Even as war rages in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians are eyeing popular holiday destinations for a summer break — or even a safe haven to wait out the conflict.
While a weaker ruble and growing economic woes means many ordinary families will be spending the warmer months on their dachas or taking a break inside Russia, those with enough cash to travel are wasting little time jetting off to sunny spots across Europe and Asia.
That means countries still willing to take their money are tapping into a lucrative market. But that can come at a cost, and the politics of taking tens of thousands of tourists from a pariah state is already creating trouble in paradise for some popular destinations.
Here are six of the top places Russians are spending their vacations.
Turkey
As lazy travel writers so often put it, Turkey is a nation that straddles East and West. That old cliché has taken on new meaning since the start of the war in Ukraine, with the NATO member state offering support to Kyiv while at the same time refusing to impose sanctions on Moscow.
Ankara, as a result, has seen much-needed foreign cash flood into the country as Russians look to move their assets abroad. It’s also one of the only European destinations not to have banned flights from Russia: While the EU’s skies are closed, Turkish operators are offering flights from Moscow to sunny destinations like Antalya and Bodrum for as little as €130.
In the first half of the year, Turkey’s tourism revenues grew by more than a quarter, hitting $21.7 billion, statistics released this week show, with as many as 7 million Russians expected to visit the country this year.
Some have even decided to stay — as many as 145,000 Russians currently have residency permits. But while they’ve escaped political instability and the risk of conscription, they are sharing their new home country with tens of thousands of Ukrainians who’ve fled Russia’s war.
That’s created tensions in resort towns like Antalya, which is popular with both Russians and Ukrainians. And given Turkey’s growing anti-migrant sentiment in the wake of May’s presidential elections, both groups could be at risk of being sent home.
Georgia
The South Caucasus country holds an almost mythical status in the minds of Russians — and its reputation for having some of the best nature, food and hospitality in the former Soviet Union has made it a go-to destination for middle-class holidaymakers, who flock to its Black Sea beaches and snow-capped mountains or kick back in trendy Tbilisi.
In 2022 alone, more than 1.1 million Russians visited Georgia, up from just 200,000 the year before. That number is on the rise after Moscow in May relaxed rules banning direct flights.
Under the ruling Georgian Dream party, Tbilisi has sought closer relations with the Kremlin since the start of the war and aimed to profit off Russian wanderlust. But many locals are less sure.
In 2022 alone, more than 1.1 million Russians visited Georgia, up from just 200,000 the year before | Jan Kruger/Getty Images
In a poll conducted in March, only 4 percent of the 1,500 people surveyed said Russians are welcome in Georgia, while a quarter said Russians were tolerated because of the cash they spend when they visit. More than one in three insisted Russian visitors should be banned until Moscow relinquishes control of the occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — accounting for around a fifth of Georgia’s territory.
Tensions are on the rise, with local Georgian and Ukrainian activists staging protests against Russian cruise ships docking in the port city of Batumi over the weekend. Clips shared by local media show Russian holidaymakers defending Russia’s 2008 war against Georgia and taunting the demonstrators from their balconies.
Thailand
It’s not only about the gleaming luxury resorts and party beaches. For Russians, the appeal of traveling to Thailand has a lot to do with the month of visa-free travel they’re granted.
The number of Russians visiting Thailand has shot up by more than 1,000 percent over the past year, according to a Bloomberg report. Official statistics show 791,574 Russians traveling to the country in the first half of this year alone.
The party city of Phuket has seen a particular influx, with close to half of all villassold theresince January being bought up by Russians — either as holiday homes or as party pads where they can wait out the war.
That rise in tourism comes as Moscow has also sought to forge closer ties with the kingdom. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — one of the most committed supporters of the war in Ukraine — flew into Bangkok in July to hail “the importance of boosting cooperation in trade and investment.”
United Arab Emirates
Dubai isn’t to everyone’s taste. But the billionaires’ playground and its pristine beaches have become a sought-after destination for many wealthy Russians looking for a friendly welcome — and a place to spend huge sums in opulent malls.
The number of Russians jetting to the Gulf nation shot up by 63 percent last year, making them the second largest tourism market. The UAE has also seen a surge in Russian expats, who report feeling more at ease in the desert city than in Western countries because there are no public displays of support for war-ravaged Ukraine.
The influx comes as ties between Russia and the UAE are also booming, with Russian firms relocating to the Gulf nation and the Kremlin selling vast volumes of discounted oil to the country.
But analysts warn that pressure from the U.S., U.K. and EU is making it increasingly difficult to the UAE to profit from sanctions evasion, meaning Russian tourists may find their welcome doesn’t last forever.
Cyprus
The island of Cyprus has long been known as Moscow on the Med — a homage to the country’s largest tourist market.
Those beach holidays are now largely out of reach for ordinary Russians, after Cyprus followed other EU member states in banning commercial flights from Russia and last year imposed an €80 fee for visas. The decision, officials say, has cost the country €600 million worth of income.
The island of Cyprus has long been known as Moscow on the Med | Roy Issa/AFP via Getty Images
But, for those who can stump up the costs, flights from Russia with a brief stop in Istanbul or Yerevan cost around €250. Cyprus has also been one of the most prolific issuers of so-called “golden passports,” which offer EU citizenship in exchange for as little as €2.5 million in investment.
While no statistics exist on how many Russians have taken advantage of the scheme, the country has been under pressure to cancel travel documents for sanctioned oligarchs. As many as 222 passports have already been withdrawn, including those belonging to several Russian billionaires.
Ukraine
For Russians with regular jobs and limited cash to spend abroad, country houses and holiday parks are still the most popular option.
Until recently, many of them would be headed to Ukraine’s occupied Crimean peninsula. An iconic spot for vacations and sanatorium breaks since the days of the Soviet Union, many Russians have bought second homes or paid for package holidays to the region’s Black Sea coast since it was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Now, a spate of explosions at military facilities and Kyiv’s insistence that Crimea will come back under its control when it wins the war has worried many Russians.
With air traffic close to the border diverted, one of the only remaining routes into the peninsula is across the car and railway bridge opened by President Vladimir Putin in 2018. That bridge has repeatedly been struck by Ukrainian forces looking to disrupt Russian military convoys.
As a result, officials say, hotels are on average more than half empty — despite heavy promotions and discounts. Local proprietors say the situation is even more dire than the government is prepared to admit.
Russia’s Wagner Group might carry out “sabotage actions” and their threat should not be underestimated, said Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday, warning that the mercenary group’s provocations are an attempt to destabilize NATO.
Morawiecki and Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nausėda met at the Suwałki Gap to discuss the threat posed by the Wagner forces, some of whom have relocated to Belarus following the aborted mutiny in June against the Kremlin.
“Our borders have been stopping various hybrid attacks for years,” Morawiecki said. “Russia and Belarus are increasing their numerous provocations and intrigues in order to destabilize the border of NATO’s eastern flank.”
Nausėda echoed the sentiment, saying the presence of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus is a security risk for Lithuania, Poland and other NATO allies.
“We stay vigilant and prepared for any possible scenario,” Nausėda wrote on social media. Morawiecki said that the number of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus could exceed 4,000.
The Polish prime minister also thanked Lithuania for “military cooperation and for the joint promise that we will defend every piece of land of NATO countries.”
“Today, the borders of Poland and Lithuania are the borders of the free world that stops the pressure from the despotism from the East,” he said, about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war on Ukraine.
Nausėda said that any closing of the border with Belarus is a decision that should be taken “in a coordinated way between Poland, Lithuania and Latvia,” national broadcaster LRT reported.
Some Wagner troops have moved to Belarus from Russia under a deal to end the group’s 24-hour rebellion against Moscow led by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. The move immediately sparked tension with Belarusian neighbors, prompting Poland to re-station military units to the east of the country, closer to the frontier with Belarus.
Tensions escalated Tuesday when Poland moved troops to its border after accusing two Belarusian helicopters of breaching its airspace. Belarus denied the accusation, but Poland notified NATO and summoned Belarusian representatives to discuss the incident.
The United States on Tuesday sharply limited Hungary’s participation in its visa waiver program over security concerns regarding new passports issued between 2011 and 2020.
Under the American Visa Waiver Program, citizens of participating countries can travel to the U.S. for tourism or business for up to 90 days without a visa, and simply need a so-called Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA).
But starting Tuesday, ESTA validity for Hungarian passport holders will be reduced from two years to one, and an ESTA will only be valid for a single use.
The unprecedented move, in response to security concerns, affects Hungary as the only one of 40 countries participating in the U.S. program.
After coming to power in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government implemented a major policy change that granted citizenship to ethnic Hungarians abroad — including in Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. Domestic critics say Orbán’s controversial move was designed to boost his electoral prospects.
David Pressman, the U.S. ambassador in Budapest, told POLITICO in an interview ahead of the announcement, “There are hundreds of thousands of passports that have been issued by the government of Hungary as part of the simplified naturalization program without stringent identity verification mechanisms in place.”
The U.S. government has been engaging the Hungarian government on this “security vulnerability” for many years and across multiple administrations, Pressman said. But “the government of Hungary has opted not to close” it.
Responding to the American decision, Hungary’s interior ministry said the country “will not disclose the data of Hungarians beyond the border with dual citizenship because that would risk their security” and accused the White House of “taking revenge on Hungarians with the new visa waiver limit.”
“This is a really unfortunate day,” Pressman said. “This is not the outcome the United States sought or is seeking.”
Washington’s move comes at a time when Hungary’s relationship with Western partners is at a low point.
Budapest’s NATO allies are deeply frustrated that Hungary’s parliament has yet to ratify Sweden’s bid to join the alliance.
There are also ongoing concerns about senior Hungarian officials promoting Kremlin-style narratives at home, as well as over efforts to water down European sanctions targeting Moscow. Earlier this year, the U.S. imposed sanctions on a Hungary-based bank linked to Russia.
Many Western countries have spoken out about deteriorating democratic standards in Hungary, as well as policies and rhetoric they say undermine the rights of LGBTQ+ people there.
