EXPLAINER: Does Putin’s alert change risk of nuclear war?
By ROBERT BURNS

 Russian ICBM missile launchers move during the Victory Day military parade marking 71 years after the victory in WWII in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implied threat to turn the Ukraine crisis into a nuclear war presents President Joe Biden and U.S. allies with choices rarely contemplated in the atomic age. One choice is whether to raise the alert level of U.S. nuclear forces in response. Putin put Russian nuclear forces in what he called a “special regime of combat duty."

 (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implied threat to turn the Ukraine war into a broader nuclear conflict presents President Joe Biden with choices rarely contemplated in the atomic age, including whether to raise the alert level of U.S. nuclear forces.

This turn of events is all the more remarkable for the fact that less than a year ago, Putin and Biden issued a statement at their Geneva summit that seemed more in keeping with the idea that the threat of nuclear war was a Cold War relic. “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” they agreed.

Putin on Sunday told his top defense and military officials to put nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty,” but it was not immediately clear how that might have changed the status of Russian nuclear forces, if at all. Russia, like the United States, keeps its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, on a high state of readiness at all times, and it is believed that Russian submarine-based nuclear missiles, like America’s, are similarly postured.

Putin indicated he was responding to economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western nations in recent days for his invasion of Ukraine, as well as “aggressive statements regarding our country,” which he did not further explain.

The Biden administration was assessing Putin’s move, which it said unnecessarily escalates an already dangerous conflict. In fact, Putin’s words amount to the kind of threat rarely heard even during the Cold War period, when vastly larger nuclear arsenals of the United States and the former Soviet Union threatened the world with nuclear Armageddon.

HOW DOES THIS CHANGE THE RISK OF NUCLEAR WAR?

U.S. officials, while disturbed by Putin’s words, indicated they did not know what he intends. But it is so rare for an American or Russian leader to issue an implied nuclear threat, particularly in the current context of the war in Ukraine, that the risk of it going nuclear cannot be dismissed. In Russia, like in the United States, the president has sole authority to order a nuclear strike.

The United States and Russia have the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world, by far. They include weapons that can be delivered by aircraft, submarine and land-based ballistic missiles. The only time in history that nuclear weapons have been used in combat was when the United States twice bombed Japan in August 1945, and at that point the U.S. had a global monopoly on nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union successfully tested its first bomb in 1949.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said Putin’s order to put his nuclear forces on higher alert was regrettable but not a complete surprise given his previous implied threats against any nation that tried to stop him in Ukraine.

“Inserting nuclear weapons into the Ukraine war equation at this point is extremely dangerous, and the United States, President Biden, and NATO must act with extreme restraint” and not respond in kind, Kimball said. “This is a very dangerous moment in this crisis, and we need to urge our leaders to walk back from the nuclear brink.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO PUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON ALERT?

According to U.S. nuclear doctrine, the weapons’ alert level is central to their role in deterring attack. The idea is that being prepared to respond on short notice makes an enemy less likely to attack in the first place and risk retaliation that would do incalculable damage.

A counterargument is that having ICBMs, which the Pentagon calls the most responsive portion of its nuclear arsenal, on high alert during a crisis compresses a president’s decision-making room and leaves open the possibility of ordering them launched in response to a false alarm. The 400 deployed U.S. ICBMs are armed at all times.

Some arms control experts have argued for taking ICBMs off high alert by separating the missiles from their nuclear warheads. But in a crisis, perhaps like the one implied by Putin’s alert order Sunday, a decision to re-arm the missiles would be taken as an escalatory move that could make the crisis even worse.

During the Cold War, U.S. and Russian weapons were not only more numerous but also in a higher state of readiness. President George H.W. Bush in 1991 took the historic step of ordering U.S. nuclear-capable strategic bombers off alert as part of a broader move to reverse the nuclear arms race. The bombers have remained off alert ever since.

HOW HAS THE UNITED STATES RESPONDED TO PUTIN SO FAR?

There is no evidence that the Biden administration has reciprocated in any sense to Putin’s announcement that he was ordering his nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty” — perhaps in part because it was unclear what that means in practical terms.

Nor was there word from Washington of evidence that Putin had taken worrying steps such as loading nuclear weapons on all or a portion of Russia’s nuclear-capable air fleet or sending additional ballistic missile submarines to sea.

In addition to his strategic nuclear force, Putin has at least a couple thousand so-called nonstrategic nuclear weapons, such as shorter-range ballistic and cruise missiles. They are called nonstrategic because they cannot reach U.S. territory. But that is little comfort for the countries in Europe that are within range of those weapons. The United States has about 200 nonstrategic weapons in Europe; they are bombs that would be delivered by Europe-based aircraft.

For years, some U.S. officials have worried that Putin, if faced with the prospect of losing a war in Europe, might resort to the use of nonstrategic nuclear weapons, thinking it would quickly bring the conflict to an end on his terms.

Major floods swamp Australia’s east coast, claiming 8 lives

the worst since 2011 when the city was inundated by what was described as a once-in-a-century event.


PHOTOS  1 of 21

People use small boats to travel through flood water in Lismore, Australia, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. Heavy rain is bringing record flooding to some east coast areas and claimed seven lives while the flooding in Brisbane, a population of 2.6 million, and its surrounds is the worst since 2011 when the city was inundated by what was described as a once-in-a-century event. 

(Jason O'Brien/AAP Image via AP)


BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Parts of Australia’s third-most populous city Brisbane were under water Monday after heavy rain brought record flooding to some east coast areas and killed eight people.

The flooding in Brisbane and its surrounds is the worst since 2011 when the city of 2.6 million people was inundated by what was described as a once-in-a-century event.

The latest fatality was a man in his 50s who drowned on Monday after driving his car into floodwater before dawn at Gold Coast city, south of Brisbane, Queensland state police said.

The bodies of the man and his dog were retrieved hours later from a submerged car which had been washed from the road, a police statement said.

