Thousands of people have taken to Twitter to say “enough” to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, opposing his bid to run for re-election on June 24.

“Tamam” – which roughly translate as “that’s enough” – became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter on Tuesday hours after Erdogan, who has been in power for the past 15 years, said he would step aside “if my people say ‘that’s enough.’”

More than 480,000 tweets with the word “tamam” were posted by the late afternoon. (Check here for a current count – VOA)

Three of Erdogan’s rivals – Meral Aksener, Muharrem Ince and Temel Karamollaoglu – also joined the fray.

Erdogan called snap presidential and parliamentary elections a year and a half before schedule. The elections will usher in a new executive presidential system that increases the powers of the president.
…

Army wife Angela Ricketts was soaking in a bubble bath in her Colorado home, leafing through a memoir, when a message appeared on her iPhone:

“Dear Angela!” it said. “Bloody Valentine’s Day!”

“We know everything about you, your husband and your children,” the Facebook message continued, claiming that the hackers operating under the flag of Islamic State militants had penetrated her computer and her phone. “We’re much closer than you can even imagine.”

Ricketts was one of five military wives who received death threats from the self-styled CyberCaliphate on the morning of Feb. 10, 2015. The warnings led to days of anguished media coverage of Islamic State militants’ online reach.

Except it wasn’t IS

The Associated Press has found evidence that the women were targeted not by jihadists but by the same Russian hacking group that intervened in the American election and exposed the emails of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta.

The false flag is a case study in the difficulty of assigning blame in a world where hackers routinely borrow one another’s identities to throw investigators off track. The operation also parallels the online disinformation campaign by Russian trolls in the months leading up to the U.S. election in 2016.

Links between CyberCaliphate and the Russian hackers — typically nicknamed Fancy Bear or APT28 — have been documented previously. On both sides of the Atlantic, the consensus is that the two groups are closely related.

But that consensus never filtered through to the women involved, many of whom were convinced they had been targeted by Islamic State sympathizers right up until the AP contacted them.

“Never in a million years did I think that it was the Russians,” said Ricketts, an author and advocate for veterans and military families. She called the revelation “mind blowing.”

“It feels so hilarious and insidious at the same time.”

`Completely new ground’

As Ricketts scrambled out of the tub to show the threat to her husband, nearly identical messages reached Lori Volkman, a deputy prosecutor based in Oregon who had won fame as a blogger after her husband deployed to the Middle East; Ashley Broadway-Mack, based in the Washington, D.C., area and head of an association for gay and lesbian military family members; and Amy Bushatz, an Alaska-based journalist who covers spouse and family issues for Military.com.

Liz Snell, the wife of a U.S. Marine, was at her husband’s retirement ceremony in California when her phone rang. The Twitter account of her charity, Military Spouses of Strength, had been hacked. It was broadcasting public threats not only to herself and the other spouses, but also to their families and then-first lady Michelle Obama.

Snell flew home to Michigan from the ceremony, took her children and checked into a Comfort Inn for two nights.

“Any time somebody threatens your family, Mama Bear comes out,” she said.

The women determined they had all received the same threats. They were also all quoted in a CNN piece about the hacking of a military Twitter feed by CyberCaliphate only a few weeks earlier. In it, they had struck a defiant tone. After they received the threats, they suspected that CyberCaliphate singled them out for retaliation.

The women refused to be intimidated.

“Fear is exactly what — at the time — we perceived ISIS wanted from military families,” said Volkman, using another term for the Islamic State group.

Volkman was quoted in half a dozen media outlets; Bushatz wrote an article describing what happened; Ricketts, interviewed as part of a Fox News segment devoted to the menace of radical Islam, told TV host Greta Van Susteren that the nature of the threat was changing.

“Military families are prepared to deal with violence that’s directed toward our soldiers,” she said. “But having it directed toward us is just complete new ground.”

`We might be surprised’

A few weeks after the spouses were threatened, on April 9, 2015, the signal of French broadcaster TV5 Monde went dead.

The station’s network of routers and switches had been knocked out and its internal messaging system disabled. Pasted across the station’s website and Facebook page was the keffiyeh-clad logo of CyberCaliphate.

The cyberattack shocked France, coming on the heels of jihadist massacres at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket that left 17 dead. French leaders decried what they saw as another blow to the country’s media. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said evidence suggested the broadcaster was the victim of an act of terror.

But Guillaume Poupard, the chief of France’s cybersecurity agency, pointedly declined to endorse the minister’s comments when quizzed about them the day after the hack.

“We should be very prudent about the origin of the attack,” he told French radio. “We might be surprised.”

Government experts poring over the station’s stricken servers eventually vindicated Poupard’s caution, finding evidence they said pointed not to the Middle East but to Moscow.

Speaking to the AP last year, Poupard said the attack “resembles a lot what we call collectively APT28.”

Russian officials in Washington and in Moscow did not respond to questions seeking comment. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied masterminding hacks against Western targets.

‘The media played right into it’

Proof that the military wives were targeted by Russian hackers is laid out in a digital hit list provided to the AP by the cybersecurity company Secureworks last year. The AP has previously used the list of 4,700 Gmail addresses to outline the group’s espionage campaign against journalists, defense contractors and U.S. officials. More recent AP research has found that Fancy Bear, which Secureworks dubs “Iron Twilight,” was actively trying to break into the military wives’ mailboxes around the time that CyberCaliphate struck.

Lee Foster, a manager with cybersecurity company FireEye, said the repeated overlap between Russian hackers and CyberCaliphate made it all but certain that the groups were linked.

“Just think of your basic probabilities,” he said.

CyberCaliphate faded from view after the TV5 Monde hack, but the over-the-top threats issued by the gang of make-believe militants found an echo in the anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the St. Petersburg troll farm — an organization whose operations were laid bare by a U.S. special prosecutor’s indictment earlier this year.

The trolls — Russian employees paid to seed American social media with disinformation — often hyped the threat of Islamic State militants to the United States. A few months before CyberCaliphate first won attention by hijacking various media organizations’ Twitter accounts, for example, the trolls were spreading false rumors about an Islamic State attack in Louisiana and a counterfeit video appearing to show an American soldier firing into a Quran .

The AP has found no link between CyberCaliphate and the St. Petersburg trolls, but their aims appeared to be the same: keep tension at a boil and radical Islam in the headlines.

By that measure, CyberCaliphate’s targeting of media outlets like TV5 Monde and the military spouses succeeded handily.

Ricketts, the author, said that by planting threats with some of the most vocal members of the military community, CyberCaliphate guaranteed maximum press coverage.

“Not only did we play right into their hands by freaking out, but the media played right into it,” she said. “We reacted in a way that was probably exactly what they were hoping for.”
…

Hundreds of rebels left the last major besieged opposition enclave in Syria on Monday, with thousands more expected to follow, responding to months of pressure by a Russian-backed government offensive, the army, rebels and residents said.

A first convoy of buses with hundreds of rebels and their families, accompanied by Russian military police, departed from the city of Rastan, starting a weeklong evacuation from towns and villages in an enclave between the cities of Homs and Hama.

Rebels representing several major Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions capitulated to a Russian-imposed deal after marathon talks with Russian generals May 2 in Dar al Kabira town in the northern Homs countryside.

The deal forced them to hand in heavy weapons and gave those rebels not ready to make peace with the army the option of leaving with light arms to rebel-held areas in northern Syria.

Draft dodgers would have a six-month reprieve.

Russia exerted pressure by pounding the main towns of the enclave, where over 300,000 inhabitants live, in an escalation that killed and wounded dozens, rebels and residents said.

The Russians closed a border crossing near a key road to prevent civilians fleeing, to raise pressure on mainstream rebels to accept the terms, rebels and residents said.

Fears that Russia and its Syrian ally would unleash an even tougher push, on the scale that ended rebel control of Aleppo in 2016 and eastern Ghouta last month, prompted the capitulation to spare civilian lives, residents and civilian negotiators said.

“They left rebels with no option after bombing civilians and giving them no choice either to submit or obliterate their areas and make civilians pay the price,” Abul Aziz al Barazi, one of the civilian opposition negotiators, told Reuters.

Bombing

The war has been going President Bashar al-Assad’s way since Russia intervened on his side in 2015. From holding less than a fifth of Syria in 2015, Assad has recovered to control the largest chunk of the country with Russian and Iranian help.

A major bombing campaign that began last February ended the last remaining pockets of opposition resistance in the eastern Ghouta, the biggest enclave around the capital, that had for years withstood a siege and successive army onslaughts.

The fall of the once-heavily defended Ghouta demoralized rebels in other areas further east of the capital closer to the Iraqi border and in a southern Damascus pocket.

Now the only besieged area left is a small enclave in southern Damascus, where a few hundred Islamic State militants are making a last stand as aerial strikes devastate the once-teeming major Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, Syria’s largest, and nearby Hajar al Aswad town.

The last batch of rebels in the remaining south Damascus pockets, which includes the towns of Babila, Yalda and Beit Sahem, are expected to leave this week.

Fear of revenge

The Homs and Hama rebel enclave deal leaves the mainly Sunni civilians unprotected, leaving many residents there afraid of revenge by militias from surrounding Alawite villages.

