Germany: Security workers go on strike at major airports

Security workers have launched a work stoppage at many of Germany's international airports as they demand better pay and working conditions. Hundreds of flights have been canceled.

Long lines formed ahead of the security check at Düsseldorf Airport amid the strikes

Airports across Germany expected massive flight delays and cancellations on Monday after security personnel went on strike at several of the country's international hubs over slumping wages and working conditions.

The employees on strike include workers who check in passengers and their baggage before reaching their gates, along with those who oversee massive cargo operations.

The Verdi labor union announced that the work stoppage would last all day at Berlin, Düsseldorf, Bremen, Hanover, Leipzig and Cologne/Bonn airports. Later in the day, Verdi announced that staff at Munich's airport were also joining the strike. 

On Tuesday, workers are set to strike in Frankfurt, the biggest and busiest airport in the country. Frankfurt Airport has already advised travelers to revise their plans to travel that day if possible.

The strikes canceled flights across Germany

Early in the day, 160 canceled flights had already been announced Düsseldorf. At Cologne/Bonn, 94 flights were canceled, both departures and arrivals. In Berlin, passengers have been stranded over nixed connections.

Workers are demanding a pay rise of at least €1 ($1.10) per hour as conditions for airport personnel have become increasingly strenuous since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The pandemic, as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have also caused the cost of living to increase in Germany.  

Further salary negotations are expected to take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Berlin, Verdi said.

es/wd (dpa, Reuters)

HINDUTVA INJUSTICE IS SYSTEMIC
India court upholds ban on hijab in schools and colleges

By SHEIKH SAALIQ

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Indian students in uniform clothing walk inside the campus of a government-run junior college in Udupi, Karnataka state, India, Feb. 24, 2022. Muslim students in this southern Indian state have found themselves at the center of a debate over hijab bans in schools. The furor began in January when staffers at the college began refusing admission to girls who showed up in a hijab, saying they were violating the uniform code. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)


NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian court Tuesday upheld a ban on wearing hijab in class in the southern state of Karnataka, saying the Muslim headscarf is not an essential religious practice of Islam in a ruling that is likely to further deepen religious tensions in the country.

The high court in Karnataka state delivered the verdict after considering petitions filed by Muslim students challenging a government ban on hijabs that some schools and colleges have implemented in the last two months. The ban does not extend to other Indian states, but the court ruling could set a precedent for the rest of the country.

The dispute began in January when a government-run school in Karnataka’s Udupi district barred students wearing hijabs from entering classrooms, triggering protests by Muslims who said they were being deprived of their fundamental rights to education and religion. That led to counterprotests by Hindu students wearing saffron shawls, a color closely associated with that religion and favored by Hindu nationalists.

More schools in the state followed with similar bans and the state’s top court disallowed students from wearing hijab and any religious clothing pending a verdict.

The court in its ruling said the state government had the power to prescribe uniform guidelines for students as a “reasonable restriction on fundamental rights.”

The ruling came at a time when violence and hate speech against Muslims have increased under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Hindu nationalist party, which also governs Karnataka state. Over the last few weeks, the issue has become a flashpoint for the battle over the rights of Muslims, who fear they are being shunted aside as a minority in India and see hijab bans as a worrying escalation of Hindu nationalism under Modi’s government.

Some rights activists have voiced concerns that the ban could increase Islamophobia.

“No one can understand our anxiousness about what is to follow,” Afreen Fatima, a New Delhi-based student activist, wrote on Twitter. “The court’s Hijab ban is a great injustice and a very worrying precedence. The scale of its repercussion is going to be brutal and inhuman.”

Karnataka’s education minister B. C. Nagesh told reporters that female Muslim students who were protesting against the ban must respect the court’s verdict and return to classes. He said his government will try to win the hearts of “misguided” students and “bring them in mainstream of education.”

Some Muslim politicians called the verdict disappointing.

“I hope this judgement will not be used to legitimize harassment of hijab-wearing women,” said Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of the Indian parliament.

Ahead of the verdict, the Karnataka government banned large gatherings for a week in state capital Bengaluru “to maintain public peace and order” and declared a holiday Tuesday in schools and colleges in Udupi.

The hijab is worn by many Muslim women to maintain modesty or as a religious symbol, often seen as not just a bit of clothing but something mandated by their faith.

Hijab restrictions have surfaced elsewhere, including France, which in 2004 banned them in schools. But in India, where Muslims make up 14% of the country’s 1.4 billion people, the hijab has historically been neither prohibited nor limited in public spheres. Women donning the headscarf is common across the country, which has religious freedom enshrined in its national charter with the secular state as a cornerstone.

Hijab bans deepen Hindu-Muslim fault lines in Indian state


By SHEIKH SAALIQ


UDUPI, India (AP) — When Aliya Assadi was 12, she wore a hijab while representing her southern Indian state of Karnataka at a karate competition. She won gold.

Five years later she tried to wear one to her junior college, the equivalent of a U.S. high school. She never made it past the campus gate, turned away under a new policy barring the religious headgear.

“It’s not just a piece of cloth,” Assadi said while visiting a friend’s house. She wore a niqab, an even more concealing garment that veils nearly the entire face with just a slit for the eyes, which she dons when away from home. “Hijab is my identity. And right now what they’re doing is taking away my identity from me.”

She’s one of countless Muslim students in Karnataka who have found themselves thrust into the center of a stormy debate about banning the hijab in schools and the Islamic head coverings’ place in this Hindu-majority but constitutionally secular nation.

Indian Muslim student Aliya Assadi dons a niqab, a concealing garment that veils nearly the entire face with just a slit for the eyes, as she arrives at her friend's house in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

The issue has become a flashpoint for the battle over the rights of Muslims, who fear they are being shunted aside as a minority in India and see hijab restrictions as a worrying escalation of Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

On Tuesday, an Indian court upheld the ban, saying the Muslim headscarf is not an essential religious practice of Islam.

The hijab is worn by many Muslim women to maintain modesty or as a religious symbol, often seen as not just a bit of clothing but something mandated by their faith. Opponents consider it a symbol of oppression, imposed on women. Hijab supporters deny that and say it has different meanings depending on the individual, including as a proud expression of Muslim identity.

A veiled Indian Muslim student, her hands decorated with henna, talks to her friend as they gather to meet student activists in Kundapur in district Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

The furor began in January in India, where Muslims make up just 14% of the country’s 1.4 billion people but are still numerous enough to make it the second-largest Muslim population of any nation, after Indonesia.

