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  • Cash-loving Germans fret over exploding ATMs as cross-border crime wave hits

    Cash-loving Germans fret over exploding ATMs as cross-border crime wave hits

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    RATINGEN, Germany, April 14 (Reuters) – In the German town of Ratingen, exploding cash machines are a hot-button topic.

    Two got blown up early on the same morning last month, at branches of Santander (SAN.MC) and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) across the street from each other close to the Duesseldorf suburb’s main square.

    A year ago, residents of the apartments above Santander unsuccessfully sued to have the machines removed due to concerns they could be raided – a gesture that might in retrospect be deemed prophetic in other countries.

    But in Germany, thieves are blowing ATMs up at the rate of more than one a day.

    Attacks are up more than 40% since 2019, according to the interior ministry, and investigators say two factors are driving the increase.

    Europe’s largest economy has 53,000 ATM machines, a disproportionately high number that reflects Germans’ preference for cash rather than bank cards. The country also boasts an extensive network of highways, or Autobahns, on much of which no speed limit is enforced.

    Ratingen lies just 70km (40 miles) from the Dutch border, and investigators say gangs from the Netherlands are the prime culprits for the attacks, which send glass flying, cause building facades to crumble and money cartridges to crack open.

    Raiders got away with nearly 20 million euros ($22.1 million) in 2021, when 392 ATM explosions were recorded, a tally that rose to 496 in 2022. Police in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Ratingen lies and which has borne the brunt of the attacks, have recorded 47 incidents so far in 2023, up on last year’s rate.

    Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics

    DUTCH RAIDERS

    Meanwhile the frequency of ATM attackers is falling in the Netherlands, partly due to security measures such as glue that makes blocks of cash inside ATMs unusable, Dutch police say.

    So Dutch cash machine raiders are crossing the border and, German police estimate, have carried out between 70% to 80% of attacks in Germany since 2018.

    Dutch police suspect around 500 men are responsible, working in ever-evolving groups as new recruits replace those who get caught. Prosecutors in Frankfurt this week charged six Dutch citizens with causing explosions, theft and property damage.

    Reuters Graphics

    Ratingen police are investigating a possible Dutch connection in last month’s twin raid too, having identified a small vehicle that sped from the scene to a nearby Autobahn.

    On Thursday, nearly a month after the attacks, Santander’s facade remained boarded up. Deutsche Bank’s sign was still damaged, and a sign asked for customers’ understanding that ATMs were out of order while under repair.

    In Germany, roughly 60% of everyday purchases are paid in cash, according to a Bundesbank study that found Germans, on average, withdrew more than 6,600 euros annually chiefly from cash machines.

    Germany is also working with officials in Belgium and France and at Europol to combat the cash machine crime wave. The partner authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

    Noting that ATM raids endangered lives, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser this week urged banks to step up safety measures for ATMs.

    Both Santander and Deutsche said they prioritised safety and were continuously improving ATM security, but banks inside Germany are reluctant to adopt blanket measures, instead advocating a case-by-case approach depending on individual security risk.

    A spokesperson for Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, a umbrella lobby group for the nation’s financial institutions, said: “Different locations come with different risks. There is currently no one-size-fits-all solution.”

    ($1 = 0.9044 euros)

    Additional reporting by Milan Pavicic; editing by John Stonestreet

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Tom Sims

    Thomson Reuters

    Covers German finance with a focus on big banks, insurance companies, regulation and financial crime, previous experience at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in Europe and Asia.

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  • No China, no deal: Bid to break sovereign debt logjams gets weary thumbs up

    No China, no deal: Bid to break sovereign debt logjams gets weary thumbs up

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    LONDON, April 13 (Reuters) – The latest bid by the world’s leading institutions and creditors to speed up debt restructurings and get bankrupt countries back on their feet has been greeted by a mix of cautious optimism and weary scepticism by veteran crisis watchers.

    Standoffs between major Western-backed lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the world’s top bilateral creditor, China, have been blamed for keeping countries such as Zambia mired in default for nearly three years.

    The somewhat loose framework around sovereign restructurings has seen Beijing seek to influence the traditional rules of engagement in these processes.

    The renewed push to overcome the logjams came after a “roundtable” at the IMF Spring Meetings and included pledges from the Fund and World Bank to share assessments of countries’ troubles more quickly, provide more low-interest and grant funding and stricter timeframes on restructurings overall.

    The idea is that Beijing would then drop its insistence that the multilateral lenders take losses, or “haircuts”, on the loans they have provided or underwritten in crisis-hit countries.

    Beijing has not commented directly on the demand for multilateral lender haircuts, but in remarks published on Friday People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang reiterated China’s willingness to implement debt talks under the Common Framework, the platform introduced by leading G20 nations in 2020 to streamline talks with all creditors.

    “If the multilateral development banks are now making real commitments to provide fresh grants to distressed countries this is a breakthrough,” said Kevin Gallagher, director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center.

    But he added that as the new plans lacked specific mention of China’s intentions it suggested the “lack of a strong and clear consensus” in Washington.

    The IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva has stressed that with around 15% of low income countries already in debt distress and dozens more in danger of falling into it, far more urgency is needed.

    Besides members of the Paris Club of creditor nations such as the United States, France and Japan, cash-strapped nations now have to rework loans with lenders such as India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Kuwait – but first and foremost China.

    Beijing is now the largest bilateral creditor to developing nations, extending $138 billion in new loans between 2010 and 2021, according to World Bank data, and some estimates put total lending at almost $850 billion.

    Reuters Graphics

    HEADWINDS

    Global headwinds are about to get stronger too.

    Financially weaker countries with “junk”-grade sovereign credit ratings need to repay or refinance $30 billion worth of government bonds next year between them, compared to just $8.4 billion for the remainder of this one.

