Daily: 05/12/2022

Рада з прав людини ООН проголосувала за розслідування ймовірних злочинів військ РФ в Україні

«За» проголосували 33 члени, а дві країни – Китай та Еритрея – «проти»

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Рада оновила ветований Зеленським законопроєкт про конфіскацію російських активів

За документ з пропозиціями президента проголосували 308 народних депутатів

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У Латвії дозволили зносити радянські памʼятники. Росія хоче «покарати» її за це

У Росії уже заявили, що Латвію «необхідно напоумити», вживши вкрай жорсткі заходи економічного характеру

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Finland’s Leaders Support Joining NATO

Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin Thursday expressed their approval for joining NATO, a move that would complete a major policy shift for the country in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security. As a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defense alliance,” they said in a joint statement. “Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay. We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days.”

The leaders said they came to their decision after allowing time for Finland’s Parliament and the public to consider the matter, and to consult with NATO and neighboring Sweden. Officials in Sweden are expected to consider their own possible NATO application in the coming days.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday if Finland does apply for membership, “they would be warmly welcomed into NATO and the accession process would be smooth and swift.” 

“Finland is one of NATO’s closest partners, a mature democracy, a member of the European Union, and an important contributor to Euro-Atlantic security,” Stoltenberg said. 

Russia has warned against NATO expansion, and said Finland and Sweden joining would bring “serious military and political consequences.” 

“The expansion of NATO and the approach of the alliance to our borders does not make the world and our continent more stable and secure,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that he praised Finland’s decision in a phone call with Niinisto.

 

The fight for Ukraine played out beyond the battlefields on Wednesday, with Kyiv cutting off one Russian natural gas pipeline that supplies European homes and industry, while a Moscow-installed official in southern Ukraine said the Kremlin should annex Kherson after Russian troops took control.

Ukraine’s natural gas pipeline operator said it was stopping Russian shipments through a hub in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists because of interference from enemy forces, including the apparent siphoning of gas.

About one-third of Russian gas headed to Western Europe passes through Ukraine, although one analyst said the immediate effect might be limited since much of it can be redirected through another pipeline. Russia’s giant state-owned Gazprom said gas flowing to Europe through Ukraine was down 25% from the day before.

The European Union, as part of its announced effort to punish Russia for its 11-week invasion of Ukraine, is looking to end its considerable reliance on Russian energy to heat homes and fuel industries.

It has, however, encountered some opposition from within its 27-member bloc of nations, especially from Hungary, which says its economy would sustain a major hit if its supply of Russian energy were cut off.

In Brussels, negotiations with Hungary over a ban on Russian energy purchases ended Wednesday for the moment. If not resolved, it would constitute a major split among NATO allies trying to impose unified Western sanctions against Russia and President Vladimir Putin.    

Meanwhile, Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration installed by Moscow, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, “The city of Kherson is Russia.”

He asked that Putin declare Kherson a “proper region” of Russia, much as Moscow did in 2014 in seizing Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula and declaring Luhansk and Donetsk as independent entities shortly before invading Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Peskov said that it would be “up to the residents of the Kherson region” to make such a request, and to make sure there is an “absolutely clear” legal basis for the action.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak derided the notion of its annexation, tweeting: “The invaders may ask to join even Mars or Jupiter. The Ukrainian army will liberate Kherson, no matter what games with words they play.”

Kherson is a Black Sea port with a population of about 300,000 and provides access to fresh water for neighboring Crimea. Russian forces captured it early in the war.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Press and Reuters.

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Biden Pledges Help to US Farmers to Offset Ukraine Crop Crisis

Calling US farms the ‘breadbasket of democracy,’ president vows to do more to offset food supply issues amid Russian invasion

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США обмежили передачу Україні розвідданих про командирів РФ – Washington Post

Заборона стосується інформації, яка б могла допомогти українським військовим ліквідувати представників вищого російського командування.

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У Кремлі назвали загрозою для Росії планований вступ Фінляндії до НАТО

«Чергове розширення НАТО не робить наш континент стабільнішим і безпечнішим», – заявили в Кремлі

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Latest Developments in Ukraine: May 12

For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

5 a.m.: Beginning in June, YouTube will add auto translations to Ukrainian video, The Washington Post reports.

