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CNN
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Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been found by a parliamentary committee to have deliberately misled parliament over breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules.
This is a breaking story. More details soon…
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Four young children have been found alive after more than a month wandering the Amazon where they survived like “children of the jungle,” according to Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.
“Their learning from indigenous families and their learning of living in the jungle has saved them,” Petro told reporters on Friday, after announcing on Twitter that they had been found 40 days after they went missing following a plane crash that killed their mother.
Petro said the children were all together when they were found, adding they had demonstrated an example of “total survival that will be remembered in history.”
“They are children of the jungle and now they are children of Colombia,” he added.
Revealing their discovery earlier in the day, the Colombian president had tweeted an image that seems to show search crews treating the children in a forest clearing, along with the words: “A joy for the whole country!”
Their grandmother, María Fátima Valencia, said she was “going to hug all of them” and “thank everyone” as soon as they were reunited in their home city of Villavicencio, where they live.
“I’m going to encourage them, I’m going to push them forward, I need them here,” she said.
The children, who appear gaunt in the photos, are being evaluated by doctors and will be taken to the town of San Jose del Guaviare. They are expected to receive further treatment in Bogota, the capital, according to Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez.
“We hope that tomorrow they will be treated at the military hospital,” he said, while praising the Colombian military and indigenous communities for helping find them.
Petro said the children were weak, needed food and would have their mental status assessed. “Let the doctors make their assessment and we will know,” he added.
Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, age 13, Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9, Tien Ranoque Mucutuy, 4, and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy were stranded in the jungle on May 1, the only survivors of a deadly plane crash.
Their mother, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, was killed in the crash along with two other adult passengers: pilot Hernando Murcia Morales and Yarupari indigenous leader Herman Mendoza Hernández.
The children’s subsequent disappearance into the deep forest galvanized a massive military-led search operation involving over a hundred Colombian special forces troops and over 70 indigenous scouts combing the area.
For weeks, the search turned up only tantalizing clues, including footprints, a dirty diaper and a bottle. Family members said the oldest child had some experience in the forest, but hopes waned as the weeks went on.
At some point during their ordeal, they’d had to defend themselves from a dog, Petro said.
He called the children’s survival a “gift to life” and an indication that they were “cared for by the jungle.”
The Colombian president said he had spoken with the grandfather of the children who said that their survival was in the hands of the jungle which ultimately chose to return them.
The grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, said he and his wife had endured many sleepless nights worrying about the children.
“For us this situation was like being in the dark, we walked for the sake of walking. Living for the sake of living because the hope of finding them kept us alive. When we found the children we felt joy, we don’t know what to do, but we are grateful to God,” he said.
The children’s other grandfather, Narcizo Mucutuy, said he wants his grandchildren to be brought back home soon.
“I beg the president of Colombia to bring our grandchildren to Villavicencio, here where the grandparents are, where their uncles and aunts are, and then take them to Bogota,” he said.
Indigenous leader Lucho Acosta, the coordinator of indigenous scouts, credited the “extra effort” of search and rescue teams and local authorities to find the children in a statement on Friday.
“They all added a little effort so that this Operation Hope could be successful, and we can hope the kids will emerge alive and stronger than before. We have been hoping together with the strength of our ancestors, and our strength prevailed,” he said.
“We never stopped looking for them until the miracle came,” the Colombian Defense Ministry tweeted.
During a press conference Friday evening, Petro said he hoped to speak with the children on Saturday.
“The most important thing now is what the doctors say, they have been lost for 40 days, their health condition must have been stressed. We need to check their mental state too,” he said.
Petro, who was previously forced to backtrack after mistakenly tweeting that they had been found last month, described the children’s 40-day saga as “a remarkable testament of survival.”
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Former Vice President Mike Pence staked out a series of clear differences with boss-turned-2024 rival Donald Trump, and needled other Republican contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Wednesday night.
Hours after he launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Pence broke with the former president on immigration policy, entitlement spending, US support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and more.
He said he would not reinstate the policy of separating migrant families at the border – a widely criticized practice that Trump didn’t rule out reviving in his own CNN town hall last month.
Pence also said that other Republican rivals were wrong to put changes to Social Security off the table, telling the crowd at Grand View University in Des Moines that seriously reducing federal spending will require changes to entitlement programs.
He sharply rebuked Trump for describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine, while casting DeSantis as naive on the issue. And he continued to criticize the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Pence said he and Trump don’t just disagree about the past; the two have “a different vision for our party.”
“I’m somebody who believes in American leadership in the world. Our party needs to lead on fiscal responsibility and stand without apology for life. We’ll have those debates,” he said.
Still, Pence said, he will “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” a pledge he said he felt comfortable making because he doubted Trump would win the primary.
“Different times call for different leadership,” Pence said. “The American people don’t look backwards; they look forward. … I don’t think my old running mate is going to be the Republican nominee for president.”
Here are six takeaways from Pence’s CNN town hall:
Pence urged the Justice Department not to indict his onetime boss, saying such an indictment would fuel division inside the country and “send a terrible message to the wider world.”
While Pence said that “no one is above the law,” he said the DOJ could resolve its investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents without resorting to an indictment, just as the department informed Pence’s attorney last week that there would be no charges brought in the case of the classified documents discovered in his home.
But in Pence’s case, the former vice president immediately contacted the National Archives and the FBI to return his documents, while Trump resisted handing over his classified material and failed to return all classified documents after receiving a subpoena last May.
Pence’s response underscores the tightrope the former vice president is walking when it comes to the numerous probes into his former boss. CNN reported Wednesday that the Justice Department had informed Trump he’s a target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents and possible obstruction, a sign that prosecutors may be moving closer to indicting the former president.
While Pence criticized Trump for his actions on January 6 at his campaign kickoff Wednesday and at the town hall, he sought to distinguish those actions from the documents probe, protesting that there were “dozens” of better ways that the FBI could have handled Trump’s case before resorting to an unprecedented search the former president’s residence.
So far, Pence’s sharpest criticism of Trump came when he was asked about the United States’ role in helping Ukraine in its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion.
After arguing that the US should accelerate its support for the Ukrainian military, Pence pointed to Trump’s description of Putin in a February 2022 radio interview as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine.
“I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win the war in Ukraine,” Pence said. “And it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty in Ukraine. And America – it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight. And we need to give the people of Ukraine the ability to fight and defend their freedom.”
Pence’s comments align him with Nikki Haley, Trump’s United Nations ambassador and a 2024 rival, and against their former boss and DeSantis, who entered the GOP race last month. The former vice president echoed Haley’s veiled shot at DeSantis – who described the war as a “territorial dispute” – casting such characterizations as naive.
“Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin will stop if he overruns Ukraine has what we say back in Indiana, another thing coming,” Pence said. “He has no intention of stopping. He’s made it clear that he wants to recreate that old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”
Pence repeatedly highlighted his support for “parents’ rights,” especially when it comes to schools. But he said the judgment of those same parents should not apply to situations when a minor is seeking gender transition care.
“I strongly support state legislation, including, as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition, chemical or surgical procedures, under the age of 18,” he said – even when parents support their child’s decision to go forward.
Republican presidential candidates have all railed against what Pence on Wednesday described as “radical gender ideology,” language that by definition falsely suggests there is a movement of people seeking to convince young people to change their gender identities.
“However adults want to live, they can live,” Pence said. “But for children, we’re going to protect kids from the radical gender ideology and say no chemical or surgical transition before you’re 18.”
Pressed on the age question, Pence compared gender transition to body art, saying, “There’s a reason why you don’t let kids get a tattoo before they’re 18.”
When Bash asked what he would say to children and families who feel targeted by his position and those of his ideological allies, Pence offered an olive branch of sorts.
“I’d put my arm around them and tell them I love ‘em,” he said, “but (tell them) ‘Just wait.’”
Pence has been a fierce anti-abortion advocate his entire adult life. On Wednesday night, he made clear he would not deviate from that position.
“I couldn’t be more proud to be vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence said, “and gave America a new beginning for life.”
On the question of a federal ban on the procedure, Pence said he supported exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. But he did not tap dance around the fundamental question, even as voters around the country – in the midterms and in referendums – have registered their anger over the Supreme Court’s decision and the subsequent passage of state laws to sharply restrict abortion rights.
“We will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country,” Pence said.
Still, the former vice president acknowledged that his side had a “long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people” and encouraged his allies to show both “principle and compassion.”
To that end, he offered qualified support for social spending programs to help support newborns and new parents.
“We have to care as much about newborns and mothers as we do about the unborn,” Pence said. But he stopped short of specifically endorsing paid family leave for all Americans or subsidized child care.
Pence said he would “take a step back” from the approach of the Trump-era landmark sentencing reform law, known as the First Step Act.
“We need to get serious and tough on violent crime, and we need to give our cities and our states the resources to restore law and order to our streets. And I promise you, we’ll do that, if I’m your president,” Pence told Bash.
Under the First Step Act, thousands of federal inmates, most of them serving sentences for drug offense and weapons charges, were released from prison early, either for good behavior or through participation in rehabilitation programs. The law also eased mandatory minimum sentencing for certain drug offenders.
Asked about DeSantis’ promise to repeal the First Step Act if elected president, Pence again conceded that he would take a different approach than the First Step Act.
“We ought to be thinking about how we make penalties tougher on people that are victimizing families in this country,” he said.
Pence repeated the criticism he has leveled at his former boss for more than a year, insisting that Trump was wrong to ask his second-in-command to overturn some states’ 2020 Electoral College votes in his ceremonial role presiding over Congress as it counted those votes on January 6, 2021.
Pence said he “frankly hoped the president would come around” since early 2021. Though he said he agreed that some states inappropriately changed their election procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.
“But at the end of the day, I think the Republican Party has to be the party of the Constitution,” he said.
Pence also broke with Trump over the legal fates of those who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6 – and have since faced criminal charges and convictions. Trump said he would consider pardoning many of those rioters, who he said were being treated “very unfairly.”
Pence, though, said the United States “cannot ever allow what happened on January 6 to happen again in the heart of our democracy.”
“I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to answer to the law,” he said.
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CNN
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Brits woke up to yet more grim news on inflation Tuesday, with new data showing prices in UK stores are rising at a record pace. It’s the latest sign of a seemingly intractable cost-of-living crisis that has Prime Minster Rishi Sunak considering drastic measures, including price controls, to keep inflation in check.
The cost of store items, known as shop price inflation, rose 9% through the year to May, a fresh high for an index that dates back to 2005, according to the British Retail Consortium. Food inflation dipped slightly to 15.4% in May, but that’s still the second-highest rate on record.
Lower energy and commodity costs helped reduce prices of some staples, including butter, milk, fruit and fish. But chocolate and coffee prices are rising as global commodity prices soar, British Retail Consortium CEO Helen Dickinson said.
The slight drop in food prices will give cold comfort to consumers, and piles the pressure on Sunak, who has promised to halve inflation this year as one of his five pledges to voters.
The British public “are still wincing when their total comes up at the checkout… a weekly shop that cost £100 last year is now clocking in at £115,” Laura Suter, head of personal finance at stockbroker AJ Bell wrote in a note.
Poor households are being hit the hardest because they spend more of their disposable income on food. More people are using food banks in the United Kingdom than ever before, eclipsing even the peak of the pandemic.
The Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest food bank network, handed out close to 3 million emergency food parcels over the 12 months to March 2023 — a 37% increase on the previous year.
Even the Bank of England, tasked with keeping inflation at 2%, has been caught off guard by stubbornly high food prices, which seem to have barely responded to 12 successive interest rate hikes.
Food prices have contributed to keeping inflation “higher than we expected it to be,” Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told a Treasury committee hearing last week. “We have a lot to learn about operating monetary policy in a world of big shocks,” he admitted.
