Europe
COVID cases rise in Southeast Asia, Middle East and Europe
The number of new coronavirus cases rose in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe last week, while the number of deaths globally dropped by 16%, according to the World Health Organization’s latest weekly pandemic report issued Wednesday.
The WHO said there were 3.3 million new COVID-19 infections last week, marking a 4% decrease, with more than 7,500 deaths. But cases jumped by about 45% in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and by about 6% in Europe. Southeast Asia was the only region to report a slight 4% increase in deaths, while figures fell elsewhere. Globally, the number of new COVID-19 cases has ben falling after peaking in January.
Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist and vice-chancellor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, said the recent fall in COVID-19 numbers had reached “trough” levels and had not been seen much in the last two and a half years. He warned, however, that some countries, including Britain, were starting to see a slight resurgence in cases.
British health officials said last week there were early signs the country could be at the start of a new wave of infections driven by omicron variants, although hospitalization rates have so far remained “very low.”
The country dropped nearly all of its COVID restrictions months ago. Last week, the U.K. recorded a 43% rise in cases following the street parties, concerts and other festivities celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee earlier this month, that marked her 70 years as monarch.
Read: Biden visits clinic, celebrates COVID shots for kids under 5
Meanwhile in the U.S., officials began rolling out vaccines for the littlest children late last week, with shots for kids aged six months to five years.
Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control authorized vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna on Saturday, saying they helped prevent severe disease, hospitalization and deaths in young children.
Read: Govt hopes FY2023 will be final year of Covid pandemic: Document
While young children generally don’t get as sick from COVID-19 as older kids and adults, their hospitalizations surged during the omicron wave and American experts determined that benefits from vaccination outweighed the minimal risks.
Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe
A leading adviser to the World Health Organization described the unprecedented outbreak of the rare disease monkeypox in developed countries as “a random event” that might be explained by risky sexual behavior at two recent mass events in Europe.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. David Heymann, who formerly headed WHO’s emergencies department, said the leading theory to explain the spread of the disease was sexual transmission among gay and bisexual men at two raves held in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox has not previously triggered widespread outbreaks beyond Africa, where it is endemic in animals.
“We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” said Heymann.
That marks a significant departure from the disease’s typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates and outbreaks have not spread across borders.
To date, WHO has recorded more than 90 cases of monkeypox in a dozen countries including Britain, Spain, Israel, France, Switzerland, the U.S. and Australia.
Also read: Monkeypox: Govt orders screening passengers at all airports, land ports
Madrid’s senior health official said on Monday that the Spanish capital has recorded 30 confirmed cases so far. Enrique Ruiz Escudero said authorities are investigating possible links between a recent Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew some 80,000 people, and cases at a Madrid sauna.
Heymann chaired an urgent meeting of WHO’s advisory group on infectious disease threats on Friday to assess the ongoing epidemic and said there was no evidence to suggest that monkeypox might have mutated into a more infectious form.
Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, rash, and lesions on the face or genitals. It can be spread through close contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets, but sexual transmission has not yet been documented. Most people recover from the disease within several weeks without requiring hospitalization. Vaccines against smallpox, a related disease, are also effective in preventing monkeypox and some antiviral drugs are being developed.
The disease can be fatal in about 10% of infections, but no deaths have been reported among the current cases.
WHO said the outbreak is “atypical” and said the fact that cases are being seen in so many different countries suggests the disease may have been silently spreading for some time. The agency’s Europe director warned that as summer begins across the continent, mass gatherings, festivals and parties could accelerate the spread of monkeypox.
Other scientists have pointed out that it will be difficult to disentangle whether it is sex itself or the close contact related to sex that has driven the recent spread of monkeypox across Europe.
“By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person’s sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission," said Mike Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London.
On Sunday, the chief medical adviser of Britain’s Health Security Agency, Dr. Susan Hopkins, said she expected more monkeypox cases to be identified in the country “on a daily basis.”
Also read: Monkeypox usually self-limiting but may be severe in some individuals: WHO
U.K. officials have said “a notable proportion” of the cases in Britain and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who are gay, bisexual or have sex with men. Authorities in Portugal and Spain also said their cases were in men who mostly had sex with other men and whose infections were picked up when they sought help for lesions at sexual health clinics.
