toddlers, whose dusty pictures now lay strewn among the debris caused by Monday’s devastating earthquake. Some of those children and teachers would not be coming back, Suleiman said.
“We lost two of the female teachers from the important cadres at the school. We lost seven or eight students that we know of,” he told Reuters.
They were among more than 2,600 people reported so far to have died in the earthquake in opposition-held parts of northern Syria. More than 3,500 were killed across Syria in total and nearly 30,000 in Turkey.
Children’s education in Syria was already hard hit by the war that has raged since 2011. For years, schools would regularly shut because of fighting, mortar fire by rebel groups or air strikes by the Syrian government or Russia.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
The earthquake destroyed more than 115 schools in Syria and damaged hundreds more, according to a United Nations update published Saturday.
More than 100 others were being used as makeshift shelters to host thousands displaced by the earthquake, which brought apartment blocks and even tiny rural homes crashing down on residents’ heads.
Suleiman has been trying to track down some of the nursery children from whose families he has not heard.
“I went around to buildings where I know some of the students live – and 90% of them were destroyed. There are some pupils that I suspect are dead because we cannot reach their families at all,” he said.
Jandaris was particularly devastated, with many concrete buildings pulverised.
Rescuers across Syria, including in the north, have been pulling young children out from under the rubble – some of them miraculously alive even almost a week after the quake, but orphaned.
Others did not make it.
Mohammad Hassan said he still doesn’t know what happened to his seven-year-old daughter Lafeen’s friends and classmates.
“We asked around and discovered that one of her teachers died, may God bless her soul,” Hassan told Reuters as Lafeen played quietly in his lap.
“She is shocked, she asks me to go see if something happened to the kindergarten. I’m telling her nothing happened and I will take you there once it reopens.”
Reporting by Khalil Ashawi; Writing by Maya Gebeily
Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky
BERLIN/LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) – A Russian scheme to grant loan payment holidays to troops fighting in Ukraine, and for banks to write off the entire debt if they are killed or maimed, has added to growing pressure for the remaining overseas lenders in Russia to leave.
Almost a year since Moscow launched what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, a handful of European banks, including Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBIV.VI) and Italy’s UniCredit (CRDI.MI), are still making money in Russia.
The loan relief scheme has not only triggered criticism from Ukraine’s central bank, which said it had appealed to Raiffeisen and other banks to stop doing business in Russia, but also from investors concerned about any reputational impact.
Raiffeisen and UniCredit are both deeply embedded in the Russian financial system and are the only foreign banks on the central bank’s list of 13 “systemically important credit institutions”, underscoring their importance to Russia’s economy, which is grappling with sweeping Western sanctions.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
Their role in supporting the Russian economy at a critical time for President Vladimir Putin has prompted some investors to go public with their misgivings.
“Companies should be very careful,” said Kiran Aziz, of Norwegian pension fund KLP, cautioning of a major risk that the banks could be used to “in other ways finance the war”. KLP funds hold shares in both Raiffeisen and UniCredit.
At the time the payment holiday law was going through parliament in September, Vyacheslav Volodin, the influential speaker of the lower house, made clear its importance to Russia.
“Soldiers and officers ensure the security of our country and we must be sure that they will be taken care of,” he said.
Eric Christian Pederson of Nordea Asset Management, which has more than 300 billion euros ($320 billion) under management, said he too was concerned about Raiffeisen and UniCredit’s Russian presence and had raised this with them.
The requirement that the banks grant payment holidays to soldiers “illustrates the dangers of operating in jurisdictions where companies can … be forced into actions that go directly against their corporate values,” he added.
“We feel that it is right for companies to withdraw from Russia, given its unprovoked attack on Ukraine,” said Pederson. Refinitiv data shows Nordea owns shares in UniCredit.
Banks restructured a total of 167,600 loans for military personnel or their family members, worth more than 800 million euros, between Sept. 21 and the end of last year, Russian central bank data shows.
Raiffeisen said that only 0.2% of its Russian loans are affected by the “government-imposed loan moratorium”, a sum it described as “negligible”. The bank has a total of almost 9 billion euros of loans in Russia, where it has been for more than 25 years, including to companies.
It made a net profit of roughly 3.8 billion euros last year, thanks in large part to a 2 billion euro plus profit from its Russia business.
UniCredit, which entered the Russian market almost 20 years ago when it acquired an Austrian bank, said that the rule was “mandatory under the federal law … for all banks”, declining to say how many of its loans had been forgiven.
The Italian bank added that its business in Russia was focused on companies rather than individuals. Of UniCredit’s more than 20 billion euro total revenue last year, Russia accounted for more than 1 billion euros.
But despite an initial sharp fall, UniCredit’s shares are now significantly higher than before Russia moved its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, while Raiffeisen’s, with a more limited free float, have not recovered.
