Monthly Archives: May 2022

One of the few welcome surprises of Putins invasion of Ukraine was the speed and apparent effectiveness of western governments imposition of conventional sanctions on his country. In short order, half of Russias $600bn foreign reserves held in western financial institutions was immediately frozen. The country was expelled from Swift, the vast messaging network that banks use to transfer money across the world. PayPal, Visa and Mastercard abruptly ceased to work in Russia. There was an immediate ban on technology transfers from the west. Then there was the sudden sanctioning of Putin-friendly oligarchs and those who service them in London, though Ben Elliot, the Tory co-chair and Quintessentially, the concierge service for the super-rich that he runs, seem to have been exempted from the strictures.

Trebles all round, then? Only up to a point: some of the successes involve measures that in other contexts are deeply toxic. Russian troops, for example, have been nabbing high-end John Deere tractors in Ukraine and shipping them back to Mother Russia. But when the lucky beneficiaries of these wondrous machines attempt to start them up, they discover that John Deere has remotely bricked them ie turned them into multi-ton paperweights. Which is why many western farmers detest John Deere. Having paid a fortune for their new tractors, they find that they are not allowed to repair them themselves and any attempt to download bootleg software to diagnose malfunctions may get them into legal trouble on intellectual-property and user-agreement grounds.

Similarly, Ukraine has been using another toxic technology facial recognition to identify dead Russian soldiers. Forbes magazine reported in March that Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation, had confirmed on his Telegram channel that the country was using the software to find the social media accounts of deceased Russian soldiers, allowing authorities to contact their friends and families. The aim, he said, is to dispel misinformation surrounding the war in the country and, specifically, Russian claims that it is just a special operation with few losses. He did not specify which particular technology had been used, but his department later confirmed to Forbes that it was Clearview AI, which the American firm had provided to the Ukrainian government free of charge.

So whats the problem? Only that Clearview AI, a company backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, among others, is pretty controversial back home. In February, a group of US senators and representatives issued a call to federal agencies to avoid using its particularly dangerous technology, which poses unique threats to Black communities, other communities of colour and immigrant communities.

Thus technology taketh away and technology also giveth, as the Old Testament might put it. But the tech that is suddenly on everyones mind in relation to sanctions and Russia is blockchain, the software that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and the like. These currencies have been proliferating like wildfire for some years, and I long ago lost count of them all, but in essence they all have one thing in common: theyre decentralised payment systems that can enable anyone to transfer value to someone else anywhere. And because every part of the process is heavily encrypted and unsupervised by any authoritative institution such as a central bank, cryptocurrencies are clearly useful for money laundering and for evading sanctions.

Whatever else it is, Russia seems to be a crypto-savvy country. An official government estimate puts local holdings of cryptocurrencies at $200bn, which is, at a guess, 12% of the world total. Another survey, by a Singapore-based crypto payment gateway, concluded that 17 million Russians own cryptocurrencies and that upwards of half a million computer programmers work in the industry. And Russia is currently third in terms of Bitcoin network-mining activity apparently with government backing; Putin has called for the use of surplus energy for crypto mining.

Given that, it would be surprising if the regime did not have a strategy for using cryptocurrencies as a way of dodging or undermining sanctions. This would be a viable option for individual Russian citizens seeking to trade with others outside the country (or even to protect their savings at a time when the rouble has crashed). But for an economy the size of Russia, crypto transactions on the scale required to offset the impact of sanctions would be much too large to conceal from western governments. For once, theres no technical fix for the problem that Putin has created for his country and for the world.

Majestic mealThe Queens Touch is an unmissable 1996 New Yorker essay by Paul Theroux.

President takes the podiumJoe Bidens speech to the annual White House correspondents dinner. A few good jokes, too.

The shipping newsA Yacht Owners Worst Nightmare is an interesting piece by Olga Khazan in the Atlantic on the tricky business of seizing oligarchs yachts.

Read more from the original source:

How Russia and Ukraine are finding new ways to use tech in the war - The Guardian

SALZBURG, Austria Finland and Sweden need to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now while Russia's Putin is focused on Ukraine, the alliance's former chief told CNBC.