Heymann, who is also a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeypox outbreak was likely a random event that might be traceable to a single infection.
“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann hypothesized. “And then there were these international events that seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S. and other European countries.”
He emphasized that the disease was unlikely to trigger widespread transmission.
“This is not COVID,” he said. “We need to slow it down, but it does not spread in the air and we have vaccines to protect against it.” Heymann said studies should be conducted rapidly to determine if monkeypox could be spread by people without symptoms and that populations at risk of the disease should take precautions to protect themselves
African scientists baffled by monkeypox cases in Europe, US
Scientists who have monitored numerous outbreaks of monkeypox in Africa say they are baffled by the disease’s recent spread in Europe and North America.
Cases of the smallpox-related disease have previously been seen only among people with links to central and West Africa. But in the past week, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, U.S., Sweden and Canada all reported infections, mostly in young men who hadn’t previously traveled to Africa.
There are about 80 confirmed cases worldwide and 50 more suspected ones, the World Health Organization said. France, Germany, Belgium and Australia reported their first cases Friday.
“I’m stunned by this. Every day I wake up and there are more countries infected,” said Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who formerly headed the Nigerian Academy of Science and who sits on several WHO advisory boards.
“This is not the kind of spread we’ve seen in West Africa, so there may be something new happening in the West,” he said.
To date, no one has died in the outbreak. Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, rash and lesions on the face or genitals. WHO estimates the disease is fatal for up to one in 10 people, but smallpox vaccines are protective and some antiviral drugs are being developed.
British health officials are exploring whether the disease is being sexually transmitted. Health officials have asked doctors and nurses to be on alert for potential cases, but said the risk to the general population is low. The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommended all suspected cases be isolated and that high-risk contacts be offered smallpox vaccine.
Nigeria reports about 3,000 monkeypox cases a year, WHO said. Outbreaks are usually in rural areas, when people have close contact with infected rats and squirrels, Tomori said. He said many cases are likely missed.
Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the country’s Center for Disease Control, said none of the Nigerian contacts of the British patients have developed symptoms and that investigations were ongoing.
WHO’s Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, described the outbreak as “atypical,” saying the disease’s appearance in so many countries across the continent suggested that “transmission has been ongoing for some time.” He said most of the European cases are mild.
On Friday, Britain’s Health Security Agency reported 11 new monkeypox cases, saying “a notable proportion” of the infections in the U.K. and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who were gay, bisexual or had sex with men.
Authorities in Spain and Portugal also said their cases were in young men who mostly had sex with other men and said those cases were picked up when the men turned up with lesions at sexual health clinics.
Experts have stressed they do not know if the disease is being spread through sex or other close contact related to sex.
Nigeria hasn’t seen sexual transmission, Tomori said, but he noted that viruses that hadn’t initially been known to transmit via sex, like Ebola, were later proven to do so after bigger epidemics showed different patterns of spread.
Also Read: US case of monkeypox reported in Massachusetts man
The same could be true of monkeypox, Tomori said.
In Germany, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said the government was confident the outbreak could be contained. He said the virus was being sequenced to see if there were any genetic changes that might have made it more infectious.
Rolf Gustafson, an infectious diseases professor, told Swedish broadcaster SVT that it was “very difficult” to imagine the situation might worsen.
“We will certainly find some further cases in Sweden, but I do not think there will be an epidemic in any way,” Gustafson said. “There is nothing to suggest that at present.”
Scientists said that while it’s possible the outbreak’s first patient caught the disease while in Africa, what’s happening now is exceptional.
“We’ve never seen anything like what’s happening in Europe,” said Christian Happi, director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases. “We haven’t seen anything to say that the transmission patterns of monkeypox have been changing in Africa. So if something different is happening in Europe, then Europe needs to investigate that.”
Also read: North Korea’s suspected COVID-19 caseload nears 2 million
Happi also pointed out that the suspension of smallpox vaccination campaigns after the disease was eradicated in 1980 might inadvertently be helping monkeypox spread. Smallpox vaccines also protect against monkeypox, but mass immunization was stopped decades ago.
