Northern Britain and parts of France and Germany were battered Sunday and Monday by Franklin — the third major storm to strike the region in less than a week. The severe weather has flooded roads, knocked out power and left at least 14 people dead.
Storm Franklin brought heavy rains and high winds that disrupted travel and prompted more than 140 flood warnings across England and Wales as of Monday.
The storm moved through Northern Ireland and northern Britain before moving on to France, where a couple in their 70s died Sunday after their car was swept into the English Channel near a small town in Normandy.
Franklin struck even as crews were attempting to clear fallen trees and restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes hit by storms Dudley and Eunice last week.
Authorities in England issued more than 300 flood warnings and alerts, while insurers in Germany and the Netherlands estimated the damage from those storms to be at more than $1.7 billion. The German Aerospace Center said the storms would likely result in widespread damage to Europe’s already weakened forests.
The AccuWeather news service reports this is the first time three such storms have struck Britain and northern Europe in less than a week since Britain’s Meteorological Office began naming storms in 2015.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
your ad hereСаакашвілі поскаржився, що до нього вже кілька місяців не пускають лікаря, а також неврологів і невропатологів зі США та Європи, які хотіли особисто взяти участь у лікуванні експрезидента
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Наприкінці засідання Путін заявив, що «рішення буде ухвалене сьогодні»
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«Ми не можемо передбачити точного часу чи дати, але це точно виглядає так, наче росіяни просуваються»
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So, the tortuous suspense continues as we wait to see if European history is going to be wrenched off its current post-Cold War axis and thrust into an unforeseen direction.
On the eve of World War I, then British foreign minister Earl Grey somberly told a hushed House of Commons: “Last week I stated that we were working for peace not only for this country, but to preserve the peace of Europe. Today, events move so rapidly that it is exceedingly difficult to state with technical accuracy, the actual state of affairs.”
What is the actual state of affairs now?
The people I spoke with in Kyiv do not seem certain.
Sunday was an emotional roller-coaster of a day — like so many preceding. We have gone up and down on a stomach-churning journey of just a few hours.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized again that all signs suggest Russia is on the brink of invading Ukraine, but he vowed to pursue diplomacy until the moment the tanks roll and planes fire to try and avert a full-blown conflict.
“Everything we are seeing suggests that this is dead serious, that we are on the brink of an invasion. We will do everything we can to try to prevent it before it happens,” he said.
His bleak view seemed validated when Belarus announced that the large-scale military drills its forces have been conducting with Russia would be extended past their deadline of Sunday, adding to worries that Kremlin war planners indeed may have their sights on Kyiv itself, if the guns of February roar.
Then worries were moderately allayed when the Élysée Palace announced, after nearly two hours of phone talks between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, that the pair had agreed to work toward a diplomatic solution “in coming days and coming weeks.” And French officials said the two are endeavoring to secure a cease-fire in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow forces have intensified shelling to a level not seen since 2015 and 2016 say independent monitors.
The Kremlin’s take on the Macron-Putin talks was much more circumspect and enigmatic though, continuing Russia’s tactic of keeping everyone guessing and on tenterhooks. And by the end of Sunday, the White House announced President Joe Biden was ready to hold a summit with his Russian counterpart — as long as Russia had not invaded before the proposed meeting.
So back full circle then to the overarching question — is Russia going to invade?
The high-stakes, back-and-forth geopolitical drama is starting to take its toll on Ukrainian friends. The international media has focused on the resilience of Ukrainians and their calmness while under the gun. Children go reluctantly to school; the morning commute remains busy.
Some of the calmness is public-facing defiance; and anyway what are people meant to do, they have no influence to shape events.
But more Ukrainian friends privately confide anxiety is getting to them, and even the most reluctant are starting to think through practical wartime contingency plans. They are also sensibly drawing more cash out from their bank accounts and stocking up on durable food and bottles of water.
