Category: Євросоюз

Shanghai — China is willing to strengthen relations with Europe, President Xi Jinping said on Friday, at a meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo in Beijing. De Croo arrived in China on Thursday, attending the inauguration of the new Belgian embassy in Beijing and meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the same day. “China is willing to work with the European Union to promote steady progress in China-EU relations in the new year,” Xi told De Croo when the two men met on Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing? according to a readout …

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SEOUL, South Korea — Russian tourists reportedly going on a ski trip to North Korea will be the first international travelers to visit the country since its borders closed in 2020 amid the global pandemic lockdown. The report, published Wednesday by the Russian state-run Tass news agency, underscores deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. It also follows the meeting last September between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East. Tass did not specify a timeframe but the report brought some surprise to Asia observers who had expected the first post-pandemic …

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MOSCOW — Russia said it had requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday to discuss military strikes on Yemen by the United States and Britain. “Russia has requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on January 12 in connection with the U.S. and UK strikes on Yemen,” Russia’s permanent mission to the United Nations said. The United States and Britain launched strikes from the air and sea against Houthi military targets in Yemen in response to the movement’s attacks on ships in the Red Sea, a dramatic regional widening of the Israel-Hamas war in …

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Istanbul / Washington — When it comes to gender equality in Turkish media, men are still dominating managerial roles, research by a journalist union has found. The Journalists’ Union of Turkey, known as the TGS, released its latest findings on gender disparities in Turkish media to mark the country’s Working Journalists’ Day on Wednesday. “Once again, we see that those who produce, go after and edit news stories are women, and those who manage media institutions are men in Turkish media,” Banu Tuna, the TGS secretary-general, told VOA. The union analyzed 10 newspapers, 10 TV channels, four news agencies and six …

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pentagon — The United States and Britain have launched a massive attack against Iranian-backed Houthis inside Yemen in retaliation for more than two dozen recent attacks against vessels transiting international shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to talk to reporters, said American and British military assets struck more than a dozen Houthi targets Thursday, ranging from training sites and airfields to drone storage sites. “We hit them pretty hard, pretty good,” a U.S. defense official, likewise talking on the condition of anonymity, told …

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KYIV, Ukraine — Hundreds of people attended a ceremony Thursday honoring the memory of renowned Ukrainian poet Maksym Kryvtsov, who was killed in action while serving as a soldier in the war Russia started in Ukraine nearly two years ago. A large crowd gathered in the courtyard of Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, where ceremonies are often held to honor soldiers killed in the war. People brought flowers adorned with blue and yellow ribbons — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — and patiently queued up to enter the monastery and pay their respects. A funeral was scheduled to be held …

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London — More than 60 world leaders will join hundreds of business executives and campaigners at the Swiss ski resort of Davos Monday for the five-day annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, where they will discuss some of the biggest global challenges.   Critics say the summit is a meeting of the super-rich and that it fails to tackle growing global inequality.  The issues on the Davos agenda appear daunting: in the immediate term, worsening conflicts in many parts of the world along with Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea; and wider threats including potentially catastrophic climate change, …

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WARSAW, POLAND — Polish President Andrzej Duda announced Thursday that he plans to once again pardon two senior politicians who were arrested in his presidential palace earlier this week, in a case that is at the center of a standoff between Poland’s new government and its conservative predecessor.  The development comes before a planned protest in Warsaw organized by the now opposition party Law and Justice, which held power for eight years until last month and is closely aligned with Duda.  Law and Justice, frustrated over its recent loss of power, urged its supporters to protest moves by the new pro-European …

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TALLINN, Estonia — Belarus state television reported Wednesday that authorities sent a recently arrived group of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine to train with the Belarusian military to learn how to evacuate in the event of a fire. Ukraine and the Belarusian opposition allege that Russian ally Belarus is engaging in the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus on a mass scale, which critics say is a campaign to indoctrinate the children as pro-Russian. Wednesday’s report referred to 35 children from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Antratsyt in eastern Ukraine that Belarusian authorities said were sent to the eastern Belarusian …

