A group of Hungarian business leaders and politicians close to Prime Minister Viktor Orban have founded an international news agency in London whose coverage will focus on central and eastern Europe.

Orban’s associates have gained control over a large chunk of the Hungarian media in recent years and his Fidesz party has taken total control of state media, drawing international accusations that they are weakening freedom of speech.

However, Orban has been unable to control international news coverage, which has been far more critical of him than local media. The new agency’s early content suggests it is more sympathetic to him.

The new company, called V4NA, was registered in London by Hungary’s ambassador to the UK, Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, on Dec. 31, 2018, according to company filings.

Last month, Arpad Habony, Orban’s main spin doctor and eminence grise, acquired a 40 percent stake in V4NA via his London political advisory firm, Danube Business Consulting Ltd. Subsequently, New Wave Media Group, owned by KESMA, a foundation that controls most of Hungary’s pro-government media, acquired a 57 percent stake from Szalay-Bobrovniczky.

Despite its huge role in the Hungarian media market, KESMA was exempted from regulatory scrutiny last year on grounds that it was a strategic national asset.

V4NA’s name reflects a focus on the Visegrad Four countries — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. It plans more coverage of other centres in the run-up to European Parliament elections due in May.

“Our team of 50 journalists and rapid-response news teams are on location where the leading stories happen in Europe: London, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, Bratislava, Warsaw,” the agency says on its web site, V4NA.com.

Most of the site’s content is behind a paywall, but the selection of front-page headlines resonates with the populism of Orban, one of the fiercest critics of immigration to Europe.

“Migrant kills wife after she converts to Christianity,” says one headline from Monday. A report about Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s League, anti-immigrant interior minister and ally of Orban, was headlined “Salvini: Citizens should control Europe.”

“Hungarian minister on EP elections: Hungarian votes also matter” and “Immigration is a war of cultures and civilizations” were headlines that borrowed directly from Orban’s rhetoric.

In an emailed statement, V4NA said it offered a “conservative, right-wing perspective” on European news. It did not answer questions about its relations with Hungary’s government or its business plans.

KESMA did not immediately reply to Reuters’ questions.

Habony could not be reached for comment.
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Police have moved in to stop a scuffle between supporters of rival candidates in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who stars in a widely popular TV sitcom about a schoolteacher turned president, easily beat President Petro Poroshenko in the first round on March 31. Zelenskiy garnered 30% of the vote, while Poroshenko won just under 16%, and a runoff between them is set for April 21.

Supporters of Zelenskiy and Poroshenko clashed Tuesday in front of Zelenskiy’s campaign headquarters in Kyiv, as they tried to wrest campaign posters from each other. Police quickly intervened, detaining two people.

Zelenskiy’s office said he wasn’t in the building when the brawl occurred.

Ahead of the vote, Zelenskiy and Poroshenko are to hold a debate in in Kyiv’s Olimpiskiy Stadium, Ukraine’s biggest arena.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May meets the leaders of Germany and France on Tuesday in a last-gasp bid to keep her country from crashing out of the European Union later this week.

Her huddles with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and President Emmanuel Macron in Paris come on the eve of another tension-packed summit in Brussels focused on the fate of the 46-year-old partnership.

May asked EU leaders on Friday to delay Brexit until June 30 to give her time to strike a compromise with the opposition that lets Britain’s hung parliament back an orderly divorce plan on the fourth attempt.

But the 27 European leaders have already signed off on one extension — the original deadline was March 29 — and have serious doubts that May will somehow break through the political gridlock now.

“We are in a very, very frustrating situation here,” said Germany’s Minister for European Affairs Michael Roth, as he and fellow EU officials arrived for Luxembourg talks on the eve of the summit.

Roth’s French counterpart Amelie de Montchalin told reporters that “we want to understand what the UK needs this extension for, and what are the political surroundings around Theresa May to have this extension”.

“And then comes the question of the conditions of what role we’d want the UK to play during this extension time,” she added.

Some in the EU are worried that if Britain accepts a long delay, its representatives could disrupt EU budget planning and reforms during indefinite Brexit talks, potentially causing more problems than a messy “no-deal Brexit”.

“We’d need a strong political reason to delay,” a diplomat from this camp said.

EU Council president Donald Tusk’s office last week floated a compromise proposal that gives Britain a “flexible” extension of up to a year — which ends earlier should some way forward emerge in London.

But a diplomatic source insisted that this was “Mr Tusk’s position, not the position of the Council”.

Merkel takes a more conciliatory approach backed by EU member Ireland — a crucial player whose politically sensitive border with Britain’s Northern Ireland is holding up May’s deal in parliament.

“I will do everything in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit,” Merkel said Friday.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Paralysis and disarray

The diplomatic disarray in Brussels is mirrored by political paralysis in London that has forced May to promise to resign as soon as she gets this first stage of Brexit over the line.

The weakened British leader had been hoping to come to Brussels with either her deal approved or some sort of alternative way forward drafted that could convince the likes of Macron.

But her talks with the opposition Labour Party have made no tangible progress and seem unlikely to find common ground before she flies to Brussels seeking a second delay in three weeks.

“The problem is that the government doesn’t seem to be moving off the original red lines,” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Monday.

The government will instead present a plan to parliament Tuesday to outline how long it intends to delay Brexit.

This is part of legislation passed into law late Monday to force May to postpone Brexit if the only other alternative is a no-deal scenario.

May’s talks with Labour have stumbled over Corbyn’s demand that Britain join some form of European customs arrangement once the sides formally split up.

EU officials are ready to include such a promise in the outline of a future relationship, which was agreed with May alongside the withdrawal deal.

But May knows that the prospect of close post-Brexit economic relations could further fracture her government and party ahead of possible snap elections.

Almost any form of European customs arrangement would keep Britain from striking its own global trade agreement and leave one of the biggest advantages of Brexit unfulfilled.

 
…

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and EU institution leaders meet in Brussels on Tuesday for an annual EU-China summit set to be overshadowed by differences over trade and investment.

After years of offering free access to its markets, the European Union has said it is losing patience with Beijing over the pace of liberalizing reforms. It also has growing concerns over state-led Chinese companies’ dominance of some EU markets and acquisitions of strategic industries.

Like the United States, many EU countries want to crack down on industrial subsidies and forced technology transfers, although prefer dialogue to the trade war Washington has triggered.

The European Commission set out a 10-point action plan last month, seeing scope for greater cooperation in fields such as climate change, but demanding greater reciprocity, such as access for EU firms to Chinese public tenders.

“The old narrative is absolutely obsolete,” Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen told Reuters.

Beijing and Brussels have been wrestling for weeks over the text of a joint declaration to be presented as the fruit of Tuesday’s summit between Li and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council chief Donald Tusk.

“China aims to have a feel-good summit, whereas we aim to have a meaningful summit, with a meaningful outcome,” Peter Berz, acting Asia director at the Commission’s trade section, told the European Parliament last week.

EU diplomats said on Monday negotiators had made some progress, but were still short of an agreed text. Talks would continue until the summit, due to start at 1 p.m.

China points to a new foreign investment law due to take effect at the start of 2020. It includes provisions to ban forced technology transfers and ensure foreign companies have access to public tenders.

EU officials say the law lacks detail and question how effective it will be in reality in protecting foreign firms.

Li wrote in a German newspaper on Monday that China wanted to work with the European Union on issues including trade and denied Beijing was trying to split the bloc by investing in eastern European states. 
…

Turkey’s High Election Board has rejected a request by the ruling AK Party for all votes to be recounted in 31 of Istanbul’s districts, a board member said on Tuesday, in a blow to the party’s goal of a total recount in the city.