The United Kingdom’s inflation problem is now so dire that Sunak is considering asking retailers to cap the price of essential food items, in a throwback to the 1970s. Back then, governments in the United States and United Kingdom imposed wage and price controls to tame inflation, although the policies weren’t very effective at bringing inflation down and were later dropped.
Economists say that capping prices encourages companies to produce less of a product, while making it more attractive to consumers. Supply goes down, and demand goes up, with shortages being the inevitable result.
Price controls distort markets and should only be used “in extreme circumstances,” Neal Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note Tuesday. “The current food price shock does not warrant such an intervention,” he added.
The Sunday Telegraph was first to report the government’s proposal, which was quickly rejected by retailers.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium said controls would not make a “jot of difference” to high food prices, which are the result of soaring energy, transport and labor costs.
“As commodity prices drop, many of the costs keeping inflation high are now arising from the muddle of new regulation coming from government,” Opie added in a statement. These include tighter rules on recycling and full border controls on food imports from the European Union, due to be implemented by the end of this year.
According to a government spokesperson, any price caps would not be mandatory. “Any scheme to help bring down food prices for consumers would be voluntary and at retailers’ discretion,” the spokesperson said in a statement shared with CNN.
Sunak and Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt “have been meeting with the food sector to see what more can be done,” the spokesperson added.
For Sunak, the pressure is on — particularly ahead of a general election widely expected to be held next year. Inflation was hovering above 10% when he made the promise to halve it in January. It dropped back to 8.7% in April, still well above his target. The Bank of England expects it to fall to “around 5%” by the end of this year, leaving little margin for error.
According to Opie of the British Retail Consortium, the government should focus on “cutting red tape” rather than “recreating 1970s-style price controls.”
At the top of the list of burdensome regulations are those introduced as a result of the country’s exit from the European Union, which is its main source of food imports.
Brexit is responsible for about a third of UK food price inflation since 2019, according to researchers at the London School of Economics.
New regulatory checks and other border controls added nearly £7 billion ($8.7 billion) to Britain’s domestic grocery bill between December 2019 and March 2023, or £250 ($310) per household, economists at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance wrote in a recent paper.
Food prices rose by almost 25 percentage points over this period. “Our analysis suggests that in the absence of Brexit this figure would be 8 percentage points (30%) lower,” the researchers wrote.
Imports of meat and cheese from the European Union were now subject to high “non-tariff barriers.”
— Mark Thompson contributed reporting.
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Here’s a look at the life of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, current president and former prime minister of Turkey.
Birth date: February 26, 1954
Birth place: Istanbul, Turkey
Birth name: Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Father: Ahmet Erdogan, coastguard and sea captain
Mother: Tenzile Erdogan
Marriage: Emine (Gulbaran) Erdogan (July 4, 1978-present)
Children: Two daughters and two sons
Education: Marmara University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, 1981
Religion: Muslim
Active in Islamist circles in the 1970s and 1980s.
Before his political career, Erdogan was a semi-professional football (soccer) player.
Erdogan is considered a polarizing figure: supporters say he has improved the Turkish economy and introduced political reform. Critics have accused Erdogan of autocratic tendencies, corruption and extravagance.
Erdogan has also been heavily criticized for failing to protect women’s and human rights, curbing freedom of speech and attempting to curb Turkey’s secular identity.
Under Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has lifted restrictions on public expression of religion, including ending the ban on women wearing Islamic-style headscarves.
Has called social media “the worst menace to society.”
1984 – Elected as a district head of the Welfare Party.
1985 – Elected as the Istanbul Provincial Head of the Welfare Party and becomes a member of the central executive board of the party.
1994-1998 – Mayor of Istanbul.
1998 – The Welfare Party is banned. Erdogan serves four months in prison for inciting religious hatred after reciting a controversial poem.
August 2001 – Co-founds the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).
2002-2003 – Erdogan’s AKP wins the majority of seats in parliamentary elections, and he is appointed prime minister.
2003-2014 – Serves as prime minister.
June 2011 – AKP wins by a wide margin in the parliamentary elections, securing a third term for Erdogan.
June 2013 – Anti-government demonstrations target Erdogan’s policies, including his plan to turn a park into a mall, and call for political reforms. Thousands are reported injured in the clashes.
December 2013 – Corruption probe begins which investigates more than 50 suspects, including members of Erdogan’s inner circle. The following month, the government dismisses 350 police officers amid the investigation. Ten months later, the prosecutor drops the inquiry.
March 2014 – After Erdogan threatens to “eradicate” Twitter at a campaign rally, Turkey bans the social media site, and a two-week countrywide blackout ensues.
August 10, 2014 – Erdogan is elected president during the first-ever direct elections in Turkey.
November 2014 – At a summit hosted by a women’s group in Istanbul, Erdogan says that women and men are not equal “because their nature is different.” It’s not the first time the Turkish leader has made controversial comments about women: previously, he told Turkish university students that they shouldn’t be “picky” when choosing a husband and has called on all Turkish women to have three children.
June 7, 2015 – In Turkey’s parliamentary elections, AKP wins 41% of the vote.
July 15-16, 2016 – During an attempted coup by a faction of the military, at least 161 people are killed and 1,140 wounded. Erdogan addresses the nation via FaceTime and urges people to take to the streets to stand up to the military faction behind the uprising. He blames the coup attempt on cleric and rival Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
April 16, 2017 – A vote is held on a constitutional amendment expanding Erdogan’s presidential powers. Turkish state media report that about 51% of people voted yes on the referendum, which abolishes the country’s parliamentary system and would potentially allow for Erdogan to remain in office until 2029. International election monitors question whether the election was free and fair, citing last-minute rule changes, the muzzling of opposition voices and the dominance of the “yes” campaign in the media. Opposition leaders in the Republican People’s Party say that they plan to challenge the election results in court.
May 16, 2017 – Erdogan meets US President Donald Trump at the White House. During a joint news conference, Erdogan praises Trump’s electoral victory and vows to help the United States fight terrorism. After the two men speak, demonstrators protest outside the residence of the Turkish ambassador. Nine people are injured when Turkish security guards rush into a line of protestors and kick people on the ground. Law enforcement sources tell CNN that some of the men involved in the fight were Erdogan’s bodyguards.
October 12, 2017 – Erdogan accuses the United States of sacrificing its relationship with Turkey in a speech made days after the arrest of a US consular staff member and the announcement that he refuses to recognize the authority of US Ambassador John Bass. Erdogan blames Bass and other officials left over from the Obama administration for sabotaging relations between the two countries.
December 2017 – In response to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Erdogan declares the move to be null and void and announces Turkey’s intention to open a Turkish embassy in Jerusalem.
June 24, 2018 – Is reelected president.
November 2, 2018 – The order to kill Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi came “from the highest levels of Saudi government,” Erdogan writes in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. The friendship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia “doesn’t mean we will turn a blind eye to the premeditated murder that unfolded in front of our very eyes,” he writes.
January 8, 2019 – After backing the decision that the United States will begin pulling troops from Syria, Erdogan claims US National Security Adviser John Bolton made “a serious mistake” telling reporters that the United States would only pull out of Syria if Turkey pledged not to attack its Kurdish allies there. “Bolton’s remarks in Israel are not acceptable. It is not possible for me to swallow this,” Erdogan says during a speech in parliament. “Bolton made a serious mistake. If he thinks that way, he is in a big mistake. We will not compromise.”
October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive into northeastern Syria, just days after Trump’s administration announced that US troops would leave the border area. Erdogan’s “Operation Peace Spring” is an effort to drive away Kurdish forces from the border, and use the area to resettle around two million Syrian refugees.
October 22, 2019 – Erdogan meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi and the men announce a wide-ranging agreement on Syria, announcing that Russian and Turkish troops will patrol the Turkish-Syrian border. Kurdish forces have about six days to retreat about 20 miles away from the border.
January 2, 2020 – The Turkish parliament gives Erdogan authorization for one year to deploy military to address Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar’s offensive against the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, Libya.
December 20, 2021 – Erdogan unveils a plan to prop up the Turkish lira with a raft of new unorthodox economic measures, including compensating Turkish savers worried about the tumbling value of their nest eggs by compensating them for the impact of the depreciation of the lira on their deposits. A few days before, Erdogan announced a nearly 50% hike in the country’s minimum wage, hoping it would provide relief to suffering workers.
February 5, 2022 – Erdogan announces on Twitter that he and his wife had contracted the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and were experiencing mild symptoms.
February 7, 2023 – Erdogan declares a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces following a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6.
May 28, 2023 – Erdogan wins Turkey’s presidential election, defeating opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and stretching his rule into a third decade.
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London
CNN
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Rishi Sunak should be celebrating after a week of successes. But despite good economic news, the allies of the British prime minister say they’ve been reminded that his castle is built on sand.
First the good news. The International Monetary Fund said this week that the UK was no longer on track for a recession. Inflation and energy prices are falling, albeit slower than Sunak might like.
Things are still not great, but given the mess Sunak inherited from his predecessor Liz Truss – whose big economic gamble caused the pound to sink to its lowest against the dollar in decades – Sunak can credibly say he has steadied the ship to some extent.
Now the bad news: his Conservative party is still rife with division and full of individuals who have scores to settle with one another.
It wasn’t even a year ago that Boris Johnson was still prime minister, doing his best to cling to power despite drowning in scandals of his own making. It was Sunak, then Johnson’s chancellor (finance minister), who dealt the killer blow by resigning from Johnson’s cabinet over the scandals.
Johnson’s fiercest allies have not forgiven Sunak for his betrayal. They all rallied behind Truss when she stood against Sunak to take over from Johnson. Just 49 days later, she was also forced to resign, leaving Sunak essentially unopposed. He became PM on October 25 and immediately set about being the anti-Truss.
He has softened relations with Europe and moved away from the firebrand conservatism that people had come to associate with Johnson and Truss. For some on the conservative right, Sunak is essentially a sellout.
This makes him vulnerable to the well-documented tumultuous internal politics of the Conservative party.
This week, two things happened that reminded some Conservatives of how quickly things can go south.
First, he had to make a decision over what to do with his Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, after it was revealed she had asked civil servants to help her avoid a speeding fine by organising a private driving awareness course.
Sunak decided her actions didn’t breach the Ministerial Code, which would have required her to resign by convention. Sunak was immediately accused of letting her off the hook because he is too weak to have a fight with someone who is a stalwart member of the right of the party, many of whom despise Sunak.
It comes just a week after Braverman gave a speech at a thinly-veiled anti-Sunak conference in London. Not only did Sunak give her the freedom to speak at the conference, but she used to platform to give a speech that was clearly aimed at her own leadership bid at some point in the future.
Second, Johnson is back in the news after being referred to the police over concerns he broke more Covid rules than previously thought. Johnson allies have taken the opportunity to accuse Sunak of being behind all of this – something that Sunak’s spokesperson went on-the-record to deny.
And just like that, two people who could make life very difficult for Sunak are distracting from positive headlines about the economy and reminding everyone how quickly the Conservative party can turn on itself.
Some Sunak allies criticize him for having Braverman in his government at all. She had already had to resign from Truss’s government for breaching the Ministerial Code once. Her ambitions are well known and she is top of the list of cabinet ministers to martyr herself before the next election in order to position herself for any vacant leadership position that might come up if the Conservatives lose power.
“He came into office thinking he was weaker than he actually was and thinking the Boris (Johnson) and Liz (Truss) types were stronger than they were,” a senior Conservative MP told CNN.
“In reality, those people were in a very weak position because their team had done so much damage to the party overall. He could have just formed a government in his own image rather than taking Boris and Liz offcuts. His lack of confidence in himself made them more powerful in the long run,” the MP adds.
A former Conservative advisor says “the risk for Rishi comes if the polls don’t improve. Once the MPs start thinking the next election is lost, some of them will decide to go out in a blaze of glory and act on all the vendettas that have built up over the years.”
A united party is very important for any party seeking to win power. Historically the Conservatives have been much better at this than other British parties. However, a senior Conservative campaign advisor says there is “no hope in hell” of getting to the next election without a big old dust up.