    The rise in global borrowing costs, though, means that many countries under the greatest stress are now unable to borrow in the international capital markets or, if they can, only at unsustainably high interest rates.

    The Chinese debt, meanwhile, is often opaque and muddied by arguments about whether the loans have been given by “official” entities – i.e by the government – or by “private” entities.

    Authorities in Beijing also prefer to roll over debt payments rather than write them off, and given it is an increasingly dominant creditor, it has little incentive to follow co-operative Paris Club-like principles.

    “It would be great to have China on board (with the push to speed up restructurings) but I don’t really have high hopes because there is a lot of geopolitics involved,” said Viktor Szabo, an emerging market debt manager at Abrdn in London.

    Select IMF loans to low and middle income countries by date of Board approval

    COMMON PROBLEMS

    Recent research by Boston University estimated that up to $520 billion in debt needs to be written off to help developing nations at greatest risk of default return to a sounder fiscal footing.

    But lengthy delays in Zambia, and more recently in Sri Lanka, have elicited widespread criticism of the Common Framework.

    Wednesday’s promises by the IMF to provide its assessments more quickly was an admission that the Common Framework was currently failing, Szabo added.

    “You have to make it functional. The fact that it’s been in place for three years and there is nothing to really show for it, that is really appalling.”

    Anna Ashton, director of China research at Eurasia Group, said this week’s developments underscored the benefits for China to give some ground on some of its concerns.

    “Being willing to compromise and facilitate debt restructuring right now is likely crucial to China’s continued credibility with the developing world writ large,” Ashton said.

    Patrick Curran, senior economist with Tellimer, added that China dropping demands for the big multilateral development banks (MDBs) to swallow losses on their loans could also be “a major breakthrough”.

    “There is likely to be broad support for the alternative proposal that MDBs mobilize their resources more aggressively, especially at a time when most low-income countries are locked out of the market,” Curran said.

    Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner on Thursday too said all the talk now needed to be converted into action.

    The group that took part in Wednesday’s roundtable plans to meet again in coming weeks to address remaining issues, including how various creditors are treated, principles for cut-off dates and suspending debt payments.

    Ultimately, whether the new terms help Zambia, and countries like Sri Lanka, Ghana and Ethiopia that are also in the midst of bailout talks, finalise deals will be the only proof of whether the new terms work.

    “China is a difficult partner to talk to but we need China at the table for the solution of debt problems, because otherwise we won’t see any progress,” Lindner said.

    Reuters Graphics

    Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New York and Joe Cash in Beijing
    Editing by Mark Potter

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • North Korea says it tested new solid-fuel ICBM, warns of ‘extreme’ horror

    North Korea says it tested new solid-fuel ICBM, warns of ‘extreme’ horror

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    • Leader Kim Jong Un and family watch missile test
    • Test key to deploying missiles faster in war
    • South Korea, U.S. and Japan stage military drills

    SEOUL, April 14 (Reuters) – North Korea announced on Friday it had tested a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a development set to “radically promote” its forces, which experts said would facilitate missile launches with little warning.

    Leader Kim Jong Un guided Thursday’s test, and warned it would make enemies “experience a clearer security crisis, and constantly strike extreme uneasiness and horror into them by taking fatal and offensive counter-actions until they abandon their senseless thinking and reckless acts”, North Korean state media said.

    Analysts said it was the North’s first use of solid propellants in an intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missile, a key task to deploying missiles faster during a war.

    South Korea’s defence ministry said North Korea was still developing the weapon, and that it needed more time and effort to master the technology, indicating that Pyongyang might carry out more tests.

    North Korean state media outlet KCNA released photos of Kim watching the launch, accompanied by his wife, sister and daughter, and the missile covered in camouflage nets on a mobile launcher. A state media video showed the Hwasong-18 missile blasting off from a launch tube, creating a cloud of smoke.

    The development of the Hwasong-18 will “extensively reform the strategic deterrence components of the DPRK, radically promote the effectiveness of its nuclear counterattack posture and bring about a change in the practicality of its offensive military strategy,” KCNA said, using the initials of the country’s official name.

    South Korea and the U.S. air forces staged drills hours after the report, involving American B-52H bombers that joined F-35A, F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, Seoul’s defence ministry said.

    “By deploying U.S. strategic assets with increased frequency and intensity, the two countries will continue demonstrating our strong alliance’s will that we will never tolerate any nuclear attack from North Korea,” the ministry said in a statement.

    North Korea has criticised recent U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises as escalating tensions, and has stepped up weapons tests in the past months.

    Japan also conducted separate air drills with two U.S. B-52 bomber jets on Friday, accompanied by four U.S. F-35 fighters and four Japanese F-15 fighters, Tokyo’s defence ministry said. It marked a second consecutive day of a Japan-U.S. joint air mission over the Sea of Japan.

    Japan asked the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting on North Korea’s ballistic missile launches, top government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno told a Friday press conference.

    [1/6] A view of a test launch of a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Hwasong-18 at an undisclosed location in this still image of a photo used in a video released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) April 14, 2023. KCNA via REUTERS TV/via REUTERS

    Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics

    MORE TESTS?

    Most of North Korea’s largest ballistic missiles use liquid fuel, which requires them to be loaded with propellant at their launch site – a time-consuming and dangerous process.

    “For any country that operates large-scale, missile based nuclear forces, solid-propellant missiles are an incredibly desirable capability because they don’t need to be fuelled immediately prior to use,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “These capabilities are much more responsive in a time of crisis.”

    North Korea will most likely keep some liquid-fuel systems, complicating the calculations of the U.S. and its allies during a conflict, Panda said.

