Two French tourists are feared kidnapped in the West African nation of Benin after they failed to return from a game drive in a wildlife reserve and their guide was later found dead, authorities said Sunday.

The disappearance has raised fears they could have been abducted by Islamic extremists who have become increasingly active over the border in Burkina Faso. There are worries the militants could be infiltrating northern Benin and neighboring Togo as well.

The French tourists were last seen with their guide Wednesday when they went into the Pendjari National Park, according to the organization that oversees the reserve in the country’s north.

Two days later the body of an African man who had been fatally shot was found in the park. Authorities in Benin identified him as the French tourists’ guide.

The French government is in contact with the tourists’ families but would not release their identities for security reasons, said a French Foreign Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be publicly named.

Authorities in Benin have been increasingly concerned that the growing instability in neighboring Burkina Faso could spread.

“We’re trying to secure our borders so that we don’t get any of these members of armed groups in our country,” Army Chief of Staff Col. Fructueux Gbaguidi said just a week ago.

Pendjari National Park makes up part of a vast wildlife area that stretches across Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. The entire area is home to most of the world’s remaining West African lion population.
…

At least 41 people were killed as a result of a fiery crash landing of a Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SSJ100) passenger plane at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport Sunday evening.

Speaking to reporters early Monday, Elena Markovskaya, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said that 41 people died in the accident and 37 people survived.

Two teenagers and at least one member of the crew were among the dead, the Investigative Committee said. One American also may have died.

The SSJ100 operated by national airline Aeroflot had 73 passengers and five crew members on board when it made a hard emergency landing. Video on Russian television showed fire bursting from the plane’s underside as it touched down.

The Russian news agency Interfax reports that the plane may have been struck by lightning, necessitating its return to the airport. Interfax says the landing caused one landing gear unit to break, sending debris into a wing fuel tank and sparking the blaze.

Russian Emergency Ministry said it does not plan to ground other SSJ100 planes following the Sunday’s crash.

​The plane departed Moscow airport at 18:03 local time (11:03 EDT) for the northern city of Murmansk. Shortly after takeoff, the crew sent a distress signal to air traffic control, saying the plane had some technical issues and required the emergency landing. 

Passengers were evacuated through emergency slides. People waiting inside the terminal were able to see the emergency landing and ensuing fire. 

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal investigation into the incident, although the reason for the crash is not yet known.

Sheremetyevo Airport was closed for a short period of time and inbound flights were forced into holding patterns and some diverted to other Moscow airports.

The plane’s manufacturer, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, said the aircraft had received maintenance at the beginning of April. Aeroflot said the pilot had some 1,400 hours of flying experience with SSJ100.

The Sunday’s incident was the second fatal crash for the Sukhoi Superjet. In 2012, an SSJ100, on a demonstration flight in Indonesia, crashed into a mountain, killing all 45 aboard.
…

Top diplomats from the United States, Russia and other nations which border the Arctic meet in Finland on Monday to discuss policies governing the polar region, as tensions grow over how to deal with global warming and access to mineral wealth.

Countries have been scrambling to claim territory or, like China, boost their presence in the region as thawing ice raises the possibility of exploiting much of the world’s remaining undiscovered reserves of oil and gas, plus huge deposits of minerals such as zinc, iron and rare earth metals.

With time-saving Arctic shipping routes also opening up, the Pentagon warned on May 2 of the risk of Chinese submarines in the Arctic.

That followed a sharp statement by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – who will give a speech at the Arctic Council meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland on May 6 – rejecting a role for China in shaping Arctic policy.

“The U.S. has realized that they cannot leave the Russians and Chinese to carve up the Arctic as they see fit,” said Niklas Granholm, deputy director of studies at Sweden’s Defense Research Agency.

The Arctic Council is made up of the United States, Canada, Russia, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, with the region’s indigenous populations also represented.

China has had observer status at the Council since 2013, and has been increasingly active in the region, outlining a plan for a “Polar Silk Road” last year.

Russia has reopened military bases closed after the Cold War and is modernizing its powerful Northern Fleet. In response, the U.S. has reconstituted its Second Fleet, whose area of responsibility will include the North Pole.

The Arctic Council’s remit excludes military matters, but participants have already clashed, with the Washington Post reporting that the U.S. had refused to sign off on a final declaration, disagreeing with the wording on climate change.

Melting the Ice

“There are different tones with which different countries want to approach climate change,” Finland’s Arctic Ambassador Aleksi Harkonen said.

“It’s not about whether climate change can be mentioned or not. It will be there, in the final declaration.”

Surface air temperatures in the Arctic are warming at twice the rate of the rest of the globe, and the ocean could be ice-free during the summer months within 25 years, according to some researchers.

That could have a profound effect on the world’s weather as well as on wildlife and indigenous populations in the polar region.

President Donald Trump has frequently expressed skepticism about whether global warming is a result of human activity and has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.

That agreement aimed to limit a rise in average global temperatures to “well below” 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times by 2100.

Another flashpoint in Finland could be the meeting between Pompeo and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will discuss the political crisis in Venezuela.

Russia has accused the United States of trying to engineer a coup against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, one of its closest allies in Latin America.

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton told Russia to stop interfering in what he called America’s “hemisphere.”

India, South Korea, Singapore, Italy and Japan have observer status at the Arctic Council in addition to China.
…

Russia’s Tass news agency says at least 13 people have been killed and several others injured after a plane caught fire as it made an emergency landing in Moscow.

Media reports said the Aeroflot plane had just taken off from the Sheremetyevo airport Sunday, bound for the northern city of Murmansk, with 78 people on board.

The cause of the fire is not known.

The Interfax news agency said the crew aboard the Sukhoi Superjet-100 had issued a distress signal shortly after takeoff.
…

Polls have opened in North Macedonia where voters will choose a new president in a runoff vote that will be watched as closely for turnout as it will be for either candidate.

More than 3,400 polling stations opened at 7 a.m. on May 5. 

Stevo Pendarovski and Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova face off in the balloting after a virtual draw — 42.8 percent to 42.2 percent respectively — in the first round on April 21.

That close outcome has put a spotlight on the Balkan nation’s ethnic Albanian minority, who strongly supported Blerim Reka in the first round, giving him 10.6 percent of the vote.

With Reka out of the runoff race, a lot will depend on whether his supporters even decide to cast ballots, and if so, for whom.

If fewer than 40 percent of the country’s 1.8 million eligible voters show up for the runoff, the election automatically becomes invalid.

About one-quarter of the population is ethnic Albanian, and overall turnout in the first round was just 41.8 percent.

“I am calling on all of our citizens to go to the polls and vote by your own choice, but vote for the future of our country and of our children,” Prime Minister Zoran Zaev urged Macedonians in a video address.

Low-key campaign

The campaign itself has been rather low-key by Macedonian standards, with virtually none of the violence, dirty tricks, and sharp nationalist rhetoric that has marked previous votes.

While the president has a largely ceremonial role, the position does have some powers to veto legislation and Zaev has warned that the outcome of the runoff could trigger early parliamentary elections.

