Facebook plans to “deprecate” its News tab for users in the United States and Australia by April, according to an announcement published Thursday night. What does that mean? As best we can tell, it means Facebook doesn’t want anyone to use the platform for news anymore and will be killing its dedicated News tab.
Meta’s Apparent Firing Goof
“In early April 2024, we will deprecate Facebook News—a dedicated tab in the bookmarks section on Facebook that spotlights news—in the US and Australia. This follows our September 2023 announcement that we deprecated Facebook News in the UK, France and Germany last year,” the unsigned announcement reads.
Facebook insists users don’t use the social media site for news anyway, claiming that just 3% of what users see globally is news articles.
“The number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. has dropped by over 80% last year. We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content—they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests,” the announcement continues.
Why is Facebook saying they’ll “deprecate” the news, a word that seems like an odd choice? Typically, most Americans probably understand the word deprecate as expressing disapproval. Other common definitions include “disparage or belittle,” but Facebook is using the term “deprecate” as a synonym for de-prioritize and phase out. The News tab was already pretty damn de-prioritized if you look at where it shows up already.
I took the screenshot below to show just how “deprecated” the News tab already is compared with all the other tabs. I had to zoom out on my browser’s perspective to even show the News tab without scrolling down. That part circled in red down there? That’s the News tab.
A screenshot of Facebook as it exists today, with the News tab circled in red. Screenshot: Facebook
And that prime placement might suggest Facebook users don’t necessarily dislike news. Perhaps they just doesn’t know where to find it.
The decision to kill the Facebook News tab comes after other Meta properties like Instagram and Threads have made it explicitly clear they don’t want to be in the news business. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said since the introduction of Threads last year that it’s not a place for news.
Facebook stressed in its announcement on Thursday that news outlets will still be able to share their content on the platform and users will still be allowed to share any news article they like in their own feeds. Facebook also noted they’re still committed to fact-checking claims on the site.
“This does not impact our commitment to connecting people to reliable information on our platforms. We work with third-party fact-checkers—certified through accreditation bodies like the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network—who review and rate viral misinformation on our apps,” Facebook said.
“We have built the largest global fact-checking network of any platform by partnering with more than 90 independent fact-checking organizations around the world who review content in more than 60 languages,” the announcement continued.
Update, 11:10 p.m. ET: Facebook responded to emailed questions Thursday night by confirming its use of the word “deprecate” means “remove.”
The ongoing blockade of Gaza has pushed the enclave’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation, Cindy McCain, executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Program, warned on Sunday.
Israel has besieged the densely populated coastal region for almost two weeks, refusing to allow in food and medical aid amid fears it could fall into the hands of the militant group Hamas. As Israel intensified airstrikes over the weekend in preparation for a ground invasion, the first 20 aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday after being blocked near the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing.
But a lot more aid needs to be delivered, McCain told POLITICO.
“Right now we’re facing a catastrophe in the area with the inability to feed people and the inability for the people to find anything to eat at all,” McCain said in an interview Sunday. “These people are going to starve to death unless we can get in.”
Her warning was echoed by the regional director of the relief organization Mercy Corps, Arnaud Quemin, who told POLITICO a ceasefire is needed if there is going to be a sustainable flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza.
Quemin warned that a spread of the conflict to neighboring countries, like Lebanon, already wracked by recent wars and deep in an economic crisis, would present the international community with a “daunting challenge.”
A second convoy of aid trucks entered the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, heading toward the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported, citing Egyptian security and humanitarian sources at Rafah. The trucks were carrying medical and food supplies, according to the report.
There are already an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and any major displacement of the Lebanese from southern Lebanon in the event of full-scale hostilities breaking out between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, would have catastrophic repercussions, Quemin said on Sunday. “It would be horrible. I hope the all the major actors in the region understand that there aren’t any buffers.”
The Gaza Strip has been besieged by Israeli forces since October 9, when Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallan moved to restrict all access to food, water and energy in the enclave in retaliation for a surprise incursion from the Hamas militant group that killed at least 1,400 people in Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory air and missile strikes have killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, and displaced more than a million people, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday.
Israel intensified its airstrikes Saturday night, killing more than 50 Palestinians, according to medical authorities in Gaza. The Israeli military warned that civilians who refused to relocate to the southern part of Gaza could be identified as sympathizers with a terrorist organization, Reuters reported.
Next stages of the war
Israeli military officials are warning that the near-constant aerial bombardment of the coastal enclave will only intensify in the coming days in preparation for a ground incursion into the Gaza.
“We will increase our strikes, minimize the risk to our troops in the next stages of the war, and we will intensify the strikes, starting from today,” Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said on Saturday, adding that a ground operation in Gaza would be launched when conditions are right.
