Davos updates | Scholz urges global cooperation on threats

German chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, May 26, 2022. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from May 22 until May 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

German chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, May 26, 2022. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from May 22 until May 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

German chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, May 26, 2022. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from May 22 until May 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has sharply condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine and called for global cooperation to overcome life-threatening challenges such as climate change, hunger and dependency on fossil fuels.

Speaking Thursday at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Scholz said the “invasion of Ukraine does not mark the outbreak of any conflict anywhere in Europe. Here, a nuclear-armed superpower claims to redraw borders.”

Scholz said Russian President Vladimir “Putin wants to return to a world order in which the strongest dictate what is right, in which freedom, sovereignty and self-determination are not.”

The German chancellor described Putin’s war politics as “imperialism,” which is “trying to bomb us back to a time when war was a common means of politics, when our continent and the world lacked a stable peace order.”

He says the world is no longer bipolar like during the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Instead of using the power politics of past centuries, the chancellor said it’s important all powers work together to solve threats like hunger, climate change or dependence on fossil fuels.

Scholz said: “If some want to take us back to the past of nationalism, imperialism and war, our answer is ‘not with us.’ We stand for the future.”

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Journalists, press freedom advocates and human rights activists debated how governments and the private sector can safeguard a free press.

Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said Thursday at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that while hundreds of journalists have been imprisoned in repressive regimes, there are also “invisible prisons, invisible bullets — journalism itself, beyond journalists, is under attack” by digital platforms and social networks.

Also speaking on a press freedom panel, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said that “social media has become a way for autocrats and others to evade that kind of journalistic accountability” provided by traditional news organizations.

Roth said powerful governments can set up “fake sites and trolls” and pump out misinformation.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is wrapping up the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting with a speech in Davos.

His address Thursday comes after days of discussions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, a global food crisis, climate change and other hot-button issues.

The yearly gathering of elites that was suspended twice over the COVID-19 pandemic has been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine. It's doused moods among policymakers but not stopping advocacy groups and business leaders from trying to improve fortunes and — as forum organizers hope — the state of the world.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and an array of lawmakers, local officials and business leaders captured the spotlight in-person and virtually to drum up support for their country’s fight.

Attention is turning to Scholz’s near-finale address, mostly to see if he might try to answer two of Ukraine’s key appeals: for stronger sanctions against Russia and better weapons to help their forces fight.