політика, бізнес, народ

Pope Francis, who is scheduled to visit Egypt later this month, decried Sunday’s blast at a Coptic Church in Egypt’s Nile Delta that killed 21 worshippers and wounded dozens more.

At the end of his Palm Sunday Mass, the leader of the world’s Roman Catholic Church said, ” I pray for the dead and the victims. May the Lord convert the hearts of people who sow terror, violence and death and even the hearts of those who produce and traffic in weapons.”

Earlier, in his homily, Francis denounced the suffering in the world today.

He said those who ” . . . suffer from slave labor, from family tragedies, from diseases . . . They suffer from wars and terrorism, from interests that are armed and ready to strike.”

Before the beginning of the Mass, Francis and a group of cardinals, holding elaborately braided palm fronds, walked through the crowd at Saint Peter’s Square.

In Jerusalem, worshippers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher celebrated Palm Sunday by waving palm branches during the procession next to the newly restored Tomb of Jesus.

The church in Jerusalem’s Old City is believed to be the burial site of Jesus.

Palm Sunday marks Jesus’ triumphant entry in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago and the beginning of the Christian Easter Holy Week.

 
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Norwegian police set off a controlled explosion of a “bomblike device” found in central Oslo Saturday, a suspect is being held in custody, and the security police are investigating, authorities said.

A Reuters reporter described a loud bang shortly after the arrival of Oslo’s bomb squad.

“The noise from the blast was louder than our explosives themselves would cause,” a police spokesman said, while adding that further investigation would be conducted at the scene.

The device had appeared to be capable of causing only a limited amount of damage, the police said earlier.

Police declined to give information about the suspect.

Norway’s police security service said in a tweet it had taken over the investigation from local police.

Oslo’s Groenland area, a multi-ethnic neighborhood that is home to popular bars and restaurants as well as several mosques, is also where the city’s main police station is located, less than a kilometer from where the device was found.

In neighboring Sweden, a truck Friday plowed into crowds in Stockholm, killing four people and wounding 15 in what police said was an apparent terror attack.

In 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik set off a car bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and destroyed Norway’s government headquarters, before going on a shooting rampage that killed 69 people at nearby Utoeya island.
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Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, canceled plans Saturday to visit Moscow, just hours before he was due to depart London, as tensions escalated between the U.S. and Russia over Syria.

Russian leaders, who have dubbed as illegal the U.S. action to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for its use of chemical weapons, ramped up the war of words late Friday when the country’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, warned America was “one step away from military clashes with Russia.”

In an apparent show of force, a Russian frigate armed with cruise missiles, reportedly was heading into the Mediterranean. According to Russian state media, the ship, the Admiral Grigorovich, will dock at Tartus on the Syrian coast.

Russia also has pledged to bolster Syria’s air defenses.

News of the cancelation of the British foreign minister’s trip was relayed first by Johnson himself, who tweeted: “I will now not travel to Moscow on Monday 10 April.” He said his priority was to hold talks with Western allies about Syria and Russia’s support for Assad.

British officials say that Johnson’s trip was called off after the British foreign minister consulted his American counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who himself is due to visit the Russian capital in a few days.

They said Johnson wants to spearhead efforts to help shape a “coalition of support” against Russian activity in Syria. In a statement later, Johnson said, “Developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally.”

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman described the cancelation as “absurd.”

Johnson was due to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and the two diplomats were expected to hold a joint news conference.

“It seems that our Western colleagues live in their own kind of reality in which they first try to single-handedly make collective plans, then they single-handedly try to change them, coming up with absurd reasons,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a statement.

“Unfortunately, stability, and consistency have long stopped being the hallmark of Western foreign policy,” she added.

As the diplomatic turmoil unfolded, activists Saturday claimed Syrian government warplanes had again struck Khan Sheikhoun, the rebel-held town targeted earlier in the week in an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the London-based pro-opposition watchdog that gathers information from activists on the ground, claimed a woman was killed and three people wounded after being machine-gunned by jets in an eastern neighborhood.

The warplanes carrying out Saturday’s alleged raid are believed to have flown from al-Shayrat, the airbase targeted Thursday by the U.S. in a punitive barrage of 59 Cruise missiles strike, the greatest show of America firepower in more than a decade. Tuesday’s chemical attack left scores dead, including children and women, according activists. U.S. officials so far have not commented on the claimed raid. In addition, there was no confirmation by other monitors.

There also was an unconfirmed report of a U.S.-led raid against the Islamic State in the countryside around Raqqa, the terror group’s de facto capital in Syria. The observatory quoted local activists as saying missiles struck the village of Hanida, to the west of the city.

 
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Officials say the top US diplomat will urge Russia to rethink its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. More from Nike Ching.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Moscow on April 12, just days after the United States launched missile strikes on a Syrian airbase in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack that killed civilians.

Officials say the top U.S. diplomat will urge Russia to rethink its continued support for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

Britain’s foreign minister, Boris Johnson, said on Saturday he had canceled a visit to Moscow that was scheduled for April 10. “Developments in Syria have changed the situation fundamentally,” said Johnson in a statement.

Secretary of State Tillerson is scheduled to travel to Moscow on Wednesday, after he attends the G-7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Italy from April 9 to 11.

The State Department did not respond to VOA’s inquiry on whether Tillerson’s Moscow trip has been changed or canceled since the U.S. military strikes.  

Analysts say Washington needs the diplomatic follow-up, though, after the military action.

The top U.S. diplomat, known as a man of few words, had harsh comments for Russia, which Washington blamed for failing to rein in its ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

“Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent,” said Tillerson on Thursday night. He was referring to the Kremlin’s failure to prevent the Assad government from allegedly conducting a poison gas attack that killed scores of people in rebel-held Idlib province.

In 2013, the Syrian government agreed to surrender its chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russia government. Prior to the recent gas attack, Tillerson said Assad’s future would be decided by the Syrian people. After the attack, he took aim at Assad’s government and Russia’s support for him.

Experts said the U.S. military strike could complicate Tillerson’s diplomatic mission to Moscow, and that an escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the future of Assad also is possible. 

“For sure this means further immediate bumps in the bilateral relationship,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told VOA.

He said despite the fact that the missile strikes were quite limited and Washington had warned Moscow ahead of time so that Russian soldiers would not be in danger, Moscow’s reaction was rather strong.

Herbst, now director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, said Russia’s decision to suspend the de-confliction mechanism, which is intended to avoid accidents, was not well considered.

“While de-confliction serves the interest of both U.S. and Russian, it is more important to Moscow” because U.S. conventional forces are far superior and “Russian forces are more at risk in case of an incident,” said Herbst.

“The strikes undoubtedly change the tone of the conversation, given the de-confliction protocols, between Russia and the U.S. have been suspended in Syria,” Michael Kofman from Center for Naval Analyses told VOA.

Professor Doga Ulas Eralp of American University in Washington told VOA on Friday that Tillerson “now has to scramble to broker a deal” that would allow a sustainable coordination mechanism between the two countries “if the U.S. is determined to escalate its military engagement in Syria.”

Middle East Institute scholar Daniel Serwer told VOA the military strikes “shoot the Syria agenda item to the top.” The key question is whether Tillerson can get something going with the Russians on a political solution in Syria,” he added.

Former U.S. officials say the Syrian chemical attack is a major challenge to the nascent relationship between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.

“It is vital that the U.S. corrects course and that the current administration moves quickly from a set of alarming and ignorant comments to having a real policy and strategy for managing and mitigating Putin’s negative impacts on world peace and security,” said former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Daniel Baer.

