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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose AK Party is facing major defeats this month in local elections, is being accused of behaving like a “dictator” after his threat to remove victorious pro-Kurdish mayoral candidates.

Erdogan, addressing supporters this week, issued a stark threat to voters in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast: Candidates deemed sympathetic to the PKK Kurdish separatist group who are elected will be removed.

“If you happen to send the opportunities provided by the state to Qandil [where PKK leaders are based in neighboring northern Iraq], we will once again, immediately and without waiting any further, appoint our trustees,” Erdogan said.

The warning was aimed at Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish HDP. Ankara accuses the HDP of being the political wing of the PKK, a charge it denies. Already, dozens of elected HDP mayors have been removed from office and jailed, accused of aiding the PKK.

The HDP’s leadership is calling on voters to take back control of the towns and cities seized by Ankara.

The pro-Kurdish party dismisses terrorist allegations against its candidates. “If they remove any of our successful candidates, it’s not that the elected mayors are terrorists but rather Erdogan is a dictator,” said Ertugrul Kurkcu, honorary president of the HDP.

Validated candidates

Kurkcu points out the Higher Election Board, which administers elections in Turkey, has validated all the HDP’s mayoral candidates. The HDP claims any alleged transgressions by its candidates during campaigning should be a matter for the Turkish judiciary, rather than the president.

Erdogan’s warning is being interpreted as an attempt at voter intimidation.

“This is a kind of a threat to Kurdish voters: If you want to have peace and tranquility in the region, you have to elect my candidates. If you vote for the opposition, I will sack the mayors. I am going to lead you like sheep,” said Kurkcu. “But after all these huge struggles for democracy, I do not see honorable Kurds or honorable citizens who will accept this threat. Instead, it provokes anger and rebellion.”

Kurkcu’s position may be well-founded. The HDP “will sweep all Kurdish-majority cities and towns despite massive intimidation and black propaganda,” predicted analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.

Analysts say there is growing anger among many Kurds over the security crackdown that has been in place since the collapse of the 2015 peace process with the PKK.

Towns ravaged

In Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, many towns and city centers were reduced to rubble as security forces ousted Kurdish fighters. Human rights groups say more than 200,000 people have been left homeless.

Along with over 80 pro-Kurdish HDP mayors removed from their posts and imprisoned, dozens of the party’s parliamentary deputies languish in jail, including its former charismatic leader, Selahattin Demirtas. They are all being held on terrorism charges.

State-appointed trustees now administer nearly all towns and cities in southeast Turkey. Many of the cultural reforms encouraging the Kurdish language have been rolled back, including the use of Kurdish on official signs.

Erdogan, in his early years in power as prime minister, had positioned himself as an advocate for Kurdish rights. He was rewarded electorally with his AK Party, securing more votes than the HDP in polls.

However, the collapse of the peace process with the PKK amid mutual recriminations saw Erdogan abandon the courting of Kurds and turn toward  Turkish nationalism. “There is a lot of distrust by Erdogan. Erdogan was sincerely believing in the peace process and believes the PKK and HDP abused this,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

​Aligned with nationalists

Since the December 2015 general election, Erdogan’s AK Party has deepened its relationship with Turkey’s hard-line Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has been in the forefront of calls for a crackdown on the pro-Kurdish movement.

With the Turkish economy mired in recession and public discontent mounting, Erdogan now depends on the MHP’s support in the March elections. Analyist Yesilada said Erdogan has little choice but to continue his hard-line rhetoric against the pro-Kurdish movement.

“AKP doesn’t have the votes to retain Istanbul and Ankara,” Yesilada said. “Erdogan has to throw something to [MHP Chairman Devlet] Bahceli. … So we will see the worst manifestations of populism.”

However, the HDP is determined to make Erdogan pay a heavy electoral price.

“In western Turkey, our party is not listing candidates in seven major cities,” said Kurkcu, “meaning that we are directing our voters, around 10 percent of the electorate, to add their vote to the general opposition. This is not a vote for the main opposition but rather against Erdogan.”

The HDP’s surprise move could prove decisive, with opinion polls indicating the opposition ahead in many of Turkey’s main cities and Istanbul too close to call. Analysts suggest a serious setback for the AKP could be the impetus for Erdogan again resetting the political agenda by reaching out to Kurds and abandoning his Turkish nationalist ally.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was facing a groundswell of revolt Friday from allied center-right parties that want to kick him out of their European Parliament group less than three months ahead of the May elections.

