1UA TV

  
…

A Russian opera said Thursday it had canceled a concert by Russian superstar soprano Anna Netrebko over her comments on Moscow’s military operation in neighboring Ukraine.

The 50-year-old singer who lives in the Austrian capital of Vienna on Wednesday “condemned” the operation, after she and other Russian artists in Europe and the United States came under pressure to publicly take a stance.

The Novosibirsk Opera in Siberia canceled a concert at which she was to perform on June 2.

“Living in Europe and having the opportunity to perform in European concert halls appears to be more important (for her) than the fate of the homeland,” it said in a statement.

But “our country is brimming with talent and the idols of yesterday will be replaced by others with a clear civic position.”

Netrebko, who has voiced pro-Kremlin views over the years, and in 2014 posed with a flag in the separatist Donetsk region in Ukraine, also holds Austrian citizenship.

Netrebko’s statement on Wednesday was, however, not enough for the Metropolitan Opera in New York to reconsider its ban on her performance there. 
…

Turkey is in the grip of nationwide protests by doctors over surging violence and worsening economic conditions. The country is witnessing an unprecedented increase in doctors quitting to take jobs overseas, which as Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, threatens one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s major achievements.
…

Yulia isn’t convinced Ukraine should give up any part of its territory to Russia — even if by doing so it could end the war.

The 25-year-old from Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv is now living in a shelter in the western Ukrainian town of Lviv, and her life is on hold while the conflict rages. 

She fled Bucha as “there were bombardments and stuff like that. And a lot of times it was really scary.” Her mother went to Germany, but Yulia decided to remain in Ukraine “because it is my country.” She doesn’t want Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to offer any concessions to Russia, including territorial ones, even to stop the fighting.

Many Ukrainians feel the war is going their way following Russian reversals northwest and east of Kyiv. They are heartened by Russian announcements that military operations around Kyiv and some other northern cities will be scaled back and the focus now will turn fully on “liberating” the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainians see that as a statement of the obvious and one forced on Moscow by the valor and effectiveness of Ukraine’s defense forces, which have stymied all of Russia’s efforts to advance on Ukraine’s capital.

With the Russian invasion faltering, Ukrainian confidence is soaring despite continued missile barrages, and talk is turning to how this war may end.

Neutrality, with guarantees

This week, Ukrainian and Russian diplomats met in Turkey. Ukraine said it was ready to become a neutral state — with security guarantees — to disarm Russian fears it might join the NATO military alliance. And the proposals included a 15-year consultation period on the status of the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine and illegally annexed in 2014.

The status of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would be discussed directly by Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy at a later date, according to the Ukrainian proposal. Any peace deal would then have to go to a referendum, under Ukraine’s draft proposals.

Yiannis Valinakis, Greece’s former deputy foreign minister, said Kyiv might have come up with this sequence “to alleviate public opinion pressure on Zelenskyy.” If that is the plan, it might not work — even if the Russians eventually accept something along the lines Kyiv is proposing.

Zelenskyy may face a big challenge in persuading Ukrainians to approve the proposals in a referendum, judging by interviews VOA conducted in western Ukraine. Said Yulia, “I don’t agree with giving land away because Ukraine is one country in terms of our Constitution and the territory defined by the Constitution.” She said she believed the Ukrainian army could overrun the Moscow-controlled regions in the Donbas, and she isn’t alone. Many Ukrainians say they are braced for the war to go on for a long time.

Archbishop Vasyl Semeniuk, a Greek-Catholic prelate in the western Ukraine town of Ternopil, said Ukraine has a sacred duty to vanquish the Russian army on the battlefield, and he said Kyiv should not give up on the Donbas or Crimea.

“Why should we give any land away, what for?” he asked. “So many people have died. So many cities have been destroyed. Those territories belong to us, and they grabbed them.”

“Mariupol has been destroyed. Kharkiv is destroyed, and other towns near Kyiv,” Semeniuk told VOA. “There are dead bodies in the street; they run over them with tanks. The war will continue. We have to stop this army that attacked Georgia, Syria and Transnistria.”

