Biden’s first State of the Union address included tough words for autocratic adversaries and a hopeful message for US citizens battered by a pandemic, rising prices, and bitter political divides
The United States announced Friday that it would freeze the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, following similar steps taken by the European Union and Britain, as nations around the world sought to tighten sanctions against Russia’s government over its invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced the action after EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels unanimously agreed to freeze the property and bank accounts of the top Russian officials.
Britain’s government took the same action Friday, with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss writing on Twitter, “We will not stop inflicting economic pain on the Kremlin until Ukrainian sovereignty is restored.”
A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the sanctions against Putin and Lavrov reflected the West’s “absolute impotence” in foreign policy, according to the RIA news agency.
World leaders are rarely the target of direct sanctions. The only other leaders currently under EU sanctions are Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to Agence France-Presse.
FILE – Alexander Schallenberg addresses a press conference at the Federal Chancellery in Vienna, Oct. 11, 2021.
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said the move was “a unique step in history” toward a country that has a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, but said it showed how united EU countries were in countering Russia’s actions.
The EU sanctions against Putin and Lavrov are part of a broader sanctions package that targets Russian banks, oil refineries and the Russian defense industry.
EU leaders agreed, however, it was premature to impose a travel ban on Putin and Lavrov because negotiating channels need to be kept open.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Friday for nations to cut Russia off from the SWIFT international bank transfer system “to inflict maximum pain.”
Ukraine has lobbied for a SWIFT ban on Russia, urging Europe to act more forcefully in imposing sanctions against Moscow. However, some European nations, including Germany, are hesitant to take that step.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Friday that the package of banking sanctions the EU has passed would hit Putin’s government harder than excluding Russia from the SWIFT payments system.
“The sword that looks hardest isn’t always the cleverest one,” she said, adding, “the sharper sword at the moment is listing banks.”
FILE – Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn speaks with reporters during arrivals for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the Brdo Congress Center in Kranj, Slovenia, Sept. 2, 2021.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said, “The debate about SWIFT is not off the table. It will continue.”
In response to the sanctions, Russia has taken its own measures, including banning British flights over its territory, after Britain imposed a similar ban on Aeroflot flights.
The United States and several allies had imposed a first tranche of sanctions Tuesday, after Putin declared the disputed eastern Ukraine regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states, much as he appropriated Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Biden added another round of sanctions on Russia on Thursday, hours after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, declaring at the White House after meeting virtually with leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations and NATO that “Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences.”
Biden said those U.S. sanctions, which target Russian banks, oligarchs and high-tech sectors and include export controls, would “squeeze Russia’s access to finance and technology for strategic sectors of its economy and degrade its industrial capacity for years to come.”
Effects on markets
NATO allies, including Britain and the European Union, also imposed more sanctions Thursday, and the effects were felt almost immediately when global security prices plunged and commodity prices surged. Biden acknowledged that Americans would see higher gasoline prices.
More than half of all Americans, 52%, viewed the Russia-Ukraine conflict before Russia’s invasion “as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests,” a significant increase from 2015, when 44% thought it was a threat after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, according to a poll released Friday by Gallup.
The poll was conducted from February 1-17 before the Russian government recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and deployed troops to those areas.
As in 2015, roughly half of Democrats and Republicans said they were likely to see the conflict as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests.
Also Friday, an International Criminal Court prosecutor warned that the court might investigate whether Russia has committed any war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine.
“I remind all sides conducting hostilities on the territory of Ukraine that my office may exercise its jurisdiction and investigate any act of genocide, crime against humanity or war crime committed within Ukraine,” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said Friday in a statement.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Honduran police arrested former President Juan Orlando Hernandez on Tuesday at the request of the United States, which is seeking his extradition to stand trial for his alleged involvement in illicit drug trafficking.
Hernandez, who left office three weeks ago, was escorted from his home in Tegucigalpa in shackles and a bulletproof jacket.
The Supreme Court of Justice chose a judge to handle the case, and that judge signed an order for the former president’s arrest. Police, who had surrounded Hernandez’s home since Monday, took him into custody.
