March 1, 2022

A roundup of local and international news.

România Internațional, 01.03.2022, 08:55

Romania’s Supreme
Defence Council chaired by president Klaus Iohannis met today to discuss the situation
in Ukraine. Speaking after the meeting, president Iohannis said the Council decided
to boost efforts aimed at consolidating the defence and deterrence posture on
the NATO eastern flank through the deployment of allied forces and speeding up
the creation of a NATO battlegroup in Romania. The Council also decided on measures
to support the Republic of Moldova, which is faced with a growing number of
refugees from Ukraine. A logistical hub will also be set up in Romania to
coordinate collection and transport of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The president
said the Council agreed on two strategic objectives for Romania: increasing defence
spending from 2% to 2.5% of GDP and achieving energy independence by developing
renewable and civilian nuclear energy capabilities.

Ukraine. The Russian army continued attacks on
Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where resistance is still strong. Kharkiv, in the east,
Ukraine’s second largest city was also heavily hit. Ukraine’s president
Volodymyr Zelensky described the strikes on Kharkiv, in which dozens of
civilians were reportedly killed, as a war crime. He said there are eyewitness
reports of civilians being deliberately targeted during the attack. Acoording
to satellite images, a huge convoy of Russian armour stretching on dozens of
kms is advancing towards Kyiv from the north. The images also show deployments
of troops and equipment in southern Belarus, less than 32 km north of the
border with Ukraine. Kyiv also confirmed an attack on the southern city of
Kherson.

European MEPs met in an extraordinary
session of the European Parliament to discuss a response to Russia’s invasion.
The meeting was called last Thursday by European Parliament speaker Roberta
Metsola and the leaders of the political groups in Parliament, who firmly
condemned the attack on Ukraine, describing it as unjustified and illegal. On
Monday, US president Joe Biden held a new conference call with allies and
partners on a unified response to the Ukraine crisis. Joining the call for the
first time was the prime minister of Japan, as well as EU and NATO leaders, the
prime ministers of the UK and Canada, the German chancellor and the presidents
of France, Poland and Romania. Romanian president Klaus Iohannis called for the
speeding up of the creation of a NATO battlegroup in Romania as a means of
consolidating NATO’s defence and deterrence posture in the region. Monday also
saw the first face-to-face meeting between Ukrainian and Russian officials,
held on Belarusian border and which ended inconclusively, with a new round of
talks possibly taking place in the next few days. Russia said it put its
nuclear triad on alert duty, while the United States and the European Union
said they are prepared to adopt additional sanctions against Russia. More than
660,000 people, mostly women and children, have fled Ukraine to the neighbouring
countries in the last six days since the invasion began, the UN refugee agency
said.

Exercise. Almost 900 Romanian and American soldiers and
over 70 pieces of military hardware will be training together between 2nd
and 10th March at the Secondary Combat Training
Centre for Romanian Land Forces in Smârdan,
in the south-east of Romania, as part of the Justice Eagle 22.1 exercise. The
drill is based on an
imaginary scenario adjusted for possible operational threats and it involves
T-55 tanks, the TAB-77 wheeled amphibious armoured personnel carriers, Bradley
armoured fighting vehicles and Stryker infantry carrier vehicles, the Romanian
defence ministry said in a statement. The Justice Eagle multinational exercise
is held annually in Romania and is designed to increase interoperability among
NATO forces and maintain the ability to deploy and train together. The US
military participating in the exercise form part of the detachments deployed in
Romania as part of measures to strengthen allied posture on the entire NATO
eastern flank.

Covid-19. Romania today reported almost 8,500
new Covid infections and 164 related fatalities, including four from an earlier
date. The incidence rate in Bucharest
dropped to 22 cases per 1,000 inhabitants, while fewer than 1,000 Covid
patients are in intensive care around the country. The vaccine uptake is still
low, with only 4,500 people receiving the vaccine in the last 24 hours. The
health ministry has proposed lifting a series of restrictions, following a
constant drop in all relevant indicators, health minister Alexandru Rafila said
today.

Mărțișor.
Romanians are today celebrating the arrival of spring, with girls and
women being gifted mărțișor, small
broche-like objects tied to a red and white string and worn on coats in the
first days of spring. The practice was included in the UNESCO intangible
cultural heritage list five years ago at the proposal of Romania, the Republic
of Moldova, Bulgaria and North Macedonia, where the practice is widespread,
with some variations: in the Republic of Moldova, for example, it’s the women
and girls who are gifting the mărțișor to men and boys. These artefacts, many
of which are handmade, are to be found for sale
around this time of the year in many shops and at artisan fairs. The are
believed to provide the wearer with protection against a variety of perils and
most commonly depict the chimney sweep, a four-leaf clove, a horse shoe,
flowers and various animals. (CM)