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A gay French writer has lifted the lid on what he calls one of the world’s largest gay communities — the Vatican, estimating that most of its prelates are homosexually inclined and attributing much of the current crisis in the Catholic Church to an internecine war among them.

In the explosive book, In the Closet of the Vatican, author Frederic Martel describes a gay subculture at the Vatican and calls out the hypocrisy of Catholic bishops and cardinals who in public denounce homosexuality but in private lead double lives.

Aside from the subject matter, the book is astonishing for the access Martel had to the inner sanctum of the Holy See. Martel writes that he spent four years researching it in 30 countries, including weeks at a time living inside the Vatican walls. He says the doors were opened by a key Vatican gatekeeper and friend of Pope Francis who was the subject of the pontiff’s famous remark about gay priests, “Who am I to judge?”

Martel says he conducted nearly 1,500 in-person interviews with 41 cardinals, 52 bishops or monsignors, and 45 Vatican and foreign ambassadors, many of whom are quoted at length and in on-the-record interviews that he says were recorded. Martel said he was assisted by 80 researchers, translators, fixers and local journalists, as well as a team of 15 lawyers. The 555-page book is being published simultaneously in eight languages in 20 countries, many bearing the title Sodom.

The Vatican didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Culture of secrecy

Martel appears to want to bolster Francis’ efforts at reforming the Vatican by discrediting his biggest critics and removing the secrecy and scandal that surrounds homosexuality in the church. Church doctrine holds that gays are to be treated with respect and dignity, but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

“Francis knows that he has to move on the church’s stance, and that he will only be able to do this at the cost of a ruthless battle against all those who use sexual morality and homophobia to conceal their own hypocrisies and double lives,” Martel writes.

But the book’s Feb. 21 publication date coincides with the start of Francis’ summit of church leaders on preventing the sexual abuse of minors, a crisis that is undermining his papacy. The book isn’t about abuse, but the timing of its release could fuel the narrative, embraced by conservatives and rejected by the gay community, that the abuse scandal has been caused by homosexuals in the priesthood.

Martel is quick to separate the two issues. But he echoes the analysis of the late abuse researcher and psychotherapist A.W. Richard Sipe that the hidden sex lives of priests has created a culture of secrecy that allowed the abuse of minors to flourish. According to that argument, since many prelates in positions of authority have their own hidden sexual skeletons, they have no interest in denouncing the criminal pedophiles in their midst lest their own secrets be revealed.

‘Gossip and innuendo’

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of Building a Bridge about how the Catholic Church should reach out more to the LGBT community, said that based on the excerpts he had read, Martel’s book “makes a convincing case that in the Vatican many priests bishops and even cardinals are gay, and that some of them are sexually active.”

But Martin added that the book’s sarcastic tone belies its fatal flaw. “His extensive research is buried under so much gossip and innuendo that it makes it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.”

“There are many gay priests, bishops and cardinals in ministry today in the church,” Martin said. “But most of them are, like their straight counterparts, remaining faithful to a life of chastity and celibacy.”

In the course of his research, Martel said he came to several conclusions about the reality of the Holy See that he calls the “rules,” chief among them that the more obviously gay the priest, bishop or cardinal, the more vehement his anti-gay rhetoric.

Martel says his aim is not to “out” living prelates, though he makes some strong insinuations about those who are “in the parish,” a euphemism he learns is code for gay clergy.

Martin said Martel “traffics in some of the worst gay stereotypes” by using sarcastic and derogatory terms, such as when he writes of Francis’ plight: “Francis is said to be ‘among the wolves.’ It’s not quite true: he’s among the queens.”

Martel moves from one scandal to another — from the current one over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington to the priest-friendly gay migrant prostitute scene near Rome’s train station. He traces the reasons behind Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation and the cover-up of the Mexican founder of the Legion of Christ, the pedophile Rev. Marcial Maciel. In each, Martel parses the scandal through the lens of the gay-friendly or homophobic prelates he says were involved.