“Any profiteering on the ongoing war is not acceptable or aligned with our view of responsible investments,” said a spokesperson for Swedbank Robur, one of Scandinavia’s top investors, adding that reputational risk was a worry.
Swedbank Robur said it has stakes in both banks, but did not disclose figures.
Larger institutional investors, including France’s Amundi and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which advocates responsible investing, declined to comment when asked for their views.
WINDOW CLOSING?
Some foreign banks have made relatively quick exits.
France’s Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) severed its Russia ties in May by selling Rosbank (ROSB.MM) to businessman Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Group.
But the continued presence of two of Europe’s biggest banks is attracting the attention of regulators at the European Central Bank (ECB), one person familiar with the matter said.
Andrea Enria, the ECB’s chief supervisor, said the window to quit was “closing a bit” because Russian authorities were taking a more “hostile” approach. But he also voiced support for any bank wanting to reduce their business there or leave.
Raiffeisen and UniCredit confirmed they were in discussions about Russia with the ECB.
UniCredit said it kept the ECB “fully and regularly up to date on our strategy of orderly de-risking our exposure to Russia”.
But with money still to be made, Raiffeisen saw profit from its business in Russia more than triple last year.
Meanwhile, Russian savers lodged more than 20 billion euros with the bank, which offers a place to deposit funds with fewer sanctions risks.
This means there is no great impetus for banks to leave Russia, despite regulatory pressure.
And in Austria, which has close historical and economic ties to eastern Europe and Russia, politicians are largely silent on Raiffeisen’s continuing Russian presence, which in recent months prompted protests outside its headquarters.
Johann Strobl, Raiffeisen’s CEO, has said he is examining options for the Russian business, although points out that any move is complicated, having earlier said that the bank is not “a sausage stand” that could be closed overnight.
For some the question is more about morality than money.
Heinrich Schaller, head of RBI’s third largest shareholder Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberoesterreich and deputy chairman of Raiffeisen, is among those to have aired doubts about staying.
“Of course it is a question of morals,” he said recently. “No doubt about it.”
Whatever shareholders may say, a decree by Putin is likely to make getting out of Russia difficult. It banned investors from so-called unfriendly countries from selling shares in banks, unless the Russian President grants an exemption.
($1 = 0.9376 euros)
Additional reporting by Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich in Vienna and Tom Sims in Frankfurt; Writing by John O’Donnell; Editing by Alexander Smith
WASHINGTON/OTTAWA, Feb 11 (Reuters) – A U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada on Saturday, the second such instance in as many days, as North America appeared on edge following a week-long Chinese spying balloon saga that drew the global spotlight.
Separately, the U.S. military also scrambled fighter jets in Montana to investigate a radar anomaly that triggered a brief federal closure of airspace.
“Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate the radar hits,” the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a statement.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first announced Saturday’s shootdown over the northern Yukon territory, saying Canadian forces would recover and analyze the wreckage.
Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand declined to speculate about the origin of the object, which she said was cylindrical in shape.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
She stopped short of calling it a balloon but said it was smaller than the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina’s coast a week ago, though similar in appearance.
Aloft at 40,000 feet (12,200 m), it posed a risk to civilian air traffic and was shot down at 3:41 EST (2041 GMT), she added.
“There is no reason to believe that the impact of the object in Canadian territory is of any public concern,” Anand told a news conference.
The Pentagon said NORAD detected the object over Alaska late on Friday.
U.S. fighter jets from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, monitored the object as it crossed over into Canadian airspace, where Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joined the formation.
“A U.S. F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory, using an AIM 9X missile following close co-ordination between U.S. and Canadian authorities,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said in a statement.
U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the U.S. military to work with Canada to take down the high-altitude craft after a call between Biden and Trudeau, the Pentagon said.
The White House said Biden and Trudeau agreed to continue close coordination to “defend our airspace.”
“The leaders discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin,” it said in a statement.
[1/3] A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor, based out of Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, flies alongside a KC-135 Stratotanker during an aerial refueling mission above an undisclosed location, in this undated handout picture released by U.S. Air Force on July 29, 2019. Chris Drzazgowsk/U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS
A day earlier, Biden ordered another shootdown of an unidentified flying object near Deadhorse, Alaska.
On Saturday, the U.S. military remained tight-lipped about what, if anything, it had learned as recovery efforts were underway on the Alaskan sea ice.
On Friday, the Pentagon offered only a few details, such as that the object was the size of a small car, was flying at about 40,000 feet (12,200 m), could not maneuver and appeared to be unmanned.
U.S. officials have been trying to learn about the object since it was first spotted on Thursday.
“We have no further details at this time about the object, including its capabilities, purpose, or origin,” Northern Command said on Saturday.
