‘A fight for your way of life’: Lithuania’s culture minister on Ukraine and Russian disinformation

‘A fight for your way of life’: Lithuania’s culture minister on Ukraine and Russian disinformation

Post By World artificial intelligence, cold war, Europe, fake news, Features, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine

Lithuania’s Minister of Culture Simonas Kairys spoke to FRANCE 24 about Lithuania’s fight against Russian disinformation and why the Baltic nation feels so bound to Ukraine.

Issued on: 16/03/2024 – 14:39

5 min

In March 1990, Lithuania became the first nation to declare its independence as the Soviet Union collapsed, setting an example for other states that had been under the Kremlin’s influence for half a century. As a nascent democracy emerging from Soviet control, Lithuania was free to rediscover its own history and culture.

But Vilnius has once again become a target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long considered the demise of the Soviet Union as a historical tragedy in which Russians were innocent victims. As part of efforts to justify the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has launched a disinformation campaign aimed at Kyiv’s allies in the West.

In addition to putting pressure on Ukraine’s supporters, the Kremlin has attempted to intimidate them. Russian authorities placed Lithuanian Culture Minister Simonas Kairys, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and others on a wanted list in February along with other Baltic officials for allowing municipalities to dismantle WWII-era monuments to Soviet soldiers, moves seen by Moscow as “an insult to history”.

Upon being informed his name was listed, Culture Minister Kairys was insouciant. “I’m glad that my work in dismantling the ruins of Sovietisation has not gone unnoticed,” he said.

FRANCE 24 spoke to Kairys on why it is vital to fight Russian propaganda, and why the Baltic state feels so invested in what is happening in Ukraine.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What historical narratives has Russia tried to distort when it comes to Lithuanian independence?

Simonas Kairys: Russia is still in “imperialism” mode. The way they inscribed me onto their wanted list shows that they think and act upon the belief that countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union – sovereign and independent countries such as Lithuania – are still part of Russia.

Russia has its own law system, which – from their point of view – is [the law even] in free countries (in the Russian criminal code, “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers” is an act punishable by a five-year prison term). It’s absurd and unbelievable how they interpret the current situation in the world. If they say, for example, that they are “protecting” objects of Soviet heritage in a foreign country like Lithuania, they are spreading their belief that it is not a free country. But we are not slaves, and we are taking this opportunity to be outspoken and say Russia is promoting a fake version of history.

Why is combating Russian disinformation essential for Lithuanian national security?

It is not important for Lithuania – it is important for the EU, for Europe and for the entire free world. The war in Ukraine is happening very near to the EU; it is happening only a few hours away from France. Culture, heritage [and] historical memory are also fields of combat. Adding me to their wanted list is just one example of this. When we see how Russia is falsifying not only history but all information, it’s important to speak about it very loudly. Lithuania has achieved a lot in this domain, along with Ukraine and France.

When France had the [rotating, six-month] presidency of the EU [in early 2022], we made several joint declarations. The result was that we signed a sixth package of sanctions against Russia and we designated six Russian television channels to be blocked in the EU – this was the first step in considering information as a [weapon]. In other words, information is being used by Russia to convince their society and sway public opinion in other European countries. Now we have a situation in which we are blocking Russian television channels in EU territory.

Our foreign partners often ask us upon which criteria Russian information can be considered as disinformation. These days, it’s very important to stress that any information – from television shows to news to other television productions – coming from Russia is automatically disinformation, propaganda and fake news. We must understand that there is no truth in what Russia tries to say.

This fight against disinformation is crucial because we are in a phase of big developments in technology and artificial intelligence. We have to ensure that our societies will be prepared, be capable of critical thinking, and understand what is happening in the world right now.

Olympic and world champion Ruta Meilutyte swims across a pond colored red to signify blood, in front of the Russian embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. © Andrius Repsys, AP

To borrow a term from Czech writer Milan Kundera, would you say that Lithuania was “kidnapped from the West” when it was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940?

During the Middle Ages, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania spanned from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. We were the same country as Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. We were oriented to the West and not the East. In much older times, during the Kievan Rus period, Moscow didn’t even exist; there were just swamps and nothing more. But with [growing] imperialism from the Russian side, they began portraying history in a different way. Yet our memory is like our DNA, our freedom and orientation are ingrained. The eastern flank of the EU is currently talking about the values of Western civilisation much more emphatically than in the past.

[During the Cold War] not only was our freedom taken but [Russia] tried to delete history and paint a picture only from the time when this imperialism entered our territory. But we remembered what happened in the Middle Ages; we remember how modern Lithuanian statehood arose after World War I and how we regained our freedom in 1990. It’s impossible to delete this memory and name Lithuania as a country that isn’t free. Once you take a breath of freedom, you never forget it. This is the reason why we understand Ukrainians and why we are so active to not only defend the territory of Ukraine, but also the values of Western civilisation as well.

How has the war in Ukraine influenced Lithuanian life and culture?

The main thing is to think about freedom; we have to do a lot because of that freedom, we have to fight for freedom … we understand more and more that culture plays a big role in this war, because it is based on culture and history. You can see what Putin is declaring and it is truly evident that culture, heritage and historical memory are used as the basis for an explanation of why Russia is waging war in Ukraine right now. (To justify the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has insisted that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and uniting them is a historical inevitability.)

There are important collaborations taking place with Ukrainian culture and artists. It’s important to give them a platform – for everyone to see that Ukraine is not defeated, that Ukraine is still fighting, that Ukraine will win, that we will help them.

The best response to an aggressor is to live your daily life, with all your traditions, habits and cultural legacy. This fight is also for your way of life. The situation is not one where you must stop and only think about guns and systems of defence – you have to live, work, create, and keep up your business and cultural life.

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Russians vote in presidential election amid sporadic acts of protest

Post By World Elections, Europe, protest, Russia, Vladimir Putin

Russia began three days of voting Friday in a presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule for six more years after he stifled dissent.

At least half a dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported, including a firebombing and several people pouring green liquid into ballot boxes — an apparent nod to the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who in 2017 was attacked by an assailant splashing green disinfectant in his face.

Voting is taking place through Sunday at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine and online. Putin cast his ballot online, according to the Kremlin.

The election comes against the backdrop of a ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and prominent rights groups and given Putin full control of the political system.

It also comes as Moscow’s war in Ukraine enters its third year. Russia has the advantage on the battlefield, where it is making small, if slow, gains. A Russian missile strike on the port city of Odesa killed at least 14 people on Friday, local officials said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has made Moscow look vulnerable behind the front line with long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia and high-tech drone assaults that put its Black Sea fleet on the defensive.

Border clashes

Russian regions bordering Ukraine reported a spike in shelling and repeated attacks this week by Ukrainian forces, which Putin described Friday as an attempt to frighten residents and derail the vote.

“Those enemy strikes haven’t been and won’t be left unpunished,” he vowed at a meeting of his Security Council.

“I’m sure that our people, the people of Russia, will respond to that with even greater cohesion,” Putin said. “Whom did they decide to scare? The Russian people? It has never happened and it will never happen.”

By the time polls closed Friday night at Russia’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad, more than a third of the country’s eligible voters had cast ballots in person and online, according to the Central Election Commission. Online voting, which began Friday morning, is available around the clock in Moscow and 28 other regions until 8 p.m. local time Sunday.

Officials said voting proceeded in an orderly fashion, but in St. Petersburg, a woman threw a Molotov cocktail on the roof of a school that houses a polling station, local news media reported. The deputy head of the Russian Central Election Commission said people poured green liquid into ballot boxes in five places, including Moscow.

News sites also reported on the Telegram messaging channel that a woman in Moscow set fire to a voting booth. Such acts are incredibly risky since interfering with elections is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The election holds little suspense since Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unchallenged. His political opponents are either in jail or in exile; Navalny, the fiercest of them, died in an Arctic penal colony last month. The three other candidates on the ballot are low-profile politicians from token opposition parties that support the Kremlin’s line.

