Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister and leader of the People’s Action Party (PAP), walks and talks with people in Singapore on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2015.
Nicky Loh | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Singapore’s government was dealt a further blow on Monday, following the resignations of two lawmakers from the ruling party who admitted to an “inappropriate relationship” with each other.
One of them was the Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin who quit over his recent “unparliamentary language.” Another lawmaker, Cheng Li Hui also resigned with immediate effect as a member of parliament. Both were members of the ruling People’s Action Party.
“Besides Mr Tan’s recent unparliamentary language used, there is also the issue of his inappropriate relationship with fellow PAP MP Ms Cheng Li Hui. This is, in comparison, the more serious matter because he was the Speaker and she an MP, and there should not have not been a relationship,” said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a press conference on Monday.
The prime minister has accepted both resignations and said it was “necessary” for Tan to quit in order to “maintain the high standards of propriety and personal conduct which the PAP has upheld all these years.”
Sudden resignations of senior PAP party members are rare in Singapore, where the ruling party has been in power since 1959, before the city-state’s independence in 1965.
Earlier last week, Lee said he had asked Iswaran to take a leave of absence after CPIB revealed that the transport minister was assisting with an investigation.
In his resignation letter to Lee, Tan said he made a mistake in Parliament, when he uttered words which were “rude and unparliamentary” in nature to an opposition party member.
His resignation comes after a recent controversy surrounding a comment Tan made on a hot mic during a Parliament session. A video clip of the comment came to light last week as it was widely circulated on social media and sparked public criticism.
Tan, who was elected the 10th speaker of parliament in September 2017, said in his resignation: “Deservedly, there has been much disquiet over my remarks. Many felt that I was not impartial.”
“My mistake raised broader questions over my neutrality and impartiality as Speaker. The credibility of Parliament and the Chair is critical and cannot be compromised,” he added.
During the briefing on Monday, Lee said that he will nominate a new Speaker by the next sitting of Parliament, on Aug. 1 when he will also be making a ministerial statement.
“High standards of propriety and personal conduct, together with staying clean and incorrupt, are the fundamental reasons Singaporeans trust and respect the PAP, and give us their mandate to form the government and work together with us to improve the lives of Singaporeans,” Lee said.
“PAP MPs – whether they are Ministers or backbenchers – must uphold these cardinal values at all times. Without party discipline, without integrity, we are nothing, so this is an absolute requirement.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia has a “sufficient stockpile” of cluster bombs and threatened to take “reciprocal action” if Ukraine used the weapons against Russian troops.
The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that Washington had delivered the cluster munitions, which over 110 countries worldwide have banned, to Ukraine.
Kyiv says it needs the explosive shells to compensate for ammunition shortages as it is currently mounting a counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion. Ukraine has said that cluster bombs would only be used on its own territory to dislodge Russian soldiers from occupied areas. Cluster bombs are filled with submunitions that are released in the air and make the weapons more effective against enemy troops but can also pose a risk for civilians.
“I want to note that in the Russian Federation there is a sufficient stockpile of different kinds of cluster bombs. We have not used them yet. But of course if they are used against us, we reserve the right to take reciprocal action,” Putin said in an interview Sunday with Russian state TV, according to Reuters.
“Until now, we have not done this, we have not used it, and we have not had such a need,” the president said. He said that he regarded the use of cluster bombs as a crime.
There is strong evidence, however, suggesting that Moscow has used cluster bombs in its war against Ukraine. In a report in May, Human Rights Watch said that “since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian armed forces have used cluster munitions in attacks that have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and damaged civilian objects, including homes, hospitals, and schools.”
Neither Russia nor Ukraine nor the U.S. has ratified the international convention on banning cluster bombs.
Ben Cohen wasn’t talking about ice cream. He was talking about American militarism.
At 72, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is bald and bespectacled. He looks fit, cherubic even, but when he got going on what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, his tone became less playful and more assertive — almost defiant.
“I had this image of these two countries facing each other, and each one had this huge pile of shiny, state-of-the-art weapons in front of them,” he said, his arms waving above his head. “And behind them are the people in their countries that are suffering from lack of health care, not enough to eat, not enough housing.”
“It’s just crazy,” he added. “Approaching relationships with other countries based on threats of annihilating them, it’s just a pretty stupid way to go.”
It wasn’t a new subject for the famously socially conscious ice cream mogul; Cohen has been leading a crusade against what he sees as Washington’s bellicosity for decades. It’s just that with the war in Ukraine, his position has taken on a new — morally questionable — relevance.
Cohen, who no longer sits on the board of Ben & Jerry’s, isn’t just one of the most successful marketers of the last century. He’s a leading figure in a small but vocal part of the American left that has stood steadfast in opposition to the United States’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks rolling on Kyiv, Cohen didn’t focus his ire on the Kremlin; a group he funds published a full-page ad in the New York Times blaming the act of aggression on “deliberate provocations” by the U.S. and NATO.
Following months of Russian missile strikes on residential apartment blocks, and after evidence of street executions by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, he funded a 2022 journalism prize that praised its winner for reporting on “Washington’s true objectives in the Ukraine war, such as urging regime change in Russia.”
In May, Cohen tweeted approvingly of an op-ed by the academic Jeffrey Sachs that argued “the war in Ukraine was provoked” and called for “negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.”
Ben Cohen outside the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington this month, before getting arrested | Win McNamee/Getty Images
I set up a video call with Cohen not because I can’t sympathize with his mistrust of U.S. adventurism, nor because I couldn’t follow the argument that U.S. foreign policy spurred Russia to attack. I called to try to understand how he has maintained his stance even as the Kremlin abducts children, tortures and kills Ukrainians and sends thousands of Russian troops to their deaths in human wave attacks.
It’s one thing to warn of NATO expansion in peacetime, or to call for a negotiated settlement that leaves Ukrainian citizens safe from further aggression. It’s another to ignore one party’s atrocities and agitate for an outcome that would almost certainly leave millions of people at the mercy of a regime that has demonstrated callousness and cruelty.
Given the scale of Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, I wanted to understand: How does one justify focusing one’s energies on stopping the efforts to bring it to a halt?
Masters of war
Cohen’s political awakening took place against the background of the Cold War and the political upheaval caused by Washington’s involvement in Vietnam.
He was 11 during the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Part of the reason he enrolled in college was to avoid being drafted and sent to the jungle to fight the Viet Cong.
When I asked how he first became interested in politics, he cited Bob Dylan’s 1963 protest song “Masters of War,” which takes aim at the political leaders and weapons makers who benefit from conflicts and culminates with the singer standing over their graves until he’s sure they’re dead.
“That was kind of a revelation to me,” Cohen said. Behind him, the sun filtered past a cardboard Ben & Jerry’s sign propped against a window. “I hadn’t understood that, you know, there were these masters of war — essentially I guess what we would now call the military-industrial-congressional complex — that profit from war.”
Cohen saw people from his high school get drafted and never come back from a war that “wasn’t justified.” As he graduated in the summer of 1969, around half a million U.S. troops were stationed in ‘Nam. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on Washington, D.C. to demand peace.
It was only much later, while doing “a lot of research” into the “tradeoffs between military spending and spending for human needs,” that Cohen came across a 1953 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which foreshadowed the U.S. president’s 1961 farewell address in which he coined the phrase “military-industrial complex.”
A Republican president who had served as the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower warned against tumbling into an arms race. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.
“That is a foundational thing for me, very inspiring for me, and captures the essence of what I believe,” Cohen said.
“If we weren’t wasting all of our money on preparing to kill people, we would actually be able to save and help a lot of people,” he added with a chuckle. “That goes for how we approach the world internationally as well,” he added — including the war in Ukraine.
Pierre Ferrari, a former Ben & Jerry’s board member who was with the company from 1997 to 2020, said Cohen’s view of the world was shaped by the events of his youth.
“We were brought up at a time when the military, the government was just completely out of control,” he said. “We’re both children of the sixties, the Vietnam War and the new futility of war and the way war is used by the military-industrial complex and politics,” Ferrari added, pointing to the peace symbol he wore around his neck.
