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Vladimir Putin | Reign of the patriarch

Post By World russia news, Russia president, russian elections, russian presidential election, ukraine war, Vladimir Putin, vladimir putin profile, vladimir putin wins election

There was no surprise. When Russia’s election authorities announced results of the presidential election, Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for nearly a quarter century, was elected for another term. He won 87% of votes, extending his reign for six more years, while his closest rival, Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party of Russian Federation, won 4.31% vote. There was no meaningful challenge to Mr. Putin in the election. Candidates who were critical of his policies, including the Ukraine war, were barred from contesting. State-controlled media hardly allowed any voices of dissent. And Mr. Putin’s approval rating has stayed high, according to Levada Centre, an independent Russian NGO, and he faces no visible or credible challenge to his authority among Russia’s elites.

If he completes his term, Mr. Putin, now 71, would surpass Joseph Stalin as the longest serving leader of modern Russia and the longest serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great, the 18th century Empress, who captured Crimea from the Ottomans and annexed it in 1783.

ALSO READ | It’s ‘Ra-Ra-Ras-Putin’ in the Russian election

In many ways, Mr. Putin’s rise to power is intertwined with Russia’s own comeback from the forced retreat of the 1990s, which many Russians call the “decade of humiliation”. He has witnessed the peak years of the Cold War, the collapse of the state, which he called a “catastrophe” and the years of chaos. If in the late 1990s, he was seen as the man who could fix Russia’s problems, now he is the face of the state that’s at war in Ukraine “with the collective West” and has built a water-tight authoritarian system at home that allows no dissent.

Rise to power

Born in 1952 in Stalin’s Russia, Mr. Putin graduated in 1975 from Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University). He served 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB (Committee for State Security), of which six years were in Dresden, East Germany. In 1990, a year before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Mr. Putin retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In the new Russia, he started his political career in St. Petersburg, the former capital of the Tsars. In 1994, he became the first Deputy Mayor of the city. Two years later, Mr. Putin moved to Moscow where he joined the Kremlin as an administrator. He captured the world’s attention in 1998 when President Boris Yeltsin appointed him as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor of the KGB. He never had to turn back.

Russia was in a bad shape. Its economy was in shambles. It was not in a position to challenge NATO, which had revived talks of expanding to Eastern Europe. In Chechnya, a separatist war was raging. Yeltsin, the vodka-drinking, aloof leader who was struggling to deal with the many challenges his big but weak country was facing, started looking at Mr. Putin, the young spymaster, as his successor. In 1999, he appointed Mr. Putin as Prime Minister. When Mr. Yeltsin stepped down, Mr. Putin became acting President. And in 2000, he began his first term after the presidential elections.

Great power rivalry

During the early years of Mr. Putin’s presidency, Russia’s ties with the West were relatively cordial. Russia was taken into the G7 industrialised economies in 1997. Mr. Putin supported the U.S.’s war on terror after the September 11 terrorist attack. In 2001, President George W. Bush said Mr. Putin was “very straightforward and trustworthy”. “We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country,” Mr. Bush said. But the larger factors of great power rivalry would soon take over the post-Soviet tendencies of bonhomie. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Russia took a strong position against it. This was also a period when Russia, under Mr. Putin’s leadership, was rebuilding its economy and military might. A year after the Iraq invasion, NATO expanded further to the east, this time taking the three Baltic countries — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all sharing borders with Russia — and four others in Eastern Europe into its fold.

Watch | Two years of Russia-Ukraine war: How Russia and the world are changing

Mr. Putin’s later remarks would show how he looked at the U.S.-led global order. In a February 2007 speech given at the Munich Security Conference (a speech which is still seen by many as Mr. Putin’s foreign policy blueprint), the Russian leader slammed what he called the U.S.’s “monopolistic dominance” over the global order. “One single centre of power. One single centre of force. One single centre of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign…. Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area,” he said.

Having silently accepted NATO’s expansion in the past, a more confident and militaristic Russia appeared to have drawn a red line on Georgia and Ukraine, both Black Sea basin countries that share borders with Russia. In 2008, the year Georgia and Ukraine were offered membership by NATO at its Bucharest summit, Mr. Putin sent troops to Georgia in the name of defending the two breakaway republics — South Ossetia and Abkhazia — which practically ended Tbilisi’s NATO dream. In 2014, immediately after the elected Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled by West-backed protests, Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula that hosts Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Mr. Putin also offered military and financial aid to separatists in the Russian-speaking territories of Eastern Ukraine, which rose against the post-Yanukovych regime in Kyiv.

The conflict that began in 2014 snowballed into a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine on February 24, 2022, when Mr. Putin ordered his “special military operation”. The war placed Russia on course with prolonged conflict with the West. But Mr. Putin looked at it differently. “He has three advisers,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told an oligarch after the war began, according to an FT report. “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”

Tight grip

Domestically, Mr. Putin has tightened his control on the Russian state over the years. He stepped down as President in 2008 as he was constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term but became Prime Minister under President Dmitry Medvedev. Four years later, Mr. Putin returned as President. This time, he got the Constitution amended that allowed him to stand in Presidential elections again. Alexei Navalny, his most vocal opposition leader who survived an assassination attempt in August 2020, died in a prison in February. Boris Nemtsov, another opposition politician, was shot dead in Moscow in February 2015. The Kremlin-tolerated opposition parties, including the Communist Party, do not pose any organisational or ideological challenge to Mr. Putin’s hold on power.

EDITORIAL | Death of dissent: On Putin’s Russia today

In the state he rebuilt, Orthodox Christianity holds a prominent place. He is fighting not just a military conflict with the West, but also a culture war between “civilisations”. He is the new patriarch of “mother Russia”, not just the President of a modern republic. This mix of populism, civilisational nationalism, cultural roots and militarism kept him popular in Russia. According to Levada Centre, Mr. Putin’s approval rating stayed at 86% in February 2024, while 12% disapproved of his performance. Levada’s polls show that Mr. Putin’s popularity has never dipped below 59% since he became President. He has mastered a complex model, with regular elections, that allowed him to retain total dominance on Russian politics, while keeping dissent and political opposition under check, something which British historian Perry Anderson calls ‘a managed democracy’. At the same time, he constantly pushed to expand Russian influence abroad, challenging the West.

This model of dominance at home and counterbalance abroad faces a tough test when Mr. Putin is assuming another term. The Ukraine war is grinding on in its third year with no end in sight. Russia, which suffered some setbacks in the early stage of the war, seems to have captured battlefield momentum, for now. But the country is also paying a big price. It lost tens of thousands of soldiers. It is struggling to offset the impact of the sanctions the West has imposed. Its ties with Europe, which Mr. Putin rebuilt painstakingly in his early years of power, lies in tatters, forcing the country to pivot to Asia. NATO further expanded towards Russia’s border after the war began, with Sweden and Finland being the latest members.

At home, there are signs that his regime is ageing, which were evident in the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of private military company Wagner, or silent protests in Russia, including on the election day. But Mr. Putin seems confident and unfazed. In his victory speech on Sunday, Mr. Putin declared that he will stay the course. “We have many tasks ahead. But when we are consolidated — no matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us — nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now, and they will not succeed ever in the future,” said the Russian leader to cheering supporters, who chanted “Putin, Putin… Russia, Russia”.

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#Vladimir #Putin #Reign #patriarch

Germany’s Olaf Scholz has become a major problem for Ukraine

Post By World euroviews, German politics, Germany, nato, Olaf Scholz, ukraine war

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Between leaked recordings, loose-lipped press conferences and confused policy, the German chancellor is in serious trouble.

