Europe
With Ukraine war, Europe's geopolitical map is moving again
Even though Russia has lost influence and friends since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, the nuclear superpower still holds sway over several of its neighbors in Europe and keeps others in an uneasy neutrality.
The Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine and the humanitarian tragedy it provoked over the past two weeks have raised a Western outcry of heartfelt support and spawned calls for a fundamental rethink of how the geopolitical map of Europe should be redrawn in the future.
To anchor that in the reality of 2022 is far more difficult than may appear at first sight. Nudging Ukraine, Europe's second-biggest country, fully into the Western fold against the will of Moscow poses massive problems.
Read:Air alert declared in Kyiv as fighting continues
And European Union leaders will confront them together head on during a two-day summit at Versailles just outside Paris starting Thursday — forced into the assessment by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he amazingly signed an official request to become an EU member last week.
“The European Union is going to be much stronger with us. So that’s for sure,” Zelenskyy said in an emotional live transmission to the European Parliament on Tuesday.
Piling on the pressure, he said, "So do prove that you are with us. Do prove that you will not let us go. Do prove that you indeed are Europeans.”
Compounding the EU's problem, Moldova and Georgia, two smaller nations who also fear the expansive reach of Russia, followed tack within days and also asked for membership.
The violence of the Russian invasion also spooked historically neutral countries like Sweden and Finland, which now see a surge in support for joining NATO and in Helsinki's case unshackling itself from a Russian influence so heavy that it became a political moniker — “Finlandization.”
Within days, conventional knowledge of who belongs where on the geopolitical map of the continent has been badly shaken.
Despite the thrill of opportunity, progress could be slow.
Many nations fear an enlargement of the bloc and a reshaping of traditional spheres of influence would put the continent on the brink of a full-fledged war. And there is no better example than Ukraine’s aspirations to join the 27-nation EU that could tilt the balance of blocs in Europe.
“There is no doubt that these brave people who defend our values with their lives belong in the European family,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, choosing her words carefully and avoiding an outright promise of membership.
Even if support for Ukraine is overwhelming among the EU member states, granting membership is anything but automatic. The leaders of eight eastern member states officially said Ukraine “deserves receiving an immediate EU accession perspective.”
But others range from cautious to skeptical, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saying that “every country in Europe is free to ask for it,” and immediately listed the immense bureaucratic hurdles ahead.
“It is extremely sensitive. The member states are not all on the same page," a high-level EU official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly about political discussions happening behind the scenes.
There could quickly be political fallout in Versailles.
Read:Suffering goes on in encircled Mariupol as evacuation fails
"The discussion about Ukraine’s accession to the EU could also easily become overheated, providing euroskeptics with a perfect opportunity to spread fear among voters,” said Pawel Zerka of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
Several nations indicate it isn't good to give Ukraine immediate hope with any rash decision taken in the heat of battle. Calls for a fast-track move to grant membership clash with institutional and political objections and some common sense.
In the past, membership applications have taken years, sometimes decades. Turkey applied to join in 1987 and is nowhere close to membership. Four others are candidate countries now, but the EU has shown an extreme reluctance to expand further eastward. To allow Ukraine to leapfrog over the others would stir passions in the Western Balkans where several are awaiting a nod.
For the European Commission to just assess whether a nation could be a candidate to start membership talks with often takes a year to 18 months.
And to be admitted, potential newcomers would also need to absorb all EU regulations, from rule of law principles to trade and fertilizer standards — about 80,000 pages of rules. Over the past years, the EU has often pointed out that Ukraine’s anti-corruption measures still lacked teeth.
And to top it off, any candidate needs the unanimous approval of current members, often allowing one nation to decide on the fate of the whole process.
In comparison, a move toward NATO membership, especially for nations like Sweden and Finland, would be easier, since the two already have very close cooperation with the military alliance.
A formal step though would surely raise the wrath of Moscow and be seen as a geopolitical power play.
“It’s obvious that if Finland and Sweden join NATO, which is first of all a military organization, it will entail serious military-political consequences, which would require retaliatory steps by the Russian Federation,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
But, somehow, that Nordic neutrality might already be slipping.
“Sweden and Finland have effectively ended their neutrality by sending military aid to Ukraine (lethal aid in the case of Sweden),” said Ed Arnold of Royal United Services Institute.
Russia shells Europe's largest nuclear plant, starting fire
Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.
The assault on the eastern city of Enerhodar and its Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant came as the invasion entered its second week with Russian forces gaining ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea. Elsewhere, another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.
Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the facility and had set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.
Firefighters cannot get near the flames because they are being shot at, he said, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted a plea to the Russians to stop the assault and allow fire teams inside.
“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Tuz said in a video statement. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.”
Also read: Norway, Germany provide missiles to Ukraine
The attack renewed fears that the invasion could result in damage to one of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors and trigger another emergency like the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world’s worst nuclear disaster, which happened about 110 kilometers (65 miles) north of the capital.
The American Nuclear Society condemned the attack but said the latest radiation levels remained within natural background levels.
“The real threat to Ukrainian lives continues to be the violent invasion and bombing of their country,” the group said in a statement from President Steven Nesbit and Executive Director and CEO Craig Piercy.
