'Positive’ signs but no breakthrough after talks with Sweden and Finland, says Turkish official

The U.S. Treasury Department took a major step Tuesday toward pushing Russia into a government default, announcing it would no longer allow the Kremlin to make debt payments owed to American bondholders.

The move will make it much harder, if not impossible, for Russia to avoid a default — a breach of its national debt commitments — which Moscow has tried to avoid since launching the war in Ukraine.

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Russia’s central bank shortly after the start of the war, but it issued a special license exempting bond payments, allowing Russia to continue to pay its loan obligations. But that license was set to expire this week, and Treasury is now saying it will not be renewed. That means American banks will not be able to process debt payments when Russia tries to make them. In total, the Russian government owes about $20 billion worth of bonds, mostly in dollars, and it owes about $500 million in interest payments over the next month, according to Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow with the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Forty-two former presidents and prime ministers have added their signatures to a growing list that calls for the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court, citing both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the loss of coronavirus funding to fraud as new evidence of the ill effects of grand corruption.

Among those signing the declaration were former leaders of Argentina, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Mexico, Peru, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and many others, according to an announcement made Wednesday by nonprofits Integrity Initiatives International and Club de Madrid.

Grand corruption — the abuse of public office for private gain by a nation’s leaders — “has global dimensions and cannot be combated by the affected countries alone,” said Danilo Turk, president of Slovenia between 2007 and 2012 and the current president of Club de Madrid, a forum for former elected world leaders.

The wife of Brittney Griner said Wednesday in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she hopes to hear from President Biden as the WNBA star’s detention in Russia on drug charges continues, saying: “If they’re holding her because they want you to do something, then I want you to do it.”

The two-time Olympic gold medalist and seven-time WNBA all-star for the Phoenix Mercury was taken into custody when she arrived Feb. 17 at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow, where she plays for the Russian UMMC Ekaterinburg team during the WNBA’s offseason, and accused of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in Russia.

Since then, Griner’s family and State Department officials have been working behind the scenes to try to secure her release, and the Biden administration recently reclassified her situation as “wrongful detainment.” Publicly, the WNBA sent a message by placing decals with her initials and No. 42 on its teams’ floors.

ISTANBUL — A senior Turkish official said Wednesday that a meeting with diplomats from Sweden and Finland, concerning Turkey’s objections to their bids to join NATO, had produced some “positive” signs but no immediate breakthrough.

The official, Ibrahim Kalin, an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested that unless Turkey’s demands were met, his government was in no great hurry to resolve a dispute that has roiled the transatlantic alliance as it tries to present a united front against Russia.

“Let’s say there is no time pressure” to include NATO’s secretary general in the talks until a meeting of the alliance scheduled for late June, Kalin said during comments to reporters in Ankara, the Turkish capital, following the meeting.

Why Turkey dissents on Finland and Sweden joining NATO and why it matters

Turkey’s objections have stalled what its NATO partners, including the United States, had assumed would be an easy march toward the expansion of the alliance during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Erdogan’s stated demands have included the extradition of people wanted by Ankara, the termination of support for a Kurdish group and the lifting of sanctions against Turkey. Many analysts, however, see an attempt by Turkey to leverage its position to win concessions on other issues with Western partners, including the Biden administration.

Kalin framed the meetings Wednesday as primarily focused on the airing of Turkish concerns, and repeated familiar complaints about Western support for Kurdish fighters in Syria affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has fought a long separatist insurgency against Turkey.

He said that dozens of extradition requests sent to Sweden and Finland had gone unanswered. “We have seen that there is no convincing legal or judicial justification,” he said.

During the meetings, he added, “We have seen a positive attitude towards the lifting of sanctions in the field of defense, which is a positive development. In NATO, it is unacceptable for allies to impose an embargo on each other, either explicitly or implicitly.”

The meetings with Sweden and Finland would continue, Kalin said.

The European Commission proposed making it a crime to violate European Union restrictive measures — a move it said was critical amid Russia’s continued war.

“While the Russian aggression on Ukraine is ongoing, it is paramount that EU restrictive measures are fully implemented and the violation of those measures must not be allowed to pay off,” the commission said in a statement Wednesday, adding that the new proposals would also push to make it easier to confiscate assets from individuals or entities that violate any sanctions.

Vera Jourova, the commissioner for values and transparency, said in a tweet that E.U. sanctions “must be respected and those trying to go around them punished.”

“As a Union we stand up for our values and we must make those who keep Putin’s war machine running pay the price,” she wrote on Twitter.

The executive director of the International Energy Agency warned European leaders Tuesday of the effects of a global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine and urged them to make contingency plans for the possibility of a harsh winter ahead.

“Europe is paying for its over-dependence on Russian energy,” Fatih Birol said in an interview with the New York Times. He added that he has advised European leaders to make backup plans, because he could not rule out the possibility that they may have to ration natural gas supplies later this year given the difficulty of securing alternative energy sources.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Birol highlighted the turmoil faced by the global energy market due to the Russian invasion, with oil and gas prices skyrocketing and signs of an economic recession mounting.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says his country should be allowed to join the European Union as soon as possible, rejecting other forms of integration with its Western allies.

“I need to emphasize we don’t think the so-called alternative formats of the integration are acceptable here,” said Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s presidential office, on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Yermak’s remarks came two weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that Ukraine could join a consortium of European countries that functions parallel to the E.U. as it waits to join the bloc. Macron and his E.U. affairs minister, Clément Beaune, have also recently said Ukraine’s application process could take up to two decades.

But on Tuesday, Beaune sought to reassure Ukraine, telling reporters he is “convinced” the country will become an E.U. member and that the consortium suggestion was not intended as an alternative to that. “We know with honesty that it takes time and in this time we can’t allow ourselves to simply wait,” Beaune said, according to Reuters.

American financier George Soros warned an audience at the World Economic Forum that the Russian invasion of Ukraine may have marked the start of a third world war, saying “the course of history has changed dramatically.”

“This has shaken Europe to its core,” the Hungarian-born Soros, 91, told an audience at the Swiss ski resort of Davos on Tuesday. Even if the fighting ends soon, “the situation will never revert to what it was before,” he said.

“The invasion may have been the beginning of the third world war, and our civilization may not survive it,” he added, noting that climate change and the coronavirus pandemic have been swept to the sidelines in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

He said the conflict, now entering its fourth month, “didn’t come out of the blue.” Instead, he said, the world was struggling with “diametrically opposed” open and closed systems of government. “Repressive regimes are now in the ascendant, and open societies are under siege,” Soros said, naming China and Russia as the largest threats.

The investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist urged Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Russian President Vladimir Putin “seems to have recognized that he made a terrible mistake when he invaded Ukraine,” but he is unlikely to initiate peace talks, Soros said.