United Nations — The U.N.’s 15-nation Security Council voted down on Wednesday a proposal by Russia to create a commission to investigate Moscow’s unsubstantiated claims of a joint U.S.-Ukrainian “military biological” program. Russia has leveled allegations since March that programs in Ukraine sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department were in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, an international law regulating weaponized toxins.
Moscow has offered no verifiable proof of such work, and the U.S. Defense Department, the White House and Ukraine have consistently refuted the allegations. The U.N.’s disarmament chief, Izumi Nakamitsu, said in March that while the global body did not have the capacity to investigate, the U.N. was not aware of any biological weapons program in Ukraine.
“Disinformation, dishonesty, bad faith”
As the Security Council voted Wednesday on the resolution brought by Russia, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington and Ukraine had been “through Russia’s allegations in Geneva, point by point, and debunked every single one.”
She said Russia’s claims were “based on disinformation, dishonesty, bad faith, and a total lack of respect for this body.”
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield addresses fellow diplomats during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council at U.N. Headquarters in New York, November 2, 2022.
UNTV/Reuters
“The United States does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States,” insisted Thomas-Greenfield.
During a series of U.N. meetings prompted by the Russian allegations, the U.S. has described the non-military biological labs it has supported in Ukraine since the 1990’s, including one called the “Biological Threat Reduction Program” that was created to disassemble the former Soviet Union’s programs, to “reduce legacy threats from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons left in the Soviet Union’s successor states.”
CBS News’ Chris Livesay is led into Ukraine’s Virology Reference Laboratory in Kyiv by Dr. Natalia Vidayko, the lab’s chief researcher, May 2022.
CBS News
In May, CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay visited the Ukrainian facility at the heart of Russia’s disinformation campaign, the Virology Reference Laboratory in Kyiv, and spoke with the chief researcher and scientists whose work there had been dedicated for years to containing dangerous pathogens. The facility has always been regularly inspected by international agencies, including the World Health Organization.
Their work changed abruptly, however, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24 and the shelling began.
“They bombed a building right nearby,” Dr. Natalia Vidayko, the lab’s top scientist, told Livesay. From that day, the Ukrainian government ordered the lab, and others in the country, to destroy all particularly dangerous biological strains they had in storage, Vidayko said.
“Rambo” the guard dog on duty outside the Ukrainian Health Ministry’s Virology Reference Laboratory in Kyiv, May 2022.
CBS News
“They’re completely destroyed,” she repeated to Livesay, who found minimal security — amounting to one tired old guard dog — when he visited the lab in Kyiv.
A bio weapons “false flag”?
Despite the clear flaws with Russia’s claims, Moscow brought its draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council this week — embedded within a 310-page document of claims and complaints — calling for a “commission consisting of all members of the Security Council to investigate” the allegations.
Diplomats from Russia and China raise their hands to vote in favor of a resolution brought by Moscow, calling for the United Nations Security Council to investigate Russia’s debunked claims of a joint U.S.-Ukrainian biological weapons program, during a Council meeting on November 2, 2022, in New York.
UNTV/Reuters
Only Russia and China voted in favor of the measure, with the other three veto-wielding permanent members of the Council, the U.S., U.K. and France, voting against it. The 10 elected members of the Council abstained, so the measure was defeated.
Analysts, Western diplomats and the Pentagon have suggested that Russia’s disinformation about the biological labs is really a “false flag,” aimed at creating a pretext to blame Ukraine and the U.S. for a possible biological or chemical attack that Russia’s own forces could carry out in Ukraine.
President Biden warned in March that Russia would pay a “severe price” if it did use biological or chemical weapons in Ukraine.
Russia’s deputy Ambassador to the U.N., Dmitry Polyansky, said his country would take the issue to a U.N. meeting on the biological weapons convention in Geneva, which takes place between November 28 and December 16, claiming the U.S. and Ukraine had “placed themselves above the law.”
After Wednesday’s vote, U.K. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said Russia’s claims that Ukraine’s Western allies had failed to consider Moscow’s evidence were “completely false.”
“Russia’s allegations have no credible basis in fact,” she said.
French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere told diplomats at the Council meeting that Russia “must stop this irresponsible disinformation campaign,” dismissing Moscow’s “so-called evidence” and insisting that it “deserves no further consideration.”
BERLIN — Berlin must change the way it deals with China as the country lurches back toward a more openly “Marxist-Leninist” political trajectory, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote in an op-ed on Thursday.
In his article for POLITICO and the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Scholz defended his trip to China on Thursday but stressed that German companies would need to take steps to reduce “risky dependencies” in industrial supply chains, particularly in terms of “cutting-edge technologies.” Scholz noted that President Xi Jinping was deliberately pursuing a political strategy of making international companies reliant on China.
“The outcome of the Communist Party Congress that has just ended is unambiguous: Avowals of Marxism-Leninism take up a much broader space than in the conclusions of previous congresses … As China changes, the way that we deal with China must change, too,” Scholz wrote.
Germany has faced withering criticism for pressuring Europe into a strategically disastrous dependence on Russian gas over recent years, and Berlin is now having to hit back against suggestions that it is making exactly the same mistakes by depending on China as a manufacturing base and commercial partner.
While Scholz signaled a note of caution over China, he was far from suggesting that Germany was close to a major U-turn in its largely cozy relations with China. Indeed, he clearly echoed his predecessor Angela Merkel in insisting that the (unnamed but obviously identified) United States should not drag Germany into a new Cold War against Beijing.
“Germany of all countries, which had such a painful experience of division during the Cold War, has no interest in seeing new blocs emerge in the world,” he wrote. “What this means with regard to China is that of course this country with its 1.4 billion inhabitants and its economic power will play a key role on the world stage in the future — as it has for long periods throughout history.”
In a thinly veiled criticism of Washington’s policies, Scholz said Beijing’s rise did not justify “the calls by some to isolate China.”
Crucially, he insisted that the goal was not to “decouple” — or break manufacturing ties — from China. He added, however, that he was taking “seriously” an assertion by President Xi that Beijing’s goal was to “tighten international production chains’ dependence on China.”
Scholz is planning to fly to Beijing late on Thursday for a one-day trip to the Chinese capital on Friday, where he will be the first Western leader to meet Xi since his reappointment, and the first leader from the G7 group of leading economies to visit China since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The chancellor also sought to counter criticism that his trip undermines a joint European approach to China. According to French officials, President Emmanuel Macron had proposed that he and Scholz should visit Xi together to demonstrate unity and show that Beijing cannot divide European countries by playing their economic interests off against each other — an initiative that the German leader rejected.
“German policy on China can only be successful when it is embedded in European policy on China,” Scholz wrote. “In the run-up to my visit, we have therefore liaised closely with our European partners, including President Macron, and also with our transatlantic friends.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed his predecessor Angela Merkel in insisting that the United States should not drag Germany into a new Cold War against Beijing | Clemens Bilan-Pool/Getty Images
Scholz said he wanted Germany and the EU to cooperate with a rising China — including on the important issue of climate change — rather than trying to box it out.
At the same time, he warned Beijing that it should not pursue policies striving for “hegemonic Chinese dominance or even a Sinocentric world order.”
Scholz also pushed China to stop its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and to take a more critical position toward Moscow: “As a permanent member of the [United Nations] Security Council, China bears a special responsibility,” he wrote. “Clear words addressed from Beijing to Moscow are important — to ensure that the Charter of the United Nations and its principles are upheld.”
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LIVERPOOL, England — On the long picket line outside the gates of Liverpool’s Peel Port, rain-soaked dock workers warm themselves with cups of tea as they listen to 1980s pop.
