Latest news with #war
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Ukraine must urgently be given the €300bn of frozen Russian assets
Ukraine needs more than long-range missiles and fibre-optic drones in its fight with Russia. What it needs is more money, and lots of it. In particular, the war-torn nation should be handed the €300bn (£250bn) of frozen Russian assets stored mostly in accounts hosted by the Euroclear trading system. The Belgian government could confiscate the funds with the support of the EU Commission, or set up a way to use the Russian funds as collateral for a gigantic loan to Ukraine. Either way, Moscow has forfeited its right to the money, which is mostly central bank funds that were left behind after Putin gave the order to invade. As a statement of intent, confiscating the funds would be shock to Putin, hurt his pride and undermine support at home for the war. It would give Ukraine a much needed psychological boost after months of backpedalling through the Donbas while Russian forces exploit the dithering and equivocation in Washington. Donald Trump, who views Europe as weak and indecisive, would be left reeling by such a forceful act, which many have demanded since the start of the war and has gained traction in recent weeks as the bombardment of Ukraine has intensified. A short walk from the EU commission buildings, Euroclear's HQ is one of the largest hosts to international financial transactions in the world. Understandably, it is keen to hang on to its reputation as a cast-iron guarantor of secure trading to the world's biggest investors. In this role, the company has warned that a confiscation of the €183bn lodged in its systems would undermine Europe's role as a safe haven in the eyes of investors from South America to the Indian subcontinent. It has the backing of the French and Belgian governments, which are shareholders in the organisation. Recently another reason for keeping the money frozen and unused has come to the fore. Trump's tariff war and tax-giveaway budget has undermined the US as the home of free-market capitalism, offering the EU a chance to grab a bigger slice of the financial trading action. One analyst said: 'Europe needs to move quickly to take advantage of growing disillusionment in the US economy'. Yannis Stournaras, governor of the Bank of Greece, was another to argue that the prize would be toppling the dollar as the premier reserve currency and inserting the euro in its place. A decade ago, many considered the euro a currency with only a limited lifespan before a north/south split – pitching profligate Greece, Italy and Spain against austere Germany, the Netherlands and Austria – tore the single currency apart. Today the euro is seen as a stable currency while the dollar comes under daily attack. Now is the time to show Europe is the safest of havens in contrast to Trump's America. There are mutterings in Brussels that to grab this opportunity also means rejecting attempts to confiscate Russia's frozen billions. How would it look, they ask, if the EU invited more investment in the bloc via jointly issued 'stability' bonds, when in the same breath it announced the confiscation of investor funds. 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 This is a fallacy that needs to be squashed quickly. It's true that a few autocratic despots around the world might withdraw their funds from European trading centres if Russia's money is taken away, fearing the same would happen to them, but EU banks should not be looking after their money anyway. And the Russia situation is extreme and cannot be thought of as the thin end of any wedge, or a slippery slope. Belgium and the EU have budged a little. The interest generated by Russia's frozen assets is given to Ukraine, and Belgium hands its shareholder dividend payments to the Volodymyr Zelenskyy war effort. And earlier this month Euroclear said it plans to seize and redistribute about €3bn of Russia's funds after Moscow last year grabbed investor cash of the same value. However, the motive was just to compensate investors who were foolish enough to leave their financial assets inside a country that has been explicitly threatening war since the 2014 invasion of Crimea. Such manoeuvring only emphasises how Ukraine needs all the money now, as a show of force and as an expression of unity as much for what it could buy. It matters because, as military chiefs discussed last week in a conference held by the UK's Royal United Services Institute, Putin has the capacity to invade other parts of Europe within months of success in Ukraine. And Nato is under-prepared. There is broader agreement across Europe as each week passes that Putin needs to be stopped. Military spending is the focus, and governments are promising to ramp up their commitments. Not by €300bn though, which is why the funds in Euroclear and other EU-based financial custodians must be seized. Even Rishi Sunak, writing in the Economist earlier this year, says he agrees that Russia has kissed goodbye to any rights over the funds. We just need chancellor Merz, president Macron and Keir Starmer to say the same.