Gay rights advocate

Equal parts investigative journalism and salacious gossip, Martel paints a picture of an institution almost at war with itself, rife with rumor and with leaders struggling to rationalize their own sexual appetites and orientations with official church teachings that require chastity and its unofficial tradition of hostility toward gays.

“Never, perhaps, have the appearances of an institution been so deceptive,” Martel writes. “Equally deceptive are the pronouncements about celibacy and the vows of chastity that conceal a completely different reality.”

Martel is not a household name in France, but is known in the French LGBT community as an advocate for gay rights. Those familiar with his work view it as rigorous, notably his 90-minute weekly show on public radio station France Culture called Soft Power. Recent episodes include investigations into global digital investment and the U.S.-China trade war.

As a French government adviser in the 1990s, he played a prominent role in legislation allowing civil unions, which not only allowed gay couples to formalize their relationships and share assets, but also proved hugely popular among heterosexual French couples increasingly skeptical of marriage.

His nonfiction books include a treatise on homosexuality in France over the past 50 years called The Pink and the Black (a sendup of Stendhal’s classic The Red and the Black), as well as an investigation of the internet industry and a study of culture in the United States.

Martel attributes the high percentage of gays in the clergy to the fact that up until the homosexual liberation of the 1970s, gay Catholic men had few options. “So these pariahs became initiates and made a strength of a weakness,” he writes. That analysis helps explain the dramatic fall in vocations in recent decades, as gay Catholic men now have other options, not least to live their lives openly, even in marriage.
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Spain will elect its third government in less than four years after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s fragile socialist government acknowledged Friday its support had evaporated and called an early general election.

Sanchez’s eight-month-old administration met its end after failing to get parliament’s approval for its 2019 budget proposal earlier this week, adding to the political uncertainty that has dogged Spain in recent years.

“Between doing nothing and continuing without a budget, or giving the chance for Spaniards to speak, Spain should continue looking ahead,” Sanchez said in a televised appearance from the Moncloa Palace, the seat of government, after an urgent Cabinet meeting.

The ballot will take place on April 28. It is expected to highlight the increasingly fragmented political landscape that has denied the European Union country a stable government in recent elections.

The 46-year-old prime minister ousted his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy last June, when he won a no-confidence vote triggered by a damaging corruption conviction affecting Rajoy’s Popular Party.

But the simple majority of Socialists, anti-austerity parties and regional nationalists that united against Rajoy crumbled in the past week after Sanchez broke off talks with the Catalan separatists over their demands for the independence of their prosperous northeastern region.

Sanchez saw the Catalan separatists join opposition lawmakers to vote down his spending plans, including social problems he had hoped would boost his party’s popularity.

Sanchez had the shortest term in power for any prime minister since Spain transitioned to democracy four decades ago.

Without mentioning Catalonia directly, Sanchez said he remained committed to dialogue with the country’s regions as long as their demands fell “within the constitution and the law,” which don’t allow a region to secede. He blamed the conservatives for not supporting his Catalan negotiations.

Popular Party leader Pablo Casado celebrated what he called the “defeat” of the Socialists, attacking Sanchez for yielding to some of the Catalan separatists’ demands.

“We will be deciding [in this election] if Spain wants to remain as a hostage of the parties that want to destroy it,” or welcome the leadership of the conservatives, Casado said.

Catalonia’s regional government spokeswoman, Elsa Artadi, retorted that “Spain will be ungovernable as long as it doesn’t confront the Catalan problem.”

Opinion polls indicate the April vote isn’t likely to produce a clear winner, a shift from the traditional bipartisan results that dominated Spanish politics for decades.

Although Sanchez’s Socialists appear to be ahead, their two main opponents — the Popular Party and the center-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) — could repeat their recent coalition in the southern Andalusia region, where they unseated the Socialists with the help of the far-right Vox party.

Vox last year scored the far-right’s first significant gain in post-dictatorship Spain, and surveys predict it could grab seats in the national parliament for the first time.

Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, vowed to use the election to “reconquer” the future, a term that refers back to how Spanish Catholic kings defeated Muslim rulers in 15th-century Spain.