It mentioned difficult Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight that can hinder search and recovery.
“Personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” it added.
On Feb. 4, a U.S. F-22 fighter jet brought down what the U.S. government called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina following its week-long journey across the United States and portions of Canada.
China has said it was a civilian research vessel.
Some U.S. lawmakers criticized Biden for not shooting down the Chinese balloon sooner. The U.S. military had recommended waiting until it was over the ocean, for fear of injuries from falling debris.
U.S. personnel have been scouring the ocean to recover debris and the undercarriage of electronic gadgetry since the shootdown of the 200-foot (60-meter) -tall Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon.
The Pentagon has said a significant amount of the balloon had already been recovered or located, suggesting American officials may soon have more information about any Chinese espionage capabilities aboard.
Sea conditions on Feb. 10 “permitted dive and underwater unmanned vehicle (UUV) activities and the retrieval of additional debris from the sea floor,” Northern Command said.
“The public may see U.S. Navy vessels moving to and from the site as they conduct offload and resupply activities.”
Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, David Shepardson, Andrea Shalal, Michael Martina, Richard Cowan in Washington, Steven Scherer in Ottawa; Editing by David Gregorio and Clarence Fernandez
Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.
National security correspondent focusing on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Reports on U.S. military activity and operations throughout the world and the impact that they have. Has reported from over two dozen countries to include Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. From Karachi, Pakistan.
Feb 3 (Reuters) – U.S. officials said on Thursday that a Chinese “surveillance balloon” has been flying over the United States for several days.
Using high-altitude balloons for spying and other military missions is a practice that dates to the middle of the last century. Here is what is known about how they operate and what they can be used for:
* During World War 2, the Japanese military tried to loft incendiary bombs into U.S. territory using balloons designed to float in jet stream air currents. No military targets were damaged, but several civilians were killed when one of the balloons crashed in an Oregon forest.
* Just after World War 2, the U.S. military started exploring the use of high-altitude spy balloons, which led to a large-scale series of missions called Project Genetrix. The project flew photographic balloons over Soviet bloc territory in the 1950s, according to government documents.
A balloon flies in the sky over Billings, Montana, U.S. February 1, 2023 in this picture obtained from social media. Chase Doak/via REUTERS
* Such balloons typically operate at 80,000-120,000 feet (24,000-37,000m), well above where commercial air traffic flies – airliners almost never fly higher than 40,000 feet. The highest-performing fighter aircraft typically do not operate above 65,000 feet, although spy planes such as the U-2 have a service ceiling of 80,000 feet or more.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
* The advantages of balloons over satellites include the ability to scan wide swathes of territory from closer in, and to be able to spend more time over a target area, according to a 2009 report to the U.S. Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College.
* Unlike satellites, which require space launchers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, balloons can be launched cheaply.
* The balloons are not directly steered, but can be roughly guided to a target area by changing altitudes to catch different wind currents, according to a 2005 study for the Air Force’s Airpower Research Institute.
* The U.S. military has tracked other spy balloons in recent years, including before President Joe Biden’s administration, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
Reporting by Gerry Doyle;
Editing by Don Durfee and Stephen Coates
80 years have passed since Soviet victory in Stalingrad
Putin draws parallels with Russia’s campaign in Ukraine
This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine.
VOLGOGRAD, Russia, Feb 2 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin evoked the spirit of the Soviet army that defeated Nazi German forces at Stalingrad 80 years ago to declare on Thursday that Russia would defeat a Ukraine supposedly in the grip of a new incarnation of Nazism.
In a fiery speech in Volgograd, known as Stalingrad until 1961, Putin lambasted Germany for helping to arm Ukraine and said, not for the first time, that he was ready to draw on Russia’s entire arsenal, which includes nuclear weapons.
“Unfortunately we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country,” Putin told an audience of army officers and members of local patriotic and youth groups.
“Again and again we have to repel the aggression of the collective West. It’s incredible but it’s a fact: we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them.”
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
Russian officials have been drawing parallels with the struggle against the Nazis ever since Russian forces entered Ukraine almost a year ago.
Ukraine – which was part of the Soviet Union and itself suffered devastation at the hands of Hitler’s forces – rejects those parallels as spurious pretexts for a war of imperial conquest.
Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle of World War Two, when the Soviet Red Army, at a cost of over 1 million casualties, broke the back of German invasion forces in 1942-3.
Putin evoked what he said was the spirit of the defenders of Stalingrad to explain why he thought Russia would prevail in Ukraine, saying the World War Two battle had become a symbol of “the indestructible nature of our people”.
“Those who draw European countries, including Germany, into a new war with Russia, and … expect to win a victory over Russia on the battlefield, apparently don’t understand that a modern war with Russia will be quite different for them,” he added.
