UK PM Sunak visits Northern Ireland after sealing ‘historic’ EU deal

BRITAIN’S Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited Northern Ireland on Tuesday after the UK and European Union sealed a deal a day earlier to resolve their post-Brexit dispute over trade in the region.

Speaking on the BBC on Tuesday morning, Sunak said he believed “hand on heart” that “this agreement is going to make a huge difference” to businesses and people in Northern Ireland.

“That’s what I’m going to talk to people about today, listening to them and explaining how this deal is going to be positive.”

Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the ‘Windsor Framework’ on Monday after agreeing to the final details in Windsor, near London.

It aims to allow for smoother trade between the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland, which was complicated by the old Northern Ireland protocol negotiated in 2020 under then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“I’m over the moon that yesterday we managed to have a decisive breakthrough with our negotiations with the EU,” Sunak said.

“The new Windsor framework that I think is an extraordinarily positive step for Northern Ireland and it represents […] a historic moment for us to move forward and resolve some of the difficulties of the past.”

The agreement, which will allow goods to flow freely to Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, could end a dispute that has soured its relations with the bloc.

Now Sunak is waiting for the judgment of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which is boycotting the region’s powersharing government until the trade arrangements are changed to its satisfaction.

The DUP collapsed Northern Ireland’s government a year ago, and it has asked authorities to lift customs controls on most products arriving in Northern Ireland from other parts of the United Kingdom.

Sunak said the new rules “removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea” by eliminating checks and paperwork for the vast majority of goods entering Northern Ireland.

Only those destined to travel onward to EU member Ireland will be checked.

The revised text also gives Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly the power to stop any forthcoming EU legislation that it considers to be inimical to regional interests.

“Today’s agreement delivers smooth-flowing trade within the whole United Kingdom, protects Northern Ireland’s place in our union and safeguards sovereignty for the people of Northern Ireland,” Sunak said.

Von der Leyen stressed that the EU’s borderless single market would be protected by safeguards including “IT access, labels and enforcement procedures” and said the European Court of Justice would remain “the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law.”

The role of the European court in resolving any disputes that arise over the rules has been the thorniest issue in the talks.

The UK and the EU agreed in their Brexit divorce deal to give the European court that authority. But the DUP and Conservative Party Eurosceptics insist the court must have no jurisdiction in UK matters.

Potential Business Boost

Under the old Northern Ireland Protocol, many businesses in Great Britain stopped supplying products in Northern Ireland, as the administrative costs were too burdensome.

Some products, such as chilled meats and sausages, were due to be banned entirely due to regulatory differences.

“We’re very, very optimistic about what this new offer is,” says Alan Mercer, manager at Hillmount Garden Centres in Northern Ireland. “Nobody knows the fine details yet, But it seems like a big relief. And we honestly think it could be a game changer that all of a sudden we can actually source plants from England again, and it could speed up the deliveries coming from the mainland.” Concerns however do remain, especially how smaller businesses will be able to navigate the new system. (Euronews)

Putin accuses Ukraine of border ‘terrorist act’ in Russian village

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a Ukrainian sabotage group entered a Russian border region on Thursday and opened fire on civilians in a “terrorist act”.

Earlier the governor of Bryansk region said “saboteurs from Ukraine” had fired at a civilian car in Lyubechane, a border village, killing one person and injuring a child.

Kyiv strongly denied the Russian claim.

The alleged incident has not been independently verified.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted that it was “a classic deliberate provocation”. “RF [Russia] wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russia has previously reported some Ukrainian missile and drone strikes on Russian border areas, including Bryansk region. But there have been no confirmed reports of Ukrainian ground forces infiltrating Russia.

Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry

Peskov said “steps to destroy these terrorists are being taken”. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said FSB forces and regular troops were battling “Ukrainian nationalists” who had crossed into Russia.

Speaking on Russian state TV, President Putin said “today they committed another terrorist act, another crime, penetrated the border area and opened fire on civilians”.

“They saw that it was a civilian car, that civilians and children were sitting there, and opened fire. It is exactly such people who set themselves the task of depriving us of historical memory. They will achieve nothing, we will put the squeeze on them,” he said.

A video has appeared online claiming to show members of the Ukraine-based Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) outside a local clinic. One armed man in the video, posted on Telegram, says they crossed into Russia.

The investigative journalism group Bellingcat Monitoring describes the RVC as “a unit officially formed last year made up primarily of anti-Putin, antiKremlin Russian far-right figures active in Ukraine”.

Commenting on the RVC claim, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, Andriy Yusov, said “these are people who are fighting with arms against the Putin regime and those who support him... Perhaps Russians are beginning to wake up, realise something and take some concrete steps”. (BBC)