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India has sharply criticized the United States and Germany for recent, but rare, back-to-back moves related to a long-running territorial dispute with neighbor and archrival Pakistan.  

The controversy erupted when Donald Blome, Washington’s ambassador to Islamabad, made a three-day visit to the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, in the divided Himalayan region. Pakistan refers to the area under its control as Azad (meaning free) Jammu and Kashmir, or AJK.

“I’m honored to visit during my first trip to AJK,” the U.S. embassy quoted Blome as saying on Twitter after touring historic sites there.  

The U.S. diplomat held meetings with senior AJK officials, as well as academic, business, cultural, and civil society representatives. The U.S. embassy noted later in a formal statement that Blome’s visit was designed to promote “the U.S.-Pakistan partnership and highlight the two countries’ deep economic, cultural and people-to-people ties.”

It is rare for a U.S. ambassador to travel to what New Delhi considers an integral part of India and refers to it as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.  

Islamabad rejects Indian claims and calls Kashmir an internationally recognized disputed territory in line with a decades-old United Nations resolution. Pakistan also refers to the other side of the divided region as Indian occupied Kashmir. Both countries claim the region in its entirety and have fought two of their three wars over it since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. The dispute remains at the center of bilateral tensions.

“Our objection to the visit and meetings in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir by the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has been conveyed to the U.S. side,” Indian foreign ministry representative Arindam Bagchi told a news conference Friday.  

Later that Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, in a rare backing for Islamabad’s stance on the territorial rivalry, said that Berlin had a “role and responsibility” with regard to the tension over Kashmir.  

Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the chief German diplomat hailed a February 2021 Kashmir cease-fire agreement between the nuclear-armed rival nations, urging both sides to build on it. She stressed that Germany supports “intensively the engagement of the United Nations” to find a peaceful solution to the dispute.

“So, we encourage Pakistan, and we encourage India to follow the track of the cease-fire, to follow the track of the United Nations, and to intensify the political dialogue, and also the political and practical cooperations in the region,” Baerbock added.

The cease-fire has since effectively halted deadly military skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani troops in Kashmir.  

On Saturday, the Indian government strongly objected to Baerbock’s Kashmir-related remarks because it vehemently opposes any third-party intervention in what India considers a bilateral issue with Pakistan.  

“All serious and conscientious members of the global community have a role and responsibility to call out international terrorism, especially of a cross-border nature,” Bagchi said in a statement.  

New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of supporting and funding Muslim militants waging cross-border attacks against Indian security forces in Kashmir, charges Pakistan rejects.  

“The Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has borne the brunt of such a terrorist campaign for decades. This continues until now,” Bagchi said. “When states do not recognize such dangers, either because of self-interest or indifference, they undermine the cause of peace, not promote it. They also do grave injustice to the victims of terrorism,” he added.  

The Pakistani foreign ministry Sunday rejected the Indian criticism of the remarks made by Zardari and his German counterpart as “preposterous.” It again accused Indian authorities of inflicting massive human rights abuses on Kashmiri Muslims on their side of the divided region.

“Hollow denials and evasion of responsibility will no longer cover up India’s mischievous strategy of posing as a ‘victim’ of terrorism while shifting blame elsewhere,” a ministry statement quoted its representative in Islamabad as saying.  

India would do well, the representative added to the statement, to address the international community’s valid concerns and mend its conduct in Kashmir.

Pakistan has welcomed the U.S. diplomat’s visit and the German foreign minister’s statement.  

Senator Mushahid Hussain of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which heads the coalition government in Islamabad, says a settlement to the Kashmir dispute can only ensure “enduring stability, peace and security” in South Asia.  

“The West has finally realized that putting all their eggs in South Asia in India’s basket was a strategic mistake as it ended up alienating Pakistan and its people; moreover, they now feel that the road to stability in the region lies through Islamabad, while Delhi continues to hunt with the hound and run with the hare,” Hussain, the chair of the Senate Defense Committee, told VOA.

Some critics in Pakistan have speculated that diplomatic tensions between India and the U.S. over New Delhi’s imports of oil products from Russia might have prompted the West to put political pressure on India. Washington has imposed sanctions on Moscow for invading Ukraine in February and been critical of India’s continued oil purchases from Russia. New Delhi defends its actions, saying Russian prices are the cheapest compared to other sources.

Michael Kugelman is the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, a non-partisan policy forum. He cautions against linking Blome’s visit to the Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the German foreign minister’s comments or reading too much into them in the wake of reported diplomatic tensions. He said New Delhi would not make a major policy shift under external pressure, especially in the case of Kashmir.  

“If the U.S. were to try to work with its Western allies to get India to change its position on Russia/Ukraine by pressuring New Delhi on the Kashmir issue, then that would be a fool’s errand,” Kugelman said.

“The U.S. wants to signal its willingness to partner more with Pakistan, and a trip to Pakistan-administered Kashmir sends a strong signal to that effect. It can be a big confidence building measure for the two sides when Washington knows Islamabad is looking for signs that the U.S. is ready to reframe the relationship around non-security cooperation,” he said.  

“Baerbock’s comment is tough to assess. Very rarely do senior Western officials publicly express a desire for the Kashmir issue to be internationalized,” Kugelman stated.  

India controls two-thirds of the Muslim-majority Kashmir and Pakistan the rest. New Delhi ended the decades-old semi-autonomous status of its part of the Himalayan region in 2019 and divided it into two union territories to be directly controlled by the federal government.

Pakistan strongly condemned the unilateral moves by India and has demanded their unconditional reversal — increasing mutual tension and the deterioration in ties.

“We believe, and absolutely, that international law should apply everywhere, U.N. resolutions should be respected everywhere, the sovereignty of territory, or even internationally disputed territory, should be respected,” Zardari said while speaking alongside Baerbock Friday.  

India disregards a 1948 U.N. resolution on the world body’s role in Kashmir and wants a settlement in line with a bilateral pact the two countries signed in 1972. Known as the Simla agreement, it calls on the two countries to resolve their disputes bilaterally.

Pakistan maintains that bilateral attempts to find a solution have failed for decades and seeks U.N. intervention.

Among other steps, the U.N. resolution asks India to allow for a free and impartial vote to enable Kashmiris to determine the fate of the region.
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Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen secured a second six-year term in office by winning more than 50% of the vote in an election on Sunday to avoid a runoff, according to initial projections issued soon after voting closed.

Neither of the main centrist parties fielded candidates in the election, and senior figures from both backed Van der Bellen, a 78-year-old former leader of the Greens. The far-right Freedom Party was the only party in parliament to put forward a candidate against the president.R

A projection by pollster SORA for national broadcaster ORF, based on a partial count of 64.8% of votes, put Van der Bellen on 55.4% with a margin of error of 1.9 percentage points. His nearest rival was the Freedom Party’s Walter Rosenkranz on 18.4%.

Initial projections in Austria, based on the count from the polling stations that closed earlier in the day, have proved reliable in the past. The last polling stations to close include those in the cities of Vienna and Innsbruck.

A separate projection by ARGE Wahlen for national news agency APA put Van der Bellen on 55.9% and Rosenkranz on 17.9%, based on 62% of votes counted.

The Austrian president largely performs a ceremonial role, but also has sweeping powers that mean overseeing periods of transition and turbulence. Van der Bellen has built up a reputation for having a steady hand and calm manner, particularly in times of crisis.
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Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned defense of migrants, calling their exclusion “scandalous, disgusting and sinful,” putting him on a collision course with Italy’s upcoming right-wing government.

Francis made his comments as he canonized a 19th century bishop known as the “father of migrants” and a 20th century man who ministered to the sick in Argentina.

Francis, who has made support of migrants a major theme of his pontificate, presided over the ceremony before 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square.

“The exclusion of migrants is scandalous. Indeed, the exclusion of migrants is criminal. It makes them die in front of us,” he said.

“And so today the Mediterranean is the world’s largest cemetery,” he said, referring to thousands who have drowned trying to reach Europe.

“The exclusion of migrants is disgusting, it is sinful. It is criminal not to open doors to those who are needy,” he said.