Staffers at a government-run junior college in Udupi, a coastal city in Karnataka, began refusing admission to girls who showed up in a hijab, saying they were violating the uniform code.

The students protested by camping outside and holding their lessons there, arguing that Muslim students had long been allowed to wear headscarves at school. More schools in the state soon imposed similar bans, prompting demonstrations by hundreds of Muslim women.

That led to counterprotests by Hindu students wearing saffron shawls, a color closely associated with that religion and favored by Hindu nationalists. They shouted slogans like “Hail Lord Ram,” a phrase that traditionally was used to celebrate the Hindu deity but has been co-opted by nationalists.

At one campus a boy climbed a flagpole and hoisted a saffron flag to cheers from friends. At another a girl in a hijab was met by shouted Hindu slogans from a group of boys; she raised her fist and cried, “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great,” in Arabic.

India's Hindu right wing Bajrang Dal activists donning saffron scarves and waving saffron flags demand a probe in the recent killing of one of their associates in Karnataka's Shivamogga district, during a protest rally in Udupi, Karnataka, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

To quell tensions the state, governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, shut schools and colleges for three days. It then slapped a statewide ban on the hijab in classes, saying “religious clothing” in government-run schools “disturbs equality, integrity and public law and order.”

Some students gave in and attended with their heads uncovered. Others refused and have been barred from school for nearly two months — students like Ayesha Anwar, an 18-year-old in Udupi who has missed exams and is falling behind her peers.

“I feel like we are being let down by everyone,” Anwar said while surrounded by friends in a dimly lit cafe, her voice barely a whisper from behind her cloth veil.

Muslim student Ayesha Anwar, 18, chats with her friends at a cafe in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. Anwar has missed exams and is falling behind her peers, after wearing of the hijab was banned in schools. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Six students sued to overturn the state’s ban, now upheld by the court, arguing it violates their rights to education and religious freedom. One of the plaintiffs to the challenge was Aliya Assadi.

“I’m an Indian and a Muslim,” she said. “When I see this with the point of view of a Muslim, I see my hijab is at a stake, and as an Indian, I see my constitutional values have been violated.”

There’s a cost to her activism: Hindu nationalists doxxed her personal details on social media, unleashing a flood of online abuse and harassment. She lost friends who depicted her actions as Muslim fundamentalism.

But she’s steadfast about wearing the hijab. She first did so as a child, imitating her mother, carefully arranging the headscarf in front of the mirror each morning. Today she enjoys the privacy it affords and the sense of religious pride it conveys: “It makes me confident.”

Indian Muslim student Aliya Assadi, left, holds her mobile phone as she interacts with a friend in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Ayesha Imtiaz, another student barred from school, said she wears it as a token of devotion to Islam but acknowledged that opinions vary even among Muslim women.

“There are so many of my friends who do not wear hijab inside the classroom,” said Imtiaz, 20. “They feel empowered in their own way, and I feel empowered in my own way.”

In her eyes, the bans segregate women according to faith and contravene core Indian values on diversity.

“It’s Islamophobia,” Imtiaz said.

Hijab restrictions have surfaced elsewhere, including France, which in 2004 banned them in schools. Other European countries have enacted regulations for public spaces, usually aimed at the more concealing garments such as niqabs and burqas. Usage of head coverings has divided even some Muslim communities.

In India, the hijab has historically been neither prohibited nor limited in public spheres. Women donning the headscarf is common across the country, which has religious freedom enshrined in its national charter with the secular state as a cornerstone.

An Indian Muslim girl wearing a hijab runs past others wearing burqas during an evening at a beach in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

But critics of Modi say India has steadily drifted from that commitment to secularism and today is deeply fractured along religious lines. The prime minister and top Cabinet officials often perform Hindu rituals and prayers on television, blurring the lines between religion and the state.

Since coming into office in 2014, Modi’s government has passed a raft of laws that opponents call anti-Muslim, though his party rejects accusations of being discriminatory.

Meanwhile calls for violence against Muslims have moved from society’s fringes toward the mainstream. Watchdog groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned that attacks could escalate against Muslims, who are disproportionately represented in India’s most impoverished neighborhoods and in prisons.

Some of the anti-Islam sentiment has specifically targeted women — recently many in the country were outraged by a website that was set up offering a fake “auction” of more than 100 prominent Indian Muslim women, including journalists, activists, artists and movie stars.

People hold placards and candles in Bengaluru, India, during a protest against banning Muslim girls from wearing the hijab in educational institutions in southern Karnataka state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Muslim students allege that behind the counterprotests in Karnataka was Hindu Jagran Vedike, a nationalist group associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a far-right Hindu organization ideologically linked to Modi’s political party.

Mahesh Bailur, a senior member of Hindu Jagran Vedike, denied that his group organized demonstrations and said it only offered “moral support” to the saffron shawls and their cause.

“Today these girls are demanding hijab in colleges. Tomorrow they will want to pray there. Finally, they’ll want separate classrooms for themselves,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”

Bailur, 36, is a proponent of a discredited conspiracy theory that holds Muslims are plotting to convert India’s Hindu population and eventually remake it as an Islamic nation. Demands to wear the hijab in classes, he argued, are part of that.

Manavi Atri, a human rights lawyer based in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka, said the hijab ban is among many assaults on expressions of Muslim identity in India today, violates principles of state neutrality on religious matters, and inflates an “us-versus-them philosophy” in a country already riven by sectarian divisions. Most troubling, she said, is the pressure it puts on girls and young women in their formative years.

“This choice (between education and faith) that people are being forced to make is not a choice one has to be exercising at that age,” she said.

A girl in uniform walks into the government-run junior college with a Muslim student wearing burqa in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

In the court case, lawyers for Karnataka state argued that the Quran does not clearly establish wearing the hijab as an essential spiritual practice, so banning it does not violate religious freedom.

Many Muslims reject that interpretation.

On a recent Friday, Rasheed Ahmad, the head imam of Udupi’s grand mosque, delivered a sermon before hundreds of worshippers. His voice thundering through loudspeakers mounted on the minarets, he railed against the bans as an attack on Islam.

“Hijab is not just our right,” he said later in an interview, “but an order from God.”

Assadi said she and the others are determined to prevail.

“We are brave Muslim women,” she said, “and we know how to fight for our rights.”