‘No opposition. No freedom. No choice’

Observers have little to no expectation the election will be free and fair.

European Council President Charles Michel mordantly commented Friday on the vote’s preordained nature. “Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today. No opposition. No freedom. No choice,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Beyond the few options for voters, the possibilities for independent monitoring are very limited.

No significant international observers were present. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitors were not invited, and only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, decreasing the likelihood of independent watchdogs. With balloting over three days in nearly 100,000 polling stations, any true oversight is difficult anyway.

“The elections in Russia as a whole are a sham. The Kremlin controls who’s on the ballot. The Kremlin controls how they can campaign. To say nothing of being able to control every aspect of the voting and the vote-counting process,” said Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.

Ukraine and the West have also condemned Russia for holding the vote in Ukrainian regions that Moscow’s forces have seized and occupied.

In many ways, Ukraine is at the heart of this election, political analysts and opposition figures say. They say Putin wants to use his all-but-assured electoral victory as evidence that the war and his handling of it enjoys widespread support. The opposition, meanwhile, hopes to use the vote to demonstrate its discontent with both the war and the Kremlin.

Two anti-war politicians were banned from the ballot after attracting genuine — albeit not overwhelming — support, depriving the voters of any choice on the “main issue of Russia’s political agenda,” said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter.

‘Most vapid’ campaign since 2000

Russia’s scattered opposition has urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to show up at the polls at noon on Sunday, the final day of voting, in protest. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death.

“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin. … What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said.

How well this strategy will work remains unclear.

Golos, Russia’s renowned independent election observer group, said in a report this week that authorities were “doing everything so that the people don’t notice the very fact of the election happening.”

The watchdog described the campaign ahead of the vote as “practically unnoticeable” and “the most vapid” since 2000, when Golos was founded and started monitoring elections in Russia.

Putin’s campaigning was cloaked in presidential activities, and other candidates were “demonstrably passive,” the report said.

State media dedicated less airtime to the election than in 2018, when Putin was last elected, according to Golos. Instead of promoting the vote to ensure a desired turnout, authorities appear to be betting on pressuring voters they can control — for instance, Russians who work in state-run companies or institutions — to show up at the polls, the group said.

The watchdog itself has been swept up in the crackdown: Its co-chair, Grigory Melkonyants, is in jail awaiting trial on charges widely seen as an attempt to pressure the group ahead of the election.

“The current elections will not be able to reflect the real mood of the people,” Golos said in the report. “The distance between citizens and decision-making about the fate of the country has become greater than ever.”

(AP)

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Russia’s presidential election: Three Putin challengers but little suspense

Post By World Alexei Navalny, democracy, Europe, Features, presidential elections, Russia, Russian politics, Vladimir Putin

President Vladimir Putin faces just three rivals in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election after anti-war candidates were barred from running. But Leonid Slutsky, Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov do not pose much of a challenge for the Russian leader, who is all but guaranteed to secure another six-year term.

The first polls in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election opened in the country’s easternmost Kamchatka Peninsula region at 8am local time Friday, with the vast voting exercise spanning 11 time zones set to finish in the westernmost Kaliningrad enclave at 8pm on Sunday.

The election holds little suspense. Incumbent Vladimir Putin – who has been in power either as president or prime minister for nearly a quarter-century – is set to secure another six-year term.

But a longtime autocrat requires a veneer of legitimacy, even in Russia. Voters will thus have a choice between the almost guaranteed victor and three pre-approved candidates.

Ultranationalist Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladislav Davankov of the relatively liberal New People’s Party and veteran candidate Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party are the supporting characters in 2024’s electoral choreography. In a possible sign of Russia’s shrinking tolerance for political challenges, that’s four fewer candidates than qualified for the 2018 presidential election.

Competition and criticism was severely curtailed in the lead-up to the 2024 vote, with authorities blocking a number of opposition hopefuls and critics using a variety of means, including labelling them as “foreign agents”.

“Between the ‘foreign agent’ labels, the fines, imprisonments and the incredible hardening of the regime, the number of candidates is limited. However, they represent real political forces. The nationalist right carries political weight in Russia, as do the Communists, whose score could be in the region of 10 percent,” noted Jean de Gliniasty, former French ambassador to Russia and current senior research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS).

‘I don’t dream of beating Putin’

But while some of the candidates represent established political parties, they do not pose much of a challenge to Putin, nor have they put up much of a fight on the campaign trail.

Shortly after registering his candidacy in December 2023, Slutsky – the candidate from the ultranationalist LDPR founded by the late right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – appeared certain of defeat.

“I don’t dream of beating Putin. What’s the point?” Slutsky told reporters. The 56-year-old Russian politician who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian lower house, the State Duma, then predicted “a huge victory” for Putin.

At 75, Kharitonov is the oldest candidate on the ballot. A veteran Communist Party politician who has been a State Duma deputy since 1993, Kharitonov ran for president in 2004, coming in second to Putin with 13.7 percent of the vote.

This time, Kharitonov ran a low-key campaign, focused on Soviet-era issues, including criticising capitalism, promoting industrial nationalisation and an increase in the Russian birth rate.

Davankov, 39, is the youngest of the opposition candidates. The former businessman-turned-politician promotes greater freedom for businesses and a stronger role for regional authorities.

The deputy chairman of the State Duma, where his party holds 15 of the 450 seats, Davankov has tried to position himself as a candidate opposed to the Kremlin’s excessive curbs on personal freedoms. He favours peace talks with Ukraine, following the Kremlin’s official line, while reiterating that it should be “on our terms and with no rollback”, meaning Russia should not cede territory it has occupied.

“Each candidate presents juxtaposed ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively these contribute to Putin’s goal of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” noted Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in a column, “Putin’s Grand Plan for Russia’s 2024 Elections“.

According to Putin’s critics, these three quasi-opponents, integrated into the Russian political system, perform an important function: to channel the discontent of various strata of society and provide a pluralist veneer for the vote, while the real opposition has been wiped out by years of repression.

“Throughout history, Russian power has always been extremely careful to respect formal rules. Even a very authoritarian regime faces public opinion and cares about it. This election remains a test of Putin’s legitimacy and popularity. Even if this test appears to be a formality, it has value for those in power,” explained de Gliniasty.

No political space for anti-war candidates

But not all positions on the political spectrum are represented on the ballot this year. In the lead-up to the presidential election, criticism of the Ukraine invasion was effectively suppressed with the arrests of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters. Hefty fines were also slapped on anyone voicing opposition to the war, according to international rights groups.

Two independent presidential hopeful running on anti-war platforms, Yekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin, were barred from running by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).

While the CEC barred Duntsova in December, Nadezhdin’s candidacy attracted attention, with thousands lining up in cities across Russia in January to give their signatures supporting the anti-war candidate.

That did not work in Nadezhdin’s favour.

“The question obviously arose of leaving out a voice that could have played a symbolic role and brought in, dare I say it, left-leaning, liberal voters. Boris Nadezhdin could have stood for election if he had achieved a modest score, but faced with the enthusiasm generated by his candidacy, the Kremlin preferred to send him packing,” explained de Gliniasty.

A ‘noon vote’ campaign for Navalny supporters

Despite the sweeping crackdowns, some of Putin’s opponents have vowed to express their opposition at the polls. On March 5, Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya called the election a “masquerade” and urged Russians to cast protest votes.

“You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You can spoil your ballot paper, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters,” she urged.

In an action called “Noon against Putin”, Navalny supporters plan to go to their local polling station on Sunday exactly at midday, stand in line for a voting slip, and then vote in a way that expresses their protest.

Such social mobilisation comes with serious risks. Some Navalny supporters received letters last week warning them that prosecutors had reason to believe they will be participating in an illegal event that “bore signs of extremist activity”, an accusation Russia often levies at enemies of the Kremlin.

