‘Putin is responsible for heinous war crimes’: Trudeau in Kyiv | Arab News

2022-05-14 21:52:44 By : Ms. Shinny Xie

https://arab.news/6uu9g

KYIV, Ukraine: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sunday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was responsible for “war crimes,” during a visit to Ukraine where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky. “It is clear that Vladimir Putin is responsible for heinous war crimes,” Trudeau said at a news conference with the Ukrainian leader, adding that “there must be accountability” and that he had “witnessed firsthand the brutality of Russia’s illegal war.”

Justin Trudeau also made an unannounced visit on Sunday to the Ukrainian town of Irpin, which was retaken from Russian troops in late March after fierce fighting, the town’s mayor said on Telegram. “I’ve just had an honor to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, who came to Irpin to see with his own eyes all the horror which Russian occupiers have caused to our town,” Oleksandr Markushyn said on his Telegram channel. He posted a picture showing Trudeau standing on a street with destroyed and burned apartment buildings in the background. The Russian military occupied Irpin following Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion but Ukrainian forces seized back control. The town has been one of the hotspots of fighting near the capital Kyiv. Canada, like other Western nations, has imposed broad economic sanctions on Russia and sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Trudeau’s Liberal government has also created a special scheme for Ukrainians and their families to apply for a temporary resident visa.

DHAKA: All year long, millions of Dhaka dwellers have to deal with swarms of mosquitoes, trying every means possible to protect themselves against their bites — lately also with zebra stripes.

Hot and humid, Bangladesh’s sprawling capital struggles with the presence of mosquitoes not only due to the climate but also unplanned urbanization.

During the monsoon season, rainwater pools in neighborhoods, becoming a breeding ground for the insects that can be hardly controlled and regularly cause outbreaks of diseases.

Incense is traditionally used to repel mosquitoes, but this year a new method partly phased it out, at least in Karail, Dhaka’s largest slum area, where residents say they are protected by fabrics with zebra print.

It started as a project of an advertising agency and a direct-to-home TV provider, which in late March furnished 10,000 households in Karail with zebra curtains they called Mosblock.

“Our aim was to ensure uninterrupted entertainment for the people while watching television,” Mohammed Abul Khair Chowdhury, head of marketing at Beximco Communications Ltd., which owns the TV service, told Arab News.

“Now we are gathering further data on the efficacy rate of the curtains,” he said. “According to our initial findings, it worked.”

The curtains soon gained popularity and local businesses in the slum area began to copy the idea and sell their own zebra fabrics.

Chameli Akter, a 24-year-old student from Karail who hung zebra curtains on her door and window, said there were significantly fewer mosquitoes at her home.

“I noticed mosquitoes can’t fly near this curtain,” she told Arab News. “Fighting against mosquitoes is a daily struggle as the environment here is mostly dirty and there are enough places for mosquitoes to breed. Now, at least, I am a bit relieved.”

Shirin Begum, a 35-year-old domestic helper who also lives in Karail, also noticed that with the zebra stripes on her windows, the insects bothered her family less. “My children couldn’t concentrate on their studies due to mosquito bites,” she said. “Now, they can pay more attention to studying.”

Numerous international studies over the past few years have shown that black and white stripes protect zebras from insect bites.

Studies on flies have shown that the polarization of light impairs their perception, making them unable to properly decelerate and land on their victims.

Whether the same effect applies to mosquitoes has not been scientifically confirmed yet.

“We need to have more research on this,” said Muntasir Akash, an assistant professor at the zoology department of Dhaka University. But he welcomed the innovation: “In tropical regions, mosquitoes are very deadly. If a curtain like Mosblock can be an effective solution against mosquitoes, it will be very helpful.”

