Feb 24,2023:China has called for a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia and a gradual de-escalation of the situation that will pave the way for peace talks, as part of a 12-point proposal to end the conflict.
The plan by China, which was released on Friday morning by the Foreign Ministry and coincides with the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, urges an end to Western sanctions against Russia, the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and steps to ensure the export of grain after disruptions caused global food prices to spike last year.
“Conflict and war benefit no one,” the ministry said in a statement.
“All parties must stay rational and exercise restraint, avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions, and prevent the crisis from deteriorating further or even spiralling out of control,” it said.
“All parties should support Russia and Ukraine in working in the same direction and resuming direct dialogue as quickly as possible, so as to gradually deescalate the situation and ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire.”
The proposal mainly elaborates on long-held Chinese positions, including that all countries’ “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity be effectively guaranteed”. The plan also called for an end to the “Cold War mentality”, which is Beijing’s standard term for what it regards as global dominance by the United States and its interference in other countries’ affairs.
Beijing — which claims to be neutral in the conflict — has a “no limits” relationship with Russia and has refused to criticise Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine or even refer to it as such. It has also accused the West of provoking the conflict and “fanning the flames” by providing Ukraine with arms.
Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi visited Moscow this week and pledged a deeper relationship between the countries while Putin hailed “new frontiers” in ties with Beijing and signalled that China’s leader Xi Jinping would visit Russia.
Xi is expected to deliver a “peace speech” on Friday, though some analysts have cast doubt on whether Beijing’s efforts to act as peacemaker will go beyond rhetoric.
The ambassador of the European Union to China, Jorge Toledo, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing on Friday that China had released a position paper not a peace proposal, and the EU will study it.
North Korea test-fired four strategic cruise missiles during a drill designed to demonstrate its ability to conduct a nuclear counterattack against hostile forces, its state media said on Friday.
The exercise on Thursday involved an apparently operational strategic cruise missile unit of the Korean People’s Army, which fired the four “Hwasal-2” missiles in the area of Kim Chaek City, North Hamgyong Province, towards the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, state news agency KCNA said.
Other units conducted firepower training at hardened sites without live firing, it added.
The four strategic cruise missiles hit a preset target after travelling the “2,000km-long (1,243 mile) elliptical and eight-shaped flight orbits for 10,208 seconds to 10,224 seconds,” the report said.
The drill demonstrated “the war posture of the DPRK nuclear combat force bolstering up in every way its deadly nuclear counterattack capability against the hostile forces,” KCNA said, using the initials of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The missile launches were not announced by South Korea or Japan, which are often the first to detect and publicly report such launches.
South Korea’s defence ministry said the launch was monitored but there were “differences” between what it and the United States detected and the North’s statement, without elaborating.
The launch came as U.S. and South Korean officials took part in a tabletop, or simulated, exercise that focused on the possibility of North Korea using a nuclear weapon.
In a separate dispatch, Pyongyang’s foreign ministry criticised Washington and its allies for calling a meeting of the UN Security Council over its spate of recent missile tests.
North Korea has accused the United Nations has been “unfair” on its military activities while keeping mum about U.S. and South Korean joint military exercises.
New Delhi, Feb 21,2023: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday termed it a special day for India-Singapore friendship and for their efforts to deepen collaboration in FinTech and innovation as the two countries linked their real-time digital payments systems.
Prime Minister Modi and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong witnessed the launch of cross-border connectivity between the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and PayNow of Singapore via video conferencing.
PM Modi said in a tweet: “Today is a special day for India-Singapore friendship and for our efforts to deepen collaboration in FinTech and innovation. The participation of my friend, PM @leehsienloong made this morning’s programme even more special.”
The launch ceremony took place at 11 am (IST) with Shaktikanta Das, Governor of Reserve Bank of India, and Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, making live cross-border transactions to each other using their respective mobile phones.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee in a tweet said:
“Delighted to launch the linkage between PayNow & India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with PM @narendramodi today! Congratulations to @MAS_sg, @RBI & all the stakeholders in Singapore & India who have helped make the linkage a reality.”
In a Facebook post, PM Lee said that thanks to the linking of the digital payments systems “Individuals and businesses in Singapore and India can now transfer funds instantly, securely and directly from their accounts to each other.”
He said the PayNow-UPI linkage “was first conceived in 2018 during PM Modi’s visit to Singapore. Digital connectivity was also discussed at the inaugural India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable (ISMR) last September.”
He congratulated the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Reserve Bank of India, and all other stakeholders in Singapore and India who helped make the linkage a reality.
