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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Such a role has served Moscow well amidst Ukraine, as both countries have refrained from condemning Russian actions,” Panda said. 
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Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, hospital officials in Moscow said.

Below are some reactions from around the world:

Russian President Vladimir Putin: He expressed “his deepest condolences,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax news agency. “Tomorrow he will send a telegram of condolences to his family and friends.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres: “I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev, a one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history. He did more than any other individual to bring about the peaceful end of the Cold War.

“On behalf of the United Nations, I extend my heartfelt condolences to Mikhail Gorbachev’s family and to the people and government of the Russian Federation.

“The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “Mikhail Gorbachev was a trusted and respected leader. He played a crucial role to end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain. It opened the way for a free Europe. … This legacy is one we will not forget.”

Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III: “History will remember Mikhail Gorbachev as a giant who steered his great nation towards democracy. He played the critical role in a peaceful conclusion of the Cold War by his decision against using force to hold the empire together. … The free world misses him greatly.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “I always admired the courage & integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. … In a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.”

The Reagan Foundation and Institute: “The Reagan Foundation and Institute mourns the loss of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who once was a political adversary of Ronald Reagan’s who ended up becoming a friend. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Gorbachev family and the people of Russia.”
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Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the demise of the Soviet Union and helped end decades of Cold War fear, earning a Nobel Peace Prize and the lasting enmity of millions of Russians bitter about the chaos unleashed by the collapse of the world’s largest country, has died at age 91.

The Central Clinical Hospital on the outskirts of Moscow told the state news agency Tass that Gorbachev died Tuesday night “after a serious and prolonged illness.”

Born in a rural corner of Russia less than 15 years after the Bolshevik Revolution to parents whose families had been peasants, Gorbachev became one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, gathering global accolades for his role in reducing the threat of a nuclear apocalypse and in freeing millions of people from Soviet oppression in his country and beyond.

Just as notably, he was a target of the scorn of millions of Soviets who blamed him for the life-changing economic and social upheaval that accompanied the country’s collapse and for the loss of a mighty empire that spanned 11 time zones.

This was Gorbachev’s paradox: loved and loathed for a process that he set in motion and whose ultimate result was foreseen by few. It was a result that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who rose to power less than a decade after Gorbachev resigned and remains in the Kremlin today, once called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

Gorbachev made clear he never meant to bring down the country, repeating almost as a mantra that “the union could have been preserved.”

But despite occasional reversals, he ultimately sided with the forces of change that he helped unleash. And in retrospect, a dozen years after the Soviet Union was done, Gorbachev insisted that those momentous changes were the result of a conscious and very personal decision.

“Other people could have [come into office] and they might have done nothing to put the country on the road to humane, free and democratic development,” he said in an interview with RFE/RL in 2003.

Humble beginnings

In any case, Gorbachev will rank alongside such towering 20th-century figures as Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong — leaders who changed the fate of nations and had a profound impact on the lives of millions of people.

Born on March 2, 1931, into a poor family in Privolnoye, a village in southern Russia’s Stavropol region, Gorbachev grew up amid the immense upheavals that roiled the Soviet Union in the first two decades of his life: collectivization, Stalin’s “Great Terror,” and the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is best known within Russia.

At about age 21, he joined the Communist Party while studying law at Moscow State University in 1952.

After marrying classmate Raisa Titorenko, Gorbachev returned to southern Russia, where he began to climb the ladder of the regional Communist bureaucracy, specializing in agriculture.

By 1970, he had risen to the top of the party hierarchy in Stavropol.

‘The state is there to serve the people’

In 1980, Gorbachev was appointed a full member of the Communist Party’s Politburo in Moscow.

To the surprise of many Kremlin watchers and Soviet citizens, he almost immediately began calling for reform, espousing twin doctrines that would become bywords for his time: “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring).

“The state is there to serve the people,” he said. “The people are not there to serve the state.”

That, according to Gorbachev, would be the new guiding principle.

Gorbachev and Raisa brought new style to the Kremlin, traveling around the USSR and abroad, plunging into crowds and leading impromptu discussions on the street.

A relaxation of economic regulations brought the rebirth of small businesses, cafes and restaurants for the first time since Lenin’s New Economic Policy in the 1920s. A partial lifting of censorship led to a renaissance in cultural life. Literary journals published previously banned authors, and theaters staged ever-more daring productions.

The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986 forced a reluctant leadership to allow even greater freedom of expression and information. The government began to release political prisoners, most famously Andrei Sakharov, the physicist who designed nuclear weapons and later campaigned against them, resulting in his internal exile from 1980 to 1986.

Gorbachev called for an end to the arms race, and he improved relations with Washington, helping remove thousands of warheads that threatened Europe with destruction by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1987. In 1989, he ended the Soviet war in Afghanistan, begun 10 years earlier under Leonid Brezhnev.

End of an empire

But all was not well in the empire. By 1989, what had begun as an effort to reform the Soviet Union’s economy and foreign policy had precipitated a crisis in industry and encouraged cries for self-determination that would soon engulf the entire region.

Gorbachev vastly underestimated the degree of economic decay. Shortages of basic household goods and foodstuffs were growing, and conservatives within the Communist Party grew ever-more strident in their criticism of his leadership.

He had also not counted on the fact that greater freedom would fan the forces of nationalism.

In October 1989, during a visit to East Berlin to mark the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the German Democratic Republic, Gorbachev signaled that Moscow would not try to turn back the clock.

A month later, the Berlin Wall fell.

“We have given up pretending to have a monopoly on truth,” Gorbachev said a few weeks after that, in a speech in Rome a day before a historic meeting with Pope John Paul II. “We no longer think that those who don’t agree with us are enemies.”

‘Freedom of choice’

In 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to reducing East-West tensions, but he had precious little time to reflect on his achievement. While feted across Europe and the rest of the world, he continued to confront growing unrest at home.

On August 4, 1991, Gorbachev left with his family for his annual vacation in Crimea on the Black Sea, intending to complete a new version of a union treaty aimed to keep the USSR together as centrifugal force was pulling it apart.

On August 18, his chief of staff, accompanied by a group of senior government officials, arrived at the presidential dacha at Foros. They demanded that Gorbachev sign a decree declaring a state of emergency or resign. Gorbachev refused to do either. The officials confiscated the codes needed to launch the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons. Gorbachev and his family were, in effect, under house arrest.

State television announced the imposition of a state of emergency “starting at 1600 Moscow time, on August 19, 1991,” claiming it was in response “to demands by broad sections of the population for the most decisive measures to prevent society from sliding toward a national catastrophe.”

Three days later, the coup collapsed, thanks to the incompetence of the plotters and the resistance demonstrated by Russia’s nascent political leader, Boris Yeltsin, and crowds of citizens who came out into the streets to oppose the attempted takeover.

