The price of oil surpassed $100 a barrel for second time since the beginning of 2014, as Russia sent troops into Ukraine raising fears that a conflict in Europe could affect the world’s energy supply.

Russia has launched a massive invasion in Ukraine in which it is targeting major cities using weapons strikes the Russian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced in an email.

Brent crude hit a peak of $101.34 per barrel in early Asia trading, the highest since September 2014. It was trading at $101.20 one barrel by 0423 GMT at 0423 GMT, an increase of $4.36 or 4.5 percent.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures surged $4.22 or 4.6 percent up to $96.32 for a barrel, following climbing to $96.51 which is which was the highest since August 2014.

Russian Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia Vladimir Putin authorised a military operation in the eastern part of Ukraine on Thursday, in what could be the beginning of conflict in Europe due to Russian demands to end NATO’s eastern expansion. learn more

Russia is the second largest oil producer. It primarily offers crude for sale to European refineries. It’s also the largest provider for natural gas in Europe with around 35% of the supply.

“Russia’s announcement of a special military operation into Ukraine has pushed Brent to the $100/bbl mark,” said Warren Patterson, head of the ING’s research on commodities, adding that the market for oil will be watching closely to see what next steps Western nations will take against Russia.

“This growing uncertainty during a time when the oil market is already tight does leave it vulnerable, and so prices are likely to remain volatile and elevated,” he said.

Brent crude oil has topped $100/barrel in the last time it has been that high since Sept 2014 over Ukraine-Russia tensions

Western nations as well as Japan on Tuesday slapped Russia with fresh sanctions for sending troops into separatist areas of the eastern region of Ukraine and warned of a further punishment should Moscow declared an all-out attack on its neighbor. As of now, there aren’t any sanctions against trade in energy. learn more

Japan and Australia announced on Thursday that they are prepared to take advantage of their oil reserves as well as others International Energy Agency (IEA) member states, if supply were hit by hostilities in Ukraine. learn more

“One factor that could act as a temporary brake on prices is the Iran nuclear deal with rumours swirling around that a new agreement could be announced, possibly as early as this week,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA.

“However Ukraine fears, and their wider ramifications will continue to support oil prices which remain a solid buy on dips.”

It is believed that the U.S. and Iran have been in indirect talks on nuclear issues in Vienna and an agreement could result in the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil sales and to increase the supply of oil around the world.

Iran on Wednesday , however, the country urged Western countries to become “realistic” in talks to renew the nuclear agreement of 2015 and announced that the country’s top negotiator would be returning to Tehran to discuss the issue which suggests that the possibility of a breakthrough in talks isn’t imminent. learn more

In addition, U.S. crude stockpiles were up 6 million barrels over the week, while distillate stocks declined according to market analysts who were quoting American Petroleum Institute figures late on Tuesday.

In advance of the release of government data for Thursday morning, experts are predicting the crude oil market to grow by 400,000 barrels and a decrease in fuel stocks.

The inventories of gasoline increased by 427,000 barrels, while distillates stocks fell by 985,000 barrels, API figures showed, according to the source, who spoke anonymously.

  China stocks fell on Thursday, tracking a decline in global markets after Russian President Vladimir Putin authorised a military operation in eastern Ukraine.

The CSI300 index (.CSI300) fell 1.3% to 4,563.95 at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index (.SSEC) lost 0.9% to 3,458.12 points.

The Hang Seng index (.HSI) dropped 3.1% to 22,925.60. The Hong Kong China Enterprises Index (.HSCE) lost 3.4% to 8,033.08.

** Putin authorised a military operation in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, in what could be the start of war in Europe over Russia’s demands for an end to NATO’s eastward expansion. read more

** Shortly after Putin spoke, explosions could be heard in the pre-dawn quiet of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

** “Asian stock markets generally recorded significant losses today, and the worsening situation in Ukraine further impacted financial markets,” said Kenny Ng, a securities strategist at China Everbright Securities International. read more

** Outflows through Northbound leg of the Stock Connect totalled 2.19 billion yuan at midday break, according to Refinitiv data (.NQUOTA.SH), (.NQUOTA.ZK).

** China will keep the real estate market stable and step up coordination and precision of property policies this year, the country’s housing minister said on Thursday. read more

** The real estate subindex (.CSI000952) eased 0.7%, while the financial subindex (.CSIFN) retreated 1.1%.

** Consumer staples (.CSICS) slid 2.3%, while information technology stocks (.CSIINT) dropped 1.6%.

** Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares (9988.HK) fell 6.6% to a record low ahead of earnings release later in the day.

** Chinese offshore-listed tech firms are facing a double whammy of fresh regulatory crackdowns by Beijing and growing geopolitical tensions over Ukraine, sending the Hang Seng Tech Idnex (.HSTECH) down more than 4%. read more

** Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) and Meituan (3690.HK) declined more than 3.5% each.

** Mainland developers listed in Hong Kong (.HSMPI) slumped 4.3%, with Shimao (0813.HK) down nearly 10%, after a trustee said roughly $170 million worth of asset-backed notes guaranteed by the Chinese developer may not be redeemed on maturity. read more

** Consumer discretionary (.HSCICD) stocks plunged 4%, while the finance index (.HSNF) lost nearly 3%.

** Russian aluminium producer OK Rusal MKPAO slumped 8.5%. 

A large blast was heard in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv while at least two big explosions were heard in the city of Kramatorsk in the country’s eastern Donbas region early Thursday.

Kramatorsk is currently a city from where lots of foreign press members follow the latest developments on the line of contact.

Explosions were also reported in the cities of Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv and Odessa.

Ukrainian local authorities said "the invasion has begun," adding that the explosions were "missile strikes."

No details were reported on casualties following the blasts.

Official statements on whether Russian troops had crossed the areas controlled by the pro-Russian separatists are yet to come.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in Donbas./aa

Germany and France on Wednesday warned Russia that it would face more sanctions if it continues further military aggression against Ukraine.

“The EU’s sanctions package can be tightened any time,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told a joint news conference with her French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, following their meeting in Berlin.

“Sanctions would evolve gradually, now we are implementing the first set of sanctions, but as we have made it clear, we will take further hard measures, when it becomes necessary,” she said.

Baerbeck heavily criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for attempting “to turn back the wheel of history” by his military move in eastern Ukraine, by recognizing separatist regions and bringing Europe to the brink of war.

French Foreign Minister Le Drian underlined unity among EU member states, and said the EU’s first set of sanctions against Russia could follow with further measures if Moscow continues with military aggression.

“Nearly 180,000 Russian troops are posted around Ukraine’s borders. Despite statements that troops will be withdrawn after the military exercises, this has not happened. Anything is possible, even the worst scenarios,” he said.

Both Le Drian and Baerbock reiterated their preference for a diplomatic solution to the crisis and called on Moscow to step back from military threats and return to the negotiating table.

“We would like to prevent a war in Europe. During our previous phone calls with our Russian colleague (Sergey) Lavrov we had clearly said this: It’s up to you, to come to the table. This is still the case today,” Baerbock said.

Putin signed a decree on Monday recognizing Ukraine’s separatist regions Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.

The Russian parliament on Tuesday unanimously ratified treaties of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance with the breakaway regions.

The US and its allies have condemned the move, and US President Joe Biden accused Russia of trying to create pretexts to justify a full-scale invasion of Ukraine./aa

A second "charity train" carrying 920 tons of emergency goods under the coordination of the Turkish government reached Afghanistan on Wednesday. 

The 45-car train that left from the country's capital Ankara on Feb. 11, was received in a ceremony by Turkiye's Consul General Sinan Ilhan, Maarif Foundation's Afghanistan Coordinator Salih Sagir, representatives of Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (AFAD), Turkish and Afghan Red Crescents, and of some Turkish NGOs.

Acting Afghan government officials also attended the ceremony that took place at the Torghundi border located in the northwestern Herat province.

At least 11 humanitarian groups from Turkiye, under the umbrella of the state-run AFAD, are supplying humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, which is facing a food crunch and is in need of emergency aid.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, AFAD's Burhan Aslan said the second train included food, blankets, clothes, medical supplies, and health supplies.

Noting that the aid materials will be packed and made ready for distribution to 34 Afghan provinces, Aslan said the unloading of items from the train is underway.

He also said the distribution of packages from the first train that arrived in Afghanistan on Feb. 7 is continuing, while the distribution in over 20 provinces has been completed so far.

The train traversed 4,168 kilometers (3,590 miles) via Iran and Turkmenistan to reach Afghanistan.

Aid groups describe Afghanistan’s plight as one of the world’s most rapidly growing humanitarian crises.

According to the UN, half the population now faces acute hunger, over 9 million people have been displaced, and millions of children are out of school.

Previously, the UN and its partners launched a $4.4 billion funding appeal to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan in 2022.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also warned that millions of Afghans are on the verge of death, urging the international community to release Afghanistan’s frozen assets and jump-start its banking system./aa  

In September last year, right-wing media outlet OpIndia published an article titled, ‘Islamists in Middle East call for boycott of Indian products over Assam violence, urge Muslim countries to take action’.

This article, like others about West Asia that one finds circulating in India’s media landscape, uses the terms ‘Islamists,’ ‘Islamic countries,’ ‘Muslim world,’ and ‘Middle East’ as synonymous, constructing the region, and the people who live there, as uniformly Muslim and violent.

The image that comes to one’s mind upon reading this title is that of angry-looking men with beards carrying guns, similar to the portrayals of Taliban men in Afghanistan that one sees regularly in the international media.

This conflation of terms used to refer to the region indicates a larger problem in the portrayals of West Asia in India; be it in media, political reports, Bollywood, or academic scholarship. It reflects the presence of discourses about West Asia that are a combined product of the Hindutva ideology, Orientalism, and Islamophobia – all three of which are constructed in relation to each other. Unfortunately, Islam becomes the only lens through which to view the region, erasing the social and political diversity that lies within.

The messiness of terminologies

‘Middle East’ and ‘Islamic world’ (or their equivalents) are used recurrently in India, as well as globally, to refer to West Asia. The term ‘Middle East’ is used globally to indicate the region approximately covered by North Africa and West Asia.

One may thus ask – for whom is the region located in the east? And what is this ‘east’ that the region is in the ‘middle’ of?

The origins of the term lie in the 19th century British colonial administration’s division of its ‘east’ into the ‘Far East’ (east of British India), Near East (the area closest to Britain) and the Middle East (the area lying in between the Far East and the Near East). Varying definitions of ‘Middle East’ have included India as well.

The Middle East’s precise definitions were later debated in the United States as the region became a site of political and economic domination for the US government. The genealogy of the term, therefore, carries within it the history of political interests of those in power, especially Britain and the United States.

The term ‘Islamic world’, meanwhile, portrays the region as uniformly Muslim. It also constructs the region as having the highest concentration of Muslims in the world. Yet, a look at religious demographic data around the world reveals that around 60% of the global Muslim population lives in the Asia-Pacific and only around 20% lives in West Asia and North Africa. Indonesia has the highest number of Muslims in the world, followed by India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

The region clearly does not lie to the east of India and hence, many academics in India choose to use the term ‘West Asia’ instead. However, the choice of the term ‘West Asia’ suffers from many of the same ambiguities as the term ‘Middle East.’ ‘West Asia’ does not include, for instance, countries in North Africa (like Algeria and Tunisia) that are sometimes included in the definition of ‘Middle East’.

In addition, like in the case of ‘Middle East’, many Indian academics have also contributed to constructing the region as “predominantly Arab-Muslim,” both historically and in the present. This construction has two problems; first, it hides the ethnic and religious diversity of the region; and second, this discourse of homogeneity becomes a political tool – locally in the region to oppress its minoritised populations and globally to construct an Orientalised image of the region.

Let us take the case of Lebanon, for example. To say that it is “predominantly Arab-Muslim” hides the fact that the country is one-third Christian and has a diverse Muslim population (including Sunni, Shia, Alawite and Ismaili groups). It also hosts a significant refugee population from Syria, Iraq and Palestine as well as migrant workers from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and the Philippines; this non-citizen population gets easily ignored in mainstream demographic descriptions of Lebanon.

Orientalising West Asia

In his path-breaking book, Orientalism, published in 1978, Edward Said provides an opening into the study of the imaginations about the ‘Orient’ or the ‘East’ by the so-called West. Orientalism, for Said, is a way of thinking or imagining that represents the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ as inherently different from each other; its goal is to produce knowledge about the ‘East’ that justifies the West’s  supposed supremacy in relation to this ‘East’.

The political interests behind Orientalist knowledge production are most clear when one traces the genealogy of discourses about women’s rights used by the United States government during its military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For example, the depictions of gender and sexuality, especially of harems, in Orientalist paintings in 19th century Europe were used to justify the project of colonialism; these depictions “continue to provide the symbolic vernacular for contemporary representations of Muslims,” writes Isra Ali, especially of Muslim women as requiring “saving,” which is then used to justify the violence of the War on Terror.  

Today, the so-called ‘West’ does not have a monopoly over the production and use of Orientalist imaginations, that is, imaginations that have constructed a uniform ‘Muslim world’ intrinsically different and inferior from self.

While West Asia may not lie to the east of India, we can still see how Orientalist imaginations about West Asia circulate in the country, especially in the portrayals of the region in Bollywood films. For example, the depiction of 1950s Istanbul in the film Guru (2007) includes a belly dance performance by Mallika Sherawat which music label Sony Music Entertainment describes as “Turkish-inspired” and “sizzling.”

There are many similarities between the 19th century Orientalist paintings produced in Europe and the imagery one sees in this video; for instance, they both portray ‘Muslim’ women as having an excess of sexuality.

That a lot of the comments on Youtube on the video note its “good Arabic vibes” points to the fact that, in the Indian imagination, the aesthetic and the sexuality represented in the song get located in the ‘Arab countries’. It must be noted here that the Turkish language is different from the Arabic language and that a majority of Turkish citizens would not identify as Arab. 

The hyper-sexualisation and fetishisation of Muslim women in India is a product of many of the same ideologies that produce the western Orientalist fetishisation of “women in the Muslim world”. In the Indian context, it marks the continuous desire of those in power to construct ‘Muslims’ as other and inferior.

I wonder if the tolerance for Muslim actresses and actors in the Indian film industry, even as Islamophobia is pushing Muslims out of many other sectors of employment, is a part of this Orientalist fetishisation of Muslim bodies in India.

These discourses construct West Asia in opposition to India, where India and its people are portrayed as victims of this collection of people and spaces dubbed the ‘Islamic world’. The connection between the construction of West Asia as ‘Muslim’, in opposition to India, is clear in the regular conflation of ‘Islamists of the Middle East’ with Muslims living in India, and their collective ‘targeted campaign against Hindus’.

While Muslim women’s bodies become sites for fantasies, ‘Islamists’ represent the construction of Muslim men as violent – a violence constructed as being directed towards Hindus as well as Muslim women. This discourse constructs Indians (and Hindus; both terms used synonymously) as victims of ‘Islamists’; thereby justifying the Indian state’s violence perpetuated against the Muslim community in India. Here, we see the influence of Hindutva ideology on constructions of the ‘Islamic world’.

Moving beyond this problematic discourse

While speaking about Tunisia, an Indian colleague of mine described it as a ‘Muslim country’. When I resisted this description, they pointed to demographic statistics that indicate that the Tunisian population is 99% Muslim.

The problem with this description is not that it is factually incorrect; rather, the term ‘Muslim’ in the Indian context comes with its own set of political and social discourses. To describe a country as ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ in India indirectly constructs it in opposition to Hinduism and, ultimately, India itself. Not only does this description construct this ‘Muslim’ country as different, but it also constructs it (indirectly) as inferior to India.

For example, after my colleagues describe Tunisia as a ‘Muslim country’, they usually ask questions like, “Can you go and swim at the beach there?” or “Can you wear a skirt there”, assuming that these are activities that I, as a woman, undertook with ease back in India. These questions indicate the assumption that women’s rights in ‘Muslim countries’ are uniformly absent, unlike in India, where they are assumed to be uniformly present.

I have been tempted many times to react to these questions by saying: “Women are free to do whatever they want in Tunisia!” There is a temptation to erase the complexity of places and experiences in reaction to questions that reflect hidden Islamophobic and Orientalist ideas about West Asia; this temptation is strong and ever-present among scholars and political figures fighting these ideologies.

To generalise the traits of a place or its people (for example, by saying that there are no issues with women’s rights in ‘Muslim countries’ or among ‘Muslims’) in reaction to Islamophobic and Orientalist generalisations puts us back in the same trap of essentialisation. For example, there is a desire to construct a discourse of the ‘good Muslim‘ in response to the discourses of ‘bad Muslims‘. In attempts to move away from Islam as lens to see West Asia, we end up using Islam as a lens all the same.

At the same time, the possibility of instrumentalisation remains when a more complex response to questions about West Asia is provided. To say that the question of women’s rights in Tunisia; in Lebanon; in Egypt is as complex and vibrant with debates as it is in India, risks the simplistic interpretation of “Yes, there are problems in Islamic countries.”/THE WIRE 

By NEETA KOLHATKAR

'This chauvinistic attitude, what they call nationalism in the name of religion, is sad.'

'It is a tragic state that we are all in currently.'

Why are Muslim women oppressed by their own families?

Why is someone fighting for the right to wear the hijab a hero and why is someone fighting against triple talaq ignored?

Why, after 75 years of Independence, does the Muslim community still not have a comprehensive personal law?

As the hijab controversy, which began in some Karnataka colleges last month, continues to grab national attention, Noorjehan Safia Niaz, an Ashoka Fellow who has founded the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (an organisation 'that fights for the rights of Muslim women'), raises these questions.

"Is this what we are reducing our educational institutions to?" she wonders in a free-flowing conversation with Rediff.com Senior Contributor Neeta Kolhatkar.

The concluding segment of a two-part interview:

It is not easy for Muslim girls from conservative families to step outside their familial circle.

The girls who wear hijabs are battling various challenges at various levels. If they don't wear the hijab, they will be pulled out from school/college by their families.

If they wear the hijab, they are hounded by right wing youth like we saw in one of the videos making the rounds on social media.

Why is there so much pressure on Muslim girls?

I felt very sad and helpless when I saw that video.

It made me wonder what our world has come to. Is this what we are reducing our educational institutions to?

It is also symbolic of how the community is being hounded and being pushed to the wall.

This kind of chauvinistic attitude, and what they call nationalism in the name of religion, is sad.

Overall, it is a tragic state that we are all in currently.

Sponsored

Can we hope for change?

Hope is the only thing we can hold on to. Umeed pe toh duniya qayam hai.

Hopefully, this is a phase and we can come out of it. Even Germany went through a bad time during Nazi rule. But they stepped away from their gory past, from their involvement in fascism and reconstructed their country.

I only hope it won't take us the same amount of time to do something similar.

Our deep-rooted values and the solid foundations of our Constitution has pulled us along so far.

But this (anti-Muslim) agenda is 90 years old; battling it is not going to be easy.

Why isn't the Muslim community speaking up?

We believed something like this would not happen and look at the situation we are in now.

As a Muslim women's organisation, we have worked towards reforming the law. We have also raised our voice against our own religious practices and against fundamentalism as well.

We need to introspect and see where we have gone wrong. Why have we not been able to check a practice like triple talaq for example?

What have we been doing all these decades while Muslim women are fighting battles within their own homes? Look at their vulnerability; they have no idea when they will be thrown out of their homes.

Why didn't we, as a community, stand by Shah Bano? After she secured her rights through the Supreme Court, a political party denied it to her.

To give you a historical perspective, the Hindu Marriage Act was codified in 1955 while the Hindu Succession Act, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act and the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act were codified in 1966. Even the Christians (Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872) and Parsis (Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936) have had their laws codified.

But Muslims -- and we are 15 per cent of India's population -- still do not have comprehensively codified family law. It's been 75 years since Independence and we still do not have legislative protection against so many practices.

As a community, why have we not been not able to introspect and tackle bad practices? Why did we allow triple talaq to become an issue that the government could pick up? As a community, we could have tackled it. Why didn't we?

If you look at the historical development of Muslim law, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act was passed in 1937.

In 1939, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act was passed.

Then, in 1978, the Shah Bano case happened. It led to the the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in 1986 and now we have the Triple Talaq Act which was passed in 2019.

But we are nowhere close to getting a comprehensive law.

Soon, we will complete 100 years as a community living without legislative protection which -- and one should not have to say this -- is the Constitutional right of every Indian citizen. And the community will continue to use patriarchy and religion to oppress its women.

In the past, Muslim women have challenged the state's oppressive behaviour. Take, for example, the Shaheen Bagh activists or Muskan, the girl in the video who took on right wing protestors in the ongoing hijab controversy.

But when the same (Muslim) women are facing issues within their families, and are entitled to the same Constitutional rights, the same Article 14 which promises equality before the law, why is the community not supporting them?

Muskan is a hero, but someone fighting against triple talaq is not. Why is that?

Why are the five Muslim women who led the fight against triple talaq -- they went all the way to the Supreme Court -- not hailed? Why is their heroism and courage not acknowledged by the community?

This is where the hypocrisy is evident and taken advantage of by the fascist, chauvinistic regime.

What has the role of the ulema (body of Muslim scholars who act as the guardians, transmitters and interpreters of Islamic religious knowledge) been in all these years?

The ulema had a strong hold over the community for several decades.

That kind of religious leadership had the state's backing and this was seen in the way the late Rajiv Gandhi buckled under pressure and allowed Muslim women to be overpowered despite the judgment in their favour; it was a 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' understanding.

The ramifications of this behaviour lasted several decades and successfully drowned out the voices of Muslim women.

We all know how the late Dr Asghar Ali Engineer (the social activist and writer who raised his voice against communalism and communal violence) was hounded when he spoke about Islam and the rights of Muslim women.

Whenever my organisation speak about Muslim women and the issues they face, we are called stooges of the RSS and the BJP. We are questioned as to why we are allowing ourselves to be used by the government against our own community.

Nobody speaks about reforms needed in the community.

Every time we raise these issues, we are told it is not the right time to speak about it. When we issued a statement on the hijab controversy, we were told not to muddy the waters, that it is not a good time.

My question is: When will the time be right to raise these kinds of questions?

India has been independent for 75 years; in another 25 years, it will complete a century as a democratic nation whose Constitution guarantees equality in the eyes of the law. Yet, Muslim women continue to be denied their Constitutional rights and the right to equality within the family.

So, once again I want to ask, when will this right time come? And who will decide that the time is right?

What is the way ahead?

We must keep the discussion about our weaknesses and our issues alive. We must find a way to end this hypocrisy and bring in democracy within ourselves.

We must deal with our issues within our own community and not lay them on a silver platter for the other side to use against us.

What is happening in Karnataka is unconstitutional; they are depriving girls of their right to education.

How can you not allow your students to enter the campus? You cannot set one section of students against another.

Don't forget, the students are your children.

Gambia appealed to the United Nation’s highest court Wednesday to reject Myanmar’s legal effort to end a case alleging genocide by the Southeast Asian country against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

Gambia brought the case before the International Court of Justice in 2019, arguing the Myanmar junta violated the 1948 genocide convention during a 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya. Gambia argues the crackdown amounted to genocide and that the world court must hold Myanmar accountable.

The Myanmar military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine state following an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces allegedly committed mass rapes and murders, and they burned thousands of homes as some 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to neighboring Bangladesh. A U.N. fact-finding mission concluded the "genocidal acts" were committed during the campaign.

Gambian lawyers urged the court to reject Myanmar’s challenge to the case two days after Myanmar’s junta demanded that it drop the case. The junta argued the West African country was “no one’s proxy” and had no legal basis for challenging the case because it was really brought by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and that the court can only hear cases between countries.

“This is very much a dispute between the Gambia and Myanmar,” Gambia’s Attorney General and Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said in a rebuttal of the junta’s argument.

Judges could take months to rule on Myanmar’s demands to drop the case.

Myanmar's legal team is led by Ko Ko Hlaing, the minister for international cooperation. He replaced pro-democracy civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi after she was ousted in a military coup last year./VOA

The US Treasury Department said Tuesday that it has imposed additional sanctions on five Kremlin-connected Russian individuals on top of sanctions announced by President Joe Biden.

They include Aleksandr Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service and a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, and his son.

Others include Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential office, and his son, and Petr Fradkov, the chairman and CEO of Promsvyazbank Public Joint Stock Company (PSB).

Biden earlier announced the first tranche of sanctions against Russia after Moscow recognized the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine and sent troops to keep peace.

The sanctions target two large Russian financial institutions -- Corporation Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs Vnesheconombank (VEB), PSB, and their 42 subsidiaries.

VEB and PSB can no longer do business in the US, are cut off from the US financial system, and all assets under US jurisdiction will be immediately frozen, the Treasury said in a statement.

"Today’s action constrains Russia’s ability to finance defense-related contracts and raise new funds to finance its campaign against Ukraine," it said.

"VEB and PSB are state-owned institutions that play specific roles to prop up Russia’s defense capability and its economy," it added.

While VEB has a $53 billion asset portfolio servicing Russia’s sovereign debt with a loan portfolio of over $20 billion, PSB services nearly 70% of Russia’s defense contracts and provides banking and personal finance to Russian military personnel, it noted.

In addition, the sanctions included five vessels owned by PSB -- two container ships, two oil tankers and one cargo vessel.

"We continue to monitor Russia’s actions and if it further invades Ukraine, the United States will swiftly impose expansive economic sanctions that will have a severe and lasting impact on Russia’s economy," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement./aa