Pressman underscored how American experts had previously identified ways the security concerns could be addressed.
The U.S. in 2017 made Hungary’s status in the visa waiver program provisional, while security concerns were also behind a decision to render Hungarians born outside the country ineligible starting in 2020.
Now, however, all Hungarian passport holders will be affected.
“This is about a choice,” the ambassador said. “The Hungarian government thus far has chosen not to address that security concern, which has led the United States to respond.”
This article has been updated with a response from the Hungarian interior ministry.
KYIV — Russia unleashed a missile barrage early Sunday on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa, leaving one person dead and heavily damaging the cathedral in the historic city center.
Moscow has been bombarding Odesa and its surroundings with different types of missiles for nearly a week after Russia withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the U.N.-brokered deal to export Ukrainian grain.
The attack on Odesa Sunday came hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg.
Russian forces attacked the Odesa region with 19 missiles, including cruise, anti-ship and ballistic missiles, in Sunday’s barrage. Ukrainian air defense managed to shoot down nine of them, the country’s air force said in a statement.
More than 19 people were wounded and one person was killed in the attack. Odesa’s historical city center, a UNESCO world heritage site, was badly damaged by the attack. Six residential buildings were destroyed. City’s oldest and biggest Transfiguration Orthodox Cathedral was heavily damaged by a Russian missile, local authorities said.
“Missiles against peaceful cities, against residential buildings, a cathedral … There can be no excuse for Russian evil,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement. “As always, this evil will lose. And there will definitely be a retaliation to Russian terrorists for Odesa. They will feel this retaliation,” he added.
Oleksandr Gimanov/AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine can’t shoot down the Oniks anti-ship missiles that Russia is firing at Odesa, partly because those weapons fly at a high speed of more than 4,000 kilometers an hour, Yuriy Ignat, spokesman of Ukraine’s air force, told Radio Liberty.
“Russians launch them from the coastal complex “Bastion” from the territory of the occupied Crimea,” Ignat said. “Initially, they fly at a speed of more than 3,000 km/h, and during the approach to the target, they descend to 10-15 meters. That way, it’s hard to shoot down something that flies very low. It is even difficult to detect those missiles,” Ignat added.
According to Ignat, only Patriot air defense systems could shoot down those types of missiles. Ukraine currently has only two of that type of U.S.-made air defense system.
The meeting between Putin and Lukashenko on Sunday came on the heels of Russian leader’s warning that an attack on Belarus would be an attack on Russia. That warning on Friday appeared to be in response to a Polish decision to shift military units to the east of the country, closer to the Belarusian border, following the Russian ally’s hosting of Wagner mercenary fighters.
In their meeting, Putin told Lukashenko that Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has failed,” according to a Reuters report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Poland that any attack on Belarus will be considered an attack on Russia, in a direct threat to the NATO country televised on Friday.
“Aggression against Belarus will mean aggression against the Russian Federation,” Putin told a televised Security Council meeting on Friday, shown by Reuters. “We will respond to it with all means at our disposal,” he said.
Putin appeared to be responding to Warsaw’s decision this week to re-station military units to the east of the country, closer to the Belarusian border, following the Russian ally’s hosting of Wagner mercenary fighters.
Putin said that Poland appears to have interests in retaking eastern territories it lost to former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, including “a good chunk of Ukraine … to take back the historic lands.” He added that “it’s well known that they dream of Belarusian lands as well.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit back later on Friday, tweeting that “Stalin was a war criminal, guilty of the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles.” He said that the ambassador of the Russian Federation will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Morawiecki’s defense minister defended the relocation of troops on Friday, pointing to reports that the Wagner mercenaries were carrying out training exercises with the Belarusian army.
“Training or joint exercises of the Belarusian army and the Wagner group are undoubtedly a provocation,” said Zbigniew Hoffmann, secretary of the government’s National Security Committee, according to a report by Polish state-run news agency PAP.
Belarus has been Russia’s ally throughout Putin’s war on Ukraine. In addition to hosting the Wagner Group following an insurrection on Moscow led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has allowed Putin to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory.
Germany said Berlin and NATO were prepared to support Poland in defending the eastern border, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Friday, according to Reuters.
Bulgaria, meanwhile, has agreed to provide Ukraine with some 100 armored personnel carriers, marking a U-turn in the NATO member’s policy on sending military equipment to Kyiv following the appointment of a new, pro-Western government. The parliament in Sofia late Friday approved the administration’s proposal to make the first shipment of heavy military equipment to Ukraine since the beginning of the war, the AP reported.
Separately, a drone attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea prompted an evacuation and brief suspension of road traffic on the bridge linking the peninsula to Russia, Reuters reported. Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-installed regional governor, said on Saturday that there was an explosion at the depot in Krasnohvardiiske in central Crimea but reported no damage or casualties, according to the report.
The brief halting of traffic on the Crimean Bridge came five days after blasts there killed two people and damaged a section of the roadway — the second major attack on the bridge since the start of the war.
Greece wants the EU to stop migrant boats before they even get to Europe.
In an interview with POLITICO, newly appointed Greek Migration Minister Dimitris Kairidis called on the EU to resume an operation that aims to halt migrants before leaving Libya, a common departure point for asylum seekers coming to Europe.
The appeal comes as the Greek government fights off allegations of negligence after a shipwreck killed hundreds of migrants heading for Europe from Libya. Survivors have claimed the Greek coast guard’s attempt to tow the vessel caused it to capsize, and various mediaaccounts have shown the boat was stalled for hours before the coast guard intervened.
“These tragedies will continue to happen unless we stop departures from Libya and other places on ships that are unseaworthy,” Kairidis said. “There will, unfortunately, be cases where it will simply be impossible to always save human life.”
One solution to avoid other tragedies, Kairidis argued, is for the EU to resume “Operation Sophia,” an EU-led naval mission designed to break up smuggling routes in the Mediterranean that was officially shelved in 2020.
“We support the launch of an ‘Operation Sophia-plus’ to break up migrant smuggling routes from Libya,” Kairidis told POLITICO during his first visit to Brussels, where he met EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson.
“EU vessels would station in the Libyan territorial waters with the agreement of the local government, which I am hopeful will accept,” he added.
The EU has not settled on how it should respond to the Adriana shipwreck. The European Parliament on Thursday backed a non-binding resolution urging the EU to establish a Europe-wide search-and-rescue operation for migrants. But some diplomats fear this would only encourage migrant departures from North Africa and feed the business model of people smugglers.
Johansson declined to endorse this approach during a tense hearing on Wednesday.
The Greek proposal is slightly different than the Parliament proposal, however. It would essentially be aimed at blocking boats from leaving in the first place, breaking up smuggling routes through the Mediterranean in the process. But critics point out that Libya has traditionally been reluctant to let EU vessels enter its territorial waters for such efforts, and that its detention centers violate migrants’ rights.
Kairidis also defended the Greek coast guard against criticism that it ignored multiple offers of help from the EU border agency Frontex.
One solution to avoid other tragedies, Kairidis argued, is for the EU to resume “Operation Sophia,” an EU-led naval mission designed to break up smuggling routes in the Mediterranean | Dimitris Kapantais/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images
The minister pointed out that the Greek coast guard has saved thousands of migrants in recent years, and he deferred any judgment on its recent actions to an ongoing national investigation.
“If someone is found guilty, there will be consequences,” he said. “But for the time being we shouldn’t bow to political pressure.”
Kairidis pushed back against testimonies from survivors accusing the Greek authorities of towing the migrant ship and ultimately causing it to capsize. He pointed out that these statements “are not a definite proof,” and that the trawler could not have been towed without the consent of those on board.
The tragedy has increased pressure on Frontex chief Hans Leijtens to end the agency’s operations in Greece due to the country’s lack of cooperation.
But Kairidis warned that such a move would “be totally counterproductive,” as the agency’s work “is of paramount importance to save more lives.”
Separately, the minister defended the Greek government against accusations that it is taking a hardline approach to migration on a par with Hungarian and Polish far-right leaders Viktor Orbán and Mateusz Morawiecki. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a center-right conservative, recently won a resounding re-election victory.
Kairidis also defended the Greek coast guard against criticism that it ignored multiple offers of help from the EU border agency Frontex | Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images
“Mitsotakis is not Orbán,” Kairidis said. “Hungary and Poland don’t want Frontex, and they have voted against the migration and asylum pact” — a reference to the EU’s recent deal to overhaul how it processes and redistributes migrants.
“We have been the swing state to get the pact over the line,” he added.
Kairidis said the far right and the far left were merely weaponizing migration to “destroy the political center, embodied by [French President Emmanuel] Macron and Mitsotakis.”
The EU finalized an agreement with Tunisia on Sunday to boost trade relations and stem migrant departures from the African country to Europe.
Under the deal, which the European Commission had been struggling to push over the line, the EU is to provide cash to Tunis in exchange for stronger border controls.
Exact financial details of the agreement were not given in the EU statement on Sunday. But Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said last month that the EU was ready to provide Tunisia with more than €1 billion in areas including trade, investment and energy cooperation.
The statement said the agreement covers five pillars: migration, macro-economic stability, trade and investment, green energy transition, and people-to-people contacts.
On economic development, von der Leyen told a press conference in Tunis that the EU is “ready to support Tunisia by mobilizing macro-financial assistance as soon as the necessary conditions are met.” She added that as a “bridging step, we are ready to provide immediate budget support.”
While she didn’t give details on Sunday, von der Leyen said in June that the Commission was considering up to €900 million in macro-financial aid, plus “up to €150 million in budget support” directly.
Von der Leyen traveled to Tunisia on Sunday along with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to meet again with Tunisian President Kais Saied. A similar meeting last month had failed to propel the talks to conclusion before a late June EU leaders’ summit as had been hoped.
“Migration is a significant element of the agreement we have signed today,” Rutte told the press conference on Sunday. “It is essential to gain more control of irregular migration.”
Von der Leyen said that under the agreement, the EU will provide Tunisia with €100 million to improve border management, search and rescue, anti-smuggling measures and other initiatives to address the migration issue.
“The tragic shipwreck a few weeks ago, in which many people lost their lives, was yet another call for action,” von der Leyen said. “We need to crack down on criminal networks of smugglers and traffickers.”
A row between EU and Latin American countries over how — or even whether — to mention the war in Ukraine risks turning what was meant to be the celebration of a renewed partnership into a diplomatic failure.
The first day of a summit between the EU and the Community of the Latin American & the Caribbean States (CELAC) was all about affirming strengthened intercontinental ties. But the lofty talk quickly fell flat as EU negotiators tried to convince Latin American countries to condemn Russia over its war in Ukraine.
Nicaragua and Cuba vehemently opposed the proposed language on Ukraine, according to three EU officials — with one alleging that these two countries had received calls from Moscow advising them to do so.
The row in Brussels came just as Russia refused Monday to extend a U.N.-brokered deal that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain surplus through the Black Sea. Both were stark reminders of how Russia’s hybrid geopolitics seeks to drive a wedge between the rich, pro-Ukrainian West and the rest of the world.
Despite several rounds of negotiations on a joint declaration which leaders could sign off on, there was still no agreement on Monday evening — with some officials fearing that the two-day summit could fail to produce any joint declaration at all.
“I confirm that we are still discussing the text of the communiqué,” said European Council President Charles Michel on Monday afternoon, in an attempt at damage control. “And it means something. It means that we want on both sides an ambitious text.”
An EU diplomat said at the end of Monday’s meeting that “negotiations will go down to the finishing line.” Haggling over the text “does not put the summit into jeopardy — for now.”
Credibility on the line
Failing to agree a joint declaration would deal a blow to the EU’s credibility at a time when it is seeking to unify voices at the U.N. and beyond in support of Ukraine against a belligerent Russia. Brussels is also trying to become best buddies with Latin America again in the face of an assertive China that is winning market share on the other side of the Atlantic.
“If Russia were to lay down its arms, there would be peace. If Ukraine were to lay down its arms, there would be no more Ukraine,” said Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņs, whose country borders Russia.
“Maybe from a more distant area, it’s not so obvious to understand,” Kariņš added in a clear dig at CELAC countries.
Latest versions of the documents, seen by POLITICO dated July 7 and July 13, showed that the language on Ukraine had been watered down, going from “strongly” condemning Moscow’s “violating” Ukraine’s sovereignty, to just “expressing concern” on the war in Ukraine.
Asked about the holdup, Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina said: “I believe that it is part of this process to find, in this dialogue, a way out that respects the visions of both the EU and CELAC and each of its members.”
Ukraine was not the only contentious issue, with the draft communiqué resembling a shopping list, after each capital pushed to mention their national priorities, such as colonial reparations or the Malvinas islands, over which Argentina and the United Kingdom — which is no longer an EU member — fought a short war 40 years ago.
Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
Camille Gijs, Sarah Anne Aarup and Hans von der Burchard
Ben Cohen wasn’t talking about ice cream. He was talking about American militarism.
At 72, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is bald and bespectacled. He looks fit, cherubic even, but when he got going on what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, his tone became less playful and more assertive — almost defiant.
“I had this image of these two countries facing each other, and each one had this huge pile of shiny, state-of-the-art weapons in front of them,” he said, his arms waving above his head. “And behind them are the people in their countries that are suffering from lack of health care, not enough to eat, not enough housing.”
“It’s just crazy,” he added. “Approaching relationships with other countries based on threats of annihilating them, it’s just a pretty stupid way to go.”
It wasn’t a new subject for the famously socially conscious ice cream mogul; Cohen has been leading a crusade against what he sees as Washington’s bellicosity for decades. It’s just that with the war in Ukraine, his position has taken on a new — morally questionable — relevance.
Cohen, who no longer sits on the board of Ben & Jerry’s, isn’t just one of the most successful marketers of the last century. He’s a leading figure in a small but vocal part of the American left that has stood steadfast in opposition to the United States’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks rolling on Kyiv, Cohen didn’t focus his ire on the Kremlin; a group he funds published a full-page ad in the New York Times blaming the act of aggression on “deliberate provocations” by the U.S. and NATO.
Following months of Russian missile strikes on residential apartment blocks, and after evidence of street executions by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, he funded a 2022 journalism prize that praised its winner for reporting on “Washington’s true objectives in the Ukraine war, such as urging regime change in Russia.”
In May, Cohen tweeted approvingly of an op-ed by the academic Jeffrey Sachs that argued “the war in Ukraine was provoked” and called for “negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.”
Ben Cohen outside the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington this month, before getting arrested | Win McNamee/Getty Images
I set up a video call with Cohen not because I can’t sympathize with his mistrust of U.S. adventurism, nor because I couldn’t follow the argument that U.S. foreign policy spurred Russia to attack. I called to try to understand how he has maintained his stance even as the Kremlin abducts children, tortures and kills Ukrainians and sends thousands of Russian troops to their deaths in human wave attacks.
It’s one thing to warn of NATO expansion in peacetime, or to call for a negotiated settlement that leaves Ukrainian citizens safe from further aggression. It’s another to ignore one party’s atrocities and agitate for an outcome that would almost certainly leave millions of people at the mercy of a regime that has demonstrated callousness and cruelty.
Given the scale of Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, I wanted to understand: How does one justify focusing one’s energies on stopping the efforts to bring it to a halt?
Masters of war
Cohen’s political awakening took place against the background of the Cold War and the political upheaval caused by Washington’s involvement in Vietnam.
He was 11 during the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Part of the reason he enrolled in college was to avoid being drafted and sent to the jungle to fight the Viet Cong.
When I asked how he first became interested in politics, he cited Bob Dylan’s 1963 protest song “Masters of War,” which takes aim at the political leaders and weapons makers who benefit from conflicts and culminates with the singer standing over their graves until he’s sure they’re dead.
“That was kind of a revelation to me,” Cohen said. Behind him, the sun filtered past a cardboard Ben & Jerry’s sign propped against a window. “I hadn’t understood that, you know, there were these masters of war — essentially I guess what we would now call the military-industrial-congressional complex — that profit from war.”
Cohen saw people from his high school get drafted and never come back from a war that “wasn’t justified.” As he graduated in the summer of 1969, around half a million U.S. troops were stationed in ‘Nam. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on Washington, D.C. to demand peace.
It was only much later, while doing “a lot of research” into the “tradeoffs between military spending and spending for human needs,” that Cohen came across a 1953 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which foreshadowed the U.S. president’s 1961 farewell address in which he coined the phrase “military-industrial complex.”
A Republican president who had served as the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower warned against tumbling into an arms race. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.
“That is a foundational thing for me, very inspiring for me, and captures the essence of what I believe,” Cohen said.
“If we weren’t wasting all of our money on preparing to kill people, we would actually be able to save and help a lot of people,” he added with a chuckle. “That goes for how we approach the world internationally as well,” he added — including the war in Ukraine.
Pierre Ferrari, a former Ben & Jerry’s board member who was with the company from 1997 to 2020, said Cohen’s view of the world was shaped by the events of his youth.
“We were brought up at a time when the military, the government was just completely out of control,” he said. “We’re both children of the sixties, the Vietnam War and the new futility of war and the way war is used by the military-industrial complex and politics,” Ferrari added, pointing to the peace symbol he wore around his neck.
Jeff Furman, who has known Cohen for nearly 50 years and once served as Ben & Jerry’s in-house legal counsel, acknowledged that his generation’s views on Ukraine were informed by America’s misadventures in Vietnam.
“There’s a history of why this war is happening that’s a little bit more complex than who Putin is,” he said. “When you’ve been misled so many times in the past, you have to take this into consideration when you think about it, and really, really try to know what’s happening.”
Ice-cold activism
Politics has been a part of the Ben & Jerry’s brand since Cohen and his partner Jerry Greenfield started selling ice cream out of an abandoned gas station in 1978.
The company’s look and ethos were pure 1960s; they named one of their early flavors, Cherry Garcia, after the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, whose psychedelic riffs formed the soundtrack of the hippy counterculture.
Social justice was one of the duo’s secret ingredients. For the first-year anniversary of the gas station shop’s opening, they gave away free ice cream for a day. On the flyers printed to promote the event was a quote from Cohen: “Business has a responsibility to give back to the community from which it draws its support.”
In 1985, after the company went public, they used some of the shares to endow a foundation working for progressive social change and committed Ben & Jerry’s to spend 7.5 percent of its pretax profits on philanthropy.
In the early years, the company instituted a five-to-one cap on the ratio between the salary of the highest-earning executive and its lowest-paid worker, dropping it only when Cohen was about to step down as CEO in the mid-1990sand they were struggling to find a successor willing to work for what they were offering.
Most companies try to separate politics and business. Cohen and Greenfield cheerfully mixed them up and served them in a tub of creamy deliciousness (the company’s rich, fatty flavors were in part driven by Cohen’s sinus problems, which dulls his taste).
In 1988, Cohen founded 1% for Peace, a nonprofit organization seeking to “redirect one percent of the national defense budget to fund peace-promoting activities and projects.” The project was funded in part through sales of a vanilla and dark-chocolate popsicle they called the Peace Pop.
It was around this time that Cohen opened Ben & Jerry’s in Russia, as “an effort to build a bridge between Communism and capitalism with locally produced Cherry Garcia,” according to a write-up in the New York Times. After years of planning, the outlet opened in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk in 1992. (The company shut the shop down five years later to prioritize growth in the U.S., and also because of the involvement of local mobsters, said Furman, who was involved in the project.)
Cohen, with co-founder Jerry Greenfield, actress Jane Fonda and other climate activists, in front of the Capitol in 2019 | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Even after Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000, there were few progressive causes the company wasn’t eager to wade into with a campaign or a fancy new flavor.
