March 23, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Some of South America’s biggest exporters are taking a hit as the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine continues to disrupt trade from the region.

Now Ecuador, the world’s largest exporter of bananas, is facing billions of dollars in losses.

On March 18, a group of 13 national organizations involved in Ecuador’s banana trade published a joint statement warning that more than 20,000 tons of the fruit were not being exported every week as result of the conflict.

The country exports around 22% of its banana exports to Russia according to the group.

More than 95% of the bananas consumed in Russia come from Ecuador, generating $2 billion every year, according to Pulso Bananero, an independent banana consultancy in Ecuador.

It’s not just Ecuador’s trade with Russian that has been disrupted – Ukraine also accounts for 3% of Ecuador’s bananas exports.

While the country’s banana exporters have been able to divert some of their product to other markets, fruit that was not exported had to be thrown away, the statement warned. Also, because of their short shelf life, bananas are exported – and paid for – on a weekly basis. Industry experts say the long-term outlook for the industry is bleak.

“The social impact is already being felt because the trade cycle is very fast; if you don’t export this week, you don’t get paid this week,” said Raul Villacres, a former executive director of the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador.

Approximately a quarter of Ecuador’s banana workforce -- roughly 50,000 people – works on exports allocated for eastern European markets, including Russia, according to Villacres.

In Colombia, the flower industry is suffering. Producers there say they haven't been paid by Russian customers for past deliveries due to the SWIFT sanctions.

“We were lucky that most of the deliveries for the most important flower day of the year in Russia – Women’s Day, on March 8 – were dispatched before the conflict began, but now it’s the payment from Russia that are being delayed,” Augusto Solano, the president of the Colombia Association of Flower Producers ASOCOLFLORES, told CNN.

Flowers are more difficult to place on in alternative markets than bananas because they are produced specifically to accommodate specific customers' taste, Solano said.

Russian flower buyers, for example, prefer enormous, expensive roses that are purchased by luxury clientele, many of whom are likely to have been affected by US and European sanctions.

According to ASOCOLFLORES, flower exports to Russia from Colombia are worth around $25 million annually, accounting for about 2-3% of ASOCOLFLORES’ revenue.

“Because of the way the flower market works, we have producers who specialize in the Russian markets and on flowers destined for Russia,” Solano said. "For them, this is a tragedy, we are talking of 20-30% of their annual exports gone.”

South America’s meat trade has also been disrupted because of the war, with Brazil’s poultry exporters likely to soon feel the crunch. In 2021, Russia was the 10th largest customer of Brazilian chicken, purchasing more than 100,000 tons, and it has only recently opened its market to Brazilian pork. While it is too early to analyze data of the war's impact over the last month, the Brazilian Association of Animal Protein – representing producers and exporters of chicken and pork– said the conflict has already created a challenge due to the increased costs of maize from Ukraine, which is used as chicken and pork feed.

Read more about this here:

RELATED

War has brought the world to the brink of a food crisis

The day before NATO’S extraordinary summit takes place in Brussels, multiple sources have told CNN that a significant amount of time on Thursday will be spent discussing how the alliance should respond if Vladimir Putin uses chemical or biological weapons against Ukrainian citizens.

Multiple officials, who spoke on the condition of total anonymity, agreed that while the official NATO position that it will not get directly involved in this war will remain, chemical weapons could be a game changer as such an escalation would likely prompt the public in NATO nations to demand action.

Sources said that the alliance was sensitive to public thinking, and while it is likely that NATO will not issue redlines to Russia this week in terms of a response, we will likely see deliberate posturing from NATO, indicating its preparedness for chemical attacks.

That could mean a strengthening of the rapid deployment teams and special units that NATO already has in place to handle such threats. Such tools at NATO’s disposal have not previously been used to help a country outside of the alliance, but sources said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was prompting unprecedented conversations about how best NATO can support countries that are not members.

Speaking to reporters earlier on Wednesday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that President Biden will “consult on potential contingencies” surrounding the use of chemical or biological weapons, along with “how to deal with the rhetoric and the commentary coming out of Russia on this whole question of the potential use of nuclear weapons.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the alliance would provide Ukrainians with protective kit, similar to the response from Western countries after Bashar-al Assad used chemical weapons against civilians in Syria.

Three NATO allies – France, the UK and the US – launched airstrikes against locations associated with Assad’s alleged April 2018 chemical attacks. Multiple Syrian activist groups documented the damage to Syrian civilians. The Syrian government denied it was responsible, and the Russian government said the attack was a "hoax."

Officials told CNN that sending this combined message of preparedness to Russia along with the ambiguity of precisely what consequences might befall should hopefully deter Putin from committing a war crime that provided him few gains – even if only to defend himself from possible legal action in the future.

Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian forces back on the frontlines east of Kyiv, a senior US defense official told reporters Wednesday.

Russian forces are about 55 kilometers (roughly 34 miles) away from Kyiv’s city center to the east, an increase of between 25 and 35 kilometers (roughly 15 to 22 miles) as compared to the same location yesterday, the official said.

To the northwest of Kyiv’s city center, Russian forces are “digging in, and they are establishing defensive positions,” the official said. They have not gotten any closer to Kyiv’s city center along this line, the official added. They remain 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) away from Kyiv’s city center to the northwest.

At the same time, the official said that Russian forces are becoming more active in the eastern part of Ukraine in the Donbas area, saying they’ve “applied a lot more energy” in the Luhansk and Dontesk regions, the two areas the Kremlin declared as independent republics ahead of last month’s invasion.

