More than 1,300 people were arrested in France during a fourth night of rioting and President Emmanuel Macron canceled a trip to Germany on Saturday as the funeral took place of teenager Nahel M, whose shooting by police sparked nationwide unrest. 

Macron’s government deployed 45,000 police officers as well as armored vehicles overnight to tackle the worst crisis for his leadership since the “Yellow Vest” protests which paralyzed much of France in late 2018. 

A similar number of police would again be on the street into Saturday night, interior minister Gerald Darmanin told a news conference, with reinforcements sent to major cities Lyon and Marseille. 

The French president postponed a state visit to Germany that was due to begin on Sunday. 

The interior ministry said on Twitter that 1,311 people had been arrested overnight, compared with 875 the previous night, although it described the violence as “lower in intensity.”  

Finance minister Bruno Le Maire said more than 700 shops supermarkets, restaurants and bank branches had been “ransacked, looted and sometimes even burnt to the ground since Tuesday.”  

Local authorities all over the country announced bans on demonstrations and ordered public transport to stop running in the evening. 

Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. 

For the funeral, several hundred people lined up to enter Nanterre’s grand mosque, which was guarded by volunteers in yellow vests, while a few dozen bystanders watched from across the street. 

Some of the mourners, their arms crossed, said “God is Greatest” in Arabic, as they spanned the boulevard in prayer. 

Salsabil, a young woman of Arab descent, said she had come to express support for Nahel’s family. “It’s important we all stand together,” she said. 

Marie, 60, said she had lived in Nanterre for 50 years and there had always been problems with the police. 

“This absolutely needs to stop. The government is completely disconnected from our reality,” she said. 

The shooting of the teenager, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism. 

“If you have the wrong skin color, the police are much more dangerous to you,” said a young man, who declined to be named, adding that he was a friend of Nahel’s. 

Macron has denied there is systemic racism in French law enforcement agencies. 

Shops ransacked  

Rioters have torched 2,000 vehicles since the start of the unrest, which has spread to cities including Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille. 

More than 200 police officers have been injured, Darmanin said, adding that the average age of those arrested was 17. 

Justice Minister Eric Dupont-Moretti said 30% of detainees were under 18. 

Friday night’s arrests included 80 people in Marseille, home to many people of North African descent. 

Social media images showed an explosion rocking the old port area of the southern city, but no casualties were reported. 

Rioters in France’s second largest city had looted a gun store and stole hunting rifles, but no ammunition, police said. 

Mayor Benoit Payan called on the government to send extra troops to tackle “pillaging and violence” in Marseille, where three police officers were slightly wounded on Saturday. 

In Lyon, France’s third largest city, police deployed armored personnel carriers and a helicopter, while in Paris, they cleared protesters from the Place de la Concorde. Lyon Mayor Gregory Doucet has also called for reinforcements. 

The unrest has revived memories of nationwide riots in 2005 that forced then President Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency, after the death of two young men electrocuted in a power substation as they hid from police. 

Players from the national soccer team issued a rare statement calling for calm. “Violence must stop to leave way for mourning, dialog and reconstruction,” they said on star Kylian Mbappe’s Instagram account. 

Events including two concerts at the Stade de France on the outskirts of Paris were canceled, while LVMH-owned fashion house Celine canceled its 2024 menswear show on Sunday, according to Women’s Wear Daily. 

Tour de France organizers said they were ready to adapt to any situation when the cycle race enters the country Monday from Spain. 

Videos on social media showed urban landscapes ablaze, with a tram set alight in the eastern city of Lyon and 12 buses gutted in a depot in Aubervilliers, northern Paris. 

With the government urging social media companies to remove inflammatory material, Darmanin met officials from Meta, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. Snapchat said it had zero tolerance for content that promoted violence. 

The policeman whom prosecutors say acknowledged firing a lethal shot at Nahel is in preventive custody under formal investigation for voluntary homicide, equivalent to being charged under Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions. 

His lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, said his client had aimed at the driver’s leg but was bumped when the car took off, causing him to shoot towards his chest. “Obviously [the officer] didn’t want to kill the driver,” Lienard said on BFM TV. 
…

Dutch King Willem-Alexander apologized Saturday for his country’s role in slavery and asked for forgiveness in a historic speech greeted by cheers and whoops at an event to commemorate the anniversary of the abolition of slavery.

The king’s speech followed Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s apology late last year for the country’s role in the slave trade and slavery. It is part of a wider reckoning with colonial histories in the West that have been spurred in recent years by the Black Lives Matter movement.

In an emotional speech, Willem-Alexander referred to Rutte’s apology as he told a crowd of invited guests and onlookers: “Today I stand before you. Today, as your King and as a member of the government, I make this apology myself. And I feel the weight of the words in my heart and my soul.”

The king said he has commissioned a study into the exact role of the royal House of Orange-Nassau in slavery in the Netherlands.

“But today, on this day of remembrance, I ask forgiveness for the clear failure to act in the face of this crime against humanity,” he said.

Willem-Alexander’s voice appeared to break with emotion as he completed his speech before laying a wreath at the country’s national slavery monument in an Amsterdam park.

Some people want action to back up the words.

“Honestly, I feel good, but I am still looking forward to something more than just apologies. Reparations, for example,” said 28-year-old Doelja Refos.

“I don’t feel like we’re done. We’re definitely not there yet,” Refos added.

Former lawmaker John Leerdam told Dutch broadcaster NOS that he felt tears running down his cheeks as the king apologized.

“It’s a historic moment and we have to realize that,” he said.

Slavery was abolished in Suriname and the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean on July 1, 1863, but most of the enslaved laborers were forced to continue working on plantations for a further 10 years. Saturday’s commemoration and speech mark the start of a year of events to mark the 150th anniversary of July 1, 1873.

Research published last month showed that the king’s ancestors earned the modern-day equivalent of $595 million from slavery, including profits from shares that were effectively given to them as gifts.

When Rutte apologized in December, he stopped short of offering compensation to descendants of enslaved people.

Instead, the government is establishing a $217 million fund for initiatives that tackle the legacy of slavery in the Netherlands and its former colonies and to improve education about the issue.

That isn’t enough for some in the Netherlands. Two groups, Black Manifesto and The Black Archives, organized a protest march before the king’s speech Saturday under the banner “No healing without reparations.”

