політика, бізнес, народ

Thousands protested in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, on Saturday, the fourth such rally in as many weeks, demanding that President Milo Djukanovic and his government resign over alleged corruption, cronyism and abuse of office. 

Throngs of people, rallied by civic activists, bloggers and journalists who say they are not affiliated with political parties, marched through the center of the city chanting “Milo, thief.” Opposition politicians have distanced themselves from the protests. 

Weekly political protests also continued in Serbia, Montenegro’s larger neighbor and fellow ex-Yugoslav republic.

Marija Backovic, a teacher from Podgorica, said she was protesting for a better Montenegro. “We are not the danger for this country … those that are destroying it for 30 years are the real danger,” she told the crowd on Saturday. 

The rallies started after Dusko Knezevic, a former ally of Djukanovic, accused him and his ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) of corruption, cronyism, abuse of office and murky financial deals. 

Both Djukanovic and the DPS have denied the allegations and said the protests are legitimate unless they turn violent. 

Djukanovic has dominated national politics in the small Adriatic country, a NATO member and candidate for European Union membership, serving as prime minister or president for most of the period since independence in 1991. 

Montenegrin prosecutors accused Knezevic, a banker, of fraud and money laundering, but he fled to Britain. He has said he will produce more evidence about alleged murky dealings by Djukanovic and his allies. 

In December, Montenegro’s central bank placed the small Atlas Banka, headed by Knezevic, under temporary administration as its capital failed to meet minimum risk requirements. In January, Atlas Banka sought to increase its capital again after hiking it last October by 1.37 million euros ($1.56 million) to 32.03 million euros. 

In Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, meanwhile, thousands marched in protest at what they see as the increasingly autocratic rule of President Aleksandar Vucic.

The veteran leader and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) are accused by political opponents of stifling media freedoms, and opposition parties have demanded Vucic’s resignation and establishment of conditions for free and fair elections. 

Vucic and the SNS, which with coalition allies holds a comfortable majority of 160 deputies in the 250-seat parliament, reject those allegations. 

Both Montenegro and Serbia are seeking join the European Union but have been told they must root out organized crime, corruption and nepotism and reduce bureaucracy before they can become members of the bloc. 
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Spain’s government says that unauthorized immigration by sea has dropped in the last month, falling to 930 people arriving in February compared with over 4,000 in January. 

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said while on a visit on Saturday to Spain’s northern African enclave of Melilla that “the upward trend of recent months has been broken.” 

Spain became the leading entry point into Europe for illegal migrants last year, when it received over 57,000 people by sea compared with 21,000 in 2017. 

Opposition parties have criticized the Socialist-led government for being soft on illegal migration. After taking a more welcoming position on migrants compared with other European Union nations like Italy, Spain has recently tried to reduce arrivals. 

The issue is expected to be on the agenda in April’s general elections.  
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Tens of thousands of people have marched in Italy’s financial capital against policies by the populist government that they say promote racism.

The Milan city official in charge of migrant policy, Pierfrancesco Majorino, put the number of marchers under the banner “People First” at 200,000.

He wrote on Twitter: “Salvini, count us” aimed at League leader Matteo Salvini, who as interior minister has blocked the arrival in Italy of humanitarian ships that have rescued migrants fleeing Libya.

The demonstration, which finished in front of the Duomo cathedral, had a festival mood with bongo drums, trumpets and DJ music.

The head of the CGIL labor confederation, Maurizio Landini, said Italy’s government “is promoting the wrong policies, and is not fighting inequalities.”

 
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose AK Party is facing major defeats this month in local elections, is being accused of behaving like a “dictator” after his threat to remove victorious pro-Kurdish mayoral candidates.

Erdogan, addressing supporters this week, issued a stark threat to voters in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast: Candidates deemed sympathetic to the PKK Kurdish separatist group who are elected will be removed.

“If you happen to send the opportunities provided by the state to Qandil [where PKK leaders are based in neighboring northern Iraq], we will once again, immediately and without waiting any further, appoint our trustees,” Erdogan said.

The warning was aimed at Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish HDP. Ankara accuses the HDP of being the political wing of the PKK, a charge it denies. Already, dozens of elected HDP mayors have been removed from office and jailed, accused of aiding the PKK.

The HDP’s leadership is calling on voters to take back control of the towns and cities seized by Ankara.

The pro-Kurdish party dismisses terrorist allegations against its candidates. “If they remove any of our successful candidates, it’s not that the elected mayors are terrorists but rather Erdogan is a dictator,” said Ertugrul Kurkcu, honorary president of the HDP.

Validated candidates

Kurkcu points out the Higher Election Board, which administers elections in Turkey, has validated all the HDP’s mayoral candidates. The HDP claims any alleged transgressions by its candidates during campaigning should be a matter for the Turkish judiciary, rather than the president.

Erdogan’s warning is being interpreted as an attempt at voter intimidation.

“This is a kind of a threat to Kurdish voters: If you want to have peace and tranquility in the region, you have to elect my candidates. If you vote for the opposition, I will sack the mayors. I am going to lead you like sheep,” said Kurkcu. “But after all these huge struggles for democracy, I do not see honorable Kurds or honorable citizens who will accept this threat. Instead, it provokes anger and rebellion.”

Kurkcu’s position may be well-founded. The HDP “will sweep all Kurdish-majority cities and towns despite massive intimidation and black propaganda,” predicted analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.

Analysts say there is growing anger among many Kurds over the security crackdown that has been in place since the collapse of the 2015 peace process with the PKK.

Towns ravaged

In Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, many towns and city centers were reduced to rubble as security forces ousted Kurdish fighters. Human rights groups say more than 200,000 people have been left homeless.

Along with over 80 pro-Kurdish HDP mayors removed from their posts and imprisoned, dozens of the party’s parliamentary deputies languish in jail, including its former charismatic leader, Selahattin Demirtas. They are all being held on terrorism charges.

State-appointed trustees now administer nearly all towns and cities in southeast Turkey. Many of the cultural reforms encouraging the Kurdish language have been rolled back, including the use of Kurdish on official signs.

Erdogan, in his early years in power as prime minister, had positioned himself as an advocate for Kurdish rights. He was rewarded electorally with his AK Party, securing more votes than the HDP in polls.

However, the collapse of the peace process with the PKK amid mutual recriminations saw Erdogan abandon the courting of Kurds and turn toward  Turkish nationalism. “There is a lot of distrust by Erdogan. Erdogan was sincerely believing in the peace process and believes the PKK and HDP abused this,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

​Aligned with nationalists

Since the December 2015 general election, Erdogan’s AK Party has deepened its relationship with Turkey’s hard-line Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has been in the forefront of calls for a crackdown on the pro-Kurdish movement.

With the Turkish economy mired in recession and public discontent mounting, Erdogan now depends on the MHP’s support in the March elections. Analyist Yesilada said Erdogan has little choice but to continue his hard-line rhetoric against the pro-Kurdish movement.

“AKP doesn’t have the votes to retain Istanbul and Ankara,” Yesilada said. “Erdogan has to throw something to [MHP Chairman Devlet] Bahceli. … So we will see the worst manifestations of populism.”

However, the HDP is determined to make Erdogan pay a heavy electoral price.

“In western Turkey, our party is not listing candidates in seven major cities,” said Kurkcu, “meaning that we are directing our voters, around 10 percent of the electorate, to add their vote to the general opposition. This is not a vote for the main opposition but rather against Erdogan.”

