An aid convoy has arrived in earthquake-stricken northwest Syria from the eastern Deir al-Zor province, showing how aid can cross a frontline in a country’s ongoing civil war.
According to the news agency, Syrian Arab tribes had organised it. As a result of the civil war in their country, many Syrians who were displaced from Deir al-Zor to the rebel-held northwest are members of powerful Arab tribes.
According to organiser Hamoud Saleh al-Darjah, more aid was being gathered. He told Reuters that the aid would be distributed equally throughout the northern region.
NATO foreign ministers met in Bucharest in Romania to work out how to keep millions of Ukrainian civilians safe and warm and sustain Kyiv’s military through winter.
“Russia does not have a veto” on countries joining the security alliance, he said in reference to the recent entry of North Macedonia and Montenegro.
The former Norwegian prime minister said Russian President Vladimir Putinwill also “get Finland and Sweden as NATO members soon”, after they applied for membership in April over concerns Russia might target them next.
“We stand by that, too, on membership for Ukraine,” he added.
It came as NATO foreign ministers met in Bucharest in Romania to pledge to step up support for Ukraine and help repair its energy infrastructure as Russian strikes knock out power supplies and heating for millions.
“Russia’s aggression, including its persistent and unconscionable attacks on Ukrainian civilian and energy infrastructure, is depriving millions of Ukrainians of basic human services,” the foreign ministers said in a statement.
“We will continue and further step up political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend its
sovereignty and territorial integrity… and will maintain our support for as long as necessary,” the statement added.
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Russia was targeting energy infrastructure to “freeze” Ukrainians into submission.
“We have seen Vladimir Putin attempting to weaponise energy supplies right from the very start of this conflict,” he said before the meeting.
Image:Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Bucharest
Call for Patriot missiles and power transformers
Ukraine’s foreign minister called for NATO members to supply it with air defence systems and transformers.
“We need air defence, IRIS, Hawks, Patriots, and we need transformers,” Dmytro Kuleba said on the sidelines of the meeting, identifying various Western air defence systems.
“If we have transformers and generators, we can restore our energy needs. If we have air defence systems, we can protect from the next Russian missile strikes. In a nutshell: Patriots and transformers is what Ukraine needs the most.”
Focus on defeating Russia
Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO anytime soon, as Russia has annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and troops and pro-Moscow separatists hold parts of the south and east, meaning it is unclear what the country’s borders would look like.
Many of NATO’s 30 members believe the focus should now be on defeating Russia and Mr Stoltenberg warned any attempt to move ahead on membership could divide them.
“We are in the midst of a war and therefore we should do nothing that can undermine the unity of allies to provide military, humanitarian, financial support to Ukraine, because we must prevent President Putin from winning,” he said.
The two-day meeting in Romania, which shares NATO’s longest land border with Ukraine, will likely see NATO make new pledges of non-lethal support to Ukraine including fuel, generators, medical supplies, winter equipment and drone-jamming devices.
Individual nations are also likely to announce new shipments of military equipment to Ukraine, such as air defence systems and ammunition, but NATO as an organisation will not make such a commitment to avoid being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Sweden will provide 3 billion crowns ($287 million) in new military aid to Ukraine, its largest package of defence material to date, including an air defence system, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced.
Sweden’s previous contributions to NATO, along with neighbouring Finland, have ranged from simple equipment such as helmets and body armour to rocket-propelled grenades and missiles.
“It’s a bigger military support package than all eight previous packages combined,” Kristersson told a news conference. “It’s the single largest we’ve done, and we follow exactly the Ukrainian priority list of what they themselves think they need just now.”
Defence Minister Pal Johnson said the new package of military equipment included an air defence system and ammunition from the stock piles of its armed forces, much needed to defend Ukraine against a fierce onslaught of Russian missiles in recent weeks.
Sweden’s previous Social Democrat government, which lost to Kristersson right-wing coalition in elections in September, had agreed several tranches of aid to Ukraine, both military and humanitarian, worth well over 1 billion crowns.
The Archer artillery system has been high on the Ukrainian wish list for some time but was not included in the fresh aid package, though Johnson did not rule it out for the future and said more support would be forthcoming.
Kristersson also said the government was closely following developments concerning the explosion in Poland near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday and that more information was needed to gain a clearer picture of what happened.
A convoy of medical aid, the first since late August, arrived Tuesday (November 15) in the capital of Tigray, following a peace agreement reached in early November to end the war in the northern Ethiopian region, the ICRC said.