“Aside from people in west and Central Africa who may have some immunity to monkeypox from past exposure, not having any smallpox vaccination means nobody has any kind of immunity to monkeypox,” Happi said.
Shabir Mahdi, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said a detailed investigation of the outbreak in Europe, including determining who the first patients were, was now critical.
“We need to really understand how this first started and why the virus is now gaining traction,” he said. “In Africa, there have been very controlled and infrequent outbreaks of monkeypox. If that’s now changing, we really need to understand why.”
Detained Bangladeshis in Libya to be brought back: FM
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Tuesday said the government would bring back Bangladeshis who were detained by Libyan security forces off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
He said this while responding to a question at his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Also read: UN says boat capsizes off Libya, 35 dead or presumed dead
Dr Momen, however, did not tell the number though media reported that over 500 Bangladeshis have been detained.
They were detained on Saturday while preparing to cross over to Europe from Libya's capital Tripoli.
Bangladesh Ambassador to Libya Major General SM Shamim Uz Zaman and his team are in touch with the Libyan authorities to rescue all of them.
Also read:Missing Bangladeshi journalist found in Libya after 5 days
Local media – The Libya Observer – tweeted claiming that security forces in Misrata have “arrested” more than 600 Bangladeshi migrants who were preparing to cross the Mediterranean Sea to the EU shores.
Do Momen said many returned after being detained there and laid emphasis on mass awareness to avoid repetition of such incidents.
EU imposes sanctions on Putin’s daughters
The European Union has imposed sanctions on two adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of a new package of measures targeting Russia’s economy, businessmen and oligarchs in retaliation for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to two EU officials.
The EU included Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova in its updated list of individuals facing an assets freeze and travel ban. The two EU officials from different EU member countries spoke Friday on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because the updated list of individuals and entities sanctioned has not been published yet.
The move from the European bloc follows a similar move two days earlier by the United States.
In the wake of evidence of torture and killings emerging from war zones outside Kyiv, the EU decided to impose a fifth package of measures.
“These latest sanctions were adopted following the atrocities committed by Russian armed forces in Bucha and other places under Russian occupation,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat. “The aim of our sanctions is to stop the reckless, inhuman and aggressive behavior of the Russian troops and make clear to the decision makers in the Kremlin that their illegal aggression comes at a heavy cost.”
But many in the Ukraine government want tougher measures that will have a quicker impact on the war.
“Some countries may want to exhaust the Russians economically rather than stop them, while the Ukrainians are shedding their blood. We don’t accept that,” said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk “The idea of the sanctions should be not just to exhaust the Russians in the longer term, but to stop them within months, not years.”
In addition to sanctions on individuals and members of their families, oligarchs and high-ranking Kremlin officials, the 27-nation bloc also formally approved Friday an embargo on coal imports starting in August, as well as a full transaction ban on four key Russian banks representing 23% of market share in the Russian banking sector.
Also, vessels registered under the Russian flag are now prohibited to access EU ports, with an exception for agricultural and food products, humanitarian aid and energy.
This is the first time that EU sanctions target Russia’s lucrative energy industry over its war in Ukraine. According to the EU council, imports of coal into the region are currently worth 8 billion euros per year.
The EU has already started working on additional sanctions, including on oil imports.
EU officials said the impact of the bloc’s sanctions so far over the first four weeks shows that imports into the 27 nations from Russia dropped off by 9% in terms of value, and over 20% in terms of volume. Trade from the EU to Russia has fallen by three quarters.
Europe agrees to ban Russian coal, but struggles on oil, gas
The European Union nations have agreed to ban Russian coal in the first sanctions on the vital energy industry over the war in Ukraine, but it has underlined the 27 countries' inability to agree so far on a much more sweeping embargo on oil and natural gas that would hit Russia harder but risk recession at home.
The coal ban should cost Russia 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) a year, the EU’s executive commission said. Energy analysts and coal importers say Europe could replace Russian supply in a few months from other countries, including the U.S.
The move is significant because it breaks the taboo on severing Europe's energy ties with Russia. It's also certain to fuel already record-high inflation. But compared with natural gas and oil, coal is by far the easiest to cut off quickly and inflicts far less damage on Russian President Vladimir Putin's war chest and the European economy. The EU pays Russia $20 million a day for coal — but $850 million a day for oil and gas.