The head of youTube’s parent company, Google, said the move is “part of our larger effort to increase access to accurate information about the war.”

4:08 a.m.: Al Jazeera reports that the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv is cutting its “sister city” ties with a host of Russian cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.

3:33 a.m.: The Associated Press has the story of a 14-year-old Ukrainian boy who says Russian soldiers shot and killed his father and tried to kill him as well. His story comes out amid an investigation into possible war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine.

3:17 a.m.: Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin expressed their approval for joining NATO, a move that would complete a major policy shift for the country in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security. As a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defense alliance,” they said in a joint statement. “Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay. We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days.

3:15 a.m.: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised Germany’s response to the war with Russia during his visit to Berlin on Thursday, saying that the country had now taken a leading role following tensions in Berlin-Kyiv relations, Reuters reported.

In an interview with German broadcaster ARD, Kuleba said there had been positive changes, after Germany decided to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine and back a proposed EU embargo on Russian oil following pressure from its allies.

During the top Ukrainian diplomat’s visit, which will also include an appearance at the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting on the German Baltic Sea coast, Kuleba said he plans to lobby for Ukrainian EU membership, as well as further sanctions on Russia and a response to food scarcity threatened by the conflict, Reuters said.

2:48 a.m.: The latest intelligence update from the U.K.’s defense ministry says Ukrainian forces have recaptured several towns north of Kharkiv.

“Russia’s prioritisation of operations in the Donbas has left elements deployed in the Kharkiv Oblast vulnerable to the mobile, and highly motivated, Ukrainian counter-attacking force,” the update notes.

Russia’s next move, the update predicts, will be to target the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River in an attempt to protect the bulk of Russia’s troops and its supply routes.

1:56 a.m.: The governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region says Russia shelled the region 26 times Wednesday, including nine times in the city of Severdonetsk, Al Jazeera reports.

1:23 a.m.: Reuters reports that Siemens will leave Russia because of the conflict in Ukraine.

“We join the international community in condemning the war in Ukraine and are focused on supporting our people and providing humanitarian aid,” the company wrote on its website. “Siemens will exit the Russian market as a result of the Ukraine war. The company has started proceedings to wind down its industrial operations and all industrial business activities.”

On its website, Siemens AG describes itself as a technology company focused on “industry, infrastructure, transport, and health care.” In September 2021 it had some 303,000 employees worldwide. It has about 3,000 people in Russia, Reuters says.

1:03 a.m.: A Ukrainian serviceman at the besieged steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, turned to Twitter to ask Elon Musk for help, the BBC reports.

“People say you come from another planet to teach people to believe in the impossible,” Serhiy Volyna tweeted. “Our planets are next to each other, as I live where it is nearly impossible to survive. Help us get out of Azovstal to a mediating country. If not you, then who?”

12:30 a.m.: Japan and the European Union demanded Russia immediately end its invasion of Ukraine and said they support “further expanding sanctions against Putin’s Russia.”

In a joint statement following talks among Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, EU Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU and Japan said they would coordinate on political, financial and humanitarian support for Ukraine. They also pledged to mitigate other effects of the conflict, including working to stabilize world energy markets.

12:02 a.m.: Canada plans to charter three flights to bring Ukrainian refugees from Poland to Canada, The Washington Post reports.

The flights will be May 23, to Winnipeg, Manitoba; May 29 to Montreal and June 2 to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

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‘This Tears My Soul Apart’: A Ukrainian Boy and a Killing

As he listened to his father die, the boy lay still on the asphalt. His elbow burned where a bullet had pierced him. His thumb stung from being grazed.

Another killing was in progress on a lonely street in Bucha, the community on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, where bodies of civilians are still being discovered weeks after Russian soldiers withdrew. Many have been shot in the head.

Fourteen-year-old Yura Nechyporenko was about to become one of them.

Survivors have described soldiers firing guns near their feet or threatening them with grenades, only to be drawn away by a cooler-headed colleague. But there was no one around to restrain the Russian soldier that day in March when Yura and his father, 47-year-old Ruslan, were biking down a tree-lined street.

They were on their way to visit vulnerable neighbors sheltering in basements and homes without electricity or running water. Their bikes were tied with white fabric, in a sign they traveled in peace.

