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Fed’s Barr Calls Silicon Valley Bank a ‘Textbook Case of Mismanagement’

Top bank regulator to testify Tuesday alongside other officials

TWSJ By Andrew Ackerman and Andrew Duehren, March 27, 2023

Netanyahu Cannot Be Trusted

The Israeli prime minister is acting irrationally for the first time, endangering not only Israelis but also crucial American interests and principles.

NYT By Thomas L. Friedman, March 28, 2023

Exclusive: US plans ultimatum in Mexico energy dispute, raising threat of tariffs

According to three people familiar with the negotiations, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) will present what has been dubbed a "final offer" to Mexico's negotiators in order to get it to open its markets and accept more oversight.

REUTER By Jarrett Renshaw and David Lawder

The House GOP Moves on Energy

Will Democrats in swing districts and states oppose a bill to expand production?

TWSJ By The Editorial Board, March 26, 2023

Russia fires anti-ship missiles at mock target in Sea of Japan

Russia's Pacific fleet drills came a week after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP, NOW 

NATO criticizes Putin for 'dangerous' rhetoric over Belarus nuclear weapon deployment

Putin says the move does not violate any nonproliferation agreements and that he’s not doing anything the U.S. hasn’t done for decades in stationing its weapons in Europe.

CBC NEWS by Leila Sackur

Fed’s Barr Calls Silicon Valley Bank a ‘Textbook Case of Mismanagement’

Top bank regulator to testify Tuesday alongside other officials

TWSJ By Andrew Ackerman and Andrew Duehren, March 27, 2023

WASHINGTON—The failure of Silicon Valley Bank demonstrates a “textbook case of mismanagement,” the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator is expected to tell Senate lawmakers on Tuesday, while acknowledging there may have been shortcomings in the central bank’s oversight. 

“SVB failed because the bank’s management did not effectively manage its interest-rate and liquidity risk, and the bank then suffered a devastating and unexpected run by its uninsured depositors,” said Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, in written testimony released by the central bank. 

Mr. Barr is set to appear on Capitol Hill as officials across Washington probe the collapses of SVB, the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history, and Signature Bank in New York. Fearing their failures could spread contagion to the rest of the financial system, federal regulators this month used emergency powers to guarantee all depositors at those two banks would get their money back.

Mr. Barr is leading a review of the Fed’s supervision of SVB, which is due by May. He said in the prepared remarks that the central bank is committed to ensuring it “fully accounts for any supervisory or regulatory failings, and that we fully address what went wrong.” 

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg, who will also appear before the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday, plans to say that his agency will produce by May 1 a report on its supervision of Signature and a separate review of the deposit insurance system.

The regulators’ decision to guarantee all deposits at the two failed banks has prompted some banks and lawmakers to explore whether deposit insurance should be expanded beyond the $250,000 per depositor that is currently protected.

Mr. Gruenberg said the FDIC will consider policy options for changing deposit insurance levels, among other elements of the system.

Both regulators said in prepared remarks that the broader banking system is sound after the events of the past few weeks. They will be joined at the hearing and at one in the House Wednesday by Nellie Liang, a top Treasury official.

The FDIC announced early Monday that First Citizens BancShares Inc., one of the nation’s largest regional banks, is acquiring large pieces of SVB more than two weeks after the lender’s collapse sent tremors through the banking system. Regulators took control of Santa Clara, Calif.-based SVB on March 10.

Worries about American banks have centered on other regional lenders that are perceived to be at risk of deposit flight. Both SVB and Signature had large amounts of uninsured deposits. According to Mr. Gruenberg’s prepared testimony, the 10 largest deposit accounts at SVB held $13.3 billion.

Mr. Gruenberg said that banks with large amounts of uninsured deposits face challenges, “particularly in today’s environment where money can flow out of institutions with incredible speed in response to news amplified through social media channels.” He said outflows at banks that had faced deposit flight had slowed after the federal intervention for SVB’s and Signature’s depositors.

