Month: January 2024

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY — Hungary’s parliamentary speaker said on Thursday there was no urgency in approving Sweden’s NATO membership bid after ratification by Turkey left only Budapest holding up the lengthy accession process.

Turkey’s general assembly, where President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling alliance holds a majority, voted 287-55 to approve the application that Sweden first made in 2022 to bolster its security in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden’s accession requires the formal approval of all 31 member states including Hungary, but approval by Turkey was widely considered the biggest remaining hurdle to overcome.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine, said on Wednesday he would urge lawmakers to approve Sweden’s accession at the first possible opportunity.

Parliament is not in session. The opposition Socialist party said this week it would call for an extraordinary session to approve Sweden’s NATO entry bid, stranded in the Hungarian legislature since mid-2022 despite repeated pledges by Orban to support it.

“I have no doubt that one of the opposition parties — who have consistently gone against Hungarian interests — will call for the (extraordinary) meeting, but this will likely fail,” Laszlo Kover, a founding member of Orban’s ruling Fidesz, told news website index.hu.

“I do not feel any particular urgency,” he said. “Moreover, I do not think there is an extraordinary situation.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged Orban on Wednesday to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession.

Despite Orban holding an iron grip on Fidesz, government ministers have repeatedly blamed the delays on grievances about Sweden’s bid among ruling party lawmakers, hardly any of whom have ever rebelled against Orban.
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washington — Depending on what kinds of weapons technology Moscow transfers to Pyongyang, the United States and South Korea may need to update their measures for dealing with North Korean threats, said analysts.  

John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesman, said the U.S. is watching “very closely” as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pursues advanced military capabilities from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kirby said at a press briefing on Tuesday that Kim’s ability to benefit from this relationship is concerning, but the U.S. and South Korean defensive posture on the Korean Peninsula “is appropriate to the risk.”

Since July, when Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea, Pyongyang has been deepening its military ties with Moscow while escalating threats on the peninsula and calling for preparations to occupy South Korea if war breaks out.

North Korea fired cruise missiles into the waters off its western coast on Wednesday, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. It also began taking down a monument in Pyongyang symbolizing reunification with South Korea.

Putin and North Korean Ambassador Choe Son Hui discussed bilateral relations in Moscow on January 16, according to Tass, the Russian state-owned news agency. It quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov the next day saying Moscow and Pyongyang “intend to boost relations in all areas, including sensitive ones.”

The most worrisome technology North Korea could seek from Russia would enable Pyongyang to miniaturize nuclear warheads to fit into a ballistic missile cone, survive reentry and hit targets in South Korea, Japan and North America, said Robert Peters, a fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation.

“This technology is the last and the most critical step in North Korea fielding a credible nuclear strike capability and is well within Russia’s ability to share,” Peters told VOA via email.

He continued, “South Korea and the United States should prepare to face a North Korea that is technically more capable than it has been before.”

At an event in Washington hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on January 18, Pranay Vaddi, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, warned that the North Korean threat “could drastically change over the coming decade” as a result of military cooperation with Moscow.

“What we are seeing between Russia and North Korea is an unprecedented level of cooperation in the military sphere,” Vaddi said.

Last year, Putin turned to North Korea to replenish Russia’s weapons stockpile, which has been drawn down severely since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He met with Kim in Russia in September to discuss possible arms dealings.

In October, Washington released satellite photos showing North Korea shipping more than 1,000 containers of weapons to Russia in violation of sanctions.

Artillery and missiles North Korea provided to Russia have been turning up in Ukraine, The New York Times reported on Monday.

John Erath, senior policy director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said Russian technology transfers “would not so much change the threat as add to the atmosphere of tension on the peninsula.”

But he told VOA via email, “It will be important to keep defense and deterrence arrangements updated.”

In November, the U.S. and South Korea held an annual Security Consultative Meeting in Seoul, where they announced the revision of the 2013 Tailored Deterrence Strategy “in recognition of the changing security environment.

Their meeting followed a summit that U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held in April in Washington, where they announced the Washington Declaration aimed at strengthening nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.

Gary Samore, White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said in a telephone interview that weapons technology Pyongyang could obtain from Moscow could embolden it to raise threats but would not be a game changer requiring the revision of “fundamental deterrence” on the Korean Peninsula.

Samore, a professor at Brandeis University, thinks Pyongyang could seek enhanced technology to include surface-to-air missiles, spy satellite collection capabilities and advanced military fighter aircraft.

He told VOA that although Moscow would be “happy whenever there is trouble for the U.S.,” it would not encourage Pyongyang to cause conflict on the Korean Peninsula that would “jeopardize the flow of weapons to Russia” for its war in Ukraine.
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kyiv, ukraine — The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Wednesday that he’s worried that the war in Ukraine has been forgotten as the country prepares to mark two years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. 

