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Tag: Moscow

  • Biden and Germany’s Scholz huddle on Ukraine war at White House

    Biden and Germany’s Scholz huddle on Ukraine war at White House

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    Washington — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Western allies would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” as he visited the White House on Friday for a private meeting with President Biden.

    The two leaders huddled as the war enters a difficult next phase, with fresh concerns about softening political resolve behind maintaining billions of dollars in military assistance for Kyiv.

    “This is a very, very important year because of the dangerous threat to peace that comes from Russia invading Ukraine,” Scholz said.

    Both leaders said they would continue working “in lockstep,” and Mr. Biden thanked Scholz for helping to “maintain the pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    China wasn’t mentioned during their brief public remarks in the Oval Office, although the meeting comes as both countries have become increasingly vocal about concerns that Beijing may step off the sidelines and supply weapons to Russia. Such a step could dramatically change the war’s trajectory by allowing Moscow to replenish its depleted stockpiles.

    President Biden meets Olaf Scholz, Germany's chancellor, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Friday, March 3, 2023.
    President Biden meets Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Friday, March 3, 2023.

    Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images


    China is Germany’s top trading partner, and European nations have generally been more cautious than the United States in taking a hard line with Beijing. However, there are signs that may be shifting as global rivalries grow more tense.

    In a speech to the German parliament on Thursday, Scholz called on China to “use your influence in Moscow to press for the withdrawal of Russian troops, and do not supply weapons to the aggressor Russia.”

    The U.S. and Germany have worked closely together to supply Ukraine with military and humanitarian assistance. But there has also been friction over issues such as providing tanks, and Washington has occasionally grown frustrated with Berlin’s hesitance.

    Maintaining a steady flow of weapons to Kyiv will be critical in the war’s second year, especially with both sides planning spring offensives.

    “We’re proud of the collective efforts that we’ve taken together,” John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said Thursday.

    He said the U.S. has not seen any indication that China has made a decision on whether to provide weapons to Russia.

    Scholz last visited the White House a little more than a year ago, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. Very little of Friday’s meeting was open to the public, and no announcements were made afterward.

    Unlike formal state visits, such as when French President Emmanuel Macron came to Washington last year, there was no pomp and ceremony. Scholz’s trip also lacked the customary press conference where the two leaders take questions from reporters representing both countries.

    Kirby described it as a “true working visit between these two leaders.”

    In an interview with German broadcaster Welt, opposition leader Friedrich Merz accused Scholz of being secretive about his trip to Washington, which took place without the customary press pack in tow. Merz suggested that Scholz had to smooth ruffled feathers over the deal to provide tanks to Ukraine.

    Scholz dismissed any notion of discord between allies.

    Asked by The Associated Press about the circumstances of his visit, Scholz said he and Mr. Biden “want to talk directly with each other,” and he described “a global situation where things have become very difficult.”

    “It is important that such close friends can talk about all of these questions together, continually,” he said.

    Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, hinted at some tension between the two countries on Sunday when appearing on ABC’s “This Week.”

    He said Mr. Biden originally decided against sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine, believing they wouldn’t be immediately useful for Ukrainian forces. However, Sullivan said, Germany would not send its Leopard tanks “until the president also agreed to send Abrams.”

    “So, in the interest of alliance unity and to ensure that Ukraine got what it wanted, despite the fact that the Abrams aren’t the tool they need, the president said, ‘OK, I’m going to be the leader of the free world,’” Sullivan said. “‘I will send Abrams down the road if you send Leopards now.’ Those Leopards are getting sent now.”

    Scholz’s government has denied there was any such demand made of the U.S.

    Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who leads the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. has often wanted Germany, the world’s fifth-largest economy, to be more forceful on the global stage.

    “There’s a hope that, instead of us having to push all the time, that Germany would take a leadership role,” he said.

    Bergmann said Germany has gone a long way toward strengthening its defense, but added that there’s more work to do.

    “The German way of seeing the world doesn’t always align with the U.S. way of seeing the world,” he said.

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  • Grand test for Indian diplomacy as American, Chinese and Russian ministers meet in Delhi | CNN

    Grand test for Indian diplomacy as American, Chinese and Russian ministers meet in Delhi | CNN

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Foreign ministers from the world’s biggest economies convened in New Delhi Thursday in what was seen as a grand test for Indian diplomacy, which ultimately didn’t succeed in reaching a consensus because of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

    In the second high-level ministerial meeting under India’s Group of 20 (G20) presidency this year, foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, met his American, Chinese and Russian counterparts, hoping to find enough common ground to deliver a joint statement at the end of the summit.

    But amid festering divisions over Moscow’s war, New Delhi was unable to convince the leaders to put their differences aside, with Jaishankar admitting the conflict had struggled to unite the group.

    India, the world’s largest democracy with a population of more than 1.3 billion, has been keen to position itself as a leader of emerging and developing nations – often referred to as the Global South – at a time when soaring food and energy prices as a result of the war are hammering consumers already grappling with rising costs and inflation.

    Those sentiments were front and center during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opening remarks earlier Thursday, when he spoke of multiples crises the world faces, with less wealthy nations hit especially hard.

    “The experience of the last few years, the financial crisis, climate change, the pandemic, terrorism and wars clearly shows that global governance has failed,” Modi said.

    “We must also admit that the tragic consequences of this failure are being faced most over by the developing countries,” who he says are most affected by global warming “caused by richer countries”.

    Eluding to the war in Ukraine, Modi acknowledged the conflict was causing “deep global divisions.” But he encouraged the foreign ministers to put differences aside during their meeting Thursday.

    “We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can,” he said.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the summit, according to a State Department official traveling with Blinken.

    Blinken and Lavrov spoke for roughly 10 minutes, the same official said.

    Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed to CNN that the meeting took place but played down its significance.

    “Blinken asked for contact with Lavrov. On the go, as part of the second session of the twenty, Sergey Viktorovich (Lavrov) talked. There were no negotiations, meetings, etc,” she said.

    Deep disagreements over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine played out in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru last month as well, when G20 finance chiefs failed to agree on a statement after their meeting.

    Both Russia and China declined to sign the joint statement, which criticized Moscow’s invasion. That left India to issue a “chair’s summary and outcome document” in which it summed up the two days of talks and acknowledged disagreements.

    Analysts say that throughout the war New Delhi has deftly balanced its ties to Russia and the West, with Modi emerging as a leader who has been courted by all sides.

    But as the war enters its second year, and tensions continue to rise, pressure could mount on countries, including India, to take a firmer stand against Russia – putting Modi’s statecraft to the test.

    Arguably India’s most celebrated event of the year, the G20 summit has been heavily promoted domestically, with sprawling billboards featuring Modi’s face plastered across the country. Roads have been cleaned and buildings freshly painted ahead of the dignitaries’ visit.

    Taking place in the “mother of democracies” under Modi’s leadership, his political allies have been keen to push his international credentials, portraying him as a key player in the global order.

    Last year’s G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia, issued a joint declaration that echoed what Modi had told Russian President Vladimir Putin weeks earlier on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan.

    “Today’s era must not be of war,” it said, prompting media and officials in India to claim India had played a vital role in bridging differences between an isolated Russia and the United States and its allies.

    A board decorated with flowers welcomes foreign ministers to New Delhi, India, on February 28, 2023.

    India, analysts say, prides itself on its ability to balance relations. The country, like China, has refused to condemn Moscow’s brutal assault on Ukraine in various United Nations resolutions. Rather than cutting economic ties with the Kremlin, India has undermined Western sanctions by increasing its purchases of Russian oil, coal and fertilizer.

    But unlike China, India has grown closer to the West – particularly the US – despite ties with Russia.

    New Delhi’s ties with Moscow date back to the Cold War, and the country remains heavily reliant on the Kremlin for military equipment – a vital link given India’s ongoing tensions with China at its shared Himalayan border.

    The US and India have taken steps in recent months to strengthen their defense partnership, as the two sides attempt to counter the rise of an increasingly assertive China.

    Daniel Markey, senior adviser, South Asia, for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), said while India’s leaders “would like to facilitate an end to this conflict that preserves New Delhi’s relations with both Washington and Moscow and ends the disruption of the global economy,” India did not have “any particular leverage” with Russia or Ukraine that would make a settlement likely.

    “I believe that other world leaders are equally interested in playing a peace-making diplomatic role. So when and if Putin wishes to come to the table to negotiate, he will have no shortage of diplomats hoping to help,” he said.

    Still, as Putin’s aggression continues to throw the global economy into chaos, India has signaled an intention to raise the many concerns faced by the global South, including climate challenges and food and energy security, according to Modi’s opening speech earlier Thursday.

    “The world looks upon the G20 to ease the challenges of growth, development, economic resilience, disaster resilience, financial stability, transnational crime, corruption, terrorism, and food and energy security,” Modi said.

    While Modi’s government appears keen to prioritize domestic challenges, experts say these issues could be sidelined by the tensions between the US, Russia and China, which have increased recently over concerns from Washington that Beijing is considering sending lethal aid to the Kremlin’s struggling war effort.

    Speaking to reporters last week, Ramin Toloui, the US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, said while Secretary of State Antony Blinken would highlight its efforts to address food and energy security issues, he would also “underscore the damage that Russia’s war of aggression has caused.”

    Blinken will “encourage all G20 partners to redouble their calls for a just, peaceful, and lasting end to the Kremlin’s war consistent with UN Charter principles,” Toloui said.

    At the same time, Russia in a statement Wednesday accused the US and the European Union of “terrorism,” stating it was “set to clearly state Russia’s assessments” of the current food and energy crisis.

    “We will draw attention to the destructive barriers that the West is multiplying exponentially to block the export of goods that are of critical importance to the global economy, including energy sources and agricultural products,” Russia said, hinting at the difficulties New Delhi might face during the meeting.

    India has “worked very hard not to be boxed into one side or the other,” Markey said. The country could not “afford to alienate Russia or the US and Modi doesn’t want discussion of the war to force any difficult decisions or to distract from other issues, like green, sustainable economic development,” he added.

    But with plummeting ties between Washington and Beijing after the US military shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon that flew over American territory, New Delhi will have to carefully drive difficult negotiations between conflicting viewpoints.

    China maintains the balloon, which US forces downed in February, was a civilian research aircraft accidentally blown off course, and the fallout led Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing.

    As differences played out during the ministerial meeting Thursday, analysts say while India will be disappointed at the outcome, they were in a very difficult position to begin with.

    “It will be a disappointment for Modi, but not one that cannot be managed,” Markey said. “Nor would it be India’s fault, as it would primarily be a reflection of the underlying differences over which Modi has very little control.”

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  • ‘It’s all a lie’: Russians are trapped in Putin’s parallel universe. But some want out | CNN

    ‘It’s all a lie’: Russians are trapped in Putin’s parallel universe. But some want out | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One year ago, when Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine and began Europe’s biggest land war since 1945, it waged another battle at home – intensifying its information blockade in an effort to control the hearts and minds of its own citizens.

    Draconian new censorship laws targeted any media still operating outside the controls of the Kremlin and most independent journalists left the country. A digital Iron Curtain was reinforced, shutting Russians off from Western news and social media sites.

    And as authorities rounded up thousands in a crackdown on anti-war protests, a culture of fear descended on Russian cities and towns that prevents many people from sharing their true thoughts on the war in public.

    One year on, that grip on information remains tight – and support for the conflict seemingly high – but cracks have started to show.

