Month: June 2018

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was freed Thursday after serving a 30-day jail sentence for his role in organizing massive protests against President Vladimir Putin last month.

“I’m with you again after a 30-day business trip,” he wrote on Twitter.  “I’m so happy to be free.”

Navalny and hundreds of his supporters were detained during the May demonstrations in Moscow and dozens of other cities on the eve of Putin’s inauguration to another six-year presidential term.  He was charged with inciting an unauthorized rally, and a Moscow court ordered him to jail.

Navalny, who also organized massive street protests to coincide with Putin’s 2012 re-election, was barred from the presidential ballot in March because of a conviction on financial crimes, charges he contends were fabricated.

He has served a number of weeks-long jail terms in recent years for organizing protests.

 
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A Hungarian court sentenced four members of a people-smuggling operation to 25 years in prison Thursday for the deaths of 71 migrants who suffocated inside a truck in 2015.

The four were convicted of murder in a court ruling in the town of Kecskemet.

In August 2015, authorities found the bodies of 59 men, eight women and four children in the truck abandoned alongside an Austrian motorway.

The victims came from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

They were among the hundreds of thousands of other migrants who were trying to reach Germany during the height of Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.
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The president of Portugal will be visiting the White House later this month to meet with President Donald Trump.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will visit on June 27.

She says the visit will mark “the culmination of a month-long celebration of the Portuguese-American community” and celebrate the close bond between the countries.

Sanders notes Portugal is an important NATO ally and partner in Afghanistan and says the meeting will focus on strengthening the countries’ cooperation in addressing global conflicts and promoting economic prosperity, among other topics.
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Back in 2010, President Vladimir Putin helped secure Russia’s bid for the World Cup with guarantees he would introduce the world to an open and welcoming Russia.

This week, Putin said Russia had made good on its promises.

“We’ve done everything to ensure our guests, sportsmen, experts, and, of course, fans feel at home in Russia,” said Putin in a video address released by the Kremlin.”We have opened our country and our hearts to the world.”

With the final countdown to Thursday’s opening match between Russia and Saudi Arabia underway, the stadiums appear ready, the fan zones (nearly) built, the bartenders ready to pour the beer, and the hooligans instructed to stay away.

But as Russia prepares to host world football fans of “the beautiful game”, human rights defenders warn the Kremlin is failing to meet obligations for social and political freedoms at home.

“There is no doubt that the government is craving this international prestige and wants to put Russia in the best light possible,” said Yulia Gorbunova, a researcher at Human Rights Watch’s Moscow division.

The problem, added Gorbunova, is, “The situation of human rights now is the worst it’s been since the fall of the Soviet Union.”

Sochi Redux

Near identical charges were levied against Russia before it hosted the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.Then as now, concerns ranged over everything from political repressions, migrant labor violations in building sports infrastructure and pressure against LGBT groups to environmental and animal rights violations.

In 2014, Putin sought to appease his critics to a degree. Before the Sochi Games, the Russian leader made several high profile gestures, including the amnesty of jailed Greenpeace activists, members of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot, and oligarch-turned-prisoner of conscience Mikhail Khodorkvosky in a bid to ease Western pressure.

This time? Not so much

“Russia has grown more and more resistant to international criticism,” said Gorbunova. “And as the international criticism intensifies, Russia becomes more self-assertive and shows how the Kremlin basically doesn’t care what the international community thinks.”

Four years later

Key to this shift is Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent fallout in Russia-West relations over Western sanctions, the downing of Malaysian Air flight MH17, election meddling allegations, and charges the Russian government engineered a doping program aimed at securing a (now tarnished) 1st place finish in Sochi among other issues.

The constant criticism has so inured the Kremlin to Western harangues that most are now merely met with a shrug and denial.

“Putin saw that there’s no need to worry about these things,” said Leonid Volkov, a pro-democracy activist and key advisor to opposition leader Alexey Navalny, currently serving a 30-day jail term for organizing anti-government protests.

“Political prisoners, downed passenger planes over Ukraine, bombs in Syria … it doesn’t matter.Everyone’s coming to Russia anyway,” noted Volkov.

Government critics say they are not out to ruin World Cup fun, but argue the political realities of the Putin regime also shouldn’t be ignored.

Sport and politics

The Kremlin has long argued politics and sport simply don’t mix, a statement Kremlin opponents find absurd.