The plant’s reactor is a different type than the one used at Chernobyl, and there should be little risk if the containment vessel is not damaged and outside power can be restored, said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a former senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council and former special adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
“Everyone needs to take a step back and not jump to conclusions,” Wolfsthal, now a senior adviser at Global Zero, said on Twitter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was in contact with authorities in Ukraine. The agency's director general, Mariano Grossi, urged military forces to refrain from violence near the plant.
Also read: UN Assembly votes to demand that Russia stop war in Ukraine
The mayor of Enerhodar said earlier that Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the city’s outskirts. Video showed flames and black smoke rising above the city of more than 50,000, with people streaming past wrecked cars, just a day after the U.N. atomic watchdog agency expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors.
The Ukrainian state atomic energy company reported that a Russian military column was heading toward the nuclear plant. Loud shots and rocket fire were heard late Thursday.
“Many young men in athletic clothes and armed with Kalashnikovs have come into the city. They are breaking down doors and trying to get into the apartments of local residents,” the statement from Energoatom said.
Later, a live streamed security camera linked from the homepage of the Zaporizhzhia plant showed what appeared to be armored vehicles rolling into the facility’s parking lot and shining spotlights on the building where the camera was mounted.
There were then what appeared to be bright muzzle flashes from vehicles, followed by nearly simultaneous explosions in the surrounding buildings. Smoke then rose into the frame and drifted away.
While the huge Russian armored column threatening Kyiv appeared bogged down outside the capital, Vladimir Putin's forces have brought their superior firepower to bear over the past few days, launching hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks on cities and other sites around the country and making significant gains in the south.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the country's nuclear plants as fighting intensified. "It is a question of the security of the whole world!” he said in a statement.
The U.S. and NATO allies have ruled out creating a no-fly zone since the move would pit Russian and Western military forces against each other.
The Russians announced the capture of the southern city of Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 280,000, and local Ukrainian officials confirmed the takeover of the government headquarters there, making it the first major city to fall since the invasion began a week ago.
Heavy fighting continued on the outskirts of another strategic port, Mariupol, on the Azov Sea. The battles have knocked out the city's electricity, heat and water systems, as well as most phone service, officials said. Food deliveries to the city were also cut.
Associated Press video from the port city shows the assault lighting up the darkening sky above largely deserted streets and medical teams treating civilians, including one inside a clinic who appeared to be a child. Doctors were unable to save the person.
Severing Ukraine's access to the Black and Azov seas would deal a crippling blow to its economy and allow Russia to build a land corridor to Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014.
Overall, the outnumbered, outgunned Ukrainians have put up stiff resistance, staving off the swift victory that Russia appeared to have expected. But a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia’s seizure of Crimea gave it a logistical advantage in that part of the country, with shorter supply lines that smoothed the offensive there.
Ukrainian leaders called on the people to defend their homeland by cutting down trees, erecting barricades in the cities and attacking enemy columns from the rear. In recent days, authorities have issued weapons to civilians and taught them how to make Molotov cocktails.
“Total resistance. ... This is our Ukrainian trump card, and this is what we can do best in the world,” Oleksiy Arestovich, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a video message, recalling guerrilla actions in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during World War II.
The second round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was held in neighboring Belarus. But the two sides appeared far apart going into the meeting, and Putin warned Ukraine that it must quickly accept the Kremlin's demand for its “demilitarization" and declare itself neutral, renouncing its bid to join NATO.
Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron he was determined to press on with his attack "until the end,” according to Macron's office.
The two sides said that they tentatively agreed to allow cease-fires in areas designated safe corridors, and that they would seek to work out the necessary details quickly. A Zelenskyy adviser also said a third round of talks will be held early next week.
Despite a profusion of evidence of civilian casualties and destruction of property by the Russian military, Putin decried what he called an “anti-Russian disinformation campaign” and insisted that Moscow uses “only precision weapons to exclusively destroy military infrastructure.”
Putin claimed that the Russian military had already offered safe corridors for civilians to flee, but he asserted without evidence that Ukrainian “neo-Nazis" were preventing people from leaving and were using them as human shields.
He also hailed Russian soldiers as heroes in a video call with members of Russia's Security Council, and ordered additional payments to families of men killed or wounded.
A top Russian officer, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, commander of an airborne division, was killed in the fighting earlier this week, an officers organization in Russia reported.
The Pentagon set up a direct communication link to Russia's Ministry of Defense earlier this week to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation sparking conflict between Moscow and Washington, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the link had not been announced.
The fighting has sent more than 1 million people fleeing Ukraine, according to the U.N., which fears those refugee numbers could skyrocket.
The immense Russian column of hundreds of tanks and other vehicles still appeared to be stalled roughly 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Kyiv and had made no real progress in days, amid fuel and food shortages, according to U.S. authorities.
Ukraine: 14 Interesting but Lesser-Known Facts
Located in Eastern Europe, Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe that is bordered by Russia to the east, Belarus to the north, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea to the south. The country is about the size of Texas. Despite its significant size, Ukraine is often overshadowed by its neighbors, Russia and Poland. However, Ukraine is a country with a rich history and culture that is worth exploring. Here are 14 interesting but less known facts about Ukraine.
Some Interesting Facts about Ukraine
1. Largest Country in Europe
Well, it is not the largest if you consider Russia, which lies both in Asia and Europe. Other than that, Ukraine is the largest, with 603,548 km². Although Ukraine is the largest country in Europe by area, it has a population of only about 43.13 million (2020) World Bank, which is smaller than Germany and France.
