політика, бізнес, народ

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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Hundreds of men in the Russian republic of Chechnya have been rounded up and detained recently on suspicion of being homosexual, and at least three have died while in custody, according to a prominent Russian newspaper.

Novaya Gazeta, which reported the crackdown Saturday, said it was aware of other sources who say the death toll may be far higher. The gay men who have disappeared from the streets of Grozny, the Chechen capital, and other towns and cities are said to have ranged in age from 16 to 50.

Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow-based publication known for independent investigative reporting and its willingness to confront Russian officialdom, said it learned of the action against gay men in Chechnya from the Interior Ministry in the Caucasus republic, local activists and law enforcement sources.

The men were detained “in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, on suspicion of such,” Novaya Gazeta reported. It said none of the detainees had openly disclosed their sexual orientation — a move the paper equated with asking for a death sentence in the largely Muslim North Caucasus region.

The account also quoted locals as saying Chechens who used gay contact groups on social messaging networks have been abandoning them and closing their accounts. It further quoted sources in Chechnya’s special services as describing the police sweep as “a preventative clear-out” aimed at discouraging public gay rights rallies.

Chechen leader: no gay men here

There was no immediate comment on the report from authorities in Moscow, which has granted its Muslim-majority Caucasus republics freedom to enforce traditional Muslim values.

However, a spokesman for Chechnya’s authoritarian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied the Novaya Gazeta report in a statement to the Russian news agency Interfax that claimed no one in the republic is homosexual.

“You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” Alvi Karimov said.

“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them,” Karimov added, “since their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.”

Novaya Gazeta has a history of confrontation with the Chechen government and the republic’s Kremlin handlers.

Reporter’​s death

In 2006, Gazeta reporter and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya wrote a series of reports critical of Russia, Kadyrov and Moscow’s role in the second Chechen war.

In her last interview, Politkovskaya described Chechen leader Kadyrov to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as a “coward armed to the teeth and surrounded by security guards.”

She said she hoped to see Kadyrov “someday sitting in the dock, in a trial that meets the strictest legal standards,” facing justice for atrocities allegedly committed by his forces during the Moscow-backed war against separatists in Chechnya.

Politkovskaya’s interview with RFE/RL took place October 5, 2006. Two days later, she was shot dead at point-blank range as she entered an elevator in her Moscow apartment building. Her colleagues blamed the assassination on Kadyrov.

The fateful interview that week coincided with then-Prime Minister Kadyrov’s 30th birthday, a milestone that meant he could seek the republic’s presidency, which he did a few months later.

Five men were eventually convicted of killing Politkovskaya.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive orders on trade deficits and import duty evasion are a sign that Washington plans to move away from free trade and international agreements, German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said on Saturday.

Trump instructed his administration on Friday to study the causes of U.S. trade deficits and clamp down on countries that abuse trade rules in two executive orders he said would open a new chapter for U.S. workers and businesses.

Zypries said that while the executive orders were initially only reviews, “they show, however, that the U.S. obviously wants to move away from free trade and trade agreements.”

“We must seek constructive dialogue and explain that the reasons for the U.S. trade deficit are not just abroad,” the minister said, adding that she would raise the issue in talks with U.S. counterparts during a trip to Washington in May.

For years, the United States has been importing more goods from Germany than it exports to Europe’s biggest economy, due to the relatively strong competitiveness of German firms and the high demand among U.S. customers for ‘Made in Germany’ goods.

The resulting U.S. trade deficit with Germany has nearly doubled in the past 10 years from some 28.8 billion euros in 2006 to 49 billion euros in 2016, according to data from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office.

Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro has accused Germany of exploiting other countries through a “grossly undervalued” euro.

This sparked a sharp response from German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said the European Central Bank is in charge of the euro and the central bank is a politically independent body.

In a further sign of increased tensions between Germany and the United States, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel urged the European Union on Friday to consider filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States over its plan to impose duties on imports of steel plate from five EU member states.
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The Trump administration escalated its criticism of Moscow Friday, with two of its most senior officials denouncing Russia’s treatment of Ukraine and reiterating a vow to maintain U.S. sanctions.

In his first visit to a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia of “aggression” in Ukraine and told his counterparts that their alliance is “fundamental to countering both nonviolent, but at times violent, Russian agitation” in the region. 

He also said U.S. sanctions against Moscow will remain in effect until it “reverses the actions” that triggered them. Washington imposed the sanctions in response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and expanded them after Moscow began providing military aid to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Tillerson’s previous language on Russia had been more conciliatory. After his first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a Group of 20 major economies meeting in Bonn in February, Tillerson said the U.S. wants to find “new common ground” with Russia and “expects” it to honor commitments to de-escalate violence in Ukraine as part of the 2015 Minsk agreement.

U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, whose role is subordinate to Tillerson, similarly criticized Russian “aggression” and vowed to keep U.S. sanctions in place in remarks to the U.N. Security Council February 2.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis also fired a verbal attack at Russia Friday. Echoing language he used in February, Mattis told reporters in London that Russian “violations” of international law are now a “matter of record — from what happened with Crimea to other aspects of their behavior in mucking around inside other people’s elections” — a likely reference to U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.