Several Christian Democrat parties already have voiced their opposition to the continued membership of the EPP umbrella group of Orban’s Fidesz party. In recent years, Orban has been strongly identified with anti-migrant rhetoric.

Luxembourg Christian Democrat leader Frank Engel said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press he wants the EPP to take a decision ahead of the March 21-22 European Union summit in Brussels “because I have no intention of engaging in an election campaign with Fidesz still on board.”

Engel joined two Belgian parties in writing in a letter to the grouping’s presidency asking for Fidesz to be excluded because the Hungarian leader “has been acting in striking contradiction” with the EPP’s Christian Democrat values.

The EPP, they said, was too important “to be undermined within our own ranks by what we are so determined to fight: nationalism-based populism and open hostility against European integration.”

Dutch and Portuguese parties have echoed that complaint, which has swelled over recent months — that Orban is too far to the political right of traditional Christian Democrat values.

Orban’s stance on migrants from conflict zones has alarmed many within the group. He has accused European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is part of the EPP, of being too lax on immigration. Orban has plastered Budapest with posters showing Juncker as a gloating force of evil.

Juncker’s Commission issued a rebuttal on Thursday against Orban’s allegations — hardly the unity the grouping wants to display three months ahead of elections.

Dutch Christian Democrat leader Rutger Ploum said “recent events have shown that informal talks with Fidesz no longer have the desired effect.”

And Portugal’s CDS/PP party said in a letter to the EPP presidency that the differences with Fidesz “are too substantial” for Orban’s party to remain inside the group.

Orban hopes anti-migration forces will become a majority in all EU institutions, including the European Parliament and EU Commission, the bloc’s executive body.

Lajos Kosa, a Fidesz founder and an Orban government commissioner, was confident the party would not be expelled from the EPP for what he called “clarifying the truth.”

Expulsion “was also raised earlier by pro-immigration EPP politicians, but it has not happened so far and we don’t expect it now, either,” Kosa told broadcaster ATV. “The debate and clarification of facts ahead of the EU election is in the public interest.”

Engel said he was sure more Christian Democrat parties would join his call by early next week, enough to reach a threshold that the EPP group would have to discuss the issue, likely on March 20.

“There are certainly more to come,” he said.
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Americans’ views of Russia have plummeted to levels not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a newly released survey by the U.S.-based Gallup polling center.

The data say 52 percent of Americans see Russian military power as a direct threat to U.S. vital interests, and that a third identify Russia as the United States’ arch rival, thereby displacing North Korea from the top position in Gallup’s semi-annual ranking of perceived U.S. enemies.

The percentage of Americans who view Russia unfavorably also increased a single percentage point to 73 in the latest poll, a record high in Gallup’s trends.

The findings follow a January 2018 poll by the independent Moscow-based Levada Center showed that two-thirds of Russians called the United States their main enemy.

Pavel Sharikov, a senior research fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, says although the latest results are a cause for concern, the outlook may not be as bleak as it seems.

“From my perspective, both Moscow and Washington have contributed to these numbers,” he said, noting that numerous variables – from Western sanctions over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and accusations of meddling in U.S. elections, and the recent collapse of the INF weapons treaty – have sparked unprecedented levels of belligerent rhetoric.

“From the United States, there is a lot of criticism toward Russia, which Russian politicians take very seriously and very dramatically, and they react to this criticism” with escalated threats,” Sharikiv said.

“This sentiment in Russia [is] that it should remain a strong military power…the president’s and generals’ rhetoric about the Russian military being on the rise, about Russian weapons systems being so robust,” he said. “This is also what leads to Americans perceiving Russians and Russia as a military threat. So these polls are a very big concern.”

But general Russian public perceptions of the United States, Sharikov said, differ significantly from opinions held among the pro-Kremlin community. And a spate of recent polls in Russia, he added, indicate an increasingly positive perception of Americans.

“It used to be, a couple of years ago, the general Russian public opinion was that Russia and the United States are enemies, but I have looked at the recent polls of the Levada Center, and there has been a very clear trend toward a positive perception of the United States and Europe among Russians, especially among the younger generation,” he said.

