Month: January 2019

Greece will bring Macedonia’s NATO accession agreement to parliament for ratification “in the coming days,” the government spokesman said Thursday, which will bring into effect the change of the country’s name to North Macedonia.

Once parliament ratifies the NATO protocol, Greece’s Foreign Ministry will inform Macedonia’s Foreign Ministry of the result, a move which will automatically bring into effect the name change, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said. He didn’t give a specific date.

The name change deal, dubbed the Prespa Agreement after the border lake where it was signed last year, ends a 27-year dispute between the two neighbors that had kept the former Yugoslav republic out of NATO and the European Union. Greece argued that the use of the name “Macedonia” implied territorial claims on its own northern province of the same name and usurped Greek history and culture, and had blocked its neighbor’s efforts to join NATO over the issue.

Tzanakopoulos said the nearly three-decade dispute had given rise to “the monster of lies, nationalism and extreme historic revisionism” in Greece. Greek lawmakers’ Jan. 25 ratification of the deal was “a historic milestone for peace, cooperation and stability in the Balkans,” he said during a media briefing, adding that the agreement restores Greece’s “leading role in the Balkans.”

The agreement’s ratification “symbolizes the victory of political courage and respect of the country’s history, over opportunism, nationalism, the taking advantage of patriotism and the commerce of hate,” he added.

The deal has been met with vociferous opposition by many in both countries, with critics accusing their respective governments of making too many concessions to the other side.

Once the deal comes into effect, Macedonia will have a five-year period to implement many of the practical changes it must make, including changing vehicle license plates and issuing new passports.

 
…

At St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dubai, an effort to transcribe the Bible in the native tongue of its flock saw the holy book presented in 52 languages — a sign of the cosmopolitan welcome awaiting Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to the United Arab Emirates.

The diversity among its parishioners can be seen in its pews and heard in the sermons of St. Mary’s priests, who celebrate Mass and offer prayers in Arabic, English, French, Tagalog, Tamil, Urdu and other languages.

The church, they say, offers an anchor for the Roman Catholics among the UAE’s vast foreign labor force, many of whom live in this federation of seven sheikhdoms alone while their families stay home.

“The whole world meets here in a way,” said the Rev. Lennie Connully, the parish priest of St. Mary’s. “We have people from all over.”

Pope Francis’ visit from Feb. 3 through Feb. 5 marks the first papal visit to the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam. The pontiff will visit Abu Dhabi, the headquarters of the Catholic Church’s Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia, which covers the UAE, Oman and Yemen.

There are nine Catholic churches in this federation of seven sheikhdoms governed by hereditary rulers; four other Catholic churches are in Oman. The Catholic flock’s rapid growth followed the discovery of oil in what was previously known as the Trucial States. Officials consecrated the first Catholic church in Abu Dhabi in 1965.

As Abu Dhabi became a major oil exporter and Dubai grew into the skyscraper-studded city it is today, the Emirates’ rapid economic expansion drew millions of foreigners to everything from white-collar office jobs to hard-hat construction work. Of the over 9 million people now living in the UAE, around 1 million are Emirati while the rest are foreign-born.

In 2010, there were an estimated 940,000 Christians living in the UAE, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center report, including 750,000 Catholics. The report suggests the number of Christians in the UAE would rise to about 1.1 million by 2020, with Catholics making up the lion’s share. The Catholic Church itself believes there are some 1 million Catholics in the UAE today.

The backbone of that population is Filipino and Indian. Life for them and others can be incredibly difficult as many move to the UAE often leaving their families and loved ones back home.

“The church is a base for them. They are far away from their homes,” Connully said. “They don’t have an extended family to support them. That family atmosphere is created here.”

Rulers in the UAE, which has described 2019 as the nation’s “Year of Tolerance,” have supported the Catholic community in the past by donating land for their churches. However, there are limits in this Muslim nation.

Proselytizing by non-Muslims remains illegal. Islam is enshrined as the UAE’s official religion in the country’s constitution, with government websites even offering online applications to convert. Conversion from Islam to another religion, however, is illegal, the U.S. State Department has warned. Blasphemy and apostasy laws also carry a possible death sentence.

At St. Mary’s and other churches, crosses are for the most part carefully concealed behind compound fences. There are no bells that toll to mark the start of services, though loudspeakers on minarets proclaim the call to prayers, like at the mosque across the street from St. Mary’s.

Despite facing restrictions, Christians in the UAE have never faced the violence that has targeted those in Syria and Iraq during the rise of the Islamic State group and other militants. Coptic Christians, a minority in Egypt that has faced extremist attacks in their homeland, also can safely worship.

In recent years, militant attacks have only exacerbated a “long, slow decline” of Christianity in the wider Middle East that began with mass migrations of the 19th Century, said Robin Darling Young, a professor studying church history at the Washington-based Catholic University of America.

The growth of ultraconservative Islamic beliefs, like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, coupled with the creation of independent states, further fueled that, she said. America’s 2003 war in Iraq and the chaos that followed made it even worse, she said.

“Particularly in areas where Wahhabi Islam is strong, like the Arabian Peninsula, Christians have been subject to more restrictions,” Young said. “The UAE is trying to make itself look better to the West by permitting, under certain restrictions, public Christian worship.”

Catholics in the UAE, however, make a point to thank the UAE’s ruling sheikhs for being able to worship freely. During a recent Mass at St. Mary’s, the Father Andre Francisco Fernandes led worshippers in a prayer asking for God’s blessings upon “the rulers of the UAE,” specifically naming UAE President and Abu Dhabi ruler Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Fernandes’ sermon that day focused on the parable of the loaves and the fishes, the story of Jesus Christ feeding a crowd of 5,000 with just five loaves of bread and two fish. The priest urged those listening to keep their faith and view the world with an open heart.

“Every day, miracles are happening,” he told parishioners. “We need to believe.”
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British banking giant Barclays has drawn up plans to shift more than $200 billion worth of assets from London to Dublin amid mounting business alarm that Britain is more likely now to leave the European Union without an exit deal.

