Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told world leaders and business executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Monday that they faced a turning point following Russia’s invasion of his country — and that it was time to ratchet up sanctions against Moscow.
It is the first time world and business leaders have gathered at Davos since January 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic. They now operate in a vastly changed world faced with numerous challenges: the war in Ukraine, economic crises and food shortages.
Maximum sanctions
Dressed not in the business uniform of the Davos elite but in the army fatigues of a wartime leader, Ukraine’s president addressed delegates by video link from Kyiv. He demanded “maximum sanctions” on Russia.
“An embargo on Russian oil, a complete blockade of all Russian banks, without exception. Total abandonment of the Russian IT sector and complete cessation of trade with the aggressor… do not wait for Russia’s use of special weapons, chemical, biological, God forbid, nuclear,” Zelenskyy urged the audience in Davos.
“You need to set a precedent for the complete exit of all foreign businesses from the Russian market so that your brands are not associated with war crimes and that war criminals do not use your offices, accounts, and goods in their bloody interests.”
Ukraine has sent a large delegation to Davos, including the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko. “Every one of you has to understand: we are defending you, personally,” Kiltschko said Monday. “We are fighting for values. I hope the same values, democratic values.”
The message from the Ukrainian delegation has been warmly welcomed. But Kyiv’s demands for a complete embargo on Russian energy and trade are far from being met.
Embargo
Several European nations, including Germany, continue to import Russian oil and gas. Hungary is resisting efforts toward a full EU embargo on Russian oil imports.
Germany’s economy minister and vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, urged Hungary to join its EU partners.
“We have to be very careful that we are not applying the same rules for everyone and not seeing the difficult situation some states are in. But saying that, I expect everyone — also Hungary — that they work to find a solution and not saying, ‘OK, we have an exception and then we will lay back and build on our partnership with Putin,’” Habeck said.
Sven Smit, a senior partner with consulting firm McKinsey & Company in the Netherlands and among the delegates at Davos, said isolating Russia would take time. “This is a fight we can’t fully participate in, but we are trying to do our best, I think. You feel a little helpless, if you stand there and see what the Ukrainians have to do for us, to stand for our values and to stand for our lives,” Smit told Reuters.
Food warning
Meanwhile the head of the United Nations’ World Food Program, David Beasley, warned of a global food crisis unless Russia ended its blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
“[Ukraine] grows enough food to feed 400 million people. That’s off the market and the only way you get it back into the market is the ports have to be opened back,” Beasley said Monday.
“It’s going to be a global food crisis. If we don’t get those ports open, you will be talking about a food pricing problem over the next 10 to 12 months, but next year, it’s going to be a food availability problem and that is going to be hell on Earth,” he added.
War crimes
Russian delegates haven’t been invited to the WEF. Instead, the former “Russia House” in Davos has been transformed into what’s been dubbed the “Russian War Crimes House,” depicting alleged atrocities carried out by the Kremlin’s forces.
The exhibition’s curator, Bjorn Geldhof, the artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, said it was vital that visitors to the Davos summit are reminded of the reality of the war.
“The atrocities that are happening are of such a massive scale that it’s important to speak to everybody about it all the time. And here in Davos, the world’s most powerful people come together, and to them we also have to show who is suffering and why they are suffering,” Geldhof said.
…
Однією з великих проблем Крісталіна Георгієва назвала зростання цін на продукти харчування, спричинене вторгненням Росії в Україну
…
Борис Бондарєв, ймовірно, став першим російським кадровим дипломатом, який офіційно заявив про свою відставку через війну РФ проти України
…
Українські військові кажуть, що РФ розміщує додатково ЗРК С-400 на території північно-західної частини окупованого Криму
…
Кількома годинами раніше Генштаб ЗСУ повідомив, що війська РФ здійснюють бойові дії з метою утримання зайнятих раніше рубежів на Харківському напрямку
…
So far, Russia’s oil exports have not slowed down a bit from the war in Ukraine and international sanctions. In fact, Russia exported more oil in April than it did before the war. And high oil prices mean Moscow is raking in money. That’s one reason Europe is considering a Russian oil ban: Current sanctions are not hurting Moscow enough. Europe gets more of its oil from Russia than anywhere else. It would have to make up for those banned barrels somewhere else, and that won’t be easy. And it’s likely to push oil prices everywhere up even further.
