Rating Ukraine's allies

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Mar 25, 2022 View in browser   By Ryan Heath Check out the weekly Global Insider podcast.| Follow Ryan on Twitter. Happening Today Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in India — on the heels of Western pressure on India to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and European Union have agreed a deal for the U.S. to deliver an extra 15 billion cubic meters of Liquified Natural Gas to the continent this year to help it kick its Russian gas habit. The deal would replace about 10 percent of the EU's Russian gas imports. Listen to European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič tell Global Insider why it's so hard for Europe to make the shift, and why it will take months. His message to American officials and companies: "We need more" LNG and "we are ready to work with you." The U.S. challenge: Its LNG export terminals are already operating at or near capacity. With more efficient use of all its facilities, this deal should allow the U.S. to overtake Australia and Qatar to become the top global LNG exporter. Listen to Global Insider Podcast UPS AND DOWNS: Ireland's ambassador to the U.S., Dan Mulhall, will become Global Distinguished Professor in Irish Studies at New York University in September. In less happy news, Mulhall and his family contracted Covid this week after Ireland's prime minister  Micheál Martin quarantined in the ambassador's residence while Covid positive. Happening Saturday: Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Israel, the West Bank, Morocco and Algeria for meetings through Wednesday. POWER MATRIX Who's all-in on Ukraine, and who's more talk than action? Global Insider mapped 35 countries on their sanctions, words, weapons and willingness to end their economic dependencies on Russia. The takeaway: Some allies and neighbors are more useful than others.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     BATTLEFRONTS Follow POLITICO's Ukraine live blog here. NATO MOVES NATO has extended the term of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for a year until Sept. 30, 2023 — avoiding a successor contest while Russia wages war in Ukraine. We brought you the scoop in Wednesday's Global Insider. And the alliance warned China not to be Russia's enabler: Read more here. Watch President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tell NATO allies Ukraine is more than good enough to join their ranks. BY THE NUMBERS  NATO estimates roughly one in 10 Russian troops are dead on Ukraine battlefields, and they've lost the same proportion of vehicles, per an alliance official. Another 25,000 are wounded, missing or imprisoned: meaning around a quarter of its forces are knocked out. More than half of Ukraine's children have been displaced since the start of the war — that's 4.3 million children in one month, per UNICEF. NATO TO DOUBLE ITS EASTERN FLANK PRESENCE: The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, complementing forces already stationed in Baltic countries and Poland, for a total of eight battlegroups running " from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea." THE END OF NEUTRALITY: POLITICO's Suzanne Lynch and Jacopo Barigazzi write that "even in Ireland, one of the European countries furthest from the fighting, policymakers are starting to revisit a strategic position rooted in the country's post-colonial historyand repeatedly reaffirmed in the century since." A recent European Commission report noted that Ireland depends heavily on neighbors and the U.S. to defend it. It's also not ready to deal with hybrid attacks. A 2021 cyberattack on the country's health system by Russian criminals and a planned exercise by the Russian navy just off the Irish coast weeks before the Ukraine invasion have highlighted Ireland's vulnerabilities as a non-aligned island nation. Denmark, meanwhile, votes June 1 whether to join the EU's common security and defense policy, but Austria is so far sticking to its neutral position: One of the reasons it attracted institutions like the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency to set up shop in Vienna. BAND OF OTHERS — CANADIANS AT WAR WITH RUSSIA: The Canadian government and military are not at war, but plenty of ordinary Canadians are. POLITICO's Andy Blatchford dug into the inner workings of a pair of foreign-fighter groups: The Georgian Legion and the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. FROM IRRITANT TO 'INDISPENSABLE ALLY' — WAR TRANSFORMS POLISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS: Rule of law concerns are now taking a backseat in bilateral relations, as President Joe Biden visits Poland as part of his campaign to save democracy writ large. "The presence of the leader of America in our country, at this difficult time, is an extremely important signal confirming strategic Polish-American relations," Poland's President Andrzej Duda said in a national address Thursday evening. In parallel, in a letter to European Commission PresidentUrsula von der Leyen, Europe's political parties argue that rule of law standards in Poland have deteriorated since the start of the Ukraine war, pointing to the suspension of Judge Anna Głowacka on Feb. 25 "for applying European law and the judgments of the European courts" and the appointment of more than 200 judges by the president. SANCTIONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION When it rains, it floods — when it comes to sanctions against Russians. Western allies rained further coordinated sanctions down upon Russian elites Thursday. Presidents Biden and von der Leyen in a joint statement described these efforts as having "strengthened and aligned their sanctions regimes" and promised greater efforts to detect sanctions evasion. This latest tranche of U.S. sanctions targets 328 members of the State Duma — Russia's chief legislative body, bringing its sanctions list to more than 600 individuals. The new targets included Herman Gref, the head of Russia's largest financial institution Sberbank and a Putin adviser since the 1990s, and 48 Russian state-owned defense enterprises. The U.K. added 65 people to its sanctions list, including Polina Kovaleva, the step-daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov , the subject of media attention for her lavish lifestyle in London which appeared to be unsupported by legitimate income, and The Wagner Group, a mercenary organization tasked with assassinating President Zelenskyy. New asks and old red lines: Transport ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland urge the EU to ban Russian and Belarusian cargo transportation by road and sea. Meanwhile, Germany's Olaf Scholz warned in a speech that Europe should not impose sanctions on Russian oil and gas because it could cause massive job losses and a Europe-wide recession. ECONOMY — RUSSIA FACES PUTIN ERA GROWTH WIPEOUT: Russia economic growth has been so anemic and narrowly based that the Institute of International Finance estimates that 15 years of economic growth