“I am confident the strong partnership between Singapore and India will continue to spawn innovative technology solutions and create more cross-border opportunities for our digital economies,” he said.
Earlier, PM Modi termed the development a new milestone in India-Singapore relations.
In his address at the launch, he said the friendship between both nations is very old, and has withstood the test of time. “Our people-to-people relations have been its mainstay,” PM Modi said.
“From today onwards, people in India and Singapore will be able to transfer money from their mobile phones in the same way as they do within their own countries,” he said.
PM Modi said the Digital India campaign has also made possible unprecedented reforms in governance and public service delivery, which was also seen during the Covid pandemic when the government was able to transfer money directly to the bank accounts of crores of people.
He said that India is today among the leading countries in the realm of real time digital transactions, and that UPI has become the most preferred payment mechanism in India.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi in a tweet termed it a landmark in India-Singapore digital partnership.
Feb 21,2023: President Vladimir Putin today said Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the U.S. that limits the two sides’ strategic nuclear arsenals. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later dubbed the decision “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
Putin provided an assessment of Moscow’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine and the impact on Russia’s economy during his state of the nation address Tuesday.
Putin accused Ukraine and the West of provoking the conflict with the expansion of NATO and new European anti-rocket defense systems.
“They started the war, and we used the force in order to stop it,” Putin said according to a translation of the speech in Moscow.
Elsewhere, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is due to visit Moscow Tuesday. He may meet with Putin, according to Russian officials.
The visit follows a surprise trip by U.S. President Joe Biden to Kyiv Monday, when he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of the invasion’s one-year anniversary on Friday.
During the visit, Biden pledged to deliver a new package of U.S. aid to Ukraine worth $500 million. The funding includes artillery ammunition, anti-armour systems and air surveillance radars.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in a nuclear arms control treaty was “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
“The announcement by Russia that it’s suspending participation is deeply unfortunate and irresponsible,” Blinken told reporters in Athens.
“We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does. We’ll of course make sure that in any event, we are postured appropriately for the security of our own country and that of our allies,” he added.
Putin’s state of the nation address Tuesday proved that he is in “a completely different reality,” a senior aide to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said.
During his speech, Putin said Ukraine and the West had “started the war,” citing the expansion of NATO and new European anti-rocket defense systems as justification for Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
Feb 18,2023:Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has suffered more than 30,000 casualties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last February, with about 9,000 of those fighters killed in action, the United States has claimed.
The US estimates that 90 percent of Wagner Group fighters killed in Ukraine since December 2022 were convicts, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a regular briefing on Friday.
Half of the overall deaths among Wagner mercenaries have occurred since mid-December, as fighting in Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut intensified, according to US intelligence.
Kirby said the mercenary group had made incremental gains in and around Bakhmut over the last few days but those advances had taken many months to achieve and came at a “devastating cost that is not sustainable”.
“It is possible that they may end up being successful in Bakhmut but it will prove of no real worth to them because it is of no real strategic value,” he said, adding that Ukrainian forces would maintain strong defensive lines across the Donbas region.
Kirby told reporters that Wagner continued to rely heavily on convicts, who were sent to war without training or equipment, despite recent comments from Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin that he had stopped recruiting Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
Feb 15,2023: Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon resigned after serving eight years in the job.
Sturgeon became the leader of the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) in the wake of its 2014 independence referendum when the country voted 55 percent to remain as part of the United Kingdom.
“I will remain in office until my successor is elected,” Sturgeon said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Under her tenure, Sturgeon led her party to a resounding success at the 2015 UK election, winning 56 of 59 seats in Scotland and establishing it as Britain’s third-largest party, before she retained control over the devolved parliament at more recent elections.
She had recently become embroiled in a row over transgender policies after Scotland passed a Gender Recognition Reform Bill, making it easier for people to change their legal gender.
She was also a scathing critic of UK’s departure from the European Union – a move opposed by a majority of voters in Scotland – and said she wants a new referendum to be held before the end of 2023.
New Delhi, Feb 15,2023: In one of the biggest aviation deals, Tata Group-owned Air India on Tuesday announced orders for the purchase of 250 aircraft from Airbus and 220 from Boeing. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron in a video conference hailed the deal with Airbus, PM Modi later spoke with US President Joe Biden to applaud the agreement with Boeing, and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a statement praised the deal with Airbus.
Air India and Airbus have signed a contract for the supply of 250 aircraft, 210 single-aisle A320neos and 40 widebody A350s to Air India.