    Vann Van Diepen, a former U.S. government weapons expert who now works with the 38 North project, said solid-fuel missiles are easier and safer to operate, and require less logistical support – making them harder to detect and more survivable than liquids.

    North Korea first displayed what could be a new solid-fuel ICBM during a military parade in February after testing a high-thrust solid-fuel engine in December.

    Analysts said the U.S. could determine between a solid- or liquid-fuelled launch with early warning satellites that can detect differences in the infrared data produced by various missile types.

    The latest launch came days after Kim called for strengthening war deterrence in a “more practical and offensive” manner to counter what North Korea called moves of aggression by the United States.

    The missile, fired from near Pyongyang, flew about 1,000 km (620 miles) before landing in waters east of North Korea, officials said. North Korea said the test posed no threats to its neighbouring countries.

    A South Korean military official said the missile’s maximum altitude was lower than 6,000 km, the apogee of some of last year’s record-breaking tests.

    “North Korea could have opted to focus on collecting data necessary to check its features at different stages than going full speed at the first launch,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. “As it was a test that did not demonstrate its normal flight pattern, North Korea will likely conduct some more tests.”

    Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi; Editing by Leslie Adler

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Europe presses tough Taiwan stance after backlash against Macron comments

    Europe presses tough Taiwan stance after backlash against Macron comments

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    April 14 (Reuters) – European foreign policy officials on Friday urged China not to use force over Taiwan, taking a tough stance against Beijing’s threats over the democratically governed island, after comments by French President Emmanuel Macron were perceived as weak.

    China in recent days has held intense military drills around Taiwan, which it claims as its own, and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

    German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, addressing the issue at a press conference in Beijing alongside her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang, said any attempt by China to control Taiwan would be unacceptable and would have serious repercussions for Europe.

    EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell echoed her remarks in a statement prepared for a speech due to be delivered in Beijing at the Center for China and Globalization think tank on Friday that had to be cancelled after he caught COVID-19.

    “A military escalation in the Taiwan Strait, through which … 50% of world trade goes every day, would be a horror scenario for the entire world,” said Baerbock, adding it would have “inevitable repercussions” for European interests.

    In interviews published after his trip to China last week, which was meant to showcase European unity on China policy, Macron cautioned against being drawn into a crisis over Taiwan driven by an “American rhythm and a Chinese overreaction”.

    While many of the remarks were not new, the timing of their publication, and their bluntness, annoyed many Western officials.

    “The European Union’s position (on Taiwan) is consistent and clear,” Borrell said in his remarks. “Any attempt to change the status quo by force would be unacceptable.”

    UKRAINE ISSUE

    Borrell also said Europe’s future relationship with China depended on it trying to use its influence to find a political solution to the Ukraine crisis.

    “It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the European Union to maintain a relationship of trust with China, which I would like to see, if China does not contribute to the search for a political solution based on Russia’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian territory,” Borrell said.

    “Neutrality in the face of the violation of international law is not credible,” Borrell said, adding an appeal for Chinese President Xi Jinping to speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and for China to provide more humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

    Xi has met Russian President Vladimir Putin twice but not spoken with Zelenskiy since Russia invaded Ukraine in what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in February 2022.

    China stated its opposition to attacks on civilians and on nuclear facilities in a position paper on Ukraine published in February, but it has refrained from openly criticising Russia.

    “President Xi’s visit to Moscow has demonstrated that no other country has a bigger influence on Russia than China,” said Baerbock.

    “It is good that China has signalled to get engaged in finding a solution. But I have to say clearly that I wonder why China so far has not asked the aggressor Russia to stop the war. We all know President Putin has the opportunity to do so any time he wants to.”

    Poland’s prime minister warned earlier this week that Ukraine’s defeat may embolden China to invade Taiwan.

    Baerbock and Borrell also spoke about the risks of being too dependent economically on China, in line with comments made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a speech last month on the eve of her China visit.

    “We just paid a high price for our energy dependency on Russia, and it is well-known that one should not make the same mistake twice,” said Baerbock, adding that economic security is core to Germany’s strategy for China.

    Borrell said that the EU needs to diversify its value chains to reduce its dependency on China for raw materials.

    He also said that the increasing trade imbalances between the EU and China are “unsustainable” and called on China to remove market access barriers.

    Reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Exclusive: India’s Bank of Baroda stops clearing payment for above-cap Russian oil – sources

    Exclusive: India’s Bank of Baroda stops clearing payment for above-cap Russian oil – sources

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    NEW DELHI, April 4 (Reuters) – India’s Bank of Baroda (BOB.NS) has stopped clearing payments for Russian oil sold above the price cap set by the West from this month, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, a move that could expedite transition to a rupee trade mechanism.

    Some Indian refiners were paying in the United Arab Emirates dirham currency for Russian low-sulphur crude priced above the $60 a barrel cap using Bank of Baroda, mainly to Dubai-based traders, sources said.

    The Group of Seven economies, the European Union and Australia, set the price cap late last year to bar Western services and shipping from trading Russian oil unless sold at an enforced low price to deprive Moscow of funds for its Ukraine war.

    “Bank of Baroda is extremely cautious in settling payments for Russian oil bought (at levels) above the price cap,” one of the sources said.

    “They have told us no for settling payments for above-cap barrels,” the person said.

    The state-run lender told refiners last month that it would not settle payment from Russian barrels bought above the price cap, the three sources said.

    Bank of Baroda did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

    Before the Ukraine war, Indian refiners rarely bought oil from Russia due to higher freight costs. After Western sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, Indian refiners have been gorging on discounted Russian oil.

    Russia has replaced Iraq as the top oil supplier to India in the last few months, data from trade sources showed.

