Lithuania's parliament approves exit from landmines treaty amid Russia threat
VILNIUS, May 8 (Reuters) - The Lithuanian parliament on Thursday voted in favour of withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention that bans the use of anti-personnel landmines amid concerns over the military threat posed by neighbouring Russia.
All five European Union and NATO countries which border Russia – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Finland - have said they plan to exit the international treaty due to the military threat from their much larger neighbour.
The Lithuanian vote follows the one in Latvia, where the parliament in April approved the withdrawal.
After withdrawing from the treaty, the countries would be able to stockpile and lay landmines six months after informing other treaty members and the United Nations of their decision.
None of the five countries have done so yet.
Russia is not a member of the Ottawa Convention and has used landmines in its invasion of Ukraine.
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The Guardian
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Russia is at war with Britain and US no longer a reliable ally, UK adviser says
Russia is at war with Britain, the US is no longer a reliable ally and the UK has to respond by becoming more cohesive and more resilient, according to one of the three authors of the strategic defence review. Fiona Hill, from county Durham, became the White House's chief Russia adviser during Donald Trump's first term and contributed to the British government's strategy, and made the remarks in an interview with the Guardian. 'We're in pretty big trouble,' Hill says, describing the UK's geopolitical situation as caught between 'the rock' of Vladimir Putin's Russia and 'the hard place' of Donald Trump's increasingly unpredictable United States. The best known of the reviewers appointed by Labour, alongside Lord Robertson, a former Nato secretary general, and retired general Sir Richard Barrons, Hill, 59, said she was happy to take on the role because it was 'such a major pivot point in global affairs'. She remains a dual national even after living over 30 years in the US. 'Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways that we probably hadn't fully anticipated,' Hill says, arguing that Putin sees the Ukraine war as a starting point to Moscow becoming 'a dominant military power in all of Europe'. As part of that long-term effort, Russia is already 'menacing the UK in various different ways,' she says, citing 'the poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber attacks and influence operations. The sensors that we see that they're putting down around critical pipelines, efforts to butcher undersea cables.' The conclusion, Hill says, is that 'Russia is at war with us'. Though the foreign policy expert, a long time Russia watcher, says she first made a similar warning in 2015, in a revised version of a book she wrote about the Russian president with Clifford Gaddy, reflecting on the invasion and annexation of Crimea. 'We said Putin had declared war on the West,' she says. At the time, other experts disagreed, but Hill says events since demonstrate 'he obviously had, and we haven't been paying attention to it'. The Russian leader, she argues, sees the fight in Ukraine as 'part of a proxy war with the United States; that's how he has persuaded China, North Korea and Iran to join in'. Putin believes, she says, that Ukraine has already been decoupled from the US relationship because 'Trump really wants to have a separate relationship with Putin to do arms control agreements and also business that will probably enrich their entourages further, though Putin doesn't need any more enrichment'. When it comes to defence, however, Hill says that the UK cannot rely on the military umbrella of the US as during the Cold War and in the generation that followed, at least 'not in the way that we did before'. In her description, the UK 'is having to manage its number one ally', though the challenge is not to overreact because 'you don't want to have a rupture'. This way of thinking even appears in the defence review published earlier this week, which says 'the UK's long-standing assumptions about global power balances and structures are no longer certain' – a rare acknowledgement in a British government document of how far and how fast Trumpism is affecting foreign policy certainties. The review team reported to Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and defence secretary John Healey. Most of Hill's interaction were with Healey however, and Hill said she only met the prime minister once – describing him as 'pretty charming … in a proper and correct way' and as 'having read all the papers'. Hill is not drawn on if she advised Starmer or Healey on how to deal with Donald Trump, saying instead 'the advice I would give is the same I would give in a public setting'. She says simply that the Trump White House 'is not an administration, it is a court' in which a transactional president is driven by his 'own desires and interests, and who listens often to the last person he talks to'. She adds that unlike his close circle, Trump has 'a special affinity for the UK' based partly on his own family ties (his mother came from the Hebridean island of Lewis, emigrating to New York aged 18) and an admiration for the royal family, particularly the late Queen. 