2. You can Speak both Russian and Ukrainian Language
Ukrainians are proficient in both Russian and Ukrainian, but if you want to be truly local, speaking Ukrainian (the official language) is necessary. Unfortunately, English is not widely spoken here. However, Russian is the second most spoken language in the country, and 29.6% of Ukraine's population speak Russian as their native language. The Ukrainian language is a Slavic language that has many similarities with the Russian Language. Many Ukrainians also speak other languages, including Polish, Romanian and Hungarian.
Read Interesting but Lesser-Known Facts
3. Home to 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Ukraine boasts seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including Related Monastic Buildings in Kyiv and Saint-Sophia Cathedral, the ancient city of Chersonesus, and the primeval beech forests of the Carpathians. These internationally significant destinations are a testament to the country's rich history and natural beauty.
Biden and Europe waiting on one key sanction against Russia
U.S. and European officials are holding one key financial sanction against Russia in reserve, choosing not to boot Russia off SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a barrage of new financial sanctions Thursday. The sanctions are meant to isolate, punish and impoverish Russia in the long term. President Joe Biden announced restrictions on exports to Russia and sanctions against Russian banks and state-controlled companies.
But Biden pointedly played down the need to block Russia from SWIFT, saying that while it's “always” still an option, “right now that's not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.” He also suggested the sanctions being put in place would have more teeth.
“The sanctions we’ve imposed exceed SWIFT,” Biden said in response to a question Thursday. “Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.”
Still, some European leaders, including in the United Kingdom, favor taking the additional step of blocking Russia from SWIFT, the Belgium-headquartered consortium used by banks and other financial institutions that serves as a key communications line for commerce worldwide. The SWIFT system averaged 42 million messages daily last year to enable payments. The name is an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, and about half of all high-value payments that cross national borders go through its platform.
Read:NATO leaders meet to reassure allies near Russia, Ukraine
Ukraine has sought for Russia to be excluded from SWIFT, but several European leaders would prefer to stay patient because a ban could make international trade more difficult and hurt their economies.
“A number of countries are hesitant since it has serious consequences for themselves,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who believes a ban should be a last resort.
The British government says Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed at a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven world leaders Thursday for Russia to be kicked out of SWIFT. It said there was “no pushback” but it was agreed that more discussion was needed. U.K. officials would not confirm Germany was resisting.
U.S. lawmakers have called on Biden to deploy every available financial sanction, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying Thursday that America should “ratchet the sanctions all the way up. Don’t hold any back. Every single available tough sanction should be employed and should be employed now.”
But Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the SWIFT ban would be complicated and time-consuming in part because the U.S. doesn't have control over the decision.
The problem is that banning Russia from SWIFT might not cut it off from the global economy as cleanly as proponents think. Also, there could be blowback in the form of slower international growth. And rival messaging systems could gain users in ways that erode the power of the U.S. dollar — all of which has left SWIFT as a sanction waiting to be deployed.
“It’s a communications platform, not a financial payments system," said Adam Smith, a lawyer who worked in the Obama administration. "If you remove Russia from SWIFT, you’re removing them from a key artery of finance, but they can use pre-SWIFT tools like telephone, telex or email to engage in bank-to-bank transactions.”
The other risk is that countries could migrate their institutions to platforms other than SWIFT, such as a system developed by China. This would increase the friction in global commerce — hurting growth — and make it harder to monitor the finances of terrorist groups.
“By politicizing SWIFT you give incentive for others to develop alternatives,” said Brian O'Toole, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former Treasury official. “SWIFT also is an important partner in U.S.-European counterterrorism efforts. It shares data with U.S. Treasury related to counterterrorism issues that has proven to be enormously valuable.”
The sanctions announced Thursday would still accomplish much of what would happen if Russia lost access to SWIFT, said Clay Lowery of the Institute of International Finance.
“Cutting off these financial institutions from utilizing the dollar, euro, pound sterling is still a pretty significant step," Lowery said. “You’re really having the same impact on certain subsections of the Russian economy through sanctions.”
Iran was blocked from the SWIFT system in 2014 because of its nuclear program. In 2019, then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said losing access to SWIFT would be akin to a declaration of war against Russia. The statement by Medvedev is a sign that Russia viewed the platform as a vulnerability and developed workarounds to limit any economic damage.
Read:Ukraine's capital under threat as Russia presses invasion
"I think it will be harmful in the immediate term and psychological as well, but I’m not sure it’ll impact the economy in ways that make it worthwhile,” Smith said.
Russia has already prepared for ways to evade sanctions, including those imposed this week, experts say.
Ari Redbord, a former Treasury senior adviser, said he expects Russia’s leadership to bypass financial penalties that limit its ability to engage in the global financial system through the increased use of cryptocurrency.
He said this is a risk “especially when there are actors like Iran, China and North Korea” that will continue to trade with Russia outside of the formal financial system, Redbord said.
“If Russian banks are entirely cut off from the U.S. and European financial system, that will be very debilitating to those banks and the Russian economy,” he said. But the Russian government will use alternative means to trade with countries “even if there are debilitating" sanctions from the European Union and U.S.
At least 9 more deaths as 2nd major storm hits north Europe
The second major storm in three days smashed through northern Europe on Friday, killing at least nine people as high winds felled trees, cancelled train services and ripped sections off the roof of London’s O2 Arena.
