BRUSSELS: The European Union will suspend sanctions on Syria’s banking, energy and transport sectors Monday, diplomats said, in a bid to help the country’s reconstruction after the ouster of Bashar Assad.
Syria’s new leaders have been clamouring for the West to ease sanctions on the country imposed to target Assad’s regime during the civil war.
But Europe and other powers have been reluctant to move before clear signals from the new Islamist-led rulers in Damascus that they are serious on having an inclusive transition.
The step due to be greenlit at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels is a formal move after the bloc struck a preliminary accord last month to suspend sanctions in key areas.
Diplomats talking on Friday said the sanctions could be reimposed if Syria’s new leaders break promises to respect the rights of minorities and move toward democracy.
The United Nations said on Thursday that at current growth rates, Syria would need more than 50 years to get back to its economic level before the outbreak of its devastating civil war.
Much of Syria’s infrastructure was destroyed and the country’s economy ravaged by years of international isolation after Assad’s 2011 crackdown on opposition sparked the civil war.
The EU and other international powers are jostling for influence in Syria after the ouster of Assad, who was backed by Russia and Iran.
EU to suspend Syria banking, energy, transport sanctions
https://arab.news/bcehr
EU to suspend Syria banking, energy, transport sanctions
- Syria’s new leaders have been clamouring for the West to ease sanctions on the country imposed to target Assad’s regime during the civil war
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
