Did France Every Pay the Fine for Refusing to Lift the Banon Britsh Beef
Battle narrows to a sliver of land in Donbas.
As the fourth month dawns in the war in Ukraine, the battle has narrowed to a 75-mile-wide sliver of land in the heart of the eastern Donbas region, where Russia's concentrated firepower and shortened supply lines are helping its forces make progress toward a handful of key cities.
Moscow's main immediate target remains Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city still under Ukrainian control. Artillery barrages fired by Russian forces approaching from three sides have knocked out water and electrical supplies, driven residents into underground shelters and, in the last 24 hours, killed at least six people, the regional government said on Wednesday.
Ukrainian officials say that they expect Russian forces to attempt a repeat of the devastating siege tactics that they employed in the southeastern city of Mariupol, choking off Sievierodonetsk and other cities as they seek full control of Donbas.
Shrinking its objectives has allowed Moscow to make incremental gains closer to the Russian border in eastern Ukraine, after failing to capture the capital, Kyiv, and other cities in the north. But military analysts and Western intelligence officials believe that Moscow's forces would face brutal urban combat if they tried to fully capture Sievierodonetsk, and that they would struggle to mount an offensive deeper inside Ukraine.
The intensified fighting, with each side trying to encircle the other and prevent entrapment, comes as Ukraine's Western allies try to maintain pressure on Russia. Representatives from Finland and Sweden were in Turkey on Wednesday to meet with high-level officials in an effort to address President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's opposition to the Nordic nations' bids to join NATO. On the eve of the talks, Turkey laid out a series of security-related demands of Sweden, including that it abandon support for the separatist Kurdistan Worker's Party, an organization that Turkey and the European Union consider terrorists.
In other developments:
-
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia visited wounded soldiers on Wednesday and announced a raft of new social welfare measures and military benefits — an apparent effort to show Russians that he was aware times were tough. Pensions for nonworking seniors, along with the minimum wage, will be raised 10 percent in June, he said.
-
Germany plans to order coal-fired power plants that were due to be shut down to be placed in reserve, as part of a plan to ensure the country can keep the lights on if supplies of natural gas from Russia are abruptly cut.
-
Aiming to crack down on Russian oligarchs who have held on to their yachts and luxury villas in Europe despite facing sanctions, the European Union proposed on Wednesday to make evading sanctions a criminal offense and to strengthen legal measures to confiscate assets.
-
China on Wednesday described organizing combat drills in the waters and airspace around Taiwan, a day after China and Russia held their first joint military exercise since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration has accelerated its efforts to reshape Taiwan's defense systems.
May 25, 2022, 8:52 p.m. ET
Reporting from near Kramatorsk, Ukraine
On their way to the front line, Ukrainian soldiers are halted by a breakdown.
Image
A dozen Ukrainian soldiers from the 95th Air Assault Brigade were temporarily halted just outside the city of Kramatorsk on Wednesday evening, after one of their armored vehicles broke down on the way to the front line.
They waited by the roadside, smoking cigarettes, until a crew driving a captured Russian vehicle rolled up beside them, made a U-turn and attached a tow rope. The soldiers still could not get the broken vehicle rolling, however, so they transferred their weapons to another armored vehicle, piled on board, and set off toward the front in the day's fading light.
May 25, 2022, 7:14 p.m. ET
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine rejected the notion that his country should cede territory to make peace with Russia, as Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state, had suggested at the World Economic Forum on Monday. Those who advise Ukraine to give up territory fail to see the ordinary people, Zelensky said, "who actually live in the territory they propose to exchange for the illusion of peace."
May 25, 2022, 4:31 p.m. ET
Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine
"I'm shooting for the first time in my life," said Vlad, a 16-year-old Ukrainian who, along with other civilians, took part in a training exercise outside Lviv in western Ukraine on Wednesday. Vlad, his father and his fellow volunteers practiced shooting, tactical training and first aid during the exercise.
Image
May 25, 2022, 2:52 p.m. ET
The E.U.'s proposed oil embargo of Russia is stuck in a standoff.
Image
It's been nearly a month since the European Union appeared poised to approve a ban on Russian oil, a once unthinkable measure heralded as a potent sign of European unity in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Instead, the policy is now stalled, stymied by Hungary's stubborn refusal to fall behind the rest of the bloc in sidelining the Kremlin.
Hopes that the standoff between Hungary and the other 26 members of the bloc could be overcome at a summit in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday are also fading. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, seeming to relish his position as the E.U.'s spoiler-in-chief, asked earlier this week that the proposed embargo remain off the table because his concerns were not anywhere close to being resolved.
Mr. Orban's ability to assert himself was emboldened after a recent landslide victory in Hungarian elections. Mr. Orban has come under repeated and stiff criticism in the E.U. for flouting its norms in areas such as media freedom and the rule of law. Concerns that he was abusing his authority were further fanned this week when he invoked a state of emergency that would allow him to bypass parliament.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands was skeptical the impasse with Hungary would get resolved next week. Mr. Orban "is not giving a lot of reason to hope that we could get to a deal on Monday, Tuesday," he said in an interview, adding that he thought the bloc would eventually overcome the standoff.
Nevertheless, negotiations in Brussels over giving Hungary concessions have been going on for the past few weeks. Mr. Orban has demanded more time before Hungary weans itself from Russian oil, as well as E.U. funds to help the country transition to new resources and avoid, as he described it, an "atomic bomb" for Hungary's economy.
Hungary is heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas. The cost of upgrading Hungary's infrastructure to receive non-Russian oil is estimated by the E.U. and Hungary to be about 700 million euros.
E.U. officials said Mr. Orban has received assurances that he could get most of the exemptions he seeks were he to sign off on the embargo. Among the concessions on the table, they said, is for Hungary to have two more years than most other member states to cut off Russian oil imports, with a proposed phaseout deadline at the end of 2024.
