Новини

As global leaders digest the fallout from a stormy United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, China has strongly denied accusations from President Donald Trump that it is trying to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections next month.

Meanwhile the diplomatic tussle has intensified between the United States and other signatories over the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as the U.S. prepares to hit Tehran with fresh sanctions.

Trump’s accusations against China took many at the U.N. by surprise. In a news conference Wednesday evening, the president was asked by reporters what evidence he had to support his claim.

“It will come out. I can’t tell you now. But it came, it didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said.

WATCH: World Digests Stormy UN General Assembly, Trump’s Tough Talk on Iran, China

China, not Russia?

Beijing strongly denies trying to influence U.S. politics, and many in China question why President Trump did not mention the investigation into Russian meddling, says analyst and professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“It would appear that the allegation that Donald Trump made against China, when he deliberately not mentioned about Russia, really was to distract attention domestically in the United States. So the Chinese are rather upset about it. And I would expect that Putin in Russia is rather pleased about it,” Tsang told VOA.

Trump’s accusation, taken alongside the ramping up of trade tariffs, marks a significant escalation of tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“The real issue for China is the status and the standing of President Xi and therefore the Communist Party in the country as a whole. President Xi cannot afford and therefore will not agree to appearing to be weak in front of an American onslaught like that,” Tsang said.

​Iran sanctions

Meanwhile the diplomatic tussle intensified at the United Nations between the United States and other signatories over the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as the U.S. prepares to hit Tehran with fresh sanctions. Chairing a U.N. Security Council meeting Wednesday, President Trump set his sights firmly on Iran, accusing it of spreading “chaos, death and destruction.” Middle East analyst Aziz Alghashian of the University of Essex says Trump’s words are aimed at others in the region.

“I think he is trying to appease the allies that he has in the region, the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), Saudi Arabia and Israel. And I think that is very important for him because he tried to repatch the bad relations, or the tense relations that the allies had with Obama.”

The United States pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May. The five remaining signatories, the U.K., France, Germany, China and Russia, want to create an alternative payment system to bypass U.S. sanctions. At a press conference Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reacted with anger to those plans.

“By sustaining revenues to the regime you are solidifying Iran’s ranking as the No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” he said.

At the U.N. Wednesday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani praised efforts to keep the nuclear deal alive.

“Until such time when we keep reaping the benefits promised within that agreement for our nation and our people, we will remain in the agreement. Should the situation change, we have other paths and other solutions,” President Rouhani told reporters in New York.

Analyst Aziz Alghashian believes Europe has little room for maneuver.

“There’s a lot of European companies that rely on the American economy, so they must take that into account as well when the sanctions hit,” Alghashian said.

Those new sanctions are set to hit in November. President Trump has pledged that they will be “tougher than ever before.”
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As global leaders digest the fallout from a stormy United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, China has strongly denied accusations from U.S. President Donald Trump that Beijing is trying to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections in November. Meanwhile, the diplomatic tussle has intensified between the United States and other signatories over the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as the U.S. prepares to hit Tehran with fresh sanctions. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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President Gjorge Ivanov on Thursday urged Macedonians to boycott a referendum on changing the country’s name, saying making such a change would amount to “historical suicide.”

“On September 30, I will not go out and vote, and I know that you, my fellow citizens, will make a similarly wise decision,” Ivanov said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

Macedonians are being asked to change the name of their country to North Macedonia to end a decades-old dispute with neighboring Greece and pave the way for the country’s admission into NATO and the European Union.

Athens has argued that the name belongs exclusively to its northern province of Macedonia and that using the name implies Skopje’s intention to claim the Greek province.

Greece has for years pressured Skopje into renouncing the country’s name, forcing it to use the more formal moniker Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in the United Nations.

It has also consistently blocked its smaller neighbor from gaining membership in NATO and the EU as long as it retains its name. 

Ivanov said giving into Athens’ demand would be a “flagrant violation of sovereignty.” He has steadfastly refused to back a deal reached between Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and his Greek counterpart, Alexis Tsipras, that put the name change to a vote.