The shift in some ways came last week, an accumulation of scares and alarms. An edge has started to creep into voices and there are more mentions of “what ifs.” I go and visit old friends of mine. I nearly stumbled over the stacks of bottled water piled high in the hallway of their apartment right in the center of Kyiv.
They have seen history unfold before. They watched from their apartment for weeks the drama unfolding below them in 2013 and 2014 when a mass uprising toppled Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych in the revolution of dignity, an upset the Russian leader blames on the West and doesn’t accept was an expression of the popular will.
My friends breathed in the acrid fumes of the fires below from burning tires and from buildings aflame, and they heard the crack of sniper bullets and saw protesters stumble and fall when struck almost eight years ago to the day. Now they feel they’re on the edge again of another vertiginous precipice.
My friends’ eldest son — a finance student — was thrilled with the speech Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy delivered Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in which he urged Western powers to not wait to impose a fresh wave of crippling sanctions on Russia in a bid to prevent war, and not implement them after the event has taken place.
The eighteen-year-old tells me that new sanctions should be imposed “every day in stages, to prevent the Russian ruble regaining some of its value,” underlining to ordinary Russians how painful the economic fallout will be from war for them. “It is important to impose sanctions every day in stages over five days and force ruble rate to dollar to at least 120. Products and goods will either disappear or rise in price catastrophically, which will cause internal non-acceptance of war,” he confidently announces.
I heard one American commentator saying the other day Ukrainians are not paying that much attention to reports on the dizzying events. That is not my impression — people are constantly sharing the latest snippet, meme, or video on messaging Apps, from WhatsApp to Facebook, Telegram to Signal. Sometimes with trepidation, and sometimes ridicule.
Mockery greeted a disinformation released a couple of days ago from Moscow’s proxies in the Donbas modeled on a graphic Britain’s Ministry of Defense put out full of arrows showing possible Russian invasion routes. The proxies announced they had secured the secret documents of the Ukrainian military outlining plans to invade Donetsk and Luhansk, the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian breakaways in eastern Ukraine. It too was full of dramatic arrows. But there was one eye-opening slip-up — the plans were in Russian, not Ukrainian!
At dinner, I glance over Kyiv’s skyline from a rooftop restaurant. I can see the golden domes of St. Michael’s Monastery reflected in the lights of nearby buildings. Maidan’s anti-Yanukovych protesters took refuge from the bone-crunching batons of the Berkut riot police there.
Nearby is the bell tower of Saint Sophia Cathedral. I can spy the figurine of Berehynia, the Slavic female spirit and hearth mother, holding a guelder rose branch atop the 61-meter monument in the middle of Independence Square. And there is the towering Ukrayina Hotel, from where Yanukovych’s snipers fired on protesters. It seems inconceivable that this cityscape could look so very different if war does break out.
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Тему позачергового засідання Ради безпеки, а також переговорів речник Путіна Дмитро Пєсков не уточнив
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US has warned of an imminent Russian invasion, saying Moscow would face ‘severe consequences’
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За даними МНС Росії, наразі приїхали понад 61 тисяча людей з ОРДЛО
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Дмитро Кулеба візьме участь у спільному сніданку зі своїми колегами із Європейського союзу
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На Іграх у Пекіні було розіграно 109 комплектів медалей у 15 дисциплінах з семи видів спорту
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Байден, ймовірно, зустрінеться з Путіним після переговорів 24 лютого між держсекретарем Ентоні Блінкеном та міністром закордонних справ Росії Сергієм Лавровим
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Макрон і Путін обговорили останню ескалацію на Донбасі, яка розпочалася 17 лютого
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Як зазначив Борис Джонсон, будь-який конфлікт може бути «кривавим і затяжним», а російський президент Путін, за словами Джонсона, просто не усвідомлює масштабу катастрофи
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Russia on Sunday extended its military drills in Belarus, along Ukraine’s northern border, after two days of sustained shelling in eastern Ukraine between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces.