President Tayyip Erdogan, also AKP leader, said on Monday the local elections were marred by “organized crime” at ballot boxes in Istanbul, raising the possibility of re-running a March 31 vote in the city that handed a slim majority to the main opposition party.

Erdogan’s comments, his strongest challenge yet to the election process in Turkey’s largest city, briefly drove the lira down and also weighed on Turkish stocks.

The AKP’s election board representative Recep Ozel told reporters after a board meeting that the board had only agreed to a recount of 51 ballot boxes, spread across 21 of the city’s total 39 districts. Each ballot box generally contains several hundred votes.

The AK Party had also called for a full recount in the city’s Buyukcekmece district, but the board has not yet ruled on that request, Ozel said. Vote recounts are continuing in the remaining districts.

Erdogan’s AK Party has already lost the mayoralty in the capital Ankara to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and has appealed several stages of the count in Istanbul which showed a narrow CHP victory.

The Islamist-rooted AKP is reeling from the potential loss of both cities, which the party and its predecessors have governed for a quarter of a century. Erdogan himself rose to prominence as Istanbul mayor in the 1990s before emerging as national leader.

Erdogan said the scale of electoral irregularities his party had uncovered meant the margin of votes between Istanbul’s top two candidates, currently at less than 15,000 in a city of 10 million voters, was too narrow for the opposition to claim victory.

 
…

Czech Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček talks to VOA about NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has thrown his full political weight into efforts to reverse the defeat of his AK Party in mayoral elections for Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul.

Speaking to reporters Monday before flying to Moscow, Erdogan questioned the validity of the vote.

“We, as the political party, have detected an organized crime and some organized activities,”he said.

Until now, Erdogan appeared to step back from the deepening political controversy over the opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) success in Istanbul.  The AKP in Istanbul is challenging the March 31 vote, seeking to overturn Ekram Imamoglu’s 24,000 vote lead over Binali Yildirim.

AKP’s efforts reduced Imamoglu’s majority to around 15,000 votes.  But the current reexamination of 300,000 invalidated ballots is almost complete.  The AKP is now demanding a full recount of the nearly 10 million votes.

Erdogan also introduced the idea of a repeat of the Istanbul poll.

“No one has a right to say, ‘I won’ with a 13,000 to 14,000 vote difference,” Erdogan said.  “We made a promise.  We said that we would protect the votes at ballot boxes, and we did so.  After protecting the votes at the ballot box, we have continued to do the same in the ensuing process.”

The prospect of a rerun of the vote drew scorn from opposition leaders.

“Renewing elections until the AK Party wins is what happens in African dictatorships.  There are examples of it,” said Good Party leader Meral Aksener.

With political tensions rising over the contested vote, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu put the onus on Turkey’s Higher Electoral Board (YSK) to end the dispute.

The YSK administrates elections in Turkey and has the final say in determining results and decisions on recounts and reruns.

“Whatever they (AKP) have tried so far didn’t change the results,” Kilicdaroglu said.  “The YSK judges have to behave independently and decide in accordance with the law.  This is about the fate of our democracy.”

The majority of the ruling YSK board is made up of Erdogan and government appointees.  YSK decisions on sanctioning recounts in the aftermath of the local elections is already raising questions over its impartiality.

“Election monitoring body YSK, which ought to be independent and which will decide on this appeal (Istanbul vote), has thus far granted 86 percent of AKP’s requests for recounts versus 12 percent of opposition CHP and 0 percent of opposition HDP (pro-Kurdish party),” tweeted Sonar Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program, in Washington.

Critics highlight the YSK’s rejection of opposition parties’ calls for recounts in the latest local elections, where the winning margin was in the hundreds or low thousands.

However, the YSK did reject AKP’s calls for a full recount in the mayoral election in Ankara, which saw the CHP win control of the city after 25 years.  In Istanbul, the board also rejected an appeal for a district mayoral election to be repeated.

Analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners said the entrance of Erdogan into the controversy over the Istanbul vote changes the political landscape.

“While the YSK, has shown some backbone during this ordeal (Istanbul vote), let’s not fool ourselves.  No mortal or legal entity in Turkey has the guts to withstand Erdogan’s wrath,” he said.

Critics warn overturning the Istanbul vote or repeating the election could end many Turks’ belief in the Turkish democratic system.  Political scientist Cengiz Aktar said for Erdogan, that would be politically costly.

“Elections, on a general or local level or even referenda are extremely important to the regime as it constitutes the sole source of legitimacy for this regime. Therefore elections are crucial for the regime.”

Erdogan’s favorite rebuttal of criticism domestically and internationally is his repeated electoral success.  Yesilada suggests the president’s AKP defeats in Istanbul and Ankara could have been an opportunity.

“The victories in Istanbul and Ankara by opposition parties should have aroused respect for Turkey’s resilient democracy and earned him (Erdogan) credit from the West for gracefully conceding defeat,” Yesilada said.  The alternative means Turkey is exiting the democratic fraternity and possibly another market quake to devastate the economy.

The Turkish lira fell sharply Monday following Erdogan’s comments.  Economists warn the currency remains vulnerable to political risk, with the economy recession and concerns over the scale of private sector debt.

Observers suggest the political and the economic risks will be considerable in any protracted struggle for Istanbul, Erdogan’s base for 25 years, where he could be calculating that such risks more than outweighed the cost of losing control of his hometown city.

“He (Erdogan) was elected mayor in 1994.  He knows how economically meaningful Istanbul is for his party, the AKP.  It has extensively benefited from Istanbul,” said Aktar.  “In that sense, it’s (Istanbul) extremely important and symbolic, and that is why the opposition will never be allowed to win in Istanbul.”
…

Ford workers in Russia have started work-to-rule action over plans to close a plant.

Mikhail Sergeyev, head of a trade union which represents around a third of the St. Petersburg plant’s 900-strong workforce, has told The Associated Press on Monday the work-to-rule will continue until Ford negotiates, and it’s already causing disruption.

Sergeyev says his union is pushing for more generous layoff packages equivalent to twice a worker’s annual salary.

Ford said last month that it’s leaving the Russian car market and closing two assembly plants and an engine plant, after years of lackluster sales. Ford will keep making vans at another site through a joint venture.

Organized industrial action is uncommon in Russia, where many unions have close ties to management, though the auto industry is a rare exception.

 
…

The migration of Africans to Europe and North America should be viewed as a positive phenomenon, not a threat, Sudan-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim said Sunday.

Experts said at a weekend conference hosted by Ibrahim’s foundation in Abidjan, Ivory Coast that Africans make up about 14% of the global migrant population, a much smaller share than the 41% from Asia and 23% from Europe.

“Migration is healthy. It’s not a disease,” Ibrahim told The Associated Press in an interview. “Migration is about aspirations, not desperation. People who migrate are mostly capable, ambitious young people who are migrating to work and to build successful lives. They add wealth to the countries they go to.”

Ibrahim also cited statistics to rebut anti-migration politicians who say Africans have inundated Europe.

“Europe is not being flooded by Africans,” Ibrahim said, citing statistics that show 70% of African migrants relocate within Africa.

The 72-year-old philanthropist earned his fortune by establishing the Celtel mobile phone network across Africa.

Now living in Britain, he says African countries should have better education and employment opportunities for their young.

“Farming should be sexy. It should be seen as profitable and productive, not a backward thing,” said Ibrahim. “Yes, IT and technology are important, but agriculture is a way of the future for Africa.”

