Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are used to risky missions — from the radioactive aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan to the politically charged Iranian nuclear program. But their deployment amid the war in Ukraine to Zaporizhzhia takes the threat to a new level and underscores the lengths to which the organization will go in attempts to avert a potentially catastrophic nuclear disaster.

The 6-month war sparked by Russia’s invasion of its western neighbor is forcing international organizations, not just the IAEA, to deploy teams during active hostilities in their efforts to impose order around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, pursue accountability for war crimes and identify the dead.

“This is not the first time that an IAEA team has gone into a situation of armed hostilities,” said Tariq Rauf, the organization’s former head of verification and security, noting that the IAEA sent inspectors to Iraq in 2003 and to former Soviet Republic Georgia during fighting. “But this situation in Zaporizhzhia, I think it’s the most serious situation where the IAEA has sent people in ever, so it’s unprecedented.”

The IAEA’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi highlighted the risks Thursday when he led a team to the sprawling plant in southern Ukraine.

“There were moments when fire was obvious — heavy machine guns, artillery, mortars at two or three times were really very concerning, I would say, for all of us,” he said of his team’s journey through an active war zone to reach the plant.

Speaking to reporters after leaving colleagues inside, he said the agency was “not moving” from the plant from now on, and vowed a “continued presence” of agency experts.

But it remains to be seen what exactly the organization can accomplish.

“The IAEA cannot force a country to implement or enforce nuclear safety and security standards,” Rauf said in a telephone interview. “They can only advise and then it is up to … the state itself,” specifically the national nuclear regulator. In Ukraine, that is further complicated by the Russian occupation of the power station.

The IAEA is not the only international organization seeking to locate staff permanently in Ukraine amid the ongoing war.

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has visited Ukraine three times, set up an office in the country and sent investigators into a conflict zone to gather evidence amid widespread reports of atrocities. National governments including the Netherlands have sent expert investigators to help the court.

Khan told a United Nations meeting in April: “This is a time when we need to mobilize the law and send it into battle, not on the side of Ukraine against the Russian Federation or on the side of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, but on the side of humanity to protect, to preserve, to shield people … who have certain basic rights.”

The International Commission on Missing Persons, which uses a high-tech laboratory in The Hague to assist countries attempting to identify bodies, has already sent three missions to Ukraine and set up an office there.

Grossi, an Argentine diplomat, was previously a high-ranking official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an organization that, after he had left, also was forced to send inspectors to conflicts.

In April 2018, an OPCW team sent to collect evidence of a suspected chlorine attack in Douma, Syria, was forced to wait in a hotel for days because of security concerns in the town, which was at the time under the protection of Russian military police.

When a U.N. security team visited Douma, gunmen shot at them and detonated an explosive, further delaying the OPCW’s fact-finding mission.

The IAEA’s biggest operation to monitor any country’s nuclear program is Iran, where it has been the key arbiter in determining the size, scope and aspects of Tehran’s program during the decades of tensions over it. Since Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the IAEA has had surveillance cameras and physical inspections at Iranian sites, even as questions persist over Iran’s military nuclear program, which the agency said ended in 2003.

But that monitoring hasn’t been easy. Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the deal in 2018, Iran has stopped the IAEA from accessing footage from its surveillance cameras. Other online monitoring devices have been affected as well.

In 2019, Iran alleged an IAEA inspector tested positive for suspected traces of explosive nitrates while trying to visit Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear facility. The IAEA strongly disputed Iran’s description of the incident, as did the U.S.

Another risky and challenging mission was in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. About two weeks after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that caused reactor meltdowns and hydrogen explosions at reactor buildings, IAEA sent experts to monitor radiation, sample soil and check food safety, but they largely stayed outside of the plant. They returned later in full hazmat suits, masks, gloves and helmets to inspect the remains of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The situation in Zaporizhzhia, with Russia and Ukraine trading accusations of shelling the area, has the potential to be just as devastating.

“Any time a nuclear power plant is in the middle of armed hostilities, shelling on its territory and nearby creates unacceptable risks,” Rauf said. “So, you know, any misfired shell could hit one of the reactors or disable some system that can lead to much bigger consequences.”
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Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has sent a special envoy to attend this weekend’s beatification of former Pope John Paul I, saying it demonstrates the close relations between the island and the Vatican, which has been courting China.

The Vatican is Chinese-claimed Taiwan’s sole European diplomatic ally, and Taipei has watched with concern as Pope Francis has moved to improve relations with China. The democratically governed island has formal ties with only 14 countries, largely due to Chinese pressure.

In a statement late Friday, Taiwan’s presidential office said former Vice President Chen Chien-jen, a devout Catholic, would attend Sunday’s ceremony as part of a nine-day trip.

The visit “demonstrates the close friendship between the two countries,” it said. Chen will also take part in a reception with the pope for members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, it added.

Tsai expressed hope that Chen would “continue to deepen the friendship between Taiwan and the Vatican, and continue to protect the shared belief in universal values between Taiwan and the Vatican.”

He went to the Vatican three times while in office, in 2016, 2018 and 2019, including attending the canonization ceremony of Mother Teresa.

Pope Francis told Reuters in July said that while the Vatican’s secret and contested agreement with China on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops is not ideal, he hoped it could be renewed in October because the Church takes the long view.

The deal, which was struck in 2018 and comes up for renewal every two years, was a bid to ease a longstanding divide across mainland China between an underground flock loyal to the pope and a state-backed official church.

Both sides now recognize the pope as supreme leader of the Catholic Church.

China’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but in recent years the government has tightened restrictions on religions seen as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Communist Party.

Taiwan puts no restrictions on freedom of faith and has a thriving religious community that includes Christians, Buddhists and Muslims. 
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An energy battle between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine revved up Friday with Moscow delaying the reopening of its main gas pipeline to Germany and G-7 nations announcing a price cap on Russian oil exports.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said it could not resume the supply of natural gas to Germany, just hours before it was set to restart deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Russia blamed a technical fault in the pipeline for the move, which is likely to worsen Europe’s energy crisis.

European Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said Friday on Twitter that Gazprom acted under “fallacious pretenses” to shut down the pipeline.

Moscow has blamed Western sanctions that took effect after Russia invaded Ukraine for hindering the maintenance of the gas pipeline. Europe accuses Russia of using its leverage over gas supplies to retaliate against European sanctions.

Also Friday, finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies said they would work quickly to implement a price cap on Russian oil exports.

The G-7 ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States said the amount of the price cap would be determined later “based on a range of technical inputs.”

“This price cap on Russian oil exports is designed to reduce [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s revenues, closing an important source of funding for the war of aggression,” said German Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

The jockeying for control of energy supplies comes as Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, where U.N. inspectors are seeking to avert a potential disaster.

