Kyiv and Baltic states to ditch OSCE Summit; Finland shuts border with Russia after migrant surge

29 Nov 2023

Frustration is settling over Ukraine as the failure of a months-long counteroffensive gives way to the second winter since the Russian invasion.

Finland decided to close the last road border crossing that had remained open on its frontier with Russia after it continued to push migrants into the Nordic country.

Three Baltic countries and Ukraine said they won’t attend a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) after it invited Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to take part.

Winter and stalled counteroffensive bring gloom and frustration to Ukraine

A sense of gloom is settling over Ukraine as the failure of a monthslong counteroffensive gives way to the second winter since the Russian invasion.

A fierce snowstorm cut power to thousands across southern Ukraine over the weekend, while temperatures in the east, where fighting is fierce, have plunged well below freezing. In the Ukrainian public, polls show cracks emerging and a softening in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval rating.

The longer nights coincide with mounting frustration over the stalled advance and tension among government and military leaders spilling into the open. As Nato ministers meet in Brussels, there are signs that help from the military alliance is wavering.

Once-confident predictions of victory over Kremlin troops are being replaced by a grim awareness that the war is most likely to grind on.

Zelensky knows that the battlefield fatigue extends to hearts and minds. The wartime leader, who maintains his nightly television addresses as a conduit to the public and a way to lift spirits, recognises the need to address a weary public’s concerns on what comes next, according to people familiar with this thinking.

“It is important that people understand that what is in their hearts is being seen and the changes that are needed will be made,” Zelensky said in an address earlier this month after a Russian missile strike killed 19 soldiers at an award ceremony in southeastern Ukraine. The president called for an investigation into the circumstances of exposing personnel to attack.

The mood has seeped into Zelensky’s support. Still lofty at 76%, his approval rating has dropped from a wartime high of 91%, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

Volodymyr Paniotto, the head of the institute, sees the spike in the president’s approval as normal for a war environment, just as the ensuing drop when the initial wave of patriotism fades. Another survey showed that as of May last year, 68% of Ukrainians felt that disagreements should be put aside in war — a figure that’s now fallen to 25%.

“The rally-around-the-flag effect is ending,” Paniotto said in an interview.

Read more: Ukraine’s struggle for arms and attention gives Putin an opening

The sobering outlook contrasts with a far more optimistic view a year ago. By December 2022, Ukrainian forces, partly spurred on as Russian troops withdrew and redeployed, had seized back territory around Kyiv, in the Kharkiv region in the northeast and Kherson in the south to the Dnipro River — and generated the sense that this year’s counteroffensive could do more.

But the campaign, which began in June, failed to penetrate entrenched Russian lines stretching from the Donbas region in the east to the mouth of the Dnipro on the Black Sea. The 260 square kilometres of territory reclaimed in the counteroffensive in 2023 amounts to less than 1% of land that was retaken last year.

Reversing the tide in the summer, when Kyiv military officials were hinting at a breakthrough in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, Russian troops are now advancing towards Ukrainian-occupied Avdiivka in the east. A defeat there would only spell more gloom.

Add to that anxiety over conscription as manpower at the front is squeezed and perennial anger over corruption, an issue still at the top of the list of Ukrainian complaints, and the winter months look even bleaker.

Ukraine will be high on the agenda when foreign ministers from Nato gather on Tuesday and Wednesday, with allies likely to reiterate their support despite concerns that aid is starting to wane. Nato will seek to showcase Ukraine’s progress towards joining, but a formal invitation still remains a lofty goal as long as the war continues.

For people on the ground, what lies ahead is anticipation of another barrage of missile and drone strikes aiming to tear into the country’s energy system.

Russian demands risk making OSCE ‘brain dead’, says Lithuania

Three Baltic countries and Ukraine said they wouldn’t attend a meeting of the European security body OSCE after it invited Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to take part.

Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia said in a joint statement on Tuesday they would stay away from the gathering of the 57-member OSCE.

“It will only provide Russia with yet another propaganda opportunity,” the countries’ foreign ministers said ahead of the meeting due in Skopje, North Macedonia, on Thursday and Friday. Ukraine also announced it wouldn’t take part.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said earlier that the OSCE risked becoming “brain dead” as US and European allies bend to Russia’s will by negotiating with Moscow over top jobs and which country will chair the organisation. The body has offered Malta to take over as chair in a compromise after Moscow pushed back against Estonia, he said.

“We’re dancing to a fiddle that’s being played by Russians and I don’t agree with that,” Landsbergis said. “If there is an organisation that could be called actually brain dead, we will very much have a chance to see the OSCE becoming this.”

Read more: Russia’s Lavrov plans to join OSCE meeting in Nato member state

Landsbergis cited a term used by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 to describe the Nato military alliance, which faced deteriorating transatlantic relations under US President Donald Trump. The term was better suited to the OSCE as it debated European security with Russia at the same table while Moscow’s war in Ukraine continued, Landsbergis said.

