Daily Archives: March 6, 2022

Here are the latest updates:

48 mins ago (01:48 GMT)

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the chamber is exploring legislation to ban import of Russian oil and that Congress intends to enact this week $10bn in aid for Ukraine in response to Russias military invasion of its neighbour.

The House is currently exploring strong legislation that will further isolate Russia from the global economy, Pelosi said in a letter.

Our bill would ban the import of Russian oil and energy products into the United States, repeal normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus, and take the first step to deny Russia access to the World Trade Organisation.

1 hour ago (01:20 GMT)

Sasha and Nastia slowly inhale the smoke from their cigarettes. Their paths have never crossed before, but they exchange knowing glances in wordless understanding when they realise they are both from Ukraines Donbas region.

The women, who only gave their first names, are standing in front of the main train station in Przemysl, a Polish border city, where hundreds of refugees arrive daily on trains from the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

Both had fled Ukraine following the Russian invasion of February 24. But there is more that they have in common.

Read more here.

2 hours ago (00:33 GMT)

Two of the so-called Big Four accounting firms KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers are pulling out of Russia over its war in Ukraine.

Both the firms said they would end their relationships with their Russia-based member firms. KPMG said it was also pulling out of Belarus.

KPMG International said in a statement it would be incredibly difficult to have its Russia and Belarus firms leave the network. KPMG has more than 4,500 employees in the two countries.

PricewaterhouseCoopers said it has 3,700 employees at its PwC Russia firm and is working on an orderly transition for the business.

3 hours ago (23:53 GMT)

Russian forces have stepped up their shelling of Ukrainian cities in the centre, north and south of the country, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich says.

The latest wave of missile strikes came as darkness fell, he said on Ukrainian television.

He said the areas that came under heavy shelling include the outskirts of Kyiv, Chernihiv in the north, Mykolaiv in the south, and Kharkiv, the countrys second-largest city.

Arestovich described a catastrophic situation in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin, where efforts to evacuate residents failed. Evacuations also failed in Mariupol in the south and Volnovakha in the east because of the shelling.

4 hours ago (22:44 GMT)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appealed to the West to strengthen sanctions on Russia.

In a video statement, Zelenskyy criticised Western leaders for not responding to the Russian defence ministrys earlier announcement that it would attack Ukraines military-industrial complex.

I didnt hear even a single world leader react to this, Zelenskyy said. The audacity of the aggressor is a clear signal to the West that the sanctions imposed on Russia are not sufficient.

Zelenskyy also called for organising a tribunal to bring to justice those who order and carry out such crimes. Think about the sense of impunity of the occupiers that they can announce such planned atrocities, he said.

The Russian defence ministry had said its forces intend to attack Ukraines military-industrial complex with what it said were precision weapons and urged staff to leave, in a statement carried by the Russian state news agency Tass.

4 hours ago (22:13 GMT)

The United States does not believe a Russian amphibious assault in or near the Ukrainian city of Odesa is imminent, a senior US defence official has said, amid growing concern about a potential attack on the city.

The official, who spoke to the Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity, estimated Russia had launched about 600 missiles since the start of its invasion and deployed into Ukraine about 95 percent of combat forces it had pre-staged outside of the country.

Russian forces continued to try to advance and isolate Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv and are meeting strong Ukrainian resistance, the official said.

4 hours ago (22:07 GMT)

Streaming giant Netflix has suspended its service in Russia.

A statement from the company cited circumstances on the ground for its decision to suspend its Russian service but did not offer any additional details.

The US-based platform had already halted its acquisitions in Russia, as well as its production of original programmes.

Earlier, social media giant TikTok announced it was suspending the posting of all video content from Russia in order to keep its employees safe and comply with new regulations in the country.

Moscow on Friday signed into law a bill introducing jail terms of up to 15 years for what is deemed fake news about the Russian army.

5 hours ago (21:58 GMT)

Tugan Sokhiev, the music director and principal conductor at Moscows prestigious Bolshoi Theatre, has announced his resignation, saying he came under pressure to condemn Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian said in a statement that he was resigning with immediate effect from his post at the Moscow theatre as well as his equivalent position at Frances Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.

Read the full story here.

5 hours ago (21:45 GMT)

Russian forces have tightened their control on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant since seizing it on Friday, the United Nations nuclear watchdog has warned.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said he was extremely concerned after Ukraines nuclear regulator informed the agency that staff members at the plant, the largest in Ukraine, are now required to seek approval from Russian forces for any operation, even maintenance.

Read more about this story here.

5 hours ago (21:38 GMT)

More than a million refugees have crossed the border from Ukraine into Poland since Russia launched its invasion, Polish border guards have said.

Today at 8:00 pm [19:00 GMT] the number of people from Ukraine into Poland exceeded a million. This is a million human tragedies, the border guard service wrote on Twitter.

5 hours ago (21:19 GMT)

The US government is consulting with its European allies on a potential import ban of oil from Russia.

We are now talking to our European partners and allies to look in a coordinated way at the prospect of banning the import of Russian oil, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN.

The debate also revolved around making sure that there is still an appropriate supply of oil on world markets, Blinken said. Thats a very active discussion as we speak.

US President Joe Biden has not explicitly ruled out such a move.

There are more details on this development here.

Welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

Read all the updates from Sunday, March 6, here.

See original here:

Russia-Ukraine live news: Zelenskyy says sanctions not sufficient - Al Jazeera English

LVIV, Ukraine Four days after Russia began dropping artillery shells on Kyiv, Misha Katsiurin, a Ukrainian restaurateur, was wondering why his father, a church custodian living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, hadnt called to check on him.

There is a war, Im his son, and he just doesnt call, Mr. Katsiurin, who is 33, said in an interview. So, Mr. Katsiurin picked up the phone and let his father know that Ukraine was under attack by Russia.