The HDP’s surprise move could prove decisive, with opinion polls indicating the opposition ahead in many of Turkey’s main cities and Istanbul too close to call. Analysts suggest a serious setback for the AKP could be the impetus for Erdogan again resetting the political agenda by reaching out to Kurds and abandoning his Turkish nationalist ally.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was facing a groundswell of revolt Friday from allied center-right parties that want to kick him out of their European Parliament group less than three months ahead of the May elections.

Several Christian Democrat parties already have voiced their opposition to the continued membership of the EPP umbrella group of Orban’s Fidesz party. In recent years, Orban has been strongly identified with anti-migrant rhetoric.

Luxembourg Christian Democrat leader Frank Engel said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press he wants the EPP to take a decision ahead of the March 21-22 European Union summit in Brussels “because I have no intention of engaging in an election campaign with Fidesz still on board.”

Engel joined two Belgian parties in writing in a letter to the grouping’s presidency asking for Fidesz to be excluded because the Hungarian leader “has been acting in striking contradiction” with the EPP’s Christian Democrat values.

The EPP, they said, was too important “to be undermined within our own ranks by what we are so determined to fight: nationalism-based populism and open hostility against European integration.”

Dutch and Portuguese parties have echoed that complaint, which has swelled over recent months — that Orban is too far to the political right of traditional Christian Democrat values.

Orban’s stance on migrants from conflict zones has alarmed many within the group. He has accused European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is part of the EPP, of being too lax on immigration. Orban has plastered Budapest with posters showing Juncker as a gloating force of evil.

Juncker’s Commission issued a rebuttal on Thursday against Orban’s allegations — hardly the unity the grouping wants to display three months ahead of elections.

Dutch Christian Democrat leader Rutger Ploum said “recent events have shown that informal talks with Fidesz no longer have the desired effect.”

And Portugal’s CDS/PP party said in a letter to the EPP presidency that the differences with Fidesz “are too substantial” for Orban’s party to remain inside the group.

Orban hopes anti-migration forces will become a majority in all EU institutions, including the European Parliament and EU Commission, the bloc’s executive body.

Lajos Kosa, a Fidesz founder and an Orban government commissioner, was confident the party would not be expelled from the EPP for what he called “clarifying the truth.”

Expulsion “was also raised earlier by pro-immigration EPP politicians, but it has not happened so far and we don’t expect it now, either,” Kosa told broadcaster ATV. “The debate and clarification of facts ahead of the EU election is in the public interest.”

Engel said he was sure more Christian Democrat parties would join his call by early next week, enough to reach a threshold that the EPP group would have to discuss the issue, likely on March 20.

“There are certainly more to come,” he said.
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Americans’ views of Russia have plummeted to levels not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a newly released survey by the U.S.-based Gallup polling center.

The data say 52 percent of Americans see Russian military power as a direct threat to U.S. vital interests, and that a third identify Russia as the United States’ arch rival, thereby displacing North Korea from the top position in Gallup’s semi-annual ranking of perceived U.S. enemies.

The percentage of Americans who view Russia unfavorably also increased a single percentage point to 73 in the latest poll, a record high in Gallup’s trends.

The findings follow a January 2018 poll by the independent Moscow-based Levada Center showed that two-thirds of Russians called the United States their main enemy.

Pavel Sharikov, a senior research fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, says although the latest results are a cause for concern, the outlook may not be as bleak as it seems.

“From my perspective, both Moscow and Washington have contributed to these numbers,” he said, noting that numerous variables – from Western sanctions over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and accusations of meddling in U.S. elections, and the recent collapse of the INF weapons treaty – have sparked unprecedented levels of belligerent rhetoric.

“From the United States, there is a lot of criticism toward Russia, which Russian politicians take very seriously and very dramatically, and they react to this criticism” with escalated threats,” Sharikiv said.

“This sentiment in Russia [is] that it should remain a strong military power…the president’s and generals’ rhetoric about the Russian military being on the rise, about Russian weapons systems being so robust,” he said. “This is also what leads to Americans perceiving Russians and Russia as a military threat. So these polls are a very big concern.”

But general Russian public perceptions of the United States, Sharikov said, differ significantly from opinions held among the pro-Kremlin community. And a spate of recent polls in Russia, he added, indicate an increasingly positive perception of Americans.

“It used to be, a couple of years ago, the general Russian public opinion was that Russia and the United States are enemies, but I have looked at the recent polls of the Levada Center, and there has been a very clear trend toward a positive perception of the United States and Europe among Russians, especially among the younger generation,” he said.

“For a very long time, the negative perception of the United States was very clearly related to a very high rating of President [Vladimir] Putin, so right now there is no correlation,” he said. “And while President Putin’s ratings are very dynamic – and, right now, it’s getting lower – the general Russian public opinion is getting more positive toward the United States.”

Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, says general public fears of warfare expressed by people polled on “both sides of the ocean” aren’t likely to affect diplomatic ties in any significant way.

“Major political decisions are being made at a different level,” he said. “Besides, the relations between the countries are already quite poor. It just doesn’t help to improve the situation when ordinary people start thinking in a negative way.”

Outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, where just days ago the choir sparked controversy with a performance of a Soviet-era satirical song about a nuclear submarine attack on the United States, locals appeared to be more nonchalant about the Gallup findings.

“This kind of published research just reinforces existing fears and biases and ultimately worsens relations,” said one young St. Petersburg resident, an engineering student, who asked to remain anonymous.

“People will believe whatever they see reported on television and online,” she said. “And, in Russia, what do they hear most about? U.S. political interference in other countries and sanctions. So of course they view the U.S. as a major enemy.”

On the streets of Moscow, too, one young professional, a psychology professor, echoed the opinion that news reports loaded with mutually antagonistic statements by U.S. and Russian officials – not to mention myriad online media threads – largely exaggerate perceptions of reciprocal enmity.

“All this gossip about Russian aggression began during Soviet times, in the mid-20th century or even earlier, and it’s never going to stop until people unplug from mass media,” he said, rolling his eyes at the mention of Gallup and Levada Center polls.

“I guess you can perceive me as an enemy if you want, but you’re perfectly safe to come have a drink with me if you like,” he added, laughing. “Thirst can be a truly dangerous thing, right?”

One Moscow-based American largely echoed that sentiment, emphasizing interpersonal connections over international relations.

“I think these polls are asking too general of a question and most people are totally politically incompetent,” said Robert, who chose to withhold his last name. “I think everyone should have a voice and democracy is a necessity but international politics isn’t a simple thing, and even experienced politicians can’t understand a lot of it – too many moving parts and cultural misunderstandings.”

Adding that he believes Russia and the United States are mutual enemies at the national level, he sees most of the conflict unfolding in geopolitical proxy disputes in places such as Syria.

“As an expat in Russia, and former expat in China and Cambodia, I don’t feel distrust or angst from locals, although they would have logical reason to feel it,” he said. “I feel different from the locals, of course, but my connection with them is on a personal level, not a political one. They realize and I realize, too, that governmental decisions are far, far removed from individual people themselves, especially in non-democratic countries like those I’ve lived in.

“I’ve spoken with people about politics in each of these countries and every one of them has shared my feelings of people connections, not political connections, between individuals,” he added.

Gallup conducted the poll among 1,016 Americans living in all 50 states between Feb. 1 and Feb. 10.

Olga Pavlova contributed to this report from Moscow.

 
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Spelt risotto was on the menu at a recent lunch in Paris. Spelt is an ancient form of wheat with a nutty flavor. It is rich in fiber and minerals, and counts among dozens of sometimes ancient and obscure foods scientists say benefit people and the planet.

