Saturday, May 14, 2022

Palestinian wounded in April clashes with Israel police dies

AFP , Saturday 14 May 2022

A Palestinian man died on Saturday of wounds suffered last month during clashes with Israeli police at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, an Israeli hospital said.

Israeli occupation forces
File Photo: Israeli occupation forces carry a Palestinian protester during clashes at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem s Old City, on April 22, 2022. AP

 

Walid al-Sharif, 23, was taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital with a "head injury" on April 22 and he was "pronounced dead this morning", the hospital said in a statement.

His family confirmed his death in an audio message shared with journalists.

Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem is Islam's third-holiest site which is also the holiest site for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount.

Palestinians have been angered by an uptick in Jewish visits to the compound, whereby longstanding convention that Jews may go but are not allowed to pray.

Palestinian news agency Wafa, quoting a family member, said Sharif had been shot in the head with "a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by Israeli occupation forces".

A spokesman for Hadassah hospital told AFP there had been no signs that Sharif had been hit by gunfire.

Israeli occupation police said his injury was caused when he fell and hit his head while throwing stones at security forces.

Clashes between Israeli occupation police and Palestinians at Al-Aqsa in April left nearly 300 people wounded, most of them Palestinians, and killed one Palestinian.

The violence, including in the occupied West Bank, followed a wave of attacks in Israel and raids by the Israeli occupation military.

Anti-Israeli attacks have killed at least 19 people since March 22, including an Arab-Israeli police officer and two Ukrainians.

A total of 32 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs have died during the same period, according to an AFP tally, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli occupation forces in West Bank operations.

Executive pay: replacing greed with good

Greed is not good, say investors pushing back as company bosses pocket big cheques. On Friday Norway’s sovereign wealth fund’s boss Nicolai Tangen amplified the chorus of dissent with a rallying cry to shareholders to vote down excessive pay and rein in corporate greed.

The $1.2tn oil fund has already voted against pay packages at Apple, IBM and Intel. Apple investors did vote through Tim Cook’s $99mn compensation package; it was approved by almost two-thirds. But then Apple — until this week the world’s most valuable company — has rewarded those who hold its shares as well as those who run it. The same cannot be said for Intel’s Pat Gelsinger, who pocketed $178mn while its shares have flatlined for years.

Some will moan that Tangen, once a highly paid hedge fund manager, has gall complaining about pay. Yet his argument is not about altruism. Markets reward the deserving and reduce the spoils for lesser performers.

The growth of stakeholder capitalism complicates today’s calculations. Bosses presiding over languishing performance may well talk up other metrics. As valuations compress, shareholders should be wary of alternative proposals for benchmarking pay.

True, linking pay to shareholder returns does not always ensure executives are aligned with shareholders. But it remains the least bad. Rising stakeholder capitalism has spawned a growing trend to link remuneration to environmental, social and governance metrics. In the UK almost two-thirds of FTSE 100 companies had some kind of ESG link to pay at the end of last year, a PwC study found, up from less than half the year before. US statistics reflect a similar trend.

The logic is sound: climate change and societal issues require attention. The problem lies in accurately measuring performance. There are no uniform standards — let alone sufficient external scrutiny. Most ESG pay incentives at US companies are impossible to assess and outcomes are rarely even disclosed, a recent study from Harvard Law School concluded.

Greed under the guise of good might be the next big pay scandal in waiting.

The LME’s Operation Fightback

In some financial circles, the London Metal Exchange’s reputation is on a par with that of estate agents, car salesmen and journalists.

That’s down to a fateful day in March when the price of nickel doubled in a few days to $100,000 a tonne in an epic short squeeze on Chinese metals tycoon Xiang Guangda, before the LME halted trading.

But it wasn’t the market closure that infuriated a lot of people. Instead it was the cancellation of nearly $4bn worth of trades, when the exchange realised the price would put many of its members in severe financial difficulty. Some missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime trade.

Cue outrage.

Now the exchange is going back to those users it either saved or mightily annoyed with a clean-up plan that once again may please some users but likely annoy another set of members. Here is the full proposal.