    Sources anticipate that prices of Russian sweet crude such as Sokol and ESPO Blend, which was sold near $60 a barrel in recent weeks, could breach the price cap due to a sharp spike in global oil prices triggered by Sunday’s OPEC+ decision to cut output.

    Some refiners, mainly private operators, have been clearing payments in dirhams for Russian crude through private lender Axis Bank (AXBK.NS), sources told Reuters last month. It was not clear if Axis Bank had also stopped settling trades for Russian oil sold above the price cap.

    Axis Bank did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

    Although Indian refiners buy Russian oil on a delivered basis, copies of invoices reviewed by Reuters also show shipping charges, which helps in calculating the price of crude at Russian ports.

    Sources said that problems in settling trade for Russian oil could push sellers to accept rupee payments, at least for barrels that exceed the price cap.

    “We have neither stopped nor reduced purchases of Russian oil after Bank of Baroda’s decision … we will consider using rupees to pay for oil purchased above the price cap,” another source said.

    India does not recognise the Western price cap on Russian oil, a senior oil ministry source said last month.

    SETTLEMENT MECHANISM

    India set up a mechanism to settle its international trade in rupees last year. Some Russian banks later opened vostro accounts with banks in India to facilitate rupee trade.

    The mechanism has not yet started given the lack of Russian appetite for rupees and India’s trade deficit with Moscow.

    However, during a visit last week to India, Igor Sechin, chief executive of Russian oil major Rosneft, discussed ways to expand cooperation with India across the hydrocarbons value chain, including the possibility of making payments in national currencies.

    A switch to rupee payments would help wean Russia from dollars and would save foreign exchange for India.

    Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Additional reporting by Siddhi Nayak in Mumbai; Editing by Tony Munroe and Jacqueline Wong

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Ukraine’s tech entrepreneurs fight war on a different front

    Ukraine’s tech entrepreneurs fight war on a different front

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    PRAGUE, April 4 (Reuters) – Eugene Nayshtetik and his five co-workers shuttered their company developing medical and biotech startups to join the defense forces days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Within two months, their commanders agreed it would be more useful if they swapped their military gear for computers.

    With the government’s blessing, Nayshtetik and his team of engineers moved to neighboring Poland where they raised initial funding from a Polish company, Air Res Aviation, to develop a new drone for the Ukrainian military.

    Jerzy Nowak, president and co-owner of Air Res Aviation, said his company’s initial investment in the drone project amounted to around $200,000.

    The Defender drone, now ready for testing, is designed to withstand strong winds to enable surveillance in bad weather, can fly vertically and carry big payloads. It’s an example of how some startups in Ukraine’s dynamic tech sector are switching to pursue military projects.

    “We had our own portfolio of medical and biotechnology civilian projects before the war,” Nayshtetik told Reuters. “We never dreamt of killing people. We wanted to heal people but the situation changed.”

    Reuters spoke to more than a dozen entrepreneurs, as well as Ukrainian and Western officials who said the shift to military innovation in Ukraine’s once-thriving technology sector has bolstered the country’s out-manned and out-gunned armed forces.

    Military experts and Ukrainian officials told Reuters that innovations developed by these startups are making a difference on the battlefield, ranging from software applications that can target enemy positions more quickly to civilian drones adapted for military use, and systems that integrate data to give commanders more detailed battlefield views.

    “The Ukrainians are outmatched by every numerical scale: in terms of numbers of forces; in terms of numbers when it comes to equipment. And yet they’re holding their own,” said a senior NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “One of the reasons they’re holding their own is that they have, in a very innovative way, integrated technology into warfighting.”

    Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine represented one of the fastest growing tech hubs in central and eastern Europe. The enterprise value of startups soared more than 9-fold between 2017 and 2022 to reach 23 billion euros, according to data from Dealroom.com.

    Ukraine offered a host of advantages for emerging technology businesses, including a tradition of producing graduates strong in math and computer science. A low cost base also allowed entrepreneurs to do more with less.

    The country boasted 285,000 software developers in 2021 with an additional 25,000 graduating from tech universities annually, according to software development outsourcing company Softjourn.

    But with most emerging companies in Ukraine focused on the domestic market, many startups suffered a collapse in demand following the war – which has killed tens of thousands of people, reduced cities to rubble and wreaked havoc on infrastructure.

    Pavlo Kartashov, director of the Ukrainian Startup Fund (USF), a government-backed organization that seeds technology startups, told Reuters his group resumed funding in October. It hopes to finance around five to 10 emerging companies a month with grants of up to $35,000.

    Most will focus on military technology, he said.

    The fund also aims to unveil in April a new platform to connect emerging companies more closely with the military to identify the needs on the battlefield and to speed the transformation of ideas into tools that can be used in the conflict.

    “If you have something innovative and efficient it will definitely be used by the army,” he told Reuters. “We need new technology to fight the enemy and can try different approaches in real time.”

    PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS

    Since the war, Western venture capital firms often have required strict term sheets that include having at least one founder and other key parts of the business located outside Ukraine. So the government has become the sole source within the country of early stage funding – the lifeblood of the technology sector – more than half a dozen founders and venture capitalists said.

    Demand from the government has driven the shift to military technology, but most of the entrepreneurs who spoke to Reuters said that patriotic duty also played a role.

    Take Kiev-based efarm.pro, a startup founded in 2016 whose GPS technology attached to tractors helps farmers more precisely monitor how fertilizer has penetrated the ground. Many of its customers are located in parts of Ukraine that became too dangerous to farm after the Russian invasion so the company adapted its product to detect mines.

    The self-driving technology is only aimed at farmers for now but could also work for military vehicles, the company’s founder Alexander Prykhodchenko told Reuters.

    “Clients were calling us in the first days of the war saying they don’t know how they can work in the field,” Prykhodchenko said. “The war started on February 24 and on February 26 we started work on the new project.”