Giorgia Meloni is expected to become prime minister later this month at the head of a right-wing coalition that has vowed to crack down on immigration and tighten Italy’s borders.

She has promised accelerated repatriations and tighter asylum rules. Meloni has also called for a naval blockade of North Africa to prevent migrants from sailing and for renewed curbs on charity rescue ships.

Francis, who did not mention Italy, said some migrants sent back are put in “concentration camps where they are exploited and treated as slaves.” In the past he has said this has happened in Libya.

The pope went off script about migrants at the point in his prepared comments when he mentioned the most well-known of the two new saints – Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, who lived between 1839 and 1905.

Scalabrini founded two religious orders — one of priests and one of nuns — to help Italian immigrants in the United States and South America.

The other new saint is Artemides Zatti, who lived between 1880 and 1951. His family fled poverty in Italy and settled in Argentina.

A lay member of the Salesian religious order, he worked as a nurse, bringing healthcare to the poor on his bicycle.

 
…

Germany’s foreign minister is calling for European Union entry bans and asset freezes against those responsible for what she described as brutal repression against anti-government protesters in Iran.

The most sustained protests in years against Iran’s theocracy are now in their fourth week. They erupted Sept. 17 after the burial of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women.

Since then, protests spread across the country and have been met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.

“Those who beat up women and girls on the street, carry off people who want nothing other than to live freely, arrest them arbitrarily and sentence them to death stand on the wrong side of history,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was quoted as telling Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“We will ensure that the EU imposes entry bans on those responsible for this brutal repression and freezes their assets in the EU,” she added. “We say to people in Iran: We stand and remain by your side.”

Baerbock didn’t name any specific individuals or organizations.

On Thursday, EU lawmakers approved a resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for the death of Amini and the subsequent crackdown.

Germany, along with fellow EU member France, is among the nations that are part of a 2015 agreement with Iran to address concerns over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and have been attempting to revive the deal.

Talks on the deal have languished but if it’s reinstated, the agreement would provide sanctions relief that would help strengthen the Iranian government.

On Sunday, videos on Iranian social media appeared to show students staging a protest on the campus of al-Zahra University in Tehran, a day after students chanted against Iran’s president during a visit there.

Protests erupted in cities across Iran on Saturday. In Tehran’s bazaar, traditionally a stronghold of Iran’s rulers, a crowd set fire to a police kiosk. Later that evening, anti-government marches drew a large crowd in the capital’s central Naziabad area, social media posts showed.

Facing persistent unrest, authorities have turned to targeting prominent Iranians who have expressed support for the protests.

The semi-official ILNA news agency reported that Iranian officials seized the passports of Homayoun Shajarian, a prominent singer, and Sahar Dolatshahi, an actress, after the pair returned from a concert tour in Australia on Saturday. The passports were taken at Tehran’s international airport, the news agency said.

Shajarian had expressed support for the protesters during his foreign tour. During a Sept. 13 concert, a large photo of Mahsa Amini served as a stage backdrop and he sang an old song dealing with cruelty and oppressors.

Another backdrop had the caption: “Don’t kill these people. These people deserve life, not death. These people deserve happiness and freedom. My position is clear, I will always stand by the people of my land.”

Since the start of the demonstrations, Iranian authorities have detained a number of prominent artists, including singer Shervin Hajipour whose song “For” became an anthem of the protest movement. Hajipour was released on bail on Oct. 4.
…

Nicolas Touillou had just proposed marriage to his girlfriend. Nelson Marinho Jr. was heading off on a new oil exploration job. Eric Lamy was about to celebrate his 38th birthday.

They were among 228 people killed in 2009 when their storm-tossed Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the Atlantic. After more than a decade of legal battles, their families at last have a chance at justice.

Aviation industry heavyweights Airbus and Air France are charged with manslaughter in a trial that opens Monday over the crash of Flight 447 on June 1, 2009. The worst plane crash in Air France history killed people of 33 nationalities and had lasting impact, leading to changes in air safety regulations, how pilots are trained and the use of airspeed sensors.

But it almost didn’t come to trial. The companies insist they are not criminally responsible, and Air France has already compensated families. Investigators argued for dropping the case, but unusually, judges overruled them and sent the case to court.

“We made a promise to our loved ones to have the truth for them and to ensure that they didn’t die for nothing,” Ophelie Touillou, whose 27-year-old brother Nicolas was killed, told The Associated Press. “But we are also fighting for collective security, in fact, for all those who board an Airbus every day, or Air France, every day.”

She said the companies present themselves as “untouchable,” and that Airbus made no effort to address families’ concerns. “For them, we are nothing. They did not lose 228 people. They lost a plane.”

Few families in Brazil, which lost 59 citizens in the crash, can afford to travel to France for the trial. Some feel the French justice system has been too soft on Airbus and Air France — two industrial giants in which the French government has an ownership stake.

The trial is expected to focus on two key factors: the icing over of external sensors called pitot tubes, and pilot error.

The Airbus A300-200 disappeared from radars over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. The first debris was only spotted at sea five days later. And it wasn’t until 2011 that the plane — and its black box recorders — were located on the ocean floor, in an unprecedented search effort at depths of more than 4,000 meters.

France’s air accident investigation agency BEA found that the accident involved a cascading series of events, with no single cause.

As a storm buffeted the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes disabled the pitot tubes, blocking speed and altitude information. The autopilot disconnected.

The crew resumed manual piloting, but with erroneous navigation data. The plane went into an aerodynamic stall, its nose pitched upward. And then it plunged.

The pilots “did not understand what was happening to them. A difficulty of interpretation, in an all-digital aircraft like all the aircraft in the world today — well, it’s easy to be wrong,” said Gerard Feldzer, a former pilot and pilot trainer for Air France.

He said he and pilots around the world asked themselves afterward “if it had been me, would I have acted in the same way? It has been a very difficult question to answer.”

No one risks prison in this case; only the companies are on trial. Each faces potential fines of up to 225,000 euros — a fraction of their annual revenues — but they could suffer reputational damage if found criminally responsible.

Nelson Marinho, whose son Nelson Jr. was killed, is angry that no company executives will be tried.

“They have changed various directors, both at Airbus and Air France, so who will they arrest? No one. There won’t be justice. That’s sadly the truth,” Marinho, a retired mechanic who leads a support group for victims’ families, told the AP.

Air France is accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks.

In a statement, the company said it would demonstrate in court “that it has not committed a criminal fault at the origin of the accident” and plead for acquittal.

Air France has since changed its training manuals and simulations. It also provided compensation to families, who had to agree not to disclose the sums.

Airbus is accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty, and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and to ensure training to mitigate the resulting risk.

An AP investigation at the time found that Airbus had known since at least 2002 about problems with pitots, but failed to replace them until after the crash. The model in question — a Thales AA pitot — was subsequently banned and replaced.

Airbus blames pilot error, and told investigators that icing over is a problem inherent to all such sensors.

“They knew and they did nothing,” said Danièle Lamy, president of an association of victims’ families that pushed for a trial. “The pilots should never have found themselves in such a situation, they never understood the cause of the breakdown and the plane had become unpilotable.”

Lamy lost her son Eric a few days before his 38th birthday. She has struggled ever since to find out the truth.

“The plane had sent messages to the ground about the problem but had not warned the pilots. It’s as if you were driving a car at 130 kph, your brakes were no longer working but the car sent the alert to the mechanic and not to the driver,” Lamy told the AP.

She is among 489 civil parties to the trial, which is scheduled to last through December.

The crash forced Airbus and Air France to be more transparent and reactive, Feldzer said, noting that the trial will be important for the aviation industry as well as for families.

“The history of aviation security is made from this, from accidents,” Feldzer said.
…

The exquisite golden tiara, inlaid with precious stones by master craftsmen some 1,500 years ago, was one of the world’s most valuable artifacts from the blood-letting rule of Attila the Hun, who rampaged with horseback warriors deep into Europe in the 5th century.

