English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 07/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.april06.22.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again
Luke 18/31-34: "Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again. ’in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said."

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 06-07/2022
Presidency says pope to visit Lebanon in June, Vatican says trip unconfirmed
President Aoun follows up on stages of implementation of "Aman"
Maronite bishops hold monthly meeting, welcome Pope Francis’s visit to Lebanon in June
Lack of quorum forces postponement of parliament session on transferred funds
Report says IMF talks made great progress, initial agreement to be signed soon
Miqati vows to hold elections, do 'utmost' to tackle crises
Mikati chairs Cabinet sessions, vows timely elections
Mawlawi: 975 kg of cannabis bound for Europe seized at Beirut port
Report accuses KSA of obstructing energy transfer to Lebanon
Miqati vows timely elections, reports progress in IMF talks
Govt. authorizes Fayyad to build power plants in Deir Amar, al-Zahrani
Lebanese Military Expert Hisham Jaber: If Israel Continues To Support The Saudi Coalition In Yemen, It Will Likely Be Targeted By Houthi Drones, Missiles
Recession in Lebanon curbs hospitality sector’s revival
Like all Lebanese lives, elections challenged by lack of /Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/April 06/2022

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 06-07/2022
Iran Moves Machines for Making Centrifuge Parts to Natanz, Says UN Nuclear Watchdog
Iranian MPs Ask for Stronger Guarantees in Vienna Talks
Tehran Gives IAEA Documents About Outstanding Issues
Iran nuclear chief says Tehran has given IAEA documents on outstanding issues
Israeli government loses majority as backbencher quits
Gantz Speaks with Palestinian President for Ramadan
Mariupol’s dead put at 5,000 as Ukraine braces in the east
Russia bombards and US imposes sanctions as Ukraine urges decisive help
More Western sanctions to hit Russia after Bucha killings
Russian Forces Pound Key Cities as Ukraine Demands Tougher Sanctions
Iraq, NATO Discuss Means to Confront Terrorism, Maintain Regional Stability
Israel’s Kohavi: Preparations to Carry Out Operations Against Iran Moving at Rapid Pace
Tunisia Calls Erdogan Comments on President’s Decree Unacceptable Interference
Syria Explosive Remnants Kill Nearly 30 in a Month, Says Monitor
Tear Gas Fired at Sudan Protest 3 Years after Anti-Bashir Sit-in
Yemen Consultations Begin Drafting Roadmap to Bolster State Institutions
Spanish PM to Hold Talks with Morocco’s King on Thursday
Canada/Statement on violence in Moura, Mali
Canada/Minister Joly meets with Moldovan counterpart
Canada/Minister Joly meets with Turkish counterpart

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 06-07/2022
Audio From FDD/Disrupting China’s Military-Academic Complex
Iran’s Master Class in Evading Sanctions/Mark Dubowitz and Matthew Zweig/The Washington Post/April 06/2022
Opinion: How the U.S. can support a war crimes investigation into Russia/Christopher J. Dodd and John B. Bellinger III /The washington Post/April 06/2022
Pope Francis Calls on Christians to Surrender Before Violence/Raymond Ibrahim/April 06/2022
The Great Russian Energy Scam ...Russian 'Dark Money' Funding 'Green' Groups in West/
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/April 06/2022
Biden Sends Nearly $1 Billion to Afghanistan Since Taliban Takeover/Daniel Greenfield/Gatestone Institute/April 06/2022
Why Tracking Putin's Wealth Is So Difficult/Mike McIntire/ The New York Times/Wed, April 06, 2022  

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 06-07/2022
Presidency says pope to visit Lebanon in June, Vatican says trip unconfirmed
Associated Press/Agence France Presse/April 06/2022
Pope Francis is set to visit Lebanon in June, the country's presidency has said, amid spiraling financial and political crises in the tiny nation. The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, meanwhile said that a trip to Lebanon was "one of the hypotheses being studied." The Vatican usually confirms such visits nearer the time. Lebanon, home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East, has been gripped by an unprecedented economic downturn since 2019, with more than 80 percent of the population now living in poverty. The pontiff, who has received Lebanon's president and prime minister in the Vatican in recent months, had previously promised to visit the country and repeatedly expressed concern over its worsening crises. "Apostolic Envoy Joseph Spiteri informed President Michel Aoun that Pope Francis will visit Lebanon next June," a presidency statement said. "The Lebanese people have been waiting for this visit for some time to express gratitude to his holiness for his support," the statement said, adding the exact date and agenda for the visit would be set later. Lebanese took to social media to celebrate the announcement. "A welcome to the pope of peace in the holy land," said one user. Lebanon, a multi-confessional country of some six million people, is home to a Muslim majority but Christians account for around a third of the population. Pope Francis' planned visit, coming after Lebanese parliamentary elections scheduled for May 15, would be the third by an incumbent pope to the country since the end of its 1975-1990 civil war. The last trip in 2012 saw Pope Benedict XVI visit to appeal for peace, months after the start of the civil war in neighboring Syria. Pope John Paul II visited in 1997, drawing one of the largest crowds Lebanon had ever seen.
"Lebanon is more than a country -- it is a message," he said at the time.
'New hope'
One social media user drew a parallel between the 1997 visit and the one expected in two months. "Just as Pope John Paul II was a hope for Lebanon, Pope Francis too will definitely be a new hope," he wrote on Twitter. "During elections, out with the old and in with the new," he said, referring to traditional party leaders who have been at the helm of Lebanese politics since the end of the civil war. Pope Francis met last month with Lebanon's president, who is a Christian as dictated by the country's constitution which also divides seats in government and parliament along sectarian quotas. In November, he received Lebanon's Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Najib Miqati in the Vatican. "May God take Lebanon by the hand and tell it: 'Get up!'" the Vatican quoted Francis as saying during the meeting. During a visit to Cyprus in December, Pope Francis met with the head of Lebanon's Maronite Church, Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, and expressed concern over the country's crises. He also received the heads of Lebanon's top churches in July. In August, he called on the international community to offer support to Lebanon, one year after an explosion in Beirut port killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the capital. Since 2019, the Lebanese currency, the pound, has lost more than 90 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar on the black market. The bankrupt Lebanese state has struggled to afford basic imports of fuel, food and medicine. With no exit in sight from the country's crisis, Lebanon's population has fled the country en masse in a damaging brain drain.

President Aoun follows up on stages of implementation of "Aman"
NNA/April 06/2022  
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, met Social Affairs Minister, Hector Hajjar, today at the Presidential Palace. Minister Hajjar indicated that his ministry began two months ago to implement the "Aman" program and pay the beneficiaries, whose number reached 10,000 citizens, to be carried out every Monday. This process transfers a new batch of money to achieve the goal of the program and benefit 150 thousand families. On the other hand, Minister Al-Hajjar clarified that the application of the financing card is awaiting financing by the World Bank.
Statement:
After the meeting, Minister Al-Hajjar made the following statement:
“His Excellency the President of the Republic reviewed the files that the Ministry of Social Affairs is following up, and he was briefed about the smallest details regarding the issue of employee salaries in light of some of the confusions faced by users in this issue, as well as with regard to the issue of grants and restrictions which are imposed by banks for employees to receive social assistance. The issue of the “Aman” network and the stages of implementation of this program have been reached with the start of payments to beneficiaries on a weekly basis, and we have consulted with President Aoun and took his directions on the issue of displaced Syrians”.
Questions & Answers:
In response to a question about the stages of completion of the "Aman" program and the latest developments regarding the financing card, Minister Al-Hajjar said: "With regard to the "Aman" program, we have started two months ago to pay the beneficiaries and every Monday a new batch of money is transferred to reach the goal that we set. In the program, 150,000 families will benefit.
We have started implementing the program since last March, as promised to the Lebanese.
There are about 10,000 citizens who receive messages from the ministry and started receiving money since 1/1/2022.
As for the financing card, there is nothing new in this matter, and we previously indicated that we have accomplished what must be accomplished on our part, and we are waiting for the World Bank to implement its promise to finance this card after the Lebanese state has accomplished everything necessary.
With regard to the difficulties that employees face in obtaining their salaries from banks, especially social assistance, Minister Hajjar explained that he visited the governor of the Banque du Liban during the past week, and stressed during the meeting that “it is not possible to impose restrictions on how to receive grants and aid because it is a right, and the governor has issued a decision calling on banks to pay salaries and grants and we are waiting for the application”.
Minister Hajjar also pointed out that "During the meeting with the governor, the issue of associations that must receive more than 8 million pounds per month was also discussed, and the governor asked the ministry to provide him with files related to these associations, and they were sent yesterday to the Banquedu Liban”.
“I hope to meet within 48 hours with the governor. Let us see in practice the practical mechanism for allowing associations to withdraw more than 8 million per month, as well as the issue of localizing salaries and the issue of fresh dollars” Hajjar added.
In response to a question about the oversight of associations, Minister Hajjar said: "I am now talking about associations that have sponsorship contracts with the Ministry of Affairs, which are subject to oversight and the Audit Bureau. As for the NGOs that have been established since 2019, they are under the oversight of the Ministry of Interior”.
Honoring the winners of the "L'Oréal_UNESCO For Women in Science" program:
President Aoun honored the winners of the “L’Oréal-UNESCOFor Women in Science” program, and awarded Dr. Abla MahiouEl-Sibai of the American University of Beirut, the National Order of the Cedar, knight, in appreciation of her achievements.
Dr. Sibai is one of the five women among the “exceptional scientists” on International-global level.
The President also honored Dr. Laura Joy Pauls from Saint Joseph University, one of the fifteen women in the world, in the category of "Rising International Talents" at the regional level.
In addition, President Aoun honored Dr. Heba Rajha from Saint Joseph University, and Rachel Njeim, a doctoral student in the the American University of Beirut, and they are among the fourteen women who were chosen regionally for their "advanced scientific research".
The women were honored during a ceremony held on February 11, 2022 at the Dubai Exhibition Center "Expo 2022_Dubai".
The ceremony at Baabda Palace was attended by Father Salim Daccache, President of Saint Joseph University, Dr. Raymond Sawaya, representing Dr. Fadlo Khoury, President of the American University of Beirut, Dr. Moeen Hamza, Secretary General of the National Council for Scientific Research and Chairman of the Jury, Ms. Emily Wahab Harb, Administrative Director of L’Oréal-Lebanon, and a number of the academic figures at Saint Joseph University and the American University, and administrators in the L'Oréal-Lebanon Company.
At the beginning of the ceremony, the Managing Director of L'Oréal Emily Wahab gave the following speech:
“Your Excellency, we are honored today to meet with you to honor four distinguished women in the L’Oréal UNESCO Program for Women in Science, and we are pleased to have the participation in this meeting, Father Salim Daccache, President of Saint Joseph University, Dr. Fadlo Khoury, President of the American University of Beirut, and Dr. Moeen Hamza Amin, General of the National Council for Scientific Research and Chairman of the Jury.
We appreciate your patronage for excellence and your interest in promoting science and technology, and we always look forward to your valuable initiatives in supporting Lebanese women and highlighting their effective role in various fields, protecting them from marginalization and exclusion, in addition to highlighting their capabilities and competence that are recognized by the whole world.
L'Oréal is committed to the advancement and empowerment of women in society and to ensuring gender equality in access to training and promotion because L'Oréal believes in gender justice as a success criterion and a primary driver for innovation. What is true in the world of business is also true in the world of science.
Stemming from the firm conviction that the world needs science, and science needs women, the L’Oréal Foundation, in partnership with UNESCO, launched the “For Women in Science” program in 1998 with the aim of empowering women in science, recognizing their scientific excellence, and helping talented female scientists to obtain the recognition that they deserve it.
In doing so, the program is committed to improving the representation of women in science, particularly in senior decision-making positions.
The program also has benefited more than 3,900 female scientific researchers from 117 countries at the doctoral and post-doctoral stages.
We are proud to announce that Lebanon's share was the most important at the global level in the various stages of the program, and the highest in the Arab world.
At the global level, the program annually awards five leading female researchers, one from every continent, in recognition of their exceptional achievements and contributions to scientific progress. Thanks to the high level of scientific research in Lebanon, during the past five years, Lebanese women researchers have won this award three times for the continent of Africa and the Arab countries, in a precedent that the program had not known before.
Mr. President, I am pleased to present to you Dr. Abla MahiouAl-Sibai from the American University of Beirut, who is one of the three women scientists who have received the most important and most prestigious awards for excellence that will be presented to her in a huge ceremony in Paris next June, as a winner for Africa and the Arab countries.
I also have the honor to present to you Dr. Laura Joy Pauls and Dr. Heba Rajiha from Saint Joseph University and Ms. Rachel Njeim from the American University of Beirut, who received L'Oréal prizes for their PhD and post-doctoral research.
We appreciate the efforts of universities and the National Council for Scientific Research in supporting research and empowering Lebanese women, as they deserve your support and trust in their national cause par excellence.
Mr. President, we thank you once again for welcoming us today and for your continued support for Lebanese women in general, and for women in science in particular”.
Dr. Shedid:
Then the Director General of Protocols at the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Nabil Shedid, delivered the following speech:
“Dear guests, it is an honor for the Presidential Palace to host Lebanese women scientists, pioneers in the field of scientific research at the international level.
Today, His Excellency President Michel Aoun is pleased to honor Dr. Abla El Sibai, Professor of Epidemiology, at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut, and will confer upon her the National Order of the Cedar, in recognition of her research and her call to improve healthy aging in low-lying countries. and middle income.
Dear audience, as Lebanon is proud of the success of its pioneering women scientists, including Dr. Laura Joy Boulos, Dr. Heba Rajha and Miss Rachel Njeim, Lebanon hopes that their success will motivate Lebanese women to confirm their presence on the global map in research and scientific development, so there are more dates for success and progress.
President Aoun:
Then President Aoun presented the National Order of the Cedar, rank of Knight, to Dr. Abla Mahiou Al-Sibai, and spoke welcoming the attendees and congratulating the honorees.
The President stressed the importance of science and its development, as well as the importance of scientists who raise the name of their country high.
President Aoun then ddressed the honored ladies, saying: "I am proud of your achievements today, and proud of the women who make the achievements. There are those who say that women are weaker than men, and I do not agree with this opinion, because women and men are equal in rights and in different jobs, and it shows the superiority and achievements of women in universities”.
Moreover, President Aoun praised the achievements of the honorees and their usefulness on the social level and said: “We salute Saint Joseph University and the American University of Beirut, and we always hope that there will be female graduates like you in the scientific field”. “Women suffer from a lack of some rights, and I am one of their advocates for obtaining these rights, whether personally or directly, or through my daughter Claudine, who chairs the National Commission for Women's Affairs” President Aoun continued.
Former Minister Sarraf:
President Aoun met former Minister Yaacoub Al-Sarraf and deliberated with him political developments. The needs of Akkar, and the issue of the military hospital were also discussed.
Director General of State Security and his Deputy:
The President signed Decree No. 8998 on April 6, 2022 accepting the resignation of the Director-General of State Security, Major General Tony Saliba from his current job at his request and referring him to retirement, and re-appointing him as Director-General of State Security in the staff of the General Directorate of State Security.
President Aoun also signed Decree No. 8999 dated April 6, 2022 transferring Administrative Brigadier General Hassan Choucair from the army to the General Directorate of State Security and appointing him as Deputy Director General. -- Presidency Press Office

Maronite bishops hold monthly meeting, welcome Pope Francis’s visit to Lebanon in June
NNA/April 06/2022
The Maronite bishops held their monthly meeting on Wednesday at the patriarchal seat in Bkerki under the chairmanship of Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi.The prelates welcomed in a press release Pope Francis’s visit to Lebanon, which is scheduled for next June. They also reiterated their insistence on having parliamentary elections be held on their scheduled date, calling on voters for a high turnout on May 25, 2022. The Prelates then insisted that officials set the economic recovery plan and reforms apart from political controversies and to sign an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as soon as possible to pave the way for economic recovery.

