Henry Foy

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Nato’s dilemma: what to do about Ukraine’s bid to join?

EuropaInternacionalOTAN

Whe Lithuanian capital with another strategic objective: to gain a seat at Nato’s table.

To Zelenskyy and his government, the US-led alliance represents long-term peace and security. Article 5 of Nato’s treaty is an ironclad mutual-defence clause backed up by American, British and French nuclear weapons.

But Kyiv’s objective goes beyond defence. Through Nato membership, Ukraine would receive an unambiguous ticket into “the west”, a break from centuries of subjugation by Moscow, and the security required for its reconstruction and economic revival.

Yet Ukraine poses a series of questions for Nato’s 31 members. Those questions reach to the heart of the alliance’s purpose, from how prepared its members are to fight a war against Russia to whether Nato’s mutual-defence clause is a security blanket to be thrown around states, or a badge of distinction to be earned.…  Seguir leyendo »

Arming Ukraine: how war forced the EU to rewrite defence policy

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad

It was three days after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine that the EU realised that it too must go to war.

At an emergency meeting, Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, made the case to anxious foreign ministers from the bloc’s 27 member states that it was the moment to do something previously considered impossible: use shared EU cash to buy weapons for Kyiv.

“The question was”, he recalls in an interview, “if we were able to use this money to provide support to Mozambique or to Mali or wherever, why the hell can’t we do that for Ukraine?”

“Explain it to me?”…  Seguir leyendo »

Russia’s melancholy oligarchs

Europa, , ,

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raged this spring, the billionaire oligarch Mikhail Fridman called Kristina Kvien, then the US’s most senior envoy to Kyiv, with a proposal.

Fridman — who grew up in Lviv, in western Ukraine, but has Russian and Israeli passports and made most of his estimated $13bn fortune in Russia — would donate part of his wealth towards repairing damage from the war.

In return, the US would help him avoid the sanctions that were being imposed on oligarchs, which western policymakers hoped would force them to break with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

After Kvien raised questions about Fridman’s proposal, the conversation quickly became heated, according to three people familiar with the matter.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukraine: the $10bn steel plant at the heart of Russia’s economic warfare

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The Russians came for the city of Kryviy Rih in the first days of the war, their columns of armoured cars advancing within kilometres of its sprawling Soviet-era steel plant, once coveted by Nazis and oligarchs and, now, Vladimir Putin.

Beaten back, they now menace the central Ukrainian city from some 50km away, occasionally lobbing rockets from afar. The prize, Ukraine’s largest steel mill that ArcelorMittal spent $5bn modernising, is within reach of their rockets, a mere half-hour’s drive from the city.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is usually measured by lines on the map — territory lost, cities vanquished, borders erased.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europe’s defence sector: will war in Ukraine transform its fortunes?

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad

Hundreds of defence and aerospace executives will this week descend on an airfield in southern England along with ministers, generals, air marshals and hangers-on, to attend the industry’s version of the Glastonbury music festival.

This year, they will meet with a renewed sense of purpose. Until it was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Farnborough International Airshow has been a regular event for more than seven decades. But for the first time in many years, the industry is relishing the prospect of a flood of money coming its way.

The war in Ukraine has prompted European governments to reverse the course of years of shrinking defence spending.…  Seguir leyendo »

Nato’s revival: will the resolve withstand an economic crisis?

InternacionalOTAN

For US president Joe Biden, it was “historic”. France’s Emmanuel Macron hailed it as “unprecedented for Europe since the second world war”.

“The most important conclusion that Vladimir Putin needs to draw from what’s happened the last few days here in Nato and previously in the G7 is that we are totally united”, said Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister.

The hugs, handshakes and bonhomie this week at Nato’s annual summit in Madrid and a G7 meeting in Germany represented a new high-water mark of western unity against Russia in response to the war in Ukraine — the apogee of an alliance rejuvenated by conflict on its borders.…  Seguir leyendo »

Nato’s eastern front: will the military build-up make Europe safer?

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y SeguridadInternacionalOTAN

British Challenger 2 tanks prowl the Polish countryside. Elite French special forces troops keep watch on Romania’s Black Sea coast. US missile batteries scan the skies of Slovakia. A Norwegian F-35 scrambles to intercept an unidentified Russian aircraft that appears off the coast of Finland.

As battle rages in Ukraine, Nato allies along the alliance’s eastern flank have collectively embarked on the most significant — and rapid — military deployment in the history of modern Europe: a state of alert and readiness short of war, but also far from peace.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has wrenched Europe and Nato back to a scenario that it thought it had consigned to the past.…  Seguir leyendo »

The battle for Donbas: ‘the real test of this war’

Europa, , ,

It began with heavy shelling overnight that levelled three-storey residential blocks, hit the town’s nursing home and left four-foot deep craters in the road. Then the heavy armour rolled in.

Dozens of Russian tanks, self-propelled guns and armoured personnel carriers advanced on Kreminna from three directions, as residents attempted to flee. After attempting to hold the town over the course of last weekend, Ukrainian troops retreated last Monday.

The small town of less than 20,000 people in eastern Ukraine is no standout victory for the Russian army, which two months ago launched an invasion aimed at capturing Kyiv and toppling the country’s pro-western government in a matter of days.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukraine’s violent stalemate: how Russia’s offensive became a war of attrition

Europa, , ,

Russian troops arrived in the town of Makariv just four days after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This week, Ukrainian authorities claimed to have retaken the town, 65km west of Kyiv, in a daring counter-attack that sent Russian forces into retreat.

Andriy Nebytov, the Kyiv chief of police, posted a video on Facebook showing him dressed in full combat gear, visiting the damaged and seemingly deserted town. In one scene he picks up what looks like a crumpled Ukrainian flag.

“As long as our flag lives”, he later said in a statement, “our army lives”.

The next day the Ukrainian defence ministry declared that “the state flag of Ukraine was raised over the city of Makariv, the enemy was driven back”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukraine: EU wrestles with how to inflict sanctions ‘pain’ on Russia

EuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior, , ,

After Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a Ryanair flight carrying a young dissident, who was later arrested and detained, the EU hit back with sanctions designed to inflict a “substantial cost” on anyone who supported Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime.

But there was a catch. It turned out that the sanctions imposed in 2021 on the lucrative petrochemicals and potash industries in Belarus applied only to new contracts, meaning that their impact would be gradual. And the penalties placed on potash came with specifications that excluded around 80 per cent of the commodity exported by the east European nation.

The Belarusian opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, warns of “regrettable” omissions in the package, which also included measures against the finance sector, and is demanding that new targets be added.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukraine: what does Vladimir Putin want?

Europa, ,

When Russia first began massing troops, tanks and artillery on its border with Ukraine in March, Vladimir Putin insisted the deployments were just a snap exercise.

But as the build-up has continued to swell to as many as 175,000 personnel, the US has warned allies the Russian leader may be planning a renewed invasion for real this time — and found Moscow in an increasingly belligerent mood.

In the past few days alone, Putin has likened Ukraine’s policy in the Donbas, the border region where Russia has led a slow-burning separatist war since 2014, to “genocide” — words Kyiv fears may be a pretext to invade.…  Seguir leyendo »