Boeing in a tweet said that Air India has ordered 190 737 MAXs, including 737-8 and 737-10, and 20 787-9 Dreamliners, and 10 777-9s, with the option for 70 more Boeing jets.
Prime Minister Modi participated in a video call with President of France Emmanuel Macron, Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons, N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman of the Board, Tata Sons, Campbell Wilson, CEO, Air India and Guillaume Faury, CEO Airbus on the occasion of the launch of a partnership between Air India and Airbus.
WASHINGTON, Feb 14,2023 :The U.S. military said on Monday it had recovered critical electronics from the suspected Chinese spy balloon downed by a U.S. fighter jet off South Carolina’s coast on Feb. 4, including key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.
“Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure,” the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement.
The Chinese balloon, which Beijing denies was a government spy vessel, spent a week flying over the United States and Canada before President Joe Biden ordered it shot down. The episode strained ties between Washington and Beijing, leading America’s top diplomat to postpone a trip to China.
Taipei, Taiwan,Feb 28,2023: At opposite ends of Southeast Asia, researchers Pornampai Narenpitak and Heri Kuswanto are both working on the same problem: Is it possible to mimic the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions to halt global warming?
Using computer modelling and analysis, Narenpitak and Kuswanto are separately studying whether shooting large quantities of sulphur dioxide into the earth’s stratosphere could have a similar effect on global temperatures as the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora in 1815.
The eruption, the most powerful in recorded history, spewed an estimated 150 cubic kilometres (150,000 gigalitres) of exploded rock and ash into the air, causing global temperatures to fall as much as 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in what became known as the “year without a summer”.
Stratospheric aerosol injection is among a number of nascent – and controversial – technologies in the field of solar geoengineering (Solar Radiation Management-SRM) that have been touted as potential solutions to mitigating the effects of climate change.
Other proposed strategies include brightening marine clouds to reflect the sun or breaking up cirrus clouds that capture heat.
SRM is largely untested in the real world.
But in Asia, where many countries are juggling the demands of trying to keep the lights on despite outdated power infrastructure and striving for carbon neutrality, the concept is at the centre of a growing body of academic discussion and research.
Narenpita and Kuswanto, who are studying the use of the technology in their respective home countries of Thailand and Indonesia, believe that SRM at the very least merits further study.
“There’s a lot that we do not understand about the climate system itself, let alone SRM,” Narenpitak, a researcher at the National Science and Technology Development Agency in Bangkok, told Al Jazeera.
“And when I say ‘we’, I think it means everyone, from every region in the world, because eventually, the impacts will look differently for different countries. And to assess the impacts, I think it’s best to have people who understand the context of each country to do the analysis. We can’t make any informed decisions if we do not know about these things.”
Take Indonesia.
Kuswanto’s team at the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology in Surabaya, East Java found that while SRM could have positive effects in some parts of the country such as Sumatra and Kalimantan, it would lead to temperature rises elsewhere.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t yet done any more studies about what is the cause of these different results in Indonesia, but of course to improve it, we have to look at the climate systems and we need to study it more,” Kuswanto told Al Jazeera.
The two scientists, whose work is funded by the Degrees Initiative, an NGO focused on furthering SRM research and discussion in developing countries with funding from San Francisco-based Open Philanthropy, are neutral on whether SRM should be used to offset the effects of climate change, but they do share a sentiment shared by many researchers: it is better to know how the technology works, just in case.
Both are also careful to say that SRM is not an alternative or substitute for cutting carbon emissions, but should be seen as more of a supplemental technology.
“Even after we reduce carbon emissions, it takes several years for the carbon that has already been emitted into the atmosphere to be removed – its warming effect is still there,” Narenpitak said.
“There’s a time lag between when we can significantly reduce carbon emissions and when we will see the temperature stop rising. In that sense, SRM may be able to bring down the temperature.”
Climate scientists say that the world must keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C (2.7F) to avoid some of the worst projected effects of climate change. Achieving that goal, however, appears to be increasingly unlikely.
In October, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change, warned that countries’ decarbonisation efforts were still “nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required” to meet the 1.5C target.
Whether SRM should even be considered as a solution is still up for debate. The technology was absent from the UN Environment Programme’s 2022 Emissions Gap Report, which included different strategies for climate mitigation.
Much of the major funding for SRM has been concentrated in the United States after a five-year research project by China’s Beijing Normal University, Zhejiang University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences came to an end in 2019, although researchers concluded China should keep pushing towards a global agreement on SRM.