The two Nordic countries have been considering joining NATO in the wake of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Becoming NATO members would represent a sharp U-turn in their policies towards the Kremlin after years of taking a neutral approach. Finland and Sweden are due to announce their plans in the coming days.

"As far as Finland and Sweden are concerned, I think there's a window of opportunity for [the] two countries to join, exactly now because Putin is preoccupied elsewhere. He can't do anything about it," Anders Rasmussen, former NATO secretary general, told CNBC Saturday.

Russia has repeatedly stated it's against NATO's enlargement and it has named this as was one of the reasons for its invasion of Ukraine.

In addition, the Kremlin has also said if Stockholm and Helsinki were to join the alliance, then it would have to "rebalance the situation."

It is unclear how the Kremlin would react if both nations move ahead with their memberships.

However, their accession would lead to doubling the current NATO-Russia border and significantly add more military power to the alliance.

NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has previously said both nations would be warmly welcomed.

But it could take "some months" before their memberships were to become official, Rasmussen told CNBC.

"Even if it's considered an urgent procedure, and it is, it will take some months because you have to go through 30 Parliaments before it can be ratified all over NATO," he said.

NATO currently has 30 members, including the United States.

"It will take some months and during that period both Finland and Sweden could potentially be exposed to Russian intimidation or even threats, and that's why we have to guarantee their security," Rasmussen said, "as if they were already members of NATO."

These security guarantees would have to come from individual members of NATO as the alliance's famous Article 5 which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack against all would only apply to Finland and Sweden once their applications were ratified by all the 30 NATO members.

Now, it is quite clear that being a member of NATO means Article Five, and being just friends of the United States does not.

Ivan Krastev

Political Analyst

Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has led to a shift in defense policy in Europe. Countries have announced a lot more spending on their military capabilities, have sent weapons to Ukraine and in the case of Finland and Sweden it has led to more public support for joining NATO.

"You should also understand the Swedish and the Finnish [potential] decisions was a message that there is no neutral countries on the border of Russia. And this is a new reality, even during the Cold War, it was not like this," Ivan Krastev, a political analyst, told CNBC Friday.

"Before [Russia's invasion of Ukraine] it was not clear what is the difference between member of NATO and just being friends of the United States. Now, it is quite clear that being a member of NATO means Article Five, and being just friends of the United States does not. And this is why Finland and Sweden should move from friends to members," he added.

Read more here:

Finland, Sweden need to move now on NATO while Putin is preoccupied with Ukraine, former secretary general says - CNBC

They were tears of happiness at first, says 23-year-old Oksana Balandina of her first dance with her new husband, captured on video by a nurse and now shared across the world.

Six weeks ago, Oksana stood on a mine as she was returning home with her then partner, Viktor Vasyliv, also 23, after venturing out to collect some supplies for elderly neighbours on their street in Lysychansk, an east Ukrainian town on the frontline of the war with Russia.

Oksana, a paediatric nurse, and mother of Diana, 5, and Illia, 7, was, according to medics, fortunate to survive the blast, but she lost both her legs and four fingers on her left hand. Since then she has had moments of utter despair, screaming out that she wants to die, says Viktor, a carpenter, as he crouches by her wheelchair.

Today, however, drinking a takeaway coffee and taking in the sun outside Lvivs municipal hospital, Oksana quick to smile says she feels stronger and grateful, as she dusts some tree blossom off her husbands cheek.

In part, she says, that is due to an outpouring of support from strangers around the world touched by that moment two weeks ago in the hospital ward when her husband gently lifted his bride, dressed in white, and held her tight as she buried her face in his shoulder and they swayed to tinny music playing on a laptop.

Oksana posted the video on the social media site TikTok and she has since put up other short pieces of film of her trying to keep fit to music since the incident. They have been viewed many thousands of times, provoking the vital comments of support that Viktor says his wife has so treasured during these hard weeks.

The dance was a complete surprise, she says. We had come back to the hospital from the registry office and Natalia and Olesia [hospital volunteers] had brought a dress and a laptop for music. Natalia said, What kind of wedding is that without a dance?