All eyes are now on the next move by the IDF, which has amassed huge numbers of troops outside Gaza and pounded the densely populated area with airstrikes in its attempt to eradicate Hamas following its deadly October 7 attack on Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel on Sunday launched an airstrike on the Al-Ansar Mosque in the city of Jenin in occupied West Bank, claiming militant Palestinian groups have been using it to plan “an imminent terror attack.” Violence has flared in the West Bank with Israel stepping up operations since the Hamas attack on southern Israel two weeks ago.
And according to Syria’s state news agency, Israeli airstrikes targeted both Damascus and Aleppo airports in the early hours Sunday, putting out of action the runways and forcing air traffic to be diverted to the city of Latakia. An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to comment.
Israel earlier struck both airports on October 12 amid fears that Iran might use them to transfer weaponry to Hezbollah in readiness to launch a “second front” against Israel, something Iran and the Lebanese militant group have threatened to do if Israel fails to stop bombing Gaza.
Since the Gaza war erupted earlier this month, Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire across the southern Lebanese border with increasing intensity. Both sides have largely confined their exchanges to military targets with Hezbollah acknowledging 15 of its fighters have been killed but claiming to have knocked out two Israeli tanks.
‘The heart of the battle’
Speaking at a funeral for one of the dead fighters on Sunday, a senior Hezbollah official vowed to step up attacks on Israel. Sheikh Naim Kassem, deputy leader, said Hezbollah is “already in the heart of the battle,” adding his group is “trying to weaken the Israeli enemy and let them know we are ready.” He added: “Do you [Israel] believe that if you try to crush the Palestinian resistance, other resistance fighters in the region will not act?”
Visiting troops on Israel’s northern border on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that if Hezbollah wants war, Israel is ready. Netanyahu said Hezbollah would be making “the mistake of its life.” He added: “We will strike it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the significance for it and the state of Lebanon will be devastating.”
Hezbollah is “dragging Lebanon into a war that it will gain nothing from, but stands to lose a lot,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said on Sunday. “Hezbollah is playing a very, very dangerous game.”
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has admitted publicly that his government has little leverage on Hezbollah. In a phone call with the Lebanese leader on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted “growing concerns over rising tensions” but underscored continued American support “for Lebanon’s army, security forces and people,” according to the U.S. State Department.
Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced Sunday that it is instructing more communities near the Lebanese border to evacuate. Twenty-eight communities were evacuated last week living within 2.8 kilometers of the border, but now the buffer zone is being expanded to 5 kilometers affecting another 14 communities. According to Mercy Corps, more than 12,000 Lebanese have been displaced by the fighting in southern Lebanon.
For humanitarian agencies, the immediate concern is Gaza and they are lobbying for all sides to allow more aid to get through to the besieged enclave.
“We can’t allow politics to begin to shape how humanitarian aid is given or sent in and so that’s what we’re pressing on people,” McCain said, noting the increased risk of diseases like cholera due to the collapse of Gaza’s water and sanitation services. “This is a humanitarian crisis. We need to be in there and we need to be in there now.”
Before the blockade, about 400 aid trucks entered the territory every day. After a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden last week, Israel said it would allow deliveries of food, water and medicine — but not fuel — from Egypt, provided they were limited to civilians in the southern part of Gaza and did not go to Hamas militants.
The 20 aid trucks that entered on Saturday “are not enough,” Samer AbdelJaber, the World Food Program’s country director for Palestine, said in a statement.
Palestinians carry their share of food aid provided to poor families at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) distribution center | Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images
Saturday’s deliveries “are a window of hope amid a catastrophic situation,” AbdelJaber said. “But they are not enough. We need continuous access. People need food, water and medicine every day, not just once.”
McCain said the WFP had systems in place to minimize the risk. “We have ways to be able to track and trace our goods,” she said. “We also have ways to make sure that our recipients are actually the people who should be getting it and not the bad guys.”
Bartosz Brzezinski reported from Brussels. Jamie Dettmer reported from Beirut.
NEW DELHI — The G20 endorsed language in support of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but the group of the world’s biggest economies weakened a previous stance that directly blamed Russia for the war in Ukraine.
The joint communiqué for the G20 summit in India stated that all countries should “refrain from action against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state.” That language was unchanged from a draft first reported by POLITICO on Saturday.
The wording, which Western countries wanted in order to signal a continued anger at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, could also appease Moscow’s complaints that attacks inside Russia have escalated since Kyiv launched its counteroffensive. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was deeply involved in the weeks of negotiations leading to the final version.
But the joint statement didn’t include a direct condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which a G20 statement in Bali last November did. Some officials contend that a shift was the only way to get buy-in from some of the group’s more Moscow-friendly members — let alone the fact that Russia is also in the bloc.
Critics argued that U.S. President Joe Biden could have gotten more. Svitlana Romanko, founder and director of the pro-Ukraine group Razom We Stand, called the communiqué “weak” and “cowardly by not even mentioning Russia or its ongoing war crimes.”
