The European Union called on Kosovo’s government and ethnic Serbs to start a “serious dialogue” to bring them back into state institutions after they boycotted local elections to press demands for more autonomy.

The boycott underlined that a Western-backed plan verbally agreed to by the Kosovo and Serbian governments in March was not working. It aimed to defuse tensions by granting local Serbs more autonomy with Pristina retaining ultimate authority.

“These elections do not offer a long-term political solution for these municipalities,” EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said on Monday, referring to a northern area of the 90% ethnic Albanian country where Serbs form a majority.

“There is an urgent need for a serious dialogue. It is imperative that we urgently restore a situation where Kosovo Serbs participate actively in local governance, policing and judiciary in the north of Kosovo,” he said in a statement.

Some 50,000 Serbs who live there have not recognized Kosovo state institutions since Pristina declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after a guerrilla uprising, instead seeing Belgrade as their capital.

Kosovo’s election commission said the turnout in Sunday’s local elections in the north was 3.47%. All four elected mayors were from ethnic Albanian political parties including two from the ruling Self-Determination Party of Prime Minister Albin Kurti. The only Serb candidate drew only five votes.

Serb officials in the north resigned collectively in November 2022 in protest at the Pristina government’s plan to replace Serbian car number plates dating to the pre-independence era with number plates with those of Kosovo.

They are demanding the implementation of an association of semi-autonomous Kosovo Serb municipalities that was agreed with European Union mediation a decade ago, before taking part in any election organized by Pristina.

Kurti accused the Serbian government of orchestrating “a threatening campaign” intimidating Serbs in the north who had been willing to vote.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic denied the accusations.

“We have witnessed a peaceful political uprising of Serbs in the north [on Sunday],” Vucic said. “I am afraid that this is just the start of a greater political crisis.”

Serbia has not recognized the independence of its former southern province, where NATO intervened during the 1998-99 conflict to protect ethnic Albanians from a fierce Serbian security crackdown replete with killings and ethnic cleansing.
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Europe’s military spending grew at a record pace in 2022, reaching a level unseen since the Cold War following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global security researchers said Monday.

The rise in Europe helped global military expenditures reach an eighth straight record at $2.24 trillion, or 2.2% of the world’s gross domestic product, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

“It’s driven by the war in Ukraine, (which is) driving European budget spending upwards, but also the unresolved and worsening tensions in East Asia between the US and China,” researcher Nan Tian, one of the study’s co-authors, told AFP.

Europe spent 13% more on its armies in 2022 than in the previous 12 months, in a year marked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The figure does not take into account sharp inflation rates, which means actual spending was even higher, the think tank said.

That was the strongest increase in more than 30 years, and a return, in constant dollars, to the level of spending in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.

“In Europe, it is at its highest level since essentially the end of the Cold War,” Tian said.

Ukraine alone increased its spending seven-fold to $44 billion, or a third of its GDP. The country has additionally benefitted from billions of dollars of weapons donations from abroad, SIPRI noted.

At the same time, Russian spending rose by 9.2% last year, estimates showed.

“Irrespective of whether you remove the two warring nations, European spending still has increased by quite a lot,” Tian said.

Spending in Europe, which totaled $480 billion in 2022, has already risen by a third in the past decade, and the trend is expected to continue and accelerate over the next decade.

The continent could “potentially” see growth levels similar to 2022 for several years, Tian said.

After declining sharply in the 1990s, global military expenditure has been on the rise since the 2000s.

The upturn was initially the result of China’s massive investments in its military, which was then followed by renewed tensions with Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

US, China account for half

The US alone accounted for 39% of global military expenditure. Together with China, which came in second at 13%, the two nations accounted for more than half of the world’s military spending.

Those next in line lagged far behind, with Russia at 3.9 percent, India at 3.6% and Saudi Arabia at 3.3%.

“China has been increasingly investing in its naval forces as a way to expand its reach to Taiwan of course, then further out than the South China Sea,” Tian said.

Japan, as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Australia are all following the trend.

Britain is the top spender in Europe, coming in sixth place overall and accounting for 3.1% of global expenditures, ahead of Germany at 2.5% and France at 2.4% — figures which include donations to Ukraine.

Britain, Ukraine’s second-biggest donor behind the United States, “spends more than France and Germany. It also gave more military aid than France and Germany,” said Tian.

