Ukrainian authorities uncovered a corrupt arms procurement deal worth nearly €36.4 million, the Ukrainian security service announced late Saturday.
Former and current “high-ranking officials” in Kyiv’s defense ministry were involved in the plot, dating to 2022, to steal funds meant for procuring 100,000 mortar rounds, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement.
The scheme reflects Ukraine’s ongoing struggle to combat corruption as it tries to fight off Moscow’s invasion and apply to join the EU and NATO.
According to the SBU, the defense ministry paid for the weapons order in August 2022, transferring the funds to supplier Lviv Arsenal. Instead of delivering the weapons, however, the company “took the received funds into the shadows, transferring them to the accounts of another affiliated structure in the Balkans,” according to the statement.
The SBU said it seized the stolen funds and notified five people of suspicion, including the former and current heads of the department responsible for military equipment at the defense ministry. One suspect is in custody after being detained while trying to leave Ukraine, the SBU said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has compared corruption to treason. Yet his move to hand graft-fighting authority to the SBU — a unit under his direct control — rather than existing corruption watchdogs has sparked controversy and fears that sensitive cases could be covered up.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron missed the boat on Ukraine.
Faced with Russia’s military build-up and subsequent invasion of its neighbor, Macron dove down a rabbit hole of fruitless talks with Vladimir Putin. At a moment when he could have taken the helm as the leader of Europe, he miscalculated and failed to seize the political initiative.
Instead, in Europe, it was the likes of the Euroskeptic British premier Boris Johnson who took the lead on rallying support for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and providing arms. While Johnson was a hero in Kyiv, Macron infuriated the Ukrainians by insisting that Putin should not be humiliated and suggesting that Moscow deserved “security guarantees.” Ukraine, the French president said, was “in all likelihood decades” from joining the EU.
But a sea change has taken place in Paris since. The French president has now picked up the mantle as one of Ukraine’s strongest allies, pledging support “until victory,” seeking to lead on issues such as NATO membership and military support, just as Europeans fret that U.S. support is flagging, with increasing concerns that a potential Donald Trump presidency could deprive Ukraine of its most important ally.
“Macron was fixated by the idea of playing a mediation role between Putin and Zelenskyy. And this meant he was extremely prudent when it came to arms deliveries,” François Heisbourg, senior adviser to the International Institute for Strategic Studies said. But early this year “Macron finally understood that Putin was taking him for a ride, and wasn’t interested in negotiating,” he added.
French diplomats, however, won’t go further than to say the president “has clarified” his position on Ukraine.
Where the French have broken most significantly from their long-standing position is on the issue of EU enlargement. Beyond the war in Ukraine, France is now seeking new allies, wants to lead on enlargement and is war-gaming how an enlarged EU would work. There is frenetic diplomatic activity behind closed doors in Paris and beyond. The French government is leading consultations and testing red lines ahead of a big speech Macron is set to give early next year, setting out his ambitions for enlargement that has already been dubbed “Sorbonne bis,” according to several French officials, in a reference to a policy-setting Europe speech Macron gave at the Sorbonne University in 2017.
Change of heart
For months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, the French president appeared to zig-zag on how to deal with Russia. Putin was a personality he had struggled to read. In a 2019 interview with the Economist, Macron mapped out a picture of how he reckoned a logical Putin would ultimately come to the realization that he would need to form “a partnership project with Europe.” It was a generous vision of Putin’s mindset that underestimated the gnawing historical primacy of the Ukraine question.
In December last year, Macron’s U-turn started to become more evident. He gave a forceful speech saying he would support Ukraine “until victory.” Only a couple of weeks earlier he had stated that the West should give Russia “security guarantees.”
In May this year, Macron hinted at a new awareness, telling Central and Eastern Europeans in Bratislava that he believed France “had sometimes wasted opportunities,” and failed to listen to their memories of Soviet brutality.
That same month, France gave the U.K. permission to export Franco-British Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, which was followed by deliveries of French long-range SCALP-EG cruise missiles. According to Heisbourg, it was a decisive signal, because France was doing what the U.S. has so far refused to do.
But Macron’s previous diplomatic serenades toward Putin have left their mark. According to a French diplomat, Macron “shot himself in the foot” in making too many overtures to Moscow, telling reporters that “Russia should not be humiliated.” In the early months of the war, “it overshadowed what we did do, the military support, the European unity,” said the diplomat who like others quoted here was granted anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter. Another French diplomat put it more bluntly: “Macron missed his Churchillian moment.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on May 14, 2023 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Macron’s government is now firing on multiple fronts in favor of Ukraine: EU enlargement, military support and NATO. This month, the French presidency announced they were opening talks with Ukraine to sign a bilateral security agreement following the NATO summit in Vilnius.
“We are not naïve, we took a big step … but we are not kidding ourselves that people will think France has changed overnight,” said a third French diplomat.
Speeding up on enlargement
As recently as 2019, Macron was opposed to opening membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania.
“France has never been anti-enlargement, but it has always been prudent about it,” said Georgina Wright, Europe director at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne. “France has always said the EU must deepen before it can widen, because there was a fear by enlarging the EU would become more dysfunctional,” she said.
But in a recent speech, Macron called for “boldness” in embracing enlargement, floating the idea of a “multispeed Europe” to keep up the drive toward greater integration.
For France, the change is also set against the realization that the Balkans and Moldova — not just Ukraine — are on the front lines of a hybrid war against Russia.
“There’s a real awakening that we are on the eve of a historic moment, similar to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, with a new wave of EU enlargement …which will help stabilize the Continent,” said Benjamin Haddad, an MP for Macron’s Renaissance party.
But the change of heart may also boil down to some hard-nosed political calculus. France’s initial diplomatic initiatives with Putin alienated Central and Eastern Europeans. With talk of the center of gravity shifting eastward, France needs support beyond its traditional allies such as Germany, Italy and Spain, if it wants to influence the change it now sees as inevitable.
