Önder Özar Diplomasi Sevgisi: The New York Times Morning Briefing March 21,2024 : covering the E.U.’s plan to use Russian funds to arm Ukraine as well as the challenges of getting aid to Gaza.

March 21, 2024

Good morning. We’re covering the E.U.’s plan to use Russian funds to arm Ukraine as well as the challenges of getting aid to Gaza.

Plus: “3 Body Problem” tries to make physics “sexy.”

A Ukrainian armored vehicle on a road with bare trees lining it.

Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are reporting shortages of ammunition. Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

How the E.U. plans to make Russia pay for Ukraine’s arms

The European Union said that it had devised a way to use frozen Russian assets to help arm Ukraine, as Ukraine runs perilously low on munitions, Europe’s arsenals dwindle and most U.S. aid remains mired in Congress.

“Make Russia pay” for Ukraine’s arsenal has long been a popular slogan among European allies, but legal concerns around liquidating Russian state assets frozen under sanctions have made accomplishing it difficult. Now, after months of political wrangling, the E.U.’s executive branch has found a way.

The E.U. is expected to approve the measure at a meeting in Brussels today, and the first payment to Kyiv could be made as soon as July. The plan could provide Ukraine with up to 3 billion euros, or about $3.25 billion, a year.

How it would work: Over $217 billion in Russian central bank assets are held in the E.U., but Russia has not been able to access that money, and the cash it generates, because of sanctions. Under the E.U. plan, 97 percent of profits generated by frozen Russian assets as of Feb. 15 would go to Ukraine.

Risks: The European Central Bank warned that using assets from another country’s central bank could harm Europe’s reputation as a safe place to store money.

More from Ukraine: Ukrainians said that defending places with little strategic value is worthwhile, especially because the attacking Russians face a higher cost.

A crowd of men, some holding up green cards, gather outside a concrete building to await aid.

Palestinians gathering to receive aid outside a U.N. warehouse in Gaza City. Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

Why isn’t more aid reaching Gazans?

As many as 1.1 million people in Gaza could face deadly hunger by mid-July, according to a report from a global authority on food crises. But lack of food isn’t the main problem: The U.N. said it had enough at or near Gaza’s border to feed the 2.2 million people there.

Instead, humanitarian workers said they face challenges at every point in the delivery process.

Here are some specifics:

The land delivery route is complex, with multiple security checks.
Onerous inspections by Israel further delay the process.
Destroyed roads and strained resources make the delivery of aid within Gaza difficult and hazardous, especially in the north.
Aid convoys frequently face violence.

Even with the increase of deliveries by sea and air, aid officials and experts said that deliveries by truck remained the most efficient way to distribute desperately needed food in Gaza.

Related: The U.S. could cut off funding for the main U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, in a blue suit, in the foreground, followed by two women and two men behind them.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of Ireland before announcing his resignation. Damien Eagers/Reuters

Ireland’s prime minister resigned

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s barrier-breaking leader, said he would resign. The surprise announcement came not long after a double referendum in which voters rejected changes that his government had championed and amid waning public support for his party, Fine Gael.

Citing reasons both “personal and political,” Varadkar said he would step down from the party leadership effective immediately but would continue to serve as prime minister until Fine Gael elected a new leader before the Easter break. His resignation also came just days after he visited President Biden in the White House.

Varadkar, Ireland’s youngest prime minister when he took office in 2017 at the age of 38, was also the country’s first gay taoiseach (as the prime minister is known) and the first person of South Asian heritage to hold the position.

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MORE TOP NEWS

An overhead view shows a small boat on the sea, packed with people.

Tolga Akmen/EPA, via Shutterstock

Britain: The House of Lords voted to amend the Conservative Party’s immigration legislation, potentially delaying a contentious plan to put asylum-seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda.
Vietnam: President Vo Van Thuong has resigned after violating Communist Party regulations, state media reported. Thuong is the second president to step down in the country in a little over a year.
Hungary: Prime Minister Viktor Orban has made lavish use of E.U. funds to direct cash and other benefits to political allies.
Royals: British authorities are investigating whether a hospital employee tried to obtain the medical records of Catherine, Princess of Wales.
Indonesia: Prabowo Subianto, a feared former general, officially won the Southeast Asian country’s presidential election.

Climate

Michael Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., in a blue business suit and red tie stands at a podium and is flanked on either side by a shiny new electric vehicle. The backdrop is an enormous American flag.

Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

E.V.s: The Biden administration issued a rule to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
South Sudan: Extreme heat has forced the nation to close schools.
Eras: The highest governing body in geology has upheld a vote against adding the Anthropocene, or human age, to the timeline of Earth’s history.

U.S. News

Jerome Powell walks to the right in front of a row of flags, his right hand holding his eyeglasses.

Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Fed: Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged.
Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel assailed Senator Chuck Schumer in a closed-door meeting with Republicans, after the Democratic majority leader called for new leadership in Israel last week.
Independents: The Democratic Party has put together a team of lawyers to track the potential threat that third-party presidential candidates pose to President Biden’s re-election chances.

A Morning Read

A gray parrot stands on a wooden stick near its cage and uses the tongue to tap cartoon characters on a tablet device.

Interact Animal Lab

Parrots, like toddlers, are playful, intelligent and curious, and without ample cognitive enrichment, they quickly become bored.

So parrot owners sometimes turn to a familiar parenting strategy: reaching for the closest available screen for games and other children’s apps. But parrots mainly use their tongues on touch-screens, and new research suggests that apps designed specifically for the brainy birds would make better enrichment tools.

Lives lived: David Seidler’s Oscar-winning script for “The King’s Speech” drew on his own experience with a childhood stutter. He died at 86.

Conversation Starters

Ancestors: A study of a trove of ancient arrowheads and animal bones in Ethiopia reflects how remarkably adaptable our progenitors were.

Pyramid: A publisher retracted a study that claimed that an archaeological site in Indonesia may be the world’s “oldest pyramid.”

SPORTS NEWS

Interviewing the original Gunnersaurus: Jerry Quy spent 26 years playing Arsenal’s beloved mascot.

The Great Silesian Derby: Ruch Chorzow versus Gornik Zabrze in Poland.

Zero regrets for Kevin Magnussen: One podium finish after 10 years in Formula 1.

ARTS AND IDEAS

A woman, in a black dress, walks through a fiery landscape.

Netflix

‘3 Body Problem’ tries to make physics ‘sexy’

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who worked together to make the hit HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” are releasing a new show on Netflix: an adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning science fiction trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” by Liu Cixin.

The series, a space invasion saga that involves a superior alien race and begins during China’s Cultural Revolution, felt unique, said Benioff, Weiss and Alexander Woo, another creator of the series, in an interview. “We tried to make physics as sexy as possible,” Woo said.

Their show “wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments,” our critic writes.

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