Countries like Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden were among the European countries that increased their military investments the most during the past decade.

Modern and costly weapons also explain some spending hikes, as in the case of Finland which last year purchased 64 US F-35 fighter jets.
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Kelvin Kiptum collapsed to the ground after winning the London Marathon on Sunday and recording the second fastest time in history over the distance.

The 23-year-old Kenyan runner set the course record with a time of 2 hours, 1 minute, 25 seconds, missing out on Eliud Kipchoge’s world record by 16 seconds.

“I am so happy with the result,” said Kiptum. “I don’t know what to say right now, I am just grateful. The course felt good, there was a bit of rain around halfway but it was OK.

“I enjoy doing the marathons, it is good preparation for me. I loved it, I am very happy.”

In the women’s race, Sifan Hassan completed a stunning comeback to win on her marathon debut after appearing to be injured part way through.

In what was long distance great Mo Farah’s final marathon, defending champion Amos Kipruto and world champion Tamirat Tola were also among the elite men’s field that Kiptum left behind.

Farah, 40, finished ninth with a time of 2:10:28.

Hassan won the women’s elite race in dramatic fashion in what was billed as possibly the strongest field ever.

The Ethiopian-born Dutch athlete triumphed despite falling off the pace and clutching her hip around the 15-mile mark.

The 30-year-old 5,000 and 10,000-meter Olympic champion then reeled in the leaders with three miles to go.

Hassan also overcame making a mess of collecting a drink from a water station, and even offered last year’s winner, Yalemzerf Yehualaw, a gulp from her bottle.

Hassan pulled away from Alemu Megertu and reigning Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir in a sprint finish along The Mall, coming home in 2:18:33.

“I never thought I would finish a marathon and here I am winning it,” said Hassan. “I had a problem with my hip, which made me stop. But it started to feel a little bit better. And then I missed one of the drinks stations! I didn’t practice that part of the race because I have been fasting and so that was quite difficult.”

Earlier, women’s world record holder Brigid Kosgei was forced to pull out less than four minutes after the start.

The Kenyan runner came into the race with injury concerns and looked in visible discomfort early on.

Kosgei, who holds the women’s record of 2:14:04 limped to the sidewalk after around 3 minutes. She then bent down to untie the laces on her running shoes and signaled that her race was over.

The marathon returned to its traditional April slot after three years of being staged in October due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A record 48,000 people were expected to cross the finish line near Buckingham Palace from a field of 49,675 runners who registered for the race.

The number of entrants was up from the previous record of 43,199 in 2019.

London Marathon organizers said they expanded numbers in an attempt to reach a cap of 50,000.

Runners set off beneath overcast skies amid temperatures of around 8 degrees Celsius (46 Fahrenheit).

Forecasters had warned there was likely to be heavier rain later in the day.

Marcel Hug won the men’s wheelchair race for the third time in a row, achieving the feat just six days after winning the Boston Marathon.

The Swiss racer won for the fifth time in London and beat his own course record with a time of 1:23:44.

Australia’s Madison de Rozario won her second women’s wheelchair race in a time 1:38:51.
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Russia said Sunday that the United States has denied visas to journalists who wanted to cover Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s trip to New York, and Lavrov suggested that Moscow would take strong retaliatory measures.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. State Department about the claim of refused visas. “The United States takes seriously its obligations as host country of the U.N. under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement, including with respect to visa issuance,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

The journalists aimed to cover Lavrov’s appearance at the United Nations to mark Russia’s chairmanship of the Security Council.

“A country that calls itself the strongest, smartest, free and fair country has chickened out and done something stupid by showing what its sworn assurances about protecting freedom of speech and access to information are really worth,” Lavrov said before leaving Moscow on Sunday.

“Be sure that we will not forget and will not forgive,” he said.

“I emphasize that we will find ways to respond to this, so that the Americans will remember for a long time not to do this,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

The dispute comes in the wake of high tensions with Washington over the arrest last month of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom Russia accuses of espionage. The United States has declared him to be “wrongfully detained.”

Many Western journalists stationed in Moscow left the country after Russia sent troops into Ukraine. Russia currently requires foreign journalists to renew their visas and accreditation every three months, compared to once a year before the fighting began.
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The UK conducted its first test of a new emergency alert service on Sunday, with millions of mobile phones emitting a loud alarm and vibrating.

