US President Joe Biden is set to hold talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin for the second time this month, in a bid to de-escalate tensions over Ukraine.

The two leaders will speak by phone on Thursday.

They will discuss forthcoming security talks between the countries and the situation in Europe, a White House official said.

Russia, which recently built up forces on the border with Ukraine, denies planning to invade the country.

It says its troops are there for exercises, and that it is entitled to move its troops freely on its own soil.

Hours before the call, Mr Putin told Mr Biden in a holiday message he was “convinced” the pair could work together based on “mutual respect and consideration of each other’s national interests”.

His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Moscow was “in the mood for a conversation”.

A day earlier, a US official told AFP news agency that Mr Biden would offer his Russian counterpart a “diplomatic path” but remained “gravely” concerned by the Russian troop build-up on the border.

The head of Ukraine’s national security council, Oleksiy Danilov, sought to downplay that on Thursday, saying: “As for the troops build-up near our borders reported by foreign media – we do not see that. There is a certain increase of [Russian] military and we closely monitor what’s happening at our borders.”

Less than a month ago, Ukraine’s defence minister told parliament – citing intelligence reports – that Russia had massed more than 94,000 troops near the border and could be gearing up for a large-scale military offensive at the end of January.

The US has consulted European leaders ahead of the call to co-ordinate a common response to the Ukraine issue, according to a White House statement.

While Ukraine is not a Nato member, it has close ties with the bloc.

Russia has said it wants legally binding guarantees that Nato will not move eastwards and that weapons will not be sent to Ukraine or any neighbouring countries.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has been adamant that Ukraine’s membership of the alliance is a matter for Nato and Kyiv. “Any dialogue with Russia has of course to respect the core principles which European security has been based on,” he previously said.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has described the current situation as probably “the most dangerous it’s been in 30 years”.

Russian officials are due to meet US counterparts in Geneva on 10 January. Asked earlier this week if he would meet Mr Putin on that date, Mr Biden replied “We’ll see”, but he is not expected to attend the talks in Geneva.

World Opinions – BBC

L’article Ukraine tensions: Biden and Putin phone call seeks ‘diplomatic path’ est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

European leaders are expected to warn Russia that hostile action against Ukraine could come at a “high price”, amid concerns over the build-up of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border.

The message, to be agreed during a European Council summit in Brussels, will be the latest warning from the West against Russian aggression.

The Kremlin denies it plans to attack.

Meanwhile, Russia has set out its demands for security guarantees to the United States.

Western intelligence services believe up to 100,000 Russian troops are massed near Ukraine’s borders. Ukrainian authorities have said Moscow could be planning a military offensive at the end of January, although US officials say it is not yet clear whether President Putin has made a decision.

On Wednesday, the chief of the European Commission, which is the EU executive, again urged Russia to de-escalate tensions. Ursula von der Leyen said additional sanctions had already been prepared, targeting “all the different fields you might think of”.

“[T]he message is very clear: should Russia take further aggressive actions against Ukraine, the costs will be severe and the consequences serious,” she said.

It is not yet clear what the threatened sanctions package might include. One of the possible targets is Nord Stream 2, a new gas pipeline from Russia to Germany not yet in operation.

Her comment came after French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sought to revive talks with Russia, as they met the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Brussels.

President Zelensky said he would prefer sanctions to be imposed immediately, before Russia acts, adding that measures after an escalation of hostilities “no longer interest anyone”.

Earlier, Mr Scholz said the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border was of “great concern”, and that any “violation of territorial integrity will have a price, a high price”.

Also on Wednesday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov handed over a list of proposals for European security to US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried, who was in Moscow for talks.

Russia wants legally biding guarantees against eastward Nato expansion and deployment of weapons close to its border. Nato says its activities are defensive and that no country can veto Ukraine’s hopes of joining the alliance.

Ukraine shares borders with both the EU and Russia but has deep social and cultural ties with Russia. Russia, meanwhile, has accused Ukraine of provocation.

World Opinions News – BBC News

L’article Russia Ukraine: EU to warn Moscow against action est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

In recent months, Europe has watched impotently from the sidelines as Alexander Lukashenko brutally reasserted his illegitimate authority over the population of Belarus. The protest movement that threatened the survival of his regime after fraudulent 2020 elections has, for the time being, been subjugated: a combination of state violence, media suppression, incarceration and torture has battered a people into temporary submission.

The modest sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States have had limited effect, while deepening the dependency of “Europe’s last dictator” on Vladimir Putin’s largesse and goodwill.

Calibrating a response to state repression that will not play into Mr Putin’s hands has not been easy. But for the EU in particular, Monday’s extraordinary abduction of Roman Protasevich, an opposition journalist based in Lithuania, must be the catalyst for a stepchange in strategy. Along with his girlfriend, Mr Protasevich was abducted from Ryanair flight FR4978, which was crossing Belarusian airspace while flying from Athens to Vilnius.

It appears he was followed onto the commercial flight by members of the Belarusian KGB. Passengers have reported Mr Protasevich’s panic and terror as the flight was diverted to Minsk on spurious grounds, accompanied by a MiG-29 fighter jet. The opposition movement’s main figurehead, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has said that he may face the death penalty.

The abduction of an opposition blogger from a commercial Ryanair flight sends a chilling message to dissidents. The west’s response must be swift and robust

The effect on other Belarusian dissidents will be chilling. Ms Tikhanovskaya, currently exiled in Vilnius but a frequent traveller across Europe, took the same route a week earlier, after speaking in Greece. With Minsk more or less under control, Mr Lukashenko has begun to pick off prominent opponents still at large. Last month, his former spokesman, Alexander Feduta, who had joined the opposition movement, was detained in Moscow and taken back to Minsk, where he has been charged with trying to organise a coup.

The international community must do everything possible to keep a spotlight on the case of Mr Protasevich, and the hundreds of other detainees facing uncertain fates in Minsk prisons. But its response must also be commensurate with the wider implications of an act of aviation piracy. Monday’s outrage will send a shiver down the spine of every overseas critic of an authoritarian regime. As the Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, has furiously observed, this was an act of aggression on “an Irish airline, a plane that’s registered in Poland, full of EU nationals, travelling between two EU capitals”. A line has been crossed. As one recent study has noted, authoritarian governments have become increasingly proactive in silencing protest beyond their borders, using methods of “transnational repression” ranging from online harassment and intimidation to abduction and assassination.

The Warsaw offices of the Telegram channels for which Mr Protasevich works operate under police protection after repeated bomb threats. The effective hijacking of flight FR4978, and what happens next, will be observed with acute interest from Beijing to Riyadh.

Britain has ordered all UK planes to cease flying over Belarus and the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has suspended the operating permit for Belavia, the country’s state-owned airline. It seems likely that the EU will also move in the direction of aviation-related sanctions, blocking Belavia flights and designating Belarusian airspace unsafe. Beyond this, there should now be consideration of tough economic sanctions that go beyond the current targeting of senior regime officials. When the supremely courageous attempts to remove Mr Lukashenko from power began last summer, there was western reluctance to reinforce a state narrative of foreign hostility and interference. But by sending a MiG fighter to corral a Ryanair flight and arrest a journalist living under the protection of the EU, Mr Lukashenko has brazenly stepped over a red line. This time, the response must be swift, robust and, for his regime, painful.

The Guardian view

L’article View on Belarus: a line has been crossed est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Britain is on a collision course with the EU over vaccine shortages after Brussels refused to accept that people in the UK have first claim on Oxford/AstraZeneca doses produced in local plants.

The EU’s health commissioner outright dismissed on Wednesday an argument made by Pascal Soriot, the Anglo-Swedish company’s chief executive, that he was contractually obliged to supply the UK first.

In a withering statement, Stella Kyriakides said the UK should not earn any advantage from signing a contract with AstraZeneca three months before the EU’s executive branch put pen to paper.

“We reject the logic of first come, first served,” the commissioner said. “That may work in a butcher’s shop but not in contracts and not in our advanced purchase agreements.”

AstraZeneca has enraged Brussels and EU capitals by warning that it will be able to deliver only 25% of the doses scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of the year once the European medicines authority has given its approval, as is expected on Friday.

