Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a new compensation body for Russia-caused damages in Ukraine, M23 control over a strategic Congolese town, and a last-ditch effort to secure a European Union-Mercosur trade deal.
Reparation Claims
A coalition of more than 30 countries, including Ukraine and European Union members, formally approved plans on Tuesday to establish a compensation body for damages incurred during the Russia-Ukraine war. However, it remains unclear where the money will come from.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a new compensation body for Russia-caused damages in Ukraine, M23 control over a strategic Congolese town, and a last-ditch effort to secure a European Union-Mercosur trade deal.
Reparation Claims
A coalition of more than 30 countries, including Ukraine and European Union members, formally approved plans on Tuesday to establish a compensation body for damages incurred during the Russia-Ukraine war. However, it remains unclear where the money will come from.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, the Register of Damage for Ukraine has received nearly 85,000 claims made by individuals, organizations, and public bodies seeking reparations for Russia-inflicted damages, including child deportations, the destruction of religious sites, and sexual violence. According to the World Bank, Kyiv’s estimated cost of reconstruction over the coming decade will be at least $524 billion—or almost three times the country’s economic output in 2024.
The newly approved International Claims Commission, overseen by the Council of Europe, will help assess these claims.
How these reparations will be paid, though, remains under negotiation. “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said. On Friday, the European Union announced that it will indefinitely freeze around $247 billion of frozen Russian assets in the hopes of using some of them to help fund Ukraine’s war effort. Moscow has denounced such moves, calling the EU proposal illegal and threatening retaliation.
“Every Russian war crime must have consequences for those who committed them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday. “It’s not enough to force Russia into a deal. It’s not enough to make it stop killing. We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world.”
Meanwhile, talks this week involving the United States, Ukraine, and its European allies continued to try to find common ground on two major stumbling blocks: Ukraine’s NATO ambitions and Russia’s territorial demands. On Tuesday, Zelensky confirmed that Kyiv would consider abandoning its NATO membership bid in exchange for other “legally binding commitments,” including strong security guarantees from the United States and European allies. These commitments would be similar to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause.
On Monday, European leaders agreed that the security guarantees should include a Europe-led multinational peacekeeping force in Ukraine. Zelensky declined to name which countries have agreed to take part in the force, saying on Tuesday that those details would be released only after a cease-fire is implemented. Russia has long been adamant that it will not accept any agreement that would see NATO member countries’ troops on the ground in Ukraine.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine, though, has agreed to concede on matters concerning territory. Moscow maintains that Kyiv must relinquish control of the largely Russian-occupied Donbas region, but Zelensky remains adamant that territorial concessions are a nonstarter. On Tuesday, Zelensky said that a draft peace plan discussed with U.S. negotiators in Berlin the day before could be finalized within days. U.S. negotiators would then need to present the proposal to Russia, which has not been involved in the latest round of talks.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Leaving Uvira. At the request of the United States, M23 rebels agreed on Tuesday to withdraw from Uvira, a strategic town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that they seized last week. Corneille Nangaa—the leader of the Congo River Alliance, a political coalition that includes M23—called the move a “unilateral trust-building measure” aimed at giving the “Doha peace process the maximum chance to succeed,” referring to a framework agreed upon in Qatar earlier this year in an effort to move toward permanently ending the conflict.
According to Reuters, one rebel source said that both M23 and Congolese forces would withdraw to 3 miles from Uvira to establish a buffer zone. However, Congolese army spokesperson Gen. Sylvain Ekenge told Reuters on Tuesday that the military remained committed to regaining control of the eastern Congolese town.
M23, which the international community has accused Rwanda of backing, entered Uvira less than a week after Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame affirmed their commitment to peace during a summit at the White House. Kigali denies supporting the rebel group.
Farmer concerns. The European Parliament finalized new measures on Tuesday aimed at protecting European farmers from sudden price swings. The safeguards are a last-ditch effort to convince member states to back a potential deal with South America’s Mercosur trade bloc, concluding 25 years of negotiations and creating an integrated market of some 780 million consumers. (Mercosur consists of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.)
The European Union views the Mercosur deal as a means to counter steep U.S. tariffs and compete with China in Latin America. However, several European nations—including France, Italy, and Poland—have argued that the deal does not do enough to protect Europe’s farmers. Tuesday’s measures aim to alleviate those concerns by implementing policies that would prevent cheap commodities, such as Latin American beef, from flooding the market.
The European Parliament is expected to convene on Wednesday to harmonize the new safeguards with other EU policies. If that succeeds, then lawmakers could approve European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to sign the EU-Mercosur pact in Brazil this weekend.
But with thousands of European farmers expected to protest an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, European leaders could still bow to domestic pressures. Only four EU nations need to block the deal to prevent the European Council from sending it to von der Leyen.
More boat strikes. U.S. forces targeted three alleged drug-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific late Monday, killing eight people. The strikes, which were part of a wider U.S. operation against what the Trump administration calls “foreign terrorist organizations,” bring the total number of attacks to 25 and the total number of deaths caused by the campaign to at least 95 people.
Monday’s assault was one of the single deadliest days of the U.S. military campaign since it began in early September. And it came just hours after Trinidad and Tobago announced that it will allow the U.S. military to access its airports in the coming weeks for “logistical” reasons, including supply replenishments and personnel rotations; the Caribbean country said it will not be used as a launchpad for U.S. attacks on other countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump maintains that the strikes—alongside a military buildup in the Caribbean and threats of attacks inside Venezuela—are vital to combat drug-trafficking organizations that the administration alleges are being overseen by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. However, legal experts and members of the U.S. Congress have questioned whether the strikes violate domestic and international law.
Odds and Ends
Tokyo’s Ueno Zoological Gardens will be saying goodbye to twin 4-year-old pandas late next month, marking the first time that Japan will be without a panda in around half a century. Japanese officials announced on Monday that Jan. 25 will be the last day that visitors can see Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei, who were born in Tokyo but must return to China due to a loan agreement. “Exchanges through pandas have contributed to improve the public sentiment between Japan and China, and we hope the relationship will continue,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said. But with tensions over Taiwan worsening China-Japan relations in recent weeks, it is unclear whether panda diplomacy will fall prey to political turmoil.
