PennDOT is beginning a $261 million project to repair the Girard Point Bridge on I-95 over the Schuylkill River. Work starts Jan. 12 and will take five years.
Michael Tanenbaum
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Tag: Bridges
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Girard Point Bridge to get $261 million in repairs over the next five years
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How PennDOT plans to install a 258-foot pedestrian bridge over Columbus Boulevard in one night
“Basically, everybody goes to bed, they wake up in the morning and there’s a bridge there,” said Michael Altomari, assistant construction engineer at PennDOT
The bridge will not be open to pedestrians and cyclists for about another year after the arch is installed. Additional work will include constructing the approach spans, decking and railings. The bridge cables also will need to be adjusted to their proper tension, and lights and security cameras will be installed for visibility and safety.
![South Street Bridge Two]()
Provided Image/PennDOT
A rendering shows plans for the South Street Bridge Extension, a 258-foot span that will carry the city’s existing structure from the east side of Interstate 95 across Christopher Columbus Boulevard to the Delaware River waterfront at Lombard Circle.
![South Street Existing]()
StreetView/Google Maps
The existing South Street Pedestrian Bridge was constructed in the mid-1990s, creating a path over Interstate 95 with a staircase leading down to Columbus Boulevard. The extension will take the bridge across Columbus Boulevard.
Planners initially considered building the bridge across Columbus Boulevard using a temporary pier in the middle of the road to support ongoing work. That plan would have required traffic control, disruptions and the use of shielding to protect drivers below. The old train tracks from the defunct Philadelphia Belt Line Railroad, now owned by CSX, also would have posed challenges.
“This is the smart way to do it, I think,” Altomari said of the overnight method.
PennDOT spokesperson Brad Rudolph said the agency has a time-lapse camera pointed at the location around the clock and will be able to show the public how the arch was moved into place.
Drawing more foot traffic to the waterfront
PennDOT believes easy access to the waterfront from South Street will maximize the use of new amenities and limit reliance on cars to get to them. The bridge will be about a 10-minute walk north along Columbus Boulevard to get to the future Park at Penn’s Landing.
On the east side of the bridge, PennDOT plans to build a “corkscrew”-style circle that allows people on bikes and wheelchairs to ease off the span gradually. Trees and bushes will be planted in the area, which sits right up against the river.
![PennDOT Circle Bridge]()
Provided Image/PennDOT
The east side of the bridge extension will have a circular ‘corkscrew’ design with landscaping next to the waterfront.
The existing South Street Pedestrian Bridge, owned by the city and accessed via Front Street, also will be rehabilitated as part of the project. It will remain unchanged except for the removal of its aluminum “Stroll” sculptures, which will be displayed at another location to be determined. PennDOT will rebuild the parking lot at the site of the existing bridge and maintain the new section over Columbus Boulevard.
When the Park at Penn’s Landing opens, it will have an ice rink, public gardens, memorials, children’s play area, amphitheater, food trucks, cafe and a mass-timber pavilion. There also will be a number of open spaces for performances, festivals, fairs and other events.
![Park Penn's Landing]()
Provided Image/DRWC
A rendering shows an aerial view of the Park at Penn’s Landing that will open in 2030.
Bonito and Altomari are confident the I-95 cap project is on schedule for completion in 2029, followed by about a year to build out the park. PennDOT and its partners – including the Delaware River Waterfront Corp., the William Penn Foundation and the city — anticipate the park will bring new foot traffic to the length of the waterfront for a safer, more welcoming atmosphere.
“The development of that area is going to draw people, which will also draw developers,” Altomari said. “There’s a lot of piers down in that area, places that maybe have been in a little disrepair or not worth the investment to somebody. Now they might be.”
Michael Tanenbaum
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Gov. Polis presents budget to lawmakers, focuses on proposal that would cut Medicaid programs
DENVER — For the second year in a row, Colorado is staring down a daunting budget deficit — and the governor believes cuts to Medicaid are one solution to balancing the budget.
The solution, however, feels more like a problem for many Colorado families worried about what it may mean for the future.
Every year, the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) is tasked with preparing budget recommendations for the General Assembly. The group of Colorado lawmakers are provided with budget requests from all executive and judicial departments by November 1.
Governor Jared Polis presented his budget proposal to the JBC on Wednesday morning.
The presentation began by setting the stage for the situation, where Gov. Polis cited the federal government shutdown, tariffs, and H.R. 1 (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) as factors that hurt Colorado’s budget.
“These actions, combined with large increases in Medicaid costs, are straining the General Fund. Difficult choices are needed to address these impacts and protect the progress we have made,” Gov. Polis said in his presentation.
A special session was held in August to address the state’s $1.2 billion budget hole, which was created by tax changes made in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Act (H.R.1). As a result, Colorado will collect less revenue than expected when lawmakers approved the state budget in May.
Some of that $1.2 billion revenue loss was absorbed by the state education fund and the affordable housing fund. Around $300 million that the state had in surplus, which would have been refunded to taxpayers, will now be used to help fill the gap. That left lawmakers with a budget gap estimated to be around $783 million.
Democratic legislative leaders and Polis had a three-pronged approach to address the budget gap:
- Cut special corporate tax breaks
- Dip into the state’s reserves
- Make spending cuts
During the special session, lawmakers cut corporate tax breaks by about $250 million. They left it to Polis to make the spending cuts and to determine how much to borrow from state reserves.
Just after the special session concluded, Polis announced a total of $250 million in cuts and redirected spending in order to balance the state budget.
The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), which administers Colorado’s Medicaid program, makes up roughly one third of the total General Fund appropriations for the next Fiscal Year.
As a result, in part, HCPF will see more than $79 million in cuts. About $38 million of that will come from freezing an increase in provider reimbursement rates that kicked in on July 1.
Then, an executive order from the end of October “initiated an additional $537 million in budget reductions to HCPF, most of which will begin this fiscal year to quickly realize savings to address the state’s current and future budget challenges,” according to the department.
HCPF has proposed several changes within budget requests targeted at saving money and the sustainability of programs. Their proposal was guided by a certain framework created by the department that aims to “avoid draconian cuts.”
As part of that framework, data analytics were employed to find trends in cost increases and examine why those increases were occurring.
“Medicaid is the fastest growing part of this budget that we present, considerably faster than education spending, the other big element,” Polis told the JBC on Wednesday. “You have to dig deeper within Medicaid. There are some costs that are not increasing more than others, and there are some that are… There’s some elements of Medicaid that have remained static and are sustainable. There’s other aspects that are not. We can’t just paint Medicaid with one broad stroke.”
Jim Waltz
Governor Jared Polis presented his budget proposal to the Joint Budget Committee on Wednesday morning. According to Polis, his proposal would protect the 1.2 million eligible Coloradans who are covered by Medicaid, as well as those who qualify in the future.
The overview of the budget requests for Fiscal Year 2026-27 reports that caseload costs within Medicaid are “growing faster than revenues will allow without crowding out other uses of the General Fund.” It continues to say that since Fiscal Year 2018-19, the General Fund appropriations for Medicaid have “grown far faster than inflation.”
Members of the JBC had concerns about Polis’ proposal following the presentation.
“My concern about the cuts that have already been made, and about what we’re looking at going forward, is that we are impacting our most vulnerable populations in the state,” said State Senator Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat. “Some of the people who have been reaching out to me have been talking about how they have a person that they care for that requires 24/7 care. They will literally not be able to survive… I just wonder what the long-term consequences are of the decisions that we’re making today that will restrict the kind of care that our most vulnerable populations are getting. And whether we are going to be driving more people into institutional settings, which are a lot more expensive than having people receive care in a less restrictive setting.”
State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican who represents Larimer and Weld counties, said she did not have many questions for Polis. Instead, she had comments she wanted the committee to consider.
“Last year, I asked you why I should think your budget was serious. This year, I definitely don’t think this budget is serious,” Kirkmeyer said. “We know where you used to balance the budget on the backs of students. Now you’re balancing the budget on the backs of people who rely on Medicaid, and you’re jeopardizing health care for everybody.”
Kirkmeyer called on the JBC to “do the right thing” and “build a budget that works for the people of this state.”
Denver7 asked Polis for a response to Kirkmeyer’s comments. His team sent Denver7 the statement below:
Gov. Polis is doing everything he can to lower the cost of healthcare. Senator Kirkmeyer can’t have it both ways and has generally voted to expand the size of government — pushing the state to make unsustainable spending decisions, and ignoring the impacts of H.R. 1 and the disastrous effects it will have on Coloradans’ access to healthcare. Governor Polis submitted a responsible, balanced budget proposal that fully funds schools, funds public safety improvement and increases funding for Medicaid to ensure our most vulnerable Coloradans continue to have access to the care they need and deserve, now and in the future.
Ally Sullivan, spokesperson for Governor Jared Polis’ Office
Meanwhile, 3-year-old Jackson Roberts was preparing for his weekly physical therapy appointment.
“Jackson, he cannot independently walk on his own, and so this is just kind of building that stability and the muscles that he needs in his legs to build up the endurance,” said his mother, Ciara Stewart. “Jackson has two extremely rare genetic mutations, and that has caused a multitude of brain deformities, severe developmental delays. “He is nonverbal. He is nonambulatory. But outside of all of the craziness that we endure, you know, Jackson is a smart, happy and joyful kid who’s full of potential.”
This year alone, Stewart said her son had spinal and eye surgery.
“It’s hard because I’m doing everything I can to give him every single opportunity to thrive and to grow and stand up, to be included in everyday activities,” Stewart said. “Being a first-time mom, this is not exactly what you dreamt of life to be, and you just have to like mold to the new reality and become the better version of the parent that your special needs child needs you to be.”
Stewart told Denver7 Medicaid has been their lifeline.
“If it wasn’t for Medicaid and these programs, we wouldn’t be able to afford these things for him,” Stewart said.
Stewart fears for the future of Medicaid in Colorado, specifically when it comes to Community Connector Services, a program that supports children learning how to safely and independently access their communities.
“What affects my son the most is Community Connector cuts that allows us to engage in the community in a safe way, and it gives us those resources that we need to be successful in an environment that’s not entirely sculpted for children like my son,” Stewart said.