Alexei Arbatov, director of the Center of International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, told VOA’s Russian service that while the U.S. missile strike in Syria complicates U.S.-Russian relations, “the reaction of the Russian Foreign Ministry thus far has been quite restrained, and it is not rejecting the possibility of agreements and cooperation with the United States.”

While Washington is willing to work with Moscow in areas of practical cooperation, the State Department said Secretary Tillerson will make it clear the U.S. is committed to holding Russia accountable when international norms are violated.

 
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Kostas Argyros’s unpaid electricity bills are piling up, among a mountain of debt owed to Greece’s biggest power utility.

His family owe 850 euros to the Public Power Corporation (PPC), a tiny fraction of the state-controlled firm’s 2.6 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in unpaid bills.​

Argyros picks up only occasional work as an odd-job man.

“When you only work once a week, what will you pay first?” said the 35-year-old, who lives in a tiny apartment in an Athens suburb with his unemployed wife and four small children.

The Argyros family are emblematic of deepening poverty in Greece following seven years of austerity demanded by the country’s international creditors. They burn wood to heat their home in winter, food is cooked on a small gas stove, and hot water is scarce.

The only evening light is the blue glare of a TV screen, for fear of racking up more debt.

Five-watt lightbulbs provide a dim glow and Argyros worries about the effect on their eyesight. More than 40 percent of Greeks are behind on their utility bills, higher than anywhere else in Europe.

People in poor neighborhoods are also increasingly turning to energy fraud, meaning that the problem for PPC is much higher than the mountain of unpaid bills suggests.

Power theft is costing PPC around 500-600 million euros a year in lost income, an industry official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to divulge the numbers.

PPC declined to comment on the figure. Public disclosures by the Hellenic Electricity Distribution Network Operator HEDNO, which checks meters, show that verified cases of theft climbed to 10,600 last year, up from 8,880 in 2013 and 4,470 in 2012.

Authorities believe theft is far higher than the cases verified by HEDNO, another official said, declining to be named.

Households in the country are equipped with analog meters, which are easy to hack. One of the most common tricks is using magnets, which slow down the rotating coils to show less consumption than the real amount, a HEDNO official said.

Some websites even offer consumers tips and tricks on power fraud.

Burden of Arrears

For households who have had their electricity cut off, a group of activists calling themselves the “I Won’t Pay” movement have taken it upon themselves to reconnect the supply. The group says it has done hundreds this year.

PPC, which has a 90 percent share of the retail market and 60 percent of the wholesale market, is supposed to reduce this dominance to less than 50 percent by 2020 under Greece’s third, 86 billion euro bailout deal.

The lenders also want PPC to sell some of its assets, but the company is toiling under the debt of unpaid bills, a problem opposition lawmakers say will force a fire-sale.

In little over a year from June 2015, overdue bills to the 51-percent state-owned firm grew by nearly a billion euros to 2.6 billion, Chief Executive Manolis Panagiotakis told lawmakers in March.

Analysts estimate PPC’s cash reserves have shrunk to about  00 million euros, forcing it to secure a 200 million euro bank loan to repay a bond due in May.

The tangle has left it with little leeway for new investments or to fund a switch to cleaner forms of energy from coal to improve environmental standards.

“It is often said that PPC is undergoing the most critical phase of its history,” Panagiotakis told lawmakers. “I will not argue with that.” He declined a Reuters request for an interview.

The burden of arrears for PPC is now “so big that some worry it will not be able to lift it for much longer”, said energy expert Constantinos Filis.

The apartment building where the Argyros family live is a testament to that. Many tenants struggle even to pay the 25 euro annual fee to light communal areas such as staircases.

Ground Zero

PPC has tried to recoup unpaid bills with phased repayment plan. A total of 625,000 customers owing a total of 1.3 billion euros had signed up to the plan by January.

The Argyros family have also entered the plan with the help of Theofilos, a local charity, which also contributes towards their monthly bills.

Meanwhile, PPC’s provisions for bad debt remain high. The plans drove the figure down to 453 million euros in the nine months to September last year from 690 million a year earlier.

Analysts expect PPC to swing back to a profit of between 63-109 million euros in 2016, with provisions of below 600 million euros.

Filis, the energy expert, said the more things stayed the same, the closer PPC was to “ground zero” and he drew comparisons with the Greek state’s brushes with near bankruptcy during the debt crisis.

“It’s reasonable to say that PPC is too big to allow it to collapse, particularly regarding energy security,” he said. “On the other hand, a few years ago some argued that no country could fail either.”
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The United States appears to be raising the stakes in Syria, suggesting Russia may have helped the Assad regime carry out a deadly chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people in Idlib province.

A day after firing 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat Airfield, the launching point for the chemical weapons strike, senior American military officials said they were looking at evidence that the Syrian regime did not act alone.

“We think we have a good picture of who supported them,” a senior military official told Pentagon reporters, adding officials were “carefully assessing any information that would implicate the Russians” — confirming they either knew of Tuesday’s sarin gas attack in advance or assisted Syrian government forces.

The Pentagon’s comments Friday followed a series of terse criticisms from Washington about Russia’s role in Syria, some accusing Moscow of trying to “sow confusion” over Syria’s use of chemical weapons by promoting what they called “false facts.”

Watch: Russia’s Suspension of US Cooperation on Syrian Airspace Elevates Risk of Clash

‘Russia faces a choice’

“Damascus and Moscow assured us all these weapons had been removed and destroyed,” a U.S. official told VOA, referencing an agreement in 2013 to eliminate Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpiles.

“Russia faces a choice,” the official continued. “Either it takes responsibility for ensuring the removal of these weapons, as Russia committed it would do, or it admits that it lacks the ability to control [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad.”

Pentagon officials refused to offer any direct evidence Friday linking Russia to the April 4 gas attack on town of Khan Sheikhoun, which was hit by bombs containing a chemical consistent with sarin, an extremely potent and deadly nerve-gas agent. However, they noted that a Russia military aviation unit is based at the same airfield, and that Russian forces in Syria are known to have “chemical expertise.”

U.S. military officials said Friday they had watched a small drone flying over a hospital in Khan Sheikoun that was both a target of the chemical attack and also provided treatment for gas victims.

“About five hours later, the UAV [drone] returned, and the hospital was stuck by additional munitions,” one official said.

‘Hiding the evidence’

A senior military official suggested that was an attempt “to hide the evidence of a chemical attack.”

Syria has claimed that its airstrike Tuesday in Khan Sheikhoun was carried out with conventional explosives, which may have inadvertently detonated a stockpile of sarin gas in a warehouse controlled by anti-Assad rebels. That theory was ridiculed by Western experts on Syrian military and other analysts.

Syrian authorities condemned the U.S. missile strike, terming it a “flawed U.S. strategy” that “makes the U.S. a partner of Islamic State and [the al-Nusra Front] and other terrorist organizations.’’

Russia, meanwhile, opened fire in its own war of words with Washington.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took to social media, branding the U.S. missile strike an illegal act and warning that Washington was now “one step away from military clashes with Russia.”

Moscow also claimed it shut down a direct line of communication with American forces in the area around Syria. The communications link was established soon after Russian military forces arrived to assist Assad, more than a year ago, with the aim of avoiding near collisions or other midair incidents involving Russian and U.S. aircraft operating in the same Syrian airspace.

U.S. officials denied the communications link had been shut down. They confirmed it had been used to warn Russia of the U.S. missile strike in advance, and that it remained operational afterwards.

Watch: What is a Tomahawk?

US emphasizes ‘precision strikes’

Pentagon officials said they took precautions to avoid striking Russian personnel stationed at the Syrian airfield, and added that they specifically avoided hitting chemical-weapons storage facilities in the area. Military experts told VOA that Tomahawk missiles were used in the attack because precision strikes were necessary.