In an interview, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi also told The Associated Press it was important to remind the international community that Ukrainians were living through a brutal war despite other global crises taking the spotlight. 

Speaking at the end of a weeklong visit to Ukraine, Grandi said that the invasion launched by Moscow on Feb. 24, 2022, continues devastating civilians by leaving houses destroyed, health centers damaged, and many facilities not functioning. 

“I think the big difference from last year to this year is that this year, this is not news anymore in the world,” Grandi said. “There is somehow a trend towards getting used to Ukrainian suffering.” 

War displaces 10 million 

UNHCR put the latest figure of people who have been displaced from the war at 10 million — 3.7 million are considered to be internally displaced, while another 6.3 million are categorized as refugees. 

The agency has called for $4.2 billion to help Ukraine this year — slightly less than last year. 

“We made that choice because we are aware that there are so many crises in the world, that that’s a factor, and therefore we really focused on the priority needs,” Grandi said. 

Politics holding up aid, says official

The U.N. refugee chief said that he was concerned that discussion over the issue of humanitarian aid to Ukraine had now become held up by political wrangling. He urged the United States and the European Union to pass their aid packages saying it was his duty to “remind everybody that humanitarian aid should not be hostage of politics.” 

In December, EU leaders failed to agree on a four-year, $52 billion package of assistance for Ukraine. Hungary blocked the agreement, which requires unanimity from all 27 EU members. The bloc is working, however, to find a way for the remaining 26 countries to come up with the money before an EU summit on February 1. 

In Washington, senators are trying for a bipartisan deal that would include nearly $61 billion in aid for Ukraine and make changes to U.S. border policy. But Republicans are renewing a push to scale back the amount of assistance for Ukraine, targeting money that would go to Ukraine’s civil sector and arguing that European nations could step in to fund those needs. 

“I very much hope that those discussions can be unblocked and be concluded positively in both places — in the EU and in the United States,” Grandi said. “If those packages are stuck, I’m very worried that that humanitarian assistance will not come. That will have an immediate impact here.” 
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Washington — The United States on Wednesday welcomed the Turkish parliament’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership bid this week and urged Ankara to formally finalize the process.

State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a briefing that Washington was looking forward to Hungary, which has yet to approve Sweden’s NATO bid, moving along in the process. 

“We look forward to (Turkish) President (Tayyip) Erdogan taking…steps he needs to within that system to formally finalize that process as well as we look forward to receiving Turkey’s instrument of ratification … in Washington,” Patel said. 

“And we look forward to our Hungarian partners also moving along on this process also.” 

Turkey’s parliament ratified Sweden’s NATO membership bid on Tuesday, clearing the biggest remaining hurdle to expanding the Western military alliance after 20 months of delay, leaving Hungary as the only NATO member yet to ratify the accession. 

All NATO members need to approve applications from countries seeking to join the alliance. When Sweden and Finland asked to join in 2022, Turkey raised objections over what it said was the two countries’ protection of groups it deems terrorists. 

It endorsed Finland’s membership in April last year but, along with Hungary, had kept Sweden waiting. 

Erdogan is expected to sign the legislation within days. 

Turkey’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO bid and the U.S. sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey have become linked over the past years. The Biden administration has said it supports the sale but kept urging Ankara to approve Sweden’s NATO bid saying Congress might be connecting the two issues. 

When asked on Wednesday if the State Department would send the formal notification for the jets once Sweden’s NATO process is fully formalized, Patel did not commit to a timeline. 

“President Biden, Secretary Blinken have been very clear of our support for modernizing Turkey’s F-16 fleet, which we view as a key investment in NATO interoperability. But beyond that, we also recognize that Congress has a key role in reviewing arms sales, but I’m just not going to confirm or get ahead of proposed defense sales or transfers until they are formally notified to Congress.” 
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Russia’s heavy losses in its invasion of Ukraine mean that Moscow sees its nuclear weapons — including smaller, shorter-range nuclear bombs — as increasingly important in deterring and defeating NATO, according to a new report warning that the West must wake up to the threat. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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BRUSSELS — The European Union on Wednesday unveiled plans to strengthen the bloc’s economic security, including measures to protect sensitive technology from falling into the hands of geopolitical rivals such as China. 

Brussels has bolstered its armory of trade restrictions to tackle what it deems to be risks to European economic security, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and global trade tensions. 

The fallout from the war in Ukraine hit Europe particularly hard, forcing the bloc to find alternative energy sources. Now, it wants to avoid a similar over-reliance on China, which dominates in green technology production and critical raw materials. 