Queensland emergency services warned life-threatening flash flooding was occurring in parts of Gold Coast.

Emergency crews made more than 130 swift-water rescues in 24 hours, officials said.

All eight flood deaths have been in Queensland state, of which Brisbane is the capital. A search continues for a solo sailor, aged in his 70s, who fell overboard from his vessel in the Brisbane River near the city center on Saturday.

Police were also searching for a man missing from Goodna, west of Brisbane and another Esk, northwest of Brisbane.

South of the Queensland border, police on Monday were searching for man after officers heard him calling for help on Sunday in floodwaters in the New South Wales town of Lismore.

Police warned downtown Brisbane businesses along the river waterfront to evacuate after a pontoon carrying a crane broke from its moorings upstream and began riding the floodwaters toward them.

Multiple emergency flood alerts were in place for Brisbane suburbs, where 2,145 homes and 2,356 businesses were submerged on Monday. Another 10,827 properties were partially flooded above the floorboards.

The Brisbane River peaked on Monday at 3.85 meters (12 foot, 3 inches), officials said.

That was 61 centimeters (2 feet) below the 4.46 meter (14 foot, 3 inch) flood level reached in 2011, officials said.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the rainfall over Brisbane had been extraordinary since November when authorities were considering water use restrictions due to a shortage.

“It is still a significant event, and I think everyone would agree no one has seen this amount of rain in such a short period of time,” in the southeastern area, Palaszczuk said.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said the floods are “very different” to 2011 because the rain pummeled the region for five days. In 2011, the rain had stopped days before the Brisbane River peaked and authorities had warned for several days of flooding downstream.

Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey said major roads had been cut. Train and ferry services across Brisbane have been halted, he said.

“We’re going to have localized flooding in a lot of areas for a couple of days yet,” Bailey said.

Lismore was bracing for its worst flooding on record.

Downtown Lismore was inundated on Monday after days of unrelenting rain and 15,000 people had been evacuated, officials said.

UKRAINE

A shelling, a young girl, and hopeless moments in a hospital

“Show this to Putin,” he said angrily. “The eyes of this child, and crying doctors.”

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV

A woman reacts as paramedics perform CPR on a girl who was injured during shelling, at city hospital of Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. The girl did not survive. 

(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)


MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — In the port city of Mariupol, where Ukrainians are trying to fend off a Russian advance, an ambulance raced into a city hospital Sunday, carrying a 6-year-old girl mortally injured in Russian shelling.

She was pale. Her brown hair was pulled back with a rubber band. Her bloody pyjama pants were decorated with cartoon unicorns. She was brought in with her wounded father, his head bloodied and bandaged.

A medical team pumped her chest, fighting desperately to revive her. Her mother stood outside the ambulance, weeping.

“Take her out! Take her out! We can make it!” a hospital worker shouted, pushing a gurney to the ambulance.

The girl was raced inside and doctors and nurses huddled around her. One gave her an injection. Another tried to revive her with a defibrillator. A nurse wept. A doctor in blue medical scrubs, pumping oxygen into her, looked straight at the camera of an Associated Press videojournalist who had been allowed inside.

Medics perform CPR on a girl at the city hospital of Mariupol, who was injured during shelling in a residential area in eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. The girl did not survive. 

(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

“Show this to Putin,” he said angrily. “The eyes of this child, and crying doctors.”

The girl, whose name was not immediately known, could not be saved. The doctor reached gently over her face to close her eyes.

Her body was left alone in the room, covered by her brightly colored polyester jacket, now spattered with blood.

Families lead the search for Mexico’s missing
By MARÍA VERZA

PHOTO'S 1 of 8

Salvador Morales holds a folder containing a photo of his disappeared son Alan Morales, during a meeting of the Milynali Network, a collective of families that aid in searches of disappeared relatives, in Ciudad Mante, Mexico, Monday, Jan. 31, 2022. Morales said his son Alan was coming back from picking oranges with his own 7-year-old son when he disappeared with four other people in October. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)


CIUDAD MANTE, Mexico (AP) — Graciela Pérez listened as the families told the stories of their missing relatives -- stories so much like those of other families she and her organization had tried to help. Stories so much like her own.

Mexico’s missing could fill a small city, and a rapidly growing one, at that. The rolls of the disappeared have risen from about 26,000 in 2013, to 40,000 in 2019, to a current, official tally of nearly 100,000. And nearly every one of them had a family left bewildered and bereft.

It was for those searching for their loved ones in the northern city of Mante that Pérez established the Milynali Network, a collective of families that aids in their search.

Pérez founded the group in 2012, when her daughter Milynali disappeared along with four relatives on their way home from Houston. None of them have been found, alive or dead.

Over 10 years, the group has registered 320 disappearances and has found and identified the remains of 16 people. On a recent day, two more families came seeking help, photos of their missing on their laps. Photos of others of the disappeared dangled from a cord strung across the room.


Elizabeth Meléndez admitted that until her son Javier Alexis disappeared in December, she didn’t realize “there’s another world you don’t want to see but is right there in front of you.” Armed men dragged the 26-year-old schoolteacher away. His grandfather stood by, frozen in place by a gun held to his head.

Meléndez managed to speak with her son by phone. He begged her to withdraw the police report -- though she had not, in fact, gone to police at that point -- and said if she did not, he would not be released.

Sitting beside her, Salvador Indalecio Morales said his son Alan was coming back from picking oranges with his own 7-year-old son when he disappeared with four other people in October.

One of the others taken with Alan -- Morales’ nephew -- was released days later, but Morales hasn’t been able to speak with him. When they cross paths in the street, Morales’ nephew lowers his head. Anonymous whispers warned of serious consequences if Morales asked too many questions.

In the middle of his story, Morales motioned at one of the pictures hanging across the room. “I hung out with him,” he said. He recognized another as a neighbor.

