Britain’s medicines regulator has authorized the world’s first gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease, in a move that could offer relief to thousands of people with the crippling disease in the U.K.

In a statement Thursday, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency said it approved Casgevy, the first medicine licensed using the gene editing tool CRISPR, which won its makers a Nobel prize in 2020.

The agency approved the treatment for patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia who are 12 years old and older. Casgevy is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Europe) Ltd. and CRISPR Therapeutics. To date, bone marrow transplants, extremely arduous procedures that come with very unpleasant side effects, have been the only long-lasting treatment.

“The future of life-changing cures resides in CRISPR based (gene-editing) technology,” said Dr. Helen O’Neill of University College London.

“The use of the word ‘cure’ in relation to sickle cell disease or thalassemia has, up until now, been incompatible,” she said in a statement, calling the MHRA’s approval of gene therapy “a positive moment in history.”

Both sickle cell disease and thalassemia are caused by mistakes in the genes that carry hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carry oxygen. 

In people with sickle cell — which is particularly common in people with African or Caribbean backgrounds — a genetic mutation causes the cells to become crescent-shaped, which can block blood flow and cause excruciating pain, organ damage, stroke and other problems.

In people with thalassemia, the genetic mutation can cause severe anemia. Patients typically require blood transfusions every few weeks, and injections and medicines for their entire life. Thalassemia predominantly affects people of South Asian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern heritage.

The new medicine, Casgevy, works by targeting the problematic gene in a patient’s bone marrow stem cells so that the body can make properly functioning hemoglobin.

Patients first receive a course of chemotherapy, before doctors take stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow and use genetic editing techniques in a laboratory to fix the gene. The cells are then infused back into the patient for a permanent treatment. Patients must be hospitalized at least twice — once for the collection of the stem cells and then to receive the altered cells.

“This is so exciting. It’s a new wave of treatments that we can utilize for patients with sickle cell disease,” said Dr. James LaBelle, director of the pediatric stem cell and cellular therapy program at the University of Chicago. He said Britain’s approval suggested the U.S. authorization was likely “imminent.”

Casgevy is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; the agency is expected to make a decision early next month, before considering another sickle cell gene therapy.

LaBelle said officials at the University of Chicago are “already moving forward to build not only the clinical infrastructure but also the reimbursement infrastructure to get these patients this treatment.”

Britain’s regulator said its decision to authorize the gene therapy for sickle cell disease was based on a study done on 29 patients, of whom 28 reported having no severe pain problems for at least one year after being treated. In the study for thalassemia, 39 out of 42 patients who got the therapy did not need a red blood cell transfusion for at least a year afterwards.

Gene therapy treatments can cost millions of dollars and experts have previously raised concerns that they could remain out of reach for the people who would benefit most.

Last year, Britain approved a gene therapy for a fatal genetic disorder that had a list price of £2.8 million ($3.5 million). England’s National Health Service negotiated a significant confidential discount to make it available to eligible patients.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals said it had not yet established a price for the treatment in Britain and was working with health authorities “to secure reimbursement and access for eligible patients as quickly as possible.”

In the U.S., Vertex has not released a potential price for the therapy, but a report by the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said prices up to around $2 million would be cost-effective. By comparison, research earlier this year showed medical expenses for current sickle cell treatments, from birth to age 65, add up to about $1.6 million for women and $1.7 million for men.

Medicines and treatments in Britain must be recommended by a government watchdog before they are made freely available to patients in the national health care system.

Millions of people around the world, including about 100,000 in the U.S., have sickle cell disease. It occurs more often among people from places where malaria is or was common, like Africa and India, and is also more common in certain ethnic groups, such as people of African, Middle Eastern and Indian descent. Scientists believe being a carrier of the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria.
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British author A.S. Byatt, who wove history, myth and a sharp eye for human foibles into books that included the Booker Prize-winning novel Possession, has died at the age of 87.

Byatt’s publisher, Chatto & Windus, said Friday that the author, whose full name was Antonia Byatt, died “peacefully at home surrounded by close family” on Thursday.

Byatt wrote two dozen books, starting with her first novel, The Shadow of the Sun, in 1964. Her work was translated into 38 languages.

Possession, published in 1990, follows two young academics investigating the lives of a pair of imaginary Victorian poets. The novel, a double romance which skillfully layers a modern story with mock-Victorian letters and poems, was a huge bestseller and won the prestigious Booker Prize.

Accepting the prize, Byatt said Possession was about the joy of reading.

“My book was written on a kind of high about the pleasures of reading,” she said.

“Possession” was adapted into a 2002 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. It was one of several Byatt books to get the film treatment. Morpho Eugenia, a gothic Victorian novella included in the 1992 book Angels and Insects, became a 1995 movie of the same name, starring Mark Rylance and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Her short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, which won the 1995 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, inspired the 2022 fantasy film Three Thousand Years of Longing. Directed by Mad Max filmmaker George Miller, it starred Idris Elba as a genie who spins tales for an academic played by Tilda Swinton.

Byatt’s other books include four novels set in 1950s and ’60s Britain that together are known as the Frederica Quartet: The Virgin in the Garden, published in 1978, followed by Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman. She also wrote the 2009 Booker Prize finalist The Children’s Book, a sweeping story of Edwardian England centered on a writer of fairy tales.

Her most recent book was Medusa’s Ankles, a volume of short stories published in 2021.

Byatt’s literary agent, Zoe Waldie, said the author “held readers spellbound” with writing that was “multilayered, endlessly varied and deeply intellectual, threaded through with myths and metaphysics.”

Clara Farmer, Byatt’s publisher at Chatto & Windus — part of Penguin Random House — said the author’s books were “the most wonderful jewel-boxes of stories and ideas.”

“We mourn her loss, but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come,” Farmer said.

Born Antonia Susan Drabble in Sheffield, northern England, in 1936 – her sister is novelist Margaret Drabble – Byatt grew up in a Quaker family, attended Cambridge University and worked for a time as a university lecturer.

She married economist Ian Byatt in 1959 and they had a daughter and a son before divorcing. In 1972, her 11-year-old son, Charles, was struck and killed by a car while walking home from school.

Charles died shortly after Byatt had taken a teaching post at University College London to pay for his private school fees. After his death, she told The Guardian in 2009, she stayed in the job “as long as he had lived, which was 11 years.” In 1983, she quit to become a full-time writer.

Byatt lived in London with her second husband, Peter Duffy, with whom she had two daughters.

Queen Elizabeth II made Byatt a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, in 1999 for services to literature, and in 2003 she was made a chevalier (knight) of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.

In 2014, a species of iridescent beetle was named for her — Euhylaeogena byattae Hespenheide — in honor of her depiction of naturalists in Morpho Eugenia.
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The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russia’s expatriate community, was added Friday to the list of “foreign agents” by Russia’s Justice Ministry. This was the latest addition in Russia’s continuing crackdown on any news media and opposition critical of its war in Ukraine.

The “foreign agent” designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label aims at undermining the designee’s credibility.

It was not immediately clear how the move would affect The Moscow Times, which moved its editorial operations out of Russia in 2022 after the passage of a law imposing stiff penalties for material regarded as discrediting the Russian military and its war in Ukraine.

Russia has methodically targeted people and organizations critical of the Kremlin, branding many as “foreign agents” and some as “undesirable” under a 2015 law that makes membership in such organizations a criminal offense.

