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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday that Russian interference in last year’s presidential election created “serious mistrust,” and that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed “a lot of work” that has to be done regarding U.S.-Russia relations.

The two top diplomats held talks on the sidelines of a regional forum in the Philippines where Tillerson said he told Lavrov the U.S. will respond by Sept. 1 to Russia’s order to remove hundreds of diplomats and other staff from U.S. diplomatic facilities in Russia.

“I told the foreign minister that we had not made a decision regarding how we will respond to Russia’s request to remove diplomatic personnel,” Tillerson said.

First meeting since sanctions announced

The meeting was the first high-level contact between the two countries since U.S. President Donald Trump last week reluctantly signed new sanctions into law to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election to help him win.

Lavrov said that despite the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “We felt that our American counterparts need to keep the dialogue open. There’s no alternative to that.”

The U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly for the sanctions. Trump, faced with the likelihood that Congress would override a veto if he rejected the legislation, approved the sanctions measure even as he called it “significantly flawed” with “clearly unconstitutional provisions.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama, weeks before he left office, expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian facilities in the United States after the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the election interference.

Russia official explains staff cuts

Russia did not retaliate at the time, but with the approval of the new sanctions, Moscow ordered the U.S. to cut 755 diplomats and staff workers, many of them Russians, from its embassy and consulates in Russia. Lavrov said he explained to Tillerson how Moscow would carry out the sharp cuts in the U.S. diplomatic missions, but did not publicly disclose any details.

Trump has been largely dismissive of the investigations in Washington over the Russian election interference, calling them a “witch hunt” and an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset victory over his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Numerous congressional probes are underway, while Special Counsel Robert Mueller has opened a grand jury investigation into whether Trump campaign aides illegally colluded with Russian interests on Trump’s behalf in the election and whether Trump obstructed justice when he fired former Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey, who was leading the agency’s Russia probe before Mueller took over.

Volker to meet with Russians

Lavrov also said Sunday that the U.S. is soon sending its envoy for negotiations over unrest in eastern Ukraine to Moscow for talks about the ongoing violence.

He said U.S. diplomat Kurt Volker would meet with Russia’s envoy for the Ukraine crisis, Vladislav Surkov. Volker last month visited eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Kyiv’s forces for more than three years. It is a conflict during which Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and more than 10,000 people have been killed.

Tillerson in his comments to reporters said Russia is showing “some willingness” to start discussing a resolution to the Ukraine crisis.  He said the U.S. and Russia have deep differences, but that it’s not a good idea to “just cut everything off on one single issue.”

 
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The Trump administration is sending its envoy for Ukraine negotiations to Moscow in a bid to make progress on the diplomatic crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Sunday.

After his first meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson since new American sanctions, Lavrov emerged with an upbeat assessment about the potential for finding common ground on Ukraine, Syria and other issues.

Lavrov said he and Tillerson had agreed to preserve a high-level diplomatic channel that Russia had suspended in protest of an earlier tightening of U.S. sanctions.

“We felt that our American counterparts need to keep the dialogue open,” Lavrov said. “There’s no alternative to that.”

There was no immediate reaction to the meeting from the U.S. State Department. Tillerson did not comment publicly or respond to shouted questions from journalists allowed in briefly for the start of the hour-plus meeting in the Philippines.

Lavrov said Tillerson had asked him for details about Moscow’s recent action to retaliate against U.S. sanctions by expelling American diplomats and shuttering a U.S. recreational facility on the outskirts of Moscow. The Russian diplomat said he explained to Tillerson how Russia will carry out its response, but Lavrov isn’t giving out details.

Last month, the Kremlin said the U.S. must cut its embassy and consulate staff in Russia by 755 people, a move that echoed former President Barack Obama’s action last year to kick out Russian diplomats in punishment for Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 American election. The Russian announcement has caused confusion because the U.S. is believed to have far fewer than 755 American employees in the country.

Word that U.S. special representative Kurt Volker plans to visit the Russian capital was the latest sign that Washington is giving fresh attention to resolving the Ukraine conflict. The U.S. cut military ties to Russia over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and accuses the Kremlin of fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine by arming, supporting and even directing pro-Russian separatists there who are fighting the Kyiv government.

In recent days, the Trump administration has been considering providing lethal weaponry to Ukraine to help defend itself against Russian aggression.

Lavrov didn’t say when Volker, a former NATO ambassador, would go to Moscow. Last month, Volker paid his first visit as special representative to embattled eastern Ukraine.

In their meeting, Lavrov said, Tillerson agreed to continue a dialogue between U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. That channel was created to address what the U.S. calls “irritants” preventing the two countries from pursuing better ties. Russia had suspended the talks after the U.S. tightened existing sanctions on Russia related to its actions in Ukraine.

Lavrov and Tillerson met on the sidelines of an Asian regional gathering in the Philippines. It was their first face-to-face conversation since Congress passed new legislation in July that makes it harder for Trump to ever ease penalties on Russia. Trump signed the bill last week, but called it “seriously flawed.”

The White House said Trump’s opposition stemmed from the bill’s failure to grant the president sufficient flexibility on when to lift sanctions. Trump’s critics saw his objections as one more sign that he is too eager to pursue closer ties to Russia, or to protect the former Cold War foe from penalties designed to punish Moscow for its actions in Ukraine, election meddling and other troublesome behavior.

A U.S. Justice Department investigation is moving ahead into Russia’s election interference and potential Trump campaign collusion. Trump denies any collusion and has repeatedly questioned U.S. intelligence about Moscow’s involvement.

At the same time, Trump’s administration has argued there’s good reason for the U.S. to seek a more productive relationship. Tillerson has cited modest signs of progress in Syria, where the U.S. and Russia recently brokered a cease-fire in the war-torn country’s southwest, as a sign there’s fertile ground for cooperation.

The Syrian cease-fire reflected a return of U.S.-Russia cooperation to lower violence there. The U.S. had looked warily at a series of safe zones in Syria that Russia had negotiated along with Turkey and Iran — but not the U.S.

Lavrov said there will be more talks in the coming week involving Russia, Iran and Turkey about how to ensure the truce in the last safe zone to be established, around the north-western city of Idlib. He predicted “it will be difficult” to hammer out the details but that compromise can be reached if all parties — including the U.S. — use their influence in Syria to persuade armed groups there to comply.
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Turkish police said they were working with Australian authorities to investigate a foiled plot to bomb an Etihad Airways flight using explosives which Canberra said were flown in from Turkey.

In a statement issued late on Saturday police said they had contacted Australian authorities as soon as they received news of the foiled plot.

The two sides have “started working to clarify unclear and unconfirmed matters regarding the possibility that explosive substances were sent from Turkey three months ago,” said the statement carried by Turkish media.

Australian police said on Friday that an Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to Sydney airport last month to catch an Etihad Airways flight carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat grinder.

High-grade military explosives used to build the bomb were sent by air cargo from Turkey as part of a plot “inspired and directed” by the militant Islamic State group, police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said.

The plot targeted an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but the bomb never made it past airport security, he said.
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Emmanuel Macron’s honeymoon didn’t last long.

Less than three months after his election, France’s energetic and image-conscious president has seen his popularity drop after announcing budget cuts, launching a divisive labor reform and engaging in a damaging dispute with the military.