On Wednesday, EU officials outlined an economic security package containing five initiatives, including toughening rules on the screening of foreign direct investment and launching discussions on coordination around export controls. 

The EU has already proposed new rules that it says are necessary to keep the bloc competitive during the global transition to clean technology and to bring more production to Europe. 

“In this competition, Europe cannot just be the playground for bigger players, we need to be able to play ourselves,” said the EU’s most senior competition official, Margrethe Vestager. 

“By doing what we are proposing to do, we can de-risk our economic interdependencies,” she told reporters in Brussels. 

Wednesday’s package is part of the EU’s focus on de-risking but not decoupling from China, pushed strongly by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. 

“The change in EU-China relations has been the driving force of this embrace of economic security, which is something extremely new for the EU,” said Mathieu Duchatel, director of international studies at the Institut Montaigne think tank. 

“Focus on riskier transactions” 

EU officials also pushed back on claims that the package had been watered down and that some of the initiatives would kick in too late. 

One of the initiatives is to revise the EU’s regulation on screening foreign direct investment, but others recommend further discussions, raising concerns that action could come too late. 

For example, the commission said it wanted to promote further discussions on how to better support research and development of technologies that can be used for civil and defense purposes. 

The EU also wants all member states to establish screening mechanisms, which could later lead to investments being blocked if they are believed to pose a risk. 

“I would not agree that the package is watered down,” the EU’s trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, said. 

He later said the EU wanted “to focus on riskier transactions and spend less time and resources on low-risk ones.” 

The negotiations are likely to prove a delicate balancing act for the commission. Investment and export control decisions are up to national governments; therefore, it must avoid overstepping its mark. 
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London — Russia’s heavy losses in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine mean that Moscow now sees its battlefield nuclear weapons as increasingly important in deterring and defeating NATO, according to a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which warns that the West must wake up to the rising nuclear threat. 

On February 24, 2022, as the first tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border at the outset of the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised address warning the world of “consequences you have never faced in your history” if anyone tried to stop Russia, a threat widely seen as nuclear saber-rattling by the Kremlin. 

The IISS report says fear of escalation with Russia has caused the West to hesitate in supplying arms to Kyiv. But nearly two years on, a declassified U.S. intelligence report last month estimated Russia has lost around 315,000 troops in Ukraine since the outset of the invasion, nearly 90% of its pre-war army – much of it at the hands of weapons donated by the West. 

“Russia has less confidence now in their conventional capabilities because of everything they’ve lost in the Ukraine war,” said William Alberque, the report author and Director of Strategy, Technology and Arms Control at IISS. 

That means Moscow’s shorter-range atomic weapons, known Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons or NSNW – designed for use on the battlefield – are becoming increasingly important to the Kremlin, according to Alberque. 

“Russia has basically short range and medium range, air-launched, ground-launched and sea-launched missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads throughout the theater and able to hold all of NATO at risk. NATO itself lacks sort of a countervailing capability to match the Russian capability.” 

Deterrence efforts

Russia has already placed non-strategic nuclear weapons in the territory of its ally Belarus, which neighbors several NATO states. Last week, Belarus announced it had adopted a new military doctrine. “The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on Belarus territory is an important component of the preventive deterrence of potential adversaries from unleashing armed aggression against Belarus. This is our forced measure,” Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin said on January 20. 

The IISS report also highlights a paper published in June by the high-profile Russian political and military analyst Sergei Karaganov, head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow, in which he endorsed a tactical nuclear strike on a European state supportive of Ukraine, in order to restore deterrence against NATO. 

In the paper, titled “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” Karaganov wrote “It is necessary to arouse the instinct of self-preservation that the West has lost and convince it that its attempts to wear Russia out by arming Ukrainians are counterproductive for the West itself. We will have to make nuclear deterrence a convincing argument again by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.” 

“Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God’s weapon, thus dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this, not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilization will cease to exist. By breaking the West’s will to continue the aggression, we will not only save ourselves and finally free the world from the five-century-long Western yoke, but we will also save humanity,” Karaganov wrote. 

Alberque notes that several other well-known political scientists in Russia have engaged in this nuclear debate following the publication of Karaganov’s paper. 

Karaganov even has presidential approval. In October last year, at an annual political conference at Valdai, a lakeside town between Moscow and St Petersburg, Putin himself picked out Karaganov among the audience. 

“Putin said (to Karaganov), ‘Yes, I read all of your papers. And I don’t think we need to strike NATO, but I do think I need additional options in terms of escalation with the U.S. and NATO in order to maintain deterrence,’” Alberque said, adding that those options increasingly involve non-strategic nuclear weapons. 