Meanwhile, the Socialists are unlikely to be able to form a new government even if they come to a coalition deal with the anti-establishment Podemos [We Can] party, so a third partner will likely be needed.

Sanchez’s options are limited. On the right, a deal with the Citizens party seemed off the table, as its leader Albert Rivera has vetoed any possible agreement with a Socialist party led by Sanchez himself.

And the prospect of Catalan nationalists joining any ensuing coalition is remote, both in the light of the recent failed talks and the ongoing trial of a dozen Catalan politicians and activists for their roles in an independence bid two years ago.

“The Socialists don’t want an election marked by Catalonia because the issue creates internal division, but right-wing parties will use it as a weapon,” said Antonio Barroso of the Teneo consulting firm.

He said polls have erred in recent elections and that clever campaigning could swing the vote significantly.

“The only certainty … is that fragmentation is Spain’s new political reality,” he said.
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Sitting in her living room, 65-year-old Tatyana Rybalchenko goes through a stack of black-and-white photos from more than 30 years ago. In one of them, she is dressed in a nurse’s coat and smiles sheepishly at the camera; in another, she shares a laugh with soldiers on a road with a mountain ridge behind them.

The pictures don’t show the hardships that Rybalchenko and 20,000 Soviet women like her went through as civilian support staff during the Soviet Union’s 1979-1989 invasion of Afghanistan. Although they did not serve in combat roles, they still experienced the horrors of war.

As Russia on Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the memories are still fresh for the nurses, clerks and shopkeepers, predominantly young, single women who were thrust into the bloody conflict.

Rybalchenko enlisted on a whim. In 1986, she was 33, working in a dead-end nursing job in Kyiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, and was going through a breakup. One day, she joined a colleague who went to a military recruitment office. The recruiter turned to Rybalchenko and asked if she would like to work abroad — in Afghanistan.

She recalls that she was fed up with her life in Kyiv, “so I told him: ‘I’d go anywhere, even to hell!’ And this is where he sent me.”

Family and friends tried to talk her out of it, telling her that Afghanistan is where “the bodies are coming from.” But it was too late: She had signed the contract.

At least 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting that began as an effort to prop up a communist ally and soon became a grinding campaign against a U.S.-backed insurgency. Moscow sent more than 600,000 to a war that traumatized many young men and women and fed a popular discontent that became one factor leading to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Rybalchenko, who worked as a nurse at a military hospital in Gardez, was stunned by the many casualties — men missing limbs or riddled with shrapnel. But there was so much work that she found herself shutting off her emotions.

“At the end, I did not feel anything anymore. I was like a stone,” Rybalchenko said, shedding her normally perky persona.

Friendships helped, and she befriended a young reconnaissance officer, Vladimir Vshivtsev.

He once confided to her that he was not afraid of losing a limb, but he would not be able to live with an injury to his eyes. She recalled him saying “if I lose eyesight, I’ll do everything to put an end to it.”

In November 1987, the hospital was inundated with casualties from a Soviet offensive to open the road between Gardez and the stronghold of Khost, near the Pakistani border.

One of the wounded was Vshivtsev, and Rybalchenko saw him being wheeled into the ward with bandages wrapped around his head. She unwrapped the dressing and gasped when she saw the gaping wound on his face: “The eyes were not there.”

She persuaded her superior to let her accompany him to a bigger hospital in Kabul as part of a suicide watch. She stayed friends with Vshivtsev, and he later became a leading activist in the Russian Society for the Blind. Decades later, he briefly served in the Russian parliament.

Raising awareness

Alla Smolina was 30 when she joined the Soviet military prosecutor’s office in Jalalabad near the Pakistani border in 1985. It wasn’t until 20 years later that Smolina started having nightmares about the war.

“The shelling, running away from bullets and mines whizzing above me — I was literally scared of my own pillow,” she said.

She put her memories on paper and contacted other women who were there, telling the stories of those who endured the hardships of war but who are largely absent from the male-dominated narratives.

She is trying to raise awareness of the role the Soviet women played in Afghanistan, believing they have been unfairly portrayed or not even mentioned in fiction and nonfiction written mostly by men.