Senior Russian lawmaker Alexey Pushkov was not amused by the U.S. verbal assaults. In a Friday tweet, he said the new U.S. administration “sounds like the old one — Mattis is indistinguishable from (former Defense Secretary Ash) Carter, Tillerson is talking about ‘Russian aggression.’ (Barack) Obama and (Hillary) Clinton must be happy.”

Bloomberg reported that Tillerson’s tough language on Russia was well-received by NATO officials. 

But NATO’s previous secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told VOA Persian that he believes the Trump administration should go further. After speaking at a Hudson Institute forum in Washington Thursday, Rasmussen said the U.S. should “strengthen” its sanctions in response to what he called Russia’s continued destabilization of eastern Ukraine.

Watch: Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on US Sanctions

Tillerson and Mattis made no reference in their new remarks to Russia’s plans for more weapons sales to Iran, a nation the Trump administration has warned against threatening the U.S. or its Middle East allies.

A Russian lawmaker who heads the upper house of parliament’s defense and security committee, Viktor Ozerov, visited Iran last November and told reporters that Tehran was in talks to buy $10 billion worth of Russian military hardware. Ozerov said any Russian deliveries of conventional weapons to Iran likely will have to wait until 2020 when U.N. restrictions on arms sales to Tehran expire.

Moscow had taken a major step to boost military cooperation with Tehran before Ozerov’s announcement, delivering an S-300 advanced air defense system to Iran last year.

U.S. officials responded to the Russian-Iranian weapons talks with alarm, according to The Washington Free Beacon news site. It quoted State Department officials as saying they had long been working behind the scenes to persuade Moscow not to sell weapons to Iran.

Former NATO deputy secretary general Alexander Vershbow, who also spoke at Thursday’s Washington forum, told VOA Persian he does not think U.S. sanctions alone can stop Russia from arming Iran.

Watch: Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow on US Sanctions and Russia

“To be effective, the U.S. would have to adopt a unified sanctions approach with Europe,” Vershbow said. “While some sanctions imposed on Russia because of Ukraine may cover the Russian defense as well as financial sectors, targeting additional sanctions against Moscow specifically because of Iran may not be an easy issue for agreement with Europe, given its desire not to harm the Iran nuclear deal.”

Iran agreed to curb activities that could produce nuclear weapons as part of a 2015 deal with world powers, who agreed to ease sanctions against Tehran in return.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Persian Service.
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Austria’s top diplomat on Friday called on both sides of the conflict in Azerbaijan’s autonomous breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh to renew the political settlement process.

Marking the first anniversary of deadly clashes in the Azeri region, which is populated mostly by ethnic Armenians, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), emphasized his hope for a fresh start in the largely stalled peace negotiations.

“Clashes and serious violations of the cease-fire on the Line of Contact, resulting in casualties, were of particular concern to us throughout the past year,” Kurz said in a public statement. “It is now high time for a focus on pragmatic and practical steps for confidence-building as well as a resumption of substantive negotiations.”

The United States, Russia and France, which co-chair OSCE’s Minsk Group for conflict mediation, used diplomacy to halt the violence between Armenian-backed separatists and Azeri forces, which was the deadliest incident since a 1994 cease-fire established the current territorial division. Although they have been unable to secure a binding peace resolution, former U.S. Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh said, the renewed push by the OSCE presents a rare opportunity for U.S. and Russian coordination.

“President [Donald] Trump had made clear during his campaign, and since then, that he would like to find a way to have more positive relations with Russia. This might be one of those areas where that is more easily tackled,” said Cavanaugh, who once co-chaired the Minsk Group as a special negotiator alongside Russian and French diplomats.

Opportunity to surprise

“For two decades we’ve been working together as co-chairs on this, and I can tell you as a former co-chair — and I have talked with my successors — that the cooperation would surprise people,” he said.

Unlike the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts, Nagorno-Karabakh is place where U.S. and Russian interests converge. Considering the constant cease-fire violations since the 2016 clashes left more than 100 people dead, Nagorno-Karabakh, he said, cannot be considered a frozen conflict, but rather “a simmering one, which needs a lot of attention and has a lot of danger.”

The only solution that can prevent further violence is close coordination between U.S. and Russian diplomats, whose nations would both benefit from a sustained peace in the region.

But that can only happen, Cavanaugh said, if both Azeri and Armenian-aligned factions show Washington and Moscow that they are ready to re-engage the peace process.

“The sides need to send clear signals to Moscow, to Washington, to Paris, that they are prepared now really to work on peace again.”

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Armenian service.
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Pressure is growing on the Hungarian government to withdraw a draft bill on higher education that could lead to the closure of the Central European University in Budapest, which was founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

The U.S. State Department as well as dozens of academics in Hungary and abroad Friday called on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to ensure CEU’s independence and operations.

Orban said Friday on state radio that the CEU was “cheating” because it did not have a campus in its country of origin and because it issued diplomas recognized both in Hungary and the United States, giving it an undue advantage over local institutions. The CEU is accredited in New York state but does not have a U.S. campus.