Shocking pictures of bodies in the Ukrainian town of Bucha are keeping discussion of broader sanctions alive, with EU officials saying they're working on targeting Russian oil.A
Also read: Ukrainian leaders predict more gruesome discoveries ahead
While the EU ponders additional sanctions, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said no embargo of Russian natural gas is up for consideration now.
“And I don’t know if it ever will be on the table,’’ he told reporters Wednesday.
EU countries, especially big economies like Italy and Germany, rely heavily on Russian natural gas to heat and cool homes, generate electricity and keep industry churning.
Still, Draghi said, “the more horrendous this war gets, the allied countries will ask, in the absence of our direct participation in the war, what else can this coalition of allies do to weaken Russia, to make it stop.”
In case a gas embargo is proposed, Italy “will be very happy to follow it” if that would make peace possible, Draghi said. “If the price of gas can be exchanged for peace ... what do we choose? Peace? Or to have the air conditioning running in the summer?"
For now, even the coal ban brings worrying consequences for politicians and consumers. Germany and EU members in Eastern Europe still generate a large share of their power from coal despite a yearslong transition toward cleaner energy sources.
“The coal ban means European consumers will have to brace for high power prices throughout this year,” according to a Rystad Energy statement.
lso read: Ukraine appeals for weapons as fight looms on eastern front
Higher prices in countries that use more coal will spread across the EU through its well-connected power grid, the energy research company said. That will bring more pain. Europe has been facing high energy prices for months over a supply crunch, and jitters over the war have sent them even higher.
Governments already have been rolling out cash support and tax relief for consumers hit by higher utility bills. High energy prices have pushed inflation in the 19 member countries that use the euro currency to a record 7.5%.
Commodities analyst Barbara Lambrecht at German bank Commerzbank said EU governments likely could agree on a coal embargo because it would take effect after three months and only apply to new contracts. The downside is the limited impact on Russia, with coal only 3.5% of its exports and only a quarter going to the EU.
Germany’s coal importer’s association said Russian coal could be completely replaced from the U.S., South Africa, Colombia, Mozambique and Indonesia “by next winter” — at higher prices.
European coal futures prices jumped after the EU announced the coal proposal, from around $255 per ton to $290 per ton. It was approved by the EU ambassadors and the sanctions should become official once published in the EU's official journal on Friday.
The big debate remains oil and natural gas, with the European Union dependent on Russia for 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil. It's tougher for Europe to cut off than the U.S., which imported little Russian oil and no gas and has banned both.
Yet European Council President Charles Michel said, “I believe that measures on oil and even on gas will also be needed sooner or later.”
It's difficult for the EU to agree on energy sanctions because countries like Germany, Italy and Bulgaria are much more dependent on Russian gas in particular than others. Europe has scrambled to get additional gas through pipelines from Norway and Algeria and with more liquefied gas that comes by ship, but those global supplies are limited.
For now, the EU's plan is to cut dependence on Russian gas by two-thirds by year's end and completely over the next several years by stepping up alternative supplies, conservation and wind and solar.
Germany has reduced its reliance on Russian natural gas from 55% to 40%, but the government says the consequences to jobs from a cutoff would be too great.
Germany's steelmaking association, for instance, has warned of forced shutdowns that would throw people out of their jobs or onto government support and send shortages of basic parts rippling through the rest of the economy.
Energy Minister Robert Habeck says the country will halt Russian coal this summer, oil by year's end and gas in mid-2024.
Oil would be easier to ban than natural gas, because like coal, there's a large and liquid global market for oil and it comes mostly by ship, not fixed pipeline like gas.
But it's not problem-free either. Russia is the world's largest oil exporter, with 12% of global supply. Taking its oil to Europe off the market would drive up prices from other exporters, such as Saudi Arabia, when supplies are already tight.
Russia might simply sell the oil to India and China, which aren't taking part in sanctions — although the price Moscow gets might be lower.
The economic hit from a full energy cutoff range from a drop of 1.2% to 2.2% of gross domestic product in the 19 countries using the euro, plus 2 percentage points of additional inflation, recent economist estimates say.