“We don’t send our tanks to their borders but we have the means to respond, and it won’t end with the use of armoured vehicles, everyone must understand that.”
[1/6] Russian service members drive a tank during a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the victory of Red Army over Nazi Germany’s troops in the Battle of Stalingrad during World War Two, in Volgograd, Russia February 2, 2023. REUTERS/Kirill Braga
VICTORY PARADE
As Putin finished speaking, the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Putin had earlier laid flowers at the grave of the Soviet marshal who oversaw the defence of Stalingrad and visited the city’s main memorial complex, where he held a minute’s silence in honour of those who died during the battle.
Thousands of people lined Volgograd’s streets to watch a victory parade as planes flew overhead and modern and World War Two-era tanks and armoured vehicles rolled past.
Some of the modern vehicles had the letter ‘V’ painted on them, a symbol used by Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
Irina Zolotoreva, a 61-year-old who said her relatives had fought at Stalingrad, saw a parallel with Ukraine.
“Our country is fighting for justice, for freedom. We got victory in 1942 and that’s an example for today’s generation. I think we’ll win again now whatever happens.”
The focal point for the commemorations was the Mamayev Kurgan memorial complex, on a hill overlooking the River Volga dominated by a hulking statue called The Motherland Calls – of a woman brandishing a giant sword.
The five-month-long battle reduced the city that bore Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s name to rubble, while claiming an estimated 2 million dead and wounded on both sides.
Despite Stalin’s record of presiding over a famine that killed millions and political repression that killed hundreds of thousands, Russian politicians and school textbooks have in recent years stressed his role as a successful wartime leader who turned the Soviet Union into a superpower.
Reporting by Tatiana Gomozova
Writing by Andrew Osborn
Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Kevin Liffey
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) – U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said on Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions toward Taiwan should not be underestimated, despite him likely being sobered by the performance of Russia’s military in Ukraine.
Burns said that the United States knew “as a matter of intelligence” that Xi had ordered his military to be ready to conduct an invasion of self-governed Taiwan by 2027.
“Now, that does not mean that he’s decided to conduct an invasion in 2027, or any other year, but it’s a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition,” Burns told an event at Georgetown University in Washington.
“Our assessment at CIA is that I wouldn’t underestimate President Xi’s ambitions with regard to Taiwan,” he said, adding that the Chinese leader was likely “surprised and unsettled” and trying to draw lessons by the “very poor performance” of the Russian military and its weapons systems in Ukraine.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
Russia and China signed a “no limits” partnership last February shortly before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and their economic links have boomed as Russia’s connections with the West have shriveled.
The Russian invasion had fueled concerns in the West of China possibly making a similar move on Taiwan, a democratic island Beijing says is its territory.
China has refrained from condemning Russia’s operation against Ukraine, but it has been careful not to provide the sort of direct material support which could provoke Western sanctions like those imposed on Moscow.
“I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the mutual commitment to that partnership, but it’s not a friendship totally without limits,” Burns said.
As Burns spoke, news came from U.S. officials that a suspected Chinese spy balloon had been flying over the United States for a few days, and that senior U.S. officials had advised President Joe Biden against shooting it down for fear the debris could pose a safety threat.
Burn made no mention of the episode but called China the “biggest geopolitical challenge” currently faced by the United States.
“Competition with China is unique in its scale, and that it really, you know, unfolds over just about every domain, not just military, and ideological, but economic, technological, everything from cyberspace, to space itself as well. It’s a global competition in ways that could be even more intense than competition with the Soviets was,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from China’s Washington embassy about the remarks from Burns or the balloon flight.
Burns said the next six months will be “critical” for Ukraine, where Moscow has been making incremental gains in recent weeks.
He also said Iran’s government was increasingly unsettled by affairs within the country, citing the courage of what he described as “fed up” Iranian women.
Reporting by Michael Martina, Rami Ayyub, David Brunnstrom and Phil Stewart; Editing by Christopher Cushing
WASHINGTON/KYIV, Feb 2 (Reuters) – The United States has answered President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s plea for rockets that can strike deep behind the front lines of the nearly year-long conflict with Russia.
Now Russian forces will need to adapt or face potentially catastrophic losses.
The new weapon, the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), will allow Ukraine’s military to hit targets at twice the distance reachable by the rockets it now fires from the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). If included as expected in an upcoming weapons-aid package first reported by Reuters, the 151 km (94 mile) GLSDB will put all of Russia’s supply lines in the east of the country within reach, as well as part of Russian-occupied Crimea.
This will force Russia to move its supplies even farther from the front lines, making its soldiers more vulnerable and greatly complicating plans for any new offensive.
