With a new Cold War heating up between the U.S. and Russia and China, Witness for Peace Southwest, Addicted to War and CodePink organized a Truth Commission on the original Cold War on March 21st, which brought together the testimony of historians, activists and others who lived through the period.
Following a hearing three years ago, the Zoom event was hosted by Frank Dorrel, publisher of the popular anti-war text Addicted to War, and Rachel Bruhnke, a high school Spanish teacher and member of Witness for Peace Southwest. In her opening remarks, Bruhnke emphasized that the Cold War should rank as one of three great crimes in U.S. history, the first two being the genocide of the native Americans, and enslavement of African-Americans.
A British coroner has determined that an exiled Russian critic of President Vladimir Putin was strangled to death by “a third party” at his home in a southwest suburb of London.
Self-exiled Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov was found dead at his home in New Malden, England, in March 2018.
Senior coroner Chinyere Inyama ruled that Glushkov was “unlawfully killed” after the West London Coroner’s Court heard evidence suggesting his death was made to look like a suicide and that there had been “third-party involvement.”
Glushkov fled Russia after authorities accused him of fraud during his time as deputy director of the state-owned Aeroflot airline.
He was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom in 2010.
He had been a close friend of the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, also a vocal critic of Putin, who was found hanged at his home west of London in 2013.
In 2017, during Glushkov’s trial in absentia, a Russian court convicted him of stealing about $120 million from Aeroflot. It sentenced him to eight years in prison.
Glushkov had been due to appear at the Commercial Court in London to defend himself on March 12, 2018 — the day his body was discovered by his daughter, Natalia.
His death came a week after the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury, England, of the Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.
‘Unlawful Killing’
A pathology report presented to the West London Coroner’s Court said Glushkov’s injuries “could be consistent with a neck-hold, applied from behind, and the assailant being behind the victim.”
The pathology report said: “There is a lack of injuries to suggest prolonged grappling or restraint with the third party, and a lack of injuries of a defensive nature to the upper limbs.”
The coroner’s verdict said: “From all the documentation, all the evidence gathered, Nikolai Glushkov died from an unlawful killing.”
British detectives are renewing an appeal for witnesses who were in the New Malden area on March 11-12, 2018.
The inquest coincides with a renewed appeal by London’s Met Police counterterrorism unit for more information about Glushkov’s death.
Commander Richard Smith says more than 1,800 potential witnesses have been contacted and more than 420 statements taken.
London police say no arrests have been made and a motive for the killing has not yet been established.
Poland has commemorated the 11th anniversary of a plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk that killed 96 people — including Poland’s then-President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and many of the country’s senior political and military officials.
Many Poles, including senior members of the governing Law and Justice Party, question the results of an investigation released in 2011 by a special Polish commission.
It concluded the Tu-154 military flight from Warsaw had crashed on April 10, 2010, in extreme fog on its approach to an airport near Smolensk because of pilot error and a lack of warnings from Smolensk air-traffic controllers.
Poles are also suspicious of Russia’s handling of the investigation.
The current Polish president, Andrzej Duda, has noted that while Russia turned over data from the plane’s flight recorders that it deemed relevant to the case, “the wreckage is still in Russia; the black boxes are still in Russia.”
The late president’s twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has said he suspects the crash was the result of an assassination plot by the Russians.
The tragedy has strained relations with Russia, all the more so because the plane had been traveling to commemorate the World War II Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish military officers and civilian intelligentsia by Soviet secret police.
Events commemorating the plane crash on April 10 began in the morning with a Roman Catholic religious service and the laying of wreaths at a monument dedicated to the victims of the crash and at their graves.
An evening religious service was also scheduled in a Warsaw cathedral.
For the second consecutive year, the commemorations took place amid coronavirus restrictions and were limited in scope.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki described the crash in a Facebook post on April 10 as “the biggest national tragedy in Poland’s postwar history.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was due on April 10 to embark on a series of overseas meetings with U.S. allies amid rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia and what Washington calls Moscow’s “destabilizing behavior.”
During the week ahead, Austin is due to meet with government and military leaders in Israel, Germany, at NATO Headquarters in Belgium, and in the United Kingdom. .
A Pentagon statement late on April 8 said Austin will “meet with his counterparts and other senior officials to discuss the importance of international defense relationships, and reinforce the United States’ commitment to deterrence and defense, burden sharing, and enduring trans-Atlantic security.”
The Pentagon says Austin’s April 14 meeting in Brussels with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will focus on “how the Alliance is tackling destabilizing behavior by Russia,” as well as “rising China, terrorism, and global challenges such as COVID-19 and climate change.”
Ahead of that meeting, Austin was scheduled to visit in Berlin with German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Chancellery Foreign and Security Policy Adviser Jan Hecker.
The Pentagon says the agenda of Austin’s Berlin talks include “combatting the malign influence of our shared strategic rivals, and continued dialogue on U.S. force posture in Germany and elsewhere.”
Austin’s tour starts a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken consulted the German and French foreign ministers about the need for Russia to cease its military buildup in the occupied Crimean Peninsula and near Ukraine’s eastern borders.
Washington has accused Russia of “provocations” in eastern Ukraine and using “inflammatory rhetoric.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (file photo)
A statement from the U.S. State Department said Blinken spoke separately with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian about the need for stepped-up consultations among NATO allies as fears grow of a major escalation in the eastern Ukraine conflict.
Kyiv and the West blame the Russia-backed separatists holding parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for a recent spike in hostilities, while Moscow has pointed the finger at Kyiv.
A recent accumulation of photographs, video, and other data has revealed major movements of Russian armed forces toward or near Ukraine’s borders and into Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
That has fueled concerns that Moscow may be preparing to send forces into eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin has rejected Western calls to pull back its troops, denying they are a threat while adding that military movements within Russia are an internal sovereign issue.
On April 9, the Kremlin issued a stark warning that Russia could take steps to “protect civilians” in the region in the event of a resumption of full-scale combat operations there.
The first stop on Austin’s four-country tour is Israel where he is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benjamin Gantz.
The final item on Austin’s agenda, after visiting NATO headquarters in Brussels, is talks in the United Kingdom with Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace.
The Pentagon says the purpose of that visit is “to reaffirm the continuing importance of U.S.-United Kingdom defense cooperation to meet global security challenges.”
Russian security agents have searched the home of one of the country’s most prominent investigative journalists and brought him in for interrogation, in what his lawyer and editorial team said was related to coverage of one of Russia’s most powerful men.
After FSB security agents searched his Moscow apartmenton April 9, Istories editor-in-chief Roman Anin was taken to the Investigative Committee in connection with enquiries into “violation of privacy by abusing his professional functions,” his lawyer Anna Stavitskaya said.
Istories reported on its Telegram channelthat the last thing they heard from Anin was that the search may be related to a previous case opened in 2016, after Anin published a report in Novaya Gazeta newspaper suggesting state-owned oil giant Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin had links to a yacht valued at $100 million.
Anin had previously worked for Novaya Gazeta, the most prominent opposition newspaper. The newspaper was found guilty of defamation after Sechin filed a complaint about the report.
In a statement,Novaya Gazeta’s editorial board said the case was reopened in March after Rosneft filed a claim against Istories.
“Everything that is happening now with Roman Anin is revenge,” the editorial board said. “We will by all legal means and publicly protect our friend and colleague.”
The move against Anin comes just weeks after he published an investigative piece suggesting the new deputy head of the FSB, Sergei Korolev, has ties with the leaders of several Russian organized criminal groups.
Created last year, Istories specializes in investigative reports, including recent articles on FSB officers surveilling imprisoned opposition leader Alexsei Navalny and an exposé into the wealth of former son-in-law of President Vladimir Putin, Kirill Shamalov.
With reporting by AFP, RFE/RL’s Russian Service, and Novaya Gazeta
MOSCOW — “I have trouble breathing. I can’t catch my breath and have trouble understanding things,” said businessman Boris Shpigel, who is suspected of bribing the former governor of Russia’s Penza region, at a court hearing on April 6. “I’m in great pain…. My stomach hurts and I can’t catch my breath.”
“I don’t have long left, a few days,” Shpigel, 68, predicted. “I haven’t slept for six days because I can’t find a comfortable position. I hurt all over and my right leg is numb…. Every day is torture for me. I can’t take anymore. I can’t stand it.”
