Telecoms equipment maker Nokia is pulling out of the Russian market, its CEO told Reuters. The decision will affect about 2,000 workers
While several sectors, including telecoms, have been exempted from some sanctions on humanitarian or related grounds, Nokia said it had decided quitting Russia was the only option.
“We just simply do not see any possibilities to continue in the country under the current circumstances,” chief executive Pekka Lundmark said in an interview.
He added Nokia would continue to support customers during the exit process, and it was not possible to say at this stage how long the withdrawal would take.
Civilians flee eastern Ukraine in advance of a widely forecast attack – as it happened
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More than 6,000 alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine are under investigation, Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office has said.
A total of 6,036 cases have been reported and 186 children have been confirmed to have been killed, the office added.
Security work is under way in the northern regions of our country, from where the occupiers were expelled.
First of all, it is mine clearance. Russian troops left behind tens if not hundreds of thousands of dangerous objects. These are shells that did not explode, mines, tripwire mines. At least several thousand such items are disposed of daily.
The occupiers left mines everywhere. In the houses they seized. Just on the streets, in the fields. They mined people’s property, mined cars, doors.
They consciously did everything to make the return to these areas after de-occupation as dangerous as possible.”
Gen Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff in the UK from 2006 to 2009, has been interviewed on Sky News this morning. He described the situation in Ukraine as “increasingly” looking like genocide. On the issue of the possible use of chemical weapons, he said:
I think this is quite possible that at some point the Russians might decide to use chemical weapons. I think we also have to look at who’s now in command for the operation in the east of the Ukraine, Gen Alexander Dvornikov, who established a pretty fearsome reputation in Syria. And certainly in Syria there is clear evidence that he and Russian forces used chemical weapons, so I’m afraid it’s quite possible that we might see chemical weapons being used. Reports are unconfirmed at the present moment. Something like this is beyond the pale, but it’s not beyond possibility.
He went on to say, when asked about how the west should respond:
I think here that Nato has been quite sensible not to set firm hard red lines. Because once you
set a red line, and say if this action takes place, that we will do this or the other, and if you do cross that red line, then you become a bit hollow if you don’t carry out that action.
We are accusing Russia quite properly of war crimes, the indiscriminate shelling of civilians, which they’ve been carrying out very widely that we know about. Pressure has got to be continued to be piled on Putin and his senior people, that there are some things that are totally unacceptable, and some things that fall somewhat more within the rules of war. But virtually everything the Russians have been doing is pretty much outside the conventions of war currently.