ІНСАЙДЕР УКРАЇНА

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has described his latest talks with North Korean officials as productive. He met with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Tokyo on Sunday before proceeding to Vietnam. Pyongyang was the first stop on Pompeo’s first around-the-world trip as America’s top diplomat. After Asia, he travels to the United Arab Emirates before heading to Belgium, where he will accompany U.S. President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Brussels. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Germany plans to use public money to support companies that invest in Africa, part of a new “Marshall Plan” with which it hopes to tackle the roots of the refugee crisis that has convulsed European politics since 2015.

The aim was to reintroduce a scheme from the 1980s that made it easier for companies to write off losses on investments in Africa in order to moderate initial investment risks, Development Minister Gerd Mueller told Handelsblatt newspaper.

“I am also going to push for provisions made for African investments to get more favorable tax treatment,” he said Sunday of the plan being developed by his department, along with the finance and economy ministries.

Few details so far

The “Marshall Plan for Africa,” named after the U.S. aid package that kick-started Western Europe’s recovery after World War II, is the centerpiece of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s scheme to reduce refugee flows by better sharing the costs of humanitarian issues between Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Few details have been made public concerning the program, which Merkel has argued is essential if Europe is to win African countries’ support for any policies aimed at stemming migration.

Since 2015, when Merkel, faced with unprecedented migrant flows, opened Germany’s borders to more than a million refugees from civil war and poverty, the migration question has dominated European politics, fueling the rise of far-right parties.

Under pressure from her own allies, Merkel conceded tighter border controls last week, but has continued to insist that Europe can only deal with refugee flows multilaterally, in cooperation with its African and Middle Eastern neighbors.

Deals with North Africa

The EU is currently trying to sign deals with North African countries mirroring one signed with Turkey in 2016, under which Ankara was paid to take back many refugees who failed to win asylum in Europe.
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Britain’s Brexit minister David Davis has resigned two days after the cabinet approved a plan to retain strong alignment with the European Union even after leaving the bloc, British media reported on Sunday.

The resignation will be a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May, who is trying to win over Brexit hardliners in her own Conservative Party ahead of a fresh round of negotiations with Brussels this month.

A long-time euroskeptic, Davis was appointed two years ago to head up the newly-created Department for Exiting the European Union after Britain voted to leave the European Union in a historic referendum.

He became the face of Brexit, leading the British delegation in talks with Brussels, although his role was overshadowed in recent months as May and her aides took an increasingly key role in the negotiations.

The 69-year-old had reportedly threatened to quit several times over a perceived lack of firmness in Britain’s negotiating stance but had remained strictly loyal to the prime minister in public.

The resignation comes just hours before May was due in parliament to explain her plan for Britain to adopt EU rules on goods after Brexit, amid anger from MPs in her own party who want a cleaner break.

Conservative MP Peter Bone said Davis had “done the right thing,” adding: “The PM’s proposals for a Brexit in name only are not acceptable.”

Labor Party chairman Ian Lavery said: “This is absolute chaos and Theresa May has no authority left.”

May’s plan would create a free trade area with the EU for goods, to protect supply chains in areas such as manufacturing, while maintaining flexibility for Britain’s dominant service sector.

It is unclear whether Brussels will accept this, after repeatedly warning Britain it cannot “cherry-pick” bits of its single market.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, was widely reported to have described the plan as a “turd” before agreeing to support it.

Special forces training

Davis, a sharp operator and a gut-instinct politician, was a “Leave” campaigner in the referendum on Britain’s EU membership.

He was well acquainted with the Brussels beat: he was Europe minister between 1994 and 1997 as the European issue tore apart then Conservative prime minister John Major’s government.

Born to a single mother and brought up on a public housing estate in London, Davis went on to study molecular and computer sciences at Warwick University in central England.

From there, he took a higher degree in business at the London Business School, attending the advanced management program at elite U.S. university Harvard while pursuing a career on the board of sugar giant Tate and Lyle.

Davis also served as a reservist in the Special Air Service, the British army’s elite special force unit.

Noted for his love of climbing and flying, his ascent in politics began in 1987 when he was elected to parliament, representing a seat in northern England.

He became a government whip ensuring party discipline and later, as Major’s Europe minister, delighted in the nickname “Monsieur Non”.

Davis then chaired the powerful public accounts committee in the lower House of Commons from 1997 to 2001.

He ran for the Conservative leadership in 2001 and came fourth, but was made party chairman.

Davis was the front-runner in the 2005 Conservative Party leadership contest, but lost out to David Cameron, shedding momentum after a party conference speech fell flat.

He stayed on as the party’s home affairs spokesman, but dramatically resigned his seat to force a by-election in protest at the Labor government’s erosion of civil liberties.

He won the seat back but the move cost him his place in Cameron’s top team.

 
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Corruption and the conflict with Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine’s east will top the agenda when a summit between that country and the European Union takes place Monday in Brussels.

In May, the EU agreed to a $1.2 billion financial assistance package for Ukraine. The International Monetary Fund and EU are demanding deeper reforms to governance and the judiciary in return for the money; however, reforms to the court system have stalled, says Andrew Wilson, professor of Ukrainian studies at University College London.

“You have what’s called the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. It’s totally separate from the corrupt police. It can do its job well. It’s independent. But it can’t actually put bad guys in jail without reform to the courts. They do their work, the courts just let the bad guys go.”

“Ukraine is being asked to set up a separate anti-corruption court. It’s kind of set up a fake version that nobody believes would be independent. So that’s the key stumbling block,” Wilson told VOA in an interview.

