The U.N. children’s fund warns that 220,000 children in the area of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed rebels are at risk of being killed or maimed by landmines and other explosive remnants of war.

Eastern Ukraine is one of the most mine-contaminated places on earth. Well into its fourth year of war, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are riddled with deadly explosives that are taking a heavy toll on the lives and well-being of its children.

The U.N. children’s fund estimates landmines and other explosive weapons kill or maim one child a week along eastern Ukraine’s contact line. This is a 500-kilometer strip of land that divides government and rebel-controlled areas where fighting is most intense.

UNICEF warns children, especially very young children, are at great risk of death and injury from these lethal weapons. The agency says most casualties occur when children pick up these explosive devices, which look like toys.

During mine awareness demonstrations, educators teach children how to protect themselves from landmines, unexploded ordnance and other deadly remnants of war.

Since 2015, UNICEF and partners have reached more than half a million children in eastern Ukraine with this message through entertaining theatrical skits and interactive shows.

While these weapons pose an ever-present danger to children, UNICEF says they also can damage crucial infrastructure, such as water, electricity and gas facilities.

In one incident earlier this month, UNICEF says, unexploded ordnance was found at the Donetsk Filter Station, a facility that provides water to nearly 350,000 people in the region.

 
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A Kremlin spokesman suggested Tuesday that a call by Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny to boycott next year’s presidential election may be illegal.

Navalny urged supporters to boycott the March 18 vote after election officials on Monday barred him from running.

Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) voted to ban the anti-corruption blogger from running because of his conviction on criminal charges. Navalny and his followers say those charges were politically motivated.

Following the CEC decision, Navalny released a video declaring a “voter’s strike,” because — according to Navalny — the March contest would not really be an election.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Tuesday that efforts by Navalny and his supporters to organize the boycott “ought to be carefully studied to see if they are breaking the law.”

Putin announced earlier this month that he will run for reelection, and it is widely assumed he will win a fourth term as Russian head of state.
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The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia stands ready to act as a mediator between North Korea and the United States in talks aimed at reducing tensions, if both parties are willing for Moscow to take on this role.

“Russia’s readiness to clear the way for de-escalation is obvious,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with reporters.
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Russian authorities say a bus careened off a road and onto steps leading into an underground passageway in Moscow, killing at least four people and leaving 13 others injured.

Moscow police said passengers and pedestrians were among those killed in Monday’s crash. Police immediately ruled out a possibility of it being an attack, saying that they suspect a mechanical fault or that the driver lost control of the vehicle. Police were questioning the driver.

Photos taken at the scene show the bus on the steps leading into the underground passageway.

Russian news agencies reporting from the scene quoted Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin as saying that he has ordered all city buses to be checked in the aftermath of the crash.

 
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Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is calling for a boycott of the country’s next presidential ballot after election officials barred him from running.

Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) voted Monday to bar Navalny from running in the March 2018 presidential election because of his conviction on criminal charges that the anti-corruption blogger and his followers say were politically motivated.

The commission’s decision came a day after Navalny declared he had collected the required number of endorsements nationwide to become a presidential candidate.

Following Monday’s CEC decision, Navalny released a video calling on his supporters to boycott the presidential vote.

“We understood that this [the CEC decision] was possible, and we have a clear and precise plan… We are declaring a ‘voters’ strike’, in as much as the procedure in which we are being urged to participate is not an election,” he said.

Navalny said his team would now campaign against participating in the presidential election, saying to cast a ballot would be “to vote for deception and corruption.”

President Vladimir Putin announced earlier this month that he will run in the March 18 election, and it is widely assumed he will win a fourth term as Russian head of state
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Pope Francis calls for “peace for Jerusalem” and “mutual trust” on the Korean peninsula as he focused on the suffering of children in conflicts across the world, in his traditional Christmas Day address “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
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Spain’s King Felipe directed his Christmas message Sunday to the separatist-minded region of Catalonia and what he says is the need to avoid confrontation.

The king urged regional leaders to help “Catalonia’s society, diverse and plural as it is, to recover its serenity, stability, and mutual respect in such a way as to ensure that ideas don’t divide or separate families and friends.”

Looking back on a “difficult” year for Spain, he reminded Catalan leaders and the newly-elected parliament to “face the problems that affect all Catalans, respecting their diversity and thinking responsibly in the common good.”

