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Germany changed its travel advice for visitors to Turkey on Saturday, warning its citizens that they risked arrest for expressing opinions that would be tolerated at home but might not be by Turkish authorities. 

“It cannot be ruled out … that the Turkish government will take further action against representatives of German media and civil society organizations,” an updated Foreign Ministry travel advisory read. 

“Statements which are covered by the German legal understanding of the freedom of expression can lead in Turkey to occupational restrictions and criminal proceedings.” 

The advice, which a ministry spokeswoman confirmed was updated on Saturday, noted that several European journalists, including Germans, had been denied accreditation in Turkey without explanation. In the last two years German nationals have also been increasingly arbitrarily detained, it said. 

Turkish authorities are suspicious about any connections to the network of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says orchestrated a 2016 coup attempt, the ministry said. 

But it added that any tourists who had taken part in meetings abroad of organizations banned in Turkey risked being detained, as did Germans who made, or endorsed, statements on social media critical of the Turkish government. 
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Three police officers in Ukraine have been injured in a clash with far-right demonstrators in the capital.

The violence occurred outside the presidential administration building in Kiev where several hundred demonstrators had gathered Saturday to call for arrests of top figures in an alleged military corruption scandal.

A media investigation last week detailed alleged embezzlement schemes in Ukraine’s military industry, including at a factory controlled by President Petro Poroshenko.

A police statement said the demonstrators tried to break through police lines and were setting off fireworks. Police turned them back with tear gas.

The police said one officer was hospitalized with chemical burns to his eyes.
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A labor strike in France, prompted by concerns over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, might spread to the flying public. Strikes by customs agents at ports and rail stations earlier in the week could now spread airports.

Long lines of trucks at Calais and Dunkirk ports. Two-hour delays for Britain-bound Eurostar rail passengers. That was the scene this week in France for passengers and merchandise headed for the U.K. French customs agents staged slowdowns by strictly observing rules, leading to lengthy security checks, a preview, they claim, of what might happen if Britain leaves the European Union without an exit agreement later this month.

Unions warned select French airports would also be affected over the weekend, including the country’s busiest hub, Charles de Gaulle, outside Paris — amid heavy school holiday traffic.

Christophe Abadie, head of the (CFDT) customs labor union, urged passengers to prepare for potential delays. He told France’s CNews TV that the French customs service lacks the technical and infrastructure ability to deal with Brexit. The government says it will be recruiting 700 more agents to cope with Brexit demands. Unions say that’s not enough. They also want better pay and working conditions.

Another customs union member warned that without enough reinforcements, kilometer-long lines seen this week at northern French ports could be even longer under a no-deal Brexit.  French authorities say they’ll be prepared. The minister in charge of customs, Gerald Darmanin, meets with union leaders early next week.

British lawmakers are set to vote again Tuesday on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, and reports suggest its passage is unlikely.  Like France, other European countries are concerned about the transportation chaos that could result from London’s departure from the EU without an agreement.  

That’s especially true for the Netherlands, where authorities at Europe’s largest port of Rotterdam warned last month that a no-deal Brexit could lead to serious problems. A Dutch transportation institute also warned that under a worst-case Brexit scenario, trade between Britain and the Netherlands could drop by as much as 50 percent.

 
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An acclaimed Italian forensic scientist has for years had the difficult job of identifying bodies of migrants, who sought to reach Europe in search of a better life but never made it. Cristina Cattaneo says it is complicated process but an important one for the families of the victims.

At least 30,000 migrants are believed to have perished in the Mediterranean Sea in their efforts to reach Europe. Of these, more than half have not been identified. For some years now, Cattaneo has been trying to improve that situation. But giving a name to migrants who died is no easy matter, particularly because there is no databank of missing migrants.

Cattaneo said what is needed is to put post-mortem details of dead migrants into a single database to match with pre-mortem details that must be gathered from relatives looking for their loved ones. She initially encountered resistance: there were no public funds available for that kind of work and criticism included the fact that no one was looking for the nameless migrants. But she disagreed.

Cattaneo said she felt the “anxiety of relatives searching for their dead and how they have the right to find them and be given their death certificates.” She said the initiative began in 2012 to afford relatives the same dignity that is given to victims of other disasters, like plane crashes. She said “the discrimination toward dead migrants” is wrong.  

The catalyst for proper identification of nameless migrants, Cattaneo said, came in the form of two major disasters that occurred in the Mediterranean: the sinking of a vessel off the island of Lampedusa on October 3, 2013, in which more than 360 migrants died, and an incident off the Libyan coastline on April 18, 2015, in which a vessel carrying more than 800 migrants sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean.  Later reports said that up to 1,100 hundred migrants could have been aboard the doomed vessel.

For both of these tragedies, forensic scientists gathered post-mortem information, including DNA, for all those recovered, in an effort to identify the migrants. In the case of the 2015 sinking, the operation was complex because many of the bodies recovered one year later were decomposed, and the vessel had to be raised from a depth of 400 meters by the Italian navy.

Cattaneo explained that identifying victims’ remains is also important from a legal point of view.

She said that orphans — especially minors — and widows often need death certificates of their relatives or it is very difficult for them to legally move forward with their lives.

After collecting and profiling the information gathered from the victims, Cattaneo said they needed to gather pre-mortem information from living relatives. In the case of the vessel that sank off Lampedusa, the Italian government put out a call for anyone who thought they may have had a family member who died in that disaster to come forward with details that could be matched against data gathered by forensic scientists.

Cattaneo said 72 relatives came forward, leading to the positive identification of 35 dead migrants, and their cases were closed.

For the ship that was recovered from the bottom of the sea, the International Red Cross put out a call for the likely relatives to come forward. One-hundred-ninety relatives from Mali and Mauritania alone responded to that call. Cattaneo and her team are continuing their identification efforts at a forensic laboratory at Milan University.

Italy is the only country in Europe that has embarked on a project like this using post-mortem and pre-mortem information matching for migrants. Underscoring the many hurdles in this process, Cattaneo saaid the only way forward is for a databank to be created in which European countries share information, similar to how law enforcement officials currently operate.

 
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In Turkey, International Women’s Day saw nationwide protests, with many focusing on the growing scourge of violence against women. According to rights groups, hundreds of women are slain yearly in Turkey.

In Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, the heart of the Asian side of the city, hundreds of women gathered, holding placards condemning violence against women.

“We are here to demand the police and judiciary take these endless murders of women seriously. I have had enough of these killings,” said Sibel, who wanted to give only her first name. 

Police presence

Despite a heavy police presence, the Kadikoy demonstration passed without incident. But thousands of women gathered in Istanbul’s main Istiklal Street area, where hundreds of riot police, backed by armored cars, used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up a procession. 