At the same time, the company has assured the British government, which chose not to be part of the EU vaccine programme, that it will fulfil its promise to deliver 2m doses a week for the benefit of UK residents.

On Tuesday UK government sources insisted that only once the British facilities in Oxford and Staffordshire had produced 100m doses for the local population would those plants be free to supply other countries.

A government spokesperson said: “We are in constant contact with the vaccine manufacturers and remain confident that the supply of vaccine to the UK will not be disrupted. We have deals in place with seven vaccine developers that will ensure our supply continues to grow as we rapidly expand the rollout in the weeks ahead.”

The EU is investing €336m (£297m) in AstraZeneca in return for 400m doses of its vaccine, the first 100m of which had been expected before April.

Boris Johnson risked further inflaming matters on Wednesday by claiming it would have been a “great pity” if the UK had followed advice to stay in the EU vaccine programme rather than set up its own plan.

“I do think that we’ve been able to do things differently, and better, in some ways,” the prime minister told the House of Commons. “But it is early days, and it is very, very important to remember that this is an international venture, these vaccines. We depend on our friends and partners, and we will continue … to work with those friends and partners in the EU and beyond.”

The clash between British and European interests, aftEUer a year of tense negotiations over post-Brexit trade and security, poses a threat to relations at a time when EU institutions and 27 EU governments are coming under criticism for the slow deployment of their vaccination programmes.

While the UK has administered vaccine first doses to more than 10% of adults and plans to vaccinate the most vulnerable 15 million – including all over-70s – by mid-February, the EU has reached 2% so far. The UK’s regulator approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in late December.

Kyriakides said that under its contract with AstraZeneca, four European plants were named as suppliers and two of those were based in the UK, and she expected them to work for EU citizens.

The company has claimed that the contract with the EU only obliges it to make “best efforts” to supply the bloc, in the understanding that it has other obligations, and that the vaccine production process is prone to breakdown.

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca said: “Each supply chain was developed with input and investment from specific countries or international organisations based on the supply agreements, including our agreement with the European commission.

“As each supply chain has been set up to meet the needs of a specific agreement, the vaccine produced from any supply chain is dedicated to the relevant countries or regions and makes use of local manufacturing wherever possible.”

Kyriakides, a Cypriot who studied in Britain, said the argument was unacceptable and the company had a moral duty to treat the EU similarly to the UK.

She said: “We are in a pandemic. We lose people every day. These are not numbers, they’re not statistics. These are persons with families with friends and colleagues that are all affected as well.

“Pharmaceutical companies, vaccine developers have moral, societal and contractual responsibilities, which they need to uphold. The view that the company is not obliged to deliver because we signed a best effort agreement is neither correct, nor is it acceptable.”

Kyriakides said there was no “priority clause” that would justify British residents benefiting first from doses made in the UK.

The European commission is rifling through customs records over fears vaccines made on EU territory have been shipped to the UK. “The customs data do not lie,” a senior EU official said. “You can be assured that we will find the information, that’s for sure.”

Kyriakides said: “No company should be under any illusion that we don’t have the means to understand what is happening.”

The EU has called for AstraZeneca to waive its concerns over confidentiality and publish the vaccine contract. Officials said they would look into whether comments from its chief executive were in breach of its clauses.

In his interview, the French head of AstraZeneca lamented problems in a plant in Belgium but said he was duty-bound to put the UK first.

“The UK agreement was reached in June, three months before the European one,” Soriot said. “As you could imagine, the UK government said the supply coming out of the UK supply chain would go for the UK first. Basically that’s how it is.”

In response to the shortages, the commission is to release details of a new “transparency register” by the end of the week to oblige vaccine suppliers to notify it of exports, with the German government raising the prospect of a block on the movement of doses outside the EU.

The EU wants to ensure that doses made in AstraZeneca’s plants in Belgium and the Netherlands are not in future sent to the UK. There is also the risk that exports of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from European plants could be blocked from reaching the UK, although the commission has sought to assuage those fears.