The Hun diadem is now vanished from the museum in Ukraine that housed it — perhaps, historians fear, forever. Russian troops carted away the priceless crown and a hoard of other treasures after capturing the Ukrainian city of Melitopol in February, museum authorities say.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its eighth month, is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities say.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukraine’s culture minister alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artifacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums. The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, the minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, added.

“The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainian culture heritage is a war crime,” he said.

For the moment, Ukraine’s government and its Western backers supplying weapons are mostly focused on defeating Russia on the battlefield. But if and when peace returns, the preservation of Ukrainian collections of art, history and culture also will be vital, so survivors of the war can begin the next fight: rebuilding their lives.

“These are museums, historical buildings, churches. Everything that was built and created by generations of Ukrainians,” Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in September when she visited a Ukrainian museum in New York. “This is a war against our identity.”

Workers at the Museum of Local History in Melitopol first tried hiding the Hun diadem and hundreds of other treasures when Russian troops stormed the southern city. But after weeks of repeated searches, Russian soldiers finally discovered the building’s secret basement where staff had squirrelled away the museum’s most precious objects — including the Hun diadem, according to a museum worker.

The worker, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing Russian punishment for even discussing the events, said the Ukrainians don’t know where Russian troops took the haul, which included the tiara and some 1,700 other artifacts.

Dug up from a burial chamber in 1948, the crown is one of just a few Hun crowns worldwide. The museum worker said other treasures that disappeared with Russian soldiers include 198 pieces of 2,400-year-old gold from the era of the Scythians, nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine and founded an empire in Crimea.

“These are ancient finds. These are works of art. They are priceless,” said Oleksandr Symonenko, chief researcher at Ukraine’s Institute of Archaeology. “If culture disappears, it is an irreparable disaster.”

Russia’s Culture Ministry did not respond to questions about the Melitopol collection.

Russian forces also looted museums as they laid waste to the Black Sea port of Mariupol, according to Ukrainian officials who were driven from that the southern city, which was relentlessly pounded by Russian bombardment. It fell under Moscow’s complete control only in May when Ukrainian defenders who clung to the city’s steelworks finally surrendered.

Mariupol’s exiled city council said Russian forces pilfered more than 2,000 items from the city’s museums. Among the most precious items were ancient religious icons, a unique handwritten Torah scroll, a 200-year-old Bible and more than 200 medals, the council said.

Also looted were art works by painters Arkhip Kuindzhi, who was born in Mariupol, and Crimea-born Ivan Aivazovsky, both famed for their seascapes, the exiled councilors said. They said Russian troops carted off their stolen bounty to the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

The invasion has also wrought extensive damage and destruction to Ukraine’s cultural patrimony. The U.N.’s cultural agency is keeping a tally of sites being struck by missiles, bombs and shelling. With the war now in its eighth month, the agency says it has verified damage to 199 sites in 12 regions.

They include 84 churches and other religious sites, 37 buildings of historic importance, 37 buildings for cultural activities, 18 monuments, 13 museums and 10 libraries, UNESCO says.

Ukrainian government tallies are even higher, with authorities saying their count of destroyed and damaged religious buildings alone is up to at least 270.

While invasion forces hunted for treasures to steal, Ukrainian museum workers did what they could to keep them out of Russian hands. Tens of thousands of items have been evacuated away from the front lines and combat-struck regions.

In Kyiv, the director of the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine lived in the building, guarding its artifacts, during the invasion’s first weeks when Russian forces sought, unsuccessfully, to encircle the capital.

“We were afraid of the Russian occupiers, because they destroy everything that can be identified as Ukrainian,” recalled the director, Natalia Panchenko.

Fearing Russian troops would storm the city, she sought to confuse them by taking down the plaque on the museum’s entrance. She also dismantled exhibits, carefully packing away artifacts into boxes for evacuation.

One day, she hopes, they’ll go back into their rightful place. For now, the museum is just showing copies.

“These things were fragile, they survived hundreds of years,” she said. “We couldn’t stand the thought they could be lost.”
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Germans in the coastal state of Lower Saxony vote in a closely watched regional election Sunday, seen as a key test for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats amid an acute energy crisis.

Polls open at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT), with the latest surveys putting Scholz’s center-left SPD slightly ahead of the conservative CDU party of former chancellor Angela Merkel.

Anxiety about soaring energy bills has dominated the race in the northwestern region on the North Sea, providing a snapshot of the national mood as Europe’s top economy grapples with the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Lower Saxony’s popular premier Stephan Weil from the SPD, eyeing a third term, said the election contest had been “the most difficult of my life.”

“Never have I seen so many question marks and worries on citizens’ faces,” he told WirtschaftsWoche magazine.

Weil, 63, has cast himself as a safe pair of hands in uncertain times and wants Lower Saxony, home to auto giant Volkswagen as well as most of Germany’s wind turbines, to play a leading role in the green energy transition.

He has also welcomed the $198 billion energy fund newly unveiled by Scholz to shield German consumers from price shocks.

Weil’s main rival, state economy minister Bernd Althusmann from the CDU, says the massive support package lacks clarity. He accuses the federal government of being slow to act as recession fears mount.

The 55-year-old challenger has billed Sunday’s vote as a verdict on Scholz’s coalition government in Berlin of the SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP.

“If the CDU becomes the strongest party in Lower Saxony, which is realistic, it will be a serious blow to the already divided federal government,” he told the Rheinische Post.

Nuclear plant row

Opinion polls put the SPD at 31-33% in Lower Saxony, followed by the CDU at 27-28%. The gap has widened in recent days.

A win would be a boost for Scholz’s SPD after it lost the last two state polls to the CDU, in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein.

The Greens are tipped to win some 16% of the vote, which would be their best showing yet in the state of 6.1 million voters.

The far-right AfD is polling at around 11%, nearly double what it scored in 2017.

The FDP meanwhile is hovering at 5%, the threshold needed to enter the regional parliament.

One major bone of contention between the leading candidates has been the fate of Lower Saxony’s Emsland nuclear power plant, one of only three still operational in Germany.

Althusmann has responded angrily to Berlin’s decision to proceed with Emsland’s planned shutdown this year, despite the need for energy diversification as the country weans itself off Russian gas and oil.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, from the traditionally anti-nuclear Greens, recently announced that the other two plants will be kept on standby until April 2023, in a landmark U-turn.

Weil has backed Berlin’s stance, saying Emsland was not needed to secure Lower Saxony’s energy supply — though he conceded that other regions may struggle when the colder winter weather hits.

Weil and Althusmann have each touted their state’s central role in reducing reliance on Russian energy, pointing to the construction of import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the ports of Stade and Wilhelmshaven.

Although the SPD and CDU currently govern together in Lower Saxony, Weil has ruled out a repeat of the left-right coalition.
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Austrians vote Sunday in a presidential election expected to return incumbent Alexander Van der Bellen, seen as a beacon of stability as the Alpine EU member struggles with an energy crisis and inflation.

Campaigning on a slogan of “clarity,” Van der Bellen is widely tipped to clinch a second mandate, with his six challengers — all men — lagging far behind.

“The biggest competitor on Sunday will be the sofa,” the 78-year-old economics professor said Friday at his last campaign rally, appealing to people to vote.

Polls put the pro-European liberal as securing more than 50% of the vote, thus avoiding a run-off vote.

Some 6.4 million people are eligible to cast their ballots from the country’s total population of 9 million.

With posters proclaiming him “the safe choice in stormy times” amid an energy crisis pushing up inflation throughout Europe, the former Greens leader runs as an independent.

But he has the explicit or implicit backing of Austria’s major parties except the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which has fielded its own candidate, Walter Rosenkranz, who is sitting in second place in the polls on 15% support.

Also standing for the presidency is 35-year-old punk rocker Dominik Wlazny, founder of the Beer Party named for its advocacy of the popular beverage.

Van der Bellen — who supporters affectionately call “the professor” — faced an unexpectedly tough fight in 2016, only winning the race in a runoff against an FPOe politician.

