U.S. lawmakers are nearing a deal on sanctions aimed at deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. Several lawmakers who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv told VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson there is broad bipartisan unity on confronting Russia.

Camera: Russian Service Produced by: Katherine Gypson
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A British judge this week ordered the family of an Azerbaijani lawmaker to forfeit some $7.6 million to the National Crime Agency on the grounds that the funds were illegally brought into Britain.

The judgment against the family of Javanshir Feyziyev, a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament, relates to the so-called Azerbaijani Laundromat, a complex money-laundering scheme that was initially exposed by Danish newspaper Berlingske and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in 2017.

Records indicate that four United Kingdom-registered shell companies processed some $2.9 billion in transactions, which Azerbaijan’s ruling elite were allegedly using to bribe European politicians, buy luxury goods and enrich themselves.

Azerbaijan’s government routinely ranks low on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index reflecting the country’s continuing struggle to make gains in democratic elections, judicial independence and free press.

“The current kleptocratic system owes its existence to corruption and bribery,” Azerbaijani human rights defender and former prosecutor Rufat Safarov told VOA.

Once imprisoned by Azerbaijan authorities on what international human rights organizations deemed politically motivated charges, Safarov considers graft to be almost standard for governance in his country.

“The state governing structures — institutions tasked with the fight against corruption — not only fail to fulfill their functions, but in government structures, inclination toward bribery is ordinary,” Safarov said.

According to economist Gubad Ibadoglu, in Azerbaijan, the fight against corruption is an imitation. In his view, the endemic corruption has affected judiciary, police and even social security organs of the state.

“Corruption is intertwined with political system and authoritarian governance,” Ibadoglu told VOA, adding that all branches of the government are under the thumb of the executive branch.

Azerbaijani authorities, however, persistently reject such assessments of the country’s record on corruption.

Gunay Selimzade, press officer for the prosecutor general, states that her government takes “intensive measures” to remedy corruption in the spheres of legislation, criminal investigation and raising public awareness.

“The fight against corruption in Azerbaijan via institutional and criminal investigative measures has been highly assessed by experts of the influential international organizations,” she told VOA.

Kamran Aliyev, the country’s chief prosecutor, recently touted some statistics as evidence of the ongoing struggle against corruption. According to him, police have closed criminal corruption investigations involving nearly 500 individuals in 2021.

Independent observers view such numbers more as an attempt to cover up the government’s poor record of combating corruption. According to Ibadoglu, reducing corruption will depend on the establishment of rule of law and an independent judiciary that can investigate charges of corruption.

To date, very few top officials have been charged or prosecuted on charges stemming from financial scandals reported abroad, including the notorious Azerbaijani Laundromat case.

This story originated in VOA’s Azerbaijan Service.
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Russia and China will discuss closer gas and financial ties during President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Beijing for the Winter Olympics, the Kremlin said Wednesday, and a long-held idea for a new gas pipeline to China is being examined.

Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will have lunch together Friday, and could sign more than 15 agreements, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, with lots of new deals being prepared in relation to natural gas.

Competition got underway Wednesday in the Beijing Winter Olympics as the shadow of war in Ukraine and the impending arrival of Putin, who will attend Friday’s opening ceremony, loomed over an event already transformed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Ushakov said the possibility of Russia building a new gas pipeline to China through Mongolia was being looked at, a project that has been discussed for a long time and would take years to be fully realized.

Deliveries via an existing pipeline, the Power of Siberia, a 4,000 kilometers project that transfers gas from eastern Russia to China, began in 2019. It took about a decade to reach an agreement on supply terms.

Some experts doubt that a second gas pipeline from Russia to China, which recently overtook Japan as the world’s largest importer of sea-borne liquefied natural gas, will come to pass.

But Putin’s visit comes at a time when the reliability of Russian gas supplies to Europe is being questioned by some Western politicians and when Moscow is keen to show it potentially has other options even if they are not realistic overnight.

“It is worth noting that the Chinese gas market is the most promising and fastest growing in the world,” said Ushakov.

Spot gas prices in Europe reached all-time highs in December amid soaring demand and limited supply. Russian gas supplies to Europe have come under scrutiny as upwards of 100,000 Russian troops have massed near the border of traditional gas transit nation Ukraine, raising fears of an invasion, something Moscow denies planning.

Western nations have threatened a slew of sanctions should Russia make an incursion onto Ukrainian territory. Ushakov said China supported Russia’s effort to extract security demands from the West.

Ushakov also said Moscow and Beijing are making serious efforts to create joint financial infrastructure that could safeguard Russia-China cooperation from potential sanctions from third countries.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov and Igor Sechin, CEO of oil major Rosneft, will be among the Russian delegation, Ushakov added.

 
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The Kremlin is ramping up a disinformation offensive aimed at demoralizing Ukraine and Western powers, using Russian state-owned broadcasters and trolls on social media platforms to portray the West as the aggressor and the government in Kyiv as a puppet of NATO, say Western officials and information war experts. 

Scare stories in recent days have included claims that Ukrainian commandos are planning to launch so-called “false flag” attacks in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine to justify NATO military action and that the United States is planning to attack Russia during this week’s Winter Olympics in China. 

