GENEVA: The new head of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Wednesday said she was prepared to go to Moscow to discuss access to prisoners of war (POWs).
Mirjana Spoljaric, who took the ICRC reins in October, told reporters in Geneva she had personally been “speaking with Russian counterparts.”
“I intend to go to Moscow, when the moment is there,” she said.
Speaking at ICRC headquarters just days after returning from Ukraine, she said the organization was intent on gaining access to POWs taken by both sides since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last February.
“We are in daily conversations at different levels, because access to prisoners of war is an ongoing engagement,” she said.
“There is never a suspension or an end to that.”
Visiting POWs is core to the ICRC’s mission enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, which define the laws of war.
The organization has been repeatedly criticized by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the ultra-sensitive subject of POW visits.
He has accused the organization of not pushing hard enough to gain access to Ukrainian troops captured by Russian forces.
Responding indirectly to that criticism, Spoljaric stressed the difficulty of the task and the dangers facing ICRC teams on the ground when visiting prisoners.
“If the ICRC doesn’t come, it is not a choice,” she insisted.
“We have to receive adequate guarantees and competent reassurances that our convoys will not be hit while trying to get to these facilities.”
The ICRC has long complained that it lacks sufficient access to those held by the warring parties and while it said last week there had been some progress, Spoljaric said far more was needed.
“We are determined to access all prisoners, no matter where they are,” she said, adding, “We also want to access civilians detained.”
She stressed it was vital that ICRC teams are not just allowed to go into each detention facility once, but that they are given repeated access.
Asked about the potential for a prisoner exchange of all detainees on both sides, the ICRC president would not comment on whether such a move was being discussed.
But she highlighted that large-scale prisoner swaps have happened in past conflicts.
“It’s not something which the ICRC can predict or can comment on but as a possibility it is certainly there,” she said, pointing out that past prisoner exchanges had proved to be a powerful confidence building measure.
“And very often, an all for all exchange constitutes the first step to a broader agreement.”
New Red Cross chief says ready to go to Russia for POWs
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New Red Cross chief says ready to go to Russia for POWs
- Mirjana Spoljaric, who took the ICRC reins in October, told reporters in Geneva she had personally been "speaking with Russian counterparts"
- Visiting POWs is core to the ICRC's mission enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, which define the laws of war
2025 among world’s three hottest years on record, WMO says
- All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said
- The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements
BRUSSELS: Last year was among the planet’s three warmest on record, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday, as EU scientists also confirmed average temperatures have now exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming for the longest since records began.
The WMO, which consolidates eight climate datasets from around the world, said six of them — including the European Union’s European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the British national weather service — had ranked 2025 as the third warmest, while two placed it as the second warmest in the 176-year record.
All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said. The warmest year on record was 2024.
THREE-YEAR PERIOD ABOVE 1.5 C AVERAGE WARMING LEVEL
The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements — which include satellite data and readings from weather stations.
ECMWF said 2025 also rounded out the first three-year period in which the average global temperature was 1.5 C above the pre-industrial era — the limit beyond which scientists expect global warming will unleash severe impacts, some of them irreversible.
“1.5 C is not a cliff edge. However, we know that every fraction of a degree matters, particularly for worsening extreme weather events,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF.
Burgess said she expected 2026 to be among the planet’s five warmest years.
CHOICE OF HOW TO MANAGE TEMPERATURE OVERSHOOT
Governments pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to avoid exceeding 1.5 C of global warming, measured as a decades-long average temperature compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
But their failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that target could now be breached before 2030 — a decade earlier than had been predicted when the Paris accord was signed in 2015, ECMWF said. “We are bound to pass it,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”
Currently, the world’s long-term warming level is about 1.4 C above the pre-industrial era, ECMWF said. Measured on a short-term basis, average annual temperatures breached 1.5 C for the first time in 2024.
EXTREME WEATHER
Exceeding the long-term 1.5 C limit would lead to more extreme and widespread impacts, including hotter and longer heatwaves, and more powerful storms and floods. Already in 2025, wildfires in Europe produced the highest total emissions on record, while scientific studies confirmed specific weather events were made worse by climate change, including Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoon rains in Pakistan which killed more than 1,000 people in floods.
Despite these worsening impacts, climate science is facing political pushback. US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change “the greatest con job,” last week withdrew from dozens of UN entities including the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The long-established consensus among the world’s scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