The Moscow Times publishes in English and in Russian, but its Russian-language site was blocked in Russia several months after the Ukraine war began.

Foothold across Dnipro

Ukraine’s military said on social media Friday that it had gained “a foothold on several bridgeheads” on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the key southern city of Kherson.  

Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.

Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday.

Ukraine also said Friday it has destroyed 15 Russian naval vessels and has damaged 12 others in the Black Sea since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Ukraine has forced Russia to move its naval forces to positions more difficult for Kyiv’s weapons to reach, navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said in televised comments.

Russia is also suffering logistical problems, he said, because it had to move vessels to Novorossiysk and periodically to Tuapse, both ports on the eastern flank of the Black   Sea southeast of Crimea and farther from Ukraine.

The Associated Press and Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield claims. Russia usually does not acknowledge damage to its military assets and says it repels most Ukrainian attacks.

More aid

Meanwhile, EU membership talks with Ukraine are at risk, and there is no agreement in the bloc to grant Kyiv a further $54 billion (50 billion euros) in aid, a senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Friday. 

The official said Hungary is potentially obstructing the unanimity necessary for Ukraine’s EU membership talks.

The proposal by the bloc’s executive European Commission to revise its long-term budget to assign the funds for Ukraine through 2027 was also criticized from several sides, said the official. 

“Leaders … were realizing it’s quite expensive,” said the official, who is involved in preparing a December 14-15 summit in Brussels of the EU 27 member states’ national leaders. “How do we pay for this?”

The downbeat comments reflect the increasing fatigue and gloomier mood setting in among Kyiv’s Western backers as the war drags on. 

The Dutch government has earmarked $2.2 billion (2 billion euros) more in military aid for Ukraine in 2024, in what Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said Friday was a sign of unwavering support for Kyiv’s war against Russia. 

It is part of a wider package the Netherlands will provide to Ukraine next year that includes an initial $111 million (102 million euros) for reconstruction and humanitarian aid that will be increased during the year if needed. 

The latest package takes the total amount of Dutch support for Ukraine during the conflict to around $8 billion (7.5 billion euros), Ollongren said.

“What’s most critical for me is that we’ll be providing an additional 2 billion euros in military aid next year,” Ollongren told Reuters.

Military conference

Ukraine and the United States will hold a military industry conference in December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

“In December of this year, a special conference involving Ukrainian and American industries, government officials and other state actors will take place — everyone involved in organizing our defense,” Zelenskyy said in a Friday evening address.

Kyiv is ramping up efforts to produce its own weapons amid concerns that supplies from the West might be faltering. It also hopes joint ventures with international armament producers can help revive its domestic industry. 

Ukraine’s children

Officials in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region have begun building heavily fortified underground schools that will allow children to safely return to in-person studies as Russian airstrikes keep targeting the area. 

Kharkiv is frequently targeted by Russian missiles, drones and artillery, with the governor reporting Thursday that settlements in three different districts had been struck in the previous 24 hours.

Two schools, each accommodating up to 500 people, are under construction and will be able to withstand direct hits, said chief regional architect Anton Korotovskykh.

“These structures will be equipped with everything necessary for the learning process,” he told Reuters in an interview.

More than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been taken to Belarus since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to new research published Thursday by Yale University.

The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health are the most extensive yet about Belarus’ alleged role in Russia’s forced relocation of Ukrainian children.

The report found that Ukrainian children, ages 6 to 17, had been transported from at least 17 cities in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory.

That’s on top of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken from Ukraine to Russia since the war began, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s war crimes prosecutors are investigating the forced transfer of Ukrainian children as potential genocide.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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After a barrage of earthquakes that herald an impending volcanic eruption, some evacuated residents of the Icelandic town of Grindavik wonder if they will ever return.

“There are going to be a lot of people who don’t want to go there. My mother said, ‘I never want to go there again,’” Eythor Reynisson, who was born and raised in Grindavik, told AFP.

The fishing port of 4,000 people on Iceland’s south coast was evacuated on November 11 after magma shifting under the Earth’s crust caused hundreds of earthquakes — a warning of a likely volcanic eruption.

Thousands of smaller tremors have shaken the region since.

With massive crevices ripping roads apart and buildings’ concrete foundations shattered, the once picturesque Grindavik now resembles a war zone.

The damage to the town hall will take months to repair.

Long-term threat

Even if the magma flow stops and no eruption occurs, “there is the issue of whether one should live in a town like this,” Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told AFP.

The Reykjanes peninsula had not experienced an eruption for eight centuries until 2021.

Since then, three eruptions have struck — all in remote uninhabited areas — and volcanologists believe this may be the start of a new era of activity in the region.

Sigmundsson warned that “a difficult period of uncertainty” lies ahead, as eruptions could happen in the coming years.

That has left residents wondering whether it is worth rebuilding their homes.

Sigmundsson said that for the region to be deemed safe, the current activity would first need to cease.

“There is a possibility that the activity will move to another area. And then it could be acceptable to go back to Grindavik,” he said.

Strong community

Despite the conditions, a resilient community spirit was evident as residents this week queued to enter Grindavik to collect belongings they left in their hurried evacuation. 

Residents embraced each other and shared moments of laughter.

“I am really emotional. That’s basically how I am feeling right now,” Johannes Johannesson told AFP.

For some, living around volcanoes comes with the territory.

“We are a strong community, so I think it’s possible to build it up again,” Reynisson said.

Iceland is home to 33 active volcano systems, the highest number in Europe. Towns have been hit before.

In 1973, a fissure erupted just 150 meters (164 yards) from the town center on the island of Heimaey, surprising locals at dawn.

A third of the homes were destroyed, and the 5,300 residents were evacuated. One person died.

In Grindavik, steam fills the air from burst hot water pipes and the electricity grid struggles to keep operating at night because of the infrastructure damage.

Locals are now seeking accommodation in hotels, with friends and family, and at emergency shelters while they wait for life to return to normal.

Authorities have organized occasional trips into the port town, escorting those with homes in the most perilous parts to rescue everything from cherished pets to photo albums, furniture and clothing.

But the operations proceed with utmost caution. On Tuesday the village was quickly emptied as sulfur dioxide measurements indicated the magma was moving closer to the surface.

“There was panic,” Reynisson acknowledged.

Today or in a month

For almost a week, Iceland has been on tenterhooks, prepared for an eruption at any moment.

“There is still a flow of new magma into this crack, and it is widening,” Sigmundsson explained.

As long as there is an inflow of magma into the crack, the likelihood of an eruption remains high.

“We need to be prepared for an eruption happening today or within the coming week or even up to a month,” the researcher said.

The most likely place for an eruption “is from the town of Grindavik northwards,” Sigmundsson said.

For residents, this means an extended and anxiety-filled time over the weeks to come.

“Plans now are to try to manage — try to just get the family into a routine and keep on going,” Johannesson said. 
…

The Spanish-language article with a Moscow dateline and a provocative headline first appeared in early August, suggesting a heist of sorts was underway in Ukraine.

“Why are sacred objects being transferred to the West from Ukraine?” it asked, describing an effort to send Ukrainian religious relics to the United States and other countries to plunder Ukraine’s riches under the guise of saving them from destruction in the war between Kyiv and Moscow.

But according to U.S. officials, the real ruse was the article itself, an early example of a Russian influence operation aimed at winning hearts and minds for the Russian cause across Latin America.

Even the author, listed as Nadia Schwarz, may be a figment of someone’s imagination.