In Izmir, on Turkey’s western Aegean coast, police using clubs broke up a Women’s Day demonstration, arresting seven. However, most commemorations and protests, held in many towns and cities across Turkey, ended without incident.

The scale and extent of the protests, in the face of strict laws controlling demonstrations, reflect a growing assertiveness regarding women’s rights and violence against women. Last month saw nationwide outrage through social media and protests over the death of Sule Cet, 23.

Police initially treated Cet’s death as a suicide after she fell from the 20th floor of an office building, where she worked overnight. After intense pressure from an attorney representing Cet’s family, police finally treated her case as a homicide, with her boss and another man now standing trial for rape and murder.

Anger about the case was exacerbated when the defense attorney said Cet was not a virgin and that she should not have been drinking with her boss late at night. The case, which has engrossed millions, has become a focal point for women’s rights groups across Turkey and the source of growing anger about an increasing number of killings. Cet’s name has become a leading hashtag, while talk shows and social media have become platforms for people’s outrage about the way the case has been handled.

“Cet’s case raises so many issues that are wrong about the way cases of murdered women are handled,” said law professor Istar Gozaydin, who is also a presenter of a women’s rights television program.

“In the judicial process, we see the private lives of the victims being routinely mentioned or the character of the victim being impugned, like raising whether the victim is a virgin or not. Also, the figures of murdered women given by authorities are not very reliable. They are designated as accidents or considered as suicides, which we saw in Sule Cet’s case,” added Gozaydin, who is doing research on violence against women for the European Union.

This week, the Umut, a prominent nongovernmental organization, said that 477 women were slain and 232 were injured by men in 2018, and that Turkish media reported 1,760 femicide cases over the past four years.

In 2012, Turkey’s AK political party made the country the first signatory of the Council of Europe’s convention to protect women. The document is intended to prevent violence against women, provide victim protection and “end the impunity of perpetrators.” 

“On paper, the legal regulations and structures are very sufficient [in Turkey] to stop violence and murders against women,” said Gozaydin. “But the way the judiciary and police enforce these procedures and laws is very, very problematic. That’s why the judicial process should be monitored very closely to achieve a fair trial.”

Seen as major problem

Experts suggest there is a growing awareness within Turkish society about the scale of violence against women. A survey released this month by Istanbul’s Kadir Has University found that 60 percent of the participants viewed violence as “the biggest problem that women face in society.”

The issue appears to be crossing the deep political divide between religious and secular Turkey. “It [violence against women] has become the target issue of so many people to give their reaction,” said Gozaydin. “It is just not limited to the secular group or just women. It is much wider.”
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The United Nations says 1.8 billion people in the world are below age 30. Most live in developing countries, with hundreds of millions in areas of conflict.

Actor Forest Whitaker, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, says young people too often are viewed in a negative light. He says they are seen as a problem rather than the solution to unresolved conflicts.  

Speaking to VOA on Friday on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, Whitaker said his foundation, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, trains young people to become mediators in four systems of conflict resolution and education. He said young women and men also are trained in information and communication technologies, life skills and entrepreneurial skills.

Efforts in South Sudan

Whitaker said many are applying their skills within their own communities as part of a peace and reconciliation program his foundation is running in South Sudan.

“They are in the middle of mediating conflicts that have to deal with cattle issues,” he said. “They are in the middle of mediating conflicts that have to do with revenge killings, that have to do with territorial rights. … They go out into the communities as well, sometimes, and interpret in their native language or native tongue the peace agreements to the communities.”

Whitaker said young people apply their expertise on many fronts. He said they often are called upon by the countries themselves to act as mediators.

He said many of the people his foundation works with in South Sudan are decommissioned child soldiers. Similar programs exist in post-conflict situations for young people who were recruited as child soldiers by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, he said.

The foundation has projects in Mexico and the United States and soon will begin working with young people on peace and reconciliation issues in South Africa.
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The Pentagon is warning of “grave consequences” to military relations between the United States and Turkey should Ankara purchase a Russian surface-to-air missile system.

“If Turkey takes the S-400, there would be grave consequences in terms of our relationship, military relationship with them,” chief Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers told reporters Friday.

Summers said those consequences would encompass losing U.S. military sales to Turkey, including the long-awaited sale of the United States’ new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet.

“If they take the S-400s then … they would not get the F-35s and the Patriots,” Summers said, referring to the Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which has a primary function of defending against ballistic missiles and has been presented as an American-made alternative to the S-400.

Ankara signed an agreement with Moscow for the S-400 missile system in 2017. At the same time, Turkey has helped finance the F-35 program and planned to buy 100 of the jets from the U.S., the first of which are due to be delivered later this year.

Washington fears the sophisticated radar of the S-400 system could compromise the F-35 technology, which was developed to elude Russian-made systems. Ankara insists the S-400 offers the best value for its needs and poses no threat to NATO systems.

Earlier this week, the head of U.S. European Command told lawmakers the United States should not move forward with the F-35 sales, should Turkey purchase the S-400.

“My best military advice would be that we don’t then follow through with the F-35, flying it or working with allies that are working with Russian systems, particularly air defense systems,” Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti said Tuesday.

A day later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his commitment to buy the Russian missile system and suggested expanding the purchase to Russia’s more advanced S-500 system.

Ankara is slated to receive the S-400 later this year in hopes of making the system ready for use by 2020.

Dorian Jones contributed to this report from Istanbul
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Britain will hand diplomatic protection to British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to underline the government’s belief that Iran has behaved unjustly in its treatment of her, foreign minister Jeremy Hunt said on Thursday.

Hunt said while the move, a little-used way for governments to seek protection on behalf of their nationals, was unlikely to be a “magic wand,” it may help Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case.

Iran’s ambassador in London said on Twitter that Britain’s move “contravenes international law.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit.

She was sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment, a charge denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organization that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and Reuters News.

“I have today decided that the UK will take a step that is extremely unusual and exercise diplomatic protection,” Hunt said in a statement, adding that the move signaled to Tehran that “its behavior is totally wrong.” 

“It is unlikely to be a magic wand that leads to an overnight result. But it demonstrates to the whole world that Nazanin is innocent and the UK will not stand by when one of its citizens is treated so unjustly,” he said.

Diplomatic protection is a mechanism under international law through which a state may seek reparation for injury to one of its nationals on the basis that the second state has committed an internationally wrongful act against that person.

“UK Govt’s extension of diplomatic protection to Ms Zaghari contravenes int’l law. Govts may only exercise such protection for own nationals,” Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador in London, said on Twitter.

“As (the) UK Govt is acutely aware, Iran does not recognize dual nationality. Irrespective of UK residency, Ms Zaghari thus remains Iranian,” Baeidinejad added.

Earlier this year, Zaghari-Ratcliffe went on hunger strike in protest at her treatment in jail.