Im trying to evacuate my children and my wife everything is extremely scary, Mr. Katsiurin told him.

He did not get the response he expected. His father, Andrei, didnt believe him.

No, no, no, no stop, Mr. Katsiurin said of his fathers initial response.

He started to tell me how the things in my country are going, said Mr. Katsiurin, who converted his restaurants into volunteer centers and is temporarily staying near the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil. He started to yell at me and told me, Look, everything is going like this. They are Nazis.

As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all.

These relatives have essentially bought into the official Kremlin position: that President Vladimir V. Putins army is conducting a limited special military operation with the honorable mission of de-Nazifying Ukraine. Mr. Putin has referred to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a native Russian speaker with a Jewish background, as a drug-addled Nazi in his attempts to justify the invasion.

Those narratives are emerging amid a wave of disinformation emanating from the Russian state as the Kremlin moves to clamp down on independent news reporting while shaping the messages most Russians are receiving.

An estimated 11 million people in Russia have Ukrainian relatives. Many Ukrainian citizens are ethnic Russians, and those living in the southern and eastern parts of the country largely speak Russian as their native language.

Russian television channels do not show the bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraines capital, and its suburbs, or the devastating attacks on Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv and other Ukrainian cities. They also do not show the peaceful resistance evident in places like Kherson, a major city in the south that Russian troops captured several days ago, and certainly not the protests against the war that have cropped up across Russia.

Instead they focus on the Russian militarys successes, without discussing the casualties among Russian soldiers. Many state television correspondents are embedded in eastern Ukraine, and not in the cities being pummeled by missiles and mortars. Recent news reports made no mention of the 40-mile-long Russian convoy on a roadway north of Kyiv.

On Friday, Russia also banned Facebook and Twitter to try to stem uncontrolled information.

All this, Mr. Katsiurin said, explains why his father told him: There are Russian soldiers there helping people. They give them warm clothes and food.

Mr. Katsiurin is not alone in his frustration. When Valentyna V. Kremyr wrote to her brother and sister in Russia to tell them that her son had spent days in a bomb shelter in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha because of the intensive fighting there, she was also met with disbelief.

They believe that everything is calm in Kyiv, that no one is shelling Kyiv, Ms. Kremyr said in a phone interview. She said her siblings think the Russians are striking military infrastructure with precision, and thats it.

She said her sister Lyubov, who lives in Perm, wished her a happy birthday on Feb. 25, the second day of the invasion. When Ms. Kremyr wrote back about the situation on the ground, her sisters answer via direct message was simple: No one is bombing Kyiv, and you should actually be afraid of the Nazis, whom your father fought against. Your children will be alive and healthy. We love the Ukrainian people, but you need to think hard about who you elected as president.

March 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

Ms. Kremyr said she sent photos from trusted media sites of mangled tanks and a destroyed building in Bucha to her brother, in Krasnoyarsk, but was met with a jarring response. He said that this site is fake news, she said, and that essentially the Ukrainian Army was doing the damage being blamed on Russians.

It is impossible to convince them of what they have done, Ms. Kremyr said, referring to Russian forces.

Anastasia Belomytseva and her husband, Vladimir, have been encountering the same problem. They are residents of Kharkiv, in Ukraines north near the Russian border, which has been hit hard by Russian bombs. But they said in an interview that it was easier to explain the invasion to their 7-year-old daughter than to some of their relatives.

They totally dont understand what is happening here, they dont understand that they just attacked us for no reason, Ms. Belomytseva said. Her grandmother, and Mr. Belomytsevs father, are in Russia.

Asked whether they believe that an attack is happening, Ms. Belomytseva responded NO!

Parts of Kharkiv have been reduced to rubble, and its city hall is a burnt-out shell. Ms. Belomytseva said she was sending videos of the bombings to her relatives on Instagram, but they just responded with the Kremlins oft-repeated claims that the invasion is just a special military operation and that no civilians would be targeted.

In reality, more than 350 civilians had died as of Saturday night, according to the United Nations. The real toll is probably much higher.

For Svetlana, a 60-year-old woman living in Cherkasy, the hardest thing to accept is the advice she has received from her sister, who lives in Belarus, and her cousins in Tomsk, Russia: that she and other Ukrainians should not concern themselves with what is going on.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

Its not that they dont believe it is happening, but they think that the high-level politicians should figure it out, said Svetlana, who was uncomfortable providing her last name.

I tell them that we are people too, and this has affected us, she said. I asked them not to hide their heads in the sand, I asked the mothers to think about not sending their sons to the army. The response was amazing to me. That is, that politicians are to blame for everything.

She displayed a WhatsApp exchange with her cousin showing that her cousin had also been swayed by a narrative being pushed by Russian state TV: that the West fomented this war, was thrilled to see two brotherly nations fighting each other and was expecting to reap a significant profit from it.

Her cousin sent a string of messages asserting that Western defense companies were raising their profits, and that alternate sources of energy were being procured for the West.

It was not the response she had hoped for no recognition of the gravity of the situation for Ukrainians or sympathy for the loss of human life.

Every day I send them the necessary information, but the response is that This is some kind of fake information, that this cannot be the case at all, that no one can or will shoot at civilians, she said.

Ms. Belomytseva, from Kharkiv, said that while her husband was still trying to communicate with his family in Russia, she had cut off most of her relatives there eight years ago, after the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine.

But Mr. Katsiurin said he could not push his closest family members out of his life.

They are our relatives, theyre the closest people we have, and this is not about them, he said. I am not angry at my father I am angry at the Kremlin. Im angry about the Russian propaganda. Im not angry at these people. I understand that I cannot blame them in this situation.