Malay Mail
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Under bombs, above fear: Kharkiv's ballet reclaims the stage amid war's shadows
KHARKIV (Ukraine), May 31 — In the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, it's hard to escape the war with Russia. On some days, when the wind blows in the right direction, residents of the historic city can hear the boom of artillery fire from the front line, some 30 km (20 miles) away. Most nights, Russian kamikaze drones packed with explosives buzz over apartment buildings as parents put their children to bed. Frequently - but unpredictably - a Russian ballistic missile will slam into the city. Three years on from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for many people in Kharkiv, the war with its unrelenting, inescapable proximity, takes a mental toll. But there is a space in the city where – for a few fleeting hours – the war stops existing. In the dark, brick-walled basement of the Kharkiv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, a dance company has created a space protected from drones and bombs where audiences can lose themselves in performances of classic ballets. In April, the space was host to performances of 'Chopiniana', an early 20th-century ballet with music by Frederic Chopin. Despite the makeshift setting, the ballet was performed with full classical pomp, complete with corps de ballet and orchestra. That marked a milestone for Kharkiv's cultural life because it was the first full performance of a classical ballet in the city since February 2022, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. 'In spite of everything – the fact that bombs are flying, drones, and everything else – we can give a gift of something wonderful to people,' said Antonina Radiievska, artistic director of Opera East, the ballet company which staged the performance. 'They can come and, even if it's just for an hour or two, completely immerse themselves in a different world.' Despite Ukraine's history of excellence in classical ballet, the art form seems far removed from the everyday lives of Ukrainians in wartime. Daily routines are given over to checking apps for drone attack warnings, sleeping on the metro station floor to escape an air raid or seeking news of relatives on the front line. Pirouettes, pas-de-deux and chiffon tutus feel a world away. Ballerina Antonina Radiievska, 43, poses for a picture after practising for the revival of 'Chopiniana,' the first since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the underground area of the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, April 27, 2025. — Reuters pic New normal Nevertheless, the journey of Kharkiv's ballet through the war mirrors the ways Ukrainian society has adapted and evolved. On February 23, 2022, the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre put on a performance of the ballet 'Giselle'. The following day, Russia launched its full-scale invasion. As Moscow's troops reached the outskirts of Kharkiv and threatened to capture the city, the theatre closed its doors and many of the ballet troupe moved away. Some of them reassembled in Slovakia and Lithuania, and began touring ballet productions outside Ukraine with help from European sponsors. By 2023, the war was grinding on, but the situation in Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, had stabilised after Russian ground forces pulled back. The realisation dawned on the city that this was a long game, a new, wartime reality. Local people started referring to the city – and themselves – using the Ukrainian word 'nezlamniy', meaning invincible. It was that year that work began on converting the theatre basement into a performance space. In October 2023, it began to be used as a rehearsal space. In spring the following year, the theatre was granted permission to bring in an audience, and it held small-scale ballet performances such as children's concerts. The revival of 'Chopiniana' represents the next milestone in Kharkiv's wartime cultural journey. Staging a classical opera again sends a message that Ukraine is still standing, according to Igor Tuluzov, Director-General of Opera East, the company staging the production. 'We are demonstrating to the world that we really are a self-sufficient state, independent, in all its aspects, including cultural independence,' he said. The auditorium seats 400 people on stackable chairs, compared to 1,750 in the main theatre upstairs, where the plush mustard seats lie empty. The stage downstairs is one quarter the size of the main stage. The aesthetic is grey-painted brick, concrete floors, pipes and electricity ducting running along the walls – a contrast to the varnished hardwood and marble of the space upstairs. The acoustic qualities of the basement, say the performers, don't match the lofty expanses of the main theatre. What matters to artistic director Radiievska, though, is that after a long hiatus, she and her troupe can once again perform at their best, in front of an audience. 'It means, you know, life,' she said. 'An artist cannot exist without the stage, without creativity, without dance or song. It's like a rebirth.' — Reuters
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
On This Day, May 31: Mark Felt reveals ID as Watergate figure 'Deep Throat'