Both Washington and Moscow have cast doubts about the prospects for the peace talks, and U.S. officials are questioning the Kremlin’s sincerity, saying actions speak louder than words. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said midweek that he hadn’t noticed anything “really promising” in the talks so far.

Taken a turn

Nonetheless, there is a feeling in Ukraine that the war is entering a new stage. Ukrainians suspect it might be the endgame; others think it will mean fighting continues but almost exclusively in eastern Ukraine.

They echo remarks made Thursday by Britain’s Chief of the Defense Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, who said Putin has “lost” his war on Ukraine through a series of “catastrophic misjudgments.” Radakin said Russian officers had taken soldiers into combat without their realizing what they were undertaking — a move he described as “insane” and “morally bankrupt.”

Radakin said there were “early indications” that Russian forces were retreating, a move that was making Putin’s military open to attack from Ukrainian defenders. “I think we are seeing that Russia’s ambitions to take Kyiv and Russia’s ambitions to take the whole of Ukraine and do that in a very swift and impressive fashion, those ambitions have fallen apart.”

Ukrainians put more emphasis on the courage of their army for Putin’s setback.

So far, the guns have not been silenced around Kyiv, and British intelligence officials said they expected some heavy fighting around the capital in the coming days. Russian forces blasted Kharkiv Oblast midweek with Grad rockets, and Russian rocket strikes hit a Red Cross building in besieged Mariupol in southern Ukraine. Dnipro in central Ukraine suffered a missile strike, and Chernihiv in northern Ukraine came under “colossal attack,” according to local officials.

But this has done nothing to stop more normal life from reappearing in much of western Ukraine, and slowly in parts of central Ukraine. In Lviv, most stores have reopened, including shopping malls, and there is bustle on the streets. Just three weeks ago, pharmacies were running low on antibiotics and even painkillers. Now they are well stocked, thanks to supplies from Europe. The occasional air raid siren doesn’t prompt people in any large numbers to rush to bunkers as they did a few weeks ago.

Outside Lviv, on highways and in nearby towns and villages, there are still checkpoints, but many are unmanned and at others traffic is waved through with few document checks. Part of the reason is farmers have been putting away their guns to focus on planting crops with the sowing season beginning.

It is also a sign that people in western Ukraine are becoming more relaxed. Many Kyivans are starting to head back to their homes, and the refugee flow across the border into Poland has decreased from a flood to a trickle.
…

Moldova is watching the war in neighboring Ukraine with special concern. Like Ukraine, Moldova is not a member of NATO or the European Union, and it has a very large Russian-speaking population – factors that for some Moldovans have sown fears of becoming the next target of Russian ambitions. Jon Spier narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in southern Moldova.
…

Washington’s hospitality industry quickly stepped up to help Ukrainian refugees after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. In the US capital, restaurants and bars are actively raising funds to help. Maxim Moskalkov has the story. Camera – Dmytri Shakhov.
…

The beautiful medieval city of Lviv in western Ukraine has become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of refugees from all over Ukraine. One Local soccer stadium, built for the 2012 Euro Cup, has been turned into a refugee center. Anna Kosstutschenko reports for VOA in Lviv.
Videographer: Yuiry Dankevych
…

Georgia on Thursday denounced as “unacceptable” plans announced by pro-Moscow separatists in the breakaway South Ossetia region to hold a referendum on joining Russia.

South Ossetia was in the center of the Russian-Georgian war in 2008 after which the Kremlin recognized the territory — along with another separatist region, Abkhazia — as an independent state and stationed military bases there.

On Wednesday, South Ossetian separatist leader Anatoly Bibilov said the statelet would hold a referendum on joining Russia shortly after the April 10 “presidential election” there.

Georgian Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani said Thursday “it is unacceptable to speak of any referendums while the territory is occupied by Russia.”

“Such a referendum will have no legal force,” he told journalists. “The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Georgian region is occupied by Russia.”

Also on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hasn’t taken any “legal” steps on the matter.

