Day: August 5, 2022

KYIV— Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned African countries against supporting Russia’s aggression on his country, saying the continent had gained little from siding with Moscow.

Zelensky told African journalists on Thursday that it was in Africa’s interest to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine because it would amount to supporting “the truth.”

“They are not investing in any countries. That means Russia does not believe in you. All they are doing is making political investments. They have just one percent of investments in Africa, yet they are 30 times our size,” Zelensky told the online press conference, his first with the continent.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year, citing the presence of ‘Nazists’. The military operation was condemned globally, including an unprecedented reprimand from the UN General Assembly in March.

Africa has, however, mostly remained aloof from the conflict. Earlier, the continent had condemned the invasion and called for dialogue. But Moussa Faki Mahamat, the African Union Commission chairperson, refused to endorse sanctions on Russia, arguing they could hurt many more people not involved in the war. In fact, during the UN vote, several African countries, such as Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, abstained or even stayed away.

Kenya, a member of the UN Security Council until December, had initially condemned Russia’s attacks but declined a request by the Ukrainian ambassador to Kenya, Andrii Pravednyk, to address its Parliament. The AU also refused a similar request by Zelensky to address the continental bloc on the issue. Some African countries such as Mali, Uganda, and the Central African Republic have close defence ties with Moscow. They, alongside South Africa, a member of the five major emerging economics bloc BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), abstained from the vote.

On Thursday, Zelensky said Africa should not see the war as distant but look at Ukraine as a victim of an invasion violating international law, which African countries have signed.

He said he would send his Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba to Africa in September.

“We would like the African countries not just to support Ukraine…but they should support the truth. There is no value we can attach to freedom, and Russia cannot be using the oil to buy the freedom of others,” he said.

Source: Nam News Network

KINSHASA— The United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Felix Tshisekedi, have held talks on calls by Congolese that UN troops should exit eastern Congo.

According to Congolese officials, Tshisekedi and Guterres held a telephone conversation following recent clashes between UN troops and Congolese civilians, who have mounted protests demanding the exit of UN troops from DRC.

“The Head of State had a telephone conversation this afternoon (Wednesday) with Guterres, the secretary general of the UN. The two men discussed the situation of blue helmets in eastern DRC, particularly the recent altercations with the population,” DRC Government officials said in a statement.

“Taking advantage of this exchange, the secretary general of UN expressed his condolences to the President of the Republic, to the bereaved families and the entire Congolese population,” officials added in their statement.

Tshisekedi and Guterres telephone talks have come against the backdrop of recent altercations between UN blue helmets under the United Nation Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) and the population, which worsened last week with the killing of four UN soldiers and over 30 civilians in eastern Congo.

“It all started with the shooting that occurred on July 31 at the Kasindi border post, where the blue helmets, returning from leave, opened fire, causing the death of civilians and serious injuries,” Congolese officials said.

The altercations have also sparked off demonstrations in the city of Beni, with people demanding for the immediate exit of MONUSCO.

Guterres said he was “outraged by the serious incident that occurred” in Kasindi border point between Uganda and DRC.

On August 1, Tshisekedi chaired a security meeting, which the DRC spokesperson and Minister for Information, Patrick Muyaya, said re-assessed the MONUSCO withdrawal plan as agreed under the UN Security Council resolution 2556.

The UN resolution gave MONUSCO up to December this year to drawdown.

According to Patrick Muyaya, the official death toll arising from the anti-MONUSCO demonstrations following the Kasindi border point shooting has risen to 36, while 170 people have been rushed to hospital with injuries.

“In its report, the special commission led by the deputy Prime Minister gave a human toll of 36 dead distributed as follows: 13 in Goma, 13 in Butembo, including four blue helmets (UN troops), four in Uvira, three in Kanyabayonga and three in Kasindi,” Muyaya said.

Muyaya added that during the telephone conversation with the UN secretary general, the DRC President expressed “his total disapproval of the behavior of the blue helmets at the root of these incidents and the need to ensure that the culprits are severely punished.”