“This is not fair to Hungarian universities,” Orban said. “There is competition among universities and it is inexplicable why we should put our own universities at a disadvantage … while securing an unfair advantage for the foreign university.”

Nobel Prize winners

Fourteen winners of the Nobel Prize in economics were among about 150 academics from U.S. and European universities who advocated for the CEU in an open letter addressed to education officials and Reka Szemerkenyi, Hungary’s ambassador in Washington.

“It would be a sad outcome for the training of students from the region, for academic research in Hungary, and for our own cooperation with Hungarian academics, if the proposed legislation came into force,” the academics said.

Orban, however, conditioned CEU’s survival to a bilateral Hungary-U.S. agreement on the university. He did not hide his disdain for the Hungarian-born Soros’ policies supporting the university and numerous non-governmental organizations that Orban considers “foreign agents” working against Hungarian interests.

University vows to stay open

CEU rector Michael Ignatieff has vowed to keep the university open despite the draft bill, scheduled to be debated by lawmakers next week. The bill sets new conditions on foreign universities operating in Hungary and was seen as directly targeting the CEU.

Among the 28 foreign universities in Hungary, only CEU would fail to meet a requirement to also have a campus in its home country.

“Contrary to the prime minister’s statement, there is no current Hungarian law that requires universities to have operations in their home countries in order to award degrees in Hungary,” the CEU said. “We have been lawful partners in Hungarian higher education for 25 years and any statement to the contrary is false.”

The CEU also said it was notified Friday by Hungary’s education authority that its accreditation in New York state met the conditions for operating in Hungary.

US speaks out

The U.S. State Department also took exception to the proposed legislation, saying it would impose “new, targeted, and onerous regulatory requirements on foreign universities.”

“If adopted, these changes would negatively affect or even lead to the closure” of the CEU, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “We urge the government of Hungary to avoid taking any legislative action that would compromise CEU’s operations or independence.”

Hungarian university organizations also expressed their support for the CEU.

“CEU is a very significant scholarly center,” said Laszlo Lovasz, president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. “It is good that it operates in Budapest.”
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Poland’s defense minster said Friday that he expected to sign a multibillion-dollar deal with U.S. firm Raytheon to buy eight Patriot missile defense systems this year.

Antoni Macierewicz told reporters in Warsaw that the $7.6 billion deal was necessary in light of what he called “a growing threat from the East.” Poland has increased efforts to modernize its military since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine three years ago.

“Those systems allow us to guarantee the security of the Polish state,” Macierewicz said.

Deputy Defense Minister Bartosz Kownacki said the missile system would help protect against Russian missiles based in Kaliningrad, an enclave of Russian territory between Poland’s northeastern border and Lithuania.

Raytheon also expressed satisfaction that the deal was moving forward. Congress must approve any contract for the sale of advanced U.S. military technology.

Macierewicz said the Polish government and Raytheon “concluded a very important stage of our discussions on the acquisition of medium-range missile systems to ensure Poland’s security.” He said that some issues were still outstanding, but that the deal could be signed by the end of 2017 if all conditions were agreed upon.

The defense minister acknowledged the talks were sometimes difficult and said Raytheon’s earlier price estimate for the missile systems, $12.7 billion, was “unacceptable.”
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European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has criticized those, including U.S. President Donald Trump, who praise Britain’s secession from the European Union (EU), and champion similar movements in other member nations. Leaders of the European People’s Party met on Malta Thursday, a day after Britain triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, officially starting the process known as Brexit. Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Hundreds of ships are switching off their tracking devices and taking unexplained routes, raising concern the trafficking of arms, migrants and drugs is going undetected.

Ninety percent of the world’s trade is carried by sea. Every vessel has an identification number administered by the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization or IMO. But crews are able to change the digital identity of their ship, making it possible to conceal previous journeys.

The Israeli firm Windward has developed software to track the changes. Its CEO, Ami Daniel, showed VOA several examples of suspicious shipping activity, including one vessel that changed its entire identity in the middle of a voyage from a Chinese port to North Korea.

“It’s intentionally changing all of identification numbers. Also its name, and its size, and its flag and its owner. Everything that’s recognizable in its digital footprint. This is obviously someone who is trying to circumvent sanctions [on North Korea],” says Daniel.

Transfers at sea

In a joint investigation with the Times of London newspaper, Windward showed that in January and February more than 1,000 cargo transfers took place at sea. Security experts fear traffickers are transporting drugs, weapons, and even people.

Suspicious activity can be highlighted by comparing a vessel’s journey with all its previous voyages. In mid-January a Cyprus-flagged ship designed to carry fish deviated from its usual route between West Africa and northern Europe to visit Ukraine, deactivating its tracking system on several occasions.

“It’s leaving Ukraine, transiting all through the Bosphorus Straits into Europe, then drifting off Malta,” explains Daniel, as the Windward system plots the route of the reefer [refrigerated] vessel on the screen. “On the way it turns off transmission a few times … then it comes into this place east of Gibraltar. This area is known for ship-to-ship transfers and smuggling, because of the proximity to North Africa.”

Under global regulations all vessels must report their last port of call when arriving in a new port.

