World

The UN General Assembly on Monday will open debate on a draft resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, as Western powers seek to underscore Moscow’s international isolation.

The decision to bring the matter before the General Assembly, where the 193 UN members have one vote each — and no one wields veto power — was taken after Russia used its veto in a Security Council meeting September 30 to block a similar proposal.

“It’s extremely important,” said Olof Skoog, who, as EU ambassador to the world body, drafted the text in cooperation with Ukraine and other countries.

“Unless the UN system and the international community through the General Assembly react to this kind of illegal attempt, then we would be in a very, very bad place,” the Swedish diplomat told reporters.

A failure by the General Assembly to act — a vote is expected no sooner than Wednesday — would give “carte blanche to other countries to do likewise or to give recognition to what Russia has done,” he added.

A draft of the resolution seen by AFP condemns Russia’s “attempted illegal annexations” of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson following “so-called referendums,” and it stresses that these actions have “no validity under international law.”

It calls on all states, international organizations and agencies not to recognize the annexations, and demands the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. 

In response, Russia has addressed a letter to all member states in which it attacks “Western delegations” whose actions “have nothing to do with protection of international law and the principles of the UN Charter.”

“They only pursue their own geopolitical objectives,” said the letter, signed by Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia.

He denounced the “huge pressure” he said the United States and its allies were placing on other member states.

Nebenzia said that given the circumstances, the General Assembly should vote by secret ballot — a highly unusual procedure normally reserved for matters like electing the rotating members of the Security Council.

– ‘A bit of desperation’ –

“It doesn’t suggest a high degree of confidence in the outcome if Russia is seeking to obscure the vote count,” a senior official in the administration of US President Joe Biden told reporters, speaking on grounds of anonymity.

“It does suggest a bit of desperation.”

Such a procedure would first require a vote of the member states — and not by secret ballot, according to General Assembly spokeswoman Paulina Kubiak.

The UN secretary-general, as the leading defender of the world body’s values, bluntly denounced the annexations.  

“It stands against everything the international community is meant to stand for,” said Antonio Guterres. 

“It flouts the purposes and principles of the United Nations. It is a dangerous escalation. It has no place in the modern world. It must not be accepted.”

Those remarks, the US official said, “show that this is not really about the West versus Russia.”

During the Security Council vote, no other country sided with Russia, though four delegations — China, India, Brazil and Gabon — abstained.

Some developing countries have complained that the West is devoting all its attention to Ukraine, and others might be tempted to join them this week.

The vote will provide a clear picture of exactly how isolated Russia has become. Given the high stakes, backers of the draft are going all out to win over potential abstentionists. 

“It’s going to be tough,” a senior European diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“For the 2014 annexation resolution of Crimea, there were approximately 100 supportive votes. I think we’ll get more this time,” he said, estimating total support at 100 to 140 votes. 

In March, two earlier General Assembly resolutions condemning the Russian invasion drew, respectively, 141 and 140 votes for, to five against (Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea), with 35 and 38 abstentions.

A third vote, in April, to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, passed but with less unanimity.

There were 93 votes for, 24 against and 58 abstentions.

For the US official, the overarching question this week will be “who’s going to vote with Russia,” when its objective is “to erase Ukraine from the map.”

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has called for the immediate deployment of a special armed force to Haiti to staunch spiraling insecurity, as the already crisis-hit country faces the threat of a cholera epidemic.

In a letter submitted to the UN Security Council on Sunday and seen by AFP, Guterres urged member states to deploy a “rapid action force” to the Caribbean nation to tackle “a dramatic deterioration in security.”

The letter, which outlined “options for enhanced security support to Haiti” as requested by a July UN Security Council resolution, came a day after Haiti said it had formally sought international assistance with a worsening security situation that the national police were unable to overcome.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is facing an acute political, economic, security and health crisis, which has paralyzed the country and sparked a breakdown of law and order. 

Protests and looting have rocked the already unstable country since September 11, when the government announced a fuel price hike.

Since mid-September, the country’s largest fuel import terminal, in Varreux, has been controlled by powerful armed gangs.

