Kuwait rushes aid, abstentionist UAE works oil, US VP brandishes … probe

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KUWAIT CITY, March 10, (Agencies): A plane loaded with 33.5 tons of medical and food supplies destined for the Ukrainians flew from the Kuwaiti Abdullah Al-Mubarak Air Base on Thursday. Kuwait Red Crescent Society (KRCS) announced that the plane was flying toward Warsaw Airport in Poland, where some procedures would be taken to secure delivery of the supplies to the Ukrainian refugees. KRCS Chairman Dr. Hilal Al-Sayer said in a statement to KUNA that in line with instructions by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the aid cargo was sent from the Kuwaiti Government to the Ukrainian people, in coordination with the Kuwaiti ministries of defense and foreign affairs. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled their country during to the ongoing Russian “special operation.” A Russian airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people brought condemnation down on Moscow on Thursday, with Ukrainian and Western officials branding it a war crime, while the highest-level talks yet yielded no progress in stopping the fighting.

Emergency workers renewed efforts to get food and medical supplies into besieged cities and get traumatized civilians out. Ukrainian authorities said a child was among the dead in Wednesday’s airstrike in the vital southern port of Mariupol. Seventeen people were also wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble. Images of pregnant women covered in dust and blood dominated news reports in many countries and brought a new wave of horror over the 2-weekold war sparked by Russia’s invasion, which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, shaken the foundations of European security and driven more than 2.3 million people from Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Russian leaders that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow to the economy, causing the ruble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee – including, on Thursday, investment bank Goldman Sachs – and prices to rise sharply.

A Kuwaiti relief plane before its departure to Warsaw airport carrying 33.5 tons of medical and food aid to be delivered to Ukrainian refugees in Poland

Complicated
“You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address. “And then, it will definitely happen, you will be hated by Russian citizens – everyone whom you have been deceiving constantly, daily, for many years in a row, when they feel the consequences of your lies in their wallets, in their shrinking possibilities, in the stolen future of Russian children.” Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed such talk, saying the country has endured sanctions before. “Just as we overcame these difficulties in the previous years, we will overcome them now,” he said at a televised meeting of government officials.

He did, however, acknowledge the sanctions create “certain challenges.” Millions more have been displaced inside the country. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Thursday that about 2 million people – half the population of the capital’s metropolitan area – have left the city, which has become virtually a fortress. “Every street, every house … is being fortified,” he said. “Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.” Bombs fell on two hospitals in a city west of Kyiv on Wednesday, its mayor said.

The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the invasion began. Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days. But they have intensified the bombardment of Mariupol and other cities, trapping hundreds of thousands of people, with food and water running short. Temporary cease-fires to allow evacuations and humanitarian aid have repeatedly faltered, with Ukraine accusing Russia of continuing its bombardments. But Zelenskyy said 35,000 people managed to get out on Wednesday from several besieged towns, and more efforts were underway on Thursday in eastern and southern Ukraine – including Mariupol – as well as in the Kyiv suburbs. The Mariupol city council posted a video showing buses driving down a highway. It said a convoy bringing food and medicine was on the way despite several days of thwarted efforts to reach the city. “Everyone is working to get help to the people of Mariupol. And it will come,” said Mayor Vadym Boychenko.

Images from the city, where hundreds have died and workers hurried to bury bodies in a mass grave, have drawn condemnation from around the world. Residents have resorted to breaking into stores for food and melting snow for water. The city has been without heat for days as nighttime temperatures fall below freezing and daytime ones hover just above it. “The only thing (I want) is for this to be finished,” Volodymyr Bykovskyi said as he stood by a freshly dug trench where bodies were being buried. “I don’t know who’s guilty, who’s right, who started this. Damn them all, those people who started this!”

When the series of blasts hit the children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol, the ground shook more than a mile away. Explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying a bleeding woman with a swollen belly on a stretcher past burning and mangled cars. Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. Regional Ukrainian police official Volodymir Nikulin, standing in the ruins, called the attack “a war crime without any justification.” Britain’s Armed Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether the hospital was hit by indiscriminate fire or deliberately targeted, “it is a war crime.”

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, on a visit to Ukraine’s neighbor Poland, backed calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion, saying, “The eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities.” The United Arab Emirates said it will urge OPEC to consider boosting oil output. The announcement followed a U.S. ban on imports of Russian oil, the latest in a series of sanctions designed to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine. Oil prices have risen sharply since Russia – the world’s third-largest oil producer – invaded Ukraine late last month. “We favor production increases and will be encouraging OPEC to consider higher production levels,” UAE’s ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, said in a statement posted on his embassy’s website. He said his country believes that stability in energy markets is critical to the global economy.

The UAE is a longtime member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which last week, along with its oil-producing allies including Russia, said it was sticking to its plan to gradually increase oil production rather that opening the spigots further. The UAE was the world’s seventh- largest oil producing nation in 2020, according to U.S. Department of Energy figures published in December of last year. Oil prices surged Tuesday after President Joe Biden announced the U.S. ban on Russian oil. But the possibility of increased OPEC output helped send prices tumbling Wednesday. A barrel of U.S. crude oil dropped 11% to $110.12. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday embraced calls for an international war crimes investigation of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, citing the “atrocities” of bombing civilians, including a maternity hospital. Speaking alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda at a press conference in Warsaw, where she is demonstrating U.S. support for NATO’s eastern fl ank allies, Harris expressed outrage over the bombing Wednesday of the maternity hospital and scenes of bloodied pregnant women being evacuated, as well as other attacks on civilians. She stopped short of directly accusing Russia of having committed war crimes. “Absolutely there should be an investigation, and we should all be watching,” said Harris, noting that the United Nations has already started a process to review allegations.

“I have no question the eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities.” Harris’ visit to Poland came amid a kerfuffl e between Warsaw and Washington over a Polish proposal to send its Soviet-made fighter jets to a U.S. and NATO base in Germany so they could then go to Ukraine. Poland, in turn, would receive American F-16s. Poland had publicly fl oated the proposal without first consulting the U.S. Just as Harris arrived in Warsaw late Wednesday, the Pentagon definitively rejected the idea, saying it would run the risk of escalating the Russia-Ukraine war. At Thursday’s news conference, both Harris and Duda sought to brush aside differences on the fighter jets issue. “I want to be very clear, the United States and Poland are united in what we have done and are prepared to do to help Ukraine and the people of Ukraine, full stop,” she said. Duda for his part sidestepped questions about why Poland announced its proposal without first consulting the United States. He stressed his government’s intention was driven by a desire for “NATO as a whole to make a common decision” on the matter.

“In a nutshell we have to be a responsible member of the North Atlantic Alliance,” Duda said. Harris’ embrace for an investigation of war crimes came after the Biden administration on Wednesday warned that Russia might seek to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine as the White House rejected Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it has invaded. The White House raised the notion after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova – without evidence – accused Ukraine of running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. The International Criminal Court prosecutor announced last week he was launching an investigation that could target senior officials believed responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide amid a rising civilian death toll and widespread destruction of property during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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