Despite a new search protocol that requires authorities to mobilize immediately to look for someone, that didn’t happen in the cases of Meléndez or Morales. Police didn’t even want to give Morales a copy of his report.

That’s not unusual although it is now illegal. In another case two hours’ drive from Mante, in the state capital Ciudad Victoria, officials told a woman in January to come back after she did not hear from her missing relative for 72 hours. They said they were busy with three other disappearances.

The Milynali Network also takes on older cases, like that of María Rosario Nava, who has been looking for a corpse for 10 years. Her sister Norma Elizabeth disappeared while going out to buy diapers. Two weeks later, authorities showed Nava photographs of a body with unmistakable tattoos: it was her sister. But they never gave her the body. They told her it was incomplete and that they had to perform DNA tests.

“I told (the official), ‘Give me what you have and I’ll put it together,’” she said. The genetic test results never arrived, but the state is moving unidentified bodies from common graves to special cemeteries where those remains can be easily found if a match is made to a relative. So she contacted Pérez for advice.

Authorities recognize the severity of the problem, but there still aren’t the resources to meet the demand.

The families are patient. They continue going out to sort every bone from every stone, despite the risks. Last July, a 28-year-old woman who searched for the missing was murdered in the northern state of Sonora and a man looking for his son was killed in Zacatecas.

And the number of missing continues to grow, which means, Pérez said, that the government is either ignoring or colluding with criminal groups.

“Which to me is terrifying,” she said.

Mexico’s efforts paltry in face of nearly 100,000 missing

By MARÍA VERZA

PHOTO ESSAY 1 of 15

Forensic technicians excavate a field on a plot of land referred to as a cartel "extermination site" where burned human remains are buried, on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. The insufficiency of investigations into Mexico’s nearly 100,000 disappearances is evident. There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries, not counting places like this one, where the charred remains are measured only by weight. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

LONG READ

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AP) — For the investigators, the human foot -- burned, but with some fabric still attached -- was the tipoff: Until recently, this squat, ruined house was a place where bodies were ripped apart and incinerated, where the remains of some of Mexico’s missing multitudes were obliterated.

How many disappeared in this cartel “extermination site” on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo, miles from the U.S. border? After six months of work, forensic technicians still don’t dare offer an estimate. In a single room, the compacted, burnt human remains and debris were nearly 2 feet deep.

Uncounted bone fragments were spread across 75,000 square feet of desert scrubland. Twisted wires, apparently used to tie the victims, lie scattered amid the scrub.

Each day, technicians place what they find -- bones, buttons, earrings, scraps of clothing -- in paper bags labeled with their contents: “Zone E, Point 53, Quadrant I. Bone fragments exposed to fire.”

They are sent off to the forensic lab in the state capital Ciudad Victoria, where boxes of paper bags wait their turn along with others. They will wait a long time; there are not enough resources and too many fragments, too many missing, too many dead.

At the Nuevo Laredo site -- to which The Associated Press was given access this month -- the insufficiency of investigations into Mexico’s nearly 100,000 disappearances is painfully evident. There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries, not counting places like this one, where the charred remains are measured only by weight.





And people continue to disappear. And more remains are found.

“We take care of one case and 10 more arrive,” said Oswaldo Salinas, head of the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s identification team.

Meanwhile there is no progress in bringing the guilty to justice. According to recent data from Mexico’s federal auditor, of more than 1,600 investigations into disappearances by authorities or cartels opened by the attorney general’s office, none made it to the courts in 2020.

Still, the work goes on at Nuevo Laredo. If nothing else, there is the hope of helping even one family find closure, though that can take years.

That’s why a forensic technician smiled amid the devastation on a recent day: She had found an unburnt tooth, a treasure that might offer DNA to make an identification possible.

___

When Jorge Macías, head of the Tamaulipas state search commission, and his team first came to the Nuevo Laredo site, they had to clear brush and pick up human remains over the final 100 yards just to reach the house without destroying evidence. They found a barrel tossed in a trough, shovels and an axe with traces of blood on it. Gunfire echoed in the distance.

Nearly six months later, there are still more than 30,000 square feet of property to inspect and catalog.

The house has been cleared, but four blackened spaces used for cremation remain. In what was the bathroom, it took the technicians three weeks to carefully excavate the compacted mass of human remains, concrete and melted tires, said Salinas, who leads work at the site. Grease streaks the walls.

Macías found the Nuevo Laredo house last August when he was looking for more than 70 people who had disappeared in the first half of the year along a stretch of highway connecting Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo, the busiest trade crossing with the United States.

The area was known as kilometer 26, a point on the highway and the invisible entrance to the kingdom of the Northeast cartel, a splinter of the Zetas. There are small shops with food and coffee. Men sell stolen gasoline and drugs. Strangers are filmed with cell phones. The power poles lining the highway farther north have been blasted with large-caliber weapons.

Most who disappeared here were truck drivers, cabbies, but also at least one family and various U.S. citizens. About a dozen have been found alive.

Last July, Karla Quintana, head of the National Search Commission, said the disappearances appeared to be related to a dispute between the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which was trying to enter the area, and the Northeast cartel, which wanted to keep them out. It’s not clear if the victims were smugglers of drugs or people, if some were abducted mistakenly or if the goal was simply to generate terror.

The phenomenon of Mexico’s disappearances exploded in 2006 when the government declared war on the drug cartels. For years, the government looked the other way as violence increased and families of the missing were forced to become detectives.

It wasn’t until 2018 -- the end of the last administration -- that a law passed, laying the legal foundations for the government to establish the National Search Commission. There followed local commissions in every state; protocols that separated searches from investigations, and a temporary and independent body of national and international technical experts supported by the U.N. to help clear the backlog of unidentified remains.

The official total of the missing stands at 98,356. Even without the civil wars or military dictatorships that afflicted other Latin American countries, Mexico’s disappeared are exceeded in the region only by war-torn Colombia. Unlike other countries, Mexico’s challenge still has no end: authorities and families search for people who disappeared in the 1960s and those who went missing today.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government was the first to recognize the extent of the problem, to talk of “extermination sites” and to mount effective searches.

