Новини

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to arrest an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor if she conducts activities in his country, arguing it was no longer an ICC member so the court had no right to do any investigating.

Striking out at what he said was an international effort to paint him as a “ruthless and heartless violator of human rights,” Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC’s Rome Statute a month ago and promised to continue his crackdown on drugs, in which thousands have been killed.

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in February announced the start of a preliminary examination into a complaint by a Philippine lawyer, which accuses Duterte and top officials of crimes against humanity, and of killing criminals as a policy.

Duterte has cited numerous reasons why he believes the ICC has no jurisdiction over him, and on Friday suggested that any doubts about that should have been dispelled by his withdrawal.

“What is your authority now? If we are not members of the treaty, why are you … in this country?” he told reporters, in comments aimed at Bensouda. “You cannot exercise any proceedings here without basis. That is illegal and I will arrest you.”

It is not clear whether Bensouda or the ICC has carried out any activities in the Philippines related to the complaint against Duterte. The office of the prosecutor in The Hague and the Philippine foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Drug war toll

Police have since July 2016 killed more than 4,000 people they say are drug dealers who resisted arrest. Activists say many of those were executions, which police deny.

Duterte has told security forces not to cooperate with any foreign investigators and last month said he would convince other ICC members to withdraw.

Duterte had earlier vowed to face the ICC and critics say pulling out is futile, because the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate alleged crimes committed in the period from when the Philippines joined in 2011 to when its withdrawal takes effect in March 2019.

Legal technicality

Under the Rome Statute, the ICC can step in and exercise jurisdiction if states are unable or unwilling to investigate suspected crimes.

But the mercurial former mayor and his legal aides argue that technically, the Philippines never joined the ICC, because it was not announced in the country’s official gazette.

“If there is no publication, it is as if there is no law at all,” Duterte said Friday.
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Ukraine this week dismissed as unacceptable a natural gas transit proposal by Russian energy giant Gazprom. Kyiv’s move will further complicate efforts by Western European governments to persuade their Central European counterparts to withdraw objections to Nord Stream 2, a Kremlin-favored pipeline being built under the Baltic Sea to deliver gas from Russia to Germany without transiting Ukraine and Poland.

The politics of Nord Stream 2 have become increasingly tangled amid heightened tensions between Europe and Russia. Suspicions are growing that the Kremlin wants to develop the new pipeline to reduce the importance of the one running through Ukraine — more for political reasons than commercial ones.

On Monday, Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko dubbed Russia “an extremely unreliable partner” in energy provision. In an interview with a German newspaper, he also said Nord Stream 2 would provide the Kremlin with the opportunity to switch off at will the gas to Ukraine without disrupting supplies to Western Europe. Most of the natural gas Western Europe buys from Russia currently flows through Ukraine.

Nord Stream 2 would replace an older pipeline under the Baltic Sea, and double by next year the amount of Russian gas delivered to Germany, the European Union’s most powerful economy.

German authorities have dismissed in the past Ukrainian and Polish objections to Nord Stream 2, and last month they issued the final permits needed for pipeline construction on German territory and in its territorial waters. Finland also has issued construction permits. 

​Merkel’s stance

But after weeks of lobbying by Kyiv, and with growing pressure from within Germany’s newly formed governing coalition, Chancellor Angela Merkel has started to harden her language about the proposed pipeline. It will cost billions of dollars to build and is planned to run 1,200 kilometers from Vyborg in Russia to Lubmin in Germany.

Russia currently supplies more than one-third of the natural gas Europe uses, though with demand increasing that could reach closer to 50 percent next decade.

In the past, Merkel hasn’t acknowledged a geopolitical dimension when it comes to debating the benefits and drawbacks of Nord Stream 2. She brushed away Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s objections at a Berlin press conference in February. He warned of the dangers of Europe becoming too dependent on Russian energy and said Russia must “not be allowed to have a monopoly and force its prices on the European Union” or use the gas to blackmail EU governments.

But after a meeting Tuesday with Poroshenko, Merkel acknowledged for the first time allies’ concerns over the “political” and “strategic” aspects of the proposed pipeline, saying Nord Stream 2 could proceed only if Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Russian gas also was protected.

She said the earnings Ukraine receives for gas transit rights are of strategic importance. “That is why I have made it very clear that the Nord Stream 2 project is not possible without clarity regarding the transit role of Ukraine,” she said.

