Category: Євросоюз

A freelance journalist, who has worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Belarus Service, remains in jail on unspecified charges, despite serving two 10-day sentences on controversial hooliganism charges, his relatives said Thursday. Andrey Kuznechyk’s family told RFE/RL that they were officially informed that the journalist was being transferred from the notorious Akrestsina detention center, where many inmates have said they were tortured, to another facility in Minsk.  The family was also told that a criminal case on unspecified charges had been launched against Kuznechyk. Kuznechyk has been held by authorities since late November. After going for a bike ride on …

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French schoolchildren clung nervously to their parents as they entered a vast vaccine center west of Paris on Wednesday — then walked excitedly away with a decorated “vaccination diploma,” as France kicked off mass COVID-19 inoculations for children age 5 to 11. It’s not a moment too soon for the French government, which is facing the highest recorded infection rates since the pandemic began but trying to avoid a new lockdown. The health minister said Wednesday that the swiftly-spreading omicron variant is expected to be dominant in France by next week, but ruled out additional restrictions on public life for now. Officials are hoping that a …

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Russian and U.S. negotiators will hold talks in January to discuss Moscow’s demand that NATO halt its eastward expansion into the countries of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said Wednesday. “We don’t want a war,” Lavrov said. “We don’t want to take the path of confrontation. But we will firmly ensure our security using the means we consider necessary,” he said in an interview with Russian RT television. The foreign minister’s remarks came as Russian energy giant Gazprom continued to restrict natural gas supplies to Europe, prompting renewed accusations the Kremlin is …

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Turkish authorities arrested a U.S. diplomat in Turkey last month for allegedly selling a bogus passport to a Syrian national, according to Istanbul police. Authorities identified the diplomat Wednesday by his initials, D.J.K. Officials also said they had video of the envoy handing the passport to a person they described as suspicious at Istanbul airport The police said the diplomat, who works at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, remains in detention after they arrested him on November 11 with $10,000 in his possession. He was later charged with suspicion of selling the document, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. …

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Dutch prosecutors have demanded life sentences for four suspects on trial for the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people.  The prosecution closed three days of final arguments Wednesday by saying Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Igor Pulatov, along with Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, collaborated to get a Buk missile system from Russia to support separatists in Ukraine.  An international investigation in 2018 concluded a missile launcher used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 came from Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. Prosecutors said the missile was brought to its launch site “by …

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Greece’s coast guard says one migrant has died and dozens are feared missing after a boat sank off the coast of the island of Folegandros.  The body of the unidentified man was recovered during an ongoing search and rescue operation launched early Wednesday after the boat sank some 180 kilometers (112 miles) southeast of Athens. The coast guard said 12 people, all believed to be from Iraq, had been rescued and transported to the nearby island of Santorini.  Most survivors said there were originally 32 people on the boat, but one told authorities there were about 50.  The coast guard said …

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Poland and Lithuania have backed Ukraine in urging Western powers to immediately impose sanctions on Russia over its military buildup along the Ukrainian border. As fears mount of a Russian invasion, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday “called upon the international community to step up sanctions on the Russian Federation over its ongoing aggression against Ukraine.” In a statement issued after the leaders met in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains, they “once again urged the Kremlin to de-escalate the situation by withdrawing its troops from the Ukrainian borders.” Despite U.S. President Joe Biden …

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The United States believes bilateral talks with Russia over its massive troop buildup along the Ukrainian border could start in January, said the State Department’s top diplomats, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the U.S. and its allies for tensions in the region.  “We’re prepared to engage diplomatically through multiple channels,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a press conference Tuesday.  “I think you’ll see relatively early in the new year engagements in all of those areas, to see if we can advance the differences diplomatically,” added Blinken, referring to the existing U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue and through …

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A Belarusian blogger has been sentenced to three years in prison on charge of “insulting” Alexander Lukashenko by writing in a post that the country’s authoritarian ruler was “illegitimate” amid a wave of protests against the results of a presidential election last year that opposition figures say was rigged. A court in the western town of Shchuchyn pronounced its ruling against Vadzim Ermashuk, also known in his posts on social media as Vadimati, on December 21. The 36-year-old blogger, who was also charged with desecrating the flag for a post in which he called it a “rag,” rejected the charges …

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The U.N. human rights office is calling on Belarus and Poland to end what it calls appalling treatment of refugees and migrants stranded along their common border and to live up to their obligations under international human rights and refugee laws. A U.N. human rights team visited the region between November 29 and December 3 to get a firsthand view of the situation. While Polish officials met with the team, Belarusian authorities did not. U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell says team members were not granted access to the restricted border area. However, she says they interviewed government officials, civil …

