PARIS — France is seeking to massively expand its arsenal of surveillance powers and tools to secure the millions of tourists expected for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
Among the plans are large-scale, real-time camera systems supported by an algorithm to spot suspicious behavior, including unsupervised luggage and alarming crowd movements like stampedes. Senators on Wednesday will vote on a law introducing the new powers, which are supposed to be temporary, with some lawmakers pushing to allow controversial facial-recognition technology.
The stakes are high: The government badly wants to avoid “failures” like the ones that dented its reputation during the Champions League final last summer, and the trauma of the 2015 Paris terror attacks still looms large over the country.
But the plans are already causing an uproar among privacy campaigners. “The Olympic Games are used as a pretext to pass measures the [security technology] industry has long been waiting for,” said Bastien Le Querrec from digital rights NGO La Quadrature du Net, who’s leading a campaign against algorithmic video surveillance.
TheFrench government already backtracked on deploying facial recognition after lawmakers within President Emmanuel Macron’s majority party raised concerns. It was also forced by the country’s data protection authority and top administrative court to build in more privacy safeguards.
For now, the law would allow for “experimentation” with the surveillance systems, and the trial is supposed to end in June 2025 — 10 months after the sports competition wraps up.
Critics, however, fear the law will lead to unwanted surveillance in the long term.
One key question is what will happen to the AI-powered devices once the Olympic Games are over, especially since the legislation mentions not only sports events but also “festive” and “cultural” gatherings. In the past, Le Querrec warned, security measures initially designed to be temporary — for example, under the state of emergency that followed the 2015 attacks — ended up becoming permanent.
Whether the tech survives the Olympics will depend on how the final law is written, according to Francisco Klauser, a professor at the University of Neuchâtel, who has written about surveillance and sporting events.
“In the history of mega-events, there is always a legacy,” he said. Countries staging major events are under “extraordinary circumstances and time pressure” that often mean systems get deployed that otherwise “would have been debated much more heavily,” he added.
For the 2024 Olympics, France already has the cameras but will need to buy the software to analyze footage, an official from the interior ministry told POLITICO.
MP Philippe Latombe said that French companies such as Atos, Idemia, XXII and Datakalab would be able to provide certain software items | Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images
Philippe Latombe, an MP from the centrist Macron-allied party Modem, said that French companies such as Atos, Idemia, XXII and Datakalab, among others, would be able to provide such tech. The lawmaker is co-chairing a fact-finding mission on video surveillance in public spaces.
After the Senate votes on the law to allow “experimentations” with the surveillance systems, the legislation will go to the National Assembly, and lawmakers in both chambers are expected to fight over the balance between privacy and security.
Time is already running out, Latombe warned, as algorithms will need to be trained on datasets for months before the Olympics kick off.
BERLIN — Olaf Scholz has once again rebooted his security policy, nominating a new defense minister to take the reins. But when it comes to his reluctance to send battle tanks to Ukraine, the German chancellor is still waiting for the U.S. to take the lead.
Tuesday’s nomination of Boris Pistorius puts an end to a growing government crisis that had left Europe’s biggest economy for several days effectively without clear military leadership. But Pistorius — whom Scholz hailed as having “the strength and calmness that is needed in view of the Zeitenwende,” Germany’s historic military revamp — will have little time to get adjusted to the new role.
Pressure is mounting on Germany to participate in a broader alliance of countries that would supply Ukraine’s army with modern Leopard 2 battle tanks. And moments after being sworn in on Thursday, the new defense minister is scheduled to meet U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is coming to Berlin before a key meeting Friday in Germany where allies will discuss tank deliveries for Ukraine.
Pistorius is replacing Christine Lambrecht, a loyal defender of Scholz’s cautious tank stance who resigned on Monday after a series of gaffes and missteps that weighed on Berlin’s reputation.
That means expectations are high for the 62-year-old Pistorius, who is from Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Yet Social Democratic lawmakers say the appointment by itself won’t tilt the scales on supplying Ukraine with tanks.
“I don’t think one has anything to do with the other,” Wolfgang Hellmich, the SPD’s defense policy spokesperson, told POLITICO.
Kristian Klinck, an SPD member of the Bundestag’s defense committee and an army reserve officer, also said he didn’t see “any significant change in this regard because of the personnel change in the defense ministry.”
While stressing that Pistorius will play a role in deciding on further military aid for Ukraine, Klinck said “this very important question of the delivery of battle tanks” would be decided “primarily in the chancellor’s office” and in coordination with other allies.
Scholz himself reiterated his reluctant position during an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, saying that any decisions on further weapon supplies could only be taken in close coordination with allies.
That argument for holding back tank deliveries has started to sound less convincing, however, given the calls from allies like Poland to jointly send Leopards, and after the U.K. announced it would supply Ukraine with its own Challenger 2 battle tanks.
German officials have indicated, though, that Scholz would likely move if he received backing from the U.S., especially if Washington also agreed to send battle tanks.
During a call between Scholz and U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday, both leaders discussed “effective, sustainable and closely coordinated” military support for Ukraine, according to a German spokesperson. This has raised expectations that a breakthrough on tanks could still be feasible.
Pressure on Scholz
Green MP Anton Hofreiter, chair of the Bundestag’s European affairs committee and a long-standing critic of Scholz’s cautious position, said it was time for the chancellor to act.
“The decision to supply tanks ultimately rests with the chancellor. Behind him is his Social Democratic Party, which unfortunately is still often under the illusion that relations with Russia can be normalized again and that Moscow should therefore not be provoked too much,” Hofreiter told POLITICO.
Anton Hofreiter, co-head of the German Green Party Bundestag faction | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Hofreiter, whose Green party is part of Germany’s government coalition alongside Scholz’s SPD and the pro-business Free Democratic Party, argued Germany was presenting “an unclear, wavering and hesitant picture” of its military support for Ukraine.
“Allies are now watching Berlin very closely: If we continue to close our minds on the Leopard issue, Germany would be increasingly isolated in Europe,” he said.
Scholz’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, also from the Greens, upped the pressure on the chancellor last week, saying Berlin should not stand in the way if allies like Poland, Finland or Spain want to send their own Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine — an important demand because Berlin must authorize any re-export of the German-made battle tanks.
The government’s deputy spokesperson later clarified that there were “no differences” on the issue between Habeck and Scholz, suggesting the chancellor would support his deputy’s line.
The remarks raised expectations that Berlin may use Friday’s meeting to at least give its allies the green light on sending Leopard tanks. But it remains uncertain whether Scholz will join the coalition and offer Germany’s own tanks, either from the German army or defense industry stocks.
Scholz said Tuesday that he would not debate these questions in public.
There are also questions in Germany about whether the recent political crisis within the defense ministry has left Scholz weakened. Scholz personally chose Lambrecht and defended her until the end, despite concerns she had failed to properly spend a reject influx of defense funds and let Germany’s ammunition stockpiles run low (in addition to her gaffes and waning standing among the military).
The SPD’s Hellmich, however, expressed optimism that these shortcomings would now improve with the newly appointed minister.
“Boris Pistorius has been in the political business for a long time and is knowledgeable on the subject. He sits on the defense committee of the Bundesrat [Germany’s upper house of parliament] and is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,” Hellmich said.
“That’s why the troops are in good hands with him.”
This article was updated to include details of a call between Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden.
BERLIN — News this month that the number of German soldiers declaring themselves conscientious objectors rose fivefold in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine created little more than a ripple in Germany.
For many Germans it’s perfectly natural for members of the Bundeswehr, the army, to renege on the pledge they made to defend their country; if Germans themselves don’t want to fight, why should their troops?
Indeed, in Germany, a soldier isn’t a soldier but a “citizen in uniform.” It’s an apposite euphemism for a populace that has lived comfortably under the U.S. security umbrella for more than seven decades and goes a long way toward explaining how Germany became NATO’s problem child since the war in Ukraine began, delaying and frustrating the Western effort to get Ukraine the weaponry it needs to defend itself against an unprovoked Russian onslaught.
The latest installment in this saga (it began just hours after the February invasion when Germany’s finance minister told Ukraine’s ambassador there was no point in sending aid because his country would only survive for a few hours anyway) concerns the question of delivering main battle tanks to Ukraine. Germany, one of the largest producers of such tanks alongside the U.S., has steadfastly refused to do so for months, arguing that providing Ukraine with Western tanks could trigger a broader war.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also tried to hide behind the U.S., noting that Washington has also not sent any tanks. (Scholz has conveniently ignored the detail that the U.S. has provided Ukraine with $25 billion in military aid so far, more than 10 times what Germany has.)
Germany’s allies, including Washington, often ascribe German recalcitrance to a knee-jerk pacifism born of the lessons learned from its “dark past.”
In other words, the German strategy — do nothing, blame the Nazis — is working.
Of course, Germany’s conscience doesn’t really drive its foreign policy, its corporations do. While it hangs back from supporting Ukraine in a fight to defend its democracy from invasion by a tyrant, it has no qualms about selling to authoritarian regimes, like those in the Middle East, where it does brisk business selling weapons to countries such as Egypt and Qatar.
Despite everything that’s happened over the past year, Berlin is still holding out hope that Ukraine can somehow patch things up with Russia so that Germany can resume business as usual and switch the gas back on. Even if Germany ends up sending tanks to Ukraine — as many now anticipate — it will deliver as few as it can get away with and only after exhausting every possible option to delay.
Much attention in recent years has focused on Nord Stream 2, the ill-fated Russo-German natural gas project. Yet tensions between the U.S. and Germany over the latter’s entanglement with Russian energy interests date back to the late 1950s, when it first began supplying the Soviet Union with large-diameter piping.
Throughout the Cold War, Germany’s involvement with NATO was driven by a strategy to take advantage of the protection the alliance afforded, delivering no more than the absolute minimum, while also expanding commercial relations with the Soviets.
In 1955, the weekly Die Zeit described what it called the “fireside fantasy of West German industry” to normalize trade relations with the Soviet Union. Within years, that dream became a reality, driven in large measure by Chancellor Willy Brandt’s détente policies, known as Ostpolitik.