Tshisekedi also told Guterres that the withdrawal of the M23 rebels from all localities in eastern Congo should be enforced in accordance with the Nairobi communique’ by the East African Community Heads of State, the Luanda peace talks between DRC and Rwanda roadmap and the June 1, 2022 declaration of the UN Security Council.

On June 20 this year, EAC leaders approved the deployment of joint troops to pacify eastern Congo during the 3rd Conclave meeting on the DRC crisis in Nairobi.

Under the Nairobi Conclave, EAC leaders agreed to create a joint force to crackdown armed rebel groups operating in eastern Congo that refuse to surrender, unconditionally disarm and participate in dialogue processes.

In 2021, Uganda deployed troops in eastern Congo, on the invitation of DRC, to fight Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in eastern Congo.

Eastern Congo is a haven to over 100-armed rebel groups, including the ADF, Red Tabara, Mayi-Mayi, M23, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), CODECO, FOREBU, among others.

Source: Nam News Network

A senior U.S. official said Friday that sub-Saharan Africa is the region hardest hit by disruptions to the global food supply due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Food prices worldwide are 23% higher than a year ago, but they hit the hardest in sub-Saharan Africa where food consumes 40% of household budgets,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told an audience at the University of Ghana in Accra. “Regardless of how you feel about Russia, we all have a powerful common interest in mitigating the impact of the war on Ukraine on food security.”

Thomas-Greenfield, who is the U.S. envoy to the United Nations and a member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, is on a four-day tour in Africa this week, making stops in Uganda, Ghana, and Cabo Verde focused on the impact of food insecurity on the continent.

She emphasized that before Russia invaded Ukraine, which is a major global grain and vegetable oil producer, over 190 million people were food insecure worldwide, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Well, since Russia’s unprovoked war, full-scale invasion into Ukraine, we estimate that number could rise to 230 million,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “That would mean that more than 40 million people will have become food insecure since President (Vladimir) Putin chose to invade his neighbor and steal their land. That’s more people than the entire population of Ghana.”

While in Accra, she announced more than $127 million in new humanitarian assistance for Africa, focused on refugees and displaced persons.

Stepped-up diplomacy

Thomas-Greenfield is not the only U.S. official visiting the region. USAID Administrator Samantha Power was in the Horn of Africa recently, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is headed to South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo starting Sunday.

Russia has intensified its own efforts to strengthen ties with the continent since launching its war on Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made an official trip to four African countries earlier this month.

Many African governments feel caught between superpowers in the conflict and have tried to remain neutral. Soon after Moscow’s February 24 invasion, the U.N. General Assembly demanded Russia end its military operations. Only one African state, Eritrea, voted against the resolution, while nearly half of the 54 others either abstained or did not vote.

“I’ve also heard from some, that Africans don’t really want to be pressured to pick a side or take a certain position,” the U.S. ambassador acknowledged. “I understand that. None of us want to repeat the Cold War. And Africans have the right to decide their foreign policy positions, free of pressure and manipulation, free of threats.”

She tried to dispel some Russian misinformation, particularly the Kremlin’s insistence that its food and fertilizer exports are being sanctioned by the United States and other western countries.

“America’s sanctions do not, let me repeat, do not apply to food and fertilizer exports, period,” she said.

Thomas-Greenfield said Moscow has disrupted its own exports, imposing quotas on nitrogen and complex fertilizers and imposing duties on its grain exports. She also laid out how Russian troops have set about sabotaging and destroying Ukraine’s agricultural sector by mining farmland, destroying equipment, and bombing grain silos.

“The fact is, this hurts Africa,” she said. “Russia and Ukraine provide over 40% of Africa’s wheat supplies.”

A recent deal among Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations will see Ukraine’s backlogged grain exports begin to leave through the Black Sea, while Moscow will get help in lessening the concerns global insurers and shippers have about dealing with Russian exports when they face sanctions in banking and other sectors. Wheat prices have already begun to ease in the two weeks since the deal was signed in Istanbul.

Thomas-Greenfield urged Ghana and other African nations to improve their agriculture sectors so they can become more insulated from global shocks with more self-sufficiency, while also exploring the possibility of feeding global markets. Part of the aid package she announced includes $2.5 million for Ghana to improve its production and import of fertilizer for its farmers.