He said he thought about cutting his father off but decided that was the wrong response. The easiest thing to do would be to say, OK, now I dont have a father, he said. But I believe that I need to do this because it is my father.

He said that if everyone worked to explain the truth to their families, the narrative could change. After a post on Instagram complaining about his fathers disbelief went viral, he launched a website, papapover.com, which means Papa, believe, with instructions for Ukrainians about how to speak to their family members about the war.

There are 11 million Russians who have relatives in Ukraine, he said. With 11 million people, everything can happen from revolution to at least some resistance.

Nataliia Yermak contributed reporting.

View post:

Ukrainians Find That Relatives in Russia Dont Believe Its a War - The New York Times

All of us have been tremendously impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian armed forces have been using the equipment that weve provided them, Laura Cooper, the Pentagons top Russia policy official, said. Kremlin watchers have also been surprised by this, and how they have slowed the Russian advance and performed extremely well on the battlefield.

Even the elements have sided with the Ukrainian military in the wars early days. Bad weather in northern Ukraine has grounded some Russian attack planes and helicopters, a senior Pentagon official said. Many Russian vehicles that have driven off the main roads to avoid the stalled convoy have gotten stuck in the mud, making them more vulnerable to attack, officials said.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

But the U.S. intelligence also has its limits. Mr. Bidens ground rules forbid flying surveillance aircraft over Ukraine, so they have to peer in over the border, much as surveillance is often conducted over North Korea. There is reliance on new, small satellites providing images similar to those that commercial firms like Maxar and Planet Labs are providing.

One of the odd features of the conflict so far is that it runs the gamut of old and modern warfare. The trenches dug by Ukrainian soldiers in the south and east look like scenes from 1914. The Russian tanks rolling through the cities evoke Budapest in 1956. But the battle of the present day that most strategists expected to mark the opening days of the war over computer networks and the power grids and communications systems they control has barely begun.

American officials say that is partly because of extensive work done to harden Ukraines networks after Russian attacks on its electric grid in 2015 and 2016. But experts say that cannot explain it all. Perhaps the Russians did not try very hard at the outset, or are holding their assets in reserve. Perhaps an American-led counteroffensive part of what Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, calls a doctrine of persistent engagement in global networks explains at least some of the absence.

Government officials are understandably tight-lipped, saying the cyberoperations underway, which have been moved in recent days from an operations center in Kyiv to one outside the country, are some of the most classified elements of the conflict. But it is clear that the cybermission teams have tracked some familiar targets, including the activities of the G.R.U., Russias military intelligence operations, to try to neutralize their activity. Microsoft has helped, turning out patches in hours to kill off malware it detects in unclassified systems.

All of this is new territory when it comes to the question of whether the United States is a co-combatant. By the American interpretation of the laws of cyberconflict, the United States can temporarily interrupt Russian capability without conducting an act of war; permanent disablement is more problematic. But as experts acknowledge, when a Russian system goes down, the Russian units dont know whether it is temporary or permanent, or even whether the United States is responsible.

View original post here:

Inside the U.S. Race to Arm Ukraine Against Russia - The New York Times

Bloomberg quoted Marina Gretskaya, a 32-year-old Russian living in London who moved last year to work in communications. She kept a ruble savings account in an online Russian bank, Tinkoff. Two weeks ago, her assets there were worth $7,400. On Monday, the ruble plummeted more than 30 percent against the dollar. That evaporated more than $2,000 from her savings. Its a months salary, she said. The same is almost certainly true for tens of millions of Russians and its just starting.

Oh, and by the way, in this wired world, guess who owns a significant portion of Russias commercial airline fleet.

Not Russia.

Roughly two-thirds of Russias commercial airliners were made by Boeing (334 jets) or Airbus (304), Reuters reported. A significant portion of those are owned by Irish leasing companies. The Dublin-based AerCap, the worlds biggest airplane-leasing company, owns 152 aircraft across Russia and Ukraine valued at almost $2.4 billion, The Irish Times reported. In addition, the Dublin-based companies SMBC Aviation Capital and Avolon own 48 aircraft between them that are leased to Russian airlines.

E.U. sanctions require those companies to repossess all those planes on lease to Russian airlines by the end of March. And Boeing and Airbus announced that they will no longer service or provide spare parts for any of these planes. On Saturday, Russias state airline, Aeroflot, said that it would suspend all international flights because of additional circumstances that prevent the performance of flights. Domestic flights are sure to follow.

Russia spans 11 time zones. If this persists, the grip of the Russian central government over the Russian landmass could begin to loosen. In the Russian Far East there are a lot of cities closer to Beijing than Moscow. Just saying

Now add the sanctions, boycotts and pressure points coming from the superempowered nonstate actors. My favorite is Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old University of Central Florida student who created a Twitter account @RUOligarchJets, or Russian Oligarch Jets that tracks the private jets of Russian billionaires close to Putin. While the 19-year-old is hardly the only person to offer such services, noted Bloomberg, what makes his account different is its easy accessibility and the enticing window it offers on the lives of Putins cronies.

The account garnered 53,000 followers in just a few days, and it now has almost 400,000; a single individual, Sweeney is making it more difficult for Putins pals to hide their often ill-gotten wealth.

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Opinion | The Cancellation of Mother Russia Is Underway - The New York Times

Card payment giants join growing Western corporate boycott imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

Card payment companies Visa and Mastercard say they will suspend operations in Russia, joining a growing list of international companies refusing to do business with Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

The moves, following a request by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier on Saturday, deal another blow to Russias financial sector and are set to further isolate its sanctions-hit economy.

Mastercard announced that cards issued by Russian banks would no longer be supported by its network and any card issued outside the country would not work at Russian shops or ATMs.