Accordingly, rebels in the enclave say that under the agreement they have gained assurances that the Russian military police would spread out and man checkpoints around the enclave for a renewable six-month period. The rebels see the move as a guarantee against the entry of paramilitary pro-Assad militias.

While Syria’s conflict is in part a proxy struggle among great powers, it also has a sectarian element pitting the mainly Sunni-led rebels against the minority Alawite community to which Assad’s family belongs.

In the latest deal and in other areas, many have opted to stay and make peace with the army rather than leave their homes for an uncertain future in refugee camps in northern Syria.

The opposition accuse the authorities of pushing demographic changes that uproot Sunnis. The authorities deny this and say many civilians were held hostage by forces they call terrorists.
…

The court examining war crimes against ethnic Serbs in Kosovo said on Monday it has appointed a new chief prosecutor, who will pick up the court’s efforts to issue its first indictments, three years after it was established.

The court said U.S. prosecutor Jack Smith will succeed fellow American David Schwendiman, who stepped down March 31, a setback for the court, which politicians in Kosovo have long tried to abolish.

The Specialist Chamber was set up in The Hague in 2015 to handle cases of alleged crimes by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas during the 1998-99 war that led to the country’s secession from Serbia.

The court has yet to hear any cases. Its prosecutors and judges are foreign, but it was established under Kosovan law and comes under Pristina’s jurisdiction. Kosovo lawmakers only this year gave up an attempt to repeal the law that created it.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian troops.

NATO launched the action in response to attacks by Serbian forces against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority during a two-year counter-insurgency war against the KLA.

Crimes committed by Serbian forces were punished by a Yugoslavia tribunal that closed in December last year, but incidents carried out by the KLA were mostly not covered.
…

The ruling Czech ANO party expects a deal on a coalition with the Social Democrats (CSSD) by Friday, ANO chairman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Monday.

The ANO won elections last October but fell short of a parliamentary majority and since then most parties have refused to cooperate with it because Babis faces fraud charges. An ANO minority cabinet lost a vote of confidence in January and has since ruled as a caretaker.

“[The agenda] is in the final stages, I believe it will be absolutely clear by Friday and then we will only wait for the (CSSD) referendum,” Babis told reporters after the meeting.

He referred to an internal vote among CSSD members, which the party leadership may launch as soon as Friday. The result is expected in early June. Babis said he planned to have a confidence vote in the parliament by the end of June.

Neither Babis, nor Social Democratic chairman Jan Hamacek would comment on specific items on the new government’s agenda such as a special tax on banks the Social Democrats want or steeper progression of income tax for the highest earners.

Notes from previous meetings of the ANO and CSSD seen by Reuters showed that the ANO would reject both ideas. CSSD chairman Hamacek said that the agreement should be acceptable to his party colleagues.

“Speaking for myself, the text which we have, is acceptable … all problems are solved. I regard the coalition agreement as solved,” he said.

The parties also agreed that if all CSSD ministers resigned, the whole government would follow suit, Hamacek said.

The leaders declined to comment on the other key CSSD demand: that Babis resign if found guilty in an investigation into charges of illegally tapping EU subsidies. He denies the police charges and the case is yet to go to trial.

If the agreement holds, the two parties would still need a support from a third party, the Communists, to win a confidence vote. It would be the first participation of the Communists on power, however indirect, since their  totalitarian rule fell during the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

Their limited role, with no cabinet seats, would not bring the kind of policy changes that have sparked conflict between the EU and Hungary and Poland. But it would still anger many Czechs who suffered under their rule.

ANO has also cooperated with the far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party in parliament, even considering leaning on it for support for a minority government. That helped the SPD to fill the post of the deputy speaker and chair some committees.

The Social Democrats have demanded SPD officials be ousted from these positions to prevent the ANO seeking support from the anti-Islam party in case of coalition squabbles. Both Babis and Hamacek declined to comment.
…

Britain’s Foreign Secretary is set to lobby the Trump administration to remain a party to the 2015 agreement struck between Iran and world powers to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Boris Johnson is meeting Monday with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser John Bolton with Iran as one of the top agenda items, according to Johnson’s office.

“The UK, U.S., and European partners are also united in our effort to tackle the kind of Iranian behavior that makes the Middle East region less secure – its cyber activities, its support for groups like Hezbollah, and its dangerous missile program, which is arming Houthi militias in Yemen,” Johnson said ahead of his visit.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been a frequent critic of what he calls a flawed deal, and has until May 12 to decide whether to renew sanctions waivers linked to the agreement. Trump wants added limitations on Iran’s ballistic missile program and objects to the so-called sunset clauses in the nuclear deal that let certain provisions expire after a certain amount of time.

Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the United States negotiated the agreement with Iran amid allegations Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons. Iran repeatedly denied that was the case, and has further asserted that it has every right to its ballistic missile program for defense.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that if the United States does withdraw from the nuclear deal, “you will soon see that they will regret it like never before in history.”

Britain’s Ambassador to the U.S. Kim Darroch said in an interview Sunday with CBS that Johnson and Trump spoke about the nuclear deal in a phone call Saturday and that the president had likely not yet made a final decision.

“It’s not a perfect deal, no deal is ever perfect, and the president is rightly concerned about Iran’s regional activities, which are malign and damaging to security and stability,” Darroch said.

He added that Britain prefers the United States remain part of the agreement, but that as long as Iran remains in compliance, Britain “wants to stick with it.”
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Sunday to launch a new offensive against Kurdish militants along the country’s borders with Syria and Iraq.

Turkey has conducted two previous operations aimed at Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, militants Ankara considers an extension of Kurdish fighters the Turkish government has been clashing with for three decades for control of southeastern Turkey.

In an address to thousands of supporters in Istanbul in advance of June’s snap election, Erdogan said, “We will not give up on constricting terrorist organizations. In the new period, Turkey will add new ones to the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations in order to clear its borders.”

He added, “We shattered the terror corridor being formed on our southern border with these operations. Our soldiers, who lastly wrote an epic in Afrin, are ready for new missions. The operations will continue until not one terrorist is left.”

Erdogan called for the June 24 election more than a year ahead of the planned vote, which analysts say was designed to capitalize on nationalist sentiment running in favor of the successful military operation in the Syrian border town of Afrin.

With the election, Turkey is transforming its governing system to an executive presidency, abolishing the position of prime minister and vesting the ruling power in the presidency.

Erdogan said that with the presidential and parliamentary votes, Turkey would “take the stage as a global power.”

 
…

High school students in Germany have gathered tens of thousands of signatures in an online petition to complain about an “unfair” final English exam, saying the test was much harder than in previous years.

By Sunday, the students from the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg had gathered almost 36,000 signatures — even though only 33,500 people took last month’s statewide exam.

They complained that text excerpts from American author Henry Roth’s 1934 novel “Call it Sleep” were too difficult and obscure to analyze and asked for the grading to be more lenient this year.

The final high school exams in Germany — called the Abitur — are a rite of passage that all students who want to enter university have to pass.

Only those with excellent grades and test scores will get into the most coveted university programs, with medicine among the hardest. But other subjects like engineering or language studies also offer only a limited amount of places.

Many German students, parents and teachers have been stressed out for months over the Abitur. Often schools will cancel all regular classes for younger students during the tests so the Abitur students won’t be disturbed.

The online petition has created such uproar that even state governor Winfried Kretschmann weighed in, though he showed only limited compassion.

“There’s no right to a simple Abitur,” he told the frustrated teenagers. “You wish for it, but you don’t have a right to it.”

At the same time Kretschmann admitted that his own English skills were too weak to actually judge whether the disputed text had been overly difficult, the German news agency dpa reported.

Students said the passage from Roth’s novel that they had to analyze — a metaphorical description of the Statue of Liberty — was difficult to understand because of its “unknown vocabulary.” They also complained the questions they had to answer were not asked precisely.

They quoted some of the text’s most difficult sentences to illustrate their point: “Against the luminous sky the rays of her halo were spikes of darkness roweling the air; shadow flattened the torch she bore to a black cross against flawless light — he blackened hilt of a broken sword. Liberty.”

The state’s education ministry responded by asking external experts to evaluate the exam — who then concluded its level was appropriate. Educational authorities also noted that students in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania had to analyze the same passage and did not complain about it.

That has not stopped the number of signatures online from growing, as younger and out-of state students sign the petition in a show of solidarity.

“I was struggling like all the others, even though I spent a year abroad in America!” Aimee Schaefer wrote in the comment section of the petition. “You would think that I can understand everything by now, but I had to look up a lot of vocabulary… whoever compiled this exam must really hate us Abitur students.”

 
…

Polish rescue workers on Sunday found the body of 38-year-old coal miner, the first fatality after an earthquake hit a coal mine in southern Poland.

Three other miners have been missing some 900 meters (2,950 feet) below ground since Saturday morning at the mine in the town of Jastrzebie-Zdroj, close to Poland’s border with the Czech Republic. One of them has been located but was not rescued yet, a mining official said Sunday.

The head of the Jastrzebie Coal Company, Daniel Ozon, said the latest miner pulled out of the Zofiowka mine was pronounced dead after he had been trapped under some metal. He had worked for the company for 10 years.