With Prime Minister Theresa May’s ruling Conservative government now backing away from a contentious withdrawal agreement negotiated in November and locked in a standoff with Brussels, Britain is heading for a scheduled March 29 departure without any kind of negotiated exit agreement. That means tariffs would have to be imposed on goods moving back and forth across the English Channel. It would also block market access to the EU for banks based in Britain.

British and international firms with European headquarters in London have become increasingly angry with the Brexit crisis. Earlier in January, in at times a testy conference call, 331 business leaders, including from U.S. banking giants and major companies like Amazon and Apple, were assured by senior government ministers that a no-deal exit would be taken off the table and that Britain wouldn’t part company with its largest trading bloc until a deal had been struck.

Since then, though, there has been no resolution to the major differences between Britain and the other 27 EU member states – if anything, frustrations have deepened with EU officials maintaining Monday that they are not prepared to reopen negotiations on the withdrawal agreement, which a deeply divided British House of Commons refused to endorse in January.

The transfer by Barclays of assets belonging to 5,000 clients emerged Monday, when the bank won the court approval required. The judge, Richard Snowden, noted that the transfer was “huge” as it represents nearly a quarter of the assets Barclays holds. “The design of the scheme has been based upon an assumption that there will be no favorable outcome of the current political negotiations between the UK and the EU,” he said.

The bank said in a statement, “Barclays will use our existing licensed EU-based bank subsidiary to continue to serve our clients within the EU beyond 29 March 2019, regardless of the outcome of Brexit. Our preparations are well-advanced and we expect to be fully operational by 29 March 2019.”

Without a deal, British banks and international financial service institutions based in London would have no access to the EU market. Some market analysts estimate that London will lose at least a trillion dollars, and possibly much more, to financial rivals in Europe, including Frankfurt, Dublin and Paris by the end of March as banks flee ahead of Brexit.

Spreading operations

At least 30 banks and financial firms are planning to move their EU headquarters to Germany. Other banks are set to spread their operations across different European cities. At least 10,000 banking jobs are likely to move to Frankfurt, Germany’s fifth biggest city, over the next eight years, industry observers say. Paris is angling for business, too, offering tax incentives for banks to relocate to the French capital, a determined rival to London.

Lloyds, Standard Chartered and Credit Suisse are among the banks that are planning to open offices in Frankfurt because of Brexit. While mainstream banks voice their frustration, hedge funds, many of which donated to anti-EU campaigns during the 2016 Brexit referendum, welcome a no-deal departure, hoping it will open the way for the dismantling of a swathe of regulations on financial services.

Aside from banks, other British businesses are becoming increasingly alarmed at what they might face in the event of a no-deal Brexit. On Monday, British officials acknowledged that businesses will face higher trade tariffs and barriers in dozens of countries because there’s not enough time between now and March 29 to replicate 40 EU trade deals with non-EU countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Leading British Brexiters, including International Trade Minister Liam Fox, have been saying for months that trade deal replications would be easy. Fox once vowed that the agreements would be all complete “one second after midnight” on Brexit day.

On Monday, a British official acknowledged to a parliamentary panel that will not be the case and that hundreds of British firms will lose preferential access, reducing the price competitiveness of their goods. The official declined to provide an “absolute figure” on how many trade deals would lapse because of technical, legal or political problems.

As business fears mount, Prime Minister May has announced a change in her negotiating team with her de facto deputy, David Lidington, a former long-serving Europe minister, taking the lead position in British efforts to persuade Brussels to open up the withdrawal agreement, itself the product of ill-tempered haggling between the EU and London.

But EU leaders have firmly shut the door, so far, to amending or changing the agreement, which would see Britain locked in a customs union with the bloc for several years while it negotiates a vaguely defined free trade settlement.

In the temporary customs union, Britain would be unable to influence EU laws, regulations and product standards it would have to observe. The transition was reached to avoid customs checks on the border separating Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, but British lawmakers fear Britain could be trapped indefinitely in the transition.

Leading Brexiters say if May can get a sunset clause written into the deal to allow Britain to escape the transition agreement, if it wished later, or if the transition were time limited, they might reverse their opposition and back the deal. But that still might not give May the majority she needs to secure parliamentary approval.

The leaders of the 27 other EU member states made clear Monday that they are not prepared to revisit the deal. “A renegotiation is not on the table,” said Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar. “There’s no plan to discuss any changes. The withdrawal agreement is not up for renegotiation and is not going to be reopened,” he added. Both the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, echoed the Irish leader.

 
…

Marie Toussaint has launched a climate petition in France that has attracted skyrocketing support. Ludovic Bayle splits his days between working at a restaurant and moonlighting as a climate activist. And in Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium, students are skipping school, demanding more action against what many Europeans consider one of the biggest threats to their future: climate change.

“Climate is one of the main concerns” in Europe, said Neil Makaroff, European Union policy adviser for the NGO Climate Action Network France. “Citizens are more and more mobilized today. They are taking different actions like marches, petition, litigation.”

Several hundred thousand Europeans took to the streets this past week alone. Students marched in Brussels where the European Union is headquartered, and climate activists briefly occupied the Scottish parliament. At the yearly Davos gathering in Switzerland, Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, who is behind the growing school strikes, told the rich and powerful they were to blame for the climate crisis. And in France, dozens of towns held climate marches last weekend, bringing young and old to the streets in sometimes pounding rain.

Climate change, some analysts believe, is also shaping up to be one of the most important issues in upcoming European parliament elections in May.

“People really, really need to wake up,” said Parisian Veronique Weil, who braved whipping rain to join a climate rally at the city’s iconic Place de la Republic. “The seas are rising, countries are going to disappear. … It’s crazy.”

In some ways, Europe seems an unlikely place for a climate revolt. The region is considered among the world’s green leaders, and the EU says it is on track to meet 2030 emissions reduction targets.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to “make the planet great again,” launching a “One Planet summit” — now heading for its third edition — and urging American scientists to move to France after the U.S. announced it was pulling out of the Paris climate pact.

But climate activists have criticized Macron, saying France and Europe haven’t done enough. It’s a message echoed by popular French environment minister Nicolas Hulot, who quit Macron’s cabinet last year.

“Besides the nice sentences like ‘make our planet great again,’ our government is really not taking climate very seriously,” said Makaroff of Climate Action Network. “Because no climate action has been really strong in France to curb emissions.”