We dont take this decision lightly, Mastercard said in a statement, adding that it made the move after discussions with customers, partners and governments.

Visa also said cards issued in Russia would no longer work outside the country, adding that it was working with clients and partners in Russia to cease all Visa transactions in the coming days.

We are compelled to act following Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the unacceptable events that we have witnessed, Visa Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Al Kelly said in a statement.

US President Joe Biden, in a call with Zelenskyy, welcomed the companies decisions.

President Biden noted his administration is urging security, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine and is working closely with Congress to secure additional funding, a White House readout of the call said.

The two credit card giants had already announced that they were complying with US and international sanctions imposed on Russia following the February 24 invasion.

Russias major banks, including its largest lender Sberbank and the Russia Central Bank, downplayed the effects the card suspensions would have on their clients.

All Visa and Mastercard bank cards issued by Russian banks will continue to operate normally on Russian territory until their expiration date, the Russia Central Bank said, warning Russians travelling abroad, however, that should carry alternate means of payment.

Economist Mohamed Haidar said the decision by Visa and Mastercard would have a real devastating effect and it may cripple a lot of businesses.

We are talking about the sum of 210 million cardholders in Russia, he told Al Jazeera, adding that there would be hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid bills.

Visas and Mastercards announcements came hours after PayPal halted its services in Russia.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted a letter early Saturday from PayPal CEO Dan Schulman officially announcing:Under the current circumstances, we are suspending PayPal services in Russia.

He added that PayPal would continue to support its staff in the region and would focus on enabling our customers and our global employee community to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

See more here:

Visa, Mastercard to suspend operations in Russia - Al Jazeera English

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a pledge on Sunday to increase pressure on Russia through sanctions and provide more aid to Ukraine, but warned that Russia held a military advantage that western allies are finding hard to counter and the war was set to last some time.

Vladimir Putin has, unfortunately, the capacity with the sheer manpower he has in Ukraine and overmatch he has, the ability to keep grinding things down against incredibly resilient and courageous Ukrainians. I think we have to be prepared for this to last for some time, Blinken told CNN.

Americas top diplomat was speaking from Chisinau in Moldova, which sits between Romania, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) military alliance, and the south-western border of Ukraine on the Black Sea, not far from the Ukrainian city of Odesa which is threatened by advancing Russian forces.

Blinken has spent the weekend visiting Nato member nations in eastern Europe that have taken in refugees from Ukraine. He said of the destruction being perpetrated under the direction of Russian president Vladimir Putin in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol that: Just winning a battle is not winning a war, and just taking a city does not mean taking the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. On the contrary, he is destined to lose.

The Ukrainian people will not allow themselves to be subjugated to Vladimir Putin or to Russias rule but it could take some time, and meanwhile the suffering is real and its terrible, he told CNNs State of the Union Sunday morning TV show.

Blinken said hed met with refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, currently estimated at a stunning 1.5 million.

Were doing everything we can to bring this to an end as quickly as we can but this may still go on for a while, he added.

Pressed on US sanctions on Russia, Blinken defended Washingtons comparative lag in application compared to European Union allies and its failure to cut off Russian imports of oil by the US.

Were adding to sanctions virtually every day, Blinken said. He said he had spoken to US president Joe Biden on Saturday and members of the cabinet on the issue of oil.

We are now talking to our European partners and allies to look in a co-ordinated way at the prospect of banning Russian oil while making sure there is an appropriate supply of oil on world markets.

Blinken also reacted to the issue of providing increased military aid to Ukraine, including sending US fighter jets to Poland so that that country can send supplies of used Migs and Sukhoi military planes to Ukraine, where the military is familiar with those Russian-style jets rather than western-made fighters.

We are working with Poland to see if we can backfill anything they provide to Ukraine. We very much support them, providing planes that the Ukrainians can fly. But we also want to see if we can be helpful in making sure that whatever they provide to the Ukrainians, something goes to them to make up for any gap in security for Poland.

But Blinken, on NBC, insisted that while the US would continue to add to Ukraine with security assistance totaling more than $1bn over the past year the US would not enforce a Ukrainian no fly zone or put the US in direct conflict with Russia.

For everything were doing for Ukraine, the president also has a responsibility to not get us into a direct conflict, a direct war, with Russia, a nuclear power, and risk a war that expands beyond Ukraine to Europe. Were trying to end this war in Ukraine, not start a larger one, he said.

The White House issued a report of Joe Bidens call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday evening, saying his administration is surging security, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine and is working closely with Congress to secure additional funding.

Lawmakers in a video call with Zelenskiy on Saturday morning said they were eager to approve an additional $10bn in spending to aid Ukraine.

Leaders are also accusing Vladimir Putin of suspected war crimes based on Russias blatant killing of Ukrainian civilians as part of its action, destroying residential areas far from likely military targets and also directly firing on civilians trying to evacuate.

We have some very credible reports of attacks on civilians, which is what is considered a war crime. Blinken said.

Republican senator Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said he thought the Russian people would ultimately remove Putin from power over his action in Ukraine.

Hopefully to stand trial for war crimes, for what he has done, Rubio said. He described Putin as a monster on ABC.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday morning on the same CNN show that an investigation is needed into whether Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.

I think there needs to be a strong and clear investigation on this question, she said.

US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield told ABCs This Week: Any attack on civilians is a war crime.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is not willing to compromise on its territorial integrity in talks with Russia but is open to discussing non- Nato models for its future security, in a wider forum, one of its negotiators told Fox News.

Ukraine has pursued membership of Nato, cited by Putin as evidence of what he portrays as Nato aggression toward Russia.

Nato members are not ready to even discuss having us in Nato, not for the next period of five or 10 years, negotiator David Arakhamia said in remarks published on the Fox News website late on Saturday.