“I honestly don’t know if that’s a real name or not,” a U.S. State Department official told VOA on the condition of anonymity, describing the article as “just a blatant falsehood.”

The official discussing details of the Russian influence operation, said it is difficult to know whether the article gained any traction.

The organization that published the article, Pressenza, does not show page views on its website. And a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, managed only 24 views.

The U.S. official said the lack of attention is just proof the Russian operation is still “in its early stages.”

“It hasn’t really gotten off the ground,” the official said. “What they would have originally done with this article, the type of amplification they would have probably like to see – the full infrastructure isn’t there.”

And that, the official said, is why the U.S. decided to go public, issuing a statement earlier this month, Nov. 7, describing the Russian operation in detail.

The State Department described the Russian effort as an “on-going, well-funded disinformation campaign” spanning at least 13 countries, from Argentina and Chile in the south all the way up to Mexico in the north.

The plan, according to U.S. officials, was to have Russian public relations and internet companies recruit and cultivate Latin American journalists, influencers and public opinion leaders, to seed their publications and broadcasts with content favorable to Moscow while hiding any links to the Kremlin.

“They’ve been somewhat successful in using RT [Russia Today] and Sputnik in Latin America,” said State Department Global Engagement Center Special Envoy and Coordinator James Rubin.

“The difference here is they’re trying to operate surreptitiously. They’re trying to create content in Russia and launder it through Latin American journalists,” Rubin told VOA. “They are covertly co-opting local media and influencers to spread disinformation and propaganda.”

In addition to Pressenza, which is based in Italy and Ecuador, and which publishes in eight languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and English, the alleged network includes Chile’s El Ciudadano news site, as well as websites serving Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

U.S. officials said it is unclear how many of the journalists and opinion leaders are aware they are being fed Russian disinformation, though a senior State Department official told VOA, “There are definitely some willing participants.”

Others involved in the network may be so-called “useful idiots” – sympathetic to the Russian viewpoints but unaware that the directions are coming from Moscow.

Both Pressenza and El Ciudadano deny the U.S. allegations.

“Pressenza is a newspaper that, over the years, has attempted to give voice to those who, with regard to these fields, oppose rearmament processes, militarization processes, and wars,” Pressenza’s Antonio Mazzeo was quoted as saying in the publication’s response earlier this week. 

“I fear a crackdown, a restriction of freedom of expression,” Mazzeo added. “This is what should make any citizen worry.”

El Ciudadano’s Oleg Yasinsky similarly rejected the U.S. accusations.

“Suddenly they realized that some independent journalists from a faraway country wrote something without consulting them,” Yasinsky wrote, according to a Google translation of his response. 

“Why does the State Department care about what is published in Latin America?” Yasinsky added. “Their media and social networks control the media space of most of the world to expose our insidious plots. Isn’t that enough?”

But U.S. officials accuse Yasinsky, who identifies himself as a Ukrainian, as the point man for the Russian influence operation.

Yasinsky is “the key figure here… that is really trying to orchestrate this, that is trying to build this network of potential useful idiots,” the state department official told VOA, saying that he appears to be based in Chile though he has also operated from Europe. 

The State Department’s note earlier this month said it is Yasinsky who maintains and leverages the nascent network of Spanish and Portuguese speaking journalists critical to laundering the Russian disinformation to pass it off as local news and opinion.

U.S. officials though, say the content comes directly from three companies all with ties to the Kremlin: the Social Design Agency (SDA), the Institute for Internet Development, and Structura.

The three companies develop topics for news articles in line with Moscow’s priorities, write them in Spanish and then seed them throughout their Latin American network, where local journalists and editors make sure the language has a local flavor that is more likely to be accepted by readers and, perhaps, get picked up by more mainstream news outlets.

U.S. officials said some of the early efforts have even involved booking journalists or analysts on radio programs to talk about their reporting.

“They’re trying to diffuse this information through multiple sources,” the State department official said. “They really want to space it out and they want to make it look organic.”

Like Pressenza and El Ciudadano, Russia has also dismissed the U.S. claims.

“The U.S. administration once again unfounded blames Russia for all sins,” according to a post on the Russian embassy’s Telegram channel.

“It attributes to us the use of its favorite method — interference in the internal political processes of independent states,” the embassy said. “The reason for this is simple: the United States is losing popularity in this region, due to neocolonial aspirations and attempts to impose its will on others.”

U.S. officials, however, said the reason they sounded the alarm about the influence operation is so the people targeted by the Russian linked actors can decide for themselves.

“We want to make sure that throughout the region that all the relevant stakeholders, the academic organizations, the think tanks, the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], and especially the journalists themselves know about this operation so that they can judge what they see and what they read and what they hear with an understanding that the Russians may be secretly manipulating the situation,” said Rubin.
…

Two years after Taiwan opened a representative office in Lithuania, officials from both sides stress progress in bilateral relations while analysts cite risks that the deepened engagement could be affected by domestic political shift in Lithuania.

“After two years of engagement with Taiwan, we have some specific agreements with Taiwanese companies and organizations, especially in the field of semiconductors, but we shouldn’t neglect the risk of some changes in Lithuania’s current relationship with Taiwan and China caused by domestic political shifts,” Tomas Janeliunas, an international relations professor at Vilnius University, told VOA by phone.

He said that while the progress in bilateral relations has largely concentrated on deepening economic and trade exchanges, the overall trend is backed by the current Lithuanian government’s desire to expand cooperation with democracies.

“Before the parliamentary elections in 2020, the current government declared that they would like to foster relationships with democracies around the world, including expanding the relationship with Taiwan,” he said. “It included some economic prospects and cooperation in the field of technology, too.”

Over the last two years, Taiwan and Lithuania have opened trade offices in both capitals, Taipei and Vilnius, and trade between the two countries grew 50% from 2021 to 2022. One of Lithuania’s leading tech companies, Teltonika, signed an agreement with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-funded institute, that would help it launch domestic semiconductor production in 2027 using Taiwanese technology.

In addition, Lithuanian companies involved in specialized laser technology agreed to work with the research institute to set up the Ultrafast Laser Technology Research and Innovation Center in Southern Taiwan, focusing on medical and industrial applications.

“So far, the cooperation has been fruitful and brought both sides some economic successes and benefits,” Karolis Zemaitis, Lithuania’s deputy economic minister, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. “We are focusing on high-value-added sectors so high-tech is our main focus. This is a very equal bilateral exchange and cooperation where both sides can see some fruits and results.”

Apart from deepening economic ties, Taiwan and Lithuania have also increased bilateral exchanges through delegation visits and agreements to expand cooperation in such areas as scientific research and agriculture.

“The cooperation is based on values,” Eric Huang, Taiwan’s representative to Lithuania, told VOA in an interview in Vilnius. “For example, since [semiconductors are] such a sensitive area, I don’t think we will be able to implement cooperation without political trust. It is a multilayered cooperation based on values.”

At the European level, one positive development that extends from Lithuania’s efforts to deepen ties with Taiwan is the European Union’s plan to adopt an anti-coercion instrument, a mechanism that could help the EU deal with countries that try to force changes in EU policies by restricting trade. The European Parliament approved the plan in October after China launched economic retaliation against Lithuania over the opening of the Taiwanese representative office.

With Estonia expressing an interest in allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Tallinn earlier this month, some analysts say how China responds to Estonia’s decision will test the effectiveness of the EU’s anti-coercion instruments, which allow Brussels to respond to external coercion forcefully.