1 killed, dozens injured after explosion at night club in Baku
At least one man was killed and more than 30 others were injured after a huge blast at a night club in the center of Azerbaijan's capital Baku in the early hours of Sunday, according to law enforcement authorities.
The explosion resulted in a huge fire that engulfed the building of the night club and caused part of it to collapse, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The blast also damaged nearby properties, including cars.
Several fire and emergency crews were sent to the area, who managed to extinguish the fire. One body was discovered at the scene. At least 31 people suffered injuries, mainly burns, and were hospitalized, according to initial estimates of law enforcement authorities.
Also Read: 2 killed, 8 injured in car bomb blast in western Afghanistan
The blast was caused by a propane gas cylinder, said Ruslan Aliyev, general director of the country's main gas provider Azerigas, adding that gas supply to the area was halted for safety reasons.
Senior officials, including Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations Etibar Mirzayev, First Deputy Prosecutor General Elchin Mammadov and Baku Mayor Eldar Azizov rushed to the scene.
Authorities have launched an investigation into the incident as emergency crews were still searching for victims.
War shakes Europe path to energy independence, climate goals
Before Russia’s war in Ukraine, Europe’s most pressing energy policy goal was reducing carbon emissions that cause climate change.
Now, officials are fixated on rapidly reducing the continent’s reliance on Russian oil and natural gas — and that means friction between security and climate goals, at least in the short term.
To wean itself from Russian energy supplies as quickly as possible, Europe will need to burn more coal and build more pipelines and terminals to import fossil fuels from elsewhere.
This dramatic shift comes amid soaring fuel costs for motorists, homeowners and businesses, and as political leaders reassess the geopolitical risks from being so energy-dependent on Russia.
In 2021, the European Union imported roughly 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil from Russia — an economic relationship that officials had thought would prevent hostilities, but is instead financing them.
Read:West needs more courage in helping Ukraine fight: Zelenskyy
While some are calling for an immediate boycott of all Russian oil and gas, the EU plans to reduce Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of this year, and to eliminate them altogether before 2030.
This “will not be easy,” said Paolo Gentiloni, the EU’s top economic official. But, he added, “it can be done.”
In the near-term, ending energy ties with Russia puts the focus on securing alternative sources of fossil fuels. But longer term, the geopolitical and price pressures stoked by Russia’s war in Ukraine may actually accelerate Europe’s transition away from oil, gas and coal.
Experts say the war has served as a reminder that renewable energy isn’t just good for the climate, but also for national security. That could help speed up the development of wind and solar power, as well as provide a boost to conservation and energy-efficiency initiatives.
The EU has pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 55% compared with 1990 levels by 2030, and to get to net zero emissions by 2050. Analysts and officials say those goals, enshrined in EU climate legislation, can still be met.
The rapid pursuit of energy independence from Russia will likely require “a slight increase” in carbon emissions, said George Zachmann, an energy expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. But “in the long term, the effect will be that we will see more investment in renewables and energy efficiency in Europe,” Zachmann said.
Plans that wouldn’t have been contemplated just a few months ago are now being actively discussed, such as running coal plants in Germany beyond 2030, which had previously been seen as an end date.
Germany’s vice chancellor and energy minister, Robert Habeck, said there should be “no taboos.”
The Czech government has made the same calculation about extending the life of coal power plants.
“We will need it until we find alternative sources,” Czech energy security commissioner Václav Bartuška, told the news site Seznam Zprávy. “Until that time, even the greenest government will not phase out coal.”
One of Europe’s top priorities is to buy more liquefied natural gas that can come by ship. On Friday, American and European officials announced a plan under which the U.S. and other nations will increase liquefied gas exports to Europe this year, though U.S. officials were unable to say exactly which countries will provide the extra energy this year.
Germany, which lacks import terminals to turn LNG back into gas when it comes off the ship, is pushing ahead with two multibillion-euro projects on its North Sea coast.
The war also has revived Spain’s interest in extending a gas pipeline across the Pyrenees to France. The 450 million-euro ($500 million) project had been abandoned in 2019 after France showed little interest and a European feasibility study deemed it unprofitable and unnecessary. If built, it would allow gas imported in Spain and Portugal as LNG to reach other parts of Europe.
