Ukraine rejects Belarus as location for talks with Russia
Ukraine’s president says his country is ready for peace talks with Russia but not in Belarus, which was a staging ground for Moscow’s 3-day-old invasion.
Oct 13: The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russia's attempts to annex four regions of Ukraine.
The resolution was supported by 143 countries, while 35 states - including China and India - abstained.
As well as Russia, four countries rejected the vote, namely Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Nicaragua.
Although symbolic, it was the highest number of votes against Russia since the invasion.
Last week, in a grand ceremony in the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin signed documents to make the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson part of Russia.
The agreements were signed with the Moscow-installed leaders of the four regions, and came after self-proclaimed referendums in the areas that were denounced as a "sham" by the West.
The resolution calls on the international community not to recognise any of Russia's annexation claim and demands its "immediate reversal". It welcomes and "expresses its strong support" for efforts to de-escalate the conflict through negotiation.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was grateful to the countries that supported it.
"The world had its say - [Russia's] attempts at annexation is worthless and will never be recognised by free nations," he tweeted, adding that Ukraine would "return all its lands".
US President Joe Biden said the vote sent a "clear message" to Moscow.
"The stakes of this conflict are clear to all, and the world has sent a clear message in response - Russia cannot erase a sovereign state from the map," he said.
Dame Barbara Woodward, Britain's ambassador to the UN, said Russia had failed on the battlefield and at the UN, adding that countries had united to defend the world body's charter.
"Russia has isolated itself, but Russia alone can stop the suffering. The time to end the war is now," she said.
The General Assembly vote was triggered after Russia used its veto power to prevent action at the Security Council - the body in charge of maintaining international peace and security. As permanent members, China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom also hold vetoes on the council.
There have been calls for Russia to be stripped of its veto power after the Ukraine invasion.
JUNE 26: He said Iskander-M systems "can fire ballistic and cruise missiles, both conventional and nuclear types".
The systems have a range of up to 500km (310 miles).
Tensions between Russia and the West have escalated, following President Putin's decision to invade Ukraine on 24 February.
Mr Putin has made several references to nuclear weapons since then, which some have interpreted as a warning to Western countries not to intervene.
Speaking in St Petersburg, Mr Putin also said Russia would help to modify Belarusian SU-25 warplanes so that they could carry nuclear weapons, in response to a query from Mr Lukashenko.
In a separate development on Saturday, Ukraine said Russian forces "have fully occupied" the key eastern city of Severodonetsk, following weeks of fierce fighting.
Taking the city means Russia now controls nearly all of Luhansk region and much of neighbouring Donetsk - the two regions that form the vast industrial Donbas.
In his video address late on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged to take back "all our cities" occupied by Russia.
But he said the war with Russia had entered an emotionally difficult stage and he did not know how many more blows and losses there would be.
Overnight, Russia launched a barrage of missiles at targets in the north and west of Ukraine. At least three people were killed and more may be buried under rubble in the town of Sarny west of Kyiv, a local official said.
Some of the rockets were fired from Belarus, Ukraine said. Belarus has provided logistical support to Russia but its army is not officially taking part in the conflict.
Ukraine's intelligence service said the missile strikes were part of Kremlin efforts to draw Belarus into the war.
Russia's capture of Severodonetsk comes ahead of a week of Western diplomacy, with US President Joe Biden flying to Germany for a G7 summit followed by Nato talks.
In recent months, the Western alliance has shown signs of strain and fatigue but on Saturday UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Ukraine could win its battle with Russia.
"Now is not the time to give up on Ukraine," he said.
At Saturday's televised meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in St Petersburg, Mr Putin said: "We have made a decision: within the next few months we will hand over to Belarus the Iskander-M tactical missile systems."
He said all the details of the transfer would be worked out by the ministries of defence of the two countries.
Iskander missiles have already been deployed in Kaliningrad, a small Russian Baltic exclave between Nato members Lithuania and Poland.
The two presidents also discussed Lithuania's decision to prevent some goods being transported to and from Kaliningrad - a move that has angered Moscow.
The Belarusian leader said Lithuania's move was "a sort of declaration of war" and "unacceptable".
Steel and some other Russian goods come under the EU sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Lithuania says its measures affect only 1% of the normal Russian goods transit on the route, dismissing Russian talk of a "blockade" of Kaliningrad.
KATHMANDU, March 13: It has been learnt that 11 Nepali nationals are stranded in the forests of Lithuania and Belarus.
These Nepali people are assumed to have left Russia trying to enter some other European nations.
After being stranded, these people contacted Jay Prakash Shivakoti, representatives of the Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA) Slovakia.
Subash Kuwar, a stranded Nepali national, contacted Shivakoti through Whatsapp and urged him for rescue.
Ram Kaji Khadka, ambassador of Nepal to Germany, assumed that these Nepali nationals could not be victims of the Russia-Ukraine war but could have fled Russia trying to enter some other European countries.
According to Khadka, the information has already been dispatched to the Russia-based Embassy of Nepal and efforts are underway to contact the stranded Nepali nationals.
The World Bank on Wednesday (local time) has stopped all its programs in Russia and Belarus with "immediate effect" in response to Moscow's military operations in Ukraine.