“For a very long time, the negative perception of the United States was very clearly related to a very high rating of President [Vladimir] Putin, so right now there is no correlation,” he said. “And while President Putin’s ratings are very dynamic – and, right now, it’s getting lower – the general Russian public opinion is getting more positive toward the United States.”

Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, says general public fears of warfare expressed by people polled on “both sides of the ocean” aren’t likely to affect diplomatic ties in any significant way.

“Major political decisions are being made at a different level,” he said. “Besides, the relations between the countries are already quite poor. It just doesn’t help to improve the situation when ordinary people start thinking in a negative way.”

Outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, where just days ago the choir sparked controversy with a performance of a Soviet-era satirical song about a nuclear submarine attack on the United States, locals appeared to be more nonchalant about the Gallup findings.

“This kind of published research just reinforces existing fears and biases and ultimately worsens relations,” said one young St. Petersburg resident, an engineering student, who asked to remain anonymous.

“People will believe whatever they see reported on television and online,” she said. “And, in Russia, what do they hear most about? U.S. political interference in other countries and sanctions. So of course they view the U.S. as a major enemy.”

On the streets of Moscow, too, one young professional, a psychology professor, echoed the opinion that news reports loaded with mutually antagonistic statements by U.S. and Russian officials – not to mention myriad online media threads – largely exaggerate perceptions of reciprocal enmity.

“All this gossip about Russian aggression began during Soviet times, in the mid-20th century or even earlier, and it’s never going to stop until people unplug from mass media,” he said, rolling his eyes at the mention of Gallup and Levada Center polls.

“I guess you can perceive me as an enemy if you want, but you’re perfectly safe to come have a drink with me if you like,” he added, laughing. “Thirst can be a truly dangerous thing, right?”

One Moscow-based American largely echoed that sentiment, emphasizing interpersonal connections over international relations.

“I think these polls are asking too general of a question and most people are totally politically incompetent,” said Robert, who chose to withhold his last name. “I think everyone should have a voice and democracy is a necessity but international politics isn’t a simple thing, and even experienced politicians can’t understand a lot of it – too many moving parts and cultural misunderstandings.”

Adding that he believes Russia and the United States are mutual enemies at the national level, he sees most of the conflict unfolding in geopolitical proxy disputes in places such as Syria.

“As an expat in Russia, and former expat in China and Cambodia, I don’t feel distrust or angst from locals, although they would have logical reason to feel it,” he said. “I feel different from the locals, of course, but my connection with them is on a personal level, not a political one. They realize and I realize, too, that governmental decisions are far, far removed from individual people themselves, especially in non-democratic countries like those I’ve lived in.

“I’ve spoken with people about politics in each of these countries and every one of them has shared my feelings of people connections, not political connections, between individuals,” he added.

Gallup conducted the poll among 1,016 Americans living in all 50 states between Feb. 1 and Feb. 10.

Olga Pavlova contributed to this report from Moscow.

 
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Spelt risotto was on the menu at a recent lunch in Paris. Spelt is an ancient form of wheat with a nutty flavor. It is rich in fiber and minerals, and counts among dozens of sometimes ancient and obscure foods scientists say benefit people and the planet.

A green cuisine effort is growing in France as scientists warn that meat consumption must be drastically cut to fight climate change and sustainably feed a global human population set to reach 10 billion by 2050.

“Seventy-five percent of our food comes from 12 crops and five animals. Sixty percent of all our calories come through three vegetables,” said David Edwards, director of food strategy at environmental group WWF, which jointly produced a report, “Future 50 Foods,” with the German food giant Knorr.

The message: Our current eating habits, which rely heavily on large-scale farming and livestock production, have got to change.

“We’ve had a 60 percent decline in the wildlife population since the 1970s — the last 50 years, within a lifetime,” Edwards added. “And …  a precipitous decline in insect populations also … food has pushed wildlife into the extreme margins.”

The Paris lunch featured many of the report’s so-called “future” foods. Vegetables are in. Meat is out. On the menu: walnuts, root vegetables, lentil flour, yams and soy milk.

Also, fonio — a drought-resistant grain that Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam now markets in the United States and serves at his New York City restaurant. He sources it from smallholder farmers in Africa.

“We’re still importing food like rice in Senegal. Yet we could have our own fonio, our own millet. We should be consuming it. But we still have this mentality that what comes from the West is best,” Thiam said.

Former White House chef Sam Kass, who led Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, is now fighting for the environment.