Such allegations are nothing new for Russia’s opaque prison system. For years, activists, lawyers, and former prisoners, have drawn attention to the poor quality of medical care in Russian prisons and pretrial detention centers and have alleged that, in many cases, medical treatment is withheld to pressure suspects, to extract false confessions or accusations, or simply as a form of punishment.
“As for medical care overall, often a prison will only have a paramedic and no real schedule for when specialists will visit,” said Asmik Novikova, director of research at the nongovernmental legal aid organization Public Verdict. “This is, of course, a very serious problem.”
‘Deliberate Campaign’
Now attention across Russia and around the world has turned to the plight of opposition political leader Aleksei Navalny, who is serving 2 1/2 years at a prison in the town of Pokrov in the Vladimir region based on a conviction that he says was politically motivated. Navalny and his attorneys have alleged that he is being subjected to a “deliberate campaign” to undermine his health.
He has said he has two herniated disks and is losing sensation in his arms and legs. His lawyers have said Navalny has not fully recovered from a nerve-agent poisoning that nearly killed him in August and that he blames on Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives working at the behest of President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny has lost 13 kilograms since his imprisonment and continues a hunger strike aimed at forcing prison officials to allow him to be treated by his own doctor.
In addition, Navalny has said at least three prisoners in his ward have been diagnosed with tuberculosis and he himself was moved to the prison sick ward on April 5 with symptoms of respiratory illness.
Prison authorities have said they were monitoring Navalny’s health, which they evaluated as “satisfactory.”
Asmik Novikova from the Public Verdict legal aid organization. (file photo)
Novikova said there is no real way of finding out what the real situation is in the prison where Navalny is being held because “all information about what goes on in prisons is monopolized” by the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN).
“We have to settle for whatever they indicate from time to time in public records,” she said. “But from what I am seeing, it’s clear there is basically no medical help there.”
Despite Navalny’s high public profile, his story is all-too-familiar to prisoners’ rights advocates, said Oleg Dubrovkin, who spent 24 years in Russian prisons and now works at the Prisoners’ Rights Defense Foundation. He says assisting prisoners who complain of health and health-care issues is one of his main duties.
‘Mechanism For Pressuring Inmates’
The prison system, he said, has strict rules for the provision of medical care, but they are applied chaotically.
“Whether or not they are applied in the institution where Navalny is being held, I don’t know,” he told RFE/RL. “To me all the prisoners are the same, whether it is Navalny or just some average Petrov. It doesn’t matter.”
Sergei Shunin is a lawyer for the NGO Committee Against Torture who formerly served on a public oversight commission (ONK) that theoretically is able to inspect and monitor prisons, agrees that the opacity of the prison system is a major problem that could conceal many others.
“In my experience, I have seen many complaints from prisoners who say that people suffering from tuberculosis have been placed in their wards,” Shunin said. “They often believe that this is done to pressure them and that the refusal to provide medical care is often a mechanism for pressuring inmates.”
A still image from CCTV footage published by Life.Ru shows what is said to be Aleksei Navalny (center) speaking with a guard in a prison ward at Correctional Colony No. 2, about 100 kilometers from Moscow.
“It’s impossible for me to evaluate the situation with Aleksei Navalny,” he added. “As a lawyer and as a former ONK member, I have to proceed from facts. The first thing I would do would be to examine his medical file and speak with the doctors. As far as I understand, the members of the Vladimir region ONK have not done this and that itself is rather strange.”
Shunin adds that a persistent problem for Russia has been the lack of qualified medical personnel in the prison system, which he argues is caused primarily by the low wages they are paid.
“A doctor in a prison, as I have been told, earns about 10,000 rubles ($130) a month, including bonuses,” he said. “With wages like that, this problem isn’t going to go away and, unfortunately, no one is doing anything about it.”
Shunin said the most common complaint he dealt with during his ONK service from 2016 to 2019 was about the lack of medical care.
Yevgeny Yenikeyev served on an ONK commission in Moscow and he told RFE/RL that the prison’s refusal to allow Navalny to consult a private physician was illegal.
“Under the law, any civilian doctor can come to a prison at the request of an inmate,” Yenikeyev said. “However, only a prison doctor can order an inmate’s transfer to a civilian hospital, since that requires a special escort and additional labor. But when the doctor is ready to come to the prison at his or her own expense and there are no additional costs, then it must happen if the prisoner desires it.”
“In the case of Aleksei Navalny, the refusal to allow him to be examined by a doctor is illegal,” he added. “We can talk forever about the motives for the prison administration’s refusal. It is very hard to know what is going on in their heads.”
On March 26, when Navalny’s health complaints were becoming increasingly serious, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed them out of hand and added: “We don’t know about any systemic problems in the Federal Penitentiary Service.”
The same day, Navalny posted on Instagram that he had once been given prison tips from former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who served a decade in Russian jails and prisons from his arrest in 2003 to his release under pardon in December 2013.
“He told me the main thing is not to get sick,” Navalny wrote. “No one is going to treat you. If you fall seriously ill, you will die.”
Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson based on reporting from Moscow by Current Time correspondent Igor Sevryugin and RFE/RL Russian Service correspondents Lyubov Chizhova and Alya Ponomaryova.
A court in Moscow has sentenced a man to 3 1/2 years in prison on a criminal charge of attacking a police officer during January 31 rallies in support of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.
The Meshchansky district court on April 9 found Pavel Grin-Romanov guilty of using pepper spray against a police officer during the dispersal of the demonstrators.
Grin-Romanov pleaded “partially guilty” admitting he sprayed the pepper spray in the direction of the riot police but did so to protect his wife who was with him.
Prosecutors sought eight years in prison for the defendant.
Grin-Romanov is one of several people who were handed prison terms or suspended sentences in recent weeks for attacking police during the nationwide demonstrations held on January 23 and January 31 against the arrest of the Kremlin critic.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning, which several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent, in Siberia in August 2020.
Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered as being politically motivated. Navalny’s 3 1/2 year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time he had been held in detention.
More than 10,000 supporters of Navalny were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies. Many of the detained men and women were either fined or handed several-day jail terms. At least 90 were charged with criminal misdeeds and several have been fired by their employers.
With reporting by Novaya gazeta, Meduza, and Mediazona
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is calling on Russia to stop denying entry to foreign reporters in the South Caucasus disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, and is urging the United Nations and Council of Europe to ensure respect for the right to the freedom to inform.
Russian peacekeepers controlling access to Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia via the Lachin Corridor have denied entry to at least 10 foreign journalists since February, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog said in a statement on April 9.
“A growing number of foreign journalists are being systematically refused entry by Russian soldiers,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
Cavelier warned that without international media, Nagorno-Karabakh “is liable to become a news and information ‘black hole.’”
Last fall, Azerbaijani and Armenian forces fought a brief war over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s.
The six-week fighting concluded in November 2020 with a Russian-brokered cease-fire, under which a chunk of the region and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by ethnic Armenian forces.
It also resulted in the deployment of around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers along frontline areas and the Lachin Corridor connecting the disputed territory with Armenia.
More than 6,000 people died in the fighting.
According to RSF, a French photographer, a reporter for the French TV channel M6, and a Canadian freelancer for The Guardian and CNN, were among the journalists who were denied entry in Nagorno-Karabakh since February.
The group said access to the region is also “restricted” via Azerbaijan. It cited the case of TV crews from France 24 and the European channel Arte which “made highly controlled visits from Azerbaijan and were not able to report freely.”
The Russian-brokered cease-fire agreement has no specific provision for the entry of journalists, RSF pointed out.
It said press accreditation is issued by the consulate of Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist authorities or by the Armenian Foreign Ministry.
However, the Russia peacekeepers “grant or refuse entry to foreign citizens, who are notified of the decision on the eve of their planned visit,” while Armenians and Russians “just need to show their passports in order to enter” the region.
Sergei Sazanakov was hunting in Russia’s Khakassia region when an accident left him trapped in the snow overnight. He lost his lower legs to frostbite, and later had to fight for his children in court after his wife left him. But Sazanakov has learned how to run his farm and care for his family with minimal assistance and has only modest wishes for a better life: comfortable prosthetics and perhaps a horse.