After months of what appeared to be an effective stalemate, a new narrative of the Ukrainian conflict is setting in: unless the West both expands and speeds up its support for the Ukrainian military, Russia could soon have a major window of opportunity.

And with the US House of Representatives still yet to clear a new package of American military aid, European NATO allies are moving to ramp up their contributions to the war effort. But not all of them are on the same page – and the continent’s largest economy is suddenly looking like a major political and strategic problem for both Ukraine and NATO as a whole.

Germany has been on a long journey since the Russian invasion in February 2022. The then-relatively new government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz oversaw a major change in German defence policy by announcing the country would provide Ukraine with military hardware, a move that helped prove how seriously the West as a whole was taking the conflict.

Since then, however, the Germans’ part in the war has been somewhat muddled. On the one hand, German Euros and materiel have been reaching Ukraine, albeit on a stop-start basis. The country’s defence ministry clearly acknowledges the seriousness of the conflict: it has increasingly urged Europe to anticipate a larger Russian threat to countries beyond Ukraine, and is deploying combat-ready battalions to Lithuania, meaning German troops will be stationed just 100km away from the Russian border.

But on the other hand, Scholz’s government has lately been resisting pressure to share one of its most powerful military assets with the Ukrainians just when they need it most.

The item in question is the Taurus missile, a stealth missile with a 500km range – twice the range of the British Storm Shadow and French Scalp missiles, both of which have been used by Ukraine to hit major Russian military targets.

The Ukrainians have been asking for the Taurus system for months, but Scholz has so far refused. The chancellor has claimed that the missiles cannot be sent to Ukraine because it would entail putting German troops on the ground to programme them, a move that he claimed could threaten a dangerous escalation.

Scholz made a major diplomatic misstep at a recent summit when he implied that French and British forces are operating cruise missiles that are ostensibly under Ukrainian control – something neither country admits is happening. The head of the UK House of Commons’s Foreign Affairs Committee called the remarks “wrong, irresponsible and a slap in the face to allies”.

But worse than Scholz’s refusal to send Tauruses to Ukraine was the recent leak of a recording in which German air force officers could be heard directly contradicting Scholz’s argument, instead confirming that the missile would not in fact require the deployment of German manpower inside Ukraine.

The recording was revealed in Russian media, with Moscow threatening “dire consequences” for Germany if Taurus is deployed in Ukraine.

Former president Dmitry Medvedev, who has voiced some of the Kremlin’s most extreme rhetoric since the invasion, responded with a pair of nationalistic tirades in response via the messaging app Telegram, sharing a Second World War-era poem entitled “Kill Him!” and writing, “The call of the Great Patriotic War has become relevant again: “DEATH TO THE GERMAN-NAZI OCCUPIERS!”

Caught out

That such a sensitive conversation could be recorded and leaked at all, not least by the Russians, has horrified many in Germany and NATO more widely. But the revelation that Scholz’s public pretext for withholding the Taurus is baseless has caused deep anger.

According to Benjamin Tallis, Senior Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, the recording shows that the chancellor is not truly committed to a Ukrainian victory.

“Holding back like this risks a Ukrainian defeat, which would put all of Europe at great risk” he told Euronews. “Scholz’s arguments have been dismantled one by one and revealed to be excuses. Allies have sent similar weapons and faced no retaliation. All Scholz is doing is projecting weakness and making Germany more of a target.

“Following the Taurus leak, it seems that what Scholz is really afraid of is the weapon’s effectiveness. This betrays his position of not wanting Ukraine to win – and it’s an approach that lets down all Europeans by making us less safe.”

The saga of the Taurus missile and the leaked recording comes at an extremely inopportune moment in the Ukrainian conflict.

Recent Russian advances in the east of the country have owed a lot to a shortage of ammunition on the Ukrainian side, which Kyiv and some of its allies have attributed to certain Western countries’ slowness to resupply the war effort.

Aside from continuing to inflict major casualties on the Russian military – which Kyiv claims has lost well over 400,000 troops since February 2022 – the Ukrainian Armed Forces are currently focusing on destroying high-value military assets that the Russians will struggle to replace, among them a high-tech Russian patrol ship that was hit by a sea drone on 4 March.

These strikes have multiple benefits: aside from costing nothing in Ukrainian lives, they both undermine Russia’s tactical abilities and challenge the idea that its enormous resources offer anything like a guarantee of victory. The same goes for missile and drone strikes within Russian territory, particularly in the border region of Belgorod, which Ukraine has targeted multiple times.

But without enough Western hardware to continue these efforts, and with ever more reports of troops retreating from positions with depleted ammunition, Ukraine will struggle to keep its closest allies’ hopes alive.

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#Germanys #Olaf #Scholz #major #problem #Ukraine

Alcohol sales from Baltics to Russia surge despite Ukraine war

Post By World Alcohol, Baltic countries, export, Latvia, Russia, ukraine war

Latvia and Lithuania are accused of acting as middlemen between Western producers of booze and Russia.

Latvia was the biggest exporter of whiskey to Russia in 2023, according to data published by the Russian state-owned news agency Ria Novosti.

That’s despite high tensions between the two countries following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions.

Ria Novosti wrote that Russia imported almost €244 million worth of whiskey between January and September 2023, almost four times more than in the same period the year before.

Most of it came from neighbouring Latvia, which Ria Novosti said shipped products worth €177.4 million, followed by Baltic neighbour, Lithuania with €26.9 million.

Latvia’s exports to Russia were worth more than €1.1 billion in 2023, according to data from the country’s government cited by German news agency DW. More than half of all of Latvian exports to Russia were drinks, spirits and vinegar.

The Baltic state exported more wine (€73 million) than even Italy (€68 million), a much bigger producer than Latvia, to Russia last year.

“Latvia has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine and joined in pushing for EU sanctions against Russia following the invasion. At the same time, Latvia continues to serve as Russia’s primary source of whiskey, accounting for more than 70% of all Russian whiskey imports during 2023,” John Wright of the Moral Rating Agency (MRA) – an organisation set up to evaluate whether Western companies carried out their promise to pull out of Russia following the invasion of Ukraine – told Euronews.

“The continuance of Latvia’s export business to Russia is both shameful and contrary to Latvia’s own values. Internally, we at the Moral Rating Agency refer to Latvia’s whiskey trade as ‘Whiskeygate’, both because it is scandalous and because Latvia is serving as a gateway for Western spirits companies into the Russian market.”

Middleman for Western companies

Latvia, according to local experts, is acting as a go-between in a process that involves Western companies unwilling to show they’re still selling their products to Russia amid the deadly war in Ukraine.

Matiss Mirosnikovs, an economist at the Bank of Latvia, told Euronews that while the country has long been a middleman for Western companies, it saw the number of re-exports of Western goods ramp up after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“If we look at where these goods are manufactured, what type of alcoholic drinks they are, we mostly see that those are of foreign origin, they’re not produced locally here,” he told Euronews.

“What I think is happening is that Western companies are trying to kind of shift attention away from their role as sellers [to Russia] and blame other distributors, while the names of the larger parent companies don’t show up in these trades, it doesn’t show that they’re directly linked with Russia,” Mirosnikovs suggested.

“We’re not to be blamed,” he added. “We’re on the border and you’ll have some Western exporters who are using this opportunity.” Latvia’s exports are not in violation of sanctions imposed against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Davis Vitols, Managing Director of the Latvian Alcohol Industry Association (LANA), agreed.