Losses to the government’s deposit insurance fund from protecting deposits at SVB are expected to be roughly $20 billion, while losses tied to Signature will cost the fund about $2.5 billion, according to Mr. Gruenberg. The government will charge banks a fee to cover those losses.

Mr. Barr said in his prepared remarks that the Fed is considering whether its bank supervisors have the tools to mitigate threats they see to a firm’s safety and soundness. He said it is also looking at whether “the culture, policies, and practices of the board and Reserve Banks support supervisors in effectively using these tools.”

He also said the Fed is weighing whether a Trump-era rollback of financial rules allowed SVB to escape more stringent stress tests and other standards. 

“We are evaluating whether application of more stringent standards would have prompted the bank to better manage the risks that led to its failure,” he said. 

The Fed is also assessing whether, if it had imposed stricter regulatory requirements, SVB would have had higher levels of capital and liquidity that would have prevented its failure or made it more resilient, Mr. Barr said. He said his review would be thorough and that his report would include supervisory assessments and exam material.

Netanyahu Cannot Be Trusted

The Israeli prime minister is acting irrationally for the first time, endangering not only Israelis but also crucial American interests and principles.

NYT By Thomas L. Friedman, March 28, 2023

Opinion Columnist

Thank goodness that Israel’s civil society has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pause, for now, his attempt to impose his control over Israel’s independent judiciary and gain a free hand to rule as he wishes. But this whole affair has exposed a new and troubling reality for the United States: For the first time, the leader of Israel is an irrational actor, a danger not only to Israelis but also to important American interests and values.

This demands an immediate reassessment by both President Biden and the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in America. Netanyahu essentially told them all: “Trust the process,” “Israel is a healthy democracy” and, in a whisper, “Don’t worry about the religious zealots and Jewish supremacists I brought into power to help block my trial for corruption. I will keep Israel within its traditional political and foreign policy boundaries. It’s me, your old pal, Bibi.”

They wanted to trust him, and it all turned out to be a lie.

From Day 1, it has been obvious to many of us that this Israeli government would go to extremes that none before it ever dared. With no real guardrails, it would take the United States and world Jewry across redlines they never imagined crossing, while possibly destabilizing Jordan and the Abraham Accords, eliminating hope of a two-state solution and bringing Israel in its 75th anniversary year to the edge of civil war.

That is because the key to implementing the government’s radical agenda was always, first, getting control over Israel’s Supreme Court — the only legitimate independent brake on the ambitions of Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners — through a process disguised as “judicial reform.”

With the judiciary brought to heel, Israel would be governed more like elected autocracies, such as Hungary and Turkey, than the Israel the world has always known. And Netanyahu and his partners have pursued that kind of political control of the courts over and above any other priority they ran on, bringing the country to the brink of “civil war” — as Netanyahu admitted in his national address on Monday night.

Staring in the face of such a civil war — after an unprecedented weekend revolt by a huge cross-section of Israeli society, its armed forces and even some members of his own party — Netanyahu offered to suspend his takeover efforts and give roughly a month for negotiations with the opposition to see if a compromise can be forged.

Let’s see what happens. But one thing is clear already: Netanyahu has become the definition of an irrational actor in international relations — someone whose behavior we can no longer predict and whose words President Biden should not trust. For starters, the U.S. needs to make sure Netanyahu does not use U.S. weapons to engage in any kind of war of choice with Iran or Hezbollah without the full and independent endorsement of Israel’s military high command, which has opposed his judicial putsch.

Why do I insist that Netanyahu has become an irrational actor and a danger to our interests and values? It’s a question that can be answered with a question:

How would you describe an Israeli prime minister and his son who, after 50 years of the United States sending Israel billions and billions of dollars in economic and military assistance, have been disseminating the lie that the U.S. government was behind the massive demonstrations against the prime minister — that this couldn’t possibly be an authentic grass-roots mainstream protest? It had to be U.S.-funded.