Many Conservatives have already decided the game is over. The list of MPs deciding not to stand at the next election is growing and the people behind the scenes, essential to winning elections, are seeking alternative employment.
“We take our lead from the top and if someone like Braverman is already thinking about the next leadership contest, I think that’s a very bad sign of what happens at the next election,” the campaign advisor says.
Rishi Sunak came to power promising a more professional approach to government than the UK had seen over the previous three years. His slow and steady managerial style has improved the dire polling numbers he inherited. And right now, no one is seriously considering trying to remove him from office.
To be clear: no one thinks things are suddenly going to erupt, or that Boris Johnson is going to make some storming return back to power. Most accept that they are going to have stick with Sunak till the election and hope the economy improves so people feel richer. The fears are that the uglier side of the party will start to emerge, factionalism will return and the result will be a slow limp to an election loss.
What this week has reminded lots of Conservatives of, however, is how precarious all of this is. As one MP put it: “You are only ever about three moves away from total collapse in the modern Conservative party.” Or as a senior campaign figure put it: “It’s just a bit crap and the best possible outcome is it remaining a bit crap rather than getting worse.”
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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky joined leaders of major democracies on Saturday at a summit in Japan dominated by a push to present a unified front against both Russia and China.
The Group of Seven (G7) talks in Hiroshima are seeking common ground on a host of global issues, including how to confront Beijing’s growing military and economic assertiveness as well as the war raging in Europe.
Zelensky, dressed in his trademark military themed clothing, made a headline-grabbing entrance as he touched down on board a French government plane in a Japanese city once obliterated by a nuclear bomb.
“Japan. G7. Important meetings with partners and friends of Ukraine. Security and enhanced cooperation for our victory. Peace will become closer today,” he tweeted moments after arriving before heading to a dizzying round of bilateral meetings with leaders at the summit.
His attendance underscores the pressing need to maintain Western unity in the face of Russian aggression.
With Russia’s aerial assaults pounding Ukrainian cities and Kyiv preparing for a counter offensive, there is a growing urgency to Zelensky’s appeals for more advanced weapons and tighter sanctions on Moscow.
A joint communique issued by G7 nations on Saturday focused heavily on Russia’s war against Ukraine, which the block “condemned in the strongest possible terms”.
“We reaffirm our unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes to bring a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” the communique read.
A day earlier G7 nations announced a string of further sanctions against Moscow while US President Joe Biden told his counterparts he was dropping objections to providing Ukrainians F16 fighter jets and would train Ukrainian pilots in the United States, a major advance in US military support for the country.
Biden is expected to unveil a $375 million military aid package to Ukraine after the summit hears from Zelensky, officials familiar with the matter said, but leaders are confronting a wide-ranging set of issues beyond the war-torn country during their talks, including climate change and emerging artificial intelligence technologies.
But Russia is not the only focus of the three day gathering, which Zelensky is set to address on Sunday.
China also features heavily.
Differences persist between the United States and Europe in how to manage their increasingly fraught relationships with the world’s second largest economy.
But in Saturday’s joint communique, leaders spoke in one voice on a series of positions related to China, including the need to counter “economic coercion” and protect advanced technologies that could threaten national security, while also stressing that cooperation with Beijing was necessary.
“A growing China that plays by international rules would be of global interest. We are not decoupling or turning inwards,” the communique read.
Leaders called on Beijing not to “conduct interference activities” that could undermine the “integrity of our democratic institutions and our economic prosperity” – an apparent nod to recent allegations that Beijing’s interfered in Canadian elections and operates of a network of overseas police stations across the globe.
A separate joint statement on economic security made no specific mention of China – while explicitly referencing Russia – but its intended audience was unmistakably Beijing’s leadership.
The leaders called for enhancing supply chain resilience, hitting back against “harmful industrial subsidies,” and protecting sensitive technologies crucial to national security – all areas that leaders have expressed concerns about in recent years in relation to China’s economic practices.
Western leaders and officials were more direct in framing the measures as a response to threats from China in comments made around the statement.
Ahead of its release on Saturday, the United Kingdom released a statement on G7 measures against economic coercion, which pointed to China’s use of its “economic power to coerce countries including Australia and Lithuania over political disputes.”
China is “engaged in a concerted and strategic economic contest,” and nations “should be clear-eyed” about the growing challenge we face,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in the statement released by Downing Street, which also referenced Russia’s “weaponization” of Europe’s energy supplies.
European Commission President Ursual von der Leyen welcomed the G7 action in a statement Saturday that nations must be “aware of the risk of weaponization of interdependencies,” but “urged de-risking not decoupling” – a term she has used to refer to how the EU should approach its economic relationship with China.
China has already pushed back on ahead of G7 discussions, with its Foreign Ministry on Thursday posting a more than 5,000 word document on its website that reached back as far as 1960s Cuba to point to what it described as examples of “America’s Coercive Diplomacy and Its Harm.”
“The US often accuses other countries of using great power status, coercive policies and economic coercion to pressure other countries into submission and engage in coercive diplomacy,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a regular press briefing in Beijing Friday.
“The fact is, the US is the very origin of coercive diplomacy. It is the US and the US alone who owns the copyrights of coercive diplomacy,” he said, adding that China has “no taste for coercion and bullying.”
Climate change was also a major theme of this weekend’s gathering with the joint communique including a pledge that the G7 would drive the economic transition to clean energy.
“We commit to realizing the transformation of the economic and social system towards net-zero, circular, climate-resilient, pollution-free and nature-positive economies,” the communique read.
The leaders also signaled they would closely monitor the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), by advancing discussions on AI governance and interoperability in line with “shared democratic values.”
Biden is balancing his world leader talks with updates from the standoff over the US debt ceiling in Washington – a “subject of interest” in the president’s summit meetings, according to Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
“Countries want to have a sense of how these negotiations are going to play out. And the president has expressed confidence that he believes that we can drive to an outcome where we do avoid default, and part of the reason that he’s returning home tomorrow, rather than continuing with the rest of the trip, is so that he can help lead the effort to bring it home,” Sullivan said.
Speaking to reporters as he met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan, Biden said he was not concerned “at all” about negotiations with House Republicans to avoid a default.
“This goes in stages. I’ve been in these negotiations before,” Biden said.
Biden, who departed a leaders’ dinner early on Friday to return to his hotel to receive additional information from staff, has gotten continual updates on the negotiations underway in Washington.
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Tallinn, Estonia
CNN
—
In 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and began fomenting conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region, there was a short phrase that captured the fear that Moscow would try to grab still more territory, this time in Estonia: “Is Narva next?”
Narva, Estonia, a city of 60,000 people, is as close as you can get to Russia in Europe. It sits high on the western bank of the Narva River, its 13th-century castle proudly flying the blue, black and white flag of Estonia. On the opposite bank stands Ivangorod, population roughly 10,000, with its 15th century fortress, atop which flutters the red, blue and white flag of Russia.
Between them stretches a bridge straight out of a Cold War movie, fortified with chain link fences and barbed wire, the route that Russian tanks might take to invade Estonia – or so the theory goes. So far, however, Russian tanks have not rolled over the bridge and Estonia, a small nation of 1.3 million people but a staunch member of NATO, is intent on making sure that never happens.
At Tapa military base, Estonia’s largest, a two-hour drive west from Narva, “Spring Storm” is under way, a large NATO military exercise with approximately 14,000 troops from 11 countries, testing the preparedness and interoperability of Estonia’s flagship 1st and 2nd Infantry Brigades with NATO troops from Denmark, France, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Britain and the US.
One day before the Lennart Meri security conference began in the capital Tallinn – an annual meeting of political leaders, military figures and academics – I joined a group of journalists observing preparations for the exercises.
At one staging area, French Foreign Legion soldiers in fierce green camouflage face paint showed us France’s AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle (dubbed the “Tank Destroyer”) that’s being used in Ukraine. Next to it – a Caesar self-propelled howitzer with its 155mm 52 caliber gun that can shoot 40 kilometers (25 miles.) We hopped a bus to another part of the base see Wildcat and Apache attack helicopters flown in by British pilots the day before.
“Estonia has a bad neighbor,” Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, Deputy Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, tells us. Readiness is key, he said. ‘We won’t have much warning.”
And if Russia tries to invade? “Let them try,” he added with a wry grin.
At last year’s Lennart Meri Conference, which took place just eleven weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the mood among the Estonian experts, including government officials, military officers and diplomats, was a respectful but firm: “We told you so:” Told you that Russia would invade. Told you that Moscow has long-term hostile strategic goals. Told you that Vladimir Putin won’t stop with Ukraine.
This year, with NATO united, Estonia’s neighbor Finland joining the defense alliance and Sweden expected to follow suit, with Russian forces suffering devastating casualties in Ukraine, the mood in Tallinn among many European and American participants was confident, but the Estonians remain cautious. “The times aren’t going to be easier for us in the near future,” Major General Palm warned. “Russia’s threat is not getting smaller.”
Vladimir Putin has a bigger goal than Ukraine, Estonian officials say: to dissolve the rules-based world order and as long as that’s the goal, Russia will remain the most dangerous immediate and long-term threat to the West.
“We know the Russians and Russian know us,” one official told us. “We watch them, and they watch us. We think we know roughly what makes them tick.”
Like parts of Ukraine, Estonia was illegally annexed and occupied by the Soviet Union. Thousands of Estonians died after being loaded onto cattle cars and exiled to Siberia.
Estonians at the conference were adamant: Unless Russia is utterly defeated in Ukraine, there is no reason to expect Putin will change his strategic objective. Their NATO allies, they said, are still operating on several “myths” about the war. Like the idea that this is “Putin’s war.” It’s not, the Estonian Ministry of Defense claims in a discussion paper. In spite of massive Russian casualties on the battlefield, there’s widespread support for the war among the Russian public. “The imperialist mindset is historically rooted in Russia,” the authors argue.
“Russia has never been a democratic country and is unlikely to become one…Russia’s leadership has been preparing the society for a large-scale war with the West for the past 20 years…Even if Putin were stopped, the next man in line would not be any different, because Russia is not any different.”
Estonian Defense officials insist that its allies are still too cautious, afraid of “uncontrollable escalation,” wary that Putin will retaliate with nuclear weapons. That, the Estonians maintain, allows Russia not only to control escalation but to control the West’s strategy. “War of attrition is a very heavy price for perceived strategic stability,” they say. “Going forward, we must strive to refrain from paralyzing self-deterrence and excessive fear of escalation.”
The first day of the conference I grabbed a seat at a standing-room only discussion with Russian journalists who fled Russia after Moscow invaded Ukraine. They’ve been living in the Baltic nations, in Georgia, Germany and the Netherlands, unsure when – or even if – they will be able to go home. As usual with Russians, the discussion quickly turns philosophical.
“The repression has grown so great,” says one TV journalist. “There’s something deeply wrong with my country,” says another, “there’s a total rejection of political responsibility…We all are hostages of a madman.”
One journalist, as Russians often do, tells a Soviet-era joke: Communist party leader Leonid Brezhnev announces that tomorrow, the state will start to execute people. “Any questions?” he asks. “Should we bring the rope?” pipes up one timid person.
Many Russians have been de-politicized by the Kremlin. “They simply don’t have any opinion on the war,” one journalist explains. “It’s like North Korea.” Russians are confused, torn, not even asking themselves whether they support the war or not. They tune out news, focusing on everyday concerns.
Several Russians at the conference said they feel personally responsible for the horrors Russia is unleashing on Ukraine. “We will have to pay for it for many years to come,” one said. Russia has never confronted even its Soviet past, they all agreed, and there’s little likelihood it will examine, let alone atone for what it now is doing to Ukraine.
What’s more, Vladimir Putin is winning support for the war from so-called “swing states” and nations in the Global South.
Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior director for European and Russian affairs at the US National Security Council, gave the keynote address and engaged in a kind of virtual debate with Putin, insisting this is not, as he argues, a “proxy war” between the US or the “collective West” and Russia. The Ukraine war, she said, “is now effectively the reverse—a proxy for a rebellion by Russia and the ‘Rest’ against the United States.”
Russia, she said, “has cleverly exploited deep-seated international resistance, and in some cases open challenges, to continued American leadership of global institutions.” The so-called “Rest” of the world “seek to cut the U.S. down to a different size in their neighborhoods and exert more influence in global affairs. They want to decide, not be told what’s in their interest.”
This year at the Lennart Meri conference the Estonians aren’t saying “We told you so.”
But, in the conference halls in Tallinn, and at the Tapa military base, they are adamant that Russia must be held accountable for its crimes in Ukraine as well as deterred from any further aggression. It’s vital for security in Europe, and in the world, they say, and for the Estonian nation’s survival. They know they will have to live with their big neighbor to the east for a very long time.
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Istanbul
CNN
—
Polls have opened in Turkey’s fiercely fought presidential and parliamentary elections that could bring an end to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 20-year rule.
Sunday’s race poses the biggest challenge yet to Turkey’s strongman leader. He faces economic headwinds and criticism that the impact of the devastating February 6 earthquake was made worse by lax building controls and a shambolic rescue effort.
His main opponent is CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who represents an election coalition of six opposition parties. For the first time, Turkey’s factious opposition has coalesced around a single candidate.
A candidate must win over 50% of the vote on Sunday night in order to be elected. Otherwise Turkey will head to a run-off on May 28.
Kılıçdaroğlu, a mild mannered 74-year-old former bureaucrat, has promised to fix Turkey’s faltering economy and restore democratic institutions compromised by a slide to authoritarianism during Erdogan’s tenure.
Erdogan has been extolling the virtues of his long rule, campaigning on a platform of stability, independent foreign policy and continuing to bolster Turkey’s defense industry. Recently, he raised the wages of government workers by 45% and lowered the retirement age.
Over the last two years, Turkey’s currency has plummeted and prices have ballooned, prompting a cost of living crisis that has chipped away at Erdogan’s conservative, working class support base.
When a vicious earthquake on February 6 laid waste to large parts of southeast Turkey, Erdogan’s battled political aftershocks. His critics chastized him for a botched rescue effort and lax building controls that his ruling Justice and Development (AK) party presided over for two decades.
In the weeks after the quake, the government rounded up dozens of contractors, construction inspectors and project managers for violating building rules. Critics dismissed the move as scapegoating.
The government has also apologized for “mistakes” that were made in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
The quake claimed over 51,000 lives in Turkey and neighboring Syrian. Thousands are still unaccounted for, with unmarked graves peppering the southeastern Turkish countryside.
On Thursday, Kılıçdaroğlu was boosted further by the late withdrawal from the race of a minor candidate, Muharrem Ince. Ince had low polling numbers but some opposition figures feared he would split the anti-Erdogan vote.
Turkey holds elections every five years. More than 1.8 million voters living abroad already cast their votes on April 17, Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah reported Wednesday, citing the country’s deputy foreign minister. Over 65 million Turks are eligible to vote.
The Supreme Election Council (YSK) chief Ahmet Yener said last month that at least 1 million voters in quake-stricken zones are expected not to vote this year amid displacement.
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CNN
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Millions of Thais are heading to the polls on Sunday for a general election where opposition parties are hoping to ride a wave of frustration over the military’s stranglehold on the levers of power and its handling of the economy.
The election is the first since youth-led mass pro-democracy protests in 2020 and only the second since a military coup in 2014 ousted an elected government, restoring a conservative clique that has pulled the strings in the kingdom’s turbulent politics for decades.
Polls opened at 8 a.m. Bangkok time (9 p.m. ET Saturday), with election authorities expecting a high turnout.
This year’s election will see some 52 million eligible voters elect 500 members to the House of Representatives in Thailand’s bicameral system which was heavily rejigged through a new constitution written by the military that seized power nine years ago.
Each voter has two ballots, one for a local constituency representative and one for their pick of candidates for the national party, known as party-list MPs.
The junta-era constitution gives the establishment-dominated upper house a significant say in who can ultimately form a government so opposition parties must win by a strong margin.
Leading that charge is a young generation of Thais yearning for change and willing to tackle taboo topics such as the military’s role and even, for some of them, royal reform.
The country’s powerful conservative establishment is relying on its own influential voter base that supports parties connected to the military, monarchy and the ruling elites, many of them in the capital Bangkok.
Lined against them are more progressive and populist leaning opposition parties campaigning for democratic reforms that have a history of attracting more working class voters in the city and rural regions as well as a new generation of politically awakened young people.
Topping opinion polls is the opposition Pheu Thai party which is fielding three candidates for prime minister and campaigning on a populist platform that includes raising the minimum wage, welfare cash handouts and keeping the military out of politics.
It’s the party of the billionaire Shinawatra family – a controversial political dynasty headed by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Thaksin, a former policeman turned billionaire telecoms tycoon, and his sister Yingluck ran governments that were ousted in military coups. Both also live in exile, with Thai courts sentencing them to prison on corruption charges in their absence.
Thaksin’s youngest daughter, 36-year-old Paetongtarn is standing as a prime ministerial candidate.
Paetongtarn only entered politics three years ago but has presented herself as hailing from a new generation to connect with young Thais. She regularly attended rallies while pregnant and went back to campaigning days after giving birth.
Enormously popular among the rural and urban working classes, the party is aiming for a landslide victory. Parties associated with Thaksin have won every Thai election since 2001.
Also in the mix for Pheu Thai is Srettha Thavisin, a 59-year-old real estate tycoon who wants to focus on fixing income inequality, promoting LGBTQ+ rights including same-sex marriage and rooting out corruption while boosting the sluggish economy.
But there is another opposition force at play called Move Forward, a party that is hugely popular among young Thais for its radical reform agenda.
Analysts have called it “a game changer” – its candidates are campaigning on deep structural changes to how Thailand is run, including reforms to the military and the kingdom’s strict lese majeste law – which prohibits criticism of the royal family and makes any open debate about its role fraught with risk.
Heading the party is Pita Limcharoenrat, 42, a Harvard alumni with a background in business. His eloquent campaign speeches and reform platform have earned him a massive following and he is one of the top picks for prime minister in opinion polls.
Also gunning for the top job is incumbent Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha – this time with a new political party, the United Thai Nation. The former army chief who masterminded the 2014 coup has now been in power for nine years.
While his party lost out to Pheu Thai in the number of seats won in the 2019 election, Prayut still became Prime Minister after gathering enough support from coalition parties to form a government.
But despite his poor performance in opinion polls, analysts have cautioned against underestimating him given his links to the country’s elites.
His rise from military coup leader to prime minister has been marred with controversy, growing authoritarianism and widening inequality.
Hundreds of activists have been arrested during his leadership under draconian laws such as sedition or lese majeste.
His military government’s mismanagement in handling of the coronavirus pandemic and economy also amplified calls for Prayut to step down and continued well into 2021.
He survived several no-confidence votes in parliament during his term which attempted to remove him from power.
If elected again, Prayut can only serve two years as the constitution limits a term in office to a maximum eight years.
Another candidate who could see his fortunes rise in any post-election wrangling is former army chief Prawit Wongsuwan, first deputy prime minister and former brother in arms with Prayut.
Prawit, a political veteran, is now leader of Prayut’s old party Palang Pracharat.
The Bhumjaithai party’s Anutin Charnvirakul could also prove influential in any post-election deals. Health Minister Anutin steered the country through the pandemic and was behind landmark legislation that decriminalized cannabis in the country last year.
The head of the biggest party may not necessarily lead Thailand, or even form a government, because the country’s electoral system is heavily weighted in favor of the conservative establishment.
Parties winning more than 25 seats can nominate their candidate for prime minister. Those candidates will be put to a vote, with the whole 750-seat bicameral legislature voting.
To be prime minister, a candidate must have a majority in both houses – or at least 375 votes.
However, the 250-seat member Senate is likely to play a key role in deciding the next government of Thailand and, because it is chosen entirely by the military, it will likely vote for a pro-military party.
That means an opposition party or coalition need almost three times as many votes in the lower house as a military party to be able to elect the next leader.
Polls are scheduled to close at 5 p.m. Bangkok time (6 a.m. ET) and vote counting will begin shortly after. Observers say that early results can be expected at midnight in Bangkok – but it could be weeks or even months until Thailand sees a new prime minister.
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Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.
CNN
—
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition candidate in Turkey’s presidential election, is decidedly calm and mild-mannered in his bid to end the two-decade rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Much of his campaign messaging has been delivered from his quintessentially Turkish middle-class home and posted on Twitter, in videos that some observers have called his “kitchen diaries.”
Seated, often with tea in an “ince belli”, a Turkish teacup, he lays out his key campaign promises, announces members of his potential coalition, and sometimes just speaks candidly to the people, virtually welcoming the public into his home.
Such gestures are in stark contrast to the elitist image he and his party once had. Analysts say the desire to appeal to today’s voters has seen the presidential candidate undergo an image makeover over the years. His messages now target Turkey’s middle class and the downtrodden, the very constituency that Erdogan has always championed.
But Erdogan is now seen by his critics as being responsible for the economic turmoil the country is facing, largely due to his inability to control runaway inflation, an issue that polls have said is high on the agenda of voters who go to the ballot box on Sunday. Inflation in the country was at 43% in April, down from its peak of 85% last October.
For Erdogan’s opponents, that’s fodder for campaigns against him.
Promising to fix Turkey’s faltering economy has been a cornerstone of Kilicdaroglu’s campaign. In a video posted on Twitter on Friday, he stood in the kitchen and held up staples like bread, eggs, and yogurt, reminding viewers how much their price had soared in a year. In a separate four-second clip, he says: “Today, if you are poorer than yesterday, the only reason is Erdogan.”
Gulfem Saydan Sanver, a political communication expert who works with several politicians in Kilicdaroglu’s center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), said the kitchen has become a “symbol” of the candidate, “that he is living in a humble (life), and he is dealing with daily life problems of the ordinary Turkish citizens.”
“(He) wanted to show that Erdogan is the one who has forgotten about the problems of the lower income families,” she said.
His use of Twitter to reach the electorate may not have been out of choice, however. The majority of mainstream media outlets in the country are controlled by government loyalists, prompting the opposition to lean heavily into social media messaging.
When he took control of the CHP in 2010, Kilicdaroglu had an image problem, experts say. His party was staunchly secular and fiercely nationalistic. Today, however, it has unified disparate political players, is trying to court the Kurdish vote and has even welcomed defectors from Erdogan’s Islamist-leaning Ak Party.
According to some of those who’ve known him, the career bureaucrat turned politician was seen as elitist and disconnected from the working class as he took control of the party, much as the CHP itself was perceived. Erdogan’s government capitalized on that.
“The government used very much the people-versus-elite distinction… in order to discredit the opposition by showing them as part of some kind of power elite,” said Murat Somer, a political science professor at Koc University in Istanbul. That created a “very hard, ossified, negative image that the opposition could not get rid of,” he told CNN.
The home videos would have been hard to imagine in the early days of his political career since his natural inclination is to keep his private life to himself, said Mehmet Karli, CHP member and longtime adviser to Kilicdaroglu.
“He has come to understand over the course of (his) … political life that private and public are very much intermeshed, especially if one is leading a movement,” he told CNN.
But the soft-spoken demeanor portrayed from his home could have downsides.
Sanver said the kitchen videos had the potential to come off as too soft for some of the tougher foreign policy issues in Turkey – including ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the United States.
Erdogan has been able to leverage personal relationships and has shown effective leadership in one of the world’s most intractable issues. Alongside the United Nations, he managed to broker a deal on grain exports between Ukraine and Russia, helping prevent a global food crisis.