Mr. Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, said that an extension for Hungary in implementing a total ban on oil seemed reasonable. But he said he was concerned that Hungary was demanding funds when it had its share of an E.U. pandemic stimulus package frozen because of Hungary's breaching of E.U. rules, including in its handling of its judicial system. Hungary has been taken to the E.U. court over some of its disputes with the bloc and Mr. Orban has claimed the E.U.'s executive branch is biased and ideologically driven against its government.
Frans Timmermans, another Dutchman who is the top European Commission official on energy and climate change, said in an interview on Wednesday that allowing Hungary to access narrowly targeted funds to upgrade its energy infrastructure could potentially open the way for the oil embargo to move forward.
Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia, a consulting firm, said there was still reason to be optimistic that the E.U. could approve the oil ban and further punish Russia.
"Given the pro-E.U. stance of Hungary's population and the fact some money is likely to flow from Brussels, we still believe Orban will be forced to yield," he said. "But the boost to Orban's self-esteem, provided by the election victory, is making him even bolder in his willingness to fight Brussels down to the wire."
May 25, 2022, 2:02 p.m. ET
While Russian ground forces have shifted their immediate focus in the eastern Donbas region to surrounding the city of Sievierodonetsk, their artillery continued to pummel cities across the region, including Kramatorsk, where a Ukrainian boy sat in front of an apartment building destroyed by a strike on Wednesday.
Image
May 25, 2022, 1:57 p.m. ET
Reporting from Istanbul
After five hours of negotiations about joining NATO between Turkish, Finnish and Swedish diplomats, a spokesman for Turkey's president said it was "not possible for any process to proceed without meeting the security concerns of Turkey." The spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, described some of the talks in positive terms, but added that Turkey, a NATO member that has stalled Sweden and Finland's effort to join, was "not under time pressure." Finland's Foreign Ministry said talks were "conducted in a constructive spirit" and would continue.
May 25, 2022, 11:56 a.m. ET
A doomed river crossing shows the perils of entrapment in the war's east.
BILOHORIVKA, Ukraine — Out on the riverbank, the scene of mayhem unfolded under a baking spring sun: blown-up tanks, the detritus of pontoon bridges, heaps of branches shorn off by explosions and the bodies of Russian soldiers, some half buried in the mud.
In the forest, a short walk revealed bits of torn Russian military uniforms hanging from trees, an eerie reminder of the troops who died violently here.
The failed river crossing that took place at this spot over several days in early May was one of the most lethal engagements of the war for the Russian army. Its forces had sought to surround Ukrainian soldiers in the nearby town of Sievierodonetsk — but instead became surrounded themselves, boxed in by the river and a Ukrainian frontline. At least 400 Russian soldiers died, mostly from artillery attacks.
As the war grinds across the rolling plains and forests of Eastern Ukraine, the maneuvering of troops has in large part evolved into attempts at entrapment. But as the deadly encounter at the bridge illustrated, the tactic comes with grave risks.
After failing to capture major cities such as Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, or to cleave off the entire Black Sea coast, the Russian military attempted a major encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the east. That effort is looking difficult now that Ukraine has blocked one main route of advance, near the town of Izium.
So the Russian forces' immediate goal has become a smaller encirclement of Sievierodonetsk, the easternmost city in the Donbas region still under Ukrainian control. Artillery bombardments by Russian troops approaching from three sides have ravaged the city, knocking out water and electricity and in the past day killing at least six people.
Image
The Russian strategy has been to use the blunt instrument of its army's vast artillery to pound away at Ukrainian forces, making incremental gains in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. Military analysts and Western intelligence officials believe that Moscow's forces would face brutal urban combat if they tried to fully capture Sievierodonetsk, and that they would struggle to mount an offensive deeper inside Ukraine.
Encirclement is a harrowing prospect for soldiers.
"I try not to think about it," said Pvt. Ivan Sichkar, a Ukrainian soldier surveying the destruction of the encircled Russian force. "If I think of being surrounded, there's no time left to do anything else."
The Russians' refashioned goal has focused the battle on a slender, 75-mile front in the Donbas. It is seeking to advance from both the north and the south to close the one remaining supply line for Ukraine into the city of Sievierodonetsk.
On Tuesday, the Russian army advanced from the south, forcing Ukrainian troops to retreat from the small town of Svitlodarsk, lest the Russians envelop the town and trap soldiers inside. And in its Wednesday evening briefing, the Ukrainian general staff described stepped-up attacks by Russian helicopters and jets to support ground troops in the east.
With Russia making only halting progress in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin moved Wednesday to shore up support at home, announcing raises in pensions and the minimum wage and making his first trip to meet with wounded soldiers. "They are all heroes," he said at a military hospital.
Image
Mr. Putin also signed a decree opening a fast track to Russian citizenship for Ukrainian residents of areas controlled by the Russian military, a further step toward annexing territory in southeastern Ukraine that Russia has occupied.
As Mr. Putin moved to reassure ordinary Russians, Ukraine's Western allies were trying to maintain pressure on his government. In Ankara on Wednesday, talks took place between Turkey, Finland and Sweden over Turkish concerns about the two Nordic countries' application to join NATO. At a news conference after five hours of negotiations, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said more talks were needed.
"Turkey is not under time pressure," Mr. Kalin said. "It is not possible for any process to proceed without meeting the security concerns of Turkey."
The strategy of encirclement has yielded far-reaching political gains for Russia over the course of its longer conflict in the region, in which Russian-backed separatists battled Ukrainian forces for eight years before the full-scale invasion this year. Two cease-fires, known as the Minsk agreements and seen as struck on terms advantageous to Russia, followed successful Russian encirclements of Ukrainian troops in the east in 2014 and 2015.