Jim Waltz
Three-year-old Jackson Roberts relies on Medicaid. According to a funding request from the HCPF for Fiscal Year 2026-27, a solution to the budget deficit would be removing access to those Community Connector services for members who are under 6 years old.
“This will ensure that parental responsibilities are taken into account with this service, while allowing age-appropriate members to make meaningful connections within their communities,” the document states.
Stewart disagrees.
“Community Connector doesn’t replace a parent responsibility. It empowers it, at the end of the day,” she said. “It is a blessing and a half to see my son be able to navigate our home and communities and his school more independently.”
Ultimately, Stewart believes cuts to Medicaid would be felt throughout the entire Colorado community.
“I understand that budget cuts have to happen, and I just hope that they just don’t end up being as drastic as what it’s looking like. Because it’s not just my family, it’s thousands of families, thousands of disabled children, thousands of disabled adults,” said Stewart. “It’s not just an effect on families. It ripples through the economies and our communities as well.”
What exactly the future holds for Colorado health care programs is still uncertain, since the budget process is far from over.
In January, state departments can request adjustments to their appropriations from the JBC for the fiscal year ahead. Such requests are called supplementals, which are bills that can be introduced into the legislative session in early February.
Once the JBC has settled on their recommendations, the result is the Long Bill — the legislation that details the state budget. That is typically introduced into the session by late March or early April.
Related coverage:
Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Colette Bordelon
Denver7’s Colette Bordelon covers stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on crime, justice and issues impacting our climate and environment. If you’d like to get in touch with Colette, fill out the form below to send her an email.
Colette Bordelon
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The Baltimore collapse focused attention on vital bridges. Thousands are in poor shape across the US
After a yearlong closure, a bridge over the Puyallup River reopened in 2019 with a sturdy new span and a brand new name. It even won a national award.But today, the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge is closed again after federal officials raised concerns about a vintage section of the nearly century-old bridge that carried about 15,000 vehicles a day. It has no timetable to reopen because the city of Tacoma, Washington, first must raise millions of dollars to clean and inspect it.”It’s frustrating — and hard to comprehend how we got here,” said Ed Wallace, whose Harley-Davidson motorcycle store has lost customers since the nearby bridge was shuttered.Bridges fulfill a vital function that often goes overlooked until lives are lost or disrupted by a closure or collapse, like that of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday. That bridge crumpled when struck by a cargo ship, not because of poor maintenance. But thousands of others stand in worse shape. About 42,400 U.S. bridges are in poor condition, yet they carry about 167 million vehicles each day, according to the federal government. Four-fifths of them have problems with the legs holding them up or the arms supporting their load. And more than 15,800 of those bridges also were in poor shape a decade ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.One of those persistently poor bridges — carrying about 96,000 westbound vehicles daily on Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River in Rhode Island — was suddenly shut to traffic late last year, resulting in long delays as drivers diverted to new routes. In March, the governor announced that the bridge must be demolished and replaced. That could cost up to $300 million and take at least two years to complete.These closures illustrate a nationwide issue.”We have not maintained our infrastructure at the rate that we should for many, many years, and now we’re trying to play catch-up,” said Marsia Geldert-Murphey, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.When an old bridge gets closed because of safety concerns, it disrupts daily commutes, business supply chains and emergency response times by police, firefighters and medical personnel. Yet many bridges still await replacement or repairs because the costs can reach millions or even billions of dollars. A massive infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 directed $40 billion to bridges over five years — the largest dedicated bridge investment since construction of the interstate highway system, which began nearly 70 years ago. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that law already is funding over 7,800 bridge projects. One of the most notable is a $3.6 billion project in Cincinnati to build a long-awaited new bridge carrying traffic on Interstates 71 and 75 over the Ohio River at the Kentucky border.But funding from the infrastructure law will make only a dent in an estimated $319 billion of needed bridge repairs nationwide, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. “The bottom line is that America’s bridges need a lot of work,” Buttigieg told the AP after visiting the closed Rhode Island bridge. He added: “The sooner we can address those significant bridges, the less likely they will be abruptly taken out of service, or worse, experience the risk of a collapse.”Inspectors rate bridges using a 0-9 scale, with 7 or above considered “good.” A “poor” rating reflects a 4 or below. A mid-range rating is considered “fair.” The nation’s poor bridges are on average 70 years old.Even before the federal funding infusion, the number of bridges in poor condition declined 22% over the past decade as structures were repaired, replaced or permanently closed, according to the AP’s analysis. But in recent years, more bridges also slipped from good to fair condition. Though potholes on bridges can jar cars, many of the most concerning problems are below the surface. Chipping concrete and rusting steel can weaken the piers and beams that keep a bridge upright. When the condition of substructures or superstructures deteriorates too much, a bridge typically is closed out of public safety concerns.Though rare, bad bridges can eventually collapse. Design flaws contributed to the evening rush hour collapse of an Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis in 2007. The collapse killed 13 people and injured 145 others. It also was costly financially. A state analysis estimated Minnesota’s economy lost $60 million in 2007-2008 due to increased travel time and operating costs for commuters and businesses.In January 2022, a bridge carrying a bus and several cars collapsed over Fern Hollow Creek in Pittsburgh, causing injuries but no deaths. Federal investigators determined the steel legs had corroded to the point of having visible holes, yet inspectors failed to calculate the severity of the problem and the city failed to follow repeated recommendations. “This bridge didn’t collapse just by an act of God. It collapsed because of a lack of maintenance and repair,” National Transportation Safety Board member Michael Graham said. Video below: Small businesses face shipping delays after bridge collapse Iowa has the most poor bridges, followed by Pennsylvania, Illinois and Missouri. The twin Burlington Street bridges in Iowa City, Iowa, exemplify the financial challenges facing old bridges. The state owns the southbound span carrying vehicles over the Iowa River while the city owns the northbound span of what’s also known as state Highway 1. The city’s part, constructed in 1915, was rated in poor condition in the 2023 and 2013 National Bridge Inventory. Inspection reports show numerous cracks and structural deficiencies in the concrete bridge. The state’s side, built in 1968, is in much better condition. Although the federal infrastructure law provided a grant to analyze the bridges, the split ownership has made it difficult to fund the more than $30 million estimated cost of a replacement.”It’s not something we can just fund in a year and say: ‘Here we go, let’s do it quick,’” said city engineer Jason Havel. “It takes years of planning, years of working through dedicated funding.” In Rhode Island, problems had been mounting for the I-195 Washington Bridge connecting Providence to East Providence. It closed after an engineer in December noticed the failure of multiple steel tie rods in concrete beams at two piers. A subsequent examination found widespread structural problems. Joseph McHugh, an engineer with 40 years of experience in bridge and road construction, reviewed a draft engineering report compiled after the bridge’s closure along with inspection reports from July 2022 and July 2023.”This failure didn’t occur overnight,” McHugh told the AP. “To me, it should have been caught by an inspection, not by a contractor or whomever was looking at what was going on.”The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations that false payment claims for the bridge’s construction, inspection or repair were submitted to the federal government.Marco Pacheco, who owns a liquor store along a main road in a Portuguese neighborhood of East Providence, said he believes “mismanagement,” “negligence” and “incompetence” caused the closure. His business revenue is down 20% since the bridge closed. But he’s even more concerned about the long-term consequences. “That traffic doesn’t instantly come back. Folks have reshaped their patterns, their thought processes and so on,” Pacheco said.Business owners in Washington share similar concerns about the indefinite closure of the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge, in an industrial area near the Port of Tacoma. Several years ago, the city spent $42 million to replace a span leading up to the river. But the bridge was abruptly closed again last October after the Federal Highway Administration raised concerns that debris had prevented the inspection of potentially corroded steel connection points. To clean and inspect the bridge, the city first must encapsulate it to protect debris from falling into the river. But the city lacks the more than $6 million needed for the project. It also has no means of paying for a potential $280 million replacement.A nearby Interstate 5 bridge provides a good alternative but that means many motorists zoom right past an exit ramp without thinking about the Harley-Davidson store or other nearby businesses. At least one shop already has closed.Wallace, the Harley-Davidson store owner, wishes the city could re-open the bridge, at least temporarily. “Is there a peril that exists?” Wallace asks rhetorically. “Yeah, absolutely, a very serious one for me as a business owner.”___ Associated Press data reporter Kavish Harjai contributed. Harjai is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
After a yearlong closure, a bridge over the Puyallup River reopened in 2019 with a sturdy new span and a brand new name. It even won a national award.
But today, the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge is closed again after federal officials raised concerns about a vintage section of the nearly century-old bridge that carried about 15,000 vehicles a day. It has no timetable to reopen because the city of Tacoma, Washington, first must raise millions of dollars to clean and inspect it.
“It’s frustrating — and hard to comprehend how we got here,” said Ed Wallace, whose Harley-Davidson motorcycle store has lost customers since the nearby bridge was shuttered.
Bridges fulfill a vital function that often goes overlooked until lives are lost or disrupted by a closure or collapse, like that of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday. That bridge crumpled when struck by a cargo ship, not because of poor maintenance. But thousands of others stand in worse shape.
About 42,400 U.S. bridges are in poor condition, yet they carry about 167 million vehicles each day, according to the federal government. Four-fifths of them have problems with the legs holding them up or the arms supporting their load. And more than 15,800 of those bridges also were in poor shape a decade ago, according to an Associated Press analysis.
One of those persistently poor bridges — carrying about 96,000 westbound vehicles daily on Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River in Rhode Island — was suddenly shut to traffic late last year, resulting in long delays as drivers diverted to new routes. In March, the governor announced that the bridge must be demolished and replaced. That could cost up to $300 million and take at least two years to complete.
These closures illustrate a nationwide issue.
“We have not maintained our infrastructure at the rate that we should for many, many years, and now we’re trying to play catch-up,” said Marsia Geldert-Murphey, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
When an old bridge gets closed because of safety concerns, it disrupts daily commutes, business supply chains and emergency response times by police, firefighters and medical personnel. Yet many bridges still await replacement or repairs because the costs can reach millions or even billions of dollars.
A massive infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 directed $40 billion to bridges over five years — the largest dedicated bridge investment since construction of the interstate highway system, which began nearly 70 years ago.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that law already is funding over 7,800 bridge projects. One of the most notable is a $3.6 billion project in Cincinnati to build a long-awaited new bridge carrying traffic on Interstates 71 and 75 over the Ohio River at the Kentucky border.