“This could slow down [a Russian assault] significantly,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defence minister. “Just as HIMARS significantly influenced the course of events, these rockets could influence the course of events even more.”
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
GLSDB is GPS-guided glide bomb that can manoeuvre to hit hard-to-reach targets such as command centres. Made jointly by SAAB AB (SAABb.ST) and Boeing Co (BA.N), it combines the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor, both of which are common in U.S. inventories.
It is not yet compatible with HIMARS, but the United States will provide Ukraine new launchers for the rockets, said sources. GLSDB could be delivered as early as spring 2023, according to a document reviewed by Reuters.
VULNERABLE SUPPLY LINES
When the United States first sent HIMARS launchers in June, it supplied rockets with a 77 km (48 mile) range. This was a major boost for the Ukrainian military, allowing it to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and weapons storage facilities.
Once Ukraine has the new glide bombs, say military experts, Russia will need to push its supplies even farther away.
“We are currently unable to reach Russian military facilities more than 80 kilometres away,” said Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Musiyenko. “If we can reach them practically all the way to the Russian border, or in occupied Crimea, then of course this will lower the attacking potential of Russian forces.”
Crucially, Ukraine will soon be able to reach every point of the occupied overland route to Crimea via Berdiansk and Melitopol. That will force Russia to redirect its supply trucks to the Crimean bridge, which was badly damaged in an attack in October.
“Russia is using Crimea as a big military base from which it sends reinforcements for its troops on the southern front,” said Musiyenko. “If we had a 150km (munition), we could reach that and disrupt the logistical connection with Crimea.”
Beyond the logistical impact, the addition of a longer-range weapon to Ukraine’s arsenal could help shake Russian confidence.
Tom Karako, a weapons and security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that while Ukraine would benefit from an even longer range weapon, GLSDB is “a really important step to give the Ukrainians longer reach and to keep the Russians guessing.”
NO ATACMS – YET
For the Biden administration, the decision to send GLSDB to Ukraine represents a step toward meeting Ukraine’s demand for the 185-mile (297km) range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile, which the administration has so far declined to provide, fearing a further escalation of the conflict.
The glide bombs, while not as powerful, are much cheaper, smaller and easier to deploy than ATACMS, making them well suited for much of what Ukraine hopes to accomplish: disrupting Russian operations and creating a tactical advantage.
Still, said Karako, it is possible the Ukrainians could end up receiving an even longer range weapon in the future.
“Time and again, we’ve seen the administration say that they would go up to a certain point, but not beyond,” he said. “Then, as the situation has deteriorated, they’ve found the necessity to, in fact, go further.”
This was the case with HIMARS, the Patriot missile defence system, and, just this month, Abrams tanks, all initially off-limits to Ukraine before the administration ended up approving shipments.
But for now, the focus will be on how quickly the new glide bombs can arrive in Ukraine, said Zagorodnyuk.
“If they speed it up…this could hugely change the situation on the field of battle.”
ANKARA, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Turkey summoned ambassadors of nine Western countries including the United States and Sweden on Thursday to criticise their decisions to temporarily shut diplomatic missions and issue security alerts following Koran-burning incidents in Europe.
The envoys of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Britain were also summoned, according to foreign ministry sources in Ankara.
Over the last two weeks, far-right activists burned copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, acts that prompted Turkey to halt negotiations meant to lift its objections to Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
The European countries have denounced the incidents but some say they cannot prevent them because of free speech rules.
Over the last week, France, Germany, Italy and the United States were among those issuing warnings to their citizens of an increased risk of attacks in Turkey, particularly against diplomatic missions and non-Muslim places of worship.
Latest Updates
View 2 more stories
Germany, France and the Netherlands were among countries that temporarily closed diplomatic missions in Turkey for security reasons this week. Some cited central Istanbul areas of high concern but did not provide the source of the information.
“Such simultaneous activities do not constitute a proportional and commonsense approach and…only serve the covert agenda of terrorist organizations,” said a foreign ministry source who asked not to be further identified.
The source added that the security of all diplomatic missions is ensured in accordance with international conventions and “allies should cooperate with” Turkish authorities.
The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said on Twitter the embassies were waging “a new psychological war” against Turkey.
All 30 NATO members must approve newcomers. Sweden and Finland applied for membership last year in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but ran into surprise resistance from Turkey.
Since then they have sought to win its backing including agreeing to take a harder line domestically against those Turkey says are members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, designated a terrorist group by Ankara and the European Union.
On Thursday, police in NATO member Norway banned a planned anti-Islam protest including the burning of the Koran for security reasons, hours after the Turkish foreign ministry summoned Oslo’s ambassador to complain.
Diplomatic tensions rose last weekend when Turkey responded to the initial U.S. security alert by warning its citizens against “possible Islamophobic, xenophobic and racist attacks” in the United States and Europe.