We are ready to discuss some non-Nato models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the US, China, UK, maybe Germany and France. We are open to discussing such things in a broader circle.

And on Sunday afternoon, retired army general David Petraeus, former head of US central command during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he did not accept military assumptions that Kyiv will inevitably fall to Russia.

Russian forces have a 40-mile-long convoy of military vehicles stalled on the approach to the Ukrainian capital and Petraeus said it appeared they cannot keep their columns fueled and praised Ukrainian resilience so far.

Theyve taken down road signs or pointed Welcome to Hell and stuff like that, Petraeus told CNN.

This is going to be a very long fight in Kyiv. The locals there have been stockpiling food, there is going to be an enormously fierce resistance. I dont accept assumptions that it will fall, he said.

Petraeus also noted Kyivs extensive surface area as a major obstacle for the Russian military, pointing out that the capital is spread across around 320 sq miles, larger than New York City and a little over half the size of Londons sprawl.

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Blinken vows to escalate sanctions on Russia but warns war could last some time - The Guardian

March 6 (Reuters) - Two of the Big Four accounting firms KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) on Sunday said they will no longer have a member firm in Russia due to the country's invasion of Ukraine.

The auditing and consultancy giant KPMG said its Russia and Belarus firm will leave the KPMG network, a move that will affect over 4,500 partners and staff in Russia and Belarus.

Separately, PwC agreed PwC Russia will leave its network. The firm has operated in Russia for more than 30 years, and has 3,700 partners and staff there, it said.

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"As a result of the Russian government's invasion of Ukraine we have decided that, under the circumstances, PwC should not have a member firm in Russia and consequently PwC Russia will leave the Network," PwC said.

Sanctions imposed by the U.K., EU and the U.S. on Russia are forcing firms globally to consider whether they should continue working with Russian clients who are state-owned.

Earlier Sunday, Britain said it will seek to speed up its sanctions process on Monday via new legislation designed to allow ministers to tighten restrictions on Russian businesses and wealthy individuals. read more

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Reporting by Akriti Sharma in BengaluruEditing by Chris Reese

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Accounting firms KPMG and PwC to exit Russia - Reuters

A driver sits in the cab of a combine harvester during the summer harvest in a field of wheat in Varva, Ukraine. Ukraine accounts for more than 10% of the global wheat market. Russia's war threatens to disrupt the spring planting season. Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

A driver sits in the cab of a combine harvester during the summer harvest in a field of wheat in Varva, Ukraine. Ukraine accounts for more than 10% of the global wheat market. Russia's war threatens to disrupt the spring planting season.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't only jeopardizing the lives of Ukraine's citizens. The war is also on track to cause a surge in severe malnutrition and even starvation around the world.

That's the grim assessment of many experts on global food security, who point to how heavily the rest of the world relies on Ukraine and Russia for wheat and a slew of other essential commodities. As that supply is cut off, it will drive up food prices that are already at record levels and at a time when the economic fallout from the pandemic has already pinched household budgets, most devastatingly in low-income countries.

"Frankly I'm extremely worried," says Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Programme. "People in Ukraine are in a disastrous situation and they're fighting for their lives. But this disaster is beyond borders. It is also going to hurt people thousands of miles away."

To find out just how bad things could get, NPR spoke to Husain, as well as to another prominent analyst, Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow of the International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPR. Both Glauber and Husain laid out some alarming scenarios. But they also pointed to concrete actions the world could take to ensure the worst does not come to pass. Here are six takeaways:

While a military conflict in Ukraine was always going to have some impact on the world's food supply, WFP's Husain says, "the timing of this unnecessary, unwanted, unjustified war couldn't have been worse."

Take the cost of food. Over the last year the prices of key commodities have jumped to their highest levels since the spikes of 2008 through 2012. Back then the strain prompted people around the world to erupt in civil unrest particularly in the hard-hit Middle East and Northern Africa, notes IFPRI's Glauber.

Food prices have risen dramatically since the start of the pandemic. Above: Edith Obatuga (right), who is bringing up her two children and four nieces and nephews, shops at a market in Lagos, Nigeria. Benson Ibeabuchi /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Food prices have risen dramatically since the start of the pandemic. Above: Edith Obatuga (right), who is bringing up her two children and four nieces and nephews, shops at a market in Lagos, Nigeria.

He says the causes of this current price crunch are manifold. But much of it has to do with reduced supply. Droughts have cut into recent harvests for wheat in North America and for soybean and corn in South America. Typhoons in Malaysia last year shrunk the crop of palm oil used for cooking, among other purposes. The upshot, says Glauber, is that, "it's not like [the war in Ukraine] is coming as we're flush with grain reserves and other things. Prices have been high. This is going to send them higher."

The human cost has also been mounting. "After decades of seeing the percent of the population that is malnourished in the world decline, over the last four or five years we've actually seen rising percentages," says Glauber. Husain notes that currently about 276 million people worldwide are in the midst of a hunger crisis with 44 million of them "one step away from famine. If we cannot assist them they will die. It's that simple."

Then there's the impact of the pandemic. "I think probably the worst thing is that this is coming during the time of COVID," says Husain. "A lot of people in many parts of the world have lost their jobs. They don't have the incomes. They don't have the purchasing power. Now on top of that, they've been dealing with inflation. So you're getting squeezed from both sides."

Many governments too, are less economically resilient now after two years of dipping into their coffers to soften COVID's economic blow on their citizens, adds Husain. "People are tapped out. And governments are tapped out."

In recent years Ukraine and Russia have both become "a major engine" for feeding the world, says Glauber. In an analysis, he and some colleagues found that the various agricultural products exported by the two countries account for about 12% of the calories the world trades.

Much of this is through wheat. Ukraine alone accounts for more than 10% of the global market, says Glauber. Add in Russia and the share jumps to more than 30%.

