Summit per l’Ucraina; Netanyahu scioglie il gabinetto di guerra🗞️Rassegna del 18/06/2024

Israele

(New York Times) Netanyahu disbands his war cabinet after two of its members quit.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has dissolved his war cabinet, an Israeli official said Monday, after the departures of two key members prompted demands from far-right politicians for representation in the influential group.
   
• The two members, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, quit Mr. Netanyahu’s small war cabinet last week amid disagreements over the direction of the war in Gaza. The men, both former military chiefs, had been seen as voices of moderation in the body.
   
• Since their departures, discussions about the war have been driven by Mr. Netanyahu in conjunction with his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and close advisers. Dissolving the war cabinet formalizes that process. It may also defuse calls from Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners who might have hoped to fill the places of Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot. Israeli news outlets reported on Monday that Mr. Netanyahu’s move to disband the war cabinet was a direct response to that demand.
   
• “Netanyahu was hearing from very serious perspectives,” said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and analyst who worked as an aide to Mr. Netanyahu in the 1990s, citing the military careers of Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot. “Now he’s lost it. What he has now is more of an echo chamber. But it’s important to remember that Mr. Netanyahu was nevertheless always in the driver’s seat, Mr. Barak added. Dissolving the war cabinet “centralizes his power and solidifies it and makes it much more difficult for any mutiny,” he said.

(New York Times) Israeli Daytime Pause in Combat Appears to Take Hold in Gaza

• The Israeli military said on Monday that it had paused operations during daylight hours in parts of southern Gaza, as a new policy announced a day earlier appeared to take hold amid cautious hopes that it would allow more aid to reach residents of the beleaguered territory.
   
• Aid workers said they hoped that the daily pause in the Israeli offensive would remove one of several obstacles to delivering aid to areas in central and southern Gaza from Kerem Shalom, an important border crossing between Israel and Gaza. Despite the pause, aid agencies warned that other restrictions on movement, as well as lawlessness in the territory, made food distribution difficult.
   
• “Before Rafah, we had free access to Kerem Shalom basically all day, every day,” said Scott Anderson, the deputy Gaza director for UNRWA, the lead United Nations agency for Palestinians. “Now we still have access, it’s just a little more nuanced and difficult to get there,” he added, citing frequent gunfire and explosions in areas traversed by aid trucks, including three times recently when convoys recently came within roughly 100 yards of fighting. “What we had asked for was windows to access Kerem Shalom without having to coordinate so closely with the I.D.F. — to be able to come and go, and the trucks to come and go, with more freedom,” said Mr. Anderson, using the initials of the Israel Defense Forces. That led to the new Israeli policy of avoiding combat in daylight hours.

Ucraina

(Kyiv Independent) Putin names ceasefire demands, including Kyiv's complete withdrawal from four Ukrainian regions
 

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said on June 14 that Moscow would only cease fire and enter peace talks if Ukraine withdraws from the four Ukrainian regions claimed – but not fully controlled – by the Kremlin.
   
• Speaking on the eve of the global peace summit in Switzerland on June 15-16, Putin said his terms were "very simple," before saying Ukraine's troops must leave Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, and Kyiv must abandon any ambition to join NATO. The demands also include the recognition of Crimea and Sevastopol as "subjects of the Russian Federation."
   
• Russia occupies most of Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast, and substantial parts of the country's Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Regional capitals Kherson and Zaporizhzhia remain under Ukrainian control, while Luhansk and Donetsk are occupied by Russia since 2014. Moscow all controls Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.
   
• "As soon as they declare in Kyiv that they are ready for such a decision and begin a real withdrawal of troops from these regions, and also officially announce the abandonment of their plans to join NATO – on our side, immediately, literally at the same minute, an order will follow to cease fire and begin negotiations," he said. "I repeat, we will do this immediately. Naturally, we will simultaneously guarantee the unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations."

(Kyiv Independent) Ukraine’s Peace Summit is over — what were its highs and lows?

Summary

• Ukraine’s peace summit wrapped up on June 16 at the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland after two days of discussions on three major aspects of Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan: nuclear safety, food security, and prisoner swaps.
   