But he also promised in 2019 that authorities would have all the resources they needed. The national commission, which was supposed to have 352 employees this year, still has just 89. And Macías’ state commission has 22 positions budgeted, but has only filled a dozen slots. There the issue isn’t money; the difficulty is finding applicants who pass background checks.

___

Disappearances are considered the perfect crime because without a body, there’s no crime. And the cartels are expert at ensuring that there is no body.

“If a criminal group has total control of an area they do what we call ‘kitchens,’ because they feel comfortable” burning bodies openly, Macías said. “In areas that are not theirs and where the other side could easily see the smoke, they dig graves.”

In 2009, at the other end of the border, a member of the Tijuana cartel confessed to having “cooked” some 300 victims in caustic lye. Eight years later, a report from a public university investigation center showed that what officially had been a jail in the border city of Piedras Negras, was actually a Zetas command center and crematorium.

Perhaps the largest such site was yet another border setting near the mouth of the Rio Grande called “the dungeon,” in territory controlled by the Gulf cartel. The memory still stirs Macías. The first time he went he saw “pelvis, skulls, femurs, everything just lying there and I said to myself, ‘It can’t be.’”

Authorities have recovered more than 1,100 pounds of bones at the site so far.

According to the Tamaulipas state forensic service, some 15 “extermination sites” have been found. There are also burial sites: In 2010, graves containing 191 bodies were found along one of the main migratory routes through Tamaulipas to the border. In 2014, 43 students disappeared in the southern state of Guerrero. Only three have been identified from pieces of burnt bones.

Most of the extermination sites have been found by family members who follow up leads themselves with or without the support and protection of authorities. Such search groups exist in nearly every state.

For the families, the discoveries inspire both hope and pain.

“It brings together a lot of emotions,” said a woman who has been searching for her husband since 2014 and two brothers who disappeared later. Like thousands of relatives across Mexico, she has made the search for her loved ones her life. “It makes you happy to find (a site), but at the moment you see things the way they are, you nosedive.”

The woman, who requested anonymity because of safety concerns, was present for the discovery of two sites last year. When she entered the Nuevo Laredo location with Macías, she could only cry.

A few months earlier, she had found the site in central Tamaulipas where she believes her loved ones are. That day, accompanied by the state search commission and escorted by the National Guard, they entered the brush in search of a drug camp.

“I’m not well psychologically after that,” she said as she showed photos of the deep graves where burnt remains were buried, some wrapped in barbed wire. They recovered around a thousand teeth, she said.

___

On a recent day in Nuevo Laredo, gloved hands sifted through the dirt, separating out bits of bone: a piece of a jaw, a skull fragment, a vertebra.

The work is hard. The forensic technicians clear brush and then dig. Some days the temperature hovers around freezing, others it’s above 100 degrees. They wear head-to-toe white protective suits and are constantly guarded.

Security is a concern, and so authorities have separated the search function from the investigations -- the cartels appear less concerned with those just looking for bones, though anything they find could eventually become evidence in a prosecution. Each day before dusk, they are escorted to a safe house and don’t leave except to return the next day to the site.

When cartel violence exploded in Tamaulipas in 2010, the capital’s morgue had space for six bodies. In a single massacre that year, a cartel killed 72 migrants. In those days, the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights denounced serious negligence in Tamaulipas’s forensic work.

Pedro Sosa, director of the state’s forensic services, said that their way of working changed radically in 2018 with the establishment of the identification team. But it’s not enough. “A single forensic anthropologist in the whole state is not compatible with all of this work.”

It can take four months for the Nuevo Laredo remains to be cleaned, processed and arrive to the genetic lab. It can take longer if something urgent emerges like in January of last year, when nearly 20 people -- mostly migrants -- were incinerated in an attack near the border.

Even if they manage to extract DNA, identification isn’t assured because the profile will only automatically be crossed with a state database.

It could be years before the profile is added to one of the national databases. In 2020, the federal auditor said that that system had only 7,600 registered disappeared and 6,500 registered dead.

Though the federal law calls for a system in which various databases can interact, that doesn’t exist, said Marlene Herbig, of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Each state or federal database of fingerprints or genetic profiles is like an island, despite calls for bridges to connect them.

No one can estimate how much money is needed or how many years it could take to see significant results in Mexico’s efforts to locate and identify the disappeared.

Herbig offered a clue: A similar effort mounted on the island of Cyprus took 10 years to identify 200 disappeared in the conflict between Greece and Turkey during the latter half of the last century. And there are many thousands more missing in Mexico than there were in Cyprus.

“This issue is a monster,” Macías said.

__

AP writer Alfredo Peña in Ciudad Victoria contributed to this report.

Norway Decides to Drop Russia From $1.3 Trillion Wealth Fund

Lars Erik Taraldsen
Sun, February 27, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Norway is starting a process to remove Russian assets from its $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, in a rare case of politics steering investments for the country’s savings.

The government decided to freeze Russian holdings in the fund in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine and plans to divest them in due course, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters in Oslo on Sunday. Norges Bank Investment Management held about 25 billion kroner ($2.8 billion) at the end of the year, Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum said.


The Oslo-based fund is the world’s biggest owner of publicly traded companies with a portfolio of about 9,000 stocks. The government made its decision despite Chief Executive Officer Nicolai Tangen on Friday describing such a move as a “wrapped gift to the oligarchs” who would buy the shares.

Until now, Norway has been careful to avoid being seen as using the fund as a political tool. Previous attempts to impose political goals on the institution have been met with criticism that its overarching goal must be the highest possible return over time.