MOSCOW, March 1: Russia and Ukraine concluded on Monday their first round of negotiations in Belarus with no clear breakthrough.
The talks are certainly a positive signal, observed analysts, but the negotiation process would be rather complicated.
NO BREAKTHROUGH
The long-awaited negotiations between delegations from Russia and Ukraine was held in the Gomel region in Belarus and lasted for five hours.
Headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, Moscow's delegation was formed by representatives from the defense and foreign ministries, among others.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Olexiy Reznikov and the deputy head of the ministry of foreign affairs were among the participants from the Ukrainian side.
Before the negotiations, representatives from the Russian side said a key aim would be to achieve peace.
Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei welcomed the participants and assured safety during the negotiation process.
After the consultations, Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation, said that the next round of peace talks would take place on the Belarusian-Polish border in the coming days.
Medinsky also said that each one of the delegations would now head back to their capitals to further discuss all negotiation positions to prepare for the next round of negotiations.
"We have found some issues on which we can predict there would be common positions," the official said, adding that all negotiation positions were discussed in detail during the talks.
HEIGHTENED TENSIONS
While the talks were going on, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, reiterating that a settlement would only be possible if Russia's security concerns were taken into account.
Putin said it was important to recognize "Russia's sovereignty over Crimea," as well as the country's commitment to solving the tasks of Ukraine's "demilitarization" and "denazification", and the issue of Ukraine's neutral status.
As for developments of Russia's military operation, the country's armed forces have hit 1,114 Ukrainian military infrastructure objects, according to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin earlier on Monday that the country's nuclear deterrence forces have begun combat duty with reinforced staff.
Meanwhile, Moscow has taken more retaliatory measures in response to recent restrictions imposed by the West.
As a response to the ban of European states on Russian air carriers, a restriction has been introduced on the operation of flights by air carriers from 36 countries, according to aviation authorities.
The country's economy has also been impacted. Russia's Central Bank said Monday that "external conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed," announcing the decision to increase the key rate to 20 percent per annum from Feb. 28.
COMPLICATED NEGOTIATION
The world is closely following developments with regards to the peace talks.
"The talks are certainly a positive signal," Bogdan Bezpalko, a member of the Council for Interethnic Relations under the President of the Russian Federation, said in an interview with Xinhua on Monday.
According to the expert, Russia has shown that it is ready to solve problems through diplomacy.
Alexander Gusev, director of Russia's Institute for Strategic Planning and Forecasting, considered the current negotiation process to be rather complicated.
"The situation that is currently developing in Ukraine is quite complicated, so it's simply impossible to set ambitious goals when it comes to the negotiation process," Gusev told Xinhua.
"On the other hand, the talks have shown that both sides are ready for dialogue, they have found common ground... and I am convinced that the negotiation process will continue, this is just the beginning," he said.
Feb 10: Nato says the joint drills mark Russia's biggest deployment to ex-Soviet Belarus since the Cold War.
The White House called the drills an "escalatory" action in the tensions over Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite amassing more than 100,000 troops at the border.
But some Western countries including the US have warned that a Russian attack could come at any time.
In 2014 Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. Since then there has been a long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists control swathes of territory and at least 14,000 people have been killed.
Some 30,000 Russian troops are expected to take part in the drills with Belarus.
Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko is a firm ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin backed Mr Lukashenko when huge protests erupted in Belarus in 2020, while most Western countries imposed sanctions and refused to recognise election results widely believed to have been rigged in the long-time leader's favour.
A Kremlin spokesman described the joint drills as serious, saying Russia and Belarus were being "confronted with unprecedented threats".
Russia's EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov, however, told the BBC that his country still believed diplomacy could help de-escalate the crisis over Ukraine. He said Russian troops currently stationed in Belarus would return to their permanent bases after the exercises.
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said: "As we look at the preparation for these military exercises, again, we see this as certainly more an escalatory and not a de-escalatory action."
French President Emmanuel Macron said talks on resolving the conflict would be revived as early as Thursday and include Russia and Ukraine along with France and Germany - known as the Normandy quartet.
Mr Macron told reporters on Wednesday that Mr Putin had assured him Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis, but Russia said it had given no such guarantee.
After two days of intense diplomacy led by Mr Macron, there is some suggestion that a renewed focus on the so-called Minsk agreements - which sought to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine - could be used as a basis to defuse the current crisis.
Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany backed the accords in 2014-2015.
Some diplomats say the agreements could offer a route to de-escalation, with France's ambassador to the US, Philippe Etienne, tweeting they should be used to "build a viable political solution".
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to travel to Brussels and Warsaw on Thursday in support of Nato allies.
Mr Johnson's trip is part of a surge of diplomatic activity, with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace also due to meet their Russian counterparts in Moscow on Thursday.
Ahead of the first visit to Russia by a UK foreign secretary in four years, Ms Truss said she was determined to stand up for freedom and democracy in Ukraine and intended to urge Moscow to pursue a diplomatic solution.
JAN 25: Russia wants the West to promise that Ukraine will not join its Nato defensive alliance, and although the two sides are negotiating, that is not going to happen. What happens next could jeopardise Europe's entire security structure.