But the FPOe’s ratings have plummeted since 2019 after a corruption scandal brought down the government they were part of and eventually led to the resignation of then-chancellor Sebastian Kurz himself in 2021.

Analyst Thomas Hofer said it is “crucial” that Van der Bellen avoids a run-off like in 2016 when the campaign was “very divisive and hostile.”

‘Stability’

“Van der Bellen stands for integrity and stability, which is very appreciated by voters given the multitude of crises that many European countries are currently facing,” Julia Partheymueller, a political analyst at the University of Vienna, told AFP.

Known for his trademark professorial manner, Van der Bellen will be Austria’s oldest head of state to be sworn in if he wins.

The presidential post, with a term of six years, is largely ceremonial.

Van der Bellen — also known as “Sascha,” a nickname that nods to his Russian roots — was born during World War II in Vienna to an aristocratic Russian father and an Estonian mother who fled Stalinism.

The arrival of the Red Army a year later forced the family to escape to the southern state of Tyrol, where Van der Bellen spent an “idyllic childhood.”

He studied economics at the University of Innsbruck and finished his Ph.D. in 1970 before going on to become dean of economics at the University of Vienna.

Polling stations open at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and close at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT) with exit polls published once they close.

At an election event last month, Alexandra Hoefenstock said she would vote Van der Bellen as he had managed the political crises well in his last stint in office.

“I hope for political stability,” the 38-year-old Vienna city worker said. 
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The European Union’s top diplomat Saturday condemned “in the strongest possible terms” Russia’s attempt to annex the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and said Russia’s forces must fully withdraw from the plant and return control of it to Ukraine.  

High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell called the seizure of the nuclear power plant “illegal, and legally null and void,” and said a reinforced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “presence at the site and its unhindered access to the plant are urgently needed in the interest of the security of Europe as a whole.” 

Earlier in the day, the IAEA reported that the Zaporizhzhia plant, the biggest in Europe, had lost its only external power source as a result of renewed Russian shelling and was forced to rely on emergency diesel generators. 

All six reactors at the plant are shut down, but they still require electricity for cooling and other safety functions. The IAEA said plant engineers have begun work to repair the damaged power line.  

The nuclear watchdog agency said the plant’s link to a 750-kilovolt line was cut about 1 a.m. Saturday local time. It cited official information from Ukraine, as well as reports from IAEA experts at the site, which is held by Russian forces. 

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is traveling to Moscow to hold talks in the coming days about establishing a protection zone around the nuclear plant. He was in Ukraine Friday and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding the situation. Transferring the plant to Russian ownership, Grossi said, is a violation of international law.  

Russian shake-up? 

Russia’s Defense Ministry named General Sergei Surovikin on Saturday as the new overall commander of Kremlin forces engaged in Ukraine. It was the first official announcement of a single overall commander for all Russian forces fighting in Ukraine since its February 24 invasion began.  

“By the decision of the defense minister of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Surovikin has been appointed commander of the joint group of troops in the area of the special military operation,” the statement said, using the Kremlin’s term for the invasion of Ukraine.  

Surovikin had since 2017 led Russia’s Aerospace Forces. In June, he was placed in charge of Russian forces in southern Ukraine. 

Bridge partly opens 

Saturday dawned with an explosion that partially collapsed a bridge over the Kerch Strait, an important road and rail link between Russia and Crimea and a vital supply line for Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.  

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast that killed three people and shut down the bridge. Russian transportation authorities said limited road and rail traffic had resumed about 10 hours after the attack. 

Zelenskyy, in a video address, indirectly acknowledged the bridge attack but not its cause. 

“Today was not a bad day and mostly sunny on our state’s territory,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was cloudy in Crimea. Although it was also warm.” 

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge. 

Moscow stopped short of assigning blame, but the speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament accused Ukraine, while downplaying the severity of the damage.  

“Now they have something to be proud of: over 23 years of their management, they didn’t manage to build anything worthy of attention in Crimea, but they’ve managed to damage the surface of the Russian bridge,” Vladimir Konstantinov, chairperson of the State Council of the Republic, wrote on Telegram. 

The official Twitter account of the Ukraine government tweeted, “Sick burn.”  

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Zelenskyy adviser, lauded the attack, tweeting, “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” 

Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram, “The Kiev regime’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure highlights its terrorist nature.” 

The Ukrainian postal service announced it would issue stamps commemorating the blast, saying in a statement that the images would draw on classic film posters to highlight the bridge’s “sacred significance” to Moscow. The postal service previously released a set of stamps commemorating the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian flagship cruiser, by a Ukrainian strike in late May. 

Investigation ongoing

The blast, reportedly a truck bomb, occurred even though all vehicles driving across it undergo automatic checks for explosives by state-of-the-art control systems.  That has drawn a stream of critical comments from Russian war bloggers. 

The truck was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It noted that investigators arrived at his home as part of the inquiry and are looking at the truck’s route and other details. 

The 19-kilometer bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov opened in 2018 and is the longest in Europe. The $3.6 billion project is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea, and it has provided an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. 

While Russia seized areas north of Crimea early on during the invasion and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive to reclaim them. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press and Reuters.  
…

Thousands of chanting, singing people held a solidarity demonstration Saturday in The Hague in support of protesters in Iran who have taken to the streets since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. 

Protesters gathered on a central park in the city waved flags and banners emblazoned with texts including “No to enforced headscarf in Iran,” “Justice can’t wait” and “Stop bloodshed in Iran.” Several lawmakers from parties across the Dutch political spectrum also attended. 

Saturday’s demonstration follows anti-government protests across Iran that were sparked by Amini’s death. 

The Iranian protests have triggered demonstrations of support across Europe, including by women who cut off locks of their hair, following Iranian women’s example. 

Oscar-winning French actors Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche, as well as other French screen and music stars, filmed themselves chopping off locks of their hair in a video posted Wednesday. 

Dutch Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius also cut off a lock of her hair during a live television talk show this week. 

The full extent of demonstrations in Iran and subsequent crackdowns remains unclear. An Associated Press tally of reports in state-run and state-linked media shows there have been at least 1,900 arrests connected to the protests. Demonstrations have been reported in at least 50 Iranian cities, towns and villages. 

State television last suggested at least 41 people had been killed in the demonstrations as of Sept. 24. In the nearly two weeks since, there’s been no update from Iran’s government. Rights activists put the death toll much higher. 
…

Several hundred people on Saturday joined an LGBTQ pride march in Montenegro, held amid strong opposition from the influential Serbian Orthodox Church in the small conservative Balkan country. 

Montenegro’s 10th pride event was dubbed “No more buts,” reflecting demands that more be done to stem hate speech and harassment of LGBTQ community despite huge steps that have been made in the past years. 

“We gathered here for the 10th time to show we are human, (that we are) live beings made of flesh and blood, wishes and dreams, but rejected and ignored, discriminated and trampled upon because of love,” said activist Stasa Bastrica. 

Montenegro is a highly conservative, male-dominated society and initial pride marches here were marred with violence. As the country seeks European Union membership, authorities have backed pride events in recent years and approved same-sex partnerships in 2020. 

On the eve of the march, the influential Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro held a prayer protest Friday against the pride march, saying it jeopardizes traditional values and family. Hundreds attended the church-led protest, including some pro-Serb officials. 

The Serbian church, which also holds significant following in Montenegro, held a similar gathering in Serbia ahead of a pan-European pride event there last month. 

After splitting from Serbia in 2006, Montenegrins have remained divided among those supporting pro-Western policies and those favoring closer ties with fellow-Slavic countries Serbia and Russia. Pro-Western leaders in Montenegro have accused Serbia and its church of seeking to maintain influence and turn Montenegro away from the West. 

Bastrica said the church and other conservative forces in Montenegro have fueled hatred against LGBTQ community by “making us the main enemy of the majority and … insanely blaming us for the disappearance of marriage, family (values) and sometimes natural disasters, and all in the name of God.” 

Another activist, Danijel Kalezic said Friday’s church-led gathering illustrated divisions in Montenegro. He insisted that the LGBTQ community will not give up their demands. 