Dozens of buses, cars and trucks honk in solidarity as they pass.
Dockers’ strikes are not new to Liverpool, nor is depravation. But this latest walk-out at Britain’s fourth-largest port is part of something much bigger, a great wave of public and private sector strikes taking place across the U.K. Railways, postal services, law courts and garbage collections are among the many public services grinding to a halt.
The immediate cause of the discontent, as elsewhere, is the rising cost of living. Inflation in the United Kingdom breached the 10 percent mark this year, with wages failing to keep pace.
But the U.K.’s economic woes long predate the current crisis. For more than a decade, Britain has been beset by weak economic growth, anaemic productivity, and stagnant private and public sector investment. Since 2016, its political leadership has been in a state of Brexit-induced flux.
Half a century after U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger looked at the U.K.’s 1970s economic malaise and declared that “Britain is a tragedy,” the United Kingdom is heading to be the sick man of Europe once again.
The immediate cause of Liverpool dockers’ discontent that brought them to strike is the rising cost of living. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Here in Liverpool, the “scars run very deep,” said Paul Turking, a dock worker in his late 30s. British voters, he added, have “been misled” by politicians’ promises to “level up” the country by investing heavily in regional economies. Conservatives “will promise you the world and then pull the carpet out from under your feet,” he complained.
“There’s no middle class no more,” said John Delij, a Peel Port veteran of 15 years. He sees the cost-of-living crisis and economic stagnation whittling away the middle rung of the economic ladder.
“How many billionaires do we have?” Delij asked, wondering how Britain could be the sixth-largest economy in the world with a record number of billionaires when food bank use is 35 percent above its pre-pandemic level. “The workers put money back into the economy,” he said.
What would they do if they were in charge? “Invest in affordable housing,” said Turking. “Housing and jobs.”
Falling behind
The British economy has been struck by particular turbulence over recent weeks. The cost of government borrowing soared in the wake of former PM Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget on September 23, with the U.K.’s central bank forced to step in and steady the bond markets.
But while the swift installation of Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, as prime minister seems to have restored a modicum of calm, the economic backdrop remains bleak. Spending and welfare cuts are coming. Taxes are certain to rise. And the underlying problems cut deep.
U.K. productivity growth since the financial crisis has trailed that of comparator nations such as the U.S., France and Germany. As such, people’s median incomes also lag behind neighboring countries over the same period. Only Russia is forecast to have worse economic growth among the G20 nations in 2023.
In 1976, the U.K. — facing stagflation, a global energy crisis, a current account deficit and labor unrest — had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. It feels far-fetched, but today some are warning it could happen again.
The U.K. is spluttering its way through an illness brought about in part through a series of self-inflicted wounds that have undermined the basic pillars of any economy: confidence and stability.
The political and economic malaise is such that it has prompted unwanted comparisons with countries whose misfortunes Britain once watched amusedly from afar.
“The existential risk to the U.K. … is not that we’re suddenly going to go off an economic cliff, or that the country’s going to descend into civil war or whatever,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London. “It’s that we will become like Italy.”
Portes, of course, does not mean a country blessed with good weather and fine food — but an economy hobbled by persistently low growth, caught in a dysfunctional political loop that lurches between “corrupt and incompetent right-wing populists” and “well-intentioned technocrats who can’t actually seem to turn the ship around.”
“That’s not the future that we want in the U.K,” he said.
Reviving the U.K.’s flatlining economy will not happen overnight. As Italy’s experience demonstrates, it’s one thing to diagnose an illness — another to cure it.
Experts speak of an unbalanced model heavily reliant upon Britain’s services sector and beset with low productivity, a result of years of underinvestment and a flexible labor market which delivers low unemployment but often insecure and low-paid work.
“We’re not investing in skills; businesses aren’t investing,” said Xiaowei Xu, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “It’s not that surprising that we’re not getting productivity growth.”
But any attempt to address the country’s ailments will require its economic stewards to understand their underlying causes — and those stretch back at least to the first truly global crisis of the 21st century.
Crash and burn
The 2008 financial crisis hammered economies around the world, and the U.K. was no exception. Its economy shrunk by more than 6 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009. Five years passed before it returned to its pre-recession size.
For Britain, the crisis in fact began in September 2007, a year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when wobbles in the U.S. subprime mortgage market sparked a run on the British bank Northern Rock.
The U.K. discovered it was particularly vulnerable to such a shock. Over the second half of the 20th century, its manufacturing base had largely eroded as its services sector expanded, with financial and professional services and real estate among the key drivers. As the Bank of England put it: “The interconnectedness of global finance meant that the U.K. financial system had become dangerously exposed to the fall-out from the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market.”
The crisis was a “big shock to the U.K.’s broad economic model,” said John Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. Productivity took an immediate hit as exports of financial services plunged. It never fully recovered.
“Productivity before the crash was basically, ‘Can we create lots and lots of debt and generate lots and lots of income on the back of this? Can we invent collateralized debt obligations and trade them in vast volumes?’” said James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum and a former adviser to Labour’s left-wing former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.
A post-crash clampdown on City practises had an obvious impact.
“This is a major part of the British economy, so if it’s suddenly not performing the way it used to — for good reasons — things overall are going to look a bit shaky,” Meadway added.
The shock did not contain itself to the economy. In a pattern that would be repeated, and accentuated, in the coming years, it sent shuddering waves through the country’s political system, too.
The 2010 election was fought on how to best repair Britain’s broken economy. In 2009, the U.K. had the second-highest budget deficit in the G7, trailing only the U.S., according to the U.K. government’s own fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The Conservative manifesto declared “our economy is overwhelmed by debt,” and promised to close the U.K.’s mounting budget deficit in five years with sharp public sector cuts. The incumbent Labour government responded by pledging to halve the deficit by 2014 with “deeper and tougher” cuts in public spending than the significant reductions overseen by former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
The election returned a hung parliament, with the Conservatives entering into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The age of austerity was ushered in.
Austerity nation
Defenders of then-Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity program insist it saved Britain from the sort of market-led calamity witnessed this fall, and put the U.K. economy in a condition to weather subsequent global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine.
“That hard work made policies like furlough and the energy price cap possible,” said Rupert Harrison, one of Osborne’s closest Treasury advisers.
Pointing to the brutal market response to Truss’ freewheeling economic plans, Harrison praised the “wisdom” of the coalition in prioritizing tackling the U.K.’s debt-GDP ratio. “You never know when you will be vulnerable to a loss of credibility,” he noted.
But Osborne’s detractors argue austerity — which saw deep cuts to community services such as libraries and adult social care; courts and prisons services; road maintenance; the police and so much more — also stripped away much of the U.K.’s social fabric, causing lasting and profound economic damage. A recent study claimed austerity was responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.
Under Osborne’s plan, three-quarters of the fiscal consolidation was to be delivered by spending cuts. With the exception of the National Health Service, schools and aid spending, all government budgets were slashed; public sector pay was frozen; taxes (mainly VAT) rose.
But while the government came close to delivering its fiscal tightening target for 2014-15, “the persistent underperformance of productivity and real GDP over that period meant the deficit remained higher than initially expected,” the OBR said. By his own measure, Osborne had failed, and was forced to push back his deficit-elimination target further. Austerity would have to continue into the second half of the 2010s.
Many economists contend that the fiscal belt-tightening sucked demand out of the economy and worsened Britain’s productivity crisis by stifling investment. “That certainly did hit U.K. growth and did some permanent damage,” said King’s College London’s Portes.
“If that investment isn’t there, other people start to find it less attractive to open businesses,” former Labour aide Meadway added. “If your railways aren’t actually very good … it does add up to a problem for businesses.”