The U.K. weather service said a gust provisionally measured at 122 mph (196 kph), thought to be the strongest ever in England was recorded on the Isle of Wight as Storm Eunice swept across the country’s south. The weather system, known as Storm Zeynep in Germany, is now pushing into the European mainland, prompting high wind warnings in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
The storm caused mayhem with travel in Britain, shutting the English Channel port of Dover, closing bridges linking England and Wales and halting most trains in and out of London.
At least three people died in Britain, including a man in southern England killed when a car hit a tree, another man whose windshield was struck by debris in northwest England and a woman in her 30s who died in London when a tree fell on a car, police said,
In the Netherlands, firefighters said three people were killed by falling trees in and around Amsterdam, and a fourth died in the northern province of Groningen after driving his car into a fallen tree.
In neighboring Belgium an elderly man died when high winds pushed him into a canal in Ypres. In County Wexford, Ireland, a local government worker was killed as he responded to the scene of a fallen tree, the local council said.
Eunice is the second named storm to hit Europe this week, with the first storm killing at least five people in Germany and Poland. Peter Inness, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in England, attributed the storms to an unusually strong jet stream over the eastern Atlantic Ocean, with winds close to 200 mph (321 kph) at high altitudes.
Read:Blizzard buffets East Coast with deep snow, winds, flooding
“A strong jet stream like this can act like a production line for storms, generating a new storm every day or two,” Inness said. “There have been many occasions in the recent past when two or more damaging storms have passed across the U.K. and other parts of Europe in the space of a few days.”
The forecast led British authorities to take the unusual step of issuing ”red” weather warnings — indicating a danger to life — for parts of southern England, including London, and Wales that lasted through early afternoon. A lower level amber warning for gusts up to 80 mph covers the whole of England from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Even before Britain was hit by the full force of the storm, Eunice disrupted travel across southern England and Wales with many train services interrupted and numerous flights and ferry services cancelled. A number of tourist attractions in England, including the London Eye, Legoland and Warwick Castle, closed ahead of the storm, as were all of London’s Royal Parks.
In the town of Wells in southwest England, the wind toppled the spire of a 19th-century church. In London, high winds ripped sections of roofing from the 02 Arena, a landmark on the south bank of the River Thames that was originally known as the Millennium Dome. Firefighters evacuated 1,000 people from the area.
“I urge all Londoners to stay at home, do not take risks, and do not travel unless it is absolutely essential,″ Mayor Sadiq Khan said before the storm.
The Environment Agency issued 10 severe flood warnings, another indicator of life-threatening weather conditions.
Read: Snow storms and pandemic ground flights, delay holiday's end
The storm was expected to hit northern Germany later Friday and sweep eastward overnight. A flood warning was issued for Germany’s North Sea coast on Friday. Meteorologists warned Friday’s storm could cause more damage than the earlier weather system, which triggered accidents that killed at least three people, toppled trees and damaged roofs and railroad tracks.
Germany’s biggest rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, cancelled all train services in the north of the country on Friday due to the storm.
In the Netherlands, authorities sent a push alert to mobile phone users on Friday afternoon, warning them to stay indoors.
The Dutch weather institute earlier issued its highest warning, code red, for coastal regions and code orange for much of the rest of the low-lying nation. The country’s rail company said it would halt all trains nationwide from 2 p.m. (1300 GMT). The airline KLM cancelled dozens of flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
In The Hague, high winds tore off part of the roof of soccer club ADO The Hague’s stadium. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
At Scheveningen beach in The Hague, authorities built walls of sand to protect beachfront bars from the storm, even as dozens of surfers braved the weather in search of storm-driven waves.
In Denmark, strong winds prompted authorities to ban light vehicles from crossing the Storebælt tunnel and bridge linking the central island of Funen to Zealand, home to the capital, Copenhagen.
Storm Eunice produced heightened concern because it had the potential to produce a “sting jet,” a small area of intense winds that may exceed 100 mph.
One example of such a phenomenon occurred during what’s known as the Great Storm of 1987, which killed 18 people and knocked down 15 million trees across the U.K., according to the Met Office.
Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, described the phenomenon as being akin to a scorpion in the sky.
“It’s often referred to as a sting-jet because it’s like it’s the sting in the tail as the storm moves through,″ she said. “And that’s usually the bit where the strong winds are — right on the tip of that curl of cloud.”
Train operators across Britain urged passengers to avoid traveling on Friday and many services shut down. Airlines warned of delays and cancelled flights at airports in southern England, including London Heathrow, where hundreds of flights were canceled.
Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College who is an expert in extreme weather events, said there is no evidence climate change is leading to more violent storms in Europe.
But she said the damage caused by such storms has increased because rainfall has become more intense as a result of human-caused climate change.
“The second thing is that sea levels have risen,” said Otto, who is part of World Weather Attribution, which investigates the link between extreme weather and global warming. “This means that storm floods, which also occur during such storms, (are) higher and therefore lead to greater damage than there would be without climate change.”
US pledges to put Russia on defensive at UN Security Council
The U.S. worked Sunday to ramp up diplomatic and financial pressure on Russia over Ukraine, promising to put Moscow on the defensive at the U.N. Security Council as lawmakers on Capitol Hill said they were nearing agreement on “the mother of all sanctions.”
