Ukraine ‘will prevail’, Zelensky says ahead of invasion anniversary

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures as he speaks during a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister after their meeting in Kyiv on February 21, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (AFP)
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Updated 24 February 2023
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Ukraine ‘will prevail’, Zelensky says ahead of invasion anniversary

  • Ahead of the war’s first anniversary on February 24, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said Russia was planning a missile attack to mark the day

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday expressed confidence in his country’s victory over invading Russian forces with fears mounting of strikes on the war’s first anniversary.
The nearly year-long conflict has seen Western leaders step up their support for Kyiv, and on Thursday G7 ministers discussed new sanctions on Russia as the UN General Assembly prepared to vote on a motion calling for “lasting” peace.
“We have not broken down, we have overcome many ordeals and we will prevail. We will hold to account all those who brought this evil, this war to our land,” Zelensky said on social media.
In the capital Kyiv, which saw Russian troops at its doorstep at the start of the invasion last February and relentless attacks on energy infrastructure since, residents remained defiant.
“This has been the most difficult year of my life and that of all Ukrainians,” said Diana Shestakova, 23, who works for a publishing house and whose boyfriend has spent the last year away in the army.
“I am sure that we will be victorious, but we don’t know how long we will have to wait and how many victims there are still to come.”
In the western city of Lviv, a Swiss artist projected images in honor of Ukraine on public buildings on Wednesday night, covering them in blue and yellow peace doves and Ukrainian tridents.
Ahead of the war’s first anniversary on February 24, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said Russia was planning a missile attack to mark the day.
“February 23-24, they have two dates,” Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview to newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda, adding: “Believe me, we have survived this more than 20 times already.”
The year-long conflict has devastated swathes of Ukraine, turned Russia into a pariah in the West and according to Western sources, has caused 150,000 casualties on each side.
In India, Group of Seven finance ministers met in the city of Bengaluru to discuss further sanctions and more financial help for Ukraine.
They urged the International Monetary Fund on Thursday to deliver a new aid package to Ukraine by the end of March.
A senior US official has said that the United States and its G7 allies planned to unveil “a big new package of sanctions” around the anniversary, including measures to crack down on the evasion of existing sanctions.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the G7 meeting that the unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over the last 12 months “had a very significant negative effect on Russia so far.”
The latest Western leader to visit the Ukrainian capital, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, tweeted that Madrid would “stand with Ukraine and its people until peace returns to Europe” after arriving in Kyiv by train and before meeting President Zelensky.
In New York, the UN General Assembly was on Thursday to bring to a vote a motion backed by Kyiv and its allies calling for a “just and lasting peace.”
“Never in recent history has the line between good and evil been so clear. One country merely wants to live. The other wants to kill and destroy,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the world body on Wednesday.
The Kremlin’s UN ambassador accused the West of being “ready to plunge the entire world into the abyss of war” to defeat Russia.
And Russian leader Vladimir Putin vowed to strengthen his country’s defense capabilities as he laid flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow before meeting soldiers in Red Square under blue skies and brisk temperatures.
Russia will equip troops with “new strike systems, reconnaissance and communication equipment, drones and artillery systems,” he said, hailing Russian soldiers fighting “heroically” in Ukraine and defending “our historical lands.”
Russia’s “unbreakable unity is the key to our victory,” he said.
While US President Joe Biden paid a hugely symbolic trip to Kyiv to show support this week, strengthened Russo-Chinese ties were on display in Moscow as Putin met Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi.
Their meeting, during which Beijing presented its views toward a “political settlement” in Ukraine, came after Washington and NATO voiced concern that China could be preparing to supply Russia with weapons.


Famine looming in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: UN

Updated 08 November 2024
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Famine looming in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: UN

  • Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning and some 2 million people are at risk of starvation, said a new report from the UN Development Programme

UNITED NATIONS: Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state is heading toward famine, the United Nations warned on Thursday, as the country’s civil war squeezes commerce and agricultural production.
“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” a new report from the UN Development Programme said, projecting “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity are left unaddressed.
Some two million people are at risk of starvation, it said.
Amid the fighting roiling the country, international and domestic trade routes leading into the already impoverished state have been closed, leaving the entrance of aid and goods severely restricted.
In addition to intense fighting, people in Rakhine are facing “absence of incomes, hyperinflation (and) significantly reduced domestic food production,” the UNDP report warned.