But some G20 members say it reflected a fair compromise. “It is a fact that this is today a very polarizing issue and there are multiple views on this,” Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said Saturday, referring to Ukraine. “Bali was a year ago, the situation was different. Many things have happened since then.”
There’s further language in the declaration that Western officials could herald as victories. It references adherence to the United Nations charter, which stipulates that no country can threaten another’s territory and sovereignty by force — a key demand of the U.S. and the EU in the run-up to the G20 summit. And it also calls for the “full, timely and effective implementation” of the Black Sea Grain Initiative which has stalled after Russia pulled out during the summer.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already touted the document as a “good and strong outcome.”
“What you’ll see in the communique is strong language, highlighting the impact of the war on food prices and food security, calling on Russia to re-enter the Black Sea grain initiative to allow exports to leave that part of the world and help feed millions of the most vulnerable people as well as the communique recognizing the principles of the U.N. charter respecting territorial integrity,” he said.
African leaders have long been reluctant to criticize Russia and now that President Vladimir Putin has killed off a deal to allow Ukraine to export grain, they know they are more dependent than ever on Moscow’s largesse to feed millions of people at risk of going hungry.
Having canceled the pact on Monday, Moscow unleashed four nights of attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk — two vital export facilities — damaging the infrastructure of global and Ukrainian traders and destroying 60,000 tons of grain. In the latest assault, on Thursday night, a barrage of Kalibr missiles hit the granaries of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa.
“The decision by Russia to exit the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a stab [in] the back,” tweeted Abraham Korir Sing’Oei, a senior foreign ministry official from Kenya, one of the African countries that has received donations of Russian fertilizer in recent months.
The resulting rise in global food prices “disproportionately impacts countries in the Horn of Africa already impacted by drought,” he added.
Sing’Oei’s was a solitary voice, however. Rather than reproaching Moscow, African leaders have remained largely silent as they prepare to attend a summit hosted by Putin in St Petersburg next week. This follows an African mission led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month to Kyiv and St Petersburg in a bid to broker peace.
The diplomatic stakes could hardly be higher.
Putin had been due to make a return visit to Africa next month to attend a summit of the BRICS emerging economies in Johannesburg. That trip has been called off, however, “by mutual agreement” to avoid exposing the Kremlin chief to the risk of arrest under an indictment for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Without the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered a year ago by the United Nations and Turkey that enabled Ukraine to export 33 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds, many African governments now have nowhere else to turn to but Russia.
“It’s going to be based on political alignments,” said Samuel Ramani, an Oxford-based academic and author of a book on Russia’s resurgent influence in Africa.
Comparing Russia’s tactics to blackmail, Ramani added: “They’re going to be offering free grain to some, they’re going to be selling to others. It’s full-fledged grain diplomacy.”
No deal
Russia said on Monday it would no longer guarantee the safety of ships passing through a transit corridor as it announced its official withdrawal from the deal, declaring the northwestern Black Sea to be once again “temporarily dangerous.” It followed up by threatening to fire on all ships going across the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports, sparking a tit-for-tat warning from Kyiv that it would do the same to all vessels sailing to Russian-controlled Black Sea ports.
Over the 12 months it functioned, the grain deal helped bring down global food prices by as much as 20 percent from the peak set in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It also provided aid agencies with vital supplies.
Russia repeatedly claimed it has not seen the benefits of the three-times extended agreement, however.
Although Western sanctions carve out exemptions for food and fertilizer the Kremlin argues that sanctions targeting Russian individuals and its state agriculture bank are hindering its own exports, thus contravening a second deal agreed last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitating these exports for a three-year period.
The Kremlin said Wednesday that it would resume talks on the Black Sea grain deal only if the U.N. implements this part of the deal within the next three months.
Propaganda war
Another of Moscow’s criticisms is that cargoes of Ukrainian grain have headed mostly to rich countries; not to those in Africa and Asia bearing the brunt of the global food crisis.
Over the last year, a quarter of all the grain and oilseeds shipped under the initiative have headed to China, the largest recipient, while some 18 percent went to Spain and 10 percent to Turkey, according to U.N. data.
This is not the whole story, however. Trade data from the World Bank shows that much of the wheat exported to Turkey is processed and re-exported, as flour, pasta and other products, to Africa and the Middle East.
Most importantly, all grain that flows onto global markets reduces prices, wherever it ends up, counter the U.N. and others.
Russia has canceled the Black Sea deal and unleashed attacks on the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
“It is not a question of where the Black Sea food actually goes; it is a question of it [bringing] international prices down, so whether you are a rich country or poor country, you can benefit,” said Arif Husain, the U.N. World Food Programme’s chief economist, speaking at an event on the Black Sea Grain Initiative in Rome recently.
