BUCHA, Ukraine, April 12 (Reuters) – French forensic experts have arrived in Bucha near Kyiv to help Ukraine authorities establish what happened in the town where hundreds of bodies have been discovered since Russian forces withdrew.
Ukraine says the people were killed by Russian forces during their occupation of the area. Reuters has not been able to verify the number of people found dead in Bucha or the circumstances of their deaths. read more
The discovery of so many slain civilians in Bucha after the Russian withdrawal has provoked a global outcry. Moscow has denied responsibility and dismissed allegations its troops committed war crimes as fake news.
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As the group from the French Gendarmerie’s forensic science department looked on, workers in hazmat suits dug earth from a shallow grave and lifted out a heavy mass wrapped in an orange blanket.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said, citing witnesses, that the burnt body parts inside were those of a woman and her two children.
Venediktova said over the next couple of weeks the French experts would help the Ukrainian authorities establish what happened to the people in Bucha.
“We have now a lot of jobs unfortunately with war crimes,” Venediktova said at the churchyard site, where locals hastily buried people who died during the town’s occupation.
“When you see dead bodies here, from the other side, from the Russian Federation, they say it is all fake, all this is our theatre,” Venediktova said.
Venediktova said the international experts would be able to see the situation for themselves. “They can see everything, they can see the situation here: real graves, real dead bodies, real bomb attacks. That’s why for us this moment is very important.”
Moscow, which has repeatedly denied targeting civilians since its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, has called allegations that Russian forces executed civilians in Bucha while they occupied the town a “monstrous forgery” aimed at denigrating the Russian army.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that images and footage of dead bodies strewn across the Ukrainian town of Bucha were fake.
Speaking at a televised news conference Putin compared Ukrainian allegations that Russian servicemen executed civilians in Bucha to what he said was the staging by the West of a chemical weapons attack in Syria aimed at incriminating Bashar al-Assad.
“It’s the same kind of fake in Bucha,” Putin said. read more
On Monday, the French authorities said the team, which includes experts on ballistics, explosives, and rapid DNA testing, would also be able to contribute what they find to an International Criminal Court investigation.
Local priest Andriy Halavin said their work would help prove to the world what happened to the people of Bucha, including those recently unearthed in his churchyard.
“They didn’t just die from explosions, by chance, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they were deliberately shot,” Halavin said.
“Some were in cars, driving, and they were shot. Some were walking on the street and they were shot.”
“It’s very important that the whole world sees the truth because Russian propaganda always tells stories and lies.”
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Editing by Jane Merriman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Sri Lanka – In 1996, 14-year-old Dewi Chandrika Bruins travelled with her family to Sri Lanka, where in an airy school room in the town of Avissawella she met a thin, shy woman.
This woman, a social worker told the teenager, is the woman who gave birth to you.
For Bruins, who had been adopted by a Dutch couple when she was three months old, this meeting should have been the crescendo of her search for her roots. It was, however, the start of an unravelling.
The encounter felt “strange”, and the woman, Bruins recalls, appeared distant, scared even. At the end of the meeting, the social worker offered no contact information for her birth mother, and no way to stay in touch. All she was given was the lady’s photo.
“They told me she moved, and she didn’t want to leave her address with me,” says Bruins, now 39 and a psychologist in the Netherlands. “So it was, again, a very big rejection.”
As a teenager, she tried to deal with the curdling pain, the sense of loss. Then in 2011, as a 29-year-old, she was spurred to gather up the skeins of her search again. This time, she knew exactly who to contact: Andrew Silva.
From her sister, Bruins had heard about Silva, a Sri Lankan tourist taxi driver with a formidable reputation as a searcher in the Dutch adoption community.
“I heard he was experienced,” says Bruins, “that he was both realistic and reliable.” So she sent him an email.
‘This is not a business’
It is a humid January evening, and Andrew Silva is locking up his boxy Nissan van to settle down for dinner. He whips out two squat brown-paper notebooks; scrawled on each in maroon letters are the words “Mothers” and “Childrens”. As the headings suggest, the books contain information on Sri Lankan mothers who placed children for adoption and want to find them (200-plus entries), or children who were adopted and are looking for their birth families (1,000-plus entries).
Andrew Silva has two books with the details of the birth mothers and adopted children he has helped reunite [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
Clad in cargo shorts and a pink T-shirt, his analogue phone and smartphone in front of him, Silva constantly fields calls. Someone wants to know if the DNA test results are back yet; someone else asks when he was going to meet them. His phones gurgle with notifications; messages from Italy and Switzerland, desperate adoptees seeking updates.
Since 2002, Silva, a 56-year-old father of two and cab driver in the coastal city of Negombo, has been connecting international adoptees to their birth mothers in the island nation.
Over two decades, he estimates he has helped reunite about 175 individuals who were adopted and their families. This is pro bono – he continues to work his day job, ferrying tourists across the country from the ruins of Sigiriya to the tea estates of Kandy and the beaches of the south. “This is not a business. This is one of the best things to help human beings,” says Silva. He only asks to be reimbursed his fuel costs if he is able to find their families.
