Daily News Brief

March 2, 2023

Top of the Agenda

A meeting of Group of Twenty (G20) foreign ministers hosted by India ended without a joint statement (NYT) today due to divergent positions on the war in Ukraine. On the sidelines of the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke in person for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine last February. Blinken reportedly told Lavrov that Washington would support Kyiv’s war effort “for as long as it takes,” in addition to calling for Russia to rejoin the New START Treaty on nuclear arms control and release jailed U.S. citizen Paul Whelan. 

Lavrov also met with India’s top diplomat (Hindustan Times), Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, ahead of the G20 meeting. While Western countries have criticized India for not taking a tougher stance on Ukraine, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he hopes India’s G20 presidency can focus on issues (Al Jazeera) of greater concern to low-income countries, including poverty and climate change. 

Analysis

“The fact that [Blinken and Lavrov] did meet briefly on Thursday suggests the [Joe] Biden administration believes that the two governments should continue to keep channels of communication open, despite being on opposing sides of Russia’s war in Ukraine,” the New York Times’ Edward Wong writes.

“U.S. policymakers should help India realize that Russia is a liability, but they should not penalize New Delhi for its continued relations with Moscow as long as they can count on India to play a larger and more active role in countering Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific,” the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Sameer Lalwani writes for Foreign Affairs.  

Pacific Rim

The sale approved by the U.S. State Department includes missiles (Reuters) for Taiwan’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets. The approval came as Taiwan reported two days of increased incursions by Chinese aircraft.

Malaysia/Myanmar/Philippines: During a visit to the Philippines, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) “should not remain silent” (Philstar) on the turmoil in Myanmar. Yesterday, he told Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (Nikkei) that ASEAN should consider new approaches to resolving Myanmar’s crisis.

South and Central Asia

The calculation was made (Al Jazeera) by international charity Save the Children. Sri Lanka’s government has raised electricity prices (Al Jazeera) for consumers and cut its own spending as it seeks to secure a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For Foreign Affairs, Deborah Brautigam argues that the United States and China should lead the global response to debt relief in the developing world.

Middle East and North Africa

Police used stun grenades (AP) and water cannons against Israelis protesting proposed reforms to the justice system. It was the first such violence of Israel’s weekslong anti-government demonstrations.

UAE: Envoys from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union (EU) have visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in recent weeks to urge it to crack down on suspected sanctions busting that could be benefiting Russia’s war effort, the Financial Times reported.  

Sub-Saharan Africa

The Labour Party of third-place candidate Peter Obi cited differences (Bloomberg) between the official vote count and unofficial tallies at polling stations.

For the Africa in Transition blog, CFR’s Ebenezer Obadare writes that foreign governments should help Nigeria make the best of its imperfect election. 

South Sudan: The United Nations criticized Juba (AP) for sending troops to a disputed border area claimed by South Sudan and Sudan, saying the deployment would cause “untold suffering and humanitarian concerns.”

Europe

In the wake of an EU embargo and a Group of Seven (G7) price cap on Russian oil, Moscow was able to redirect its oil exports to other markets, but suffered reduced earnings because it sold them at a discount, according to a new paper (SSRN) by researchers at the Institute for International Finance and several U.S. and Spanish universities. However, they found that the price cap was poorly enforced, with “a significant share of Russian crude being sold well-above the price cap.”

This In Brief looks at one year of sanctions on Russia.

Greece: The country’s transportation minister resigned (Kathimerini) following a train crash in central Greece that killed at least thirty-six people.

Americas

A London-based artificial intelligence company used the fake newscasters to spread positive English-language coverage of Venezuela’s government on social media, the Washington Post reported.

Argentina: Large parts of the country experienced a blackout (Reuters) yesterday, the latest in a series of outages that have occurred since electricity demand began rising during a January heat wave. A fire appeared to be responsible for yesterday’s outage.

United States

A report by five U.S. intelligence agencies found it “very unlikely” (WaPo) that a foreign adversary or energy weapon caused U.S. envoys around the world to experience the anomalous health incidents often referred to as Havana Syndrome. 

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