“A lot of people including myself, my group, The Black Archives, and the Black Manifesto say that (an) apology is not enough. An apology should be tied to a form of repair and reparatory justice or reparations,” said Black Archives director Mitchell Esajas.

Marchers wore colorful traditional clothing in a Surinamese celebration of the abolition of slavery. Enslaved people were banned from wearing shoes and colorful clothes, organizers said.

“Just as we remember our forefathers on this day, we also feel free, we can wear what we want, and we can show the rest of the world that we are free.” said Regina Benescia-van Windt, 72.

The Netherlands’ often brutal colonial history has come under renewed and critical scrutiny in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in the U.S. city of Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

A groundbreaking 2021 exhibition at the national museum of art and history took an unflinching look at slavery in Dutch colonies. In the same year, a report described the Dutch involvement in slavery as a crime against humanity and linked it to what the report described as ongoing institutional racism in the Netherlands.

The Dutch first became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 1500s and became a major trader in the mid-1600s. Eventually, the Dutch West India Company became the largest trans-Atlantic slave trader, according to Karwan Fatah-Black, an expert in Dutch colonial history and an assistant professor at Leiden University.

Authorities in the Netherlands aren’t alone in apologizing for historic abuses.

In 2018, Denmark apologized to Ghana, which it colonized from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. King Philippe of Belgium has expressed “deepest regrets” for abuses in Congo. In 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized for the church’s role in slavery. Americans have had emotionally charged disputes over taking down statues of slaveholders in the South.

In April, King Charles III for the first time signaled support for research into the U.K. monarchy’s ties to slavery after a document showed an ancestor with shares in a slave-trading company, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.

Charles and his eldest son, Prince William, have expressed their sorrow over slavery, but haven’t acknowledged the crown’s connections to the trade.

Willem-Alexander acknowledged that not everybody in the Netherlands supports apologies but called for unity.

“There’s no blueprint for the process of healing, reconciliation and recovery,” he said. “Together, we are in uncharted territory. So let’s support and guide each other.”
…

Bosnia’s international peace overseer, Christian Schmidt, annulled two laws Saturday that the Bosnian Serb parliament had adopted that defy the constitution and the terms of a peace deal that ended the Balkan country’s war in the 1990s. 

Schmidt, who as international High Representative in Bosnia has powers to impose laws and sack obstructive officials, also amended a law so that those seen as attacking the state institutions can be criminally prosecuted. 

“Recent decisions by the National Assembly of Republika Srpska directly violate the constitutional order of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Dayton peace agreement,” Schmidt told a news conference in Sarajevo. 

Schmidt was referring to lawmakers in Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic who voted to suspend rulings by Bosnia’s constitutional court and stop the publishing of the peace envoy’s decrees and laws in the official gazette. 

The Dayton peace accords ended nearly four years of war, in which about 100,000 died, by splitting Bosnia into two autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the Federation shared by Bosniaks and Croats, linked by a weak central government. 

The region’s separatist pro-Russian President Milorad Dodik, who has long criticized the court for having foreign judges on board, initiated the vote after the court last week decided to change the rules to be able to convene sessions and make decisions without Serb judges. 

The Serbs say they do not recognize Schmidt, who was appointed in 2021, as the high representative because the U.N. Security Council did not endorse his appointment.  

“Republika Srpska will not accept a single decision of the fake high representative,” Dodik, who was sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom for corruption and obstructing the peace, said on Saturday. 

Schmidt said that his decisions are effective immediately. 

The U.S. embassy welcomed Schmidt’s decisions, agreeing that he was defending the Dayton peace deal and the constitution upholding the rule of law in Bosnia. 

“The United States supports the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and multi-ethnic character of Bosnia and Herzegovina and will continue to hold individuals engaged in anti-Dayton behavior responsible for their actions,” the embassy tweeted. 
…

Latest developments:

The United States is confident Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia is making progress despite the lack of any significant break in the Russian lines. Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley told an audience in Washington on Friday the slow pace of Ukraine’s advance is “part of the nature of war.”
Milley also said the U.S. is openly considering providing Ukraine with cluster-munitions, long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles and even some of its own F-16 fighter jets. "These things are on the table,” he said. “There's no decision at this point.”
The U.N. expressed concern Friday that no new ships have been registered since June 26 under a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine. "We call on the parties to commit to the continuation and effective implementation of the agreement without further delay," U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. Moscow said Modi expressed support for what the Kremlin called the Russian leadership's decisive actions in handling the mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group last Saturday. The call comes after the U.S. and India declared themselves "among the closest partners in the world" last week during a state visit to Washington by Modi. India has yet to condemn ally Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian forces hit a school in Serhiivka, Donetsk oblast, on Friday, killing two members of staff and injuring six others, the regional prosecutor's office reported. 

 

CIA Director William Burns  made a secret visit to Ukraine in June. Burns met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and intelligence officials to discuss Ukraine’s counteroffensive strategy.  Reports of the secret meetings emerged Friday.  The clandestine discussions are reported to have occurred before Russian mercenary leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s thwarted rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian defense establishment.

The failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian troops to make rapid advancements is not causing any panic among top U.S. military officials.

Ukrainian officials have expressed frustration in recent days, calling on Washington and the West to provide it more advanced weaponry to help dent Russian defensive positions and allow for Ukrainian troops to retake more territory.

However, U.S. officials remain confident Ukraine’s counteroffensive will make headway, even if it takes six to eight weeks before Ukrainian forces see more substantial gains.

“War on paper and real war are different,” the top U.S. military commander, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, told an audience in Washington on Friday.

“That it’s going slower than people predicted doesn’t surprise me at all,” Milley said during an appearance at the National Press Club, saying Ukrainian forces are “advancing, steadily, deliberately.”

“It’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to be very long. And it’s going to be very, very bloody and no one should have any illusions about any of that,” he said.

Earlier Friday, Ukraine’s top general told The Washington Post his forces are in desperate need of ammunition and other advanced weaponry.

It “pisses me off,” said Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny. “This is not a show … It’s not a show the whole world is watching and betting on or anything. Every day, every meter is given by blood.”

“Without being fully supplied, these plans are not feasible at all,” he added, criticizing the West for pushing war plans that rely on air superiority, which neither Ukraine nor Russia have been able to establish.