Ibrahim’s foundation publishes an annual index and awards a leadership prize to encourage good governance in Africa.
…

Arrested former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn is set to name the people he believes are responsible for his downfall in Japan, his wife said in an interview on Sunday as she fled Tokyo out of fear she could be detained.

Ghosn was re-arrested last week in the Japanese capital over fresh allegations of financial misconduct which will see him held in custody until at least April 14.

Speaking to the Journal du Dimanche newspaper in France, his wife Carole detailed the latest twists in the extraordinary saga, saying that Ghosn had recorded a video interview in English before his detention.

“He names the people responsible for what has happened to him. The lawyers have it. It will be released soon,” she told the newspaper.

Carole added that she had fled Tokyo on a flight to Paris — with support from the French ambassador to Tokyo — because she “felt in danger.”

Despite her Lebanese passport being confiscated by Japanese authorities, Carole said she was able to use her American passport to board a flight and was accompanied by the ambassador to the airport.

“He didn’t leave me until the plane,” she explained. “Up to the last second, I didn’t know if they were going to let me fly. It was surreal.”

The role of the French ambassador could lead to fresh friction between the countries over the highly sensitive case, which involves Nissan and French car maker Renault, which were both previously run by Ghosn.

Japanese news channel NHK said prosecutors in Tokyo wanted to question Carole on a voluntary basis.

Other reports in Japan say that investigators are looking into allegations that company money allegedly misused by Ghosn could have transited through a business that was run by his wife.

‘Different person’

Carole intends now to try to pressure the French government to do more for her husband whose 108-day imprisonment in Japan between November 19 and March 6 had left him a “different person,” she told The Financial Times in a separate interview.

France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Saturday he had raised the case during talks with his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono on the sidelines of the meeting of Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers in the French resort of Dinard.

Le Drian said he had “reminded him of our attachment to the presumption of innocence and the full rights of consular protection.”

Japanese authorities are looking into new allegations that Ghosn transferred some $15 million in Nissan funds between late 2015 and mid-2018 to a dealership in Oman.

They suspect around $5 million of these funds were siphoned off for Ghosn’s use, including for the purchase of a luxury yacht and financing personal investments.

Prosecutors say Ghosn “betrayed” his duty not to cause losses to Nissan “in order to benefit himself.”

Ghosn denies the allegations and says he is also innocent of the three formal charges he faces: two charges of deferring his salary and concealing that in official shareholders’ documents, and a further charge related to investment losses.

The man previously seen as the most powerful figure in the global car industry told French channel TF1 last week that he was “a combative man and an innocent man” and vowed to “defend myself to the bitter end”.

And he voiced concern that he would not be given a fair hearing in Japan where around 99 percent of trials result in a conviction.

 
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Ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, the world has been fascinated with the idea of creating life in a lab. But it remained in the realm of fiction… until it became a bit closer to reality with genetic engineering work in a Swiss lab. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May said Saturday that the longer it takes to find a compromise with the opposition Labour Party to secure a parliamentary majority for a Brexit deal, the less likely it is that Britain will leave the European Union. 

May has so far failed to secure backing for her negotiated agreement with Brussels, as some Conservative lawmakers and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her minority government, have voted it down. 

She has since turned to the opposition Labour Party in a bid to secure a majority for an orderly Brexit, although its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said Saturday that he was waiting for May to move her Brexit red lines. 

“The fact is that on Brexit there are areas where the two main parties agree: We both want to end free movement, we both want to leave with a good deal, and we both want to protect jobs,” May said in comments released by her Downing Street office. 

‘The only way’

“That is the basis for a compromise that can win a majority in Parliament, and winning that majority is the only way to deliver Brexit.” 

She added, “The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all.” 

May has a plan to enshrine in law a customs arrangement with the EU to win over the Labour Party, and her aides have discussed offering the opposition a place in the British delegation to Wednesday’s EU summit, The Sunday Times reported. 

The prime minister has asked EU leaders to postpone Britain’s exit from the bloc until June 30. The EU, which gave her a two-week extension the last time she asked, insists she must first show a viable plan to secure agreement on her thrice-rejected divorce deal in the British Parliament. 

It is the latest twist in a saga that leaves Britain, the world’s fifth-biggest economy, struggling to find a way to honor a 2016 referendum result to take the country out of the globe’s largest trading bloc.  

Pressure on both parties

May reiterated Saturday her hope that lawmakers would approve a deal to allow Britain to leave the bloc as quickly as possible. 

“My intention is to reach an agreement with my fellow EU leaders that will mean if we can agree a deal here at home, we can leave the EU in just six weeks,” she said. 

One of the most senior Brexiters in her government, the leader of the lower house of Parliament, Andrea Leadsom, also said there was a risk of Brexit slipping further from lawmakers’ grasp. 

“The vision we had of Brexit is fading away — and we are running out of time to save it,” she wrote in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. 

Some of May’s lawmakers are warning they will try to oust her if Britain participates in EU parliamentary elections next month and is forced to extend membership of the bloc beyond June, The Observer newspaper reported. 

The Sunday Telegraph said ministers are discussing whether to resign if a Brexit delay means Britain must field candidates. 

​Local candidates’ anger

In a further sign of the ever heavier strains on the Conservatives, more than 100 candidates for upcoming local elections wrote to May warning of the growing anger at the grass-roots level and among the public. 

“Our party and our government have completely lost touch with voters,” the candidates said, according to The Sunday Telegraph. “Let’s be clear: More fudge and a further dilution of Brexit is not the answer.” 

Opposition leader Corbyn also faces pressure as more than 80 of his lawmakers warned that another vote on Brexit must be a red line in Labour’s talks with the government, The Independent newspaper said.
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Tens of thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in several Swiss cities against climate change, the Swiss news agency Keystone-ATS reported. 

Around 50,000 marched in all, the news agency estimated, including 15,000 in Zurich and up to 9,000 in the capital, Bern, and in Lausanne. 

“It’s about knowing if finally we want to listen to the voice of science,” high school student Jan Burckhardt told ATS. 

“Save the climate, please: It’s the last time we ask politely,” read one of the placards at the Lausanne demonstration, an AFP photographer saw. 

The marches were organized by an alliance of activist groups in Switzerland, including Greenpeace, Swiss Youth for Climate and green groups.  

“We don’t want to stop our movement as long as our claims have not been heard, as long as we have not obtained concrete results,” said Laurane Conod, one of the organizers of a smaller march in Geneva. 

The climate change protests in Switzerland were in part inspired by the teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who started weekly school strikes calling for policy change on the climate issue.
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Right-wing populist parties are gearing up to campaign for European Parliament elections next month, but policy differences and the Brexit drama threaten their dream to “unite the right.” 

Many fear the May 26 vote will be a wake-up call for Brussels on the reality that Europe’s anti-immigration and blood-and-soil patriotic forces have moved from the fringes to the mainstream. 

Once considered outsiders, they could now end up with one-fifth or more of the seats, allowing them to shift the tone of political discourse and make a claim for legitimacy. 

Key players are Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (NR) in France and the Italian League of Matteo Salvini, who is hosting a meeting of like-minded right-wing groups in Milan on Monday. 

In the EU’s top economy, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has become the biggest opposition party by railing against Chancellor Angela Merkel and her 2015 decision to allow a mass influx of asylum seekers. 

The AfD launched its election program in the southwestern city of Offenburg on Saturday, calling for “a Europe of fatherlands” and opposing the EU’s immigration, financial and climate policies. 

“This European campaign is a campaign about identity,” said party co-leader Alexander Gauland.  

“The European Union is not a state. It doesn’t need a parliament,” he added. 