Ukraine’s military said Friday that it had carried out strikes against a Russian base in the southern town of Enerhodar, near the nuclear power plant.

Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling near the facility. Kyiv also accuses Moscow of storing ammunition around the plant and using it as a shield for carrying out attacks, charges Russia denies.

Inspectors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have visited the Zaporizhzhia plant, braving artillery blasts to reach the facility on Thursday.

Ukraine’s nuclear agency, Energoatom, on Friday accused Russia of “making every effort” to prevent the IAEA mission from learning the real situation at the facility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Thursday, “Ukraine did everything to make this mission happen. But it is bad that the occupiers are trying to turn this IAEA mission — a really necessary one — into a fruitless tour of the plant.”

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, leading the inspection group, told reporters Thursday the agency was “establishing our continued presence” at Europe’s biggest nuclear facility. He said it was obvious that the “physical integrity” of the Zaporizhzhia plant “has been violated several times.”

Grossi said, “I worried, I worry, and I will continue to be worried about the plant.”

The Zaporizhzhia plant has been controlled by Russia since the earliest days of its invasion but is operated by Ukrainian engineers.

With the nuclear plant in a war zone, world leaders have expressed fears it could be damaged and result in a radiation disaster like that at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant in 1986.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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A new hormone treatment improved the cognitive function of six men with Down syndrome by 10% to 30%, scientists said this week, adding the “promising” results may raise hopes of improving patients’ quality of life.

However, the scientists emphasized the small study did not point toward a cure for the cognitive disorders of people with Down syndrome and that far more research is needed.

“The experiment is very satisfactory, even if we remain cautious,” Nelly Pitteloud of Switzerland’s Lausanne University Hospital, co-author of a new study in the journal Science, said Thursday.

Down syndrome is the most common genetic form of intellectual disability, occurring in about one in 1,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet previous research has failed to significantly improve cognition when applied to people with the condition, which is why the latest findings are “particularly important,” the study said.

Recent discoveries have suggested that how the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) is produced in the brain can affect cognitive functioning such as memory, language and learning.

GnRH hormones regulate how much testosterone and estrogen are produced, and increased levels of it help spur puberty.

“We wondered if this hormone could play any role in establishing the symptoms of people with Down syndrome,” said Vincent Prevot, study co-author and head of neuroscience research at France’s INSERM institute.

Research on mice

The team first established that five strands of microRNA regulating the production of GnRH were dysfunctional in mice specifically engineered for Down syndrome research.

They then demonstrated that cognitive deficiencies — as well as loss of smell, a common symptom of Down syndrome — were linked to dysfunctioning GnRH secretion in the mice.

The team then gave the mice a GnRH medication used to treat low testosterone and delayed puberty in humans, finding that it restored some cognitive function and sense of smell.

A pilot study was conducted in Switzerland involving seven men with Down syndrome aged 20 to 50.

They each received the treatment through their arm every two hours over a period of six months, with the drug delivered in pulses to mimic the hormone’s frequency in people without Down syndrome.

Cognition and smell tests were carried out during the treatment, as were MRI scans.

Six of the seven men showed improvement in cognition with no significant side effects, and none showed a change in sense of smell.

“We have seen an improvement of between 10% to 30% in cognitive functions, in particular with visuospatial function, three-dimensional representation, understanding of instructions as well as attention,” Pitteloud said.

The patients were asked to draw a simple 3D bed at several stages throughout the therapy. Many struggled at the beginning but by the end the efforts were noticeably better.

‘Improve quality of life’

The authors acknowledged some limitations of the study, including its size and that the choice of patients was “pushed by their parents.”

“The clinical trial only focused on seven male patients — we still have a lot of work to do to prove the effectiveness of GnRH treatment for Down syndrome,” Pitteloud said.

A larger study involving a placebo and 50 to 60 patients, a third of them women, is expected to begin in the coming months.

“We are not going to cure the cognitive disorders of people with Down syndrome, but the improvement seen in our results already seems fundamental enough to hope to improve their quality of life,” Pitteloud said.

Fabian Fernandez, an expert in cognition and Down syndrome at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the research, hailed the “tour de force study.”

He told AFP that while it is “difficult to envision” how such an intensive treatment could be used for young people, it might be better suited to delay the Alzheimer’s disease-related dementia suffered by many adults with Down syndrome.

It was also difficult to predict how such an improvement could impact the lives of people with the condition, he said.

“For some, it could be significant, however, as it would enable them to be more independent with daily living activities such as maintaining and enjoying hobbies, finding belongings, using appliances in the home and traveling alone.”
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U.N. agencies are quickly mobilizing resources and staff to assess the damage and provide aid needed to assist millions of people made homeless and destitute by flooding in Pakistan.

Extensive rains, which have pummeled Pakistan since June, have inundated the country, putting a third of it under water. The United Nations said more than 1,100 people are known to have died, over 6,000 have been injured, 33 million have been left homeless and hundreds of thousands of buildings and infrastructure damaged or destroyed.

Aid agencies said bridges have been destroyed and roads turned into mud, cutting off access to many people in distress. The World Health Organization warns the floods are having a catastrophic impact on the health situation.

WHO representative in Pakistan Palitha Mahipala said major health risks are unfolding and will continue to unfold in the months to come as more rain is forecast. Speaking in the capital, Islamabad, he warned that people are ill-equipped to fend off disease outbreaks in camps lacking safe water and sanitary conditions.

“Major health concerns already reported with the spread of diarrheal diseases, skin infections, respiratory tract infections, malaria, and dengue fever,” Mahipala said. “Rains continue and projections are that floods will worsen further over the coming days, with even greater humanitarian and public health impact.”

Mahipala said there is an urgent need to scale up disease surveillance, restore damaged health facilities and ensure sufficient medicine and health supplies are obtained. He said mental health assistance and psychosocial help must be made available for affected communities.

He said the monsoon rains and floods have damaged and destroyed nearly 2,000 public and private health facilities. The loss of the clinics will seriously affect the ability of sick and injured people to get treatment they need.

Mahipala said shortages of health workers and limited health supplies also are disrupting health services and increasing the health risks for children and pregnant and lactating women.
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Group of Seven finance ministers agreed Friday to impose a price cap on Russian oil aimed at slashing revenues for Moscow’s war in Ukraine while keeping crude flowing to avoid price spikes, but their statement left out key details of the plan.

The ministers from the group of wealthy industrial democracies confirmed their commitment to the plan after a virtual meeting. They said, however, that the per-barrel level of the price cap would be determined later “based on a range of technical inputs” to be agreed by the coalition of countries implementing it.

“Today we confirm our joint political intention to finalize and implement a comprehensive prohibition of services, which enable maritime transportation of Russian-origin crude oil and petroleum products globally,” the G-7 ministers said.