Now, citizens are taking matters into their own hands.

French environmentalist Marie Toussaint quit her government job two years ago to create a green NGO. In December, she launched a petition with three other groups, threatening to sue the French government for climate inaction. So far, the petition has gathered a record 2 million signatures, and counting.

“We really want to save the climate, to save the planet, but also to save solidarity, to save the people — to be part of the solution,” Toussaint said.

The grassroots uprising is being seen in ways big and small. In the Netherlands, activists sponsoring a similar climate petition won a landmark court ruling last year, ordering the Dutch government to accelerate emissions cuts.  And in Germany, the Greens Party is surging, ranked second in polls behind the ruling Christian Democrats.

In Versailles, just outside Paris, 34-year-old Ludovic Bayle spends most waking hours either waiting tables or working at his unpaid job as a member of Citizens for Climate France, one of the grassroots groups that organized last weekend’s French protests. Launched in September, the chapter has nearly 70,000 members on its Facebook page.

“Of course I’m scared” about climate change, Bayle said. “That’s why it’s so important to act. We need to mobilize to put pressure on decision-makers.”

Last weekend’s climate protests intersected with another citizen’s uprising in France — the yellow vest movement, in its third month. Now embracing broader demands for greater social justice, the yellow vest protests began over a fuel tax hike intended partly to fund climate measures.

As a result, some analysts suggest the yellow vests show that people ultimately are not willing to make sacrifices to curb emissions. But climate activists like Toussaint dismiss that view.

“What we see now is people who are polluting the least are being asked to pay the most,” said Toussaint, who said both movements share similar demands for greater social justice.

The European parliament elections may be an early test of whether climate uprisings can translate into political power. Green parties are gaining strength, but not everywhere. In France, a recent poll placed the Greens a distant fifth in voter intentions, behind a fledging yellow vest party.

Meanwhile, the far-right National Rally Party, with a minimalist green agenda, is surging in second place, and hopes to capture votes from yellow vests, who are a highly disparate group.

Still, Makaroff believes politicians have gotten the message from the streets.

“It would be suicide for political parties not to take up climate issues in the European elections,” he said. 
…

A state-funded Russian film that lionizes a Soviet World War II tank and its crew has become the second highest grossing home-grown production since the collapse of the Soviet Union, part of a Kremlin-backed drive to instill patriotism in young people.

The Kremlin has long put the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany at the heart of a patriotic push to accompany what it casts as the country’s return to greatness under Vladimir Putin who has portrayed Russia as a fortress besieged by the West.

The new film, “T-34,” has been praised by the defense ministry which has shown it to its troops. Its release coincides with heightened tensions with the West, with President Putin warning of a new arms race. An opinion poll by Levada published on Wednesday showed more than half of Russians believe their country faces a foreign military threat.

It also comes as Kremlin critics warn of a growing militarization of society in the wake of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, its continued backing for pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine, and deployment in Syria.

“T-34” tells the story of a group of Soviet soldiers who escape a Nazi concentration camp inside a T-34 tank. It is loosely based on real events.

Released on Jan. 1, it has already taken more than 2.1 billion rubles ($31.86 million) at the box office and has been watched by more than 8.3 million people, making it the second most successful domestically produced film in ruble terms since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

The highest-grossing film, released last year, told the story of a Soviet Cold War sports victory over the United States.

Raising the flag

Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s culture minister, has suggested people take their children to see “T-34.”

Medinsky, a Putin ally, has angrily likened critics of the film who have questioned its historical accuracy to Soviet wartime traitors.

“It seems to me that here we need to raise and hold the flag,” the TASS news agency cited Medinsky as saying this month, calling for people to feel pride in their country’s wartime achievements.

Some critics have said the film romanticizes war and have likened it to a computer game, suggesting it does too little to bring home the human cost of warfare.

But its director, Alexei Sidorov, said he had tried to make a film that was not too gloomy.

“Yes, it’s war. Yes, it’s death. Every family lost someone.

But we won this war and that’s important,” he said.

Russia estimates that nearly 27 million Soviet citizens – including both soldiers and civilians – perished during World War II. In Russia it has long been known as the Great Patriotic War.

 
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Athens is aiming to ensure that all the goods and services the local government provides to its residents are free of forced labor, under a pilot project launched on Wednesday that officials and activists hope will set an example across Greece. 

The Athens municipality plans to create a level playing field for its suppliers by working solely with companies that monitor their supply chains and take action to prevent modern slavery, several officials told an anti-trafficking conference. 

As the world strives to meet a U.N. goal of ending slavery and forced labor by 2030, major companies face growing scrutiny and consumer pressure to guarantee their goods are slave-free. 

Yet governments have unparalleled bargaining power to change the business practices of their suppliers and contractors, not just at home but worldwide because of the increasingly global and complex nature of supply chains, experts said at the conference.

“By using the financial power of a city like Athens … there is pressure and leverage in order to change the situation in the labor market, and make the public procurement process fairer,” said Lefteris Papagiannakis, a vice mayor of Athens. 

While public procurement often focuses on environmental issues, the pilot project is an opportunity to bring human trafficking in government supply chains to the fore, he added. 

The scheme will first research and map Athens’ supply chains, then look to design due diligence tools and monitoring systems, according to Fiori Zafeiropoulou, who is leading the project. 

Companies in the dark

Many Greek companies interviewed by officials recently were unaware of how child or forced labor could be part of their supply chains, and would need help to monitor their operations and act if they were to find such cases, Zafeiropoulou said. 

“We want to create a zero-tolerance environment … and a level playing field to ensure all businesses play by the same rules with no unfair advantage for those exploiting victims of trafficking,” Zafeiropoulou said after announcing the plan. 

However, Athens has no dedicated funding for the project and will need to raise cash soon to go beyond just research and mapping, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

If successful, the plan could be extended to other cities in Greece, government ministries and the private sector, and influence other European governments, said Korina Hatzinikolaou, an expert adviser at the national anti-human trafficking office. 

Every year, authorities across the European Union spend about 14 percent of their gross domestic product — at least 1.9 trillion euros ($2.2 trillion) —  on public procurement, according to data from the European Commission. 