The race itself between the two academics has been dominated by debate on issues such as integration into Western structures and a struggling economy, plagued by stubbornly high unemployment at more than 20 percent.

Pendarovski, a 55-year-old former political-science professor, has strongly supported the so-called Prespa deal signed with Greece last year to change the country’s name, while Siljanovska-Davkova, the country’s first female candidate and a university professor, has been critical of it, though the opposition has said it will not cancel the accord.

The signing of the historic agreement with Greece changed the country’s name to North Macedonia and ended a decades-long dispute that had blocked the Balkan state’s path to NATO and the European Union.

Pro-Western Pendarovski is supported by the ruling Social Democrats. Siljanovska-Davkova, 63, ran as an independent but is now backed by the main conservative opposition VMRO-DPMNE party.

If turnout fails to reach the minimum requirement, constitutional experts say a completely new vote must be called within 40 days.

During the interim period, the head of the National Assembly, Talat Xhaferi, would assume the function of president.

Outgoing President Gjorge Ivanov was constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive five-year term.

Once a part of Yugoslavia, North Macedonia left Belgrade’s umbrella when it seceded peacefully in 1991.

But it veered close to civil war in 2001 when ethnic Albanians launched an armed insurgency seeking greater autonomy, and subsequent elections have been stormy.

Polling stations will remain open until 7 p.m. local time.
…

British Prime Minister Theresa May says her Conservative government and the opposition Labour Party have a duty to strike a compromise Brexit agreement to end months of political deadlock over Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, May told Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: “Let’s do a deal.”

She said a cross-party compromise was not her first choice, but “we have to find a way to break the deadlock.”

The Conservatives are desperate to move forward after losing hundreds of positions in last week’s local elections. Labour also suffered losses as voters punished both main parties for the Brexit impasse.

But the prospect of the government compromising and accepting Labour’s demand for close economic ties with the EU has infuriated pro-Brexit Conservatives, who are demanding May’s resignation.
…

Anti-government protesters marched in France for a 25th straight week Saturday but in significantly smaller numbers than during the yellow vest movement’s first months or for a May Day rally that attracted tens of thousands of participants.

Several dozen people demonstrated at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport to denounce privatization plans. Protests were also held in Paris and other cities around France, including Nice, Marseille and Lyon, where environmentalists and yellow vest protesters joined forces. 

The Interior Ministry counted a total of 2,600 participants at three events in Paris and 18,900 in all of France, a low for Saturday protest marches, according to French media reports. 

Security was visibly lighter than on Wednesday, when French officials deployed 7,400 officers from around the country to police the annual May Day march organized by labor unions.

During that march, clusters of protesters wearing masks and hoods set trash bin fires, vandalized property and threw rocks at riot police, who responded with tear gas, rubber projectiles and stun grenades.

The leaderless yellow vest movement sprang up in mid-November with workers who rely on their cars camping out at traffic circles to protest a hike in fuel taxes. They wore the high-visibility vests all French drivers must keep in their cars for emergencies. 

It quickly expanded to encompass a range of economic issues and policies of French President Emmanuel Macron that were seen as favoring the rich.

Macron responded last month with measures that included tax cuts for middle-class workers and plans to close France’s elite school for top civil servants, while defending his pro-business policies. 

Three lists of yellow vest candidates are running in a May 26 election for France’s representatives to the European Union parliament.
…

VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump applauded Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini’s announcement that his country plans to increase its military spending to 2% of its GDP in the next three years, as well as purchase U.S.-made F-16 war planes.

A joint statement issued by the two leaders after their White House meeting Friday said the U.S. and Slovakia “seek to build on this and deepen our defense cooperation by concluding a mutually beneficial Defense Cooperation Agreement.”

Earlier, speculation about terms of a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement, or DCA, had stirred controversy in the Central European country. The Slovak foreign ministry described as lacking in knowledge and short on facts allegations that a defense cooperation agreement with the U.S. would lead to encroachment upon Slovakia’s sovereignty.

In contrast to protests heard in certain quarters in Slovakia, a number of nations in Central Europe have shown an eagerness to enter into defense cooperation agreements with the U.S.

Last month, a bilateral agreement was signed between the U.S. and Hungary on the sidelines of events marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO, after more than a year and a half of negotiations.

In an interview with VOA, Laszlo Szabo, Hungary’s ambassador to the U.S., described the agreement as both strategic and tactical in nature and as one that sets the terms under which American forces and other foreign troops can operate in Hungary.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic is negotiating an agreement that is “quite similar,” according to Hynek Kmonicek, the country’s chief diplomat in the U.S. Czechs regard the U.S. as the “backbone of NATO,” he told VOA, adding “if you ask people how they feel about [the] 2% of GDP spent [on military expenditures], it usually has 80% [popular] support, which is quite extraordinary.”

Among Central European countries, Poland is seen as the most enthusiastic when it comes to building ever-closer ties with the United States in military and security affairs.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said in an interview with VOA’s Russian Service that Poland realizes relying on its own defense forces will not be sufficient when it comes to a security guarantee, even as the Polish government is working to strengthen its military forces, including increasing the number of soldiers. The minister said the “military presence of our allies on our soil is crucially important.”  

Not that Poland feels a direct military threat from Russia at the moment, said Czaputowicz, but from what Poland can see, Russia is prone to taking advantage of situations when it “senses a weakness; like in Donbas, like in Crimea,” referring to Russian attempts to annex territory in Ukraine. Poland, he said, plans to increase its defense spending to up to 2.5% of its GDP.  The relative absence of an imminent military threat that Poland currently feels, as Czaputowicz sees it, is precisely due to Russia’s calculation of both how the country itself and its allies will react.

As negotiations between the U.S. and Slovakia on a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement unfold, Rachel Ellehuus, a former Pentagon official and current deputy director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), cautions that the U.S. Congress has signaled that it will not allow funds from the European Deterrence Initiative to be spent in countries that have not signed a defense cooperation agreement with the U.S. She also points out that the guarantee of “assured access” by U.S. military to signatory countries’ facilities could be a sticking point with certain allies.

That said, Ellehuus describes bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreements as “pragmatic measures to enhance NATO deterrence and defense, while also ensuring needed protections for U.S. troops.

“Think of them as legal agreements that strengthen the provisions in the NATO SOFA,” she said, referring to Status of Forces Agreements among NATO member states.

From an operational angle, “mitigating Russia’s time-distance advantages” over the U.S. and allies, should conflict break out, is crucial to deterrence and defense, according to Billy Fabian, a Research Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CSBA).

 
…

Britain’s governing Conservative Party said Saturday that it is ready to compromise to secure a Brexit deal after suffering its worst result in local elections for more than 20 years.

In contests for local authorities across England, the party lost about 1,300 seats, a quarter of its total, as voters punished the government for the U.K’s Brexit impasse. The opposition Labour Party also suffered losses as voters switched to smaller parties and independent candidates.

Almost three years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the date and terms of Brexit remain uncertain following months of gridlock in Parliament.

Many Conservatives blame Prime Minister Theresa May for failing to deliver Brexit and want her to quit. This week’s electoral drubbing increased pressure on May, who was heckled at a Conservative event Friday by a party member shouting “Why don’t you resign? We don’t want you.”