A green cuisine effort is growing in France as scientists warn that meat consumption must be drastically cut to fight climate change and sustainably feed a global human population set to reach 10 billion by 2050.

“Seventy-five percent of our food comes from 12 crops and five animals. Sixty percent of all our calories come through three vegetables,” said David Edwards, director of food strategy at environmental group WWF, which jointly produced a report, “Future 50 Foods,” with the German food giant Knorr.

The message: Our current eating habits, which rely heavily on large-scale farming and livestock production, have got to change.

“We’ve had a 60 percent decline in the wildlife population since the 1970s — the last 50 years, within a lifetime,” Edwards added. “And …  a precipitous decline in insect populations also … food has pushed wildlife into the extreme margins.”

The Paris lunch featured many of the report’s so-called “future” foods. Vegetables are in. Meat is out. On the menu: walnuts, root vegetables, lentil flour, yams and soy milk.

Also, fonio — a drought-resistant grain that Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam now markets in the United States and serves at his New York City restaurant. He sources it from smallholder farmers in Africa.

“We’re still importing food like rice in Senegal. Yet we could have our own fonio, our own millet. We should be consuming it. But we still have this mentality that what comes from the West is best,” Thiam said.

Former White House chef Sam Kass, who led Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, is now fighting for the environment.

“When we talk about these dramatic changes to overhaul everything, people are like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t know what to do.’ And here, it’s like, just pick 2 to 3 foods and eat them once a week. That would be a big start,” Kass said.

In Europe, research fellow Laura Wellesley of British think-tank Chatham House says governments must aid in a shift to so-called plant-based meat and, more controversially, meat grown in laboratories.

“The EU has really invested quite heavily in this area … but it could do more,” Wellesley said. “It could invest more public finance in the research and development of culture and plant-based meat that are truly sustainable and are healthy options. And it could also support the commercialization of innovations.”

At the Paris lunch, diner Thomas Blomme gave his first course a thumbs-up.

“[S]ome sort of soup, with a lot of spices and some new ingredients. Tasted really well with some lentils,” he said.

And for diners heading back to work but feeling a bit sleepy after the seven-course tasting menu: A green moringa after-party booster juice was offered.
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Russia’s economy has stagnated for some years and suffers under sanctions imposed by the West after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Still, Moscow remains a vibrant city that attracts immigrants from around the world, most of them from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. For many of those migrants, the search for prosperity is often not easy. Ricardo Marquina has more from Moscow in this report narrated by Jim Randle.
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The U.N. Security Council failed to agree Thursday on either a U.S. or Russian proposal to find a way forward on the Venezuelan crisis.

The 15-nation council voted on two draft resolutions. The U.S. text had the support of the majority of the council members but was blocked by Russia and China, while a Russian draft garnered only four positive votes.

The U.S. text stressed the need to “prevent further deterioration” of the humanitarian situation and to allow unhindered access for the delivery of aid throughout the country.

The government of disputed President Nicolas Maduro has refused to recognize that there is a humanitarian crisis in the country and is not permitting aid from the United States to enter the country, saying it is a pretext for a U.S. military invasion.

The American draft also expressed “deep concern” that the May 2018 presidential elections that gave the incumbent Maduro a second six-year term were “neither free nor fair” and called for a political process leading to new elections. It also showed support for the “peaceful” restoration of democracy and rule of law.

“Regrettably, by voting against this resolution, some members of this council continue to shield Maduro and his cronies, and prolong the suffering of the Venezuelan people,” said U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams.

“Regardless of the results of today’s vote, this resolution shows that democracies around the world, and especially in Latin America, are mobilizing behind interim President [Juan] Guaido,” he said of the National Assembly leader who declared himself interim president Jan. 23.

Russian response 

The Russian resolution called for a peaceful settlement of the conflict, but added that Maduro needed to approve aid deliveries. The Russian text also expressed “concern over the threats to use force” against Venezuela.

Moscow’s envoy said Washington’s proposal was an effort to “escalate tensions and to implement their scenario for an unconstitutional change of government.” Vassily Nebenzia warned that the focus on the humanitarian situation was merely “a smoke screen.”  

“We are seriously concerned at the fact that today’s meeting may be exploited as a step for preparations of a real — not humanitarian —intervention as a pretext for external intervention as a result of the alleged inability of the Security Council to resolve the situation in Venezuela,” Nebenzia said.

Last Saturday, troops and Maduro supporters blocked the entry of trucks carrying food and medical supplies in violent clashes at Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil. Four people were killed, and dozens were injured.

Venezuela’s U.N. envoy said that Saturday’s violence was an “international incident,” not a domestic one, and he asserted that all was well in his country.

“Venezuela today is completely at peace, a peace preserved by the constitutional government of President Nicolas Maduro, who is in full exercise of his legal powers and who guarantees the protection of national territory, as well as the well-being of the Venezuelan people and effective control over the country,” Ambassador Samuel Moncada said. “Let me repeat: There is no type of violence in Venezuela. If there are threats against peace, those threats come from abroad.” 
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The adoption of a European Union money-laundering blacklist, which includes Saudi Arabia as well as Puerto Rico and three other U.S. territories, could be blocked by EU governments under a procedure launched on Thursday, two EU diplomats told Reuters.

At a meeting on Thursday, some national envoys opposed adopting the list, triggering a process that could lead to it being delayed or withdrawn, the diplomats said.

The move came after Saudi Arabia’s King Salman sent letters to all 28 EU leaders urging them to reconsider the inclusion of Riyadh on the list, one of the letters seen by Reuters showed.

The listing of the Saudi Kingdom “will damage its reputation on the one hand and it will create difficulties in trade and investment flows between the Kingdom and the European Union on the other,” the King wrote.

One diplomat said Washington has also pressured EU countries to scrap the list.

The U.S. Treasury said when the list was approved by the European Commission that the listing process was “flawed” and it rejected the inclusion of the four U.S. territories.

The diplomat said the Saudi lobby had intensified at the summit of EU and Arab League leaders earlier this week in Sharm el-Sheikh.

At that meeting, British Prime Minister Theresa May discussed the issue with the Saudi King, the diplomat said, adding that Britain and France are leading the group of EU countries opposed to the kingdom’s inclusion on the list, confirming a Reuters report earlier in February.

For the list to be blocked, a majority of 21 states is necessary. EU officials said that around 15 countries have already declared their opposition to the listing.

The list was first adopted by the European Commission on Feb 13 and lists 23 jurisdictions including Nigeria, Panama, Libya, the Bahamas and the four U.S. territories of American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam.

For the first time, the EU listing used different criteria from those used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering.

The FATF list is much smaller and does not include Saudi Arabia and U.S. territories.

 
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A U.N. human rights expert has published a draft list of questions to measure countries’ privacy safeguards, a first step towards ranking the governments that are potentially doing the most snooping on their own citizens.

Joseph Cannataci, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to privacy, submitted the draft questionnaire – touching on everything from chatrooms to systematic surveillance – to the U.N. Human Rights Council, and invited comments by June 30.

Cannataci’s role investigating digital privacy was created by the council in 2015 after Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. surveillance, and he has strongly criticized surveillance activities by the United States and other countries.

As the first person in the job, Cannataci set out an action plan for tackling the task and said he planned to take a methodical approach to monitoring surveillance and privacy laws to help him to decide which countries to investigate.

The council’s 47 member states are not be obliged to agree with his findings, but special rapporteurs’ reports are generally influential in a forum where governments are keen to appear to have an unblemished human rights record.

