Edited by: TJVNews.com
Ukraine’s first lady on Tuesday pressed world leaders and corporate executives at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland to do more to help her country at a time when Russia’s invasion is leaving children dying and the world struggling with food insecurity, according to an AP report.
As the anniversary of the war nears, Olena Zelenska said parents in Ukraine are in tears watching doctors trying to save their children, farmers are afraid to return to their fields filled with mines and “we cannot allow a new Chernobyl to happen,” referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster as Russian missiles have pounded Ukrainian energy infrastructure for months.
“What you all have in common is that you are genuinely influential,” Zelenska told attendees, as was reported by the AP. “But there is something that separates you, namely that not all of you use this influence, or sometimes use it in a way that separates you even more.”
“We are all internally convinced that there is no such global problem that humanity cannot solve,” Zelenska said, the AP reported. “This is more important now when Russia’s aggression in Europe poses various challenges.”
The fighting has killed thousands of civilians, displaced millions and jolted food and fuel markets worldwide, raising inflation and expanding food insecurity in developing nations.
“There is a right to food that every human being has, and it’s an insult for mankind and for human nature itself, that in the 21st century, it is possible for us to have mass starvation simply because because there is a targeted aggression of some countries,” she said, according to the AP report.
Zelenska said “there are no day offs from war” and the AP reported that she also said “everyone in Ukraine has to risk their lives every day,” but added that she believed the world would unify for peace.
Her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will be beamed in by video Wednesday to complement the in-person delegation of his wife and officials such as Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, the AP reported.
Davos offers a new chance for Ukrainian envoys to ramp up international support for donations of weapons like tanks and anti-rocket defenses and greater pressure to further isolate and squeeze Russia’s economy.
She spoke as hundreds of government officials, corporate titans, academics and activists from around the world descended on the resort town for the annual confab. The WEF officially convened on Monday as the weeklong talkfest of big ideas kicked off as well as backroom deal-making that prioritizes global problems such as hunger, climate change and the slowing economy, according to the AP report. The report indicated that it’s never clear how much concrete action emerges to help reach the forum’s stated ambition of “improving the state of the world.”
The AP reported on Monday that the WEF has “increasingly become a target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit. Experts say what was once a conspiracy theory found in the internet’s underbelly has now hit the mainstream.”
Other reliable media sources disagree about the motives of those gathered in Davos for the WEF. Many claim that the corporate media partners with the WEF to advance their agendas. Corporate media is represented in Davos by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
On Tuesday, it was reported through a series of Twitter postings that Avi Yemini, an Australian correspondent for Rebel News was threatened with physical violence by CNBC’s international managing editor when Yemini posed polite questions to him. Referring to the threat made against Yemini by the CNBC editor, Rebel News posted on Twitter: “These are the THUGS that want to control the world. But he doesn’t care us.”
In a January 13th report, CNBC said of the WEF: “The global elite of business leaders, politicians and economists make bold predictions and try to set the agenda for the year ahead — but they don’t always get it right.”
One example that they offered of predictions that never came to fruition concerned the FTX crash that dominated the headlines in the last half of 2022. CNBC reported that cryptocurrency was rocky throughout 2022, but those in the market weren’t expecting the collapse of FTX — once a $32 billion crypto exchange.
Brett Harrison, who served as president of FTX U.S., told CNBC at Davos in 2022 that the company was in a “very good spot” regarding capital and was looking at acquisitions, according to the CNBC report.
U.S. authorities arrested Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO, in December, and accused him of wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty.
In terms of prognostications on cryptocurrency, CNBC also reported that in 2019, Jeff Schumacher, founder of BCG Digital Ventures, said during a CNBC-hosted panel at Davos that the price of bitcoin could sink to zero.
Bitcoin has had a volatile run, but in 2021 and 2022 it reached levels well above those seen in 2019, CNBS reported. It has since come down from its historic highs, but its trading levels this week are still above those of four years ago.
As to the possibility of global military aggression, CNBC reported that billionaire investor George Soros warned during a speech at Davos in 2018 that the United States could be heading for a nuclear war with North Korea but did not offer a timeline for any possible confrontation.
“The United States is set on a course towards nuclear war by refusing to accept that [North] Korea has become a nuclear power,” he said at the time, CNBC reported.
The Obama administration also said back in 2016 that this was a top national security risk.
So far, the United States has avoided any military conflict with North Korea. In fact, CNBC reported that recent concerns along these lines are focused on Russia, in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged the executives and leaders at this year’s WEF at Davos to keep aiding Ukraine, the AP reported.
“It is a perfect opportunity to take investment and reform to pave this way for Ukraine towards the European Union,” she said. “And my call on you is: We need every helping hand on board. Ukraine deserves to have as much support as possible.”