Both the Conservatives and Labour said the message coming from voters was: Get on with Brexit.

The parties plan more meetings next week to try to agree on departure terms that could win the support of Parliament.

Talks so far have become stuck on divisions between the Conservatives and Labour over how close an economic relationship to seek with the EU after Brexit. Labour says the U.K. should remain in a customs union with the bloc to avoid barriers to trade. The government wants a looser relationship with the EU that would let Britain strike new trade deals around the world.

Environment Secretary Matt Hancock said he remained skeptical about a customs union, but the government needed “to be in the mood for compromise.”

“The mood of the nation is get on, deliver Brexit and then move on,” he told the BBC.

Others argue that the message coming from voters is more complex. The local elections saw a big surge for the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats and the Greens, parties that support a new referendum with the option of remaining in the EU.

Labour lawmaker Lisa Nandy said both main parties had suffered because voters were “losing faith with the system as a whole.”

“People are really, really frustrated about Brexit, but the major frustration comes from the perceived inability of the two major parties — including Labour — to get our act together and start dealing with the very many and real problems people have got,” she said.

The Conservatives and Labour are bracing for worse results in May 23 elections for the European Parliament, where they face opposition from new forces on the political scene — the anti-EU Brexit Party and the pro-European Change UK.

 
…

European and American investigators have broken up one of the world’s largest online criminal marketplaces for drugs, hacking tools and financial-theft wares in raids in the United States, Germany and Brazil.

Three German men, ages 31, 22 and 29, were arrested after the raids in three southern states on allegations they operated the so-called “Wall Street Market” darknet platform, which hosted about 5,400 sellers and more than 1 million customer accounts, Frankfurt prosecutor Georg Ungefuk told reporters in Wiesbaden on Friday.

A Brazilian man, the site’s alleged moderator, was also charged.

The three Germans, identified in U.S. court documents as Tibo Lousee, Jonathan Kalla and Klaus-Martin Frost, face drug charges in Germany on allegations they administrated the platform where cocaine, heroin and other drugs, as well as forged documents and other illegal material, were sold.

They have also been charged in the United States with conspiring to launder money and distribute illegal drugs, according to a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court.

“The charges filed in Germany and the United States will significantly disrupt the illegal sale of drugs on the darknet,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan White told reporters in Germany. “We believe that Wall Street Market recently became the world’s largest darknet marketplace for contraband including narcotics, hacking tools, illegal services and stolen financial data.”

Two-year operation

Ungefuk said Wall Street Market was at least the second biggest, refusing to name others for fear of jeopardizing other investigations.

In the nearly two-year operation involving European police agency Europol and authorities in the Netherlands as well as the U.S. and Germany, investigators pinpointed the three men as administrators of the platform on the darknet. It is part of the internet often used by criminals that is hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through anonymity-providing tools, such as the Tor browser.

Transactions were conducted using cryptocurrencies, and the suspects took commissions ranging from 2% to 6%, Ungefuk said.

The site trafficked documents such as identity papers and driver’s licenses. But an estimated 60% or more of the business was drug-related, he said.

​Caught during ‘exit scam’

Authorities swept in quickly after the platform was switched into a “maintenance mode” April 23, and the suspects allegedly began transferring funds used on the platform to themselves in a so-called “exit scam,” Ungefuk said.

The U.S. Department of Justice said the administrators took about $11 million in the exit scam from escrow and user accounts.

The U.S. identified a fourth defendant as Marcos Paulo De Oliveira-Annibale, 29, of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was not clear if he had been arrested, and federal police in Brazil wouldn’t comment.

Annibale, who went by the moniker “MED3LIN” online, faces federal drug distribution and money laundering charges in the United States for allegedly acting as a moderator on the site in disputes between vendors and their customers. He also allegedly promoted Wall Street Market on prominent websites such as Reddit, the Justice Department said.

Brazilian authorities searched his home Thursday after investigators linked his online persona to pictures he posted of himself years ago, U.S. officials said.

Impact will be short-lived

A University of Manchester criminology researcher who follows activity on dark web markets, Patrick Shortis, said the takedown was widely anticipated after Annibale leaked his credentials and the market’s true internet address online.

Knocking out Wall Street Market is unlikely to have a lasting impact on online criminal markets, though law enforcement officials make it clear they are going after sellers and customers, Shortis said.

In Los Angeles, two drug suppliers were arrested, and authorities confiscated about $1 million cash, weapons and drugs in raids. They were only identified by their online monikers, “Platinum45” and “Ladyskywalker,” and characterized as “major drug traffickers” dealing methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Other darknet busts

After the first big takedown of such a marketplace, Silk Road in 2013, it took overall trade about four to five months to recuperate, Shortis said. And after law enforcement took out Hansa and AlphaBay in 2017, it took about a month, he said.

Shortis said one threat he does see to the market, in the short term at least, are so-called denial of service cyberattacks that effectively knock web servers offline by flooding them with traffic.

“An extortionist is currently targeting Empire and Nightmare, who are both in the running to replace Wall Street as the top market,” he said.

The raids in Germany culminated Thursday with the seizure of servers, while federal police confiscated 550,000 euros ($615,000) in cash, Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies, hard drives, and other evidence in multiple raids.

Because of the clandestine nature of the operation and the difficulty of tracing cryptocurrencies, Ungefuk said it was difficult to assess the overall volume of business conducted by the darknet group. But he said that “we’re talking about profits in the millions at least.”
…

Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, returns to politics on Saturday with a vow to resist any new referendum on independence from the United Kingdom.

The Conservatives in pro-EU Scotland have seen their poll support slip over their handling of Brexit, coinciding with Davidson’s six-month maternity leave, while support for the pro-independence Scottish National Party has risen.

On Friday the results of elections for seats on local councils in England, the biggest of the UK’s four nations, provided stark evidence of how the fallout from Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union has undermined the two biggest parties, Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.

Meanwhile, support for Scottish independence has risen to its highest point in the past four years, largely driven by voters who want to remain in the European Union, according to a YouGov poll published in the Times last week.

“I’ll make a firm guarantee now: If I am elected Scotland’s next first minister, there will be no more constitutional games and no more referenda. We’ve had enough to last a lifetime,” Davidson will tell delegates at the Scottish Conservative conference, according to advance comments.

Scotland, England’s political partner for more than 300 years and part of the United Kingdom, rejected independence by 10 percentage points in a 2014 referendum. But differences over Brexit have strained relations with the government in London.

Davidson’s straight-talking politics has made her a favorite of moderate Conservatives and given her high public approval ratings, while infighting has whittled away the authority of the prime minister and the standing of some of her rivals.

May addressed the conference in Aberdeen on Friday.

On returning to work this week after giving birth to baby Finn, Davidson, 40, again said she does not want to be prime minister but speculation continues to swirl — despite her currently not having a seat in the Westminster parliament but sitting as a member of Scotland’s devolved assembly.

In an interview with Scottish politics magazine Holyrood, she was characteristically candid about the impact of motherhood and the kind of changes it has meant to her life, describing the effects of “bone-crushing” sleep-deprivation.