Despite financial scandals, the AfD has the support of 10 percent of voters, according to opinion polls, with its popularity highest in the former East Germany. 

Meeting in Milan

On Monday in Milan, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Salvini will follow up and gather allies from across Europe to try to lay the foundations for a future hard-right grouping in the now 751-member European Parliament. 

Salvini and Le Pen also agreed to call another meeting in May, after they met in Paris on Friday, a NR source said. 

“The leaders are considering a common manifesto to close the electoral campaign and announce the start of a new Europe,” said a spokesman for Salvini. 

So far, Europe’s right-wing nationalists have been divided into three blocs and a tangled web of alliances in the legislature that moves between seats in Brussels and the French city of Strasbourg. 

They are the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group, which includes the RN and League; the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); and the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD). 

The dream of Salvini — and of Steve Bannon, the former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump — has been to unite the disparate patriotic forces and form a federation of nationalist parties.  

But so far such efforts have met with only limited success, in part because the parties’ nationalist focus runs counter to a multinational approach.

Divided on key issues

Another problem for the groups has been that, despite their shared dislike for immigration, multiculturalism, the left and the EU, they remain divided on other key issues. 

On economic policy, the AfD and their Scandinavian allies tend to believe in the market economy, while the French RN favors a more protectionist and statist approach. 

While Italy’s League, Poland’s PiS and Hungary’s Fidesz highlight Europe’s Christian cultural roots, the RN has shied away from taking a similar stance in a country where the majority is in favor of secularism. 

And even on immigration, Salvini’s League favors an EU-wide redistribution of asylum seekers while others demand an outright stop to immigration. 

On relations with Russia, Salvini has praised President Vladimir Putin, a view not shared by Poland’s governing party.

‘Patriotic alliance’?

The AfD’s top candidate, Joerg Meuthen, said he expects big gains for nationalist parties but that they will have trouble forming a “patriotic alliance” with a common agenda.  

There are also strategic deliberations. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has voiced admiration for Salvini but was considered unlikely to come to the Milan meeting, given his Fidesz party still belongs to the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) group, despite its temporary suspension. 

Meanwhile, most parties have also toned down their anti-EU rhetoric as the Brexit debacle has made the prospect of leaving the bloc look far less appealing. 

Le Pen renounced a “Frexit” after the 2017 presidential election and her disastrous debates against Emmanuel Macron, while Germany’s AfD has downgraded a “Dexit” scenario to a “last resort.” 

Still, the potential of the far-right must not be underestimated, said Sven Hutten, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University. 

He warned that such groups target “15 to 30 percent of the population” and that at the moment “the populist right is fighting for unity and to build a single bloc.”
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Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies were wrapping up a two-day meeting in the French seaside resort of Dinard on Saturday where they hope to seal joint commitments on a range of global challenges and lay the groundwork for August’s G-7 summit in Biarritz.

Diplomats from G-7 countries, which include the U.S., France, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and the U.K., walked side-by-side against the rocky Atlantic coast backdrop and in the fresh Brittany air to project a united front before a working lunch. They hope to agree on a joint statement on the fight against trafficking drugs, arms and migrants in Africa’s troubled Sahel region, fighting cybercrime and stopping sexual violence against women in conflict zones, especially in Africa.

But U.S. officials said that points of discord will also be discussed at the talks led by the host, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan said that Washington will use the G-7 forum to galvanize support for Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaido, who the U.S. has backed to lead the country into a “democratic transformation from the failed regime” of President Nicolas Maduro.

Guaido has embarked on an international campaign to topple the socialist administration of Venezuela’s president amid deepening unrest in the country, which has been plagued by nearly a month of power outages.

Washington seems to be at odds with Italy over its stance on the crisis-hit South American country, being the sole G-7 member state to not back Guaido.

The U.S. and Canada have pursued a pro-active stance on widening support for Guaido, according to French officials.  But there has already been widespread alarm after Guaido was stripped of immunity by Maduro loyalists earlier this week.

“With Juan Guaido being stripped of his immunity … we don’t want the situation to escalate,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in Dinard on Saturday.

“We are still of the opinion that free elections should take place during which Venezuelans can decide themselves who will lead the country,” he added.

Italy has also irked EU and U.S. allies by becoming the first G-7 member to sign up to a contentious Chinese plan to build a Silk Road-style global trade network, the trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

 
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In a bid to increase renewable energy use in Europe, the European Commission adopted a new regulatory framework in June 2018. With the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) the European Union applied new criteria March 13 for crops used for the production of biofuels: They must be sustainable and not cause deforestation through indirect land use change.

According to the EU, palm oil has been associated with the highest level of deforestation of any crop from 2008 to 2015, thereby deeming one of Indonesia’s biggest export commodities unsustainable. 

As a result the EU will begin a gradual reduction of palm oil imports from Indonesia in January 2024.

The chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association, Joko Supriyono, questions the criteria set by the EU for palm oil.

“They mentioned ILUC (Indirect Land Use Change) and palm oil has high ILUC-risk. From our point of view, their methodology to determine that is unclear. We believe the regulation is discriminatory,” he told VOA last week.

​Bring the issue to WTO

The Indonesian government agrees with the association’s concern. The Indonesian Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Darmin Nasution, says that the regulation will have a negative impact for the export of crude palm oil (CPO) from Indonesia to the EU.

“This is a discriminatory act, if they want to test it, let’s test (the regulation) together. We will bring this to the WTO. So it’s clear, whether their action is fair or this is simply protectionism that’s concealed with different accusations,” he said in a statement.

The EU is Indonesia’s second biggest export market for CPO after India. Data from the Indonesian Palm Oil Association recorded 4.78 million tons of CPO exported to the EU last year. Supriyono said for biofuel purposes alone, the country exported around 800,000 tons in 2018.

Although Indonesian market share in the EU is quite large, Supriyono says it is not about how much palm oil Indonesia sends to Europe. 

“Our biggest concern is because the European market has become a reference for other countries. We are worried of the effect after, because the EU bans our palm oil, then other countries will follow suit. It’s the negative image,” he explained.

The EU has a two-month comment period during which the European Parliament and the European Council can express an objection to the new directive. Supriyono said the Indonesian government will file a complaint to the WTO if the regulation is passed and published at the Official Journal of the European Union.

In a statement, the EU said that their doors will always be open for a frank discussion with the Indonesian government and other stakeholders.

“We also expect that the establishment of a joint working group between the EU and relevant ASEAN Member States to address issues relating to palm oil will serve as another avenue for discussion,” the EU said.

​Indonesia has few bargaining chips

Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, the Indonesian coordinating minister of maritime affairs, says Indonesia must be firm. The Indonesian government is threatening to boycott products from the EU in retaliation for the palm oil restrictions.

“There are a lot of European Union products that we need. With our 55 million people in the middle class and 269 million people of the total population, the market is huge,” he said adding that the palm industry plays a significant role in the Indonesian economy.

Nevertheless, Enny Sri Hartati, the director of Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), says the issue will not be solved by threats. She believes that the right way to dismiss any accusations about Indonesian palm oil is by proving them wrong.

“Use supporting data, to counter the accusation. For example, the industry players have obtained the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certificate. Fighting it with retaliation will not benefit anyone. Even if Indonesia boycotts products, will the accusation stop?” she told VOA.

Hartati mentions that the issue with the EU directive is only biofuel, while the uses of derivatives of palm oil are very diverse, including in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries.

“Our limitation all this while is we can’t develop the diversification of palm oil. Our market is only the traditional market for CPO. And that makes our bargaining position weak,” she added. She believes that the government must create policies to give more incentives for the industry to diversify.