Lack of quorum forces postponement of parliament session on transferred funds
Naharnet/April 06/2022
A session for the joint parliamentary committees was postponed Wednesday due to lack of quorum, Deputy Speaker Elie Ferzli announced. The session was supposed to tackle a draft law aimed at recovering funds transferred out of Lebanon in the wake of the Oct. 17, 2019 uprising. Lebanese banks have imposed informal capital controls since the economic crisis began in October 2019 after decades of corruption and mismanagement by the country's political class. Since then, people do not have full access to their savings and those who withdraw cash from their U.S. dollar accounts get an exchange rate far lower than that of the black market. Some banks are meanwhile accused of bypassing those exact same capital controls by helping the political elite squirrel billions of dollars overseas.

Report says IMF talks made great progress, initial agreement to be signed soon
Naharnet/April 06/2022
A preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund is likely to be reached soon, as the negotiations have made an important progress, according to al-Joumhouria newspaper. The daily said Wednesday that, according to its sources, an initial agreement might be signed in the upcoming hours, as Prime Minister Najib Miqati will meet tomorrow with the IMF delegation, before the team leaves Friday to the U.S. An agreement on the framework of the program has been reached, while negotiations about the IMF's preconditions will resume, al-Joumhouria said. The sources told the daily that the IMF has asked Lebanon to issue the needed reform laws, as a prerequisite to implement the program that will be divided into phases. Talks will resume online on Monday, the newspaper added.

Miqati vows to hold elections, do 'utmost' to tackle crises
Naharnet/April 06/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati has vowed to remove anything that might threaten to disrupt the elections. Miqati told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Wednesday that the government will carry on with implementing its program with perseverance and steadfastness. "The government is aware of the size of the crises that the country is facing," Miqati said, adding that it will do everything within its capabilities to address the problems. Cash-strapped Lebanon is even struggling to turn lights on for the polling day as the EDL couldn't provide electricity except at a very high cost, with no guarantee of solid results."The issue of electricity is the biggest problem facing Lebanon... but we will be able to solve it for the day of elections," Interior Minsiter Bassam Mawlawi said.

Mikati chairs Cabinet sessions, vows timely elections
NNA/April 06/2022  
Prime Minister Najib Mikati has stressed that the upcoming parliamentary elections will be held on their scheduled date on May 15 and that they constitute a stepping stone to the change the Lebanese are seeking, Information Minister Ziad Makary told reporters following a Cabinet session at the Grand Serail on Wednesday."Doubting that the elections will not take place and talks about administrative and logistical impediments are mere blabber," Makary quoted the PM as saying. On the Lebanese government's negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, Mikati revealed that progress has been made within the key points of the economic recovery plan. The Cabinet convened today under Mikati's chairmanship to look into an agenda of 21 items. Following the session, Energy Minister Walid Fayyad told reporters that the Council of Ministers has approved the establishment of two power plants in Zahrani and Deir Amar.

Mawlawi: 975 kg of cannabis bound for Europe seized at Beirut port
NNA/April 06/2022
The Internal Security Forces' anti-narcotics bureau has seized 975 kg of cannabis at the Beirut seaport, hidden inside consumer goods boxes and heading to a European country, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi announced in a tweet on Wednesday. He added that search for those involved in the smuggling operation is underway after they have been identified.

Report accuses KSA of obstructing energy transfer to Lebanon
Naharnet/April 06/2022
U.S. ambassador Dorothy Shea has been reportedly quoted as saying that "some parties" have been obstructing the transfer of gas and electricity from Egypt and Jordan to Lebanon, al-Akhbar newspaper said. Informed sources have told al-Akhbar, in remarks published Wednesday, that they suspect that KSA might be the party obstructing the deal. The daily said that according to sources Shea is embarrassed of the delay in the implementation of the energy plan, after Hizbullah had successfully imported Iranian diesel half a year ago. It added that the U.S. has been making efforts to speed up the loan's funding and that Syria is logistically ready. Egypt, for its part, has been hesitating over disagreements regarding the quantity of gas and guarantees that the IMF had requested from the country.

Miqati vows timely elections, reports progress in IMF talks
Naharnet/April 06/2022
Prime Minister Najib Miqati said Wednesday that progress has been made within the main points of the recovery plan with the International Monetary Fund. He said at the start of a Cabinet session that the situation is challenging, adding that "we will not give up, we will carry on with the recovery plan." On another note, Miqati said that doubting that the elections will not take place is "mere blabber.""The elections will be held on time," he affirmed.

Govt. authorizes Fayyad to build power plants in Deir Amar, al-Zahrani
Naharnet/April 06/2022
Cabinet on Wednesday approved the energy minister’s plan for building two new power plants in the northern area of Deir Amar and the southern region of al-Zahrani. MTV said Energy Minister Walid Fayyad also proposed setting up a plant in the northern area of Salaata, adding that the suggestion was rejected by Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Culture Minister Mohammed al-Murtada of the Amal Movement. Fayyad meanwhile denied MTV’s report. “I did not speak of building a plant in Salaata because this will be a long-term move, whereas I want to achieve results rather than trigger controversial debates,” Fayyad said in remarks after the session.

Lebanese Military Expert Hisham Jaber: If Israel Continues To Support The Saudi Coalition In Yemen, It Will Likely Be Targeted By Houthi Drones, Missiles
MEMRI/April 06/2022
Source: Al-Alam TV (Iran)
Lebanese military expert and strategist Hisham Jaber said in a March 26, 2022 interview on Al-Alam TV (Iran) that if Israel continues its support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, then it will likely be targeted by the Houthis. He explained that the Houthis have long-range drones that can reach Israel and ballistic missiles that can reach Eilat. For more information about Hisham Jaber, see MEMRI TV Clips Nos. 844 and 755. Hisham Jaber: "If the Zionist entity continues to play a role in the war [in Yemen], I will not be surprised if the [Houthi] drones and perhaps ballistic missiles begin to strike deep in Israel. "We know that the Yemenis have advanced Sammad-3 type drones that have a range of 2,500 kilometers and can reach Israel. Moreover, they possess ballistic missiles that can reach Eilat. The Israelis are aware of that, and they have already prepared air defense in that area, in preparation for what might happen."

Recession in Lebanon curbs hospitality sector’s revival
Najia Houssari/Arab News/April 06/2022
BEIRUT: Worsening economic conditions in Lebanon have forced many people to adjust the fasting habits and festivities that usually accompany the month of Ramadan. Outdoor restaurants and coffeeshops are attracting customers again as pandemic-related restrictions are eased and warmer weather arrives after a long, cold winter. However, not many people can afford to go out — the owners of hotels and restaurants say their customers “do not exceed 8 percent of the Lebanese people, and they are the same ones who frequent entertainment places on a weekly basis in light of the absence of the Arab and foreign tourists in Lebanon.”The month of Ramadan, through the iftars (after sunset meals) and sahoors (before dawn meal) in restaurants, is an important source of income for the tourism sector every year. However, the market has been hit by the increase in the price of food, transport and generators’ bills, the emigration of staff and the closing down of many tourist institutions due to the deterioration of the Lebanese pound. The head of the Syndicate of Owners of Restaurants, Cafes and Restaurants, Tony Ramy, said that “people want to entertain themselves by going out from home after a period of confinement due to the winter season, and we want to provide these people with a breathing space to have their iftar meals in restaurants and to restore the Ramadan atmosphere to forget about the tense and sad situation.”Arab News toured a number of restaurants and cafes in and outside Beirut. Managers spoke about offering a range of options to customers from a full iftar meal that might exceed the minimum wage in Lebanon, which is LBP675,000, and to a salad, soup, and a plate of French fries for around LBP100,000. Naeem, an employee at one of Beirut’s restaurants, said that the increase in food prices was caused by the rise in the cost of cooking gas and generator bills, because electricity comes only for one hour per day “while we have to provide the generator’s electricity and pay in dollars.”At many cafes, cellphone and laptop chargers stand next to coffee or tea cups. Ramy said: “During the first week of the month of Ramadan people prefer to have family iftars at home, and might prefer to frequent cafes instead of restaurants to save expenses.” In early 2019, the syndicate counted 8,500 outlets in Lebanon in the beverages, food, entertainment, snacks, and Arab sweets sectors. The number fell by 550 in 2020, and due to the lockdown in the first 6 months of 2021 the sector lost another 1,000 outlets.Ramy said: “We are trying to survive through crisis management in our establishments and to be resilient because we love Lebanon.” “The sales of this sector had reached $9.7 billion in 2010 and created 200,000 jobs and it gave a push to all other productive sectors, because tourism activates the agricultural and industrial sectors, and the food industry provides jobs and many investments.”The head of the Federation of Tourism Syndicates and Hotel Owners Syndicate, Pierre Al-Ashkar, said that the main problem in the hotel sector was to secure diesel oil, the price of which was skyrocketing: “We cannot ration our generators for we need electricity 24/7 and this is an exorbitant cost.”Al-Ashkar played down any sign of recovery for the sector during Easter and iftar, but pointed out that some hotel owners in high mountainous areas with snow were able to achieve profit.

Like all Lebanese lives, elections challenged by lack of electricity
Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/April 06/2022
Finally, a Lebanese official has dared to confirm that Lebanon’s national grid is supplying the nation with only two hours of electricity per day. However, people from Lebanon will tell you that they have forgotten they receive any power from the national electricity company, since most have been forced to rely on alternatives supplied by shady local power providers. These cost households in the impoverished country hundreds of dollars per month just to connect for a few hours daily to meet their basic domestic needs.
Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi last week announced that Electricite du Liban has demanded an upfront cash payment of $16 million to guarantee the power stays on throughout the day of Lebanon’s general election on May 15 — a sum that exceeds the total cost of holding the vote both domestically and abroad by 30 percent. Mawlawi explained that he has had several meetings with the electricity company, in which he was told that the service could be arranged for the big day, but at a very high cost. He indicated that, like the people of the country, the government might turn to the private operators of local generators to supply power for the polling stations, particularly to keep them illuminated after the polls close to enable the counting to be done. In my view, Lebanon’s forthcoming election is unlikely to produce a new democratic leadership that is capable of ushering the country away from its failed state status. Holding credible elections is one of the main steps Lebanon’s major donors are insisting on if they are to deliver more assistance to the country. However, if the Interior Ministry can find such funds, I recommend it use them to help those most in need in the bankrupt country instead of wasting them on a process that has seen the electoral laws amended to fit and reproduce the same political class that has been supervising the descent of Lebanon toward the abyss. For decades, Lebanon’s political, social and economic stagnation has been supervised by a corrupt political class propped up and held hostage by an armed group serving some foreign geostrategic interests that are beyond the means of such a small country. Mawlawi is apparently adamant that the government will do all it can to ensure the election goes ahead as scheduled, despite the many rumors that it could be called off. Lebanon has been living with an unprecedented financial crisis for years, but it became more acute in 2019 and the country defaulted on paying its debts in March 2020. This has resulted in the devaluation of the Lebanese pound and the nation’s banks shutting their counters and introducing capital control, denying people access to their savings.
Power cuts that last more than 22 hours per day are not new to Lebanon. During the country’s various conflicts, the power grid has fallen victim to the missiles of warring parties. But in recent years the grid’s antiquated systems, its poor state of repair and its mismanagement in times of peace, in addition to the rampant corruption milking its budget, have led to the drying up of all necessary funds to fuel its turbines and supply consumers.
If the country’s power shortage leads to an indefinite postponement of these elections, it might be a blessing in disguise.
The international community has long demanded a complete overhaul of Lebanon’s loss-making electricity sector — which is estimated to have cost the treasury more than $40 billion in post-civil war Lebanon — as one of its basic conditions for disbursing billions of dollars in desperately needed financial support.
Lebanon’s electric poverty adds to the many woes the country has been suffering from since its consociationalism-based democracy stopped in its tracks. Its political realignment closer to the whims of Syria and Iran, which spearhead the so-called resistance bloc championed by Hezbollah in Lebanon, has led to the imposition of sanctions, the drying up of investment in the country, the default of its financial institution and the collapse of the national currency.
Mawlawi said recently that, one way or another, he will make sure the streets will be lit on election day in Lebanon. But what about the longer term?
A lack of power is not the only problem Lebanon is facing ahead of the forthcoming vote, with Western states still wanting the election to go ahead despite an electoral law that has been tailored to favor one political group at the expense of the rest.
Few in the country believe the polls are likely to transform Lebanon’s fortunes, apart from by further cementing the grip on power of the Iran-backed Shiite group Hezbollah and its allies. The 2018 election gave these groups their first majority in parliament.
The decision by Sunni leader Saad Hariri to step away from politics opens the way for Hezbollah and its allies to extend their already deep sway over the country, rendering it even more of a bastion of Iranian influence in the heart of the Arab world.
Since Lebanon’s independence, insecurity, civil strife, war and geopolitics have led to the cancelation or postponement of many elections, allowing caretaker parliaments and governments to stay in power beyond their expiry date. Lebanon today faces existential threats rarely seen in any nation state, with its debts ballooning, its people sinking further below the poverty line and its brain drain accelerating. If the lack of electricity leads to an indefinite postponement of these elections, it might be a blessing in disguise, as any new parliament is unlikely to produce a political class that is ready to reform and allow every Lebanese household to be supplied by the national electricity grid for many years to come.
• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 06-07/2022
Iran Moves Machines for Making Centrifuge Parts to Natanz, Says UN Nuclear Watchdog
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Iran has moved all its machines that make centrifuge parts from its mothballed workshop at Karaj to its sprawling Natanz site just six weeks after it set up another site at Isfahan to make the same parts, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday. Iran granted International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to Karaj in December to re-install surveillance cameras there after a months-long standoff that followed what Tehran said was Israeli sabotage that destroyed one camera and badly damaged another, prompting Iran to remove all four cameras. A month later, Iran told the IAEA it was moving production of the parts for advanced centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, to a new location in Isfahan, and the IAEA set up cameras there to monitor that work. Little is known about the Isfahan workshop. Diplomats have said it is slightly larger than the Karaj one. On Wednesday, the IAEA said Iran had moved all the equipment from Karaj to an unspecified location at Natanz, raising the question of whether it will increase output by using both Natanz and Isfahan. "On the same date (April 4), agency inspectors verified that these machines remained under agency seal at this location in Natanz and, therefore, were not operating," the IAEA said in a statement summarizing a confidential report to member states seen by Reuters. Neither the statement nor the report described the location at Natanz, a site that includes a large underground enrichment plant and various buildings above ground. Under an arrangement that is more than a year old, the IAEA does not have access for the time being to the data collected by some of its cameras, such as those at the new Isfahan workshop. "Without access to the data and recordings collected by these cameras, the agency is unable to confirm whether the production of centrifuge components at the workshop in Esfahan has begun," the report to IAEA member states said.