The ice cream maker has marketed “Rainforest Crunch” in defense of the Amazon forest, sold “Empower Mint” to combat voter suppression, promoted “Pecan Resist” in opposition to then-U.S. President Donald Trump and launched “Change the Whirled” in partnership with Colin Kaepernick, the American football quarterback whose sports career ended after he started taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
More recently, however, the relationship between Cohen, Greenfield and Unilever has been rockier. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop doing business in the Palestinian territories. Cohen and Greenfield, who are Jewish, defended the company’s decision in an op-ed in the New York Times.
After the move sparked political backlash, Unilever transferred its license to a local producer, only to be sued by Ben & Jerry’s. In December 2022, Unilever announced in a one-sentence statement that its litigation with its subsidiary “has been resolved.”Ben & Jerry’s ice cream continues to be sold throughout Israel and the West Bank, according to a Unilever spokesperson.
Cohen himself is no stranger to activism: Earlier this month, he was arrested and detained for a few hours for taking part in a sit-in in front of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was protesting the prosecution of the activist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Unilever declined to comment on Cohen’s views. “Ben Cohen no longer has an operational role in Ben & Jerry’s, and his comments are made in a personal capacity,” a spokesperson said.
Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request for comment.
The world according to Ben
For Cohen, the war in Ukraine wasn’t just a tragedy. It was, in a sense, a vindication. In 1998, a group he created called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities published a full-page ad in the New York Times titled “Hey, let’s scare the Russians.”
The target of the ad was a proposal to expand NATO “toward Russia’s very borders,” with the inclusion of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Doing so, the ad asserted, would provide Russians with “the same feeling of peace and security Americans would have if Russia were in a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, armed to the teeth.”
Cohen is by no means alone in this view of recent history. The American scholar John Mearsheimer, a prominent expert in international relations, has argued that the “trouble over Ukraine” started after the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest when the alliance opened the door to membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
In the U.S., this point has been echoed by progressive outlets and thinkers, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the linguist Noam Chomsky, or most recently by the American philosopher, activist and longest-of-long-shots, third-party presidential candidate Cornel West.
“We told them after they disbanded the Warsaw Pact that we could not expand NATO, not one inch. And we did that, we lied,” said Dennis Fritz, a retired U.S. Air Force official and the head of the Eisenhower Media Network — which describes itself as a group of “National Security Veteran experts, who’ve been there, done that and have an independent, alternative story to tell.”
It was Fritz’s organization that argued in a May 2023 ad in the New York Times that although the “immediate cause” of the “disastrous” war in Ukraine was Russia’s invasion, “the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears.”
The ad noted that American foreign policy heavyweights, including Robert Gates and Henry Kissinger, had warned of the dangers of NATO expansion. “Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings?” it asked. “Profit from weapons sales was a major factor.”
Cohen andGreenfield announce a new flavor, Justice Remix’d, in 2019 | Win McNamee/Getty Images
When I spoke to Cohen, the group’s primary donor, according to Fritz, he echoed the ad’s key points, saying U.S. arms manufacturers saw NATO’s expansion as a “financial bonanza.”
“In the end, money won,” he said with a resigned tone. “And today, not only are they providing weapons to all the new NATO countries, but they’re providing weapons to Ukraine.”
I told Cohen I could understand his opposition to the war and follow his critique of U.S. foreign policy, but I couldn’t grasp how he could take a position that put him in the same corner as a government that is bombing civilians. He refused to be drawn in.
“I’m not supporting Russia, I’m not supporting Ukraine,” he said. “I’m supporting negotiations to end the war instead of providing more weapons to continue the war.”
The Grayzone
I tried to get a better answer when I spoke to Aaron Maté, the Canadian-born journalist who won the award for “defense reporting and analysis” that Cohen was instrumental in funding.
Named after the late Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst who campaigned against the development of F-35 fighter jets as overly complex and expensive, the award recognized Maté’s “continued work dissecting establishment propaganda on issues such as Russian interference in U.S. politics, or the war in Syria.”
Maté, who was photographed with Cohen’s arm around his shoulders at the awards ceremony in March, writes for the Grayzone, a far-left website that has acquired a reputation for publishing stories backing the narratives of authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. His reports deny the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, and he has briefed the U.N. Security Council at Moscow’s invitation.
When I spoke to Maté, he was friendly but guarded. (The Pierre Sprey award noted that “his empiricist reporting give the lie to the charge of ‘disinformation’ routinely leveled by those whose nostrums he challenges.”)
He was happy however to walk me through his claims that, based on statements by U.S. officials since the start of the war, Washington is using Kyiv to wage a “proxy war” against Moscow. Much of his information, he said, came from Western journalism. “I point out examples where, buried at the bottom of articles, sometimes the truth is admitted,” he explained.
He declined to be described as pro-Putin. “That kind of ‘guilt-by-association’ reasoning is not serious thinking,” he said. “It’s not how adults think about things.” When I asked if he believed that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine, he answered: “I’m sure they have. I’ve never heard of a war where war crimes are not committed.”
Still, he said, the U.S. was responsible for “prolonging” the war and “sabotaging the diplomacy that could have ended it.”
‘Come to Ukraine’
The best answer I got to my question came not from Cohen or others in his circle but from a fellow traveler who hasn’t chosen to follow critics of NATO on their latest journey.
A self-described “radical anti-imperialist,” Gilbert Achcar is a professor of development studies and international relations at SOAS University of London. He has described the expansion of NATO in the 1990s as a decision that “laid the ground for a new cold war” pitting the West against Russia and China.
But while he sees the war in Ukraine as the latest chapter in this showdown, he has warned against calls for a rush to the negotiating table. Instead, he has advocated for the complete withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine and “the delivery of defensive weapons to the victims of aggression with no strings attached.”
“To give those who are fighting a just war the means to fight against a much more powerful aggressor is an elementary internationalist duty,” he wrote three days after Russia launched its attack on Kyiv, comparing the invasion to the U.S.’s intervention in Vietnam.
Achcar said he understood the conclusions being drawn by people like Cohen about Washington’s interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, “it leads a lot of people on the left into … [a] knee-jerk opposition to anything the United States does.”
What they fail to account for, however, is the Ukrainian people.
“In a way, part of the Western left is ethnocentric,” said Achcar, who was born in Senegal and grew up in Lebanon. “They look at the whole world just by their opposition to their own government and therefore forget about other people’s rights.”
Cohen, with late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon in 2011 | Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Ben & Jerry’s
His point was echoed in the last conversation I had when researching this article, with Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former economy minister.
“It doesn’t really matter who promised what to whom in the 1990s,” Mylovanov said. “What matters is that there was Mariupol and Bucha, where tens of thousands of people were killed.”
Mylovanov taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh until he returned to Ukraine four days before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Things like war are difficult to understand unless you experience them,” he said. “This is very easy to get confused when you are sitting, you know, somewhere far from the facts and you have surrounded yourself by an echo chamber of people and sources that you agree with.”
“In that sense,” he added. “I invite these people to come to Ukraine and judge for themselves what the truth is.”
The Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk came under fire from across the Ukrainian border in the early hours of Wednesday, according to local governors.
Both officials blamed Ukraine for the attack — claims which have not been independently verified.
Statements from the regions’ governors say one woman was injured in the attack, which targeted the town of Valuyki in Belgorod and the village of Tyotkino in Kursk.
Belgorod’s Governor Viacheslav Gladkov said Valuyki was shelled for more than an hour, and that Russian air defenses shot down three targets and one drone. Another 12 shells from Grad multiple rocket launcher systems (MLRs) were fired at a residential area, according to Gladkov. Eight buildings and a powerline were damaged, and a woman suffered shrapnel injuries.
Kursk’s Governor Roman Starovoit said 12 shells were fired at Tyotkino, damaging a school.
In the last few months, Russian regions on the border with Ukraine and even further east have come under frequent shelling and drone attacks.
Russia claims that Ukraine attacked Moscow with at least five drones on Tuesday. Kyiv rarely claims responsibility for such attacks. Following Tuesday’s events, Andriy Cherniak, a representative of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence, told POLITICO that such attacks “are the consequences of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.”
BRUSSELS — EU countries are bickering over granting billions in new funds to deal with migration as asylum applications soar and backlogs pile up at the Continent’s borders.
Germany, which received a quarter of all EU asylum applications in 2022, specifically wants to “revitalize” the EU’s ties with neighboring Turkey, according to a senior German official — a nod to the last time the bloc faced such levels of migration.
Then, in 2016, the EU offered Turkey billions in exchange for the country housing thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war. Now, there is a push to authorize up to €10.5 billion in new money for not just Turkey, but also countries like Libya or Tunisia, hoping it would help them prevent people from entering the EU without permission.
The debate has jumped onto the agenda of an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. And countries are sparring over whether to reference a monetary request in the meeting’s final conclusions, according to five diplomats and officials from four different countries.
The behind-the-scenes fight illustrates how much migration has come to dominate the political agenda. Organizers for the summit had hoped to keep the divisive migration talk to a minimum in favor of discussions on Russia, China and economic security. But with high-profile disasters like the recent migrant shipwreck near Greece and arrival figures continuing their steep climb, the heated issue is becoming increasingly hard to avoid.
Notably, draft conclusions for the summit, dated Wednesday evening and seen by POLITICO, still had two indirect references to the fresh migration funds: The €10.5 billion pot and another €2 billion for “managing migration” within the EU’s own borders.
Whether that language survives until Friday is another question.
Germany: Let’s talk Turkey, not money
Germany, as always, is one of the key players in the debate — and in this instance, it is making arguments for both sides.
On one side, Berlin wants to renew the EU’s relationship with Turkey, hoping it can take in more asylum seekers and help cut down on unauthorized border crossings. In return, the Germans want the EU to improve trade ties with the country.
On the other side, however, Berlin is fiercely opposing the attempt to explicitly mention money in the summit conclusions. The logic: Committing to fresh billions now would imperil upcoming talks over whether to add €66 billion to its budget. Germany wants to discuss the whole package at once, instead of approving parts of it in advance.