The national system, modelled on similar schemes in Canada, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States, aims to warn the public if there is a danger to life nearby but has generated criticism over “nanny state” intrusion.

The alert was due to go off at 3:00 pm (1400 GMT), although some phones sounded the alarm before the scheduled time, and others minutes later.

Some users on social media complained that they had not received the warning at all.

The alarm was accompanied by a message reading: “This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a new UK government service that will warn you if there’s a life-threatening emergency nearby.”

Emergency services and the government hope to use the system to alert people to issues such as severe flooding and fires.

The 10-second alarm, which sounded even if phones were on silent, rang out at entertainment and sporting events, including Premier League football matches.

Organizers of the World Snooker Championship paused play just before the alert, while the Society of London Theatre advised its members to tell audiences to turn off their phones.

Drivers were warned not to pick up their phones during the test, and people who did not wish to receive the alerts were able to opt out in their device settings.

“Keep Calm and Carry On. That is the British way and it is exactly what the country will do when they receive this test alert at 3:00 pm today,” said Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden before the test.

“The government’s number-one job is to keep people safe and this is another tool in the toolkit for emergency situations.”

‘Terrifying’

But some Conservative figures have criticized the plan, with former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg urging people to defy the government’s calls and “switch off the unnecessary and intrusive alert.”

“It is back to the nanny state — warning us, telling us, mollycoddling us when instead they should just let people get on with their lives,” he said.

Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, ex-wife of government minister Michael Gove, called the plans “terrifying.”

“This Sunday, at 3 pm… the government intends to rattle our collective cages by invading our mobile phones — and our privacy — with its absurd emergency test signal. The notion is as terrifying as it is tiresome,” she wrote.

“Terrifying because it’s a reminder of the tyranny imposed on all of us by the technology that has invaded our homes like Japanese knotweed, infiltrating every aspect of our daily lives,” she added.

Dowden sought to play down privacy and intrusion fears, saying “all people need to do is swipe away the message or click “OK.”

“The test is secure, free to receive and one-way, and does not reveal anyone’s location or collect personal data,” he added.

Judy Edworthy, an international expert in alarm systems and psychology professor at the University of Plymouth, said the alert system was a positive development, even if its first airing may surprise people.

“Despite the message explaining it is a test, I expect some people may well be astonished,” she told the domestic Press Association.

MPs also criticized the decision to hand the lucrative IT contract for the alert system to Fujitsu, the Japanese firm responsible for faulty software in the Post Office system that led to innocent sub-postmasters receiving fraud convictions.
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New developments:

At least five Russian missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and surrounding districts Saturday night.
Russia struggles to justify the war in Ukraine to its citizens.
Russia claims to have captured three more districts in Bakhmut.
Russian billionaires’ wealth rises to more than half a trillion dollars, despite Western sanctions, Forbes reports.

Russia is looking to recruit “real men” to fight in its invasion of Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry said Sunday in its intelligence update posted on Twitter.

The ads for the new campaign on billboards, TV, and social media sites also feature the financial rewards of signing up for the Russian military, but it is “highly unlikely” that Russia will meet its target of 400,000 volunteer recruits, the British ministry said.

Ukraine announced new sanctions against individuals or legal entities who support or invest in “Russian aggression.” In his nightly video address Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv has sanctioned 322 companies that manufacture weapons and military components for Russia’s military against Ukraine.

Additional sanctions have been imposed against “individuals and legal entities that help circumvent sanctions against Russia,” he said.

“The task is to remove any opportunity for Russia to circumvent sanctions,” he added, “the tougher the sanctions against the Russian war economy, the faster the end of the aggression will be.”

So far, Western sanctions against Russia have not dampened the wealth of Russian billionaires.

According to Forbes World’s Billionaires list, the wealth of Russia’s billionaires rose to about half a trillion dollars in 2023. The overall wealth of Russian billionaires jumped from $353 billion in 2022 to $505 billion in 2023, and 22 people were added to the number of super-rich Russians, raising the total to 110. That number does not include the ultra-wealthy Russians who have renounced their Russian citizenship. The data “fly in the face of significant Western sanctions and a troubled Russian economy that shrank 2.1% last year,” Forbes says.

Missiles strike

Reuters reports that at least five Russian missiles struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and adjacent areas late Saturday night, damaging some civilian buildings, according to local officials.

Regional governor Oleh Sinegubov wrote on Telegram that one missile destroyed a house in the village of Kotliary, just south of Kharkiv, and another caused a large fire in the city.

Just about an hour’s drive away, across the border in Russia, at least 3,000 evacuees returned to their homes Saturday in the city of Belgorod. They had evacuated while military experts disposed of a bomb.

A Russian Sukhoi-34 supersonic warplane accidentally fired on Belgorod on Thursday, and the blast injured three people, Russian officials said.

Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram that “operational headquarters decided to evacuate 17 apartment buildings within a radius of 200 meters” before explosive experts began their work.

Russia expels German diplomats

Russia announced Saturday it was expelling more than 20 German diplomats. According to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency, the Kremlin’s decision was made in response to Germany’s expulsion of more than 20 Russian diplomats.

A German Foreign Ministry official said the two countries had been looking to reduce their staffing, with Germany interested in reducing Russia’s intelligence presence, according to Reuters.

“Today’s departure of Russian embassy staff is related to this,” the official told Reuters. The German ministry declined to say how many Russian diplomats had left.

“The German authorities have decided on another mass expulsion of employees of Russian diplomatic missions in Germany,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We strongly condemn these actions by Berlin, which continues to demonstratively destroy the entire array of Russian-German relations,” it said.

Relations between the two countries have been frosty since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before the invasion, Germany was Russia’s biggest oil and gas importer.

Russia’s war justification faltering

In its daily intelligence update on Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russia is “struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative it uses to justify the war in Ukraine.” The narrative is that the invasion of Ukraine is similar to the Soviet experience in World War II.

Earlier this month, Russia cited safety issues as the reason for canceling the annual observance of the Immortal Regiment “Great Patriotic War” remembrance marches. “In reality,” the ministry said,” the authorities were highly likely concerned that participants would highlight the scope of recent Russian losses.”

The Russian military downplays the number of Russian soldiers killed in battle. According to RFE/RL of the 400 soldiers killed by a Ukrainian strike in the eastern city of Makiyivka four months ago, only 89 were documented. The government’s lack of transparency has led many Russians to desperately seek answers about their missing relatives at the war front, the article says.

“Maybe in 10 years we will learn the truth,” said a woman whose brother was killed in Makiyivka.

Another part of the Russian saga justifying its invasion against Ukraine, is its alleged de-Nazification operation there. But even Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Wagner Group and a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly questioned the existence of Nazis in Ukraine, contradicting Russia’s justification for the invasion, the British ministry said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Russian assault troops had captured three more districts in the western part of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Reuters reports. Russia’s regular forces and fighters from the Wagner private military company are launching nonstop assaults on the ravaged city Ukrainian commanders on the front lines told CNN.

Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play.

“The situation is tense, but under control,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on Telegram.

Malyar made the comments after Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv’s forces.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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France is trying to limit the diplomatic fallout after President Emmanuel Macron said Europe should reduce its dependence on the U.S. and avoid “getting caught up in crises that are not ours,” following a state visit to China earlier this month.

Critics said Macron’s remarks undermined the transatlantic relationship at a time of dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Macron was in Beijing April 5-8, alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, partly to seek China’s help in ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They were accompanied by dozens of European business leaders, who signed a series of commercial deals during the visit.

So far, China has refused to condemn Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. President Xi Jinping again refrained from criticizing Moscow during Macron’s visit. Nevertheless, Macron later wrote on Twitter: “Long live the friendship between China and France!’”

In an official statement, China described the visit as “successful and rewarding with fruitful outcomes.”

Beijing has since vowed not to send any weapons to Russia. “China will not provide weapons to relevant parties of the conflict and will manage and control the exports of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations,” Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said at an April 14 news conference, alongside his visiting German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock.

Taiwan focus

Just two days after Macron and von der Leyen’s visit to Beijing, the Chinese military conducted live fire exercises encircling Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory.

On the flight home to Paris, Macron gave interviews to journalists from Les Echos and Politico, in which he reportedly said the great risk Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy.”

“The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron was reported as telling Politico.

Macron was questioned about his remarks during a visit to The Hague on April 12.

“France is for the status quo in Taiwan. France supports the ‘One China’ policy and the search for a peaceful settlement of the situation. This is, moreover, the position of the Europeans, and it is a position which has always been compatible with the role of ally,” Macron told reporters.