Joe Biden, eager to reverse the diplomatic damage inflicted during the Trump years, reversed course and has gone out of his way to show his appreciation for all things German | Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images
That’s one reason the Germans so feared U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his hard line against the Soviets. Far from welcoming his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” demand, both the German public and industry were terrified by it, worried that Reagan would upset the apple cart and destroy their business in the east.
By the time the Berlin Wall fell a couple of years later, West German exports to the Soviet Union had reached nearly 12 billion deutsche mark, a record.
That’s why Germany’s handling of Ukraine isn’t a departure from the norm; it is the norm.
Germany’s dithering over aid to Ukraine is a logical extension of a strategy that has served its economy well from the Cold War to the decision to block Ukraine’s NATO accession in 2008 to Nord Stream.
Just last week, as the Russians were raining terror on Dnipro, the minister president of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, called for the repair of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which was blown up by unknown saboteurs last year, so that Germany “keeps the option” to purchase Russian gas after war ends.
One can’t blame him for trying. If one accepts that German policy is driven by economic logic rather than moral imperative, the fickleness of its political leaders makes complete sense — all the more so considering how well it has worked.
The money Germany has saved on defense has enabled it to finance one of the world’s most generous welfare states. When Germany was under pressure from allies a few years ago to finally meet NATO’s 2 percent of GDP spending target, then-Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel called the goal “absurd.” And from a German perspective, he was right; why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Of course, the Germans have had a lot of help milking, especially from the U.S.
American presidents have been chastising Germany over its lackluster contribution to the Western alliance going as far back as Dwight D. Eisenhower, only to do nothing about it.
The exception that proves the rule is Donald Trump, whose plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Germany was thwarted by his election loss.
Joe Biden, eager to reverse the diplomatic damage inflicted during the Trump years, reversed course and has gone out of his way to show his appreciation for all things German.
Biden’s decision to court the Germans instead of castigating them for failing to meet their commitments taught Berlin that it merely needs to wait out crises in the transatlantic relationship and the problems will fix themselves. Under pressure from Trump to buy American liquefied natural gas, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in 2018 to support the construction of the necessary infrastructure. After Trump, those plans were put on ice, only to revive them amid the current energy crisis.
By virtue of its size and geographical position at the center of Europe, Germany will always be important for the U.S., if not as a true ally, at least as an erstwhile partner and staging ground for the American military.
Who cares that the Bundeswehr has become a punchline or that Germany remains years away from meeting its NATO spending targets?
In Washington’s view, Germany might be a bad ally, but at least it’s America’s bad ally.
And no one understands the benefits of that status better than the Germans themselves.
LONDON — Japan increasingly sees the U.K. as a key defense and trade ally in its pushback against China in the Indo-Pacific, say senior Japanese officials, as the country makes a diplomatic push to rally G7 nations this week.
Tokyo has opened its G7 presidency with a diplomatic offensive amid concern about both China and Russia. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Italy and France this week before landing in London — and plans to cap the week with visits to Canada and Washington.
Kishida is “a strong believer” that “security in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region are inseparable,” the Japanese prime minister’s press secretary, Hikariko Ono, told reporters Wednesday.
On the same day, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Kishida signed a Reciprocal Access Agreement, the most significant defense pact between the two nations since 1902. The two will ramp up joint military drills and smooth the ability of U.K. forces to be deployed to Japan and vice versa.
The agreement “cements our commitment to the Indo-Pacific,” Sunak said ahead of the signing, “and underlines our joint efforts to bolster economic security, accelerate our defense cooperation and drive innovation that creates highly skilled jobs.”
“Collaboration across defense and security would not only benefit Japan and the United Kingdom, but broader global stability, the leaders agreed,” said a Downing Street spokeswoman after the signing ceremony at the Tower of London Wednesday evening.
Japan is increasingly concerned about security in its backyard. Last December, China and Russia conducted joint live-fire military drills near Japan. And Beijing launched live-fire exercises near Taiwan last summer following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. This prompted Tokyo to update its own national security strategy in December, vowing to increase its defense budget to 2 percent of its GDP — a 20 percent increase.
Japan’s security environment has become “really severe so that we have no choice but to think about whether or not our current defense capability can really defend the life of the Japanese people,” said Ono, the Japanese prime minister’s spokesperson.
Last month, London and Tokyo also announced they are teaming up with Italy to develop the Tempest, a new fighter jet kitted out with the latest technology.
During his meeting with Sunak, Kashida urged Britain to agree to further bilateral meetings between the foreign and defense ministers from both countries in a bid to further bolster defense ties.
“We are ready to strengthen our security alliances,” Ono said, and “would like to explore further collaboration” with the U.K.
As part of this, Tokyo is working to help Britain join the 11-nation Asia-Pacific CPTPP trade bloc. Japan is a founding member and the deal is “not a mere trade agreement, but a strategic agreement,” the spokesperson said, with negotiations with the U.K. “now at the final stage.”
Kishida and Sunak plan to “jointly tackle the remaining issues regarding the accession,” they said, “so the earliest possible conclusion can be reached.”
Japan is keen “to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific,” they said, and “fully support” the British government’s engagement in the region.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes a quick reshuffle of generals can revive the fortunes of his faltering campaign in Ukraine and quell bitter turf wars among his commanders, he’s likely to be disappointed.
After only three months as overall commander of Russia’s war, General Sergei Surovikin has been replaced by his boss, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, the country’s most senior soldier. Colonel General Alexander Lapin was promoted to chief of the general staff of the ground forces.
Both Western security analysts and pro-war Russian military veterans, however, are skeptical this game of musical chairs will trigger any game-changing tactics or help restore momentum to the Russian campaign. Surovikin will continue as Gerasimov’s battlefield deputy.
They see the shake-up as largely political, and a sign of infighting in the Kremlin, with the defense ministry trying to reassert control of the management of the war and to curb the growing influence of paramilitary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the mercenary Wagner Group.
Prigozhin is seeking to seize the limelight by claiming to have made breakthroughs with a massive wave attacks in the east of Ukraine, using so-called penal battalions comprised largely of former prison inmates to deliver a rare Russian victory. This week, for example, Prigozhin claimed Wagner mercenaries had overrun the salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine retorts that fighting is still ongoing and that Prigozhin’s tactics are insane because of the huge casualties that he is willing to accept for negligible strategic gains.
In a sign of the personality politics that seem to be looming larger in the splintered Russian military, Prigozhin is also keen to depict himself as a fighter in helmet and flak jacket with his troops on the battle fronts.
The pro-war ultranationalist camp of Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has long been pushing for a restructuring of the top echelons of the command.
It looks, though, like Putin is not giving them the new arrangement they want, but is instead strengthening the hand of the ministry men, who are often the target of the radicals’ most excoriating denunciations.
General Armageddon
Surovikin, known as General Armageddon for overseeing a vicious bombing campaign in northern Syria in 2016, has not been the butt of the hardline camp’s anger. They credit him with having brought more tactical coherence and focus to Russia’s ground campaign. They had been calling instead for Gerasimov, who they blame for failing to seize Kyiv in the early days of the war, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Lapin, another of their bêtes noires, to be sacked.
Ultimately, Putin has chosen to deal with the internal power fissures plaguing the military by elevating Gerasimov and Lapin, and demoting Surovikin.
Rob Lee, an analyst at the U.S.-based security think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that Prigozhin had praised Surovikin, and suggested this week’s promotions may “partially be a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war.”
Influential pro-war Russian military blogs such as Rybar, which has a million followers on Telegram, were also scathing about the decision to replace Surovikin. The Rybar blog, the work of several authors all apparently well connected to the Russian military, credited Surovikin with achieving much in his three months as overall battlefield commander and for starting to bring some order to a chaotic campaign.
Russian President Vladimir Putin presents an award to Colonel General Sergei Surovikin on 28 December, 2017 | Alexei Nikolsky/AFP via Getty Images
Rybar fumed Surovikin would be left taking the blame for recent debacles — including the Ukrainian missile strike on New Year’s Day on conscripts billeted temporarily at a college in Makiivka that may have left more than 400 dead. Western military experts say the Russians, who claim 89 died, laid themselves wide open to the devastating attack by crowding the soldiers in one building.
Lapin’s promotion has drawn disdain from Igor Girkin, a former intelligence officer and paramilitary commander who played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.
Girkin, who uses the pseudonym Igor Strelkov, said on his Telegram channel that Lapin’s new role must be “to put it mildly, a misunderstanding.” The appointment represents a “boorish” bid by the Russian defense ministry to demonstrate its invulnerability from criticism and impunity, he said. Lapin was sacked earlier this year after failing to rebuff a Ukrainian offensive that saw the Russians pushed out of the strategic town of Lyman, in the Donetsk region.
Chechen leader Kadyrov publicly blamed Lapin for the loss of Lyman, saying he should be stripped of his medals and rank and sent to the front line barefoot with a light machine gun to “wipe away his shame with blood.” Kadyrov’s outburst prompted a warning from the Kremlin to curb his criticism and to “set aside emotions.”
Surovikin’s appointment in October as overall commander of what Russia calls its special military operation was greeted with delight by Russia’s hawks. Kadyrov praised him as “a real general and a warrior.” He will “improve the situation,” Kadyrov added in his social media post.
Russia’s defense ministry said the reshuffle amounted to “an increase in the level of leadership of the special military operation” and said the change was needed to boost the effectiveness of the military. It specifically cited “the need to organize closer interaction between the types and arms of the troops,” in other words to improve combined arms warfare, the integration of infantry, armor, artillery and air support to achieve mutually reinforcing and complementary effects, something Russia has failed to accomplish.
After his appointment, Russia made a conspicuous shift to pummeling civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, knocking out power stations and water facilities.
The decision to keep Surovikin as Gerasimov’s No. 2 has gone some way to mollify the ultranationalists, but it hardly answers their calls for a root-and-branch makeover of the top brass of Russia’s armed forces.
Over to you, Gerasimov
Whether Gerasimov, a veteran of Russia’s war in Afghanistan, can pull that off remains to be seen. He has experience as a battlefield commander in Ukraine: He oversaw Russian forces and pro-Russian insurgents in August 2014, outmaneuvering the Ukrainians at Ilovaisk in the Donetsk region, where more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. That battle forced then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to agree to peace talks.
