International

A day after it was ‘annexed’, crucial city returned to Ukraine

Published

2 years ago

October 2, 2022

The banner hanging near Red Square was triumphant. It read: “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Russia! Together for ever!” On Friday Vladimir Putin formally announced the annexation of these Ukrainian territories and celebrated with a victory concert in Moscow. Russia’s president addressed a cheering crowd waving white blue and red tricolours. “Welcome home,” he said. “Russia! Russia!” they replied.

For ever turned out to mean less than 24 hours. As workmen dismantled the stage, put up on the cobbled square outside the Kremlin, Ukrainian troops marched into the eastern city of Lyman, from where Putin’s army had just made an inglorious retreat. At one point Lyman’s liberators even performed a victory dance, hopping cheerfully from side to side along a sandy forest path.

They were, according to the Kremlin’s version of reality, encroaching on Russia’s sovereign territory. In his angry west-bashing speech on Friday, delivered before Russia’s supine government, Putin had declared that Donetsk province which includes Lyman would be officially incorporated into the Russian federation. It was, he suggested, a restoration of historical Russian lands.

Since his full-scale invasion in February Putin has managed to seize a large swathe of the south and east of Ukraine. It amounts to about 15 per cent of the country. His expectation was that absorbing these territories would be relatively straightforward and similar to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, an operation carried out by undercover special forces officers dubbed “little green men”.

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This turned out to be untrue. Residents in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia showed little enthusiasm for their new Russian masters. Many fled to Ukrainian government-controlled areas. Even in the east only a small minority in freshly occupied towns and cities supported Russia. Faced with a distinct lack of popular consent the presidential administration in Moscow put on hold plans to carry out “referendums” – fake ones, according to the international community.

The plans were hastily revived as it became increasingly clear that Russia was losing the war. Over the summer Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy gave his commanders orders to recapture the southern city of Kherson, lost in the first days of the conflict. He promised a major counter-offensive. The Kremlin responded by hurrying troops to the right bank of the Dnipro river, as Kyiv had intended.

The offensive happened but the real blow fell elsewhere – on weakly defended Russian positions in the north-east, on the other side of the country. In a few stunning days in September, Ukrainian forces liberated the cities of Izium, Balakliia and Kupiansk and an area half the size of Wales. They found mass graves, torture chambers, and Russian armoured vehicles, abandoned as their crews ran away in panic, donning civilian clothes.

Since then Ukrainian forces have continued their push. By Friday they had effectively surrounded Lyman and cut off the 5,000 or so Russian troops marooned inside. According to Serhiy Haidai, Luhansk’s regional governor, the occupying soldiers requested permission from their superiors to retreat. It was refused. For some the decision turned out to be a death sentence. Footage suggests Ukrainian artillery and drones picked off convoys trying to escape.

It shows burnt-out tanks next to the side of a muddy road. Lying on the verge are the bodies of several soldiers. Other videos suggest dozens and possibly hundreds of Russian servicemen were taken prisoner – a bedraggled and vanquished force, seemingly left to their fate by a callous and incompetent military command back in Moscow.

Across a significant chunk of northern Donetsk flags were being raised on Saturday – Ukrainian ones. Ukrainian forces liberated several settlements around Lyman including Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandrigolovo and Drobysheve. In Shandrigolovo Ukrainian soldiers pulled down the Russian tricolour. They threw it to the ground and stomped on it. In Lyman they ripped down the Russian sign outside the city’s police station.

These images, of course, will not be broadcast on Russian state television. But they pile further pressure on Putin whose decision last month to mobilise up to one million new soldiers has seen support for his war effort dip. There have been protests in some regions including Dagestan in the North Caucasus. And long queues at the international borders with Georgia and Finland. Young men have sought to dodge the draft, and to avoid the fate of Lyman’s luckless Russian defenders.

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Russian nationalist bloggers expressed fury on Saturday at the way Moscow’s “special military operation” is being prosecuted. And Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s thuggish president, suggested the moment was right for Moscow to deploy a low-yield nuclear bomb in Ukraine, if it wished to avoid further military disasters. In his speech on Friday Putin hinted he would be prepared to use “all means” to defend Russian land, though how far he is prepared to go is unclear.