She said she had put her job before family and friends in the past, but being a mother had changed her priorities. “I don’t think for one second (my job) will come before Finn.”

 
…

Turkish prosecutors are carrying out 32 investigations into the narrow opposition victory last month in Istanbul’s mayoral election. The investigations come as the ruling AKP intensifies calls for another vote, amid fears of political and economic chaos.

Prosecutors are looking into 100 voting stations in three Istanbul districts, which the opposition CHP won.

CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu narrowly won the Istanbul vote, ending nearly 25 years of rule by the AKP and its Islamist predecessors. The result has been subject to numerous partial recounts, which reduced his margin of victory to around 14,000 votes.

The judicial probes have been seized upon by AKP, which is petitioning Turkey’s Supreme Election Board, or YSK, to repeat the election.

“Our appeal to the YSK is founded on the belief that there was an organized plot in the elections,” deputy AKP head Ali İhsan Yavuz told a news conference Thursday. “[Prosecutor] investigations have confirmed what we have claimed.”

The YSK is composed of mostly appointees by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish president on one occasion called for the result to be accepted and for the country to come together to face security and economic challenges.

MHP ‘outburst’

Erdogan’s junior coalition political partner in parliament, the MHP, is taking a more robust approach. MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, in a statement this week, demanded the vote be repeated, claiming the country’s security was at stake. 

“The outburst by MHP leader and Erdogan’s stalwart ally, Mr. Bahceli, is the new variable,” said analysts Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. Yesilada says the variable “needs to be added to the witches’ brew of factors which will motivate Erdogan’s decision on how much pressure to apply on the YSK to rule against CHP Mayor-elect Mr. Imamoglu.”

With the AKP having lost control of most of Turkey’s most important cities in April’s local elections, Bahceli is increasingly challenging Erdogan.

“Bahceli openly demanded a repeat of Istanbul elections, adding that his party shall only recognize the YSK’s final verdict if it satisfies the conscience of the nation,” said Yesilada. “This sentence, too, implies that in case of HEC [High Election Council] ruling in favor of Imamoglu, MHP will end the coalition.”

Stung by Bahceli’s attack, Erdogan took a more robust stance Thursday, confidently predicting a win in any Istanbul revote.

Renewed CHP success

Erdogan’s widely perceived lack of enthusiasm for a new election, however, could be explained by an awareness that victory is far from assured.

“The AKP of the past, I don’t think it is anymore,” said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

“I really don’t see anymore the mobilization and enthusiasm that distinguished AKP itself from other parties,” he added. “To the contrary, the CHP, which a lot of us left for dead or at least in a deep coma, found in itself sparks of life, if you will.”

Ozel says a vital part of the CHP’s success is Imamoglu, who successfully bridged the deep political polarization of Turkish politics by reaching out to AKP voters. Coupled with an economy in recession, near-record high unemployment, and food inflation at more than 30 percent, the AKP is seen as facing considerable electoral challenges.

In a possible sign of the magnitude of the challenge posed by any revote, the AKP’s defeated candidate, Binali Yildirim, appeared to rule himself out of the running in a new election.

Analysts point out that Erdogan is aware of the political damage of the Istanbul defeat. Probably the Turkish president’s most celebrated political asset is a reputation of electoral invincibility, carved out over 15 years of unbridled success. The loss of Turkey’s largest city has changed that perception.

Pressure on Erdogan

The political damage to Erdogan, should there be a second defeat in an Istanbul vote, would be considerable.

“There is a fair possibility he will lose the elections,” said political scientist Cengiz Akar. “But knowing him since 1994, he will do his utmost to win those elections. This is why we will have an extremely tense period between any [YSK] board decision to hold the elections and the date of the polls,” Akar added.

Analysts say international investors share those concerns with the Turkish lira under pressure. The currency has fallen more than 10 percent since the start of the year and could face further declines if investors run to the exits over a new Istanbul vote, amid fears of high political tension.

Turkey’s YSK could rule on a new ballot as early as next week. It would be a decision widely seen as one of the most important and far-reaching in recent times. 
…

A senior Russian diplomat is confirming that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meet next week in Finland at a time of simmering tensions between the two countries over the crisis in Venezuela.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying Friday by state news agency TASS that the meeting has been set up.

Reports say the pair will meet on the sidelines of the Arctic Council ministerial session on Monday and Tuesday in the city of Rovaniemi.

The unrest in Venezuela is likely to be a key point of discussion. The United States views President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election last year as illegitimate and has recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president. Russia is backing Maduro.

 
…

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has begun what is expected to be a fierce and protracted fight against extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on charges of stealing and leaking sensitive U.S. government documents. Assange told a British court Thursday he does not wish to be extradited for “doing journalism that has won many awards and protected people.” VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
…

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel are conducting separate visits to Africa this week, the latest in a flurry of visits by European leaders and officials as Western states look to expand their engagement on issues like trade, migration and security.

Chancellor Merkel is visiting Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, and pledged more than $68 million to support police and security services. More than 1,000 German troops are deployed in West Africa as part of United Nations peacekeeping and European Union training missions to defeat Islamist terrorism.

“We from the European side have to become faster with our commitment,” Merkel told reporters after meeting Burkina Faso’s President Roch Marc Christian Kabore Wednesday.

Great Britain

Meanwhile Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is in the region to launch a new diplomatic push, announcing plans to open new embassies in Niger and Chad and investing $5.2 million in English language teaching.

“The economic opportunities we see right now in Africa are tremendous, with enormous potential to grow. We must not see African nations as recipients of our charity, but rather as partners and destinations for our investment and trade,” Hunt told an audience in Ghana earlier this week.

Much of the region is Francophone with close historical links to the former colonial power. But Paul Melly, with the London-based policy institute Chatham House, says Britain is not trying to muscle in.

“I think the one thing it’s not is an attempt to outcompete France. All European countries are aware that they need to develop links with a continent that is fast-growing in economic terms, in population terms. And it has a major impact in terms of issues such as migration,” Melly told VOA.

​France

French President Emmanuel Macron signed investment deals worth $2.2 billion with Kenya during a March visit to East Africa, a region with closer historical links to Britain.

Melly says London is looking to export its financial services skills after it leaves the European Union and tries to carve a new role in the global economy.

“Those skills are things actually that rather tend to compliment the things that other European players are doing.”

China is Africa’s biggest trade partner and investor in infrastructure financing. But there is a growing wariness.

“Very often, China will make a contribution in terms of funding big infrastructure things that some other partners feel cautious about doing. But often, this is on soft loan terms, which down the line produces a heavy debt obligation,” Melly says.

​United States

American companies are the biggest source of foreign direct investment in Africa, and the U.S. government is the continent’s biggest aid donor. White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump visited Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast last month as part of a project to provide support to 50 million women in developing countries by 2025.

“We believe that investing in women is smart development policy, and it is smart business. It is also in our security interest. Because women, when they are empowered, foster peace and stability,” Trump told reporters during the trip.

