Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
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As NATO, G-7 and European Union leaders met behind closed doors Thursday in Brussels, protesters gathered outside, demanding that the West take tougher action against Russia. Henry Ridgwell reports from the Belgian capital.

Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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There will be a Western military response if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday.  

“It would trigger a response in kind,” Biden replied to a reporter’s question during a news conference. “Whether or not you’re asking whether NATO would cross (into Ukraine to confront Russian forces), we’d make that decision at the time.”  

The U.S. president also said at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that Russia should be removed from the Group of 20 major economies and that Ukraine be allowed to attend G-20 meetings.  

Biden confirmed the issue was raised during his meetings with other world leaders on Thursday as they marked one month since Russia invaded Ukraine.  

Asked whether Ukraine needs to cede any territory to achieve a cease-fire with Russia, Biden responded, “I don’t believe that they’re going to have to do that,” but that is the judgment of Kyiv to make.  

At his news conference, Biden said the United States is committing more than $1 billion in humanitarian assistance “to help get relief to millions of Ukrainians affected by the war in Ukraine.”  

“With a focus on reuniting families,” the United States will welcome 100,000 Ukrainians and invest $320 million to support democratic resilience and defend human rights in Ukraine and neighboring countries, the president said.  

NATO announced earlier Thursday that the defense alliance would bolster its capabilities after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had called on the organization’s leaders to provide more weaponry to his country ”without limitations” as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second month.  

 

Zelenskyy’s appeal came as Biden met with NATO leaders to discuss their short- and long-term response to the Russian invasion.  

Addressing the summit via video, Zelenskyy said his military needed fighter jets, tanks, and improved air and sea defense systems, as he warned Russia would attack NATO member Poland and other Eastern European countries.  

“Russia has no intention of stopping in Ukraine,” he declared. ”It wants to go further. Against Eastern members of NATO. The Baltic states. Poland, for sure.”  

A White House statement issued Thursday said “between now and the NATO summit in June, we will develop plans for additional forces and capabilities to strengthen NATO’s defenses.”  

A Biden administration official told reporters that Zelenskyy did not reiterate on Thursday his demand for a no-fly zone, which NATO previously rejected on the grounds it would lead to direct conflict between NATO and Russia.  

NATO members said in a joint statement after the summit that they would “accelerate” their commitment to invest at least 2% of their national budgets on the alliance, allowing for a significant strengthening of its “longer term deterrence and defense posture.”  

The alliance also vowed to “further develop the full range of ready forces and capabilities necessary to maintain credible deterrence and defense.”  

In addition to participating in the NATO talks, Biden met Thursday with G-7 leaders and the European Council.  

The White House on Thursday announced a new round of sanctions targeting 48 Russian state-owned defense companies and more than 400 Russian political figures, oligarchs and other entities — an action Biden said was being done in alignment with the European Union.  

Britain said Thursday its new package of sanctions includes freezing the assets of Gazprombank, a main channel for oil and gas payments, as well as Alfa Bank, a top private lender in Russia. Oil tycoon Evgeny Shvidler, Sberbank CEO Herman Gref and Polina Kovaleva, stepdaughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, are among individuals sanctioned.  

China has criticized the sanctions imposed on Russia and has drawn warnings from Biden about not helping Russia evade the measures.  

Asked about his recent phone discussion on the topic with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden said he had made clear to Xi “the consequences of him helping Russia,” but, he noted, “I made no threats.”  

The U.S. president heads to Poland on Friday, a visit that will also spotlight the millions of Ukrainians who have become refugees since Russia started the war.  

“I plan on attempting to see those folks,” Biden told reporters amid speculation he might go to Poland’s border with Ukraine. “I guess I’m not supposed to say where I’m going, am I?”  

Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman, National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.   

Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.  

 
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Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who protested Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by bursting onto the set of a flagship television news show, says her colleagues at Kremlin-controlled TV Channel One are scared and she doesn’t regret for one moment her action.

The 43-year-old television journalist last week held up a banner behind the news anchor during a live broadcast denouncing the aggression in Ukraine and shouted, “stop the war.” On the banner she wrote: “No War” and “They are lying to you here.”

“My colleagues are scared,” Ovsyannikova told VOA. “The heads of Channel One forbade them to discuss this incident. Several colleagues quit, the rest — continue to work. They need to feed their families; they cannot find other work in such a difficult time. Because of Western sanctions, people have become real hostages of the difficult economic situation in Russia,” she added.

Ovsyannikova has declined an asylum offer from France after she staged her protest to challenge the Kremlin’s narrative of the invasion, which Russian leader Vladimir Putin has dubbed a “special military operation.” She was detained and fined $290 for loading a video onto YouTube denouncing the invasion, but her lawyer, Anton Gashinsky, told VOA more serious charges could be filed against her.