As of Wednesday night, the summit conclusions draft still contained an indirect endorsement of the money.
Germany, as always, is one of the key players in the debate — and in this instance, it is making arguments for both sides | David Gannon/AFP via Getty Images
The document mentions “financing mechanisms” — seen as a reference to the €10.5 billion — for “the external aspects of migration.” That money would go to countries like Turkey, Libya and Tunisia, which migrants often traverse on their way to Europe.
There’s also an indirect reference to the €2 billion for internal EU migration management. The text calls for “support for displaced persons,” particularly from Ukraine, via “adequate and flexible financial assistance to the member states who carry the largest burden of medical, education and living costs of refugees.” Translated, that would mean more money for countries that host the bulk of Ukrainian refugees, like Poland and Germany.
Yet during a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, German officials urged their counterparts to cut or massively reduce both passages, according to the five diplomats and officials, who, like other officials in this story, were granted anonymity because they are not allowed to publicly discuss the talks.
As of Wednesday night, that appeal had failed. But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz may take up the issue himself with his counterparts on Thursday.
The German argument is that including the figures would mean EU leaders are essentially making a big step toward endorsing the full budget package — which the European Commission requested just last week — before even discussing it, two of the officials said.
Nevertheless, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to briefly present her €66 billion budget plan during the gathering of EU leaders on Thursday, meaning there will likely be an initial debate about the money, the officials said.
Von der Leyen’s plans are expected to run into resistance from a number of countries, particularly the so-called “frugal” countries, including Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Speaking to a briefing for reporters in Berlin on Wednesday, a senior German official also voiced caution about von der Leyen’s plan.
“One of the questions is: Is the Commission’s assessment of the situation convincing?” said the senior official, who could not be named due to the rules under which the briefing was organized.
Time to work with Erdoğan again?
At the same time, the senior German official stressed Berlin’s interest in renewing the EU relationship with Turkey.
“[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan has been re-elected, and this must be an opportunity for the EU to take another broad look at its relationship with Turkey,” the official said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
“For us, it’s a matter of putting EU-Turkey relations once again on the agenda … to possibly revitalize them, if all sides want to commit to this,” the official continued, adding that the European Commission and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell should “come back in the fall with proposals.”
One idea could be an update of the EU’s trade rules with Turkey — a thorny issue, though, as talks between Brussels and Ankara have failed to make progress on modernizing the so-called EU-Turkey customs union for several years.
Germany’s Scholz held a phone call with Erdoğan on Wednesday during which both leaders discussed how “to cooperate further and deepen exchanges on various cooperation issues,” according to Steffen Hebestreit, Scholz’s spokesperson.
Any progress in EU-Turkey relations would also require the agreement of the EU countries perpetually at odds with Turkey — Greece and Cyprus.
At least in that sense, there seems to be progress: “We agreed to include a paragraph on Turkey and the future relations,” a Greek diplomat said.
The latest draft conclusions from Wednesday evening ask Borrell and the Commission “submit a report” on EU-Turkey relations “with a view to proceeding in a strategic and forward-looking manner.”
Barbara Moens, Jakob Hanke Vela, Lili Bayer, Jacopo Barigazzi and Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.
Mercenaries from the Wagner Group of embittered warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin — some of them speeding along a highway to Moscow — on Saturday looked set for imminent clashes with troops loyal to President Vladimir Putin, who warned the rebellion risked pushing Russia into a civil war.
Furious over the Kremlin’s bungled invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin seized key strategic footholds in southern Russian on Saturday — most significantly the major city of Rostov-on-Don — while an unclear number of his forces were making a dash up the main highway to the capital. Russian government forces also appeared to shell the southern city of Voronezh on Saturday in an attempt to combat the Wagner insurrection, which is snowballing into one of the gravest threats to Putin’s 25-year rule.
It is far from clear how close Wagner’s troops are to Moscow but the governor of Lipetsk, some 400 kilometers south of the capital, has reported the mercenary convoy passing through, and authorities there said they were carving ditches in the road with diggers to slow Prigozhin’s men. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warned “a counter-terrorist operation has been declared in Moscow. The situation is complicated,” and added that Monday would not be a regular working day, telling people to avoid traveling round the city.
Footage posted online of the roadblocks supposed to slow Wagner looked hastily improvized, with a light military presence, mainly composed of civilian vehicles. Jay Truesdale, a former American diplomat who served in both Russia and Ukraine, said Moscow was ill-equipped to cope with a major insurgency. “I’m not surprised Russia hasn’t been able to deal with the growing threat because the best members of its armed forces are deployed, or have been killed,” he told POLITICO.
In a sign that fears of full-blown internal conflict are not far-fetched, Chechen strongman and Putin loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov vowed to throw his fighters behind the president and take on Prigozhin’s renegade troops in Rostov. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.
Images of shelling in Voronezh, some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, could not immediately be verified, but the governor, Alexander Gusev, confirmed fighting there. “The Russian armed forces are carrying out required operational and combat measures on the territory of the Voronezh Region as part of a counter-terror operation,” he said.
Early on Saturday, Prigozhin claimed to have taken control of Rostov — a crucial command center for the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, with a population of more than 1 million — without a fight. In response, Putin lashed out at Prigozhin’s “treason” and vowed to “neutralize” the threat posed by his renegade mercenary army.
In a five-and-a-half-minute address to the nation, the president denounced this mutiny as “a stab in the back of our nation and our people.” Without naming Prigozhin, he said: “We are dealing with treason.”
The Russian president said the insurrection was “exactly the kind of blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917, when the country fought the First World War, but victory was stolen from her. Intrigues, squabbles, politicking behind the backs of the army and the people turned into the greatest shock: the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories. In the end — the tragedy of the civil war.”
The insurrection dramatically escalates the stakes in Moscow’s 16-month-old war on Ukraine, and creates a significant headache for Putin, just as Ukrainian forces are looking for opportunities to push through Russian defensive lines in a long-awaited counteroffensive.
Most significant challenge
Britain’s ministry of defense also cast Prigozhin’s mutiny “as the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.”
In a new audio message released by Prigozhin on Saturday, he insisted his men had Russia’s best interests at heart. “When it comes to accusations of betrayal, the president is deeply mistaken. We are patriots … None of us will turn ourselves in because we don’t want to live a life of corruption, deceit and bureaucracy,” he said. “We are patriots and those who oppose us today are on the side of the scum.”
In a statement on Saturday morning, the U.K. government indicated Prigozhin’s forces were moving through territory around Voronezh, roughly 500 kilometers south of Moscow and around 500 kilometers north of Rostov “almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow.” Russian authorities said they had closed the main highway running from Moscow to the south in a bid to block any advances by Prigozhin’s mutineers.
In both Voronezh and Rostov, the authorities have called on people to stay at home, while Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, called on Russians to pray for Putin.
“With very limited evidence of fighting between Wagner and Russian security forces, some have likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner,” the statement by the U.K. defense ministry said. “Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out.”
Admitting the situation remains “difficult” in Rostov, a palpably angry Putin called on Wagner’s forces to desert their commander. “I call on those who are being dragged into this crime not to make the fatal and tragic, inimitable mistake, to make the only right choice — to stop participating in criminal actions,” he said.
Putin’s chef
Nicknamed “Putin’s chef” — because he came to prominence by running catering services for the Russian government — Prigozhin has become one of the most prominent faces of Russia’s war against Ukraine, but has become an increasingly virulent critic of Moscow’s military command, which he repeatedly accuses of incompetence and of providing insufficient resources to his frontline troops. A notoriously brutal and unpredictable figure, Prigozhin has drawn many of his forces from jails.
Overnight, Prigozhin said in a series of short voice messages posted to social media that he was leading a “march of justice” and not a military coup, and suggested that 25,000 of his men were en route to Moscow to oust Russia’s military leadership — and were ready to die for the cause.
“We are at the staff headquarters, it’s 7:30 in the morning,” Prigozhin said in a video statement posted in his Telegram channel. “Military objects in Rostov are under control, including the aerodrome.”
According to reports and social media, Wagner forces met little resistance as they traveled the short distance from the Ukrainian border to the city, the operational center for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The thrust transformed Prigozhin’s increasingly furious tirades of the past 24 hours against the Kremlin into stark action that exposed the vulnerability of the Russian rear.
“The chief of staff ran away as soon as he found out that we were approaching the building,” said Prigozhin, referring to Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, who was reported to have been in the area recently.
Prigozhin said the staff headquarters in Rostov was working normally. “Everything we did and took control over was so that offensive aviation does not strike us, but strikes the Ukrainians,” he said. The 1:43-minute video statement was shot in the corner of a rain-soaked courtyard as armed troops milled around in the background.
The big question now is how much support Prigozhin could possibly command. Wagner’s recruitment posters were already being taken down in several cities. Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, tweeted Prigozhin was unlikely to win support among Russia’s key power players.
“The indifference of the man of the masses on which Putin’s regime rests will not turn against him. But an indifferent person will not defend him either. Much depends on the loyalty of the siloviki and the elites in general. But they don’t like Prigozhin, he’s dangerous to them.”
Prigozhin takes control
Meanwhile, an unverified video purported to show Prigozhin taking control of military installations in Rostov, where he held tense talks with Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov. The Wagner chief appeared to threaten to blockade the city and march on Moscow if his demands were not met.
According to military bloggers and to Prigozhin himself, Wagner troops had overnight shot down one Russian Mi-35 helicopter. Videos posted on social media overnight had shown choppers hovering over Rostov.
Prominent Russian pro-war blogger Igor Girkin also posted clips showing long columns of military vehicles, which he said belonged to Wagner forces, snaking through the Voronezh region.
Appealing directly to the Russian army and people, Prigozhin said the Kremlin had lied to them over the toll of the war. A huge amount of territory has been lost, he said. Three to four times as many men were being killed than was reported to the top; and losses — killed, missing, wounded and unable to fight due to a lack of ammunition or leadership — reached 1,000 on some days, he said.