“But it is precisely here that I insist on the importance of strategic autonomy. Being allies does not mean being a vassal. It is not the case that because we are allies, because we do the things together that we decide to do, that we no longer have the right to think alone.” he added.

Fierce pushback

There has been a strong backlash on both sides of the Atlantic.

Marcin Przydacz, a foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, said Warsaw was not in favor of any shift away from Washington. “We believe that more America is needed in Europe. … Today, the United States is more of a guarantee of safety in Europe than France,” Przydacz told Polish broadcaster Radio Zet.

In Washington, Republicans on Capitol Hill also strongly criticized Macron’s remarks. In a video posted on Twitter, Senator Marco Rubio said if Europe refuses to “pick sides between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, then maybe we shouldn’t be picking sides either [on Ukraine].”

Timing questioned

Macron’s timing was unwise, said Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States and the United Nations and now an analyst with the Atlantic Council.

“We are just right now fighting — all of us, together, behind the Americans — we are fighting the Russian aggression in Ukraine. And I do understand that for a lot of our partners, it was not the right moment, frankly, to raise the issue of our transatlantic alliance,” Araud told VOA in an interview Tuesday.

Others fear the fallout could be more damaging, as Macron’s comments undermine the transatlantic alliance just as the West tries to counter Russian aggression and stand up to an increasingly assertive China.

“The way Macron framed it made it sound as if it is a project of equidistance — of having sort of the same distance to the United States and to China,” said Liana Fix, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “And it also created the impression that it is the United States which is pushing confrontation, and not China. The feedback from China was very positive, because it confirmed Chinese thinking that it’s possible to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.”

“From the perspective of central and eastern Europeans, these remarks basically confirmed their most fundamental fears: that Macron’s pledge for European strategic autonomy or more independence is just a pledge for more French power in Europe. It’s a pledge to decouple from the United States,” Fix told VOA on Monday.

Mending ties

In the wake of a growing diplomatic storm, a delegation from the French parliament visited Taiwan last week to reassure them of French support.

“This is very important for us to be here and just saying to all the people from Taiwan, we stand to you, we are close to you,” the head of the delegation, Eric Bothorel, told reporters in Taiwan.

Analyst Renaud Foucart of Britain’s Lancaster University argued that Macron was simply trying to avert wider confrontation.

“China is asking for a multilateral world. And Macron is coming and saying, ‘OK, if you don’t arm Russia, we can be France and claim that we are not a vassal to the U.S., we can claim that we are all different blocs, that we have our own sensitivities to the ‘One China’ policy of Taiwan, and all those things.

“But if you start yourself, China, to create a bloc with Russia — to start to arm Russia— then we cannot be the multilateral world. We need to be together with the U.S. And this is going to be our natural allies in that in that framework.’”

It is disingenuous to suggest that Macron supports China over Taiwan, Foucart asserted.

“At the same time that Macron was making these comments about China and Taiwan … there were military boats of France cruising the Taiwan Strait at the same time as the Chinese were having their [military] training,” he said. “So, the French have their own interest in the Indo-Pacific.”

US election

The United States is set to hold presidential elections in 2024. That could usher in a new administration less keen than Joe Biden to spend money arming Ukraine or defending Europe, said Araud, the former French ambassador to the U.S.

“For the moment, as long as the U.S. administration is strongly supporting the defense of Europe, there will be no question about strategic autonomy on European defense,” said Araud. “If [Donald] Trump is elected president, I think that the debate would be reopened by force. The Europeans who want to sleep under the American flag will be obliged to wake up.”
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VOA Azerbaijani Service journalists Idrak Jamalbeyli and Seymur Shikhaliyev received shrapnel wounds Saturday when a booby trap left by Russian soldiers exploded as they were reporting in the previously Russian-occupied trenches near the village of Myrne in the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine.

Ukrainian volunteers were showing Jamalbeyli and Shikhaliyev extensive trenches dug by Russian troops in the area when the explosion was ignited by a trap set up by the departed Russian soldiers.

Jamalbeyli was wounded by some shrapnel in one of his legs, and one of Shikhaliyev’s arms was hit, also by shrapnel. Both are recovering, and they did not sustain serious injuries. One of the Ukrainian volunteers also received light wounds on his face.
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New developments:

The Wagner Group founder is concerned about a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The United States will be training Ukrainian soldiers on Abrams tanks, while Germany will build a tank repair hub in Poland.
Ukraine grain exports are still banned by European countries.

In its daily intelligence update on Ukraine, then British Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russia is “struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative it uses to justify the war in Ukraine.” The narrative is that the invasion of Ukraine is similar to the Soviet experience in World War II.

Earlier this month, Russia cited safety issues as the reason for canceling the annual observance of the Immortal Regiment “Great Patriotic War” remembrance marches. “In reality,” the ministry said,” the authorities were highly likely concerned that participants would highlight the scope of recent Russian losses.”

Another part of the Russian narrative is the rallying cry that there are Nazis in Ukraine.  But now, however, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is the chief of the Wagner Group and also a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has publicly questioned the existence of Nazis in Ukraine, contradicting Russia’s justification for the invasion, the British ministry said.  

In his nightly video address Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was readying for a counteroffensive.

“The front line is priority No. 1,” he said Friday. “We are also actively preparing new brigades and units that will show themselves at the front.”

Zelenskyy thanked the allies for their commitment to Ukraine’s defense.

A U.S.-hosted meeting Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany focused on air defense and ammunition in Ukraine. The United States said it would soon start training Ukrainian troops to operate Abrams tanks, while Germany announced that it was building a tank repair hub in Poland for tanks deployed in Ukraine.

During the meeting, allies also reassured Kyiv of their unconditional support and backed Ukraine’s bid to join NATO in the future.

Ukraine pressed its allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition ahead of the counteroffensive against Russian troops, which is expected in the coming weeks or months.

 

Prigozhin concerned

Following Zelenskyy’s remarks Friday, Yevgeni Prigozhin, chief of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, expressed concerns about an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive with highly trained Ukrainian forces.

“Today we are killing those who were trained in Ukraine, but the ones coming from Germany will be technologically educated,” he said in an audio recording released on his Telegram channel.

He was referring to those Ukrainian soldiers who will train in Germany to use U.S. Abrams tanks.

Prigozhin predicted that Ukraine would counterattack after the spring rains, when the ground is firm.

“They will attack … they will come and try to tear us apart, and we must resist,” he said.

Russia relies heavily on the Wagner forces in Bakhmut, where fighting is still raging.

Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play. “The situation is tense, but under control,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Malyar made the comments after Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv’s forces.

 

EU-Ukraine grain

Four European Union member states have banned Ukraine’s food exports to protect their own markets. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria say that an influx of Ukrainian food imports is harming their own farmers, who can’t compete with Ukraine’s low prices. The Polish government approved $2.4 billion in aid for its agricultural sector, criticizing the European Commission on Friday for not doing enough to help resolve the problem.

“What the EU is offered with a delay, it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.

The European Commission has offered $110 million of aid for central European farmers, in addition to an earlier $61.5 million package. It has also said it will take emergency preventive measures for other products — like wheat, corn and sunflower seeds — but the central European states want this list to be broadened to include honey and some meats, Reuters reported.

Ukraine’s economy is heavily dependent upon agriculture, and the European ban will put a significant dent in its sales, Bloomberg reported, citing UkrAgroConsult.

Romania has for now decided not to participate in the ban, while allowing transit of Ukraine exports through its Black Sea port of Constanta.

Several central European countries became the gateway to a glut of Ukraine’s food exports after Ukrainian grain was stranded in Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia. The Black Sea Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey has allowed safe transit of grain shipments through that corridor, though Russia is threatening not to renew after the deal expires on May 18.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that the renewal of the deal depended on whether the West would lift restrictions affecting Russia’s agricultural exports. The Kremlin said Friday that it was monitoring reports of a possible ban on Russian exports and that new Western sanctions would damage the global economy.

“We are aware that both the U.S. and the EU are actively considering new sanctions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We believe that both the current sanctions against the Russian Federation and the new additional steps that the U.S. and the EU may be thinking about now will, of course, also hit the global economy.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The European Union is reportedly preparing emergency curbs on Ukrainian food products after several member states bordering Ukraine imposed their own import bans in recent days, complaining that a glut of cheap produce is hitting their own farmers.

Following a virtual meeting with EU officials on Wednesday, Romanian Minister of Agriculture Petre Daea outlined the bloc’s plans.