“Her action on the First Channel live has not yet been assessed by law enforcement agencies” he said. He added: “So far, Marina has not been summoned for interrogation. We do not have any official information about the investigation being carried out against her.”

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has launched a probe into her actions, according to Russian news agency TASS.

“A preliminary inquiry is being conducted regarding Ovsyannikova to determine whether her actions constitute a crime under Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code [‘Public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation’],” the news agency quoted an official saying. If found guilty of the charge Ovsyannikova could be jailed for 15 years.

Ovsyannikova has a 17-year-old son and a daughter. Her lawyer told VOA: “During the detention she was treated with respect, they were polite, they did not use physical force.” She was held for 14 hours but was denied a lawyer even though she demanded legal representation “about 20 times,” Gashinsky said.

No regrets

She does not recant a single word of her condemnation of the war. “She is happy that she was able to show the whole world that Russian people are mostly against armed conflicts. And those who support armed conflicts, Marina’s quote: ‘poisoned by state information propaganda.’ Marina is a pacifist. She believes that all conflict situations can be resolved through negotiations,” he added.

Gashinsky said: “It’s not easy for her now. Together with her are her two children and two golden retrievers. She has loans for a car and her house. Now she has lost the only source of income that she had, and she has no savings. She receives alimony from her ex-spouse for the maintenance of children. But she, like a real Russian woman, said that she would cope with all the difficulties.”

Ovsyannikova told VOA, via her lawyer, she is not making plans as “the future of our country is unknown and very foggy now and Russia is plunged into darkness.”

Others targeted

This week, Russian prosecutors also opened a case against journalist Alexander Nevzorov, who has more than 1.6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, accused of deliberately spreading false information about the war in Ukraine. In an open letter to Russia’s top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, Nevzorov dubbed the investigation “ridiculous.” The probe is focused on Nevzorov’s postings on Instagram and YouTube about Russia’s armed forces deliberate shelling of a maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port town of Mariupol.

Nevzorov said the case against him was meant as a signal to journalists in Russia to show “the regime is not going to spare anyone.”

Russian authorities have been adding more and more offenses to try to shut down independent reporting on the war or any coverage that challenges the Kremlin version of what is happening in Ukraine, say Russian journalists.

On Tuesday, the Russian parliament passed amendments to the Criminal Code that would expand a new law of spreading of falsehoods to allow authorities to prosecute those deemed to have spread false information about the work of state bodies abroad.

A Moscow court this week granted prosecutors’ request to designate Meta an “extremist” organization and Russia’s federal censor instructed media organizations to stop displaying the logos of Meta, Facebook, and Instagram, all three are now being blocked on Russia’s internet along with Twitter. Television network Euronews is also now being blocked.

Most foreign news organizations have pulled their correspondents out of Russia and Russia’s few remaining independent digital news outlets have also gone into exile.

The editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, who received a Nobel Peace Prize last year announced this week he will auction his medal and donate the prize proceeds to an NGO that supports Ukrainian refugees. The paper has called on the Kremlin to: “Stop combat fire, exchange prisoners, release the bodies of the dead, provide humanitarian corridors and assistance, and support refugees.”

On Tuesday Russian investigative reporter Svetlana Prokopyeva announced she had left her home in the Russian town of Pskov and is now in Riga, Latvia. Two years ago, she was found a guilty of “justifying terrorism” in her reporting but was issued a fine rather than jailed in a case that was closely followed by the international media and rights groups. Her home was raided on March 18 during which she was forced to the floor and handcuffed. She was interrogated at a police station for allegedly spreading lies about the region’s governor.

“Yes, I am in Riga. I never thought this would happen in my life,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “I thought I would renovate the greenhouse, which was bent under the snow, and in the summer, maybe I’ll make a foundation under the house,” she added. “And I will be back. As soon as it is possible,” she added.

Some reporting for this story is from Reuters.
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Chinese enterprises are caught between the high reputational risk of remaining in Russia during its war on Ukraine and the pro-Moscow sentiment that dominates China’s state-controlled media. So far, most have chosen to remain silent.

According to the Yale School of Management, more than 400 companies have announced their withdrawal from Russia’s economy since Putin launched the war on Feb. 24. Most are based in the U.S., European Union, Japan and South Korea.

Salvatore Babones, an associate professor at the University of Sydney with expertise in the political economy of the Indo-Pacific region, said that for companies outside China, the desire to maintain a positive public image prompted their withdrawal from Russia.

“The risk of remaining in Russia is reputational,” he told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview. “Russia is a relatively small market, and there’s a huge public reaction against Russia right now. They (the companies) are responding to consumer pressure.”

Russia’s imports from China totaled about $54.9 billion in 2020. China is the largest source, followed by Germany, at $23.4 billion, and the United States, with just over $13.2 billion, according to the website Trading Economics, which uses figures from the United Nations COMTRADE database. By comparison, the site reports that China’s exports to the U.S. in 2020 totaled $452.6 billion.