Analysts say the race to build economic and diplomatic clout on the continent is gathering pace.
…

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to meet next week with his Russian counterpart as a dispute between Washington and Moscow intensifies over Venezuela.

A senior State Department official says Pompeo and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will resume an as-yet unproductive discussion on Venezuela when they are both in Finland for an Arctic Council meeting. The two men traded warnings over the situation in Venezuela in a telephone call Wednesday, and the official says they’re expected to pick up that conversation when they meet. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration accuses Moscow of propping up embattled Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro over opposition figure Juan Guaido, who Washington regards as the country’s legitimate leader.

 
…

Germany’s leading Jewish organization expressed alarm Thursday over footage of flag-waving neo-Nazis in self-styled uniforms marching through an eastern German town on May Day unhindered by police. Footage of the march Wednesday prompted widespread outrage in Germany and calls for authorities in the state of Saxony, where far-right sentiment is particularly strong, to step in.

“The images of the neo-Nazi march by The Third Way party in Plauen are disturbing and frightening,” said Josef Schuster, the head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews.

Noting that the rally took place on the eve of Yom HaShoah , the day when Jews commemorate the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust, Schuster added that “right-wing extremists are marching in Saxony in a way that brings back memories of the darkest chapter in German history.”

German security agencies say The Third Way, a relatively small party, has close ties to far-right extremists. The march in Plauen took place to the beat of heavy drums made to look like those used by the Hitler Youth. Participants shouted slogans such as “Criminal foreigners out!” and “National socialism now!”

Saxony police said several hundred people took part in the march. Counter-protesters were kept away.

Police said they are investigating nine people for illegally covering their faces during the event and another for insulting an officer, but described the day as a success from a policing perspective because there was no violence.

The Central Council of Jews said authorities should have prevented the march from taking place at all.

“If the Saxony state government is serious about combating right-wing extremism, it must not allow such demonstrations,” Schuster said. “The Jewish community expects decisive action and visible consequences from the responsible authorities and the state government.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union is running neck-and-neck in recent opinion polls with the far-right Alternative for Germany party ahead of Sept. 1 state election in Saxony.

At a separate rally Wednesday, neo-Nazis marched through the western German city of Duisburg with signs calling for the destruction of Israel.
…

Britain’s former defense secretary ferociously denied allegations that he leaked details from private government discussions about the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, as opposition leaders called Thursday for a criminal investigation into the scandal.

Gavin Williamson was fired from the government’s top defense job late Wednesday by Prime Minister Theresa May, who said she had seen “compelling evidence” that he was behind media reports that the government had agreed — against the advice of the United States — to let Huawei participate in some aspects of Britain’s new 5G wireless communications network.

It was the first time in decades that a senior minister has been fired over leaks of sensitive information.

Williamson hit back, telling Sky News that the investigation had been a “witch hunt” and claiming he was the victim of a “kangaroo court with a summary execution.”

“I swear on my children’s lives I did not” leak, he told the Daily Mail.

At 42, Williamson was Britain’s youngest-ever defense secretary, but had raised hackles among some colleagues with his ambition and occasional gaffes. After former spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury — an attack that Britain blames on Moscow — Williamson said Russia should “go away and should shut up.”

Critics said that sounded more like playground language than diplomatic rhetoric.

Allies of Williamson rallied to his support Thursday, demanding that May’s government publish the evidence against him.

“Natural justice requires that the evidence is produced so that his reputation can be salvaged or utterly destroyed,” said Conservative lawmaker Desmond Swayne.

The firing of Williamson was a dramatic display of the divisions and ill-discipline that is roiling Britain’s Conservative-led government.

With May weakened by her failure so far to take Britain out of the European Union, multiple ministers are positioning themselves to try to replace her, partly by cultivating positive press coverage.

Williamson was named in a Daily Telegraph report last week as being one of several ministers alleged to have opposed letting Huawei work on Britain’s 5G infrastructure.

The United States has been lobbying allies including Britain to exclude Huawei from all 5G networks, claiming that the Chinese government can force the company to give it backdoor access to data on its networks.

Opposition Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson said the leak from a top-secret meeting of Britain’s National Security Council was “indicative of the malaise and sickness at the heart of this ailing government.”

He called for a criminal investigation into leaks from the security council, which is made up of senior ministers who receive briefings from military and intelligence chiefs.

Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said the government did not plan to refer the matter to police.

“But we would of course cooperate fully should the police themselves consider that an investigation were necessary,” he told lawmakers.

Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick, however, said the force would only investigate if it received a complaint.
…

The United States is installing new military leadership in Europe at a moment of heightened worries about Russian aggression, doubts about the future of arms control and rising tensions among NATO allies.

These pressures are reflected in stepped-up U.S. military maneuvers in Europe, including the unusual simultaneous deployment last week of two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups in the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, the Russians are rattling nerves with talk of fielding new “doomsday” weapons such as a nuclear-armed undersea drone and making moves seen by some as risking escalation of the war in eastern Ukraine.

In ceremonies in Germany on Thursday and in Belgium on Friday, Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters will take over for Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti in the dual roles of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and head of U.S. European Command.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan had planned to attend the ceremonies but canceled just hours before his scheduled departure from Washington on Wednesday.

A Shanahan spokesman said he decided he should remain in Washington for consultations with the White House and the State Department on the crisis in Venezuela and the situation on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Scaparrotti, who is retiring, spent his tenure’s final months dealing with U.S.-Turkey tensions triggered by Turkey’s decision to buy a Russian S-400 air defense system. The U.S. and other NATO allies see the deal as incompatible with Turkey’s continued participation in the Pentagon’s F-35 stealth fighter program, and even its future in NATO. The two countries have been sharply at odds over U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Wolters has made clear his view that the fielding of a Russian air defense system by a NATO ally is unacceptable.

“If Turkey proceeds down a path to procure and operate the S-400, they should not get the F-35,” he said at his Senate confirmation hearing on April 2. “I would contend that we all understand that Turkey is an important ally in the region, but it’s absolutely unsustainable to support co-location of the F-35 and the S-400.”

Wolters, a fighter pilot by training, had most recently served as commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and head of NATO’s Allied Air Command.

The U.S. dispute with Turkey has the potential to tear the fabric of NATO unity, perhaps achieving a central aim of Russia’s strategy toward the West. A Pentagon report to Congress last fall said Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 “would have unavoidable negative consequences for U.S.-Turkey bilateral relations, as well as Turkey’s role in NATO.” Turkey is among NATO member countries in which the United States stores nuclear weapons.

Some in Europe also worry that both Washington and Moscow plan to abandon a Cold War-era treaty that had banned an entire class of nuclear weapons. The U.S. and NATO accused Russia of violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty; Moscow denies the charge.

In NATO’s 70th anniversary year, the alliance also faces a problem that two former ambassadors to NATO call unprecedented.

“NATO’s single greatest challenge is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history,” Douglas Lute and Nicholas Burns wrote in a report in February for Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“President Donald Trump is regarded widely in NATO capitals as the alliance’s most urgent, and often most difficult, problem” because of his open ambivalence about the value of the alliance, they wrote. Trump has accused key members, including Germany, of being freeloaders unwilling to pay for their own defense.