Indian Muslim students spend time at a cafe after they were denied entry into their college for wearing the hijab in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Police officers stand guard at a gate of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial college after hijab wearing Muslim girl students were denied entry into the campus in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
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Indian students in uniform clothing walk inside the campus of a government-run junior college in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

A Muslim girl wearing a hijab checks photographs taken on her mobile phone at a beach in Udupi, Karnataka state. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Rasheed Ahmad, the head imam of Udupi's grand mosque, teaches the Quran to children in Udupi, Karnataka state, India. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Indian Muslim students wearing burqas leave Mahatma Gandhi Memorial college after they were denied entry into the campus in Udupi, Karnataka state, India, Feb. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

W. Virginia Senate blows deadline to pass teaching race bill

By LEAH WILLINGHAM

March 13, 2022

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Legislature’s Republican supermajority failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session, a state Senate spokesperson confirmed early Sunday.

Lawmakers had spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the “Anti-Racism Act of 2022.” It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late Saturday to take the final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly, and the late-night vote was merely to greenlight the House’s version.

“We took the vote, but essentially that didn’t matter because it didn’t make deadline,” Senate spokesperson Jacque Bland told The Associated Press in an email early Sunday. She said the education bill has no path forward to becoming law.

A separate bill restricting abortion access did pass just minutes before midnight. It bars parents from seeking abortion care because they believe their child will be born with a disability. It provides exemptions in the case of a medical emergency or in cases where a fetus is “nonmedically viable.”

GOP lawmakers appeared unhurried as the clock ticked down Saturday, spending about an hour passing resolutions honoring two outgoing senators.

Supporters of the Anti-Racism Act of 2022 said it aims to prevent discrimination based on race in K-12 public schools, banning teachers from telling students that one race “is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

The bill said students can’t be taught a person’s moral character is determined by their race, or that a person by virtue of their race “bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race.”

It would have created a mechanism for reporting complaints and for the Legislature to collect data on how many complaints are substantiated each year. The law didn’t specify punishment.

Legislators convened at the snowy state Capitol on Saturday with dozens of bills to finalize. GOP House Speaker Roger Hanshaw arrived late to a debate on the state budget bill because he was delayed by a car accident on the roads, which were still being cleared.

The bill dealing with disabilities and abortion was passed just minutes before midnight. The final passage of the bill happened hours after the House passed the bill following 90 minutes of debate.

“This is about science and morality,” said Republican Del. Kayla Kessinger in support of the bill. “It’s about, ‘When does life begin?’ and whether or not it has a value.”

Democrats voiced their opposition, with Del. Evan Hansen saying the bill does nothing substantial to help people with disabilities and their families.

“This is an attempt to use people with disabilities as props for an anti-abortion agenda, something that the disability community has not asked for, as far as I know — and that’s just wrong,” Hansen said. “It creates government overreach into personal family medical decisions.”

A physician who violates the law could see their license to practice medicine suspended or revoked.

The bill also requires physicians to submit a report — with patients’ names omitted — to the state for each abortion they perform and whether “the presence or presumed presence of any disability in the unborn human being had been detected.”

The reports would include the date of the abortion and the method used, as well as confirming the doctor asked the patient if they chose an abortion because the baby might have a disability. These reports must be submitted within 15 days of each abortion.

The bill now moves to the desk of Republican Gov. Jim Justice.

That bill wasn’t the only abortion-related legislation brought forward by the state’s Republican supermajority in recent weeks , however lawmakers declined Saturday to take up a second bill banning abortions after 15 weeks, and it wasn’t passed.

Additionally, lawmakers voted 90-9 to send a $4.635 billion budget to the governor’s desk after two hours of discussion on the House floor Saturday.

The bill includes 5% pay raises for state employees and teachers, with an additional bump for state troopers. The budget does not include the 10% personal income tax cut passed by the House last month. The House and Senate could not come to an agreement on how to incorporate the cuts into the bill.

Lawmakers also promised that social workers in the state’s foster care system will see a 15% pay raise. After a bill to provide the increases was essentially gutted, they advised the Department of Health and Human Resources to provide the raises by instead eliminating open positions.

Additionally, lawmakers passed a bill decriminalizing fentanyl test strips, which can signal the presence of synthetic opioid in illicit drugs.

Other bills repealed the state’s soda tax, and banned requiring COVID-19 vaccination cards to enter state agencies or public colleges and universities.

As Cairo transforms, Egyptians fight to save their trees

By AMIR-HUSSEIN RADJY

March 11, 2022

1 of 9

 A bridge under construction is part of mega projects that include building new cities, roads, bridges and tunnels as the government tries to ease traffic on congested roads in one of the world's most crowded cities, in the Giza suburb of Cairo, Egypt, July 19, 2021. The massive road construction projects have erased some of the oldest remaining green spaces in Egypt’s capital.

 (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)


CAIRO (AP) — A few months ago, Choucri Asmar decided he wasn’t ready to give up hope. So he led a group of residents in “a peaceful demonstration to protect the trees” of his Cairo neighborhood.

Egyptian authorities were planning to clear out a large avenue of ficus, acacia and palm trees — part of sweeping urban redevelopment projects that are transforming much of historic Cairo.

“It was like a war on green,” Asmar said.

Asmar and other residents of Heliopolis — an old neighborhood that boasts some of the city’s most important early 20th-century buildings — numbered the trees lining Nehru Street, labeling each of them after famous Egyptian figures. Five days later, police took the signs down and Asmar got a warning from security officials. The trees have survived, for now, while many others nearby have not, their wood sawed into pieces and towed away in trucks.

Part of the adjoining park was razed to erect a stone monument commemorating Cairo’s road and highways development, while a nearby public garden dating from the early 20th century was demolished to make way for a new street and state-owned gas station.



Workers load recently cut tree branches on a government vehicle, in Cairo, Egypt, Feb. 17, 2022 Massive road construction projects have erased some of the oldest remaining green spaces in Egypt’s capital. As Egypt prepares to host the global climate conference COP27 this year, activists say they’re in a tough fight to save what trees remain. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Asmar said that between August 2019 and January 2020, Heliopolis lost an estimated 396,000 square meters (about 100 acres) of green space.



The remains of a giant tree is left in a public green space that was replaced by a new highway, in a median on Gesr Al Suez street, in Heliopolis, in Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 26, 2019.

“And then we stopped counting, but lost much more,” he said. He described feeling disoriented on once-familiar streets.

That’s roughly 73 football fields worth of greenery in just one neighborhood of the sprawling metropolis that stretches from the Pyramids at Giza in the west, across the Nile River, to new modern developments in the east. Heliopolis accounts for no more than one fifth of the capital in area. Cairo’s population of roughly 20 million is spread over some 648 square kilometers (250 square miles), making it one of the densest cities in the world.