Yair Netanyahu, his father’s closest political adviser, last week shared conspiratorial tweets with his many Twitter followers on the Israeli right, The Jerusalem Post reported, like this one: “The American State Department is behind the protests in Israel, with the aim of overthrowing Netanyahu, apparently in order to conclude an agreement with the Iranians.”

I wonder where that came from? Well, two weeks ago, The Times of Israel reported that while Netanyahu the elder was on an official visit to Rome, a “senior official” in his traveling party (which everyone in the Milky Way galaxy knows is code for the prime minister himself) was quoted as saying (without a shred of evidence): “This protest is financed and organized with millions of dollars. … This is a very high-level organization.” The story continued: “Another member of the premier’s entourage confirmed that the senior official was referring to the United States.”

This is the same conspiracy thinking that Iran’s leaders have been deploying to discredit the authentic democracy movement in Iran, led by Iranian women.

That Netanyahu and his son would turn on America with the same pathetic cynicism as Iran is shameful — and crazy. Neither man should be allowed into America until they apologize.

This is not the only sign of what an irrational actor Netanyahu has become. Ask yourself: What rational Israeli prime minister would risk fracturing his military — which this judicial takeover attempt has been doing — at a time when Iran can now whip up enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb in under two weeks, and is racking up diplomatic achievements with Israel’s Arab allies?

A little over a week ago, Netanyahu’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, a respected military leader who began as a naval commando, gave the prime minister a choice: freeze his attempt at a judicial coup without a national dialogue or go ahead with it, have his defense minister resign and have large segments of the army and air force reserves refuse to show up for duty.

Netanyahu then made the remarkable move of firing Gallant. As Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel put it: “It’s hard to think of one senior defense official who wasn’t shocked to the core by Netanyahu’s decision. … Among both current and former senior I.D.F. officers, the discussion Sunday night focused on whether a mass resignation of major generals and brigadier generals was necessary to stop the madness.”

Consider this as well: What rational Israeli prime minister would risk one of the greatest achievements of U.S. and Israeli diplomacy in the Middle East, the Abraham Accords, in order to push through a judicial takeover that would give a free hand to the Jewish supremacists and nationalist zealots in his cabinet? I am talking about the likes of Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who, as Axios described it, last week “gave a speech in Paris at a podium featuring a map that included Jordan and the occupied West Bank as part of Israel and said the Palestinian people were ‘an invention.’”

This totally freaked out the U.A.E. and Bahrain, not to mention Jordan, which is a critical pillar of American Middle East strategy. If Netanyahu and company destabilize Jordan, they will sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

And what Israeli prime minister would try to pass a law so he can appoint a thrice-convicted tax cheat and financial scammer — Shas Party leader Aryeh Deri — as his health and interior minister, with a promise to make him finance minister at the next cabinet reshuffle?

In 1993, Deri was ordered by the Supreme Court to resign from the cabinet over corruption charges, but he remained Shas leader until 1999, when he was sentenced to three years in prison for taking bribes. Then in 2021, as The Times of Israel reported, Deri accepted a plea deal in which he admitted “to a pair of tax offenses in exchange for resigning from the Knesset” and paying a fine. In January, the Supreme Court ruled that Deri was not fit to serve in government.

In case you missed it, besides everything else going on, Netanyahu has been trying to rush through legislation to override the Supreme Court so that this crony of his who defrauded the Israeli Treasury — to which American taxpayers have donated billions in aid to over the last half century — can eventually be put in charge of that same Treasury.

The contempt that all of this shows for Israeli taxpayers, for the rule of law in Israel, for the Israeli Supreme Court and for America is just more evidence of a leader who has come completely loose of any ethical moorings.

It is finally time that the American government, the American Congress and American Jewish leaders and lobbyists, who too often have been Netanyahu’s enablers, make it unmistakably clear that they are also marching with all those Israelis — from the military, the high-tech community, the universities, traditional religious communities, doctors, nurses, air force pilots, bankers, labor unions and even settlements — who took to the streets in the last week to ensure the 75th anniversary of Israeli democracy will not be its last.