But in Bilohorivka, a tiny coal mining town on the banks of the Siversky Donets River, the tables were turned earlier this month, at least temporarily slowing the Russian advance.
Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the battle took to calling the site "the ear" for a lobe-like loop in the river where the fiercest fighting took place. The Ukrainian military escorted reporters for The New York Times to the site, which is on a frontline formed in much of the Donbas region by the roiling, fast-flowing river, swollen by spring rain.
Image
Sunlight filters through the foliage of a dense, quiet forest on the river's floodplain, which was the Ukrainians' kill zone. Mosquitoes buzz. In places, the smell of decaying corpses is overwhelming.
"The Russian bodies start here," Private Sichkar said as he rounded a bend in a dirt road extending about a mile through the forest to the river's edge. Just in this one spot, 15 incinerated armored personnel carriers were scattered about.
"The Russians wanted some little victory," Col. Dmytro Kashchenko, the Ukrainian officer who commanded the counterattack on the pontoon bridge, said in an interview. "They tried in Kyiv, they tried in Kharkiv, and they lost. They were trying to win at least something."
The Siversky Donets River, which cuts a meandering path through Eastern Ukraine, forms a natural barrier to Russia's advances. Suitable sites for pontoon crossings are few, Colonel Kashchenko said.
He was ordered to one of the crossings on May 8, after the Russians deployed pontoons and moved soldiers into the forest on the near bank. Ukrainian infantry advanced into the area the next day, but were repulsed, suffering losses, he said.
They then set up a defensive line to box in the Russians as they crossed their pontoon bridge, and rained down artillery fire on the area. They also set about destroying the bridge by placing floating mines upstream, allowing the current to carry them to the Russians' pontoons, which proved an effective tactic. The Ukrainian forces blew up four separate bridges at the crossing site.
The Russians hastily laid new pontoons and sent armored vehicles across, Colonel Kashchenko said, but they were unable to break through the Ukrainian defensive line. Dozens of armored vehicles and infantry soldiers became trapped and were mauled by Ukrainian artillery. The Ukrainians also hit Russian troops involved in the bridge work on the far shore.
The bombardment included some of the first barrages from a newly arrived American artillery gun, the M777, Colonel Kashchenko said.
Image
Colonel Kashchenko said he had offered the enemy forces a chance to surrender, shouting into a loudspeaker, "'Russians, give up!'" But, he said, "I don't know if they heard us."
Some enemy soldiers escaped by swimming across the river, the Ukrainians said. The Ukrainians have yet to collect the remains of the Russians scattered around the forest.
In the mottled light sifting through the leaves, discarded food and personal items lay all about: a sleeping bag, bottles of shower gel, cans of beef, a bag of potatoes, Russian tea bags, flip-flop sandals.
Ukrainian soldiers found a certificate for a medal granted to a Russian colonel for earlier fighting in the war. It was called an "award for military excellence."
Beside a disabled Russian tank lay a cardboard box apparently used for carrying supplies. On the box was an odd message for a unit in war: "Always believe something wonderful is about to happen."
Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, former supreme allied commander in Europe, drew a distinction between the Ukrainian tactics of seeking to target Russian armored vehicles and troops with artillery and the Russian bombardments of towns and cities.
"In the big scheme of things, Ukraine is trying to do maneuver warfare to regain territory and cut off resupply routes," General Breedlove said. "And Russia is doing more of a grinding, attrition-based warfare."
Of Russia's bungled pontoon crossing, he said, "the Russians did something poorly that is difficult even if you do it magnificently."
Image
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.
May 25, 2022, 11:23 a.m. ET
Hungary's Viktor Orban declares state of emergency, citing the Ukraine war to expand his power.
Image
Fresh from an election victory last month, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has declared a "state of emergency" in the country, using the war in Ukraine as a pretext to further entrench his power.
Before the announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Orban, a right-wing populist with ties to Russia's president, had cited the conflict in Ukraine as a justification for the expanded executive emergency powers, which allow him to bypass Hungary's legislative process and rule by decree.
The emergency powers, he said, would enable him to respond swiftly to pressing challenges spurred by the war such as ensuring the safety of Hungarians and confronting economic hurdles. European Union sanctions against Russia had disrupted the Hungarian economy, he said, causing prices to rise and endangering the country's energy supplies.
"This war poses a constant threat to Hungary," Mr. Orban said Tuesday on Facebook.
The state of emergency is Mr. Orban's first big policy move since forming his latest government this week — he has been elected a total of five times, and has won the last four consecutive elections. His far-right party, which holds a constitutional supermajority in parliament, amended the constitution to give the declaration legal footing hours before the announcement was made.
The invocation of emergency powers will not change much in practical terms, analysts said. Mr. Orban was already governing by decree after invoking a similar state of emergency in 2020, citing the pandemic. But the analysts said the new measure would nevertheless give him a broader scope for tightening his hold on the levers of power.
Mr. Orban made his name during the turbulent days of 1989 when, as an opposition leader, he called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, channeling the aspirations of a region.
Since returning to political power in 2010, however, he has broken with his country's long wariness of Russian hegemony, forging closer ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and leaning heavily on Russian energy resources.
At the same time, Mr. Orban has solidified his control over the state, even as his encroaching authoritarianism has generated stinging rebukes from the European Union and human rights advocates, who say he is stifling freedom of the press and undermining the rule of law.
In March, Mr. Orban essentially declared Hungary's neutrality in the Ukraine war, making him an outlier in Europe. He has been blocking a proposed E.U. embargo on Russian oil, one of the biggest steps many countries in the bloc want to take to punish Russia. Mr. Orban has argued that a ban on Russian oil would be the equivalent of an "atomic bomb" for his country's economy. He has also declined to transfer military equipment to Ukraine or to allow weapons bound for Ukraine to pass through Hungary.