Getting political
With the European election looming next year, France is gearing up for a battle of opposing visions, between Europhiles arguing the EU protects citizens and populists shining a spotlight on the Union’s failings.
In France, where the far-right National Rally is riding high in the polls, and most recently the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed ambitions to bring Ukraine into the Union — an anti-enlargement position held by several French political heavyweights before him, the fight is expected to be bloody.
Haddad says his camp will argue that the EU, even enlarged, will protect citizens against the upheavals of the world: the war in Ukraine, “a predatory China,” and a possible Trump presidency. “If the far right had been in power … Russia would be occupying all of Ukraine,” he said.
But what may also undermine Macron’s new drive is what Heisbourg calls “the temptation towards mediation,” adding that the French president failed to recall France’s policy on Taiwan during a visit to Beijing, in a bid to get China to play a mediation role with Russia.
“This temptation makes our partners skeptical despite the real and profound change [in France], the fear is that we might return to our old ways,” he added.
As gear reviews go, it was a glowing one: In a 60-second video clip posted on Telegram, a masked sniper sporting the death’s-head insignia of the Wagner mercenary army sings the praises of the Russian-made Orsis T-5000 rifle.
“The equipment comes very well recommended,” the soldier, pictured in the charred interior of a building, tells a war reporter from the Zvezda TV channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Pulling out the clip of the weapon at his side, he continues: “It uses Western .338 caliber ammunition. It works very well. It can penetrate light cover if the enemy is behind it. And, in the open, it can strike the enemy at a range of up to 1,500 meters.”
Filings obtained by POLITICO indicate that Promtekhnologiya and another Russian firm called Tetis have acquired hundreds of thousands of rounds made by Hornady, a U.S. company that trademarks its wares as “Accurate. Deadly. Dependable.” Hornady, founded in 1949, sums up its philosophy with the phrase: “Ten bullets through one hole.”
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that supplies of lethal and nonlethal military equipment are still reaching Russia despite the West’s imposition of unprecedented sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. The exigencies of war have exposed Russia’s lack of capacity to manufacture high-end sniper rounds, say defense experts, and that is fueling a flourishing black market for Western ammunition.
Information on the procurement of such gear is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals — importers, suppliers and product descriptions — can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes.
Anything but bulletproof
In a “declaration of conformity” filed with a Russian government registry and dated August 12, 2022, Promtekhnologiya stated that it planned to sourcea batch of 102,200 Hornady lead bullets for the assembly of “hunting cartridges” used in “civilian weapons with a rifled barrel.” The specifications — .338 Lapua Magnum bullets weighing 285 grains — match those of a product in the Hornady catalog.
A second declaration bearing the same date is for a batch of “uncapped cartridge cases for assembling civilian firearms cartridges” made by Hornady with the same .338 Lapua Magnum specification.
The description is misleading: The .338 Lapua Magnum isn’t a “hunting cartridge;” it’s a high-powered, long-range projectile that was developed by Western militaries in the 1980s and used by their snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reached by POLITICO, Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime.
“The instant Russia invaded Ukraine, we were done,” Hornady said in a brief telephone call.
Hornady declined at first to elaborate and, when asked to review the evidence, requested that it be sent by fax or courier as he did not use email. He eventually responded after POLITICO sent written requests for comment with supporting documentation by courier.
“We categorically are NOT exporting anything to Russia and have not had an export permit for Russia since 2014,” he replied. “We do not support any sale of our product to any Russian son-of-a-bitch and if we can find out how they acquire, if in fact they do, we will take all steps available to stop it.”
Hornady added that he had contacted the U.S. authorities following POLITICO’s inquiry. He pointed out that current U.S. law required that customers must obtain permission from the Department of Commerce to re-export articles made in the United States. “To the best of our knowledge, none of our customers violate that law,” he said.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, asked which ammunition his troops used, told POLITICO they had “a huge amount of NATO-issue ammunition left over from the Ukrainian army.” In a sarcastic voice message sent to a POLITICO journalist, the Russian warlord also asked for help procuring F-35 combat jets and U.S.-made sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Promtekhnologiya denied filing any customs declarations to import ammunition; said it had no relationship with Hornady; and that it had the capacity to manufacture its own ammunition. The company also said in emailed comments to POLITICO that the Orsis rifle and the ammunition the company makes are intended for “hunting and sporting” purposes and are freely available on the civilian market.
Both Promtekhnologiya and Alexander Zinovyev, listed as the company’s general director in the filings, have been sanctioned by Ukraine, which cites evidence that its Orsis rifles “have been used in Russian military operations in Eastern Ukraine.”
Promtekhnologiya is also in Washington’s sights: “We take any allegation of sanctions violation or evasion seriously and are committed to ensuring that sanctions are fully enforced,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in response to a request for comment from POLITICO.
“We have taken steps to hold Russia accountable for its war in Ukraine and have imposed an unprecedented sanctions regime to disrupt Russia’s ability to access funds and weapons that fuel Putin’s war machine. That includes sanctioning companies like Promtekhnologiya.”
Criminal, or wilful, violations of U.S. sanctions can trigger penalties of up to $1 million per violation, as well as up to 20 years’ imprisonment for individuals. Civil penalties can run to the higher of either twice the value of the underlying transaction or around $350,000 per violation.
Describing military-grade ammunition as for hunting or sporting use, as the filings do, amounts to a thinly veiled ruse to evade targeted “smart” sanctions aimed at starving the Russian military of the means to fight the war, said defense analyst Maria Shagina.
“Strictly speaking, smart sanctions are not supposed to target anything civilian to avoid humanitarian collateral damage,” said Shagina, a research fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “But the targets in authoritarian countries will really exploit this.”
Steve Hornady, CEO of the family company based in Grand Island, Nebraska, denied selling ammunition to Russia in wartime | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Russia reloaded
Another Russian buyer of Hornady ammunition is a company called Tetis, which has disclosed two shipments since Russia’s full-scale invasionof Ukraine beganon February 24, 2022. The most recent was in April for more than 300,000 “units” comprising a wide range of products that checked out with the Hornady catalog.