The ‘non-war’ across the border

Although the outcome of the vote is certain, the authorities have gone through great lengths to encourage Russians to go to the polls, dialing up the patriotism and presenting the vote as an essential step towards “victory” in Ukraine.

Over the past few weeks, Putin did several media appearances with the heroes of the “special military operation”, as the Ukraine war is still called in Russia.

But the campaign did not feature any debate on the conflict in Russia’s neighbouring state.

“One might have expected the subject of war to be central to the election campaign,” said Anna Colin-Lebedev, a specialist in post-Soviet societies at Paris-Nanterre University. “However, the debates – which did not excite the Russian public – were mainly devoted to other subjects such as education, culture, the economy, agriculture, demographics [and] housing” in what she called a “framed”, pre-approved narrative.

More than two years after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is attempting a tricky balancing act on the subject, according to experts.

“The authorities are caught in a contradiction,” noted de Gliniasty. “They want to talk as little as possible about the war in Ukraine, as if to say that everything is fine, that everything is normal and that it’s just a special operation. But at the same time, it wants this election to serve to legitimise the invasion.”

The turnout barometer

Given the stakes, the authorities are deeply invested in keeping up appearances by holding elections under the guise of a functioning democracy.

“These elections are very important for the Kremlin,” Nikolai Petrov of London-based Chatham House told the AFP. “It is needed to demonstrate that Russians overwhelmingly support Putin” during the military offensive.

Turnout then becomes a critical issue, as it does in most authoritarian countries holding questionable elections.

Some managers at state companies have ordered employees to vote – even asking them to submit photographs of their ballot papers, reported Reuters, quoting six sources who did not want to be named. Cash machines also remind Russians to vote. And in Russian-occupied Ukraine, residents have complained of pro-Russian collaborators with ballot boxes going from house to house looking for voters accompanied by armed soldiers.

Then there’s the question of vote-rigging.

“Parliamentary elections may be rigged in Russia, but presidential elections are not,” de Gliniasty said. “There are cameras and observers in polling stations. There’s no need for rigging because everything has been cleaned up beforehand so the result will be perfectly acceptable.”

But given the context of the Ukraine war and the hardening stance of the Russian regime, “we cannot predict what will happen in these elections”, admitted the former French ambassador.

Putin won nearly 77 percent of the vote in 2018, 14 points more than in 2012. At the country’s helm for almost a quarter-century, the indisputable master of the Kremlin has yet to name a successor. Putin signed into law a constitutional amendment in 2021 that altered term limits and will allow him to remain in power until 2036.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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Anti-Putin Russian groups stage new cross-border raids into Russia

Post By World Europe, Features, Kyiv, propaganda, Russia, Russian politics, Ukraine, Ukraine war analysis, Vladimir Putin

Pro-Ukrainian forces are conducting incursions into Russian territory, temporarily seizing a village in the border region of Kursk, reminiscent of similar operations in the spring of 2023 but occurring in a very different military and political context.

Ukraine-based Russian militias are again on the attack, staging cross-border raids this week into Russian territory. Pro-Ukrainian forces even claimed on Tuesday, March 12, to have taken full control of a Russian village. The Freedom of Russia Legion, mainly composed of anti-Putin Russian fighters, posted a video showing Russian soldiers deserting Tetkino, a municipality in the Kursk region, on the Russian side of the border.

Forces from other pro-Ukrainian groups – the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion – also announced incursions into the Kursk and Belgorod regions. These attacks were carried out with the support of “tanks, armoured vehicles, and drones“, according to analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group.

Moscow initially denied the attackers had entered areas inside Russia before stating later that the enemy fighters did not advance very far into Russia and were all driven back. “Thanks to the sacrifice of Russian soldiers, all attacks by Ukrainian terrorists have been repelled,” affirmed the Russian ministry of defence.

The situation on the ground appears to be somewhat less clear than suggested by Russian authorities. “Currently, there are still battles around Tetkino and pro-Ukrainian forces still seem capable of controlling part of this locality,” says Sim Tack, chief military analyst at Force Analysis, a conflict monitoring company.

Russia’s national guard said on Thursday it was fighting off attacks from pro-Ukrainian groups in the Kursk region, as clashes continued at the border.

The Russian defence ministry claimed its troops killed 195 Ukrainian soldiers and destroyed five tanks and four armoured infantry vehicles, two days after saying it killed 234 Ukrainian troops in another border assault.

In a joint statement, three pro-Kyiv militia groups called on Russian authorities to evacuate civilians from the regions of Belgorod and Kursk, saying that “civilians should not suffer from the war”.

The current incursions are “very similar to what happened in the spring and summer of 2023”, notes Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist in the Russia-Ukraine war at the University of Glasgow. In that incursion, pro-Kyiv Russian troops had crossed the border – a little further south, in the Belgorod region – and temporarily seized a village before retreating under pressure from Russian artillery.

At the time unprecedented, last year’s incursions served to put pressure on Russia by highlighting that its national territory was poorly protected. The dynamics of the war were then in Ukraine’s favour, given its army had managed to fend off Russian offensives. The 2023 raids had begun just before the start of Kyiv’s counteroffensive and gave the impression that Ukraine could strike anywhere.

The situation today is very different. The counteroffensive has fizzled out and Ukraine is now more on the back foot. As Aliyev notes: “Moscow has built a defensive line – similar to the one it set up in Ukraine – about twenty kilometres inside Russian territory.” This line of trenches extends from the north of the Kursk region to the south of the Belgorod region.

Before last year, “Russia didn’t have any defensive positions there”, Aliyev adds, meaning incursions could be made deeper into Russian territory.

Pro-Ukrainian forces chose to attack Tetkino for its vulnerable position.

“The village captured is not behind the defensive line. It’s a buffer zone, what Russia calls a security zone,” Aliyev says. “On the other side of the border the region is mostly under control of Ukrainians, so it’s not difficult for pro-Ukraine forces to cross the border and occupy that village”

An attempt to influence the Russian election?

If taking a border village like Tetkino was a relatively easy objective for the Freedom of Russia Legion and other armed groups of anti-Putin Russians, it remains to be seen how long they’ll be able to stay there. “If they’ve taken armoured vehicles, it’s also in anticipation of a rapid retreat, so they suspect they won’t be able to occupy Tetkino” for long, notes Tack.

But why expend resources on a raid into Russia instead of strengthening defences on the front line in the Donbas, where Ukraine’s forces are under great duress? Officially, the Freedom of Russia Legion claimed it wanted to “influence the presidential election” to be held March 15-17, according to the Moscow Times

The pro-Kyiv Russians aim to show their compatriots that there is an alternative to Putin. “It is a way for them to try to prove to the Russians that they have the means to ‘liberate Russia from Putin’,” explains Nicolo Fasola, a specialist in Russian military issues at the University of Bologna.

The Ukrainian military leadership also stated that the Russian militia groups had acted on their own without informing Kyiv. According to Tack, this is unlikely “because to be able to move troops and tanks in this region, at least tacit approval from the Ukrainian army is needed. But this helps strengthen the narrative of an operation carried out by Russians to overthrow Vladimir Putin“.

But the ambitions of the anti-Putin forces are obviously unattainable, Tack says. “These fighters do not have the means to go very far,” he notes, adding that they did not even attempt to break through the new Russian defensive lines.

Few Russians will even hear about the capture of Tetkino, says Aliyev. “The problem is that most Russian don’t follow independent media or Western mass media. And they will be fed with the Russian propaganda about a Ukrainian failed ‘terrorist’ attempt” against Russia.”

Kyiv’s ‘diversion capabilities’

In this regard, the cross-border raids could even be counterproductive. Coming just days before the Russian presidential election, “these incursions will likely cement the attractiveness of Putin as president”, says Fasola. “The rhetoric of a ‘besieged Russia’ is key to Putin’s platform and these attacks on Russian territory basically prove he’s right, in the eyes of the larger Russian public.”