Gerasimov is seen as an advocate of hybrid warfare and is the author of a doctrine, named after him, calling for combining military, technological, information, diplomatic, economic, cultural and other tactics to achieve strategic goals. In May, there were unconfirmed reports that he was wounded when visiting the frontlines, but Ukrainian officials denied the claims, saying he had left a command post shortly before they targeted it.
The Chechen leader and other hawks looked to him to reverse a series of stunning battlefield Ukrainian successes and to turn the tide of war in Russia’s favor. The shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler, served in Chechnya and Syria. A ruthless and unscrupulous tactician, he oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and to send refugees toward Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign “showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,” noted Human Rights Watch in a damning report.
General Sergei Surovikin has been replaced by his boss, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov | Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images
Since Gerasimov was part of a small circle of Kremlin hawks that advised Putin to invade Ukraine, his future likely now all depends on the outcome of the war. The job he has been given is “the most poisoned of chalices,” according to Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian military. “It’s now on him,” he added in a tweet.
Ukraine’s defense ministry took a more laconic approach to Gerasimov’s appointment.
Every Russian general “must receive at least one opportunity to fail in Ukraine,” it tweeted.
Iran executed a former deputy Iranian defense minister, who was a British-Iranian, on allegations of spying for British intelligence, marking the first execution of a prominent official in over a decade in a clear sign of deteriorating relations with the West.
Alireza Akbari, a 61-year-old British-Iranian dual national, was executed for spying on behalf of the U.K., an accusation he had always denied since he was arrested in Iran in 2019.
Akbari was accused of “harming the country’s internal and external security by passing on intelligence,” an activity he carried out between 2004 and 2009 and for which he would have received a payment of over €2 million, the judiciary’s official news outlet Mizan said.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the execution a “callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime.”
Akbari’s death would “not stand unchallenged,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, in a statement that prompted Persian authorities to summon the British ambassador in Teheran.
BBC Persian aired an audio message from Akbari earlier this week in which the inmate said he had been tortured and forced to confess crimes on camera he hadn’t committed — something that human rights NGO Amnesty International is now urging London to investigate.
Maryam Samadi, Akbari’s wife, said she was “just shocked,” in a phone interview with the New York Times on Friday. “We saw no reason or indication for the charges,” she said. “We could have never imagined this, and I don’t understand the politics behind it.”
The U.K. Foreign Office is now seeking the possibility of giving asylum to Akbari’s family, considered at risk, but that’s proving difficult, as the country does not recognize dual nationality for its citizens.
BERLIN — German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht has resigned on Monday, after a series of mistakes made her position in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government untenable.
“I have today asked the chancellor to dismiss me from the office of the Federal Minister of Defense”, Lambrecht said in a written statement on Monday. “The media focus on my person for months hardly allows for objective reporting and discussion about the servicemen and women, the Bundeswehr and security policy decisions in the interest of the citizens of Germany,” she added.
Scholz has accepted Lambrecht’s resignation, a spokeswoman for Scholz’s cabinet said in a press conference.
The minister’s repeated blunders put increasing strain on Scholz and his German defense policy shift announced during in his Zeitenwende speech last year. On Friday, various media outlets had reported unanimously on the planned resignation.
Lambrecht failed to implement an increase in military spending pledged by Scholz after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She had also faced strong criticism for celebrating an early delivery of 5,000 helmets to Ukraine at the beginning of last year as “a clear signal” of support, then by taking her son on a helicopter flight as part of a personal holiday. An awkward New Year’s Eve video, where her well wishes were muffled by the sound of exploding fireworks, contributed to eroding her stature as a defense minister.
The news of Lambrecht’s resignation throws the Scholz government into uncertainty, less than a week before a crucial meeting of Western defense ministers in Ramstein. Her successor will be announced soon, but “probably” not on Monday, the government spokeswoman said.
Several names are circulating on German media shortlists: Chancellor’s Office head Wolfgang Schmidt, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces Eva Högl, Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil, Lambrecht’s Parliamentary State Secretary Siemtje Möller and SPD leader Lars Klingbeil.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday on the sidelines of a visit to a weapons manufacturer in Ulm that he has a clear idea of Lambrecht’s successor. His idea will become known to everyone “very quickly,” he added. “I know how it should proceed from my point of view, and we will announce that in time,” Scholz said.
They’re dazzlingly rich, and they expect to be in charge for a long, long time.
The monarchs leading Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia might seem from the outside like a trio of like-minded Persian Gulf autocrats. Yet their regional rivalry is intense, and Western capitals have become a key venue in a reputational battle royale.
“All of these governments … really want to have the largest mindspace among Western governments,” said Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
As the Gulf states seek to wean themselves off the oil that made them rich, they know they’ll need friends to help transform their economies (and modernize their societies).
“They think it’s important not to be tarred as mere hydrocarbon producers who are ruining the planet,” Alterman added.
The Qatari government categorically denies any unlawful behavior, saying it “works through institution-to-institution engagement and operates in full compliance with international laws and regulations.”
Against the background of regional rivalries, that engagement has become increasingly robust. While tensions with Riyadh have eased over the past few years, Qatar’s mutual antagonism with the United Arab Emirates has been particularly severe.
Qatar’s survival strategy
Regional rivalries burst beyond the Middle East in 2017 in a standoff that would reshape regional dynamics.
Until then, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been essentially frenemies. As members of the Gulf Coordination Council, they’d been working toward building a common market and currency in the region — not so different from the European Union.
But different responses to the Arab Spring frayed relations to a breaking point.
The Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network gave a platform to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist party that rode a wave of unrest into power in Egypt and challenged governments throughout the Arab world. And Doha didn’t just offer a bullhorn — it gave the Muslim Brotherhood direct financial backing.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, considered the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group.
Along with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE severed diplomatic ties with Doha in June 2017, barring Qatar’s access to airspace and sea routes; Saudi Arabia closed its border, blocking Qatar’s only land crossing.
Among the demands: close Al Jazeera, end military coordination with Turkey and step away from Iran. Qatar refused — even though it was crunch time for building infrastructure ahead of the 2022 World Cup and 40 percent of Qatar’s food supplies came through Saudi Arabia.
Fighting what it called an illegal “blockade” became an existential mission for Doha.
“The only thing Qatar could do was make sure everyone knew Qatar exists and is a nice place,” said MEP Hannah Neumann, chair of the Parliament’s delegation for relations with the Arab Peninsula (DARP).
“They really stepped up the diplomatic efforts all around the world to also show, ‘We are the good ones,’” said Neumann, of the German Greens.
Qatar needed Brussels because it had already lost an even bigger ally: Washington. Not only did then-President Donald Trump take the side of Qatar’s rivals in the fight; he also appeared to take credit for the idea of isolating Qatar — even though the U.S.’s largest military base in the region is just southwest of Doha.
Elsewhere, Qatar had already been working with the London-headquartered consultancy Portland Communications since at least 2014 — as its World Cup hosting coup was becoming a PR nightmare, with stories emerging over bribed FIFA officials and exploited migrant workers.
Exploding onto the EU scene
In Brussels, Doha leaned on the head of its EU Mission, Abdulrahman Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, who had moved to Belgium in 2017 from Germany, to step up European relations.
Within days of the fissure, Al-Khulaifi appeared in meetings at NATO, and within months opened a think tank called the Middle East Dialogue Center to hone Doha’s image as an open promoter of debate (in contrast,it contended, to its neighbors) and pressure the EU to intervene in the Mideast.
By the next year, he was speaking on panels about combating violent extremism — alongside Dutch and Belgian federal police. By late 2019, Al-Khulaifi hosted the first meeting of embassy’s Qatar-EU friendship group with a “working dinner.”
“The situation following the blockade has pushed Qatar to establish closer relations outside the context of the regional crisis with, for example, the European Union,” Pier Antonio Panzeri, then chair of the Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, told Euractiv in 2018.
The following year, Panzeri would attend the Qatari-hosted “International Conference on National, Regional and International Mechanisms to Combat Impunity and Ensure Accountability under International Law,” and heap praise on the country’s human rights record.
Panzeri is now in a Belgian prison, facing corruption charges; his NGO, Fight Impunity, is under intense scrutiny for being a possible front.
Neumann said that Qatar’s survival strategy has paid off. “Absolutely, it worked,” she said. “I think it’s fair enough, if they didn’t do it with illegal means.”
Directly or indirectly, Qatar clocked several big victories during this period, including multiple resolutions in Parliament on human rights in Saudi Arabia and a call to end arms exports to Riyadh in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Doha also inked a cooperation arrangement with the EU in March 2018, setting the stage for closer ties.
Frenemies once again
Since Saudi Arabia and Qatar signed a deal to end the crisis two years ago, Riyadh-Doha relations have generally thawed. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, traveled to Qatar in November for the World Cup and embraced Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, 42, while wearing a scarf in the host’s colors.
However, relations between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, 61 — remain chilly.
As the Gulf transforms, the United Arab Emirates “has come to see that role as being a status quo power,” said Alterman. On the part of its neighbor, “Qatar has come to see that role as aligning with forces of change in the region, and that’s created a certain amount of mutual resentment.”
Qatar’s smaller scale contributes to Doha’s sense of internal security, fueling its openness to engaging with groups that others see as an existential threat.
Qataris see themselves as “champions of the Davids against the Goliath,” said Andreas Krieg, an assistant professor at King’s College London who has worked in the past as a consultant for the Qatari armed forces. Civil society organizations founded by “a range of different opposition figures, Saudi opposition figures in the West, have been supported financially by Qatar as well,” Krieg added. (Khashoggi, one of the era’s most prominent Saudi opposition figures, had connections to the state-backed Qatar Foundation.) “Hence why Qatar was always seen as sort of a thorn in the side of its neighbors.”
And while the €1.5 million cash haul confiscated by Belgian federal police looks like an eye-popping sum, it certainly pales in comparison to the amount the Gulf states spend on legal lobbying in Brussels. And that sum, in turn, pales in comparison to what those countries spend in Washington.
“Brussels isn’t that important,” Krieg said. “If you look at the money that these Gulf countries spend in Washington, these are tens of millions of dollars every year on think tanks, academics … creating their own media outlets, investing strategically into Fox News, investing into massive PR operations.”
