标题: 2022.03.07乌克兰第二次临时停火失败 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-3-7 18:57 标题: 2022.03.07乌克兰第二次临时停火失败 The world in brief
Catch up quickly on the global stories that matter
Updated 14 hours ago (20:19 GMT / 15:19 New York)
A second temporary ceasefire in Mariupol, a port in south-eastern Ukraine, failed. Both sides blame each other for the collapse of the truce, which was intended to allow civilians to flee. Ukrainian authorities said Russian shelling had resumed. The first ceasefire collapsed on Saturday. The city is on the verge of a “humanitarian catastrophe”, according to a Ukrainian government spokesman. The UN’s refugee agency said more than 1.5m Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia invaded.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, said his country’s assault on Ukraine will end only when Ukrainians stop resisting and his government’s “well-known demands” are met. According to a Russian government readout of a call with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday, Mr Putin said Russia’s military operation was going according to plan. Earlier, he had claimed Western sanctions were akin to a declaration of war, and that any country which imposed a no-fly zone over Ukraine would be deemed to have joined the conflict.
Visa and Mastercard said they would suspend their operations in Russia. Cards issued in the country will still be usable for domestic transactions until they expire. But Russian customers will not be able to make international payments, nor will cards issued abroad work for payments to Russian vendors. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, welcomed the move. American Express said it would suspend operations in Russia and Belarus.
Russia’s interior ministry said police had arrested around 3,500 people on Sunday at protests against the war. (OVD-Info, a protest-monitoring group, said more than 4,300 were detained). Residents of some Ukrainian cities captured by Russian forces have also taken to the streets. In Kherson people gathered in the city’s main square, at one point commandeering a Russian armoured vehicle. Similar demonstrations took place in Berdyansk and Melitopol.
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According to several reports the Biden administration has asked Poland to supply Ukraine with Soviet-era MiG fighter jets, with Poland to receive American F-16s in their place. Separately Mr Zelensky spoke with Joe Biden on Saturday, when the two presidents discussed financial support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. Mr Zelensky also said he had persuaded Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, to send more Starlink satellite internet terminals, allowing more Ukrainians to access the internet.
The diplomatic effort limped on. Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, spoke with Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, though the pair did not seem to find much common ground. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister, met Mr Putin in Moscow. Mr Bennett said his country had a “moral obligation” to mediate even if the chance of success was “not great”. A third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine to end hostilities may take place on Monday. Previous meetings have been fruitless.
Other news
Denmark will hold a referendum in June on joining the EU’s defence policy, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Danes voted to opt out almost 30 years ago • Libya’s national oil company said an armed group had closed two oil fields, reducing output by 330,000 barrels a day. The country has Africa’s biggest oil reserves and produced around 1.2bn barrels a day before the shutdown • Russia threatened to derail talks to revive the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, demanding written guarantees that sanctions over Ukraine would not affect its trade with Iran.
Word of the week: Ostpolitik (noun): a decades-old strategy of dealing with Russia based in part on the hope that gas pipelines could promote mutual dependence and therefore peace. Read the full article.
Russia’s military convoy stalls
PHOTO: AFP
A huge column of tanks, lorries and armoured vehicles, at least 60km long, is trundling towards Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It is around 25km from the centre of the city. Clouds have obscured its recent movements. But on Thursday British defence intelligence claimed, with some satisfaction, that it had made “little discernible progress” over the previous three days.
Russian supply units have struggled to keep up with frontline forces, leaving some vehicles stranded without fuel. Perhaps as a result of the colossal corruption within Russia’s armed forces, some equipment appears to have been denied basic maintenance.
Ukraine’s ground forces have been attacking the convoy. But Russia’s air-defence systems may deter strikes from the skies. The fog of war remains thick. The column may have slowed to synchronise with other Russian advances. Nor is congestion unknown in war. The initial German advance into France in May 1940 was called “the largest traffic jam in European history”. The Germans, of course, got there in the end.
By Invitation: the prime minister of Lithuania on Russia and Ukraine
PHOTO: DAN WILLIAMS
As Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, visits Lithuania on Sunday, an excerpt from an essay by Ingrida Simonyte, the Baltic country's prime minister. The full article can be found here.
All this was bound to happen. Vladimir Putin’s war on Chechnya did not serve as a wake-up call for the West in 1999. Neither did the Kremlin’s cyber-assault on Estonia in 2007, its war on Georgia in 2008, the illegal annexation of Crimea, nor the start of its military aggression against Ukraine in 2014—all of which Russia denies. Numerous, blatant assassinations of “inconvenient” witnesses, opponents and journalists rang alarm bells, especially when carried out on European soil. But Western leaders pressed the snooze button time and again.