“It’s one of the critiques I had,” Sanver, who has met with Kilicdaroglu throughout his campaign, told CNN. “He needs to look strong because Erdogan is also very strong.”
Delivering some addresses from his office may have helped establish a more serious persona while showing he’s still a different leader than Erdogan, she said.
In a country where ethnic and religious identity often plays a part in the public discourse and is exploited by some politicians, Kilicdaroglu has moved swiftly to deprive his opponents of ammunition.
In a video posted on Twitter from his office last month, he declared to the electorate that he belongs to the Alevi sect, a minority faith group from the east of Turkey that has for years complained about persecution in the majority Sunni Muslim country. The video was watched 36 million times.
“We will no longer talk about identities; we will talk about achievements,” he said. “We will no longer talk about divisions and differences; we will speak of our commonality and our common dreams. Will you join this campaign for this change?”
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CNN
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What’s eating Yevgeny Prigozhin?
In recent days, the boss of the Russian private military company Wagner seems to have gone into social-media meltdown, flooding his Telegram channel and other accounts with ever-more outrageous and provocative statements.
Among other things, Prigozhin revealed an apparently humiliating battlefield setback for Russia, fulminating this week that a Russian brigade had “fled” around eastern city of Bakhmut, threatening his troops with encirclement by the Ukrainian forces.
“The situation on the western flanks is developing according to the worst of the predicted scenarios,” Prigozhin complained in an audio message released Thursday. “Those territories that were liberated with the blood and lives of our comrades … are abandoned today almost without any fight by those who are supposed to hold our flanks.”
Earlier in the week, Prigozhin marred Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations with public and profanity-laced criticisms of the country’s top military brass.
“Today they [Ukrainians] are tearing up the flanks in the Artemovsk [Bakhmut] direction, regrouping at Zaporizhzhia. And a counteroffensive is about to begin,” he said Tuesday. “Victory Day is the victory of our grandfathers. We haven’t earned that victory one millimeter.”
And then there was a more cryptic comment that raised eyebrows on social media. Continuing a longstanding public complaint that Russia’s uniformed military was starving his troops of shells, Prigozhin suggested that the higher-ups were dithering while Wagner fighters died.
“The shells are lying in warehouses, they are resting there,” he said. “Why are the shells lying in the warehouses? There are people who fight, and there are people who have learned once in their lives that there must be a reserve, and they save, save, save those reserves. … No one knows what for. Instead of spending a shell to kill the enemy, they kill our soldiers. And happy grandfather thinks this is okay.”
That begged the question: Whom, exactly, is Prigozhin referring to? After all, “grandfather in the bunker” is one of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s favorite monikers for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who inhabits an almost cartoonishly extreme security bubble.
So what, exactly, was Prigozhin driving at? Is he flirting with defenestration? Or is he simply at the end of his tether, after spending months on the front lines?
Prigozhin quickly backpedalled on his “grandfather” comment, recording a subsequent voice memo clarifying that he might be referring to the former Defense Minister Deputy Mikhail Mizintsev or Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov (or, more bizarrely, pro-war blogger Nataliya Khim).
“I spoke about a ‘grandpa’ in the context of the fact that we are not given shells which are kept in warehouses, and who can be a grandpa?” Prigozhin said in a Telegram voice memo. “Option number one, Mizintsev, who was fired for giving us shells and therefore now he cannot give shells. The second is the General Chief of Staff, Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov, who is supposed to provide shells, but we do not receive enough shells, and we receive only 10%.”
A bit of context is in order here. For months, the boss of the Wagner private military company has seen his political star rise in Russia as his fighters seemed to be the only ones capable of delivering tangible battlefield progress in the grinding war of attrition in eastern Ukraine. And he has used his social-media clout to lobby for what he wants, including those sought-after ammunition supplies.
But amid those successes — particularly in the meatgrinder of Bakhmut — Prigozhin has revived and amplified a feud with Russia’s military leadership. A canny political entrepreneur, Prigozhin has cast himself as a competent, ruthless patriot — in contrast with Russia’s inept military establishment.
It may seem surprising in a country where criticizing the military can potentially cost a person a spell in prison that Prigozhin gets away with strident criticism of Putin’s generals. But Putin presides over what is often described as a court system, where infighting and competition among elites is in fact encouraged to produce results, as long as the “vertical of power” remains loyal to and answers to the head of state.
But Prigozhin’s online tantrums to be crossing the line to open disloyalty, some observers say.
In a recent Twitter thread, the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said, “If the Kremlin does not respond to Prigozhin’s escalating attacks on Putin it may further erode the norm in Putin’s system in which individual actors can jockey for position and influence (and drop in and out of Putin’s favor) but cannot directly criticize Putin.”
Speculation then centers on whether Prigozhin is politically expendable, whether his outbursts are a sort of clever deception operation — or, more troublingly for Putin, whether the system of loyalty that keeps the Kremlin running smoothly is starting to break down.
“This isn’t meant to happen in Putin’s system,” said Cold War historian and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Sergey Radchenko in a recent Twitter thread. “Putin’s system allows for minions to attack each other but never undermine the vertical. Prigozhin is crossing this line. Either Putin responds and Prigozhin is toast or — if this doesn’t happen — a signal will be sent right through. A signal that the boss has been fatally weakened. And this is a system that does not respect weakness.”
That theory will be tested in the coming days, as the battles continue to rage around Bakhmut.
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Washington
CNN
—
House Oversight Chairman James Comer laid out new details to support allegations that members of Joe Biden’s family including his son Hunter received millions of dollars in payments from foreign entities in China and Romania including when Biden was vice president, according to a memo obtained by CNN.
New bank records cited in the memo were obtained by the committee through a subpoena and include payments made to companies tied to Hunter Biden. Republicans also alleged that Hunter Biden used his familial connections to help facilitate a meeting in 2016 between a Serbian running for United Nations Secretary-General and then-national security adviser to the vice president Colin Kahl.
The foreign payments raise questions about Hunter Biden’s business activities while his father was vice president, but the committee does not suggest any illegality about the payments from foreign sources. The bank records by themselves also do not indicate the purpose of the payments that were made.
The memo marks Comer’s most direct attempt to substantiate his allegations that Biden family members have enriched themselves off the family name. Comer has suggested that Biden may have been improperly influenced by the financial dealings, particularly by his family’s foreign business partners.
But the latest report does not show any payments made directly to Joe Biden, either as vice president or after leaving office.
Comer has been publicly teasing information for months about the paper trail committee Republicans have uncovered through subpoenas sent to multiple banks and trips to the Treasury Department to review records.
Comer and other Republicans on the committee held a press conference Wednesday morning to tout their findings.
“These people didn’t come to Hunter Biden because he understood world politics or that he was experienced in it, or that he understood Chinese businesses. They wanted him for the access his last name gave him,” Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, said during the news conference.
On Wednesday, Comer was asked about specific policy decisions Biden made while president or vice president that may have been directly influenced by these foreign payments. Comer failed to name any and instead pointed to then-vice president Biden traveling around the world and discussing foreign aid in the last year of the Obama administration, and added they think there are decisions Biden made as president that “put China first and America last.” Comer said the committee “will get into more of those later.”
Ahead of the memo’s release, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement to CNN, “Congressman Comer has a history of playing fast and loose with the facts and spreading baseless innuendo while refusing to conduct his so-called ‘investigations’ with legitimacy. He has hidden information from the public to selectively leak and promote his own hand-picked narratives as part of his overall effort to lob personal attacks at the President and his family.”
Abbe Lowell, counsel for Hunter Biden, said in a statement, “Today’s so-called “revelations” are retread, repackaged misstatements of perfectly proper meetings and business by private citizens. Instead of redoing old investigations that found no evidence of wronging by Mr. Biden, Rep. Comer should do the same examination of the many entities of former President Trump and his family members.”
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, said in a statement to CNN, “Chairman Comer has failed to provide factual evidence to support his wild accusations about the President. He continues to bombard the public with innuendo, misrepresentations, and outright lies, recycling baseless claims from stories that were debunked years ago.”
Bank records cited in the committee’s memo show that within five weeks of then-Vice President Biden’s meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in 2015, a Romanian who Hunter Biden was doing legal consulting for, Gabriel Popoviciu, started sending money to Rob Walker, a business associate of Hunter’s.
Walker received more than $3 million from November 2015 to May 2017 and wired approximately $1 million in various installments to Hunter Biden, his business associate James Gillian, and Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s oldest son, Beau Biden who died in May 2015. Hallie Biden and Hunter Biden were romantically involved for a period after Beau’s death.
It has long been known that Hunter Biden did legal work for Popoviciu, a wealthy Romanian business executive who was convicted in 2016 on corruption charges.
Comer’s memo raises questions about why Popoviciu was paying a Biden family business associate directly instead of the law firm where Hunter Biden worked at the time or the other firm Hunter reportedly referred Popoviciu to.
Former President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani was also involved with Popoviciu, which Comer’s memo does not mention.
Committee Republicans obtained the bank records from subpoenas to four different banks.
The report also alleges that in 2016, Vuk Jeremic, a Serbian politician who was running for UN secretary-general, tried to use his business relationship with Hunter Biden and his associates to get a meeting with Kahl, who was then an aide in Biden’s vice president’s office.
In a June 2016 email, Jeremic wrote to Hunter Biden and a business associate, Eric Schwerin, asking to “meet with VPOTUS National Security Advisor Colin Kahl” related to the UN secretary-general election.
Schwerin instructed Hunter Biden to “Think about how you want to respond,” according to the report.
In a July 2016 email, Jeremic followed up via email saying, “[m]y meeting with Colin did not last very long, but didn’t go too bad, I think. What is suboptimal is that OVP seems to be outside the decision-making loop on the UNSG elections issue. Colin promised to get better informed on what’s going on at the moment,” according to the report.
Republicans said they intend to pursue more communications related to the matter, but concluded it appears that “a Biden administration official met with Jeremic to discuss the UN Secretary General election at the direction of Hunter Biden and/or his business associates.”
Kahl did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jeremic’s attorneys told the committee in a letter last month he would not cooperate with a request for documents and testimony due to separation of powers issues and because House rules limit subpoenas to people “within the United States.”
The memo also alleges that two Chinese nationals made payments of $100,000 to Hunter Biden’s professional corporation through a Chinese-backed energy company. Republicans claim that at least one of those individuals had ties to the Communist Party of China.
The memo alleges that those two individuals were connected to CEFC, a Chinese energy conglomerate, had a business relationship with Hunter Biden.
Committee Republicans claim one of the individuals “used CEFC to bribe and corruptly influence foreign officials.”
The memo includes a copy of a bank transaction showing that on August 4, 2017, CEFC Infrastructure wired $100,000 to Owasco P.C, Hunter Biden’s professional corporation.
The memo also includes details from the bank records on how money was moved between companies, including a $100,000 payment to one of Hunter Biden’s companies that was then funded by a Chinese based firm tied to the CEFC, the Chinese energy conglomerate.
Comer alleges the transaction “disproves President Biden’s claim that his family received no money from China.”
In the report, the committee acknowledged there “exist legitimate commercial transactions with China-based entities and individuals.”
“However, the pattern of behavior engaged in by the Bidens and their Chinese counterparties—memorialized in relevant bank records—signals an attempt to layer companies and cloud the source of money,” the committee alleges.
Comer has previously revealed that members of Biden’s family received just over $1 million indirectly from State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company.
Senate Republicans in 2020 first detailed how Walker made wire transfers to companies associated with Hunter Biden and president’s brother, James, after receiving a $3 million wire from the Chinese company.
The latest GOP memo claims Walker also sent some of that money to Hallie Biden and an unknown bank account identified as “Biden.”
Committee Republicans said they are continuing to trace bank records and have written to additional witnesses involved in certain transactions to request documents as well as interviews.
According to the report, Republicans intend to pursue legislative changes – a key step needed to justify their investigation if fights over subpoenas head to court.