Ukraine and Poland aren’t the only European countries objecting to Nord Stream 2. Baltic nations and Slovakia, as well as Sweden and Denmark, have expressed doubts about the project, both out of solidarity with Ukraine, which would lose about $3 billion a year in revenue once the new pipeline was complete, and over fears about Europe’s growing dependence on natural gas supplies from Russia.

That dependency, they fear, could make Europe vulnerable to geopolitical blackmail by Russia. It is a view shared by the U.S., which has urged Germany to be cautious about signing up to Nord Stream 2 and has promised to offer more U.S. gas to Europe.

​Pipeline critics

NATO’s former head, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has described Nord Stream 2 as a “geopolitical mistake” for the EU, saying it would make a mockery of EU sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea.

Last week, the Trump administration included Alexei Miller, the CEO of Gazprom, which is 50 percent owned by the Russian state, on an expanded economic sanctions list.

On Tuesday, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said that the Baltic states, Nordic countries and Visegrad countries had formed a bloc on Nord Stream 2 inside the EU. “We have always been united in our position regarding Nord Stream 2, and we believe that this is not an economic and business but a political project,” he said.

Authorities in Sweden and Denmark are still mulling whether to agree to construction permits. Last year, Denmark’s parliament passed legislation that would allow the Danish government to ban the pipeline from going through the country’s territorial waters.

Gazprom said in March that it would terminate its gas contracts with Ukraine after a European court ordered the Russian giant to pay more than $2.5 billion to Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz, concluding a long legal battle about prices and obligations.

Gazprom transit

But in a statement this week seemingly aimed at assuaging European doubts about the project, Miller, the Gazprom CEO, said his company had never envisaged stopping all transit through Ukraine and would maintain volumes of 10 billion to 15 billion cubic meters per year.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Igor Nasalyk said Wednesday that those amounts were too small to make Russian gas transit economically viable. “Our country will not accept such volumes,” he said.

Ukrainian energy officials say Russia needs to pump at least 40 billion cubic meters of gas per year to make the transit route through Ukraine “economically profitable” for Kyiv. Last year, 93.5 billion cubic meters of Russian gas transited Ukraine to the rest of Europe — about half of the EU bloc’s total purchases from Gazprom.

Merkel’s shift in language about Nord Stream 2 followed a series of highly critical remarks about Russia from Heiko Maas, Germany’s new foreign minister. Ukraine argues the whole project is political, and Poroshenko said this week that his country’s transit pipeline could be modernized more cheaply than the cost of building Nord Stream 2.

Russian officials counter that it is European foes who are trying to turn natural gas into a political weapon by throwing up objections to the new pipeline project. They also contend that Europe will face gas shortages and price spikes next decade if the Russian energy giant isn’t allowed to boost capacity. 
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Amnesty International reports the number of executions around the world continued to fall last year, with a 4 percent drop in executions and a significant decline in the number of new death sentences.

In an annual report on executions and the death penalty released on Thursday, the human rights organization said there were at least 993 executions in 23 countries last year, down 4 percent from 1,032 in 2016 and down 39 percent from 1,634 in 2015.

The vast majority of global executions recorded last year took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan, according to the report.

China

China remained the world’s top executioner, the rights group said. Though the precise number of executions in China remains unknown, Amnesty said “thousands of executions [are] believed to have been carried out” in the country last year.

Four countries — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan — accounted for 84 percent of the reported executions. Iran had at least 507 executions, Saudi Arabia at least 146, Iraq at least 125 and Pakistan at least 60, Amnesty said.

Five other countries — Botswana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sudan and Taiwan reported no executions.

Amnesty International said the drop in executions was driven by growing aversion to the death penalty around the world, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa where 20 countries have abolished the practice and others are taking steps to repeal it.

“Developments across sub-Saharan Africa in 2017 exemplified the positive trend recorded globally, with Amnesty International’s research pointing to a further decrease in the global use of the death penalty in 2017,” said the report.

USA

In the United States, the only Western country with the death penalty, there were 23 executions and 42 death sentences. Though slightly higher than 2016, both figures are in line with historically low trends seen in recent years, Amnesty said.

In Europe and Central Asia, Belarus was the only country to execute people, with at least two executions and at least four death sentences, Amnesty said.

