Category: Євросоюз

Russia launched a missile strike Sunday on the southern Ukranian city of Mykolaiv, which has been the target of several strikes in recent weeks.   The Associated Press reports that an “industrial and infrastructure facility” was the target.    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his daily address Saturday, urged Ukrainians to develop “a kind of emotional sovereignty” over the disinformation and propaganda that Russia and others have distributed in various media about Ukraine. Zelenskyy said, “We do not depend on what the enemy constantly launches against you and me.” He said the Ukrainian people must “have the power to consciously perceive any …

READ MORE

Family by family, house by house, French police rounded up 13,000 people on two terrifying days in July 1942, dispatching them to Nazi death camps simply because they were Jewish. Eighty years later, France is honoring the victims, and trying to keep their memory alive. For the dwindling number of survivors of France’s wartime crimes, commemoration ceremonies Sunday are especially important. At a time of rising antisemitism and far-right discourse sugarcoating France’s role in the Holocaust, they worry that history’s lessons are being forgotten. A week of ceremonies marking 80 years since the Vel d’Hiv police roundup on July 16-17, …

READ MORE

“It’s absolutely crazy to stick yourself to the road with superglue,” admits Lina Schinkoethe. And yet, the 19-year-old recently landed in jail for doing just that, in protest at what she believes is the German government’s failure to act against climate change. Schinkoethe is part of a group called Uprising of the Last Generation that claims the world has only a few years left to turn the wheel around and avoid catastrophic levels of global warming. Like-minded activists elsewhere in Europe have interrupted major sporting events such as the Tour de France and the Formula One Grand Prix in Silverstone …

READ MORE

Two landmark new studies in France are bursting myths about immigration at a time when xenophobic far-right discourse has gained ground. They show that the children of immigrants are increasingly melting into French society, but some with African and Asian backgrounds face persistent discrimination. Karima Simmou, a 20-year-old French Moroccan student at the prestigious Paris university Sciences Po, embodies the phenomenon. She comes from a working-class family of eight children, with a mother who raised the family and a father who worked as a miner in western France. Her family pushed her to go to the elite school. “As a …

READ MORE

As bullets and bombs fall in Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe, researchers and officials say, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fears about refugees and rising fuel prices while calling the West an untrustworthy ally. In Bulgaria, the Kremlin paid journalists, political analysts and other influential citizens 2,000 euros a month to post pro-Russian content online, a senior Bulgarian official revealed this month. Researchers also have uncovered sophisticated networks of fake accounts, bots and trolls in an escalating spread of disinformation and propaganda in the country. Similar efforts are playing out in other …

READ MORE

A cargo aircraft Antonov An-12 crashed late Saturday near Paleochori Kavalas in northern Greece, the fire brigade said. Eyewitnesses said the aircraft was on fire and that they had heard explosions, Athens News Agency reported. A local man, Giorgos Archontopoulos, told state broadcaster ERT television he had thought something was wrong as soon as he heard the aircraft’s engine. “At 22:45 I was surprised by the sound of the engine of the aircraft,” he said. “I went outside and saw the engine on fire.” Local officials said seven fire engines had been deployed to the crash site but that they …

READ MORE

North Macedonia has approved a French proposal that opens the way for negotiations to join the European Union and overcome Bulgarian objections.  There were 68 votes in favor of the proposal in the 120-member chamber, with the leftist coalition, which has 61 seats, getting the backing of small ethnic Albanian parties. Opposition lawmakers left the chamber in protest, abstaining from the vote.  Protesters gathered again outside Parliament, as they have done every day for 10 days, but the protest ended peacefully.  Under the proposal, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron last month, North Macedonia would commit to changing its constitution …

READ MORE

The world was sadder and more stressed out in 2021 than ever before, according to a recent Gallup poll, which found that four in 10 adults worldwide said they experienced a lot of worry or stress. Experts say the most obvious culprit, the pandemic — and the isolation and uncertainty that came with it — is a factor but not entirely to blame. Carol Graham, a Gallup senior scientist, says the culprit for declining mental health includes the economic uncertainty faced by low-skilled workers. “There are some structural negative changes that make some people in particular more vulnerable. And in …

READ MORE

U.S. and Ukrainian officials say U.S. rocket systems provided to Ukraine are having a large impact in the fight against Russia, helping Ukrainian forces to hold off Russia’s military in the eastern Donbas region. A senior U.S. military official speaking on the condition of anonymity Friday to discuss the war said U.S.-supplied rocket systems known as HIMARS are having “a very, very significant effect” in the fight against Russia. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry spokesperson, Oleksandr Motuzianyk, also singled out the role played by the HIMARS long-range rocket systems. “In the last weeks, over 30 of the enemy’s military logistical facilities have …

READ MORE

Ukraine’s deputy minister of culture said Friday that her country’s heritage is under attack by Russia and must be protected. “The president of Russia, Mr. Putin, announced that Ukrainian culture and identity is a target of this war,” Kateryna Chueva, deputy minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, reminded an informal meeting of the U.N. Security Council. She said the Russian bombs and missiles that have damaged and destroyed Ukrainian cities also have hit scores of important cultural sites. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has verified damage to 163 cultural sites since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. …

