The ambassadors of the member states to the European Union (EU) reached an agreement on Wednesday in principle to use the benefits of frozen Russian assets to support “the recovery and military defense” of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression.

“The EU ambassadors agreed in principle on measures on the extraordinary benefits of Russia’s fixed assets,” the Belgian presidency of the Council of the EU wrote in its profile of social network X.

He added that the money “will serve to support the recovery of Ukraine and military defense in the context of Russian aggression.”

The European Commission proposed last March to use the extraordinary benefits of Russian assets frozen by the sanctions in relation to the war in Ukraine, which amount to between 2.5 and 3 billion euros per year, to finance weapons and ammunition for that country mainly.

The first transfer of profits to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia is expected to take place in July.
Community sources detailed that 90% of the profits of fixed assets will go to the European Peace Support Fund (FEAP) for military support. The FEAP is an instrument through which EU countries co-finance the shipment of weapons to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

The other 10% will go to the macro-financial aid package to Ukraine from the general budget of the European Union. This year, the community club agreed on an aid of 50 billion euros to Ukraine that is part of the revised community budget, covers the next four years until 2027 and is disbursed in the form of loans (33 billion euros) and grants (17 billion).

Most of the frozen Russian assets are deposited in Euroclear, a Brussels-based body that owns about 192 billion euros.

Belgium keeps a part of the profits of those securities in terms of corporate taxes, a fact that has been criticized by other Member States.

That country argues that it is a “general tax, not something that has been invented for Ukraine” and that part of what is collected serves precisely to help Kiev with its weapons needs and to support refugees.

The sources specified that the tax revenues generated in Belgium by those profits will continue to be allocated to Ukraine in its entirety.

The corporate tax is 25% in Belgium and applies to all companies, according to the sources, who insisted that it is impossible to eliminate it.

However, they recalled that in 2022 Belgium decided to allocate all those extraordinary corporate tax revenues to support Ukraine and that in 2023 they created a specific fund for it.

For the fiscal year of 2024, an amount of 1.7 billion euros of national corporate taxes is expected from immobilized Russian assets, of which about 1 billion have already been allocated to Ukraine.

The new legislation will apply to the remaining extraordinary benefits after this mandatory taxation, according to the sources.

The ambassadors of the Member States decided that the rate that Euroclear will charge for handling the assets will be 0.3%.

Some States such as Austria, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus are reluctant to buy weapons for Ukraine because of their policy of neutrality and Hungary has repeatedly said that it does not support the idea.

Irregular migration intercepted by Mexico has tripled in the first quarter of the year to almost 360,000 people in the midst of growing operations, although the Government affirms that the migratory flow has decreased.

The Mexican authorities detected 359,697 “people in irregular immigration status” between January and March 2024, an increase of 199.68% compared to 120,029 in the same period in 2023, according to the statistics available this Saturday from the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior.

In just three months, the Government of Mexico has intercepted almost half, 46%, of the record of 782,176 irregular migrants it detected in all of 2023, when this flow rose by 77% annually.

The main country of origin of migrants is Venezuela, with 89,718 registered, almost one in four of the total, 24.94%.

It is followed by Honduras (37,323), Ecuador (36,956), Guatemala (36,934), Colombia (21,534), Nicaragua (18,711), El Salvador (17,720), Haiti (16,791) and Cuba (10,464).

The figures are disseminated after a joint statement by the presidents of the United States, Joe Biden, and Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who agreed to “work together to immediately implement concrete measures in order to significantly reduce irregular border crossings.”

As a achievement, López Obrador said last Thursday that the capture of undocumented people have fallen by more than 50% on the border with the United States, which reported about 12,000 daily in December and in April it fell to an average of 5,812.

The tension over migration has increased this year because the presidential elections of Mexico and the United States coincide, but the Mexican president denied that he tightens controls due to pressure from the United States.

“No, it’s just that I don’t let myself be pressured by anyone, Mexico is an independent country and the president of Mexico acts freely, he is not a scoundrel of any foreign government,” he said.

Tapachula, the largest city on the southern border of Mexico, still suffers from the phenomenon, although some activists point out that the number of migrants on the streets has decreased.

Gerver Bermúdez, administrator of the Jesús el Buen Pastor shelter in Tapachula, considered that the presence of foreigners has decreased, but they have not stopped arriving in the city, where they are four or five days and follow their route because the authorities are not giving them transit permits.

“The shelter is always full and the goal is to support everyone who comes as an immigrant. We have handled between 800 and 900 people of different nationalities such as Hondurans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Ecuadorians,” he told EFE.

On the other hand, Cecilia Izaguirre, human rights defender in Tapachula, stressed that the presence of so many foreigners is no longer very visible.

“People no longer stay in Tapachula, because they came to be here to do their Comar procedure (Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid), but now they are passing by, it has decreased a little, but it has not stopped or has not decreased by a large number,” the activist said.

The Cuban Felipe Martínez, who works informally parking vehicles, explained that now the migrants “walk” from the southern border in the face of the action of the Mexican authorities.

“They go by caravan because they delay the papers a little, they fall into a state of anxiety because they want to be established in one place with their relatives, they despair, emigrate and continue to look for new horizons,” said the migrant, who is waiting for the Comar to resolve his asylum application.

On the other hand, Jorge Cruz, a Honduran who is in the Jesús el Buen Pastor shelter, considered that migration remains normal because “a lot of them always arrive every day.”

“There is always, I see that there are more people who go up and up, it has not come down, a lot of people enter, a lot of people also enter the shelter, there are children and women, who are supported come and go,” he said.

At least three members of Afghanistan’s security forces have been killed and five others have been injured in an explosion that targeted a Taliban convoy in the northeast of the country.

“Unfortunately, in this incident three police officers died and five others have been injured,” the director of Information and Culture of Badakhshan province, Zabiullah Amiri, told EFE.

The incident took place around 12.00 local time (07.30 GMT) in the city of Faizabad, capital of Badakhshan province.

The explosive was placed on a motorcycle, and exploded at the passage of a police convoy in charge of destroying opium crops, according to the official.

At the moment, no insurgent or terrorist organization has claimed the authorship of this attack.

The jihadist group Islamic State, which has become the main rival of the Taliban since the withdrawal of international troops, has claimed responsibility for almost all of the attacks committed since August 2021, when the Taliban took power.

While the Taliban insist on denying that the armed organization represents a security challenge, the Islamic State of Khorasan, the Afghan branch of the terrorist group, has emerged as the main threat to the country’s stability.

At least 23 people died and another 60 were injured in a strong explosion that shook the offices of a bank in the city of Kandahar on March 21, an attack that was later claimed by ISIS.