But funding from the infrastructure law will make only a dent in an estimated $319 billion of needed bridge repairs nationwide, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.
“The bottom line is that America’s bridges need a lot of work,” Buttigieg told the AP after visiting the closed Rhode Island bridge. He added: “The sooner we can address those significant bridges, the less likely they will be abruptly taken out of service, or worse, experience the risk of a collapse.”
Inspectors rate bridges using a 0-9 scale, with 7 or above considered “good.” A “poor” rating reflects a 4 or below. A mid-range rating is considered “fair.” The nation’s poor bridges are on average 70 years old.
Even before the federal funding infusion, the number of bridges in poor condition declined 22% over the past decade as structures were repaired, replaced or permanently closed, according to the AP’s analysis. But in recent years, more bridges also slipped from good to fair condition.
Though potholes on bridges can jar cars, many of the most concerning problems are below the surface. Chipping concrete and rusting steel can weaken the piers and beams that keep a bridge upright. When the condition of substructures or superstructures deteriorates too much, a bridge typically is closed out of public safety concerns.
Though rare, bad bridges can eventually collapse.
Design flaws contributed to the evening rush hour collapse of an Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis in 2007. The collapse killed 13 people and injured 145 others. It also was costly financially. A state analysis estimated Minnesota’s economy lost $60 million in 2007-2008 due to increased travel time and operating costs for commuters and businesses.
In January 2022, a bridge carrying a bus and several cars collapsed over Fern Hollow Creek in Pittsburgh, causing injuries but no deaths. Federal investigators determined the steel legs had corroded to the point of having visible holes, yet inspectors failed to calculate the severity of the problem and the city failed to follow repeated recommendations.
“This bridge didn’t collapse just by an act of God. It collapsed because of a lack of maintenance and repair,” National Transportation Safety Board member Michael Graham said.
Video below: Small businesses face shipping delays after bridge collapse
Iowa has the most poor bridges, followed by Pennsylvania, Illinois and Missouri. The twin Burlington Street bridges in Iowa City, Iowa, exemplify the financial challenges facing old bridges. The state owns the southbound span carrying vehicles over the Iowa River while the city owns the northbound span of what’s also known as state Highway 1.
The city’s part, constructed in 1915, was rated in poor condition in the 2023 and 2013 National Bridge Inventory. Inspection reports show numerous cracks and structural deficiencies in the concrete bridge. The state’s side, built in 1968, is in much better condition.
Although the federal infrastructure law provided a grant to analyze the bridges, the split ownership has made it difficult to fund the more than $30 million estimated cost of a replacement.
“It’s not something we can just fund in a year and say: ‘Here we go, let’s do it quick,’” said city engineer Jason Havel. “It takes years of planning, years of working through dedicated funding.”
In Rhode Island, problems had been mounting for the I-195 Washington Bridge connecting Providence to East Providence. It closed after an engineer in December noticed the failure of multiple steel tie rods in concrete beams at two piers. A subsequent examination found widespread structural problems.
Joseph McHugh, an engineer with 40 years of experience in bridge and road construction, reviewed a draft engineering report compiled after the bridge’s closure along with inspection reports from July 2022 and July 2023.
“This failure didn’t occur overnight,” McHugh told the AP. “To me, it should have been caught by an inspection, not by a contractor or whomever was looking at what was going on.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations that false payment claims for the bridge’s construction, inspection or repair were submitted to the federal government.
Marco Pacheco, who owns a liquor store along a main road in a Portuguese neighborhood of East Providence, said he believes “mismanagement,” “negligence” and “incompetence” caused the closure. His business revenue is down 20% since the bridge closed. But he’s even more concerned about the long-term consequences.
“That traffic doesn’t instantly come back. Folks have reshaped their patterns, their thought processes and so on,” Pacheco said.
Business owners in Washington share similar concerns about the indefinite closure of the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge, in an industrial area near the Port of Tacoma. Several years ago, the city spent $42 million to replace a span leading up to the river. But the bridge was abruptly closed again last October after the Federal Highway Administration raised concerns that debris had prevented the inspection of potentially corroded steel connection points.
To clean and inspect the bridge, the city first must encapsulate it to protect debris from falling into the river. But the city lacks the more than $6 million needed for the project. It also has no means of paying for a potential $280 million replacement.
A nearby Interstate 5 bridge provides a good alternative but that means many motorists zoom right past an exit ramp without thinking about the Harley-Davidson store or other nearby businesses. At least one shop already has closed.
Wallace, the Harley-Davidson store owner, wishes the city could re-open the bridge, at least temporarily.
“Is there a peril that exists?” Wallace asks rhetorically. “Yeah, absolutely, a very serious one for me as a business owner.”
___
Associated Press data reporter Kavish Harjai contributed. Harjai is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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How to ease bridge-crossing fears after collapse of Key Bridge in Baltimore – WTOP News
A fear of bridges, especially after what happened on the Key Bridge in Baltimore, can be addressed with therapy or using drive-over services on bridges that are known for causing anxiety.
As engineers studied the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, one thing occurred to Ben Schafer, a bridge expert with the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University: “Most people have some natural trepidation when they’re driving across a large span bridge.”
Schafer said that for some, waking up to the news of the Key Bridge collapse likely fed “into a fear that they’re already dealing with.”
Schafer said the public should know that engineers, bridge designers and maintenance professionals view their job as a “solemn responsibility” to ensure the safety and soundness of infrastructure used every day. He added that the profession works to learn from failures like the one that led to the collapse of the bridge.
That trepidation can be addressed with therapy or using drive-over services on bridges that are known for causing anxiety. Yet, the bridge expert wants people to trust that engineers have their best interests in mind while building a long bridge.
Psychologist weighs in on ‘gephyrophobia’
Abigail Marsh, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown University, said she’s sympathetic to Schafer’s concern about fears of crossing bridges being exacerbated by the bridge collapse in Baltimore. However, her grandfather was also an engineer, so she understands the care and concern needed to build a bridge.
Marsh said some amount of anxiety around bridges is reasonable.
“So many of the kinds of things that we tend to fear are the result of evolutionary pressures that make us sensitive to certain kinds of danger,” she told WTOP.
Marsh said the fear of bridges manifests itself through a fear of heights. While many people experience some level of anxiety or fear of going over bridges, some have crippling phobias.
“The difference between having a fear and a true phobia is that only true phobias interfere with your ability to function and cause significant distress,” said Marsh.
Among the solutions to deal with the type of phobia that leaves people simply unable to drive over a bridge is some form of treatment, either through behavioral or cognitive behavioral therapy. Both forms are seen as the “gold standard approach’ in combating the fear, the professor said.
Through therapy, a client is taught to relax on cue. They then take that skill to confront the object causing the fear. A patient might start imagining themselves on a bridge or looking at photos of tall bridges, Marsh said. They may eventually walk over the overpass or, in some cases, drive over it.
Failing to address the phobia can actually create a situation where the fear is reinforced, she said.
Most people can successfully overcome those fears with therapy, but there are more immediate solutions. In some areas, a bridge authority may provide a service or access to a business that can transport you across the structure, known as drive-over services.
“You can ride as a passenger with your eyes shut, imagine that you’re somewhere else while a professional drives your car across the bridge, which I think is a wonderful service,” Marsh said.
More on the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore
The solution for those who fear the Chesapeake Bay Bridge
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge has been the subject of lots of social media posts and even YouTube videos, with some dubbing it “the scariest bridge in the world” or “America’s scariest bridge.”
Many drivers experience such severe fear that, at one time, Maryland provided a drive-over service. Until 2007, the Maryland Transit Authority Police would escort nervous drivers over the bridge before the service was dissolved.
Several businesses cropped up to fill the void, including the Kent Island Express: Bay Bridge Drive Overs.
Steven Eskew operates the business that, pre-pandemic, provided an average of 7,000 trips a year. Post-pandemic, Eskew told WTOP he’s closer to just over 5,000 trips a year, although business is ticking up.
Drivers call Eskew’s business about an hour before heading to the bridge and if they’re eastbound, they give a second call before approaching Annapolis. The meetup point is a weigh station that’s provided in cooperation with the Maryland Transit Authority.
“And then we just get into their vehicle. They get into their back seat or the passenger seat, whatever they’re comfortable with,” he said. “We drive them across and drop them off at a safe spot on the other side.”
Eskew said there are regular customers who depend on the service, using his business up to 1-3 times a week. Then there are seasonal travelers who may have heard about his company’s services in advance and use them once or twice a year.
Then, there is a third type of customer who drives up to the bridge and stops before attempting to cross. In those cases, Eskew’s business may get a call from police or workers for the Maryland Transportation Authority Police who service the bridge to meet the driver.
“They’ll have a panic attack, and 99% of the time, we can help them,” he said.
Eskew said there are different reactions from drivers depending on which direction they’re headed. When heading eastbound to the beaches, there are concrete barriers and a curve on either side of the bridge. Some people don’t like not being able to see over to the other side of the overpass, he said.
“I kind of coin that ‘the Christopher Columbus fear’ because people have the sense that they’re going off the edge,” he told WTOP.
The westbound trip is harder for other drivers to manage because the barriers are relatively low.
“I think it’s beautiful, but people are very uncomfortable” with the unobstructed view, Eskew said.
Once drivers know they don’t have to be behind the wheel, some preferences still stand out. Some enjoy taking in the view without the stress of driving, while others would cover themselves up and hide while crossing the Bay.
Eskew’s wife even came up with a creative addition to the service; she made sleep masks for customers so they could “just sit back and enjoy the ride,” he said.
In some cases, customers may take the wheel themselves, while Eskew and others sit on the passenger side and talk to them while they cross the bridge. He said it provides a distraction but can be tricky as some have panicked during the drive.
The type of vehicles differs, too, but Eskew says his business has transported tractor-trailers and motorcycles across the bridge.
“We even offer a bicycle service,” he said.
For cyclists, the issue isn’t fear, he said, but rather that the state doesn’t allow bikes to cross the bridge, so riders who want to get to the Eastern Shore need a way to get their bikes over.
“The bridge does not discriminate,” Eskew said. “If you don’t like driving the bridge, it is what it is.”