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United Nations — Russia’s military cooperation with North Korea to further its war in Ukraine is drawing international condemnation, including at the U.N. Security Council, where Russia is a permanent member. U.N. Security Council members Britain, France, Japan, Malta, South Korea, Slovenia, and the United States, plus Ukraine, on Wednesday condemned three waves of deadly airstrikes by Russia on December 30, January 2 and 6. “These heinous attacks were conducted, in part, using ballistic missiles and ballistic missile launchers procured from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK],” the group said in a statement. Last week, U.S. National Security Council spokesman …

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Turkey this month has arrested dozens of people accused of spying for Israel. The highly publicized arrests are seen as a warning to Israel to desist from targeting Palestinians in Turkey, after Israel warned it would target anyone involved in the Oct. 7 attack. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul. …

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Helsinki, Finland — Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and China’s Xi Jinping on Wednesday said their countries held “constructive dialogue” over a Baltic Sea gas pipeline that Finnish authorities believe was damaged by a Chinese vessel, Helsinki said. Finnish police in late October recovered an anchor believed to have damaged the Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia on October 8. They said findings suggested it belonged to the Chinese cargo ship Newnew Polar Bear. “The presidents noted the constructive dialogue between the countries regarding the Balticconnector pipeline incident,” a statement from the Finnish presidency said. A Chinese statement about the presidents’ video-link …

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Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the country’s ability to engage with Russia militarily has depended on Western support. With some of that aid now in limbo or drying up, this year could be especially difficult for Kyiv. VOA’s Andriy Borys spoke with military and diplomatic analysts about where the war stands, and where it could be headed. Anna Rice narrates the story. …

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kyiv, ukraine — For nearly two years, some of Ukraine’s largest broadcasters have worked together under the United TV Marathon.    But as the fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion enters its third year, critics are questioning the usefulness and multimillion-dollar budget that goes into the broadcast.    Formed in February 2022, the coalition of six major broadcasters produces 24/7 coverage during the war. Each broadcaster — Suspilne, 1+1, Starlight Media, Media Group Ukraine, Inter Media Group, and the parliamentary Rada TV Channel — airs content for a set number of hours, with prime-time slots rotating between stations.     See related video by Cristina Caicedo Smit: When …

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LONDON — 2024 will pose a major test of democratic rule as an estimated 4 billion people in more than 50 nations — almost half the world’s population — are set to vote in national elections, with the outcomes likely to shape global politics for years or decades to come. Bangladesh began 2024 with the first major election of the year as Sheikh Hasina won a fifth term as prime minister Saturday. Opposition parties boycotted the vote over complaints that it was neither free nor fair. A crucial presidential election is due to take place on the self-governing island of Taiwan …

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The coming year will be a major test of democratic rule as an estimated 4 billion people in more than 50 nations — almost half the world’s population — are set to vote in elections. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the outcomes will likely shape global politics for many years to come. …

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PARIS — Emmanuel Macron appointed 34-year-old Education Minister Gabriel Attal as his new prime minister on Tuesday, as the French President seeks to breathe new life into his second mandate ahead of European parliament elections. The move will not necessarily lead to any major political shift, but signals a desire for Macron to try to move beyond last year’s unpopular pension and immigration reforms and improve his centrist party’s chances in the June EU ballot. Opinion polls show Macron’s camp trailing far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s party by around eight to ten percentage points. Attal, a close Macron ally who became …

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MOSCOW — Russia has detained and brought drug-related charges against U.S. citizen Robert Woodland, who was apprehended by law enforcement earlier this month, a Moscow court said Tuesday. Moscow is holding several American nationals on espionage and other charges, as tensions between Russia and the United States balloon over the conflict in Ukraine. “On January 6, the Ostankinsky District Court of Moscow ordered Robert Romanov Woodland to be placed in detention for a period of two months, until March 5, 2024,” the court said on social media. He is accused of the “illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, manufacture, processing” of drugs and …

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