Russian men banned for fear of invasion
Measure taken under martial law after naval clash off Crimea
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel finally made her way to Argentina for the Group of 20 Summit (G20) after a technical problem with her plane forced her to change plans and stay overnight in Bonn.
Merkel’s office said she and a small delegation, including the finance minister, took a different government plane to Madrid yesterday morning, and then boarded a commercial flight to Buenos Aires.
Merkel was en route on Thursday night on an air force plane, but turned around over the Netherlands after the captain reported a technical problem.
The plane was diverted to the Cologne/bonn airport and landed without incident. US PRESIDENT Donald Trump opened two days of diplomacy at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina yesterday after his abrupt decision to cancel a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin overshadowed the proceedings before they even started.
Trump tweeted that he was cancelling
The German Air Force said yesterday there was no suspicion of criminal activity. It said the problem appeared to have been an electrical issue.
Der Spiegel magazine said the plane’s communication system malfunctioned, constituting a serious emergency, with the crew forced to plan the landing using an onboard satellite phone.
Guido Henrich, commander of the German Air Force’s government fleet, told reporters the pilots experienced the radio failure over the Netherlands and that other systems failed, too, so they landed at Cologne-bonn airport.
Merkel called the incident a “serious malfunction”. | the meeting with Putin over Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian vessels.
Coming into this G20, he faces a series of diplomatic challenges — most notably whether he can strike an agreement with Chinese president Xi Jinping to ease trade tensions that have rattled financial markets. | UKRAINE has banned Russian adult men aged 16 to 60 years from entering Ukraine, the head of the border service, Petro Tsygykal, said in a televised meeting yesterday.
Ukraine imposed martial law this week, citing fears that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion after Russian vessels fired on and captured Ukrainian ships last weekend.
The measure aimed at men of combatant age is to “prevent Russians from implementing in Ukraine the operations that they planned in 2014”, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Twitter, referring to the outbreak of a pro-russian separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine.
Poroshenko said that such militia units were “in reality representatives of the armed forces of the Russian Federation”.
More than 10 000 people, including 2 700 civilians, have been killed in the conflict between Russia-loyal separatist groups and the Ukrainian military, according to estimates by the UN.
Tensions between Ukraine and neighbouring Russia escalated last weekend when the Russian coastguard opened fire and captured several Ukrainian naval vessels near the Russian-annexed Crimea region, which Ukraine maintains is its territory.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia was not planning to impose similar travel bans on Ukrainians.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman called for harsher EU sanctions against Russia in response to the naval clash, according to an interview published yesterday.
Groysman also criticised the planned expansion of a natural gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany – Nord Stream 2 – asserting that it drives the EU towards dependence on Russia.
“It is not just harmful for Ukraine, but for the whole continent,” Groysman said.
Ukraine is set to lose billions of dollars in transit fees as the gas corridor does not pass through its territory.
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has warned that the pipeline issue should not be mixed up with the Crimea tensions. |
AP Reuters