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  • Merkel pledges support to Ukraine after Zelensky win


Merkel pledges support to Ukraine after Zelensky win

Volodymyr Zelensky. (AFP)
Updated 22 April 2019
AFP
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Merkel pledges support to Ukraine after Zelensky win

  • Germany key broker in conflict between Kiev and Russia-backed separatists
  • The war in eastern Ukraine between government forces and rebels backed by Moscow has claimed some 13,000 lives
Updated 22 April 2019
AFP

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has congratulated comedian Volodymyr Zelensky on his landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election, saying she hopes the vote will help stabilize the troubled country.

“I congratulate you on your election,” Merkel said.

“The stabilization of Ukraine and a peaceful conflict resolution are as close to my heart as the implementation of central reforms of the judiciary, decentralization and the fight against corruption,” her statement said.

“The Federal government will continue to actively assist Ukraine in its right to sovereignty and territorial integrity in the future.”

Merkel, who met incumbent Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko earlier this month in Berlin, added that she would welcome receiving Zelensky soon.

Germany has been a key broker in the conflict between Kiev and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since Moscow annexed the Crimeapledgen peninsula in 2014, negotiating with France the now moribund Minsk peace accords.

The war in eastern Ukraine between government forces and rebels backed by Moscow has claimed some 13,000 lives and rumbles on despite a series of periodic truce deals.

The EU also has sanctions in force against Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas praised Poroshenko for his “great contribution to his country over the last five years” and echoed Merkel’s offer of support to Zelensky.

“Volodymyr Zelensky became known during the election campaign for further reforms and the fight against corruption,” said Maas in a statement.

“Germany will continue to stand at the side of Ukraine and offer support on this path.”

Ukrainians looked to the future with hope and anxiety after Zelensky took 73 percent of the vote, according to nearly complete official results.

The star of the sitcom “Servant of the People,” now in its third season, has vowed to stick to the pro-European course set out by his predecessor.

But he has also said he will try to improve ties with Russia.

On the streets of Kiev, many praised honest elections and a peaceful transfer of power after popular uprisings of 2004 and 2014.

“People showed that they want change,” said 28-year-old Karina.

“We had the most honest polls in the history of Ukraine,” she added, praising Poroshenko for conceding defeat soon after exit polls were published.

Zelensky presented a vague manifesto and one of his campaign slogans was, “No promises. No apologies.”

He shunned traditional campaign rallies, instead performing comedy gigs, and implied he would use the same unorthodox style to run the country of 45 million dependent on international aid.

It remained unclear Monday who would fill top positions, including the role of prime minister.

US President Donald Trump and French leader Emmanuel Macron called the political novice to congratulate him on his landslide win.

“Allow us to express our appreciation for the strong attachment to democracy and the rule of law that the people of Ukraine have demonstrated,” EU Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said in a joint letter to Zelensky.

Outgoing Poroshenko said he stood ready to help his successor, despite a bitter campaign.

Russia — which Kiev and the West accuse of fueling a smoldering separatist conflict in Ukraine’s industrial east — said it saw an opportunity with the new leader.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said there was “a chance” to improve ties.

“What’s needed for this? Honesty. And a pragmatic and responsible approach,” Medvedev wrote on Facebook.

There was no immediate comment from President Vladimir Putin.

Topics: Ukraine Angela Merkel berlin

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Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs

Updated 7 sec ago
AP
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Japanese court convicts Australian who says she was tricked into smuggling drugs

Updated 7 sec ago
AP
CHIBA: A Japanese court on Wednesday sentenced an Australian woman who says she was tricked amphetamines into the country to six years in prison, despite accepting her testimony that she was the victim of an online romance scam.
The Chiba District Court said it found Donna Nelson from Perth, Australia, guilty of violating the stimulants control and customs laws. It ordered her to pay a fine of 1 million yen ($6,671) in addition to serving a prison term.
Nelson was arrested at Japan’s Narita International Airport just outside Tokyo on Jan. 3, 2023 when customs officials found about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of phenylaminopropane, a stimulant, hidden under a false bottom in a suitcase she was carrying as checked luggage.
Nelson, 58, told the court that she did not know that drugs were hidden in the suitcase and that she was carrying them for a man she thought she loved and hoped to marry.
The man, whom she met online in 2020, told her he was the Nigerian owner of a fashion business. In 2023, he paid to travel to Japan via Laos, and asked her to collect dress samples from an acquaintance in Laos, her lawyers said.
She was supposed to meet the man in Japan but he never showed up, according to prosecutors.
Nelson has already been in custody for nearly two years. The court said 430 days of that will be counted toward her sentence.
Presiding Judge Masakazu Kamakura said that although Nelson was decieved, she had a sense that something was wrong with the arrangement and that something illegal could be hidden in the suitcase, and she could have stopped.
However, the judge said there was room for sympathy and imposed a shorter sentence than would be typical for the amount of drugs she was carrying.
Prosecutors demanded 10 years in prison and a fine of 3 million yen (about $20,000) in their closing argument last month.
Nelson’s lawyer Rie Nishida said the ruling was unjust and did not make sense, and that she planned to appeal.
On Wednesday, Nelson dropped her head and seen sobbing as she listened to the verdict in the witness seat in front of a panel of judges. One of her daughters, Kristal Hilaire, was also seen wiping away tears as she looked on from her seat in the audience.
Several other family members who attended earlier sessions, seeing Nelson for the first time since her arrest nearly two years ago, returned home ahead of the verdict.