It was pure joy and happiness, she adds of her response to Viktor picking her up. But then the realisation came. Its not how I wanted my first dance to be.

There have, of course, been innumerable other difficult moments, not least explaining the injuries to her children, who are staying with their grandfather in the Poltava region to the east.

Oksana and Viktor, who are waiting to be taken for rehabilitation at a specialist hospital somewhere in the European Union, have not been able to see the children for weeks. But the memory of that day, and the precariousness of life in Ukraine today, is itself hard to get over, the couple say. The retelling only emphasises Oksanas extraordinary strength.

We were coming back home and theres a stream at the back of our garden, so we wanted to make a shortcut and took a dirt road, says Oksana. We knew this way very well. I was in front and my husband and friend behind, and I saw there was a missile not far from us, I turned towards Viktor, I yelled, Honey, look. He looked at me and I just suddenly flew into the air, I heard a loud noise in my ears. I looked at my feet and they werent there. Just bones.

Viktor ran to her. He was breathless, caught in a panic, he says. In my head I thought it was over for a moment, he recalls. Then she started to move; she yelled to me to call the ambulance. But they refused to come close because they were afraid of the mines. They said it needed to be cleared.

The couples friend called Oksanas stepfather on the phone. So we carried her with her stepdad and our friend, we carried her to the ambulance. Oksana, despite all the shock she was in, was in charge of everything. She pushed me and I went out of shock, she was the one who told me to call the ambulance. I dont know when would I have come to my senses if she didnt tell me. Then she helped the paramedic.

Oksana explains: The paramedic was a young inexperienced girl apparently she had never seen anything like this. So I helped her. I knew my veins better. I asked for oxygen but they didnt have any. When we came to the hospital, I saw my mom. I saw her and cried Mummy, and I lost consciousness.

Oksana does recall brief snippets of the conversations of the medics working to save her life. When we were on the way to the hospital, the paramedics were saying, If only she was able to make it to the hospital. When we came to the hospital, the doctors were saying, If only she was able to make it through the surgery. But when the anaesthesia wore off and I came back to my senses, I realised thats it. I have nothing. I was panicking, I didnt want to live, I didnt want my children to see me like this.

Oksana was transferred from Lysychansk to the city of Dnipro, 200 miles farther west. The doctors did an amazing job. They helped me a lot, Oksana says. I realised my life was not over. I need to move on and I need to move on for the sake of my children.

Viktor adds: She was very depressed she yelled she didnt want to live. But in Dnipro there were amazing rehabilitation doctors. They inspired Oksana. And then there was TikTok. She started to post some videos, got a lot of positive comments, and it helped to boost her morale.

Viktor proposed on the 27 April and they were married the next day.

I just posted these videos just for myself, Oksana says, I didnt think about becoming popular I just wanted to document the process of recovery. How the rehabilitation goes and later, when I will hopefully have prosthetics, I will learn how to use them.

Viktor adds: It helps her. Whenever she has a minute, she is trying to read comments to her videos. She smiles, she is happier.

Oksana says she is determined to rebuild her life and continue her career in medicine in the field of rehabilitation. And to show to the others with my own example that you cant give up, that everything is possible and you should keep living no matter what.

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How hospital wedding dance restored Ukraine bombing victims will to live - The Guardian

To Western audiences, Russias invasion of Ukraine has unfolded as a series of brutal attacks punctuated by strategic blunders. But on Russian television, those same events were spun as positive developments, an interpretation aided by a rapid jumble of opinion and falsehoods.

Much of Russian news media is tightly controlled by the Kremlin, with state-run television working as a mouthpiece for the government. Critical reporting about the war has been criminalized.

Russian televisions convoluted and sometimes contradictory narratives about the war are not solely intended to convince viewers that their version of events is true, disinformation experts say. Just as often, the goal is to confuse viewers and sow distrust so audiences are not sure what to believe.

The New York Times reviewed more than 50 hours of television footage to show how the war was being presented to Russians through the countrys news media.