“Before Russia started the war in Ukraine, Latvia was one of the main hubs, if not the main hub, for many big alcohol companies’ reexports to Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” Vitols told Euronews.

“According to the EU sanctions, alcohol exports to Russia and Belarus are still allowed, except bottles that cost more than €300, so, because Latvia does not produce whisky, these are reexported from other countries, where in Latvia, these bottles are being stamped according to exporting country laws,” he added.

Wright told Euronews that Latvia is “clearly serving as a ‘back door’ into the Russian market for Western spirits companies.” According to Wright, Latvia ranks as the sixth largest importer of Scotch in the world, “even though its population is smaller than that of Idaho,” he said.

“Our calculations suggest that, if the Latvian population actually consumed all of the alcohol that the country is importing, then every Latvian man, woman, and child would be inebriated for the majority of each day. But this is not what is happening. Instead, the data shows that Latvia continues to redistribute about 5 bottles of whiskey to Russia for every 1 bottle of whiskey it consumes at home. “

Russian sources agreed with Latvian experts.

“If previously, according to documents, imports went to Russia simply in transit through Latvia or Lithuania, now the final point is the Baltic States, and from there the delivery goes to the Russian Federation,” Veniamin Grabar, President of Russia’s alcohol company Ladoga, told Ria Novosti.

“The logistics chain has not changed, it has changed a little paperwork. The reason is that often foreign suppliers do not want to take risks and indicate Russia as the final delivery point.”

Mirosnikov told Euronewss the proportion of exports to Russia has actually dropped “dramatically” since 2014.

Ten years ago Russia was Latvia’s second largest export partner, taking 14 per cent of total goods exported, now it’s lower than 6 per cent.

“It’s still quite high, but its role has diminished over the years,” he continued.

‘Vital’ for Western businesses to stop

For Wright, it’s “vital for the Western business community to stand united and to continue to send a clear signal to Russia that its military aggression will result in economic ostracism from the Western world,” he said.

“What kind of message does it send to Russian elites that certain Western countries and companies are willing to bend over backwards to continue providing Western luxury goods to Russia? And what kind of message does it send to the rest of Europe when even the Baltics are supporting Russia? Any country that is tempted to cut corners, either to enrich itself or to curry favour with Putin, should recall President John F. Kennedy’s admonition ‘that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside’.”

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#Alcohol #sales #Baltics #Russia #surge #Ukraine #war

Ukrainian comedian Dima Watermelon explains why Putin is not a joke

Post By World comedy, Refugees, Russia-Ukraine invasion, ukraine war

Ukrainian comedian Dima Watermelon would love nothing more than to be able to stop making jokes about Putin. But as long as the war in Ukraine goes on, he feels he has to address “the elephant in the room”.

Some believe that humour always helps but not on the 24 February 2022,when the Russian invasion of Ukraine left nothing to laugh about. Ukrainian comic Dima Watermelon said: “I don’t think any Ukrainians will ever forget the moment where they were. It’s like asking Americans about 9/11.”

Except for Ukrainians this time their whole existence as a sovereign state was under threat. Dima remembers exactly where he was that day. In Munich getting ready to fly to South Africa where his wife comes from. Dima had been living in Berlin for several years after moving from Finland as a student.

How does one switch from IT to stand-up comedy?

After finishing his studies in Berlin and starting to work in IT, Dima began doing live stand-up performances. That’s when Dima became a full time comedian and a regular in the lively Berlin stand-up comedy scene. That’s where having a surname like Watermelon helps. It is his Ukrainian surname Kabyh translated into English. We met Dima before a live show in a well-known comedy venue in Neukölln, in West Berlin.

Joking about the war is like addressing “the elephant in the room”

Originally political jokes weren’t really Dima’s thing. But circumstances, even in the world of laughter force you to adapt.

“I never wanted to be a political comedian. But because of the war I need to address it, it’s like addressing the elephant in the room. So of course I end up writing more jokes about war and about Russia and about Putin. Humour is important because this is one thing people always have. You know, you can laugh and you can feel better when you laugh.“

And some of his jokes aged better than he would have hoped for. When he first started as a comedian back in 2018, he joked that if someone asked him about his nationality, as he is from Ukraine, he first had to check the news:

During his live set, one member of the audience asks him why he’s here and not there. Dima asks the man for a one-to-one after the show to talk further about this issue. He must continue, the house is full and people have paid for the show – they want to be entertained.

We asked Dima a similar question before his comedy hour “Culturally Inappropriate aka Ukrainian Dream” began. Dima thinks it is a difficult question but says if he was conscripted and there wasn´t any other option yes, of course, he would go. He´s not sure what he really has to offer. He feels certain groups of people aren´t really fit for the army and artists fall under this category, but he did receive basic military training as a radio operator for air space systems.

Dima’s hometown is Irpin, now sadly known because of the war

And of course his comedy is in a foreign language – English. He has never really done stand-up in his native language. Although he was brought up bilingually in Ukraine, his mother spoke Ukrainian, his father Russian, he has always spoke Ukrainian.

Dima is from the eastern suburbs of Kyiv a place called Irpin which is now known as one of the places where the Russian push in Ukrainian was halted in the first months of the war. Dima didn’t even used to say he was from Irpin to people, because it was unknown, he just said Kyiv. Now it’s on the map, like so many others places in Ukraine that nobody really knew before the war. Dima hasn’t been back to Irpin since the war begun.

That was really heart breaking, I would like to, to keep those places nice in my head, in my memory. I’m not sure what the right thing to do is.“

“Take the war seriously and supply Ukraine with more weapons”

One thing Dima is sure of is that people in the West and western Europe don’t take the whole situation seriously enough.

“I just listened to Putin and Russia. They’re not playing and they’re serious. And this idea that they will stop in Ukraine and they will take Crimea and Donbas and they will stop, it’s just not true because as I said, Russia was consistent over 20 years of grabbing, of restoring, like Russian Empire, the former Soviet Union.”

According to Dima the West needs to be much more involved and realise the seriousness of the situation. “I hope, the Western world will take this war more seriously and to actually supply Ukraine with more weapons and not just supply leftovers.”

The Ukrainian community is more closely knitted than ever before

Dima feels very pessimistic about the future for Ukraine and for Europe too. He feels things can only get much worse. His hopes are that he, his family and friends will survive this ongoing nightmare.

“One thing that has changed is that Ukrainians have become much closer as a nation of people.”

Other big changes have also taken place in his life. Dima´s mother for example arrived in Berlin as a refugee. They too have become much closer than they were before the invasion.

Dima says the stereotype about people wanting to come to Germany for financial benefits is not really true. People especially older people like his mother do not want to be here. There’s no joy living in a city where it’s very difficult to find accommodation as a refugee, where the bureaucratic hurdles are so difficult many would rather return home.

He jokes that she would rather hear sirens than face German bureaucracy every day. “

Putin only has war to offer, nothing else

Dima adds that Putin can only offer Russians war and nothing else. He has no way back, no way out, even if he was offered a peace deal in his opinion. He adds ”Putin is serious about the Baltic countries.” Dima thinks they are also on Putin’s invasion list. “He hates Poland. We need to take it seriously.“

And in one of his sets he jokes, that as he is an Ukrainian comedian, the public in Western Europe and the public in Eastern Europe have very different expectations, when it comes to his material and to his jokes about Russia.