The American ambassador to the United Nations said the Security Council will press Russia hard in a Monday session to discuss its massing of troops near Ukraine and fears it is planning an invasion.
“Our voices are unified in calling for the Russians to explain themselves,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the U.S. and the other council members on ABC’s “This Week.” ”We’re going into the room prepared to listen to them, but we’re not going to be distracted by their propaganda.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is bent on waging an “attack on democracy,” not just on a single country. It’s a case that some senior foreign policy figures have urged President Joe Biden to make, including at the Security Council.
Read:Russian roar on Ukraine rings hollow to Latin America allies
“If Ukraine will be further attacked by Russia, of course they will not stop in Ukraine,” Markarova said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Any formal action by the Security Council is extremely unlikely, given Russia’s veto power and its ties with others on the council, including China. But the U.S. referral of Russia’s troop buildup to the United Nations’ most powerful body gives both sides a stage in their fight for global opinion.
Russia’s massing of an estimated 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine has brought increasingly strong warnings from the West that Moscow intends to invade. Russia is demanding that NATO promise never to allow Ukraine to join the alliance, and to stop the deployment of NATO weapons near Russian borders and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe. NATO and the U.S. call those demands impossible.
The head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, on Sunday rejected Western warnings about an invasion.
“At this time, they’re saying that Russia threatens Ukraine — that’s completely ridiculous,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency Tass. “We don’t want war and we don’t need it at all.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, countered that on Twitter, saying: “If Russian officials are serious when they say they don’t want a new war, Russia must continue diplomatic engagement and pull back military forces.”
The United States and European countries say a Russian invasion would trigger heavy sanctions.
On Sunday, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, said that in the event of an attack, lawmakers want Russia to face “the mother of all sanctions.” That includes actions against Russian banks that could severely undermine the Russian economy and increased lethal aid to Ukraine’s military.
The sanctions under consideration would apparently be significantly stronger than those imposed after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Those penalties have been seen as ineffective.
Menendez also raised the prospect of imposing some punishments preemptively, before any invasion.
“There are some sanctions that really could take place up front, because of what Russia’s already done — cyberattacks on Ukraine, false-flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally,” the New Jersey Democrat said on CNN.
The desire to hit Russia harder financially over its moves on Ukraine has been a rare area of bipartisan agreement in Congress. But Republicans and Democrats have been divided over the timing of any new sanctions package.
Many GOP members are pushing for the U.S. to impose tough penalties immediately instead of waiting for Russia to send new troops into Ukraine. The Biden administration and many Democratic lawmakers argue that imposing sanctions now against Putin would remove any deterrent to invasion.
Sen. James Risch of Idaho, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN he is “more than cautiously optimistic” that Republicans and Democrats will be able to resolve their differences over the timing of sanctions.
Russia has long resented NATO’s granting of membership to countries that were once part of the Soviet Union or were in its sphere of influence as members of the Warsaw Pact.
Read:Russia says US ignored its security demands over Ukraine
NATO “has already come close to Ukraine. They also want to drag this country there,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday, “although everyone understands that Ukraine is not ready and could make no contribution to strengthening NATO security.”
Ukraine has sought NATO membership for years, but any prospects of joining appear far off as the country struggles to find political stability and attack corruption.
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and member of the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus, suggested that Ukraine’s backing off its NATO aspirations could expedite a diplomatic solution to the current crisis.
If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “decides that the future membership, if there’s to be one in NATO for Ukraine, and the question of the Russian occupation of Ukraine are two things to put on the table, I think we may move toward a solution to this,” Durbin said on NBC.
Ukraine has not shown signs of willingness to make concessions on potential alliance membership. It is not clear whether Durbin’s suggestion has broader backing.
Lavrov also underlined Russia’s contention that NATO expansion is a threat, saying the alliance has engaged in offensive actions outside its member countries.
“It is difficult to call it defensive. Do not forget that they bombed Yugoslavia for almost three months, invaded Libya, violating the U.N. Security Council resolution, and how they behaved in Afghanistan,” he said.
The U.S. and NATO have formally rejected Russia’s demands about halting NATO expansion, though Washington outlined areas where discussions are possible, offering hope there could be a way to avoid war.
Where Ukraine's sunflowers once sprouted, fears now grow
On a warm spring day in Ukraine 26 years ago, three men smiled for cameras as they planted symbolic sunflower seedlings in freshly tilled earth where Soviet nuclear missiles had once stood ready.
That placid scene was, briefly, a launchpad for hope that the demise of the Soviet Union would bury the threat of great power war and mark the start of lasting peace in an undivided Europe. Today Ukraine is ground zero for worry that Russia will ignite a conflict that could engulf the region.
On that early-June day in 1996, the American secretary of defense, William J. Perry, joined his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in ceremonies marking the completion of Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. Under Western pressure, Ukraine had agreed to give up the weapons it inherited with the breakup of the Soviet empire in exchange for a Russian and Western security guarantee.
Perry likened the moment to the parting of a dark cloud of Cold War fear.
READ: US and Russia try to lower temperature in Ukraine crisis
“It is altogether fitting that we plant sunflowers here at Pervomaysk to symbolize the hope we all feel at seeing the sun shine through again,” he said, standing on a small concrete pad in the former missile field, where SS-19 nuclear missiles once stood in underground silos, prepared to launch toward targets in the United States. Nearby, American, Russian and Ukrainian national flags waved in a warm breeze.