Jeff Furman, who has known Cohen for nearly 50 years and once served as Ben & Jerry’s in-house legal counsel, acknowledged that his generation’s views on Ukraine were informed by America’s misadventures in Vietnam.
“There’s a history of why this war is happening that’s a little bit more complex than who Putin is,” he said. “When you’ve been misled so many times in the past, you have to take this into consideration when you think about it, and really, really try to know what’s happening.”
Ice-cold activism
Politics has been a part of the Ben & Jerry’s brand since Cohen and his partner Jerry Greenfield started selling ice cream out of an abandoned gas station in 1978.
The company’s look and ethos were pure 1960s; they named one of their early flavors, Cherry Garcia, after the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, whose psychedelic riffs formed the soundtrack of the hippy counterculture.
Social justice was one of the duo’s secret ingredients. For the first-year anniversary of the gas station shop’s opening, they gave away free ice cream for a day. On the flyers printed to promote the event was a quote from Cohen: “Business has a responsibility to give back to the community from which it draws its support.”
In 1985, after the company went public, they used some of the shares to endow a foundation working for progressive social change and committed Ben & Jerry’s to spend 7.5 percent of its pretax profits on philanthropy.
In the early years, the company instituted a five-to-one cap on the ratio between the salary of the highest-earning executive and its lowest-paid worker, dropping it only when Cohen was about to step down as CEO in the mid-1990sand they were struggling to find a successor willing to work for what they were offering.
Most companies try to separate politics and business. Cohen and Greenfield cheerfully mixed them up and served them in a tub of creamy deliciousness (the company’s rich, fatty flavors were in part driven by Cohen’s sinus problems, which dulls his taste).
In 1988, Cohen founded 1% for Peace, a nonprofit organization seeking to “redirect one percent of the national defense budget to fund peace-promoting activities and projects.” The project was funded in part through sales of a vanilla and dark-chocolate popsicle they called the Peace Pop.
It was around this time that Cohen opened Ben & Jerry’s in Russia, as “an effort to build a bridge between Communism and capitalism with locally produced Cherry Garcia,” according to a write-up in the New York Times. After years of planning, the outlet opened in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk in 1992. (The company shut the shop down five years later to prioritize growth in the U.S., and also because of the involvement of local mobsters, said Furman, who was involved in the project.)
Cohen, with co-founder Jerry Greenfield, actress Jane Fonda and other climate activists, in front of the Capitol in 2019 | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Even after Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000, there were few progressive causes the company wasn’t eager to wade into with a campaign or a fancy new flavor.
The ice cream maker has marketed “Rainforest Crunch” in defense of the Amazon forest, sold “Empower Mint” to combat voter suppression, promoted “Pecan Resist” in opposition to then-U.S. President Donald Trump and launched “Change the Whirled” in partnership with Colin Kaepernick, the American football quarterback whose sports career ended after he started taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
More recently, however, the relationship between Cohen, Greenfield and Unilever has been rockier. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop doing business in the Palestinian territories. Cohen and Greenfield, who are Jewish, defended the company’s decision in an op-ed in the New York Times.
After the move sparked political backlash, Unilever transferred its license to a local producer, only to be sued by Ben & Jerry’s. In December 2022, Unilever announced in a one-sentence statement that its litigation with its subsidiary “has been resolved.”Ben & Jerry’s ice cream continues to be sold throughout Israel and the West Bank, according to a Unilever spokesperson.
Cohen himself is no stranger to activism: Earlier this month, he was arrested and detained for a few hours for taking part in a sit-in in front of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was protesting the prosecution of the activist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
Unilever declined to comment on Cohen’s views. “Ben Cohen no longer has an operational role in Ben & Jerry’s, and his comments are made in a personal capacity,” a spokesperson said.
Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request for comment.
The world according to Ben
For Cohen, the war in Ukraine wasn’t just a tragedy. It was, in a sense, a vindication. In 1998, a group he created called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities published a full-page ad in the New York Times titled “Hey, let’s scare the Russians.”
The target of the ad was a proposal to expand NATO “toward Russia’s very borders,” with the inclusion of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Doing so, the ad asserted, would provide Russians with “the same feeling of peace and security Americans would have if Russia were in a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, armed to the teeth.”
Cohen is by no means alone in this view of recent history. The American scholar John Mearsheimer, a prominent expert in international relations, has argued that the “trouble over Ukraine” started after the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest when the alliance opened the door to membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
In the U.S., this point has been echoed by progressive outlets and thinkers, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the linguist Noam Chomsky, or most recently by the American philosopher, activist and longest-of-long-shots, third-party presidential candidate Cornel West.
“We told them after they disbanded the Warsaw Pact that we could not expand NATO, not one inch. And we did that, we lied,” said Dennis Fritz, a retired U.S. Air Force official and the head of the Eisenhower Media Network — which describes itself as a group of “National Security Veteran experts, who’ve been there, done that and have an independent, alternative story to tell.”
It was Fritz’s organization that argued in a May 2023 ad in the New York Times that although the “immediate cause” of the “disastrous” war in Ukraine was Russia’s invasion, “the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears.”
The ad noted that American foreign policy heavyweights, including Robert Gates and Henry Kissinger, had warned of the dangers of NATO expansion. “Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings?” it asked. “Profit from weapons sales was a major factor.”
Cohen andGreenfield announce a new flavor, Justice Remix’d, in 2019 | Win McNamee/Getty Images
When I spoke to Cohen, the group’s primary donor, according to Fritz, he echoed the ad’s key points, saying U.S. arms manufacturers saw NATO’s expansion as a “financial bonanza.”
“In the end, money won,” he said with a resigned tone. “And today, not only are they providing weapons to all the new NATO countries, but they’re providing weapons to Ukraine.”
I told Cohen I could understand his opposition to the war and follow his critique of U.S. foreign policy, but I couldn’t grasp how he could take a position that put him in the same corner as a government that is bombing civilians. He refused to be drawn in.
“I’m not supporting Russia, I’m not supporting Ukraine,” he said. “I’m supporting negotiations to end the war instead of providing more weapons to continue the war.”
The Grayzone
I tried to get a better answer when I spoke to Aaron Maté, the Canadian-born journalist who won the award for “defense reporting and analysis” that Cohen was instrumental in funding.
Named after the late Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst who campaigned against the development of F-35 fighter jets as overly complex and expensive, the award recognized Maté’s “continued work dissecting establishment propaganda on issues such as Russian interference in U.S. politics, or the war in Syria.”
Maté, who was photographed with Cohen’s arm around his shoulders at the awards ceremony in March, writes for the Grayzone, a far-left website that has acquired a reputation for publishing stories backing the narratives of authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. His reports deny the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, and he has briefed the U.N. Security Council at Moscow’s invitation.
When I spoke to Maté, he was friendly but guarded. (The Pierre Sprey award noted that “his empiricist reporting give the lie to the charge of ‘disinformation’ routinely leveled by those whose nostrums he challenges.”)
He was happy however to walk me through his claims that, based on statements by U.S. officials since the start of the war, Washington is using Kyiv to wage a “proxy war” against Moscow. Much of his information, he said, came from Western journalism. “I point out examples where, buried at the bottom of articles, sometimes the truth is admitted,” he explained.
He declined to be described as pro-Putin. “That kind of ‘guilt-by-association’ reasoning is not serious thinking,” he said. “It’s not how adults think about things.” When I asked if he believed that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine, he answered: “I’m sure they have. I’ve never heard of a war where war crimes are not committed.”
Still, he said, the U.S. was responsible for “prolonging” the war and “sabotaging the diplomacy that could have ended it.”
‘Come to Ukraine’
The best answer I got to my question came not from Cohen or others in his circle but from a fellow traveler who hasn’t chosen to follow critics of NATO on their latest journey.
A self-described “radical anti-imperialist,” Gilbert Achcar is a professor of development studies and international relations at SOAS University of London. He has described the expansion of NATO in the 1990s as a decision that “laid the ground for a new cold war” pitting the West against Russia and China.
But while he sees the war in Ukraine as the latest chapter in this showdown, he has warned against calls for a rush to the negotiating table. Instead, he has advocated for the complete withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine and “the delivery of defensive weapons to the victims of aggression with no strings attached.”
