Category: Євросоюз

For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine. The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT: 4:02 a.m.: An adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, Ukraine, says that Russia’s use of “filtration camp” detention centers has turned the city into a “concentration camp,” Al Jazeera reports.  3:07 a.m.: The Pentagon says there are no indications Belarus plans to get involved in the conflict in Ukraine, Al Jazeera reports. 2:04 a.m.: CNN reports that the Pentagon denied news reports saying the U.S. provided intelligence that helped Ukraine sink the Russian warship Moskva. “We did …

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Ukraine received $6.5 billion in pledges at an international donors’ conference in Warsaw Thursday.  VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze discussed the conference and other issues with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in the Polish capital.  The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.  VOA: Donors pledged nearly $7 billion for Ukraine today. Are you satisfied with this pledge? UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER DENYS SHMYHAL: This is not the first and is not the last donors’ conference. So, we are so very grateful to our Polish and Swedish partners, to the European Commission, the European Union, because they …

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that a third evacuation operation is underway to assist civilians in Ukraine’s southern city of Mariupol and the Azovstal steel plant. “We must continue to do all we can to get people out of these hellscapes,” he told the U.N. Security Council, refusing to go into details about the sensitive mission. The U.N. chief met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 26 and then traveled to Kyiv to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 28. During his meeting in Moscow, the Russian president agreed to allow some evacuations from the besieged …

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Former Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich died this week at the age of 87. He took a part of the Soviet Union’s history with him.  Shrewd and wise, he was the one who put the last nail in the Soviet Union’s coffin. Together with Ukrainian and Russian leaders Leonid Kravchuk and Boris Yeltsin, in the cold winter of 1991 in Belarus’ Belavezha forest, he signed the document that became the death certificate for the USSR. A physicist by profession, soft-spoken and accompanied everywhere by his wife, Shushkevich never regretted the collapse of the USSR, and he called the signing of historical …

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Another Russian oligarch’s yacht was seized Thursday as part of efforts to punish Russia over its war in Ukraine.  At the request of the United States, Fijian officials took a $300 million yacht belonging to Suleiman Kerimov, the Justice Department said. Officials say the yacht is in Lautoka, Fiji.  Kerimov’s yacht, the Cayman Island-flagged Amadea, reportedly has been in Fiji since last month, arriving from Mexico. Defense lawyers claimed the vessel belonged to another oligarch.  Kerimov had already been sanctioned by the U.S. in 2014 and 2018 for Russia’s activities in Syria and Ukraine. The European Union also sanctioned him.  …

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Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, at least 23 journalists have been killed in the country, according to a journalists’ union. And at least seven of those deaths took place while the journalists were on assignment, says the Committee to Protect Journalists. Oleksii Kovalenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Kostiantyn Golubchyk. …

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Russia has announced the expulsion of seven people from the Danish Embassy in Moscow in response to a similar move announced by Copenhagen four weeks earlier. “They must leave the country within two weeks,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement Thursday. The move came exactly one month after Denmark expelled 15 employees from the Russian Embassy in Copenhagen, accusing them of being intelligence agents. Denmark said it wanted to send “a clear signal to Moscow that we will not accept that Russian intelligence officers are spying on Danish soil.” In its statement Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry …

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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine. The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT: 3:35 a.m.: VOA’s Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze tweets that donors are gathering in Warsaw to generate support for Ukraine.   3:30 a.m.: Reuters reported that two villages in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have been shelled by Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday, adding that there were no civilian casualties. “There is shelling from the Ukrainian side on Zhuravlyovka and Nekhoteevka,” he said. 3:10 a.m.: VOA’s Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze tweets …

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled new punitive actions against Russia on Wednesday, even as Russia pounded Ukraine, targeting rail stations and other supply lines in attempts to stop the West from “stuffing Ukraine with weapons.” The Russian strikes, with air- and sea-launched missiles, hit five railway stations and fuel and ammunition depots, Russia and Ukraine reported. “This is an effort to try to disrupt the Ukrainians’ ability to replenish and reinforce,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a briefing Wednesday. But the Pentagon said that specifically around Lviv, the strikes had “no appreciable impact,” said a …