Some background: Back in March, one of the reasons the LME didn’t react earlier to the nickel squeeze was that it didn’t know just how much business was being done over-the-counter via swaps (with the price on the LME being used as a reference price).

When the banks who were the counterparties to the swaps ‘fessed up, it emerged the LME saw just one-fifth of the market.

The LME’s chief executive Matthew Chamberlain was due to quit for a crypto start-up, but has now done a U-turn and stayed as CEO (probably wisely given the absolute carnage in crypto lately), and feels he has a mandate for change.

The LME’s first move will try to ram through a plan for more regular reporting of over-the-counter positions in all physically-delivered metals, like aluminium, cobalt, copper, lead and yes, nickel.

As part of a big revamp last year, the LME had tried to introduce daily reporting to reduce “the potential for market squeezes on LME and related OTC markets.” The market rejected the idea because it was all too complex and costly. Quite.

It appears the LME has absorbed some lessons, however. Last year it pushed for daily reporting but now will accept weekly updates. There would be no minimum position size threshold. The positions would be filed on a template provided by the LME, thus closing off one of the avenues the market has used to skirt a post-2008 push on transparency in fixed income markets.

Regulators didn’t standardise publication of information, so the data that is public is simultaneously within the letter of the law and useless.

The exchange is giving the market just two weeks to respond to its proposal, far shorter than usual.

The LME’s urgent need to ensure that it has a clear understanding of activity that could impact on the orderly functioning of the LME’s metals markets, during the current period of global uncertainty and supply chain pressures. Further, in the interests of ensuring a level playing field between respondents to the consultation, the LME shall not consider responses submitted after the deadline.

It seems that Clifford Asness, one of the most vocal, colourful and amusing critics of the LME after his firm AQR lost out on a large windfall, isn’t convinced.

But even this change will need approval from its members and users. So far there’s been little detail from the banks as to how Guangda built up such a big position, nor why they did not close him out earlier when margin calls were surely due.

Reform of the OTC commodities market may be a hard challenge but the LME isn’t letting a good crisis go to waste.


India Bans Wheat Exports in Growing Wave of Food Protectionism


 


Pratik Parija
Sat, May 14, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- India prohibited wheat exports that the world was counting on to alleviate supply constraints sparked by the war in Ukraine, saying that the food security of the nation is under threat.

Exports will still be allowed to countries that require wheat for food security needs and based on the requests of their governments, India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in a notification dated May 13. All other new shipments will be banned with immediate effect.

Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said at a media briefing on Saturday that higher local wheat prices prompted the ban, and that costs are likely to fall after the move. The policy will allow some supplies to be diverted to the needy and vulnerable people across the world, Commerce Secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam said at the same event.

The decision to halt wheat exports highlights India’s concerns about high inflation, adding to a spate of food protectionism since the war started. Governments around the world are seeking to ensure local food supplies with agriculture prices surging. Indonesia has halted palm oil exports, while Serbia and Kazakhstan imposed quotas on grain shipments.

Curbing exports would be a hit to India’s ambition to cash in on the global wheat rally after the war upended trade flows out of the Black Sea breadbasket region. Importing nations have looked to India for supplies, with top buyer Egypt recently approving the South Asian nation as an origin for wheat imports.

German Agriculture Minister Cem Oezdemir said he and his Group of Seven counterparts had discussed “with concern” on Saturday both Indonesia’s decision to limit exports of palm oil and India’s move to halt wheat exports.

“If we all started imposing these export limits, or even closed down markets, that just makes the crisis worse,” Oezdemir said at a news conference in Stuttgart. “It also hurts India itself and the farmers there because of course it means a roller-coaster ride for prices.”

“We now have an environment with another supplier removed from contention in global trade flows,” said Andrew Whitelaw, a grains analyst at Melbourne-based Thomas Elder Markets, adding that he’s been skeptical about the high volumes expected from India.

“The world is starting to get very short of wheat,” Whitelaw said. At present, the US winter wheat is in poor condition, France’s supplies are drying out and Ukraine’s exports are stymied.