This trend is set to continue after the US 2022 Appropriations Act authorised funding for a five-year project by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to examine how to study SRM on a national scale – setting down goals, concerns, funding needs and which agencies would actually oversee this work.
Testing SRM beyond computer modelling, however, is deeply controversial because of the unknown effects and unpredictability of shooting chemicals into the stratosphere.
Since SRM involves shooting chemicals into the atmosphere 20-30km (12.4-18.6 miles) above the earth’s surface, the deployment of the technology by one country could affect weather patterns in other parts of the world.
Govindasamy Bala, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, found in experiments using computer models that the effects of aerosol injections can vary depending on the latitude at which the injections are carried out.
One climate model predicted, for example, different effects on monsoon rains depending on the hemisphere: aerosols injected at 15 degrees north reduced monsoon rain in the Northern Hemisphere and increased rainfall in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.
Other research has shown different effects on hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean compared with typhoons and cyclones elsewhere.
“I think the only conclusion we have right now is if we do stratospheric aerosol injection, it has the ability to reduce global warming. We know it will work, but it will also have side effects and unequal impacts,” Bala told Al Jazeera.
“If we can do this, it means humans can control the climate, right? We have the ability to control climate but the more difficult question is who will decide?”
Such concerns were among the reasons Sweden’s Space Agency in 2021 cancelled a joint project with Harvard University to carry out a landmark technical test of SRM in the Arctic Circle using a high-altitude balloon following public outcry, most notably from Indigenous Saami people living in the region.
The SCoPEx project had been intended as a dry run for navigating a 600kg (1,323 pounds) payload at more than twice the height of a commercial aircraft.
Some climate activists have also raised concerns about moral hazard, arguing the technology could weaken countries’ commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions and give companies licence to keep polluting.
Meanwhile, there are outstanding questions about how the technology would be regulated given the global implications of unilateral action, especially by large countries such as the United States and China.
“The benefits itself [of SRM] can be questioned in the sense that, do we need this when we have other means like mitigation, which is something that we need to push for at this stage,” Dhanasree Jayaram, a research fellow at Earth System Governance and assistant professor at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education’s Centre for Climate Studies in India, told Al Jazeera.
“Does it actually sideline, for instance, research investments and other resources that need to actually go into mitigation? Is this a distraction from the real requirements of climate governance?”
SRM raises geopolitical questions, as well, Jayaram said, as developing countries struggle with their own energy transitions. They could also feel pressure to join the SRM “bandwagon” to ensure they can still have a seat at the table, she said.
While such questions preoccupy academia, some of SRM’s most enthusiastic champions have emerged in Silicon Valley.
Make Sunsets, a two-person team based between the US and Mexico, is preparing to carry out micro SRM experiments with Amazon-bought weather balloons, helium and small amounts of sulphur dioxide. Their long-term goal is to use the balloons to sell cooling credits to private companies.
“Our theory is basically that companies can only meet their net [carbon] zero goals if they resort to things like our measure, because it’s so much more cost-effective,” Make Sunsets founder Luke Iseman told Al Jazeera.
“We can issue a whole lot of these cooling credits, and we don’t wait around for 20 years to see if these trees grow, we actually put this up into the air and can see an impact within several years.”
Make Sunsets has hit a number of snags since its launch in October 2022.
Only a handful of individuals have bought credits so far, according to Iseman.
More seriously, flights were grounded in Mexico after the government there banned the company from carrying out experiments following a number of balloon launches on the Baja Peninsula, citing potential environmental damage.
Last week, Make Sunsets announced it had carried out the launches of three balloons containing small amounts of sulfur dioxides in the US state of Nevada.
SRM researchers such as John Moore, however, argue that the world needs to get a grasp of how the technology could work as soon as possible, rather than finding out later during a global emergency.
“What people tend to be worried about is that people will, in a sense, panic and go for the geoengineering option, suddenly because some terrible catastrophe due to climate change is happening somewhere. And then people try to launch balloons or spray aerosols into the stratosphere,” Moore, a research professor at the University of Lapland’s Arctic Center in Finland and leader of China’s five-year SRM project, told Al Jazeera.
This is particularly true, Moore said, for the countries that are feeling the harshest effects of climate change despite contributing historically fewer greenhouse gases.
“I know there are some people that are quite high profile that say doing any research on solar geoengineering is bad because of this moral hazard argument, and I completely disagree with that,” he said.
“Fundamentally, I think that we actually have a duty to people in the developing world, that have not contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, who are already suffering disproportionate damage because of climate change impacts.”