‘A different direction’

In the months that followed, more republics declared independence from Moscow. On December 8, Yeltsin, along with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine, signed accords proclaiming the Soviet Union’s end and announcing the creation of a new entity called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Gorbachev stayed on in the Kremlin for a few more weeks, but power had slipped from his hands. On December 25, he resigned — stepping down as the leader of a country that had effectively ceased to exist.

In 1991, he founded The Gorbachev Foundation in an effort to maintain a voice in Russian affairs. In 1996, he ran for president but came in a distant seventh in a field of 10, with 0.5% of the vote. Later, he became a sometime critic of Putin, to whom Yeltsin handed the presidency on the last day of 1999.

Gorbachev was an approving voice for some of Putin’s most controversial actions on the international stage, including Moscow’s 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Suggesting he viewed the annexation in terms of Russia’s national interests, he told the media he would have acted “the same way” had he had the choice.

However, he continued to criticize many of Putin’s repressive domestic policies and opposed Putin’s decision to return to the presidency in 2012, when Dmitry Medvedev turned out to have been a placeholder after four years of hinting at reform. In 2013, Gorbachev commented that “politics is increasingly turning into imitation democracy.”

Gorbachev was also harshly critical of the United States, largely blaming Washington for poor ties by charging that it failed to develop good relations with Russia after the Soviet collapse.

In positions echoed by or echoing Putin’s, he accused the United States of relishing its status as the world’s sole superpower and lambasted the eastward expansion of NATO. He opposed NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which he had negotiated and signed with Reagan in 1987, as “not the work of a great mind.”

The ailing Gorbachev, who turned 91 a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, had made few public comments, about the war in Ukraine or anything else.

RFE/RL’s Jeremy Bransten contributed to this report.
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Russian news agencies are reporting that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has died at 91.

The Tass, RIA Novosti and Interfax agencies cited the Central Clinical Hospital.

Gorbachev’s office said earlier that he was undergoing treatment at the hospital.
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While China’s strategic partnership with Russia “without limits” has been widely reported since the start of the war in Ukraine, much less known is the strategic partnership Ukraine and China forged in 2011. Now, that partnership is being questioned by a key lawmaker in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this month sounded a soft tone on China, casting Beijing’s role in the conflict as “neutral” and inviting Chinese government and business to play an active role in his country’s rebuilding.

Back in June 2011, then-Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Ukraine after stopping in Moscow. China and Ukraine agreed to boost cooperation in energy, technology, agriculture and trade. The two sides also upgraded their ties to a “strategic partnership.”

China is now Ukraine’s number one trading partner. While Ukraine figures less prominently in China’s overall trading, Beijing has been acquiring items of importance from Ukraine, including military equipment and critical minerals, such as those produced only in Mariupol and Odesa.

But a key lawmaker in Kyiv says the bilateral relationship should not be based only on those factors, given China’s officially declared “strategic partnership with Russia with no limit,” while Moscow has engaged in an all-out war on Ukraine.

Beijing “has failed this partnership,” Oleksandr Merezhko told VOA in a written interview from Kyiv. 

“In my personal view, Ukraine should seriously reconsider [its] strategic partnership with [the People’s Republic of China],” he said. “In fact, it’s totally absurd to have a strategic partnership with a country which: 1) has strategic partnership without limits with Russia (aggressor state committing genocide against Ukrainian nation); 2) amplifies Russian propaganda; 3) helps Russia to circumvent Western sanctions; 4) holds joint military drills with Russia,” Merezhko wrote.

“I don’t think that strategic partner of the aggressor state can be simultaneously our strategic partner. It makes no sense,” he added. 

Zelenskyy sounded a more conciliatory note toward Beijing during a recent online town hall with college students from Australia and during an on-camera interview with the South China Morning Post, published in Hong Kong but owned since 2016 by the mainland-based Alibaba Group.

China, Zelenskyy said, on both occasions, has shown “neutrality” in his country’s conflict with Russia. Zelenskyy underscored that “I really wanted the relationship with China be reinforced and developed every year” in a video clip put out by the South China Morning Post on August 3. He also highlighted China’s role in Ukraine’s reconstruction. 

“I would like China to participate in the rebuilding of all Ukraine,” he said, noting Ukraine’s rebuilding is going to be a huge undertaking. “I would like China and the Chinese business to join in the rebuilding process, and the [Chinese] state to join this,” Zelenskyy said in the video clip.

The largest international conference on Ukraine’s rebuilding to date has been the Lugano Conference held in July in Switzerland. China was not seen in the official “family photo” taken at the conference, which featured top officials from more than 20 democratic nations that have provided large amounts of aid to Ukraine.

Asked to comment on Zelenskyy’s recently published remarks, Merezhko said: “In democratic society, members of parliament might have a different point of view on some issues of parliamentary diplomacy than executive power.”

“I also believe that in economic matters, Ukraine should more rely upon Western business rather than Chinese business,” he added. 

According to recent reports, China’s purchases of Russian oil and gas products have almost doubled from a year ago; Chinese spending on Russian energy in July alone reached $7.2 billion, while China’s economy is showing significant signs of slowing.

Commenting on social media, Merezhko wrote that “Russia’s allies bear moral and political responsibility for its crimes against peace and global security” and “the West should introduce secondary sanctions against those Russia’s allies.”

Trade and economics weren’t the only factors Merezhko had in mind when he called into question his country’s decade-old “strategic partnership” with Beijing. Following recently published investigative reports that Chinese authorities have been putting dissidents in psychiatric hospitals and subjecting them to torture, Merezhko said such practices bring to mind “the same cruel totalitarian practices which were used by the Soviet repressive regime.”

“I don’t think such a country can be a strategic partner of any democratic country, including Ukraine,” he concluded.

Recently, Merezhko and more than a dozen fellow parliamentarians from three Ukrainian political parties formed a Taiwan friendship group. “Democracies should support each other to survive and win,” he wrote on Twitter.
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The Vatican sought on Tuesday to clarify the pope’s position on Ukraine, after the pontiff’s comment on the death of a Russian ultranationalist’s daughter ruffled feathers in Kyiv.

“The Holy Father’s words on this dramatic issue are to be read as a voice raised in defense of human life and the values associated with it, and not as political positions,” the Vatican said in a statement.

It stressed that the war in Ukraine had been “initiated by the Russian Federation” and that Pope Francis had been “clear and unequivocal in condemning it as morally unjust, unacceptable, barbaric, senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious.”

Speaking on Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24, the pope had said of the conflict: “So many innocents… are paying for madness.”

He cited as one example Daria Dugina — the daughter of a Russian ultranationalist ally of President Vladimir Putin’s — who was killed when a bomb exploded under her car.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, Andriy Yurash, responded that the pope should not have put “aggressor and victim” in the same category and the Vatican’s envoy to Kyiv was summoned to the foreign ministry to explain.

Pope Francis, who has repeatedly condemned the conflict, has, on several occasions, been criticized in some quarters for not painting the war in black and white terms, and for leaving the door open to discussions with Moscow.