“Now is the time, now is the time to feed the future, to transform Ghana and other African nations into breadbaskets of your own,” she urged. “The world is hungry, and your potential is unlimited. And there is not a moment to lose.”

Source: Voice of America

Ukrainian grain starts its voyage to world markets

Following the signing on July 22 of the package deal to get millions of tons of Ukrainian grain out to world markets and ease the growing food crisis, the first commercial vessels sailed from the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk this week. While another vessel was enroute Friday into Chornomorsk to pick up cargo for export.

More Ships Carrying Corn Depart from Ukrainian Ports

UN troops open fire on border post in DRC

After anti-U.N. protests turned deadly last week in the eastern Congo, the U.N. stabilization mission MONUSCO faced new troubles Sunday after Tanzanian peacekeepers returning from leave opened fire on a Ugandan border post, killing at least two people and injuring 15 others. The mission’s spokesman was also told to leave the country by the government.

Two Dead After UN Troops Open Fire at DRC Uganda Border Post

IAEA: Iran’s nuclear program moving ahead very fast

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear program is “growing in ambition and capacity” and his agency needs full access to verify all aspects of it. Separately, Thursday in Vienna, negotiators from Iran, the United States and the European Union resumed indirect talks to try to bring Washington and Tehran back into the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA, which eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.

IAEA Chief: Iran’s Nuclear Program Growing

In brief

— The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference got underway Monday at U.N. headquarters. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned there are crises with nuclear undertones from the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said there are nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled around the world. The conference will run through August 26 and look at ways to strengthen the NPT, which entered into force in 1970. Guterres landed Friday in Japan, where he will participate in the August 6 annual commemoration at Hiroshima, where the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945.

— Two weeks after the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, the United States followed suit Thursday, declaring a domestic public health emergency. More than 6,600 cases have been verified in the United States. India reported its first confirmed death from the virus Tuesday, while Spain reported its second death. WHO is urging people who may have been exposed to or at risk of monkeypox to get vaccinated as a preventive measure. WHO has registered more than 18,000 cases since early May in at least 75 countries. The monkeypox virus is spread from person to person through close bodily contact. It can cause a range of symptoms, including painful sores. Those at higher risk for the disease or complications include men who have sex with men, women who are pregnant, children and people who are immunocompromised.

— U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is on a four-day mission in Africa this week, making stops in Uganda, Ghana, and Cabo Verde focused on the impact of food insecurity on the continent. Russia and Ukraine provide over 40% of Africa’s wheat supplies and the war has impacted the continent, where drought, conflict and COVID-19 have already pushed millions to crisis levels of hunger. Thomas-Greenfield has announced nearly $150 million in new development assistance during her trip.

— WHO said life expectancy in Africa rose by nearly 10 years between 2000 and 2019, from 46 years to 56 years, but that is still well below the global average of 64 years. WHO Assistant Regional Director for Africa Lindiwe Makubalo warned the life expectancy gains could easily be lost unless countries strengthen and make greater investments in the development of health care systems.

Good news

The United Nations said Tuesday that the parties to the Yemen war have agreed to extend a truce in place for the past four months for an additional two months, a move humanitarians welcomed. The truce between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels has brought some relief to the population, 19 million of whom the U.N. says are going hungry and 160,000 who are “on the brink of famine.”

Yemen Truce Renewed Until October

Quote of note

“Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”

— U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the opening of the 10th Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference Monday at U.N. headquarters.

What we are watching next week

The secretary-general is in Hiroshima, Japan, to draw attention to the need to eliminate stockpiles of nuclear weapons. He will participate in Saturday’s Peace Memorial Ceremony and meet a group of surviving victims of the atomic bombs, known as the hibakusha, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His travels will continue until August 12, with stops in Mongolia and South Korea.

Source: Voice of America

Three more ships carrying thousands of tons of corn left Ukrainian ports Friday, part of a grain deal between Kyiv and Moscow, as the two countries accused each other of damaging a major Ukrainian nuclear power plant.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom said Russian shelling had hit the Zaporizhzhia power station, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

“Three strikes were recorded on the site of the plant, near one of the power blocks where the nuclear reactor is located,” Energoatom said in a statement.