“We should monitor whether China will respond to the case of Estonia in a belligerent manner,” Marcin Jerzewski, an analyst of EU-Taiwan relations at the European Values Center for Security Policy, told VOA by phone. “The EU’s reaction will be the perfect test of the sustainability of the developments that we have seen in the case of Lithuania.”

Despite some Lithuanian and Taiwanese officials’ positive views on the state of bilateral relations, there is still some skepticism about the prospect and benefits of deepening ties with Taiwan within the Lithuanian government.

In September, Asta Skaisgirytė, the chief foreign policy adviser to President Gitanas Nausėda, told Lithuanian National Television and Radio that the large amount of investment that Taiwan promised when it opened the representative office in Vilnius has not materialized at the scale that Lithuania may have anticipated.

Some analysts think Taiwan has not “done a very good job” of delivering the investment promises. “The appetite for investment in Lithuania is much bigger, but so far the only big deal that has been realized is the one with Teltonika,” Jerzewski told VOA. “Taiwan has to do proper expectation management.”

Apart from domestic skepticism about the economic benefit of the relationship with Taiwan, some analysts highlight the risk of progress in the bilateral relationship between Taiwan and Lithuania being stalled by potential regime changes in Lithuania.

“If we look at opinion polls, the current government is not performing really well, and the Social Democrats and Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Association are becoming the parties of choice in the presidential election scheduled for May 2024,” Jerzewski told VOA. “These are the two parties that have shown the greatest hesitation toward deepening ties with Taiwan.”

Janeliūnas said while some members of opposition parties have declared that they would consider changing the current direction of Lithuania’s relationship with China and Taiwan, he thinks it is unlikely they would make drastic changes to Vilnius’ ties with Taipei if they won the presidential election next year.

“I don’t believe they would go for a radical move like changing the name of Taiwan’s representative office, because the political costs of such a move would be quite high,” he told VOA. “When you are in opposition, you can be bold in your expressions. But when you are in office, you have to calculate all kinds of consequences.”

Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said last week officials from Lithuania and China had been talking about potentially normalizing diplomatic relations after Beijing downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius in 2021 following the opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania.

While some observers view Lithuania’s move as the government’s response to domestic political pressure, Jerzewski said China could make recalibration of Lithuania’s relationship with Taiwan as a condition for both sides to normalize diplomatic ties. “China might say they would only be willing to restore full diplomatic relations with Lithuania if the name of the Taiwanese representative office is amended,” he told VOA. 
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Germany Friday on a short visit overshadowed by the two countries’ very different stances on the war between Israel and Hamas.

Erdogan is holding meetings with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s largely ceremonial president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Berlin. Scholz invited Erdogan to visit in May following his re-election.

Turkey has long been viewed as an awkward but essential partner in Germany, which is home to more than 3 million people with Turkish roots. It’s a NATO ally that also is important in efforts to control the flow of refugees and migrants to Europe, an issue on which Scholz faces intense domestic pressure, but there have been tensions in recent years over a variety of issues.

This visit is overshadowed by a growing chasm between the two countries’ stances on events following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and has opposed calls for a cease-fire, while pushing for aid to civilians in Gaza, advocating “humanitarian pauses” and seeking to keep open channels of communication with other countries in the region to prevent the conflict from spreading.

Erdogan has taken an increasingly strident stance against Israel. On Wednesday, he called it a “terrorist state” intent on destroying Gaza along with all of its residents. He described Hamas militants as “resistance fighters” trying to protect their lands and people. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and European Union.

Those and similar comments have appalled politicians across the spectrum in Germany. Asked earlier this week about Erdogan’s comments, Scholz didn’t mention the Turkish leader by name but said “the accusations that are being made there against Israel are absurd.”

On Wednesday, Scholz told parliament that his talks with Erdogan will include a discussion of “differing views — in this question, it is very important that there is clarity and that we make our own position very clear.”

Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey last month after Erdogan accused Israel of committing war crimes. Turkey later also recalled its ambassador from Israel.

Another possible area of tension emerged ahead of the visit. Late Thursday, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said Turkey plans to purchase 40 Eurofighter Typhoon jets, but Germany was impeding the sale of the warplanes produced by Germany, the U.K., Spain and Italy.

Guler told members of the Turkish parliament’s defense committee that Spain and the U.K. favored selling the jets to Turkey and were now working to persuade Germany.

 
…

More than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been taken to Belarus since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to new research published Thursday by Yale University.

The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health are the most extensive yet about Belarus’ alleged role in Russia’s forced relocation of Ukrainian children.

The report found that Ukrainian children, ages 6 to 17, had been transported from at least 17 cities in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory.

Yale identified more than 2,000 children who were transported to the Dubrava children’s center in the Minsk region of Belarus between September 2022 and May 2023. More than 390 children were taken to another 12 facilities, the report said.

That’s on top of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken from Ukraine to Russia since the war began, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert at the Regional Center for Human Rights in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s war crimes prosecutors are investigating the forced transfer of Ukrainian children as potential genocide.

Meanwhile, Russian shelling on Thursday killed two people and wounded at least 12 across southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, local officials said.

Among the dead was a 75-year-old woman who died in her apartment in the region’s biggest town, which is also called Kherson, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said. Eight people were injured, he said on the messaging app Telegram.

Also Thursday, the United Kingdom’s top foreign diplomat, David Cameron, traveled to the Port of Odesa to pledge continued support for the Ukrainian war effort.

Cameron’s visit is the first the former British prime minister has made since being named to his new role of foreign minister.

It also marks the first time a British diplomat has traveled to the port city, a common target for Russian airstrikes during Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Cameron said the U.K. would continue to provide whatever support was needed to Ukraine, “but above all, the military support that you need not just this year and next year but however long it takes.”

The visit came as Ukraine faces significant setbacks in the war effort, including attention shifting to the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East, the European Union’s inability to provide all the munitions it promised, and political fighting in the United States threatening additional aid to Ukraine.

The U.K. said its $5.7 billion of military aid to Ukraine was second only to the U.S. and that the country had trained 30,000 Ukrainian troops.

“Russia thinks it can wait this war out and that the West will eventually turn its attention elsewhere,” Cameron said in a statement Thursday. “This could not be further from the truth. In my first discussions with President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in my new role, I made clear that the U.K. and our partners will support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes for them to achieve victory.”

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has seen little success, and the war appears to be reaching a stalemate, a situation that Zelenskyy has warned would create a “volcano that is sleeping but will definitely wake up.”

“We cannot afford any stalemate,” Zelenskyy told African journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday. “If we want to end the war, we must end it. End with respect so that the whole world knows that whoever came, captured and killed, is responsible.”

According to the Ukrainian president, if the war becomes a stalemate, future generations of Ukrainians will have to fight, because Russia “will come again if it is not put in its place.”

Zelenskyy’s comments came two weeks after General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, told The Economist that the war had “reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

Zelenskyy acknowledged that the situation on the battlefield remained very difficult but said he does not believe that the war has reached a stalemate. He emphasized that Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia until it completely withdraws from Ukrainian territories.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

The United States on Thursday targeted 10 individuals in a new round of sanctions aimed at containing Russian influence in the Western Balkans, the U.S. Treasury said.

The Treasury also imposed sanctions on 20 entities, including 11 based in Russia, in line with executive orders related to the Western Balkans and Russia, according to a Treasury website.