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As China’s crackdown on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong intensifies under Beijing’s so-called “National Security Law,” tens of thousands of citizens are fleeing the territory. In the first six months of the year, over 65,000 Hong Kong citizens applied to move to Britain, which controlled the territory until 1997, under a special new visa scheme. VOA’s Henry Ridgwell met one Hong Kong family who is making a new life in Britain. Camera: Henry Ridgwell …

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In Turkey, Uyghur refugees who fled Chinese detention centers and other alleged rights abuses say they fear the Turkish government is under increased pressure to prosecute or deport activists. But as VOA’s Heather Murdock finds at one school in Istanbul, some Uyghur children say their parents sent them here to find safety, when there was no one to care for them at home. Camera: Umut Colak …

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A Russian businessman has been extradited from Switzerland to the United States to face charges of insider trading, the Swiss justice ministry said.    Vladislav Klyushin, who reportedly owns a media and cybersecurity business called M13 that is linked to the Kremlin, is accused of “involvement in a global scheme to trade on non-public information stolen from U.S. computer networks … between at least in or about January 2018 and September 2020,” according to a press release from the U.S. Justice Department.    According to the company’s website, its products were used by “the Administration of the President of the …

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The White House said Monday the United States is ready to start diplomatic talks with Russia through multiple channels, but it made clear that Moscow must address Western concerns about its military buildup along the Ukrainian border. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with his counterpart, Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the White House saying the U.S. was willing to talk directly with the Kremlin, as well as through the NATO-Russia Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The White House said Sullivan told Ushakov that “any dialogue must …

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Russia expelled two German diplomats on Monday in response to Germany’s expulsion of two Russian diplomats last week.  The dispute between the two nations started when a German court said last week that Russia had ordered the assassination of a former Chechen militant Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019.  A German court convicted Russian Vadim Krasikov of murder and sentenced him to life in prison, calling the slaying a “grave breach of German law and the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany.” After the conviction, Russia called the notion of Russian involvement “absurd.”  The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned …

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Pope Francis has denounced domestic violence against women as “nearly satanic” and said parents should never slap their children.  Francis made the comments in a televised encounter with an abused woman who recently fled her home with her four children. Their meeting was broadcast late Sunday on the private Mediaset network’s TG5 program and also included footage of Francis interacting with a homeless woman, a prisoner and a student.  The abused woman told the pope her story and asked him how she can find her dignity after she and her children suffered so much violence.  Francis, who has previously spoken …

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Azerbaijan said Sunday it had freed 10 more Armenian soldiers captured last month during fighting between the Caucasus arch foes. “Azerbaijan, with mediation of the European Union, handed over 10 soldiers of Armenian origin” who had been captured on November 16, the Azeri committee in charge of prisoners of war said in a statement.  Baku said that the move was a result of a meeting between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and European Council chief Charles Michel in Brussels on September 14.  “Warmly welcome Baku’s release of 10 Armenian detainees in follow up to discussions with …

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Authorities in Russia evacuated 128 coal miners Sunday from a mine in Siberia amid reports of a fire in one of its sections. The news comes weeks after a devastating blast in another Siberian coal mine killed 51 people. Emergency officials told Russia’s Interfax news agency that a fire occurred in an abandoned mine gallery in the Anatoly Ruban coal mine in the Kemerovo region in southwestern Siberia and about 140 miners were being evacuated. A total of 128 miners have been evacuated from the mine, Interfax reported, citing mine operators as saying that 140 miners were supposed to be …

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The political crisis engulfing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has deepened with the resignation of a close ally, Brexit minister David Frost, who cited pandemic restrictions and the government’s “direction of travel.” Frost has been handling Britain’s post-Brexit negotiations with the European Union. Frost voiced his dissatisfaction with the government’s policies in a speech last month, saying he was worried Britain wasn’t taking advantage of its exit from the EU to chart a new course of limited government, lower taxes and reduced regulation. In his resignation letter Saturday, Frost returned to the same theme, saying, “You know my concerns about …

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Spain’s Catholic Church is to open an investigation into alleged sex abuse of hundreds of children by members of the clergy dating back 80 years that the newspaper El Pais has uncovered, the daily said on Sunday. The investigation will look into allegations of abuse against 251 priests and some lay people from religious institutions that the paper has uncovered, El Pais said. The paper has not published in full its findings from a three-year investigation it conducted into the issue, but said its correspondent gave a 385-page dossier to Pope Francis on Dec. 2 while the papal entourage and …

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