“When we talk about these dramatic changes to overhaul everything, people are like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t know what to do.’ And here, it’s like, just pick 2 to 3 foods and eat them once a week. That would be a big start,” Kass said.

In Europe, research fellow Laura Wellesley of British think-tank Chatham House says governments must aid in a shift to so-called plant-based meat and, more controversially, meat grown in laboratories.

“The EU has really invested quite heavily in this area … but it could do more,” Wellesley said. “It could invest more public finance in the research and development of culture and plant-based meat that are truly sustainable and are healthy options. And it could also support the commercialization of innovations.”

At the Paris lunch, diner Thomas Blomme gave his first course a thumbs-up.

“[S]ome sort of soup, with a lot of spices and some new ingredients. Tasted really well with some lentils,” he said.

And for diners heading back to work but feeling a bit sleepy after the seven-course tasting menu: A green moringa after-party booster juice was offered.
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Russia’s economy has stagnated for some years and suffers under sanctions imposed by the West after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Still, Moscow remains a vibrant city that attracts immigrants from around the world, most of them from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. For many of those migrants, the search for prosperity is often not easy. Ricardo Marquina has more from Moscow in this report narrated by Jim Randle.
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The U.N. Security Council failed to agree Thursday on either a U.S. or Russian proposal to find a way forward on the Venezuelan crisis.

The 15-nation council voted on two draft resolutions. The U.S. text had the support of the majority of the council members but was blocked by Russia and China, while a Russian draft garnered only four positive votes.

The U.S. text stressed the need to “prevent further deterioration” of the humanitarian situation and to allow unhindered access for the delivery of aid throughout the country.

The government of disputed President Nicolas Maduro has refused to recognize that there is a humanitarian crisis in the country and is not permitting aid from the United States to enter the country, saying it is a pretext for a U.S. military invasion.

The American draft also expressed “deep concern” that the May 2018 presidential elections that gave the incumbent Maduro a second six-year term were “neither free nor fair” and called for a political process leading to new elections. It also showed support for the “peaceful” restoration of democracy and rule of law.

“Regrettably, by voting against this resolution, some members of this council continue to shield Maduro and his cronies, and prolong the suffering of the Venezuelan people,” said U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams.

“Regardless of the results of today’s vote, this resolution shows that democracies around the world, and especially in Latin America, are mobilizing behind interim President [Juan] Guaido,” he said of the National Assembly leader who declared himself interim president Jan. 23.

Russian response 

The Russian resolution called for a peaceful settlement of the conflict, but added that Maduro needed to approve aid deliveries. The Russian text also expressed “concern over the threats to use force” against Venezuela.

Moscow’s envoy said Washington’s proposal was an effort to “escalate tensions and to implement their scenario for an unconstitutional change of government.” Vassily Nebenzia warned that the focus on the humanitarian situation was merely “a smoke screen.”  

“We are seriously concerned at the fact that today’s meeting may be exploited as a step for preparations of a real — not humanitarian —intervention as a pretext for external intervention as a result of the alleged inability of the Security Council to resolve the situation in Venezuela,” Nebenzia said.

Last Saturday, troops and Maduro supporters blocked the entry of trucks carrying food and medical supplies in violent clashes at Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil. Four people were killed, and dozens were injured.

Venezuela’s U.N. envoy said that Saturday’s violence was an “international incident,” not a domestic one, and he asserted that all was well in his country.

“Venezuela today is completely at peace, a peace preserved by the constitutional government of President Nicolas Maduro, who is in full exercise of his legal powers and who guarantees the protection of national territory, as well as the well-being of the Venezuelan people and effective control over the country,” Ambassador Samuel Moncada said. “Let me repeat: There is no type of violence in Venezuela. If there are threats against peace, those threats come from abroad.” 
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The adoption of a European Union money-laundering blacklist, which includes Saudi Arabia as well as Puerto Rico and three other U.S. territories, could be blocked by EU governments under a procedure launched on Thursday, two EU diplomats told Reuters.

At a meeting on Thursday, some national envoys opposed adopting the list, triggering a process that could lead to it being delayed or withdrawn, the diplomats said.

The move came after Saudi Arabia’s King Salman sent letters to all 28 EU leaders urging them to reconsider the inclusion of Riyadh on the list, one of the letters seen by Reuters showed.

The listing of the Saudi Kingdom “will damage its reputation on the one hand and it will create difficulties in trade and investment flows between the Kingdom and the European Union on the other,” the King wrote.

One diplomat said Washington has also pressured EU countries to scrap the list.

The U.S. Treasury said when the list was approved by the European Commission that the listing process was “flawed” and it rejected the inclusion of the four U.S. territories.

The diplomat said the Saudi lobby had intensified at the summit of EU and Arab League leaders earlier this week in Sharm el-Sheikh.

At that meeting, British Prime Minister Theresa May discussed the issue with the Saudi King, the diplomat said, adding that Britain and France are leading the group of EU countries opposed to the kingdom’s inclusion on the list, confirming a Reuters report earlier in February.

For the list to be blocked, a majority of 21 states is necessary. EU officials said that around 15 countries have already declared their opposition to the listing.

The list was first adopted by the European Commission on Feb 13 and lists 23 jurisdictions including Nigeria, Panama, Libya, the Bahamas and the four U.S. territories of American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam.

For the first time, the EU listing used different criteria from those used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering.

The FATF list is much smaller and does not include Saudi Arabia and U.S. territories.

 
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A U.N. human rights expert has published a draft list of questions to measure countries’ privacy safeguards, a first step towards ranking the governments that are potentially doing the most snooping on their own citizens.

Joseph Cannataci, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to privacy, submitted the draft questionnaire – touching on everything from chatrooms to systematic surveillance – to the U.N. Human Rights Council, and invited comments by June 30.

Cannataci’s role investigating digital privacy was created by the council in 2015 after Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. surveillance, and he has strongly criticized surveillance activities by the United States and other countries.

As the first person in the job, Cannataci set out an action plan for tackling the task and said he planned to take a methodical approach to monitoring surveillance and privacy laws to help him to decide which countries to investigate.

The council’s 47 member states are not be obliged to agree with his findings, but special rapporteurs’ reports are generally influential in a forum where governments are keen to appear to have an unblemished human rights record.

The 28 draft questions, each with a suggested score attached, begins with a potential five points if a country’s constitution had a provision to protect privacy or has been interpreted to encompass such a protection.

Under the first version of Cannataci’s scoring system, systematic monitoring of private communications could subtract 55 points, as could intensive policing of the internet and monitoring of chatrooms.

Other questions focus on subjects ranging from parliamentary and judicial oversight of surveillance and intelligence activities, profiling of civilians, and the use of “bulk powers” — such as downloading an entire set of phone records rather than getting a judge’s permission to listen into one call.

The last question asks: “Does your country have a police and/or intelligence service which systematically profiles and maintains surveillance on large segments of the population in a manner comparable to that of the STASI in the 1955-1990 GDR (East Germany)?”

Any country answering “yes” to that would forfeit 1,000 points and should abolish its system and start again, he wrote.

Cannataci stressed that the questionnaire was incomplete and “very much a work in progress”, and more questions might be added on open data, health data and privacy and gender.

“The intention would be to use such metrics as a standard investigation tool during country visits, both official and non-official,” Cannataci wrote in his report. He will report to the Council on Friday.
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Ukrainian lawmaker and presidential hopeful Vitaliy Kupriy survived two violent attacks in the past — and he is taking no chances now. One attack involved an assailant coming at him with a hammer.

As campaigning heats up in the country’s presidential race, he is shadowed by two mountainous bodyguards.

It is hardly surprising that he is alert to danger — he has been a thorn in the side of the rich and powerful for years. He has used an NGO he founded to try to kick-start a string of high-profile corruption cases, including one against businesses owned by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko for profiting from currency speculation using, Kupriy alleges, insider information.

The rights lawyer and deputy chairman of a parliamentary panel overseeing Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies does not have any illusions about his chances of emerging as a frontrunner from the pack of also-rans in an election featuring an unwieldy field of 44 candidates. That is not the point of his candidacy, he tells VOA.

Broken system

His objective is to highlight how broken the judicial and law enforcement system is in Ukraine and how political corruption is as bad now, he says, as it was when pro-Moscow authoritarian president Viktor Yanukovych was ruling the country and plundering Ukraine. Yanukovych was driven from office in 2014 by the Euro-Maidan uprising.