But these operations are not useless in the eyes of the Ukrainian high command. “These anti-Putin Russian forces are part of the diversion capabilities at Kyiv’s disposal,” notes Tack. “Each of their operations serves to push Moscow to allocate resources capable of intervening quickly to defend the entry points into Russian territory.”

The raids are part of “a broader strategy at work in recent weeks”, says Tack. There were attacks against Russian warships in the Black Sea at the end of February, followed by the strike using dozens of drones against the Lukoil oil refinery in Kirichi, near Saint Petersburg. These diversions are intended to demonstrate Ukraine’s disruptive capability, even when pushed into an essentially defensive role on the front line.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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‘Noon against Putin’: A small gesture and a powerful symbol of Russia’s opposition

Post By World Alexei Navalny, Europe, Features, opposition party, presidential elections, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

The widow of Russia’s late opposition leader Alexei Navalny is calling on voters in the country’s presidential election to turn up at polling stations en masse at 12 noon on March 17 and either vote against Vladimir Putin or spoil their ballot. The protest action, known as “Noon Against Putin”, aims to honour Navalny’s last wishes, while illustrating the high number of voters who are against Russia’s war on Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin is hoping for record turnout in the country’s forthcoming March 15-17 elections. And now the Russian strongman, who is seeking a fifth term in office in a tightly controlled vote, might find his wish has been granted.

But if voters turn out in high numbers on March 17 at noon sharp, Putin might feel he should have been careful what he wished for.

The “Noon against Putin” protest action was called for by the late Alexei Navalny two weeks before his death in an Arctic prison, and is now being continued by his widow Yulia.

Promoters of the protest want Russians to wait until noon on March 17 to go to their polling station. They don’t care which candidate they vote for – as long as it’s not Putin and as long as they come precisely at noon.

“The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin,” Navalnaya said in a YouTube video.

“You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station, and then turn around and go home.”

Russia’s presidential election is widely expected to hand Putin another six-year term, keeping him in the Kremlin until at least 2030. The vote is being held with no meaningful opposition challengers and international observers have already raised concerns about its transparency and accountability.

Navalnaya views the polling protest as a gesture of support for the Russian opposition and a powerful way for citizens to show they are against Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Indeed the protest action may be the only thing motivating Russians who are against Putin to turn out and vote.

“How many people will show up is the only interesting figure in these elections,” says Matthew Wyman, a specialist in Russian politics at Keele University in the UK.

‘Navalny’s political legacy’

“We have to sabotage it [the election],” says Maxim Reznik, an exiled Russian opposition figure who came up with the idea for the initiative, when interviewed by independent Russian news website Meduza.

Reznik first suggested the protest action during a debate – “What to do about the presidential election?” – broadcast in January 2024 on the opposition channel Dozhd.

Since then, most of Russia’s leading opposition figures have voiced their support for the “Noon Against Putin” initiative, starting with Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, which rarely misses an opportunity to promote it.

Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper, has even called the protest action “Navalny’s will”.

“It’s very appropriate to link it to Navalny because it’s the kind of thing he would have done,” Wyman points out.

“It is in the spirit of a lot of things Navalny was doing and asking people to do: it’s not difficult, and with small steps you can hope to make big changes,” adds Jenny Mathers, a specialist in Russia at Aberystwyth University in Wales.

“Noon against Putin” ties in perfectly with this strategy. Going to the polling station at a specific time calls for no particular effort from voters – neither does it put them at risk.

“What they are doing is trying to find ways to show resistance without risk of being put in jail. The protest is brilliant because they are doing exactly what the regime wants you to do: going to vote,” says Wyman, adding that the police would find it hard to justify arresting voters for doing their civic duty.

Mathers suggests it is important to start with small steps.

“The idea is to rebuild civil society and a credible opposition force that has been badly hit lately,” she notes. “After small steps, maybe a bigger one will come? I see it as one piece of a long-lasting campaign,” Mathers adds.

The number of Russians opposed to the war

This type of protest action illustrates “the creativity of actions undertaken by the opposition in Russia”, explains Wyman, adding that “the space to protest has been kind of reduced and reduced”.

“Noon against Putin” is just one of a long list of initiatives in a similar vein. Demonstrators have held up blank sheets of paper to symbolise the censorship of any criticism of Russia’s war on Ukraine, and activists have added QR codes to advertising billboards so that citizens can access websites critical of Putin.

“These are the kind of practices you see in regimes that become more and more oppressive,” says Mathers.

“It is like what China does, when they use Winnie the Pooh,” adds Mathers, referring to China’s ban of a Winnie the Pooh film after the Chinese used memes to mock their leader Xi Pingping by comparing him to the honey-loving bear.

Some wonder if the protest action will have any real impact.

“Obviously it’s not going to change the outcome of the election,” admits Mathers.

However, Wyman believes it will give a “better picture” of the strength of the opposition to the war on Ukraine.

The vast crowds that gathered for Navalny’s funeral on March 1 have already given some insight into the feeling of dissent in Russia. At least 27,000 people came to say farewell to Navalny at Borisovsky cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow, according to a count by the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona.

But Stephen Hall, a Russia specialist at the University of Bath, predicts that voter turnout will be much higher than it was for Navalny’s funeral – pointing out that it was mainly Muscovites who attended, and that police had warned people to stay away.

“Here the risk of arrest is low and it’s [taking place] all over Russia.

“This is a low risk way to show you’re against the regime and the war.”

Stealing the media limelight from Putin

Hall believes one of “Noon Against Putin’s” main challenges will be mobilising people outside of Moscow or St Petersburg.

“Putin has always counted on popular support on the outskirts of major urban centres. If long queues form in front of polling stations all over Russia at midday on Sunday, he may start to worry about the real level of his popularity,” he explains.

“Noon against Putin” also aims to steal the media spotlight from the Kremlin.

“The regime wants this election to be non-controversial. So the more disruption there is, like huge numbers going to polling stations at noon, the more this might be a problem for Putin,” says Mathers.

“Putin desperately wants all the world headlines after the election to say he ‘got 85 percent’,” says Reznik.

“But now, rest assured, you’ll see! All the headlines won’t be about Putin’s performance but about what happened at ‘Noon’,” Reznik adds.

“It’s about creating a counter-narrative,” agrees Matthew Wyman.

This is partly so that Russians opposed to the regime do not feel alone, but it’s also “a way to say to the world we are not all Putin, and that there is a movement to support in Russia”, adds Mathers.

But for that to happen, voters will need to turn out in high numbers at polling stations at noon on Sunday.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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#Noon #Putin #small #gesture #powerful #symbol #Russias #opposition

Five things to know about Russia’s upcoming presidential election

Post By World Alexei Navalny, Europe, opposition party, presidential elections, propaganda, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking a fifth term as Russians vote from Friday to Sunday in an election that has already raised transparency and accountability concerns. After two anti-war candidates were disqualified, the remaining three have all supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is holding a presidential election that is set to hand President Vladimir Putin another six-year mandate despite the upheaval triggered by Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

After a 2021 constitutional reform altered Russian term limits, Putin could remain in power until 2036. He was first elected president in 2000.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has said its election observers were not invited to monitor the 2024 vote to ensure an “impartial and independent assessment” of the electoral process.

Here are five things to know about the Russian election:

No anti-war opposition

The only would-be candidates opposed to the campaign in Ukraine, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, who gathered tens of thousands of signatures to support their candidacies, had their applications turned down.

Other than Putin, there are three registered candidates – the nationalist conservative Leonid Slutsky, the Communist Party candidate Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov, a businessman.

They have all supported Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Kremlin critics point out that the role of these three candidates is to channel any discontent and give a pluralist varnish to the vote at a time when the opposition has been greatly diminished by repression.

Independent observers also say the authorities have means at their disposal to manage the results, including vote-rigging, ballot-stuffing and using millions of state employees to back the status quo.