That hopeful moment when American, Russian and Ukrainian officials grabbed white-handled spades to plant sunflowers has given way to today’s fears of renewed conflict and a new cold war. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin stands accused by the West of violating that deal by targeting Ukraine with 100,000-plus troops.
Now it is Russia that wants a security guarantee from the West as well as legal guarantees that Ukraine never be permitted to join the NATO alliance, even as Moscow readies for a potential invasion of a neighbor with inferior military might and none of the 170-plus nuclear-tipped missiles it once held.
Moscow wants a stop to NATO's eastward expansion, which it asserts Washington promised in the early aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the context of the reunification of Germany. The U.S. and its NATO allies deny any such promise was given. The opportunity for countries to join NATO is enshrined in Article 10 of the organization's founding treaty, and this “open door” policy was reaffirmed in 2008 when alliance leaders agreed that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO” but set no timeline and offered them no formal path to membership. Ukraine remains without a NATO invitation, and none is likely for the foreseeable future.
Ukraine gave up its inherited nuclear weapons — an estimated 1,900 warheads that at the time constituted the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world — after getting the security assurance it wanted. It is known as the Budapest Memorandum, named for the Hungarian capital in which it was signed in 1994 by the United States, Britain and Russia. Its words seem to defy the reality of today's Ukraine crisis.
The three signatory nations pledged to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine." They promised to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self defense or otherwise in accordance with the charter of the United Nations.”
Thus began a long road to today's crisis in which Ukraine's future may be in doubt. It already has lost control of the eastern Donbas region bordering Russia, following a Russian intervention in 2014 in support of separatists. That same year, Russia seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
After those Russian moves, the United States and NATO distanced themselves from Russia, and Washington has provided substantial — but still limited — military assistance to Kyiv. Ukraine continues to seek closer ties to the West, including membership in the NATO alliance, which Putin sees as a threat to Russia for having expanded eastward toward its borders multiple times since 1999.
President Joe Biden says the United States stands with Ukraine. But he also notes that since Ukraine is not in NATO, it has no guarantee of U.S. military backing. Biden also has noted the historic significance of a nuclear-armed Russia potentially invading a neighbor that swore off nuclear weapons.
READ: Russia announces sweeping naval drills amid Ukraine tensions
“This will be the most consequential thing that’s happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War II,” he said.
Among the U.S. officials at Pervomaysk for the sunflower planting in 1996 was Ashton Carter, who years later would become secretary of defense. In a memoir, Carter recalled Ukraine's decision to disarm, which he saw as marking the true end of the Cold War that divided Europe for nearly half a century. He said it showed that even insecure nations can give up the awesome destructive power of nuclear weapons — “placing their trust instead in a world order dedicated to peace and a powerful America dedicated to international partnerships.”
At the time, Perry spoke of prospects for “a permanent season of peace.” But looking back, he concluded that the spirit of goodwill was all too short-lived.
“I am saddened to realize," he wrote in 2015, “that such a scene and such cooperation are unthinkable today.”
Omicron exposes inflexibility of Europe's public hospitals
A World Health Organization official warned last week of a “closing window of opportunity” for European countries to prevent their health care systems from being overwhelmed as the omicron variant produces near-vertical growth in coronavirus infections.
In France, Britain and Spain, nations with comparatively strong national health programs, that window may already be closed.
The director of an intensive care unit at a hospital in Strasbourg is turning patients away. A surgeon at a London hospital describes a critical delay in a man's cancer diagnosis. Spain is seeing its determination to prevent a system collapse tested as omicron keeps medical personnel off work.
“There are a lot of patients we can’t admit, and it’s the non-COVID patients who are the collateral victims of all this,” said Dr. Julie Helms, who runs the ICU at Strasbourg University Hospital in far eastern France.
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Two years into the pandemic, with the exceptionally contagious omicron impacting public services of various kinds, the variant’s effect on medical facilities has many reevaluating the resilience of public health systems that are considered essential to providing equal care.
The problem, experts say, is that few health systems built up enough flexibility to handle a crisis like the coronavirus before it emerged, while repeated infection spikes have kept the rest too preoccupied to implement changes during the long emergency.
Hospital admissions per capita right now are as high in France, Italy and Spain as they were last spring, when the three countries had lockdowns or other restrictive measures in place. England's hospitalization rate of people with COVID-19 for the week ending Jan. 9 was slightly higher than it was in early February 2021, before most residents were vaccinated.
This time, there are no lockdowns. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a population health research organization based at the University of Washington, predicts that more than half of the people in WHO Europe's 53-country region will be infected with omicron within two months.
That includes doctors, nurses and technicians at public hospitals.
About 15% of the Strasbourg hospital system’s staff of 13,000 was out this week. In some hospitals, the employee absentee rate is 20%. Schedules are made and reset to plug gaps; patients whose needs aren’t critical must wait.
The French public hospital's 26 ICU beds are almost all occupied by unvaccinated patients, people ”who refuse care, who refuse the medicine or who demand medicines that have no effectiveness," Helms said.
She denied 12 requests for admission early in the week, and 10 on Wednesday night.
"When you have three patients for a single bed, we try to take the one who has the best odds of benefiting from it,” Helms said.