More than 200 workers were involved in the rescue operation. Ozon said emergency workers were pumping air into the affected area to lower the level of methane gas before they can safely move ahead.

After the quake hit, four miners were rescued quickly but seven others went missing. Two of the missing were later found alive and have been hospitalized.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who came to Jastrzebie Zdroj on Saturday night, visited the hospitalized miners and met with their families. President Andrzej Duda was on his way to the town.

Authorities have launched an investigation into the accident.

Poland’s State Mining Authority said the temblor had a magnitude of 3.4, while the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre pegged it at 4.3. TVN24 said the quake was also felt on the surface and shook some houses.

Coal mining is a major industry in Poland. Coal remains the main source of energy and heating in the country but Poland is taking some steps to shift toward renewable, cleaner sources of energy. The Main Statistical Office said some 65.8 million metric tons (58.7 million tonnes) of coal were extracted last year in Poland, some 4.8 million tons less than in 2016.

Still many of Poland’s mines are dangerous, with methane gas that has led to a number of deadly explosions and cave-ins. So far this year, five miners including Sunday’s casualty have been killed at different mines, according to the State Mining Authority.

In 2016, eight miners were killed in a cave-in at the Rudna mine in Polkowice and methane explosions killed five miners at the Myslowice-Wesola mine in 2014.

 
…

Nearly a year ago, an investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller was tasked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with exploring any links or coordination between the Russian government and “individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” and, additionally, “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” according to the appointment order.

Since the order was issued on May 17, 2017, the investigation has grown into a multipronged effort that has resulted in criminal proceedings against 19 people — five U.S. nationals, 13 Russians and one Dutch national — and three Russian organizations.

Here are four areas of the investigation:

​Trump campaign officials’ business deals involving Russia

Perhaps the most visible results of the investigation so far are the indictments of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner, Paul Gates.

On Oct. 30, 2017, Manafort and Gates surrendered to FBI agents to face charges they conspired to launder money, failed to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, acted as unregistered agents of foreign principal, and made false statements, including statements under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. The charges were related to consulting work they did for pro-Russian businesspeople in Ukraine. Gates has pleaded guilty, while Manafort maintains his innocence.

CNN has reported that the FBI is looking for suspicious ties between Trump and Russia in financial records related to the Trump Organization (the collective name of a group of some 500 business entities owned solely or principally by President Trump), Trump himself, his family members, and his campaign associates.

Transactions under investigation include Russian purchases of Trump apartments, a New York City development with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $30 million more than its appraised value.

​Russian campaign contacts

In addition, the probe is looking at contacts between Russian government officials and Trump campaign officials.

George Papadopoulos, a former Trump foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty Oct. 5, 2017, to making false statements to FBI agents about contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign in 2016. He is cooperating with Mueller’s investigators.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Dec. 1, 2017, to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI about contacts and communications with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Kislyak returned to Russia in August 2017 and now serves in the Russian legislature.

On Feb. 16, 2018, Mueller issued indictments for 13 Russian citizens and three Russian entities regarding campaign contacts, plus released new charges against Manafort and Gates on February 22.

Russian attempts to influence US voters through cyberspace

In January 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded “with high confidence” that the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election by hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, campaign chairman for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The hackers then forwarded the contents of the emails to WikiLeaks.

NBC has reported Mueller is assembling a case against Russians who carried out the hacking and leaking of private information “designed to hurt Democrats in the 2016 election.” NBC said potential charges include violations of statutes on conspiracy, election law, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Beyond the targeted hacking, Mueller’s team is investigating at least one Russia-based “troll farm” — a group or organization intentionally posting inflammatory comments on social media to disrupt an online community — known as the Internet Research Agency.

In February, a federal grand jury issued indictments for 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities, alleging they pretended to be Americans online, creating posts that were meant to “sow discord” within the American political system and “spread distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.” The eight-count indictment charges that by early to mid-2016, the defendants were using their online identities to support Trump’s candidacy and disparage his challenger, Clinton.

The indictment also alleges the defendants encouraged minorities not to vote, or to vote for a third-party candidate.

On Dec. 14, 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported Mueller had requested that data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica turn over the emails of any of its employees who worked on the Trump campaign.

In 2018, Cambridge Analytica was found to have inappropriately acquired the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users while working on Trump’s presidential campaign. Having also done work for a pro-Brexit campaign in Britain, the company is now the subject of investigations in both countries.

Cambridge Analytica announced Wednesday it was filing for bankruptcy and shutting down.

​Obstruction of justice

A fourth prong of the special counsel investigation is whether the Trump administration obstructed justice with requests to federal law enforcement agencies to state that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Part of that investigation centers on whether the firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 amounted to obstruction of justice, after, according to Comey, Trump tried and failed to get Comey to swear to the president a vow of loyalty and to end an investigation of former National Security Adviser Flynn, who was fired in February 2017.

The Mueller team has Comey’s personal notes on his interactions with the president while head of the FBI, but a federal judge has denied multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to make the notes public.

Meanwhile, Comey has released his own version of what took place between him and the president in a memoir released last month titled, A Higher Loyalty. The volume of preorders drove the book to No. 1 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list, four weeks before its April 17 release.
…

Iran’s president said Sunday if the U.S. withdraws from the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers that Washington would regret the decision.

Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address, “If the United States leaves the nuclear agreement, you will soon see that they will regret it like never before in history.

“We have plans to resist any decision by Trump on the nuclear accord,” Rouhani said in a speech carried live by state television, Reuters reported.

“Orders have been issued to our atomic energy organization … and to the economic sector to confront America’s plots against our country,” Rouhani told a rally in northeast Iran.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will decide by May 12 whether Washington will remain an adherent to the nuclear agreement.

He has said he will pull out of the pact if amendments are not made, including a proposal to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program, which Iran has maintained is a defensive deterrent.

Iran’s foreign minister said Thursday Iran will not renegotiate a 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers.

“We will neither outsource our security nor will we renegotiate or add onto a deal we have already implemented in good faith,’’ Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on YouTube.

Meanwhile, a foreign policy adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned last week Iran would withdraw from the deal if Trump follows through on his threat to pull out of the accord.

Ali Akbar Velayati said on Iran’s state television website, “If the United States withdraws from the nuclear deal, then we will not stay in it.”

Velayati warned against any attempts to renegotiate in exchange for sanctions relief, saying, “Iran accepts the nuclear agreement as it has been prepared and will not accept adding or removing anything.”

The three European countries that signed the agreement, Britain, France and Germany, have repeatedly tried to persuade Trump not to withdraw.

China and Russia also signed the deal. All of the signatory countries are members of the United Nations Security Council.
…

Russian’s most widely known opposition leader Alexei Navalny, along with hundreds of his supporters, were detained Saturday as street demonstrations unfolded in Moscow and 90 other Russian cities to protest Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a fourth presidential term.

Within minutes of Navalny arriving at the protest in central Moscow, he was arrested along with his ally Nikolai Lyaskin. The independent monitoring group OVD-Info estimated more than 350 people had been detained nationwide by police, who dubbed the protests “unsanctioned.”
 

In the hours before his appearance, Navalny — barred from running in April’s presidential race — stayed at a secret location to avoid being detained before he managed to reach the protest held in Pushkinskaya Square. He was dragged off by his arms and legs to a van by five policemen as protesters chanted, “Russia without Putin” and “Down with the Tsar.”

A nationalist youth movement organized a counterprotest in Moscow, attempting to block Navalny’s supporters from gaining access to Pushkinskaya Square.

Although observers expect the anti-Putin protests to be on a smaller scale than in 2012, the Kremlin appears to be planning a more low-key inauguration than previous ones and Putin is likely not to venture beyond the Kremlin complex.  

Navalny, who has been repeatedly detained over the years for organizing anti-Kremlin protests, urged supporters all week with online messages to protest Saturday, saying “If you think that he’s not our tsar, take to the streets of your cities. We will force the authorities, made up of swindlers and thieves, to reckon with the millions of citizens who did not vote for Putin.”

One activist told a crowd in the city of Khabarovsk, “Putin has already been on his throne for 18 years! We’ve ended up in a dead end over these 18 years. I don’t want to put up with this!”

In St. Petersburg, anti-Putin protesters were prevented from reaching the city’s central square.
 

In Yekaterinburg in the Urals, 1,500 kilometers from Moscow, local reporters estimated that about 1,000 people turned out to protest. There also were reports of protests in Siberian towns. Monitors reported that police arrested about 150 people in Krasnoyarsk, in eastern Siberia, and another 75 in Yakutsk.

In the March election, Putin, who has been either president or prime minister since 1999, won against seven weak challengers with almost 77 percent of the vote. It was the largest margin by any post-Soviet Russian leader, which the Kremlin argues demonstrates his “father-of-the-nation” status and his clear mandate to govern.

One of Putin’s challengers, however, described the voting as a “filthy election.”

International observers criticized the poll, saying there had been no real choice in the election and complained of widespread allegations of ballot rigging amid reports of hundreds of ballot violations at polling stations across the country. Russian election officials described the violations as “minor,” but said they were investigating.

Despite Putin’s overwhelming election win, Monday’s inauguration ceremony will be a simpler affair than his previous three swearing-ins. The Russian TV station Dozhd reported Saturday that Putin will forgo driving in a presidential motorcade through central Moscow, avoiding the awkward scenes in 2012, when the capital’s streets appeared almost empty.