“We have been working hard to secure her release but despite repeated efforts have not been successful. We have not even been able to secure her the medical treatment she urgently needs despite assurances to the contrary,” Hunt said.

“No government should use innocent individuals as pawns for diplomatic leverage so I call on Iran to release this innocent woman so she can be reunited with her family.”
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President Donald Trump and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis now have another thing in common: They both like the same campaign slogan.

Babis said Thursday at the White House that he similarly wants to “Make the Czech Republic great again.”

The two leaders already have much in common.

Babis, like Trump, is a wealthy businessman who rode into office on a nationalist-style campaign.

While Trump is dogged by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Babis is facing charges of misusing European Union subsidies for a farm he transferred to relatives, including his son.

Trump wants to strengthen the U.S. border with Mexico. Babis is a vocal opponent of accepting migrants and refugees in his country.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted the prime minister of the central European country and his wife, Monika Babisova, outside the White House and they walked to the Oval Office.

“Czech Republic doing very, very well economically and in all other respects,” Trump said. “It’s always been a safe country. Strong military. Strong people. We have a very good relationship with the Czech Republic and the United States. We do a lot of trade.”

Babis said U.S.-Czech Republic business relations are growing.

“Our investors are investing in the U.S. and already created thousands of jobs,” Babis said. “Mr. President, I watched your 2019 State of the Union address and I perfectly understand you plan how to make America great again. I have a similar plan to make the Czech Republic great again.”

The two leaders also discussed cybersecurity. A Czech watchdog followed U.S. authorities in warning against use of hardware or software made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE.

Huawei has become the target of U.S. security concerns because of its ties to the Chinese government. The U.S. has pressured other countries to limit use of its technology, warning they could be opening themselves up to surveillance and theft of information.

“Our countries will work to ensure secure and reliable telecommunications networks and supply chains to reduce the risk of malicious cyber activity,” the two leaders said in a joint statement issued after their meeting. “We resolve to deepen our cooperation. … to develop telecommunications security principles.”

On trade, Trump has raised the ire of many Europeans by imposing tariffs on aluminum and steel, while threatening to slap tariffs on imports of cars from the European Union. Before leaving for the United States, Babis told The Associated Press that he hoped the trade spat would not escalate and that talks would result in a solution that avoids a trade war.

In their statement, the two leaders also said they would work together to promote enhanced energy diversification in Europe and ensure security. “We will further investigate the potential benefits of regional energy infrastructure development in Central Europe,” they said.

Babis’ visit coincides with the 30th anniversary of the 1989 anti-communist “Velvet Revolution” and the 20th anniversary of the Czech Republic’s membership in NATO, which began in 1999.

The Czech Republic is among the countries criticized by Trump for not meeting the NATO goal of committing 2 percent of their gross domestic product to defense. Babis has promised to meet the target by 2024.
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Russia’s leading telecoms firm said Thursday it had agreed to pay $850 million to settle a U.S. corruption case over huge bribes paid to the family of Uzbekistan’s former president.

The case shed light on massive corruption in Uzbekistan under former president Islam Karimov, who ruled the ex-Soviet republic from 1990 until his death in 2016.

MTS, based in Moscow and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said the settlement had been agreed with the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The deals “mark the closure of the investigations into the company’s acquisition and operation of its former subsidiary in Uzbekistan,” MTS said in a statement.

MTS complies 

In agreeing to the fine “MTS affirmed its commitment” to complying with anti-corruption legislation, it said.

MTS was in a long-running dispute with the Uzbek authorities, which seized the company’s local subsidiary in 2012 after cancelling its operating licenses for alleged tax evasion.

The Uzbek subsidiary, which had 9.5 million subscribers by the end of 2011, filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

The SEC said that MTS had “bribed an Uzbek official” related to Karimov to obtain and retain business operations in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation of more than 32 million people.

“The company engaged in egregious misconduct for nearly a decade, secretly funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to a corrupt official,” the SEC said in a statement. 

‘$1 billion worth of payments’

An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project previously said that the subsidiary, which was known as Uzdunrobita before it was acquired by MTS, had paid hundreds of millions of dollars to companies owned by Karimov’s daughter Gulnara.

The OCCRP, an NGO that works with investigative reporters mainly in Eastern Europe, alleged that MTS made payments in 2004 and 2007 to purchase stakes in the company. 

MTS was not the only telecoms company involved. “Karimova squeezed more than $1 billion worth of payments… out of international telecom-related companies,” OCCRP said.

Some commentators in Russia expressed dismay that the U.S. was fining Russian companies for operations in third countries.

“What concern does the U.S. have about the faraway Uzbekistan and Russian operators?” said a journalist on BFM business radio, pointing out that “the money will go to the American budget, not the Uzbek one.”

End to economic isolation

Uzbekistan is led by Karimov’s former prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has moved to end the country’s economic isolation and removed visa restrictions for travelers from European Union countries and the United States.

Gulnara Karimova, once a high-profile diplomat and pop singer, was being held under house arrest after being convicted on fraud and money laundering charges in 2017 and sentenced to five years.

Uzbek authorities this week said she had violated the terms of her house arrest and had been sent to prison where she would remain until the end of her sentence.
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A French court convicted the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon on Thursday of failing to act on historic allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in his diocese, handing Cardinal Philippe Barbarin a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Barbarin is the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church in France. He was found guilty of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s by a priest who is due to go on trial later this year.

Barbarin has 10 days to appeal.

Barbarin’s trial put Europe’s senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when Pope Francis is under fire for the church’s response a sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the church, deeply damaging its standing around the globe.

The pontiff last month ended a conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth.”

Victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.
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British police said a suspicious package destroyed by bomb-disposal experts at the University of Glasgow on Wednesday contained an explosive device and was linked to three letter bombs sent to two London airports and a railway station.  

The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command said the item sent to the Scottish university had “similarities in the package, its markings and the type of device” to the three small improvised bombs received by the London transportation hubs on Tuesday.  

The mailing envelope sent to London’s Heathrow Airport with one of the bombs inside partly caught fire when someone opened it, but no one was injured.  

The force said it had not identified the sender and urged transportation operators, mail sorting companies and schools “to be vigilant” about watching for suspicious packages. 

Precautionary evacuation

The University of Glasgow said several buildings on its campus, including the mailroom, were evacuated “as a precautionary measure” after the package was found in the mailroom on Wednesday morning. 

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson of Police Scotland said “the package was not opened and no one was injured.” 

He said bomb-disposal experts later performed a controlled explosion on the item.  

Another package sparked an evacuation Wednesday at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in Edinburgh. It was found to contain “promotional goods” and deemed no threat to the public, police said. 