'He talked endlessly about that,' she says. On the other hand, Hill is no fan of the populist right administration in the White House and worries it could come to Britain if 'the same culture wars' are allowed to develop with the encouragement of Republicans from the US. Already, she notes, Reform UK won a string of council elections last month, including in her native Durham, and leader Nigel Farage wants to emulate some of the aggressive efforts to restructure government led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) before his falling out with Trump. 'When Nigel Farage says he wants to do a Doge against the local county council, he should come over here [to the US] and see what kind of impact that has,' she says. 'This is going to be the largest layoffs in US history happening all at once, much bigger than hits to steel works and coal mines.' Hill's argument is that in a time of profound uncertainty, Britain needs greater internal cohesion if it is to protect itself. 'We can't rely exclusively on anyone any more,' she says, arguing that Britain needs to have 'a different mindset' based as much on traditional defence as on social resilience. Some of that, Hill says, is about a greater recognition of the level of external threat and initiatives for greater integration, by teaching first aid in schools or encouraging more teenagers to join school cadet forces, a recommendation of the defence review. 'What you need to do is get people engaged in all kinds of different ways in support of their communities,' she says. Hill says she sees that deindustrialisation and a rise of inequality in Russia and the US has contributed to the rise in national populism in both countries. Politicians in Britain, or elsewhere, 'have to be much more creative and engage people where they are at' as part of a 'national effort'. If this seems far away from a conventional view of defence, that is because it is, though Hill also argues that traditional conceptions of war are changing as technology evolves and with it what makes a potent force. 'People keep saying the British army has the smallest number of troops since the Napoleonic era. Why is the Napoleonic era relevant? Or that we have fewer ships than the time of Charles II. The metrics are all off here,' Hill says. 'The Ukrainians are fighting with drones. Even though they have no navy, they sank a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet.' Her aim, therefore, is not just to be critical but to propose solutions. Hill recalls that a close family friend, on hearing that she had taken on the defence review, had told her: ''Don't tell us how shite we are, tell us what we can do, how we can fix things.' People understand that we have a problem and that the world has changed.'
Sky News
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Roman Abramovich: From rags, to riches, to 'ripping off' Ukraine
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
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Between ‘rollover UK' and ‘retaliatory China': will EU hardball secure trade deal with US?
In Brussels' corridors of power, quiet optimism is growing that the EU's hardball strategy to secure a US trade deal is working. While Britain quickly moved to try to cushion the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs with a deal agreed last month – and US-Chinese relations are a tit-for-tat situation – the EU has taken a different stance. 'We are positioning ourselves between 'rollover UK' and 'retaliatory China',' said a Brussels source. The stakes are not just the £706bn in transatlantic trade between the EU and US but the fallout from what diplomats and businesses say is a dangerous assault on the global rules-based system that governs western democracy. 'The only thing that appeals to Trump is power. Amid all the nausea and uncertainty here, there is a significant chance the EU will go the whole way and not do a deal,' said a diplomat in the Belgian capital. 'If the EU doesn't stand up to Trump or demand the rigours of rules, the question will be: what is left of the international rules based system?' the source added, noting the risk to employment rights, free speech, social welfare and public care. The EU's steadfast strategy is high-risk, and has weeks to play out before the 90-day pause in Trump's threat to impose 20% tariffs on all EU imports ends in July. He has already slapped a 10% tariff on all exports, with more on autos and steel, which this week went to 50%. 'If in the end, if we are the only ones on the pitch, people will start to say we should have been more like the Chinese,' said one EU official, with demands for retaliation expected to arise 'very quickly from member states'. The biggest pothole in what threatens to be a bumpy road ahead may be a Nato summit on 24 June when Trump, who has shown visceral antipathy towards the EU, may find fault in what he considers freeloading allies. Right now, EU member states are united in their resolve not to capitulate in the face of his demands, which include the removal of non-tariff barriers such as food standards. 