Andras Kadar, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group in Budapest, said that Mr. Orban's decision to bypass parliament meant that Hungarians were being deprived the opportunity to learn about important legal changes through parliamentary debate — one of the last remaining ways Hungary's beleaguered opposition could exercise oversight of the government.
"We have seen in the past two years that the government does not exercise self-constraint, and it uses this power for solely political purposes," Mr. Kadar said.
May 25, 2022, 11:02 a.m. ET
Reporting from Paris
France is coordinating European efforts to send Ukraine over 12,000 digital devices "to ensure the integrity of government action and communications in the country," the French Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. The ministry said that equipment such as computers, servers, 4G routers and other networking devices from over a dozen companies had been sent through Poland at the request of Ukrainian authorities, with a first shipment in March.
May 25, 2022, 10:51 a.m. ET
Putin visits the wounded at a military hospital in Moscow, in a first since the Ukraine invasion.
Image
President Vladimir V. Putin visited wounded soldiers on Wednesday and announced a raft of new social welfare measures and military benefits — an apparent effort to show Russians that he was aware times were tough as the war in Ukraine entered its fourth month.
The Kremlin released brief clips of Mr. Putin, dressed in a white gown and flanked by Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu, greeting patients at a military hospital in Moscow. It was the president's first time visiting the wounded since the start of the war, but his words were sparse: "He'll be proud of his dad," Mr. Putin told a patient with a 9-month-old son.
Later, Russian state television showed Mr. Putin meeting senior government officials at the Kremlin. He directed them to increase payments to service members deployed in Ukraine and to double the child care allowance for women in the military.
He said that while the military doctors he met on Wednesday had assured him that "they have all they need," the government should "promptly, quickly and effectively respond to any needs" in the medical care of wounded soldiers.
"They are all heroes," Mr. Putin said of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. "Each of them is exposing his life to mortal danger, doing so consciously, and they should be treated as such, as heroes."
The Russian Defense Ministry last released casualty figures on March 25, when it said that 1,351 Russian service members had been killed in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin also promised wider social welfare measures, even as he repeated his insistence that the Russian economy was not suffering as much as some had predicted at the beginning of the war. Pensions for non-working seniors, along with the minimum wage, will be raised 10 percent in June, he said.
May 25, 2022, 10:39 a.m. ET
As it replaces Russian energy, Europe says it will try to limit gas reliance to 10 years to meet its climate goals.
Image
DAVOS, Switzerland — Europe's quest to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels is putting up new obstacles to its efforts to be a global climate leader, potentially locking the continent into methane-belching gas for decades to come.
To replace Russian piped gas, the largest single source of fuel for electricity generation, Europe is scrambling to secure liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., from countries as far afield as Angola, Qatar and the United States — and spending 12 billion euros to construct import terminals and pipelines to get that gas where it needs to go.
Even with all of that new fossil-fuel infrastructure, a top European Union official said the 27-member bloc would aim to limit its reliance on gas to no more than a decade. It has little choice. Gas produces emissions of planet-warming gases, and Europe is bound by its own law to cut emissions by more than half by the end of the decade.
"The overriding strategic decision is to wean ourselves off Russian oil and gas," Frans Timmermans, the European Union's vice president for energy and climate, said in an interview on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Even if L.N.G. is slightly dirtier than pipeline gas, this overriding concern dictates our policies because we cannot be dependent on Russian energy supplies."
Mr. Timmermans's job is complicated by the fact that liquefied gas suppliers want to lock in long-term contracts. "I would hope we could limit the signing of contracts to, let's say, five or 10 years," he said, "and then see where we are in five or 10 years time and see how much more natural gas we would need before we can go for renewable."
For its part, the United States, the world's top exporter of liquefied gas, expects to sell to Europe "until at least 2030," according to an agreement announced in March to rev up gas supplies to the continent.
The European Union is also struggling to agree to ban Russian oil imports, fracturing a remarkably unified front against Russia, mostly because of Hungary's fierce resistance to the measure.
The European Union's €300 billion energy transition plan, known as RePower Europe, proposes to reduce electricity demand by insulating buildings, promoting rooftop solar and simplifying the permitting of renewable energy projects. At the moment, it can take seven years to get government permits for a wind or solar project. Mr. Timmermans said the bloc's leadership would urge countries to set up designated areas, such as land next to highways, to develop large renewable energy projects.
The trouble is, until all of that renewable energy starts delivering electricity, several countries are likely to revert to burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
May 25, 2022, 8:46 a.m. ET
Putin fast-tracks Russian citizenship for residents of Ukrainian areas under Russian control.
Image
President Vladimir V. Putin signed a decree on Wednesday opening a fast track to obtain citizenship for Ukrainian residents of areas controlled by the Russian military, according to documents published on an official website, a further step toward annexing territory in southeastern Ukraine that Russia has occupied.
The decree extended to residents of the Kherson and Zaporozhzhia regions a faster method for obtaining Russian citizenship that was established in 2019 for residents of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics, two rump states created by the Kremlin and recognized as "independent" right before the February invasion.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry condemned the move as an illegal attempt to force residents of the region to acquire Russian citizenship, calling it "more evidence of the criminal goal of Russia's war against Ukraine — the conquest of Ukrainian territories for their further occupation and integration into Russia's legal, political and economic space."
Moscow has shown signs it was preparing for the "Russification" of parts of eastern Ukraine, moving to introduce the ruble as currency, install proxy politicians in local governments, impose new school curriculums, reroute internet servers through Russia and cut the population off from Ukrainian broadcasts.
May 25, 2022, 8:33 a.m. ET
Reporting from Helsinki
Finland's foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, will visit Washington over the next three days, the ministry said in a statement. Mr. Haavisto will meet with U.S. officials including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to discuss the war and Finland's application to join NATO.