WATCH: EU Demands Deep Reforms Ahead of Summit, Some Ukrainians Question Benefits

​Focus on elections

That stumbling block to a closer relationship between Ukraine and the EU may be difficult to overcome in coming months, says Anastasia Voronkova of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

“With the main preoccupation of the Ukrainian government right now being the forthcoming 2019 elections, it’s very unclear how all the challenges will be met,” she said.

Nearly a year ago, the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was signed after repeated delays. For many Ukrainians, it offered the hope of economic opportunity and the rule of law, after decades of slow growth and corruption.

“The early signs are that exports to the EU are beginning to expand, but not enough really to float the economy off the rocks. So, there are some signs of disillusion because Ukraine hasn’t got more,” Wilson said.

​Crimea on agenda

The EU will use the summit to reaffirm its backing for Ukraine’s territorial integrity after the grouping extended sanctions against Russia last week.

“External pressure can help, in particular perhaps to prevent a strong escalation of the conflict. But it won’t on its own be sufficient to really do anything meaningful to resolve the conflict,” Voronkova said.

The White House this week said there is no change in U.S. policy on Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The United States has provided Kyiv with $350 million in lethal and non-lethal military aid this year, including so-called “Javelin” anti-tank missiles.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet in Helsinki July 16, with Ukraine likely a key subject of the talks.
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Corruption and the conflict with Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine’s east will top the agenda at a European Union summit with Ukraine on Monday in Brussels. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the EU is pressuring Kyiv to make deeper reforms, but it is also facing disillusionment among some Ukrainians over the perceived benefits of closer ties with Europe.
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Turkey’s government Sunday issued an emergency decree dismissing thousands of public servants for alleged links to terror groups.

The decree, published in the Official Gazette, sacked 18,632 civil servants, including nearly 9,000 police officers, some 6,000 members of the military and hundreds of teachers and academics. Their passports will be canceled.

Turkey has been under a state of emergency for nearly two years, declared after a failed coup attempt in July 2016. The government blames a U.S.-based cleric for orchestrating the coup and has sacked or arrested people suspected of links to him. The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, denies the allegations. But the purge has broadened to include other “terror groups,” with more than 130,000 people dismissed.

The decree is expected to be the last of a series of emergency laws as Turkey’s ruling system will fully transform into an executive presidency Monday, following last month’s elections. The Cabinet and administrative structure will be completely revamped, coming under the authority of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Sunday’s decree also reinstated 148 people previously sacked through emergency decrees, while annulling the ranks of some 1,500 retired military and police officers, depriving them of their pensions and passports.

Twelve nongovernmental organizations, three newspapers and one television station were also shuttered through the 461-page ruling.

More than 75,000 people have been arrested for alleged links to Gulen.

The current state of emergency ends on July 18, unless extended for another term by the president and approved by parliament. Erdogan has hinted it may be lifted.
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French air accident investigators say that a rapidly spreading fire probably caused the crash of an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo in 2016, casting doubt on Egyptian authorities’ claims that traces of explosives were found.

French investigation agency BEA said in a statement late Friday that “the most likely hypothesis is that a fire broke out in the cockpit and “spread rapidly, resulting in loss of control.”

Authorities at Cairo airport declined to comment, saying only that state prosecutors were investigating the case. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists on the matter.

Egyptian authorities are carrying out a criminal investigation amid suspicions that explosives were involved.

The BEA has also investigated the crash alongside Egyptian and American experts. In its statement, the French agency cited its “difference of opinion” with the Egyptian conclusions based on evidence collected so far, including the BEA’s advanced repair work on flight recorders found in the Mediterranean depths.

The BEA urged Egyptian prosecutors to investigate the possibility it was an accidental fire, to prevent such accidents in the future. BEA officials met this May with the Egyptian attorney general to urge further work on the debris and recorded data, but were told that since Egyptian authorities believe a “malicious act” brought down the plane, the investigation is “within the sole jurisdiction of the judicial authorities.”

All 66 people aboard were killed when EgyptAir Flight 804, an Airbus A320 en route from Paris to Cairo, plunged into the Mediterranean. The pilots made no distress call and no militant group claimed to have brought the aircraft down.

The tragedy came about seven months after a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai Peninsula shortly after taking off from an Egyptian Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board. The incidents have dealt Egypt’s tourism industry, a major pillar for foreign currency which had already been weakened by years of political unrest since a 2011 uprising, a severe blow.
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The U.N. refugee agency says it has had a permanent presence in Libya this year, providing humanitarian assistance and medical aid to refugees and migrants in detention centers. The UNHCR works with Libyan authorities to obtain the release of vulnerable refugees and their evacuation from Libya.

The U.N. is expected to open a new transit center in Tripoli this month, which will have a capacity for 1,000 people. From this gathering and departure facility, candidates for asylum will be evacuated to a U.N. center in Niamey in Niger to complete their applications, which will allow them to be transferred to resettlement nations.

Speaking Friday in Rome, the UNHCR representative in Libya, Roberto Mignone, said more than 1,500 migrants and refugees already have made the trip to Niger this year, and 200 have been accepted for asylum in countries like France, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany.

Mignone said European countries have offered to take 4,000 refugees, but the process of re-settling must be accelerated. It is a mechanism that works, he added, but European nations need to accept refugees at a quicker pace. 

Mignone said the UNHCR has the capability at present to evacuate more than 1,000 people a month from Libya to Niger, but then these other refugees must leave the center in Niger or a bottleneck is created.

Mignone added that if more offers from European countries are forthcoming, other centers could be opened in the region. He said talks are underway with Chad, Burkina Faso and Sudan.

Italy’s new populist government recently intensified a crackdown on humanitarian rescue boats operating off Libya, refusing to give them docking permission in Italian ports and forcing them to sail hundreds of miles to Spain.