Russia’s FSB spy service has opened a criminal investigation for organizing an armed insurrection, and according to state media, counterterrorism operations have been launched in Moscow, the surrounding region and Voronezh oblast, which lies around halfway along the 1,100-kilometer road from Rostov to the Russian capital.
This story is developing.
Douglas Busvine , Gabriel Gavin and Zoya Sheftalovich
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to carry on with the war in Ukraine, speaking in a pre-recorded interview that was broadcast on state television on Sunday.
The interview was taped on June 21 but broadcast after the Kremlin resolved the first attempted coup against Moscow in three decades.
“I’m focused primarily on the special military operation,” Putin said in the interview with Rossiya-1 TV, using his regime’s term for the invasion of Ukraine. “My day begins and ends with this.”
“Lately, I stay up quite late” monitoring the situation, he added. “Of course, I always have to be communicating.”
Putin’s message of being in control was broadcast after the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force on which Moscow has depended for the war against Ukraine, attempted a lightning march on Moscow from the Russian-Ukrainian border, taking the Russian elite establishment and the world at large by surprise.
On Saturday, Putin had to rely on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to personally intervene and broker a deal with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to avoid bloodshed. Prigozhin agreed to move to Belarus, and Wagner troops appeared to be standing down on Sunday.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described the Wagner coup attempt as “humiliating” for Putin.
“You almost nullified Putin,” Podolyak said in a tweet. “Prigozhin humiliated Putin [and] the state and showed that there is no longer a monopoly on violence.”
This article has been updated to show that the interview was conducted on June 21.
Vladimir Putin’s strongman mask is slipping — and Ukraine sees opportunity in the chaos.
Warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny over the weekend exposed Putin’s tenuous grip on the levers of power, the disunity within his ranks and the weakness in Russia’s own border defenses. The ease with which Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries were able to take control of Russian territory and march to within 200 kilometers of Moscow — and the videos of Russians cheering for them — showed Putin’s regime is far from invincible.
“Today the world saw that Russia’s bosses do not control anything,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening address late Saturday. “In one day, they lost several of their million-plus cities and showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs and anyone else how easy it is to capture Russian cities and, probably, weapons arsenals.”
Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelenskyy continued in what was clearly a message to Putin’s apparatchiks: “The man from the Kremlin is obviously very afraid and is probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself. I’m sure he is no longer in Moscow … He knows what he’s afraid of because he himself created this threat. All the evil, all the losses, all the hatred — he foments it himself. The longer he can run between his bunkers, the more you will all lose, all of those who are connected with Russia.”
Putin, a fan of historic parallels, on Saturday morning invoked the specter of the Russian civil war, which broke out in 1917 as the country was fighting the First World War — an indication of how seriously he appeared to view the Prigozhin threat.
But perhaps Putin ought to look to the failed 1991 August Coup against then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Back then, Communist Party hardliners furious at Gorbachev’s attempts to ram through reforms detained the leader at his dacha in Crimea and rolled their tanks into Moscow. Like Prigozhin’s failed mutiny, the August Coup of 1991 was short-lived — it only lasted three days. But the fallout was catastrophic for the Soviet Union — it led to a loss of confidence in the Communist regime, and by December of 1991, the USSR was no more.
Wagner’s role in Putin’s war
Wagner mercenaries have played an important role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As an unofficial arm of the Kremlin’s armed forces, recruited from Russia’s prisons and alleyways, they have been among Putin’s most expendable men.
A force with a capacity for horrific savagery — including executions of deserters with sledgehammers — Prigozhin’s men were thrown into the most brutal battles — offcuts in Russia’s famous military meat-grinder.
Last winter, when Russian forces were depleted and demoralized in the wake of a surging Ukrainian counteroffensive that took back Kharkiv and Kherson, Moscow used Prigozhin’s mercenaries to plug gaps in the battlefront and give his regular troops breathing space.
As Wagner mercenaries held the line over the winter, Russia was able to replenish its dwindling arms supplies, and call up and train a fresh wave of conscripts to throw into the trenches.
Prigozhin’s forces were also instrumental in the battle for Bakhmut, the strategic town in eastern Ukraine that has seen some of the heaviest fighting and highest Russian casualties of the war.
What happens to Prigozhin’s forces now?
On Sunday, Prigozhin’s mercenaries started pulling out of Russia’s southern Voronezh region, which is situated along a highway that the Wagner Group wanted to use to march on Moscow, and from Rostov-on-Don, the Russian city close to the Ukrainian border seized by Wagner on Saturday.
The question is, where will they go now?
With Prigozhin out of the way, the Wagner mercenaries will either go back to where they came from or sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense | Stringer/AFP via Getty Images
With Prigozhin out of the way (and likely avoiding all windows, doorknobs, teacups and umbrellas during his supposed exile in Belarus), the Wagner mercenaries — 25,000 of them, if Prigozhin is to be believed — will either go back to where they came from, or sign contracts with the Russian defense ministry.
Indeed, Russian military bloggers have speculated that Prigozhin launched his offensive on the country’s military leadership in response to the Kremlin seeking to defang him by integrating his mercenaries into the army. (Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu earlier this month ordered all “volunteer detachments” at the front in the Ukraine war to sign contracts with the ministry by July 1 — which Prigozhin vowed to oppose.)
But the Wagner mercenaries who do sign contracts may not make much of a difference on the battlefield now.
“Wagner bought the Russian army time over winter,” said Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired Australian Army major general. “But with or without Wagner, it’s going to be difficult for Russia to win this war,” he added.
“As we’re seeing now, there’s a big difference in will on the two sides,” Ryan said. “The Ukrainians are absolutely dedicated to saving their country, they’re fighting for their freedom. The Russians are kind of interested in fighting Ukraine — and kind of interested in fighting each other.”
And to what extent can Putin ever trust his new recruits, who were ready to storm Moscow under Prigozhin’s command?
“Russia has just lost 25,000 soldiers,” Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former general of the U.S. forces in Europe, told Times Radio on Sunday, referring to the Wagner mercenaries. “Every one of them is going to be looked at with suspicion and seen as unreliable.”
Putin’s humiliation a boost for Kyiv
With the full-scale war in its 16th month and Putin’s forces deeply entrenched in Ukraine’s south and east, Kyiv has struggled to make significant gains in its counteroffensive.
But the extraordinary events on Saturday gave Ukraine’s forces a much-needed morale boost.
“For our soldiers, it was also very motivating,” Ukrainian MP Kira Rudik, from the liberal Holos party, said in an interview with Times Radio. “It is a great proof that you can fight Russia and you can win [against] Russia and it’s very good that the world has seen that.”
Kyiv’s forces have been hitting Russian positions in the south and the east of Ukraine, looking for a way to push through the Kremlin’s line, like they did last year.
Prigozhin’s antics have forced the Kremlin to shore up control of Russian territory rather than direct the entire might of its armed forces at Ukraine. That provides an opening for Kyiv — if it can get the gear it says it needs to push through Russia’s positions.
A person holds a Wagner Group flag in Rostov-on-Don | Roman Romokhov/AFP via Getty Images
Zelenskyy, in his Saturday address, renewed his call for the West to supply Ukraine with more weapons, to enable the country to take advantage of Putin’s moment of weakness. “Now is the time to provide all the weapons necessary,” Zelenskyy said, name-checking U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets and tactical missile systems.
“If the Ukrainians are able to exploit this, particularly in the east, near Bakhmut, at the end of the day they just need one breakthrough,” said Ryan, the military strategist. “If they punch through Russian defenses and keep that penetration open, the Russians are going to be in real trouble — they are very brittle. The Ukrainians just need to do this once. And the Russians are going to be chasing their tails thereafter.”
Ominous signal for Putin
Prigozhin’s macho-man missives railing at Russia’s military leadership tapped into a general sense among his countrymen that the “special military operation” isn’t going as well as it ought to, given what they view as Ukraine’s military inferiority.
While the warlord stopped just short of directly blaming Putin for Russia’s lackluster battlefield performance, he insinuated in his barrage of posts on Telegram late Friday and early Saturday that the Russian president had at the very least been manipulated by those in his circle.
Prigozhin’s implication: That Putin is out of touch, weak, easily bamboozled — the polar opposite of the image the strong-man leader has carefully cultivated over his decades at Russia’s helm.
And Prigozhin’s attacks seem to have found a receptive audience.
The scenes in Rostov, where crowds of Russians welcomed the Wagner mercenaries with chanting and cheering, revealed the extent to which support is waning for members of Putin’s inner sanctum — particularly his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his overall commander of the war on Ukraine, General Valery Gerasimov.
Perhaps even more telling was Wagner’s superstar exit as its tanks and heavily armed forces pulled out of Rostov. The crowds applauded, whistled, waved Wagner flags, and yelled “Great job! Great job!” and “Wagner! Wagner!” — just hours after Putin labeled Prigozhin and his followers traitors.
“I think what the world has seen is that Putin is not almighty,” said Rudik, the Ukrainian MP. Referring to the deal negotiated by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko under which Prigozhin would depart for Belarus in return for being spared prosecution by Russia, she said: “I think the situation was very, very much like the Wizard of Oz, where Prigozhin looked for the great and terrible Putin and it turned out that it was just a man who was really scared and had to have a leader of another country, so-called President Lukashenko, to talk to him to get him in his senses.”
“What happened [Saturday] was not the end,” Rudik added. “It was the beginning, to show that Putin does not control the country and that he’s not invincible, and that if you have enough strength you can try and fight him. And I think for many nationalistic movements in Russia, they were waiting for the opportunity.”
Anger is growing over the handling of a migrant boat disaster off Greece last week that has become one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean in years. The calamity is dominating the country’s political agenda a week ahead of snap elections.
The Hellenic Coast Guard is facing increasing questions over its response to the fishing boat that sank off Greece’s southern peninsula on Wednesday, leading to the death of possibly hundreds of migrants. Nearly 80 people are known to have perished in the wreck and hundreds are still missing, according to the U.N.’s migration and refugee agencies.