Nonetheless, the EU remains a key target. Abu Dhabi is strengthening its “long-standing partnership” with Brussels on economic and regional security matters “through deep, strategic cooperation with EU institutions and Member States,” said a UAE official, in a statement.
“Brussels was always a hub to create a narrative,” said Krieg.
And right now, each of the region’s power players is deeply motivated to change that narrative.
Alterman invoked a broad impression of the Gulf countries as “people who have more money than God who want to take the world back to the 7th Century.”
But that’s wrong, he said. “This is all about shaping the future with remarkably high stakes, profound discomfort about how the world will relate to them over the next 30 to 50 years — and frankly, a series of rulers who see themselves being in power for the next 30 to 50 years.”
In the United States, TikTok is a favorite punching ball for lawmakers who’ve compared the Chinese-owned app to “digital fentanyl” and say it should be banned.
Now that hostility is spreading to Europe, where fears about children’s safety and reports that TikTok spied on journalists using their IP locations are fueling a backlash against the video-sharing app used by more than 250 million Europeans.
As TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew heads to Brussels on Tuesday to meet with top digital policymaker Margrethe Vestager amid a wider reappraisal of EU ties with China, his company faces a slew of legal, regulatory and security challenges in the bloc — as well as a rising din of public criticism.
One of the loudest critics is French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called TikTok “deceptively innocent” and a cause of “real addiction” among users, as well as a source of Russian disinformation. Such comments have gone hand-in-hand with aggressive media coverage in France, including Le Parisien daily’s December 29 front page calling TikTok “A real danger for the brains of our children.”
New restrictions may be in order. During a trip to the United States in November, Macron told a group of American investors and French tech CEOs that he wanted to regulate TikTok, according to two people in the room. TikTok denies it is harmful and says it has measures to protect kids on the app.
While it wasn’t clear what rules Macron was referring to — his office declined to comment — the remarks added to a darkening tableau for TikTok. In addition to two EU-wide privacy probes that are set to wrap up in coming months, TikTok has to contend with extensive new requirements on content moderation under the bloc’s new digital rulebook, the DSA, from mid-2023 — as well as the possibility of being caught up in the bloc’s new digital competition rulebook, the Digital Markets Act.
In answers to emailed questions, France’s digital minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that France would rely on the DSA and DMA to regulate TikTok at an EU level, though he “remained vigilant on these ever-evolving models” of ad-supported social media. Barrot added that he “never failed to maintain a level of pressure appropriate to the stakes of the DSA” in meetings with TikTok executives.
Ahead of Chew’s visit to Brussels, Thierry Breton, the bloc’s internal market commissioner, warned him about the need to “respect the integrality of our rules,” according to comments the commissioner made in Spain, reported by Reuters. A spokesperson for Vestager said she aimed to “review how the company was preparing for complying with its (possible) obligations under our regulation.”
That said, the probes TikTok is facing deal with suspected violations that have already taken place. If Ireland’s data regulator, which leads investigations on behalf of other EU states, finds that TikTok has broken the bloc’s privacy rulebook, the General Data Protection Regulation, fines could amount to up to 4 percent of the firm’s global turnover. Penalties can be even higher under the DSA, which starts applying to big platforms in mid-2023.
Spying fears
And yet, having to fork over a few million euros could be the least of TikTok’s troubles in Europe, as some lawmakers here are following their U.S. peers to call for much tougher restrictions on the app amid fears that data from TikTok will be used for spying.
TikTok is under investigation for sending data on EU users to China — one of two probes being led by Ireland. Reports that TikTok employees in China used TikTok data to track the movements of two Western journalists only intensified spying fears, especially in privacy-conscious Germany. (TikTok acknowledged the incident and fired four employees over what they said was unauthorized access to user data.)
One of the loudest critics is French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called TikTok “deceptively innocent” and a cause of “real addiction” among users | Pool photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Citing a “lack of data security and data protection” as well as data transfers to China, the digital policy spokesman for Germany’s Social Democratic Party group in the Bundestag said that the U.S. ban on TikTok for federal employees’ phones was “understandable.”
“I think it makes sense to also critically examine applications such as TikTok and, if necessary, to take measures. I would therefore advise civil servants, but also every citizen, not to install untrustworthy services and apps on their smartphones,” Jens Zimmermann added.
Maximilian Funke-Kaiser, digital policy spokesman for the liberal FDP group in German parliament, went even further raising the prospect of a full ban on use of TikTok on government phones. “In view of the privacy and security risks posed by the app and the app’s far-reaching access rights, I consider the ban on TikTok on the work phones of U.S. government officials to be appropriate. Corresponding steps should also be examined in Germany.”
For Moritz Körner, a centrist lawmaker in European Parliament, the potential risks linked to TikTok are far greater than with Twitter due to the former’s larger user base — at least five times as many users as Twitter in Europe — and the fact that up to a third of its users are aged 13-19.
“The China-app TikTok should be under the special surveillance of the European authorities,” he wrote in an email. “The fight between autocratic and democratic systems will also be fought via digital platforms. Europe has to wake up.”
In Switzerland, lawmakers called earlier this month for a ban on officials’ phones.
Call for a ban
So far, though, no European government or public body has followed the U.S. in banning TikTok usage on officials’ phones. In response to questions from POLITICO, a spokesperson for the European Commission — which previously advised its employees against using Meta’s WhatsApp — wrote that any restriction on TikTok usage for EU civil servants would “require a political decision and will be based on the careful assessment of data protection cybersecurity concerns, and others.”
The spokesperson also pointed out that “there are no official Commission accounts” on TikTok.
A spokesperson for the European Parliament said its services “continuously monitor” for cybersecurity issues, but that “due to the nature of security matters, we don’t comment further on specific platforms.”
POLITICO reached out to cybersecurity agencies for the EU, the U.K. and Germany to ask if they had or were planning any restrictions or recommendations having to do with TikTok. None flagged any specific restrictions, which doesn’t mean there aren’t any. In Germany, for example, officials who use iPhones can’t use or download TikTok in the section of their phone where confidential data can be accessed.
The European Commission has previously advised its employees against using Meta’s WhatsApp | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
For Hamburg’s data protection agency, one of 16 in Germany’s federal system, restricting TikTok on official phones would be a good idea.
“Based on what we know from the available sources, we share, among other things,the concerns of the U.S. government that you mentioned and would therefore welcome it appropriate for government agencies in the EU to refrain from using TikTok,” a spokesperson said.
This suggests that the most immediate public threat for TikTok in Europe is privacy-related. Of the two probes being conducted by Ireland’s privacy regulator, the one looking into child safety on the app is the closest to wrapping up, according to a spokesperson for the Irish Data Protection Commission.
Depending on the outcome of discussions between EU privacy regulators — the child safety probe is likely to trigger a dispute resolution mechanism — TikTok could face new requirements to verify age in the EU. The other probe, looking into TikTok’s transfers of data to China, is likely to wrap up around mid-year or toward the end of 2023 if a dispute is triggered, the spokesperson said.
Antoaneta Roussi contributed reporting.
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Nicholas Vinocur, Clothilde Goujard, Océane Herrero and Louis Westendarp
KYIV — When the Russians first came to the school where Larysa taught history in southeastern Ukraine, they asked for all the history and Ukrainian language textbooks.
The director refused to hand them over.
The school closed — but then reopened virtually on September 1, with up to 80 percent of its 700 pupils attending online. More than half of them remain in occupied Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhia region, said Larysa, who left in April for the Odesa region.
“Some go to Russian school and do homework with us,” she said. “We do all we can to make it incognito. We deleted all electronic lists, never put up any photos or screenshots or write names.”
Larysa did not give her surname or name the school for security reasons. Half of her colleagues are still on occupied territory and teaching online, risking imprisonment or worse from occupying forces — two were already detained and later released in September.
“They’re holding lessons in extreme conditions,” Larysa said. “Some were saved just because someone was on lookout. The wife was teaching a lesson and her husband was watching from the window so that she had time to hide everything before they came.”
After reopening in autumn 2021, following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, Ukrainian schools have moved mostly back online following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. But from bombs to blackouts to displacement to occupation, millions of Ukrainian children and young adults face an education interrupted, with educators struggling to work under desperate conditions.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine — 10 percent of the total — have been damaged or destroyed, according to the Ministry of Education. School buildings are at risk of shelling or lack heating after massive damage to the country’s energy infrastructure, while blackouts and interrupted internet connections hamper learning from home.
Meanwhile, thousands of students and teachers living under occupation face pressure to switch to Russian schooling.
Education, with its propaganda potential to influence young hearts and minds, has become a front line in the war.
Ideological battle
Crimea, under Russian control for more than eight years, is an example of how Russian education in occupied territories aims — with eventual success — to erase Ukrainian identity and militarize children.
History lessons there claim that Ukraine was always part of Russia. Army cadet courses and classes sponsored by law enforcement agencies start for children as young as six, says Maria Sulyanina from the Crimean Human Rights Group.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine — 10 percent of the total — have been damaged or destroyed | Genya Savilov AFP via Getty images
“We see that these children who were small kids when the occupation started, after eight years they have been turned into Russians,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has steadily been moving its educational system away from that inherited from the Soviet Union. It has relegated Russian to foreign language teaching; moved Russian literature to part of the study of world literature; and revised history courses to include events like the Holodomor, the Soviet-caused famine in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians and is still largely denied in Russia.
Yet despite Russia’s carrot-and-stick approach — from September, parents in recently occupied territories are paid a one-off of 10,000 rubles (€145) to send their children to Russian school, plus 4,000 per month that they stay — many families are sticking to a Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers are still teaching it.
But the war has made Ukrainian education extremely tenuous.
When Russia invaded and occupied Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, the vocational school where Viktoria Scherbakova taught was pressured to switch to the Russian system, and later damaged and looted.
Now, her classroom — and office — is the kitchen table at a small rented flat she shares with her two children and elderly parents in Kyiv, after she and her children fled the Russian occupation. The flat is also her daughter’s Kharkiv university virtual lecture hall and her son’s Kyiv ninth-grade classroom on days when air raid sirens sound and he can’t attend school.
The motor transport vocational college in Kupiansk where Scherbakova taught, which offered practical training for mechanics and drivers along with courses in transport logistics to some 300 pupils aged 14 to 18, exists as a displaced, virtual entity, with no home of its own. Although she is offering lessons online, Scherbakova doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to teach there again in person.