The Western Balkans-related sanctions are the latest imposed by the United States on politicians, other individuals and organizations designed to contain Russian efforts to prevent the region’s integration into international institutions, the Treasury said.

The sanctions freeze all property and other assets those targeted have in the United States or are controlled by U.S. citizens and generally prohibit Americans from doing business with them.

Those hit with sanctions are individuals from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

They include Savo Cvijetinovic, a senior official of the political party led by Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russia leader of Republika Srpska, or R.S., the Serb-dominated half of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dodik already is under U.S. sanctions for alleged corruption and promoting the secession of the Serb Republic.

Cvijetinovic is the R.S. representative of a firm owned by a former Russian Air Force deputy chief that “facilitated the illegal transfer” of Ukrainian-made helicopter engines to Russia, the statement said.

Cvijetinovic told Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA that he suspected the U.S. sanctions were politically motivated, and that the company he represented has legal business with Ukraine and Russia. He said it had supplied spare engine parts, rather than engines.

Also targeted was Petar Djokic, Dodik’s minister of industry, energy and mining, who signed an agreement with a Croatian counterpart to build a pipeline from Croatia to a Russia-owned refinery in the Serb Republic.

Djokic’s Socialist Party said in a statement that the sanctions were “the biggest strike” against the accords that ended the 1992-95 Bosnia war “and the future cooperation and dialogue” in the country.

Dodik’s Moscow representative, Dusko Perovic, was sanctioned for lobbying for meetings between Dodik and Russian President Vladimir Putin, serving as a go-between for the Serb Republic government and an unidentified Russian billionaire and working for two of the billionaire’s firms, Treasury said.

Perovic told SRNA he was not involved in any business in Russia and said that his main duty was to lobby for the R.S. and Dodik, and “if this is a sin for Americans … I have no objections.”

In 2022, Dodik said the United States was accusing him of corruption despite the absence of any criminal proceeding against him. 
…

Five years ago, Soledad Gallego-Diaz challenged Spain’s last great taboo: sexual abuse inside the Roman Catholic Church.

The newly appointed editor of the left-leaning daily El Pais launched an investigation into allegations of abuse by clergy and lay people against children.

Unlike in the United States, Ireland and France, the Spanish Church had not sought to address this issue.

Echoing The Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church, El Pais’ probe sought justice for survivors of abuse.

“I realized that the church was not going to do anything, unlike in the U.S. and Ireland. It had no intention to do anything. It was going to carry on covering up those cases that it knew about. It was the moment to find out the truth,” Gallego told VOA.

Five years after the paper launched its investigation, Spain’s ombudsman published a report estimating that more than 200,000 children suffered sexual abuse from some members of Spain’s Catholic clergy. 

The 700-page report, published October 27, is the first national independent report on this issue. 

Gallego said she believed the government ordered the ombudsman’s report because of the “enormous” public reaction to the paper’s investigation.

Inigo Dominguez, one of two journalists who worked on the investigation from the start, said no other media were covering this issue when El Pais started.

“No other media decided to investigate. It was a deliberate decision. So, El Pais was very alone,” he told VOA.

Their work started shortly after the release of the movie “Spotlight,” about The Boston Globe investigation. 

As the first step in the investigation, El Pais published an email for people to contact the newspaper in confidence. The inbox soon was flooded with people who wanted to tell their stories of abuse. 

Personally, the work has been very tough for the journalists involved, Dominguez said.

“Psychologically, to listen to all these terrible stories, it has put you in contact with human evil. These people have never had anyone to listen to them,” he said.

“When they speak to a journalist, you realize that it is their last hope. You realize that you cannot fail, because it is their last hope.”

But their reporting has gone some way to achieving justice. 

Angel Gabilondo, the Spanish ombudsman, spoke of the “devastating impact” on victims, and criticized the church for its inaction and attempts to cover or deny the abuse.

“What has happened has been possible because of that silence,” he told a press conference.

The ombudsman report is the result of interviews with 8,000 members of the public.

It found that 0.6% of the country’s adult population of roughly 39 million people said they had suffered sexual abuse as children by members of the clergy.

That percentage rose to 1.13% when it included abuse by lay people, making the potential number of victims about 400,000. 

The Spanish Bishop’s Conference apologized to survivors of sexual abuse by priests but questioned the accuracy of the survey that suggested such abuse was far more widespread than previous smaller investigations have found, Reuters reported.

The church’s ruling body expressed its “pain for the damage caused by some church members with the sex abuses and repeated their request to the victims for forgiveness.”

Francisco Garcia, Episcopal conference secretary general, said the church would contribute to a compensation fund but it would have to involve general educational institutions, sports associations and other organizations because abuse happened there too, and not just in the church.

Gallego, who was editor of El Pais from 2018 to 2020, said she has mixed feelings about the ombudsman report. 

“On one hand, it was a relief that a state body, with all the resources at its disposal which are far superior to a newspaper, was uniting all the data and analyzing them. On the other, unhappiness that even the ombudsman was unable to get most bishops to answer his questions. The church hierarchy continues to believe that no one can investigate it,” Gallego told VOA. 

Gallego said the paper’s investigation had revealed more than 2,000 victims and over 1,000 alleged abusers.

The number of reporters increased on the team in the early years of the investigation but has fluctuated throughout.

And the paper is still investigating under current editor Pepa Bueno. 

“The church tried to control the media. I wanted to give a voice to the victims,” she said.

“I hope that Pope Francis, who has pledged to repair the damage, will ensure those priests who have been investigated do not have any more contact with children and are dealt with through the courts.”

Despite falling attendance and the Catholic Church’s influence waning in society, at least 60% of Spaniards describe themselves as Catholic, according to a 2021 survey.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the ombudsman’s findings were a “milestone” in the country’s democracy.

“We are a better country because a reality that everyone knew about for many years but nobody talked about has been made known,” he said.

Dominguez of El Pais said trying to raise the issue of sexual abuse presented journalistic problems.

“These stories are hard to publish because they are often just one person’s word against another,” he said.

The El Pais investigation was recognized with an Association of Investigative Journalists award this year. 

The jury that presented the award said the paper had formed “the first and only database of this type of cases in the Spanish Catholic Church.” 

“The work of El Pais has also served to give voice to the victims, who have found a channel to bring out and share their suffering. This work represents, therefore, a clear exercise of journalistic responsibility,” the jury said. 

Antonio Rubio, president of the Association of Investigative Journalists, told VOA, “It is a work which tries to change something which is the basis of objective investigative journalism.”    
…

Journalists from India, Togo, Georgia and Mexico are honored with International Press Freedom Awards this week. The legal threats and harassment all four confront reflect a wider downward trend in civil liberties, they say.  For Liam Scott, VOA’s Jessica Jerreat has more. VOA footage by Hoshang Fahim and Cristina Caicedo Smit.
…

Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, outlined his views on the ongoing war in Ukraine in a recent interview with The Economist. VOA’s Andriy Borys asked U.S. military experts their thoughts on Zaluzhny’s message and on how Ukraine can win the war. Anna Rice narrates. VOA footage by Oleksii Osyka.
…

Britain’s highest court ruled Wednesday that the government’s migrant policy of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda for processing is illegal — a big political blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
…

German police raided 54 locations across the country on Thursday in an investigation of a Hamburg-based center suspected of promoting Iranian ideology and supporting the activities of Hezbollah, the government said.

The Interior Ministry said the Islamic Center Hamburg, or IZH, has long been under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. It said the activities of the group are aimed at spreading the “revolutionary concept” of Iran’s supreme leader.