Kadryov pointed the finger of blame at Russia’s cerebral chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov. He also attacked the commanding officer who presided over the Lyman defeat, accusing him of idiocy, and of running the campaign remotely, from 150kms away. The upshot is this: that Russia’s military establishment is bitterly divided, and unhappy, as the war in Ukraine goes from bad to worse.

By signing “accession treaties” formalising Russia’s illegal annexation of the four occupied regions, Putin has dramatically raised the stakes. He had bound his political fortunes after 22 years in power with the successful outcome of his invasion. There were cheers and clapping on Friday, from Russia’s political elite gathered inside the Kremlin. But the euphoria was short-lived.

In a defiant response to Putin’s ceremony in Moscow, Zelenskiy, announced that his country was formally applying for fast-track membership of the Nato alliance, adding that Ukraine would not hold any peace talks with Russia as long as Putin was president. The Biden administration, meanwhile, announced a $12.4bn (£11.1bn) package of further aid, some of it military.

Meanwhile Zelenskiy’s senior advisers poked fun at Putin. Writing on Twitter Mykhailo Podolyak observed: “Twenty hours ago on Red Square, Russia’s leadership chanted ‘hooray’ for the annexation of new territories. ‘Russian Federation borders have no ending.’ Now Russian troops are leaving another strategic city and propagandists are looking for culprits. Reality can hurt if you live in a fantasy world.”

What happens next will be decided on the battlefield, not on a gilded table where Putin signed his annexation document. Ukraine’s defence ministry on Saturday tweeted a photo of the Ukrainian flag being raised with the words: “Ukrainian air assault forces are entering Lyman.” The army, it added, “will always have the decisive vote in today’s and any future ‘referendums’”.

The Guardian

Related Topics:annexed city Ukraine Vladimir Putin

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International

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

Published

2 hours ago

November 27, 2024

Trends Admin

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

Officials from Canada, Mexico and China have warned US President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose sweeping tariffs on America’s three largest trading partners could upend the economies of all four countries.

“To one tariff will follow another in response and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said.

Trump vowed on Monday night to introduce 25% tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% on goods coming from China. He said the duties were a bid to clamp down on drugs and illegal immigration.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he spoke to Trump in the hours after the announcement and planned to hold a meeting with Canada’s provincial leaders on Wednesday to discuss a response.

A spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington DC told the BBC: “No-one will win a trade war or a tariff war.”

The international pushback came a day after Trump announced his plans for his first day in office, on 20 January, in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.

Trudeau said his country was prepared to work with the US in “constructive ways”.

“This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that’s what we’ll do,” Trudeau told reporters.

In a phone call with Trump, Trudeau said the pair discussed trade and border security, with the prime minister pointing out that the number of migrants crossing the Canadian border was much smaller compared with the US-Mexico border.

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Trump’s team declined to confirm the phone call.

But Trump spokesman Steven Cheung added that world leaders had sought to “develop stronger relationships” with Trump “because he represents global peace and stability”.

Mexico’s President Sheinbaum told reporters on Tuesday that neither threats nor tariffs would solve the “migration phenomenon” or drug consumption in the US.

Reading from a letter that she said she would send to Trump, Sheinbaum also warned that Mexico would retaliate by imposing its own taxes on US imports, which would “put common enterprises at risk”.

She said Mexico had taken steps to tackle illegal migration into the US and that “caravans of migrants no longer reach the border”.

The issue of drugs, she added, “is a problem of public health and consumption in your country’s society”.

Sheinbaum, who took office last month, noted that US car manufacturers produce some of their parts in Mexico and Canada.

“If tariffs go up, who will it hurt? General Motors,” she said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, told the BBC that “China-US economic and trade co-operation is mutually beneficial in nature”.

He denied that China allows chemicals used in the manufacture of illegal drugs – including fentanyl – to be smuggled to the US.

“China has responded to US request for verifying clues on certain cases and taken action,” Liu said.

“All these prove that the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”

President Joe Biden has left in place the tariffs on China that Trump introduced in his first term, and added a few more of his own.