The singer’s fight against domestic violence and homophobia and her body-positive posts on Instagram have led to a torrent of abuse – some from very powerful people
Russia’s 2021 Eurovision candidate breezes into a conference room, Channel One documentary film crew in tow, offering a simple tea of mint leaves brewed in hot water. “On days like today, I want something calming,” Manizha says, pouring two cups, as a boom mic hovers over us. No pressure.
The Tajikistan-born singer, who will perform her feminist ballad Russian Woman next month at the much-loved, much-mocked song contest in Rotterdam, is the target of a fiery conservative backlash for her foreign roots and her lyrics attacking female stereotypes.
Two Russians and an American are scheduled to take off for the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Soyuz rocket on April 9.
The Russian space agency Roskosmos expects to get cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark T Vande Hei aloft from the Russian launch facility at Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
The trip to the ISS should take around three hours.
The Russian launch is the last before a rocket owned by the private U.S. company SpaceX is scheduled to set out late this month for the ISS from Florida.
Quiz: How Much Do You Know About The First Man In Space?
Test your knowledge!
Four Americans, two Russians, and a Japanese national are currently manning the ISS.
Three of them being relieved by the incoming trio will return to Earth in about a week.
The Soyuz 2.1a rocket set to carry the three men into space on April 9 has been named the Yuri Gagarin in honor of the Soviet cosmonaut who became the first human to reach space 60 years ago next week.
Gagarin orbited the Earth once on April 12, 1961, after taking off from the same Kazakh facility at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race.
Russia’s government this month extended a space cooperation agreement with the United States until 2030, one of the few remaining partnerships between Moscow and Washington amid frosty relations.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved and signed the extension on April 3.
The original cooperation agreement, signed in 1992 and extended four times previously, laid the groundwork for wide-ranging, space-related projects and research between NASA and Roskosmos.
You would think riling up one nuclear power is bad enough, but the United States seems intent on doubling the risk of starting a world war by gratuitously aggressing Russia and China simultaneously.
Throwing around personal insults against the leaders of those two countries is one thing. But actually winding up military tensions is quite another which shows how reckless the Biden administration is.
Since Joe Biden became the 46th president, there has been an alarming increase in hostile rhetoric and conduct by the US toward Russia and China.
Ludicrously, the Biden administration is accusing Moscow and Beijing of aggression towards European and Asian allies when it is the United States that is building up warships, warplanes, missiles and troops in sensitive regions that threaten Russia and China.
Under this Democrat president, the US is increasing lethal military supplies to the Ukraine where an anti-Russia regime in Kiev has been waging a seven-year war against ethnic Russian people in the east of that country on Russia’s border. It is no coincidence that the US-backed regime in Kiev is emboldened to step up offensive military attacks on civilian centers in east Ukraine. The city of Donetsk is this week reportedly coming under intensified shelling.
Likewise, the Biden White House has become more vocal in support of Taiwan, the breakaway island territory off China’s southern coast. US military leaders are warning that China might invade the island, which most nations view to be a sovereign part of Chinese territory. Since 1979, even the US recognized this under its One China policy.
Washington is, however, conducting a record number of military maneuvers in the South China Sea and through the Strait of Taiwan, only about 100 kilometers from mainland China. This week – for the fourth time since Biden took office, the US dispatched a guided-missile destroyer through the Strait.
China’s territorial claims in the region have a lot more credibility than America’s posturing about “defending allies” and so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises.
But the reckless rhetoric from the Biden administration – labelling Russia and China as “aggressors” – is serving to embolden regimes in Ukraine and Taiwan to engage in dangerous provocations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week called on the US-led NATO alliance to fast-track membership for his country. Such a move would be incendiary for Russia’s national security. The Kiev regime is also intensifying offensive operations in east Ukraine which is another form of provocation toward Russia due to Washington’s indulgence.
Similarly, the anti-China separatists in Taiwan are feeling ever-more confident in taking a militarist posture. With American warships sailing nearby, the Taiwanese authorities this week warned they would not hesitate to shoot down Chinese aircraft that approach the island. This is a flagrant provocation to Beijing’s authority.
The United States has indicated it will support Ukraine or Taiwan if a war with Russia or China were to erupt. Such a policy is an incentive for rogue conduct leading to war.
It is perplexing to see just how far the Biden administration is willing to go in risking a war with either Russia or China, or both at the same time. Any such war would inevitably result in a nuclear conflagration in which tens of millions of people would die, if not bring about the end of the world as we know it.
This is a measure of how desperate the American imperial state is in trying to maintain its ambitions of global hegemony and domination. US global power is waning – in line with the historic failing of its capitalist system – and in order to offset that loss of power, its ruling class are resorting to maniacal militarism against perceived geopolitical rivals. The objective is to intimidate and terrorize the world into accepting its “rules-based order”. That is rules ordered by the US for its advantage and privileges over others.
Russia and China, and many other nations, are refusing to capitulate to America’s diktat. There was a time when such bullying may have worked. Not any more.
American rulers – the deep state – and their puppet president are behaving like arsonists. They’re playing with fire in provoking Russia and China. It is criminal and it’s psychopathic recklessness. It’s also abominable that the planet is being held hostage by such a crazy American regime.
You would think riling up one nuclear power is bad enough, but the United States seems intent on doubling the risk of starting a world war by gratuitously aggressing Russia and China simultaneously.
Throwing around personal insults against the leaders of those two countries is one thing. But actually winding up military tensions is quite another which shows how reckless the Biden administration is.
Since Joe Biden became the 46th president, there has been an alarming increase in hostile rhetoric and conduct by the US toward Russia and China.
Ludicrously, the Biden administration is accusing Moscow and Beijing of aggression towards European and Asian allies when it is the United States that is building up warships, warplanes, missiles and troops in sensitive regions that threaten Russia and China.
Under this Democrat president, the US is increasing lethal military supplies to the Ukraine where an anti-Russia regime in Kiev has been waging a seven-year war against ethnic Russian people in the east of that country on Russia’s border. It is no coincidence that the US-backed regime in Kiev is emboldened to step up offensive military attacks on civilian centers in east Ukraine. The city of Donetsk is this week reportedly coming under intensified shelling.
Likewise, the Biden White House has become more vocal in support of Taiwan, the breakaway island territory off China’s southern coast. US military leaders are warning that China might invade the island, which most nations view to be a sovereign part of Chinese territory. Since 1979, even the US recognized this under its One China policy.
Washington is, however, conducting a record number of military maneuvers in the South China Sea and through the Strait of Taiwan, only about 100 kilometers from mainland China. This week – for the fourth time since Biden took office, the US dispatched a guided-missile destroyer through the Strait.
China’s territorial claims in the region have a lot more credibility than America’s posturing about “defending allies” and so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises.
But the reckless rhetoric from the Biden administration – labelling Russia and China as “aggressors” – is serving to embolden regimes in Ukraine and Taiwan to engage in dangerous provocations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week called on the US-led NATO alliance to fast-track membership for his country. Such a move would be incendiary for Russia’s national security. The Kiev regime is also intensifying offensive operations in east Ukraine which is another form of provocation toward Russia due to Washington’s indulgence.
Similarly, the anti-China separatists in Taiwan are feeling ever-more confident in taking a militarist posture. With American warships sailing nearby, the Taiwanese authorities this week warned they would not hesitate to shoot down Chinese aircraft that approach the island. This is a flagrant provocation to Beijing’s authority.
The United States has indicated it will support Ukraine or Taiwan if a war with Russia or China were to erupt. Such a policy is an incentive for rogue conduct leading to war.
It is perplexing to see just how far the Biden administration is willing to go in risking a war with either Russia or China, or both at the same time. Any such war would inevitably result in a nuclear conflagration in which tens of millions of people would die, if not bring about the end of the world as we know it.
This is a measure of how desperate the American imperial state is in trying to maintain its ambitions of global hegemony and domination. US global power is waning – in line with the historic failing of its capitalist system – and in order to offset that loss of power, its ruling class are resorting to maniacal militarism against perceived geopolitical rivals. The objective is to intimidate and terrorize the world into accepting its “rules-based order”. That is rules ordered by the US for its advantage and privileges over others.
Russia and China, and many other nations, are refusing to capitulate to America’s diktat. There was a time when such bullying may have worked. Not any more.
American rulers – the deep state – and their puppet president are behaving like arsonists. They’re playing with fire in provoking Russia and China. It is criminal and it’s psychopathic recklessness. It’s also abominable that the planet is being held hostage by such a crazy American regime.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Read other articles by Finian.