The provision of maritime transportation services, including insurance and finance, would be allowed only if the Russian oil cargoes are purchased at or below the price level “determined by the broad coalition of countries adhering to and implementing the price cap.”

The ministers said they would work to finalize the details, through their own domestic processes, aiming to align it with the start of European Union sanctions that will ban Russian oil imports into the bloc starting in December.

The G-7 consists of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

The ministers said they would seek a broader coalition of oil importing countries to purchase Russian crude and petroleum products only at or below the price cap, and they will invite their input into the plan.

Some G-7 officials have expressed concerns the price cap would not be successful without participation of major importers such as China and India, which have sharply increased their purchases of Russian crude since Moscow launched its invasion in February. But others have said China and India have expressed interest in buying Russian oil at an even lower price in line with the cap.

Enforcing the cap would rely heavily on denying London-brokered shipping insurance, which covers about 95% of the world’s tanker fleet, and finance to cargoes priced above the cap. But analysts say alternatives can be found to circumvent the cap and market forces could render it ineffective.

Despite Russia’s falling oil export volumes, its oil export revenue in June increased by $700 million from May because of prices pushed higher by its war in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency said last month.

The G-7 finance ministers’ statement follows up on their leaders’ decision in June to explore the cap, a move Moscow says it will not abide by and can thwart by shipping oil to states not obeying the price ceiling.

Pricing concerns

The U.S. Treasury has raised concerns the EU embargo could set off a scramble for alternative supplies, spiking global crude prices to as much as $140 a barrel, and it has been promoting the price cap since May as a way to keep Russian crude flowing.

Russian oil prices have risen in anticipation of the EU embargo, with Urals crude trading at an $18-to-$25 per barrel discount to benchmark Brent crude, down from a $30-to-$40 discount earlier this year.
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Germany and the families of Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics have agreed on a compensation offer totaling $28 million, according to an interior ministry spokesperson on Friday.

Last month, the families had said they were unhappy with the latest German compensation offers and that they planned to boycott a ceremony on Monday in Munich marking the 50th anniversary of the attack in protest.

The federal government will contribute $22.5 million, while $5 million will come from the state of Bavaria, and $500,000 will come from Munich, said the spokesperson.

On September 5, 1972, members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage at the poorly secured athletes’ village by Palestinian gunmen from the radical Black September group.

Within 24 hours, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman were dead after a standoff and subsequent rescue effort erupted into gunfire.
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Human Rights Watch issued a report Thursday documenting the forcible transfer of Ukrainian citizens to Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, which HRW says constitutes war crimes and potential crimes against humanity.

The 71-page report, We Had No Choice: “Filtration” and the Crime of Forcibly Transferring Ukrainian Civilians to Russia, includes interviews with 18 people who went to Russia — 15 from the Mariupol area, one from Donetsk and two from the Kharkiv region. It said Russian and Russian-affiliated authorities also subjected thousands of Ukrainians to a form of compulsory, punitive and abusive security screening called filtration.

Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at HRW, discussed the organization’s work in Ukraine with Natalya Churikova of VOA’s Ukrainian Service in an interview Wednesday.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: Who did you interview for this report? Were they Ukrainians in Russia?

Denber: So, the people who we interviewed were Ukrainians, Ukrainian citizens who had been forcibly transferred to Russia. So, about the time when we spoke to them, they were no longer in Russia. They had already made it out of Russia, for the most part. They were already in the countries of the European Union or Georgia.

VOA: How do you define forced deportation?

Denber: I think this is a really important question because … a forced transfer is a war crime and a potential crime against humanity. In order for it to apply in a situation like in Ukraine, where it’s an armed conflict and one side is bringing people to the opposite side or to other occupied areas, for the term, force transfer, to be applicable, you don’t have to actually put a gun to somebody’s head, or you don’t have to drag them in handcuffs.

What we documented was how Russian authorities, Russian forces, or forces that were affiliated with Russia, pretty much just made clear to Ukrainians to whom they were offering evacuation on a bus that they had no other choice. And that’s, in fact, the title of the report.

They pretty much told them they had no other choice, that they had to … get on this bus. Sometimes they said, “Well if you stay, it’ll be so much worse for you. You’re not going to survive.” Or sometimes they didn’t say anything at all. In some cases, they didn’t tell people where they were taking off to. In other cases, these forces rounded people up from shelters, from the streets, sometimes also from house-to-house searches, and put them on buses to so-called DNR, [Donetsk People’s Republic] and then onward to the Russian border.

VOA: What would be the legal way for Russia to deal with this situation? That they are in a state of war, and they really want the population to be safe?

Denber: The legal way would be to ensure that there was transportation offered to Ukrainian-held areas. Their responsibility was to make that available, because it wasn’t impossible. People who were fleeing either the Mariupol area, or even people who had been through filtration, if they had access to their own transportation, if they had their own car, or if they had enough money to hire a car, they were able to drive away and drive to Ukrainian-held areas. It’s just that if you didn’t have the money, you had no other choice [but] to get on a bus. And that’s the definition of forced transfer.

VOA: What about the filtration camps and the separation of families? We know that families are trying to escape together.

Denber: I think that almost everyone we talked to who went through filtration felt that they were in a very coerced situation. Some people felt like they were hostages. Some people felt like they were being accused of a crime. So, this was a very abusive process that had no legal framework whatsoever. Look, the Russian authorities are entitled to set up a screening process for people who are voluntarily going to Russia. That’s not what the case was here. And second of all, even if they’re setting up a screening process for security reasons for people who are voluntarily going to Russia, there are certain boundaries and limits that they need to observe.

There is nothing that could justify the scope of the screening that they were undertaking … by getting people’s biometric data. That’s hugely invasive, and it’s also consistent with what Russia is doing domestically. They’re using all kinds of mechanisms in order to scrape people’s biometric data with the purpose of controlling them. …

[Also,] they’re asking their opinions about the war. Their opinions about the military. Their opinions about Putin. Why is that? There is no real justification for that other than to intimidate people. And then they were invasively looking into people’s telephones and scraping everything they could. We don’t know what’s happened to that data.

VOA: In the report, you say that some of the civilians who were detained from the Mariupol area who were suspected of sympathizing with this battalion were put in the camp where Ukrainian prisoners of war were recently killed. Do you have any data about this?

Denber: So, all of the information that we got, we got from interviewing people — and quite detailed interviews. We interviewed many people who had been through the filtration process. We specifically asked people about what happened to people who flunked the filtration process, who the Russian or Russian-affiliated forces detained after they finished the gathering of data and the interviews, then the interrogations. And we understand that people told us that they have heard that people were taken to various other locations, including what their fate was after that. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to follow up on those things.