Graphic on internally displaced persons in Myanmar, including those in Rakhine province, according to data collected by UNHCR. (AFP)

Myanmar has been racked by conflict between the military and various armed groups opposed to its rule since the ruling junta ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.
Clashes have rocked western Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked security forces in November 2023, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the junta’s 2021 coup.
With the farming economy in crisis, the UNDP predicted local food production would only cover 20 percent of the state’s needs by March or April.
Internal rice production is “plummeting,” it said, due to “a lack of seeds, fertilizers (and) severe weather conditions.”
Some 97,000 tons of rice are set to be cultivated in Rakhine this year, compared to 282,000 tons last year, according to the UNDP.
A “steep rise” in internally displaced people, meanwhile, means many fields are unable to be worked.
According to UN figures, Rakhine state recorded more than 500,000 displaced people in August, compared to just under 200,000 in October 2023.
Facing particular risk are populations including members of the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority and displaced people.
 


Biden to attend South America summits, in Trump’s shadow

Updated 08 November 2024
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Biden to attend South America summits, in Trump’s shadow

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will attend two key summits and visit the Amazon rainforest in South America this month, the White House said Thursday, in a trip totally overshadowed by Donald Trump’s election win.
Biden’s swansong at the G20 summit in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and the APEC meeting in Lima, Peru will come as world leaders are more focused on how to deal with Trump’s stunning comeback.
“He is planning to attend both conferences,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing.
The return of Trump’s “America First” agenda to the global stage threatens to upend Biden’s embrace of international alliances on issues ranging from Ukraine and the Middle East to climate change and trade.
Jean-Pierre said in a statement that Biden will travel to Lima from November 14-16 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) regional forum.
Last year he met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in California, although there is no word on whether a similar meeting is possible this time.
Biden will then make what the White House said was the first visit by a sitting US president to Manaus in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest to meet indigenous leaders and others working to “protect this critical ecosystem.”
Finally, Biden will attend his last G20 group of nations summit in Rio on November 18 and 19, where the subjects will include climate change, it said.
Biden has spent his four years in office trying to reshape US leadership on the world stage, after the disruption of Trump’s first term as he criticized US allies and courted dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Uncertainty now reigns about what Trump 2.0 will mean for the world.
Trump’s plans for huge tariffs could trigger a trade war with China and badly affect Canada, Mexico, Europe and other trading partners.
Trump is also mooting talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, amid speculation that he will try to push through a peace deal with Ukraine.
Putin has said he will not attend this G20 because it would “wreck” the conference.


Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

Updated 1 min 16 sec ago
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Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

  • Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers
  • Altogether, his approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.
The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America’s international role.
Trump’s agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.
A look at what Trump has proposed:
Immigration
“Build the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the effort. Still, Trump has been scant on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it targeted only people in the US illegally. He’s pitched “ideological screening” for would-be entrants, ending birth-right citizenship (which almost certainly would require a constitutional change), and said he’d reinstitute first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants from certain majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.

