Month: December 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy witnessed the swearing-in on Sunday of Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei.  It was the Ukrainian leader’s first official trip to Latin America as Kyiv continues to court support among developing nations for its 21-month-old fight against Russia’s invading forces.  During Zelenskyy’s visit to Buenos Aires, his office and the White House announced he would travel to Washington to meet with President Joe Biden on Tuesday.  Biden has asked Congress for a $110 billion package of wartime funding for Ukraine and Israel, along with other national security priorities. But the request is caught up in a debate …

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Hungarian truckers plan to protest near Hungary’s main border crossing with Ukraine on Monday, aiming to slow the movement of trucks as they demand restrictions on Ukrainian haulers working in the European Union, police said Sunday.  Police have given permission for the protest in which about a dozen trucks will partially block the main road leading to the Zahony crossing, police said in a reply to emailed questions from Reuters.  Police did not say how long the protest would last, but website index.hu reported the plan was to partially block the road leading to the border until the end of …

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Several thousand people demonstrated against antisemitism in Berlin on Sunday as Germany grapples with a large increase in anti-Jewish incidents following Hamas’ attack on Israel two months ago.  Police estimated that around 3,200 people gathered in the rain in the German capital, while organizers put the figure at 10,000, German news agency dpa reported. Participants in the protest, titled “Never again is now,” marched to the Brandenburg Gate.  A group tracking antisemitism in Germany said in late November that it had documented a drastic increase in antisemitic incidents in the month after Hamas’ attack — a total of 994, an increase …

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Israel helped Cyprus foil an Iranian-ordered attack against Israelis and Jews on the island, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Sunday, saying such plots were on the rise since the Gaza war erupted. Netanyahu’s office gave no details of the planned attack but said in the statement on behalf of the Mossad intelligence service that Israel was “troubled” by what it saw as Iranian use of Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus “both for terrorism objectives and as an operational and transit area.” The breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in northern Cyprus is recognized only by Turkey, which is sharply critical of Israel’s …

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The British Defense Ministry said Sunday in its daily intelligence update on Ukraine that Russia has “almost certainly been stockpiling” air-launched cruise missiles or ALCMs for use in its winter campaign against Ukraine. The missiles were used on December 7, the ministry said, in a “major wave of strikes” aimed at Kyiv and central Ukraine. While the British ministry says the December launch of the missiles was “probably” designed to degrade Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, initial reports indicate that Ukraine successfully intercepted most of them. The damage from the ALCMs was apparently minimal, according to the British report, but one civilian …

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The September 2023 appointment of Rustem Umerov as Ukraine’s defense minister was well received at home and abroad.   Noted for his youth and corruption-free record, the 41-year-old has been a top negotiator in talks with Russia. But what has drawn the most notice is Umerov’s ethnic background as a Crimean Tatar, representing an often-overlooked part of Ukraine’s Indigenous history.  Crimea has a long history of human habitation, having been settled by the Tauri and Scythian people before becoming a Greek and later Roman colony.   During the medieval period, the peninsula saw rule by the Khazar Empire, Byzantium, the …

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Russian police have put prominent Russian American journalist and author Masha Gessen on a wanted list after opening a criminal case against them on charges of spreading false information about the Russian army. It is the latest step in an unrelenting crackdown against dissent in Russia that has intensified since the Kremlin invaded Ukraine more than 21 months ago, on Feb. 24, 2022. The independent Russian news outlet Mediazona was the first to report Friday that Gessen’s profile has appeared on the online wanted list of Russia’s Interior Ministry, and The Associated Press was able to confirm that it was. …

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A man with dual U.S.-Russian nationality has been placed in pre-trial custody in St. Petersburg for “rehabilitating Nazism” in posts on social media, the city’s court service said Saturday.  Yuri Malev was charged over posts in which he was alleged to have denigrated the St. George’s ribbon, a symbol of Russian military valor. One contained obscene language and the other showed a picture of a corpse wearing the ribbon.  The court service said this showed disrespect for society and insulted the memory of the Great Patriotic War, as Russians refer to World War II.  The U.S. State Department said it …

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An Iranian court has begun the trial of a Swedish national employed by the European Union who was detained last year, Sweden’s foreign minister said Saturday.  “I have been informed that the trial of Johan Floderus has begun in Tehran,” Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told Swedish news agency TT.  “The Swedish charge d’affaires was at the court but was refused the right to participate in the trial. Sweden has … requested the right to be present when the trial resumes.”  Floderus was detained in April 2022 while on holiday in Iran for what his family said was alleged spying. Billstrom …

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The family of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian Kurdish woman who died in custody, has been banned from traveling to France to collect a top rights prize awarded posthumously, their lawyer said Saturday. Amini died at age 22 on September 16, 2022, while being held by Iran’s religious police for allegedly breaking the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women. Her family and supporters say she was killed. Iranian authorities claim she died in custody from a previously undisclosed medical condition. In October, the European Union awarded its top rights honor, the Sakharov Prize, to her and the global movement her …

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