…
Дощова вода розтікається містом «разом зі сміттям, наслідками його гноєння та трупною отрутою», заявив радник мера
…
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country is interested in a major gas exploitation project in Senegal as he began a three-nation visit to Africa on Sunday that also is focused on the geopolitical consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Senegal is believed to have significant deposits of natural gas along its border with Mauritania at a time when Germany and other European countries are trying to reduce their dependence on importing Russian gas.
“We have begun exchanges and we will continue our efforts at the level of experts because it is our wish to achieve progress,” Scholz said at a joint news briefing with Senegalese President Macky Sall.
The gas project off the coast of Senegal is being led by BP, and the first barrels are not expected until next year.
This week’s trip marks Scholz’s first to Africa since becoming chancellor nearly six months ago. Two of the countries he is visiting — Senegal and South Africa — have been invited to attend the Group of 7 summit in Germany at the end of June.
Participants there will try to find a common position toward Russia, which was kicked out of the then-Group of Eight following its 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
Leaders at the G-7 summit also will be addressing the threat of climate change. Several G-7 countries, including Germany and the United States, signed a ‘just energy transition partnership’ with South Africa last year to help the country wean itself off heavily polluting coal.
A similar agreement is in the works with Senegal, where Germany has supported the construction of a solar farm.
German officials also said Scholz will make a stop in Niger, a country that like its neighbors has long been battling Islamic extremists.
Earlier this month, the German government backed a plan to move hundreds of its soldiers to Niger from neighboring Mali. The development comes amid a deepening political crisis in Mali that prompted former colonial power France to announce it was withdrawing its troops after nine years of helping Mali battle insurgents.
Germany officials say their decision also was motivated by concerns that Malian forces receiving EU training could cooperate with Russian mercenaries now operating in the country.
Germany, though, will increase its participation in a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, providing up to 1,400 soldiers. The Cabinet’s decisions still need to be approved by parliament.
Niger is also a major transit hub for illegal migration to Europe. People from across West Africa connect with smugglers there to make the journey northward to attempt the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea.
…
For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:
3:30 a.m.: Poland has decided to terminate an intergovernmental agreement with Russia regarding the Yamal gas pipeline, Polish Climate Minister Anna Moskwa said on Twitter on Monday, Reuters reported.
“Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has confirmed the accuracy of the Polish government’s determination to become completely independent from Russian gas. We always knew that Gazprom was not a reliable partner,” Moskwa said.
2:30 a.m.: New Zealand said Monday it is deploying additional 30 defense force personnel to the United Kingdom in support of Ukrainian armed forces, CNN reported.
“The soldiers will be stationed in the United Kingdom until the end of July,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
In April, New Zealand deployed a C-130 Hercules and 58 personnel to Europe to further support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, according to Reuters.
2:00 a.m.: Russian citizens may express their discontent with the way the war against Ukraine is going, the British defense ministry predicted Monday, based on the number of casualties Russian forces have suffered.
“Russia has likely suffered a similar death toll to that experienced by the Soviet Union during its nine year war in Afghanistan,” The ministry said in its daily update posted on Twitter.
1:30 a.m.: The U.N.’s refugee agency said conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution around the world, including the war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, have driven more than 100 million people from their homes in total.
“100 million refugees and displaced people are a terrible indicator of the state of our world,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi said Monday in a Twitter post.
1:00 a.m.: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country is interested in a major gas exploitation project in Senegal as he began a three-nation visit to Africa on Sunday that also is focused on the geopolitical consequences of the war in Ukraine. The Associated Press has the story.
12:30 a.m.: During U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Japan this week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Biden Monday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “undermines the foundation of global order,” The New York Times reported.
“We can in no way allow whatsoever such attempts to change the status quo by force wherever it may be in the world,” Kishida said.
Information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…
Очікується, що за пошук активів відповідатиме Міністерство юстиції, а справами про такі санкції займатиметься Вищий антикорупційний суд
…
Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes Film Festival entry “R.M.N.” is set in an unnamed mountainous Transylvanian village in Romania, but the conflicts of ethnocentricity, racism and nationalism that permeate the multi-ethnic town could take place almost anywhere.