Dan Harris, a trade lawyer who specializes in doing business in emerging markets and co-authors the China Law Blog, said the business calculus has changed because of the sanctions imposed on Russia.

“Companies that are not sanctioned … they are saying ‘I’m out’ because of reputational reasons or because it’s not worth figuring out and risking getting in trouble to sell a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of product to Russia. It’s just easier and safer to get out,” he told VOA Mandarin by phone.

A different approach

But while non-Chinese firms rush to exit Russia, most Chinese firms, especially those in the technology sector, have so far chosen to stay put.

The U.S. and other nations have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, including import bans on energy, export bans on advanced technology, and moves to exclude Moscow from the SWIFT system that banks and other financial institutions use for global financial transactions.

In a phone call on Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Chinese President Xi Jinping that Beijing would face severe consequences should it choose to provide aid to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

On March 14, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index hit a six-year low on fears that Chinese firms could be ostracized if Beijing sided with Russia, according to Bloomberg.

But on Chinese social media, where sentiment against the war is heavily censored, netizens overwhelmingly support Russia. A CNN analysis showed that during the first week of the Russian invasion, half of the most shared content on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo contained information attributed to a Russian official or comments picked up directly from Russian state media.

Consequently, some Chinese companies have doubled down on their support for Moscow, while others have changed course after getting hammered online for announcing plans to halt operations in Russia.

The Chinese government has refused to call Russia’s action in Ukraine an invasion. In a daily briefing on March 15, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China was “deeply grieved to see that the situation in Ukraine has reached its current state,” and he insisted the country was working for peace talks.

Didi, a ride-hailing app, faced public backlash after announcing that it would withdraw from the Russian market on March 4. Chinese netizens criticized the company, accusing it of giving in to pressure from America. Later, the company made a U-turn and said it would continue operating in Russia.

Hong Kong-based Lenovo Group, which announced the suspension of its shipments to Russia in late February, faced similar criticism on Chinese social media. Sima Nan, a Chinese television pundit known for his nationalistic and anti-American sentiment, wrote on his Weibo account that “Lenovo’s decision to follow America’s footstep is disgusting.”

This public support for Russia has left companies with little room to maneuver, according to Babones.

“The Chinese government suppresses any kind of discussion (that condemns Russia),” he said. “I can’t imagine that in China we would see a mass condemnation of Russia leading to the pressure on Chinese companies to exit the market.”

China’s official position on Moscow’s invasion has straddled both sides. Beijing has called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict while maintaining that the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia are counterproductive.

The Japanese business publication Nikkei Asia quoted an official at a major Chinese telecommunication company on March 9 as saying most Chinese companies “will not express opinions that conflict with the government’s stance.” At the same time, the official said, the companies will shy away from “any statements that are friendly to Russia to avoid boycott from Western companies.”

A former executive at the Chinese telecommunication firm Xiaomi told the Financial Times — and was quoted elsewhere as saying — that “it is politically sensitive to openly announce a sales suspension in the Russian market like Apple and Samsung, but from a business perspective, it makes (sense) to stand by and watch what happens next.”

Cost to Chinese firms

That wait-and-see approach might be costly to Chinese firms, according to experts. And firms that are more openly supportive of Russia risk a loss of international market share, forcing them to recalculate the risks of remaining in Moscow.

For example, at the telecommunications giant Huawei, just the rumor that it was helping the Russians defend against cyberattacks had reputational costs.

These stemmed from a March 6 report by the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, that cited “reports in China” as saying Huawei has been helping Russia stabilize its internet network after cyberattacks since the start of the Ukraine crisis.

The Daily Mail also cited a report on a Chinese news site that claimed Huawei would use its research centers to train 50,000 technical experts in Russia. The Chinese report has been deleted.

On March 9, the two remaining British members of Huawei U.K.’s board of directors resigned over the claim. Meanwhile, Robert Lewandowski, a Polish professional footballer designated Best FIFA Men’s Player of 2020 and 2021, announced the early termination of his sponsorship deal with Huawei.

The former regional ambassador of Huawei in his home country and other parts of Europe, Lewandowski wore an armband in the Ukrainian colors of yellow and blue during a match and said, “The world cannot accept what is happening there. I hope the whole world will support Ukraine.”

Harris, the trade lawyer, said that Huawei is already on the “do not trade” list of the U.S. and some of its allies, and companies in other parts of the world, particularly those in Central and Eastern Europe, might decide to cut ties with the Chinese firm to avoid violating sanctions imposed by Washington and other governments.

“If you’re dealing with China right now, you should be looking at what the world has done to Russia and figure that that could very well happen to China within the next few months,” Harris said.

“It might not happen if China backs away from Russia, but if China doesn’t back away from Russia, there are going to be a lot of sanctions, and things are going to get really bad.”
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Full developments of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine   
…

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