Bloomberg News reported earlier this month that a record-shattering heat wave has damaged wheat yields across the South Asian nation, prompting the government to consider export restrictions. The food ministry had said it didn’t see a need to control exports, even as the government cut estimates for India’s wheat production.

Shipments with irrevocable letters of credit that have already been issued will still be allowed, according to the latest notification. Traders have contracted to export 4.5 million tons so far in 2022-23, the food ministry said. After Egypt, Turkey has also given approval to import wheat from India, it said.

After the war hampered logistics in the Black Sea region, which accounts for about a quarter of all wheat trade, India has tried to fill the vacuum. The country targeted to export a record 10 million tons in 2022-23.

But its domestic challenges have come into sharper focus in recent weeks. Hundreds of acres of wheat crops were damaged during India’s hottest March on record, causing yields to potentially slump by as much as 50% in some pockets of the country, according to a Bloomberg survey.

That’s raised concerns for the domestic market, with millions depending on farming as their main livelihood and food source. The government said wheat purchases for its food aid program, the world’s largest, will be less than half of last year’s level. The ban on exports will likely hurt farmers and traders who have stockpiled the grain in anticipation of higher prices.

Controlling wheat exports by India -- given uncertainties related to the crop size, the grain procurement program, the war, high fertilizer costs and extreme weather in other growing nations -- is a logical move to ensure domestic availability and manage inflation, said Siraj Chaudhry, managing director and chief executive officer of National Commodities Management Services Ltd., a warehousing and trading company.

However, an approach with measures such as a minimum export price and quantitative restrictions would have been better as a sudden ban throws challenges to trade, affects Indian exporters’ reliability and hits the earning potential of farmers, Chaudhry said.














IT'S ILLEGAL

‘This isn’t how I imagined leaving’: Twitter boss Parag Agrawal fires top executive on paternity leave as Musk takeover looms

Twitter is shaking up its executive team and implementing a hiring freeze ahead of Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover, with departing executives venting their disappointment on the social platform.

The company confirmed on Friday that Kayvon Beykpour, head of product, and Bruce Falck, who oversaw revenue, are leaving.

Jay Sullivan, Twitter's head of consumer product, will serve as interim leader of both departments.

Beykpour said in a Twitter thread on Thursday that he had been axed by CEO Parag Agrawal during his paternity leave, adding that he was “disappointed” with the decision.

“The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision,” Beykpour said.

“Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.”

Falck—whose Twitter bio now describes him as “unemployed”—wrote a thread on Thursday dedicated to his coworkers at the company.

He added, "I'll clarify that I too was fired by" Agrawal. Falck later deleted the tweet.

Kayvon Beykpour is seen speaking to a reporter (who is off-screen) during an interview with Bloomberg. Beykpour's phone and a cup of coffee lay on the table in front of him.
Kayvon Beykpour, co-founder and chief executive officer of Periscope, speaks during a Bloomberg West Television interview in San Francisco, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Periscope is a live video streaming app for iOS and Android. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Twitter has been in a state of uncertainty since Musk announced in April that his $44 billion takeover bid for the social media platform had been accepted.

Musk is still working to secure financing for his mammoth acquisition of the company, and many investors are apprehensive about whether or not the deal will really go through.

A Twitter spokesperson told Fortune on Friday that effective this week, the company was "pausing most hiring and backfills, with the exception of business-critical roles."

“We are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient,” they added.

The reaction to Musk’s takeover hasn’t been overwhelmingly positive among Twitter’s existing workforce, with reports of angry messages between colleagues, crying in meetings, and warnings of a mass employee exodus.

But while there may not be much enthusiasm about a Musk-run Twitter among current employees, job interest in the company surged by 250% in the weeks following the announcement of his takeover.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Leading medical journal warns 'women will die' if Supreme Court overturns Roe


·Senior Writer

One of the world’s oldest and most well-known medical journals published an editorial on Thursday warning that if the U.S. Supreme Court were to confirm Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, “women will die.”