Russia faced a significant loss when its flagship missile cruiser, the Moskva, sank after being damaged in mid-April. Ukrainian officials said the ship was struck with two Neptune anti-ship missiles. The New York Times reported this week that the United States provided intelligence that helped Ukraine locate and strike the ship. Independent Russian news media based outside the country reported that about 40 men died and an additional 100 were injured.

Moskva, a Russian missile cruiser, moored in a Ukrainian port in the Black Sea in 2013. Reuters

On Russian state-controlled media, though, news programs downplayed Ukraines strategic attack with a narrative that has shifted over time.

At first, Russias Defense Ministry said the ship was damaged after a fire on board had detonated ammunition. The ship was being towed back to shore and the crew was safely evacuated, the report continued.

Russian media later reported that the ship had sunk while being towed during a storm. A segment also showed a lineup of healthy Russian soldiers, describing them as the Moskvas crew, alive and well.

Ship described as sinking in a storm.

Russian soldiers, reportedly from the Moskva.

For the Kremlin, the loss adds to its growing challenges in conveying a positive impression of the war at home. While Russian news media has repeatedly dismissed or downplayed Ukrainian civilian casualties, Russias own casualties and the grieving families left in their wake are harder for the Kremlin to ignore.

Russia acknowledged the overall death toll for the first time in March, making clear to Russian viewers that the war would involve domestic losses as well. But even those reports underestimated the Russian casualties, according to U.S. experts. Though it is difficult to get exact casualty figures during a war, Western intelligence agencies estimate Russian military losses could be as high as 10,000 killed and 30,000 wounded.

As Russian forces retreated from the region surrounding Kyiv, graphic images circulated showing bodies of dead civilians lying in the streets. In Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, some civilians were found with their hands bound or with gunshot wounds to the head. The images prompted renewed calls for war crime charges against Russia.

Tatiana Petrovna, 72, mourned in the garden where three civilian bodies lay. Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

On Russian television, the discovery was cast instead as a hoax, with television presenters analyzing images and video for signs of fakery.

In one clip, Russian journalists noted that clothing on some dead civilians was too clean to have been in the streets for days, implying they could not have been killed during Russias occupation. A statement from the Ministry of Defense, aired on the nightly newscast Vremya, said the bodies lacked signs of decay and that blood in their wounds had not coagulated.

All that is irrefutable evidence that the photos and videos from Bucha are yet another staging by the Kyiv regime for the benefit of Western mass media, the ministrys statement said.

Unblurred photographs run by Western media outlets, however, showed the bodies had clear signs of decay.

Another news report indicated that footage from Bucha showed some of the bodies moving, which was cited as proof the dead bodies were staged. One clip showed a body in a rearview mirror that appeared to move after the car drove by. But several photographs taken on the ground by Western photographers showed bodies in the area had clear signs of decomposition. The impression of movement appeared to be caused by distortion in the mirror, which was also seen affecting the buildings surrounding the body.

A Russian television report claimed the body seen in the rearview mirror on the right-hand side was moving.

The claim that the bodies in the streets were part of a staging collided later with an entirely different narrative pushed on Russian television: that the civilians were indeed killed, but that it was Ukrainian troops who had killed them.

To make that case, the Russian state-run station Channel 1 presented a convoluted alternate timeline, selecting footage to support the claim that no one was killed until days after Russian troops fled the region.

March 30

March 31

April 1

March 31 to April 2

April 2

Disinformation researchers say scattershot narratives like this can overwhelm viewers, sowing doubts even if audiences arent persuaded by any specific claim.

Russia drew international condemnation after a maternity hospital was bombed in the southern port city of Mariupol. Images of injured pregnant women, carried across charred hospital grounds or ushered down battered staircases, made clear to Western audiences the civilian cost of war.

Marianna Vyshemirskaya walked downstairs in a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

In Russia, though, the attack was dismissed as a hoax.

In a flurry of claims over several days, Russian television dissected footage and raised numerous doubts about the Western account, often using the same imagery seen in the West to advance very different accounts of what happened.