In his final appearance before Congress to present his assessment of security issues facing NATO and European Command, Scaparrotti in March said Russia was his main worry.

“Russia is a long-term, strategic competitor that wants to advance its own objectives at the expense of U.S. prosperity and security and that sees the United States and the NATO alliance as the principal threat to its geopolitical ambitions,” Scaparrotti said. “In pursuit of its objectives, Moscow seeks to assert its influence over nations along its periphery, undermine NATO solidarity, and fracture the rules-based international order.”

Ukraine is at the center of these concerns.

Although Ukraine is not a NATO member, it has a close working relationship with the alliance. So Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine are a source of concern in much of Europe.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin heightened those concerns by signing a decree to expedite citizenship applications from some Ukrainians living in areas held by Russia-backed separatists. The European Union called Putin’s move a sign that he intends to further destabilize the country.

Philip Breedlove, who served as the top NATO commander from 2013 to 2016, said in an interview that Russia poses a multidimensional threat, and that matters only worsened as the U.S. narrowed its dialogue with Moscow in recent years.

“We’re moving away from each other, sadly,” he said. “Part of that is just because we can’t depoliticize the issue of Russia in Washington, D.C.”  As a result, he added, relations have worsened and solutions have grown more distant. “We need to move forward on a conversation with Russia to have talks that might bring some fruit.”

               
…

British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson has been fired after an investigation into leaks from a secret government meeting about Chinese telecoms firm Huawei.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s office says May has “lost confidence” in Williamson.

Downing St. says “the prime minister’s decision has been informed by his conduct surrounding an investigation into the circumstances of the unauthorized disclosure of information from a meeting of the National Security Council.”

An investigation was launched last week after newspapers reported that the security council, which meets in private, had agreed to let Huawei participate in some aspects of Britain’s new 5G wireless communications network.

The government insists no decision has been made about that.

 
…

Political parties across Europe are kicking off their campaigns for possibly the most consequential EU election since 1979, when voters began casting ballots for a European parliament. 

Turnout is normally low in all 28 member states, averaging around 43%, but the continent’s new kind of populist and nationalist parties hope this year will be different. Voting is set to take place between May 23 and May 26. 

Their leaders suspect high turnouts will be to their benefit as they seek to halt European integration and turn the clock back to a time, in their mind, when nation states didn’t pool their sovereignty with their neighbors. According to a recent Europe-wide poll, two-thirds of all Europeans, and three-quarters of Germans, are planning to participate in the election.

For populists, pocketbook issues are taking second place to national identity, and their message is rooted in anti-migrant sentiments.

Europe’s establishment parties, which are based more on socio-economic class politics, could buckle in this month’s European Parliament elections under the challenge from populist parties, which base themselves on socio-cultural divides. Polls show populist support is growing.

According to British pollster Michael Ashcroft, more than half the voters in Britain don’t feel represented by the main political parties. Culture and identity issues are more salient than economic ones for them, he says.

Other pollsters in Europe say they, too, are seeing cultural issues becoming more important for voters. 

Macron vs. Salvini

Two conflicting visions of Europe are on offer with centrists led by French President Emmanuel Macron and nationalist populists championed by Italy’s far-right leader, Matteo Salvini.The populists have turned to former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon for advice.

Macron has pitched himself as the antidote to the so-called “illiberal democracies” of central Europe and the defender of the European Union. The French leader wants to reform and revive the bloc by deepening the political and economic integration of Europe.

The 44-year-old Salvini wants not only to halt further integration, but to mount a reversal so the bloc becomes more of a looser group of nation states less hedged by Brussels and EU treaties. “We’re working for a new European dream,” Salvini said in March at a gathering of like-minded populist leaders from Germany, Finland and Denmark.

He wants populists to offer a joint electoral platform similar to his Lega party manifesto, which pledges to “underline and reaffirm common Christian roots, defend national identity, and the supremacy of [national laws] over European laws and directives.”

Populist gains expected

Populist parties, especially in Italy, Poland, Hungary and France, expect to make major gains in the May elections for the 750-seat parliament. In France, opinion polls are suggesting Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National is running neck-and-neck with Macron’s En Marche party. 

Pollsters are predicting euroskeptic populists will capture a third of the European parliament’s 750 seats. In last Sunday’s Spanish elections, the right-wing Vox party secured parliament seats, marking the first time an avowedly far-right party has done so since Gen. Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.

The populists will fall well short of the kind of parliamentary clout that would allow Salvini and his allies to re-shape the European Union and reassert the pre-eminence of national identity, or even halt deeper integration. But it would give them the opportunity to disrupt integrationist proposals and to complicate the process of appointing a new European Commission following the elections, say analysts.

Salvini, guided by Bannon, had hoped to draw together nationalist populists into a continent-wide electoral alliance, but they are unified only when it comes to their disdain for the old establishment politics.On some other key issues, they are divided and the top leaders are deeply competitive with each other. 

Italy’s Salvini, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and French politician Marine Le Pen are all eager to be seen as Europe’s populist-in-chief. But the Italian deputy prime minister has been pressing other EU member states to take “their fair share” of migrants, helping to relieve Italy, Greece and Spain of the burden. Orban and central European leaders refuse to do so.

Polish nationalists are also deeply skeptical of the warming ties between their western European counterparts and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

No ‘normal crisis’

Nonetheless, the populist challenge is shaking up European politics and this month’s election is likely to bring that home. Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, author of the book After Europe, cautions against people thinking this is a “normal crisis.” 

He argues “against those who are convinced that nothing can happen because the European Union is going to stay and the current crisis is a normal one. No, it’s a more radical crisis than any other we have ever experienced before.” He warns people shouldn’t take the European Union for granted, although he doesn’t believe it will disintegrate.

For centrists and Europhiles, though, there are grounds for confidence. The Brexit mess has softened some of the euroskepticism of the new populists, none of whom is advocating leaving the bloc. 

And the rise of nationalist populism is also prompting a Europhile reaction — a recent survey across 10 European states by the Pew Research Center found strong support for the EU with a median 74 percent saying it promotes peace, democratic values and prosperity. But more than half worry Brussels still doesn’t understand the needs of ordinary citizens.
…

On posters, hustings and social media, a battle for Europe is being fought, as contenders seek votes for an EU parliamentary election in late May – but the real battle for power will come only once the count is in.

More than 400 million voters will deal the hands that leaders, of parties, nations and rival EU institutions, must play; but it will be after the May 23-26 ballot that the high-stakes poker will begin that will shape the European Union for years to come.

Then comes the real suspense: how pro-Union groups may build a majority coalition to work with the EU executive and member states to make law; how a growing eurosceptic bloc may disrupt it; how lawmakers will clash with national leaders over who runs Brussels; and whether British members might end up staying.

“The campaign determines the strength of people’s bargaining positions,” a senior official in the European Parliament said. “But the real game will start after the count.”

The sheer scale of elections for the 751 lawmakers who will convene in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 2 limits scope for surprises of the kind voters have delivered in national ballots as they lose confidence in established elites.