One American military official said the action in Syria early Friday was “appropriate, proportionate, precise and effective.”

Early assessments indicated the U.S. successfully targeted about 20 aircraft, storage facilities, ammunition supply bunkers and radars, yet doubts are beginning to emerge about the missile strike’s effectiveness.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian warplanes based at Shayrat were back in the skies Friday, carrying out airstrikes on rebel-held areas in the countryside east of the city of Homs.

In Palm Beach, Florida, President Donald Trump’s spokesman defended the U.S. strike and said it sent a “very, very clear message” to Assad. But White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer also seemed to distance himself from some of the tough talk about Russia.

“The actions that were taken were clearly against the Assad regime, and I’m not going to say anything further than that,” Spicer said.

He also appeared to walk back Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comment Thursday that “steps are underway” to form an international coalition to cooperate on removing Assad from power.

“The president believes that the Syrian government, the Assad regime, should at the minimum agree to abide by the agreements that they made not to use chemical weapons,” Spicer said. “I think that’s where we start.”

What next?

The U.S. position has left many allies, while supportive of the missile strike against Syria, wondering what comes next.

“We think it is a good move, because we have been asking for it for a long time,” a Western diplomatic official told VOA on condition of anonymity, adding that while it is clear Assad cannot remain in power, no one has yet to present a clear path to agreement on a suitable replacement.

“That’s the problem. We have not identified anyone,” the official said.

Western intelligence agencies have also warned repeatedly that any move that creates a power vacuum in Syria will only strengthen terror groups like Islamic State and al-Qaida.

The White House promised the U.S. is well positioned to build a consensus. 

“There’s going to be a lot of foreign leader engagement,” one official there told VOA. “We have the credibility.”

At the United Nations Friday, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said the United States “took a very measured step” with the missile strike. “We are prepared to do more,” she added, “but we hope that will not be necessary.”

VOA’s U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
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Serbian President-elect Aleksandar Vucic likes to use the past to explain the future.

In 1947, as Josip Broz Tito was consolidating Yugoslavia, he built a railway through Bosnia that linked Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, friend and foe after World War II.

“Tito wasn’t stupid,” Vucic told Reuters. “People had to work together, build together, then travel together, live together. That’s what we need — connecting.”

Together again

Yugoslavia broke up in war 26 years ago, spawning seven states. Now, the European Union has taken up a project put forward by Vucic that would see five of them — plus Albania — joined once more, this time in a common market.

It would abolish all remaining tariff barriers, lift obstacles to the free movement of people, commodities and services and introduce standard regulations across the region.

The EU wants an outline agreed to in July, seizing on the idea as a way to re-engage with Balkan states unnerved by the bloc’s evaporating enthusiasm for further enlargement and exposed to the growing influence of Russia.

But it has received a mixed reception.

Some apprehensions

Kosovo, for one, fears being roped back into a Serbian-dominated union of the kind it fought to leave; others worry it will only slow their accession to the EU, or worse still replace it.

The EU has delegated development of the plan to the Regional Cooperation Council. Its head, Goran Svilanovic, told Reuters Balkan leaders were “increasingly realistic” about the reduced appetite in Brussels for EU enlargement.

“They see what’s up in the EU,” he said.

But they will work together on the Balkan market plan and with the EU “when it comes to something they see is … bringing change to their daily lives.”

Market of 20 million

For years, the prospect of EU accession has stabilized relations and driven reform in a turbulent and impoverished region. But since Croatia followed ex-Yugoslav Slovenia in joining in 2013, the EU has been beset by problems of migration, Brexit and right-wing populism.

A year later, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ruled out any further expansion until at least 2020.

Stability and democracy in the Balkans have suffered.

Juncker was stating a fact, a senior EU official told Reuters, but in hindsight he had made “a huge mistake.”

“A lot of things that were in progress just stopped,” the official said. Another EU diplomat said Brussels had “dropped the ball” and was trying to re-engage.

Start with market, trade

One of the results is the Western Balkans Common Market, which would build on the Central European Free Trade Area, CEFTA. All six countries are members of CEFTA, but the pact has struggled to stimulate trade within the region and some barriers remain.

Backers of the plan say a single economic space with a market of 20 million people would be more attractive to investors than six small states each with their own red tape.

“Investors would be banging down our doors,” said Vucic, Serbia’s prime minister who was elected president Sunday.

The EU says it would mark a step toward membership, not an alternative.

But it did not go unnoticed that enlargement had no place in a March document by Juncker that set out the options for the EU after Britain leaves in 2019.

“Create your own common market [because you are not joining ours],” was the headline of an opinion piece last month by Kosovo analyst Besa Shahini on the Pristina Insight website.

Kosovo threw off Belgrade’s repressive rule in a 1998-99 war, and is wary of Serbia as the biggest country in the region and a friend of Russia.

“We don’t want to see a Serbia that behaves in the style of Russia, trying to politically dominate the region,” Kosovo Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said of the initiative Tuesday.

Prime Minister Isa Mustafa took to Facebook: “We share different experiences of the past,” he wrote. “We do not want that past to return, repackaged.”

Sokol Havolli, an adviser to Mustafa, told Reuters the project risked slowing the region’s EU integration.

Alternative narratives

Asked if a common market may become a substitute for EU enlargement, Vucic said that “should not and must not” happen but said he had heard, unofficially, of such fears in Montenegro.

The office of Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic told Reuters Podgorica had yet to receive a detailed proposal, but that it supported greater regional cooperation.

An Albanian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tirana was “skeptical.”

Kristof Bender, deputy chairman of the European Stability Initiative, a Brussels-based research group, said he would be surprised if creating a club of poor economies would do much to address the region’s woes.

Nor could it be a “credible alternative” to the narrative of prosperity and stability inside the EU.

“If this narrative evaporates, Balkan politicians will need to look for other narratives,” Bender told Reuters. “Given recent history, this is dangerous.”

Railroad holds lessons

Today, the railway Tito built speaks less of the future than the folly of the past: as trains cross between Bosnia’s two ethnically-based regions, different crews take over, reflecting how power was divided up in order to end the 1992-95 war. Part of the line is no longer used.

Vucic said critics of his idea argued they simply wanted to leave the Balkans behind and join the EU.

So does Serbia, he said. “But does that mean we should lose the next three, four, five years when we know we’re not going to become a member?”
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A 31-year-old Romanian tourist who was knocked into the River Thames from Westminster Bridge during an attack on Britain’s Houses of Parliament more than two weeks ago has died, London police said Friday.

Andreea Cristea was rescued from the cold river after the attack, in which a man identified as Khalid Masood drove his rented SUV into pedestrians on the bridge and then fatally stabbed a police officer at the Houses of Parliament.

Cristea’s family described her as “our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts,’’ and said they would be donating to charity all the money raised to help her since the March 22 attack.

Her boyfriend Andrei Burnaz suffered a broken foot in the attack. 

Police said she had been receiving extensive treatment in the hospital since the attack but that life support was withdrawn Thursday afternoon.

The death toll from the attack now stands at five, including the police officer. The attacker was shot dead by police. Dozens more were wounded.

Police believe the 52-year-old attacker acted alone and was motivated by Islamist extremism.
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A few days before the July 2014 missile attack on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, a Ukraine Army-operated Buk missile launcher was located not near fighting in the east, as Moscow has long insisted, but hundreds of kilometers to the west.

That’s what a team of journalists and researchers at Bellingcat, a Britain-based investigative website, has concluded after lengthy analysis of digital images taken by a Ukrainian army chaplain.

Bellingcat, which specializes in using open-source information such as social media posts to analyze conflicts, was one of the first groups to produce evidence debunking key elements of the Russian government’s claim that Ukrainian forces shot down MH17 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard. Bellingcat’s conclusion — that Moscow doctored images in order to buttress allegations that Kyiv was responsible for the single worst atrocity of the war — was later corroborated by arms control researchers at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey in California.