Norway’s decision comes after Russian markets slumped last week and follows U.S. plans with its European allies to ban transactions with the central bank in Moscow and cut off various Russian lenders from the critical SWIFT financial messaging system. In addition, BP Plc moved to dump its shares in oil giant Rosneft PJSC and could be forced to make $25 billion writedown.

The fund is now freezing its account holdings in Russia, which means that it will neither buy nor sell, Line Aaltvedt, a spokeswoman for the fund, said by phone. It will then make a plan to sell out of Russia in collaboration with the ministry, she said. No timeline for the exit was given.

Created in the 1990s to invest Norway’s oil and gas revenue abroad, the fund has followed strict ethical guidelines since 2004, including bans on certain weapons, tobacco and most exposure to coal.

Its biggest equity holdings in Russia at the end of 2020, the last time it disclosed its full portfolio, were in Sberbank of Russia PJSC, Gazprom PJSC and Lukoil PJSC, according to the Norges Bank Investment Management website. It will publish its 2021 holdings on Thursday.

“We want to give a very clear and unequivocal response that the type of abuse we have seen in recent times can not be accepted and it is therefore natural for Norway to withdraw its investments from the Russian market,” Vedum said on Sunday.

Norway also announced that it will enforce sanctions in cooperation with the European Union and will close its airspace to Russian flights. It will also increase humanitarian support related to the crisis to as much as 2 billion kroner.

(Updates with holdings in second and eighth paragraphs, finance minister comment in ninth, details throughout)

Equinor, BP to exit Russia over Ukraine invasion

BP on Sunday said it was ending its business ventures in Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Photo by Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA-EFE

Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Norway's state-owned energy company announced Monday that it was pulling out of Russia over the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine, becoming the second major oil and gas company to do so after BP said it was withdrawing a day prior.

Equinor said its board of directors has decided to stop new investments into Russia and that it would start the process to exit from its joint ventures in the country.

"We are all deeply troubled by the invasion of Ukraine, which represents a terrible setback for the world, and we are thinking of all those who are suffering because of the military action," Equinor President and CEO Anders Opedal said in a statement.

The company owned by Norway's Ministry of Petroleum and Energy said it has been in Russia for more than 30 years and entered an agreement with state-owned Rosneft in 2012. In 2020, it acquired a 49% stake in KrasGenNac for about $550 million. At that time, it held 12 exploration and production licenses in Eastern Siberia with one of those projects alone expected to produce up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day by 2024.

Equinor valued its long-term assets in Russia at $1.2 billion though it expects that its decision to leave will impact the price of its assets.

"In the current situation, we regard our position as untenable," Opedal said, with his company adding that it will now prepare a proposal to contribute funding for humanitarian assistance in the region.

The announcement by Equinor came hours after Britain's BP said Sunday that it was exiting Russia and its 19.75% share in Rosneft that its held since 2013.

BP said it will be exiting the market and its two nominated directors for the Russian oil and gas company's board have resigned, effective immediately. It valued its stake in the company at $14 billion.

"Welcome news that BP is joining the rapidly growing list of organizations and governments isolating Russia over Putin's brutal and miscalculated invasion of Ukraine," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted following the announcement.

Like Equinor, BP has been operating in Russia for more than 30 years and Russia's attack on Ukraine "represents a fundamental change," said Helge Lund, BP's chair, in a statement.

"It has led the BP board to conclude, after a thorough process, that our involvement with Rosneft, a state-owned enterprise, simply cannot continue," Lund said. "The Rosneft holding is no longer aligned with BP's business and strategy and it is now the board's decision to exit BP's shareholding in Rosneft."

The announcements follow Russia early last week conducting an early morning invasion of Ukraine that has been met with international condemnation.

Western nations have imposed a series of collaborative sanctions, including barring a number of its banks from the SWIFT international payment network, against Russia, further isolating it and causing concerns among international companies that do businesses in the country.

A day after the attack, Germany canceled certification of the $11 billion, 750-mile Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany.

The move by Equinor and BP is expected to put pressure on other companies to exit Russia.

Germany to Boost Military Spending in Latest Historic Shift 

UNDER A SECOND INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT

Birgit Jennen, Alexander Pearson and Arne Delfs
Sun., February 27, 2022,



(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced plans for a massive boost in defense spending in the latest historic policy shift in Germany triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Germany will channel 100 billion euros ($113 billion) this year into a fund to modernize the military, Scholz said Sunday in a speech to a special session of the lower house of parliament. By 2024, the government will spend at least 2% of gross domestic product each year on defense, he added, in line with a NATO target that Berlin has consistently failed to meet.

Scholz had been widely criticized by opponents and allies alike in recent weeks for what they perceived as dithering and weakness in the face of Russia’s mounting aggression toward Ukraine. In the past few days he has announced a series of radical changes to long-entrenched German policies following the full-scale attack ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the former Soviet republic.

Even before the invasion, Scholz halted the certification process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline built to bring more of the Russian gas his country heavily relies on. On Saturday, he abandoned Germany’s traditional rejection of supplying weapons to conflict zones and gave way on expelling Russian banks from SWIFT, the system used for trillions of dollars worth of transactions between thousands of banks around the world. The willingness to supply Ukraine with military equipment including surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank weapons is in many ways the most dramatic move.

Such a wide-ranging rethink from Scholz and his government came unexpectedly and prompted suggestions that Europe’s biggest economy may finally be ready to punch its weight in the international arena, discarding decades of reluctance linked to its role in the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts. Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, who was in parliament Sunday, called it a “truly historic moment.”

“With the invasion of Ukraine, we are in a new era,” Scholz, the Social Democrat who took over from Angela Merkel in December, told lawmakers. “On Thursday, President Putin created a new reality with his invasion of Ukraine. This new reality requires a clear response. We have given it.”

German defense spending in recent years has been hovering at around 1.5% and actually declined slightly as a share of output last year, according to NATO figures.

That has led to criticism that the armed forces are consistently underfunded. Germany has reduced the number of its battle tanks to 300 from 4,700 since 1989 and the number of warplanes to 230 from 390, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. The number of troops has dropped to 180,000 from more than 300,000.