Critics say that the Greek authorities should have acted faster to keep the vessel from capsizing. There are testimonies from survivors that the Coast Guard tied up to the vessel and attempted to pull it, causing the boat to sway, which the Greek authorities strongly deny.
The boat may have been carrying as many as 750 passengers, including women and children, according to reports. Many of them were trapped underneath the deck in the sinking, according to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. “The ship was heavily overcrowded,” Frontex said.
About 100 people are known to have survived the sinking. Authorities continued to search for victims and survivors over the weekend.
The disaster may be “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said on Friday. She said there has been a massive increase in the number of migrant boats heading from Libya to Europe since the start of the year.
Frontex said in a statement on Friday that no agency plane or boat was present at the time of the capsizing on Wednesday. The agency said it alerted the Greek and Italian authorities about the vessel after a Frontex plane spotted it, but the Greek officials waved off an offer of additional help.
Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s migration crisis since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa traveled thousands of miles across the Continent hoping to claim asylum.
Migration and border security have been key issues in the Greek political debate. Following Wednesday’s wreck, they have jumped to the top of the agenda, a week before national elections on June 25.
Greece is currently led by a caretaker government. Under the conservative New Democracy administration, in power until last month, the country adopted a tough migration policy. In late May, the EU urged Greece to launch a probe into alleged illegal deportations.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is expected to return to the prime minister’s office after the vote next Sunday, blasted criticism of the Greek authorities, saying it should instead be directed to the human traffickers, who he called “human scums.”
“It is very unfair for some so-called ‘people in solidarity’ [with refugees and migrants] to insinuate that the [Coast Guard] did not do its job. … These people are out there … battling the waves to rescue human lives and protect our borders,” Mitsotakis, who maintains a significant lead in the polls, said during a campaign event in Sparta on Saturday.
The Greek authorities claimed the people on board, some thought to be the smugglers who had arranged the boat from Libya, refused assistance and insisted on reaching Italy. So the Greek Coast Guard did not intervene, though it monitored the vessel for more than 15 hours before it eventually capsized.
“What orders did the authorities have, and they didn’t intervene because one of these ‘scums’ didn’t give them permission?” the left-wing Syriza party said in a statement. “Why was no order given to the lifeboat … to immediately assist in a rescue operation? … Why were life jackets not distributed … and why Frontex assistance was not requested?”
Alarm Phone, a network of activists that helps migrants in danger, said the Greek authorities had been alerted repeatedly many hours before the boat capsized and that there was insufficient rescue capacity.
According to a report by WDR citing migrants’ testimonies, attempts were made to tow the endangered vessel, but in the process the boat began to sway and sank. Similar testimonies by survivors appeared in Greek media.
A report on Greek website news247.gr said the vessel remained in the same spot off the town of Pylos for at least 11 hours before sinking. According to the report, the location on the chart suggests the vessel was not on a “steady course and speed” toward Italy, as the Greek Coast Guard said.
After initially saying that there was no effort to tow the boat, the Hellenic Coast Guard said on Friday that a patrol vessel approached and used a “small buoy” to engage the vessel in a procedure that lasted a few minutes and then was untied by the migrants themselves.
Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou defended the agency. “You cannot carry out a violent diversion on such a vessel with so many people on board, without them wanting to, without any sort of cooperation,” he said.
Alexiou said there is no video of the operation available.
Nine people, most of them from Egypt, were arrested over the capsizing, charged with forming a criminal organization with the purpose of illegal migrant trafficking, causing a shipwreck and endangering life. They will appear before a magistrate on Monday, according to Greek judicial authorities.
“Unfortunately, we have seen this coming because since the start of the year, there was a new modus operandi with these fishing boats leaving from the eastern part of Libya,” the EU’s Johansson told a press conference on Friday. “And we’ve seen an increase of 600 percent of these departures this year,” she added.
Greek Supreme Court Prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos has urged absolute secrecy in the investigations being conducted in relation to the shipwreck.
Thousands of people took to the streets in different cities in Greece last week to protest the handling of the incident and the migration policies of Greece and the EU. More protests were planned for Sunday.
BULBOACA, Moldova — European leaders mounted a powerful show of defiance — and support for Ukraine — as they gathered Thursday for a historic summit in the ex-Soviet country of Moldova just kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
But even as over 40 leaders pledged their solidarity with Ukraine at the second gathering of the so-called European Political Community, the difficulty in maintaining that unity was on display. Before and during the summit, leaders hedged and staked out competing positions on an increasingly contentious issue — what security guarantees the Western alliance can give Kyiv to ensure that if Russia is ever pushed out, it won’t return.
French President Emmanuel Macron set the tone on Wednesday, imploring allies to offer Kyiv “tangible and credible” security guarantees — a shift in the French position. His German counterpart, Olaf Scholz, was more hesitant on Thursday, declining to provide any details and indicating it might be a question for after the war.
Against this backdrop, Ukraine’s own leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, joined the leaders in a surprise appearance. Under a crisp blue sky, Zelenskyy made two explicit demands: One, a “clear invitation” to join NATO — another subject that divides allies — and “security guarantees on the way to NATO membership.”
Both, he said, “are needed.”
The divergent positions illustrate the fraught questions that lie ahead as the West strives to hold together against Russia and the war grinds on. Yet, for now, unity is still the predominant rhetorical theme when European leaders gather.
“Today’s summit showed us how valuable the European Political Community is,” Moldovan President Maia Sandu said as the summit drew to a close. “We have shown that we are a family, a strong and united family of European nations acting together to make the continent stronger — more united and more peaceful.”
Zelenskyy’s plea
The summit at Castle Mimi, a vineyard only 20 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, kicked off on an emotional note with Zelenskyy’s arrival.
Sandu welcomed the Ukrainian president ahead of the other leaders, thanking him profusely for “keeping Moldova safe.” The side-by-side image of the two leaders, whose countries have both been battling Russian aggression to various degrees, was a powerful symbol.
But with Kyiv under an intensifying hail of Russia’s bombs, Zelenskyy moved swiftly to his plea, asking allies to give Ukraine firm security guarantees and a commitment to NATO membership at an upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania. NATO agreed in 2008 that Ukraine would eventually become a member, but it has never offered a firm promise or timeline.
While Zelenskyy is unlikely to get everything he wants at the July gathering, both issues are being hotly debated at the moment.
Macron set the stage on Wednesday when he turned heads with his most forthcoming remarks yet about security guarantees.
“I’m in favor — and it will be the topic of collective discussions in the coming weeks — of giving tangible and credible security guarantees for two reasons: Ukraine protects Europe today and she gives Europe security guarantees,” he said.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the leaders in a surprise appearance | Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images
But on Thursday, Scholz, the German chancellor, was more guarded.
“One thing is very clear: We are now making our contribution to supporting Ukraine,” he said. “We have always said that there must also be guarantees for a peace order after the war. Germany will make a contribution to this.”
Scholz then refused to be drawn into the details of the discussion, even as it moved to center stage.
Still, both Scholz and Macron confirmed that allies are actively discussing the subject, and working to coordinate their approaches ahead of the NATO summit.
Speaking in Oslo on Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was similarly careful when addressing the touchy subject.
“When the war ends, we need to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself, that this pattern of Russian aggression against Ukraine really stops and therefore, we need to have in place frameworks to provide guarantees for Ukrainian security after the end of the war, so history doesn’t repeat itself,” he said.
Leaders pose for the family photo at the European Political Community summit | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
The lack of clarity reflects the complexity of offering — or even defining — “security guarantees” for another country. Europe may also be waiting to take its cue from the U.S. One option on the table may reflect the security model binding the U.S. and Israel, which prioritizes arms transfers and long-term support commitments.
Nonetheless, Scholz, speaking at the conclusion of the summit, was keen to stress that helping Ukraine defend itself was “the task at hand.” And he ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine at this juncture.
“There are clear criteria for membership. You can’t have border conflicts for instance,” he said — an obvious reference to Ukraine.
Scholz’s remarks reflect the broad understanding that Ukraine cannot join NATO so long as it’s actively at war with Russia. But Ukrainian officials want NATO leaders to offer a concrete political gesture that Kyiv is at least on the membership path.
Some NATO allies are willing to be far blunter than Scholz on the subject, most notably those representing the Baltic countries, highlighting yet another fissure that separates allies.
“The only security guarantee that works … is NATO membership,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said Thursday, echoing Zelenskyy’s message.
Imagine a court hearing where the plaintiff is not a person, but a damaged river, lake or mountain.
That’s the vision of a movement of conservationists — gaining traction across the Continent — that believes granting basic legal rights to nature can help protect it from threats like deforestation, biodiversity loss, chemicals pollution and climate change.
“We usually think about nature as an object” that “serves us,” such as a swimming pool or a natural park, said Eduardo Salazar, a lawyer involved in the successful push to grant legal rights to Mar Menor, a large saltwater lagoon in Murcia in southeastern Spain polluted by the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers by nearby farmers.
Granting an ecosystem legal status on “the same level” as individuals can help alter social attitudes to nature, he said, and give it important new protections.
The lagoon last year became the first ecosystem on the Continent to be granted a status comparable to that of a person following a campaign backed by more than 600,000 people.
Activists are now trying to replicate the model elsewhere.
In Poland, a group of activists this week will complete the last leg of a 43-day-long march along the Oder River aimed at drawing attention to their campaign to grant the polluted ecosystem — which runs along the German-Polish border — the legal status of a person.
After a massive die-off last summer killed thousands of fish in the Oder, campaigners fear the ecosystem may be headed for another ecological disaster, pointing to Poland’s failure to rein in industrial emissions that are thought to have contributed to the incident.
“There is a lot of suffering going on in this river,” said Przemek Siewior, a climate activist who joined the march. Giving the fragile ecosystem legal rights is “a really good tool for people to try to save it,” he argued.
A ‘voice’ for nature
The so-called rights of nature movement, which originated in the United States some 50 years ago, has gained traction in recent years thanks to growing attention to the importance of protecting nature as part of combating climate change and biodiversity loss.