“To give those who are fighting a just war the means to fight against a much more powerful aggressor is an elementary internationalist duty,” he wrote three days after Russia launched its attack on Kyiv, comparing the invasion to the U.S.’s intervention in Vietnam.
Achcar said he understood the conclusions being drawn by people like Cohen about Washington’s interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, “it leads a lot of people on the left into … [a] knee-jerk opposition to anything the United States does.”
What they fail to account for, however, is the Ukrainian people.
“In a way, part of the Western left is ethnocentric,” said Achcar, who was born in Senegal and grew up in Lebanon. “They look at the whole world just by their opposition to their own government and therefore forget about other people’s rights.”
Cohen, with late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon in 2011 | Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Ben & Jerry’s
His point was echoed in the last conversation I had when researching this article, with Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former economy minister.
“It doesn’t really matter who promised what to whom in the 1990s,” Mylovanov said. “What matters is that there was Mariupol and Bucha, where tens of thousands of people were killed.”
Mylovanov taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh until he returned to Ukraine four days before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Things like war are difficult to understand unless you experience them,” he said. “This is very easy to get confused when you are sitting, you know, somewhere far from the facts and you have surrounded yourself by an echo chamber of people and sources that you agree with.”
“In that sense,” he added. “I invite these people to come to Ukraine and judge for themselves what the truth is.”
Mark Rutte said he will not run for a fifth term as the Dutch prime minister.
SOPA Images
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced on Monday that he won’t run for a fifth term in office after handing in the resignation of his cabinet Friday, bringing an end to the country’s fragile four-party coalition government.
Fifty-six-year-old Rutte, who became the country’s longest-serving prime minister in history in August last year, said he plans to leave Dutch politics following elections later in the year.
The leader of the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) had served as prime minister since 2010.
“In recent days there’s been a lot of speculation about what motivated me. The only answer is the Netherlands,” Rutte said in a speech in parliament, according to Reuters. His comments came ahead of a scheduled no-confidence vote in The Hague on Monday.
“Yesterday morning I made the decision that I will not again be available as leader of the VVD. Once the new cabinet is formed after the elections, I will leave politics.”
Rutte’s announcement comes shortly after he last week said that his four-party coalition government had collapsed over “irreconcilable” differences on immigration policy.
The prime minister and his government will remain in post until a new ruling government is chosen. Opposition lawmakers have called for an immediate election. A fragmented political landscape in the Netherlands means it can take months to form a new government after an election.
The four-party coalition government comprises Rutte’s VVD, the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal party and two centrist parties: the Democrats 66 and the Christian Union.
The latest political crisis resulted from splits over migration policy.
Rutte has faced pressure from the right wing of his own party to take a tougher stance on immigration, and from the rise of right-wing parties more broadly. He has been trying to limit the scope for immigrant families to reunite in the Netherlands.
Some of the junior coalition partners opposed the measures, insisting that children and parents seeking asylum in the country have the right to be reunited.
Coalition partners of Rutte’s VVD sought to pin the blame of the government’s collapse on the prime minister over the weekend, suggesting he had gone too far with limits on family migration.
Rutte on Friday denied that he was responsible for the cabinet’s collapse and suggested he was open to seeking a fifth term in office, before ultimately scrapping this plan on Monday morning.
Analysts at Dutch lender Rabobank said that the proportional representation political system means the country tends to rely on coalition governments to enact policies.
“The need to build consensus can result in stalemate in key policy areas. This has traditionally been viewed as pretty market friendly as it limits dramatic changes in direction of policy,” analysts at the bank said Monday.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan arrives for a NATO summit in Madrid, Spain June 29, 2022.
Nacho Doce | Reuters
NATO is convening a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 11 to approve new defense plans, and — its leaders hope — announce the full approval of a new member to the alliance, Sweden.
But more than a year after the Nordic country made its application to join the defense organization, Turkey — which has been a member since 1952 and boasts NATO’s second-largest military — stands in the way.
Hungary, an EU and a NATO member, is the only other holdout, though its stance on the issue is expected to follow Turkey’s. Countries need unanimous approval from NATO’s existing 31 member states in order to join.
Turkey is leveraging its strength as a member of the alliance to extract concessions from other countries. It’s a bet that could pay off handsomely for Ankara — or it could further stress relations with the West, backfiring and hurting the country’s already fragile economy.
U.S. President Joe Biden has already told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Washington wants the objection to Sweden’s NATO bid dropped, while Erdogan is pushing the administration for a sale of F-16 fighter jets for the Turkish military. The jets could be something Turkey gains in exchange for a potential approval for Sweden, although Biden officials say the two demands are “totally unrelated.”
With much at stake for Turkey, Sweden, and the NATO alliance, whichever direction Turkey moves in will have significant consequences for them all.
Turkey’s objection stems from Sweden’s support for Kurdish groups that Ankara deems to be terrorists. Kurds, an ethnic minority in Turkey constituting some 20% of the country’s population, have a tumultuous history with the Turkish government, which classifies some Kurdish political groups to be a severe threat. Sweden has made efforts to adjust its policies to Turkey’s demands, but Erdogan says that he isn’t satisfied.
Turkey’s position is also essentially a flex, some observers say, using its role in NATO to win concessions and remind the West that it is a partner whose demands must be taken seriously.
“There’s still a chance that Turkey will allow Sweden to enter NATO in time for the July summit,” Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at Rane, told CNBC. “But there’s clearly a realistic chance that Erdogan will continue to play this thing out well past that deadline.”
Finland and Sweden announced their intentions to apply for NATO membership in May of 2022, reversing a historic policy of nonalignment in the wake of Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.
While official partners of the alliance since the 1990s, the idea that the Nordic states might actually join the group made Moscow bristle — NATO expansion is something it has previously cited to justify invading Ukraine.
This move is part of a broader dance Ankara is performing between Russia and NATO, using its unique position to leverage advantages.
Guney Yildiz
Researcher on Turkey and Syria
Erdogan meanwhile has a friendly relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, operating as a mediator of sorts between Moscow and Kyiv and refusing to adopt Western sanctions against Russia.
Many Kurdish activists living in Sweden say they do not support terrorism but oppose Erdogan and his policies, and now fear Stockholm may sell them out for NATO membership. Turkey’s demands of Stockholm controversially include extraditing certain Kurdish activists to Turkey, some of whom are Swedish citizens and have been protected from extradition under Swedish law.
“President Erdogan said Sweden has taken steps in the right direction by making changes in anti-terrorism legislation,” a statement from the Turkish presidency said on July 5. “But supporters of the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) … terrorist organization continue to freely organize demonstrations praising terrorism, which nullifies the steps taken,” it added.
Turkey is using this opportunity to send an important message about its national security interests, explained Kamal Alam, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
A participant jumps onto a banner showing a portrait of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a demonstration organised by The Kurdish Democratic Society Center against the Turkish President and Sweden’s NATO bid in Stockholm on January 21, 2023.
Christine Olsson | Afp | Getty Images
“A lot of Turkey’s stance is a direct message to Europe that whilst this may look like posturing, Ankara has not gotten over the EU support to the YPG/PYD in north East Syria which also translates into indirect support to the PKK,” he said, referencing Kurdish militant and political groups in Syria that have links to the PKK, but who were vital in the fight against ISIS there.
“This stance is a direct result of the fallout of the war in Syria when Turkey drifted apart from the EU on many fronts,” Alam said. “Whilst the headlines might be of tactical blocking of joining NATO, the overall strategic messaging is don’t mess with Turkey’s national security.”
He also noted the decades-long refusal by the EU to let Turkey into the bloc, adding: “Turkey is saying we are the second largest army in NATO and after all the blackmailing and stalled EU accession, we will now reverse the process of who comes in or out.”
While the bet could pay off for Turkey, it also threatens to rupture already tense relations with Western allies and even backfire economically.
“Turkey’s blockade on Sweden’s NATO progression isn’t a clear-cut ticket to economic fallout, but it is playing with fire,” said Guney Yildiz, a researcher focused on Turkey and Syria.
“This move is part of a broader dance Ankara is performing between Russia and NATO, using its unique position to leverage advantages,” he told CNBC.