Friedrich Merz, the leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, signaled Sunday in his speech to parliament that the party is ready to work with the ruling coalition on agreeing the financing for the defense fund.

As well as ramping up defense spending, Scholz also pledged to do more to protect energy supplies, including increasing gas-storage volume by 2 billion cubic meters, establishing a national coal and gas reserve and swiftly constructing two LNG terminals on the north coast.

There are signs public opinion is firmly behind the chancellor and his two partners in the ruling coalition -- the Greens, who control the foreign and economy ministries, and the business-friendly Free Democrats, who run the finance ministry.

About 100,000 people streamed through the Brandenburg Gate to the central Tiergarten park Sunday for a demonstration in support of Ukraine, according to police estimates. Authorities had expected as many as 20,000. Many had Ukrainian flags and banners calling on Putin to stop the war.

Johannes Boie, the editor in chief of influential tabloid Bild, published an editorial entitled “Germany Delivers!” in which he praised the government’s decision to supply Ukraine with weapons.

“Our country owes its prosperity, its happiness, to the fact that the Allies once erased our own mass-murdering dictator from the map,” Boie wrote.

“Today the government took a first step,” he added. “Slowly, hesitantly, but still. Keep it up - even faster! Even braver!”

While Scholz looks to have set aside his preference for circumspection and prudence, at least for the time being, his calm, careful approach has often stood in recent weeks in stark contrast to the two senior Green Party ministers in his government.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, who is the economy minister and vice chancellor, have been far more outspoken about the need to confront Russia, particularly on issues like Nord Stream 2.

Scholz also had to overcome a degree of reluctance to punish Russia within his own Social Democratic party, which has a long history of sympathy toward Moscow.

Baerbock said Sunday that now is the “right moment” for Germany to make what she called a “180-degree turn in foreign policy.”

“If our world is different, then our politics must also be different,” she said in a speech to the special session of parliament.

“Perhaps it is the case that Germany is today leaving behind a form of special restraint in foreign and security policy,” she added. “In choosing between war and peace -- in choosing between an aggressor and children who have to hide from bombs in subways -- no one can be neutral.”

Germany’s move to help arm Ukraine signals historic shift

By EMILY SCHULTHEIS

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A woman shows a peace sign in front of a Russian WWII tank at the Soviet War Memorial at the bolevard 'Strasse des 17. Juni' alongside a rally against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)


VIENNA (AP) — Germany’s stunning decision to send anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine — abandoning its long-held refusal to export weapons to conflict zones — is nothing less than a historic break with its post-World War II foreign policy.

“A new reality,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it in an uncharacteristically rousing speech Sunday to a special session of parliament. The typically low-key Chancellor Scholz said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine required a dramatically different response from Germany than in the past.

“With his invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, President Putin created a new reality,” Scholz told the Bundestag, his speech repeatedly greeted by applause, particularly his condemnations of the Russian leader. “This reality demands a clear answer. We’ve given one.”

Scholz said Germany is sending anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine. He also said the country is committing 100 billion euros ($113 billion) to a special fund for its armed forces and will raise its defense spending above 2 percent of GDP, a measure on which it had long lagged.

Germany’s about-face served as a potent example of just how fundamentally Russia’s war in Ukraine is reshaping Europe’s post-World War II security policy.

Germany’s foreign policy has long been characterized by a strong aversion to the use of military force, an approach German politicians explain as rooted in its history of military aggression against its neighbors during the 20th century.

While a strong U.S. ally and NATO member, post-war Germany has attempted to maintain good ties with Moscow, a policy also driven by business interests and Germany’s energy needs.

“Many of the things that Olaf Scholz said would have been unthinkable even months ago,” said Marcel Dirsus, a nonresident fellow at the University of Kiel’s Institute for Security Policy. “It’s become very clear that Russia has simply gone too far, and as a result, Germany is now waking up.”

Still, until this weekend, the German government had balked at sending weapons to Ukraine, even as it faced growing international criticism for its hesitation.

But then, a series of announcements starting Saturday evening rocked traditional notions of German policy.

It began with word from the government that it would allow the shipment of 400 German-made anti-tank weapons from the Netherlands to Ukraine, something it had thus far refused to do.

Shortly afterwards, the chancellor’s office went further and said it would send its own weapons, including 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 “Stinger” surface-to-air missiles, directly to Ukraine. It also committed to targeted bans on Russian banks from the SWIFT global financial system, which German leaders had expressed reluctance to do.

On Sunday, the breaks with the past continued, with Scholz committing to greater defense spending.

The developments were all the more notable considering they followed another historic decision last week, when Germany took steps to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.

Germany’s reluctance to send German-made weapons to Ukraine had earned the country criticism from NATO allies in recent weeks. Although Germany is one of the world’s top weapons exporters — it exported arms worth 9.35 billion euros in 2021 — it has long had a policy of not sending lethal weapons to conflict zones. Until Saturday, German leaders had refused to send anything other than 5,000 helmets to aid Ukraine.

Scholz’s Sunday announcement about defense spending will, at least for the time being, put to rest the oft-repeated criticism that Germany is not adequately contributing to its own and NATO’s defense.

The country was a favorite target of former U.S. President Donald Trump for its failure to spend 2 percent of its GDP on defense, a target for NATO members. According to NATO figures, Berlin spent around 1.53 percent of GDP in 2021, or almost $65 billion. Its budget has grown annually for several years.

In balking at new spending, Berlin always insisted that Germany was investing enough to fulfill any NATO military requirements. Officials also noted that by spending that kind of money, Berlin’s defense budget would surpass that of Russia, and possibly make its own European neighbors nervous.

NATO countries slashed their military budgets in the 1990s after the Cold War, but they were spurred back into action when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. That year, the allies pledged to halt the cuts and move toward spending 2 percent of GDP by 2024.