LISBON: Portugal blocked the sale of a 10 million euro ($10.4 million) luxury house over a “strong conviction” it belonged to sanctions-hit Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, Foreign Minister Joao Cravinho said on Saturday. The property registry of the mansion in the luxury Quinta do Lago resort in the Algarve was frozen — meaning it cannot be sold, rented or mortgaged — on March 25 at the request of the foreign ministry, a month after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine. “We have a strong conviction, which hasn’t been fully confirmed, the house belongs to Roman Abramovich,” Cravinho said on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Berlin. “The challenge here is that many of those sanctioned do not have their properties and assets in their names.” According to Publico newspaper, which initially reported the story, the former Chelsea soccer club owner tried to sell the property 15 days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started through the Delaware-based Millhouse Views LLC, owned by Millhouse LLC, which manages his assets. However, a spokesperson for Abramovich told Reuters he did own “any property in Portugal” and “Millhouse Views LCC is not connected” to him. “In fact we have never heard of this company,” the spokesperson added. Portugal’s largest bank, Caixa Geral de Depositos, noticed the move to sell the property and alerted authorities, Publico said. The bank declined to comment. According to Publico, the property is in plot 17 of Quinta do Lago’s San Lorenzo North area. A Reuters witness said there was a signboard outside the gated mansion saying it had been sold. Abramovich has been sanctioned by the British government and the European Union over his links to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has denied having such ties. The billionaire was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 based on a law offering naturalization to descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula during the Mediaeval Inquisition. There is little known history of Sephardic Jews in Russia. The case sent shockwaves across Portugal, leading public prosecutors to launch an investigation and to the detention of a rabbi responsible for the certification that allowed Abramovich to obtain citizenship.

SEOUL: Leader Kim Jong Un says a Covid outbreak is causing ‘great upheaval’ in North Korea, which announced 21 new “fever” deaths Saturday. Two days after confirming its first cases of Covid-19, the government said more than half a million people had been sickened nationwide. Despite activating its “maximum emergency quarantine system” to slow the spread of disease through its unvaccinated population, North Korea is now reporting tens of thousands of new cases daily. On Friday, “over 174,440 persons had fever, at least 81,430 were fully recovered and 21 died in the country,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported. North Korea confirmed Thursday that the highly contagious omicron variant had been detected in the capital Pyongyang, with Kim ordering nationwide lockdowns. It was the government’s first official admission of Covid cases and marked the failure of a two-year coronavirus blockade maintained at great economic cost since the start of the pandemic. From late April to May 13, more than 524,440 people have fallen sick with fever, KCNA said, with 27 deaths in total. The report did not specify whether the new cases and deaths had tested positive for Covid-19, but experts say the country will be struggling to test and diagnose on this scale. North Korea has said only that one of the first six deaths it announced Friday had tested positive for Covid-19. “It’s not a stretch to consider these ‘fever’ cases to all be Covid-19, given the North’s lack of testing capacity,” said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute. “The actual number of Covid cases could be higher than the fever figures due to many asymptomatic cases,” he said, adding that the pace of infection was growing “very fast.” Kim said Saturday the “crisis” was causing “great upheaval,” as he oversaw a second Politburo meeting in three days to discuss the situation, KCNA reported. “The spread of malignant disease comes to be a great upheaval in our country since the founding of the DPRK,” he said, referring to North Korea by its official name. Kim is putting himself “front and center” of the country’s Covid response, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “The language he’s used suggests the situation in North Korea is going to get worse before it gets better,” he told AFP. “Engagers see this rhetoric preparing the way for international assistance, but Kim may be rallying a population on the verge of further sacrifice,” he added. The meeting of the nation’s top officials discussed medicine distribution and other ways of “minimizing the losses in human lives,” KCNA said. North Korea has a crumbling health system — one of the worst in the world — and no Covid vaccines, antiviral treatment drugs or mass testing capacity, experts say. But the country will “actively learn” from China’s pandemic management strategy, Kim said, according to KCNA. China, the world’s only major economy to still maintain a zero-Covid policy, is battling multiple omicron outbreaks — with some major cities, including financial hub Shanghai, under stay-at-home orders. North Korea has previously turned down offers of Covid vaccines from China and the World Health Organization’s Covax scheme, but both Beijing and Seoul issued fresh offers of aid and vaccines this week. Kim’s comments indicate North Korea “will try getting supplies from China,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. It also looks likely Pyongyang “will adopt a Chinese-style anti-virus response of regional lockdowns,” Yang added. So far, Kim said Saturday, North Korea’s outbreak was not “an uncontrollable spread among regions” but transmission within areas that had been locked down, KCNA said. Despite its Covid outbreak, new satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has resumed construction at a long-dormant nuclear reactor. “I can’t tell you when the reactor will be ready to go, but it is about 10x larger than the existing reactor at Yongbyon,” Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies wrote in a Twitter thread Saturday. It would produce 10 times more plutonium for nuclear weapons, he said, adding: “This would make good on Kim’s pledge to increase the number of nuclear weapons.” The United States and South Korea have warned that Kim is preparing to conduct another nuclear test — which would be the regime’s seventh — and that it could come any day now. Analysts have warned Kim could speed up his nuclear test plans in a bid to “distract” North Korea’s population from a disastrous Covid-19 outbreak.