The main owners of Tetis, Alexander Levandovsky and Sergey Senchenko — who each own stakes of 41.1 percent — have links to the Russian military.
Both were previously listed as shareholders in another company called Kampo, which according to company filings holds licenses to make weapons and military equipment and has done business with the Ministry of Defense and the Special Flight Detachment that operates Putin’s presidential plane.
Although Tetis doesn’t offer Hornady ammo on its website, it does advertise itself as an international distributor for RCBS, a U.S. maker of reloading equipment. This is used to assemble cases, primer, propellants and projectiles into cartridges that can then be fired — as seen in this video posted by a Russian gun enthusiast.
A database check revealed that the most recent declaration of conformity filed by Tetis for RCBS, for electronic weighing scales, predated Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 of last year by just over a month.
Russia’s trade bureaucracy allows local firms to vouch for the goods they are importing by filing declarations of conformity, such as those that mention the Hornady products. This means that the supplier listed on the form may not be aware of specific shipments that could have been handled by an intermediary.
Tetis did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Matt Rice, a spokesman for RCBS owner Vista Outdoor, said Tetis was no longer an international distributor for RCBS. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our business made the decision to end all sales of goods with the country,” Rice said in an email, adding that RCBS would remove the listing for Tetis from its website.
Doing the rounds
Hornady ammunition or its components are freely available in Russia, along with other high-end foreign military gear.
Take the “Sniper Shop” on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that is popular in Russia: It features a current offer for a full range of Hornady products, with the seller inviting buyers to visit a showroom in Sokolniki, a Moscow district, and offering delivery throughout Russia by courier or post. Contacted by POLITICO, the poster confirmed the Hornady ammo was in stock but declined to comment further on how it was sourced.
Then there is “Anton,” who advertises products from Hornady and RCBS on his profile. He also touts gear from Nightforce, maker of thermal optical sights; Lapua, which helped design the eponymous .338 ammo; MDT, a maker of chassis systems, magazines and accessories for rifles; and precision gunsmith AREA 419. All are American with the exception of Lapua, which is based in Finland and owned by a Norwegian company called Nammo.
Western high-end foreign military gear seems to be freely available in Russia | Leon Neal/Getty Images
“Anton” posted an offer for Hornady cartridges last October 24. Contacted via Telegram to ask whether he was still stocking Hornady, he replied: “We don’t do ammunition.”
POLITICO has, in the course of its research, also found declarations from several other Russian companies for ammunition made in Germany, Finland and Turkey.
The thriving black market reflects a structural deficit in Russia’s war economy. Its military-industrial complex can produce good small arms, like the Orsis rifle, but lacks the capacity to churn out the amount of ammunition needed by an army fighting a war across a front stretching hundreds of miles.
“Despite the quality of the rifles produced, a successful hit directly depends on the components used in the cartridges, and they, unfortunately, are imported,” a correspondent lamented in a post on a Russian military news site a few months into the war. Gunpowder produced in Russia lacks stability, the correspondent added, saying this is “unacceptable in the framework of high-precision shooting.”
The continuing access to specialized rifle cartridges made in the West, such as the .338 Lapua Magnum, by a sanctioned Russian small arms manufacturer like Orsis maker Promtekhnologiya is “egregious,” said Gary Somerville, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British defense think tank.
“At present, there is only one manufacturer of this cartridge in Russia,” he added. “Preventing the shipment of these types of ammunition from Western countries to Russia is an easy win for those seeking to constrain Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine.”
Balkan route
It’s not just ammunition from the U.S. that is reaching the battlefront around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries after a bloody, months-long battle.
There also appear to be cartridges from the European Union, which has imposed no fewer than 10 rounds of sanctions against Russia in a so-far inconclusive attempt to starve Putin’s war machine of the means to fight on.
Promtekhnologiya has filed four declarations since October covering shipments of 460,000 units described as “Orsis hunting cartridges” — most are of the .338 Lapua Magnum type. These identify a Slovenian company called Valerian as the supplier.
The first of the filings, dated October 13, 2022, includes an air waybill number whose first three digits — 262 — indicate that the shipper was Ural Airlines, a Russian carrier. It was not immediately possible to trace the route of the flight, however.
Valerian was founded on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with paid-in capital of €7,500 by Gašper Heybal, who previously worked for U.S. military outfitter Voodoo Tactical. On its home page, Valerian says: “Our goal is to equip you for your mission, whatever it might be, and wherever you are going.”
In online posts over the past decade — including on a Facebook Group called EU Guns with a declared mission of “easier transfer of weapons between European gun owners” — Heybal has done little to dispel the impression that he is an active small arms dealer.
Bakhmut was recently captured by Prigozhin’s mercenaries, the Wagner mercenary group| Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
The telephone number Heybal shared publicly in those posts is the same as the one for Valerian, which is registered at an address in a village around 40 minutes’ drive southeast of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana.
Reached at that number, Heybal denied that Valerian had shipped ammunition to Russia: “We don’t sell any … firearms or ammunition, and also there is an embargo on Russia,” said Heybal.
In a follow-up email on the declarations of conformity, Heybal said: “Firstly, we must stress that we do not know, nor do we understand how the name of our company, Valerian d.o.o., appears on the document.”
“Secondly, Valerian is not listed there as a supplier but as the producer, and this is not possible, as we do not produce ammunition. That being said, it still makes absolutely no sense to us as to how our name could appear on it. We are glad you brought this to our attention so we can figure out what is going on.”
A Slovenian diplomat said that, while Valerian had never applied for authorization to export weapons or ammunition to Russia, it had shipped “individual parts” to Kyrgyzstan.
The Central Asian state is one of the countries that the EU has in mind as it discusses an 11th round of measures targeting third countries that are suspected of helping Russia evade sanctions.
“The competent services in the Republic of Slovenia have already initiated the appropriate procedures to investigate the facts concerning the company,” the diplomat told POLITICO, adding that they would verify the possible diversion of goods to the Russian Federation. “Slovenia is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine, we have been supportive of all sanctions packages and especially this anti-circumvention one.”