“The fact is that if the U.S. Supreme Court confirms its draft decision, women will die,” the Lancet said in its editorial. “The Justices who vote to strike down Roe will not succeed in ending abortion, they will only succeed in ending safe abortion. Alito and his supporters will have women's blood on their hands.”

The 199-year-old journal argues that Alito’s “shocking, inhuman, and irrational” draft opinion “utterly fails to consider the health of women today who seek abortion.”

The cover of the Lancet's May 14 issue. (The Lancet)
The cover of the Lancet's May 14 issue. (The Lancet)

“Unintended pregnancy and abortion are universal phenomena. Worldwide, around 120 million unintended pregnancies occur annually,” the editorial stated. “Of these, three-fifths end in abortion. And of these, some 55% are estimated to be safe — that is, completed using a medically recommended method and performed by a trained provider. This leaves 33 million women undergoing unsafe abortions, their lives put at risk because laws restrict access to safe abortion services.”

In the United States, the Lancet notes, Black women have an unintended pregnancy rate double that of non-Hispanic white women and a maternal mortality rate almost three times higher than for white women.

“These sharp racial and class disparities need urgent solutions, not more legal barriers,” the editorial said.

“If the Court denies women the right to safe abortion,” the Lancet concluded, “it will be a judicial endorsement of state control over women — a breathtaking setback for the health and rights of women, one that will have global reverberations.”

Demonstrators in support of reproductive rights march following a protest vigil outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home in Alexandria, Va., on May 9.
Demonstrators in support of reproductive rights march following a protest vigil outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home in Alexandria, Va., on Monday. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

The publication of the editorial comes amid nationwide protests by abortion rights advocates over the initial draft majority opinion, which was published by Politico earlier this month. The report suggested that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

Polls show that most Americans would object to such a move.

According to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll, just 31% of U.S. adults say Roe should be overturned. In contrast, nearly twice as many Americans see abortion as “a constitutional right that women in all states should have some access to” (56%) and say the procedure should be legal in all or most cases (55%).

Hundreds of thousands of advocates for reproductive rights are expected to take part in demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities on Saturday.

The economic cost of abortion bans


·Senior Columnist
YAHOO FINANCE

Abortion is obviously a fraught moral issue. There are also important economic consequences states ought to consider if the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade, as expected, and most Republican-led states impose severe abortion restrictions or outright bans.

“Eliminating the right of women to make a decision about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a Congressional hearing on May 10. Yellen said the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized abortion nationwide, “enabled many women to finish school. That increased their earning potential, it allowed women to plan and balance their families and careers.”

The Supreme Court is due to rule by June on a Mississippi law that would be one of the nation’s most aggressive efforts to restrict abortion, if the high court upholds it. The leak of a draft opinion indicates the court will do just that, overturning Roe and opening the door for at least half of all states to sharply curtail or ban abortion. The political implications could be explosive, but the economic consequences could be substantial, as well.

Yellen, a labor economist by training, is surely aware of numerous studies that have examined the financial impact on women unable to obtain a desired abortion, and on the broader economy. Last September, more than 150 economists filed an amicus brief in the Mississippi case before the Supreme Court, citing the negative impact on women’s educational attainment, earning potential and career success if forced to bear a child they don’t want.

“The financial effects of being denied an abortion,” they wrote, “are thus as large or larger than those of being evicted, losing health insurance, being hospitalized, or being exposed to flooding due to a hurricane.”

Nearly half of women who get an abortion in the United States are already living below the poverty level. If forced to raise a child against their wishes, they’d have to forego work or find child care if they want to work, which can easily cost $10,000 per year. The burden of raising a child explains why young mothers, not surprisingly, are less likely to finish high school or attend college, which directly correlates with lower lifetime incomes. Reluctant mothers are also more likely to receive public assistance.

The 'motherhood wage penalty'

Even for better-off women, there’s a well-known “motherhood wage penalty” that results in lower pay for women who have children, due to time off for childbearing, work-life balancing and other factors. Many women and their partners willingly accept that trade-off as they build their families. But abortion bans would force that penalty on women who don’t want to pay it.