Dima knows that with inflation and the costs of living crisis, the daily quality of life has deteriorated for most, even in Western Europe: “But at least people here are not dying.

“I hope it will sort itself out magically. But yeah, let’s take it seriously, guys.“

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#Ukrainian #comedian #Dima #Watermelon #explains #Putin #joke

‘If I die it’s my choice’: Finnish soldiers on Ukraine’s front line

Post By World Finland, Foreign Fighters, Military aid, Russia-Ukraine invasion, soldier, ukraine war

This is the story of Hobbit and Mariachi, two Finns who volunteered to fight in Ukraine, where the brutal Russian invasion strikes a chord close to home.

It’s March 2022.

Russian forces have besieged the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, shelling it from warships in the Azov Sea. Kremlin troops are still dangerously close to the capital Kyiv, while the first horrific accounts of mass killings are starting to emerge from Bucha.

As the war unfolded around him, Hobbit arrived in Ukraine.

“In the beginning, it was all new to me, and I was very nervous. And I was sure after one or two months there wouldn’t be a government left.”

Hobbit – who only uses his callsign not his real name for operational security reasons – is one of the estimated hundred Finns, among hundreds of other foreign fighters, who put their lives on hold to take up arms against the Russian invaders.

For many people in Finland, the war in Ukraine has echoes of their own country’s not-so-distant past, when a Soviet false-flag operation in November 1939 saw Stalin’s forces shell a border post and blame it on the Finns as a pretext to launch a ground offensive.

Russia’s famed composer Dmitri Shostakovich was commissioned to write new music, which would be played as victorious Soviet troops marched through the streets of Helsinki to install a puppet government – a tale that chimes with reports from the current war that Russian forces had been told to pack their dress uniforms for a victory parade in Kyiv.

At the end of the short 105-day Winter War, Finland had inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets but was ultimately forced to give up territory and pay reparations. The outcome, and the tens of thousands of internally displaced people who moved from annexed Karelia into Finland proper, makes the modern-day situation in Ukraine seem chillingly familiar to many Finns.

“To be honest I don’t know how it happened exactly but I was watching the war, and then I started to feel that maybe I should do something, and I was sitting at home enjoying the little things in life like cinnamon buns and IPA beer,” Hobbit tells Euronews.

“I thought why am I staying at home and enjoying this without any care in the world when 18-year-olds in Ukraine have to go to war without much training: This is the rifle, this is how you shoot, you are good to go. But I have training.”

Like most Finnish men, Hobbit had served his conscription in the military although he says he didn’t much enjoy it at the time, with too many rules and restrictions.

Whether nine months of basic training really prepared him for war is a different question.

“No training can be the same as war of course. But I had an advantage because the Finnish army has always trained for combat against Russia, so I was taught how to survive. That is also one of the reasons why I felt I should come because we have knowledge to share.”

Hobbit’s family was less sure he should volunteer in Ukraine. “They didn’t like it at all. But in the end we discussed, and I expressed my views. I will be disappointed in myself if I do not go. It’s my life. If I die it’s my choice.”

It’s September 2022.

Russia illegally annexes Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhizhia as Vladimir Putin announces a “partial mobilisation” of 300,000 troops to fight in Ukraine. It’s a further sign that things are not going the way the Kremlin planned, and the call-up triggers a mass exodus of military-age Russian men trying to escape conscription.

Hobbit is on the front line of fighting in the small town of Petropavlivka, near Kupiansk.

Along with another Finnish volunteer, he’s assigned to fire support.

“I had a heavy machine gun stolen from a Russian tank, and my job was to move and cover the advance through the town,” he recalls.

The pair moved into position near a crossroads, where advancing Ukrainian forces would be exposed in an open area. Hobbit had just put his gun down into a makeshift firing position when they spotted a Russian BMP-2M – an infantry fighting vehicle – a few hundred metres away.

“I thought there was a slight chance to hit some critical system, to disable the BMP. Or if I hit it from the side, rounds might actually go through, so I started blasting the BMP and managed to empty three belts of ammunition into the vehicle and the dismounting infantry.”

Hobbit was firing the third belt when the bullets zinged through the air. He’d been so focused on the main target that he didn’t notice the Russian sniper. One shot hit him low in the calf, embedding deep into his foot, shattering bones and severing tendons.

Video from a body-worn camera shows the action in real time that day, and captures the moment when Hobbit is hit. He screams in agony, and swears in Finnish, a language well suited to profanities. His battle buddy calls for a medevac and soon another foreign fighter shows up in an SUV. Hobbit is unceremoniously bundled into the back, his foot bandaged, as he’s driven away.

After a month in a Ukrainian hospital, he is transferred to Finland where his family visits him for the first time since he was injured.

“They were shocked. There was not many words spoken, but many tears.”

If Hobbit was one of the first Finnish volunteers to show up in Ukraine, then Mariachi is one of the newest. He’s only been in the country a few months.

The nickname, he says, is a nod to his Latin American heritage.

Studying abroad, the 22-year-old was helping out with pro-Ukraine events on campus but knew he wanted to do more to help – a lot more.

“It was my second year at university and I could not focus on anything. I was in school, but in my head, I was browsing the news about what was happening at the front. It was the beginning of last summer I decided I wanted to go. That’s why it took me a long time to get here, I had to prepare.”

He first floated the idea of going to Ukraine with his dad five months before finally moving.

“I told him what was on my mind, but he didn’t take it that well. I told my friends about one month before. They tried to stop me, and persuade me not to go. That’s a sign you have good friends. Nobody told me it was a good idea but I wouldn’t be here if I had listened to them,” Mariachi says from his base outside Kyiv, where he’s training with a reconnaissance platoon.

Unlike the initial waves of foreign volunteers who arrived haphazardly and either served with the International Brigade or operated more independently, Mariachi is serving directly with a Ukrainian unit.

“Ukrainian commanders want good international soldiers in their units, and my commander has been actively recruiting Finnish soldiers here and reservists back in Finland.”

The advantages are that Ukrainian units get new soldiers who already have more training than Ukrainian recruits have time for. “These guys are battle-hardened, they know how to function out there in the trenches, but they’re civilians who became soldiers out of necessity, they’re not trained army men. The average Ukrainian soldier doesn’t get much training time.”

One thing Mariachi and the other Finnish fighters in Ukraine have come to rely on is the enviable network put in place back home to support them.

Kasper Kannosto from the Your Finnish Friends charity explains they’ve bought more than €350,000 of supplies since 2022, and received material donations like cars and equipment worth €100,000.

On the shopping list has been defensive equipment, night vision goggles, cold weather clothing, socks, generators, pick-up trucks, vans and tools.

“We include Finnish chocolate and coffee in the packages,” he adds.

Mariachi is waiting on a particular brand of boots he likes, which should soon arrive via the Helsinki-Kyiv supply pipeline, and describes the service as “crucial” in providing Finnish fighters with the equipment they need.

“I’m serving in a recon platoon and if you don’t have night vision goggles you’re fucked. That’s the reality here. And even a good, cheaper pair of night vision headsets can cost €4,500 or €5,000 which is three to four months of active pay,” he says.

It’s March 2023.

Bitter fighting rages in the eastern city of Bakhmut, with casualties so high it earns the grim nickname of ‘meat grinder’. Ukraine gets its first delivery of Western heavy tanks: Challengers from Britain and Leopards from Germany, as Vladimir Putin says he plans to move tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus.

Hobbit is back in Ukraine as well, although his foot is still not healed so he needs a stick to walk around, which confines him to a desk job in logistics for months at a time while he rehabs his injury to get back in fighting shape.