When the solider stepped from a dirt path to challenge them, Yura and his father immediately stopped and raised their hands.

“What are you doing?” the soldier asked. He didn’t give Yura’s father time to answer.

The boy heard two gunshots. His father fell, mouth open, already bleeding.

A shot hit Yura’s hand, and he fell, too. Another shot struck his elbow. He closed his eyes.

A final shot was fired.

Yura’s extraordinary account of an attempted killing by Russian soldiers stands out as international justice experts descend on Bucha as a center of the horrors and possible war crimes in Ukraine. In Bucha alone, 31 children under the age of 18 were killed and 19 wounded, according to local authorities.

“All children were killed or injured deliberately, since the Russian soldiers deliberately shot at evacuating cars that had the signs ‘CHILDREN’ and white fabric tied to them, and they deliberately shot at the homes of civilians,” the chief prosecutor of the Bucha region, Ruslan Kravchenko, told The Associated Press.

The U.N. human rights office says at least 202 children across Ukraine have been killed in Russia’s invasion, and believes the real number to be considerably higher. The Ukrainian government’s count is 217 children killed and over 390 wounded.

The AP and Frontline, drawing from a variety of sources, have independently documented 18 attacks where children were killed that likely meet the definition of a war crime. The number of child victims in the attacks is unknown, and the accounting represents just a fraction of potential war crimes.

Yura is a teenager growing into himself, spindly and spotted, with dark circles pressed under his eyes. As he lies on the floor of his family’s home to demonstrate what happened, he shows the healing holes in his elbow.

His mother, Alla, takes deep breaths to calm herself. Yura, sitting up, wraps an arm around her, then puts his head on her shoulder.

On that awful day, Yura survived the attempted killing by the awkward grace of that teenage constant, his gray hoodie. It was shot instead of him, and he felt it move.

Yura lay on the street for minutes afterward, waiting for the soldier to walk away.

Then Yura ran.

When he finally arrived home, his family called the police. The police told the family that officers didn’t know what to do with the case, according to the boy’s uncle, Andriy. A prosecutor’s report describes the killing and attempted killing in a few bare sentences. Kravchenko told the AP that they continue to work on Yura’s case.

In March, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that investigations into crimes against children in particular will benefit from a new trust fund. Children account for half or more of those affected by conflict, but are often labeled as too vulnerable to testify or as having inaccurate memories, according to Veronique Aubert, the special adviser on crimes involving children to the ICC prosecutor.

Yura’s case is unusual.

“Prosecutors may want to take up this case because the victim is still alive and can potentially testify,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and former special counsel for the Department of Defense. “It may be difficult if not impossible for a defendant to claim they were somehow justified in trying to kill a child.”

Yura’s family retrieved his father’s body the next day. Yura’s grandmother pleaded with Russian soldiers to let her approach.

With their guns cocked, they let her walk ahead of them. Another soldier in the distance shouted, “Don’s come here or we’ll kill you.” But he didn’t fire.

They brought Yura’s father home in a wheelbarrow and buried him in the yard, in one of many makeshift graves hurriedly dug during the monthlong Russian occupation.

Yura and his family left Bucha the next day along a rare evacuation corridor. They had to pass the scene of the shooting. Yura wore a white sling around his arm, and Russian soldiers asked what had happened.

“I was shot by a Russian soldier,” the boy replied.

At that, his mother was terrified. “I felt everything collapse inside me,” she recalled. “I thought they would shoot us all.”

But the soldiers let them pass. The family left town that day.

The gray hoodie, bloodied at the elbow and with the top seam sliced, is now the centerpiece of the family’s search for justice. After the Russians left, they returned to Bucha and reburied Yura’s father.

Yura’s mother is thinking of sending the boy overseas for the sake of his mental health. She needs some distance, too.

“I’m never alone physically, but it’s possible to be alone mentally,” she said, near tears. “I try to avoid this.”

She hopes the courts will work, and believes no one should go through what her son did. Yura fears they already have.

“It’s not only me who wants justice,” he said. “People in Ukraine are still possibly being tortured and killed even now.”

On April 25, the family again gathered at the grave to mark 40 days after Ruslan’s death, by local custom. Yura quietly lit a candle and placed it on the grave. Then he pulled a hoodie, a black one, over his head to block the chill.