These arguments have been at the center of a months-long propaganda battle between Moscow and Kyiv over who can rightly claim to be feeding the world and who is responsible for soaring food prices.
In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Kremlin’s narrative — that western sanctions are to blame — was quick to take hold in many parts of Africa.
Ukraine sought to counter this with a humanitarian food program, Grain from Ukraine, launched in November 2022, but shiploads of fertilizer donated to countries, including Malawi and Kenya, served to sweeten the Kremlin’s message.
“A true friend knows no weather. A true friend comes to the rescue when you need them the most. And you just demonstrated that to us,” Malawi’s Agriculture Minister Sam Dalitso Kawale said upon receiving a fertilizer gift from Russian firm Uralchem in March.
Feeling the pinch
Now, countries like Malawi need friends in Moscow more than ever. Not only does the end of the grain deal cut them off from flows of Ukrainian grain, leaving them dependent on Russian supplies, but it also pushes up prices.
Moscow’s withdrawal from the agreement is unlikely to have the same impact on prices as its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Over the last year, Ukraine has opened up alternative export routes and a slowdown in shipments moving under the initiative also meant commodity markets had been expecting Moscow to quit the deal.
While Ukraine can continue to export grain through alternative routes, these come with extra logistical and transport costs, squeezing prices for Ukrainian farmers, at one end, and pushing up costs for buyers, at the other.
For food-insecure countries in the Horn of Africa even a small increase in prices could spell disaster, said Shashwat Saraf, emergency director in East Africa for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
Domestic production has dropped amid conflict and severe drought, leaving the region increasingly reliant on food imports and food aid. As such, higher food prices will hit hard, he said, adding that traders already report “feeling the pinch.”
With the cost of food rising, the IRC and other humanitarian organizations will be forced to either reduce the number of people they provide cash transfers or reduce the value of these themselves — and this at a time when the number of food insecure people is rising, said Saraf. “When we should be expanding our coverage, we will be actually reducing [it].”
Slap in the face
African leaders attending Putin’s summit next week will be silent on such issues, predicted Christopher Fomunyoh, African regional director at the U.S. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and one of the Grain from Ukraine ambassadors appointed by Kyiv.
But they must not return empty-handed again, he said. Russia’s discontinuation of the grain deal, following the South African-led visit to St Petersburg, is a “slap in the face,” Fomunyoh told POLITICO. “Their own credibility is now at stake. And my hope is that they will have to speak out in order to not further lose credibility with their own populations.”
In 2022, Russia’s narrative was dominant in Africa, but that has slowly changed through the course of this year, he explained, adding that Africans were starting to see through Moscow’s propaganda.
“There is always a time delay,” said Fomunyoh. “But my sense is that in the days and weeks to come, people are going to see very clearly [that] the destruction of infrastructure in Odessa, the destruction of stock, wheat, and grain in Chornomorsk is contributing to scarcity and the inflation in prices.”
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.
BRUSSELS — China and other powerful countries need to step up to help steer the world away from a potentially “catastrophic” hunger crisis this year, the new head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme said.
Cindy McCain, an American diplomat and the widow of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, also told POLITICO that the EU and U.S. should see world hunger as a national security issue due to its impact on migration. She furthermore accused Russia of using hunger as a “weapon of war” by hindering exports of Ukrainian grain.
McCain, formerly the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, took the helm of the WFP on April 5 and begins her five-year term at a time of increasing world hunger. The number of people facing food insecurity around the world rose to a record 345 million at the end of last year, up from 282 million in 2021, according to the WFP’s figures, as Russia’s war in Ukraine deepened a food crisis driven by climate change, COVID-19 and other conflicts.
This year could be worse still, McCain warned, with the Horn of Africa experiencing its worst drought in 40 years and Haiti facing a sharp rise in food insecurity, among other factors. “2023 is going to be catastrophic if we don’t get to work and raise the money that we need,” she said. “We need a hell of a lot more than we used to.”
Non-Western countries, which have traditionally contributed much less to the WFP, need to step up to meet the shortfall, McCain said, pointing specifically to China and oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. China contributed just $11 million to WFP funds last year, compared to $7.2 billion donated by the U.S.
“There are some countries that have just basically not participated or participated in a very low fashion. I’d like to encourage our Middle Eastern friends to step up to the plate a little more; I’d like to encourage China to step up to the plate a little more,” said McCain. “Every region, every country needs to step up funding.”
Her entreaty may fall on deaf ears, however, given rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. The WFP’s last six executive directors have been American, dating back to 1992, and Beijing may prefer to distribute aid through its own channels. Last summer, for example, China shipped food aid directly to the Horn of Africa following a drought there.
National security
Countries hesitant to throw more money into food aid should think about the alternative, McCain said, particularly those in Europe that are likely to bear the brunt of any new wave of migration from Africa and the Middle East.