Those changes include laws that require additional reporting about the finances of a president or vice president’s family members, public disclosure of foreign transactions involving the family members of senior elected officials and an expedited law enforcement review of any suspicious bank activity reports related to a president or vice president’s immediately family members.
Comer left the door open on whether his committee would investigate the foreign business dealings of former President Donald Trump and his family ahead of making any legislative recommendations to address influence peddling. To date however, Comer has not looked into Trump’s financial dealings or pursued an investigation into the classified documents that he had at Mar-a-Lago.
“We’re going to look at everything when we get ready to introduce the legislation to ban influence peddling” Comer said. “This has been a pattern for a long time. Republicans and Democrats have both complained about Presidents’ families receiving money.”
On the foreign business dealings of Trump’s son-in law, Jared Kushner, specifically, Comer said, “I’m not saying whether I agreed with what he did or not, but I actually know what his businesses are. What are the Biden businesses?”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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London
CNN
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Late last year, after a breakneck ascent of British politics put her in charge of the country’s migration, crime and national security agenda, Suella Braverman revealed her political fantasy.
“I would love to (see) a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda,” the home secretary (interior minister) told that newspaper, referring to her controversial efforts to deport asylum-seekers to the central African nation. “That’s my dream. That’s my obsession.”
Braverman is no stranger to the front pages. Her self-proclaimed “obsession” with curbing migration – and the loaded and occasionally inflammatory language she uses to address it – has attracted forceful criticism from international agencies, lawyers, rights groups and many of her own colleagues, making her arguably Britain’s most divisive politician.
But among Conservative Party members and the chief architects of Brexit, she is a star; someone who is prepared to say and do controversial things in pursuit of a singular goal.
“She’s the cutting edge of the populist, radical right-wing strain in the Conservative Party,” Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London, and the author of books on the party, told CNN.
“In a way, that allows her to say what some Conservative MPs would think of as the unsayable.”
Braverman has railed against what she calls an “invasion” of migrants, holding “values which are at odds with our country” – and suggested she would break international law to deport them from Britain.
And she is an equally furious culture warrior, borrowing rhetoric from the American right when lambasting “woke” culture, transgender rights and climate protesters.
But Braverman has speedily made herself a central figure in British politics; the assassin of Liz Truss’s premiership and the kingmaker of Rishi Sunak’s, she has made evident her desire to ultimately enter Downing Street as prime minister herself – a prospect that sits uneasily with much of the country’s political establishment.
Braverman, who evangelizes on the benefits of Brexit and has made migration curbs her political mission, has a backstory that seems to teem with contradictions.
She is the daughter of migrants, who wants to cut net migration to Britain to the “tens of thousands.” Her parents, both of Indian origin, arrived in the country from Kenya and Mauritius “with very little” in the 1960s.
She was a practicing lawyer before entering politics, but has displayed an unabashed indifference about whether her flagship migration bill complies with international law.
And she is an avid Francophile, sometimes speaking in French when meeting her counterpart in Paris, who championed the project to leave the European Union. Braverman says she fell in love with France while studying at the renowned Sorbonne university in Paris, taking advantage of the EU’s Erasmus program that encourages students to spend time in other parts of the continent. Brexit shut the program off to British students.
Now, she has staked her political reputation on her ability to “Stop the Boats” – an oft-repeated government pledge, borrowed from Australia’s hardline rhetoric towards asylum-seekers, to reduce the growing number of migrants crossing the English Channel on small vessels.
It is a stance that has drawn sharp criticism – including from within the traditional wing of Braverman’s Conservative Party.
“Braverman has placed far too much emphasis on curbing migration,” said Ben Ramanauskas, an economist and adviser to Truss when the previous prime minister was secretary of state for international trade. “Her priority seems to be attempting to be as cruel as possible.”
The government’s flagship bill, which was approved by MPs last week but faces scrutiny in the House of Lords, essentially hands the government the right to deport anyone arriving illegally in the United Kingdom. “It’s incredibly dangerous, hostile, cruel, and fundamentally unworkable,” migration policy expert and campaigner Zoe Gardner told CNN.
And experts say it deliberately misses the point. “Deterrents don’t work… There is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between how brutally we respond to migration, and the numbers of people forced to move,” Gardner said. “We need a functioning asylum system where we process people’s claims, (and) we need to give people safe routes in order to travel.”
Braverman, however, is steadfast in the face of criticism. The Home Office told CNN in a statement that her bill “will break the business model of the people smuggling gangs and restore fairness to our asylum system. It will ensure anyone arriving via small boat or other dangerous and illegal means will be in scope for detention and swiftly removed.”
Braverman’s plans have won praise from Europe’s leading populist figures, including Italy’s hardline deputy leader Matteo Salvini and French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.
But that is company many in the Conservatives feel uncomfortable keeping.
“The UK’s ability to play a role internationally is based on our reputation – not because we’re British, but because of what we stand for and what we do,” ex-Prime Minister Theresa May said in a stinging intervention in the House of Commons last month. May added last week that the bill’s removal of modern slavery protections “will consign victims to remaining in slavery.”
And Sayeeda Warsi, the first Asian chair of the Tory party, has attacked what she described as Braverman’s “racist rhetoric,” after Braverman prompted controversy by singling out British Pakistani men when attacking grooming gangs in the country.
“Braverman’s own ethnic origin has shielded her from criticism for too long,” Warsi wrote in The Guardian. “Black and brown people can be racist too.” The Home Office told CNN that Braverman “has been clear that all despicable child abusers must be brought to justice. And she will not shy away from telling hard truths, particularly when it comes to the grooming of young women and girls in Britain’s towns who have been failed by authorities over decades.”
Braverman fronts a newer, more populist streak in the UK’s ruling party – a move that has troubled some of its grandees but has found an audience among voters.
“The voters that she’s appealing to is the majority of the British public,” said James Johnson, who ran polling in May’s Downing Street operation and later founded the JL Partners pollster. “There is a very significant disconnect between what people on Twitter about immigration, and what people actually think about immigration.
“Voters do not react to (Braverman’s) language with the same outrage that some people do,” he told CNN. “(They) want their politicians to at least be trying.”
Polling shows that approval of Braverman’s tough stance on migration significantly outpaces support for the government in general – as well as approval of Braverman herself – with research often indicating that a slim majority of the public supports her plans.
And those who support her – particularly those in Euroskeptic circles, where she is almost revered – say Braverman speaks to the concerns of modern Britain in a way that her more seasoned critics cannot. “When finally even I wobbled about backing Brexit in name only, Suella stood firm,” prominent Brexit backer Steve Baker said when he supported her leadership campaign last year, praising Braverman’s resolve to defeat May’s Brexit deal and push for a harder-line departure from the EU. “It wouldn’t have happened without her.”
But research has also shown that the importance of immigration to British voters has receded since the bitter debates of the mid-2010s.
It appears inevitable that the Tories will seek to make migration a wedge issue at the next election, ensuring Braverman plenty of airtime as the government looks to draw a contrast between itself and the Labour party. But a series of brutal electoral results in local polls on Thursday will further fuel questions about whether that is a winning strategy.
Braverman’s political coming-of-age took place just as the 2016 EU referendum shifted the tectonic plates underneath Westminster, giving younger, Euroskeptic voices like hers an inroad with the public.
It was Braverman’s role fronting an anti-EU backbench committee that “propelled her to her (current) position, and she knows it,” former Conservative MP Antoinette Sandbach told CNN.
Today, she takes the populist mantle further than many of her peers on a range of matters far beyond Brexit. Braverman appears to relish “culture war” confrontations with her political enemies like few other frontline politicians; “you almost feel sometimes that she gets a kick out of ‘owning the libs,’” the politics professor Bale told CNN.
She has taken aim at the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” from the despatch box, and insisted she will “not be hectored by out-of-touch lefties.” In 2019, she said she considers herself engaged in a “battle against cultural Marxism.”
Braverman’s Home Office recently reportedly backed two pub landlords who refused to remove their minstrel-style children’s toys that are considered a racist relic of the 1970s. And she has criticized police officers for “virtue signaling,” saying in a speech last week that “they shouldn’t be taking the knee.”
But those battles have left some traditional Tories cold. “The Conservative Party has moved right since I joined, and become much more like the MAGA Republicans” since the dividing line of 2016, said Sandbach, who was expelled from the party by Boris Johnson after trying to avert a no-deal Brexit. She subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats.
Those who worked alongside Braverman describe her as friendly and personable, and few doubt her ambition.
As 23-year-old Suella Fernandes, she nearly ran against her own mother to become the Tory candidate in a 2003 by-election, until the elder Fernandes – a Conservative councilor and NHS nurse – persuaded her to pull out.
Braverman succeeded in becoming an MP in 2015. In a series of tweets that bemoaned her “lamentable hopelessness,” one of her more critical backbenchers, William Wragg, claimed she asked in her first week in Parliament whether she could expense a fine for speeding.
But her determination to drive towards power has served her well. No politician emerged more triumphant from the psychodrama that has transfixed British politics than Braverman, who started 2022 as attorney general and ended it a household name – having served in three different Cabinets, twice as home secretary.
An initial departure from frontline politics theoretically came amid scandal (Braverman resigned for breaching ministerial rules by using a private email address), but her scathing parting letter turned her misconduct into a maneuver, essentially pulling the plug on Truss’s shambolic tenure.
“I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility: I resign,” Braverman wrote, in a thinly veiled attempt to contrast herself with Truss. Six days later she was back in the same post, having aligned herself with Sunak’s successful leadership bid.
Few doubt Braverman’s long-term ambitions. “You have to interpret everything Suella Braverman does and says in the light of the leadership contest that many people assume will take place if… Sunak were to lose the next election,” Bale said.
Crucial to that target is her reputation among party members and its more hardline MPs. It is those groups that pick a party leader, and she is met enthusiastically by grassroots Conservatives who tend to reflect the more right-wing, populist traits of the bloc.
That prospect undoubtedly perturbs some. “There will be many Tory MPs who simply could not stomach her as leader,” Bale added. “I think the lack of support she received in her leadership bid (last year) reflects how she was seen by the party as a whole,” Sandbach said.
Nevertheless, Braverman is storming up the approval rankings among ordinary Conservative members. In its latest monthly league table of Cabinet ministers, the ConservativeHome website – widely regarded as having its finger on the pulse of the grassroots party – puts Braverman fourth from the top with a net approval rating of 47.8. Only last November, she was sixth from bottom in the site’s regular survey of party members. “The panel seems to have decided that if the Government fails to stop the boats it won’t be for want of the Home Secretary trying,” wrote the website’s editors in April.
Should Braverman succeed at her next bid for the party leadership, her critics fear another rightwards shift in British politics.
“Braverman has taken some cues from the US, and also from history,” Gardner said. “She’s recognized that in the current political climate, her way of creating an impact… (is) positioning herself as a Trump tribute act.
“She’s setting herself up to lead a more extreme, right-wing populist version of the Tory party.”
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London
CNN
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Many Britons will enjoy the long weekend while celebrating the coronation of King Charles III. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is unlikely to be one of them.
Instead, he will be pondering a bleak future after watching a dire set of results pour in from a swath of municipal elections held around the country on Thursday. And they made grim viewing for a man hoping to lead his Conservative Party back to power in just over a year’s time at the next UK general election.
With most of the results declared by early evening on Friday, the Conservatives had lost control of 45 local administrations and shed more than 1,000 councilors.
Before Thursday’s votes, the Conservatives had been in expectation management mode, briefing journalists they would lose heavily in areas that had been in Conservative hands for years. Presumably, party officials had hoped privately that it wouldn’t be as bad as that.
The main opposition Labour Party could barely conceal its glee – the results would translate to a nine-point national lead according to PA Media. Labour boasted that the results show it would not just beat Sunak at the next election, but do so decisively.
The task ahead of Sunak is a daunting one. At most, he has until January 2025 – the last date he can legally hold an election – to turn things around. In reality, he hopes to hold the vote in the fall of next year.
The British economy is in big trouble after 13 years of Conservative government. Some of the reasons for this have been out of the government’s hands. But it was ultimately various iterations of this government that decided to erect punitive post-Brexit trade borders with Europe and propose unfunded tax cuts that caused the pound to tank.
Public services, including the much-loved National Health Service, are in a dire state. It can take weeks to arrange an appointment with your doctor and months to get a vital medical procedure.
Teachers, doctors, nurses, train drivers and workers in many other services have held strikes over pay and working conditions, with polls consistently showing that the public thinks the government is handling negotiations with unions poorly.
Immigration, one of the hottest issues in British politics for decades, is making headlines almost daily as an increasing number of migrants arrive in the UK on small boats, often arranged by criminal human trafficking gangs.
Against this backdrop, taxes are at their highest in decades and trust in Sunak’s party is low.
Fixing everything before the election is a tall order on its own. What Sunak must also do, if he’s to turn things around in just over a year, is stop his party from tearing itself apart.
The blame game for Conservative woes started last summer after its lawmakers forced Boris Johnson out of office after months of scandals – including the notorious “Partygate” scandal when officials in Downing Street were revealed to have held parties that broke Covid-19 restrictions.
Johnson loyalists insist it was a grave mistake to have removed him from office. They claim Johnson was responsible for the party winning a parliamentary majority in the 2019 general election, a victory they regard as his personal mandate. They argue that removing a man they see as the Conservative’s biggest electoral asset has blown up credibility the party might have with the public. And they blame those who ultimately made Johnson’s position untenable – including Sunak, whose resignation from Johnson’s Cabinet was arguably the final nail in his coffin – for the current mess.
The anti-Johnson cohort, meanwhile, think he trashed the reputation of the party while in office.
Partygate created the perception that the government, led by Johnson, didn’t believe the pandemic rules applied to people running the country. While Sunak and Johnson both received fines after a police investigation, Sunak emerged relatively unscathed.
There were other scandals on Johnson’s watch – from his personal financial arrangements to cronyism – that created a stench of sleaze around the Conservatives that Sunak has struggled to shake off.
These two main factions both agree that the short premiership of Liz Truss, who succeeded Johnson last summer but only managed to stay in office for 45 days, has done real damage to the Conservatives’ main electoral selling point: economic credibility. She proposed unfunded spending and tax cuts that caused the pound to fall to its lowest against the dollar since 1985, and did not survive the ensuing fallout.
Suank’s loyalists point out that Truss was team Johnson’s preferred candidate, but almost everyone in Westminster has distanced themselves from her short tenure.
Ahead of this latest set of local elections, there was concern among some in the party that poor results might cause for loud calls from the right of the party for someone to challenge Sunak. There are people who sincerely believe Johnson returning ahead of the next election would give them the best chance at victory.
However, these people are now a minority and Johnson has gone off grid, earning huge amounts of money giving speeches and writing books. But that doesn’t mean his supporters cannot still cause problems for Sunak.
Next week, a group of Conservatives broadly from the Johnson wing of the party will meet at a conference organized by the Conservative Democrat Organisation. Speakers include three of Johnson’s most loyal Cabinet ministers and one of his biggest financial supporters.
They are, it is commonly accepted, a group that believes Johnson was kicked out of office unfairly and that Sunak was imposed on them and their grassroots members by the big cheeses of the Conservative Party. Most of them have said publicly in the months since Johnson resigned that they wish he was still PM.
Right now, most of the party seems to be on message. They are downplaying the local elections and pointing out that Labour would still need a swing bigger than Tony Blair achieved in 1997 to win a majority of just one seat. They also believe that Sunak’s rise in popularity is down to the relative stability he has brought since taking over from Truss.
But if polls don’t improve dramatically, Sunak should start looking over his shoulder. The Conservative Party has developed a taste for regicide since 2016. If the economy fails to improve, if he can’t live up to his promise to “stop the boats” of migrants and if Conservative members of parliament start to fear they will suffer the same fate as those who lost their jobs in these elections, then it’s not a giant leap from mild concern to panic – and calls for a new way forward before the party is booted from power.
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CNN
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Moscow alleged Wednesday Ukraine flew two drones toward the Kremlin overnight in what it claimed was an attempt to kill President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian president was not in the building at the time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
The Kremlin said the attack was foiled and the alleged drones destroyed. “No one was injured as a result of their fall and scattering of fragments,” state media RIA Novosti reported.
Ukraine says it had no knowledge of any attempted drone strike on the Kremlin, that it did not attack other countries. “We do not have information on so called night attacks on Kremlin,” the spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sergiy Nykyforov, told CNN on Wednesday.
“As President Zelensky has stated numerous times before, Ukraine uses all means at its disposal to free its own territory, not to attack others,” Nykyforov added.
A social media video appears to show a flash and some smoke in the vicinity of the Kremlin, but the source of the smoke is unclear. CNN has not been able to independently verify the Moscow’s claims.
The Kremlin Press Service called the purported drone attack an “attempt on the President’s life.” “Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit,” it added.
Russia referred to the incident as an “act of terrorism,” blaming Ukraine.
Kyiv said that accusation an accusation was better directed at Russia.
“A terror attack is destroyed blocks of residential buildings in Dnipro and Uman, or a missile at a line at Kramatorsk rail station and many other tragedies,” said Nykyforov, the Ukrainian presidential spokesman. “What happened in Moscow is obviously about escalating the mood on the eve of May 9.” That day is known as “Victory Day” inside Russia, commemorating the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.
“It’s a trick to be expected from our opponents,” he said.
Kyiv is approximately 862 kilometers (about 535 miles) from Moscow. Russia has accused Ukraine of multiple attempted drone strikes deep inside Russian territory, including one earlier this year when the governor of the Moscow region claimed a Ukrainian drone had crashed near the village of Gubastovo, southeast of the capital.
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CNN
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on Sunday that the country’s intelligence forces had killed the leader of ISIS in Syria as he vowed to continue the country’s fight against terrorism.
In a broadcast, Erdogan said Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization had been tracking a man known as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini Al-Qurshi “for a long time.”
“This person was neutralized in the operation carried out by MIT (Turkish National Intelligence Organization) yesterday in Syria,” he said. “From now on, we will continue our fight without discrimination against terrorist organizations.”
He added that Turkey’s fight against terrorism contributes to Europe’s security, claiming that Europe “is not aware of this or does not want to be aware of it.”
Al-Qurshi was named ISIS leader after the death of his predecessor, Abu al-Hasan al-Hashmi al-Qurayshi, who was killed last October by the Free Syrian Army in Syria.
Little was known about Al-Qurshi, but at the time of his appointment, ISIS described him as an “old fighter.”
Erdogan’s announcement came after a recent absence from the public eye due to illness.
Media reports had speculated that his health was deteriorating just two weeks before a crucial election.
The speculation followed a televised interview on Tuesday, which was interrupted after Erdogan left his chair in the middle of a question, before returning to explain he had a “serious stomach flu.”
Following Tuesday’s incident, Erdogan was advised by his doctors to rest at home and canceled a number of public events.
On Thursday, the Turkish government rejected news reports about his health as “baseless claims.” He appeared on video link the same day for the inauguration of the Akkuya nuclear power plant.
Erdogan made his return to public stage for the first time in three days on Saturday, at an aviation festival in Istanbul, where he rallied his supporters as he seeks to extend his 20-year stint in power.
Turkey goes to the polls on May 14, just three months after a devastating earthquake and amid soaring inflation and a currency crisis that last year slashed nearly 30% off the lira’s value against the dollar.
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Rome
CNN
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There is a popular saying in Italian – similar to how Anglophones use “when hell freezes over” – that translates as “I’ll do it when the bridge to Messina is finished.”
The dream of a bridge connecting the mainland to Sicily across the Straits of Messina goes back to Roman times, when Consul Metellus strung together barrels and wood to move 100 war elephants from Carthage to Rome in 252 BCE, according to writings by Pliny the Elder.
Since then, various plans, including a short-lived idea for a tunnel, have come and gone – like water under the bridge.
If built, the bridge across the Straits of Messina would span two miles (3.2 kilometers) and would be the longest suspension bridge in the world.
Now the massive engineering project might actually be realized, thanks to a decree passed by the government of Giorgia Meloni last month after Transport Minister Matteo Salvini revived a plan last pushed forward when Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister.
In 2006, the bid to build the bridge was awarded to a consortium led by the Italian firm Salini Impregilo, now called WeBuild. When Berlusconi’s government fell that year, the plans to build the bridge collapsed with his government after the next prime minister, Romano Prodi, deemed it a waste of money and a risk to the environment.
Since then, various governments have tried to revive it, and the current ruling coalition under Meloni, Salvini and Berlusconi put it on their list of campaign promises. When Salvini became transport minister, he made it his priority, betting his legacy on the bridge.
WeBuild, which still has the bid award on paper, sued the government for breach of contract after the project was paused, but it remains the most likely company to be given the job back despite “expressions of interest from all over the world, including China,” Salvini told the Foreign Press Association in Rome in March when he presented the plan.
“The ones who won the 2006 tender are the ones who will most likely continue with the final version of the project,” he said, without naming WeBuild directly.
WeBuild’s engineering director, Michele Longo, was invited to parliament to talk about the revived plan April 18.
“The bridge over the Strait of Messina is a project that can break ground immediately. As soon as the contract is reinstated and updated, the project can start,” Longo told parliament. “The executive design is expected to take eight months, while the time needed to build the bridge will be a little more than six years.”
The cost of the project is 4.5 billion euros ($4.96 billion) for the bridge alone and 6.75 billion euros ($7.4 billion) for the infrastructure to support it on both sides, which includes upgrading road and rail links, building terminals and doing the prep work on the land and seabed to “reduce hydrogeological risks” during construction, according to the plan presented to the transportation ministry.
Since 1965, 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in public funds has already been spent on feasibility studies, according to Italian treasury department. Salvini is fond of saying it will cost more “not to build the bridge than build it.”
The plans may seem well advanced but the challenges are complex.
Southern Italy is prone to corruption with two major organized crime syndicates – the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta and the Sicilian Cosa Nostra – excelling in infiltrating construction projects.
The recent arrest of Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro after 30 years on the lam in Sicily represented a victory.
Denaro was against the building of the bridge, as are some other mob bosses, according to testimony from informants who contributed to Denaro’s arrest, in part because the organized crime syndicates feed off poverty and underdevelopment.
Despite this, fears remain. An anti-Mafia from study from the Nomos Centre think tank published 20 years ago and now being updated warned parts of the project, such as transport and supply could fall under criminal control, as well as there being the possibility local mobs could demand protection money.
Salvini has played down concerns. “I’m not afraid of criminal infiltration,” he told parliament recently, “we will be able to guarantee that the best Italian, European and global companies work there. There will be supervisory bodies that we are working on for every euro invested on the bridge.”
There are also geophysical problems that may be even more difficult to contend with.
The Strait of Messina is along a fault line where a 7.1 earthquake in 1908, killed more than 100,000 people and spawned tsunamis that devastated the coastal areas on both the Calabrian and Sicilian sides of the water. It remains the deadliest recorded seismic event in Europe to date.
The waters, too, are turbulent. Currents are so strong they often rip seaweed off the seabed, and they change every six hours, according to NASA, which notes that the strong wave patterns are visible from space.
Under WeBuild’s original plan, which is the only one currently under consideration since bids have not been, and may not be, opened, the bridge deck would be built to withstand winds of up to 300 kilometers an hour – and could stay open to traffic with winds up to 150 kilometers an hour.
There would be three vehicle lanes in each direction – two for traffic, and one for emergency, with train lines in the middle. Under the current plan, 6,000 cars and trucks could pass each hour, and 200 trains could pass each day.