Ongoing CEPA negotiation

Indonesia and the EU are currently negotiating the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), a process that began in July 2016. The seventh round of negotiations took place in Brussels last March. Supriyono said the latest development on palm oil will impact the CEPA discussion.

“We are talking about an industry that has a significant contribution for Indonesia. Because of palm oil, our trade with Europe is a surplus. This becomes a consideration for our government, that the trade negotiation should be able to increase our export,” he said. Supriyono said the palm oil discussion is one of the reasons why the conclusion of the trade agreement has been delayed for the past two years.
…

A new survey shows that less than half of Americans support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance originally designed to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, but now focused on Russia and non-state actors such as the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

The YouGov survey, released to commemorate the 70th anniversary of NATO, found that only 44 percent of Americans support the United States’ place in the agreement. That was down 3 percentage points from when the survey was conducted in 2017.

The poll also surveyed other NATO countries and found that support for the alliance had decreased significantly in the past two years among key European allies. Support for NATO dropped in Britain from 73 percent to 59 percent, in Germany from 68 percent to 54 percent, and in France from 54 percent to 39 percent.

YouGov said there is a generational divide in the United States over support for NATO, with 56 percent of the Baby Boomer generation, who grew up at the beginning of the Cold War, believing that the treaty continues to serve an important role in defending Western nations. Only 35 percent of Millennials and 33 percent of Generation X members support U.S. participation in the alliance.

There is also a political divide, according to the survey, with 60 percent of Democrats in the United States agreeing the alliance serves an important role, while only 38 percent of Republicans believe the same.

YouGov contacted more than 1,200 U.S. adults for the survey, which was conducted online, as well as more than 1,000 adults in several European countries.

NATO was formed to be an alliance of Western nations that would balance the military power of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe. After the former Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, some experts questioned what part the alliance would play in international security, but the return of Russian assertiveness under President Vladimir Putin has partly changed that.

NATO has expanded to include countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc, and has also added countries that are further away, such as Turkey and Greece.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the group, saying many NATO members do not spend enough on defense to fully meet their commitments under the agreement.
…

Chancellor Angela Merkel has received former U.S. President Barack Obama at her office in Berlin for a meeting characterized by German officials as a routine private encounter with a former international peer.

Obama could be seen waving as he left the chancellery alongside Merkel Friday. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said she has met repeatedly with ex-heads of state and government “with whom she worked together closely and well for a time.”

He said the meeting has no implications for current German-U.S. relations. Asked whether it was a signal to President Donald Trump, with whom Germany has a sometimes-complicated relationship, Seibert replied: “I would firmly reject that impression.”

Merkel and Obama have already met in Berlin since the former president left office, participating in a discussion at a May 2017 conference.
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Albania will learn in June whether the European Union will move forward with accession talks to admit the Balkan nation as a member. Albania will also hold local elections in June — possibly without the main opposition party taking part. As these two events draw near, political instability is mounting. Sabina Castelfranco has more from Tirana.
…

European Council President Donald Tusk wants Britain to have until next April to come up with a viable plan for its exit from from the European Union. 

EU leaders would have to approve the extension which gives Britain the option of leaving the group earlier if parliament approves an exit deal. 

British Prime Minister Theresa May is set to write Tusk a letter Friday formally requesting another extension, until June 30. 

Britain was originally due to leave the bloc by March 29, but May got approval from the EU for a short extension to give her government more time to find a solution parliament could support.

While the process dragged on, parliament sought its own path forward, but in a series of votes Monday lawmakers struck down four possible paths forward. The closest that came to passing was a proposal to have Britain withdraw from the EU, but remain in a customs union.

The latest deadline set by the European Union was April 12, but no withdrawal plans have been approved by British lawmakers. 

The delays mean Britain is beginning preparations to vote for it’s representatives to the European parliament on May 23.
…

Russia has made reaffirming its presence in the Arctic a top goal, revamping the military Arctic outpost of Severny Klever along the Arctic shipping route

Missile launchers ply icy roads and air defense systems point menacingly into the sky at this Arctic military outpost, a key vantage point for Russia to project its power over the resource-rich polar region.

The base, dubbed Severny Klever (Northern Clover) for its trefoil shape, is painted in the white, blue and red colors of the Russian national flag. It has been designed so soldiers can reach all of its sprawling facilities without venturing outdoors — a useful precaution in an area where temperatures often plunge to minus 50 Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit) during the winter, and even in the short Arctic summer are often freezing at night. 

It’s strategically located on Kotelny Island, between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea on the Arctic shipping route, and permanently houses up to 250 military personnel responsible for maintaining air and sea surveillance facilities and coastal defenses like anti-ship missiles.

The Russian base has enough supplies to remain fully autonomous for more than a year.

“Our task is to monitor the airspace and the northern sea route,” said base commander Lt. Col. Vladimir Pasechnik. “We have all we need for our service and comfortable living.”

Russia is not alone in trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, as shrinking polar ice opens fresh opportunities for resource exploration and new shipping lanes. The United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway are jostling for position, as well, and China also has shown an increasing interest in the polar region.

But while U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has seen the Arctic through the lens of security and economic competition with Russia and China, it has yet to demonstrate that the region is a significant priority in its overall foreign policy. The post of special U.S. representative for the Arctic has remained vacant since Trump assumed office.

Russia, however, has made reaffirming its presence in the Arctic a top goal, not the least because the region is believed to hold up to one-quarter of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas. Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited estimates that put the value of Arctic mineral riches at $30 trillion.

The move has alarmed Russia’s neighbors, analysts say.

“In Russia, the Northern sea route has been described as a bonanza with lots of potential of economic development,” said Flemming Splidsboel Hansen of the Danish Institute for International Studies. “And that’s why there is a need for military capacity in the area. It is likely meant as defensive, but it is being interpreted by the West as offensive.”

Kristian Soeby Kristensen, a researcher at Copenhagen University in Denmark, said the problem of Russian hegemony in the Arctic was most obvious to Norway.

“Norway is a small country, whose next-door neighbor is mighty Russia, which has placed the bulk of its military capacity right next to them,” Soeby Kristensen said. “Norway is extraordinarily worried.”

In 2015, Russia submitted to the United Nations a revised bid for vast territories in the Arctic. It claimed 1.2 million square kilometers (over 463,000 square miles) of Arctic sea shelf, extending more than 350 nautical miles (about 650 kilometers) from the shore.

As part of a multipronged effort to stake Russia’s claims on the Arctic region, the Kremlin has poured massive resources into modernizing Soviet-era installations there.

The military outpost on Kotelny Island fell into neglect after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but a massive effort to build a new base began in 2014 and took several years. 

A group of reporters brought to the island by the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday were shown Bastion anti-ship missile launchers positioned for a drill near the shore and Pantsyr-S1 air defense systems firing shots at a practice target. 

The Russian military has kept Western media from visiting its Arctic facilities, so the trip offered a unique opportunity to watch the Russian expansion up close. 

A big radar dome looms on a hill overlooking the coast, underlining the base’s main mission of monitoring the strategic area.

In contrast with drab, Soviet-era facilities, the pristine new base features spacious living quarters, a gym and a sauna. Putin’s words about the importance of the Arctic for Russia dot the base’s walls and a symbolic border post sits in a hallway.

Soldiers at the base say they are proud of their mission despite the challenging Arctic environment.

“Proving to myself that I can do it raises my self-esteem,” said one of the soldiers, Sergei Belogov. “Weather is our enemy here, so we need to protect ourselves from it to serve the Motherland.”