Iranian MPs Ask for Stronger Guarantees in Vienna Talks
London - Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
In a letter to their ally, hardline conservative President Ibrahim Raisi, a majority of Iranian parliamentarians demanded “stronger guarantees” from the US and “maintaining the red lines” in reviving the nuclear agreement. The MPs' demands came at a time when Tehran and Washington are exchanging blame for postponing negotiations. More than 190 parliamentarians have signed the letter, urging Raisi to ensure that the parties involved in the Vienna talks give Iran stronger guarantees. Conservative legislator Mohammad Saleh Jokar told Fars News Agency that the “deputies signed statements stressing the observance of the framework set by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for the negotiating team in the Vienna negotiations with the 4+1 group.”He added that the letter to Raisi “emphasizes that negotiations must take into account the lifting of all sanctions, including the free sale of Iranian oil.” The government's Mehr News Agency reported that the representative of the city of Abadan, MP Mojtaba Mahfuzi, issued a verbal warning to the Iranian nuclear negotiating team at the beginning of Tuesday’s parliamentary session, saying that “the nuclear negotiating team must not retreat from the country's rights and red lines.” Hardline MP Nasrollah Pejmanfar, who represents the city of Mashhad, said: “It is necessary to lift oil sanctions, allowing us to sell oil freely to any country we want after reaching an agreement.”The Iranian official news agencies did not address the issue of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard in the statements quoted by the parliament deputies. Negotiations have been taking place in Vienna for months between Iran on the one hand, and China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany on the other hand, to revive the Iranian nuclear agreement, whose effects evaporated after the US withdrew in 2018. In other news, the US and Iran exchanged blame on Monday for a weeks-long impasse that has held up a return to the 2015 deal that sought to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “We will not be going to Vienna for new negotiations but to finalize the nuclear agreement,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said. “If Washington answers the outstanding questions, we can go to Vienna as soon as possible,” he added. “At the moment, we do not yet have a definitive answer from Washington,” he said. But in Washington, Khatibzadeh’s State Department counterpart Ned Price pushed back, suggesting it was Tehran that was not giving way to make a deal possible. “Anyone involved in the talks knows precisely who has made constructive proposals, who has introduced demands that are unrelated to the JCPOA, and how we reached this current moment,” Price said.

Tehran Gives IAEA Documents About Outstanding Issues
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Iran has handed over documents related to outstanding issues to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami told a televised news conference on Wednesday. Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog last month agreed a three-month plan that in the best case will resolve the long-stalled issue of uranium particles found at old but undeclared sites in the country, removing an obstacle to reviving the Iran nuclear deal. "We have handed over the documents on March 20 to the agency. They are reviewing those documents and probably the agency's representatives will travel to Iran for further talks and then the IAEA will present its conclusion," Eslami said. The agency has long said Iran had not given satisfactory answers on those issues, but in early March they announced a plan for a series of exchanges. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said last month he will aim to report his conclusion by the June 2022 (IAEA) Board of Governors' meeting, which begins on June 6. The joint plan will help to secure the nuclear deal, which Washington exited in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

Iran nuclear chief says Tehran has given IAEA documents on outstanding issues
Reuters/April 6, 2022
Iran has handed over documents related to outstanding issues to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami said on Wednesday, as Tehran demands closure of the agency's investigation into uranium particles found at three undeclared sites. Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month agreed a three-month plan to try to resolve a long-stalled issue over uranium particles found at old but undeclared sites in the country. Resolving the issue would remove an obstacle to the revival of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. "We have handed over the documents on March 20 to the agency. They are reviewing those documents and probably the agency's representatives will travel to Iran for further talks and then the IAEA will present its conclusion," Eslami told a televised news conference. The agency has long said Iran had not given satisfactory answers on those issues, but in early March they announced a plan for a series of exchanges. The joint plan will help to secure the nuclear deal, which Washington exited in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran. Eleven months of indirect talks between Iran and the United States in Vienna on salvaging the 2015 deal have stalled as both sides say political decisions are required by Tehran and Washington to settle the remaining issues.

Israeli government loses majority as backbencher quits
Associated Press/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
An Israeli lawmaker quit the government's wafer-thin ruling coalition over a religious dispute on Wednesday, throwing the fragile alliance into disarray without a majority in parliament. Backbencher Idit Silman's departure raises the possibility of new parliamentary elections less than a year after the government took office. While Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's government remains in power, it is now hamstrung in the 120-seat parliament and will likely struggle to function. Silman, from Bennett's religious-nationalist Yamina party, had opposed allowing people to bring leavened bread and other foodstuffs into public hospitals — food prohibited according to religious tradition during the Passover holiday, public broadcaster Kan reported. Bennett's coalition of eight political parties ranging from Islamists to hard-line nationalists and dovish liberals — all united solely in their opposition to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — now holds 60 seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. The Knesset is currently in recess, and it remains unclear if the opposition will now have enough support to hold a no-confidence vote and send Israelis to the polls for the fifth time in just over three years.Silman, said she "cannot lend a hand to harming the Jewish character of the state of Israel and the people of Israel," and would work to form a right-wing government, Kan reported. Israel has held four elections in two years in a protracted political crisis over Netanyahu's fitness to rule while on trial for corruption. The deadlocked elections were finally broken in June when Bennett and his allies ousted Netanyahu after 12 years in office by cobbling together a coalition of unlikely allies. Netanyahu, now opposition leader, congratulated Silman and "welcomed her back home to the nationalist camp."

Gantz Speaks with Palestinian President for Ramadan
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz spoke with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas over the phone on Tuesday on the occasion of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Gantz's office said. "Minister Gantz wished (Palestinian Authority) Chairman Abbas and the Palestinian people a blessed month of Ramadan," the statement said. "Ramadan must be a month of peace and quiet and not a period marked by terror," Gantz told Abbas, according to the statement, pointing to recent deadly attacks in Israel. Last year during Ramadan, clashes that flared between Israeli forces and Palestinians visiting occupied east Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound led to 11 days of devastating conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers. "Israel is prepared to expand civilian measures during and after the month of Ramadan, in accordance with the security situation," Gantz added, according to AFP. The statement did not elaborate on the measures that would affect Palestinians. He also expressed "appreciation" for Abbas' comments on an attack in the town of Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv late last month. The Palestinian president had issued a rare condemnation of the March 29 attack in which five people were killed after a Palestinian opened fire at passers-by, saying that the killings "will only lead to further deterioration of the situation, while we are all striving for stability". A total of 11 people have been killed in attacks in Israel since March 22, including some carried out by assailants linked to or inspired by ISIS. Over the same period, eight Palestinians have been killed, according to an AFP tally, including two assailants in anti-Israeli attacks and six people the Israelis said had carried out attacks or were about to do so.

Mariupol’s dead put at 5,000 as Ukraine braces in the east
The Associated Press/06 April ,2022
The mayor of the besieged port city of Mariupol put the number of civilians killed there at more than 5,000 Wednesday, as Ukraine gathered evidence of Russian atrocities and braced for what could become a climactic battle for control of the country’s industrial east. Ukrainian authorities continued gathering up the dead on the ruined outskirts of Kyiv amid mounting evidence the Russians killed civilians indiscriminately before withdrawing from the capital area over the past several days. In other developments, the US and its Western allies moved to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin over what they branded war crimes. And Russia completed the pullout of all of its estimated 24,000 or more troops from the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas in the north, sending them into Belarus or Russia to resupply and reorganize, a US defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Moscow is now marshaling reinforcements and trying to push deeper into the country’s east, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to “liberate” the Donbas, Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial heartland. “The fate of our land and of our people is being decided. We know what we are fighting for. And we will do everything to win,” Zelenskyy said. Ukrainian authorities urged people living in the Donbas to evacuate now, ahead of an impending Russian offensive, while there is still time.
“Later, people will come under fire,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, “and we won’t be able to do anything to help them.” A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence estimates, said it will take Russia’s damaged forces as much as a month to regroup for a major push on eastern Ukraine. Almost a quarter of its battalion tactical groups in the country have been rendered “non-combat-effective” and have either withdrawn or merged with other units, the official said. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said that of the more than 5,000 civilians killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting, 210 were children. He said Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death. Boichenko said that more than 90 percent of the city’s infrastructure has been destroyed by the shelling. The Russian military has besieged the strategic port on the Sea of Azov, cutting food, water and fuel supplies and pulverizing homes and businesses. British defense officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a prewar population of 430,000. A humanitarian-relief convoy accompanied by the Red Cross has been trying without success to get into the city since Friday. Capturing the city would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Meanwhile, in the scarred and silent streets of Bucha and other towns around Ukraine’s capital where Russian forces withdrew, investigators sought to document what appeared to be widespread killings of civilians. Some victims had evidently been shot at close range. Some were found with their hands bound or their flesh burned. At a cemetery in Bucha, workers began to load more than 60 bodies apparently collected over the past few days into a grocery shipping truck for transport to a facility for further investigation.
More bodies were yet to be collected in Bucha. The Associated Press saw two in a house in a silent neighborhood. From time to time there was the muffled boom of workers clearing the town of mines and other unexploded ordnance.
In Andriivka, a village about 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Kyiv, two police officers from the nearby town of Makariv came Tuesday to identify a man whose body was in a field beside tank tracks. Officers found 20 bodies in the Makariv area, Capt. Alla Pustova said. Andriivka residents said the Russians arrived in early March and took locals’ phones. Some people were detained, then released. Others met unknown fates. Some described sheltering for weeks in cellars normally used for storing vegetables for winter. With the sixth week of the war drawing to a close, the soldiers were gone, and Russian armored personnel carriers, a tank and other vehicles sat destroyed on both ends of the road running through the village. Several buildings were reduced to mounds of bricks and corrugated metal. Residents struggled without heat, electricity or cooking gas.“First we were scared, now we are hysterical,” said Valentyna Klymenko, 64. She said she, her husband and two neighbors weathered the siege by sleeping on stacks of potatoes covered with a mattress and blankets. “We didn’t cry at first. Now we are crying.”To the north of the village, in the town of Borodyanka, rescue workers combed through the rubble of apartment blocks, looking for bodies. Mine-disposal units worked nearby. The Kremlin has insisted its troops have committed no war crimes, charging that the images out of Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians.
Thwarted in their efforts to swiftly take the capital, increasing numbers of President Vladimir Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas. At least five people were killed by Russian shelling Wednesday in the Donbas’ Donetsk region, according to Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko, who urged civilians to leave for safer areas.Russian forces also attacked a fuel depot and a factory in the Dnipropetrovsk region, just west of the Donbas, authorities said. In the Luhansk region, which is part of the Donbas, And Russian shelling set fire to at least 10 multi-story buildings and a mall in the town of Sievierodonetsk, the regional governor reported. There was no immediate word on deaths or injuries.
Ukrainian forces have been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas since 2014. Ahead of its Feb. 24 invasion, Moscow recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.
Ukrainian authorities have said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv, and Associated Press journalists in Bucha counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who told of witnessing atrocities.
In a video address Tuesday to the U.N. Security Council, Zelenskyy said that civilians had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.
He said that those who gave the orders and those who carried them out should face war crimes charges in front of a Nuremberg-type tribunal.
In reaction to the alleged atrocities, the US announced sanctions against Putin’s two adult daughters and said it is toughening penalties against Russian banks. Britain banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year. The European Union was also expected to take additional punitive measures, including an embargo on coal. Elsewhere in Ukraine, the aid group Doctors without Borders said its staff witnessed an attack Monday on a cancer hospital in a residential district of the southern city of Mykolaiv. The group said it was the third known strike in recent days on a hospital in the port city, whose capture is key to giving Russia control of the Black Sea coast. It said it had no overall death toll, but its team saw one body. The group said it also saw numerous small holes in the ground, scattered over a large area, that suggested the use of cluster bombs. Russia has denied using cluster munitions in Ukraine. The use of such weapons against civilians can be a violation of international law. Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine have been discussing ways to end the fighting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said those talks continue despite the war crime allegations.

