Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already driven millions of people from their homes and left many without water, power and food. As hostilities continue, the humanitarian and economic consequences will expand far beyond the region, putting potentially millions of people around the world at risk of hunger.
And these aren’t just short-term threats. The decisions that farmers and policymakers make over the next few weeks and months will have long-term consequences for the future of the world’s food systems. The right responses can keep the world on track for a sustainable food future. The wrong ones will worsen food insecurity and fuel climate change.
Ukrainian refugees escape to the border town of Medyka, Poland. Millions of Ukrainian residents have fled their homes in recent weeks, due to the Russian invasion. Photo by Damian Pankowiec/Shutterstock
The Ukraine war is complicating the calculus of China’s energy security and the prospect of a new energy deal with Russia
Can Beijing afford to be close to a Moscow that is increasingly politically and economically isolated?
Snow covers sections of connected pipework at the Gazprom PJSC Atamanskaya compressor station, part of the Power Of Siberia gas pipeline extending to China, near Svobodny, in the Amur region, Russia, in 2019. Photo: Bloomberg
Two recent developments reveal the possibility of a new energy agreement between China and Russia. First, Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC announced a contract to design the Soyuz Vostok pipeline across Mongolia towards China. Second, Beijing is reported to be discussing with its state-owned companies opportunities to buy stakes in Russian energy companies, and is also looking at a Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to China.
With the exit of international energy companies from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Germany’s decision to halt the certification process of the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and rounds of sanctions on Russia, there are certainly new opportunities for the Chinese government and companies to strengthen their position in the Russian market.
However, even as domestic, regional and global factors may push China towards a new energy deal with Russia, Beijing could also face a range of challenges.
Firstly, Beijing’s ambition to be carbon-neutral by 2060 and replace much coal with gas is one of the most important domestic factors prompting China to further improve its relations with Russia.
Russian gas exports – whether liquefied natural gas or pipeline gas delivered through the original Power of Siberia, for example – would help China reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the country makes a green transition.
Secondly, the withdrawal of Western energy companies such as BP and Shell from Russia due to the Ukraine war creates opportunities for Chinese energy companies, especially state-owned ones, to invest in Russia and diversify their portfolio.
Thirdly, while China also imports gas from Turkmenistan, Russian gas is one of the cheapest options for Chinese consumers, making a new energy deal with Russia that much more attractive.
However, there could also be obstacles to such a deal. One problem could be the political and economic uncertainties now looming over Russia; the deterioration of the Russian business environment under current sanctions might discourage Chinese companies from investing in Russia.
Particularly, sanctions led by Washington seem to inspire caution in Beijing and Chinese companies. For example, the state-run Sinopec Group recently suspended talks about a major petrochemical investment and a gas marketing venture in Russia, apparently heeding a government call to tread carefully with Russian assets.
“And yet, just when the climate scientists and governments across the eight Arctic states should be working together to understand and address the climate crisis, Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental group of Arctic states and Arctic Indigenous Peoples, to suspend their joint activities in protest of Russia’s unprovoked aggression.“
As Russian forces withdraw from the areas around the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, some of the horrors of what they have done are being revealed with bodies being discovered littering the streets of towns
A Ukrainian soldier walks past the body of a civilian, who according to residents was killed by Russian army soldiers, as it lies on the street in Bucha (Image: REUTERS)
The larger reality is that the world has never before been confronted by a genocidal war waged by a man brandishing nuclear weapons.P hotograph by Dan Kitwood / Getty
“We have to call this what it is,” Volodymyr Zelensky said, late last month, a few days after Vladimir Putin had ordered the invasion and conquest of Ukraine. “Russia’s criminal actions against Ukraine show signs of genocide.” President Zelensky, who lost family members during the Holocaust, and who also happens to have a law degree, sounded suitably cautious about invoking genocide, and he called for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to send war-crimes investigators as a first step. But such investigations take years, and rarely result in convictions. (Since the I.C.C. was established in 1998, it has indicted only Africans; and Russia, like the United States, refuses its jurisdiction.) The only court that Zelensky can make his case in for now is the court of global public opinion, where his instincts, drawing on deep wells of courage and conviction, have been unerring. And by the end of the invasion’s second week—with Putin’s indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets intensifying, and the death toll mounting rapidly; with more than two and a half million Ukrainians having fled the country, and millions more under relentless attack in besieged cities and towns; and with no end in sight—Zelensky no longer deferred to outside experts to describe what Ukrainians face in the most absolute terms. “I will appeal directly to the nations of the world if the leaders of the world do not make every effort to stop this war,” he said in a video message on Tuesday. He paused, and looking directly into the camera, added, “This genocide.”