Images of two women in particular were widely circulated in Western media. One, an influencer named Marianna Vyshemirskaya, survived the attack and later gave birth to a girl. Another woman, who has not been identified, was photographed on a stretcher and was later reported by The Associated Press to have died. In one segment, Russian journalists claimed the two were the same woman. Ms. Vyshemirskaya later denied being the woman seen on the stretcher.

In another segment aired on Russian television, victims being carried away from the hospital were described as soldiers from Ukraines far-right Azov Battalion, a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard with ties to the countrys neo-Nazi movement. But images captured by Western journalists showed the victims were women, with some wearing khaki-colored clothing that vaguely resembled troop uniforms.

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Ms. Vyshemirskaya later gave an interview to Denis Seleznev, a Ukrainian blogger who backs the separatist movement in Ukraines eastern Donbas region. The portions that aired on Russian television focused not on her injuries but on the Azov Battalion, with claims that the military group occupied the hospital before the strike took place.

There was no evidence reported by Western journalists on the scene that Azov was using the building as a base, and an April report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe classified the attack on the hospital as a war crime.

In airing Ms. Vyshemirskayas interview, alongside a video she posted to Instagram, Russian news media focused on her description of Azov soldiers, casting them as belligerent occupiers who demanded food.

They said they havent eaten for five days, she said. They took our food away and said, You can cook more.

An interview with Ms. Vyshemirskaya aired on Russian television.

The Kremlin and Russian media have frequently focused on Ukraines neo-Nazi movement as justification for the invasion. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that one of his central aims was the denazification of Ukraine.

Though the Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 out of Ukraines ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups, experts say the group has quelled much of its extremist side under pressure from authorities. The neo-Nazi movement is not a significant force in Ukraine, according to experts who track the far right, who point to Ukraines election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as evidence.

Russian forces advanced on Europes largest nuclear power plant in early March. A skirmish with Ukrainian forces ended with a fire on the compound, which Mr. Zelensky warned could result in the end of Europe. The fire was later extinguished, but Ukrainian officials accused Russia of nuclear terrorism.

Surveillance camera footage captured the attack near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Zaporizhzhya Npp/Zaporizhzhya Npp Via Reuters

But Russian audiences were told another story: that Ukrainian soldiers had attacked the facility, setting fire to the building before fleeing. Russian forces were described as defending the facility from Ukrainian saboteurs, according to a government statement repeated in state media.

A Russian television report says that Russian soldiers were defending the power plant from Ukrainian small arms fire.

In footage released weeks later, the power plant was shown functioning normally, with drone shots showing workers arriving at a spotless facility and passing through security checkpoints in an orderly fashion.

While the special military operation is underway, the nuclear power plant hasnt stopped working for a second, said Aleksey Ivanov, a reporter for Vremya, the Channel 1 evening news broadcast. And now it has even grown in strength.

Mr. Ivanov also said that Russian guards do not interfere with the work of the plant.

A soldier interviewed at the facility said that employees of this plant show a certain amount of respect and that workers maintain order and discipline in their work.

The idea that Ukraine is faring better under Russian control continues to be a frequent claim on state television, bolstering the dubious argument advanced by Mr. Putin that Russian troops were sent in to protect Ukrainian citizens.

A Russian state news report describes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was recently captured by Russian soldiers, as functioning normally.

Excerpt from:

The War in Ukraine, as Seen on Russian TV - The New York Times

When women at the border started talking to me about rapes and murders happening inside Ukraine, I thought these were just rumours; I wouldnt let myself believe it. I told myself that it was just people sharing scare stories or that women were just trying to rationalise their feelings of guilt about leaving their husbands and sons. Maybe my psyche was trying to defend itself.

Then a woman in her 70s, who said she was from one of the occupied areas close to Irpin and Bucha, crossed the border with her daughter and great-granddaughter. They were being treated by medical volunteers at the French mission. The daughter, who was in her 50s, had cancer and was very sick. The medics could not believe that someone like this, with a hole in her stomach and no bandages, was so desperate to leave that she would risk travelling for so many hours with no medical support.