“We’re not in Kyiv, not in Kharkiv, not in Kupiansk,” she said. “We’re not anywhere.”
The education front line
As of October, about 1,300 schools were on Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. Teachers have been targeted for collaboration and detained, threatened and mistreated. Staff have been sent to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea for retraining in the Russian education system or told they would be replaced by teachers from Russia if they refused to work.
In Kupiansk, after the then-mayor surrendered to the Russians on February 27, educational establishments stayed open. However, many parents kept their children out of school — including Scherbakova, whose 14-year-old son stayed at home although she herself continued to work at the college.
Apart from hoisting a Russian flag outside, the occupiers left them alone — until June. But by the end of term, it became clear that staff would be forced to decide: leave, or start the next school year under the Russian system.
“And if you didn’t work for them, it wasn’t clear what the consequences would be,” said Scherbakova. “If you openly said you didn’t support them, you would end up in their prisons or cellars.”
Many families are sticking to a Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers are still teaching it | Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty images
One school director in Kupiansk, who refused to open her school after occupation, spent almost a month detained in the basement of the police station.
Of nearly 50 teaching and administrative staff in the vocational college, only seven refused to work with the Russian occupying authorities, according to Scherbakova.
“I’m ashamed of my college,” she said.
Spurred by the apparent ultimatum, Scherbakova and her children managed to leave Kupiansk for free Ukrainian territory in early June. The college was moved to operate virtually in Ukrainian-controlled territory, with her role shifting to acting director. With a colleague, they printed diplomas for those graduates who were reachable — 35 out of 53 — and developed a program to start the new teaching year.
But when she and a colleague started calling students, they found out that the teenagers had been enrolled to start the year in the college in Kupiansk — under the Russian system.
The physical and the virtual college started teaching parallel courses on September 1. Eight days later, Ukrainian forces took back Kupiansk.
When Scherbakova went back to Kupiansk after liberation, she found that though the college had been completely looted of its equipment and training vehicles, the library was full of untouched new Russian textbooks.
Some of the college staff who had remained in Kupiansk fled to Russia. Others got in touch with Scherbakova asking if they could work with her.
“At first I didn’t have an answer. I’m not the SBU [Ukrainian security services], I can’t judge them,” she said.
Some are under suspicion of collaboration. Later, the Ministry of Education clarified that teachers who had collaborated or brought in the Russian education system were banned from teaching. According to Ukrainian legislation on collaboration adopted in early September, teachers who engage in Russian propaganda in schools can be sentenced to prison terms. By mid-September, 19 proceedings had been opened against teachers in Ukraine.
Back in Kyiv,Scherbakova conducts online lessons and end-of-term exams amid daily power cuts since Russia began bombing essential infrastructure in Ukraine.
Her students, scattered around the country by war, face power outages too. Others, displaced abroad, are fitting lessons around schooling in Germany or England. And some remain in Kupiansk, recently liberated from occupation, where there is no internet, and the town comes under Russian shelling morning and night.
Viktoria Scherbakova conducts online lessons and end-of-term exams amid daily power cuts since Russia began bombing essential infrastructure in Ukraine | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty images
“Those ones, all I can do is call and ask: ‘Are you alive? How did the night go? This is your exam question, just tell me something, whatever comes into your head,’” said Scherbakova.
“Of course, I can’t give them good marks. But I can’t abandon them.”
Lost generation
The physical challenges of war and the ideological battle as Russia seeks to impose its education system threaten the very basis of education in Ukraine: participation.
Scherbakova says her students, many of whom come from low-income families, are dropping out of online courses. “They need to survive. They dropped everything to find work,” she said. “Many of them had to leave their homes, and they need to live on something.”
Teachers are leaving the profession too — due to migration, retirement, low salaries, and war-related stresses and bans. The Kharkiv region has lost nearly 3,000 of 21,500 teachers since February, according to its education department.
In Kupiansk, as in many liberated towns and villages, the will to learn is not matched by the necessary infrastructure of electricity, internet and teachers. Children can only get an education if they move.
“We don’t want to leave. This is our land, and we want to live here,” said Iryna Protsenko, who was recently collecting humanitarian aid in Kupiansk with her daughter Zlata, 6. The family ran a small dairy business in the town before the war and stayed throughout occupation. “But now I’m afraid we will have to leave, because of school.”
Zlata, smiling shyly next to her mother, wants to learn, said Protsenko. She should start school this year. For the moment they read books together at home — easier now that electricity has been restored. “But she’s lonely.”
Ukrainian children were already starved of live interaction due to pandemic restrictions. Now, with only online teaching, plus the interrupted routines and safety restrictions of war, they are becoming increasingly stressed and withdrawn.
“It’s not so much the quality of education as the communication. They are losing socialization,” said Larysa, the teacher from Berdiansk.
Some parents compare the situation to that of their grandparents, who missed years of education during World War II. When the war was over, they had to study together with much younger children, earning themselves the name ‘pererostki,’ or ‘overgrown.’
“I think it will be like my grandma,” said Maria Varenikova, a journalist living in Kyiv with her son Nazar, 11. “Something will have to be figured out in Ukraine, given that for years children don’t have an education because of COVID, and now war.”
“They try hard and worry so much. They are lost children” said teacher Viktoria Scherbakova | Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty images
Nazar’s school opened in person this September, keeping going with generators, bottled water and a basement bomb shelter. But Nazar is repeating the largely lost previous school year.
Scherbakova’s son, on top of the trauma of fleeing his home, had to cram in most of the last school year in extra classes over the summer in order to progress to the next grade in Kyiv.
“They try hard and worry so much,” said Scherbakova. “They are lost children.”
Prince Harry never imagined he’d be left to fend for himself when it came to a security detail for his family, especially after his uncle Prince Andrew was permitted to keep his despite being in the midst of a sexual assault scandal, he reportedly writes in his new book.
In a portion of his forthcoming memoir, Spare, obtained by Us Weekly, the Duke of Sussex recalls that when he and his wife, Meghan Markle, decided to move to America after stepping down from their positions as senior royals in 2020, she expressed fears that they would be left unprotected, and he reassured her, “Never. Not in this climate of hate. Not after what happened to my mother [Princess Diana]. Also, not in the wake of my Uncle Andrew.” He goes on to say in the excerpt that his uncle “was embroiled in a shameful scandal, accused of the sexual assault of a young woman and no one had so much suggested that he lose his security. Whatever grievances people had against us, sex crimes weren’t on the list.” Following the move, however, Harry and Meghan did lose their royal security detail, which, in the prince’s opinion, was a refusal by the palace to perform “its implicit promise” and “obligation” to them.
The same month that Andrew was stripped of his titles, Harry issued a statement regarding the palace’s decision to remove his security detail. “Prince Harry inherited a security risk at birth, for life. He remains sixth in line to the throne, served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats,” the statement read. “While his role within the Institution has changed, his profile as a member of the royal family has not. Nor has the threat to him and his family.” He added that he and his wife’s personally funded security team could not “replicate the necessary police protection needed whilst in the UK.”
To compound matters, Harry also shares in his new book that he suffers from agoraphobia and panic attacks, which made the public duties of royal life all the more difficult and terrifying, something he says his brother, Prince William, once mocked him for, according to the excerpt from Us Weekly. “I was an agoraphobe. Which was nearly impossible given my public role. After one speech, which couldn’t be avoided or canceled, and during which I’d nearly fainted, Willy came up to me backstage. Laughing,” the duke writes. “Him of all people. He’d been present for my very first panic attack. With [Princess] Kate. We were driving out to a polo match in Gloucestershire, in their Range Rover. I was in the back and Willy peered at me in the rearview. He saw me sweating, red-faced…. He’d told me that day or soon after that I needed help. And now he was teasing me? I couldn’t imagine how he could be so insensitive.”
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This is an opinion editorial by Matt Smith, an operations officer for the United States Air Force and an assistant professor of aerospace studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
As the country’s most adversarial competitors actively pursue ways to de-dollarize the world while simultaneously publicly announcing, “the economy of imaginary wealth is being inevitably replaced by the economy of real valuables and hard assets,” the race for bitcoin accumulation, the hardest and scarcest asset in the world, is not too far off in the not so distant future.
Countries will not ban Bitcoin. Instead, eventually, they will aggressively compete for it and those with larger fractions of 21 million will have greater strategic and economic primacy than their geopolitical competitors.
With that being said, the National Security Strategy (NSS) is a periodic document designed to communicate the vision of the executive branch and serve as the roadmap for U.S. that helps Congress carry out the directions laid out by the highest office in the land. The October 2022 NSS outlines how the White House “will seize this decisive decade to advance America’s vital interests, position the United States to outmaneuver geopolitical competitors, tackle shared challenges, and set our world firmly on a path toward a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow.”
These powerful words not only inspire hope and promise of a better future for the American people as the U.S. strives to continue to be the champion of freedom and democracy on the world stage, but they also recognize that if there are any missteps in the nation’s strategic interests, that might bring further darkness to a country desperately seeking light or, even worse, cost the nation to lose a grip on its global influence. It is imperative that the U.S. truly weighs all available options in order to secure the best outcomes that promote American values and protect the American way of life.
Digital Currency Can No Longer Be Ignored
Part of the most recent NSS, under the “Trade And Economics” section, states, “[the U.S.] will explore the merits and responsibly lead development of digital assets, including a digital dollar, with high standards and protections for stability, privacy, and security to benefit a strong and inclusive U.S. financial system and reinforce its global primacy.”
Despite being labeled “magic internet money” and “rat poison” over the last decade, the rise of Bitcoin secured its credibility and since then, has gradually made its way into committees and boardrooms consisting of members holding the highest positions of influence. It can no longer be ignored. The aforementioned excerpt of the NSS provides important insight into the executive branch’s current view of the growing significance of developing digital assets like Bitcoin.
One driver for this growing interest into digital assets is undoubtedly the U.S. national debt, as the nation currently runs a $31 trillion deficit with no sign of slowing down. Senator Rand Paul recently acknowledged that “the greatest national security risk is our debt” after the release of a single, $1.7 trillion (or roughly 95 million bitcoin, in today’s value) spending package. The mountain of national debt is certainly a cause of concern.