Silva has no background in genealogy, bureaucracy or detective work. He is simply a man with a van, a network and an investigative zeal. “I can’t promise. If you say, ‘Andrew, help me find my biological mother’, I can’t say, ‘OK, I will [be able to] do it,’” he says. “But I say, ‘I will try.’”
It is not easy. From the 1970s onwards, at least 11,000 children in Sri Lanka were adopted by white Western couples often in dubious circumstances, with poor women exploited, and babies even sold. The Netherlands, Sweden and France were the top three receiving countries from Sri Lanka, according to Peter Selman, a visiting fellow at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and chair of the Network for Intercountry Adoption. According to his data, Sri Lanka went from being tenth in the 1970s to fifth in the 1980s as an origin country for international adoption.
As the scale of the wrongdoing was exposed, particularly in the wake of a 2017 Dutch documentary programme, the Sri Lankan government announced an investigation. Shorn of answers and sundered from their roots, grown-up adoptees have been increasingly returning to Sri Lanka in the past two decades.
“As adopted people, we want to know our stories,” says Helene Iresha Deschamps, 29, a French lawyer in Lyon. “There are so many questions.”
But poor record-keeping and the desire to cover up misdeeds have often stymied their searches, especially in a country where they do not know the language or even where to start.
Celine Breysse’s recent memoir, Good Morning Nilanthi, makes mention of some of her experiences finding her birth mother [Courtesy of Celine Breysse]
For instance, Celine Breysse found conflicting information in the paperwork handed to her French parents in 1983. In 2009, when she went to Sri Lanka, the hospital that is listed on her birth certificate claimed to have burned its files. Silva tracked down the village of Breysse’s birth mother after finding the woman’s name in hospital records that were not mentioned in the adoption papers. It later turned out that the woman who had handed Breysse over in court was an “acting mother” – she had completed the formalities, but not actually given birth to her.
“Andrew was able to gain access to institutions that had lied to me for years,” says Breysse, 39, whose recent memoir, Good Morning Nilanthi, refers to some of these experiences. “Alone I would not have succeeded.”
The first case
Silva was raised in Negombo, a touristy beach town about 40km (25 miles) from the country’s capital, Colombo. Born Catholic, but not especially religious, he grew up a football fanatic in a cricket-mad nation.
In “little Rome”, as the town is called for its richness of churches, Silva had few plans other than playing as goalie for his beloved Jupiter football team and driving his taxi.
But life took a turn around 2002 when a Dutch tourist he knew through football introduced him to a Dutch family who wanted to do a tour. The family was also hoping to find their daughter’s birth mother but had run up against some hurdles. An intermediary claimed they could help, but only if they paid them.
Aggrieved, the family turned to Silva, their driver for the trip: would he be able to tackle an additional request?
Silva went through the paperwork at hand, puzzled at first by the enigmatic language. Through a process of trial and error, and following curious clues about “the houses near the river”, Silva hit upon the right person.
“I was happy after that,” he says. He did not expect that one success would launch a cottage industry. But the word of his breakthrough spread abroad and set off a ripple effect of requests.
Andrew when he was younger [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
‘This is my mother’s name’
By the time Silva received the email from Bruins in 2011, he was depressingly familiar with the unscrupulous practices rife through the 1980s: agents who coerced mothers into giving up children; nurses, lawyers and church officials who brokered shady agreements; government authorities who looked the other way.
With Bruins’s photo of the pink-sari-clad woman she was introduced to as her birth mother, Silva pounded the pavements and knocked on doors, asking around Avissawella where Bruins recalled having the meeting. But nothing worked and the search stagnated.
Then in 2017, Bruins reached out to him again, spurred on after watching a television documentary on adoption frauds. Tapping into his network of media contacts Silva was able to place a story in a local Sinhala newspaper on Bruins and her futile quest. The story mentioned the birth mother’s name, along with a photo from 1996.
For days, nothing happened. As Silva tells it, some weeks later, he received a call. The caller said she knew the name of the woman mentioned.
“She said, this is my mother’s name but this is not her photo,” Silva recounts. “But we know my mother [placed] a child for adoption.” The caller said they didn’t subscribe to this paper regularly, but they chanced upon the frayed pages while using old newspapers to protect their furniture during home renovations. She had accidentally read the story.
Even though the name and the photo did not match, it felt like the case had been cracked open.
Andrew on a visit to a family in search of a son who was placed for adoption [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
Cautiously optimistic, Silva went to meet the family in a village near Negombo. He was instantly struck by the older woman’s resemblance to Bruins. Retrieving a DNA kit from his van, Silva pulled out a stick and swished the inside of the woman’s mouth for a sample.
‘One day you can find your mother’
Tourism has been erratic since the COVID pandemic struck, decimating a major plank of Sri Lanka’s economy. But before that, Silva did roughly two tours a month. Traversing the expanses of his homeland also gives him a chance to meet families in remote crannies, cultivate contacts in hospitals and government offices, and pursue leads everywhere.
“I can’t say I know all the places. Still, I am learning something new every day,” he says.
In recent years, Silva has been coordinating with people like Breysse who are based abroad and active in online adoption communities.
Frenchwoman Helene Deschamps describes watching Silva at work the first time she visited. He even joked to her at one point, that “searching for hotels and restaurants was not as interesting as searching to reunite mothers and children”.