The woman told me that her grandson served in a military brigade that had been the first to go into recently liberated areas. She said he took photos of what he had seen. She showed them to me, and it was only then I understood it was worse than I could have ever imagined.

She said that after her grandson had returned from duty, he had come to her house and begged her to leave Ukraine. He told her that women were being raped and killed by Russian troops but she refused to leave. In desperation, he showed her the photos and she knew she had to flee.

One of the photos she showed me was the hanging body of a young girl. She couldnt have been more than 14. She said her grandson told her he was walking through the woods looking for dead bodies left by the Russians and lifted his head and saw these girls strung from the trees, all of them very young. They were naked and torn up. She said he had passed on the photos to investigators in Ukraine who were gathering evidence of war crimes.

I was not ready to see something like this. In Ukraine now there are many photos of what happened in Bucha but in Poland these are not widely circulated. Since she showed it to me I think my brain has tried to blank it out because I cant even recreate it in my mind. All I remember is a white blur in the top-left corner of a shattered phone screen.

She told me that after she had seen these photos she went to the hospital where her daughter was being treated in the oncology ward. She went in, took out her daughters intravenous drip and helped her walk to the car and they just took off.

When I met them on the border, the car they were driving was shattered. The lights were broken, they had foil instead of windows. They had driven all that way in a car where the wheels were still turning but that was about it. But this lady said that after she started driving she didnt stop until she had left Ukraine.

Often when women first cross the border theyre elated, happy to reach safety. They start smiling, joking youd never guess theyve had any sort of trauma. Since I have seen that photo, I keep thinking back to those other women I have met and wondering what they might have gone through.

There have been women who have been asking me about getting hold of pills that cause menstruation. At the time I didnt understand what they meant.

There was another woman who came over with a 17-year-old daughter. The daughter would not stop crying. I asked her how I could help, and what was going on. She asked for thick menstrual pads, underwear and trousers for the girl. I remember her as she had the same name as my own daughter. That woman also told me that when she went through the last checkpoints outside Kharkiv, she kept driving without stopping.

It isnt just the ones who talk about the violence they have faced or witnessed. You worry about all the women who make the crossing. There are many who just cannot deal with being this helpless.

There was one woman, you could tell that she was wealthy. Her clothes were very nice, her shoes were very nice. The children were dressed nicely. And from their manners you could tell they were well-off. And their older girl, about 10, sat at the table in the reception centre and said: Well, here you have free soup. And the little boy said: I dont want a free soup. The mother sat not saying anything until she just exploded and yelled: Youre refugees now, and you need to eat everything they give you.

This was the change they experienced that when they crossed the border, everything they had had before had stayed behind in Ukraine. Then they leave you and you never find out what happened to them next.

See the original post:

I didnt believe stories of atrocities in Ukraine. But then I saw the photos - The Guardian

The move would allow for food produced in the war-torn country to flow freely to the rest of the world as well as avoid mountains of grain from going to waste.

Right now, Ukraines grain silos are full. At the same time, 44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation. We have to open up these ports so that food can move in and out of Ukraine. The world demands it because hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies, WFP Executive Director David Beasley said.

Were running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where its desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine.

The crisis is another fallout from the war, which began on 24 February.

Ports on the Black Sea are blocked, leaving millions of metric tonnes of grain trapped in silos on land, or on ships that are unable to move.

Unless ports reopen, Ukrainian farmers will have nowhere to store the next harvest in July and August, WFP said.

The result will be mountains of grain going to waste while WFP and the world struggle to deal with an already catastrophic global hunger crisis, the agency said.

Some 276 million people around the globe were already facing acute hunger at the beginning of the year. That number could rise by 47 million if the war continues, according to WFP, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to the conflict, most of the food produced in Ukraine was exported through the countrys seven Black Sea ports. More than 50 million metric tonnes of grain transited through the ports in the eight months before the war began, and exports were enough to feed 400 million people.

The disruption caused by the war has already pushed food commodity prices well above record highs reached earlier this year. In March, export prices for wheat and maize rose 22 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, on top of steep increases in 2021 and early 2022.