There are only two ways a deficit of that magnitude can ever be paid: either by default through a monetary reset or inflation. Because of the unsurmountable level of debt, there is a growing need for innovation to help solve this dilemma. The path to a digital dollar is nearly inevitable, as the era of 0% money quickly approaches its expiration date and forces the transition into a new monetary system that will be birthed into existence — a monumental shift of which the world has not experienced since the likes of the Nixon Shock in 1971. In 1971, instead of defaulting on its financial obligations, the U.S. changed the economic policy entirely, ended the Bretton Woods era and removed gold from being tied to the U.S. dollar.
If history is any future indicator of what will occur at the end of the next financial cycle, the U.S. will likely explore an alternative economic policy as alluded to in the NSS, but this time will introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or a digital dollar, to avoid defaulting on its current debt which, ironically, is a form of default.
The U.S. Can Adopt Bitcoin
However, there may not be a need for the U.S. to invent a domestic digital dollar as Bitcoin fits the criteria that the NSS details. Bitcoin is the hardest form of money and provides the highest standards of protection to individuals. It is the most stable digital asset as it continues to release a new block every 10 minutes, and is the most inclusive monetary protocol as it allows not just individuals with social security numbers and two forms of government-issued IDs to access its benefits, but its open-source protocol grants protection and services to everyone including the 1.4 billion unbanked people across the world while the Lightning Network promotes efficient transactions, arguably the most important dimension of a globalized economy.
As more individuals, companies, banks and countries are forced by the market to pay out loans in bitcoin instead of notes, holders of the largest bitcoin stacks will naturally gain more influence. Its built-in deflationary nature and absolute scarcity features ensures that 100% of the work and value created by people is enjoyed and never diminished through monetary debasement. Lastly, Bitcoin’s enormous defense system discourages bad actors as the cost of attack has become too great and thus forces peaceful and mutually beneficial agreements.
In every sense, the Bitcoin protocol perfectly aligns with the core values of the United States and its national security strategy. Contrary to what some senior officials claim, Bitcoin does not generate a national security risk. Instead, ignoring the Bitcoin network would significantly impede the U.S.’s ability to pay its national debt, “outmaneuver [its] geopolitical competitors” and weaken the country’s economic instrument of power, which aims to leverage the country’s wealth to influence the behaviors of others. Thus, further delaying Bitcoin adoption is the national security risk.
This is a guest post by Matt Smith. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Department of Defense or the United States Air Force.
This mainly stems from the worry that miner revenue will not be enough to offer adequate security in the future, post block subsidy. Bitcoin miners play a crucial part in securing the network by proposing blocks of transactions which nodes then verify, accept and update to the Bitcoin ledger. Competing against other miners to propose this new block to the chain, miners use intense computing power to complete the proof-of-work consensus algorithm, and win the right to propose the new block.
Simplified, the concern is that the transaction fee portion of the miner rewards will not be raised enough to make up for the loss of the block subsidy, resulting in decreased security for the Bitcoin network and an increased likelihood in attacks as miners are no longer incentivized to participate. My view, though, is that most who are worried about this are misunderstanding Bitcoin’s long-term game theory, incentive mechanisms, scalability and adoption potential.
With that being said, this is a topic that should probably be discussed more publicly and not shrugged off as a non-issue. There are people advocating for tail emissions to be added, creating an increase to Bitcoin’s 21 million supply as a solution to the security budget (settlement finality) issue, which is concerning.
I believe the solution (if you can call it that) is already baked into the Bitcoin incentive structure and adoption curve. There are two parts: one, transaction fees scaling with Bitcoin adoption and as a security measure and two, Bitcoin mining transitioning to an auxiliary tool.
Transaction Fee Scaling
When this issue is raised, it usually comes from somebody with a misunderstanding of how or why transaction fees will increase or advocating for proof of stake (here’s an example). Ironically, one of the reasons for increased transaction fees could be a natural defensive reaction to an attack from a bad actor mining empty blocks to prevent users from transacting. If empty blocks are being mined, the mempool will fill with Bitcoin transactors that are raising fees, competing with each other to get in the next block. Riot Blockchain and Blockware Solutions released an incredible report outlining how this and similar attacks would be met with naturally-occuring defense mechanisms from the Bitcoin immune system, most resulting in much higher transaction fees:
“Under an empty block attack or other attacks attempting to stop users from transacting, it is in the self-interest of Bitcoin users to raise their transactions’ fees to get into the next block. The more empty blocks (the longer the attack lasts), the more pending transactions in the mempool. Transaction fees could soar from 1 sat/vbyte to 1,000+ sats/vbyte. The reward for one block could go from close to 0 BTC to 10+ BTC assuming the current maximum block size of 1,000,000 vbytes. The system is antifragile, and an empty block attack would be met by an endless market based counterattack of high transaction fees. And knowledge of this counterattack would likely deter the attacker from this attack in the first place.”
Another example of fees raising as a result of the network defending itself would be a reaction to miners attempting to censor merchants. This example is covered more in depth in this article:
“If a majority miner is not accepting transactions from merchants then the censored merchants must either increase their fees or not transact at all. If a merchant cannot move their bitcoins then they effectively have no value for the duration in which they are being censored. We can deduce that, due to personal time preference, a merchant who is being censored will be willing to pay a higher confirmation fee proportional to the duration in which they are being censored, up to the theoretical maximum in which the fee is the entirety of the transaction.”
In addition to naturally-occuring defensive incentives that would result in increased transaction fees, there are also countless arguments for transaction fees increasing as a result of Bitcoin adoption, specifically as a medium of exchange.
As adoption increases, competition to add transactions to Bitcoin’s scarce block space will increase, and this increases current fees, which then creates further demand for scaling solutions. The market will continue to present these scaling solutions as demanded — some popular solutions now include exchanges batching transactions, the Lightning Network and other Layer 2 and Layer 3 developments that can ultimately bundle thousands of Bitcoin transfers into one transaction that settles on-chain.
When you understand Bitcoin’s adoption curve, it is completely reasonable to assume that the majority of normal user transactions will occur on additional layers or sidechains. Final settlement of these more efficiently-bundled transfers will occur on-chain, along with transactions that want increased security or institutions moving large values. The final settlement would warrant a much higher transaction fee.
The second route that should lower concern around miners dropping offline and reducing the overall security of the network is increased efficiency and a newer realization that Bitcoin miners can act as an auxiliary tool for other business practices. A highly-overlooked development in the mainstream lately has been the Bitcoin miners’ incentive to pursue stranded, wasted or excess energy.
Bitcoin mining offers a unique and new proposal for society, where untapped or un-transportable energy can now be instantly sold to the Bitcoin network on-site via mining. One of the most interesting innovations in this sector is ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) merging with Bitcoin.
There is an incredibly in depth article on how OTEC and Bitcoin can further energy production and efficiency here:
“Bitcoin has the potential to help unlock between 2 to 8 terawatts of clean, continuous and year-round baseload power — for one billion people — by harnessing the thermal energy of the oceans. that turns Earth’s oceans into an enormous renewable solar battery.
“It does this by combining warm tropical surface water and deep cold seawater to create a conventional heat engine. This simple idea is perfectly suited to be expanded to a planetary scale by Bitcoin’s unique appetite for purchasing and consuming stranded energy from the prototypes and pilot plants that will be required to prove it works. Furthermore, by harnessing virtually unlimited quantities of cold water for cooling co-located ASIC miners, OTEC may very well be the most efficient and most ecological way to mine Bitcoin.”
This is just one example of how mining can become even more efficient over time, and with increased efficiency comes continued network security as it makes less sense for miners to go offline.
Bitcoin mining is also now becoming an auxiliary tool for other industrial processes. Bitcoin miners can pair with different industries and businesses and offer enormous benefits to seemingly-normal business practices. One mind-blowing example: ASICs used to mine Bitcoin generate heat, this heat can be used to boil water and create steam, condensing the water again is a form of purification, and ultimately this can result in water distillation that was subsidized by mining, as was discussed in a recent Troy Cross interview.
These ASICs that generate heat also need to be cooled with fans. Another mind-blowing concept is combining mining with businesses or industries that naturally create cool air. An example that Cross discussed was carbon capture facilities, which integrate enormous fan banks as part of their normal business operations. Pairing these fan banks with a mining operation subsidizes the cost of ASIC cooling.
As these innovations get more developed, simply adding Bitcoin mining to countless unrelated industries and businesses that generate cooling or need heating will improve efficiency and reduce costs. Bitcoin mining is already heating greenhouses and distilling whiskey, while at the same time monetizing stranded or wasted energy.
Over time, Bitcoin mining will continue to be paired with industries that make mining or normal business operations more profitable. Eventually it will be ridiculous to not use your businesses’ naturally-generated heat or wasted energy on Bitcoin miners, or if your business happens to have enormous fan banks, it will become ridiculous to not point them at ASICs. All of this results in more positively-incentivized miners over time which maintains network security and has the potential to counterbalance the shrinking block subsidy.
The combination of Bitcoin’s adoption naturally leading to increased transaction fees over time and Bitcoin mining shifting into an auxiliary tool for a wide range of independent industries demonstrate how the long-term security of the network is something to be optimistic about.
This is a guest post by Dillon Healy. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
National Safety Shelters sees sharp increase in demand for bulletproof pods to protect students, teachers and staff from active shooters.
Press Release –
Dec 20, 2022 09:00 EST
PORT SAINT LUCIE, Fla., December 20, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– As the United States hits the alarming milestone of 1,000 incidents of gunfire in schools in the last decade, school officials are looking for better ways to protect children, including in-classroom safety pods from National Safety Shelters.
Despite traditional safety measures like security guards, metal detectors, pat-downs and more, armed assailants are penetrating school security perimeters and gaining access to classrooms, with deadly consequences. Everytown for Gun Safety, a respected group working to reduce gun violence, reports that this year, U.S. schools reached 1,000 shooting incidents since the group began compiling data in 2013.
Those shootings resulted in 331 deaths and 698 injuries, in addition to creating pervasive anxiety and fear: Only 31% of parents of children in grades K-12 say they feel their kids are safe at school.