“People in the United Kingdom are vaccinated with a very good vaccine produced in Europe, supported by European money,” said Peter Liese, a German MEP in Angela Merkel’s CDU party, referring to the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine.

“If there is anyone thinking that European citizens would accept that we give this high quality vaccine to the United Kingdom and would accept to be treated as second class by a UK-based company, I think the only consequence can be to immediately stop the export of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. And then we are in the middle of a trade war. So the company and the UK better think twice.”

World Opinions News – theguardian.com

L’article Britain and EU clash over claims to UK-produced Covid vaccine est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

The venerable cover CD, beloved of music magazine buyers for a generation, has been challenged by Brexit after Mojo was forced to postpone distribution of its next issue because of a delay in delivery.

In an email to subscribers on Friday, Mojo said that while the magazine itself was printed, “the CDs which are produced in the EU, are not yet in the UK”. It is understood that the issue was caused by hold-ups in the process caused by new trade rules.

Mojo, which apologised to readers and said they would be given early access to the digital edition of the magazine, is the victim of the latest logistical hiccups to strike business since the Brexit transition period ended.

German freight giant DB Schenker paused UK deliveries on Thursday, blaming increased paperwork, while companies including Fortnum and Mason have reported problems delivering to customers in the EU and Northern Ireland.

Marks & Spencer said it was concerned that a third of the products in its Irish food halls, including Percy Pigs, would now be subject to import tariffs. Meanwhile, international delivery giant DPD also said it was “pausing” road service from the UK into Europe last week.

Mojo’s problem represents another challenge to the economics of the cover-mounted CD. Once a prized staple of music and technology magazines and even deemed a threat to the music industry when they appeared in weekend newspapers, they are now largely anachronistic as most people access entertainment online and fewer have CD players.

The heritage music magazine is not the only publication to fall foul of Brexit-related issues. Electronic Sound magazine also said it had been forced to delay its next issue, editor Push told the Guardian, saying that a problem with the free vinyl sent to subscribers was “the result of issues with changing to a UK supplier”.

Oliver Condy, editor of BBC Music Magazine, said he had feared the same issue with cover CDs and he had been “planning for this for months and months”.

“We sent materials to the [CD] presses a couple of months early,” he said. “We haven’t seen the results yet, but we’ve got our fingers crossed it will be fine.”

Bauer, Mojo magazine’s publisher, declined to comment, saying it was “still a live situation”.

By Archie Bland – theguardian.com

L’article Brexit delays Mojo magazine as cover CDs remain stranded in EU est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Leaving the EU was an emotionally charged political proposition, not an economic one. It was a desire rooted in a vision of British sovereignty richly marinaded in a heady mix of nostalgia and bogus victimhood, fanned by Britain’s media, and which made the enormous error of confusing sovereignty with power. The reality of that error will come home to roost in the months and years ahead. But Brexit was never about the price of potatoes or cars. In the end, it wasn’t even about standing up for Britain’s one genuine shared diplomatic triumph of recent decades, the Northern Ireland peace agreement.

Britain leaves the EU with its sovereignty compromised, its economy weakened – and its leader walking a tightrope

The initial hoopla on Christmas Eve about the trade deal with the EU must be seen from that perspective. Stupid headlines about a Merry Brexmas conceal the fact that what is being celebrated is in fact a thin deal and bad economic news for Britain. But economics has always been secondary in Brexit. Trade deals, like economic arrangements more generally, are not Brexit’s first-order objectives but its second-order consequences. If free trade had been the objective, Britain would have stayed in the single market and the customs union. It was nonsense for Boris Johnson to pretend on Thursday that the EU deal will create “a giant free-trade zone”. There was one there already. And this deal says little about services.

What was finally agreed this week is a worse trade deal than we had as an EU member state. Britain has expelled itself from the EU because sovereignty is what really matters in Brexitland, not trade. As a result, for probably the first time in human history, these have been trade negotiations that aim to take the trading partners further apart, not closer together. That would be difficult enough with goodwill, and has been doubly difficult because of Britain’s unrealistic tactics. But that is the looking-glass world Britain now inhabits. If taking back control means giving up some of the prosperity, along with the other benefits, that went with EU membership – and it certainly does – then the leavers say: so be it.