May 25, 2022, 7:59 a.m. ET
Reporting from Krakow, Poland
Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty and to reclaim "all of its territories," President Volodymyr Zelensky said via videolink to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. It was an apparent reference to Ukraine's desire to regain lands seized by Russia in the regions of Crimea and Donbas in 2014.
Image
May 25, 2022, 8:01 a.m. ET
Reporting from Krakow, Poland
Zelensky said that Russia could show that it is serious about peace talks by withdrawing its forces to the positions they held before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
May 25, 2022, 7:53 a.m. ET
An E.U. proposal could make it easier to seize the yachts and villas of Russian oligarchs who are under sanctions.
Aiming to crack down on Russian oligarchs who have held on to their yachts and luxury villas in Europe despite facing sanctions, the European Union proposed on Wednesday to make evading sanctions a criminal offense and to strengthen legal measures to confiscate assets.
The proposal comes amid increased discussion of making Russia pay Ukraine for war damage. According to Ukrainian authorities, losses inflicted on the country by Russian aggression now amount to $650 billion.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc's executive branch, said on Tuesday that Russian assets could be used to help finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. "We should leave no stone unturned — including, if possible, using Russian assets," Ms. von der Leyen said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Since President Vladimir V. Putin's invasion of Ukraine began in February, the 27-nation bloc has imposed five rounds of sanctions covering over 1,000 Russian and Belarusian individuals and entities. European authorities have frozen almost 10 billion euros, or about $10.7 billion, in assets, and blocked €196 billion, or $209 billion, in transactions.
Although E.U. sanctions were agreed upon jointly, it is up to national authorities to carry them out, and that varies among members. As a result, oligarchs who are under sanctions can use legal loopholes to protect their assets and move them around the bloc.
Categorizing sanctions evasion as an E.U. crime would remedy that and streamline the execution of sanctions, the commission said. In the future, it could also provide the legal basis for national authorities to confiscate frozen assets. The commission also proposed ways to identify and track down potential goods and real estate to be seized faster and more efficiently.
"As a union we stand up for our values," Vera Jourova, the European Commission's vice president responsible for values and transparency, said in a statement on Wednesday, "and we must make those who keep Putin's war machine running pay the price."
It is not clear, however, whether such a move has enough support to go into effect. Creating a new category of E.U. crime would require all member nations to agree, and some national diplomats expressed concern over the legal basis of the commission's proposals.
May 25, 2022, 7:07 a.m. ET
Reporting from London
Marks & Spencer, the British retailer, said on Wednesday that it would exit its business in Russia, where it operated about 45 stores with a franchise partner. M&S ceased shipments to Russia in early March. Its stores in Ukraine have been partly closed since the war started, and the company said it aimed to fully reopen them when possible. The company put the cost of quitting Russia, and the disrupted business in Ukraine, at £31 million ($38.8 million).
May 25, 2022, 6:55 a.m. ET
Reporting from Istanbul
Talks between Turkey, Finland and Sweden about Turkish objections to the two Nordic countries' NATO bids are underway in Ankara, according to the office of Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Kalin and Sedat Onal, the deputy foreign minister, are heading the Turkish delegation, and Turkey made a series of security-related demands of Sweden on Tuesday.
May 25, 2022, 6:34 a.m. ET
Reporting from Krakow, Poland
Russian troops on Wednesday fired four cruise missiles at the city of Zaporizhzhia, on the Dniepro River, killing a resident, wounding three others and causing damage to 62 houses, the local administration said. Russian forces seized a nuclear power plant southwest of the city in March.
May 25, 2022, 6:27 a.m. ET
Germany plans to keep coal-fired plants ready in case Russian gas is cut.
Image
Germany plans to order coal-fired power plants that were due to be shut down to be placed in reserve, as part of a plan to ensure the country can keep the lights on if supplies of natural gas from Russia are abruptly cut.
A bill drawn up this week by the economy ministry, led by Robert Habeck, a member of the Greens, envisions maintaining power plants that burn coal and brown coal, or lignite, so they could be fired up on short notice.
The proposed regulation, if adopted, would remain in place through March 31, 2024.
"This means that the short-term use of coal-fired plants in the electricity sector is made possible on demand, should the need arise," it states. The measure still requires approval by the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Natural gas, much of it from Russia, accounted for 15 percent of Germany's electricity generation in 2021, the ministry said, although it expected that number to be lower this year because of the rising cost of gas and turmoil caused by the war in Ukraine.
Germany has counted on affordable, abundant supplies of natural gas from Russia as a replacement for coal as it seeks to meet its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 55 percent of 1990s levels by 2030. But since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Berlin has scrambled to reverse decades of policy focused on importing fossil fuel from Russia.
This month, the Parliament passed legislation paving the way for the construction of four terminals to receive liquefied natural gas on Germany's northern coast, including two floating terminals that are expected to be ready by the end of the year.
Germany has reduced the share of natural gas it receives from Russia to 35 percent, from 55 percent at the start of the year. Most of the Russian gas flows through the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
The International Monetary Fund warned in its annual report on Germany this week that a cut in natural gas from Russia was the largest threat to the German economy, which is Europe's largest.
Germany decided under its previous government in 2020 that it would spend $44.5 billion to quit coal by 2038. The new government, which took over in December, has moved the exit date up to 2030 and emphasized the expansion of renewable energy for power generation.
Efforts to build more wind turbines and solar farms stalled under the previous government. Last year, amid high gas prices, coal-generated power rose nearly 5 percent, accounting for roughly 30 percent of Germany's electricity production.
May 25, 2022, 6:19 a.m. ET
'Sievierodonetsk is barely alive': Russia focuses its firepower on the Donbas region.
Image
As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, Moscow's military has narrowed its focus to the Donbas region in the east of the country, concentrating firepower on individual towns and cities and making some gradual gains, analysts said on Wednesday.