U.N. officials say the impact of the crackdown and the Libyan coast guard’s ineffectiveness at carrying out the rescue of migrants has caused the number of deaths at sea to soar, along with an increase in the number of people being held in Libyan detention centers.

More than 10,000 migrants have been intercepted by the Libyan coast guard this year and taken to 17 active detention centers in the country. Mignone said “overcrowding in Libyan centers is a serious problem and abuses on migrants cannot be ruled out.”

Despite fewer crossings, more than 1,000 people have drowned this year alone. Carlotta Sami, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Rome, called June’s mortality rate in the central Mediterranean “dramatic and exceptional.”

Sami said that in 2017, on average, only one in every 38 migrants attempting the crossing died. Today that number is one in every seven.

The United Nations has urged Italy to end its campaign against humanitarian rescue boats in the Mediterranean, but Italy’s Interior minister, Matteo Salvini, shows no sign of wanting to back down, and he has said his aim is that”not one more person arrives by boat” on Italian shores.

 
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The Head of the UN Migration Agency, William Lacy Swing, is appealing to Libyan authorities to stop detaining migrants intercepted or rescued at sea by the Coast Guard after trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

The International Organization for Migration praises Libya’s dramatically stepped up anti-smuggler operations.  With European Union support, it notes the number of migrants rescued in Libya’s territorial waters and brought back to shore has greatly increased.

IOM Spokesman, Leonard Doyle, says in the past month alone, the Libyan coast guard has intercepted nearly 4,000 migrants.

“Despite occasional, from what we understand, rogue issues, there generally seems to be a desire by the coast guard personnel to save lives, to get their country back on a regular footing and to avoid having indiscriminate, irregular migration where the only people profiting are the smugglers,” said Doyle.

IOM Chief Swing recently returned from a two-day visit to Libya where he appealed to the authorities to end the cruel policy of locking up migrants who already have suffered so much trying to reach European shores.  Doyle says there are some signs the authorities are willing to consider this.

“They will probably do that by trying to speed up repatriation.  So we support them in voluntary repatriation, voluntary return, humanitarian return from Libya,” said Doyle. “It sometimes takes a while because they do not have papers, they do not have documents.  The only embassies in the country really full-time are African embassies and even they are at very low capacity.”   

Doyle says once the documentation and bureaucratic process is completed, it will be relatively simple to repatriate the migrants.  He says IOM has a charter flight leaving for an African destination practically every day, taking people who voluntarily want to return home.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May secured a cabinet agreement on Friday for her plans to leave the European Union, overcoming rifts among her ministers to win support for “a business-friendly” proposal aimed at spurring stalled Brexit talks.

After an hours-long meeting at her Chequers country residence, May seemed to have persuaded the most vocal Brexit campaigners in the cabinet to back her plan to press for “a free trade area for goods” with the EU and maintain close trade tie.

The agreed proposal — which also says Britain’s large services sector will not have the current levels of access to EU markets — will not come soon enough for Brussels, which has been pressing May to come up with a detailed vision for future ties. But the hard-won compromise may yet fall flat with EU negotiators.

By also committing to ending free movement of people, the supremacy of the European court and “vast” payments to the bloc, May could be accused of “cherry-picking” the best bits of the EU by Brussels officials, who are determined to send a strong signal to other countries not to follow Britain out of the door.

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier welcomed the agreement but added on Twitter: “We will assess proposals to see if they are workable and realistic.”

For now, May, who has been written off by critics regularly since losing her Conservative Party’s parliamentary majority in an ill-judged election last year, will be buoyed by the hard-won agreement.

“Today in detailed discussions the cabinet has agreed our collective position for the future of our negotiations with the EU,” May said in a statement. “Now we must all move at pace to negotiate our proposal with the EU to deliver the prosperous and secure future all our people deserve.”

In a document outlining the government’s position, ministers said they had agreed that an earlier proposal made to the EU “needed to evolve in order to provide a precise, responsible and credible basis for progressing negotiations.”

Instead, they had agreed to negotiate for a “free trade area for goods,” one that would see Britain having a “common rulebook for all goods” in a combined customs territory. This would allow Britain to set its own import tariffs and seal new free trade deals.

They also agreed that parliament would have the power to decide whether to follow EU rules and regulations in the future, and the government would step up preparations for the eventuality of a ‘no deal’ exit.

But for both sides of the Brexit debate — the hardline eurosceptics and the staunch EU supporters — the agreed negotiating position was not enough.

John Longworth, a chairman of campaign group Leave Means Leave, accused May of personally deceiving Brexit campaigners.

“May’s Brexit means BRINO — ‘Brexit In Name Only’ — a fake Brexit.”

Pro-EU Labour lawmaker Chuka Ummuna described it as “yet another behind-closed-doors stitch up that would leave us all worse off.”

The Times newspaper said, without citing sources, that May was taking a hard line and had promised senior allies that she would sack foreign minister Boris Johnson, a Brexit supporter, if he tried “to undermine the peace deal.”

Trade deals 

With nine months before Britain leaves and just over three before the EU says it wants a deal, May has been under intense pressure from the bloc and from many businesses to show her negotiating position.

As she held the crisis talks with her ministers, the chief executive of European planemaker Airbus, Tom Enders, accused the government of having “no clue or at least consensus on how to execute Brexit without severe harm.”

May was cautious on whether she will win the support of the EU, saying only that she had “been talking to European leaders over the last week or so.”

“This is a proposal that I believe will be good for the UK and good for the EU and I look forward to it being received positively,” she told reporters.

But she has at least cleared yet another domestic hurdle. She seems to have reassured pro-Brexit ministers that under the new negotiating position Britain will still be able to seek trade deals with the rest of the world, easing fears that mirroring EU rules for goods would rule that out.