German officials backed up their policy U-turn by calling it a necessary adjustment to a new normal.

“We cannot leave Ukraine defenseless against the aggressor who is bringing death and devastation to this country,” Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said Sunday. “If our world is different, then our politics must be different as well.”

The decisions were met with praise by many of the Ukrainian leaders and European allies that had been most critical of Germany in recent weeks.

“Keep it up, Chancellor @OlafScholz!” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted Saturday night after the news of weapons shipments. “Anti-war coalition in action!”

___

Lorne Cook contributed from Brussels. Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin.

For GOP, Supreme Court Case on Climate Goes Way Beyond the Environment

Greg Stohr and Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Sun., February 27, 2022



(Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Supreme Court argument Monday has the potential to give conservatives a new lever to slash the power of federal regulatory agencies with ramifications that reach far beyond the environmental issues at hand.

Coal-mining companies and Republican-led states are seeking sharp limits on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants. That would jeopardize President Joe Biden’s pledge to halve those emissions by the end of the decade.

More broadly, the case could produce a defining moment for the movement to rein in the so-called administrative state, a project some legal conservatives say is as vital as overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling. They say unaccountable regulators are usurping a role the Constitution entrusts to Congress.

“This is really about a fundamental question of who decides the major issues of the day,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is leading the effort to curb the EPA. “Should it be unelected bureaucrats, or should it be the people’s representatives in Congress?”

The result could be weakened environmental regulations, reduced consumer-safety and anti-fraud protections and less flexibility for presidents to address future pandemics and other crises. With Congress all but paralyzed amid partisan discord, supporters of administrative agencies say they are the government’s only tool for addressing the nation’s biggest problems.

“People who aren’t all that interested in environmental issues -- people who are concerned about vaccine mandates or other issues of the administrative state -- are laser-focused on this case,” said James W. Coleman, a Southern Methodist University law professor. “These are huge questions for the entire administrative state, not just for environmental law, even though the climate questions themselves are big, blockbuster ones.”

Thwarting Biden

The case involves two controversial legal doctrines that have gained new prominence at the court with the arrival of three Donald Trump appointees -- and have already played a role in thwarting Biden’s agenda.

The non-delegation doctrine says the Constitution limits Congress in handing off its legislative responsibilities. The major-questions doctrine, meanwhile, insists on clear authorization from Congress before letting an agency exercise broad powers.

Both doctrines lurked near the surface when the court lifted the Biden administration’s moratorium on evictions during the pandemic and blocked plans to require vaccines or regular tests for 84 million workers.

In the eviction case last year, the court alluded to the major-questions doctrine, saying that “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.”

The court used that language again in January when it said Congress didn’t authorize the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s shot-or-test rule.

In a separate opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch added for three conservative justices that “if the statutory subsection the agency cites really did endow OSHA with the power it asserts, that law would likely constitute an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority.”

First Congress

Critics say both doctrines are judicial inventions, found nowhere in the Constitution and impossible to square with the country’s history. University of Michigan law professor Julian Davis Mortenson argued in a brief filed in the case that in 1789 and 1790 the First Congress delegated broad policy making authority, covering such areas as patent rights, taxes, refinancing the national debt and raising armies.

“These delegations routinely granted vast discretion to resolve major policy questions with little or no guidance,” Mortenson said.

The case centers on a Clean Air Act provision requiring the EPA to identify the “best system of emission reduction” for existing pollution sources. The law then tasks states to implement plans that reflect those findings.

Coal companies and Republican-led states say the EPA’s authority stops at the fence-line of power plants, an approach that could limit the agency to modest emission cuts at the sites themselves.

They are asking the court to preemptively bar anything resembling former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which pushed states to shift electricity generation from coal-burning plants toward lower-emitting options, such as renewable power. The Supreme Court blocked the Clean Power Plan in 2016, and it never took effect.

‘Preemptive Shush’

The Biden administration, power companies and environmental groups say the Clean Air Act allows broader emissions-control measures, such as cap-and-trade systems. They point to Supreme Court precedents that say Congress can delegate policy making provided an “intelligible principle” guides the agency.

The court’s agreement to hear the state and coal-company appeals suggests an eagerness to constrain the EPA. The justices brushed aside objections that their involvement was premature given that the Biden administration hasn’t issued its own power-plant rule yet. A ruling against the EPA could also block its new limits on automobile emissions, which aim to encourage electric vehicles.

“The Supreme Court seems to be in a mood to give EPA a preemptive shush,” Michael McKenna, a GOP energy strategist and former White House official, said in a note to clients. “That’s probably a bad sign for the agencies.”

West Still Reluctant to Target Russia Energy on Economy Fear

Philip Aldrick and Enda Curran
Sun., February 27, 2022,


 

(Bloomberg) -- Global governments remain reluctant for now to sanction Russian energy, seeking to insulate the world economy from a greater shock even as they tighten the financial grip on the country following its invasion of Ukraine.

While oil last week briefly passed $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014 and European natural gas prices jumped as much as 62%, the gains were partly reversed as the U.S. and European nations avoided sanctioning Moscow’s massive energy supplies for punishment.

They continue to resist doing so despite fresh plans to further annex President Vladimir Putin’s economy from the international monetary system. Although some Russian banks will now be excluded from the SWIFT payment messaging system, one official said the White House is looking at exemptions for transactions involving the energy sector.

The current reluctance to crack down on the source of much of Russia’s wealth reflects the fear that doing so would send energy prices surging even higher, transmitting a stagflationary mix of faster inflation and slower growth around an already fragile world economy.

The reprieve may support Putin’s under-threat economy, where commodities account for more than 10% of activity and much of the nation’s budget.

“Financial sanctions are often there as a signal of disapproval rather than a real attempt to cause pain and damage,” said John Gieve, a former U.K. government official and central banker. “Arguably that is the case now. We are not restricting energy exports because that would mean more pain for us than we are willing to bear.”