On April 1 — appropriate date, perhaps, for a saga of unending western foolishness and villainy — the EU announced that officials from Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, and Germany would be meeting virtually to discuss a possible return of the USA to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Later announcements indicated that representatives of both the USA and Iran would meet with European partners in Vienna in the first week of April, although possibly from different rooms to separate US and Iranian representatives. Talks began on August 6.
A State Department spokesman welcomed the move, indicating the Biden administration’s preparedness to return to the 2015 deal tortuously negotiated over several years between Iran, the US Obama administration and European powers, and that former President Donald Trump later unilaterally abrogated in May 2018. A pretense by the USA and Europe that resumption of JCPOA requires arduous negotiation camouflages the reality that it has always been obvious that removal of US sanctions on Iran would automatically prompt its immediate return to the JCPOA framework.
The use of the potential (but not the actuality) of nuclear weapons in the form of weapons development capability has arguably been an instrument of Iranian foreign diplomacy from the days of the Shah, first as a defense against nuclearization of regional neighbors and, since the Islamic revolution in 1979 — and in the guise of varying percentages of uranium enrichment and the construction of centrifuges (many unused) — against US and European opposition to Iranian independence from Washington.
The 2015 deal itself was the outcome of a long-standing, bullying, propaganda campaign by the USA, Israel, and Europe (UK, France, and Germany) to smear Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program (including the slight enrichment of uranium for scientific and medical purposes, far below the 90%+ required for nuclear weaponry) as a meaningful threat of nuclear war. Yet Iran, a signatory in 1968 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), had over several decades conceded detailed scrutiny of its energy program (perfectly legitimate, under the NPT) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel, on the other hand, in possession of one hundred or more nuclear warheads, never signed the NPT.
Israel, with a far smaller population (9 million) than Iran (82 million) and a far smaller territory (22,145 sq.km to Iran’s 1,648,195 sq km), is and has consistently shown evidence of being by far the more likely nuclear aggressor in the Middle East. In June 1981, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an unfinished suspected Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In 2007, Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. In the period 2009 to 2012 the Israeli administration of Benjamin Netanyahu several times threatened to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, the US and Israeli administrations collaborated in a cyberattack on Iranian facilities (“Stuxnet”) in 2009. There have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists – the latest reported in November 2020 – mostly attributed to Israel’s Mossad.
Through JCPOA, Iran — which has never possessed nuclear weapons and which has never formally revealed evidence of wanting or planning them — was cowered into conceding an implicit but false admission to being at fault in some way. Iran’s Supreme Leaders have consistently stated their belief that such weapons are immoral. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, confirmed a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons in October 2003. “Evidence” of Iranian scientists’ planning for nuclear weaponry is based on forgeries. The bullying gang was a cabal of more prosperous nations that unlike Iran, did possess nuclear weapons and, in the case of the USA, had actually used them and, from time to time, demonstrated continuing willingness to consider their use.
Furthermore, Washington has never shown a fraction of the hysteria it regularly performs on account of Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear “threat” as it did with the actual nuclear weaponization of India from 1998 (with possibly 150 nuclear warheads today) and Pakistan in 1972.
Iran’s misleading concession to the West’s false narrative was the product of Western coercion through sanctions’ regimes. US-driven sanctions’ terror over Iran, both primary (involving relations between Iran and U.S. actors) and secondary (involving relations between Iran and non-U.S. actors), started from the early 1980s and extended in 1995 to cover bilateral trade and foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas development. Sanctions were further extended in 2002 to include nuclear and missile technology, financial services, transportation, foreign banks operating in Iran, and purchase of Iranian oil. Although many sanctions were lifted by JCPOA, others were retained, including Iranian support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles, arms-related transactions, violations of human rights and corruption. The slipperiness of concepts such as “terrorism,” “human rights,” and “corruption” in the hands of U.S. and allied states and state-compliant “NGO” agencies provides ample room for continuing sanctions aggression on false or misleading pretext. This is particularly worrisome in the contexts of covert and proxy wars between the US, European powers, Gulf States, Israel, and Salafist rebels in Syria, on the one hand and, on the other, the Syrian government, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as also in the case of Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen. Even a return to JCPOA, therefore, would exercise considerable restraint on Iranian exercise of its legitimate, sovereign power.
Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program originated from imperial machinations in Iran. It was launched in 1957 with US and European assistance in the administration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in the wake of the US-UK orchestrated coup d’etat of 1953 that toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000. It is possible that the Shah always entertained the possibility of transitioning from a nuclear energy to a nuclear weapons program should neighboring states do the same. The USA supplied the country with a reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium in 1967. After a two-year hiatus, the Shah’s program was resumed by the revolutionary administration in 1981. The regime intended to continue collaborating with a French-owned consortium, but France succumbed to pressure from the Reagan administration in 1984 to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite the absence of any evidence for US claims that Iran’s then only reactor presented a risk of proliferation. In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.
Sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian economy and the welfare of its people. The value of Iranian petroleum exports fell from $53 billion in 2016-2017 to $9 billion in 2019-2020. Iranian GDP shrank by between 5% and 6.5% each year in the period 2018-2020, and inflation rose each year between 30% and 41%. The value of the Iranian currency, the rial, fell from 64,500 rials to the dollar in May 2018 to 315,000 to the dollar in October 2020.
As strategies of control, sanctions have significant other weaknesses, even from the western point of view. Since the revolution of 1979, first, there is a clear correlation between western aggression towards Iran and the influence on the Iranian polity of anti-western Iranian conservatives and their control over Iranian society through the clerical hierarchy and its exercise of superordinate power over Iran’s parliamentary democracy by the Office of the (non-elected) Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the religious foundations (or bonyads) and Revolutionary Guards. Second, sanctions encourage Iranian strategies of import substitution and technological independence. Third, they help consolidate Iran’s relations with global powers that rival Washington, including Russia and China, and its relations with sympathetic powers in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In March 2021 Iran and China agreed a deal whereby China would invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil to fuel. The deal represented a further incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East (extending to an offer by China to broker peace between Israel and Palestine) at the likely expense of the USA, promising further escalation of tensions between China and the USA and the ultimate threat of nuclear war.
Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus of Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He is a scholar of international media, news, and war propaganda. Read other articles by Oliver.
On April 1 — appropriate date, perhaps, for a saga of unending western foolishness and villainy — the EU announced that officials from Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France, and Germany would be meeting virtually to discuss a possible return of the USA to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Later announcements indicated that representatives of both the USA and Iran would meet with European partners in Vienna in the first week of April, although possibly from different rooms to separate US and Iranian representatives. Talks began on August 6.
A State Department spokesman welcomed the move, indicating the Biden administration’s preparedness to return to the 2015 deal tortuously negotiated over several years between Iran, the US Obama administration and European powers, and that former President Donald Trump later unilaterally abrogated in May 2018. A pretense by the USA and Europe that resumption of JCPOA requires arduous negotiation camouflages the reality that it has always been obvious that removal of US sanctions on Iran would automatically prompt its immediate return to the JCPOA framework.
The use of the potential (but not the actuality) of nuclear weapons in the form of weapons development capability has arguably been an instrument of Iranian foreign diplomacy from the days of the Shah, first as a defense against nuclearization of regional neighbors and, since the Islamic revolution in 1979 — and in the guise of varying percentages of uranium enrichment and the construction of centrifuges (many unused) — against US and European opposition to Iranian independence from Washington.
The 2015 deal itself was the outcome of a long-standing, bullying, propaganda campaign by the USA, Israel, and Europe (UK, France, and Germany) to smear Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program (including the slight enrichment of uranium for scientific and medical purposes, far below the 90%+ required for nuclear weaponry) as a meaningful threat of nuclear war. Yet Iran, a signatory in 1968 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), had over several decades conceded detailed scrutiny of its energy program (perfectly legitimate, under the NPT) to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel, on the other hand, in possession of one hundred or more nuclear warheads, never signed the NPT.
Israel, with a far smaller population (9 million) than Iran (82 million) and a far smaller territory (22,145 sq.km to Iran’s 1,648,195 sq km), is and has consistently shown evidence of being by far the more likely nuclear aggressor in the Middle East. In June 1981, an Israeli airstrike destroyed an unfinished suspected Iraqi nuclear reactor located 17 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. In 2007, Israel struck a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. In the period 2009 to 2012 the Israeli administration of Benjamin Netanyahu several times threatened to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, the US and Israeli administrations collaborated in a cyberattack on Iranian facilities (“Stuxnet”) in 2009. There have been several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists – the latest reported in November 2020 – mostly attributed to Israel’s Mossad.