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India and France on Wednesday called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities” in Ukraine, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi again stopping short of condemning Russia’s invasion of its neighbor. India, which imports much of its military hardware from Russia, has long walked a diplomatic tightrope between the West and Moscow, notably refusing to denounce the latter or vote against it at the United Nations over its actions in Ukraine. “France and India expressed their deep concern over the humanitarian crisis and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron said in a joint statement after they met …

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Iran will later this month execute a Swedish-Iranian national whom it has imprisoned since 2016 and convicted of spying for Israel, media reported. Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency on Wednesday released a report in which Iranian officials stated that Tehran will implement the death penalty against Ahmad Reza Jalali by May 21. Jalali, a researcher and physician who specializes in disaster relief, was arrested during a visit to Iran in April 2016. In 2017, Jalali was sentenced to death in Iran after he had been found guilty of passing information about two Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel to help it …

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Refugees fleeing the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, now under Russian control, are heading to the cities of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro to find safety. In Dnipro, the city has opened a special center to accommodate the newcomers. Yaroslava Movchan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera – Oleksandr Khoroshun. …

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Stanislav Shushkevich, the first leader of an independent Belarus and one of the signatories of the accords that formally dissolved the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 87. His wife Irina told Agence France-Presse that Shushkevich passed away Tuesday in the capital Minsk. He had been hospitalized in intensive care last month after contracting COVID-19. The former electrical engineer was serving as interim chairman of the Supreme Soviet, or parliament, of what was then known as Byelorussia when the country voted to secede from the Soviet Union in September 1991, one month after the failed coup to remove …

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France’s Socialist Party and the hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party reached an agreement in principle on Wednesday to form an alliance for June’s parliamentary election. The coalition pact, which the Greens and Communists agreed to earlier this week, is an attempt to deprive Macron of a majority in parliament in the June 12-19 vote and block his pro-business agenda, after he was re-elected president in April. “We can and will beat Emmanuel Macron and we can do it with a majority to govern for a radical program,” LFI lawmaker Adrien Quatennens told Franceinfo radio. If the agreement between the …

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The European Union considered new sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, including measures targeting Russia’s oil and banking industries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pushed for more extensive European actions to cut off imports of Russian energy, and said earlier this week that a new EU package “should include clear steps to block Russia’s revenues from energy resources.” Inside Ukraine, Russia intensified its shelling in the eastern and southern parts of the country, actions that Zelenskyy characterized as Russian forces reacting “with great anger to our successes.” “The sheer scale of today’s shelling clearly does not indicate that Russia has any …

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Pope Francis said in an interview published on Tuesday that he has asked for a meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to stop the war in Ukraine but had not received a reply. The pontiff also told the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera that Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has given the war his backing, “cannot become Putin’s altar boy.” Francis told the newspaper that about three weeks into the war, he asked the Vatican’s top diplomat to send a message to Putin about setting up a meeting.   “We have not yet …

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The mayor of Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol said Tuesday 100,000 citizens remained in the city, while Ukrainian officials awaited the arrival of the first group of people who were able to leave a bombed-out steel plant. Mayor Vadym Boychenko said those still in the city included some civilians trapped in the bunkers and tunnels under the Azovstal iron and steel works.  There are an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian troops holed up there as well. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday that only civilians had so far been able to leave the plant and that Ukraine’s government was continuing to …

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also led to another casualty: freedom of the press in Russia, according to a new report by Reporters Without Borders. The media advocacy group has ranked Russia near the bottom of its 2022 World Press Freedom index, which was issued Tuesday in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day. The annual index classifies a record 28 countries as “having very bad media freedom.” The Reporters Without Borders, also known as RSF, says Moscow’s assault on a free press ramped up as Russian troops invaded Ukraine through such means as propaganda, laws aimed at discrediting credible media, …

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Turkey is one of the few countries where Russian airplanes can fly and Russian passport holders can enter without visas, making it a prime destination for Russians seeking to escape both Putin’s crackdowns and the effects of economic sanctions. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul. …

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