    Some Russians are tuning out the relentless jingoism on Kremlin-backed airwaves. Tech-savvy internet users skirt state restrictions to access dispatches and pictures from the frontlines. And, as Russia turns to mobilization to boost its stuttering campaign, it is struggling to contain the personal impact that one year of war is having on its citizens.

    “In the beginning I was supporting it,” Natalya, a 53-year-old Moscow resident, told CNN of what the Kremlin and most Russians euphemistically call a “special military operation.” “But now I am completely against it.”

    “What made me change my opinion?,” she contemplated aloud. “First, my son is of mobilization age, and I fear for him. And secondly, I have very many friends there, in Ukraine, and I talk to them. That is why I am against it.”

    CNN is not using the full names of individuals who were critical of the Kremlin. Public criticism of the war in Ukraine or statements that discredit Russia’s military can potentially mean a fine or a prison sentence.

    For Natalya and many of her compatriots, the endless, personal grind of war casts Russian propaganda in a different light. And for those hoping to push the tide of public opinion against Putin, that creates an opening.

    “I do not trust our TV,” she said. “I cannot be certain they are not telling the truth, I just don’t know.

    “But I have my doubts,” she added. “I think, probably, they’re not.”

    ​​Natalya is not the only Russian to turn against the conflict, but she appears to be in the minority.

    Gauging public opinion is notoriously difficult in a country where independent pollsters are targeted by the government, and many of the 146 million citizens are reluctant to publicly condemn President Vladimir Putin. But according to the Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, support dipped by only 6% among Russians from March to November last year, to 74%.

    In many respects, that is unsurprising. There is little room for dissenting voices on Russian airwaves; the propaganda beamed from state-controlled TV stations since the onset of war has at times attracted derision around the world, so overblown are their more fanatical presenters and pundits.

    In the days leading up to Friday’s one-year anniversary of war – according to BBC Monitoring’s Francis Scarr, who analyzes Russian media daily – a Russian MP told audiences on state-owned TV channel Russia-1 that “if Kyiv needs to lie in ruins for our flag to fly above it, then so be it!”; radio presenter Sergey Mardan proclaimed: “There’s only one peace formula for Ukraine: the liquidation of Ukraine as a state.”

    And, in a farfetched statement that encapsulates the alternate reality in state TV channels exist, another pro-Russian former lawmaker claimed of Moscow’s war progress: “Everything is going to plan and everything is under control.”

    Russian state TV presents a picture that is worlds away from the realities of the battleground. But it has won over some Russians who once held concerns about the war.

    Such programming typically appeals to a select group of older, more conservative Russians who pine for the days of the Soviet Union – though its reach spans generations, and it has claimed some converts.

    “My opinion on Ukraine has changed,” said Ekaterina, 37, who turns to popular Russian news program “60 Minutes” after getting home from work. “At first my feelings were: what is the point of this war? Why did they take the decision to start it? It makes the lives of the people here in Russia much worse!”

    The conflict has taken a personal toll on her. “My life has deteriorated a lot in this year. Thankfully, no one close to me has been mobilized. But I lost my job. And I see radical changes around me everywhere,” she said.

    And yet, Ekaterina’s initial opposition to the invasion has disappeared. “I arrived at the understanding that this special military operation was inevitable,” she said. “It would have come to this no matter what. And had we not acted first, war would have been unleashed against us,” she added, mirroring the false claims of victimhood at the hands of the West that state media relentlessly communicate.

    07 russia information interviews

    Ekaterina, 37 (top) and Daniil, 20, follow news on the war from Russian state TV. But they have reached different conclusions on how closely to trust the output.

    Reversals like hers will be welcomed in the Kremlin as vindication of their notorious and draconian grip on media reporting.

    “I trust the news there completely. Yes, they all belong to the state, (but) why should I not trust them?” Yuliya, a 40-year-old HR director at a marketing firm, told CNN. “I think (the war) is succeeding. Perhaps it is taking longer than one could wish for. But I think it is successful,” said Yuliya, who said her main source of news is the state-owned Channel One.

    Around two-thirds of Russians rely primarily on television for their news, according to the Levada Center, a higher proportion than in most Western countries.

    But the sentiment of Yuliya and Ekaterina is far from universal. Even among those who generally support the war, Kremlin-controlled TV remains far removed from the reality many Russians live in.

    “Everything I hear on state channels I split in half. I don’t trust anyone (entirely),” 55-year-old accountant Tatyana said. “One needs to analyze everything … because certain things they are omitting, (or) not saying,” said Leonid, a 58-year-old engineer.

    Several people whom CNN spoke with in Moscow this month relayed similar feelings, stressing that they engaged with state-controlled TV but treated it with skepticism. And many reach different views on Ukraine.

    “I think you can trust them all only to an extent. The state channels sometimes reflect the truth, but on other occasions they say things just to calm people down,” 20-year-old Daniil said.

    Vocal minorities on each side of the conflict exist in Russia, and some have cut off friendships or left the country as a result. But sociologists tracking Russian opinion say most people in the country fall between those two extremes.

    “Quite often we are only talking about these high numbers of support (for the war),” Denis Volkov, the director of the Moscow-based Levada Center, said. “But it’s not that all these people are happy about it. They support their side, (but) would rather have it finished and fighting stopped.”

    This group of people tends to pay less attention to the war, according to Natalia Savelyeva, a Future Russia Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) who has interviewed hundreds of Russians since the invasion to trace the levels of public support for the conflict. “We call them ‘doubters,’” she said.

    “A lot of doubters don’t go very deep into the news … many of them don’t believe that Russian soldiers kill Ukrainians – they repeat this narrative they see on TV,” she said.

    The center ground also includes many Russians who have developed concerns about the war. But if the Kremlin cannot expect all-out support across its populace, sociologists say it can at least rely on apathy.

    Putin addresses a rally in Red Square marking the illegal Russian annexation of four regions of Ukraine -- Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia -- in September.

    “I try to avoid watching news on the special military operation because I start feeling bad about what’s going on,” Natalya added. “So I don’t watch.”

    She is far from alone. “The major attitude is not to watch (the news) closely, not to discuss it with colleagues or friends. Because what can you do about it?” said Volkov. “Whatever you say, whatever you want, the government will do what they want.”

    That feeling of futility means anti-war protests in Russia are rare and noteworthy, a social contract that suits the Kremlin. “People don’t want to go and protest; first, because it might be dangerous, and second, because they see it as a futile enterprise,” Volkov said.

    “What are we supposed to do? Our opinion means diddly squat,” a woman told CNN in Moscow in January, anonymously discussing the conflict.

    The bulk of the population typically disengages instead. “In general, those people try to distance themselves from what’s going on,” Savelyeva added. “They try to live their lives as though nothing is happening.”

    And a culture of silence – re-enforced by heavy-handed authorities – keeps many from sharing skepticism about the conflict. A married couple in the southwestern Russian city of Krasnodar were reportedly arrested in January for professing anti-war sentiments during a private conversation in a restaurant, according to the independent Russian monitoring group OVD-Info.

    “I do have an opinion about the special military operation … it remains the same to this day,” Anna told CNN in Moscow. “I can’t tell you which side I support. I am for truth and justice. Let’s leave it like that,” she said.

    The partial mobilization of Russians has brought the war home for many citizens, leading to cracks in Putin's information Iron Curtain.

    Keeping the war at arm’s length has, however, become more difficult over the course of the past year. Putin’s chaotic partial mobilization order and Russia’s increasing economic isolation has brought the conflict to the homes of Russians, and communication with friends and relatives in Ukraine often paint a different picture of the war than that reported by state media.

    “I have felt anxious ever since this began. It’s affecting (the) availability of products and prices,” a woman who asked to remain anonymous told CNN last month. “There is a lack of public information. People should be explained things. Everyone is listening to Soloviev,” she said, referring to prominent propagandist Vladimir Soloviev.

    “It would be good if the experts started expressing their real opinions instead of obeying orders, from the government and Putin,” the woman said.

    A film student, who said she hadn’t heard from a friend for two months following his mobilization, added: “I don’t know what’s happened to him. It would be nice if he just responded and said ‘OK, I’m alive.’”

    “I just wish this special military operation never started in the first place – this war – and that human life was really valued,” she said.

    For those working to break through the Kremlin’s information blockade, Russia’s quiet majority is a key target.

    Most Russians see on state media a “perverted picture of Russia battling the possible invasion of their own territory – they don’t see their compatriots dying,” said Kiryl Sukhotski, who oversees Russian-language content at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the US Congress-funded media outlet that broadcasts in countries where information is controlled by state authorities.

    “That’s where we come in,” Sukhotski said.

    The outlet is one of the most influential platforms bringing uncensored scenes from the Ukrainian frontlines into Russian-speaking homes, primarily through digital platforms still allowed by the Kremlin including YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp.

    And interest has surged throughout the war, the network says. “We saw traffic spikes after the mobilization, and after the Ukrainian counter-offensives, because people started to understand what (the war) means for their own communities and they couldn’t get it from local media.”

    Russians see a

    Current Time, its 24/7 TV and digital network for Russians, saw a two-and-a-half-fold increase in Facebook views, and more than a three-fold rise in YouTube views, in the 10 months following the invasion, RFE/RL told CNN. Last year, QR codes which directed smartphone users to the outlet’s website started popping up in Russian cities, which RFE/RL believed were stuck on lampposts and street signs by anti-war citizens.

    But independent outlets face a challenge reaching beyond internet natives, who tend to be younger and living in cities, and penetrating the media diet of older, poorer and rural Russians, who are typically more conservative and supportive of the war.

    “We need to get to the wider audience in Russia,” Sukhotski said. “We see a lot of people indoctrinated by Russian state propaganda … it will be an uphill battle but this is where we shape our strategy.”

    Reaching Russians at all has not been easy. Most of RFE/RL’s Russia-based staff made a frantic exit from the country after the invasion, following the Kremlin’s crackdown on independent outlets last year, relocating to the network’s headquarters in Prague.

    The same fate befell outlets like BBC Russia and Latvia-based Meduza, which were also targeted by the state.

    A new law made it a crime to disseminate “fake” information about the invasion of Ukraine – a definition decided at the whim of the Kremlin – with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison for anyone convicted. This month, a Russian court sentenced journalist Maria Ponomarenko to six years in prison for a Telegram post that the court said spread supposedly “false information” about a Russian airstrike on a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, that killed hundreds, state news agency TASS reported.

    “All our staff understand they can’t go back to Russia,” Sukhotski told CNN. “They still have families there. They still have ailing parents there. We have people who were not able to go to their parents’ funerals in the past year.”

    His staff are “still coming to terms with that,” Sukhotski admitted. “They are Russian patriots and they wish Russia well … they see how they can help.”

    Outlets like RFE/RL have openings across the digital landscape, in spite of Russia’s move to ban Twitter, Facebook and other Western platforms last year.

    About a quarter of Russians use VPN services to access blocked sites, according to a Levada Center poll carried out two months after Russia’s invasion.

    Searches for such services on Google spiked to record levels in Russia following the invasion, and have remained at their highest rates in over a decade ever since, the search engine’s tracking data shows.

    YouTube meanwhile remains one of the few major global sites still accessible, thanks to its huge popularity in Russia and its value in spreading Kremlin propaganda videos.

    “YouTube became the television substitute for Russia … the Kremlin fear that if they don’t have YouTube, they won’t be able to control the flow of information to (younger people),” Sukhotski said.

    A billboard displays the face of Specialist Nodar Khydoyan, who is participating in Russia's military action in Ukraine, in central Moscow on February 15, 2023.

