Finland and Sweden draw closer to NATO
Finland and Sweden submitted their applications for NATO membership on Wednesday, but Turkey’s opposition is forcing the military alliance to hold consultations to lift the stalemate, diplomatic sources said.
“This is a historic moment at a critical time for our security,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “We hope to conclude quickly [le processus] ”, he added. But if Turkey does not obtain satisfaction, it can still prevent accession in two ways, either by refusing to sign the accession protocols or by refusing to ratify them, since the measure requires the unanimity of the 30 member countries.
The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, could also want to bring the subject to the next NATO summit, which is to be held in Madrid on June 29 and 30.
New surrenders in Azovstal
« 959 fighters [ukrainiens], including 80 injured, have become prisoners” since Monday on the site of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday. They would have been entrenched for weeks inside the huge factory, but Ukraine has not commented on this information.
“Commanders and high-ranking fighters in the [régiment] Azov have not yet emerged” from the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in this port city, assured Denis Pushilin, a pro-Russian separatist leader. According to him, a thousand members of this paramilitary unit integrated into the Ukrainian army are still hiding there. Ukraine gave the same figure last week.
The Russian military was focusing its efforts on Wednesday on blocking Ukrainian units near Azovstal with artillery fire and airstrikes, the General Staff in kyiv reported.
Negotiations stall
Russia on Wednesday accused Ukraine of “total lack of will” to negotiate an end to the conflict, which has been going on since February 24.
The Ukrainian presidency said on Tuesday that the talks were suspended because of Russia. “The negotiation process is on hold,” said an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhaïlo Podoliak. Russia is failing in a key element: understanding […] what is currently happening in the world and its extremely negative role. »
Several meetings between the negotiators of the two camps took place, but they did not yield any concrete results. The last meeting between the heads of delegations, namely Vladimir Medinski for Russia and David Arakhamia for Ukraine, dates back to April 22, according to Russian agencies.
UN calls for cereals and fertilizers to be kept out of war
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on Moscow to free Ukrainian grain exports — and the West to open Russian fertilizers to world markets — so they can effectively tackle the global food crisis. “Russia must allow the safe and secure export of grain stored in Ukrainian ports,” he said Wednesday at a ministerial meeting hosted by the United States in New York.
At the same time, “Russian food and fertilizers must have full and unrestricted access to world markets,” the UN chief demanded. These fertilizers are not subject to Western sanctions taken against Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine, but Russia has decided to stop their export.
António Guterres has been negotiating on these two subjects for several weeks with Russia, Ukraine, the United States, the European Union (EU) and Turkey. “I’m hopeful, but there’s still a long way to go,” he said, declining to say more so as not to jeopardize the chances of an agreement.
Assistance to Ukraine and fall in Russian GDP
Brussels on Wednesday offered “new exceptional macro-financial assistance” to Ukrainians, amounting to “up to nine billion euros in 2022”. Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “grateful to [ce] support for Ukraine”, which will “help it win the war, overcome the consequences of Russian aggression and speed up the process of joining the EU”.
The European Commission has also presented a 210 billion euro plan to free the EU “as quickly as possible” from Russian gas imports.
At the same time, the French bank Société Générale has announced that it has settled the final details of the sale of Rosbank, a heavyweight in the Russian banking sector in which it was the majority shareholder, to the investment fund Interros, of the oligarch Vladimir Potanin, a close of Putin. Under the effect of the sanctions, in particular, the economy of Russia should suffer this year a contraction of between 7.8% and 8.8%, predicted Wednesday Moscow.