“Food security is a national security issue,” she said. “No refugee wants to leave their home country, but they’re forced to because they don’t have enough food, and they can’t feed their families. So it comes down to if you want a stable world, food is a major player in this.”
The WFP is already having to make brutal decisions despite raking in a record $14.2 billion last year — more than double what it raised in 2017. In February, for instance, it said a funding shortfall was forcing it to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh.
The problem is compounded by surging costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which sent already-high food prices soaring further, as grain and oilseed exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports plunged from more than 5 million metric tons a month to zero.
A U.N.-brokered deal allowing Ukrainian grain exports to pass through Russia’s blockades in the Black Sea has brought some reprieve, but Moscow’s repeated threats to withdraw from the agreement have kept prices volatile.
Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South | Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
The deal, initially brokered in July last year, was extended for 120 days last month; Russia, however, agreed to extend its side of the Black Sea grain initiative only for 60 days. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov threatened, once again, to halt Moscow’s participation in the initiative unless obstacles to its own fertilizer and food exports are addressed.
Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions — those targeting Russia’s fertilizer oligarchs and its main agricultural bank, as well as others excluding Russian banks from the international SWIFT payments system — are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South.
Ukraine and its Western allies have countered that Russia is deliberately holding up inspections for ships heading to and from its Black Sea ports, creating a backlog of Ukraine-bound vessels off the Turkish coast and inflating prices.
These delayed food cargoes are hindering the WFP’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises, said McCain, who did not hold back on the issue.
“Let’s be very clear, there are no sanctions on [Russian] fertilizer,” she said. “It is not sanctioned and never has been sanctioned.”
Russia is “using hunger as a weapon of war,” said McCain. “it’s unconscionable that a country would do that — any country, not just Russia.”
Ukraine’s farmers played an iconic role in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, towing away abandoned enemy tanks with their tractors.
Now, though, their prodigious grain output is causing some of Ukraine’s staunchest allies to waver, as disrupted shipments are redirected onto neighboring markets.
The most striking is Poland, which has played a leading role so far in supporting Ukraine, acting as the main transit hub for Western weaponry and sending plenty of its own. But grain shipments in the other direction have irked Polish farmers who are being undercut — just months before a national election where the rural vote will be crucial.
Diplomats are floundering. After a planned Friday meeting between the Polish and Ukrainian agriculture ministers was postponed, the Polish government on Saturday announced a ban on imports of farm products from Ukraine. Hungary late Saturday said it would do the same.
Ukraine is among the world’s top exporters of wheat and other grains, which are ordinarily shipped to markets as distant as Egypt and Pakistan. Russia’s invasion last year disrupted the main Black Sea export route, and a United Nations-brokered deal to lift the blockade has been only partially effective. In consequence, Ukrainian produce has been diverted to bordering EU countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
At first, those governments supported EU plans to shift the surplus grain. But instead of transiting seamlessly onto global markets, the supply glut has depressed prices in Europe. Farmers have risen up in protest, and Polish Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk was forced out earlier this month.
Now, governments’ focus has shifted to restricting Ukrainian imports to protect their own markets. After hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw in early April, Polish President Andrzej Duda said resolving the import glut was “a matter of introducing additional restrictions.”
The following day, Poland suspended imports of Ukrainian grain, saying the idea had come from Kyiv. On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after an emergency cabinet meeting, said the import ban would cover grain and certain other farm products and would include products intended for other countries. A few hours later, the Hungarian government announced similar measures. Both countries said the bans would last until the end of June.
The European Commission is seeking further information on the import restrictions from Warsaw and Budapest “to be able to assess the measures,” according to a statement on Sunday. “Trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable,” it said.
While the EU’s free-trade agreement with Ukraine prevents governments from introducing tariffs, they still have plenty of tools available to disrupt shipments.
Neighboring countries and nearby Bulgaria have stepped up sanitary checks on Ukrainian grain, arguing they are doing so to protect the health of their own citizens. They have also requested financial support from Brussels and have already received more than €50 million from the EU’s agricultural crisis reserve, with more money on the way.
Restrictions could do further harm to Ukraine’s battered economy, and by extension its war effort. The economy has shrunk by 29.1 percent since the invasion, according to statistics released this month, and agricultural exports are an important source of revenue.
Cracks in the alliance
The trade tensions sit at odds with these countries’ political position on Ukraine, which — with the exception of Hungary — has been strongly supportive. Poland has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, while weapons and ammunition flow in the opposite direction; Romania has helped transport millions of tons of Ukrainian corn and wheat.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki | Omar Marques/Getty Images
Some Western European governments, which had to be goaded by Poland and others into sending heavy weaponry to Kyiv, are quick to point out the change in direction.