    And that allows censored organizations a way in. “I watch YouTube. I watch everything there – I mean everything,” one Moscow resident who passionately opposes the war told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “These federal channels I never watch,” she said. “I don’t trust a word they say. They lie all the time! You’ve just got to switch on your logic, compare some information and you will see that it’s all a lie.”

    Telegram, meanwhile, has spiked in popularity since the war began, becoming a public square for military bloggers to analyze each day on the battlefield.

    At first, that analysis tended to mirror the Kremlin’s line. But “starting around September, when Ukraine launched their successful counter-offensives, everything started falling apart,” said Olga Lautman, a US-based Senior Fellow at CEPA who studies the Kremlin’s internal affairs and propaganda tactics. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.

    Scores of hawkish bloggers, some of whom boast hundreds of thousands of followers, have strayed angrily from the Kremlin’s line in recent months, lambasting its military tactics and publicly losing faith in the armed forces’ high command.

    This month, a debacle in Vuhledar that saw Russian tanks veer wildly into minefields became the latest episode to expose those fissures. The former Defense Minister of the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin, sometimes known by his nom de guerre Igor Strelkov – now a a strident critic of the campaign – said Russian troops “were shot like turkeys at a shooting range.” In another post, he called Russian forces “morons.” Several Russian commentators called for the dismissal of Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, the commander of the Eastern Grouping of Forces.

    “This public fighting is spilling over,” Lautman told CNN. “Russia has lost control of the narrative … it has normally relied on having a smooth propaganda machine and that no longer exists.”

    One year into an invasion that most Russians initially thought would last days, creaks in the Kremlin’s control of information are showing.

    The impact of those fractures remains unclear. For now, Putin can rely on a citizenry that is generally either supportive of the conflict or too fatigued to proclaim its opposition.

    But some onlookers believe the pendulum of public opinion is slowly swinging away from the Kremlin.

    “One family doesn’t know of another family who hasn’t suffered a loss in Ukraine,” Lautman said. “Russians do support the conflict because they do have an imperialistic ambition. But now it is knocking on their door, and you’re starting to see a shift.”

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  • Why Moldova fears it could be next for Putin | CNN

    Why Moldova fears it could be next for Putin | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Tensions are mounting in Moldova, a small country on Ukraine’s southwestern border, where Russia has been accused of laying the groundwork for a coup that could drag the nation into the Kremlin’s war.

    Moldova’s President, Maia Sandu, has accused Russia of using “saboteurs” disguised as civilians to stoke unrest amid a period of political instability, echoing similar warnings from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has meanwhile baselessly accused Kyiv of planning its own assault on a pro-Russian territory in Moldova where Moscow has a military foothold, heightening fears that he is creating a pretext for a Crimea-style annexation.

    US President Joe Biden met President Sandu on the sidelines of his trip to Warsaw last week, marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

    Although there is no sign he has accepted her invite to visit, the White House did say he reaffirmed support for Moldova’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

    Here’s what you need to know.

    Earlier this month, Zelensky warned that Ukrainian intelligence intercepted a Russian plan to destabilize an already volatile political situation in Moldova.

    The recent resignation of the country’s prime minister followed an ongoing period of crises, headlined by soaring gas prices and sky-high inflation. Moldova’s new prime minister has continued the government’s pro-EU drive, but pro-Russian protests have since taken place in the capital, Chisinau, backed by a fringe, pro-Moscow political party.

    Amid the tensions, Moldova’s President Sandu issued a direct accusation that Russia was seeking to take advantage of the situation.

    Sandu said the government last fall had planned for “a series of actions involving saboteurs who have undergone military training and are disguised as civilians to carry out violent actions, attacks on government buildings and hostage-taking.”

    Sandu also claimed individuals disguised as “the so-called opposition” were going to try forcing a change of power in Chisinau through “violent actions.” CNN is unable to independently verify those claims.

    “It’s clear that these threats from Russia and the appetite to escalate the war towards us is very high,” Iulian Groza, Moldova’s former deputy foreign minister and now the director of the Chisinau-based Institute for European Policies and Reforms, told CNN.

    “Moldova is the most affected country after Ukraine (by) the war,” he said. “We are still a small country, which has still an under-developed economy, and that creates a lot of pressure.”

    Despite Moscow’s pleas of innocence, its actions regarding Moldova bear a striking resemblance to moves it made ahead of its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

    On Tuesday, Putin revoked a 2012 foreign policy decree that in part recognized Moldova’s independence, according to Reuters.

    Then on Thursday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense accused Ukraine of “preparing an armed provocation” against Moldova’s pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria “in the near future,” state-media TASS reported.

    No evidence or further details were offered to support the ministry’s accusation, and it has been rubbished by Moldova.

    But the claim has put Western leaders on alert, coming almost exactly a year after Putin made similar, unsubstantiated claims that Russians were being targeted in the Donbas – the eastern flank of Ukraine where Moscow had supported militant separatists since 2014 – allowing him to cast his invasion of the country as an issue of self-defense.

    “It was the case before – we have seen constant activities of Russia trying to explore and exploit the information space in Moldova using propaganda,” Groza said.

    “With the war, all these instruments that Russia was using before have been multiplied and intensified,” he said. “What we see is a reactivation of Russian political proxies in Moldova.”

    “I do see lots of fingerprints of Russian forces, Russian services in Moldova,” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told CBS last Sunday. “This is a very weak country, and we all need to help them.”

    Central to Russia’s interests in Moldova is Transnistria, a breakaway territory that slithers along the eastern flank of the country and has housed Russian troops for decades.

    The territory – a 1,300 square mile enclave on the eastern bank of the Dniester River – was the site of a Russian military outpost during the last years of the Cold War. It declared itself a Soviet republic in 1990, opposing any attempt by Moldova to become an independent state or to merge with Romania after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

    When Moldova became independent the following year, Russia quickly inserted itself as a so-called “peacekeeping force” in Transnistria, sending troops in to back pro-Moscow separatists there.

    War with Moldovan forces ensued, and the conflict ended in deadlock in 1992. Transnistria was not recognized internationally, even by Russia, but Moldovan forces left it a de facto breakaway state. That deadlock has left the territory and its estimated 500,000 inhabitants trapped in limbo, with Chisinau holding virtually no control over it to this day.

    Moldova is a country at a crossroads between east and west. Its government and most of its citizens want closer ties to the EU, and the country achieved candidacy status last year. But it’s also home to a breakaway faction whose sentiment Moscow has eagerly sought to rile up.

    It has been a flashpoint on the periphery of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the past year, with Russian missiles crossing into Moldovan airspace on several occasions, including earlier this month.

    A series of explosions in Transnistria last April spiked concerns that Putin was looking to drag the territory into his invasion.

    Russia’s stuttering military progress since then had temporarily allayed those fears. But officials in Moldova have been warning the West that their country could be next on Putin’s list.

    Last month, the head of Moldova’s Security Service warned there is a “very high” risk that Russia will launch a new offensive in Moldova’s east in 2023. Moldova is not a NATO member, making it more vulnerable to Putin’s agenda.

    Should Russia launch a Spring offensive that centers on Ukraine’s south, it may seek again to creep towards Odesa and then link up with Transnistria, essentially creating a land bridge that sweeps through southern Ukraine and inches even closer to NATO territory.

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  • Solemn day as Ukraine marks one year since Russian invasion

    Solemn day as Ukraine marks one year since Russian invasion

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    Solemn day as Ukraine marks one year since Russian invasion – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    President Biden is holding a virtual meeting with G7 leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, one year since Russia’s invasion of the country. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata joins us from Kyiv with more on how Ukraine is marking this day.

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  • Blinken warns Chinese foreign minister balloon incursion

    Blinken warns Chinese foreign minister balloon incursion

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    Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Saturday at an international security conference in Munich, marking the first high-level contact between the U.S. and China since the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon two weeks ago. 

    In their hourlong meeting, Blinken told Wang that Beijing’s surveillance program had been “exposed to the world.”

    “I condemned the incursion of the PRC surveillance balloon and stressed it must never happen again,” Blinken said in a tweet, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

    State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that Blinken “made clear the United States will not stand for any violation of our sovereignty, and that the PRC’s high-altitude surveillance balloon program — which has intruded into the airspace of over 40 countries across five continents — has been exposed to the world,” Price said.

    Blinken canceled a trip to Beijing earlier this month because of the balloon incident, which has become a major issue of contention between the two countries. A meeting at the conference in Germany had been widely anticipated.

    Blinken also told Wang that the U.S. does not seek conflict with China, repeating a standard talking point that the Biden administration has provided since it has come into office.

    “The United States will compete and will unapologetically stand up for our values and interests, but that we do not want conflict with the PRC and are not looking for a new Cold War,” Price said. Blinken “underscored the importance of maintaining diplomatic dialogue and open lines of communication at all times.”

    In addition to the balloon incident, Price said Blinken had reiterated a warning to China on providing assistance to Russia to help with its war against Ukraine, including assisting Moscow with evading sanctions the West has imposed on Russia.

    “I warned China against providing materiel support to Russia,” Blinken said in his tweet. “I also emphasized the importance of keeping open lines of communication.”

    Earlier Saturday, Wang had reiterated Beijing’s criticism of the United States for shooting down the balloon, arguing that the move did not show U.S. strength.

    Beijing insists the white orb shot down off the Carolina coast on Feb. 4 was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities. But U.S. officials said that the balloon had equipment that was “clearly for intelligence surveillance,” including “multiple antennas” that were “likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications,” according to a statement by a senior State Department official. 

    Wang, the director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, repeated the claim in a speech at the conference and accused the U.S. of violating international legal norms in destroying the object with a missile fired from an U.S. fighter jet.

    “The actions don’t show that the U.S. is big and strong, but describe the exact opposite,” Wang said.

    Wang also accused the U.S. of denying China’s economic advances and seeking to impede its further development.

    “What we hope for from the U.S. is a pragmatic and positive approach to China that allows us to work together,” Wang said.

    His comments came shortly before an address to the conference by Vice President Kamala Harris, who didn’t mention the balloon controversy or respond to Wang’s comments. She stressed the importance of upholding the “international rules-based order.”

    She said Washington is “troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow since the war began” in Ukraine and that “looking ahead, any steps by China to provide lethal support to Russia would only reward aggression, continue the killing and further undermine a rules-based order.”

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  • Opinion: ‘The arc of history will not go Putin’s way.’ 7 voices on one year of war | CNN

    Opinion: ‘The arc of history will not go Putin’s way.’ 7 voices on one year of war | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    It’s the evening of February 23, 2022. In Kyiv, the boss of a news site relaxes with a bath and candles. In Zaporizhzhia, a young woman goes to bed planning to celebrate her husband’s birthday in the morning. In Moscow, a journalist happens to postpone his travel plans to Kyiv.

    Within hours, their lives are dramatically and radically transformed. The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin launches his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    In the space of a year, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions more. It has unleashed unfathomable atrocities, decimated cities, driven a global food and energy crisis and tested the resolve of western alliances.

    We asked seven people close to the conflict – from “fixers” in Ukraine, to commentators in Moscow – to reflect on the first anniversary of the invasion. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

    Opinion by Diliara Didenko

    Diliara Didenko is a PhD candidate in sociology and a mother of two. She works in social media marketing.