Exclusive: US plans ultimatum in Mexico energy dispute, raising threat of tariffs

According to three people familiar with the negotiations, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) will present what has been dubbed a "final offer" to Mexico's negotiators in order to get it to open its markets and accept more oversight.

REUTER By Jarrett Renshaw and David Lawder

March 27 (Reuters) - The Biden administration plans to send Mexico an "act now or else" message in coming weeks in an attempt to break a stalemate in an energy trade dispute as bipartisan calls grow for the U.S. to get tougher with its southern neighbor, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The move would represent a significant escalation in already-strained tensions between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Obrador's decision to roll back reforms aimed at opening Mexico's power and oil markets to outside competitors sparked the trade dispute.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is expected to make what was described as a "final offer" to Mexico negotiators to open its markets and agree to some increased oversight, three people familiar with the talks told Reuters. If not, the U.S. will request an independent dispute settlement panel under the Unites States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA, they said.

The United States and Canada demanded dispute settlement talks with Mexico in July, 250 days ago. Under USMCA rules, after 75 days without a resolution they were free to request a dispute settlement panel, a third party that rules on the case.

At an event on Monday, Mexico's Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro said the United States has been entitled to call for a panel since Oct. 3.

If the panel rules against Mexico and it fails to take corrective action, Washington and Ottawa could ultimately impose billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs on Mexican goods.

The White House has hoped to avoid escalating trade tensions with Mexico as it sought help on immigration and drug trafficking. But months of talks have yielded little progress and the administration has run out of less-combative options, the sources told Reuters.

Raising the stakes in the dispute carries significant risk for Biden, who is expected to launch a re-election bid in coming weeks and will face Republican criticism over his handling of immigration and drug trafficking. Biden needs Mexican help to control the border after COVID-era restrictions are lifted on May 11.

A U.S. official acknowledged growing frustration with the lack of progress in the discussions. "We want to see clear progress on this issue and address the concerns that have been raised by our negotiating teams," said the official, who declined to be named because the discussions were private.

A USTR spokesperson declined comment on the energy consultations with Mexico, but Trade Representative Katherine Tai hinted at possible escalation during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday when questioned about the talks.

"We are engaging with Mexico on specific and concrete steps that Mexico must take to address the concerns set out in our consultations request. This is still very much a live issue," Tai said.

She later added: "We know that all the tools in the USMCA are there for a reason."

U.S. oil companies, such as Chevron (CVX.N) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC.N), along with solar and wind power companies, have struggled to get permits to operate in Mexico in recent years.

Mexico's Buenrostro said the challenges of transitioning to renewable energy and getting those projects connected to the power grid were at the bottom of the issue.

"It is not that they are being given discriminatory treatment, it is that we have difficulties of a technical nature," Buenrostro said, adding investments in power distribution were being made to address the issues.

The potential move by the Biden administration comes just weeks after USTR escalated another trade dispute with Mexico over its plans to ban genetically modified corn for human consumption, requesting formal consultations. The energy dispute is a step ahead under the USMCA's enforcement mechanism.

The Biden administration alleges Obrador is favoring state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and national power utility Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), and discriminating against U.S. companies.

"I think you're going to increasingly see folks looking for ... the next step of establishing a panel relatively soon," a congressional aide said, noting patience on Capitol Hill over the talks was wearing thin.

Ron Wyden, a Democrat senator from Oregon and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told Tai on Thursday that Mexico was "flouting" its USMCA obligations by shutting out U.S. renewable energy firms.

"Eight months have passed. American clean energy producers are still waiting for access. In my view, it’s long past time to say enough is enough and escalate this into a real dispute settlement case," Wyden said.

U.S. imports from Mexico totaled $455 billion in 2022 against exports of over $324 billion, for a record U.S. trade deficit of $130.5 billion, according to government data.

The House GOP Moves on Energy

Will Democrats in swing districts and states oppose a bill to expand production?