It takes him another six months before he’s running again, and when he can do 5km he’s deployed near Bakhmut – a ruined city where ‘success’ is measured house by house and village by village. Tiny incremental gains that do little but sap morale and increase the body count on both sides.

It’s October 2023.

On this mission, Hobbit is the squad leader of a machinegun team, assaulting south of Bakhmut. They’re in the treeline, advancing towards enemy positions when Russian artillery hones in on them.

“Our whole assault element got hit by artillery, just me and a couple of others were uninjured,” he recalls flatly.

“The assault was cancelled and we spent the next six or seven hours evacuating the wounded. When we went back for the last wounded guy we picked him up on the stretcher and artillery hit next to us.”

Hobbit was injured for the second time, shrapnel in his shoulder and arm. They couldn’t move to safety, or move the last badly injured soldier, because of the incoming Russian artillery fire. Stuck in a foxhole, they waited for hours until they were finally able to get out.

After a month in hospital, Hobbit requested a transfer to a Ukrainian unit but was assigned as temporary platoon leader in the meantime. “I lasted only three weeks in that role, not a great job. There was very little sleep and a lot of stress and responsibility at least with regards to the Bakhmut fighting.”

“I ended up just crying on my last day, that I can’t do it any more. Luckily I got some time off.”

It’s February 2024.

The conflict has largely ground to a halt, with Russian and Ukrainian forces digging into entrenched positions. The war has reached increasingly beyond Ukraine’s borders, with Russian oil refineries targeted by Kyiv’s drones, while Western countries hesitate to send more military aid which is badly needed by soldiers on the front lines.

“I feel the impact of diminishing support in the last couple of months. Germany is holding back its Taurus cruise missiles, and Europe is not giving as much aid as they should,” says Hobbit.

“In the beginning, we were so outnumbered by the Russians that when we saw observation posts and called in artillery, we didn’t have shit.”

“The Kharkiv offensive changed all that, we came level with the Russians. But in the last month it’s back the other way again, Russians hitting us with more artillery,” he says.

So how long does he plan to stay in Ukraine, risking his life for a foreign country, swerving away from death each time it approaches head-on?

“I hope I won’t be here forever. But definitely until victory.”

“The whole idea of a normal life seems impossible now. It’s hard to imagine a life after this.”

“The only thing I can imagine is a party on the day when we win. But what comes after I don’t know. It’s just a cloud.”

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Will Zelenskyy’s four-star general become his main political opponent?

Post By World euroviews, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine politics, ukraine war, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

The Zelenskyy-Zaluzhnyi beef is a reminder that the essence of politics lies in disagreement or divergence of group interests — especially when those interests involve the survival of the nation and its people, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

As the war in Ukraine nears the two-year mark, global attention has radically shifted away from Russia’s ongoing act of aggression. Battlefield reports have become scarce, and the continued humanitarian crisis affecting tens of millions of Ukrainians barely makes the news any more.

Yet, the most recent bombshell out of Kyiv alleging a behind-the-scenes dispute between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and army commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi brought Ukraine to the headlines of the media around the world once more.

Rumours of Zaluzhnyi’s imminent dismissal as a consequence of an ever-widening rift between two key figures in wartime Ukraine of today are said to be tied to the fact that Zaluzhnyi — seen by many as a level-headed realist — has become increasingly more popular among Ukrainians than Zelenskyy himself.

While the Ukrainian president dismissed this as “not true”, fears over Zaluzhnyi’s rise in popularity in domestic politics would serve to prove that, while a nation’s unity in times of war might be strong, concord in politics tends to be very short-lived.

And if anything, the Zelenskyy-Zaluzhnyi beef is a reminder that the essence of politics lies in disagreement or divergence of group interests — especially when those interests involve the survival of the nation and its people.

What unites a country?

In fact, history has shown that the unity of the people and various political options is an unnatural state in the realm of politics.

This coming together of an entire society is usually either a product of tyranny from within — where unity represents merely a false image of itself, as in the case of Vladimir Putin’s Russia — or forced from the outside by aggressive foreign powers threatening the sole existence of a nation.

Going a mere decade back, Ukrainian society was, like any other, divided between conflicting interests of various groups, represented by political parties, with a meddling oligarchic element to boot.

However, Ukrainians already had a unifying incentive, that many societies luckily don’t have — an increasingly aggressive and revanchist great power at its doorstep, attempting to capture Ukraine’s territory and reconfigure its national identity.

The Ukrainian political class didn’t only face the cumbersome task of building democratic institutions and curbing oligarchic influence over the political sphere. It also had to do so while dealing with the military aggression of its now resurgent former imperial master.

Enter Zelenskyy

Fast forward to the last presidential electoral cycle in Ukraine in 2019: the current president of the country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, achieved a unifying effect never seen before in contemporary Ukrainian politics.

In the runoff, he got both the west and the east of the country to support him, while replacing a string of oligarchs who preceded him, including Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Yanukovich.

Russia’s total war against Ukraine in 2022 changed the political landscape of both countries.

Moscow slid into totalitarianism, while in Ukraine, the vast majority of the nation rallied around President Zelenskyy, a political figure only a few considered to be as resilient as he turned out to be.

Zelenskyy, a man of charisma and a politician who understood how to appropriately communicate with a wide audience, helped the Ukrainian people beat back the main onslaught of Russian troops.

Western aid, in terms of armaments and finances, came later. It was Zelenskyy’s voice, his presence, that instilled hope in the hearts of Ukrainians around the world.

Even those who mocked him and thought he was incapable of holding the highest political office, came to respect his actions when they were needed the most, and Zelenskyy went on to become a globally recognised leader of a nation embroiled in a David vs Goliath-esque contest.

The nature of politics inevitably rears its head

However, after nearly two years of bloody war, the frontlines barely moving, and new wars and crises arising elsewhere, Ukraine lost its leading place in the world news reports. Zelenskyy’s aplomb just wasn’t enough any more.

Internally, the nature of politics began to show itself. By mid-2023, it was already clear that Zelenskyy would be facing renewed opposition.

His controversial former advisor Oleksiy Arestovych immediately presented himself as a promising potential leader of the “stalemate” or “sober” party — claiming to be the actual realist in the room.

He alone, nonetheless, didn’t stand much chance against Zelenskyy, having switched too many political camps in his career, and it became evident that not many of those who were a part of the pre-war opposition would back him.

With Zelenskyy at the helm of the determined resistance strain of Ukrainian politics, then who could be the face of the stalemate party, without him or her being labelled a defeatist or, even worse, Putin’s agent?

The answer to that question was clear to the opposition veterans from the start — four-star general Valerii Zaluzhnyi definitely fits the bill.

Will the four-star general stand and be counted?

The general, already a war hero, is surely a strong-willed and determined individual, marked by the makings of a Macarthurian type of character. And more importantly, he has the overwhelming trust of the Ukrainian people on his side.

A December 2023 poll by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology showed that 88% of Ukrainians supported Zaluzhnyi, while Zelenskyy’s approval rating hovered at around 62%.

The same poll demonstrated that while the absolute majority of Ukrainians also do not favour the option of peace in lieu of giving up a part of their country’s territory — 74% are against it — a growing number of people now see the stalemate as a possibility, with 19% ready to accept it (up from 14% in October and 10% in May).

Zaluzhnyi’s words in a now-infamous interview in November 2023, where he expressed his reservation that Ukraine might be stuck in a long and costly war, have stung the ever-persistent Zelenskyy just as much as they have made the possible pact with the devil seem slightly more acceptable than the continued devastation of Ukraine.

At the same time, his outspoken and direct takes also piqued the interest of the nearly-inert Ukrainian opposition, already significantly weakened after the 2019 elections and following February 2022, when it lost almost all of its appeal.

Yet, the passage of time and lack of progress on the battlefield has made them once again engage in a political match against Zelenskyy, as can be gleaned from those from the Verkhovna Rada issuing accusatory statements aimed at him while supporting Zaluzhnyi to the Western press these days.

All they need now is a respectable leader to stand and be counted.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. He was formerly a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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ICJ partially rejects Ukraine ‘terror’ case against Russia

Post By World Russia, Ukraine, ukraine war

All the latest developments on the war in Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine swap scores of POWs despite tensions over a plane crash last week

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged about 200 prisoners of war each, the countries said Wednesday, despite tensions stemming from last week’s crash of a military transport plane that Moscow claimed was carrying Ukrainian POWs and was shot down by Kyiv’s forces.

After the 24 January crash of the Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, some Russian officials had publicly questioned the possibility of future POW swaps.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said the countries exchanged 195 POWs each. After the statement was released, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 207 Ukrainians were freed. There was no immediate explanation for the different figures.

“We remember each Ukrainian in captivity. Both warriors and civilians. We must bring all of them back. We are working on it,” Zelenskyy said on X, formerly Twitter.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights, said on social media that it was the 50th such exchange since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, with a total of 3,035 POWs repatriated.

Among the Ukrainians released were members of the armed forces, National Guard, Border Service and national police, said Andrii Yermak, head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office. He added that some of them had been captured while defending Mariupol, Azovstal, and Snake Island.

The Russian military said, without providing details or evidence, that the Russian POWs who were swapped Wednesday “faced deadly danger in captivity” and will be flown to Moscow for treatment and rehabilitation.

Moscow had said 65 Ukrainian POWs had been aboard the military transport that crashed 24 January. Ukrainian officials confirmed that a swap was due to take place that day and was called off, but said it has seen no evidence the plane was carrying the POWs.

Meeting with his campaign staff in Moscow as he ramps up his run for reelection, President Vladimir Putin said Russian investigators concluded that Ukraine used US-supplied Patriot air defence systems to shoot down the transport plane. Ukrainian officials didn’t deny the plane’s downing but didn’t take responsibility and called for an international investigation.

Putin said Russia wouldn’t just welcome but would “insist” on an international inquiry on what he described as a “crime” by Ukraine.

ICJ judges largely reject Ukraine’s “terror” case against Russia

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected on Wednesday almost all of Ukraine’s claims on Russia violating the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

The United Nations’ top court rejected large parts of the case filed by Ukraine, alleging that Russia bankrolled separatist rebels in the country’s east a decade ago and discriminated against Crimea’s multi-ethnic community, the International Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that Moscow violated articles of two treaties.

Russia has not fulfilled its obligations only on one provision of the convention, said ICJ President Joan Donoghue while reading out the decision in The Hague.

“Russia failed to fulfill its obligations to conduct investigations against individuals who allegedly could finance terrorism in Ukraine,” she said.

Most of Ukraine’s claims under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination were also found to be ungrounded.

“The Court rejects all other claims of Ukraine in relation to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” the order read.

However, it added that Russia had violated its obligations under Articles 2 and 5 of the convention through its implementation of its educational system in Crimea after 2014 with regard to schooling in the Ukrainian language.

Even though it rejected far more of Kyiv’s claims under the treaties, Anton Korynevych, a lawyer representing Ukraine at the ICJ, said it was a “really important day” because the court had still ruled that Russia had “violated international law.”

Ukraine sued Russia for violating both conventions in 2017, and labeled breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk “terrorist organisations financed by Russia.”

Kyiv also insisted that Russia was allegedly conducting a targeted campaign of racial discrimination against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea.

The court also rejected Ukraine’s request for Moscow to pay reparations for attacks in eastern Ukraine blamed on pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels, including the 17 July 2014, downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 that killed all 298 passengers and crew.

Azov Brigade uses a howitzer to fire at Russian positions in eastern Ukraine

An artillery unit of the Azov Brigade in eastern Ukraine has used a howitzer to fire at Russian positions, as Ukraine’s forces continue to grapple with ammunition shortages.

The unit, embedded in the forest near Lyman, said Russian forces were attempting to advance and their work was crucial to hold them back.

The situation in the Kreminna direction is tense with Russians making assaults every day, the soldiers say.

“As on the entire frontline, it is quite tense here because there are active assaults that we are fighting back and this requires a lot of ammunition,” said “Vyarag”, an Azov Brigade howitzer calculation commander.

The brigade is facing a lack of ammunition and parts to repair the American howitzers they received last September.

For now, they have only 10% of the total number they need to fight Russians said one of the commanders of the artillery division.

The brigade said that they are constantly inventing new fighting strategies to deter the Russians, but to go on a counterattack to win, more ammunition is needed.

Even with a shortage of ammunition, soldiers are not lacking motivation.

Putin holds meeting on development of occupied Ukrainian territories

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday chaired a meeting on the economic development of occupied Ukrainian territories.

Moscow spent almost two trillion rubles on a “comprehensive” development programme of Russia-held parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions last year, Putin said.

Over two million local residents there are already receiving social security payments, he added.

“The economy is gradually recovering, including industry. More than one-and-a-half hundred enterprises in mechanical engineering, metallurgy, mining, and other important industries in all these regions have resumed work.

Support for farmers has been established, banks and shops are operating,” Putin claimed.

He urged Russian banks to start working in the occupied territories.

“Everything that was feared before – sanctions – has already happened. What is there to be afraid of? You need to enter these territories and work more actively there,” Putin said.

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Russia faces new ICJ ruling as European leaders say they let Kyiv down

Post By World Roman Abramovich, Russia, Ukraine, ukraine war

The latest developments from the war in Ukraine.

European leaders admit EU has ‘fallen short’ of its goals to help Ukraine

In a letter published in the Financial Times on Wednesday, five European leaders admitted “the hard truth” that the European Union has “fallen short” of its goal to supply Ukraine with 1 million artillery rounds before the end of March 2024.

In the document, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Czech Republic’s Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte wrote that the EU “can’t just give up on our promise.”

“If Ukrainian soldiers are to keep up the fight, the need for ammunition is overwhelming,” the letter reads. “And the EU member states’ delivery of arms and ammunition to Ukraine is more important than ever.”

The leaders called for the EU to redouble its efforts to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion and provide Kyiv “the ammunition and weapon systems, including howitzers, tanks, UAVs and air defence” it urgently needs.

Ruling due in Russian separatist funding case

The United Nations’ top court plans to rule today on Ukraine’s allegations that Russia bankrolled separatist rebels in the country’s east a decade ago and has discriminated against Crimea’s multiethnic community since its annexation of the peninsula.

The legally binding final ruling is the first of two expected decisions from the International Court of Justice linked to the decade-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into a full-blown war almost two years ago.

The case, filed in 2017, accuses Russia of breaching conventions against discrimination and the financing of terrorism. Ukraine wants the court to order Moscow to pay reparations for attacks and crimes in the country’s east, including the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.

The court is also expected to rule Friday on Russia’s objections to its jurisdiction in another case filed by Ukraine shortly after Russian troops invaded in February 2022. It alleges that Moscow launched its attack based on trumped-up genocide allegations.