    Zaporizhzhia, February 23, 2022. I went to bed thinking that I would celebrate my husband’s birthday the next day. Our life was getting better. My husband was running his own business. Our daughter had started school and made friends there. We were lucky to have arranged support services and found a special needs nursery for our son. I finally had time to work. I felt happy.

    Could I imagine that, 22 days later, I would be starting my life over in the Czech Republic, and my country would be set on fire?

    Completely exhausted, crushed and scared, we had to brace ourselves and come to terms with our forced displacement. I will be forever grateful to all those who helped us come to Prague and adjust to a new life in a foreign land.

    Thanks to the opportunities for Ukrainians provided by the Czech Republic, my husband got a job. I found special needs classes for my son. He now attends an adaptation group for Ukrainian children and has a learning support assistant. My daughter goes to a Czech school while studying in her Ukrainian school remotely.

    We are trying to live in the here and now. But the truth is, we are heartbroken. While physically we are in Prague, our hearts have remained in Ukraine.

    Mikhail Zygar headshot

    Opinion by Mikhail Zygar

    Mikhail Zygar is a journalist and former editor in chief of the independent TV news channel Dozhd. He is the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin” and upcoming book “War and Punishment. Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.”

    On February 24, 2022, I was supposed to be in Kyiv. But a few days before that, my husband broke his shoulder and we had to stay in Moscow. At 9:00 a.m. that day he had surgery.

    That morning we woke up to learn that the invasion started. I wrote an open letter denouncing the war, which was co-signed by 12 Russian writers, directors and cultural figures. Soon it was published, and tens of thousands of Russian citizens added their signatures.

    On the third day we, my husband and I, left Russia. I felt that it was some kind of moral obligation. I could no longer stay on the territory of the state that has become a fascist one.

    We moved to Berlin. My husband went to work as a volunteer at the refugee camp next to the main railway station, where thousands of Ukrainians had been arriving every day. And I started writing a new book. It starts like this:

    “This book is a confession. I am guilty for not reading the signs much earlier. I too am responsible for Russia’s war against Ukraine. As are my contemporaries and our forebears. Regrettably, Russian culture is also to blame for making all these horrors possible.”

    I know that Russian people are infected with imperialism. We failed to spot just how deadly the very idea of Russia as a “great empire” was – now we have to come a long way, healing our nation from that disease.

    Michael Bociurkiw headshot

    Opinion by Michael Bociurkiw

    Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst who in summer relocated from Canada to Ukraine. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

    As I write, Russia has just fired dozens of Kalibr missiles towards several cities in Ukraine, including my adopted city of Odesa. Air raid sirens blare as we bolt for shelter into enclosed hallways. My landlady brings me a pot of borscht to help create a sense of normalcy.

    If anything, for me, the son of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, this has been a war of history repeating itself – from the forced deportation of upwards of 2.5 million Ukrainians, including 38,000 children, to the stealing of Ukrainian grain to the wanton destruction of Ukrainians museums, libraries, churches and monuments.

    Time and again since the Russian invasion started, I’m haunted by the darkness in my father’s eyes during the re-telling of chilling dinnertime stories of relatives shipped off to the Soviet gulag, never to return. Stories of millions of Ukrainians who starved to death in Stalin’s manmade famine of 1932-33.

    What’s changed since Russian missiles first began falling on February 24, 2022? The fear felt by Ukrainians has been replaced with anger as they stand up to barrages of rockets and drones.

    An expert from the prosecutor's office examines collected remnants of shells and missiles used by the Russian army to attack the second largest Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, on Decmber 7.

    Whether it’s going through with a wedding in the aftermath of a rocket attack, pitching in to make Molotov cocktails, shifting classes to a Kyiv subway station as missiles fly or keeping a family business open against all odds, one thing Putin’s invasion has done is galvanize the Ukrainian people like never before.

    It’s an unmistakable, irrepressible resilience that convinces me the arc of history will go anything but Putin’s way.

    Opinion by Sasha Dovzhyk

    Sasha Dovzhyk is a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London and associate lecturer in Ukrainian at the School of Slavonic and East-European Studies, University College London. She divides her time between London and Ukraine where she works as a “fixer“– a translator and producer for foreign journalists.

    A year into the full-scale invasion, my passport is a novel in stamps. My life is split between London, where I teach Ukrainian literature, and Ukraine, where I get my lessons in courage.

    My former classmates from Zaporizhzhia whom, based on our teenage habits, I expected to perish from addictions a long time ago, have volunteered to fight. My hairdresser, whom I expected to remain a sweet summer child, turned out to have fled on foot from the Russia-occupied town of Bucha through the forest with her mother, grandmother and five dogs.

    Sasha Dovzhyk's work on Ukraine is supported by the IWM project, Documenting Ukraine.

    My capital, which the Kremlin and the West expected to fall in three days, has withstood 12 months of Russia’s terrorist bombings and energy blackouts. These dark winter nights, one sees so many stars over Kyiv which the Russians have only managed to bring closer to eternity.

    Ukrainians have learned that they are stronger than was expected of them. Have those who have underestimated them learned their lessons? Military aid has been enough for Ukraine to survive but not to crush the enemy.

    For the outside world, the idea of a defeated Russia is still scarier than the sight of Ukraine half-ruined. Just like a year ago, Ukraine is calling on the rest of the world to find courage.

    Andrei Kolesnikov headshot

    Opinion by Andrei Kolesnikov

    Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of several books on the political and social history of Russia, including “Five Five-Year Liberal Reforms.” Origins of Russian Modernization and Egor Gaidar’s Legacy.”

    It seems that since February 2022 we have experienced several eras. The first was euphoric, when Putin suddenly, after a significant time of stagnant ratings, received more than 80% approval from the population.

    It seemed to many at the time that the campaign would be short, like the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

    Then, beginning in late spring, came a period of apathy, when people tried not to pay attention to what was being done in Ukraine.

    And in the fall, public demobilization was replaced by mobilization – Putin demanded that citizens share responsibility for the war with him with their bodies. This provoked unprecedented anxiety, but instead of serious protests, the bulk of the population again preferred adaptation.

    Among Putin’s supporters there is also a group of aggressive conformists who have become supporters of total war.

    Veterans and guests attend the Victory Day military parade at Red Square in central Moscow on May 9, 2022.

    But everyone experienced the shock of war differently. For millions of people in Russia, what happened was an absolute catastrophe: Putin not only destroyed all the achievements of previous life, he aborted the country’s history.

    By aborting the past, he canceled the future. Those who were disoriented, preferred to support Putin: it is easier to live this way when your superiors decide everything for you, and you take for granted everything you are told by propaganda.

    For me personally and my family, what happened was a catastrophe to which it is impossible to adapt. As an active commentator on the events, I was labeled by the authorities as a “foreign agent,” which increased personal risk and reinforced the impression of living in an Orwellian anti-utopia.

    Daryna Shevchenko head shot

    Opinion by Daryna Shevchenko

    Daryna Shevchenko is chief executive officer of The Kyiv Independent, an English-language news site in Ukraine.

    On the evening of February 23 I washed my dog, cleaned the house, took a bath and lit candles. I have a cozy, one-bedroom apartment in a northern district of Kyiv. I loved taking care of it. I loved the life I had. All of it – the small routines and the struggles. That night was the last time my life mattered.

    The next morning my phone was buzzing from all the messages and missed calls. A red headline in all caps on the Kyiv Independent website read: “PUTIN DECLARES WAR ON UKRAINE.”

    I remember talking to colleagues, trying to assemble and coordinate a small army of volunteers to strengthen the newsroom. And calling my parents to organize buying supplies.

    We’d been expecting a battle for quite some time and knew it would be an uphill one. I had a solid plan, and it was working.

    The aftermath of a Russian missile strike on a residential building in Dnipro, in January 2023.

    The life I knew started falling apart soon after, starting with the small things. It no longer mattered what cup I used to drink my morning tea, or how I dressed, or whether or not I took a shower. Life itself no longer mattered, only the battle did.

    Just a few weeks into the full-scale invasion it was already hard to remember the struggles, sorrows and joyful moments of the pre-war era. I would remember being upset about my boyfriend, but I could no longer relate. My life didn’t change on February 24, it was stolen from me on that day.

    And besides the obvious battles, there was another one to fight – trying to claim my life back. The life Russia stole from me and millions of Ukrainians.

    Anna Ryzhykova profile picture

    Opinion by Anna Ryzhykova

    Anna Ryzhykova is a Ukrainian track and field athlete, Olympic bronze medalist and multiple European Championships medalist.

    By March, my initial shock and fear of the war turned into a desire to act through sports. Athletes could fight against Russian propaganda in the best way. We just had to tell the truth about the war and Ukrainians – how strong, kind and brave we are. How we have united to defend our country.

    I was no longer concerned with my personal ambitions. Only the common goal was crucial – to raise our flag and show that we are fighting even under these circumstances.

    I couldn’t enjoy my victories on the track. They were only possible because so many defenders had laid down their lives. But I got messages from soldiers on the frontline. They were so happy to follow our achievements, and it was my primary motivation to continue my career.

    This whole year has been full of tears and worries. I read the news about people close to me killed by Russians – a teammate, the director of a sports school, or a friend’s parents.

    After each attack, I call my family and friends to ensure they are alive. The seconds of waiting for their voices are excruciating.

    Life values have changed. Like never before, I enjoy every opportunity to see or talk to relatives and friends. And like other Ukrainians, I believe in our victory and that all of us will return to our beloved country. But we need the world’s help.

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  • Russian businessman found guilty in hacking, insider trading scheme

    Russian businessman found guilty in hacking, insider trading scheme

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    A Russian millionaire with ties to the Kremlin was convicted Tuesday of participating in an elaborate $90 million insider trading scheme using secret earnings information from companies such as Microsoft that was stolen from U.S. computer networks.

    Vladislav Klyushin, 42, who ran a Moscow-based information technology company associated with the Russian government, was found guilty on all charges against him, including wire fraud and securities fraud, after a two-week trial in federal court in Boston.

    “The jury saw Mr. Klyushin for exactly what he is — a cybercriminal and a cheat. He repeatedly gamed the system and finally got caught. Now he is a convicted felon. For nearly three years, he and his co-conspirators repeatedly hacked into U.S. computer networks to obtain tomorrow’s headlines today,” Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said in an emailed statement.

    Klyushin was arrested in 2021 in Switzerland after he arrived on a private jet and just before he and his party were about to board a helicopter to whisk them to a nearby ski resort. Four alleged co-conspirators — including a Russian military intelligence officer who’s also been charged with meddling in the 2016 presidential election — remain at large.

    Klyushin’s attorney, Maksim Nemtsev, said in an email that he and his client are disappointed but respect the jury’s verdict. He said they intend to appeal, adding that the case included “novel theories” that have never before been reviewed or adopted by higher courts.

    Passport page showing Vladislav Klyushin
    This image provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office shows the Russian passport of Vladislav Klyushin, part of the U.S. government’s evidence entered into the record during Klyushin’s trial. Klyushin, a Russian millionaire with ties to the Kremlin, was convicted Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023, of participating in a $90 million insider trading scheme using secret earnings information from companies such as Microsoft that was stolen from U.S. computer networks.

    U.S. Attorney’s Office via AP, File


    The businessman was owner of a Moscow-based information technology company that purported to provide services to detect vulnerabilities in computer systems. It counted among its clients the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other government entities, according to prosecutors.

    Klyushin was also close friends with a Russian military officer who was among 12 Russians charged in 2018 with hacking into key Democratic Party email accounts, including those belonging to Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Ivan Ermakov, who worked for Klyushin’s company, was a hacker in the alleged insider trading scheme, alleged prosecutors. They have not alleged that Klyushin was involved in the election interference.