We did get details of one case of a man who was held because he flunked the filtration process, and he was eventually released. He didn’t want to talk about [his] experience, and he also talked about his son who was picked up in Mariupol and held for several weeks. He was suspected of being affiliated with the Ukrainian military, and … it was pretty clear that he was quite badly beaten.

VOA: Ukrainian authorities say almost 6,000 Ukrainian children are being deported to Russia, and some of them are being put up for adoption. Have you come across any of these cases?

Denber: In our report, we documented only one case of a forced transfer of children. And that was, of course, [the] transfer of 17 children who had been in an institution in Mariupol, and they were forcibly transferred. Somebody who ran the institution had a plan to get them out of Mariupol, and he was intercepted by some DNR person who took the children to the DNR. And that was it. We didn’t document any other cases other than that, but that doesn’t mean that those cases don’t exist.

VOA: We asked the U.N. refugee agency about their numbers, and they said the Russian Federation gives them the numbers, and they put them up for the public in their portal, and that Russia has become the biggest country to receive Ukrainian refugees. They said they didn’t have the means to check the numbers independently. Would your report be a basis for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to change the definition on the status of the Ukrainians in the Russian Federation?

Denber: That’s an excellent question. Our report certainly raises questions about how to define the people who have crossed the Ukrainian border into Russia. Look, we can’t say how many people were forcibly transferred into Russia. We don’t know. But we do know that large numbers of people were, because there were busloads and busloads and busloads of people. We do know that people were rounded up en masse and put on buses in this manner that is coercive. … It’s very hard to say exactly how many people were displaced from Ukraine and who ended up in Russia. It’s very hard to say how many of those people who ended up in Russia are genuinely refugees. How many of them are forcibly transferred. How many of them went voluntarily to Russia. It’s a very difficult numbers game.

VOA: Can Ukraine use your report as evidence in the International Court of Justice, where it has sued Russia for human rights violations?

Denber: I hope that anybody who is interested in justice will use our report as evidence of the crime of forced transfers. … We documented a number of cases, and I very much hope that our report is used by anybody who’s looking for justice.

VOA: In which case does forced deportation represent a crime against humanity?

Denber: It would have to do with the scale and the numbers. I think once we see who actually was forcibly transferred, we could talk about whether it was systematic, and whether it was combined with other crimes.

VOA: What would be the benchmark?

Denber: I really couldn’t say. I think that’s something the court would have to determine.
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Russia this week shut off a major gas pipeline to Germany as Europe and the U.S. accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “weaponizing” energy. And as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, there are growing environmental concerns about an unexplained Russian gas flare close to the Arctic.
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Belarus has become an accomplice to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. Russian troops used it as a launchpad for missile strikes and air raids on Ukraine. In response, Western countries have imposed tough sanctions on Belarus. Maxim Moskalkov reports. Camera: Elena Matusovsky.
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Russia closed the major Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany on Wednesday, claiming the three-day shutdown is necessary for the maintenance of turbines. Europe and the U.S. dispute that claim and accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of “weaponizing” energy.  

Last year, Russia supplied 40 percent of the European Union’s gas. In recent weeks, Russia has reduced the flow through Nord Stream 1 to just 20 percent of capacity. Moscow blamed the latest shutdown on Western sanctions that have targeted its economy. 

Visiting the town of Lubmin on Germany’s Baltic coast Tuesday, where the Nord Stream pipeline comes ashore, Markus Soeder, the premier of the German state of Bavaria, said his country was in a difficult position. 

“Putin is playing a game with Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. I think it’s a kind of game. Our problem right now is that we are not in a position to adequately respond to this game,” Soeder told reporters. 

Current European gas prices have soared to about 10 times their average price over the past decade. Germany declared a gas crisis in June and warned that consumers and businesses must cut back. Consumption has since fallen by around 20 percent. 

In a stark speech last week, French President Emmanuel Macron warned of “the end of abundance” and said the French people would have to make sacrifices. 

“Our freedom — the system of freedom, which we are used to living in — has a cost. And at times, if it needs to be defended, that could entail sacrifices to reach the end of certain battles we must carry out,” Macron said at a cabinet meeting August 24. 

Looking for other sources

As Russia turns off the taps, Europe is scrambling to find alternative sources. Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have helped Europe fill gas storage sites to 80 percent capacity, two months ahead of the EU target. That has calmed markets and brought down prices in recent days. But storage will only last so long, said Tom O’Donnell, who teaches at the Free University in Berlin and is the founder of energy analyst group The Global Barrel.

“Storage by itself isn’t enough for the winter,” O’Donnell told VOA. “With all the pipelines cut off — which is what we have to expect from Russia, that all their pipelines will be cut off — [even with] all the LNG we can take, that storage is going to last 2½ months in heating season. And then, you know, Europe’s stuck.”

Europe is trying to wean itself off Putin’s gas, but it will take at least two years, O’Donnell said. 

“In the meantime, he has leverage and he will use it all he can before totally loses the business,” O’Donnell said. “The dependence of Europe on Russian-delivered gas by pipeline is much greater than, let’s say, the importance of that money for Putin, because he makes so much more money from oil.” 

Meanwhile, there is growing concern over a Russian gas flare, which has been burning close to the Finnish border for two months. Experts say it’s burning an estimated $10 million worth of gas every day, sending the equivalent of 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

“It is on the site where the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany is starting,” said professor Esa Vakkilainen of Lut University in Lappeenranta, the closest city to the border.

“But it is also a place where the Russians have built an LNG plant to deliver LNG, and that plant was supposed to open this spring,” Vakkilainen told the Reuters news agency. “And so, it is probably operating. But due to the war in Ukraine, there is very little information about what is actually happening there. So, we can only speculate that right now there are some technical difficulties either involved with Nord Stream or with this LNG station.”

Across Europe, new LNG terminals are under construction, old coal and nuclear power plants are being fired up again, and there is a big investment in renewable power. But in the short term, it may not be enough, and governments are warning of a difficult winter ahead.
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The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be able to attend the funeral service of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader who died earlier this week, because of his work schedule.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow Thursday that while Gorbachev will not be honored with a full state funeral, the service will have an honor guard and some other elements usually given during such a ceremony.

He added that Putin stopped by the Central Clinical Hospital earlier in the day to bid farewell to the man credited with helping end the Cold War, whose body remains there after he passed away at the age of 91 on August 30 following a prolonged illness.

“Unfortunately, the president’s work schedule will not allow him to do that [attend the service] on September 3, which is why he decided to it today,” Peskov said.

Gorbachev’s daughter, Irina Virganskaya, has said her father’s funeral will be held on September 3 at the historic House of the Unions, where all Soviet leaders, except Nikita Khrushchev, have laid in state. The site is just a short walk away from the Kremlin.

Putin’s decision not to attend the funeral highlights the frosty response the Kremlin has had to the death of a man much of the West praised for ushering in political and economic changes known as “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring) that helped trigger the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, and ultimately the demise of the Soviet Union.

