British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday said that if Western nations failed to fulfill their promises to support Ukraine’s independence, it would have damaging consequences worldwide, including for Taiwan.
Russian troops are massed near Ukraine’s borders, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has overseen military exercises by strategic nuclear missile forces, but Russia rejects Western concerns that it is poised to invade.
“We do not fully know what President Putin intends, but the omens are grim,” Johnson told a security conference in Munich, Germany.
Photo: AFP
“If Ukraine is endangered, the shock will echo around the world, and those echoes will be heard in East Asia, will be heard in Taiwan,” he said. “People would draw the conclusion that aggression pays and that might is right.”
China has threatened the use of force to gain control of Taiwan.
Johnson said that Western nations have repeatedly told Ukraine that they would support its independence.
“How hollow, how meaningless, how insulting those words would seem, if at the very moment when their sovereignty and independence is imperiled, we simply look away,” he said.
On Tuesday, the UK said it could block Russian companies from raising capital in London, and passed legislation to widen sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals if the country invades Ukraine.
“We will sanction Russian individuals and companies of strategic importance to the Russian state, and we will make it impossible for them to raise finance on the London capital markets,” Johnson said.
Europe must also wean itself off Russian oil and gas supplies to stop being at risk of being blackmailed, he added.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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