In Britain, like France, omicron is causing cracks in the health system even though the variant appears to cause milder illness than its predecessors. The British government this month assigned military personnel, including medics, to fill in at London hospitals, adding to the ranks of service members already helping administer vaccines and operate ambulances.
At the Royal Free Hospital in London, Dr. Leye Ajayi described a patient who faced delays in his initial cancer diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, when we eventually got round to seeing the patient, his cancer had already spread," Ajayi told Sky News. "So we’re now dealing with a young patient in his mid-50s who, perhaps if we’d seen him a year ago, could have offered curative surgery. We’re now dealing with palliative care.”
Nearly 13,000 patients in England were forced to wait on stretchers more than 12 hours before a hospital bed opened, according to figures released last week from the National Health Service.
Britain has a backlog of around 5.9 million people awaiting cancer screenings, scheduled surgeries and other planned care. Some experts estimate that figure could double in the next three years.
“We need to focus on why performance has continued to fall and struggle for years and build the solutions to drive improvement in both the short and long term,” said Dr. Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine.
Having the capacity to accommodate a surge is crucial, and it’s just this surge capacity that many in Europe were surprised to learn their countries lacked. The people in a position to turn that around were the same ones dealing with the crisis daily.
In the midst of the first wave, in April 2020, WHO’s Europe office put out a how-to guide for health systems to build slack into their systems for new outbreaks, including identifying a temporary health workforce.
“Despite the fact that countries thought they were prepared for a pandemic that might come along, they were not. So it’s building the ship as it sails,” said Dr. David Heymann, who previously led the World Health Organization’s infectious diseases department.
But France had been cutting back hospital beds — and doctors and nurses — for years before the pandemic. Building it back up in a matter of months proved too much when the current wave infected hospital staff by the hundreds each day. Even allowing symptomatic COVID-19-positive health workers to report for work hasn’t been enough.
Read:France eases entry rules for vaccinated travelers from U.K.
Britain's NHS Confederation, a membership organization for sponsors and providers, says the public health service went into the pandemic with a shortage of 100,000 health workers that has only worsened.
The first wave of the pandemic pushed Spain's health system to its limit. Hospitals improvised ways to treat more patients by setting up ICUs in operating rooms, gymnasiums and libraries. The public witnessed, appalled, retirees dying in nursing homes without ever being taken to state hospitals that were already well over capacity.
After that, the Spanish government vowed not to let such a collapse happen again. Working with regional health departments, it designed what officials call “elasticity plans” to deal with sudden variations in service demands, especially in ICUs.
The idea is that hospitals have the equipment and, in theory, the personnel, to increase capacity depending on the need. But critics of government health policy say they've warned for years of inadequate hospital staffing, a key driver of the difficulty delivering care in the current wave.
“The key thing is flexibility, having flexible buildings that can expand, having staff that are flexible in terms of accepting task shifting, having flexibility in terms of sharing loads more of a regional structure,” said Dr. Martin McKee, a public health professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Ultimately, though, McLee said: “A bed is an item of furniture. What counts is the staff around it,” McKee said.
Helms, the Strasbourg intensive care doctor, knows that all too well. Her unit has space for 30 beds. But it has only enough staff to care for the patients in the 26 beds currently occupied, a situation unlikely to change quickly after omicron burns through the region.
In the same hospital's infectious diseases unit, frantic schedulers are borrowing staff from elsewhere in the facility, even if it means non-COVID-19 patients get less care.
“We’re still in the middle of a complex epidemic that is changing every day. It’s hard to imagine what we need to build for the future for other epidemics, but we’re going to have to reflect on the system of how we organize care,” said Dr. Nicolas Lefebvre, who runs the infectious diseases unit at the Strasbourg hospital.
He said Europe is prepared to handle isolated outbreaks as it has in the past, but the pandemic has exposed weakened foundations across entire health systems, even those considered among the world's best.
Frédéric Valletoux, the head of the French Hospital Federation, said policymakers at the national level are acutely aware of the problem now. For 2022, the federation has requested more resources from nursing staff on up.
“The difficulty in our system is to shake things up, especially when we're in the heart of the crisis,” Valletoux said.
COVID variant spreads to more countries as world on alert
The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries on Saturday, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread.
The U.K. on Saturday tightened its rules on mask-wearing and on testing of international arrivals after finding two cases. New cases were confirmed Saturday in Germany and Italy, with Belgium, Israel and Hong Kong also reporting that the variant has been found in travelers.
In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, said he would not be surprised if the omicron variant was already in the United States, too.
“We have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility ... it almost invariably is ultimately going to go essentially all over,” Fauci said on NBC television.
Because of fears that the new variant has the potential to be more resistant to the protection offered by vaccines, there are growing concerns around the world that the pandemic and associated lockdown restrictions will persist for far longer than hoped.
Nearly two years since the start of the pandemic that has claimed more than 5 million lives around the world, countries are on high alert. Many have already imposed travel restrictions on flights from southern Africa as they seek to buy time to assess whether the omicron variant is more transmissible than the current dominant delta variant.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was necessary to take “targeted and precautionary measures” after two people tested positive for the new variant in England.
“Right now this is the responsible course of action to slow down the seeding and the spread of this new variant and to maximize our defenses,” he told a news conference.