The deaths of Soviet women who held civilian jobs in Afghanistan are not part of the official toll, and Smolina has written about 56 women who lost their lives. Some died when a plane was shot down by the Afghan mujahedeen, one was killed when a drunken soldier threw a grenade into her room, and one woman was slain after being raped by a soldier.

In an era when the concept of sexual harassment was largely unfamiliar in the Soviet Union, the women in the war in Afghanistan — usually young and unmarried — often started a relationship to avoid unwanted attention from other soldiers.

“Because if a woman has someone, the whole brigade won’t harass you like a pack of wolves,” Rybalchenko said. “Sometimes it was reciprocal, sometimes there was no choice.”

She said she found boyfriends to “protect” her.

Denied war benefits

While the war grew unpopular at home, Soviet troops and support staff in Afghanistan mostly focused on survival rather than politics. While Afghans largely saw Moscow’s involvement as a hostile foreign intervention, the Soviets thought they were doing the right thing.

“We really believed that we were helping the oppressed Afghan nation, especially because we saw with our own eyes all the kindergartens and schools that the Soviet people were building there,” Smolina said.

After Rybalchenko came home, she could hardly get out of bed for the first three months, one of thousands with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder.

When she asked officials about benefits for veterans and other personnel in Afghanistan, she faced hostility and insults. She said one told her: “How do I know what you were actually up to over there?”

In 2006, Russian lawmakers decided that civilians who worked in Afghanistan were not entitled to war benefits. Women have campaigned unsuccessfully to reinstate them.

Rybalchenko eventually got an apartment from the government, worked in physiotherapy and now lives in retirement in Moscow, where her passion for interior decorating is reflected by the exotic bamboo-forest wallpaper in her home.

Smolina, who lives in Sweden, is wary of disclosing all the details about her own Afghan experiences after facing a backlash from other veterans about her publications.

“Our society is not ready yet to hear the truth. There is still a lingering effect from the harsh Soviet past,” she said. “In Soviet society, you were not supposed to speak out.”
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The United States has called on Europe to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Washington pulled out of last year.

At a two-day conference in Warsaw, attended by more than 60 nations Thursday, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence accused European allies of trying to break American sanctions against what he called “Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.”

“The time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and join with us as we bring economic and diplomatic pressure necessary to give the Iranian people, the region and the world the security, peace and freedom they deserve,” Pence said at a news conference.

​Pompeo adds pressure

Also attending the conference, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said global pressure was mounting on Tehran.

“No country spoke out and denied any of the basic facts that we all have laid out about Iran, the threat it poses, the nature of regime. It was unanimous,” Pompeo said.

Unanimous, perhaps, among those countries attending the conference. Some U.S. allies, however, were notable for their absence, including the foreign ministers of France and Germany. Britain’s representative left the summit early.

All three allies have voiced strong support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and have launched a payment system to bypass U.S. sanctions on Tehran in an attempt to keep the agreement alive.

WATCH: U.S. Rebukes EU Allies Over Iran Deal

US-European divide

Warsaw-based analyst Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations says summit host Poland and some other European states appear closer to Washington’s approach and the United States sees an opportunity.

“I have the feeling that the Trump administration doesn’t care much about Europe’s unity, or even more perhaps it really tries to exploit some divisions within Europe, or even deepen them,” he said.

Jonathan Eyal of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute argued Washington’s approach is in fact aimed at bridging transatlantic divides with European allies.

“The United States is willing to re-engage with them on a Middle East policy, especially on a very sensitive issue like the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran where the gulf between Europe and the U.S. is very big,” he sad. “And secondly it is also another attempt by the State Department to remind the White House that the friends in Europe are irreplaceable when it comes to most of America’s foreign policy objectives.”

The summit was attended by Israel and several Sunni Gulf states. Qatar, Turkey and Lebanon declined to take part. Iran, which did not attend the meeting, dismissed it as “dead on arrival.”
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The United States has called on Europe to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Washington pulled out of last year. At a conference in Warsaw attended by more than 60 nations, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence accused European allies of trying to break American sanctions against what he called Iran’s ‘murderous revolutionary regime.’ Several EU states have refused to attend the meeting, as Henry Ridgwell reports.
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The European Union will give Ireland some leeway to establish new border arrangements with Northern Ireland in case of a no-deal Brexit, sources in the bloc’s political hub Brussels said.