“Our agencies have collapsed. We don’t have the rule of law,” he says. “I go to different cities and hold town-hall meetings and last year I traveled to 130 cities. Aside from poverty, the major complaints are about the courts and law enforcement and how when people complain to the police about crimes against them nothing happens and the criminals just pay off the police.”

From petty bribery to high-level graft, corruption is one of the key issues in a presidential race that many say is one of the dirtiest they can recall. The current surprise front-runner popular TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy has built his political outsider campaign around the issue. With a month to go before the first round of polling, Zelenskiy’s nearest rivals Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko have been slinging mud at each other, trading corruption accusations.

Tymoshenko made a fortune in the natural-gas business, earning her the nickname “the gas princess” for her role in shadowy dealings back in the 1990s.

On Tuesday, an investigation by an independent news outlet, BIHUS.info, rocked the election with allegations linking the son of one of Poroshenko’s closest associates and former business partner, Oleg Gladkovsky, the first deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, to a money-laundering and smuggling scandal.

The scheme, the outlet alleged, led to the embezzling of millions of dollars from state defense enterprises and involved the smuggling of used parts from Russia and selling them to Ukrainian defense companies at inflated prices. According to the National Security and Defense Council, Gladkovsky was suspended from his post after the allegations were aired pending an investigation into the claims. Later it was reported he had resigned, but both he and his son deny the allegations.

‘Ugly and dirty campaign’

Poroshenko has not been directly implicated in the accusations of wrong-doing. Even so, Tymoshenko has demanded Poroshenko’s impeachment, and some analysts suggested the expose could upend the incumbent president’s bid for re-election.  

“Just wonder if this will be a terminal blow for Poroshenko’s campaign,” Tim Ash, senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, a major European investment house, said in a note to clients. “All sides have a lot to lose in this campaign, I guess it is going to be an ugly and dirty campaign. The gloves just came off,” he added.

Corruption involving the armed forces is a highly emotive issue in Ukraine. The conflict in the east with Russia has cost an estimated 13,000 lives since 2014.

The embezzlement allegations come as no surprise to Kupriy, a native of the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk), where he headed a department combating racketeering.

He was briefly a member of Poroshenko’s parliamentary bloc but broke with the president in March 2015 after clashing with him over stalled reforms. Last year, he was involved in an ugly verbal spat with Poroshenko in the parliament over the war in the east, which he believes the president has not pursued with enough vigor.

Breaking with Poroshenko has had consequences, he says. Friends and allies of his have been targeted for prosecution and he is under investigation himself by the country’s chief military prosecutor, Anatoliy Matios.

“His wife is a multi-millionaire,” he says of the prosecutor’s spouse. “How is this possible? He has spent his whole career in government agencies. He says it is his wife’s business, but we know what’s going on,” he adds. A request for comment by VOA from the military prosecutor’s office went unanswered.

Inaction

Kupriy’s tactic has been to follow high-profile graft cases and when there’s no action by prosecutors and the anti-corruption agencies to go to the courts to get them to order probes are advanced. “I have 60 current cases. My style is to be like a bulldozer and push hard,” he says. But once he has secured a court order there is little he can do to get the investigations to be handled seriously.

His biggest focus has been on corruption involving former Yanukovych aides and friends. Most of the cases have just stalled but meanwhile the assets are stripped off the accused and transferred into offshore companies, whose ownership is unclear.

“The property should be seized for the people, and not just confiscated and transferred into the hands of others. This is a question of due process. We lose the opportunity of the property being sold and the proceeds put into the national treasury,” says Kupriy, a father of three who spent four years studying and working in Australia.

The West is frustrated

His outrage has been echoed by Western governments and independent observers, who have urged Ukrainian authorities to enact root-and-branch reform.

Since Yanukovych’s ouster of 2014, several anti-corruption agencies have been set up in close cooperation with the assistance of Ukraine’s Western allies, including the U.S.. Among them the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, the State Bureau of Investigation, and an anti-corruption court.

But there has been open warfare between the agencies. Forty-eight out of 180 major investigations into top officials and oligarchs have been completed, but no one has been sentenced to jail terms and hearing dates keep being postponed. Analysts say there’s been progress in reducing corruption in the gas and banking sectors, but otherwise graft has returned to pre-Maidan levels.

“What went wrong? The short answer is that the new institutions don’t work, or in the case of NABU, they’re being blocked from doing their job,” wrote Mykola Vorobiov, a Ukrainian journalist, in a study for the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank.