During Monday’s inauguration, Putin will stay within the Kremlin’s grounds, taking his oath of office in the Andreyevsky Hall. He is due to step outside the hall to thank party volunteers who worked on his election campaign.

In an effort presumably to head off Saturday’s protests, Russian police raided the homes of Navalny’s supporters on Friday and detained dozen.

“Activist Ilya Gantvarg was detained in St. Petersburg last [Friday] night,” said an Open Russian Foundation press release reported by Interfax.
 

The Open Russia document also says one of its own members, Viktor Chirikov, was detained in the city of Krasnodar, and that an employee of Navalny’s staff was detained in her own backyard in Krasnoyarsk.

“She was taken to a court right from home … tentatively [to be charged] in connection with the May 5 action,” the group said.

In a recent interview with VOA’s Russian Service, Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, had warned that a crackdown was imminent. “The authorities have been and continue to be afraid of protests. They are trying everything they can — threats, warnings, promises to shatter [the opposition] — it’s always the same,” he said.

“Politically speaking, they just can’t afford to have a large-scale protests in Moscow,” he said.

Navalny’s regional headquarters in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg were raided early Friday. Police confiscated promotional materials to be used at Saturday’s rally.

According to a report by Radio Free Europe, a Navalny organizer in the southern city of Volgograd Tweeted that local students were “forced to sign papers acknowledging that they could face serious consequences, including expulsion, if they take part in the rally.”

Navalny, who organized massive street protests to coincide with Putin’s 2012 reelection, was barred from the presidential ballot due to a conviction on financial-crimes charges he contends were fabricated.

VOA Russian Service’s Yulia Savchenko contributed to this article.

 
…

Russians angered by the impending inauguration of Vladimir Putin to a new term as president protested Saturday in scores of cities across the country – and police responded by reportedly arresting more than 1,600 of them.

Among those arrested was protest organizer Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is Putin’s most prominent foe.

Police seized Navalny by the arms and legs and carried the thrashing activist from Moscow’s Pushkin Square, where thousands were gathered for an unauthorized protest.

Police also used batons against protesters who chanted “Putin is a thief!” and “Russia will be free!”

Demonstrations under the slogan “He is not our czar” took place throughout the country, from Yakutsk in the far northeast to St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad on the fringes of Europe.

The protests demonstrated that Navalny’s opposition, although considered beleaguered by Russian officials and largely ignored by state-controlled television, has sizeable support in much of the country.

“I think that Putin isn’t worthy of leading this country. He has been doing it for 18 years and has done nothing good for it,” said Moscow demonstrator Dmitry Nikitenko. “He should leave for good.”

OVD-Info, an organization that monitors political repression, said late Saturday that at least 1,607 people had been detained at demonstrations in 20 Russian cities. It said 704 were arrested in Moscow alone, and another 229 in St. Petersburg.

Moscow police said about 300 people were detained in the capital, state news agencies said, and there was no official countrywide tally.

“Let my son go!” Iraida Nikolaeva screamed, running after police in Moscow when they detained her son. “He did not do anything! Are you a human or not? Do you live in Russia or not?”

Navalny was to be charged with disobeying police, an offense that carries a sentence of up to 15 days, news reports said, though when he would face a judge was not immediately clear. Navalny has served several multi-week stretches in jail on similar charges.

In St. Petersburg, police blocked off a stretch of Nevsky Prospekt as a crowd of about 1,000 marched along the renowned avenue. Video showed some demonstrators being detained.

Putin is to be inaugurated for a new six-year term on Monday after winning re-election in March with 77 percent of the vote. Navalny had hoped to challenge him on the ballot but was blocked because of a felony conviction in a case that supporters regard as falsified in order to marginalize him.

Navalny has called nationwide demonstrations several times in the past year, and their turnout has rattled the Kremlin.

Saturday’s protests attracted crowds of hundreds in cities that are far remote from Moscow, challenging authorities’ contention that Navalny and other opposition figures appeal only to a small, largely urban elite.
…

The U.S. Navy is reinforcing its presence in the Atlantic Ocean with the resurrection of a naval command in response to increasing assertiveness by Russia’s military.   

The Pentagon announced Friday the Navy was re-establishing the 2nd Fleet, almost seven years after it was disbanded for cost-savings and organizational reasons.

“This is a dynamic response to the dynamic security environment,” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson told reporters aboard the carrier George H. W. Bush. “So as we’ve seen this great power competition emerge, the Atlantic Ocean is as dynamic a theater as any and particular the North Atlantic.”

The 2nd Fleet, which will be based in the mid-Atlantic waterfront city of Norfolk, Virginia and begin operations on July 1, was disbanded in 2011. Since then, there has been a sharp increase in Russian naval activity in the North Atlantic and in the Arctic. Russia has also become more assertive in conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, resulting in escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced a new national defense strategy that prioritizes Russia and China. It was the latest sign of shifting priorities after more than 15 years of fighting terrorism.

The Pentagon also said Friday it has offered to host a proposed NATO Joint Force Command at its naval base in Norfolk. A new logistics command is expected to be located in Germany.

A blueprint of the plan was approved by NATO defense ministers at a February meeting, as part of a larger effort to protect the security of sea lanes and communication lines between Europe and North America.
…

Russian police have detained supporters of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, raiding their homes and detaining them on the streets of various Russian cities ahead of Saturday protests against President Vladimir Putin, whose new term starts Monday.

“Activist Ilya Gantvarg was detained in St. Petersburg last night,” said an Open Russia Foundation press release reported by Interfax. “Ilya is an active participant in the actions held by Alexei Navalny’s staff.”

The Open Russia document also says one of its own members, Viktor Chirikov, was detained in Krasnodar, and that an employee of Navalny’s staff was detained in her own backyard in Krasnoyarsk.

“She was taken to a court right from home … tentatively [to be charged] in connection with the May 5 action,” the group said.

Navalny’s supporters have planned 90 anti-Putin rallies around the country Saturday, some of which have not been approved.

Crackdown warning

In a recent interview with VOA’s Russian service, Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, warned that a crackdown was imminent.

“The authorities have been and continue to be afraid of protests,” he said. “They are trying everything they can — threats, warnings, promises to shatter [the opposition] — it’s always the same.”

While at least one smaller protest has been sanctioned, Volkov said it was approved largely to project the appearance of direct democracy in action.

“They’ll approve and coordinate one protest, something that looks moderately decent,” he said, explaining that the one demonstration usually occurs in a secure part of Moscow or St. Petersburg. Smaller cities are more tightly regulated so it doesn’t “seem like protests are being dispersed throughout the country.”

“It’s typical of this fascist police state,” he added, explaining that no grass-roots protests have been approved in major cities for at least three years. “Politically speaking, they just can’t afford to have a large-scale protest in Moscow.

“I think it’s very likely there will be more arrests,” he said. “This is part of their routine when it comes to threatening everyone, to try to lower the number of protesters. They do that before every protest — May 5th is no exception.”

Navalny office raided

Navalny, who branded Saturday’s protest “He’s Not Our Tsar,” saw his regional headquarters in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg raided early Friday. Police confiscated promotional materials for Saturday’s rally.

According to a report by Radio Free Europe, a Navalny organizer in the southern city of Volgograd tweeted that local students were “forced to sign papers acknowledging that they could face serious consequences, including expulsion, if they take part in the rally.”

Supporters were also detained in Cheboksary, Kemerovo, Tambov and Ryazan.

All detainees are to face charges of violating regulations for holding public gatherings.

Putin, who has been president or prime minister since 1999, is to be sworn in to a new six-year presidential term on Monday after winning a March 18 election that opponents said was marred by fraud and international observers said gave voters no real choice.

Navalny, who organized massive street protests to coincide with Putin’s 2012 re-election, was barred from the presidential ballot because of a conviction on financial crimes charges he contends were fabricated.

Some information in this report came from RFE.
…

The United Nations will launch a screening system to prevent former employees guilty of sexual misconduct from finding new jobs with its agencies or other charities, a senior official said Friday, part of an effort to address its #MeToo issue.

The tool will be an electronic registry of information to be available across the U.N.’s vast international reach and eventually to other groups, said Jan Beagle, U.N. under-secretary-general for management, following a high-level meeting in London.

Prominent U.N. bodies including the World Food Program (WFP) and refugee agency (UNHCR) fired several staff last year amid concerns raised that sexual misconduct was going unreported in a culture of silence and impunity at U.N. offices worldwide.

The wider aid sector was rocked by reports that some staff at Oxfam, one of the biggest disaster relief charities, paid for sex during a relief mission after a 2010 earthquake.

And in February, a high-level official at the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF resigned over inappropriate behavior toward women in his previous role as head of Save the Children UK.

Plans for the U.N. screening tool to register workers found guilty of sexual misconduct were announced at the gathering of its agency heads in London this week.

“[It] is a screening tool so that when we have confirmed perpetrators of sexual harassment in the system, we can ensure that they are not able to move around,” Beagle told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

Beagle said groundwork for the system, which will be managed by the secretariat, is complete and it was expected to be fully operational by the summer.