“Someone may say to me at this point: but you are pro Putin! No, I am not,” the pope stressed in an interview published in June by Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica.

“I am simply against reducing complexity to… good guys and bad guys, without reasoning about roots and interests, which are very complex.”

In July, the head of the Roman Catholic Church repeated his wish to visit Ukraine.

The 85-year-old pontiff is due to attend a congress of religious leaders in Kazakhstan in mid-September.

Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and a fervent supporter of both Putin and his war in Ukraine, had been due to attend the congress but has now said he will not be going.
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Russian prosecutors at the trial of a former journalist asked the court Tuesday to hand him a 24-year prison sentence on treason charges.

Ivan Safronov who worked as a journalist for a decade before becoming an adviser to the head of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, has been in custody since his July 2020 arrest in Moscow. He has rejected the charges of passing military secrets to Czech intelligence and insisted on his innocence. 

Safronov’s case reflects the challenges faced by Russian journalists, which have grown even tougher amid Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.

Safronov, who covered military and security issues for the leading Russian business daily Kommersant before joining Roscosmos, stated that he had collected all the information from open sources in the course of his work and did nothing illegal. He has argued that the investigators have failed to spell out the treason charges and explain what secrets he had allegedly revealed.

Many Russian journalists and human rights activists have pushed for Safronov’s release, and some have alleged that the authorities may have wanted to take revenge for his reporting that exposed Russian military incidents and shady arms deals.

Roscosmos has said that Safronov didn’t have access to state secrets, and claimed that the charges didn’t relate to Safronov’s work for the corporation, which he joined in May 2020.

Rights activists, journalists, scientists and corporate officials who have faced treason accusations in Russia in recent years have found it difficult to defend themselves because of secrecy surrounding their cases and a lack of public access to information.

Safronov’s father also worked for Kommersant covering military issues after retiring from the armed forces. In 2007, he died after falling from a window of his apartment building in Moscow.

Investigators concluded that he killed himself, but some Russian media outlets questioned the official version, pointing to his intent to publish a sensitive report about secret arms deliveries to Iran and Syria. 
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Ukraine’s presidential office reported heavy fighting Tuesday in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, an area occupied by Russian forces where Ukraine says it has launched a counteroffensive to try to retake territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed in his nightly address Monday that Ukrainian forces would take back their territory. He said Ukraine would chase Russia’s forces “to the border.”

“If they want to survive — it’s time for the Russian military to run away. Go home,” he said.

Britain’s defense ministry said Tuesday that as of early Monday, “several brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased the weight of artillery fires in front line sectors across southern Ukraine.”

It added that since the start of August, Russia has worked to reinforce its presence on the western bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson area.

“Most of the units around Kherson are likely undermanned and are reliant upon fragile supply lines by ferry and pontoon bridges across the Dnipro,” the British defense ministry said.

Russia’s defense ministry said Monday that Russian forces had stopped Ukrainian attacks in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and inflicted “heavy losses” on Ukrainian forces.

A senior U.S. defense official told reporters Monday that the United States would know more about Ukraine’s offensive near Kherson “in the next 24-36 hours.” The official said Ukrainian force numbers are gaining parity with Russian forces in the south.

“Are they on the offensive? I think they are,” the official said.

Russia failed to capture the capital, Kyiv, in northern Ukraine in its initial attack that began in late February, but later took control of wide swathes of land in the south along the Black Sea coast.

Fighting for months has centered on eastern Ukraine in the Donbas region, where Russia-supported separatists and Kyiv’s forces have fought since 2014, the same year Moscow seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in a move not recognized by the international community.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has been at somewhat of a standstill for weeks, with Russia and Ukraine gaining or losing territory incrementally.

But Western allies, led by the United States, have continued to ship armaments to the Kyiv government, possibly giving Ukraine new confidence to attack farther in the southern reaches of the country.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. VOA’s Carla Babb contributed to this report.
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An Istanbul court has released Turkish pop star Gulsen from pretrial detention but put her under house arrest with judicial control on Monday over a remark she made about religious schools in Turkey.

The 46-year-old singer-songwriter, whose full name is Gulsen Colakoglu, was taken into custody for questioning on charges of “inciting hatred and enmity among the public” and put in pretrial detention last Thursday.

The charges were based on a joke she made onstage about Turkey’s religious Imam Hatip schools in April.

“He studied at an Imam Hatip [school] previously. That’s where his perversion comes from,” Gulsen says in a video of the incident, referring to a musician in her band.

The video was circulated by pro-government daily Sabah a day before her detention and widely shared on social media by pro-government accounts.

Several ministers condemned her words on Twitter, including Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag.

“Inciting one part of society towards another using begrudging, hateful and discriminating language under the guise of being an artist is the biggest disrespect to art,” Bozdag tweeted.

Imam Hatips are state-run middle and high schools providing religious education for boys and girls ages 10 to 18 in Turkey. There are several graduates of Imam Hatip schools in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Cabinet, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bozdag.

The AKP government is a staunch supporter of Imam Hatip schools, as Erdogan has said in the past that he aims to raise a “pious generation” in Turkey.

In a statement on her social media accounts, Gulsen apologized for her remark, adding that what she said was used by some people who want to polarize society. She also denied the accusations in her testimony at the police station.

Her lawyer Emek Emre appealed the pretrial detention decision last Friday and said he will appeal the house arrest decision Monday.

Reactions

Her arrest has sparked controversy about Turkey’s freedom of expression and judicial independence.

Yigit Acar, a lawyer who specializes in freedom of expression and human rights violations, calls the court decision to keep her under house arrest “a disgrace.”

“This decision meets the wishes of a group of conservative people who are uncomfortable with her and are not a large group. Look at the court decision where the lynching campaign against Gulsen was used as a reason for the arrest,” Acar told VOA.

Acar believes that putting the singer under house arrest is intended to be a deterrent.

“The purpose has already been accomplished. The purpose was to keep Gulsen away from the stage and to make her modern, secular view invisible,” Acar said, adding that the government is sending a message to millions of people by putting the singer under house arrest.

The singer has long been a target of conservative circles in Turkey because of her revealing stage outfits and support for the LGBTQ community.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), called for her release, saying that her arrest was aimed at polarizing society to keep Erdogan’s government in power. The next parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for June 2023, but the opposition parties are calling for snap elections, which Erdogan has repeatedly rejected.

Responding to an inquiry from VOA on the pop star’s arrest, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said, “The right to exercise freedom of expression, even when it involves speech which some find controversial or uncomfortable, strengthens democracy and must be protected.”

“The United States remains concerned by widespread use of censorship, criminal insult suits, and other forms of judicial harassment to restrict freedom of expression in Turkey. We urge Turkey to respect and ensure freedom of expression,” the spokesperson said, adding that the U.S. “opposes discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons and those who support LGBTQI+ rights.”

The Turkish government has argued that the judiciary is free from political interference.