The global trend toward abolishing the death penalty continued.

Executions eliminated

Guinea and Mongolia expunged the death penalty for all crimes. Guinea became the 20th sub-Saharan country to abolish the punishment for all crimes. Kenya ended mandatory death penalty for murder while Burkina Faso and Chad took steps to repeal the practice.

“The progress in sub-Saharan Africa reinforced its position as a beacon of hope for abolition,” Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Salil Shetty said in a statement. “The leadership of countries in this region gives fresh hope that the abolition of the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is within reach.”

At the end of 2017, 106 countries had abolished the death penalty in law for all crimes and 142 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice, according to Amnesty.
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Kensington Palace has announced that politicians and world leaders won’t be attending Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding. But 1,200 members of the public — many involved with charities or community groups — have been invited to the grounds of Windsor Castle for the May 19 celebration. That will give them a chance to see the royals arrive at the chapel and to see the carriage procession after the wedding ceremony.

Here’s a look at some of the people invited:

• Pamela Anomneze, 52, who works with 306 Collective in London, which helps people with mental health issues by teaching them to create mugs, jewelry, textiles and other items.

• Catherine Cooke, 53, and her daughter Julie-Ann Coll, 35, of Northern Ireland. Cooke was chosen for her involvement with a network of women’s groups across the country and Coll for her work with Life After Loss, a child bereavement support group she joined after her 22-week-old son died.

• Kai Fletcher, 18, who was homeless at 15 and now works with a charity called Southside in the English city of Bath.

• Jorja Furze, 12, who was born with only one leg and is an ambassador for Steel Bones, a charity in England that supports civilian amputees.

​- Phillip Gillespie, 30, a former soldier from Northern Ireland who lost his right leg in a combat incident in Afghanistan, where Harry also served.

• David Gregory, 28, a teacher in northeastern England who is a driving force behind efforts to get students more engaged with science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

• Reuben Litherland, 14, who was born deaf and has started giving sign language lessons at his school in England.

• Amelia Thompson, 12, who was caught up in the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22 people last year. As her guest she’s taking Sharon Goodman, the grandmother of 15-year-old Olivia Campbell-Hardy, who died in the attack.

• Amy Wright, 26, from Scotland, chairwoman of the board of directors for The Usual Place, a cafe that provides training opportunities for young adults who need support.

 
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Four laboratories linked to the international chemical weapons watchdog have confirmed Britain’s findings that a nerve agent was used last month to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter.

The confirmations were in an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) report released Thursday.

British Ambassador to the U.N. Karen Pierce said OPCW’s conclusions “agree explicitly with the U.K.’s analysis” and added the chemical used in the attack was a “military-grade nerve agent of high purity.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May said former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned last month in Salisbury, England with a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and ’80s.

The watchdog did not blame Russia for the attack nor did it name the specific chemical agent used.  But British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said only Russia had the “means, motive, and record” to carry out such an attack.

Russia has denied involvement in the attack and contends Britain has not provided evidence to support its allegation.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday Russia would not accept any of the report’s conclusions unless Russian officials were provided access to the ongoing investigation. Zakharova also accused Britain of waging a campaign to discredit Russia.

“We are all simply drowning in a torrent of misinformation that is in one way or another supported by official London,” she told reporters. “There are no grounds to believe that all of this is not the continuation of a crude provocation against the Russian Federation on the part of the British special services.”

Britain, meanwhile, has called on the U.N. Security Council to convene a meeting to discuss the report, according to a tweet from Britain’s mission to the United Nations.

Ambassador Pierce said it would probably be held next Wednesday.

Yulia Skripal was discharged Monday from a British hospital. She said she was still suffering from the effects of the poisoning and her father remains seriously ill.  

She lives in Russia but was visiting her father in Britain when they were poisoned. In a statement issued Wednesday night by Britain’s Metropolitan Police Service that was attributed to her, she rejected an offer of assistance from the Russian Embassy. Zakharova reiterated that British officials were keeping Yulia Skripal in isolation and said Moscow would continue to demand access to her.

 
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America’s allies are offering to join a possible military response to a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. But they’re urging Washington to avoid swift retaliation, saying that before a reprisal is launched, more evidence is needed that Syria was behind the chemical attack.

