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Category: Russia

  • ‘Noon Against Putin’ Protesters Line Up For Russian Presidential Election

    Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.

    Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.

    Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.

    Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.

    Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.

    Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.

    Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.

    While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

    Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.

    “The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”

    The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.

    The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.

    Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.

    In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.

    Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.

    Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.

    The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”

    Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”

    But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”

    The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”

    Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.

    Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.

    Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.

    Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.

    Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.

    On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.

    Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.

    “This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.

    On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.

    On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.

    The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.

    Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.

    “The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.

    Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russians form long queues at polling stations in ‘noon against Putin’ protest

    Voters in some cities answer Yulia Navalnaya’s call to turn up at midday to signal dissent against president

    Long queues formed at several polling stations in Moscow and other Russian cities as people took up a call from Alexei Navalny’s widow to head to the polls at noon on Sunday in a symbolic show of dissent against Vladimir Putin’s all but certain re-election as president.

    In the run-up to the three-day presidential elections, Yulia Navalnaya urged her supporters to protest against Putin by appearing en masse at midday on Sunday in a legal show of strength against the longtime Russian leader.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 6)

    Why is the United States so hostile, bellicose, and determined to engage Russia in a war? Searching for clues to answer the question necessarily leads to decode how U.S. ruling circles debate and adopt anti-Russian policies. Could clinical psychology—e.g., irrational, mortal fear of the Russian power—be a factor? No. Although it could be used in petty competitive settings, psychology is subjective and has no place in international politics. Further, one can play psychology but cannot avoid being trapped in it. Further, Politics, be domestic or international, is an open arena for rational processes and decision-making. Could it be then that tangible imperialistic motives are what we are looking for? Yes. Based on documented history, America’s anti-Russian hostility is designed and manufactured for the purpose of empire and domination.

    Two traits define this hostility. (a) How the United States views itself in crafted ideological terms aggrandizing itself and role in the world, and (b) how it views Russia through the same lens. Simply, American ideologues and policy makers have been consistent in viewing Russia as a formidable, untenable, and non-negotiable foe presenting a structural incompatibility with their global domination project. Aside from hyper-militarized capitalism, and entities interconnected by interests and mutual promotion such as the military industry, all satellite and service industries, political class, interventionists, ideologues of empire, other important factors are primary instruments in defining and amplifying that view. A few examples include:

    • Historically developed and encouraged ideology based on military strength and sheer domination as a path to empire is a factor. Karl Rove (a supremacist political theoretician typifying the fascist American system, and a senior advisor to George W. Bush) synthesized the basics of that ideology as follows:

    We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. [sic]

    • With the exception of a different political system and a new national identity, post-independence American ruling classes and population remained essentially British. The new Americans inherited language, culture, attitudes, mentality, criminal bent, ideology, and morbid lust for bloody colonialist expansions. In short, royal Britain was the inspiring and guiding matrix for the American republic, its worldview, and its philosophy of power. The point: the utter ugliness and cynical criminality of the British model of colonialism, imperialism, racism, and ideology of domination had become American. (Was it not a British novelist (Rudyard Kipling) who inspired and suggested to the United States to build a “recycled British empire” with his “The White Man’s Burden”?)
      • The Zionization of the United States is a subject by itself, and goes beyond the scope of this work. Suffice to say, from Harry Truman onward, the rise to power of American Jewish Zionists (and their American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and myriad other organizations) have added new dimensions to the U.S. imperialist system. They pushed it to the path of no return—so far—on all matters of foreign policy and wars. The formula behind this push is intuitive. The more the United States aggressively and militarily engages the world, the more Israel becomes the direct beneficiary and controller of the imperialist state via American Zionists.
    • Limited cultural literacy: simply stated (but without generalizing), in the United States, ruling classes and society, are clueless—by choice, by careers, and by indoctrination—about how the world works. Said differently, encouraged, cultivated, and socially accepted ignorance is what defines the United States despite positive results in many areas.

    Molly Boigon (producer and reporter for Learning Curve) gave a tiny glimpse on the degradation of the American culture with her taking on the widely spread practice of hoaxes and the messages they convey. To make sure, hoaxes are manifestations of mass culture—especially when coupled to political schemes. She opens her article, “The Great Bamboozle: How America Has Become the Land of the Hoax “with these words,

    “From Pizza gate to Rachel Dolezal, “A Million Little Pieces” to “Love And Consequences,” fake Indians to fake Holocaust survivors, the United States has a past rife with hoaxes, and likely, a history peppered with them, too.”

    On academic level, philosopher Alan Bloom gave an impressive appraisal of the abysmal status of the American political culture with his book, The Closing of the American Mind (1988). And before I forget, I must add William J. Lederer’s remarkable work, A Nation of Sheep published in 1961

    Statement: the American system thrives on all possible means to advance its world agenda. Remark: considering its devious and corecitive mechanisms of control, domestically and internationally, it is quite easy to understand the basic condition pitting the United States against Russia. By taming and indoctrinating the American crowds on how to view Russia, China, Arab states, Korea, Iran, Israel, South Africa, etc., U.S. ruling circles have succeeded at creating fertile but dangerous grounds for a global U.S. imperialist agenda with little, if not existent, domestic opposition.

    To see how all this plays in the U.S. political processes, consider the following event. In a Senate hearing held on January 24, 2000 to discuss so-called “Russian Threats to United States Security in the Post-Cold War Era”, a passage from the transcript solemnly declares:

    “Russia continues to be our top security concern, even without the adversarial relationship of the cold war. Russia still possesses 20,000-plus nuclear weapons. Wide-spread corruption and the absence of honest and accountable internal governmental administrative functions threatens Russia’s slow and erratic evolution toward democracy.” [sic]

    Paragraph Analysis

    • The Sentence, “Russia continues to be our top security concern, etc.”: the statement confirms my repeated assertions that the U.S. enmity toward Russia has nothing to do with Communism, but all to do with Russia’s status—old and new—as a great power standing in the way of its imperialist expansions, unilateralism, and hegemonic agendas.
    • The Sentence, “Russia still possesses 20,000-plus nuclear weapons,”
    • First, did the Senators and Reps expect Russia to disarm just because it changed from Communism to capitalism? In other words, did the legislators of that time expect Russia to disarm unilaterally while they continue keeping their offensive capabilities intact?
    • Second, as per Wikipedia, in 2000, the United States had 8,360 nuclear weapons, and Russia had 21,500. The number of weapons is irrelevant in relation to the issue whether the country with the most is a threat to another with a lesser number. On this subject, if Russia was a threat to the U.S., so was the opposite, i.e., the United States was equally a threat to Russia. Besides, countless factors including size, multiple heads, load, trajectory, time of travel, etc. determine the equivalency of destructiveness thus rendering the count of weapon of no use.
    • Third, while the gathering was focused on the number of Russian warheads to make impression, someone has “forgotten” that the USSR was defending a huge lands mass in Europe and Asia while confronting American, British, and French nukes near home, and, at the same, deterring potential American surprise attack from continental USA and its nuclear submarines around the oceans.
    • Fourth, by mentioning only Russian weapons without disclosing the U.S. number of weapons or other capabilities, the 106th Congress was playing a trite game in highlighting a hypothetical Russian threat while obscuring the American side of the equation.
    • The Sentence, “Wide-spread corruption and the absence of honest and accountable internal governmental administrative functions threatens Russia’s slow and erratic evolution toward democracy”. [Sic]

    Here we go. Whenever the United States wants to inveigh against a foreign state, it resorts to the inferior gizmo of psychological projection. Russia is everything bad, but the United States is everything good—as if U.S. rulers and society are honest, accountable, inerratic, and unbending practitioners of democratic rules.

    To close, the hearing is a testimony that U.S. hostility toward Russia is structural and ideological, fixed and repetitive to tedium. Keeping that in mind, it does not take much convincing to state that Russia is being targeted not because of its Russian-ness. The cause is different and dialectical: Russia is standing in the way of U.S. military-hegemonic onslaught on all nations out of its control. Otherwise, why is all this fanfare and opposition to Russia’s role and place in the international system?

    What I just cited is a minuscule story in the annals of U.S. history concerning Russia. However, since 2000 through present, things have not changed in the United States, but gradually changed in the rest of the world. In 2001, George W. Bush, a fascist hyper-imperialist, ushered his freaky world vision with these words: “You Are either with Us, Or with the Terrorists”. In 2024, Blinken, Nuland, and Biden keep shouting, insulting, and blistering but no one listens. What happened? And, how Ukraine became the watershed for the crumbling of U.S. hyper-imperialism?

    To recap, starting with Barack Obama, U.S. mechanisms to subjugate Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Arab nations, and any other nation resisting surrender to the U.S. diktat have finally reached their operational limits and started jamming. Signs of irreparable structural failure in the U.S. grip of the world were everywhere. Examples include Trump’s failure to disarm North Korea, Biden and Trump’s failure to vanquish Iran, their failure to make China and Russia “cry uncle” with sanctions and threats, their failure to save the dollar from unstoppable decline in world trade, and the failure of their Zionist wars in the Middle East—directly or via Israel.

    In historical perspective, what were the signs that Russia was unstoppably breaking free from the chains that tied it to the U.S. imperialist wheel since the fall of the Soviet Union? How did Ukraine become the unintended theater for changes that no one has ever anticipated? Although Russia had almost surrendered to the United States during the Yeltsin years and the early Putin years (the proposal that Russia joins NATO), the powerful sign that it was so protective of its sovereignty can be attested to by one salient fact. It refused to dismantle its entire nuclear arsenal and national defensive structures—as demanded by the United States immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

    After the fall of the USSR (1991), U.S. planners focused on disarming Russia. The first target was the dismantlement of its nuclear capabilities. When that failed, the focus shifted to transform it into a vassal. The method was all too familiar American scheming: use pro-American Russians—with Americans in advisory roles—to model Russia’ new character according to America’s plans. The gamut was long; it included the composition of new political elites, capitalistic mode of production, finance, pro-U.S. foreign policy, and control of Russia’ military assets. But when this enterprise stalled under Vladimir Putin’s first presidency, and when Russia began recovering its independent international role, the U.S. reverted to its erstwhile confrontational strategy: opposing Russia as a state, nation, polity, and geography.

    In summary, U.S. conduct vs. Russia is not happenstance. It has roots, motives, and it moves according to preset objectives. Knowing the details of this conduct is the path to unravel the knots surrounding the ongoing events in Ukraine. In particular, U.S. hostile posture toward post-Soviet Russia did not come out of nowhere. It is a culmination of a long anti-Russian history. As I stated, while this posture is no longer about the struggle between capitalism and communism, the United States updated its purpose to include confrontational policies in the pursuit of chimerical global empire under its unilateral control.

    On one side, this new struggle is related intricately and ideologically to the imperialist making of the United States and its global projection. On the other, it is materially tied to how it wants to portray and treat Russia. To recap, after the dissolution of the USSR, Russia continued to be a nuclear superpower, it declined to be a U.S. vassal, and it recovered from the disastrous years of Boris Yeltsin. The rest is a known history. After carving its own independent path in the world, Russia is now facing, technically alone, formidable challenges including:

    • Fend off attacks from U.S.-directed Ukraine,
    • Prepare for a possible U.S. nuclear strike,
    • Nullify U.S. efforts to surround it with nuclear weapons,
    • Nullify U.S. military advantage through NATO,
    • Watching out for aggressive moves by Britain, France, Germany, and Poland,
    • Nullify the effects of economic sanctions and seizing of assets ,
    • Terminate U.S. unipolarism in world affairs.

    A question: what does it mean when an independent Russia (and China) stands in the way of U.S. quest for unopposed control of the planet? The answer is spontaneous: conflict will ensue. Thus far, it seems that neither Russia nor China is inclined to bargain for co-sharing in world domination under the wings of the American empire—they never sought such an aim in the first place. Besides, it would be a frivolous bribery. In addition, Russia and China–through words and deeds–respect the world and the inherent rights of all nations to be secure and prosper without U.S. sermons, warnings, or threats of war.

    Russia’s independence from U.S. blackmail has predictable consequences, though. By failing to subdue Russia, the United States went back to square one. That is, driven by dreams of universal control, by entrenched imperialist violence, and by the arrogance of military power, the United States reprised its strategic fixation to defeat Russia. Some armchair ideologues have even suggested that the United States has the capability of taking on both Russia and China at the same time. And another just stated the other day, “The United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces.”

    Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has mobilized vast arrays of tools to zoom on and destabilize Russia. Anti-Russian films, TV shows, videogames, parodies with heavy Russian-accented English, books, news agencies, mass media, essays, policy statements, academia, congressional resolutions, national security strategies, presidential executive orders, military alliances, and even comic publications have all transformed Russia into a villain for all times.

    As a reminder, the core of the Soviet Union was Russia. But when the USSR collapsed, Russia didn’t. Its national purpose and statehood identity remained intact. Having failed to destabilize, contain, or make Russia collapse in over 105 years (since 1917) of strenuous attempts, the United States is at it again by using the Ukraine conflict as a springboard toward that end.

    To summarize, weakening, cancelling Russia’s presence in the world, planning to partition, or even destroying it in some way remains an irrepressible U.S. coveted desire. Key point: U.S. morbid hostility toward Russia did not come about the day after the intervention—it predates it by decades. Next, I shall address four pertinent examples.

    Example 1: in her article: “From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age,” Ekaterina Blinova, a freelance Russian journalist, vigorously addressed the issue of U.S.-British hostility toward Russia. She writes:

    Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan, the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945. The plan, dubbed Operation Unthinkable, stated that its primary goal was “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire. Even though ‘the will’ of these two countries may be defined as no more than a square deal for Poland, that does not necessarily limit the military commitment. [Emphasis added]

    Example 2: U.S. Department of State (Office of the Historian) published a document entitled, United States Relations with Russia: The Cold War: 1945–1949. The relevant part of the document was a reference to a telegram sent by the anti-Soviet, anti-Russian, and anti-communist George Kennan. Here is an extract of how Kennan initiated what has become official U.S. hostility to Russia:

    On February 22, 1946, George F. Kennan, the chargé d’affaires at the Moscow Embassy, sent a long telegram to the Department of State detailing his concerns about Soviet expansionism. Kennan argued that the United States would never be able to cooperate successfully with the Soviets, because they saw the West as an enemy and would engage in a protracted battle to limit Western power and increase Soviet domination. Kennan argued that the United States should lead the West in “containing” the Soviets by exerting counterforce at various geographical and political points of conflict. Kennan published a public version of this argument in the July 1947 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Kennan’s articulations of the policy of containment had a major influence on American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union”.

    Comment

    • Kennan talks about Soviet expansionism. This is remarkable—sarcastically, of course. Was he aware of how the United States of the 13 colonies situated on the East coast of the Atlantic Ocean had expanded all the way to the Pacific and to Hawaii? Did anyone inform him how President James Polk annexed Texas and the way with which he took control of the Mexican Cession?
    • He said that the “United States would never cooperate with the Soviets, because they saw the West as enemy”. Fact: it was the other way around. The United States saw Russia, the USSR, and Communism as enemies after the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. That revolution was a great revolutionary experiment in social change and re-distribution of wealth—all of which are anathema to U.S. capitalists and imperialists. That the experiment had failed is another story.
    • The core of Kennan’s hostility toward Russia was inserted along these lines: Russia “Would engage in a protracted battle to limit Western power and increase Soviet domination.” Well! So, it is okay if the United States increases domination and limit the power of the Soviet Union. Essentially, Kennan wanted that the United States to be the sole power having the right to dominate.
    • As for the proposal to “contain” Russia, his exhortation has become eventually the daily Gospel in Washington until the end of so-called Cold War. However, “Containment” is now re-appearing regularly in U.S. and European media.

    The full text of telegram (861.00/2 – 2246) is a synthesis of how U.S. political psychopaths think of Russia. How they see history. How they see the world through the narrow pinhole of ideology and indoctrination. How they construct a self-serving alternative reality and thereafter manufacture responses to it. (The study of this telegram goes beyond the scope of this work)

    In example 3 and 4, next, I shall discuss the making, workings, and adoption of the U.S. anti-Russian ideology.

    Read Part 1,  2, 3, 4, and 5.

    The post Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 6) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukraine Strikes Russian Oil Refineries, Shells Border City

    Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.

    By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.

    More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.

    Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.

    Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.

    Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.

    Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.

    The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.

    Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.

    In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.

    The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.

    There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.

    “It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.

    “The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”

    Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.

    Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.

    No Serious Challengers

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.

    He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.

    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.

    “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”

    His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    With reporting by Reuters and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Police Investigate At Least 15 Cases Of ‘Vandalism In Polling Stations’ As Voting Resumes

    Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.

    By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.

    More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.

    Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.

    Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.

    Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.

    Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.

    The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.

    Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.

    In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.

    The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.

    There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.

    “It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.

    “The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”

    Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.

    Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.

    No Serious Challengers

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.

    He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.

    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.

    “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”

    His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    With reporting by Reuters and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Europe To Use Frozen Russian Profits To Buy Arms For Ukraine

    Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.

    By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.

    More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.

    Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.

    Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.

    Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.

    Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.

    The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.

    Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.

    In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.

    The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.

    There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.

    “It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.

    “The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”

    Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.

    Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.

    No Serious Challengers

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.

    He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.

    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.

    “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”

    His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    With reporting by Reuters and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Green Dye And Fire Spoil Ballot Boxes In Incidents Across Russia


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Two Dead In Russian Strikes On Ukrainian Regions

    Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.

    By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.

    Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”

    There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”

    Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.

    Results are expected to be announced on March 18.

    The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.

    “Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.

    McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.

    “I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.


    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.

    “We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.

    How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russians Begin Voting In A Presidential Election Whose Outcome Is Not In Doubt

    Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.

    By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.

    Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”

    There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”

    Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.

    Results are expected to be announced on March 18.

    The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.

    “Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.

    McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.

    “I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.


    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.

    “We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.

    How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Macron Again Declines To Rule Out Western Troops In Ukraine, But Says Not Needed Now

    Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.

    By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.

    Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”

    There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”

    Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.

    Results are expected to be announced on March 18.

    The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.

    “Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.

    McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.

    “I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.


    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.

    “We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.

    How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Lawmakers Weigh Lend-Lease Program Favored By Trump As Ukraine Aid Compromise

    Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.

    The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

    Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.

    Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.

    “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”

    The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.

    By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.

    Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”

    There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”

    Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.

    Results are expected to be announced on March 18.

    The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.

    The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.

    Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.

    Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.

    “Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.

    McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.

    “I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.

    Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.


    Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.

    “We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.

    How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CPJ joins call for Russia to keep the internet on during presidential elections

    The Committee to Protect Journalists joined #KeepItOn Coalition partners on Thursday in calling on Russian authorities and telecommunications providers to maintain free, open, and secure internet access before, during, and after presidential elections scheduled for March 15 to 17.

    The letter highlights Russia’s history of internet shutdowns, including the blocking of tech companies that refused to comply with censorship orders and throttling internet access during moments of civil unrest.

    Read the full letter here.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Navalny’s Widow Calls Putin A ‘Gangster’ Unworthy To Be Recognized As President

    Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) was behind a sweeping wave of drone attacks on several Russian regions on March 13 that reportedly set a Rosneft refinery on fire and targeted other economic and military objectives, a Ukrainian intelligence source told RFE/RL.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry earlier said its air defenses shot down 65 Ukrainian drones over six regions — 35 in Voronezh, 25 in Belgorod, eight in Bryansk and Kursk each, one in Leningrad, and one on Ryazan region.

    Regional officials reported that the Rosneft oil refinery in Ryazan was struck, a day after another drone attack seriously damaged a LUKoil refinery.

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    Pavel Malkov, the governor of Ryazan, some 180 kilometers southeast of Moscow, said the local Rosneft oil refinery, Russia’s seventh-largest, was on fire as a result of a drone attack.

    There were also casualties, according to preliminary information, Malkov wrote on Telegram, without providing further details.

    The Shot Telegram channel reported that the attack on the Rosneft subsidiary Ryazannefteprodukt also injured two people.

    Russian news agency RIA Novosti later quoted emergency services as saying that four drones had hit the refinery. The fire, which affected two tanks used in the processing of oil products on an area of some 175 square meters, was later extinguished, it said.

    The source, who is in security enforcement and spoke on condition of anonymity to RFE/RL, said that three Russian oil refineries — one in Ryazan, one in Kstovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region, and one in Kirishi in the Leningrad region — were targeted by Ukrainian drones as Kyiv seeks to inflict as much damage as possible to Russia’s economy

    “We have been systematically implementing a detailed strategy to diminish the economic potential of the Russian Federation. Our task is to deprive the enemy of resources and reduce the flow of oil money and fuel, which the Russia directs toward the war and the murdering of our citizens,” the source said

    Ukrainian drones also targeted a Russian air base in Buturlinovka and a military airfield in Voronezh region, the source said.

    Separately, an SBU source who wished to remain anonymous confirmed to Ukrayinska Pravda that the strikes had been orchestrated by the agency.

    “We are at war with everything that finances the Russian military and the war. And Russia is at war with civilians and high-rise buildings,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, wrote on Telegram, without directly confirming the attacks.

    In Belgorod, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said an apartment building was struck but there were no injuries, while according to TASS, the facade of the regional headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB) was damaged and windows were broken.

    The March 13 attacks came a day after another sweeping wave of strikes on multiple targets in Russia that reportedly started fires at two major oil facilities.

    The attacks damaged LUKoil’s NORSI refinery, Russia’s fourth-largest, in the Nizhny Novgorod region about 775 kilometers from the Ukrainian border and hit an oil depot in Oryol, 116 kilometers from Ukraine.

    Also on March 12, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and the Siberian Battalion, which consist of Russian citizens who have been fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the war, claimed to have launched cross-border attacks into Russia territory.

    The Kremlin said Russian forces repelled the incursions and inflicted heavy losses on the armed groups. Neither claim could be independently verified.

    Meanwhile, Russian air strikes killed at least two people and wounded several others on March 13 in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Sumy regions, officials said.

    Two civilians were killed and 11 wounded in the eastern Donetsk region in the bombardment of a high-rise residential building in the city of Myrnohrad, regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.

    In the northeastern region of Sumy, a Russian drone attack on a five-story apartment building destroyed 30 apartments and caused a number of casualties, the region’s military administration said on Telegram.

    Ten people were rescued from the rubble, eight of whom sustained injuries, it said.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Are We Stumbling into World War III in Ukraine?


    U.S. and Ukrainian armies attend the opening ceremony of the “RAPID TRIDENT-2021” military exercises.

    President Biden began his State of the Union speech with an impassioned warning that failing to pass his $61 billion dollar weapons package for Ukraine “will put Ukraine at risk, Europe at risk, the free world at risk.” But even if the president’s request were suddenly passed, it would only prolong, and dangerously escalate, the brutal war that is destroying Ukraine.

    The assumption of the U.S. political elite that Biden had a viable plan to defeat Russia and restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has proven to be one more triumphalist American dream that has turned into a nightmare. Ukraine has joined North Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Gaza, as another shattered monument to America’s military madness.

    This could have been one of the shortest wars in history, if President Biden had just supported a peace and neutrality agreement negotiated in Turkey in March and April 2022 that already had champagne corks popping in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksiy Arestovych. Instead, the U.S. and NATO chose to prolong and escalate the war as a means to try to defeat and weaken Russia.

    Two days before Biden’s State of the Union speech, Secretary of State Blinken announced the early retirement of Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the officials most responsible for a decade of disastrous U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

    Two weeks before the announcement of Nuland’s retirement at the age of 62, she acknowledged in a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the war in Ukraine had degenerated into a war of attrition that she compared to the First World War, and she admitted that the Biden administration had no Plan B for Ukraine if Congress doesn’t cough up $61 billion for more weapons.

    We don’t know whether Nuland was forced out, or perhaps quit in protest over a policy that she fought for and lost. Either way, her ride into the sunset opens the door for others to fashion a badly needed Plan B for Ukraine.

    The imperative must be to chart a path back from this hopeless but ever-escalating war of attrition to the negotiating table that the U.S. and Britain upended in April 2022 – or at least to new negotiations on the basis that President Zelenskyy defined on March 27, 2022, when he told his people, “Our goal is obvious: peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible.”

    Instead, on February 26, in a very worrying sign of where NATO’s current policy is leading, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed that European leaders meeting in Paris discussed sending larger numbers of Western ground troops to Ukraine.

    Macron pointed out that NATO members have steadily increased their support to levels unthinkable when the war began. He highlighted the example of Germany, which offered Ukraine only helmets and sleeping bags at the outset of the conflict and is now saying Ukraine needs more missiles and tanks. “The people that said “never ever” today were the same ones who said never ever planes, never ever long-range missiles, never ever trucks. They said all that two years ago,” Macron recalled. “We have to be humble and realize that we (have) always been six to eight months late.”

    Macron implied that, as the war escalates, NATO countries may eventually have to deploy their own forces to Ukraine, and he argued that they should do so sooner rather than later if they want to recover the initiative in the war.

      The mere suggestion of Western troops fighting in Ukraine elicited an outcry both within France–from extreme right National Rally to leftist La France Insoumise–and from other NATO countries. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted that participants in the meeting were “unanimous” in their opposition to deploying troops. Russian officials warned that such a step would mean war between Russia and NATO.

    But as Poland’s president and prime minister headed to Washington for a White House meeting on February 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Polish parliament that sending NATO troops into Ukraine “is not unthinkable.”

    Macron’s intention may have been precisely to bring this debate out into the open and put an end to the secrecy surrounding the undeclared policy of gradual escalation toward full-scale war with Russia that the West has pursued for two years.

    Macron failed to mention publicly that, under current policy, NATO forces are already deeply involved in the war. Among many lies that President Biden told in his State of the Union speech, he insisted that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine.”

    However, the trove of Pentagon documents leaked in March 2023 included an assessment that there were already at least 97 NATO special forces troops operating in Ukraine, including 50 British, 14 Americans and 15 French. Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, has also acknowledged a “small U.S. military presence” based in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to try to keep track of thousands of tons of U.S. weapons as they arrive in Ukraine.

    But many more U.S. forces, whether inside or outside Ukraine, are involved in planning Ukrainian military operations; providing satellite intelligence; and play essential roles in the targeting of U.S. weapons. A Ukrainian official told the Washington Post that Ukrainian forces hardly ever fire HIMARS rockets without precise targeting data provided by U.S. forces in Europe.

    All these U.S. and NATO forces are most definitely “at war in Ukraine.” To be at war in a country with only small numbers of “boots on the ground” has been a hallmark of 21st Century U.S. war-making, as any Navy pilot on an aircraft-carrier or drone operator in Nevada can attest. It is precisely this doctrine of “limited” and proxy war that is at risk of spinning out of control in Ukraine, unleashing the World War III that President Biden has vowed to avoid.

    The United States and NATO have tried to keep the escalation of the war under control by deliberate, incremental escalation of the types of weapons they provide and cautious, covert expansion of their own involvement. This has been compared to “boiling a frog,” turning up the heat gradually to avoid any sudden move that might cross a Russian “red line” and trigger a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. But as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in December 2022, “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.”

    We have long been puzzled by these glaring contradictions at the heart of U.S. and NATO policy. On one hand, we believe President Biden when he says he does not want to start World War III. On the other hand, that is what his policy of incremental escalation is inexorably leading towards.

    U.S. preparations for war with Russia are already at odds with the existential imperative of containing the conflict. In November 2022, the Reed-Inhofe Amendment to the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) invoked wartime emergency powers to authorize an extraordinary shopping-list of weapons like the ones sent to Ukraine, and approved billion-dollar, multi-year no-bid contracts with weapons manufacturers to buy 10 to 20 times the quantities of weapons that the United States had actually shipped to Ukraine.

    Retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian, the former chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division in the Office of Management and Budget, explained, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”

    So the United States is preparing to fight a major ground war with Russia, but the weapons to fight that war will take years to produce, and, with or without them, that could quickly escalate into a nuclear war. Nuland’s early retirement could be the result of Biden and his foreign policy team finally starting to come to grips with the existential dangers of the aggressive policies she championed.

    Meanwhile, Russia’s escalation from its original limited “Special Military Operation” to its current commitment of 7% of its GDP to the war and weapons production has outpaced the West’s escalations, not just in weapons production but in manpower and actual military capability.

    One could say that Russia is winning the war, but that depends what its real war goals are. There is a yawning gulf between the rhetoric from Biden and other Western leaders about Russian ambitions to invade other countries in Europe and what Russia was ready to settle for at the talks in Turkey in 2022, when it agreed to withdraw to its pre-war positions in return for a simple commitment to Ukrainian neutrality.

    Despite Ukraine’s extremely weak position after its failed 2023 offensive and its costly defense and loss of Avdiivka, Russian forces are not racing toward Kyiv, or even Kharkiv, Odesa or the natural boundary of the Dnipro River.

    Reuters Moscow Bureau reported that Russia spent months trying to open new negotiations with the United States in late 2023, but that, in January 2024, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan slammed that door shut with a flat refusal to negotiate over Ukraine.

    The only way to find out what Russia really wants, or what it will settle for, is to return to the negotiating table. All sides have demonized each other and staked out maximalist positions, but that is what nations at war do in order to justify the sacrifices they demand of their people and their rejection of diplomatic alternatives.

    Serious diplomatic negotiations are now essential to get down to the nitty-gritty of what it will take to bring peace to Ukraine. We are sure there are wiser heads within the U.S., French and other NATO governments who are saying this too, behind closed doors, and that may be precisely why Nuland is out and why Macron is talking so openly about where the current policy is heading. We fervently hope that is the case, and that Biden’s Plan B will lead back to the negotiating table, and then forward to peace in Ukraine.

    The post Are We Stumbling into World War III in Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Russia Deploys “Game Changer” Weapon against Ukraine

    WATCH Russia deploy ‘game changer’ weapon against Ukraine©  Telegram / mod_russia

    Russia’s Defense Ministry has released footage of an Su-34 bomber dropping FAB-500 glide munitions, which have been hailed as a game-changer in the Ukraine conflict for their destructive potential and deployment range of up to 80km.

    In a video that appears to be shot from a camera attached to the side of an aircraft, several bombs can be seen dropping and then deploying their wings shortly thereafter.

    The bombs are equipped with a unified planning and correction module (UMPC), which turns regular free-falling bombs into guided glide munitions. The high-explosive aerial FAB-500 bombs seen in the video each carry a 300-kilogram payload.

    The UMPC system has also been used on other older Soviet aerial gravity bombs such as the FAB-1500 – a 1.5-tonne weapon, nearly half of which consists of high explosives – to turn them into highly destructive and effective glide munitions.

    These modernized bombs have proven to be “dramatically” effective against Ukrainian forces, as noted by Western experts and media outlets such as the Washington Post and CNN, because Kiev’s troops cannot effectively defend against such munitions.

    With their ability to traverse long distances with accuracy, the UMPC-fitted bombs can be fired from Russian jets well outside the effective range of Kiev’s existing aerial defense systems, leaving Ukrainian forces unable to defend against them.

    Ukrainian commanders have also noted the “very high destructive power” of these munitions. Dmitry Lykhoviy, a Ukrainian military spokesman, told the Post that the Russian bombs are capable of completely demolishing houses and foundations that are used for defense fortifications.

    “These bombs completely destroy any position. All buildings and structures simply turn into a pit after the arrival of just one,” recalled one fighter of a Ukrainian assault brigade operating near the stronghold town of Avdeevka, which was captured by Russian forces last month.

    Russia has reportedly “significantly” increased the rate at which these  bombs have been used on Ukrainian positions, particularly around Avdeevka, leading to heavy casualties.

    According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s latest estimates, Ukraine’s losses of military personnel since the start of the conflict in 2022 have surpassed 444,000 people.

    The post Russia Deploys “Game Changer” Weapon against Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What Happens In LGBT Conversion Therapy In Russia


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russia Strikes Apartment Buildings In Kryviy Rih, Kupyansk, Killing 3

    Andrija Mandic, the pro-Russian head of the New Serbian Democracy party, will continue to serve as the speaker of the Montenegrin parliament after surviving a no-confidence vote.

    In a secret ballot, 44 lawmakers voted for Mandic to remain at the helm of parliament, while 27 voted for his dismissal. There are 81 legislators in the Montenegrin parliament.

    Mandic’s dismissal was sought by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which accused him of abusing the assembly for “party, nationalist, and anti-European interests.”

    DPS, the biggest opposition party, was outraged after Mandic received Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian president of the Bosnian Serb entity on February 27.

    Dodik visited Montenegro immediately after meetings with the authoritarian presidents of Russia and Belarus, Vladimir Putin, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The visit triggered violent protests in Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, prompting the latter to send a note of protest to the Montenegrin authorities.

    The note highlighted that only the flag of the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, was displayed behind Dodik at the press conference and not Bosnia’s. Dodik has called for the seccession of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska from Bosnia. A quarter of Montenegro’s population is ethnic Serb.

    “Mandic is a representative of those who implement national-chauvinist politics, a promoter of Greater Serbian nationalism. For him, (Radovan) Karadzic and (Ratko) Mladic are his heroes,” DPS deputy Ivan Vukovic said in explaining the request for Mandic’s dismissal.

    Karadzic and Mladic are Bosnian Serbs who were convicted of war crimes, including genocide, during the Yugoslav wars.

    The DPS criticized Mandic for visiting the election headquarters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s party on the day of the parliamentary elections in Serbia. They also criticized him for placing a tricolor flag identical to the official national flag of Serbia in his cabinet. Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia in 2006.

    The DPS called Mandic a “weight on the neck” of European Montenegro and claimed that Western ambassadors bypass the Montenegrin parliament because of his leadership role.

    Mandic did not directly respond to the accusations and criticism, emphasizing instead that te public is primarily interested in the results delivered by the parliamentary majority.

    “In response to claims by political opponents that I am a hindrance to European integration, I defer to [EU Enlargement Commissioner] Oliver Varhelyi and others in Brussels with whom I have engaged. They appreciate the efforts of the parliament and me,” Mandic said.

    Mandic received support from his own party as well as members of the ruling coalition, which includes the Europe Now Movement (PES) led by Prime Minister Milojko Spajic, the Democrats led by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Becic, and the Socialist People’s Party.

    However, during the parliamentary session, no member of the Europe Now Movement voiced support for Mandic, despite not voting for his dismissal.

    Mandic was the leader of the former pro-Russian Democratic Front, which until 2020 was the main opposition to the DPS, which subsequently lost power.

    The program guidelines of the Democratic Front included the withdrawal of recognition of Kosovo’s independence, the lifting of sanctions against Russia introduced in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, and the withdrawal of Montenegro from NATO.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. To Send $300 Million In Military Aid To Ukraine, First New Package In Months

    Andrija Mandic, the pro-Russian head of the New Serbian Democracy party, will continue to serve as the speaker of the Montenegrin parliament after surviving a no-confidence vote.

    In a secret ballot, 44 lawmakers voted for Mandic to remain at the helm of parliament, while 27 voted for his dismissal. There are 81 legislators in the Montenegrin parliament.

    Mandic’s dismissal was sought by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which accused him of abusing the assembly for “party, nationalist, and anti-European interests.”

    DPS, the biggest opposition party, was outraged after Mandic received Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian president of the Bosnian Serb entity on February 27.

    Dodik visited Montenegro immediately after meetings with the authoritarian presidents of Russia and Belarus, Vladimir Putin, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The visit triggered violent protests in Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, prompting the latter to send a note of protest to the Montenegrin authorities.

    The note highlighted that only the flag of the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, was displayed behind Dodik at the press conference and not Bosnia’s. Dodik has called for the seccession of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska from Bosnia. A quarter of Montenegro’s population is ethnic Serb.

    “Mandic is a representative of those who implement national-chauvinist politics, a promoter of Greater Serbian nationalism. For him, (Radovan) Karadzic and (Ratko) Mladic are his heroes,” DPS deputy Ivan Vukovic said in explaining the request for Mandic’s dismissal.

    Karadzic and Mladic are Bosnian Serbs who were convicted of war crimes, including genocide, during the Yugoslav wars.

    The DPS criticized Mandic for visiting the election headquarters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s party on the day of the parliamentary elections in Serbia. They also criticized him for placing a tricolor flag identical to the official national flag of Serbia in his cabinet. Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia in 2006.

    The DPS called Mandic a “weight on the neck” of European Montenegro and claimed that Western ambassadors bypass the Montenegrin parliament because of his leadership role.

    Mandic did not directly respond to the accusations and criticism, emphasizing instead that te public is primarily interested in the results delivered by the parliamentary majority.

    “In response to claims by political opponents that I am a hindrance to European integration, I defer to [EU Enlargement Commissioner] Oliver Varhelyi and others in Brussels with whom I have engaged. They appreciate the efforts of the parliament and me,” Mandic said.

    Mandic received support from his own party as well as members of the ruling coalition, which includes the Europe Now Movement (PES) led by Prime Minister Milojko Spajic, the Democrats led by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Becic, and the Socialist People’s Party.

    However, during the parliamentary session, no member of the Europe Now Movement voiced support for Mandic, despite not voting for his dismissal.

    Mandic was the leader of the former pro-Russian Democratic Front, which until 2020 was the main opposition to the DPS, which subsequently lost power.

    The program guidelines of the Democratic Front included the withdrawal of recognition of Kosovo’s independence, the lifting of sanctions against Russia introduced in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, and the withdrawal of Montenegro from NATO.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Romanian President Says He Will Run For NATO’s Top Job

    Andrija Mandic, the pro-Russian head of the New Serbian Democracy party, will continue to serve as the speaker of the Montenegrin parliament after surviving a no-confidence vote.

    In a secret ballot, 44 lawmakers voted for Mandic to remain at the helm of parliament, while 27 voted for his dismissal. There are 81 legislators in the Montenegrin parliament.

    Mandic’s dismissal was sought by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which accused him of abusing the assembly for “party, nationalist, and anti-European interests.”

    DPS, the biggest opposition party, was outraged after Mandic received Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian president of the Bosnian Serb entity on February 27.

    Dodik visited Montenegro immediately after meetings with the authoritarian presidents of Russia and Belarus, Vladimir Putin, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The visit triggered violent protests in Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina, prompting the latter to send a note of protest to the Montenegrin authorities.

    The note highlighted that only the flag of the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, was displayed behind Dodik at the press conference and not Bosnia’s. Dodik has called for the seccession of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska from Bosnia. A quarter of Montenegro’s population is ethnic Serb.

    “Mandic is a representative of those who implement national-chauvinist politics, a promoter of Greater Serbian nationalism. For him, (Radovan) Karadzic and (Ratko) Mladic are his heroes,” DPS deputy Ivan Vukovic said in explaining the request for Mandic’s dismissal.

    Karadzic and Mladic are Bosnian Serbs who were convicted of war crimes, including genocide, during the Yugoslav wars.

    The DPS criticized Mandic for visiting the election headquarters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s party on the day of the parliamentary elections in Serbia. They also criticized him for placing a tricolor flag identical to the official national flag of Serbia in his cabinet. Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia in 2006.

    The DPS called Mandic a “weight on the neck” of European Montenegro and claimed that Western ambassadors bypass the Montenegrin parliament because of his leadership role.

    Mandic did not directly respond to the accusations and criticism, emphasizing instead that te public is primarily interested in the results delivered by the parliamentary majority.

    “In response to claims by political opponents that I am a hindrance to European integration, I defer to [EU Enlargement Commissioner] Oliver Varhelyi and others in Brussels with whom I have engaged. They appreciate the efforts of the parliament and me,” Mandic said.

    Mandic received support from his own party as well as members of the ruling coalition, which includes the Europe Now Movement (PES) led by Prime Minister Milojko Spajic, the Democrats led by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Becic, and the Socialist People’s Party.

    However, during the parliamentary session, no member of the Europe Now Movement voiced support for Mandic, despite not voting for his dismissal.

    Mandic was the leader of the former pro-Russian Democratic Front, which until 2020 was the main opposition to the DPS, which subsequently lost power.

    The program guidelines of the Democratic Front included the withdrawal of recognition of Kosovo’s independence, the lifting of sanctions against Russia introduced in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, and the withdrawal of Montenegro from NATO.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What Happens In LGBT Conversion Therapy In Russia


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Know Your Enemy: Why the Right Loves Foreign Dictators

    Matt and Sam talk to Jacob Heilbrunn about his new book, America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Borrell Urges EU To Beef Up Defense Industry For Potential Threats, Keep Aiding Ukraine

    Ukraine and its regional allies on March 10 assailed reported comments by Pope Francis in which the pontiff suggested opening negotiations with Moscow and used the term “white flag,” while the Vatican later appeared to back off some of the remarks, saying Francis was not speaking about “capitulation.”

    Francis was quoted on March 9 in a partially released interview suggesting Ukraine, facing possible defeat, should have the “courage” to sit down with Russia for peace negotiations, saying there is no shame in waving the “white flag.”

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit out in a Telegram post and in his nightly video address, saying — without mentioning the pope — that “the church should be among the people. And not 2,500 kilometers away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

    Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted more directly on social media, saying, “When it comes to the ‘white flag,’ we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century.”

    Many historians have been critical of the Vatican during World War II, saying Pope Pius XII remained silent as the Holocaust raged. The Vatican has long argued that, at the time, it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities and therefore could not denounce them.

    Kuleba, in his social media post, wrote: “I urge the avoidance of repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives.

    “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations,’” Kuleba said.

    “Our flag is a yellow-and-blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” added Kuleba, who also thanked Francis for his “constant prayers for peace” and said he hoped the pontiff will visit Ukraine, home of some 1 million Catholics.

    Zelenskiy has remained firm in not speaking directly to Russia unless terms of his “peace formula” are reached.

    Ukraine’s terms call for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, restoring the country’s 1991 post-Soviet borders, and holding Russia accountable for its actions. The Kremlin has rejected such conditions.

    Following criticism of the pope’s reported comments, the head of the Vatican press service, Matteo Bruni, explained that with his words regarding Ukraine, Francis intended to “call for a cease-fire and restore the courage of negotiations,” but did not mean capitulation.

    “The pope uses the image of the white flag proposed by the interviewer to imply an end to hostilities, a truce that is achieved through the courage to begin negotiations,” Bruni said.

    “Elsewhere in the interview…referring to any situation of war, the pope clearly stated: ‘Negotiations are never capitulations,’” Bruni added.

    The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, said Ukraine was “wounded but unconquered.”

    “Believe me, no one would think of giving up. Even where hostilities are taking place today; listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy! Because we know that if Ukraine, God forbid, was at least partially conquered, the line of death would spread,” Shevchuk said at St. George’s Church in New York.

    Andriy Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, told RAI News that “you don’t negotiate with terrorists, with those who are recognized as criminals,” referring to the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin. “No one tried to put Hitler at ease.”

    Ukraine’s regional allies also expressed anger about the pope’s remarks.

    “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on social media.

    Lithuanian President Edgars Rinkevichs wrote on social media: “My Sunday morning conclusion: You can’t capitulate to evil, you have to fight it and defeat it, so that evil raises the white flag and surrenders.”

    Alexandra Valkenburg, ambassador and head of the EU Delegation to the Holy See, wrote “Russia…can end this war immediately by respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. EU supports Ukraine and its peace plan.”

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Imprisoned Kara-Murza Says Putin’s Rule Based ‘Exclusively On Fear And Apathy’

    Ukraine and its regional allies on March 10 assailed reported comments by Pope Francis in which the pontiff suggested opening negotiations with Moscow and used the term “white flag,” while the Vatican later appeared to back off some of the remarks, saying Francis was not speaking about “capitulation.”

    Francis was quoted on March 9 in a partially released interview suggesting Ukraine, facing possible defeat, should have the “courage” to sit down with Russia for peace negotiations, saying there is no shame in waving the “white flag.”

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit out in a Telegram post and in his nightly video address, saying — without mentioning the pope — that “the church should be among the people. And not 2,500 kilometers away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

    Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted more directly on social media, saying, “When it comes to the ‘white flag,’ we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century.”

    Many historians have been critical of the Vatican during World War II, saying Pope Pius XII remained silent as the Holocaust raged. The Vatican has long argued that, at the time, it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities and therefore could not denounce them.

    Kuleba, in his social media post, wrote: “I urge the avoidance of repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives.

    “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations,’” Kuleba said.

    “Our flag is a yellow-and-blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” added Kuleba, who also thanked Francis for his “constant prayers for peace” and said he hoped the pontiff will visit Ukraine, home of some 1 million Catholics.

    Zelenskiy has remained firm in not speaking directly to Russia unless terms of his “peace formula” are reached.

    Ukraine’s terms call for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, restoring the country’s 1991 post-Soviet borders, and holding Russia accountable for its actions. The Kremlin has rejected such conditions.

    Following criticism of the pope’s reported comments, the head of the Vatican press service, Matteo Bruni, explained that with his words regarding Ukraine, Francis intended to “call for a cease-fire and restore the courage of negotiations,” but did not mean capitulation.

    “The pope uses the image of the white flag proposed by the interviewer to imply an end to hostilities, a truce that is achieved through the courage to begin negotiations,” Bruni said.

    “Elsewhere in the interview…referring to any situation of war, the pope clearly stated: ‘Negotiations are never capitulations,’” Bruni added.

    The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, said Ukraine was “wounded but unconquered.”

    “Believe me, no one would think of giving up. Even where hostilities are taking place today; listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy! Because we know that if Ukraine, God forbid, was at least partially conquered, the line of death would spread,” Shevchuk said at St. George’s Church in New York.

    Andriy Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, told RAI News that “you don’t negotiate with terrorists, with those who are recognized as criminals,” referring to the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin. “No one tried to put Hitler at ease.”

    Ukraine’s regional allies also expressed anger about the pope’s remarks.

    “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on social media.

    Lithuanian President Edgars Rinkevichs wrote on social media: “My Sunday morning conclusion: You can’t capitulate to evil, you have to fight it and defeat it, so that evil raises the white flag and surrenders.”

    Alexandra Valkenburg, ambassador and head of the EU Delegation to the Holy See, wrote “Russia…can end this war immediately by respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. EU supports Ukraine and its peace plan.”

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Conviction Of Former Mediazona Publisher Verzilov Canceled

    Ukraine and its regional allies on March 10 assailed reported comments by Pope Francis in which the pontiff suggested opening negotiations with Moscow and used the term “white flag,” while the Vatican later appeared to back off some of the remarks, saying Francis was not speaking about “capitulation.”

    Francis was quoted on March 9 in a partially released interview suggesting Ukraine, facing possible defeat, should have the “courage” to sit down with Russia for peace negotiations, saying there is no shame in waving the “white flag.”

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit out in a Telegram post and in his nightly video address, saying — without mentioning the pope — that “the church should be among the people. And not 2,500 kilometers away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

    Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted more directly on social media, saying, “When it comes to the ‘white flag,’ we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century.”

    Many historians have been critical of the Vatican during World War II, saying Pope Pius XII remained silent as the Holocaust raged. The Vatican has long argued that, at the time, it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities and therefore could not denounce them.

    Kuleba, in his social media post, wrote: “I urge the avoidance of repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives.

    “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations,’” Kuleba said.

    “Our flag is a yellow-and-blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” added Kuleba, who also thanked Francis for his “constant prayers for peace” and said he hoped the pontiff will visit Ukraine, home of some 1 million Catholics.

    Zelenskiy has remained firm in not speaking directly to Russia unless terms of his “peace formula” are reached.

    Ukraine’s terms call for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, restoring the country’s 1991 post-Soviet borders, and holding Russia accountable for its actions. The Kremlin has rejected such conditions.

    Following criticism of the pope’s reported comments, the head of the Vatican press service, Matteo Bruni, explained that with his words regarding Ukraine, Francis intended to “call for a cease-fire and restore the courage of negotiations,” but did not mean capitulation.

    “The pope uses the image of the white flag proposed by the interviewer to imply an end to hostilities, a truce that is achieved through the courage to begin negotiations,” Bruni said.

    “Elsewhere in the interview…referring to any situation of war, the pope clearly stated: ‘Negotiations are never capitulations,’” Bruni added.

    The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, said Ukraine was “wounded but unconquered.”

    “Believe me, no one would think of giving up. Even where hostilities are taking place today; listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy! Because we know that if Ukraine, God forbid, was at least partially conquered, the line of death would spread,” Shevchuk said at St. George’s Church in New York.

    Andriy Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, told RAI News that “you don’t negotiate with terrorists, with those who are recognized as criminals,” referring to the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin. “No one tried to put Hitler at ease.”

    Ukraine’s regional allies also expressed anger about the pope’s remarks.

    “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on social media.

    Lithuanian President Edgars Rinkevichs wrote on social media: “My Sunday morning conclusion: You can’t capitulate to evil, you have to fight it and defeat it, so that evil raises the white flag and surrenders.”

    Alexandra Valkenburg, ambassador and head of the EU Delegation to the Holy See, wrote “Russia…can end this war immediately by respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. EU supports Ukraine and its peace plan.”

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hungary’s Orban Says Trump’s Plan To End Ukraine War Is To Cut Funding

    Ukraine and its regional allies on March 10 assailed reported comments by Pope Francis in which the pontiff suggested opening negotiations with Moscow and used the term “white flag,” while the Vatican later appeared to back off some of the remarks, saying Francis was not speaking about “capitulation.”

    Francis was quoted on March 9 in a partially released interview suggesting Ukraine, facing possible defeat, should have the “courage” to sit down with Russia for peace negotiations, saying there is no shame in waving the “white flag.”

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit out in a Telegram post and in his nightly video address, saying — without mentioning the pope — that “the church should be among the people. And not 2,500 kilometers away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

    Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted more directly on social media, saying, “When it comes to the ‘white flag,’ we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century.”

    Many historians have been critical of the Vatican during World War II, saying Pope Pius XII remained silent as the Holocaust raged. The Vatican has long argued that, at the time, it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities and therefore could not denounce them.

    Kuleba, in his social media post, wrote: “I urge the avoidance of repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives.

    “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations,’” Kuleba said.

    “Our flag is a yellow-and-blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” added Kuleba, who also thanked Francis for his “constant prayers for peace” and said he hoped the pontiff will visit Ukraine, home of some 1 million Catholics.

    Zelenskiy has remained firm in not speaking directly to Russia unless terms of his “peace formula” are reached.

    Ukraine’s terms call for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, restoring the country’s 1991 post-Soviet borders, and holding Russia accountable for its actions. The Kremlin has rejected such conditions.

    Following criticism of the pope’s reported comments, the head of the Vatican press service, Matteo Bruni, explained that with his words regarding Ukraine, Francis intended to “call for a cease-fire and restore the courage of negotiations,” but did not mean capitulation.

    “The pope uses the image of the white flag proposed by the interviewer to imply an end to hostilities, a truce that is achieved through the courage to begin negotiations,” Bruni said.

    “Elsewhere in the interview…referring to any situation of war, the pope clearly stated: ‘Negotiations are never capitulations,’” Bruni added.

    The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, said Ukraine was “wounded but unconquered.”

    “Believe me, no one would think of giving up. Even where hostilities are taking place today; listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy! Because we know that if Ukraine, God forbid, was at least partially conquered, the line of death would spread,” Shevchuk said at St. George’s Church in New York.

    Andriy Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, told RAI News that “you don’t negotiate with terrorists, with those who are recognized as criminals,” referring to the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin. “No one tried to put Hitler at ease.”

    Ukraine’s regional allies also expressed anger about the pope’s remarks.

    “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on social media.

    Lithuanian President Edgars Rinkevichs wrote on social media: “My Sunday morning conclusion: You can’t capitulate to evil, you have to fight it and defeat it, so that evil raises the white flag and surrenders.”

    Alexandra Valkenburg, ambassador and head of the EU Delegation to the Holy See, wrote “Russia…can end this war immediately by respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. EU supports Ukraine and its peace plan.”

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Watching the Neighbours

    With political tension rising around the world, airborne special mission aircraft have arguably never been more important. Asia-Pacific states facing Chinese pressure on their South China Sea interests are continuing to enhance their air capabilities. This includes the acquisition of special mission aircraft whose various roles include airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), intelligence, surveillance […]

    The post Watching the Neighbours appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • St. Petersburg Resident Sent To Pretrial Detention For Writing ‘Putin Killed Navalny’

    The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.

    The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”

    It said the mission found the “physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death…. On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”

    Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran’s so-called “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.

    Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.

    The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.”

    “Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.

    The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of “crimes against humanity.”

    “The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.

    “The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.

    The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.

    “Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.

    Amini’s death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran’s clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.

    The UN report said “violations and crimes” under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.

    “The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

    The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.

    The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini’s death.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pope Francis: Ukraine Should Have The Courage Of The ‘White Flag,’ Negotiate End Of War With Russia

    The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.

    The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”

    It said the mission found the “physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death…. On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”

    Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran’s so-called “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.

    Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.

    The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.”

    “Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.

    The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of “crimes against humanity.”

    “The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.

    “The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.

    The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.

    “Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.

    Amini’s death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran’s clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.

    The UN report said “violations and crimes” under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.

    “The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

    The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.

    The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini’s death.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Putin’s Russia: A Country at War with Itself


    This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Military Says Dozens Of Ukrainian Drones Launched Over Russian Territory

    The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.

    The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”

    It said the mission found the “physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death…. On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”

    Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran’s so-called “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.

    Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.

    The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.”

    “Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.

    The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of “crimes against humanity.”

    “The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.

    “The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.

    The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.

    “Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.

    Amini’s death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran’s clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.

    The UN report said “violations and crimes” under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.

    “The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

    The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.

    The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini’s death.


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.