Cultural hegemony

Yuksel Taskin, deputy leader of the CHP and a former professor of political science at Istanbul’s Marmara University, argues that the singer’s arrest was part of the government’s efforts to establish cultural hegemony among the Turkish public through its ideological lens.

Taskin recalls Turkish presidential communications director Fahrettin Altun’s tweet from 2018: “Your political hegemony is over. Your cultural hegemony will also end,” referring to Turkey’s Kemalist elites before the AKP came into power. Kemalism, as an ideology, is based on the principles of modern Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which include secularism.

“A cultural hegemony based on intimidation and oppression has no chance to survive,” Taskin told VOA.

Ezel Sahinkaya contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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In the Russian government’s latest move to reduce its reliance on a global financial system dominated by the United States and its allies, Kremlin authorities Monday began a policy of barring the use of U.S. dollars as collateral for transactions on the Moscow Exchange, Russia’s largest financial services marketplace.

According to experts, the change was more symbolic than practical, because a broad slate of sanctions imposed on Russia over its expanded invasion of Ukraine have made it almost impossible for Russian businesses to make dollar-based transactions. The change comes just a few weeks after the Moscow Exchange reduced the acceptable percentage of U.S. dollars in collateral from 50% of total value to 25%.

Still, the change underlines Moscow’s efforts to chart a path through the maze of economic barriers constructed by the U.S. and its allies over the more than six months since the invasion began. Kremlin officials have called on Russian businesses and individuals to divest themselves of “toxic” currencies issued by governments that have acted to thwart President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to expand Russian territory by force.

“The blocking of Russian assets by unfriendly countries, as well as operational restrictions on settlements in the world’s major reserve currencies, create risks for citizens and businesses when using the U.S. dollar and the euro,” the Russian central bank said in a statement issued last month.

Heavy sanctions

In the days after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine in February, the U.S. and its allies, including most of the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia and almost all other major Western economies began applying unprecedented economic pressure in an effort to get Putin to reverse course.

A large portion of the assets of the Russian central bank held overseas were frozen, as were the assets of many wealthy Russian businesspeople. U.S. banks were effectively barred from doing business with Russian businesses, with some exceptions for energy payments, which had the result of cutting Russian firms off from the dollar-based transactions that represent a large share of global commerce.

Russian banks were eventually barred from SWIFT, the global messaging network that international banks use to settle cross-border transactions, and export controls have made it difficult for Russia to purchase high-end electronic components and other goods essential to operating a modern economy in the 21st century.

Faulty assumptions

The Kremlin may have been surprised by the unity with which the U.S. and its allies acted. Experts said that Russian leaders likely assumed that it would be cut off from the dollar after invading Ukraine — indeed, Russian has, for years, been taking steps to insulate itself from the dollar.

However, the Kremlin did so on the assumption that other global currencies, primarily the euro, but also the Japanese yen and the British pound, would remain available to it.

“What’s so important to understand about this is that Putin and Elvira Nabiullina, the central bank governor, truly believed that it was OK to be less reliant on the dollar, because they could diversify into euros and other currencies,” Josh Lipsky, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, told VOA.

But the world’s seven leading industrialized democracies, the G-7, remain firm on sanctions, and have pledged solidarity with Ukraine.

“What surprised them was the unity amongst the G-7 — that the dollar and the euro and the yen and the pound were acting in tandem,” Lipsky said. “And that gave them no other outlets.”

Other markets

While Russia has found itself largely blocked from doing business with much of the world, a set of exceptions has been put in place that allow the Kremlin to continue selling energy products, primarily oil and gas. Those sales, boosted by months of abnormally high energy prices, have helped Russia avoid the worst potential consequences of its economic isolation.

At the same time, Russia has been working to develop alternatives to its traditional trade and financial flows. Turkey, whose leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has positioned himself as an intermediary between Putin and Western leaders, agreed earlier this month to pay for some Russian natural gas in rubles.

China and India, both major consumers of Russian energy, have both increased their purchases in the months since the invasion, settling transactions in their national currencies rather than in dollars, as is common on global markets.

However, even Russian officials have conceded that creating a system completely independent of the dollar is not feasible.

Commenting on his country’s growing relationship with China in June, Russian Ambassador to China Andrei Denisov said, “Full de-dollarization is impossible in principle, and no one is setting this goal, considering that the dollar is actually a tool, an accounting currency, means for international settlements and international payments.”

Bad options

Jeffrey Mankoff, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University and a non-resident senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA that while Russia may be able to make some transactions in non-dollar currencies, the practice is “suboptimal” at best, and the future looks bleak for the Russian economy.

“The problem is, there’s not really a good alternative to the dollar at this point,” Mankoff said. “There’s no other currency that is convertible to the extent the dollar is and has a deep liquid securities market behind it so that you’re not taking on big exchange rate risks by doing business in it.”

While the use of non-dollar currencies for settlement keeps cash flowing into Russian coffers, he said, “The problem is the money can’t really flow out. Or, it can’t flow out to buy the things that Russia needs, which are restricted because of sanctions.”

Russia cannot import many of the consumer goods that its citizens had been used to purchasing, which has eroded living standards. Additionally, Russia cannot import semiconductors and other high-tech components needed for domestic manufacturing operations.

In the end, Mankoff said, Russia’s options are starkly limited if it remains cut off from most global markets, and economic conditions are likely to get worse.

“Manufacturing, anything kind of high-tech related, and that includes military goods, is going to get harder and harder,” Mankoff said. “If this war is still going on six months or 12 months or longer from now, I think you’re going to see the impact of these restrictions increasing over time.”
…

Germany has secured a power link to a planned offshore wind hub in the Danish part of the Baltic Sea that will help reduce energy dependence on Russia, Denmark’s energy ministry said on Monday.

The planned energy hub on the island of Bornholm will by 2030 link several offshore wind parks in the Baltic Sea with a total generating capacity of at least 3 gigawatts, enough to power 4.5 million German households, the ministry said in a statement.

The hub will be connected to Germany via a 470 kilometer power cable.

Investment and future profit will be shared equally between Germany and Denmark, the statement said without giving financial details.

“The Danish-German cooperation is a flagship project,” Germany’s Minister of Economy and Climate, Robert Habeck, said in the statement.

“The green electricity from Bornholm Energy Island will supplement the national electricity production and reduce our dependence on importing fossil energy,” he said.

Last year, the two countries began operating a smaller cross-border cable that also connects several wind farms in the Baltic Sea.

Bornholm Energy Island is part of Denmark’s broader plan to increase domestic offshore wind power production five-fold by 2030.

Early plans by Northern European countries to create a common power grid under the North Sea to connect future offshore wind farms have faced financing and regulatory challenges.

Denmark will host an energy summit on the Baltic Sea island on Tuesday.
…

Norwegian carbon dioxide (CO2) storage company Northern Lights and its owners have agreed to store emissions captured at fertilizer maker Yara’s Dutch operation from 2025 in what they say is a commercial breakthrough for the business. 