Bellingcat’s new report says metadata from a series of digital images prove that the exact same Buk missile launcher that Moscow claims was within striking range of MH17 on the day of the attack was actually stationed at Mirgorod Air Base in Poltava, central Ukraine — well outside of firing distance.

“The only operational Buk missile launcher observed within firing range of MH17 on July 17, 2014, was the Russian Buk 332, from the Kursk-based 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” a surface-to-air combat unit of the Russian ground forces that was stationed in eastern Ukraine at the time, Bellingcat reported.

Kyiv-based political scientist Yuri Lesnichiy of the Institute of Analysis and Forecasting says the new information will prove vital to undercutting the Kremlin narrative surrounding the tragedy.

“Such high-profile investigations … carry across particular information and the Kremlin finds it difficult to twist the facts that the Europeans will believe in,” he told VOA’s Russian Service.

Immediately after MH17 was shot out of clear blue skies over the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported that Russian-backed separatists had successfully shot down a Ukrainian military aircraft. They retracted the story upon learning that it was a civilian airliner that had been brought down.

In March, Ukraine asked the United Nations’ highest court to order Russia to stop funding and equipping pro-Russian separatists. In that filing, they cited a September 2016 six-country investigation team led by the Netherlands, which said MH17 had been shot down with a Russian-manufactured Buk surface-to-air missile from an area controlled by pro-Russian forces.

Russia denies sending troops or military equipment to eastern Ukraine and has dismissed findings of the September 2016 probe as biased and politically motivated.

This report was translated by Svetlana Cunningham and produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian Service.
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The European Parliament on Thursday supported easing travel rules for Ukrainians, driving on a Western integration viewed with great suspicion by Moscow.

Ukraine has been the scene of the worst confrontation between Russia and the West in Europe since the Cold War with Moscow annexing Crimea from Kyiv in 2014 and backing separatist rebels in the east of the country.

The West has sided with Ukraine, where Russia intervened after a Moscow-allied president was toppled by street protests demanding an end to corruption and closer EU ties. Russia denies direct military involvement in its southern neighbor.

European lawmakers voted 521 to 75 to grant Ukrainians holding biometric passports the right to visit for up to 90 days for tourism, business or visiting relatives and friends.

“Great day for the people of Europe and Ukraine,” said Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, a Swedish member of the Parliament.

The visa waiver, which does not give Ukrainians the right to work in the EU, is expected to take effect this summer.

The pro-Western government in Kiev is moving closer to the EU and NATO. But a weak economy and endemic corruption would hinder any move to accession, and some states would be unwilling to further anger Ukraine’s Soviet-era ruler, Russia, by incorporating it into an alliance it views as hostile.

The waiver covers all EU states except Ireland and Britain, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland – not in the EU but members of Europe’s free-travel Schengen zone.

Kyiv’s Europe Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said the vote on Thursday was “a strong signal to the aggressor that Ukraine is on its way back to the European family.”

Three years of fighting in Ukraine’s industrial east killed more than 10,000 people.

While the heaviest battles have died down, the conflict is still simmering and peace efforts are stalled amid mutual recriminations by Kyiv, EU and NATO on the one side, and Russia and the rebels on the other.
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European Central Bank head Mario Draghi insisted Thursday that the bank’s massive stimulus efforts are still needed even though the 19-country eurozone’s economy is strengthening.

“The recovery is progressing and now may be gaining momentum,” Draghi said in a speech at a conference at Frankfurt’s Goethe University.

He cautioned, however, that much of the improvement depended on the ECB’s monetary stimulus efforts and that it was “too soon to declare success.”

Draghi’s stance on keeping stimulus in place contrasts with that of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which has already started withdrawing monetary stimulus by raising benchmark interest rates off their lows near zero. Minutes of the Fed’s last meeting, released Wednesday, showed officials were considering reducing their large bond holdings sooner than expected, a step that could eventually mean higher market interest rates. The Fed can do that because the U.S. economic recovery is farther along and unemployment has fallen to lower levels than in Europe.

The ECB has said it intends to continue its main stimulus program – which pushes newly printed money into the eurozone economy through bond purchases – at least through the end of the year. It has also kept its key interest rate benchmark at a record low of zero. Both steps aim to raise inflation and increase credit to businesses so they can expand and hire people.

A raft of recent economic data has stoked speculation that the ECB might start withdrawing its stimulus efforts earlier than planned. Surveys suggest that the eurozone may have grown as much as 0.6 percent in the first quarter from the previous three-month period, while official figures have shown inflation rising sharply from near zero to 1.5 percent in March, which is closer to the bank’s goal of just under 2 percent. Unemployment has also fallen but remains high at 9.5 percent, with sharp differences between member countries.

Bringing an end to the stimulus efforts could have wide-ranging consequences for markets, companies and consumers. It would likely mean an end to unusually low borrowing costs for governments and financially solid companies. It would also remove support for bond prices and might mean higher returns for savers, who currently get very little, if anything at all, on conservative holdings such as bank deposits.

Draghi indicated the central bank was not considering an earlier exit and that “a reassessment of the current monetary policy stance is not warranted at this stage.”

Draghi warned that recent gains in growth had come to a great extent from cheaper oil and from the ECB’s own efforts. He said the bank needed to see that inflation would remain stronger even after the stimulus started to be withdrawn.

His comments were in line with the written account released Thursday of the bank’s March 9 meeting, when it left the stimulus efforts unchanged. The account indicated that the bank’s 25-member rate-setting committee was in “broad agreement” that “a very substantial degree” of stimulus was still needed.

Europe’s recovery still faces risks from unexpected political turbulence in Europe and elsewhere. Anti-EU candidate Marine Le Pen could seek to take her country out of the euro if she wins the French presidency in June. U.S. President Donald Trump has raised uncertainty about global trade conditions by vowing to review existing agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying they have disadvantaged U.S. companies and workers.

The political risks lead analysts to think that the ECB will not signal a stimulus exit is on the way until after the French elections at the earliest. Draghi has said bond purchases would not end abruptly but would likely be tapered off over a period of months.

The Frankfurt-based ECB is the chief monetary authority for the 19 European Union member countries that use the euro as a currency.
…

The European Union says it is imposing new sanctions on North Korea in retaliation for the country’s repeated nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The new sanctions include investment bans on aerospace, metalworking and conventional arms-related industries, and prohibitions against providing computer services to people involved with mining and chemical industries.

An EU statement Thursday said the new sanctions were imposed because North Korea violated multiple U.N. resolutions and constitutes “a grave threat to international peace and security.”

The European Union asked North Korea to “cease its provocations and to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” and begin talks with the international community.

Four people were also added to the EU visa ban and asset freeze list. Their names were not immediately released.

On Wednesday, North Korea launched a projectile about 60 kilometers into the Sea of Japan. Last month, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea in response to annual U.S.-South Korea military drills, which the North sees as a preparation for war.

Any launch of objects using the ballistic missile technology is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but the North has defied the ban as infringement of its sovereign rights to self-defense and pursuit of space exploration.

The sanctions announced Thursday are the second round imposed on North Korea by the European Union since late February when Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of leader Kim Jong-Un, was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur.

 
…

Russian police arrested three people Thursday in connection with a suicide bombing in the St. Petersburg subway system earlier this week.

Police said the suspects come from the same region of central Asia as the bomber, Akbarzhon Dzhalilov. A bomb also was found and disarmed in the apartment shared by the three suspects on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top criminal investigation agency, said investigators found other evidence in the apartment that will help in the case against the three suspects.