They may also have been reassured by May reiterating her belief that any agreement with the EU should end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, although British courts would still have to “pay due regard” to its rulings.

And the agreed negotiating position also hands a big role for parliament to decide whether Britain should continue to follow EU rules and regulations, recognizing that any rejection of them “would have consequences.”

“This is a further step, an important further step, in our negotiations with the European Union,” she said. “But of course we still have work to do with the EU in ensuring that we get to that end point in October. But this is good.”
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So is this what a trade war looks like?

The Trump administration and China’s leadership have imposed tens of billions of dollars in tariffs on each other’s goods. President Donald Trump has proposed slapping duties on, all told, up to $550 billion if China keeps retaliating and doesn’t cave in to U.S. demands to scale back its aggressive industrial policies.

Until the past couple of years, tariffs had been losing favor as a tool of national trade policy. They were largely a relic of 19th and early 20th centuries that most experts viewed as mutually harmful to all nations involved. But Trump has restored tariffs to a prominent place in his self-described America First approach.

Trump enraged such U.S. allies as Canada, Mexico and the European Union this spring by slapping tariffs on their steel and aluminum shipments to the United States. The tariffs have been in place on most other countries since March.

The president has also asked the U.S. Commerce Department to look into imposing tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts, arguing that they pose a threat to U.S. national security.

Here is a look at what tariffs are, how they work, how they’ve been used in the past and what to expect now: 

Are we in a trade war?

Economists have no set definition of a trade war. But with the world’s two largest economies now slapping potentially punishing tariffs on each other, it looks as if a trade war has arrived. The value of goods that Trump has threatened to hit with tariffs exceeds the $506 billion in goods that China exported to the United States last year. 

It’s not uncommon for countries, even close allies, to fight over trade in specific products. The United States and Canada, for example, have squabbled for decades over softwood lumber. 

But the U.S. and China are fighting over much broader issues, like China’s requirements that American companies share advanced technology to access China’s market, and the overall U.S. trade deficit with China. So far, neither side has shown any sign of bending.

​So what are tariffs?

Tariffs are a tax on imports. They’re typically charged as a percentage of the transaction price that a buyer pays a foreign seller. Say an American retailer buys 100 garden umbrellas from China for $5 apiece, or $500. The U.S. tariff rate for the umbrellas is 6.5 percent. The retailer would have to pay a $32.50 tariff on the shipment, raising the total price from $500 to $532.50.

In the United States, tariffs — also called duties or levies — are collected by Customs and Border Protection agents at 328 ports of entry across the country. Proceeds go to the Treasury. The tariff rates are published by the U.S. International Trade Commission in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which lists U.S. tariffs on everything from dried plantains (1.4 percent) to parachutes (3 percent).

Sometimes, the U.S. will impose additional duties on foreign imports that it determines are being sold at unfairly low prices or are being supported by foreign government subsidies. 

Do other countries have higher tariffs than the United States?

Most key U.S. trading partners do not have significantly higher average tariffs. According to an analysis by Greg Daco at Oxford Economics, U.S. tariffs on imported goods, adjusted for trade volumes, average 2.4 percent, above Japan’s 2 percent and just below the 3 percent for the European Union and 3.1 percent for Canada.

The comparable figures for Mexico and China are higher. Both have higher duties that top 4 percent.

Trump has complained about the 270 percent duty that Canada imposes on dairy products. But the United States has its own ultra-high tariffs — 168 percent on peanuts and 350 percent on tobacco.

​What are tariffs supposed to accomplish?

Two things: Raise government revenue and protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Before the establishment of the federal income tax in 1913, tariffs were a big money-raiser for the U.S. government. From 1790 to 1860, for example, they produced 90 percent of federal revenue, according to Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy by Douglas Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth College. By contrast, last year tariffs accounted for only about 1 percent of federal revenue.

In the fiscal year that ended last September 30, the U.S. government collected $34.6 billion in customs duties and fees. The White House Office of Management and Budget expects tariffs to fetch $40.4 billion this year.

Tariffs also are meant to increase the price of imports or to punish foreign countries for committing unfair trade practices, like subsidizing their exporters and dumping their products at unfairly low prices. Tariffs discourage imports by making them more expensive. They also reduce competitive pressure on domestic competitors and can allow them to raise prices.

Tariffs fell out of favor as global trade expanded after World War II.

The formation of the World Trade Organization and the advent of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement among the U.S., Mexico and Canada reduced or eliminated tariffs. 

​Why are tariffs making a comeback?

After years of trade agreements that bound the countries of the world more closely and erased restrictions on trade, a populist backlash has grown against globalization. This was evident in Trump’s 2016 election and the British vote that year to leave the European Union — both surprise setbacks for the free-trade establishment.

Critics note that big corporations in rich countries exploited looser rules to move factories to China and other low-wage countries, then shipped goods back to their wealthy home countries while paying low tariffs or none at all. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the United States has shed 3.1 million factory jobs, though many economists attribute much of that loss not just to trade but to robots and other technologies that replace human workers.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to rewrite trade agreements and crack down on China, Mexico and other countries. He blames what he calls their abusive trade policies for America’s persistent trade deficits — $566 billion last year. Most economists, by contrast, say the deficit simply reflects the reality that the United States spends more than it saves. By imposing tariffs, he is beginning to turn his hard-line campaign rhetoric into action.

Are tariffs wise?

Most economists — Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro is a notable exception — say no. The tariffs drive up the cost of imports. And by reducing competitive pressure, they give U.S. producers leeway to raise their prices, too. That’s good for those producers, but bad for almost everyone else.

Rising costs especially hurt consumers and companies that rely on imported components. Some U.S. companies that buy steel are complaining that Trump’s tariffs put them at a competitive disadvantage. Their foreign rivals can buy steel more cheaply and offer their products at lower prices.

More broadly, economists say trade restrictions make the economy less efficient. Facing less competition from abroad, domestic companies lose the incentive to increase efficiency or to focus on what they do best. 
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Russia is denying any role in the poisoning of a British couple who British authorities insist are the latest victims of Novichok — allegedly a Russian-made military-grade nerve agent first implicated in an assassination attempt on a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil last March.

The initial attack left former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, hospitalized in serious condition for several weeks before their ultimate recovery. The incident set off an international crisis that Kremlin officials seemed less than eager to repeat in the face of renewed allegations. 

“Of course we’re concerned that these substances have been used repeatedly in Europe,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “However, on the other hand, we have no information about which substances were used or how they were used.”

British nationals Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, both fell ill in Amesbury — less than 16 kilometers (10 miles) from Salisbury — showing symptoms British medical personnel have described as consistent with those in the Skripals’ poisoning.

Russia has angrily denied any involvement in the incidents, arguing Moscow never possessed Novichok and had nothing to gain politically from an attack on a former double agent seemingly in retirement.

Yet, in the wake of the Amesbury incident, Russian officials have concentrated their frustration on British authorities’ continued refusal to allow Russian investigators to participate in a joint investigation.

“It is regrettable that U.K. officials try to link a second poisoning with Russia without having produced any credible results of the investigation of the first one,” the Russian Embassy in Britain said in a statement. “Instead of genuine cooperation, London is doing everything possible to muddy the waters, to confuse and frighten its own citizens.”

“There is a need for thorough and professional work, and the efforts of British security services will not be enough,” added Vladimir Shamanov, chairman of the defense committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma.

“Russia should be involved, among others,” he added.

The revival of the Novichok issue presents an additional challenge to East-West relations just days ahead of a July 16 summit in Helsinki between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that both sides say is much needed to thaw existing tensions.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is all but certain to raise the subject when Trump visits London for talks prior to the Helsinki summit.

In the wake of the March attack against the Skripals, the U.S. joined with Britain in marshaling the largest mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western allies since the days of the Cold War. 

At the time, British authorities argued, and U.S. officials concurred, that it was “highly likely” Moscow was either behind the attack or had lost control of its chemical weapons stores. 

Renewed focus on the poisonings serves as an unwelcome distraction from Russia’s continued hosting of World Cup 2018, which visiting soccer fans have overwhelmingly lauded as a success. 

The event has helped burnish Russia’s international image following years in which the Kremlin argues it has been unfairly demonized over everything from its policies in Ukraine and Syria to cyber-meddling in elections and what Washington has described as general “malign activities.”

Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the world governing body FIFA in Moscow on Friday, Putin praised the tournament and world soccer fans for helping to destroy “so many stereotypes about Russia.”

“People have seen that Russia is a hospitable country, a friendly one for those who come here,” said Putin.

Yet Sergei Zheleznyak, deputy speaker of the Duma, argued it was Russia’s very success as World Cup host that explained the sudden return of the Novichok scandal to world headlines.

“A huge number of British fans, despite the warnings from their government, came to support their team. Their impressions are just destroying everything British propaganda built over the past few years,” said Zhelezhnyak. “To break up this flow of really positive emotions that the British fans are sharing, they had to put something like this in the mass media.”

While British officials and the royal family have boycotted the games in protest against the Skripal poisonings, the controversy over Novichok wasn’t the only source of tension between London and Moscow.

Depending on the outcome of their World Cup matches Saturday, Russia and England could square off in the semifinals. 
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By the time the World Cup is over, 64 matches will have taken place in 12 venues in 11 cities. For many people in Nizhny Novgorod, one of the soccer venues, the monthlong event has been the biggest party in town for decades. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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The mayor of London has approved a protester’s request to fly a blimp depicting Donald Trump as an angry, orange diaper-wearing baby during the U.S. president’s visit to the British capital next week. 

The 6-meter tall inflatable will fly over Parliament between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. local time on July 13 during a scheduled protest. 

“The Mayor supports the right to peaceful protest and understands that this can take many different forms,” Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office said Thursday. 

Leo Murray, the activist behind the blimp dubbed Trump Baby said the mayor’s office originally did not approve of the blimp but “following a huge groundswell of public support for our plan, it looks like City Hall has rediscovered its sense of humor.”

Murray used an online crowdfunding site to raise more than $20,000 asking donors to “make our six-meter high orange, inflatable baby with a malevolent face and tiny hands fly over central London during Trump’s U.K. visit.”

During the three-day visit, Trump will meet with the Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Theresa May. 
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The parties in Germany’s ruling coalition on Thursday reached agreement on a package of measures to deal with asylum-seekers who have already registered in other European Union states, and vowed to push ahead with an

immigration law before year’s end.

The two-page agreement, reached after a short meeting at the historic Reichstag building, ends a dispute that had threatened to bring down Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “grand coalition” just months after it took power, and left the four-term leader politically weakened.

But the debate has left lingering resentments in what was already a fragile coalition brokered by Merkel after she failed to forge an alliance with two smaller parties.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), had triggered the crisis when he threatened to defy Merkel and turn back at the German border the small number of asylum-seekers — a maximum of five people a day — who turn up after registering in other EU states.

Speedier returns

The parties agreed to speed up the process of returning migrants who have applied for asylum in other EU states to those countries, as mandated by current EU law, but only if agreements were in place with the country where they first registered.

Full implementation would require signing deals with Italy and other countries that have been unwilling to take back migrants.