Eskew’s clients vary in gender, ages and professions, with the majority between the ages of 40 and 60. Airline pilots, psychologists, firefighters — anyone can experience the kind of fear that makes a $40 charge to have someone else do the driving worth it.
The fear can also crop up from nowhere for people who’ve lived in the area and driven back and forth to the Eastern Shore since they were old enough to drive. Eskew said he hears that a lot.
“They’re just uncomfortable with the drive,” he said. “Something just clicks … and it just happens.”
While he’s not up to pre-pandemic numbers, his business did tick up after places reopened because of the stress of driving the Bay Bridge. Relieving that stress is what his business is all about.
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Kate Ryan
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In Northern Ireland, ‘a Protestant state’ finally has a Catholic leader
Demands and priorities
Britain is providing the executive an extra £3.3 billion to start patching holes in services and pay long-delayed wage hikes that just triggered the biggest public sector strike in Northern Ireland’s history. The trouble is, the head of Northern Ireland’s civil service, Jayne Brady, has already told the new leaders that these eye-watering sums are still too small to pay the required bills. The U.K. expects Stormont to raise regional taxes, something local leaders have been loath to do.
If anything can unite unionist and republican politicians, it’s their shared demand for the U.K. Treasury to keep sending more moolah — even though the British government already has committed to pay Northern Ireland over the odds into perpetuity at a new rate of £1.24 versus an equivalent £1 spent in England.
Money demands and spending priorities should underpin short-term stability at Stormont. But a U.K. general election looms within months and DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson wants to reverse his party’s losses to Sinn Féin. That could be complicated by the fact that he’s just compromised on Brexit trade rules in a fashion that distresses and confuses many within his own divided party, leaving him vulnerable.
To strengthen his leadership, Donaldson boosted pragmatic allies and sought to neuter less reasonable opponents in Saturday’s DUP moves at Stormont.
The assembly’s new non-partisan speaker will be DUP lawmaker Edwin Poots, who defeated Donaldson for the party leadership in 2021 only to be tossed out almost immediately.
That move puts Poots — who used his previous role as Stormont’s agriculture minister to block essential resources for the required post-Brexit checks at ports — into a new strait-jacket of neutrality.
Little-Pengelly, by contrast, is one of Donaldson’s most trusted lieutenants and a Stormont insider. He put her into his own assembly seat when, shortly after the 2022 election, Donaldson dumped it in favor of staying an MP in London.
While Stormont is never more than one crisis away from another collapse, for Saturday, peace reigned — and an Irish republican, committed to Northern Ireland’s eventual dissolution, is in charge of making the place work.
Shawn Pogatchnik
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Taiwan’s new president: 5 things you need to know about William Lai
TAIPEI — Forget Xi Jinping or Joe Biden for a second. Meet Taiwan’s next President William Lai, upon whom the fate of U.S.-China relations — and global security over the coming few years — is now thrust.
The 64-year-old, currently Taiwan’s vice president, has led the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to a historic third term in power, a first for any party since Taiwan became a democracy in 1996.
For now, the capital of Taipei feels as calm as ever. For Lai, though, the sense of victory will soon be overshadowed by a looming, extended period of uncertainty over Beijing’s next move. Taiwan’s Communist neighbor has laid bare its disapproval of Lai, whom Beijing considers the poster boy of the Taiwanese independence movement.
All eyes are now on how the Chinese leader — who less than two weeks ago warned Taiwan to face up to the “historical inevitability” of being absorbed into his Communist nation — will address the other inevitable conclusion: That the Taiwanese public have cast yet another “no” vote on Beijing.
1. Beijing doesn’t like him — at all
China has repeatedly lambasted Lai, suggesting that he will be the one bringing war to the island.
As recently as last Thursday, Beijing was trying to talk Taiwanese voters out of electing its nemesis-in-chief into the Baroque-style Presidential Office in Taipei.
“Cross-Strait relations have taken a turn for the worse in the past eight years, from peaceful development to tense confrontation,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Chen Binhua said, adding that Lai would now be trying to follow an “evil path” toward “military tension and war.”
While Beijing has never been a fan of the DPP, which views China as fundamentally against Taiwan’s interests , the personal disgust for Lai is also remarkable.
Part of that stems from a 2017 remark, in which Lai called himself a “worker for Taiwanese independence,” which has been repeatedly cited by Beijing as proof of his secessionist beliefs.
Without naming names, Chinese President Xi harshly criticized those promoting Taiwan independence in a speech in 2021.
Without naming names, Chinese President Xi harshly criticized those promoting Taiwan independence | Mark Schiefelbein-Pool/Getty Images “Secession aimed at Taiwan independence is the greatest obstacle to national reunification and a grave danger to national rejuvenation,” Xi said. “Those who forget their heritage, betray their motherland, and seek to split the country will come to no good end, and will be disdained by the people and sentenced by the court of history.”
2. All eyes are on the next 4 months
Instability is expected to be on the rise over the next four months, until Lai is formally inaugurated on May 20.
No one knows how bad this could get, but Taiwanese officials and foreign diplomats say they don’t expect the situation to be as tense as the aftermath of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in 2022.
Already, days before the election, China sent several spy balloons to monitor Taiwan, according to the Taiwanese defense ministry. On the trade front, China was also stepping up the pressure, announcing a possible move to reintroduce tariffs on some Taiwanese products. Cases of disinformation and electoral manipulation have also been unveiled by Taiwanese authorities.
Those developments, combined, constitute what Taipei calls hybrid warfare — which now risks further escalation given Beijing’s displeasure with the new president.
No one knows how bad this could get, but Taiwanese officials and foreign diplomats say they don’t expect the situation to be as tense as the aftermath of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in 2022 | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images 3. Lai has to tame his independent instinct
In a way, he has already.
Speaking at the international press conference last week, Lai said he had no plan to declare independence if elected to the presidency.
DPP insiders say they expect Lai to stick to outgoing Tsai Ing-wen’s approach, without saying things that could be interpreted as unilaterally changing the status quo.
They also point to the fact that Lai chose as vice-presidential pick Bi-khim Hsiao, a close confidante with Tsai and former de facto ambassador to Washington. Hsiao has developed close links with the Biden administration, and will play a key role as a bridge between Lai and the U.S.
4. Taiwan will follow international approach
The U.S., Japan and Europe are expected to take precedence in Lai’s diplomatic outreach, while relations with China will continue to be negative.
Throughout election rallies across the island, the DPP candidate repeatedly highlighted the Tsai government’s efforts at diversifying away from the trade reliance on China, shifting the focus to the three like-minded allies.
Lai has to tame his independent instinct | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images Southeast Asia has been another top destination for these readjusted trade flows, DPP has said.
According to Taiwanese authorities, Taiwan’s exports to China and Hong Kong last year dropped 18.1 percent compared to 2022, the biggest decrease since they started recording this set of statistics in 1982.
In contrast, Taiwanese exports to the U.S. and Europe rose by 1.6 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively, with the trade volumes reaching all-time highs.
However, critics point out that China continues to be Taiwan’s biggest trading partner, with many Taiwanese businesspeople living and working in the mainland.
5. Lai might face an uncooperative parliament
While vote counting continues, there’s a high chance Lai will be dealing with a divided parliament, the Legislative Yuan.
Before the election, the Kuomintang (KMT) party vowed to form a majority with Taiwan People’s Party in the Yuan, thereby rendering Lai’s administration effectively a minority government.
While that could pose further difficulties for Lai to roll out policies provocative to Beijing, a parliament in opposition also might be a problem when it comes to Taiwan’s much-needed defense spending.
“A divided parliament is very bad news for defense. KMT has proven that they can block defense spending, and the TPP will also try to provide what they call oversight, and make things much more difficult,” said Syaru Shirley Lin, who chairs the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation, a Taipei-based policy think tank.
“Although all three parties said they wanted to boost defense, days leading up to the election … I don’t think that really tells you what’s going to happen in the legislature,” Lin added. “There’s going to be a lot of policy trading.”
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Aid convoys set course for Nagorno-Karabakh under new pact with Azerbaijan
KORNIDZOR, Armenia — Tons of humanitarian aid were en route on Saturday to Nagorno-Karabakh under the terms of a deal struck with the breakaway region’s Armenian leadership, Azerbaijan said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Saturday said it had dispatched its first shipment of food and fuel to reach the mountainous territory from Armenia since Azerbaijan launched its military offensive earlier this week. The convoy of four trucks drove across the Hakari Bridge, crossing the border amid warnings of a growing humanitarian crisis among the civilian population.
“We are looking at the different needs of the population,” a spokesperson for the ICRC told POLITICO. “And, underlining our role as a neutral intermediary, we are of course in dialog with all the decision-makers to be able to provide assistance that is much needed.”
The delivery marks only the second time civilian aid will reach Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia since Azerbaijan closed a checkpoint on the internationally recognized border after a firefight with Armenian troops on June 15. The ICRC has previously warned that without access, a humanitarian crisis could quickly unfold — and that situation has only been compounded by reports of mass displacements as Azerbaijani forces took territory inside the ethnic Armenian-held enclave in a 24-hour attack that began on Tuesday.
While the ICRC has been able to transfer wounded people to hospitals inside Nagorno-Karabakh, a mooted evacuation of the injured to Armenia has not yet materialized.
Azerbaijan has since said the local leadership must disband, its soldiers must lay down their weapons, and those living there will have to accept being governed as part of Azerbaijan, or else leave.
A U.S. congressional delegation visited the road leading to the Hakari Bridge moments before the ICRC convoy passed. Addressing reporters, Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said Washington was deeply concerned by the unfolding crisis and called for support for civilians “suffering as a result of the blockade for many months.”
Shortly afterwards, a long convoy of Russian peacekeepers’ vehicles raced down the road toward Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan said that it had dispatched two tanker trucks full of fuel to the de facto capital, Stepanakert. Moscow’s personnel had also been prevented from regularly using the road since June, reportedly only bringing in essentials for their own troops by helicopter.
Speaking to POLITICO, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy adviser, Hikmet Hajiyev, said the guarantee for humanitarian aid access “once again shows the good intentions and seriousness of the Azerbaijan government to meet the needs and requirements of Armenian residents and also to ensure a safe and decent reintegration process.”