WFP has also felt the impact. Soaring prices for food and fuel have hiked operational costs by up to $71 million a month, or equivalent to providing nearly four million people with a daily ration for one month, thus affecting the agencys ability to respond to hunger crises around the world.

See the rest here:

WFP appeals for re-opening of Ukraine ports to avert looming famine threat - UN News

The energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine disabused many politicians of the notion that the world could make a swift transition to green energy powered by solar, wind and wishful thinking. As food prices skyrocket and the conflict threatens a global food crisis, we need to face another unpopular reality: Organic farming is ineffective, land hungry and very expensive, and it would leave billions hungry if it were embraced world-wide.

For years, politicians and the chattering classes have argued that organic farming is the responsible way to feed the world. The European Union pushed last year for members roughly to triple organic farming by 2030. Influential nonprofits have long promoted organic farming to developing nations, causing fragile countries like Sri Lanka to invest in such methods. In the West, many consumers have been won over: About half the population of Germany believes that organic farming can fight global hunger.

See the rest here:

Ukraine Crisis Reveals the Folly of Organic Farming - The Wall Street Journal

When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, the stock prices of many of the world's biggest arms manufacturers spiked.

As the first Russian tanks rolled across the border, investors flocked to companies, including Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Thales, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.

However, the demand created by the war has yet totranslateinto big increases in revenue for the major defence contractors.

Billions of dollars worth of military hardware has already been shipped to Ukraine from all over the world, including from Australia.

The United States, alone, has provided more than $US3 billion ($4.1 billion) in military aid, and last week President Joe Biden asked Congress for about $US20 billion more to last through September.

NATO countries and Western allies, including Canada and Australia, have lined up to help.

The Australian Defence Force's contribution so far has included six M777 towed howitzers and 20 Bushmaster four-wheel-drive armoured vehicles, tactical decoys, uncrewedaerial and uncrewedground systems, rations and medical supplies.

Other weapons delivered or on their way include tanks, air-defence systems, howitzers, guided anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, helicopters, armoured Humvees and personnel carriers, drones, small arms, command-detonated Claymore anti-personnel mines and more.

Most famously, Ukraine has received and reportedly made effective use of large shipments of high-tech, self-guided and shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The Javelins are sought-after because of their sophisticated tracking systems, which allow users to take cover immediately after firing,and their ability to hit targets from above.

Since the beginning of February, the US committed to giving Ukraine 5,500 Javelin systems, which are produced by US defence contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and are each worth about $US178,000.

"Saint Javelin" has become a meme in Ukraine and, during a tour of Lockheed Martin's factory, Mr Biden saidUkrainian parents were naming their children "Javelin"or "Javelina"because of the weapons' successes.

Rather than buying new supplies, most of this military hardware wascoming out of existing holdings, said Marcus Hellyer, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

"That may be stuff that they have in storage or it could be stuff that is actually frontline holdings," Dr Hellyer said.

"It looks like Germany, for example, is pulling retired armoured vehicles out of storage and refurbishing them and sending them.

"When I look at what Australia has shipped, some of that stuff was probably being used by the ADF, because we don't actually have much holdings.

"So it's notbeing produced, specifically, as new orders to go to Ukraine."

Dr Hellyer said no country had unlimited inventory and they would need to order more eventually.

The West's stocks of guided weapons, especially, were being depleted "at a great rate", he said.

"They will need new contracts with industry to backfill inventory, and keep supply going to Ukraine," he said.

"What seems to be the case is it will take several years before they can get new weapons.

"So, it's a bit of a race against time here, of whether the West will run out of weapons [by] supplying them to Ukraine, before it can get new ones."

According to the Washington-based Centre for International Strategic Studies think-tank, the US hasgiven Ukraine about a third of its total inventory of Javelins and a quarter of its Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and it will take three or four years to replace them.

"It's actually hard to spend money quickly in the defence sector," Dr Hellyer said.

"Because, if things aren't in production, it can take years to set up production lines.

"[Human-operated]portable missiles have hundreds of components in there, which you need tosource, so it can take a long time, even to just boost productionon an existing system."