Social Democrats hailed the agreement as a win for their party, and criticized conservatives for what Finance Minister Olaf Scholz called the “summer theater” of the last weeks.

While the agreement averts the collapse of Merkel’s government and keeps her conservative bloc from splintering apart, the episode highlighted the fragility of the German government and raised the prospect of further disputes.

Seehofer told reporters he was “extremely satisfied” with the deal despite having to back off his call for border zone transit centers.

The agreement calls for asylum-seekers registered in other countries to be processed within 48 hours in police facilities, not separate transit centers, if they cannot be transported to the Munich airport to be returned to the country where they first applied for asylum.

​No transit centers

Andrea Nahles, leader of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), stressed the agreement would not involve creation of any transit centers or unilateral action by Germany. The SPD had warned such centers could be seen as internment camps.

Nahles told broadcaster ZDF the deal would not require any legal changes, and said it was up to Seehofer’s ministry, which oversees the border police, to accelerate the asylum process.

“I want to be very clear that we did not agree to some kind of a compromise. Instead we drafted a new proposal that includes reasonable solutions, and the CDU/CSU has performed a piece of theater in the last three weeks that was unworthy of this country, our country,” Nahles said.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), said the deal laid the groundwork for a more unified approach on migration.

“With this, the entire coalition has committed to the goal to order, control and limit migration,” she said. “This agreement makes it possible that our migration policy is effective, that it remains humane and that it will succeed.”

As the agreement was reached, a new poll conducted for broadcaster ARD showed broad public frustration over the issue.

Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said Seehofer had weakened German conservatives through his brinkmanship, and 78 percent said they were unhappy with the coalition’s work.

Fifty-six percent of Germans felt too much focus was being put on migration, to the detriment of other issues.

Far fewer arrivals

Annual migrant arrivals have dropped sharply after peaking in 2015 at over 1 million people, many of them fleeing Syria’s war and therefore entitled to asylum.

In 2017, 15,414 people applied for asylum at German borders, with 1,740 of those applications made at the German-Austrian border, or around 4.7 per day, according to data from Seehofer’s ministry provided to Left party lawmakers.

Some in the SPD have accused Seehofer of sparking the coalition crisis to corral right-wing voters ahead of the Bavarian state election in October, after hemorrhaging a million voters to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany in the national election last September.

Seehofer and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz met in Vienna on Thursday and said they would discuss with Italy how to shut the migration route into Europe across the Mediterranean.
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Moscow’s most famous landmarks — Red Square, the Kremlin, and the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral — are swarmed with World Cup fans doing a bit of sightseeing in between matches. Just upriver, more adventurous tourists will find an anonymous-looking apartment block whose history sheds light on the Soviet Union’s darkest days.

The House of the Embankment embodies the history of revolution and dictatorship in miniature. It lies just upstream from the Kremlin and was completed in 1931 to house the Soviet Union’s governing elite.

“These people living here were the so-called ‘old Bolsheviks’ [revolutionaries]. And they were people close to each other — in their spirit and ideology — as well as their fate,” said Olga Trifonova, who runs the House of the Embankment museum, inside one of the block’s roughly 500 apartments.

The museum displays some of the luxurious fittings and furniture the first residents enjoyed. The block offered in-house theaters and cafeterias, libraries and sports halls.

Soon, however, the ostentatious lifestyles of the residents began to look at odds with the ideals of the revolution.

In the mid-1930s, Soviet leader Josef Stalin began the “Great Purge” to rid the country of those deemed enemies of the working class. A million people were imprisoned and 700,000 executed. The residents of the House of the Embankment — once the elite of the revolution — were among the first in line. Arrests and disappearances created a crushing paranoia.

“The residents of the house stopped paying visits to each other. One stopped having confidence in other people,” Trifonova said.

During the 1930s, 800 of the residents were arrested. Close to half of them were executed.

Olga Trifonova’s late husband, Yuri, grew up in the House of the Embankment. His father was arrested during the purges in June 1937 and never seen again. His mother was sent to a Gulag prison in Kazakhstan. In 1976, Yuri Trifonov wrote a best-selling book about his memories, which gave the apartment block its name. He died in 1981.

“This is a story about the nature of fear. How fear mutilates a human for his entire life,” Trifonova said.

Memories of that fear appear to be fading. An opinion poll last year crowned Stalin as Russia’s most outstanding historical figure.

But the grim history of the House of the Embankment is not forgotten, according to Dmitry Taganov of real estate firm INCOM, which is selling some of the apartments on the block.

“Many buyers are scared off by the gloomy background of this House. Many people undoubtedly know about that, even the ones belonging to the younger generation.”

A younger generation that is forming its own historical image of Stalin and the legacy of Communism.
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Moscow’s famous landmarks – Red Square and the Kremlin, the domes of St Basil’s Cathedral – are swarmed with World Cup fans doing a bit of sightseeing in between matches. But just upriver, more adventurous tourists will find an anonymous-looking apartment block whose history sheds light on the Soviet Union’s darkest days. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Moscow, that history is once again the subject of fierce debate in modern Russia.
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Long before Viktor Vekselberg was tied to a scandal over the president and a porn star, the Russian oligarch had been positioning himself to extend his influence in the United States.

Working closely with an American cousin who heads the New York investment management firm Columbus Nova, Vekselberg backed a $1.6 million lobbying campaign to aid Russian interests in Washington. His cousin Andrew Intrater served as CEO of a Vekselberg company on that project, and the two men have collaborated on numerous other investments involving Vekselberg’s extensive holdings.