And for civilians in the cross hairs of Russian forces, that focus has meant sustained bombardment.
"They are killing our cities, destroying everything," the head of the regional military administration in Luhansk Province, Serhiy Haidai, said on Wednesday. Referring to the last major city in the province that is not in Russian hands, he said, "Sievierodonetsk is barely alive."
Russia secured considerable ground in the Donbas region in 2014, and separatists backed by Moscow set up two so-called republics there. It is now aiming to expand that territory and potentially annex the region entirely, and to create an overland route for its forces along the coast to Crimea.
In its efforts to do so — and after failing to seize the capital, Kyiv, and Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv — Russia has in recent weeks concentrated its campaign on Ukraine's east, including the Donbas region, where proximity to Russian soil shortens supply chains.
One of its key aims was to completely encircle Ukraine's forces there, but analysts say that setbacks on the battlefield have prompted it to adjust its tactics. That, in turn, has helped Moscow make modest gains in the area.
"Russian forces have likely abandoned efforts to complete a single large encirclement of Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine and are instead attempting to secure smaller encirclements, enabling them to make incremental measured gains," said a report on Wednesday by the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington.
For months, Ukraine's government has called for heavier weapons with a longer range to combat Russia's advantage in artillery, and commanders now say they hope the arrival of some of those weapons could gradually start to turn the tide in Donbas.
Six people were killed in Sievierodonetsk in the past 24 hours, the regional military government said on Wednesday. Most residents in the cities under attack have taken to basements or bomb shelters amid dwindling supplies of food, medicine, electricity and water, and few safe means of evacuation.
Russian attacks killed 12 civilians in Donetsk Province on Tuesday, including three who died in the city of Bakhmut, the regional military authorities said, adding that 10 others were wounded.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an overnight speech that neither the country's enemies nor the world's leading intelligence agencies had expected Ukraine to hold on for so long against the Russian invasion. But he acknowledged that the situation in Donbas, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk Provinces, was "extremely difficult."
"All the strength the Russian Army still has was thrown there to attack," he said, noting that Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk and Lyman, Popasna and Sloviansk in Donetsk were particularly vulnerable.
"The occupiers want to destroy everything there," he said.
May 25, 2022, 2:21 a.m. ET
Reporting from Ukraine
Two explosions hit in the area of the railway station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk aroud 7:30 a.m. Wednesday. There was no immediate information about casualties. A month earlier, a Russian missile hit the station in the nearby city of Kramatorsk killing 59 people, most of them waiting for an evacuation. An evacuation train was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Pokrovsk, but people had not yet gathered when the strikes hit.
Image
May 24, 2022, 10:52 p.m. ET
Reporting from Seoul
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian troops were facing an increasingly dire situation in the country's eastern Donbas region, calling the situation on the ground in a cluster of towns around Sievierodonetsk "extremely difficult." "All the strength the Russian Army still has was thrown there to attack," he said in his nightly address. "The occupiers want to destroy everything there."
May 24, 2022, 9:55 p.m. ET
As the U.K. offers homes to Ukrainians, the process lags behind the good will.
Image
LONDON — At a church in East London this month, Imogen Moore-Shelley balanced her 6-month-old on her hip as she scrawled an important message on a poster: "Useful information for sponsors."
She then handed her marker to Natalia, a Ukrainian woman who had moved into Ms. Moore-Shelley's home a week earlier. Natalia then wrote the message in Ukrainian as people filtered into the church for a luncheon bringing together refugees and the Londoners opening their homes to them.
Natalia and Ms. Moore-Shelley's story — of a woman fleeing war and finding shelter with a stranger 1,300 miles away — served as a hopeful example of a smooth transition to safety in Britain. But not every experience with a British visa program meant for Ukrainians fleeing war has been so easy, and many of the sponsors gathered at the church, unable to get clear answers from the government, were looking to one another for advice.
Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and amid widespread criticism that it was not doing enough to help, the British government began Homes for Ukraine, a program meant to offer Ukrainians a quick path to safety. But despite tens of thousands of Britons having expressed interest in playing host, the rollout has been painfully slow.
Aid groups, potential hosts and Ukrainians say that the program is full of pitfalls, including a difficult application process and significant delays in visa processing. They also express concerns about safety and about a lack of support in gaining access to schools and other vital services in Britain.
May 24, 2022, 9:00 p.m. ET
Russian shelling pummels an eastern Ukrainian town, where the mayor says escape is impossible.
Image
Russia's intense bombardment has killed and wounded many people in the eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman, according to the mayor. Water, gas and electricity supplies are long gone. Escape is impossible because the roads are cut off, the mayor said, and those civilians who remain have taken refuge in their basements or in bomb shelters.
In recent weeks, the port city of Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine's suffering, after a protracted siege that left it in ruins and killed thousands. But other, lesser-known places have been pummeled in the conflict, too, and information about them has been hard to obtain because of fierce fighting as Moscow tries to seize territory in Ukraine's east.
Few reports have emerged from Lyman, a town in the Donetsk region that is a strategic target for Russia. But on Tuesday, the mayor, Oleksandr Zhuravlyov, gave a glimpse, noting that food supplies can no longer reach the citizens still in the town, who number about 8,000, down from over 20,000 in 2021, according to Ukraine's state statistics service.
"The situation in the city is very difficult," he said, during a broadcast on Ukrainian television. He said heavy shelling had destroyed many houses and cut communications. One priority, he said, was to secure an evacuation route so that civilians could leave.
Lyman lies around 40 miles west of the city of Sievierodonetsk, the last major urban center in the neighboring Luhansk region that is not under Russian control. Russian forces have been trying to capture Sievierodonetsk and hope to push east to take other larger towns still in Ukrainian hands, among them Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
The resource-rich Donets Basin in eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbas, contains the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Moscow-backed separatists have held significant territory since 2014.