The court already has issued an interim order for Russia to halt the invasion, which Moscow has flouted.

European Commission extends duty-free policy with Ukraine

The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it would extend the suspension of import duties on Ukrainian agricultural exports for another year, til June 2025.

The announcement is likely to fuel the anger of farmers who have been protesting across Europe for measures to protect them from the influx of cheaper imports and to recognise the value of their work.

Belarusian rock band critical of Putin detained in Thailand

Members of a rock band that has been critical of Moscow’s war in Ukraine remained locked up Tuesday in a Thai immigration jail, fearful that they could be deported to Russia as a reported plan to let them fly to safety in Israel was apparently suspended.

The progressive rock band Bi-2 said on Facebook they had information that intervention from Russian diplomats had scuttled the plan, even though tickets had already been purchased for their flight.

“The group participants remain detained at the immigration centre in a shared cell with 80 people,” the post said. It said they declined to meet with the Russian consul.

The group later said on the Telegram messaging app that its singer, Yegor Bortnik, whose stage name is Lyova, boarded a flight for Israel late Tuesday, but the other members remained in jail.

The seven band members were arrested last Thursday after playing a concert on the southern resort island of Phuket, reportedly for not having proper working papers. On Facebook, they said all their concerts “are held in accordance with local laws and practices.” Phuket is a popular destination for Russian expats and tourists.

The detained musicians “include Russian citizens as well as dual nationals of Russia and other countries, including Israel and Australia,” the group Human Rights Watch said in a statement Tuesday. Those holding only Russian citizenship are thought to be most at risk.

Bi-2 has 1.01 million subscribers to its YouTube channel and 376,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

Ukraine’s promises to Hungarian minority fall short, says Orbán

Members of a sizeable ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine continue to disrupt relations between Budapest and Kyiv, threatening to derail key financial support for the Ukrainian war effort.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has long alleged that Ukraine’s government is infringing upon the right of Hungarian-speaking students, and of the roughly 75,000 ethnic Hungarians residing in the Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia, to speak their native language in education and public administration.

His government has blocked crucial EU funding for Ukraine and threatened to impede the war-ravaged country’s efforts toward eventually joining the bloc, bringing diplomatic ties to worrying lows.

The dispute over language is rooted in Ukraine’s efforts to bolster its national identity after Russia-backed rebels took control of two regions in the country’s east in 2014 and Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Aimed at combating Russian influence, but ultimately affecting other minority languages, a law was passed in 2017 that made Ukrainian the required language of school study past the fifth grade.

But in December, Ukraine amended its education and language laws to comply with the EU’s membership requirements, and restored many of the language rights demanded by Budapest – prompting a sigh of relief from the region’s Hungarian community.

UK tries to free up frozen Abramovich Chelsea funds

UK lawmakers expressed frustration Wednesday that funds from the sale of the Chelsea Football Club have not yet gone to support Ukrainian war victims as had been promised nearly two years ago by the former owner, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

Abramovich sold Chelsea in 2022 after being sanctioned by the British government for what it called his enabling of Russia’s “brutal and barbaric invasion” of Ukraine.

He pledged to donate the £2.5 billion (nearly €3 billion) from the sale to victims of the war. But almost 20 months later, the funds are still frozen in a bank account in an apparent disagreement with the British government over how they should be spent.

The stalemate highlights the difficulty Western governments face in reallocating frozen Russian assets to Ukraine – even those that have been pledged by their owner.

“We are all completely baffled and frustrated that it has taken so long,” said Lord Peter Ricketts, chair of the European Affairs Committee in the British House of Lords, which produced the report.

“We can’t understand why either Abramovich or the British government didn’t ensure that there was more clarity in the original undertaking which … would avoid arguments about exactly who in Ukraine would get this money,” Ricketts said.

The impasse “reflects badly on both Mr Abramovich and the Government,” the report said.

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Why is Turkey finally getting behind Sweden’s NATO bid?

Post By World Hungary, nato, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sweden, Turkiye (Turkey), ukraine war

The last Nordic country to join the alliance is still waiting for Turkey and Hungary to clear its path.

Sweden edged closer toward joining NATO on Tuesday after the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee greenlit a protocol for the Nordic country’s accession to the military alliance.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dropped his objection to Sweden’s membership during a NATO summit in July, but it took him several months to send the bill to parliament for ratification and weeks for the parliamentary committee to give its consent.

The long-delayed protocol now needs to be approved by the full general assembly and it remains to be seen how quickly the issue will be taken up by the floor.

Sweden and Finland abandoned their decades-long neutrality and sought membership in NATO amid heightened security concerns following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Finland became NATO’s 31st member earlier this year, after Turkey’s parliament ratified its bid.

Why the delay?

Turkey’s opposition to Swedish membership in NATO stemmed from its belief that the Nordic country has been too soft toward supporters of Kurdish militants and other groups in Sweden that Ankara views as security threats.

These include people associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, which has waged a 39-year insurgency in Turkey and people with alleged links to a coup attempt in 2016 against Erdoğan. Others are critics of the Turkish leader.

Some observers have warned giving in to Ankara’s demands could undermine Sweden’s sovereignty, as well as the rights of those Erdoğan wants extradited to Turkey.

Turkey, Sweden and Finland reached an agreement last year to tackle Ankara’s security concerns and Stockholm subsequently took steps to tighten its anti-terrorism laws, making support for extremist organisations punishable by up to eight years in prison.

But a series of anti-Turkey and anti-Islam protests in Stockholm, some of which involved the burning of the Quran, angered Erdoğan’s government and the Turkish public.

While the demonstrations were condemned by the Swedish government, Turkey criticised Sweden – which has strict laws protecting free speech – for allowing displays of anti-Muslim sentiment.

What’s changed?

While Sweden strengthened its antiterrorism laws to address Ankara’s security concerns, NATO agreed to establish a special coordinator for counterterrorism and appointed Assistant Secretary-General Tom Goffus to the position.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at the alliance’s summit in July that Sweden had agreed “to support actively the efforts to reinvigorate Turkey’s EU accession process.”

Stockholm announced it would seek improved customs arrangements and take steps to implement visa-free European travel for Turkish citizens.

Turkey’s EU membership talks came to a standstill in 2018 because of the country’s democratic backsliding and poor record on human rights.

Earlier this month, Erdoğan openly linked Sweden’s NATO membership to Ankara’s efforts to purchase US-made F-16 fighter jets. He also called on Canada and other NATO allies to lift arms embargoes on Turkey.

Some Western states banned arms exports to Turkey in 2019, following its military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militias.

During Tuesday’s debate at the parliamentary committee, opposition legislator Oguz Kaan Salici questioned whether the government had received assurances from the United States concerning the sale of the F-16s.

US President Joe Biden’s administration backs Turkey’s F-16 request, but many in the US Congress strongly oppose selling arms to Turkey, which wants to buy 40 new F-16 fighter jets and modernisation kits for its existing fleet.

What happens next?

The approval by the parliamentary committee paves the way for Sweden’s accession protocol to be debated and ratified by the general assembly. It would then have to be signed off by Erdoğan to come into effect.

It was not clear when the full assembly would debate the bill.

Erdoğan’s ruling AK party and its allies command a majority in the 600-seat parliament.

However, the Turkish president has said the decision rests with lawmakers. His ruling party’s nationalist allies remain uneasy with Sweden’s membership and accuse NATO members of indifference toward the PKK threat to Turkey.