Of all the films competing for the top Palme d’Or prize at Cannes, none may be quite as of the moment as “R.M.N.” The movie, using a Romanian microcosm, captures the us-vs-them battles that have played out across Europe and beyond, wherever immigration and national identities have collided.
Mungiu, the celebrated Romanian filmmaker of the landmark 2007 abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” has long been accustomed to his films being written off as grim portraits of a faraway Eastern Europe. It’s a caricature he rejects, especially when it comes to “R.M.N.”
RMN is the Romanian abbreviation for an MRI, which, when scanning the brain, can reveal fascinating secrets of how human beings are wired, Mungiu told Agence France-Presse.
“Whenever journalists interpret that it’s yet again another somber painting of this country, well, it’s not about that country — or not only about that country,” Mungiu told reporters Sunday. “It’s good to check your own elections in your own countries.”
When a local bakery in need of workers — most of the town’s men have gone abroad to find work — hires a few men from Sri Lanka, a Romanian village’s already complicated mix of ethnicities — Romanian, Hungarian, German — turn increasingly volatile.
But “R.M.N.,” which features a powerhouse 17-minute single shot of a contentious town meeting, from the start teases at the question of who, exactly, is an outsider and who gets to define tradition. In the end, even the village’s local bears could be said to have their say.
“What is tradition? We do something because someone did this before. But why precisely do we do is this?” Mungiu said. “If you dig deep down, it’s a way of fighting back the fear you have of something. It’s a way of unleashing these violent impulses that you have.”
“I’m sorry to say this, but we are a very, very violent species of animal. And we need very, very little to identify an enemy as other,” added Mungiu. “You can see this today in the war in Ukraine.”
The Palme d’Or will be awarded May 28.
…
The usual trophies and prize money will be on the line for Novak Djokovic, Iga Swiatek and other top players at Wimbledon, but there is a significant change there this year: No one will earn ranking points, a valuable currency in tennis, when play begins June 27.
The women’s and men’s professional tours announced Friday they will not award those points at the grass-court Grand Slam tournament because of the All England Club’s decision to bar players from Russia and Belarus over the invasion of Ukraine.
Both the WTA and ATP said they were reacting to what they called “discrimination.”
Here is a look at how this unprecedented move came about and what it means:
What is happening in Ukraine?
Russia, with help from Belarus, launched an invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24. Russia’s bombardment and siege of the southern port city of Mariupol killed over 20,000 civilians, according to Ukraine, including strikes on a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians had taken shelter.
Why did Wimbledon bar Russians and Belarusians?
The All England Club, which runs the oldest Grand Slam tournament (Wimbledon was first held in 1877), announced in April it would not allow players from Russia or Belarus to enter the event in 2022. Chief Executive Sally Bolton defended the club’s move as following a directive from the British government, and she cited a “responsibility to play our part in limiting the possibility of Wimbledon being used to justify the harm being done to others by the Russian regime.”
Have other sports banned Russian athletes?
Yes, including in soccer, where the Russian men’s team was kicked out of qualifying matches for this year’s World Cup. Figure skating and track and field are among the other sports to have taken action against Russian and Belarusian athletes. In tennis, players from those countries have been allowed to compete — including at the French Open, the year’s second Grand Slam tournament, which begins Sunday in Paris — but as “neutral” athletes who are not being identified by their nationalities.
Who can’t play at Wimbledon?
The most prominent Russian tennis player at the moment is Daniil Medvedev, who won the U.S. Open in September and briefly reached No. 1 in the men’s rankings this year. Andrey Rublev, who is ranked No. 7 in the ATP, is another top male player. The WTA’s No. 7, Aryna Sabalenka, who was a semifinalist at Wimbledon a year ago, and former No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Australian Open champion, are from Belarus.
Why cancel ranking points?
The WTA and ATP condemned the invasion of Ukraine, but said it was not fair for the All England Club to prevent certain players from playing because of the actions of their countries’ governments.
“Our rules and agreements exist in order to protect the rights of players as a whole,” the ATP said. “Unilateral decisions of this nature, if unaddressed, set a damaging precedent for the rest of the tour.”
The International Tennis Federation also withdrew its ranking points from the junior and wheelchair events at Wimbledon.
Taylor Fritz, the highest-ranked American man and seeded No. 13 at the French Open, said he thinks “most players agree” that athletes from Russia and Belarus should be allowed to play at Wimbledon. The ban, he said, “is a sign to show support for Ukraine, but you’re just kind of punishing people based off of where they were born … and they can’t really change that.”
How do ranking points work? Why do they matter?
The WTA and ATP official rankings date to the early 1970s and currently are based on each player’s best results over the preceding 52 weeks (women count their top 16 tournaments, men their top 19). Swiatek is the 28th woman to sit atop the WTA; Djokovic is one of 27 men to lead the ATP and has spent more weeks in that spot than anyone else. Wimbledon and the three other Grand Slam tournaments award 2,000 points apiece to the women’s and men’s singles champions, more than any other events. In addition to other measures such as trophies or prize money, rankings are a way for fans, sponsors and others — including the players themselves — to understand where athletes stand in the sport’s hierarchy. Technically, any tennis event that does not award ranking points is considered an exhibition.
Has this happened before?
Representatives of the ATP, WTA and ITF said they were unaware of any previous instances of ranking points being withheld from a tournament.
Will any players skip Wimbledon because there aren’t ranking points?
It’s too soon to know, but even without ranking points, Wimbledon still offers plenty of prestige and millions of dollars in payouts. “If you win it, I think you’d still be pretty happy,” said Jessica Pegula, an American seeded 11th at Roland Garros. “But I think it’s just up to each individual person — how they’re feeling, their motivation.”
What will happen at the US Open?
It is not yet known whether players from Russia or Belarus will be able to enter the U.S. Open, the year’s last Grand Slam tournament, which begins in New York Aug. 29. “We continue to monitor events,” U.S. Tennis Association spokesman Chris Widmaier wrote in an email, “and are in active dialogue with the Ukraine and Russian/Belarusian players, the tours, the other Grand Slams, and other relevant parties.”
…
A South African company that promotes solar power and uses crowdsourcing to raise capital is financing a solar-powered farm in Zimbabwe that is also benefiting neighboring farmers. The company, The Sun Exchange, raised $1.4 million for the farm. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Marondera, Zimbabwe.
…
When Chandler Jones realized she was pregnant during her junior year of college, she turned to a trusted source for information and advice.
Her cellphone.
“I couldn’t imagine before the internet, trying to navigate this,” said Jones, 26, who graduated Tuesday from the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I didn’t know if hospitals did abortions. I knew Planned Parenthood did abortions, but there were none near me. So I kind of just Googled.”
But with each search, Jones was being surreptitiously followed — by the phone apps and browsers that track us as we click away, capturing even our most sensitive health data.
Online searches. Period apps. Fitness trackers. Advice helplines. GPS. The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than we know ourselves.
For now, the information is mostly used to sell us things, like baby products targeted to pregnant women. But in a post-Roe world — if the Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that legalized abortion, as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks — the data would become more valuable, and women more vulnerable.
Privacy experts fear that pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to vigilantes.
“The value of these tools for law enforcement is for how they really get to peek into the soul,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation. “It gives [them] the mental chatter inside our heads.”
HIPAA, hotlines, health histories
The digital trail only becomes clearer when we leave home, as location apps, security cameras, license plate readers and facial recognition software track our movements. The development of these tech tools has raced far ahead of the laws and regulations that might govern them.
And it’s not just women who should be concerned. The same tactics used to surveil pregnancies can be used by life insurance companies to set premiums, banks to approve loans and employers to weigh hiring decisions, experts said.
Or it could — and sometimes does — send women who experience miscarriages cheery ads on their would-be child’s birthday.
It’s all possible because HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects medical files at your doctor’s office but not the information that third-party apps and tech companies collect about you. Nor does HIPAA cover the health histories collected by non-medical “crisis pregnancy centers, ” which are run by anti-abortion groups. That means the information can be shared with, or sold to, almost anyone.
Jones contacted one such facility early in her Google search, before figuring out they did not offer abortions.
“The dangers of unfettered access to Americans’ personal data have never been more clear. Researching birth control online, updating a period-tracking app or bringing a phone to the doctor’s office could be used to track and prosecute women across the U.S.,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said last week.
For myriad reasons, both political and philosophical, data privacy laws in the U.S. have lagged far behind those adopted in Europe in 2018.
Until this month, anyone could buy a weekly trove of data on clients at more than 600 Planned Parenthood sites around the country for as little as $160, according to a recent Vice investigation that led one data broker to remove family planning centers from the customer “pattern” data it sells. The files included approximate patient addresses (down to the census block, derived from where their cellphones “sleep” at night), income brackets, time spent at the clinic, and the top places people stopped before and after their visits.
While the data did not identify patients by name, experts say that can often be pieced together, or de-anonymized, with a little sleuthing.
In Arkansas, a new law will require women seeking an abortion to first call a state hotline and hear about abortion alternatives. The hotline, set to debut next year, will cost the state nearly $5 million a year to operate. Critics fear it will be another way to track pregnant women, either by name or through an identifier number. Other states are considering similar legislation.
The widespread surveillance capabilities alarm privacy experts who fear what’s to come if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion by early July.
“A lot of people, where abortion is criminalized — because they have nowhere to go — are going to go online, and every step that they take (could) … be surveilled,” Conti-Cook said.
Punish women, doctors or friends?
Women of color like Jones, along with poor women and immigrants, could face the most dire consequences if Roe falls since they typically have less power and money to cover their tracks. They also tend to have more abortions, proportionally, perhaps because they have less access to health care, birth control and, in conservative states, schools with good sex education programs.
The leaked draft suggests the Supreme Court could be ready to let states ban or severely restrict abortion through civil or criminal penalties. More than half are poised to do so. Abortion foes have largely promised not to punish women themselves, but instead target their providers or people who help them access services.
“The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen of Oklahoma said last month of a new law that makes performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
But abortion advocates say that remains to be seen.
“When abortion is criminalized, pregnancy outcomes are investigated,” said Tara Murtha, the communications director at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, who recently co-authored a report on digital surveillance in the abortion sphere.
She wonders where the scrutiny would end. Prosecutors have already taken aim at women who use drugs during pregnancy, an issue Justice Clarence Thomas raised during the Supreme Court arguments in the case in December.
“Any adverse pregnancy outcome can turn the person who was pregnant into a suspect,” Murtha said.
State limits, tech steps, personal tips
A few states are starting to push back, setting limits on tech tools as the fight over consumer privacy intensifies.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, through a legal settlement, stopped a Boston-based ad company from steering anti-abortion smartphone ads to women inside clinics there that offer abortion services, deeming it harassment. The firm had even proposed using the same “geofencing” tactics to send anti-abortion messages to high school students.
In Michigan, voters amended the state Constitution to prohibit police from searching someone’s data without a warrant. And in California, home to Silicon Valley, voters passed a sweeping digital privacy law that lets people see their data profiles and ask to have them deleted. The law took effect in 2020.
The concerns are mounting, and have forced Apple, Google and other tech giants to begin taking steps to rein in the sale of consumer data. That includes Apple’s launch last year of its App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets iPhone and iPad users block apps from tracking them.
Abortion rights activists, meanwhile, suggest women in conservative states leave their cellphones, smartwatches and other wearable devices at home when they seek reproductive health care, or at least turn off the location services. They should also closely examine the privacy policies of menstrual trackers and other health apps they use.
“There are things that people can do that can help mitigate their risk. Most people will not do them because they don’t know about it or it’s inconvenient,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “There are very, very few people who have the savvy to do everything.”
Digital privacy was the last thing on Jones’s mind when she found herself pregnant. She was in crisis. She and her partner had ambitious career goals. After several days of searching, she found an appointment for an abortion in nearby Delaware. Fortunately, he had a car.
“When I was going through this, it was just survival mode,” said Jones, who took part in a march Saturday in downtown Baltimore to support abortion rights.
Besides, she said, she’s grown up in the Internet age, a world in which “all of my information is being sold constantly.”
But news of the leaked Supreme Court draft sparked discussions at her law school this month about privacy, including digital privacy in the era of Big Data.
“Literally, because I have my cell phone in my pocket, if I go to a CVS, they know I went to a CVS,” the soon-to-be lawyer said. “I think the privacy right is such a deeper issue in America [and one] that is being violated all the time.”
…