A series of opinion polls last week showed the percentage of French citizens who said they were satisfied with Macron’s policies and trusted their young leader to deal with the country’s problems plunging. The reversal might not affect the visible international profile he has cut since taking office, but it could hurt Macron’s ability to secure his ambitious domestic agenda.

France’s Ifop polling agency put it bluntly: “Apart from Jacques Chirac in July 1995, a newly elected president has never seen his popularity rate falling as quickly during the summer after the election.”

His declining approval is striking given that Macron was being credited two months ago with giving France a boost of much-needed confidence after years of security fears and economic stagnation. Increasingly, he instead is portrayed as power-hungry and inexperienced.

The French media have started calling Macron “Jupiter,” a reference to the mythological king of the Roman gods and what is perceived as the president’s superior attitude after he upended France’s political landscape and shot from relative obscurity to the nation’s top post at age 39.

While struggling at home, Macron has succeeded in raising France’s diplomatic profile, hosting meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump and Libyan peace talks in Paris.

Jean-Daniel Levy, director of the Policy and Opinion Department at the Harris Interactive polling institute, connects the president’s popularity slide to the government’s plans to reduce housing aid for students and to initiate tax reform. The reform aims to help lower-income employees, but could weigh on retirees.

Macron’s image also has taken a hit during his standoff with the French military chief over budget cuts. Gen. Pierre De Villiers resigned and was quickly replaced, but some saw last month’s public dispute as evidence of the president’s authoritarian tendencies.

Macron has promised to boost defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2025 as part of France’s commitments to NATO, but the government announced a reduction of 870 million euros in military spending for this year.

The government also launched the labor reforms that were central to Macron’s campaign promise to boost France’s lagging economy through pro-free market policies. Changes would include capping the potential financial penalties for companies sued for firing employees and giving businesses greater leeway to set workplace rules instead of relying on collective bargaining agreements.

Labor unions and France’s far-left parties are fighting the reforms, saying they would weaken hard-won worker protections. Critics also resent the way Macron is trying to speed their approval. The government is invoking a special procedure to avoid a lengthy debate in parliament.

Daniel Fasquelle, a lawmaker from the conservative The Republicans party denounced Macron for what he called the “will to weaken all opposition” and for refusing to give interviews. Except for carefully choreographed photo opportunities, the president has distanced himself from the media. He canceled the traditional Bastille Day television interview.

“These are excesses the French judge more harshly and they are right,” Fasquelle said on France’s Info radio. “It simply means the president is not up to the task… He’s paying for his own lack of experience. Maybe he got too quickly, too soon, high responsibilities that are overwhelming him.”

Government spokesman Christophe Castaner acknowledged that Macron has been standoffish with the press, but offered an alternative explanation.

“No one can blame him [Macron] for rarely speaking,” Castaner told reporters. “I understand it can irritate a bit. I understand it can be questioned. But I think you and me should get used to it because the president has decided not to be a commentator [of the news], but an actor.”

Macron is expected to return from his August vacation to a tough September, with unions and far-left parties calling for street protests against his proposed labor reforms.

 
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Britain is prepared to pay up to 40 billion euros ($47 billion) as part of a deal to leave the European Union, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported, citing three unnamed sources familiar with Britain’s negotiating strategy.

The European Union has floated a figure of 60 billion euros and wants significant progress on settling Britain’s liabilities before talks can start on complex issues such as future trading arrangements.

The government department responsible for Brexit talks declined to comment on the Sunday Telegraph article. So far, Britain has given no official indication of how much it would be willing to pay.

The newspaper said British officials were likely to offer to pay 10 billion euros a year for three years after leaving the EU in March 2019, then finalize the total alongside detailed trade talks.

Payments would be made only as part of a deal that included a trade agreement, the newspaper added.

“We know ([the EU’s] position is 60 billion euros, but the actual bottom line is 50 billion euros. Ours is closer to 30 billion euros but the actual landing zone is 40 billion euros, even if the public and politicians are not all there yet,” the newspaper quoted one “senior Whitehall source” as saying.

Whitehall is the London district where British civil servants and ministers are based.

‘Go whistle’

A second Whitehall source said Britain’s bottom line was “30 billion euros to 40 billion euros,” and a third source said Prime Minister Theresa May was willing to pay “north of 30 billion euros,” the Sunday Telegraph reported.

David Davis, the British minister in charge of Brexit talks, said on July 20 that Britain would honor its obligations to the EU but declined to confirm that Brexit would require net payments.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit advocate, said last month that the EU could “go whistle” if it made “extortionate” demands for payment.

Last week, the Bank of England said Brexit uncertainty was weighing on the economy. Finance Minister Philip Hammond wants to avoid unsettling businesses further.

If Britain cannot conclude an exit deal, trade relations would be governed by World Trade Organization rules, which would allow both parties to impose tariffs and customs checks and leave many other issues unsettled.

The EU also wants agreement by October on rights of EU citizens already in Britain, and on border controls between the Irish Republic and the British province of Northern Ireland, before trade and other issues are discussed.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin stripped to his waist to brave the cold waters of a mountain lake as part of a three-day fishing and hunting trip in the Siberian wilderness, the Kremlin said.

Putin, 64, is renowned for his strong-man publicity stunts, which have contributed to his sky-high popularity ratings. The trip comes eight months before Russia’s presidential election next March and, though he has yet to announce his candidacy, Putin is widely expected to run and to win comfortably.

The hunting and fishing expedition took place on Aug. 1-3 in the republic of Tyva in southern Siberia, on the Mongolian border, some 3,700 km (2,300 miles) east of Moscow.

Pictures and video footage released by the Kremlin on Saturday showed Putin — who is also a keen practitioner of martial arts and ice hockey — spear-fishing, swimming and sunbathing alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“The water in the lake doesn’t get warmer than 17 degrees, but this didn’t stop the president from going for a swim,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

“He went hunting underwater with a mask and snorkel … The president chased after one pike for two hours, there was no way he could shoot it, but in the end he got what he wanted.”

 
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Russia’s former ambassador to Washington, Sergei Kislyak, said on Saturday his conversations with former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn had been transparent and focussed on matters of U.S.-Russia cooperation.

Kislyak ended his tenure in Washington in July but remains a key figure in ongoing U.S. investigations into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became known that he had failed to disclose the content of conversations he had with Kislyak and misled U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence about their meetings.

“We only spoke about the most simple things… but the communication was completely correct, calm, absolutely transparent. In any case, there were no secrets on our side,” Kislyak said during a panel discussion on Russian television.

“There are a number of issues which are important for cooperation between Russia and the United States — most of all, terrorism. And that was one of the things we discussed.”

 
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A new study shows that deaths that result from extreme weather in Europe could increase 50 times by the end of the century if the effects of global warming are not curbed.

In the study published Saturday by The Lancet Planetary Health journal, scientists say weather-related disasters could kill more than 152,000 people a year by 2100, up from 3,000 per year recently. The researchers say the toll could be especially high in southern Europe.

“Unless global warming is curbed as a matter of urgency and appropriate adaptation measures are taken, about 350 million Europeans could be exposed to harmful climate extremes on an annual basis by the end of this century,” the report said.

Study’s assumptions

The study’s predictions are based on an assumption that there is no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and that no improvements take place to curb the effects of climate change.