An official at the European Commission deflected a request for comment, saying the bloc’s member countries were responsible for implementing sanctions. “As this seems like a very specific case, these allegations need to be investigated further by the competent authorities,” the official said.
Sergey Panov reported from Spain, Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels and Douglas Busvine from Berlin. Additional reporting by Steven Overly in Washington.
[ad_2]
Sergey Panov, Sarah Anne Aarup and Douglas Busvine
NATO on Tuesday deployed additional forces to Kosovo, a day after peacekeeping troops were injured in clashes with Serb protesters in the country.
11 Italian and 19 Hungarian soldiers belonging to Kosovo Force (KFOR), a NATO-led peacekeeping mission, were wounded in northern Kosovo while working to contain violent demonstrations. Three of the Hungarian soldiers were injured by the use of firearms, according to KFOR.
NATO condemned the attacks and called “on all sides to refrain from actions that further inflame tensions, and to engage in dialogue.”
In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Allied Joint Force Command Naples said NATO is sending the Operational Reserve Forces (ORF) for the Western Balkans to Kosovo.
“JFC Naples is closely monitoring the situation in Kosovo, and will continue to coordinate with KFOR to ensure that they have all the capabilities and forces they need to impartially ensure a safe and secure environment and the freedom of movement for all communities,” it said, noting that additional reserve forces have been ordered to boost readiness to reinforce KFOR if needed.
Admiral Stuart B. Munsch, commander of Allied Joint Force Command Naples, said in a statement that “the deployment of additional NATO forces to Kosovo is a prudent measure to ensure that KFOR has the capabilities it needs to maintain security in accordance with our U.N. Security Council Mandate.”
“I want to commend KFOR for taking swift, restrained, and professional action to intervene to stop the unrest and to save lives,” he said, adding: “The violence must stop, and all sides must stop taking actions to undermine the peace in any and all communities of Kosovo.”
Tensions are running high in the region. On Friday, the U.S., France, Italy, Germany, and the U.K. issued a joint statement condemning Kosovo’s decision to force access to municipal buildings in northern Kosovo. The five countries also said they are “concerned by Serbia’s decision to raise the level of readiness of its Armed Forces at the border with Kosovo and call all parties for maximum restraint, avoiding inflammatory rhetoric.”
It’s now easy to forget that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once hailed as the paragon of a “Muslim democrat,” who could serve as a model to the entire Islamic world.
In the early 2000s, hopes ran high about the charismatic, lanky, former football striker, who received only one red card in his playing career, unsurprisingly for giving an earful to a referee. The man from the working-class Istanbul neighborhood of Kasımpaşa promised something new: Finally, there was a master-juggler, who could balance Islamism, parliamentary democracy, progressive welfare, NATO membership and EU-oriented reforms.
That optimism feels a world away now, as Turkey heads into crunch elections on May 14 marked by debate over the centralization of powers under an increasingly authoritarian and divisive leader — dubbed the reis, or captain. Prominent opponents are in jail, the media and judiciary are largely under Erdoğan’s thrall and the kid from Kasımpaşa now rules 85 million people from a monumental 1,150-room presidential complex he built, commonly referred to as the Saray, meaning palace.
Little wonder, then, that the opposition is focusing its campaign on undoing the “one-man regime.” The six-party opposition bloc is vowing to take a pick-ax to the all-powerful presidential system Erdoğan introduced in 2017 and to shift to a new type of pluralist parliamentary democracy. (POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the contest on a knife edge, meaning there will probably be a second round in the presidential vote on May 28.)
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition leader challenging Erdoğan for the top job, describes the restoration of Turkish democracy as the “first pillar” of the election race. “In a manner that contradicts its own history … our veteran parliament’s legislative power has been consigned to the grip of the one-man regime,” Kılıçdaroğlu, an avuncular, soft-spoken former bureaucrat, said in a speech on April 23 commemorating the founding of parliament.
Know your onions
But is this talk of democratic restoration seizing the imagination in an election that is, quite literally, about the price of onions and cucumbers?
Turkey’s brutal cost of living crisis is the No. 1 electoral battleground. Kılıçdaroğlu hit a nerve when, onion in hand, he delivered a warning from his modest kitchen — no Saray for Mr. Kemal — that the cost of a kilo of onions would spike to 100 lira (€4.67) from 30 lira now, if the president stays in power.
Stung, Erdoğan insisted his government had solved Turkey’s food affordability problems, saying: “In this country, there is no onion problem, no potato problem, no cucumber problem.” But most Turks know Kılıçdaroğlu’s arithmetic is not outlandish; he is an accountant by training, after all. Annual inflation hit a record high of 85.5 percent last October, and ran at just over 50 percent in March. The Turkish lira has plunged to 19.4 to the dollar from about 6 to the dollar in early 2020.
In contrast to those bread-and-butter campaign issues, the main thrust of the opposition’s manifesto for switching power away from the presidency sounds legalistic. There are provisions to end the president’s effective veto power, ensure a non-partisan presidency and impose a one-term limit. Parliament will be strengthened by measures ranging from a lower threshold for a party to enter the assembly to greater use of independent experts in committees.
Important reforms, certainly, but will they strike a chord with voters? They could well do. İlke Toygür, professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, observed that while constitutional reforms might not be the “daily conversation,” the big themes of one-man rule and Turkey’s historical attachment to parliament did resonate.
One-man rule, for example, is widely linked to mismanagement of the economy and skyrocketing prices, she noted. Erdoğan has been lambasted for pouring fuel onto the inflationary fire by advocating for slashing interest rates — a stance euphemistically described as “unorthodox.”
“If you link everything to each other and link the one-man rule to the cost of living crisis, to the democracy crisis, and to all the problems in foreign policy, then you are defining this system and you are providing an alternative,” she said.