The U.S. embassy confirmed its Ambassador Jeffry Flake attended a meeting at Turkey’s foreign ministry on Thursday. Two European diplomatic sources said envoys from Germany, France and the Netherlands were also summoned.
Writing by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Alison Williams, Peter Graff and Mark Heinrich
ANKARA, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Sweden should not expect Turkey’s support for its NATO membership after a protest near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm at the weekend including the burning of a copy of the Koran, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.
Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and against Sweden’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have heightened tensions with Turkey, whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the military alliance.
“Those who allow such blasphemy in front of our embassy can no longer expect our support for their NATO membership,” Erdogan said in a speech after a Cabinet meeting.
“If you love members of terrorist organisations and enemies of Islam so much and protect them, then we advise you to seek their support for your countries’ security,” he said.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom declined to immediately comment on Erdogan’s remarks, telling Reuters in a written statement he wanted to understand exactly what had been said.
“But Sweden will respect the agreement that exists between Sweden, Finland and Turkey regarding our NATO membership,” he added.
Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but all 30 member states must approve their bids. Ankara has previously said Sweden in particular must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Finland and Sweden are ready to join the alliance, but declined to comment on whether Washington thought Erdogan’s comments meant a definitive shutting of the door to them.
“Ultimately, this is a decision and consensus that Finland and Sweden are going to have to reach with Turkey,” Price said.
Price told reporters that burning books that are holy to many is a deeply disrespectful act, adding that the United States is cognizant that those who may be behind what took place in Sweden may be intentionally trying to weaken unity across the Atlantic and among Washington’s European allies.
“We have a saying in this country – something can be lawful but awful. I think in this case, what we’ve seen in the context of Sweden falls into that category,” Price said.
The Koran-burning was carried out by Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line. Paludan, who also has Swedish citizenship, has staged a number of demonstrations in the past where he burned the Koran.
Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait denounced the event. Turkey had already summoned Sweden’s ambassador and cancelled a planned visit by the Swedish defence minister to Ankara.
Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Huseyin Hayatsever; Additional reporting by Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Grant McCool
GNOIEN, Germany Jan 23 (Reuters) – Germany on Monday dispatched the first two out of three Patriot air defence units that will be sent to the Polish town of Zamosc close to the Ukrainian border where they will be deployed to prevent stray missile strikes.
Two men were killed by a stray Ukrainian missile that struck the Polish village of Przewodow in the region last November, in an incident that raised fears of the war in Ukraine spilling over the border.
As a result, Berlin offered to deploy three of its Patriot units to Poland to help secure its air space.
Ground-based air defence systems such as Raytheon’s (RTX.N) Patriot are built to intercept incoming missiles.
“One of the reasons why Germany will now support NATO’s eastern flank in Poland with Patriots is certainly because we saw how quickly the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could spill over to NATO member countries,” Colonel Joerg Sievers told reporters in the eastern German town of Gnoien before the Patriots’ departure.
Sievers, who will command the German unit in Poland, underlined the defensive nature of the Patriot system.
“We are not the only defence forces on the ground, the British and Americans are also on the ground,” he said.
“Patriot is a strictly defensive system, and we hope that we will be able to provide sufficient protection there to prevent attacks or accidents like the one in November in the future,” he added.
.
Reporting by Oliver Ellrodt and Stefan Remter, writing by Sabine Siebold
U.S. providing Abrams tanks, Germany to send Leopard tanks
Biden: Tanks pose ‘no offensive threat’ to Russia
Russian-backed leader: Wagner force advancing on Bakhmut
WASHINGTON/BERLIN/KYIV, Jan 26 (Reuters) – The United States and Germany have announced plans to arm Ukraine with dozens of battle tanks in its fight against Russia, which denounced the decisions as an “extremely dangerous” step.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised the commitments and urged allies to provide large quantities of tanks quickly.
“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,” he said in a nightly video address on Wednesday. “We have to form such a ‘tank fist’, such a ‘fist of freedom’.”
Ukraine has been seeking hundreds of modern tanks to give its troops the firepower to break Russian defensive lines and reclaim occupied territory in the south and east. Ukraine and Russia have been relying primarily on Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
The promise of tanks comes as both Ukraine and Russia are expected to launch new offensives in the war and as fighting has intensified in Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east.
Ukrainian forces destroyed 24 drones, including 15 over Kyiv, that Russia launched in overnight attacks, the military said on Thursday, adding there was major danger of more Russian air raids. An alert had been declared over most of the country.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision to supply 31 M1 Abrams tanks hours after Berlin said it would provide Leopard 2 tanks – the workhorse of NATO armies across Europe.
Maintaining Kyiv’s drumbeat of requests for more aid, Zelenskiy said he spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and called for long-range missiles and aircraft.