Extreme cold and fierce winds often make it hard to venture outside, and even winterized vehicles may have trouble operating when temperatures plunge to extreme lows and even special lubricants freeze.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin in December that the military has rebuilt or expanded numerous facilities across the polar region, revamping runways and deploying air defense assets. He said renovation works were conducted on a long string of Arctic territories.

The expanded infrastructure has allowed the Russian military to restore full radar coverage of the nation’s 22,600-kilometer (14,000-mile) Arctic frontier and deploy fighter jets to protect its airspace.

The military also has undertaken a cleanup effort across the region, working to remove tens of thousands of tons of waste from the Arctic territories, most of it rusty fuel tanks left behind by the Soviet military.

The Russian soldiers share the island with polar bears, arctic foxes and wolves.

Officers said that, soon after the base opened, curious bears regularly prowled near its walls, sometimes even peering into its windows. On some occasions, soldiers had to use a truck to spook away a particularly curious bear wandering nearby.

Soldiers interviewed at the base said they marveled at the area’s wildlife and its majestic Arctic landscapes.

“The nature here is extremely beautiful,” said Navy Lt. Umar Erkenov, who came from southern Russia. “Meeting a polar bear is an experience that fills you with emotions. We have established friendly ties with them from the start. We don’t touch them, they don’t touch us.”

He said he’s missing his wife and daughter, whom he can only see during his leave period once a year, but is proud of his mission.

“Few people do their job under such conditions,” he said. “I feel proud that I’m here with my unit, doing my duty and protecting the Motherland.”
…

Some European countries could soon find themselves cut off from U.S. intelligence and other critical information if they continue to cultivate relationships with Chinese technology firms.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued the warning Thursday, following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Washington.

“We’ve done our risk analysis,” Pompeo said. “We have now shared that with our NATO partners, with countries all around the world. We’ve made clear that if the risk exceeds the threshold for the United States, we simply won’t be able to share that information any longer.”

U.S. defense and intelligence officials have warned repeatedly in recent years of a growing threat that information shared over Chinese-built networks or Chinese-made devices could be stolen or copied and shared with the Chinese government.

More recently, concerns have focused on China’s Huawei and ZTE, which have been offering to build advanced, high-speed 5G for mobile devices across Europe.

A report issued earlier this week by the U.S. Defense Innovation Board, which advises the Pentagon, raised the possibility Huawei already is building so-called “backdoors,” or security vulnerabilities, into its software and products.

“Many of these seem to be related to requirements from the Chinese intelligence community pressuring companies to exfiltrate information about domestic users,” the report said, citing the example of Xiongmai, a Chinese security camera maker that was using Huawei code to allow unauthorized access to millions of cameras.

While some European countries have acknowledged U.S. concerns, the European Union has rejected calls for a blanket ban on Huawei, in particular.

NATO response

As for NATO, some officials, including Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, have called for more consultations and have suggested the need for a more nuanced response, given there are currently few alternatives in Europe to Huawei’s 5G technology.

“We’re just in the preliminary stages,” NATO analyst and consultant Benedetta Berti said earlier this week in Washington.

“We need to take stock of our critical vulnerabilities, of the impact of external investments on our critical infrastructure,” she said. “We will come to a common strategic understanding.”

U.S. urgency

But U.S. officials are pushing for greater urgency.

“It is as important for NATO as it is for us,” State Department Director of Policy Planning Kiron Skinner told reporters this week. “How European countries address China’s involvement across all of their sectors is central to American security,” he added.

“When a nation shows up and offers you goods that are well below market, one ought to ask what else is at play,” Pompeo said Thursday, calling the offers from Chinese technology companies “literally too good to be true.”

“There is undoubtedly the risk that NATO or the United States will not be able to share information in the same way it could if there were not Chinese systems inside of those networks, inside of those capabilities,” he said.
…

The United States is considering expanding sales of Lockheed Martin Corp made F-35 fighter jets to five new nations including Romania, Greece and Poland as European allies bulk up their defenses in the face of a strengthening Russia, a Pentagon official told Congress on Thursday.

In written testimony submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives and seen by Reuters, Vice Admiral Mathias Winter — the head of the Pentagon’s F-35 office — said that “future potential Foreign Military Sales customers include Singapore, Greece, Romania, Spain and Poland.”

News of the new customers coincides with U.S. tension with F-35 development partner Turkey over Ankara’s plans to buy a Russian missile defense system.

Foreign military sales like those of the F-35 are considered government-to-government deals where the Pentagon acts as an intermediary between the defense contractor and a foreign government.

Other countries considering F-35

Other U.S. allies have been eyeing a purchase of the stealthy jet including Finland, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.

Winter’s full written testimony, which will be made public as soon as Friday, said the United States would respond to all official requests for information about the jet.

Last year, Belgium was the first new customer for the F-35 in years, choosing it over the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace its aging F-16s in a 4 billion euro ($4.55 billion) deal.

Under President Donald Trump the United States has rolled out a “Buy American” plan that relaxed restrictions on sales and encouraged U.S. officials to take a bigger role in increasing business overseas for the U.S. weapons industry.

Three models of F-35 available

Lockheed, the jet’s prime contractor, is developing and building three models of the new warplanes for the U.S. military and 10 other countries that have signed up to buy the jets: Britain, Australia, Italy, Turkey, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Belgium.

U.S. arms sales to foreign governments rose 13 percent to $192.3 billion in the year ending Sept. 30, the State Department said in November.

Lockheed delivered 91 F-35 fighter jets to the United States and its allies in calendar 2018.
…

To experience corruption in Ukraine, just go for a drive. The bone-crunching, bouncing ride over the countless potholes is a daily ritual for travelers across the country.

Campaigners say the local authorities’ failure to repair the winter road damage is just one symptom of the myriad corruption schemes that plague the country.

Tackling corruption is invariably among the issues Ukrainians cite as a top priority for the next president, as incumbent Petro Poroshenko and newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy face a final round runoff April 21.

​Anti-corruption law struck down

There are growing fears that government resolve is stalling, after Ukraine’s Constitutional Court in February struck down a law against officials enriching themselves. The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch recently demanded the government get a grip on the problem.

High-level corruption poses an existential threat, says Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, executive director of Transparency International Ukraine.

“Schemes which are now existing in the sphere of national security or the energy sphere, it’s really dangerous for not only [government] effectiveness but also it’s dangerous for the existence of Ukraine, because we are a country now in war. And this corruption helps our enemy make us weaker,” Yurchyshyn said.

Poroshenko’s bid to win a second presidential term has been caught up in corruption allegations over military procurement. He denies involvement.

Yurchyshyn says Poroshenko shouldn’t be singled out. 

“When we see other candidates in the presidential campaign, for everyone we have several questions for his or their close affiliations with different corruption schemes,” he said.

Journalists, lawyers investigate

Many Ukrainians have had enough and are fighting back. The group BIHUS info consists of dozens of journalists and lawyers investigating corruption. Their results are put on YouTube, and they are not afraid to tackle some of the biggest scandals. One recent investigation looked into the funding of the Fatherland party, led by defeated presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko.

“Three residents of these two villages were among the party’s biggest contributors in 2018, donating more than $148,000 (4 million hryvnias),” according to reporter Maksym Opanasenko in a recent documentary on the BIHUS info YouTube channel. He then confronts one of the party donors as she is working at the checkout of a local village store. It is clear that she is not the real source of the money.

Such schemes use a typical formula, employing intermediaries to disguise financial transactions, says founder of the group Denys Bihus.