Abortion
Trump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, the GOP platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level. Trump said last month on his social media platform Truth Social that he would veto a federal abortion ban if legislation reached his desk — a statement he made only after avoiding a firm position in his September debate against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
But it’s unclear if his administration would aggressively defend against legal challenges seeking to restrict access to abortion pills, including mifepristone, as the Biden administration has. Anti-abortion advocates continue to wage legal battles over the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug as well as the agency’s relaxed prescribing restrictions. Trump is also unlikely to enforce Biden’s guidance that hospitals must provide abortions for women who are in medical emergencies, even in states with bans.
Taxes
Trump’s tax policies broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. That’s mostly due to his promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul, with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent from the current 21 percent. That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping Inflation Reduction Act levies that finance energy measures intended to combat climate change.
Those policies notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working- and middle class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and overtime wages from income taxes. It’s noteworthy, however, that his proposal on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could give a back-door tax break to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tip income — a prospect that at its most extreme could see hedge-fund managers or top-flight attorneys taking advantage of a policy that Trump frames as being designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.
Tariffs and trade
Trump’s posture on international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10 percent to 20 percent on foreign goods — and in some speeches has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an August 2020 executive order requiring that the federal government buy “essential” medications only from US companies. He pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the US by Chinese buyers.
DEI, LGBTQ and civil rights
Trump has called for rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal funding as leverage.
On transgender rights, Trump promises generally to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.
Regulation, federal bureaucracy and presidential power
The president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges precipitous drops in US households’ utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration — even though US energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations — though most construction rules come from state and local government. He also says he would end “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”
The approach would in many ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would come more directly from the White House.
He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and, potentially, impose a chilling effect on those who remain.
Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.
As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered details, any such move would represent a momentous change to how the US economic and monetary systems work.
Education
The federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration. That does not mean that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal funding as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”
In higher education, Trump proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist Maniacs and lunatics” he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts. That almost certainly would end up in protracted legal fights.
As in other policy areas, Trump isn’t actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated endowment money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without a tuition charges. “It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed— none of that’s going to be allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
Trump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tip and overtime wages might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for Social Security and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid during this campaign, but his first administration reshaped the program by allowing states to introduce work requirements for recipients.
Affordable Care Act and Health Care
As he has since 2015, Trump calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a plan.” In the latter stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of pesticides used in US agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again.”
Climate and energy
Trump, who claims falsely that climate change is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner energy designed to reduce US reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy policy – and transportation infrastructure spending – anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not oppose electric vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage EV market development. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.
Workers’ rights
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring America’s workers. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In an Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, “I’m telling you, you shouldn’t pay those dues.”
National defense and America’s role in the world
Trump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the US has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield — an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and top US military brass. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “see on television.” He repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
 


Trump picks Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff

Updated 08 November 2024
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Trump picks Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff

WEST PALM BEACH: P resident-elect Donald Trump on Thursday announced that Susie Wiles, one of his two campaign managers, will be his White House chief of staff, entrusting a top position to a political operative who helped the Republican win election.
The appointment was the first of what is expected to be a flurry of staffing announcements as Trump girds for a return to the White House on Jan. 20.
As gatekeeper to the president, the chief of staff typically wields great influence. The person manages White House staff, organizes the president’s time and schedule, and maintains contact with other government departments and lawmakers.
The low-key Wiles, 67, will be the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff.
“Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected,” Trump said in a statement. “I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”
Trump has been secluded at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, since defeating Democrat Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s election.
He is considering a wide array of people for top jobs in his administration, many of them familiar figures from his 2017-2021 presidency, four sources said.
Wiles, a long-time Florida-based political strategist, and fellow campaign manager Chris LaCivita are credited with running a more disciplined operation for Trump’s third presidential bid compared with his past campaigns.
Trump thanked them both during his victory speech early on Wednesday.
“Susie likes to stay in the back, let me tell you,” Trump said, as she stood toward the back of the stage. “We call her the ice maiden.”
Several people who have worked with Wiles said in interviews on Thursday that she would provide stability and sage counsel to Trump in the White House.
Trump ran through four chiefs of staff — an unusually high number — during his 2017-2021 term as they struggled to rein in the famously undisciplined president.
“Susie is a strong woman and a true leader with a proven track record of getting things done,” said Florida-based Republican consultant David Johnson.
Wiles previously worked on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and helped Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis win election in 2018. She served as a senior adviser on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 bids.
Trump chose Wiles over former House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who is close to Trump and has been a frequent visitor to Mar-a-Lago.
Sources said McCarthy had been in contention as well as Brooke Rollins, who was the former acting director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council.
A fierce Trump ally, New York Republican Representative Elize Stefanik, is under consideration to be US ambassador to the United Nations, a source familiar with the matter said.
Former US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who was an acting intelligence chief in Trump’s first term and was with him when he recently met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York, is under consideration for secretary of state.
Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, a former US ambassador to Japan, is also under consideration for that position, the sources said.
Hagerty, asked by CNN about being considered for a role in Trump’s administration, said, “I’ll leave the speculation to the speculators.”


Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists

Updated 08 November 2024
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Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists

N’DJAMENA: Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram jihadists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said on Thursday.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
Deby, who gave an interview in full military fatigues, said he had “personally” launched the counter-attack against Boko Haram, which targeted the Chadian army in an attack last month in the western region, close to the border with Nigeria.
The Chad government had vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Chad and its neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.