But they said Dublin would soon have to come up with a plan to ensure the integrity of the EU’s single market or face checks on its own goods coming into the rest of the bloc.

“Ireland can get transition periods or some temporary opt-outs on the border in the worst-case scenario,” a senior EU diplomat said.

“But soon enough it will have to face up to the fact that either there is a border on the island or a border between Ireland and the rest of the EU,” the person added.

EU diplomats and officials dealing with Brexit admit it is impossible to set up full border controls overnight as should theoretically be the case if the United Kingdom leaves the bloc without a divorce settlement on March 29.

The issue of a “hard border” on the island of Ireland has hung over Brexit negotiations from the start and is threatening to sink the divorce deal put together over months of painstaking EU-U.K. talks as the British parliament opposes the Irish “backstop” part of it.

The “backstop” is meant as a last resort, a way to prevent full-blown border controls on goods crossing between EU-state Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

But without a U.K.-EU free trade deal, yet to be negotiated, that would tie the latter to the bloc’s trade rules — anathema to hardline pro-Brexit supporters in Britain and British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Northern Irish allies who say it would weaken the province’s links with the rest of the country.

Many in Britain, Ireland and the rest of the EU also fear the return of border checks could reignite violence and make checkpoints a target.

In 1998, Britain and Ireland made the Good Friday Agreement to end 30 years of sectarian violence over whether Northern Ireland should remain British or join the Irish Republic. With both states in the EU, checks along the 500-km (300-mile) land border ended.

“The Irish-Irish border is a European border. The Brexit issue is not a bilateral question between the Republic of Ireland and the U.K. It’s a European issue,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Brussels this month.

Asked to comment on the matter in the Irish parliament Thursday, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said: “Deal or no deal, there is an obligation on the Irish and British governments, and the EU to try and work together to find a way of avoiding physical border infrastructure on this island.”

Hard choice

But an EU official familiar with the bloc’s preparations for a no-deal Brexit said: “In a no-deal scenario, Ireland would have to choose between setting up a physical border with Northern Ireland and de facto leaving the single market.

“If there is no physical border, the customs checks would have to take place on all goods coming from Ireland.”

The EU has made a point of publishing contingency plans for areas from transport to social benefits to university exchanges as the risk of an abrupt split grows. But it has kept silent on the Irish border.

Varadkar’s stark warning last month that the army may have to be deployed to the border “if things go very wrong” highlighted the risks.

The threat that Ireland could lose at least some access to the EU market is not lost on Varadkar who in Brussels spoke of Dublin’s readiness to protect the bloc’s common economic area.

“It’s core to our economic and industrial strategy, core to our prosperity,” he said standing side-by-side with Juncker, promising Ireland would not become a “back door” to the EU.

But while Ireland is promising the EU it would implement border checks, Varadkar also said: “We are making no preparations, no plans for physical infrastructure on the border.”

EU and Irish sources say the only way to ensure customs controls while avoiding border infrastructure is the backstop.

It envisages that many checks would be carried out away from the actual frontier — in market places or production sites.

“It is not possible to erect a border. It’s just impossible and a different solution needs to be found,” said a second EU official dealing with Brexit. “The backstop is our template. It is a solution that is ready and it works.”
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The United States clashed with Iran in the international arena Tuesday. The U.S. is hosting a Middle East conference in Poland with a focus on countering Iran’s influence in the world. An international court based in the Netherlands ruled Tuesday that Iran can proceed with a bid to unfreeze assets in the United States. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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The leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey are meeting in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi Thursday to discuss the conflict in Syria for the first time since the United States announced its troop withdrawal.