The 28 draft questions, each with a suggested score attached, begins with a potential five points if a country’s constitution had a provision to protect privacy or has been interpreted to encompass such a protection.

Under the first version of Cannataci’s scoring system, systematic monitoring of private communications could subtract 55 points, as could intensive policing of the internet and monitoring of chatrooms.

Other questions focus on subjects ranging from parliamentary and judicial oversight of surveillance and intelligence activities, profiling of civilians, and the use of “bulk powers” — such as downloading an entire set of phone records rather than getting a judge’s permission to listen into one call.

The last question asks: “Does your country have a police and/or intelligence service which systematically profiles and maintains surveillance on large segments of the population in a manner comparable to that of the STASI in the 1955-1990 GDR (East Germany)?”

Any country answering “yes” to that would forfeit 1,000 points and should abolish its system and start again, he wrote.

Cannataci stressed that the questionnaire was incomplete and “very much a work in progress”, and more questions might be added on open data, health data and privacy and gender.

“The intention would be to use such metrics as a standard investigation tool during country visits, both official and non-official,” Cannataci wrote in his report. He will report to the Council on Friday.
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Ukrainian lawmaker and presidential hopeful Vitaliy Kupriy survived two violent attacks in the past — and he is taking no chances now. One attack involved an assailant coming at him with a hammer.

As campaigning heats up in the country’s presidential race, he is shadowed by two mountainous bodyguards.

It is hardly surprising that he is alert to danger — he has been a thorn in the side of the rich and powerful for years. He has used an NGO he founded to try to kick-start a string of high-profile corruption cases, including one against businesses owned by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko for profiting from currency speculation using, Kupriy alleges, insider information.

The rights lawyer and deputy chairman of a parliamentary panel overseeing Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies does not have any illusions about his chances of emerging as a frontrunner from the pack of also-rans in an election featuring an unwieldy field of 44 candidates. That is not the point of his candidacy, he tells VOA.

Broken system

His objective is to highlight how broken the judicial and law enforcement system is in Ukraine and how political corruption is as bad now, he says, as it was when pro-Moscow authoritarian president Viktor Yanukovych was ruling the country and plundering Ukraine. Yanukovych was driven from office in 2014 by the Euro-Maidan uprising.

“Our agencies have collapsed. We don’t have the rule of law,” he says. “I go to different cities and hold town-hall meetings and last year I traveled to 130 cities. Aside from poverty, the major complaints are about the courts and law enforcement and how when people complain to the police about crimes against them nothing happens and the criminals just pay off the police.”

From petty bribery to high-level graft, corruption is one of the key issues in a presidential race that many say is one of the dirtiest they can recall. The current surprise front-runner popular TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy has built his political outsider campaign around the issue. With a month to go before the first round of polling, Zelenskiy’s nearest rivals Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko have been slinging mud at each other, trading corruption accusations.

Tymoshenko made a fortune in the natural-gas business, earning her the nickname “the gas princess” for her role in shadowy dealings back in the 1990s.

On Tuesday, an investigation by an independent news outlet, BIHUS.info, rocked the election with allegations linking the son of one of Poroshenko’s closest associates and former business partner, Oleg Gladkovsky, the first deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, to a money-laundering and smuggling scandal.

The scheme, the outlet alleged, led to the embezzling of millions of dollars from state defense enterprises and involved the smuggling of used parts from Russia and selling them to Ukrainian defense companies at inflated prices. According to the National Security and Defense Council, Gladkovsky was suspended from his post after the allegations were aired pending an investigation into the claims. Later it was reported he had resigned, but both he and his son deny the allegations.

‘Ugly and dirty campaign’

Poroshenko has not been directly implicated in the accusations of wrong-doing. Even so, Tymoshenko has demanded Poroshenko’s impeachment, and some analysts suggested the expose could upend the incumbent president’s bid for re-election.  

“Just wonder if this will be a terminal blow for Poroshenko’s campaign,” Tim Ash, senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, a major European investment house, said in a note to clients. “All sides have a lot to lose in this campaign, I guess it is going to be an ugly and dirty campaign. The gloves just came off,” he added.

Corruption involving the armed forces is a highly emotive issue in Ukraine. The conflict in the east with Russia has cost an estimated 13,000 lives since 2014.

The embezzlement allegations come as no surprise to Kupriy, a native of the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk), where he headed a department combating racketeering.

He was briefly a member of Poroshenko’s parliamentary bloc but broke with the president in March 2015 after clashing with him over stalled reforms. Last year, he was involved in an ugly verbal spat with Poroshenko in the parliament over the war in the east, which he believes the president has not pursued with enough vigor.

Breaking with Poroshenko has had consequences, he says. Friends and allies of his have been targeted for prosecution and he is under investigation himself by the country’s chief military prosecutor, Anatoliy Matios.

“His wife is a multi-millionaire,” he says of the prosecutor’s spouse. “How is this possible? He has spent his whole career in government agencies. He says it is his wife’s business, but we know what’s going on,” he adds. A request for comment by VOA from the military prosecutor’s office went unanswered.

Inaction

Kupriy’s tactic has been to follow high-profile graft cases and when there’s no action by prosecutors and the anti-corruption agencies to go to the courts to get them to order probes are advanced. “I have 60 current cases. My style is to be like a bulldozer and push hard,” he says. But once he has secured a court order there is little he can do to get the investigations to be handled seriously.

His biggest focus has been on corruption involving former Yanukovych aides and friends. Most of the cases have just stalled but meanwhile the assets are stripped off the accused and transferred into offshore companies, whose ownership is unclear.

“The property should be seized for the people, and not just confiscated and transferred into the hands of others. This is a question of due process. We lose the opportunity of the property being sold and the proceeds put into the national treasury,” says Kupriy, a father of three who spent four years studying and working in Australia.

The West is frustrated

His outrage has been echoed by Western governments and independent observers, who have urged Ukrainian authorities to enact root-and-branch reform.

Since Yanukovych’s ouster of 2014, several anti-corruption agencies have been set up in close cooperation with the assistance of Ukraine’s Western allies, including the U.S.. Among them the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, the State Bureau of Investigation, and an anti-corruption court.

But there has been open warfare between the agencies. Forty-eight out of 180 major investigations into top officials and oligarchs have been completed, but no one has been sentenced to jail terms and hearing dates keep being postponed. Analysts say there’s been progress in reducing corruption in the gas and banking sectors, but otherwise graft has returned to pre-Maidan levels.

“What went wrong? The short answer is that the new institutions don’t work, or in the case of NABU, they’re being blocked from doing their job,” wrote Mykola Vorobiov, a Ukrainian journalist, in a study for the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank.

To the frustration of Western allies, Ukraine’s highest court struck down Wednesday a provision forcing officials suspected of corruption to prove that their assets are legitimate. The court ruled the requirement unconstitutional on the grounds it violates the principle of the presumption of innocence. The provision was introduced in 2015, a quid pro quo demanded by the International Monetary Fund for loans need to shore up Ukraine’s economy.

NABU officials say the ruling will force them to shut down more than 60 corruption cases.

 
…

Venezuela’s foreign minister said on Wednesday the United States was trying to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro and suggested talks with U.S. President Donald Trump — an idea the Trump administration immediately rejected.

Jorge Arreaza, addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council, suggested that Maduro and Trump meet to “try to find common ground and explain their differences.” He also said his country had lost $30 billion in assets “confiscated” since November 2017 under sanctions.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence ruled out prospects of talks. “The only thing to discuss with Maduro at this point is the time and date for his departure,” Pence said on Twitter.