The core message is that NATO and Kyiv present a major threat to Russia, they say.

Moscow has waged a sophisticated and multi-faceted information warfare campaign against Ukraine since 2014, when a popular uprising toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster in a color revolution that Moscow blamed on the West, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and seized part of the Donbas, initially using armed proxies. 

Western leaders fear Putin is prepared to invade Ukraine if he fails to secure concessions he wants from the United States and NATO that in effect would carve out for Russia a Soviet era-like sphere of influence across eastern Europe. Among Putin’s key demands is a guarantee that NATO will never expand eastward. Russian officials deny they have any intentions to invade their neighbor, despite an unprecedented massive military build-up along the borders of Ukraine. They accuse Western powers of causing alarm.

“The drumbeat of Kremlin propaganda is also becoming noticeably louder,” according to Yevhen Fedchenko, co-founder of fact-checking website StopFake.org, which monitors Russian disinformation.

“Over the past eight years, Moscow has been able to deploy an impressive and expanding arsenal of information weapons against Ukraine,” Fedchenko wrote in an expert commentary for the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based research institution. 

“These have ranged from small armies of online trolls to lavishly funded mainstream media outlets that combine world-class production values with an often near-complete absence of journalistic ethics. Each individual element operates under direct or indirect Kremlin control. Together, they repeat and amplify variations of the same carefully curated messages designed to justify or otherwise support Russia’s undeclared war in Ukraine,” he maintains.

Shaping the message

Other analysts also say the Kremlin is making strenuous efforts to try to control the narrative in Ukraine and tailoring messages to Russians and key audiences outside Russia.

Tom Southern is director of special projects at the Center for Information Resilience (CIR), a UK-based NGO which exposes disinformation activities. Southern told British reporters there are two sides to the Kremlin’s information war — “what is being pushed in Ukraine, and what’s being pushed about Ukraine.” He said Kremlin propagandists work across a broad spectrum that uses official Russian government statements broadcast by its well-funded domestic and international media outlets but amplify key messages using social media sites and messaging apps like Telegram.

“This includes the messaging that Ukraine is a failed state and historical revisionism of Ukraine and NATO, as provoking Russia or targeting Russian speakers in Ukraine,” he says. A key message both to domestic Russian audiences and to international ones is that NATO is the aggressor and has broken promises it made as the Soviet Union collapsed about not expanding the Western alliance eastward.

The Russian leader has made the claim frequently about NATO skullduggery, accusing Western powers of taking advantage of a weakened, disoriented Russia as the Soviet Union fell apart. And the West’s supposed trickery and violation of a solemn pledge not to expand has figured prominently as an important component in a Putin foreign policy narrative which presents Russia as a victim and aggrieved party. This key message is being played across all Russian-controlled media outlets and broadcast on social media platforms, say disinformation experts. 

Authoritative historians say no such formal undertaking was ever given. And in 2014 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview, “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all” during his talks with U.S. leaders.

Kremlin propaganda output has been increasing compared to this time last year, according to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s deputy minister of culture and information policy. Russia’s official websites are the main drivers, but technology is used by the Kremlin to “circulate harmful, hostile content” and to spread disinformation, he says. He says Russia’s prevailing narrative comprises three key messages — Ukraine is a failed state, Russia is peaceful and that the West wants war. 

Western broadcasters have been complaining in recent weeks that Russian state-controlled media have been misusing their reports and footage by dubbing over their dispatches with changed commentary designed to assist in shaping the message that the West is on a war footing and is preparing to attack. 

This is a variation on what disinformation experts dub ‘information laundering’ — using Western sources to undermine Western arguments, often by interviewing “experts” who are aligned with Moscow but have obscure backgrounds.

The Ukrainian Crisis Media Center, an NGO that receives funding from the European Union among others, has warned that the Kremlin is seeking to fan tensions with constant accusations that Ukraine is “preparing provocations.” One example it says was a recent claim that Ukraine and NATO were planning to launch a clandestine operation code named “Crushing Sword” which would use fake footage of Russian aggression and use that as a pretext to attack Russia. 
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Speaking to VOA from his New York apartment, Dmitry Savchenko, 34, recalls the prosperous life he recently left behind.

“In Belarus, we had everything. My wife had several cafes. I had two businesses myself, some real estate, an apartment, a car,” he said.

Savchenko and his family had never intended to leave their home. But in the last few months, for him and many other Belarussian citizens, what was once unthinkable became a dire necessity.

“We were faced with a dilemma: either go to prison or run and hide in another country,” he said.

Long described as “Europe’s last dictatorship,” Belarus has been run for 27 years by Alexander Lukashenko. But in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, there was a sense among his opponents that he was politically vulnerable.

Savchenko says he has been apolitical his entire life, but in those months he, like many others, was “smelling change in the air,” inspired by the caliber and diversity of presidential candidates eager to challenge Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule.

Two months before election day, August 9, the hopeful Belarusian entrepreneur registered as an independent observer for the polls.

But Savchenko was setting himself up for a major disappointment.