In Greece, an estimated 89,000 people are modern-day slaves — about one in 125 of its 11 million population — according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index by the Walk Free Foundation. 

Greece was a front-line country for refugees fleeing war and poverty in Syria and elsewhere until 2016, and thousands of adult and child migrants are at risk of exploitation by traffickers for sex and labor, experts say.
…

European Union leaders have ruled out British Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempt to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s exit from the bloc in March.

The British parliament Tuesday approved May’s request to the EU to re-work the Irish border provision of the current Brexit deal.

But the spokesman for European Council President Donald Tusk immediately ruled out any re-negotiation.

“The Withdrawal Agreement is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union,” the spokesman said. “We continue to urge the UK government to clarify its intentions with respect to the next steps as soon as possible.”

Britain’s House of Commons rejected May’s Brexit plans two weeks ago, primarily because of the Irish border provision, known as the backstop. 

The backstop would keep Britain in a customs union with the EU in order to keep a free flow of goods between Ireland — an EU member —  and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.

Backstop opponents who still support the idea of Brexit say it means Britain would still be subjected to EU rules, which is the reason they want Britain to leave the EU in the first place. 

Without an agreement in place, Britain faces a “no-deal” Brexit departure.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told a congressional panel in Washington Tuesday that such an outcome “would cause economic disruptions that could substantially weaken the [United Kingdom] and Europe.”

Business leaders are worried that a no-deal Brexit would lead to economic chaos.

British opposition Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said he believes the British government would have to delay its Brexit departure for three months to allow for more negotiations.

The pact defeated two weeks ago took British and EU negotiators 18 months to reach. Since then, May has pledged to go forward with the agreement and seek some changes to earn the necessary support.

May’s Conservative Party is now supporting what it calls “alternative arrangements” to overcome the concerns about tying Britain’s policies to EU rules.

What is not certain is whether those changes would be enough to win over a majority of parliament. There also is the question of whether the European Union would agree to alter the agreement, something its leaders have repeatedly said throughout the debate in Britain they have no intention of doing.
…

Even in the densely packed Soviet-era apartment blocks at the edge of this faded Siberian industrial hub, little redheaded Masha always seemed to stand out.

“She was quite an unusual kid to some extent — physically quite tall in comparison with her peers, and she was in fact much more physically developed,” says her father, Valeriy Butin, a retired 55-year-old manufacturing engineer.

“Since childhood she had the strongly marked characteristics of a leader,” he says. “She enjoyed giving commands, organizing her peers, her brother and her sister. She has always tried to carry herself as a leader. That was just natural for her.”

Soft-spoken with a patient disposition, Valeriy is also unfailingly polite. Even upon declining initial interview requests, he would nonetheless thank us for asking and apologize for needing time to consider.

Meeting my videographer and me at the cafe beside our hotel, he seems oblivious to patrons who appear to recognize him immediately, even if they don’t dare say so.

After agreeing to the interview, he waits for us out in the car where, through the cafe window, he seems adrift in an aimless stare, his thoughts likely turning to a Virginia jail cell where his daughter, Maria Valeriyevna Butina, has been held in solitary confinement since U.S. officials brought espionage-related charges against her in July.

Despite a December plea bargain, Valeriy, just like his friends and family, still cannot square the foreign media depiction of a confessed foreign agent with his precocious daughter who, until weeks of incarceration, mailed home report cards and research papers — cherished tokens of the myriad academic accomplishments the family has scrapbooked since primary school.

“She was always gifted with a good memory and inquisitive mind, a willingness to research and really grasp something new,” he says, his vocal pitch beginning to tremble. “I have no doubt it was — it is — natural for her.”

The world that shaped Masha

Touching down on the chemically treated Tarmac at Barnaul International Airport in southwestern Siberia, the pilot stops the plane at the end of the runway and pivots the nose onto a massive five-centimeter-thick expanse of plow-scarred ice and snowpack.

Descending the airplane stairs to board a bus idling in the deep freeze of early dawn, passengers trudge through the glare of a single floodlight as four policemen in matching black Ushankas look on in silence. The only sound is an engine and the rhythmic crunching of snow under boots.

Nestled between the northern borders of Kazakhstan and Mongolia, Barnaul lies 228 kilometers due south of Novosibirsk, part of what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described as the “Gulag Archipelago.”  Like nearly all of its centrally planned neighboring municipalities, the city, which is the administrative seat of the Altai Krai region, immediately evokes memories of its Soviet past. Once known for manufacturing tanks, ammunition and tractors, Barnaul — also like nearly all of its neighbors — has long since seen most of those jobs disappear.

A half-hour from the airport in a flat grid of city blocks where Maria Butina spent her first 20 years, camouflage-clad hunters tote bagged rifles alongside morning commuters with briefcases. For many youth, it’s the kind of place where one aspires to nothing more than one day residing anyplace else.

“The official statistics brought me into a state of dismay,” Maria wrote of regional brain drain in a 2008 essay for a local paper. “Last year the number of people leaving the region was 9,383 more than those who came to my native Altai.”

As an 18-year-old college junior, Maria was a Rotary Club member who had recently been elected to a civic organization comprising “prominent citizens of Russia, representatives of national, regional and interregional NGOs” that aimed to be a conduit between citizens and lawmakers.

“When first elected, I wondered if it would be possible to transform the region into a place with lifelong professional prospects for my peers,” wrote Butina. “Now I’m pretty confident [that]… if someone doesn’t ‘rejuvenate’ the regional elite, programs will neither succeed nor stop the young from leaving.”

Political aspirations

Adjacent to the Krai Administration building in Barnaul’s Soviets Square, the School of Real Politics (SRP) was architecturally designed to contrast with the stodgy edifice beside it that, until just years ago, still hosted regional legislative sessions.

“Maria came to the Real Politics faculty in 2005, where she instantly showed herself as an active leader,” said Konstantin Emeshin, SRP’s founder and, as Valeriy tells it, the personal mentor who perhaps more than any other individual has shaped Maria’s worldview.