A special government working group has been established, he added, to address the humanitarian, economic and social aspects of absorbing Nagorno-Karabakh and its tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians into Azerbaijan after 30 years of self-declared independence. The leadership of the unrecognized state said on Wednesday that it had been forced to accept a Moscow-brokered surrender agreement as its troops were routed. Azerbaijan says Armenian fighters have already begun surrendering their weapons under the terms of the deal.
“Karabakh was a powder keg and the most militarized zone in the world,” Hajiyev added. “But now that is in the past. Under these circumstances, there are much better chances for peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
However, concerns remain that tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the crisis-hit region could be forced to flee their homes, with local officials warning of “ethnic cleansing.”
According to Laurence Broers, an expert on the conflict at Chatham House, the question is now whether the apparent goodwill gestures solidify into something more permanent.
“We’ve got to end this stop-start humanitarian aid paradigm,” he said. “We need to have a long-term solution around access and, just as importantly, we have to have concentrated attention so that those who want to get out of Karabakh can still do so.”
Gabriel Gavin
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normal decisive superficial
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Sun, sea and sanctions evasion: Where Russians are spending the summer
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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 villas sold there since 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.
Gabriel Gavin
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Drone attack on tanker shows Kyiv’s intent to hit Russian energy shipments
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KYIV — An overnight naval drone attack against a Russian tanker in the Black Sea signals a potential new front in the Ukraine war, with Kyiv delivering its strongest message to date that it is willing to target Moscow’s all-important shipments of oil and fuel.
The battle for supremacy in the Black Sea is ramping up fast, with massive implications for global energy and food security. The attack on the tanker off Crimea came only a day after another Ukrainian marine drone — a flat, arrowhead-shaped vessel packed with explosives — targeted a Russian naval base near the port of Novorossiysk, badly damaging a warship.
“The tanker was damaged in the Kerch Strait during an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday. “The crew is safe, the Maritime Rescue Center informed us. The engine room was damaged. Two tugboats arrived at the scene of an emergency with a tanker in the Kerch Strait, the question of the towing vessel is being resolved,” it said.
Russia’s Federal Marine and River Transport Agency reported it was a SIG oil and chemical tanker — a ship whose owner, St. Petersburg-based company Transpetrochart, was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019 for supplying jet fuel for Russian forces in Syria.
Tensions are rising in the Black Sea after Russia last month announced it was withdrawing from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative and started attacking Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea coast and on the Danube River with missiles, destroying tens of thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain.
After those attacks and the blockade, Ukrainian officials issued a statement in July that Russian vessels will be no longer safe in the Black Sea. Kyiv’s defense ministry said in a statement that such vessels “may be considered by Ukraine as carrying military cargo with all the corresponding risks” from midnight Friday.
On Saturday, Kyiv announced a “war risk area” around Russian ports on the Black Sea, specifically citing the ports of Novorossiysk, Anapa, Gelendzhik, Tuapse, Sochi and Taman. The declaration will be in effect from August 23 “until further notice,” it said.
‘Completely legal’
Marine Traffic, an online maritime tracking site, has the latest position of the SIG tanker fixed near the Kerch Strait “at anchor.”
Russia’s Marine and River Transport Agency reported all 11 crew members on board were safe and that the tanker was struck in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side, presumably as a result of an attack by a marine drone. By morning, the water pouring to the engine room has been staunched, and the vessel was afloat, Russian official said.
Ukraine almost never directly takes responsibility for these kinds of attacks. However, Vasyl Malyuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, has previously claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Crimean bridge and hinted that there will be more similar attacks soon.
“Anything that happens with the ships of the Russian Federation or the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely logical and effective step in relation to the enemy. Moreover, such special operations are conducted in the territorial waters of Ukraine and are completely legal,” Malyuk said in a statement on Saturday.
“So, if the Russians want that to stop, they should leave the territorial waters of Ukraine and our land. And the sooner they do it, the better it will be for them. Because we will one hundred percent defeat the enemy in this war.”
Waters near Russian-occupied Crimea and the Kerch Strait are Ukrainian territorial waters, according to international maritime law.
“Since 1991, Russia has systematically used the territorial waters of Ukraine to organize armed aggressions: against the Georgian people and against the people of Syria,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a social media post on Saturday.
“Today, they terrorize peaceful Ukrainian cities and destroy grain, condemning hundreds of millions to starvation. It’s time to say to the Russian killers, ‘It’s enough.’ There are no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas,” the ministry said.
Veronika Melkozerova
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Drones hit Moscow city center in latest attack on Russian territory
Several drones attacked the center of Moscow in the early hours of Sunday morning, in the latest assault on Russian territory that the city’s mayor blamed on Kyiv.
The drones hit two high-rise buildings in an area called Moscow City, a posh business district in the center of the Russian capital, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a Telegram statement on Sunday.
“Ukrainian drones attacked tonight. The facades of two city office towers were slightly damaged. There are no victims or injured,” Sobyanin said.
Russian media reported that a 50-story building in Moscow City was evacuated. And Russian social media users posted videos of blasts.
Russian media channel Astra reported that one of the drones damaged the 10th floor of an office building in Moscow City, where at least three Russian ministries have their offices — the Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Trade and Ministry of Digital Development.
Ukraine did not officially take responsibility for the attack. “We can neither confirm nor deny,” Andriy Yusov, representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, told POLITICO. Ukrainian officials almost never admit responsibility for military operations in Russian territory.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a third drone was shot down in the Moscow region.
The attack on Moscow happened the night after Ukrainian Armed Forces hit a key bridge in Chonhar. The Friday night bombing severely damaged one of the strategic supply routes for the Russian army occupying the south of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Strategic Communications Center said in a statement on Saturday.
Vladimir Saldo, a Russian-installed official in the occupied part of the Kherson region, had said earlier Saturday that Ukrainian forces launched 12 Storm Shadow missiles at the bridge in Chonhar. He said that all missiles were shot down by Russian air defense, providing no evidence for his claim.
This is not the first attack on the Chonhar bridge. On June 22, Ukrainians attacked the bridge with a Storm Shadow missile, Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov, chief of the Main Operational Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a July 5 interview with the Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform.
The attack on the Chonhar bridge came the day after a missile damaged the city center of Taganrog in the Rostov region of Russia. Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said a missile fell near Chekhov Sad cafe in the city center. Sixteen people were wounded, but no one died, he said in a statement.
Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the Taganrog attack. The Russian Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of using a Soviet-made S200 missile to attack Taganrog. It said air defense shot down the weapon but falling debris caused damage and injuries.
Russian independent media Istories reported that a missile hit 10 kilometers away from Russian strategic bombers at an airfield used to bomb Ukraine.
Veronika Melkozerova
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Russia closes Crimea bridge — again — after attack on ammo depot
Four days after re-opening the strategic Crimea bridge that links Russia to the occupied Ukrainian peninsula, Moscow was forced to close it again due to another attack.
A drone assault on an ammunition depot in the Krasnogvardeysky district has caused residents within a 5 kilometer radius of the area to be evacuated, and for rail traffic to be suspended on the Kerch bridge into Crimea. Social media reports suggested that an oil depot had been struck in Oktyabr’skiy, south of the town of Krasnogvardeysky and close to an airfield.
The attack was more than 200 kilometers from the bridge, but Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of occupied Crimea, said on Telegram that train traffic will be suspended “to minimize risk.” The main rail line from the bridge travels through Crimea and eventually branches around to Krasnogvardeysky, a small town roughly in the center of the Russian occupied territory.
Earlier, Aksyonov reported on an attempted drone raid on infrastructure in the same district, Russian state-owned media TASS reported. POLITICO has been unable to verify these reports.
The Kerch bridge, completed in 2018, four years after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal occupation of Crimea, is a critical land route into the peninsula, re-supplying Moscow’s forces fighting in southern Ukraine with troops, weapons and fuel.
Its closure on Saturday is the second in a week, after the bridge was struck by two drones on Monday, killing two civilians and collapsing part of the roadway structure. One lane was re-opened and the rail line continued to operate.
The bridge was also the target of an attack during Ukraine’s counteroffensive last October.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Aspen security conference in the U.S. on Friday that the Kerch bridge was a military target, according to a Reuters report. “This is the route used to feed the war with ammunition and this is being done on a daily basis. And it militarizes the Crimean peninsula,” Zelenskyy said.
“For us, this is understandably an enemy facility built outside international laws and all applicable norms. So, understandably, this is a target for us. And a target that is bringing war, not peace, has to be neutralized,” the Ukrainian leader said, in comments relayed through an interpreter.
No one has yet come forward to take responsibility for this week’s attacks.
Helen Collis
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Why Latin America still won’t condemn Putin’s war in Ukraine
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The ghosts of colonial history returned to haunt European and Latin American leaders at their summit in Brussels.
For the guests, four hundred years of European colonial rule, economic exploitation and slavery was front of mind. For the hosts, it was Russia’s war on Ukraine in the here and now.
The divergence in views was so profound that the two sides struggled to align their thinking at their first summit in eight years — especially to find words to condemn Russia’s war of aggression in their closing communiqué.
That made the two-day gathering frustrating for all concerned — but especially for leaders of the EU’s newest member states from Eastern Europe, which have their own bitter memories of Soviet imperial rule and Russian aggression.
“It is actually a war of colonization,” Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš said of the 16-month-old Ukraine conflict.
“There is a former colonizer, Russia, and a former colony, Ukraine. And the former overlord is trying to take back their one-time possession. I think that many countries around the world can relate to that.”
Despite the pre-summit rhetoric highlighting the two continents’ shared values, EU leaders struggled to persuade the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — which includes traditional allies of Moscow such as Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela — to clearly condemn Russia’s war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — a regular guest in Brussels — wasn’t invited this time. Wrangling over the wording in their joint declaration delayed the end of the meeting by hours as leaders sought to bridge the gaps. In the end, only Nicaragua dissented.
“No one intends to lecture anyone,” said European Council President Charles Michel, seeking to placate his guests. “This is not how it works, we have a lot of respect for those countries, for the traditions, for the culture, and the idea is always to engage in a spirit of mutual respect.”
Four hundred years
Spain, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, has its eyes on Latin America and likes to emphasize the close cultural and linguistic ties between the two.