The boy’s uncle, Andriy, fears the trauma of surviving death will catch up with Yuras.

“This tears my soul apart,” said Andriy, in tears. “What we see is suffering after suffering.”

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Finland Veterans Who Fought 1939 Russian Invasion Support NATO Membership   

Finland and Sweden are expected to apply for NATO membership in the coming days, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Taipalsaari, close to the border, Russia’s actions have particular historical resonance in Finland.

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Iran Detains Two Europeans for Fomenting ‘Social Disorder, State TV Says

Iran’s intelligence ministry said on Wednesday it arrested two European nationals for allegedly fomenting “insecurity” in the country, state media reported, as the EU pushes to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

The pair were accused of “organizing chaos and social disorder aimed at destabilizing [Iran]” in conjunction with foreign intelligence services, state TV cited the ministry as saying, without revealing their nationalities.

The arrests coincided with a visit to Tehran by the European Union’s Iran nuclear talks coordinator, Enrique Mora, who held talks with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri Kani, according to Iranian media.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Tehran wanted U.S. sanctions lifted “with the observance of Iran’s red lines.”

“Negotiations are pursued … to reach a good, strong and lasting agreement,” he said on Twitter.

Talks to revive the 2015 accord have been on hold since March, chiefly over Iran’s insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran’s elite security force, from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic, prompting Tehran to retaliate by gradually violating the deal’s nuclear curbs.

Tehran’s refusal to back down from the FTO assignation demand has raised doubt about whether the nuclear impasse can be resolved. Washington has made it clear that it has no such plans, while also not ruling it out.

But Iran’s rulers ultimately want an end to sanctions, fearing a return of unrest among lower-income Iranians, whose protests in recent years have reminded leaders how vulnerable they can be to grassroots anger over economic hardship.

Presiding over an economy crippled by the U.S. sanctions, Iran’s clerical establishment has faced near-continuous protests by workers, teachers and government employees in recent months over unpaid wages, high unemployment, inflation exceeding 40% and mismanagement. 

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Зеленський розповів, коли закінчиться війна

Володимир Зеленський зазначив, що можливості завершення війни дипломатичним шляхом зменшуються щоразу, коли російські війська чинять страшні злочини щодо українців.

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«Будь ласка, не дайте їм померти» – дружини «азовців» звернулись до Папи Римського

Папа Римський Франциск 11 травня зустрівся у Ватикані із дружинами бійців полку «Азов» Катериною Прокопенко та Юлією Федосюк

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У Росії вкотре звинуватили Україну в обстрілі прикордонної області, але вперше заявили про жертви

Від початку війни бєлгородський губернатор та керівники інших російських прикордонних регіонів

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For Macron’s Second Term — a Lower Profile in Africa?

Five years ago, France’s Emmanuel Macron saw big when it came to Africa. Days after his presidential inauguration, he flew to northeastern Mali, meeting with French troops and vowing, alongside his Malian counterpart, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, to wage an “uncompromising fight” against Islamist terrorism.

A few months later in another Sahel country, nearby Burkina Faso, he laid another pillar of his Africa strategy based on a “rupture” of traditional French-Africa relations. France’s 39-year-old leader told students from the University of Ouagadougou he was “from a generation that doesn’t come to tell Africans what to do.”

Today, the Sahel insurgency is expanding southward, and both Mali and Burkina Faso are under military rule. France’s counter-insurgency military operation in the Sahel is downsizing, regrouping and recasting itself under a European umbrella.

Meanwhile, Macron’s ambitious promise of transforming France’s relationship with Africa is still in the works.

“The goal should be to accompany local efforts rather than expanding French interests in Africa,” Cameroonian intellectual Achille Mbembe told French broadcaster RFI. If that happens, he added, “It would be possible to finally get out of France-Afrique,” describing Paris’ old and tangled ties with its former colonies.

Yet, as Macron officially begins his second term this Saturday, Africa appears to be taking a back seat to other, more immediate priorities, both domestic and European, as the war in Ukraine takes center stage.

French-African relations barely figured into an election campaign that saw him facing off anti-immigration, far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the runoff.

