Category: Євросоюз

A Russian court on Tuesday rejected Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s appeal against a decision to imprison him on extremism charges for almost two decades. On August 4, judges of the Moscow City Court convicted Navalny on extremism charges and sentenced him to 19 years in prison, ruling that his previously handed prison sentences will be served concurrently in Russia’s harshest prison regime. Navalny, his allies, rights groups and Western governments say all charges are politically motivated. The first appeals court in Moscow upheld the sentence on Tuesday at a hearing held behind closed doors. Only the reading of the verdict …

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Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew over the weekend when some 30 heavily armed Serbs barricaded themselves in an Orthodox monastery in northern Kosovo, setting off a daylong gunbattle with police that left one officer and three attackers dead. Sunday’s clash was one of the worst since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. It came as the European Union and the United States are trying to mediate and finalize yearslong talks on normalizing ties between the two Balkan states. There are fears in the West of a revival of the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo that claimed more than …

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The EU’s trade chief told Beijing Monday that tough security laws and a more “politicized” business environment have left European companies struggling to understand their obligations and questioning their future in China. China’s refusal to condemn ally Russia for its war in Ukraine also poses a “reputational risk” for the world’s second-largest economy, Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said in a speech at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. He said transparency and openness were “a winning strategy in the long run,” at a time when trade tensions between the European bloc and China are mounting. “China is navigating a challenging transition from an …

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Burkina Faso’s military junta on Monday suspended the French news magazine Jeune Afrique for publishing “untruthful” articles that reported tension and discontent within the country’s armed forces, it said in a statement.  Jeune Afrique’s suspension marks the latest escalation in a crackdown on French media since the West African country fell under military rule last year.  The statement accused the publication of seeking to discredit armed forces and of manipulating information to “spread chaos” in the country, following two articles published over the past four days.  Relations between Burkina Faso and its former colonizer, France, have soured since frustrations over …

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Military analysts say Vietnam is desperate for a new generation of powerful fighter jets and other arms, and recent news reports indicate the country could be seeking them from both the United States and Russia, although no details can be confirmed.   Reuters reported Saturday that the Biden administration is in talks with Vietnam over an agreement for the largest transfer of arms between the two countries, including F-16 fighter jets.  The report says the deal is still in its early stages and may not come together. But it was a key topic of recent Vietnamese-U.S. Talks in Hanoi, New York …

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Italian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested in January after evading arrest for decades, died of colon cancer in a prison hospital, Italian prosecutors said Monday. Denaro, 61, was captured in Palermo on January 16, following decades on the run as Italy’s most wanted fugitive. His colon cancer diagnosis and need for treatment was what led Italian officials to his location and arrest. Denaro has been cited as the mastermind behind some of the Italian mafia’s most brutal crimes, including two bombings in 1992 that killed Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutors. Prosecutors in Palermo are requesting an autopsy, despite …

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European Union member countries have watered down a proposal by the bloc’s executive arm aimed at lowering vehicle emissions. The European Commission had proposed last year updated pollution standards for new combustion engine vehicles that are expected to remain on European roads well after the 27-nation bloc bans their sale in 2035, with the aim of lowering emissions from tailpipes, brakes and tires. The Commission hoped that new guidelines would help lower nitrogen oxide emissions from cars and vans by 35% compared to existing exhaust emission regulations for pollutants other than carbon dioxide, and by 56% from buses and trucks. …

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Some members of London’s police force are refusing to carry firearms after a colleague was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man. Such a charge against a police officer is extremely rare in England. The Telegraph newspaper reports that more than 300 officers, about 10% of the armed police, have refused to carry their weapons following their colleague’s charge. The officers’ move has prompted Scotland Yard to ask the Ministry of Defense for help with counter-terrorism policing. The MoD would provide London with soldiers who would do specific tasks, but not routine police work. Only …

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Kosovo was observing a day of mourning Monday, following the death of a Kosovar Albanian police officer killed by Serbian gunmen, who then barricaded themselves at an Orthodox monastery north of the capital, Pristina.   It was not immediately clear who supports the approximately 30 gunmen who were dressed in combat uniforms when they used an armored vehicle to storm the monastery in Banjska and engage in a standoff Sunday with Kosovo police.  Most of the gunmen were able to escape the monastery Sunday evening, but at least three of them were killed and two arrested. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and …

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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is to meet his ally Azeri President Ilham Aliyev on Monday, as thousands of ethnic Armenians began an exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan defeated the breakaway region’s fighters last week. Erdogan will pay a one-day visit to Azerbaijan’s autonomous Nakhchivan exclave – a strip of Azeri territory nestled between Armenia, Iran and Turkey – to discuss with Aliyev the situation in the Karabakh region, the Turkish president’s office said. The Armenians of Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but previously beyond its control, were forced into a ceasefire last week after a 24-hour …