Although not affiliated Altai State University, where Maria was concurrently enrolled, Emeshin’s “faculty,” as he called it, appears to be a government subsidized private organization aligned with the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party that mentors and develops aspiring politicians. Altai State University administrators did not respond to multiple inquiries about its relationship with SRP, and Emeshin declined follow-up interview requests to learn more about the organization.

The concept behind SRP, he said, is that “‘real policy’ doesn’t come from the TV set.”

“Television channels as a rule broadcast information as well as propaganda, whereas real politics is always made by [actual] deputies, officials.”

In “real politics,” he said, students are immersed in day-to-day parliamentary life, in government life, communicating directly with officials, even at the highest levels.

After her first year with the political organization, Butina’s SRP peers elected her school coordinator,a coveted position in which the student reports on legislation and wrangles VIPs for on-site events.

Smitten by her boundless energy and networking savvy, Emeshin nominated her for the prestigious Seliger forum for young leaders. The annual lakeside gathering — once dubbed “Russia’s nationalist summer camp” and sometimes attended by President Vladimir Putin — invites participants to give presentations of their work.

Having solicited the sponsorship of local businessmen, Butina would be expected to champion a regional cause.

At the time, Emeshin said, short-barrel arms legalization was strongly supported by Altai regional Governor Alexander Bogdanovich Karlin.

For the daughter of an avid hunter, a personal history of gun ownership suddenly dovetailed with a politically practical regional cause.

The gun rights cause

In Russia, private citizens can be licensed to own long-barreled shotguns, stun guns and gas pistols, but handguns and assault rifles are banned for the broader public.

Like a handful of provincial Russian politicians, Karlin had long framed pistol ownership as a civilian rights issue, but in his economically struggling region it meant more than that: Altai Krai is also home to one the few small-arms bullet manufacturers in Russia.

At Seliger, Butina connected with politically like-minded activists and expanded the pistol rights debate to the federal level, hosting roundtables throughout the country.

“It was no secret that Senator [Aleksandr] Torshin,” long an avid gun rights supporter, “was now in touch with Maria.”

“She knew everybody: [Alexei] Kudrin, [Andrey] Nechayev, she was at the top of public activities of Russia,” said Emeshin, referring to a close Putin ally and a former economic minister respectively.

Emeshin then encouraged Maria to pursue graduate work abroad.

“Having mastered real politics at the city, regional and federal level,” he told her in 2014 Facebook message, “you should certainly master the real politics at the international level.”

For personal friends of Maria, the rapid career developments came as no surprise.

“At the time, she seemed to be quite the young idealist, a person who awakes with an idea of changing the world,” said Lev Sekerzhinsky, a Barnaul-based photographer who was close to Butina before she departed for Moscow. “But unlike most people, she woke up not just with an idea but with some real energy … just a willful determination to implement all the plans to do something good.

“Every day she had to be doing something,” he recalled. “I’ve never met anyone else like her in all my life.”

Asked whether she could have turned that energy against the interests of a foreign nation, he was unconvinced.

“I’ve read trial documents saying she was doing or planning things against the United States, but I’m pretty confident she wanted to improve ties,” he said. “It’s quite a pity if she violated some laws on the way.”

Charges against her

On December 13, Butina pleaded guilty to conspiracy, engaging in unofficial diplomacy and lobbying after building relationships in American conservative circles — including the National Rifle Association — not unlike what she did on behalf of Altai officials at Seliger. She also admitted to working at the behest of her ex-employer, former Senator Torshin, to create back-channel communications between NRA contacts and Russian officials.

“She was playing a role familiar to professional intelligence officers…using her natural network of contacts to spot, meet, and assess potential targets for the Russian espionage apparatus,” writes Atlantic Monthly contributor John Sipher, a 28-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service and an authority on espionage at the Brookings Institution.

Describing modern Russia as “the world’s first intelligence state” and Putin’s actions as “those of a superpowered spy chief,” any Russian national living abroad — especially politically connected former State Duma aides such as Butina — can be tapped to act informally as the “overt face of covert operations.”

Ambitious young professionals who wish to maintain professional options at home, said longtime Russian affairs reporter Danila Galperovich, often have little choice but to accommodate the intelligence inquiries, which, for many, inevitably blurs boundaries between networking, lobbying and espionage.

“Can they be approached at any time? Yeah, absolutely, the same way, if we’re perfectly honest, a congressional aide in Washington can be approached by the CIA,” said Mark Galeotti, a globally renowned expert on Russian intelligence.

“But is there any evidence of her being a spy in the sense of someone who actually works for the Russian intelligence apparatus? For me, the answer is absolutely not,” said Galeotti. “I think what this all simply reflects is the way modern Russia works. That you have all kinds of different individuals and agencies who are pushing their own agendas, but also with an eye on whether their actions are likely to fit the kind of interests that we think the Kremlin has. Because, if you can pull off something that is a value to the Kremlin, then you will be rewarded.”

As Galeotti tells it, Russia’s president sets broad policy directives, “and then all these scurrying little entrepreneurs will use whatever leverage or interest they themselves have — and it may be totally different if you’re an ambassador compared to if you’re a journalist compared to if you’re whatever else” — to further those Kremlin interests.

“If they fail? Well, the Kremlin’s no worse off; it can deny anything and it hasn’t spent a penny,” he said. “But if they succeed, then sometimes the Kremlin will actually reach in and, in effect, takeover an operation, or simply reward them for a job well done.”

Calling Butina “ambitious in a perfectly normal way,” Galeotti said her long history of advocating gun rights made the NRA a logical place to network.

“She has a personal and passionate commitment to this issue of the right to bear arms, and therefore she obviously wants to have connections, she wants to have some sense of meaning,” he said. “Because of the extent to which the NRA and the Republican Party are incestuously intertwined, you can’t really network in one without the other.

For Galeotti, the best way to detect the presence of formal intelligence directives is by identifying a given suspect’s behavioral anomalies.

“Look at friendships pursued that, otherwise, just don’t seem to make sense or seem to fit a pattern,” he said. “Quite frankly, if one looks at what Butina was doing, it all seems pretty consistent with someone who’s just trying to see where she can get, see what she can do.”

Galeotti also said that former Senator Torshin, who declined multiple phone and email requests for interview, has long operated in this gray area between personal ambition and political favor.