Egypt’s environmental record is under scrutiny as it hosts the U.N. climate conference COP27 in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in November.

An official at Egypt’s Ministry of Environment did not respond to a request for comment on the loss of urban green spaces. Other officials have said that better roads will ease traffic, and promised that the new developments will include large parks and incorporate as much vegetation as possible. One plan, announced in government media, is for a park in the historic center, incorporating a large archeological zone.

Much of Cairo’s redesign and new highways aim to service a new capital under construction on the city’s outskirts. It’s the flagship mega-project of President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, who says he is rebuilding the economy after years of political turmoil.

In recent years, grassroots groups have sprung up in different areas of Cairo to try to protect the city’s urban identity. Asmar is a member of the Heliopolis Heritage Initiative, founded in 2011.

Sarah Rifaat lives a five-minute walk from Mesaha Square, a rare leafy spot in Giza, a neighborhood of high-rises. A few months ago, she was jolted into action by a video of a forklift leveling the square’s garden. She joined a WhatsApp group where residents expressed concern over the loss of green space. Residents organized a petition, but paving over of the garden continued.

“There’s a sense of collective connection to trees that I haven’t seen before,” she said.

Activists have scored some wins, including halting the commercial redevelopment of the Fish Garden, a park in the city’s central Zamalek area. Rifaat has seen some urban improvements initiated by city officials as well, but says there is no accountability among decision-makers.

Cairenes are struggling to come to terms with a rapidly changing city, where many public spaces have been taken away or commercialized, she said. Rifaat believes that protecting neighborhoods has become a final form of protest, as the space for civil society in Egypt keeps shrinking.

Backed up by residential groups across the city, environmental lawyer Ahmed Elseidi is leading a case before Egypt’s highest administrative court that he hopes will oblige the government to replant trees and protect Cairo’s few remaining green spaces.

The government is required by law to carry out public consultations and environmental impact reports on highway construction that has torn through many old neighborhoods, he said. The law protects green spaces, designating trees as public property, he added.

Elseidi said he has submitted documents showing that no environmental studies were conducted ahead of any road projects, including in Heliopolis.

Rim Hamdy, a botany professor at Cairo University, said some types of trees could vanish from city streets. Thirty-five varieties of Australian eucalyptus once grew along Giza streets but dozens have been felled. Even the nearby Agricultural Ministry’s plant nursery has been bulldozed, she said.

Many tree species and public gardens are a legacy of Egypt’s 19th-century rulers, who planted thousands of trees as they rebuilt Cairo. They imported specimens — including flowering purple jacaranda and red poinciana — that became signatures of Cairo’s streets.

Hamdy plans to petition authorities to allow her to trim and protect a century-old sycamore fig outside her university.

In Maadi, an area known for its leafy squares and villas, the Tree Lovers Association is one of the city’s oldest neighborhood groups.

Association member Samia Zeitoun said the authorities have responded to some of the public complaints about development.

“Cairo was choking, so it’s a big challenge for the government to open up arteries,” she said, raising the issue of overcrowding in the city that grows by the thousands every day.

As Egypt prepares to host COP27, activists say green spaces help reduce Cairo’s heavy pollution and lower scorching summer temperatures in urban areas.

In fighting to preserve green spaces, the more well-to-do areas score more successes, with residents typically enjoying better access to officials than those living in poorer areas.

Asmar said he’s disappointed he hasn’t been able to do more to protect Al Maza, a working-class area next to the more affluent Heliopolis. Authorities are removing its main tree-lined road and planning to evict residents along it, he said.

Ukraine’s only woman rabbi among the many Jews fleeing war

By VANESSA GERA

March 13, 2022

1 of 6

Rabbi Julia Gris, who led a Progressive Jewish congregation in Odessa, Ukraine, visits a synagogue in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, March 12, 2022. Many Jews are among the more than 2.5 million refugees leaving Ukraine. International Jewish organizations have mobilized to help, working with local Jewish communities in Poland, Romania, Moldova and elsewhere to organize food, shelter, medical care and other assistance. Among them is Rabbi Gris, Ukraine's only woman rabbi, who these days leads online Shabbat services for her scattered congregation. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)


WARSAW, Poland (AP) — On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day.

A week earlier, Ukraine’s only woman rabbi had been fleeing the war that scattered her Odesa congregation from Moldova to Romania and Israel. Some stayed behind, braving the Russian shelling.

She first led an online service for those congregants scattered abroad. Then, she officiated one in person for a small group in Poland, taken in by a Christian couple near Warsaw.

Gris lit sabbath candles that she had carried from Ukraine, while her 19-year-old daughter Izolda played the guitar and sang, just as she had during services back home in the her Reform community, Shirat ha-Yam.

“There were so many stories, so much crying and so much pain,” Gris said. “For those who are here, and even more so for those still in Ukraine.”

Gris and her daughter found safety after a 30 kilometer (20 mile) walk lugging suitcases and their two cats, reaching the border with Poland where they negotiated a 40-hour wait without food, water or toilets.

The mother and daughter are part of the exodus from Ukraine that has become the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II

With some 200,000 Jews in Ukraine, one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, it is inevitable that many Jewish people are also among those fleeing.

International Jewish organizations have mobilized to help, working with local Jewish communities in Poland, Romania, Moldova and elsewhere to organize food, shelter, medical care and other assistance.

The reality that so many Jews have joined the mass civilian exit from Ukraine exposes the deceitfulness of Russian claims that it’s there to “denazify” Ukraine. In truth, Ukraine has steadily grown into a pluralistic society, led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Why is a Russian regime that claims to be “denazifying” Ukraine brutalizing a country led by a democratically elected and proud Jew?” said David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who visited Poland this week to assess the needs of refugees. “Why is Moscow adopting Nazi-like tactics of the 1930s — fake history, phony grievances, blitzkrieg, attacks on civilians and civilian institutions, and murder of children?”

Gris said she always felt very much at home in Ukraine, a Russian-born Jew who had never felt discrimination.

Now Russia’s invasion has plunged the country into an acute humanitarian crisis affecting Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish organizations say they are there to help all refugees irrespective of faith. But for some Jews, the organizations’ involvement is essential to helping them emigrate to Israel or stay true to their faith’s observances, for instance by getting kosher food.