Capturing the entire Donbas has become the focus of President Vladimir V. Putin's current campaign. Russia's earlier offensives failed to secure the capital, Kyiv, and the second largest city, Kharkiv, and it's forces have recently withdrawn from the outskirts of those cities. Those setbacks have had the effect of compressing and intensifying the fighting in southeastern Ukraine as Russia has shifted units to the region from other parts of the country.
May 24, 2022, 8:02 p.m. ET
Lessons from Russia's war in Ukraine are shifting the U.S.'s approach to Taiwan's defense.
Image
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has accelerated its efforts to reshape Taiwan's defense systems as it projects a more robust American military presence in the region to try to deter a potential attack by the Chinese military, current and former U.S. officials say.
Russia's war in Ukraine has made American and Taiwanese officials acutely aware that an autocrat can order an invasion of a neighboring territory at any moment. But it has also shown how a small military can hold out against a seemingly powerful foe.
U.S. officials are taking lessons learned from arming Ukraine to work with Taiwan in molding a stronger force that could repel a seaborne invasion by China, which has one of the world's largest militaries.
The aim is to turn Taiwan into what some officials call a "porcupine"— a territory bristling with armaments and other forms of U.S.-led support that appears too painful to attack.
Taiwan has long had missiles that can hit China. But the American-made weapons that it has recently bought — mobile rocket platforms, F-16 fighter jets and antiship projectiles — are better suited for repelling an invading force. Some military analysts say Taiwan might buy sea mines and armed drones later. And as it has in Ukraine, the U.S. government could also supply intelligence to enhance the lethality of the weapons, even if it refrains from sending troops.
American officials have been quietly pressing their Taiwanese counterparts to buy weapons suitable for asymmetric warfare, a conflict in which a smaller military uses mobile systems to conduct lethal strikes on a much bigger force, U.S. and Taiwanese officials say.
Washington increasingly uses the presence of its military and those of allies as deterrence. The Pentagon has begun divulging more details about the sailings of American warships through the Taiwan Strait — 30 since the start of 2020. And U.S. officials praise partner nations like Australia, Britain, Canada and France when their warships transit through the strait.
In ramping up its posture and language, the United States is trying to walk a fine line between deterrence and provocation. The actions risk pushing President Xi Jinping of China to order an attack on Taiwan, some analysts say.
On Wednesday, the Chinese army described organizing combat drills in the waters and airspace around Taiwan to send a blunt message to the United States. The statement was ambiguous as to whether such drills had already taken place recently or were still to come.
A Chinese offensive against Taiwan could take many forms, such as a full-scale sea and air assault on the main island with missile barrages, an invasion of small islands closest to China's southeast coast, a naval blockade or a cyberattack.
"Are we clear about what deters China and what provokes China?" said Bonnie S. Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. "The answer to that is 'no,' and that's dangerous territory."
"We need to think long and hard on how to strengthen deterrence," she said.
U.S. officials often discuss potential deterrent actions that end up being dropped because they are deemed too provocative. In the Trump administration, National Security Council officials discussed putting U.S. troops in Taiwan, one former official said. White House and Pentagon officials also proposed sending a high-level U.S. military delegation to Taiwan, but that idea was killed after senior officials at the State Department objected, another former official said.
President Biden's strong language during a visit to Tokyo this week tiptoed up to provocation, Ms. Glaser and other analysts in Washington said.
The president asserted on Monday that the United States had a "commitment" to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan — the third time he has made such remarks during his presidency. And he explicitly said he would take measures that go beyond what the United States has done in Ukraine. While Beijing could see the words as belligerent, they are consistent with the new emphasis in Washington on forceful deterrence.
Image
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden said in Tokyo that the decades-old policy of "strategic ambiguity" — leaving open whether the U.S. military would fight for Taiwan — still stands. "The policy has not changed at all," he said.
Harry B. Harris Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and a retired admiral who led the U.S. Pacific Command, said the United States now needed to adopt "strategic clarity" rather than "strategic ambiguity" to serve as a deterrent. China, he said, "isn't holding back its preparations for whatever it decides it wants to do simply because we're ambiguous about our position."
The United States has been urging allies to speak up on Taiwan in an effort to show Beijing that Washington can rally other nations against China if it attacks the self-governing democratic island. On Monday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan said at a news conference with Mr. Biden that the two leaders had affirmed "the importance of peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait."
In the three months of war in Ukraine, Washington has held together a coalition of European and Asian partners to impose sanctions against Russia. U.S. officials say they hope the measures send a message to China and other nations about the costs of carrying out the type of invasion overseen by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. U.S. officials are already discussing to what extent they could replicate the economic penalties and the military aid deployed in defense of Ukraine in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
"I want P.L.A. officers to wake up each day and believe they cannot isolate Taiwan in a conflict and must instead face the decision of initiating a costly, wider conflict where their objectives are beyond their reach," said Eric Sayers, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Pacific Command who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, referring to the People's Liberation Army.
The statement from the Chinese army on Wednesday described China's drills near Taiwan as "a solemn warning" to the United States and Taiwan. The spokesman for China's Eastern Theater Command, Senior Col. Shi Yi, said in an online statement: "It is hypocritical and futile for the United States to say one thing and do another on the Taiwan issue."
U.S. intelligence analysts have been studying the evolving relationship between China and Russia and the lessons Beijing might be drawing from Ukraine.
Chinese leaders face a complicated calculus in weighing whether their military can seize Taiwan without incurring an overwhelming cost.
A Pentagon report released last year said China's military modernization effort continued to widen the capability gap between the country's forces and those of Taiwan. But the Chinese military has not fought a war since 1979, when it attacked Vietnam in an offensive that ended in a strategic loss for China.