The OSCE grew from efforts to reduce tensions during the Cold War, but its role has been in doubt since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine. The tensions over the OSCE come as the US and the European Union struggle to agree to more funds for Ukraine, while weapons stocks on both sides of the Atlantic have been depleted and defence companies aren’t ramping up quickly enough.

In the joint statement, the Baltic nations said Lavrov’s attendance at the meeting “risks legitimising aggressor Russia as a rightful member of our community of free nations, trivialising the atrocious crimes Russia has been committing, and putting up with Russia’s blatant violation and contempt of the OSCE.”

Ukraine said it would skip the session because Russia “systemically” blocked consensus on key issues and turned the organisation into “a hostage of its whims and aggression”, according to a statement from the foreign ministry.

Lavrov has said he plans to accept the invitation if he’s able to travel, given an EU flight ban for his country.

North Macedonia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the group, said it was prepared to temporarily lift a ban on aircraft from Russia to allow Lavrov to attend the talks. Bulgaria has also said it would allow Lavrov’s plane through its airspace, though the permit won’t be valid for members of the Russian envoy’s delegation who are under EU sanctions.

Ukrainian foreign minister feels no pressure for Russia talks

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said he didn’t feel foreign partners were pushing him to start negotiations with Russia even while his country’s troops hadn’t had a major breakthrough on the frontline over the past year.

“No, I don’t feel any pressure,” Kuleba said during a joint briefing with European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell in Brussels.

The EU may decide as early as December to start accession talks with Ukraine, after the European Commission formally recommended opening membership talks earlier this month.

Borrell said he saw no signs of war fatigue among EU members despite many questions that remained, particularly the prospect of fighting in Ukraine.

Finland shuts last open road border with Russia over migration

Finland decided to close the last road border crossing that had remained open on its frontier with Russia after it continued to push migrants into the Nordic country.

New information and estimates indicated that “instrumentalised immigration” would have intensified without the decision, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told reporters on Tuesday.

All eight road checkpoints will be closed from 30 November to 13 December, including the northernmost crossing, Raja-Jooseppi in Lapland, which is currently the only one open. A railway crossing in Vainikkala remains open to cargo.

“This is a Russian hybrid operation, and we refuse to accept it,” Orpo said. “Russia has started it and Russia can also end it.”

Seven border stations were already shut this month over what the newest Nato member sees as a hybrid operation to push asylum seekers across the demarcation line. Finnish authorities view the operation masterminded by Moscow as a threat to its national security.

Sanctioned Russian tanker in limbo shows India’s oil dilemma

A Russian oil tanker sanctioned by Washington is still floating about 2,500km from the Indian port where it was due to unload as New Delhi grapples with a dilemma over whether to let the vessel dock.

The longer it drifts — and the vessel has now been stuck in its current location for about 10 days — the more it underscores the challenge that India faces as it seeks to import cheap Russian crude, and at the same time avoid the risk of damaging ties with the US.

Any sign that the US can impede Russia’s capacity to deliver its own oil would concern the Kremlin, which has amassed a large fleet of vessels to work around Group of Seven sanctions following the war in Ukraine.

The NS Century, a Liberia-flagged Aframax owned by Sovcomflot, started its journey from South Korea’s Yeosu in late October, according to ship-tracking data.

Before it stopped, the vessel was heading to the Indian port of Vadinar, where state-owned refiner Indian Oil has a mooring facility and Nayara Energy, which counts Rosneft as its single largest shareholder, has a refinery.

A Nayara Energy spokesman said the cargo didn’t belong to the refiner. Indian Oil didn’t immediately comment on the cargo or the delivery. India’s Directorate General of Shipping said last week it was awaiting instructions from the government as to whether the ship would be allowed to unload its cargo.

The US recently sanctioned five vessels for using Western services for the transport of oil that cost more than $60 a barrel, a price cap imposed by the Group of Seven nations. The ships include NS Century.

EU tensions over Ukraine crop imports spread to sugar market

French sugar-beet growers are demanding that rising sugar imports from Ukraine be re-exported outside Europe to avoid hurting local producers.

Ukrainian sugar imports to the bloc could reach 700,000-800,000 tonnes in the 2023-2024 season, growers’ group CGB said at a press conference on Tuesday. That would be about double the previous season’s imports and well above the 21,500-tonne average for the five years before that, European Commission data show. Ukraine has previously said it would cap sugar exports at 650,000 tonnes to all destinations this season.

“We need a clear answer from the European Commission on the future management of this inflow of sugar,” the CGB said in a presentation.

The sugar producers’ demands follow similar tensions over a surge in Ukraine grain exports, which prompted several Eastern European countries to ban purchases on the grounds the shipments were depressing local prices. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted operations at its Black Sea ports, forcing grain producers to rely more on rail, road and river routes through neighbouring countries.

Ukraine military intelligence chief’s wife ‘was poisoned’

The wife of Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov was poisoned, Radio Svoboda, the Ukrainian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Tuesday, citing military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov.

Marianna Budanova was poisoned with heavy metals and has been receiving medical treatment in a hospital, Yusov told Radio Svoboda, adding that her treatment would conclude soon. DM

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