Dr Hellyer added that there would notbe one-for-one backfilling for a lot of the olderequipment being donated, but countries would likely replace it with more contemporary hardware, such as the Javelin missiles.

He said a number of European countries, such as Germany, had said they were going to increase defence spending.

"They were meant to be spending 2 per centof GDP already, according to their NATO commitments, but were falling short. So, now that commitment has been reinvigorated," Dr Hellyersaid.

"Obviously, the kindof stuff they're going to get is the kind of stuff that, I think, has been demonstrated as working very effectively in Ukraine."

The rapid consumption of, particularly, the Javelin missiles has prompted concerns about the United States' stockpile if a conflict erupts elsewhere.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said this week that Americas military readiness was not dependent on one system.

Mr Kirby said that, every time the Pentagon developed a package of weapons and systems to send to Ukraine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the department assessed the impact on readiness.

"It's not about counting, say, Javelins and being able to say that, when you reach a certain level, then all your readiness is gone," he said.

"The Javelin has an anti-armourcapability, so we judge it all as a conglomerate of what's our ability to meet this particular mission set, realising that a Javelin isn't the only capability you have against armour."

Once the US and other countries begin to restock, Dr Hellyer said, it would be the companies that produce guided weapons such asRaytheon and Lockheed Martin that would be the biggest beneficiaries.

"It's likely that orders have already been placed with Western arms manufacturers to start producing those weapons," he said.

Raytheon's chief executive, Greg Hayes, told an earnings call last week that the company did notexpect any increased revenue this year as a result of replenishment of stocks sent to the Ukraine.

"We'll ramp-up production, what we can this year, but I would expect, again, this is going to be a '23, '24 where we actually see orders come in for the larger replenishments, both on Stinger as well as on Javelin, which havealso been very successful in theatre," he said.

During the call, Mr Hayes also revealed the war had actually negatively affected the fortunes of the company, which also provides civil aeronautical services.

The sanctions imposed on Russia meant Raytheon could no longer operate there, reducing its total revenue by about $US750 million, and also ruling out suppliers of some key materials and components.

Lockheed Martin chief executive James Taiclet said in a recent CNBC interview that demand for the Javelin and other weapon systems would increase broadly over time because of the Russian invasion.

He said the company was working "to get our supply chain ramped-up".

"We have the ability to meet current production demands, are investing in increased capacity and are exploring ways to further increase production as needed,"Lockheed Martin said in a statement to AP.

In 2018, the federal government announced it was making the development of the local defence industry a priority, with the aim of making Australia one of the top 10 exporters in the world.

Australia's defence exports were $2.7 billion in 2020-21, down from $5.3 billion the year before.

Receipts in the first quarter of 2021-22 were nearly $1.8 billion.

Dr Hellyer said the Australian industry only manufactured a few "complete platforms" such as entire weapons, vehicles or ships.

"We're gearing-up our shipbuilding industry, but that's not really something of any use to Ukraine," he said.

"The only military vehicles we make at the moment are the Bushmaster and Hawkei.

"We do have the ability to make ammunition for small arms, bullets and some slightly larger rounds, but that's the kind of stuff that's pretty easily available on the global market, and a lot more cheaply than we can make it.

"So, probably, that's not something that Ukraine would be seeking from us."

According to Dr Hellyer, the Australian defence industry doesmanufacture components for larger systems, such as the Joint Strike Fighter F-35, which is assembled in the US by Lockheed Martin.

"It's possible theAustralian industry could be supplying components into things produced in the US or in Europe that could eventually go to Ukraine, but it's very hard to have visibility of that," he said.

Dr Hellyer said an option could be for French company Thales, which makes Australia's Bushmasterand Hawkeivehicles at a factory in Bendigo, to make more for Ukraine.

"Ukraine seems to like them and has asked for more," he said.

However, he added, the army had about 900 Bushmasters "so it's probably got a few more that it can provide before it starts running low".

Thales Australia did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment.

ABC/AP

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Ukraine war boosts weapons makers' stock prices, but revenue to take years to flow through - ABC News