Through JCPOA, Iran — which has never possessed nuclear weapons and which has never formally revealed evidence of wanting or planning them — was cowered into conceding an implicit but false admission to being at fault in some way. Iran’s Supreme Leaders have consistently stated their belief that such weapons are immoral. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, confirmed a fatwa against the acquisition, development and use of nuclear weapons in October 2003. “Evidence” of Iranian scientists’ planning for nuclear weaponry is based on forgeries. 1 The bullying gang was a cabal of more prosperous nations that unlike Iran, did possess nuclear weapons and, in the case of the USA, had actually used them and, from time to time, demonstrated continuing willingness to consider their use.
Furthermore, Washington has never shown a fraction of the hysteria it regularly performs on account of Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear “threat” as it did with the actual nuclear weaponization of India from 1998 (with possibly 150 nuclear warheads today) and Pakistan in 1972.
Iran’s misleading concession to the West’s false narrative was the product of Western coercion through sanctions’ regimes. US-driven sanctions’ terror over Iran, both primary (involving relations between Iran and U.S. actors) and secondary (involving relations between Iran and non-U.S. actors), started from the early 1980s and extended in 1995 to cover bilateral trade and foreign investment in Iranian oil and gas development. Sanctions were further extended in 2002 to include nuclear and missile technology, financial services, transportation, foreign banks operating in Iran, and purchase of Iranian oil. Although many sanctions were lifted by JCPOA, others were retained, including Iranian support for terrorism, development of ballistic missiles, arms-related transactions, violations of human rights and corruption. The slipperiness of concepts such as “terrorism,” “human rights,” and “corruption” in the hands of U.S. and allied states and state-compliant “NGO” agencies provides ample room for continuing sanctions aggression on false or misleading pretext. This is particularly worrisome in the contexts of covert and proxy wars between the US, European powers, Gulf States, Israel, and Salafist rebels in Syria, on the one hand and, on the other, the Syrian government, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as also in the case of Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen. Even a return to JCPOA, therefore, would exercise considerable restraint on Iranian exercise of its legitimate, sovereign power.
Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program originated from imperial machinations in Iran. It was launched in 1957 with US and European assistance in the administration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, in the wake of the US-UK orchestrated coup d’etat of 1953 that toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Shah approved plans to construct up to 23 nuclear power stations by 2000. It is possible that the Shah always entertained the possibility of transitioning from a nuclear energy to a nuclear weapons program should neighboring states do the same. The USA supplied the country with a reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium in 1967. After a two-year hiatus, the Shah’s program was resumed by the revolutionary administration in 1981. The regime intended to continue collaborating with a French-owned consortium, but France succumbed to pressure from the Reagan administration in 1984 to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, despite the absence of any evidence for US claims that Iran’s then only reactor presented a risk of proliferation. In the 1990s, Russia formed a joint research organization with Iran, providing Iran with Russian nuclear experts and technical information.
Sanctions have a negative impact on the Iranian economy and the welfare of its people. The value of Iranian petroleum exports fell from $53 billion in 2016-2017 to $9 billion in 2019-2020. Iranian GDP shrank by between 5% and 6.5% each year in the period 2018-2020, and inflation rose each year between 30% and 41%. The value of the Iranian currency, the rial, fell from 64,500 rials to the dollar in May 2018 to 315,000 to the dollar in October 2020.
As strategies of control, sanctions have significant other weaknesses, even from the western point of view. Since the revolution of 1979, first, there is a clear correlation between western aggression towards Iran and the influence on the Iranian polity of anti-western Iranian conservatives and their control over Iranian society through the clerical hierarchy and its exercise of superordinate power over Iran’s parliamentary democracy by the Office of the (non-elected) Supreme Leader, the Council of Guardians, the religious foundations (or bonyads) and Revolutionary Guards. Second, sanctions encourage Iranian strategies of import substitution and technological independence. Third, they help consolidate Iran’s relations with global powers that rival Washington, including Russia and China, and its relations with sympathetic powers in the region, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In March 2021 Iran and China agreed a deal whereby China would invest $400 billion in Iran over 25 years in exchange for a steady supply of oil to fuel. The deal represented a further incursion of Chinese influence in the Middle East (extending to an offer by China to broker peace between Israel and Palestine) at the likely expense of the USA, promising further escalation of tensions between China and the USA and the ultimate threat of nuclear war.
Kiriakou, J. and Porter, G. (2020) The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis: From CIA Coup to the Brink of War. New York: Skyhorse Publishing.
Lawyers based in Russia and in parts of eastern Ukraine held by Moscow-backed separatists have flooded the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) with thousands of complaints against Kyiv for alleged rights violations in conflict-ridden Donbas, in what appears to be a coordinated campaign to tar Ukraine, an investigation by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service has found.
The investigative TV program Skhemy (Schemes) found that around 6,000 claims related to the conflict in the Donbas, out of a total of 10,000 claims Ukraine faces at the ECHR, were filed by several groups of lawyers from Russia and areas of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine that are under the control of Russia-backed separatists.
A Moscow law firm that has filed thousands of complaints has substantial experience “defending the interests” of the Russian government, and a lawyer in the Donbas who has also filed claims is under investigation on suspicion of falsifying application forms to international courts.
The number of cases that will ultimately be considered by the Strasbourg-based court, let alone brought to trial, is unclear. Still, the sheer number of filings has bumped Ukraine up to third among nations facing rights-violations allegations at the ECHR.
Moscow has long asserted that Ukraine violates the rights of Russian speakers in the Donbas. It has used those claims to justify interference in the region, including its backing of the separatists’ seizure of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in 2014, and as a potential catalyst for stepped-up military action in the future.
More than 13,000 people have been killed and thousands more wounded in the war that erupted in the Donbas in April 2014, a month after Russia’s armed takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Russia denies involvement despite ample evidence showing it has provided arms, fighters, financing, and other aid to the separatists.
Until 2014, no claims of rights violations had been filed over Kyiv’s policies or actions in the Donbas at the ECHR, Ukrainian human rights lawyer Serhiy Zayets told Schemes, a joint investigative project of RFE/RL and Ukrainian public broadcaster UA:First.
Serhiy Zayets
“There are several Russian lawyers who started filing complaints only after 2014. They have no complaints against Russia, and only against Ukraine,” Zayets said, adding that it is “an extremely large number of cases.”
Troop Buildup
The report by Schemes comes amid evidence of a Russian troop buildup — including heavy armor such as tanks — in and around Ukraine, primarily in Crimea and in areas abutting the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in what some analysts have argued could portend a major Russian offensive. Others say it’s more likely to be a show of force aimed to frighten Kyiv, the European Union, and the United States.
The Schemes report also comes less than two months after Ukraine accused Russia of the “targeted assassinations” of “perceived opponents” in a case filed at the ECHR, the latest in a series of legal complaints against Moscow.
It was the ninth case filed by Ukraine against Russia at the ECHR, four of which are still pending and refer to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, human rights violations in Crimea, and Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Kerch Strait in 2018.
The Schemes investigation found that lawyers linked to Klishin and Partners, a Moscow-based law firm, had filed more than 5,000 complaints at the ECHR against Ukraine for rights violations.
Asked about the complaints, Klishin and Partners declined to provide a substantive comment, sending a statement to Schemes saying that it had “not registered any public interest in Russia” in the topic.
It also said it was not obliged to reply to an organization deemed “foreign agents,” a reference to controversial Russian legislation under which several Russian-language services of RFE/RL have been designated as “foreign agents” by the Russian authorities.
Coordinated Effort?
Whether Klishin and Partners were acting in coordination with the Kremlin is unclear. On its website, the firm states it has “sufficient experience defending the interests of the government.”
Also active in filing complaints at the ECHR has been Vladimir Fyodorov, a Russian lawyer who bragged to separatist-run TV in the Donetsk region in 2016 that, thanks in part to his efforts, Ukraine was among the nations facing the largest number of claims at the court.
Without providing specific evidence, Fyodorov asserted that, early in the conflict, the court “did everything possible not to accept these lawsuits from us…but they were forced to…in part due to our work, thanks to which, Ukraine is now on top in [terms of] the number of lawsuits at the European Court of Human Rights.”