In Britain, which is no longer part of the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson says it’s “time to take back control of our energy supplies.”
Britain will phase out the small amount of oil it imports from Russia this year. More significantly, Johnson has signaled plans to approve new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, to the dismay of environmentalists, who say that is incompatible with Britain’s climate targets.
Read:Rocket attacks hit Ukraine's Lviv as Biden visits Poland
Some within the governing Conservative Party and the wider political right want the British government to retreat on its commitment to reach net zero by 2050, a pledge made less than six months ago at a global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Conservative Party co-chairman Oliver Dowden said last week that “British people want to see a bit of conservative pragmatism, not net zero dogma.”
Yet the shock waves from the war cut both ways.
Sharply higher gas and electricity prices, and the desire to be less dependent on Russia, are increasing pressure to expand the development of home-grown renewables and to propel conservation.
The International Energy Agency recently released a 10-point plan for Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by a third within a year. Simply lowering building thermostats by an average of one degree Celsius during the home-heating season would save 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, or roughly 6% of what Europe imports from Russia.
At the German rooftop solar panel company Zolar, chief executive Alex Melzer said there has been a surge of inquiries from potential customers since the war began.
“With the Ukraine crisis, we’ve really seen that people are wondering whether Germany is going to stop buying oil and gas from Russia and what’s going to happen to our electricity and energy system,” he told The Associated Press.
Melzer said customers are less interested in saving the planet than in saving money, despite the upfront investment of 20,000 euros ($22,000). But it amounts to the same thing: a reduction in fossil fuel use and thereby emissions.
“Goal achieved, super,” he said.
Biden lashes at Putin, calls for Western resolve for freedom
President Joe Biden delivered a forceful and highly personal condemnation of Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Saturday, summoning a call for liberal democracy and a durable resolve among Western nations in the face of a brutal autocrat.
As he capped a four-day trip to Europe, a blend of emotive scenes with refugees and standing among other world leaders in grand settings, Biden said of Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
It was a dramatic escalation in rhetoric — Biden had earlier called Putin a “butcher” — that the White House found itself quickly walking back. Before Biden could even board Air Force One to begin the flight back to Washington, aides were clarifying that he wasn’t calling for an immediate change in government in Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly denounced Biden, saying “it’s not up to the president of the U.S. and not up to the Americans to decide who will remain in power in Russia.”
While Biden’s blunt language grabbed headlines, in other pieces of his roughly 30-minute speech before Warsaw’s iconic Royal Castle he urged Western allies to brace for what will be a turbulent road ahead in a “new battle for freedom.”
READ: Biden ending Europe trip with unity message that echoes past
He also pointedly warned Putin against invading even “an inch” of territory of a NATO nation.
The address was a heavy bookend to a European visit in which Biden met with NATO and other Western leaders, visited the front lines of the growing refugee crisis and even held a young Ukrainian girl in his arms as he sought to spotlight some of the vast tentacles of the conflict that will likely define his presidency.
“We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after, and for the years and decades to come. It will not be easy,” Biden said as Russia continued to pound several Ukrainian cities. “There will be costs, but the price we have to pay, because the darkness that drives autocracy is ultimately no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.”
Biden also made the case that multilateral institutions like NATO are more important than ever if the West and its allies are going to successfully push back against autocrats like Putin.
During his campaign for president, Biden talked often about the battle for primacy between democracies and autocracies. In those moments, his words seemed like an abstraction. Now, they have an urgent resonance.
Europe finds itself ensconced in a crisis that has virtually all of Europe revisiting defense spending, energy policy and more, and so does the U.S.
Charles Kupchan, who served as senior director for European affairs on the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, called the invasion a “game-changer” that left Atlantic democracies with “no choice” but to bolster their posture against Russia.
But the path ahead for Biden — and the West — will only grow more complicated, Kupchan said.
“The challenges Biden’s presidency faces have just grown in magnitude,” said Kupchan, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “He now needs to lead the West’s efforts to protect the West from the pressing external threat posed by Russia. And he needs to continue strengthening the West from within by countering the illiberal populism that still poses internal threats to democratic societies on both sides of the Atlantic.”