Although the Kremlin hasn’t divulged details, a number of observers say questions about the strategic implications of a U.S. pullout and differences between Moscow and Ankara on a political settlement in northern Syria are likely to predominate.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Monday made an unexpected visit to Ankara, where he met with Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar to resolve several issues ahead of the so-called Astana trio gathering — particularly recent developments in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, which borders southern Turkey.

WATCH: Russia, Turkey, Iran Discuss Syria’s Postwar Future

Russia and Turkey cut a deal in September to establish an Idlib demilitarized zone to avert a Syrian government offensive, but the agreement was imperiled last month when al-Qaida-linked Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham militants took control there from Turkish-backed rebels.

While Russia and Iran are close allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey, like the United States, supports differing Syrian rebel factions.

Earlier this week Turkey and Russia jointly called for “decisive measures” to retake control of Idlib, though the statement contained no specifics.

Turkey’s foreign minister recently said Ankara might agree to a limited Russian-backed Syrian offensive to seize Idlib, but that would prove a strategic setback for Ankara, which seeks to capitalize on the U.S. troop withdrawal by retaking oil-rich northeastern provinces held by Kurdish fighters, whom Ankara considers terrorists.

Turkey’s long-term plan to create a buffer zone on the Syria-Turkey border, which has long been bolstered by the U.S. forces, would now require Russian support to enforce.

In the Idlib region where Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham has expanded its reach, any kind of massive military assault would likely mean large-scale civilian casualties and a refugee exodus into Turkey.

​Reconstruction investments

On the premise that an unstable Syria will only increase migrant flows to northern Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin began soliciting postwar reconstruction investment from European counterparts in late 2018.

Rebuffed by European leaders who are unwavering in their conviction that Syria’s estimated $250 billion postwar reconstruction bill belongs solely to Assad, Putin, according to Oxford University analyst Samuel Ramani, has been looking to Saudi Arabia and China as potential investment partners, a move that would put Moscow at financial odds with Tehran, with whom it is militarily partnered in Syria.

“Concerns about competition between Russian and Iranian businesses involved in the reconstruction of Syria came to a head in February 2018, when Moscow beat out Tehran for a major 50-year deal in Syria’s phosphate industry,” he recently wrote in a think piece for the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

Although their mutual interest in safeguarding Assad’s rule may allow Tehran and Moscow to see past financial differences throughout the Sochi talks, he wrote, “tensions could flare up between Russia and Iran once their joint military operations in Syria come to a close.”

Senior Iranian figures last week called Syria a top foreign policy priority and a situation where American troops should have no role whatsoever.

On Sunday, Tehran’s Deputy Defense Minister Reza Talai-Nik warned that “all U.S. bases there are within the range of our cross-border weapons, and if these fail, we’ll strike them from within Iran,” according to a report by the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.

​Moscow as sole broker

As the Astana trio impatiently awaits a full U.S. withdrawal from Syria, some observers say the absence of American boots on the ground may prove a complicating factor for Moscow, which has long sought to assert itself as a broker of global affairs.

“The first question in Sochi is likely to be, who replaces the American presence?” said Alexey Malashenko of the Moscow-based Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute. “And here, there is a misunderstanding between Russia and Turkey, because Turkey has repeated several times that this American place must come to be occupied by Turks, and Russia is against this. So, from that point of view, I think the meeting in Sochi will be very, very difficult for both of those countries.”

Asked if the Astana leadership is even confident in White House plans for withdrawal — President Donald Trump’s statements on the U.S. pullout, which contained no timetable, have been contradicted by members of his own Cabinet — Malashenko said it doesn’t matter.

“Regardless of the specifics, just the possibility of an American withdrawal creates additional problems for Russia,” he said. “In the Kremlin they constantly speak about America as an adversary that creates problems in the Middle East. But if Americans withdraw, what will Russia do? Because for Putin and the Kremlin, the situation with the American presence was at least more or less clear. Now this situation is becoming more and more unclear by the day.”

In his assessment, a sustained U.S. presence would only benefit the Kremlin.

“Maybe it’s a paradox, yes, but I think that’s the case,” he said, adding that a U.S. pullout also leaves Moscow to act as an on-the-ground arbiter between Iran, Syria and Israel.