UK’s David Lammy: hand of Russia seen in many world conflicts at present

Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters
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UK’s David Lammy: hand of Russia seen in many world conflicts at present

Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters

BRUSSELS: Russia’s involvement can be seen in many of the wars currently taking place across the world, said British Foreign Minister David Lammy at a NATO meeting on Wednesday, as he urged NATO allies to ‘get serious’ over defense spending.
“We are living in dangerous times,” said Lammy.
“And as we look across the world with war here on our continent in Europe, with the tremendous aggression that we are seeing across the Middle East with the hand of Iran so present in the Middle East and with this rising conflict in Sudan and now in Syria, there is one country with its hand in so much of it, and that is Russia,” he added.

Topics: UK Russia Syria Ukraine

New UN aid chief vows ‘ruthlessness’ to prioritize spending as funding for world’s crises shrinks

Updated 04 December 2024
AP
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New UN aid chief vows ‘ruthlessness’ to prioritize spending as funding for world’s crises shrinks

  • The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is issuing its global appeal for 2025
Updated 04 December 2024
AP

GENEVA: The new head of the UN humanitarian aid agency says it will be “ruthless” when prioritizing how to spend money, a nod to challenges in fundraising for civilians in war zones like Gaza, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.
Tom Fletcher, a longtime British diplomat who took up the UN post last month, said his agency is asking for less money in 2025 than this year. He said it wants to show “we will focus and target the resources we have,” even as crises grow more numerous, intense and long-lasting.
His agency, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, on Wednesday issued its global appeal for 2025, seeking $47 billion to help 190 million people in 32 countries — though it estimates 305 million worldwide need help.
“The world is on fire, and this is how we put it out,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The office and many other aid groups, including the international Red Cross, have seen donations shrink in recent years for longtime trouble spots like Syria, South Sudan, the Middle East and Congo and newer ones like Ukraine and Sudan. Aid access has been difficult in some places, especially Sudan and Gaza.
The office’s appeal for $50 billion for this year was only 43 percent fulfilled as of last month. One consequence of that shortfall was a 80 percent reduction in food aid for Syria, which has seen a sudden escalation in fighting in recent days.
Such funds go to UN agencies and more than 1,500 partner organizations.
The biggest asks for 2025 are for Syria — a total of $8.7 billion for needs both within the country and for neighbors that have taken in Syrian refugees — as well as Sudan at a total of $6 billion, the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” at $4 billion, Ukraine at about $3.3 billion and Congo at nearly $3.2 billion.
Fletcher said his office needs to be “ruthless” in choosing to reach people most in need.
“I choose that word carefully, because it’s a judgment call — that ruthlessness — about prioritizing where the funding goes and where we can have the greatest impact,” he said. “It’s a recognition that we have struggled in previous years to raise the money we need.”
In response to questions about how much President-elect Donald Trump of the United States — the UN’s biggest single donor — will spend on humanitarian aid, Fletcher said he expects to spend “a lot of time” in Washington over the next few months to talk with the new administration.
“America is very much on our minds at the moment,” he said, acknowledging some governments “will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort” laid out in the new report.