“But as you can understand, when it does ship-to-ship transfers here, it doesn’t actually call into any port, right, because it’s the middle of the ocean. So it’s finding a way to bypass what it already has to report to the authorities,” Daniel said.

Finally the vessel sails to a remote Scottish island called Islay, but again it anchors around 400 meters off a tiny deserted bay. The specific purpose of this voyage hasn’t yet been identified.

Lack of political will

Daniel shows another example of a vessel leaving the Libyan port of Tobruk before drifting just off the Greek island of Crete, raising suspicions that it is involved in people smuggling.

But he says using information like this to investigate suspicious shipping activities requires political will as well as technological advances.

“Regulation, coordination, legislation. And then proof in the court of law. And not all of this necessarily exists. The high seas, which means 200 nautical miles onwards by definition, are not regulated right now. The U.N. is still working on it.”

Meanwhile the scale of smuggling around the United States’ coastline was underlined this month, as the Coast Guard intercepted 660 kilos of cocaine off the coast of Florida, with a street value of an estimated $420 million.

 
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Hundreds of ships are switching off their tracking devices and taking unexplained routes, raising concern that the trafficking of arms, migrants and drugs is going undetected. New technology enables authorities to follow the routes of suspect vessels, but security experts say taking on the smugglers will require greater coordination. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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While much attention is on Russia’s policy toward the Baltic states, some experts say Russia’s growing influence in the Balkans poses more of a danger to Western interests in that region. They say Moscow’s aim is to counter Western interests by preventing Balkan states from being integrated into the Euro-Atlantic institutions. VOA’s Jane Bojadzievski has more.
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Russian high school student Roman Shingarkin had some explaining to do when he got home after becoming one of the faces of anti-Kremlin protests at the weekend. His father is a former member of parliament who supports President Vladimir Putin.

At the height of a protest in Moscow on Sunday against what organizers said was official corruption, 17-year-old Shingarkin and another young man climbed onto the top of a lamp-post in the city’s Pushkin Square.

Hundreds of protesters in the square cheered and whistled as a police officer, dressed in riot gear, shinned up the lamp-post and remonstrated with the two to come down. They refused, and the police officer retreated, to jubilation from the protesters down below.

As images of the protests, the biggest in Russia for several years, ricocheted around social media, Shingarkin’s sit-in on top of the lamp-post was adopted by Kremlin opponents as a David-and-Goliath style symbol of defiance.

Shingarkin was eventually detained when, after the protest in Pushkin Square had dispersed, police persuaded him to climb down. He was taken to a police station but as a minor, he could not be charged. From the police station, he had to ring his father to ask to be picked up.

His father, Maxim Shingarkin, was from 2011 until 2016 a lawmaker in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament. He was a member of the LDPR party, a nationalist group that on nearly all major issues backs Putin.

Putin last year gave the party’s leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a medal for services to Russia. With Putin standing next to him, Zhirinovsky proclaimed: “God protect the tsar.”

Shingarkin had not told his father he would be going to the protest, but the former lawmaker quickly guessed what had happened.

“When I rang my dad from the police station, he immediately understood why I was there,” Shingarkin, wearing the same blue and black coat he had on during the protest, said in an interview with Reuters TV.

“I went there [to the rally] out of interest to see how strong the opposition is, how many people would take to the streets, and at the same time to get a response from authorities to a clear fact of corruption.”

He decided to climb up the lamp-post because he “could see nothing from the ground.”

Contacted by telephone on Wednesday, Shingarkin senior said he was sympathetic with his son’s motives for attending the protest.

“He has a social position, against corruption, I support it completely,” Maxim Shingarkin said.

But he emphasised that his son’s actions did not mean that he or the family were opponents of Putin.

The Russian leader, Shingarkin senior said, is popular among voters and there is no one to replace him, but he is let down by the officials around him.

Roman Shingarkin said for now he would not attend any more protests unless they were approved by the authorities.

He said he might venture to a non-approved demonstration once he turns 18, because if he gets into trouble then, the police will charge him and not involve his parents.
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The United States is examining its next steps in the campaign to defeat Islamic State militants and stabilize the refugee crisis with regional allies, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson embarks on trips to Turkey and NATO headquarters this week. The top U.S. diplomat will press NATO allies to demonstrate a clear path to increase defense spending, in his first meeting with counterparts from this security bloc.

U.S.-led forces are increasing their campaign to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State militants. Stabilizing areas where militants have fled and allowing refugees to return home is high on the agenda for the U.S. and its anti-Islamic State coalition partners.

In Turkey, Tillerson will try to build on progress from last week’s meeting of coalition partners in Washington.

“While a more defined course of action in Syria is still coming together, I can say the United States will increase our pressure on ISIS and al-Qaida, and will work to establish interim zones of stability through cease-fires to allow refugees to go home,” he said, using a common acronym for Islamic State, which is also known as ISIL and Daesh.

But it could be a tall order, according to Middle East expert Daniel Serwer.

“The Turks would like to have safe zones; they have been proposing them for years,” he said. “But they are, in fact, extraordinarily difficult to create, and to defend, and to maintain.”

NATO

Days before Tillerson’s first meeting with NATO foreign ministers, Tillerson met with his counterparts from the Baltic states. They expressed confidence in Washington’s support for NATO.