It said there were no signs that the damage had caused a radioactive leak.

Three strikes

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces were responsible for damaging the plant.

“Ukrainian armed units carried out three artillery strikes on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the city of Enerhodar,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Fortunately, the Ukrainian shells did not hit the oil and fuel facility and the oxygen plant nearby, thus avoiding a larger fire and a possible radiation accident,” it said.

Russian troops have occupied the plant in southern Ukraine since March.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia on Monday of using the plant as a shield for its forces.

An official with the Russian-backed administration in Enerhodar said earlier this week that Ukrainian forces had repeatedly attacked the plant, according to Reuters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily video address on Friday that Russia was committing acts of “nuclear terrorism.”

“Russia must take responsibility for the very fact of creating a threat to a nuclear plant,” he said.

Corn shipments

Three more ships carrying thousands of metric tons of corn left Ukrainian ports Friday in a sign that a deal to allow exports of Ukrainian grain, held up since Russia’s invasion of its neighbor in February, is starting to work.

The ships departed for Ireland, the United Kingdom and Turkey. Another ship, the Razoni, left Ukraine on Monday for Lebanon, carrying the first grain shipment through the Black Sea since the start of the war.

In New York on Friday, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said another ship was headed toward the Ukrainian port of Chornomorsk to pick up a grain shipment.

The U.N. and Turkey recently brokered a deal, the Black Sea Grain Initiative, aimed at enabling Ukraine to export about 22 million metric tons of grain currently stuck in silos and port storage facilities. The deal is meant to ease a global food crisis marked by soaring prices and food shortages in some regions.

Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of the wheat, corn, barley and sunflower oil that millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia rely on for survival.

In another hopeful sign, Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agriculture, said the country could start exporting wheat from this year’s harvest through its seaports as early as next month. According to Reuters, Vysotsky said Ukraine hoped in several months to increase shipments of grain through the route from 1 million metric tons expected this month to between 3 million and 3.5 million metric tons per month.

The initiative will run for a 120 day-period that ends in late November.

A backlog of nearly 30 ships that have been stranded in Ukraine’s southern ports because of the war has entered its sixth month. The Joint Coordination Center, or JCC, a body set up under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, says the ships need to move out so other ships can enter the ports and collect food for transport to world markets.

The crews and cargo of the vessels that set sail Friday will undergo checks at the JCC inspection area in Turkey’s territorial waters before moving on toward their destinations.

The JCC says that based on its experience with the first ship that sailed Monday, it is now testing moving multiple ships in the safe corridor, both outbound and inbound.

Erdogan in Russia

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Russia on Friday for talks with President Vladimir Putin that included the grain deal, prospects for talks on ending hostilities in Ukraine, and the situation in Syria.

In a statement issued at the conclusion of the talks in Sochi, which lasted four hours, Putin and Erdogan emphasized “the necessity of a complete fulfillment” of the grain deal.

They also said that “sincere, frank and trusting ties between Russia and Turkey” are important to global stability.

In other developments Friday, the Biden administration prepared its next security assistance package for Ukraine. Reuters reported that the package was expected to be worth $1 billion, one of the largest U.S. military aid packages to Ukraine to date.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy blasted human rights group Amnesty International for a report that said Ukrainian forces had put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas.

The report “unfortunately tries to amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim,” Zelenskyy said. “There cannot be, even hypothetically, any condition under which any Russian attack on Ukraine becomes justified. Aggression against our state is unprovoked, invasive and openly terroristic.”

The head of Amnesty International’s Ukrainian office, Oksana Pokalchuk, also took issue with the report. In posts on Facebook on Thursday, she said the Ukrainian office “was not involved in the preparation or writing” of the report and tried to prevent the material from being published.

Pokalchuk on Friday announced her resignation from Amnesty International in a Facebook post.

Amnesty International said its researchers investigated Russian strikes in Ukraine between April and July in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions. The organization said its “researchers found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in the regions.”

Source: Voice of America