But it doesn't end there. The two countries are also a major source of grains such as corn and barley that are mainly fed to livestock. Ukraine provides about 15% of the global supply of corn, for instance. And taken together Ukraine and Russia account for just under 30% of the world's barley supply.

Another important product is sunflower oil, one of the main vegetable oils used for cooking. The two countries contribute about 80% of the world's supply.

Russia along with Belarus is also a huge source of fertilizer, providing about 15% of the world's needs.

People line up in front of a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Vasylkiv, just outside Kyiv on Feb. 27. Overnight, Russian strikes hit a nearby oil depot. Dimitar Dilkoff /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

People line up in front of a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Vasylkiv, just outside Kyiv on Feb. 27. Overnight, Russian strikes hit a nearby oil depot.

Then there's the crucial stream of oil and gas exported from Russia via Ukraine. While technically these fuels don't count as food, their impact on food prices is enormous, says Husain: "When the price of gas goes up, everything goes up."

There's a range of reasons why the supply of all these commodities could dry up.

The most obvious risk is to Ukraine's exports. "The good news," says Glauber, is that at present most of the wheat from Ukraine's last harvest has already been shipped out of the country. Still, he says, about 30% still awaits transport. That's also the case with about 45% of the corn crop. "Now the ports are shut," he says. So a key question is how long that will remain the case.

Another test will come in April, when planting for corn, barley and sunflower seed should begin much of it in areas where Russia's military is currently bearing down. This summer will be another crucial period. That's when the next major wheat harvest would need to take place.

Russia's planting and harvesting doesn't face the same disruptions as Ukraine's. And sanctions are not currently directly targeting Russia's food exports. Yet the war could still cause major disruption.

Husain notes that two major shipping lines have already refused to do business with Russia. "If you're tainted, nobody's going to do business with you, even if it is allowed," he says. And when even just one component in the export process gets affected the ramification can be enormous. "The supply chain network is so complicated that if somebody sneezes in one place, somebody else gets the cold in another place," says Husain.

Sudanese buy bread from a bakery in Khartoum on Oct. 11, 2021. The country has suffered from shortages of wheat and other essentials due to the closure of Port Sudan during protests. Mujahed Sharaf Al-Deen Sati /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

In the immediate term it would seem that the countries most likely to be affected by a cut-off in exports from Ukraine and Russia are those that currently get a large share of their imports from the two countries. For instance, in their analysis Glauber and his co-authors found that Egypt is one of several countries that get more than about half of their imported calories from Ukraine and Russia. Other heavily reliant countries of concern to food security experts include Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.

But Glauber and Husain both stress that because world commodity markets are so interconnected, it won't take long for prices to rise even in countries that don't currently source their wheat, corn or other commodities directly from Ukraine or Russia. "Any disruption that happens in one place has an effect in another place," says Husain.

A vendor at a market in the war-torn Yemeni capital Sanaa, on Feb. 28, 2022. Ukraine supplies grains to many Middle Eastern countries; Russia's invasion of Ukraine could mean less bread on the table in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world. Mohammed Huwais /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A vendor at a market in the war-torn Yemeni capital Sanaa, on Feb. 28, 2022. Ukraine supplies grains to many Middle Eastern countries; Russia's invasion of Ukraine could mean less bread on the table in Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world.

Another way to gauge where the fallout will be most severe is to look to countries that are heavily reliant on one of the products at risk regardless of where they're currently getting it from. Glauber says he worries about Bangladesh, for instance, because it is heavily reliant on fertilizers and because its government has already had to stretch itself to subsidize farmers hurt by the current rise in prices.

Husain, too, says that since every country is likely to feel the stress, he's most concerned about those that are "already in trouble" when it comes to food crises. Unfortunately, he adds, "that's a big list. I mean there are 38 countries where there are people facing emergency levels of hunger."

As depressing as all this may sound, Glauber and Husain both point to a bright spot: Even with the loss of the contributions to the food supply from Ukraine and Russia, there would still technically be enough quantity left to feed the world. In other words, the only problem will be the increased price of that food. This in turn, suggests that the immediate solution will be monetary. As Glauber puts it, "someone has to pay for those higher costs." So if governments and other donors can fill the gap between what people are able to pay and the new, higher price of food, people will not go hungry.

Yemenis receive humanitarian aid provided by the World Food Programme in the capital Sanaa. WFP hopes to raise about $18 billion to assist some 140 million people worldwide this year. To date member states have provided about half of that. Mohammed Huwais /AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Unfortunately, says Husain, the world has not been particularly generous even in better times. Just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the World Food Programme which is the main arm of the United Nations responsible for averting hunger crises was attempting to raise enough money to assist about 140 million people worldwide in 2022. That would require about $18 billion, says Husain. To date he says, member states have provided about 50% of that. And that's not even considering the $580 million that WFP will now be asking countries to contribute to help about 3.2 million Ukrainians inside the country and an additional 200,000 refugees who the United Nations estimates will now need food aid over the next six months.

"This is our world in the 21st century," he says.

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Russia's war on Ukraine is dire for world hunger. But there are solutions - NPR

Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Chinese Communist Party tabloid, Global Times, posted a video saying that a large number of Ukrainian soldiers had laid down their arms. Its source: the Russian state-controlled television network, RT.

Two days later, Chinas state broadcaster Central Television Station (CCTV) flashed a breaking news alert, quoting Russias parliamentary speaker, that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had fled Kyiv. CCTV then created a related hashtag on the Twitter-like platform Weibo that was viewed 510 million times and used by 163 media outlets in the country.

On Feb. 28, as Russia became an international pariah, the Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik shared a message of strength with its 11 million Weibo followers. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Sputnik said, said Russia still had friends in the world, especially a real giant like China.