In an October speech, the king condemned what he called the “unacceptable disloyalty” of Catalan separatists.

Pro-independence lawmakers dominate the Catalan parliament after Thursday’s election.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy disbanded the previous parliament after Catalonia illegally held an independence referendum, leading to violence and nationwide chaos.

Rajoy was hoping Catalan voters would elect a new parliament that favors remaining united with Spain instead of looking to secede.

Catalonia President Carles Puigdemont fled to exile in Belgium after the October referendum. He has offered to hold talks with Rajoy, but will not return to Spain where he faces arrest.

Rajoy has so far refused to meet with Puigdemont, saying he wants to wait until the Catalan parliament elects its next regional president.

Catalonia, in northeast Spain, and its capital Barcelona are major tourist magnets. It has his own language and distinct culture. But the separatist crisis has hurt tourism and the regional economy.

Catalan separatists say the region is a powerful economic engine that drives Spain and have demanded more autonomy.

Those who want to stay united with Spain are afraid the region will sink into an economic abyss without the central government, its ties to the European Union, and its numerous existing bilateral relations.
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Outside the doors to the Moscow courthouse, the crowd of supporters, and reporters, swelled into the hundreds. Inside, one of Russia’s most famous theater directors was on trial for embezzlement. Just meters away, on a street corner, a young woman stood with a small sign: “Return our artist to us.”

Such are the times in Russia, where art – theater, literature, painting, music, film – has again become a political battleground, where left and right fight over values and culture with increasing intensity.

In President Vladimir Putin’s current term alone, the country’s cultural space has already been buffeted by an artist who nailed his scrotum to Red Square and the jailing of masked musicians whose collective sobriquet, Pussy Riot, became a byword for protest.

But for many observers, the fervor of debate and clashes in the past year over what constitutes art has been symptomatic of creeping authoritarianism under Putin and the conservative, nationalist, and sometimes religious agenda that may keep him in the Kremlin longer than any leader since Stalin.

A Russian film about the last tsar and his Polish mistress attracted angry protests and threats against cinema owners. An acclaimed director branded himself a “coward” and denounced his own TV spy series as “defending the regime.” And the prolific artistic director of Moscow’s avant-garde Gogol Center was charged with financial crimes after clashing publicly with Russia’s culture minister.

Under Putin, artists have gone from being “neutral” outsiders to being pulled into the country’s cultural struggles, says Marat Guelman, an influential Moscow gallery owner who once clashed with cultural authorities over artwork that satirized the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

“Now it’s not just enough to be for Putin,” Guelman says. “We’ve arrived at the moment in time when the administration doesn’t just want loyalty, not just those who have joined Putin. They want people who are united in their thinking with the administration. They want to work people who say: ‘We are patriots. We are for isolation. My creative work is against America, against liberals.'”

Keeping Things ‘Traditional’

As recently as a month before his August arrest, the Gogol Center’s Kirill Serebrennikov had clashed with outspoken Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky over a new ballet based on the life of famed Soviet dancer Rudolph Nureyev.

Serebrennikov’s production, to be staged at the Bolshoi Theater, alluded to Nureyev’s sexual orientation, and the Bolshoi director later announced a postponement. Though no official reason was given, Medinsky reportedly disapproved of the homosexual references in an echo of a controversial 2013 law criminalizing the propaganda of “nontraditional sexual relationships” to minors.

Serebrennikov’s detention on accusations of embezzling state funds for another project stunned Russia’s artistic community. Many saw Serebrennikov’s domestic and international accolades as sources of pride for the country’s rich artistic traditions.

It was Serebrennikov’s first appearance in court that drew hundreds to the Moscow street, many carrying signs and photographs and jeering the proceedings.

Before his detention, Serebrennikov was outspoken in his condemnation of the 2013 law and the detention of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov for allegedly planning terrorist acts in Crimea after its occupation by Russia in 2014. Serebrennikov was also vocal in his support of Pussy Riot, the performance-art group whose members served prison time over a music video criticizing Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church that was filmed inside a Moscow cathedral.

Serebrennikov’s arrest may turn out to be a watershed moment, according to John Freedman, who has been the Moscow Times’ theater critic since the English-language paper’s founding in 1992.

