Category: Євросоюз

Supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny are staging protests across Russia Sunday over plans to increase the nation’s pension age, as Russians go to the polls for regional elections. Navalny was scheduled to appear at the demonstration in Moscow Sunday, but last month he was convicted of breaking protests laws and was jailed for for 30 days. His detention, Navalny says, was designed to wreck his plans for the nationwide rallies against raising the age when workers can start receiving their pensions. Navalny’s supporters, however, went forward with the plans for the protests.  The demonstrations have not been sanctioned …

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Voters in Sweden went to the polls Sunday for a parliamentary election that could change the Scandinavian country’s reputation for being a liberal stronghold. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who want the country to leave the European Union and put a freeze on immigration, are hoping to become the country’s largest party. Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson told voters Saturday there needs to be “tight, responsible” immigration policies to help create “breathing space” in Sweden. At a rally Saturday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven warned, “The haters are mobilizing in Sweden and are egging on people against people. … We will resist. …

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Combined support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative alliance and its partners, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), has hit a record low for any such “grand coalition” government, according to a survey published Sunday. Germany’s two biggest and most established parties have had a difficult summer, blighted by infighting over immigration that is flaring up again after violent right-wing protests in the eastern city of Chemnitz followed the fatal stabbing of a German man, for which two migrants were arrested. The survey by pollster Emnid for the weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag had support for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), …

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Swedes vote on Sunday in a tight election dominated by fears about asylum and welfare, with the populist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats vying to become the biggest party in a country long seen as a bastion of economic stability and liberal values. Far-right parties have made spectacular gains throughout Europe in recent years following a refugee crisis sparked by civil war in Syria and conflicts in Afghanistan and parts of Africa. In Sweden, the influx of 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015 has polarized voters, fractured the cozy political consensus and could give the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the neo-Nazi fringe, a veto over which parties form the next government. …

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British anti-terrorism officers were helping to investigate a knife attack in a northern English town Saturday in which one man was injured, although police said they were keeping an open mind. A 28-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, they said, after what officers earlier called a “serious incident” in Barnsley that resulted in the man suffering minor injuries. A kitchen knife had been recovered and was being forensically examined, South Yorkshire police said. “At this stage we are keeping an open mind as to the motivation … we are receiving support from detectives at Counter Terrorism Policing North East,” the police said in a statement. “The woman …

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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Saturday unveiled plans for tax cuts and pledged spending to heal years of painful austerity, less than a month after Greece emerged from a bailout program financed by its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund. Tsipras, who faces elections in about a year, used a keynote policy speech in the northern city of Thessaloniki to announce a spending spree that he said would help fix the ills of years of belt-tightening and help boost growth. But he said Athens was also committed to sticking to the fiscal targets pledged to lenders. “We will not allow Greece to revert to the era …

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Three days of U.N.-mediated consultations aimed at restarting peace negotiations to end Yemen’s civil war have achieved no results because one of the main parties to the talks has failed to show up. U.N. Special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths is putting a brave face on the failure of the talks by saying that fruitful discussions have begun.  This, even though those discussions only took place between him and the Yemeni government delegation. He expressed disappointment that the rebel Houthi delegation, known officially as Ansarullah, did not show up, but noted it was not unusual for negotiations involving conflict to …

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Turkey is again warning that a “bloodbath” would result from any Syrian government military offensive on Syria’s last rebel stronghold of Idlib. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated that warning Friday as a trilateral summit involving his country and Russia, and hosted by Iran, appeared to end in deadlock over efforts to avert conflict in the Idlib enclave. “We never want Idlib to turn into a bloodbath,” Erdogan said at a news conference with his Russian and Iranian counterparts. “Any attack launched or to be launched on Idlib will result in a disaster, massacre and a very big humanitarian tragedy,” …

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As U.S. ties with Turkey have turned sour, relations between the U.S. and Greece are warming rapidly. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross arrived Friday in Thessaloniki along with a bevy of American officials and U.S. companies for an international trade fair. VOA’s Jamie Dettmer reports. …

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The U.S. military will station about 1,500 additional soldiers in Germany by September 2020, adding to more than 33,000 American troops already in the country in a move that could trigger fresh tensions with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested last month that NATO forces in eastern Europe posed a threat to Russia, a charge firmly rejected by NATO officials. The U.S. Army’s European headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, said the new forces would be permanently stationed in Germany as “a display of our continued commitment to NATO and our collective resolve to support European security.” Sharp criticism of the NATO …

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Architect Renzo Piano has offered a new bridge design for his beloved hometown of Genoa to replace the one that collapsed last month, killing 43 people, saying it must be built to last 1,000 years and be “simple, solid … but not banal.” Piano joined city and regional officials on Friday to present the plans for the new bridge, which officials hope to have operational by November 2019. Piano said it would likely be built in steel and recall the shape of a ship in a nod to Genoa’s maritime tradition. “A bridge that falls is terrible, because a bridge …

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U.S. and European Union officials are considering new ways to penalize Russia after concluding economic sanctions have not influenced Moscow’s behavior. The sanctions were imposed after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014 and were extended after a Russian-made nerve agent killed one person and sickened three more in Britain. Observers say Russia’s economy has suffered because of sanctions, but that has not deterred Russian President Vladimir Putin. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.]] …

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A Polish national who fled to the U.S. after being found guilty in a massive fraud case dating back to the country’s communist era is fighting his extradition while imprisoned in Florida. Dariusz Przywieczerski fled his home country to avoid incarceration. He was found guilty in 2005 of being involved in a scheme to illegally trade in foreign debt at a state agency controlled by the communist secret service. The fraud involving the Foreign Debt Servicing Fund, known as FOZZ, cost the country’s treasury the equivalent of about 80 million euros in the late 1980s. Several others involved were given …

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China accused Britain of “provocation” after a Royal Navy warship sailed near islands claimed by Beijing in the disputed South China Sea.  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said Britain had “violated international and Chinese laws” when the HMS Albion sailed by the Paracel Islands on Aug. 31.  “The Chinese Navy legally verified the ship and warned it to leave,” Hua told a news briefing Thursday.  Vietnam and Taiwan also claim the islands, also known as Xisha in Chinese and Hoang Sa in Vietnamese. Reuters news agency, which first reported the story Thursday, said Albion’s maneuver was an assertion of …

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Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday accused the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) of using violent protests over a fatal stabbing blamed on migrants to stir up ethnic tension. Far-right groups clashed with police and chased people they deemed to be migrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz on Aug. 26 after police said a Syrian and an Iraqi had been detained as suspects in the killing of a 35-year-old German man. AfD leader Alexander Gauland had earlier this week urged a “peaceful revolution” against Merkel’s liberal immigration policy and said this required banishing politicians and members of the media who …

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U.S. lawmakers and former diplomats on Thursday urged tougher sanctions against Russia but stressed the need to craft measures that will get the Kremlin’s attention without harming the United States or its European allies. “There is no question [Russian President Vladimir] Putin must pay for his actions, and the United States has the ability to impose real costs against Moscow,” the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho, said at a hearing. “We seek real and immediate changes in Russian behavior,” said the committee’s top Democrat, Sherrod Brown of Ohio. “We’re not yet seeing it.” Former …

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The International Criminal Court ruled Thursday it has jurisdiction to investigate the alleged forced mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh as a possible crime against humanity. The Hague-based court said the top prosecutor must consider the ruling “as she continues with her preliminary examination concerning the crimes allegedly committed against the Rohingya people.” The ruling came after chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, in an unprecedented move, asked judges for an opinion on whether she could investigate the deportations as a crime against humanity. The preliminary probe, which aims to determine if there is sufficient evidence to launch …

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Three Baltic countries have lashed out at retail giant Walmart for selling online T-shirts and other products with Soviet Union emblems on them, and demanded that the goods be removed. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were forcibly annexed by Moscow in 1940 and remained part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991, except for a brief occupation by Nazi Germany 1941-1944.  Lithuania has been taking a particularly hard line against its communist-era legacy, banning all Soviet symbols as well as Nazi ones. “Horrific crimes were done under the Soviet symbols of a sickle and hammer,” the Lithuanian ambassador to …

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Georgette Mosbacher, an entrepreneur and Republican donor, officially began her term as the new U.S. ambassador to Poland on Thursday by presenting her credentials to President Andrzej Duda. The 71-year-old Mosbacher was tapped by President Donald Trump for her mission in the nation of 38 million that has close ties with Washington. Warsaw was the inaugural stop on Trump’s first European tour last year. The two NATO allies share security concerns in the face of Russia’s increased military activity. Poland is seeking a greater U.S. troop presence on its territory and in the region. Duda is to hold talks with …

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Russia’s military chief of staff says that the military exercises that begin next week, expected to be the biggest in three decades, will involve nearly 300,000 troops.   The Vostok 2018 exercises in central and eastern Russia will also include participants from the Mongolian and Chinese militaries.   Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov said Thursday that the war games will include “massive” mock airstrikes and testing of measures against cruise missiles. There will be maneuvers in the Sea of Okhotsk, which borders Russia and Japan, and in the northern Pacific, he said.   The most intensive part of the …

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