Toygür also stressed parliament played a crucial role in creating Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s independent Turkish republic a century ago, and that still counted. “Parliament has a very strong symbolic value in Turkey,” she said, adding that voters appreciated teams in decision-making, something that Kılıçdaroğlu is playing up. “One of the biggest complaints now is that people lost their links to decision-making candidates.”
In stark contrast to the image of Erdoğan as the lone almighty reis, Kılıçdaroğlu portrays himself as building consensus, ready to draw on a broad pool of talent. In videos, he shows himself discussing earthquake-resistant construction, education and nutrition with high-profile mayors, Mansur Yavaș from Ankara and Ekrem İmamoğlu from Istanbul, his vice-presidents in the wings.
What’s more, Kılıçdaroğlu has pushed this vision of himself as an inclusive leader to a dramatic new level by publicly declaring himself to be an Alevi, a member of Turkey’s main religious minority that long suffered discrimination. His Twitter declaration on his identity, in which he called on young Turks to uproot the country’s “divisive system,” went viral. It’s a risky gambit against a populist president from the Sunni mainstream, but the message is clear: Kılıçdaroğlu is styling himself as the pluralist antidote to Erdoğan’s polarizing politics. The humble 74-year-old may be a bit dull after the caustic current leader, but the opposition’s gamble is that’s what Turkey needs.
Power to the president
Most observers looking back to identify a turning point where Erdoğan decided to centralize power around himself select the Gezi Park protests of 2013, when an unusually socially diverse band of demonstrators sought to stop a green space in Istanbul from being bulldozed for a shopping mall.
The protests — eventually smashed with tear gas and water cannon — swelled into a nationwide roar against Erdoğan’s cronyism and strongman style. Demir Murat Seyrek, adjunct professor at the Brussels School of Governance, said it was the first time Erdoğan felt “the threat was against him” rather than the ruling AK party.
Turkish President and People’s Alliance’s presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Atlan/AFP via Getty Images
The final straw was an attempted coup in 2016 — the facts of which remain opaque — that pushed Erdoğan to hold a referendum in April 2017 on shifting to a presidential system. He won by the narrowest of margins (51.4 percent) and the opposition still disputes the result, not least because the vote was held during a post-coup state of emergency.
Seyrek noted the irony that the presidential system also had downsides for Erdoğan, particularly as he requires 50 percent of votes (+1) to stay in office. Now deserted by bigwigs from his AK party’s early days — former President Abdullah Gül and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have turned against him — he has to find increasingly extreme partners for his coalition to make up the numbers. “Each time, he wins by losing political power to other parties. He is winning by sharing power with more and more people,” he remarked.
A hardened political brawler, Erdoğan is punching back hard against the accusations that he’s the man undermining Turkish democracy.
As he has done for years, Erdoğan is turning the tables and casts himself as the voice of the majority, underlining Islamic propriety and family values, while saying his adversaries are in hock to terrorists, the imperialist West, murky international high-finance and LGBTQ+ organizations. Mainstream rival parties are dismissed as fascists and perverts, and he predicts his voters will “burst” the ballot boxes with their tide of support on May 14.
In an episode typical of Erdoğan’s combative instincts, he scented blood when Kılıçdaroğlu was photographed stepping on a prayer rug in his shoes at the end of March. Although his rival apologized for this unwitting accident, the president whipped up a crowd to boo him, accusing Kılıçdaroğlu of taking his instructions from Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based preacher and former AK party ally, whom Erdoğan now accuses of inciting the failed coup in 2016.
Clutching a prayer rug himself, Erdoğan intoned through his microphone: “This prayer rug is not for standing on with shoes. God willing, we’ll be able to perform the prayer of thanks on this prayer rug on May 15.”
Opposition politicians know full well they can easily be typecast by Erdoğan as reactionary voices of an old elite. That’s why they are being careful not to describe their proposed constitutional overhaul of the presidency as turning back the clock to some fictional glory days, but rather as creating something new: What the opposition manifesto calls “a truly pluralistic democracy” that “has never been possible” before.
Free but not fair?
Given the fears about Erdoğan’s lurch toward authoritarianism, speculation is intense over how fair the elections will be, and whether Erdoğan can rig them. Indeed, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu only fanned the concerns that the government could crack down on the democratic process by describing May 14 as an attempted “political coup” by the West — hardly words to be taken lightly given Turkey’s history of putsches.
With the full resources of the state and pliant media at his disposal, the president can certainly command disproportionate influence. In only the past few days, for example, Erdoğan has been able to offer free Black Sea gas as a pre-election perk.
But Seyrek at the Brussels School of Governance stressed that voting itself in Turkey should never be compared with Russia or Belarus. He argued the vote in each polling station would be closely monitored by all the political parties and other civilian observers. “I still feel in Turkey, what you can do against the result of elections is quite limited,” he said.
The consensus is that Erdoğan will be unable to fix the result in the case of a significant defeat. The greater danger, as noted by several analysts, is that he could attempt some high-risk stratagem in case of a tight result, demanding a recount or calling a state of emergency in case of some diversionary “incident.” That would, however, only inflame the country’s febrile politics just as Ankara needs stability to attract foreign investors and resuscitate the economy.
The more surreal idea — but not an implausible one now — is that Erdoğan could tactically see the time is ripe to lead the opposition and attack Kılıçdaroğlu’s new government. The new president would be highly vulnerable to Erdoğan’s vitriolic rhetoric as he tries to hold together a fissiparous coalition in the teeth of an economic crisis. Paradoxically, though, Seyrek noted that the AK party members in opposition could even support reforms to shake up the presidency and ensure media freedoms, as that would be in their interest. That could prove important as constitutional change would need a hefty parliamentary majority.
Or would Erdoğan simply take umbrage in defeat and quit the country?
Seyrek found that inconceivable.
“In his mind, he is a second Atatürk, he would rather die than escape.”
In the run-up to Sunday’s too-close-to-call election, he has ramped up his poisonous invective against homosexuality, as he seeks to shore up his conservative Islamist base. Almost every other speech from the campaign trail accuses the opposition of undermining family values and of being in the thrall of improbably powerful LGBTQ+ networks — sometimes with hints they are run by paymasters abroad.
