European leaders were yesterday set to unveil punishing new sanctions on Russia after weekend fighting in Ukraine imperilled a fragile truce aimed at halting a bloody pro-Kremlin uprising.
Ukrainian soldiers fortified their positions around Mariupol yesterday after insurgent attacks late on Saturday on government positions on the eastern edge of the strategic port city.
The shelling killed one woman — the first casualty since the warring parties signed a truce on Friday aimed at ending five months of fighting that has killed nearly 2,800 people and plunged East-West relations to a post-Cold War low.
“Another Grad missile fell here overnight,” the commander of a Ukrainian checkpoint to the east of the government-held city said without disclosing his name. “There was close combat about 2km from here.”
The Ukrainian military also said separatist militias had violated the truce on five occasions overnight in the rebel-held strongholds of Lugansk and Donetsk.
The first attacks outside Mariupol broke out only hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin issued nearly identical statements on Saturday agreeing the truce was “generally holding” and vowing to pursue further steps toward peace.
The EU said it was ready to review plans for new sanctions against Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict, if the truce holds.
Western governments accused Moscow of sending in huge numbers of troops and heavy weapons to back insurgents who launched a counter-offensive across the southeast late last month, dramatically turning the tide of the conflict.
EU President Herman Van Rompuy on Sunday said the measures could be reconsidered “if the ceasefire is durable, and/or if the peace talks start.”
“We have noted that Russia only consented with difficulty to serious negotiations. The ceasefire is an important step, but it is only a step,” he told Belgian television.
The new round of sanctions set to be approved yesterday would tighten existing measures imposed in July, targeting more individuals with travel bans and asset freezes, as well as tightening access to capital markets for Russian oil and defense companies.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev vowed to adopt “asymmetric” measures against Europe by forbidding its airlines from flying over the country on their lucrative routes to Asia should the new punitive steps go into effect.
“Our understanding is that we have friendly relations with our partners, which is why the skies over Russia are open to flights,” Medvedev told Moscow’s Vedomosti business daily in an interview published yesterday. “If we are sanctioned, we will have to respond. If Western airlines are going to circumvent our airspace, this could bankrupt many companies that are already teetering on the edge of survival.”
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS