03/02/2026

TUESDAY | FEB 3, 2026 9 ‘UK should do more with EU on defence’ LONDON: Britain should “do more” with the EU on defence, including through a bloc-wide initiative to bolster arms stocks that London has not yet joined, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said. The comments follow talks for London to access the €150 billion (RM701.7 billion) European Union rearmament loan scheme ending in failure last year amid disagreement over the entry fee. On the sidelines of a visit to China last week, Starmer told reporters he remained open to exploring closer cooperation. “I do think that both on spending, on capability and cooperation ... we need to do more together,” the UK leader said. “I have made the argument that that should require us to look at schemes like SAFE and others, to see whether there isn’t a way in which we can work more closely together.” European nations have scrambled to boost their militaries since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Brussels launching the SAFE (Security Action for Europe) lending initiative in response. Created to provide EU countries with loans at lower rates to help them rearm, London and Brussels wrangled for months over the level of contribution Britain would make to join but failed to seal a deal. It was a setback in Starmer’s bid to rebuild post-Brexit relations with the EU since winning power in July 2024, hoping to fire up Britain’s insipid economy. London and Brussels struck a strategic partnership agreement last May, which included a pact to deepen defence cooperation as well as measures to boost trade. – AFP FIVE HELD FOR SUPPLYING RUSSIAN DEFENCE FIRMS BERLIN: German federal prosecutors said yesterday they had detained five individuals accused of operating a network that exported goods to Russian defence companies, contravening European Union sanctions. The Federal Prosecutors’ Office said the arrests were carried out by customs officers in Luebeck, a Baltic Sea port city in northern Germany, and the surrounding Herzogtum Lauenburg district. The suspects – identified as German, Ukrainian and Russian nationals – were apprehended under warrants issued by the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice. Prosecutors claim the suspects used shell companies, fake recipients within and outside the EU, and a Russian entity to obscure the shipments. The prosecutors said that Russian state agencies are suspected to have directed the procurement activities, with 24 listed Russian defence firms allegedly serving as end-users. The Russian embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. – Reuters AUSTRALIAN WOMAN DIES IN SKI LIFT ACCIDENT TOKYO: An Australian woman died after her backpack caught on a ski lift on a mountain and she became suspended mid-air, police said yesterday. The 22-year-old woman was preparing to get off the lift on Friday morning at Tsugaike Mountain Resort in Hakuba Valley, a popular ski destination in the central region of Nagano. But a loose buckle from her backpack became caught in the lift chair, according to the lift operator Tsugaike Gondola Lift. The woman, who had secured the rucksack with a chest strap, was then dragged by the lift and became “suspended” mid-air, said a spokesman for Nagano regional police. “Because the chest strap was fastened, the backpack could not be removed from the (woman’s) body, and the guest was dragged along with the backpack after disembarking from the lift,” Tsugaike Gondola Lift’s president Tsuneo Kubo said. The woman died in hospital on Sunday. – AFP

Russia does not want a global conflict: Medvedev

o ‘Moscow not crazy’

calls the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine showed Russia would stand up for its interests. Ukraine and its European allies cast the war, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two, as an imperial-style land grab, and say that if Russia wins in Ukraine then it will one day attack Nato. Russia dismisses such claims as nonsense. Conflict first erupted in eastern Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. Russia annexed Crimea and Moscow-backed separatists battled Kyiv’s armed forces in eastern Ukraine. When asked about the flurry of global events last month in Venezuela, over Greenland and elsewhere, Medvedev said that it had all been simply “too much”. On Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a Russian ally, Medvedev said that if Trump had been “stolen” by a foreign power, then the United States would have clearly seen it as an act of war. He also said Western claims of a Russian or Chinese threat to Greenland were false “horror stories” made up by Western leaders to justify their own behaviour. – Reuters

WarGonzo Russian war blogger in an interview at his residence outside Moscow. “The pain threshold seems to be decreasing.” “We are not interested in a global conflict. We’re not crazy,” said Medvedev, who served as Russian president from 2008 to 2012. “A global conflict cannot be ruled out.” President Vladimir Putin remains the final voice on Russian policy, though Medvedev, now an arch-hawk, gives a sense of hardliners’ thinking within the Russian elite, according to foreign diplomats. A cartoon hanging in the room where the interview took place showed Medvedev, a former lawyer who hails from Putin’s hometown of St Petersburg, pointing a submachine gun at European leaders. Putin and Trump have both mentioned the risks of escalation over Ukraine, though European diplomats say that Moscow has skilfully played the escalation card to scare Ukraine’s allies from getting too heavily involved in the war. “They say ‘No way – these Russians are making it all up – they are sowing horror stories and they will never do anything,” Medvedev said, adding that what the Kremlin

MOSCOW: Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Kremlin security official, said in remarks released for publication yesterday that the world was getting very dangerous, but that Russia did not want a global conflict. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation between the West and Moscow since the depths of the Cold War, though US President Donald Trump’s envoys are trying to negotiate an end to the war with Russia and Ukraine. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, a kind of modern-day politburo of Russia’s most powerful officials, praised Trump and said it was encouraging that contacts had resumed with Washington. But Medvedev, who has repeatedly hurled invective at Kyiv and Western powers while warning of the risks of an escalation of the war towards a nuclear “apocalypse”, said the West had repeatedly ignored Russian interests. “The situation is very dangerous,” Medvedev told Reuters, TASS and the

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A Ukrainian volunteer distributing hot drinks to attendees of an outdoor DJ party in a residential neighbourhood of Kyiv on Sunday. – AFPPIC

Rafah crossing makes limited reopening RAFAH: Gaza’s key Rafah border crossing was reopened to Palestinians yesterday, an Israeli security official said, but Egyptian media said only 50 people would be allowed to cross in each direction in the early days. AlQahera News, which is linked to state intelligence, reported citing an unnamed source that “fifty people will depart Egypt for Gaza and fifty people will come from Gaza, in the first days of the operation”.

An official at Gaza’s Health Ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, said about 200 patients were waiting for permission to leave the territory. AlQahera News reported that 150 hospitals and 300 ambulances had been prepared to receive Palestinian patients. It said 12,000 doctors and 30 rapid deployment teams had been allocated to work with the transferred Palestinians. Rafah is considered a key entry point for aid into Gaza, where humanitarian conditions remain dire after two years of war in spite of a ceasefire in place since Oct 10. COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry body coordinating Palestinian civilian affairs, made no mention of a surge of aid, speaking only of the passage of individuals “in both directions”. Cairo News reported that the Egyptian side of the crossing would remain open “round the clock”. –AFP

A source at the border said a few dozen people arrived on the Egyptian side yesterday awaiting entry into Gaza. However, Israeli state broadcaster Kan reported that around 150 people were expected to leave Gaza for Egypt yesterday, including 50 patients. The report said around 50 others were also expected to enter the territory, adding that the crossing would be open for six hours daily. “The Rafah crossing is a lifeline,” said Mohammed Nassir, a Palestinian who had his leg amputated early in the war. “I need to undergo surgery that is unavailable in Gaza but can be performed abroad.”

The resumption of operations comes after Israeli forces seized control of the gateway to Egypt in May 2024 during the war with Hamas. A partial resumption of operations began on Sunday in a tightly restricted pilot phase that did not involve travel of people, following months of appeals from aid groups. “As of this time, and following the arrival of the EUBAM teams on behalf of the European Union, the Rafah crossing has now opened to the movement of residents, for both entry and exit,” the Israeli official said, referring to a European border assistance mission. Egyptian media reported that 50 people were expected to cross in each direction in the first days of the reopening.