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US Army’s Pacific Commanding General Charles Flynn is arriving on a four-day visit to Nepal on Thursday, a Nepal Army source said. 

Flynn is arriving in Nepal prior to Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) Prabhu Ram Sharma and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s visit to the USA.

The arrival of US high ranking officials in Nepal has started rising gradually after the endorsement of the Millennium Challenge Corporation from the Parliament. 

Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights and US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya also visited Nepal in the third week of May.

Earlier on Tuesday, he held talks with Indian Chief of Army Staff General Manoj Pande and discussed aspects of bilateral defence cooperation.

Angela Merkel defended her approach to Ukraine and Russia during her 16 years as Germany’s leader, saying Tuesday that a much criticized 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine bought Kyiv precious time and she won’t apologize for her diplomatic efforts, Associated Press reported.

In her first substantial comments since leaving office six months ago, Merkel said there was “no excuse” for Russia’s “brutal” attack on Ukraine and it was “a big mistake on Russia’s part.”

Merkel, who dealt with Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout her chancellorship, rejected a suggestion that she and others engaged in appeasement that ultimately enabled the invasion.

“I tried to work toward calamity being averted, and diplomacy was not wrong if it doesn’t succeed,” she said in an on-stage interview at a Berlin theater that was televised live. “I don’t see that I should say now that it was wrong, and so I won’t apologize.”

“It is a matter of great sorrow that it didn’t succeed, but I don’t blame myself now for trying,” Merkel said. 

She defended the 2015 peace agreement that she and then-French President Francois Hollande brokered in Minsk, Belarus, aimed at easing fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russian-backed separatists.

Merkel conceded that it didn’t fulfill all of Ukraine’s interests and that few people stand by it now, with some saying it was badly negotiated, according to Associated Press.

“But at the time it brought calm and, for example, it gave Ukraine a great deal of time — seven years namely — to develop into what it is today,” she said. If there had been no intervention at the time, she added, “Putin could have wrought gigantic damage in Ukraine.”

She said that sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea in 2014 “could have been stronger, as far as I’m concerned,” but added that there was no majority sentiment for doing so at the time. 

“We didn’t do nothing either,” she said, noting that Russia was thrown out of the Group of Eight and that NATO set a target for countries to work toward spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

Merkel also strongly defended a decision in 2008 not to put Ukraine directly on track to join NATO, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in early April blasted as a “miscalculation.”

NATO pledged in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members. But French and German concern over Russia’s reactions dashed their hopes of being granted a “membership action plan” that would bring them into the alliance within five to 10 years.

Merkel said that “Ukraine was not the one we know today,” saying it was a country very divided and dominated by oligarchs. “It wasn’t an internally democratically stable country,” she said, Associated Press reported.

She suggested a stronger NATO green light for Ukraine in 2008 would have led to faster Russian aggression, with Ukraine less able to resist.

“I was very certain that Putin wouldn’t just let it happen,” she said. “For him, from his perspective, that was a declaration of war ... I don’t share any of this, but I knew how he thought.”

Tuning to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which she long defended against criticism from the US, Ukraine and eastern European allies, Merkel said Putin invaded Ukraine without waiting for it to enter service. 

Current Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government halted the project in February.

His administration also decided to deliver arms to Ukraine. 

Merkel said she had opposed doing that when she was chancellor because Germany and France were trying to lead diplomacy, according to Associated Press.

“That is no longer on the agenda today — this is a different time,” she said.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister says the United Nations has arranged a worldwide public appeal to help the island nation’s food, agriculture and heath sectors face serious shortages amid its worst economic crises in recent memory, Aljazeera reported.

In his speech to parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the UN plans to provide $48m in assistance over a four-month period. But the projected funds barely scratch the surface of the $6bn the island nation needs to stay afloat over the next six months.

Wickremesinghe said that for the next three weeks, it will be tough to obtain some essentials and urged people to be “united and patient”, to use the scarce supplies as carefully as possible and to avoid nonessential travel.

“Therefore, I urge all citizens to refrain from thinking about hoarding fuel and gas during this period. After those difficult three weeks, we will try to provide fuel and food without further disruptions. Negotiations are under way with various parties to ensure this happens,” Wickremesinghe said.

The Indian Ocean nation of 22 million is nearly bankrupt and has suspended repayment of its foreign loans. Its foreign reserves are almost spent, which has limited imports and caused serious shortages of essentials including food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, according to Aljazeera.

This year, the island is due to repay $7bn of the $25bn in foreign loans it is scheduled to pay by 2026. Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt is $51bn.

To tide over the current turmoil, Sri Lanka will need about $3.3bn for fuel imports, $900m for food, $250m for cooking gas and $600m more for fertiliser this year, Wickremesinghe told parliament.

The central bank has estimated the economy will contract by 3.5 percent in 2022, Wickremesinghe said, but added that he was confident growth could return with a strong reform package, debt restructuring and international support.

“Only establishing economic stability is not enough, we have to restructure the entire economy,” said Wickremesinghe, who is working on an interim budget to balance battered public finances, Aljazeera reported.

“We need to achieve economic stability by the end of 2023.”

Russia on Tuesday claimed to have taken control of 97% of one of the two provinces that make up Ukraine’s Donbas, bringing the Kremlin closer to its goal of fully capturing the eastern industrial heartland of coal mines and factories, Associated Press reported.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow’s forces hold nearly all of Luhansk province. And it appears that Russia now occupies roughly half of Donetsk province, according to Ukrainian officials and military analysts.

After abandoning its bungled attempt to storm Kyiv two months ago, Russia declared that taking the entire Donbas is its main objective. Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian government forces in the Donbas since 2014, and the region has borne the brunt of the Russian onslaught in recent weeks.

Early in the war, Russian troops also took control of the entire Kherson region and a large part of the Zaporizhzhia region, both in the south. Russian officials and their local appointees have talked about plans for those regions to either declare their independence or be folded into Russia.

But in what may be the latest instance of anti-Russian sabotage inside Ukraine, Russian state media said Tuesday that an explosion at a cafe in the city of Kherson wounded four people. Tass called the apparent bombing in the Russian-occupied city a “terror act.”

Before the Feb. 24 invasion, Ukrainian officials said Russia controlled some 7% of the country,including the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and areas held by the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces hold 20% of the country, according to Associated Press.

While Russia has superior firepower, the Ukrainian defenders are entrenched and have shown the ability to counterattack.

Zelenskyy said Russian forces made no significant advances in the eastern Donbas region over the past day.

“The absolutely heroic defense of the Donbas continues,” he said late Tuesday in his nightly video address.

Zelenskyy said the Russians clearly did not expect to meet so much resistance and are now trying to bring in additional troops and equipment. He said the same was true in the Kherson region.

Speaking earlier to a Financial Times conference, Zelenskyy insisted on Ukraine’s need to defeat Russia on the battlefield but also said he is still open to peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But a former senior US intelligence officer said the time isn’t right.

“You’re not going to get to the negotiating table until neither side feels they have an advantage that they could push,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Washington-based Center for a New American Security.

The Russians “think they will be able to take the whole of the Donbas and then might use that as the opportunity to call for negotiations,” Kendall-Taylor said at an online seminar organized by Columbia and New York universities, Associated Press reported.

Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, said Moscow’s forces have seized the residential quarters of Sievierodonetsk and are fighting to take control of an industrial zone on the city’s outskirts and nearby towns.

Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk have seen heavy fighting in recent weeks. They are among a few cities and towns in the Luhansk region still holding out against the Russian invasion, which is being helped by local pro-Kremlin forces.