In his letter, Guterres underlined a need to restore security to ensure access to supplies and services, to safeguard transport infrastructure and oil terminals and to tackle rampant gang violence. 

“Addressing these objectives is imperative for the country to halt its spiraling instability,” he said.

He called for the establishment of a unit made up of special armed forces personnel from member states, with the efforts led by one member state.

Guterres reiterated the call in a public statement issued Sunday by spokesman Stephane Dujarric, in which he said he “remains gravely concerned about the situation in Haiti,” where already dire humanitarian conditions risk being exacerbated by a cholera outbreak. 

– Cholera fears –

The UN on Thursday warned of a possible explosion of cholera cases in the country after Haiti announced its first cases of cholera in three years last week, with at least seven deaths.

As of Friday, the UN said at least twelve cholera cases had been confirmed and another 152 suspected cases reported, though Ulrika Richardson, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, said the real numbers could be much higher.

Tests were underway abroad to determine whether it was the same strain of cholera as the one that killed more than 10,000 people from 2010 to 2019.

Guterres’s Sunday statement underscored that the blockage of the Varreux terminal hindered efforts to tackle the outbreak, including by hampering the delivery of “critical services required to prevent the rapid spread of the disease to a stand-still, including the distribution of potable water.”

“The most vulnerable sectors of the Haitian population are those hit the hardest.” 

The deteriorating security situation led the Dominican Republic, which shares the mountainous island of Hispaniola with Haiti, to warn on Sunday that it would shut down the border in the event of a “massive migration.”

“It is very dangerous to receive refugees en masse,” said President Luis Abinader, who has previously called for more action from the international community to mitigate the crises in Haiti. 

The crushing poverty and widespread violence in Haiti, home to 11 million people, has caused large numbers of Haitians to attempt to flee to the Dominican Republic or to the United States.

In its July resolution, the UN Security Council agreed to ask member states to ban the transfer of small arms to Haiti but stopped short of a full embargo requested by China.

It also extended the mandate of the UN’s special political mission in Haiti, BINUH, until 2023.

Haiti had already been mired in a political and economic crisis for years before the assassination of president Jovenel Moise in 2021 exacerbated its instability, with gangs taking an increasingly strong hold.

A landslide in central Venezuela left at least 22 people dead and more than 50 missing after a river overflowed, officials said Sunday, in the latest deadly disaster caused by heavy rains to hit the country. 

Dozens of people have died in recent months in the crisis-hit South American nation as a result of historically high precipitation.

“We are seeing very significant damage here, human losses: so far, we have already found 22 dead, there are more than 52 people missing,” Vice President Delcy Rodriguez told local media at the scene in the town of Las Tejerias. “We are working to find these people.”

Houses and businesses were destroyed and felled trees littered the town’s streets, which were covered with mud and debris, including splintered wood, household items and mangled cars.

“The village is lost. Las Tejerias is lost,” 55-year-old resident Carmen Melendez, who has lived her whole life in the town 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the capital, Caracas, in Aragua state, told AFP.

Around a thousand people had joined the rescue efforts, Interior and Justice Minister Remigio Ceballos told AFP, as he also worked at the site.

Local residents dug through the remains of battered homes looking for loved ones, while search teams arrived with dogs hoping to find survivors trapped in the rubble. 

A butcher shop that had closed due to the pandemic and which was due to reopen Monday was buried in muddy sediment that caked the refrigerators and everything else inside. 

“We were waiting for the meat to be shipped in — to start after two years closed,” said Ramon Arvelo, one of the workers who was helping remove mud. 

“I never thought that something of this magnitude could happen; it’s a really big deal,” said Loryis Verenzuela, 50, as she looked out at the devastation through tears.

– Record rain –

“We have a huge landslide as a result of the changing climate,” Ceballos said, referring to the effects of Hurricane Julia, which passed just north of Venezuela the night before. 

“There was a record rainfall,” he added as he surveyed the disaster site — as much rain in one day as is usually seen in one month. 

“These strong rains saturated the ground,” he said. 

Images taken by rescue teams’ drones showed huge amounts of earth piled up in the streets as residents had tried to shovel out the meters of mud that flowed into their houses. 

