This morning, much of the world woke up to chilling news that Russia had invaded Ukraine. And tonight, the world faces the specter of an all-out war in Europe, while millions of people around the world are wondering how the conflict would affect their lives.
And it's just the same in Belize - where we have our own territorial dispute - and citizens are very sensitive to unprovoked aggression by a large neighbor towards a small one.
Today in San Pedro, Prime Minister John Briceno lamented the invasion - and discussed how it will affect Belize as the harsh economic penalties against Russia reverberate worldwide:
Hon. John Briceno - Prime Minister
"It's unfortunate that Russia would do such thing, we've been hearing the news over and over for some time that they would do so and we were hoping that it would not happen, that diplomacy would prevail but obviously it did not. How it's going to affect us, well you know already the price of fuel, and the price continues to go up. As it is right now, it's over $100 per barrel and for us as a country, the taxes that we collect on the price of fuel has been going down. Before we got into government it was approximately about 48% of the price, now we're down to about 38%. Today in Cabinet, we're having a retreat this afternoon and all day tomorrow and that is going to b e one of the important topics for us to discuss. There was a shipment that came in this week, a few days ago, and diesel would have gone up by about a dollar at the pump and when I spoke to the FinSec, I said, I simply don't see how we can absorb that so on this shipment alone we decided that the government is going to absorb that cost. It's going to cost the government approximately a million and a half dollars. Within the next week or two, more fuel will come so now we have to sit down as Cabinet to decide what we can do because as I pointed out before, fuel brings in about $150 million in revenues for the government and we simply just can't afford not to collect those taxes."
Courtney Menzies
"Sir some people are saying that this might be the start of a full blown war, what else can Belize expect? Apart from the price of gas, can we expect the prices of commodities to go up?"
Hon. John Briceno
"As I mentioned yesterday, we import pretty much most of our food and so it's bad news for Belize especially for small countries like us. Already the stock market has taken a big hit, this morning we saw on TV. So let's hope and pray better head prevail and maybe Russia can find a way to deescalate quickly."
But a rapid de-escalation does not appear likely at this hour: The latest news from Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky is that Russian sabotage groups have entered the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
It is a deepening and worrying world crisis, and later in the news we'll have perspective from Marianne Van Steen, Ambassador of the European Union (EU) to Belize who is currently on an official visit to Belize.