“But at the same time, we are talking about people of South Osseita expressing their opinion and we treat it with respect,” Peskov told reporters.

Bibilov’s spokeswoman Dina Gassiyeva told Thursday Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency that the decision to hold the referendum was “linked with the window of opportunity that opened in the current situation”, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Last week, Bibilov said that South Ossetia had sent troops to fight alongside the invading Russian troops in Ukraine, where thousands of people were killed and more than 10 million displaced.

In August 2008, Russia launched an assault against Georgia which was battling pro-Russian militia in South Ossetia, after they shelled Georgian villages.

The fighting ended after five days with a European Union-mediated ceasefire but claimed more than 700 lives and displaced tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians.
…

As millions of Ukrainians flee their homes, there has been an outpouring of support from people around the world. One Ukrainian woman in Guatemala has mobilized the online community to help Ukrainians. For VOA News Eugenia Sagastume has the story.
Camera: Eugenia Sagastume
…

Taiwan’s defense ministry has set up a working group to study the tactics of the war in Ukraine, including how the country has been able to hold out against Russia, and has been discussing this with the United States, its minister said Thursday.

Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has raised its alert level since the Russian invasion, wary of Beijing possibly making a similar move on the island, though it has reported no signs this is about to happen.

The possible impact of the war on China’s military thinking on Taiwan, and how China could attack the island, has been widely debated in official circles in Taipei.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of parliament, Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said they had had “contact” with foreign countries to talk about how the war was being fought, and had set up their own working group to study it.

Topics Taiwan is following include Russia’s poor military performance and Ukraine’s resistance, he said.

“It is not only discussed in exchange meetings between the United States and Taiwan, but also discussed with other countries that have regular contacts with Taiwan,” Chiu added, without giving details.

Taiwan’s team on Ukraine includes academics from the National Defence University, he said.

“However, we will not make remarks rashly, but through internal discussions which are important, to get results that are helpful for building armaments and preparing for war.”

While Taiwanese officials have seen many parallels in the Ukraine war and their own situation, including having their own giant neighbor with territorial ambitions, they have also pointed to major differences.

Taiwan has talked, for example, of the “natural barrier” of the Taiwan Strait which would make China putting troops on the ground much more difficult than Russia just crossing over its land border with Ukraine.

Taiwan also has a large and well-equipped air force, and is developing its own formidable missile strike capability.

China has been stepping up its military pressure against Taiwan over the past two years or so.

Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims, and says only the island’s people can decide their future.
…

  
…

The ruble is no longer rubble.

The Russian ruble by Wednesday had bounced back from the fall it took after the U.S. and European allies moved to bury the Russian economy under thousands of new sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has resorted to extreme financial measures to blunt the West’s penalties and inflate his currency.

While the West has imposed unprecedented levels of sanctions against the Russian economy, Russia’s Central Bank has jacked up interest rates to 20% and the Kremlin has imposed strict capital controls on those wishing to exchange their rubles for dollars or euros.

It’s a monetary defense Putin may not be able to sustain as long-term sanctions weigh down the Russian economy. But the ruble’s recovery could be a sign that the sanctions in their current form are not working as powerfully as Ukraine’s allies counted on when it comes to pressuring Putin to pull his troops from Ukraine. It also could be a sign that Russia’s efforts to artificially prop up its currency are working by leveraging its oil and gas sector.

The ruble was trading at roughly 85 to the U.S. dollar, roughly where it was before Russia started its invasion a month ago. The ruble had fallen as low as roughly 150 to the dollar on March 7, when news emerged that the Biden administration would ban U.S. imports of Russian oil and gas.

Speaking to Norway’s parliament on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president urged Western allies to inflict still greater financial pain on Russia.

“The only means of urging Russia to look for peace are sanctions,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video message from his besieged country. He added: “The stronger the sanctions packages are going to be, the faster we’ll bring back peace.”

Increasingly, European nations’ purchases of Russian oil and natural gas are coming under scrutiny as a loophole and lifeline for the Russian economy.