“Curious to see that some of these countries are [always] asking for more on sanctions, more on ammunition, etc. But when it affects them, they turn to Brussels begging for financial support,” said one diplomat from a Western country, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some EU countries also oppose the import restrictions for economic reasons. For instance, Spain and the Netherlands are some of the biggest recipients of Ukrainian grain, which they use to supply their livestock industries.
Politically, though, the Central and Eastern European governments have limited room for maneuver. Poland and Slovakia are both heading into general elections later this year. Bulgaria has had a caretaker government since last year. Romania’s agriculture minister has faced calls to resign, including from a compatriot former EU agriculture commissioner.
And farmers are a strong constituency. Poland’s right-wing Law & Justice (PiS) party won the last general election in 2019 thanks in large part to rural voters. The Ukrainian grain issue has already cost a Polish agriculture minister his job; the government as a whole will have to tread carefully to avoid the same fate.
LONDON — Public sector workers on strike, the cost-of-living climbing, and a government on the ropes.
“It’s hard to miss the parallels” between the infamous ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79 and Britain in 2023, says Robert Saunders, historian of modern Britain at Queen Mary, University of London.
Admittedly, the comparison only goes so far. In the 1970s it was a Labour government facing down staunchly socialist trade unions in a wave of strikes affecting everything from food deliveries to grave-digging, while Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives sat in opposition and awaited their chance.
But a mass walkout fixed for Wednesday could yet mark a staging post in the downward trajectory of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, just as it did for Callaghan’s Labour.
Britain is braced for widespread strike action Wednesday, as an estimated 100,000 civil servants from government departments, ports, airports and driving test centers walk out alongside hundreds of thousands of teachers across England and Wales, train drivers from 14 national operators and staff at 150 U.K. universities.
It follows rolling action by train and postal workers, ambulance drivers, paramedics, and nurses in recent months. In a further headache for Sunak, firefighters on Monday night voted to walk out for the first time in two decades.
While each sector has its own reasons for taking action, many of those on strike are united by the common cause of stagnant pay, with inflation still stubbornly high. And that makes it harder for Sunak to pin the blame on the usual suspects within the trade union movement.
Mr Reasonable
Industrial action has in the past been wielded as a political weapon by the Conservative Party, which could count on a significant number of ordinary voters being infuriated by the withdrawal of public services.
Tories have consequently often used strikes as a stick with which to beat their Labour opponents, branding the left-wing party as beholden to its trade union donors.
Sunak has so far attempted to cast himself as Mr Reasonable, stressing that his “door is always open” to workers but warning that the right to strike must be “balanced” with the provision of services. To this end, he is pressing ahead with long-promised legislation to enforce minimum service standards in sectors hit by industrial action.
Sunak has made tackling inflation the raison d’etre of his government, and his backbenchers are reasonably content to rally behind that banner | POOL photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Unions are enraged by the anti-strike legislation, yet Sunak’s soft-ish rhetoric is still in sharp relief to the famously bellicose Thatcher, who pledged during the 1979 strikes that “if someone is confronting our essential liberties … then, by God, I will confront them.”
Sunak’s careful approach is chosen at least in part because the political ground has shifted beneath him since the coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020.
Public sympathy for frontline medical staff, consistently high in the U.K., has been further embedded by the extreme demands placed upon nurses and other hospital staff during the pandemic. And inflation is hitting workers across the economy — not just in the public sector — helping to create a broader reservoir of sympathy for strikers than has often been found in the past.
James Frayne, a former government adviser who co-founded polling consultancy Public First, observes: “Because of the cost-of-living crisis, what you [as prime minister] can’t do, as you might be able to do in the past, is just portray this as being an ideologically-driven strike.”
Starmer’s sleight of hand
At the same time, strikes are not the political headache for the opposition Labour Party they once were.
Thatcher was able to portray Callaghan as weak when he resisted the use of emergency powers against the unions. David Cameron was never happier than when inviting then-Labour leader Ed Miliband to disown his “union paymasters,” particularly during the last mass public sector strike in 2011.
Crucially, trade union votes had played a key role in Miliband’s election as party leader — something the Tories would never let him forget. But when Sunak attempts to reprise Cameron’s refrains against Miliband, few seem convinced.
QMUL’s Saunders argues that the Conservatives are trying to rerun “a 1980s-style campaign” depicting Labour MPs as being in the pocket of the unions. But “I just don’t think this resonates with the public,” he added.
Labour’s current leader, Keir Starmer, has actively sought to weaken the left’s influence in the party, attracting criticism from senior trade unionists. Most eye-catchingly, Starmer sacked one of his own shadow ministers, Sam Tarry, after he defied an order last summer that the Labour front bench should not appear on picket lines.
Starmer has been “given cover,” as one shadow minister put it, by Sunak’s decision to push ahead with the minimum-service legislation. It means Labour MPs can please trade unionists by fighting the new restrictions in parliament — without having to actually stand on the picket line.