“In due course when we have some experience with it, we would like to extend it to other partners,” Beagle said, referring to aid agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other groups.

#MeToo campaign

The plans come amid the #MeToo campaign, in which women around the world have taken to social media to share their experiences with sexual harassment and abuse. It was sparked by accusations made last year against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last year appointed Beagle to lead a special task force to address the issue.

At the London meeting, U.N. agencies also discussed setting up 24-hour help lines for workers, agreed on a common definition of harassment and were told to hire more specialized investigators, preferably women, to speed up probes, said Beagle.

“Most of our investigators are specialized in things like fraud, which is a different type of skill,” she said. The secretariat has already started the recruiting process, she added.

An exclusive survey by Reuters in February found more than 120 staff from leading global charities were fired or lost their jobs in 2017 over sexual misconduct.
…

Turkey’s opposition parties have selected their candidates to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in next month’s snap election.

The main opposition CHP picked veteran deputy chairman Muharrem Ince, a fiery critic of Erdogan.

Addressing party supporters in Ankara, Ince removed his party badge, replacing it with one of a Turkish flag.

“I will be the president of 80 million, of rightists and leftists, of Alevis [an Islamic sect] and Sunnis, of Turks and Kurds,” he said. “I will be an impartial president.”

The 54-year-old former physics teacher is seen as a shrewd choice by CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Ince has built a reputation of having a common touch.

He is also social media savvy, being only second to Erdogan in Twitter followers. The announcement of his candidacy saw #İNCEdenDemokrasiGelecek (Democracy will come with İnce) becoming the second global trending topic, after #StarWarsDay.

In a sign of what possibly lies ahead, Erdogan supporters were quick to distribute across social media a photograph of Ince drinking a beer with his family, allegedly during the Islamic Holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Unbeaten in 15 years of elections, Erdogan, a devout Muslim, routinely portrays Ince’s pro-secular CHP as anti-religious. Turkey is an overwhelmingly conservative country, and the presidential elections will take place during Ramadan.

But in a move to reach conservative voters, Ince pledged to hold meetings every night at 1:30 a.m. to coincide with the time that fasters rise to eat before sunrise.

Political observers claim if Ince is to have any chance of success, he will need to make inroads into Erdogan’s normally loyal conservative religious base.

Critics claim the CHP should have chosen a nonpartisan, conservative candidate.

“With a presidential candidate that has zero appeal outside its own 25-percent usual voter base, Turkey’s main opposition CHP has shown once again that it has no vision to win elections,” tweeted Mustafa Akyol, a conservative writer on Turkish politics.

But the CHP has taken steps to reach out to religious voters. In a groundbreaking move ahead of parliamentary elections due to be held simultaneously with presidential polls, the CHP formed an electoral pact with the Islamist Sa’adet Party as part of a four-way party alliance.

Temel Karamollaoglu

Sa’adet’s leader, Temel Karamollaoglu, has also declared himself a presidential candidate. With Sa’adet outside parliament, Karamollaoglu needs to secure 100,000 nominations. In a goodwill gesture, the CHP leader, Kilicdaroglu, has called on his members to support Karamollaoglu’s nomination.

Securing Karamollaoglu’s backing in a presidential runoff is seen as offering Ince his best chance of luring away conservative voters from Erdogan.

Kurdish vote

But the potential kingmaker is Turkey’s Kurdish voter base, which accounts for around 20 percent of the electorate.

Friday the pro-Kurdish HDP, Turkey’s second-largest opposition party, announced its imprisoned former leader Selahattin Demirtas as its candidate. The declaration was made in simultaneous events in Istanbul and Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey’s predominately Kurdish southeast.

“The dignified stance of millions whose hearts beat with mine against all pressure has proven that a [prison] cell that can fit 6 million people has not been built yet. I have tried to represent the values of freedom, democracy, equality, and justice here in your name,” Demirtas declared in a statement read by HDP leader Pervin Buldan to supporters in Diyarbakir.

Demirtas is facing more than 100 years in jail on terrorism charges under Turkey’s emergency rule, introduced after the failed 2016 coup.

Even though he is in jail, he can still run in presidential elections under the election laws  — until convicted. Demirtas has a court hearing on June 8, when prosecutors are expected to press for a verdict.

Analysts say because other opposition parties have excluded the HDP from an electoral alliance in parliamentary elections, the exclusion of Demirtas from the presidential elections could lead to calls for a boycott by HDP voters.

“Kurds and Kurdish HDP are openly excluded from the [electoral] alliance,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar said. “By doing so, frankly, the opposition actually tells everybody their stance towards the Kurds is little different from the AKP.”

The CHP voted in favor of lifting Demirtas’s parliamentary immunity, opening the door to his prosecution and jailing. But Ince was among a number of dissident deputies that voted against the move — a stance praised among HDP supporters.

With the HDP having around 10 percent of the vote, their support, analysts say, is vital for any candidate seeking to defeat Erdogan, who remains the clear front-runner.

But observers say with the opposition parties all fielding strong candidates, Erdogan for the first time, faces challenges from across the political spectrum.

“Erdogan is facing the prospect of a complex electoral map, something he has not faced before. It will be more challenging,” said political analyst Atilla Yesilada, of Global Source Partners.
…

The ruling party of Armenia indicated it will support the opposition leader’s bid to become prime minister in a parliamentary vote scheduled for May 8. The decision follows weeks of protests that culminated in blockades and strikes this week. The opposition called a halt to the demonstrations Thursday as all sides negotiated a political solution. The protests erupted last month after the former prime minister was accused of manipulating the constitution to cling to power. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…

The Armenian ruling party’s signal of support for opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan’s bid to become interim prime minister has been greeted with disbelief by some on the streets of the capital.

Opposition supporters lingered in Yerevan’s Republic Square even after Pashinyan called to halt demonstrations as all sides negotiated a solution to the political crisis that has wracked the tiny South Caucasian country for weeks.

On Thursday, Armen Ashotyan, deputy head of the ruling Republican Party, told reporters that his legislators would support Pashinyan in an upcoming May 8 parliamentary vote to elect a prime minister, as long as the opposition figure won at least a third of the votes cast.

“We had two criteria to assist any candidate,” Ashotyan said. “The first is a necessary … amount of signatures, and the second is to calm down the situation on the streets, not blocking the interstate roads, airports, etcetera. So, the man who could cope with this criteria is considered to be Nikol Pashinyan and in case — before 8 May — he keeps these two criteria as promised, as agreed, we will assist his election.”

The statement comes just two days after Armenia’s parliament voted 45-to-55 against Pashinyan, leaving him eight votes short of the majority needed to capture the former Soviet republic’s most powerful office.

“If that is true, we are very glad, but I can’t believe that’s possible,” said a young Armenian woman who, like thousands of others, had participated in weeks of protests that forced the resignation of former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan.

Sargsyan, who was elected prime minister by parliament on April 17 — some eight days after his two-term presidency ended — had previously said he would not seek to become prime minister after newly implemented constitutional changes, which he championed during his presidency, made the office of prime minister more powerful than that of the president.

Republicans’ Tuesday abstentions, which blocked Pashinyan’s bid to become prime minister, leaving the office vacant, triggered city-wide street blockades and strikes.

On a bench in Republic Square, one protester suggested Ashotyan’s Thursday assurances of a plan to back Pashinyan seemed too good to be true.

“We can’t believe until we see it,” he said.

“We hope Nikol Pashinyan will be our premier,” said the women seated beside him. “And by ‘our,’ I mean all of us.”

If the May 8 vote fails to elect a prime minister, parliament will be dissolved and fresh elections will be called.

Optimistic opposition

Although recants protests have been largely non-violent, some Pashinyan loyalists say the country appears to be on the verge of forcing a change of government.

Gevorg Gorgisyan, a parliamentarian aligned with Pashinyan’s Yelk or “Way Out”-alliance, which holds 47 votes among its loosely allied opposition constituency, described the majority Republican as out of touch with most Armenians.

“[Republican leadership] speeches enraged our citizens, as they merely admitted minor mistakes and attempted to stay in power,” he said, referring to widespread frustration over poverty, corruption and poor governance in the nation of some 3 million people.

According to statistics by the United Nations, more than 11 percent of Armenians live below the poverty line, earning less than 1,530 Armenian drams ($3.20) per day, and, as Bloomberg reports, emigre remittances from Armenia’s 8-million-strong diaspora comprise 14 percent of national GDP.

Under Sargsyan, Armenia barely recovered from a GDP decline of 14 percent in 2009, only to witness a 7.5-percent surge of economic growth in 2017.

By the end of last year, however, the economy faced deflation and extremely weak domestic demand.

“They just don’t realize that it’s too late,” Gorgisyan added. “That train has already left the station.”

Fellow Yelk Alliance MP Edmon Marukhyan expressed confidence in a May 8 triumph for Pashinyan, who has vowed to rid Armenia of corruption, poverty and nepotism, and has promised snap elections.

“We will need to adapt the electoral code to guarantee that no administrative resource can be used during the elections and to prevent any bribe of the voters,” he said, seeming to look well beyond the upcoming parliamentary vote. “Only the people’s candidate can guarantee that, and today that person is Nikol Pashinyan.”