A 2015 study found U.K. productivity, as measured by GDP per hour worked, was now lower than in the rest of the G7 by a whopping 18 percentage points.
“Frankly, nobody knows the whole answer,” Osborne said of Britain’s productivity conundrum in May 2015. “But what I do know is that I’d much rather have the productivity challenge than the challenge of mass unemployment.”
‘Jobs miracle’
Rising employment was indeed a signature achievement of the coalition years. Unemployment dropped below 6 percent across the U.K. by the end of the parliament in 2015, with just Germany and Austria achieving a lower rate of joblessness among the then-28 EU states. Real-term wages, however, took nearly a decade to recover to pre-crisis levels.
Economists like Meadway contend that the rise in employment came with a price, courtesy of Britain’s famously flexible labor market. He points to a Sports Direct warehouse in the East Midlands, where a 2015 Guardian investigation revealed the predominantly immigrant workforce was paid illegally low wages, while the working conditions were such that the facility was nicknamed “the gulag.”
The warehouse, it emerged, was built on a former coal mine, and for Meadway the symbolism neatly charts the U.K.’s move away from traditional heavy industry toward more precarious service sector employment. “It’s not a secure job anymore,” he said. “Once you have a very flexible labor market, the pressure on employers to pay more and the capacity for workers to bargain for more is very much reduced.”
Throughout the period, the Bank of England — the U.K.’s central bank — kept interest rates low and pursued a policy of quantitative easing. “That tends to distort what happens in the economy,” argued Meadway. QE, he said, is a “good [way of] getting money into the hands of people who already have quite a lot” and “doesn’t do much for people who depend on wage income.”
Meanwhile — whether necessary or not — the U.K.’s austerity policies undoubtedly worsened a decades-long trend of underinvestment in skills and research and development (Britain lags only Italy in the G7 on R&D spending). At British schools, there was a 9 percent real terms fall in per-pupil spending between 2009 and 2019, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Xu. “As countries get richer, usually you start spending more on education,” Xu noted.
Two senior ministers in the coalition government — David Gauke, who served in the Treasury throughout Osborne’s tenure, and ex-Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable — have both accepted that the government might have focused more on higher taxation and less on cuts to public spending. But both also insisted the U.K had ultimately been correct to prioritize putting its public finances on a sounder footing.
It was February 2018 before Britain finally achieved Osborne’s goal of eliminating the deficit on its day-to-day budget.
Austerity was coming to an end, at last. But Osborne had already left the Treasury, 18 months earlier — swept away along with Cameron in the wake of a seismic national uprising.
***
David Cameron had won the 2015 election outright, despite — or perhaps because of — the stringent spending cuts his coalition government had overseen, more of which had been pledged in his 2015 manifesto. Also promised, of course, was a public vote on Britain’s EU membership.
The reasons for the leave vote that followed were many and complex — but few doubt that years of underinvestment in poorer parts of the U.K. were among them.
Regardless, the 2016 EU referendum triggered a period of political acrimony and turbulence not seen in Westminster for generations. With no pre-agreed model of what Brexit should actually entail, the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU became the subject of heated and protracted debate. After years of wrangling, Britain finally left the bloc at the end of January 2020, severing ties in a more profound way than many had envisaged.
While the twin crises of COVID and Ukraine have muddled the picture, most economists agree Brexit has already had a significant impact on the U.K. economy. The size of Britain’s trade flows relative to GDP has fallen further than other G7 countries, business investment growth trails the likes of Japan, South Korea and Italy, and the OBR has stuck by its March 2020 prediction that Brexit would reduce productivity and U.K. GDP by 4 percent.
Perhaps more significantly, Brexit has ushered in a period of political instability. As prime ministers come and go (the U.K. is now on its fifth since 2016), economic programs get neglected, or overturned. Overseas investors look on with trepidation.
“The evidence that the referendum outcome, and the kind of uncertainty and change in policy that it created, have led to low investment and low growth in the U.K. is fairly compelling,” said professor Stephen Millard, deputy director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Beyond the instability, the broader impact of the vote to leave remains contentious.
Portes argued — as many Remain supporters also do — that much harm was done by the decision to leave the EU’s single market. “It’s the facts, not the uncertainty that in my view is responsible for most of the damage,” he said.
Brexit supporters dismiss such claims.
“It’s difficult statistically to find much significant effect of Brexit on anything,” said professor Patrick Minford, founder member of Economists for Brexit. “There’s so much else going on, so much volatility.”
Minford, an economist favored by ex-PM Truss, acknowledged that “Brexit is disruptive in the short run, so it’s perfectly possible that you would get some short-run disruption.” But he added: “It was a long-term policy decision.”
Where next?
Plenty of economists can rattle off possible solutions, although actually delivering them has thus far evaded Britain’s political class. “It’s increasing investment, having more of a focus on the long-term, it’s having economic strategies that you set out and actually commit to over time,” says the IFS’ Xu. “As far as possible, it’s creating more certainty over economic policy.”
But in seeking to bring stability after the brief but chaotic Truss era, new U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has signaled a fresh period of austerity is on the way to plug the latest hole in the nation’s finances. Leveling Up Secretary Michael Gove told Times Radio that while, ideally, you wouldn’t want to reduce long-term capital investments, he was sure some spending on big projects “will be cut.”
This could be bad news for many of the U.K.’s long-awaited infrastructure schemes such as the HS2 high-speed rail line, which has been in the works for almost 15 years and already faces a familiar mix of local resistance, vested interests, and a sclerotic planning system.
“We have a real problem in the sense that the only way to really durably raise productivity growth for this country is for investments to pick up,” said Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. “And the headwinds to that are quite significant.”
For dock workers at Liverpool’s Peel Port, the prospect of a fresh round of austerity amid a cost-of-living crisis is too much to bear. “Workers all over this country need to stand up for themselves and join a union,” insisted Delij.
For him, it’s all about priorities — and the arguments still echo back to the great crash of 15 years ago. “They bailed the bankers out in 2007,” he said, “and can’t bail hungry people out now.”
The Ukrainian drone assault on Sevastopol, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, may have damaged one of the fleet’s two best frigates—potentially the flagship—but it definitely didn’t sink either of the vessels.
Commercial satellite imagery from Tuesday confirms that both of the Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates are afloat and pierside at the port in Russian-occupied Crimea. If there’s damage to either of the 409-foot, missile-armed frigates—currently the most powerful ships in the roughly 30-strong Black Sea Fleet—it’s not visible from above.
If the frigates both escaped damage, it probably was a matter of luck. The video feed from one of the apparently-explosives-laden unmanned surface vessels—in essence, a remote-controlled speedboat—shows the USV speeding to within a few feet of one of the frigates before the feed goes dead.
Russian media confirmed damage to one support vessel in the Saturday strike, which apparently involved drone aircraft in addition to the robotic boats.
If Admiral Makarov indeed avoided damage, it would be the second time the frigate—which took on the Black Sea Fleet’s flag following the April sinking of the missile-cruiser Moskva by Ukrainian missiles—defied expectations. Back in May, there were persistent rumors the Ukrainians had hit Admiral Makarov with an anti-ship missile. Those rumors turned out to be untrue.
There are three likely outcomes from the Saturday drone assault. That the USV struck the frigate and inflicted damage that’s not yet visible in public imagery. That the USV struck the frigate and failed to inflict any damage. Or that the USV somehow failed to strike the frigate despite coming very, very close.
An unnamed U.S. Defense Department official for their part was coy. “We do assess that there were explosions there [in Sevastopol] but I’m not going to have a damage assessment,” they said on Monday.