The only unknown factor is whether there could be any protests, as called for by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and now his widow, Yulia Navalnaya.

Thousands of supporters turned out to pay their respects at Navalny’s funeral in Moscow last month, some chanting anti-government slogans.

His widow has called the elections “a complete fiction and a fake”, and earlier this month urged supporters to show up at the polling stations on Sunday to protest.

“What to do next? The choice is yours. You can vote for any candidate except Putin,” she said in a YouTube video. “You can ruin the ballot, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters on it. And even if you don’t see the point in voting at all, you can just come and stand at the polling station, and then turn around and go home.”

Putin’s promises

While the result of the election is not in doubt, the government is campaigning hard, in a bid to strengthen Putin’s domestic and international legitimacy.

The Kremlin chief is in a better position now because of Russian advances in Ukraine amid cracks in Western support for Kyiv, and the Russian economy proving resilient despite heavy sanctions.

Putin has stepped up media appearances in recent weeks, meeting students, visiting factories and even taking a flight in a nuclear bomber.

But the efforts have not come without a cost. According to internal Kremlin documents recently obtained by the Estonian news website Delfi, the government has spent some €1 billion on propaganda ahead of the elections.

However, the Russian president has never taken part in an election debate since coming to power nearly a quarter of a century ago and will not start now.

In his State of the Nation speech last month, he made a long series of budget promises, handing out billions of rubles to modernise schools and infrastructure, fight poverty, protect the environment and boost technology.

The speech laid out a programme of government until at least 2030.

Economic concerns

Even though the economy has held up far better than expected, many Russians are worried about rising prices – particularly for food – and, in general, the instability generated by the war in Ukraine.

Labour shortages have piled up since thousands of young men have either died or are fighting in Ukraine, while hundreds of thousands of other people have fled abroad because they oppose the conflict or to avoid military service.

The authorities have clamped down hard in recent months on demonstrations by the wives of conscripted soldiers who have been asking for their loved ones to be allowed to return from the front.

Calls to vote

Patriotic posters have been plastered around the country, calling on Russians to vote.

The election posters have a “V” sign akin to the one used by Russian troops in Ukraine and the slogan: “Together, we are strong. Let’s vote for Russia!”

The authorities will also organise raffles and entertainment to encourage voters to come out and vote in a country where disenchantment with politics, particularly among young people, is high.

Neighbouring Ukraine and its Western allies are presented as troublemakers in state media and official speeches.

Putin warned in December about possible “foreign interference” in the vote and promised a “severe response”.

Last week, Russia summoned the US ambassador Lynne Tracy, accusing US-funded NGOs of “spreading disinformation” about the election.

According to the Moscow Times, Russia warned of retaliatory measures that could include expelling “US embassy officials involved in such actions”.

Voting in Russia-held Ukraine

In a sign of Russian authorities trying to project normality amid an ongoing conflict, there will be voting in Russian-held areas of Ukraine.

Russia in 2022 declared the unilateral annexation of four regions of Ukraine – even though its troops still do not control them fully.

Kyiv says local inhabitants are now being subjected to threats and violence to force them to vote –something which Moscow denies.

Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine have been able to cast their ballots early.

Three women sit on a bench near a mobile polling station during early voting in Russia’s presidential election, in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on March 10, 2024. Kyiv has warned that residents in Russian-annexed areas have been threatened against not voting. © Alexander Ermochenko, Reuters

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters)

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Aid ship prepares to leave Cyprus for Gaza as test of new humanitarian sea corridor

Post By World Cyprus, David Cameron, Europe, European Union, Gaza Strip, Humanitarian aid, Israel Hamas war, United Arab Emirates, Ursula von der Leyen

A ship was preparing to leave Cyprus in the coming days and head for Gaza with humanitarian aid, the European Commission president said, as international donors launch a sea corridor to supply the besieged territory facing widespread hunger and shortages of essential supplies after five months of war.

The vessel, belonging to the Spanish NGO Open Arms, will make a pilot voyage to test the corridor, Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Cyprus, where she’s inspecting preparations for the sea corridor. The ship has been waiting at Cyprus’s port of Larnaca for permission to deliver food aid from World Central Kitchen, a U.S. charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés.

Israel said Friday it welcomed the opening of the maritime corridor but cautioned it would also need security checks.

“The Cypriot initiative will allow the increase of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, after a security check according to Israeli standards,” Lior Haiat, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, said on X, formerly Twitter.

Israel welcomes the inauguration of the maritime corridor from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip. The Cypriot initiative will allow the increase of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, after security checks are carried out in accordance with Israeli standards.

Israel will continue to… pic.twitter.com/T68hLQB0mY

— Lior Haiat 🇮🇱🎗️ (@LiorHaiat) March 8, 2024

The European Union, together with the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other countries involved in the effort are launching the sea route in response to the “humanitarian catastrophe” unfolding in Gaza, Von der Leyen said at a news conference with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.

“We are now very close to the opening of the corridor, hopefully this Saturday, this Sunday, and I’m very glad to see that an initial pilot operation will be launched today,” she said. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza is dire, with innocent Palestinian families and children desperate for basic needs.

The ship will depart for Gaza on Saturday, Christodoulides told The Associated Press.

In Brussels, commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said the Open Arms ship’s direct route to Gaza raises a number of “logistical problems” which are still being worked out. He said U.N. agencies and the Red Cross will also play a role in how the corridor will work.

05:15

Von der Leyen praised Christodoulides for his leadership in promoting the sea corridor initiative, which he pitched back in November, and thanked UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed for rallying support to get it underway .

“I call on all the actors who have a role to play here to help this corridor deliver on its potential,” said Von der Leyen. “The maritime corridor can make a real difference in the plight of the Palestinian people.”

Christodoulides said Cyprus, as the EU’s eastern-most member state, had “the moral duty” to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” leveraging its role in excellent relations with all countries in the region.”

The latest efforts to dramatically ramp up aid deliveries signaled growing frustration with Israel’s conduct in the war in the United States and Europe.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced a plan to open an offshore port to help deliver aid, underscoring how the U.S. has to go around Israel, its main Mideast ally and the top recipient of U.S. military aid, to deliver aid to Gaza, including through airdrops that started last week. Israel accuses Hamas of commandeering some aid deliveries.

Efforts to set up a sea route for aid deliveries come amid mounting alarm over the spread of hunger among Gaza’s 2.3 million people. Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces for months and suffered long cutoffs of food supply deliveries.

After months of warnings over the risk of famine in Gaza under Israel’s bombardment, offensives and siege, hospital doctors have reported 20 malnutrition-related deaths at two northern Gaza hospitals.

While reiterating his support for Israel, Biden used his State of the Union speech to reiterate demands that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow in more aid to Gaza.

“To the leadership of Israel, I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden declared before Congress. He also repeated calls for Israel to do more to protect civilians in the fighting, and to work toward Palestinian statehood as the only long-term solution to Israeli-Palestinian violence.

U.S. officials said it will likely be weeks before the Gaza pier is operational.

Aid groups have said their efforts to deliver desperately needed supplies to Gaza have been hampered because of the difficulty of coordinating with the Israeli military, the ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order. It is even more difficult to get aid to the isolated north.

Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters late Thursday that air and sea deliveries cannot make up for a shortage of supply routes on land.

Von der Leyen said the EU would continue exploring different ways of getting aid to Palestinians in Gaza. She said the bloc has so far launched 41 flights carrying over 1800 tons of aid and would consider ‘all other options, including airdrops, if our humanitarian partners on the ground consider this effective.”

Meanwhile, efforts to reach a cease-fire before Ramadan appeared stalled. Hamas said Thursday that its delegation had left Cairo, where talks were being held, until next week.

International mediators had hoped to alleviate some of the immediate crisis with a six-week cease-fire, which would have seen Hamas release some of the Israeli hostages it is holding, Israel release some Palestinian prisoners and aid groups be given access to to get a major influx of assistance into Gaza.