On the day of the vote, Savchenko chronicled numerous irregularities in his precinct, which reached their climax with the members of the elections committee — which normally consist of regime loyalists — not letting the independent observers monitor the process in person. The elections committee members then fled the building with the ballots through the backdoor, escorted by the local police, Savchenko says. 

Hearing hundreds of stories like Savchenko’s from friends and family — as well as from independent media — ordinary Belarusians took to the streets. The country saw a rise of civic awareness unprecedented in its history. In Minsk alone, about 200,000 people came out for a peaceful protest on one of the post-election weekends.

And then the violence began.

Trying to drown people’s enthusiasm, Lukashenko, who baselessly claimed victory with more than 80% of the vote, unleashed a wave of repression and violence against the protesters. Video and photo evidence of police brutality, as well as of demonstrators’ mutilated bodies, made headlines around the world.

“Some of my friends participated in those protests,” Savchenko said. “It was heart-wrenching to even look at them (after their release from jail).”

Those who appeared to have suffered the most were those sent to the infamous Okrestina detention center in the country’s capital where, according to numerous detainee accounts, they were beaten and tortured for hours and not given food or water for days.

“Photos of the people who were released from the Okrestina detention center looked like the photos of people who came from war,” Savchenko added. “And I denounce that. Because people came out (to protest) unarmed.”

Savchenko says he is determined to punish those who so flagrantly abused the law. 

“I am gathering proof of falsifications of the election results, abuse of police authority. And I decided that I will bring them to justice no matter where I am,” he said.

He sent the incriminating evidence he had gathered to BYPOL, an independent union of Belarusian ex-security officers whose mission is to keep a registry of crimes committed by the Lukashenko regime.

The state’s crackdown drew international condemnation, but Savchenko says that did not stop the authorities from methodically targeting their critics after the elections.

“At first, the authorities cracked down on most vocal protesters, then on independent media. After that they started laying off state officials who — how should I put it — didn’t vote for ‘the right candidate.’ Slowly but surely, they got to the people who were election observers,” he said. 

For days, he was harassed and intimidated, then detained and beaten by the police. The authorities threatened to send his 5-year-old son to an orphanage.

So he and his family ran. First to Moscow, then all the way to Mexico City, then to Tijuana, then to the United States, where they are seeking political asylum.

Washington-based immigration lawyer Elizabeth Krukova specializes in providing legal help to asylum-seekers from the countries of the former Soviet Union. She says there are many others like the Savchenko family.

“We’ve seen a number of these cases and a big increase in the number of cases coming from Belarus specifically,” she said.

VOA spoke with several Belarusian asylum-seekers who arrived in the United States from the southern border following the post-election crackdown. They all spoke of intimidation, detainment and beatings by police back home.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows a steady increase in the number of encounters of Belarusian migrants by the southwest border CBP officers — from three in October 2020 to 123 in September 2021.

Savchenko says the main reason his family chose to travel to the U.S. instead of Europe is safety. 

“There is a network of Russian and Belarusian agents that are active in the countries neighboring Belarus, as well as in some EU states,” he said. 

Belarusian officials demonstrated their relentless pursuit of critics when they forced a civilian Ryanair flight to land in Minsk last year and arrested an opposition blogger, Roman Protasevich. Another exiled Belarusian activist, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a park near his home in Kyiv, an unsolved case widely seen as the work of Minsk’s clandestine services.

John Sipher, the former CIA deputy chief of station in Europe, still views Europe as relatively safe but says the fears of dissidents are not groundless.

He says horror stories of kidnappings and murders spread among dissidents “like wildfires.” 

“If there are a few cases where Belarusians are hunted down or arrested, or brought back to Minsk, then it becomes a story that makes its way around that community,” Sipher said.

With Russian troops now massing in Belarus and more on the border of Ukraine, experts see the region’s authoritarian leaders becoming more collaborative, putting their critics at greater risk.

“Since Lukashenko’s crackdown in the last year or so, he is going to be looking for more opportunities to assist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Putin is going to be looking for means to work with Belarusians on these issues,” Sipher said.

Experts say whether an activist is in danger depends on how high their name is on the Belarusian KGB’s priorities list. But it’s a guessing game no one on the list wants to play. 

VOA’s Aline Barros contributed to this report. 

 
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The continuing crackdown on pro-democracy activists following the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus has spurred a wave of political asylum seekers. VOA’s Igor Tsikhanenka spoke with some who undertook a long and uncertain journey to Mexico and on to the United States in recent months. Some of them say they had no other choice because they no longer feel safe even in the European Union. Camera: Aaron Fedor
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For the last eight years, Ukraine has lived under a permanent state of alert, with the constant threat of Russian intervention in its territory. The fear and tension have led many civilians to seek military training to be prepared in the event of a conflict.  Jonathan Spier narrates this report for VOA from Ricardo Marquina in Kyiv.
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Since 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainians have lived in a permanent state of alert, facing a constant threat of further Russian incursions. With a possibility of a full-scale invasion now looming, many civilians have volunteered to undergo military training to be prepared in the event of a conflict. They use equipment and weapons they buy with their own money and train in their spare time. For VOA, reporter Ricardo Marquina spent a day with them at a training site outside of Kyiv and brings us these images.
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The top diplomats from the United States and Russia are expected to speak by phone Tuesday, a day after United Nations representatives from the two countries faced off at the U.N. Security Council over Russian-denied allegations that it is planning a large-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. 