“We don’t want them (officials) to come here and take photos with us,” Kalezic said. “We want results. No more buts!” 

The Serbian church in Montenegro also led weeks of protest ahead of the 2020 election that toppled long-ruling pro-Western authorities and paved the way for the formation of a pro-Serb government. A former Slavic ally of Russia in the Balkans, Montenegro in 2017 defied Moscow to join NATO. 
…

Seven people have been killed in an explosion at a gas station in County Donegal in Ireland’s northwest, police said on Saturday.

The Garda Siochana police force said eight people had been hospitalized as “the search and recovery for further fatalities continues” at the site in the village of Creeslough.

It said it “can now confirm seven fatalities as a result of this incident — three fatalities were confirmed yesterday (Friday); four fatalities are now confirmed overnight.”

Rescue efforts by Ireland’s emergency services went on through the night after the blast ripped through a petrol station forecourt and a nearby apartment complex.

An aerial photograph taken after the explosion showed the petrol station building destroyed. 

Two two-story residential buildings behind had collapsed, while the facade of a similar adjacent building was blown off.

Resident Kieran Gallagher, whose house is about 150 meters from the scene, said the blast sounded like a “bomb.”

“I was in my house at the time and heard the explosion. Instantly I knew it was something — it was like a bomb going off,” he told the BBC.

Many emergency services vehicles remained at the scene overnight, including fire services from both sides of the border with British-run Northern Ireland.

Gardai (Irish police) and civil defense were also involved, and a coastguard helicopter airlifted some of the injured from Letterkenny University Hospital to the Irish capital, Dublin.

‘Shocked and numbed’

Letterkenny University Hospital, some 24 kilometers from the explosion, was placed on an emergency footing to deal with “multiple injuries”, it said in a statement.

Ireland’s premier Micheal Martin said his “thoughts and prayers are today with those who have lost their lives, and those injured in the devastating explosion.”

“People across this island will be numbed by the same sense of shock and utter devastation as the people of Creeslough at this tragic loss of life,” he said.

Martin thanked members of the emergency services who were working non-stop “in extremely traumatic circumstances.”

Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue, who represents northeast Donegal in the Irish parliament, compared the scenes to events during the decades-long sectarian conflict on the island of Ireland over British rule in Northern Ireland.

“People are shocked and numbed,” McConalogue told Irish broadcaster RTE.

“The scenes from the event are reminiscent of the images from The Troubles years ago, in terms of the scene on the ground and the damage and the debris.”

Creeslough is around 48 kilometers from the border with Northern Ireland and has a population of about 400 people.

The Applegreen service station is on the N56 road, which loops around the northern tip of the Irish republic.

Applegreen tweeted that the news was “devastating”.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the deceased, those who have been injured, and the wider Creeslough community,” said the company.

Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins expressed his “shock” in an official statement.

“This tragedy is a terrible blow to a community that is closely knit and where every loss and injury will be felt by every member of the community and far beyond,” he said.
…

Russia’s defense ministry is coming under criticism from “increasingly diverse actors within the Russian system,” according to an intelligence update posted on Twitter on Saturday by Britain’s defense ministry. The growing criticism is a result, the ministry said, of “continued battlefield setbacks for Russia over the last two weeks.”

Critics of Russia’s military performance in Ukraine include “Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Wagner Group private military company owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, state-approved TV presenters, pop stars, and an increasingly vocal community of ultra-nationalistic military bloggers.”

The British defense ministry said “criticism remains focused at the military high command, rather than senior political leadership, but it does represent a trend of public voicing of dissent against the Russian establishment which is being at least partly tolerated and which will likely be hard to reverse.”

Russia says a truck explosion on the combination rail and highway bridge connecting Crimea to Russia has destroyed part of the roadbed. The blast also caused seven fuel tankers on a train crossing the bridge to catch fire.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the explosion, but Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted a picture of the damaged bridge with a caption reading “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.”

Russia concentrated its attacks in Ukraine on areas it claims to have annexed, including the eastern city Kharkiv and the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram that missile strikes hit the center of Kharkiv early Saturday, according to The Associated Press. He said the explosions sparked fires at several buildings, including a medical institution.

The Ukrainian governor of the Zaporizhzhia region said that Russian forces fired more missiles at the regional capital on Friday and used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones there for the first time.

The death toll from earlier missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 14.

In other Moscow-annexed areas, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported its forces had repelled Ukrainian advances near the city of Lyman and had retaken three villages elsewhere in the eastern Donetsk region. The ministry said Russian forces also had prevented Ukrainian troops from advancing on several villages in the Kherson region.

Communication troubles

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops have reported outages of their Starlink communication devices on the front line that may have prevented troops from liberating territory held by Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and soldiers.

Thousands of Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, were purchased by the U.S. government and crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates, and communicate with each other in areas where there are no other secure networks, the Financial Times reported.

Some of the outages led to a “catastrophic” loss of communication in recent weeks, said a senior Ukrainian government official with direct knowledge of the issue. Many outages were reported in the south, around the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, but also along the front line in eastern Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, the Times said. But later, on Twitter, Musk said, “As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified.”

Ukrainian offensive

Ukrainian forces have liberated a total of 2,434 square kilometers and 96 settlements in the eastern part of the country in their latest offensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Friday.

Zelenskyy also said that in the last week alone, Kyiv’s forces had taken 776 square kilometers and 29 settlements in the eastern region.

As Ukraine’s forces advanced into areas previously held by Russia, officials reported the discovery of mass graves.

Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram on Friday that workers in Lyman, an eastern town recently recaptured by Ukraine, found a mass grave with an unknown number of victims. He said another burial site had also been found in the town with 200 individual graves.

A report by Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry said Friday that 530 bodies of civilians have been found in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region in the past month.

Nuclear worries

Fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has alarmed nuclear energy watchdogs. Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom said Saturday’s shelling caused the plant to lose its connection to external power. In a post on Telegram the company said the backup diesel generators have enough fuel for about 10 days.

An accident there could release 10 times the potentially lethal radiation as the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine 36 years ago, Ukrainian Environmental Protection Minister Ruslan Strilets said Friday.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi will travel to Russia early next week for talks on setting up a protection zone around the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.

U.S. President Joe Biden said at a fundraiser in New York on Thursday night that the risk of Armageddon is the highest it has been since the early 1960s as Russian losses in Ukraine prompt Russian officials to discuss the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told Democratic donors. In October 1962, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were seemingly on the verge of a nuclear conflict after the U.S. deployment of ballistic missiles in Turkey and Italy were countered by the Soviet deployment of similar missiles in Cuba.

Following Biden’s comments, the White House said Friday that the U.S. sees no reason to change its nuclear posture and does not have any indication that Russia is imminently preparing to use nuclear weapons.

“He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously … we take these threats,” from Russia, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Biden’s comments.

EU divide

European Union leaders on Friday agreed to give more financial and military aid to Ukraine, but a full day of talks at a Prague summit did not bring any agreement on whether or how to cap natural gas prices.

EU leaders want to lower natural gas prices before winter sets in, but political discussions on how to go about it are tangled amid differing proposals. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday suggested gas price cap options for the EU leaders to discuss, after France, Italy, Poland and 12 other countries urged Brussels to propose an EU-wide cap to contain inflation.

Other countries are opposed — among them Germany, Europe’s biggest gas buyer, and the Netherlands — and they insist capping prices could cause demand for gas to rise or leave countries struggling to attract supply from global markets.

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

A giant fire sparked by a car bomb has broken out on a key bridge linking Crimea to Russia, which annexed the territory in 2014, Moscow said Saturday, without immediately blaming Ukraine.

The road-and-rail bridge, built on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and inaugurated in 2018, was a key transport link for carrying military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, especially in the south, as well as ferrying troops across.

Spanning the Kerch Strait, it is the only crossing between occupied Crimean territory and Russia.

“Today at 6:07 a.m. (0307 GMT) on the road traffic side of the Crimean bridge … a car bomb exploded, setting fire to seven oil tankers being carried by rail to Crimea,” Russian news agencies cited the national anti-terrorism committee as saying.