“The AK Party has never been an LGBT supporter,” Erdoğan roared at a recent Istanbul rally, referring to his governing party. “We believe in the sanctity of the family. Family is sacred.”
Adding a menacing note, he followed up with: “So are we ready to bury these LGBT supporters in the ballot box?”
To some extent, the homophobic focus of the campaign is easily explicable. Increasingly deserted by his early supporters, Erdoğan is having to form coalition partnerships with more extreme Islamists in this year’s elections.
But even so, his language smacks of a fixation, and an attempt to divert attention from the country’s most pressing ailments — including a snowballing cost of living crisis and scorching inflation.
Diversionary tactics
Fulden Ergen, editor of Velvele.Net, an online debate platform for LGBTQ+ rights, said she was taken aback by the ubiquity of Erdoğan’s propaganda against the LGBTQ+ community in this year’s campaign.
She reckoned the attacks were an attempt to mask how few answers to Turkey’s profound problems the AK Party now has.
“I was not expecting them to be this devoid of policies and just talking about LGBTI,” she said. “The alliance does not have much to give people anymore,” she added, referring to the conservative coalition backing the president. “They don’t know how to deal with the economic crisis. They have no policies left, I see this campaign as a defeat.”
Though he may be running out of ideas, Erdoğan could still win. And that is now a serious concern to LGBTQ+ people.
Life is already tough, and could get significantly worse. LGBTQ+ flags are banned, gatherings are arbitrarily blocked by the government and participants in pride parades are regularly attacked or detained by police. The fear is that their organizations could now be made illegal, and — in the worst case scenario — that laws to protect families could be extended to outlaw homosexuality itself.
Activists say that if Erdoğan stays in power, violence could follow his hate speech.
An anti-LGBTQ+ rally in Istanbul in 2022 | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
One of the dangers is that his government could use security laws to crack down on homosexual relations — casting them as part of a foreign conspiracy. The government is playing on perceptions that “people don’t believe LGBTI can be from Turkey,” Ergen said.
One of the biggest setbacks for women and LGBTQ+ people has been Turkey’s 2021 withdrawal from the — ironically named — Istanbul Convention, which is intended to prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and promote gender equality.
Domestic violence is a severe problem that kills at least one woman every day in Turkey. According to data from the Monument Counter, a website that commemorates women who lost their lives to domestic violence, 824 women have been killed in just the past two years.
Gender parity is another failing across the country’s political spectrum. According to the country’s Women’s Platform for Equality, a rights group that has been tracing the candidates on the various parties’ electoral lists, a mere 117 female deputies are set to be elected to Turkey’s 600-seat parliament.
‘I have seen many Erdoğans in my life’
Zeynep Esmeray Özadikti, who has been an activist for trans rights for 30 years, looks set to be an exception to that trend. She is a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey and the first openly trans woman with a good chance of making it to parliament.
In a café in Kurtuluş, a neighborhood in Istanbul where there are significant numbers of trans voters, Esmeray told POLITICO that, if elected, she would fight for the rights of LGBTQ+ people against discrimination, hate crimes and violence. “I am getting very positive feedback from the streets,” she said. “If we can judge it by looking at the streets then I’ll definitely be getting into the parliament.”
If Erdoğan stays in power, Esmeray believes he will take the country in a more religiously conservative direction, even aiming for Sharia law.
Ergen, the Velvele.net editor, echoed Esmeray’s line of thought. She feared that Article 10 in Turkey’s constitution — a part of the national charter that gives some vague protection to gender equality — might be doctored, paving the way to the possible criminalization of homosexuality.
“This is my biggest fear,” she says. “If they win, they are going to do it.”
Still, the fear of Erdoğan does not mean the LGBTQ+ community feels completely protected by the opposition, whose candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is leading in the polls ahead of Sunday’s first round vote.
Ergen thinks the right-wing parties within the wide-ranging opposition alliance could also lobby to make life harder for LGBTQ+ groups.
Kılıçdaroğlu himself is fairly guarded in his LGBTQ+ remarks, knowing that the government could easily turn the subject against him.
To Erdoğan, Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community represents “deviant structures” | Burak Kara/Getty Images
He is, however, committed to a trajectory toward EU norms. When asked for his stance by POLITICO, he said: “We defend all human rights. It is our common duty to defend human rights. Democracy demands it. You cannot alienate people based on their beliefs, identities and lifestyles, you have to respect everyone.”
Both Esmeray and Ergen believed the priority should be for Turkey to return the Istanbul Convention to reinforce some basic freedoms.
And both reckoned Turkey’s population was ahead of its politicians.
“I am more optimistic about people, not political parties,” said Ergen, who based her hopes on the breadth of civil society activities in Turkey.
Esmeray added: “I have seen many Erdoğans in my life. If he wins, we will continue fighting. If it comes to that, I will face him and tell him to kill me.”
PARIS — When French President Emmanuel Macron’s party lost its absolute majority in parliament six months ago, many wondered what the setback would mean for an ambitious, here-to-disrupt-the-status-quo leader whose first term was defined by a top-down style of management.
It turns out Macron 2.0 is a man about globe, pitching “strategic intimacy” to world leaders, as he leaves domestic politics to his chief lieutenant and concentrates on his preferred sphere: international diplomacy.
The Frenchman’s past “intimate” moves have been well-documented: affectionate hugging with Angela Merkel, knuckle-crunching handshakes with Donald Trump, and serial bromancing with the likes ofJustin Trudeau and Rishi Sunak. Now in his second term, the French president appears to be making a move on — quite literally — the world.
Since his reelection, Macron has been hopping from one official visit to another: in Algeria one day to restore relations with a former colony, in Bangkok another to woo Asian nations, and in Washington most recently to shore up the relationship with Washington. The globetrotting head of state has drawn criticism in the French press that he is deserting the home front.
“He is everywhere, follows everything, but he’s mostly elsewhere,” quipped a French minister speaking anonymously.