Teachers say that schools and classrooms provide little protection in the case of an active shooter.
“It’s heartbreaking that teachers themselves describe students and faculty as ‘sitting ducks’ in the classroom,” said Dennis Corrado, founder and president of National Safety Shelters. “Some school leaders are recognizing they need to provide better protection, and as a result, we’re seeing a sharp increase in inquiries and purchases of safety pods from school districts across the country.”
The Final Report of the Federal Commission on School Safety recommends that schools should “seek to create secure spaces within classrooms where students and teachers can shelter in case of an active shooter.” National Safety Shelters’ classroom pods offer precisely that – immediate and unbreachable “secure spaces within classrooms,” with walls made of quarter-inch American-made NIJ Ballistic Level III steel – a material that can withstand the intensity of semi-automatic weapons.
Some school districts are taking these proactive measures and attracting the attention of safety-minded parents. After the Quitman School District in Quitman, Arkansas, invested in National Safety Shelters pods in all their classrooms, enrollment went up 20%.
Quitman superintendent Dennis Truxler recommends to all administrators and school boards that they “seriously consider adding classroom shelters to their schools” as a safety net against active shooters.
National Safety Shelters offers Safety Pods, Safety Shelters, and Safe Rooms for instant protection from armed intruders, EF5 tornadoes, bomb threats, and even earthquakes. Visit https://nationalsafetyshelters.com to learn how National Safety Shelters can protect your school.
The liberation of Kherson by Kyiv troops more than a month ago hasn’t brought peace of mind nor a feeling of security to residents of the southern Ukrainian city.
Moscow launched a missile strike on the city Saturday morning, killing at least eight people and injuring another 58, with 18 of the injured were in serious condition, according to local officials.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other Kyiv officials published graphic pictures of burning cars and people lying in blood on the streets.
“Social networks will most likely mark these photos as ‘sensitive content.’ But this is not sensitive content — it is the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy wrote. “These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”
Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, called Saturday’s assault “another brutal attack by Russia on recently-liberated Kherson.”
“Truly horrific, especially on Christmas Eve,” Brink said in a tweet.
Kherson, which had a pre-war population of about 300,000, became a target for Russian troops after their withdrawal from the city and other settlements on the western bank of the Dnipro River to the eastern bank in November in an attempt to avoid being cut off by the artillery of advancing Ukrainian troops. Over the past weeks, Russian forces have attacked Kherson and other Kyiv-controlled territories around the city with artillery, rocket launchers and mortars on a daily basis, according to local authorities.
On Friday, Russian troops shelled the Kherson region 74 times, as a result of which five civilians were killed, 17 people were injured, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the regional governor, wrote on his social media.
Intensified daily bombardments put many civilians in front of a difficult choice — either to risk their lives staying in Kherson or to leave the city for safer Kyiv-controlled areas of the country.
Ukraine’s Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories said earlier this week that more than 12,000 people have been evacuated from liberated territories in the Kherson region “over the past months.”
On Friday, the ministry said that local authorities urged residents of the Ostriv district of Kherson, which remains “a zone of increased danger” due to constant enemy shelling, to leave their homes as they may be left without electricity, heat and water supply.
SAINT-PAUL-LEZ-DURANCE, France — Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has ripped apart Moscow’s ties with the EU and the U.S. on everything from energy to trade to travel — but there’s one partnership they can’t escape.
Tucked away in a quiet sun-soaked corner of southern France, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) — an effort to harness the power of nuclear fusion to unleash vast amounts of clean energy — continues to purr along with the participation of Russian scientists and Russian technology.
Earlier this month, scientists at ITER hailed a major breakthrough announced by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which said it had overcome a major barrier — producing more energy from a fusion experiment than was put in.
The 35-nation ITER — born out of U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1985 meeting after decades of Cold War tensions — has no way of removing a member gone rogue; there’s no path to kicking Russia out of the experiment without torpedoing the entire scheme.
The €44 billion project aims to test nuclear fusion — a process occurring in the center of stars — as a viable source of carbon-free energy that’s minimally radioactive. By injecting hot plasma that reaches 150 million degrees Celsius into a deviceand confining it with magnetic fields, hydrogen nuclei fuse into a helium nucleus and additional neutrons, releasing huge amounts of energy.
The EU shoulders around half of ITER’s costs and manages its participation through the bloc’s Barcelona-based Fusion 4 Europe (F4E) agency; India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. each have a roughly 9 percent share.
As an active participant in ITER, Russia still has around 50 staff, including engineers, working onsite.
Flags of participant nations fly outside the ITER complex | Photo by Victor Jack/POLITICO
Immediately after Moscow launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine in February, the project was left in a tight spot, especially as Russian government representatives form part of the high-level decision-making board, the ITER Council, alongside their European and American counterparts.
“It’s a difficult balance between condemning a member and facing the consequences for the project,” said ITER Communication Officer Sabina Griffith, who adds that there were initially intensive discussions about how to respond. Staff even briefly discussed putting a banner on the project’s website condemning the war, before scrapping the idea.
Even if “the organization itself is apolitical … many people were questioning” what to do after the invasion began, according to ITER’s chief engineer Alain Bécoulet, who added that there was “a lot of sadness” among the staff.
“The political situation so far is stable, [with] all members … declaring that they want to continue to work together,” he said, adding that the first ITER Council meeting after the invasion in June was “very constructive.”
ITER Council members again “reaffirmed their strong belief in the value of the ITER mission” when they met at the site for their latest gathering in October.
The experiment — over budget and over deadline — has already had its fair share of controversies. France’s nuclear safety authority in January suspended the assembly of the fusion reactor over safety concerns. F4E has been plagued by accusations of a high-pressure and overwork culture that critics have linked to at least one suicide.
Vladimir Tronza | Photo by Victor Jack/POLITICO
Unlike Geneva-based particle physics laboratory CERN — a collaborative research center that suspended its ties with Russia after the war began — ITER is an international agreement like the U.N., making it hard to suspend Moscow, said Bécoulet.
That’s because up to 90 percentof the funding comes not in the form of cash but “in-kind” contributions of equipment, with participant countries each manufacturing a one-of-a-kind bespoke piece of the overall reactor that is then put together like a giant puzzle.
While the set-up was designed to create specialized fusion expertise across the world and stimulate domestic manufacturing, it now means that if one member doesn’t deliver a part, the entire project could collapse, wasting billions.
Even if they wanted to, countries couldn’t formally kick Russia out of the project, as there’s no clause in ITER’s constitution that would allow them to do so— instead, every other country would have to pull out.
Going nuclear
But that doesn’t mean the project hasn’t been impacted by Russia’s war.
For one, Western sanctions and Moscow’s counter-sanctions have made it a minefield to procure Russian-made parts, according to Bécoulet.
“It turns out 2022 is one very important year in terms of Russian deliveries” for the project, he said, with Moscow producing crucial parts including busbars — aluminum bars feeding the reactor with a huge electric current — and a 200-ton ring-shaped magnet that shapes the plasma and keeps it suspended in the reactor, called a poloidal field coil.
Transporting the busbars by truck and the field coil — which is on its way from St. Petersburg to Marseille — by ship required “more paperwork, more justification to explain to the various European countries that no, we are not subject to sanctions — we have derogations,” he said. The “painful” process delayed deliveriesby up to two months, he added.
It also left Russian staff in the lurch, including Moscow-born assembly engineer Vladimir Tronza, who’s worked onsite since 2016.
“In the beginning, everyone was like, ‘What’s going to happen? Should we look for another job? Should we pack and go back?’” he said, adding that Russian staff members were initially concerned that Moscow would exit the project.
But Tronza said he hasn’t heard of Russian staff going home, with the “majority not interested to go back” given many have settled in southeastern France.
“Collaboration is important — it’s important to keep the ties and … talk,” he said, adding that the project is “a global good.”
PARIS — A Moroccan secret service agent, identified as Mohamed Belahrech, has emerged as one of the key operators in the Qatar corruption scandal that has shaken the foundations of the European Parliament. His codename is M118, and he’s been running circles around European spy agencies for years.
Belahrech seems at the center of an intricate web that extends from Qatar and Morocco to Italy, Poland and Belgium. He is suspected of having been engaged in intense lobbying efforts and alleged corruption targeting European MEPs in recent years. And it turns out he’s been known to European intelligence services for some time.
Rabat is increasingly in the spotlight, as focus widens beyond the role of Qatar in the corruption allegations of European MEPs, which saw Belgian police seizing equipment and more than €1.5 million in cash in raids across at least 20 homes and offices.
Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne last week provided a scarcely veiled indication that Morocco was involved in the probe. Speaking to Belgian lawmakers, he referred to “a country that in recent years has already been mentioned … when it comes to interference.” This is understood to refer to Morocco, since Rabat’s security service has been accused of espionage in Belgium, where there is a large diaspora of Moroccans.
According to Italian daily La Repubblica and the Belgian Le Soir, Belahrech is one of the links connecting former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri to the Moroccan secret service, the DGED. The Italian politician Panzeri is now in jail, facing preliminary charges of corruption in the investigation as to whether Morocco and Qatar bought influence in the European Parliament.
In a cache of Moroccan diplomatic cables leaked by a hacker in 2014 and 2015 (and seen by POLITICO), Panzeri is described as “a close friend” of Morocco, “an influential ally” who is “capable of fighting the growing activism of our enemies at the European Parliament.”
Investigators are now looking at just how close a friend Panzeri was to Morocco. The Belgian extradition request for Panzeri’s wife and daughter, who are also allegedly involved in the corruption scandal, mentions “gifts” from Abderrahim Atmoun, Morocco’s ambassador to Warsaw.
For several years, Panzeri shared the presidency of the joint EU-Morocco parliamentary committee with Atmoun, a seasoned diplomat keen on promoting Morocco’s interests in the Brussels bubble.
But it’s now suspected that Atmoun was taking orders from Belahrech, who is “a dangerous man,” an official with knowledge of the investigation said to Le Soir. It’s under Belahrech’s watch that Panzeri reportedly sealed his association with Morocco’s DGED after failing to get reelected to the Parliament in 2019.