Palestinian militants are believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages. Several dozen hostages were freed in a weeklong November truce, and about 30 are believed to be dead.

Egyptian officials said Hamas has agreed to the main terms of such an agreement as a first stage but wants commitments that it will lead to an eventual more permanent cease-fire, while Israel wants to confine the negotiations to the more limited agreement.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations with media. Both officials said mediators are still pressing the two parties to soften their positions.

(AP)

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As France makes abortion a constitutional right, UK women see sharp rise in abortion convictions

Post By World abortion, Europe, Features, reproductive rights, UK, women's rights

As France enshrines abortion access in its constitution, the UK is facing a sharp rise in abortion convictions. A law dating from 1861 is being used to prosecute women in England and Wales, in at least one case leading to incarceration.

France has become the only country in the world to protect the right to terminate a pregnancy in its constitution after abortion access was officially added to the freedoms guaranteed in the French constitution on Monday. The move was a direct reaction to the rollback of abortion rights in the United States and elsewhere.

But across the English Channel, women are still at risk of prosecution for having the procedure because abortion in the UK has not been decriminalised. Britain is facing a sharp rise in abortion convictions, with a law dating from 1861 being used to prosecute women and in at least one case leading to incarceration.

Between 1967 and 2022, three women were convicted of having an illegal abortion in England and Wales. But in the last 18 months alone, six women have been prosecuted over suspected abortion offences.

Of the six prosecutions, three cases were dropped and two cases are awaiting trial, according to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). One woman was sent to prison.

Illegal abortion and life imprisonment

According to legislation passed 163 years ago, abortion is still a crime in England and Wales.

The Offences Against the Persons Act of 1861 states that it is illegal for a woman to procure her own abortion or provide the means for another woman to terminate a pregnancy.

What makes abortions accessible today is the Abortion Act, passed by parliament in 1967. The law allows doctors to perform abortions and allows women access to them, but only if they have authorisation from two registered medical practitioners and meet at least one of a specific set of circumstances: These include potential injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children in her family, any substantial risk to her life, and any serious physical or mental abnormality the unborn child could have.

A time limit of 24 weeks was added in 1990 but with exceptions, for example, if a woman faces the risk of death or “permanent damage” to her physical or mental health, or if there is a serious foetal abnormality.

But outside of these restrictions, women can still face a sentence of life imprisonment – one of the harshest penalties for having an illegal abortion in Europe.

Many countries in Europe will punish you for performing your own abortion or getting an abortion outside of the healthcare system, says Mara Clarke, co-founder of Supporting Abortions for Everyone (SAFE), a pan-European charity for providing access to abortion.

“But none of [the punishments] is life in prison.”

Doctors in England, Wales and Scotland have the final say on whether or not a woman can access an abortion. They determine whether a risk to health is serious enough to call for terminating a pregnancy, whether an abortion is necessary to avoid “grave permanent injury” to a woman’s mental or physical health, and can even opt out of providing abortion care if they object for reasons of conscience.

A woman in England or Wales can even be prosecuted if they purchase abortion pills online without the authorisation of the two required doctors, or if they terminate their pregnancy beyond the 10-week limit for at-home medical abortions or the 24-week limit for abortions at a vetted healthcare facility.

Other health care professionals, including nurses, are not authorised to sign off on an abortion, with the necessary double approval restricted only to doctors. And there is “no consideration of the reasons why a woman might want to end a pregnancy”, according to a UK abortion rights campaign group run by healthcare professionals called Doctors for Choice.

“The law prevents nurses and midwives from having a full role in abortion care despite being more than capable of doing so,” the group says on its website.

The Independent newspaper reported that Dr Jonathan Lord, the co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers, knows of at least 60 criminal inquiries into suspected illegal abortions in England and Wales since 2018.

‘An aberration’

“We really have better things to be doing with our time and money,” sighs Clarke from SAFE. “There are 60 investigations, yes, but out of how many abortions – 200,000?” She feels frustrated by the fact that public attention is turned to the prosecutions rather than the safe and guaranteed provision of abortion care for all.

“How many times did Carla Foster have to turn up in court before her case was overturned?” For Clarke, the answer is “too many”.

Carla Foster is a mother of three who ended her pregnancy outside the legal 24-week legal limit in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. She took mifepristone – a medical abortion pill – after the limit expired during lockdown.

She received a 28-month custodial sentence in June 2023 and was sent to Foston Hall prison in Derbyshire, where she was incarcerated for 35 days.

Foster took her case to a court of appeal to reduce her sentence and won. A judge deemed the 46-year-old needed “compassion, not punishment” and reduced her punishment to a 14-month suspended sentence. She was released in July.

“UK public opinion is very liberal on abortion and is quite strongly pro-choice,” says Sally Sheldon, a professor at University of Bristol specialising in healthcare law. “It’s relatively easy for people with access to the NHS (National Health Service) to receive abortion care. In that context, these cases are really an aberration.”

Nevertheless, the legal remedies – when applied – are severe.

“Most of these women are having their laptops and phones taken away … There have been reports of women having their children taken into care because they were seen as a risk to their kids,” says Sheldon. “It impacts the whole family. The impact is enormous.”

Sheldon surmises that the sudden uptick in prosecutions could be connected to an increased awareness of abortion pills. “Since the pandemic … women can have an online consultation and have the pills sent to them,” she says. “I think that has led to a climate of much greater suspicion around unexplained later pregnancy loss or premature delivery. It seems like most cases are being reported by healthcare professionals … who report it to the police.”

Earlier this year, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists released new guidance for abortion care. Stating their “concern at the increasing number of police investigations following later gestation abortion and pregnancy loss, and the impact this can have on women”, it urged healthcare professionals to “abide by their professional responsibility to justify any disclosure of confidential patient information”.

Labour MP Diana Johnson this month is expected to introduce an amendment to the UK’s Criminal Justice Act that would end prosecutions of women for terminating pregnancies after the 24-week limit.

“If that amendment gets selected for debate, I would hope it’s got a good chance of being passed,” says Sheldon. “But it’s very difficult to know.”

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Another Ukraine: a disinformation platform run by an exiled Ukrainian oligarch in Russia

Post By World Europe, propaganda, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine war analysis, Vladimir Putin

Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin, found refuge in Russia after leaving Ukraine, where he faces treason charges. He runs a Russian-language portal pushing Kremlin narratives on Ukraine and the war, but his latest foray into disinformation has run into its own challenges.

Every day, new phrases hammer home messages from Another Ukraine, a Russian-language portal launched in the summer of 2023: “Russia is Ukraine’s only salvation,” “They wanted NATO and are ready to die for Western interests.” The news is uniformly negative.

The project is officially led by Viktor Medvedchuk, a leading figure pushing pro-Kremlin interests in post-Soviet Ukraine, but it is orchestrated behind the scenes by Ilya Gambashidze’s Social Design Agency, a Russian IT company closely linked to the Kremlin whose digital disinformation campaigns are now targeting international opinion. The digital platform claims to “unite the dynamic forces capable of reversing the situation and pulling the Ukrainian people out of the impasse in which they find themselves”.

Medvedchuk is certainly no stranger to intrigue and disinformation. For 20 years, the oligarch had been a conduit for Moscow’s interests in Ukraine, in both the political sphere and the media. His close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin have made him a reviled figure in his home country. The two men, about the same age, have known each other since the early 2000s. Putin had just come to power in Russia and Medvedchuk was chief of staff for Ukraine’s then president Leonid Kuchma.

Their relationship took on a personal dimension when Medvedchuk became Putin’s “kum”, a term of kinship in Slavic culture, a link cemented when Putin was chosen as godfather to Medvedchuk’s youngest daughter.

Medvedchuk likes to emphasise this personal bond with Putin to show off his own importance.