“It would be hard to see Macron completely changing his African strategy” in his second term, Africa analyst Antoine Glaser told France 24 TV in a recent interview. “I think what will change will be the method … he will be a lot less on the front lines,” giving African and European partners a bigger spotlight.

Other analysts agree France should be more attentive to African concerns, mindful it now competes against many other foreign players on the continent, including in former French colonies.

“France and Europe fail to properly listen to the priorities of different African states,” said Africa-Europe researcher Cecilia Vidotto Labastie, from the Paris-based Montaigne Institute research institution. “This creates space for other partners — or competitors or enemies — to act.”

Breaking with the past

Still in his first term Macron did listen and respond to several key African priorities, recognizing more painful aspects of France’s legacy on the continent — and in doing so, going further than his predecessors.

He acknowledged his country’s role in Rwanda’s genocide and crimes committed by French soldiers and police during Algeria’s war of independence — although he ruled out an official apology to France’s former colony. In both cases, Paris set up expert commissions to dig into historical archives.

Those steps, among others, helped cement ties between Macron and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, following years of rocky French-Rwandan relations.

Ties with Algeria remain strained, however, including over other, more recent issues, like French visas and Macron’s remarks about Algeria’s post-colonial rule. Nonetheless, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune congratulated his French counterpart on his reelection last month and invited him to visit.

Macron also became France’s first leader to restore looted colonial-era treasures — returning a dozen artifacts to Benin and a sword to Senegal. Those gestures helped to unleash a broader restitution debate and similar moves elsewhere in Europe.

“The fact he has so much energy and interest in this, in a way it obliged other countries to do the same,” said analyst Vidotto Labastie. “This is something that is new. In a way, it’s now part of Europe-Africa relations.”

Less successful has been Macron’s support for efforts to reform the West and Central African CFA currency, and for a France-Africa summit that featured civil society rather than the continent’s leaders last October.

Aimed to “reinvent” France’s relationship with the continent, the summit in Montpellier, France, also offered a forum for young Africans to air grievances against Paris’ alleged tolerance of corruption and dictators in Africa.

“Emmanuel Macron wanted to shake up French-Africa relations,” one participant, Ivorian historian Arthur Banga told Jeune Afrique news magazine, but still described changes the president has realized to date as largely in form, rather than substance. Over Macron’s next term, Banga said, “The first steps he initiated over five years must now deliver results.”

Sahel setbacks and moving forward

Macron’s biggest challenge and setback, analysts say, has been in the Sahel.

The civilian presidents he met with five years ago in Mali and Burkina Faso have been ousted and replaced by military juntas. The Islamist insurgency that French and African troops hoped to conquer has spread. Russia-based Wagner mercenaries are implanted in Mali, and anti-French sentiment is mounting in some countries.

Last month, Mali’s military rulers suspended French broadcasters France 24 and RFI, over their reports of alleged rights abuses by Malian forces. Last week, as the two countries traded accusations over hundreds of bodies found buried in the Malian desert, Mali announced it had terminated a nearly decade-old military cooperation agreement with France — even as French troops were already leaving the country, as part of a full withdrawal planned over several months.

Macron’s strategy in the Sahel was a failure, France’s Le Monde newspaper wrote, its fallout “casting a sandy veil over his record.”

Not everyone agrees.

Montaigne Institute’s Vidotto Labastie believes Macron’s Sahel setbacks were partly due to a mix of factors beyond his control — including the death of Chadian leader Idriss Deby, whose country was a linchpin of the regional counterinsurgency fight. They should also be seen within a wider European Union context, she adds.

“It depends on how you define failure; France was never alone,” she said, noting Denmark’s announcement in January it would withdraw its forces from Mali and West Africa. “Was it a failure for Denmark? For the EU?”

Moving forward, Vidotto Labastie said, France and Europe need to be more attentive to Africa’s demands in sectors like energy and migration.

“The more France and the EU lack clarity in the region, the more space there is for Russia and also Turkey” along with other foreign powers, she said. “They will be ready to exploit any difficulty of the Sahel strategy and French action.”

Analyst Glaser agrees France’s Africa strategy needs to be attuned to a more competitive and opportunistic reality.

“France was in a dominant position for 30 years, until the fall of the Berlin wall,” he said. “Now it’s a globalized Africa … the world is changing, and Africa is changing even faster.”

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