Reuters reports the unexploded bomb found in the apartment was similar to the unexploded bomb found Monday in the subway.

The arrests come a day after eight other central Asian men were arrested in St. Petersburg for allegedly recruiting people to join the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

The poverty-stricken countries in Central Asia have become a prime recruiting territory for the militant groups, with thousands of people from the region believed to be fighting alongside the IS group in Iraq and Syria.

Authorities said there is no immediate evidence linking the alleged recruiters to the subway bombing.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing Monday that left 14 people dead, including the bomber, and more than 50 others wounded.

 
…

Switzerland and Italy are in a diplomatic dispute over Switzerland’s decision to close three secondary border crossings at night in a bid to fight crime.

Italy’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned the Swiss ambassador for urgent talks, emphasizing that the closings violate Europe’s norms on free circulation.

In an email, the press office of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs said Ambassador Giancarlo Kessler “took note” of the message from Italian authorities and pledged to keep them informed on the results from what it characterized as an experiment.

Italian mayors in the affected region had protested the closures as penalizing Italians who legitimately cross the border for work or other reasons.

The crossings from the Italian provinces of Como and Varese have an average nightly traffic of 90 vehicles during the week and 110 vehicles on weekends, 20 percent of which are Swiss vehicles, according to Swiss authorities.

Switzerland started closing the three border crossings at night on April 1 as part of a six-month pilot program. The move, approved by the Swiss parliament, follows a brief surge of migration into the Italian-speaking Swiss region of Ticino last summer from Italy, which has seen the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants rescued at sea.

The populist Swiss People’s Party, which has the most seats in parliament, has led the push to restrict access both to citizens of European Union countries who want to work in Switzerland and to migrants who have arrived in Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but adheres to the “Schengen zone” rules that allow for unimpeded cross-border travel and trade on the continent.

Kessler said Switzerland “had informed the Italian authorities on several occasions” about the project, including during a meeting of their two countries’ foreign ministers last month, according to the foreign affairs department.
…

Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropy promised $100 million over the next five years to support journalism and fight fake news, the foundation announced Wednesday.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which broke the story of the controversial Panama Papers, is the first organization to receive funds from the Omidyar Network – a three-year grant of up to $4.5 million “to expand its investigative reporting”.

“Across the world, we see a worrying resurgence of authoritarian politics that is undermining progress towards a more open and inclusive society,” Matt Bannick, Omidyar Network Managing Partner, said. “A lack of government responsiveness and a growing distrust in institutions, especially the media, are eroding trust. Increasingly, facts are being devalued, misinformation spread, accountability ignored, and channels that give citizens a voice withdrawn.”

​

Formally announcing the commitment at the Skoll World Forum on social entrepreneurship in Oxford, England, the Omidyar Network has also promised support to the Anti-Defamation League, devoted to fighting anti-Semitism, and the Latin American Alliance for Civic Technology (ALTEC).

Established in 2004 by Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the Omidyar Network supports organizations to foster economic and social change.

Reporting on the Panama Papers revealed secret, so called offshore financial accounts that were hiding assets to avoid tax payments.

 
…

A gap is widening between the Trump administration and European allies over the future of President Bashar al-Assad and how to end the six-year war in Syria.

While U.S. officials have shifted the focus away from Assad having to relinquish power, European leaders remain adamant he has no future as ruler of Syria. His departure, they say, remains a crucial part of any solution to a conflict that has left an estimated 470,000 dead.

Following Tuesday’s toxic gas attack on a town in northern Syria, the worst chemical weapons attack in the war since mid-2013, European leaders are intensifying their rhetoric. On Tuesday, Britain’s Theresa May called “on all the third parties involved to ensure that we have a transition away from Assad.”

Photo Gallery: Aftermath of gas attack on  Khan Sheikhoun

European politicians gathered for an international conference hosted by the European Union in Brussels on Syria drew a link between what seems to be the use of a more deadly nerve agent than seen in previous claimed chemical weapons attacks, and the Trump administration’s shift on Syria.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Assad’s future was up to the Syrian people to decide, while the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said removing him was no longer a Washington priority.

On Monday, just hours before the gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Haley hardened her rhetoric, referring to the Syrian leader as a “war criminal” guilty of “disgusting” actions against his people.” She said Syrians “don’t want Assad anymore.”

In the wake of the chemical weapons attack, U.S. officials in Washington did not publicly indicate any likely shift in administration policy. The White House and U.S. State Department condemned the attack as “heinous,” dubbing it a likely war crime.

But officials placed the emphasis on the need for Russia and Iran, Assad backers, to do something. Tuesday, the White House press secretary didn’t outline any punitive steps in response to an attack the administration says was carried out by the Assad regime.

Russian, Iranian influence

Tillerson demanded Tuesday that Moscow and Tehran “exercise their influence over the Syrian regime and to guarantee this sort of horrific attack never happens again.” He added that “Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths.”

On Wednesday, Moscow reiterated its denial the Assad regime was responsible for the attack that has left close to 100 dead, according to local activists, and more than 400 injured. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement it believed a rebel “terrorist warehouse” was hit by a conventional airstrike from Syria’s military, causing the release of “toxic substances.”

The Defense Ministry claimed chemical weapons were being stored for use in neighboring Iraq. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov said,“On the territory of the depot there were workshops, which produced chemical warfare munitions.”

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said “all the evidence” he had seen in relation to the incident “suggests this was the Assad regime who did it in the full knowledge they were using illegal weapons in a barbaric attack on their own people.”

Johnson added he did “not see how a government like that can continue to have any kind of legitimate administration over the people of Syria.”

Focus on Assad

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, “There is one thing which cannot happen, that a dictator who committed horrible crimes in the region remains untouched.”

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini also said she could see no way Assad can remain as Syria’s ruler. “It seems completely unrealistic to believe that the future of Syria will be exactly the same as it used to be in the past,” she told reporters in Brussels.

But it is unclear what the Europeans can or would be willing to do without U.S. support, according to analysts.

They note that European influence on shaping international policy on the Syrian conflict is waning, despite the fact Europe is the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Syria. This week’s EU co-hosted international conference on humanitarian assistance to Syria has attracted minimal participation from the United States, Russia and Turkey.

Instead of sending its foreign minister, Russia is only represented at the gathering by its EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov. Washington has sent the State Department’s under-secretary for political affairs, Thomas Shannon. That contrasts with last year when then Secretary of State John Kerry attended.

Damascus calculation

Analyst Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute in Washington, says he believes Damascus has taken note of the Trump administration’s policy shift when it comes to Assad’s future and that may have shaped the decision behind launching Tuesday’s attack.

“Assad also knows full well that the U.S. is increasingly distancing itself from any consideration of intervention in Syria, so what has Assad got to lose?” he argued. “If all he suffers is a few days of international condemnation, then he comes out of things just as secure as he was beforehand.”

 
…

The European Union is determined to stick to a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of undocumented migrants into the bloc, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.

Tusk, who met Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev, welcomed Sofia’s efforts to boost security on its southeastern border with Turkey to prevent migrants from crossing. He said Brussels would provide additional financing if the situation worsened.

“We are determined to keep routes of illegal migration in this region closed,” Tusk told reporters. “We remain committed to the full implementation of the EU-Turkey statement. The EU is honoring its commitments, just like we expect Turkey to continue keeping its part of the deal.”

The EU-Ankara agreement came into force in March 2016 after more than a million refugees and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond reached Europe in 2015, many crossing to Greek islands from Turkey.

“Should further difficulties arise on Bulgaria’s borders, the EU has already planned emergency funding, and stands ready to react quickly in support of Bulgaria,” Tusk said.