Ukraine’s allies have already provided billions in military support including sophisticated U.S. missile systems.
The United States has been wary of deploying the difficult-to-maintain Abrams but had to change tack to persuade Germany to send to Ukraine its more easily operated Leopards.
Biden said the tanks pose “no offensive threat” to Russia and that they were needed to help the Ukrainians “improve their ability to manoeuvre in open terrain”.
Germany will send an initial company of 14 tanks from its stocks and approve shipments by allied European states.
The Abrams can be tricky, but the Leopard was designed as a system that any NATO member could service and crews and repair specialists could be trained together on a single model, Ukrainian military expert Viktor Kevlyuk told Espreso TV.
“If we have been brought into this club by providing us with these vehicles, I would say our prospects look good.”
‘DANGEROUS DECISION’
[1/17] Spanish army tank Leopard 2 of NATO enhanced Forward Presence battle group fires during the final phase of the Silver Arrow 2022 military drill on Adazi military training grounds, Latvia September 29, 2022. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
Russia reacted with fury to Germany’s decision to approve the delivery of the Leopards.
“This extremely dangerous decision takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation,” said Sergei Nechayev, Russia’s ambassador to Germany.
Since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, Russia has shifted its rhetoric on the war from an operation to “denazify” and “demilitarise” its neighbour to casting it as a face-off between it and the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
Senior U.S. officials said it would take months for the Abrams to be delivered and described the decision to supply them as providing for Ukraine’s long-term defence.
Germany’s tanks would probably be ready in three or four months, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said.
Pledges to Ukraine from other countries that field Leopards have multiplied with announcements from Poland, Finland and Norway. Spain and the Netherlands said they were considering it.
Britain has offered 14 of its comparable Challenger tanks and France is considering sending its Leclercs.
BAKHMUT FIGHTING
The Kyiv government acknowledged on Wednesday its forces had withdrawn from Soledar, a small salt-mining town close to Bakhmut in the east, that Russia said it captured more than a week ago, its biggest gain for more than six months.
The area around Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of 70,000, has seen some of the most brutal fighting of the war.
Ukraine’s military said that Russian forces were attacking in the direction of Bakhmut “with the aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region and regardless of its own casualties”.
The Russian-installed governor of Donetsk said earlier that units of Russia’s Wagner contract militia were moving forward inside Bakhmut, with fighting on the outskirts and in neighbourhoods recently held by Ukraine.
Analyst Kevlyuk said losing Bakhmut would not change much in terms of the tactical scheme of things but that he was more concerned by Russian efforts to regroup and concentrate resources in the Luhansk region.
Donetsk and Luhansk make up the Donbas region. Russian forces control nearly all of Luhansk, while Russians and their proxies say they control about half of Donetsk.
Reuters could not verify battlefield reports.
The 11-month war has killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and reduced cities to rubble.
Reporting by Reuters bureaus; writing by Cynthia Osterman and Himani Sarkar; editing by Grant McCool, Robert Birsel
Reforms call for creation of two additional military districts
Army corps to be based near border with Finland
Forces to be boosted in territories Moscow has claimed to annex
Jan 23 (Reuters) – Russia’s new military reforms respond to possible NATO expansion and the use of Kyiv by the “collective West” to wage a hybrid war against Russia, the newly appointed general in charge of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine said.
Valery Gerasimov, in his first public comments since his Jan. 11 appointment to the role, admitted also to problems with the mobilisation of troops, after public criticism forced President Vladimir Putin to reprimand the military.
The military reforms, announced mid-January, have been approved by Putin and can be adjusted to respond to threats to Russia’s security, Gerasimov told the news website Argumenty i Fakty in remarks published late Monday.
“Today, such threats include the aspirations of the North Atlantic Alliance to expand to Finland and Sweden, as well as the use of Ukraine as a tool for waging a hybrid war against our country,” said Gerasimov, who is also the chief of Russia’s military general staff.
Finland and Sweden applied last year to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Under Moscow’s new military plan, an army corps will be added to Karelia in Russia’s north, which borders with Finland.
The reforms also call for two additional military districts, Moscow and Leningrad, which existed before they were merged in 2010 to be part of the Western Military District.
In Ukraine, Russia will add three motorized rifle divisions as part of combined arms formations in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, parts of which Moscow claims it annexed in September.
“The main goal of this work is to ensure guaranteed protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country,” Gerasimov said.
‘ACTING AGAINST THE ENTIRE COLLECTIVE WEST’
Gerasimov added that modern Russia has never seen such “intensity of military hostilities”, forcing it to carry out offensive operations to stabilise the situation.
“Our country and its armed forces are today acting against the entire collective West,” Gerasimov said.