So far it seems to be working. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, an umbrella group representing millions of U.K. trade unionists, told POLITICO: “Frankly, I’m less concerned about Labour frontbenchers standing up on picket lines for selfies than I am about the stuff that really matters to our union” — namely the government’s intention to “further restrict the right to strike.”
The TUC is planning a day of action against the new legislation on Wednesday, coinciding with the latest wave of strikes.
Sticking to their guns
For now, Sunak’s approach appears to be hitting the right notes with his famously restless pack of Conservative MPs.
Sunak has made tackling inflation the raison d’etre of his government, and his backbenchers are reasonably content to rally behind that banner.
As one Tory MP for an economically-deprived marginal seat put it: “We have to hold our nerve. There’s a strong sense of the corner (just about) being turned on inflation rising, so we need to be as tough as possible … We can’t now enable wage increases that feed inflation.”
Another agreed: “Rishi should hold his ground. My guess is that eventually people will get fed up with the strikers — especially rail workers.”
Furthermore, Public First’s Frayne says his polling has picked up the first signs of an erosion of support for strikes since they kicked off last summer, particularly among working-class voters.
“We’re at the point now where people are feeling like ‘well, I haven’t had a pay rise, and I’m not going to get a pay rise, and can we all just accept that it’s tough for everybody and we’ve got to get on with it,’” he said.
More than half (59 percent) of people back strike action by nurses, according to new research by Public First, while for teachers the figure is 43 percent, postal workers 41 percent and rail workers 36 percent.
‘Everything is broken’
But the broader concern for Sunak’s Conservatives is that, regardless of whatever individual pay deals are eventually hammered out, the wave of strikes could tap into a deeper sense of malaise in the U.K.
Inflation remains high, and the government’s independent forecaster predicted in December that the U.K. will fall into a recession lasting more than a year.
More than half (59 percent) of people back strike action by nurses, according to new research by Public First, while for teachers the figure is 43 percent, postal workers 41 percent and rail workers 36 percent | Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Strikes by ambulance workers only drew more attention to an ongoing crisis in the National Health Service, with patients suffering heart attacks and strokes already facing waits of more than 90 minutes at the end of 2022.
Moving around the country has been made difficult not only by strikes, but by multiple failures by rail providers on key routes.
One long-serving Conservative MP said they feared a sense of fatalism was setting in among the public — “the idea that everything is broken and there’s no point asking this government to fix it.”
A former Cabinet minister said the most pressing issue in their constituency is the state of public services, and strike action signaled political danger for the government. They cautioned that the public are not blaming striking workers, but ministers, for the disruption.
Those at the top of government are aware of the risk of such a narrative taking hold, with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, taking aim at “declinism about Britain” in a keynote speech Friday.
Whether the government can do much to change the story, however, is less clear.
Saunders harks back to Callaghan’s example, noting that public sector workers were initially willing to give the Labour government the benefit of the doubt, but that by 1979 the mood had fatally hardened.
This is because strikes are not only about falling living standards, he argues. “It’s also driven by a loss of faith in government that things are going to get better.”
With an election looming next year, Rishi Sunak is running out of time to turn the public mood around.
Annabelle Dickson and Graham Lanktree contributed reporting.
European far-right politicians just stormed to victory in Italy, after achieving historic results in France and Sweden.
“Everywhere in Europe, people aspire to take their destiny back into their own hands!” said Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally Party.
But if you think there is a new wave of right-wing radicalism sweeping Europe, you’d be wrong. Something else is going on.
Analysis by POLITICO’s Poll of Polls suggests far-right parties in the region on average did not increase their support by even one percentage point between the start of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in February and today.
POLITICO looked at the median and average increase of all parties organized in right-wing European Parliament groups of Identity and Democracy, the European Conservatives and Reformists or unaffiliated parties with political far-right positions.
Overall, the results indicate that if an increase in support occurred for far-right parties, it happened several years ago.
The Sweden Democrats’ first surge happened after the 2014 election, when the party grew from around 10 percent to 20 percent, the same one-fifth share of the vote they received in this year’s election. The far-right Alternative for Germany AfD in Germany grew fast in 2015 and 2016 reaching 14 percent in POLITICO’s polling tracker. In Italy, the Northern League overtook Forza Italia for the first time in early 2015, and peaked in 2019 at 37 percent before starting a downward trend ending on 9 percent in last month’s election. In the Italian election, voters mostly switched between rival right-wing camps.
The far-right has moved from the fringes of politics into the mainstream, not only influencing the political center but also entering the arena of power.
“There is a normalization of far-right parties as an integral part of the political landscape,” said Cathrine Thorleifsson, who researches extremism at the University of Oslo. “They have been accepted by the electorate and also by other, conventional parties.”
