Russian Space Agency Chief Threatens to End Cooperation Over Western Sanctions

The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.

In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, “We can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”

Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon.

Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.

Projects with Germans scrapped

Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the “Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.”

Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos “will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station.”

Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.

Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial …. NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS.”

Some information for this report came from Reuters.

Western Evacuation Calls Draw Criticism

Britain joined the United States on Friday in urging foreign nationals to evacuate Ukraine while there are still commercial means to do so. The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office updated its advice shortly after the country’s defense minister, Ben Wallace, flew out of Moscow after talks with senior Kremlin figures.

Estonia is also urging citizens to leave Ukraine immediately due to “an increased risk of military action by Russia.” The evacuation calls came as senior U.S. officials warned that Russia could invade Ukraine at any time and had sufficient forces deployed to do so.

The European Union’s envoy to Ukraine, Matti Maasikas, has urged nonessential staff at its embassy in the Ukrainian capital to leave amid heightening tension with Russia.

“I have urged all expat colleagues with the exception of the essential staff to leave Ukraine ASAP to telework from outside the country,” he wrote in an email message to EU diplomats. “I feel very sad,” he added.

A European Commission spokesperson, however, emphasized that the EU isn’t pulling out all diplomats. “We continue to assess the situation as it develops, in line with the duty of care we have towards our staff and in close consultation and coordination with the EU member states,” said Peter Stano, the foreign affairs spokesman.

The Kremlin denies it has any intentions to invade and is accusing Washington and London of provocative alarmism.

“The hysteria of the White House is more indicative than ever,” said Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson, Friday.

“The Anglo-Saxons need a war. At any cost. Provocations, misinformation and threats are a favorite method of solving their own problems,” she added.

While senior Ukrainian officials acknowledge the threat of a Russian “provocation,” there is deep frustration in Kyiv with the calls for foreign nationals to leave, with concerns mounting that the message is demoralizing for Ukrainians and at this stage premature. Ukraine has frequently played down warnings from the United States, and Ukrainian officials say they are seeing “nothing new” in Russian military activity now.

The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said Ukrainian authorities are “well aware” of the possible provocations Russia could stage. “We are currently considering all options,” he added.

Ukraine says it is giving Russia 48 hours to explain the presence of its troops at the border under the terms of the Vienna Document, a series of agreements on European security. But Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian foreign minister, said the statement is “not evidence of some radical change of the situation.”

Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have also asked their citizens in Ukraine to leave.

British diplomats say a meeting Friday between the heads of government and ministers of NATO members was sobering. “Next week is the working assumption,” a senior British official said. During the meeting U.S. President Joe Biden was clear an invasion was imminent, he added.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the meeting “he feared for the security of Europe in the current circumstances,” Downing Street said in a statement.

“He impressed the need for NATO allies to make it absolutely clear that there will be a heavy package of economic sanctions ready to go should Russia make the devastating and destructive decision to invade Ukraine,” the statement continued.

Some British lawmakers added their concerns to Ukrainian worries that the calls for departures and evacuations were sending the wrong signals to Moscow and suggest the West is giving up on Ukraine. Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative member of Parliament and chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, said the rhetoric being used by Washington and London appears to be “bordering on panic.”

Ellwood conceded the governments have a duty of care for their citizens, particularly when the threat picture changes.

“But it’s almost bordering on panic and that absolutely fits into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s objective. He’ll be delighted to see the West and the NATO alliance crumbling in this way.”

Ellwood has been advocating for a serious NATO force to be deployed in Ukraine for weeks, arguing that would be the only way to deter Russia. “The least we can do now is provide a no-fly zone,” he added.

Ukraine’s envoy in London has also been arguing for NATO deployments. Britain should send troops to Ukraine to deter an invasion, Vadym Prystaiko told The Times of London.

Most of the thousands of Britons and Americans in Ukraine have deep roots there. Many have dual nationality, strong family ties and are married to Ukrainians and are unlikely to leave. U.S. Embassy staff have been telephoning American nationals in Ukraine urging them to evacuate.

Biden has announced military plans to fly American troops into Poland to help with any evacuations, hoping to avoid the chaos seen during the August U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan. Britain is also drafting evacuation plans. Like the Americans, Britain is planning to evacuate more Kyiv-based diplomats and to relocate them to Poland, British officials say.

“The aim is to strip down to the bare bones,” an official told VOA.

China's Loans to Sub-Saharan Africa Outweigh Those of Western Nations

Chinese banks provided more loans to fund developmental projects in sub-Saharan Africa than some of the world’s greatest economies combined from 2007 to 2020, according to a new study.

The Washington- and London-based Center for Global Development on Thursday also reported that Chinese development banks provided a whopping $23 billion to finance public-private partnerships in the region.

The figure is more than double the combined amount of $9.1 billion lent by banks in the U.S., Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, France and South Africa, the report found.

“This is well short of what the region needs for roads, dams and bridges,” said Nancy Lee, lead author of the study.

The global think tank examined more than 500 infrastructure projects in the region with a private sector component that reached financial closure during the period.

“There’s a lot of criticism of China, but if Western governments want to boost productive and sustainable investments to meaningful levels, they need to deploy their own development banks and press the multilateral development banks to make these investments a priority,” Lee said.

FILE – A worker works on the electrified light rail transit construction site in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, Dec. 16, 2014. The project was built by China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC) and mostly financed through a loan from China’s Exim Bank.

The report also found that despite the 2015 “billions to trillions” vision launched by multilateral development banks, institutions such as the World Bank provided only $1.4 billion per year to fund infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan Africa from 2016 to 2020.

The lack of transparency and use of collateralized loans by China has been of great concern to stakeholders in recent years.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have warned that several low-income countries face or are already in debt distress.

Lee, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said Western countries have been slow to hike investments despite “much rhetoric.”

“There’s a real opportunity for the U.S. to provide more leadership on infrastructure finance in Africa,” Lee noted.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.

China's UN Envoy Says Choice of Uyghur Torchbearer Not Meant to Deflect Western Criticism

China’s United Nations envoy has rejected his U.S. counterpart’s remark that China’s choice of an ethnic Uyghur as a torchbearer for the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics was an attempt to distract from his country’s alleged rights abuses against Muslim minorities.

Ambassador Zhang Jun said in a statement on the embassy’s website that China “sternly refutes” the “unwarranted accusations” made by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in an interview with CNN.

Zhang said that Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross country skier born in Xinjiang, is “among the best” of the 20 athletes from nine ethnic minorities competing for Team China at the Winter Games.

“She is the pride and excellent representative of the Chinese people. Where does the U.S.’ inexplicable anger over this come from, and what intentions does it harbor?” Zhang said.

Dinigeer was selected as one of the last two torchbearers at the opening ceremony. Many Western nations have imposed a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly from the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps in Xinjiang since 2016.

China rejects accusations of abuse, describing the camps as vocational centers designed to combat extremism, and in late 2019 it said all people in the camps had “graduated”.

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said on Saturday that Dinigeer was not chosen because of where she comes from.

Chinese organizers of the Games said the torchbearers who entered the stadium with the flame had been picked based on their birth dates, with each having been born in a different decade, starting from the 1950s through to the 2000s.