In the 11 months since invading Ukraine, Russia has been shifting its rhetoric on the war from an operation to “denazify” and “demilitarise” its neighbour to increasingly casting it as defence from an aggressive West.
Kyiv and its Western allies call it a an unprovoked act of aggression, and the West has been sending increasingly heavy weaponry to Ukraine to help it resist Russian forces.
Gerasimov and the leadership of the defence ministry have faced sharp criticism for multiple setbacks on the battlefield and Moscow’s failure to secure victory in a campaign the Kremlin had expected to take just a short time.
The country’s mobilisation of some 300,000 additional personnel in the fall proceeded chaotically.
“The system of mobilization training in our country was not fully adapted to the new modern economic relations,” Gerasimov said. “So I had to fix everything on the go.”
Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Himani Sarkar
Alireza Akbari was a former Iranian deputy defence minister
Arrested in 2019, he was accused of spying for Britain
UK’s Sunak calls it ‘a callous and cowardly act’
Britain had said Iran must not follow through with sentence
DUBAI/LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Iran has executed a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defence minister, its judiciary reported on Saturday, defying calls from London for his release after he was handed the death sentence on charges of spying for Britain.
Britain, which had declared the case against Alireza Akbari as politically motivated, condemned the execution and said it would not stand unchallenged.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it “a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people”.
The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported the execution early on Saturday, without saying when it had taken place. Late on Friday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had said Iran must not follow through with the sentence – a call echoed by Washington.
“Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death on charges of corruption on earth and extensive action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the British government’s intelligence service … was executed,” Mizan said.
The report accused Akbari, arrested in 2019, of receiving payments of 1,805,000 euros, 265,000 pounds, and $50,000 for spying.
In an audio recording purportedly from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, he said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture.
Sunak said on Twitter he was “appalled by the execution”. Cleverly said in a statement it would “not stand unchallenged”. “We will be summoning the Iranian Charge d’Affaires to make clear our disgust at Iran’s actions.”
British statements on the case have not addressed the Iranian charge that Akbari spied for Britain.
Iranian state media broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed that Akbari played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran which authorities blamed at the time on Israel.
In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the assassination but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh.
Iran’s state media often airs purported confessions by suspects in politically charged cases.
Reuters could not establish the authenticity of the state media video and audio, or when or where they were recorded.
Akbari was a close ally of Ali Shamkhani, now the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was defence minister from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy.
‘3,500 HOURS OF TORTURE’
Reflecting Iran’s worsening ties with the West, London-Tehran relations have deteriorated in recent months as efforts have stalled to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, to which Britain is a party.
Britain has also been critical of the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on anti-government protests, sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman in September.
A British foreign office minister said on Thursday that Britain was actively considering proscribing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation but has not reached a final decision.
Iran has issued dozens of death sentences as part of the crackdown on the unrest, executing at least four people.
In the audio recording broadcast by BBC Persian, Akbari said he had made false confessions as a result of torture.
“With more than 3,500 hours of torture, psychedelic drugs, and physiological and psychological pressure methods, they took away my will. They drove me to the brink of madness… and forced me to make false confessions by force of arms and death threats,” he said.
Reporting by Dubai newsroom and Michael Holden in London; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by William Mallard and Angus MacSwan
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/EWHZPC3GKJKG3BL5QHC4ZKJHWE.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/GH73BIDPB5MQZMSYYEKXP7UDLY.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/PSVJ7XXFNFPDRKG36LIIMAZTJE.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/IAHGYLDD2FKVDMTGXPB6CCIUJ4.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/7MDEC4GLVFNFRDQKCFGPCIQZOE.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/BPPNQEXIEZNQRPAMIKJTEIBMXY.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/TFVXM3UVE5M4BFAUJMF6B4KEPI.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/7NSVVQDSYJL6JIMHLM2V7EDABQ.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/BQFO6E5PZVIHPDN3VSMTQBN6ME.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/KF6F5IBFWNLFBBP2Z7GOZK2Q6A.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/DEOVYEMA4VJZJLM4CGXIQMUDBQ.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/VGZ3UQGFG5N7LM76B5DCSTGA6A.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/MGBXQHJCTRLLNNF6P4FITR7I34.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/62PT6CNHVNK2XMBBJGBCSWGPAU.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/JW63GXUVGBKMJEBLFFUIDUMALQ.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/6LTBMNOJXBKVHEEM4AF6AV6FQE.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/OHBUGWJCXJJTLCQD7Y6ISNHEME.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/6OY2WVMBZJOU3HPKPQSPUSMVMY.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/N3EC5DXERRO3TFVDPKM342ROFI.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/QD74PPDJ6VMQVJMJE5IDMZPOMQ.jpg)