Tuesday’s diplomatic efforts to address the crisis also include a trip by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. 

“We urge Russia to step back and engage in dialogue to find a diplomatic resolution and avoid further bloodshed,” Johnson said in a statement. 

Britain, like the United States and other Western allies, has provided weapons to Ukraine, and Johnson is considering doubling British troops in the Baltic countries. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held face-to-face talks January 21 in Geneva, and since then the two sides have exchanged written responses in order to try to make their positions clear. 

Russia said a U.S. document failed to address its core security concerns, which include its opposition to further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, especially to Ukraine. The United States, NATO and Ukraine have all deemed such a demand an unacceptable restriction on their ability to decide their own affairs. 

The United States received a Russian response letter Monday, but State Department officials declined to discuss its contents, citing a desire to keep the negotiation process private. 

The United States has threatened to impose sharp economic sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine. In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, and it says it has no plans to invade Ukraine again.  

“The situation we’re facing in Europe is urgent and dangerous, and the stakes for Ukraine — and for every U.N. member state — could not be higher,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Security Council members Monday. 

She said the more than 100,000 troops Russia has amassed along Ukraine’s border include combat forces and special forces prepared to conduct offensive actions into the former Soviet republic.     

“This is the largest — this is the largest — hear me clearly — mobilization of troops in Europe in decades,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “And as we speak, Russia is sending even more forces and arms to join them.”

She said that included the nearly 5,000 Russian troops “with short-range ballistic missiles, special forces and anti-aircraft batteries” that Moscow had moved into its close ally and neighbor Belarus. There is evidence Moscow plans to increase their number to 30,000 troops by early February, she added.     

The U.S. ambassador said Russia’s aggression threatens Ukraine, Europe and the international order.     

“An order that, if it stands for anything, stands for the principle that one country cannot simply redraw another country’s borders by force or make another country’s people live under a government they did not choose,” she said.     

As Thomas-Greenfield spoke, President Joe Biden issued a statement from the White House.  

“If Russia is sincere about addressing our respective security concerns through dialogue, the United States and our allies and partners will continue to engage in good faith,” Biden said. “If instead, Russia chooses to walk away from diplomacy and attack Ukraine, Russia will bear the responsibility, and it will face swift and severe consequences.”      

He later told reporters in the Oval Office while meeting with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, that the United States is ready for any scenario in Russia, but, he added, “We continue to urge diplomacy as the best way forward.”        

Russian response    

At the Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia tried to use a procedural vote to block Monday’s public meeting but narrowly failed to get the requisite support.     

He said Russia is not “scared” of discussing the issue, but it just did not understand why a discussion was necessary.  

“The deployment of Russian troops within our own territory has frequently occurred on varying scales before and has not caused any hysterics whatsoever,” Nebenzia said.

He said that the United States and Western colleagues were acting as though an invasion had already taken place, and that they presented no evidence that one was planned.     

“Our Western colleagues are talking about the need for de-escalation, but first and foremost, they are whipping up tensions, rhetoric and provoking escalation,” he said, calling the discussions about a threat of war “provocative.”   

All Russian officials have “categorically rejected” plans for an invasion, he said, and anyone who claims the opposite is “misleading you.”      

Sovereign rights   

Based on its past experiences with Moscow, Ukraine simply cannot accept Russia’s declaration, and Moscow should withdraw its troops from near its borders, Ukrainian envoy Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council.  

“Ukraine strongly rejects any attempt to use the threat of force as an instrument of pressure to make Ukraine and our partners accept illegitimate demands. There is no room for compromise on principle issues,” Kyslytsya said. “The most principled position for Ukraine is that we have (an) inherent sovereign right to choose our own security arrangements, including treaties of alliance which cannot be questioned by Russia.”   

He emphasized that Kyiv is prepared to defend itself but supports keeping diplomatic channels with Moscow open. He noted that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he is willing to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

“If Russia has any questions to Ukraine, it is better to meet and talk, not to bring troops to Ukraine’s borders and intimidate Ukrainian people,” the envoy said.     

After the meeting, in response to reporters’ questions, Kyslytsya said he believes a Russian invasion is “imminent.” Asked what he meant by “imminent,” he referenced an English-Russian dictionary of diplomacy, reading in Russian.     

“Imminent, the first meaning, published in Moscow: approaching, hanging over and only then unavoidable,” he said, translating for reporters. “So, we have to work very hard so that the first two stay as it is — the threat is hanging over. It’s our duty.”   

Intensifying crisis    

U.S. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Monday that “we continue to see, even over the course of the weekend … additional Russian ground forces move in Belarus and around the border with Ukraine,” as well as “increasing naval activity in the Mediterranean and Atlantic by Russian fleet vessels.” He called the Russian movements “concerning.”  

NATO has increased its military presence in member countries bordering Russia, but NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday that NATO has no intention of sending troops to Ukraine if Russia invades the former Soviet republic.       

VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb and VOA’s Chris Hannas contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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Will Russia invade Ukraine? While the world waits, the war of words is picking up steam, with top diplomats from the U.S. and Russia going head-to-head at the United Nations and President Joe Biden vowing that the U.S. is ready “no matter what happens.” VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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Several NATO member states are sending troops and hardware to allies in Eastern Europe as tensions with Russia escalate. The United States has put several thousand troops on alert. Moscow has over 100,000 troops amassed on the Ukraine border, and the West fears an imminent Russian invasion, which the Kremlin denies. Henry Ridgwell looks at what NATO’s military response means.
 
Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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NATO member states are sending thousands of troops, warplanes and ships to allies in eastern Europe as tensions with Russia escalate over Moscow’s deployment of more than 100,000 troops to its border with Ukraine. The West fears an imminent Russian invasion, which the Kremlin denies.

Four Danish F-16 fighter jets landed in Lithuania last week to bolster NATO’s air policing mission in the Baltic. Since Russia’s 2014 forceful annexation of Crimea, NATO has deployed between 4,000 and 5,000 troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in what the alliance terms an “enhanced forward presence.”

US troops 

The United States has put 8,500 troops on standby. “I’ll be moving U.S. troops to eastern Europe and NATO countries in the near term,” U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters Friday. 

The U.S. already has tens of thousands of troops stationed in Europe, mostly in Germany and Britain. One scenario could see some of those personnel gradually shifted to eastern NATO allies. 

NATO allies 

France has announced plans to deploy hundreds of troops to Romania. “As President Macron recalled last week, we have sizably contributed to the security of our European partners in NATO missions in Baltic states and we will continue to do so,” French Defense Minister Florence Parly said during a visit to Bucharest on January 27.

“In the same spirit, he indicated our availability to go further and within the NATO framework to engage in new EFP (enhanced forward presence) missions, particularly in Romania, if NATO decides it,” Parly added. 

Spain, the Netherlands and Germany are also considering sending troops, aircraft and warships to eastern European allies. 

Anti-tank weapons 

Britain has supplied about 2,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine and is expected to offer further deployments to NATO allies this week, potentially doubling its current commitment of about 1,150 troops. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to visit Ukraine this week and hold talks on the phone with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. 

British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said the deployments are intended to send a message to Moscow. 

“I think it is important when it comes to military deployment that we signal to President Putin that the very thing he fears, which is more NATO closer to Russia, would be the consequence of a strategic error of invading a sovereign country such as Ukraine,” Wallace told reporters Monday following talks with his Hungarian counterpart in Budapest. 

Deterrence 

However, NATO has no plans to deploy combat troops to Ukraine, notes security analyst Julie Norman of University College London. 

“Those NATO troops that are in those border states are really there more for preparedness and for a defensive and deterrence capability, rather than expectation for direct conflict or direct combat.” 

Norman says the NATO deployments could be rapidly strengthened. “If there is indeed a conflict … those border states will be reinforced further than what they currently have. There’s already NATO troops in most of those states, but this would bolster them by about double the amount, to start,” Norman told VOA. 

NATO says it is responding to Russian aggression. Moscow has labelled the Western response “hysteria” and denies it has any plans to invade Ukraine, instead claiming that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet-bloc countries poses a security risk.

Belarus threat 

Russia has about 100,000 troops deployed close to the Ukrainian border. Thousands more arrived in Belarus for joint military exercises this week. 

Evelyn N. Farkas, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, says Western allies had to respond. 

“NATO itself has had to respond to a new threat Russia posed by putting additional forces into Belarus, which of course shares a border with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which are NATO allies,” Farkas told a recent panel discussion hosted by London-based Chatham House. 

NATO’s deployments in eastern Europe could ratchet up tensions with Russia’s president, says Norman. 

“Putin’s key demand in all of this is the drawdown of NATO troops and weaponry from those same eastern states. So, the fact that there is more buildup, that is going to be seen not as an act of defense, but an act of offense and provocation by Russia.” 

 
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With Russian forces poised to attack Ukraine, Turkish-made drones are set to face a big test in battle as well as a challenge to Turkey’s relations with Russia. Despite warnings from Moscow, Turkish firms have continued to supply Kyiv with armed drones. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized before Parliament Monday following the release of a report concluding that parties held at the prime minister’s official residence during the country’s COVID-19 lockdown represented “serious failures” to observe the standards set by the government.

The report, conducted by senior civil servant Sue Gray, examined a series of gatherings that had been held at No. 10 Downing St. in 2020 and 2021 when much of Britain was under strict pandemic restrictions.

“The gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government, but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time,” Gray said in the report.

She also made note of “excessive consumption of alcohol” at the gatherings, which she said “is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time.”

Gray said some of the gatherings “should not have been allowed to develop as they did,” and others should not have been held at all. She looked specifically at four gatherings, saying she withheld comment on 12 other events that the metropolitan police were investigating to determine if laws were broken.

In his comments to Parliament, Johnson apologized for “the things we simply didn’t get right” and “for the way that this matter has been handled.” He said he understood people’s anger and accepted Gray’s findings “in full,” as well as “her recommendation that we must learn from these events and act now.”