In very direct terms, U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Twitter Wednesday that a military response was coming:

Russian officials were quick to respond, saying if there was an American strike, then Russia would shoot down the missiles and target the positions from where they were launched.

“Smart missiles should fly toward terrorists, not the legal government that has been fighting international terrorism for several years on its territory,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked in a Facebook post.

Amid the heated social media exchange with threats and counterwarnings, all raising the stakes of a military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, Britain, France and Australia offered backing for a U.S. missile strike, but they weighted their backing with caveats.

And they questioned the deterrent effect of missile strikes, pointing out that U.S. military retaliation a year ago in response to a Syrian government sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun in the northern Syrian province of Idlib had failed to stop Assad from launching other chemical attacks, predominantly with chlorine barrel bombs dropped from regime helicopters.

In a phone conversation with Trump late Tuesday, British Prime Minister Theresa May offered her support but, according to British officials, said Britain would need more evidence of who was behind the suspected chemical attack on Saturday on a rebel-held Damascus suburb. The attack left at least 40 people dead and up to 500 injured.

With inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) preparing to visit the suburb of Douma, the site of the attack, other Western allies said there should be no action until more facts were established.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has said France is ready to commit to punitive action, if it is confirmed that Assad crossed a red line and used chemical weapons. But he appears to want to limit retaliatory strikes to Syrian government chemical weapons facilities.

With the U.S. and its Western allies telegraphing a possible military response, analysts say they have lost the element of surprise and given the Syrian government and its military backers Russia and Iran plenty of time to get ready for an attack.

“The obvious pitfall for this likely U.S.-France-U.K. strike on Assad is that the effect of surprise is totally lost but also has given enough time for the Syrian regime, Russia and Iran to get prepared with anti-aircraft batteries and to empty potential targets,” said Olivier Guitta, managing director at GlobalStrat, a security and geopolitical risk consultancy.

He said the situation now was different from 2013 when Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, threatened to strike at Assad for a chemical attack, also on rebels and civilians in a Damascus suburb.

“Then the repercussions would have been much less in terms of actors because Iran and Russia were barely present in Syria,” he said. “While a strike on Assad is more than overdue since 2013, there’s a risk of conflagration, escalation and the first actual fighting between Russia and the West, opening the door to a longer, protracted conflict,” he warned.

That fear also appeared to be weighing on the minds of European governments allied with the U.S., including among members of May’s ruling Conservative Party in Britain, who worry that the Trump administration has no overall strategy for Syria.

“There are worries about being involved in any military action,” said David Amess, a British lawmaker. “Given the disastrous consequences of our involvement in Iraq, we need a strategy. We need it clearly laid out to parliament, what our objectives are. This is not a straightforward issue and we need to wait for the reports from the OPCW. This is a very dangerous and worrying time.”

Like other senior Conservative lawmakers, he said the prime minister would have no option but to seek parliamentary approval before ordering any strike on Syria. Julian Lewis, chairman of the British Parliament’s defense committee, said Tuesday: “When we are contemplating military intervention in other people’s conflicts, Parliament ought to be consulted first.”

That raises the prospect of a repeat of the setback suffered by May’s predecessor in Downing Street, David Cameron, who sought Parliament’s agreement in 2013 to participate in a U.S.-led military strike on Syria, only to lose the vote. The withholding of British support contributed to Obama’s decision to stay his hand and not to enforce his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government.

British officials said Trump had not formally asked May to participate in military action. They also said there were no immediate plans to recall the House of Commons, which is currently in recess. But May has called for a meeting Thursday of her “war cabinet,” prompting concern among opposition leaders that she might commit to some joint action without seeking parliamentary approval first.

In a statement after May’s conversation with the U.S. leader, Downing Street said the two had agreed that the international community had to respond, but they stopped short of blaming the Syrian government, which denies being behind the Douma attack. That contrasted with the tone of U.S. officials, who have been clear in pointing the finger at Assad.

The former head of British armed forces, Lord Richard Dannatt, said that if the U.S and Britain did take action, it shouldn’t be restricted to an isolated retaliatory strike, which, he said, on its own would be meaningless. 

A reprisal, he said, has to be done within a “broader strategy.” He said an isolated “missile strike like the one Donald Trump ordered last year wouldn’t achieve anything, and that didn’t achieve anything.”