Russia’s creative classes “realize that the state’s choice to go after art through the way it is funded is a danger to everyone who engages in art in Russia,” Freedman said in an e-mail to RFE/RL. “The laws are a mess. It is virtually impossible for a theater manager, for example, to keep his theater running without breaking laws. This has been true for years and even decades.”

Not Just For Art’s Sake

Unlike during the Soviet era, when nearly all artists had to work under official auspices, Russian artists and cultural figures had relatively free rein during the tumultuous presidency of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and, until recently, Putin’s tenure. Even critics acknowledge that writers, painters, sculptors, and musicians could largely publish, paint, build, and perform more or less what they were inspired to do.

Early in Putin’s presidency, however, the Kremlin moved to take over the country’s TV networks, foreshadowing limits on the medium for artistic expression. The economic boom of the 2000s gave government agencies – the Culture Ministry, above all – more money to hand out to artists.

In the meantime, a donor class of uber-wealthy, well-connected businessmen invested in artistic projects that helped showcase the country’s talent. Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, founded by Dasha Zhukova and her billionaire ex-husband, gained renown in international circles for promoting pioneering artists in an avant-garde venue.

Established artists, such as conductor Valery Gergiyev, the venerated artistic director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, were lavished with state funds and support. Last year, Gergiyev’s orchestra was flown to the Syrian ruins of Palmyra to perform a live televised concert in celebration of Russian forces’ military successes there.

But other artists were openly scornful of perceived rigidity in the Putin era and groups like the notorious street-art group Voina embraced political protest as a form of performance art. Acts were already testing the limits of official tolerance, in particular with respect to the powerful Russian Orthodox Church.

Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, after four years as prime minister for his protege Dmitry Medvedev, was a tipping point for art and politics, Guelman says.

On the heels of major street protests following contentious parliamentary elections and with Putin poised to retake the Kremlin, Pussy Riot in February 2012 shot its now-famous video that sparked a landmark trial and landed three of its members in custody – two for prison terms.

One year later, with the Kremlin-backed United Russia party dominant, lawmakers passed the law on gay “propaganda” and another law that indirectly targeted some forms of artistic expression. The other, on “offending believers,” made it a criminal offense to insult individuals’ religious sensibilities.

Such legislation prompted a backlash not only within Russia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and artistic communities but also in the West, where some leaders boycotted the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.

‘Catalyzing’ Effect

Guelman was one of many artists who mocked the Sochi Olympics, which were the costliest in history and dogged by accusations of corruption. Guelman was fired in the run-up to the games after lampooning their preparations in an exhibition at a museum in the Urals city of Perm.

Guelman, who now spends most of his time abroad, was also an outspoken supporter of Pussy Riot. He says their cathedral performance came at a moment when the country had experienced a burst of liberal optimism under Medvedev and was wary of compromise with the government.

Pussy Riot changed that, he says. “They created something in direct contradiction to Putin.”

“You also have to understand what happened at that moment in time. It was a moment when apathy, among our circles, was great – that there was nothing to be done: ‘Putin is bad, but he’s not going anywhere, and we can’t do anything about it,'” Guelman explains. “And yet these girls managed to do something.” 

Pussy Riot, in turn, inspired one of Russia’s most shocking performance artists. Pyotr Pavlensky made his own name sewing his mouth shut to draw attention to Pussy Riot’s plight, nailing his scrotum to the cobblestones outside the Kremlin to protest public indifference, and otherwise challenging the government and Russian society.

“The authorities themselves catalyzed this with their punitive action against the group Pussy Riot,” Pavlensky told RFE/RL’s Russian Service in 2016. Earlier this year, he and his partner fled Russia and sought political asylum in France.

Mark Teeter, a Moscow-based Russian-language professor and longtime TV critic for the Moscow Times, says artists of an earlier generation who have remained resolute in their contempt for the authorities include Yury Shevchuk, front man for the rock band DDT.

“Various artists have refused to be intimidated, and shown it by more conventional means than nailing their scrotums to something downtown,” Teeter says. “Rock artists of my generation have kept on doing what they do with undisguised contempt for” Putin.