“Of course, Putin uses sport as a key part of his rule,” said Volkov, the pro-democracy activist.

The World Cup, he notes, is the latest in a series of high profile sporting investments by the Russian president aimed at showcasing Russia’s resurgence under Putin’s rule.

Only it’s not clear the party is for everyone.

In the run-up to the Cup, students at Moscow State University say they were subjected to harassment by security services for protesting the location of Moscow’s fan zone, located just off the university grounds.

“They accuse protesters of trying to ruin the World Cup,” said Igor Vaiman, 21, a physics student, in an interview . “But the security services and repressions hurt World Cup much more than we could ever do.”

Great tournament, bad team?

Meanwhile, Russian football fans have another concern: the national team.FIFA ranks it 70th, the lowest ever for a host country in pursuit of a World Cup championship.

Russian fans are preparing for the worst, despite a record $12 billion spent on hosting the event.

Russia’s most recognizable star, veteran striker, Artem Dyzuba, finally lashed out at the critics’ read of Russia’s chances before even a single match. “We also dream of winning a World Cup,” he reminded fans.

But Viktor Levin, a retired sportscaster who called games for the legendary teams of the Soviet Union, said the problems with modern Russia football ran deep. “In the Soviet Union, our team battled out of genuine patriotism,” said Levin. “Now it’s all about money.”

Even the fans have changed, he argued. “Before we went to watch football with our kids. It was a family event. Now all these young people do is drink, wave their scarves, and fight.”

His friend Marshan nodded in agreement. “What can I say? We’re bad at football,” he said, before adding a caveat worthy of the Kremlin.

“But nobody hosts better than Russia! I guarantee it!”
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Macedonia’s President Gjorge Ivanov says an agreement reached Tuesday with Greece to change his country’s name is detrimental for the Republic of Macedonia and that he would not sign it into law.

In a televised national address, Ivanov said the agreement reached between Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras violates constitutional law. The deal called for Macedonia to be renamed as the Republic of North Macedonia.

“The government did not have the strength and courage to initiate the building of a common stance and consensus,” he said. “The entire process lacked transparency and the end result is a testimony to this.”

The vast majority of Ivanov’s opposition VMRO-DPMNE party have long said they would refuse to support such a deal, which has been in the works the 20 years. Although Zaev’s ruling party negotiated the name change, Macedonian law says any international agreements require a presidential signature for ratification.

Greece and Macedonia have been feuding over who gets to use the name since Macedonia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Many Greeks say allowing the neighboring country to use the name insults Greek history and implies a claim on the Greek territory also known as Macedonia — a key province in Alexander the Great’s ancient empire.

As a result, Greece has blocked Macedonian efforts to join the EU and NATO. Despite recognition by 137 countries, Macedonia is officially known at the U.N. as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM.

This story originated in VOA’s Macedonian Service. 
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The Turkish and Azerbaijani presidents on Tuesday inaugurated a key pipeline carrying natural gas from Azerbaijan’s gas fields to Turkish markets and eventually to Europe, part of a wider Southern Gas Corridor project that aims to diversify gas supplies and reduce countries’ dependence on Russia.

The Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline, or TANAP, is also part of Turkey’s ambition of becoming a major energy hub.

“We are taking a historic step,” Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a ceremony in central Eskisehir province with Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev marking the delivery of the first gas. “We are inaugurating a project that is the ‘Silk Road’ of energy.”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic also attended.

Erdogan said the pipeline would not only ensure energy security but also increase the “welfare of the people on its route.” It will deliver 6 billion cubic meters of gas per year to Turkey and 10 billion cubic meters to Europe.

Although it has no financial involvement, the United States has strongly supported TANAP, said Sandra Oudkirk, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy, who also attended the ceremony.

“We take energy security for ourselves and allies and partners really seriously and we see this as an important component of the bigger energy diversification and energy security picture,” she told a group of journalists in Ankara earlier.

The pipeline will eventually be connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, or TAP, at the Turkey-Greece border. Erdogan said that could take place in June 2019.
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Greece and Macedonia reached a historic settlement Tuesday to their long-simmering dispute over the name Macedonia — shared by the former Yugoslav republic and an ancient region of northern Greece.

Under the deal between the two prime ministers, the country will now be called The Republic of North Macedonia.