Cooperation between the center-right and the extreme-right has become less taboo.
“The rise of far-right parties is only part of the story. The facilitating and mainstreaming of far-right parties as well as the adoption of far-right frames and positions by other parties is at least as important,” tweeted Cas Mudde, a leading scholar on the issue.
This may risk destabilizing Europe even more than winning a couple of percentage points in the polls.
Italy’s far-right firebrand Giorgia Meloni is a clear-cut example. While her party draws its origin from groups founded by former fascists, she’ll now lead the EU’s third-largest economy.
Leader of Italian far-right party “Fratelli d’Italia” (Brothers of Italy), Giorgia Meloni | Pitro Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images
In Sweden, the center-right party has started coalition talks for a minority government which would have to draw on opposition support, most likely from the far-right Swedish Democrats. Far-right parties have also entered governments in Austria, Finland, Estonia and Italy. Other countries are likely to follow.
George Simion, the leader of Romania’s far-right party, Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), celebrated Meloni’s win in Italy, saying his party is likely to follow in their footsteps.
Spain heads to the ballot box next year and socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez may have a tough time winning re-election. The conservative People’s Party is between five and seven points ahead of the Spanish socialists in all the published polls, but it is unlikely to garner enough votes to secure a governing majority outright.
That means it may have to come to an agreement with far-right party Vox, whose leader, Santiago Abascal, is an ally of Meloni’s. While the People’s Party previously refused to govern with Vox, last spring its newly elected leader, Alberto Núnez-Feijóo, greenlit a coalition agreement with the ultranationalist group in Spain’s central Castilla y León region.
Tom Van Grieken, the right-wing Belgian politician, also pointed to Spain as the next likely example, especially because of the possible cooperation with the PP. “All over Europe, we see conservative parties who are considering breaking the cordon sanitaire,” he said, referring to the refusal of other parties to work with the far-right. “They are tired of compromising with their ideological counterparts, the parties at the left end of the spectrum.”
Chairman of Vlaams Belang party Tom Van Grieken | Stephanie Le Coqc/EFE via EPA
This didn’t happen overnight. The far-right worked hard to shrug off their extremist, neo-Nazi image.
“In some of the reporting on the Swedish Democrats, you’d think they’ll deport people on trains as soon as they’re in power. Come on, these parties have changed,” said one EU official with right-wing affiliations.
The far-right invested in “image adjustment and trying to tread carefully with some issues, while unashamedly catering to others,” said Nina Wiesehomeier, a political scientist at the IE University of Madrid. “This is particularly obvious in Italy right now, with Meloni sticking to the slogan of ‘God, homeland, family,’ as a continuation, while having tried to purge the party from more radical elements.”
In Belgium’s northern region of Flanders, the right-wing Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) explicitly dismisses the label “extreme-right.” Just like his counterparts in Italy, Sweden and France, Van Grieken, the party’s president, denounced the more extremist positions of his group’s founding fathers and moderated his political message to make voting for the far-right socially acceptable.
Overt racism is taboo. Instead, the rhetoric changes to criticizing an open-door migration policy. By carefully catering to centrist voters, the far-right aims for a bigger slice of the cake, while still riding on the anti-establishment discontent.
“There is a clear fault line between the winners of globalization and the nationalists,” Van Grieken told POLITICO. “This comes on top on the concerns about mass migration, whether it’s in Malmö, Rome or other European cities.”
Perfect storm
Now, the time is right to capitalize on that transformation.
As Europe is battling record inflation and Europeans fear exorbitant heating bills, governments warn about the political implications of a “winter of discontent.”
“It’s a massive drainage of European prosperity,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told POLITICO recently. “In the current situation, it’s hard to believe in progress, it’s very hard to make progress. So there’s a very pessimistic feeling.”
The current war in Ukraine is the latest in a succession of crises — in global finance, migration and the pandemic. Experts argue that this is key to understanding the rising support for the far-right.
“Such existential crises have a destabilizing effect and lead to fear,” said Carl Devos, a professor in political science at Ghent University. “Fear is the breeding ground for the far-right. People tend to translate that fear and outrage into radical voting behaviour.”
Migration and identity politics are less prominent in the media because of the Ukraine war and rising energy prices, but they’re still key issues in right-wing debate.
In Austria, the coalition parties fought over whether or not asylum seekers should receive climate bonuses. In the Netherlands, the death of a baby at the asylum center Ter Apel led to a renewed debate over the overcrowded migration centers.
The combination of those issues is likely to feed into more right-wing wins across the continent. “The far-right offers nationalist, protectionist solutions to the globalized crises, said Thorleifsson. “We see how the migration issue was momentarily off the agenda during the pandemic, but now it’s back.”
Aitor Hernández-Morales, Camille Gijs and Ana Fota contributed reporting.