Turkey has said it may cancel the migrant readmission agreement, under which it takes back people who enter Greece through irregular routes. It was angered after several EU states prevented Turkish politicians from holding rallies to drum up support for plans to give President Tayyip Erdogan new powers in a referendum.

Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest member, expressed concern about a possible new migrant influx given that Turkey-EU tensions are running high.

“It is extremely important for us to develop good neighborly relations with Turkey,” Radev said. “At the same time, rising tensions between the EU and Turkey create the greatest risk for Bulgaria.”
…

The referendum in Turkey to extend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers is a couple of weeks away, and polls indicate the outcome remains too close to call. The “No” campaign, having little access to mainstream media, is increasingly turning to social media, and human rights groups accuse prosecutors of targeting those who adopt such a strategy.

Turkish law student Ali Gul’s video on why to vote “No” highlights, in a humorous way, the dangers of concentrating too much power in one person’s hands. It was an instant hit on social media. At the end of the video, Gul rhetorically asked, “Will I get arrested if this video is popular?”

Within days of its success, Gul issued another video, and he said he knew he would be arrested for making it.

Youth ‘deserve freedom’

“I am now going to the prosecutor to give a statement,” he said. “I will probably be arrested after that.  But it is not important, I am not afraid. The children and youth of this nation deserve freedom and happiness — and not fear, imprisonment and death.”

Gul was indeed arrested and jailed — but not for the video. He was detained instead for tweets posted two years ago that were deemed insulting to the president, a crime that carries three years in jail. Gul denied writing them, but his attorneys warned that he was destined to remain in pretrial detention for many months.

Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of U.S. based Human Rights Watch said there appears to be a systematic campaign of intimidation against “No” campaigners on social media.

“I think actually clamping down on individuals, making them a target for punitive measures pre-referendum because they have had a prominent voice in the ‘No’ campaign, is all about creating a chilling effect which will give the message loud and clear to the general public that you are not welcome to discuss what is at stake in the referendum and you are not welcome to publicly voice opposition of it,” she said.

Scores of arrests, closures

Meanwhile, independent mainstream media have been all but crushed. Under emergency rule, introduced after July’s failed coup, more than 150 journalists have been jailed and 170 media outlets closed, all critical of the government. The government claims the prosecutions and closures are all related to terrorist actions and coup plotting.

Most news TV channels broadcast at least three or four campaign speeches a day in support of a “Yes” vote on the presidential powers issue, while the “No” campaign is all but invisible, accounting for only 10 percent of coverage.

For the “No” campaign, social media have become vital, but with more than 2,500 prosecutions for insulting the president in the past six months, social media postings are not without risks.  

Observers warn such pressure is likely to intensify as the referendum campaign ends.
…

Turkish gold imports rose 17-fold to 28.2 tons in March, as Turks looking to hedge currency risk ahead of a referendum in two weeks time followed President Tayyip Erdogan’s calls to buy gold instead of dollars.

After the sharpest falls in the Turkish lira since the 2008 financial crisis last November, Erdogan called on Turks to sell dollars and buy lira or gold to prop up the local currency. Gold imports have been rising year-on-year ever since.

“People have started opting for gold rather than foreign currencies,” said Mehmet Ali Yildirimturk, a gold specialist in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, adding that a moderate recovery in the lira had also made gold more affordable again.

Gold imports to Turkey rose almost eightfold to 36.7 tons in December after Erdogan’s calls, their highest monthly level in just over two years, according to data from the Precious Mines and Metals Markets of the Istanbul bourse.

Prices in Turkey surged from 132 lira ($36) for 24-carat gold in January to 153 lira in February. On Tuesday, gold prices were around 148 liras.

Gold is seen as a safe place to park assets during times of uncertainty. Turkey holds a referendum on April 16 on constitutional changes which would significantly boost Erdogan’s powers, with polls suggesting a tight race.

($1 = 3.6664 liras)
…

Bulgaria’s largest party, the center-right GERB, expects to form a government with three nationalist parties by late April and return Boiko Boriskov to power as prime minister, a senior party official said on Monday.

Borisov’s GERB won 95 seats in the general election on March 26, beating its leftist Socialist rivals, but it failed to gain an outright 121-seat majority in parliament.

His resignation late last year triggered the early election.

GERB has told the third-placed United Patriots (UP), a nationalist alliance of three parties, that the prime minister’s post will not be subject of their coalition negotiations.

“The prime minister of the next government that will be formed I suppose by the end of this month … will be Boiko Borisov”, said Vladislav Goranov, an MP and member of GERB’s political negotiating team. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Goranov’s comments to reporters came after one of the nationalist leaders had suggested that Borisov, 57, should not lead the next government.

Borisov quit as premier after a GERB-backed candidate lost a presidential election in November to Rumen Radev, a Russia-friendly ally of the Socialists. Bulgaria is currently being run by a caretaker administration.

The UP alliance campaigned to boost low living standards and double the minimum monthly state pensions, now at 160 levs ($87.25) – the lowest in the European Union.

Analysts say such demands, coupled with GERB’s plans to double teachers’ wages within four years, may boost public spending and pose risks to Bulgaria’s currency peg to the euro.

But Goranov, a former finance minister likely to get the same post in the next government, told reporters he was not worried for state coffers.

A coalition with the nationalists would have just one seat above the majority threshold of 121 seats and Goranov said GERB would also seek support of smaller, populist grouping of businessman Veselin Mareshki.

Bulgaria’s polls suggested the country would continue with its fiscal and economic policies but was unlikely to break a pattern of unstable governments that have hindered structural reforms, Fitch rating agency said last week.

The timing for inter-party negotiations has yet to be set.

GERB has not ruled out leading a minority government, but Goranov called such an option “extreme.”

(1$= 1.8338 leva)
…

Several U.S. legislators have criticized the Russian government for plans to effectively ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a nontraditional Christian movement, as an “extremist” organization.

On March 15, Russia’s Justice Ministry filed a claim with the country’s Supreme Court, calling on it to designate the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia an “extremist” organization and liquidate the group’s national headquarters and 395 local chapters in Russia.

Jehovah’s Witnesses is a millenarian Christian group founded in the United States in the 1870s. It is known, among other things, for door-to-door preaching and refusing to perform military service, salute national flags or accept blood transfusions. Its adherents have frequently been persecuted by authoritarian governments, including that of the former Soviet Union.

“At stake in the upcoming court case is the legality and, perhaps, the survival of the Jehovah’s Witnesses — and, in fact, basic religious freedom — throughout the Russian Federation,” said Congressman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who co-chairs the U.S. Helsinki Commission. “If the Supreme Court of Russia declares this faith group an extremist organization, it is an ominous sign for all believers and it marks a dark, sad day for all Russians.”

Russia’s Justice Ministry reported on its website last week that since 2009, it has identified 95 materials of “an extremist nature” that were brought into Russia and circulated in the country, according to the Tass news agency. Tass quoted the website saying, “As many as eight local cells of the organization were recognized to be extremist ones, banned and disbanded since 2009.”

However, Anatoly Pchelintsev, chief editor of the magazine Religion and Law, said the accusations are incompatible with the principle of freedom of religion.

“Formally, the semblance of legitimacy is observed [by the Justice Ministry],” he told VOA’s Russian Service. “However, there is actually no extremist activity and, in fact, it is baseless and bogus. There are multiple videotapes showing how banned literature is planted [on Jehovah’s Witnesses].”

If the Supreme Court rules against Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, its 175,000 followers face the threat of criminal prosecution.

That, according to Pchelintsev, would be “total madness.”

“Of course, there will absolutely be prison sentences, just like it was in Taganrog [in southern Russia’s Rostov region], where 15 innocent people were sentenced,” he said. “But a majority [of the Jehovah’s Witnesses] will go underground. They will also be congregating, praying and so on. Stalin couldn’t do anything about them even though he deported them to the North. Hitler also couldn’t do anything about them, even though he sent them to concentration camps and physically destroyed them.”