President Nicolas Maduro declared three days of national mourning for the victims, while Venezuelans took to social media to offer assistance to the town.

Caracas baseball team Los Leones said they would organize a collection for the victims, asking for “non-perishable foods, water and clothes.”

The landslide, caused by the biggest river flood in the area in 30 years, is the worst so far this year in Venezuela, which has seen historic rain levels in recent months. 

In August, at least 15 people died in the Venezuelan Andes after heavy rains triggered mud and rock slides.

And in September, at least eight people died when floods from intense rains flowed through a religious retreat in the western part of the country.

In 1999, huge landslides killed some 10,000 people in the state of Vargas, north of Caracas.

Moscow on Sunday blamed Ukraine for the deadly blast on the bridge linking Crimea to Russia, as Ukraine denounced the latest lethal missile attack in its territory that killed at least 13 people.

“The authors, perpetrators and sponsors are the Ukrainian secret services,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said of Saturday’s Crimea bridge bombing, which he described as a “terrorist act”.

Putin was speaking during a meeting with the head of the investigation committee he has set up to look into the bombing, Russian news agencies reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile denounced a Russian missile strike on Sunday that killed at least 13 people — one of them a child — in Zaporizhzhia — the latest deadly bombardment of the southern Ukrainian city.

The attack also wounded 89 people, including 11 children, according to a statement from the president’s office.

Zelensky described the “merciless strikes on peaceful people” and residential buildings as “absolute evil” perpetrated by “savages and terrorists”.

Regional official Oleksandr Starukh posted pictures of heavily damaged apartment blocks on Telegram and said a rescue operation had been launched to find victims under the rubble.

Russia officials also denounced on Sunday what they said was a surge in Ukrainian fire into its territory that had hit homes, administrative buildings and a monastery.

– Divers inspect damage –

Russia’s FBS, which is responsible for border security, reported on Sunday: “Since the start of October, the number of attacks from Ukrainian armed formations on Russia’s border territory has considerably increased.”

More than a hundred artillery attacks, concentrated on the western border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, had hit housing and administrative buildings, said the statement.

The attacks had killed one person and wounded five others, including a child.

The governor of Kursk region, Roman Starovoyt, said Ukrainian fire had hit the Garnalski Saint Nicolas monastery, on the border.

Although the building had been hit, starting a fire that was quickly put out, nobody was hurt, he said, posting photos of the damage on Telegram.

Moscow meanwhile said divers were to inspect the waters beneath the giant Crimea bridge on Sunday, a day after a truck bomb ignited a massive fire on the road and rail link, killing three people.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said the divers would make their initial report later on Sunday.

Already on Saturday, Russia said some road and rail traffic had resumed over the strategic link, a symbol of the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The 19-kilometre (12-mile) bridge is a vital supply link between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula.

Following the attack at dawn on Saturday, the bodies of an unidentified man and a woman were pulled out of the water, probably passengers in a car driving near the exploded truck, Moscow said.

Russian officials said they had identified the owner of the truck as a resident of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.

The blast sparked celebrations from Ukrainians and others on social media, but Zelensky, in his nightly address on Saturday, did not directly mention the incident, and officials in Kyiv have made no direct claim of responsibility.

Until Putin’s statement on Sunday, most Russian officials had stopped short of blaming Kyiv.

– Power restored at power plant –

Putin has ordered the creation of a commission to look into the Crimea bridge blast, and the Russian leader will chair a scheduled meeting of his Security Council on Monday. 

Some military analysts argue that the blast could have a major impact if Moscow sees the need to shift already hard-pressed troops to Crimea from other regions — or if it prompts a rush by residents to leave.

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian senior officer now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that even if Ukrainians were not behind the blast, it constituted “a massive influence operation win for Ukraine.

“It is a demonstration to Russians, and the rest of the world, that Russia’s military cannot protect any of the provinces it recently annexed,” he said on Twitter.

Authorities in Crimea tried to allay fears of food and fuel shortages in the territory, which has been dependent on the Russian mainland since its annexation from Ukraine.

It is just the latest in a series of setbacks for Russia.