“We’re starting to see them sort of dig in around Kyiv, but really trying to go more on the offense than they have been, more energy apply to that eastern part,” the official said. “So that’s a little bit of a change from what we’ve been talking about before.”

Moscow announced it will expel US diplomats from Russia, according to a statement issued by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.

Persona non grata literally means “an unwelcome person.”

The move was in response to Washington's expulsion of 12 diplomats from the Russian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, as well as a Russian employee of the UN Secretariat.

"The American side was firmly told that any hostile actions of the United States against Russia would receive a decisive and adequate response," the statement read.

The statement did not specify which diplomats or how many it intends to expel.

US President Joe Biden has arrived in Brussels for a set of emergency summits meant to address Russia's war in Ukraine.

Air Force One landed at the Brussels airport at 9:03 p.m. local time after a roughly seven-hour flight from Washington.

Biden is expected to be greeted by Belgium's prime minister at the airport. He begins intensive talks with NATO, the G7 and the European Union starting Thursday.

US President Joe Biden departed Wednesday for Europe on one of the highest-stakes presidential trips in recent memory.

His visits to Brussels and Poland could still underscore the alliance's limits in ending the bloodshed in Ukraine, with Western leaders struggling to find ways to halt Russian President Vladimir Putin's war. So far, punishing Western sanctions haven't stopped Putin, and it's unclear whether the new steps expected this week — including sanctions on hundreds of members of Russia's lower legislative body and changes to NATO's force posture along its eastern edge — will be different. 

Here are more of the headlines from today in the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday called out French business giants Renault, Auchan and Leroy Merlin for their continued presence in Russia, as he urged French companies to leave the country.   

“French companies must leave the Russian market. Renault, Auchan, Leroy Merlin and others must stop being the sponsors of Russia’s war machine,” Zelensky said in his video address to the French parliament on Wednesday. 

For some of the French companies Zelensky called out, the Russian market represents a crucial part of their profits. Russia is the second-most important markets for Renault, ranking only behind the carmaker’s home base France in terms of sales volume, according to the company’s 2021 sales results.   

The Russian market is also crucial for the French home retail giant Leroy Merlin. Present in both Russia and Ukraine, the former represents 18% of the brand’s global activities, CNN’s French affiliate BFMTV reported. 

The company will continue its operations in Russia, Veronique Retaux, a spokesperson for the mother company Adeo Group told CNN on Wednesday. The spokesperson did not provide further details.

Earlier in the week, a Leroy Merlin store in the Retroville shopping complex in Kyiv was hit by an explosion, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry. CNN has geolocated and verified the authenticity of photos on social media showing damage to the store. 

The incident prompted many to call on the company to leave Russia as it itself became an apparent victim of the Russian invasion.   

An online petition was launched on March 20 calling on the Adeo Group and Association Familiale Mulliez, the mother company of Leroy Merlin, to leave Russia. So far it has gathered more than 14,000 signatures.  

Renault confirmed to CNN on Tuesday that its Moscow factory resumed production on Monday, but would last for only three days. The company declined to provide more details when CNN asked why the company is restarting its production for three days.   

Meanwhile, some French companies are cutting their ties with Moscow. French oil giant TotalEnergies announced on Tuesday that it will stop purchasing Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022 as its plan to move towards a gradual suspension of its activities in Russia. 

CNN’s Niamh Kennedy and Katie Polglase contributed reporting to this post. 

New drone video near the Ukrainian village of Rakivka shows flooding in the Irpin River basin, northwest of Kyiv.

For days, satellite images have shown rising water levels of the Irpin River. Now, new drone video is giving a better glimpse of just how far south flooding has spread. 

CNN geolocated and verified the authenticity of the video. It was published on Tuesday, but its metadata shows the video file was created on Monday.

The video also shows a Russian tank firing toward the eastern bank of the Irpin River.

The Russian military controls much of the western bank of the Irpin River around Rakivka; the Ukrainian military is dug in and is defending northwestern Kyiv around Moshchun.

Why this matters: The river is critical to the Russian advance toward Kyiv; if the Russians cannot cross it, they can't take Kyiv from the west.

It's unclear how the dam began flooding — whether the gates were opened on purpose by the Ukrainians, or it was hit by a military strike.

Watch the video:

President Joe Biden has asked the governors of all 50 US states and the mayor of the District of Columbia to bolster the cybersecurity of state computer systems and critical infrastructure in the face of potential Russian hacking threats.  

Biden reiterated in the letter that “we must prepare for any contingency, including cyber attacks on our homeland” from Russia. 

Politico first reported on the letter. 

Some more context: This is the latest in a series of statements from Biden administration officials for critical infrastructure firms to be on high alert for any potential Russian cyber activity. 

The FBI advised five US energy firms last week that Russian internet addresses were scanning their networks in possible preparation for a hack. There are no known compromises from that activity. Scanning, which involves checking computer networks for devices and vulnerabilities, happens on the internet all the time. 

Biden urged the governors and mayor, if they haven’t already, to meet with their leadership teams to discuss how they will protect critical infrastructure and state resources in the event of a cyberattack.  

“Has your chief information security officer done all that he or she can do to lock down your state’s systems and put your cybersecurity teams on high alert?” Biden asked. 

Russian hacking groups have in 2015 and 2016 used cyberattacks to cut off power in parts of Ukraine. That has’t happened in the US. The electric sector and other critical industries have invested heavily in defenses and preparatory work.