Category: Євросоюз

The announcement by Russia’s Defense Ministry Saturday that 10,000 troops deployed along the border with Ukraine are to return to their permanent bases isn’t easing the alarm of Western officials, who see the risks mounting of Russian military action.   Russian President Vladimir Putin last week indicated his country’s willingness to sit down for talks with the United States and NATO amid soaring tensions, prompted by the Kremlin deploying more than 100,000 troops near its borders with Ukraine.    Russian Defense Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a televised interview Monday that Moscow was still waiting for NATO’s response to various …

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Poland’s president on Monday said he has decided to veto a media bill that would have forced U.S. company Discovery to give up its controlling share in TVN, a Polish TV network.  President Andrzej Duda noted that the bill was unpopular with many Poles and would have dealt a blow to Poland’s reputation as a place to do business.  The bill, recently passed by the lower house of parliament, would have prevented any non-European entity from owning more than a 49% stake in television or radio broadcasters in Poland.  Its practical effect would have targeted only one existing company, Discovery …

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NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has sought a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council next month and contacted Moscow to secure its attendance, an alliance spokesman said Sunday. Stoltenberg has on several occasions in recent months offered to resume dialogue with Moscow through this body, set up in 2002 but currently inactive because of the conflict in Ukraine. But the Russian authorities have not responded favorably. “We are in touch with Russia” about the January 12 meeting, said the NATO spokesman, who asked not to be identified. NATO has consistently denounced Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and has called on …

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France has recorded more than 100,000 virus infections in a single day for the first time in the pandemic and COVID-19 hospitalizations have doubled over the past month, as the fast-spreading omicron variant complicates the French government’s efforts to stave off a new lockdown.  More than 1 in 100 people in the Paris region have tested positive in the past week, according to the regional health service. Most new infections are linked to the omicron variant, which government experts predict will be dominant in France in the coming days. Omicron is already dominant in Britain, right across the Channel.  Meanwhile …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he would ponder various options if the West fails to meet Moscow’s demands for security guarantees, amid heightened tensions involving a massive deployment of Russian troops near Ukraine.  Moscow earlier this month submitted draft security documents demanding an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and military cooperation with countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, among other things.  Speaking at his annual news conference last week, Putin urged the West to meet the demands “immediately,” listing off a litany of grievances about Ukraine and NATO.  He warned that Moscow would have to take adequate measures if …

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As 2021 nears its end, hopes that the coronavirus pandemic might be ending are rapidly fading – as the new omicron variant sweeps across the world. Henry Ridgwell looks back on a tumultuous year in Europe as populations and policymakers struggled to return to normality. Producer: Barry Unger …

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Britain’s Queen Elizabeth spoke of the loss of her husband, Prince Philip, on Saturday, remembering the “mischievous twinkle” in his eyes in an unusually personal Christmas message to the nation. The 95-year-old monarch said that while Christmas was a time of happiness for many, it could be hard for those who had lost loved ones, and this year especially she understood why, having lost Philip, 99, in April after 73 years of marriage. “His sense of service, intellectual curiosity and capacity to squeeze fun out of any situation were all irrepressible,” she said in her traditional pre-recorded festive broadcast, paying …

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Scientists declared the eruption on Spain’s La Palma officially over on Saturday, allowing islanders to breathe a sigh of relief nearly 100 days after the Cumbre Vieja volcano began to spew out lava, rock and ash and upended the lives of thousands. After bursting into action on Sept. 19, the volcano suddenly went quiet on Monday Dec. 13 but the authorities, wary of raising false hope, held off until Christmas Day to give the all-clear. “What I want to say today can be said with just four words: The eruption is over,” Canary Islands regional security chief Julio Perez told …

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Senior German and Russian government officials have agreed to a rare in-person meeting next month in an effort to ease political tensions over Ukraine, a German government source said Saturday. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foreign policy adviser Jens Ploetner and Russia’s Ukraine negotiator Dmitry Kozak agreed to meet after a lengthy phone conversation Thursday, the source said on condition of anonymity. The German government has not made any official comment.  A spokesman for Kozak declined to comment. There has been a flurry of phone calls between western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months over Russia’s military build-up …

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Pope Francis in his Christmas message on Saturday decried increasing polarization in personal and international relationships, saying only dialog can resolve conflicts ranging from family feuds to threats of war. In his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message, he called on individuals and world leaders to talk to each other rather than dig in their heels, a distancing he said has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our capacity for social relationships is sorely tried; there is a growing tendency to withdraw, to do it all by ourselves, to stop making an effort to encounter others …