This week, Kurdish militants attempted to infiltrate a Turkish base in northern Iraq, killing 12 soldiers in two days of clashes.

Islamist parties, frustrated by what they perceive to be Western nations’ silence toward Israel’s military actions in Gaza, may vote against the bill.

The Hungarian factor

Hungary, the only other NATO holdout on Sweden, has not announced when the country’s ratification may occur.

Hungary’s governing Fidesz party – led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is widely considered one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s only allies in the EU – has stalled Sweden’s NATO bid since July 2022, alleging that Swedish politicians have told “blatant lies” about the condition of Hungary’s democracy.

Yet neither Orbán nor his senior officials have indicated what kind of redress they require from Stockholm to allay their reservations over Sweden joining the military alliance.

Some critics have alleged that Hungary is using its potential veto power over Sweden’s accession as a tool to leverage concessions from the European Union, which has frozen billions in funds to Budapest over concerns over minority rights and the rule of law.

Hungarian officials have said repeatedly that their country will not be the last NATO member to endorse Sweden’s bid. But Ankara’s move toward ratification suggests that the time for further holdups may be running out.

Some opposition politicians in Hungary – who have argued for immediate approval of Sweden’s bid – believe that Orbán’s party is following Ankara’s timetable and will vote to approve once it seems clear that Turkey will imminently do the same.

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Putin says no peace in Ukraine until Russia’s goals are achieved

Post By World Alexei Navalny, Russia, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ukraine war, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The Russian president was speaking at an end of year press conference, which was somewhat overshadowed by the peculiar disappearance of jailed former opposition leader Alexeï Navalny.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there will be no peace in Ukraine until his goals are achieved – and said those objectives remain unchanged.

Putin was speaking at a year-end news conference on Thursday which offered the leader an opportunity to reinforce his grip on power.

Giving rare detail on what Moscow calls its special military operation, Putin dismissed the need for a second wave of mobilisation of reservists to fight in Ukraine – a move that proved deeply unpopular in the past.

He said there are some 617,000 Russian soldiers currently there, including around 244,000 troops who were called up to fight alongside professional Russian military forces.

The Russian president, who has held power for nearly 24 years and announced recently he is running for reelection, was greeted with applause as he arrived in the hall in central Moscow.

Putin did not hold his traditional press conference last year after his military failed to take Kyiv while the Ukrainian army retook swaths of territory in the east and south of the country.

But with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now forced to plead for more US aid, a stalling counteroffensive and reports of fracturing Western support for Ukraine, the Russian president has decided to face the media once more.

It seems, though, that the broadcast remained heavily choreographed and more about spectacle than scrutiny.

This year, ordinary citizens had the chance to phone in questions along with those asked by journalists – and Russians submitted queries for Putin over a two week period.

It was the first time Putin, who has heavily limited his interaction with foreign media, has faced multiple questions from Western journalists since the fighting in Ukraine began.

The press conference opened with questions about the conflict in Ukraine and highlighted concerns some Russians have about fears of another wave of mobilisation. In September 2022 Putin ordered a partial military call-up as he tried to boost his forces in Ukraine, sparking protests.

“There is no need,” for mobilisation now, Putin claimed, because 1,500 men are being recruited into the Russian army every day across the country. He said, as of Wednesday evening, a total of 486,000 soldiers have signed a contract with the Russian military.

Putin reiterated that Moscow’s goals in Ukraine – “de-Nazification, de-militarization and a neutral status” of Ukraine – remain unchanged.

He spelled out those loosely defined objectives the day he sent troops to the country in February 2022.

“De-Nazification” refers to Russia’s allegations that the Ukrainian government is heavily influenced by radical nationalist and neo-Nazi groups – claims derided by Kyiv and the West.

Putin has also demanded that Ukraine remain neutral – and not join the NATO alliance.

“There will be peace when we will achieve our goals,” Putin said, repeating a frequent Kremlin line.

His appearance was primarily aimed at a domestic audience and is a chance – performative or otherwise – for him to personally resolve the problems of ordinary Russian citizens ahead of the 17 March election.

Putin fielded questions on Thursday from a group of children in Russian-annexed Crimea concerned about the leaking roof and mould in their sports hall as well as from a woman who addressed him as “my favourite president,” to complain about the spiking price of eggs.

State media said that as of Wednesday, about 2 million questions for Putin had been submitted ahead of the broadcast.

Journalists lined up for hours in freezing temperatures to get into the venue and some donned traditional dress, including elaborate hats in order to catch Putin’s attention. Many journalists also hold placards, prompting the Kremlin to limit the size of signs they can carry during the news conference, which often lasts about four hours.

Is Putin a shoo-in at the next election – and where is Navalny?

In the absence of real opposition, methodically eradicated by the Kremlin, Putin’s victory in March 2024 seems obvious.

The conference comes at a time when his main detractor, the imprisoned anti-corruption activist Alexeï Navalny, has not been heard from for more than a week.

Last known to be serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism”, nobody has been able to track him down.

There are rumours that he may have been transferred to a penal colony with even harsher conditions, potentially an effort by the Kremlin to tighten his isolation as Putin fights his presidential campaign.

Earlier this week, worries spread about Navalny’s whereabouts after officials at the prison facility east of Moscow said he was no longer on the inmate roster.

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh confirmed that his associates and lawyers have been unable to contact him for a week. Prison officials claim he has been moved from the jailhouse – but didn’t give further details.

Although from a Western perspective it sounds suspicious, prison transfers in Russia are notoriously secretive.

Authorities rarely provide information about the whereabouts of inmates for weeks until they reach another facility and are given permission to contact relatives or lawyers.

Earlier this year, another prominent opposition figure, Andrei Pivovarov, also went missing during a prison transfer. His transfer, from a detention centre in Russia’s southern region of Krasnodar to a penal colony in the northwestern region of Karelia, took about a month.

Once at a new facility, prison officials there are legally obliged to notify relatives or lawyers within 10 days, but Kira Yarmysh said they can hardly be expected to follow the rules in Navalny’s case.

“They will try to hide him as long as possible,” she explained to the AP.

“I guess this was made deliberately to isolate Alexei during this period of time so he wouldn’t be able to influence all these things in any way, because everyone understands – and Putin, of course, understands – that Alexei is his main rival, even despite the fact that he is not on the ballot.”

Asked on Tuesday where Navalny is, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov snapped that “we have neither a desire nor an opportunity to track down inmates.”

Commenting on US expressions of concern about Navalny, Peskov said in a conference call with reporters that he has been convicted and is serving his sentence, adding that “we consider any interference, including by the United States, inadmissible.”

Navalny, 47, has been behind bars since January 2021, when he was arrested upon his return from Germany where he had recuperated from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Navalny, who campaigned against official corruption and organised major anti-government protests, has rejected all charges against him as a politically motivated vendetta.

The loss of contact with Navalny was particularly worrying, given that he recently fell ill, Yarmysh said. She said prison officials had given him an IV drip when he felt dizzy and he had to lie on the floor of his cell.

While Putin’s reelection is all but certain, given his overwhelming control over the country’s political scene and a widening crackdown on dissent, Navalny’s supporters and other critics hope to use the campaign to erode public support for the Kremlin leader and his military action in Ukraine.

Since the start of his imprisonment, he has continued his scathing attacks on the Kremlin in comments his associates posted to social media.

“I guess they decided that it would be smarter for them to send him as far away because he’s still too loud and too present in the public field,” Yarmysh said.

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