Zaluzhny and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called on the U.S. and its other allies to provide not just tanks and armored vehicles, but cluster munitions, long-range missiles, and modern fighter jets, such as F-16s.

So far, the U.S. has been hesitant to provide Kyiv with such systems, although it has said it will allow its allies to provide Ukraine with the U.S.-made jets and is training its pilots to fly them. Washington says the focus has been on giving Ukraine systems and weapons it can immediately deploy to the front lines.

Milley said Kyiv’s requests were not being ignored.

“ATACMS, F-16s or anything else is in a constant review process,” Milley said.  “These things are on the table. There’s no decision at this point.”

Milley said the U.S, has also not ruled out providing Ukraine with cluster munitions, despite concerns by some allies about the nature of the bombs.

The munitions, which open in midair and drop bomblets, are opposed by a number of humanitarian groups, which say they have a high rate of failure and often lead to civilian casualties.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said Kyiv’s forces have successfully liberated nine settlements in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, though the main attack is yet to come.

Northern border

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked his senior military leadership to strengthen Ukraine’s northern military sector after the arrival in Belarus of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“The decision … is for Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny and ‘North’ commander [General Serhiy] Naev to implement a set of measures to strengthen this direction,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.

Zelenskyy did not mention Wagner Group boss Prigozhin in the brief post on Telegram.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told VOA the U.S. will “continue to monitor Wagner’s activities wherever they are around the world, and we’re going to continue to hold them properly accountable for the kinds of egregious violent, deadly and illegal conduct … that they are still capable of conducting.”

After pushing Russian forces out of northern regions last year, Ukraine took steps to tighten the defense of its border with Belarus, a close ally of Russia.

Prigozhin flew from Russia into exile in Belarus on Tuesday under a deal negotiated by President Alexander Lukashenko that ended his mercenaries’ mutiny in Russia on Saturday.

VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

NANTERRE, France — Young rioters clashed with police and looted stores overnight Friday in a fourth night of unrest in France triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teen, piling more pressure on President Emmanuel Macron after he appealed to parents to keep children off the streets and blamed social media for fueling violence.

While the situation appeared to be somewhat calmer compared to previous nights, turmoil gripped several cities across the country.

Protesters overturned garbage bins and used them to block off streets in Colombe, a Paris suburb near Nanterre, where the shooting occurred Tuesday. In the southern Mediterranean port city of Marseille, officers arrested nearly 90 people as groups of protesters lit cars on fire and broke store windows to take what was inside, police said. Looters broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons, and a man was later arrested with a hunting rifle, police said.

Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, where a third of the roughly 30 arrests made were for theft, police said. Authorities reported fires in the streets after an unauthorized protest drew more than 1,000 people earlier in the evening.

By about 3 a.m., Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told cable news channel BFMTV that 471 arrests were made during the night.

The fatal shooting of the 17-year-old, who has only been identified by his first name, Nahel, was captured on video, stirring up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Nahel’s burial is scheduled for Saturday, according to Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said France needs to “push for changes” in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stiffer policing, Friday saw brazen daylight violence, too. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall, where officers repelled people trying to break into a shuttered store, authorities said.

Violence was also erupting in some of France’s territories overseas.

Some 150 police officers were deployed Friday night on the small Indian Ocean island of Reunion, authorities said, after protesters set garbage bins ablaze, threw projectiles at police and damaged cars and buildings. In French Guiana, a 54-year-old was killed by a stray bullet Thursday night when rioters fired at police in the capital, Cayenne, authorities said.

In the face of the escalating crisis that hundreds of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005.

Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response. Already massively beefed-up police forces were boosted by another 5,000 officers for Friday night, increasing the number to 45,000 overall, the interior minister said. Some were called back from vacation. The minister, Darmanin, said police made 917 arrests on Thursday alone and noted their young age — 17 on average. He said more than 300 police officers and firefighters have been injured.

It was unclear how many protesters have been injured in the clashes.

Darmanin on Friday ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown of all public buses and trams, which have been among rioters’ targets. He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls to violence.

“They were very cooperative,” Darmanin said, adding that French authorities were providing the platforms with information in hopes of cooperation identifying people inciting violence.

“We will pursue every person who uses these social networks to commit violent acts,” he said.

Macron, too, zeroed in on social media platforms that have relayed dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being torched, saying they were playing a “considerable role” in the violence. Singling out Snapchat and TikTok, he said they were being used to organize unrest and served as conduits for copycat violence.

Macron said his government would work with technology companies to establish procedures for “the removal of the most sensitive content,” adding that he expected “a spirit of responsibility” from them.

Snapchat spokesperson Rachel Racusen said the company has increased its moderation since Tuesday to detect and act on content related to the rioting.

The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors for the summer Olympic Games. Organizers said they are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the Olympics continue.

The police officer accused of killing Nahel was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide, which means investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.

Prache said officers tried to pull Nahel over because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped and then got stuck in traffic.

The officer said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car as Nahel attempted to flee, according to the prosecutor.

Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer but not at the police in general. “He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said, adding that justice should be “very firm.”

“A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives,” she said.

Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.

Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. In the wake of Nahel’s killing, French anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior in general.

This week’s protests echoed the three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
…

BASRA, IRAQ – Thousands of followers of a firebrand Iraqi Shiite cleric rallied in major cities in Iraq on Friday, condemning the burning of a Quran during a protest in Sweden earlier this week. Some of the demonstrators called for the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador from Iraq. 

At rallies in Baghdad and Basra, followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, a cleric and political leader with a large grassroots following, burned Swedish flags and rainbow LGBTQ+ pride flags and chanted “Yes, yes to Islam” and “No, no to the devil.” 

Addressing the crowds in a speech in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, Friday prayers preacher Sayyid Sattar Batat called on Iraqi authorities to, “if necessary, expel the Swedish ambassador and cut all diplomatic relations with them.” 

The protests came a day after hundreds of protesters briefly stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. 

On Wednesday, a man who identified himself in Swedish media as a refugee from Iraq burned a Quran outside a mosque in central Stockholm. 

An Iraqi security official said the man was an Iraqi Christian who had previously fought in a Christian unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of mostly Shiite militias that were incorporated into the country’s armed forces in 2016. 

Swedish police had authorized the protest, citing freedom of speech, after a previous decision to ban a similar protest was overturned by a Swedish court. 