Currently, a majority of what the two countries sell to each other is subject to tariffs – 66.4% of US imports from China and 58.3% of Chinese imports from the US.

Speaking in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Trudeau told lawmakers that “the idea of going to war with the United States isn’t what anyone wants”.

He called on them to not “panic”, and to work together.

“That is the work we will do seriously, methodically. But without freaking out,” he said.

The leaders of Canadian provinces suggested that they would impose their own tariffs on the US.

“The things we sell to the United States are the things they really need,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday. “We sell them oil, we sell them electricity, we sell them critical minerals and metals.”

America’s northern neighbour accounted for some $437bn (£347bn) of US imports in 2022, and was the largest market for US exports in the same year, according to US data.

Canada sends about 75% of its total exports to the US.

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said on Monday the proposed tariff would be “devastating to workers and jobs in both Canada and the US”.

“To compare us to Mexico is the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard,” said Ford.

Ford was echoed by the premiers of Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, while a post on the X account of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith acknowledged that Trump had “valid concerns related to illegal activities at our shared border”.

The Canadian dollar, the Loonie, has plunged in value since Trump vowed to impose tariffs on Canadian imports come January.

The Canadian dollar dipped below 71 US cents, the lowest level the Loonie has fallen to since May 2020, when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian goods during his first stint as US president. The Mexican peso fell to its lowest value this year, around 4.8 cents.

Canada, Mexico, China respond to Trump tariff threats

BBC

International

Relief as Israel agrees to ceasefire with Lebanon

Published

3 hours ago

November 27, 2024

Trends Admin

Relief as Israel agrees to ceasefire with Lebanon

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will bring a US-brokered proposal for a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon to his government for approval as soon as Tuesday evening.

He said in a televised address that he would put “a ceasefire outline” to ministers “this evening”.

He however did not say how long the truce would last, noting “the length of the ceasefire depends on what happens in Lebanon”.

But it later learnt that the ceasefire would is for 60 days.

During the period, Hezbollah fighters are expected to retreat 40 kilometres from Israel’s border, with Israeli ground forces withdrawing from Lebanese territory.

“If Hezbollah violates the agreement and attempts to rearm, we will strike,” Netanyahu warned.

Key Israel backer the United States has led ceasefire efforts for Lebanon alongside France.

US President Joe Biden is optimistic the deal will lead to a “permanent cessation of hostilities”.

Biden added that the US would lead another push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“In full coordination with the United States, we are maintaining full military freedom of action,” Netanyahu said, outlining the seven-front war Israel says it faces in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

Even as Netanyahu spoke about the ceasefire, the Israeli military carried out multiple strikes on heart of Beirut while the army said some 15 projectiles had entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon.

Demonstrators raise placards and Israeli flags during a protest in front of the Israeli Defence Ministry in the coastal city Tel Aviv on November 26, 2024, against a possible ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. – Israel’s security cabinet has started discussing a proposed ceasefire deal in its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Israeli official confirmed to AFP on November 26. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP)

The war in Lebanon escalated after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah, which said it was acting in support of Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.

The war has killed at least 3,823 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.

On the Israeli side, the hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.

Netanyahu said the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on “the Iranian threat” and ramp up its fight against Hamas in Gaza.

“With Hezbollah out of the picture, Hamas is left on its own,” he said.

“We will increase our pressure on Hamas and that will help us in our sacred mission of releasing our hostages.”

During last year’s Hamas attack, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army has declared dead.

International

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

Published

17 hours ago

November 26, 2024

Trends Admin

Israeli strikes pound central Beirut, suburbs

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes pounded a densely-populated part of the Lebanese capital and its southern suburbs on Tuesday, hours ahead of an anticipated announcement of a ceasefire ending hostilities between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

A strike on Beirut hit the Noueiri district with no evacuation warning and killed at least one person, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a preliminary toll.

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Minutes later, at least 10 Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs. They began approximately 30 minutes after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for 20 locations in the area, the largest such warning yet.

As the strikes were under way, Israel’s military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the air force was conducting a “widespread attack” on Hezbollah targets across the city.