Putin, who had a strained relationship with Gorbachev, has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.”

Gorbachev had carefully criticized Putin, at times, for rolling back democratic reforms and reintroducing elements of repression that seemed more at home during the Soviet era than post-perestroika Russia.

The Gorbachev Foundation said that anyone who wants to bid farewell to the man who stopped the Cold War can attend the ceremony in the House of the Union from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on September 3.

Gorbachev will be laid to rest at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, who died in 1999 of leukemia at the age of 67.
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Russia on Thursday launched weeklong war games involving forces from China and other nations in a show of growing defense cooperation between Moscow and Beijing as they both face tensions with the U.S.

The maneuvers are also intended to demonstrate that Moscow has sufficient military might for massive drills even as its troops are engaged in military action in Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise will be held until Sept. 7 at seven firing ranges in Russia’s Far East and the Sea of Japan and involve more than 50,000 troops and over 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships.

Russian general staff chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, will personally oversee the drills that will involve troops from several ex-Soviet nations, China, India, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Syria.

The Defense Ministry noted that as part of the maneuvers, the Russian and Chinese navies in the Sea of Japan will “practice joint action to protect sea communications, areas of marine economic activity and support for ground troops in littoral areas.”

The drills showcase increasing defense ties between Moscow and Beijing, which have grown stronger since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. China has pointedly refused to criticize Russia’s action, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking Moscow, and has blasted punishing sanctions imposed on Moscow. Russia, in turn, has strongly backed China amid the tensions with the U.S. that followed a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Putin has drawn parallels between U.S. support for Ukraine and Pelosi’s trip, describing them both as part of alleged efforts by Washington to foment global instability.

Alexander Gabuyev, a political analyst who closely follows Russia-China ties, noted that “it’s very important for Beijing to show to the U.S. that it has levers to pressure America and its global interests.”

“The joint maneuvers with Moscow, including the naval drills, are intended to signal that if the pressure on Beijing continues it will have no other choice but to strengthen the military partnership with Russia,” Gabuyev said. “It will have a direct impact on the interests of the U.S. and its allies, including Japan.”

He noted that the Kremlin, for its part, wants to show that the country’s military is powerful enough to flex its muscle elsewhere despite the campaign in Ukraine.

“The Russian leadership demonstrates that everything goes according to plan and the country and its military have resources to conduct the maneuvers along with the special military operation,” Gabuyev said.

The exercise continues a series of joint war games by Russia and China in recent years, including naval drills and patrols by long-range bombers over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. Last year, Russian troops for the first time deployed to Chinese territory for joint maneuvers.

China’s participation in the drills “aims to deepen pragmatic and friendly cooperation between the militaries of the participating countries, enhance the level of strategic cooperation among all participating parties, and enhance the ability to jointly respond to various security threats,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei said last week.

Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have developed strong personal ties to bolster a “strategic partnership” between the former Communist rivals as they both are locked in rivalry with the U.S.

Even though Moscow and Beijing in the past rejected the possibility of forging a military alliance, Putin has said that such a prospect can’t be ruled out. He also has noted that Russia has been sharing highly sensitive military technologies with China that helped significantly bolster its defense capability.
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U.N. nuclear inspectors expect to begin their work Thursday at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, assessing safety and security matters amid international concern that fighting in the area could endanger the facility.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told reporters there has been “increased military activity, including this morning,” near the plant.

“But weighing the pros and cons and having come so far, we are not stopping,” Grossi said.

Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the area near the power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe and a key source of energy for Ukraine.

That continued Thursday, with Russia saying Ukraine sent a team of troops to try to seize the plant, while Ukraine said Russian forces shelled the route the IAEA team would travel to get to the site.

The company that oversees Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, Enerhoatom, said Russian shelling led the Zaporizhzhia plant’s emergency protection system to shut down one of its reactors.

Grossi said he expects his team’s initial work to last a few days and that he hopes to establish a permanent presence.

With the nuclear plant in the midst of a war zone, world leaders have expressed fears it could be damaged and result in a radiation disaster like that at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant in 1986.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday reiterated his call for Russia to fully demilitarize the area around the plant.

“They are playing games. They are gambling with the nuclear security,” Borrell said. “We cannot play war games in the neighborhood of a site like this.”

Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder welcomed the presence of the IAEA team and called on Russia to enable them to do their work at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Ryder also announced U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will lead a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Sept. 8 at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Ryder said the meeting, the group’s fifth, would bring together defense ministers and senior military officials from 50 nations to discuss the Ukraine conflict and coordination for Ukraine aid.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Wednesday there would be an announcement in the coming days about “future security assistance” for Ukraine on top of the $13 billion already pledged by the United States.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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As the world marks the passing of former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh shares the thoughts of international journalists and his own memories of what it was like to report on the international statesman.
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The death of the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms led to the disintegration of the former communist giant in 1991, is seen by many in China as a reminder to avoid the same fate as its neighbor.

Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at 91, is lauded in China for normalizing Sino-Soviet relations, paving the way for solid ties between the two countries in subsequent years. But Beijing also blames him for bringing about the dissolution of its ally, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

While the West saw Gorbachev as a brave hero who brought much needed democratic reforms to his country and freed the Soviet satellite states to be independent, China sees him as a weak leader who failed his country.

Both countries were at a crossroad in the late 1980s. The Soviet Union’s economy was near collapse and changes were urgently needed; China’s people were yearning for political reforms after decades of poverty and political turmoil.

Whereas Gorbachev allowed political reforms, China’s then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping crushed protesters and put reformist General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Zhao Ziyang under house arrest.

At that time and even now, China thinks it made the right decision.

“Back in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping believed Mr. Gorbachev got the perestroika (restructuring) wrong,” said Victor Gao, a former interpreter for Deng. He is currently a professor at China’s Soochow University and vice president of the Center for China and Globalization. “Gorbachev was pushing political reform ahead of economic reform; China under Deng was promoting economic reform ahead of political reform.”

Gorbachev loosened control over not only the USSR’s state-controlled economy but also its political society, leading eventually to satellite states such as Latvia and Lithuania and later Eastern European countries splitting off and chaos in the Russian economy.

To Deng, this was not a smart move.

“Deng believed Gorbachev got the priorities and the sequence wrong. By the end of the day, what matters the most is whether you can bring bread and butter to the table for the people,” Gao said.

Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of international relations at the International Christian University in Japan, said the Soviet Union’s collapse led China’s leadership to harden its commitment to socialism.

To make sure that socialist principles were sustainable, Deng opened up the Chinese economy, starting by setting up special economic zones to grow prosperity, Nagy said.