Analysts expect additional information soon. The Tuesday imagery hints at possible damage to one of the frigates. It’s customary in the Russian navy to moor undamaged ships perpendicularly to a pier—a practice called “Mediterranean mooring.” One of the frigates that’s visible in the satellite imagery is Med-moored.
The other is tied up parallel to the pier. And there’s a large crane alongside. The parallel mooring and crane could be evidence that the vessel suffered damage and is undergoing repairs. Of course, it’s also possible the ship is intact and the crane simply is shifting supplies.
Replenishing a large warship might take a couple of days, at most. If, a week from now, the frigate still is parallel to the pier with a crane nearby, that would be a strong signal that the vessel suffered damage.
The Ukrainian armed forces shouldn’t despair. Merely infiltrating Sevastopol and even nearly striking the Black Sea Fleet’s most important warship represents a major victory for the Ukrainians.
Months ago they proved they can sink even the most powerful Russian warship if the ship strays into the western Black Sea, where Ukraine’s anti-ship missiles can reach.
Now they’ve proved they can threaten Russian warships inside the perimeter of the ships’ own home port. The Russian Black Sea Fleet isn’t safe anywhere near Ukraine.
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Two U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday that senior Russian military officials discussed in mid-October how and when they might use nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine. The intelligence concerned U.S. officials because the relevant discussions came not long after Russian President Vladimir Putin, seeing Ukrainian forces claw territory back from his troops, hinted that he could resort to nuclear weapons.
Putin warned in late September that he would “certainly use all the means at our disposal” to defend Russian territory.
Asked about the U.S. intelligence on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed it as “purposeful pumping” of nuclear weapons rhetoric.
“We have not the slightest intention to take part in this pumping, and consider it very, very irresponsible,” Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
The discussions among Russian officials, first reported by the New York Times, were not detailed by the U.S. officials who confirmed the intelligence to CBS News.
In a statement shared with CBS News, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said he couldn’t provide “any comment on the particulars of this reporting,” but said the U.S. had been “clear from the outset that Russia’s comments about the potential use of nuclear weapons are deeply concerning, and we take them seriously.”
The talk within the Russian military came as Moscow claimed, without offering any evidence, that Ukraine was preparing to use a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Ukraine and its Western partners dismissed the claim as a bid by Russia to create a pretext to blame Ukraine for its own possible use of such a device.
A dirty bomb is a device that uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material. They are not generally weapons stocked by national military forces, but more often associated with terrorism. Their use is, however, hypothetical: A dirty bomb has never been detonated in an attack, but they have been tested. Their size and lethality depends entirely on the potency and quantity of the radioactive and explosives materials used.
Since the intelligence about the unidentified Russians’ conversations first came to light, concern within the U.S. government has eased, principally, one American official told CBS News, because the Russians’ own rhetoric has been dialed back.
Putin was not said to have been part of the conversations, and Kirby and the U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News on the condition of anonymity said there were no indications that Russia was then or is now making preparations to use a nuclear weapon.
Fears that Putin — who makes all final decisions about Russian military deployments and operations — could order the use of any kind of nuclear weapon in Ukraine increased last month as his invading forces were dealt a series of defeats, retreating from a number of villages and towns in regions of eastern Ukraine that Putin has declared Russian territory.
His unilateral annexation of four eastern Ukrainian regions at the end of September has been dismissed by the United Nations and most of the global community as an illegal landgrab.
In addition to his battlefield losses, there were also indications last month of discontent within Russia.
As Ukraine’s troops advanced and a hastily-called military mobilization sent hundreds of young Russian men running for Russia’s borders to avoid serving in Ukraine, and hundreds more who were drafted sent to the front lines with inadequate training and equipment, senior Russian officials started voicing rare public concern over the trajectory of Putin’s war.
Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN
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Almost immediately after last month’s blast that destroyed a section of the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to Crimea – the Ukrainian territory it annexed in 2014 – the Kremlin intensified attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, stepping up its bombing of apartment buildings, power grid and water systems.
Much of the weaponry for these attacks that are wreaking havoc on the lives of Ukrainians is coming from Iran, which has already supplied Russia with hundreds of deadly drones.
Now, CNN has reported Iran is about to start sending even more – and more powerful – weapons to Russia for the fight against Ukraine, according to a western country closely monitoring Iran’s weapons program.
The strengthening relationship between Moscow and Tehran has drawn the attention of Iran’s rivals and foes in the Middle East, of NATO members and of nations that are still – at least in theory – interested in restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which aimed to delay Iran’s ability to build an atomic bomb.
The intersection of the war in Ukraine and the conflicts surrounding Iran is just one example of how Ukraine has become the pivot point for so many of the world’s geopolitical tensions.
A little over eight months since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has become the stage upon which multiple battles are being fought.
This is a conflict like few, if any, in recent memory, with grave and far-reaching consequences. The ramifications we have already seen underscore just how important it is – and not only for Ukraine – that Russia’s aggression not succeed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was never a run-of-the-mill border dispute. Even before it started, as Putin initiated – and continuously denied – his march to war, the importance of preventing Russia’s autocratic regime from gaining control of its neighbor, with its incipient democracy, was clear.
The historian Yuval Noah Harari has argued that no less than the direction of human history is at stake, because a victory by Russia would reopen the door to wars of aggression, to invasions of one country by another, something that since the Second World War most nations had come to reject as categorically unacceptable.
For that reason, Ukraine received massive support from the West, led by the United States. The war in Ukraine reinvigorated NATO, even bringing new applications for membership from countries that had been committed to neutrality. It also helped reaffirm the interest of many in eastern European states – former Soviet satellites – of orienting their future toward Europe and the West.
Much of what happens today far from the battlefields still has repercussions there. When oil-producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, decided last month to slash production, the US accused the Saudis of helping Russia fund the war by boosting its oil revenues. (An accusation the Saudis deny).
Separately, weapons supplies to Ukraine have become a point of tension with Israel, which has developed highly effective defense systems against incoming missiles. Ukraine has asked Israel to provide those systems, including the Iron Dome and David’s Sling, but Israel refuses, citing its own strategic concerns.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz recently reiterated that “Israel supports and stands with Ukraine, NATO and the West,” but will not move those systems to Ukraine, because, “We have to share our airspace in the North with Russia.”
Syria’s airspace, bordering Israel, is controlled by Russian forces, which have allowed Israel to strike Iranian weapon flows to Hezbollah, a militia sworn to Israel’s destruction. Gantz has offered to help Ukraine develop defensive systems and it will reportedly provide new military communications systems, but no missile shields.
As others have noted, Israel is reluctant to let go of its defensive systems partly because it could need them for its own defense. Hezbollah in the north holds a massive arsenal of missiles, and Hamas in the south has its own rockets.
Beyond the Middle East and Europe, the war in Ukraine has also brought economic and potentially political shockwaves across the world.
Russia’s assault on Ukrainian ports and its patrols of Black Sea halted Ukraine’s grain exports just after the war started, causing food prices to skyrocket. The head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, warned in May that the world was “marching toward starvation.”
A UN and Turkey-brokered agreement allowed Ukraine’s maritime corridors to reopen, but this week Moscow temporarily suspended that agreement after Russian Navy ships were struck at the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Putin’s announcement was immediately followed by a surge in wheat prices on global commodity markets. Those prices partly determine how much people pay for bread in Africa and across the planet.
In fact, the war in Ukraine is already affecting everyone, everywhere. The conflict has also sent fuel prices higher, contributing to a global explosion of inflation.