“With subtle alignment with the West on other fronts like Russian sanctions, Turkey feels it can take the heat over Sweden for a while. But it’s a ticking clock,” Yildiz warned. “The window to exploit Sweden’s membership for gain is closing. When it does, Turkey will pay a price, especially as the cost of managing its Russian relations escalates, inevitably tipping the scale towards more compromise and less gain.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to meet Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Turkey’s economy has been on a rollercoaster the past several years, with inflation veering between 40% and 80% in the last year and a currency that’s lost some 80% of its value against the dollar in the last five years.
In such a precarious setting, Turkey can’t afford to take any more risks, says Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management.
“Either Turkey approves Sweden’s NATO membership at Vilnius or it risks a major break in relations with the West and at a time when Turkey’s macro is on the edge. It’s decision time,” Ash wrote in an email note.
“It will go to the last minute, the 11.5th hour,” he said. “But if it does not happen there will be a major crisis in Turkey-NATO relations — at a time when the Turkish macro looks particularly vulnerable.”
Haitham al-Ghais, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), speaking at the Energy Asia Summit on June 26, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country signaled that the influential producers’ alliance is actively open to recruiting new members.
Asked if he is trying to expand the OPEC coalition, the organization’s Secretary-General Haitham al-Ghais told reporters on Wednesday: “I am, yes.”
The organization currently has 13 members, predominantly based in the Middle East, North and West Africa and South America. At stake for the group of oil producers is a battle to reconcile an outlook of tighter crude supply in the second half of the year, current macroeconomic worries, and inflationary concerns. OPEC members coordinate the amount of oil they output in an effort to influence prices.
Ecuador exited the group in 2020 because of political circumstances, but in May was invited to rejoin the OPEC ranks, according to a letter from al-Ghais shared by the Ecuadorian energy ministry.
“The Organization sees as a top priority that Ecuador joins the OPEC family again,” the letter said. The Ecuadorian ministry did not reveal its response.
Al-Ghais would not be drawn into disclosing the names of potential new members. He mentioned recent visits paid to oil-producing countries, however, including allies that currently implement a joint production strategy with OPEC countries, in a group known as OPEC+.
“I was in Malaysia, I was in Brunei,” he said, stressing that he had not necessarily invited these countries to join the organization. “I was in Azerbaijan, I was in Mexico.”
Previous speculation about Guyana’s potential membership saw OPEC state in late June that, while the South American country is “an emerging player in the international oil market with significant potential,” it had not been invited to join.
Asked about the requirements to become an OPEC member, al-Ghais said: “They have to be a net [oil] exporter, substantial, they have to have similar goals as OPEC. This is all mentioned very clearly in our statute. And I think many countries that I just named actually fit this profile. So … work in progress.”
The OPEC secretary-general addressed reporters following an OPEC seminar conference in Vienna, where energy and oil ministers met on the sidelines.
No new policies were announced, but ministers expressed appreciation for the additional oil production cuts of OPEC+ members Saudi Arabia, Russia and Algeria.
On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would extend its voluntary 1-million-barrels-per-day cut initially outlined for July into August, while fellow heavyweight Moscow said it would trim its exports by 500,000 barrels per day next month. Algeria also said it will reduce its production by 20,000 barrels per day in August.
All three countries and several other OPEC+ members in April declared a separate set of output cuts totaling over 1.6 million barrels per day, which they have extended until the end of 2024.
Al-Ghais emphasized that the voluntary reductions enacted by some OPEC+ did not suggest divisions in the policy views of coalition members.
“When people can sit down and go through an agreement that goes all the way through, with a clear vision, into 2025, I think that’s a sign of unanimity,” he said.
“These are sovereign country decisions. They are extra. We appreciate them … It does not in any way insinuate that there is a fragmentation.”
Echoing the comments of other OPEC officials, al-Ghais has also been advocating for simultaneous joint investment in fossil fuel projects and in renewables, in an effort to avoid energy supply deficits. Despite what he perceives as global underinvestment in hydrocarbons, he said that the OPEC alliance can still answer any potential supply crisis.
“Part of the decision to reduce production is also good because it gives us more spare capacity, and OPEC has always managed to step up in case of any shock globally,” al-Ghais said.
“Spare capacity is tight, I would say … And our countries are investing. When I talk about underinvestment, most of our countries, if not all of them, are investing … But it’s a global responsibility. OPEC cannot shoulder this on its own. We have to have everybody step up.”
Suhail al-Mazrouei, energy minister of the United Arab Emirates, likewise stressed focus on investment and availabilities.
“What’s important is not the price, what’s important is the level of investments that are coming to the market to balance the longer or the medium-term view of the supply,” he told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Wednesday. “If something worries me, that’s what worries me, the medium to long-term supply. Not the demand.”
The International Energy Agency in May foreshadowed an intense supply crunch, noting “tighter market balances we anticipate in the second half of the year, when demand is expected to eclipse supply by almost 2 mb/d.”
Thierry Breton, internal market commissioner for the European Union, delivers a keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The European Union is looking to cooperate more closely with Japan on key technologies such as artificial intelligence, the bloc’s industry chief said, as the coalition looks to reduce its reliance on China in certain areas.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton is meeting with the Japanese government on Monday, and artificial intelligence will be “very high” on his agenda, he said in a video posted on Twitter on Sunday.
“I will engage with [the] Japanese government … on how we can organize our digital space, including AI based on our shared value,” Breton said.
Breton also said there will be an EU-Japan Digital Partnership council, to discuss areas including quantum and high-performance computing. The EU held a similar council with South Korea last week, in which the two sides agreed to cooperate on technologies such as AI and cybersecurity.
Partnerships with key Asian countries with strong technology sectors come as the EU looks to “de-risk” from China — a different approach from that of the U.S., which has sought to decouple its economy from Beijing.
Part of that EU strategy involves deepening the relationship with allied countries around technology.
Breton told Reuters on Monday that the bloc and Japan will cooperate in the area of semiconductors. Japan is a key country in the semiconductor supply chain, and Tokyo has been looking to strengthen its domestic industry. Last week, a fund backed by the Japanese government proposed to buy domestic chipmaking firm JSR for around 903.9 billion yen ($6.3 billion).
Semiconductors are vital components that go into everything from cars to smartphones and have potential military applications. Countries around the world have been reassessing their supply chains, and some, like the U.S., have looked to bring semiconductor manufacturing back onshore.
Semiconductors are also key to training artificial intelligence models. AI and chips are seen as two key areas of technology for the future, which countries are trying to position themselves to take advantage of.
At the same time, the U.S. in particular has sought to cut China off from critical technologies, such as semiconductors, through export restrictions and Washington has looked to convince European allies to join.
A union representing port workers in Western Canada officially began striking, an action that could have ripple effects reaching beyond the U.S.’s northern neighbor.
The International Longshore & Warehouse Union Canada’s Longshore Division announced its labor strike began in a Saturday Facebook post signed by union president Rob Ashton. More than 99% of members of the union, who support West Coast ports such as Vancouver and Prince Rupert, voted to approve the strike last month. Notice of the strike came Wednesday.
“The ILWU Canada Longshore Division has not taken this decision lightly, but for the future of our workforce we had to take this step,” Ashton said in the post. “We are still hopeful a settlement will be reached through FREE Collective Bargaining!”
The union has been open to bargaining since February with the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association, which represents port owners, and remains ready to continue working on a contract, Ashton added.
The employers association, known as the BCMEA, said in a statement it has worked to “advance proposals and positions in good faith, with the objective of achieving a fair deal at the table.” It noted the role of federal mediators and said it was open to “any” solution that can get the parties to a balanced agreement, including a mediated arbitration process.
Cruises remain able to sail and bulk grain is moving, but containerized grain is not. Canadian labor minister Seamus O’Regan Jr. tweeted seemingly in support of continued negotiations between the two groups, noting that “the best deals for both parties are reached at the table.”
The two parties are at odds over issues including automation, the use of contract work and the cost of living for workers. Two mediators appointed by the Canadian government oversaw discussions that ran through the end of May. Those discussions were followed by a so-called cooling-off period between the two groups.