The team of scientists looked at the most harmful weather-related disasters — heat waves, cold snaps, wildfires, droughts, floods and windstorms — across the European Union, plus Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. They looked at records of weather-related events in those countries for a 30-year stretch and compared them with projections for population growth and future weather disasters.

Heat will be deadliest

Their findings predicted that heat waves would be the most lethal weather disasters, causing 99 percent of all future weather-related deaths in Europe. The researchers said deaths from coastal flooding would also increase sharply, from six deaths per year at the beginning of this century to 233 a year by the end of it.

“Climate change is one of the biggest global threats to human health of the 21st century, and its peril to society will be increasingly connected to weather-driven hazards,” said Giovanni Forzieri of the European Commission Joint Research Center in Italy, who co-led the study.
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Alaska is the biggest – yet one of the least populated American states. There are just over 741,000 people living there – oil industry workers, adventurers from all over the U.S., Native Alaskans, immigrants. Within this complex cultural mosaic there is a group known as Russian Old believers. Nearly 50 years ago, they established a village called Nikolaevsk on Alaska’s Kenai peninsula. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from there.
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Top U.S. intelligence officials are refusing to back down over concerns about Russia, even as U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian officials lament what they describe as deteriorating relations between the two countries.

“Our values and our interests are not aligned naturally,” Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a small group of reporters this week.

“Russia desires to be the center of influence in the European theater,” Stewart said. “There will be a perpetual contest between us and the Russian state for either regional or global dominance.”

Stewart, who spoke before the latest public sparring between Trump and Congress over Washington’s approach to Russia, also warned of Moscow’s ability to interfere and shape the playing field.

“They’ve got their heads wrapped around the idea that 21st-century warfare is as much cognitive as it is kinetic,” Stewart said.

This is not the first time Stewart, who has led the DIA since July 2015, has warned about Russia’s intentions.

In the DIA’s “Russia Military Power” report, released in late June, Stewart cautioned that Russia “is manipulating the global information environment” and was especially successful in Crimea and in Syria at “shaping the information environment to suit its interests.”

Despite such warnings from Stewart and other high-ranking intelligence officials, Trump has pushed for improving ties with Russia.

This past week, the president signed legislation authorizing new, tough sanctions against Russia but took to Twitter, warning of the consequences.

“Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low,” President Trump tweeted, adding, “You can thank Congress.”

Trump has also dismissed concerns about multiple investigations into allegations of possible collusion between his presidential campaign and the Russians, telling a rally in West Virginia on Thursday, “The Russia story is a total fabrication.”

Russian officials have been quick to echo Trump’s sentiments.

“We fully share this opinion,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Friday, when asked about ties between the U.S. and Russia being at a “very dangerous low.”

A tweet from Russia’s embassy in South Africa said the U.S. was using “primitive Cold War era cliches.”

Those themes were also picked up and disseminated by Russian disinformation networks on Twitter, according to a new online dashboard from the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Hashtags with “trumprally” and “westvirginia” were used with heavy or increased frequency during the course of Thursday and Friday based on the dashboard’s look at about 600 Twitter accounts with links to Russia’s propaganda efforts.

In addition to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency director, other top U.S. intelligence officials have warned about Russia’s influence activities.

“They’re trying to undermine Western democracy,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Aspen Security Forum late last month, admitting Russia’s influence efforts are “quite a bit more sophisticated than they used to be.”

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who like Coats was nominated by Trump, told the same forum there was no doubt in his mind Russia would continue efforts to meddle in U.S. elections.

“They have been at this a hell of a long time,” Pompeo said.  “And I don’t think they have any intention of backing off.”

Still, Pompeo refused to rule out working with Russia in areas where Moscow and Washington could find common ground, such as counterterrorism.

He said that “if Russia has information that can help us fight the CT [counterterror] fight around the world, it’s my duty” to work with them and “the right thing to do.”
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Mikheil Saakashvili, since last week the world’s only stateless former president, says he could have remained safely in the United States, or perhaps settled with his family in his wife’s home nation, the Netherlands.

But instead, the former Georgian leader, who last week was stripped of his adoptive Ukrainian citizenship, turned up without notice Thursday in Poland, where he stands at risk of being deported to Georgia to face criminal charges that he says are politically motivated.

“No, I could have [received residency in the United States], I was even offered to do it, but I didn’t want to take it,” he told VOA’s Georgian service in an interview this week. “Like many people, I obviously have [a temporary] visa, but that’s it. I never had any intention to stay in the U.S. and I am not now intending to stay.”

As for the Netherlands, “If I had wanted a Dutch citizenship, I would have taken it a long time ago,” he said. “On the contrary, my wife is now a Georgian citizen. My kids are Georgian. Formally I’m not, of course, but I am in real terms. This thing will never be on the table for me.”

Saakashvili, who reportedly had been staying with relatives in the New York borough of the Bronx while planning his next move, told VOA he loves to visit the United States. “I feel at home here, but my home is Georgia and Ukraine, for sure.”

Both countries, however, are off limits, especially without a passport. Georgian authorities insisted this week they are going ahead with criminal proceedings against him and, after a falling out with his college friend President Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine is threatening to deport him to Tbilisi if he turns up there.

It was not immediately clear why he chose to travel to Poland, where news reports say he attended an event marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. But it does get him closer to home.

It also leaves him in considerable jeopardy. A spokesman for the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Tbilisi says authorities in Poland have already been approached with a request for his extradition. “All relevant procedures have been started in accordance with the law,” the statement said.

It has been a strange and winding journey for Saakashvili, the hero of Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” who led demonstrators to storm the parliament in 2003, ending the post-Soviet rule in Tbilisi of one-time Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. For years he was welcomed in Washington as a hero of Western-style democracy.

But by the end of his second and last term in office, his party had lost control of parliament, and soon afterward he left the country in the face of what he dismisses as trumped-up criminal charges.

To the rescue came his old friend Poroshenko, who provided him not only a Ukrainian passport but also a post as governor of the southwestern province of Odessa. But because Georgian law stipulates that anyone who acquires another passport automatically loses Georgian citizenship, the move cost him his Georgian passport.

Looking to burnish his own reformist credentials in the post-Euromaidan upheaval, Poroshenko placed Saakashvili, along with a handful of ex-Georgian democratic revolutionaries, in Ukrainian government sectors tainted by graft.

“But the ‘Georgian team’ wasn’t doing well in Kyiv, hemmed in by the all-powerful bureaucracy and a political elite that wanted [Saakashvili] to fail,” wrote Bloomberg’s Lenoid Bershidsky.

Increasingly at loggerheads with Kyiv’s leadership, Saakashvili resigned the governorship and announced the formation of a new political movement last fall. Last week, on his first departure from Ukrainian soil since moving to form his own party, Saakashvili learned via international news reports that Poroshenko had removed his citizenship in what several experts are calling a politically paranoid maneuver.

“This is an issue that distracts from what should be the main focus of Ukrainian officials, which is economic reform, anti-corruption, and defending the homeland,” David Kramer, former deputy assistant Secretary of State, told VOA.

“Why pick a fight with Saakashvili at this time?” he asked. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, though coming after President Poroshenko’s trip to Tbilisi two weeks ago, it does not seem like a mere coincidence. The revoking of Saakashvili’s citizenship seems intended to placate Georgian officials who viewed their former president’s role in Ukraine as an irritant in relations.”