Higher prices not only affect family budgets and individual lives. When they come with such powerful momentum, they pack a political punch. Inflation, worsened by the war, has put incumbent political leaders on the defensive in countless countries.
Now comes a new chapter in the international impact of the war in Ukraine. Some of Putin’s former friends in the far right have turned against him, but not all. Some far-right politicians and prominent figures in Europe and the US echo Putin’s claims about the war. Their hope is to leverage discontent – which could worsen as winter comes and heating prices rise.
And it’s not all on the fringes. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader who could become speaker of the House after next week’s US elections, suggested the GOP might choose to reduce aid to Ukraine. Progressive Democrats released and withdrew a letter calling for negotiations. Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official during the Obama administration, said they’re all bringing “a big smile to Putin’s face.”
The war in Ukraine is becoming an engine that fuels a far-right push for more influence; a symbiotic relationship between Putin and his fans in the West. Just as a political action committee linked to the former Trump aide Stephen Miller is arguing against spending on Ukraine, somehow linking it to poverty and crime in the US, like-minded figures in Europe are trying to promote their views by pointing to their country’s hardships as the cost of helping Ukraine. For now, support for Ukraine remains strong in Europe and the US, although flagging among Republicans.
Ukraine has become the epicenter of a global conflict; a hub whose spokes connect to every country, every life. Russia’s aggression – its Iranian drones, civilian targets, and weaponization of hunger – has already taken a global toll, lowering worldwide living standards and raising international tensions.
If Russia is allowed to win, Putin’s war would mark the beginning of a new era of global instability, with less freedom, less peace and less prosperity for the world.
Russia will resume its cooperation with a diplomatic agreement brokered by Turkey and the United Nations to facilitate the export of Ukrainian foodstuffs, its defense ministry said Wednesday.
The U-turn came after talks on Tuesday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Moscow on Saturday suspended its involvement in the agreement that has allowed Ukraine to ship some 10 million tons of foodstuffs onto the world market, helping to allay a global food affordability crisis.
“The Russian Federation believes that the guarantees received at this time are adequate and resumes implementation of the agreement,” Russia’s defense ministry said on Telegram.
The statement makes clear that Russia wanted guarantees Ukraine would not use the corridor to launch attacks on its navy, and it alleges that this is what happened in the drone strike against its fleet at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea last weekend.
Ukraine has rejected that and the U.N. has said no ships were traveling through the corridor at the time the attack took place.
Erdoğan also said that Russia would resume cooperation, having held talks with Putin, according to Reuters. Erdoğan added that shipments would now flow Wednesday, despite a previous plan not to transport any food until Thursday.
Amir Mahmoud Abdulla, the U.N. coordinator of the Black Sea grain initiative, said he welcomed Russia’s decision to return to the deal. “Grateful for the Turkish facilitation. Looking forward to working again with all parties in the Initiative,” he tweeted.
Even though Russia had said it could no longer guarantee the security of the corridor, Turkey, the U.N. and Ukraine kept the deal working Monday and Tuesday, merely informing Russia of their operations.
The deal, signed by the four sides in Istanbul in July, will need to be renewed around November 19. Ukraine, the U.N. and Turkey have been pressing for a much longer extension, while Russia has wanted to improve the situation for its own food and fertilizer exports.
Wilhelmine Preussen contributed reporting.
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The battle for the southern region of Kherson is intensifying as Ukrainian forces press forward and Russia increases pressure on residents to leave their homes. Follow live updates here.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was in a strong position to remain in power after her Social Democrats won the most votes Tuesday in Denmark’s election and a center-left bloc in Parliament that backs her appeared set to retain a majority by just one seat.
The result was preliminary and based on the assumption that a vote count in Greenland expected early Wednesday would give the autonomous Danish territory’s two seats to the center-left bloc.
“I am so thrilled and proud. We have gotten the best election result in 20 years,” Frederiksen told supporters early Wednesday in Copenhagen.
Despite the success, Frederiksen, who heads a Social Democratic minority government, said she would resign as prime minister and try to form a new government with broader support across the political divide, something she had said suggested before the election.
“It is also clear there is no longer a majority behind the government in its current form. Therefore, tomorrow I will submit the government’s resignation to the queen,” said Frederiksen, adding that she would meet with other parties about forming a new government.
Frederiksen was forced to call the vote earlier this month amid the fallout from her government’s contentious decision to cull millions of minks as a pandemic response measure. The cull and chilling images of mass graves of minks have haunted Frederiksen since 2020 and eventually led to cracks in the center-left bloc.
The Social Democrats remained Denmark’s top party with 28% of the vote, but it remained unclear long into the night whether the center-left parties together would reach the 90 seats needed for a majority in the 179-seat Parliament. Exit polls suggested they would fall short, but the decisive seat flipped at the very end of the vote count.
Before that former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen appeared set to become kingmaker. His newly formed centrist party won 9% of the vote for 16 seats, according to the preliminary results.
Løkke Rasmussen said he too wanted to Mette Frederiksen to try to form a government but he would not point at her “as prime minister.”
A two-time government leader who lost the 2019 election to Frederiksen and abandoned the center-right Liberal party following an internal power struggle, Løkke Rasmussen, wouldn’t say whom he would back as the next prime minister or whether he saw that role for himself.
“I know for sure that Denmark needs a new government, “ he told jubilant supporters in Copenhagen. “Who is going to sit at the end of the table we do not know.”
Denmark may be a small, tranquil country known for having some of the happiest people on Earth, but its politics is filled with intrigue that will be familiar to fans of the fictional Danish TV drama series “Borgen.”
Before the election, Frederiksen, 44, floated the idea of a broader alliance that would also include opposition parties, but was rebuffed by opposition leaders Jakob Ellemann-Jensen of the Liberals and Søren Pape Poulsen of the Conservatives, who both ran as candidates for prime minister in a center-right government.
Even though the election result suggested she could ostensibly carry on as prime minster with only center-left support, Frederiksen said she would keep her ambition to also reach out to opposition parties.
“The Social Democrats went to the election to form a broad government,” she said. “I will investigate whether it can be done.”
Denmark’s more than 4 million voters could choose among over 1,000 candidates — the most ever — from 14 parties. Four of the 179 seats in the Danish legislature, Folketinget, are reserved for the Faeroe Islands and Greenland, which are autonomous Danish territories.
Concerns about rising inflation and energy prices linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine and a shortage of nurses in the public health care system were key themes in election campaigns.
“What I feel is important and is a worry to many are the soaring prices, whether it be electricity, bread or gasoline,” said Inge Bjerre Hansen, 82, after casting her vote in Copenhagen. “My son is reducing the number of his visits because it has become expensive to fill the tank (of his car).”
Unlike in previous elections, immigration received little attention. Denmark has some of Europe’s strictest immigration laws and there is broad agreement among the major parties to keep it that way.
That and internal squabbles help explain the collapse of the populist Danish People’s Party, which spearheaded Denmark’s crackdown on immigration two decades ago. Once polling over 20%, the party recorded its worst parliamentary election result since its creation in 1995, with around 3% of the vote, the results showed.
The Danish People’s Party faced competition for nationalist voters from new right-wing parties. Among them are the Denmark Democrats, created in June by former hardline immigration minister Inger Støjberg. In 2021, Støjberg was convicted by the rarely used Impeachment Court for a 2016 order to separate asylum-seeking couples if one of the partners was a minor.
She was eligible to run for office again after serving her 60-day sentence. The official results showed her party getting 8%.
Frederiksen, who became Denmark’s youngest prime minister when she took office at 41 more than three years ago, teamed up with the opposition to hike NATO-member Denmark’s defense spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her steadfast leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic was partly overshadowed by the mink-culling episode.
