Eusebio R. Sheffield US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the crisis in Ukraine was a global issue that underscored the importance of maintaining international order, territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Biden’s comments at the opening of the ‘Quad’ meeting of Indo-Pacific leaders in Tokyo come a day after he broke convention and offered US military support to Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China.
“It is more than a European problem. It’s a global problem,” Biden said of the situation in Ukraine at the Quad meeting of the United States, Japan, India and Australia.
Mr Biden stressed that Washington would stand with its allies and push for a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
“International law, human rights must always be upheld, no matter where in the world they are violated,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told global business leaders in Davos on Monday that the world must increase sanctions against Russia to deter other countries from using “brute force” to achieve their goals.
The European Union will likely agree to an embargo on Russian oil imports ‘within days’, its biggest member Germany has said, as Moscow said its economic ties with China would grow amid its isolation by the West because of the Ukrainian conflict.
Many of the EU’s 27 member states rely heavily on Russian energy, prompting criticism from kyiv that the bloc has not acted quickly enough to halt supplies.
Hungary demands energy investments before agreeing to an embargo, clashing with EU states demanding quick approval. The EU has offered up to 2 billion euros ($2.14 billion) to central and eastern countries lacking non-Russian supplies.
“We will achieve a breakthrough within days,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck told ZDF television.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin would focus on developing relations with China as economic ties with the United States and Europe were cut.
“If they (the West) want to offer something in terms of resuming relations, then we will seriously consider whether we need it or not,” he said in a speech, according to a transcript on the website. of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Now that the West has adopted a ‘dictator stance’, our economic ties with China will grow even faster.”
Russia’s three-month invasion, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has seen more than 6.5 million people flee abroad, turn entire cities to rubble and cause unprecedented taxation Western sanctions against Russia.
Zelenskiy on Monday called on Ukraine’s allies to pressure Moscow into a prisoner swap.
“We don’t need the Russian military, we only need our own,” Zelenskiy said. “We are ready for an exchange tomorrow.”
Donbass fights
Russia sent thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24 for what it calls a ‘special military operation’ aimed at demilitarizing its neighbor and rooting out dangerous nationalists – claims dismissed by kyiv and Western countries as false pretenses for land grabbing.
After capturing the port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine after a months-long siege, Russian forces now control a largely unbroken swath of east and south.
They are trying to encircle Ukrainian forces and fully capture the provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk that make up the eastern region of Donbass, where Moscow supports separatist forces.
A total of 12,500 Russians were trying to seize Luhansk, the region’s governor, Serhiy Gaidai, said on Telegram.
Four people were killed when a residential building was bombed in the city of Sievierodonetsk, Gaidai added.
“The intensity of the firing on Sievierodonetsk has increased several times, they are simply destroying the city,” he said on television, adding that there were around 15,000 people in the city and that the Ukrainian army keep control.
Sievierodonetsk is located in the easternmost part of a Ukrainian pocket of Donbass and one of the last areas of the Luhansk region still outside of Russian control.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko told local television that shelling was taking place along the frontline, with the mining town of Avdiivka being hit around the clock.
Russian forces fired on 38 communities in Donetsk and Luhansk on Monday, killing seven and wounding six, the Ukrainian Joint Task Force military command said.
Reuters was unable to immediately verify the information.
Mr Zelenskiy revealed Ukraine’s worst military casualties after a single attack in the war, saying 87 people were killed last week when Russian forces hit a barracks at a training base in the north.
Denmark’s commitment to send Harpoon anti-ship missiles and a launcher to Ukraine, announced by the United States on Monday, is the first sign since the Russian invasion that kyiv will receive American-made weapons that will significantly expand its striking range.
The harpoons, made by Boeing, could be used to draw the Russian navy away from Ukrainian Black Sea ports, allowing the resumption of exports of grain and other agricultural products.
War crimes trial
In the first of what could be many war crimes trials stemming from the invasion, a kyiv court sentenced a young Russian tank commander to life in prison for killing an unarmed civilian.
Ukraine is investigating more than 13,000 alleged Russian war crimes, its attorney general’s website says.
Russia has denied targeting civilians or participating in war crimes.
At a cemetery outside Mariupol, walking through long rows of fresh graves and makeshift wooden crosses, Natalya Voloshina, who lost her 28-year-old son in the fight for the city, said many Mariupol dead had no one left to honor their memory. .
“Who will bury them? Who will put up a plaque? she asked.
“They have no family.” – Reuters
