BRICS SUMMIT/WAR IN UKRAINE: August 22, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS FROM JOHANNESBURG AND ON DAY 545 OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Johannesburg in the pre-dawn hours for a state visit marking 25 years of diplomatic relations. Xi is also here for the BRICS Summit which commences today. Among key issues is expansion of the bloc, which China is said to favor. Some 22 countries wish to join - including Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Mexico.
Various officials will be attending the gathering as observers, according to South Africa. They include UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. More than 30 African heads of state and government are also expected to participate.
Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his first appearance - but virtually - at the BRICS Summit business forum. With an ICC arrest warrant connected to his war crimes in Ukraine hanging over him, he’s stayed in Moscow. It clearly shows a more isolated and fearful leader. In the very first lines of his speech, Putin attacked unnamed countries for “illegal freezing of assets.”
In the same speech, Putin said Russia would rejoin the Black Sea Grain Initiative “only if all obligations to the Russian side are truly fulfilled.” Demanding sanctions relief & release of Russian fertiliser stuck in EU ports, it sounds like the deal won’t be resumed with the participation of Moscow
On the grain deal itself, Putin falsely claimed that the majority of exported grain went to “high and upper middle class countries, including the EU.” (In fact, the UN says that, of the 32.9-million metric tonnes exported, 57 percent - or 19-million tonnes - went to developing countries.
Leaders of the BRICS nations will focus on ways to reduce dependence on the US dollar when they meet starting Tuesday, South African Deputy President Paul Mashatile said. Meanwhile, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is pushing for BRICS expansion, wants the bloc to eventually form its own joint currency and has suggested the bloc be involved in Russia-Ukraine diplomacy - Bloomberg
At the BRICS Summit, the only two billion population countries are here: China and India. The next member of this club is expected to come from the African continent - and that’s Nigeria. Over the next three decades, the population of Nigeria is expected to soar from 216 million in 2022 to 375 million, the U.N. says
Africa trades more with the outside world than it does with itself. Intra-African trade is only at 18 percent. A big reason for this is the cost and complexity of conducting trade in the US dollar. Some 42 different currencies are used on the continent, and for two countries to conduct bilateral trade, they have to use a third currency. “When Kenya trades with Djibouti why is the dollar involved,” asked one panelist at the BRICS Business Forum on Tusday. That’s starting to change.
Power outages and painfully slow internet are greeting visitors to the BRICS Summit. While so-called “load shedding” has been a fact of daily life for quite some time in the country, it was only earlier this month that two undersea cables were cut causing major slowdowns for internet users. Journalists at the BRICS media center are dealing with download speeds of under 4 megabites per second and at some premium locations around the city the internet is out for several hours at a time.
As the BRICS summit was about to get underway in Africa, who shows up on the continent saying he here to make Russia great again? A video purportedly shows none other than Wagner chief Yevgeni Prigozhin in the turbulent Sahel region, where the mercenary group is accused of fomenting unrest while extracting blood resources. There’s also an irony that his buddy Vladimir Putin is cloistered in the Kremlin while Prigozhin roams freely in his private jet
A flagship Russian long-range bomber has been destroyed in a Ukrainian drone strike. Images posted on social media and analysed by BBC Verify show a Tupolev Tu-22 on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase, south of St Petersburg. The Tu-22 can travel at twice the speed of sound and has been used extensively by Russia to attack cities in Ukraine, the BBC reported
In all, in a series of attacks over the past two days, agents cooperating with Ukrainian military intelligence have destroyed or damaged five Russian aircraft, including strategic bombers used to strike Ukraine, New Voice reported, citing unnamed sources in Ukrainian military intelligence.
Ukrainian drones appear in Moscow for the fifth day in a row. Direct damage is minimal but the daily shutdowns of Moscow airports and flight disruptions are starting to take a toll. Ukrainian airports closed in February 2022, and Ukraine may be seeking some reciprocity here.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock defended Ukraine’s right to strike targets on Russian soil, saying that Kyiv acts within international law, Anadolu news agency reported. “Russia has attacked Ukraine, and therefore Ukraine has a right enshrined in the UN Charter to defend its country, to defend its people,” Baerbock was quoted as saying. “Russia is bombing civilian targets in Ukraine relentlessly, targeting grain silos, hospitals, and churches. Ukraine is defending itself within the framework of international law.”
A source in the general staff told a reporter that Ukraine has received just 60 Leopard tanks, despite the promise of hundreds. Demining vehicles are particularly scarce. “We don’t have the resources to do the frontal attacks that the West is imploring us to do.”
Ukraine is considering using its newly-tested wartime Black Sea export corridor for grain shipments after the first successful evacuation of a vessel along the route last week, a senior agricultural official said on Monday. Russia has blockaded Ukrainian ports since it invaded its neighbour in February 2022, and threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets after pulling out of a U.N.-backed safe-passage deal for Black Sea grain exports last month. In response, Ukraine announced a "humanitarian corridor" hugging the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria. A Hong Kong-flagged container ship stuck in Odesa port since the invasion travelled the route last week without being fired upon. "Only one commercial vessel has passed through so far, (and this) has shown readiness to move by alternative routes," said Denys Marchuk, deputy head of the Agrarian Council. "Further, there should be a movement of potentially 7-8 more ships... then perhaps in the future these alternative routes will become a corridor for the movement of ships that are travelling with cargoes of grain and oilseeds," he said. Britain's Financial Times newspaper said Kyiv was finalising a scheme with global insurers to cover grain ships travelling to and from its Black Sea ports, citing Ukrainian Deputy Economy Minister Oleksandr Gryban - Reuters