Dannatt dismissed various and shifting Russian explanations for the attack, including Kremlin claims that the White Helmets, a first-response volunteer organization operating in parts of rebel-controlled Syria, could have faked the attack. “The Russians have developed fake news into an art form,” he said.

“Up to this moment, it has seemed much more than likely, and high on the balance of probabilities, that this was an attack using chemical weapons carried out by the Syrian regime. … And it is right that they don’t get away with it,” he said.
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When the U.S. fired Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield a year ago after a chemical weapons attack, the Pentagon gave Moscow advance warning to get its personnel out of harm’s way.

Since then, U.S.-Russian relations have soured, and the two nuclear powers have raised the ante, getting dangerously close to a potential military clash in Syria.

U.S. President Donald Trump has taunted Moscow to “get ready” for “nice and new and ‘smart”‘ missiles coming to punish Syria for a purported chemical attack on Saturday that killed at least 40 people. The tweet followed Russia’s warning that it will strike at incoming U.S. missiles and their launch platforms.

The defiant posture leaves both the White House and the Kremlin with fewer options to respond without losing face.

A stern statement last month by Russia’s top military officer effectively drew a red line on any U.S. strike. Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, said Russian military officers are at Syrian facilities throughout the country and warned that “if a threat to our servicemen emerges, the Russian armed forces will take retaliatory measures against both missiles and their carriers.”

Some say the U.S. could launch a limited strike like it did in April 2017, when it hit Syria’s Shayrat airfield with cruise missiles after warning Russia. Such a scenario would allow Washington to claim it made good on its promise to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad without triggering a clash with Russia.

A pinpoint U.S. strike on Syrian targets that does not harm Russian personnel “will allow Trump to say that the Assad regime has paid a heavy price … and Russia, in its turn, will be able to limit itself to ringing statements,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies, an association of top Russian political and security experts.

He added, however, that the U.S. would be unlikely to warn Russia of the coming strike this time.

“The context of the relations has changed radically in the past year: We’re in a state of a real and tangible Cold War,” Lukyanov said.

Cooling relations

Moscow’s hopes of warmer ties with Washington under Trump have been shattered by the ongoing U.S. investigations of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and its potential ties with the Trump campaign. The Trump administration has ramped up sanctions against Russia and expelled dozens of diplomats. Tensions between the two countries have escalated on a broad range of issues — from the crisis in Ukraine to the war in Syria to the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain, which triggered the massive diplomatic war.

President Vladimir Putin’s top adviser, Vladislav Surkov, said in an article released earlier this week that Russia has abandoned its centuries-long aspirations of integrating into the West and is bracing for a new era of “geopolitical loneliness.” Surkov warned that “it’s going to be tough,” but added cryptically that “it’ll be fun.”

Opinions vary about what may happen in Syria.

“The situation is pretty bad, but it shouldn’t be overdramatized,” Alexei Malashenko, a leading Russian expert on Syria said in televised remarks. “I don’t believe that a clash between Russia and the U.S. is possible.”

Washington and Moscow both have said that a hotline established in 2015 to prevent incidents between their militaries in Syria has worked well, but the rising stakes make the situation more unstable than ever during the Syrian conflict.

Possible scenarios

Under one possible scenario, Russia may try to use its sophisticated electronic warfare systems deployed in Syria to make U.S. missiles veer off course without shooting them down. If that softer option doesn’t work, the Russian military could use an array of its state-of-the-art air defense assets in Syria to target the U.S. cruise missiles or drones.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, a senior lawmaker in the Kremlin-controlled lower house of parliament, said in televised remarks that the Russian military was getting its electronic countermeasures and air defense assets ready for action. He added on a combative note that the situation offers a “good chance to test them in conditions of real combat.”

An even more threatening situation may evolve if the U.S. and its allies use manned aircraft, and the Russian strike results in casualties.

Such a scenario could trigger a quick escalation, leaving Russia and the U.S. on the brink of a full-scale conflict — a situation unseen even during the darkest moments of the Cold War.

Retired Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Buzhinsky, the former chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s international department, warned that Russia has thousands of military advisers in Syria “practically in every battalion,” and a strike on any Syrian facility could jeopardize their lives. He warned that Russia and the U.S. will quickly find themselves in a major conflict if they allow a collision in Syria to happen.

“I have an impression that Americans’ survival instincts have grown numb, if not vanished completely,” Buzhinsky said. “They seem not to really believe that Russia will give a tough military response and expect some sort of a local brawl, exchanging some minor blows. It’s a miscalculation. Any clash between Russian and U.S. militaries will expand beyond a local conflict and an escalation will be inevitable.”

Fears of war

Andrei Klimov, the head of an upper house committee that investigates foreign meddling in Russian affairs, proudly said on the top talk show on Russian state TV that his relative, a Soviet pilot, won a medal for combat duty in Vietnam. Klimov pointed to heavy U.S. losses from Soviet missiles and jets in Vietnam, adding that Russia stands ready to counter any possible U.S. strike.

Unlike the Vietnam War, where Soviet advisers helping North Vietnam supposedly weren’t directly engaged in combat, the potential clash in Syria would pit Russia directly against the U.S.

Fears of war swept Russian newspaper headlines and TV news, with commentators discussing the darkest possible outcomes, including a nuclear war.

“What if the war starts tomorrow?” the front page of Moskovsky Komsomolets clamored on Wednesday. Russia’s best-selling newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda wondered: “Is macho Trump going to start World War III?”

Even former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev weighed in. The 87-year-old former president compared the tensions to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and said he feels “great concern.”
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The daughter of poisoned former spy Sergei Skripal said Wednesday that she didn’t want help from the Russian Embassy as she recovers from the nerve agent attack that left her and her father in critical condition and created an international furor.

Yulia Skripal, 33, said in a statement that she found herself with a “totally different life” than the one she had before the March 4 poisoning in southwest England. She was released from the hospital this week, while Sergei Skripal remains hospitalized.

“I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance,” Skripal, a Russian citizen who was visiting her father in the cathedral city of Salisbury, said in the statement. “At the moment, I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but if I change my mind I know how to contact them.”

Britain has blamed the attack on Russia, triggering the expulsion of more than 150 Russian diplomats from Western countries. Russia vehemently denies any involvement and has responded by expelling the same number of diplomats.

Russian criticism

Yulia Skripal’s statement, which was distributed by London’s Metropolitan Police, is important because the Russian Embassy in London has criticized the British government for not allowing diplomatic staff to visit the Skripals since they were stricken. Britain has said it is up to the father and daughter to decide whether they want to meet with embassy officials.

Earlier, the embassy protested that its requests for consular access had been “left without a substantial reaction on part of the British authorities.”

“We would like to know what exactly the British side did to comply with its international obligation under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the bilateral Consular Convention, and what were the reasons for such a unfounded conclusion,” the embassy said.

Yulia Skripal’s statement also addressed a controversy over her cousin, Viktoria. British officials alleged that the cousin was a pawn of the Russian government after she gave interviews with Russian media outlets.

Skripal thanked Viktoria for her concern and asked her to “not visit me or try to contact me for the time being.”

“Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s,” Yulia Skripal said.
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One of Hungary’s two national opposition dailies will shut down on Wednesday due to financial problems, its publisher said, in a sign of rapidly deteriorating prospects for media freedom after the landslide re-election of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The closure of Magyar Nemzet will be a milestone in the gradual disappearance of independent media in Hungary that western European Union leaders and international rights groups say underlines the country’s slide into authoritarianism.

The 80-year-old daily is owned by tycoon Lajos Simicska, once an ally of the right-wing nationalist prime minister who fell out with him and became one of his staunchest opponents in the election campaign.

Simicska’s media holdings, once highly profitable, incurred heavy losses after he fell out with Orban and his publications were deprived of government advertising.

“Due to the financing problems of Magyar Nemzet, the owners have decided to cease media content production activity from April 11, 2018. Therefore Magyar Nemzet and its online version mno.hu will close,” the publisher said in on its website.

The timing of the announcement, two days after Orban won a two-thirds majority for the third time with the ability to amend the constitution to entrench his power, suggests the newspaper’s closure had political dimensions.

“Simicska dedicated his past year to revenge (against Orban), and his media portfolio was a conduit for that,” Policy Solutions analyst Tamas Boros said. “Now that he sees Orban with another two-thirds majority, it was no longer worth his while.”

“He sees the results, anticipates government revenge, and is shutting down unprofitable media organizations.”