A growing number of countries — including Uganda, Ecuador and New Zealand — have laws granting ecosystems legal rights, and court rulings in India and Colombia have recognized such rights and stressed the government’s duty to protect it. Just last month, Panama gave rights to sea turtles in a bid to protect them against pollution and poaching.
In Europe, campaigners are hoping to ride the coattails of the Mar Menor movement, with citizens’ initiatives pushing for similar recognition for the North Sea in the Netherlands and the Loire River in France, for example.
The Loire River bed at Loireauxence was completely dried out because of extreme heat in September 2022 | Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images
At the movement’s core is a call for a fundamental rethink of the way people relate to and understand ecosystems. But more tangibly, campaigners also stress the importance of ensuring ecosystems can be represented in court.
In New Zealand, granting legal personhood to the Whanganui River was seen as a key step to ensure the Indigenous Māori community living in its vicinity gets more say on the health of the ecosystem.
The Spanish law giving Mar Menor a right “to exist as an ecosystem and to evolve naturally” ensures it will be represented by a group of caretakers, made up of scientists, local politicians and citizens.
Inspired by the Spanish example, the Oder River movement last month published a draft law to protect the ecosystem that would include establishing a 15-person committee to represent the river. Three would be appointed by the state, four by municipalities and eight by NGOs; a group of 10 scientists would advise the committee.
That structure would “give the Oder River a democratic representation” and a “voice that it currently just doesn’t have,” said Gaweł Andrzejewski, the coordinator of the Oder River march.
The process is still in its early stages: Drafted by a lawyer in collaboration with civil society, the draft bill is mostly meant to “stir and start the conversation” with politicians and NGOs, said Andrzejewski.
Practical impact
Critics argue that such representation is largely symbolic and doubt it can do much to help protect and restore ecosystems.
Setting up committees to represent an ecosystem gives “power to particular people” to make decisions about what is or isn’t in its interest, said Michael Livermore, a professor of law at the University of Virginia who specializes in environmental law, among other topics.
But there’s no guarantee that they’ll make the right call, or that it’ll be heeded. “I think part of the issue with a legal right is that you still run into problems, like what’s best for an ecosystem? And who’s going to make that decision?” he said.
In Ecuador, for example, environmental activists challenged a large-scale mining project located in one of the most biodiversity-rich areas of the planet, saying it violated nature’s rights — but the court ruled against them, arguing that the government’s interests to exploit the resource were important enough to override the nature rights argument.
Giving ecosystems legal status also does not guarantee protection — granting the Indian Ganges River legal personhood in 2017 has not prevented it from deteriorating, for example.
Livermore argues there are more efficient alternatives to protecting nature, such as preserving people’s rights to organize, providing protections for environmental organizations or improving decision-making processes to give more power to Indigenous communities.
Companies have so far remained relatively quiet on the movement — to Livermore, that’s a sign that giving rights to nature doesn’t pose much of a challenge.
“If it’s such a powerful tool to protect the environment, why don’t the special interests that worry about that, who would be opposed to very strong environmental protections, why aren’t they fighting it?” he said.
KYIV — Washington is investigating reports that U.S. military vehicles were used in raids on Russia, a White House official said Wednesday, warning Ukraine and pro-Ukraine forces against using U.S. equipment to attack inside Russia.
Two pro-Ukraine Russian paramilitary groups claimed responsibility for an incursion Monday into Russia’s Belgorod region from Ukraine, in which they overran several small villages. Moscow said Wednesday it had defeated the groups, killing more than 70 people and destroying U.S.-made military vehicles.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday the White House is “looking into those reports that the U.S. equipment and vehicles could have been involved,” hinting at frustration in Washington.
“We’ve been pretty darn clear: We don’t support the use of U.S.-made equipment for attacks inside Russia … we’ve been clear about that with the Ukrainians,” Kirby said. “I won’t get into private discussions that we’re having with them. But I think we’ve been nothing but consistent about our concerns in that regard.”
Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Tuesday said the U.S. had not authorized nor received Ukrainian requests for transferring equipment to paramilitary groups. He also expressed doubts about the Russian reports and images appearing to show U.S.-made vehicles.
“I don’t know if it’s true or not, in terms of the veracity of that imagery,” said Ryder. “You’ll recall [this week] there were some bogus images of reported, alleged explosions at the Pentagon. So, you know, we just — all of us, both within the [defense department] and I’m sure in the … journalistic community, have to take a look at these things and make sure we get the facts before we make assumptions.”
Ukraine has denied involvement in the attack, saying the two groups — Legion of Free Russia and Russian Volunteer Corps — consist only of Russian citizens who are fighting on Kyiv’s side, aiming to create a demilitarized zone on the border with Ukraine.
Andriy Cherniak, a representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence or HUR, told POLITICO that military aid provided by the U.S. and other Western allies is strictly limited for use by the Ukrainian army.
“Every bullet is tracked not only by us but also by our Western allies,” Cherniak said, adding he did not know where the paramilitary groups got the U.S.-made vehicles. While he insisted the groups acted on their own, Cherniak said HUR has been in contact with them and has observed increased anti-Putin sentiment among Russians.
“Our main goal is to protect Ukraine. For us, those are Russian citizens who are against Putin and want to shake his regime. So we work with whoever we can to reach our main goal,” Cherniak said. “More and more in Russia understand they don’t want to die for [Putin] at war.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu described the groups as Ukrainian “nationalists” during a televised meeting with Russian military officials and displayed images of two severely damaged armored vehicles that look similar to those provided by the U.S. to Ukraine as part of military aid.
“During counterterrorist operations, units of nationalist formations were blocked and defeated by air strikes and artillery fire and active actions. The remnants of the nationalists were thrown into the territory of Ukraine, where the fight continued until they were completely eliminated,” Shoigu said.
The two groups themselves, however, claimed they were able to return to Ukraine with only two killed and 10 injured from the Legion of Free Russia, as well as two injured from the Russian Volunteer Corps.
When asked about how they got U.S.-made vehicles, Russian Volunteer Corps’ Denis Kapustin, aka “White Rex” (the same name as his white nationalist clothing line), joked that his fighters could have purchased them at any military store — mocking remarks from Vladimir Putin about how Russian-backed militants got weapons to fight Ukraine in Donbas in 2014.
Kapustin also claimed his group had taken back military vehicles stolen from Ukraine.
“The goal of our peacekeeping operation into Belgorod region was also to destroy law enforcement serving Putin’s regime and also demonstrate to the people of Russia that resistance is possible,” the Legion of Free Russia said Tuesday.
The Russian Volunteer Corps also claimed they wanted to show Russians they are not protected by Putin.
Alexander Ward reported from and Lara Seligman contributed reporting from Washington.
LONDON — British politicians are now a legitimate military target for Moscow, a senior Russian official said, after the U.K.’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly argued Ukraine has the right to use force within Russian borders.
Speaking in Estonia Tuesday, Cleverly said Ukraine “has a right” to project force “beyond its own borders” as part of its self-defense, following a series of drone strikes that hit Moscow’s wealthiest neighborhoods. The U.K. minister argued that Kyiv striking inside Russia would “undermine” the Kremlin’s ability to continue its war in Ukraine, which has officially denied responsibility for the attack.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, hit back on Wednesday arguing that the U.K. is “de facto leading an undeclared war against Russia” by supplying Ukraine with military aid and specialists.
“That being the case, any of its public officials (either military, or civil, who facilitate the war) can be considered as a legitimate military target,” he wrote on Twitter.
Medvedev, who regularly makes blunt remarks about the war in Ukraine and has called for the killing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warned: “The goofy officials of the U.K., our eternal enemy, should remember that within the framework of the universally accepted international law which regulates modern warfare, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions with their additional protocols, their state can also be qualified as being at war.”
Cleverly’s remarks meanwhile appear to be at odds with the U.S.’ position. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing Tuesday that the U.S. was still gathering information on the reports of drones striking in Moscow.
“We do not support attacks inside of Russia. That’s it. Period,” she said.
KYIV — Two Russian military groups reportedly fighting on Kyiv’s side of the war in Ukraine — Legion of Free Russia and Russian Volunteer Corps — said they entered Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday and overran villages.
“The Legion and the RVC completely liberated Kozinka village, Belgorod Oblast. Forward units have entered Graivoron. Moving on. Russia will be free!” the Legion tweeted.
The Russian groups claimed the liberation of at least two villages — Kozinka, and Gora-Podol — in the region bordering Ukraine.
Local Russian Telegram channels and media reported heavy fighting in several villages next to the border, including Graivoron, a town where a Russian military base is located.
“Ukrainian Armed Forces saboteurs group entered the territory of the Graivoronsk district. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation together with the Border Service, the Russian Guard, and the FSB [intelligence service] are taking the necessary measures to eliminate the enemy,” Belgorod Governor Viacheslav Gladkov said in a statement.
He later added on his Telegram channel that a “counter-terrorist operation” had been launched by the Russian authorities, including ID checks and “the suspension of the activities of industries that use ‘explosive, radioactive, chemically and biologically hazardous substances.’”
The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Department claimed that both military groups consist only of Russian citizens and aim to create a demilitarized zone on the border with Ukraine.
“Yes, today the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Legion of Freedom of Russia, consisting of citizens of the Russian Federation, launched an operation to liberate these territories of the Belgorod region from the so-called Putin regime and push back the enemy in order to create a certain security zone to protect the Ukrainian civilian population,” Andriy Yusov, Ukraine’s military intelligence representative, told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.
Legion of Free Russia on Monday morning published a video statement on its Telegram channel, claiming the soldiers storming Belgorod are Russians who want to liberate Russia from Putin. “Stay at home, do not resist, and do not be afraid: We are not your enemies. Unlike Putin’s zombies, we do not touch civilians and do not use them for our purposes. Freedom is near.”
On Tuesday, Gladkov said drones had been shot down “over Belgorod and the Belgorod region” by local air defense, without any casualties.
