Taipei has urged Taiwanese to leave Ukraine and the US is to evacuate its embassy in Kiev as Western intelligence officials warn that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is increasingly imminent.
US officials said the US Department of State planned to announce that virtually all US staff at the Kiev embassy would be required to leave ahead of a feared Russian invasion.
The announcement was expected to happen after press time last night.
Photo: EPA-EFE
A small number of officials might remain in Kiev, but the vast majority of the almost 200 Americans at the embassy would be sent out or relocated to Ukraine’s far west, near the Polish border, so that the US can retain a diplomatic presence in the country.
The state department would not comment.
The department had earlier ordered families of US embassy staffers in Kiev to leave, but it had left it to the discretion of nonessential personnel if they wanted to depart.
The new move comes as Washington has ratcheted up its warnings about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Pentagon on Friday said that it is sending another 3,000 troops to Poland to join 1,700 who are already assembling there in a demonstration of US commitment to NATO allies worried at the prospect of Russia invading Ukraine.
The additional soldiers are to depart their post at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, over the next couple of days and should be in Poland by early next week, said a defense official, who provided the information under ground rules set by the Pentagon.
They are the remaining elements of an infantry brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Their mission is to train and provide deterrence, but not to engage in combat in Ukraine.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday advised Taiwanese to leave Ukraine as soon as possible.
The ministry in a news release urged about 25 Taiwanese registered as living in Ukraine to leave the country as soon as possible and called on others to avoid traveling to the country.
Ukraine-based Taiwanese who need assistance can contact the Taipei-Moscow Economic and Cultural Coordination Commission, which officially handles Taiwan’s affairs in Ukraine, it said.
They can also get in touch with the Taiwan Trade Center in Kiev, which is run by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said that Taiwan is opposed to any unilateral actions to use force to alter the “status quo” in the region, and called on the countries involved to resolve their disputes through dialogue and peaceful means.
He also stressed that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is fundamentally distinct from the crisis in Ukraine, and that misinformation designed to affect Taiwan’s morale had been identified.
As agencies take steps to counter the misinformation, the public is urged to trust information from the government, he said.
Additional reporting by Su Yung-yao and CNA
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS