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

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

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

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

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

Crackdown warning

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

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

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

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

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

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

Navalny office raided

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#MeToo campaign

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

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

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

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

An exclusive survey by Reuters in February found more than 120 staff from leading global charities were fired or lost their jobs in 2017 over sexual misconduct.
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Turkey’s opposition parties have selected their candidates to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in next month’s snap election.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Temel Karamollaoglu

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

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

Kurdish vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Erdogan is facing the prospect of a complex electoral map, something he has not faced before. It will be more challenging,” said political analyst Atilla Yesilada, of Global Source Partners.
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The ruling party of Armenia indicated it will support the opposition leader’s bid to become prime minister in a parliamentary vote scheduled for May 8. The decision follows weeks of protests that culminated in blockades and strikes this week. The opposition called a halt to the demonstrations Thursday as all sides negotiated a political solution. The protests erupted last month after the former prime minister was accused of manipulating the constitution to cling to power. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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The Armenian ruling party’s signal of support for opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan’s bid to become interim prime minister has been greeted with disbelief by some on the streets of the capital.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Optimistic opposition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story originated in VOA’s Armenian Service.  Arman Tarjimanyan reported from Washington. Angelina Bagdasaryan of VOA’s Russian Service contributed original reporting from Los Angeles.
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The number of asylum applications by Russian citizens in the United States hit a 24-year high in 2017, jumping nearly 40 percent from the previous year and continuing an upward march that began after Russian President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I had to leave’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Getting shaken down’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hidden’ migration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A quarter of the respondents said they left due to the “political situation” in Russia, including “disappointment” after the 2012 election that brought Putin back to the Kremlin and the “events of 2014,” when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and war between Kyiv’s forces and Russia-backed separatists erupted in eastern Ukraine.
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As the world marks Press Freedom Day, journalists around the world face arrests, intimidation or death for doing their jobs. And while the list of the world’s most censored countries is more or less the same, new hostility against media is emerging from previously friendly quarters. Rights organizations say freedom of the press, rather than improving, is increasingly at risk. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Russian fighter jet crashed Thursday shortly after taking off from an air base in Syria, killing both of its pilots.

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

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

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

 
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The April 30 killings of 10 journalists in Afghanistan highlight the dangers journalists face in covering some parts of the world. On VOA’s Plugged in with Greta Van Susteren, experts discuss why worldwide freedom of the press is more important now than ever. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
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As France marks the half-century anniversary of May 1968, a profound period of social upheaval, protesters are back on the streets, venting their anger against reforms being pushed through by the year-old centrist government of President Emmanuel Macron. But from Paris, Lisa Bryant reports the spirit today is very different from that watershed year that left an indelible mark on French politics and society.
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The Russian government is struggling to block messaging app Telegram, and its bid to cut access to the instant messenger platform is causing widespread disruption to an array of websites and online services in Russia that have nothing to do with Telegram.

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

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

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

Widespread disruption

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

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

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

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

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

Advocating freedom

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

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

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

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

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

The lawmaker, Natalya Kostenko, subsequently changed the settings on her Facebook account, so that only friends and family could view her page after the exchange with Timakova was picked up by news outlets.
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Protesters took to the streets of the Armenian capital of Yerevan Wednesday as opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan called for a national strike to pressure the ruling party to relinquish control of the country.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fourth place

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The amendment to a new Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citizens react

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Former president Sargsyan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign Policy

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

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

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

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

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

Falling Support

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Trouble Elsewhere?

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

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

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

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

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

And Social Democrat leader Jan Hamacek said on Saturday he was more worried about the rising far-right, anti-Islam, anti-NATO and anti-EU party SPD, which won 10.6 percent of the vote.
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Russia’s Gazprom said on Monday it had completed the sea portion of the first line of the TurkStream offshore gas pipeline across the Black Sea.

Gazprom, which plans to complete the pipeline in 2019, said in a statement that 1,161 km, of pipe had been laid since it began construction last year.

The second line, designed to ship gas to south European countries such as Greece, Bulgaria and Italy, will be laid in the third quarter of 2018, the company said.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said this month that Turkey’s approval for Gazprom’s onshore portion of the TurkStream pipeline’s second line was still pending.

Moscow, which relies on oil and gas revenue, sees new pipelines to Turkey and Germany – TurkStream and Nord Stream 2 – as crucial to increasing its market share in Europe.

 
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The Trump administration risks igniting a trade battle with Europe just as it’s preparing for tense trade talks in China this week.

Facing a self-imposed deadline, Trump is considering whether to permanently exempt the European Union and five other countries from tariffs that his administration imposed last month on imported steel and aluminum. The White House provided temporary exemptions in March and has until the end of Monday to decide whether to extend them.

If it loses its exemption, the EU has said it will retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods imported to Europe.

The confrontation stems from the president’s decision in March to slap tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum. Trump justified the action by saying it was needed to protect American metal producers from unfair competition and bolster national security. But the announcement, which followed an intense internal White House debate, triggered harsh criticism from Democrats and some Republicans and roiled financial markets.

At the time, Trump excluded several vital trading partners — the European Union, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil — from the tariffs.

Two people familiar with the process said the Trump administration has been considering whether to provide a short-term extension of the exemptions to allow for more time to review the countries’ efforts to secure permanent exemptions.

One of the officials said the U.S. trade representative has been overseeing the process for all of the countries except the European Union, whose tariffs are being evaluated by the Commerce Department.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

The EU and other countries have been asked to spell out what limits they could accept on the amount of steel they export to the United States, how they would address the issue of excess production of steel and aluminum and how they would support the U.S. before international bodies like the World Trade Organization. Security relationships with the U.S. have also been part of the criteria.

South Korea agreed to limit its exports to the United States as part of broader discussions involved in updating its bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. and was granted a permanent exemption.

China, Japan and Russia haven’t received exemptions from the duties. That will likely reduce steel shipments from those countries over time. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said late Friday that quotas on imports from Europe and other countries are necessary so imports from those countries don’t simply replace Chinese imports. The goal of the tariffs is to reduce total steel imports and boost U.S. production, Ross said.

“If you let everybody back out of the tariff, and you let them out of any kind of quota, how would you ever reduce the imports here?” Ross asked at a conference of business journalists. Ross is set to discuss the issue Monday with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom.

Germany, the EU’s largest steel exporter to the U.S., accounted for about 5 percent of U.S. steel imports last year. South Korea made up the largest share, shipping about 13 percent of U.S. imports, according to an American Iron and Steel Institute analysis of government data.

The EU has compiled a list of retaliatory tariffs worth about $3.5 billion it will impose if its steel and aluminum isn’t exempted.

European leaders have resisted the idea of a quota. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a statement Sunday that she discussed the issue with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May after returning from a White House visit Friday.

The three European leaders “agreed that the U.S. ought not to take any trade measures against the European Union,” which is “resolved to defend its interests within the multilateral trade framework,” Merkel’s statement said.

In her meeting with Trump, Merkel said, she saw little progress in obtaining permanent exemptions. “The decision lies with the president,” she said Friday.

Battle with China

In a separate trade battle with China, the United States has threatened to impose tariffs on $150 billion of Chinese goods in retaliation for what it argues are Beijing’s unfair trade practices and its requirement that U.S. companies turn over technology in exchange for access to its market. The White House also wants China to agree to reduce its $375 billion goods trade surplus with the U.S.

China has said it would subject $50 billion of U.S. goods to tariffs if the U.S. taxes its products. Trump has announced that an administration delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and trade adviser Peter Navarro will visit Beijing for negotiations on Thursday and Friday this week.

In addition to Mnuchin, Lighthizer, Ross and Navarro, the group will include economic adviser Larry Kudlow, U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad and Everett Eissenstat, deputy assistant to the president for International Economic Affairs.

“We’re going to have very frank discussions,” Mnuchin in an interview broadcast Monday on Fox Business.

Most analysts, however, think it’s unlikely the talks will reach permanent agreements and will more likely mark the start of longer-term negotiations.
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Britain’s interior minister has resigned after Prime Minister Theresa May’s government faced criticism for its treatment of some long-term Caribbean residents who were wrongly labeled illegal immigrants, a government official said.

A spokesman for May was not immediately available for comment but a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed a BBC report that Home Secretary Amber Rudd had resigned.

For two weeks, British ministers have been struggling to explain why some descendants of the so-called “Windrush generation,” invited to Britain to plug labor shortfalls between 1948 and 1971, had been labeled as illegal immigrants.

The Windrush scandal overshadowed the Commonwealth summit in London and has raised questions about Theresa May’s six-year stint as interior minister before she became prime minister in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Rudd had faced repeated calls from the opposition Labor Party to resign after she gave contradictory statements about meeting targets for deportations.

May apologized to the black community on Thursday in a letter to The Voice, Britain’s national Afro-Caribbean newspaper.

“We have let you down and I am deeply sorry,” she said. “But apologies alone are not good enough. We must urgently right this historic wrong.”

 
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A court in Iraq has sentenced 19 Russian women to life in prison for joining the Islamic State terrorist group.

The Central Criminal Court in Baghdad, which deals with terrorism cases, also sentenced six women from Azerbaijan and four from Tajikistan to life in prison on Sunday on the same charge.

Most of the defendants told the court they had been brought to Iraq against their will from Turkey by IS fighters.

Earlier this month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said between 50 and 70 “Russian-speaking women” were being held in Iraq, along with more than 100 of their children.

IS took over nearly one third of Iraq in a blistering 2014 offensive, seizing control of the country’s second largest city, Mosul, among others.

Baghdad declared military victory over the jihadists in December, after expelling them from all urban centers.

Experts estimate that Iraq is holding 20,000 people in jail over suspected IS membership. There is no official figure.

Iraqi courts have sentenced to death a total of more than 300 people, including dozens of foreigners, for belonging to IS.

 
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A mystery is brewing at the White House about what happened to the oak tree President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron planted there last week.

The sapling was a gift from Macron on the occasion of his state visit.

News photographers snapped away Monday as Trump and Macron shoveled dirt onto the tree during a ceremonial planting on the South Lawn. By the end of the week, the tree was gone from the lawn. A pale patch of grass was left in its place.

The White House hasn’t offered an explanation.

The oak sprouted at a World War I battle site that became part of U.S. Marine Corps legend.

About 2,000 U.S. troops died in the June 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, fighting a German offensive.

 
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she and the leaders of France and Britain are ready to push back if the Trump administration does not permanently exempt the European Union from new import taxes on aluminum and steel imports.

Merkel said in a statement that she spoke with President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday and Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday after returning from Friday talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Merkel says the three leaders “agreed that the U.S. ought not to take any trade measures against the European Union,” which is “resolved to defend its interests within the multilateral trade framework.” The chancellor’s statement did not outline specific steps the 28-nation EU might take.

The EU’s temporary exemption from the tariffs expires Tuesday.
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Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport was temporarily closed early Sunday as a large power outage hit all operations at one of Europe’s busiest airports.

Authorities closed roads to Schiphol and stopped train traffic to the airport around 0300 GMT to “ensure the safety of travelers,” the airport said, as check-in procedures had become impossible and the airport’s main halls overflowed with waiting passengers.

Roads to the airport were reopened around 0430 GMT, as power was restored, but the disruption of services would have “severe consequences for air traffic during the day,” airport spokesman Jacco Bartels said.

This would also affect flights to Amsterdam at other airports, as Schiphol would be able to handle only 10 arriving planes per hour on Sunday morning, with priority given to the large number of flights waiting to leave the airport, Bartels said.

Schiphol is the third-busiest airport in Europe in numbers of travelers, after London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
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Law enforcement authorities in the United States, European Union and Canada this week began a joint cybercampaign against Islamic State online communication channels that will “severely disrupt” the group’s propaganda machine, the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol said.

The multinational action, led by Belgian federal prosecutors, was launched  Wednesday and Thursday and targeted IS media outlets, including Amaq news, al-Bayan radio, Halumu and Nashir news.

IS’s Amaq news agency is believed to be a major propaganda outlet for the terror group. The group relies on the outlet to spread propaganda in several languages, including English and French. Amaq has broadcast claims of responsibility for deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Barcelona.

“With this groundbreaking operation we have punched a big hole in the capability of IS to spread propaganda online and radicalize young people in Europe,” Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, said in a statement released Friday.

“I applaud the determined and innovative work by Europol and its partners to target a major part of the international terrorist threat prevalent in Europe today,” he added.

Earlier efforts

This is not the first time Western countries joined forces to crack down on IS propaganda capabilities. A coordinated effort in August 2016 hit Amaq’s mobile application and web infrastructure. Another multinational operation led by Spanish Guardia Civil in June 2017 against the outlet helped authorities identify radicalized individuals in over 100 countries around the world.

Europol claimed the two-day effort this week led to the seizure of digital evidence by law enforcement authorities and compromised IS broadcast capabilities and materials.

Europol authorities said the data retrieved as a result of the crackdown would be used to identify the administrators behind IS media outlets.

In a separate statement, Belgian police said the operation also aimed to seize and shut down computer servers used to spread terror propaganda in Europe.

Over the years, IS has weaponized the internet to radicalize, recuit and inspire acts of terrorism in the West and around the world.

The group’s ability to produce and distribute new propaganda has been significantly diminished since it lost nearly 98 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, and social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter increased their efforts to remove radical content from the internet. 

VOA Turkish service’s Arzu Cakir contributed to this report from Paris. 
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Saturday that airstrikes on Syria, conducted by the U.S., Britain, and France on April 14, were a violation of international law and indicated that the Western powers were trying to destroy the peace process.

Lavrov, speaking after meeting in Moscow with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts, said such “attempts to … destabilize the situation” encourage the extremists in Syria to go on with their armed struggle.

Lavrov and his counterparts said they agreed that Syria’s territorial integrity should be preserved, while accusing the United States of plans to “reformat” the Middle East and divide Syria into parts.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif said there was no military solution to the Syrian crisis. He also said that Iran condemned the use of chemical weapons and hoped that the investigation of an alleged Syrian attack on its own people would uncover the truth. He also said anyone who supported Iraq when it used chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s had no right to criticize Syria today.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country, too, supported Syrian territorial integrity and, with allies Iran and Russia, hoped ultimately to find a political solution to the crisis. He said “some groups” had tried to undermine that work, and he urged all parties to contribute to the peace process instead.
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Can the Europeans save the Iran nuclear deal? It’s an accord U.S. President Donald Trump has excoriated repeatedly and threatened to scrap.

Europeans were heartened midweek by indications from the U.S. leader that he’s willing to consider French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to augment an accord he considers “insane” by negotiating a side deal with Iran to address Trump’s concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile development and its expanding military presence across the Middle East.

Nonetheless, the nuclear deal signed in 2015 by the Obama administration hangs in the balance, despite the back-slapping, hand-pumping “bromance” between Macron and Trump in Washington. The two leaders continued to forge a personal entente cordiale, but as Macron highlighted in a speech to Congress, the pair is far apart on Iran and Syria, climate change and trade.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has dismissed talk of a re-negotiation, saying midweek he had warned Macron several times of Tehran’s refusal to “add anything to the deal or remove anything from it, even one sentence.”

The nuclear deal has no fans in the White House. Trump’s new national security adviser John Bolton has long argued in favor of scraping the deal, which he believes has thrown an economic lifeline to a regime he’d like to change. Three years ago Bolton advocated in a newspaper editorial that to stop Iran from developing a bomb, Iran would have to be bombed.

High-profile visits

And the visits in the past week to Washington by Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel inthemost high-profile European push to date to try to convince Trump to preserve the nuclear accord with Iran may not be enough to save it, say political observers.

Even Macron, on his departure from the U.S. capital, suggested he’d failed to persuade Trump to continue with the nuclear deal. “My view — I don’t know what your president will decide — is that he will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons,” he told reporters.

On Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said no decision had yet been made by Trump.

By May 12, President Trump has to decide whether to renew sanctions relief for Iran, a key step in keeping the deal. Even if he does renew the relief this time, possibly out of respect for Macron, that will be no guarantee against him subsequently scrapping the accord. European officials admit they are skeptical of being up to conjure up a diplomatic solution that will stop him from doing so later.

If Trump does rip up the accord, where would that leave a transatlantic partnership between the U.S. and Europe that won the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and now appears to be at the onset of another one with Vladimir Putin’s Russia?

Will it mark the beginning of the end for a transatlantic alliance that has been roiled since Trump entered the White House?

Pessimists, among them former U.S. officials and analysts, as well as European politicians, warn that the U.S. and Europe are drifting quickly toward a fracture — and not just over Iran.

Growing divide?

A former political director of the British Foreign Office, Simon Gass, has warned that a U.S. revocation of the Iran deal will push the Europeans into the uncomfortable position of being aligned with Russia and China when it comes to Tehran. “Such a division between the U.S. and some of its closest allies would cause as much dismay in European capitals as it would glee in some others,” he said.

America and Europe’s foes have been gleeful following other recent sharp divergences between Washington and the Europeans — including over the Paris climate accord, Trump’s criticism of what he sees as low defense spending by the Europeans as a percentage of gross domestic product, the imposition of trade tariffs and the threat of a transatlantic trade war. There have been differences over policy toward Russia and China, the conflict in Syria, and abrasive tweet clashes between British and German politicians on one side and Trump over refugee policies and Islam.

Trump foes blame him for the differences and disagreements, arguing he’s driving a wedge between America and Europe and that scrapping the Iran deal will lead to a breakdown in the transatlantic alliance.

Optimists point out that America and Europe have been at serious odds before — including over Vietnam, Ronald Reagan’s hardline “evil empire” confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the Balkans war. The transatlantic alliance weathered those because ultimately, for all the disputes, American and European interests, more often than not, overlapped.

But will they in the future? Analyst Xenia Wickett says there are several factors shaping the new era in transatlantic relations. In a report she authored earlier this year for Britain’s Chatham House research group, Wickett argued Trump may cause “real and meaningful shorter-term disruptions” in transatlantic relations, but heposes “less of a long-term threat to the relationship between the U.S. and Europe” than key structural factors affecting the alliance.

“While his policies may have reverberations beyond his time in office, there is no reason to believe that the consequences are likely to be profound and long-lasting for the fundamental interests of the transatlantic relationship,” she wrote.

She cautioned, however, there will be changes in that relationship thanks to migration patterns. “The increase in Latin American and Asian groups in the U.S., and to a lesser extent, Middle Eastern populations in Europe, is likely to cause the U.S. and Europe to continue to diverge in terms of their regional interests and attention,” she said.

Inherent affinity

But for all of the sharp disagreement in recent months there are clear indications that both Washington and the Europeans value the alliance. Trump may have been more iconoclastic than many fervent Atlanticists may like — especially rhetorically — but despite his declaring NATO obsolete and accusing European allies of “ripping the U.S. off,” his administration has devoted more U.S. resources for European security, notes Jeffrey Rathke of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based policy institute.

Likewise, Trump temporarily exempted the European Union from recent tariffs imposed on aluminum and steel imports. Rathke dubs all of this a “political zig and zag,” and worries that “the United States’ alliance relationships are no longer Washington’s foreign policy lodestar, as they were for the past 70 years,” arguing that the U.S. and the EU are stronger when working together and are more vulnerable when they aren’t.

“Confrontation, just like friction, can generate heat and rancor, but it is also necessary to challenge and refine, to hone and polish,” Rathke argued in a midweek CSIS commentary. “Now is the time for the United States’ closest friends to adapt to these undiplomatic times with a more robust, and if necessary, confrontational diplomacy,” he said.

That more confrontational diplomacy by the Europeans was on display this week. In Macron’s case it was accompanied by a warmth — and a personal chemistry between the French and U.S. leaders that partly overshadowed their disagreements. Merkel’s much more understated visit — three hours compared to three days — was accompanied by a greater chill, but was more cordial than their previous encounters, say analysts.

But that might be the new normal in transatlantic relations, and it could well remain so after Trump leaves the White House, with allies not trying to disguise divergences or cover up disagreements, but talking openly and frankly even abrasively, maybe as only friends can do.
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Standing alongside Germany’s chancellor, U.S. President Donald Trump emphasized on Friday that Iran would not be permitted to build a nuclear arsenal, even if a deal intended to prevent that scenario collapsed. 

“They’re not going to be doing nuclear weapons. You can bank on it,” Trump told reporters. 

Asked about possible actions, including use of force, that he could take if Iran restarted its nuclear weapons program, if the deal made in 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was abandoned, the president replied: “I don’t talk about whether or not I’d use military force.” 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, appearing with Trump at the news conference following their Friday meetings, described the JCPOA as “anything but perfect,” adding, “It will not solve all the problems of Iran.” 

She described it as one piece to limit Iran’s bad actions, while saying Berlin considered it of “prime importance” to contain threats from Iran as it exerts geopolitical influence in Syria, which has been racked by years of civil war. 

Merkel said her government would continue very close discussions with the United States as the president neared a decision on the Iranian nuclear accord, signed by Iran with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.

The Trump administration is required to recertify to Congress every 90 days that Iran is complying with the deal. The next deadline is May 12. 

The U.S. president repeatedly has heaped scorn on the agreement, referring to it as a “disgrace,” “stupid” and the “worst deal ever negotiated.” 

Following a meeting Friday of foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), new U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters in Brussels that “absent a substantial fix, absent overcoming the flaws of the deal,” the U.S. president “is unlikely to stay in that deal.” Earlier in the week, French President Emmanuel Macron said in Washington that he did not believe he had been able to persuade Trump not to abandon the nuclear agreement. 

Asked by journalists whether he thought the U.S. president would walk away from the pact, Macron replied, “That’s my bet.” 

Macron was seen by many as the foreign leader most likely to be able to change Trump’s mind because of the warm relationship between the two. 

Trump on Friday greeted Merkel under the West Wing entry portico with a kiss on both cheeks and a handshake in the Oval Office, more affection than during Merkel’s initial White House visit 13 months ago when he appeared to refuse to shake her hand in the Oval Office. 

Merkel’s relationship with Trump remains icy, according to The Washington Post, quoting a person who was in the room when the president was with Macron on Tuesday when Trump reportedly said he was “not looking forward to Merkel coming.”

According to Peter Rashish, senior fellow and director of the geoeconomics program at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, “there was always going to be a division of labor between Macron and Merkel with Trump.”

Rashish, a former vice president for Europe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, noted that while “Macron is a gifted public performer, Merkel thrives in close-range, behind-the-scenes meetings. The cordial tone of the press conference suggests she was able to find a way to engage Trump in a way that could bear fruit further down the line.”

Alongside Trump, during several events Friday at the White House when reporters were in the room, Merkel remained mostly stone-faced. But there were a couple of flashes of puzzlement during their joint news conference when Trump made off-the-cuff remarks in his trademark fashion. 

Trump and Merkel acknowledged they discussed other difficult matters, including the level of funding for NATO and trade tariffs. 

“We had an exchange of views,” she said when asked about steel tariffs Trump is poised to impose on European exports. “The decision lies with the president.” 

While Trump emphasized the need to bring down the EU trade surplus with the United States, the president also said he wanted to deepen economic ties with Europe, which observers saw as something new. 

Merkel on Friday restated her interest in a U.S.-EU free-trade agreement.

“Put those two ideas together and you could imagine down the road the resumption of some version of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with a more Trumpian stamp,” Rashish told VOA. 
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The Syrian civil war has been a catalyst for Russian-Turkish rapprochement, much to the concern of Turkey’s NATO partners. This, coupled with Ankara’s current strained relations with its traditional Western allies, is raising the prospect of a nonaligned Turkey.

Foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Russia are meeting Saturday in Moscow under the auspices of the so-called Astana process that’s aimed at resolving the Syrian civil war.

Ahead of the meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with new U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A myriad of differences continue to strain ties between the two NATO allies.

Speaking to reporters, Cavusoglu dismissed a threat from some U.S. lawmakers that additional measures might be taken against Turkey in light of its prosecution of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson on terrorism charges.

Countermeasures

“I have openly told him [Pompeo] that sanctions should not be on the agenda,” he said. “These would trigger countersteps from us that would not be in our interests,” Cavusoglu said.

Washington also threatened further sanctions over Ankara’s planned purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile system.

“The S-400 sale is done,” added Cavusoglu. “We can only talk about what we can do with the U.S. in the subsequent process.”

Washington has indicated sanctions could be triggered when the missiles are actually delivered to Turkey. Moscow has already announced it is working to bring forward the delivery date to next year, from the originally planned 2020.

A picture of the ​Iranian, Russian and Turkish presidents at an Ankara summit on Syria this month exemplified Western concerns of Turkey’s eastern drift.

But a top Turkish presidential adviser sought to put a different spin on the image. “To me, that photo-op underlines the strategic importance of Turkey and shows its rise in foreign policy. This is not a shift of axis,” international relations head Ayse Sozen Usluer said in an interview with the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper Friday.

In the same interview, Usluer suggested critics of Ankara’s Moscow rapprochement were trapped in the past.

“For the last 10 to 15 years in particular, Turkey has not felt the need to choose between the West and the East, or between the U.S. and Russia,” he said. “Turkey no longer sees its foreign policy within the framework of the Cold War or East versus West alliances.”

Usluer’s comments coincided with pro-government media political commentators increasingly promoting the idea of a nonaligned Turkey.

“Pro-government commentators are saying India, Egypt, even Cyprus did this before. Why can’t we do it now?” said political commentator Semih Idiz of the Al-Monitor website.

“I don’t see this as realistic,” he said. Governments’ policies “are determined by the geography they find themselves in. I don’t think Turkey is in a situation or place in the world that it can be a nonaligned country.”

Challenging proposition

Turkey borders Iran, Iraq and Syria, and for the nearly three decades, conflicts have raged along on its southern border. Analysts suggest pursuing an increasingly independent diplomatic role will be challenging.

But Turkey’s geography also gives it leverage.

“We call it balance-of-power policy, like in the 19th century. Turkey can play the mediation between the rival counties,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “But we can never abandon our international alliances. We have always had alliances with our allies. We were never alone, back to World War II and the Crimean War of the 19th century.”

The current situation may well suit Moscow.

“For Russia, the target is not to fully disrupt U.S.-Turkish relations, but to keep this relationship weak,” said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served in Iraq and Washington. But given that Ankara and Moscow are on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war and remain regional rivals, Selcen suggested Turkey would have to eventually return to its Western allies.

“Anyone looking at the map, even with no knowledge of history, can come up with the conclusion, yes, Turkey should have rational relations with Moscow and Tehran,” said Selcen. “But it cannot extend beyond a certain operational or tactical basis, given the long-term contradictory goals of those powers, especially in Syria.”
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A top U.S. official said Friday that NATO foreign ministers would refuse to “return to business as usual with Russia” until Moscow “withdraws forces and support for proxies in the Donbas, and returns control of Crimea to Ukraine.”

The unusually pointed demand, tweeted by State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, coincided with newly confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s arrival in Brussels for Friday’s ministerial meeting — a powerful message to send to NATO allies for his first day on the job.

“I hopped straight on a plane and came straight here,” Pompeo told the ministerial. “There’s good reason for that. The work that’s being done here today is invaluable and our objectives are important and this mission means a lot to the United States of America.”

Tweeting throughout the initial phase of the Brussels visit, Nauert reiterated those talking points, calling NATO “more relevant than any time since the Cold War,” and that today’s focus was squarely on “Russia’s continued aggression and ability to threaten, coerce, undermine and invade its neighbors.”

She also tweeted that 22 Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded in last 48 hours in eastern Ukraine, the highest number since July, adding that “Russia-led forces have intensified artillery attacks on Ukrainians defending their country. Russia must end its aggression and fully implement the Minsk agreements.”

Neal Walker, chief of the U.N. humanitarian mission to Ukraine, told VOA’s Ukrainian service that they were recording 40,000 cease-fire violations each month.

“As you can imagine, this isn’t really a cease-fire,” he said. “This is a hot conflict that has a huge impact on people’s lives.”

UN Says Enormous Humanitarian Funding Restraints in Ukraine

NATO-Russia tension

Analysts say Pompeo has good reason to hit the ground running, with increased tensions between NATO and Russia likely to top the agenda. 

Pompeo and the other NATO foreign ministers will most likely focus on how to counter Russian cyberattacks and other interference in Western democracies, as well as Moscow’s role in protecting President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

During his first year in office, U.S. President Donald Trump criticized alliance allies for not spending enough on defense, calling it unfair to taxpayers in the United States. The president, however, did reaffirm support for NATO while urging allies to pay their fair share.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and other leaders in Brussels said they appreciated Pompeo’s quick action to attend Friday’s talks.

“I feel that that’s a great expression of the importance of the alliance and the importance we attach to the alliance, and I very much look forward to talking with you, on the need to adapt NATO to a more demanding security environment,” the secretary-general told Pompeo.

As of publication time, Russia’s Foreign Ministry had not yet responded to Nauert’s tweets or Pompeo’s visit with NATO ministers.

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service. VOA’s Cindy Saine contributed original reporting.
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European Union countries backed a proposal Friday to extend a partial ban on the use of insecticides known as neonicotinoids that studies have shown are harmful to bees.

The full outdoor ban will be on the use of three active substances: imidacloprid, developed by Bayer CropScience; clothianidin, developed by Takeda Chemical Industries and Bayer CropScience; as well as Syngenta’s thiamethoxam.

“All outdoor uses will be banned and the neonicotinoids in question will only be allowed in permanent greenhouses where exposure of bees is not expected,” the European Commission said in a statement.\
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