Gagik Tsarukyan, leader of the slightly larger opposition Prosperous Armenia, told VOA’s Armenian Service that although his party has been odds with their fellow Yelk Alliance legislators, they plan to back Pashinyan unconditionally.

“Today the victory belongs entirely to the people, and the people should decide who their candidate [for prime minister] is,” he said. “As for us, we will vote for that candidate as we did last time.”

In the United States, members of the vast Armenian diaspora community have given full-throated support for Pashinyan’s candidacy, holding demonstrations in front of the Armenian embassy in Washington on the streets of Los Angeles, which is home to Armenia’s largest diaspora community.

“The people have said ‘enough!'” said Gurgen Mkhitaryan, a member of the Los Angeles branch of Armenian Renaissance, a diaspora-led grass-roots organization composed of international and municipal chapters that aims to bring about true representative government and rule of law in Armenia.

“We should have said it long ago, but we managed to do it today,” he added, expressing skepticism about calls to slow the Armenian opposition’s pursuit of radical change.

“Questions about why now, why not a year ago, why not wait until 2022 — they don’t make sense,” he said. “Armenia belongs to the people.”

This story originated in VOA’s Armenian Service.  Arman Tarjimanyan reported from Washington. Angelina Bagdasaryan of VOA’s Russian Service contributed original reporting from Los Angeles.
…

The number of asylum applications by Russian citizens in the United States hit a 24-year high in 2017, jumping nearly 40 percent from the previous year and continuing an upward march that began after Russian President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012.

U.S. authorities received 2,664 new asylum applications from Russian nationals in the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, a 39-percent increase compared to 2016.

RFE/RL obtained the 2017 statistics, which have yet to be released publicly, under a Freedom Of Information Act request filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The 2017 figure is more than double the number of first-time applications by Russians since 2012, when Putin was elected to a third presidential term after serving four years as prime minister. It also eclipsed the previous high according to USCIS data for post-Soviet Russia, set in 1994 with 2,127 first-time asylum applications by Russians.

Putin has been accused by critics of overseeing a mounting crackdown on dissent — including against the political opposition and businesspeople not in step with the Kremlin — and fostering stigmatization of sexual minorities since he regained the presidency.

A flashpoint of criticism has been law signed by Putin in 2013, a year into his third term, that banned disseminating “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to minors, and which has been widely denounced as discriminatory — an accusation the Kremlin rejects.

The USCIS statistics do not indicate the basis for the asylum claims, though successful applicants must demonstrate “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Rights activists and immigration attorneys say the surge in the number of Russian asylum applications in the United States has been driven in part by the 2013 law concerning sexual minorities.

In a ruling last year, the European Court of Human Rights said that by enacting such laws, Russian authorities “reinforce stigma and prejudice and encourage homophobia, which is incompatible with the notions of equality, pluralism, and tolerance inherent in a democratic society.”

‘I had to leave’

Vlad, a gay Russian applicant in his 30s, told RFE/RL that he was simply looking to move somewhere where he could live “more freely,” and that a lawyer suggested U.S. asylum as an option. He said his family is not aware that he is gay and asked that his last name not be published.

Vlad said in a telephone interview that a man he had dated in Russia was killed after leaving a gay club, and that he believes militant antigay thugs may have been responsible. He said he had also been harassed in Russia due to his sexual orientation.

“I understood that I had to leave, and that it’s unlikely I could live peacefully and find a partner in Russia,” Vlad said, adding that he applied for U.S. asylum in December 2016.

Lyosha Gorshkov, a New York-based activist and asylee who heads RUSA LGBT, a support network for Russian-speaking sexual minorities and their families, told RFE/RL that since 2016 there has also been a “huge influx” of HIV-positive gay men from Russia seeking U.S. asylum.

Gorshkov attributes this to significant difficulties in obtaining medication in Russia to treat HIV.

Canada and several European countries last year began helping gay men from Chechnya obtain asylum following revelations about an alleged campaign of torture and murder targeting gay Chechens in the mainly Muslim republic in southern Russia.

Russian activists say gay Chechens face difficulties in obtaining a U.S. visa that would allow them to travel to the United States and apply for asylum.

Wendy Barlow, an immigration attorney with The Law Offices of Grinberg & Segal in New York, told RFE/RL that her firm had “a couple of consultations with members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community from Chechnya” last year, but had not represented any.

‘Getting shaken down’

Russian entrepreneurs are also seeking political asylum in the United States, claiming they were targeted by Russian authorities, according to U.S.-based attorneys handling such cases.

New York-based attorney Boris Palant said that most of his Russian asylum cases involve “persecution in the form of a fabricated criminal case.”

“One is a banker, but most of them are young businessmen,” Palant told RFE/RL.

Another New York-based attorney, Andrew Johnson, said his firm took on 25-30 new cases involving Russian asylum applicants in 2017. Half of those involved “straight political opinion,” while 35 percent concerned politically tinged “business-related” cases, Johnson said.

He said his firm had clients who say they were “getting shaken down on their business dealings merely because they are partisan and anti-Putin, and funding or being involved in another political party.”

In some cases, even apolitical asylum seekers say they were accused by Russian authorities of antigovernment behavior after they rebuffed requests for bribes and other official pressure, Johnson said.

Putin was recently elected by a landslide to a fourth term as president in a ballot decried by opposition activists as tightly controlled political theater.

During his March 1 state-of-the-nation address, delivered at the height of the campaign period, Putin said that Russia must “get rid of everything that enables corrupt officials and law enforcement officers to pressure businesses.”

Both Putin and his stopgap predecessor, current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, have made similar calls in the past.

‘Hidden’ migration

The 2,664 new Russian asylum applications in the United States last year — a 268-percent increase since 2012 — represent, of course, a tiny percentage of Russia’s total population of 144 million.

But that figure did place the United States ahead of every European Union country except Germany in terms of Russian first-time asylum applications in 2017. According to full-year EU immigration data for 2017, Germany received 4,885 of the more than 12,600 first-time Russian asylum applications in the 28-member bloc.

Around 90 percent of Russian citizens who apply for asylum in Germany are ethnic Chechens who enter the EU on the Belarusian-Polish border, according to Olga Gulina, head of the Berlin-based Institute on Migration Policy.

In the United States, “there is a lot more variety among (Russian) people seeking asylum,” Gulina told RFE/RL.

Gulina said, however, that “humanitarian migration” by Russians to Europe is “hidden” to a significant degree.

“People prefer not to apply for asylum. They prefer to look for other mechanisms,” including educational programs, Gulina said.

A study published in January by researchers at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration estimated that annually, around 100,000 Russians have left their homeland in recent years. Around 40 percent of those people have higher educations, according to the study.

There searchers surveyed  highly qualified Russians who moved to the West — and stayed there — after 2010. A majority of the respondents said they left due to economic difficulties that snowballed in 2014, when flagging oil prices and Western sanctions over Russia’s expansionism in Ukraine battered the Russian economy.

A quarter of the respondents said they left due to the “political situation” in Russia, including “disappointment” after the 2012 election that brought Putin back to the Kremlin and the “events of 2014,” when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and war between Kyiv’s forces and Russia-backed separatists erupted in eastern Ukraine.
…

As the world marks Press Freedom Day, journalists around the world face arrests, intimidation or death for doing their jobs. And while the list of the world’s most censored countries is more or less the same, new hostility against media is emerging from previously friendly quarters. Rights organizations say freedom of the press, rather than improving, is increasingly at risk. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports.
…

Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Russian fighter jet crashed Thursday shortly after taking off from an air base in Syria, killing both of its pilots.

A ministry statement carried by Russian media said the Su-30 jet went down in the Mediterranean Sea after taking off from Hmeimim air base, located along the coast in northwestern Syria.

It further said the plane had not come under fire and that preliminary information suggested the cause of the crash could have been a bird being sucked into one of the plane’s engines.

Russian forces joined Syria’s war in September 2015 fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

 
…

The April 30 killings of 10 journalists in Afghanistan highlight the dangers journalists face in covering some parts of the world. On VOA’s Plugged in with Greta Van Susteren, experts discuss why worldwide freedom of the press is more important now than ever. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
…

As France marks the half-century anniversary of May 1968, a profound period of social upheaval, protesters are back on the streets, venting their anger against reforms being pushed through by the year-old centrist government of President Emmanuel Macron. But from Paris, Lisa Bryant reports the spirit today is very different from that watershed year that left an indelible mark on French politics and society.
…

The Russian government is struggling to block messaging app Telegram, and its bid to cut access to the instant messenger platform is causing widespread disruption to an array of websites and online services in Russia that have nothing to do with Telegram.

For three weeks, Russian regulators have been floundering in their efforts to block the app after a court imposed a ban on Telegram April 13 for its refusal to hand the security agencies encryption keys enabling them access to users’ private messages.

Telegram’s defiant founder, Pavel Durov, a Russian entrepreneur in self-imposed exile, has boasted that the user count hasn’t suffered since the Kremlin sought to ban the app. Russian intelligence chiefs say they need access to Telegram messages sent by terrorists and criminals.

While the censors’ efforts have not caused many problems for Telegram, they have resulted in access being blocked to a host of other websites and online services, intermittently affecting Russians’ ability to buy via the internet everything from movie tickets to car insurance.