Silva’s Nissan, with “big fan of the world” emblazoned across, is a veritable storage room; DNA kits lie in the boot, along with large name cards and pamphlets. In another compartment he has stashed stacks of photos in polythene bags; photos of brown mothers and white mothers, passport photos, baby photos, holiday photos.
Andrew goes through photos from his collection that he keeps in his taxi [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
He has a typically restrained answer on the nuts and bolts of his work. “I think every case is difficult; when I [solve it] then I say, this is easy!”
Part of the work involves sussing out frauds and insisting on a DNA test before an adoptee plans a visit; or undertaking new searches for those who doubt the families they found years ago.
The word “lottery” comes up – the vagaries of fortune determine who will find their birth mother today, next year, ever. Silva buys a national lottery ticket for 20 Sri Lankan rupees ($0.07 at the current rate) almost daily himself. He knows the feeling of chance wins – on occasion he has won more than 10,000 rupees ($36).
When adoptees feel frustrated, on the edge of giving up, Silva does not. “I say, one day you can find your mother.”
‘They can give her a nice life’
One January morning, Silva is on another search. He parks his Nissan and enters an unpainted house in the coastal town of Marawila. A woman waits inside.
Grecilda Lurds Fernando Malwaththage has been waiting for more than 35 years.
Malwaththage, 63, a cherubic woman in a skirt and blouse, narrates as Silva scribbles notes, and studies the sepia baby photos. Jobless, besieged by poverty, with her husband having walked out on her, Malwaththage, a school dropout, says she was cajoled by church officials into placing her daughter, Galgamage Shanika Priyadarshini Silva, for adoption when she was one.
When Silva gently asks her why, she bursts into tears.
Grecilda, centre, with her younger daughter, Sakulia Malisha, right, and her niece, Samya, left [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
Her niece translates as Malwaththage speaks: “The priest tells her, you cannot take care of the baby, you are poor. The people who are getting the baby, they can give her a nice life.” Silva commiserates. “If you decided to [raise] the child, the child would have suffered, you might have thought like that.”
Malwaththage’s second-born went with a “nice young couple”, who she remembers as tall and beautiful; possibly Dutch or Italian.
A few months later, she says she received four photos of Galgamage, but any questions she asked at the church were stonewalled. Her grief festered and gnawed. Four years ago, her brother heard about Silva, and thought, perhaps he would know what to do.
“I think god will one day help me find her,” says Malwaththage, as Silva translates. “I only want to see her and that is more than enough for me … I don’t want anything from her.”
She sometimes scans the faces of young women she meets, catching phantasmic glimpses of her own daughter in them. Before leaving, Silva asks if she knows of other mothers like herself, and if they might like to get in touch.
‘I want to find more mothers’
At first, those contacting Silva were mostly adoptees searching for their families, but as his name grew, families in Sri Lanka who had placed children for adoption, also began reaching out.
It is harder for these women; many do not remember dates or places, some are uneducated, and clueless on how or where to start searching. They tell him about unwanted pregnancies, about incestuous rape, about premarital sex and abusive husbands; freely unburdening themselves to this middle-aged male stranger.
Silva is attentive, asking uncomfortable questions delicately, giving them space to open up and making no extravagant promises. At times, he sizes them up and senses they are not telling him everything.
In the home of Warnakula Suriyage Premalata, a former tea estate worker in the winding hills of Opanayaka, Silva first makes discrete inquiries. He waits for one family member to leave before opening the conversation in Sinhala, then alternates with Tamil.
A photo of Galgamage Shamika, that her birth mother Grecilda received from overseas following her adoption [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
“Before I die, I somehow have to see her face,” says Premalata, 69, a thin woman in a nightdress and a tight bun. As she runs through a potted family history, Silva slaps his knees, in Eurekaish delight. “OK!” he exclaims, “Now I know!”
Brow furrowed, Silva is working something out in live time, but iceberg-like, much remains below the surface. Of Premalata’s two daughters who were adopted, the older one is possibly in Sri Lanka; it turns out he may have met her already. He suspects she was sent to a local convent, and the younger one abroad.
“How do you spell New Zealand?” he asks, as he jabs at his phone while trying to find photos of the older one. Festive fireworks go off outside.
On this trip, Silva has been working with Sri Lankan-born Dutch adoptee Amanda Janssen and her nonprofit, the Sri Lanka DNA foundation; Janssen provides the DNA kits and tracks matches with adoptees abroad.
At the end of the chat, Silva unwraps a new kit and extracts a stick. He peers from the top of his glasses, asking Premalata deadpan: “How many teeth do you have? We are going to pluck two.” Horrified, Premalata covers her mouth, then sensing the joke, rearranges her face in giggles.
Like Premalata, Silva is cognisant of time, and of mothers ageing and dying, which weighs his work with an added urgency. “I don’t know how to explain because these 20 years I am always thinking, before I die I want to find more mothers,” he says. “Because I know if I stop this, many children are going to lose something.”
‘It’s a big part of his life’
After Silva left the village near Negombo where he met the woman he thought could be Bruins’s mother, he sent her DNA sample for testing. Within weeks, the results came in: the two were mother and daughter.