It is an inconvenient and ironic truth that all trade deals, including this one, will involve a compromise of sovereignty for mutual benefit. That is what making deals means. Ursula von der Leyen was spot on when she described “pooling our strength and speaking together” as what sovereignty means in practice in the 21st century. This deal is absolutely no different. This truth is, of course, being brushed over in the immediate media silliness that burst out on Thursday. But when the dust settles and MPs come back to Westminster to debate the deal next week, they will see that Britain has had to give up some sovereignty in order to be able to go on trading with by far our largest and nearest market on preferential terms.

The only sense in which this amounts to a triumph for Johnson is that it completes the detachment of the United Kingdom from the EU that a majority of voters opted for four and a half years ago. That is undeniably important. It is the consummation of Johnson’s lifelong campaign of lies about the EU. It may, in fact, mean that Johnson’s premiership now has no other particular purpose. But the deal involves considerable political risk for the government, because the economics of Brexit and the politics of Brexit have always pulled Johnson in opposite directions.

Johnson is nothing like as clever as he thinks he is, but he is not stupid either. He knows that geographical proximity and established supply networks matter massively in trade, and therefore that trade with the EU cannot simply be abandoned. He knows that the Office for Budget Responsibility calculated that failure to strike a deal would have led to lost GDP potential of more than 5% over 15 years. He knows that small, medium and large businesses are only surviving on their margins as the Covid pandemic deepens again. He knows that, post-Covid, the UK will face huge fiscal pressures that would be much worse if there was no deal.

And he knows something else too. Even if part of him would prefer to ignore it, he knows that no deal would have handed Nicola Sturgeon the biggest and best Christmas present she could have dreamed of in her efforts to take Scotland out of the UK. As Brexit begins to fade in the prime minister’s rearview mirror next year, the task of saving the union looms ever closer. All of these factors always pointed towards a deal.

Yet there was always a party-political logic at work in Johnson’s calculations too, and this pulled him in the opposite direction, towards no deal. Johnson is, after all, not just the prime minister of the UK. He is also the leader of the volatile, fanatical and potent leave movement. This is what made him the leader of his party. It is the reason he won the 2019 election. And the leave movement would have been more than happy with no deal, because a complete break with Europe is in many ways the sovereigntists’ ideal.

So getting the choreography of the EU trade deal right has been critical. That would have been true even if this was a normal year and this was a normal Christmas. But the circumstances of 2020 – with Johnson’s Covid handling the subject of widespread and persistent criticism, including from within his party, and now amid the Christmas trucking chaos in Kent – have made that doubly vital.

Johnson’s original strategy after the 2019 election, urged on by Dominic Cummings, was to demand rigid party discipline, cabinet unity, the bypassing of parliament and, above all, to starve Nigel Farage of any political oxygen to shout betrayal. Covid severely disrupted that approach but did not derail it. Yet when the pandemic threatened to get out of hand in the autumn, control of the optics became even more crucial. The process had to go right down to the wire, with at least one apparent collapse, to ensure as little time as possible for party resisters to organise and for Farage to build up a revolt. That is what happened.

Nevertheless, none of this guarantees that Johnson is now home and dry on the EU trade deal. For one thing, Brexit will never cease to divide Britain. The issue will never be settled. Meanwhile the extravagant pre-Christmas exercise in brinkmanship suggests that there is in fact plenty in the deal for backbench zealots and Farage to object to. Von der Leyen’s comment that this is a fair, balanced and responsible deal is not what the MPs in the European Research Group want to hear.

Even at the very end of the year, even with coronavirus spreading, even with most minds focused on the festive season and even with most of the press dutifully portraying Johnson as a commanding leader, things could fall apart in the coming days. One should never forget that, among all his many qualities, Johnson is a compulsive political risk-taker. Given the ferocity of the emotions that Brexit will always arouse, this deal may prove a much bigger risk than anyone, including Johnson, yet realises.

By Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

L’article Boris Johnson has ‘got Brexit done’. With a deal that will please no one est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.