“We’re passing what we consider very important messages of the need to develop transatlantic security and economic links, so it was, overall, a very good introductory meeting,” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics told VOA’s Ukrainian Service.

After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, NATO agreed to send troops to Lithuania and to Estonia, Latvia and Poland, in a move to deter potential Russian aggression.

“I wouldn’t say the military presence is insignificant,” Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Misker told VOA’s Russian Service. “These are very well-trained, well-equipped forces. But when you look at the numbers, the presence is slightly modest compared to what Russia has in place on the other side of the border. So it shouldn’t be viewed as escalatory in any way … but I think it’s sufficient to make Russia change its calculus. It makes clear to Russia that they should not launch a provocation and think that they can do it with impunity.”

Tillerson is going to the NATO talks before he goes to Moscow, a move that ends the controversy over his earlier decision to skip the event.

“[NATO allies] want the commitment by Tillerson to maintain sanctions [on Russia for its actions] on Ukraine; they want a commitment from Tillerson that his president isn’t going to sell out the alliance to the Russians,” Serwer said.

Tillerson will make it clear that it is no longer sustainable for the United States to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO’s defense spending. He also will consult with allies about their shared commitment to improve security in Ukraine and the need for NATO to push Russia to end aggression against its neighbors.

NATO member states have until 2024 to meet a shared pledge to contribute 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense.

Estonia is the only Baltic nation to spend 2 percent of the GDP for defense purposes. Lithuania and Latvia have pledged to reach that level by 2018.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian and Ukrainian services.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to sign off on a delivery of fighter jets, battle tanks and armored vehicles to Serbia, the Balkan country’s defense minister said Tuesday, in what could worsen tensions with neighboring states and trigger an arms race in the war-weary region.

Defense Minister Zoran Djordjevic said that Putin agreed to approve the delivery during a visit by Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic to Moscow on Monday. He said six MiG-29 fighter jets, 30 T-72 tanks and 30 BRDM-2 armored vehicles will be delivered soon.

“The president of the Russian Federation said he will sign that decree, and when it’s signed, we will act accordingly,” Djordjevic said. “We are waiting for the process to be finalized in Russia and see how (the equipment) will be delivered to Serbia.”

The jets would have to fly over NATO-member countries before reaching Serbia. Or, they would have to be taken apart and flown in transport planes, if the neighboring countries approve.

Djordjevic said that the jets, tanks and fighting vehicles — donated from Russian arms reserves for free — will be “fully modernized and refurbished” in Serbia by Russian technicians for an undisclosed sum. It is estimated that the overhaul of the MiGs alone would cost Serbia some 200 million euros ($216 million.)

Djordjevic said earlier that Serbia is also interested in buying a Russian air defense system as well as opening a repair center for Russian MIL helicopters which, analysts believe, would be tantamount to opening a Russian military base on its territory.

Serbia formally has been on the path to join the European Union, but under political and propaganda pressure from Moscow has steadily slid toward the Kremlin and its goal of keeping the countries in the Balkan region out of NATO and other Western integrations.

EU officials have voiced their alarm over increasing Russian influence in the western Balkans, which has seen a bloody civil war in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, Serbia’s archrival and NATO-member Croatia is shopping for a new fighter to replace the nation’s aging MiG-21s.

The two leading contenders for the planned contract reportedly include American Lockheed Martin’s F-16 and Swedish Saab JAS-39 Gripen.
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Scotland’s Parliament voted Tuesday to seek a new referendum on independence from Britain, clearing the way for the country’s first minister, its top lawmaker, to ask the British government to approve such a vote.

The legislature in Edinburgh voted 69-59 to seek Britain’s parliamentary endorsement, which is required, for a referendum that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wants to hold within two years — before Britain has completed its departure from the 28-nation European Union.

British voters narrowly approved a departure from the EU last year, and London will begin the formal process leading to Britain’s exit from the union on Wednesday.

Despite the overall vote last year in favor of leaving the EU — based on ballots cast in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — nearly two-thirds of Scottish voters elected to remain in the bloc. Since then, Sturgeon has insisted that independence is the only way for Scotland to maintain its formal EU relationship.

Scottish voters chose not to declare independence from London in a referendum three years ago, but that was months before discussions began about Britain’s possible departure from the Brussels-based EU.  

‘Democratically indefensible’

Sturgeon has argued that last year’s Brexit vote necessitates a new independence referendum. On Tuesday, she said “it would be democratically indefensible and utterly unsustainable” for London to block a new Scottish vote.

Sturgeon first predicted a push for a new independence referendum last year, hours after British voters elected to leave the EU. She said it would be “unacceptable” for Scotland to be forced to leave the EU along with the rest of Britain, in light of Scots’ strong support for remaining in the bloc.

For her part, British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will not support a new Scottish vote until Britain has formally departed the EU — a process of negotiations that experts say could take take several years.

“Now is not the time,” May said of a new Scottish referendum, adding that Britons “should be working together, not pulling apart,” as the Brexit unfolds.
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Britain has launched a new pound coin that authorities say will be difficult to counterfeit.
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Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. presidential election, calling it a hostile act.