Placed under house arrest in May 2021 after being charged with treason, he escaped and went on the run just days after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The eventual recapture of the man branded a “traitor” in Ukraine caused a sensation: dressed in camouflage clothing, disheveled and weak, Medvedchuk’s release from jail was eventually granted in September 2022 when he was included in a prisoner exchange. Kyiv saw the release of 215 soldiers, including 108 from the Azov regiment captured in Mariupol, while 55 Russians were also freed. The transaction was unbalanced, but as they say in Russia, “Svoïkh nie brossaïem”: We don’t abandon our own.

‘Alternative narrative’

Russia provided a refuge for Medvedchuk, as it had for another disgraced Ukrainian, former president Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, toppled by the Maidan revolution (2013-2014), was convicted in absentia for high treason after fleeing to Russia.

Stripped of his Ukrainian nationality, Medvedchuk, 69, realised he had no future in the country. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further marginalised Ukrainian forces loyal to Moscow. The Opposition Platform–For Life party, co-founded by Medvedchuk, was banned; the three television channels he unofficially controlled were also suspended.

Putin would have been infuriated by this turn of events. “He took it as a personal affront,” said one of his longtime associates, speaking anonymously, as cited by the Russian media outlet Verstka. “Medvedchuk and his channels played the role of a bridge and offered hope for resolving the Ukraine issue through political methods.” Medvedchuk’s exile meant the Kremlin lost its key means of influence in Ukraine and the country moved further away from the Russian orbit.

According to Verstka, Medvedchuk fueled the ideological narrative the Russian leader wanted to hear, assuring him that there was enduring pro-Russia and pro-Putin feeling in Ukraine.

Medvedchuk’s misadventures in Ukraine did not mean an end to his involvement with his former country. When the Kremlin again attempted to regain control of the “Ukraine issue”, it was Medvedchuk who was given the job, with the aim of imposing an “alternative narrative”.

Despised in Ukraine, Medvedchuk is not held in high regard in Russia either. However, “Medvedchuk’s allegiance and loyalty are crucial to explain why Putin has always relied on him,” said Ukrainian journalist Maksym Savchuk, author of a book dedicated to the oligarch’s connections.

In January 2023, the former Ukrainian MP broke his silence by writing a column in the newspaper “Izvestia”, where he presented the main ideas of the Russian camp. Medvedchuk positioned himself as a representative of the “peace party” against a Ukrainian elite labeled as “neo-Nazi” and belligerent, manipulated by the West. State media made an effort to bolster his stature. He appeared on Russia’s Channel One, where he was presented as “one of Ukraine’s most famous opponents”.

Ukraine’s ‘dead end’

Despite losing all credibility as well as his media holdings in Ukraine, Medvedchuk continues to propagate disinformation and pursue his own interests. Yanukovych was considered a capable manager; Medvedchuk, on the other hand, is known as an “ideas guy”. According to Meduza journalist Andrey Pertsev, he is indebted to the Kremlin but also aims to capitalise on his status as a privileged intermediary for Putin. “He is arguing the merits of his approach to obtain funds and is negotiating new deals in Russia,” Pertsev said.

Another Ukraine is the latest outlet for Medvedchuk’s ambitions. Officially, it is a public organisation located in central Moscow, a few metres from the ministry of foreign affairs. It specialises in targeted information, which it uses to try “to interact with Ukrainians with pro-Russia convictions, inside Ukraine and beyond its borders”, according to Savchuk.

Another Ukraine’s team is composed of journalists and commentators from the 112 Ukraine channel, banned in 2021 by the authorities in Kyiv, as well as disgraced political figures and “political technologists” – a Russian term for those engaged in political manipulation.

Almost all are accused in Ukraine of separatism or treason. The nature of the project remains nebulous: Another Ukraine defines itself as a “movement” with Medvedchuk as “chairman of the council”. “It seems to me that they, themselves, do not know exactly what its true purpose is,” Savchuk noted.

On the Another Ukraine website, the oligarch regularly publishes posts on Ukrainian domestic politics, the conduct of the war, and the need for an entente with Russia. However, “Medvedchuk is just the public face of this project,” said Anton Shekhovtsov, director of the Centre for Democratic Integrity in Austria. Shekhovtsov said its communications strategy was entrusted to the Social Design Agency led by Gambashidze, one of the key figures of Russian disinformation campaigns targeting an international audience.

Testing storylines

Another Ukraine aims to appeal to that part of the Ukrainian population favourable to Russia and establish a connection with it, according to Shekhovtsov. One method involves taking the pulse of this population and measuring its reaction to various narratives. The project uses the image of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595-1657) monument in central Kyiv, a symbolic choice given the dual legacy of the Cossack leader: While some consider him a symbol of the Ukrainian state, Another Ukraine lauds him for seeking protection from Moscow.

In a 2021 publication of collected works, “Histoire partagée, mémoires divisées” (Shared history, divided memories), historians Volodymyr Masliychuk and Andrii Portnov note the inscription that paid homage to Khmelnytsky in Russian on the monument’s pedestal: “Russia, united and indivisible.”

The project also manages “assistance centres” for Ukrainians who are temporarily in Russia and willing to settle there permanently.

But according to Savchuk – who investigates corruption for Radio Svoboda, the leading international broadcaster in Russia and a division of US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – this new influence operation is not working. “In Ukraine, the project is seen as a collection of pariahs who Medvedchuk is feeding rubles so they will do what they used to, not so long ago, on his now-defunct television channels,” he said.

Moreover, Another Ukraine is only accessible online inside Ukraine by using a VPN (Virtual Private Network).

Nevertheless, the movement has ambitions to extend its influence beyond Ukraine and Russia. In December it announced the opening of a Serbia division – headed by Dragan Stanojevic, a pro-Russian populist MP who has long done business in Ukraine.

Savchuk described the move as a “mutually beneficial collaboration”. “For Stanojevic, this branch is a way of appearing even closer to Putin among his electorate; for Medvedchuk, it is proof that his organisation is influential and that it is taking on an international dimension,” he said. “The fact that the Ukrainian government demanded its closure gave Another Ukraine even greater prominence – people started talking about it.”

But turning Medvedchuk into a respected figure, recognised as a credible interlocutor abroad, may be an overly ambitious goal.

“I don’t think the Social Design Agency will be able to improve his image, even though that would be a fundamental goal if the project is to be effective,” said Shekhovtsov. “The public face of Another Ukraine should be a personality who gives interviews to the international media, someone who people want to know better. And here, that’s not the case – not in the slightest.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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Gaza war comments, ghosts of past anti-Semitism rows haunt UK’s Labour Party

Post By World anti-Semitism, Europe, Features, Israel Hamas war, Jeremy Corbyn, keir starmer, Labour Party, UK, UK politics

Voters in the northern English town of Rochdale go to the polls Thursday in a by-election that has roiled the Labour party with a new anti-Semitism controversy. Britain’s main opposition party was the clear favourite until its candidate was disowned for espousing conspiracy theories about Israel. The row recalls the party’s anti-Semitism crisis under its previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and comes as current party leader Keir Starmer is at pains to show that Labour has changed.

Triggered by last month’s death of the sitting Labour MP Tony Lloyd, the Rochdale vote comes a fortnight after two other by-elections, in which Labour seized two seats from the ruling Conservatives. But it has been overshadowed by the type of controversy that Britain’s main opposition party was supposed to have put firmly in the past.

Over the weekend of February 10-11, it emerged that Labour’s candidate for Rochdale, Azhar Ali, had voiced an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks. In the shocking remarks, made at a meeting of the local Lancashire Labour Party and obtained by the Daily Mail on Sunday through a leaked recording, Ali claimed that Israel deliberately let the Hamas atrocities happen in order to have the “green light” to invade Gaza. While Israel did dismiss prior warnings about the Hamas attacks, there is no evidence that it knowingly let its own citizens be massacred.