It turns out that essentially, in 1996, Bruins had met a stand-in, or in adoption argot, “an acting mother”.
Bruins had sunk 20 years into a misapprehension, but at last, the truth had tumbled out.
Andrew in front of his taxi, that he uses to ferry tourists around the country [Bhavya Dore/Al Jazeera]
In 2018, along with Silva, she travelled to Sri Lanka to meet her birth family. “It was a very nice meeting, very warm, but it was also very strange, because you look similar but there is also a distance,” says Bruins.
Her birth mother spoke of having had to place her for adoption as they were a large family and her husband had been sick. She claimed she too had been hoping to find her daughter, but did not know where to start until Silva arrived like a deus ex machina.
For Bruins, it brought closure. “I’m so happy that I met Andrew because otherwise I would always have questions which couldn’t be answered,” she says. “It’s very important to know where you come from.”
Silva is often present on these emotionally raw occasions. Helene Iresha Deschamps recalls Silva arranging her visit in 2021, and choking up himself. “He was the one crying the most and I was like, it’s OK,” she says. “He really is very invested, it’s a big part of his life.”
In the clip Silva filmed of Deschamps, she is panting, weeping, laughing as she embraces her birth mother. Few words are spoken. Silva swipes open his phone to reveal more such videos, a highlight reel of his work.
The camera shakily pans – side-to-side, up and down – struggling to capture the scale of the moments; climactic comminglings of disbelief and relief.
Silva looks on, then chuckles, “always I am also crying”.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation.
Feb 28 (Reuters) – Russia’s central bank on Monday sharply raised its key policy rate to 20%, a day after announcing a slew of measures to support domestic markets, as it scrambled to manage the fallout of harsh Western sanctions in retaliation against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The bank hiked the key rate from 9.5% to counter risks of rouble depreciation and higher inflation, and also ordered companies to sell 80% of their foreign currency revenues. read more
“External conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed,” the central bank said in a statement, adding that the rate hike ‘will ensure a rise in deposit rates to levels needed to compensate for the increased depreciation and inflation risk.”
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Monday’s steps bolster other measures announced on Sunday, which include the central bank’s assurance that it would resume buying gold on the domestic market, launch a repurchase auction with no limits and ease restrictions on banks’ open foreign currency positions.
It also increased the range of securities that can be used as collateral to get loans and ordered market players to reject foreign clients’ bids to sell Russian securities. read more
Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina will hold a briefing at 1300 GMT, the bank said in its statement on Monday.
The steps came after Western allies ratcheted up sanctions on Saturday, taking action to banish big Russian banks from the main global payments system SWIFT and announced other measures to limit Moscow’s use of a $630 billion war chest to undermine sanctions. read more
The new set of sanctions were likely to deal a devastating blow to the Russian economy and make it hard for Russian banks and companies to access the international financial system. The rouble plunged nearly 30% to an all-time low versus the dollar on Monday.
RUN ON BANKS?
Russians waited in long queues outside ATMs on Sunday, worried that new Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine will trigger cash shortages and disrupt payments.
“A bank run has already started in Russia over the weekend … and inflation will immediately spike massively, and the Russian banking system is likely to be in trouble,” said Jeffrey Halley, Asia-based senior market analyst at OANDA.
Nomura analysts said the fresh reprisal measures by the West against Russia is likely to have wider global implications.
“These sanctions from the West are likely to eventually hurt trade flows out of Russia (around 80% of FX transactions handled by Russian financial institutions are denominated in USD), which will also hurt the growth outlook of Russia’s key trading partners including Europe and lead to greater inflationary pressures and risk of stagflation, we think,” the analysts wrote in a note to clients.
Energy major BP opened a new front in the West’s campaign to isolate Russia’s economy, with its decision to abandon its stake in state oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM) at a cost of up to $25 billion, the most aggressive move yet by a company in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. read more
The Russian business operations of other Western corporations are also in the spotlight as governments tighten the financial screws on Moscow read more
Several European subsidiaries of Sberbank Russia, majority owned by the Russian government, are failing or likely to fail due to the reputational cost of the war in Ukraine, the European Central Bank, the lenders’ supervisor, said on Monday.
FINANCIAL STABILITY
The Russian central bank in several announcements on Sunday sought to ensure financial stability. It said it would resume buying gold on the domestic market from Feb. 28.
It added that customers of sanctioned banks would be unable to use their bank cards outside Russia, and that cards issued by the sanctioned banks won’t work on Google Pay or Apple Pay.
It also ordered market players to reject attempts by foreign clients to sell Russian securities, according to a central bank document seen by Reuters.
That could complicate plans by the sovereign wealth funds of Norway and Australia, which said they planned to wind down exposure to Russian-listed companies. read more
In a bid to inject cash into the financial system, the central bank said there would be no limit at a “fine-tuning” repo auction it plans to hold on Monday and added that the banking system remained stable after the new sanctions targeting Russia’s financial institutions.