Widespread disruption

Access to some news sites also has been impaired, and users of Gmail say they have not been able to check their accounts. Online gamers also say they are encountering disruption.

Following the crackdown, owners of several different smart TV models have been unable to connect their sets to the Internet, and owners of fitness trackers and blood-pressure-monitors also have been experiencing problems, according to Mikhail Klimarev, director of the Society for Internet Protection. He says parents are complaining that GPS watches for tracking the location of their children have been failing.

One of the country’s most popular online car-sharing services, Delimobil, says its app has stopped displaying crucial maps thanks to the censorship. The flight search and ticketing service Kupibilet notified customers that “some ticketing systems are having problems.”

Russia’s Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, known as Roskomnadzor, denies the outages are being caused by its decision to block 15.8 million IP addresses on Amazon and Google’s cloud platforms in its bid to snuff out Telegram. But the widespread disruption has been reported since Roskomnadzor launched its censorship.

On Monday, more than 7,000 people rallied in Moscow to complain about the ban on Telegram — more than the number who took to the streets of Moscow after the re-election of Russian leader Vladimir Putin in April. They threw paper planes — the messaging service’s logo.

Advocating freedom

Russia’s best-known opposition activist, Alexei Navalny, told the crowd, “Our country is destitute, it’s a really poor country, where nobody has any prospects. The only sector that has developed in recent years by itself — without the state, or subsidies, or favors — is the internet. And those people say, ‘You’re behaving badly on your internet, so we’ll gobble it up.’”

Telegram’s Durov praised the protesters. “Thousands of young and progressive people are now protesting in defense of internet freedom in Moscow — this is unprecedented,” he wrote on his page on VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook.

Protest organizers say they want the repeal of “repressive Internet laws” and the dissolution of Roskomnadzor. “Our rights regarding secrecy of correspondence, freedom of speech and conscience are guaranteed by the constitution and cannot be restricted either by law or by conscience,” they said in a statement.

Of even greater embarrassment for the federal censors, they appear to be losing the support of some Kremlin officials and pro-Putin lawmakers, who also are voicing frustration with the ban.

Natalya Timakova, spokeswoman of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, inadvertently publicized her irritation, and on Facebook recommended online tools to bypass any problems encountered when accessing Telegram. In a response to a lawmaker’s frustration, Timakova advised her to “install VPN,” a virtual private network that allows users to circumvent online restrictions.

The lawmaker, Natalya Kostenko, subsequently changed the settings on her Facebook account, so that only friends and family could view her page after the exchange with Timakova was picked up by news outlets.
…

Protesters took to the streets of the Armenian capital of Yerevan Wednesday as opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan called for a national strike to pressure the ruling party to relinquish control of the country.

Demonstrators blocked the road from Yerevan to Zvartnots Airport and blocked several subway stations and government buildings.

Former government officials and citizens have expressed reservations about the ruling party’s decision to block a bid by Pashinyan to become prime minister, setting up a standoff between Armenia’s leadership, which has run the country for more than a decade, and thousands of Pashinyan’s supporters camped on the streets.

On Tuesday, Armenia’s parliament voted 45-to-55 against Pashinyan, leaving him short of the votes needed to capture the South Caucasian nation’s most powerful office.

Armenia’s former defense minister, Seyran Ohanyan, told VOA’s Armenian Service he expected to see Pashinyan elected prime minister, which he said would have resolved the unfolding political crisis.

“Nikol Pashinyan indeed deserved to be the prime minister in this new situation and implement changes expected and demanded by people,” said Ohanyan.

He also stressed that the ruling party’s stated rationale for not appointing Pashinyan — that electing an opposition figure as prime minister at this time would imperil national security — should be questioned.

“Otherwise, we will never have any political changes!” Ohanyan told VOA. “Just the opposite, political changes are the major pillar of the military strength of our country, which is linked to the economy. Whoever raises the economy, will also help the army.”

While observers have expressed fear that any unexpected political turmoil resulting from Tuesday’s parliamentary sessions could destabilize the Moscow-allied nation, which has been locked in a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan for decades, Pashinyan had met Sunday with Russian lawmakers, telling them his premiership would not threaten Yerevan’s close ties with Moscow.

Stepan Demirchyan, Armenia’s former opposition leader 2004 presidential candidate, however, said Pashinyan’s “movement can’t be stopped.”

“This is a continuation of the previous struggle, and it should reach its logical goal,” he told VOA. “I have no doubts Nikol Pashinyan will eventually become a prime minister. Yet, the major goal is to have snap and fair elections in our country.”

Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich, the former top U.S. diplomat to Azerbaijan, told VOA he thinks the Armenian people should have the right to decide their own fate by themselves.

The more external powers involved, he said, the higher the level of uncertainty.

“The outside powers, in particular, Moscow and Washington, need to stand back from this process, and that will be easier to do for Washington than for Moscow,” he said.

People on the streets of Yerevan, people who did not want to share their names, seemed to echo these opinions.

“There is no alternative. Nikol should sit on the prime minister chair,” said one pub patron as he watched the political coverage on television.

“The people’s candidate should be the prime minister,” said a woman sitting nearby.

Pashinyan, who addressed a rally of his supporters immediately after the vote, vowed to continue his movement.

On Monday, Pashinyan promised to stage nationwide strikes if the legislature failed to appoint him.

The 42-year-old opposition lawmaker, who had led 11 days of street demonstrations over an alleged power grab by former prime minister Serzh Sargsyan that threw the former Soviet republic into a political crisis, was widely expected to receive the 53 votes required to secure the post from the 105-member parliament.

As the only candidate officially nominated for prime minister, Pashinyan, a member of the Yelk or “Way Out”-led alliance, which holds 47 votes among its loosely allied opposition constituents, had secured assurances of further support from Sargsyan’s ruling Republican Party.

Sargsyan, who was elected prime minister by parliament on April 17—some eight days after his two-term presidency ended due to term limits—previously had said he would not seek to become prime minister after recently implemented constitutional changes, which he championed during his presidency, made the office of prime minister more powerful than that of the presidency he was forced to vacate.

According to statistics by the United Nations, more than 11 percent of Armenians live below the poverty line, earning less than 1,530 Armenian drams ($3.20 dollars) per day, and as Bloomberg reports, emigre remittances from Armenia’s 8-million-strong diaspora comprise 14 percent of national GDP.

Under Sargsyan, Armenia barely recovered from a GDP decline of 14 percent in 2009, only to witness a 7.5-percent surge of economic growth in 2017.

By the end of last year, however, the economy faced deflation and extremely weak domestic demand.

The government has grappled with constant budget deficits, and the unemployment rate remains above 16 percent.

This story originated in VOA’s Armenian Service.
…

Russian military spending fell by a fifth last year, its first decline in nearly two decades, with tighter purse strings likely to affect Moscow’s military activity ahead, a report by defense think tank SIPRI showed Wednesday.

Russia has flexed its military muscles during the last few years with its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and deep involvement in the Syrian conflict serving as examples of its more belligerent stance.

But while global military spending rose 1 percent to $1.739 billion last year, Russia’s fell 20 percent in real terms to $66.3 billion, the report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed.

It was the first fall since 1998, a year of a major crisis when Russia’s economy collapsed and it defaulted on domestic debt. The following year Vladimir Putin took power as prime minister and, on New Year’s Eve, president.

Based on the government’s spending plan until 2020, defense costs are expected to stay flat from 2017 or possibly even fall somewhat adjusted for inflation, said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher in the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Program.

“Very clearly that has a direct impact on procurement and on operations. Those are the quickest things to cut,” Wezeman told Reuters.

In fourth place

Russia dropped to fourth place in the ranking of the world’s biggest military spenders, overtaken by Saudi Arabia.

“Russia definitely has a very clear feeling it has to show that it is still a major power, and you show that by undertaking operations, in for example, Syria, by showing up on the Atlantic Ocean with your navy,” Wezeman said. “But I am sure that there will be serious cost cuts to those.”

Russia’s finances are still fragile following a two-year economic downturn brought on by Western sanctions and a collapse in global oil prices. Higher crude prices helped the economy return to growth of 1.5 percent last year, short of a government target of 2 percent.

The export-dependent economy has now got accustomed to lower commodity prices than before 2014, and the budget is likely to post a small deficit or even a surplus in 2018.

Putin has also called for higher living standards and higher spending on social infrastructure, such as health care and education. Some government officials have called for lower military spending to free up funds for such initiatives.

The Kremlin said in March that Russia would cut its military budget to less than 3 percent of gross domestic product within the next five years.

The United States remains the world’s biggest military spender by far, accounting for 35 percent of global expenditures, more than the next seven highest-spending countries combined. Its military budget was unchanged in 2016 and 2017 but a significant rise is expected this year.

China’s spending as a share of world military expenditure rose to 13 percent last year from 5.8 percent in 2008.
…

Britain will be able to impose sanctions on people who commit gross human rights violations under a so-called “Magnitsky amendment” backed by members of parliament on Tuesday.

The amendment to a new Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering

Bill going through parliament passed without a vote, because it was backed both by the ruling Conservatives and the main opposition Labor Party.

Lawmakers referred to it during their debate as the Magnitsky amendment, in reference to Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested in 2008 after alleging that Russian officials were involved in large-scale tax fraud. He died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after complaining of mistreatment.