Johnson had previously said that no rules had been broken. He has dismissed calls from lawmakers — even those in his own party — to resign.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have repeatedly warned they will impose swift and punitive economic sanctions against Moscow in the event Vladimir Putin orders an invasion of Ukraine. British ministers announced Sunday they plan new legislation to make it easier to impose sanctions on “Putin’s oligarchs” and Russian officials who have investments and assets in Britain.

Russians have invested about an estimated $2 billion in the London property market alone, according to Transparency International, an anti-corruption lobbying and research organization in Berlin.

And the House of Commons’ own research library noted in a report last year: “For some time the UK has been accused of being a hub for dirty money — especially London’s prime property market.”

The British move is in response to frustration in Washington, where officials have complained that the government of Boris Johnson has not done enough to stop London from being used as a destination, and also a way station, for the profits of the Russian mega-rich.

The Britain problem 

Last week, analysis by the Center for American Progress, an influential Democratic-aligned think tank, outlined the challenges the White House will face making economic sanctions bite. It suggested that the “economic domain will be the primary theater for U.S.-Russia confrontation,” but noted “expectations for what imposing economic costs can achieve must be kept in check.”

The think tank singled out Britain as a problem. “The United Kingdom, in particular, has become a major hub for Russian oligarchs and their wealth, with London gaining the moniker ‘Londongrad,’” Max Bergmann, author of the report noted. “Uprooting Kremlin-linked oligarchs will be a challenge given the close ties between Russian money and the United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative Party, the press and its real estate and financial industry,” he concluded.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, is outlining legislative proposals to British lawmakers, which she says will make it easier to freeze the assets of Russians with financial links to Putin and his government.

Britain’s sanctions regime currently only covers assets lodged in Britain that can be tied to businesses or individuals who can be linked to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“There will be nowhere to hide” for Putin’s oligarchs, Truss told Britain’s Times Radio on Sunday. Truss said new legislation would widen the scope of sanctions.

Bill Browder, a British-American financier who has long campaigned to expose high-level corruption in Russia, has been urging British authorities for years to target Putin-connected oligarchs. In 2018, in the wake of the poisoning on English soil of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, he told British lawmakers that Western weakness only emboldens the Kremlin. The British government blamed the Kremlin for attempted assassination of Skripal and his daughter, something Russia denies.

“The Achilles heel of the Putin regime is to go after Putin-connected oligarchs in the UK by seizing their assets,” he argued. He told a British parliamentary panel approximately $800 billion worth of Russian state-backed assets, mostly real estate, are held outside Russia and could be targeted. About $300 billion in cash and assets are estimated to be in the United States.

According to a 2018 report by Transparency International, large amounts of the Russian state-backed money controlled by Putin-connected oligarchs flow through British Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean and then are transferred to the British capital. 

“London has certain advantages and Russians have always found London particularly attractive,” according to Robert Barrington of Transparency International. “It has these historic links with the Crown dependencies and overseas territories, so it is very easy to be part of that global laundering system. It is also a huge market in itself, so if you want to hide dirty money, it is easier to do,” he said.

Anti-corruption campaigners say there was a huge jump in Russian money flows to London after the 2008 financial crash, partly because Britain courted foreign money and offered easy-to-get investor visas with very few questions being asked. An estimated 500 Russian multimillionaires live in Britain.

Their cash has driven up real estate prices and helped fuel the profits of expensive private schools and exclusive shops as well as providing a large share of the incomes of British bankers, fund managers, lawyers, and PR executives. More than 10,000 properties in Westminster, a central London borough, are owned by anonymous companies; some are thought to be Chinese or Gulf Arab in origin, but many are Russian.

The British government announced new asset-seizure powers in 2017 known as unexplained wealth orders, allowing for the confiscation of property without proving criminality and placing the burden of proof on the owners to explain their wealth. Britain’s i newspaper reported last week that officials were looking to issue more unexplained wealth orders in the event Russia invades Ukraine, forcing those suspected of having tight links to President Putin to explain the origins of their wealth.

Doubts 

But some skeptics harbor doubts about the determination of the authorities to move against Russian wealth. They note since 2017 only five such orders have been issued. “No one has done more to channel the flood of money out of Russia than London’s army of lawyers, bankers, and accountants; no one has been more accommodating of Putin’s oligarchs than Britain’s politicians,” wrote Oliver Bullough in Britain’s Sunday Times this week.

Author of “Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals,” Bullough says: “If the government really wants to help Ukraine, it should force Putin’s oligarchs to take their cash home.”

Critics also say the government needs to insist that so-called crown dependencies in the Caribbean need to introduce rigorous transparency rules for stashed overseas money. And they worry that Russian oligarch money and properties are well concealed behind shell companies.

In December, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to force offshore companies that own British property to declare their ownership, and to tackle criminals who abuse UK-registered shell companies. He made the promise at the US-convened Summit for Democracy, a virtual conference that explored how to strengthen the world’s democracies.

The chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat, said he plans to hold a new set of new hearings to discuss the assets and investments of Russian oligarchs in London. His committee did the same thing in 2018 and recommended several steps, but the recommendations languished.
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Turkey’s president has ordered that steps be taken against media like TV programs that are deemed contrary to Turkey’s “fundamental values.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a circular posted Saturday on the Official Gazette, said the decision aims to eliminate the harmful effects of television programs with foreign content that have been adapted in Turkey and to protect Turkish culture.

All precautions would be taken against productions that negatively affect the family, children and youth, through Turkish laws and the constitution. Children and youth will be protected from “messages conveyed through certain symbols,” the decision stated, without elaborating.

Turkey’s media watchdog, the Supreme Council of Radio and Television, already has wide-ranging powers, and can fine media or order temporary blackouts for television channels that are mostly critical of the government for violating Turkish values. It has also fined channels for erotic or LGBT content.

Ilhan Tasci, a member of the media watchdog from the main opposition party, called the move “the censorship circular” and said it violates the constitution that promises to protect press freedom.

The majority of media companies in Turkey are already owned by businesses close to the conservative and nationalist government and closely follow government lines.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Turkey at 153 out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index of 2021. At least 34 media employees are currently behind bars, according to Turkey’s Journalists Union. 

Last week, well-known journalist Sedef Kabas was arrested pending trial for insulting Erdogan, after citing a proverb on Tele 1 television and social media referring to an ox. Tens of thousands of people in Turkey have been prosecuted for allegedly insulting Erdogan.

The circular follows the launch of Fox TV’s Turkish adaptation of the international show “The Masked Singer,” where celebrities perform in costume to hide their identities. The show has been criticized online for alleged Satanic and pagan content.

Elsewhere in the region, Netflix’s first Arabic movie has sparked intense debate in Egypt and other Middle East countries, with critics denouncing it as a threat to family and religious values that encourages homosexuality.

Others have rallied to the film’s defense. They say detractors are in denial about what happens behind closed doors in real life and say that those who don’t like the movie titled “Ashab Wala A’azz,” (“No Dearer Friends”) can simply not subscribe to Netflix.
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The United Nations Security Council meets Monday to discuss Russia’s buildup of more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border. Western and Ukrainian officials continue to be on alert for a possible invasion. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has told his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi that a deal lifting sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear activities is still possible but talks need to accelerate, Macron’s office said on Sunday.

France, Germany and Britain, known as the E3, and the United States are trying to save the 2015 Vienna agreement with Iran, but Western diplomats have said negotiations, which have been in their eighth round since Dec. 27, were moving too slowly.

Iran has rejected any deadline imposed by Western powers.

“The President of the Republic reiterated his conviction that a diplomatic solution is possible and imperative, and stressed that any agreement will require clear and sufficient commitments from all the parties,” the Elysee palace said in a statement after a telephone call with Raisi on Saturday.

“Several months after the resumption of negotiations in Vienna, he insisted on the need to accelerate in order to quickly achieve tangible progress in this framework,” it added.

“He underlined the need for Iran to demonstrate a constructive approach and return to the full implementation of its obligations,” it said.

Macron also asked for the immediate release of Franco-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, re-imprisoned in January, and French tourist Benjamin Briere, who was sentenced on Tuesday to eight years in prison on spying charges.
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Manchester United player Mason Greenwood was arrested on suspicion of rape and assault on Sunday after a woman posted visual and audio allegations on social media of an incident.

United said the 20-year-old forward “will not return to training or play matches until further notice.”

The police did not name Greenwood but the statement about the investigation was provided after inquiries about the footballer.

“Greater Manchester Police were made aware earlier today of online social media images and videos posted by a woman reporting incidents of physical violence,” the force said in a statement. “An investigation was launched and following enquiries we can confirm a man in his 20s has since been arrested on suspicion of rape and assault.  

“He remains in custody for questioning. Enquiries are ongoing.”  

The allegations were posted early Sunday morning on the Instagram account of a woman who uploaded images of bruising to her body and bleeding from her lip. A voice note purporting to be of an attack was also posted. The posts were all deleted from the social media site but were widely shared.

“Manchester United does not condone violence of any kind,” the club said.

Nike, one of Greenwood’s sponsors, expressed its unease.

“We are deeply concerned by the disturbing allegations and will continue to closely monitor the situation,” the sportswear firm said in a statement.

Greenwood, who progressed through the United academy into the first team, has scored six goals this season. He extended his contract last year through 2025.

Greenwood made his England debut in September 2020 but was sent home from Iceland for a disciplinary breach after the game. He hasn’t played since for Gareth Southgate’s side.
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The Northern Irish city of Londonderry began commemorations Sunday of one of the darkest days in modern UK history when, 50 years ago, British troops without provocation killed 13 unarmed civil rights protesters. 

The anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” comes with Northern Ireland’s fragile peace destabilized by Brexit, and with families of the victims despondent over whether the soldiers involved will ever face trial. 

Charlie Nash saw his 19-year-old cousin William Nash killed as members of the British Parachute Regiment fired more than 100 high-velocity rounds on January 30, 1972, at the demonstrators in Londonderry, known as Derry to pro-Irish nationalists. 