Source: Al Jazeera
Feb 20,2023:United Nations members will gather in New York City in the United States on Monday to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world’s marine biodiversity.
Nearly two-thirds of the ocean lies outside national boundaries on the high seas, where fragmented and unevenly enforced rules seek to minimise human impacts.
The goal of the UN meetings, which will start on Monday and run through March 3, is to produce a unified agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of those vast marine ecosystems. The talks, formally called the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, resume negotiations suspended last year without agreement on a final treaty.
“The ocean is the life support system of our planet,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University.
“For the longest time, we did not feel we had a large impact on the high seas. But that notion has changed with expansion of deep-sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, climate change,” and other human disturbances, he said.
The UN talks will focus on key questions. How should the boundaries of marine protected areas be drawn, and by whom? How should institutions assess the environmental impacts of commercial activities such as shipping and mining? And who has the power to enforce rules?
“This is our largest global commons,” said Nichola Clark, an oceans expert who is following the negotiations for the non-partisan Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. “We are optimistic that this upcoming round of negotiations will be the one to get a treaty over the finish line.”
The aim of the talks is not to actually designate marine protected areas, but to establish a mechanism for doing so.
“The goal is to set up a new body that would accept submissions for specific marine protected areas,” Clark said.
Marine biologist Simon Ingram of the University of Plymouth in England said there is an urgent need for an accord.
“It’s a really pressing time for this – especially when you have things like deep-sea mining that could be a real threat to biodiversity before we’ve even been able to survey and understand what lives on the ocean floor,” Ingram said.
Experts say a global oceans treaty is needed to actually enforce the UN Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30 percent of the planet’s oceans, as well as its land, for conservation.
“We need a legally binding framework that can enable countries to work together to actually achieve these goals they’ve agreed to,” said Jessica Battle, an expert on oceans governance at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
US Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Monica Medina said the treaty was a priority for her country.
“This agreement seeks to create, for the first time, a coordinated approach to establishing marine protected areas on the high seas,” she said. “It’s time to finish the job.”
Officials, environmentalists and representatives of global industries that depend on the sea are also watching negotiations closely.
Gemma Nelson, a lawyer from Samoa who is currently an Ocean Voices fellow at the University of Edinburgh, said that small Pacific and Caribbean island countries are “especially vulnerable to global ocean issues”, such as pollution and climate change, which they generally do not cause or have the resources to easily address.
“Getting the traditional knowledge of local people and communities recognised as valid” is also essential to protect both ecosystems and the ways of life of Indigenous groups, she said.
With nearly half the planet’s surface covered by high seas, the talks are of great importance, said Gladys Martinez de Lemos, executive director of the non-profit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, which focuses on environmental issues across Latin America.
“The treaty should be strong and ambitious, having the authority to establish high and fully protected areas in the high seas,” she said. “Half of the world is at stake these weeks at the United Nations.”
Feb 15,2023:Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressed support for Iran during a visit to China by President Ebrahim Raisi as Tehran tries to expand relations with Beijing and Moscow to offset Western sanctions over its nuclear development.
“China supports Iran in safeguarding national sovereignty” and “resisting unilateralism and bullying,” Xi said in a statement carried by Chinese state TV on its website on Tuesday.
His comments came as China hosted Raisi on his first state visit to the Asian economic giant and the first by an Iranian president in 20 years.
Xi called for a proper resolution to the Iran nuclear issue as he expressed Beijing’s “solidarity” with Iran amid global uncertainty.
China will continue to “participate constructively” in talks to resume negotiations on implementing the Iran nuclear agreement, Xi told Raisi in talks in Beijing.
A 2015 nuclear agreement limited Iran’s uranium enrichment programme to make it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear arms in return for lifting international sanctions. Iran says it was further developing nuclear energy for peaceful reasons.
But in 2018, then-United States President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the deal, saying it had not done enough to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities, and reimposed sanctions.
China has criticised Washington for withdrawing from the deal and insists the US should make the first move in reviving the pact.
In September, the US imposed new sanctions on companies involved in Iran’s oil exports, including five based in China. Washington said it would continue enforcing sanctions on Iran’s oil and petrochemical sales so long as Tehran continues to accelerate its nuclear programme.
Feb 23,2023:In a year, thousands of Ukrainian civilians and troops on both sides have been killed in Russia’s war, and tensions between Moscow and the West have risen to an all-time high.
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the invasion he ordered on February 24, 2022, as his United States counterpart Joe Biden was in Poland, rallying support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bemoaned a Russian attack in Kherson, carried out as Putin made his fiery state of the nation speech.
