GLOBAL IMPACTS OF WAR IN UKRAINE Job platform for Ukrainian refugees and launch: Two Berlin-based Ukrainian entrepreneurs, Ivan Kychatyi and Nikita Overchyk, have launched UAtalents where employers can advertise openings to people from Ukraine who have lost their jobs due to the war. The platform has started with tech jobs and is expanding from there. INSTITUTIONS EU MESHES ITS OWN SUMMIT WITH NATO: Whatever happens while Biden is in Brussels, it will happen via a new type of inter-institutional cooperation. Six EU countries are not in NATO (Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden) and not all NATO members are in the EU (U.K., Norway, Iceland, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro). We've seen NATO leadership join EU summits before, but not with this intense level of cooperation, which will be needed to ensure additional weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and that Europe can get the energy it needs without relying on Russia. EU's new strategic culture: "Almost overnight, we have seen the birth of a new strategic culture. This culture has a few elements: it is holistic, seeing the security elements of economic, media, trade and cultural policy. It is European — we no longer shy away from developing joint capabilities. It is well-funded, backed with serious investments both public and private," said Luukas Ilves, Estonia's chief information officer, exiting a digital minister's meeting last week. G-20: CHINA TRIES TO KEEP UKRAINE OFF AGENDA U.N. — WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL? Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a fair point — the post-World War II security architecture was designed to stop exactly what we're seeing unfold in Ukraine, and it has failed. So is it time to expel Russia? Moscow was expelled from the Council of Europe last week, while the U.S.S.R. was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland in 1939. United Nations Resolution 377 (also known as the Uniting for Peace resolution of 1950) allows the General Assembly to assert its right to discuss security matters when a veto is used to prevent the Security Council from performing its functions. Why the U.N. can't send peacekeepers to Ukraine: Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová has called for the U.N. to step in with peacekeepers . Only the Security Council can deploy peacekeeping missions, per Farhan Aziz Haq, deputy spokesperson for the U.N. secretary general. ENERGY Oilfield servicing firms leave Russia: Russia will eventually struggle to service its oil field equipment without the on-site expertise of the four biggest international firms: Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Weatherford International. An emergency synchronization of the Ukrainian and Moldovan power grids with the rest of Europe has been completed. Germany clinches Qatar energy deal to reduce dependence on Russia. Belgium latest to extend nuclear power: On Friday, the country said it would delay plans to abolish nuclear energy due to the Ukraine crisis, after a mammoth cabinet session. The operating lives of the country's two nuclear reactors will be extended another decade, until 2035. Sri Lanka's fuel crisis saw two men die waiting in line. The men, in their seventies, died while they waited for petrol and kerosene oil in two different parts of the country, Reuters reported. Spain — 150,000 protest rising prices . Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is pushing for an EU-wide response to rising prices and wants more intervention in the wholesale energy market to ensure that. DEMOCRACY TAIWAN — INSPIRED BY UKRAINE, AND UNDER-PREPARED: Taiwan has conscription, but only 169,000 active-duty military personnel. Unlike Russia, China won't be stuck with decades-old equipment or troops it can't resupply in the event of a Taiwan invasion, and that has officials worried. INTERVIEW — LITHUANIA'S MANTAS ADOMĖNAS Adomėnas, Lithuania's vice foreign minister, is the architect of Lithuania's push-back against China, including its permission for Taiwan to open a de-facto embassy in Vilnius. He told Global Insider that Lithuania's government knew what it was walking into when it recognized Taiwan, and while the country may have looked like a brave but lonely outlier at the time, "now the map is shifting … the war in Ukraine and China's role in it have shown to the general public and within political elites that we are right in having this apprehension about the global role that China is playing." Focus on China and Russia together: Adomėnas insisted the West must not drop its focus on China as it deals with Russia's war in Ukraine. "All democratic countries tend to be subject to attention deficit disorder: they cannot concentrate on two things at once, and they cannot concentrate for a long time. So with the crisis in Ukraine, the issue of China is receding and that there is a tendency to normalize them to think that oh, well, at least they're not waging active wars. But in the long term, our free world is threatened more by the sort of the strategies that China is implementing than by this very obnoxious posturing by Russia." Turning temporary sanctions into a new culture: "We have an opportunity now to create immunity, to create an ecosystem which is immune to serving Russian oligarchs, to the united front of China." He said Beijing uses "trade and value creation chains as weapons of political blackmail" which only work when the West is divided. "We have to install a new culture relating to the financial and ideological interests coming from authoritarian societies." Blame Schröder : "The present war would not have happened if [former German Chancellor] Gerhard Schröder had not betrayed the interests of the free world for his personal financial gain." PEOPLE VS. PLANET EU — delay to major agriculture policy: The European Commission is considering delaying key agricultural proposals (which eat up around one-third of the bloc's budget) that were due to be unveiled this week. EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski and French President Macron are pushing for a reassessment of the EU's green farming goals in light of Russia's war. Macron said the EU's sustainability plan was based on a "pre-Ukraine war world." A decision by President Ursula von der Leyen is expected as early as today. Brazil — Jair Bolsonaro sees war opportunity to seize control of indigenous land: Decades of debate between agriculture producers and environmentalists has tempered some Amazon deforestation. But the goalposts may be about to move thanks to Russia's war, which will make the world more dependent on Brazilian food commodities. UKRAINE PERSPECTIVES Liz Truss interview: Britain's foreign secretary told the Times of London that "the West focused on cheap goods at the expense of freedom and security," and that she's reversing that course. Israeli lawmakers tear into Zelenskyy for Holocaust comparisons in Knesset speech. The Ukrainian president, who is Jewish, didn't get the reaction he's been getting elsewhere around the world for his graphic metaphors. What it's like inside Biden's Ukraine war room: Anna Makanju was the Russia director for the National Security Council, and later Joe Biden's adviser on Russia, Ukraine and NATO (when he was veep). AUSTRALIA — NATIONAL ELECTION EXPECTED MAY 14: Read more about the tough road ahead for Prime Minister Scott Morrison, from Niki Savva, a former conservative adviser and political historian Chris Wallace. Morrison's ruling conservative Liberal party lost the state of South Australia in an election Saturday. The state's new premier is Labor's Peter Malinauskas — who until now has been better known to Australians for his six-pack than his policies.
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