“[But] he’s been on the job for five years now, does he really need to follow the minutiae of every project? And the international pressure is very strong. Nothing is going well in the world,” the minister added.
Before COVID-19 struck, Macron’s first term was marked by a brisk schedule of reforms, including a liberalization of the job market aimed at making France more competitive. The French president was hoping to continue in the same pragmatic vein during his second term, focusing on industrial policy and reforming France’s pensions system. While he hasn’t abandoned these goals, the failure to win a parliamentary majority in June has forced him to slow down on the domestic agenda.
Foreign policy in France has always been the guarded remit of the president, but Macron is trying to flip political necessity into opportunity, delegating the tedium and messiness of French parliamentary politics to his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
There are few areas of global diplomacy where the president hasn’t pitched a French initiative in recent months — whether it’s food security in Africa, multilateralism in Asia or boosting civilian resilience in Ukraine. Despite some foreign policy missteps in his first term including the backing of strongman Khalifa Haftar in the Libyan civil war, Macron is now a veteran statesman, eagerly taking advantage of Europe’s leaderless landscape to hog the international stage.
The French president’s full pivot to global diplomacy in his weakened second term at home is reminiscent of past leaders confronting turmoil on the domestic front.
“The Jupiterian period is over. He’s got no majority,” said Cyrille Bret, researcher for the Jacques Delors Institute. “So now he is suffering from the Clinton-second-mandate-syndrome, who after the impeachment attempts over the Lewinsky [inquiry], turned to the international scene, trying to resolve issues in the Balkans, the Middle East and in China.”
But even as Macron embraces the wide world, the pitfalls ahead are numerous. Photo ops with world leaders haven’t done much to slow the erosion of his approval ratings at home. With a recession looming in Europe and discontent over inflation and energy woes, Macron’s margins of maneuver are limited, and trouble at home might ultimately need his attention.
Man about globe
The French president first used the words “strategic intimacy” in October, when he told European leaders gathered in Prague they needed to work on “a strategic conversation” to overcome divisions and start new projects.
If the thought of 44 European leaders cozying up wasn’t bewildering enough, Macron double-downed this month and called for “more strategic intimacy” with the U.S.
It’s not entirely clear what kind of transatlantic liaison he was gunning for, but it certainly included a good dose of tough love. Arriving in Washington, Macron called an American multi-billion package of green subsidies “super aggressive.” (He nonetheless received red carpet treatment at the White House, with Joe Biden calling him “his friend” and even “his closer” — the man who helps him bring deals over the finish line — even if he didn’t actually obtain any concessions from the U.S. president.)
Some of Macron’s success in taking center stage is, of course, due to France’s historical assets: a permanent seat on theU.N. Security Council, a nuclear capacity, a history of military interventions and global diplomacy.
But for the Americans, Macron is also the last dancing partner left in a fast-emptying ballroom across the pond. The U.K. is still embroiled in its own internal affairs and has lost some influence after Brexit, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hasn’t filled the space left by Merkel’s departure.
While Macron’s abstract and at times convoluted speeches may not be to everyone’s liking, at least he has got something to say.
“[The Americans] are looking for someone to engage with and there’s a lack of alternatives,” said Sophia Besch, European affairs expert at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Macron is the last one standing. There’s his enthusiasm, and at the same time he is disruptive for a leader and not always an easy partner.”
“He can count on some reluctant admirers in Washington for his energy,” she said.
The French touch
In his diplomatic endeavors, Macron likes a good surprise.
“Emmanuel Macron doesn’t like working bottom-up, where the political link is lost,” said one French diplomat. “He enjoys surprising people and marking political coups.”
“The [French bureaucracy] doesn’t really like that,” the diplomat added. “We prefer things that are all neat and tidy.”
Conjuring up new ideas — such as the European Political Community — that haven’t quite filtered through the layers of bureaucracy is one of Macron’s ways of pushing the envelope. The newly christened group’s first summit was ultimately hailed as a success, having marked the return of the U.K. to a European forum and displaying the Continent’s unity in the face of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
It’s a technique that forces the hand of other participants but sometimes undermines the credibility of his initiatives, and raises questions about what has really been confirmed. Launching the European Political Community may have been a success; announcing a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the U.S. president a couple of days before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine less so. (The summit, obviously, never took place.)
Macron’s diplomatic frenzy has also raised speculation that he is already gunning for a top international job for when he leaves the Elysée palace. Macron cannot run for a third term, and speculation is already running high in France on what the hyperactive president will do next.
The question at the heart of Macron’s second term is whether his attempts to be everything and everywhere — combined with his stubborn dedication to controversial ideas — is what will ultimately trip him up.
Even as Macron’s U.S. visit was hailed a success, with him saying France and the US were “fully aligned” on Russia, he sparked controversy on his return when he told a French TV channel that Russia should be offered “security guarantees” in the event of negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.
“That comment fell out of the line in relation to the coordinated message from Macron and Biden, which was that nothing should be done about Ukraine without Ukraine’s [approval],” said Besch.
Macron says he wants France to be an “exemplary” NATO member, but he still wants France to act as a “balancing power” that does not completely close the door on Russia. It’s a stance that may help France build partnerships with more neutral states across the world, but it does nothing to mend the rift with eastern EU member states.
For the man about globe who presents himself as the champion of European interests, that’s an uncomfortable place to be in.
When it comes to “strategic intimacy,” it’s possible to have too many partners.
Elisa Bertholomey and Eddy Wax contributed to reporting.
There is mounting anxiety about what Tuesday’s American midterm elections may mean for Ukraine and U.S. support for the country, amid fears that a Republican surge could weaken American backing for Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials and lawmakers are scrutinizing the opinion polls and parsing the comments of their counterparts.
“We hope that for our sake that we don’t become a victim to the partisan debate that’s unfolding right now in the U.S.,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a former Ukrainian deputy prime minister and now opposition lawmaker, told POLITICO. “That’s the fear, because we are very much seriously dependent on not only American support, but also on the U.S. leadership in terms of keeping up the common effort of other nations.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the potential next speaker if the Republicans prevail, said last month that there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine if the House comes back under Republican control. The Biden administration has tried to assuage concerns about the government’s commitment to supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, but populist Republican sentiment in Congress is urging less support for Kyiv and more attention on U.S. domestic problems.