The decision to slaughter up to 17 million minks to protect humans from a mutation of the coronavirus was taken in haste and without the required legislation in place. It dealt a devastating blow to Danish mink farmers, even though there was no evidence the mutated virus found among some minks was more dangerous than other strains.
———
Ritter reported from Stockholm. Associated Press journalists and Aleksandar Furtula and Anders Kongshaug in Copenhagen contributed to this report.
For supporters of Ukraine’s war-weary air force, it was a beautiful sight: four of the air force’s swing-wing Su-24 bombers flying in formation over Ukraine on or around Oct. 30.
It was the biggest formation of the two-seat, supersonic bombers that anyone had seen in Ukraine in many years—and certainly the biggest to appear over Ukraine since Russia widened its war on the country starting in late February.
What’s amazing about the sighting is that Ukraine has lost more of the four-decade-old Su-24s to Russian air-defenses and bombardment than it may have had in its inventory before the war. The October four-ship is yet more evidence that Kyiv’s technicians are working hard to restore to flightworthiness many, or all, of the bombers Ukraine had in storage.
To recap: the Ukrainian air force went to war with around 125 combat aircraft, mostly MiG-29 fighters but also including between a dozen and 16 Su-24s, all belonging to the 7th Bomber Regiment at Starokostiantyniv air base in western Ukraine.
The higher estimate comes from Patrick Roegies, Paul Gross and Hans Looijmans, writing forAviation Photography Digest back in 2015, the second year of Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and eastern Donbas region.
The Russians have shot down 11 Ukrainian Su-24s that independent analysts can confirm and also destroyed a 12th bomber on the ground. Without a source of fresh airframes, the 7th Bomber Regiment by now would be incapable of sustaining combat sorties.
But Roegies, Gross and Looijmans in their reporting also counted another nine or 17 nearly-airworthy Su-24s at Starokostiantyniv plus around 30 additional bombers “stored in relatively good condition.” They did not count scores of derelict Su-24 airframes in open storage at bases across Ukraine, in particular the aircraft boneyard in Bila Tserkva, near Kyiv.
In 1991, the Ukrainian air force inherited from the disintegrating Soviet air force no fewer than 200 Su-24s. Most of the bombers wound up in open storage. Probably none of these airframes have any value except as sources of simple airframe components that the active bomber force might use as spares.
The air force in short had as many as 63 Su-24s that, with some effort, it could bring to active status as of late February. Subtract the dozen it’s lost. That leaves 51 Su-24s.
That’s … a lot of bombers. Potentially more bombers than the air force has crews for, even after bringing retired pilots and co-pilots back into active service. The 7th Bomber Regiment has buried at least 14 of its crew, after all. And training new pilots is difficult as long as Ukraine’s air space remains even somewhat contested.
Still, the relative abundance of flyable bombers helps to explain why it’s still possible to glimpse as many as four of them in flight at the same time as late as October. It’s safe to assume that if four Su-24s are in the air, another eight or so are on the ground undergoing routine maintenance.
In other words, the 7th Bomber Regiment might have as nearly flightworthy Su-24s now as it did eight months ago. And if the loss rate of the last eight months continues, the 7th Bomber Regiment won’t run out of Su-24s until November 2025.
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Cars pass in Independence Square at twilight in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 31, 2022. Rolling … [+] blackouts are increasing across Ukraine as the government rushes to stabilise the energy grid and repair the system ahead of winter. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Dispatches from Ukraine.
As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.
By Polina Rasskazova
Tuesday, November 1. Day 251. According to the President of Ukraine, 40% of all Ukrainian energy infrastructure has been seriously damaged as a result of Russian attacks. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a meeting with the European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, during which he disclosed the consequences of Russia’s energy terrorism, as well as the measures Ukraine is taking to stabilize its energy grid. “Unfortunately, due to the strikes of missiles and kamikaze drones by the Russian Federation on our energy system, we have suspended the export of electricity to Europe. But I am sure that we will restore everything, and in a calmer time, when the situation in our energy system will be stabilized,” said Zelenskyy.
Iran plans to send more than 200 drones to the Russian Federation starting in November. According to the main intelligence department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Shahed-136, Mohajer-6 and Arash-2 drones will be delivered via the Caspian Sea to the port of Astrakhan, in Russia. Drones will arrive in a disassembled state, then, on the territory of the Russian Federation, they will be assembled, repainted and applied with Russian markings, in particular “Geran-2”.
Starting November 1, in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, the Russian regime intends to start its fall draft to fill the ranks of the Russian armed forces, reported the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Under the guise of conscription, mobilization is also underway in Crimea, the nature and methods of which testify to the desire of the Russian military-political leadership to reduce the number of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars on the peninsula as they are the most resistant to Russian occupation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns Russia’s intention to start conscription. “Under international humanitarian law, an occupying power is prohibited from forcing protected persons to serve in its armed forces, as well as from pressuring and promoting voluntary military service,” written in the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mykolayiv. Around midnight, the Russian army attacked the city with S-300 type missiles, as a result of which a number of civilian objects were damaged. The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Senkevich, reported that a two-story residential building was completely destroyed and a woman was killed. A fire broke out in another house due to the impact of ammunition and shrapnel.
Monday, October 31. Day 250. Russian forces unleash massive missile attack on the entire territory of Ukraine. In the morning, air raid alarms sounded throughout Ukraine. Out of more than 50 cruise missiles, air defense forces managed to shoot down 44. According to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Denys Shmyhal, 10 regions were affected by missiles and drones, where 18 objects were damaged, and most of them energy-related. Hundreds of settlements in seven regions of Ukraine were cut off from power. “Local emergency shutdowns continue in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv regions. Today, as in previous weeks, it is important that all Ukrainians consciously consume energy and reduce the load on the network,” said Shmyhal.
Kyiv Region. Due to massive Russian shelling, part of the Kyiv region was left without electricity. According to the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, 80% of the consumers of the capital of Ukraine remained without water supply, 350,000 apartments in Kyiv remain without electricity. As a result of the attack, two people were injured in the Kyivregion. One of them is in serious condition. There was also damage to private buildings.
Kharkiv. According to Oleh Synyehubov, the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, about 50,000 consumers were cut off from power in Kharkiv due to the morning missile strikes launched by the Russian army, which damaged critical infrastructure. In the Kharkiv region, about 90,000 local residents were disconnected from electricity. As a result of problems with electricity, “water was supplied with reduced pressure to some districts of Kharkiv and to some large settlements of the region, because there was not enough power in the power grids for the pumps to create the proper pressure,” said Synyehubov.
Cherkasy Region. Two-thirds of the region was cut off from power supply as a result of a Russian attack on a critical infrastructure facility. The head of the Cherkasy Regional Military Administration, Ihor Taburets, reported other four victims of shelling are currently in the hospital. Work to restore electricity supply in the region continues.
Dnipropetrovsk Region. According to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, the Marhanets community came under Russian fire. 40 shells from BM-21 Grad missile launchers were fired into the community. As a result of the attack, a 31-year-old woman died. Another woman is injured. “Almost 30 high-rise and private buildings were damaged in the city. The local lyceum, administrative building, cars and power lines were mutilated,” reported Reznichenko. In the morning, the Russians caused serious damage to energy infrastructure facilities in Dnipro and Pavlohrad. As a result, the system could not cope with the electrical load causing blackouts.