Now, Intrater’s investment firm is wrestling with the fallout from financial sanctions the U.S. Treasury Department lodged in April against Vekselberg, one of a group of oligarchs tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Columbus Nova has insisted it only managed Vekselberg’s vast assets. But an Associated Press review of legal and securities filings shows that the cousins sometimes collaborated in a more deeply entwined business relationship than was previously known.

Spokesmen for Columbus Nova have told the AP that the firm’s business relationship with Vekselberg has been indefinitely halted by the sanctions, which targeted Russian oligarchs accused by Treasury of playing “a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.”

All Vekselberg assets in the U.S. are frozen and U.S. companies forbidden from doing business with him and his entities. The deadline to sever those relationships was June 4, but talks between Columbus Nova and the government are continuing, the firm’s spokesmen said. A Treasury Department spokesman declined to comment.

The Columbus Nova spokesmen said the firm is also seeking permission from Treasury to retrieve any assets entwined with Vekselberg’s Renova Group, which the U.S. firm has called “its biggest client.”

Extricating Columbus Nova’s holdings from Vekselberg’s is not so simple. The sanctions apply to all assets in which Vekselberg has more than a 50 percent stake — including some investment funds managed by Columbus Nova in which the firm has an ownership interest, the spokesmen said. They discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions.

A Russian citizen who has had a U.S. green card and homes in New York and Connecticut, Vekselberg once told an American diplomat he felt “half-American.” Vekselberg heads the Renova Group, a global conglomerate encompassing metals, mining, tech and other assets that is based in Moscow.

He wields an estimated $13 billion fortune that supports Silicon Valley startups, programs at a California state park, a Western-themed resort amid the Joshua trees near Scottsdale, Arizona — and a loan to a Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia.

“I think all along Vekselberg thought a big chunk of his life was going to be anchored here in the United States and he, like other Russia businessmen, has made strategic investments in his philanthropic work to be in better standing here,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Vekselberg also has cemented tech deals using a Kremlin-funded foundation — raising national security concerns years before special counsel Robert Mueller began probing contacts between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian intermediaries. His opaque corporate structure, which includes an array of hard-to-trace shell companies, has fallen under Mueller’s scrutiny, according to several media reports.

Vekselberg hired Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen as a consultant in January 2017, just months after Cohen paid off the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who has alleged she had an affair with Trump.

But some experts familiar with Vekselberg’s financial holdings wonder if the government is adequately tracking his U.S. assets, let alone the companies or foundations managing his money under other names.

“Given how hidden these companies are in a network of shell companies, it is entirely possible that Vekselberg has a majority stake in businesses that are still functioning in the United States that the government doesn’t even know about,” said Peter Harrell, a sanctions expert and former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department.

Vekselberg’s spokesman, Andrey Shtorkh, did not detail how the billionaire was addressing the sanctions. Shtorkh stressed that the oligarch did not create or control Columbus Nova and gave up his green card more than a decade ago.

“It quickly became obvious that he had little time for more than brief visits to the United States,” Shtorkh said.

Making Western inroads

Vekselberg was born in what is the modern-day Ukraine, and built his fortune investing in aluminum and oil, taking advantage of the privatization of state companies after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

The 61-year-old billionaire burnished his reputation in the West in 2010 when he was appointed president of the Skolkovo Foundation, a nonprofit initiative funded by the Russian government and private investors to build a high-technology research hub aimed at luring digital entrepreneurs to Russia.

While Putin and Vekselberg have not always been strongly allied, the project now appears to have the Russian president’s backing. In January, Putin highlighted a Skolkovo effort as the type of “forward-looking projects” that would receive government support. In a June 2017 meeting at the Kremlin, Putin praised Skolkovo’s work.

In June 2010, Vekselberg traveled to Silicon Valley with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to try to gain a foothold for the Skolkovo Foundation. He signed a deal with Cisco CEO John Chambers for Cisco to invest $1 billion over 10 years in Skolkovo projects and met with Russian expatriates who urged him to set up a Skolkovo office nearby.

Skolkovo appeared to be a family concern. When members of the same expatriate association gathered in Manhattan to promote U.S. venture capital investment in Russia, the featured speakers included Intrater. And in a presentation dated June 2013 on Skolkovo’s website, Columbus Nova was described as one of several corporate venture funds financing Skolkovo participants. The foundation declined to comment, deferring to Shtorkh, who said that Vekselberg did not have control over the foundation’s decisions.

In 2011, an office near Stanford University was established for the Skolkovo Foundation and two sister funds, amid President Barack Obama’s call for a “reset” in Russia relations.

Vekselberg also spawned another foundation to benefit Fort Ross, a California state park that was once a Russian settlement. The foundation and affiliates donated at least $3.2 million to the park’s programs and activities between 2010 and 2017, according to the foundation’s website.

As Obama’s effort to reboot diplomatic relations sputtered, federal officials began raising alarms about the Skolkovo Foundation’s ties to Putin.

The FBI’s Boston division gave tech startups a frank warning in an April 2014 column published in a trade journal.

“The foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research, development facilities and dual-use technologies,” wrote Lucia Ziobro, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office.

Spotlight grows 

Media attention zeroed in on Vekselberg and Intrater in May when Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, released a memo claiming the cousins routed about $500,000 through Columbus Nova to a shell company set up by Trump attorney Cohen.

Avenatti claimed that just before the 2016 presidential election, Cohen used the same shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, to pay the adult film star $130,000 to keep silent about her allegation of a one-night stand with Trump a decade earlier.

Eleven days before Trump’s inauguration, Vekselberg and Intrater jointly met with Cohen, one of several meetings between Trump intimates and high-level Russians during the 2016 campaign and transition. During the meeting in Cohen’s office in Trump Tower, Vekselberg and Cohen discussed U.S.-Russia affairs, said a person familiar with the meeting who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the session.