“Our investment in the compromise is a definition of a specified Macedonian name for our country, a dignified and geographically defined name,” Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the deal ends any claim he believes Macedonia may have had on Greek territory.

“This achieves a clear distinction between Greek Macedonia, and our northern neighbors. … [Macedonia] cannot and will not be able in the future to claim any connection with the ancient Greek civilization of Macedonia.”

Greece will also stop blocking Macedonia’s efforts to join NATO and the European Union.

European Council President Donald Tusk congratulated both sides. “Thanks to you, the impossible is becoming possible,” he tweeted.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the deal and Macedonia’s possible membership “will help to consolidate peace and stability across the wider Western Balkans.”

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the settlement will have “positive repercussions” in Europe and beyond, and hopes it will inspire others to negotiate deals to end other “protracted conflicts.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the deal will bolster regional security and prosperity and that the United States congratulates both prime ministers for their “vision, courage and persistence.”

She said Washington also thanks United Nations mediator Matthew Nimetz for spending the last 20 years committed to finding a solution.

But Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, leader of the right-wing Independent Greeks Party, said his party will not vote to ratify the agreement. 

Other Greeks said the new name should not even include the word Macedonia, while backers reject nationalism and said the dispute has gone on long enough. 

Opponents in Macedonia have called any alteration of the country’s name a form of treason and a cave-in to Greek demands.

Zaev said he will put the deal to a vote in a referendum, while the Greek parliament will consider ratification before the end of the year.

Tsipras said if Macedonia does not change its constitution to reflect the new name, Greece will again block Macedonian membership in NATO and the EU.
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Frosty relations between the United States and its European allies should not be blamed on U.S. President Donald Trump — that’s according to a diplomat who represents one of the countries with whom Trump has been feuding.

“The impression is that if we have a crisis in the transatlantic relationship, it’s because of one person  —the president,” French Ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud said Tuesday in Washington. “It’s something that I don’t believe to be true.”

Instead, the French envoy believes the fraying ties are the result of an underlying fragility in the U.S.-European alliance and the lack of a true, existential enemy.

“We don’t have a common threat anymore to face — Russia is not USSR [the former Soviet Union],” Araud told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We need to define a common agenda.”

Tensions at G-7

The French ambassador’s comments come in the wake of last week’s G-7 Leaders Summit in Canada, during which Trump sparred with U.S. allies over trade and ultimately refused to endorse the summit’s communique.

“Sorry, we cannot let our friends, or enemies, take advantage of us on Trade anymore,” Trump tweeted.

Trump’s tweets and his behavior drew a sharp response from French President Emmanuel Macron, who called Trump’s refusal to sign the G-7 communique a display of “incoherence and inconsistency.”

“International cooperation cannot be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks,” Macron added.

Macron also criticized Trump ahead of the G-7 summit, telling a news conference, “Maybe it doesn’t bother the American president to be isolated, but it doesn’t bother us to be six if need be.”

Mutual concerns

Still, Araud sought Tuesday to make the differences between the U.S. and European allies like France less about a clash of personalities and more about concerns shared by people on both sides of the Atlantic, despite Trump’s “unusual way of conducting foreign policy.”

“President Trump is raising a real issue with trade,” Araud said, as an example.

“We have simply believed that free trade in and of itself was globally good. We forgot that globally means you have pluses and minuses,” he said. “Our citizens are sending the message that enough is enough.”

Despite such underlying issues, Araud said the U.S. and its European allies do have a shared interest in revitalizing their relationship, but that it will require focusing on shared goals moving forward.

“We have a real question, which is why [do we need] a strong, really, transatlantic relationship, and how? And to do what?” he said.

“It will be a mistake to enter into a sort of tweet against tweet,” he warned. “What matters at the end of the day is the substance.”

North Korea

Despite some substantive policy differences, the French diplomat said France is supporting Trump’s efforts to denuclearize and bring peace to the Korean Peninsula.

“On North Korea, we have all supported our American allies,” Araud said. “We are supporting the America demarche.”

But he refused to speculate on whether the recent summit in Singapore would lead to lasting success.

“Let’s wait and see,” he said. “Previous policies have not been very effective.”
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Spain’s Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s conviction of the husband of Princess Cristina for fraud and tax evasion, though it acquitted him of forgery and reduced his prison sentence by five months.