Second only to India as an exercise in democracy but beset by low turnouts that hamstring the legislature’s ambitions to legitimacy, proportional representation, a plethora of parties and a tendency for 28 national campaigns to even out shocks mean that poll data tend to be a fair guide to the overall outcome.

That points to policy continuity as the European Union tries to prove its use in defending common interests in global struggles over power, trade and the environment against nationalist critics.

Brexit Party Time

A survey commissioned by the parliament, whose projections were on the money in the 2014 election, shows the center-right EPP and center-left S&D losing 37 seats each and hence the majority they enjoy in an informal “grand coalition.”

That, many lawmakers expect, will mean a broader reaching out after the vote to the likes of the ALDE liberals, who are hoping for a major boost from President Emmanuel Macron’s mold-breaking French party, and also possibly to the Greens.

With Italy’s populist ruling League and, at times, France’s far-right National Rally and Britain’s new Brexit Party topping national opinion rankings, polls show a surge for eurosceptics.

But talk of a blocking minority, with allies in more mainstream groups such as the Polish and Hungarian ruling parties, comes up against the nationalists’ persistent divisions.

The uncertainties around how the parliament will line up in July are compounded this year by a number of new parties – most obviously Macron’s En Marche – keeping options open on whom to sit with, but also by Brexit, since the delay to Britain leaving the EU has led to London holding a vote for 73 British MEPs.

That potentially brief presence means some officials suggest key decisions, notably parliamentary votes on who should succeed Jean-Claude Juncker and his team at the European Commission, be put off until the British have left.

Jobs Row

Even without Brexit, this year may be tricky, as lawmakers and national leaders face off over the legislature’s demand that a lead “Spitzenkandidat” from a winning party succeed Juncker.

Leaders would normally agree on a successor in late June so that parliament can endorse the appointment in July. But a row with parliament could also delay the handover beyond Nov. 1.

Key appointments, including that of European Central Bank president after Mario Draghi leaves in October, will see fierce bargaining, among big states and small, the north, south, east and west of Europe, left and right, men and women, and so on.

The European Council of national leaders, which must also choose its own next president in succession to Donald Tusk, is reluctant to be tied to a choice of Manfred Weber, a conservative German MEP, or Juncker’s Dutch deputy, Frans Timmermans of the Socialists.

Macron is a loud opponent of parliament’s Spitzenkandidat push and Brussels is abuzz with talk that he favors others – notably Frenchman Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, or centrist Danish EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Weber and his parliamentary allies will argue strongly that it is that kind of backroom carve-up which is turning Europeans off the EU. In reply, national leaders may argue that they have stronger democratic mandates to govern than a parliament for which in 2014 only 43 percent of voters cast a ballot.

Polling data suggests somewhat more people intend to vote than last time, parliamentary officials say. But there are huge variations in engagement with campaigns largely fought on domestic issues. In Belgium, where voting is compulsory and a national election is held the same day, turnout was 90 percent in 2014. But in Slovakia, it was 13 percent.
…

Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly sacked Moscow’s ambassador to Belarus, Mikhail Babich, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, amid a row over contaminated oil and a wider political discord between the ex-Soviet countries.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has generally been more closely aligned with Moscow than any other ex-Soviet leader, while the lack of tolerance for dissent at home has made him largely a pariah in the West.

However, Minsk has shown increasing signs of seeking a thaw with the United States and the European Union since 2014, when Belarus did not recognize Russia’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula from neighboring Ukraine.

Lukashenko has said Russian officials had sometimes set unacceptable conditions for Belarus, such as adopting the Russian currency or even merging with Russia.

Babich had been appointed Moscow’s envoy to Belarus last August. He had criticized Belarus authorities amid the row over oil tax change which Belarus says will cost its budget $400 million this year.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday Babich will move to another job and will be replaced by Dmitry Mezentsev, a lawmaker from the upper house of parliament.

The wider political differences have been exacerbated by the contaminated Russian oil flows to European countries including Belarus.
…

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili says Russia’s decadelong military occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has failed to break the national will to maintain sovereignty and achieve European Union and NATO accession.

“Despite the occupied territories and despite the … constant everyday pressure with hostage-taking, with humanitarian pressure on the populations on both sides of the occupying line, this has not been a victory for Russia, because Georgia has kept its line and (determination) to join the EU and (North Atlantic Treaty Organization),” she told VOA’s Georgian Service in an interview in Tbilisi.

“And I think that was the ultimate aim of Russia: to effect Georgia’s determination,” she said, adding that, as such, “it’s a victory for Georgia and not for Russia.”

Ever since Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution severed ties with its Soviet past and pivoted the southern Caucasus nation of roughly 3.7 million toward the West, it has struggled to secure EU and NATO membership.

Despite visa-free travel and formal trade pacts with the European bloc, the EU has yet to grant Georgia membership candidacy, in part because of Brussel’s trepidation about openly antagonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin following the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula. (In Georgia, where Russian tank units maintain control over 20% of the terrain, a holdover from the August 2008 five-day war, officials had long espoused their conviction that Russia might one day attempt to annex portions of Ukraine.)

Increased American naval activity on the Black Sea — a kind of maritime gateway for trade and access to natural resources across Asia that circumvents routes through Russia — reflects not only U.S. strategic interest in the region, Zourabichvili said, but an opportunity for Tbilisi to deepen ties with Washington.

“I think the Black Sea is becoming much more important in the strategic view of the United States,” she told VOA. With NATO-partnered Romania and Bulgaria on the maritime region’s western flank, Georgia is vital strategic partner on the eastern shore, “and we are ready to see the Black Sea being a more important link with the United States.”

Beyond established U.S.-Georgian military cooperation, former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in October praised Georgia’s defense reforms and contributions to the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, where Tbilisi’s 870 uniformed troops represent the world’s largest per capita contributor to the mission. Zourabichvili said she would like to see increased cybersecurity cooperation and training with both the U.S. and NATO.

Asked whether she was open to hosting a U.S. military base on Georgian soil, however, Zourabichvili was doubtful.

“I don’t think that it would be recommended,” she said. “We don’t need to take steps that might be viewed as provocations, and I don’t think that the United States would be ready for having here a military base that would attract probably reactions both from Russia and from these … terrorist movements that are very active in the region.”

Meanwhile, Tbilisi’s lack of diplomatic ties to Moscow means that it must depend exclusively upon interlocutors to demand that Russia respect its obligations under international law in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“Of course we know that it won’t change the situation in the occupied territories today,” she said “But there might come a day, and I hope it will be soon, where that might have some effect. So we cannot let either Russia or our partners forget that the issue of the occupied territories is a very central issue for Georgia.”

Russia, she said, “will never have a veto” over Georgia’s transatlantic path.

Although Georgia hosts NATO military exercises and has troops serving with alliance forces in Afghanistan, NATO has set no date for membership.

Zourabichvili, 67, who was born in France, became Georgia’s first woman president in December 2018.

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian Service. 
…

The father-and-son leaders of a divisive anti-immigrant party were sworn in Monday as Estonia’s interior and finance minister.