Aside from the AJC there are others helping. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a New York-based Jewish humanitarian organization, has so far evacuated thousands of Jews to Moldova and helped several thousand more after they reached Poland and other countries.

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said some of the Jewish refugees plan to go to Israel while others intend to join family in countries like Germany or Britain. Others, he said, “have to figure out what to do with their lives — do they want to settle in Poland or elsewhere?”

The dark historical irony isn’t lost on Schudrich. Eight decades ago, Jews desperately tried to flee German-occupied Poland and other eastern European countries under Nazi German rule. Six million of them were exterminated.

“The struggles that people had, the splitting up of families, saying goodbye and never knowing if you would see each other again, and most times you didn’t,” Schudrich said. “And to think now that Jews and others are not fleeing out of Poland but into Poland, and we, the small Jewish community of Poland, can now welcome them.”

Gris is awaiting a sponsorship letter in hopes of going to the U.K. She was ordained a rabbi at the Leo Baeck College in London and has friends and colleagues there who are supporting her.

Wearing a sequined kippa and a ribbon pinned to her chest in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag, Gris said that she never experienced anti-Semitism in her 22 years of living in Ukraine.

It was the fact that she was Russian that made her nervous after Russian troops attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24. Friends advised her that she would be better off leaving. Ukrainian authorities froze her bank account — a step taken against Russian and Belarusian citizens. At the border, she said Ukrainian guards asked, “how do we know you’re not a spy?”

Gris said she could understand that reaction from a nation under attack, but it still hurt because “my heart and soul is with Ukraine.”

Gris, 45, was born in Bryansk, Russia, before the breakup of the Soviet Union. She embarked on her spiritual journey as a teenager at a time of a broader revival of Jewish life in eastern Europe. Judaism, like other religions, had been suppressed by the the officially atheistic ideology of the communist era.

In her youth she was told by a rabbi that she was so wise that she could even aspire to being a rabbi’s wife. But she said to herself: “No, I will be a rabbi myself.”

Gris doesn’t know where the war will lead but fears that Jewish life will never be the same there.

On Saturday, her second Shabbat in safety, she was joined in Warsaw by a member of her Odesa congregation — two thirds of whom have fled now — a reunion that was comforting to them both.

She denounced Russian propaganda, and recounted how her own mother, who is still in Russia, didn’t believe that Russia attacked Ukraine. “I had to tell her yes, I can hear the sirens and the bombs myself!”

Now she feels her life in Odesa may be lost forever. “I don’t know when I can go back,” Gris said fighting back tears. “Or if I will go back.”

As Ukraine war rages, Israel grapples with fate of oligarchs

By JOSEF FEDERMAN and ILAN BEN ZION

A banner in the colors of Russia's national flag depicting Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich and reading "the Roman Empire" is shown during the English Premier League soccer match between Chelsea and Newcastle United at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is grappling with how to deal with dozens of Jewish Russian oligarchs as Western nations step up sanctions on businesspeople with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A worried Israeli government has formed a high-level committee to see how the country can maintain its status as a haven for any Jew without running afoul of the biting sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle.

“Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries,” Foreign Minister Yair Lapid declared Monday during a stop in Slovakia.

Several dozen Jewish tycoons from Russia are believed to have taken on Israeli citizenship or residency in recent years. Many have good working relations with the Kremlin, and at least four -- Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Viktor Vekselberg -- have been sanctioned internationally because of their purported connections to Putin. Some of the sanctions stretch back even to before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month.

Israel, which has emerged as an unlikely mediator between Ukraine and Russia, has not joined the sanctions imposed by the U.S., Britain, European Union and others. But as the war in Ukraine drags on, and other names are added to the list, the pressure is increasing.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 TV station over the weekend, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, called on Israel to join the group of countries that have sanctioned Russia.

“What we are asking among other things is for every democracy around the world to join us in the financial and export control sanctions that we have put on Putin,” she said. “You don’t want to become the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars.”

Aaron David Miller, a now-retired veteran U.S. diplomat, said on Twitter that Nuland’s comments were the “toughest battering of Israeli policy since crisis began or of any policy in very long while.”

Israel, founded as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, an estimated 1 million Jews from Russia and other former Soviet republics have moved to Israel. In recent years, a growing number of tycoons from the former Soviet Union have joined them.

Some, such as former energy magnate Leonid Nevzlin, came after falling out with Putin. Others appeared to have done so as hedges against trouble abroad.

Abramovich, for instance, took Israeli citizenship in 2018 after his British visa was not renewed, apparently as part of British authorities’ efforts to crack down on Putin associates after a former Russian spy was poisoned in England. Although he appears to spend little time in the country, he has bought some choice real estate, including a home in a trendy Tel Aviv neighborhood reportedly purchased from the husband of Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot.

Some of the tycoons have kept low public profiles, while others have embraced their Jewish roots, emerging as major philanthropists to Jewish causes or investing in Israel’s high-flying technology sector. With a limited number of places to go, a growing number of Jewish tycoons, especially those with Israeli citizenship, could find themselves spending more time in Israel.

Israeli media have reported private jets belonging to oligarchs coming in and out of the country in recent days. Channel 12 said late Sunday that one of Abramovich’s planes had landed in Israel, though it was unclear if he was onboard. Israeli media reported he was seen at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Monday, around the same time as his private jet flew to Istanbul.

While Israel weighs its moves, Jewish organizations already are taking a closer look at their relations with Russian oligarchs.

Last week, Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, said it was suspending a reported donation of tens millions of dollars from Abramovich “in light of recent developments.” In Ukraine, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built at the ravine where over 30,000 Jews were massacred in just two days in 1941, said that Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, had resigned from its advisory board due to the sanctions.

Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the government has formed a special inter-ministerial committee to study the sanctions issue. The fate of affected oligarchs is a central part of that mission.

On Monday, Lapid said the ministry was working with other government bodies, including Israel’s Central Bank, to make sure tycoons do not use the country to avert sanctions.

Lapid also has advised his colleagues to keep their distance from the oligarchs.

“You have to be very careful because those guys have connections and they can call you on the phone and ask you for things,” Lapid recently told the Cabinet. “Don’t commit to anything because it could cause diplomatic damage. Say you can’t help them and give them the number of the Foreign Ministry.”

His comments, first reported in Israeli media, were confirmed by officials who attended the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing closed Cabinet proceedings.

Israel, one of the few countries that has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, may be able to insulate itself from the international pressure as long as it continues to mediate between the warring sides. Joining the sanctions would risk drawing Russian ire and jeopardize Israel’s unique role.