Among the measures announced, Johnson said anyone arriving in England must take a PCR test for COVID-19 on the second day after their arrival and self-isolate until they provide a negative test. And if someone tests positive for the omicron variant, then he said their close contacts will have to self-isolate for 10 days regardless of their vaccination status — currently close contacts are exempt from quarantine rules if they are fully vaccinated.
READ: Philippines extends travel ban on Bangladesh, 9 other countries as Delta variant spreads
He also said mask-wearing in shops and on public transport will be required and said the independent group of scientists that advises the British government on the rollout of coronavirus vaccines has been asked to accelerate the vaccination program. This could involve widening the booster program to younger age groups, reducing the time period between a second dose and a booster and allowing older children to get a second dose.
“From today we’re going to boost the booster campaign," he said.
Britain's Department of Health said the two cases found in the U.K. were linked and involved travel from southern Africa. One of the two new cases was in the southeastern English town of Brentwood, while the other was in the central city of Nottingham. The two confirmed cases are self-isolating with their households while contact tracing and targeted testing takes place.
The British government also added four more countries — Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia — onto the country's travel red list from Sunday. Six others — Botswana, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe — were added Friday. That means anyone permitted to arrive from those destinations will have to quarantine.
Many countries have slapped restrictions on various southern African countries over the past couple of days, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Iran, Japan, Thailand and the United States, in response to warnings over the transmissibility of the new variant. This goes against the advice of the World Health Organization, which has warned against any overreaction before the variant was thoroughly studied.
Despite the banning of flights, there are mounting concerns that the variant has already been widely seeded around the world.
Italy and Germany were the latest to report confirmed cases of the omicron variant.
An Italian who had traveled to Mozambique on business landed in Rome on Nov. 11 and returned to his home near Naples. He and five family members, including two school-age children, have since tested positive, the Italian news agency LaPresse said. All are isolating in the Naples suburb of Caserta in good condition with light symptoms.
The variant was confirmed by Sacco hospital in Milan, and Italy’s National Health Institute said the man had received two doses of the vaccine. Italy’s health ministry is urging all regions to increase its tracing of the virus and sequencing to detect cases of the new variant first identified in South Africa.
In Germany, the Max von Pettenkofer Institute, a Munich-based microbiology center, said the omicron variant was confirmed in two travelers who arrived on a flight from South Africa on Nov. 24. The head of the institute, Oliver Keppler, said that genome sequencing has yet to be completed, but it is “proven without doubt that it is this variant,” German news agency dpa reported.
The Dutch public health institute said the omicron variant was “probably found in a number of the tested persons” who were isolated after arriving Friday in Amsterdam on two flights from South Africa. The institute said in a statement that further sequencing analysis is underway to determine for sure that it is the new variant. The results were expected Sunday. A total of 61 people were tested.
Israel said it detected the new strain in a traveler who had returned from Malawi and was tracing 800 travelers who returned recently from southern African countries. And Australia said early Sunday its scientists were working to determine whether two people who tested positive for COVID after arriving from southern Africa are infected with the omicron variant.
The variant’s swift spread among young people in South Africa has alarmed health professionals even though there was no immediate indication whether the variant causes more severe disease.
A number of pharmaceutical firms, including AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer, said they have plans in place to adapt their vaccines in light of the emergence of omicron. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said they expect to be able to tweak their vaccine in around 100 days.
Professor Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which developed the AstraZeneca vaccine, expressed cautious optimism that existing vaccines could be effective at preventing serious disease from the omicron variant, noting that most of the mutations appear to be in similar regions as those in other variants.
“At least from a speculative point of view we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against a new variant for serious disease, but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed," he told BBC radio.
Some experts said the variant’s emergence illustrated how rich countries’ hoarding of vaccines threatens to prolong the pandemic.
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa have been fully immunized against COVID-19, and millions of health workers and vulnerable populations have yet to receive a single dose. Those conditions can speed up spread of the virus, offering more opportunities for it to evolve into a dangerous variant.
“One of the key factors to emergence of variants may well be low vaccination rates in parts of the world, and the WHO warning that none of us is safe until all of us are safe and should be heeded," said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London.
READ: Covid’s new variant: Bangladesh plans to ban flights with South Africa
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Saturday with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor, and they stressed the importance of working together to help African nations vaccinate their populations, the State Department said in a statement. It said Blinken praised South Africa's scientists for quickly identifying the omicron variant and the government for its transparency in sharing this information, “which should serve as a model for the world.”
At least 2 people dead during first winter storm in UK
At least two people have died in the U.K. after the year's first winter storm battered parts of the countries with gusts of nearly 100 mph (160 kph).
The storm, which was named Arwen by the country's Met Office, hit parts of the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland particularly hard, causing road causing road closures, train delays, power cuts and high waves.
Cumbria Police, in northwest England said a man died after a tree fell on him just before 11 p.m. on Friday. In Northern Ireland, a man was killed when his car was hit by a falling tree.
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Though the worst of the storm appears to have passed, people have been advised to be wary of traveling on Saturday, as train networks reported disruption to services amid still-high winds and heavy snow.
“Storm Arwen has delivered some dangerously strong winds overnight, with gusts in excess of 90 mph recorded," the Met Office's chief meteorologist Steve Ramsdale said. “The strong winds will move south across the U.K. through the day, gradually weakening.”
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