Cheney said Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a serious attempt to interfere in the 2016 election and other democratic processes in America.

In a speech at a speaker’s conference in New Delhi, Cheney said, “In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war.”

Cheney’s accusation comes at a time when both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees are investigating possible Russian interference in the election that brought President Donald Trump to power.

 
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Violent clashes in Paris between baton-wielding police and protesters outraged at the police killing of a Chinese man in his home injured three police officers and led to the arrest of 35 protesters, authorities said Tuesday.

The tensions have prompted China’s Foreign Ministry to express its concern to French authorities over the killing of the man, who it says was shot by a plainclothes officer.

Demonstrators from the Asian community gathered Monday night outside the multicultural 19th district’s police station in Paris’ northeast, said Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office.

They were angry at rumors the man was shot in his home in front of his children while cutting up fish and had not hurt anyone. Police say an officer fired in self-defense during a raid because the victim wounded an officer with a “bladed weapon.”

With chants of “murderers” and candles that spelled “opposition to violence” lining the road Monday night, scores of demonstrators broke down barricades, threw projectiles and set fire to cars during the brutal clashes with police that lasted several hours.

Authorities said 26 demonstrators were held for participating in a group planning violence, six for throwing projectiles, and three others for violence against police that saw a police car damaged by arson.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said that, according to witnesses, one man of Chinese origin was injured in the clashes.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that China had summoned a representative of the French embassy in Beijing Tuesday and urged French officials to “get to the bottom of the incident as soon as possible.”

Hua said Chinese authorities “hope that Chinese nationals in France can express their wishes and demands in a reasonable way.”

France is home to Europe’s largest population of ethnic Chinese, a community that routinely accuses police of not doing enough to protect them against racism.

“Chinese are victims of racist attitudes in France — especially from other ethnic groups like Arabs. They are targets for crime because they often carry cash and many don’t have residence permits, so can be threatened easily. They’re angry with police for not protecting them enough,” said Pierre Picquart, Chinese expert at the University of Paris VIII.

“Chinese people do not like to protest or express themselves publicly, so when we see them like this it means they are very, very angry. They’ve had enough of discrimination,” he added.

He estimated that there are 2 million people living in France of Chinese origin.

Last September, 15,000 people rallied in the French capital to urge an end to violence against the Asian community after the beating to death of Chinese tailor Chaolin Zhangh called new attention to ethnic tensions in Paris suburbs. The victim’s lawyer said the August 2016 attack was ethnically motivated, and the area’s Chinese immigrant community says it is routinely targeted by armed robbers and violence.

The recent killing and clashes also come just days after thousands marched in Paris in a show of anger over the alleged rape in February of a young black man by police. The alleged incident in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois turned the 22-year-old, identified only as Theo, into a symbol for minorities standing up to police violence.
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Violent clashes in Paris between police and protesters angry at the police killing of a Chinese man in his home have left three police officers injured and 35 protesters arrested, authorities said Tuesday.

Demonstrators, who were from the Asian community, had gathered in the multicultural 19th district on the French capital’s northeastern edge, police official Agnes Thibault Lecuivre said.

They were paying homage to a Chinese man killed Sunday by a police officer, outraged by reports that he was shot in his home in front of his children while he was cutting up fish. Police say the officer fired in self-defense during a raid because the victim, whom Chinese media say is Chinese, wounded an officer with a bladed weapon.

With candles spelling “violence” lining the road Monday evening, scores of protesters broke down barricades, threw projectiles and set fire to a car during the clashes with police that lasted several hours.

The latest violence comes just days after several thousand people marched in Paris against police violence, in a show of anger sparked by the alleged rape in February of a young black man with a police baton, and other police abuse. Anarchists faced off with riot police at the end of that march, and tear gas was fired. But clashes remained limited in scope and violence.

The alleged police rape of Theo in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois turned the 22-year-old into a symbol for minorities standing up to police violence. His last name hasn’t been publicly released.
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The leader of Bulgaria’s Socialist party has conceded defeat after exit polls showed her party placing second in the parliamentary election held Sunday.

Socialist leader Kornelia Ninova congratulated former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov’s GERB party as the election’s winner.

An Alpha Research exit poll said GERB won 32.2 percent of the vote, with the Socialist Party coming in second with 28 percent. A separate exit poll by Gallup International Balkan had GERB with 32.8 percent and the Socialists with 28.4 percent.

Official results are expected Monday.  

The election had been seen as a test of Bulgaria’s loyalties to the European Union and to Russia, with which it has historic political and cultural links. Bulgaria is set to take over the bloc’s presidency in 2018.

GERB and the Socialists both campaigned to revive economic ties with Russia to benefit voters in the European Union’s poorest nation. But the Socialists vowed to go further, even if it meant upsetting the country’s European Union partners.

GERB did not win enough votes to govern alone, and will likely form a coalition government with the United Patriots, an alliance of three nationalist parties that the exit polls showed placing third.

The Socialists ruled out any option of serving in a coalition government. But Ninova said her party would look at options for forming a government should the center-right GERB party find it cannot do so on its own.

Borisov, 57, resigned as prime minister after his party lost the presidential election last year.  Parliament was dissolved in January, and the president appointed a caretaker government that will stay until a new government is formed.