Ksenia Svetlova, an international-affairs expert and former Israeli lawmaker born in Russia, said Israel would hold out from taking a stance as long as possible.

“It depends on what kind of pressure they will exercise against Israel,” she said. “Not voluntarily, certainly.”

In Russian invasion of Ukraine, Cold War echoes reverberate
By JAKE COYLE

March 13, 2022

1 of 4

President Joe Biden announces Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court at the White House in Washington on Feb. 25, 2022, left, and President Vladimir Putin speaks during a visit to the construction site of the National Space Agency at Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, in Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 27, 2022. The invasion of Ukraine has rapidly returned echoes of a Cold War mentality to the United States, with a familiar foe in Russia. (AP Photo)


NEW YORK (AP) — A rivalry with Russia. A proxy battleground. Nuclear brinksmanship. For many generations of Americans, it’s just like old times.

The invasion of Ukraine has rapidly returned echoes of a Cold War mentality to the United States, with a familiar foe in Russia. Bars have poured out their Russian vodka. McDonald’s, a symbol of the end of the Soviet Union when it first opened in Moscow, has shuttered its Russian locations. Once again, a U.S. president sees a pitched ideological battle. “We will save democracy,” President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address.

For an America where Russia never quite went out of style as an evergreen villain in film and television, revived tensions with the Kremlin have drawn from a well-worn geopolitical script. A familiar, chilly East-West wind is blowing again.

“It’s very much a Cold War echo,” says James Hershberg, professor of history and international affairs at Georgetown University and former director of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Hershberg sees much that’s different about today’s inflamed tensions with Russia. Vladimir Putin’s aggressions, he says, don’t seem driven by ideology the way communism was for the Soviet Union. A transformed media landscape, too, has helped turn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a global protagonist.

But in a crisis that pits two nuclear superpowers on opposing sides, history is repeating in other ways. A Russian strategic overreach, Hershberg says, is again sparking a potentially perilous moment in international order.

“We are in a second Cuban Missile Crisis in many ways in terms of the danger of escalation,” says Hershberg, whose books include “Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam.” “Putin is acting so irrationally he makes Nikita Khrushchev appear like a rational actor in comparison.”

The largest land conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia’s two-plus weeks of war in Ukraine has rallied Western alliances like few events before it. In repudiating Putin’s invasion, the U.S. and its European allies have enacted crippling economic sanctions on Russia -- which Biden on Tuesday extended to Russian crude oil -- while still drawing the line on military engagement with Russia.

“If we’re talking about a capitalized Cold War, I don’t think I could call this Cold War II,” says Fredrik Logevall, professor of history and international affairs at Harvard and Pulitzer-Prize winning author most recently of “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956.”

“But,” Logevall says, “if we’re talking more generally about a cold war, if we mean a titanic struggle that involves all aspects of national power waged between two incompatible systems but short of outright military conflict — then yeah, I guess this is a cold war.”

The Cold War is innately connected to the crisis in Ukraine partly because it so much informs Putin’s world view. A former KGB agent, he once called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. The invasion of Ukraine is intended to deter Western influence and NATO infringement from Russia’s sphere of influence, and potentially to restore a Texas-sized part of the former Soviet Union.

Barely two weeks in, the Cold War has often been invoked. The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said “the threat to global security now is more complex and probably higher” than during the Cold War, partly because there aren’t the same back channels of communication. A Russian Foreign Ministry official, Alexander Darchiyev, according to an Interfax report, recently suggested that “perhaps it would be worth recalling the well-forgotten principle that worked during the Cold War — peaceful coexistence.”

Even before war began in Ukraine, Americans had a historically dim view of Russia. According to Gallup poll conducted in February, 85% of Americans viewed Russia unfavorably, easily the country’s worst rating in more than three decades — a slide accelerated by Russia’s meddling in U.S. elections, its annexation of Crimea and the nerve agent attack on Putin’s leading opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who’s currently imprisoned.

And while former president Donald Trump has maintained his esteem for Putin, anti-Russian opinion has uncommon bipartisan support. Gallup found that 88% of both Republicans and Democrats have an unfavorable view of Russia. Nothing unites like a common enemy.

Nina Khrushcheva, a Moscow-born professor of international affairs at the New School in New York and the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, maintains that the Cold War never really went away — that the West’s view of Russia remained stuck in the broad portrayals of villains Boris and Natasha in “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons. To her, Putin’s invasion was devastating because it confirmed the worst about her native country. Now, she begins her classes by apologizing.

“Putin is the global villain he deserves to be, and Russia is finished for decades to come,” says Khrushcheva, whose great-grandfather was premier of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when John F. Kennedy was president of the United States. “My country just killed itself,” she says, and the U.S. “got their enemy back.”

“They got their enemy that has always been, always deserves to be and is always at the forefront of the American mind,” says Khrushcheva. “Russia has no excuse. But for America, it’s a field day. America is back and it’s on a white horse saving a white country in the middle of Europe against the horrible Russian Bear.”

Logevall, who co-authored the book “America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity,” doesn’t expect a Cold War rerun. The world isn’t as bipolar as it was decades ago. China, which signed a pact with Russia shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, looms much larger. And the interconnectedness of the global economy -- where waves of corporations have severed ties with Russia -- makes isolated coexistence harder to tolerate.

The conflict in Ukraine seems sure to be at least a coda to the Cold War, if not a new beginning.

“Putin feels great resentment about how the Cold War ended. The West declaring victory. Russia losing power and influence. I think he resents a certain Western triumphalism,” Logevall says. “In a way, I think history is what drives him.”

___

Follow Associated Press Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JakeCoyleAP

Russia’s war idles some European mills as energy costs soar

By COLLEEN BARRY

March 13, 2022

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A fisherman mends a net in front of his fishing boat with a banner reading "stop for gasoline increase", in the Roman port of Fiumicino, Friday, March 11, 2022. Fishermen, facing huge spikes in oil prices, stayed in port, mending nets instead of casting them. Nowhere more than in Italy, the European Union’s third-largest economy, is dependence on Russian energy taking a higher toll on industry. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)


MILAN (AP) — Italian paper mills that make everything from pizza boxes to furniture packaging ground to a halt as Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent natural gas prices skyrocketing.

And it’s not just paper. Italian steel mills, likewise, turned off electric furnaces last week. And fishermen, facing huge spikes in oil prices, stayed in port, mending nets instead of casting them.