To take Taiwan, the Chinese Navy would need to cross more than 100 miles of water and make an amphibious assault, an operation that is much more complex than anything Mr. Putin has tried in Ukraine.
And in any case, perceived capabilities on paper might not translate to performance in the field.
"As we have learned in Ukraine, no one really knows how hard a military will fight until a war actually starts," said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral and former dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. "China is probably not ready to take a risk of an invasion with current force levels and capabilities in terms of attacking Taiwan."
American officials are not making that assumption. They have pressed Taiwan to buy weapons systems that they deem suitable for asymmetric warfare against China. The Biden administration recently told the Taiwanese Defense Ministry not to order MH-60R Seahawk helicopters made by Lockheed Martin, and it has also discouraged orders for more M1A2 Abrams tanks.
Admiral Stavridis said the United States needed to get weapons into the hands of the Taiwanese quickly if an invasion looked imminent, with a focus on systems that would wear down Chinese offensive capabilities.
"That would include smart mines, anti-ship cruise missiles, cybersecurity capability and special forces who can neutralize Chinese advance teams, and air defense systems," he said.
U.S. officials consider mobility to be critical and are encouraging Taiwan to buy mobile land-based Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Stinger antiaircraft missiles could also be valuable for staving off the Chinese air force.
The pace of Taiwan's weapons purchases has increased. Since 2010, the United States has announced more than $23 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, according to the Pentagon report from last year. In 2020 alone, authorizations totaled more than $5 billion. The sales included advanced unmanned aerial systems, long-range missiles and artillery, and anti-ship missiles.
Taiwan's annual defense budget is more than 2 percent of its gross domestic product. President Tsai Ing-wen has increased the annual figure by modest amounts.
Both U.S. and Taiwanese officials say Taiwanese troops need better training, but each government wants the other to take more responsibility.
"The Taiwanese troops barely have opportunities to conduct exercises with the allies," said Shu Hsiao-huang, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, which is funded by the government of Taiwan. "Military cooperation between Taiwan and the United States should be strengthened in the aspects of regional exercises and the deployment of weapons."
Ms. Glaser said Taiwan needed to create a strong reserve force and territorial defense force that could wear down an invading military, as the Ukrainians did.
"The U.S. has encouraged Taiwan's military for years to talk to countries with a robust defense force," she said. "Taiwan has sent delegations to Israel, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, some of the Baltic States. Now the situation is far more serious and far more urgent. There's a lot more pressure."
John Ismay and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington, Paul Mozur from Seoul, and Amy Chang Chien from Taipei, Taiwan.
May 24, 2022, 7:40 p.m. ET
Turkey lists demands ahead of talks with Sweden and Finland on their NATO bids.
Image
Turkey made a series of security-related demands of Sweden on Tuesday, a day ahead of talks between Turkish officials and delegations from Sweden and Finland in Ankara about Turkey's opposition to their becoming NATO members.
After years of neutrality, both Finland and Sweden decided to join NATO, aiming to fortify their defenses against Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. But approval of their membership bids requires the unanimous consent of current NATO members, and the president of one — Turkey — has voiced strong objections.
"Are they coming to convince us?" the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters last week. "They shouldn't bother."
The Finnish and Swedish delegations are expected to meet at the presidential palace on Wednesday with Mr. Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, and a deputy Turkish foreign minister, Sedat Onal, according to Mr. Kalin's office.
Turkey accuses Sweden and Finland of providing support for terrorism — specifically for the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or P.K.K., and followers of Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive Islamist preacher living in self-exile in the United States.
The P.K.K., a Maoist guerrilla movement, has been fighting the Turkish state for more than three decades and is considered a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union. Turkey accuses Mr. Gulen, a former ally of Mr. Erdogan and his followers, of orchestrating a deadly coup attempt in 2016.
"Turkey expects concrete assurances from Sweden" regarding Turkey's security concerns, Mr. Erdogan's communications directorate said in a tweet on Monday, posting a list of its demands.
Among the demands were that Sweden lift an arms embargo and sanctions against Turkey; stop financing and providing political support to what Turkey considers terrorism; and halt sending weapons to the P.K.K. and its Syrian offshoot, Y.P.G.
The statement of demands said that Turkey had been requesting extradition of Gulenists and people with links to the P.K.K. since 2017, without, it said, getting an adequate response.
May 24, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ET
Chelsea's sale advances after assurances that no proceeds will go to the soccer team's Russian owner.
Image
LONDON — The British government on Tuesday moved closer to giving its blessing to the purchase of Chelsea F.C., one of European soccer's blue-ribbon teams, by an American-led investment group after deciding it had sufficient assurances that none of the proceeds from the record sale price — $3.1 billion — would flow to the club's Russian owner.
The government's pending approval, expected as soon as Wednesday, signaled the end of not only the most expensive deal in sports history but possibly the most fraught, cryptic and political, too.
In the three months since the Russian oligarch who owns Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, hurriedly put his team on the market, the club's fate has played out not only on the fields of some of world soccer's richest competitions but in the corridors of power at Westminster and the soaring towers of Wall Street. And all of it is against the backdrop of crippling financial sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The path to a deal has entangled a scarcely probable cast of characters — private equity funds and anonymous offshore trusts; lawmakers in Britain and Portugal; an octogenarian Swiss billionaire and the American tennis star Serena Williams; an enigmatic Russian oligarch and a little known Portuguese rabbi — and featured a contested passport, wartime peace talks and even reports of an attempted poisoning.
Its end leaves as many questions as answers. All that can be said for certain is that a group led by the Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly and largely financed by the private equity firm Clearlake will now control Chelsea, a six-time English and two-time European champion, and Abramovich will not.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/25/world/russia-ukraine-war
0 Response to "Did France Every Pay the Fine for Refusing to Lift the Banon Britsh Beef"
Post a Comment