Magyar Nemzet publisher’s will also close Lanchid Radio, a sister radio station, at midnight on Tuesday and seek buyers for other Simicska group outlets.

Orban has become the central European country’s dominant leader by projecting himself as a savior of its Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, an image which resonated with more than 2.5 million voters on Sunday.

Orban’s Fidesz party, in power since 2010, has turned public broadcasters into obedient mouthpieces, his closest allies have bought big stakes in privately owned media and advertising has been channelled to heavily benefit government-friendly outlets.

Businessmen close to the premier purchased then-shuttered Nepszabadsag, the country’s top opposition newspaper, in 2016.

They also bought up nearly all regional dailies and acquired dozens of radio licenses covering the entire country.

The only remaining independent publications with widespread reach are the RTL television group owned by Germany’s Bertelsmann and the news website Index.hu, where a close Simicska associate sits on the board of the foundation that owns the company.

The other independent national newspaper, Nepszava, is owned by ex-Socialist Party treasurer Laszlo Puch via an Austrian company, but has far less readership than Index.
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Russian retailers warned of price increase after ruble tumbles

European electronic and household goods manufacturers have warned Russian retailers of a possible 5 to 10 percent rise in prices after the ruble tumbled this week due to U.S. sanctions, retailers said on Tuesday.

Eldorado, which operates over 400 stores in Russia, said the hikes may mean it has to adjust its retail prices.

“Suppliers have already started warning of a possible 5-10 percent adjustment in prices,” a spokesperson for Eldorado told Reuters, adding that the warnings had primarily come from European manufacturers that do not produce goods in Russia.

A spokesperson for M.Video, which operates a network of 424 stores, also said that some of its suppliers had told them of plans to raise prices by between 5 and 10 percent.

The ruble fell sharply on Monday as investors took fright after a new round of U.S. sanctions against Moscow, targeting officials and businessmen around Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The ruble extended its losses on Tuesday, shedding over 3 percent of its value against the dollar, as investors continued a sell-off of assets fueled by fears that Washington could impose more sanctions and a realization that Russian credit and market risks had substantially increased.
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Emmanuel Macron has blurred a line that has kept French government free of religious intervention for generations, critics said on Tuesday, after he called for stronger ties between the state and the Catholic Church.

The issue is particularly sensitive in historically Catholic France, where matters of faith and state were separated by law in 1905 and which is now home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities.

The president’s remark might have raised fewer eyebrows had he left it until later in a one-hour speech on Monday night to Church dignitaries in Paris, where he began by saying that just arranging such a gathering was an achievement in itself.

“If we’ve done so, it must be because somewhere we share the feeling that the link between Church and State has been damaged, that the time has come for us, both you and me, to mend it,” he said.

Critics, many his natural political opponents, took the president to task.

“It took three centuries of civil war and struggle to get to where we are and there’s absolutely no reason to turn the clock back … because of an intellectual whim of the president’s,” said hardline leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, a candidate in the election that brought Macron to power last May.

Former prime minister Manuel Valls and Socialist Party head Olivier Faure said the separation of church and state must remain a mainstay of political life, in a country where public service employees are banned from wearing Muslim veils and other dress with religious connotation.

Gay rights groups, who fought a bitter campaign against the Church over the introduction of same-sex marriage in 2013, were also critical.

The role of Islam

Raised in a non-religious family, Macron was baptized a Roman Catholic at his own request when he was 12. His government is now struggling to redefine the role of France’s second most popular religion, following a spate of attacks by Islamist militants that have killed around 240 people since early 2015.

Hardline Islam sits uneasily with France’s secular foundations, and Macron is under mounting pressure to address voter fears that its influence may spread via mosques and prisons that offer fertile ground for radical proselytizers.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe responded in February by introducing prison isolation zones and more stringent licensing rules for faith-based schools.

France’s guiding principles also hold that religious observance is a private matter, for all faiths.

Catholic leaders present for Macron’s speech seemed less persuaded than his political detractors that might soon again be exerting influence on government.

Cardinal Georges Pontier, who met the president on Monday night, told CNews TV he read the remarks as nothing more than an invitation to more open dialogue.

“Some people imagine the Church wants to take power over people’s minds and more, but that’s not true,” he said.

This story was written by Reuters.
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