 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party won a state election by large margin, exit polls said Sunday, in an early setback to center-left hopes of unseating her in the September national vote.

Early results from the voting in Saarland state had Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) leading with 40 percent while the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had around 30 percent.

The SPD was facing its first electoral test since nominating Martin Shultz to face off against Merkel in September.

The party has seen a recent surge in popularity.

Merkel is expected to run for fourth term as chancellor.
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The U.S. State Department has “strongly condemned” the detention of hundreds of protesters throughout Russia including the country’s opposition leader on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of Russians demonstrated in cities across the country in support of a call by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for accountability among Russia’s elite.  Nearly 500 people were detained around Moscow’s Pushkin square, including Navalny, for protesting without permission.

“Detaining peaceful protesters, human rights observers, and journalists is an affront to core democratic values,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.

He said the United States was “troubled” by the arrest of Navalny, who has announced plans to run for president in the 2018 election.

Navalny, a Kremlin critic, was detained as he arrived to join the Moscow rally. Reports from the scene say police put him in a truck that was surrounded by hundreds of protesters who tried to open its doors and halt the arrest.

The protests appeared to be the largest coordinated outpouring of dissatisfaction since the massive 2011-2012 demonstrations following a fraud-tainted parliamentary election.

“This is an  important event!  We came here to express our position as citizens,” said one protester who just gave her first name-Alina.  “We came to remain citizens of our country.”

“By my presence here, I stand against the corruption of the incumbent power,” said another protester who only gave his first name-Maxim.  “The authorities do not feel like talking to their people, they communicate only through force-applying methods.”  

Navalny called the demonstrations after publishing a detailed report earlier this month accusing Prime Minister  Dmitry Medvedev of amassing a collection of mansions, yachts and vineyards through a shadowy network of non-profit organizations.

The report has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube.  Medvedev has not reacted to it so far.

Navalny said on his official website that 99 Russian cities planned to protest, but that in 72 of them local authorities did not give permission.

There was scant coverage of the demonstrations on Russia’s official media.  A short report on Tass said a police officer was injured during an “unauthorized” rally in Moscow.

Navalny, who has announced his intention to run for president in next year’s election, has been rallying supporters in major Russian cities in recent weeks.
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A state election Sunday in western Germany offers Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives a tough test against their resurgent center-left rivals six months before Merkel seeks a fourth term in a national vote.

The election for the state legislature in Saarland, a region of just less than 1 million people on the French border that Merkel’s Christian Democrats have led since 1999, is the first of three regional votes before Germany’s September 24 national vote.

Test for Merkel, Schulz

It’s being watched closely as the first electoral test since the center-left Social Democrats nominated Martin Schulz as Merkel’s challenger in January.

Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament but a newcomer to national politics, has boosted his party’s long-moribund poll ratings and injected it with new self-confidence. He’s offering a classic though often vague center-left pitch of tackling economic inequality at home.

That boost means that a fourth Merkel term no longer looks inevitable — and it also has tightened the race in Saarland.

Conservative governor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer until recently looked certain to win a new five-year term. But Social Democrat rival Anke Rehlinger now hopes to finish first, and polls suggest she could win a majority for an alliance with the opposition Left Party.

The two women currently govern together in a “grand coalition” of the biggest parties, an alliance similar to Merkel’s at the national level.

Governor’s race important

Kramp-Karrenbauer is one of only five conservative governors in Germany’s 16 states. Losing her would be a worrying signal for the national campaign and for two bigger state elections in May — in Schleswig-Holstein and Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, both led by the Social Democrats.

Merkel has barely mentioned Schulz so far, but warned at a rally in Saarland on Thursday against a left-wing coalition there.

“We don’t want the clocks to go back on Sunday; we want the clocks to be put forward,” she said.
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Francois Fillon’s aides used an umbrella to shield him from eggs thrown by protesters in southwest France on Saturday as the beleaguered conservative fell further behind centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-rightist Marine Le Pen in opinion polls.

The contrast between former front-runner Fillon, embroiled in a financial scandal, and new poll favorite Macron was striking as both candidates campaigned 29 days before the first round of France’s unpredictable presidential election.

Addressing a rally in the French island of La Reunion, in the Indian ocean, Macron departed from typical campaign speeches by inviting members of the audience — including a 6-year old who asked him “How do you get to be president?” — on stage to ask questions on a wide range of issues.

“It’s historic, we need to decide whether we want to be afraid of the century that has just started … or want to bring fresh ambition to France,” the 39-year-old former investment banker said to chants of “Macron President!”

Macron, a former economy minister to Socialist President Francois Hollande, set up his own centrist party last year.

Macron leads in polls

He has shot to first place in opinion polls since Fillon was put under investigation over suspicions he misused public funds by paying his wife hundreds of thousands of euros as a parliamentary assistant for work she may not have done. Fillon denies any wrongdoing.

Fillon slipped to 17 percent in a BVA poll published Saturday, which saw Macron getting 26 percent of the first-round vote, up 1 percentage point from a week ago with Le Pen at 25 percent, down one point.

The number of undecided voters for the first round remains high, with 40 percent of voters still undecided.

