9. 6. 2022

             Joke of the week

• Policy & Research

1. The food war

2. Airstrikes on Kyiv

• U.S. Developments

1. New US $700 million drawdown military assistance for Ukraine

2. American spy agencies review their misses on Ukraine, Russia

• Kremlin’s Current Narrative

1. Putin: short-sighted policy of European countries led to the energy crisis.

2. Medvedev claims that Europeans will have to scour the world in search of diesel

• Taipei news

The war in Ukraine will soon trigger a global food crisis because Russian military forces have blockaded Ukrainian Black Sea ports, blocking most grain exports. The resulting market volatility, as United Nations World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley stated, will not only severely damage the Ukrainian economy but also affect 400 million people, and right now the global priority should be to ensure food security and prevent its tragic consequences by opening the port of Odesa and restarting exports. So far, Russian armed forces have either destroyed grain supplies in occupied areas or stolen them to transport them to Russia, or looked for profitable buyers.

At the same time, the United Nations is trying to negotiate to reopen ports through a trade corridor, but the Kremlin is trying to flip the table in its favour by demanding sanctions relief against Russia in return. Since the invasion, Russia has held the Black Sea hostage by mining its waters and striking at least ten commercial ships in transit, and sinking one Estonian ship, so opening food and humanitarian corridor to the port of Odesa with the cooperation of the Kremlin and Turkey, which would ensure its safe passage through the straits on the Mediterranean Sea, seems to require a trust in the Russian authorities that is difficult to accept, especially for Ukrainians after assurances to the West that they had no intention of invading the country in February.

Russian armed forces fired missiles at the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Sunday, five weeks after the last attack, claiming to have targeted European-supplied T-72 tanks. The attack was followed by a direct threat from Putin of military escalation to new targets not previously hit if the West continues to supply Ukraine with weapons, pointing the finger at the U.S. approved provision of $700 million in security assistance to Ukraine, promising longer-range rockets that could hit Russian territory.

However, Ukrainian authorities deny that such tanks were hit by the rockets, claiming that the target was train carriages used to transport grain. The motive for the attack thus appears to be to cut supply lines to Ukraine's east, where the conflict has concentrated over the past month and where over the weekend Ukrainian forces regained victorious momentum by recapturing part of Sievierodonetsk territory, according to the local governor. In the current situation, Ukraine considers Western-supplied weapons such as the "Himars truck-mounted multiple-launch missile systems" to be crucial in what has turned into an artillery war in the Donbas to prevent further Russian attacks in the attempt to expand inland.

The Biden administration issued a new package of military assistance for Ukraine. This is the eleventh drawdown of arms and equipment from the US Department of Defense inventories for Ukraine's defence, valued at up to $ 700 million.

The package of military aid includes advanced rocket-launcher systems, radar systems, Javelin missiles, anti-armour weapons, helicopters, tactical vehicles, and various forms of ammunition. In particular, the list comprises four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, five counter-artillery radars, two air-surveillance radars, 1,000 Javelins and 50 Command Launch Units, 6,000 anti-armour weapons, 15,000 rounds of 155mm artillery, four Mi-17 helicopters, 15 tactical vehicles, spare parts and vehicles.

The new military aid was conditioned for Ukraine on the direct assurances from the Ukrainian leaders that they would not use the weapons against the targets within Russian territory. As Joe Biden stated, the military assistance for Ukraine does not intend to prolong the war or to encourage Ukraine to strike beyond its borders, but to inflict pain on Russia. In response, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov assessed the package as "extremely negative" as it increases the risks of a direct confrontation.

The US intelligence services have begun a review of how they judge the will and ability of foreign governments to fight. The review aims at analyzing what the intelligence services got wrong beforehand-especially after their mistakes in judging Afghanistan last year. The Senate Intelligence Committee sent a classified letter last month to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence asking about how intelligence services assessed both Ukraine and Afghanistan. As for Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, says the council is reviewing how the agencies evaluate both “will to fight” and “capacity to fight”.

According to the US intelligence services, the “will to fight” refers to the readiness of the Ukrainian government to fight in the war and not to flee the country, while the “capacity of the fight” refers to the ability such as military equipment and training that makes the Ukrainian military capable of resisting Russia properly.