“For democracy to return and for Venezuela to rebuild — Maduro must go,” Pence said.

Dozens of diplomats, mainly from Latin American countries, walked out as Arreaza began to speak, while some European ambassadors boycotted the speech.

The United States and dozens of other nations have recognised opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president, but Maduro still controls the military, state institutions and oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA , which provides 90 percent of the country’s export revenue.

Maduro also “stands ready for dialogue” with the Venezuelan opposition, Arreaza said.

“There is an attempt by external powers to overthrow an elected government, this goes against all rules of international law,” Arreaza said.

‘Ilegal pillage’

The United States targeted Venezuela’s government with new sanctions on Monday and called on allies to freeze the assets of state-owned PDVSA after deadly violence blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the country over the weekend.

The “blockade” against Caracas amounts to “theft of the assets and gold” of Venezuela, Arreaza said.

Some $30 billion in state assets had been confiscated since November 2017, he said, adding: “This is the illegal pillage of the resources of our state oil company in the United States.”

U.S. refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp is cutting ties with its parent PDVSA to comply with U.S. sanctions imposed on the OPEC country, two people close to the decision told Reuters on Tuesday.

The Bank of England has blocked $1.5 billion and Belgium $1.4 billion, Arreaza said. The Bank of England has previously declined to comment on questions about Venezuela’s gold, citing client privacy considerations.

“The humanitarian crisis is being used as a pretext for foreign intervention in my country,” Arreaza said.

In weekend clashes at the Colombian border, Venezuelan security forces acted with “proportionality and caution,” as humanitarian aid was burned, he said.

Earlier, an aide to President Ivan Duque of neighboring Colombia called for action to end Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis and bring about a political transition leading to free elections.
…

Britain’s opposition Labor Party will put forward or support an amendment in favor of a public vote to prevent a damaging Brexit, the party’s Brexit spokesman said on Wednesday. 

British lawmakers voted 323-240 against a Labor proposal for a permanent customs union with the EU.

“Disappointed the government has rejected Labor’s alternative Brexit deal,” Labor Member of Parliament Keir Starmer said. “That’s why Labor will put forward or support an amendment in favor of a public vote to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit.”
…

Ukraine’s Constitutional Court has struck down a law against officials enriching themselves, a move that raises concern about the country’s fight against endemic corruption and about whether it can get further aid from the International Monetary Fund.

The Ukrainian branch of Transparency International said Wednesday that the decision meant that at least 50 corruption cases would have to be closed.

The court said the law was unconstitutional because it violated the presumption-of-innocence principle by obliging suspected officials to prove their assets were legitimate, rather than obliging prosecutors to show assets were obtained by corrupt practices.

The law was introduced in 2015 to meet a demand of the IMF in order to receive badly needed loans. The IMF in 2015 authorized $17.5 billion in aid to Ukraine to support reforms.

President Petro Poroshenko said he would instruct his government to formulate a new draft law on punishing officials for corruption and that it would be submitted to parliament as an urgent priority.

Official corruption is a major issue in Ukraine as it approaches a presidential election on March 31. On Tuesday, one of Poroshenko’s top challengers in the race, Yulia Tymoshenko, called for him to be impeached following a media investigation into alleged embezzlement schemes in the country’s military industries.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the prosecutor general’s office on Wednesday to protest corruption, crying “Death to the marauders.”

 
…

A Russian military court convicted a former senior counterintelligence officer and a cybersecurity firm executive of treason Tuesday, concluding a case that initially aroused speculation of a manufactured effort to punish the source of leaks about Russian campaign hacking.

Moscow’s District Military Court heard several months of evidence and arguments behind closed doors before it found Col. Sergei Mikhailov, an ex-officer at Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and Kaspersky Lab executive Ruslan Stoyanov guilty.

The basis for the charges remains murky given the top-secret nature of the criminal proceedings. Russian media have reported the case centers on accusations that Mikhailov contacted Stoyanov to pass information from an FSB probe of a Russian businessmen Pavel Vrublevsky to an analyst with alleged ties to the FBI.

Mikhailov, the deputy head of cyber intelligence at the domestic security agency, also known as FSB, received a 22-year prison sentence and was stripped of his military rank and decorations, which included the elite “For Services to the Fatherland.”

The court gave Stoyanov 14 years. The two men listened to the verdicts and sentences from a glass cage inside the courtroom, flanked by masked men.

After the pair were arrested and charged in December 2016, the timing led some people to suggest the actions were linked to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and a possible mole who tipped off U.S. intelligence agencies about Russian interference.

Later news reports said Mikhailov was prosecuted for passing on details about an unrelated case to an American cybercrime analyst.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian security services and co-author of “Red Web” told The Associated Press on Tuesday he still thinks the criminal case against Mikhailov and Stoyanov was a direct response to U.S. officials investigating election-related hacking.

“Their arrest… was a direct follow-up to the outcry in the U.S. over the Russian meddling,” Soldatov said. “Mikhailov was the top FSB officer in charge of maintaining contacts with Western security agencies in the cyber-sphere, something that went out of fashion after the last scandal.”

Inga Lebedeva, Stoyanov’s defense lawyer, said secrecy rules prevented her from providing details about the trial. But Lebedeva said after the verdicts were given that allegations involving potential meddling in the U.S. elections did not come up.

She alleged the charges were trumped up to appease the Russian businessman Mikhailov was accused of passing on information about, Pavel Vrublevsky.

“The case has been concocted at Vrublevsky’s orders” Lebedeva alleged.

Vrublevsky, who testified during the long trial, rejected her accusation. It was not the content of the information Mikhailov allegedly passed on to the American analyst that constituted treason, but that he shared information about an active FSB investigation with a foreign citizen.

The businessman alleged Mikhailov abused his position at the FSB to go after internet entrepreneurs like him and “turn them into cybercriminals,” thus “whipping up cyber-hysteria around the world.”
…

Robots, cars, drones and virtual-reality gaming sets connected by cutting-edge 5G networks are among the thousands of futuristic gadgets on display at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

While there is much excitement over how 5G will transform our everyday lives, the conference is overshadowed by the standoff between the United States and Beijing over the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which the U.S. says could be used by the Chinese government for espionage.

Some U.S. cities and parts of Asia are already operating 5G mobile networks. They offer speeds of over a gigabyte per second and low latency — in other words, practically instant connections with no delay.

Experts say that opens up whole new fields of connectivity, from new generations of virtual reality gaming and communication, to remote robotic surgery.

The technology promises to transform not only the mobile phone in your pocket — but also the world around us, says Paul Triolo of the Eurasia Group, who spoke to VOA from the conference.

“The really key aspects of 5G, like some of the low latency communications and massive sensor, massive machine-to-machine communications, that’s more about industry and industrial uses. And that gets into thing like critical infrastructure so you’re going to have a lot more non-personal or industrial data flying around and that really has people concerned. For example, military forces in countries like the U.S. will also leverage large parts of the commercial network,” said Triolo.Chinese firm Huawei is a big presence at the Mobile World Congress and a big player in 5G network technology.

Washington has banned the company from 5G rollout in the United States, citing Chinese legislation requiring companies to cooperate with the state — raising fears Huawei 5G networks overseas could be used as a ‘Trojan horse’ to spy on rivals.

Attending the Mobile World Congress Tuesday, the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Secretary for Cyber Policy Robert L. Strayer urged allies to do the same.