Topics: UN

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Taipei to host Shanghai delegation in rare high level visit

Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters
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Taipei to host Shanghai delegation in rare high level visit

  • Shanghai Vice Mayor Hua Yuan would visit from Dec. 16-17
  • Taiwan’s government has pushed to re-open talks with China but Beijing refuses
Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters

TAIPEI: Taiwan’s capital will host a rare high level Chinese delegation later this month when a deputy mayor of Shanghai visits for an annual city forum, a trip that will be happening at a time of heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
Shanghai Vice Mayor Hua Yuan would visit from Dec. 16-17 for the Taipei-Shanghai City Forum, which was first held in 2010, Taipei city government spokesperson Yin Wei told reporters on Wednesday.
“This year is the 15th time it will be held, and 45 memorandums of understanding have been held in the past which a very good result for city exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” he added.
China’s official Xinhua news agency confirmed the forum would take place in Taipei this year.
“Cross-strait city exchanges are conducive to enhancing the affinity and well-being of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and promoting the peaceful development of relations,” it said in a brief report.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an is from the main opposition Kuomintang party, which traditionally favors close ties across the strait and dialogue though denies being pro-Beijing.
Chiang is a rising star in the party and widely considered a future presidential candidate.
He visited Shanghai last year for the same city forum.
China, which claims the democratically governed island as its territory, has been carrying out military activities near Taiwan, including regularly sending fighter jets into the air space around it.
Taiwan’s government has pushed to re-open talks with China but Beijing refuses to engage with President Lai Ching-te, calling him a “separatist.”
Lai says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

Topics: Taiwan

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Depleted by war, Ukraine gives absconding soldiers second chance

Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters
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Depleted by war, Ukraine gives absconding soldiers second chance

  • Ukraine lacks soldiers to hold back much bigger enemy
  • Rate of troops fleeing front or bases has jumped in 2024
Updated 04 December 2024
Reuters

KYIV: As Ukraine’s military struggles to find enough troops, particularly infantry, to hold off Russia’s much larger army, some units are giving a second chance to those who have absconded from service.
Data from the prosecutor’s office shows nearly 95,000 criminal cases have been opened since 2022 against soldiers going “absent without leave” (AWOL) and for the more serious crime of battlefield desertion.
The number of cases has risen steeply with each year of the war: almost two-thirds of the total are from 2024. With many tens of thousands of troops killed or wounded, it is a depletion that Ukraine can ill afford.
Now, some units are replenishing their ranks by accepting soldiers previously declared AWOL.
One of them is Ukraine’s elite 47th Brigade, which published a social media post last month inviting soldiers who had absconded to join.
“Our aim is to give every soldier the opportunity to come back into the fold and realize his potential,” the post announced. In the first two days, the brigade said, over a hundred applications came in.
“There was a tsunami of applications; so many that we still aren’t able to process them all before new ones come in,” Viacheslav Smirnov, the 47th’s head of recruitment, said two weeks after the announcement.
Two military units Reuters spoke to said they were only recruiting soldiers who had gone AWOL from their bases, rather than those who had deserted from combat.
The former is seen within the Ukrainian military as a lesser offense. A bill recently signed into law has in effect decriminalized a soldier’s first disappearance, allowing them to return to service.
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers rejoin after absconding
Col. Oleksandr Hrynchuk, deputy head of Ukraine’s military police, told reporters on Tuesday that 6,000 AWOL soldiers had returned to service in the last month, including 3,000 in the 72 hours since the law was signed.
Mykhailo Perets, an officer from the K-2 battalion of Ukraine’s 54th Brigade, said his battalion had already hired over 30 men who had gone AWOL from other units.
“The reasons [for absconding] are very different: for some people it was too tough a transition straight from civilian life, others served for a year or two as qualified pilots but were then sent to the front line because there wasn’t enough infantry.”
Perets said those who had applied also included men who had become exhausted and run away after being at war for seven or eight years, having fought Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine before 2022.
Gil Barndollar, a non-resident fellow at the US-based Defense Priorities think tank, said the increase in unauthorized absences was most likely driven by exhaustion.
Ukrainian service personnel have previously said how the lack of replacements for lost soldiers puts an unbearable strain on those remaining, exhausting them physically and mentally.
Barndollar also highlighted their average age as an additional strain.
“An army of men, often in poor health, in their 40s, all else being equal, is going to get exhausted sooner and is going to have morale problems faster than a reasonably fit army of 20- or 25-year-olds.”
Zelensky has responded to questions about the manpower problem by arguing that Ukraine lacks weapons rather than people, and pushed back against US pressure to lower the minimum draft age to 18 from 25.
He said in an interview with Sky News last week that Kyiv’s allies had been able to provide the necessary equipment for only a quarter of the 10 new brigades Ukraine had formed over the past year.

Topics: Ukraine Russia war

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