    Currently, only three of the tractors are in use as the autonomous technology remains in the testing and development phase, Prykhodchenko said.

    Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said the intensity of the fighting has meant that some concepts can flow from the drawing board to the battlefield in months, if not days.

    While acknowledging the critical role of weapons supplied by Western nations in helping to fight the Russians, he added that the ability to utilize the know-how of tech-savvy Ukrainians at home and abroad has proved invaluable.

    “One of the few areas where Ukraine has managed to stay consistently ahead of Russia is in the use of innovative military technologies,” he wrote in a February article for the Atlantic Council.

    Russia says its own weapons industry is increasing production and introducing new technology fast to meet the demands of military operations in Ukraine.

    Gregory Allen, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington DC, highlighted the so-called “Uber for Artillery” application developed by a network of Ukrainian programmers before the Russian invasion that networks together infantry, reconnaissance and artillery units to spot and land an artillery strike more quickly.

    He also said that a pair of anonymous Ukrainian software developers had rapidly created a program in mid-2022 that used machine learning to analyze video feeds from drones to detect more effectively military vehicles camouflaged in forests. Reuters was not able to confirm independently the details of the software.

    “I used to work in the Defense Department, and I have almost never seen high quality military machine learning systems go from an idea in someone’s head to a real system being used in war in a matter of weeks,” Allen told Reuters. “The value of the Ukrainian software systems is impressive but the speed is astonishing.”

    The Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer Bill LaPlante has described Ukraine’s use of technology in the war as a “wake up call.”

    “We are seeing true innovation on the battlefield: new combinations of technologies and concepts being developed and implemented, and the cycle from idea to prototype to a warfighter’s hands collapsed to months, if not weeks,” LaPlante told a U.S. Congressional committee last month.

    ISRAELI MODEL

    While Ukraine’s government and tech founders are focused on war-time innovation to aid the military now, they say these emerging start ups can also underpin Ukraine’s post-war economy — pointing to Israel as an example of how military technology laid the foundation for a booming technology sector.

    Government support and experience working on military projects transformed Israel into a global tech hub and propelled the nation into a leader in cybersecurity and autonomous driving vehicles — a path Ukraine officials and tech leaders like Valery Krasovsky hope to emulate for a country with a pre-war population nearly five times that of Israel.

    “There are much more ideas in military technology,” said Krasovsky, the founder and chief executive of Swedish-Ukrainian Sigma Software Group.

    For now, the scarcity of seed funding in Ukraine has forced some companies to flee to places like to neighboring Poland. Groups like the Polish-Ukrainian Start Up Bridge – a Polish-government backed venture – offer emerging Ukrainian tech companies small grants to fund basic business needs and a co-working space in Warsaw.

    “Startups have had the past year to teach themselves how to survive and adapt to the new reality,” Mykhailo Khaletskyi, an advisor for the Startup Bridge and Ukrainian government, told Reuters.

    Additional Reporting by Andrew Gray and Sabine Siebold in Brussels, Elizabeth Piper in London and Mike Stone in Washington, Editing by Daniel Flynn

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Russian charged with war crimes may brief U.N. Security Council

    Russian charged with war crimes may brief U.N. Security Council

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    UNITED NATIONS, April 3 (Reuters) – Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, is likely to brief an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council this week, according to a note seen by Reuters on Monday.

    Russia, which holds the monthly rotating presidency of the 15-member body for April, told council members in a note that it plans to hold an informal meeting on Wednesday on Ukraine, focused on “evacuating children from conflict zone.”

    “Participants will hear ‘first hand’ information from the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights of the Russian Federation, as well as from children evacuated from the conflict area,” read the note.

    The commissioner is Maria Lvova-Belova. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lvova-Belova, accusing them of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, as well as the unlawful transfer of people to Russia from Ukraine since Moscow invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.

    “They cannot invite a credible briefer because they do not have any credibility on this issue,” Britain’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki told Reuters in a statement. “Russian leaders have been charged by the ICC with unlawfully deporting children from Ukraine to Russia. That is a war crime.”

    Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Monday that the meeting briefers would be announced shortly. Such meetings are held at U.N. headquarters, but not in the Security Council chamber, and briefings can be done virtually.

    ‘APRIL FOOL’S JOKE’

    Moscow has not concealed a program under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

    Nebenzia told reporters last month that the informal meeting of Security Council members to be held on Wednesday had been planned long before the ICC announcement and it was not intended to be a rebuttal of the charges against Putin and Lvova-Belova.

    While a feature of Russia’s presidency, members do not need to be the rotating monthly president to hold such meetings.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to travel to New York to chair formal Security Council meetings later in the month on the Middle East and on “effective multilateralism through the defense of the principles of the U.N. Charter.”

    The 193-member U.N. General Assembly has criticized Russia for violating the founding U.N. Charter by invading its neighbor and called for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” in line with the principles of the U.N. Charter.

    Given Russia’s Security Council presidency started on April 1, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters on Monday: “It’s like an April Fool’s joke … We expect that they will behave professionally.”

    “But we also expect that they will use their seat to spread disinformation and to promote their own agenda as it relates to Ukraine, and we will stand ready to call them out at every single moment that they attempt to do that,” she said.

    Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Don Durfee and Bill Berkrot

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  • Ukraine’s Zelenskiy aims for Western warplane coalition; Russians pressure Bakhmut

    Ukraine’s Zelenskiy aims for Western warplane coalition; Russians pressure Bakhmut

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    • Poland pledges more MiG jets for Kyiv during Zelenskiy visit
    • Zelenskiy cites difficult situation for Kyiv’s forces in Bakhmut
    • France’s Macron in China to nudge it to help end Russia’s war

    KYIV, April 5 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said during a trip to Warsaw on Wednesday that Poland would help form a coalition of Western powers to supply warplanes to Kyiv, adding that Ukrainian troops were still fighting for Bakhmut in the east but could withdraw if they risked being cut off.

