As an ally of Ukraine, the United Kingdom has been an outspoken opponent of Russian aggression and moved first to provide Ukraine with tanks and long-range missiles.

As a participant in the multinational naval force working to neutralise the threat from Yemen-based Houthis to international shipping, it has raised its own military profile on the world stage.

“We’ve acted at the forefront of global responses to maintain regional stability,” UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said in a speech to Lancaster House on Monday.

In October, after the Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel, the UK was among the first countries to send a Royal Navy task group, marines and surveillance planes off Israel.

Last December, after Yemen-based Houthis attacked international shipping in support of Hamas, the UK joined the US to lead the multinational Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea.

On Friday, that force struck Houthi military sites after the Houthis targeted HMS Diamond and US Navy vessels with 21 drones and missiles.

The UK used four RAF Typhoon FGR4s to drop Paveway IV guided bombs on two facilities, a site at Bani used to launch reconnaissance and attack drones, and the airfield at Abbs, used to launch cruise missiles and drones. “Early indications are that the Houthis’ ability to threaten merchant shipping has taken a blow,” said the Ministry of Defence in a statement.

The UK has been raising its military profile globally and its defence budget at home. Shapps said defence spending, already at 50 billion pounds ($63bn) this year, would rise to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) as soon as possible, and he called on other NATO allies to follow suit.

The justification for the Red Sea action has been to protect global trade.

Some 15 percent of the world’s marine traffic passes through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Indian Ocean from the Reds Sea. From there it reaches Europe through the Suez Canal.

Among the most affected are container ships, bringing manufactured products from China to the European market.

When Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest operator of container ships, said it was diverting its vessels around Africa on January 5, it prompted other shippers to do the same. The diversion adds about 10 days shipping time, increases costs and could inflate prices. Maersk made its decision after Houthis attacked the Maersk Hangzhou on January 2.

Oil tankers have been the other large category of ships affected, since they use Suez to bring Middle Eastern oil to European refineries. One-third of the world’s oil is moved by Greek-owned ships.

“Greek tanker businesses have been monitoring the situation in the Red Sea for some time now – well before the most recent events,” an adviser to a Greek tanker operator told Al Jazeera, preferring to remain anonymous. “Incidents that were widely reported off Yemen in the last quarter of 2022 alerted everyone to the need to adopt a prudential stance.”

Not everyone in Europe has seen a similar need for the use of force.

“There’s a wider question about the extent to which this was legal self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter,” international relations professor at Panteion University in Athens Angelos Syrigos told Al Jazeera.

“Nothing … shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations,” the article says.

“Italy is hiding behind the need for parliamentary approval [of military force],” said Syrigos. “France and Spain are saying, ‘We don’t want to solve this through force because that risks escalation,’” he said.

“It is a huge problem, it is a consequence of other [war] outbreaks. I would not like to open a third front of war at this time,” Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto told Reuters, in a reference to current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

Crosetto has also called on Ukraine to open negotiations with Russia.

The risk of escalation is certainly present.

Both Hamas and the Houthis are armed by Iran. A third Iran proxy, Lebanon-based Hezbollah, has also threatened to attack Israel. And there is the risk of Iranian direct involvement.

On January 11, Iran seized an oil-filled tanker in retaliation for the confiscation by US authorities of a sanctioned Iranian oil cargo last year.

An escalation could be a significant military challenge. The Israeli army is still fighting Hamas after more than three months of bombing and commando operations. Hezbollah is said to possess 150,000 rockets. And the Houthis may still have powerful weapons. They attacked a US-owned ship three days after the punitive attacks by the US and UK.

The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies believed Iran had provided the Houthis with Sayyad and Quds 800km (500-mile) range missiles as well as 500km (300-mile) range missiles with 300kg (660-pound) warheads.

“Although the Houthis have linked their campaign against shipping to the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas, the weapons were being provided by Iran well before the Israeli–Hamas conflict erupted in October 2023,” wrote the IISS’s Fabian Hinz in an IISS blog. “That suggests a strong, long-term Iranian focus on strengthening Houthi anti-ship capabilities and a potential attempt to export Iran’s model of naval coercion from the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to the geopolitically important Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait.”

The UK has nonetheless determined that an advance defence is the best deterrent against possible future hostilities by other actors.

“The era of the peace dividend is over,” said Shapps, referring to the post-Cold War years. “In five years time, we could be looking at multiple theatres involving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.”

“Ask yourselves – looking at today’s conflicts across the world – is it more likely that the number grows, or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer – it’s likely to grow.”

The UK is about to field 36,000 soldiers overseas – its highest number of land forces in 40 years.

There may be other reasons, too, why the British government is putting itself front and centre in the conflict.

“Britain considers that in the Middle East, it is still a great power … it is effectively saying, ‘I need to maintain a presence there and keep an eye on events because I know the region well,’” said Syrigos.

And the UK’s governing Conservatives face a general election this year. Polls conducted by Ipsos and YouGov late last year found that only a quarter of Britons held a favourable view of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, with more than half viewing him unfavourably.

Whether the UK’s action in the Red Sea proves as popular as its forceful stance in Ukraine remains to be seen.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Source: European Pravda, citing the Office of the President of Ukraine

The parties discussed key priorities on the agenda of relations between Ukraine and the EU in the near future, especially in the context of Ukraine approaching the start of negotiations on EU accession.

Zelenskyy and von der Leyen agreed to initiate the screening of Ukrainian legislation, which is a further step towards opening negotiations on Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.

“Our agreement foresees that the screening is set to start as soon as the Ukrainian delegation arrives in Brussels. The government must ensure this happens no later than within a week,” said Ihor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, in a comment to European Pravda.

Zelenskyy also emphasised their focus on the need to unlock the decision on providing Ukraine with EUR 50 billion euros in long-term assistance from the EU at the EU Council summit on 1 February, where Ukraine hopes to achieve consensus on this matter.

At the same time, von der Leyen announced on Twitter that the European Commission is advancing the process of Ukraine’s accession to the EU and is providing resources for the recovery, reconstruction, and reform of Ukraine through a dedicated fund.

“Our hearts are with your soldiers on the frontline. Keeping faith in an EU future will give them strength,” she said.

Background: 

• Earlier, the media reported that on 27 February, the European Commission may release an assessment of Ukraine’s progress with European integration reforms, upon which the actual start of accession negotiations depends.

• Ukraine’s interest is the verdict on additional reforms outlined in the enlargement report released in November. Their implementation is a condition for the adoption of the negotiating framework.

• In December, the European Union’s leaders at a summit in Brussels accepted the European Commission’s recommendation to begin accession negotiations with Moldova and Ukraine.

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Ukrainian businesses can now legally buy land in Ukraine as of Jan. 1 as part of the second phase of a historic decision in March 2020 to lift a near 20-year moratorium on the sale of land.

The land market officially opened in July 2021, but until now, only allowed individuals to purchase up to 100 hectares (247 acres). Under this second phase of the law, Ukrainian entities can now participate in the market and along with individuals can purchase up to 10,000 hectares of land (24,710 acres).

Despite agricultural land being the backbone of Ukraine’s economy accounting for 20% of its workforce, opening up the country — 71% of which is agricultural land according to the World Bank — to land sales remains a highly contentious issue.

Opponents of the reforms claim large companies will reap benefits at the expense of small farmers, while those championing the changes say it will allow further opportunities for agricultural development and bolster Ukraine’s annual GDP growth.

“For legal entities, this opens up new opportunities for investment and business expansion, creation of new jobs, and construction of processing complexes. Land ownership will allow legal entities to confidently invest in new construction: elevators, warehouses, and product processing plants,”  Ihor Lisetskyy, coordinator of the Land Committee of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB),  told the Kyiv Independent.

During the first phase of the reform, companies nonetheless found ways to purchase land. Employees of a given company would purchase 100 hectares of land as individuals. They argue that being able to legally purchase up to 10,000 hectares will reduce the legal and administrative costs they incurred when purchasing 100 hectares at a time.

Groups, such as the Kyiv-based NGO Eco Action, warn that the reforms could lead to the concentration of land ownership by large agricultural companies and oligarchs over small and family farmers. Unlike larger agricultural companies, smaller farmers have received little fiscal support since the start of the full-scale invasion.

Lisetskyy said farmers are concerned that large companies will own most of the land, resulting in a decrease in employment in the agricultural sector. In the lead up to the initial stages of the reform, the United Nations (UN) stressed that the land market must primarily benefit landowners, smaller farmers, and local communities.

“Further concentration of land in a few hands must be prevented. To take full effect, smallholders and smaller farms must be supported with well-targeted financing instruments, including state support, access to credit, and Partial Credit Guarantees (PCG),” the UN wrote in a 2020 policy paper.

Unpopular law

The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) found that the creation of a land market was largely unpopular among Ukrainians during a poll in 2021. Out of 2,031 respondents, 65.5% said they supported the 2001 moratorium, originally introduced as a temporary measure to regulate the complicated transition from Soviet-era collective farms to private ownership.

Both Lietskyy and Ukraine’s Agricultural Minister Mykola Solsky refuted the fears of small farmers. Solsky told the Kyiv Independent that small farmers don’t need protection from the land market as the reform is simply a “new transparent mechanism for developing their business and investments.”

Read also: Minister: Nearly 15 million tons of cargo exported via temporary Black Sea corridor

Agriculture is one of Ukraine’s largest sectors accounting for 11% of GDP prior to the full-scale invasion and has been pinpointed as a key pillar for reconstruction. The war dealt a blow to Ukraine’s agricultural economy, reducing harvests and exports. Mines, occupation of arable land, and relentless drone and missile attacks have impacted some of Ukraine’s largest agricultural holdings.

Many companies see land ownership as a way to bolster the sector and encourage much-needed investments to help develop agricultural enterprises. Legal entities have greater financial means and can therefore adopt more modern technologies and farming methods to increase land productivity, Lisetskyy claims.

Despite calls in parliament to postpone the second stage until 2025, spearheaded by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Dmytro Razumkov, Minister Solsky stressed that expeditious action is crucial, even in the midst of the full-scale war.

“We generally must move faster than before the war. Business is not guided by sentiment. We must have convenient rules, no worse than in countries where people are willing to invest. Our legislation and agricultural business must be ready for maximum global competition,” Solsky told the Kyiv Independent.

Currently, foreign individuals and companies are still prohibited from purchasing farmland, although they are allowed to lease land from local owners. This could change in the near future if a national referendum takes place, but this would likely inflame tensions around an already divisive topic.

Stable market, so far

Despite Russian aggression, the land market has proven to be stable, according to Oleksandr Solovei, head of land relations department at Nibulon, one of Ukraine’s agricultural giants.

In 2021, 27,696 sales were completed, followed by 23,122 in 2022 and 40,850 in 2023, totaling 283,000 hectares, according to the Agricultural Ministry.

Nevertheless, Russian aggression has still caused complications. It is difficult to accurately predict demand and supply in specific regions, Solovei said. Moreover, regions close to the front line or areas highly contaminated by explosives will be excluded as they require major financial investments to de-mine.

Land prices across Ukraine are also expected to increase. UCAB predicts the price of a hectare of land could jump by 20-25% this year. Nibulon notes that offers to their company rose from $1,200- $1,500 in 2022 to $1,500-$2,300 in 2023 per hectare of land. Now with legal entities entering the market, the company believes that the initial cost will range from $2,300- $3,300, possibly higher.

At the moment, there does not appear to be any great rush to sell land. In the first week of the reform, two plots of land were sold totaling less than eight hectares. But Solskyi claims this will soon change.

“I am convinced that in a couple of months, all the myths about the dire threats of land sales to legal entities will disappear, just as they did at the beginning of the reform.”

Read also: Five EU members sign letter to Brussels demanding customs duties on Ukrainian food products

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BERLIN: Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner took to the stage on Monday in front of thousands of jeering farmers protesting against tax rises and told them there was no money for further subsidies.
Berlin has been brought to a near standstill by the demonstration, which filled one of its central avenues with trucks and tractors as some 10,000 farmers arrived to cap a week of protests against taxes that have become a flashpoint for anti-government anger.
“I can’t promise you more state aid from the federal budget,” Lindner told the crowd from a chilly stage in front of the Brandenburg Gate. “But we can fight together for you to enjoy more freedom and respect for your work.”
The protests have heaped pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition as it struggles to fix budget disarray and contain right-wing groups.
The protests surged after a government decision to phase out a tax break on agricultural diesel as it tried to balance its 2024 budget following a constitutional court ruling in November that forced it to revise its spending plans.
Faced with a backlash, the government has already said it maintain a tax rebate on new agricultural vehicles and spread the scrapping of the agricultural diesel subsidy over several years.
But farmers, with the vocal backing of the opposition conservatives and the far-right, say that is not enough.
“I have respect for every politician who is prepared to come to us,” said Farmers’ Union head Joachim Rukwied, who at one moment had to take the microphone from Lindner and beg the crowd to stop jeering for long enough to listen to him.
“The finance minister is here,” he said. “It makes no sense to boo him.”
The government has taken a conciliatory tone as concern has grown that political debate has become radicalised and demonstrations could turn violent. Protest leaders will meet coalition leaders later this afternoon.
Mucking out
Lindner, describing himself as a lad from the countryside who had mucked out stables in his time, sought, to little avail, to win over farmers by contrasting their peaceful protest in Berlin to the behaviour of climate activists who had sprayed paint on the Brandenburg Gate – “the symbol of German national unity”.
But he said scarce money was needed for long neglected investments in schools and roads and for industrial energy subsidies.
Jeers grew especially loud when Lindner said money was needed because of the war in Ukraine.
“With the war in Ukraine, peace and freedom in Europe are threatened once again, so we have to invest once again in our security as we used to,” he said.
Vehicles that arrived overnight from across Germany parked nose-to-tail along the route, and crowds of farmers, wrapped up against the cold, waved German flags and held up banners marked with slogans including: “Without farmers, no future”.
The governing parties are divided over how best to meet farmers’ demands. Agriculture minister Cem Ozdemir, a Green, has suggested financial rewards for humane animal husbandry, while some social democrats want to offer higher produce prices, and Lindner’s free democrats want to cut administrative overheads.
Several bus and tram lines closed for the protest, which was patrolled by around 1,300 officers, police said.
Disruption caused by protests and train strikes last week hurt coalition parties in the polls and propelled the far-right Alternative for Germany party to new heights.