The act, coming during the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, drew widespread condemnation in the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested Thursday that the incident would pose another obstacle to Sweden’s bid for NATO membership. 

Iraqi officials have called on Sweden to extradite the man who had burned the Quran for prosecution in Iraq.
…

LONDON — Most Europeans see Russia as an adversary following its invasion of Ukraine, according to a survey of over 16,000 people across 11 European Union member states.

Europeans tend to have a more favorable opinion of China, with a plurality seeing Beijing as a necessary partner.

Russian ‘adversary’

Two-thirds of Europeans now see Russia as an adversary since its invasion of Ukraine, according to the poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations, or ECFR, which was conducted in April. That’s double the figure from 2021, the last time the survey was taken.

“In particular, majorities in Denmark [74%] Poland [71%], Sweden [70%], the Netherlands [66%], Germany [62%] and Spain [55%], think of Russia as an “adversary” of Europe – while only 37% in Italy and 17% in Bulgaria do,” the ECFR report said.

Future relations

The respondents also were asked about Europe’s future relationship with Moscow.

“Around half of those surveyed [48%] believe their country’s relationship with Russia, in the event of a negotiated peace settlement in Ukraine, should be ‘limited,’” the report said.

“The only country where a majority [51%] of citizens expressed the view that it should be ‘fully cooperative’ was Bulgaria. Many in Austria [36%] and Hungary [32%] also supported this view,” it added.

European Security

The survey looked at attitudes toward the security guarantees provided by the United States and whether Europe should invest more in its own defense. Some EU leaders – notably French President Emmanuel Macron – have called for Europe to develop strategic autonomy, the ability to defend itself independent of the U.S.

Almost three-quarters of the respondents said Europe cannot always rely on the U.S. for its security.

“You can interpret it, of course, as a sign that Europeans are not trusting Americans that much as they used to historically. And in this sense, perhaps the presidency of Donald Trump has left lasting damage to that relationship,” said Pawel Zerka, a co-author of the report with the European Council on Foreign Relations, in an interview with VOA.

“But you can also have a more benevolent interpretation, according to which – simply due to the war in Ukraine and Russia’s invasion on Ukraine – Europeans are more ready right now to take responsibility for their security,” he said.

China’s position

The survey asked similar questions about European attitudes toward China.

“A plurality of respondents [43%] consider China a “necessary partner” of their country. This position puts them closer to the political positions of Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron than China hawks, such as [European Union Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen,” the report said.

Co-author Pawel Zerka said that compared to Russia, there are marked differences in European attitudes toward China.

“People mostly say that the risks and benefits are balanced, so they do not recognize that economic relationship with China as particularly risky and therefore requiring some rebalancing,” he told VOA.

However, a majority of Europeans opposed the idea of Chinese ownership of key infrastructure, while 41% of respondents said that if Beijing gave weapons to Russia, the EU should impose sanctions on Beijing even if that would harm Western economies.
…

The U.N. expressed concern Friday that no new ships have been registered since June 26 under a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine. “We call on the parties to commit to the continuation and effective implementation of the agreement without further delay,” U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. Moscow said Modi expressed support for what the Kremlin called the Russian leadership’s decisive actions in handling the mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group last Saturday. The call comes after the U.S. and India declared themselves “among the closest partners in the world” last week during a state visit to Washington by Modi. India has yet to condemn ally Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.  
Russian forces hit a school in Serhiivka, Donetsk Oblast on Friday, killing two members of staff and injuring six others, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.

More weapons are needed for an effective counteroffensive, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the top officer in Ukraine’s armed forces, said in an interview with The Washington Post. 

Zaluzhny expressed frustration that although Ukraine is expected to rapidly take back Russian occupied territories, it will have to wait — in a best-case scenario — at least until the fall before it receives American-made F-16s.

The Ukrainian commander pointed to NATO’s own doctrine, which calls for air superiority before launching an offensive. Despite that, Western leaders are slow to supply the jets, Zaluzhny complained.

He also said his troops have limited ammunition, adding they have been outshot tenfold at times by the enemy.

So, it “pisses me off,” Zaluzhny said, when he hears that Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive in the country’s east and south has started slower than expected — an opinion publicly expressed by Western officials and military analysts. Nevertheless, he remarked his troops have gained some ground — even if they are inching just 500 meters daily.

“This is not a show,” Zaluzhny said Wednesday in his office at Ukraine’s General Staff headquarters. “It’s not a show the whole world is watching and betting on or anything. Every day, every meter is given by blood.”

“Without being fully supplied, these plans are not feasible at all,” he said. “But they are being carried out. Yes, maybe not as fast as the participants in the show, the observers, would like, but that is their problem.”

Ukrainian forces have successfully liberated nine settlements in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, according to Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, though the main attack is yet to come.

Northern border

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked his senior military leadership to strengthen Ukraine’s northern military sector after the arrival in Belarus of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

“The decision … is for Commander-in-Chief [General Valeriy] Zaluzhny and ‘North’ commander [General Serhiy] Naev to implement a set of measures to strengthen this direction,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.

Zelenskyy did not mention Wagner Group boss Prigozhin in the brief post on Telegram.  

National Security Spokesman John Kirby told VOA the U.S. will “continue to monitor Wagner’s activities wherever they are around the world, and we’re going to continue to hold them properly accountable for the kinds of egregious violent, deadly and illegal conduct that they, that they are still capable of conducting.”

After pushing Russian forces out of northern regions last year, Ukraine took steps to tighten the defense of its border with Belarus, a close ally of Russia.

Prigozhin flew from Russia into exile in Belarus on Tuesday under a deal negotiated by President Alexander Lukashenko that ended his mercenaries’ mutiny in Russia on Saturday.

Thunberg’s involvement

Zelenskyy met Thursday in Kyiv with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and prominent European figures who are forming a working group to assess ecological damage from the 16-month-old Russian invasion. Their talks focused on the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. 

“Combating ecocide is one of the points of the Ukrainian Peace Formula, and we must implement each of its points, all aspects of peace,” said Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy also met Thursday with former U.S. vice president Mike Pence, who made a surprise visit in Kyiv. Zelenskyy thanked Pence for his support. “We appreciate that both major U.S. parties, the Republican and Democratic, remain united in their support for Ukraine,” he said and added “we feel the strong support of the people of the United States,” he said.