READ MORE

Liza, a 4-year-old girl with Down syndrome, was en route to see a speech therapist with her mother in central Ukraine when a Russian missile hit. She never made it to the appointment. Now the images that tell the story of her life and its end are touching hearts worldwide. Wearing a blue denim jacket with flowers, Liza was among 23 people killed, including boys ages 7 and 8, in Thursday’s missile strike in Vinnytsia. Her mother, Iryna Dmytrieva, was among the scores injured. After the explosion, the mother and daughter went in different directions. Iryna, 33, went into a …

READ MORE

Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.        ‘Broad agreement’ on deal to export blockaded Ukrainian grain    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday there is “broad agreement” on a deal between Russia and Ukraine, with Turkey and the United Nations, to export millions of tons of Ukrainian grain stuck in silos since Russia’s invasion on February 24. Breaking his silence to speak to reporters at U.N. headquarters, Guterres said important and substantive progress had been made and the parties are getting …

READ MORE

The European Union’s executive intensified its legal standoff with Hungary on Friday by taking the country to the EU’s highest court over a restrictive law on LGBT issues and media freedom.  The EU had already tried for a year to make Hungary change a law that bans content portraying or promoting homosexuality. The European Commission said it “discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”  “The Commission considers that the law violates the internal market rules, the fundamental rights of individuals (in particular LGBTIQ people) as well as — with regard to those fundamental rights …

READ MORE

Across Europe, there is a growing uneasiness that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is serving to overshadow another critical, even existential threat that could do severe damage to the West while serving the Kremlin’s interests. Instability and the rise of terrorism across Africa, according to multiple European and NATO officials, cannot be overlooked no matter how deeply Russian President Vladimir Putin pushes into Ukraine. And nowhere are concerns growing as fast as they are in the Sahel, the semiarid stretch of land spanning northern and western Africa from Senegal to Sudan. “By sending a couple of thousand Wagner paramilitaries, the Russians …

READ MORE

Western finance ministers condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine at G-20 talks in Indonesia on Friday, accusing Russian officials of complicity in atrocities committed during the war. The two-day meeting on the island of Bali began under the shadow of a Russian military assault that has roiled markets, spiked food prices and stoked breakneck inflation, a week after Moscow’s top diplomat walked out of talks with the forum’s foreign ministers. “Russia is solely responsible for negative spillovers to the global economy,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the Russian delegation in the opening session, according to a Treasury official. “Russia’s officials …

READ MORE

“The simple truth is that, as we speak, children, women and men, the young and the old, are living in terror,” International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said at the opening of the Ukraine Accountability Conference in The Hague on Thursday, with about 40 nations in attendance. Khan said an “overarching strategy” is needed to bring those guilty of conducting war crimes in Ukraine to justice. Ukraine has granted the ICC jurisdiction over the crimes committed within the country, opening the door to the court’s investigations, since neither Ukraine nor Russia is an ICC member. Ukrainian officials said Russian …

READ MORE

An Azerbaijani journalist imprisoned on what rights groups believe are trumped-up charges has had his appeal for parole rejected. The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan on Wednesday rejected the appeal of human rights defender and journalist Elchin Mammad to be freed after serving one-third of his sentence. Mammad, editor of the news website Yukselish Namine and head of the nongovernmental organization Legal Education of Sumgayit Youth, was arrested in the city of Sumgayit in 2020. Police at the time said they’d found stolen jewelry in his office. A court in October 2020 convicted Mammad of theft and illegal possession of weapons, …

READ MORE

The United States is pressing to implement a plan meant to force Russia to sell oil at artificially low prices on the global market, in order to deprive the Kremlin of funding for its war in Ukraine. Speaking at a news conference in Bali, Indonesia, before the start of a meeting of the finance ministers of the G-20 large economies, Yellen restated the Biden administration’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She said that cutting its profits from crude oil sales “would deny [Russian President Vladimir] Putin the revenue his war machine needs.”    She also argued that capping the …

READ MORE

Stockholm’s District Court sentenced a former Iranian official to life in prison on Thursday for war crimes and the murder of political prisoners during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. At the time of the killings, Hamid Noury was a 27-year-old assistant to the deputy prosecutor at Gohardasht prison in Karaj, Iran. According to prosecutors, the killings were ordered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s leader at the time. The executed prisoners were loyal to an Iranian opposition group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Noury, now 61, was arrested upon arrival at the Stockholm airport in 2019. He has denied the accusations. The Swedish court …

READ MORE

A Russian arms dealer labeled the “Merchant of Death” who once inspired a Hollywood movie is back in the headlines with speculation around a return to Moscow in a prisoner exchange. If Viktor Bout, 55, is indeed eventually freed in return for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, as some published reports suggest, it would add to the lore around a charismatic arms dealer the U.S. has imprisoned for more than a decade. Depending on the source, Bout is a swashbuckling businessman unjustly imprisoned after an overly aggressive U.S. sting operation, or a peddler of weapons …

READ MORE