Category: Євросоюз

The Turkish government is facing mounting pressure to seek the return of the Somali president’s son, who allegedly fled Turkey after causing a fatal traffic crash in Istanbul. Yunus Emre Gocer, a 38-year-old motorcycle courier, died of injuries in a hospital on Dec. 6, six days after he was hit by a car driven by Mohammed Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on a busy highway in Istanbul. Turkish authorities ordered Mohamud arrested and barred him from traveling abroad following the motorcyclist’s death, but reports said the Somali president’s son had already left Turkey by the time the warrant was issued. On Sunday, …

READ MORE

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended Britain’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday, telling an official inquiry he did not recognize testimony describing a dysfunctional government and saying his hospitality scheme was supported at the time.   The inquiry is examining Britain’s response to the pandemic which killed more than 230,000 people in the country. It has heard that the government of then-prime minister Boris Johnson was gripped by infighting and incompetence, and unable to make a decision.   Sunak was a relatively unknown politician when he was promoted to finance minister on the eve of the pandemic, appearing to …

READ MORE

Afghan special forces trained and funded by Britain and who worked side-by-side with British troops in Afghanistan in the fight against the Taliban are now facing the possibility of being deported from Pakistan, where the Afghan troops and their families fled, according to a BBC report.   The 200 special forces would likely be targeted for revenge by the Taliban if they were to return to Afghanistan.  Pakistan says it is ready to deport any Afghans who do not possess the proper papers for residency.  Failing to relocate the Afghans who worked with the British in Afghanistan “is a disgrace,” …

READ MORE

The national conservatives who have ruled Poland for eight years are expected to finally relinquish power this week to a centrist bloc led by political veteran Donald Tusk. The transition will come in several steps over three days, starting Monday, nearly two months since Poles turned out in huge numbers to vote for change in a national election. The transition was delayed for weeks by the president, who chose to keep his political allies in office as long as possible. “READY, STEADY, GO!” tweeted Tusk, who is expected to be chosen as the new prime minister by the evening. The …

READ MORE

Ukraine’s military said Monday that Russia attacked Kyiv with eight ballistic missiles overnight in the latest wave of aerial assaults targeting the Ukrainian capital. The Ukrainian air force said air defenses shot down all eight of the missiles. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said four people received medical treatment after debris from one of the downed missiles fell in the eastern part of the city.  He also reported missile debris being found at a warehouse, but said there was no damage at the site. The Ukrainian military said Russia also launched 18 drones from Russia-occupied Crimea, and that Ukrainian air defense …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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. …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

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 …

READ MORE

Pickup trucks and tourniquets bound for Ukraine’s battlefield are among items stuck in a miles-long line at the border with Poland. Components to build drones to fight off Russian forces are facing weeks of delays. Ukrainian charities and companies supplying the war-torn country’s military warn that problems are growing as Polish truck drivers show no sign of ending a border blockade that has stretched past a month. The Polish protesters argue that their livelihoods are at stake after the European Union relaxed some transport rules and that Ukrainian truckers undercut their business. While drones will make it to the front …

READ MORE

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya says she and her cabinet are planning to issue passports next year that could ease travel hurdles for many Belarusians forced to live in exile. The political activist, who was declared the winner in the 2020 presidential election by outside observers but was forced into exile after incumbent Alexander Lukashenko seized power, told VOA in an interview in Washington on Thursday that issuing passports would be an unprecedented initiative for her exile government. Lukashenko has banned the country’s embassies from renewing passports for citizens who live abroad. “I understand the fear [that some might have] …

READ MORE

Russian airstrikes, shelling and bad weather have damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving 500 settlements in intermittent energy blackouts. Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo reported that energy consumption hovered near record highs on Friday, straining the already fragile power grid. For a second winter, Russia is targeting the country’s electric infrastructure, sending dozens of drones on an almost nightly basis to hit power-generating facilities and distribution networks across the country. Ukrenergo said a thermal power plant in the east had again been damaged by systematic and prolonged shelling, and elsewhere a power facility had been shut down for emergency repairs. Meanwhile Ukrenergo …

READ MORE

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock discussed the fate of Germans held in Iran Friday with her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian, her ministry said.  The two ministers held a telephone call with a “particular focus… on German consular cases,” the ministry wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.  Jamshid Sharmahd, a German citizen of Iranian descent, was abducted in late July 2020 by the Iranian authorities and sentenced earlier this year to be hanged for “corruption on earth.”  Iran’s Supreme Court in April confirmed the death penalty.  German-Iranian Nahid Taghavi, in her late 60s, was sentenced to 10 years and eight …

READ MORE

Javier Vrox, the host of a political program on a YouTube channel in Chile who constantly monitors social networks in his country, recently noticed an uptick in pro-Russian political messaging, which had already been common in the country. “They copy and paste the same messages on social media — that [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is an actor, that he is a funny president; they copy those videos of Zelensky’s past TV series, making the point that he is an actor and a liar.” According to Vrox, such reports aim to convince Chileans that Ukrainians only pretend to be victims of …

READ MORE