    Stolen credentials

    Prosecutors say hackers stole employees’ usernames and passwords for two U.S.-based vendors that publicly traded companies use to make filings through the Securities and Exchange Commission. They then broke into the vendors’ computer systems to get financial disclosures for hundreds of companies — including Microsoft, Tesla, Kohls, Ulta Beauty and Sketchers — before they were filed to the SEC and became public, prosecutors said. Many of the earnings reports were downloaded via a computer server located in Boston, according to prosecutors.

    Armed with this insider information, the hackers were able to cheat the stock market, alleged prosecutors. They said that Klyushin personally turned a $2 million investment into nearly $21 million, and altogether, the group turned about $9 million into nearly $90 million.

    Klyushin’s attorney denied that his client was involved in the scheme, telling jurors in his opening statement that the government’s case was filled with “gaping holes” and “inferences.”

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  • Sudan military finishes review of Russian Red Sea base deal

    Sudan military finishes review of Russian Red Sea base deal

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    CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s ruling military concluded a review of an agreement with Russia to build a navy base on the Red Sea in the African country, two Sudanese officials said Saturday.

    They said the deal was awaiting the formation of a civilian government and a legislative body to be ratified before it takes effect. The officials said Moscow met Sudan’s most recent demands, including providing more weapons and equipment.

    “They cleared all our concerns. The deal has become OK from the military side,” one official said.

    The officials did not provide further details and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A spokesman for the Sudanese military declined to comment.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said Thursday the deal still needs ratification by Sudan’s yet-to-be-formed legislative body.

    Sudan has been without a parliament since a popular uprising forced the military overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. The country has been mired in political chaos since an October 2021 military coup derailed its short-lived transition to democracy.

    The deal, which surfaced in December 2021, is part of Moscow’s efforts to restore a regular naval presence in various parts of the globe. It was reached during al-Bashir’s reign.

    The agreement allows Russia to set up a naval base with up to 300 Russian troops, and to simultaneously keep up to four navy ships, including nuclear-powered ones, in the strategic Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

    The base would ensure the Russian navy’s presence in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and spare its ships the need for long voyages to reach the area, according to Viktor Bondarev, the former Russian air force chief.

    In exchange, Russia is to provide Sudan with weapons and military equipment. The agreement is to last for 25 years, with automatic extensions for 10-year periods if neither side objects.

    In June 2021, Sudan’s Chief of General Staff, Gen. Mohammed Othman al-Hussein, told a local television station that Khartoum would review the agreement.

    In February last year Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, held talks with senior Russian officials in Moscow.

    Upon his return from the weeklong trip, Dagalo said his country didn’t have objections to Russia or any other country establishing a base on its territory as it poses no threat to Sudan’s national security.

    “If any country wants to open a base and it is in our interests and doesn’t threaten our national security, we have no problem in dealing with anyone, Russian or otherwise,” he said.

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  • Russia sentences popular cookbook author over Ukraine posts

    Russia sentences popular cookbook author over Ukraine posts

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    MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Monday sentenced a popular cookbook author and blogger to nine years in prison after convicting her in absentia of spreading false information about the country’s military. The trial was part of the Kremlin’s sweeping, months-long crackdown on dissent.

    The charges against Veronika Belotserkovskaya, who lives abroad, were brought over her Instagram posts that the authorities alleged contained “deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to destroy cities and the civilian population of Ukraine, including children.”

    Belotserkovskaya, whose Instagram profile says she was born in Odesa, a city in southern Ukraine, responded to the news of the sentencing by writing that she is, “on one hand, perplexed, and on the other hand, of course, proud.”

    Russia’s Investigative Committee announced launching a case against Belotserkovskaya on March 16 2022, several weeks after Moscow’s troops rolled into Ukraine. It was the first publicly-known case under a new law adopted earlier that month that penalized information seen as disparaging to the Russian military.

    The Russian authorities issued an arrest order for the blogger in absentia, put her on a wanted list and seized 153 million rubles (roughly $2.2 million) worth of her assets.

    She was also declared a “foreign agent,” a designation that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations aimed at discrediting the recepient.

    Belotserkovskaya by far has been handed the longest prison sentence under the new law and is the second prominent public figure to be sentenced in absentia.

    Last week, a Moscow court sentenced Alexander Nevzorov, a television journalist and former lawmaker, in absentia to eight years in prison on the same charges. Nevzorov was accused of posting “false information” on social media about the Russian shelling of a maternity hospital in the Sea of Azov port of Mariupol. Moscow has fiercely denied its involvement.

    The journalist moved abroad after the start of the Ukrainian conflict.

    In December, prominent opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 8½ years in prison under the same law. Earlier last year, Alexei Gorinov, a member of a Moscow municipal council Yashin used to chair, was sentenced to seven years in prison for his critical remarks about the hostilities in Ukraine.

    Another leading opposition figure, Vladimir Kara-Murza, is currently in custody facing the same charges.

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  • Ukraine war coverage lands exiled Russia journalist Alexander Nevzorov a prison sentence

    Ukraine war coverage lands exiled Russia journalist Alexander Nevzorov a prison sentence

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    Moscow — A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced in absentia veteran journalist Alexander Nevzorov to eight years in prison for spreading “false information” about Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The verdict is the latest in a series of high-profile rulings under new legislation that opponents of the Kremlin say was designed to criminalize criticism of the conflict.

    Nevzorov, 64, came under pressure from authorities for alleging that Russian forces deliberately shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, a port city in southern Ukraine that was captured by Moscow after a long siege.

    Russia Opposition
    Veteran Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov speaks in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a February 24, 2012 file photo.

    Sergei Konkov/AP


    “Journalist Alexander Glebovich Nevzorov was found guilty… and sentenced to imprisonment for a period of eight years,” the press service for Moscow courts said in a statement on Telegram.

    Prosecutors had requested a sentence of nine years in jail. Nevsorov said in response to the verdict: “I don’t think Russia will exist in nine years’ time.”


    Russia defends attack on maternity hospital

    03:57

    According to the Reuters news agency, he told a Russian outlet that he didn’t plan to return to his country and accused its president, Vladimir Putin, of leading “a dictatorship based on dirt, blood and denunciations.”

    Nevzorov left Russia almost a year ago and did not take part in the hearings. The court said Wednesday that if he was to come home, he’d be sent to one of Russia’s notorious penal colonies. The court also formally banned him from managing online content for four years — a move unlikely to have much impact on his work in exile.


    Russia imposes new law criminalizing criticism of Ukraine invasion

    04:07

    Investigators launched the probe in March last year, saying Nevzorov had intentionally published “misleading information” with “inaccurate photographs of civilians affected by the shelling,” which prompted him to leave the country with his wife.

    He was designated a “foreign agent” one month later, a branding that carries Soviet-era connotations and piles bureaucratic pressure on people hit with the label.

    Nevzorov is a former member of parliament and his popular YouTube channel boasts nearly two million subscribers.

    After the Kremlin ordered troops into Ukraine last February, Russia introduced new legislation criminalizing what authorities consider to be false or damaging information about the Russian army and the offensive.

    Several politicians and public figures have faced jail terms under the new law, including opposition councilor Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to eight and a half years behind bars.

    Russia Opposition
    Russian opposition activist Ilya Yashin gestures as he stands inside a glass cubicle in a courtroom, prior to a hearing in Moscow, Russia, December 9, 2022.

    Yury Kochetkov/AP


    Separately, a court in Russia’s Far East sentenced an activist to three years in jail for “discrediting” the military and being in contempt of court, Russian media reported on Monday.

    Vladislav Nikitenko sent out requests to authorities asking to initiate criminal proceedings against members of Russia’s Security Council, including President Vladimir Putin, for “acts of international terrorism.”

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  • Rybakina meets Sabalenka in Australian Open women’s final

    Rybakina meets Sabalenka in Australian Open women’s final

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    MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Aryna Sabalenka figures she’ll feel some jitters when she steps out on court to face Elena Rybakina in the Australian Open women’s final.

    Saturday’s contest is, after all, Sabalenka’s first singles title match at a Grand Slam tournament. Rybakina is more familiar with this stage: She won Wimbledon a little more than six months ago.

    “That’s OK, to feel little bit nervous. It’s a big tournament, big final,” Sabalenka said. “If you’re going to start trying to do something about that, it’s going to become bigger, you know?”

    She is seeded No. 5; Rybakina is No. 22. Sabalenka is a 24-year-old from Belarus; Rybakina is a 23-year-old who was born in Moscow and began representing Kazakhstan in 2018 when that country offered to fund her tennis career.

    “For me, this time, I would say it was a bit easier, compared to Wimbledon, when I was playing for the first time (in a major) quarters, semis, final,” said Rybakina, the first woman since Jennifer Capriati in 2001 to beat three past Grand Slam champions during one edition at Melbourne Park.

    That run includes victories over three-time Slam winner and Iga Swiatek, 2012-13 Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka and 2017 French Open champ Jelena Ostapenko, along with Danielle Collins, the runner-up at Melbourne a year ago.

    Both Rybakina and Sabalenka are among the most powerful players on tour, using big serves and groundstrokes to overwhelm opponents. It’s a style that evokes the way the Williams sisters went about winning when they began to transform the sport — and rather different from the way the current No. 1, Iga Swiatek, and her predecessor, the retired Ash Barty, went about things.

    “As a matchup, I mean, it’s going to be a lot of mistakes, a lot of winners, I’m sure about that, from both sides, because there is going to be a lot of pressure,” said Stefano Vukov, Rybakina’s coach. “I think who serves well tomorrow goes through. That’s my feeling.”

    Both finalists are indeed capable of terrific serving, which was not always the case for Sabalenka.

    She has won a tournament-high 89% of her service games, holding in 49 of 55, meaning she has been broken an average of just once per match. It’s a significant development for someone who struggled mightily with double-faulting last year, accumulating nearly 400 over the course of the season, including more than 20 in some matches.

    But Sabalenka reworked the mechanics on her serve during a five-day session less than a month before the U.S. Open, where she got to the semifinals. Something else Sabalenka has improved that has made her a better player: the way she manages her mindset during a match.

    Instead of “screaming after some bad points or some errors” the way she used to, Sabalenka said she now tries to “hold myself, stay calm, just think about the next point. … Just less negative emotions.”

    Rybakina rarely lets so much as the slightest trace of emotion show, even when she clinched the championship at the All England Club.

    Both tend to seek to put an end to points with quick strikes from the baseline.

    Sabalenka has managed to keep the ledger tilted quite a bit in her favor, accumulating 196 winners (32.7 per match) and 136 unforced errors (22.7 per match). Rybakina’s numbers are more even, averaging 26.3 winners and 24.8 unforced errors.

    This will be their fourth head-to-head meeting, and Sabalenka is 3-0 so far, winning each in three sets, although they haven’t played each other since Wimbledon in 2021.

    Since then, Sabalenka’s coach, Anton Dubrov observed, “Aryna lost (her) serve. Then she found the serve. Meanwhile, Rybakina won a Slam. They both kind of came here from different directions. So I would say … all previous matches don’t matter at all. It’s going to be something really new.”

    ___

    AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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  • Former Moscow-linked Church claims religious persecution as security raids heat up | CNN

    Former Moscow-linked Church claims religious persecution as security raids heat up | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The vertically shot video published last November shows no weapons, battlefield atrocities or even soldiers. But the sound of a patriotic Russian song reverberating through a church on Kyiv’s famous Lavra monastery grounds seemed to open a new front in Ukraine’s war with Russia.