    Neighbouring Poland is a close ally of Ukraine and helped galvanise support in the West to supply main battle tanks to Kyiv. During Zelenskiy’s visit, Poland announced it would send 10 more MiG fighter jets on top of four provided earlier.

    “Just as your (Polish) leadership proved itself in the tank coalition, I believe that it will manifest itself in the planes coalition,” Zelenskiy said in a speech on a square in Warsaw.

    Earlier in the day, Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops faced a really difficult situation in Bakhmut and the military would take “corresponding” decisions to protect them if they risk being encircled by Russian invasion forces.

    Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut sometimes advanced a little only to be knocked back, Zelenskiy said, but remained inside the city.

    “We are in Bakhmut and the enemy does not control it,” Zelenskiy said.

    BOMBARDMENT

    Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s mainly Russian-occupied Donetsk province, has proven one of the bloodiest and longest battles of Russia’s invasion, now in its 14th month. Kyiv’s forces have held out against a Russian onslaught with heavy losses on both sides and the city, a mining and transport hub, reduced to ruin after months of street fighting and bombardment.

    “For me, the most important is not to lose our soldiers and of course if there is a moment of even hotter events and the danger we could lose our personnel because of encirclement – of course the corresponding correct decisions will be taken by generals there,” Zelenskiy said.

    He appeared to be referring to the idea of withdrawing.

    However, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said later in that the situation at the front was “completely under control” despite repeated Russian attempts to take Bakhmut and other cities in the east.

    Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

    Ukrainian military commanders have stressed the importance of holding Bakhmut and other cities and inflicting losses on Russian troops before an anticipated counter-offensive against them in the coming weeks or months.

    [1/6] Ukrainian service member, Naza, 21, commander from 28th mechanised brigade repositions his machine gun during a fire exchange at the frontline, amid Russia?s attack on Ukraine in the region of Bakhmut, Ukraine, April 5, 2023. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

    Mercenaries from the Wagner group – who have spearheaded the assault on Bakhmut – said at the weekend they had captured the city centre, a claim dismissed by Kyiv.

    The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said the Wagner fighters had made advances in Bakhmut and were likely to continue trying to consolidate control of the city centre and push westward through dense urban neighbourhoods.

    PLAYING THE CHINA CARD

    French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, was visiting China after he and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed they would try to engage Beijing to hasten the end of the Russian assault on Ukraine.

    China has called for a comprehensive ceasefire and described its position on the conflict as “impartial”, even though the Chinese and Russian presidents announced a “no limits” partnership shortly before the invasion.

    Both Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, due in Beijing shortly after him, have said they want to persuade China to use its influence over Russia to bring peace in Ukraine, or to at least deter Beijing from directly supporting Moscow in the conflict.

    The U.S. and NATO have said China was considering sending arms to Russia, which Beijing has denied.

    ‘SHOULDER TO SHOULDER’

    Poland has played a big role in persuading Western allies to supply battle tanks and other heavy weapons to Ukraine, which helped Kyiv stem and sometimes reverse Russian advances so far.

    “You have stood shoulder to shoulder with us, and we are grateful for it,” Zelenskiy said after Polish President Andrzej Duda presented him with Poland’s highest award, the Order of the White Eagle.

    Duda said Warsaw was also working to secure additional security guarantees for Ukraine at a NATO summit to be held in the Lithuania in July.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state TV that Moscow needed to maintain relations with Washington even though American supplies of weapons to Ukraine meant “we are really in a hot phase of the war”.

    In addition to MiG-29s, Kyiv has also pressed NATO for F-16 jet fighters but Duda’s foreign policy adviser, Marcin Przydacz, said Poland would not decide soon on whether to send any.

    Reporting by Pavel Polityuk with additional reporting by Ron Popeski, Mike Stone, Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz and Tom Balmforth; writing by Angus MacSwan, Mark Heinrich and Idrees Ali; editing by Philippa Fletcher, Nick Macfie and Grant McCool

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  • Putin ally proposing banning ICC in Russia

    Putin ally proposing banning ICC in Russia

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    March 25 (Reuters) – Russia’s parliament speaker on Saturday proposed banning the activities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crimes.

    Vyacheslav Volodin, an ally of Putin’s, said that Russian legislation should be amended to prohibit any activity of the ICC in Russia and to punish any who gave “assistance and support” to the ICC.

    “It is necessary to work out amendments to legislation prohibiting any activity of the ICC on the territory of our country,” Volodin said in a Telegram post.

    Volodin said that the United States had legislated to prevent its citizens ever being tried by the Hague court and that Russia should continue that work.

    Any assistance or support for the ICC inside Russia, he said, should be punishable under law.

    The ICC issued an arrest warrant earlier this month accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. It said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility.

    Russian officials have cautioned that any attempt to arrest Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since the last day of 1999, would amount to a declaration of war against the world’s largest nuclear power.

    In its first warrant for Ukraine, the ICC called for Putin’s arrest on suspicion of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation since Feb. 24, 2022.

    The Kremlin says the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes.

    Big powers such as Russia, the United States and China are not members of the ICC though 123 countries are state parties to the Rome Statute, including Britain, France, Germany and some former Soviet republics such as Tajikistan.

    Ukraine is not a member of the ICC, although Kyiv granted it jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed on its territory.

    Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Stephen Coates

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    Guy Faulconbridge

    Thomson Reuters

    As Moscow bureau chief, Guy runs coverage of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Before Moscow, Guy ran Brexit coverage as London bureau chief (2012-2022). On the night of Brexit, his team delivered one of Reuters historic wins – reporting news of Brexit first to the world and the financial markets. Guy graduated from the London School of Economics and started his career as an intern at Bloomberg. He has spent over 14 years covering the former Soviet Union. He speaks fluent Russian.
    Contact: +447825218698

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  • Russia’s war on Ukraine latest: Ukraine slams Putin’s nuclear weapons plan

    Russia’s war on Ukraine latest: Ukraine slams Putin’s nuclear weapons plan

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    March 26 (Reuters) – A top security adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russian plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus would destabilise that country, which he said had been taken “hostage” by Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the decision on Saturday, sending a warning to NATO over its military support for Ukraine and escalating a standoff with the West.

    DIPLOMACY AND SANCTIONS

    * Russia and China are not creating a military alliance and the cooperation between their armed forces is “transparent”, Putin said in comments broadcast on Sunday, days after hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the Kremlin.

    * Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday he would push for fair peace in the war in Ukraine that included “territorial integrity”, when he visits China next week.

    * Putin held a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, the Kremlin said. Erdogan thanked Putin for his “positive attitude” in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the Kremlin said in a statement.

    BATTLEFIELD

    * Ukrainian forces have managed to blunt Russia’s offensive in and around the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, where the situation is stabilising, commander in chief General Valery Zaluzhniy said on Saturday. Separately, Britain’s defence ministry said the months-long Russian assault on the city had stalled, mainly as a result of heavy troop losses.

    * The Ukraine General Staff said on Sunday Ukrainian forces had repelled 85 Russian attacks over the past 24 hours in several parts of the eastern front, including the Bakhmut area.

    * U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Saturday he will visit the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine next week to assess the serious situation there.

    * More than 5,000 former criminals have been pardoned after finishing their contracts to fight in Russia’s Wagner mercenary group against Ukraine, the founder of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday.

    *Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports.

    ECONOMY

    * Ukraine will no longer resort to “dangerous” monetary financing to fund the war against Russia, its central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, told the Financial Times in an interview.

    RECENT IN-DEPTH STORIES

    * INSIGHT-Inside Ukraine’s scramble for “game-changer” drone fleet

    * Peace plans and pipelines: What came out of the Putin-Xi talks?

    * SPECIAL REPORT-Wagner’s convicts tell of horrors of Ukraine war and loyalty to their leader

    Compiled by Reuters editors

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  • Nordic countries plan joint air defence to counter Russian threat

    Nordic countries plan joint air defence to counter Russian threat

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    COPENHAGEN, March 24 (Reuters) – Air force commanders from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark said on Friday they have signed a letter of intent to create a unified Nordic air defence aimed at countering the rising threat from Russia.

    The intention is to be able to operate jointly based on already known ways of operating under NATO, according to statements by the four countries’ armed forces.

    The move to integrate the air forces was triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, commander of the Danish air force, Major General Jan Dam, told Reuters.

    “Our combined fleet can be compared to a large European country,” Dam said.

    Norway has 57 F-16 fighter jets and 37 F-35 fighter jets with 15 more of the latter on order. Finland has 62 F/A-18 Hornet jets and 64 F-35s on order, while Denmark has 58 F-16s and 27 F-35s on order. Sweden has more than 90 Gripens jets.

    It was unclear how many of those planes were operational.

    The signing at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany last week was attended by NATO Air Command chief General James Hecker, who also oversees the U.S. Air Force in the region.

    Sweden and Finland applied to join the trans-Atlantic military alliance last year. But the process has been held up by Turkey, which along with Hungary has yet to ratify the memberships.

    The Nordic air force commanders first discussed the closer cooperation at a meeting in November in Sweden.

    “We would like to see if we can integrate our airspace surveillance more, so we can use radar data from each other’s surveillance systems and use them collectively,” Dam said. “We are not doing that today.”

    Reporting by Johannes Birkebaek and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; additional reporting by Terje Solsvik, Niklas Pollard and Anne Kauranen; Editing by Nick Macfie

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  • Exclusive: Ukraine accuses Russian snipers of abusing child, gang raping mother

    Exclusive: Ukraine accuses Russian snipers of abusing child, gang raping mother

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    • Soldiers assaulted family soon after invasion, prosecutors say
    • Ukraine accuses Russian army of widespread sexual assaults
    • President Vladimir Putin’s government denies atrocities

    KYIV, March 14 (Reuters) – Ukraine has accused two Russian soldiers of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and gang raping her mother at gunpoint in front of her father, as part of widespread allegations of abuse during the more than one-year-long invasion.

    According to Ukrainian prosecution files seen by Reuters, the incidents were among a spree of sex crimes Russian soldiers of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade committed in four homes of Brovary district near the capital Kyiv in March 2022.

    Russia’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Phone numbers listed for the brigade were out of order. Two officials at the Samara Garrison, of which the brigade is a part, said they were unable to give contacts for the unit when contacted by Reuters, with one saying they were classified.

    During Moscow’s failed push to capture Kyiv after its Feb. 24 invasion, soldiers entered Brovary a few days later, looting and using sexual violence as a deliberate tactic to terrorise the population, the Ukrainian prosecutors said.

    “They singled out the women beforehand, coordinated their actions and their roles,” said the prosecutors, whose 2022 documents were based on interviews with witnesses and survivors.

    Most of the alleged atrocities took place on March 13, when soldiers “in a state of alcoholic intoxication, broke into the yard of the house where a young family lived,” the prosecutors alleged.

    The father was beaten with a metal pot then forced to kneel while his wife was gang raped. One of the soldiers told the four-year-old girl he “will make her a woman” before she was abused, the documents said.

    The family survived, though prosecutors said they are investigating additional crimes in the area including murders during the same period.