Sunday, October 30. Day 249.The Russian Federation suspends its participation in a formal agreement to allow the movement of grain out of Ukrainian ports, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported. The grain deal was signed by Ukraine and Russia with Turkey and the UN at the end of August in Istanbul, and provides for the unblocking of Ukrainian ports for the export of food and farmed goods. The Russian Federation refused the agreement “in view of the terrorist act carried out by the Kyiv regime on October 29 of this year with the participation of UK specialists against ships of the Black Sea Fleet and civil courts involved in the security of the grain corridor.”
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, emphasized Russia began deliberately aggravating the food crisis back in September, when it blocked the movement of ships with Ukrainian food. From September to today, 176 vessels have already accumulated in the grain corridor as they’ve been blocked from navigating their routes. “Some grain carriers have been waiting for more than three weeks. Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and other countries can all be equally destabilized by this Russian decision to block exports,” Zelenskyy added.
NATO called on Moscow to urgently renew the U.N.-brokered deal that enabled Ukraine to resume grain exports via the Black Sea amid a global food crisis, Reuters reported. “President Putin must stop weaponising food and end his illegal war on Ukraine,” NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu said. “We call on Russia to reconsider its decision and renew the deal urgently, enabling food to reach those who need it most.” According to the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Oleksandr Kubrakov, the ship Ikaria Angel, carrying 40,000 tons of grain, was supposed to leave the Ukrainian port today. “These foodstuffs were intended for Ethiopians that are on the verge of famine. But due to the blockage of the “grain corridor” by Russia, export is impossible,” Lungescu said.
Russian launch nuclear provocations in the city of Enerhodar, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Region. Most of the occupied city of Enerhodar (where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located) was left without electricity due to Russian shelling. According to the mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, the Russian troops hit one of the substations. “We are waiting for updates on the extent of damage and restoration of power supply,” he added.
Donetsk region. During the day, the Russian military forces launched 24 attacks on the civilian population in Donetsk, Ukraine. The police of the Donetsk region recorded more than 30 destroyed buildings as a result of Russian shelling. In all, the attack caused fires in 16 settlements, 31 civilian objects were destroyed and damaged, including residential buildings, the city council building, utility buildings, garages and cars. According to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, as a result of Russian shelling on October 29, 5 civilians of the Donetsk region were killed and another 8 people were injured: in Antonivka, Pervomaiskyi, Druzhba, Klishchiivka, and Yelyzavetivka. In addition, law enforcement officers discovered the bodies of 5 civilians who died during the occupation.
Kharkiv Region. According to the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Oleh Synyehubov, during the past day, the Russian army shelled the city of Kupyansk, as well as settlements and villages in various districts of the region. “In Kupyansk, as a result of shelling, a civilian industrial facility was damaged, and a large-scale fire broke out. Rescuers are working on the spot, the fire has been contained. Previously, no one was injured,” he reported. According to the regional Center of Emergency Medical Assistance, a 58-year-old resident of the Kupyansk district was hospitalized with an injury during the day. Also, Synyehubov emphasized that hostilities continue on the contact line with the Russian border.
A woman walks past a building damaged by missile strikes in the eastern Donbas region of Bakhmut, Ukraine, on November 1.
Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
The Ukrainian military said that Russian forces continue to carry out artillery and rocket attacks throughout the front lines, stretching from Kharkiv in the north to Zaporizhzhia in the south. Altogether, it said, more than 50 settlements were hit from Sunday to Monday night.
In the east: Parts of the Donetsk region were among those hardest hit, with Soledar, Vuhledar and Bakhmut districts coming under fire. Ukrainian forces still hold Bakhmut, but along with settlements to the east and south, it is under daily attack.
The Ukrainian military’s General Staff also reported heavy shelling in areas to the west of the city of Donetsk that have been contested for several months.
It said the Russians continue to shell recently liberated parts of Kharkiv and Luhansk, where Ukrainian forces have been edging forward toward Russian resupply routes. Several settlements in Kharkiv region close to the Russian border were also shelled, it said.
Further south, Ukraine appears to have targeted a Russian military headquarters in the town of Volnovakha in Donetsk region with long-range rockets.
Yurii Mysiagin, the deputy head of parliamentary committee on national security, intelligence and defense, said it was reported that the Akhtamar hotel on the Mariupol-Donetsk highway, where Chechen forces were based, was hit.
The local Russian-backed authorities in Donetsk confirmed the building was destroyed but gave no further details.
In the south: As Ukrainian forces try to push further into the southern region of Kherson, the Russians continue to respond with shelling by tanks and artillery across a wide area, according to the General Staff. Several settlements in Zaporizhzhia came under fire, and the city of Mykolaiv was also hit again on Monday night. Two S-300 missiles struck the city, and one residential building was demolished. One woman was reported killed by the mayor’s office.
The General Staff echoed the comments of regional officials that in Kakhovka, on the Dnieper river, “citizens living in apartments along the banks of the Dnipro are forcibly evicted from their homes.”
It said Russian forces were building fortifications and laying “mine-explosive barriers around civilian housing.”
Ukrainian officials said that rather than leave the west bank in Kherson, Russian units appear to be digging in.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — President Joe Biden is making no secret of his frustration with high gas prices and the oil companies making record profits as a result. With the support of Democratic allies in Congress, he is threatening to levy windfall taxes on energy firms, a prospect that’s prompted backlash from the industry.
The president on Monday tweeted: “The oil industry has a choice. Either invest in America by lowering prices for consumers at the pump and increasing production and refining capacity. Or pay a higher tax on your excessive profits and face other restrictions.”
The language sets up what looks like a standoff between the U.S. oil industry and the Biden administration at a time of high energy prices, soaring inflation and worries of a global crude supply shortage after years of under-investment in the industry and several months of sanctions on Russian commodities for its war in Ukraine.
But reports of animosity between the White House and America’s energy giants are overhyped, says Amos Hochstein, Biden’s special presidential coordinator, who liaises closely with energy industry leaders domestically and around the world.
The Biden administration is not anti-profit or anti-free market, he stressed; rather, it wants to see oil companies reinvest their profits in improving crude production and the country’s energy security.
“I talk to the CEOs, other senior members of the administration talk to the CEOs on a regular basis,” Hochstein told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble Monday, when asked about the administration’s relationship with industry executives.
“People know that. I don’t think that’s the issue. The issue is this: we want them to increase their capex, increase investment,” he said. “The price environment for the last year, over a year now, lends itself to investment. So take those profits that you’re making. We’re not against profits. What we do want, and the president said this last week — take those profits and invest them.”
Congressional Democrats argue that oil executives are prioritizing shareholder returns over reinvesting profits toward boosting production that could lower consumer prices. Hochstein held the position that shareholder returns are not an issue in themselves, but that increasing America’s energy supplies should be the priority.
“You want to pay some back to shareholders? Some is fine,” he continued. “But not excessively. You want to take these profits, that’s fine too. But not excessively. We’re in a war and you can do more to increase production.”
Several major oil companies have raked in record profits this year as consumers grappled with soaring gas and energy bills. ExxonMobil reported a record $19.7 billion net profit for the third quarter, and Biden this week accused the Texas-based company of using that to reward shareholders and buy back its own stock rather than investing in production improvements that could ease prices at the pump.
California-based Chevron made $11.23 billion in profits in the third quarter, just shy of the record it hit in the previous quarter. In the last two quarters, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Britain’s BP, Shell and France’s TotalEnergies reportedly made over $100 billion in profits — more than they earned in the entirety of 2021.
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods, speaking to CNBC last week, said his company was committed to addressing both shareholder returns and improving production, regardless of who was in the White House.
“We don’t really look to satisfy one administration or the other. We look to make sure we’re doing the best we can using our shareholders’ money appropriately, finding advantaged projects that allow us to grow production and grow value. We’re also looking at reducing our emissions,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
But Hochstein says he doesn’t see sufficient investment on a broad scale.