According to financial records reviewed by the AP, the meeting occurred the same month that Intrater’s firm began making payments to Cohen’s LLC that totaled $500,000, delivered in eight installments ending in August 2017.

In a statement on its website, Columbus Nova denied that Vekselberg played any role in its payments to Cohen.

Intrater’s firm, which described itself in a company website entry as “a multi-strategy investment firm managing over $15 billion of assets,” has handled Vekselberg’s financial holdings for nearly two decades, company spokesmen say.

But as far back as 2000 — during Columbus Nova’s start up — Intrater also worked for Vekselberg as CEO of a subsidiary of the Russian’s Renova Group conglomerate. Between 2000 and 2004, the New York-based subsidiary, Renova Inc., commissioned a Washington lobbying firm to work for both Vekselberg and Russian interests.

Shtorkh acknowledged Renova Inc. is owned by the billionaire. According to a lobbying contract reviewed by AP and validated by spokesmen for Columbus Nova, Intrater served as Renova Inc.’s CEO for at least three years even as he built up his own investment firm.

The Columbus Nova spokesmen described Renova Inc. as a “rep firm,” a marketing company that represented Vekselberg’s conglomerate in the U.S. They added that Intrater took on his Renova Inc. role as a client service to Vekselberg as part of his asset management role for the Russian.

In April 2001, Intrater signed a contract with Washington lobbying firm Carmen Group Inc., representing the Vekselberg company. The lobbying firm said in congressional filings that it had been hired to “encourage trade and cultural exchanges between the United States and Russia.”

The contract also said the Carmen Group was hired to “organize congressional and other high-level U.S. government delegations to meet with foreign government and business leaders abroad and in the U.S.” Columbus Nova spokesmen said no U.S. delegations were brought to Russia.

Carmen Group was paid $1.58 million; a spokeswoman for the lobbying firm declined to detail its work.

While the Columbus Nova spokesmen acknowledged Intrater has served on advisory boards of several companies where Vekselberg owed majority stakes, they said Intrater took those positions because of his role managing assets for Columbus Nova.

Intrater joined the board of one such firm in the mid-2000s, becoming a director — and briefly, chairman — of an American cable company that transformed into a Moscow-based firm after a Vekselberg-financed takeover. Between 2004 and 2007, the cousins teamed up in the acquisition of Moscow CableCom Corp., a U.S.-based cable company once known as the Andersen Group that now serves several Russian cities.

Intrater joined the board after Columbus Nova routed $51 million from the New York firm’s investors to Moscow Cablecom the cable firm in 2004. That same year, Vekselberg’s Renova Group took a stake. By July 2007, Vekselberg’s company had financed the cable firm’s acquisition in an estimated $152 million deal.

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission list both Vekselberg and Intrater as key figures in the cable firm acquisition. But Columbus Nova representatives said that some filings made by the now-defunct Moscow CableCom Corp contained errors, including overstating the role of a Columbus Nova corporate entity in one round of investments.

Winding down assets

Vekselberg’s unfettered access to the U.S. withered when his assets in America were frozen under sanctions April 6, causing him nearly $1 billion in losses, Forbes estimated.

The Treasury Department included a Russia-based corporate entity owned or controlled by Vekselberg in its sanctions, but warned that the list shouldn’t be viewed as a complete inventory of companies linked to the oligarch.

Two of Vekselberg’s largest companies — Renova Management AG and the engineering firm Sulzer, both based in Switzerland — swiftly and publicly corrected course to lessen his control or financial interests.

Some entities associated with the oligarch in the United States have been less forthcoming.

Shtorkh said Vekselberg is an investor in a venture fund called Maxfield Capital, which lists a San Francisco office on its website. A Maxfield Capital representative in Russia said the fund was taking steps to fully comply with sanctions requirements, but offered no specifics.

“Vekselberg’s money directly or indirectly represents quite a hefty chunk of all assets under management,” said Michael Minkevich, who managed deals for the fund in Silicon Valley until January. “They definitely need to find some way to cut any ties.”

Shtorkh said Vekselberg had a limited partnership interest in the Cayman Islands-based fund and did not have control over Maxfield Capital.

As for Vekselberg’s park foundation, its director did not respond to emails or voicemails.

Sarah Sweedler, president of another nonprofit that received funding from Vekselberg’s foundation to run programming at Fort Ross, said her group has no outstanding business with the foundation and has not communicated with its staff since the sanctions hit.

Vekselberg also has ties to two other foundations operating in the U.S. The Link of Times Foundation USA Inc. did not respond to voicemails or emails seeking comment, and the administrator of the Mariinsky Foundation of America Inc. said Vekselberg was removed from the board of directors last year.

The Skolkovo Foundation’s activities have not been disrupted by U.S. sanctions, Shtorkh added.

Sean Kane, a former senior official with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said it was unusual but not unprecedented for a sanctioned person to have such extensive personal and business relationships inside the United States.

OFAC regulations require companies to do their own checking to ensure they aren’t doing business with sanctioned entities. But Kane said that problems sometimes surface years later because it is so difficult to unravel complex corporate structures.

Kane, who now is in private practice in Washington, said that “nobody has the time or resources to be tracking how these people are moving their money 24/7. Any entanglements that U.S. foundations and companies have with sanctioned individuals such as Vekselberg will need to be looked at very carefully.”
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A rescue ship carrying 60 migrants picked up from rubber boats in the Mediterranean Sea arrived in a Spanish port Wednesday, after being refused entry by Italy and Malta. Tens of thousands of migrants have reached European shores this year so far, and southern European countries are refusing entry to the latest arrivals unless their burden is shared. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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