The central bank said bank cards were working as normal and that customers’ funds could be accessed at any time. It said it would substantially increase the range of securities that can be used as collateral to get central bank loans. read more
The central bank also said it is temporarily easing restrictions on banks’ open foreign currency positions after the sanctions. The measure, allowing banks suffering from “external circumstances” to keep positions above the official limits, will be in place until July 1, it said in a statement.
The central bank said that it would continue to monitor changes in currency positions “in order to guarantee the normal functioning of the currency and money markets and the financial stability of lending institutions”. read more
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Reporting by the Moscow bureau; Writing by Paritosh Bansal and Shri Navaratnam;
Editing by Stephen Coates and Jacqueline Wong
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
PARIS, Feb 11 (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian COVID-19 test when he arrived to see President Vladimir Putin this week, to prevent Russia getting hold of Macron’s DNA, two sources in Macron’s entourage told Reuters.
As a result, the visiting French head of state was kept at a distance from the Russian leader during lengthy talks on the Ukraine crisis in Moscow.
They were photographed at opposite ends of a table so long that it provoked satirical comment on social media and speculation, including by diplomats, that Putin might be using it to send a message.
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But two sources who have knowledge of the French president’s health protocol told Reuters Macron had been given a choice: either accept a PCR test done by the Russian authorities and be allowed to get close to Putin, or refuse and have to abide by more stringent social distancing.
“We knew very well that meant no handshake and that long table. But we could not accept that they get their hands on the president’s DNA,” one of the sources told Reuters, referring to security concerns if the French leader was tested by Russian doctors.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Macron had declined the test and said Russia had no problem with this, but it meant that a 6-metre (20 feet) distance from Putin was required in order to protect the Kremlin leader’s health.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Moscow, Russia February 7, 2022. Sputnik/Kremlin via REUTERS/File Photo
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“There is no politics in this, it does not interfere with negotiations in any way,” he said.
A second source in Macron’s entourage said he instead took a French PCR test before departure and an antigen test done by his own doctor once in Russia.
“The Russians told us Putin needed to be kept in a strict health bubble,” the second source said.
Macron’s office said the Russian health protocol “did not seem to us to be either acceptable or compatible with our diary constraints”, referring to the length of time that would have been required to wait for the results.
When asked specifically about DNA theft, Macron’s office said: “The president has doctors who define with him the rules that are acceptable or not in terms of his own health protocol.”
On Thursday, three days after Macron and Putin had their socially-distanced meeting, the Russian leader received Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The two men shook hands, and sat close to each other, divided only by a small coffee table.
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Additional reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Editing by Catherine Evans
BRUSSELS/PARIS, Feb 25 (Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers will thrash out details on Friday of sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine after leaders of the bloc agreed on a robust package of measures to ensure that President Vladimir Putin “must and will fail”.
Foreign ministers were due to convene in Brussels for an emergency session from 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) to settle measures broadly agreed in principle at the emergency summit overnight.
Russia launched its invasion on Thursday and its troops advanced on Kyiv on Friday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleaded with the international community to do more, saying sanctions announced so far were not enough. read more
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The leaders’ agreement in principle meant the bloc is joining the United States and others in taking steps such as curbing Russia’s access to technologies.
However, they opted not to cut Russia off from the SWIFT global interbank payments system.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, hosting a meeting of EU counterparts in Paris on Friday to discuss the economic consequences, said this remained an option, but only as a last resort. read more
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said European sanctions against Russia will lead to cost increases, but the bloc would be able to protect its economies against the effects of further inflation. read more
The Dutch and Luxembourg prime ministers, Mark Rutte and Xavier Bettel, said the measures agreed with fellow leaders were very substantial, hitting Russia hard in many sectors.
Putin had done everything he could to divide Europe, Rutte said, but he had only managed the opposite.
Bettel said in the early hours of Friday that the most emotional moment of the EU summit was when Zelenskiy addressed the room remotely from Ukraine.
“He told us he doesn’t know whether he will be able to speak with us another time so it’s tough. We have to know how serious the situation is in Ukraine,” he said.
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Reporting by Tassilo Hummel, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Leigh Thomas, Jan Strupczewski in Paris, Bart Meijer in Amsterdam; Writing by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by John Chalmers
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
A woman wearing a face mask walks past a screen displaying Hang Seng Index, in Hong Kong, China February 24, 2022. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
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Asian, Wall Street shares move higher
Russia advances into Ukraine
Rally may be brief, analysts caution
Western countries sanction Russian banks, SOEs
SINGAPORE, Feb 25 (Reuters) – Asian markets rebounded on Friday following Wall Street’s surprising overnight reversal, as investors weighed the longer-term impact of tough Western sanctions against Russia after it
unleashed troops, tanks and missiles on Ukraine.
European stock markets looked set to follow Asia higher even as Russia pressed its attacks and global condemnation grew, with FTSE futures adding 0.78%, European futures up 2.2% and German stock market DAX futures rising 1.56%.
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But U.S. share futures slipped in Asian trade, with S&P500 e-mini futures losing 0.61% and Nasdaq futures down 0.92%.
Some analysts said the sanctions by the United States, Europe and a number of other countries were not as strong as markets had feared.