On this date in history: In 1790, President George Washington signed a bill creating the first U.S. copyright law. In 1859, construction concluded and bells rang out for the first time from London's Big Ben clock tower. In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pa., left more than 2,200 people dead. In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War. In 1916, the Battle of Verdun passed the 100-day mark. It would continue for another 200 days, amassing a casualty list of an estimated 800,000 soldiers dead, injured or missing. In 1921, the Tulsa race massacre was set off when a mob of White residents attacked the Black residents and businesses in the Greenwood District. The total number of those killed in the violence is unknown, with an Oklahoma commission established in 2001 estimating between 75 to 100 people dead. The number of displaced Black residents was far greater. In 1940, a thick fog hanging over the English Channel prevented the German Luftwaffe from flying missions against evacuating Allied troops from Dunkirk. In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was a single-day record for closings since the FDIC was founded in 1934. In 1996, Israeli voters elected opposition Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-sought fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster in North Carolina. Rudolph, whose bombings killed two people and injured many others, was sentenced to four life terms in prison. In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that, while No. 2 man in the FBI, he was "Deep Throat," the shadowy contact whose help to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in led to U.S. President Richard Nixon's resignation. In 2012, John Edwards of North Carolina, former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, was acquitted on a charge of taking illegal campaign contributions, and a judge declared a mistrial on five other charges against him. In 2014, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 28, captured in Afghanistan nearly five years earlier, was released by the Taliban in exchange for five detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In March 2015, the Army announced that Bergdahl had been charged with desertion. In 2019, a shooting a a Virginia Beach, Va., municipal center left 12 victims and the shooter -- a disgruntled former employee -- dead. In 2021, China announced plans to allow couples to have a third child, scrapping its controversial two-child policy amid a slumping birth rate and aging population.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
General Staff: Russia has lost 987,330 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022
Russia has lost around 987,330 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on May 31. The number includes 1,250 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day. According to the report, Russia has also lost 10,867 tanks, 22,652 armored fighting vehicles, 50,198 vehicles and fuel tanks, 28,475 artillery systems, 1,400 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,173 air defense systems, 372 airplanes, 336 helicopters, 38,215 drones, 28 ships and boats, and one submarine. Read also: Trump 'very surprised, disappointed' at Russian attacks on Ukraine amid peace talks We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Arab News
14 hours ago
- General
- Arab News
Russian attacks kill two in Ukraine
KYIV: Russian shelling and air strikes on southern Ukraine overnight killed a man and a nine-year-old girl in separate attacks, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday. In the Zaporizhzhia region, 'Russians hit a residential area with guided aerial bombs,' killing the girl and wounding a 16-year-old boy, Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional military administration, said on the Telegram platform. One house was destroyed and several others damaged by the blast, he added. In a separate assault on the city of Kherson, a '66-year-old man sustained fatal injuries' from Russian shelling, Oleksandr Prokudin, Kherson region's governor, wrote on Telegram. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands of people have been killed, swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine destroyed, and millions forced to flee their homes. One person was wounded in a Russian drone strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, its mayor said. In Russia, Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 10 people in the Kursk region overnight, acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said. Diplomatic efforts to end the war have accelerated in recent weeks, with both sides meeting earlier this month for their first round of direct talks in more than three years. But the negotiations in Istanbul yielded only a prisoner exchange and promises to stay in touch. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that his government did not expect results from further talks with Russia unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance, accusing the Kremlin of doing 'everything' it could to sabotage a potential meeting. 'There must be a ceasefire to continue moving toward peace. We need to stop the killing of people,' Zelensky added in a statement on Telegram. The Ukrainian leader also said he had discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 'a possible next meeting in Istanbul and under what conditions Ukraine is ready to participate,' with both agreeing that the next round of talks with Moscow 'cannot and should not be a waste of time.' Russia has said it will send a team of negotiators to Istanbul for a second round of talks on Monday, but Kyiv has yet to confirm if it will attend.