Add oil, Russia, Sputniks Weibo follower @fengyiqing cheered on, using a Chinese expression of support. All the people in the world who love justice are friends of Russia.

As European and American officials press Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other online platforms to clamp down on Russian disinformation, China has embraced Russias propaganda and lies about the war. Chinas state-owned media outlets quoted their Russian counterparts coverage without verification, helping to magnify their disinformation on the Chinese internet. They put Russian officials on state television networks with little pushback on their claims.

When it comes to information, the Chinese government is a control freak, dictating and censoring what its 1.4 billion people consume. Beijing has silenced and jailed its critics and journalists. It has coerced and co-opted the biggest Chinese online platforms to enforce its censorship guidelines. It blocks nearly all major western news and information websites, including Google, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

Yet as the world faces one of its most serious geopolitical crises since the end of the Cold War, China let down its digital defenses and allowed Kremlins propaganda machine to help shape public perception of the war. No wonder the Chinese internet is overwhelmingly pro-Russia, pro-war and pro-Putin.

If China wants to remain officially ambiguous about whether it supports Vladimir V. Putins war refusing to call it an invasion and abstaining from a U.N. vote to condemn the invasion its state-controlled media nonetheless makes very clear where China stands.

The China-Russia information alliance is forged over a shared worldview of two leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin, who, out of deep distrust of the United States, are determined to challenge the Wests dominance in the competition for public opinion.

In a 2013 speech, Mr. Xi urged the countrys propaganda workers to enhance the countrys international discourse power under the notion of telling Chinas story well. During a visit to RTs headquarters in the same year, Mr. Putin said the network was created to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.

In 2015, Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin decided the two countries should strengthen their cooperation in media. Since then, theyve held a Sino-Russian media forum each year, aiming to redefine the map of the international discourse.

Last November, a RT executive said at the forum that major Chinese media outlets quoted RT.com on average 2,500 times a week in 2021.

Many Chinese media organizations admire RT and Sputnik, which they believe have broken the Wests information monopoly, or at least muddied the water. Many media experts have analyzed what Chinas state-owned media could learn from their successes. One academic paper detailed RTs coverage of Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 to illustrate how the Russian network carefully planned its reporting strategy to increase its seeming credibility and accessibility so it could set its own agenda.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Kremlins media machines worked well in China. Combined with Beijings censorship of pro-Ukraine content, they wove a web of disinformation that proved difficult for most Chinese online users to escape.

The message they are trying to drive home: Russias military actions are anti-West, anti-NATO expansion and anti-Nazi thus justified and popular.

In Chinas state media, theres very little about the international condemnation of Russia; Ukraines success in the battle for public opinion, led by President Zelensky; or antiwar protests in Russia.

The one-two punch is working, keeping the Chinese public from facts while sowing confusion.

On the Chinese social media platforms, many people adopted Mr. Putins and Russian medias language, calling the Ukrainian side extremists and neo-Nazis.

They kept bringing up the Azov Battalion as if it represented all of Ukraine. The battalion, a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, is known for having neo-Nazi sympathizers but remains a fringe presence in the country and its military.

President Zelensky himself is Jewish and won the presidential election in 2019 with 73 percent of the votes. His approval rate soared to over 90 percent recently for his wartime leadership.

Gas supplies. Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.

Shortages of essential metals. The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the worlds largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.

Financial turmoil. Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctionsintended to restrict Russias access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.

The fog of disinformation thickens when Chinese state media portrays Russias war as an anti-fascism effort. After Russias defense minister announced this week that his country would host the first international anti-fascism conference in August, the CCTV posted a one-paragraph story, then created a Weibo hashtag. Within 24 hours, it had 650 million views and was used by 90 media outlets. Many commenters called Ukraine and the United States fascist countries.

Chinese media is also propagating Russian disinformation that Ukraine has been using civilians as human shields. In its prime-time news program on Feb. 26, CCTV quoted President Putin as making that allegation. A few days later the nationalistic news site, guancha.com, ran a banner headline that said the Russian military was going only after military targets, while the Ukrainian military was using civilians as human shields.

Taken collectively, Chinese online users are seeing a quite different war from much of the world.

While videos circulated outside China purportedly showing Ukrainians kind treatment of Russian prisoners of war, the trending social media topic in China was that captured Russians had endured Nazi-like torture. Both CCTV and the Peoples Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, created hashtags echoing the same, based on a briefing by the Russian defense ministry. They had combined views of more than 200 million.

Sputnik, with 11.6 million followers on Weibo, has been posting more than 100 items a day lately, populating its timeline with words like criminal Zelensky, empire of lies, fake news and Nazi.

We must stand with Russia! Weibo user @qingdaoxiaowangzi commented on one of Sputniks posts, using a popular line on the Chinese internet. If Russia falls, NATO and the neo-Nazi United States will bully China!

At the same time, Weibo and other platforms are censoring pro-Ukraine content. The Weibo account of the actor Ke Lan, which has 2.9 million followers, was suspended after she retweeted a video and a photo about an antiwar protest in Russia with the emoticon . So was the account of a transgender celebrity, Jin Xing, with 13.6 million followers. Respect all lives and resolutely oppose the war!!! her last post said.

But as the war continues and China recalibrates its position, some Chinese online users have begun to scrutinize the Russian news media reports. Under a Sputnik Weibo post contending that the Ukrainian military murdered civilians, a user with the handle @jialalabadededashen wrote, Is this another news item that was tailor made by the Russian news agency for China?

In a social media discussion, some people called out Russia for waging an information war in China. Russias external propaganda has infiltrated China out-and-out, wrote a Weibo user called @juediqiangshou. Thats why all the excuses to justify the invasion are popular here.