Nowhere more than in Italy, the European Union’s third-largest economy, is dependence on Russian energy taking a higher toll on industry. Some 40% of electricity is generated from natural gas that largely comes from Russia, compared with roughly one-quarter in Germany, another major importer and the continent’s largest economy.

Over the past decade, Italy’s dependence on Russian natural gas has surged from 27% to 43% — a fact lamented by Premier Mario Draghi. It will take at least two years to replace, his energy transition minister says.

Even before the war, Europe was facing a serious energy crunch that drove up costs for electricity, food, supplies and everything in between for people and businesses. Ever higher prices tied to fears that the conflict will lead to an energy cutoff are hitting the continent much harder than the U.S. because it imports so much of its oil and gas from Russia.

European leaders meeting Friday in Versailles outside Paris discussed ways of easing the pain. Draghi pushed to diversify gas sources, develop renewables and introduce a cap on natural gas prices. He said his foreign minister, who recently visited Algeria and Qatar, was working on new gas markets.

“We are talking about errors made over many years,” said Francesco Zago, CEO of the Veneto-based paper and packaging manufacturer Pro-Gest. “We get too much gas from Russia. In school, they tell us we need to diversify the sources, otherwise there is a danger.”

Natural gas prices were on the rise last year as reserves dwindled in Europe, but Zago said his company was able to stabilize prices and continue operating. That changed with the Russian invasion, when already high prices soared from 90 euros a megawatt hour to over 300 euros a megawatt hour.

“We found ourselves facing huge losses,” Zago said.

To remain profitable, he said they would have had to nearly double prices from 680 euros a ton to 1,200 euros — not doable on the marketplace.

He suspended operations at six mills that recycle paper to supply one-third of all of Italy’s packaging needs, and he is keeping a close eye on the energy market to see when production can relaunch. For now, there is still enough stock to keep open the company’s sites that make cardboard boxes and other packaging, supplying industries from food to pharmaceuticals to furniture. But that could run out soon.

Likewise, Acciaierie Venete shut three of its steel mills for a few days last week as prices spiked to 10 times above normal. The makers of high-quality steel for automotive and agricultural machinery had enough stock to work on finished product, waiting for prices to dip so they could reopen.

“Never, ever has this happened that we had to shut down ovens,” said Francesco Semino, an executive at the steel-making company based in the northeastern region of Veneto.

The urgency of Italy’s energy situation is trickling down to consumers in the form of higher heating bills, and more recently, rising prices at the pump, with gasoline topping 2 euros a liter this week, or nearly $6 a gallon.

Radio call-in shows are soliciting ideas about how to save energy, reviving memories of long-abandoned tricks like ember-fueled bedwarmers. Italy’s state broadcaster has launched a campaign with lists of how to save energy, including turning off lights, lowering thermostats and regularly defrosting refrigerators, under the motto “M’illumino di meno,” or “I light up less.”

Truckers who say they can’t afford higher gasoline prices are set to strike this coming week. Fishermen took the hit last week, deciding not to trawl the waters off Italy, with fishing boats along the entire peninsula moored in port.

At current prices, it costs 1,250 euros a day to run boats out of Fiumicino, leaving little room for profits after plying the sea for cod, sea bass, sea bream, octopus, squid and shrimp, said Pasquale Di Bartolomeo, who runs one of 22 boats out of the port near Rome.

Restaurants, he said, will make do with frozen seafood or farm-raised fish. He hopes the prices ease so he can return to work.

“The family needs to eat, there are expenses,” Di Bartolomeo said.

Italy decreased its gas consumption from 2010 to 2014, thanks to the addition of subsidized wind and solar power, but reliance on natural gas pushed back up again in recent years as it took polluting coal power plants offline.

They have been substituted mostly by natural gas as renewables stalled, partly because of Italy’s infamous bureaucracy that has kept many investors away, said Matteo Di Castelnuovo, an energy economist at Milan’s Bocconi University.

“Italy clearly underestimated the problem of increasing its gas consumption the last few years, and with that, its dependence on Russian gas,” he said.

The government has pledged to simplify red tape, and this week approved six new wind parks that will produce more than 400 megawatts of energy. Energy transition minister Roberto Cingolani has floated the idea of next-generation nuclear to a reluctant population.

“Nuclear fusion will not save us from Russian gas,″ Di Castelnuovo said, referring to a technology that is still decades away.

Italy’s dependence on Russian gas can most quickly and effectively be reduced by simple conservation methods, he said, given the time and investments it takes to transition to other energy sources.

That can include such measures as improving home insulation, using appliances that consume less energy and lowering the thermostat.

“My heat, my thermostat, is actually paying for Putin’s missiles and bombs,” Di Castelnuovo said. “It is good enough for me to lower it by 2 degrees and wear a jumper instead.”

Toxic Putin is going for bust. The west must stop him before this contagion spreads

Analysis: if we do not refuse to be blackmailed and step in to stop Russia, Ukraine will only be the start

Last week’s shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol could be a harbinger of much worse to come.

 Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Simon Tisdall

THE GUARDIAN/OBSERVER
Sun 13 Mar 2022 

Politically speaking, Vladimir Putin is a dead man walking. As dictators always do, he has fatally over-reached. Bunker-bound and bonkers, there’s no way back into the world for him. At home, too, he looks increasingly isolated.

But, militarily speaking, he’s not giving up. In Ukraine, the toxic president is going for bust. The worrying question: what will he do next?

Insofar as Putin still has a plan, it is to bomb and batter the Ukrainian people into submission, by whatever means necessary, as quickly as possible. If that requires using chemical weapons, such as chlorine gas, as in Syria, who can doubt he will do so. Last week’s Mariupol maternity hospital war crime was a harbinger of worse, perhaps far worse, to come.

Diplomats and analysts believe that, despite Ukraine’s unexpectedly effective resistance, Russia’s grip on the country is inexorably tightening. Vitali Klitschko, mayor of Kyiv, says the capital only has sufficient supplies for one or two weeks if attacked. Half the population has fled. If the allied powers sincerely want Ukraine to survive, time is running out.

The west must now maximise pressure on Putin – military as well as economic – as a matter of utmost urgency. Ukraine’s citizens and soldiers cannot be expected to hold out for very much longer without increased, all-round support. Ukraine’s future as an independent democratic state may be decided in the coming fortnight. So, too, may be the future of Putinism in Russia itself.

President Putin is going for bust in Ukraine, trying to bomb the country into submission. 

Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/TASS

The oppressive, corrupt regime in Moscow that has blighted Russian lives for over 20 years, and spread fear and discord around the world, has never been weaker. This is a huge moment. Europe’s future security architecture could indeed be remodelled, as Russia has often urged, but on a post-Putin basis of cooperative, lawful, democratic co-existence, not a balance of terror.

This tantalising prospect is offset by the risk of all-out conflict with a nuclear-armed tyrant who, hemmed in by his own miscalculations, may lash out wildly. Nato’s ill-judged refusal to provide any form of no-fly zone, as requested by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, or for example to create a UN-mandated safe zone on the ground in western Ukraine, stems from such fears.

So what will Putin do? Three main scenarios are in view: a compromise peace deal; a stalemate; or a wider, escalating war. After two weeks of fighting, there is much talk of talks but no actual peace process. Dashing hopes it might intervene, China has kept its distance. Last week’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Turkey was a deliberate stalling exercise by Moscow. The two sides remain miles apart.

Ukraine’s leaders will not agree to anything permanent while cities are besieged, vast swaths of their country are occupied, and heinous war crimes proliferate – and why should they? Nor is it likely that Putin will abandon his insistence that Ukraine remain separate from Nato and the EU, or give up his claims to Crimea and recently captured territory along the southern seaboard.

Under a second scenario, the war drags on, degenerating into a Donbas-like stalemate or frozen conflict. This would suit no one. It would be disastrous for Ukraine’s citizens, both the displaced and those who remain; for Ukraine’s integrity as a nation state; for bogged-down, demoralised Russian forces facing determined insurgents; and for international relations and stability, endlessly polarised and poisoned by Ukraine-related tensions.

Knowing this, and spurning peace, Putin is actively pursuing the third scenario: “doubling down” on military force, as CIA director William Burns put it last week, encircling cities, using hungry, freezing civilians as hostages, seizing more territory, and threatening a wider war, potentially involving chemical or even battlefield nuclear weapons.

Here is the crux of the west’s dilemma. The US and UK are pumping increasingly advanced weaponry into Ukraine on a vast scale. British anti-tank missiles, for example, are reportedly proving grimly lethal. Now Starstreak anti-aircraft weapons are also being deployed, ostensibly for “defensive”, not “offensive”, purposes.

Such sophistry aside, there can be no doubting where this massive Berlin airlift-type build-up is leading. Nato’s rejection of a no-fly zone and the US veto on supplying Polish MiG fighters to Ukraine’s air force cannot disguise the reality that the allies, de facto, are already party to this conflict or, in legal parlance, are “co-combatants”.


Russian bombing of maternity hospital ‘genocide’, says Zelenskiy

Putin characterises sanctions as western economic warfare. How much longer before he declares that Russia is also under western military attack, and escalates accordingly? That’s the firm expectation in the Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – frontline former Soviet republics that Putin regards, like Ukraine, as not “real” countries. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is another looming flashpoint.

Valdis Dombrovskis, a former Latvian prime minister, warned last week the Baltic states may be next in the firing line. “If we do not support Ukraine, it’s not going to stop in Ukraine… Unfortunately, it is likely this aggression will continue in other countries,” he said.

Discussing Putin’s veiled nuclear threat, Dombrovskis, an EU commission vice-president, said the west must not be intimidated.

“The question is, to what extent we are giving in to this blackmail because it can be used all the time against everything. Putin will continue his aggressive wars, he will always use this blackmail.”

Plainly, there is no risk-free path through this horror. But any outcome that destroys a European democracy, or rewards Russian aggression, is unsustainable in the long term. That will only guarantee more grief down the road. Logically, practically, morally, the west really has no choice.

Its leaders must now employ all possible levers – including the threat of direct military action – to stop Russia in its tracks in Ukraine, stop the mass murder of civilians, and stop the spread of the deadly Putin contagion.

ETHIC CLEANSING

'Cultural cleansing': Ukraine's heritage is in danger, UNESCO warns

By Daniel Bellamy with AP • Updated: 12/03/2022 - 14:36

Snow covers the city centre with a Christmas tree, St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, December 2021 - Copyright AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

The UN's cultural agency has warned that major historical sites in Ukraine are in danger of being damaged and even destroyed as Russia continues its offensive.

"City centres are seriously damaged, some of which have sites and monuments that date back to the 11th century," Lazare Eloundou, UNESCO's World Heritage Director said, speaking from Paris.

"Today, museums are damaged, some with collections inside. There are also cultural venues that are damaged. It is a whole cultural life that risks disappearing."

The deliberate destruction of a country's or culture's heritage is a war crime.

UNESCO says the targeting of cultural sites has evolved into a tactic of war to damage and attempt to destroy societies over a prolonged period.

And in an address to the UN Security Council in 2015, UNESCO's former Director-General Irina Bokova described it as "cultural cleansing".

UNESCO urges Russia to refrain from targeting cultural sites

Ukraine and Russia have close cultural and religious ties, but since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, a partial schism has developed between the Orthodox Churches of both countries.

In 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was granted independence by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul.

It marked a historic split from Russia, which Ukrainian leaders saw then and still see today as vital to the country's security.

The decree, known as Tomos, has pressured Ukrainian clerics to choose between the Russian-supported Ukrainian churches and the new church.

The Ukrainian church had been under Moscow's patriarchate for centuries, but since Ukraine became independent in 1991, tensions accumulated and then intensified in 2014 with the Russian annexation of Crimea.

Putin's objection not NATO but 'a more European Ukraine' — ex-EU chief Barroso

With these political and religious tensions in mind, UNESCO's World Heritage Director Lazare Eloundou is particularly worried as fighting nears Kyiv.

"A site which for us is of great concern in the city of Kyiv, which is a World Heritage Site. This site has two very important ensembles: the St. Sophia Cathedral and also the Lavra monastic complex. These two places are testimony to the birth of the Russian Orthodox Church."

Eloundou has urged all UNESCO member states -- including Russia -- not to target any cultural sites.

"It is important that, when hostilities are launched, countries mark with this sign, this emblem, their most important historical sites so that they are well identified, clearly visible and are not targeted. This is what we have recommended to the Ukrainian authorities to do for their sites."



Meanwhile, Russian cultural officials have asked for major works of art that are currently on loan to galleries in Milan to be returned.

They include Renaissance artist Titian's "Young Woman with the Feathered Hat," which belongs to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Italy's Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said earlier this week that "it seems evident that when the owner asks for their works to be returned, they must be returned."

The ministry said it is currently surveying what Italian works of art are on loan to Russian museums.