Category: Євросоюз

China, watching this week’s historic Russia-North Korea summit from the sidelines, is likely to welcome a boost for President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine but worry that its longtime client state in Pyongyang could be slipping from its grasp, experts say. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s green bulletproof train headed to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a city in Russia’s far Khabarovsk region, on Thursday after his rare summit with Putin a day earlier, according to Yonhap News in Seoul. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Kim is expected to meet with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and visit a manufacturing facility that produces Sukhoi fighter jets. …

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The new trade corridor linking India and the Mideast to Europe is being hailed as a modern version of the Spice Route, the road of yore that connected East and West — and as a way to counter China’s modern Belt and Road Initiative. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington on how the U.S. and allies are promoting the rail and maritime route. …

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears to be using this week’s much-heralded summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tighten his control over a country struggling with international sanctions and a pandemic-stricken economy, analysts said. Putin and Kim met on Wednesday at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a rocket launch facility in the Russian Far East, for their first summit in more than four years. North Kores’s official Korean Central News Agency said Putin and Kim vowed to strengthen “strategic and tactical cooperation” without providing details. Concern over arms deal Washington suspects Pyongyang may supply Moscow with munitions for its war …

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Italy is considering whether to leave the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s multibillion-dollar global trade and infrastructure program, by the end of the year. The dilemma comes amid geopolitical pressures from Western allies and domestic disappointment that the program has not delivered the economic benefits that the country hoped for. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke to reporters after meeting the Chinese delegation at last week’s G20 summit in New Delhi. “There are European nations which in recent years haven’t been part of the Belt and Road but have been able to forge more favorable relations [with China] than we …

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The luxury cruise ship MV Ocean Explorer was “successfully” pulled free in Greenland on Thursday, three days after running aground with 206 people on board, authorities and the ship’s owner said. The ship was freed by a fisheries research vessel at high tide, said the cruise ship’s owner, Copenhagen-based SunStone Ships and the Arctic Command, which had been coordinating the operation. It was done “based on a pull from the vessel (owned by the Greenland government) and vessel’s own power. There have not been any injuries to anybody onboard, no pollution of the environment and no breach of the hull.” …

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Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday it has expelled two U.S. Embassy employees from the country, accusing them of working with a Russian national that Moscow had previously accused of spying. In a statement, the foreign ministry said it had summoned U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy and informed her that the two diplomats — Jeff Sillin and David Bernstein — conducted “illegal activities by liaising with a Russian citizen, Robert Shonov,” and they must leave the territory of Russia within seven days. Shonov had worked as a local employee at the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Vladivostok for more than …

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Beijing on Thursday blasted the launch of a probe by the European Commission into China’s electric vehicle (EV) subsidies as protectionist and warned it would damage economic and trade relations, as shares in Chinese EV makers slid. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the investigation on Wednesday, accusing China of flooding global markets with electric cars that had artificially low prices because of huge state subsidies. The probe, which could result in punitive tariffs, has prompted analyst warnings of retaliatory action from Beijing as well as pushback from Chinese industry executives who say the sector’s competitive advantage was …

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The first truckload of Russian humanitarian aid has arrived this week in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan, although Armenian authorities, activists and citizens say that Azerbaijani troops continue to block access from Armenia. Reporter Ricardo Marquina traveled to areas near the enclave on the Armenian side. Marcus Harton narrates his report from the Armenian capital, Yerevan. …

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Ukraine’s military said Thursday it shot down 17 drones that Russia used to target multiple areas of Ukraine in overnight attacks. The Ukrainian military said Russia launched a total of 22 drones in several waves of attacks directed at the Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Serhiy Lysak, the regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk, said wreckage from one of three drones downed over the region damaged buildings and cars and started a grass fire. Lysak said Russian shelling also struck the region, but that there were no casualties reported. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down multiple Ukrainian drones …

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The U.S. ambassador to Russia on Wednesday visited Paul Whelan, a former Marine serving a 16-year sentence for espionage, charges he denies. Ambassador Lynne Tracy emphasized to Whelan during the meeting that the Biden administration was committed to securing his release, the State Department said. Whelan was arrested in 2018 and convicted in 2020. Both Whelan and the U.S. government deny he is a spy. The U.S. says Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich are both wrongfully detained. “Ambassador Tracy did meet with Paul Whelan earlier today. It was a consular visit,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin met Wednesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at Russia’s most advanced spaceport amid warnings from the United States and South Korea against a potential arms transfer. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports. …