The bridge would be around 74 meters above sea level and allow a navigation channel of 600 meters, allowing cargo vessels and even the tallest cruise ships to pass. It would also be designed to withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, slightly stronger than the devastating one in 1908.
The construction phase alone would contribute 2.9 billion euros to the national GDP and employ 100,000 people and 300 suppliers, Longo told parliament, adding “most of these people would come from the regions of Sicily and Calabria where there the rates of unemployment are high.”
On the geographical challenges, Longo told CNN it is “one of the most dynamic straits of water anywhere between the depths and currents, but it is also one of the most studied areas. There millions of pages of studies dedicated to this area. We’ve read them all.” On the dangers of organized crime getting involved he said “nothing is impossible, but this is low risk.”
Environmentalists have long argued the bridge would be devastating to the terrain and wildlife.
“In the Strait of Messina, a very important place of transit for birds and marine mammals, one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in the world is concentrated,” a spokesperson for the group Legambiente says, adding that the bridge – both during and after construction – would disrupt migration routes between the Africa and Europe.
The World Wildlife Fund has also campaigned against reviving the project. “The entire Strait of Messina area is a protected area under the EU Habitats Directive,” WWF Institutional Relations director Stefano Lenzi said in a statement. Back in 2006, before the plan was shelved, the group was preparing a lawsuit to try to stop it for breaching European Union protected areas.
The environmental groups contend that the half-hour ferry is the least disruptive route.
The post-bridge impact to the economy would be unarguably high, Salvini insists, saying that cargo ships from Asia could dock in Sicily and those goods could be transported on high-speed trains to Europe, once high-speed rails are built on Sicily – although they do not currently exist.
Public opinion on both sides of the straits remains mixed, with those in a position to prosper through increased trade and easier tourism generally in support of it and those who don’t mind keeping Sicily isolated largely against it.
The bridge has never been as close to being built as it is now, after Meloni signed the decree to pave the way for concrete plans to be put in place. The decree will become law in June, and Salvini said he hopes to break ground by July 2024.
The Straits of Messina have long been equated with troubled waters. Homer created the sea monsters’ den for Scylla and Charybdis there for a reason. And while the only monsters might be ecological and criminal, there is little question that no matter when it happens, the dream for some of building the bridge to Messina won’t be put to rest until it’s finished.
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Hong Kong
CNN
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Sandwiched between two Pacific superpowers, the Philippines has long had to tread delicately when it comes to dealing with Beijing and Washington’s competing interests, a complex juggling act that has been on vivid display in recent weeks.
April has been a particularly busy month for Philippine diplomacy with the country hosting its largest joint military drills yet with the United States while also receiving a top envoy from China, which has grown increasingly rattled – and outspoken – about the archipelago’s defense ties.
Only a few years ago US-Philippine relations were in a delicate place.
The country’s then leader, Rodrigo Duterte, routinely launched obscenity laden rants against US counterpart Barack Obama while downplaying longstanding territorial disputes with Beijing and seeking to attract investment from its giant neighbor to the north.
But the election of his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, last year has returned relations to a more even keel, in part because Manila has become wary of a more assertive China.
Marcos Jr, who has been on a charm offensive to mend ties with Manila’s historical ally, is set to fly to the United States to meet with President Joe Biden in Washington next week.
He visit caps a month of frenetic exchanges with the United States.
More than 12,000 American troops joined some 5,000 soldiers from the Philippines over the last three weeks to take part in the largest “Balikatan” joint military exercises to date, an event Beijing’s state-run media has labeled an “attempt to target China.”
The climax of the war games came Wednesday when US and Philippine forces fired on a mock enemy warship in the West Philippine Sea, the part of the South China Sea that encompasses the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone.
Just as those drills kicked off, the US also hosted two top diplomats from the Philippines, for talks during which both sides agreed to complete a roadmap for the US to provide security assistance to its regional ally the next five to 10 years, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a “2+2 meeting” in Washington.
Last year the US granted $100 million to boost the Southeast Asian country’s defense capabilities and military modernization. It also plans to allocate $100 million for the improvement of military bases to which the US has access under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
In February, the Philippines granted new rights to the US military to add four bases to the five originally covered under the EDCA. The new facilities include three on the main island of Luzon, close to Taiwan, and one in Palawan province in the South China Sea (SCS).
That appears to have alarmed China.
Earlier this month Beijing’s ambassador in Manila, Huang Xilian, accused the Philippines of “stoking the fire” of regional tensions by offering expanded military base access to the US, saying that the goal was to interfere in China’s affairs with Taiwan.
China’s ruling Communist Party has never controlled Taiwan but claims the self-ruled island democracy as its own and has repeatedly refused to rule out taking it by force, a threat which Manila perceives as reason to ramp up its guard with help from Washington.
Huang also appeared to threaten overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Taiwan, which prompted a backlash in the Philippines.
“The Philippines is advised to unequivocally oppose ‘Taiwan independence’ rather than stoking the fire by offering the US access to the military bases near the Taiwan Strait, if you care genuinely about the 150,000 OFWs,” Huang said.
National Security Council spokesperson Jonathan Malaya responded to the Chinese ambassador’s remarks by saying that “the Philippines has no intention of interfering in the Taiwan issue,” and added that the EDCA sites were “not meant for offensive operations against China or for interference in the Taiwan issue.”
With tensions high over the Beijing ambassador’s comments, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang arrived last Friday for a three-day visit to Manila, where he met with Marcos Jr and Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo.
The readouts suggested both sides were keen to calm the waters with Marcos Jr announcing “more lines of communications” to resolve conflicts between the two countries over the West Philippine Sea and Manalo also pledging to “overcome difficulties and interference.”
Qin said Beijing hoped the Philippine side would “properly handle Taiwan-related and maritime issues in line with the overall interests of regional peace and stability.”
Analysts say the positioning of the Philippines makes the archipelago vital for anyone wanting to project power across the Pacific.
“The Philippines is crucial in safeguarding the national security interests of both China, as well as the security or strategic interests of the United States in the Pacific,” said Aries Arugay, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
“And this is why both superpowers are very sensitive every time the Philippines is being perceived as leaning more towards one or the other,” he added.
What the last month has shown, added Anna Malindog-Uy, vice president of the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute (ACPSSI), is that Filipinos “do not want to be compromised for the geopolitical interests and agenda of the United States in the region.”
Manila may be thousands of miles away from Washington, but their defense alliance dates back to the end of World War II, as America sought to protect its interests in the Pacific.
The Philippines was a former US territory and used to be home to two of the US military’s largest overseas installations, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, which were transferred to Philippine control in the 1990s.
A mutual defense treaty signed in 1951 remains in force, stipulating that both sides would help defend each other if either were attacked by a third party.
Moderninzing the Philippines’ military capabilities by working with the US, and establishing well-connected regional defense cooperation with players like Japan, South Korea and Australia, is a priority for Marcos Jr, according to Richard Heydarian, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of the Philippines Asian Center.
Heydarian describes the approach as a “multi-vector foreign policy of maximizing ties with all major powers without excessively relying on any one of them.”
“He’s doubling down in the Philippines’ alliance with the United States so that we deal with China from a position of strength,” Heydarian said.
Heydarian added that China has to rethink its strategy towards the Philippines, as the Marcos Jr administration is openly more aligned with the US.
China remains one of the top trade partners of the Philippines, while Marcos Jr also continues to negotiate energy and agriculture investments from Beijing.
But Manila’s growing caution towards Beijing in recent years has been furthered by recent maritime aggressions – including accusations China used a high-powered laser against a Philippine Coast Guard vessel in February – Beijing’s increased drills around Taiwan as well as maritime patrols in the South China Sea, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
“These give the Philippines a lot of reason for caution towards Beijing. But at the same time, they do want to keep relations with Beijing on an even keel,” Chong said.
Support for the expanded defense ties with Washington is far from unanimous.
Some worry Marcos Jr might be giving too much access to the US, especially when it comes to bases and facilities close to Taiwan, Heydarian said.
The president’s own sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, has publicly questioned why the Philippine government should rely on foreigners for its external defense, urging for defined limitations on the EDCA pact should the country be dragged into regional conflict.
As the US-China rivalry intensifies the Indo-Pacific, their competition for influence has been localized within the Philippines, particularly in the provinces where American bases are located, Arugay added.
There were pockets of protest in Cagayan province, the northern mountainous region where three out of the four new EDCA sites are to be built.
At least 5,000 people in Cagayan held demonstrations and prayer rallies, as they believed that America’s self-interest were prioritized before the native residents, according to the Cagayan Provincial Information Office.
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CNN
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke Wednesday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Moscow’s most important diplomatic partner, in the first phone call between the two leaders since the start of Russia’s invasion.
“I had a long and meaningful phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine’s ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations,” Zelensky said.
Andrii Yermak, head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, described the phone call as “an important dialogue” in a Telegram post Wednesday.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV also reported the call, during which Xi confirmed that that an envoy would travel to Ukraine and other countries to help conduct “in-depth communication” with all parties for a political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.
In a briefing on Wednesday, China’s Foreign Ministry said its envoy to Ukraine will be Li Hui, Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs. Li is the former Chinese ambassador to Russia, who served in the post from 2009 to 2019.
The ministry did not provide further details as to when Li would make the trip and which other countries he would be visiting.
Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion or make any public call for Russia to withdraw its troops. Its officials have instead repeatedly said that the “legitimate” security concerns of all countries must be taken into account and accused NATO and the US of fueling the conflict.
Despite its claims of neutrality and calls for peace talks, Beijing has offered Moscow much-needed diplomatic and economic support throughout the invasion.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Moscow had taken notice of China’s willingness to facilitate negotiations with Ukraine following the phone call between Xi and Zelensky.
“We note the readiness of the Chinese side to make efforts to establish the negotiation process,” Zakharova said during a press conference on Wednesday.
However, she said she also noted that under current conditions negotiations are unlikely and blamed Kyiv for rejecting Moscow’s initiatives.
Wednesday’s phone call is the first time Xi has spoken to Zelensky since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year. In comparison, Xi has spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin five times since the invasion – including a face-to-face at the Kremlin when the Chinese leader visited Moscow last month and another in-person meeting at a regional summit in Central Asia last September.
Reports that discussions were underway between China and Ukraine to arrange a call for their leaders first surfaced in March, in the lead-up to Xi’s state visit to Russia.
The reported efforts were widely seen by analysts at the time as part of China’s attempt to portray itself as a potential peacemaker in the conflict, in which it has claimed neutrality.
But the call didn’t materialize for weeks after Xi and Putin met in Moscow and made a sweeping affirmation of their alignment across a host of issues – including their shared mistrust of the United States.
Following a trip to Beijing, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told reporters earlier this month Xi reiterated his willingness to speak with Zelensky “when conditions and time are right.”
Xi’s call with Zelensky comes days after China’s top diplomat in Paris sparked anger in Europe by questioning the sovereignty of former Soviet republics, in comments that could undermine China’s efforts to be seen as a potential mediator between Russia and Ukraine.
The remarks by China’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who said during a television interview last weekend that former Soviet countries don’t have “effective status in international law,” have caused diplomatic consternation, especially in the Baltic states, with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia summoning Chinese representatives to ask for clarification.
Officials including from Ukraine, Moldova, France and the European Union also all hit back with criticisms of Lu’s comments.
China later distanced itself from Lu’s comments saying he was expressing a personal opinion, not official policy.
CNN asked Chinese Foreign Ministry official Yu Jun if the timing of the Xi-Zelensky phone call had anything to do with the backlash. “China has issued an authoritative response to the remarks made by the Chinese ambassador to France,” he said. “And I have been very clear on China’s position (on the Ukraine crisis).”
The last publicly reported phone call between Xi and Zelensky was on January 4, 2022, weeks before the invasion, during which the two leaders exchanged congratulatory messages to celebrate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic bilateral ties.
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