“The [European] Commission is making available to the five countries [Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia] 100 million euros [$109.32 million] from its crisis reserve. … It provides for the activation of exceptional safeguarding mechanisms, which means stopping imports until June 5 for the following products: wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and rapeseed,” Daea told reporters.

He added that the deal would be made available only when member states had withdrawn their own unilateral import bans.

The EU has yet to confirm details of the planned support package.

Ukraine grain

Ukraine, the world’s fifth-biggest grain exporter, has struggled to ship agricultural produce from its Black Sea ports to world markets following Russia’s invasion last year.

The European Union ended quotas and tariffs on Ukrainian goods after the outbreak of the war to shore up the Ukrainian economy. Eastern European states claim this has led to cheap grain imports being dumped on their domestic markets.

In the past week, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria have banned the import of Ukrainian grain and other products, in an apparent breach of EU trade law. Bulgarian Prime Minister Galab Donev said Wednesday that the measures were necessary.

“A significant amount of [Ukrainian] food has remained in the country and disrupted the main production and trade chains,” Donev told reporters. “If this trend persists and even increases, it is possible to reach extremely serious consequences for the Bulgarian business.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki outlined a $2.4 billion support package for farmers and said the European Union response had been inadequate.

“What the EU is offering us is offered with a delay; it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs,” Morawiecki told a news conference Friday in Warsaw.

Protests

Farmers have staged protests in several countries bordering Ukraine, including Romania.

“Our fear is that this unfair competition coming from our colleagues in Ukraine cannot be borne by the Romanian farmers. We will witness a chain of bankruptcies of Romanian farmers,” warned Liliana Piron of the League of Romanian Agriculture Producers Associations at a protest in Bucharest earlier this month.

Brussels warned this week that the import bans violated EU law.

“Unilateral action is not possible under EU trade policy,” European Commission spokesperson Miriam Garcia Ferrer said Wednesday. Nevertheless, it appears the EU is preparing to approve emergency curbs on Ukrainian imports for certain countries.

Domestic politics

The dispute has taken many by surprise, said Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform, an analyst group.

“In the case of Poland, what’s so strange is that this is so much at odds with the assistance that Poland has given Ukraine in other ways,” Bond told VOA.

“So, this is entirely driven by domestic political considerations to do with protests by Polish farmers, and the risk that government obviously feels that the farmers might defect and vote for some other party in the next elections,” Bond said.

Ukraine reaction

For Ukrainian farmers, the import bans add to the troubles caused by Russia’s invasion. Volodymyr Bondaruk, executive director of the Pearl of Podillia, a mixed dairy and arable farm near Ternopil in western Ukraine, said, “I would like farmers and the agricultural lobby in the Eastern [European] countries to understand that we face similar problems. We don’t ask for subsidies; we don’t want anything like that. Just help us to sell our goods,” Bondaruk told Reuters.

“We have leftovers from the 2022 harvest. In the previous years, we exported a lot of corn, wheat and other grains to the Middle East countries, African countries. But today because of the war, ports do not accept large amounts of goods,” he added.

Black Sea

The glut of Ukrainian grain in Europe is the result of reduced exports through the Black Sea since Russia’s invasion. A deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to reopen the shipping route, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, came into force last August. However, Russia is threatening to end the deal when it’s up for renewal next month.

The ban on imports of Ukrainian grain by some countries in Europe could play into Moscow’s hands, analyst Bond said.

“It seems to me that this increases the chances that Russia will see this as a pressure point and will try to use it as a way of saying, ‘Well, we’re not going to renew the grain deal unless you agree to completely unacceptable conditions.’”

While its domestic import ban remains in place, Poland resumed the transit of Ukrainian products across its territory on Friday.

The European Union said it planned to organize alternative transport, including convoys of trucks, trains and barges, to take grain from Ukraine’s land borders to ports where it could be shipped to the world market.
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Ukrainian women from all walks of life have joined the armed forces to fight for their homes and country. Anna Kosstutschenko met with some near Bakhmut. Video: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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Germany’s train system came to a standstill Friday when railway workers went on strike for eight hours. 

EVG, the union representing the state-owned Deutsche Bahn workers, says its members need a raise to counter inflation.  

Long distance and regional trains were affected by the strike, which lasted from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m.  

The railway strike coincided with a walkout at four major German airports, affecting hundreds of flights. Reuters news agency reports 700 flights were canceled.
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