“If you operate in Russia, you know this,” said Galeotti. “Everyone is constantly looking for what kind of blat, what kind of connections, what kind of leverage they can find. That’s just the nature of this environment.”

However, Yuri Shvets, a former KGB major who worked in the Washington office of the Soviet First Chief Directorate, the intelligence organization responsible for foreign operations, said the NRA has been a target of Soviet infiltration since at least the 1980s.

“She is certainly an ‘agent’ [of the Russian government], whether an active duty one or just an ‘agent of influence’ that I don’t know,” added Shvets, who defected to the West in the early 1990s. “But after the Anna Chapman story, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything.”

In June, American prosecutors said Butina possessed materials indicating direct communication with a Russian intelligence service, although a December Department of Justice affidavit summarizing charges against Butina cites none.

American parallels

Driving to the Butin family home, Valeriy’s gray late-model Nissan shoots down a snowy stretch of canopied coniferous byway about 32 kilometers west of Barnaul. I tell him that I can see why Solzhenitsyn chose voluntary exile in the U.S. state of Vermont, and that the surrounding pines could pass for a postcard from there.

“I’ve heard it’s lovely,” he said. “But we’ve got more bears.”

Does the lifelong hunter advocate the pistol legalization his daughter championed?

“I’m not as political as my daughter is,” he said after some hesitation. “But I think it’s important that one should at least have the right, if only for personal protection.

“Look at this guy in Kerch,” he said, referring to an October shooting at a polytechnic college in Russian-occupied Crimea that claimed 20 victims.

“This young man bought a gun absolutely legally and goes on rampage, but nobody could do anything because of gun restrictions. What if just one other person there had had a gun?

“Guns are deadly, but someone could be attacked with a frying pan or beaten to death by fists. To me legalization just means you can have an opportunity to protect yourself against these insane people, and they’re everywhere. They’re here and in America, too.”

As the road crests, we bear left down a snow-rutted unpaved access lane leading into a sprawling warren of scattered structures that betray a range of income levels. Some homes are new, some are old or restored, and a handful were abandoned mid-construction, the skeletal rebar-and-cement casualties of Russia’s chronic boom-and-bust economic cycles.

Waiting for Maria

Entering the Butin family drive, an automated steel gate slides open, revealing a low-slung structure all but buried in snow. On setting foot in the entryway, Maria’s younger sister, Marina, crosses the house to greet us and insists on taking our coats.

“You’re from Washington,” she sighs in almost unaccented English. “Such a cool city.”

Placing an arm around a sprightly older woman who emerges from the kitchen, Marina introduces her grandmother.

“This is the American?” she asks Marina, who nods.

“Welcome,” says the older woman, offering a hand and holding tight with a lengthy penetrating stare.”I’ll put on some tea.”

Arrayed on a table are family albums that chronicle the achievements of each Butin child. The photos and clippings show just how much academic engagement and school-based events were an organizing principle in the Butin household, which, until Maria left for university, had been located within a half-block of a primary school.

At only 24, Maria’s younger sister holds multiple degrees from one of Russia’s elite polytechnic universities in St. Petersburg, where she has since joined an electronics manufacturing firm.

Like both of her parents, she is an engineer. Also like both of her parents, she learned of Maria’s incarceration via news reports.

“I was in the car, going to work and I didn’t know what had happened,” says Marina, who says she spoke with her older sister at least once weekly until the arrest.

“I was confused and then heard her name and just pulled over and fell silent,” she recalls. “I thought it was fake news, and then I thought maybe after two days everything would be okay, that this was all a big misunderstanding.”

Since hearing the news on television that same morning, Valeriy says his impression of the accusations is unchanged.

“I can only imagine it must have been Maria’s legal ignorance about the details of these [lobbying] laws that her absolutely friendly activities resulted in such an accusation,” he says, insisting that his daughter was fond of the United States and wanted to see relations improved.”Maria couldn’t possibly wish any harm to the country where she was studying, that she treats with great respect.”

Maria’s mother, Irina, says Maria had often spoken taking “part in some global decisions that are being undertaken for (her) country and to be a public figure.”

“Masha did these things without any deliberate intentions,” she says. “I am confident that any illegal activity resulted from her legal ignorance, her young years, her drive, persistence, and of course some naïveté.”

Although the U.S. indictment refutes that opinion, the family remains hopeful that their daughter will be deported immediately after her mid-February hearing, and that U.S.-Russian ties can be salvaged.

“Our two countries are simply obliged to exist peacefully, at a minimum,” says Valeriy. “But even better, we can have absolutely friendly, good relations.”

Asked what he would say directly to President Donald Trump and other top U.S. officials, Valeriy appeared to have tears welling in his eyes.

“It is difficult to say what one could say to the U.S. president, as well as to the Secretary of State,” he says. “But if something will depend on them, I would ask them to release her as soon as possible.”

Asked if Russian officials have been adequately supportive, he exhales in mild exasperation. Although Russian officials have amplified the case via state-media news interviews, the family says they remain dependent upon crowdfunding to deal with more than $500,000 in legal fees.

Characteristically polite, Valeriy asks us to convey a message to Maria’s defense lawyers.

“I am tremendously grateful for their diligence and impartiality, their faith in the fact that Maria should not be punished,” he said before drawing a parallel to a positive memory from the Cold War.

“There was a situation between our countries, quite a tough one dating back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Yuri Andropov,” he says. “A young American girl named Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Andropov in very human and straightforward tone that ultimately fostered a kind of détente in Cold War tensions. It seems to me there is now some similarity to that situation.”

Regardless of whether her upcoming court ruling can help mend relations, Maria’s younger sister sees the good that is resulting from her sister’s incarceration.

“I want her to stand firm and know that, despite the conditions of solitary confinement, the large distance separating us, she is actually the one keeping us all in the right mind set,” she says. “She reminds us that everything will be tackled, that everything will be okay, that truth and justice will prevail.”

“These are the basics we laid from childhood,” says Irina, calling their family bonds the “thread” to which her daughter holds tight in a Virginia jail.

Even for professor Emeshin, the weighty darkness of a naïve, high-energy extrovert stuck in solitary confinement may yet have one silver lining.