TWSJ By The Editorial Board, March 26, 2023

President Biden’s energy policy is summed up by last year’s $370 billion gift to the climate lobby, aka the Inflation Reduction Act. That leaves an opening for Congress, where House Republicans unveiled their energy agenda this month. The plan should have a shot if self-described moderate Democrats stand by their claims.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s Lower Energy Costs Act includes reforms to unburden energy producers and cut costs for consumers. It would repeal the Energy Department’s power to block cross-border purchases and sales of natural gas, letting producers import and export without months of preapproval.

The move is inspired by Congress’s elimination of the oil-export ban in 2015, which helped U.S. producers become the global leader as domestic drilling surged. Progressives urged President Biden to ban natural-gas exports last year before an expected price spike in the winter, but trade amid global shortages boosts investment and increases supply.

The bill also promotes the production of minerals that are critical to manufacturing, especially for electric vehicles. It allows the Energy Department to grant easements lasting up to 50 years for mineral extraction, and it reduces the federal fee on sales.

The bill’s most important plank reforms permitting, which stymies projects of all kinds—renewable energy and fossil fuels—and has become a national embarrassment. The bill mandates a one-year time limit to determine whether a project will have a significant environmental impact, and a two-year maximum for extensive reports on certain projects’ effects. It also streamlines the process for lawsuits that activists use to kill projects by delaying them for years. The bill requires opponents to opine during the public comment period before suing, limits their suit to the topic of their comment, and gives them 120 days to file.

House Republicans also plan to block wasteful and counterproductive programs in the Inflation Reduction Act. Their bill would repeal the fee that the last Congress imposed on methane emissions, which takes effect next year at $900 per metric ton and rises to $1,500 in 2026. The fee will be an obstacle to production for smaller companies. The new bill would also cancel the $27 billion “green bank,” which is gearing up to fund local climate-friendly investments with federal dollars. It is pure green pork.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the House bill as “dead on arrival” in the Senate. Yet cheaper energy is popular and is a broad cause on Capitol Hill. Such vulnerable Senators as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona may feel pressure to give the plan a fair hearing. Republicans John Barrasso and Shelley Moore Capito will lead the push in the Senate and could explore the possibility of a compromise.

Stranger political things have happened. If House Republicans pass the bill and pick up the votes of some House Democrats, who knows how the politics might evolve if energy prices spike as an election approaches. Republicans campaigned on promoting more U.S. energy production and distribution, and the Scalise bill honors that promise.

Russia fires anti-ship missiles at mock target in Sea of Japan

Russia's Pacific fleet drills came a week after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Ukraine.

Le Monde with AFP, NOW 

In this photo made from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry press service on Tuesday, March 28, 2023, a Russian navy boat launches an anti-ship missile test in the Peter The Great Gulf in the Sea of Japan. AP

Russia's defence ministry said on Tuesday, March 28, that its navy had fired test anti-ship missiles at mock targets in the Sea of Japan during military exercises.

Russia's Pacific fleet drills came a week after Tokyo's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Ukraine.

"In the waters of the Sea of Japan, missile boats of the Pacific Fleet fired Moskit cruise missiles at a mock enemy sea target," the ministry said on Telegram early on Tuesday. It said two ships took part in the exercise.

"The target, located at a distance of about 100 kilometers, was successfully hit by a direct hit from two Moskit cruise missiles."

Moscow said its naval aviation oversaw the "safety of the combat exercise."

Last week, Russia said two of its Tu-95 strategic bomber planes performed "flights in the airspace over neutral waters in the Sea of Japan."

The bomber jet flights came after Japan's Kishida visited Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

Japan has joined Western allies in sanctioning Russia over its offensive in Ukraine. Russia's far eastern Pacific coast is separated from Japan by the narrow Sea of Japan.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

NATO criticizes Putin for 'dangerous' rhetoric over Belarus nuclear weapon deployment

Putin says the move does not violate any nonproliferation agreements and that he’s not doing anything the U.S. hasn’t done for decades in stationing its weapons in Europe.