“A poor person is hired, and he or she then draws up financial documents for a silly amount of money. Then they pass the right to sign off on these documents to someone else, but formally, they remain the only one visible in [public] documents,” Bihus told VOA in a recent interview.

The Fatherland party denies accusations of corruption.

Bihus says they pass on evidence from their investigations to law enforcement agencies. 

“But the problem is that, though we can initiate a case, we cannot force them to investigate it effectively. This is especially true in those cases where top politicians are involved,” he said.

​Symbol of graft

Decades of graft can even be seen along the Kyiv skyline. Construction on the vast Podilsko-Voskresenskyi Bridge, a rail and road crossing over the Dnieper River, started 26 years ago. Work has been halted repeatedly over corruption scandals. It is still not complete.

Anti-corruption campaigners say fighting corruption in the system is not enough for in Ukraine, the system is corruption.
…

Tackling corruption is invariably among the issues Ukrainians cite as a top priority for the next president. Incumbent Petro Poroshenko and newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy face a final round runoff April 21. There are growing fears that government resolve is stalling after Ukraine’s Constitutional Court in February struck down a law against officials enriching themselves. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine recently demanded the government get a grip on the problem. Henry Ridgwell reports from Kyiv.
…

Initial vote counts indicate that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party lost control of multiple major cities in Turkey in local elections Sunday. Erdogan is disputing the results in Ankara and Istanbul, but many analysts say the vote is clearly a setback for the powerful ruler. VOA’s Turkish Service spoke with political analysts about what the results mean, in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
…

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.  Pete Cobus contributed to this report.

LONDON – Ukrainians who live abroad strongly prefer sitting President Petro Poroshenko to other candidates in last weekend’s first-round presidential election, contradicting the choice of voters who reside within the eastern European nation.

According to official tallies of votes cast in Ukraine, comedian-turned-actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy was the preferred choice of 30 percent of the electorate, giving the novice politician a commanding lead over the incumbent Poroshenko, who came in a distant second with roughly 16 percent of the vote.

According to official tallies from Ukraine’s 101 foreign polling stations, however, the majority of Ukraine’s 20 million-strong expat community — less than a half-million of whom are registered to vote — gave Poroshenko 38.9 percent of their estimated 55,000 ballots, leaving Zelenskiy with 26.1 percent, and the difference split among the first round’s other 37 candidates.

Geographic voter preferences

Like their Ukraine-based counterparts, who handed victory to Zelenskiy in 20 of 25 reporting oblasts — the five outliers located the country’s far east and west respectively — voter preference among members of the country’s global diaspora also tended to be geographically clustered.

Poroshenko, for example, was the clear favorite among Ukrainians based the United States, where he garnered 56 percent of the vote. He enjoyed similarly strong showings in Canada (49.9 percent), the United Kingdom (52 percent), France (46 percent) and Germany (42 percent). He also claimed landslides (between 53 and 59 percent) in Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, Montenegro, Thailand and Australia.

Zelenskiy had a significantly stronger showing throughout Central and Eastern European countries such as Latvia (43 percent), Belarus (41 percent), Slovakia (40 percent), Hungary (32 percent), along with victories in Armenia, Czech Republic and Georgia. Zelenskiy also captured 38 percent of Poland’s Ukrainian diaspora.

Overall, Poroshenko claimed victory in 53 of the 71 foreign nations where Ukrainian expats are eligible to vote; Zelenskiy triumphed in 16 of them, whereas pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Yuri Boyko won in Estonia and Moldova with 35 and 33 percent respectively.

The breakdown suggests that Western-based Ukrainian voters tended to vote more conservatively than their Central- and Eastern-European counterparts, who appeared more amenable to voting for a newcomer.

Poroshenko, a 53-year-old confectionary magnate before he was elected five years ago, saw his approval ratings slip amid Ukraine’s economic turbulence during the first part of his term. Although real wages have ultimately increased and the economy is growing, ongoing dissatisfaction with cronyism and demands for more effective actions against corruption prompted him to build a re-election campaign that vows to defeat the Russian-backed separatists in the east and to wrest back control of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

Zelenskiy, 41, who plays a schoolteacher-turned-president infuriated by corruption in a popular television sitcom, made fighting corruption a focus of his actual candidacy, in which he proposed a lifetime ban on holding public office for anyone convicted of graft. He also called for new direct negotiations with Russia on ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, although he has yet to provide a detailed plan of action.

Boyko, 60, the Russian-friendly candidate who performed well in Estonia and Moldova, claimed 11.6 percent of votes cast on Ukrainian soil, where campaign vows to represent Ukraine’s “Russian-speaking population” notched victories in the ethnic-Russian strongholds of Luhansk and Donbass in Ukraine’s war-torn eastern flank.

Ukrainian officials refused to recognize votes cast by Ukrainians living in Russia, citing an inability to guarantee that a country with whom it is at war would conduct fair and transparent polling procedures. Although wire news outlets reported that some Russia-based Ukrainians did cast ballots from authorized polling stations in Finland and Belarus, data recorded in previous years show that Russia-based Ukrainians aren’t particularly engaged in domestic Ukrainian affairs.

This year’s foreign turnout cast 18,000 fewer votes than in 2014, when about 73,000 members of the Ukrainian diaspora helped push Poroshenko into office.

Long treks to the polls

In the United States, some diaspora members drove hundreds of miles to cast their votes.

“We drove about 15 hours yesterday,” Yaroslav Kuznetsov of Tampa, Florida, told VOA Ukrainian, explaining that Ukrainian voting laws required expats to vote at their nearest consulate.

For Kuznetsov, that entailed a trek to Washington, D.C., but one that he didn’t mind making.

“Its very important for the country for Ukraine for our future,” he said.

Ukrainian-American Andriy Nemchenko flew to the nation’s capital from Dallas, Texas.

“It’s most important elections because it is a chance for Ukraine to finally cut off ties with Russia,” he told VOA.

In Ukraine, police officials said they had received more than 2,100 complaints of violations on voting day alone, in addition to hundreds of earlier voting fraud claims, including bribery attempts and removing ballots from polling stations.

But election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe hailed Sunday’s election as competitive and free, even though it criticized procedural violations and said there were indications that state resources were misused in the vote.

Zelenskiy and Poroshenko have advanced to a runoff on April 21.

 
…

State Department correspondent Cindy Saine and VOA Russian service reporter Valeria Jegisman contributed to this report

WHITE HOUSE — North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is set to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress Wednesday, ahead of a meeting in Washington of the alliance’s foreign ministers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invited the NATO leader to speak to members of the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate to show the bipartisan support the 70-year-old trans-Atlantic alliance enjoys among lawmakers in spite of President Donald Trump’s occasional criticisms of the alliance.

As foreign ministers of NATO gather in Washington, foreign policy analysts are emphasizing it is one of the most successful military alliances in history and still relevant, pointing to its ability to adapt in dealing with a resurgent Russia, managing the crisis on the south of NATO’s flank and new, increasing threats such as cybersecurity.

“NATO is adapting and allies are spending more on defense. And I think this administration is understanding more and more how critical NATO is to some of the challenges that it faces, including China,” Mark Simakovsky of the Atlantic Council tells VOA. “So, in many ways, NATO is far from obsolete.”

Trump criticism

Trump’s criticism that NATO members aren’t paying their fair share of defense spending, as well as political upheaval in Europe — including the impending British exit from the European Union — and calls by some to kick Turkey out of NATO, can leave the impression, however, that the defense alliance is fracturing.