“She is unusually talented, an incredibly clever girl, you can’t deny that,” he said earlier that day. “That’s why she chose the path of public life, why she took charge of the school’s information center, joined our public chamber and quickly leaped to federal-level work.”

For better or worse, he said, she’s found herself in the high-profile international role she always sought.

“Quite a complicated one, yes, but still a real experience,” he said. “She’s now well-known and, like any decent and honest person from this country, she’ll come to occupy a worthy spot in Russia’s political sphere.”

Olga Pavlova in Moscow, Ricardo Marquina in Barnaul, Igor Tsikhanenka in Washington contributed to this report.
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From Sweden to southern Spain, and the Netherlands to Hungary, populist forces have gained seats in recent elections and they now see a chance at power in Brussels itself.

Europe is gearing up for EU parliament elections in May, a vote where the balance of power could shift decisively.

The campaigns are getting under way amid the fevered atmosphere of street protests in France and many other EU states, alongside growing brinkmanship in the negotiations on Britain’s imminent withdrawal from the bloc.

The 751 members of the European Parliament (or MEPs) are directly elected every five years, and they form the legislative body of the bloc which has the power to pass EU laws and approve the appointment of EU commissioners.

Populist forces, backed by the power of street protests, look set to make the coming vote unlike any other in the bloc’s history, according to analyst Michael Cottakis of the London School of Economics. He is also director of the ’89 Initiative,’ which seeks to engage younger generations in European decision-making.

“It’s an opportunity to hit the piñata when the establishment presents it to you and get your policy opinions across,” Cottakis told VOA. “Generally we’ve seen that the European elections have been a sort of locus in which angry, disaffected citizens essentially voice their concerns – the height of a delayed populist political backlash against a long period of economic hardship.”

In France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen is seeking to align her National Rally party with the yellow vest protesters.

Coordinated May assault

Across Europe, populist forces are attempting a coordinated assault on the May elections. Italy’s far-right interior minister recently weighed in on the French protests, posting a video on social media in which he said he hoped “that the French can free themselves from a terrible president, and the opportunity will come on May 26.”

The minister, Matteo Salvini, is trying to form alliances with governments in Hungary and Poland. Their common foe is immigration — but there are major contradictions, says analyst Luigi Scazzieri of the Center for European Reform.

“With Italy wanting other countries to take migrants but Hungary, for example, having absolutely no intention of doing so. So the real question is, will they be able to work together to form an effective group?'”

That’s unlikely, says Michael Cottakis, citing other significant policy differences among Europe’s populist governments.

“Italy is a member of the eurozone, Poland is not. And then in terms of foreign policy, very importantly, Poland is a great believer in the NATO alliance, terrified of Russia, greatly mistrusting of Vladimir Putin; whereas Salvini has openly expressed support.”

Street fights back

Political battle lines are being drawn, colors nailed to the mast. Several hundred self-styled red scarf’ protesters staged counter-demonstrations in Paris Sunday, waving EU flags and voicing support for pro-EU President Emmanuel Macron of France.

In Hungary, the EU flag has been at the forefront of growing anti-government demonstrations. In Germany meanwhile, the Green party has overtaken the far right Alternative for Germany’ party in the polls.

Populists are fast discovering they do not have a monopoly on the street. The real test of strength will come at the ballot box on May 26, a vote that could change the balance of power in Europe.
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The European Union has a message for Prime Minister Theresa May as she plots a path out of the Brexit impasse: Britain needs to decide what it really wants but the negotiated divorce deal will not be reopened.

With less than nine weeks until Britain is due by law to leave the European Union on March 29, there is no agreement yet in London on how and even whether to leave the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Parliament defeated May’s deal two weeks ago by a huge margin, with many Brexit-supporting rebels in her Conservative Party angry at the Irish “backstop,” an insurance policy aimed at preventing a hard border in Ireland if no other solutions can be agreed.

Ahead of Tuesday’s votes in the British parliament on a way forward, lawmakers in May’s party are pushing for her to demand the European Union drop the backstop and replace it with something else.

“It is quite a challenge to see how you can construct from a diversity of the opposition a positive majority for the deal,” EU deputy chief negotiator Sabine Weyand told a Brussels conference organized by the European Policy Center think-tank.

In a note of criticism of May’s strategy, she said there appeared to be a lack of “ownership” in Britain of the agreement struck between the two sides in November, and that there was insufficient transparency in the prime minister’s moves.

“There will be no more negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement,” said Weyand, a German senior civil servant at the European Commission, reiterating the EU stance.

As the Brexit crisis goes down to the line, however, EU officials indicated there might be wriggle room if May came back with a clear, and viable, request for changes that she — and the EU — believe will secure a final ratification.

Wriggle room?

However, Weyand echoed her boss Michel Barnier in saying that Britain could resolve some of the problems caused by opposition to the Irish backstop by changing some of its demands on post-Brexit trade.

Referring to an amendment to May’s proposed next steps on Brexit put forward by senior Conservative lawmaker Graham Brady, who wants “alternative arrangements” to the backstop, Weyand said that the withdrawal treaty already contained that possibility.

“We are open to alternative arrangements” on the Irish border, she said. “The problem with the Brady amendment is that it does not spell out what they are.

“The backstop is not a prerequisite for the future relationship,” she said. “We are open to alternative proposals.”

A source in May’s office said the government would tell Conservative lawmakers to vote in favor of Brady’s amendment if it is selected by the speaker on Tuesday.

Britain remaining in a customs union, or even the EU single market, could help reach a final agreement, Weyand said, adding: “We need decisions on the U.K. side on the direction of travel.”

Weyand said the ratification of the EU-U.K. deal would build the trust necessary to build a new relationship, but ruled out bowing to British calls to set a time limit to the backstop beyond which the insurance policy would lapse.

“A time-limit on the backstop defeats the purpose of the backstop because it means that once the backstop expires you stand there with no solution for this border,” Weyand said.

Impasse 

Speaking to the same conference, a former British envoy to the EU, Ivan Rogers, said he expected the deadlock to persist in the coming weeks, saying it had always seemed likely that the outcome would remain in doubt until much closer to March 29.