    The church belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – which, despite the name, has traditionally been loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, and whose current leader Patriarch Kiril has openly supported Moscow’s brutal invasion. Splitting with Kiril, the leadership of the UOC denounced Russia’s attack, and last May, declared its independence from Russia.

    In a sermon days after the split, Patriarch Kiril said he was praying that “no temporary external obstacles will ever destroy the spiritual unity of our people.”

    Days after the video surfaced, masked members of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) conducted a raid on the Lavra – officially, to prevent it being used for “hiding sabotage and reconnaissance groups” or “storing weapons.”

    By December, a handful of church leaders had been sanctioned, and dozens more churches across the country were raided by the SBU – though the searches turned up little more than a few Russian passports, symbols and books.

    “There was no mention in the findings of weapons or saboteurs. What they said they found was printed matter, documents, which are not prohibited under Ukrainian law,” UOC Bishop Metropolitan Klyment told CNN in an interview.

    There is plenty of gray area, however. In a statement the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told CNN that it’s not illegal to store Russian propaganda, but it is to distribute it. “If such literature is in the library of the diocese or on the shelves of a church shop, it is obvious that it is intended for mass distribution,” the statement read.

    It insisted that the raids on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “are aimed exclusively at national security issues. This is not a matter of religion.” Vladimir Legoyda, a spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church, however, slammed the searches as an “act of intimidation.”

    Professor Viktor Yelenskyi, Ukraine’s newly appointed religious freedom watchdog, said that for more than 30 years the UOC leadership has been “poisoning people with the ideas of the Russian world.” He defended the SBU’s raids, comparing them to the crackdown on Islamic extremism after 9/11. “Ukraine is still a safe haven for religious freedom.”

    Yet, at the end of 2022, the government declined to renew the church’s lease on its massive, central Lavra cathedral and turned over the keys to the similarly named, but completely separate Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The rival OCU celebrated Orthodox Christmas (on January 7) mass there for the first time this year.

    Speaking outside the church on Christmas Day, Alla, who declined to give her last name, said, “I think it should’ve been done a long time ago.”

    “We’ve been tolerating this [UOC] evil and closing our eyes as we thought we should be tolerant, but the war brought it all to surface.”

    Father Pavlo Mityaev is pictured at the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Vita Poshtova, a village just outside Kyiv.

    The Ukrainian Orthodox Church held this year’s Christmas mass at a smaller church down just steps from the cathedral. Kyrylo Serheyev, a student at the lavra seminary, said this year especially, he’s praying for Ukrainian troops. And despite government sanctions and scrutiny of his church, he insists “our patriotism is not becoming less.”

    Viktoria Vinnyk said she was sad not to have mass in the central cathedral this year. Though she speaks Russian, she’s never been to Russia.

    “I hope for better in my country. And I hope that the situation will change,” she said.

    The cathedral isn’t the only holy site to change hands. Outside Kyiv, in the village of Vita Poshtova, a small church has sat perched on a hillside above the frozen lake since the Soviet era. It’s the only one in the village. In September the congregation voted to convert the church from UOC to the independent OCU. Parishioner Olha Mazurets says she was uncomfortable with any connection to Russia.

    “It’s a matter of identity and self-preservation. We must identify our enemy too,” she told CNN.

    The ceiling of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Vita Poshtova in Ukraine.

    Father Pavlo Mityaev, the newly appointed priest says before war, “people didn’t pay attention to whether it was a Ukrainian or Russian-speaking church, they were coming to God. But when the war started, everything changed.”

    According to Klyment, up to 400 of the UOC’s 12,000 churches in Ukraine have converted to the OCU since the war began.

    The security services says that since the full-scale invasion began, 19 church clergy have been charged and five have been convicted.

    In December, UOC priest Andriy Pavlenko was sentenced to 12 years for passing information about Ukrainian battlefield positions in the Donbas to the Russians. A week later, he was sent to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange.

    Klyment acknowledges that priest’s guilt but dismisses other cases – like the Vinnytsia priest indicted just this week for disseminating pro-Russian propaganda – as hollow accusations. He thinks the wider church is being unfairly tarnished.

    “Members of the Ukrainian Orthodox … are citizens of Ukraine, and sometimes among the best citizens of Ukraine, proving their patriotism with their own lives,” he said referring to UOC members fighting on the front lines.

    In his nightly address on December 1, President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated he was prepared to go beyond raids – proposing a law to ban churches with “centers of influence” in Russia from operating in Ukraine – all in the name of “spiritual independence.”

    “We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul,” he said.

    But Klyment believes that law would merely push his church underground.

    “What else do you call persecution if not this?” he asked.

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  • Defiant Navalny has opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine from prison. His team fear for his safety | CNN

    Defiant Navalny has opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine from prison. His team fear for his safety | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: The award-winning CNN Film “Navalny” airs on CNN this Saturday at 9 p.m. ET. You can also watch now on CNNgo and HBO Max.



    CNN
     — 

    Surviving President Vladimir Putin’s poisoners was just a warm-up, not a warning, for Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny. But his defiance, according to his political team, has put him in a race against time with the Russian autocrat.

    The question, according to Navalny’s chief investigator, Maria Pevchikh, is whether he can outlast Putin and his war in Ukraine – and on that the verdict is still out. “So far, touch wood, they haven’t gone ahead with trying to kill him again,” she told CNN.

    On January 17, 2021, undaunted and freshly recovered from an attempt on his life five months earlier – a near lethal dose of the deadly nerve agent Novichok delivered by Putin’s henchmen – Navalny boldly boarded a flight taking him right back into the Kremlin’s hands.

    By then, Navalny had become Putin’s nemesis. So strong is the Russian leader’s aversion to his challenger that even to this day he refuses to say his name.

    As Navalny stepped off the flight from Berlin onto the frigid tarmac at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport that snowy evening, he knew exactly what he was getting into. Just weeks before leaving Germany, he told CNN: “I understand that Putin hates me, I understand that people in the Kremlin are ready to kill.”

    Navalny’s path to understanding had come at a high cost. He knew in intimate and excruciating detail exactly how close he had come to death at the hands of Putin’s poisoners while on the political campaign trail in Siberia to support local candidates.

    As he recovered in Berlin from the August 2020 assassination attempt, Navalny and his crack research team – acting on some creative sleuthing by investigative outfit Bellingcat and CNN – figured out who his would-be killers were and discovered they’d been tailing him on Putin’s orders for over three years.

    So detailed was Navalny’s knowledge that, posing as an official with Russia’s National Security Council, he was able to call one of the would-be killers, who promptly confessed to lacing Navalny’s underwear with the banned nerve agent Novichok.

    The security service agent, one of a large team from the feared FSB, the Soviet KGB’s modern replacement, even offered a critique of their failed murder bid. He told Navalny he’d survived only because the plane carrying him diverted for medical help when he became sick, and suggested that the assassination attempt might have succeeded on a longer flight.

    When challenged face-to-face at the door of his Moscow apartment by CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who along with journalists from Der Spiegel and The Insider had also helped in the investigation, the agent swiftly shut himself inside. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attempt on Navalny’s life.

    Alexey Navalny, his wife Yulia, opposition politician Lyubov Sobol and other demonstrators march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow on February 29, 2020.

    When Putin was asked if he’d tried to have Navalny killed, he smirked, saying: “If there was such a desire, it would have been done.”

    Despite his denials, Putin’s desire was transparent: Navalny’s magnetism was positioning him as the Russian leader’s biggest political threat.

    Today he is the best-known anti-Putin politician in Russia and is putting his life on the line to break Putin’s stranglehold over Russians.

    Navalny’s team, who are in self-imposed exile for their safety, believe their boss is in a race for survival against Putin.

    Pevchikh, who heads Navalny’s investigative team and helped winkle out his would-be assassins, says the war in Ukraine – which Navalny has condemned from his prison cell behind bars – will bring Putin down. The question, she says, is whether Navalny can survive Putin. “It’s a bit of a race. You know, at this point, who lasts longer?”

    A photograph taken on June 23, 2022 shows the IK-6 penal colony to which Alexey Navalny was transferred near the village of Melekhovo, in Vladimir region.

    Navalny’s almost immediate incarceration after landing from Germany and his subsequent detention in one of Russia’s most dangerous jails prisons – he was moved in June to a maximum-security prison facility in Melekhovo, in the Vladimir region – is no surprise.

    What is remarkable is that despite every physical and mental blow Putin’s brutal penal regime has dealt him, Navalny still refuses to be silenced.

    Even while behind bars, his Instagram and Twitter accounts keep up his attacks on Putin. “He passes hundreds of notes and we type them up,” Pevchikh says. She didn’t specify how the notes were relayed.

    But it’s not without cost: With every trumped-up turn of Putin’s tortuous legal machinations, Navalny has had to fight for even basic rights like boots and medication. His health has suffered, he has lost weight.

    His daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, currently studying at Stanford University in California, told CNN he is being systematically singled out for harsh treatment.

    Prison authorities are repeatedly cycling him in and out of solitary confinement, she says. “They put him in for a week, then take him out for one day,” to try to break him, she said. “People are not allowed to communicate with him, and this kind of isolation is really purely psychological torture.”

    His physical treatment, she said, is just as horrendous. “It’s a small cell, six (or) seven-by-eight feet… a cage for someone who is of his six-foot-three height,” she told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “He only has one iron stool, which is sewed to the floor. And out of personal possessions he is allowed to have: a mug, a toothbrush, and one book.”

    In the past few days, Navalny’s lawyer has said he has a “temperature, fever and a cough.” He hasn’t seen a doctor yet and his team is struggling to get medicine to him in his isolation cell.

    Yulia Navalnaya leaves the IK-2 male correctional facility after a court hearing, in the town of Pokrov in Vladimir Region, Russia, on February 15, 2022.

    His wife Yulia, who says she received a letter from Navalny on Wednesday, has also raised concerns about his health. She says he has been sick for over a week, and that he is not getting treatment and is forced off his sick bed during the day.

    At least 531 Russian doctors as of Wednesday had signed an open letter addressed to Putin to demand that Navalny should be provided with necessary medical assistance, according to the Facebook post where the letter was published.

    His family haven’t seen him since May last year and his daughter fears what may come next. “This is one of the most dangerous and famous high security prisons in Russia known for torturing and murdering the inmates,” she said.

    In his last moments of freedom as police grabbed him at Sheremetyevo airport on his return to Russia nearly two years ago, Navalny kissed his wife Yulia goodbye.

    Outside, riot police beat back the crowds who’d come to welcome them home. It was the beginning of a new chapter in Navalny’s struggle, one he is aware he may not survive.

    Before leaving Germany, he’d recorded a message about what to do if the worst happened: “My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: not give up… The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”

    When Navalny appeared in a Moscow court after his arrest at the airport, the huge scale of his problems was just beginning to become apparent. He was defiant; cut off from the world inside a cage in the crowded court, he signaled his love to his wife just yards away in the tiny room.

    The trial itself was a farce. He was handed a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for allegedly breaking the terms of his probation in an old, politically motivated case.

    The courtroom theater was a typically Putinesque twist of Russia’s easily manipulated judicial process. Navalny’s alleged probation violation came as he lay incapacitated in the Berlin hospital recovering from the Novichok poisoning he and Western officials blame on the Kremlin.