Zelenskyy also thanked the U.S. for the recent defense assistance packages worth $2.1 billion and $500 million, allocated on June 6 and June 27, respectively, and he emphasized the unprecedented total amount of support provided, which has reached $43.1 billion since February last year. [https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/volodimir-zelenskij-zustrivsya-iz-48-m-vice-prezidentom-ssha-83929]

Pence is the first Republican U.S. presidential candidate to meet with the Ukrainian president during the campaign.

VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report. Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Iran will be formally approved as a member of the regional Shanghai Cooperation Organization with China, Russia and Central Asian countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.

“At the meeting of heads of state on July 4, the full membership of Iran will be approved,” Lavrov said at the opening of an SCO center in Moscow.

Iran has intensified its diplomacy with friends and foes alike in recent months, seeking to reduce its isolation, improve its economy and project strength.

SCO membership was already on the cards and Iran is also hoping to be quickly accepted into another grouping that excludes Western countries — the BRICS group with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The SCO, which has its headquarters in China, is a diplomatic organization with eight members, including India and Pakistan.

Kremlin ally Belarus is also applying to join, and Lavrov said Friday that next week’s virtual summit would “begin the procedure” for that membership to go ahead.
…

NATO is attempting to choose a new leader, as the term of the current secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, is due to end later this year. However, some member countries want Stoltenberg to stay on, to give the Western alliance stability amid Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, has led NATO for nine years. His tenure has already been extended twice, most recently last year, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Hosting the secretary-general in Washington earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden praised Stoltenberg’s record.

“Your leadership in the alliance has been through a really significant period, in terms of dealing with NATO’s relationship with Ukraine and, you know, I think you’ve done an incredible job,” Biden said June 13. 

Stoltenberg’s term is due to expire in September. Traditionally, the secretary-general is European, but NATO allies appear undecided over who should succeed the 64-year-old incumbent, said Joel Hickman, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis, based in Washington.

“They’re going to have to be able to navigate lots of different competing national interests that you get in NATO, you get in an alliance of 30-plus countries. 

“They’re also going to have to be able to garner support among populations within those allied nations, particularly with young people. Polling in recent years has found that young people in the West struggle to understand the purpose or the relevance of NATO,” Hickman told VOA.

Denmark’s frontrunner

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is seen as a frontrunner. On a recent visit to Washington, she highlighted her country’s support for Kyiv.

“We will, of course, continue from our Danish perspective, our very strong, strong support to Ukraine,” she said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are also seen as contenders. However, Wallace said this week he does not believe he is a likely candidate for the top job. 

Hickman said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will inevitably dominate NATO thinking on choosing Stoltenberg’s successor.

“Its important that the NATO secretary-general has both an established and clear voice on Ukraine and can continue to maintain alliance solidarity on Ukraine. But also that they have credibility when it comes to NATO’s 2% [of GDP] spending target,” he said.

NATO is due to hold its annual summit on July 11 and 12 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Some allies want Stoltenberg to extend his term once again, although he hasn’t indicated whether he is prepared to do so.

“Right now I think there’s a lot of uncertainty in Ukraine. There’s also a lot of uncertainty in terms of U.S. politics and who we may have as a president next year – obviously we’ve heard different positions from some of the Republican candidates. And I think given all of that uncertainty, a large number of allies are looking for that stability,” Hickman said.

Daunting Challenges

Analysts say that whoever leads NATO will face numerous challenges: large scale land warfare in Europe; the dangers of nuclear proliferation; an increasingly assertive China; and new theaters of competition in cyber and space technology.

“All across the West, I think advanced societies are on the cusp of profound transformational changes, in particular in emerging and disruptive technologies. And I think NATO really needs to lead that race, particularly with what’s going on in Russia, but also with China and elsewhere in the world,” Hickman said. 
…

NANTERRE, France — Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old that has shocked the nation. More than 600 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest.

Armored police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel. On the other side of Paris, protesters lit a fire at the city hall of the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and set a bus depot ablaze in Aubervilliers.

In several Paris neighborhoods, groups of people hurled firecrackers at security forces. The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rivoli street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in central Paris.

In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city center, regional authorities said.

President Emmanuel Macron planned to leave an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.

Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. Police detained 667 people, the interior minister said; 307 of those were in the Paris region alone, according to the Paris police headquarters.

Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.” His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government efforts to be “extremely firm” with rioters.

The government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005.

The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.” Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.

The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated.” The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.

“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released as per French practice in criminal cases. “He really didn’t want to kill.”

The shooting captured on video shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The teenager’s family and their lawyers haven’t said the police shooting was race-related and they didn’t release his surname or details about him.

Still, anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behavior.

“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”

Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. But some increasingly vocal groups argue that this consensus conceals widespread discrimination and racism.

Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, have died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.

In Nanterre, a peaceful march Thursday afternoon in honor of Nahel was followed by escalating confrontations, with smoke billowing from cars and garbage bins set ablaze.

Tensions rose in places across France throughout the day. In the usually tranquil Pyrenees town of Pau in southwestern France, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a police office, national police said. Vehicles were set on fire in Toulouse and a tramway train was torched in a suburb of Lyon, police said. Some towns, such as Clamart on the French capital’s southwest suburbs and Neuilly-sur-Marne in the eastern suburbs, imposed precautionary overnight curfews.

Bus and tram services in the Paris area shut as a precaution, and many tram lines remained shut for Friday morning rush hour.

The unrest extended as far as Belgium’s capital Brussels, where about a dozen people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France and several fires were brought under control.

Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped then got stuck in traffic.

Both officers said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing. The officer who fired the shot said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, according to Prache.

The scenes in France’s suburbs echoed 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. The boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois. 
…

VIENNA, AUSTRIA – Austrian authorities said Thursday they had seized hundreds of weapons, ammunition and Nazi memorabilia and arrested six people after raids on several premises of the right-wing extremist Bandidos motorcycle gang.

Police found a huge weapons stash including about “35 long firearms, 25 submachine guns, 100 pistols, over a thousand weapons components, 400 signal weapons,” the interior ministry said.

The haul was made following 13 house searches in the neighboring provinces of Upper and Lower Austria carried out Monday, the ministry added in a statement.

More than 10,000 rounds of ammunition as well as grenade launchers were also seized, it said.