While Putin has weighed in periodically on far-reaching cultural legislation — he endorsed the gay “propaganda” law and called Pussy Riot “talented girls” — it’s Medinsky who has led the charge against art deemed inappropriate.

The Culture Ministry is among the largest sources of funding for artistic projects, so its ability to approve or influence directors, gallery owners, or performers is unmatched. (The embezzlement charges against Serebrennikov stem from a project involving a Shakespeare play that received state money.)

At least one prominent director has openly lamented a willingness — his own and others’ — to sacrifice artistry in the service of the Kremlin. After his TV series Sleepers debuted, lionizing Russian security agents battling CIA sleeper cells, director Yury Bykov apologized, saying he had “betrayed” his fans by “defending the regime.” The series was funded by the Culture Ministry and produced by Fyodor Bondarchuk, a filmmaker who is also on United Russia’s top council.

In the meantime, religious and nationalist groups have also stepped into the culture wars, taking on the feature film Matilda, which depicts a romantic affair of Tsar Nicholas II, who has been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. One group calling itself Christian State-Holy Rus threatened this year to burn down cinemas if they showed the film, and director Aleksei Uchitel’s office in St. Petersburg was hit with Molotov cocktails.

Three years before he ended up in a Moscow jail cell, Serebrennikov gave an interview to online culture website Colta.ru in which he was blunt about his country’s future.

Russia “is an unbelievably dark and ignorant country,” he warned, “and it’s only getting darker.”
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Turkey dismissed more than 2,700 employees from its public service sector Sunday – the latest firings in a widescale crackdown since a failed military coup in July 2016.

A total of 2,756 people, including academics, soldiers, and military personnel were dismissed on Sunday, accused of links to what Ankara has labeled as terror groups, according to the Official Gazette.

In a separate emergency decree Sunday, Turkey the country’s defense procurement agency was ordered to report to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead of the defense ministry. Seventeen Turkish institutions, including two newspapers, were also ordered shut.

Under emergency rule introduced last year following the botched military coup, more than 50,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 others have lost their jobs over suspicion of links to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Turkey claims that Gulen and his movement, which it calls the “Fethullah Terrorist Organization” was behind the failed coup in July 2016 and has asked the U.S. to extradite him. Gulen has denied all involvement.

 
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The United States and other Western countries swiftly condemned a move in Kosovo to scrap a war crimes court, warning that if successful, it would hamper efforts for Euro-Atlantic integration.

“It will be considered by the United States as a stab in the back. Kosovo will be choosing isolation instead of cooperation, and I have to say we would hate to turn the clock back for Kosovo on progress when it has come so far,” U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo Greg Delawie said Friday.

The United States has been a key ally and financial backer of Kosovo since it broke away from Serbia and then declared independence in 2008.

“Tonight could be Kosovo’s most dangerous night since the war,’’ British Ambassador Ruairi O’Connell said.

​Lawmakers’ petition

Both ambassadors were at Kosovo’s Parliament building Friday. They and other Western ambassadors met Saturday behind closed doors with Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to discuss the issue, after 43 lawmakers moved to present a petition by former fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which seeks to amend the 2015 law that governs the court.

Haradinaj said Saturday that he would respect any decision by the parliament.

Isa Mustafa, Kosovo’s former prime minister and an opposition leader, said the proposal was “devastating for our state and very damaging for justice.”

Lawmakers from the governing coalition, which holds a majority, are pressing for a vote to abolish the court. The vote was scheduled for Friday, but it failed twice because of opposition from other parties.

Parliament speaker Kadri Veseli said lawmakers would continue to attempt to vote on the issue in the coming days. The body is now on recess, however, and this issue most likely will not be taken up until sometime in January.

Kosovo Specialist Chambers

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers court, based in The Hague, was set up as a result of U.S. and European pressure on Kosovo’s government to confront alleged war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) against ethnic Serbs.

Former fighters in Kosovo’s independence movement allegedly have collected more than 16,000 signatures for a petition on the law, seeking to extend its jurisdiction to include Serbs, their former adversaries in a war for independence.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi said on Twitter, “It’s important that everyone continues to be confident about Kosovo’s future and its democratic processes. Kosovo’s society and leadership remain fully committed to democracy, rule of law, reconciliation, dialogue and relations on an equal and fair basis.”

Thaçi, Haradinaj and Veseli are former KLA commanders.