“It is hard to see what benefit there is for the citizens of Ukraine in taking away Saakashvili’s passport,” said Thomas Melia, a fellow at the George W. Bush Institute who frequently visited Georgia and Ukraine under the Obama administration.

“The stated reason — that the government of Ukraine didn’t know there were criminal charges pending against Saakashvili in Georgia when he came to Ukraine — is preposterous,” he told VOA. “All the world knew there were charges pending.”

In his interview with VOA this week, Saakashvili said his temporary U.S. work visa, which he acquired during a brief stint in Washington several years ago, is set to expire in less than a year.

“This threat of denied citizenship has been there forever, and I got used to it,” he said of the Ukrainian prosecutor’s threat on Wednesday to extradite him to his native Georgia should he return to Kyiv.

“Frankly I did not think [Poroshenko] would do it so brutally, so immediately after coming back from Tbilisi,” he said of his former boss’s visit to the Georgian capital.

In keeping with his legendary appetite for political battle — his U.S. Secret Service codename was “Energizer Bunny” — Saakashvili appears determined with his sudden arrival in Warsaw to mount yet another campaign, this time in the courtrooms of Kyiv or Strasbourg.

“If the Administrative Court [of Ukraine] doesn’t work out, we will go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg,” he recently told an Interfax reporter. At VOA headquarters, however, he refused to elaborate on exactly how he might advance his search for a country to call home.

“Look, I’m fighting every day. I’m talking to you. I talk to multiple Ukrainian journalists, to think tanks. I am trying to help the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian people,” he said. “I’ve seen so much suffering, so much deprivation because of selfishness, greed, immorality of the ruling political class. How can I not try to help? That’s my natural instinct. That has nothing to do with my political aspirations or ambitions.”

He pauses.

“Of course I might have ambitions,” he added. “But that is secondary.”

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian Service.
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Three firefighters have been hurt battling a large brush fire south of the Greek capital, Athens.

Authorities have ordered the evacuation of dozens of homes in two communities in Lagonissi, a coastal area 30 kilometers from Athens, after several homes and cars were destroyed in the fire.

Dozens of firefighters and fire engines are taking part in the operation.

Winds up to 60 kilometers per hour were hampering the firefighting effort, while temperatures in the area reached 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).

Albanian fires

In Albania about 300 firefighters and military personnel are working to keep under control about 25 wildfires that have broken out in the last 24 hours. About 20 of the fires are threatening residential areas in the capital, Tirana, as well as in the cities of Vlora, Dibar, Elbasan and Berat, where vast areas of forest are burning.

Albanian authorities have asked neighboring Greece and Italy, as well as the European Union, for assistance in controlling the fires near Tirana and along the country’s Riviera.

Two airplanes are expected to arrive in Albania from the Greek island of Corfu and from Puglia, Italy, to assist the civil emergency units on the ground.

Corsica winds, heat

Wildfires are also taking a toll on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, approaching the famous hikers’ route known as the GR20.

Authorities have issued warnings about soaring temperatures expected in Corsica and the southern French mainland, and the added threat of high winds.
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Turkey, once considered the model of an open, secular democracy in the Muslim world, now seems to be stuck in reverse. The government is cracking down on dissidents and erasing the line between religion and state in a country that has served as the bridge between East and West.

Founded nearly a century ago, the overwhelmingly Muslim republic incorporated Western thought and philosophy and focused on science. It became an early member of NATO and aimed for European Union membership.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, riding a wave of domestic conservatism, is turning toward increasingly authoritarian rule. The once-vibrant news media have been the target of mass arrests since a failed coup attempt a year ago, with journalists joining opposition legislators in jail on terrorism charges.

Thousands of workers have been culled from the civil service and school system. The education curriculum was revamped to eliminate the theory of evolution from most classrooms. Proposed legislation would allow local religious leaders to register and conduct marriages.

Fears of extremism

Critics inside and outside the country see a steady assault on the secular system, along with marginalization of minorities, which they fear could feed extremism.

“Basically, President Erdoğan is destroying Turkey’s secular education system,” said Soner Cagaptay, Turkey program director at the Washington Institute policy organization. “That is the key reason why Turkey worked as a democratic society, which did not produce violent jihadist radicalization.

“The replacement of secular education with a nonsecular curriculum will inevitably expose Turkey to jihadist recruitment as well as radicalization efforts by groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida, both of which thrive across Turkey’s border in Iraq and Syria.”

The Education Ministry announced July 18 that the new national curriculum dropped the theory of evolution and added the concept of jihad. The ministry said evolution is above the level of students and was not directly relevant. It also said jihad was an element of Islam and had to be taught correctly.

​Mustafa Balbay, of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), questioned the changes.

“We have to look at this issue as a whole,” Balbay said. “If you do that, you will see that new steps by the government will move our students away from science and scientific knowledge. Science is the basis of the modern Turkish republic. An 18-year-old person is old enough to be elected to public office, but you tell him he can’t understand the theory of evolution. It makes no sense.”

But the change mirrors the sentiments of much of Erdogan’s conservative supporters.

“Evolution is monkey theory. I don’t believe in monkey theory. Allah created us,” said Kemal, a cab driver in Erzurum. “In Turkey, we as a society have to become more religious. I support the government’s moves. I am a Muslim. I want our country to produce more religious and more ethical generations.”

Rushed legislation

The proposal to open the marriage system to clerics emerged from the Cabinet Erdoğan installed after a recent referendum. Opposition and women’s rights groups say the changes could open the door to underage marriages and could be used to force Islamic traditions on other religions.

They don’t see the need to rush the legislation through, pointing out there are higher priorities, given that the current civil marriage bureaus aren’t overworked.

“It is not a surprise that the first action undertaken by the Cabinet … is an initiative that will inflict another blow to secularism,” said Candan Yuceer, deputy chair of parliament’s committee on gender equality and a member of the opposition CHP. “This is not a regulation that emerged out of need, but instead is the government’s arbitrariness.”

Parliament lost much of its clout in the referendum, which despite a clearly split electorate, gave Erdoğan the ability to revamp the judiciary and other government organizations to suit his agenda. More regressive legislation is in the works, and there has been talk of restoring the death penalty, which has drawn protests from Germany and other European nations.

The CHP says it will try to stop the marriage bill in parliament, although opponents are finding themselves off balance in fighting the government’s moves. Last year’s attempted coup has significantly weakened the opposition. The government has shackled most of the media and critics of Erdogan’s more conservative policies find themselves labeled as terrorists.

Reporters Kasim Cindemir in Washington and Yildiz Yazicioglu in Ankara contributed to this report.
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One of the most deprived suburbs in Paris is expected to be a big winner now the French capital is in line to host the 2024 Olympics with thousands of homes and a new swimming center to be built in Seine-Saint-Denis for the games.

The poorest of France’s 101 mainland departments, Seine-Saint-Denis sprawls east and north from Paris, much of it a drab expanse of grey buildings, abandoned factories and poverty.

Paris learned on Monday that it was a near certainty to be the IOC’s chosen host for the 2024 games when its only remaining rival, Los Angeles, agreed to wait another four years. Budapest, Boston, Hamburg and Rome had all pulled out of the race.