“We thought there might be rioting, but nothing, nothing like what happened. We thought at first they were rubber bullets,” Nash, now 73, told AFP. 

“But then we saw Hugh Gilmour [one of six 17-year-old victims] lying dead. We couldn’t take it in. Everyone was running,” he said. 

“It’s important for the rest of the world to see what they done to us that day. But will we ever see justice? Never, especially not from Boris Johnson.” 

Amnesty? 

The UK prime minister this week called Bloody Sunday a “tragic day in our history”.

But his government is pushing legislation that critics say amounts to an amnesty for all killings during Northern Ireland’s three decades of sectarian unrest, including by security forces. 

Thirteen protesters died on Bloody Sunday, when the paratroopers opened fire through narrow streets and across open wasteland. 

Some of the victims were shot in the back, or while on the ground, or while waving white handkerchiefs. 

At the entrance to the city’s Catholic Bogside area stands a wall that normally proclaims in large writing: “You are now entering Free Derry.” 

This weekend the mural says: “There is no British justice.” 

Several hundred people, including relatives of the victims, on Sunday retraced the fateful 1972 march, walking in somber silence under a leaden grey sky ahead of a late morning memorial service. 

Children bearing white roses and portraits of the victims joined the poignant procession.

“I’m here to honor the people who were murdered by the British state who were trying to achieve their civil rights,” said Michael Roach, 67, a Texan with Irish roots. 

“There will be no justice until the paratroopers are held to justice for murder.” 

‘Unjustifiable’ 

After an initial government report largely exonerated the paratroopers and authorities, a landmark 12-year inquiry running to 5,000 pages found in 2010 that the victims were unarmed and posed no threat, and that the soldiers’ commander on the ground violated his orders. 

“We in the inquiry came to the conclusion that the shootings were unjustified and unjustifiable,” its chairman Mark Saville, a former judge and member of the UK House of Lords, told BBC radio on Saturday. 

“And I do understand, people feel that in those circumstances justice has yet to be done,” he said, while expressing concern that with the surviving soldiers now elderly, the government should have launched any prosecution “a very long time ago”. 

Then as now, Londonderry was a largely Catholic city. But housing, jobs and education were segregated in favor of the pro-British Protestant minority. 

Simmering tensions over the inequality made it the cradle of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland starting in the late 1960s, which finally ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

‘Reckless’ 

The UK’s divorce from the European Union has unsettled the fragile post-1998 consensus. 

Protestant unionists want Johnson’s government to scrap a protocol governing post-Brexit trade for Northern Ireland, which treats the province differently from the UK mainland (comprising England, Scotland and Wales). 

The government, which is in protracted talks with the EU on the issue, is sympathetic to their demands. 

Heading into regional elections in May, some nationalists hope that Brexit could help achieve what the Irish Republican Army (IRA) never did — a united Ireland, a century after the UK carved out a Protestant statelet in the north. 

Sinn Fein, which was once the political wing of the IRA, is running ahead of the once dominant unionists in opinion polls. 

“Northern Ireland finds itself again in the eye of a political storm where we appear to be collateral damage for a prime minister whose future is hanging in the balance,” said professor Deirdre Heenan, a Londonderry resident who teaches social policy at Ulster University. 

“The government’s behavior around the peace process has been reckless in the extreme,” she added. 

Protestant hardliners have issued their own reminders of where they stand: leading up to the anniversary, Parachute Regiment flags have been flying in one unionist stronghold of Londonderry, to the revulsion of nationalists. 

“How can they do that, this weekend of all weekends?” asked George Ryan, 61, a tour guide and local historian. 

 
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NATO has no plans to deploy combat troops to non-NATO member Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday. 

Asked on BBC Television whether he would rule out putting NATO troops in Ukraine if Russia does invade, Stoltenberg said: “We have no plans to deploy NATO combat troops to Ukraine … we are focusing on providing support.” 

“There is a difference between being a NATO member and being a strong and highly valued partner as Ukraine. There’s no doubt about that.” 
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Britain is considering making a major NATO deployment as part of a plan to strengthen Europe’s borders in response to Russia massing troops on the border with Ukraine, the government said Saturday.

Britain has said that any Russian incursion into Ukraine would be met with swift sanctions and would be devastating for both sides.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to visit the region next week, and also will speak to Vladimir Putin by phone.

Johnson is considering the biggest possible offer to members of the NATO defense pact in the Nordics and Baltics, which would double troop numbers and send defensive weapons to Estonia, his office said.

“This package would send a clear message to the Kremlin “we will not tolerate their destabilizing activity, and we will always stand with our NATO allies in the face of Russian hostility,” Johnson said in a statement.

“I have ordered our Armed Forces to prepare to deploy across Europe next week, ensuring we are able to support our NATO allies.”

Officials will finalize the details of the offer in Brussels next week, with ministers discussing the military options Monday.

Stepping up diplomatic efforts after facing criticism for not doing enough, Johnson will make a second trip to meet NATO counterparts early next month, his office said.

Britain’s foreign and defense ministers will also both go to Moscow for talks with their Russian counterparts in coming days, with the aim of improving relations and de-escalating tensions. 

 
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