“Before last year we spoke a lot about the multipolar situation of Tehran, Ankara and Moscow,” he said. “But now it seems that triangle is becoming more and more fragile.”

Putin approval ratings in the balance

Russia’s ability to stabilize Syria in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal also has potential consequences for Putin’s domestic approval ratings, which have been at a low point since late 2018.

Thursday’s summit will start just three days after a survey released by Moscow’s independent Levada Center polling organization showed that more than 50 percent of Russians say top officials are lying to them about the true state of affairs in the country.

Less than a week ago, Reuters published an investigation alleging that the Kremlin covered up mass casualties on the ground in Syria at a time when it is expanding its military activities in the Middle East and Africa.

The Higher School of Economics in Moscow recently published data showing that disposable income has decreased since 2014 and is predicted to drop further this year, which marks the fifth anniversary of U.S. and European Union sanctions resulting from Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.

Several rounds of negotiations over recent years have failed to end the fighting, which has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 people, displaced millions, and devastated many historic sites across the country.

President Trump has received criticism from Republicans, Democrats, and some foreign officials for what they have called a hastily planned withdrawal of the 2,000 U.S. troops, with many saying it leaves Kurdish allies at the mercy of the Turks and hands a victory to Russia and Iran.

Turkey has threatened to attack the United States’ Kurdish allies fighting Islamic State militants in Syria. In January, Trump threatened to “devastate Turkey economically” if Ankara attacks the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces.

Thursday’s talks will be 12th conference organized by Moscow, Ankara and Tehran, including nine held in Astana. The trio last met in November.
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The leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey meet Thursday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to talk about the way forward in Syria as the conflict comes to an end. All three nations have adversarial relations with the United States and have welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he plans to withdraw American troops from Syria. But as Ricardo Marquina in Moscow tells us in this report narrated by Jim Randle, there are big questions about what will happen after a U.S. pullout.
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China has issued a travel warning to its residents visiting Turkey, in a move seen as targeting Turkey’s large tourism industry. The advisory is the latest escalation in bilateral tensions after Hami Aksoy, a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry, condemned China’s treatment of its Uighur minority.

In a statement, Aksoy said 1 million Uighurs have been arbitrarily detained and subjected to torture and brainwashing. Beijing swiftly shot back, calling the Turkish statement “vile.” Chinese officials called on Ankara to withdraw what they described as “false accusations.”

The northwest Xinjiang region of China, home to most of the country’s Uighurs, has been under heavy police surveillance after years of ethnic tensions that have sometimes exploded into violence. 

The Chinese government calls its crackdown a counterterrorism effort.

In the past, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan advocated for the rights of Uighurs, who are ethnically related to modern-day Turks, and the country often received Uighurs seeking asylum. In recent years, however, analysts say booming trade with China became more of a priority for Erdogan and his government.

“They stopped talking about this burning issue, preferring an economic relationship with this giant country,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar said.

Erdogan is a conservative Muslim and has been increasingly positioning himself as a defender of global Muslim rights. The Turkish leader regularly condemns Burma’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims, and he is vocal in his support for the Palestinians.

Aktar said the growing international condemnation of Beijing over its treatment of Uighurs forced Ankara to speak out.

“The issue became universal, and there were reactions all over the world especially from non-Muslim countries. So, [Turkey] felt simply compelled to react to it,” he said.

Election politics also is a factor, with Erdogan’s AKP Party competing in hotly contested local polls next month. Analysts say backing the Uighurs will play well among religious, conservative voters.

Analysts expect Beijing to impose further economic sanctions on Ankara, meaning the price Turkey will pay for standing up for the Uighurs in China could be considerable.
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The International Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that it has jurisdiction to hear part of a case brought by Iran against the United States that seeks to claw back around $2 billion worth of frozen Iranian assets.

The U.S. Supreme Court awarded the money to victims of a 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other attacks linked to Iran.

At hearings last year, the United States raised five objections to the court’s jurisdiction and the admissibility of the case, which Iran filed in 2016.