    If the court process in Putin’s Russia was a surreal circus, jail was to be its brutal twin where the Russian leader hoped to break Navalny’s will.

    Journalists watch a live broadcast of the court hearing from the press room of the penal colony N2, on the first day of a new trial of Alexey Navalny, in the town of Pokrov on February 15, 2022.

    But far from defeated, and a lawyer by training, Navalny fought for his basic prison rights through legal challenges.

    After his sentencing, Navalny went on a hunger strike, complaining he was being deprived of sleep by prison guards who kept waking him up. He began suffering health issues and demanded proper medical attention.

    Against a backdrop of international outrage, Navalny was moved to a prison hospital; meanwhile Moscow’s courts moved to have him declared a terrorist or extremist and Putin shut down his political operations across the country.

    In January 2022 Navalny appealed this designation, but after another six months of judicial theater he lost.

    And there were more charges. In March that year, he was convicted of yet more trumped-up charges – contempt of court and embezzlement – and he was transferred to Melekhovo’s maximum security penal colony IK-6, hundreds of miles from Moscow.

    At every turn, Navalny fought back, threatening in November 2022 to sue prison authorities for withholding winter boots, and, most recently, mounting a legal challenge to know what prison medics have been injecting him with.

    Putin’s efforts to break him have no bounds, Navalny has said, describing his months in a punitive punishment cell as an attempt to “shut me up.” Often, he has been made to share the tiny space with a convict who has serious hygiene issues, he said on Twitter.

    Navalny says he saw it for what it was: Putin’s callous use of people. “What especially infuriates me is the instrumentalization of a living person, turning him into a pressure tool,” he said.

    But his suffering is paying off, according to Pevechikh. “We have had a very successful year in terms of our organization,” she said. “We are now one of the most loud, anti-war, anti-war media that there is available.”

    It’s the fact Navalny returned to Russia that persuades people he is genuine, she said. “The level of risk that he takes on himself personally… is very impressive,” she said. “And I would imagine that our audience recognises that.”

    Dasha and Yulia Navalnaya attend the premiere of the film

    Perhaps because of this, but certainly despite the more than 700 days in jail, where he remains subject to Putin’s vindictive whims, Navalny’s spirit seems strong.

    At New Year he made light of his inhumane treatment, saying on Instagram that he had put up Christmas decorations he’d been sent in a letter from his family. When the guards took them down, he said, “the mood remained.”

    His team posted a poignant photoshopped picture of him with his family – a way of keeping alive their New Year tradition of being together – and quoted Navalny as saying: “I can feel the threads and wires going to my wife, children, parents, brother, all the people closest to me.”

    His New Year message to his many supporters is both stark and sincere: “Thank you all so much for your support this year. It hasn’t stopped for a minute, not even for a second, and I’ve felt it.”

    For what dark horrors Putin may yet choose to visit on him, even the resilient Navalny will need all the support he can get.

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  • As police in Idaho faced mounting criticism, investigators worked meticulously behind the scenes to nab a suspect | CNN

    As police in Idaho faced mounting criticism, investigators worked meticulously behind the scenes to nab a suspect | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In the weeks after four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in a home near campus, police faced mounting criticism from the public as the investigation appeared to be at a standstill.

    In fact, court documents show, a team of local and state law enforcement officers, along with a slew of FBI agents, were working meticulously through the holiday season to catch the alleged killer.

    Weeks before making an arrest on December 30, investigators began setting their sights on Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old PhD student in criminology at a nearby university who has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.

    “I bristled in the days after the arrest when people questioned whether police had the right man because a PhD candidate in criminal justice would be too smart for this crime,” said John Miller, a CNN law enforcement analyst and former New York Police Department deputy commissioner. “You can teach a master’s class on how to do a complex criminal investigation based on this case.”

    The brutal nature of the November 13 killings set off a wave of fear and anxiety in Moscow, a small college town on the Idaho-Washington border that had not reported a murder in seven years.

    Police found the door to the off-campus residence open and the bodies of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin in rooms on the second and third floors. Two other young women were in the three-floor, six-bedroom rental at the time but were not injured, according to police.

    Latah County Coroner Cathy Mabbutt told CNN she saw “lots of blood on the wall” when she arrived at the scene. She said there were multiple stab wounds on each body, likely from the same weapon. One victim had what appeared to be defensive stab wounds on the hands.

    Moscow police initially told the public the attack was targeted and there was no threat to the community. Days later, however, Police Chief Jason Fry backtracked: “We cannot say that there is no threat to the community,” he said. Many students began leave town.

    Authorities remained tight-lipped, withholding details of the crime and some of the leads they were tracking. For weeks, law enforcement officials said they had not identified a suspect or located the murder weapon.

    Jim Chapin, the father of Ethan Chapin, said in a November 16 statement that the lack of information from the university and local police “further compounds our family’s agony after our son’s murder.”

    “For Ethan and his three dear friends slain in Moscow, Idaho, and all of our families, I urge officials to speak the truth, share what they know, find the assailant, and protect the greater community,” the statement said.

    As frustrations continued to mount, pundits and relatives of the victims became even more critical of the apparent lack of progress in the case.

    “It takes a while to put together and piece together that whole timeline of events and the picture of really what occurred,” Idaho State Police spokesman Aaron Snell said on November 22, nine days after the killings. “A lot of this the public doesn’t get to see because it’s a criminal investigation. But I guarantee you behind the scenes, there’s so much work going on.”

    One day later, Steve Goncalves, Kaylee’s dad, told CNN he was focused on securing justice for his daughter, despite the dearth of information.

    “We all want to play a part in helping, and we can’t play a part if we don’t have any real substantial information to work from,” he said.

    Asked what he’d heard from local police, Goncalves said, “They’re not sharing much with me.” He suggested Moscow police might be limited in what they can share.

    One bit of information initially not shared publicly was that a review of surveillance footage from the area around the home brought to investigators’ attention a white sedan, later identified as a Hyundai Elantra, according to a probable cause affidavit released Thursday in the case against Kohberger.

    By November 25, law enforcement in the area had been notified to be on the lookout for such a vehicle, the affidavit said.

    And several days later, officers at nearby Washington State University, where the suspect was a graduate student in the criminal justice program, identified a white Elantra and subsequently found it was registered to Kohberger.

    This was just part of the behind-the-scenes work in a complex quadruple homicide investigation where any hint to the public about a suspect or the various leads police are following can cause it to fall apart, according to experts.

    “We don’t want to tip off suspects or spook them so that they end up going on the run. We don’t want them trying to get rid of evidence or destroy things,” said Joe Giacalone, adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired NYPD sergeant who directed the department’s homicide school and the Bronx cold case squad.

    “There’s a lot of people in the public that need to apologize to the police department,” Giacalone said. “That Moscow, Idaho, police chief took a beating and he kept on moving ahead.”

    Miller agreed: “They were willing to take it on the chin, from the public, from the press, from local critics, in order to keep the case clean and keep the investigation going.”

    One crucial clue not shared by police was that one of the two roommates who survived told investigators she saw a masked man dressed in black in the house the morning of the attack, according to the probable cause affidavit.

    The roommate, identified in the document as D.M., said she “heard crying” in the house that morning and a male voice say, “It’s ok, I’m going to help you.” D.M. said she then saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” the document said.

    “D.M. described the figure as 5’ 10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” according to the affidavit. “The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase.’”

    Kohberger’s driver’s license information, which was reviewed by investigators in late November, turned out to be consistent with the description provided by the surviving roommate, the affidavit said, noting specifically his height and his “bushy eyebrows.”

    Armed with driver’s license and plate information, investigators were able to obtain phone records that indicated Kohberger’s phone was near the victims’ residence at least 12 times between June 2022 to the present day, the affidavit said.

    Those records also showed that Kohberger’s phone was near the crime scene again after the killings, between 9:12 a.m. and 9:21 a.m., the document said.

    “For weeks before the arrest, so called experts, pundits and some in the press criticized the Moscow police for not being up to the task and for not having an arrest,” Miller said. “It’s not like ‘Law & Order,’ ‘Blue Bloods’ or ‘CSI.’”

    From the morning the murders were discovered, Miller said, the Moscow police knew they needed help and brought in the state police homicide squad and the FBI.

    “What the Moscow police had, that the FBI and the state police could never have, was they knew the area,” Miller said. “They knew the community and they knew the people and they had a very engaged community. But the FBI brought technical prowess and expertise. And what the state police brought was experience in homicide investigations and a state-of-the-art lab.”

    By mid December the public criticism of the police department continued to grow as few details of the investigation were made public.

    But the court documents show that investigators worked through the holidays to build their case, which included DNA found at the scene of the killings and at the Pennsylvania home of Kohberger’s family.

    “The general public tends to think all of this happens overnight,” said retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole. “You have a group of investigators from different agencies coming together and working together. It’s very challenging.”

    Investigators learned that Kohberger received a new license plate for his Elantra five days after the killings, the affidavit said, citing records from the Washington State Department of Licensing.

    At the scene of the killings, investigators found a tan leather knife sheath on the bed next to one of the victims, the affidavit said. On its button snap, the Idaho State Lab would later find a single source of male DNA.

    Late last month, Pennsylvania law enforcement recovered trash from Kohberger’s family home in Albrightsville, according to the affidavit. That evidence, too, was sent to the Idaho State Lab.

    The DNA in the trash is believed to belong to the biological father of the person whose DNA was found on the sheath, the document said.

    On December 29, authorities requested an arrest warrant for Kohberger on four counts of first-degree murder and burglary, according to the affidavit.

    The next day, a Pennsylvania State Police SWAT team moved in on the Kohberger family home. They broke down the door and broke through windows in what is known as a “dynamic entry” – a rare tactic used to arrest “high risk” suspects, a law enforcement source told CNN.

    Kohberger was booked into the Latah County jail last week after being extradited from Pennsylvania. The affidavit, with many previously unknown details of the case, was released Thursday as the suspect made his first court appearance in Idaho.

    Kohberger did not enter a plea and he is due back in court on Thursday. A court order prohibits the prosecution and defense from commenting beyond the public records of the case.

    Moscow police “took a lot of criticism and a lot of heat in those seven weeks after the incident,” University of Idaho Provost and Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence told CNN. “And I’m just so thankful that they stayed committed to that case and to sharing only what they could share so that they didn’t disrupt the investigation… If they had shared more, we could wonder would Mr. Kohberger have been able to elude them.”

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  • The Idaho Student Murders

    The Idaho Student Murders

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    The Idaho Student Murders – CBS News


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    Four college students are found stabbed to death in their home. Police say the suspect had studied the criminal mind. “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.

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  • Russia, shaken by Ukrainian strike, could step up drone use

    Russia, shaken by Ukrainian strike, could step up drone use

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Emergency crews on Tuesday sifted through the rubble of a building struck by Ukrainian rockets, killing at least 63 Russian soldiers barracked there, in the latest blow to the Kremlin’s war strategy as Ukraine says Moscow’s tactics could be shifting.

    An Associated Press video of the scene in Makiivka, a town in the partially Russian-occupied eastern Donetsk region, showed five cranes and emergency workers removing big chunks of concrete under a clear blue sky.

    In the attack, which apparently happened last weekend, Ukrainian forces fired rockets from a U.S.-provided HIMARS multiple launch system, according to a Russian Defense Ministry statement.

    It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago and an embarrassment that stirred renewed criticism inside Russia of the way the war is being conducted.

    The Russian statement Monday about the attack provided few other details. Other, unconfirmed reports put the death toll much higher.