CBC NEWS by Leila Sackur

NATO called his rhetoric “dangerous and irresponsible,” while Ukraine accused President Vladimir Putin of making Belarus a “nuclear hostage” with his announcement that Russia was going to store tactical nuclear weapons in the country, which both nations border.

Insisting that such a move would not violate nuclear nonproliferation agreements, in an interview with state television on Saturday, Putin likened his plans to the U.S. stationing its weapons in Europe.

“There is nothing unusual here,” he said, adding that “the United States has been doing this for decades.” He added that Russia and Belarus had agreed to “do the same thing, without, I would like to highlight, going against our international duties and agreements on the nondistribution of nuclear weapons.”

Russia would not be transferring control of the weapons to Belarus, he said, although he added that his country was planning to complete the construction of a storage facility for them by the summer.

Moscow had already stationed 10 aircraft capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons in the country, he said. He added that a number of Iskander tactical missile systems that can launch nuclear weapons had also been stationed in the country.

The Iskander-M contains two guided missiles with a range of up to 300 miles and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

Putin said that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long requested the deployment. There was no immediate reaction from Lukashenko.

Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan had nuclear weapons stationed on their territory but handed them over to Russia after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, so this could be the first time since then that Russia has based such weapons outside the country.

American reaction to Putin’s announcement was muted. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told NBC News late Saturday that the U.S. had “not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.”

But Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted that the Kremlin “took Belarus as a nuclear hostage.”

U.S. and NATO criticize Russia’s plan to store nuclear weapons in Belarus

While the Belarusian army has not formally fought in Ukraine, the country has a close relationship with Russia, and Minsk allowed Moscow to use its territory to send troops into Ukraine last year. The two nations have stepped up joint military training. Russia is also Belarus’ largest and most important political and economic partner.

Calling Russia’s nuclear rhetoric “dangerous and irresponsible,” NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu said the organization was “closely monitoring the situation.”

“We have not seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own,” Lungescu said. “We are committed to protect and defend all NATO allies.” NATO added that Moscow had “consistently broken its arms control commitments,” most recently suspending its participation in the New START Treaty — a key nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of Britain and NATO’s joint chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear regiment called the plan a “strategic error” and “another sign of desperation coming out of the Kremlin,” after 13 months of war in Ukraine and few victories to show for it.

“It seems that Putin is clutching at straws,” he said, adding that Russian forces had been “hammered” around Bakhmut, where brutal battles for control of the eastern city have raged for months, with neither side gaining much ground.

Moving such weapons closer to NATO nations like Germany, Poland and Lithuania was likely to “hasten Western weapons” to Ukraine, he said. Germany, which has previously been cautious about providing military aid to Ukraine, “might be encouraged” by the potential threat of closer nuclear weapons, he added.

For Keir Giles, the author of a forthcoming report on Russia’s nuclear threat for Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London, the biggest threat from the weapons was to Belarus itself. 

“There’s a long tradition of Putin saying what he wants Belarus to do and claiming 'Belarus asked us,' but not a peep about it from Minsk,” he said.  

“This is not in the category of ‘escalation to scare us,’ it’s more ‘what they have always wanted to do and now Belarus is not in a position to resist anymore,” he said.

De Bretton-Gordon agreed. “Belarus is now a target in a nuclear standoff, an unintended consequence Lukashenko has not fully appreciated,” he said, adding that the announcement might embolden opposition voices in Belarus, who have long been against the war. 

And Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus in 2020 after standing against Lukashenko in a disputed presidential election that led to widespread protests across the country, took to Twitter Sunday to complain about the deal.

She said the deal had been announced on “Freedom Day — when Belarusians celebrate the 105th anniversary of Belarus’ independence,” saying that this was “not accidental.”

“Russia acts as the occupying force, violating national security and putting Belarus on the collision course with its neighbors and the international community,” she said

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