WEISSENHAUS, Germany: The Group of Seven leading economies warned Saturday that the war in Ukraine is stoking a global food and energy crisis that threatens poor countries, and urgent measures are needed to unblock stores of grain that Russia is preventing from leaving Ukraine. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who hosted a meeting of top G-7 diplomats, said the war had become a “global crisis.” Baerbock said up to 50 million people, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, would face hunger in the coming months unless ways are found to release Ukrainian grain, which accounts for a sizeable share of the worldwide supply. In statements released at the end of the three-day meeting on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, the G-7 pledged to provide further humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable. “Russia’s war of aggression has generated one of the most severe food and energy crises in recent history which now threatens those most vulnerable across the globe,” the group said. “We are determined to accelerate a coordinated multilateral response to preserve global food security and stand by our most vulnerable partners in this respect,” it added. Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, said her country, another major agricultural exporter, stands ready to send ships to European ports so Ukrainian grain can be brought to those in need. “We need to make sure that these cereals are sent to the world,” she told reporters. “If not, millions of people will be facing famine.” The G-7 nations also called on China not to help Russia, including by undermining international sanctions or justifying Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. Beijing should support the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, and not “assist Russia in its war of aggression,” they said. The G-7 urged China “to desist from engaging in information manipulation, disinformation and other means to legitimize Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.” The grouping, which comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, also reiterated its stance that the territories seized by Russian forces need to be returned to Ukraine. “We will never recognize borders Russia has attempted to change by military aggression,” they said. The meeting in Weissenhaus, northeast of Hamburg, was billed as an opportunity for officials to discuss the broader implications of the war for geopolitics, energy and food security, and ongoing international efforts to tackle climate change and the pandemic. In a series of closing statements, the G-7 nations also addressed a wide range of global problems from the situation in Afghanistan to tensions in the Middle East. On Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba appealed to friendly countries to provide more military support to Kyiv and increase the pressure on Russia, including by seizing its assets abroad to pay for rebuilding Ukraine. Kuleba said his country remains willing to talk to Russia about unblocking grain supplies stuck in Ukraine’s silos and also about reaching a political agreement to end the war itself, but had so far received “no positive feedback” from Moscow. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an interview published Saturday that he had not detected any change in Putin’s stance recently. Scholz, who spoke at length by phone with the Russian leader Friday, told German news portal t-online that Putin had failed to achieve the military objectives he set out at the start of the war while losing more Russian soldiers than the Soviet Union did during its decade-long campaign in Afghanistan. “Putin should slowly begin to understand that the only way out of this situation is through an agreement with Ukraine,” Scholz was quoted as saying. One idea discussed at the G-7 meeting was whether Russian state assets frozen abroad can be used to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. “Russia bears responsibility for the massive damage resulting from this war,” Baerbock said. “And that’s why it’s a question of justice that Russia should have to pay for this damage.” But she added that, unlike in Canada — where legislation allows for seized funds to be repurposed — the legal basis for doing so in Germany is uncertain. “But that’s precisely what such meetings are for, to have an exchange about how to resolve these legal questions,” Baerbock said. Many of the foreign ministers were due to attend an informal meeting of NATO diplomats in Berlin on Saturday and Sunday. That gathering will consider moves by Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance amid concerns about the threat from Russia, as well as ways in which NATO can support Ukraine without being drawn into the conflict. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was unable to attend the G-7 meeting after recovering from a COVID-19 infection, was expected at the NATO gathering.

WANGELS, Germany: The Group of Seven industrialized nations said Saturday they would never recognize the borders Russia is trying to shift in its war against Ukraine and pledged enduring support for Kyiv. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 but Kyiv’s forces managed to push Moscow’s troops back from the capital. The conflict is now well into its third month. “We will never recognize borders Russia has attempted to change by military aggression, and will uphold our engagement in the support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea, and all states,” the G7 foreign ministers said in a statement after three days of talks in northern Germany. They also vowed to expand sanctions to include sectors on which Russia is dependent and keep supplying Ukraine with weapons to help it repel Russia’s invasion. “We reaffirm our determination to further increase economic and political pressure on Russia, continuing to act in unity,” they said. Western countries have supplied Ukraine with artillery, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank weapons and other powerful material, but Kyiv has been pushing allies for more support. As the war drags on, the G7 foreign ministers also highlighted the growing impact of the war on poorer countries, especially in the area of food security. The ministers also slammed Belarus over its stance on the war. “We ... call on Belarus to stop enabling Russia’s aggression and to abide by its international obligations,” they said.