    President Vladimir Putin’s government, which says it is fighting Western-backed “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, has repeatedly denied allegations of atrocities. It has also denied that its military commanders are aware of sexual violence by soldiers.

    The soldiers were both snipers, aged 32 and 28, the files said, adding that the former had died while the younger, named as Yevgeniy Chernoknizhniy, returned to Russia.

    When Reuters asked for the identities of both soldiers, prosecutors provided only the name of the younger man. When Reuters called a number in online databases for him, a person saying he was Chernoknizhniy’s brother said he was deceased.

    “He died. There’s no way you can get hold of him,” said the man, crying. “That’s all that I can say.”

    Reuters was unable to independently confirm his assertion.

    GROWING ACCUSATIONS

    The two snipers were among six suspects accused in the Brovary assaults, which prosecutors say is one of the most extensive investigations of sexual abuse since the invasion.

    After the alleged attack on the girl and her parents, the two soldiers entered the house of an elderly couple next door, where they beat them, prosecutors said, also raping a 41-year-old pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl.

    At another location where several families lived, the soldiers forced everyone into the kitchen and gang raped a 15-year-old girl and her mother, they said.

    All the victims survived, prosecutors said, and were receiving psychological and medical assistance.

    A pre-trial investigation is ongoing into the possible role of superior officials in the Brovary attacks, prosecutors said, in a case adding to growing allegations of systematic sexual abuse by Russian soldiers.

    Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office says it is investigating more than 71,000 reports of war crimes received since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops over the border.

    Ukrainian investigators know the probability of finding and punishing suspects is low and potential trials would be mainly in absentia, but there are also international efforts to prosecute war crimes including by the International Criminal Court.

    While suspects are unlikely to be surrendered by Moscow, anyone convicted in absentia may be placed on international watchlists, which would make it difficult to travel.

    Russia has also accused Ukrainian forces of war crimes, including the execution of 10 prisoners of war.

    A U.N. human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has said that most of the dozens of sexual violence accusations pointed at the Russian military.

    So far, Ukrainian prosecutors have convicted 26 Russians of war crimes – some prisoners of war, some in absentia – of which one was for rape.

    Reporting by Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam and Stefaniia Bern in Kyiv;
    Additional reporting by Anton Zverev and Maria Tsvetkova;
    Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Cawthorne

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  • Iran makes sweeping pledge of cooperation to IAEA before board meeting

    Iran makes sweeping pledge of cooperation to IAEA before board meeting

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    VIENNA, March 4 (Reuters) – Iran has given sweeping assurances to the U.N. nuclear watchdog that it will finally assist a long-stalled investigation into uranium particles found at undeclared sites and even re-install removed monitoring equipment, the watchdog said on Saturday.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran issued a joint statement on IAEA chief Rafael Grossi’s return from a trip to Tehran just two days before a quarterly meeting of the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

    The statement went into little detail but the possibility of a marked improvement in relations between the two is likely to stave off a Western push for another resolution ordering Iran to cooperate, diplomats said. Iran has, however, made similar promises before that have yielded little or nothing.

    “Iran expressed its readiness to … provide further information and access to address the outstanding safeguards issues,” the joint statement said. A confidential IAEA report to member states seen by Reuters said Grossi “looks forward to … prompt and full implementation of the Joint Statement”.

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    Iran is supposed to provide access to information, locations and people, Grossi told a news conference at Vienna airport soon after landing, suggesting a vast improvement after years of Iranian stonewalling.

    [1/2] Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi meets with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi in Tehran, Iran, March 4, 2023. Iran’s President Website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS.

    Iran would also allow the re-installation of extra monitoring equipment that had been put in place under the 2015 nuclear deal, but then removed last year as the deal unravelled in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump.

    Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi, however, said Tehran had not agreed to give access to people.

    “During the two days that Mr. Grossi was in Iran, the issue of access to individuals was never raised,” Kamalvandi told state news agency IRNA, adding there also has been no deal regarding putting new cameras in Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    Follow-up talks in Iran between IAEA and Iranian officials aimed at hammering out the details would happen “very, very soon”, Grossi said.

    Asked if all that monitoring equipment would be re-installed, Grossi replied “Yes”. When asked where it would be re-installed, however, he said only that it would be at a number of locations.

    Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Louise Heavens and David Holmes

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Host India doesn’t want G20 to discuss further Russia sanctions – sources

    Host India doesn’t want G20 to discuss further Russia sanctions – sources

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    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.”

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    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

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  • Putin cancels decree underpinning Moldova’s sovereignty in separatist conflict

    Putin cancels decree underpinning Moldova’s sovereignty in separatist conflict

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    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.

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    “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

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  • U.N. to mark one year of Ukraine war with vote to ‘go down in history’

    U.N. to mark one year of Ukraine war with vote to ‘go down in history’

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    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.

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    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

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  • Analysis: Loans to Russian soldiers fuel calls for European banks to quit

    Analysis: Loans to Russian soldiers fuel calls for European banks to quit

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    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.

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    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

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Putin evokes Stalingrad to predict victory over ‘new Nazism’ in Ukraine

    Putin evokes Stalingrad to predict victory over ‘new Nazism’ in Ukraine

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    • Russian president speaks in Volgograd
    • 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.”

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    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.

    A new bust of Stalin was erected in Volgograd on Wednesday along with two others, of Soviet marshals Georgy Zhukov and Alexander Vasilyevsky.

    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

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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  • Turkey summons nine Western ambassadors over security alerts

    Turkey summons nine Western ambassadors over security alerts

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    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.

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    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

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  • Erdogan to Sweden: Don’t expect Turkish support for NATO bid after Stockholm protest

    Erdogan to Sweden: Don’t expect Turkish support for NATO bid after Stockholm protest

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    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

    Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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