Thursday, May 26, 2022
The Russia-Ukraine conflict raises financial stability risks
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has raised financial stability risks, the European Central Bank (ECB) has warned.
As financial stability conditions deteriorate, energy and commodity price shocks, amplified by Russia’s operation in Ukraine, increase risks to post-pandemic growth, inflation and financial conditions in the euro area and globally, according to the ECB’s Financial Stability Review report.
“Since late 2021, rising inflationary pressures have threatened to slow the momentum of the recovery in 2022. Upside risks to euro area inflation and downside risks to growth rose sharply following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war,” it said.
Russia reports destroying Ukraine targets
The Russian military said it has destroyed a large Ukrainian unit with equipment at a railway station in the east.
Russian Defence Ministry spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov has said that the Russian warplanes hit the railway station in Pokrovsk when an assault brigade that arrived to reinforce the Ukrainian forces in the region was unloading there.
Konashenkov also said that the Russian military destroyed Ukraine’s electronic intelligence center in Dniprovske in the southern Mykolaiv region, killing 11 Ukrainian soldiers and 15 foreign experts. His claims couldn’t be independently confirmed.
Russia has suffered substantial losses: British military
Britain’s military said Russia has suffered substantial losses among its elite units because of “complacency” among commanders and failure to anticipate strong Ukrainian resistance.
The UK Ministry of Defence says the airborne VDV has been involved in “several notable tactical failures” since the February 24 attack, including the attempt to capture and hold Hostomel Airfield near Kyiv early in the offensive and failed attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in eastern Ukraine.
In its daily intelligence update, the defense ministry said the VDV had been sent on missions “better suited to heavier armored infantry and has sustained heavy casualties during the campaign.
Kremlin says West is to blame Ukraine’s grain export problems
The Kremlin has rejected the US and European Union’s claims that Russia had blocked grain exports from Ukraine and accused the West of creating such a situation by imposing sanctions.
“We categorically do not accept these accusations. On the contrary, we blame Western countries of taking actions that have led to this,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
Moscow called for the West to remove the sanctions that it says are blocking grain exports from Ukraine.
Putin will not dictate Ukraine peace terms: Scholz
Russia will not win its war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin must not dictate the terms of any peace agreement, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said.
“Putin must not win his war, and I am convinced he will not win,” Scholz said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.
Although some have suggested that Ukraine should negotiate with Putin and consider ceding territory, Scholz rejected the idea of letting Putin dictate the terms of an agreement.
Donbas separatist leader calls for accelerated Russian operation
The leader of Russian-backed separatists in the breakaway Donetsk region has called for the military operation in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to be accelerated, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said Kyiv had blocked water supplies to key cities in the north of the region and called for military action to be stepped up.
Separatist republics hold 8,000 Ukrainian POWs
Ukrainian prisoners of war held in the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics number about 8,000, Luhansk official Rodion Miroshnik has been quoted by TASS news agency as saying.
“There are a lot of prisoners. Of course, there are more of them on the territory of Donetsk People’s Republic, but we also have enough and now the total number is somewhere in the region of 8,000. That’s a lot, and literally, hundreds are being added every day,” Miroshnik said.
The report has not been verified.
Ukraine health emergency sparks rival resolutions at WHO
A proposal to condemn the regional health emergency triggered by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine will come before a World Health Organization (WHO) assembly, prompting a rival resolution from Moscow that makes no mention of its own role in the crisis.
The original proposal backed by the United States and more than 40 other countries, condemns Russia’s actions but stops short of immediately suspending its voting rights at the UN health agency.
If the Western-led initiative passes nearly unanimously, observers say it would send a powerful political message that is rare in the multilateral system.
Russian forces shell 40 towns in eastern Ukraine
Russian forces have shelled more than 40 towns in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s military said, threatening to shut off the last main escape route for civilians trapped in the path of their offensive, now in its fourth month.
Russia has poured thousands of troops into the Donbas region – comprised of two eastern provinces Moscow claims on behalf of separatists – attacking from three sides in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces holding out in the city of Sievierodonetsk and its twin Lysychansk.
“The occupiers shelled more than 40 towns in Donetsk and Luhansk region, destroying or damaging 47 civilian sites, including 38 homes and a school. As a result of this shelling five civilians died and 12 were wounded,” the Joint Task Force of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Facebook.
Mass graves for civilians killed: Luhansk governor
Police in Lysychansk are collecting bodies of people killed in order to bury them in mass graves, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said. Some 150 people have been buried in a mass grave in one Lysychansk district, he added.
Families of people buried in mass graves will be able to carry out a reburial after the war and police are issuing documents enabling Ukrainians to secure death certificates for loved ones, Gaidai said.
A missile blasted a crater in a railway track and damaged nearby buildings in Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian-held Donbas city that has become a major hub for supplies and evacuations.
In Kramatorsk, nearer the front line, streets were largely deserted, while in Sloviansk further west, many residents took advantage of what Ukraine said was a break in the Russian assault to leave.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy rebuffs calls to cede land
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has strongly rebuffed those in the West who have suggested Ukraine cede control of areas occupied by Russian forces for the sake of reaching a peace agreement.
Those “great geopoliticians” who suggest this are disregarding the interests of ordinary Ukrainians – “the millions of those who actually live on the territory that they propose exchanging for an illusion of peace,” he said in his nightly video address to the nation. “We always have to think of the people and remember that values are not just words.”
Zelenskyy compared those who argue for giving Russia a piece of Ukraine to those who in 1938 ceded territory to Hitler in hopes of preventing World War II. The interests of Ukraine should not be outweighed by “the interests of those in a hurry to meet the dictator again,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