The Kremlin spokesperson said Putin had ordered the establishment of a commission to look into the blast, Russian news agencies reported.

The head of the Russian-installed regional parliament in Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov, blamed it on “Ukrainian vandals.”

Russia had maintained the bridge was safe despite the fighting in Ukraine but had threatened Kyiv with reprisals if it was attacked.

If it is established that Ukraine was behind the blast, it is a matter of serious concern for Moscow as the bridge is far from the front line.

There have been several explosions at Russian military installations in the Crimean peninsula.

Ukraine’s recent lightning territorial gains in the east and south have undermined a claim from the Kremlin last week that it annexed Donetsk, neighboring Lugansk and the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

The four territories create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, and together make up around 20% of Ukraine.
…

As concerns grow of a possible nuclear conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, there are hopes China could defuse the crisis.

But Russia’s most influential ally may not have the desire or the ability to help, according to analysts.

“If any power has influence over Putin, it is China,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS University of London’s China Institute.

The problem, according to Tsang, is that “foreign policy under [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] is guided by the China-first — not the world first — principle,” meaning Beijing will be weighing the advantages or disadvantages of getting involved.

China is the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council that has pledged to not be the first to use nuclear weapons. It is also Russia’s biggest trade partner and arguably the country with the most political influence over Moscow.

But some analysts say Beijing has little incentive to help Washington defuse the crisis because of its anger over the Biden administration’s handling of U.S.-China relations, especially the Taiwan issue. They say U.S. weapons sales to the island that China hopes to reunify with one day, along with recent visits by high-level U.S. officials, are seen as emboldening Taiwan’s pro-independence ruling party.

“That is a critical factor, because Beijing has to think: ‘What am I doing this for, given the U.S. seems relentless in introducing measures every other day to harm Chinese interests, from trade to tech, from the Taiwan issue to the Indo-Pacific,’” said Yuan Jingdong, a professor specializing in Chinese foreign policy at the University of Sydney.

And even if it wanted to, China may lack the ability to persuade Putin to end the war, some experts told VOA.

“China’s influence in the Ukraine war is very limited,” said Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Studies at eastern China’s Nanjing University.

Given that the war is going strongly against Putin, urging him to end it now would amount to asking him to accept defeat, Zhu said.

“Can China convince him? Convince him to die a political death? He won’t listen,” said Zhu.

Yuan agreed: “Putin will simply say ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’ He has to think about something more serious, including his very survival.”

China has publicly called for negotiations and a peaceful resolution.

At a meeting with Ukraine’s foreign minister on the sidelines of a U.N. Security Council session in New York last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said: “As a responsible major country and a permanent member state of the U.N. Security Council, China has always been committed to dialogue for peace, never standing on the sidelines, nor pouring oil on the flame, still less seeking selfish gains. We always stand on the side of peace and will continue to play a constructive role.”

Although Beijing’s stance on the war has been ambiguous — China has not condemned the Russian invasion and it, alongside Brazil, Gabon and India, recently abstained from a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Moscow-backed referendums in eastern Ukraine — Beijing has stopped short of providing Russia with political and military backing.

At a recent meeting between Putin and Xi, Putin revealed China had questions and concerns about the war.

Analysts say it’s possible Xi may have suggested ways of de-escalation in private conversations with Putin, and others speculate that China may not believe a nuclear crisis is imminent.

It’s possible that China “doesn’t think Putin will use nuclear weapons because Putin is not suicidal,” Zhu said. “Putin’s personal political career will suffer a huge impact, and Russia will be downgraded into some kind of failed state.”

Simon Chen, a political science professor at National Taiwan University, said the biggest worry for Beijing is Putin losing political power due to a total defeat in the war.

“It could hurt Putin’s chances of securing another term in office in the presidential election in 2024 and boost the chances of opposition democratic parties in Russia, which are close to the U.S.,” Chen said. “This is not beneficial to China and something China really doesn’t want to see. That’s why Beijing wants both sides to negotiate an end to the war.”

Moscow losing the war could weaken China’s strongest political ally against the U.S., said Yuan.

“Russia’s complete defeat would leave China [alone] against the U.S. and its European and Asian allies and partners and will make it very difficult for China to achieve what it has set out to do,” Yuan said.

Tsang of SOAS argued that it may be in China’s interest to play a much stronger mediating role, even if top Chinese officials might not see that as beneficial.

“If China should successfully put an end to the war, it will emerge as a leading global peace maker and will do China’s global image a ton of good, and the end of the war will also bring in economic benefits,” said Tsang. “The problem is that Xi can’t see it, and no one in the Chinese government dares to tell him.”

Working to end the Ukraine conflict could also help China achieve long-term geopolitical objectives and help China mend its image in other ways, analysts say.

Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, says the Ukraine conflict has been used by Taiwan to allege that China will soon invade the island. The U.S. government, however, has said there’s no evidence Beijing is preparing for an invasion.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also feeding into European suspicions that Beijing’s ambitious transcontinental trade route—the Belt and Road Initiative—cloaks imperial intentions and debt traps for countries to fall into, a position that Beijing consistently denies.

China, however, may consider an image enhancement as having little value.

“Improving image will not solve China’s Taiwan problem. It may not even lead to the U.S. taking a less forceful approach toward Taiwan, so one might say that positive incentive is needed to nudge China’s positions,” said Sun Yun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

Ultimately, Beijing’s action or inaction on the Ukraine war appears to be based on its relations with Washington.

Seeking Chinese help with Russia while “fanning the flames” over Taiwan “doesn’t work,” said Chinese analyst Zhu, reflecting Beijing’s view. “If you want China to help, why do you treat China the way you do?” 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday designed to allay European concerns that U.S. intelligence agencies are illegally spying on them. It promises strengthened safeguards against data collection abuses and creates a forum for legal challenges. 

The order builds on a preliminary agreement Biden announced in March with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a bid to end a yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens’ data that tech companies store in the U.S. However, the European privacy campaigner who triggered the battle wasn’t satisfied that it resolved core issues and warned of more legal wrangling. 

The reworked Privacy Shield “includes a robust commitment to strengthen the privacy and civil liberties safeguards for signals intelligence, which should ensure the privacy of EU personal data,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters. 

Means of redress

“It also requires the establishment of a multilayer redress mechanism with independent and binding authority for EU individuals to seek redress if they believe they are unlawfully targeted by U.S. intelligence activities,” she added. 

Washington and Brussels have long been at odds over the friction between the European Union’s stringent data privacy rules and the comparatively lax regime in the U.S., which lacks a federal privacy law. That has created uncertainty for tech giants including Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta, raising the prospect that U.S. tech firms might need to keep European data out of the U.S. 

Industry groups largely welcomed Biden’s order but European consumer rights and privacy campaigners, including activist Max Schrems, whose complaint kicked off the legal battle a decade earlier, were skeptical about whether it goes far enough and could end up in the bloc’s top court again. 

Friday’s order narrows the scope of intelligence gathering — regardless of a target’s nationality — to “validated intelligence priorities,” fortifies the mandate of the Civil Liberties Protection Officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and directs the attorney general to establish an independent court to review related activities. 

Europeans can petition that Data Protection Review Court, which is to be composed of judges appointed from outside the U.S. government. 

The next step: Raimondo’s office was to send a series of letters to the 27-member EU that its officials can assess as the basis of a new framework. 

Improvements acknowledged

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, said the framework has “significant improvements” over the original Privacy Shield and it would now work on adopting a final decision clearing the way for data to flow freely between EU and U.S. companies certified under the framework. 

Raimondo said the new commitments would address European Union legal concerns covering personal data transfers to the U.S. as well as corporate contracts. A revived framework “will enable the continued flow of data that underpins more than $1 trillion in cross-border trade and investment every year,” Raimondo said. 

Twice, in 2015 and again in 2020, the European Union’s top court struck down data privacy framework agreements between Washington and Brussels. The first legal challenge was filed by Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Schrems, who was concerned about how Facebook handled his data in light of 2013 revelations about U.S. government cyber-snooping from former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. 