“It is not an easy time. I don’t wish to do this to anyone,” Hernandez said in an audio message posted on his Twitter profile early Tuesday morning. He said he was ready to go with police in order to “face this situation and defend myself.”
The extradition request said that since 2004, Hernandez allowed tons of cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia to travel through Honduras on its way to the United States, while protecting drug traffickers from investigation, in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
Hernandez was repeatedly implicated as a co-conspirator in his brother’s 2019 drug trafficking trial by New York prosecutors. The brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was found guilty of drug and weapons charges and sentenced to life in prison.
FILE – Protestors celebrate outside the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York after Tony Hernandez, brother of the president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, was sentenced to life for drug trafficking offenses, March 30, 2021.
Hernandez was once a key regional ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month there were credible reports that Hernandez “has engaged in significant corruption by committing or facilitating acts of corruption and narco-trafficking” and using the proceeds to fund his political career.
After eight years as president, Hernandez was sworn in as Honduras’ representative to the Central American Parliament on January 27, just hours after his successor, Xiomara Castro, became the country’s first woman president. His lawyer says he has immunity from extradition because he is a member of the regional parliament.
The extradition process is likely to last for several weeks.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Manny Pacquiao, boxing legend and presidential candidate in the Philippines for the elections next May, promised this Friday to promote the recovery of billions of dollars allegedly stolen from the State during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, whose son is the top favorite in the elections. elections.
During a forum with several presidential candidates, Pacquiao affirmed that the Presidential Commission for Good Government (PCGG in English), a body created to recover the illicit fortune of the Marcoses and their allies, will have the power to increase the 3,410 million dollars recovered to date. moment.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Honduras on Thursday to attend the inauguration of Xiomara Castro as the Central American nation’s first female president.
Harris attendance at the historic event underscores her role in leading President Joe Biden’s efforts to curb the migration of hundreds of thousands of people from Honduras and neighboring El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico into the United States each year, many of them traveling on foot over thousands of kilometers. Harris has been specifically tasked with addressing the root causes of the mass migration, including poverty and crime.
Biden pledged to adopt a more humane stance on migration than that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who expelled migrants back to their home countries and separated children from their families.
Also attending Castro’s swearing-in will be Vice President William Lai of Taiwan. Castro has talked of switching Honduras’s diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China, which claims the self-ruled as part of its territory and has pushed to isolate Taipei from the international community.
Castro campaigned on a platform of ending the corruption that had clouded the 12-year rule of the right-wing National Party, which took power after her husband, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown by the military. But her tenure has already gotten off to a rocky start after a breakaway faction of her Liberty and Refoundation Party, or Libre, elected lawmaker Jorge Calix to be their congressional leader last weekend.
The move went against an agreement Castro reached with the Partido Salvador de Honduras party, a key part of her political alliance that helped her win last November’s election, to choose PSH lawmaker Luis Redondo as congressional leader.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Taiwanese Vice President William Lai will attend the inauguration of the first female president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, on Thursday in a move to shore up the relationship between Taipei and Honduras, one of Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies.
Honduras is one of only 14 countries that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Last month, its neighboring country, Nicaragua, severed ties with Taiwan and re-established relations with Beijing, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province that someday will be reunified with the mainland. Taipei views itself as a self-governing state.
Speaking at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport before his departure, Lai said he would take medical supplies to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic in Honduras. According to Reuters, since 2006 Taiwan has loaned Honduras around $205 million and given another $27 million in donations.
During a layover in Los Angeles on Tuesday, he held an online meeting with U.S. lawmakers to discuss bilateral trade relations and the threats posed by China, according to the Taipei Times.
In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Taiwan Vice President William Lai waves to supporters during a stopover in Los Angeles, Jan. 25, 2022. Lai is leading a Taiwanese delegation to Honduras for the inauguration of President-elect Xiomara Castro Jan. 27-28.