While urging unity for Ukraine, the head of the EU’s executive arm unveiled a major clean tech industrial plan to compete with China and the United States as the 27-nation bloc looks to remain a leader on plotting a greener future, as was reported by the AP.
She said the plan would make it easier to push through subsidies for green industries and inject funding into EU-wide projects to help reach a 2050 goal of climate neutrality. The bloc also would be more forceful in countering unfair trading practices.
Also speaking on Tuesday was former Vice President Al Gore who emphasized the need to reform multilateral development banks if the world wants to rapidly decarbonize and meet its climate goals, the AP reported.
He pointed to the World Bank, whose leader David Malpass faced criticism in September for not directly answering when asked whether the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to global warming. Instead, he said, “I am not a scientist.”
The AP reported that he has denied Gore’s accusations of being a climate denier. Gore said during a panel session at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday that “if we have a global allocation system for capital that deprives the vast majority of people that live in developing countries from any meaningful access then we are kidding ourselves.”
According to Gore, 88% of the projected increase in emissions of planet-warming gases will come from the developing world but most of them don’t have access to private capital today, the AP reported.
He said that Nigerians, for example, have to pay an interest rate that is seven times higher than those in a European or North American country.
Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, announced that USAID would be providing more support for the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation on Tuesday at the forum in Davos.
The AP reported that Power, speaking during a panel discussion on democracy said the program was developed in conjunction with the forum, with the private sector saying business is hard to do certain countries and asking USAID and other government actors to make it easier.
She said “we’re going to surge support to Ecuador, Tanzania, countries like that again are doing those hard things to try to facilitate trade and not merely again the classic tool toolkit for democracy promotion,” as was reported by the AP.
Power said many countries are taking difficult steps to address problems as they try to implement political reforms. She said those efforts could be helped by public-private partnerships.
She urged businesses to check about investment opportunities in countries that are “doing hard things, that are fighting for more transparency, fighting those anti-democratic forces,” the AP reported.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, whose country borders Russia and is looking to join NATO, said the West should send Russian President Vladimir Putin the message that “we will support Ukraine as long as needed — five years, 10 years, 15 years, whatever it takes — we will support Ukraine, and this will not stop,” according to the AP report.
Speaking Tuesday in Davos, Marin added that “it’s for Ukrainians to decide when they are ready to negotiate, when they are ready to make some peace agreement.”
She said “the story might have been very different” if Western is allies had acted stronger when Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.
The AP reported that the European Union member that shares a long border with Russia is seeking NATO membership. Marin says Finland believed it was best to stay out of the alliance for its own security but then it saw “Russia is attacking another neighbor and we cannot rely on that relations anymore, so we have to seek partnership elsewhere.”
All 30 NATO states must approve Finland and Sweden joining the Western military alliance, with just Turkey and Hungary yet to sign on. The AP also reported that Turkey is demanding the Nordic countries tighten counterterrorism measures.
Marin says she has spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who relayed to her that “there aren’t big issues with Finland, maybe Sweden.” She emphasized that Finland and Sweden must join NATO together, according to the AP report.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged business and political leaders during the forum to “wake up” and preserve global trade even as they look to insulate their supply sources from disruption.
Georgieva says the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine showed that some redundancy is needed when it comes to where businesses source parts and raw materials, according to the AP report.
But the smart way is “to keep that to the level where we make the world economy more resilient and not drag the world into a place where we will be all poorer and we will be less secure.”
The head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning World Food Program said support from donors like the United States and Germany have allowed it to postpone — though not entirely avert — famine in Somalia, according to the AP report.
WFP Executive Director David Beasley stressed that “we’re not out of this yet.”
He told The Associated Press that countries in the Horn of Africa have faced “unprecedented climate impact” from years of drought, and the U.N. agency had been expecting to announce famine in Somalia before donors “stepped up in magnificent ways.”
Speaking Tuesday, Beasley warned that “we still could end up with a famine technically in Somalia” because “famine-like conditions” already exist, as was reported by the AP.
When Beasley took the job in 2017, some 80 million people worldwide were on the brink of starvation and faced chronic hunger. The AP reported that conflict, climate change and COVID-19 have caused that to balloon to 350 million today because of economic devastation and supply-chain disruptions.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said at the forum on Tuesday that efforts to build an international coalition that could send “at least an armored brigade” to Ukraine “will take some time,” the AP reported.
Duda stressed that Ukraine is asking for modern Western weapons and tanks as it has been fighting for Russia’s invasion since February and is “counting on the allies to each give a few or about a dozen tanks.
Speaking to Polish reporters after a panel he said he’s counting on Finland and on other European countries, including Germany, which have Leopard tanks, the AP reported.
Duda stressed that Germany’s permission will be required for the German-made Leopard tanks to be handed over to Ukraine, according to the AP. Britain has offered to provide its Challenger tanks, with Duda expressing thanks for the U.K. government.
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