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European businesses in China are increasingly questioning their positions in the face of tough new security laws and a politicization of trade, an EU commissioner warned in Beijing on Monday. “European companies are concerned with China’s direction of travel,” Valdis Dombrovskis said in a speech at the capital’s Tsinghua University. “Many are questioning their position in this country.” He pointed to a new foreign relations law and a recent update to China’s anti-espionage laws as being of “great concern to our business community.” “Their ambiguity allows too much room for interpretation,” he warned. “This means European companies struggle to understand …

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French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday, France is imminently to withdraw its ambassador from Niger, followed by the French military contingent in the next months, in the wake of the coup in the west African country that ousted the pro-Paris president. Macron’s announcement appeared to end two months of French defiance over the coup, which had seen Paris keep its ambassador in place in Niamey despite him being ordered by the coup leaders to go. “France has decided to withdraw its ambassador. In the next hours our ambassador and several diplomats will return to France,” Macron told French television in …

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Among the hundreds of trains crisscrossing Ukraine’s elaborate railway network every day, the Kyiv-Kramatorsk train stands apart, shrouded in solemn silence as passengers anticipate their destination. Every day, around seven in the morning, passengers of this route leave the relative safety of the capital and head east to front-line areas where battles between Ukrainian forces and Russian troops rage and Russian strikes are frequent with imprecise missiles that slam into residential areas. The passengers are a mix of men and women that offer up a slice of Ukrainian society these days. They include soldiers returning to the front after a …

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Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday the likelihood was rising that ethnic Armenians would flee the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh and blamed Russia for failing to ensure Armenian security. If 120,000 people go down the Lachin corridor to Armenia, the small South Caucasian country could face both a humanitarian and political crisis. “If proper conditions are not created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homes and there are no effective protection mechanisms against ethnic cleansing, the likelihood is rising that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will see exile from their homeland as the only way to …

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A populist far-right politician is the front-runner in a mayoral race Sunday in the German city of Nordhausen, best known as the location of the Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora. Joerg Prophet of the Alternative for Germany party, won 42.1% of the vote in the first round of the election earlier this month. His opponent, independent incumbent candidate Kai Buchmann, had just 23.7%. The prospect of a far-right mayor holding a revisionist version of Germany’s Holocaust past has not gone unnoticed by Holocaust survivors and people who work in Germany to combat discrimination. Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora …

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Sofia Oliveira was 12 years old when catastrophic wildfires in central Portugal killed more than 100 people in 2017. She “felt it was now or never to raise our voices” as her country appeared to be in the grip of deadly human-caused climate change. Now a university student, Sofia and five other Portuguese young adults and children between 11 and 24 years of age are due on Wednesday at the European Court of Human Rights, where they are accusing 32 European governments of violating their human rights for what they say is a failure to adequately address climate change. It’s …

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At the annual meeting of world leaders last year, the U.N. chief sounded a global alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet. This year, the alarm rang louder and more ominously, and the message was even more pressing: Wake up and take action — right now. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ assessment, delivered in his no-nonsense style, aimed to shock. We are becoming “unhinged,” he said. We are inching closer to “a great fracture.” Conflicts, coups and chaos are surging. The climate crisis is growing. Divides are deepening between military and economic powers, the richer North and poorer South, East …

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Thousands of migrants have made their way illegally into Greece from Turkey, using rickety rafts to cross the Aegean, the narrow waterway between the two countries. United Nations data in September shows sea arrivals have already more than doubled the roughly 12,000 migrants who were caught trying to illegally enter Greece last year. Illegal entries along the land border and the massive Evros River that snakes along the rugged frontiers of the two countries in the northeast also count record increases of more than 65 percent in the last two months alone, police said. “Much of this has to do …

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A small drone flits over opened earth, and an explosion appears on the video feed. The drone has just dropped a grenade into a trench in Ukraine. The images were being projected on a giant screen in the Netherlands, in front of NATO military officers and defense company executives. These drones being used against Ukrainian forces are “small, fast” and finding a way to defend against them is “complex,” says Willem Koedam, a former Dutch air force officer turned expert for NATO’s C-UAS unit, which looks at anti-drone defenses. The solution may be complex, but it’s not impossible. Representatives from …

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov castigated Ukraine’s proposed 10-point peace plan and spurned a revival of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, calling both “not realistic.” Lavrov addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday at the annual gathering of world leaders at U.N. headquarters in New York. In a week of global diplomacy, Ukraine and its Western allies sought to rally support for Kyiv on its defensive war against Russian aggression. “It is completely not feasible,” Lavrov said of the peace plan initiated by Kyiv. “It is not possible to implement this. It’s not realistic and everybody understands this, but …

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