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Generous paid family leave would reduce the motherhood penalty somewhat, but the United States is one of the few developed nations with no such program. Some companies offer paid leave, but they tend to be big firms with mostly white-collar workers, not smaller firms staffed with lower-paid workers.

Abortion opponents argue that contraception is now readily available and ought to mitigate the need for many abortions. Yet even that can be expensive for low-income women without health insurance, especially since some contraception requires a doctor’s visit and a prescription. There’s also the uncomfortable reality that some pregnancies are simply mistakes—by both the man and the woman. In that sense, abortion bans would punish women more than men for a mistake each of them makes.


People protest after the leak of a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, preparing for a majority of the court to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision later this year, in New York City, U.S., May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Yana Paskova

The nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 occurred as women were increasingly joining the workforce. There were factors other than the Roe decision fueling that trend, including more women going to college, changing attitudes about women working and the need for two household incomes. But economists think Roe helped, since more women could put off starting a family to focus on education or a career, if they chose to.

“Roe v. Wade and access to reproductive health care, including abortion, helped lead to increase labor force participation,” Yellen said on May 10.

A move that would exacerbate the labor shortage

There was no labor shortage, as there is now, when the Supreme Court debated Roe in 1973. Many employers these days are desperate for workers, and one factor in the Great Resignation is the departure of women from the labor force, most likely because they’ve had more caregiving responsibilities at home during the COVID pandemic than men. Abortion bans would add one more barrier for some women to overcome if they want to work, and that would harm the overall economy. When employers can’t get all the workers they need, they produce less, demand goes unmet, there are fewer people earning and spending money than there would be otherwise, and the economy underperforms.

If states insistent on banning abortion wanted to mitigate the economic damage, they’d establish stronger support networks for reluctant mothers, and especially low-income ones, that include free or subsidized child care and health care. They’d also find new ways to impose the economic burden as equitably as possible on the fathers of unwanted children, as well as the mothers, to address the bias already working against women in the labor force and make sure men feel the same fear about becoming an accidental parent as women do.

This is unlikely to happen in most states that ban abortion, given that economic concerns are mostly an afterthought in what is mostly a cultural, political and religious battle. We already see this in another controversial issue: Immigration. Economists broadly argue that more legal immigration generates more economic activity, which benefits everybody, because more people working means more people spending and stronger economic growth. Plus, immigrants to the United States are more entrepreneurial than native-born Americans. More legal immigration, in fact, is one glaring solution to the current labor shortage.

Yet xenophobia and the conflation of legal and illegal immigration have made this a potent political weapon for Republicans, who have been able to block efforts to increase immigration or bully Democrats into sidestepping the issue, as President Biden has largely done. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas recently held up truck commerce from Mexico to the United States as part of a stunt to look for migrants, weapons and drugs sneaking into the country. He didn’t find any, but produce rotted while shipping costs and prices rose, with businesspeople and consumers paying the price for Abbott’s political spectacle. Many Americans are ambivalent about abortion, but they generally oppose burning money.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.

Ukrainian volunteer fighters use a Russian tank nicknamed 'Bunny' against Russian forces


Lauren Frias
Fri, May 13, 2022,

This photograph taken on May 13, 2022, shows a damaged tank on a road near the Vilkhivka village east of Kharkiv, amid Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images

Ukrainian fighters used a captured tank nicknamed "Bunny" against its previous owners, the Russians.


The T-80 tank has destroyed dozens of Russian vehicles and several tanks in the past several weeks.


On May 9, Ukraine mocked Moscow's "Victory Day" with a parade featuring captured Russian tanks.


Ukrainian volunteer forces have been using a captured T-80 tank nicknamed "Bunny" against the machine's previous owners — the Russian army.

The tank was built two years ago and, up until March of this year, was controlled by Russian forces, according to CNN's Sam Kiley, who met with the volunteer fighters in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian soldier identified solely as Alex, a former software engineer who used to live in the country's second-largest city of Kharkiv, said he was on a sniper mission when he discovered the abandoned tank in a field in March — just eight days into the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kiley reported.