The envelopes received in London appeared to carry Irish stamps, and Jarrett said one line of inquiry “is the possibility that the packages have come from Ireland.” 

There has been speculation the devices could be connected to Irish Republican Army dissidents. But Dean Haydon, Britain’s senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, said no sender had been identified and no group had claimed responsibility. 

“We are talking to our Irish counterparts but at the moment there’s nothing to indicate motivation of the sender or ideology, so I cannot confirm at the moment if it’s connected to any Ireland-related terrorist groups,” he said.
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Pope Francis has urged Roman Catholic faithful to free themselves from the “clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness” as he marked the start of Lent, the period of prayer and fasting before Easter.

Francis led a procession and then celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the basilica of Santa Sabina, one of Rome’s most beautiful.

In his homily, Francis said the 40-day period of Lent is a “wakeup call for the soul” to rediscover the direction of life.

He said: “We need to free ourselves from the clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness, from always wanting more, from never being satisfied, and from a heart closed to the needs of the poor.”

At the end of Lent, Christians commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
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U.S. officials have warned at an energy conference in Brussels that the Trump administration will take punitive action against European companies that are building the Kremlin-favored Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which will deliver energy from Russia to Germany while bypassing Ukraine.

Nord Stream 2 (NS2) will largely replace an older pipeline running through Ukraine and Poland that has the backing of the German government. But it is prompting the alarm of Central European governments, increasingly infuriated with Berlin’s dismissal of their concerns.

They object to Nord Stream 2 — which will run 1,200 kilometers from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany, and snake under the Baltic Sea — not only because they’ll lose lucrative transit fees from the older pipeline, but because they fear the Kremlin wants to develop NS2 largely for political reasons, not commercial ones.

Speaking at the energy conference in the Belgian capital, Nicole Gibson, deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s office for Europe, warned that if European companies resume laying pipe later this year they “risk significant sanctions.”

Declining to go into any details about the threatened sanctions, Gibson said Washington doesn’t accept that Nord Stream 2 is a done deal. “Some people say it is a fait accompli that Nord Stream 2 will be done. We don’t see it that way… We call on European leaders to make sure Nord Stream 2 is not implemented,” she said.

Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko has warned that NS2 would allow the Kremlin to switch off gas to Ukraine and Central Europe when it wants to blackmail its nearer neighbors without disrupting supplies to Western Europe, lessening likely push back from the more powerful European countries while it toys with weaker ones.

Her high-profile warning, upping the political stakes, comes two months after Richard Grenell, the U.S. envoy to Germany, sent letters to dozens of European construction and energy companies saying they face sanctions if they resume in the spring the laying of NS2’s concrete-coated steel pipes. Construction work was suspended in December because of winter weather.

Washington’s opposition to Nord Stream 2 has been consistent — the Obama administration also was critical.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s opposition has a harder edge, however, with officials seeing a dark political menace behind the new pipeline. They argue NS2 will undermine European security, deepen Western Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and give the Kremlin a greater opportunity to use natural-gas supplies to exert political influence and blackmail Western European governments.

Nord Stream 2, which will be owned by the Kremlin-directed energy giant Gazprom, would double the capacity of Russian gas delivered to Germany, the European Union’s most powerful economy. NS2 will cost billions of dollars to build. 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, forecast energy industry experts.

Last July, during his visit to the annual summit of NATO allies in Brussels, President Trump expressed his frustration with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the Russia-to-Germany undersea pipeline, saying, “We’re supposed to protect you from Russia, but Germany is making pipeline deals with Russia. You tell me if that’s appropriate. Explain that.”

But Merkel has dug in amid pressure from Germany businesses, which say NS2 will slash their energy costs. The German Chancellor also appears to be distancing herself from a promise she made last year to Central European leaders when she acknowledged for the first time allies’ geopolitical concerns, saying NS2 could proceed only if Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Russian gas also was protected.

Germany, along with NS2 transit countries Finland, Sweden and Denmark, counter-argue the pipeline will increase Europe’s energy security by avoiding potential cutoffs from the more politically volatile Ukrainian route. Washington believes the pipeline also is a Russian bid to hurt Ukraine economically by stripping it of gas transit fees.

Ukrainian officials estimate their losses from Nord Stream 2 will be high, running at about $2.5 billion a year.

“When Nord Stream 2 is finished this year, there will be no need to use the Ukrainian gas transit system,” Yuriy Vitrenko, managing director of Ukraine’s Naftogaz, a state-owned oil and gas company, told the Brussels conference. “Ukraine will lose approximately 4 percent of GDP,” he added.

Kremlin officials say Washington wants to stop NS2 because U.S. energy giants are hoping to export surplus shale gas to Europe as liquified natural gas (LNG). U.S. officials have made no secret of their hopes that American energy firms will be able to profit from a halt to NS2, but say that isn’t the major reason for their objections to the pipeline.

U.S. officials’ alarm about NS2 is echoed by European security officials. 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 2014 annexation of Crimea.
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The Venezuelan government has ordered the expulsion of Germany’s ambassador, citing his alleged support of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is engaged in a political battle with President Nicolas Maduro.

The government said in a statement that ambassador Martin Kriener had 48 hours to leave for what it said was Kriener’s meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs. The order came after Kriener met with Guaido at Caracas airport Monday upon Guaido’s return to the country.   

Guaido, recognized by the U.S. and about 50 other nations as Venezuela’s interim leader, returned on a commercial flight following a tour of Latin American countries in defiance of a court-imposed travel ban. Guaido called for Maduro’s ouster at a rally shortly after his return.

Venezuela is in the midst of a political and humanitarian crisis that is expected to worsen as U.S. oil sanctions against the country take their toll.

Guaido supporters contend last year’s re-election of Maduro, who is supported by Russia, was invalid.

 
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U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet is warning that growing social, economic, and political inequalities are increasing alienation and instability in countries throughout the world. The high commissioner presented a sweeping view of major human rights situations around the world in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Bachelet said inequalities in income, opportunity, justice and the enjoyment of human rights exist in all countries — rich and poor alike. Tackling these inequalities, she says, is critical in overcoming the grievances and unrest that fuel hatred, violence and threats to peace.

She cited many examples of countries where the denial of rights has led to protests and violent crackdowns by security forces. She mentioned Sudan, where people protesting harsh economic conditions and bad governance have been violently dispersed by security forces.

She noted similar scenarios are playing out in many other places, including Zimbabwe, Haiti, France, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Bachelet said she is shocked by the number of killings of human rights defenders around the world. She expressed alarm at the increasingly widespread attacks on journalists and media freedoms.

The human rights chief said she is very concerned about government reprisals against victims, human rights defenders and non-governmental organizations who cooperate with the United Nations.