Prime Minister Juri Ratas presented his 15-member coalition Cabinet on Monday at the 101-seat Riigikogu assembly located in the picturesque Old Town of Estonia’s capital, Tallinn.

Earlier this month, Ratas, leader of the left-leaning Center Party, clinched a surprise deal with the nationalist and euroskeptic Estonian Conservative People’s Party, or EKRE, as well as with the conservative Fatherland, to create a majority coalition.

EKRE’s Mart Helme, 69, was appointed interior minister in the Cabinet, while his son Martin, 43, becomes finance minister.

EKRE’s strong rhetoric has divided Estonia ever since the party first entered parliament in 2015. The party has advocated abolishing the law recognizing same-sex civil unions, demanded changes to the country’s abortion law and fiercely opposed European Union quotas for taking in asylum-seekers.

It emerged from the election with 17.8% of votes, becoming Estonia’s third-largest party.

The three parties will have five ministerial posts each in the government. Fatherland’s Urmas Reinsalu became new foreign minister and Juri Luik from the same party continues as defense minister — a key post in this small Baltic nation that neighbors Russia.

The fact that EKRE is entering a governing coalition has caused fierce debates nationwide, with some Estonians blaming it for polarizing society.

In a curious detail, President Kersti Kaljulaid was following the new Cabinet’s inauguration ceremonies in the parliament sporting a sweater inscribed with the Estonian words “Sona on vaba,” or “Speech is free.”

That is seen as a statement on the importance of freedom of speech from the head of state following weeks of public controversy on EKRE, which has accused Estonian media of biased reporting on the party’s affairs.

In early April, Peeter Helme — nephew of Mart Helme — was appointed the new editor-in-chief of Estonia’s oldest and largest newspaper Postimees. Peeter Helme has worked with the paper earlier.

EKRE claims to defend the interests of ethnic Estonians in the former Soviet republic where some 25% of the 1.3 million inhabitants are ethnic Russians, who have traditionally opted to vote for the Center Party.

Mart Helme told an Estonian radio channel Sunday that it was “wishful thinking” that the party would tone down its strong rhetoric after assuming government power.

A total of five parties are represented in parliament, including the Reform Party that was the biggest party after the March 3 election. Its leader, Kaja Kallas, was first tasked to form a government, but she failed to get sufficient support.
…

The United States is key to settling the ongoing conflict between Kosovo and Serbia, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci said on Monday, pointing to the inability of major European countries to reach a unified position on the issue.

The former Serb and predominantly ethnic Albanian republic of Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, almost a decade after a bloody war there.

It won recognition from the United States and most EU countries, but not from Serbia or its big power patron Russia, and relations between Belgrade and Kosovo remain tense.

“Without the U.S. we can never have any dialogue, negotiations or any agreement,” Thaci told Reuters TV in Berlin, adding: “The EU is not united in this process.”

Thaci was in Berlin to join a summit later on Monday on the Western Balkans, called by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Thaci played down the expectations for the Berlin meeting saying: “I will not expect any miracle.”

It is crucial for Serbia to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, Thaci said.

“We will ask today Chancellor Merkel and President Macron to convince (Serb) President (Aleksandar) Vucic to recognize Kosovo”, Thaci said, adding that if that does not happen, “I think the meeting in Berlin will not be useful.”

Thaci stressed that Serbia tended to orient itself towards Russia but Kosovo wanted to be part of NATO and the European Union as soon as possible.
…

Thousands protested around the Czech Republic on Monday against a justice minister nominee they fear might meddle with a criminal case involving the prime minister.

President Milos Zeman will appoint Marie Benesova on Tuesday after the resignation of her predecessor, bringing opposition accusations of pressure on courts as Andrej Babis faces a potential fraud trial over European Union subsidies more than a decade ago.

Babis, a billionaire media and chemicals businessman before entering politics, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the investigation a plot to force him out of politics.

Czech police said on April 17 that Babis and others should stand trial for the alleged fraud involving the handling of a 2 million euro EU subsidy — charges that could see the prime minister jailed for up to 10 years.

Justice Minister Jan Knezinek resigned the day after the police wrapped up their investigation. Babis said Knezinek’s position had only been intended to be temporary. His departure came amid a wider cabinet shuffle.

On Monday, protesters marched from the Prague Castle, the seat of the Czech president, through the capital’s medieval centre to the Old Town Square. Marchers chanted “We have had enough” and organizers carried banners saying “Justice.” The website of daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported 10,000 demonstrated in the capital.

In the country’s second largest city, Brno, around 3,000 marched, according to estimates of news website SeznamZpravy.cz. Czech Television reported protesters turned out in 105 spots in the country of 10.6 million.

Benesova had previously served in a caretaker cabinet in 2013, appointed by President Zeman – who has backed Babis. She was the top state attorney, appointed by a Zeman-led government in 1999.

She supported Babis in 2017 when she abstained in a lower house vote on lifting his parliamentary immunity.

Despite the investigation, Babis’s ANO party maintains a firm poll lead after sweeping to power in a 2017 election when it won three times the votes of its nearest competitor with pledges to end politics as usual and bring a businessman’s touch to governance.

Babis, the country’s second richest person, has long fought accusations of conflicts of interest because of his vast business interests. He put his Agrofert business empire into trusts in 2017 to meet new Czech legislation.
…

Over 1,100 French and international architects and heritage experts have called on French President Emmanuel Macron to take the necessary time to ensure good reconstruction work on the fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral.

In a column published by French newspaper Le Figaro Monday, they urge Macron to “let historians and experts have the time for diagnosis before deciding on the future of the monument.”

They call for a well-considered, thoughtful and ethical approach and warn against a “political agenda” based on speed.

France’s government last week presented a bill aimed at speeding up the reconstruction of Notre Dame that would allow workers to skip some ordinary renovation procedures.

Macron has set a goal of rebuilding the cathedral in just five years, which some experts consider simply impossible to achieve.
…

A strike among pilots at Scandinavian Airlines has entered its fourth day with the carrier being forced to cancel 1,213 flights Monday and Tuesday, affecting some 110,000 passengers.

The flag carrier of Denmark, Norway and Sweden says more than 170,000 passengers have been affected since the open-ended strike started Friday.

The strike began after the collapse of pay negotiations with the SAS Pilot Group, which represents 95% of the company’s pilots in the three countries.

There is no sign of when talks might resume on a new collective bargaining agreement.

Jacob Pedersen, an analyst with Denmark’s Sydbank, says the pilots want their share of company earnings after the carrier posted a profit in the past four years following a cost saving program that started in 2012.
…

Slovakia’s Supreme Court has dismissed a request by the country’s prosecutor general to ban a far-right party that has 14 seats in the country’s parliament.

In his request filed two years ago, Jaromir Cizna said the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia is an extremist group whose activities violate the country’s constitution.

But the court ruled Monday the prosecutor general failed to provide enough evidence for the ban.

The verdict is final.

The party openly admires the Nazi puppet state that the country was during World War II. Party members use Nazi salutes, blame Roma for crime in deprived areas, consider NATO a terror group and want the country out of the alliance and the European Union.

If granted, it would have been the first ban on a parliamentary party.
…