While Western nations redoubled their efforts to crimp Russia’s ability to do business — freezing bank assets and cutting off state-owned enterprises — they stopped short of disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international banking system or targeting its oil and gas exports, which some analysts said had helped markets to recover. read more
“The limits to the economic pain that the ‘West’ was prepared to tolerate to support Ukraine and punish Russia have been revealed within 24 hours of Russia’s offensive beginning,” Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA, said in a note.
“The Russian offensive has occurred in a time of already high inflation and commodity shortages globally, and the West has blinked immediately. The process of throwing Ukraine under the geopolitical bus has begun. Markets clearly felt the same way, that this is the worst it can get…Thereafter, the power of buy-the-dip proved irresistible.”
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was up 0.57% by midday, Shanghai’s composite index (.SSEC) was up 0.57% and Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) was up 1.27%. South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index added 1.01%, recovering from a decline on Thursday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index and Australian shares fell slightly, 0.44% and 0.03% respectively, after a strong start.
Investors rediscovered their risk appetite overnight after some initial sharp losses, with major U.S. indices posting gains, led by tech stocks.
But some analysts worry any rallies might be fleeting.
“Biden’s sanctions and reluctance to pour troops in is providing some relief. But this conflict is going to be a protracted issue and add to global inflationary pressures that will keep central banks on track for tightening,” said Kyle Rodda, analyst at IG Markets in Melbourne.
“It’s okay for now, but in the long-term the market will be tracking to the downside,” he said.
Oil prices surged again on worries about supply disruptions, with Brent crude rising 2% to $101.80 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude also rose 2.71% to $95.53, although both benchmarks were off their highs.
Safe haven gold inched higher 0.57% to $1,913 an ounce after easing back from a multi-month high of $1,973.96 that it hit on Thursday.
The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries was at 1.95% after an initial slide to 1.84% on Thursday, its biggest daily drop since late November.
The U.S. dollar index , which measures the greenback against a basket of major currencies, eased 0.23% to 96.87, having risen on Thursday to levels last seen during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The Russian rouble rose again and was at 85.52 against the dollar, clawing back from a record low of 89.986.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Thursday a new iron curtain was descending over Europe.
Ukrainian soldiers battled Russian troops as they poured in from three sides while about 100,000 people fled their homes, according to the United Nations, many hunkering down in basements and subway stations to escape shelling. Ukrainian authorities said 137 people had been killed on the first day of fighting. read more
On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) closed up 92.07 points, or 0.28%, at 33,223.83 while the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 63.2 points, or 1.50%, to 4,288.7 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 436.10 points, or 3.34%, to 13,473.59.
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Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; editing by Richard Pullin and Kim Coghill
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
A man wearing a protective mask, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, walks past an electronic board displaying Japan’s Nikkei index and various countries’ stock market index prices outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, February 22, 2022. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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MSCI Asia ex-Japan down more than 3%, lowest since Nov. 2020
European stock futures point to sharply lower open
Ukraine says Russia has launched full-scale invasion
Gold highest since Jan. 2021, oil breaches $100
Civilian flights restricted in Ukraine
SHANGHAI, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Global stocks and U.S. bond yields dived on Thursday, while the dollar, gold and oil prices rocketed higher as Russian forces fired missiles at several Ukrainian cities and landed troops on its south coast. read more
Shortly after President Vladimir Putin said he had authorised what he called a special military operation, explosions could be heard in the pre-dawn quiet of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the Ukraine government accused Moscow of launching a full-scale invasion. read more
The United States and its allies will impose “severe sanctions” on Russia after the attacks, U.S. President Joe Biden said. read more
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The equities rout in Asia looked set to continue in Europe and the United States, with a sharp jump in commodity prices adding to worries about inflation and risks to economic growth.
The Euro Stoxx 50 futures and German DAX futures were down more than 3.5% in early deals, while FTSE futures were 2% lower.
S&P 500 e-minis were down 2.3% and Nasdaq futures fell 2.8%, putting the U.S. index on track toward confirming it is in a bear market.
Closing down at least 20% from its Nov. 19 record high close of 16,057.437 points would confirm the Nasdaq has been in a bear market, according to a widely used definition. That would mark its first bear market since 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak crushed global financial markets.
The Moscow Exchange announced a suspension of all trading on Thursday. read more
In Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) fell more than 3.2% to its lowest level since November 2020. Australian shares (.AXJO) shed more than 3% and Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) lost 2%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei (.N225) was 2.1% lower.
“The market was always trying to judge if (Russia) would stop at Donbass, and it looks pretty clear that they are moving toward Kyiv, which was always one of the worst case scenarios, because we now have a long night ahead of us trying to understand how bad this gets, and what sanctions get put up, because there has to be a fresh round of sanctions now against Putin and the Russian government,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone.
“That’s where the worst case, or the bear case scenario is for markets, and that’s what we’re seeing. There are no buyers here for risk, and there are a lot of sellers out there, so this market is getting hit very hard.”
Asset markets have seen a sharp increase in volatility over the deepening crisis, with the Cboe Volatility Index, known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, up more than 55% over the past nine days. (.VIX)
Brent crude futures , which seesawed between sharp rises and falls on Wednesday, jumped more than 3.5% to shoot past $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since September 2014.