Russia bombards and US imposes sanctions as Ukraine urges decisive help
REUTERS/April 06, 2022
LVIV: Russian forces bombarded cities in Ukraine as the United States imposed more sanctions on Wednesday after civilian killings widely condemned as war crimes and Ukraine’s President urged a decisive Western response amid divisions in Europe.Russia’s 42-day-long invasion has forced more than 4 million people to flee abroad, killed or injured thousands, left a quarter of the population homeless, turned entire cities into rubble and prompted a slew of Western restrictions on Russian elites and the economy. The new measures announced by Washington included sanctions on President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters, days after the grim discovery of civilians shot dead at close range in Bucha, north of Kyiv, when it was retaken from Russian forces. “We’re going to keep raising the economic costs and ratchet up the pain for Putin, and further increase Russia’s economic isolation,” US President Joe Biden said.
The United States wants Russia expelled from the Group of 20 major economies forum, and will boycott a number of meetings at the G20 in Indonesia if Russian officials show up, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was critical of some in the West and said he could not tolerate “any indecisiveness.”
“The only thing that we are lacking is the principled approach of some leaders — political leaders, business leaders — who still think that war and war crimes are not something as horrific as financial losses,” he told Irish lawmakers. European Union diplomats failed to approve on Wednesday new sanctions, as technical issues needed to be addressed, including on whether a ban on coal would affect existing contracts, sources said. EU member Hungary said it was prepared to meet a Russian request to pay roubles for its gas, breaking ranks with the rest of the bloc and highlighting the continent’s reliance on imports that have held it back from a tougher response on the Kremlin. Western policymakers have denounced the killings in Bucha as war crimes, and Ukrainian officials say a mass grave by a church there contained between 150 and 300 bodies. Moscow denied targeting civilians there or elsewhere. Russia’s foreign ministry said that images of bodies in Bucha were staged to justify more sanctions against Moscow and derail peace talks with Kyiv. Russia says it is engaged in a “special military operation” designed to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and Western governments reject that as a false pretext for its invasion.
Reflecting such fears, the EU executive said it had begun a stockpiling operation to boost its defenses against chemical, nuclear and biological threats.
Besieged city
Ukrainian authorities said late on Wednesday they cannot help people evacuate from the eastern front line town of Izyum or send humanitarian aid because it is completely under Russian control as the east sees the worst fighting. A siege of the southern port of Mariupol has trapped tens of thousands of residents without food, water or power. State-owned Ukrainian Railways said there were a number of casualties after three rockets hit a station in eastern Ukraine. It did not give a precise location. Many in the eastern town of Derhachi, just north of Kharkiv and near the border with Russia, have decided to leave while they can. Buildings have been badly damaged by Russian artillery. Kharkiv itself has been hammered by air and rocket strikes from the start. Mykola, a father of two in Derhachi who declined to give his surname, said he could hear the thud of bombardments every night, and had been hunkering down with his family in the corridor of their home. “(We’ll go) wherever there are no explosions, where the children won’t have to hear them,” he said, hugging his young son and struggling to hold back the tears. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were continuing preparations for an eastern offensive in order to take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It said the main focus of current hostilities was Donetsk, where Russian troops were still trying to seize all of Mariupol. Ten high-rise buildings were on fire in the eastern town of Sievierodonetsk after Russian shelling on Wednesday, the region’s governor said in an online post.
New sanctions
The new US sanctions include a ban on Americans from investing in Russia. The sanctions hit Russia’s Sberbank, which holds one-third of Russia’s total banking assets, and Alfabank, the country’s fourth-largest financial institution, but energy transactions were exempted, US officials said.
Britain also froze Sberbank’s assets, and said it would ban imports of Russian coal by the end of the year. But Europe is walking a tightrope as Russia supplies around 40 percent of the EU’s natural gas consumption and the bloc also gets a third of its oil imports from Russia, about $700 million per day.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy which relies on Russian gas for much of its energy needs, warned that while it supported ending Russian energy imports as soon as possible it could not do it overnight. Despite the sanctions, the Russian rouble extended recovery gains on Wednesday, returning to levels seen before the invasion, shrugging off fears of a potential default on international debt as it paid dollar bondholders in roubles.

More Western sanctions to hit Russia after Bucha killings
Associated Press/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union were set Wednesday to impose new punishing sanctions targeting Russia, including a ban on all new investment in the country and an EU embargo on coal, after evidence of torture and killings emerged in recent days from a town outside of Kyiv.
Videos and images of bodies in the streets of Bucha after it was recaptured from Russian forces have unleashed a wave of indignation among Western allies, who have drawn up new sanctions as a response. The European Commission's proposed ban on coal imports would be the first EU sanctions targeting Russia's lucrative energy industry over its war in Ukraine. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said energy was key to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war coffers. "A billion euro is what we pay Putin every day for the energy he provides us since the beginning of the war. We have given him 35 billion euro. Compare that to the one billion that we have given to the Ukraine in arms and weapons," Borrell said. After several European countries announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats, the European Commission proposed a fifth package of sanctions including a ban on coal imports that could be adopted as soon as Wednesday once unanimously approved by the 27-nation bloc's ambassadors. The United States and Western allies plan to impose a ban on all new investment in Russia. Among the other measures being taken against Russia are greater sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, and sanctions on government officials and their family members, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki. Separately, the Treasury Department moved Tuesday to block any Russian government debt payments with U.S. dollars from accounts at U.S. financial institutions, making it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the coal ban is worth 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) per year and that the EU has already started working on additional sanctions, including on oil imports. She didn't mention natural gas, with consensus among the 27 EU countries on targeting the fuel used to generate electricity and heat homes difficult to secure amid opposition from gas-dependent members like Germany, the bloc's largest economy. But European Council President Charles Michel said the bloc should keep up the pressure on the Kremlin, suggesting that an embargo on gas imports should also be required at some point in the future. "The new package includes a ban on coal imports," Michel said on Wednesday. "I think that measures on oil, and even gas, will also be needed, sooner or later."The new package of measures proposed by the commission also includes sanctions on more individuals and four key Russian banks, among them VTB, the second-largest Russian bank. The bloc also would ban Russian vessels and Russian-operated vessels from EU ports. Further targeted export bans, worth 10 billion euros, in sectors covering quantum computers, advanced semiconductors, sensitive machinery and transportation equipment also were proposed. "I appreciate the strengthening of the 5th EU sanctions package: bans on Russian coal, vessels accessing EU ports, and road transport operators," Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter. "But it will take a gas/oil embargo and de-SWIFTing of all Russian banks to stop Putin. Difficult times require difficult decisions." Western allies have already cut out several Russian banks of the SWIFT financial messaging system, which daily moves countless billions of dollars around more than 11,000 banks and other financial institutions around the world.

Russian Forces Pound Key Cities as Ukraine Demands Tougher Sanctions
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Artillery pounded key cities in Ukraine on Wednesday, as its president urged the West to act decisively in imposing new and tougher sanctions being readied against Russia in response to civilian killings widely condemned as war crimes. Western sanctions over Russia's invasion gained new impetus this week when dead civilians shot at close range were found in the town of Bucha after it was retaken from Russian forces. As Pope Francis described the killings there as a "massacre", the head of the European Commission signaled further sanctions - including examining a ban on energy imports - on top of ones unveiled by the bloc on Tuesday. Washington is in turn due to announce new sanctions on Wednesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the West needed to act decisively in taking "more rigid" steps. "When we are hearing new rhetoric about sanctions... I can't tolerate any indecisiveness after everything that Russian troops have done," he told Irish lawmakers by videolink. Ukrainian officials say between 150 and 300 bodies might be in a mass grave by a church in Bucha, north of the capital Kyiv, where satellite images taken weeks ago show bodies of civilians on a street, a private US company said. Moscow, which refers to the conflict as a "special military operation" designed to demilitarize Ukraine, denied targeting civilians there and called the evidence presented a forgery staged by the West to discredit it. To the south, the besieged southern port of Mariupol has been under bombardment throughout most of the invasion that began on Feb. 24, trapping tens of thousands of residents without food, water or power. "The humanitarian situation in the city is worsening," British military intelligence said on Wednesday, while Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said people trying to flee would have to use their own vehicles.. Reuters could not immediately verify the British report.Vereshchuk said authorities would try to evacuate civilians trapped elsewhere through 11 humanitarian corridors.
Energy sanctions push?
Ukraine's foreign minister said that while he welcomed the latest set of EU sanctions only an embargo on Russian gas and oil and cutting off all Russian banks from the global financial system could "stop" President Vladimir Putin. "I will take a gas/oil embargo and de-SWIFTing of all Russian banks to stop Putin. Difficult times require difficult decisions," Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. Russian forces last week pulled back from positions outside Kyiv and shifted the focus of their assault away from the capital, and Ukraine's general staff said the northeastern city of Kharkiv, the country's second-largest, also remained under attack. Authorities in the eastern region of Luhansk on Wednesday urged residents to get out "while it is safe" from an area that Ukraine also expects to be the target of a new offensive. Speaking a day after the European Union announced new sanctions, including a ban on Russian coal imports and denying Russian ships access to EU ports, the head of the EU executive, Ursula von der Leyen, said there was more to come. "These sanctions will not be our last sanctions," she told European Parliament on Wednesday. "Now we have to look into oil and revenues Russia gets from fossil fuels." Von der Leyen's remarks signaled the bloc's strengthening resolve to take the step that Kyiv says is vital to securing a deal to end the war. But German Finance Minster Christian Lindner said in a newspaper interview, Europe's biggest economy which relies on Russian gas for much of its energy needs, was just not ready for an immediate ban. The White House said earlier that new sanctions, coordinated between Washington, the Group of Seven advanced economies and the EU, will target Russian banks and officials and ban new investment in Russia.

Iraq, NATO Discuss Means to Confront Terrorism, Maintain Regional Stability
Baghdad - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Iraq’s Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi and his deputy, Hakim al-Zamli, held talks on Tuesday with a Danish delegation from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, led by its head Mads Fuglede. They discussed the importance of future relations and means of countering all forms of extremism and terrorism. Halbousi said the meeting touched on bilateral ties between Iraq and Denmark, in particular, and with all NATO member countries, in general, as well as bolstering cooperation to combat terrorism in the areas determined by the Iraqi government. Zamli, for his part, considered Iraq’s stability a key factor to maintain stability in the Middle East region. All world countries have a united goal to counter terrorism, coordinate in the field of armament, training and intelligence information to address the threat posed by terrorist groups, his office stated. He underscored the need to maintain cooperation with the NATO Alliance in the fields of security, training and counterterrorism. Meanwhile, international coalition logistics convoy in Iraq came under an IED attack on Tuesday. Assaults targeting the US-led international coalition forces have been occurring progressively, with attacks sometimes taking place daily. The coalition has been coordinating with the Iraqi government in the fight against terrorism after the withdrawal of US forces in late 2021. An official issued a press statement on Tuesday revealing that the exploded IED was planted on the side of the western international highway within the borders of Baghdad governorate. According to the statement, no casualties were reported and the convoy moved on to its destination. This attack is the fourth in only three days. On Sunday, two separate roadside bombs targeted US-led coalition military convoys carrying supplies in Saladin governorate. The attack was the second after a similar attack targeted a convoy of trucks in al-Muthanna governorate, without causing casualties. Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, the armed factions loyal to Iran are usually accused of carrying them out. The Iraqi authorities’ assertions of the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq and the transformation of their mission into an advisory role do not seem to have convinced the pro-Iranian factions.

Israel’s Kohavi: Preparations to Carry Out Operations Against Iran Moving at Rapid Pace
Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Chief of Staff of the Israeli army Aviv Kohavi and the newly-appointed Air Force Commander, Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, addressed Iran on Tuesday and cited operations carried out by their forces in the past and their readiness for the future. At a ceremony Monday, Bar took over his new post, replacing Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, who has served in the position for five years. During the event, Kohavi said the process of preparing for operations against Iran is currently moving at a rapid pace. The Israeli Air Force has improved in recent years, but we still have to adapt to the future, Kohavi added. He referred to the strikes targeting Iranian positions, arms and militias in Syria and other places in the Middle East region. “We have enhanced our capabilities to launch airstrikes on our enemy,” he stressed, saying the army will continue to do so, while the air force will continue to play a key role in these wars. He pointed out that the series of attacks have played an important role in preventing Iranian military deployment in Syria to threaten Israel and its citizens. Kohavi and Bar affirmed that their forces are conducting an average of one military drill per week to ensure preparedness. On Tuesday, the army conducted a new military exercise in the Red Sea city of Eilat, during which its forces used military vehicles and warplanes. The military said this drill was planned as part of the 2022 exercises to determine the army’s readiness. On the other hand, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office announced that he discussed on Tuesday with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi various issues, mainly the Iranian nuclear deal. It revealed that the coalition deal stipulates that the nuclear file remain within his authority even after handing over his post next year. In mid-June 2021, Israel’s parliament approved a new coalition government, ending the historic 12-year rule of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sending the polarizing leader into the opposition. Under the coalition deal, centrist Yair Lapid will replace Bennett as prime minister in August 2023.

Tunisia Calls Erdogan Comments on President’s Decree Unacceptable Interference
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Tunisia's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that comments by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tunisia's leader dissolving parliament was "an unacceptable interference" in internal affairs. On Monday, Erdogan criticized President Kais Saied's decree dissolving parliament last week as a "smearing of democracy" and a blow to the will of the Tunisian people. "Tunisia expresses its astonishment at the Turkish President's statement ... these comments are unacceptable," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. "Tunisia affirms its keenness on close relations with friendly countries but adheres to the independence of its decision and rejects interference in its sovereignty," it said. The Tunisian foreign minister, Othman Jerandi, said on Twitter on Wednesday that he also talked to his Turkish counterpart by telephone and summoned the Turkish ambassador to Tunisia to express his country's rejection of Erdogan's comments. Tunisia's political crisis intensified last week when more than half the members of parliament held an online session to revoke Saied's decrees. Saied responded by dissolving parliament. Anti-terrorism police summoned the main opposition figure, Rached Ghannouchi, who is also parliament Speaker, and other lawmakers for questioning last week. Saied's move was criticized at home and abroad. The US State Department expressed its deep concern while the opposition called for a protest next Sunday in Tunis. Ghannouchi, who is the head of Islamist Ennahda party, rejected Saied's decision to dissolve parliament and said other virtual sessions would be convened.

Syria Explosive Remnants Kill Nearly 30 in a Month, Says Monitor
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Explosive remnants of Syria's war killed nearly 30 civilians, including more than a dozen children, last month, a war monitoring group said Wednesday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "29 civilians, including 12 children, died from explosive remnants in March" and that another 29 were wounded. The latest toll brings to 73 the total number of people killed by explosive remnants since the start of the year, according to the monitor, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria. Explosives left by all sides in fields, along roads or even in buildings in Syria's decade-long conflict have wounded thousands of civilians and killed hundreds of others. Across the country, one in three communities are thought to be contaminated by explosive ordnance, says the United Nations. In 2020, Syria overtook Afghanistan as the country with the highest number of recorded casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war, with 2,729 people killed or wounded, according to the Landmine Monitor. In 2021, 241 civilians were killed and 128 wounded by explosive remnants across Syria, said the Observatory. Syria's war is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions since it began with a brutal crackdown of anti-government protests in 2011.

Tear Gas Fired at Sudan Protest 3 Years after Anti-Bashir Sit-in
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
Thousands protested across Sudan against military rule on the anniversary Wednesday of previous popular uprisings, most recently against president Omar al-Bashir three years ago. Security forces fired tear gas at demonstrators in the capital Khartoum, its twin city of Omdurman, and in Wad Madani to the south, witnesses and AFP correspondents said. They also "stormed Al-Jawda hospital and fired tear gas inside, scaring patients and health workers and causing suffocation among some of them", said the independent Central Committee of Sudan Doctors.
Sudan has grappled with an October 25 coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan that has derailed a political transition period and hammered the economy of one of the world's poorest countries. Pro-democracy activists had warned online of a people power "earthquake of April 6" -- a momentous day in Sudan's history that was key in bringing down earlier strongmen. In 1985, the day saw the ouster of president Jaafar Nimeiri following a popular uprising. In 2019 it marked the start of a mass sit-in outside army headquarters, after months of protests, against Bashir's three decades in power. "It is an important day... so we expect many to take to the streets despite the heat and Ramadan," the Muslim month of fasting, said one Khartoum protester, Badwi Bashir. "We just want to bring down the coup (leadership) and end the prospect of any future coups."
'No to military rule'
Sudan's latest putsch has "set fire to all aspects of life, turning our country into an arena of crises," said the civilian alliance Forces of Freedom and Change, or FFC.
Security forces had earlier sealed off key bridges and deployed around the presidential palace and army headquarters. In Omdurman, protesters broke through barbed wire blockades and marched through streets leading to the parliament building, according to an AFP correspondent. Protesters marched in the eastern state of Gedaref with banners that read "No to military rule" and "Away with the government of hunger", said one witness, Ahmed Salah. Demonstrations were also held in several cities across the Darfur region, the central state of North Kordofan and the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, according to witnesses.
Five days after the start of the 2019 sit-in, generals bowed to the pressure on the streets to remove Bashir. But the protesters stayed on to press for civilian rule, only to be dispersed in a crackdown in June that year by men in military fatigues that claimed 128 lives according to medics. Sudan's civilian and military leaders later agreed on a transition of power, which promised greater international engagement for the country as well as foreign aid and investment. But last October's coup upended those plans, leading to the current wave of protests. At least 93 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the crackdown since, medics say.
Partnership 'failed'
"We have to defeat the coup," FFC spokesman Jaafar Hassan said last week.
"We have tried a partnership with the military, and it failed, ending in this coup, and we shouldn't do this again."Burhan said last Saturday he would only "hand over power to an honest, elected authority, accepted by the all the Sudanese people".
The United States on Wednesday warned against "the use of any violence" and demanded Sudanese authorities "keep their word and hold accountable those responsible for abuses." Since the coup, Sudan's already ailing economy has suffered severe blows, as Western donors cut crucial aid pending the restoration of a transition to civilian rule. Prices of food, fuel and basic commodities have soared and crime has spiked. Violence has intensified in remote areas, particularly the restive Darfur region, the UN says. Burhan last week threatened to expel UN special representative Volker Perthes, accusing him of "interference" in the country's affairs after Perthes warned of the deepening crisis in Sudan during a UN Security Council briefing.

Yemen Consultations Begin Drafting Roadmap to Bolster State Institutions
Riyadh – Omar al-Badwi and Abdulhadi Habtor/Tuesday. (Asharq Al-Awsat)Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
After six days of discussions in Riyadh, gatherers at the intra-Yemeni consultations began drafting solutions and a roadmap that would address the challenges confronting their country's security and stability. The Gulf Cooperation Council is sponsoring the talks that kicked off last week. GCC Ambassador to Yemen Sarhan Al-Minaikher said consensus has prevailed throughout the talks. Speaking at a press conference at the conclusion of Tuesday's talks, he stressed that "everyone, without exception, is in agreement on the need to lead their country to stability and prosperity.""We are celebrating the success of the talks," he declared. "Everyone is optimistic. The Yemeni people are pinning their hopes on their representatives at these consultations," he added. "They have started to draft a roadmap that would lead Yemen to safety and prosperity."
Yemen will find the needed support from its brothers at the GCC, stressed the ambassador. In recent days, the gatherers tackled the challenges and obstacles facing their country. On Monday they met with the government. Everyone, without exception, is keen on dedicating themselves in service of the citizen inside and outside Yemen, continued Al-Minaikher. They are determined to bolster state institutions and enable them to serve the people, he stressed. He reiterated that the solution to Yemen's problems lies in the hands of Yemenis themselves. The GCC will not oppose any agreement they reach.
He said the gatherers are holding open and expanded meetings with the government to address all pressing issues. They started to draft solutions on Tuesday. The consultations are set to conclude on Thursday. Al-Minaikher also reiterated that the consultations are not a substitute to UN negotiations or the Gulf initiative. Rather, the consultations are a path that boosts the chances of peace and the UN negotiations. Lutfi Numan, a participant at the talks, spoke of a "more realistic approach" being adopted in addressing the performance of the legitimate government, underscoring the need to reform it. This is an issue that enjoyed consensus at the consultations, he told Asharq Al-Awsat. The gatherers discussed the relationship between the various components of the legitimate authority, including between the legitimacy and member states of the Saudi-led Arab coalition. They also tackled the fight against the Iran-backed Houthi militias. On whether he believes the consultations will be a success, he remarked that whenever Yemenis come together, they appear united, but when they depart, "they return to battle." Another participant, Abdulkarim Saeed, attended the discussions on security and the fight against terrorism. He revealed that security challenges in all provinces were on the table. The gatherers met with the prime minister and members of government to exchange views and ideas. Tuesday's discussions covered security solutions and recommendations that will be adopted by the consultations, he added. The government will be responsible for applying them, as well as uniting national ranks. Discussions also covered the possibility of merging various military formations with the several security agencies active in liberated regions, he added.

Spanish PM to Hold Talks with Morocco’s King on Thursday
Rabat - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 April, 2022
The Moroccan royal palace said on Tuesday that King Mohammed VI will meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Rabat on Thursday, as their countries seek to patch up a diplomatic dispute that flared last year.
King Mohammed will hold official talks with Sanchez and will host an Iftar banquet in his honor. Relations have improved between the two countries after Spain announced in a letter to the King in March its support for Morocco’s autonomy plan “as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for settling the dispute” over the Western Sahara.
The letter reflected a shift in Spanish policy in favor of Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that Morocco considers its own but where the Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks to establish its own state. In April 2021, Morocco was angered after Spain admitted Polisario leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatment, saying it had not been informed. Morocco warned that if Ghali left Spain, where he faced human rights charges, without a trial it could cut diplomatic ties.
According to the royal palace in Rabat, the letter from Sachez said: “Spain considers the autonomy initiative presented by Morocco in 2007, as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for settling the dispute.”Sanchez also said all the UN Security Council resolutions since 2007 have welcomed the autonomy plan and the “serious and credible efforts” made by Morocco. He stressed that the new phase in relations will be “based on mutual respect, the completion of agreements, the absence of unilateral actions and the permanent transparency of communication.”The PM reiterated his determination to work together to address common challenges, especially cooperation to manage the flow of migrants in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. He said these steps will be taken “to ensure the stability and territorial integrity of the two countries.”

Canada/Statement on violence in Moura, Mali
April 5, 2022 - Berlin, Germany - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement:
“Canada is very concerned by reports of hundreds of civilians killed and injured last week in the context of a counter-terrorism operation in the village of Moura, Mali. We offer our deepest condolences to the families of the civilian victims. Canada condemns in the strongest possible terms this attack on civilians and any violations of international humanitarian law.
“We are also deeply concerned by reports suggesting that the Wagner Group was implicated in this attack alongside the Malian Armed Forces. In December 2021, Canada and its partners had criticized the deployment in Mali of the Wagner Group, which is known to have close ties to the Russian leadership, noting the violations the Group had been accused of committing in other parts of the world. We are concerned that such violations against the Malian population will fuel terrorist recruitment efforts, undermining collective efforts in the fight against terrorism. Respect for human rights and international humanitarian law must be at the heart of all military operations.
“Canada calls on the Malian Armed Forces to respect human rights in the course of all their operations. We urge the transitional authorities in Mali to grant free, unrestricted and secure access to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) to conduct a thorough and independent investigation of this attack. It is not too late for Malian authorities to reconsider their collaboration with foreign mercenaries, who are known to have a destabilizing effect on peace and security.
“Canada stands with the people of Mali and supports their right to peace and stability.”

Canada/Minister Joly meets with Moldovan counterpart
April 6, 2022 - Berlin, Germany - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, yesterday met with Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, during her trip to Berlin, Germany.
Minister Joly thanked Minister Popescu for his country’s generous humanitarian efforts to assist migrants fleeing the horrific events in Ukraine. The ministers expressed their concern over the well-being of migrants and recognized the importance of the Moldova Support Platform Conference to contend with the effects of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s illegal and unjustifiable war.
Minister Joly expressed optimism regarding international support for Moldova and reaffirmed that Canada is committed to supporting those affected by the crisis in Ukraine and neighbouring countries, including Moldova.
The ministers exchanged views on responses to President Putin’s war in Ukraine and security challenges in Eastern Europe, and they concluded their meeting by expressing a mutual desire to deepen Canada-Moldova bilateral ties.

Canada/Minister Joly meets with Turkish counterpart
April 6, 2022 - Brussels, Belgium - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today met with Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The ministers acknowledged the important and long-standing bilateral relations between Canada and Turkey.
The ministers reiterated their strong condemnation of Russian President Putin’s illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine and highlighted the role that diplomacy can play in putting an end to the war.
Minister Joly expressed Canada’s appreciation for Turkey’s efforts to bring Russia and Ukraine together for peace talks, and both ministers agreed on the importance of peace and stability in the entire region. Minister Joly also noted Turkey’s response to the devastation in Mariupol, Ukraine, and she thanked Minister Çavuşoğlu for his country’s efforts to support refugees from Ukraine.
The ministers discussed ways that the entire transatlantic community can work together to support Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence. They also discussed their strong commitment to strengthening coordination as bilateral partners and NATO allies.
The ministers concluded their meeting by exchanging views on how the international community can work together to address the global repercussions and impacts of President Putin’s senseless war.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources publishedon April 06-07/2022
Audio From FDD/Disrupting China’s Military-Academic Complex
TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 6, 2022
Event video
Introductory remarks:
Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research, FDD
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Vice Chair, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Speakers (clockwise from top-left):
Craig Singleton, Senior Fellow, FDD
The Hon. Bonnie Glick, Director, Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue
Phelim Kine, China Correspondent, Politico
Anna Puglisi, Director of Biotechnology Programs and Senior Fellow, Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology
RADM (ret.) Mark Montgomery, Senior Fellow and Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, FDD
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES INCLUDED BELOW.
About
The American public – and policymakers on a nonpartisan basis – are quickly coming to terms with the multi-faceted threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). That includes Beijing’s concerted efforts to harness the talent and technology needed to win its strategic competition with Washington. America’s top universities, for example, must now contend with re-examining risk within the broader research enterprise, including how they engage with Chinese universities that directly support China’s military-industrial complex.
The CCP’s efforts to infiltrate and exploit American institutions, businesses, technology, and critical infrastructure is coming to the fore, and Washington is poised to act. Congress is wrestling with significant measures to better position America to compete strategically with China in technology and related sectors, and unprecedented initiatives to limit China’s ongoing campaign to blur the traditional boundaries between academia, defense research, and the private sector, are under consideration.
FDD’s China Program and Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation host a discussion, with keynote remarks by Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), to discuss these complex threats and the ways in which Washington may tackle them.
https://www.fdd.org/events/2022/04/05/disrupting-chinas-military-academic-complex/

Iran’s Master Class in Evading Sanctions
Mark Dubowitz and Matthew Zweig/The Washington Post/April 06/2022
The ‘central banker of terrorism’ could coach Russia on how to diminish pressure from the West over the Ukraine war.
The most important resource Tehran can share with Moscow is expertise in evading Western sanctions. Iran’s clerical regime reportedly is talking with the Kremlin about working together to get around the restrictions they both face. If the U.S. and its allies want to limit this sort of cooperation, they should learn from the mistakes they made while employing sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran’s sanctions-evasion techniques are sophisticated and sweeping. The Journal reported last month that Tehran has developed a “clandestine banking and finance system to handle tens of billions of dollars in annual trade banned under U.S.-led sanctions.”
The most important resource Tehran can share with Moscow is expertise in evading Western sanctions. Iran’s clerical regime reportedly is talking with the Kremlin about working together to get around the restrictions they both face. If the U.S. and its allies want to limit this sort of cooperation, they should learn from the mistakes they made while employing sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran’s sanctions-evasion techniques are sophisticated and sweeping. The Journal reported last month that Tehran has developed a “clandestine banking and finance system to handle tens of billions of dollars in annual trade banned under U.S.-led sanctions.”
As part of the nuclear negotiations taking place in Vienna, the Biden administration likely will agree to lift sanctions on the CBI and other terrorist-supporting entities if Tehran accepts some temporary limits on its nuclear program. If the U.S. agrees to those terms, that will contradict Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s commitment to Congress to maintain terrorism sanctions on Iran and undercut its efforts to hold Russia accountable in Ukraine.
The CBI already received one get-out-of-jail-free card as part of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Its illicit activities continued, yet the Obama administration didn’t hold it accountable, lest Tehran withdraw from the nuclear pact. But in September 2019, the Trump administration named the Central Bank of Iran a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 for providing “billions of dollars to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps . . . its Qods Force . . . and its terrorist proxy, Hizballah.”
If the Biden administration wants to lift sanctions on the CBI, it should first prove that the bank has stopped funding terrorists and managing Iran’s sanctions-evasion efforts.
A second lesson for dealing with Iran is that the CBI’s terror funding wasn’t self-contained; it infected the country’s entire financial system. In 2007 the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, warned U.S. banks about the Iranian financial system’s links to terrorist activity and proliferation. In November 2011, FinCEN moved to designate Iran a jurisdiction of primary money-laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act. In effect, FinCEN was warning that the threat of illicit finance had permeated Iran’s entire economy, so foreign banks doing business in the country should take precautions. The advice wasn’t binding, but major international banks followed it.
While the 2015 nuclear deal remained in effect, the Obama administration hesitated to finalize FinCEN’s Section 311 designation, which would have made it binding. The nuclear deal’s unintended effect was to protect Iran’s illicit financial networks, lest a push for accountability lead Tehran to withdraw.
In 2019, more than a year after the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal, FinCEN issued a new evidentiary finding and a final rule that declared Iran a jurisdiction of primary money-laundering concern and imposed binding restrictions on U.S. banks.
A third lesson from dealing with Iran is that the U.S. should address Russian (or Russian-Iranian) illicit financial practices through the Financial Action Task Force. FATF is a 39-member intergovernmental body that establishes international financial standards. FATF cited Iran as a threat to the global financial system in 2007, noting its lack of “anti-money laundering/combatting the financing of terrorism” mechanisms.
In 2008 the group recommended that its members conduct enhanced due diligence when dealing with Iranian financial institutions, thus placing Iran on its “gray list.” Iran failed to shore up its weaknesses, and the following year FATF moved the country to its “black list.” If a jurisdiction is on the black list, other jurisdictions are required to implement due-diligence measures to protect their banks against the risk to the international financial system presented by the blacklisted jurisdiction.
The 2015 nuclear deal granted Tehran another reprieve. The Obama administration lent its support to an arrangement that would suspend FATF countermeasures against Iran for two years, during which Tehran would bring itself into compliance with FATF standards. Iran never made a good-faith effort to address money-laundering and terror-finance concerns, yet it took until 2020 for FATF members to agree to reimpose countermeasures. The lesson for Washington is that it should never grant leniency based on hope that rogue states will mend their ways.
Rather than learning from the past, the Biden administration is determined to repeat it. While declaring its intent to make Russia a pariah, the administration reportedly is also relying on Moscow to cajole Tehran into concluding a revised nuclear deal. Russia would be made the guarantor of the deal, responsible for taking Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium that it needs to produce a nuclear bomb. For Iran, the terms of the proposed deal are more favorable than the original one. Now there’s the added risk of Washington’s throwing Moscow a financial lifeline to ensure the deal keeps moving forward.
Given the administration’s stance, it is up to Congress to intervene legislatively to protect the U.S. and international financial systems. New legislation could require the president to certify annually that the CBI or other Iranian financial institutions aren’t involved in illicit and deceptive financial practices, including terrorism financing or facilitating Russian efforts to evade Western sanctions—and mandate sanctions if they are.
While the 2015 nuclear deal was in effect, Washington hesitated to confront Tehran about its provocations, from funding terrorism to attacking American troops and allies, to obstructing the work of nuclear inspectors. Now Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei are waiting to see whether a revised nuclear deal will give them a license to facilitate Russian sanctions evasion and Iranian terror financing.
The legal process for holding Putin and his army accountable has begun. The International Criminal Court launched an investigation in early March; Poland has called for an international investigative commission; French prosecutors have opened three investigations of war crimes against French citizens; and the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office has mobilized about 50,000 investigators to gather evidence of atrocities. Some of these investigations will proceed however the war is settled.
Russia’s response to the horrifying images has been in character for Putin’s regime: a shameless campaign of lies. The denials of brutal killing are so cavalier and reflexive that they convey a moral emptiness that should embarrass every honest Russian.
“All those died in Bucha were some kind of road traffic offenders,” asserted Russian member of parliament Oleg Matveichev. Bucha was “a flagrantly brutal provocation by Ukrainian Nazis,” said Russian state TV’s Olga Skabeyeva. The West chose Bucha for their “egregious accusation against Russia” because the town’s name sounds like the English word for “butcher,” claimed talk show host Olesya Loseva.

Opinion: How the U.S. can support a war crimes investigation into Russia
Christopher J. Dodd and John B. Bellinger III /The washington Post/April 06/2022
The authors are lawyers with Arnold & Porter. Christopher J. Dodd, a Democrat, served in the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 2011. John B. Bellinger III served as the legal adviser for the National Security Council and State Department from 2001 to 2009.
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The gruesome images of numerous dead civilians in Ukraine have fueled international demands for investigation of Russia for war crimes. President Biden responded to the news by saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be held “accountable.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken had already said the U.S. government considered Russian attacks on Ukrainian hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and other civilian facilities to be “war crimes” and that the United States would share information about these offenses with appropriate international institutions.
But the Biden administration has not yet said whether the United States will assist the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which opened an investigation last month into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Potential U.S. assistance to the ICC is complicated by the fact that the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that created the ICC. In the years since, Republican and Democratic administrations have objected to the court’s claims of jurisdiction over U.S. personnel, and U.S. law severely restricts the executive branch’s ability to assist the court. But the law includes important exceptions, which both of us helped draft, that permit U.S. assistance in certain cases. The Biden administration should help the ICC investigate Russian war crimes and rely on these exceptions to provide intelligence, diplomatic and other support.
The Clinton administration ultimately voted against the treaty that created the ICC, based on Defense Department objections that the ICC prosecutor might conduct politicized prosecutions of U.S. military personnel, and the George W. Bush administration later declared that the United States would not join the court. In 2002, Congress went further still by enacting the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA), which prohibits U.S. agencies from providing financial, intelligence or other support to the ICC.
The U.S. relationship with the ICC reached a nadir during the Trump administration after the court opened an investigation into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. In response, Trump officials imposed financial and other sanctions on ICC officials and threatened to bring criminal charges against them. President Biden lifted these sanctions last year.
We believe it is lawful and appropriate for the United States to assist the court’s investigation of Russian war crimes. One provision of the ASPA, drafted by one of us and known as the Dodd Amendment, specifically permits the United States to assist international efforts to bring to justice “foreign nationals” who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Another provision, added when the other of us was a White House lawyer, provides that the ASPA does not interfere with the president’s constitutional authority to take actions to help the Court in specific cases. These exceptions would clearly allow the United States to share intelligence information about Russian offenses, to allow expert investigators and prosecutors to assist, and to provide law enforcement and diplomatic support to the Court.
U.S. support for an ICC investigation of Russian war crimes would not constitute a double standard or be inconsistent with U.S. objections to the court’s claimed jurisdiction over U.S. personnel. The United States can help the court in appropriate cases while still strongly opposing ICC investigations (including of U.S. personnel) that do not meet the court’s strict threshold requirements. The ICC was created to prosecute only the most serious international crimes that are not addressed by the nations that commit them, not to investigate every allegation of misconduct.
Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, they appear to have committed grave and widespread violations of the Geneva Conventions, killing more than 1,400 civilians in targeted or indiscriminate attacks; the United Nations has documented more than 75 attacks against medical facilities, including 50 hospitals. The most recent reports from Bucha suggest Russian forces committed crimes against humanity by torturing and executing civilians.
Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute. Neither is Ukraine, but Kyiv has accepted the court’s jurisdiction over offenses committed in Ukraine, and there is very broad international support for an investigation of apparent Russian war crimes. Moreover, unlike the United States, which has conducted multiple investigations of alleged offenses by U.S. personnel relating to Afghanistan, Russia has to date denied any wrongdoing in Ukraine.
The ICC now faces the greatest challenge in its 20-year history. Its newly elected chief prosecutor will be flooded with information about alleged Russian (and possibly Ukrainian) war crimes and will need to decide whether to bring indictments against senior Russian officials, potentially including Putin. Despite past and potentially future U.S. concerns about misguided ICC investigations, the tribunal is now doing exactly what it was set up to do.
Consistent with the long-standing U.S. commitment to international justice, the United States must assist the court’s work. It is our moral responsibility to do so.

Pope Francis Calls on Christians to Surrender Before Violence
Raymond Ibrahim/April 06/2022
Pope Francis, a leading advocate of Doormat Christianity, is at it again, trying to reverse nearly two millennia of Christian doctrine, by preaching total passivity—even against violent aggression.
On March 18, 2022, Francis declared before an audience that “A war is always—always!—the defeat of humanity, always. We, the educated, who work in education, are defeated by this war, because on another side we are responsible.”
So far, all well and good, if only because such lofty but impotent words are expected.
But then Francis went so far as to say that, “There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!”
That is a remarkably dangerous claim, one that, if embraced—as no doubt it is by millions of similar naïve thinkers—can easily lead to their annihilation.
There is, indeed, such a thing as a just war—the only rational way of responding to unjust wars—and it is firmly grounded in Christian, especially Catholic, teaching, even if the head of the Catholic world argues otherwise.
In fact, from the very start, Christian theologians had concluded that “the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person [and not the state],” to quote historian Christopher Tyerman.
Christ himself—who called on his followers to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s (Matt. 22:21)—differentiated between the social and spiritual realms. In the only recorded instance of Jesus being slapped, he did not “turn the other cheek,” but rather challenged his slapper to explain himself (John 18:22–23). The Nazarene further praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to “repent” by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries in world history (Matt. 8: 5–13). Similarly, when a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages (Luke 3:14)—and said nothing about their quitting the Roman army.
This is because there is “no intrinsic contradiction,” continues Tyerman, “in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul’s phrase, Christians ‘may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (1 Tim. 2:2)
Or in the words of that chief articulator of Just War theory, Saint Augustine (354–430), “It is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.” Crusades historian Jonathan Riley-Smith elaborates:
What was evil in war itself? Augustine had asked. The real evils were not the deaths of those who would have died anyway, but the love of violence, cruelty, and enmity; it was generally to punish such that good men undertook wars in obedience to God or some lawful authority…. Expeditions to the Levant, North Africa, or the Iberian Peninsula could be justified as responses to present Muslim aggression or as rightful attempts to recover Christian territory which had been injuriously seized in the past. [For more on the intricacies of just war theory, especially as compared and contrasted with unjust wars, which do merit condemnation, read “Just War vs. Just Plain Old Jihad.”]
Make no mistake: without just wars and the brave men who undertook them, the world today would be a very different place. Europe, for instance, would have been Islamic—and not by willingly capitulating, as it is now, but by force: countless jihads were waged against it and other Christian nations; and they were repulsed only by the force of arms—by war, just war.
Indeed, even the Vatican itself, whence Pope Francis issues his lofty words of peace and love, has long been targeted and even attacked (for example in 846) by Muslims, and was saved only thanks to men acting in accordance with just war theory.
There is nothing wrong with Pope Francis’s generic condemnation of war and its horrors. It is his usual lack of distinction—in this case, conflating just with unjust wars—that is problematic, if not suicidal.
See Ibrahim’s new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, for more on just war theory in action.

The Great Russian Energy Scam ...Russian 'Dark Money' Funding 'Green' Groups in West
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/April 06/2022
"Germany and several other European countries have largely banned fracking. This has transformed European leaders into the equivalent of 16th-century naval explorers, praying for favorable winds and weather as energy prices rise and fall depending on cloud cover and wind conditions." — Wall Street Journal editorial, October 20, 2021.
In the autumn of 2021, COP26, the UN climate conference, was setting up its grotesque spectacle: a kind of ecological Versailles. The rich, powerful and virtuous of the planet gathered in Glasgow to pontificate to the citizenry of Western countries about how much we are harming the planet with our way of life. They arrived in their private jets to complain about the plague of air industry emissions. The British government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, said that everyone should eat less meat and fly less. Then came the news that 400 private jets would be flying to the UN climate conference...
While the Germans pontificated about the climate, the Washington Post informed us of their hypocrisy: "Germany portrays itself as a climate leader. But it's still razing villages for coal mines... The yawning black-brown scar in the earth that is Germany's Garzweiler coal mine has already swallowed more than a dozen villages. Centuries-old churches and family homes have been razed and the land they were built on torn away. Farmland has disappeared, graveyards have been emptied." The Lützerath mine alone is twice the size of Manhattan. That is why Germany has been labelled as the most polluting country in Europe.
Thus, the progressive American pundits until October dreamed of an alliance between the West, Russia and China against global warming. Now that the West has isolated Russia, the largest supplier of energy for Europe, no one is talking about that anymore.
Russia, it turns out, has reportedly been promoting, often through "dark money" via Bermuda – which does not require donor countries to be named -- "green" campaigns against nuclear power to ensure dependence by the West on imports of Russia's fossil fuels.
Germany's Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection, which has reportedly received more than 17 million euros from Gazprom, has also been accused of being a Moscow-funded "puppet", the Sunday Times disclosed. The foundation was established this year in Mecklenburg-Pomerania by Manuela Schwesig... an ally of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is Chairman of the companies that own the Nord Stream and Nord Stream II pipelines, built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. Schröder has also been serving on the boards of Russian state-backed energy companies.
"I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – environmental organizations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas". — Then NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, quoted in The Guardian, June 19, 2014.
"We have found Gazprom funding in particular environmental NGOs, which furnished certain European countries with ministers -- Belgium for example -- who then evidently embarked on a sort of return of favor by defending an exit from nuclear power." — Dominique Reynié, professor of political science at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, in an interview with CNews.
An investigation by Unherd revealed that China is also funding Western environmentalists.
Russia, it turns out, has reportedly been promoting, often through "dark money" via Bermuda – which does not require donor countries to be named -- "green" campaigns against nuclear power to ensure dependence by the West on imports of Russia's fossil fuels. An investigation by Unherd revealed that China is also funding Western environmentalists. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the Energy Club Summit during an International Economic Forum meeting in St. Petersburg on June 21, 2013. (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA-Novosti/AFP via Getty Images)
"With winter fast approaching, Europe finds itself in an energy crisis—and reliant on the tender mercies of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It's a self-induced disaster years in the making".
That was how an October 20, 2021 editorial in the Wall Street Journal began, before Russia amassed its troops on the Ukrainian border and no analyst or think tank imagined that the unthinkable was around the corner. The editorial continued:
"European leaders have handicapped themselves on energy in the name of pursuing a climate agenda that will have no effect on the climate but is raising energy prices, harming consumers and industry, and is now empowering the bullies in the Kremlin.
"The U.K. and EU have pledged net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, closing coal plants and pouring billions into solar and wind projects. Germany and several other European countries have largely banned fracking. This has transformed European leaders into the equivalent of 16th-century naval explorers, praying for favorable winds and weather as energy prices rise and fall depending on cloud cover and wind conditions.
"Germany also hurt itself when Chancellor Angela Merkel chose to eliminate nuclear power in an overreaction to the 2011 Fukushima accident."
Konstantin Kosachev, an influential Russian legislator, had previously told Bloomberg that "we cannot ride to the rescue just to compensate for mistakes that we didn't commit". Such raw honesty stood in painful contrast to Europe's naïveté.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently met with activists from the Greta Thunberg-inspired "Fridays for Future" movement, despite these environmentalists' responsibility in Europe's energetic masochism, as the Wall Street Journal called it in another editorial.
Author Michael Shellenberger, also blasting the climate polices of Europe, recently pointed out in a Substack post headline "The West's Green Delusions Empowered Putin":
"As the West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves."
One of the reasons for Germany's catastrophic energy choices -- Russian gas and Chinese solar panels instead of domestic nuclear energy and fossil fuel production -- was exposed by Fabien Bouglé in his book Nucléaire, les vérités cachées ("Nuclear Energy, The Hidden Truths"). In a recent interview with Le Figaro, he said:
"My research revealed clearly that Germany has waged an economic war against French nuclear energy. In connection, for years, with anti-nuclear and pro-wind environmental NGOs, our neighbor has been struggling to denigrate our nuclear industry on our soil but also in Brussels. An army of German lobbyists are working with the European Commission to prevent French nuclear energy from entering the list of activities considered 'green' because of its low-carbon nature."
In the autumn of 2021, COP26, the UN climate conference, was setting up its grotesque spectacle: a kind of ecological Versailles. The rich, powerful and virtuous of the planet gathered in Glasgow to pontificate to the citizenry of Western countries about how much we are harming the planet with our way of life. They arrived in their private jets to complain about the plague of air industry emissions. The British government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, said that everyone should eat less meat and fly less. Then came the news that 400 private jets would be flying to the UN climate conference, bringing international leaders and corporate executives.
The United Kingdom's Prince Charles, from one of his palaces, said COP26 was the planet's "last chance." The British royal family has flown so much over the past five years that they could have reached the moon and back.
While the Germans pontificated about the climate, the Washington Post informed us of their hypocrisy:
"Germany portrays itself as a climate leader. But it's still razing villages for coal mines... The yawning black-brown scar in the earth that is Germany's Garzweiler coal mine has already swallowed more than a dozen villages. Centuries-old churches and family homes have been razed and the land they were built on torn away. Farmland has disappeared, graveyards have been emptied."
The Lützerath mine alone is twice the size of Manhattan. That is why Germany has been labelled as the most polluting country in Europe. Six years ago, at the time of COP21, former Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek warned us, "let's not be hypocrites: Germans are building up additional coal plants to support their renewable energy sector."
In November 2021, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times:
In a recent essay on great-power competition and climate change, Rob Litwak, an arms control expert at the Wilson Center, recalled a question that President Ronald Reagan posed to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, after they took a walk during their 1985 Lake Geneva summit.
As Gorbachev put it later: "President Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?'"...
Litwak's point in retelling that story, of course, is that today we are facing a similar, world-stressing threat — not from space aliens but from a much more familiar and once seemingly benign force: our climate.
Thus, the progressive American pundits until October dreamed of an alliance between the West, Russia and China against global warming. Now that the West has isolated Russia, the largest supplier of energy for Europe, no one is talking about that anymore.
The Glasgow meeting in January has been forgotten. Coal imports to the European Union have already increased by more than 56% compared to 2021, to face an energy crisis. In Britain, the Coal Authority has authorized a mine in Wales to increase production by 40 million tonnes over the next two decades.
Germany, which depends on Russian gas and which has the Greens Party in government with the Social Democrats, was so desperate that it had to stop the shutdown of its nuclear power plants. The closing of the reactors had been decided by then Chancellor Angela Merkel after the Fukushima accident. Now Hans-Werner Sinn, a leading German economist, writes:
"In both the short and the long term, Germany will be unable to end Russian gas imports without triggering economic chaos... Germany's pledge to abandon coal and nuclear, the very energy sources that would have given it a degree of self-sufficiency and autonomy, has thus placed the country in great danger."
Russia, it turns out, has reportedly been promoting, often through "dark money" via Bermuda – which does not require donor countries to be named -- "green" campaigns against nuclear power to ensure dependence by the West on imports of Russia's fossil fuels. According to an article in The Hill:
"In 2014 – the same year Russia annexed Crimea – then-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that Russia was covertly working to undermine European and U.S. fossil fuel production...
"According to The Guardian, Rasmussen... claimed in a presentation to a think tank in London, 'I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – environmental organizations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.'"
Dominique Reynié, professor of political science at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, in an interview with CNews, recently noted:
"We have found Gazprom funding in particular environmental NGOs, which furnished certain European countries with ministers -- Belgium for example -- who then evidently embarked on a sort of return of favor by defending an exit from nuclear power."
Germany's Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection, which has reportedly received more than 17 million euros from Gazprom, has also been accused of being a Moscow-funded "puppet", the Sunday Times disclosed.
The foundation was established this year in Mecklenburg-Pomerania by Manuela Schwesig, the Social Democratic state premier and an ally of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is Chairman of the companies that own the Nord Stream and Nord Stream II pipelines, built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. Schröder has also been serving on the boards of Russian state-backed energy companies.
In addition, an investigation by Unherd revealed that China is also funding Western environmentalists:
"A few blocks away from Tiananmen Square, amid the cavernous splendour of the Beijing Hotel Convention Centre, an array of senior Communist Party officials gathered in September to proclaim a clear message: by 'focusing on cutting carbon emissions... China will promote green development, and continuously improve its ecology'. The annual general meeting of the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development (the CCICED) was in full swing...
"Indeed, as the room fizzled with optimistic eco-rhetoric, you could almost forget that China is the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases — and that the new coal-fired power stations in its construction pipeline alone have a greater capacity than Britain's entire generation fleet....
"According to the official conference report, the 'foreign committee members and partners lauded China's ecological civilisation building and its new and greater contributions to promoting the construction of a clean and beautiful world'".
In attendance were Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, president of the Grantham Center on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, former chief economist of the World Bank, adviser to British governments on environmentalism; Kate Hampton, chief executive of the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which is reportedly funded by billionaire Christopher Hohn, a leading environmental philanthropist, and the World Wide Fund for Nature-UK, for which Prince Charles serves as president.
As Europe was facing its own energy suicide and just before Putin began obliterating Ukraine, what was US Secretary of State John Kerry, the U.S. "climate czar", concerned about? About the "massive emissions impact" of the war as well as its being a distraction from the fight against climate change. "I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate," he told the BBC.
Here is another scam: Not only do Germany and France have enough natural gas reserves to replace Russian gas for more than 20 years, but its extraction has been forbidden "for environmental reasons."
The journalist Michael Shellenberger noted:
"Russia has leveraged an economy half the size of Germany's to end the post-Cold War era and defeat NATO
"It did so with aggression, natural gas, & nuclear
"America must produce massively more nuclear, natural gas, and oil, or liberal democratic Western civilization is dead"
According to Ulf Poschardt in Die Welt:
"Vladimir Putin can only do what he wants because he has seen through the West's weaknesses: Europe and the Germans in particular have become decadent, they patronize their top performers and submit to a naively deluded zeitgeist... Putin looks at Germany and sees it as a federal republic of clowns. And he's not afraid of clowns".
Now Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. But what comes next?
*Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Biden Sends Nearly $1 Billion to Afghanistan Since Taliban Takeover
Daniel Greenfield/Gatestone Institute/April 06/2022
After Biden's retreat, the Taliban have consolidated control over Afghanistan. And over all the hungry children, the girls deprived of an education, and all the other sob stories that kept a river of private charity and taxpayer money flowing into a hellhole in which nothing ever got better.
That's on top of the $782 million in "humanitarian aid" allocated to Afghanistan last year since the Taliban took over. This year, Biden signed an executive order allocating $3.5 billion of the Afghan assets held in the Federal Reserve for the same purpose. But even not counting those funds, Biden has dedicated $986 million to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over.
That's nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money and nearly $4.5 billion in total funds.
The Biden administration keeps insisting that the money won't go to the Taliban. That's as plausible as its previous claims that the Afghan government wouldn't collapse, that if it did we would be ready, and that all Americans would be evacuated before Kabul fell to the enemy.
There's no one with less credibility on Afghanistan than a member of the Biden administration.
The Taliban have been hungry to get their hands on foreign aid, but, likely guided by their Qatari backers, they've also been clever about it. They proposed a joint body with the international community to dispense aid. When that didn't work, they went back to their usual strategy of pressuring NGOs to hire Taliban members to determine where the aid should go and who should distribute it. But that's just a matter of cutting out the middleman for more direct control.
Since the NGOs rely heavily on local labor, all the Taliban have to do is intimidate Afghan employees into following their orders. And for a terror group that practices mutilation and beheading, that's not hard. Does anyone really believe that an Afghan with a wife and children living under Taliban rule is going to follow our aid guidelines rather than those of the gunmen
The Taliban, like the Houthis in Yemen and other Islamic terror groups who both cause and profit from famines, have already been distributing and taking credit for humanitarian aid.
Portions of the nearly $1 billion in foreign aid stolen from the paychecks of American workers and the mouths of their children will be used to finance a new Jihad against Western nations.
A generation after 9/11, Americans are once again funding the terrorists who are out to kill them.
The Taliban, like the Houthis in Yemen and other Islamic terror groups who both cause and profit from famines, have already been distributing and taking credit for humanitarian aid. A generation after 9/11, Americans are once again funding the terrorists who are out to kill them. Pictured: A Taliban soldier stands guard at the venue for a flag hoisting ceremony in Kabul on March 31, 2022.
Over two decades, the United States and its international partners poured billions in humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. Much of that aid went into the pockets of the Taliban.
After Biden's retreat, the Taliban have consolidated control over Afghanistan. And over all the hungry children, the girls deprived of an education, and all the other sob stories that kept a river of private charity and taxpayer money flowing into a hellhole in which nothing ever got better.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
At an aid conference hosted by the UN, the UK, Germany and the Islamic terror state of Qatar, which backs the Taliban, $2.4 billion was raised for Afghanistan. The hosts had demanded over $4.4 billion, which would have been the largest amount ever raised for any nation.
The Biden administration kicked in another $204 million.
That's on top of the $782 million in "humanitarian aid" allocated to Afghanistan last year since the Taliban took over. This year, Biden signed an executive order allocating $3.5 billion of the Afghan assets held in the Federal Reserve for the same purpose. But even not counting those funds, Biden has dedicated $986 million to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over.
That's nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money and nearly $4.5 billion in total funds.
The Biden administration keeps insisting that the money won't go to the Taliban. That's as plausible as its previous claims that the Afghan government wouldn't collapse, that if it did we would be ready, and that all Americans would be evacuated before Kabul fell to the enemy.
There's no one with less credibility on Afghanistan than a member of the Biden administration.
Biden's UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, claimed that, "this humanitarian aid, like all aid from the United States, will go directly to NGOs and the United Nations. The Taliban will not control our humanitarian funding."
Since the Taliban control Afghanistan, they control the non-profit NGOs and the UN presence in what is now their country. Anyone who directs money into Afghanistan is funding the Taliban.
As I warned last year, the Taliban have a 10% Islamic tax on income, and NGOs and even UN agencies have been paying taxes to the Taliban going back as much as a decade.
The Taliban have already unveiled a "Monitoring and Control Plan of NGOs" which would allow the Islamic terror group to control everything that NGOs do with their aid. This is just the latest incarnation of the Taliban's old Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organizations, which included NGO coordinators and which padded the pockets of the Taliban with our aid. And the Taliban have already taken to seizing aid sent into the terror state.
In the Ghor province, the Taliban ruler announced that he was taking control over the NGOs and ordered them to turn over the money and pursue whatever projects the terrorists decided were worthwhile. Those who resisted were locked up, and while the order may be temporarily in abeyance after foreign protests, the terrorists keep testing us to see what they can away with.
The Taliban have been hungry to get their hands on foreign aid, but, likely guided by their Qatari backers, they've also been clever about it. They proposed a joint body with the international community to dispense aid. When that didn't work, they went back to their usual strategy of pressuring NGOs to hire Taliban members to determine where the aid should go and who should distribute it. But that's just a matter of cutting out the middleman for more direct control.
Since the NGOs rely heavily on local labor, all the Taliban have to do is intimidate Afghan employees into following their orders. And for a terror group that practices mutilation and beheading, that's not hard. Does anyone really believe that an Afghan with a wife and children living under Taliban rule is going to follow our aid guidelines rather than those of the gunmen?
The Taliban, like the Houthis in Yemen and other Islamic terror groups who both cause and profit from famines, have already been distributing and taking credit for humanitarian aid.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has also set up a "humanitarian trust fund" at a meeting hosted by Pakistan, a strong supporter of the Taliban, under the aegis of the Islamic Development Bank together with "international actors". One can only imagine where it will go.
NGOs are using Hawalas to move money into Afghanistan in order to bypass our sanctions on the Taliban. That means it's quite likely that international aid money is already crossing streams with funds being funneled to not only the Taliban, but also to Al Qaeda and ISIS-K.
And since the Taliban control Afghanistan, they're also able to tax the Hawala system which means that any money we transfer, as Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield put it, "directly to NGOs" and is then moved by them to Afghanistan through Hawalas will go to the Taliban.
And that will be the first of a series of ways that the Taliban will profit from our humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian aid remains a major asset for Islamic terrorists from Hamas in Gaza to the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. While opium and rare earths are assets that require a great deal of labor and risk to exploit, foreign aid just shows up.
The Taliban continue to engage in diplomacy because we keep sending them money. But much as the Islamic terror group kept negotiating with us while plotting to seize the country, their willingness to engage in diplomacy doesn't mean that they've become moderate. Only that the terrorists are once again playing on our naive faith in the power of international diplomacy.
After two decades of funding the Taliban with our efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, we're still at it.
Portions of the nearly $1 billion in foreign aid stolen from the paychecks of American workers and the mouths of their children will be used to finance a new Jihad against Western nations.
A generation after 9/11, Americans are once again funding the terrorists who are out to kill them.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
This article was first published by Frontpage Magazine and is reprinted here by the kind permission of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Why Tracking Putin's Wealth Is So Difficult
Mike McIntire/ The New York Times/Wed, April 06, 2022
Buried in a 421-page legal filing in an obscure court case is a single sentence, offered almost as an afterthought, about a meeting at a Geneva restaurant where two businessmen chatted about “a yacht which had been presented to Mr. Putin.”
The passing reference, cited in a 2010 judge’s decision in London on a financial dispute involving a shipping company, is the rare bit of public evidence directly linking President Vladimir Putin of Russia to any of the luxury boats, planes or villas associated with him over the years. It has taken on new significance as U.S. and European authorities pursue the hidden wealth of Putin and people close to him in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But the British court document also holds a clue to why it has been so hard to clearly connect the Russian president to his rumored riches. The yacht, called the Olympia, was managed by a company in Cyprus, where corporation filings show that the true owner was not Putin — it was the Russian government.
Indeed, it is one of many extravagant assets long speculated to be Putin’s that actually are owned or controlled by the state, showing how much the private interests of the president and his inner circle have merged with those of the government he has dominated for two decades. Others include a sprawling resort, a fleet of expensive automobiles, fancy planes and still more yachts.
The United States and its allies have created a multinational task force to track and seize assets of at least 50 wealthy Russians, including Putin, and announced rewards for information that helps in the effort. But some analysts question whether it will have much effect on the Russian president, who has never been found to personally own much worth confiscating.
While there has been much media and public discussion that oligarchs and old Putin friends could be secretly holding valuable property on his behalf, or keeping his cash for him in offshore companies and Swiss bank accounts, many of his more obvious luxuries are embedded in state-owned enterprises and largely beyond the reach of Western sanctions.
Alina Polyakova, an expert on Russian foreign affairs who leads the Center for European Policy Analysis, said that because government resources and agencies were most likely used to shield at least some of his purported wealth, targeting Putin personally with sanctions was mainly symbolic.
“To get to him, as well, we’d have to sanction the entire Russian government,” she said. “And, of course, there are reasons why Europe and the United States are not prepared to do so.”
Economically blocking the whole of the Russian state would mean, for instance, fully blacklisting Gazprom, one of the world’s largest energy companies and a major source of natural gas in Europe. The company has faced only limited sanctions aimed mainly at restricting its purchases of certain debt and equity, even as worldwide outrage grows over apparent Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Yet Gazprom figures in any calculus of Putin’s possible wealth. Though luxury real estate would seem to have little to do with its core mission, the state-run gas company built a plush hideaway that the Russian president enjoys in a mountainous region of Siberia. Despite claims that the project was not connected to the Kremlin, a report co-written by a former deputy prime minister and Putin critic, Boris Nemtsov, noted that the location was “being provided with security by the FSO” — the federal protective service assigned to the Russian president and other high-level officials.
The mountain resort was among 20 properties described in the 2012 report by Nemtsov as being available to Putin, along with dozens of luxury aircraft, four yachts and 11 wristwatches with a retail value of nearly $700,000, all allegedly paid for with public funds.
Nemtsov was assassinated in 2015, shot in the back while crossing a bridge in view of the Kremlin.
Because of the efforts by the few independent news organizations operating in Russia before the recent crackdown on free speech, as well as opposition voices like Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, the notion that Putin is living large on the taxpayers’ dime is hardly a secret. The Kremlin has long denied that he lives beyond his means — officially, he collects a salary of about $140,000 and has a small apartment in Moscow. But his spokesperson told a Russian newspaper, in response to Nemtsov’s allegations, that the Russian president also uses state-owned residences and vehicles “in accordance with the law.”
The presence of Putin’s protective detail has been seen as a telltale sign of his hidden ties to various extravagances. Sergei Kolesnikov, a former business partner of a Putin ally, wrote an open letter in 2010 asserting that government funds had been diverted to help develop a $1 billion estate on the Black Sea that became known as “Putin’s palace.”
An investigation released last year by Navalny, the jailed opposition leader, found that the palace had been guarded by members of the federal protective service and that the internal security agency, the FSB, had at one point enforced a no-fly zone over it.
Most recently, Navalny’s team reported that it had linked crew members on a $700 million superyacht to the same Kremlin protective detail, amid speculation that the vessel, whose ownership is obscured by offshore shell companies, was secretly used by Putin. The 459-foot yacht, named the Scheherazade, has two helicopter pads and is topped with a cluster of satellite domes. It is currently dry-docked in Italy.
“If the owner of the yacht cannot be identified — it’s some offshore company from the Marshall Islands — then we will try to establish who works on it and who pays them salaries,” Maria Pevchikh, a member of Navalny’s team, said in a video describing the investigation.
The New York Times, which first reported that American officials had indications the yacht could be tied to Putin, has not been able to independently confirm the Navalny team’s findings about the crew’s security connections, and American officials declined to specify what information they had that could pierce the veil of corporate secrecy surrounding the vessel’s offshore ownership.
Indeed, many jurisdictions traditionally have offered not only tax advantages to managing assets through offshore shells but also corporation registries that make it difficult, if not impossible, to publicly identify the ultimate owners. It is primarily through leaks from law firms specializing in these services that wealthy Russians have been discovered to be frequent clients.
Sometimes the Russian government itself is the beneficiary.
Leaked files known as the Paradise Papers, from the Appleby law firm in Bermuda, revealed offshore projects on behalf of several enterprises controlled by the Russian state, including VTB Capital, an investment bank, and Gazprom. Another involved the $53.9 million purchase of a Bombardier Global 6000 private jet by an obscure Cyprus company, Genetechma Finance Ltd.
Appleby’s records show that Genetechma was operating, ultimately, on behalf of VEB, a state-owned economic development bank with ties to Russian intelligence. VEB, whose chairman has reportedly used private jets, controlled the Cyprus-based Genetechma through a Luxembourg subsidiary.
A different Cyprus company surfaced in the ownership chain of the Olympia yacht, whose connection to Putin appeared in the British court documents. The litigation involved convoluted allegations of self-dealing among executives at several Russian shipping companies, including Sovcomflot, whose majority owner is the Russian government.
In a decision by a London court in 2010, Justice Andrew Smith described how various players involved attributed their positions of influence to having “a good relationship” with Putin, and in one instance, recalled a meeting at the Lipp Brasserie in Geneva where the gift of the Olympia to him was mentioned. The yacht, estimated to cost $35 million to $50 million in 2002 and reportedly outfitted with marble baths, extensive gilding and a Jacuzzi, was said to be “managed by Unicom,” a Cyprus-based company.
Corporation records in Cyprus, which in recent years has become more rigorous about requiring transparency of ownership, show that Unicom was owned by a Bermuda company, whose “ultimate parent corporation” was a state-owned shipping company in Russia.
The Olympia, which sails under a Cayman Islands registration, was last known to be in the Baltic Sea near St. Petersburg.
© 2022 The New York Times Company

Mariupol mayor calls Russian siege 'the new Auschwitz,' says more than 5,000 civilians have been killed: Live Ukraine updates/Yahoo news
John Bacon, Joey Garrison, Jorge L. Ortiz, Tom Vanden Brook and Celina Tebor,/ US Today/Wed, April 06, 2022
The mayor of the encircled Ukrainian city of Mariupol said more than 5,000 civilians, including 210 children, have been killed during the monthlong Russian siege.
Vadym Boichenko said Wednesday that Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death, and have destroyed more than 90% of the southern port city’s infrastructure.
"The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of the Nazi concentration camps. Russia-occupation forces turned our entire city into a death camp," Boichenko said, according to the Ukrainian news agency Interfax. "This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek."
Boichenko's estimates of the fatalities in Mariupol come on the same day the U.S. imposed sweeping new sanctions on Russia that include targeting Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters in response to atrocities in Ukraine that the White House has called war crimes.
Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two daughters of the Russian leader and his ex-wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva Putina, face full blocking sanctions that will cut them off from the U.S. financial system and freeze any assets they may hold in the U.S. The administration believes many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members.
Sanctions also target Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's wife and daughter. The new wave of sanctions on Russian elites add to the 140 other oligarchs and Kremlin officials already hit with sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
"We’re going to keep raising the economic costs and ratchet up the pain for Putin,'' President Joe Biden said.
A Ukrainian serviceman pets a cat next to a destroyed Russian fighting vehicle after collecting parts and ammunition in the village of Andriivka, on April 6, 2022. Several buildings in the village were reduced to mounds of bricks and corrugated metal and residents are struggling without heat, electricity or cooking gas.A Ukrainian serviceman pets a cat next to a destroyed Russian fighting vehicle after collecting parts and ammunition in the village of Andriivka, on April 6, 2022. Several buildings in the village were reduced to mounds of bricks and corrugated metal and residents are struggling without heat, electricity or cooking gas.
Biden: New sanctions ‘ratchet up the pain' further on Russia
President Joe Biden said new economic sanctions imposed Wednesday against Russia, including two adult daughters of President Vladimir Putin, “ratchet up the pain'' further on Russia following the discovery of atrocities committed by its troops.
"There's nothing less happening than major war crimes," Biden said, describing scenes of bodies left in the streets of the Ukrainian town of Bucha including civilians executed with their hands tied behind their backs.
“Responsible nations have to come together to hold these preparators accountable. And together with our allies and our partners, we’re going to keep raising the economic costs and ratchet up the pain for Putin, and further increase Russia’s economic isolation."
Biden was speaking before labor union leaders in Washington for the North America’s Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference.
The Biden administration announced sanctions on 21 Kremlin officials and Russian elites in addition to two adult Putin daughters, Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, and the wife and daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Other measures include full blocking sanctions on Russia’s largest financial institution, Sberbank, and Russia’s largest private bank, Alfa Bank, as well as a ban on U.S. investment in Russia. European allies took similar actions.
"Think about the incredible amounts of money these oligarchs have stolen," Biden said, adding that they won't be able to keep their "$100 million yachts" and luxury homes "while children in Ukraine are being killed, displaced from their homes every single day."
– Joey Garrison
Justice Department helps investigate war crimes, indicts Russian who supported Crimea separatists
The Justice Department unsealed an indictment Wednesday against Russian oligarch Konstantinos Malofeyev for alleged sanction violations, the first such criminal charges brought by the U.S. since Russia's invasion. The Treasury Department previously identified Malofeyev as one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea and for providing material support for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. Malofeyev attempted to evade the sanctions by using co-conspirators to acquire and run media outlets across Europe, Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a Justice briefing.
“We are also announcing the seizure of millions of dollars from an account at a U.S. financial institution, which the indictment alleges constitutes proceeds traceable to Malofeyev’s sanctions violations," Garland said.
Garland also acknowledged for the first time that the Justice Department is assisting in the effort to examine possible war crimes in Ukraine. He said U.S. authorities recently met with counterparts in Europe to develop a plan to gather evidence.
"This department has a long history of helping to hold accountable those who perpetrate war crimes," Garland said.
"We have seen the mass graves. We have seen the bombed hospital, theater, and residential apartment buildings,'' he said. "The world sees what is happening in Ukraine. The Justice Department sees what is happening in Ukraine."
– Kevin Johnson
Russian forces exit Kyiv, Chernihiv
Russian forces have completely retreated from Kyiv and Chernihiv, moving into neighboring Belarus and Russia after facing fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces, a senior Defense official said Wednesday. The Ukrainians hit Russian forces as they retreated from Kyiv, the official said.
Kyiv remains under threat, although it has not been hit by airstrikes in the last 24 hours, the official said. The threat of a ground invasion to Kyiv has dissipated for now, the official said.
The Russian forces – up to 40,000 troops, or almost one-third of the force Russian President Vladimir Putin sent to invade Ukraine – are being resupplied, according to intelligence assessments the official described on condition of anonymity. It's unclear when the withdrawal of Russian troops from those cities was completed. The Russians appear to have seeded some of the ground left behind with mines.
The Pentagon believes the troops will be sent back into fighting in eastern Ukraine, the Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have clashed with Ukrainian troops since 2014.
Investigators search for proof of Russian atrocities
Days after Russian forces retreated from the Kyiv area, investigators and volunteers are beginning the long, grim work of chronicling what U.S. officials have described as a "troubling campaign" of brutality against civilians. Ukrainian officials say the bodies of more than 400 civilians were found in towns around Kyiv after Russian forces withdrew. United Nations Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet said preserving, exhuming and identifying bodies would be critical for an independent investigation into possible war crimes. Read more here.
"Everything was like in fog – a lot of crying, a lot of happiness to see Ukrainian people, a lot of fear in eyes, a lot of anger," Kyiv resident Vladimir Basovskyi, 35, told USA TODAY. "Next what I remember, I am sitting at home and crying like a child."
– Grace Hauck and Chris Kenning
Dutch put 14 Russian yachts under 'special supervision'
Dutch customs officials placed 14 yachts at five shipyards under "special supervision" on Wednesday because they are being built or repaired for wealthy Russians. Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said 12 yachts are under construction and two are undergoing maintenance. The boats will not be allowed to leave the country because of the export ban and sanctions imposed on hundreds of wealthy supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Netherlands has been criticized for its slow start to enforcing sanctions.
Russian owners made up 9% of all superyacht owners in 2021, making Russia the second largest ownership country behind the United States, according to Superyacht Times. The U.S. government on Monday seized a 254-foot yacht in Spain owned by an oligarch with close ties to Putin. Other countries also have seized the luxury boats.
China calls for probe of Bucha slayings, does not condemn Moscow
The reports and images of civilian deaths in Bucha are "deeply disturbing" and should be thoroughly investigated, China's U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said Wednesday. But Zhang placed no blame on Russia and urged all sides to "exercise restraint and avoid unfounded accusations" until more details are known.
China has been walking a diplomatic tightrope, declining to condemn Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and suggesting sanctions will only accelerate the crisis and create global economic problems. China has chastised the U.S. and NATO, saying they provoked the war with NATO's expansion and fueled it by arming Ukraine.
UN to vote on Russia's spot in Human Rights Council
The United Nations will vote Friday on whether Russia should be removed from the Human Rights Council. The United States and United Kingdom called for Russia's removal from the council in recent days as evidence of atrocities by the Russian military emerged. To remove Russia from the council, at least two-thirds of the UN General Assembly would need to vote for the ouster.
"Given the growing mountain of evidence, Russia should not have a position of authority in a body whose purpose is to promote respect for human rights," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said at a Security Council meeting Tuesday. "Not only is it the height of hypocrisy – it is dangerous."
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia denied that Russian troops were committing war crimes, blaming Ukrainians for the deaths and defending the invasion by claiming the "Nazi malignant tumor that is devouring Ukraine would have eventually begun to devour Russia."
– Ella Lee
Pope Francis kisses Ukrainian flag, pleads for end to war
Pope Francis kissed the Ukrainian flag and renewed his appeal Wednesday for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. During his weekly audience in the Vatican's auditorium, several Ukrainian children – now refugees in Italy – joined him on the stage. The pope furled the faded, stained flag and held it up, saying the flag “came from war, from that martyred city of Bucha.” He condemned "the massacre" in that city outside Kyiv.
“Ever more horrendous cruelties, even against civilians, women and helpless children," the pope said. "They are victims whose innocent blood cries out to heaven and implores.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
*This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine live updates: Mariupol mayor says more than 5,000 have died