“This referendum could lead us to become a subordinate state, dependent on another country,” Ivanov said. “We will become a state in name only, not in substance.”
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Moscow has responded derisively to a report by a Britiain-based investigative group claiming one of the two men suspected of poisoning ex-spy Sergei Skripal is a highly decorated colonel in Russian military intelligence.

A report by Bellingcat asserted Wednesday that the man identifying himself as Ruslan Boshirov is really Anatoly Chepiga, a military intelligence colonel awarded the Hero of Russia, the country’s highest honor.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova characterized the report as a stunt timed to coincide with British Prime Minister Theresa May’s address to the U.N. General Assembly.

“There is no proof, so they are continuing their information campaign whose main task is to divert attention from the main question: WHAT HAPPENED IN SALISBURY?” Zakharova wrote on Facebook Wednesday, referring to the British town where the poisoning occurred.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the president’s administration had seen the Bellingcat report but dismissed it.

“Lots of people look like one another,” he said when questioned about the physical similarities between Boshirov and the photo of Chepiga published in the report.

Putin has denied that the men in question are spies, repeatedly identifying them as civilians.

His government has been accused of being behind the March poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok, a nerve agent developed in the Soviet era.

The report said the man identified as Chepiga, 39, graduated from the Far-Eastern Military Command Academy, one of the country’s top training grounds for marine commandos and special forces.

He is said to have fought in Chechnya and possibly Ukraine, receiving the Hero of Russia award in 2014 for “conducting a peace-keeping mission,” probably a reference to the Ukraine conflict.

The report said it was “highly likely” that Putin knew Chepiga as he personally hands out the Hero of Russia awards.

 
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Residents in a small Russian village have identified one of the two suspects in the nerve agent poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain as a senior intelligence agent, Russia’s respected Kommersant daily said Thursday in a report that backed up findings by an investigative group.

Britain-based investigative group Bellingcat on Wednesday named one of the men suspected to have carried out the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter as Col. Anatoly Chepiga, an agent with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU who was awarded Russia’s highest medal, Hero of Russia, in 2014.

The suspect had been named by British authorities as Ruslan Boshirov, and he had also appeared on Russian television channel RT under that name denying any involvement in the poison attack. The Bellingcat report published a photo from Chepiga’s 2003 passport that resembled Boshirov, but didn’t contain further proof that they are the same person.

Kommersant on Thursday interviewed several residents of Beryozovka, the small village where Chepiga’s family used to live, and quoted them confirming that Chepiga is one of the suspects identified by British authorities.

The villagers said they have not seen Chepiga for about ten years, but could recognize him in the photos released by British police and in the interview on RT. One resident described him as a “very good, clever boy.” Another said people in the village knew that Chepiga was “in the secret service” and that his mother was worried about his assignments.

Britain has charged Boshirov and another suspect, Alexander Petrov, with trying to kill Skripal and his daughter on March 4 with the Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury. Britain has said the attack received approval “at a senior level of the Russian state,” an accusation Moscow has fiercely denied.

Both men appeared in an exclusive interview with the Kremlin-funded RT television station earlier this month, when they denied any role in the poisoning or links to the intelligence services. They said they were in the sports nutrition business and that they were in Salisbury on vacation.

Putin earlier this month said the two suspects are civilians who did nothing criminal.

Asked about Bellingcat’s report, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that the president stands by his statement. He added that the Kremlin doesn’t know who Chepiga was, but promised to check whether he received Russia’s highest award.

A search in the Spark-Interfax corporate database shows that Vladimir Chepiga, whose first and family names indicate that he could be Anatoly Vladimirovich Chepiga’s father, has a 6 percent holding in a small construction company based in the village of Beryozovka.

A local patriotic society briefly wrote about Anatoly Chepiga in a December article, saying he graduated in 2001 from the Far Eastern Military Command College. The article said he had been on assignment in Chechnya three times and has been awarded “Hero of Russia”.

Some Russian media on Thursday tried to debunk Bellingcat’s findings.

Russia’s best-selling newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Thursday quoted a Defense Ministry employee who pointed to what he described as several discrepancies in the investigation.