Fyodorov’s brother, Grigoriy, is a former member of the Russian Civic Chamber, and has also been active in such efforts.
Schemes also found that a significant number of complaints have emerged from lawyers working within areas of the Donbas under Russia-backed separatist control. Vitaliy Galakhov, head of an organization called Fair Protection claimed to have sent some 2,000 claims to the ECHR in 2018. Schemes was able to confirm that only four claims filed by Galakhov are actually pending at the court now.
Galakhov is wanted by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) on suspicion of falsifying application forms to international courts from residents of areas of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions under the control of the Russian-backed separatists. Law enforcement officers have found about 100 people who contend that they did not actually apply, according to the Schemes investigation.
Oleh Tsarev (left) is seen with separatist leader Aleksandr Borodai in Donetsk in June 2014.
Also active in filing Donbas-related complaints against Kyiv at the court, Schemes found, has been the Union of Refugees of Ukraine, established by Oleh Tsarev, a former Ukrainian lawmaker from the Moscow-friendly Party of Regions and a leading separatist figure in eastern Ukraine for a time.
Although no direct link to the Kremlin was discovered in the investigation, Moscow can only gain from such a campaign, opined Aleksandr Cherkasov, director of the Russian human rights group Memorial.
Aleksandr Cherkasov (file photo)
“Any decision by an international body that is beneficial to Russia will then be used [by Moscow] either as propaganda or a trump card to be used during negotiations,” Cherkasov told Schemes, referring to efforts to resolve the conflict in the Donbas.
“If a decision is made in favor of [Russia], then it was made by wise Western lawyers and politicians,” he said, describing how he believes the Kremlin would seek to take advantage of such cases. “And if not in [Russia’s] favor, then it’s the result of a sellout to the plutocrats who are opposed to [Russia] politically.”
Written by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by Valeria Yehoshyna of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service
TOMSK, Russia — The former mayor of the Siberian city of Tomsk, Ivan Klyain, has rejected charges of abuse of office and illegal business activities at the start of his trial.
Klyain stated in the courtroom on April 8 that he’s not guilty of any of the charges and described allegations by investigators and prosecutors as attempts to put “pressure” on him.
Klyain was arrested in November 2020 with investigators saying at the time that he was suspected of using his post to illegally prevent the construction of a building in 2016-17 on land close to the Tomsk Beer company, which he controls.
The 61-year-old Klyain has served as the mayor of Tomsk since 2013. Before being appointed to the post, he had been the general director of the Tomsk Beer company — one of the largest breweries in the region — since 1994.
After becoming mayor, his wife was elected by Tomsk Beer’s board of directors as the facility’s general director.
In 2013, the Kommersant newspaper wrote that Klyain owned 51 percent of Tomsk Beer, while his spouse and daughters owned 20 percent of the company’s shares.
For several years, Klyain declared one of the highest incomes among Russian mayors, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Slovakia’s drug regulator has said that the Russian Sputnik V doses it received differ from the same vaccine reviewed by the EU’s drug overseer and the U.K.-based medical journal The Lancet.
The State Institute for Drug Control (SUKL) did not explain how the mix-up might have occurred.
“Batches of [Sputnik V] vaccine used in preclinical tests and clinical studies published in The Lancet journal do not have the same characteristics and properties as batches of vaccine imported to Slovakia,” the SUKL said a statement.
The SUKL had already said the day before that lingering questions about the efficacy and risks of the Russian vaccine due to inadequate data from the producer were preventing use of the doses.
EU member Slovakia received 200,000 batches of Sputnik V, which has still not been cleared by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), last month.
The Russian Health Ministry, which supervises the Gamaleya Institute where Sputnik V was developed, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
“On March 30, 2021, the agency officially sent an evaluation report to the Health Ministry, in which it stated that it was not possible to make a conclusion on the balance of benefits and risks of the Sputnik V vaccine,” Reuters quoted SUKL as saying on April 7.
The regulator cited “an amount of missing data from the producer, inconsistency of dosage forms, and [the] impossibility of mutually comparing batches used in various studies and countries.”
As its inspection continues, reports say the EMA’s approval will also be contingent on “good clinical practice” (GCP) standards.
Russian backers of the vaccine, which was registered to great Kremlin fanfare last year despite concerns about underlying data and unfinished clinical trials, have denied the problems should stand in the way of safe rollout.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Igor Matovic, was forced to resign last week under a cloud of questions about his administration’s order for 2 million doses of Sputnik V.
In the neighboring Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis on April 7 announced the dismissal of a health minister who was reportedly resisting pressure — including public complaints by President Milos Zeman — to order Sputnik V.
Sputnik V is already being used in EU member Hungary and other countries around the world.
The German state of Bavaria recently announced an agreement to buy 2.5 million doses of Sputnik V pending approval by European regulators.
The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Thailand announced on its website that three more Mil Mi-17V-5 Hip-H’ medium transport helicopters have been delivered to the Royal Thai Army (RTA). The helicopters were officially handed over to RTA official during a ceremony at U-Tapao airbase on 26 March. The latest addition brings the total number […]
The closely linked Russian and Belarusian currencies have weakened sharply amid an ongoing slew of seemingly unrelated political and diplomatic challenges for the two post-Soviet neighbors.
Russia’s ruble hit a five-month low against the U.S. dollar on April 7 despite hints at a possible monetary tightening by the Russian central bank that could have propped up the currency.
The Belarusian ruble weakened to a record of 2.66 to the dollar the same day, breaking a previous low from February and nearing levels from the weeks just after a disputed election in August 2020.
Both economies have been stymied by Western sanctions, blacklisting, and other punitive measures over their authoritarian leaders’ increasingly repressive tactics to quell dissent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin faces increasing international pressure over the poisoning and jailing of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, while Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who had ruled Belarus since 1994, has been condemned in the West for his brutal crackdown on peaceful protests since a dubious reelection claim in August.
Experts also cite fears of escalating conflict near Ukraine’s border with Russia, where Moscow has acknowledged a troop buildup as skirmishes intensify in Ukraine six years into a conflict between Russian-backed separatists and forces loyal to Kyiv.
NATO and Western leaders have stepped up contacts with Ukraine’s leadership and warned Russia against “provocations.”
Currency traders think a Russian interest rate hike is coming but the Russian ruble remains stubbornly low “due to fears over military escalations in Donbas,” Credit Suisse analysts wrote in a note this week, referring to the eastern region of the former Soviet republic.
Pandemic Problems
In addition to international sanctions over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, Russia’s economy has also been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices.
Analysts have suggested Russia’s recovery after the pandemic will lag behind those of many other emerging markets amid what they called lingering signs of “fundamental weakness.”
In Belarus, tens of thousands of people have been detained in the protests since a presidential election that the opposition and the West say was rigged.
Most of the opposition leadership has been arrested or forced into exile, including opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who has been rallying international support for the pro-democracy movement since fleeing to Lithuania.
The West has responded with sanctions on top officials and rejects Lukashenka as Belarus’s legitimate leader.
The Belarusian economy was already in a weak position before the political crisis, while the coronavirus pandemic has created additional problems.
Andrei Karpunin, chairman of Belarus’s Club of Financial Directors, cited a decrease in remittances from Belarusians working abroad as a major factor in that currency’s fall.
But he also predicted that if sanctions continue to dog the economy, Belarusians will have little choice but to withdraw ruble deposits to convert them into hard currency, further hurting the exchange rate.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, AFP, Reuters, and AP
MOSCOW — The house arrest of the brother of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, a close associate, and two Moscow municipal lawmakers who are charged with breaking coronavirus restrictions by publicly calling on Moscow residents to take part in unsanctioned rallies in January, has been cancelled.
Vladimir Voronin, the lawyer for Lyubov Sobol, who is a lawyer with Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), said late on April 7 that the Moscow City Court had ruled to replace the house arrest of his client, as well as Navalny’s brother, Oleg Navalny, and Moscow city lawmakers, Lyusya Shtein and Konstantin Yankauskas, with other restrictions.
According to the court decision, the new restrictions include being barred from leaving their homes between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., a ban on communicating with other individuals in the case, a ban on the use of all methods of communication to discuss issues related to the case, and a ban on the use of regular mail or telegraphic communication.