The ruling came amid high tensions between Washington and Tehran after President Donald Trump pulled America out of the nuclear deal last year.

The United Nations’ highest court upheld one U.S. objection to its jurisdiction, but it rejected another and said the third objection should be discussed at a later stage in the case. The judges also rejected two U.S. objections to the admissibility of the case.

The case will now proceed to the merits phase and is expected to take months or years to complete.

Tehran filed the case in 2016 based on the 1955 Treaty of Amity between Iran and the U.S., a bilateral agreement that Washington withdrew from last year.

The little-known treaty regulating commerce between the two countries was among numerous ones signed in the wake of World War II as the Truman and Eisenhower administrations tried to assemble a coalition of nations to counter the Soviet Union. It includes a clause that sends unresolved disputes about interpretation of the treaty to the world court.

The attack at the heart of the case was a suicide truck bombing of a U.S. marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 that killed 241 military personnel and wounded many more. A U.S. court ruled that the attack was carried out by an Iranian agent supported by the Hezbollah militant group.

The court, in an 11-4 majority ruling, upheld a U.S. objection to its jurisdiction based on state immunity claimed by Iran, however they unanimously rejected Washington’s assertion that measures freezing Iranian assets fell outside the scope of the treaty.

The judges unanimously rejected U.S. claims that the case was an abuse of process and that it should be thrown out because of Tehran’s alleged sponsorship of terrorism and involvement in nuclear proliferation.

Iranian representative Mohsen Mohebi called the decision a success, but added he had expected the court to reject all of the American objections. American lawyers left the court without commenting.
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Catalan separatist and right-wing lawmakers in the Spanish parliament’s lower house rejected Wednesday the ruling Socialist government’s 2019 budget plan, likely paving the way for a call of early elections by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

The 191-158 vote, with one abstention, opens a new crisis in Spanish politics. Members of the cabinet had signaled that a defeat in parliament would lead to a general election. The only other time that a Spanish government lost a budget vote, in 1995, the Socialists were forced to dissolve the parliament and call an election.

Opposition leader Pablo Casado, head of the conservative People’s Party, said Wednesday’s vote was “a de facto confidence vote against Pedro Sanchez.”

Catalan deputies from pro-independence parties had demanded to open talks on the northeastern region’s self-determination in exchange for supporting Sanchez’s spending proposal, but the center-left minority government had rejected that.

The socialist party holds only 84 seats in the 350-seat lower house. Its votes and those of the anti-austerity Podemos party weren’t enough to counter a majority of center-right, conservative and smaller parties voting in favor of six blanket objections.

Sanchez became prime minister in June when the Catalans joined the anti-austerity Podemos and other smaller parties in backing a no-confidence vote against his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy.

Without parliamentary support, Sanchez’s government can’t pass significant legislation and would need to prolong Rajoy’s 2018 spending plan. That leaves the center-left administration without funds for social policies that are key to retaining Podemos’ support.

Sanchez rushed out of the lower house’s chamber shortly after the vote, dodging questions by reporters.

His finance minister, Maria Jesus Montero, said that it made sense that Sanchez’s term, which ends next year, would be shortened with the budget rejection – but that it was up to the prime minister himself to decide if and when to call a new general election.

Talks between Sanchez’s government and a new separatist coalition that took power in Catalonia after 2017’s failed independence push broke down last week when the government refused to accept self-determination talks.

The ongoing trial against a dozen politicians and activists who drove the breakaway attempt in Catalonia two years ago has further angered many pro-independence supporters.

The politically charged trial entered its second day on Wednesday with the Supreme Court prosecutor criticizing what he said were defense lawyers’ attempts to turn the proceedings into an examination of the Spanish state and judiciary.

Prosecutor Javier Zaragoza called “ridiculous” and “unjustified” the arguments made on Tuesday, the trial’s opening day, by defense lawyers who called the case politically motivated and an attempt to eliminate dissent in the troubled northeastern region.

Twelve Catalan politicians and activists face years behind bars if they are convicted of rebellion or other charges for having pushed ahead with a unilateral independence declaration that opened an unprecedented political crisis in Spain.
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