“For Russia, everything is about their energy revenues. It’s half their federal budget. It’s the thing that props up Putin’s regime and the war,” said Tania Babina, an economist at Columbia University who was born in Ukraine.

Babina is currently working with a group of 200 Ukrainian economists to more accurately document how effective the West’s sanctions are in stymying Putin’s war-making capabilities.

The ruble has also risen amid reports that the Kremlin has been more open to cease-fire talks with Ukraine. U.S. and Western officials have expressed skepticism about Russia’s announcement that it would dial back operations.

President Joe Biden promoted the success of the sanctions — some of the toughest ever imposed on a nation — while he was in Poland last week. “The ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble,” Biden said.

Sanctions on Russian financial institutions and companies, on trade and on Putin’s power brokers were crushing the country’s economic growth and prompting hundreds of international companies to stop doing business there, Biden noted.

Russian efforts to counter those sanctions by propping up the ruble can only go so far.

Russia’s Central Bank cannot keep raising interest rates because doing so will eventually choke off credit to businesses and borrowers. At some point, individuals and businesses will develop ways to go around Russia’s capital controls by moving money in smaller amounts. As the penalties depress the Russian economy, economists say that will eventually weigh down the ruble. Without these efforts, Russia’s currency would almost certainly be weaker.

But Russia’s oil and gas exports have continued to Europe as well as to China and India. Those exports have acted as an economic floor for the Russian economy, which is dominated by the energy sector. In the European Union, a dependence on Russian gas for electricity and heating has made it significantly more difficult to turn off the spigot, which the Biden administration did when it banned the relatively small amount of petroleum that the U.S. imports from Russia.

“The U.S. has already banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas, and the United Kingdom will phase them out by the end of this year. However, these decisions will not have a meaningful impact unless and until the EU follows suit,” wrote Benjamin Hilgenstock and Elina Ribakova, economists with the Institute of International Finance, in a report released Wednesday.

Hilgenstock and Ribakova estimate that if the EU, Britain and the U.S. were to ban Russian oil and gas, the Russian economy could contract more than 20% this year. That’s compared with projections for up to a 15% contraction, as sanctions stand now.

Knowing this, Putin has greatly leveraged Europe’s dependence on its energy exports to its advantage. Putin has called for Russia’s Central Bank to force foreign gas importers to purchase rubles and use them to pay state-owned gas supplier Gazprom. It’s unclear whether Putin can make good on his threat.

The White House and economists have argued that the impact of sanctions takes time, weeks or months for full effect as industries shut down due to a lack of materials or capital or both. But the administration’s critics say the ruble’s recovery shows the White House needs to do more.

“The ruble’s rebound would seem to indicate that U.S. sanctions haven’t effectively crippled Russia’s economy, which is the price Putin should have to pay for his war,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.

“To give Ukraine a fighting chance, the U.S. must sever Putin’s revenue stream by cutting off Russian oil and gas sales globally,” Toomey said in an email to The Associated Press.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that lawmakers are considering ways to expand the sanctions Biden recently imposed on members of the Russian parliament “and probably widen that to other political players.” Brown, D-Ohio, said lawmakers also are weighing more penalties against banks.

Western leaders, under Biden’s encouragement, embraced sanctions as their toughest weapon to try to compel Russia to reverse its invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO and not protected under that bloc’s mutual defense policy.

Some of the allies now acknowledge their governments may need to redouble financial punishment against Russia.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that the Group of Seven major industrial nations should “intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of (Putin’s) troops is out of Ukraine.”

But that’s a tougher ask for other European countries such as Germany, which depend on Russia for vital natural gas and oil. The EU overall gets 10% of its oil from Russia and more than one-third of its natural gas.

Many of those countries have pledged to wean themselves off that dependence — but not immediately.

If European nations did move more quickly off Russian petroleum, wrote analyst Charles Lichfield of the Atlantic Council, “a more comprehensive embargo from Europe would threaten Russia’s current account surplus — suddenly making it more difficult to pay public-sector salaries and wage war.”

He noted that “such an outcome may be beyond the reach of Western consensus.”
…