The amendment is not specifically aimed at Russians, but it comes at a time of crisis in relations between Britain and Russia following a nerve agent attack in England on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter, which London blames on Moscow.

Russia has denied any involvement in the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The standoff has led to tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and fiery rhetoric on both sides.

Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign minister, called the passage of the amendment through the House of Commons an “important moment.”

“These [provisions] will allow U.K. to act against those responsible for serious offenses worldwide. U.K. stands up for human rights globally,” he said on Twitter.

The United States passed a law known as the Magnitsky Act in 2012 under which it has imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the lawyer’s death.

Prime Minister Theresa May spoke May 14 about bringing forward a Magnitsky Act-style amendment in one of her statements responding to the attack on the Skripals.

Bill Browder, an investment fund manager who employed Magnitsky and has led a campaign to punish Russian officials he blames for the lawyer’s death, took to Twitter to thank lawmakers who played a part in the British Magnitsky amendment.

“Thank you for making a UK Magnitsky Act happen,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed allegations that Magnitsky’s death was linked to mistreatment, saying he died of heart failure. A Russian court sentenced Browder in absentia in December to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of deliberate bankruptcy and tax evasion, allegations

Browder denies.
…

Former government officials and citizens in Armenia expressed reservations about the ruling party’s decision to block a bid by opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan to become prime minister, setting up a standoff between the elite, which has run the state for more than a decade, and thousands of Pashinyan’s supporters camped on the streets.

Armenia’s former defense minister, Seyran Ohanyan, told VOA’s Armenian Service he expected to see Pashinyan elected prime minister, which in his opinion would have resolved the unfolding political crisis.

Armenia’s parliament voted 45-to-55 against Pashinyan, leaving him eight votes short of the majority needed to capture the South Caucasian nation’s most powerful office.

“Nikol Pashinyan, indeed, deserved to be the prime minister in this new situation and implement changes expected and demanded by people,” Ohanyan said.

He also stressed that the ruling party’s stated rationale for not appointing Pashinyan — that electing an opposition figure as prime minister would imperil national security — should be questioned.

“Otherwise, we will never have any political changes!” Ohanyan told VOA. “Just the opposite, political changes are the major pillar of the military strength of our country, which is linked to the economy. Whoever raises the economy, will also help the army.”

While observers have expressed fear that any unexpected political turmoil resulting from Tuesday’s parliamentary sessions could destabilize the Moscow-allied nation, which has been locked in a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan for decades, Pashinyan had met Sunday with Russian lawmakers, telling them his premiership would not threaten Yerevan’s close ties with Moscow.

Stepan Demirchyan, Armenia’s former opposition leader 2004 presidential candidate, said Pashinyan’s “movement can’t be stopped.”

“This is a continuation of the previous struggle, and it should reach its logical goal,” he told VOA. “I have no doubts Nikol Pashinyan will eventually become a prime minister. Yet, the major goal is to have snap and fair elections in our country.”

Citizens react

Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich, the former top U.S. diplomat to Azerbaijan, told VOA he thinks the Armenian people should have the right to decide their own fate by themselves.

The more external powers involved, he said, the higher the level of uncertainty.

“The outside powers — in particular, Moscow and Washington — need to stand back from this process, and that will be easier to do for Washington than for Moscow,” he said.

People on the streets of Yerevan, who did not want to share their names, seemed to echo these opinions.

“There is no alternative. Nikol should sit on the prime minister chair,” said one pub patron as he watched the political coverage on television.

“The people’s candidate should be the prime minister,” said a woman sitting nearby.

Pashinyan, who addressed a rally of his supporters immediately after the vote, vowed to continue his movement.

On Monday, Pashinyan promised to stage nationwide strikes if the legislature failed to appoint him.

The 42-year-old opposition lawmaker, who had led 11 days of street demonstrations over an alleged power grab by former prime minister Serzh Sargsyan that threw the former Soviet republic into a political crisis, was widely expected to receive the 53 votes required to secure the post from the 105-member parliament.

Former president Sargsyan

As the only candidate officially nominated for prime minister, Pashinyan, a member of the Yelk or “Way Out”-led alliance, which holds 47 votes among its loosely allied opposition constituents, had secured assurances of further support from Sargsyan’s ruling Republican Party.

Sargsyan, who was elected prime minister by parliament on April 17 — some eight days after his two-term presidency ended due to term limits — previously had said he would not seek to become prime minister after recently-implemented constitutional changes, which he championed during his presidency, made the office of prime minister more powerful than that of the presidency he was forced to vacate.

According to statistics by the United Nations, more than 11 percent of Armenians live below the poverty line, earning less than 1,530 Armenian drams ($3.20) per day, and as Bloomberg reports, emigre remittances from Armenia’s 8-million-strong diaspora comprise 14 percent of national GDP.

Under Sargsyan, Armenia barely recovered from a GDP decline of 14 percent in 2009, only to witness a 7.5-percent surge of economic growth in 2017.

By the end of last year, however, the economy faced deflation and extremely weak domestic demand.

The government has grappled with constant budget deficits, and the unemployment rate remains above 16 percent.

This story originated in VOA’s Armenian Service. VOA’s Aram Avetisyan reported from Washington.
…

When the United States, Britain and France bombed Syria earlier this month, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis showed support for his Western partners one day before rowing back the next.

The military strike turned from “inevitable” to an act described as changing nothing after Babis was rebuked by the far-left Communist party, showing the fine line the billionaire businessman is walking as he tries to form a government.

Babis is aiming for a pro-Western administration but political fragmentation in October’s election means he needs the pro-Russian Communist party to either support it or abstain, ending the party’s pariah status since communism fell in 1989.

The Communists and President Milos Zeman will push Babis — whose ANO party is pro-EU and pro-NATO — toward a softer tone on Moscow, but he is not expected to move far despite the fall of his first minority cabinet in a confidence vote in January.

Shunned by most parties over charges of fraud in a 2-million-euro EU subsidy case he says is a plot, Babis is now negotiating a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats that would also lean on Communist votes.

The Communists’ limited role, with no cabinet seats, would not bring the kind of changes to core policies that have sparked conflict between the EU and Hungary and Poland, but would still anger many Czechs who suffered under their rule.

The current Communist rank and file, with average age well over 70, are nostalgic about life behind the Iron Curtain, and the party pledges to fight global capitalism and leave NATO.

“Security threats do not come from the east, security is under threat from those who commit aggressive attacks against sovereign countries in violation of international law as the United States, Britain and France have done in Syria,” party leader Vojtech Filip said at a party congress on April 21.

Foreign Policy

The Communists would like to end EU sanctions on Russia and follow Moscow’s line on Ukraine: party officials have traveled to separatist-controlled Donbass and Crimea.

They oppose Czech participation in military missions lacking U.N. approval — which means any opposed by Russia as permanent U.N. Security Council member.

The Czechs have hundreds of troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, a number Babis’s cabinet aims to boost this year by several hundred. The Czechs also plan to help protect NATO airspace in the Baltic.

“We have an elevated sensitivity to any pressure for escalation of tensions toward the post-Soviet region, we would have to react very strongly to anything like that,” Communist member of parliament Richard Dolejs told Reuters.

The Communists also criticized Babis’s government for handing a suspected Russian hacker in March to the United States, and for expelling Russian diplomats after the attack on a former Russian spy in Britain.

Falling Support

It is unclear what concessions the Communists would secure from the two coalition parties, but their influence will be limited by their waning popularity. They scored their worst post-Communist election result, 7.8 percent, in October, bleeding half of their votes to the far-right and to Babis.

“They have become very pragmatic over the last two decades,” said Lubomir Kopecek, political science professor at the Masaryk University.

“The request to leave NATO does not appear in the talks…A large part of the party’s elite wants to experience some recognition at the end of their political careers.”

A senior source from one of the negotiating parties said the Communists would be satisfied with positions in administration and state-owned firms. In foreign policy, the government could seek support elsewhere in parliament.

Dolejs said the party wanted to have a say on issues such as social benefits.

“Tolerating the government will raise our legitimacy. We see a chance to show our voters…that we can get at least a bird in the hand.”

More Trouble Elsewhere?

Involving the Communists is not a sudden turnaround. They have been part of regional governments and former party members, who include Babis himself, have held prominent jobs.

For the center-right, the party remains a no-go. “Andrej Babis is fulfilling his dream at too high a cost,” Petr Fiala, leader of the Civic Democrats, said in a post last week.

But elsewhere views are finely balanced. A Median agency survey last month showed 45 percent of Czechs could accept a Communist-backed government, while another 41 percent reject it.

Thousands protested in March after Zdenek Ondracek, a Communist lawmaker who had been in a police unit that beat up pro-democracy protesters in the 1980s, was elected to lead a police inspection oversight body. Babis withdrew his support and Ondracek resigned.

Within the Social Democrats, there is more debate about the risks of joining Babis, due to his legal problems and visions of streamlining political decision-making, than the Communists.

And Social Democrat leader Jan Hamacek said on Saturday he was more worried about the rising far-right, anti-Islam, anti-NATO and anti-EU party SPD, which won 10.6 percent of the vote.
…