“Today, allow me to voice my concern at the apparently arbitrary arrest and detention, and alleged ill-treatment or torture, of several women human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “The persecution of peaceful activists would clearly contradict the spirit of the country’s proclaimed new reforms. So, we urge that these women be released.”

Bachelet condemned the detention of members of the Uighur Muslim minority in what China calls re-education centers in its Xinjiang province. Activists say about 1 million Uighurs are kept in what they call detention centers.

Bachelet also did not shy away from criticizing the United States’ migration policy. Thousands of migrant children have been separated from their families during border crossings into the U.S.

Separately, she called on Australia to implement more humane policies toward hundreds of migrants detained on Manus Island and Nauru.

She said inequalities undermine social progress, and economic and political stability; whereas human rights build hope.

The high commissioner urged nations to do away with the divisive, destructive forces of repression in favor of principled and more effective policies grounded in human rights.
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The leader of the main center-right party in the European Parliament said on Tuesday that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban must apologize for his criticism of the EU or his ruling Fidesz party could be suspended from the grouping.

Orban, an outspoken nationalist, wants to remain in the EPP, Fidesz said on Tuesday, despite growing pressure within the European Parliament’s biggest grouping to suspend or expel it, a scenario backed by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.

The Hungarian leader has long been at loggerheads with Brussels over his hardline stance on immigration and accusations — which he denies — that he is undermining the rule of law. The feud is escalating ahead of European Parliament elections in May.

“Viktor Orban must immediately and permanently end his government’s anti-Brussels campaigns,” Manfred Weber, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) candidate to be EU Commission President, told Bild newspaper.

On Monday, the EPP said it had received motions from 12 member parties in nine EU countries and would discuss suspending or excluding Fidesz on March 20.

Juncker, who in 2014 was the EPP’s candidate for the top EU executive position he now holds, accused Orban of coming “within a hair’s breadth” of peddling falsehoods and said he would support the exclusion.

Asked about Orban, Juncker told German broadcaster ZDF: “Whoever lies in European affairs for domestic political reasons has to ask himself whether he still wants to belong to the EPP club. I think, they are not one of them any more.”

“I already said months ago that the EPP’s biggest problem in the European elections has a name, and that is Orban. I will support this exclusion,” Juncker added.

Speaking to journalists in the Germany town of Rottersdorf, Weber said that in recent weeks “Viktor Orban and the Fidesz have crossed red lines again” and added that all options were on the table, “especially the option of expulsion and going away, going our future way without Fidesz.”

Orban’s party said in a statement: “Fidesz does not want to leave the (European) People’s Party, our goal is for anti-immigration forces to gain strength within the EPP.”

‘Constructive dialogue’

Orban has launched a media and billboard campaign that frames the May elections as a choice between forces backing and opposing mass immigration and that attacks Juncker.

However, on Tuesday he said he welcomed an initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron for reforming the EU. 

“In the details, of course, we have differences of views, but far more important than these differing opinions is that this initiative be a good start to a serious and constructive dialogue on the future of Europe,” Orban said in a statement to Reuters.

Weber told Bild newspaper he expected an apology to EPP member parties, an immediate and permanent end to Orban’s anti-EU campaigns and renewed government support for Central European University to stay in Budapest.

CEU was forced out of Hungary and plans to relocate to Vienna from September as Orban wages a bitter campaign against its founder, U.S. billionaire George Soros, accusing him of supporting immigration to undermine Europe’s way of life.

Hungarian-born Soros, 87, denies that.

The EPP has 217 lawmakers in the 750-strong EU legislature, 12 of them from Fidesz. It is expected to remain the biggest parliamentary group in the May elections, although likely weakened, opinion polls show.

Far-right, populist parties are expected to perform well.
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A call by French President Emmanuel Macron for reforms of the European Union to pave the way to a “European renaissance” won mainly just polite support on Tuesday from other EU leaders.

Some officials portrayed Macron’s reform plan as part of a bid to become the new leader of Europe as Angela Merkel prepares her exit as German chancellor, and suggested it was at least partly intended to boost his waning popularity in France.

His proposals, unveiled in an open letter to citizens of Europe that was published in newspapers across the EU, are to protect and defend Europe’s citizens while giving the 28-nation bloc new impetus in the face of global competition.

Britain is preparing to leave the EU, and elections to the European Parliament take place in May. The EU also faces a more assertive China and challenges from Russia, and has differences with the United States, especially over President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies.

“The German government supports engaged discussions about the direction of the European Union,” said a spokesman for the government in Germany, the EU’s biggest member state. He declined to give further details.

The importance of Berlin’s backing for any change in the EU, or lack of it, has become clear since Macron’s vision of deeper integration among the 19 countries that use the euro currency failed to materialize after 18 months of EU talks.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who chairs EU leaders’ summits, focused on only one aspect of Macron’s reform drive — the creation of a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies to protect EU countries from outside cyber-attacks and meddling in elections.

“I agree with Emmanuel Macron. Do not allow external anti-European forces to influence our elections and decide on key priorities and new leadership of EU,” Tusk said.

Start of a serious debate?

The European Commission, the EU executive, saluted Macron’s call as a contribution to the debate about Europe but said most of the ideas had already been implemented or were under way.

However, Macron’s proposals failed to impress Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who described them as “totally divorced from reality,” according to Czech news website www.parlamentnilisty.cz.

“I have noticed that when France says ‘more of Europe’, she in fact means more of France. But that is not the way. We are all equals in Europe,” he was quoted as saying.

Other EU officials, when speaking on condition of anonymity, were also less diplomatic, ascribing the timing of the proposals to Macron’s desire to boost his popularity ratings in France before the European Parliament elections in May.

“People are seeing it as a bit ridiculous that he keeps reinventing the wheel,” one official said.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel offered selective support for Macron’s ideas.

“Support for Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for a new impetus for the European project. Minimum wage, climate investments, Security and Defense Council, multi-speed Europe,” Michel said on Twitter.

More surprising was support from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, usually a strong critic of the EU.

“This could mark the beginning of a serious European debate,” Orban said in a statement sent to Reuters by email.

“In the details, of course, we have differences of views, but far more important than these differing opinions is that this initiative be a good start to a serious and constructive dialogue on the future of Europe,” he said.
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The United States needs more firepower and focus to push back against ever-increasing Russian aggression across Europe and beyond, according to the top U.S. commander in Europe.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, European Command’s Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti called Russia the primary threat to stability in Europe and recommended the U.S. boost the number of troops it deploys to the continent on both a permanent and rotational basis.

Scaparrotti said he was particularly concerned about insufficient intelligence and surveillance capabilities, as well as a shrinking advantage on the high seas.

“I’ve asked for two more [naval] destroyers,” Scaparrotti told lawmakers, saying the need for additional ships was critical “if we want to remain dominant in the maritime domain.”