“La Joie est Libre! (Joy Ahead!),” said the front-page headline of L’Equipe sports newspaper, welcoming the news with a play on words. A series of Islamist militant attacks frightened away many visitors from the French capital and city officials hope winning the bid will boost tourism.

Organizers of the games say their aim to lift Seine-Saint-Denis’s fortunes helped their case with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

“Bearing in mind the symbolic and real divides which there sometimes still are between Paris and its suburbs, this young, working class place, with young people of all colors and all origins allows us to say to the IOC that these games are a wonderful opportunity to show that Paris is bigger than Paris,” Stephane Troussel, president of Seine-Saint-Denis, told Reuters.

Tony Estanguet, co-chair of the Paris bid, said: “We looked at the success of the games in London and for sure, the fact that London succeeded in leaving a strong legacy, a physical legacy in the east of London, was very important for us.”

Not Convinced

Not all locals are sure of the benefits however. Some have half an eye on Stratford, a swath of east London that was redeveloped for the 2012 games, but where rising rents have pushed locals out of similarly created new housing there.

“When there is a lot of investment landlords will also take advantage by adding a bit, increasing the rents,” said Fode Abass Toure, a 45-year-old resident of Bobigny.

“And even the restaurants will try to increase prices of products because a lot of tourists will come,” he said.

Seine-Saint-Denis has a reputation as a Socialist bastion where the French Communist Party and hard-left have a strong presence. It was in the area where the deaths of two youths who were hiding from police in a power station set off 2005 riots.

Unemployment in and around its main towns of Saint-Denis and Bobigny is approaching double the national average at more than 18 percent. Three out of 10 of its 1.5-million-strong population are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, mostly from Africa, a similar proportion are classed as living in poverty.

The Paris games – which have a relatively modest budget by recent standards at around 7 billion euros ($8.27 billion), will leave behind two permanent new developments, both of them in Seine-Saint-Denis.

They are the Olympic Village itself, which will be converted after the games to provide more than 3,500 homes, and a swimming center to stand alongside the Stade de France stadium, built for the 1998 football World Cup, now to be reborn as the Olympic Stadium where track and field athletes will compete.

“Same in Sport”

At a run-down local pool that will be transformed into a water polo venue, children splashed as they played during a visit by Reuters.

“Sport brings people together,” said sports activity leader Jose Defaria, aged 22.

“Even if we don’t come from the same social background, I think we’re the same in sport, we are brought closer together and we make links and it’s good for everyone. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”

Paris 2024 – enthusiastically backed by the country’s tennis-playing new President Emmanuel Macron – plans to make the most of the city’s existing sports facilities and take full advantage of its landmarks.

Boxers will compete alongside tennis players at the clay court French Open tennis venue, Roland Garros, on the city’s western fringe, while the nearby clubs Paris Saint Germain and Stade Francais will host respective sports of soccer and rugby.

Distance races on foot and bicycle will start and finish at the Eiffel Tower, in whose shadow the ever-popular beach volleyball competition will play out.

Fencing and taekwondo will be held under the majestic steel and glass of the Grand Palais near the Champs Elysees, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has bet her reputation on the Seine river being clean enough for open water swimming in time for the games.

Attacks Scared Tourists

Official confirmation due in September would mean one of the world’s most visited cities can mark the centenary of the 1924 Paris Olympics with a repeat showing. Amongst the stars of those games was U.S. swimming gold medalist Johnny Weismuller who later became known for his role in the Tarzan films.

Hoteliers are keen for a much-needed shot in the arm.

Although hotel occupancy rates are rising, up 7.2 percent at 76.9 percent in the first half of this year, they are short of the 80 percent rate hoteliers enjoyed in 2014 before Islamist militant attacks scared off tourists.

A successful Olympic legacy is far from assured for any city, with recent hosts enjoying contrasting fortunes.

The legacy of the Athens Games left derelict, run-down arenas and unused stadiums. Four years earlier, Sydney used the Games to develop an Olympic Park which is now a thriving commercial, residential and sporting suburb.

Four years after Athens, Beijing aimed to use the games to showcase itself as a progressive world power. London’s 2012 evoked a feelgood factor before domestic politics reversed that optimism. In 2016, while Rio’s games lacked a certain luster they underlined the South American nation’s ability to deliver in the face of economic and social adversity.
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The German government has condemned Vietnam’s “unprecedented and blatant violation” of German and international law by kidnapping a Vietnamese citizen seeking asylum in Berlin and returning him to Hanoi to face criminal charges.

The German foreign ministry expelled a Vietnamese intelligence officer and summoned Vietnam’s ambassador to hear a complaint that the incident “has the potential to have a massive negative impact on relations between Germany and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

A statement issued in Berlin Wednesday said senior German officials have “no reasonable doubt” that Vietnamese security services and embassy staff carried out the kidnapping last week of Trinh Xuan Thanh, 51, an executive of the state-owned energy company PetroVietnam, which has been the target of recent corruption investigations that have ensnared government and business leaders. Thanh is accused of responsibility for nearly $150 million in losses by a division of PetroVietnam at a time when he headed that group.

Seized by armed men

A Vietnamese-language newspaper and German media reported that armed men accosted and seized Thanh in Berlin’s Tiergarten, a large forested park in the German capital, July 23, the day before he was to appear for a hearing on his request for political asylum in Germany.

Thanh, a former high-ranking member Vietnam’s Communist Party, turned up in Hanoi this past Monday. Police in the Vietnamese capital claimed he decided to turn himself in, 10 months after an international warrant was issued seeking his arrest.

The Hanoi police did not explain how Thanh made his way from Berlin or why he returned home. No pictures of him have been published and family members were said to have been unaware that he was back in Vietnam.

The German foreign ministry said Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government was demanding that Thanh be allowed to travel back to Germany immediately, so authorities there could examine both his asylum application and Vietnam’s request for his extradition. In addition, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, Martin Schaefer, told reporters: “We reserve the right to draw further consequences, if necessary, at a political, economic and development policy level.”

In Hanoi, no comment

VOA asked the Vietnamese foreign ministry to comment on the case but received no response. Media reports in Germany said the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin was not responding to any inquiries.

Vietnam’s current anti-corruption drive marks a period of change and maneuvering within the country’s Communist Party.

“Massive corruption has been like rust eating away at the authority of the legitimacy of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” Professor Carl Thayer told VOA from Australia.

Thayer, an emeritus professor of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy, explained: “This has been openly acknowledged by top party officials for well over a decade. Each major corruption case is judged not only on the financial loss to the state, but also on its impact on political stability.

“I liken anti-corruption campaigns to campaigns to end prostitution,” Thayer continued. “They are never-ending, because human greed is involved and officials will take risks.”

Quick promotions for Thanh

Thanh, a Hanoi native, graduated from the Hanoi University of Architecture in 1990 and then worked until 1995 in Germany, which currently is Vietnam’s largest trading partner in the European Union.

After returning to Vietnam, he advanced rapidly through a series of executive positions of increasing responsibility, at a state-owned technology and economic development company, a state-owned civil and industrial construction company and, in 2007, PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation. He was chairman from 2009-2013, and was awarded a Laborers’ Hero in the Renovation Era medal in 2011.

Thanh moved into the government realm in September 2013 as deputy chief of office and head of the representative office of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the central province of Da Nang.