“Honduras is an important ally of Taiwan in Central America,” he said Tuesday. “On this trip, we will bring a variety of Taiwan-made disease prevention equipment to give to the people of Honduras, taking concrete action to demonstrate our strong support for the Taiwan-Honduras alliance and the new Honduran administration on the first day of President Castro’s term.” Less than 50% of the Honduran population is fully vaccinated, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
During her campaign, Castro, a member of the left-wing Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), said she would re-establish diplomatic relations with China if elected, according to the Taiwan News. After a November trip by high-level officials from the U.S. State Department, who expressed the hope that Honduras would maintain its relationship with Taiwan, Castro backtracked and signaled support for Taiwan by retweeting congratulations from its president, Tsai Ing-wen.
US ties valued
Gerardo Torres, Libre Party secretary of international relations, said after Castro was elected on November 28 that the incoming administration would not sever ties with Taipei. “Nobody in the party wants to enter government distancing ourselves from the United States,” he said on December 10, according to the Taipei Times.
I believe that we have a responsibility to [Taiwan] as someone with whom we have had a good relationship,” said Rodolfo Pastor, a foreign policy adviser to Castro, according to the website Diálogo Chino.
“But I do believe that we also have a responsibility to our own population to be realistic, to be pragmatic and to understand that mainland China today plays a determining role that we cannot let go unnoticed,” Pastor said.
Analysts told VOA Mandarin that Castro was unlikely to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan after the U.S. intervention.
“It’s not really about what we have done to consolidate the bilateral relationship with Honduras, it’s more about the U.S. factor,” Ko Yu-Chih, an associate professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview.
FILE – In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, outgoing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, left, exchanges gifts with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during a meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Nov. 13, 2021.
Chang Kuang-Chiu, an associate professor at Chihlee University of Technology in Taipei, agreed. He said that because the U.S. is the largest trade partner of Honduras, and the U.S. military maintains the Soto Cano Air Base in the Central American country, “Honduras will likely make their relations with the U.S. as a priority.”
Meeting possible?
Meanwhile, there was speculation that Lai will meet unofficially with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who also is attending the inauguration.
A White House official on Wednesday told VOA Mandarin that “there are no plans for her [Harris] to meet with VP Lai while in Honduras.”
While there is no official diplomatic relationship between the United States and Taiwan, informal meetings between U.S. officials and Taiwan leaders on stopovers in the U.S. have become an institutionalized part of bilateral relations.
Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for China’s State Council Office on Taiwan Affairs, said on Wednesday at a daily briefing that China strongly opposed any form of official contact between Taipei and Washington.
“The DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] authorities are using the so-called ‘transit trip’ to seek official contact with the United States and opportunities for independence,” she said. “No matter what trick they use, it will not change the fact that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is a part of China.”
Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA Mandarin that observers who follow relations between China and Taiwan are keeping an eye on whether Harris and Lai will have any meaningful interaction on the margins of the inauguration, and if so, what messages are shared.
“Traditionally, international inaugurations, funerals and multilateral events, such as APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] conferences, are the venues where senior U.S. and Taiwan officials have opportunities to be in direct, personal contact. If the U.S. has a message it would like to convey to VP Lai, this inauguration presents a unique opportunity to do so,” he told VOA Mandarin in an email.
Avoiding ‘great disturbance’
Ko, of the National Chengchi University, argued that it’s possible the two leaders might have an opportunity to exchange a few words, but that the U.S. was unlikely to arrange a talk on the sidelines because it would anger China.
“If there is such an arrangement, it will cause a great disturbance in Sino-U.S. relations, which is also not beneficial for the stability of Taiwan,” she said. “The Biden administration is now dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic at home and Ukraine crisis abroad. Taiwan is not really a priority for the U.S. at this time.”
Hass, of Brookings, said Lai’s layovers in the U.S. follow long-standing American policy in consideration for the safety, comfort, convenience and dignity of Taiwanese officials.
“It reflects the Biden administration’s efforts to maintain a steady, principled approach to its Taiwan policy,” he said. “I do not expect the transit to deviate in any significant way from established practice.”
The president of Melilla, Eduardo de Castro, has canceled his agenda after suffering from a coronavirus infection, which he has confirmed with a control test carried out on the afternoon of this Tuesday.
De Castro has made known his state of health through Twitter, where he has reported that he is fine, although he suffers from mild symptoms, such as cough and sore throat, although he does not have a fever.