The Defense Ministry source, who was unnamed because he is still an active serviceman, reportedly said that it was unlikely that a graduate of the Far Eastern Military Command College could be a spy because the school doesn’t train intelligence officers.

Chepiga, however, went on to study at another military academy after that, according to Bellingcat.

The official also cast doubt on reports that Chepiga worked in Ukraine, for which he reportedly was awarded Hero of Russia.

Many others, including Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, focused on Belligcat’s sources rather than on the content of the revelations.

Maj. Gen. Alexander Mikhailov told the National News Service radio station that the data released by Bellingcat is so highly confidential that they couldn’t have been leaked. He called the report “nonsense.”

Russian commentators posted numerous memes online on Thursday, making fun of Chepiga’s allegedly blown cover identity.

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-funded RT channel that scored the exclusive interview with the two suspects, posted one of them on Thursday. In the meme, Simonyan asks one of the suspects in a speech bubble: “Are you Chepiga?” and the man who called himself Boshirov replies: “Are you?”

 
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The presiding judge in the appeal by Radovan Karadzic against his genocide and war crimes convictions removed himself from the case Thursday, following a request by the former Bosnian Serb leader’s lawyer.

The decision by American Judge Theodor Meron could delay a ruling in the appeal that had been expected before the end of the year at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. The mechanism is a court set up to deal with appeals and other residual issues from now-closed temporary tribunals for the Balkan wars and Rwandan genocide.

Meron’s decision follows a ruling removing him and two other judges from the appeal of Karadzic’s former military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, for appearance of bias because they had previously convicted lower-ranking Bosnian Serb officers.

In his written decision, Meron stressed that, had he remained on the five-judge appeals bench, “I would continue to adjudicate the Karadzic Case with an impartial mind.”

He also criticized the decision to remove him from Mladic’s appeal, saying that it “clearly contradicts established jurisprudence and, in my view, harms the interests of the Mechanism.”

Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment after being convicted in March 2016 on 10 counts including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as the political mastermind behind Serb crimes in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He was acquitted of one genocide charge. Prosecutors appealed the acquittal and urged judges to increase Karadzic’s prison term to life behind bars.

Mladic was convicted last year of largely the same crimes following a separate trial. He was given a life sentence.

Meron appointed Portuguese judge Ivo Nelson de Caires Batista Rosa to replace him on the Karadzic appeal.
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A group of British investigative journalists have identified a highly decorated member of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) as one of two men accused of trying to assassinate an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain earlier this year.

British prosecutors have charged two Russians, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of trying to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, with the Soviet nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. 

On Wednesday, the investigative website Bellingcat reported that Boshirov was actually Col.  Anatoliy Chepiga, who was awarded Russia’s highest honor — Hero of the Russian Federation — in 2014.

The New York Times reported that the Russian news outlet Insider has confirmed Bellingcat’s findings. 

British authorities say the suspects arrived at London’s Gatwick airport two days before the poisoning took place.  

Their journey from a London hotel to the crime scene in Salisbury was tracked by security cameras. The two men then flew out of Heathrow Airport back to Russia the same evening.

Boshirov and Petrov were charged in absentia with carrying out the attack. In an interview on the Kremlin-funded RT channel, they denied they were GRU agents and claimed to work instead in the nutrient supplements business. The suspects said they visited Salisbury to see its famous cathedral and did not know Skripal or where he lived.

Britain quickly rejected the claims. 

“The government is clear,” Britain said, that the men “used a devastating toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.” 

Skripal and his daughter recovered from the attack, but a British woman who touched a discarded perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent died. 

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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Israel should think carefully before attacking Syria again once it obtains the sophisticated S-300 defense system from Russia, a Damascus official said.

The warning followed pledges from Moscow to deliver the missile system after last week’s downing of a Russian plane by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli airstrike.

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said late Tuesday that the S-300 should have been given to Syria long ago.

Israel, “which is accustomed to launching many aggressions under different pretexts, will have to make accurate calculations if it thinks to attack Syria again,” he said.