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Foreign ministers of the G7 and European Union have condemned “sham elections” in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, saying they are meant to legitimize Moscow’s rule in areas illegally seized by force. The elections took place in Crimea and the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, where President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party says it won at least 70% of the overall vote. Detailed results have yet to be released.   In the statement issued Wednesday, the ministers said the elections are a further violation of Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty. “Russia has no legitimate basis for any such actions on …

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A fishing vessel owned by Greenland’s government will attempt to use a high tide to pull free a Bahamas-flagged luxury cruise ship carrying 206 people that ran aground in the world’s northernmost national park, authorities said. Capt. Flemming Madsen of the Danish Joint Arctic Command told The Associated Press that the passengers and crew on the ship stranded in northwestern Greenland were doing fine and “all I can say is that they got a lifetime experience.” The scientific fishing vessel was scheduled to arrive later Wednesday and would attempt, when the conditions were right, to pull the 104.4-meter-long (343 feet) …

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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday called on Moscow to immediately release American journalist Evan Gershkovich.  Speaking at the United Nations in New York, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia’s actions were “beyond cruel” and “a violation of international law.”  Gershkovich has been detained in Russia since March 29 on espionage charges that he and his publication, The Wall Street Journal, deny. The Moscow-based reporter was arrested while on assignment in the eastern city of Yekaterinburg. In her remarks, Thomas-Greenfield urged the international community and U.N. member states to “stand with us, to stand on the side of justice, …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin met Wednesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at Russia’s most advanced spaceport amid warnings from the U.S. and South Korea against a potential arms transfer. Kim pledged his “full and unconditional support” for “all decisions” by Putin, in an apparent reference to Russia’s war on Ukraine, as the two leaders held talks at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur region of Russia’s far east, near the Chinese border.  The meeting came as media reports quoted unidentified Western officials as saying Russia hopes to receive North Korean artillery shells for use in its war in …

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The British government has rejected calls to officially label China a threat to its interests. Several lawmakers have called for a tougher line from the government after it was revealed that a researcher in the British parliament was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing. Spying suspects British police detained two men in March on suspicion of breaking Britain’s Official Secrets Act. The arrests came to light this week, when the Sunday Times newspaper reported that one of the suspects was a researcher in the British parliament with connections to several prominent members of the ruling Conservative Party, including government …

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Two U.K.-based activists have described troubling interactions with a researcher in the British parliament who was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing. The 28-year-old suspect, whose name has been withheld by British police because he has not been formally charged, worked in the China Research Group in Westminster as a researcher and had a parliamentary pass. He has insisted on his innocence and is currently free on bail. Finn Lau, a Hong Kong human rights activist currently in the U.K. and wanted by the Hong Kong authorities, told VOA Mandarin he had an unusual coffee meeting with the suspect, …

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From zero to 100 kph in less than a second: A racing car built by students has broken the world record for electric vehicle acceleration, a Swiss university said Tuesday.  Students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences designed and built the “Mythen” vehicle that achieved the feat, ETHZ said in a statement.  “Now, Guinness World Records has confirmed that Mythen broke the previous world acceleration record for electric vehicles,” it said.  Covering a distance of 12.3 meters (40.4 feet) at the Switzerland Innovation Park in Dübendorf, opposite the students’ workshop, …

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An American researcher was “doing well” at a Turkish hospital, officials said Tuesday, after rescuers pulled him out of a cave where he fell seriously ill and became trapped 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below its entrance for over a week. Rescuers from Turkey and across Europe cheered and clapped as Mark Dickey, a 40-year-old experienced caver, emerged from Morca Cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains strapped to a stretcher at 12:37 a.m. local time Tuesday. He was whisked to the hospital in the nearby city of Mersin in a helicopter. Dickey fell ill on Sept. 2 with stomach …

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For at least the second time this year, U.S. cyber forces have come to the aid of a Baltic ally, as concerns linger about potential cyberattacks from Russia and other Western adversaries. U.S. Cyber Command Tuesday announced the completion of a two-month-long, so-called “defensive hunt” operation in Lithuania, alongside Lithuanian cyber teams. The focus of the operation, according to a spokesperson with the U.S. Cyber National Mission Force, was to look for malicious cyber activity on networks belonging to Lithuania’s Interior Ministry. Neither U.S. nor Lithuanian officials were willing to specify the exact nature of the threat, but just last …

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