The joint venture founded by oil companies Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell plans to inject CO2 from industrial plants into rock formations beneath the North Sea ocean floor. 

“With the first commercial agreement for transportation and storage of CO2, we open a value chain that is critical for the world to reach net zero by 2050,” Equinor Chief Executive Anders Opedal said in a statement. 

Under the deal with Yara, 800,000 tons of CO2 per year will be transported on ships from the Netherlands from early 2025. 

Northern Lights also has preliminary deals to store CO2 from a cement plant and a waste plant that, if confirmed, will fill the project’s phase 1 capacity of 1.5 million tons per year. 

Following the Yara deal, the partnership will now work on expansion of its storage capacity to between 5 million and 6 million tons of CO2 per year, Equinor said. 

The International Energy Agency says carbon capture and storage (CCS) is vital to reducing global CO2 emissions, including from hard-to-abate sectors such as cement production, to curb global warming. 

However, there are few commercial projects in existence. 

Norway tried a decade ago to create a carbon capture project at a gas power plant in a plan once touted as the oil-producing country’s “moon landing,” but it failed because of cost issues. 

In addition, some environmentalists say that CCS merely serves to prolong the age of burning carbon for energy and that the world needs a more decisive shift to renewables. 

Yara, one of the world’s largest fertilizer manufacturers, uses natural gas in its production processes and has long sought solutions to cutting the resulting emissions. 

France’s TotalEnergies said the deal to transport CO2 to Norway and store it 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) under the seabed was a breakthrough for commercial CCS operations. 

“TotalEnergies aims to develop CO2 storage capacity of more than 10 million tons per year by 2030, both for its own facilities and for its customers,” Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said in a separate statement. 
…

Ernest Marvel has a case full of medals in his Frankford home.

He was awarded his most recent addition, the French Legion of Honor, in July — almost 80 years after he helped liberate the country from the Germans in World War II.

Marvel, now 98, has rarely left the Bethany Beach area, save for the war.

“I’m a home boy,” he said.

He speaks fondly of his family. His garden is his pride and joy. He likes to dance and sing karaoke on the weekends at the local VFW and Eagles Club.

But Marvel also holds dark memories of a different time, when heroes had to fight through Europe to free thousands held in concentration camps under Adolf Hitler’s control.

He was one of those heroes.

In 1945, Marvel made his way through French and German villages, across the Rhine River and to the gates of Dachau.

Marvel’s war story

Pfc. Marvel entered the war late, just after the Battle of the Bulge, according to historian Eric Montgomery. A member of U.S. Army Company B, 179th Infantry Regiment, 1st Battalion, 45th Infantry Division, the 20-year-old made his way to Europe aboard the Queen Elizabeth troopship.

One of Marvel’s first missions, according to Montgomery, was to crawl “across an enemy-held field (strewn) with mines and booby traps.”

“We had to climb from foxhole to foxhole to get to our headquarters to let them know where we were,” Marvel said. “Each foxhole had two Germans in it, but they were kids. They were maybe 15 or 16 years old, and they were scared to death.”

His division crossed the Rhine River in storm boats as the Germans fired mortars at them.

“About three boats down from me there was a mortar shell landing, and it blew it apart,” Marvel said. “We were about halfway across. It could’ve been us.”

From there, the soldiers moved into Germany, taking village after village, often house by house.

“I was a bazooka man for a good while, and I would knock out the wheels of a tank so they couldn’t move. I’d shoot a phosphorus grenade into the turret, and it’d get so hot, they’d have to come out. Some would come out fighting, some with their hands up,” Marvel said.

He bombed German soldiers shooting from perches in church steeples, as well.

“I could hear ‘em for ages, screaming as it blew ’em out,” Marvel said.

He became reflective as he spoke.

“It’s not a good feeling,” he said. “I’m doing better.”

Marvel said he has post-traumatic stress disorder. After the war, he’d wake his wife up in the night as he experienced flashbacks. Ultimately, he got help from a psychiatrist.

“He said my trouble was it was all bottled up in me; I wouldn’t let it out. He said, ‘You start letting it out and you’ll feel better.’ And I did. I started telling different people about different things and it started coming around, but it’s still never left my mind,” he said.

Liberating Dachau concentration camp

Part of the trauma he experienced was during the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. Marvel’s memories are vivid of the horrific place where thousands of people were killed.

“There was about a half a mile of concrete road, and they had a big German barrack made out of brick on each side of the road. In between was a white-bark tree,” he said.

Marvel and his fellow soldiers moved through the buildings and killed or took prisoner the German soldiers inside.

Elsewhere on the grounds, he opened up a boxcar, only to find it and several others like it full of bodies.

“The smell was terrible. They had … big incinerators that they were burning them with and they couldn’t burn them as fast as they were dying,” he said.

That day, U.S. soldiers found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies brought to Dachau, all in an advanced state of decomposition, according to the U.S. National Holocaust Memorial Museum.

He was shocked by the condition of the prisoners still alive inside the camp, who were starving and wracked with diseases.

“You’ve seen ‘The Walking Dead’?” Marvel asked of the zombie apocalypse TV series. “They looked worse than that. They were dying of malnutrition. They were nothing but skin and bones, and their eyes sunk right into their heads.”

Soldiers “tossed candy bars and cigarettes over the barbed wire to the starving prisoners until ordered to stop,” according to the July 2022 National WWII Museum article, “The Last Days of the Dachau Concentration Camp,” but most of them stayed out of the main compound for “fear of disease.”

“Medical staff came, regulated the supply of food and water to those beset with malnutrition and created a typhus ward to respond to the epidemic of that dreaded disease in the camp,” the article states.

U.S. forces liberated 32,000 prisoners at Dachau, according to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A connection to the present

The only injury Marvel said he suffered during the war was from being hit by shrapnel on his arm. He still has a scar.

“Our general … he wanted us to take this village. He said they had been flying over and reconnaissance planes saw no activity,” he said. “We got out halfway into the field. It was breaking day, and they started shooting at us. … And the shrapnel was flying everywhere.”

Marvel was one of eight of 28 men to survive the attack, he said.

One of the soldiers who did not survive was Orla Moninger, a man Marvel had become close friends with since arriving in Europe, he said. When they returned to retrieve the bodies the next day, Moninger’s hand was over his heart, holding photos of his family, Marvel said.

Marvel’s grandson, Donnie Carey, knew of Moninger from stories shared by his grandfather. He began wondering if the fallen soldier had any family still alive. The historian he’d been working with, Montgomery, found Moninger did indeed have a living son, and Carey gave him a call.

“He said he heard (his father) was getting off a train in Germany and was shot,” Carey said, recalling the conversation with Moninger’s son. “The hair just stood up on my arm because I knew I had some information he had never heard. … It was right before holidays and he was like, ‘I have a story I can tell now.’ It was a great moment.”