West Texas Intermediate leaped 4.6% to $96.22 per barrel, their highest since August 2014.
Spot gold jumped more than 1.7% to hit its highest level since early January 2021.
The deepening selloff in equities came after U.S. stocks already took a beating on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) down 1.38% to barely above the level that would have confirmed a correction. The S&P 500 (.SPX), which confirmed a correction a day earlier, lost 1.84% to 4,225.5.
Investors have also been grappling with the prospect of imminent policy tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve aimed at combating surging inflation, which NAB analysts say could be exacerbated by a commodities supply shock.
While expectations of an aggressive 50-basis-point hike at the Fed’s March meeting have eased, Fed funds futures continue to point to at least six rate hikes this year. FEDWATCH
All the same, immediate geopolitical threats weighed on U.S. yields on Thursday, pushing the benchmark U.S. 10-year yield down sharply to 1.8681% from its U.S. close of 1.977% on Wednesday. The 2-year yield also fell, to 1.5% from a close of 1.6%.
The global flight to safety boosted the dollar, which jumped more than half a percent a basket of other major trading partners to 96.715.
The euro was down 0.8% on the day at $1.1220.
The Russian rouble turned violently lower after posting small gains early in the session. It was last down as much as 5.77% on top of a 3% slump against the dollar on Wednesday.
The sell-off spread to cryptocurrency markets, pushing bitcoin below $35,000 for the first time in a month.
“Markets are now more adequately pricing in the risk of something horrific happening. That combined with the uncertainty is a horrible environment to be in. No one wants risk exposure when that’s floating around,” said Rob Carnell, head of Asia Pacific research at ING.
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Reporting by Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Kevin Buckland in Tokyo, Sinéad Carew and Noel Randewich in New York, Alun John in Hong Kong and Wayne Cole in Sydney; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Feb 22 (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday announced a first round of economic sanctions on Russia a day after Moscow recognised the Ukraine separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent.
The United States, the European Union, Germany and Britain also announced ways they will punish Russia financially as they fear a further incursion is to come, a move Moscow has consistently denied for months.
The Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk broke away from Ukrainian government control in 2014 and proclaimed themselves independent “people’s republics” after a pro-Moscow Ukrainian president was ousted in Kyiv.
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Trudeau said his government will ban Canadians from all financial dealings with the so-called “independent states” of Luhansk and Donetsk. Canada will also ban Canadians from engaging in purchases of Russian sovereign debt, he added.
The Canadian prime minister said his government will sanction members of the Russian parliament who voted for the decision to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill after police ended three weeks of an occupation of the capital by protesters seeking to end coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandates in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada February 21, 2022. REUTERS/Blair Gable
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Canada will apply additional sanctions on two state-backed Russian banks and prevent any financial dealings with them, Trudeau said.
Trudeau also said he was authorizing additional troops to the region.
“So today, I am also authorizing the deployment of up to 460 members of the Canadian Armed Forces to Operation Reassurance. This involves more troops to Latvia, as well as the deployment of an additional frigate and maritime patrol aircraft,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops into eastern Ukraine, saying they were there to “keep the peace.” Trudeau described the step as “a clear incursion of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”
“Make no mistake: this is a further invasion of a sovereign state and it is absolutely unacceptable,” he said, adding it was “not too late” for Russia to seek a diplomatic resolution.
Weeks of intense diplomacy have so far failed as Moscow calls for security guarantees, including a promise that its neighbour Ukraine will never join NATO. read more
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Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
HONG KONG, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Global stocks tumbled while safe-havens rallied and oil surged on Tuesday as Europe’s eastern flank stood on the brink of war after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was on course for its worst day for this month, off 1.66%, weighed by markets in Hong Kong and mainland China. Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) shed 1.7%.
U.S. and European markets were also braced for sharp losses at the opening bell, with S&P 500 futures down 1.4%, Nasdaq futures off 1.9%, the pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures 1.1% lower, and FTSE futures down 0.6%.
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Both Asian shares and U.S. and European futures had fallen more earlier in the session.
In contrast, Brent crude futures rose 2.1% to $97.44, a new seven-year high, on worries Russia’s energy exports could be disrupted. Spot gold added 0.1% to $1,908.10, having earlier hit a new six-month top of $1,913.89.
Putin on Monday recognised two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent and ordered the Russian army to launch what Moscow called a peacekeeping operation into the area, upping the ante in a crisis that could unleash a major war. read more
A Reuters witness saw columns of military vehicles including tanks early Tuesday on the outskirts of Donetsk, the capital of one of two breakaway regions, and Putin signed treaties with leaders of the two breakaway regions giving Russia the right to build military bases. read more
Washington and European capitals condemned the move, vowing new sanctions. Ukraine’s foreign minister said he had been assured of a “resolute and united” response from the European Union.
Following Russia’s latest move “we are much closer to military intervention, which of course is going to drive a lot of the risk off sentiment in the markets,” said Carlos Casanova, senior Asia economist at UBP, adding the short term volatility in markets caused by both geopolitical factors and the U.S. Federal Reserve was ‘relentless’.
Casanova said the consequences would be higher oil prices, an equity sell off, and people flocking to safe haven assets like the Japanese yen.