Belharech may also be the key to unraveling one of the lingering mysteries of the Qatar scandal: the money trail. A Belgian extradition request seen by POLITICO refers to an enigmatic character linked to a credit card given to Panzeri’s relatives — who is known as “the giant.” Speculation is swirling as to whether Belahrech could be this giant.
The many lives of a Moroccan spy
Belahrech is no newbie in European spy circles — media reports trace his presence back to several espionage cases over the past decade.
The man from Rabat first caught the authorities’ attention in connection to alleged infiltration of Spanish mosques, which in 2013 resulted in the deportation of the Moroccan director of an Islamic organization in Catalonia, according to Spanish daily El Confidencial.
Belahrech was allegedly in charge of running agents in the mosques at the behest of the DGED, while his wife was suspected of money laundering via a Spain-based travel agency. The network was dismantled in 2015, according to El Mundo.
Not long after, Belahrech reemerged in France, where he played a leading role in a corruption case at Orly airport in Paris.
A Moroccan agent, identified at the time as Mohamed B., allegedly obtained up to 200 confidential files on terrorism suspects in France from a French border officer, according to an investigation published in Libération.
The officer, who was detained and put under formal investigation in 2017, allegedly provided confidential material regarding individuals on terrorist watchlists — and possible people of interest transiting through the airport — to the Moroccan agent in exchange for four-star holidays in Morocco.
French authorities reportedly did not press charges against Belahrech, who disappeared when his network was busted. According to a French official with knowledge of the investigation, Belahrech was cooperating with France at the time by providing intelligence on counterterrorism matters, and was let off for this reason.
Moroccan secret service agents may act as intelligence providers for European agencies while simultaneously coordinating influence operations in those same countries, two people familiar with intelligence services coordination told POLITICO. For that reason, European countries sometimes turn a blind eye to practices that could be qualified as interference, they added, so long as this remains unobtrusive.
Contacted, the intelligence services of France, Spain and Morocco did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
As to Belahrech: Five years after his foray in France, the mysterious M118 is back in the spotlight — raising questions over his ongoing relationship with European intelligence networks.
The boom gates at Croatian border posts swung up at midnight Sunday as the country joined Europe’s zone of free movement as the country also adopted the euro as its currency.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed “two immense achievements,” speaking alongside Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar at a border post in the town of Bregana.
“There is no place in Europe where it is more true today that it is a season of new beginnings and new chapters than here at the border between Croatia and Slovenia,” von der Leyen said.
“Nothing is the same after this,” said Plenković, noting the convenience that free movement and currency union will bring to Croatians.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the former Yugoslavian republic joining the EU. Von der Leyen praised the hard work of the Croatian people and singled out Plenković for pushing through the reforms needed to make the rapid ascension into the EU’s currency club.
She said the euro “brings macroeconomic stability and credibility” at home and abroad.
“Our citizens and the economy will be better protected from crises,” said Plenković.
But more than that, von der Leyen said, the euro coin imprinted with the pine marten — which gave its name to Croatia’s former currency, the kuna — is “a symbol of the successful union between your national identity and your European destiny.”
The adoption of the euro comes on the back of a long campaign to demonstrate that Croatia can adhere to the currency zone’s requirements for economic management. Croatian Finance Minister Marko Primorac told POLITICO last week that he expected the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to fall steeply in the coming years as the recovery from the pandemic continues.
Shortly after midnight, Primorac withdrew the first euros from a Croatian ATM.
The entry into the Schengen zone means the removal of land and sea border checks with Croatia’s European neighbors. Airport checks from the 26 other countries that participate in the scheme will end in March.
The fall of these barriers to movement is “the final affirmation of our European identity, for which generations of Croats fought and fought,” said Interior Minister Davor Božinović, who opened the barrier at Bregana at midnight on New Year’s Day alongside his Slovenian counterpart, Sanja Ajanović Hovnik.
Parties were organized by citizens at the border. Von der Leyen said those living close to Slovenia and Hungary would see “tangible results” as they were able to travel freely across the frontier for employment and shopping. “Communities will grow closer together,” she said.
The Commission president also noted the responsibility that joining Schengen confers on Croatia, at a time when migration pressures are a matter of growing political tension between the bloc’s members.
“We will need to work very closely together to protect Schengen and preserve its benefits,” said von der Leyen. “In Schengen, we rely on each other and we know that we can trust you and that we can rely on Croatia.”
In a statement, Slovenia’s Hovnik congratulated Croatia on a “historic” step, which her country took just a year before, and tried to settle Slovenian anxiety about security along the newly open border.
“It is an event for which we have been preparing for a long time on both sides of the border,” she said.
KYIV — On a frosty Saturday morning, several altar boys posed for group selfies next to the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Monastery complex in the Ukrainian capital.
“It is for history! Moskals used to occupy this place, and now we are here,” said one of the boys, using a Ukrainian slur for Russians.
“No time for photos, boys! We have work to do,” a priest admonished the youngsters as the first-ever Christmas service of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was about to start in Lavra — an 11th-century monastery that is the most important religious center for Ukrainian Orthodox believers.
“God has graced us with a great gift during difficult trials: For the first time, the Ukrainian prayer of the local autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine is heard in the main cathedral church of the Assumption of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Christ was born! Let’s praise Him!” Church Metropolitan Epifaniy said during the Christmas service.
Just as Ukraine is fighting against Russia to maintain its sovereignty, Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine is battling against Russian-backed priests for control over the Lavra Monastery complex, which is also known as the Monastery of the Caves. Rising numbers of Ukrainians have been moving away from the Russia-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is also known as the Ukrainian Church of Moscow Patriarchate, and have been switching allegiance to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, especially since February when Russia invaded Ukraine.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian-backed church started to be seen as a weapon of Moscow’s influence in Ukraine as many priests have allegedly collaborated with the Kremlin’s invading forces, according to the Ukrainian government.
‘Moral victory’
“We have already achieved a moral victory because all people of goodwill condemn the acts of genocide, terror, and numerous war crimes committed by the evil Russian empire on our land,” Metropolitan Epifaniy said in the Christmas service.
Hundreds of parishioners came to Lavra for the first Christmas service in the Ukrainian language inside these walls. The Dormition Church was soon full of soldiers, priests and other believers, and people kept coming. Some had to stay outside and watch the service on TV screens even though the temperature was minus 8 degrees Celsius. Many people cried with joy.
“This is a historical event. A turning point. Even though it is still unclear whether the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will get the long-time rent from the state, we saw the government’s position. And it is clear. There will be no Moscow Church here anymore, thank God,” one believer, 19-year-old Hanna from Kyiv, told POLITICO. “Of course, we want them to go peacefully. We want to celebrate the birthday of Christ in peace.”
Ukraine’s independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine is battling against Russian-backed priests for control over the Lavra Monastery complex | Ethan Swope/Getty Images
Previously, parishioners and priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were not allowed to pray here, as the Dormition Cathedral, the main church of the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery, used to be the main headquarters of the Russia-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church, also known as the Moscow Patriarchate Church. So far it is unclear whether the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine will be allowed to stay in churches for more than one Christmas day, because the previous tenants, Moscow-backed priests, won’t agree to go in peace.
Although the Lavra priests deny they still have ties to Moscow, many of them are currently under investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine for alleged collaboration with Russian security forces and invading soldiers after Russian passports and Russian propaganda material were found during searches of monasteries. The priests refute the accusations.
While the entire Lavra complex is state-owned, Russian-affiliated orthodox priests had rented the Dormition Cathedral and nearby Trapezna Church from the state since the 1990s. In December, their lease expired and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the primary manager of Lavra, refused to prolong it, returning both temples to the state on January 5.
Cathedral clash
Russian-affiliated priests refused to acknowledge the decision, claiming despite the expiration of the lease that they have the right to stay in the Lavra churches until the war ends. Russian-affiliated priests also assert that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has no right to serve in the Dormition Cathedral.
“The events announced on the territory of the Lavra are an attempt to forcibly seize the cathedral by means of blackmail and misleading society,” the Russian-affiliated church said in a statement on Thursday.
The priests claimed the Orthodox Church of Ukraine announced the service before it received official permission and pressured the government in Kyiv to grant it.
The Lavra priests consider themselves the only genuine local Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Many times, Moscow-backed priests have called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine schismatic even though in 2019 Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, officially recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and granted it self-governorship.
“The Ukrainian shrine should serve the entire Ukrainian people, and we will adhere to this principle in the future,” Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said in a statement on Telegram on Thursday.
Some 3,000 police officers were guarding the Lavra premises during the Christmas service Saturday morning.
Qatar criticized the European Parliament for banning the Gulf state’s representatives at the institution, warning that this “discriminatory” move could harm broader EU-Qatari cooperation where the bloc is dependent on Doha, including with energy.
The Parliament last week barred Qatari representatives from entering the premises and suspended legislation related to the country that include visa liberalization and planned visits. The moves followed allegations of corruption involving attempts to influence officials at the Parliament.
“The decision to impose such a discriminatory restriction … will negatively affect regional and global security cooperation, as well as ongoing discussions around global energy poverty and security,” a Qatari diplomat said in a statement on Sunday reported by media. The statement added that the decision “demonstrates that MEPs have been significantly misled.”
“It is unfortunate that some acted on preconceived prejudices against Qatar and made their judgments based on the inaccurate information in the leaks rather than waiting for the investigation to conclude,” the statement said. The World Cup host “firmly” rejects the allegations “associating our government with misconduct,” it said.
EU countries have increasingly turned to Qatar in a bid to diversify energy supplies and make up for shortfalls amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Germany last month signing a 15-year contract for liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports. Doha provided a quarter of the EU’s LNG imports last year.
Belgian authorities have charged four people with links to the Parliament — including one of the institution’s vice presidents, Eva Kaili — with “criminal organization, corruption and money laundering” over allegations they accepted payments in exchange for doing the bidding of Qatar in Parliament. Kaili has since been stripped of her duties, while authorities have carried out raids on at least 20 homes and offices in Belgium, Greece and Italy in recent days.
Qatar also criticized Belgium for keeping the Gulf state in the dark about the investigation, which Belgian authorities said had taken more than a year before they made the first arrest this month.
“It is deeply disappointing that the Belgian government made no effort to engage with our government to establish the facts once they became aware of the allegations,” the diplomat said in the statement.