Pchelintsev recalled that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were recognized in the early 1990s as having been victims of political repression during the Soviet period, and received official documents to that effect.

“If they’re being banned now, should their documents be revoked?” he asked. “And then, after a while, when a new president is elected, should they receive their documents back? It’s a bizarre logic. We cannot live according to the constitution; we’re constantly looking for an enemy, either external or internal.”

Pchelintsev added: “You may not share their beliefs and there can be different attitudes toward them,” he said. “However, from the standpoint of law and the constitution, they have every right to exist. Otherwise, we will become the first country in the modern world to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Valery Borshchev, a veteran human rights activist and member of the Russian branch of the International Association of Religious Freedom, agrees that harassment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses violates the principles of religious freedom.

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses are not involved in any extremist activity,” he told VOA. “Yes, they have some controversial views that confuse others — for example, the ban on blood transfusions. But it’s a debatable issue.”

In any case, said Borshchev, this has nothing to do with extremist activity.

“All the accusations against them are unfair and anti-constitutional,” he said. “It violates the principles of the freedom of belief and conscience enshrined in the constitution.”

According to Borshchev, those calling for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be banned do not understand the nature of religious organizations.

“They would do well to learn the history of religious movement in the Soviet Union, where nobody could do anything about the alternative churches,” he said. “The same thing will happen now. More than that, this adversarial position will escalate the conflict. The members of the organization will feel like they have a mission and it will strengthen their rigor.”

According to the Helsinki Final Act, which was signed by the 57 participating countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation Europe (OSCE), including Russia, “the participating States will recognize and respect the freedom of the individual to profess and practice, alone or in community with others, religion or belief acting in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience.”

VOA’s Svetlana Cunningham contributed to this report, which was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian Service.
…

Amenia’s ruling party won slightly less than 50 percent of the vote in a parliamentary election, officials said on Monday.

Sunday’s vote, which was the nation’s first since the former Soviet republic changed its constitution to expand power of parliament and the prime minister’s office, allowed President Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) to claim a majority of seats.

HHK claimed 49 percent of the vote, with businessman Gagik Tsarukian’s opposition coalition trailing with 27 percent, and two other parties getting 5 percent — just enough to get seats in parliament — according to data released by the Central Election Commission. Official results are expected to be released later this week.

Critics have said the recent constitutional amendments are part of Sargsyan’s efforts to retain control of the country after he steps down in 2018 due to term limits. If his party controls parliament, he could be appointed prime minister after that.

Sargsyan and his supporters have vigorously disputed that claim.

The observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) called Sunday’s vote “well administered and fundamental freedoms were generally respected.” OSCE officials, however, did acknowledge allegations of vote-buying and intimidation around the country.

Sona Ayvazyan, executive director of Transparency International Armenian, told VOA’s Armenian Service, “Our observers recorded many violations related to the failures of technical equipment” such as electronic fingerprint scanners.

“These failures were not intentional, I assume,” she added. “However, in terms of frequency, these failures were most frequent. … We [also] saw the increase of pressure on and bribery of the voters.”

Armenian Helsinki Committee Director Avet Ishkhanyan told VOA about widespread bribery.

“Prior to the voting, everything was already predetermined,” he said. “People were already registered as ‘units,’ and each of them was supposed to be bribed or threatened to vote for ruling candidates.

“What distinguishes this voting from previous elections is that, prior to this … many people’s votes had been already bought by bribes, so there was no need for widespread violations during the ballot-counting process,” Ishkhanyan added. “But is that a step forward? I would rather say these are the saddest elections, which illustrate final failure of civil and political institutes in Armenia.”

An RFE/RL reporter who was investigating allegations of vote-buying was attacked a few hours after polls opened.

The incident occurred after Sisak Gabrielian, a reporter with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, saw citizens leaving an HHK office in Yerevan’s Kond neighborhood with money in their hands.

People inside the campaign office, who refused to identify themselves, said it was salary money and that citizens were not receiving “election bribes.”

Gabrielian said he was then roughed up by ruling party loyalists, receiving minor injuries.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Armenian Service Some information is from AP.
…

Thousands of people took to the streets of Hungary’s capital Budapest Sunday to protest legislation that a university founded by U.S. billionaire George Soros says is aimed at shutting it down.

There is growing opposition in Hungary and abroad to a bill proposed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government that would tighten regulations on foreign universities.

Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991, says the bill is aimed at driving it out of the country, a charge the government has denied.

The proposed new rules affect universities from non-European Union countries and would ban their awarding of Hungarian diplomas without an agreement between national governments.

Such institutions also would be required to have operations in their home countries.

The future of the CEU, which does not have a U.S. campus, now “depends on talks between the governments of Hungary and the United States,” Orban said on Friday. He also said the “Soros university” was “cheating” because it can award both a Hungarian diploma and an American one, which gives it an “unfair advantage” over local institutions.

Hungarian scholars and teaching organizations, as well as more than 500 leading international academics, including 17 Nobel laureates, have come out in support of CEU, saying it is one of the preeminent centers of thought in the country.

CEU enrolls more than 1,400 students from 108 countries.
…

Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that President Donald Trump has not blocked her from attacking Russia, even as he continues to assail U.S. news media for its reporting on congressional and legal investigations into whether his aides colluded with Russian officials to help him win the election.

“The president has not once called me and said, ‘Don’t beat up on Russia’ — has not once called me and told me what to say,” Haley told ABC News. “I am beating up on Russia.”

Haley said Russia’s 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was wrong, as well Moscow’s continuing involvement supporting pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine battling Kyiv’s forces.

“When they do something wrong,” she said, “I have no trouble calling them out. The president has not disagreed with me” holding Russia “accountable.”

Asked whether Trump needs to be “beating up on Russia” as well, Haley responded, “Well, of course. He’s got a lot of things he’s doing, but he is not stopping me from beating up on Russia.”

“The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea,” Haley said. She added that “Crimea-related sanctions” levied against Russia will continue to “remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.”

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Moscow, on orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, meddled in last year’s presidential election in an effort to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state.

Haley told ABC that “certainly, I think Russia was involved in the election. There’s no question about that.” She added, “We don’t want any country involved in our elections, ever. We need to be very strong on that.”

The top U.S. investigative agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is probing whether Trump aides criminally colluded with Russian officials to boost Trump’s election chances. In addition, intelligence committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives are conducting their own investigations of Russian interference in the election.

Trump only reluctantly accepted the intelligence community’s finding about Russian meddling in the election, but he frequently has disparaged news accounts about the ongoing probes.

On Saturday, on his Twitter account, Trump said, “It is the same Fake News Media that said there is ‘no path to victory for Trump’ that is now pushing the phony Russia story. A total scam!”
…

France’s polling commission has issued a warning over a Russian news report suggesting conservative candidate Francois Fillon leads the race for the presidency — something which contradicts the findings of mainstream opinion pollsters.

The cautionary note from the watchdog on pre-election polling followed allegations in February by aides of centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron that he was a target of “fake news” put out by Russian media including the Sputnik news agency.

Macron takes a hard line on European Union sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis, whereas Fillon has said they are totally ineffective, creating a “cold war” climate that needs to be reversed.

Almost all media in France are drawing on polls that have shown since mid-February that Fillon, a former prime minister, is trailing in third place behind Macron and far right leader Marine Le Pen for the April 23 first round. Third place would mean Fillon’s elimination from the May 7 runoff.

State-run Sputnik carried different findings in a report on March 29 under the headline: “2017 presidential elections: the return of Fillon at the head of the polls.”