The avoidance of targeting Russian energy still may fade the longer the conflict rages and the more countries utilize alternative energy supplies. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Saturday that the U.K. would support restricting Russian energy exports to Europe and that the U.K. was working with Group of Seven partners to reduce dependency on Russia.

Separately, BP Plc moved to dump its shares in oil giant Rosneft PJSC, taking a financial hit of as much as $25 billion by joining the campaign to isolate Russia’s economy.

Russia is a commodities-powerhouse, producing more than 10% of the world’s oil and natural gas, with Europe reliant on it for a third of its gas.

“Energy sanctions are certainly on the table,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We have not taken those off, but we also want to do that and make sure we’re minimizing the impact on the global marketplace and do it in a united way.”

The invasion-driven surge in energy prices already has economists predicting a higher and delayed peak in inflation as well as a hit to growth as consumers and companies are forced to allocate more of their budgets to fuel and heating.

Even with Russian energy being left alone, the war’s first few days have shown there’ll likely be snags maintaining a smooth flow of oil. Many buyers have backed away from buying Russian crude cargoes for fear of getting ensnared in sanctions or damaging their reputation. Urals, Russia’s most important export grade, is trading at a record discount to international benchmarks.

Many banks in Europe and China also have backed away from financing Russian commodity deals, at least in the short term, and tanker owners are reluctant to take on the risks of loading at Russian ports.

“Even if it is possible to pay counter-parties under trade contracts, payments will be in stupor in the near future due to exchange-rate volatility,” said Sofya Donets, economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. “For a period of uncertainty, trade will be made with great difficulty.”

But the fallout would be much worse if curbs were imposed on Russia.

The latest limits on finance are a “welcome move but insignificant to cut oil and gas flows,” said Thierry Bros, a professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. “We will still be in a position to pay for gas.”

In a scenario in which Europe’s gas supply was cut off, the euro-area would tumble into recession, according to Bloomberg Economics. The U.S. would suffer significantly tighter financial conditions and growth would diminish, leaving the Federal Reserve potentially having to raise interest rates in a slowing economy, the economists wrote last week.

At JPMorgan Chase & Co., economists led by Bruce Kasman estimate that a sustained shutting-off of Russian oil exports could propel the price of crude to $150 a barrel, potentially lowering global growth by 3 percentage points and raising inflation by 4 percentage points.

Still, Kasman’s team noted a nuclear agreement with Iran and the release of oil from the U.S.’s strategic reserve could offset as much as two-thirds of the shortfall from the cessation of Russian oil shipments.

Other ways of opening room to bash Russia and mitigate the aftershock include reviving coal-fired power stations and encouraging governments, including China’s, to tap their own reserves in a coordinated fashion.

As for Russia, the continued flowing of oil will likely provide some relief given the World Bank calculates commodities account for almost 70% of goods exports. About 43% of the country’s crude and condensate output is sold abroad.

The central bank’s latest projections showed the economy could grow 2%-3% this year, down from 4.7% in 2021. Inflation, though, is running at more than double its target, despite 525 basis points in interest-rate hikes since last March.

If crude prices stay around $90 this year, the country’s budget could get more than $65 billion in extra revenue, adding to the Kremlin’s financial strength, economists said recently. Oil at $100 would boost the windfall closer to $73 billion.

At Natixis SA, economist Alicia Garcia Herrero said sanctions on energy could still be in the cards.

“The West is finding ways to reduce the impact of a commercial embargo, which would include energy, but it has not found it yet,” Garcia Herrero said. “However, it is a question of time.”

Norway Decides to Drop Russia From $1.3 Trillion Wealth Fund

Lars Erik Taraldsen
Sun., February 27, 2022



(Bloomberg) -- Norway is starting a process to remove Russian assets from its $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, in a rare case of politics steering investments for the country’s savings.

The government decided to freeze Russian holdings in the fund in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine and plans to divest them in due course, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters in Oslo on Sunday. Norges Bank Investment Management held about 25 billion kroner ($2.8 billion) at the end of the year, Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum said.

The Oslo-based fund is the world’s biggest owner of publicly traded companies with a portfolio of about 9,000 stocks. The government made its decision despite Chief Executive Officer Nicolai Tangen on Friday describing such a move as a “wrapped gift to the oligarchs” who would buy the shares.

Until now, Norway has been careful to avoid being seen as using the fund as a political tool. Previous attempts to impose political goals on the institution have been met with criticism that its overarching goal must be the highest possible return over time.

Norway’s decision comes after Russian markets slumped last week and follows U.S. plans with its European allies to ban transactions with the central bank in Moscow and cut off various Russian lenders from the critical SWIFT financial messaging system. In addition, BP Plc moved to dump its shares in oil giant Rosneft PJSC and could be forced to make $25 billion writedown.

The fund is now freezing its account holdings in Russia, which means that it will neither buy nor sell, Line Aaltvedt, a spokeswoman for the fund, said by phone. It will then make a plan to sell out of Russia in collaboration with the ministry, she said. No timeline for the exit was given.

Created in the 1990s to invest Norway’s oil and gas revenue abroad, the fund has followed strict ethical guidelines since 2004, including bans on certain weapons, tobacco and most exposure to coal.

Its biggest equity holdings in Russia at the end of 2020, the last time it disclosed its full portfolio, were in Sberbank of Russia PJSC, Gazprom PJSC and Lukoil PJSC, according to the Norges Bank Investment Management website. It will publish its 2021 holdings on Thursday.

“We want to give a very clear and unequivocal response that the type of abuse we have seen in recent times can not be accepted and it is therefore natural for Norway to withdraw its investments from the Russian market,” Vedum said on Sunday.

Norway also announced that it will enforce sanctions in cooperation with the European Union and will close its airspace to Russian flights. It will also increase humanitarian support related to the crisis to as much as 2 billion kroner.