Monitors displaying the stock index prices and Japanese yen exchange rate against the U.S. dollar are seen after the New Year ceremony marking the opening of trading in 2022 at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan January 4, 2022. REUTERS/Issei Kato
In Hong Kong, shares of Russian aluminium producer OK Rusal , plunged as much as 22.1% to HK$6.18, their biggest daily percentage decline since April 2018.
Away from Russia, and not helping the Hong Kong market, Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech stocks (.HSTECH) fell 2.3%, with heavyweights Tencent (0700.HK) and Alibaba (9988.HK) both hit by speculation about a new wave of regulatory scrutiny.
CURRENCIES QUIETER
In currency markets, moves were more muted, barring the Russian rouble which hit an 15-month low early in Asian trading, before steadying.
The Japanese yen walked back early gains which had taken it to a near three-week high of 114.48 per dollar, fellow safe-haven the Swiss franc was holding steady near the previous day’s one-month high, and the euro recovered to trade flat after earlier falling to a one-week low of $1.1286.
“Currency markets are not really showing the same level of caution as equity markets,” said Matt Simpson, senior market analyst at City Index.
“When you read the headlines .. you’d expect to see some follow-through in the markets. We are in equities but we’re not in currencies,” he said.
“Interestingly, overnight the Swiss franc was the safe haven, not the Japanese yen.”
The nerves also drove U.S. Treasury yields lower, with benchmark 10-year Treasury yields diving as much as 7 basis points to 1.846%. Bets on Federal Reserve rate hikes also eased and the chance of a 50 basis point hike next month fell below 1-in-5.
U.S. policy makers have been sparring publicly about how aggressively to begin tightening.
Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said on Monday that she will assess incoming economic data over the next three weeks in deciding whether a half percentage point interest rate rise is needed at the central bank’s next meeting in March. read more
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Reporting by Tom Westbrook in Singapore and Xie Yu in Hong Kong; additional reporting by Alun John in Hong Kong and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; editing by Jane Wardell & Shri Navaratnam
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
OTTAWA, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday activated rarely used emergency powers in an effort to end protests that have shut some U.S. border crossings and paralyzed parts of the capital.
Under the Emergencies Act, the government introduced measures intended to cut off protesters’ funding and took steps to reinforce provincial and local law enforcement with federal police.
“The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety,” Trudeau told a news conference. “We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.”
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But the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said the government had not met the standard for invoking the Emergencies Act, which is intended to deal with threats to “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” the group said.
The “Freedom Convoy” protests, started by Canadian truckers opposing a COVID-19 vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border drivers, have drawn people opposed to Trudeau’s policies on everything from pandemic restrictions to a carbon tax. Copycat trucker protests have also sprung up in Israel, France, Australia and New Zealand.
Protesters blockaded the Ambassador Bridge, a vital trade route between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, for six days before police cleared the protest on Sunday while others have shut down smaller border crossings in Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. Protests in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, entered a third week.
Protesters camped in front of the Canadian Parliament, some of whom want the prime minister to meet with them, said the latest steps were excessive. “It’s an extreme measure that isn’t necessary,” said protester Candice Chapel.
CUTTING OFF FUNDS
The financial measures bring crowdfunding platforms under terror-finance oversight, authorize Canadian banks to freeze accounts suspected of funding the blockades and suspend insurance on vehicles in the protests, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said.
A person waves a Canadian flag in front of banners in support of truckers, as truckers and supporters continue to protest the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandates, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, February 14, 2022. REUTERS/Lars Hagberg
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“We are making these changes because we know that these (crowdfunding) platforms are being used to support illegal blockades and illegal activity which is damaging the Canadian economy,” Freeland said.
Canadian authorities have said about half of the funding for the protests has come from U.S. supporters. Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD.TO) last week froze two personal bank accounts that received C$1.4 million ($1.1 million) for the protests. read more
A U.S.-based website, GiveSendGo, became a prime conduit for money to the protesters after mainstream crowdfunding platform GoFundMe blocked donations to the group. An Ontario court last week ordered GiveSendGo to freeze all funds supporting the blockade, but it said it would not comply.
Amid criticism that the police approach to demonstrations has been too permissive, Trudeau will use federal officers to back up provincial and local forces. “Despite their best efforts, it is now clear that there are serious challenges to law enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law,” he said.
In the western Canadian province of Alberta, police said they broke up a group that was armed and prepared to use violence to back a blockade at a border crossing with the United States. read more
The Canadian Parliament must approve the use of the emergency measures within seven days, and the left-leaning New Democrat party said it would support Trudeau’s Liberal minority government to pass the measures.
Ontario, which declared a state of emergency on Friday, backed the move. But premiers in Alberta, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan opposed the plan. Quebec’s Premier Francois Legault said using emergency powers risked putting “oil on the fire.” read more
Trudeau said the measures would be geographically targeted and time limited.
Ontario said it will speed up its plan to remove proof-of-vaccination requirements and lift pandemic-related capacity limits for many businesses while Alberta ended its mask requirements for school children on Monday. read more
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Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Nia Williams in Calgary and Lars Hagberg in Ottawa; Writing by Amran Abocar; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Paul Simao and Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.