The court ruled on an appeal that Inaki Urdangarin, King Felipe VI’s brother-in-law, was also guilty of misuse of public funds, abuse of power and influence peddling and should serve a sentence of five years and 10 months.

The lower court, in Palma de Mallorca, convicted Urdangarin in a 2016 trial that captivated Spain as Princess Cristina testified in court. It was the first time a member of Spain’s royal family was put on trial since the monarchy was restored in 1975.

The case centered on accusations that Urdangarin embezzled about 6 million euros ($7 million) in public funds. The court found that Urdangarin and his business partner Diego Torres exploited the duke’s “privileged status” to obtain public contracts related to sports events.

The Supreme Court also upheld the verdict that Princess Cristina benefitted from her husband’s crimes. She was ordered to pay a fine of 136,950 euros ($161,500).

Sources at the Zarzuela royal palace commented after the ruling that the monarchy has “total respect for judicial independence,” the Europa Press news agency reported.

The lower court will now rule on when Urdangarin must enter prison to serve his sentence, though he can still appeal to the Constitutional Court.

Princess Cristina and her husband were stripped of their titles of the Duke and Duchess of Palma after the initial court verdict. The couple moved from Barcelona to Geneva with their four children when the first allegations of wrongdoing emerged in 2012.

 
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The man at the center of a sex-abuse and financial crimes scandal that is tarnishing the academy which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, was Tuesday charged with two counts of rape of a woman in 2011.

Swedish prosecutor Christina Voigt said the evidence “is robust and sufficient for prosecution.”

Jean-Claude Arnault, a well-known figure in Sweden who ran a cultural center, is married to poet and member of the Swedish Academy, Katarina Frostenson. He has denied this and other sex abuse allegations.

In April, the Swedish Academy said an internal investigation into sexual misconduct allegations found that “unacceptable behavior in the form of unwanted intimacy” has taken place within the ranks of the prestigious institution.

Voight didn’t name the victim as is the customary in Sweden.

The secretive 18-member board has in recent months been embroiled in a sex-abuse scandal that investigators concluded was “not generally known.” It has led to the departure of at least six of members of the Academy and tarnished the prize’s reputation.

The academy had commissioned lawyers to investigate sexual misconduct claims from 18 women against Arnault. In April, it had decided to hand over the internal report to relevant judicial authorities.

 
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Spain announced Monday that it will allow a ship carrying 629 migrants to dock in Valencia. The rescue ship Aquarius has been in international waters since picking up the migrants from a smuggler’s vessel off the coast of Libya. Malta and Italy refused to let it dock, saying they cannot cope with more migrants and refugees. It is not clear whether the rescue ship can make the 1,400-kilometer journey to Valencia and what awaits migrants once they disembark in the European Union country.
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The U.S. sanctioned five Russian entities and three individuals Monday, accusing them of malicious cyber activities to provide material and technological support to Moscow’s intelligence service.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the sanctioned entities and individuals “have directly contributed to improving Russia’s cyber and underwater capabilities through their work with “the Russian Federal Security Service “and therefore jeopardize the safety and security of the United States and our allies.”

He said the U.S. “is committed to aggressively targeting any entity or individual working at the direction” of the Russian intelligence service “whose work threatens the United States and will continue to utilize our sanctions authorities … to counter the constantly evolving threats emanating from Russia.”

The sanctions continue what appear to be conflicted messages from Washington about Moscow.

The U.S. has imposed a series of penalties against specific Russian activities. Yet just last week, President Donald Trump suggested that Russia be allowed to rejoin the G-7 group of advanced economies after being pushed out in 2014 for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Trump has also been discussing the possibility of a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The sanctions announced Monday block access for those blacklisted to any U.S. financial accounts they hold and prohibit Americans from any transactions with them.

The Treasury statement said the five entities and three individuals have engaged in “malign and destabilizing cyber activities,” including intrusions “against the U.S. energy grid to potentially enable future offensive operations” and “global compromises of network infrastructure devices.”

It said the sanctions also target Russia’s underwater capabilities, which it said include tracking undersea communications cables that carry the bulk of the world’s telecommunications data.

The U.S. said one of the entities, Divetechno services, bought underwater equipment and diving services for the intelligence service, including a $1.5 million submersible craft. The three sanctioned individuals all worked for the company.
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