The Russian exercises with Belarusian forces had been scheduled to end Sunday. They were extended amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s show of force along the Ukrainian border with the massing of some 150,000 troops, accompanied by naval exercises in the Black Sea to the south of Ukraine.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the sharp increase in Russian troop deployments in recent weeks, cyberattacks on the Ukrainian defense ministry and major banks last week and now the new outbreak in fighting in eastern Ukraine that killed two Ukrainian soldiers, signal that Moscow is “following its playbook” ahead of large-scale warfare.
“Everything leading up to the invasion is already taking place,” Blinken said.
The separatists in eastern Ukraine have claimed that Kyiv’s forces are planning an attack there, which Ukraine denies.
At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy questioned why the United States and its Western allies, who have vowed to impose swift and tough economic sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, are not already doing so.
Blinken said, “As soon as you impose them, you lose the deterrence” to try to prevent an invasion, and if the West were to announce specific sanctions it would impose, Russia “could plan against them.”
The top U.S. diplomat said, however, “Until the tanks are moving” and missiles launched, Western leaders will “try to do everything to reverse” Putin’s mind, “to get him off the course he’s decided.”
Asked whether Putin might be bluffing an invasion with his military buildup, Blinken said, “There’s always a chance.” But Blinken added, “He’s following the script to the letter on the brink of an invasion.”
Still, Blinken said he would meet with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Europe on Thursday for more negotiations, on condition that Moscow has not launched an invasion before then.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” show, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said, “There [are] no such plans” for an invasion.
He said Russia has “our legitimate right to have our troops where we want on Russian territory.”
Antonov said Russia has withdrawn some troops from near Ukraine “and nobody even said to us, ‘thank you.’” The West says its monitoring of the terrain near Ukraine shows that Russia has not begun to send its troops back to their bases.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who said Friday he is “convinced” Putin plans to invade, is meeting Sunday with his National Security Council to discuss the latest developments.
The U.S. and its NATO allies fear that the Russian forces in Belarus could be deployed in an attack southward on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, while tens of thousands more troops could invade from the east and south into Ukraine.
Despite their belief that Putin has his mind made up to invade, Biden and other Western leaders are holding out hope for a settlement to the crisis, 11th hour diplomacy to avert the first massive warfare in Europe since the end of World War II.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said Sunday, “The big question remains: Does the Kremlin want dialogue?”
“We cannot forever offer an olive branch while Russia conducts missile tests and continues to amass troops,” Michel said at the Munich Security Conference. “One thing is certain: if there is further military aggression, we will react with massive (economic) sanctions.”
Some of the Western allies, including the U.S., have shipped arms to Ukraine, but none of its leaders is planning to deploy troops to fight alongside Ukrainian forces in the event of an invasion.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday the United Kingdom will use the “toughest possible” economic sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine.
Johnson told the BBC the sanctions would not only target Putin and his associates, “but also all companies and organizations with strategic importance to Russia.”
The British leader said, “We are going to stop Russian companies raising money on U.K. markets, and we are even with our American friends going to stop them trading in pounds and dollars.”
French President Emmanuel Macron had a telephone conversation with Putin Sunday, with Macron’s office saying afterward that the two leaders agreed on the need to find a diplomatic solution.
The two countries’ foreign ministers will meet in the coming days to work on a possible summit involving Russia, Ukraine and allies to establish a new security order in Europe.
Western allies say they are willing to discuss their missile positioning and military exercises in Europe but have balked at Putin’s demand to rule out possible NATO membership for Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
“We need to stop Putin because he will not stop at Ukraine,” Liz Truss, Britain’s foreign secretary, said in an interview Sunday in The Daily Mail about Putin’s apparently imminent invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin has said all this publicly, that he wants to create the Greater Russia, that he wants to go back to the situation as it was before where Russia had control over huge swaths of eastern Europe.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union’s executive commission, said, “The Kremlin’s dangerous thinking, which comes straight out of a dark past, may cost Russia a prosperous future.”
She said if Russia invades Ukraine, Moscow would have limited access to financial markets and tech goods, according to the sanctions package being prepared.
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