"This is like my personal tank. I am [the] tank commander and tank owner," Alex told Kiley in an interview, adding that the "slightly modernized" tank features an auto-loader and can "shoot more advanced, better rounds," including guided missiles.

In March, "Bunny" destroyed two dozen Russian military vehicles and several tanks, Kiley told CNN.

Ukrainian and Western officials said earlier this week that Russian forces appear to be withdrawing from the Kharkiv region, The New York Times reported. It was a significant setback for the Russian army since its retreat from Kyiv in early April. UK defense officials cited Russia's "inability to capture key Ukrainian cities" and "heavy losses" as the reason behind the withdrawal.

Earlier this week, Ukraine mocked Russia's annual "Victory Day" military celebration in Moscow by hosting their own "parade" featuring captured Russian tanks, "ruining the holiday for the occupiers," the Ukrainian Defense Ministry wrote in a tweet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an address during the Russian "Victory Day" celebration on Monday, calling Ukraine and its leaders "Nazis" but did not mention a declaration of war following warnings from Western officials.

"The West was preparing for the invasion of Russia. NATO was creating tensions at the borders. They did not want to listen to Russia. They had other plans," Putin said in his Victory Day speech. "You are fighting for the motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of World War II, so that there is no place in the world for executioners, punishers, and Nazis."


Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate says that Poroshenko and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were the reason for Russia's invasion



DENYS KARLOVSKYI - THURSDAY, 12 MAY 2022, 

The Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) has stated that one of the reasons for Russia's invasion in 2022 was the activity of former President Petro Poroshenko to obtain the Tomos [a decree issued by the Patriarch of Constantinople granting autocephaly] and establish a single local church for Ukrainians.

Source: Official statement of the Synod of the UOC-MP

Quote: "Instead of uniting the people in the pursuit of victory and the restoration of peaceful life, an internal religious front is being inflamed in this country. A group of people's deputies of Ukraine, on the basis of made-up and knowingly false accusations, have put forward draft laws banning the activities of our church to the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine.

We note with sadness that all these facts are the result of the misguided religious policy pursued during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko and the destructive ideology of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine. We are convinced that these actions of the previous government and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were one of the reasons for the military invasion of Ukraine."

Details: The church leadership stressed that all parishes are praying for the preservation of Ukrainian statehood and for peace, but as a result of negotiations, not armed confrontation. Separately, they emphasised that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is "sinful".

In its statement, the synod noted that a ban on the activities of the UOC-MP would be "national suicide", because, they said, millions of Ukrainians who are defending Ukraine belong to this church.

The head of the UOC-MP plans to convene a meeting in the near future with priests, monks, nuns and lay people to decide the future of the church in this environment. However, the synod wants to avoid schisms and violations of church canons.

It is not clear at this time how church leaders plan to organise mass meetings when there is a war going on.

Read more: UOC-MP priest Andriy Pinchuk: The "Russian World" theory is a heresy that should be condemned by an international tribunal

Background:


On 4 May, the mayor of Konotop banned UOC-MP parishes from operating in the city due to the threat to national security. On 6 May, a similar decision was made by the mayor of Brovary.

In March, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine called on all Orthodox Ukrainians, including priests, to unite in the single national church established by the Tomos signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch [Bartholomew I of Constantinople].

On 9 May, Metropolitan Onufriy, Head of the UOC-MP, appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to let Ukrainian defenders leave [Mariupol] by safe routes. Moscow's Patriarch Kirill, who holds a higher position than Onufriy, insists that Russia "has never attacked anyone at any time in history".

In early April, nearly 200 priests from UOC-MP parishes demanded that Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who blesses the mass murder and torture of Ukrainians, be brought before an ecclesiastical tribunal.



In 2019, Ukraine received the Tomos from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew that established a new single national local church - the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Fifth President Petro Poroshenko and his team, who regularly visited Istanbul to coordinate matters, played an important role in this process. Poroshenko made use of the Tomos as a theme in his tours and speeches during the presidential race in the spring of 2019.