Why is Russia threatening Ukraine?
Russia denies it's planning any invasion, but it has seized Ukrainian territory before and it has an estimated 100,000 troops deployed near its borders.
Russia has long resisted Ukraine's move towards European institutions, and Nato in particular.
Ukraine shares borders with both the EU and Russia, but as a former Soviet republic it has deep social and cultural ties with Russia, and Russian is widely spoken there.
When Ukrainians deposed their pro-Russian president in early 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine. The rebels have fought the Ukrainian military ever since in a conflict that has claimed more than 14,000 lives.
How big is the risk of invasion?
Russia says it has no plans to attack Ukraine: and armed forces chief Valery Gerasimov even denounced reports of an impending invasion as a lie.
But tensions are high and President Vladimir Putin has threatened "appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures" if what he calls the West's aggressive approach continues.
Nato's secretary general warns the risk of conflict is real and President Biden says his guess is that Russia will move in. The US says it knows of Russian plans to boost its forces near Ukraine "on very short notice".
The US says Russia has offered no explanation for the troops posted close to Ukraine - and Russian troops and tanks have headed to Belarus for exercises.
Russia's deputy foreign minister compared the current situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the US and Soviet Union came close to nuclear conflict.
Western intelligence suggests a Russian incursion or invasion could happen some time in early 2022.
What does Russia want from Nato?
Russia has spoken of a "moment of truth" in recasting its relationship with Nato: "For us it's absolutely mandatory to ensure Ukraine never, ever becomes a member of Nato," said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
Moscow accuses Nato countries of "pumping" Ukraine with weapons and the US of stoking tensions. President Putin has complained Russia has "nowhere further to retreat to - do they think we'll just sit idly by?"
In reality Russia wants Nato to return to its pre-1997 borders.
It demands no more eastward expansion and an end to Nato military activity in Eastern Europe. That would mean combat units being pulled out of Poland and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and no missiles deployed in countries such as Poland and Romania.
Russia has also proposed a treaty with the US barring nuclear weapons from being deployed beyond their national territories.
What does Russia want with Ukraine?
Russia seized Crimea in 2014 arguing it had a historic claim to it. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in December 1991 and Mr Putin said it was the "disintegration of historical Russia".
A clue to President Putin's thinking on Ukraine came in a lengthy piece last year when he called Russians and Ukrainians "one nation". He labelled Ukraine's current leaders as running an "anti-Russian project".
Russia has also become frustrated that a 2015 Minsk peace deal for eastern Ukraine is far from being fulfilled.
There are still no arrangements for independently monitored elections in the separatist regions. Russia denies accusations that it is part of the lingering conflict.
Can Russian action be stopped?
President Vladimir Putin has spoken several times to Mr Biden and high-level talks continue, but Russian officials have warned that Western rejection of their key demands are leading to a "dead end".
The question is how far Russia will go. President Biden has warned that a full-scale invasion would be a disaster for Russia. But if it was a minor incursion, he said controversially that the West would "end up having to fight about what to do".
The White House has stressed any move across the border constitutes a renewed invasion - but points out Russia has other weapons, including cyber-attacks and paramilitary tactics.
The Pentagon has accused Russia of preparing a so-called false-flag operation, with operatives ready to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian-backed rebels, to provide a pretext for invasion. Russia has denied it.
Russia has also handed out 500,000 passports in rebel-run areas, so if it does not get what it wants then it could justify any action as protecting its own citizens.
However, if Russia's only aim is to force Nato away from its backyard, there is no sign of it succeeding.
Nato's 30 members have turned down flat any attempt to tie their hands for the future. "We will not allow anyone to slam closed Nato's open-door policy," said US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
Ukraine is looking for a clear timeline to join and Nato says Russia has "no veto, no right to interfere in that process".
And non-Nato members Sweden and Finland have also rejected Russia's attempt to stop them beefing up their ties with the alliance. "We will not let go of our room for manoeuvre," said Finland's prime minister.
How far will the West go for Ukraine?
The US has made clear it has no plans to send combat troops, while being committed to helping Ukraine defend its "sovereign territory".
The main tools in the West's armoury appears to be sanctions and military aid in the form of advisers and weapons.
President Biden has threatened Russia's leader with measures "like none he's ever seen" if Ukraine is attacked. So what would they involve?
The ultimate economic hit would be to disconnect Russia's banking system from the international Swift payment system. That has always been seen very much as a last resort, but Latvia has said it would send a strong message to Moscow.
Another key threat is to prevent the opening of Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Germany, and approval for that is currently being decided by Germany's energy regulator.
There could also be measures targeting Russia's RDIF sovereign wealth fund or restrictions on banks converting roubles into foreign currency.
Is the West united in its response?
Washington has said it is committed to "working in lockstep" with its allies, but there are divisions between the US and Europe.
European leaders are adamant that Russia cannot just decide on the future with the US. France has even proposed that Europeans work together with Nato and then conduct their own dialogue with Russia.
BBC
1645949363_1200.jpeg)
1642553740_1200.jpeg)