“I’m worried about the Trump wing of the GOP,” said Mia Willard, a Ukrainian-American living and working in Kyiv. “I have recently read about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s promise that ‘not another penny will go to Ukraine’ if Republicans retake control of Congress.”
According to the latest poll data, the Republicans are favored to take over the House and possibly the Senate in Tuesday’s voting.
“I do hope that regardless of the election results,” said Willard, “there will be a continued bipartisan consensus on supporting Ukraine amid Russia’s genocide of the Ukrainian people, which I cannot call anything but a genocide after firsthand witnessing Russia’s war crimes in the now de-occupied territories,” said Willard, who is a researcher at the International Centre for Policy Studies in the Ukrainian capital.
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin is confident that U.S. military and financial support for his country will continue after the midterms. “I don’t see a critical number of people among the Republicans calling for cuts in aid,” he told POLITICO. At the same time, Klimkin acknowledged that the procedure for congressional consideration of Ukraine aid may become more complex.
Klimkin said he believes that the U.S. stance toward Ukraine is “critical” for Washington beyond the Ukrainian conflict — “not only with respect to Russia, but also to how the U.S. will be perceived by China.”
Voters line up outside the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections center in Cleveland, Ohio | Dustin Franz/AFP via Getty Images
For Ukraine, Klimkin said the “real risk” is the debate taking place in Washington on both sides of the aisle about the fact that “the United States is giving much more than all of Europe” to Kyiv’s war effort.
According to the Kiel Institute of the World Economy, the U.S. has brought its total commitments in military, financial and humanitarian aid to over €52 billion, while EU countries and institutions have collectively reached just over €29 billion.
“The U.S. is now committing nearly twice as much as all EU countries and institutions combined. This is a meager showing for the bigger European countries, especially since many of their pledges are arriving in Ukraine with long delays,” said Christoph Trebesch, head of the team compiling the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker.
Europe’s stance
If the Republicans prevail in Tuesday’s vote, the anxiety is also that without U.S. leadership, Ukraine would slip down the policy agenda of Europe, too, depriving Ukraine of the backing the country needs for “victory over the Russian monster,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
If the worst happened and U.S. support weakens following the midterms, Klympush-Tsintsadze said she has some hopes that Europe would still stand firm. She has detected in Europe “much more sobriety in the assessment of what Russia is and what it can do, and I hope there would be enough voices there in Europe, too, to ensure there’s no weakening of support,” she said.
Others are less sanguine about how stout and reliable the Europeans would be without Washington goading and galvanizing.Several officials and lawmakers pointed to the Balkan wars of the 1990s and how the Clinton administration stood back, arguing the Europeans should take the lead only to have to intervene diplomatically and militarily later.
“We in Ukraine have been watching closely the developments in the USA and what configuration the Congress will have after the midterm elections,” said Iuliia Osmolovska, chair of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center and a senior fellow at GLOBSEC, a global think-tank headquartered in Bratislava.
A local resident rides a bicycle on a street in Izyum, eastern Ukraine on September 14, 2022 | Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images)
“This might impact the existing determination of the U.S. political establishment to continue supporting Ukraine, foremost militarily. Especially given voices from some Republicans that call for freezing the support to Ukraine,” she said.
But Osmolovska remains hopeful, noting that “Ukraine has been enjoying bipartisan support in the war with Russia since the very first days of the invasion in February this year.” She also believes President Joe Biden would have wiggle room to act more independently when it comes to military assistance to Ukraine without seeking approval from Congress thanks to legislation already on the books.
But she doesn’t exclude “the risk of some exhaustion” from allies, arguing that Ukraine needs to redouble diplomacy efforts to prevent that from happening. What needs to be stressed, she said, is that “our Western partners only benefit from enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia as soon as possible” — as a protracted conflict is in no one’s interest.
“There’s a feeling in the air that we’re winning in the war, although it is far from over,” said Glib Dovgych, a software engineer in Kyiv.
“If the flow of money and equipment goes down, it won’t mean our defeat, but it will mean a much longer war with much higher human losses. And since many other allies are looking at the U.S. in their decisions to provide support to us, if the U.S. decreases the scale of their help, other countries like Germany, France and Italy would probably follow suit,” Dovgych said.
Yaroslav Azhnyuk, president and co-founder of Petcube, a technology company that develops smart devices for pets, says “it’s obvious that opinions on how to end Russia’s war on Ukraine are being used for internal political competition within the U.S.”
He worries about the influence on American political opinion also of U.S.-based entrepreneurs and investors, mentioning David Sacks, Elon Musk and Chamath Palihapitiya, among others. “They have publicly shared concerning views, saying that Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia, or that the U.S. should stop supporting Ukraine to avoid a global nuclear war.”
Azhnyuk added: “I get it, nukes are scary. But what happens in the next 5-10 years after Ukraine cedes any piece of its territory or the conflict is frozen. Such a scenario would signal to the whole world that nuclear terrorism works.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that regardless of the results of the U.S. midterms, Kyiv is “confident” that bipartisan support for Ukraine will remain in both chambers of the Congress. Both the Republicans and Democrats have voiced their solidarity with Ukraine, and this stance would remain “a reflection of the will of the American people,” he said.
The Ukrainian side counts on America’s leadership in important issues of defense assistance, in particular in expanding the capacity of the Ukrainian air defense system, financial support, strengthening sanctions against Moscow, and recognizing Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, Podolyak told POLITICO.
And this isn’t just about Ukraine, said Klympush-Tsintsadze, the former deputy premier.
“Too many things in the world depend on this war,” she said. “It’s not only about restoring our territorial integrity. It’s not only about our freedom and our chance for the future, our survival as a nation and our survival as a country — it will have drastic consequences for the geopolitics of the world,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