“We do need greater capacity, particularly given the modernization and the growth of the Russian fleets in Europe,” he said, noting growing concern about the presence of Russian submarines in European and international waters.

Countering Russian Influence

Scaparrotti, who also serves as the supreme allied commander for NATO, is not the first high ranking U.S. military official to raise concerns about what many in the U.S. see as Russia’s increasingly aggressive posture.

Last month, a report by the U.S. military’s Defense Intelligence Agency warned of the threat posed by Russia’s action is space, while the commander of U.S. forces in Africa cautioned Moscow was playing on perceived U.S. weakness to gain influence there.

In his prepared testimony Tuesday, Scaparrotti said Europe, however, was still the lynchpin to Moscow’s overall approach.

“Moscow seeks to assert its influence over nations along its periphery, undermine NATO solidarity, and fracture the rules-based international order,” he wrote, adding from there, Russia is looking to “increase its influence and expand its presence in Afghanistan, Syria, and Asia.”

Scaparrotti told lawmakers that the U.S. military has been working closely with European allies, including Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic nations to develop the right capabilities to counter Russian aggression.

US support for Ukraine

He also said strong consideration is being given to find more ways to support Ukraine.

Since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, the U.S. has given Kyiv more than $1 billion worth of military assistance, though the vast majority of it has been non-lethal.

To date, the lone exception has been shipments of javelin missiles which started last April (2018), following authorizations by U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress.

Scaparrotti said the additional lethal aid could include sniper systems, ammunition and even naval warfare systems, citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian naval vessels last November, as part of an effort to block off Ukrainian access to the Kerch Strait.

Disinformation, cyberattacks and arms race

But like top U.S. intelligence officials, the commander of U.S. forces in Europe cautioned that while Russia is strengthening its military might, the biggest threat comes from the Kremlin’s devotion to information warfare. And he raised concerns Washington’s response in that arena is lacking.

“We need to probably get greater focus and energy into a strategy, a multifaceted strategy to counter Russia,” Scaparrotti said, “specifically within information operations, challenging their disinformation in cyber.”

U.S. lawmakers Tuesday also raised concerns about a possible nuclear arms race with Russia, with both President trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin announcing last month they are withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The U.S. and its European allies accuse Moscow of violating the terms of the treaty, which prohibited ballistic and ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, since at least 2014.

“We simply cannot tolerate this kind of abuse of arms control and expect for arms control to continue to be viable,” a senior U.S. administration official said at the time. “Let’s be clear: If there’s an arms race, it is Russia that is starting it.”

Pressed on how the U.S. would proceed in a post-treaty environment, Scaparrotti said planning was underway.

“I don’t know that we have a plan today,” he said. “We’re still in a 6-month period here where we are looking at what our options are.”
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The speed and elegant appearance of the Concorde inspired awe. Its ear-rattling sonic booms irritated people on the ground and led to restrictions on where the jet could fly.

The Concorde’s maiden flight was 50 years ago this month. Although the plane went out of service in 2003, its delta-wing design and drooping nose still make it instantly recognizable even to people who have never seen one in person.

The Concorde was the world’s first supersonic passenger plane. It was a technological marvel and a source of pride in Britain and France, whose aerospace companies joined forces to produce the plane.

Its first flight occurred on March 2, 1969, in Toulouse, France. The test flight lasted 28 minutes. British Airways and Air France launched passenger flights in 1976.

With four jet engines and afterburners, the plane could fly at twice the speed of sound and cruised at close to 60,000 feet, far above other airliners. It promised to revolutionize long-distance travel by cutting flying time from the U.S. East Coast to Europe from eight hours to three-and-a-half hours.

Depending on the layout, the plane could seat up to 128 passengers, far fewer than on many other planes flying the trans-Atlantic routes. The relative scarcity of seats and the plane’s high operating costs made tickets expensive — typically several thousand dollars — so it was mostly reserved for the wealthy and famous, occasionally royalty.

In the U.S., the plane flew mainly to New York and Washington and attracted quite a buzz. In the mid-1980s, men dressed as Union and Confederate soldiers to re-enact a Civil War battle in Virginia paused in mid-skirmish to gaze up at a Concorde flying into nearby Dulles Airport.

A Concorde captain raved that the plane flew beautifully, and that the only indication of its speed came from looking down at other jets far below that seemed as if they were flying backward — the Concorde was moving about 800 mph faster.

Jamie Baker, an airline analyst and aviation enthusiast, took the plane from New York to London in 2002. Perhaps because it was a morning flight, the mood was more dignified than festive, Baker says. The ride was so smooth that there was hardly any sensation of flight.

“No turbulence. No sense of motion, save for the clouds passing by below us,” Baker says. “Concorde was a tool devised to outwit time.”

Former Boeing engineer Peter Lemme recalls his 1998 flight as a delight, but cramped.

“The seats were more like what we flew domestically in coach,” he says. “The food was excessive,” including caviar, and there was a duty-free cart piled with very expensive items.

However, the Concorde never caught on widely. The plane’s economics were challenging, and its sonic booms led it to be banned on many overland routes. Only 20 were built; 14 of which were used for passenger service.

As time went on, flights were disrupted by mechanical breakdowns including engine failures and a broken rudder. Reviewers complained about the small cabin, noise, and vibrations that started during takeoff and continued once airborne.

The plane’s darkest day came on July 25, 2000, when an Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel and exploded shortly after takeoff in Paris, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground.

Investigators determined that the plane ran over a metal strip that had fallen off another jet on to the runway, damaging a tire. A piece of the tire crashed into the underside of the wing, shockwaves caused a fuel tank to rupture, and the fuel ignited.

The planes were grounded for expensive modifications. After 18 months, BA and Air France both resumed flights, but traffic never recovered.

It was determined that a more intensive and expensive maintenance schedule would be required to keep the fleet flying. In 2003, BA and Air France both stopped Concorde service.

BA’s chief executive called it “the end of a fantastic era in world aviation,” but added that retiring the planes was a prudent business decision.

Supersonic transports could yet make a comeback. Several companies are working on models and hope to test them soon.
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At President Donald Trump’s direction, the United States intends to scrap the preferential trade status granted to India and Turkey, officials said Monday.

Washington “intends to terminate India’s and Turkey’s designations as beneficiary developing countries under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program because they no longer comply with the statutory eligibility criteria,” the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said in a statement.

India has failed to provide assurances that it would allow required market access, while Turkey is “sufficiently economically developed” that it no longer qualifies, USTR added.

Under the GSP program, “certain products” can enter the US duty-free if countries meet eligibility criteria including “providing the United States with equitable and reasonable market access.”

India, however, “has implemented a wide array of trade barriers that create serious negative effects on United States commerce,” the statement said.