Some people are also raising questions about whether the flood of pro-Russia information would be detrimental to the interests of China and its people.

Even Wang Xiaodong, a famous nationalist writer, suggested on Weibo that the Russia-Ukraine war was more complicated than it seemed. The Chinese people should have access to comprehensive and diversified information, he wrote on Wednesday.

See the original post here:

How China Embraces Russian Propaganda and Its Version of the War - The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine With hands still dirty from the battlefield, a dozen Russian prisoners of war sat, stony-faced, in a conference room of a Ukrainian news agency on Saturday and described being captured after their armored columns were ambushed.

Lt. Dmitry Kovalensky, who had fought in a Russian tank unit and spoke at the behest of his Ukrainian captors, said he recently came under fire from an armed drone and shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles on a road near Sumy, in northeastern Ukraine. The whole column burned, he said.

Around the same time and a few miles away, at a makeshift Ukrainian military base in an abandoned building on the western edge of Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers prepared for the same sort of ambushes that took out Lieutenant Kovalenskys unit.

Lt. Yevgeny Yarantsev, a Ukrainian officer, said his countrys soldiers fight differently than the Russians. The troops under his command organize in small, nimble units that can sneak up on and ambush the lumbering columns of Russian tanks.

They have a lot of tanks, we have a lot of anti-tank weapons, said Lieutenant Yarantsev, who previously fought with a volunteer group against Russia in eastern Ukraine. In the open field, it will be even. Its easier to fight in the city.

The two young officers the same rank, but each representing a different country gave some of the few firsthand accounts of the fighting that have emerged in the 10-day war. The Russian was a prisoner of war speaking under the watchful eye of heavily armed Ukrainian security officials. The Ukrainian spoke as he displayed newly obtained, sophisticated weapons from the United States.

The accounts of soldiers from both sides give a small glimpse of how the war is being fought around Kyiv in the north. There, relying largely on ambush tactics, Ukrainian forces have slowed the Russian campaign to encircle and capture the capital, even as Russian troops barrel across the south.

Lieutenant Kovalensky and the other Russian prisoners were presented at a news conference intended to support Ukraines claim that it had captured a significant number of Russian soldiers. In their statements, the prisoners blended woodenly phrased condemnations of their own countrys leadership with genuine-sounding details of the conflicts early firefights.

According to the rules governing treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect a prisoner of war from being made into a public curiosity, a concept that is sometimes interpreted as not presenting them in any public setting. The Russian soldiers looked exhausted, but showed no outward signs of having been mistreated.

The prisoners comments and the fact of their capture supported descriptions by Western military analysts and governments of a Russian offensive that has suffered grave setbacks. The Russian armys superior numbers and equipment, however, could well reverse that trend.

Near the end of the days movement on Feb. 27, our column was attacked, Pvt. Dmitry Gagarin of the Russian army told the reporters. My commander burned and died. I ran into the forest and later surrendered to local people.

Lieutenant Kovalensky said he learned Russia would invade Ukraine only the evening before the tank columns began moving, and that soldiers at the rank of sergeant and lower were not told where they were driving until after crossing the border.

March 6, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET

All the prisoners described being captured after their armored columns were ambushed on roads, accounts that supported Ukraines assertions that its military had made good use of Western-supplied anti-tank weaponry, such as the American-made Javelin missile. But independent analysts have also described more mundane problems for the Russian army, including logistical snarls and a lack of fuel.

Lieutenant Yarantsev, the Ukrainian officer, commands what he described as a mobile group of about 500 soldiers who are skirmishing with the Russians on the western approach to Kyiv. He said that their prospects were bolstered three days ago when they received Barrett 50-caliber sniper rifles in a shipment from the United States.

Sleek and black, with barrels so long they look almost like spears, the rifles were being unpacked and inspected. One sniper, who declined to offer his name, said he had fired one in combat on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Protests in Russia. Amid antiwar rallies across Russia, the police said more than 3,000 people were arrested Sunday, the highest nationwide total in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.

Lieutenant Yarantsev said the troops were more comfortable being able to garrison in buildings than in fields or forests. Ive noticed something about war, he said. Soldiers want to be somewhere where cellphones work and where there is internet.

The building the soldiers have taken up in, in a leafy residential area of the city, was cluttered with ammunition boxes. Two hand grenades sat on the floor beside a sofa. The soldiers had an electric kettle and offered coffee. In a hallway, a soldier oiled his Kalashnikov.

The fighting has been inching closer to the capital. Ukraines defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said in a statement on Saturday that the Russian forces primary objective is to encircle Kyiv, following the tactic they have pursued with smaller cities such as Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, which is now surrounded, with its heat and electricity cut off.

The fighting around Kyiv is mostly in Irpin and Bucha, two outlying towns to the northwest, where conditions are grim. A central street in Bucha is now clogged with the burned husks of Russian armored personnel carriers, destroyed in an ambush.

Stanislav Bobrytsky, a computer programmer reached by phone in Irpin, said he had not left his apartment since Tuesday. All the windows are shaking from blasts, he said. Its very scary.

In the center of Kyiv, at the news conference with captured Russian soldiers, the Ukrainian security officials present refused to speak. A moderator passed around a microphone, offering reporters an opportunity to question the prisoners.

Lieutenant Kovalensky said he was appealing to the Russian people to rise up and overthrow President Vladimir V. Putin because the Russian leadership had deceived the armys officers about the aims of the war and had used the guise of a military exercise to prepare for an invasion.

The prisoners said they did not know what would happen to them after the news conference. While they said they were treated well, days after their capture it was unclear if they had showered or been offered clean clothes.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Lviv, Ukraine.

See the original post here:

Russian Prisoners and Ukrainian Soldiers Describe Two Sides of the Conflict - The New York Times