Overall, the officials have identified some errors. On the one hand, the US intelligence services overestimated the capacity of Russia to gain supremacy in the war. The forecast of the swift Russian victory by the US failed. Besides, Russia did not use chemical and biological weapons as the US publicly warned. On the other hand, the US intelligence services underestimated Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s will to fight. Despite the prediction that Zelenskyy would flee the country as he had never been tested to the crisis of such a level, he received worldwide acclaim for refusing to flee Ukraine.

In the first interview during the Russian military aggression in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin told "I personally believe that many political forces both in the States and in Europe have begun to speculate on the natural anxiety of the inhabitants of the planet for the state of the climate, for climate change, and have begun to promote this "green agenda", including in the energy sector."

To begin with, it is worth mentioning the energy crisis has begun due to epidemical but not political issues. Forbes staff Christopher Helman reports “Trying to bounce back from Covid, the world has run headlong into an energy crisis.”

Vladimir Putin is trying to use the energy crisis factor to demonstrate to the world community that Western countries do not care about the prosperity of their population and follow some vague trends in their energy policy. Russia criticises the environment-oriented approach in energy policy to promote fossil fuels dependence, where Russia is one of the biggest producer and supply countries. The Kremlin found its interest not in taking measures to reduce its environmental footprint or switching to renewables but in increasing the rates of export.

Medvedev published a commentary on the sixth package of European sanctions against Russia: Europeans "will have to scour the world in search of raw materials of the same quality", while they will face a shortage of certain types of fuel, such as diesel. Tass reports Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who said “Against the background of the introduction of a phased embargo on Russian oil, European countries will face a shortage of certain types of fuel, including diesel.”

Diesel demand in the European Union in 2020 consists of 275.2 million tonnes per year according to the statistical report FuelsEurope. European countries import around 25.5 million tonnes per year of diesel from Russia, which is almost 10% of general diesel consumption. The largest importers of diesel, Germany and the UK, both imported less than usual, however, the export of diesel from India to the European Union doubled this year, informs Argus. So, the European Union is ready to lose Russian diesel imports with the prospect of an alternative diesel supply and a decrease in general diesel consumption.

A delegation of Slovak officials is currently visiting Taiwan, and its primary aim is to facilitate the deepening of economic relations between Taipei and Bratislava. Led by Deputy Speaker of the Slovak National Council Milan Laurenčík, the six-day visit consists of meetings with high-level Taiwanese politicians, including President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier Su Tseng-Chang (蘇貞昌). The ongoing trip has already marked new contributions to the institutionalization of relations between Taiwan and Slovakia. The first among the European Union member states, Slovak officials witnessed the June 8 signing of an arrangement on judicial cooperation in civil and commercial matters with Taiwan, which compliments the deal on legal cooperation in criminal matters the two countries inked last year. On June 9, the delegates partook in the inauguration ceremony of the Taiwan-Slovakia Interparliamentary Amity Association. Amid its precarious geopolitical status, Taiwan has been able to effectively use parliamentary diplomacy as a productive tool for expanding its international space.

The Slovak delegation also aims to promote cooperation at the sub-national level. Among the Slovak officials visiting Taiwan are Juraj Droba, President of the Bratislava Self-Governing Region and Juraj Říha, Mayor of Malacky City. Droba is expected to meet with the mayor of Kaohsiung Chen Chi-Mai (陳其邁) on June 10 to sign a partnership agreement between his region and the southern Taiwanese city. The agreement will build upon the existing ties between Kaohsiung and Bratislava. In 2020, Chen’s mayoral administration donated 300 thousand face masks to the Bratislava region to support COVID-19 relief efforts. The Kaohsiung-based National Sun Yat-sen University also operates a special scholarship for Slovak doctoral students in STEM. Before the visit, Slovakia has been a regional outlier in subnational diplomatic engagements with Taiwan as the two countries currently do not have any formalized agreements; meanwhile, there are three sister city pairs between Taiwan and Poland, and one each between Taiwan and Czechia, Hungary, and Lithuania.

After a fourteen-year hiatus, the Kuomintang (KMT; the Chinese Nationalist Party) marked its return to Washington, DC as party chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) officially unveiled the plaque at KMT’s representative office in the American capital. The KMT is currently Taiwan’s largest opposition party. The new mission, headed by the chief of the KMT's international affairs department Alexander Huang (黃介正), will work to garner support in Washington for "Taiwan, the Republic of China, and the Taiwanese people." The ruling Democratic Progressive Party opened its office in Washington, DC in 2013. Given that Taiwan continues to depend on American support in political, economic as well as military realms, the country’s political parties regularly seek to engage US-based stakeholders.