“We will continue to engage with these governments and the regulators in these countries to educate them about what we know and keep sharing the best practices for how we can all successfully move to next generation of technology. I´ll just say there are plenty of options in the West,” Strayer told reporters.

Huawei’s management has said the company would never use ‘back doors’ for espionage — and the Chinese government has dismissed the accusations.

Australia, New Zealand and Japan have followed Washington’s lead and restricted Huawei’s involvement in 5G. Europe remains undecided — but the industry needs clarity, said analyst Paul Triolo.

“The European community in particular and also the U.S. have to clarify what these policies mean, what a ban would mean or what some kind of a partial ban would mean, if there’s really a middle ground that can be found here.”

Vodafone’s CEO Nick Read told the Barcelona conference that banning Huawei could set Europe’s 5G rollout back another two years.

The eye-catching gadgets show the potential that 5G networks are about to unleash. But the question of who controls those networks, and the data they carry, looms large over this futuristic world.
…

A federal judge on Tuesday agreed to delay sentencing for Maria Butina, who has admitted to working to infiltrate a gun rights group and make inroads with U.S. conservative activists and Republicans as an agent for Russia, after a prosecutor said her cooperation was continuing.

Butina, 30, has been in custody since her arrest in July.

She pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent of Russia. Butina’s attorney Robert Driscoll told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in court on Tuesday his client is ready to be sentenced.

“From our perspective, we’re ready to go,” Driscoll said.

But the lead prosecutor in the case said the prosecution stills need Butina’s cooperation in its ongoing probe.

The judge said she is sensitive to the defense’s concerns, but agreed to postpone sentencing and hold another status conference next month.

“Ms. Butina has been detained for a substantial portion of what she would likely face,” Chutkan said. But, the judge added that “her cooperation continues to be needed by the government.”

The next status hearing is now scheduled for March 28.
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reiterated his demand for a safe zone in Syria exclusively under Turkish armed forces control; however, the Turkish plans, which already face growing regional opposition, threaten to be complicated by Washington’s partial reversal of a decision to militarily pull out of Syria. 

In a television interview on Sunday, Erdogan outlined the need for a 30-kilometer-deep safe zone. The president said the Turkish frontier needed protection from the “terrorist” threat posed by the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG. 

“It will be unacceptable for us if the safe zone would be shaped in a way that contradicts with our own strategic understanding,” he said. “If there will be a safe zone on my border, it has to be under our control.”

Ankara says the YPG is linked to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Speaking at a campaign rally, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar declared that all military preparations had been completed and were “just waiting for an order from our president.” 

Analysts say the timing of the Syrian operation was dependent on the withdrawal of around 2,000 U.S. forces from Syria. U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out had been widely interpreted as a “green light” for Ankara to attack the YPG.

Trump on Friday announced that at least 200 troops would remain in Syria. Analysts say the decision could jeopardize Ankara’s plan to intervene in Syria, along with threatening to reopen new tensions with the U.S., a NATO ally. U.S. forces are working closely with the YPG in the war against Islamic State, much to Ankara’s anger.

Erdogan has refrained from criticizing Trump’s latest move. On Sunday, Erdogan described as a ”positive relationship” his dealings with his U.S. counterpart and said they have agreed to meet face-to-face in April. 

Ankara has been careful not to directly attack Trump, despite strained bilateral relations over a myriad of reasons, instead blaming his surrounding ministers and advisers. 

Turkish pro-government media are already touting that the U.S. and Turkish presidents could yet find common ground on Syria.

“After all, the proposed safe zone creates a window of opportunity for Turkey and the U.S. to find a way out of a particularly tense episode in their relations,” wrote columnist Burhanettin Duran in the Daily Sabah. Duran also heads SETA, a Turkish research group with close ties to the government.

Ankara’s possible orientation toward Washington comes as it finds itself increasingly at odds with Tehran and Moscow. 

“Turkey is definitely the top loser in Syria,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar. “Turkey is finding itself increasingly excluded, especially after Sochi.”

Erdogan reportedly failed to sell his “safe zone” plan to his Iranian and Russian counterparts at this month’s summit at the Russian Sochi resort. Even though Ankara is backing the Syrian rebel opposition, it has been recently working closely to end the civil war with Tehran and Moscow, the Damascus government’s main backers.

With Turkish military forces already occupying a broad swath of Syria, analysts suggest Moscow and Tehran are wary of Turkey expanding its control of Syrian territory. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed resurrecting the 1998 Adana Agreement between Damascus and Ankara that allows Turkey to carry out cross-border operations, with Syria’s permission.

“Russia could indeed back Ankara’s undertaking a cross-border operation in the region,” said Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based Edam research group, “providing Ankara gets the assent of the (Damascus) regime, and that has proven to be a stumbling block,” Ulgen said.

Turkey severed diplomatic relations with Syria at the beginning of the civil war, although Erdogan acknowledged “low level” communications at an intelligence level are continuing between the countries.

However, even if Ankara restored full diplomatic relations with Syria, Damascus strongly opposes any Turkish intervention.

“Turkey has the new ambition to occupy other people’s land,” said Bouthaina Shaaban, a senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad. “I think we are facing Erdogan, who has dreams of reinvigorating and recreating the Ottoman Empire,” added Shaaban, speaking at a conference in Moscow this month. 

Analysts say there are widespread concerns across the Arab world over Turkish forces’ holding of Syrian territory, given Turkey’s imperial past.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is proposing a new initiative in which Russian police would secure Turkey’s Syrian border.

“We have experience in combining cease-fire agreements, safety measures and the creation of de-escalation zones with the roll out of the Russian military police,” said, Lavrov.

Ankara has not so far commented on Lavrov’s proposal. Analysis point out that Ankara is likely to be less than enthusiastic, given Moscow has close ties to the YPG and is seeking to coax the militia into a deal with Damascus. 

Given Turkey’s increasingly isolated position on Syria, Ulgen said, Ankara will need to tread carefully over its safe zone plans.

“Essentially, Ankara does not want to undermine the productive political dialogue with Moscow and find itself totally isolated, given that the (Syrian) regime is against this operation, Iran is against this operation, Moscow is against this operation. If Ankara goes purely unilaterally, it will find Russia challenging its actions,” Ulgen said.
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared war on inflation after food prices in the country soared by 30 percent after last year’s collapse of the Turkish currency. In a bid aimed at securing his political future, Erdogan is taking radical measures to curb price increases after accusing food sellers of excessively hiking food prices. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
…

The famed annual Venice Carnival is in full swing with revelers donning beautiful costumes and extraordinary masks. The masks range from historical classics, to modern, original creations. VOAs Deborah Block takes us to a shop in the city of canals that makes intricate masks by hand.
…

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier came under fire over a congratulatory telegram sent to Iran on the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, with a Jewish community leader on Monday joining a chorus of criticism.

Taking aim at Steinmeier for failing to include criticisms of the Islamic regime in the message, Josef Schuster, who heads Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said that “routine diplomacy appears to have overtaken critical thinking”.

“It is incomprehensible that sensitivity was missing in the topic of Iran in the president’s office,” Schuster told Bild daily.

“If it was necessary to send congratulations on this anniversary, then the president should have at least found some clear words criticizing the regime,” he added.

Human Rights Watch’s director for Germany, Wenzel Michalski, has also called the message “shocking.”

The foreign policy chief of the business-friendly FDP party, Frank Mueller-Rosentritt, said the telegram must have felt like a “resounding slap in the face for our friends in Israel who are exposed to constant threats of annihilation by Iran”.