“The first ICRC medical supplies have just arrived in Mekele (…) by road,” Jude Fuhnwi, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ethiopia.
After a five-month truce, the resumption of hostilities at the end of August between the rebel authorities in Tigray and the federal army and its allies interrupted most of the delivery of humanitarian aid – already largely insufficient – to Tigray.
Two “trucks have delivered 40 tonnes of essential medical equipment, emergency medicines, and surgical supplies” to health facilities in the region “to treat the most urgent cases,” the ICRC said in a statement.
“Although some health facilities in Tigray are no longer functioning, those still open lack basic medicines and equipment and other essential supplies,” the organization said.
“The ICRC hopes to continue these deliveries on a regular basis and significantly increase the humanitarian response in Tigray,” whose six million inhabitants have been largely deprived of food and medicine for more than a year.
The Ethiopian government and the rebel authorities in Tigray signed a peace agreement in Pretoria on November 2 to end a two-year deadly war in northern Ethiopia.
Military leaders from both sides also initialed a document on Saturday to implement the provisions of the agreement, including the disarmament of rebels and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Tigray.
Canada will provide another $500 million in military assistance to Ukraine, in addition to sanctions against nearly two dozen Russians, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office announced.
The additional funding, which will help fund military, surveillance and communications equipment, fuel, and medical supplies, will be added to the $3.4 billion in Canadian assistance to Kyiv for its defence against Russia’s invasion, according to Trudeau’s office.
Monday’s sanctions target 23 Russian individuals “involved in gross and systematic human rights violations against Russian opposition leaders,” including police officers, prosecutors, judges and prison officials, the statement added.
Samantha Power, USAID Administrator, made the announcement during a visit to Lebanon ahead of a trip to Egypt for the United Nations Climate Conference (COP27).
During his visit, Power plans to meet with Lebanese political leaders to press for a resolution to the country’s political vacuum and for leaders to implement a series of political and economic reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund in order to secure a $3 billion aid package.
The visit comes at a time when Lebanon is experiencing its worst economic and financial crisis in modern history.
Power declined to say, however, whether any U.S. assistance would be contingent on Lebanon taking these measures.
“We are not focused on what happens if those reforms don’t happen. The reforms have to happen,” she told The Associated Press.
The prospect of an IMF deal “should be enough to end the infighting and bickering and do what is needed for the sake of the country,” Power said.
USAID has provided about $260 million to Lebanon in 2022 to date. On Wednesday, Power announced an additional $72 million for food assistance to some 650,000 people over five months as part of a $2 billion global food security initiative.
Lebanon, which relies heavily on imported food and has historically imported the majority of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia, has faced increased food security anxieties in the wake of the Russian war in Ukraine.
Power also announced $8.5 million to fund 22 new solar-powered pumping stations. Lebanon has been dealing with a crippling electricity crisis that has also led to water shortages due to lack of power at pumping stations.
The shortages in public water supply are fueling a cholera outbreak, the first Lebanon has seen in three decades. Most Lebanese now rely on water trucked in by private suppliers, which is often not tested for safety.
As anti-French sentiments rise in Bamako, Mali’s military government has been strengthening ties with Russia.
Mali’s economy minister, Alousseini Sanou, says the West African country expects Russia to send shipments of fuel, fertilizer, and food worth around $100 million in the coming weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed providing the supplies with his Malian counterpart in August, a sign of deepening ties as Mali’s relationship has soured with its longtime ally and former colonial ruler, France.
Speaking on national television from Moscow, Sanou said on Wednesday that Russia was going to send 60,000 tonnes of petroleum products, 30,000 tonnes of fertiliser and 25,000 tonnes of wheat.
Mali’s ruling military government came to power in a 2020 coup and has sparred repeatedly with neighbouring countries and Western powers over election delays, alleged army abuses and cooperation with Russian mercenaries in its fight against an uprising that has raged in Mali since 2012.
Fighters from the Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked private military company, have been supporting the Malian army since late last year in its fight against groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
In October, Putin told Mali’s interim president, Assimi Goita, that Moscow was committed to strengthening cooperation to help root out “terrorist groups” in Mali.
France intervened militarily in Mali in 2013, leading an effort to removearmed groups that had seized control of towns in northern Mali.
The departure of French troops in August raised new concerns about whether those fighters would regain territory as security responsibilities have now fallen on the Malian military and United Nations peacekeepers.