It quoted Moscow-based Brand Analytics, an online audience research firm, as saying that its study based on an analysis of French social media put Fillon out in front.

In a statement, France’s polling commission said the study could not be described as representative of public opinion and Sputnik had improperly called it a “poll”, as defined by law in France.

“It is imperative that publication of this type of survey be treated with caution so that public opinion is aware of its non-representative nature,” it said.

Brand Analytics’ track record either for political polling or for commercial internet audience measurement outside of Russia and former Soviet territory is unknown.

Sputnik published an earlier online survey by the firm from mid-February which also showed Fillon with a strong lead over Macron and Le Pen at a time when other polls showed Macron’s candidacy beginning to surge with Fillon in third place.

Neither Sputnik in Moscow, nor the company, responded immediately to emailed requests for comment on Sunday.

US intelligence warns

Richard Burr, head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee which is investigating the Russian hacking during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, said last week that the Kremlin was trying to interfere in the French vote.

The Kremlin denied in February that it was behind media and internet attacks on Macron’s campaign. Russia has a strong interest in the outcome of the French election since Macron has suggested imposing further sanctions on Moscow if it does not implement its side of a deal to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.

Fillon, once the frontrunner for the Elysee before he was hit by a scandal surrounding payments of public funds to his wife and children, dismissed as “fantasy” concerns of Russian interference in the election. Speaking last Friday, Fillon said he would seek a better balance in relations with a country that was nevertheless “dangerous.”

Richard Ferrand, the head of Macron’s En Marche! (Onwards!) party, said in February that Sputnik and another Russian state-run outlet Russia Today were spreading ‘fake news’ with the aim of swinging public opinion against Macron.

In February, Sputnik announced it would publish weekly French election polls using representative sampling from three mainstream polling firms — IFOP, Ipsos and OpinionWay — alongside an analysis of social media posts in France from Brand Analytics for which it did not disclose its survey methodology.

Separately, Sputnik carried a news report last Friday about Macron supporters being awarded state decorations when he had been a high-level functionary at the Elysee and economy minister in the Socialist government, suggesting this could amount to influence peddling.

It offered no proof that Macron had organized the decorations, which were sometimes awarded by other ministers. In several instances, it cited awards made by the economy ministry, without mentioning that Arnaud Montebourg, Macron’s predecessor, was minister at the time.

The Sputnik report contrasted Macron’s alleged action with a judicial inquiry into an award made when Fillon was prime minister to a billionaire friend who owned a cultural magazine where Fillon’s wife drew a salary.

 
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Serbians voted for a new president on Sunday with conservative Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic the runaway favourite despite opposition warnings about the extent of his domination over the Balkan country.

Most polls see Vucic, 47, winning in the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote, trailed in the low teens by a former rights advocate and a white-suited student whose satirical portrayal of a sleazy political fraudster has struck a chord with some disillusioned voters.

The role of president is largely ceremonial, but Vucic is expected to retain real power through his control of Serbia’s ruling Progressive Party.

As such, the election is unlikely to alter the country’s delicate balancing act between the European Union, which Vucic wants Serbia to join, and Russia, with which Serbs share their Orthodox Christian faith and Slavic heritage.

During the campaign, the studio backdrop of one popular television talkshow on which Vucic was a guest featured a photograph of him flanked by pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To his supporters, Vucic is a cool head and a firm hand in a troubled region.

“I voted for stability, we’ve had enough wars,” said Bozica Ivanovic, a 65-year-old pensioner who voted for Vucic. “We need more jobs for younger people and if we can get higher pensions and salaries, even better.”

Vucic’s opponents, however, say he has an authoritarian streak that has led him to take control over the media in Serbia since his party rose to power in 2012 and he became prime minister three years ago.

He denies the charge but has struggled to shake it given his record when last in government in the dying days of Yugoslavia.

Then in his late 20s, Vucic was Serbia’s feared information minister behind draconian legislation designed to muzzle criticism of the government during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

“We want above all to give back dignity to Serbian citizens and meaning to state institutions,” Sasa Jankovic, Serbia’s former human rights ombudsman who was polling a distant second or third before Sunday’s vote, said after casting his ballot.

Turnout until 10 a.m was 10.56 percent compared to 11.04 percent in 2012, state election commission said.

‘Proxy’ prime minister

Jankovic and a host of opposition candidates risk being embarrassed by 25-year-old communications student Luka Maksimovic, whose alter ego Ljubisa ‘Beli’ Preletacevic has come from almost nowhere to challenge them for second place.

Dressed in a white suit and loafers, the pony-tailed Maksimovic plays on a widely-held perception of Balkan politicians as greedy cheats. Despite economic growth and greater fiscal stability, Serbia remains mired in poverty and corruption.

“I voted for Beli,” said 30-year-old Dejan Markovic, an unemployed metal worker. “The so-called opposition candidates have betrayed us in the past and Vucic is lying to us all now, so Beli is the only way to mock all this hypocrisy.”

Pollsters said a high turnout among Serbia’s 6.7 million eligible voters may force a run-off on April 16, Easter weekend, if no single candidate wins a majority in the first round.

“I am hoping these elections will facilitate stability and the continuation of economic reforms,” Vucic said after voting.

As president, Vucic would have few formal powers, among them the right to send legislation back to parliament for reconsideration.

But he is widely expected to appoint a loyal ally as prime minister and try to keep a tight rein on policy, as former President Boris Tadic, then of the Democratic Party, did between 2004 and 2012.

Some analysts said that could yet prove difficult.

“Vucic will now be distanced from everyday policy-making and executive affairs and will have to rely on a proxy,” Eurasia Group wrote in on March 30. “This will likely generate some tensions in the chain of command.”
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Armenians voted for a new parliament on Sunday in a closely fought race between the ruling party and a former coalition partner that heralds the start of a parliamentary system of government.

Under constitutional changes critics say were designed to prolong the political life of President Serzh Sarksyan, parliament, not voters, will elect the president for the first time. That role will become largely ceremonial while the office of prime minister will become more powerful.

Voting got under way at 0400 GMT and would last until 1600 GMT in the country with about 2.6 million eligible voters.

Sarksyan, the 62-year-old leader of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), has repeatedly denied that the changes, which were approved by the electorate in a December 2015 referendum, were made for his benefit.

He has been president since 2008 but his second term expires next year. Under the new system, critics say, he could keep wielding executive power by becoming prime minister, stay active by remaining leader of the RPA or quit politics but keep exercising influence via a handpicked successor.

The outcome of Sunday’s vote was difficult to predict, with polls showing the RPA neck-and-neck with an opposition alliance led by wealthy businessman Gagik Tsarukyan.

His alliance has ruled in coalition with the RPA before, but it is not clear whether it would agree to do so again if, as expected, it fails to win enough support to rule alone.

The ruling party still wields considerable support and its main campaigner, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, who was appointed in September, is a popular figure and the RPA candidate for the post of the prime minister after this vote.

“I’m very optimistic, but time will show [who will win],” he said after voting.

Many Armenians, however, accuse the government of corruption and of mishandling the troubled economy.

Armenia depends heavily for aid and investment on Russia, which has been hard hit in the past three years by an economic downturn. Armenia has felt the impact, with growth falling to 0.2 percent last year from 3.0 percent in 2015.

“Voters should vote for [our] party, which will change laws and will change life,” Tsarukyan said after voting at a polling station in his native town of Abovyan, about 20 km north-east from the capital Yerevan.

“Economic growth is impossible in the current situation.” Political analysts say unrest could erupt after the vote, partly due to a growing malaise over the economic slowdown.

“The situation is especially tense, due to the deepening level of discontent and dissent,” said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan.
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