• At the end of the summit, a joint communique was published, stating that Ukraine’s territorial integrity has to form the basis of any peace agreement. The final communique also called for nuclear safety to be established at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and for Russia to refrain from nuclear threats. It also called for the end to attacks on Ukraine’s ports to allow for exports, and the complete exchange of civilians and prisoners.

Positive Aspects

• The peace summit included delegations from 92 countries, as well as eight organizations and an observer country. Delegations from every continent were present. While less than the 160 Ukraine invited, it’s still a broad showing of support for Kyiv.
   
• Saudi Arabia initially signaled it wouldn’t be showing up to the peace summit, also over Russia’s absence, but in the end, sent its Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud. Ukraine detractor Hungary also hinted it wasn’t sure it would go, but it too showed up in the end. It also signed the final communique, as did Russia-friendly Serbia.
   
• No other proposals were discussed at the summit besides Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan, three parts of which formed the basis for the weekend’s discussions at Burgenstock. China was reportedly quietly lobbying for its own alternative peace plan in the days leading up to the summit, according to Reuters, which spoke with 10 unnamed diplomats. Turkey was also reported to have its own version of a plan to end the war. At the summit, however, “no alternative peace plans were discussed,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters.
   
• Among those 78, all 27 European member states signed on. One celebration-worthy endorsement of the communique is Turkey, which maintained relations with both Russia and Ukraine throughout the war and sought to act as a mediator between the two.

Negative Aspects

• The countries notably absent from the list of signatories to the communique include India, Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Indonesia, Bahrain, Colombia, South Africa, Thailand, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates.
   
• Brazil, present as an observer in the list of 92 confirmed participant countries shared by the Swiss Foreign Ministry on June 14, did not sign the communique either.
   
• While Ukraine had hoped to garner support among countries of the so-called Global South with their attendance at the summit, none of the Group of 20 countries that are outside of Europe endorsed the communique.
   
• Those countries include India, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. This shows that support for Ukraine and Russia’s war is still largely split between the West and the rest of the world.

Future prospects

• Zelensky’s administration said that participants from the summit had agreed to continue working on the three points discussed in Switzerland in special groups. “We agreed to start to work in special after-summit groups on specific ideas, proposals, and developments that can restore security in various aspects,” he said.
   
• The president said that once “action plans for peace” were prepared among the groups, conversations about the second summit would begin. There were hopes the next summit’s location would be announced at the end of this conference in Burgenstock, but it’s yet unclear when and where that will take place.
   
• Saudi Arabia is rumored to be the next host. It’s also unknown if Russia will be invited to the next summit. The only hint about when came from Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis who said a follow-up summit could happen before the U.S. elections in November.

(Kyiv Independent) Ukraine's energy supplier: Ukrainians may have electricity for 6-7 hours per day in winter

• In recent months, Russia has intensified its attacks against Ukraine's critical infrastructure in a renewed assault against the country's energy grid. As a result of the attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine began implementing rolling blackouts on May 15. Ukrainians will face lengthy, daily interruptions in electricity until the end of July due to scheduled repairs at nuclear power plants, according to Ukrenergo.
   

• Kovalenko said that it is difficult to predict the situation in winter as it is unclear what power generation capacity will be available before the beginning of the heating season. There will be an electricity deficit in winter anyway, he added. "We know that the winter peak (of power usage) is quite high. If generation and import capacities remain at the same level, the deficit will reach 35%," Kovalenko said. Kovalenko said this must be discussed in August to evaluate the amount of Ukraine's power import and how much domestic energy capacity could be restored.
   
• In a "worst-case" scenario in which Ukraine is unable to repair damaged energy facilities and prevent future attacks, Ukrainians could experience up to 20 hours of blackouts a day, Dmytro Sakharuk, executive director of Ukraine's largest privately-owned energy company DTEK, told the Kyiv Independent in an interview on June 9.
   
• Speaking at the Ukraine recovery conference on June 11, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian missile and drone attacks have destroyed 9 gigawatts (GW) of Ukraine's total energy capacity.
   
• The U.S. will provide Ukraine with $1.5 billion in aid to support the country's energy infrastructure, address urgent humanitarian needs, and bolster civilian security, including the protection of the border, Vice President Kamala Harris said on June 15.

