BRUSSELS // Nato told Russia on Friday to halt its illegal military actions in Ukraine after the West accused Moscow of direct involvement in the separatist uprising.
Fears of a wider confrontation rose after Nato said Russia had sent troops to fight in Ukraine and funnelled huge amounts of heavy weaponry to pro-Kremlin rebels.
Germany warned the crisis was spiralling out of control as European Union foreign ministers met to discuss further punitive measures against Moscow.
“This is not an isolated action, but part of a dangerous pattern over many months to destabilise Ukraine as a sovereign nation,” Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after an emergency meeting of the alliance.
“We urge Russia to cease its illegal military actions, stop its support to armed separatists and take immediate and verifiable steps towards de-escalation of this grave crisis.”
Kiev and the West have accused Russian troops of being behind a lightning counter-offensive in which the rebels have seized swaths of south-eastern territory from government forces, dramatically turning the tide in the four-month conflict.
And in a move certain to anger Kiev’s former masters in Moscow, Mr Rasmussen said Nato was not closing the door to Ukraine’s possible membership of the alliance after the government said it was taking steps to join.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that Moscow is fuelling the conflict or has any troops on the ground in the former Soviet state.
He demanded yesterday that the Ukrainian government hold talks with the separatists who took up arms against Kiev in April, apparently emboldened by Russia’s annexation of Crimea the month before.
“I believe that what is happening in Ukraine right now is in principle our common colossal tragedy and it is necessary to do everything for it to stop as soon as possible,” he said.
Nato said on Thursday Russia had sent at least 1,000 troops to fight alongside the rebels, along with air defence systems, artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles, and had massed 20,000 troops near the border.
The new rebel advance has raised fears that the Kremlin could be seeking to create a land corridor between Russia and Crimea on the Black Sea.
Residents of Mariupol, a strategic government-held port on the Azov Sea south of the main insurgent bastion of Donetsk, were fleeing yesterday after rebels seized several villages near by.
The sharp escalation came just days after Mr Putin held talks with Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko but failed to make any significant breakthrough.
“Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and the new images of Russian forces inside Ukraine make that plain for the world to see,” the US president Barack Obama said.
“This ongoing Russian incursion into Ukraine will only bring more costs and consequences for Russia.”
The United States and the EU have already imposed a series of punishing sanctions on Moscow in the worst standoff between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
EU foreign ministers were meeting in Milan yesterday to propose new sanctions against Russia for consideration at a summit of the bloc’s 28 heads of state today in Brussels.
“We have to be aware of what we are facing: we are now in the midst of the second Russian invasion of Ukraine within a year,” said Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt.
“We see regular Russian army units operating offensively on the Ukrainian territory against the Ukrainian army,” Mr Bildt said. “We must call a spade a spade.”
Russia has rejected accusations that it has invaded Ukraine.
Mr Putin yesterday defiantly described the insurgents as defenders of New Russia, a Tsarist-era term for Moscow’s former imperial holdings in the region that the strongman has revived since annexing Crimea.
He praised rebel successes in halting Kiev’s advances in the counter-offensive in the south-east that has left government troops battling for survival in the town of Ilovaysk.
He called on rebel forces to open a “humanitarian corridor” for the besieged Ukrainian troops.
According to new UN figures, almost 2,600 people have been killed since mid-April, and well over 400,000 have fled their homes, many of them to Russia.
The UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the international community had to redouble its efforts to resolve the crisis, and said it was vital general elections in Ukraine go ahead as planned in October.
The International Monetary Fund on Friday approved the release of nearly US$1.4 billion (Dh5.14bn) in fresh funds for Ukraine.
It was the second tranche from the IMF’s programme to help stabilise the economy and its currency, the hryvnia, battered by years of mismanagement and more recently by the separatist uprising.
* Agence France-Presse, with additional reporting by Associated Press
Leap of Faith
Michael J Mazarr
Public Affairs
Dh67
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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