Most of the millions of Ukrainians who have fled abroad in the past weeks have passed through the Lviv train station. Photograph by Andres Gutierrez / Anadolu Agency / Getty
In Lviv, on the western edge of Ukraine, most of the time the war felt very far away. Its shadow appeared, fleetingly, in the beautiful old cavernous Greek Catholic churches throughout the city, where people filled the pews and wept, and the priests, who perform the Byzantine liturgy in Ukrainian, called for God to protect the nation from its enemies; and in the basements and hallways and underground parking garages where people sheltered during the frequent air-raid sirens, most often at night; and in the old city after 8 p.m., when the curfew was approaching and all the many small restaurants and cafés closed; and in the many schools and nonprofits that had been turned into shelters for the people fleeing the bombing in the east of the country; but, still, most of the time, during the fourth week of the war, people in Lviv followed the bloodshed in the same way that everyone else in the world did: on television.
The one place in Lviv where the war was never far away was the train station. Built in the early twentieth century, when Lviv was a cosmopolitan, multiethnic city called Lemberg and was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is a grand, attractive building two miles from the old town. It has also been, since the start of the invasion, as the Lviv-based sociologist Alona Liasheva put it to me, “a hell on earth.” It was the westernmost hub of the Ukrainian train system, in a country that still relies primarily on trains; most of the three million people who had fled abroad in the past weeks had passed through it, as did the hundreds of thousands who had fled westward but remained in Ukraine, including in Lviv.
Americans are used to wars against people who don’t so casually speak our language. Zelensky can respond to Russian propaganda by directly addressing the Russian people — in Russian.
Photo illustration by Vanessa Saba
By Keith Gessen
NYtime – Published March 11, 2022Updated March 13, 2022
The thing about the videos from the war in Ukraine in 2014 was that there were very few war videos. It was, at least at first, a small-arms war. Fighting, when it erupted, happened on city streets. As soon as shots were fired, whoever was making the video would put away the phone and run.
The videos that characterized the conflict were not of rifle fire but of protests: riot police beating demonstrators as people shouted, “What are you doing?”; later, young men on the same square, outfitted in motley assortments of helmets and kneepads, counterattacking; videos of people arguing; videos of people being forced, in eastern Ukraine, to get on their knees. After pro-Russian forces took over cities in the east and the Ukrainian Army finally moved to restore its authority, there were videos of pro-Russian protesters trying to prevent tanks from entering their towns. These were the images of a country falling apart.
Mar 23, 2022
In an exclusive interview for Eurovision News in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told TV reporters that he is ready to discuss a commitment from his country not to seek NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire, Russian troop withdrawal and guarantee of Ukraine’s security.
In an exclusive interview for Eurovision News in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told TV reporters that he is ready to discuss a commitment from his country not to seek NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire, Russian troop withdrawal and guarantee of Ukraine’s security.
We, the Leaders of the G7, met today in Brussels at the invitation of the German G7 Presidency, to further strengthen our cooperation in light of Russia’s unjustifiable, unprovoked and illegal aggression and President Putin’s war of choice against independent and sovereign Ukraine. We will stand with the government and people of Ukraine.
We are united in our resolve to restore peace and stability and uphold international law. Following the United Nations General Assembly resolution on March 2022, we will continue to stand with the overwhelming majority of the international community, in condemning Russia’s military aggression and the suffering and loss of life it continues to cause.
We remain appalled by and condemn the devastating attacks on the Ukrainian population and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools. We welcome the investigations of international mechanisms, including by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. We will work together to support the gathering of evidence of war crimes. The siege of Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities, and the denial of humanitarian access by Russian military forces are unacceptable. Russian forces must immediately provide for safe pathways to other parts of Ukraine, as well as humanitarian aid to be delivered to Mariupol and other besieged cities.
The Russian leadership is obligated to immediately comply with the order of the International Court of Justice to suspend the military operations that it commenced on 24 February 2022 in the territory of Ukraine, without any further delay. We also urge Russia to withdraw its military forces and equipment from the entire territory of Ukraine.
We further call upon the Belarusian authorities to avoid further escalation and to refrain from using their military forces against Ukraine. Moreover, we urge all countries not to give military or other assistance to Russia to help continue its aggression in Ukraine. We will be vigilant regarding any such assistance.
We will spare no efforts to hold President Putin and the architects and supporters of this aggression, including the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, accountable for their actions. To this end, we will continue to work together, along with our allies and partners around the world.
We underline our resolve to impose severe consequences on Russia, including by fully implementing the economic and financial measures we already imposed. We will continue to cooperate closely, including by engaging other governments on adopting similar restrictive measures to those already imposed by G7 members and on refraining from evasion, circumvention and backfilling that seek to undercut or mitigate the effects of our sanctions. We task the relevant Ministers in a focused initiative to monitor the full implementation of sanctions and to coordinate responses related to evasive measures, including regarding gold transactions by the Central Bank of Russia. We stand ready to apply additional measures as required, continuing to act in unity as we do so. We commend those partners who have aligned with us in these efforts.
Russia’s attack has already risked the safety and security of nuclear sites in Ukraine. Russian military activities are creating extreme risks for the population and the environment, with the potential for catastrophic result. Russia must comply with its international obligations and refrain from any activity that imperils nuclear sites, allowing unhindered control by the Ukrainian authorities, as well as full access by and cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
We warn against any threat of the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or related materials. We recall Russia’s obligations under the international treaties to which it is a signatory, and which protect us all. In this regard, we categorically denounce Russia’s malicious and completely unfounded disinformation campaign against Ukraine, a state in full compliance with international non-proliferation agreements. We express concern about other countries and actors that have amplified Russia’s disinformation campaign.
We are resolved in our support to the Ukrainian people in their heroic resistance to Russia’s unjustifiable and illegal aggression. We will step up our support to Ukraine and neighbouring countries. We thank all those who are already providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine and ask others to join. We will furthermore collaborate in our efforts to bolster democratic resilience and defend human rights in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.
We will continue efforts to support Ukraine in defending its networks against cyber incidents. In preparation for any Russian malicious cyber response to the actions we have taken, we are taking steps to increase the resilience of the infrastructure in our respective nations by strengthening our coordinated cyber defences and improving our shared awareness of cyber threats. We will also work to hold accountable those actors that engage in destructive, disruptive, or destabilising activities in cyberspace.
We further commend neighbouring states for their solidarity and humanity in welcoming Ukrainian refugees and third country nationals from Ukraine. We highlight the need to further increase international assistance to countries neighbouring Ukraine, and, as a concrete contribution to this end, underline our commitment to receiving, protecting, and supporting refugees and displaced persons as a consequence of the conflict. We thus all stand ready to welcome them on our territories. We will take further steps to broaden our support to Ukraine and neighbouring countries.
We are concerned by the escalating and reinforced repression against the Russian people and the increasingly hostile rhetoric of the Russian leadership, including against ordinary citizens. We deplore the Russian leadership’s attempt to deprive Russian citizens of access to unbiased information through censorship, and denounce its malicious disinformation campaigns, which we will not leave unaddressed. We express our support to those Russian and Belarusian citizens standing up against the unjustified war of aggression against their close neighbour Ukraine. The world sees them.
The people of Russia must know that we hold no grievances against them. It is President Putin, his government and supporters, including the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, who are imposing this war and its consequences on Russians and it is their decision that besmirches the history of the Russian people.
We are taking further steps to reduce our reliance on Russian energy, and will work together to this end. At the same time, we will ensure secure alternative and sustainable supplies, and act in solidarity and close coordination in the case of possible supply disruptions. We commit to actively support countries willing to phase out their dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal imports. We call on oil and gas producing countries to act in a responsible manner and to increase deliveries to international markets, noting that OPEC has a key role to play. We will work with them and all partners to ensure stable and sustainable global energy supplies. This crisis reinforces our determination to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and of the Glasgow climate pact and limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C, by accelerating reduction of our reliance on fossil fuels and our transition to clean energy.
We stand in solidarity with our partners who have to bear the rising price of President Putin’s unilateral choice to wage war in Europe. His decision is putting the global economic recovery at risk, undermines the resilience of global value chains and will have severe impacts on the most fragile countries. We call on the international community to take action by fully recognising Russia’s responsibility and protecting the most vulnerable countries, with the support of international and regional institutions.
More immediately, President Putin’s war places global food security under increased pressure. We recall that the implementation of our sanctions against Russia takes into account the need to avoid impact on global agricultural trade. We remain determined to monitor the situation closely and do what is necessary to prevent and respond to the evolving global food security crisis. We will make coherent use of all instruments and funding mechanisms to address food security, and build resilience in the agriculture sector in line with climate and environment goals. We will address potential agricultural production and trade disruptions, in particular in vulnerable countries. We commit to provide a sustainable food supply in Ukraine and support continued Ukrainian production efforts.
We will work with and step up our collective contribution to relevant international institutions including the World Food Programme (WFP), in parallel with Multilateral Development Banks and International Financial Institutions, to provide support to countries with acute food insecurity. We call for an extraordinary session of the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to address the consequences on world food security and agriculture arising from the Russian aggression against Ukraine. We call on all participants of the Agriculture Markets Information System (AMIS) to continue to share information and explore options to keep prices under control, including making stocks available, in particular to the WFP. We will avoid export bans and other trade-restrictive measures, maintain open and transparent markets, and call on others to do likewise, consistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, including WTO notification requirements.
International organisations and multilateral fora should no longer conduct their activities with Russia in a business as usual manner. We will work closely with our partners to act as appropriate, based on shared interests, as well as rules and regulations of respective institutions.
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening, everyone. With all the press that’s here, you must be getting very tired. Am I the 16th or 17th? At any rate, all kidding aside, thank you for taking the time.
I — today marks one month since Russia began its carnage in Ukraine, the brutal invasion of Ukraine. And we held a NATO summit the very next day. At that time, my overwhelming objective, wanting that summit, was to have absolute unity on three key important issues among our NATO and European allies.
First was to support Ukraine with military and humanitarian assistance.
Second was to impose the most significant — the most significant sanctions — economic sanction regime ever, in order to cripple Putin’s economy and punish him for his actions.
Third was to fortify the eastern flank of our NATO Allies, who were obviously very, very concerned and somewhat at — worried what would happen.
Lake Baikal, Siberia, Russia (Photo by 
CVD 