will be wiped out in the 2022/23 war and sanction-induced Russian recession. That risk, and a need to split European allies, explain why Putin announced that if you want Russian oil and gas you now need to pay in rubles. Economist Adam Posen explained: "Rubles for oil is simply a gambit by Putin ahead of EUCO (European Council summit) with Biden to split the alliance. If Germany and Italy play along, the sanctions alliance erodes greatly. If Germany and Italy (are pressured to) decline, later on the economic costs of an oil embargo get resented when Putin offered an out." GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS TIME FOR A NEW FOOD STRATEGY  Food donations to Ukraine and other food insecure countries are rolling in. But the donations are tactical responses to a situation that demands new strategic input. War in Ukraine, which is compounding a series of food crises catalyzed by Covid and climate change, will likely lead to starvation later in 2022, a series of economists, trade experts, food system analysts and philanthropists told Global Insider. One clear pressure point: Wheat imports account for about 90 percent of Africa's $4 billion trade with Russia and nearly half of the continent's $4.5 billion trade with Ukraine, according to African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley told POLITICO to expect "famine, destabilization and mass migration" if European nations don't lend financial support to less wealthy nations in northern Africa and the Middle East. Beasley said WFP has an $8 billion shortfall for its 2022 needs. Germany's Scholz committed an extra $473 million to the WFP on Thursday. To put Germany's donation in perspective: That's roughly how much Russian oil and gas purchases the country buys each week. Beyond donations, some of the ways to avoid starvation scenarios: — Prioritize fertilizers and wheat exports from Russia over oil and gas. If little can or should leave Russia, let it be food-related. Russia also needs food imports: It has banned grain exports even to its allied neighbors through Aug. 31 to guarantee its own food supply. — Peace and air cover to allow planting and harvesting: Ukraine's spring wheat needs to be planted in April and May, but its planted fields are set to halve. Ukrainians need fertilizer imports to replace Russian fertilizer. Most of all they need peace, and if not peace, air cover. Ukraine will also struggle to harvest its winter wheat, a particularly harsh contrast with its 2021 record crop. — Rich countries need to incentivize farmers to grow food rather than other crops such as cotton. Leaving this to market forces in major producers such as the U.S. and Brazil may mean the world ends up with too many clothes and not enough food. Dead people can't wear clothes. The Rockefeller Foundation launched a new strategy Thursday to "help increase the supply of good, nourishing food and reimagine our food systems to make them more resilient for the future," per Raj Shah, the foundation's president. UNITED NATIONS — HOW TO BRING TAIWAN IN FROM THE COLD: The German Marshall Fund has a new report on pressure tactics from China at the U.N., in which diplomats have pushed to have Taiwan continuouslylabeled as "Taiwan, province of China" in official documents. The authors discovered cases of Beijing coercing U.S.-based think tanks to alter the language on their websites and argue why excluding Taiwan from U.N. processes has no legal basis. UNITED NATIONS — WORLD DEBATES SEABED REGULATIONS, AMERICA ON SIDELINES: The International Seabed Authority is set to debate mining regulations for minerals like copper, manganese, cobalt and nickel beneath international waters that make up about 54 percent of the world's oceans. But because the U.S. has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, it doesn't get to vote in the debate, Jordan Wolman explains. TECH — EU NEGOTIATORS SEAL DEAL ON THEIR NEW DIGITAL REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: The goal of the EU's Digital Markets Act is to rein in abusive practices in the digital economy. Who is covered by the new rules? Platforms with a market capitalization of $85 billion or turnover in the European Economic Area of more than $8 billion, and gatekeeper services with more than 45 million monthly end-users in the EU or 10,000 annual business users. In other words, American tech giants such as Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon are all affected, along with accommodation platform Booking and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Connected TVs are an example of a product/service that will not be affected by the rules. Fines: The European Commission is now empowered to impose fines of up to 10 percent of total worldwide turnover for violations of the rules and 20 percent in case of repeated infringements. What they said: Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager uses a "fairness" mantra to explain the rules. "This regulation, together with strong competition law enforcement, will bring fairer conditions to consumers and businesses for many digital services across the EU," she said. While an Apple spokesperson voiced security concerns: "We remain concerned that some provisions of the Digital Markets Act will create unnecessary privacy and security vulnerabilities for our users." The EU executive now needs to staff a team to enforce the rules, which will come into effect later in 2022 once the team is ready. CHINA — AUSTRALIAN PM TURNED DOWN MEETING WITH AMBASSADOR: The meeting would have been the most senior bilateral discussion in several years between Canberra and Beijing. GLOBETROTTERS RIP, MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Former Secretary of State Albright, who died at 84 on Wednesday, was remembered around the world as a trailblazer who rose from a refugee childhood t o the world's power circles as a fierce advocate for peace and freedom. KLEPTOWATCH  POLITICO's Joseph Gedeon tracked all the impounded superyachts belonging to wealthy Russians. On Monday, we'll be ready to show you all the superyachts still roaming free and where they are.   DON'T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO's new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     BRAIN FOOD SHORT READ: Michael Schaffer decodes the differences between Washington, D.C.'s private schools, after their operation became a source of tension in the Supreme Court Senate confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson. "Washington is the sort of place where, in a certain sector of society, people care about private schools: not what they do, but what they mean." LONG READ: Cleveland's deliberate act of kindness. Kathy Gilsinan on what happens when a city tries to cure a country's poisoned politics with an app. Thanks to editor John Yearwood, producer Hannah Farrow, Joseph Gedeon and all the POLITICO reporters working across eight countries who are reporting on the Russian war in Ukraine.   Follow us on Twitter Ryan Heath @PoliticoRyan   Follow us

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