The telegram has not been made public by the president’s office. But Bild last week quoted excerpts of the message, which it said included Steinmeier’s promise to do all in his power to implement the nuclear deal on limiting Tehran’s atomic program.

The newspaper said however that there was no mention of Tehran’s backing of Hamas and Hezbollah in the message.

At the government’s weekly briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Rainer Breul said there had been a “misunderstanding.”

“To our knowledge, the president did not send congratulations for the anniversary of the Islamic revolution. His congratulations were on the occasion of Iran’s national day celebrations. Both days fall on the same day.

“It is common practice for states that have diplomatic relations to send congratulations on national day celebrations,” Breul said on Friday.
…

A comedian who is leading Ukraine’s presidential election race has urged his supporters to propose candidates for top government jobs.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who plays the nation’s president in a popular TV series, called on his backers to suggest candidates for prime minister, foreign and defense ministers and other top officials. Zelenskiy said in a video message Monday that Ukrainians have grown sick of presidents naming their friends to key positions.

Opinion polls have shown Zelenskiy ahead of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the runup to the March 31 vote.

Zelenskiy’s popularity has been driven both by his TV star status and by public dismay with current leaders. Ukraine has seen economic troubles and a sharp drop in living standards after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

 
…

After nearly two years of bitter talks on the departure of Britain from the European Union, there’s now even disagreement between the two on when Brexit should actually take place.

While EU Council President Donald Tusk said Monday that it would be “rational” for the March 29 Brexit date to be extended, British Prime Minister Theresa May reiterated her opposition to any delay.

Tusk warned that the chances of a withdrawal agreement being concluded in time are receding, and with businesses fearing a chaotic and costly cliff-edge departure, sticking by the planned Brexit date would be too risky.

“I believe that in the situation we are in, an extension would be a rational solution,” Tusk told reporters at an EU-Arab League summit in Egypt, acknowledging that he and British Prime Minister Theresa May had discussed prolonging the negotiations.

He said “all the 27 (member states) will show maximum understanding and goodwill” to make possible such a postponement — a decision that would require a unanimous vote from them.

May insisted she could deliver on the set date, however massive the challenge.

“It is within our grasp to leave with a deal on 29th of March and I think that that is where all of our energies should be focused,” May said.

She said that “any delay is a delay. It doesn’t address the issue. It doesn’t resolve the issue.”

May met several EU leaders separately over two days at the summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.

She held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as she sought elusive changes to the U.K.-EU divorce agreement.

And Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned her against “sleepwalking” into a chaotic Brexit next month and that it was time for Britain to step up and clinch a deal.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable. And I think your best friends have to warn you for that,” Rutte told the BBC. “Wake up. This is real.”

Britain’s Parliament has rejected the deal once, and May has over a month to get it approved by lawmakers before the U.K.’s scheduled departure day.

May says a new vote won’t be held this week and could come as late as March 12.

U.K. lawmakers’ objections to the Brexit deal center on a provision for the border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a safeguard that would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU in order to remove the need for checks along the Irish border until a permanent new trading relationship is in place.

May wants to change the deal to reassure British lawmakers that the backstop would only apply temporarily.

But EU leaders insist that the legally binding Brexit withdrawal agreement, which took a year and a half to negotiate, can’t be reopened.

A group of British lawmakers will try this week to force the government to delay Brexit rather than see the country crash out of the bloc without a deal. They want Parliament to vote Wednesday to extend the negotiating process.

Labour lawmaker Yvette Cooper, one of those behind the move, said it was irresponsible of the government that just a few weeks before Brexit “we still don’t know what kind of Brexit we are going to have and we’re not even going to have a vote on it until two weeks before that final deadline.”

“I don’t see how businesses can plan, I don’t see how public services can plan and I think it’s just deeply damaging,” Cooper told the BBC.
…

Thousands gathered in central Moscow on Sunday to mark the fourth anniversary of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov’s murder.

Although the events were approved by Moscow authorities, police limited access to the northern edge of the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge just outside the Kremlin, where for years a makeshift memorial comprising of plaques, photos, flowers and candles has marked the spot of the 55-year-old’s assassination by gunshot.

It was on the evening of February 27, 2015, when Nemtsov was walking across the bridge when a car stopped alongside him. A gunman emerged from the vehicle and fired multiple shots from a range of several feet, striking Nemtsov in the head, heart, liver and stomach, killing him instantly.

The attack come just hours after the activist had publicly called for a rally to protest Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the days leading up to his assassination, he had said he was preparing to release a damning report entitled “Putin. War” that would undercut Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial that the Kremlin had troops on the ground in eastern Ukraine.

In the center of Moscow, as in other cities across Russia, thousands took to the streets with placards in Russian and English with statements such as “Killed for freedom,” “Are you going to kill us too?” and “Putin is a liar.” Although five men were convicted of Nemtsov’s killing, supporters say those who commissioned the hit have evaded justice.

According to Evan Gershkovich of The Moscow Times, many placards visible at the rally touched on a litany of grievances frequently invoked by the Russia’s anti-Kremlin community — from a 2018 movie theater blaze that killed scores of Siberian children to arrests over political commentary on social media threads. 

“For many demonstrators, the rally … was ultimately less about [Nemtsov’s] death as much as it was about keeping his spirit of opposition alive,” he wrote.

“This is a march in opposition to Vladimir Putin,” one of the event’s organizers, politician Ilya Yashin, said in a video prior to the march. “This is a march for a free and democratic Russia.”

According to the “White counter,” an independent activists group that specializes in assessing rally turnout, the Moscow event drew and estimated 10,600 people

Moscow police reported about 6,000 participants.

The march route, which was coordinated with city officials, didn’t include a stop at Nemtsov’s memorial, but participants planned on walking there to deposit flowers after the rally concluded. They were met by steel slat barriers and police officers, some donning riot gear, who said access to the bridge was restricted.

Attempting to approach the bridge from Red Square, one VOA reporter was told access to the bridge was closed. When asked why the bridge was blocked, the officer gestured to step back. “Be on your way,” he said, point away from the bridge.

Riot control vehicles were visible in an area alongside the bridge.

“For some reason, they decided to make access to the bridge as difficult as possible,” said one protester named Vladimir, who has attended a number of annual Nemtsov memorial rallies. “Maybe they did it hoping that people won’t reach the place. But who wants to come will come. The state, apparently, has decided people will suffer before coming and pay their respect to Boris Nemtsov.”

“At first, we tried to reach the bridge from one entrance. It was closed. Then we tried to go through another one,” added Vladimir, who withheld his last name. “It’s not the first year they are doing this. It’s been expected, there’s nothing new.”

Andrew, who hadn’t planned on attempting to reach the site of the memorial in order to lay flowers there,  made a last-minute effort — and with success.

“[Police] a little bit fenced the place around, and I asked, ‘can I pass?’, and they said ‘yes, you can.’ And then the next behind me tried to pass through, too, but they said, “the passageway is closed.’

“It’s somehow a bit incomprehensible,” Andrew added. “A week ago, I was here, and I could pass. They don’t want people to come here. They’re ruining the memorial here every time flowers are laid. They are afraid.”

Later in the afternoon, police opened one point of access to the memorial — this time from Red Square, where marchers could walk through a gangway cordoned by crowd-control fencing with officers regulating pedestrian access in a seemingly arbitrary way.

Several prominent opposition politicians, including Alexei Navalny, attended the march.

Reports on Ekho Moskvy radio said similar rallies were being held in at least 20 Russian cities. In St. Petersburg, radio reports said, municipal officials denied permits for several memorial events.