The four, along with six other supporters and associates of Navalny, were detained in January on the eve of unsanctioned mass rallies against the Kremlin critic’s arrest.
The others include Anastasia Vasilyeva, the chief of the Alliance of Doctors NGO; Maria Alyokhina, a leading member of the Pussy Riot protest group; Oleg Stepanov, a coordinator of Navalny’s team in Moscow; Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh; activist Nikolai Lyaskin; and a municipal lawmaker Dmitry Baranovsky.
The majority of them remain under house arrest and all have been charged with violating sanitary and epidemiological safety precautions during a pandemic. If found guilty of the charges, each faces up to two years in prison.
The Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow has recognized the group as political prisoners.
The German state of Bavaria has signed an agreement to buy 2.5 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine once it is approved by European regulators.
Markus Soeder, the premier of the southeastern German state, said on April 7 that Bavaria signed a memorandum of understanding for the supply of Sputnik V.
If the Sputnik V vaccine is approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Bavaria is set to receive around 2.5 million doses through a company that would produce the vaccine in the Bavarian town of Illertissen, Soeder said.
Production in Illertissen could start this year, Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek said.
The memorandum includes the possibility of importing the drug as well, Holetschek said, adding, “It is a highly effective vaccine.”
The EMA is currently reviewing Sputnik V for authorization. EMA experts are expected to travel to Russia later this month to survey production and storage of the vaccine.
Russia approved Sputnik V for use in August, making it the first vaccine against COVID-19 to be authorized although medical trials had not been completed at that time.
The EMA will investigate those trials and whether they followed “good clinical practices,” the Financial Times reported on April 7 citing anonymous sources familiar with the EMA approval process. The sources said there were ethical concerns over how Sputnik V was tested before it was released for general use.
The German government, which has faced criticism for a slow vaccine rollout as it struggles with deliveries and supply, said last month said that it would be open to using Sputnik V if it is approved by the EMA.
Algeria also announced news about Sputnik V on April 7, saying that it would start producing the vaccine in September in partnership with Moscow.
The production will be intended for African countries, the Algeria’s minister for the pharmaceutical industry said on April 7.
The North African country, which already has received 50,000 doses of Sputnik V, said in February it was in talks with Russia to produce the vaccine.
The vaccine will be produced in partnership with state pharmaceutical products firm Saidal, which will get help from an Indian laboratory specialized in the manufacture of vaccines, Benbahmed said.
“Three committees are working on the transfer of the technology provided by the Russian side,” Benbahmed said. “Algeria will have its share and responsibility in the vaccination of the African populations.”
Armenia’s prime minister has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for help in releasing dozens of prisoners of war captured by Azerbaijan during last year’s brief war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Speaking on April 7 during a trip to Moscow, Nikol Pashinian also said Armenia was interested in acquiring more Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccines.
Last fall’s war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was waged over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s.
The six-week war concluded with a Russian-brokered cease-fire, under which a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by ethnic Armenian forces.
The agreement also led to the deployment of around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers along frontline areas and a land corridor connecting the disputed territory with Armenia.
More than 6,000 people died in the fighting.
The final status of Nagorno-Karabakh remains unresolved.
There are no official figures of how many Armenian POWs are being held by Azerbaijan, but the RBC news agency said there were about 140 Armenians still being held in Azerbaijan. It’s unclear how many Azerbaijani POWs there are.
“I would like to note that in this context there is a very important issue that has not yet been settled,” Pashinian told Putin. “This is a question of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees.”
“As we have repeatedly discussed…all hostages, prisoners of war, and other detainees should be returned to their homeland, but, unfortunately, we still have detainees in Azerbaijan,” the Armenian prime minister added.
In his meeting with Putin, Pashinian said the first shipment of 15,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine was expected to arrive in Armenia on April 6, but the country needs more than 1 million doses in all.
“The first shipment was, so to speak, a symbolic shipment. We hope to acquire a large amount of the Russian vaccine, because it has proven its efficacy,” he said.
Pashinian’s trip to Moscow came as Armenia prepares for early parliamentary elections in June, triggered by opposition demands the prime minister step down over his handling of the war with Azerbaijan.
Above photo: Foreign policy. Dear President Biden, We last communicated with you on December 20, 2020, when you were President-elect. At that time, we alerted you to the dangers inherent in formulating a policy toward Russia built on a foundation of Russia-bashing. While we continue to support the analysis contained in that memorandum, this new memo serves […]
Igor Krainov was detained on drug-possession charges in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod in 2019. But CCTV footage helped him get the charges dropped and turn the tables on the police, who appeared to plant evidence in his pocket. Three officers lost their jobs and are facing a criminal investigation.
Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Islamabad on April 7 that Russia will provide unspecified military equipment to Pakistan as the two countries increase cooperation to fight terrorism.
Russia and Pakistan will also conduct joint naval and land exercises, he said.
Lavrov’s two-day visitmarks the first to Islamabad by a Russian foreign minister in nearly a decade and is widely regarded as part of an effort to foster deeper bilateral relations that have warmed only recently.
Lavrov’s meetings with Pakistani officials followed a stop in rival neighbor India and were expected to touch on efforts to establish peace in another neighboring country, Afghanistan.
“We stand ready to strengthen the anti-terrorist potential of Pakistan, including by supplying Pakistan with special military equipment,” Lavrov said.
Moscow has recently sought to assert greater influence in conflict-torn Afghanistan as the United States and other Western powers try to extricate themselves from a two-decade war.
Russia is also helping to construct a gas pipeline between Pakistan’s port city of Karachi and eastern Lahore.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Islamabad welcomes Russian expertise on rail and energy-sector modernization.
Qureshi also said Pakistan will purchase 5 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, which is being used in dozens of countries but has run into regulatory delays in the European Union.
Pakistan’s security establishment is seen as close to the Afghan Taliban, which is fighting the central government in Kabul amid stalled intra-Afghan peace talks, and is said to wield leverage to influence that militant group’s actions.
A May 1 deadline is approaching for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave Afghanistan in line with an agreement Washington signed with the Afghan Taliban in Qatar in February 2020.
Afghanistan has seen a nationwide spike in bombings, targeted killings, and violence on the battlefield as common ground evades peace negotiators in Qatar.
U.S. President Joe Biden has warnedthat the May withdrawal deadline will be difficult to meet, raising the prospect that the entire agreement with the Taliban will unravel.
Later this month, Taliban and Afghan government representatives are expected to gather for a U.S.-backed international conference in Turkey meant to give new impetus to peace talks.
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia — The father of Ivan Zhdanov, the director of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been remanded in custody on a charge of abuse of office, which he and his supporters reject.
The Rostov regional court on April 7 upheld an earlier decision by a lower court in the city of Rostov-on-Don to keep 66-year-old Yury Zhdanov in pretrial detention at least until May 21.
Yury Zhdanov, who took part in the hearing via a video link from the detention center, and his lawyers requested the court transfer him to house arrest due to his age and the danger of getting infected with the coronavirus while in custody.
Zhdanov said at the hearing that many of those in his cell are sick. He said earlier that the cell he is kept in is so overcrowded that inmates have to sleep in shifts due to the limited number of beds.
Yury Zhdanov was sent to pretrial detention after police searched his home on March 26.
His son said last week that he had “no doubts that the criminal case was launched because of me and my activities.” He called his father’s arrest “absolutely a new level of villainy and turpitude from the [Russian] presidential administration.”
According to Zhdanov, before retiring last summer his father worked as an official in a remote town for several years.
Investigators now accuse Yury Zhdanov of recommending the town’s administration provide a local woman with a subsidized apartment, though it later turned out that the woman’s family had previously received housing allocations.
The apartment was later returned to municipal ownership in accordance with a court decision and no one among those who made the decision was held responsible.
Navalny’s FBK is known for publishing investigative reports about corruption among Russia’s top officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
The latest report focused on a lavish Black Sea mansion that Navalny’s team called “a palace for Putin,” capturing worldwide attention with almost 116 million views on YouTube.
The report showcases a luxurious, 100 billion ruble ($1.32 billion) estate near the popular holiday town of Gelendzhik that it said Putin effectively owns via a complex trail of companies.
The Kremlin has denied the report, saying “one or several [businessmen] directly or indirectly own” the property, adding that it “has no right to reveal the names of these owners.”
Train convoys of heavy Russian military equipment, seen on multiple videos on social media, reportedly shipping from Siberia to the border regions of Ukraine.
The Kerch Strait Bridge to the occupied Crimean Peninsula shut down briefly, apparently for a major shipment of weaponry.
An uptick in shelling along the line of control separating Ukrainian forces from Russia-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine. Ominous rhetoric on Russian state TV.
Is the Ukrainian-Russian “cold war” about to go “hot”?
Amid talk of war, here are six questions framing the flareup in tension between Russia and Ukraine — and some potential answers.
Ukrainian soldiers patrol along a position at the front line with Russia-backed separatists not far from Avdiyivka in the Donetsk region on April 5.
Isn’t There Already A War?
Yes. The conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region known the Donbas began seven years ago this month and despite multiple cease-fire agreements, has never really ended. More than 13,000 people have been killed since April 2014, according to the United Nations, and more than 1 million have been displaced.
Since July 2020, 45 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed and nearly 320 wounded, a Ukrainian official said last month.
Since late March, though, there’s been a noticeable uptick in Russian troop movements close to Ukraine’s borders and into Crimea, which Russia seized in March 2014.
It’s also set off alarm bells in Western capitals.
What’s With All That Equipment?
Over the past two weeks or so, there’s been a steady accumulation of photographs, video, and other data suggesting major movements of Russian armed units toward or near Ukraine’s borders and into Crimea.
That’s sent open-source researchers, journalists, and others to try to geolocate the imagery and divine the intentions of Russian military command, not to mention the Kremlin.
One prevailing theory is that this is merely a show of force aimed at spooking or intimidating Kyiv and sending a message to the West that Russia is willing to put “boots on the ground” — and a lot of them — very quickly.
“The ostentation with which the troops are being moved confirms that Russia is saber-rattling rather than contemplating a blitzkrieg,” Maksim Samorukov, a fellow with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in an opinion piece published on April 5.
Observers have also pointed out that Russia has done large troop movements in the past, in connection with regular military exercises, without invading. Some analysts say these deployments don’t seem to make sense in that context.
What Does Russia Say?
Not much, or not much that’s clear.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week turned away reporters’ questions about the troop movements, saying that there was nothing to fear and that the repositioning of armed units within Russia’s borders was a strictly domestic concern.
When it comes to Crimea, though, Kyiv and the West — and nearly all of the rest of the world, for that matter — do not accept that, because they do not accept Moscow’s claim to the Black Sea peninsula.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Southern Military District, the command unit with responsibility for areas near the border with the Donbas and the North Caucasus, announced it was conducting an annual readiness check, with several dozen related exercises being held between March 29 and April 30. (The district also technically oversees Russia’s military command for Crimea.)
A few days earlier, Russia’s defense minister added further to the fog. On March 25, Sergei Shoigu announced that a paratrooper unit based in the northwestern city of Pskov, the 56th Air Assault Brigade, would be reorganized, and redeployed to the Crimean port of Feodosia. The closure of the Kerch Strait Bridge was reported to be connected with the transport of related equipment.
A convoy of Russian military equipment is seen on the move in Crimea on March 24.
But while Russia regularly conducts large-scale, district-wide training exercises — often involving thousands of troops, and dozens of units, across wide areas — some observers have said the scale of the equipment movement seen of late is far beyond normal.
On April 6, Shoigu announced broader-scale exercises in all military districts nationwide.
Isn’t There A Cease-Fire?
The oft-violated cease-fire in eastern Ukraine stems from the Minsk accords. A two-part deal, the second was signed in February 2015 by Ukraine and Russia, along with Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was also a signatory.
There’s also the Normandy Format: a grouping made up of Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany that has been trying to end the conflict. That goal has been elusive due to factors that include Russia’s funding and support for the militants in eastern Ukraine, internal Ukrainian politics, and German and French wavering on how forcefully to confront Moscow — and how much support to give Kyiv.
In a statement issued on April 3, the German Foreign Office called for restraint in the current tension, but also used the phrasing “all sides” — which drew criticism from some officials who said it equated threatening Russian troop movements with Ukraine’s defensive posture in the Donbas. (As of April 7, there was no public evidence suggesting Ukraine is doing similar large-scale equipment movement — and unlike Russia in Crimea, any deployments it is making are inside its borders.)
The European Union, meanwhile, has spoken up in support of Ukraine. But the bloc’s lead diplomat, Josep Borrell, was humiliated when he traveled to Russia in early February in an effort to mend fences with Moscow, leading observers to conclude that the EU has little leverage with Russia in this specific context.
Moscow may be trying “to make it clear to the West that the more it backs Ukraine rhetorically, the more the potential risk that it might be forced to make good on its promises,” Mark Galeotti, an analyst and author on Russia, wrote in a column for BNE Intellinews. “This is, after all, something the Kremlin thinks Europe in particular is unwilling to do.”
What About The United States?
Observers also say the timing and scope of the Russian maneuvers suggest a challenge to the United States and in particular President Joe Biden. He’s been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters dating back to the period leading up the outbreak of war in 2014, when he was vice president.
Washington hit Russia with sanctions after the seizure of Crimea, and despite his often-conciliatory rhetoric, Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, kept those sanctions in place.
Biden’s administration has signaled a more confrontational approach: neither reset nor escalation, U.S. officials have said repeatedly since Biden took office In January. “We have asked Russia for an explanation of these provocations, but most importantly what we have signaled directly with our Ukrainian partners is a message of reassurance,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on April 5.
Ukrainian Army personnel display U.S. Javelin anti-tank missiles during a military parade marking Independence Day in Kyiv on August 24, 2018.
The new U.S. administration has hit Moscow with economic sanctions in response to the near-fatal poisoning of opposition activist Aleksei Navalny with a military-grade nerve agent and to his imprisonment when he returned to Russia from Germany three days before Biden’s inauguration. The administration has also threatened unspecified action for a massive cyberattack on U.S. government computers, which it has blamed on Russian intelligence.
On April 2, in Biden’s first phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the U.S. leader pledged “unwavering” support. That call was preceded by calls between top U.S. defense and military officials and their Ukrainian counterparts.
While the EU has provided hundreds of millions of euros to help Ukraine build a more functional, and less corrupt, government, the United States has provided weaponry and training to Ukrainian forces, including anti-tank missiles, night-vision goggles, and counter-battery radars.
That effort continued on March 1, with the U.S. Defense Department announcement of another $125 million in new aid: “capabilities to enhance the lethality, command and control, and situational awareness of Ukraine’s forces through the provision of additional counter-artillery radars and tactical equipment; continued support for a satellite imagery and analysis capability; and equipment to support military medical treatment and combat evacuation procedures.”
The Kremlin bitterly opposes the notion that Ukraine could someday join NATO. But while Kyiv’s membership in the alliance seems to be a distant prospect, that hasn’t stopped Zelenskiy from making public statements about it. “We are committed to reforming our army and defense sector, but reforms alone will not stop Russia,” he said on Twitter after speaking with NATO’s secretary-general. “NATO is the only way to end the war in [the] Donbas.”
What’s Russia’s Endgame?
If there is a Kremlin endgame beyond a couple of big military exercises and relocating a combat brigade, it’s certainly not clear to Washington, Kyiv, or other Western capitals.
But one other place to look for guidance is how Russia has handled other simmering conflicts in its backyard. These so-called “frozen conflicts” have persisted in several places since the Soviet collapse, including Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as Transdniester in Moldova.
In all of them, Russian forces have deployed and remained, either as peacekeepers or as fully garrisoned units, though in reality, they go in unilaterally without the blessing of the United Nations or the OSCE and end up destabilizing the status quo in favor of Moscow.
Deploying international peacekeepers to the Donbas under the aegis of the Vienna-based OSCE has been discussed in the past. Those proposals, however, have been hung up on questions including whether they would be allowed to patrol the Russian-Ukrainian border or merely the line of control in Ukraine.
Many observers say that Russia seems unlikely to risk a renewal of full-scale war or an attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory, at least for the time being. James Sherr, the former head of Chatham House’s Russia program, has suggested that putting a Russian peacekeeping force inside Ukraine may be Moscow’s desired endgame.
“A localized escalation, dramatic and devastating, leading to the deployment of Russian ‘peacekeepers’ on the current demarcation line, is probably the most realistic option,” he wrote in a commentary for the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia.