A grandson, a country music singer and the Legion of Honor

Carey said he became interested in learning more about his grandfather’s time in the war about six years ago. That was when his wife read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the well-known writings of a young Jewish girl who spent two years hiding from Nazis with her family and ultimately died in a concentration camp.

“She said, ‘You know, your grandfather experienced a lot of this stuff at Dachau,’ and I just realized how honored I was to still have the opportunity to help him and learn from him,” Carey said. “He’s my hero.”

Carey and the rest of Marvel’s extended family surprised him last summer when they took him to see country music singer Jamey Johnson at the Freeman Arts Pavilion in Selbyville. Johnson gave Marvel a shoutout before singing “In Color,” a song about a veteran.

The family made their way to the front of the stage and Johnson said, “Thank you for your sacrifice, sir.” He then came down and gave Marvel a handshake, a hug and some guitar pics.

Video of the moment was posted online, and one of those who viewed it reached out to let Carey know Marvel qualified for the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration.

“I’m just trying to do everything I can to help him be recognized while he’s still here,” Carey said.

Marvel turned 98 in May.

This summer, he contracted pneumonia on top of COVID-19, but recovered in time for the Legion of Honor ceremony in Washington, D.C. It was held the day before Bastille Day, (July 14) France’s most notable patriotic holiday. Marvel and two other American World War II vets were presented the award by French Ambassador Phillipe Etienne.

The award was created in 1802 “to recognize outstanding services rendered to France by military and civilian personnel,” Etienne said.

An average of 2,200 French citizens and 300 foreigners are decorated each year, according to the Legion of Honor website.
…

 Greek surface-to-air missiles locked on to Turkish F-16 fighter jets carrying out a reconnaissance mission in international airspace, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said Sunday.

The allegation is the latest claim from Turkey that its neighbor and fellow NATO member Greece has been targeting its aircraft above the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

The radar of a Greek S-300 missile system based on the island of Crete locked on to the Turkish jets on Aug. 23, Anadolu reported, citing Defense Ministry sources.

The F-16s were at an altitude of 10,000 feet to the west of Greece’s Rhodes island when the Russian-made S-300’s target tracking radar locked on, the report added. The Turkish planes completed their mission and returned to their bases “despite the hostile environment.”

It added that radar lock-ons are considered an act of hostility under NATO rules of engagement.

Calls to the Greek Embassy in Ankara went unanswered Sunday.

Last week, Turkey summoned the Greek military attaché and filed a complaint with NATO after Greek F-16s allegedly harassed Turkish F-16s that were conducting a mission for the alliance.

Anadolu said the Greek pilots put Turkey’s aircraft under a radar lock over the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey “gave the necessary response” and forced the planes to leave the area, Anadolu said, without elaborating.

Greece rejected the Turkish version of events. The Defense Ministry said five Turkish jets appeared without prior notification to accompany a flight of U.S. B-52 bombers — which hadn’t been due to have a fighter escort — through an area subject to Greek flight control.

It said four Greek fighters were scrambled and chased off the Turkish planes, adding that Athens informed NATO and U.S. authorities of the incident.

Although both NATO members, Turkey and Greece have decades-old disputes over an array of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean Sea and disputes over the airspace there. The disputes have brought them to the brink of war three times in the past half-century.

Tensions flared in 2020 over exploratory drilling rights in areas of the Mediterranean Sea where Greece and Cyprus claim exclusive economic zones, leading to a naval standoff.

Turkey has accused Greece of violating international agreements by militarizing islands in the Aegean Sea. Athens says it needs to defend the islands — many of which lie close to Turkey’s coast — against a potential attack from Turkey’s large fleet of military landing craft.
…

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer backs a European Union-wide cap on runaway electricity prices, he said in a statement issued by his office Sunday.  
Austria’s conservative-led government was initially skeptical at the idea of capping power prices, but it has warmed to the idea as they have continued to rise in line with soaring gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We must finally stop the madness that is taking place in energy markets. And that can only happen through a European solution,” the statement quoted Nehammer as saying, adding that he would seek to convince holdouts in the bloc.

“Something has to happen at last. This market will not regulate itself in its current form. I call on all the EU 27 (member states) to stand together to stop this price explosion immediately.”

Austria is heavily dependent on Russian gas particularly in industry and heating, obtaining about 80% of its supply from Russia before the war. Most of its electricity, however, comes from renewables and there is growing incomprehension among the Austrian public at the market system where gas and power prices are closely linked.

The market price for electricity must come back down and must be decoupled from gas to bring it closer to actual production costs, Nehammer said.

“We cannot let (Russian President Vladimir) Putin determine the European electricity price every day,” he added.

The Czech Republic, which holds the rotating EU presidency, will propose an extraordinary meeting of the EU Energy Council as soon as possible to deal with soaring energy prices, Czech government officials said Friday as they seek to build European support for energy price caps.

The statement by Nehammer’s office said he would push for a sustainable model that can be implemented quickly, without elaborating. It added that he had discussed the issue with his Czech and German counterparts.  

 
…

Italian authorities scrambled Sunday to relieve overcrowding in shelters after scores of boats carrying a total of about 1,000 migrants reached Italy’s southern shores and two of its tiny islands over the weekend.

Nearly 50 boats arrived between Friday night and Saturday on Lampedusa island off Sicily, according to state radio and other Italian media. Other boats carrying migrants reached Pantelleria, another tiny island favored by vacationers.

Hundreds of migrants stepped ashore from the virtual flotilla of smugglers’ vessels on those islands. Several of the vessels launched by migrant smugglers held as few as eight passengers. But others had around 100 passengers aboard, many of them from Tunisia, according to the reports.

Other boats reached the shores of the Italian mainland Saturday, either unaided or assisted by Italian coast guard vessels.

The Italian news agency ANSA said that 92 migrants, most of them from Afghanistan, reached Puglia — the “heel” of the boot-shaped peninsula — in a sailboat Saturday. Still other migrants sailed to Calabria in the “toe” of the peninsula, while other boats reached Sicily and Sardinia, Italy’s two biggest islands, in the last two days.

On Sardinia, Carabinieri paramilitary police spotted 29 migrants walking along a road, ANSA said.

The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders tweeted that one of its rescue ships, Geo Barents, saved 25 migrants, including five minors, from a small boat in distress in international waters near Libya Saturday night. Geo Barents already had other migrants abroad plucked to safety in other rescue operations, the group said.

With the disembarkation of hundreds of migrants from boats in the last days, the residence temporarily housing rescued migrants on Lampedusa quickly became overcrowded. Corriere della Sera said the residence housed 1,500 asylum-seekers, nearly four times its capacity.

Interior ministry authorities arranged for a commercial passenger ferry to sail from Sicily to Lampedusa, where it was expected to arrive on Sunday night, embark 250 migrants and take them to Sicilian migrant residences to lessen crowding on the tiny island’s facility.