His successor, Jiang Zemin, allowed the country’s growing number of capitalists to join the Chinese Communist Party. Current leader Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has campaigned to root out corruption to maintain the legitimacy of the party.

Today, China is much wealthier than it was in the 1980s and is soon to become the world’s biggest economy, whereas Russia still suffers serious economic problems.

The two countries’ different fates also may be because of their “very different” political systems, Nagy said.

“Russia today is a kleptocracy, it’s very few men and it’s always men who run the economy, it’s like a mafia state. They don’t have centralized control and a centralized state. It’s very corrupt,” Nagy said.

In China, the Chinese Communist Party has been able to exert centralized control to govern effectively, he said.

“Whatever you can say about the CCP, in China, 800 million people have been pulled out of poverty, they have really good infrastructure, a lot of people are well off, and this is due to relatively good governance of the party,” Nagy said.

Critics argue that China risks eventual collapse, given problems such as an unhealthy property market, a slowing economy and disruptions from its zero-COVID policy that has led to major cities being locked down.

However, a former Taiwanese official who has dealt with China believes that regardless of the challenges China may face, it is impossible for Chinese leaders to ever accept the disintegration of their country as Gorbachev did.

“Chinese people always have a sense that their country must be unified, it can’t be split for whatever reason. This mindset goes back to the first emperor who unified China. This feeling of unification is very strong among Chinese people,” he said. “The Soviet state on the other hand was made up of many countries. Their views of one nation are not so strong.

“China definitely wouldn’t let Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan split off,” added the former official, who requested anonymity to avoid problems ahead of upcoming local elections in Taiwan.

It is unclear whether China’s growing economy and attendant problems will ever lead to the kind of political reforms that Gorbachev fostered, he said.

Nagy also questions whether China will ever move toward the kind of political reforms initiated by Gorbachev.

“In the Chinese context, I’m not sure a democratic system will be able to deal with all their challenges and manage the stable economic growth without the current control of the state,” he said. “Something more fractious like Taiwanese democracy could create problems in the internal stability in the Chinese context.

“I don’t think any political system can deal with the challenges in China today: demographics, environmental problems, productivity problems in economy, quality of economic growth, debt, water security, food security, selected diversification from Chinese supply chains.”

At the end of the day, Gao said, the Chinese leadership’s top priority is maintaining political stability.

“The collapse of the USSR under Mr. Gorbachev has been closely studied and analyzed by China. China has been successful in navigating through more than four decades of reform and opening to the outside world,” Gao said.

“However … maintaining political stability has always been a most important task. … China believes reform needs to be steady, but not hasty; gradual, but not in one stroke.  Stability needs to be protected at all cost,” Gao said.

“China will continue to push for greater reform and opening to the outside world, in building a unique system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

In response to Gorbachev’s death, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday: “Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev made positive contribution to the normalization of relations between China and the Soviet Union. We mourn his passing and extend our condolences to his family.”
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When Caroline Muscat filed Freedom of Information requests in Malta to access public contracts and payments to the director of a prominent media company, the agencies in Malta told her the information “does not exist.”

Muscat, founder and editor of a small independent news website called The Shift, appealed. After investigating, the Data Protection Commission ruled in her favor, ordering the agencies in July 2021 to share the information.

Instead, 40 government ministries and agencies sued The Shift, appealing the ruling.

Some of the lawsuits alleged that The Shift’s requests, filed in December 2020, amounted to harassment of officials, the news website reported.

“This is nothing more than an attempt to dissect our work and cripple us financially,” Muscat told VOA.

To fight the cases, the website needs to raise $40,185 — half of its yearly operational budget.

“We are a community-funded newsroom, and having to raise this amount of money in such a short period of time is close to impossible,” Muscat said.

The Maltese Embassy did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

Legal fight

The use of mass lawsuits — known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs — to target journalists is not new.

At the time of her death in October 2017, the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing 48 libel cases — five criminal and 43 civil.

Many were filed by government officials, including former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who is unrelated to The Shift founder.

The Council of Europe criticized authorities for not immediately dismissing the cases after a car bomb killed Galizia, who came to prominence reporting on political corruption in Malta.

But the tactic is not confined to Malta. Over a decade, 570 cases of SLAPPs have been recorded in Europe, with the number increasing every year, according to data collected by the nongovernmental Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) and Amsterdam Law Clinics.

Oliver Money-Kyrle, head of Europe advocacy and programs at the International Press Institute, described SLAPPs as legal action “with the intent not of winning the case, but with the intent of silencing the person and intimidating them so they either settle out of court, or they withdraw what is being published.”

Corinne Vella of the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation — a nonprofit set up after her sister Galizia’s death — said the journalist’s experience aligned with this apparent lack of intent to win the cases.

“Eventually, the cases collapsed because [the plaintiffs] never turned up in court,” Vella said of the lawsuits against Galizia. “So, very clearly, they found excuses just to harass her.”

With The Shift’s case, Vella said it appeared to be “an orchestrated attempt to prevent any information from being accessed by The Shift and being made public.”

SLAPPs are “very effective” in hindering journalists’ work, according to Vella, because of how exhausting, expensive and time-consuming it can be to fend off so many cases.

“It makes you a target in more ways than one because once you’ve hit so many lawsuits, people can start to think that you’ve actually done something wrong,” Vella said. “And this certainly was the case for Daphne.”

Resource drain 

The Shift has argued that its freedom-of-information requests are important to the public interest because they concern the administration of public funds. Since the 40 lawsuits were filed, 12 rulings have been issued, all in favor of the news website.

But those rulings are being appealed.

“You have 40 government agencies — and we’re talking 40 to 60 lawyers over there — that the government is paying to fight an individual newsroom,” Muscat said. “Why? Simply because it does not want to abide by, first of all, the Freedom of Information Act — its own legislation — and two, government-appointed bodies that have already ruled in our favor.”

The rise of SLAPPs in Europe has led to a heightened awareness of the lack of legislative safeguards against such practices.

Since Galizia’s killing, media groups and some members of the European Parliament have advocated for EU-wide legislation protecting journalists from SLAPPs.

In April, the European Commission proposed an anti-SLAPP directive that would allow judges to quickly dismiss such cases.

“[The experiences of] both The Shift and Daphne show very, very clearly just how important it is to have protection mechanisms built into law,” Vella said. “It’s not a matter of tinkering with existing legislation and adding clauses and provisions. There has to be a law that comprehensively protects people from abusive lawsuits.”
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As soon as he arrived with a small motorcade in rural Eureka, Illinois — population 5,400 — he was the center of attention.

“It looks like everyone in this small town is a photographer!” former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev exclaimed through his translator amid the crowd of cameras.