But those links hark back to Spain — and Europe’s — colonial past. The Spanish kingdom colonized much of Latin America starting in 1493 and, over the next 400 years, acquired vast wealth by exploiting its lands and people. The European slave trade also forcibly transported millions of Africans into slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.
While European leaders hoped to ease geopolitical tensions, their Latin American counterparts came to the table with a clear message: Defining relations today means addressing and rectifying past injustices — especially as the EU looks once again to the resource-rich region, this time to power its green transition.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves | Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP via Getty Images The prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — a small island state that heads up the 33-nation group — called for talks on economic reparations for colonization and enslavement.
“Resources from the slave trade and from slavery helped to fuel the industrial revolution that has laid the basis for a lot of the wealth within Western Europe,” Ralph Gonsalves told a small group of reporters on Tuesday.
This was part of his argument for a plan to “to repair the historical legacies of underdevelopment resulting from native genocide and the enslavement of African bodies,” as he said on Monday ahead of the summit.
Trade tensions
Trade talks between the EU and Mercosur — which groups four of Latin America’s big economies — also reflected the broader tensions over what it really means for Europe to start afresh in a relationship of equals.
Beyond a cursory mention of a Mercosur deal in the final statement, talks with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay were kept on the sidelines despite previous hopes that the summit could inject new energy into negotiations on wrapping up a trade deal.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did, however, say after the summit that “our ambition is to … conclude [at] the latest by the end of this year.”
Industry and civil society have fundamentally different interpretations around how much — or how little — the deal would help put the countries on equal footing with their European partners.
For businesses, the deal needs to happen to ensure the region remains on the EU’s political and economic map.
“For us, the [trade] agreements are important. We need stability and don’t want to be at the mercy of political changes,” said Luisa Santos of the industry lobby group BusinessEurope.
But NGOs don’t see it that way. “Any proposal that leaves the region as a mere provider of natural resources for the benefit of the one percent in the region, big corporations and rich countries is business as usual,” said Hernán Saenz from the NGO Oxfam.
Resource craze
Sealing the Mercosur deal has gained importance for the EU, which is banking on the resource-rich region to power the wind turbines and electric vehicles it needs to meet its climate targets.
Brazil is the largest exporter of strategic raw materials to the EU by volume, while the “lithium triangle” spanning Chile, Argentina and Bolivia hosts about half of the world’s lithium reserves. As part of the summit, Brussels and Chile signed a new memorandum of understanding on raw materials.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (right) in Brussels | Dati Bendo/EC But the EU’s new appetite for those metals and minerals evoques those dark memories of Spanish conquistadors who set out to dominate large parts of South America — in the name of god, glory and, not least, gold, fueling an economic boom back home while stripping Latin America of its riches.
While von der Leyen on Monday announced Brussels will pump over €45 billion into the region through its Global Gateway program — for infrastructure projects that, at least in part, will also benefit the EU’s private sector — Europe is coming late to the party in a region where China has already expanded its influence.
And raw materials partnerships today, the region’s countries emphasized, cannot be based on a model where resource-rich countries mine the valuable resources — often under poor environmental and working conditions — only for them to be shipped abroad for processing and manufacturing, making them reliant on imports for finished products.
“This was the first time that we had the opportunity to discuss in such clear terms a mechanism that would take us away from extractivism in Latin America,” Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández said after the summit.
“It took five centuries, but we managed it — I’m saying that half in jest, but we have at last succeeded.”
Camille Gijs and Barbara Moens contributed reporting.
Sarah Anne Aarup and Antonia Zimmermann
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Defiant Ukraine says dam carnage won’t stop counteroffensive
KYIV — Ukrainian officials insist the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, which unleashed massive flooding in the Kherson region, won’t stand in the way of Kyiv’s counteroffensive.
“Ukraine is equipped with all the necessary watercraft and pontoon bridge crossings for crossing water obstacles,” the Strategic Communications Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (Stratcom) said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ukraine is ready to restore and rebuild the territories liberated from Russian aggression.”
Western leaders, including NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU High Representative Josep Borrell, among others, have blamed Moscow for blowing up the dam, which is located in an area of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces. Kyiv argues that the Kremlin was seeking to flood the areas around it to make them less accessible to Ukrainian tanks and personnel in a counteroffensive.
Ukraine has been warning that Russia would seek to destroy the dam since last October, when Kyiv launched its surprise counteroffensive and regained swathes of territory from Moscow’s forces.
Russia, after initially claiming the dam had burst of its own accord on Tuesday, subsequently blamed Ukraine’s forces for bombing it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Kyiv had sabotaged the dam, which supplied water to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, to deprive it of water.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected this argument, saying in a video address to the Bucharest Nine Summit on Tuesday: “Russia has been controlling the dam and the entire Kakhovka HPP for more than a year. It is physically impossible to blow it up somehow from the outside, by shelling. It was mined by the Russian occupiers. And they blew it up.”
Meanwhile, last week, a Russian government decree suspended requirements to investigate incidents at energy infrastructure in occupied Ukraine.
On Monday, a day before the dam was blown up, the Kremlin claimed Russia had prevented Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Kyiv dismissed that idea, stating instead that its forces had succeeded in retaking some territory around Bakhmut, the town in Donbas that Russia’s forces claimed to have full control over.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Russia responded with another barrage of airstrikes aimed mostly at Kyiv; Ukraine shot all 35 missiles down.
Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.
Veronika Melkozerova
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Russians shooting at rescuers in flooded areas, Zelenskyy says
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Voiced by artificial intelligence.
Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.
KYIV — Russian forces are shooting at Ukrainian rescuers attempting to reach those trapped in flood-struck areas of occupied Kherson after the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an exclusive interview.
“As soon as our helpers try to rescue them, they are shot at,” Zelenskyy said, referring to efforts to reach residents of towns on the Russian-occupied bank of the Dnipro River, which has been inundated with floodwater after blasts partially destroyed the dam on Tuesday. The floodwaters threaten 80 settlements on both the Ukrainian-held and Russian-occupied sides of the river, according to Kyiv.
“People, animals have died,” Zelenskyy said. “From the roofs of the flooded houses, people see drowned people floating by. You can see that on the other side. It’s very hard to get people out of the occupied part of Kherson region. When our forces try to get them out, they are shot at by occupiers from a distance.”
He added: “We won’t be able to see all the consequences for a few days, when the water has trickled down a bit.”
After initially denying that the dam had been blown up, Russia blamed Kyiv for the disaster. The dam bridges the Dnipro River, holding back as much as 18 cubic kilometers of water, and was a vital source of water to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Ukraine says the Kremlin is behind the destruction of the dam, as part of a desperate bid to hold back Kyiv’s expected counteroffensive.
“They understand very well that they will lose this battle,” Zelenskyy told Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. “They are dragging out the liberation of our territories.”
Pointing to the fact that the dam has been under Russian forces’ control since the very beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Zelenskyy said the Kremlin was to blame.
“This is happening on occupied territory,” Zelenskyy said, adding that he had long warned his Western allies of the probability the Russians would attempt to destroy the dam.
“Everyone said: ‘The risk is high that the dam will be blown up if the adversary senses that we will come upon these territories to liberate them,’” the Ukrainian president said. The Russians “are afraid that we will start the counteroffensive in this direction and they want to make it difficult to liberate our areas. They didn’t think twice about flooding their occupied territories as well. I don’t see any other reasons.”
Zelenskyy also took aim at international humanitarian organizations, which he said were missing in action when it came to rescue efforts on the ground.
“They are not there,” he said. While Ukraine has appealed for help, “we haven’t received any response. I am shocked.”
Paul Ronzheimer reported from Kyiv.
Paul Ronzheimer and Zoya Sheftalovich
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2023’s most important election: Turkey
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For Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, next month’s election is of massive historical significance.
It falls 100 years after the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular republic and, if Erdoğan wins, he will be empowered to put even more of his stamp on the trajectory of a geostrategic heavyweight of 85 million people. The fear in the West is that he will see this as his moment to push toward an increasingly religiously conservative model, characterized by regional confrontationalism, with greater political powers centered around himself.
The election will weigh heavily on security in Europe and the Middle East. Who is elected stands to define: Turkey’s role in the NATO alliance; its relationship with the U.S., the EU and Russia; migration policy; Ankara’s role in the war in Ukraine; and how it handles tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The May 14 vote is expected to be the most hotly contested race in Erdoğan’s 20-year rule — as the country grapples with years of economic mismanagement and the fallout from a devastating earthquake.
He will face an opposition aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi,” who is promising big changes. Polls suggest Kılıçdaroğlu has eked out a lead, but Erdoğan is a hardened election campaigner, with the full might of the state and its institutions at his back.
“There will be a change from an authoritarian single-man rule, towards a kind of a teamwork, which is a much more democratic process,” Ünal Çeviköz, chief foreign policy adviser to Kılıçdaroğlu told POLITICO. “Kılıçdaroğlu will be the maestro of that team.”
Here are the key foreign policy topics in play in the vote:
EU and Turkish accession talks
Turkey’s opposition is confident it can unfreeze European Union accession talks — at a standstill since 2018 over the country’s democratic backsliding — by introducing liberalizing reforms in terms of rule of law, media freedoms and depoliticization of the judiciary.
The opposition camp also promises to implement European Court of Human Rights decisions calling for the release of two of Erdoğan’s best-known jailed opponents: the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party Selahattin Demirtaş and human rights defender Osman Kavala.
“This will simply give the message to all our allies, and all the European countries, that Turkey is back on track to democracy,” Çeviköz said.
Even under a new administration, however, the task of reopening the talks on Turkey’s EU accession is tricky.
Turkey’s opposition is aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi” | Burak Kara/Getty Images Anti-Western feeling in Turkey is very strong across the political spectrum, argued Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.
“Foreign policy will depend on the coherence of the coalition,” he said. “This is a coalition of parties who have nothing in common apart from the desire to get rid of Erdoğan. They’ve got a very different agenda, and this will have an impact in foreign policy.”
“The relationship is largely comatose, and has been for some time, so, they will keep it on life support,” he said, adding that any new government would have so many internal problems to deal with that its primary focus would be domestic.
Europe also seems unprepared to handle a new Turkey, with a group of countries — most prominently France and Austria — being particularly opposed to the idea of rekindling ties.
