Biden visits Kyiv as Putin withdraws from arms treaty
Great power rivalry
Ukraine: United States President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine this week and pledged his unwavering support for a war that he described as a battle for freedom against autocracy.
In a visit likened to Abraham Lincoln’s trip to the frontlines of the Civil War, Biden took a 10-hour train ride from Poland to Kyiv – accompanied by a small team of aides and two journalists – where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was the first visit by a modern US leader to a war zone that was not under American control.
“One year later, Kyiv stands,” Biden said during his five-hour visit. “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”
Biden then travelled to Warsaw, addressing a crowd of 30,000 to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
“President Putin chose this war,” he said. “Instead of an easy victory he perceived and predicted, Putin left burnt-out tanks and Russian forces in disarray.”
The speech came hours after Vladimir Putin delivered a state-of-the-union address in Moscow, in which he claimed that the
West “unleashed” the war and was using Ukraine as a “battering ram” against Russia. He announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the 2010 New START Treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, this week warned that China was considering providing arms to Russia – a claim that was rejected by Beijing.
Blinken said China was already giving non-military assistance to Russia but that new intelligence indicated it may also offer “lethal support”.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, defended China’s close ties to Russia but denied reports that Moscow had requested military support.
“It is the United States and not China that is endlessly shipping weapons to the battlefield,” he told reporters.
In Ukraine, Russia’s offensive in the eastern Donbas region has reportedly stalled amid intense fighting. The United Nations said on Tuesday that the war had caused 8006 verified civilian deaths – mainly from shelling and air strikes – but admitted that this figure was the “tip of the iceberg”.
The neighbourhood
Papua New Guinea: An Australian anthropologist and three local researchers were taken hostage on Monday while doing field work in the Papua New Guinea highlands and were moved between villages as their kidnappers reportedly demanded a ransom of 3.5 million kina ($1.5 million).
Police said the kidnapping was conducted by about 20 armed men who were holding the hostages in the border region of South Highlands, Hela and Western Province.
According to ABC News, the anthropologist is a New Zealand citizen who works at an Australian university and focuses on archaeology. He was taken with a three-woman team of PNG researchers, as well as local guides, who were released. On Wednesday, one of the researchers – the team co-ordinator – was released.
Villagers in Hela Province have reportedly been assisting authorities, including helping with negotiations and searching for the hostages.
PNG’S police commissioner, David Manning, said the kidnappers were motivated by “greed”, warning that authorities were willing to use force to free the hostages.
“These are opportunists that have obviously not thought this situation through before they acted, and have been asking for cash to be paid,” he said.
“They can release their captives and they will be treated fairly through the criminal justice system, but failure to comply and resisting arrest could cost these criminals their lives.”
The prime minister, James Marape, said he believed this was the country’s first kidnapping for ransom but was confident that the hostages will be released.
“We don’t want it to be a precedent for the future,” he said.
Democracy in retreat
North Korea: Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, threatened to launch further missiles over the Pacific Ocean, after a series of ballistic missile tests off the coasts of Japan and South Korea.
Yo-jong, who has become increasingly prominent since her first official statement in March 2020, said future missile tests will depend on the extent of the US military presence on the Korean peninsula.
“The frequency of using the Pacific as our firing range depends upon the US forces’ action character,” she said in a statement reported by state media.
North Korea fired two missiles on Monday, two days after testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew 989 kilometres and landed off the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The tests were condemned by the United Nations SecretaryGeneral António Guterres, and prompted the US to conduct separate joint exercises with South Korean and Japanese warplanes.
Yo-jong indicated that further North Korean tests would be conducted in the coming months as the US and South Korean militaries hold annual field exercises.
“We will watch every movement of the enemy and take corresponding and very powerful and overwhelming counteraction against its every move hostile to us,” she said.
Spotlight: Youtube algorithm on trial
The US Supreme Court this week began hearing a pair of landmark cases on whether Youtube, Facebook and Twitter should be held responsible for algorithms that promote hate content.
The first case alleges that Youtube, which is owned by Google, should be held liable for recommending Daesh recruitment videos. The case was brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old student who died in Paris during a Daesh terrorist attack in 2015 that killed 130 people.
In the second case, the family of Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in a Daesh terrorist attack in Istanbul in 2017, claim that Twitter, Facebook and Google abetted terrorism by allowing Daesh to use their platforms to recruit, fundraise and communicate.
The cases could affect the scope of a 1996 law that protects technology firms from liability for content posted by users – a move that would radically change the internet.
In the Gonzalez case, the family says the law should not extend to algorithms that promote harmful content. Such algorithms, which are closely guarded by technology companies, have been blamed for pushing users down online rabbit holes filled with extremist content and conspiracy theories.
Lisa Blatt, a lawyer for Google, told the court that weakening the 1996 law would “threaten today’s internet” and would force sites to either remove any content that was remotely problematic or allow all content, including hate speech.
“You have The Truman Show versus a horror show,” she said. “Helping users find the proverbial needle in the haystack is an existential necessity on the internet.”
Comments by the nine judges during the hearings this week indicated they are likely to proceed cautiously but may consider some limitations on the 1996 law, which was introduced before social media sites existed and which enabled their rise.
Justice Elena Kagan noted that the court was trying to determine how “a pre-algorithm statute applies in a post-algorithm world”. Drawing laughter, she observed: “You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet.”