Turkey, after being designated a GSP beneficiary in 1975, has meanwhile demonstrated a “higher level of economic development,” meaning that it can be “graduated” from the program, according to USTR.
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Tiny Estonia has become the latest European country with a political landscape reshaped by a populist party promising national survival in an age of globalism, a development noted Monday in light of European Union parliament elections.

Political observers watched a parliamentary election held Sunday in the Baltic nation, an EU and NATO member that borders Russia, as a continental barometer for whether far-right nationalists would continue making gains. And in Estonia, they did. 

While the center-right Reform Party, which ran on a low-tax, small-government platform, will be tasked with forming a government, the anti-immigrant, euroskeptic Estonian Conservative People’s Party more than doubled its seat tally in parliament.

Reform Party leader Kaja Kallas is expected to become the country’s first female prime minister after her party finished with 28.8 percent of the vote. The party said before the election it would not consider the Estonian Conservative People’s Party, or EKRE, as a potential governing coalition partner. 

The far-right party nevertheless captured a larger platform for its positions, some of which critics see as homophobic and racist. Martin Helme, who runs EKRE with his father and leads its parliament caucus, has said publicly that only white immigrants should be allowed into Estonia. 

On election night, Helme said the party’s growing popularity was “no different than almost all other countries in Europe, where there’s a serious public demand for political parties who will stand up against the globalist agenda” and European Union policymakers.

But the “biggest achievement” the vote count reflects is “We are dictating the Estonian political agenda,” he said. 

In recent years and months, support for populist parties with nationalist agendas has grown in Europe, from Poland and Hungary to France and Italy.

The outcome in Estonia bore similarities to what happened in Sweden last year. The Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, won 62 seats in the 349-member parliament on Sept. 9, making it the third-largest party. 

The other parties ruled out forming a coalition government that included the Sweden Democrats. It took four months before a two-party, center-left minority government took office. 

In some countries, including Italy, nationalist surges followed large influxes of immigrants. In others, like Poland and Estonia, mass migration has been a source of anxiety even though the number of arriving migrants has been extremely small.

Shrinking populations and the threat of cultural identity eroding stirs the fear in countries that gained independence with the fall of the Soviet Union three decades ago.

Estonia, a former Soviet republic, has just 1.3 million people and its population declines each year due to low birth rates and emigration to richer Western countries. Ethnic Estonians make up 70 percent of the population, or some 900,000 people.

​In explaining his party’s success in the election, Martin Helme, 42, said its message promoting traditional values has appeal to voters when demographic changes are causing worries.

“Emigration is a big thing in Estonia,” he said. “The replacement of the population in Estonia. Estonians are leaving and others coming in. These are big issues. Compared to those issues, tax issues are just meaningless.”

EKRE was formed in 2012 through a merger of an agrarian and a populist party. It defines its ideology as nationalist-conservative and its goal to protect the benefits of ethnic Estonians.

The party leads an annual torch-lit Independence Day march through Tallinn’s Old Town. During the February event, hundreds of participants shout the party’s slogan “For Estonia!”

Martin Helme’s father, party chairman Mart Helme, is a former diplomat and a historian specializing in ancient Estonian civilization. He took over as EKRE’s leader in 2013 and led it to securing 8 percent of the vote, or seven parliament seats, in 2015.

The party opposed Estonia becoming the first ex-Soviet republic to allow same-sex couples to register as civil partners. In the past, it called for a referendum on leaving the EU but did not gain traction with the idea.

Martin Molder, a political scientist at Estonia’s University of Tartu, thinks the party’s growing strength is a protest against established elites.

“There’s a lot of generic dissatisfaction in the electorate in regards to how ‘business as usual’ is done in politics,” Molder said. “Certain parties and politicians have been in power for a long time and they’ve created a kind of class of professional politicians whose only experience in life has been doing politics.”

 
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The Kremlin had hoped that by fomenting a separatist insurgency in east Ukraine’s Donbas region, Ukraine could be snapped back into the Russian orbit, but the strategy appears to have backfired, say analysts.

The debate over whether Ukraine should look west and align with the European Union or east towards Moscow appears to be over — at least for now.

This month’s presidential election appears to many as another major stage in Ukraine’s journey to break free of Russia and carve out an independent future for itself free of constraints imposed by the Kremlin.

It is the first, they say, since the Soviet era that has not been dominated by debate about whether Ukraine’s best prospects rest with the West or Russia. Being labeled Russia-friendly is a liability for any candidate in an election that’s featuring 43 hopefuls.

And in his bid to secure re-election, incumbent president Petro Poroshenko, who is trailing according to opinion polls in third place, has not been shy to label his two main rivals: popular TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the upstart frontrunner, and veteran politician Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister now campaigning as a recast Ukrainian nationalist, as “agents of the Kremlin.”

Pro-Moscow is out

The top openly pro-Russian candidate, Yuriy Boyko, a former deputy prime minister and ally of ousted authoritarian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was driven from office by the popular Maidan uprising in 2014, is languishing in fourth place.

In the opinion polls he is stuck at around 10 percent of the vote. And there are few signs he will be able to break out from his electoral stronghold of the south-east and improve his position before polling in the first round of voting on Mar. 31.

“He has Russian President Vladimir Putin to thank for that,” says Tetiana Popova, media expert and former deputy minister for information policy. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its violent occupation of the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, has in effect deprived Boyko of a huge pool of pro-Russian voters.

Voters in the Donbas and the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea traditionally back candidates who promote close ties to Russia, but in this election they have all but been disenfranchised inadvertently by Putin. They face steep obstacles if they want to cast a ballot in the presidential race, having either to go to consulates overseas or travel to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.

“Losing pro-Russian voters in Crimea and Donbas means the electorate has become even more pro-Europe — you can see it in the ratings,” says Popova.

And Russia’s intervention in the east, a reaction to the pro-Moscow Yanukovych’s ouster and part of a strategy, say Western diplomats, aimed at disrupting Ukraine and exerting pressure on it, is deeply angering Ukrainians. An estimated 13,000 people have died in the Donbas conflict. As a result, two-thirds of Ukrainians view Russia as an “aggressor country,” fueling pro-West sentiment and public support for the country to join NATO.

“Russia’s intervention in the east, where pro-Moscow separatists enjoy Russia’s full support, has backfired — it is just making Ukrainians more pro-Western,” says a U.S. diplomat. “It isn’t for nothing that people here say, ‘Putin may have got Crimea for a while, but he has lost Ukraine,’” he adds.

Debate not over, really

But some warn Russia should not be written out of the picture yet, noting that Ukraine has switched between East and West and back again before.

Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, Ukrainian commentator Konstantin Skorkin noted that while “for the first time since Ukraine’s independence, national elections will not feature a powerful, pro-Russian force capable of winning,” the Kremlin will likely continue to play a “long game” to try to snap Ukraine back into the Russian orbit.

Elections later this year for the Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, could well be seized on by the Kremlin as “an opportunity to change the political course in Kyiv,” he fears. Viktor Medvedchuk, a well-known pro-Russian politician closely associated with Putin, has already announced plans to create a pro-Russia political coalition.

And the “Kremlin will likely try to enact its will by manipulating information and fomenting propaganda narratives that stoke division within Ukrainian society,” Skorkin cautions.

Some say that’s already happening.

Russian influence

There are fears that Russian special services with the help of local proxies are preparing to spread false exit-poll data to set the grounds for the Kremlin to claim the results are fake and the election illegitimate.

And Poroshenko has accused Russia of launching cyberattacks against Ukraine’s Central Election Commission. And Ukraine’s State Security Service, SBU, say cyber-hackers have been targeting campaign staff’s personal computers.

On Thursday, SBU deputy head Viktor Kononenko told reporters a “group of Russian citizens and Ukrainian collaborators” had used financial bribes to set up a network of people ready to vote for a certain candidate and to influence public opinion. He did not indicate which candidate.

Adrian Karatnycky, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, has raised the possibility the Kremlin “may have had a hand in the doctoring of data” for an explosive media expose last week implicating the son of a Poroshenko associate in the embezzlement of millions of dollars from state defense enterprises.

The scheme, involving the smuggling of used parts from Russia and then the selling of them to Ukrainian defense companies at inflated prices, has been seized on by Poroshenko’s challengers.

Poroshenko has not been directly implicated in any accusations of wrongdoing, and his aides point out that the expose was based on leaked documents of an ongoing probe into the scheme by the government, an illustration, they say, of the incumbent’s commitment to fighting corruption.

“Whatever the ultimate truth of the allegations [and even the journalists say only that the evidence is ‘most likely’ true] voters should be skeptical until the facts have been ascertained,” says Karatnycky. “Given Putin’s aim to destroy any Ukrainian President who defies him, a Russian intelligence hand in this cannot be excluded.”

The fallout from the expose appears to be helping the upstart Zelenskiy.

Poroshenko is widely seen as the Kremlin’s least preferred candidate. He has pushed reforms to help Ukraine integrate with Europe and has responded robustly to Russian intervention in the east, say analysts.

Zelenskiy, who’s turned the race upside down by capitalizing on economic hardship and public fatigue with falling living standards, has promised to engage with the Kremlin to end the conflict in the Donbas. Poroshenko supporters say Zelenskiy is ill-equipped and too inexperienced to deal with the wily Putin.

 
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British Prime Minister Theresa May will on Monday set out plans for a $2.11 billion (1.6 billion pound) fund to help to boost economic growth in Brexit-supporting communities, particularly in the north of England.

The “Stronger Towns Fund,” details of which appeared in newspapers last month, is seen by many as part of May’s efforts to win support for her Brexit deal from opposition Labour lawmakers who represent areas that voted strongly in favor of leaving the European Union.

Britain is due to leave the bloc at the end of the month and May, whose exit deal with Brussels was rejected by a large majority of lawmakers in January, has promised parliament will get to vote on a revised deal by March 12.

The government said the fund would be targeted at places that had not shared fairly in the country’s prosperity and would be used to create new jobs, help to train people and boost economic activity.

“Communities across the country voted for Brexit as an expression of their desire to see change; that must be a change for the better, with more opportunity and greater control,” May said in a statement.

“These towns have a glorious heritage, huge potential and, with the right help, a bright future ahead of them.”

The opposition Labour Party’s finance spokesman, John McDonnell, said the fund was “Brexit bribery.”

“This towns fund smacks of desperation from a government reduced to bribing Members of Parliament to vote for their damaging flagship Brexit legislation,” he said in a statement.

One billion pounds has already been allocated, with more than half going to towns across the north of England. A further 600 million pounds will be available for communities around the country to bid for, the government said.
…

An annual race run in Britain’s largest island ended with the promise of holy matrimony. One competitor who had previously won the quirky race carrying his girlfriend proposed to her after they won their second race in as many years. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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The Dutch man who married a British teenager after she ran away to join the Islamic State group says he wants to return home to the Netherlands with Shamima Begum and their newborn son.

Yago Riedijk, 27, told the BBC from a Kurdish-run detention center that he met Begum within days of her arrival in Syria when she was 15. He said in an interview aired Sunday that the marriage was “her own choice.”

When asked if marrying a 15-year-old was appropriate, he said: “To be honest, when my friend came and said there was a girl who was interested in marriage, I wasn’t that interested because of her age, but I accepted the offer anyway.”

Riedijk says that while he fought for IS, he now rejects the group and tried to leave it.

Begum fled east London with two other friends to travel to Syria to marry IS fighters in 2015 at a time when the group’s online recruitment program lured many impressionable young people to its self-proclaimed caliphate.

Begum, now 19, resurfaced at a refugee camp in Syria and recently told reporters she wanted to come home. But her apparent lack of remorse has triggered criticism in Britain and the family has expressed its own shock at her lack of repentance.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has revoked her citizenship — even while saying he wouldn’t make a decision that would render a person stateless. Her family has insisted she isn’t a dual citizen. The case will be argued in the courts.

Although it’s unclear if Begum has committed a crime, her comments — and those of her husband — throw into sharp relief larger questions about how Western societies will deal with others who joined IS, but want to return to their home countries now that the extremist group is on the verge of collapse.

 
…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned an attack on a Holocaust memorial in the French city of Strasbourg.

Netanyahu on Sunday condemned the “horrific, anti-Semitic” defacing of a monument marking the site of a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis in 1940.

French police on Saturday launched an investigation the incident, in which a heavy memorial stone was moved off its base in the eastern city. The incident comes amid a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in France in recent months, including spray-painting of swastikas on around 80 Jewish gravestones last month.

Netanyahu called upon “all leaders of enlightened countries to join in denouncing it in a systematic and continuous fashion. The first way to combat anti-Semitism is to denounce, to condemn it unequivocally.”
…

French authorities say about 50 migrants attempted to scurry aboard a cross-Channel ferry that had arrived from Dover, England into the northern French port of Calais late Saturday.

Officials say 44 of the refugees were apprehended, dashing their hopes of reaching England on the vessel’s return trip.

Two of the migrants fell into the water, but were quickly rescued.

Maritime officials say ferry traffic was delayed for several hours as police searched the ship.

Authorities say at least 100 migrants stormed into the port Saturday night.

The French news agency, AFP,  reports that police were continuing to look Sunday morning for a least four more migrants the police believed were still hiding out on the same ship where the other migrants had been apprehended.

 
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