    The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s armed forces claimed Sunday that around 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. That claim couldn’t be independently verified. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school.

    Satellite photos analyzed by The AP show the apparent aftermath of the strike. An image from Dec. 20 showed the building standing. One from Jan. 2 showed it in ruins. Other days had intense cloud cover, making it impossible to see the site by standard satellite imagery.

    Vigils for soldiers killed in the strike took place in two Russian cities Tuesday, the state RIA Novosti agency reported.

    In Samara, in southwestern Russia, locals gathered for an Orthodox service in memory of the dead. The service was followed by a minute’s silence, and flowers were laid at a Soviet-era war memorial, RIA reported.

    Unconfirmed reports in Russian-language media said the victims were mobilized reservists from the region.

    With the fighting raging much longer than anticipated by the Kremlin, and becoming bogged down in a war of attrition amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive backed by Western-supplied weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin is mulling ways of regaining momentum.

    In a video address late Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country needs to strengthen its defenses in the face of what he described as Russian plans for a new offensive.

    “There is no doubt, that todays bosses of Russia will gather all they can to try to reverse the battlefield situation or at least delay their defeat,” he said. “We must derail that Russian scenario and are getting ready for it.”

    In comments a day earlier, Zelenskyy had claimed the Kremlin plans to step up the use of Iranian-made exploding drones.

    “We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack by Shaheds (exploding drones),” he said Monday night.

    Zelenskyy said the goal is to break Ukraine’s resistance by “exhausting our people, (our) air defense, our energy.”

    For the Russian military, the exploding drones are a cheap weapon which also spreads fear among the enemy. The United States and its allies have sparred with Iran over Tehran’s role in allegedly supplying Moscow with the drones.

    The Institute for the Study of War said Putin is striving to strengthen support for his strategy among key voices in Russia.

    “Russia’s air and missile campaign against Ukraine is likely not generating the Kremlin’s desired information effects among Russia’s nationalists,” the think tank said late Monday.

    “Such profound military failures will continue to complicate Putin’s efforts to appease the Russian pro-war community and retain the dominant narrative in the domestic information space,” it added.

    Meanwhile, drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield. Experts say it may be a matter of time before Russia or Ukraine deploy them.

    Putin’s additional reliance on currently available drones might not help him achieve his goals, however, as Ukraine claims a high success rate against the weapons. Even so, part of the intention of using drones is to exhaust Ukrainian air defenses.

    During the first two days of the new year, which were marked by relentless nighttime drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, the country’s forces shot down more than 80 Iranian-made drones, Zelenskyy said.

    Since September, Ukraine’s armed forces have shot down almost 500 drones, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat claimed in a television interview Tuesday.

    As well as seeking to wear down resistance to Russia’s invasion, the long-range bombardments have targeted the power grid to leave civilians at the mercy of biting winter weather.

    In the latest fighting, a Russian missile strike overnight on the city of Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region wounded two people, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported Tuesday.

    The Russian military on Tuesday acknowledged strikes on Druzhkivka and Kramatorsk, also in Donetsk. The Defense Ministry claimed it destroyed four HIMARS launchers in the area. This claim could not be independently verified.

    A reporter with French broadcaster TF1 was live on television screens when a blast from one of the strikes erupted behind him in Druzhkivka. A German reporter with Bild newspaper suffered a minor injury from shrapnel in the same bombardment.

    Officials said the attack ruined an ice hockey arena described as the largest hockey and figure skating school in Ukraine.

    In recently retaken areas of the southern Kherson region, Russian shelling on Monday killed two people and wounded nine, Kherson’s Ukrainian governor, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said Tuesday. He also said two people were killed in the Kherson region Tuesday after driving over a mine.

    In other developments Tuesday:

    — Ukraine’s main security service said it was bringing criminal charges against two high-ranking Russian commanders accused of overseeing strikes against civilians.

    The Security Service of Ukraine said on its website that it had collected a “high-quality body of evidence” against Sergei Kobylash, commander of Russia’s long-range aviation force, and Igor Osipov, the former head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The two are charged under Ukrainian law with violating the country’s territorial integrity and with “planning, preparing, initiating and conducting a war of aggression,” which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

    Although it is unlikely that Kyiv will be able to bring Kobylash and Osipov to trial in the near future, the announcement marks the first time Ukrainian authorities brought charges linked directly to attacks on residential areas and civilian infrastructure.

    — Ukraine’s chief military officer, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said he had his first phone call this year with U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    Zaluzhnyi said on Facebook that he told Milley about heavy battles around Svatove-Kreminna and in the direction of Lysychansk. “The most difficult situation remains in the Soledar-Bakhmut-Mayorsk area,” he said, adding that the Russians are trying to advance by “effectively marching on corpses of their own.” He said Ukrainian forces securely keep their defenses in the Zaporizhzhia region and make efforts to protect Kherson from Russian shelling, while the situation along the border with Belarus is fully controlled.

    ———

    Jon Gambrell in Rome contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Ruslan Khasbulatov, who led Russian parliament revolt, dies

    Ruslan Khasbulatov, who led Russian parliament revolt, dies

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    MOSCOW — Ruslan Khasbulatov, who led a rebellion against Russia’s first post-Soviet president, has died. He was 80.

    Khasbulatov’s death was reported Tuesday by Russian state television.

    An ethnic Chechen, Khasbulatov was elected speaker of the parliament of the Russian Federation shortly before the Soviet collapse.

    Initially he was a staunch ally of Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin and firmly stood behind him during a botched August 1991 coup staged by hardline members of the Soviet leadership.

    After the Soviet breakup in December 1991, relations between Yeltsin and Khasbulatov grew increasingly strained as they argued over economic policies and other issues.

    In September 1993, Khasbulatov teamed up with Vice President Alexander Rutskoi to challenge Yeltsin’s leadership. Yeltsin retaliated by disbanding parliament, and Khasbulatov called a session that declared Yeltsin’s authority terminated.

    The crisis culminated on Oct. 3-4 1993, when parliament’s supporters clashed with police on the streets of Moscow and tried to storm the state television building, engaging in a fierce gunbattle with troops protecting it. Yeltsin then ordered tanks to fire on parliament, and hundreds of lawmakers and their supporters were arrested.

    Khasbulatov was also arrested and charged, but was freed under an amnesty in February 1994. He quit politics and returned to teaching economics, the job he held before his quick ascent to power. Khasbulatov since kept a low profile and avoided any criticism of the government.

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  • Russian soldiers killed in apparent Ukrainian missile strike

    Russian soldiers killed in apparent Ukrainian missile strike

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    Russian soldiers killed in apparent Ukrainian missile strike – CBS News


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    The Russian Defense Ministry says at least 63 Russian soldiers were killed New Year’s Day in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. CBS News foreign correspondent Ian Lee joined Lana Zak to discuss the missile strike, as well as the ongoing Russian attacks in the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Kyiv.

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  • Suspect in the Idaho college student killings returned home for the holidays weeks after the crime. Here’s what we know about him | CNN

    Suspect in the Idaho college student killings returned home for the holidays weeks after the crime. Here’s what we know about him | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The man arrested in connection with the November killings of four University of Idaho students who were found stabbed to death attended a nearby university in Washington state and traveled across the country in December to spend the holidays with his parents.

    Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was arrested in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, on Friday on an arrest warrant for first-degree murder charges issued by the Moscow, Idaho, Police Department and the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office, according to the criminal complaint.

    The four slain students – Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20 – were each stabbed multiple times in the early morning hours of November 13 at an off-campus house in the small college town of Moscow.

    Kohberger was apprehended at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania, where Kohberger went several days before Christmas, Monroe County Chief Public Defender Jason LaBar told CNN. A white Elantra authorities had been looking for in connection with the killings was also at the parents’ house, the attorney added.

    “He was home for the holidays,” LaBar said.

    Kohberger’s father traveled with him from Washington state to Pennsylvania, according to the public defender and a person who claims to have interacted with the father and son earlier in December.

    That person, who asked not to be identified, said they did not know the father and son but engaged in friendly conversation with them at an auto maintenance shop on December 16 in Pennsylvania, while the two were getting their Elantra serviced. (A separate person also confirmed to CNN the father and son did business at the location on December 16.)

    The father told the individual he flew to Washington state and made the cross-country trip with Kohberger, adding his son would be traveling to the west coast alone after the holidays. Police have not indicated the suspect’s father is in any way implicated in the killings. CNN has attempted to contact the father for comment.

    The person described the younger Kohberger as “a little awkward,” but not suspiciously so. The suspect reportedly told the person he wanted to go into the field of behavioral criminal justice and become a professor.

    Kohberger is a graduate student at Washington State University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, according to a now-removed university graduate directory, which was seen by CNN earlier Friday.

    Kohberger had finished his first semester as a PhD student in the school’s criminal justice program earlier in December, the university said in a Friday statement.

    Earlier that day, university police assisted authorities in executing search warrants at his office and apartment, both located on the school’s Pullman campus.

    Pullman is about a 15-minute drive from Moscow, where the killings took place.

    Kohberger intends to waive his extradition hearing to Idaho, set for January 3, to expedite his transport to the state, LaBar said, adding his client is “eager to be exonerated” of the charges.

    Kohberger was previously an undergraduate and graduate student at DeSales University, according to a statement on the school’s website. DeSales is a Catholic university in Pennsylvania, according to its official Facebook page.

    He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2020 and earlier this year completed his “graduate studies for the Master of Arts in criminal justice program,” according to a university spokesperson.

    Kohberger’s attorney described his client as “very intelligent,” adding “he understands where we are right now.”

    In a post removed from Reddit after the arrest was made public, a student investigator associated with a DeSales University study named Bryan Kohberger sought participation in a research project “to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.”

    The post said, “In particular, this study seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense, with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience.”

    CNN reached one of the principal investigators of the study, a professor at DeSales University, but they declined to comment on the matter. The university has not responded to comment.

    A spokesperson for Northampton Community College, also in Pennsylvania, confirmed Kohberger was a student there and graduated with an Associate of Arts and Psychology degree in 2018.

    Earlier in December, authorities asked the public for information about a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra they believed was in the “immediate area” of the crime scenes around the time of the killings.

    After an overwhelming number of tips, investigators narrowed their focus to Kohberger by tracing ownership of the Elantra back to him, according to two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.

    His DNA also matched DNA recovered at the crime scene, according to the sources, who also explained authorities believed Kohberger left the area and went to Pennsylvania after the crime.

    A surveillance team with the FBI tracked the suspect for several days in the area where he was arrested, the sources added.

    One law enforcement source said Kohberger is believed to have driven across the country to his parents’ house in the Elantra. Authorities had also been surveilling his parents’ house, the source said.

    Authorities kept Kohberger under surveillance while investigators from Moscow’s police department, the Idaho State Police and the FBI worked with prosecutors to develop sufficient probable cause for an arrest warrant.

    The suspect’s family is “very shocked,” LaBar, the attorney, said, adding they are in “awe over everything that’s going on” and believed this was “out of character for Bryan.”

    Authorities still want to hear from people who may be able to shed more light on Kohberger.

    “This is not the end of this investigation, in fact, this is a new beginning,” Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said Friday. “You all now know the name of the person who has been charged with these offenses, please get that information out there, please ask the public, anyone who knows about this individual, to come forward.”

    “Report anything you know about him, to help the investigators, and eventually our office and the court system, understand fully everything there is to know about not only the individual, but what happened and why,” Thompson added.

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