He wasn’t the biggest name to visit these parts, however. That distinction belongs to the man who was both Gorbachev’s adversary and his partner in reshaping geopolitics: former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Well before he was in the White House, Reagan attended Eureka College, graduating in 1932. In 2009, the college invited Gorbachev to accept an honorary degree, nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I diligently followed Gorbachev throughout his campus visit, managing to place myself on one side of a segment of the iconic Berlin Wall, gifted to the college in honor of Reagan, while Gorbachev stood across from me on the other side, reflecting on their historic relationship and the fall of that wall in Europe, both figuratively and literally, as my camera rolled.

“Ronald Reagan said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ And when I am asked what was my impression when he said that, I said that didn’t have much of an impact on us. We knew that Mr. Reagan, in his initial career, was an actor! But I still must say that my feelings about Ronald Reagan remain very high,” Gorbachev said through his translator.

“Mikhail Gorbachev was a patriot of his country, and that was immediately obvious when you encountered him or you listened to him. And to be clear, his country was the Soviet Union,” said Jeffrey Trimble, a former Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report who covered Gorbachev during the height of the Cold War. He later served as deputy director of U.S. international broadcasting.

“Mikhail Gorbachev was remarkably accessible to the journalistic community. This was the time of glasnost, of course, so it was relatively easy as a foreign correspondent to get direct access to Gorbachev,” Trimble said.

“He appeared genuinely interested in connecting with people,” said Andrew Nagorski, who worked in Moscow as a correspondent for Newsweek magazine. “He did want to be respected. He did want to project a view of a younger generation,” he told VOA’s Russian Service.

That view continued into Gorbachev’s later years, when he delighted in answering questions from college students 60 years younger than him.

“What do you want to most be remembered for?” a young Eureka College student asked Gorbachev in a question-and-answer session during his 2009 visit.

“I reply to this question always the same way: History is a fickle lady,” Gorbachev replied.

“I think outside Russia, he will be remembered as a transformational figure,” Nagorski said.

When asked just how transformational, Gorbachev himself said, while standing near the section of Berlin Wall at Eureka College in 2009, that the global opinion of him might not be unanimous.

“There is still a debate as to what was done right by Gorbachev and Reagan and what was not done right,” Gorbachev admitted. “But no one can deny one very important fact: The Cold War was ended. We started the process of eliminating nuclear weapons, and relations between our two nations at that time turned into an excellent relationship. There was even euphoria in the Soviet Union for cooperation with the United States.”

Euphoria that has since transformed into apprehension amid a continuing war in Ukraine that has put Russia and the United States on opposing sides of a conflict.
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Britain will have a new prime minister next week, nearly two months after the resignation of Boris Johnson in July, following a series of scandals. As Henry Ridgwell reports, Johnson’s successor faces a series of daunting challenges — while Britain’s allies, including Ukraine, are watching closely.
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Mikhail Gorbachev could have been celebrated for involuntarily opening a path toward Ukraine’s independence, but his support for Crimea’s annexation and silence in the face of Russia’s invasion have stained his reputation there.

Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, triggered its demise in 1991, which led to the formation of 15 new independent countries including Ukraine.

But it is no accident that the Ukrainian government is still mute, a day after the death of Gorbachev, whose mother and wife were of Ukrainian origin.

Ukrainians walking through the streets of Kyiv on Wednesday did not mince their words about the leader of the “occupying” and “imperialist” Soviet power.

“I’m very happy he died. The more enemies and their supporters die, the happier I’ll be,” said 32-year-old Oleksandr Stepanov.

Katerina Boyuk, a 17-year-old student, is convinced that Gorbachev “did not really care” about Ukraine and that the country’s independence has “nothing to do” with him.

“He was just the ruler of the USSR, and he couldn’t manage to keep his throne,” she said.

“I think he’s as much of an aggressor as the current Kremlin leaders,” said Vytalya Formantchuk, 43, adding that Gorbachev “put a lot of effort into destroying Ukrainians, their culture and their language.”

The visible hostility of Ukrainians toward Gorbachev also stems from his silence regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Gorbachev, mostly popular in the West, never publicly commented on what has turned out to be the worst conflict in Europe since World War II.

One member of his close circle, Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov, said in July that Gorbachev was “disappointed, of course.”

Even worse, Gorbachev said he “approved” Moscow’s annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014.

He argued that “the people” had spoken in the referendum on the unification of the peninsula to Russia, widely regarded as a sham.

Kyiv never forgave him for that.

Gorbachev is perceived in Ukraine “with a lot of skepticism — we do not share the enthusiasm we’ve been seeing in obituaries all around the world,” said Volodymyr Yermolenko, philosopher and editor-in-chief of the ukraineworld.com website.

“His destiny is the same destiny as many Russian reformers who want reforms, but only up to a certain point: when people start questioning Russian imperialism and decolonization,” he said.

Gorbachev was Soviet leader in 1986, when Chernobyl’s No. 4 nuclear reactor exploded, causing the world’s worst nuclear accident and spreading radioactive contamination across Europe.

Moscow first tried to downplay the extent of the disaster, which delayed evacuation of locals.

Gorbachev is widely blamed for this and for the decision to maintain the May 1 parade in Kyiv five days later.

Thousands of people, including many children, marched through the city holding flowers and singing songs, blissfully unaware of the radioactive cloud surrounding them.

Gorbachev “was an ordinary Russian imperialist. He simply did everything he could to save the USSR and restore the Russian Empire, which is now waging war against us,” popular blogger and activist Yuri Kasyanov posted on Facebook.

Disliked by Russians, rejected by Ukrainians, Gorbachev still regularly talked about his Ukrainian roots.

“I am, after all, half Ukrainian. My mother was Ukrainian, and my wife, Raisa, was too. I spoke my very first words in Ukrainian, and the first songs I heard were Ukrainian,” he said in a 2015 interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel.
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The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, says the bloc’s 27 members have agreed to suspend an agreement with Russia, which had made it easier for Russians to obtain tourist visas, as a sanction for Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Borrell announced the decision, which falls short of the total ban on visa issuance some countries sought, on Tuesday after the second day of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Czech capital.

A 2007 visa agreement to ease EU entry requirements for Russians was partially suspended in late February, targeting people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, such as Russia’s official delegations and holders of diplomatic passports. But it left so-called “ordinary Russians” untouched, allowing them to continue to enjoy EU visa-facilitation benefits, such as reduced waiting times and costs and the need to present fewer documents when applying.

Countries that share borders with Russia — the Baltic states, Poland, and Finland — have led the drive for more restrictive bans on visas for Russian tourists. With air service barred by the EU on flights from Russia, most travelers are using their land borders to travel on to other EU countries.

Borrell said the agreement is aimed at stopping Russians from “visa shopping” by applying for their travel documents with countries in the bloc where the rules are not as strict. Once granted a visa to an EU country, the holder of the document can then travel freely within the EU’s Schengen Area.

The suspension of the pact makes the EU visa process more complicated, more expensive, and more bureaucratic, as well as increasing waiting times for approval, according to European Commission guidelines.

Germany and France have led the other side of the debate, saying the limiting of visas to Russians would be counterproductive as the EU tries to fight for the “hearts and minds” of those Russians who don’t support Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine.

Kyiv has called for the bloc to ban issuing visas to all Russians except political dissidents.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told RFE/RL in an interview on August 30 that “calling this war a ‘Putin problem’ and not the problem of the Russian society that mostly supports its president is self-deception.”

All 27 EU members had to agree to any measure adopted that would limit the issuance of visas throughout the bloc.
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Fans of the late Princess Diana placed tributes outside the gates of her Kensington Palace home on Wednesday, marking the 25th anniversary of her death in a Paris car accident.

An arrangement of white chrysanthemums spelling out “Princess Diana” sat among dozens of photos and messages left by admirers, some of whom said they make annual pilgrimages to the spot to remember the tragedy.

“We just come here, do the memorial and, you know, we just chat about things that she used to do, you know, to … let people know that we will never forget the princess, we will never forget what she’s done,’’ said Julie Cain, 59, who traveled 300 miles (480 kilometers) from Newcastle in northern England. “We just want her legacy kept, like, going as long as possible.”

Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, at the age of 36, stunning people around the world who felt they knew the princess after seeing her successes and struggles play out on TV screens and newspaper front pages for 17 years. The tributes left outside Kensington Palace on Wednesday were a small reminder of the mountains of flowers piled there in the days after Diana’s death.

Diana was the focus of constant media attention from the moment she was engaged to marry Prince Charles until the night she died. Her fairytale wedding, ugly divorce and efforts to build a new life all made headlines.

The public watched as she blossomed from a shy teenager into an international style icon who befriended AIDS patients, charmed Nelson Mandela and walked through a minefield to promote the drive to eradicate landmines. Along the way, she showed the royal family, particularly her sons William and Harry, how to connect with people and be relevant in the 21st century.

On Wednesday morning, Cain and her friend Maria Scott, 51, paid their respects to Diana as dawn broke over the palace, just as they do every year.

“There was just something about that girl that really stood out. And of course, I watched the wedding, the fairy-tale princess,’’ Scott said. “And, you know, you see, she was like part of your life because you were seeing that every day on the television. She was in newspapers, magazines. She was all over. And you felt like she was part of your life.” 

 
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Condolences and tributes are pouring in from around the world following Tuesday’s death of the former president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. VOA’s Michael Brown reports on some of the early reactions.
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India and China are among several countries taking part in Russia’s weeklong joint military drills scheduled to get underway on Thursday in the east of the country, according to Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass. 

While India has previously taken part in multinational military drills in Russia — an Indian contingent was part of Zapad military exercises held in September 2021 — analysts say its participation in the “Vostok-2022” military exercises in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reaffirms New Delhi’s friendly ties with Moscow despite a tightening strategic partnership with the United States. 

“India’s participation in exercises in Russia is not unusual, but this time, they are also making a political point,” said Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “New Delhi is emphasizing that it will adhere to the independent position that it has taken in the wake of the Ukraine crisis and continue to remain neutral between the U.S. and Russia.”   

India has refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has not joined Western sanctions against Moscow. Its oil imports from Moscow have risen sharply this year as it takes advantage of deep discounts. 

India has defended its oil purchases as necessary for what it says is an energy deficient, developing country like India. “We have been very honest about our interests,” India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said earlier this month in Bangkok. “I have a country with a per capita income of $2,000. These aren’t people who can afford higher energy prices.”

Although India is currently purchasing weapons from other countries, including Israel and the United States, much of its existing weaponry is of Russian origin.

Analysts point out that India is unlikely to turn away from Russia anytime soon.

“India has an important relationship with Moscow with regard to defense and it has really no direct stake in the Ukraine crisis,” said Joshi. “If our national interest is served by maintaining ties with Russia, we will do so — that is India’s position.”  

For the time being, Washington appears to have accepted India’s position. Questioned about India’s participation in the Vostok military exercises earlier this month, State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said that the U.S. recognizes that reorienting a country’s foreign policy is a long-term challenge. 

“At the same time, we also recognize that there are countries around the world that have longstanding relationships, including security relationships, with countries like Russia, for example,” he told reporters at a press briefing. “Reorienting a country’s foreign policy or a country’s security establishment or defense procurement practices away from a country like Russia is not something that we can do overnight.” 

However, there are questions about how long India can continue to walk the middle ground between the United States and Russia amid the deepening tensions between the two countries. 

Analysts in Washington say that the U.S. appears to be taking a long view, with an eye toward trying to convince New Delhi that a long-term security partnership with Moscow is untenable. 

“Washington certainly worries about New Delhi’s enduring security partnership with Moscow,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center. “In the coming months, we can expect Washington to make the case to New Delhi that eventually Russia, sanctioned and cash-strapped, will no longer have the capacity to keep manufacturing and exporting weaponry to India.”

India for its part has maintained a low profile about the Russian drills — there has been no official word on its participation but sources in the Defense Ministry have confirmed that a contingent from India will take part. 

India’s military partnership with the United States is growing rapidly amid mutual worries over China. In mid-October, India and the U.S. will hold a joint military exercise as part of an annual military exercise known as “Yudh Abhyas” or “War Practice.” The location of the exercises — which according to reports will be 100 kilometers from the disputed India China border — is significant. 

For New Delhi, striking a balance between Russia and its partners in the Quad grouping that consists of India, U.S., Japan and Australia is also challenging. According to a report in the Deccan Herald newspaper, India will not take part in naval drills in the Sea of Japan that are part of the military exercises. New Delhi has close ties with Tokyo, which along with the U.S. and Australia is an important partner in efforts to counter China’s expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.

The strengthening Russia-China relationship could also emerge as a concern for New Delhi as tensions between India and Beijing over their border disputes show no signs of abating. While Beijing has joined drills with Moscow earlier, its participation in the Vostok military exercises reflects growing defense ties between the two countries amid tensions with the West, analysts say. 

“It is the first time the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has sent its Army, Navy and Air Force at the same time to a joint drill with Russia,” points out Bonnie S. Glaser, director with the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “With the alignment between Moscow and Beijing growing closer, it can be expected that bilateral military ties will also likely increase.”

From Russia’s point of view, the participation of both India and China, who have tense bilateral ties with each other, underscores the country’s efforts to strengthen ties with both the large Asian economies.

Jagannath Panda, head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs said Moscow is hoping to ensure “Eurasian unity” against the West, “owing to its traditional partnership with India and the ideological friendship with China.

“Such a role has served Moscow well amidst Ukraine, as both countries have refrained from condemning Russian actions,” Panda said. 
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