“They are used to the idea of a non-aligned Turkey, that has departed from EU norms and values and is doing its own course,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş a visiting fellow at Brookings. “If the opposition forms a government, it will seek a European identity and we don’t know Europe’s answer to that; whether it could be accession or a new security framework that includes Turkey.”
“Obviously the erosion of trust has been mutual,” said former Turkish diplomat Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, arguing that despite reticence about Turkish accession, there are other areas where a complementary and mutually beneficiary framework could be built, like the customs union, visa liberalization, cooperation on climate, security and defense, and the migration agreement.
The opposition will indeed seek to revisit the 2016 agreement with the EU on migration, Çeviköz said.
“Our migration policy has to be coordinated with the EU,” he said. “Many countries in Europe see Turkey as a kind of a pool, where migrants coming from the east can be contained and this is something that Turkey, of course cannot accept,” he said but added. “This doesn’t mean that Turkey should open its borders and make the migrants flow into Europe. But we need to coordinate and develop a common migration policy.”
NATO and the US
After initially imposing a veto, Turkey finally gave the green light to Finland’s NATO membership on March 30.
But the opposition is also pledging to go further and end the Turkish veto on Sweden, saying that this would be possible by the alliance’s annual gathering on July 11. “If you carry your bilateral problems into a multilateral organization, such as NATO, then you are creating a kind of a polarization with all the other members of NATO with your country,” Çeviköz said.
A protester pushes a cart with a RRecep Tayyip Erdoğan doll during an anti-NATO and anti-Turkey demonstration in Sweden | Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images A reelected Erdoğan could also feel sufficiently empowered to let Sweden in, many insiders argue. NATO allies did, after all, play a significant role in earthquake aid. Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın says that the door is not closed to Sweden, but insists the onus is on Stockholm to determine how things proceed.
Turkey’s military relationship with the U.S. soured sharply in 2019 when Ankara purchased the Russian-made S-400 missile system, a move the U.S. said would put NATO aircraft flying over Turkey at risk. In response, the U.S. kicked Ankara out of the F-35 jet fighter program and slapped sanctions on the Turkish defense industry.
A meeting in late March between Kılıçdaroğlu and the U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake infuriated Erdoğan, who saw it as an intervention in the elections and pledged to “close the door” to the U.S. envoy. “We need to teach the United States a lesson in this elections,” the irate president told voters.
In its policy platform, the opposition makes a clear reference to its desire to return to the F-35 program.
Russia and the war in Ukraine
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey presented itself as a middleman. It continues to supply weapons — most significantly Bayraktar drones — to Ukraine, while refusing to sanction Russia. It has also brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea.
Highlighting his strategic high-wire act on Russia, after green-lighting Finland’s NATO accession and hinting Sweden could also follow, Erdoğan is now suggesting that Turkey could be the first NATO member to host Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Maybe there is a possibility” that Putin may travel to Turkey on April 27 for the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear power reactor built by Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, he said.
Çeviköz said that under Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, Turkey would be willing to continue to act as a mediator and extend the grain deal, but would place more stress on Ankara’s status as a NATO member.
“We will simply emphasize the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, and in our discussions with Russia, we will certainly look for a relationship among equals, but we will also remind Russia that Turkey is a member of NATO,” he said.
Turkey’s relationship with Russia has become very much driven by the relationship between Putin and Erdoğan and this needs to change, Ülgen argued.
Turkey brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images “No other Turkish leader would have the same type of relationship with Putin, it would be more distant,” he said. “It does not mean that Turkey would align itself with the sanctions; it would not. But nonetheless, the relationship would be more transparent.”
Syria and migration
The role of Turkey in Syria is highly dependent on how it can address the issue of Syrians living in Turkey, the opposition says.
Turkey hosts some 4 million Syrians and many Turks, battling a major cost-of-living crisis, are becoming increasingly hostile. Kılıçdaroğlu has pledged to create opportunities and the conditions for the voluntary return of Syrians.
“Our approach would be to rehabilitate the Syrian economy and to create the conditions for voluntary returns,” Çeviköz said, adding that this would require an international burden-sharing, but also establishing dialogue with Damascus.
Erdoğan is also trying to establish a rapprochement with Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will only meet the Turkish president when Ankara is ready to completely withdraw its military from northern Syria.
“A new Turkish government will be more eager to essentially shake hands with Assad,” said Ülgen. “But this will remain a thorny issue because there will be conditions attached on the side of Syria to this normalization.”
However, Piccoli from Teneo said voluntary returns of Syrians was “wishful thinking.”
“These are Syrians who have been living in Turkey for more than 10 years, their children have been going to school in Turkey from day one. So, the pledges of sending them back voluntarily, it is very questionable to what extent they can be implemented.”
Greece and the East Med
Turkey has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric against Greece in recent months, with the Erdoğan even warning that a missile could strike Athens.
But the prompt reaction by the Greek government and the Greek community to the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and a visit by the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias created a new backdrop for bilateral relations.
A Turkish drill ship before it leaves for gas exploration | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images Dendias, along with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, announced that Turkey would vote for Greece in its campaign for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2025-26 and that Greece would support the Turkish candidacy for the General Secretariat of the International Maritime Organization.
In another sign of a thaw, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi visited Turkey this month, with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar saying he hoped that the Mediterranean and Aegean would be a “sea of friendship” between the two countries. Akar said he expected a moratorium with Greece in military and airforce exercises in the Aegean Sea between June 15 and September 15.
“Both countries are going to have elections, and probably they will have the elections on the same day. So, this will open a new horizon in front of both countries,” Çeviköz said.
“The rapprochement between Turkey and Greece in their bilateral problems [in the Aegean], will facilitate the coordination in addressing the other problems in the eastern Mediterranean, which is a more multilateral format,” he said. Disputes over maritime borders and energy exploration, for example, are common.
As far as Cyprus is concerned, Çeviköz said that it is important for Athens and Ankara not to intervene into the domestic politics of Cyprus and the “two peoples on the island should be given an opportunity to look at their problems bilaterally.”
However, analysts argue that Greece, Cyprus and the EastMed are fundamental for Turkey’s foreign policy and not much will change with another government. The difference will be more one of style.
“The approach to manage those differences will change very much. So, we will not hear aggressive rhetoric like: ‘We will come over one night,’” said Ülgen. “We’ll go back to a more mature, more diplomatic style of managing differences and disputes.”
“The NATO framework will be important, and the U.S. would have to do more in terms of re-establishing the sense of balance in the Aegean,” said Aydıntaşbaş. But, she argued, “you just cannot normalize your relations with Europe or the U.S., unless you’re willing to take that step with Greece.”
Nektaria Stamouli
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‘Beaten by a lettuce’: 44 glorious days of Liz Truss
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LONDON — Westminster is in turmoil, the U.K. economy is floundering, and Tory MPs are about to pick their fifth prime minister in just over six years.
But in a sign of total normality in this fully-functioning Western democracy, Brits have instead spent much of the past week fixated on a livestream of a head of iceberg lettuce, wearing a wig.
Set up by tabloid the Daily Star, the paper’s newshounds bet big that a 60p supermarket lettuce would outlast Prime Minister Liz Truss, after her fledgling regime was gripped by unprecedented chaos in its first few weeks.
And they were right. Truss finally resigned Thursday, just 44 days into the job, making her the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister. The Daily Star broke out the Champagne, declaring: “The Lettuce Outlasted Liz Truss.”
So how did Truss put her salad days behind her, and why did she wilt under the public gaze?
Let POLITICO take you on a whirlwind tour of Truss’ 44-day premiership — but be warned, there are more than a few icebergs ahead.
Smashing the orthodoxy
September 6: It all started so well. After seeing off suave-but-dull rival Rishi Sunak in a rancorous Conservative leadership contest, Truss looked triumphant as she took the reins at No. 10 Downing Street and vowed to “transform Britain into an aspiration nation.” She had good reason to be cheerful, too, vacuuming up support from thousands of grassroots Tory members, getting the key Conservative-backing newspapers on side, and confidently brushing off the fact that the majority of her own Tory MPs had doubts about her competence. What did they know, after all? They’d only worked with Truss in Westminster for the past decade.
September 8: Upon taking office, Truss picked her close friend and neighbor Kwasi Kwarteng as her top finance minister, and immediately tasked him with taking on the stale “orthodoxy” at the Treasury. In a savvy first move, Kwarteng immediately sacked the most senior civil servant in the ministry — a man so clever his name is literally Tom Scholar — and so ensured that outmoded, orthodox qualities like “experience,” “credibility” and “economic literacy” were expunged at just the right time … amid a global economic crisis.
Also September 8: A busy day this one, what with Britain’s longest-reigning monarch dying that same afternoon. As the country mourned Queen Elizabeth II, Truss faced her first big communications test on the job: How to capture the nation’s deep sense of grief? She duly rose to the occasion, ripping up lines painstakingly prepared by career officials to deliver a heartfelt tribute with all the enthusiasm of a Q4 sales report. The country wept, for at least one Liz.
September 23: The queen’s death put normal politics on ice for a couple of weeks. But the pause allowed Team Truss to put the finishing touches on their very own Mona Lisa: the mini-budget. A sleeker, more aerodynamic budget than the normal kind, this mini version did away with tired conventions like “independent fiscal scrutiny by the government’s own watchdog,” and “making the sums add up.” Instead, Truss and Kwarteng pressed ahead with debt-funded tax cuts and a multi-billion pound plan to subsidize energy bills. Kwarteng also showed he retained a populist touch with crowd-pleasing measures such as cutting taxes for the U.K.’s super-rich and removing a cap on bankers’ bonuses, all in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis — before heading off to a Champagne reception with hedge fund bosses to party the night away. Cheers!
Woke markets cancel Truss
September 26: Eek. Then came the backlash. Financial markets — famously stuffed with tofu-munching lefties who hate conservatism and everything it stands for — failed to understand the mini-budget’s genius, while the unruly pound, which probably voted to Remain in the EU, crashed to its lowest-ever level against the U.S. dollar. Kwarteng, sounding a little shaken, promised he would publish all his fully-worked-out sums in, oooh, November? That sound OK?