In one of the most poignant moments of his trip, Biden on Saturday bent down and picked up a young girl, a Ukrainian refugee in a pink winter coat, and spoke of how she reminded him of his own granddaughters.
“I don’t speak Ukrainian, but tell her I want to take her home,” Biden asked a translator to tell the smiling child.
Hours later, Biden was in front of a crowd of a 1,000 — including recent Ukrainian refugees — at the Royal Castle, a Warsaw landmark that dates back more than 400 years and was badly damaged in World War II. He made clear that the West would need to steel itself for what will be a long and difficult battle.
“We must commit now, to be this fight for the long haul,” Biden said.
The Biden administration, which has been selective about putting too great of importance on any single policy speech, sought to elevate what White House officials billed as a major address. Biden spoke with grand palace behind him to an invited audience — one bigger than just about any he’s spoken to during his presidency.
He singled out Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader who led the push for freedom in his country and was eventually elected its president, and connected the moment to the former Soviet Union’s history of brutal oppression, including the post-World War II military operations to stamp out pro-democracy movements in Hungary, Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia. And he urged Europe to heed the words of Pope John Paul II, the first pontiff from Poland: “Be not afraid.”
Biden’s trip has reaffirmed the importance of European alliances, which atrophied under former President Donald Trump. He’s worked with his counterparts to marshal an array of punishing sanctions on Russia, and placed the continent on a course that could eliminate its dependence on Russian energy over the next several years.
The collective response to the invasion of Ukraine has little parallel in recent history, which has been more characterized by widening divisions than close coordination. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed that dynamic, with European nations stepping up defense spending and imposing crushing sanctions against Moscow, and some taking initial steps to reorient their energy needs away from Russia.
“I’m confident that Vladimir Putin was counting on dividing NATO,” Biden said during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Friday. “But he hasn’t been able to do it. We’ve all stayed together.”
Maintaining such unity will likely prove difficult as the war grinds on, and the refugee situation could become one source of strain. Much like NATO is committed to the collective defense of each member, Biden said, other nations should share the burden of caring for Ukrainian refugees. To that end, the U.S. administration announced it would admit up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States this year.
“It should be all of NATO’s responsibility,” he told Duda, whose country has accepted roughly 2.2 million of the 3.7 million who have fled Ukraine. It’s not clear how many of those displaced Ukrainians who have come through Poland have now moved on to other nations.
There’s also no clear path to ending the conflict. Although Russian officials have suggested they will focus their invasion on the Donbas, a region in East Ukraine, Biden wasn’t so sure if there was a real shift underway.
Asked on Saturday if the Russians have changed their strategy, he told reporters that “I am not sure they have.”
Despite the hazards ahead, Biden insisted there is more reason to be hopeful that the West and Ukraine can eventually succeed.
“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a people’s love for liberty,” Biden said. “Brutality will never grind down their will to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.”
Zelenskyy vows to keep negotiating with Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will continue negotiating with Russia and is waiting for a meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for a meeting with Putin. But so far, his requests have gone unanswered by the Kremlin. Zelenskyy said Sunday during his nightly address to the nation that his delegation has a “clear task” to do everything to ensure a meeting between the two presidents.
Read:Russian airstrike escalates offensive in western Ukraine
Zelenskyy said talks are held daily between the two countries via video conference. He said the talks are necessary to establish a cease-fire and more humanitarian corridors. He said those corridors have saved more than 130,000 people in six days.
The humanitarian convoy to the besieged city of Mariupol was blocked Sunday by Russian forces. Zelenskyy said they would try again Monday.
Zelenskyy has also said it is a “black day” after Russia shelled a military base in the western part of his country.
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Sunday that Russia fired 30 rockets at the Yavoriv military base. He said the attack killed 35 people and injured 134 injured others.
Read:U.S. journalist killed by attack near Kyiv
The base is less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Polish border. Zelenskyy said he had given Western leaders “clear warning” of the danger to the base. He asked NATO leaders again to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. He warned “it is only a matter of time” before Russian missels fall on NATO territory.
Military analysts say the U.S, Britain and their European allies are unlikely to impose a no-fly zone because they believe it could escalate the war in Ukraine into a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia.