English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 03/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
Healing Miracle Of The Blind Man
John/09/01-41/: And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened? He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not. They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes. Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them. They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet. But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see? His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind: But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself. These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him. Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes? He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 02-03/2022
Faith, Hope And Persistence Do Miracles/Healing miracle of the blind beggar/Elias Bejjani/April 03/2022
Judiciary’s clash with banks threatens Lebanon’s elections/Hussein Dakroub, Al Arabiya English/02 April ,2022
Pace of electoral list announcements accelerates in Lebanon as deadline approaches/Najia Houssari/Arab News/April 02, 2022
Lebanon's Mufti Condemns Hezbollah, Accuses Corrupt Clique of Starving People
Cash-strapped Lebanon Struggles to Turn Lights on for Polling Day
President Aoun: Let the days of Ramadan carry goodness and peace of mind
Mikati sponsors launching ceremony of Northern Forum on autism
Ramadan kicks off in much of Mideast amid soaring prices

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 02-03/2022
Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinian Militants in West Bank
US Ambassador Says Administration Will Reopen Consulate to Serve Palestinians Soon
Israel Suggests that Washington Ramp Up Sanctions on Iran to Level Imposed on Russia
Iran Denies US Impact on Ballistic Program, Regional Influence
Pope Says He’s Studying Possible Trip to Kyiv
War in Ukraine: Latest developments
Zelensky: Retreating Russians Leave Many Mines Behind, Creating ‘Complete Disaster’
Logistics Hub in Russia Ablaze, Ukraine Denies Hitting it
Nabil Fahmy Describes Egypt-US Ties as 'Vital’
Morocco’s Public Prosecution Office, BAM Sign MoU to Promote Financial Security
Sudan to Resolve Tribal Conflicts in Darfur Militarily

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 02-03/2022
EU Vs. China: Is There Still a Global Marketplace?/Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
It Would Be Folly for China to Bust Russia Sanctions/Tim Culpan/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
Putin Would Be Crazy to Cut Off Europe’s Gas. Or Desperate./Liam Denning/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
India Shouldn't Fall For Putin's Rupees-For-Rubles Deal/Andy Mukherjee/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
How Putin Misunderstood Rumsfeld/Amir Taheri/Ashark Al Awsat/April 02/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 02-03/2022
Faith, Hope And Persistence Do Miracles/Healing miracle of the blind beggar
Elias Bejjani/April 03/2022
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/73575/elias-bejjani-faith-and-persistence-do-miracles/
John 09:39: “I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.”
On the sixth Lenten Sunday, our Maronite Catholic Church cites and recalls with great piety Jesus’ healing miracle of the blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus. This amazing miracle that took place in Jericho near the Pool of Siloam is documented in three gospels:Mark 10/46-52. John 9/1-41 Matthew 20/:29-34.
Maronites in Lebanon and all over the world strongly believe that Jesus is the holy and blessed light through which believers can see God’s paths of righteousness. There is no doubt that without Jesus’ light, evil darkness will prevail in peoples’ hearts, souls and minds. Without Jesus’ presence in our lives we definitely will become preys to all kinds of evil temptations.John 09:5: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world”.In every community, there are individuals from all walks of life who are spiritually blind, lacking faith, have no hope, and live in dim darkness because they have distanced themselves from Almighty God and from His Gospel, although their eyes are physically perfectly functional and healthy.
Meanwhile the actual blindness is not in the eyes that can not see because of physical ailments, but in the hearts that are hardened, in the consciences that are numbed and in the spirits that are defiled with sin. John’s Gospel gives important details about what has happened with Bartimaeus after the healing miracle of his blindness. As we read in the below enclosed Biblical verses that after his healing Bartimaeus and his parents were exposed to intimidation, fear, threats, and terror. But he refused to succumb or to lie.He held verbatim to all the course details of the miracle, bravely witnessed for the truth and loudly proclaimed his strong belief that Jesus who cured him was The Son Of God.His faith made him strong, fearless and courageous. The Holy Spirit came to his rescue and spoke through him.Romans 8:26: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”Sadly our contemporary world hails atheism, brags about secularism and persecutes those who have faith in God and believe in Him.Where ever we live, there are opportunists and hypocrites like some of the conceited crowd members that initially rebuked Bartimaeus, and tried with humiliation to keep him away from Jesus, but the moment Jesus called on him they changed their attitude and let him go through.Meanwhile, at the present time, Christian believers do suffer dire persecution in many countries on the hands of ruthless oppressors, Jihadists and rulers who refuse to witness for the truth.But despite of all the dim spiritual darkness, thanks God, there are still too many meek believers like Bartimaeus who hold to their faith no matters what the obstacles or hurdles are.Lord, enlighten our minds and hearts with your light and open our eyes to realize that You are a loving and merciful father.
Lord Help us to take Bartimaeus as a faith role model in our life.
Lord help us to defeat all kinds of sins that take us away from Your light, and deliver us all from evil temptations.

Judiciary’s clash with banks threatens Lebanon’s elections
Hussein Dakroub, Al Arabiya English/02 April ,2022
An escalating confrontation between Lebanon’s judiciary and the battered banking sector appears to have overshadowed ongoing preparations to hold parliamentary elections on time, raising fears that judicial rulings against some leading banks might eventually lead to scuttling the vote altogether.
President Michel Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), the main Christian political party founded by Aoun and now headed by his son-in-law, MP Gebran Bassil, have been accused by their political opponents of standing behind the judicial campaign against Lebanese banks to delay or even derail the elections deemed “crucial” by the international community and most of the Lebanese people.
The Lebanese, reeling from the worst economic meltdown in the country’s history, are hoping that the polls, scheduled on May 15, will be an opportunity to bring about an overdue political change. It’s hoped this will steer Lebanon out of the crisis, described by the World Bank as one of the world’s worst since the 1850s, posing the gravest threat to its stability since the 1975-90 Civil War.
The financial downturn, caused by decades of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption by the country’s ruling political elite, has propelled more than 70 percent of Lebanon’s 6 million population into poverty. A crashing Lebanese pound has lost more than 90 percent of its value against the US dollar since late 2019, sending prices of food, supplies, and basic commodities skyrocketing.
“The ongoing crisis between the judiciary and the banking sector has put the government at bay while it struggles to cope with multiple crises, including an unprecedented economic meltdown that is hitting the Lebanese hard and threatening them with poverty,” a political source told Al Arabiya English.
So far, there are no signs of an imminent solution to the crisis despite a cabinet decision on March 23 to form a committee made up of judges and bankers to settle the conflict between the judiciary and banks. The latest crisis began earlier in March when Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun issued judicial orders freezing the assets of six banks while she investigated transactions they made with the country’s Central Bank.
The judge is currently at the center of a heated controversy after she had been accused by Aoun’s opponents of bias and acting in line with the political agenda of the president, who reportedly wants Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh removed from his post. She has denied this, saying that she is implementing the law.
The asset freeze applies to properties, vehicles, and shares in companies owned by the banks or the members of their boards. Judge Aoun has also issued travel bans against the heads of the boards of the banks as a precautionary measure while she carried out her probe. But she has not charged any of the parties mentioned with any crime. A seventh bank, Fransabank, had its assets frozen by another judge who ruled in favor of a man who had brought a case demanding the bank reopen his account and payout his deposit in cash.
Protesting the rulings, Lebanon’s banks staged a two-day “warning” strike on March 21-22, paralyzing businesses in a country mired in a suffocating economic crisis. Lebanon’s banks’ association has dismissed the rulings as “arbitrary” and “illegal.” the measures would further destabilize the country’s banking system, already crippled by a financial downturn that has seen depositors locked out of their hard currency accounts.
Raya Hassan, chairman of the board of Bankmed, one of the banks targeted by the judicial measures, warned that if such measures persisted against banks, the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) would resort to escalating actions.
In an interview with the Lebanese channel MTV on March 24, she said one of these measures is to go on an open-ended strike by banks and file a lawsuit against the Lebanese state for allegedly wasting the money [the people’s deposits] from the Central Bank.
Hassan, a former interior minister, affiliated with the Future Movement headed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, blamed the collapse of the banking sector squarely on the Lebanese state, saying the state should compensate for the losses in this sector, estimated at more than $70 billion.
Experts said more than $100 billion had been trapped in a banking system paralyzed since 2019 when Lebanon descended into a devastating financial crisis.
“A prolonged bank closure risked chaos, and social unrest as public and private sector employees will not be able to withdraw their salaries,” a banking source told Al Arabiya English.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi criticized the judicial rulings against banks, warning that the crisis between the two sides might lead to a “social implosion” in the crises-ridden country. “It is unacceptable for some judiciary members to take illegal, incorrect, and unwise decisions and for these decisions to be without constraints,” Mawlawi said in an interview published in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai on March 27. His ministry is supervising the upcoming elections.
“It is unacceptable for [judicial] decisions emanating from political and revengeful motives. A judge must be impartial,” he argued. “What we are seeing today is a judge’s bias toward one of the two parties and hatred for one of them. What is happening is very dangerous and might lead to a social implosion,” Mawlawi added.
Commenting on the judicial-banking crisis, Prime Minister Najib Mikati denied interfering in the judiciary in a statement on March 18 but said there were “shortcomings” in its work.
In what appeared to be an implicit criticism of Ghada Aoun’s rulings, Mikati said actions taken by some judges were stoking tensions in Lebanon, and he had asked the public prosecutor to “take appropriate measures.” He warned against attempts to exploit the judicial measures for election purposes. “It’s clear that the course of action taken by some judges is pushing toward ominous tensions, and there are attempts to use this tension in election campaigns,” Mikati said, referring to the May 15 polls. “This is a dangerous matter.”
Asked to comment on fears that the tensions arising from the judicial measures were aimed at scuttling the elections, Mikati, after chairing a special Cabinet session on March 19 to discuss the rulings against banks, said: “We in the government insist on holding the parliamentary elections on May 15, 2022.”
In its news bulletin on March 25, the Lebanese channel MTV, quoting what it called “informed sources” familiar with the matter, described the ongoing judicial-banking dispute as “a war with double win” launched by Aoun and Bassil “either to scuttle the elections or to devise an electoral slogan that would secure an election victory for the team of the president and the Free Patriotic Movement.”
However, sources close to Aoun rejected this accusation. Instead, they accused the president’s opponents, namely Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Hariri, and Druze leader Walid Joumblatt of seeking to torpedo the elections. “It’s neither the president’s team nor the FPM’s team that wants to foil the elections. Rather, the Berri-Hariri-Joumblatt team is seeking to scupper the elections,” MTV quoted the sources as saying.
At the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, a source also dismissed the opposition’s accusation that President Aoun stood behind the judicial campaign against banks intending to disrupt the polls. “The president has nothing to do with this issue [judicial measures]. He does not interfere in the judiciary’s work. Judge Aoun has files that she is pursuing. Probably she takes measures with some exaggeration,” the Baabda source told Al Arabia English.
“Concerning financial wrongdoings, the president is concerned with a forensic audit [of the Central Bank’s accounts]. The issue of judicial files remains in the hands of the judiciary. Therefore, the president does not interfere in order not to influence the judiciary’s work,” the source added.
Samir Geagea, head of the Lebanese Forces party, criticized the “selective” judicial measures taken against some banks. He warned that the crisis might eventually lead to scuttling the elections.
“We fear that these measures aim to push banks to close, something that will prevent elections being held on time because it will be difficult [for candidates] to open [bank] accounts and use them during the [election] campaign. It is a political-judicial play whose outward appearance is to serve right and the law, but inwardly it is to derail the elections,” Geagea said on March 19.
Geagea and other Hezbollah adversaries hope to overturn the majority won by the Iranian-backed Shia group and its allies, including the Free Patriotic Movement and the Amal Movement led by Berri, in 2018 elections. Analysts said the Lebanese Forces party, which has the second-largest Christian bloc in Parliament after the FPM’s bloc, is widely expected to make gains in the elections.
In contrast, its main Christian rival, the FPM, allied with Hezbollah, is expected to lose seats. MP Mohammad Hajjar, whose parliamentary Future Movement bloc headed by Hariri has been at loggerheads with President Aoun and the Free Patriotic Movement, linked the judicial measures against banks to attempts to disrupt the elections.
“Like many of the Lebanese, we have felt that the judicial measures are tied to the parliamentary elections, especially since these measures came after a demand by the president and his political movement, the Free Patriotic Movement, to amend the electoral law to allow Lebanese expatriates to elect only six MPs representing them instead of voting to elect the 128 members was not fulfilled,” Hajjar told Al Arabiya English.
Citing another demand by Aoun and the FPM to set up “mega voting centers” that was rejected by the government, Hajjar said: “The judicial measures came as if someone wants to play with this issue and probably derail the parliamentary elections… There is an impression held by the overwhelming majority of the Lebanese and observers that there is someone who wants to derail the elections by triggering these judicial rulings.”
The proposed “mega centers” would allow citizens to cast their ballots in areas of their residence instead of having to go to their hometowns to do so. The head of Lebanon’s influential Maronite Catholic Church also warned against attempts to use judicial measures against banks to thwart the elections, reiterating his stance that the polls should be held on time. “In the face of the sad and dangerous situation of the judiciary, we ask: Where are the honorable judges, and where are judicial authorities that do not do their duty to protect the judicial body?”
A view shows the exterior of the Justice Palace building where Raja Salameh, brother of Central Bank governor Riad Salameh is believed to have been arrested in Baabda. (Reuters)
A view shows the exterior of the Justice Palace building where Raja Salameh, brother of Central Bank governor Riad Salameh is believed to have been arrested in Baabda. (Reuters)
Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros al-Rai said in a sermon on March 27 after chairing Sunday’s Mass at his seat in Bkirki, northeast of Beirut. “Is the goal of some shocking [judicial] measures is to create a situation that will lead to undoing the parliamentary elections on time and holding the party that wants the elections to be conducted responsible for this national crime?” Rai asked.
He stressed that the polls should be held on time and followed by the election of a new president two months before the current president’s term expiry, as stated in Article 73 of the Constitution. Keeping up the heat on the banking sector, Judge Aoun, on March 21, charged Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh with illicit enrichment, days after she charged his brother Raja in the same case and ordered him arrested.
The first charge was brought against Riad Salameh, the veteran governor whose wealth is also being probed by authorities in at least five European countries. Judge Aoun told Reuters the case related to the purchase and rental of Paris apartments, including some to the Central Bank.
She imposed a travel ban on Riad Salameh in January. Salameh, 71, governor for nearly three decades, has denied the charge, saying he had ordered an audit that showed public funds were not a source of his wealth. He has described the accusations against him as politically motivated.
Raja Salameh’s lawyer has said allegations of illicit enrichment and money laundering against his client were unfounded. Unruffled by mounting criticism of her actions, Judge Aoun vowed to press on with her measures against banks. “Being a believer means to continue the jihad [struggle] of our message even though we don’t see fruits for now,” she wrote on her Twitter account on March 27.

Pace of electoral list announcements accelerates in Lebanon as deadline approaches
Najia Houssari/Arab News/April 02, 2022
BEIRUT: Parties standing in the May 15 parliamentary elections in Lebanon are hurrying to draw up their candidate lists ahead of the Monday deadline for registration. Campaigning for the elections is gathering pace as candidates visit their constituents across the country and their rhetoric becomes increasingly inflammatory. Most of the parties in power have announced their lists and alliances, but the opposition and independent forces are still forming lists and alliances. A voter in the Baalbek-Hermel constituency told Arab News that “Hezbollah mobilized all its electoral machinery and began touring the voters, wooing them in Beirut and its southern suburbs, in the Bekaa and the south.” The voter added that party delegates “enquire about the number of voters in each house and whether they need transportation to reach the polling booth, and ask them to fill out a specific form to communicate with them.”
The voter, who declined to be named, also indicated that Hezbollah’s delegates were being challenged during campaigns. They said people were raising queries about how the party had benefited them during the last period of being in power, and that their situation had become worse.
“The same applies to other parties whose electoral machines face losing the voter enthusiasm.”The elections may lead to a change in the balance of power in the new parliament, which will elect the new president to succeed Michel Aoun, whose term ends in October.
Hezbollah had tried to raise the bar of its electoral battle to a higher level to obtain a parliamentary majority.
On Saturday, during a tour of southern villages, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, accused “the accomplices who are working to sow discord and stir divisions in the ranks of our resistance environment.”
MP Wael Abu Faour, of the Democratic Gathering bloc, said that “there is an excessive targeting of the Progressive Socialist Party, and the war against it is almost global.” Addressing his voters in the southern Bekaa region, Abu Faour said: “There is a clear project to create a parliamentary bloc in parliament that supports the forces of the ‘March 8 alliance’ (Hezbollah and its allies) among (PSP leader) Walid Jumblatt’s supporters, and this attempt will fail.” A delegation from the EU made up of technical experts and election observers has been looking at preparations for the elections, as agreed with the Lebanese Election Supervision Commission. Headed by Deputy Chief Observer Jaroslaw Domansky, the delegation held talks with the commission, led by Judge Nadim Abdel-Malik to discuss how they would carry out their work supervising the elections.

Lebanon's Mufti Condemns Hezbollah, Accuses Corrupt Clique of Starving People
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/April 02/2022
Lebanon's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel Latif Derian accused the "corrupt clique" in power of starving the Lebanese people, blaming them for destroying everything the Lebanese built in 100 years, including the judiciary and the banking sector and Lebanon's relations with Arab and international countries.
In his message on the eve of Ramadan month, the Mufti warned that the military institution and army are being deprived for the sake of militias affiliated with foreign forces, in reference to Hezbollah. He also urged Lebanese citizens to participate "without hesitation" in the May 15 legislative elections. "People feel hungry during Ramadan because they choose to fast, but starvation results from failed policies, corrupt rulers, complete disregard for human rights, and stealing people's money." The Mufti accused the corrupt politicians of turning Lebanon into a country that suffers from starvation, fear, and deprivation while they keep "devouring the money you have unlawfully taken," saying it would be better if they fast from corruption and falsehood and give Lebanon "an opportunity to breathe." He also condemned the corrupt saying they destroyed Lebanon's relations with Arab and international countries, attempting to undermine the country's identity and affiliation. Derian criticized the "desperate attempts to ruin Lebanon's identity and constitution, and destroy the principle of separation of powers in favor of personal feuds and miserable political interests." He summarized his message with central positions: the solidarity among the Lebanese at all levels, and solidarity from Arab countries and the world since the Beirut Port explosion, despite everyone's anger and despair over the lack of reforms. In his second position, the Mufti addressed the upcoming elections, saying it is a peaceful way to achieve the goals which the Lebanese must follow without hesitation. He urged all Lebanese voters to participate in the polls, "any alternative produced by the elections is better than the coercive and corrupt authority, and some candidates are motivated and willing to create change."Derian rejected the estimates that most candidates are of the same kind and are opportunists, saying: "I see that many candidates, whether old or new, are people who want change." "Any alternative produced by the elections is better than the coercive and corrupt authority, and some candidates are motivated and willing to create change," he said. Derian concluded his speech by addressing the national initiatives that unite Lebanese who suffered from the authority, such as the national dialogue. He called for a revolution against the oppressors, the tyrants, and the corrupt, urging all to choose alternatives through the elections. '

Cash-strapped Lebanon Struggles to Turn Lights on for Polling Day
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
Lebanon's electricity company is charging $16 million to supply power on the day of the May 15 parliamentary polls, a sum that exceeds the overall election budget by nearly 30 percent, the interior minister said. Holding credible elections is one of the main steps Lebanon's major donors are insisting on to deliver more assistance to the country, which is mired in a deep financial crisis fueled by endemic corruption. The state-owned Electricite du Liban (EDL) presented a quote of $16 million to the government, which is trying to provide just half a day's worth of power to polling stations for the critical vote. "I held several meetings with EDL, which apparently couldn't provide electricity except at a very high cost," Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said, AFP reported. "The entire elections, at home and abroad, don't cost this much," Mawlawi said, saying his total budget for the vote was capped at $12.5 million. Mawlawi was adamant the government was working for the polls to go ahead as scheduled, despite persistent rumors they could be called off. Lebanon, grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis since 2019, and which defaulted on its debt in March 2020, has suffered from severe power shortages for nearly a year -- largely because the government can't afford fuel for power stations. Power cuts last up to 22 hours a day in most regions, forcing many to rely on expensive generator subscriptions to keep the lights on. The international community has long demanded a complete overhaul of Lebanon's loss-making electricity sector -- which has cost the government more than $40 billion since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war -- as one of the basic conditions to disburse billions of dollars in desperately needed financial support. EDL had asked for its payment in cash, Mawlawi said.
Mawlawi said the government may turn to private generators to power voting centers, which will need electricity to light the room at night when the votes are counted immediately after polls close. "I can't rely on the state because despite the high cost demanded, EDL can't guarantee solid results... which may lead to a sudden blackout," the interior minister said. "The issue of electricity is the biggest problem facing Lebanon... but we will be able to solve it for the day of elections," he added. Lebanon's energy crisis is just one of its many economic woes, with the currency having lost more than 90 percent of its value. Most of Lebanon's population lives below the poverty line. Power outages mean streets are dark at night and surveillance cameras are effectively obsolete, leading to a spike in certain types of crime, Mawlawi said, who cited deepening poverty as another driving force. Interior ministry figures show armed robberies surged by 135 percent in 2021 compared with the previous year, and car theft increased by nearly a quarter over the same period. At the same time, Lebanon's security forces have been weakened because officers have quit to look for other work, since their salary barely covers enough to buy basic food for a family. At least 478 security officers working for Internal Security Forces or the General Security Agency have quit ranks since the start of the country's crisis, documents provided by the ministry showed. "There is a problem," Mawlawi told AFP. But "the number of those defecting is not large. We should not exaggerate the problem," he added.

President Aoun: Let the days of Ramadan carry goodness and peace of mind
NNA/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
On the occasion of the blessed month of Ramadan, President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, wished a blessed fast, full of goodness and peace of mind for all the Lebanese. The President Aoun wrote the following Tweet: “Blessed fasting on the occasion of Ramadan, the month of tolerance and blessings.
I hope that the days of this month will bring goodness and peace of mind to the Lebanese people”.

Mikati sponsors launching ceremony of Northern Forum on autism
NNA/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
Prime Minister Najib Mikati wished at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, that "... the efforts of all Lebanese would be united for the advancement and recovery of the country." Mikati hoped that the government would achieve the required recovery plan and exit from the crisis we are living in, and that we would reach parliamentary elections that would be a sure title for the change that the Lebanese seek. Mikati was speaking during the sponsorship of the launching ceremony of the "First Northern Autism Forum" organized by the Engineers Syndicate in the North in cooperation with the "National Autism Society", at the union's headquarters in Tripoli.

Ramadan kicks off in much of Mideast amid soaring prices
Associated Press/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- when the faithful fast from dawn to dusk -- began at sunrise Saturday in much of the Middle East, where Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sent energy and food prices soaring.
The conflict cast a pall over the holiday, when large gatherings over meals and family celebrations are a tradition. Many in the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia planned to start observing Sunday and some Shiites in Lebanon, Iran and Iraq were also marking the start of Ramadan a day later. Muslims follow a lunar calendar and a moon-sighting methodology can lead to different countries declaring the start of Ramadan a day or two apart.
Muslim-majority nations including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and the United Arab Emirates had declared the holiday would begin Saturday morning.
A Saudi statement Friday was broadcast on the kingdom's state-run Saudi TV and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, congratulated Muslims on Ramadan's arrival.
Jordan, a predominantly Sunni country, also said the first day of Ramadan would be on Sunday, in a break from following Saudi Arabia. The kingdom said the Islamic religious authority was unable to spot the crescent moon indicating the beginning of the month.
Indonesia's second-largest Islamic group, Muhammadiyah, which counts more than 60 million members, said that according to its astronomical calculations Ramadan begins Saturday. But the country's religious affairs minister had announced Friday that Ramadan would start on Sunday, after Islamic astronomers in the country failed to sight the new moon.
It wasn't he first time the Muhammadiyah has offered a differing opinion on the matter, but most Indonesians - Muslims comprise nearly 90% of the country's 270 million people - are expected to follow the government's official date.
Many had hoped for a more cheerful holiday after the coronavirus pandemic cut off the world's 2 billion Muslims from Ramadan rituals the past two years, With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, however, millions of people in the Middle East are now wondering where their next meals will come from. The skyrocketing prices are affecting people whose lives were already upended by conflict, displacement and poverty from Lebanon, Iraq and Syria to Sudan and Yemen.
Ukraine and Russia account for a third of global wheat and barley exports, which Middle East countries rely on to feed millions of people who subsist on subsidized bread and bargain noodles. They are also top exporters of other grains and sunflower seed oil used for cooking.
Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, has received most of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine in recent years. The country's currency has also taken a dive in recent days, adding to other pressures driving up prices.
"We were going to be affected, at any rate. We just pray that God will make this pass," said customer Hassan Ali Hassan.
The soaring prices exacerbated the woes of Lebanese already facing a major economic crisis. Over the past two years, the currency collapsed and the country's middle class was plunged into poverty. The country's meltdown has also brought on severe shortages in electricity, fuel and medicine.
In the Gaza Strip, few people were shopping Friday in markets usually packed at this time of year. Merchants said Russia's war on Ukraine has sent prices skyrocketing, alongside the usual challenges, putting a damper on the festive atmosphere that Ramadan usually creates.
The living conditions of the 2.3 million Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory are tough, compounded by a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007.
Toward the end of Ramadan last year, a deadly 11-day war between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel cast a cloud over festivities, including the Eid al-Fitr holiday that follows the holy month. It was the fourth bruising war with Israel in just over a decade. In Istanbul, Muslims held the first Ramadan prayers in 88 years in Hagia Sophia, nearly two years after the iconic former cathedral was converted into a mosque.
Worshippers filled the 6th-century building and the square outside Friday night for tarawih prayers led by Ali Erbas, the government head of religious affairs. Although converted for Islamic use and renamed the Grand Hagia Sophia Mosque in July 2020, COVID-19 restrictions had limited worship at the site.
"After 88 years of separation, the Hagia Sophia Mosque has regained the tarawih prayer," Erbas said, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.
The decision to return the UNESCO World Heritage site to Muslim worship sparked controversy two years ago with Orthodox Christian church leaders in Greece and the United States announcing a "day of mourning" over its return as a mosque.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 02-03/2022
Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinian Militants in West Bank
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
Israeli security forces killed three Islamic Jihad militants when they came under fire Saturday during a raid in the West Bank, police said, the latest deaths in a surge of violence. The bloodshed comes amid heightened tensions ahead of the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, that has seen violence spiral in Israel and the occupied West Bank.Last year during Ramadan, clashes that flared between Israeli forces and Palestinians visiting Al-Aqsa mosque in annexed east Jerusalem led to 11 days of devastating conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers Hamas. On Saturday, Israeli police said security forces killed three members of the Islamic Jihad militant group who had opened fire during an operation to arrest them near the northern West Bank city of Jenin. Four Israeli soldiers were wounded during the operation, one of them seriously, the police said. The Israeli forces had intercepted "a terrorist cell on its way to an attack, and stopped the car in which they were travelling between Jenin and Tulkarem", AFP reported, citing a police statement. The Islamic Jihad confirmed the three deaths. "We mourn the death of our three hero fighters," the armed wing of Islamist movement said, adding that two of them were from Jenin and one from Tulkarem. Hamas issued a warning to the Israelis. "The enemy's policy of assassination in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem will not provide it with so-called security," Hamas said. Saturday's clash is the latest in a spate of bloody violence in Israel and the West Bank since March 22. On Friday, Israeli forces shot dead a 29-year-old Palestinian during clashes in the West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Palestinian Wafa news agency named him as Ahmad al-Atrash, who it said was taking part in a protest against Israeli settlements and had previously served six years in an Israeli prison. The Israeli army said that during a "riot" in Hebron, "a suspect hurled a Molotov cocktail" at soldiers, who "responded with live fire". Hebron, the biggest city in the West Bank, is home to about 1,000 Jewish residents living under heavy Israeli military protection, among more than 200,000 Palestinians. The Palestinian Red Crescent said 70 people were wounded in Friday's clashes with the Israeli army in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank. On Thursday, Israeli security forces raided Jenin after three fatal attacks rocked the Jewish state, leading to clashes in which two Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Elsewhere in the West Bank on the same day, a Palestinian man who stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli civilian with a screwdriver on a bus was shot dead south of the city of Bethlehem. The violence followed an attack on Tuesday night in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv. A Palestinian with an M-16 assault rifle killed two Israeli civilians, two Ukranian nationals and an Israeli-Arab policeman. A total of 11 people have been killed in anti-Israeli attacks since March 22, including some carried out for the first time by assailants linked to or inspired by ISIS. The West Bank, which has been occupied by Israeli forces since the 1967 Six-Day war, is home to nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers, living in communities regarded as illegal under international law.

US Ambassador Says Administration Will Reopen Consulate to Serve Palestinians Soon
Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
The US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, announced that the administration would reopen the consulate in Jerusalem soon to serve the Palestinians. During a press meeting with Israeli television channels, Nides said that terrorism could not defeat Israel, asserting that killing people and violence will not lead to a positive result. The ambassador rejected the idea that terrorism is limited to Palestinians and said extremist Jewish settlers attack the Palestinians. He referred to the attack in Bnei Brak when the Arab policeman, Amir Khoury, and Jewish policemen attacked the perpetrator, saying it is the "essence of Israel."
Nides reiterated the position expressed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last Sunday regarding settler violence, saying there is no comparison when it comes to human life, and everyone agrees that settler violence is rejected. He criticized the continuation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for paying salaries of the families of martyrs and prisoners and considered it an encouragement to carry out terrorist operations. When he was asked about the US consulate in Jerusalem to serve the residents of the occupied Palestinian territories, he explained that the administration wanted to open the consulate. The former US administration closed the consulate and annexed it to the embassy in West Jerusalem. President Joe Biden pledged to reopen it in its headquarters, but it did not fulfill its promise due to the Israeli opposition. Nides noted that Israel wouldn't be faced with any US restrictions if it wishes to act against Iran, whether or not a nuclear deal is signed between Tehran and world powers. The ambassador did not describe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization but said that Iran was a state that supports terrorism. Israelis have their doubts about Nides' statements. He served as Deputy Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and had a significant role in persuading Congress to extend the loan to Israel worth $3.8 billion. However, he angered Israeli officials when he said last month that he'd never visited an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and had no plans to do so. Nides stressed that the Biden administration's support for the two-state solution stems from the fact that it will enhance Israel's strength, but this does not mean resuming the "peace process" soon. "When it comes to Israel, I have no ideology. All I care about is that Israel will remain a strong, democratic, and Jewish state.""My support for a two-state solution — a solution that President Biden, of course, supports — my support for the well-being of the Palestinian people, all of this stems from the belief that Israel will be strengthened this way," Nides said.

Israel Suggests that Washington Ramp Up Sanctions on Iran to Level Imposed on Russia
Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat/April 02/2022
Israel has suggested to US President Joe Biden’s administration an alternative to the nuclear deal with Iran, sources in the US and Tel Aviv revealed on Thursday. During a press conference on Sunday with Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked how Tel Aviv would stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, when at its current enrichment pace, it would be able to do so within weeks. Bennett said Iran can be deterred from enriching uranium to the military level of 90% if it knows the United States and European countries will ramp up sanctions to the level they’ve been imposed on Russia after invading Ukraine. The PM also told Blinken that the nuclear deal will only be “a band-aid” solution for just a few years. At the same time, it will give Iran billions of dollars that it would use for its regional malign activities and to arm its proxies, a senior State Department official and an Israeli senior official said. “It is us here in the region that will have to deal with that afterward,” Bennett warned, according to the officials. He also protested the notion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) being delisted as a terrorist group. “The idea that this organization will be removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations blacklist is very disturbing and not just to us,” he said. “We are still hoping and working toward preventing this from happening.”Blinken, for his part, tried to reassure Israel by affirming that “there is no daylight” between the US and Israel on the efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, as well as countering its threats to the region. He added that the US will maintain that stance regardless of whether a new Iran nuclear deal is reached. “Deal or no deal, we will continue to work together and with other partners to counter Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region,” he stressed.

Iran Denies US Impact on Ballistic Program, Regional Influence
Tehran -London/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 02/2022
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced on Thursday that its ballistic missile program and “regional influence” represented in its cross-border activities, were “red lines” and would not be affected by “the intentions, hopes and aspirations of the American rulers.”Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian criticized the imposition of new sanctions against an Iranian and entities with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, specifically a unit in charge of developing ballistic missiles. “Everything now depends on whether the United States wants to be realistic or responsible for the failure of negotiations,” Iranian agencies quoted Abdollahian as saying during a meeting with his Uzbek counterpart, Omar Razakof, in Tunxi, southeast China on Thursday. With the Vienna negotiations faltering, the United States imposed on Wednesday sanctions on an Iran-based procurement agent and his network of companies that procured ballistic missile propellant-related materials for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The US Treasury said that the decision came after the Iranian missile attack on Erbil in Iraq and the Houthi missile attack on Saudi Arabia earlier this month.
“Today’s action follows Iran’s missile attack on Erbil, Iraq on March 13 and the Iranian enabled Houthi missile attack against a Saudi Aramco facility on March 25 as well as other missile attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and are a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles continues to pose a serious threat to international security,” the US Treasury statement read. “This action reinforces the United States’ commitment to preventing the Iranian regime’s development and use of advanced ballistic missiles,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian E. Nelson. “While the United States continues to seek Iran’s return to full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we will not hesitate to target those who support Iran’s ballistic missile program. We will also work with other partners in the region to hold Iran accountable for its actions, including gross violations of the sovereignty of its neighbors.”On Thursday, Reuters quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh as saying that Washington continues to violate the United Nations resolution that enshrines the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, despite its claims of wanting to revive the pact. “This move is another sign of the US government’s malice towards the Iranian people, as it continues the failed policy of maximum pressure against Iran,” the spokesperson added. In a statement, the IRGC said that its missile force and regional influence were “a red line for the Iranian people.”It added that Iran was targeted by the American “mafia regime,” noting that “weakening and undermining Iran’s vitality and defensive and deterrent depth is one of the primary goals of the enemies in order to destroy the Iranian Republic…”

Pope Says He’s Studying Possible Trip to Kyiv
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
Pope Francis said he is studying a possible visit to Kyiv and he blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching a “savage” war. This came as he arrived in Malta and delivered his most pointed and personalized denunciation yet of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Francis didn’t cite Putin by name, but the reference was clear when he said that “some potentate” had unleashed the threat of nuclear war on the world in an “infantile and destructive aggression” under the guise of “anachronist claims of nationalistic interests.” Speaking to Maltese authorities Saturday, Francis said: “We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past.”According to The Associated Press, Francis has to date avoided referring to Russia or Putin by name. But Saturday’s personalization of the powerful figure responsible marked a new level of outrage for the pope.

War in Ukraine: Latest developments
Agence France Presse/Saturday, 2 April, 2022 - 08:30
Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:
Mariupol evacuation -
Residents fleeing the besieged region around southern port Mariupol take a convoy of buses and private cars to reach Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzhia.
The fleet's arrival comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says over 3,000 people have been rescued from Mariupol, though it is not immediately clear if he is referring to the bus passengers. The Red Cross says its own Mariupol rescue effort was forced to turn back after "arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed," but adds its team will try again Saturday.
U.S. commits $300 mn in 'assistance'
The U.S. Defense Department announces it is allotting $300 million in "security assistance" for Ukraine to bolster its defense capabilities, adding to the $1.6 billion Washington has already committed since Russia's invasion.
The package includes laser-guided rocket systems, drones, ammunition, night-vision devices, tactical secure communications systems, medical supplies and armored vehicles.
Ukraine accused of Russia attack -
Ukrainian helicopters have carried out a strike on a fuel storage facility in Russia's western town of Belgorod, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border, according to the local governor. Vyacheslav Gladkov says on Telegram the air strike was "carried out by two Ukrainian army helicopters, which entered Russian territory at a low altitude."Kyiv would not be drawn on whether it was behind the attack, with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba saying he did "not possess all the military information."
Peace talks resume
Peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials resume via video conference, but Moscow warns that the helicopter attack will hamper negotiations.
Moscow's chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky says on Telegram: "Our positions on Crimea and Donbas have not changed."
U.N. official to visit Moscow, Kyiv -
A top U.N. official is set to fly to Moscow Sunday, and then on to Kyiv to try and secure a "humanitarian ceasefire" in Ukraine, says the body's chief Antonio Guterres.
Both Russia and Ukraine have agreed to meet Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Guterres said.
'Russia preparing powerful strikes' -
Zelensky says Russia is preparing "powerful strikes" in the country's east and south, including Mariupol. Moscow said in peace talks earlier this week it would scale back attacks on the capital Kyiv and the northern city of Chernigiv.
Ukrainian troops regaining control
Ukraine's troops begin to regain control including around the capital Kyiv and in the southern region of Kherson -- the only significant city that Russia had managed to occupy. Russian troops "are continuing their partial retreat" from the north of Kyiv towards the Belarusian border, Ukraine's defence ministry says.
New gas war front
Russian President Vladimir Putin says "unfriendly" countries, including all EU members, must set up ruble accounts to pay for gas deliveries from April, or "existing contracts would be stopped."
30 countries tap oil reserves -
The 31-country International Energy Agency (IEA) agrees to tap national emergency oil reserves again in a bid to calm crude prices that have soared following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a record release of U.S. oil onto the market.
China warned
The EU's top officials have warned China's leaders at a summit not to help Russia wage war on Ukraine or sidestep Western sanctions, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen says.
"It would lead to a major reputational damage for China here in Europe," Von der Leyen says after video talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Chernobyl radiation -
Russian soldiers were likely exposed to radiation while they were occupying the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power station over the past four weeks, Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom says.
The power station, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, was taken back under the control of Ukrainian forces on Thursday.
Lavrov lauds India -
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov praises India's refusal to condemn the Ukraine invasion, stressing their "friendship" and saying Moscow and New Delhi will find ways to circumvent "illegal" Western sanctions and continue to trade.
Landmarks damaged
The U.N.'s cultural agency UNESCO says it has confirmed that at least 53 Ukrainian historical sites, religious buildings and museums have sustained damage during Russia's invasion of the country.
4.1 million refugees
The number of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia's war in their country has crossed 4.1 million, the United Nations says.

Zelensky: Retreating Russians Leave Many Mines Behind, Creating ‘Complete Disaster’
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned his people early Saturday that retreating Russian forces were creating “a complete disaster” outside the capital as they leave mines across “the whole territory,” even around homes and corpses.
He issued the warning as the humanitarian crisis in the encircled city of Mariupol deepened, with Russian forces blocking evacuation operations for the second day in a row, and the Kremlin accused the Ukrainians of launching a helicopter attack on a fuel depot on Russian soil. Ukraine denied responsibility for the fiery blast, but if Moscow’s claim is confirmed, it would be the war’s first known attack in which Ukrainian aircraft penetrated Russian airspace, according to The Associated Press. “Certainly, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of the talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, five weeks after Moscow began sending upwards of 150,000 of its own troops across Ukraine’s border. Russia continued withdrawing some of its ground forces from areas around Kyiv after saying earlier this week it would reduce military activity near the Ukrainian capital and the northern city of Chernihiv. “They are mining the whole territory. They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation. “There are a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers.”
He urged residents to wait to resume their normal lives until they are assured that the mines have been cleared and the danger of shelling has passed.
While the Russians kept up their bombardment around Kyiv and Chernihiv, Ukrainian troops exploited the pullback on the ground by mounting counterattacks and retaking a number of towns and villages. Still, Ukraine and its allies warned that the Kremlin is not de-escalating to promote trust at the bargaining table, as it claimed, but instead resupplying and shifting its troops to the country’s east. Those movements appear to be preparation for an intensified assault on the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region in the country's east, which includes Mariupol.
Zelenskyy warned of difficult battles ahead as the Russians redeploy troops. “We are preparing for an even more active defense,” he said. He did not say anything about the latest round of talks, which took place Friday by video. At a round of talks earlier in the week, Ukraine said it would be willing to abandon a bid to join NATO and declare itself neutral — Moscow’s chief demand — in return for security guarantees from several other countries. The invasion has left thousands dead and driven more than 4 million refugees from Ukraine. Mariupol, the shattered and besieged southern port city, has seen some of the worst suffering of the war. Its capture would be a major prize for Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving his country an unbroken land bridge to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014. Mariupol's fate could determine the course of the negotiations to end the war, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think tank Penta. “Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance," Fesenko said, “and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table.” The fall of Mariupol, he said, “will open the way to a peace agreement.”
On Friday, the International Committee for the Red Cross said it was unable to carry out an operation to bring civilians out of Mariupol by bus. It said a team had been on its way but had to turn back.
City authorities said the Russians were blocking access to Mariupol. “We do not see a real desire on the part of the Russians and their satellites to provide an opportunity for Mariupol residents to evacuate to territory controlled by Ukraine,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.He said Russian forces “are categorically not allowing any humanitarian cargo, even in small amounts, into the city.”
Around 100,000 people are believed left in the city, down from a prewar 430,000, and weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting have caused severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine. “We are running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that residents in Mariupol have suffered,” Red Cross spokesperson Ewan Watson said. On Thursday, Russian forces blocked a 45-bus convoy attempting to evacuate people from Mariupol and seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies bound for the city, Ukrainian authorities said.
Zelenskyy said more than 3,000 people were able to leave Mariupol on Friday. He said he discussed the humanitarian disaster with French President Emmanuel Macron by telephone and with the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, during her visit to Kyiv. “Europe doesn’t have the right to be silent about what is happening in our Mariupol,” Zelenskyy said. “The whole world should respond to this humanitarian catastrophe.”Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were fired late Friday from the Crimean Peninsula at the Odesa region on the Black Sea, regional leader Maksim Marchenko said. The Ukrainian military said the Iskander missiles were intended for critical infrastructure but did not hit their targets because of Ukraine’s air-defense forces. It was unclear where they hit. Marchenko said there were casualties, but he did not elaborate.
Odesa is Ukraine’s largest port and the headquarters of its navy. As for the fuel depot explosion, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said two Ukrainian helicopter gunships flew in extremely low and attacked the civilian oil storage facility on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the Ukraine border. The regional governor said two workers at the depot were wounded, but the Rosneft state oil company denied anyone was hurt. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said on Ukrainian television: “For some reason they say that we did it, but in fact this does not correspond with reality." In an interview with Fox, Zelenskyy refused to say whether Ukraine launched the attack.
Russia has reported cross-border shelling from Ukraine before, including an incident last week that killed a military chaplain, but not an incursion of its airspace. Amid the Russian pullback on the ground and its continued bombardment, Ukraine’s military said it had retaken 29 settlements in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. Russian forces in the northeast also continued to shell Kharkiv, and in the southeast sought to seize the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne as well as Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said. Meanwhile, Russia on Friday began its annual spring conscription, which aimed at rounding up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty. Russian officials say new recruits won’t be sent to the front lines or “hot spots,” but many young Russians are skeptical and fear they will be drawn into the war.  On the outskirts of Kyiv, where Russian troops have withdrawn, damaged cars lined the streets of Irpin, a suburban area popular with young families, now in ruins. Emergency workers carried elderly people on stretchers over a wrecked bridge to safety. Three wooden crosses next to a residential building that was damaged in a shelling marked the graves of a mother and son and an unknown man. A resident who gave her name only as Lila said she helped hurriedly bury them on March 5, just before Russian troops moved in. “They were hit with artillery and they were burned alive,” she said. An Irpin resident who gave his name only as Andriy said the Russians packed up their equipment and left on Tuesday. The next day, they shelled the town for close to an hour before Ukrainian soldiers retook it. “I don’t think this is over,” Andriy said. “They will be back.”

Logistics Hub in Russia Ablaze, Ukraine Denies Hitting it
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
Russian firefighters battled a blaze at one of Russia's main logistics hubs for its Ukraine war effort on Friday, after what Moscow described as a cross-border air raid by Ukrainian helicopters, the first of its kind in the five week war. Ukraine denied responsibility for the huge fire at the fuel depot in Belgorod, a Russian city near the border. Security camera footage of the depot, from a location verified by Reuters, showed a flash from what appears to be a missile fired from low altitude in the sky, followed by an explosion on the ground. The defense ministry said two Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters had been involved in the raid. Inside Ukraine, Ukrainian forces were moving into territory abandoned by withdrawing Russian troops in the north as peace talks resumed on Friday. But in the southeast, which Russia now says is the focus of its operation, the Red Cross said it had been barred from bringing aid to the besieged city of Mariupol. A Russian threat to cut off gas supplies to Europe unless buyers paid with roubles by Friday was averted for now, with Moscow saying it would not halt supplies until new payments are due later in April. Hours after the reported attack on the oil depot, an eyewitness reached by telephone in Belgorod, who asked not to be identified, said aircraft were flying overhead and there were continuous explosions from the direction of the border. "Something is happening. There are planes and constant explosions in the distance." Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said authorities were doing everything possible to reorganize the fuel supply chain and avoid disruption of energy supplies in Belgorod. The incident did not create comfortable conditions for the peace talks, he said. Ukraine's top security official said the Russian allegations it was behind the attack were not correct. Earlier the defense ministry declined to confirm or deny Ukrainian involvement. "Ukraine is currently conducting a defensive operation against Russian aggression on the territory of Ukraine, and this does not mean that Ukraine is responsible for every catastrophe on Russia's territory," said ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk.
Collecting the dead
After failing to capture a single major city in five weeks of war, Russia says it is pulling back from northern Ukraine and shifting its focus to the southeast. Russia has painted its draw-down in the north as a goodwill gesture for peace talks, but Ukraine and its allies say Russian forces have been forced to regroup after suffering heavy losses due to poor logistics and determined Ukrainian resistance. Regional governors in Kyiv and Chernihiv said Russians were pulling out of areas in both those provinces, some heading back across borders to Belarus and Russia. In Irpin, a commuter suburb northwest of Kyiv that had been one of the main battlegrounds for weeks, now firmly back in Ukrainian hands, volunteers and emergency workers carried the dead on stretchers out of the rubble. About a dozen bodies were zipped up in black plastic body bags, lined up on a street and loaded into vans. Lilia Ristich was sitting on a metal playground swing with her young son Artur. Most people had fled; they had stayed. "We were afraid to leave because they were shooting all the time, from the very first day. It was horrible when our house was hit. It was horrible," she said. She listed neighbors who had been killed - the man "buried there, on the lawn"; the couple with their 12-year-old child, all burned alive. "When our army came then I fully understood we had been liberated. It was happiness beyond imagination. I pray for all this to end and for them never to come back," she said. "When you hold a child in your arms it is an everlasting fear." Kyiv regional governor Oleksandr Pavlyuk said Russian forces had also withdrawn from Hostomel, another northwestern suburb which had seen intense fighting. The mayor of Bucha said his town, between Hostomel and Irpin, had also been recaptured. Further north, Russian forces have withdrawn from the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, although Ukrainian officials said some Russians were still in the radioactive "exclusion zone" around it. However, Kyiv's Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said it was not yet time for those who fled Kyiv to hurry home. "Huge" battles were still being fought to the north and east. "The risk of dying is pretty high, and that's why my advice to anyone who wants to come back is: Please, take a little bit more time," he said.
Red Cross aid blocked
Friday's peace talks, by video link, picked up from a meeting in Turkey on Tuesday, where Ukraine offered to accept neutral status, with international guarantees for its security. "We are preparing a response. There is some movement forward, above all in relation to the recognition of the impossibility of Ukraine" joining NATO, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. Putin sent troops on Feb. 24 for what he calls a "special military operation" to demilitarize Ukraine. Western countries call it an unprovoked war of aggression. Russia now says it has turned its focus to the Donbas, a southeastern area where it has backed separatists since 2014. Russia's biggest target in that area is Mariupol, where the United Nations believes thousands of civilians have died under a month-long siege, suffering relentless bombardment without access to food and water supplies, medicine or heat. The International Committee of the Red Cross said a convoy it had organized had turned back on Friday after "arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed" with its mission to evacuate civilians trapped in the city. Ukraine has blamed Russia for refusing to allow any aid to reach the city.

Nabil Fahmy Describes Egypt-US Ties as 'Vital’
Cairo - Rasha Ahmed/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 02/2022
Egypt’s former foreign minister Nabil Fahmy described the Egyptian-US relations as “vital” throughout modern history, citing Cairo's pioneering role at the regional level and Washington's leadership at the global level. His remarks came during the signing ceremony of his book dubbed “Epicenter of Events…Egypt’s Diplomacy in War, Peace and Transition” at the American University in Cairo, where he currently serves as the Dean of School of International Affairs and Public Policies. Speakers at the event included Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, former secretary- general of the Arab League and former Egyptian foreign minister Amr Moussa, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Mostafa El- Feki, Chairman and Founder of Dar El Shorouk Ibrahim al-Moallem, AUC President Ahmad Dallal, and other senior diplomatic figures. His book covers an Egyptian diplomatic era, with its regional and global interactions over four decades of his public service in the offices of the Egyptian Presidency as a career diplomat. He served as policy advisor to the Foreign Minister, ambassador to Japan, and was appointed as ambassador to the US for nine years before leading Egypt’s foreign policy as foreign minister in 2013-2014. Fahmy said he visited Moscow in 2013 and met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov at the time and told him that Cairo does not intend to replace the US with Russia but rather aims to expand the circle of its international partners and diversify its options to preserve the sovereignty of Egypt’s decisions.He stressed that “misunderstanding” in relations with major powers is more critical than differences in positions. Commenting on the peace process, Fahmy said the Palestinian cause is no longer on the international community’s agenda, even before the Russian war on Ukraine. He called for engaging multiple parties in sponsoring the global peace process, urging Palestinian parties to unite and learn a lesson from the Israelis who put aside their fundamental differences and united to topple Benjamin Netanyahu and keep him from forming a government.

Morocco’s Public Prosecution Office, BAM Sign MoU to Promote Financial Security
Rabat - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 2 April, 2022
The Public Prosecutor’s Office and Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM), Morocco’s central bank, signed on Friday a memorandum of understanding to establish a framework for collaboration to exchange data and expertise in areas of common interest, particularly promoting financial security. The MoU was inked by the Attorney General of the Court of Cassation and President of the Public Prosecutor's Office, El Hassan Daki, and Central Bank Governor Abdellatif Jouahri. It is part of the implementation of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF) recommendations, which call for bolstering coordination and cooperation mechanisms among institutions fighting against money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT). Under the MoU, both sides will cooperate to establish a computerized and secure exchange channel and create a National Forum to exchange views on issues related to the fight against AML/CFT. It provides for the protection of financial public order through proactive exchanges of qualitative and quantitative data related to the various forms of financial crime. Daki underlined BAM's pivotal role in boosting the financial integrity of financial operations, preserving banking and financial systems and fighting against all forms of infringement of financial security. He explained that based on its role to protect the public economic order and implement criminal policy in this area, the Prosecution “intends to make this partnership an added value that will contribute to enhancing the effectiveness in the fight against financial crime, money laundering and terrorist financing.” Jouahri, for his part, welcomed the strong ties between the Public Prosecutor's Office and BAM in terms of continuous cooperation and protection of the security of the national financial system. He said BAM serves as a key link in investigations and financial research ordered by the Public Prosecutor's Office. Jouahri further revealed that the project will come into effect in the few coming weeks.

Sudan to Resolve Tribal Conflicts in Darfur Militarily
Khartoum - Ahmad Youness/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 02/2022
The Sovereignty Council of Sudan ordered the use of military force to maintain order in the South Darfur following an increase in tensions. Clashes intensified in Darfur after the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) from the country, The Vice-President of the Transitional Sovereign Council, Lt-Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, issued strict directives to the government of South Darfur state and the state security committee to resolve tribal attacks militarily and "use an iron fist against anyone who violates the law."Dagalo issued directives to the acting governor of South Darfur state, Hamid Mohammed al-Tijani, and the state security committee to disperse and prevent any tribal gatherings by military force and immediately implement the emergency law to resolve tribal conflicts, according to SUNA.
The security authorities announced that military aircraft arrived at the areas of the tribal fighting between Rizeigat and Fallata in the south of the state's capital Nyala.
The state's security committee said it instructed the military forces to deal decisively with any gatherings in those areas and warned citizens against crowding. According to press sources, the conflict erupted after gunmen attacked a lieutenant of the Rapid Support Forces, who was coming from gold mines on the border, shot him dead, and stole his belongings. The state said in a statement that the authorities tasked a joint force of police, armed forces, and rapid support forces with tracking down the perpetrators. Investigations led the authorities to an area of the Fallata tribe before a group of the dead's relatives joined them. Negotiations failed to resolve the issue between the parties, and the two groups clashed, resulting in the death and injury of dozens. According to UN statistics, Darfur has witnessed clashes between government forces and armed movements since 2003, which killed over 300,000 people.
The government is accused of causing the conflict, and several leaders of the former regime are facing international arrest warrants on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The UN created one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world, UNAMID. However, it left the region at the end of its mandate on December 31, 2020, but the Sudanese authorities have not succeeded in stopping the fighting. The conflict in Darfur is between ethnic groups, which accuse government military parties of being involved in it. The Juba Peace Agreement, signed between the armed movements and the Sudanese government in Darfur, failed to end the bloodshed. The security situation has been exacerbated by conflicts over resources, such as gold, between locals and the Rapid Support Forces.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 02-03/2022
EU Vs. China: Is There Still a Global Marketplace?
Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
Globalization felt like it wGlobalization felt like it was going into reverse long before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. Donald Trump’s election, Brexit and Covid-19 were all flagged as milestones on the path back toward more protectionism and higher costs for multinationals.
Yet the speed and severity of the slide into war and its fallout have clearly shocked Europe’s political and corporate establishment. Strategic plans and long-term investments are being torn up, leaving behind factories and staff. Carmaker Renault SA has halted Russian operations, as has brewer Carlsberg AS. At around 10% of revenue in both cases, this is a lesson that will not be quickly forgotten. And while the focus is on Russia, boardroom angst is also stretching to that other emerging-market El Dorado – China – as its ties to Moscow are scrutinized. With relations between Beijing and Brussels already in deep freeze, and a China-European Union summit over a stalled investment agreement on Friday unlikely to improve matters, preparing for a post-war economy increasingly means taking on a Cold War view of the world.
Corporate pressures related to the geopolitics of China have always been around “targeted” decoupling rather than anything more radical — understandable, considering China is the world’s second-largest economy and is among the EU’s top trade partners — but hopes of a thaw are fading. “The rethinking of business ties has already happened in Russia, and I expect it to happen in China,” says Noah Barkin, of research firm Rhodium Group. While Europe has in the past been deeply split over how to deal with China expanding investments in Eastern and Southern Europe, it is likely to put up an increasingly united political front. Germany is reiterating the European view of China as a “systemic rival”: Beijing’s support for Russia and warnings to the West on Taiwan are adding to long-running grievances over its geopolitical influence and acquisitions inside the EU.
And just as Russia has found it harder to split the West, Beijing has pushed Europe closer together through episodes like its boycott of Lithuania after Taiwan opened a representative office in Vilnius. With China eager to keep the door of European trade open, Friday’s summit will be a test of the EU’s ability to wield its political cohesion and economic heft, says Philippe Le Corre, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Firms are still keen to highlight China as a strategic market, but some behavior is shifting. Volkswagen AG, which makes nearly 40% of annual sales in China and as recently as Christmas was calling for more China-EU cooperation, is re-thinking its supply chain with “resilience” in mind. Executives talk of reducing business reliance on China by expanding investments in the US and duplicating Ukraine production in countries like Poland and Romania, the WSJ reported this week.
Beyond war, Covid-19 is an obvious catalyst as Shanghai slides into lockdown and forces the likes of Volkswagen to halt some production. But Ukraine has accelerated things, driving a stake through old ways of doing business. Russia is the visible tip of the iceberg of vulnerable profits in authoritarian nations. European firms that began their investments over swigs of vodka with Vladimir Putin, imagining new markets brought in from the cold through trade, today lack components and customers.
Few firms would give up plants and profits willingly, let alone at such speed. Executives who took pride in a global workforce now recount tales of internal staff political divides from Russia and Ukraine to China. Sticking to the explicit contours of international sanctions or contract law hasn’t pacified tensions or boycott calls. After a rocket strike destroyed one of French home-improvement chain Leroy Merlin’s stores in Kyiv, Ukrainian staff called on the firm to stop sales in Russia (It hasn’t). The world map of corporate conquest now looks like a game of Risk.
Executives are being taught to prepare for extreme scenarios, such as a halt to globalization that’s more abrupt than feared. If it comes to pass, the new order could see two blocs that trade more internally than with each other. The upside for Europe might be a more integrated union, and less dependence on cheap gas. Robust and resilient supply chains would be a strategic advantage. Ties with the US would be deepened. But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Re-shoring jobs, running alternative supply chains and quitting cheap sources of power bring costs, which are already being seen in sky-high European inflation. Telling companies and consumers to cut back doesn’t just mean adding an extra sweater but also reducing investment. These are choices Europe hoped it wouldn’t have to ever make, given its own ambitions for a seat at the superpower table. Businesses are preparing for the worst, however — just in case.

It Would Be Folly for China to Bust Russia Sanctions
Tim Culpan/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
There are many ways a Chinese company might sidestep US sanctions and provide technology products to Russia. It could hide American imports behind third-party suppliers, implement layers of shell companies to obfuscate source and destination, or create elaborate schemes to hide data from forensic accountants. They’d be foolish for trying, and Beijing itself would likely step in to stop them. The US and its allies were swift to act after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington led a coalition of more than 30 countries that halted the supply of US goods and services, or those that use American technology or production equipment. A separate package of financial restrictions cut the nation off from global banking systems. Russia can cope for a little while, but if its war in Ukraine drags on and sanctions remain in place then it’ll eventually run out of the components needed to not only build weapons and military vehicles, but run servers and networks used by the civilian population. Chinese companies may be tempted to fill the void. Beijing and Moscow seem close — there is “no ceiling” for their cooperation, China said this week — and the two countries are united in their disdain for what they see as Western imperialism. Helping out a friend by shipping some US chips, or computers that contain them, might seem like a friendly gesture and possibly even a lucrative one. In addition to the aforementioned methods of masking its supply chain, a major Chinese corporation could also mislead its bankers, use external staffing companies to employ engineers in the target country, or simply claim that a subsidiary was no more than a business partner and thus not subject to US embargoes. We know about these various sanctions-busting schemes because they’re exactly how electronics companies ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies Inc. skirted restrictions on sales to Iran. But they got caught, and the punishments were severe. In March 2017, ZTE was hit with a $1.2 billion fine and cut off from buying the US components necessary to make many of its products. The company was forced to suspend operations, fire its board, and replace its management team. Revenue plummeted and the company has struggled to recover ever since.
Huawei this week showed just how damaging sanctions can be. Banned from buying the crucial communications and computing chips needed to power the latest 5G phones and networks, the Shenzhen-based company was forced to reduce production. The result was a 29% drop in sales last year. Even domestic revenue fell 31%, highlighting the simple reality that you cannot sell what you can’t make. Any Chinese executive running the risk-return calculation on skirting the Russian sanctions needs to remember two things: The US is getting very good at catching violators, and the punishment could hurt not only that company but China as a whole. President Joe Biden was blunt when he reiterated a warning this week to President Xi Jinping that “he’d be putting himself at significant jeopardy” if he helped his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. China has rejected suggestions that it would try to bypass the embargoes, but has made clear it’s opposed to them. “There has been unnecessary damage to the normal trade exchange with Russia, including between China and Russia,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular news briefing in Beijing this week.
Notable about this round of sanctions is the large coalition Washington has built to enforce them. It now has dozens of governments that have been updated on the rules and what to look out for. They will in turn serve as its eyes and ears around the world. In Asia, briefings have been held with industry groups and chambers of commerce in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and China. Even if it chooses not to be a willing informant, Beijing too knows the rules, with representatives of China’s Ministry of Commerce meeting their counterparts in Washington soon after the embargo was announced. The US also has export-control attaches stationed in foreign countries, and companies themselves are likely to be snitches if they feel others in the supply chain are not following the rules, Deputy Assistant Commerce Secretary Matthew Borman said.
Thus, not only are the chances of getting caught higher than ever, but Beijing has a vested interest in ensuring no one breaks the rules. Bans apply to components and hardware, as well as the software and equipment required to produce them. So while China is working hard to wean itself off chips made by Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp., it still needs software from Synopsis Inc. and Cadence Design Systems Inc. as well as tools from Applied Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp. Any product made using inputs from these companies is subject to the bans.
It could be more than a decade before Beijing can completely replace the entire design and manufacturing supply chain; losing access now would be disastrous. And that’s a real possibility. Should anyone be found breaking Russian sanctions, and Beijing seen aiding and abetting them, Washington may be forced to broaden its punishments — instead of merely forbidding sales to Russia using US technology, Chinese businesses could also be cut off. That would set China’s drive for technology independence back a long way. The smart move for Beijing now is to comply with the sanctions and make sure its companies do, too. Helping out a friend, and making a quick buck, isn’t worth sacrificing the nation’s long-term plan to become a global technology superpower that can stand on its own two feet.

Putin Would Be Crazy to Cut Off Europe’s Gas. Or Desperate.
Liam Denning/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
A fairly common view expressed since Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed his forces on Ukraine is that he has come unhinged. If he ever follows through on his threats to cut off natural gas supply to Europe, I might be inclined to agree.
Invading Ukraine is a horrific act, and also entirely irrational. Even if Russia’s troops were performing better, the price Russia will pay in economic terms alone seems to vastly outweigh the benefits of embarking on a lengthy and likely draining occupation of a large neighboring country.
Yet Putin and others around him no doubt see it differently. From their perspective, Russia is a global power surrounded by outright adversaries and frenemies like China. It has vast mineral wealth and a large military but also suffers from endemic economic and demographic weaknesses. The imperative to expand its borders as a means to defend them stretches back at least as far as Catherine the Great. Plus, Putin has faced few consequences for his prior adventurism. Throw in an erroneous assumption that all Russian speakers yearn for the motherland, and going for broke now may well seem like a viable political choice.
Clearly, the war isn’t going according to plan for the Kremlin. The West has also displayed more resolve than the reaction to Putin’s earlier excursions signaled.
These setbacks, combined with Putin’s worldview, help explain why he would risk even more damage to Russia by threatening to halt natural gas sales.
This week, the threat came in the guise of a reiterated demand that European buyers pay for gas in rubles rather than euros or dollars. There is a monetary angle to this, forcing buyers to sell hard currency and buy the battered ruble. But the main motivation is to remind those buyers who is heating their homes — and who controls the tap. As it is, the Kremlin announced Thursday a convoluted plan whereby customers effectively keep paying in euros and dollars, but via designated accounts in Russia that convert that to rubles. Putin, it seems, wasn’t quite ready to follow through on his ultimatum.
Nor should he be. Like the nuclear weapons he has brandished rhetorically, an actual cutoff would entail some mutually assured destruction. Putin’s war has pushed the European Union to radically rethink its long-term energy relationship with Russia, one that has endured for half a century, even during the Cold War. The incentive remains for both sides not to rock the boat too much. Europe still depends on Siberian gas, which is why it hasn’t sanctioned it. And Russia still relies on payments for it. Indeed, gas payments have risen in importance, according to Thane Gustafson, author of a history of the gas relationship with Europe. His rough math suggests that the share of gas in Russia’s hydrocarbon export revenue — which accounts for more than half of exports overall — has risen to half amid all this disruption, up from a typical level of one-fifth. He adds:
The irony is that one of the bigger investments under Putin has been the development of gas infrastructure to serve the European market for another generation. Yamal, Blue Stream, Nord Stream. All of that is now in ruins.
The economic and social impact in Europe of a prolonged cutoff, including the likelihood of a deep recession, would mark a big escalation of the conflict. Tempting as it may be to see a cutoff as just tit-for-tat following the sanctions on Russia, that ignores the fact that the original “tat” was the brutal and ongoing attack on Ukraine. In any case, if Putin does actually cut off supply, with all that entails, it perhaps should be read as a sign of desperation. Or that whatever method there may have been in his madness, madness has become the method.

India Shouldn't Fall For Putin's Rupees-For-Rubles Deal
Andy Mukherjee/Bloomberg//April 02/2022
India wants to go on trading with Russia for reasons that are more practical than to swipe at the West. For one thing, New Delhi relies heavily on Moscow for defense procurement, a dependency that will be hard to shed overnight with new suppliers. For another, Russia is reportedly offering India a $35 discount per barrel on the pre-war price of flagship Urals grade oil. Cheap energy imports can help Prime Minister Narendra Modi put a lid on rising domestic discontent with high pump prices. The stance won't exactly please the Americans. However, it's no more opportunistic than Europe continuing to buy Russian gas more than a month into President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. India may still end up testing US and European Union tolerance if it agrees to rupee-ruble trade using Russia's communication channel SPFS to move funds. That direct challenge to Washington will not be in New Delhi's own longer-term interests. SPFS is what Moscow has proposed to the Modi government, according to Bloomberg News, as a way to deliberately short-circuit SWIFT, the messaging system used by banks to move money across borders.
SWIFT is a critical surveillance tool: Global banks can be slapped with hefty fines if transaction messages show the involvement of a sanctioned entity. Losing access to SWIFT would itself be a punishment because of the system's ubiquity. Additionally, if it's a dollar payment and the settlement occurs in New York- under an arrangement known as CHIPS- then the US can inflict more serious damage, including putting offenders in jail. In the long run, Washington has to reimagine this policing power by supplementing- or even supplanting- the reigning trinity of SWIFT, CHIPS and the US currency with something better and faster, such as a digital dollar designed for use by the entire world. Right now, though, President Joe Biden has to thwart attempts by geopolitical rivals to smash the status quo before he has had a chance to define, and lead, the post-SWIFT era in global payments. If the world's 11th largest economy succeeds in bending sanctions, then China, the second biggest, will surely be able to break them at will. It's easy to see why Moscow may want India to bypass SWIFT. Access to the Brussels-based network has been cut off for key Russian lenders, with the exception of Sberbank PJSC and Gazprombank, which the Europeans need to conduct energy trades. The question is, what does New Delhi get in return for this accommodation, besides cheap oil and military hardware like batteries for the S-400 air defense system? Nothing much, actually. If anything, it has much to lose.
Deals like this are often short-lived. They lack the deep liquidity provided primarily by the dollar, a medium of exchange and store of value all counterparties freely accept- unless they happen to be in Russia, where even the central bank has lost access to much of its foreign reserves. Without liquidity, trade shrivels up. For instance, India bought oil from Iran under a US sanctions waiver by depositing rupees in Indian banks. Tehran used these funds to buy food and medicine from India. However, once the waiver lapsed, India had to stop importing Iranian oil. The balances in the accounts dwindled, and now Indian firms won't sell Tehran rice, sugar or tea because they may not get paid.
At least the trade with Iran was entirely in rupees. SPFS is mainly a system for domestic Russian use. Since it's being proposed in cross-border trade, we can assume that Moscow will provide messaging log-ins to a couple of Indian banks. They may open accounts with lenders in Russia, and the favor would be returned. Russian exporters will very likely get rupees paid into their banks' accounts in India. Once transfer messages move on SPFS from New Delhi to Moscow, the Russian banks' head offices will give these exporters, principally state-linked firms, rubles. Messages and claims will flow the other way for Russian imports from India. The exchange rate will be important. Back when India conducted commerce with the Soviet Union along similar lines, an "extremely complex system of currency and commodity coefficients" used to be at play behind the scenes to determine how much a ruble was worth, according to a March 1990 paper by the Indian economist Pronab Sen. Soon, however, the USSR collapsed, India got embroiled in a balance-of-payment crisis, and suddenly both parties wanted what neither could print: dollars.
Even if bureaucrats leave the exchange rate to markets this time, it's unclear how financial claims arising from trade will eventually be balanced: India imported almost $9 billion worth of goods from Russia last year, but exported only a little more than $3 billion. At the national levels, the numbers involved may be peanuts; but they will be significant for the banks facilitating this trade. If the EU succumbs to Putin's ultimatum to "unfriendly" states and lets its gas-buyers pay in rubles, using accounts at Russian banks, there will be nothing exceptional about India doing something similar. But to take the lead in adopting a brand-new institutional arrangement with Moscow makes little sense from a geopolitical perspective. The US considers a democratic India to be its potential ally in its superpower rivalry with China. It's not yet a deep relationship, and requires trust-building on both sides. It's one thing for New Delhi to abstain from condemning Putin's aggression at the United Nations, and quite another for it to abet his regime in avoiding sanctions. Agreeing to open a separate financial email channel with Moscow will make India look unreliable to far bigger economies whose markets it needs to move up from a low-middle-income status to high-middle. This transition is much more vital to its national interests than a $35 discount on oil or a favorable deal on weaponry.

How Putin Misunderstood Rumsfeld
Amir Taheri/Ashark Al Awsat/April 02/2022
Apart from its political impact the international order the war that Russia has launched against Ukraine contains countless features that should interest military analysts and planners across the globe.
This is the first time since World War II that the Russian army (formerly Soviet Red Army) is tested on the battlefield against a medium-sized adversary in a classical war.
In the 1950s, the Red Army fought border wars with Communist China and managed to annex large chunks of territory across the border. But that was not a full-scale war as a much weaker China, then also devoid of nuclear weapons, shied away from fighting back in a meaningful way.
Also in the 1950s the Red Army’s tanks rolled into Warsaw and Budapest to crush unarmed anti-Communist uprisings. In 1968 the same scenario was played out in Prague where Russian tanks rolled over the Czech revolution.
Russia’s 10-year war in Afghanistan was also atypical. The Red Army was “invited” to intervene by the Communist regime in Kabul and was not fighting against a classical army. The Russians mainly relied on their air force, bombing civilian areas, while the boots-on-the ground part was assigned to the Afghan army and its Uzbek militia.
The two wars that the Red Army waged in Chechnya were also one-sided affairs as Russian fire-power gave the invaders a massive superiority. Although they lasted several years, the two wars did not provide a proper test of Russian capabilities because the adversary lacked adequate weapons and was forced to fight a cottage-industry form of guerrilla warfare.
In Georgia, Russia chose a limited objective: annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stopped the war before the much weaker and under-gunned Georgian army could reorganize and fight back.
In Syria, Russia employed massive air power to bomb targets using the remnants of the Syrian army, Iran’s mercenaries from Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and elements of the Quds Force from Iran to provide boots on the ground.
Thus the war in Ukraine provides the first real opportunity to assess the Russian military’s performance in actual combat and for an appreciable length of time.
No doubt, NATO analysts and planners are having a whale of a time studying every detail of this war, which provides a treasure of information about Russian weaponry, strategy, tactics, command-and-control systems, and military doctrine.
The way Vladimir Putin, as commander-in-chief has conducted this war is puzzling.
He began by calling it “special operations” so that he would not have to obtain the consent of the Russian parliament (Duma) to wage war.
This may have been because he expected a quick victory and did not wish to share the glory with anyone.
Putin also refused to name a commander-in-chief of the forces unleashed against Ukraine. This is the first time in war history that the general in over-all command is not identified let alone glorified. This time we have no dashing Field Marshal Zhukov marching to Berlin, let alone the gout-stricken General Kutuzov shining in Borodino
Putin’s strategic thinking has been chaotic to say the least and, because he consults with no one, it is hard to discern a decision-making pattern related to reality.
He started to assemble large forces close to Ukrainian borders with Russia and Belarus, not to mention the Donetsk and Luhansk enclaves, with the claim that nothing but a demonstration of force through “military exercises” was intended.
Because he did not reveal his real intentions, his military subordinates seem to have assembled a potpourri of forces from special police units to raw recruits from Siberia and Tatarstan to professional killers from Chechnya.
The assembled forces were told they were to invade Ukraine only a day before it happened.
What Putin seems to have ignored is the importance of rotation in war. Having assembled over 200,000 troops he seems not have realized that he would need three times as many in reserve to ensure orderly rotation on the battlefield.
For every soldier in combat, an army has another one that is resting, recovering from wounds and battle fatigue, or simply retraining, and a third who is getting prepared to step in at a moment’s notice.
Every chunk of land you capture, you need to leave some men behind to cleanse and control it, thus, reducing the forces you have for advancing.
Putin’s failure in that domain may explain the reason for slowing down the invasion and the loss of some captured territory to Ukrainians.
Another surprise is the Russian army’s lack of a backbone provided by professional non-commissioned officers (NCOs). This is an army in which officers are in direct leadership of the rank and file, most of whom seem to be ill-trained conscripts.
Also surprising is Putin’s reliance on largely antiquated tanks, gas-guzzlers of the first order, that require complicated logistics for refueling and repair.
He also ignored that, at this time of the year, Ukrainian soil is turned into an ocean of mud and a trap for tanks. (Hitler’s generals learned that in 1941when their Operation Barbarossa was stuck in Ukrainian mud for weeks.)
Another surprise is that Putin’s army is using antiquated systems and networks that allow US spy satellites to hear all Russian communications and pass the gist to the Ukrainians. This may partly explain why Russian losses, including eight generals, have been so heavy.
It is hard to establish the number of Russian losses.
But even if we go by conservative estimates based on Russian official leaks, Putin’s army has suffered a 20 percent loss in killed and wounded. This is twice the maximum accepted in classic military doctrines that consider a 10 percent loss, known as decimation in military jargon, as the upper limit of tolerance beyond which you either seek a ceasefire or change strategy.
Putin’s invasion army has been acting as an orchestra without a conductor and lacking a notes-sheet.
It is difficult to know why so many disparate operations are started and then abandoned or why infrastructure that might be needed by Russian forces in later stages, not to mention putative victory, are randomly destroyed.
Also puzzling is the use of the letter Z to identify Russian tanks and armored vehicles. Because Ukrainians use the same Soviet-made tanks and vehicles, the Z identification enables them to know not to attack their own side. More diabolically, it enables the Ukrainians to put a Z on their own tanks and vehicles and sow confusion in Russian ranks through surprise attacks. Even more puzzling is the latest Russian decision to dig trenches in various areas and mine several strategic roads as if they were preparing for a World War I remake.
Putin presents his Ukrainian adventure as “active defense”, the misunderstood Russian version of Donald Rumsfeld’s “preventive war” shibboleth.
In practice, however, rather than preventing a war he has triggered one which he seems unable to control.