Recent lightning territorial gains by Ukraine in the east and south have undermined the Kremlin’s official annexation of Donetsk, neighbouring Lugansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

After growing domestic criticism of Russia’s army, Moscow on Saturday announced that a new general — Sergei Surovikin — would take over its forces in Ukraine.

Surovikin previously led Russia’s military in southern Ukraine. He has combat experience from the 1990s conflicts in Tajikistan and Chechnya, as well as, more recently, in Syria.

Ukraine’s power operator Energoatom announced on Sunday that engineers had managed to restore power to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, a day after they said shelling had cut the last source of external power there.

Germany’s Social Democrats on Sunday won a closely-fought regional election that was dominated by worries over soaring energy costs, giving Chancellor Olaf Scholz a welcome boost as a difficult winter looms.

Scholz’s centre-left SPD was set to remain the largest force in the coastal state of Lower Saxony, taking around 32.7-33.3 percent of the vote, according to exit polls by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.

The conservative CDU party of former chancellor Angela Merkel came a distant second at 27.5 percent, its worst result in the state in six decades.

The election was widely billed as a key test of Scholz’s handling of the energy crisis caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The outcome marks a turnaround after his SPD lost the last two regional polls to the CDU, in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein.

The Greens, Scholz’s coalition partners on the federal level, surged to around 14 percent, their best-ever showing in the state.

The far-right AfD also had reason to cheer, nearly doubling its result from five years ago and climbing to almost 12 percent as it capitalised on voter anger over the rising cost of living.

The AfD “is a protest party” that benefits from “crisis and fears”, political scientist Karl-Rudolf Korte told ZDF.

The liberal FDP, Scholz’s third coalition partner in Berlin, appears to have only narrowly scraped the five-percent threshold required to enter into the regional parliament, according to the preliminary results. 

– ‘Referendum’ –

The Lower Saxony election was “very important” for Scholz, Korte told ZDF, calling it “a referendum” on the federal government’s handling of myriad crises since coming to power almost a year ago.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent energy costs soaring, pushing German inflation to a record-high of 10 percent in September and fuelling fears of a looming recession in Europe’s top economy.

Support for Scholz’s SPD has fallen below 20 percent in national opinion polls, well behind the CDU in first place. Scholz’s own popularity ratings have also taken a hit.

Lower Saxony’s incumbent premier Stephan Weil from the SPD, whose popularity with local residents played a large role in Sunday’s victory, said he was “relieved” his party had a clear mandate to govern in Lower Saxony.

“We fought and tonight we won, my friends,” he told supporters.

Weil, set for a third consecutive term, had previously called the election contest “the most difficult of my life”.

“Never have I seen so many question marks and worries on citizens’ faces,” he said.

The 63-year-old has cast himself as a safe pair of hands in uncertain times and wants Lower Saxony — home to auto giant Volkswagen as well as most of Germany’s wind turbines — to play a leading role in the green energy transition.

He has also welcomed a 200-billion-euro ($198-billion) energy fund newly unveiled by Scholz to shield German consumers from price shocks. 

The fund however has been criticised by European neighbours who don’t have the same fiscal largesse and fear a splintering of EU unity on Ukraine.

Weil’s main challenger in Lower Saxony, state economy minister Bernd Althusmann from the CDU, announced his resignation as regional party leader shortly after the results were announced.

Sunday’s vote was “not a pretty result for us”, said CDU secretary general Mario Czaja.

The path is now clear for Weil to ditch his coalition government with the CDU and team up with the Greens instead.

– Nuclear plant row –

A major bone of contention between the SPD and the CDU during the election race was the fate of Lower Saxony’s Emsland nuclear power plant — one of only three still operational in Germany. 

The CDU has been angered by Berlin’s decision to proceed with Emsland’s planned shutdown this year, despite the need for energy diversification as the country weans itself off Russian gas and oil.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, from the traditionally anti-nuclear Greens, recently announced the other two plants will be kept on standby until April 2023, in a landmark U-turn.

Weil has backed Berlin’s stance, saying Emsland was not needed to secure Lower Saxony’s energy supply.