Pete Cobus contributed reporting from Moscow. Some information from Reuters.
…

A poster at the National Rally’s headquarters outside Paris shows a smiling Marine Le Pen standing alongside Italy’s interior minister and League leader Matteo Salvini. “Everywhere in Europe,” reads the tagline, “our ideas are coming to power.”

The message is more than aspirational. As campaigning heats up for May European Parliament elections, experts predict the two far-right leaders and those of other nationalist movements may score strongly, with potentially sweeping consequences for the European Union.

“Complacency will be very dangerous with these elections,” said analyst Susi Dennison, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who estimates that “anti-European” parties could grab up to one-third or more of the vote. “The idea of change, that the political system is broken, is a very powerful one among European voters.”

Le Pen also sees a potential sea change, calling the upcoming vote a “historic turning point.”

“The European Union is dead,” the National Rally leader said during a recent interview with Anglophone journalists. “Long live Europe.”

If she proves right, the elections will consolidate a trend that has put Euro-skeptics into governments in Hungary, Italy, Austria and Poland, further weakening a union already shaken by internal divisions and Britain’s upcoming departure.

In France, the National Rally has rebounded from a stinging defeat in presidential and parliamentary elections two years ago, to become the country’s leading opposition force. Since taking control of the party her father founded in the 1970s, 50-year-old Le Pen has fundamentally revamped its pugnacious image and rhetoric — including a name tweak last year from its original moniker, the National Front.

From outsider to almost-mainstream

From once-shunned political outsider, the National Rally is now almost mainstream, surfing on the implosion of France’s center-right and center-left in 2017, and a shift in voter support to the political margins.

In a nod to its success, the conservative Les Republicains party has controversially borrowed some of its hardline rhetoric, notably on immigration.

Le Pen has also capitalized on the plummeting support for President Emmanuel Macron and his reformist agenda, seen with the weeks of “yellow vest” protests.

“Instead of offering an alternative to chaos,” she said of the president, “the French got both chaos and Macron.”

For the EU elections, she has tapped 23-year-old loyalist Jordan Bardella to head the party’s list and bolster its appeal to younger voters. Recent polls have shown the National Rally neck-and-neck with Macron’s Republic on the Move, although a survey released Friday found slipping support for the Le Pen’s party.

Still, it has traditionally fared well in EU Parliament elections, coming in first in the last 2014 vote, with nearly a quarter of the vote. Today, Le Pen is banking on a broader win.

“I think Europe is moving toward the return of nation-states, and we’re part of this great political movement supporting this,” she said. “Our goal is to turn the EU into a cooperation among nations, and not this kind of European super state.”

Eroding support for pro-EU parties

An EU Parliament forecast released last week appears to bolster her prediction. While parliament’s top two blocs, the Christian Democrats and Socialists will retain their primacy, it finds their overall share of membership and support is expected to erode.

Meanwhile, nationalist parties including Italy’s League and Le Pen’s National Rally are expected to grow sizably, with the latter predicted to gain six parliamentary seats to reach 21 in total.

Launching their European parliament campaign in Rome last October, Le Pen and Italy’s Salvini predicted a win by nationalist parties would bring “common sense” to Europe, and blasted key EU officials, including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, as “enemies of the people.”  

Like other European populist leaders, both have sought counsel from Steve Bannon, an EU skeptic and former political advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, who founded a Brussels-based initiative called The Movement.

Europe’s populists are riding on citizen ambivalence and outright antipathy to a bloc many consider too soft on immigration and overly focused on bureaucracy. Recent Eurobarometer surveys show that while two-thirds of Europeans believe their country has benefited from being part of the EU — a 35-year high — only four in 10 have a positive image or trust in it.

A strong showing by euro-skeptic parties could have significant repercussions for the EU, she said, giving them greater influence and access to key posts, including in the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body.

“The challenge for EU institutions and pro-EU politicians going into this elections, is to find issues on which Europe can deliver that will mobilize voters” such as climate change, she added.

Exploiting weaknesses

Nationalist parties also have weaknesses that pro-European ones can exploit, Dennison said, including differences on how to handle immigration. And while some populist parties are calling for nothing less than the EU’s demise, others want to reform, not break it.

In France, the National Rally’s prospects may be complicated by the yellow vest protest movement. Some yellow vests are eyeing an EU Parliament run, but the movement is leaderless and disorganized, and the idea of turning grassroots action into a political force is controversial.

“The yellow vests present both a threat and an opportunity for Marine Le Pen,” said political scientist Jean Petaux, of Sciences-Po Bordeaux University, “They could offer her party a chance to enlarge its audience as the party that listens to their grievances.”

But a yellow vest list could steal votes from the National Rally, he added.  

In Le Pen’s favor is the traditionally poor turnout for EU elections in France, Petaux said, leading to a potentially significant protest vote.  

“When you have a low turnout,” he said, “it is usually those who are against who mobilize — not those who are for.”
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Pope Francis has compared the sexual abuse of children to human sacrifice.

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” Francis said Sunday.  

He was speaking at the close of the summit of the church’s top bishops and leaders, called to design a plan on how to deal with the predatory priests who have sexually abused children and adults for decades.

AFP, the French news agency, reports that the bishops were given a “roadmap” on how to stop the predatory priests that included “drawing up mandatory codes of conduct for priests, training people to spot abuse, and informing police.”

Mark Coleridge, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference warned the gathered Catholic clergy and leaders that “We do not have forever, and we dare not fail” as they go back to  their dioceses and navigate dealing with reports of abuse.

“We have shown too little mercy,” Coleridge warned, “and therefore we will receive the same.”

Worldwide sexual abuse by priests

The reports of worldwide sexual abuse by priests have rocked the Roman Catholic Church.  

“We will do all in our power to make sure that the horrors of the past are not repeated,” Coleridge said.

On Saturday, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, in an extraordinary admission, said that “files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created.”

Sister Veronica Openibo, a Nigerian nun, addressed the group Saturday:  “We must acknowledge that our mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency have brought us to this disgraceful and scandalous place we find ourselves as a Church. We pause to pray, Lord have mercy on us.”

She told the summit; “Too often we want to keep silent until the storm has passed.  This storm will not pass by.  Our credibility is at stake.”
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Poland’s ruling party leader has pledged more social benefits for families with children and for the elderly as he opened the right-wing party’s campaign ahead of key elections this year.

Speaking at a party convention Saturday, Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced an upgrade to the generous social program of his Law and Justice party, a policy that has kept the party on top of the political polls since it won power in 2015.

But opinion polls show the party could lose to a united opposition in the European Parliament election in May and in a vote for Poland’s national parliament in the fall. 

Kaczynski, Poland’s most powerful politician, is also facing recent allegations of soliciting a bribe and unlawful participation in business negotiations.

He urged supporters to rally for the party ahead of the elections. His speech drew applause and chants of “Jaroslaw, Jaroslaw!” from party members.

But it also drew criticism from the opposition and economists about the high cost of his promises, at a time when Poland’s health care and education systems remain strapped.

Kaczynski promised to expand family benefits to cover every child, abolish taxes for young employees and raise payouts for retirees.He promised to restore bus connections among small towns and villages that were canceled years ago as unprofitable.

He said the decisions aim to improve “the quality of life, an increase in our freedom and equality” as Poland tries to catch up with richer Western Europe.

Prime Minister Premier Mateusz Morawiecki estimated the costs of the program at up to 40 billion zlotys (9 billion euros) a year, but said he knows how to finance it.
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