Published: 22 March ,2024: 01:06 AM GSTUpdated: 22 March ,2024: 01:43 AM GST
EU leaders grappled at a summit meeting Thursday with how to get more weapons to Ukraine’s outgunned forces while also re-arming their own countries in the face of Russia’s emboldened President Vladimir Putin.
More than two years into Moscow’s war against its neighbor, Kyiv’s troops are struggling to hold back the Russian army as Western deliveries of ammunition have faltered.Putin has tightened his iron grip over his country by winning a new six-year term at elections after opposition was crushed.
More than two years into Moscow’s war against its neighbor, Kyiv’s troops are struggling to hold back the Russian army as Western deliveries of ammunition have faltered.Putin has tightened his iron grip over his country by winning a new six-year term at elections after opposition was crushed.
“Europe can provide more -- and it is crucial to prove it now,” he said, also calling for additional air-defense systems in the wake of a large-scale strike on Kyiv.
As a $60-billion package remains stalled in Washington, the EU leaders debated a plan to use profits from 200 billion euros in frozen Russian central bank assets on weapons for Ukraine.
'. . .The IMF said its loan program continued to provide a strong anchor for Ukraine's economic program, which has remained on track despite extremely challenging circumstances due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its third year.
While Ukraine's economy was more resilient than expected in 2023, headwinds were re-emerging in 2024, with growth expected to soften to 3-4% due to uncertainty about the war and as supply constraints become more binding, the IMF said.
- “Looking ahead, the recovery is expected to slow somewhat, given the exceedingly high risks to the outlook stemming mainly from the exceptionally high war-related uncertainty as well as potential delays in external financing," IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement.
- "The authorities should be vigilant against these risks.
- It is also critical that the external financing committed to Ukraine by all donors is disbursed in a timely and predictable manner to safeguard Ukraine’s hard-won macroeconomic stability."
- One critical factor for Ukraine's future remains the return of an estimated 6.5 million people - mainly women and children - who fled the country and remain outside its borders because of the war.
- Nadeem said the IMF continued to expect a net loss of about 2 million people, but said there was a risk that number could grow the longer the war lasts.
- "This is indeed a very challenging situation and does present headwinds to society," she said, noting that Ukraine had an aging society even before the war.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov's comments, first to the Russian publication Arguments and Facts and then to reporters on a conference call on Friday, may sound unremarkable to Ukrainian and Western ears.
But inside Russia, where people have been told for the past two years to refer to the war in Ukraine as a "special military operation" - a phrase designed to underline the initially limited nature of the conflict - they represent a departure and look like part of a shift to prepare people mentally for a conflict which may require more sacrifices from them.
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He made his comments five days after President Vladimir Putin was re-elected for six more years and after what Kyiv said was Russia's largest air strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
- They appear to signal that Russia is digging in for an even longer standoff over Ukraine with the United States and its allies.
- They also give the Russian authorities more leeway with their own people to announce decisions more commonly associated with a war such as a further mobilization. . .
Peskov in subsequent remarks to reporters clarified that Russia's actions in Ukraine were still legally qualified at home as "a special military operation" rather than as a war.
"But de facto it has become a war for us as the collective West more and more directly increases its level of involvement in the conflict," he said.
Russian officials from Putin down have gradually started to use the word "war" more often, having long avoided it and discouraged others from using it - on pain of prosecution - as they initially sought to cast the decision to go into Ukraine as some kind of a swift and limited military intervention.
Having suffered serious battlefield losses and been pushed back in 2022 and 2023 before regaining the initiative, Russian officials have conceded that fighting is now set to go on for longer than initially thought, however, and that ambitious goals remain unfulfilled.
Mark Galeotti, author of several books on Putin and Russia, said Peskov's comments sent a powerful signal to the Russian public: "That ‘internal mobilisation’ is actually the key thing: the Kremlin’s demand that every Russian get into a wartime mindset, and realise there is now no middle ground between being a patriot and a traitor (as Putin defines these)" Galeotti wrote on the X social media network.
Peskov said that Russia must fully "liberate" its "new regions" to ensure people's safety there, a reference to the four Ukrainian regions which Russia claimed to have annexed in 2022 but does not fully control. Russia, he added, could not allow a state to exist on its borders that had shown itself ready to use any method to seize control of Crimea.
Kyiv says Russia's annexation of the four regions is an illegal land grab and that it will not rest until every Russian soldier is ejected from its soil.
It says it is also determined to return the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia took from it in 2014. Moscow, which has invested heavily in Crimea, the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, says the peninsula is part of Russia and that its status has been settled once and for all.
IMF board okays $880 million loan payment for Ukraine, sees war winding down in ‘24
- Ukraine mission chief Gavin Gray told reporters the fund still expected the war in Ukraine to wind down by the end of 2024
The global lender said the risks facing Ukraine remained exceptionally high, particularly the uncertainties surrounding the war with Russia and prospects for external financing, although Ukraine mission chief Gavin Gray told reporters the fund still expected the war in Ukraine to wind down by the end of 2024.
Gray said Ukraine’s overall performance on the IMF program had remained strong over its first year, and it had met all but one of the quantitative performance criteria.
- The miss involved tax revenues, but involved a very minor amount.
Ukraine should receive the funds in coming days, Gray said.
- That should be welcome news as the US Congress continues to debate approval for a $61 billion supplemental aid package for Ukraine.
- Gray said the IMF would have to study the impact on Ukraine’s debt levels if US lawmakers decided to convert some of that funding to a loan instead of a grant.
Sanaa Nadeem, the IMF’s deputy mission chief for Ukraine, said the IMF had approved a new debt sustainability analysis for Ukraine that had not materially changed the macroeconomic analysis, but did exclude some $3 billion in debt for Russian Eurobonds that had been contested by the Ukrainian authorities.
She told reporters that credible progress was being made on restructuring Ukraine’s commercial debt and the IMF expected ongoing technical discussions on that issue to pick up in coming weeks.
REFERENCE:
![IMF and Ukrainian Authorities Reach Staff Level Agreement on a US$15.6 Billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) Arrangement [EN/UK] - Ukraine | ReliefWeb](https://reliefweb.int/sites/default/files/styles/small/public/previews/7b/a2/7ba2f6d0-3d58-4958-8280-e2330573763b.png?2405783-1-0)
The demise of the name-and-shame campaign, if it happens, would be indicative of how Kyiv may have to soften its stance as it becomes harder to maintain global support for its war effort more than two years into the full-scale invasion.
“It’s China, but not only China,” said one person with direct knowledge of the matter, also alluding to pressure from France to remove retailer Auchan and Leroy Merlin, a home improvement and gardening retailer, from the list.
- Beijing, a major consumer of Ukrainian grain, demanded in February that Kyiv remove 14 Chinese companies from the list to “eliminate negative impacts.”
- A second source said that Austria, China, France and Hungary had all exerted pressure on Kyiv over the list, adding that it could be taken down from the internet within days.
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