“I don’t think that’s the case. The alliance is strong,” Estonian Defense Minister Juri Luik tells VOA, pointing to increased political dialogues and military exercises among NATO’s members, as well as more U.S. military equipment and troops being brought to Europe.

“You’re not giving the money to somebody else. You’re not putting it into a NATO budget somewhere, you’re spending it on yourselves,” says McCain Institute Director Kurt Volker, who formerly served as U.S. ambassador to NATO. “But it is a demonstration of your commitment to your own security, which then gives NATO the confidence that this is a country that we can help defend as well, because they are committed to defense of their own territory.”

Lack of trust

Others agree that defense spending is important, but they say the alliance is fundamentally about the members’ ability to trust each other, and Trump has damaged that trust.

“When an American president questions the value of the alliance, our enemies in Moscow and Beijing are now questioning whether or not NATO would come to the defense of some smaller NATO nations that the president has criticized as maybe not worthy of NATO’s defense,” says Simakovsky, a former Europe/NATO chief of staff in the policy office of the U.S. secretary of defense. “But I don’t think at this summit the administration is going to be announcing any departure of the United States.”

Brooking Institution’s Robert Kagan is expressing concern that Trump’s attitude toward the European Union and expressed hostility toward the defense alliance could bring more chaos to the continent.

“Think of Europe today as an unexploded bomb, its detonator intact and func­tional, its explosives still live. If this is an apt analogy, then Trump is a child with a hammer, gleefully and heedlessly pounding away. What could go wrong?” writes Kagan in an upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs.

 
…

Prime Minister Theresa May and the leader of Britain’s main opposition party were due to meet Wednesday for talks on ending the impasse over the country’s departure from the European Union — a surprise about-face that left pro-Brexit members of May’s Conservative Party howling with outrage.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the government was not setting preconditions for the talks with Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, but was also not offering a “blank check.”

“There will need to be compromise on all sides,” he said.

The exact timing for the meeting between May and Corbyn wasn’t immediately specified, but it will probably take place Wednesday afternoon.

After failing repeatedly to win Parliament’s backing for her Brexit blueprint, May dramatically changed gear Tuesday, saying she would seek to delay Brexit and hold talks with the opposition to seek a compromise.

May said the country needs “national unity to deliver the national interest.”

That points Britain toward a softer Brexit than the one May has championed since the June 2016 decision to leave the EU. Labour wants the U.K. to remain in a customs union with the bloc to ensure frictionless trade. May has always ruled that out, saying it would limit Britain’s ability to forge an independent trade policy.

But May’s Brexit deal with the EU has been rejected three times by Parliament.

Barclay said the “remorseless logic” of Parliament’s failure to back the prime minister’s deal was that the country was heading toward a softer form of Brexit.

“The alternative to that is no Brexit at all and I think that would be very damaging from a democracy point of view,” he told Parliament’s Brexit committee.

May’s government and the Conservative Party are split between those who want to keep close economic ties with the EU, and Brexiteers who say Britain must make a clean break in order to take control of its laws and trade policy.

The Brexit-backers condemned May’s shift. Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Brexit “is becoming soft to the point of disintegration.”

Junior Wales Minister Nigel Adams quit his post, sending the prime minister a letter criticizing her for seeking a deal with “a Marxist who has never once in his political life out British interests first” — a reference to the left-wing Corbyn.

“It is clear we will now end up in the customs union. That is not the Brexit my constituents were promised,” Adams wrote.

May’s change of plan came just days before Britain faced a disruptive no-deal departure from the EU. That would mean tariffs and other barriers to trade between Britain and the bloc, with the potential for border gridlock and shortages of goods.

The leaders of the EU’s 27 remaining countries have given the U.K. until April 12 to leave the bloc or to come up with a new plan, after British lawmakers three times rejected an agreement struck between the bloc and May late last year.

The House of Commons has also failed to find a majority for any alternative plan in two days of voting on multiple options.

European Council President Donald Tusk gave a cautious welcome to May’s change of course.

“Even if, after today, we don’t know what the end result will be, let us be patient,” he tweeted — a suggestion the EU would wait for Britain to present a clear plan.

The European Parliament’s Brexit chief, Guy Verhofstadt, tweeted that May’s move toward compromise was “better late than never.”

Labour’s business spokeswoman, Rebecca Long-Bailey, said May’s offer was long overdue, but that the opposition would enter talks with an open mind.

“We’re not setting any red lines for these discussions with the prime minister,” she said.
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U.S. lawmakers of both parties on Tuesday resolutely endorsed the Trump administration’s decision to halt delivery of F-35 fighter equipment to Turkey over Ankara’s decision to purchase a Russian surface-to-air missile system — a possible first step to blocking Turkey from acquiring the stealth jet altogether.

“If Turkey goes through with the Russian system, there is no way in the world that we can justify training them [on the F-35] and going through with our commitment on the [delivery of] the two F-35s,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said.

“The two can’t exist [together], the F-35 and the Russian system,” said Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who also serves on the panel. “We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Both senators spoke with VOA moments before the committee heard from President Donald Trump’s nominee to become NATO Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters.

“I concur with this committee’s belief that the S-400 [Russian missile system] and the F-35 are not compatible, and if Turkey proceeds down a path to procure and operate the S-400, they should not get the F-35,” Wolters said.

Danger to F-35s

Last week, Turkey’s foreign minister reaffirmed his country’s commitment to a deal with Moscow to buy the S-400, a system Washington believes could imperil the F-35, an advanced radar-eluding fighter jet. U.S. officials have warned that Turkey’s possession of both U.S. and Russian systems ultimately could help Moscow find ways to detect the F-35 and gain access to advanced American military technology.

“We cannot allow the technology of the F-35 to get into the hands of the Russians and our enemies,” New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen told VOA.

Shaheen and three other senators have introduced legislation prohibiting the transfer of F-35s to Turkey until the Trump administration certifies that Ankara will not accept delivery of the Russian air-defense system.

“It would be better if we were able to simply have them eliminate the S-400,” South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said of Turkey’s planned purchase.

Complicating the issue is Turkey’s role in the supply chain for assembling the F-35, which is made by U.S. aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin.

“Component parts of the F-35 are produced in Turkey, so we have to examine all the options,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said. “We need to really maximize our effort to achieve Plan A, which is that they don’t purchase the Russian system.”

‘Mixed issues’ with Turkey

Inhofe suggested Turkey’s role in F-35 production can be replaced.

“One time, they [Lockheed Martin] said, ‘We can’t make them without Turkey.’ We found that was not true,” the chairman said.

The Pentagon confirmed Inhofe’s assertion.

“The DoD [Department of Defense] has initiated steps necessary to ensure prudent program planning and resiliency of the F-35 supply chain,” acting Chief Pentagon spokesperson Charles Summers said. “Secondary sources of supply for Turkish-produced parts are now in development.”

The disagreement over military systems is one of several points of tension that have arisen in recent years between Washington and Ankara.

“They’re an ally, they’re a NATO ally, but we’ve got a lot of mixed issues with them, from our support for the Kurds in northern Syria, who have been an effective fighting force against ISIS, to this issue [of military acquisitions],” Kaine told VOA.

The senator added, “But then again, we would not have been able to successfully prosecute the war against ISIS without using the Incirlik [Turkish military] base in Adana. So they have been a supportive ally in many ways.”

Asked how he would characterize Turkey as a U.S. ally, Manchin said, “Cautiously, very cautiously. I put them in the same category as I would Pakistan [a major non-NATO U.S. ally].”

VOA’s Carla Babb contributed to this report from the Pentagon.
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