In early June last year, Thanh landed in the spotlight after a photograph of him driving a privately owned car bearing government number plates was posted online.

Tripped up by privilege

An uproar ensued as people questioned why Thanh, then a deputy chairman of the southern province of Hau Giang, was assigned a government plate. After review by authorized agencies, the province’s leaders admitted they had made a mistake.

However, the outcry caught the attention of the head of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, who on June 9, 2016, called for an investigation of Thanh’s activities. That scrutiny uncovered losses of $147 million at PetroVietnam during Thanh’s tenure.

In July 2016, Thanh requested annual leave. The following month, he requested sick leave for medical treatment overseas, and then disappeared.

By mid-September, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security had charged Thanh, along with four others, with mismanagement at a subsidiary of the national oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, had removed him as a member of the Communist Party, and had issued an international warrant for his arrest.

The resulting worldwide manhunt for Thanh appeared to be fruitless until the recent events in Berlin.

One report this week indicated the two governments involved had discussed the Thanh case before he was abducted in Berlin.

The Associated Press said Germany’s foreign ministry spokesman, Martin Schaefer, confirmed that German and Vietnamese officials discussed Hanoi’s request for Thanh’s extradition during a meeting in Hamburg July 7-8, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit.

This report originated on VOA Vietnamese.
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Centers like Pontourney in Beaumont-En-Veron were to be opened in France as reintegration centers, and were to be set up in every region of France. But that will not happen now: At the end of July, officials said Pontourney is closing.
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A Georgian court on Wednesday rejected a request to postpone former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s hearing on embezzlement charges.

Saakashvili’s lawyers asked Tbilisi City Court to delay the hearing because the former president has been stateless since July 26, when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko revoked Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship.

Calling the request unsubstantiated, Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili ruled that the hearing would be held at the court’s discretion.

Saakashvili, 49, once a lauded pro-Western reformist, served two terms as Georgia’s president, from January 2004 to November 2013. His popularity declined toward the end of his second term, in part because of a five-day war with Russia during which Moscow’s forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country, and his long-ruling party was voted out of power in a 2012 parliamentary election.

In 2015, Saakashvili forfeited his Georgian citizenship by accepting an offer from his old college friend, Poroshenko, to become governor of Ukraine’s southwestern Odessa Oblast province — a post that required Ukrainian citizenship.

Saakashvili, whom many suspect of harboring Ukrainian political ambitions, resigned as governor of Odessa in November 2016, complaining of official obstruction and corruption. He accused Poroshenko of dishonesty and said his central government had sabotaged democratic reforms required for membership to the European Union and NATO.

‘Very Soviet behavior’

Saakashvili recently told VOA that Poroshenko stripped his Ukrainian citizenship in order to eliminate his main domestic political opponent and undermine democracy in the Russian-occupied Eastern European nation.

“It’s a very Soviet behavior, very much reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s actions,” he told VOA. “First, deprive somebody of citizenship and then declare them crazy, criminal. It’s very much a déjà vu.”

Poroshenko, who announced the decision while Saakashvili was visiting the United States, said he nullified Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship upon learning that the former Georgian leader had lied on his citizenship application.

Ukrainian law requires applicants for citizenship to disclose whether they are subjects of any ongoing criminal investigations inside or outside the country.

Georgia has been seeking the former president’s extradition to face charges connected to embezzlement of public funds, the violent dispersal of protests and a raid on a private television station. Saakashvili said the charges were politically motivated.

He insisted he “indicated everything rightfully” on the 2015 document, and that Poroshenko operatives had since doctored it.

“The documents that I filed were not shown,” Saakashvili said. “We are demanding them to be shown because we need to see that everything was done legally. The fact that they are showing this [falsified application for citizenship reveals a] blatant desire to do something very illegal. We are talking about the forgery here.”

No copy of original

Asked whether he had a copy of the original application, Saakashvili said he did not.

“I happen to trust people,” he told VOA. “I have filed so many documents in my life that I don’t keep copies. I trust the state institutions; I trust people that they would do their jobs fairly.”

Kyiv officials declined to respond to Saakashvili’s assertions or comply with a request to share a copy of the disputed application.

Although Saakashvili has vowed to return to Ukraine and fight to reclaim his citizenship, it is not known whether he has taken any official steps to initiate that legal process.

On Wednesday, Kyiv officials in Washington said he had made no efforts to reach them.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, said he would be forced to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia should he return to Ukraine — but only if the Georgians filed a new request.

Georgian authorities unsuccessfully requested Saakashvili’s extradition twice prior to Poroshenko’s official visit to Tbilisi last month.

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian service.
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Europe is experiencing extreme weather conditions, including heat waves and flooding. The heat has caused outbreaks of wildfires in southern countries such as Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, Portugal and southern France, and drought has led to shortages of water in many areas.
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The Sistine Chapel choir is preparing for its first visit to the United States in 30 years. The world’s oldest choir, it began performing for the head of the Roman Catholic Church about 500 years ago.
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Sirens wailed across Poland’s capital on Tuesday as the country marked the 73rd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a doomed revolt against the occupying Germans during World War II.

Sirens sounded for about two minutes starting at 5 p.m., the hour the 1944 uprising began, bringing traffic mostly to a standstill while people stopped to pay respect to the Poles who fought and died.

President Andrzej Duda, veterans, scouts and others took part in ceremonies, as did several thousand far-right extremists who marched through Warsaw.

The German Embassy in Warsaw flew its flags — a German and a European Union flag — at half-staff to honor the victims.

The Warsaw Uprising broke out August 1, 1944, with the Polish underground taking up arms against the powerful Nazi forces, hoping to liberate the city before the arrival of the Soviet Red Army. They held out for 63 days before the Germans crushed the revolt.

It was the largest act of resistance in any nation under German occupation during the war. The heroism of insurgents who fought for national liberation remains a defining element in Polish national identity.

The Germans suppressed the rebellion brutally, destroying most of Warsaw and killing around 200,000 people, most of them civilians.

Soviet troops who had arrived on the outskirts of Warsaw in their westward push against Adolf Hitler’s forces remained on the city’s outskirts without helping the Poles who were supposed to be their allies. The Red Army’s inaction was viewed as a deep betrayal.

U.S. President Donald Trump paid homage to the “desperate struggle to overthrow oppression” during a July 6 visit to Warsaw.

Trump recalled that the Soviets “watched as the Nazis ruthlessly destroyed the city, viciously murdering men, women and children.”

The 1944 uprising by the Polish resistance came more than a year after Jews confined to the Warsaw Ghetto and about to be sent to death camps took up arms against the Nazis. That revolt also ended in tragedy for the Jews.
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On the latest leg of his first official tour of Eastern Europe, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence assured regional allies the United States will stand by their side.

Facing a crowd of Georgian and international journalists at government offices in Tbilisi, Pence, standing alongside his host, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, said America first does not mean America alone.

“President Trump has sent me with the simple message to you and to the people of Georgia, we are with you, we stand with you …  America stands with Georgia,” said Pence.

The vice president came to Georgia, the only non-NATO member country on his itinerary, from Estonia, a model of a successful EU-leaning transformation, before heading to Montenegro, NATO’s newest member.

Pence is the highest-ranking American official of the current administration to visit Georgia and the larger Caucasus region.

“Thanks to your help, Georgia is no longer a Soviet or a post-Soviet country,” said Kvirikashvili at Tuesday’s joint press conference.  “Today we are a democracy closely associated with the European Union.”

Kvirikashvili’s comments, in which he touted Georgia’s role as “a key strategic partner of America,” come amid an ongoing partial Russian occupation.

About 60 kilometers from the news conference, Russian tank units maintain control over 20 percent of Georgian terrain, a holdover from the August 2008 five-day war.

Pence reiterated the U.S. non-recognition policy regarding the Russian-occupied zone, condemning Moscow’s presence on Georgian soil, what many observers describe as an evolving, “creeping” occupation.

“President Trump has called on Russia to cease its destabilizing activities,” Pence said, adding that President Donald Trump will soon sign sanctions against Russia.

“Our country prefers a constructive relations with Russia, based on cooperation and common interest.  But the president and our Congress are unified in our message to Russia: a better relationship, lifting of sanctions, will require Russia to reverse actions that caused sanctions to be imposed in the first place.”

‘Reset’ jitters

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Georgia about a year after the 2008 war.  Biden’s visit came shortly after the Obama administration’s “reset” policy with Russia, which caused concern among many Europeans that the United States would give Moscow a pass for its invasion of Georgia.

Years later, Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized Eastern Ukraine, which led the West to unilaterally impose sanctions on Russia.

Both Georgia and Ukraine are aspiring NATO members.  Some observers argue Georgia’s 2008 war and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea could have been avoided if those countries hadn’t been denied Membership Action Plan status at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April, 2008.

“President Trump and I stand by the 2008 NATO Bucharest statement, which made it clear that Georgia, one day, will become a member of NATO,” said Pence.

According to recent nationwide polls carried by National Democratic Institute, 66 percent of Georgia’s population approves of the government’s stated goal to join NATO.  Sixty-two percent of Georgians say the country should join the European Union.  Both organizations are largely seen as security instruments that would protect Georgia independence and development.

2017 represents the 25th anniversary of U.S.-Georgian diplomatic relations.

George W. Bush is the only U.S. president who has visited Georgia, which he called “a beacon of democracy.”

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian Service. 
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An attempted escape from a Moscow courthouse has left three gang members dead, authorities said Tuesday.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said the ill-fated incident occurred at the Moscow Regional Court as the defendants were being escorted under guard in an elevator. Officials say a suspect attacked one of the guards and tried to strangle him before the defendants seized the weapons from the guards.

A shootout with court guards erupted once the elevator doors opened, leaving three of the suspects dead and two wounded. At least two guards also were injured, authorities said.

The trouble happened prior to a hearing for the defendants, who are accused of killing 17 motorists over the course of a few months in 2014.

Prosecutors said the men would lay spike strips across roads as cars were driving by, popping the tires and forcing the drivers to exit their vehicles.

When the drivers left their cars, the gang, totaling nine members, would shoot them dead, investigators said.
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Spain’s National Court has recommended the extradition to the United States of a Russian computer programmer accused by U.S. prosecutors of developing malicious software that stole information from financial institutions and caused losses of $855,000.

Stanislav Lisov, 31, was arrested January 13 in the Barcelona Airport while on honeymoon in Europe. Prosecutors accuse him of developing the NeverQuest software that targeted banking clients in the United States between June 2012 and January 2015.

The Spanish court said Tuesday that Lisov could face up to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to commit electronic and computer fraud. The extradition hearing took place July 20.

The court said its ruling can be appealed by Lisov.

The extradition, if finally decided upon, must be approved by the government.
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Russian authorities are now barring American diplomats and their families from a U.S. recreational residence on the outskirts of Moscow, part of sweeping retaliatory measures announced by Kremlin leader Vladmir Putin.

The Russian president ordered the U.S. on Sunday to cut its overall staff of more than 1,200 in Russia by 755 people, in response to new U.S. sanctions imposed against Moscow for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. It is believed to be the single largest cut ever imposed on the U.S. embassy in Moscow and consulates elsewhere in Russia, although many of those to be dismissed are likely Russians working in support positions.

Putin said the cuts would leave both Russia and the U.S. with the same number of staff and diplomats in Washington and Moscow, respectively — 455.

President Donald Trump has been silent on the issue since Putin announced his retaliatory action.

Asked about this Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “Right now we are reviewing our options, and when we have something to say on it we will let you know.”

No response yet to Putin

The White House has said Trump intends to sign into law the new round of sanctions against Russia that Congress passed last week, but he has not yet done so.

The U.S. State Department said the order to reduce the number of American diplomats in Russia was “a regrettable and uncalled for act.” A spokesman said U.S. officials are assessing how to respond to Putin.

A Russian analyst, Nikolai Petrov of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said the move reflects the Kremlin’s disillusionment with Trump: “These measures are tough, and it is linked to a deep disappointment that came after the euphoria linked to the arrival of Donald Trump [to power], and to the idea that today we will start our relations anew.”

Another Russian analyst, Gleb Pavlovsky, said a return to Cold War-era hostilities with the U.S. will only boost Putin’s popularity at home ahead of another likely bid for the Russian presidency next year.

Pavlovsky, a former political consultant for the Kremlin who now is president of the Foundation for Effective Politics in Moscow, explained how U.S. efforts to “punish” Putin may have the opposite effect: “American sanctions naturally are causing a definite mass reaction [in Russia] — an anti-American, pro-Putin reaction.” If Putin wished, Pavlovsky added, he could make the American sanctions the centerpiece of his re-election campaign next year.

Russians also will feel cutback

Other experts say the vital work of the U.S. embassy in Moscow will continue despite the massive cuts.

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. diplomat now with the Brookings Institution, told VOA that Russians also may discover some unintended consequences of their president’s crackdown on U.S. diplomacy.

“My assumption is hundreds of Russians are going to lose their jobs now,” Pifer said. “And when you’re looking at priority functions of the embassy, you know, visa functions are important but they’re not as important as other functions. So my guess is that those Russians [who] want to travel to the United States are going to find that visa processing is going to take longer than usual because of reduced staff in the consular section.”

Pifer was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1986, at a time when there were several back-and-forth expulsions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He later served on the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton, and was ambassador to Ukraine from 1998-2000.

During his time in the Russian capital, Pifer said, American staff were called upon for “all-purpose duty” at times when Russian support staff were unavailable for political reasons.

“So, five or six days out of every seven, I would work on my normal portfolio, which is arms control,” Pifer recalled. “And then one day, I’d drive a truck. And the embassy got by. There was actually this incredible spirit in the embassy that we were going to show the Soviets that this kind of action was not going to cramp the embassy.”

Pifer said he expects the same determined spirit from U.S. embassy personnel now.

Congress approved the new sanctions against Russia last Thursday, as part of a package that also included new measures against Iran and North Korea. Russia’s foreign ministry denounced the U.S. for “extreme aggression” in international affairs and signaled the coming counter-measures the next day, two days before Putin personally announced the cutbacks in diplomatic staff.

In addition to sharply trimming the size of the U.S. mission, Russia reclaimed two U.S. facilities, a recreational retreat near Moscow and a storage facility in the city.
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Five aid groups that operate migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean refused to sign up to the Italian government’s code of conduct on Monday, the Interior Ministry said, but three others backed the new rules.

Charity boats have become increasingly important in rescue operations, picking up more than a third of all migrants brought ashore so far this year against less than one percent in 2014, according to the Italian coast guard.

Italy fears the groups are facilitating people smuggling from North Africa and encouraging migrants to make the perilous passage to Europe, and it proposed a code containing around a dozen points for the charities.

Those who refused to sign the document had put themselves “outside the organized system of sea rescues, with all the concrete consequences that can have”, the ministry said.

Italy had previously threatened to shut its ports to NGOs that did not sign up, but an Interior Ministry source said in reality those groups would face more checks from Italian authorities.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has taken part in many of the rescues of some 95,000 migrants brought to Italy this year, attended a meeting at the Interior Ministry but refused to sign the code.

MSF objected most strongly to a requirement that aid boats must take migrants to a safe port themselves, rather than transferring people to other vessels, which allows smaller boats to stay in the area for further rescues.

“Our vessels are often overwhelmed by the high number of [migrant] boats … and life and death at sea is a question of minutes,” MSF Italy’s director Gabriele Eminente wrote in a letter to Interior Minister Marco Minniti.

“The code of conduct puts at risk this fragile equation of collaboration between different boats,” Eminente continued, adding that MSF still wanted to work with the ministry to improve sea rescues.

But Save The Children gave its backing, saying it already complied with most of the rules and would monitor constantly to be sure that applying them did not obstruct their work.

“We would not have signed if even one single point would have compromised our effectiveness. This is not the case, not one single point of the code will hinder our activities,” Save The Children Italy director Valerio Neri said after the meeting.

The Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) and Spanish group Proactiva Open Arms agreed to the conditions, but Germany’s Sea-Watch, Sea-Eye and Jugend Rettet, and France’s SOS Mediterranee abstained.

MSF, SOS Mediterranee and Jugend Rettet also called for clarity on the rules and took issue with a clause in the code which would oblige groups to accept police officers on board.

“For us the most controversial point … was the commitment to help the Italian police with their investigations and possibly take armed police officers on board,” Jugend Rettet coordinator Titus Molkenbur said. “That is antithetical to the humanitarian principles of neutrality that we adhere to, and we cannot be seen as being part of the conflict.”
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When Luxembourg’s new law governing space mining comes into force on Tuesday, the country will already be working to make the science-fiction-sounding mission a reality, the deputy prime minister said.

The legislation will make Luxembourg the first country in Europe to offer a legal framework to ensure that private operators can be confident about their rights over resources they extract in space.

The law is based on the premise that space resources are capable of being owned by individuals and private companies and establishes the procedures for authorizing and supervising space exploration missions.

“When I launched the initiative a year ago, people thought I was mad,” Etienne Schneider told Reuters.

“But for us, we see it as a business that has return on investment in the short-term, the medium-term, and the long-term,” said Schneider, who is also Luxembourg’s economy minister.

Luxembourg in June 2016 set aside 200 million euros ($229 million) to fund initiatives aimed at bringing back rare minerals from space.

While that goal is at least 15 years off, new technologies are already creating markets that space mining could supply, said Schneider.

He said firms could soon make carrying materials to refuel or repair satellites economically feasible or supply raw materials to the 3-D printers now being tested on the International Space Station.

Lifting each kilogram of mass from Earth to orbit costs between 10,000 and 15,000 euros ($11,000 to $18,000), according to Schneider, but firms could cut these costs by recycling the debris of old satellites and rocket parts floating in space.

The small European country, best known for its fund management and private banking sector, will on Tuesday begin the work of making such deals, with the security of a legal framework in place, said Schneider.

Luxembourg has already managed to attract significant interest from pioneers in the field such as U.S. operators Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, and aims to attract research and development projects to set up there.

A similar package of laws was introduced in the United States in 2015 but only applies to companies majority owned by Americans, while Luxembourg’s laws will only require the company to have an office in the country.

“I am already in discussions with fund owners for more than 1 billion euros which they want to dedicate to space exploration over here in Luxembourg,” Schneider said. “In 10 years, I’m quite sure that the official language in space will be Luxembourgish.”
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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is in Estonia for talks on military support with the three Baltic members of NATO, to assure them the United States supports its allies who are concerned about Russian expansionism.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all have asked for tangible demonstrations of U.S. military support. Concerns about Russian expansionism have increased sharply in the Baltic region with Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Pence was upbeat on his arrival in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, on Sunday: “President (Donald) Trump sent me to Eastern Europe with a very simple message, and that is that America first doesn’t mean America alone.”

Pence will meet with all three Baltic presidents on Monday, then travel on to Georgia, where troops from the U.S. and other NATO partners began military exercises Sunday, and later to Montenegro, NATO’s newest member.

“Our message to the Baltic States, my message when we visit Georgia and Montenegro will be the same,” Pence said in Tallinn. “To our allies here in Eastern Europe: We are with you, we stand with you on behalf of freedom and it’s a great honor for me to be here.”

The NATO military exercise that began Sunday at Georgia’s Vaziani military base, Tbilisi, marks the first time that U.S. and German heavy military machinery was deployed in the former Soviet republic, which borders Russia.

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili attended the opening ceremony at the exercise, dubbed Noble Partner 2017. A total of 2,800 soldiers from five NATO members — the U.S., Britain, Germany, Turkey and Slovenia — joined troops from NATO partner countries Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia.

Pence said the U.S. is making it very clear “that Russia’s destabilizing activities, its support for rogue regimes, its activities in Ukraine are unacceptable.”

 
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Thousands of people rallied in Turkey’s largest city on Sunday against security measures Israel has imposed at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, shortly after Israel removed other measures that led to two weeks of violent Palestinian protests.

The rally in Istanbul, called “The Big Jerusalem Meeting” and organized by Turkey’s Saadet Party, drew some five thousand people to the Yenikapi parade ground on the southern edge of Istanbul.

Protesters were brought in by buses and ferries from across the city, waved Turkish and Palestinian flags, and held up posters in front of a giant stage where the chairman of the Saadet party and representatives from NGOs addressed the crowd.

“The Al-Aqsa mosque is our honor,” read a poster.

“You should know that not only Gaza, but Tel Aviv also has their eyes on this parade ground. Netanyahu does as well, and he is scared”, said Saadet Party Chairman Temel Karamollaoglu, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Turkey has opposed the security measures installed at the entry points of the mosque compound, with President Tayyip Erdogan warning Israel that it would suffer most from the dispute.

Erdogan accused Israel of inflicting damage on Jerusalem’s “Islamic character”, in comments that Israel’s foreign ministry called “absurd”.

The dispute over security at the mosque compound – where Israel installed metal detectors at entry points after two police guards were shot dead this month – has touched off the bloodiest clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in years.

On Friday however, the main prayer session at the Al-Aqsa mosque ended relatively calmly after Israel removed the tougher security measures, though it barred entrance to men under age 50.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City and the holy compound, in the 1967 Middle East war. It annexed the area in a move that has never been recognized internationally.

Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine, sits in the heart of the Old City. It is also the holiest place in Judaism – the venue of two ancient temples, the last destroyed by the Romans. Jews pray under heavy security at the Western Wall at the foot of the elevated plaza.
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