(Euromaidan Press) Ukrainian forces hit 15 Russian air defense systems in Crimea over two months

• The Armed Forces of Ukraine have targeted 15 Russian air defense systems in temporarily occupied Crimea over the past two months, according to the Strategic Communications Department of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
   
• Additionally, dozens of launchers of the mentioned systems have been destroyed, along with over 15 radar stations and ten command posts. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Ukrainian military attempted to weaken Russian air defense systems before the arrival of F-16 aircraft with these strikes.
   
• Meanwhile, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russia’s strategy to intensify offensives and expand combat operations aimed at exhausting Ukrainian forces before the arrival of F-16 fighter jets. Syrskyi added that Russian forces understand that Ukraine’s air defenses will be significantly strengthened with the Western aircraft, reducing Russia’s chances of victory in the war.

Russia

(New York Times) In Need of Munitions, Putin to Visit North Korea

• President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will visit North Korea this week for a meeting with its leader, Kim Jong-un, their second in nine months, as the two countries deepen military ties to support Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine with North Korean weapons.
• Mr. Putin last visited North Korea in 2000, when he became the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit the nation.  Mr. Kim met with Mr. Putin in Russia’s Far East last September, ushering in a new era of relations between the two countries.

• The two countries announced the two-day visit on Monday. “At the invitation of the chairman of state affairs of the D.P.R.K, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin will pay a friendly state visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on June 18-19,” the Kremlin said. ​Days before Mr. Putin’s ​arrival in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, the Kremlin​ vowed to foster cooperation with North Korea “in all areas.”

Politica internazionale

Africa

(New York Times) Ramaphosa Gets Second Term in South Africa, but Coalition Is Fragile

 

• After suffering a sharp decline in support in last month’s national election, Mr. Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress, undertook feverish negotiations to form a governing coalition with rivals, inking a deal only after Friday’s parliamentary session had begun.

• The coalition deal includes the second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance — long a bitter rival of the A.N.C. — and the fifth-largest one, the Inkatha Freedom Party. Some of the 15 other parties in Parliament are also expected to join the coalition, which the A.N.C. is calling a “government of national unity.”

• The A.N.C. had governed South Africa with comfortable majorities since the end of apartheid in 1994. In that first government, led by Nelson Mandela, the A.N.C. included rival parties as a show of unity. In this year’s election, the party captured only 40 percent of the vote, so if the parties clash, the government could collapse.

• To soften the blowback during negotiations, A.N.C. leaders also sold a partnership with the Democratic Alliance in tandem with Inkatha, a party led by Black lawmakers that is popular with speakers of Zulu, the language most widely used in South African homes. 

• The notion of Inkatha’s working alongside the A.N.C. carries some symbolic significance. In the turbulent years toward the end of apartheid, fighting between supporters of the A.N.C. and Inkatha left thousands dead and threatened to derail the 1994 election.

(Guardian) ‘We need the world to wake up’: Sudan facing world’s deadliest famine in 40 years

• El Fasher, the capital of the North Darfur region and a former humanitarian hub, faces its second month under siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF is a paramilitary group that has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, when a power struggle between two rival generals, the SAF’s Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler, and the RSF’s Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, escalated into a conflict that has split the country. The civil war has already killed 14,000 people and forced 10 million to flee their homes. The UN security council adopted a UK-drafted resolution on Thursday, demanding an end to the El Fasher siege, but the fighting escalated on Friday.

• On Friday, Samantha Power, the head of the US Agency for International Development, announced $315m in new US humanitarian assistance for Sudan, but said hardly any aid was reaching isolated populations. Both sides have been accused of using control over food access as a weapon. “The really clear message here is that it is obstruction, not insufficient stocks of food, that is the driving force behind the historic and deadly levels of starvation in Sudan,” Power said.

• Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said that in a worst-case scenario, a famine in Sudan could become even more lethal than the Ethiopian famine that killed a million people between 1983 and 1985. “We’ve seen mortality projections estimating that in excess of 2.5 million people, about 15% of the population in Darfur and Kordofan – the hardest hit regions – could die by the end of September,” the ambassador said.

• While humanitarian aid has faced constant obstruction, both sides in the war continue to receive weapons, the US officials said: the SAF from Russia and Iran among others, the RSF in particular from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).