To the frustration of Western allies, Ukraine’s highest court struck down Wednesday a provision forcing officials suspected of corruption to prove that their assets are legitimate. The court ruled the requirement unconstitutional on the grounds it violates the principle of the presumption of innocence. The provision was introduced in 2015, a quid pro quo demanded by the International Monetary Fund for loans need to shore up Ukraine’s economy.

NABU officials say the ruling will force them to shut down more than 60 corruption cases.

 
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Venezuela’s foreign minister said on Wednesday the United States was trying to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro and suggested talks with U.S. President Donald Trump — an idea the Trump administration immediately rejected.

Jorge Arreaza, addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council, suggested that Maduro and Trump meet to “try to find common ground and explain their differences.” He also said his country had lost $30 billion in assets “confiscated” since November 2017 under sanctions.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence ruled out prospects of talks. “The only thing to discuss with Maduro at this point is the time and date for his departure,” Pence said on Twitter.

“For democracy to return and for Venezuela to rebuild — Maduro must go,” Pence said.

Dozens of diplomats, mainly from Latin American countries, walked out as Arreaza began to speak, while some European ambassadors boycotted the speech.

The United States and dozens of other nations have recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president, but Maduro still controls the military, state institutions and oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA , which provides 90 percent of the country’s export revenue.

Maduro also “stands ready for dialogue” with the Venezuelan opposition, Arreaza said.

“There is an attempt by external powers to overthrow an elected government, this goes against all rules of international law,” Arreaza said.

‘Ilegal pillage’

The United States targeted Venezuela’s government with new sanctions on Monday and called on allies to freeze the assets of state-owned PDVSA after deadly violence blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the country over the weekend.

The “blockade” against Caracas amounts to “theft of the assets and gold” of Venezuela, Arreaza said.

Some $30 billion in state assets had been confiscated since November 2017, he said, adding: “This is the illegal pillage of the resources of our state oil company in the United States.”

U.S. refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp is cutting ties with its parent PDVSA to comply with U.S. sanctions imposed on the OPEC country, two people close to the decision told Reuters on Tuesday.

The Bank of England has blocked $1.5 billion and Belgium $1.4 billion, Arreaza said. The Bank of England has previously declined to comment on questions about Venezuela’s gold, citing client privacy considerations.

“The humanitarian crisis is being used as a pretext for foreign intervention in my country,” Arreaza said.

In weekend clashes at the Colombian border, Venezuelan security forces acted with “proportionality and caution,” as humanitarian aid was burned, he said.

Earlier, an aide to President Ivan Duque of neighboring Colombia called for action to end Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis and bring about a political transition leading to free elections.
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Britain’s opposition Labor Party will put forward or support an amendment in favor of a public vote to prevent a damaging Brexit, the party’s Brexit spokesman said on Wednesday. 

British lawmakers voted 323-240 against a Labor proposal for a permanent customs union with the EU.

“Disappointed the government has rejected Labor’s alternative Brexit deal,” Labor Member of Parliament Keir Starmer said. “That’s why Labor will put forward or support an amendment in favor of a public vote to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit.”
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Ukraine’s Constitutional Court has struck down a law against officials enriching themselves, a move that raises concern about the country’s fight against endemic corruption and about whether it can get further aid from the International Monetary Fund.

The Ukrainian branch of Transparency International said Wednesday that the decision meant that at least 50 corruption cases would have to be closed.

The court said the law was unconstitutional because it violated the presumption-of-innocence principle by obliging suspected officials to prove their assets were legitimate, rather than obliging prosecutors to show assets were obtained by corrupt practices.

The law was introduced in 2015 to meet a demand of the IMF in order to receive badly needed loans. The IMF in 2015 authorized $17.5 billion in aid to Ukraine to support reforms.

President Petro Poroshenko said he would instruct his government to formulate a new draft law on punishing officials for corruption and that it would be submitted to parliament as an urgent priority.

Official corruption is a major issue in Ukraine as it approaches a presidential election on March 31. On Tuesday, one of Poroshenko’s top challengers in the race, Yulia Tymoshenko, called for him to be impeached following a media investigation into alleged embezzlement schemes in the country’s military industries.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the prosecutor general’s office on Wednesday to protest corruption, crying “Death to the marauders.”

 
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