Rogers was speaking in a personal capacity, having resigned two years ago after differences with May over the negotiation.

The question for May is whether the EU can offer enough to get a variant of her defeated deal through parliament.

May wants to use a series of votes on Tuesday to find a consensus that lawmakers in her own party could support, just two weeks since her deal suffered the biggest parliamentary defeat in modern British history.

Parliament will vote on proposals made by lawmakers including a delay to Brexit and going back to the EU to demand changes to the Northern Irish backstop.

In essence, May is forcing lawmakers to show their cards on what sort of Brexit, if any, they want. Lawmakers in her own party want her to demand a last-minute change to the withdrawal deal to remove the backstop, which they fear could end up trapping the U.K. in a permanent customs union with the EU.

 
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When Germany signed a deal last month to help Bolivia exploit its huge lithium reserves, it hailed the venture as a deepening of economic ties with the South American country. But it also gives Germany entry into the new “Great Game,” in which big powers like China are jostling across the globe for access to the prized electric battery metal.

The signing of the deal in Berlin on Dec. 12 capped two years of intense lobbying by Germany as it sought to persuade President Evo Morales’ government that a small German family-run company was a better bet than its Chinese rivals, according to Reuters interviews with German and Bolivian officials.

While the substance of the deal has been reported, how China, Bolivia’s biggest non-institutional lender and close ideological ally, lost out to Germany has not.

China has been quietly cornering the global lithium market, making deals in Asia, Chile and Argentina as it seeks to lock in access to a strategic resource that could power the next energy revolution.

China has invested $4.2 billion in South America in the past two years, surpassing the value of similar deals by Japanese and South Korean companies in the same period. Chinese entities now control nearly half of global lithium production and 60 percent of electric battery production capacity.

German officials told Reuters they championed the bid by ACI Systems GmbH because they saw an opportunity to lower Germany’s reliance on Asian battery makers and help its carmakers catch up with Chinese and U.S. rivals in the race to make electric cars.

The German push included a series of visits by German government officials who talked up the benefits of picking a German company. Bolivian officials also toured German battery factories, Bolivia’s deputy minister of High Energy Technologies, Luis Alberto Echazu, told Reuters.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier wrote a letter to Morales, an environmental champion, emphasizing Germany’s commitment to environment protection.

The lobbying effort was capped by a call last April between Altmaier and Morales, Bolivian, German and ACI officials said, without offering details of what was discussed.

German diplomats in La Paz also stressed high-level German government backing for the project, potential loan guarantees and the tantalizing prospect of supply agreements with German automakers, ACI and Bolivian officials told Reuters.

ACI’s win means Germany now has a foothold in the final frontier of South America’s so-called Lithium Triangle: the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia, one of the world’s largest untapped deposits. The triangle comprises lithium deposits in an area that includes parts of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.

“This partnership secures lithium supplies for us and breaks the Chinese monopoly,” Wolfgang Tiefensee, economy minister of the German state of Thuringia, an automotive manufacturing hub, told Reuters during a visit to the Bolivian capital La Paz in October.

Some risks

The venture in Bolivia is not without risk for ACI.

While Uyuni boasts at least 21 million tons of lithium, Morales has made nationalizing natural resources a key policy plank. Bolivian officials assured ACI that foreign investments in the Uyuni would be guaranteed should anything go awry, CEO Wolfgang Schmutz said in an interview.

In addition, unlike Chile’s sun-drenched Atacama salt flats, snow and rain slow the evaporation process needed to extract lithium from brine in Uyuni, and the landlocked nation will have to use a port in neighboring Chile or Peru to ship the metal out.

ACI, a family-run clean tech and machinery supplier, has no experience producing lithium. The company dismisses concerns from some lithium analysts about its ability to deliver, saying its small size gives it more flexibility to bring partners from different fields into the project.

Schmutz said the company has preliminary lithium supply deals with major German carmakers, but declined to provide details, citing non-disclosure agreements.

None of Germany’s top three carmakers — BMW, VW or Daimler — confirmed any agreement with ACI when contacted by Reuters.

BMW said it was in preliminary talks with ACI but had made no decision. VW said ensuring supplies and stable prices for raw materials was important, but noted lithium production in Bolivia was particularly demanding. Daimler board member Ola Kaellenius said: “If it’s happening, we’re not part of it.”

ACI said the carmakers that it was in talks with would not be able to confirm anything publicly until final deals were made.

The “Great Game” — lithium version

The global battle for control of lithium has been likened to the “Great Game,” the term coined to describe the struggle between Russia and Britain for influence and territory in Central Asia in the 19th century.

The Bolivian project includes plans to build a lithium hydroxide plant and a factory for producing electric car batteries in Bolivia. Once completed, the factory will help to fulfill Morales’ ambition to break with Bolivia’s historic role as a mere exporter of raw materials.

ACI has said it expects the lithium hydroxide plant to have an annual production capacity of 35,000-40,000 tons by the end of 2022, similar in output to plants operated by the world’s top lithium producers. Eighty percent of that would be exported to Germany.

ACI’s willingness to build a battery plant in Bolivia helped to seal the deal, said Echazu, the deputy minister.

The Chinese did not want to build a battery plant in Bolivia because they felt it made no economic sense to ship in materials to make the batteries only to re-import the final product to China, he said.

China’s embassy in La Paz declined to comment on the Uyuni project, but said the potential for future cooperation with Bolivia on lithium was “huge.”

Bolivia’s state-owned lithium producer YLB will own 51 percent of the new joint venture. Control of the project was another key demand of the Bolivians, who have bitter memories of foreign powers meddling in the former Spanish colony to seize its natural resources.

Juan Carlos Montenegro, the head of YLB, said geopolitics was a factor for Bolivia in deciding which companies to work with.

“We don’t want a single country to set the rules, we want balance and other world powers must help create that balance,” he said. “So for Bolivia, it’s important to have not just economic partners for markets, but geopolitical strategic partners.”

He stressed, however, that Bolivia had not been predisposed against China in deciding who had made the best offer.

“China-Bolivia relations are still good. China is present in every country in the world and impossible to avoid,” he said.
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