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Worshippers in face masks filed into Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois Church across from the Louvre Museum on Friday for Christmas Eve Mass and were greeted by the rector of the closed Notre-Dame Cathedral.  It was the second year that holiday services were held under the shadow of the coronavirus.  Everyone was masked, and members of the congregation sprayed people’s hands with disinfectant as they entered. Children in the choir sang while masked and spaced out across the podium. They had to produce negative coronavirus tests to participate. “We have very strict rules in place,” said Monsignor Patrick Chauvet, rector of Notre-Dame, which has …

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At least three people died when a migrant boat sank in the Aegean Sea on Friday, just hours after similar sinking claimed 11 lives, Greece’s coast guard said. The latest tragedy, the third since Wednesday, came amid high smuggler activity not seen in Greek waters in months. The coast guard said it found three bodies and rescued 57 people from a boat that overturned and sank near the island of Paros. Hours earlier, 11 bodies were recovered from a boat that ran aground on an islet north of the Greek island of Antikythera on Thursday evening. Ninety people stranded on …

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The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office has asked a court to arrest former President Petro Poroshenko on suspicion of high treason and financing pro-Russian separatists, a lawmaker from Poroshenko’s faction in parliament said Friday. “On Christmas Eve, the prosecutor general office confirmed the information … that the prosecutor general had approved a motion to arrest Poroshenko with the possibility of bail set at 1 billion hryvnia [$37 million],” Iryna Gerashchenko said on Facebook. The prosecutor general’s office declined to confirm Gerashchenko’s claim. On Monday, the state investigative bureau said Poroshenko, who is visiting Poland, was suspected of “facilitating the activities” of …

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Pope Francis celebrated Christmas Eve Mass before an estimated 2,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday, going ahead with the service despite the resurgence in COVID-19 cases that has prompted a new vaccine mandate for Vatican employees.  A maskless Francis processed down the central aisle as the Sistine Chapel choir sang “Noel,” kicking off the Vatican’s Christmas holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem. He remained maskless throughout the service.  In his homily, Francis urged the faithful to focus on the “littleness” of Jesus, and remember that he came into the world poor, without …

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The year 2021 saw a new migrant crisis on Europe’s borders – as thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa travelled to Belarus and tried to cross the border into Poland and the European Union. Henry Ridgwell reports. Camera: Henry Ridgwell …

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The Russian foreign ministry said Friday that someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail at the Russian consulate in Ukraine’s Lviv and that it had formally protested over the attack, which it called “an act of terrorism.” Russia’s foreign ministry summoned a Ukrainian official and demanded apologies from Ukrainian authorities. Ukrainian police in Lviv said they had launched an investigation into the incident, which they referred to as “hooliganism.” …

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New satellite images captured by a private U.S. company show that Russia has continued to build up its forces in annexed Crimea and near Ukraine in recent weeks while pressing the United States for talks over security guarantees it is seeking. Reuters could not independently verify the latest images from U.S.-based Maxar Technologies. The Kremlin reiterated on Friday that it reserves the right to move its own forces on Russian territory as it sees fit and that Western countries were carrying out provocative military maneuvers near its borders. U.S., European and Ukrainian leaders have accused Russia of building up troops …

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Polish Senator Krzysztof Brejza’s mobile phone was hacked with sophisticated spyware nearly three dozen times in 2019 when he was running the opposition’s campaign against the right-wing populist government in parliamentary elections, an internet watchdog found. Text messages stolen from Brejza’s phone — then doctored in a smear campaign — were aired by state-controlled TV in the heat of that race, which the ruling party narrowly won. With the hacking revelation, Brejza now questions whether the election was fair.  It’s the third finding by the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab that a Polish opposition figure was hacked with Pegasus …

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The White House said Thursday that Washington is keeping a keen eye on Moscow and remains committed to diplomacy during upcoming high-level talks. This comes amid increasingly heated rhetoric from Russia’s leader, who on Thursday accused U.S. and NATO allies of undermining his country as he continues to mass troops near Russia’s border with Ukraine. “You expanded NATO to the east,” President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, during his customary marathon end-of-year press conference, where he also accused Western intelligence services of trying to break up the Russian federation by using terrorist groups. “Of course, we asked you not to do …

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Belarus’s Interior Ministry has added RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, known locally as Radio Svaboda, to its registry of extremist organizations, in a continued clampdown on independent media and civil society sparked by an eruption of protests against authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko’s claim he won a presidential election last year that the opposition says was rigged. According to the statement issued by the ministry on December 23, “a group of citizens associated via Radio Svaboda’s internet resources were determined to be an extremist group.” The move means that Belarusians who subscribe to Radio Svaboda online could face up to six years in …

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