The Russian Il-20 military reconnaissance aircraft was downed by Syrian air defenses that mistook it for an Israeli aircraft, killing all 15 people on board.

Russia laid the blame on Israel, saying Israeli fighter jets were hiding behind the Russian plane, an account denied by the Israeli military.

On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the S-300s will be delivered to Damascus within two weeks. Earlier in the war, Russia suspended a supply of S-300s, which Israel feared Syria could use against it.

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said the delivery would be a “significant escalation” in already high tensions in the region and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he would raise the matter this week with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at the U.N. General Assembly.

Mekdad said the missiles are for defensive purposes, adding that “Syria will defend itself, as it always did” — a reference to missiles Syrian forces fired at Israeli warplanes carrying out airstrikes inside Syria over the past months.

Meanwhile, in northwestern Syria, preparations were underway to set up a demilitarized zone around the rebel-held province of Idlib, the last major area controlled by a mix of Turkey-backed opposition fighters and other insurgent groups, including al-Qaida-linked militants.

Two jihadi groups have so far rejected the plan to set up a demilitarized zone by Oct. 15. The al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, the largest militant group in Idlib province, has not said yet whether it approves setting up the zone.

A Turkish security official said Wednesday that there were “indications” that some insurgents were leaving the demilitarized zone in and around Idlib but that it was unclear whether a “concrete” withdrawal of radical groups has started. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

Russia and Turkey agreed last week to set up a demilitarized zone around Idlib to separate government forces from rebels, averting a government offensive on the last major opposition stronghold in Syria.

Also Wednesday, Russian Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Ilyin said more than 3,150 Syrians returned to their homes in the past week, including 494 refugees. The rest were internally displaced people.

Moscow has called for international assistance for Syrian refugee returns, rejecting Western arguments that the Mideast country remains unsafe.

Ilyin, who spoke during a conference call on coordination of efforts to encourage the return of refugees, said the total of more than 1.2 million internally displaced people and more than 244,000 refugees have regained their homes.

In seven years of civil war, some 5.5 million Syrians have fled their homeland and millions more were internally displaced.
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Danish submarine inventor Peter Madsen, convicted of torturing and murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard one of his own vessels last year, lost his appeal Wednesday against his life sentence.

The Danish version of a life sentence typically is about 16 years long, but it may be continuously extended if the court rules that circumstances call for it. Madsen had sought a time-limited term. Now the 47-year-old could potentially spend the rest of his life in prison.

His defense had argued that Wall’s death was an accident, although Madsen himself admitted to throwing her body parts into the Baltic Sea.

The prosecution had argued that Madsen’s motive was sexual and that the murder was planned.

“I’m terribly sorry to Kim’s relatives for what happened,” Madsen told the court. Wall’s parents were not present.

A Copenhagen court ruled in April that Madsen had lured Kim onto his home-made submarine UC3 Nautilus with the promise of an interview, where she then died. The exact cause of her death has never been established.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy speech to the 73rd session of the U.N. General Assembly drew mixed reaction from world leaders. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff has this report looking at the international community’s response.
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Morocco’s navy opened fire on a boat carrying migrants off its Mediterranean coast Tuesday, wounding four.

Moroccan officials say the boat’s Spanish captain ignored orders to stop.

The wounded migrants were taken to a hospital while authorities seized the boat and opened an investigation. It gave no other information.

Meanwhile, France, Germany, Malta, Portugal and Spain reached a deal Tuesday to take in a boatload of 58 migrants stranded at sea.

The Aquarius will dock in Malta, where the 58 migrants will disembark and head for their new homes.

A dog named Bella is also aboard the ship. Her final destination has not been revealed.

Italy’s new right-wing government refused to let the ship dock, saying it has taken in enough migrants over the past several years and other EU members need to help out.

France also denied permission for the boat to go to Marseille, saying under the law of the sea, the ship needs to head to the closest port.

Two well-known charities — Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee — operate the Aquarius.

The ship picked up more than 600 migrants from the Mediterranean in June. EU nations squabbled for nearly two months over who is responsible for accepting them before several nations gave them refuge.
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