Friday marks the first anniversary of the war the world had feared. Peace seems a distant prospect.
A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, the repercussions continue to reverberate around the world. Not only has the war in Ukraine set off a geopolitical realignment, but it has caused economic hardship far from the epicenter of the fighting.
The Feb. 24, 2022, invasion has touched off a refugee crisis, as Ukrainians flee the conflict in their homeland and many Russian men seek to avoid conscription. Meanwhile, it has spurred a process toward expanding NATO, with Finland and Sweden pursuing membership after decades of official neutrality.
Ukraine and Russia are key exporters of wheat, barley, corn and cooking oil, particularly to African and Middle Eastern countries. Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal last summer to allow Ukrainian grain to pass through Black Sea ports, but Russia is reportedly still hindering shipments. Russia is also a major producer of fertilizer and petroleum. Disruptions to the flow of these goods are compounding other supply chain and climate challenges, driving up food and gas prices and causing shortages in places such as Chad, Tunisia and Sri Lanka.
More than 8 million refugees have fled Ukraine in what the World Health Organization describes as “the largest movement of people in the European Region since the Second World War.” Many have been involuntarily relocated by Russia. Others have put a strain on resources, as well as schools and hospitals, in Poland and Germany.
A 21st century war in Europe — led by a nuclear power — is pushing the world toward realignment. It has rattled NATO, the European Union and the U.N., forcing countries to take sides in ways that have led to escalating tensions and diplomatic shifts. For example, Turkey, despite being a NATO member, has increased trade with Russia since the start of the war and has thrown up objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance.
Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and fuel. European countries have banned the Russian oil, gas and diesel they relied on, which initially caused a steep spike in prices. However, moves by European nations to lock in alternative sources, along with conservation efforts and a mild winter, have largely alleviated those price hikes. Now prices have returned to pre-invasion levels.
ussia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Its attack on Ukraine has notably reenergized NATO, with the U.S. and other member states funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment into Ukraine. Early weapons deliveries included anti-tank rockets such as the U.S.-made Javelin. In the latest moves, the U.S., Germany and Britain have promised to provide state-of-the-art tanks.
Feb 25,2023:The number of people killed by the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria earlier this month has now passed 50,000, according to the latest figures from both countries.
In Turkey alone, 44,218 people died as a result of the earthquakes, the country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said on Friday, while the latest announced death toll in Syria was 5,914.
The first earthquake on February 6 that hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria measured a magnitude of 7.7 and a second, a little later, measured 7.6. The region has been rocked by more than 9,000 aftershocks since, according to the AFAD.
Nearly 240,000 rescue workers, including volunteers, continue to work in the 11 quake-hit provinces in Turkey. Some of the areas affected by the quakes were initially difficult to access but recovery efforts continue and casualty numbers are rising as they progress.
There have been no reports of survivors being rescued in recent days.
Nearly 530,000 people have been evacuated from the disaster area in Turkey alone and the Turkish government has said that 173,000 buildings have so far been recorded as collapsed or severely damaged, with more than 1.9 million people taking refuge in temporary shelters or hotels and public facilities.
Some 20 million people in Turkey have been affected by the quake, while the United Nations estimates 8.8 million people have been affected in Syria. Less information has come from Syria where many people were already living in precarious conditions after years of civil war.
Many survivors have left the parts of southern Turkey hit by the quake or have been settled in tents, container homes and other government-sponsored accommodation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to rebuild homes within a year, although experts have said the authorities should put safety before speed.
Some buildings that were meant to withstand tremors crumbled in the latest earthquakes.
New York [US], February 24,2023:India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ruchira Kamboj, on Thursday said India remains committed to multilateralism while reiterating calls for dialogue and diplomacy. She made the statement after India abstained from voting on a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on the need to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.
“India remains steadfastly committed to multilateralism and upholds the principles of the UN Charter. We will always call for dialogue and diplomacy as the only viable way out. While we take note of the stated objective of today’s Resolution, given its inherent limitations in reaching our desired goal of securing lasting peace, we are constrained to abstain,” Kamboj said.
Kamboj added that India’s approach to the Ukraine conflict will continue to be people-centric. She stated that India continues to provide both humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and economic support to neighbours in the Global South.
She noted that reports from the ground reveal a complex scenario, with the conflict between the two nations intensifying on several fronts. Notably, 141 nations voted in favour of the resolution, while 32, including China and India, abstained, and seven voted against it at the UNGA.