“All I see is record profits that are not translating to sufficiently increased investment and where investments are not keeping up with average ratios of investment-to-price increase,” he said.
Many in the oil industry argue that a windfall tax is counterproductive and would harm production and investment. Still, the threat of such taxes from the Democratic leadership is likely more of a pressure tactic than a plausible policy proposal in the near-term since Congress is not in session. And it could even become impossible to carry out if Republicans, who largely oppose such a move, win one or both houses in the November midterm elections.
Biden came into office campaigning hard for an end to fossil fuel use and a transition to renewables as part of his climate-focused agenda, laying out a bevy of regulations on oil and gas exploration and production. Supporters of Biden’s green energy goals say this aggressive push was needed to reverse what they describe as damage done by former President Donald Trump, who rolled back years of work on environmental protections and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords.
But it was that policy push, those in the fossil fuel industry argue, that helped throttle investment in oil and gas production and subsequently led to the energy supply shortages and higher prices we see today. Now, faced with a tightening global oil and gas market, climbing demand, and a war in Europe, the administration is taking a different tone.
“Look, it’s no secret that the Biden administration and oil industry do not see eye-to-eye on the long term role that oil will play in the economy,” Hochstein said. “However, we have to do two things. We need more investment in oil production and refining, now.”
The longtime energy policy veteran pointed out that much of the initial regulations and restrictions have eased — and noted that under this administration, the U.S. is approaching pre-pandemic highs in oil production levels, even despite what he says is insufficient activity from oil companies.
Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub contradicted the narrative that the Biden administration was ignoring oil companies. Speaking to CNBC in Abu Dhabi, she said she indeed communicates with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a vocal climate policy advocate.
“I do hear from Secretary Granholm — she is focused on tech, she’s enthusiastic about the climate transition, she listens, she [communicates with] the National Petroleum Council and has sent us requests for studies to be conducted to help her in making her decisions” concerning clean energy investments, Hollub said.
Whatever the disagreements on the longer-term role of the fossil fuel industry in the U.S., oil executives and White House officials appear to agree on one thing — they will need to communicate properly to ensure future energy security for the country at a time of severe economic and geopolitical risk.
President Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s first mobilisation since World War II in September, but the process was chaotic.
Russia’s defence ministry says the partial military mobilisation that was announced in September after a series of battleground defeats in Ukraine has been completed.
“All activities related to the conscription … of citizens in the reserve have been stopped,” the ministry said on Monday, and no further call-up notices would be issued.
President Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s first large-scale mobilisation since World War II on September 21, one of a series of escalatory measures in response to military setbacks in northeastern and south Ukraine.
He said the draft was needed to protect the country and its territorial integrity, but the announcement triggered demonstrations and attacks on draft centres across the country and led to the arrest of thousands of people.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the time that some 300,000 additional personnel would be drafted and that they would be specialists with combat experience.
The Russian government tried to dress the draft in the same language it used to justify the full-scale invasion in February, justifying it as a fight against Nazism and an existential confrontation with the West.
But the mobilisation proceeded chaotically, with many highly publicised cases of call-up notices going to the wrong men. Hundreds of thousands fled Russia to avoid being drafted, while a survey conducted by the independent pollster Levada Center after the announcement found that close to half of the respondents felt fear and 13 percent were angry.
Putin has publicly acknowledged mistakes were made and has set up a new coordination council to boost the military effort and ensure that men being sent to the front are properly armed and equipped.
The announcement on Monday – day 250 of the war – did not give a final figure for the number of men called up.
The enlistment was a tacit admission that Russia was facing serious difficulties in a conflict that Putin still refuses to describe as a war with Ukraine, describing it instead as a “special military operation”.
It brought the war closer to home for many ordinary Russians by confronting them, or their friends and family, with the direct risk of being sent to Ukraine to fight.
Russia still holds large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine and partly occupies four regions of the country. But it has lost ground even in the past month since it unilaterally proclaimed their annexation – a move denounced by Kyiv, its Western allies and the United Nations General Assembly as illegal.
The head of the United States Agency for International Development urged Russia to continue its participation in the United Nations-brokered Black Sea grain deal, writing that “the world cannot afford for Putin to continue to use food as a weapon of war.”
“Russia’s comments about suspending its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative are regrettable. This life-saving agreement between Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, brokered in July by the United Nations, has allowed the export of more than nine million metric tons of grain and other food products to populations around the world in the midst of a devastating global food crisis,” USAID Administrator Samantha Power wrote in a statement Sunday.
She touted the “tremendous success” of the deal so far, crediting it with lowering global food prices and providing relief to those “most vulnerable to severe hunger.”
“The United States and our allies and partners remain clear: the Black Sea Grain Initiative must continue and be extended. Any attempt to undermine the agreement is an attack on hungry families around the world whose lives and livelihoods are dependent on this initiative,” Power wrote.
Remember: Moscow announced it was leaving the grain deal after blaming Ukraine for a drone attack on Crimea Saturday. Kyiv has accused Russia of inventing “fictitious terrorist attacks” and using the deal as “blackmail.”
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials on Monday morning reported a massive barrage of Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities.
Part of the Ukrainian capital was cut off from power and water supplies as a result, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Officials reported possible power outages in the cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia resulting from the strikes.
Critical infrastructure objects were also hit in the Cherkasy region southeast of Kyiv, and explosions were reported in other regions of Ukraine.
In Kharkiv, the subway ceased operating. Some parts of Ukrainian railways were also cut off from power, the Ukrainian Railways reported.
The attack comes two days after Russia accused Ukraine of a drone attack against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet off the coast of the annexed Crimean Peninsula. Ukraine has denied the attack, saying that Russia mishandled its own weapons, but Moscow still announced halting its participation in a U.N.-brokered deal to allow safe passage of ships carrying grain from Ukraine.
Commenting on Monday’s attacks, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office Andriy Yermak said that Russian forces “continue to fight with civilian facilities.”
“We will persevere, and generations of Russians will pay a high price for their disgrace,” Yermak said.
It’s the second time this month that Russia unleashed a massive barrage of strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. On Oct. 10, a similar attack rocked the war-torn country following an explosion on the Kerch Bridge linking annexed Crimea to mainland Russia — an incident Moscow blamed on Kyiv.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials on Monday morning reported a massive barrage of Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities.
Part of the Ukrainian capital was cut off from power and water supplies as a result, its mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Officials also reported possible power outages in the cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia resulting from the strikes.
The attack comes two days after Russia accused Ukraine of a drone attack against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet off the coast of the annexed Crimean peninsula. Ukraine has denied the attack, saying that Russia mishandled its own weapons, but Moscow still announced halting its particiaption in a U.N.-brokered deal to allow safe passage of ships carrying grain from Ukraine.
American philanthropist Howard Buffett’s foundation has granted over $1 million to help support dancers who have had their lives upended by the war in Ukraine.
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Tonight, an update on a story from last May, “Ballet In Exile.”
That’s when we met ballet artists, both Russian and Ukrainian, who fled the war to pursue their art overseas, some Ukrainians out of necessity, some Russians out of protest, like the Bolshoi’s Olga Smirnova.
“I had to leave everything. Like, my home, my theater, my repertoire, my partners, my parents, sister, brother, everything. But I don’t have regrets,” Smirnova told 60 Minutes in the report. “Because at least I can be honest with myself.”
American philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, and once the focus of a 60 Minutes profile, was watching. His foundation has granted more than a million dollars to help support the exiled Ukrainian dancers.