Western democracies introduced sanctions and expelled spooks disguised as diplomats. We expressed concern and condemned—sometimes, in the strongest possible terms—Russia’s habitual acts of aggression. We rebuked violations of the territorial integrity of independent states by Russia or its proxies. Many thought this would somehow suffice as a face-saving alternative to real action that would be costly for our economies and that might provoke the aggressor.
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Sport wrestles with politics
PHOTO: AFP
Organisations overseeing sports have long maintained that politics and athletics do not mix. That doctrine both enriched such organisations and let them duck awkward questions. Thuggish countries and dodgy characters, meanwhile, polished their images by hosting tournaments and buying teams. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that sporting bodies have also been played.
Amid a global outcry, the bodies that govern the Olympics, football, hockey, chess and much else have conceded that they operate in a political world. But if sport is to undergo a prise de conscience, where will it draw the line? The 2022 football World Cup, from which Russia has been excluded, will take place in Qatar, where at least 35 migrant workers have died building stadiums. Chelsea football club will be sold by its Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, but what of Newcastle United, recently bought by a Saudi state investment fund? If administrators are genuinely committed to examining how their sports are financed, the hardest questions still lie ahead.
Zen and the art of Zen
PHOTO: FREER GALLERY OF ART
In the fifth century a form of Buddhism emerged in China that put a particular emphasis on inner reflection. Zen Buddhism later became influential in medieval Japan, where monks produced monochrome ink paintings as representations of enlightenment. Many such works feature in “Mind Over Matter”, which opens on Saturday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC.
The show displays the breadth of the museum’s medieval Zen collection, on show for the first time since the museum was founded almost a century ago. The show aims to promote understanding of Zen Buddhism and its influence on modern Japanese art and culture. The seemingly simple yet precise black-and-white renderings of landscapes and significant figures in Zen inspired East Asian artists for centuries. The bowls on display were used in rituals that evolved to become the tea ceremonies still practised today. The exhibition itself embodies Zen philosophy: simultaneously being present while staying rooted in the past.
Weekend profile: Vitali Klitschko, mayor of Kyiv
PHOTO: DPA
In his youth Vitali Klitschko found fame as a world heavyweight boxing champion. Now as Russian forces advance on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, he is leading a different kind of fight as the city’s mayor. As he once said early in his political career: “I know better than anyone: no fight, no win.”
A towering figure at just over two metres tall, Mr Klitschko often speaks in boxing metaphors. He was born in 1971 in what is now Kyrgyzstan, the son of a Soviet major-general. As the family moved between military bases, Mr Klitschko and his younger brother Wladimir took up boxing. Both spent most of their professional sporting careers in Germany. Wladimir too became a world heavyweight champion; Vitali was known as “Dr Ironfist”, a reference to his PhD in sports science. After hanging up his gloves, Vitali became one of Ukraine’s most recognisable pro-Western politicians, playing a prominent role in the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in the winter of 2013-14. In 2014 he was elected mayor of Kyiv.
Now aged 50, Mr Klitschko has been mobilising Kyiv’s residents against the Russian onslaught. A huge convoy of tanks has been advancing slowly on the city. Thousands have been sheltering from bombing and artillery fire deep in metro stations; many more have fled west. Ordinary people are arming themselves and mixing Molotov cocktails. “A huge number of people, civilians are taking part in defending the city,” said Mr Klitschko in a television interview this week. “We have our partners, our will, our beloved land, which we are not going to give up.”
Beyond Ukraine, the Klitschko brothers are using their international popularity to rally support for the war effort. Speaking in German in January, Vitali urged Berlin to alter its stance on arms exports. (After the invasion, Germany said it would deliver weapons directly to Ukraine.) “[Everyone has] to be involved,” he told the BBC in English in a joint interview with Wladimir from Kyiv this week. This is “a war against democracy”, because Ukraine is aiming to be a “modern European democratic country”.
This week’s quiz winners
Thank you to everyone who took part in this week’s quiz. The winners, chosen at random from each continent, were:
Asia: Nana Taylor, Singapore
North America: Kevin Garcia, Media, United States
Central and South America: Marcelo Birenbaum, Montevideo, Uruguay
Europe: Jyrki Raina, Porvoo, Finland
Africa: Rob Blair, Harare, Zimbabwe
Oceania: Rata Ingram, Christchurch, New Zealand
They all gave the correct answers of Elmer Bernstein, Sylvester Stallone, Leghorn, Yosemite and coyotes. The theme was Warner Brothers cartoon characters: Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam and Wile E Coyote. Check back on Monday for the beginning of next week’s edition, and your chance to win.
Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.