For 48 hours, Labour stood by Ali, who issued an “unreserved” apology for his comments. But on February 12, after more of his anti-Semitic remarks came to light, the party suspended him and withdrew its support for his candidacy. However, the deadline had already passed to field another Labour candidate – meaning that if elected, Ali will have to sit as an independent MP in the House of Commons. To make matters worse, a second Labour parliamentary candidate, Graham Jones, had to be suspended the following day after a leaked recording emerged of him making anti-Israel comments at the same meeting as Ali.

When quizzed about the Ali debacle, party leader Starmer found himself on the back foot. “When I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership, I mean it,” he insisted, referring implicitly to anti-Semitism.

“When I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership, I mean it.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer explains why he took “decisive action” in withdrawing support for Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali.

https://t.co/xItZsH7tea

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 pic.twitter.com/35nqIpD1o6

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 13, 2024

Getting to grips with anti-Semitism

Ever since Starmer took over as Labour leader in April 2020, the 61-year-old centrist has made it a priority to get to grips with the party’s anti-Semitism problem, which reached crisis levels under his predecessor Corbyn. Starmer has come down hard on Labour MPs caught in controversy, as seen with last year’s suspension of left-winger Diane Abbott for minimising anti-Semitism in a letter to The Observer newspaper.

This month’s suspension of the two candidates suggests that Labour “is taking the issue very, very seriously”, said Steven Fielding, emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. “But there are still people in the party who at the very least are committing potentially anti-Semitic tropes, which the conspiracy talk [by Ali] clearly was.”

He added: “There are still people on the left of the Labour Party who confuse Israel with Jews and conflate the two things together. It’s not so much [that] they are traditionally anti-Semitic, but they see Israel as part of the imperialist order backed by the United States.”

The shadow of Corbyn

During the leadership of left-winger Corbyn, from September 2015 to April 2020, Labour was plagued by allegations of anti-Semitism at all levels. Despite Corbyn’s denials, the controversies kept on coming: from Corbyn’s past defence of an anti-Semitic mural on social media, to Labour’s reluctance to embrace the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. Corbyn, a self-described socialist and lifelong supporter of the Palestinian cause, was also tainted by his past associations, such as inviting Hamas and Hezbollah representatives to parliament in 2009 and introducing them as “friends” – a term he only repudiated in 2016.

Watch moreBritain’s Labour Party: No home for Jews?

In October 2020, after a 16-month investigation, the UK’s human rights watchdog issued a damning report which found “serious failings in leadership and an inadequate process for handling anti-Semitism complaints across the Labour Party”. Starmer, now party leader, apologised to the Jewish community and vowed a “culture change” in Labour. This happened swiftly: Corbyn was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the wider Labour Party for failing to fully accept the report’s findings.

A few weeks later, Labour’s ruling body readmitted Corbyn as a party member. But crucially, Starmer refused to “restore the whip” to his predecessor, meaning that Corbyn has to suffer the indignity of sitting as an independent MP. And in February 2023, Starmer announced that Corbyn would not be allowed to stand as a Labour MP at the next general election. The vote is expected to take place later this year, with Labour currently holding a double-digit lead over the ruling Conservatives in the polls.

As Fielding noted, anti-Semitism “was one of the issues that lost Labour the last election”, in a massive defeat under Corbyn in December 2019. Starmer “does not want to give anybody any grounds for claiming that he or his party is anti-Semitic”, Fielding explained. “As the Rochdale by-election has proven, [Labour is] willing to throw away a seat in order to make a stand on that issue,” he added.

But electoral calculations are only part of the story. Starmer’s wife Victoria is Jewish and the couple occasionally take their two children to the synagogue. In his new book “Keir Starmer: The Biography”, journalist Tom Baldwin recounts how at the height of Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis, Starmer began to feel the heat personally. He is quoted as saying: “People I had got to know a bit at the synagogue would come up to me, asking, ‘What’s happened to your party? Why can’t you do something? Are you embarrassed to be a Labour MP?’ I would go home feeling angry.”

Unease and division over support for Israel

But Starmer has appeared so keen to distance himself from the party’s past anti-Semitism that he has caused deep unease with his support for Israel in its deadly offensive in Gaza.

Asked in a radio interview four days after the October 7 Hamas attacks whether Israel’s complete siege of Gaza was appropriate, he responded that Israel “does have that right” to cut off electricity and water – something that is prohibited under international law. The interview was particularly disastrous because Starmer is a lawyer by training and former top prosecutor. He later clarified his comments, saying he meant that Israel has “the right to self-defence”.

This position was at odds not only with public opinion, but also with a number of lawmakers within his own party. This disconnect culminated in November 2023, when Labour instructed its MPs to abstain on a motion in the House of Commons calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Some 56 of 198 Labour MPs rebelled and voted in favour of the motion brought by the Scottish National Party (SNP), leading to the resignation of 10 members of Starmer’s top team. More than 60 Labour councillors have also quit over the leadership’s reluctance to call for an immediate ceasefire.

Fast-forward to February 2024 and there has been a shift in Labour’s position. In mid-December 2023, Starmer aligned himself with the UK government position by calling for a “sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza. Speaking at Scottish Labour’s party conference in Glasgow on February 18, Starmer said a lasting ceasefire “must happen now”. On February 20, Labour officially adopted the position of calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”. The following day saw chaotic scenes in the Commons, with Starmer accused of pressuring the speaker to prioritise a Labour ceasefire motion over an SNP one in order to stave off another rebellion.

We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

We want it to last.

That means it must be observed by all sides.

That means the hostages must be returned.

That means aid must get in unhindered.

And it requires a roadmap for a diplomatic process to deliver a two-state… pic.twitter.com/0saKBcxZex

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) February 20, 2024

Cost-of-living crisis, not Gaza war, tops voters’ priorities

Back in Rochdale, Labour’s disowned candidate Ali remains on the ballot and “could still win”, Fielding noted. But populist firebrand George Galloway, a vocal critic of Israel who is standing for the Workers Party of Britain, is now the bookmakers’ favourite to take the seat. Some 30 percent of Rochdale’s population is Muslim. Galloway is openly courting those votes by focusing his campaign on the war in Gaza and channelling voters’ anger at Labour over its handling of the conflict.

Neither candidate spells good news for Britain’s Jewish community. Galloway is “definitely anti-Israel and he’s definitely not averse to dipping into anti-Semitic waters within the Muslim community”, Fielding said. Anti-Semitic incidents reached an all-time record high in the UK last year, with most of them occurring after October 7.

But Fielding cautioned against seeing Rochdale as a bellwether for the upcoming UK general election. “Even if George Galloway does relatively well [in Rochdale], it’s very unusual circumstances,” he said. For Fielding, Labour’s wider loss of support among Muslim voters “won’t make a significant dent into what most people anticipate will be quite a big Labour majority [in the general election]. But it will cause some local worries”.

And although all of the UK’s House of Commons seats with significant Muslim populations are currently held by Labour, Fielding predicted that “the general election won’t be fought on Israel-Palestine”. Instead, the cost-of-living crisis is expected to be the key issue on voters’ minds: “Muslim voters, who are disproportionately poor [and] in insecure occupations, will benefit most materially from a Labour government. And clearly Israel-Palestine is an issue. But I think that if push comes to shove, if the choice is between Labour and Conservative, then they’ll vote for Labour.” He noted that some voters might still choose an “independent pro-Palestine candidate” as a protest vote if a Labour victory seems inevitable.

Notwithstanding Starmer’s belated change in position over Gaza, the Labour Party appears well aware of this electoral calculus. “The assumption is that Muslim voters might not like it, but they’ll still vote Labour, come the [general] election,” Fielding said of Starmer’s policy on Israel. Yet with the Conservative Party also embroiled in controversy linked to the conflict, one thing is for sure: the Israel-Hamas war is likely to permeate British politics for some time to come.

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Cost-of-living crisis, not Gaza war, tops voters’ priorities