European consumer group BEUC said despite the extra safeguards, fundamental differences between American and European privacy and data protection standards are too wide to bridge. 

“However much the U.S. authorities try to paper over the cracks of the original Privacy Shield, the reality is that the EU and U.S. still have a different approach to data protection, which cannot be canceled out by an executive order,” said the group’s deputy director general, Ursula Pachl. “The moment EU citizens’ data travels across the Atlantic, it will not be afforded similar protections as in the EU.” 

Schrems said while his Vienna-based group, NOYB, would need time to study the order, his initial reading is that it “seems to fail” on some key requirements, including for surveillance to be necessary and proportionate under the EU’s Charter of Fundamental rights to avoid indiscriminate mass data collection. 

While the U.S. included those two words, Schrems said the two sides don’t seem to have agreed they have the same legal meaning. 

If it did, “the U.S. would have to fundamentally limit its mass surveillance systems to comply with the EU understanding of ‘proportionate’ surveillance,” Schrems said. 
…

Russia concentrated its attacks Friday on the area around Zaporizhzhia, one of the four areas of eastern Ukraine that it claims to have annexed.

The Ukrainian governor of the Zaporizhzhia region said that Russian forces had fired more missiles at the regional capital on Friday and had used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones there for the first time.

The death toll from earlier missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city of Zaporizhzhia rose to 12.

In other Moscow-annexed areas, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported its forces had repelled Ukrainian advances near the city of Lyman and had retaken three villages elsewhere in the eastern Donetsk region. The ministry said Russian forces also had prevented Ukrainian troops from advancing on several villages in the Kherson region.

Communication troubles

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops have reported outages of their Starlink communication devices on the front line that may have prevented troops from liberating territory held by Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and soldiers.

Thousands of Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, were purchased by the U.S. government and crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates and communicate with each other in areas where there are no other secure networks, the Financial Times reported.

Some of the outages led to a “catastrophic” loss of communication in recent weeks, said a senior Ukrainian government official with direct knowledge of the issue. Many outages were reported in the south, around the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, but also along the front line in eastern Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, the Times said. But later, on Twitter, Musk said, “As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified.”

Ukrainian claim successes

Ukrainian forces have liberated 2,434 square kilometers and 96 settlements in the eastern part of the country in their latest offensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Friday. 

Zelenskyy also said that in the last week alone, Kyiv’s forces had taken 776 square kilometers and 29 settlements in the eastern region. On Thursday, he said more than 500 square kilometers had been recaptured in the south.

Nuclear worries

Fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has alarmed nuclear energy watchdogs. An accident there could release 10 times the potentially lethal radiation as the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine 36 years ago, Ukrainian Environmental Protection Minister Ruslan Strilets said Friday.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi will travel to Russia early next week for talks on setting up a protection zone around the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.

President Joe Biden said Thursday night at a fundraiser in New York that the risk of Armageddon was at its highest point since the early 1960s as losses in Ukraine prompt Russian officials to discuss the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since [U.S. President John F.] Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said. In October 1962, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were seemingly on the verge of a nuclear conflict after the U.S. deployment of ballistic missiles in Turkey and Italy were countered by the Soviet deployment of similar missiles in Cuba.

Speaking to Democratic donors, Biden said he and U.S. officials were still “trying to figure out [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s offramp” in Ukraine.

Following Biden’s comments, the White House said Friday that the U.S. saw no reason to change its nuclear posture and did not have any indication that Russia was imminently preparing to use nuclear weapons.

“He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously … we take these threats” from Russia, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Biden’s comments.

The president reiterated the U.S. would continue to support Ukraine.

EU divide

European Union leaders on Friday agreed to give more financial and military aid to Ukraine, but a full day of talks at a Prague summit did not bring any agreement on whether or how to cap natural gas prices.

EU leaders want to lower natural gas prices before winter sets in, but political discussions on how to go about it are tangled amid differing proposals. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday suggested gas price cap options for the EU leaders to discuss, after France, Italy, Poland and 12 other countries urged Brussels to propose an EU-wide cap to contain inflation.

Other countries are opposed, including Germany, Europe’s biggest gas buyer, and the Netherlands. They insist capping prices could cause demand for gas to rise or leave countries struggling to attract supply from global markets.

Captured Russian tanks

Britain’s defense ministry said in an intelligence update posted on Twitter Friday that “repurposed, captured Russian equipment makes up a large proportion of Ukraine’s military hardware. Ukraine has likely captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and around 650 other armored vehicles since the invasion. Over half of Ukraine’s currently fielded tank fleet potentially consists of captured vehicles.”

The update added that “the failure of Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering highlights their poor state of training and low levels of battle discipline. With Russian formations under severe strain in several sectors and increasingly demoralized troops, Russia will likely continue to lose heavy weaponry.”

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

Bulgaria does not supply weapons to Ukraine and is not actively supporting the war-torn country on diplomatic or legal fronts. It is, however, assisting Ukrainian refugees. Tatiana Vorozhko reports from its capital, Sofia. VOA footage by Svitlana Koval. Video editing by Oleksii Osyka and Anna Rice.
…

The U.N. Human Rights Council has appointed a special rapporteur to monitor human rights in Russia. The resolution was adopted on a vote of 17 in favor, 6 against, and 24 abstentions.  

The debate on the initiative began just as a Belarusian activist and two humanitarian organizations based in Ukraine and Russia were announced as co-winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.   

The significance was not lost on those attending the council session.  

Before the voting began, many delegates expressed concern about the worsening human rights situation in Russia. They deplored the severe restrictions on people’s fundamental rights to freedoms of expression and assembly.   

The U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Council, Michele Taylor, said repressive tactics and attacks against dissenting voices have significantly increased since Russia launched its war against Ukraine. She said the extensive shrinking of civic space has discouraged Russians from actively participating in public life.  

“These unrelenting domestic attacks on human rights enable Russia’s war on Ukraine and its ongoing violations of the U.N. charter,” Taylor said. “However, the Russian authorities’ long-running and worsening repression within Russia more than justifies the creation of a special rapporteur. We will vote yes on this resolution and urge others to do so as well.”   

Many other countries joined in this chorus of support. Only Venezuela, Cuba and China spoke out in defense of Russia’s position.   

The Russian ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, lashed out at the council, saying it has stopped being a forum for dialogue to resolve general problems of human rights. Instead, he said the council has become a tool for Western countries to attain their political goals. He spoke through an interpreter. 

“This is a further step in the Western strategy towards transforming the HRC [Human Rights Council] and the U.N. human rights system as a whole into a tool to serve the interests of one group of countries … as after all that is the final aim of this despicable document. The accusations it contains could be directed just as successfully against virtually all of the states which are co-sponsors of this draft,” Gatilov said.

The resolution cites many concerns, including mass arrests and detentions, and targeted harassment of journalists, politicians, human rights defenders, and other activists. It criticizes the forced shutdowns of civil society organizations, including the Russian human rights organization Memorial, one of this year’s Nobel peace laureates. 

The resolution calls on Russian authorities to cooperate fully with the Special Rapporteur who will serve for a period of one year. 

 
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Friday held talks by phone with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to deepen relations. The talks are seen as likely to add to growing concerns among some of Turkey’s NATO partners over its relationship with Moscow and where its loyalties lie. 

The phone call was announced in a press statement by Erdogan’s office. 

It said the Turkish president reiterated his willingness to work toward a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. The conversation came after Erdogan’s three face-to-face meetings with Putin in the past few months.

The Turkish leader’s efforts to deepen ties, including his refusal to enforce Western sanctions against Russia, have spurred growing questions about Turkey’s commitment to its Western partners and NATO.

But Turkish presidential adviser Mesut Casin, who is also a professor at Istanbul’s Yeditepe University, said such talks are normal between neighbors. 

“Turkey is a NATO member and will continue to be so and this is very critical for Turkey,” he said. “The NATO alliance is one thing and Turkey’s relation with Russia is something else. They need to be seen as two separate things. Russia is our neighbor and we need maintain good ties. Turkey’s neutrality policy over Ukraine is to the benefit of NATO.”