Nazi memorabilia, including daggers, flags, uniform parts, busts and pictures were also found at the homes of the suspects, who were remanded in custody.

After plans by the Bandidos MC motorcycle group to expand to Austria were revealed in late 2022, authorities have been surveilling them.

Investigations aimed to avoid potential violent clashes between the Bandidos, which has a worldwide network of branches, and their rival Hells Angels MC, as has occurred in Switzerland.

“The investigations have shown the extent to which right-wing extremism is represented in outlaw motorcycle gangs,” domestic intelligence agency (DSN) chief Omar Haijawi-Pirchner said.

Possessing Nazi memorabilia is illegal in Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.

Austria long cast itself as a victim after being annexed by the German Third Reich in 1938 and has only in the past three decades begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust.
…

Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan together for several days of peace talks in Washington, as residents of the ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan say they have been cut off from food, medicine and gas. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

Russian authorities appear to have detained General Sergei Surovikin over his suspected connection to the Wagner Group’s mutiny last week, according to media reports.

The specific details surrounding Surovikin’s status remain blurry, but top Russian and U.S. officials have said the senior general has been detained, the Financial Times and The New York Times reported Thursday.

Questions about Surovikin’s whereabouts have been swirling for days because the general had not been seen in public since June 24, when the Wagner paramilitary group marched on Moscow. Surovikin was known to have a good relationship with Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

It is unclear whether Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russia’s invasion force in Ukraine, has been formally charged for playing a part in the rebellion or just detained for questioning.

But Moscow has not yet publicly confirmed what has happened to him.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters he could not clarify the situation about Surovikin and said reporters should contact the Defense Ministry.

Surovikin appeared in a video Saturday urging the Wagner Group to halt any moves against the army and return to their bases.

His daughter Veronika said that “everything is fine” with her father. “Honestly, no, nothing has happened to him. He’s at work,” she told the Russian news outlet Baza.

“When did he appear in the media every day? He never made any statements every day,” she said. “As I understand, everything is sort of flowing as things normally happen. Everyone is at their workplace. Everything is fine.”

Prigozhin arrived in Belarus earlier this week at the invitation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as part of a deal to halt the mutiny.

It still is not clear where Prigozhin is in Belarus, how many fighters accompanied him or how long he plans to stay there.

Peskov told reporters Thursday that he did not have information about Prigozhin’s location.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has “absolutely” been weakened inside Russia by Prigozhin’s rebellion effort.

But Biden, speaking to reporters at the White House, said it was “hard to tell” the extent to which Putin is diminished.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, echoed Biden’s comments when speaking with VOA’s Russian Service on Wednesday.

“On balance, Putin is much weaker today than he was just four or five days ago. Elites in Russia, soldiers in Russia, are all watching this and wondering, ‘What’s happened to our leader?’

“And I think that’s good, because a weakened Russia might do less in terms of damage, principally in Ukraine,” McFaul said.

While pledging that Prigozhin would be safe in Belarus, Putin has expressed mixed views about the Wagner Group since the rebellion. He has characterized Wagner’s leaders as traitors but said the rank-and-file mercenaries “really showed courage and heroism” in their fight against Kyiv’s forces.

Prigozhin’s arrival in Belarus came as Putin said Tuesday that Moscow had paid $1 billion between May 2022 and May 2023 to fully fund the Wagner mercenary fighters, contrary to claims by Prigozhin that he had financed his mercenaries.

Russia once denied the existence of the Wagner Group, but it has advanced Russia’s interests in several African and Middle Eastern countries.

Many of the Wagner fighters in Ukraine were convicted criminals freed from Russian prisons on the promise that if they fought in neighboring Ukraine for six months, the remaining portions of their sentences would be rescinded.

Prigozhin said earlier this year that he had always financed Wagner but had looked for additional funding after Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine.

Prigozhin said Monday that his troops’ advance on Moscow had not been an attempt to overthrow the Russian government and that he remained a patriot.

VOA’s Russian Service contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

The fallout from Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny and exile to Belarus has rattled nerves in the Baltic countries and is expected to broaden NATO’s agenda beyond Ukraine during talks at its annual summit later in July. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
…

A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced a Russian media publisher to eight years in prison in absentia for criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ilya Krasilshchik, who left Russia after the invasion and now lives in Berlin, is a former publisher of the exiled Russian news outlet Meduza, which is based in Latvia.

Krasilshchik was charged in absentia in April 2022 with “spreading fake news about the Russian military motivated by political hatred” over comments about the massacre of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, by Russian troops.

Spreading “false information” about Russia’s military became a criminal offense in Russia soon after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Krasilshchik now runs the “Help Desk” project, a media platform and service that helps those impacted by the war in Ukraine.

Besides his previous work at Meduza, he formerly served as editor-in-chief of the Russian lifestyle magazine Afisha.

In addition to the prison sentence, the Moscow court banned him from administering websites for four years.

Responding to the sentence on Twitter, Krasilshchik said he “will now have four years of excuses for why I’m not answering messages.”

The press freedom group the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, called on Russia to drop the charges against Krasilshchik when they were brought against him last year.

“Russia’s new laws criminalizing so-called ‘fake’ information about the war in Ukraine serve only one purpose: to censor and criminalize accurate coverage of the conflict,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said in a statement at the time.

In a Facebook post commenting on the sentence, Krasilshchik said he will not appeal the sentence.

“The circus is over, and to hell with it,” he wrote.

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

Turkey has condemned Wednesday’s public burning of a Quran in Stockholm and analysts say the incident will likely give Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even more reason to veto Sweden’s bid to join NATO. Erdogan has already threatened to block Sweden’s membership because he accuses Stockholm of harboring Kurdish separatists who he says are terrorists. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
…

More than three million Syrians have made Turkey home since the start of their country’s conflict in 2011. Despite the challenges of life in Turkey, many have remained active, trying to help other Syrian refugees. VOA’s Eyyup Demir has the story from Ankara, narrated by Sirwan Kajjo.
…

The Kremlin said Thursday it could not provide information about Russian General Sergei Surovikin, who has not been seen in public since Saturday, when Wagner mercenary group head Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny attempt against the Russian military.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters he could not clarify the situation with Surovikin and said they should contact the defense ministry.

Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, appeared in a video Saturday urging the Wagner group to halt any moves against the army and return to their bases.

Prigozhin arrived in Belarus earlier this week at the invitation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as part of a deal to halt the mutiny.

It still is not clear where Prigozhin is in Belarus, how many fighters accompanied him or how long he plans to stay there.

Peskov told reporters Thursday that he did not have information about Prigozhin’s location.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has “absolutely” been weakened inside Russia by Prigozhin’s rebellion effort.

But Biden, speaking to reporters at the White House, said it was “hard to tell” the extent to which Putin is diminished.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, echoed Biden’s comments when speaking with VOA’s Russian service on Wednesday.

“On balance, Putin is much weaker today than he was just four or five days ago. Elites in Russia, soldiers in Russia are all watching this and wondering, ‘What’s happened to our leader?’”

“And I think that’s good. Because a weakened Russia might do less in terms of damage, principally in Ukraine,” McFaul said.

While pledging that Prigozhin would be safe in Belarus, Putin has expressed mixed views about the Wagner Group since the rebellion. Putin has characterized Wagner’s leaders as traitors but said the rank-and-file mercenaries “really showed courage and heroism” in their fight against Kyiv’s forces.

Prigozhin’s arrival in Belarus came as Putin said Tuesday that Moscow had paid $1 billion between May 2022 and May 2023 to fully fund the Wagner mercenary fighters, contrary to claims by Prigozhin that he had financed his mercenaries.

Russia once denied the existence of the Wagner Group but it has advanced Russia’s interests in several African and Middle Eastern countries.

Many of the Wagner fighters in Ukraine were convicted criminals freed from Russian prisons on the promise that if they fought in neighboring Ukraine for six months, the remaining portions of their sentences would be rescinded.

Prigozhin said earlier this year that he had always financed Wagner but had looked for additional funding after Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine.

Prigozhin said Monday that his troops’ advance on Moscow had not been an attempt to overthrow the Russian government and that he remained a patriot.

VOA’s Russian service contributed to this report. Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

LONDON – Britain’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful, London’s Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday, in a major setback for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who has pledged to stop migrants arriving across the Channel in small boats.

Under a deal struck last year, Britain’s government planned to send tens of thousands of asylum seekers who arrive on its shores more than 6,400 kilometers to the East African country.

The first planned deportation flight was blocked a year ago in a last-minute ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which imposed an injunction preventing any deportations until the conclusion of legal action in Britain.

In December, the High Court ruled the policy was lawful, but that decision was challenged by asylum seekers from several countries along with human rights organizations.

Announcing the Court of Appeal’s decision, three senior appeal judges ruled, by a majority, that Rwanda could not be treated as a safe third country.

“The deficiencies in the asylum system in Rwanda are such that there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that persons sent to Rwanda will be returned to their home countries where they face persecution or other inhumane treatment,” judge Ian Burnett said.

Burnett said he himself disagreed with the other two judges on this point.

The ruling is a huge blow for Sunak who is dealing with stubbornly high levels of inflation, declining public support, and is under increasing pressure from his own party and the public to deal with migrant arrivals in small boats.

Sunak has made “stop the boats” one of five priorities and is hoping a fall in arrivals might help his Conservative Party pull off an unexpected win at the next national election. 
…

Latest developments:  

European Union leaders to discuss security assistance for Ukraine at summit. 





U.S. State Department approves sale of up to $15 billion in Patriot missile defense systems for Poland. 

Crews in Ukraine found a body Thursday in the rubble of a pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, bringing the death toll from a Russian missile attack on the site to 12 people. 

Ukrainian authorities said the dead include three children, and that the attack injured another 60 people. 

Ukraine’s counterintelligence service said Wednesday it arrested a man it accused of helping Russia direct the attack. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said those who help Russia “destroy life” deserve maximum punishment. 

“Anyone in the world who does not understand that one cannot be an accomplice of a terrorist state must be held accountable by the entire international community,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. “The spotter is being charged with treason. The possible punishment is life imprisonment. Accomplices of a terrorist state must be treated as betrayers of humanity.” 

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday his foreign ministry would send a note of protest to Russia after the strike in Kramatorsk injured “three defenseless Colombian civilians.” 

Petro tweeted that Russia “violated the protocols of war.” 

The restaurant was frequented by journalists, aid workers, and soldiers as well as local residents. The Security Service of Ukraine provided no evidence for its claim that the man filmed the restaurant and told the Russians about it.

Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated Russia’s claim that it does not target civilians.    

The strike during dinnertime on Tuesday was one of several Russia launched on Ukrainian cities throughout the evening and into early Wednesday.  

Kramatorsk is west of the front lines where fighting is taking place in Donetsk province in eastern Ukraine.  

A Russian airstrike on the city’s railway station in April 2022 killed 63 people.  

Ukraine also reported a Russian missile strike Tuesday in Kremenchuk, which came exactly a year after a Russian attack there killed at least 20 people at a shopping mall.    

“Each such manifestation of terror proves over and over again to us and to the whole world that Russia deserves only one thing as a result of everything it has done — defeat and a tribunal, fair and legal trials against all Russian murderers and terrorists,” said Zelenskyy.  

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

WASHINGTON – The fallout from Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny and exile to Belarus is set to broaden the agenda beyond Ukraine in talks at the upcoming annual NATO summit in July 11–12.

The meeting will take place in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, just 35 kilometers from the border of Prigozhin’s new home base, highlighting urgency to fortify the alliance’s eastern flank and increase defense spending.

It is still not clear how many members of Prigozhin’s mercenary army will accompany him to Belarus, but the thought of them setting up camp just a few hours away is rattling nerves in the Baltic countries of Lithuania and Latvia as well as Poland. All of them share a land border with Belarus.

Lithuania and Latvia quickly urged NATO members to bolster their defense, noting the speed with which Wagner forces had advanced on Moscow.

“Our countries’ borders are just hundreds of kilometers from that activity, so it could take them eight to 10 hours to suddenly appear somewhere in Belarus close to Lithuania,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Tuesday.

Fortification efforts began immediately. On Monday, Germany announced it will permanently station a 4,000-strong army brigade in Lithuania, something Vilnius has demanded since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Until the Wagner uprising, Berlin was only willing to deploy its troops to Lithuania on a temporary basis.

On Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it was too early to say what the Wagner presence in Belarus could mean for the alliance, but vowed that NATO would protect “every ally, every inch of NATO territory” against threats from “Moscow or Minsk.”

The Wagner fallout also bolsters the case for NATO to increase its defense spending. Earlier this month Stoltenberg reiterated the need for each alliance member to commit at least 2% of their GDP to defense, a long-standing NATO goal.

A NATO report released in March shows that while defense spending across the alliance increased by 2.2% from 2021-22, only seven of NATO’s 30 member states in 2022 met the 2% target – the United States, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the United Kingdom.

Russian instability

President Joe Biden said Wednesday he believed Putin had “absolutely” been weakened inside his country from his clash with Prigozhin but that it was “hard to tell” the extent to which Putin had been diminished.

As soon as the chaos unfolded in Russia, Biden said he directed his national security team to prepare for “a range of scenarios,” and convened a video call with NATO allies.

“We had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO,” Biden said Monday. “We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”

However, it’s clear that in Vilnius Biden and NATO leaders will need to address questions of the broader threat posed by Russia and its ally Belarus.

“We’ve gone from thinking about Ukraine as a slightly isolated conflict to again thinking about NATO having this incredibly long, thousands of miles border, all down Finland and down Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,” said Kristine Berzina, managing director for German Marshall Funds North and co-leader of GMF’s Russia Transatlantic Initiative.

“And Poland, because of Kaliningrad,” she told VOA, referring to the Russian exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania where Moscow has stationed thousands of troops.

“Is Russia unstable? What happens to the nuclear arsenal should Russia be unstable? What happens if you have someone who is more warmongering than Putin coming to power in Russia, and perhaps less predictable? These are questions for NATO itself to answer,” Berzina added.

Concern about Russian instability is decades old, said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia who is now director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

“Russia has nuclear weapons, and we don’t want those nuclear weapons to get into the hands of people irresponsible,” he told VOA.

Diplomatic end

McFaul argues that since the mutiny attempt by Wagner soldiers was sparked by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, leaders concerned with Russian instability would be well-served to find a diplomatic end sooner rather than later.

“Whether you’re President Biden, or Xi Jinping in China, I think this is the time to put more pressure on Mr. Putin to end his war in Ukraine,” he said. “Because the longer that war goes on, the more likely we are going to see future events of instability inside Russia.”

Administration officials have long underscored that the way to ending the conflict is by boosting Ukraine’s battle capabilities to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in the negotiation table.

The biggest impediment to reaching a diplomatic settlement for a “just and durable peace” is Putin’s conviction that he can outlast Ukraine and NATO, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken during an event at the Council of Foreign Affairs think tank Wednesday.

“The more we’re able to disabuse him of that notion, the more likely it is that at some point, he’ll come to the table,” Blinken said.

As NATO leaders meet in Vilnius to address the concerns surrounding Wagner, they must also decide on the kind of security guarantee to provide to Kyiv. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded clarity on his country’s future in the alliance during the summit.

“During the war we cannot become a member of NATO, but we must be confident that after the war we will be,” he said. “And this is exactly the signal we want to receive, that after the war Ukraine will be a member of NATO.” 
…

PARIS – Protesters shot fireworks at police and set cars ablaze in the working-class Paris suburb of Nanterre on Wednesday, in a second night of unrest following the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy during a traffic stop there. 

The use of lethal force by officers against the teenager, who was of North African origin, has fed into a deep-rooted perception of police brutality in the ethnically diverse suburbs of France’s biggest cities.  

Shortly before midnight, a trail of overturned vehicles burned as fireworks fizzed at police lines on Nanterre’s Avenue Pablo Picasso.  

Police clashed with protesters in the northern city of Lille and in Toulouse in the southwest, and there was also unrest in Amiens, Dijon and the Essonne administrative department south of the French capital, a police spokesman said. 

French media reported incidents in numerous other locations across greater Paris. Videos on social media showed dozens of fireworks being directed at the Montreuil town hall, on the eastern edge of Paris. 

Earlier, President Emmanuel Macron called the shooting “unexplainable and inexcusable.”  

A police officer is being investigated for voluntary homicide for shooting the youth. Prosecutors say the youth had failed to comply with an order to stop his car. 

The interior ministry has called for calm and said 2,000 police have been mobilized in the Paris region. 

Rights groups allege systemic racism inside law enforcement agencies in France, a charge Macron has previously denied. 

A video shared on social media, verified by Reuters, shows two police officers beside the car, a Mercedes AMG, with one shooting at the driver at close range as the car pulled away. The driver died shortly afterward from his wounds, the local prosecutor said. 

“You have a video that is very clear: a police officer killed a young man of 17 years. You can see that the shooting is not within the rules,” said Yassine Bouzrou, a lawyer for the family. 

Lawmakers held a minute’s silence in the National Assembly, where Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the shooting “seems clearly not to comply with the rules.” 

The family has filed a legal complaint against the officers for homicide, complicity in homicide and false testimony, the lawyer said. 

In a video shared on TikTok, a woman identified as the victim’s mother called for a memorial march in Nanterre on Thursday. “Everyone come. We will lead a revolt for my son,” she said. 

Unusually frank 

Tuesday’s killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France so far in 2023, down from a record 13 last year, a spokesperson for the national police said. 

There were three such killings in 2021 and two in 2020, according to a Reuters tally, which shows the majority of victims since 2017 were Black or of Arab origin. 

France’s human rights ombudsman has opened an inquiry into the death, the sixth such inquiry into similar incidents in 2022 and 2023. 

Macron’s remarks were unusually frank in a country where senior politicians are often reticent to criticize police, given voters’ security concerns. 

Two leading police unions fought back, saying the detained police officer should be presumed innocent until found otherwise.  

Macron has faced criticism from rivals who accuse him of being soft on drug dealers and petty criminals, and he has implemented policies aimed at curbing urban crime, including greater authority for police to issue fines. 

Before the violence erupted for a second night, some in Nanterre had expressed hope the unrest would end swiftly.  

“To revolt like we did yesterday won’t change things. We need to discuss and talk,” local resident Fatima said. 
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US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken say Saturday’s armed rebellion in Russia shows that President Vladimir Putin is clearly losing the war in Ukraine and highlights the stark contrast between Putin’s grand ambitions when he started the war and where his army stands now. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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