“They’re constantly thinking about what sort of dosage of nuclear weapons would they need to make us acquiesce, to make us basically sue for peace, without escalating the conflict beyond their control, where we start actually hitting targets deep inside Russia? So, basically, how do they prevent us from striking Moscow? How do they keep the conflict at the theater level?”  

“I think that they believe that smaller uses of nuclear weapons could be contained and could be advantageous for Russia. So, this is what we would consider nuclear warfighting to win the battle, to knock out the U.S., to prevent the U.S. from joining in the war by, for instance, preventing us from being able to reinforce from the continental United States,” Alberque told VOA. 

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the use of any nuclear weapon by Russia in Ukraine would “fundamentally change the nature of the conflict” and would have “consequences.” 

Russia believes NATO does not have the resolve to respond with its own nuclear weapons, according to the IISS report, which says it is vital for the West to re-calibrate its own deterrence.  

“Do we have to introduce the same (NSNW) systems? Or do we take the Russian options off the table through better-integrated air and missile defenses? These are the things that we have to figure out. This is a new dilemma – or a dilemma, I should say, that we’ve ignored for such a long time,” Alberque said.
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Dayana Yastremska extended her dream run at the Australian Open on Wednesday to become the first women’s qualifier to reach the semi-finals in 45 years but made sure to remind tennis fans about her countrymen fighting in Ukraine.

Getting to the pointy end of the year’s first Grand Slam was not a specific goal for the 23-year-old, but instead she has focused on keeping her emotions in check after battling personal challenges, which she did not want to talk about.

“I was just trying to enjoy playing here,” Yastremska told reporters after beating Czech teen Linda Noskova 6-3 6-4.

Fresh attacks on Ukraine add to the weight on the shoulders of the world number 93, who revealed at an Australian Open lead-up tournament in Brisbane that just before one of her matches  her grandmother’s house had been hit by a rocket.

At Melbourne Park, she has been undaunted by higher ranked players across the net, beating former Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka and reigning Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova along the way.

“The girls, you know, at any ranking can show amazing game,” she said.

“I was doing just my thing and focusing on myself, the way I play. I think that’s working.”

On her way off the court, Yastremska, dressed in blue and yellow matching her country’s flag, scribbled on the camera: “I’m proud of our fighting people from Ukraine.”

She later said the fighters deserve huge respect.

“I think it’s my mission here,” she told reporters. “If I do well, I can get – (it’s) tough to express. I’m just trying to give the signal to Ukraine that I’m really proud of it.”

In the wake of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, Ukrainian players on the tour have refused to shake hands with opponents from Russia and Belarus, which has been used as a staging ground for Russian attacks.

However, a Ukrainian junior, Yelyzaveta Kotliar, caused a stir when she shook hands with her Russian opponent after losing her first round match this week. Yastremska called it a youthful mistake.

“You know, Ukrainians, we have our position. We are not shaking the hands. But I think she’s still a little bit young. Not so experienced,” Yastremska told reporters.

“But I’m sure that she stands by Ukraine, and I’m sure that she just got too emotional and confused.”

Yastremska is not letting tennis get in the way of her musical ambitions. She is working on releasing a song with two other people in February which she said would bring together three countries.

“You’re going to hear it soon, I hope.”

 
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Paris — Power generated from low-emissions sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear, will be adequate to meet growth in global demand for the next three years, the International Energy Agency said, adding that emissions from the power sector are on the decline.

Following record growth, electricity generation from low-emissions sources will account for almost half of the world’s power by 2026, up from less than 40% in 2023, the IEA said in report on Wednesday.

Renewables are expected to overtake coal by early 2025, accounting for more than a third of total electricity generation, the report said.

Nuclear power is also forecast to reach a record globally as French output continues to recover from lows in 2022, several plants in Japan come back online and new reactors begin operations in markets including China, India, Korea and Europe.

Electricity demand is expected to rise on average by 3.4% from 2024 through 2026 with about 85% of demand growth seen coming from China, India and southeast Asia, after growth eased slightly to 2.2% in 2023, IEA data showed.

Over this period, China is expected to account for the largest share of the global increase in electricity demand in terms of volume, despite a forecast for slower economic growth and a lower reliance on heavy industry, the report said.

Meanwhile, global emissions are expected to decrease by 2.4% in 2024, followed by smaller declines in 2025 and 2026, the report said.

“The decoupling of global electricity demand and emissions would be significant given the energy sector’s increasing electrification, with more consumers using technologies such as electric vehicles and heat pumps,” the report said.

Electricity accounted for 2% more of final energy consumption in 2023 from 2015 levels, though reaching climate goals would require electrification to advance significantly faster in coming years, the IEA said.
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