September 28: The pound’s reign of terror continued, and, as U.K. borrowing costs soared and British pension funds teetered on the brink of collapse, those radical communists at the Bank of England were forced to step in with an unprecedented emergency bond-buying program “to restore market functioning.” Their hippie best mates at the International Monetary Fund also got in on the act, saying Kwarteng’s plans would “likely increase inequality” and urging the government to “re-evaluate” its tax measures. Chill out, guys!
Prime Minister Liz Truss is seen returning to Downing Street | Rob Pinney/Getty Images October 3: Phew — she made it through to the Tory party conference. Political party conferences, after all, are normally a glorious victory lap for newly-crowned leaders, but Truss again decided to smash the status quo by turning hers into a deeply embarrassing few days of U-turns, backpedaling and noisy Tory infighting. Less than 24 hours after insisting she was sticking by her economic plan, Truss suddenly junked her centerpiece proposal to cut taxes for the rich. Kwarteng admitted the idea had “become a distraction” from the government’s “overriding mission.”
October 4: Indeed, the U-turn allowed the real “overriding mission” of the government — to needlessly piss off its own MPs — to shine through. No sooner had the tax cut been ditched than Truss’ ever-loyal Cabinet ministers were onto their next target, publicly pressuring the PM not to impose a real-terms cut to social security payments. One minister even capped off the day by telling a room full of drunk communications professionals that the government’s own comms strategy was “shit.” And who could argue?
October 10-11: A week after ditching their flagship policy, Truss’ government had another go at calming the still-spooked markets. Kwarteng’s new idea? Bringing forward the publication of his next fiscal plan to a date in no way guaranteed to be, erm, spooky: October 31. The Bank of England loved the cut of his jib, again stepping in with a major market intervention to prevent what it called a “fire sale” of U.K. government bonds. Which sounded worrying.
Actually, we really love the orthodoxy, please come back
October 14: After weeks of economic turmoil, Kwarteng was dragged home from a trip to Washington D.C. so that he could be sacked on the spot while still jet-lagged — a bad day at the office by anyone’s standards. Finally free of a chancellor who had repeatedly defied her by *checks notes* implementing her exact policy wishes to the letter, the PM then ripped up her long-standing pledge to ease taxes on big business, admitting in an epic eight-minute-long press conference that she’d gone “further and faster than markets were expecting.” We’ve all been there. Reaching out to the center of the Tory party, Truss appointed former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt as her new chancellor, shoring up her faltering premiership for a full 36 hours.
October 16: Team Truss’ strenuous efforts to build bridges with her now-mutinous party ramped up another notch over the weekend, as a No. 10 insider branded her former leadership rival and ex-Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid — who had reportedly just been sounded out by Truss’ team itself about the chancellor job — “shit.” It didn’t go down too well with him, or his mates.
October 17: A biggie, as Hunt put a bullet in the entire Truss agenda, live on TV. In an astonishing move, the new finance minister issued a televised statement in which — by his own admission — he ripped up “almost all” the mini-budget pledges the Truss government had announced just a few weeks earlier. Even the energy support plan, clung to by Truss supporters as one of the few remaining positives of her premiership, was to be significantly pared back — although hard-pressed voters should be able to warm themselves this winter by standing near the giant “dumpster fire” that’s been Westminster the past six years. Truss capped another glorious day by avoiding an urgent question in the House of Commons and sending a junior Cabinet minister to reassure angry MPs that the British prime minister was not, in fact, “hiding under a desk.”
October 19: Very much the End Times. A rollercoaster of a day — if rollercoasters only went downhill — as an under-pressure Truss first offered up yet another U-turn, this time on pension payments; then a senior Truss aide was suspended as that clever “shit” quote to the Sunday newspapers got investigated by No. 10; then her home secretary was sacked and posted what was essentially an extended anti-Truss sub-tweet as a resignation letter; and then the government somehow turned a really boring House of Commons vote into a bitter row about “manhandling” its own MPs, as one of them literally cried on live TV. For those watching from abroad — this is why people in the U.K. drink a lot.
October 20: With the game finally up and her authority shot to pieces, Truss bowed to the inevitable and resigned Thursday, reeling off all her achievements in an 89-second statement on the Downing Street steps. Yet all is not lost. Tucked away in a newsroom in London, there’s one little lettuce who never lost hope. And in its still-crisp and delicious center lies the promise of national renewal. We can but dream.
This article was updated to correct a date.
Matt Honeycombe-Foster
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Kyiv calls for air defenses as Putin brings his Syria tactics to Ukraine
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Russian President Vladimir Putin turned back to his bloody, destructive playbook from Syria with a barrage of rocket attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine on Monday, ramping up pressure on Western allies to supply Kyiv with the air defenses it has long sought.
Monday’s rush-hour bombardment on the streets of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and other regions came as little surprise, given that Putin had already signaled his willingness to switch to ever more brutal tactics by appointing Sergey Surovikin, the general who oversaw Russian forces in Syria on-and-off from 2017 to 2020, as commander of his struggling war effort in Ukraine.
In a speech at an emergency meeting of his National Security Council on Monday, Putin claimed the strikes came in response to this weekend’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking illegally occupied Crimea to Russia. Putin said Russia had deployed “high-precision, long-range weapons from the air, sea and land” to deliver “massive attacks on targets of Ukraine’s energy, military command and communications facilities.” He added that Russia would continue to dole out retribution if Ukraine continued to strike so-called “Russian” territory.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said 75 missiles were launched, 41 of which were shot down.
Moscow’s claims to precision attacks on strategic targets seemed to mask the fact that the aim was clearly to kill civilians, as the missiles struck the Shevchenkivskyi district in the heart of Kyiv during peak morning traffic. Pictures and footage taken by reporters and from security cameras show cars on fire; a crater beside a children’s playground in the Shevchenko Park and a pedestrian bridge destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia appeared to have two targets in its assault: energy facilities throughout the country — and Ukrainians going about their daily lives.
“They want panic and chaos,” Zelenskyy said, in a video that appeared to have been shot on his cell phone on the streets of Kyiv. Monday’s attacks came at a time “especially chosen to cause as much damage as possible … Why such strikes exactly? The enemy wants us to be afraid, wants to make people run. But we can only run forward — and we demonstrate this on the battlefield. It will continue to be so.”
Zelenskyy also renewed his appeals to the West to provide Ukraine with additional air defenses. Kyiv has been seeking this additional firepower for weeks, arguing that Russia is likely to try to knock out Ukraine’s energy and industrial infrastructure over the winter, and it has been disappointed by the slow response.
In tweets, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the strikes on the capital and other cities. With Macron, Zelenskyy said: “We discussed the strengthening of our air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.”
Those discussions on air defense batteries are now likely to loom large at the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein format — where senior defense officials from across the globe will gather in Brussels later this week.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Monday: “The best response to Russian missile terror is the supply of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine — protect the sky over Ukraine! This will protect our cities and our people. This will protect the future of Europe. Evil must be punished.”
The butcher of Syria takes over
Surovikin was only announced as the new Russian commander for Ukraine on Saturday.
The 55-year-old general, who before his promotion had been charged with leading Russia’s Southern Military District and Russian troops in Syria, has long been an infamous figure with a reputation for being ruthless.
He was linked to the violent suppression of the anti-Soviet 1990 Dushanbe riots in Tajikistan, and was reportedly imprisoned (before being freed without charge) after soldiers under his command killed three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. In 1995, Surovikin received a suspended sentence (which was later overturned) for participating in the illegal arms trade. Surovikin also played a role in Russia’s second Chechen war, commanding the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
But Surovikin is best known — and most feared — for his command of Russian forces in Syria, where Moscow intervened to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization, listed Surovikin as one of the commanders “who may bear command responsibility” for human rights violations during the 2019-2020 offensive in Syria’s Idlib province, when Syrian and Russian forces launched dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, striking homes, schools, health care facilities and markets.
It was not the first time Russian forces were accused of war crimes in Syria. The Kremlin’s troops, working with Syrians, undertook a month-long bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in 2016, killing hundreds of civilians, including 90 children, with indiscriminate airstrikes, cluster munitions and incendiary weapons hitting civilian targets including medical facilities.
Now, with Russian forces on the back foot in Ukraine and Putin’s full-throated rhetoric out of step with the situation on the ground in his war, Surovikin appears to be turning to his old tactic of inflicting massive damage on civilians in an attempt to turn the tide of the war.
Zoya Sheftalovich
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Putin summons security council after Crimean bridge blast
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting of his national security council on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state-owned news agency TASS on Sunday, following a fiery explosion on a strategic Crimean bridge on Saturday.
Although Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia, the blast that partially destroyed Putin’s pet infrastructure project — which is key to supply Russia’s military fighting in Ukraine — is bound to be on the security council’s agenda.
Over the past weeks, the Kremlin has been making thinly veiled threats to use its nuclear arsenal against Ukraine as Kyiv regains territory Russia has occupied in its invasion of the country.
The latest Russian official to sabre-rattle was Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, who heads the defense committee of the State Duma.
“There will be an answer” that “all [Ukrainians] will feel” from the Russian side if Ukraine is found to be responsible for the blast that blew damaged the Kerch Bridge, Kartapolov told Russian news outlet Vedomosti on Sunday. “What the answer will be, we will find out. Our President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief never does what ‘partners’ expect from him. He does what is not expected of him,” Kartapolov said.
The Ukrainian government so far hasn’t been commenting about the origins of the apparent bombing. The country’s security service posted a cryptic message on Telegram Saturday after the blast, which reads: “Dawn, The bridge is well ablaze; Nightingale in Crimea, The SBU [Ukrainian security service] meets,” with a picture of the damaged bridge.
Russia opened an investigation into the explosion, and Russia’s Foreign Ministry is pointing the finger at Ukraine. “The reaction of the Kyiv regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure testifies to its terrorist nature,” ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, according to Russian news outlet Kommersant.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia | AFP via Getty Images Fear is mounting that Russia might resort to a nuclear response. Pope Francis on Sunday said that “we should not forget the danger of nuclear war,” asking “Why don’t we learn from history?”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said the Russian army killed some 17 civilians in the Ukrainian area of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday.
“A missile attack on the civilian population of Zaporizhzhia destroyed residential houses, where people slept at night, lived, didn’t attack anyone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Sarah Anne Aarup
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