Ankara insists it also maintains close ties with Ukraine, to which it continues to supply military hardware, including drones. Such contacts with Moscow and Kyiv, Erdogan claims, allowed him to successfully assist the United Nations in brokering a deal to enable Russian-blockaded Ukrainian grain to reach world markets. That deal comes up for renewal in November.

But Western concerns, especially over deepening Turkish-Russian financial ties, are growing. Under the threat of U.S. secondary sanctions, Turkish banks withdrew from Russia’s Mir payment system last month. Moscow was using the system to circumvent a ban on Russian use of international credit cards. But analysts say Ankara retains leverage over its Western allies, with Turkey’s permission required to allow Sweden and Finland to join NATO. On Thursday, Erdogan renewed his threat Thursday to block Sweden’s bid. 

“As long as terrorist organizations demonstrate on Swedish streets and terrorists are present in their parliament, our approach to the issue will not be positive,” the Turkish leader told reporters.

Erdogan accuses Stockholm of offering sanctuary to Kurdish separatists fighting the Turkish state and an organization that Ankara blames for carrying out the failed 2016 military coup. Sweden denies the charges. But some observers say Turkey’s stance will likely only add to questions on whether Ankara is doing Moscow’s bidding.

Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting scholar with the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said the West will need to get used to a more assertive Turkey.

“The dynamics have changed,” she said. “Turkey no longer feels a strong and firm member of the Western camp or NATO alliance. It is still NATO, but obviously also interested in having alternatives. And Turkey is also a whole lot more self-confident than it used to be.”  

With Turkey geographically close to Russia, Ukraine, and other hotspots like Iran and Syria, observers say Erdogan is aware of his country’s strategic importance and Western allies’ need for its continued cooperation.
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Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing in a small boat on a remote Alaska island in the Bering Sea, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday.

Karina Borger, a spokesperson for the Alaska Republican senator, said in an email that the office has been in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that “the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service.”

Thousands of Russian men have fled since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization to bolster Russian forces in Ukraine. While Putin said the move was aimed at calling up about 300,000 men with past military service, many Russians fear it will be broader.

Spokespersons with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection referred a reporter’s questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security public affairs office, which provided little information Thursday. The office, in a statement, said the people “were transported to Anchorage for inspection, which includes a screening and vetting process, and then subsequently processed in accordance with applicable U.S. immigration laws under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

The agency said the two Russians arrived Tuesday on a small boat. It did not provide details on where they came from, their journey or the asylum request. It was not immediately clear what kind of boat they were on.

Alaska’s senators, Republicans Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, on Thursday said the two Russians landed at a beach near the town of Gambell, an isolated Alaska Native community of about 600 people on St. Lawrence Island. Sullivan said he was alerted to the matter by a “senior community leader from the Bering Strait region” on Tuesday morning.

Gambell is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the western Alaska hub community of Nome and about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Chukotka Peninsula, Siberia, according to a community profile on a state website. The remote, 100-mile (161-kilometer) long island, which includes Savoonga, a community of about 800 people, receives flight services from a regional air carrier. Residents rely heavily on a subsistence way of life, harvesting from the sea fish, whales and other marine life.

A person who responded to an email address listed for Gambell directed questions to federal authorities. A message seeking comment also was sent to the Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco.

Sullivan, in a statement, said he has encouraged federal authorities to have a plan in place in case “more Russians flee to Bering Strait communities in Alaska.”

“This incident makes two things clear: First, the Russian people don’t want to fight Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” Sullivan said. “Second, given Alaska’s proximity to Russia, our state has a vital role to play in securing America’s national security.”

Murkowski said the situation underscored “the need for a stronger security posture in America’s Arctic.”

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday, as initial details of the situation were emerging, said he did not expect a continual stream or “flotilla” of people traversing the same route. He also warned that travel in the region could be dangerous as a fall storm packing strong winds was expected.

It is unusual for someone to take this route to try to get into the U.S.

U.S. authorities in August stopped Russians without legal status 42 times who tried to enter the U.S. from Canada. That was up from 15 times in July and nine times in August 2021.

Russians more commonly try to enter the U.S. through Mexico, which does not require visas. Russians typically fly from Moscow to Cancun or Mexico City, entering Mexico as tourists before getting a connecting a flight to the U.S. border. Earlier this year, U.S. authorities contended with a spate of Russians who hoped to claim asylum if they reached an inspection booth at an official crossing.

Some trace the spike to before Russia invaded Ukraine, attributing it to the imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last year.
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A new COVID-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of available vaccines will likely limit booster uptake.

Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer Omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of Omicron are being tracked by scientists, World Health Organization officials said this week.

WHO data released late on Wednesday showed that cases in the European Union (EU) reached 1.5 million last week, up 8% from the prior week, despite a dramatic fall in testing. Globally, case numbers continue to decline.

Hospitalization numbers across many countries in the 27-nation bloc, as well as Britain, have gone up in recent weeks.

In the week ended Oct 4, COVID-19 hospital admissions with symptoms jumped nearly 32% in Italy, while intensive care admissions rose about 21%, compared to the week before, according to data compiled by independent scientific foundation Gimbe.

Over the same week, COVID hospitalizations in Britain saw a 45% increase versus the week earlier.

Omicron-adapted vaccines have launched in Europe as of September, with two types of shots addressing the BA.1 as well as the BA.4/5 subvariants made available alongside existing first-generation vaccines. In Britain, only the BA.1-tailored shots have been given the green light.

European and British officials have endorsed the latest boosters only for a select groups of people, including the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

Complicating matters further is the “choice” of vaccine as a booster, which will likely add to confusion, public health experts said.

But willingness to get yet another shot, which could be a fourth or fifth for some, is wearing thin.

“For those who may be less concerned about their risk, the messaging that it is all over coupled with the lack of any major publicity campaign is likely to reduce uptake,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

False sense of security

“So on balance I fear that uptake will be quite a bit lower.”

“Another confounder is that quite a high proportion of the population might have also had a COVID episode in recent months,” said Penny Ward, visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London.

Some may erroneously feel that having had a complete primary course and then having fallen ill with COVID means they will remain immune, she added.

Since Sept. 5, when the roll-out of new vaccines began in the European Union, about 40 million vaccine doses produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have been delivered to member states, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

However, weekly vaccine doses administered in the EU were only between 1 million and 1.4 million during September, compared with 6-10 million per week during the year-earlier period, ECDC data showed.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to uptake is the perception that the pandemic is over, creating a false sense of security.

“There must be some complacency in that life seems to have gone back to normal – at least with regards COVID and people now have other financial and war-related worries,” said Adam Finn, chair of ETAGE, an expert group advising the WHO on vaccine preventable diseases in Europe.

He added that some lawmakers, too, were dropping the ball.

Italy’s Gimbe science foundation said the government, soon to be replaced after an election, was ill prepared for the autumn-winter season, and highlighted that a publication on the government’s management of the pandemic had been blocked.

The health ministry declined to comment.

Meanwhile, British officials last week warned that renewed circulation of flu and a resurgence in COVID-19 could pile pressure on the already stretched National Health Service (NHS).
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This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three recipients: Ales Bialiatski, one of the initiators of the democracy movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s; and two human rights groups – Memorial, a Russian organization, and the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian group.

Last year’s Peace Prize was awarded to Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov, a Russian. The Nobel Committee said the two received the award “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

The award is accompanied by a nearly $1 million prize and an 18-karat gold medal.

Muratov sold his Noble medal to benefit Ukrainian children displaced by the war. An anonymous philanthropist bought the gold disc for $103.5 million.

Other winners of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize have included: Martin Luther King Jr., The Red Cross, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Dag Hammarskjold, and Barack Obama.

No prize was awarded during World War II, from 1940-45.
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In recent days, Ukraine has seized control of large areas in the east and south of the country from invading Russian forces. With the Kremlin troops’ retreat, the war could be entering a critical new phase, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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