'What the US is doing has brought us together, and there's a sense of urgency of that cooperation within the 27 that is quite important,' says one diplomat. There is even a growing acceptance that US tariffs of more than 10% are a long-term reality. 'Ideally less than 10%, so it doesn't look like we have rolled over,' says one Brussels official. Before Trump took office for the second time the average tariff on US imports in the EU was about 2.5%. The EU's chief negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, said on multiple occasions this week that he was 'optimistic' a deal would be done, but back at base, trade war preparations continue. 'We are keeping the gun on the shelf. We don't want to use it, but we want them to know it is there,' said one diplomat. Šefčovič said on Friday he had held another call with the US secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick. 'Our time and effort fully invested, as delivering forward-looking solutions remains a top EU priority. Staying in permanent contact,' he wrote on X. Meanwhile, twin talks took place this week in Paris at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and in Washington with a team of EU officials led by Tomas Baert, trade adviser to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. Those talks helped 'clean the slate, clear the table', Šefčovič told a conference organised by the European Policy Centre, a thinktank, on Thursday in Brussels. He added that he had also discussed the continued threat of sectoral tariffs on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors with the US trade representative Jamieson Greer in Paris. Šefčovič said his message was that the US and the EU had mutual interests in re-industrialisation on both sides of the Atlantic, and in minimising China's unstoppable rise in key sectors such as electric vehicles and steel. 'Any obstacle in the middle of the Atlantic would simply make them less competitive and more vulnerable. This is the diplomatic, political but also very technical discussions we are having,' he said. Up to now negotiations have been somewhat hampered by the parallel universe occupied by the US president, and White House and EU officials. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Last month, Trump, out of the blue, threatened and then unthreatened to slap a 50% tariff on all EU imports, claiming Brussels was dragging its feet 'to put it mildly'. 'This came as a surprise to Maroš, because he had been in talks since February,' said one source. 'But because this is an imperial court, it is the emperor who will decide when talks are happening.' The volatility in the transatlantic relationship on European business is unprecedented. 'I have been here 10 years and I have never seen this level of nervousness, not during the pandemic, not after the invasion of Ukraine,' said a director at one trade group representing dozens of multinationals in Brussels, who declined to be named. Luisa Santos, the deputy director general at Confederation of Business Europe, which represents 42 national business federations, said trade would, like water, find its course but investment could prove the collateral damage. 'The whole basis of trade is WTO [World Trade Organization] rules,' she said. 'We agreed on the rules and they were accepted the consequences. Now the rule is the power game: 'I will impose what I think is best for me, and the bigger players with more power determine the rules and that is a huge change.' Santos added: 'I think the biggest shock in Europe is that we were supposed to be the traditional allies. But now we are basically put on the same basket as China.' Kyle Martin, the vice-president of European affairs at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, whose members include Boeing and Airbus, said tariffs would end a 45-year-old US-EU agreement that aviation construction, which relies on a global supply chain, was duty-free. A Boeing 787 gets its front fuselage from Italy, its wings from Japan and doors from France, with assembly at home in Seattle, he pointed out. 'I don't see this having a positive [outcome] for either Boeing or Airbus or any other manufacturer. Everyone will be impacted because everyone's got an interconnected supply chain.' But while negotiations with the US continue, new EU agreements with India, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa and Australia are also on the cards. Ultimately it is the profound shift in the world order that is bothering many in Brussels. The US was behaving 'like a very unevolved state', said one EU source, like a developing country that relied on customs duties for national revenue in the absence of income tax, corporate tax and VAT. 'Maybe this is what Trump wants, a smaller, leaner weaker state where everybody has to pay for themselves,' they said.