While hundreds of thousands of migrants have set sail from Libyan shores aboard smugglers’ boats in the last decades, many also set out from Tunisia.

Italian media noted the Tunisian coast guard had thwarted at least a score of attempts by vessels filled with migrants to head toward Italy and rescued many others from boats in distress on Friday and Saturday.
…

Pope Francis, who has often said he may step down in the future if bad health impedes him from leading the Catholic Church, on Sunday praised the humility of one of the few popes in history to resign willingly instead of ruling for life.

L’Aquila, a central Italian city which Francis visited briefly, is the burial place of Celestine V, who resigned as pope in 1294 after only five months to return to his life as a hermit, establishing a papal prerogative.

Pope Benedict XVI, who in 2013 became the first pontiff in about 600 years to resign willingly, visited L’Aquila four years before stepping down. In the past, Francis has also praised Benedict’s courage.

When the Vatican announced in June Francis’ trip to L’Aquila – to inaugurate an annual “feast of forgiveness” – it fueled speculation that a conjunction of events – including the induction of new cardinals on Saturday and meetings starting on Monday on the Vatican’s new constitution – could foreshadow a resignation announcement.

However, in an interview with Reuters last month Francis, 85, laughed the idea off, saying “it never entered my mind,” while leaving open the possibility that he could step down for health reasons in the distant future.

In the homily of a Mass for thousands of people in a central square, Francis noted that in “The Divine Comedy,” Dante Alighieri condemned Celestine for having carried out what the medieval poet called “The Great Refusal.”

But Francis, who prayed silently before Celestine’s tomb, said that by relinquishing power, Celestine showed the strength that comes from humility.

“In the eyes of men, the humble are seen as weak and losers, but in reality, they are the real winners because they are the only ones who trust completely in the Lord and know His will,” Francis said.

The pope, who has been using a wheelchair and a cane for the past few months because of a knee ailment, sat through most of the Mass but read his homily in a strong voice and often went off script.

He told the crowd how the pilot of the helicopter that brought him from Rome had to circle for some time because of thick fog in the mountainous area before finding an opening in the mist. He compared this to seizing an opening from God in one’s life.

Although Francis has quashed rumors that he plans to resign anytime soon, the visit underscored the Catholic Church’s need to regulate the status of pontiffs who step down.

L’Aquila was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2009 that killed 309 people, injured several thousand, and destroyed many buildings.

At the start of Sunday’s visit, Francis donned a grey fire fighter helmet and was taken around the ruins of the city’s cathedral, which is being reconstructed.
…

The death toll from an accident when a truck drove off a dike and slammed into a community barbecue in a village south of Rotterdam rose to six Sunday and police said a further seven people are in hospital, including one in critical condition.

Police spokeswoman Mirjam Boers said the truck driver, a 46-year-old Spanish man, is suspected of causing the accident that happened early Saturday evening in the village of Nieuw-Beijerland.

The large truck the man was driving left a small rural road and careered down the bank of the dike and plowed into the village gathering. Boers said the driver was not under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash.

“We are investigating what could have happened,” Boers said.

Forensic investigators worked into the night Saturday around the truck where it stopped at the bottom of the dike. Later, a crane and a tow truck hauled it back onto the road.

Photos of the scene showed bunting hanging between trees and chairs scattered around trestle tables with plates still on them.

Local Mayor Charlie Aptroot visited the scene Saturday night.

“My condolences go out to the victims, their families, eyewitnesses and first responders,” he said in a statement.

He added that he had spoken to many of the people at the scene and expressed “appreciation for the way in which people are there for each other.” 
…

An elaborate fireworks display took place Saturday under calm skies in Hungary’s capital after a postponement of the show last weekend caused controversy when it led to the firing of the country’s top meteorologists over their weather predictions.

Saturday’s event, a rescheduling of the display planned for Hungary’s national holiday a week earlier, drew tens of thousands to the Danube River in Budapest in what was billed as Europe’s largest fireworks show.

On Monday, the two top officials at Hungary’s National Meteorological Service were fired after the government committee managing holiday events postponed the show based on the weather service’s prediction of a high probability of heavy rain that evening.

While storms did strike other areas of Hungary that night, they did not hit the capital. Weather service chief Kornelia Radics, who had served since 2013, and her deputy Gyula Horvath, who has served since 2016, lost their jobs.

Gabor Valter Tolczli, a spectator at Saturday’s fireworks show, said, “I was surprised that the fireworks were postponed a week ago because there was no storm then. But today I don’t mind the postponement, because there are fewer crowds.”

He added, however, that he was “outraged that the meteorologists were fired, because you can never predict the weather 100%.”

The firings led to accusations from critics of Hungary’s nationalist government, led by autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban, of punitive political pressure reminiscent of Hungary’s communist past.

Academics and scientists in Hungary have long complained of pressure being exerted on independent scientific bodies and Orban’s government has been accused of corruption, nepotism and anti-democratic tendencies.

This has led to clashes with the European Union, which has withheld billions in pandemic recovery funds from Hungary over what the bloc sees as deficiencies in the Hungarian government’s adherence to basic values and the rule of law.

Hungary’s government says the firings were related to the Aug. 20 forecast but that the minister overseeing the weather service had previously been dissatisfied with its performance. In a news conference Tuesday, Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said the service’s assessment of a high probability of extreme weather — which never came — was “the last straw.”

On Wednesday, Hungary’s government appointed Laszlo Hanyecz, the weather service’s vice president for economic affairs, as its interim head. Of 19 leading officials at the agency, Hanyecz, who is not a meteorologist, was one of only two not to sign a letter demanding the reinstatement of the fired weather chiefs.

Climate Without Borders, an international network of weather presenters, released a letter signed by 76 members from 48 countries expressing solidarity with the fired forecasters.

“As forecasters, our first mission is to protect life and property. When Hungarian meteorologists saw danger in the forecast, they did what any of us would do — warned of the risk to life,” the letter read, condemning the firings.
…

In Poland’s late summer heat, dozens of cars and trucks line up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as people fearful of winter shortages wait for days to stock up on heating fuel in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 kilometers from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tons of coal for himself and his family.

“Toilets were put up today, but there’s no running water,” he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers and private cars.

“This is beyond imagination; people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times, but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

Artur’s household is one of the 3.8 million in Poland that rely on coal for heating and now face shortages and price hikes, after Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

Poland banned purchases with an immediate effect in April, while the bloc mandated fading them out by August.

While Poland produces over 50 million tons from its own mines every year, imported coal, much of it from Russia, is a household staple because of competitive prices and the fact that Russian coal is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.

Soaring demand has forced Bogdanka and other state-controlled mines to ration sales or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in limited amounts. Artur, who did not want to give his full name, said he had collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking up all their fuel allocations at once.

The mine planned to sell fuel for some 250 households Friday and would continue sales over the weekend to cut waiting times, Dorota Choma, a representative for the Bogdanka mine told Reuters.