Authorities are also looking into suspicions that it supports banned activities in Germany by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, which has repeatedly traded fire with Israel across the Israel-Lebanon border since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza last month.

The IZH runs a mosque in Hamburg. The Interior Ministry said German intelligence believes it exerts significant influence or full control over some other mosques and groups, and that they often promote a “clearly antisemitic and anti-Israel attitude.” It said authorities are examining whether it can be banned, and material seized during the searches will be evaluated.

Wednesday’s raids were carried out in Hamburg and six other German states — Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria in the south, Berlin, and Hesse, North-Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony in the west and northwest. In addition to IZH, the investigation is also targeting five other groups suspected of being sub-organizations of it.

“We have the Islamist scene in our sights,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement. “Now in particular, at a time when many Jews feel particularly threatened, we tolerate no Islamist propaganda and no antisemitic and anti-Israel agitation.”

On Nov. 2, Faeser implemented a formal ban on activity by or in support of Hamas and dissolved Samidoun, a group that was behind a celebration of Hamas’ attack on Israel, following up on a pledge made by Chancellor Olaf Scholz shortly after the attack.
…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that a stalemate in his country’s war against Russia would create a “volcano that is sleeping but will definitely wake up.”

“We cannot afford any stalemate,” Zelenskyy told African journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday. “If we want to end the war, we must end it. End with respect so that the whole world knows that whoever came, captured, and killed, is responsible.”

According to the Ukrainian president, if the war becomes a stalemate, future generations of Ukrainians will have to fight, because Russia “will come again if it is not put in its place.”

Zelenskyy’s comments came two weeks after General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, told The Economist that the war had “reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

Zelenskyy admitted that the situation on the battlefield remains very difficult but said he does not believe that the war has reached a stalemate. He emphasized that Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia until it completely withdraws from Ukrainian territories.

Also Wednesday, Zelenskyy spoke by phone with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

According to the Ukrainian president’s press service, the two leaders talked about the situation on the battlefield, defense cooperation with an emphasis on strengthening Ukrainian air defense and “increasing the capabilities of mobile fire groups to combat [drones].”

Zelenskyy thanked Canada for a new sanctions package and praised Ottawa’s initiative to create an international coalition for the return of deported Ukrainian children. Canada proposed the coalition at a summit of national security and foreign policy advisers on Ukraine’s peace formula, held in Malta on Oct. 29.

Zelenskyy and Trudeau “coordinated the next steps regarding the development of this initiative at the highest level.”

In other diplomacy, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal held a meeting with Pierre Heillbronn, the French president’s special envoy for Ukraine’s relief and reconstruction.

“We discussed the involvement of the private sector in reconstruction. We are preparing specific projects in this direction,” Shmyhal said Wednesday. He also thanked France for extending the mandate of the French Development Agency to Ukraine and pointed to “a number of examples of establishing ties between the communities of Ukraine and France.”
…

How was the air breathed by Caesar, the Prophet Mohammed or Christopher Columbus? A giant freezer in Copenhagen holds the answers, storing blocks of ice with atmospheric tales thousands of years old.

The Ice Core Archive, housing 25 kilometres (15 miles) of ice collected primarily from Greenland, is helping scientists understand changes in the climate.

“What we have in this archive is prehistoric climate change, a record of man’s activities in the last 10,000 years,” glaciology professor Jorgen Peder Steffensen of the University of Copenhagen told AFP.

Blocks of ice have been his passion for 43 years — and it was while drilling into Greenland’s ice sheet that he met his wife Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, also a top expert in the field of paleoclimatology.

Steffensen has since 1991 managed the repository, one of the biggest in the world, with 40,000 blocks of ice stacked on long rows of shelves in large boxes.

The frozen samples are unique, made up of compressed snow and not frozen water.

“All the airspace between the snowflakes is trapped as bubbles inside (and) the air inside these bubbles is the same age as the ice,” Steffensen explained.

The repository’s antechamber is similar to a library’s reading room: this is where scientists can examine the ice they have withdrawn from the main “library”, or storage room.

But they must be quick: the temperature in the antechamber is kept at -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4F) — decidedly balmy compared to the -30C (-22F) in the storage room.

Here, Steffensen removes a block of ice from a box. Its air bubbles are visible to the naked eye: it’s snow that fell during the winter of year zero.

“So we have the Christmas stuff, the real Christmas snow,” says Steffensen with a big grin, his head covered in a warm winter bonnet with furry ear flaps.

Bedrock

A team of researchers brought the first ice cores to Denmark in the 1960s from Camp Century, a secret US military base on Greenland.

The most recent ones date from this summer, when scientists hit the bedrock on eastern Greenland at a depth of 2.6 kilometres, gathering the oldest ice possible.

Those samples contain extracts from 120,000 years ago, during the most recent interglacial period when air temperatures in Greenland were 5C higher than today.

“The globe has easily been much warmer than it is today. But that’s before humans were there,” Steffensen said.

This recently acquired ice should help scientists’ understanding of rising sea levels, which can only be partly explained by the shrinking ice cap.

Another part of the explanation comes from ice streams, fast-moving ice on the ice sheet that is melting at an alarming rate.

“If we understand the ice streams better, we can get a better idea of how much the contribution will be (to rising sea levels) from Greenland and Antarctica in the future,” Steffensen said.

He hopes they’ll be able to predict the sea level rise in 100 years with a margin of error of 15 centimetres — a big improvement over today’s 70 centimetres.

‘Treasure’

Ice cores are the only way of determining the state of the atmosphere prior to man-made pollution.

“With ice cores we have mapped out how greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane vary over time,” Steffensen said.

“And we can also see the impact of the burning of fossil fuels in modern times.”

This project is separate from the Ice Memory foundation, which has collected ice cores from 20 sites worldwide to preserve them for future researchers at the French-Italian Concordia research station in Antarctica, before they disappear forever due to climate change.

“Storing Greenland’s ice memory is very good,” said the head of the foundation, Jerome Chappellaz.

But, he noted, the storage of samples in an industrial freezer is susceptible to technical glitches, funding woes, attacks, or even wars.

In 2017, a freezer that broke down at the University of Alberta in Canada exposed 13 percent of its precious samples thousands of years old to undesirably warm temperatures.

At Concordia Station, the average annual temperature is -55C, providing optimal storage conditions for centuries to come.

“They have a treasure,” said Chappellaz, appealing to the Danes to join Concordia’s project.

“We must protect this treasure and, as far as possible, ensure that it joins mankind’s world heritage.”
…

After living and working in Russia for the last decade, Tajik construction worker Zoir Kurbanov recently decided it was time to head home.

Life for many Central Asian migrants in Russia after it invaded Ukraine was not the same: wages were falling and men faced a danger of being sent by Moscow to the front.

Then, Kurbanov got an offer for jobs on building sites in Mariupol and Donetsk — cities in occupied Ukraine.

“I refused,” the 39-year-old said.

He decided to take a huge pay cut and return home to Tajikistan “because of the war,” taking up a construction job in the capital, Dushanbe.

Russia is increasingly trying to lure Central Asian migrants to work in the parts of Ukraine it occupies, or even to sign up to fight for its army.

While some 1.3 million still migrated to Russia from Central Asia in the first quarter of 2023, some are choosing to leave, rather than be coerced to go to Ukraine.