A strike in the western ports occurring around holidays in both the U.S. and Canada could result in impacts on the American economy, industry followers say. The Port of Vancouver and Port of Prince Rupert are popular destinations for U.S. trade because these ports are among the major ports of call for goods arriving from Asia. Some logistics managers have told CNBC that rail service out of those ports is a lot faster than going through the port of Seattle or Tacoma.
The International Longshoremen’s Association said it won’t take diverted cargo from ports with striking workers, while the head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents West Coast port workers in the U.S., made a statement of solidarity with the Canadian union but did not mention any specific action.
The strike could lead to congestion in these ports with longshoremen unable to unload vessels. Congestion can turn into backlogs and lead to delayed pickups from terminals, which can then lead to late fees that are often passed on to consumers — a situation similar to what occurred during the pandemic.
“With the Canadian holiday and July Fourth holidays, the volume of containers moving are lighter than normal but now vessels are not being worked because of the strike,” said Paul Brashire, vice president of drayage and intermodal at ITS Logistics. “If this strike continues into the middle of next week, it will impact congestion in the coming weeks at Chicago and Detroit rail terminals because of the amount of containers that would have built up and eventually moved to those rail terminals.”
The Canadian ports handle nearly $225 billion in cargo each year, according to estimates, with items spanning industries such as home goods, electronics and apparel transported by rail. Approximately 15% of consumer trade going through the Port of Vancouver is headed to or coming from the U.S., according to port authority data. Around two-thirds of containerized import volume going to the Port of Prince Rupert are headed to the U.S., port data shows.
Three Class 1 railways operate at these ports: CN, Canadian Pacific and BNSF, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. In an email to CNBC, BNSF said it had no comment on a strike impact. CN could not be immediately reached for comment.
In a CPKC customer advisory issued Wednesday, the railway said: “The work stoppage related to this notice could impact port operations in British Columbia. At this time, we do not anticipate any significant service interruptions to result from this work stoppage and, as such, CPKC has not initiated embargoes related to a potential service interruption but we are closely monitoring developments to evaluate any impact to shipments on CPKC’s network. We will provide updates as necessary.”
Steve Lamar, CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, told CNBC that the “fragile and recovering supply chains cannot tolerate a strike,” while urging the Canadian government to help keep parties at the table.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo testifies before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Feb. 1, 2022.
Andrew Harnik | Reuters
As reports swirl about potential U.S. limits on semiconductor exports to China, a small division within the sprawling U.S. Department of Commerce is taking on an outsize role.
The Bureau of Industry and Security was described by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in 2021 as the “small but mighty” agency at the center of federal national security efforts. That’s especially true now, with President Joe Biden considering stricter controls on the export of powerful artificial intelligence computing chips to the world’s second-largest economy.
The BIS is responsible for implementing the U.S. export control regime, preventing critical high-tech and defense products from getting into the hands of the wrong companies or governments. The decisions made by the BIS about who can and can’t access U.S. technology can have a major effect on corporate bottom lines.
Chipmakers have already taken a hit as a result of BIS-imposed restrictions. In 2022, the BIS warned Nvidia that new licensing requirements precluded the export of the company’s advanced A100 and H100 chips to China without obtaining a license from the Commerce Department, part of the Biden administration’s sweeping effort to curb Chinese technological advancement.
Nvidia warned in August 2022 that about $400 million in potential Chinese sales would be lost unless customers purchased “alternative product offerings.” Just a few months later, Nvidia began to offer a watered-down version of its flagship AI chip for the Chinese market. Dubbed the A800, its lower-end specifications exempted it from Commerce Department licensing requirements.
But The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that even the less-powerful Nvidia offering could be restricted from export at the direction of President Biden. The BIS declined to comment on a potential tightening of export controls. Nvidia shares, which have soared 180% this year largely on AI hype, fell 2% after the WSJ story.
Through its Commerce Control List, the BIS can define which product specifications require licenses to be sold overseas. The criteria can be so specific that only a handful of commercially available items apply.
While the Commerce Control List isn’t intended to single out any one vendor, there are very few companies that develop the kind of high-octane processors that power AI models. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices lead that group.
If an export restriction were implemented, those companies would be responsible for ensuring their high-tech processors don’t end up in the Chinese markets.
In one high-profile enforcement case, the BIS took aim at hard drive manufacturer Seagate over the company’s decision to continue supplying Huawei after the Chinese company was blacklisted in 2020. Seagate was fined $300 million by the government. But the financial effect was much greater, as Seagate had a $1.1 billion business in China.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that the Chinese military was “stronger” at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and accused the former president of being “singularly focused” on trade with China while he was in office.
“China was military stronger – militarily stronger – when President Trump left office than when he entered. That’s bad. But Joe Biden’s record is much worse,” the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a policy speech on China at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington on Tuesday.
Haley, who is polling in the single digits, has started to take more direct aim at the Republican primary’s leading candidates in recent weeks. Tuesday marked her strongest public objections to Trump’s record with China so far.
She said Trump “did too little about the rest of the Chinese threat” and demonstrated “moral weakness in his zeal to befriend [Chinese] President Xi.”
“He did not put us on a stronger military foothold in Asia. He did not stop the flow of American technology and investment into the Chinese military. He did not effectively rally our allies against the Chinese threat. Even the trade deal he signed came up short when China predictively failed to live up to its commitments,” Haley said.
She added that, “Trump congratulated the Communist Party on its 70th anniversary of conquering China. That sends a wrong message to the world. Chinese communism must be condemned, never congratulated.”
Haley did say that Trump deserves credit for pushing both parties to “take off their blinders” with regard to threats from China and claimed that Biden’s track record on China is worse than Trump’s.
“Just look at what happened. China’s scolded us then President Xi pronounced it was a good meeting. He only says that when he gets a lot more than he gives. In fact, he gave us nothing,” Haley said.
In her speech laying out what her policy toward China would look like as president, Haley declared the Chinese Communist Party an “enemy” and deemed it the “most dangerous foreign threat we face since the second world war.”
“The Communist Party’s endgame is clear. China is preparing its people for war. President Xi has openly said it. We should take him at his word and act accordingly,” she said.
Haley added that the question of China is a question for presidential leadership, saying there must be a “series of fundamental shifts” in US policy. She said that her administration would respond domestically, economy and militarily.
She also proposed specific moves, including pushing Congress to put an end to permanent trade relations with China until the flow of fentanyl into the US ends, and eliminating federal funding for all universities that take Chinese money.
“Universities must choose, you either take Chinese money or you take American money, but the days of taking both are over. It shouldn’t be a hard decision,” Haley said
Haley also said that the US should ban all lobbying from the CCP and stop allowing licenses for exporting sensitive technology to China.
On Taiwan, she said that the US should make clear that if China invades Taiwan “it would mean a full-blown economic decoupling and it would massively damage China.” Though Haley did not explicitly commit to keeping or getting rid of the US policy of strategic ambiguity when it comes to Taiwan.
Haley also said that a Russian defeat in the Ukraine war “would be an enormous loss for China” and – as she has done before – made the case for continued support to Ukraine so that it can reclaim its territory.
“Now is the time to seize the moment and help Ukraine bring this war to a decisive end. Make no mistakes China is watching the war in Ukraine with great interest,” Haley said. “China is seeing what most fears if it invades Taiwan, but that could change in short order. If America and the West abandon Ukraine and Russia succeeds in taking its territory and freedom, China will hear an unmistakable message. That message can only encourage China to invade Taiwan as soon as possible. The warning signs are already flashing.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump addresses The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 2023 “Road to Majority” conference in Washington, U.S., June 24, 2023.
Tasos Katopodis | Reuters
Hours after the release of an audio tape in which Donald Trump discusses a classified document that he kept after leaving office, the former president intensified his attacks on the special counsel who oversees the probe that led to Trump’s historic indictment.
In an all-caps social media post Tuesday morning, Trump decried the criminal charges that have been filed against him in federal court and asked “somebody” to “explain” his position to special counsel Jack Smith, “his family, and his friends.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on Trump’s latest broadside against Smith, who was tapped last year to lead multiple criminal investigations involving the former president.
Trump was indicted on charges stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to keep them from the government after leaving office. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts, including willful retention of national defense information and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump’s post claimed that “as president of the United States, I come under the Presidential Records Act,” instead of the Espionage Act, which is the law cited in 31 of the counts against Trump. Fact-checkers have disputed Trump’s characterizations of both laws.
That statement on Truth Social was not the first time Trump has referenced Smith’s personal circle. On the morning of his arraignment in federal court in Florida, the ex-president wrote that Smith is a “Trump Hater, as are all his friends and family.” That post also asserted without evidence that materials found in the boxes of records at the center of the classified documents case were “probably ‘planted.'”
Trump’s latest post followed the Monday night release by CNN of an audio recording of a July 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, in which Trump references a document that he says is “highly confidential” and “secret.”
“This was done by the military, and given to me,” Trump said in the tape, which was recorded months after he left the White House. Trump indicates that the document has to do with a plan of attack on Iran.
“As president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t,” he said in the recording.
Trump was reportedly speaking to a writer and publisher who were working on a book about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Two of Trump’s staff members were also present.
None of them had security clearances or any need to know the classified information referenced by Trump, according to the indictment, which references a transcript of the recording.
Trump’s attacks on Smith fit the pattern and style that the former president has employed against many of his other legal and political foes.
He has regularly fired rhetorical salvos against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is leading a separate, state-level criminal prosecution against Trump in connection with hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election.
Trump in April pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in that case. Ahead of that court appearance in Manhattan, Trump targeted the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, accusing him and his family of being “Trump haters.“
Smith is overseeing a separate probe of the facts surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the post-presidential transfer of power in 2020. No charges have yet been filed stemming from that investigation, which is ongoing.
All eyes are on Moscow — but no one knows what they’re looking at.
Are there more uprisings in the works? Will Vladimir Putin escalate his brutality in Ukraine to compensate? Are his nukes secure? Will everything somehow return to a tense, war-time status quo?
These types of questions have gripped conversations after a failed mutiny saw the Wagner Group’s mercenaries march within hours of Moscow before turning back.
While Putin and Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin continue to spin dueling narratives about the rebellion, one thing appears certain: the Russian leader’s veneer of invincibility has shattered.
That does not mean the end of the Putin regime is imminent. But a host of hard-to-imagine and even bizarre scenarios are now being teased out as everyone speculates over what comes next.
There are “more unknowns than knowns,” said a senior Central European diplomat, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.
POLITICO lays out a few of those knowns — and unknowns — about what will now unfold in the world’s largest country.
Putin’s next act: Repression? More war? Ousted?
Images of Wagner troops capturing a major military headquarters before marching toward Moscow with few consequences, only to turn around without even facing arrest, have prompted confused musings about what the strongman leader’s potential next move.
Often, it’s a crackdown.
“What I think naturally follows from this now is even more repression in Russia,” said Laurie Bristow, who served as British ambassador to Russia from 2016 until 2020.
That hasn’t yet happened, though. In fact, despite deriding the mutiny’s leaders as having betrayed Russia, Putin claims to be offering those involved a way out.
On Monday, he said Wagner soldiers would be free to join regular forces, go home or head to Belarus — heightening speculation that the Moscow regime’s once-dominant position of power is withering.
Putin said an armed mutiny by Wagner mercenaries was a “stab in the back” and that the group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had betrayed Russia | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Image
One Eastern European diplomat said their assessment is that Prigozhin was “used by a particular group of the Kremlin/FSB elite dissatisfied with the current leadership” in the defense ministry. And, the diplomat added, Putin could still change the terms of his deal with the Wagner boss at any moment.
That has just created more speculation about what the coming months will entail.
Edgars Rinkēvičs, Latvia’s foreign minister and president-elect, listed a host of options, from “Putin trying to put more repression in place back home” to the Russian leader “trying to maybe launch some offensive in Ukraine, trying to show to his own public that he’s in full control.”
And while most experts believe Putin will hold on to power, for now, there is recognition that the West needs to consider a scenario where he is replaced. Powerful figures within Putin’s orbit and the FSB intelligence service are likely already eyeing the unfolding events — and Putin’s muddled response — to spot any opportunity.
“Chaos always carries risks, but there will come a time when the position of Putin is eroded and he is replaced,” said a Western European diplomat.
Speaking on Tuesday night alongside a group of European leaders, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte insisted NATO allies do not want instability.
“I refute what Putin suggested yesterday, that we in the West want Russia to descend into domestic chaos,” Rutte said. “On the contrary, instability in Russia creates instability in Europe. So we are concerned. These developments are further proof that Putin’s war has achieved nothing but more instability — above all, it has inflicted intolerable suffering on the Ukrainian people.”
John Lough, a Russia specialist at Chatham House, said he believed Putin is unlikely to still be in power a year from now.
How that process unfolds — via coup or planned succession — would, of course, influence who comes next.
Emily Ferris, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading London-based security and foreign policy think tank, argued the next Russian leader will likely be “a placeholder that’s very similar to him — somebody that has the ear of the security services, has some sort of security background, is able to control the oligarchs.”
“The person that comes after that,” she added, “would be where the change comes from.”
Wagner’s next boss: Putin? Prigozhin? Belarus?
The mutinous Wagner Group is, remarkably, not dead yet. Who it’s working for, however, is unclear.
On Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that Prigozhin had arrived in his country, where the Wagner boss said he will be allowed to keep operating his paramilitary firm.
The pledge befuddled many — why would Putin let a rogue force operate next door under the guise of a charismatic, traitorous leader? What is Belarus getting out of this arrangement?
Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik via AFP/Getty Images
Officials in the region are anxiously eyeing the situation as they try to sort it out.
Minsk has long been a close Moscow ally, and even let Russia launch attacks on Ukraine from within its borders. Earlier this month, Putin also said he had stationed a first batch of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Now, some of the Wagner fighters are apparently heading there.
“We have to monitor very closely all the movements of Wagner Group,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur warned Tuesday when asked whether the arrival of Wagner personnel in Belarus poses a regional risk.
“It seems that there is much more to discover regarding the deal of Prigozhin and Lukashenka,” he said in a text message.
Asked about the presence of Wagner in Belarus, former U.S. Army Europe commanding general Ben Hodges said on Tuesday that this poses “not more risk for Ukraine … but potentially strengthens Lukashenko’s hand vs. his opposition and/or a future push by Russia.”
“I imagine,” Hodges added, “he’ll also look at this Wagner connection as a business opportunity for himself in Africa.”
Speaking in the Hague on Tuesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Wagner’s presence in Belarus is “really serious and very concerning” and that in his view the move requires a “very tough answer of NATO.”
Wagner forces are already in several African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic, helping prop up anti-Western governments in exchange for access to natural resources. And Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has vowed they will keep working there. But not everyone is convinced that work will always be for Moscow.
“Could Lukashenko be now smarter than Putin?” exclaimed a second Eastern European diplomat. “That would be the ultimate blow to Moscow!”
Moscow’s next chapter in Ukraine: Deflated troops? Fewer mercenaries? Dueling paramilitaries?
Officials are working through how Wagner’s failed mutiny will impact the battlefield in Ukraine — both in terms of how many Wagner members return to fighting in Ukraine and how their mutiny affects the regular Russian military’s thinking.
“One of the things that we should be watching very closely over the next few days is whether morale takes a dive in the Russian army,” said Bristow, the former British ambassador.
But, he added, “We should be very cautious not to think this means that Ukraine does not still face a long, hard fight.”
Rescuers work in a 24-storey building hit by Russian missiles in Kyiv | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
A senior Central European defense official underscored that if Wagner troops are no longer involved in Ukraine, it could change dynamics.
“Wagner Group was for many months the most effective fighting force on the Russian side in Ukraine,” the official said. “If the group is disbanded and will no longer be deployed in Ukraine, it will reduce Russia’s military offensive capacity.”
And it’s not all about Wagner: the weekend mutiny could also impact the calculus of oligarchs, companies and commanders within Russia who control their own armed groups.
Rinkēvičs, Latvia’s foreign minister and president-elect, underscored that there are multiple private military entities in Russia — and that even more could emerge amid Putin’s weakening position.
“It’s not only about regular army in Russia, not about FSB,” Rinkēvičs said in a phone interview, “but also how this situation can develop if more and more oligarchs, or private companies or people in power are going to form their own private, mercenary forces, everyone needs to take this seriously.”
The nukes’ next owner: The Russian state? A future mutineer?
Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal is one element that sets it apart from most other countries undergoing political tumult. Officials are more than happy to see Putin weakened — but they also want to see nuclear weapons in stable hands.
In fact, even at this frosty stage of the relationship with Moscow, Washington still appeared to be checking in with the Kremlin over the weekend about its nukes. Speaking on Monday, Lavrov said the American ambassador in Moscow had passed along a message “that the United States hopes that everything is fine with the nuclear weapons.”
But experts and officials say that they are confident nuclear weapons won’t fall into the wrong hands.
“It’s very hard to imagine a situation where the Russian state loses control of its nuclear arsenal,” said Bristow, the former British ambassador.
Others agree — but say that Russia’s nuclear arsenal could still play a role in a future power struggle.
“We’ve pretty good sight on what they do for security,” said William Alberque, a former director of NATO’s arms control center who now works at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and has in the past visited Russian nuclear sites.
“I have very high confidence that their nuclear weapons remain secure and under the command of the 12th GUMO,” he said, referring to a directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense that manages Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
People near Rostow-on-Don greeted the Wagner group mercenaries with waves and open arms | Roman Romokhov/AFP via Getty Images)
But the 12th GUMO itself, Alberque said, could become a kingmaker in a future Russian game of thrones. Should Putin lose power, his successors may court the powerful directorate’s leadership — and whoever wins their backing would be in pole position to win a succession fight.
“If there were chaos in Moscow,” Alberque said, “if there was one or more pretenders, I think the smartest one would say, ‘I just talked to the commander of 12th GUMO.’”
BRUSSELS — EU countries are bickering over granting billions in new funds to deal with migration as asylum applications soar and backlogs pile up at the Continent’s borders.
Germany, which received a quarter of all EU asylum applications in 2022, specifically wants to “revitalize” the EU’s ties with neighboring Turkey, according to a senior German official — a nod to the last time the bloc faced such levels of migration.
Then, in 2016, the EU offered Turkey billions in exchange for the country housing thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war. Now, there is a push to authorize up to €10.5 billion in new money for not just Turkey, but also countries like Libya or Tunisia, hoping it would help them prevent people from entering the EU without permission.
The debate has jumped onto the agenda of an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. And countries are sparring over whether to reference a monetary request in the meeting’s final conclusions, according to five diplomats and officials from four different countries.
The behind-the-scenes fight illustrates how much migration has come to dominate the political agenda. Organizers for the summit had hoped to keep the divisive migration talk to a minimum in favor of discussions on Russia, China and economic security. But with high-profile disasters like the recent migrant shipwreck near Greece and arrival figures continuing their steep climb, the heated issue is becoming increasingly hard to avoid.
Notably, draft conclusions for the summit, dated Wednesday evening and seen by POLITICO, still had two indirect references to the fresh migration funds: The €10.5 billion pot and another €2 billion for “managing migration” within the EU’s own borders.
Whether that language survives until Friday is another question.
Germany: Let’s talk Turkey, not money
Germany, as always, is one of the key players in the debate — and in this instance, it is making arguments for both sides.
On one side, Berlin wants to renew the EU’s relationship with Turkey, hoping it can take in more asylum seekers and help cut down on unauthorized border crossings. In return, the Germans want the EU to improve trade ties with the country.
On the other side, however, Berlin is fiercely opposing the attempt to explicitly mention money in the summit conclusions. The logic: Committing to fresh billions now would imperil upcoming talks over whether to add €66 billion to its budget. Germany wants to discuss the whole package at once, instead of approving parts of it in advance.
As of Wednesday night, the summit conclusions draft still contained an indirect endorsement of the money.
Germany, as always, is one of the key players in the debate — and in this instance, it is making arguments for both sides | David Gannon/AFP via Getty Images
The document mentions “financing mechanisms” — seen as a reference to the €10.5 billion — for “the external aspects of migration.” That money would go to countries like Turkey, Libya and Tunisia, which migrants often traverse on their way to Europe.
There’s also an indirect reference to the €2 billion for internal EU migration management. The text calls for “support for displaced persons,” particularly from Ukraine, via “adequate and flexible financial assistance to the member states who carry the largest burden of medical, education and living costs of refugees.” Translated, that would mean more money for countries that host the bulk of Ukrainian refugees, like Poland and Germany.
Yet during a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, German officials urged their counterparts to cut or massively reduce both passages, according to the five diplomats and officials, who, like other officials in this story, were granted anonymity because they are not allowed to publicly discuss the talks.
As of Wednesday night, that appeal had failed. But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz may take up the issue himself with his counterparts on Thursday.
The German argument is that including the figures would mean EU leaders are essentially making a big step toward endorsing the full budget package — which the European Commission requested just last week — before even discussing it, two of the officials said.
Nevertheless, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to briefly present her €66 billion budget plan during the gathering of EU leaders on Thursday, meaning there will likely be an initial debate about the money, the officials said.
Von der Leyen’s plans are expected to run into resistance from a number of countries, particularly the so-called “frugal” countries, including Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Speaking to a briefing for reporters in Berlin on Wednesday, a senior German official also voiced caution about von der Leyen’s plan.
“One of the questions is: Is the Commission’s assessment of the situation convincing?” said the senior official, who could not be named due to the rules under which the briefing was organized.
Time to work with Erdoğan again?
At the same time, the senior German official stressed Berlin’s interest in renewing the EU relationship with Turkey.
“[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan has been re-elected, and this must be an opportunity for the EU to take another broad look at its relationship with Turkey,” the official said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
“For us, it’s a matter of putting EU-Turkey relations once again on the agenda … to possibly revitalize them, if all sides want to commit to this,” the official continued, adding that the European Commission and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell should “come back in the fall with proposals.”
One idea could be an update of the EU’s trade rules with Turkey — a thorny issue, though, as talks between Brussels and Ankara have failed to make progress on modernizing the so-called EU-Turkey customs union for several years.
Germany’s Scholz held a phone call with Erdoğan on Wednesday during which both leaders discussed how “to cooperate further and deepen exchanges on various cooperation issues,” according to Steffen Hebestreit, Scholz’s spokesperson.
Any progress in EU-Turkey relations would also require the agreement of the EU countries perpetually at odds with Turkey — Greece and Cyprus.
At least in that sense, there seems to be progress: “We agreed to include a paragraph on Turkey and the future relations,” a Greek diplomat said.
The latest draft conclusions from Wednesday evening ask Borrell and the Commission “submit a report” on EU-Turkey relations “with a view to proceeding in a strategic and forward-looking manner.”
Barbara Moens, Jakob Hanke Vela, Lili Bayer, Jacopo Barigazzi and Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.
Joe Biden says his earlier ‘dictator’ comment on Chinese president Xi Jinping has not derailed efforts to mend ties between the world’s two largest economies. He was speaking at a joint press conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House on June 22, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images
U.S. President Joe Biden dismissed concerns about his comment referencing Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator,” saying his remarks did not undermine diplomatic efforts to mend fragile ties between the two countries.
“I don’t think it’s had any real consequence,” Biden told reporters Thursday at a joint press conference in Washington with the visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Chinese ambassador to Washington, Xie Feng, made “strong protests” to senior White House and State Department officials, NBC News reported.
“I’ve said this for some time — that the hysteria about the relationship with China is collapsing and moving, etc, etc. We had an incident that caused some — some confusion, you might say,” Biden said Thursday. “But Secretary Blinken had a great trip to China. I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future, in the near term.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during an event following his arraignment on classified document charges, at Trump National Golf Club, in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., June 13, 2023.
Amr Alfiky | Reuters
A federal judge issued a protective order Monday barring former President Donald Trump from disclosing — or keeping — evidence set to be turned over to him by the government in the classified documents case on social media.
The order against Trump and Walt Nauta, his co-defendant in the criminal case alleging he mishandled national security information, prohibits them from sharing evidence federal investigators are set to begin turning over to their lawyers as part of the discovery process in the case.
“The Discovery Materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court,” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said in the order.
It bars them from disclosing information about the government’s evidence to people not directly involved in the case without explicit permission from a judge, and warns they could face criminal contempt charges if they violate the order.
It also puts limits on Trump’s access to the material.
“Defendants shall only have access to Discovery Materials under the direct supervision of Defense Counsel or a member of Defense Counsel’s staff. Defendants shall not retain copies of Discovery Material,” the ruling said.
The ruling largely tracks with a request for a protective order the government filed in the case on Friday. The government said in that filing that Trump and Nauta’s lawyers had “no objections to this motion or the protective order.”
Trump attorney Todd Blanche declined comment on the order.
The information prosecutors sought to guard includes “sensitive and confidential information,” including “information that reveals sensitive but unclassified investigative techniques; non-public information relating to potential witnesses and other third parties (including grand jury transcripts and exhibits and recordings of witness interviews); financial information of third parties; third-party location information; and personal information contained on electronic devices and accounts.”
“The materials also include information pertaining to ongoing investigations, the disclosure of which could compromise those investigations and identify uncharged individuals,” their Friday filing said.
Trump, 77, was indicted earlier this month on 37 federal felony counts, including willful retention of national defense information, making f
alse statements and representations, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment last week. Nauta, whose lawyer has declined comment on the case, is expected to enter a not guilty plea next week.
Trump was slapped with a similar order in the New York criminal case where he’s charged with dozens of counts of falsifying business records. Trump’s attorneys had objected to portions of the order in that case.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office said those restrictions were necessary because the “risk” that Trump would use the evidence “inappropriately” was “substantial.”
“Donald J. Trump has a longstanding and perhaps singular history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, trial jurors, grand jurors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him, putting those individuals and their families at considerable safety risk,” the DA’s office had argued in a court filing.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken walks after arriving in Beijing, China, June 18, 2023.
Leah Millis | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, as the top U.S. diplomat wraps up his rare two-day visit to Beijing amid simmering U.S.-China tensions.
Blinken will meet with Xi at 4:30 p.m. local time, according to a State Department official.
The trip by Blinken makes him the highest-level American official to visit China since Joe Biden became U.S. president and the first U.S. secretary of State to make the trip in nearly five years. A meeting with Xi had not been confirmed before Blinken arrived in Beijing, and will likely be seen as a positive sign that talks are going well.
Wang stressed that the Blinken visit came at a critical juncture in Sino-U.S. relations, in a statement released by the Chinese foreign ministry translated via Google. He said both parties must choose between cooperation and conflict, adding that the difficulties in the countries’ ties are rooted in the U.S.’ “erroneous perception of China, which leads to wrong policies towards China.”
Wang further urged Washington to give up its so-called “China threat theory,” to lift sanctions against Beijing and to no longer suppress China’s technological development.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a breaking news story, please check back later for more.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) walks with China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang (R) ahead of a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on June 18, 2023.
Leah Millis | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing on a high-stakes diplomatic mission to cool U.S.-China tensions that have overshadowed geopolitics in recent months.
The trip by Blinken makes him the highest-level American official to visit China since Joe Biden became U.S. president and the first U.S. secretary of state to make the trip in nearly five years.
Blinken’s original travel plans for February were disrupted by news of an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over U.S. airspace. The U.S. ultimately shot down the alleged spy balloon, and tensions between the world’s two largest economies have since remained tense. Beijing insisted the balloon was an unnamed weather tracker that blew off course.
Expectations for a significant recovery in the U.S.-China relationship, especially as a result of Blinken’s trip, remain low. State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement last week that Blinken will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication and will “raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional matters, and potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges.”
At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue event in Singapore earlier this month, the U.S. defense chief and his Chinese counterpart didn’t have a formal meeting. And more broadly, international travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic limited contact between the U.S. and Chinese governments.
In August, a controversial visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, fueled Beijing’s ire. Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory, with no right to conduct diplomatic relations on its own. The U.S. recognizes Beijing as the sole legal government of China, while maintaining unofficial relations with the island, a democratically self-governed region.
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Biden’s visit to Beijing could also possibly pave the way for a November meeting between Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi — their first since Bali in November, a day before a G-20 summit kicked off.
In late May, the U.S. commerce secretary and her Chinese counterpart met in Washington, D.C. And U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is also expected to visit China at an unspecified time.
China’s new ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, arrived in the U.S. in late May after a period of about six months with no one in that position. Biden said around the same time that he expected U.S.-China tensions would “begin to thaw very shortly.”
A potential opportunity for Biden and Xi to meet again would be in November, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Summit that’s set to be held in San Francisco.
U.S. Ambassador to Turkiye Jeffry Flake speaking in Washington D.C., United States on May 3, 2023.
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The U.S. is still holding out hope that Sweden will join NATO by July in spite of Turkey’s apprehensions, Ambassador to Ankara Jeffry Flake said.
“We hope Sweden can become a member of NATO soon,” Flake told CNBC’s Dan Murphy Friday, adding that Sweden has taken a number of measures to address Turkey’s security concerns.
“We fully expect and hope that by the time Vilnius comes … that Sweden will be a member.”
Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had on Wednesday rebuffed mounting international pressure to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership bid before the defense alliance convenes for the 2023 Vilnius summit of July 11-12.
Officials from Sweden, Turkey, Finland and NATO had convened in Ankara with hopes of easing Turkey’s objections.
Ankara’s objections are complex, but center mainly on Sweden’s support for Kurdish groups that Turkey considers to be terrorists, and on weapons embargoes that both Sweden and Finland, along with other EU countries, put on Turkey for targeting Kurdish militias in Syria.
Erdogan also wants Sweden to crack down on protests against his government. For months, Sweden’s capital has seen protests built up against Turkey, which at the start of the year led to the heavily criticised burning of the holy Muslim book Quran by some demonstrators.
“In order for us to comply with these expectations, first of all, Sweden must do its part,” Erdogan said.
Prior to the recent elections in May, Turkey’s presidential spokesperson in March said that Ankara has “left the door open” to Stockholm’s bid to be a part of the military alliance “if it shows will and determination.”
On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden met with NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, emphasizing their “shared desire to welcome Sweden to the Alliance as soon as possible,” a White House statement said.
“Obviously, our relationship is grounded in NATO. I think it will continue to be so,” Flake said of U.S.-Turkey relations, underscoring both parties’ security and commercial partnership.
“On the commercial side, we[‘ve] got a healthy amount of balance trade, about 33 billion as of last year. That’s increasing every year,” he said.
The Turkish leader has previously criticized Flake for paying a visit to Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the presidential candidate of the opposition alliance that Erdogan beat in recent elections. Flake on Friday characterized his relationship with Erdogan as being “in a good place.”
He added, “Sometimes it’s a challenging relationship. That is true, but we have a good security and commercial and people relationship with Turkey.”
—CNBC’s Natasha Turak contributed to this article.
Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, during the EEI 2023 event in Austin, Texas, US, on Monday, June 12, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft‘s co-founder Bill Gates will be meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, Reuters reported Wednesday citing two sources familiar with the matter.
The meeting will be Xi’s first with a foreign CEO in recent years, the report said, as the Chinese leader stopped travelling overseas for almost three years after China shut its borders during the pandemic.
It could be a one-on-one meeting, Reuters said without revealing details on what they might discuss.
CNBC reached out to China’s ministry of foreign affairs but did not hear back at the time of publication.
The two men met in 2015 on the sidelines of the Boao forum, a gathering for political and business leaders, held in Hainan province. They discussed views on enhancing public health service and poverty reduction, according to China’s foreign ministry.
Gates tweeted Wednesday, saying he had landed in Beijing to “visit with partners who have been working on global health and development challenges” for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is his first visit since 2019.
The billionaire stepped down as Microsoft’s board chair in March 2020 to “dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change.” He left his full-time executive role at Microsoft in 2008.
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Blinken spoke Wednesday and “discussed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication” in order to manage the U.S.-China relationship and “avoid miscalculation and conflict,” the U.S. State Department said.
Other foreign tech leaders — such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — have met with Chinese ministers in recent months.