The limits are in place to prevent hoarding and profiteering, or even selling spots in the queue, Choma said.

Like all Polish coal mines, Bogdanka typically sells most of the coal it produces to power plants. Last year, it sold less than 1% of its output to individual clients so it lacks the logistics to sell fuel directly to retail buyers.

Lukasz Horbacz, head of the Polish Coal Merchant Chamber of Commerce, said the decline in Russian imports began in January when Moscow started using rail tracks for military transport.

“But the main reason for the shortages is the embargo that went into immediate effect. It turned the market upside down,” he told Reuters.

A spokesperson for the Weglokoks, a state-owned coal trader tasked by the government to boost imports from other countries declined to comment, while the climate ministry was not available for comment. Government officials have repeatedly said Poland would have enough fuel to meet demand.

In recent years, Poland has been the most vocal critic of EU climate policy and a staunch defender of coal that generates as much as 80% of its electricity. But coal output has steadily declined as the cost of mining at deeper levels increases.

Coal consumption has held mostly steady, prompting a gradual rise in imports. In 2021, Poland imported 12 million tons of coal, of which 8 million tons came from Russia and were used by households and small heating plants.

In July, Poland ordered two state-controlled companies to import several million tons of the fuel from other sources including Indonesia, Colombia and Africa, and introduced subsidies for homeowners facing a doubling or tripling of coal prices from last winter.

“As much as 60% of those that use coal for heating may be affected by energy poverty,” Horbacz said.

Back at Bogdanka, Piotr Maciejewski, 61, a local farmer who joined the queue Tuesday, said he was prepared for a long wait.

“My tractor stays in line, I’m going home to get some sleep,” he said.
…

Poland and Czechia signed an agreement Saturday to protect Slovak airspace as Slovakia gives up its old Soviet-made MiG-29 jets.

The vow of protection by NATO allies is to last until Slovakia receives new F-16s from the United States, something expected to happen in 2024.

Under the agreement, Poland and Czechia are providing the necessary forces to quickly react in the case of violations of Slovakia’s airspace.

The agreement was signed at a Slovak air base by defense ministers Mariusz Blaszczak of Poland, Jana Cernochova of Czechia and Jaroslav Nad of Slovakia.

Blaszczak said under the agreement, a pair of Polish F-16 fighter jets would begin patrolling Slovakia’s air space starting Sept. 1. He called the effort a way for the neighbors to “deter a possible aggressor.” Slovakia has a short border with Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February.

Slovakia has a fleet of 11 MiG-29 jets, and last month Nad said Slovakia may consider donating them to Ukraine under certain conditions.

Asked by a reporter at a joint news conference about whether the jets might go to Ukraine, Nad said Slovakia was in talks with Ukraine and European Union allies about how best to help. But he said he could not say what that help might look like yet.

Since the start of the Russian invasion Feb. 24, Ukraine has urged Western allies to provide it with warplanes to challenge Russia’s air superiority.

Poland, Czechia and Slovakia belong to a region that was under Moscow’s control during the decades of the Cold War. Many people here worry that if Russia isn’t stopped in Ukraine, Moscow’s renewed imperial ambitions could target them too.
…

Serbia and Kosovo have settled an ethnic dispute over the movement of citizens across their border, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Saturday.

“We have a deal,” Borrell said in a tweet. “Kosovo Serbs, as well as all other citizens, will be able to travel freely between Kosovo & Serbia using their ID cards. The EU just received guarantees from PM [Albin] Kurti to this end.” 

The dispute stemmed from predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, something Belgrade has refused to recognize.

Serbia and Kosovo still have to agree on the hotly contested use of Serbian car number plates issued in the north of Kosovo where Serbs defy the government in Pristina and see Belgrade as their capital.

Independent Kosovo is recognized by the United States, all but five EU members, but not by a number of other states including Serbia’s allies Russia and China.

The most recent flareup of tensions between Serbia and Kosovo has been triggered by a directive for Kosovo authorities for local Serbs to switch their car number plates from Serbian to Kosovo ones from September 1.

Serbs from northern Kosovo, responded by setting roadblocks and clashing sporadically with police before NATO peacekeepers oversaw their removal.

The talks between EU and U.S. envoys with the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo have so far failed to yield concrete results about the car number plates issue.

Earlier in the day, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic said he was hoping the EU would provide guarantees for the personal documents agreement. He also said Serbia would be issuing a “a general disclaimer” in which it would be written that the use of identity cards issued by Pristina was allowed for practical reasons with an aim of facilitating the freedom of movement but not tantamount to the recognition of Kosovo’s independence.

“Under the EU-facilitated Dialogue, Serbia agreed to abolish entry/exit documents for Kosovo ID holders and Kosovo agreed to not introduce them for Serbian ID holders,” Borrell tweeted.

Belgrade and Kosovo’s Serb minority also claim entitlement under a 2013 EU-brokered agreement to an association of semi-autonomous majority-Serb municipalities, which Pristina has refused to implement.
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Greece’s main opposition leader has called on the country’s prime minister to resign after he admitted that the nation’s spy chief bugged the phone of a senior political leader. The scandal is being dubbed Greece’s Watergate.  

Speaking before Greece’s Parliament, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis took the stage, defending what he called “a mistake.”

The minute he found out, he said, he looked the Greek people in the eye and told them he knew nothing of what was going on. 

It was wrong, he said, adding, however, that it was legal on national security grounds.

Greek law allows eavesdropping on criminal suspects, terrorists, and pedophiles,

but the Greek constitution bars phone-tapping of political leaders except on national security grounds.

Mitsotakis was hammered with complaints, charges, and demands during the heated debate Friday for failing to explain why the phone of Nikos Androulakis, the head of Greece’s Socialist party, had been tapped.

Instead, Mitsotakis added to conspiracy theories whirling since the scandal broke earlier this month that suggest Androulakis’ phone was hacked at the behest of foreign spy agencies.

Forces outside the country can only benefit from seeing this slip-up cause instability and a political crisis, he said.

Mitsotakis refused to elaborate, but Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s main opposition leader and a former prime minister, insisted the nation had to know why Androulakis’ phone tapping was allowed on grounds of national security.

“Is he a foreign agent, a spy? Your refusal, to tell the truth, is in itself an answer,” Tsipras said.

Local media loyal to the government have suggested Androulakis’s phone was hacked at the request of spy agencies from China, Armenia and Ukraine – allegations that the three countries have categorically denied.

Still, the scandal adds to fears of widespread surveillance across Europe at a moment when democracies feel threatened by Russian aggression. The European Union has begun to regularly check phones and other devices for listening applications and espionage.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has also been a target recently, along with President Emmanuel Macron of France, the former prime minister of Belgium and top EU officials.

During the heated parliamentary debate, Tsipras urged the government to resign, accusing it of defying democratic practices and acting in a way that was a disgrace to the Greek people.

Parliamentary probes are set to begin in the coming weeks.
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