Moscow is offering high salaries, social benefits and even promises of citizenship to work in places like Mariupol, virtually flattened by the Russian army last year.

Meanwhile, enlistment offices and recruitment campaigns are trying to entice them to join the Russian army.

While there are no exact numbers on how many migrant workers have left Russia – or the numbers sent to work in Ukraine or recruited to the army – Kurbanov’s case is not an exception.

‘Police everywhere’

If offers of bumper paychecks don’t work, Russian authorities have other means of coercing migrants to the front.

“The Russian police were checking me everywhere, asking if I had done my military service,” said Argen Bolgonbekov, a 29-year-old who served in the Kygryz border force.

What starts as a document check can often escalate, he said. On the pretext of uncovering some kind of offense – real or fabricated – Russian authorities sometimes offer migrants a stark choice: prison or the army.

“In Russia, where there are problems with human rights and workers’ rights, migrants are vulnerable. It’s easier to fool them,” Batyr Shermukhammad, an Uzbek journalist who specializes in migration issues, told AFP.

Street searches and police raids of dormitories and work sites were a common feature of life for Central Asian migrants in Russia even before the war. But the invasion has added a new element of risk.

Bolgonbekov was relieved to have just been deported to Kyrgyzstan after police found irregularities with his documents.

“It’s a good thing, because over there you couldn’t walk around in peace anymore,” he said, speaking to AFP at a textile workshop in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.

Farhodzhon Umirzakov, an Uzbek who worked in Russia for six years before he was also deported, said he was “worn down” by the climate there.

“The pressure on migrants increased. We were disrespected. There were more and more raids – even in mosques people were being arrested,” the 35-year-old told AFP.

He said an Uzbek he knew was sentenced to 12 years in prison for drug trafficking and ended up in the army fighting in Ukraine.

Independent media outlets in Central Asia have also reported similar cases.

‘Russia needs soldiers’

Russia is no longer hiding its targeting of migrants for military service.

Earlier this year, lawmaker Mikhail Matveyev called for Central Asians who have recently been granted Russian citizenship to be drafted instead of ethnic Russians.

“Why are they not mobilized? Where are the Tajik battalions? There is a war going on, Russia needs soldiers. Welcome to our citizenship,” he said in a post on Telegram.

War propaganda uses Soviet imagery of the victory over Nazi Germany, in which Central Asians fought for the Red Army.

Earlier this month, the Russian region of Vladimir published a recruitment video showing two men it said were Tajik doctors talking about their decision to go and fight at the front. In the video they called on their compatriots to “follow our example.”

In another video, an Uzbek man said he joined the army because “Russia is a bulwark. If it falls, our countries will fall too.”

The campaigns have not sat well with governments in Central Asia.

Although economically dependent on Moscow, they are striving to maintain their sovereignty and regularly call on their citizens not to take part in the war.

Despite the escalating pressure, Russia “remains the priority destination” for Central Asian workers, said journalist Shermukhammad.

There is no other country where migrants can go “without a visa, speak Russian and earn money,” he said.

Kurbanov, the Tajik construction worker who recently returned home, agreed.

“If the war ends tomorrow, I’ll go back to Russia the day after,” he said.

 
…

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged on Wednesday that his government will keep seeking ways to send some undocumented immigrants on a one-way journey to Rwanda, even though the Supreme Court just ruled that policy was illegal and could imperil refugees.

Five justices unanimously found that Rwanda is not a safe destination for migrants, writing in their decision that asylum-seekers redirected to the East African nation would be “at real risk of ill-treatment.”

The court cited a laundry list of reasons for striking down Sunak’s plan, including Rwanda’s record of human rights abuses, political repression and policy of “refoulement,” or deporting asylees to the countries they had fled from.

The justices argued that Rwanda’s tendency to reject refugees from war-shattered countries means that there is a danger “that asylum claims will not be determined properly…”

The ruling, Sunak said, “was not what we wanted.” But he is undeterred. He said that his administration would broker a treaty with Rwanda to address the court’s worries.

If the treaty falls through, Sunak said, he would consider rewriting British law and backing out of international human rights agreements, which would undoubtedly draw ire from activists at home and abroad.

Rwanda agreed in April 2022, when former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was still in office, to receive undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the U.K. as stowaways and process their asylum applications.

The Conservative government has already given Rwanda nearly $175 million as part of the plan, although not a single migrant has been sent there yet.

While Britain’s border crisis is not as severe as many of its neighbors in Europe, such as Italy and Germany, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants have made the harrowing journey to northern France to sail across the English Channel in often overcrowded dinghies.

More than 27,000 refugees from around the world have floated over the channel this year, a marked decrease from last year’s 46,000. Sunak claims that the decline in undocumented immigrants is due to his government’s stringent policies. Others believe the disparity in crossings is due to harsh weather conditions.

In the post-Brexit era, “stop the boats” has become a conservative protest slogan. To Sunak and many of his right-wing supporters, stricter control of the country’s borders represents independence from outside influence.

Human rights groups have condemned Sunak’s positions on immigration.

Amnesty International said the nation’s leaders should “draw a line under a disgraceful chapter in the U.K.’s political history.” The U.K. branch of ActionAid, a global humanitarian charity, struck a similar tone, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling represents “British values of compassion and dignity.”

Rwandan officials have repeatedly affirmed their country’s commitment to human rights, despite a number of scandals, from torture and secret abductions by law enforcement to, as the Supreme Court noted in its judgment, “credible plans to kill” Rwandan defectors living in Britain.

Nevertheless, Yolande Makolo, a spokeswoman for Rwanda’s government, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “Rwanda is committed to its international obligations. We have been recognized by the UNHCR and other international institutions for our exemplary treatment of refugees.”

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
…

Ukrainian troops have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson Oblast, according to a Ukrainian official.

“Against all odds, Ukraine’s defense forces have gained a foothold on the left bank,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said during a speech to a Washington think tank on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Ukraine had been attempting to push Russia from the strategically significant eastern bank of the river, which has served as a natural barrier, preventing Ukraine from advancing farther into the Kherson region towards the Russian-annexed Crimea. 

The river also allowed Russia to concentrate troops in other heavily fortified and mined regions of eastern Ukraine, such as Zaporizhzhia.

Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of occupied Kherson, confirmed that Ukrainian troops gained a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River but are acting in small groups and taking heavy losses.

“Our additional forces have now been brought in. The enemy is trapped in [the settlement of] Krynky and a fiery hell has been arranged for him: bombs, rockets, heavy flamethrower systems, artillery shells and drones,” Saldo said.

Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, described the front line as “fairly fluid” with Ukrainian troops pressuring Russian troops along the river.

Russia previously controlled areas on the western side of the river, including the city of Kherson, but left those positions last year.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been seen as moving somewhat slowly, though an advancement on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River could prove significant for Kyiv’s efforts, by forcing Russia to spread its troops thinner along the front line. 

Some information in this report was taken from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

After 21 months of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas says there is much more on the line for the Western world than Russia seizing its neighbor’s territory. She says malign actors globally are watching how the Ukraine war ends and if they see aggression paying off, the world will see many more conflicts.  

In an interview with Ia Meurmishvili of VOA’s Georgian service Tuesday while visiting Washington, Kallas discussed whether western support for Ukraine is sustainable, the status of efforts to seize Russian frozen assets in Europe, and her push to eliminate so-called “gray zones” — areas between the west and Russia, where Moscow’s efforts to exert influence threaten Europe’s security. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

VOA: How do you think the Ukraine war is going? 

Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas: We are in the war of attrition. It is not a stalemate, but it takes a long time. In war of attrition, you basically have three elements. You have the people, you have the resources, and then you have the morale. Russia is thinking that they can outlast Ukraine. But I have a reason to believe that our support to Ukraine can outlast Russia.  In terms of people — Europe is training 30 to 40,000 [Ukranian] soldiers. If America is doing the same, it is 80,000 trained soldiers versus conscripts that are sent to the battle from the Russian side. So, we can outlast them in terms of people. 

In terms of resources — the combined GDP of Europe is seven times bigger than that of Russia. We also see the sanctions kicking in, which means that the Russian budget is really in trouble. They have lost one-third of their budget and they cannot get any outside. They are in trouble. And, in terms of military aid — if you think of the Ramstein Coalition, then the defense budget of the Ramstein Coalition is 13 times bigger than that of Russia. So, we can outlast there.  

And the third element is the morale of Ukrainians fighting for their homes. Their morale is definitely higher than that of Russia. What we also have to do is believe in Ukraine’s victory. 

VOA: Do you think this support is sustainable?  

Kallas: The U.S. gave a lot of support to Ukraine, and you can say that Europe was a bit behind. But Europe has now picked up the pace and, if you think about the military aid given now, plus the future pledges, then it is bigger in absolute numbers than that of the United States’. 

All the leaders in Europe have put their political will behind supporting Ukraine because it is fundamental for the peace in the world that the aggression does not pay off. Because all the aggressors or would-be aggressors in the world are carefully taking notes. If Russia walks away with more territory than they have, and we say that, okay, let’s draw the line here, then all the aggressors and would-be aggressors are seeing that the aggression pays off. So, we will see more of it, and that is going to be more expensive than to support Ukraine so that Russia will lose this war. I totally agree with the historian Timothy Snyder, who said that in order for a country to become better, it has to lose its last colonial war. If you think about European history that is true for many European countries. Russia has never lost its last colonial war.

VOA: Why do you think it is important for the U.S. to keep engaged? 

Kallas: For me, the question is always of the alternative. Is the alternative to supporting Ukraine right now more expensive or is it cheaper? I say that it’s more expensive, because all the malign actors are very carefully looking — Iran, North Korea. If Russia walks away, and nothing happens to them with more territories than they had before, [if] they do not lose their last colonial war, then others will try to do this in the world as well, and that is going to be detrimental to the world peace.

VOA: Do you see any movement towards seizing the frozen assets of Russia in Europe and using that money for the Ukrainian recovery? 

Kallas: Yes, the European Commission is working on the European solution. In Estonia, we drafted a law that is tackling the same issue. So basically, how it works is that in Hague, in the International Criminal Court, there is a registry that is registering all the damages that Russia is causing to Ukraine, and its cost. At the same time, we have the assets that are frozen or sanctioned and we know the value of those assets. Russia has a legitimate claim towards us regarding those assets. Ukraine has a legitimate claim towards Russia. So, we make a settlement with those claims so that we can use those assets in favor of Ukraine. And after the war ends, and Russia has paid all the reparations to Ukraine and there is something left over, then we can return this.

I think this is fundamental because nobody wants to take this from the taxpayers’ money, but it’s also fundamental in order to think outside of the box, what really influences the Russian elite or the cronies around the Kremlin to have a pressure to really stop this war. And the war will stop when Russia realizes it cannot win there, and that it was a mistake.

VOA: Are your partners listening to your call to eliminate the “gray zones”?

Kallas: I think everybody has understood that the gray zones are sources of conflicts and wars. For us to not have wars, it has to be clear where the lines really are. The question has been from the start, is the unity now collapsing? But it has not. Of course, we are all democracies, and in democracies we debate, we have different opinions. But the point is that we come to a mutual decision. As [Russian President Vladimir] Putin does not believe in multilateralism so it has been a negative surprise to him that we have been able to keep our unity together and we should continue negatively surprising him.

VOA: And now he is uniting with China, North Korea and Iran.

Kallas: Exactly. There are clear authoritarian regimes fighting against the democracies in the world and for freedom, really. And [the] question is, who gets to rule the world, whether it’s freedom and prosperity, or is it authoritarian regimes that have other values? 
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The use of anti-personnel land mines by Russia and Myanmar triggered a surge in the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine and Myanmar last year, according to a new report by a land-mine monitor.

The report, published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, found that Russia, which is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty, “used antipersonnel mines extensively in Ukraine since its all-out invasion of the country in February 2022.”

The report also found evidence that Ukraine, which is a party to the Mine Ban Treaty, used anti-personnel mines in and around the city of Izium, in Kharkiv oblast, in 2022 when the city was under Russian control.

“This has created an unprecedented situation in which a country that is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty is using the weapon on the territory of a [treaty member],” said Mark Hiznay, associate arms director at Human Rights Watch and an editor of Landmine Monitor 2023. “In the 20-plus years [since the Mine Ban Treaty was adopted], this has never occurred before.”

Ukraine has previously said it would look into allegations in a Human Rights Watch report earlier this year detailing “numerous cases” in which Ukrainian forces deployed banned anti-personnel mines.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which is a global coalition of nongovernmental organizations chaired by Human Rights Watch, recorded 4,710 injuries and deaths in 2022, down from 5,544 casualties in the previous year.

“But there were significant increases in some countries, primarily Ukraine,” said Loren Persi, Landmine Monitor 2023 impact team lead. “In Ukraine, the number of civilian casualties recorded increased 10-fold from around 60 in 2021 to around 600 in 2022.”

The Monitor report says civilians accounted for 85% of casualties from land mines and exploded remnants of war last year, roughly half of them children. The highest number of casualties, 834, was recorded in Syria, followed by Ukraine with 608 casualties, and Yemen and Myanmar, each of which recorded more than 500 casualties in 2022.

Hiznay said that Russia began using landmines in 2014 in support of pro-Russian separatist forces in the contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

“Russia has made extensive use of land mines in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya,” he said. “I think they have supplied land mines to 35, 38 different countries over the years.

“Another factor we are noticing is wherever Wagner goes, land mines go,” he said, referring to the Moscow-financed Wagner Group militia. “We do not think that is a coincidence, particularly in Libya, where several new types of land mines were found and documented.”

Myanmar, he said, has been using anti-personnel land mines since 1999, but the magnitude and scope of the contamination is now different.

“It is just bigger,” he said. “You have more use by the government forces and more use by various nonstate armed groups. So, it is a lingering, festering problem that has just got worse in the past reporting period.”

The Monitor report indicates land mines were also used during the reporting period by nonstate armed groups in Colombia, India, Myanmar, Thailand and Tunisia, as well as in eight treaty members in the Sahel region.

Currently 164 countries have signed onto the Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines.

The Monitor says that 30 states who are parties to the treaty have cleared all mined areas from their territory since the treaty came into force in 1999, leaving 60 countries and other areas contaminated. In addition, it notes that 22 states that are not party to the treaty and five other areas remain infested with these lethal weapons.

De-mining activists warn that the number of victims will continue to grow for as long as land mines remain in the ground. They say health care and physical rehabilitation services are seriously underfunded and unable to assist the many people who are disabled by these weapons, including in countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen.

“Alarming increases in the number of civilians killed and injured by recently placed mines in several countries further demonstrate the dire need for increased resources to ensure all the rights of the victims are addressed,” said Persi. 
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