Month: February 2022

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris travels Thursday to Munich, where officials say she will focus on consulting with allies about the Russia-Ukraine crisis. While in Germany, where Harris will lead the U.S. delegation at the Munich Security Conference, she is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and the leaders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Harris is also due to give an address Saturday that administration officials said would highlight the level of unity among Western countries and NATO members on diplomatic, military and economic fronts. “The vice president will underscore how that unity is …

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The top European Union court ruled on Wednesday that the EU can withhold funding from member states that fail to uphold its rule of law principles, giving the bloc a powerful tool to enforce its democratic values.  “The European Union must be able to defend those values, within the limits of its powers,” the European Court of Justice said in the ruling. The decision by the Luxembourg-based court cannot be appealed.  “Today’s judgments confirm that we are on the right track,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said when announcing how the bloc would proceed in the next couple …

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NATO’s chief said on Wednesday there was no evidence that Russia was withdrawing forces from the Ukraine border, but he added there was still a chance for a diplomatic solution. NATO leaders and defense ministers were meeting in Brussels for talks. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb has more. …

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President Emmanuel Macron hosts African leaders on Wednesday ahead of an expected announcement that France is withdrawing its troops from Mali after an almost decade-long deployment to battle a jihadist insurgency. Multiple sources have told AFP that Macron will announce that French forces will leave Mali and redeploy elsewhere in the Sahel region, following a breakdown in relations with the ruling junta. It remains unclear when, and how, Macron will make the announcement, which could come as part of Wednesday’s meeting or when he travels to Brussels on Thursday for a two-day EU-Africa summit. The deployment in Mali of a …

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced Wednesday a move by Russian legislators to recognize two Russian-supported breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent. Russia’s lower house voted Tuesday to ask President Vladimir Putin to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics, which declared independence from Ukraine in 2014 after President Viktor Yanukovych was removed from office in the Ukrainian Revolution.  The European Union urged Moscow not to follow through on the vote by the State Duma. Approval of the vote could further intensify tensions between Russia and Western countries over Russia’s military buildup along Ukraine’s borders that has fueled …

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Everything is normal — or appears so. Outside the grand nineteenth-century city hall in Lviv, the capital of western Ukraine where Western embassies hurriedly relocated consular staff from Kyiv earlier this week, the streets are bustling. Children squeal with delight as they try to master their roller-skates in an outdoor skating rink nearby. Their breath steams in the chill evening air. Young lovers kiss, some argue, outside restaurants and bars. Older couples saunter through the narrow streets of Lviv’s historic center, seemingly in their twilight years without a care in the world. Lviv is much more a tourist town than …

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday he is “troubled by dubious new charges” against Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who went on trial Tuesday in a penal colony outside of Moscow. Navalny is accused of embezzlement and contempt of court. If convicted, he could face up to 15 more years in prison.  “Navalny and his associates are targeted for their work to shine a light on official corruption,” Blinken tweeted. He added a call for Russian authorities to release Navalny “and end their harassment and prosecution of his supporters.”  The Kremlin critic was arrested in January 2021 and …

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Catholic groups Tuesday accused Italy’s Church of an “institutional failure” to confront clergy sexual abuse and demanded an independent national inquiry mirroring ones conducted in France and Germany.  A collective of nine groups — seven headed by women — issued the demand during the launch of a campaign called “Beyond the Great Silence” and a hashtag, #ItalyChurchToo, inspired by the international #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.  In an online news conference, Paola Lazzarini, head of Women for the Church, called for the opening of the archives of “all dioceses, convents and monasteries,” damages for victims and the uncovering of the …

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Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny went on trial Tuesday in a penal colony outside of Moscow, accused of embezzlement and contempt of court. If convicted, he could face up to 15 more years in prison.  The hearing is taking place inside the maximum-security prison in Moscow’s Lefortovsky district court, where he is being held, 96 kilometers from Moscow.  The Kremlin critic was arrested in January 2021 and convicted of violating his parole by spending several months in Germany recovering from a poison attack. He was sentenced to 2½ years in prison.  At his new trial, Russian investigators say Navalny …

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