Against abolishing court

On Saturday, U.S. Ambassador Delawie reiterated on Twitter calls not to abolish the court.

Critics of the court, including former KLA fighters, consider it to be discriminating against Albanians. They insist it would punish victims rather than perpetrators, referring to the Serbian campaign against Kosovo that killed about 10,000 Albanian civilians before NATO started airstrikes on Serbia that forced Belgrade to withdraw its troops in 1999.

Unwise move

But Daniel Serwer, a Balkans analyst and director of the Conflict Management Program, told VOA’s Albanian service Saturday that it would be very unwise to change the mandate of the court.

“Kosovo is a sovereign state, it’s a democracy, and parliamentarians can open any issue they want, but that doesn’t mean it’s wise to open those issues,” said Serwer, a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

He maintains those who are pushing these moves are trying to escape accountability.

“If there are people who were responsible for any wrongdoing, they should be brought to justice,” Serwer said. “Just because you flew the flag of protecting human rights and protecting Albanians from an autocratic and brutal Serbian regime doesn’t mean that you never did anything wrong in the way that you conducted that fight.”

Court review

The court was expected to review accusations that KLA fighters were involved in killings, illegal detentions, persecution and abductions of Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians suspected as collaborators with the Serbian regime during and after the 1998-99 conflict.

Serwer said the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which closed its doors this month, brought to justice Serbs responsible for crimes, but he notes the Kosovo court would handle alleged wrongdoings that happened after the formal hostilities were over.

The separate U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague convicted some Serbian military commanders for actions against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo during Belgrade’s intervention into the conflict.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008 and is recognized by more than 110 countries, including most Western nations, though not by Serbia itself, Serbia’s key ally Russia, or China.
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Italy’s ruling Democratic Party (PD), hit by internal divisions and a banking scandal, is continuing to slide in opinion polls, with a new survey on Saturday putting it more than six percentage points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.

The survey by the Ixe agency, commissioned by Huffington Post Italia, came days before parliament is expected to be dissolved to make way for elections in March.

It gave the center-left PD just 22.8 percent of voter support, down almost five points in the last two months, compared with 29.0 percent for 5-Star, which has gained almost two points in the same period.

Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy!) is given 16.2 percent, with its right-wing allies Northern League and Brothers of Italy at 12.1 percent and 5.0 percent, respectively.

This bloc is expected to win the most seats in the election but not enough for an absolute majority, resulting in a hung parliament.

With the PD’s support eroding in virtually all opinion polls, several political commentators have speculated that its leader, Matteo Renzi, may choose or be forced to announce he will not be the party’s candidate for prime minister at the election.

Renzi has given no indication so far he will take this step.

The PD has split under his leadership, with critics complaining he has dragged the party to the right.

Breakaway groups united this month to form a new left-wing party called Free and Equal (LeU), which now has 7.3 percent support, according to Ixe.

The PD’s popularity seems to have also been hurt by a parliamentary commission looking into the collapse of 10 Italian banks in the past two years.

The commission’s findings have put the PD on the defensive, allowing the opposition to claim a conflict of interest involving one of Renzi’s closest allies who was active in trying to save a bank where her father was a board member.
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Macedonia’s main opposition party, the rightist VMRO-DPMNE, formally replaced its leader, Nikola Gruevski, on Saturday and appointed Hristijan Mickoski, a technocrat, as his successor.

Gruevski, 47, resigned this month following an election defeat last year and unrest that rocked the small Balkan country in April.

In his speech to the party’s convention on Saturday, Gruevski said that a key reason for VMRO-DPMNE’s fall from power was his refusal to yield to what he described as international and domestic pressure to accept a compromise in a dispute with Greece.

Macedonia, which won independence in 1991 from then-federal Yugoslavia, has made little progress toward European Union and NATO membership because of a long-running dispute with Greece, which claims Macedonia’s name represents a territorial claim to its province with the same name.

“We wanted a fair compromise and a name solution, but not under dictate,” Gruevski said.

Gruevski’s successor, Mickoski, 41, a relative novice in politics, became VMRO-DPMNE secretary-general earlier this year.

He served in Gruevski’s government as the general manager of ELEM, Macedonia’s state-owned power plants managing company.
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