The poll showed Macron winning a second round vote with 62 percent of the vote versus 38 percent for Le Pen, who is to hold a rally in the northern France city of Lille on Sunday.

The poll was carried out partly before a TV interview Thursday night in which Fillon, 63, accused Hollande of leading a smear campaign against him.

Voters throw eggs, bang pans 

Met by some 30 protesters throwing eggs and banging pots and pans to shouts of “Fillon in prison” in the southwest France town of Cambo-les-Bains, Fillon told reporters: “Those protests are an insult to democracy … the more they protest, the more French voters will support me.”

Meanwhile, a faction of the centrist UDI party, which is allied with Fillon’s The Republicans, was kicked out of the party Saturday for rallying behind Macron.

The BVA poll also showed far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon gaining ground in the first round, up 2 points from a week earlier to 14 percent, now 2.5 points ahead of the ruling Socialist Party’s candidate Benoit Hamon.
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Tens of thousands of pro-EU demonstrators rallied in London, despite heightened concerns about the terrorism threat, to mark the European Union’s 60th anniversary — just days before Britain’s exit from the EU is expected to formally begin.

Organizers said about 80,000 people joined the march calling for Britain to stay in the EU on March 25.

The demonstration came four days before British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would formally start Britain’s exit negotiations by invoking Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

Hundreds of blue EU flags were carried by protesters in the procession as it stretched through central London.

Banners carried by the demonstrators had slogans like “I am European,” and “I’m 15 — I want my future back!”

The protesters fell silent as they moved through Parliament Square, where a British-born terrorist earlier this week drove a car through crowds of people before crashing into a fence and stabbing a police officer to death.

One banner raised in front of Britain’s Parliament said, “Terrorism won’t divide us — Brexit will.”

About 10,000 EU supporters also marched in Rome on March 25 while about 4,000 gathered in Berlin.

Some material for this report came from AFP, BBC and AP.
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U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year’s American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.

In December, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russian separatists.

VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.

Some see overblown allegations

CrowdStrike was first to link hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors last year, but some cybersecurity experts have questioned its evidence. The company has come under fire from some Republicans who say charges of Kremlin meddling in the election are overblown.

After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch claimed it provided added evidence of Russian election interference. In both hacks, he said, the company found malware used by “Fancy Bear,” a group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

CrowdStrike’s claims of heavy Ukrainian artillery losses were widely circulated in U.S. media.

On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report.

The company removed language that said Ukraine’s artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.

The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017.

The company also removed language saying Ukraine’s howitzers suffered “the highest percentage of loss of any … artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

Finally, CrowdStrike deleted a statement saying “deployment of this malware-infected application may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this platform” — meaning the howitzers — and excised a link sourcing its IISS data to a blogger in Russia-occupied Crimea.

In an email, CrowdStrike spokeswoman Ilina Dmitrova said the new estimates of Ukrainian artillery losses resulted from conversations with Henry Boyd, an IISS research associate for defense and military analysis. She declined to say what prompted the contact.

CrowdStrike defends report

“This update does not in any way impact the core premise of the report that the FANCY BEAR threat actor implanted malware into a D-30 targeting application developed by a Ukrainian military officer,” Dmitrova wrote.

Reached by VOA, the IISS confirmed providing CrowdStrike with new information about combat losses, but declined to comment on CrowdStrike’s hacking assertions.

“We don’t think the current version of the [CrowdStrike] report draws conclusions with regard to our data, other than quoting the clarification we provided to them,” IISS told VOA.

Dmitrova noted that the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community have also concluded that Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.

The release of embarrassing Democratic emails during last year’s U.S. political campaign, and the subsequent finding by intelligence agencies that the hacks were meant to help then-candidate Donald Trump, have led to investigations by the FBI and intelligence committees in both the House and Senate.

Trump and White House officials have denied colluding with Russians.
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U.S. officials say Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with members of the NATO alliance next week, following criticism over his initial decision to skip a NATO foreign ministers meeting.

State Department officials say Tillerson will meet NATO members on March 31 in Brussels. Foreign ministers from NATO countries were originally scheduled to gather in Brussels on April 5-6. It is not clear if the new meeting will replace the April dates.

There was no official statement from NATO.  

Voices of support for NATO

Earlier this week, Tillerson’s office said he would not be able to attend the April meeting of the 28-member alliance, raising fears about the U.S. administration’s commitment to NATO.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed NATO as “obsolete,” though his vice president, Mike Pence, voiced staunch U.S. support for the alliance during a news conference in Brussels last month and Tillerson has also expressed his support for NATO, as has U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis.

After meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week at the White House, Trump said Germany owes “vast sums of money to NATO and the United States,” voicing a charge he has repeatedly made that allies do not pay their fair share.

Tillerson to visit Turkey

U.S. State Department officials said Tillerson will travel to Brussels after his trip to Ankara, Turkey. They said more details about his schedule will be released soon.

Tillerson is also expected to to attend Trump’s meeting on April 6-7 with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Earlier this week, the White House announced that Trump will attend a summit of NATO heads of state set to be held May 25 in Brussels, and will host NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg for talks on April 12.
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