The Kremlin-backed ruling United Party is on track to victory in Russia’s lower house of parliament, early results showed, after a three-day voting process that was marred by irregularities and allegations of ballot tampering.

The Central Election Commission said with about 10% of votes counted after polls closed Sunday, United Russia, which strongly backs President Vladimir Putin, had 38.6% of the vote, followed by the Communist Party with 25.2% and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party with 9.6%.

The elections lacked a significant opposition presence after authorities declared organizations linked to imprisoned Alexey Navalny, the Kremlin’s most vocal critic, to be extremist. The voting was also marred by numerous reports of violations, including ballot-stuffing.

Because of the system of party-list voting combined with single-mandate voting districts, it wasn’t immediately clear how the results would translate into a breakdown of seats in the new Duma.

United Russia, which currently holds 334 seats in the 450-seat Duma, is looking to keep its supermajority in the legislature, which allows it to change the constitution. But the party is deeply unpopular, and surveys from independent pollsters have shown its approval rating at the lowest level in the two decades since it was established.

In the last national vote in 2016, United Russia won just more than 54% of the vote.

Apathy is another major concern for the authorities, as Russian voters grow increasingly cynical about how free and fair elections are in the country. As of midafternoon Sunday, turnout at polling stations nationwide stood around 43%, the Central Election Commission said.

In addition to being a test for United Russia, the three-day vote was also a major test for Navalny, the jailed corruption crusader whose allies had invested heavily in their Smart Voting strategy, aimed at eroding United Russia’s stranglehold on politics.

This year, most of the candidates endorsed by Smart Voting are from the Communist Party, even though it and two other parties in the Duma rarely vote against majority initiatives or those explicitly lobbied for by the Kremlin.

“If the United Russia party succeeds, our country will face another five years of poverty, five years of daily repression, and five wasted years,” a message on Navalny’s Instagram account read on the eve of the elections.

In recent months, authorities unleashed a sweeping crackdown against Navalny’s political network, designating it an extremist organization and barring the politician’s allies from participating in elections.

Navalny himself is in prison serving a 2½-year sentence on charges his allies say were politically motivated.

As the voting began on Friday, however, Navalny’s Smart Voting app disappeared from the Apple and Google online stores. Telegram, a popular messaging app and a key tool for Navalny’s team to get out its messaging, also removed a Smart Voting bot. YouTube — which is owned by Google — also took down a video that contained the names of candidates they had endorsed. And Google also blocked access to a Navalny Google Doc, which circulated a text copy of all the Smart Voting endorsed candidates.

About 50 websites run by Navalny have also been blocked, including the one dedicated to Smart Voting.

The vote, which is being held alongside elections for regional governors and local legislative assemblies, took place amid widespread reports of irregularities.

On the first day, there were unusually long lines at some polling stations. Golos, an independent election-monitoring group, suggested state workers and military personnel were being forced by United Russia and government authorities to vote.

Across the country, there were reports of ballot box stuffing and “carousel voting,” in which voters are bused into multiple polling stations as an organized group. It’s unclear, however, to what extent the fraud reports would affect the final vote.
…

A volcano erupted on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma on Sunday, sending fountains of lava and a plume of smoke and ash into the air from the Cumbre Vieja national park in the south of the island. 

Authorities had already begun evacuating the infirm and some farm animals from the surrounding villages before the eruption, which took place on a wooded slope in the Cabeza de Vaca area at 3:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), according to the islands’ government. 

Immediately after the eruption, the municipality urged residents in a statement to “exercise extreme caution,” and stay away from the area and off the roads. 

The population of nearby villages were told to go to one of five centers to be evacuated, and soldiers were deployed to help. 

Spanish television showed fountains of lava shooting into the sky, and plumes of smoke could be seen from across the island. 

There had been more than 22,000 tremors this week in the Cumbre Vieja area, a chain of volcanoes that last had a major eruption in 1971 and is one of the most active volcanic regions in the Canaries. 

The earliest recorded volcanic eruption in La Palma took place in 1430, according to the Spanish National Geographical Institute (ING). 

In 1971, one man was killed as he was taking photographs near the lava flows, but no property was damaged. 

 
…

France says U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron are planning to talk in the next few days about the diplomatic standoff that was triggered between the two old allies when Australia cancelled a submarine contract with Paris in favor of a new security alliance with the United States and Britain. 

A French government spokesman said Sunday that the U.S. leader asked to speak with Macron and that a call would occur soon. Gabriel Attal told news channel BFM TV that France wants “clarification” over the cancellation of an order that it had with Australia. 

Paris has expressed shock that Australia last week abandoned its $66 billion 2016 contract for French majority state-owned Naval Group to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines, although Australia says it has for months voiced concerns about the deal. The French spokesman said Paris is seeking discussions over reparations for the canceled deal. 

The French-Australian deal collapsed as the U.S., Australia and Britain, already long-time allies, jointly announced a new security alliance that would build an Australian fleet of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines. 

France, angered by the snub, recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra, but not London. 

On Sunday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his country was concerned the conventional submarines it ordered from France would not meet its strategic needs. He blamed the end of the deal with France on rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, although he did not specifically refer to China’s massive military buildup that the U.S. has expressed concerns about. 

China has denounced the sharing of such U.S. and British nuclear technology as irresponsible. 

Morrison said Sunday at a news conference that he understood France’s disappointment over the cancellation of the order, but said, “Australia’s national interest comes first.” 

“It must come first and did come first and Australia’s interests are best served by the trilateral partnership I’ve been able to form with President Biden and (British) Prime Minister (Boris) Johnson,” he said. 

Referring to the French submarines, Morrison said, “The capability that the Attack class submarines were going to provide was not what Australia needed to protect our sovereign interests.” 

He said France “would have had every reason to know that we have deep and grave concerns that the capability being delivered by the Attack class submarine was not going to meet our strategic interests and we have made very clear that we would be making a decision based on our strategic national interest.” 

On Saturday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the France 2 television network that ending the deal with Australia was a “crisis.” 

“There has been lying, duplicity, a major breach of trust and contempt. This will not do. Things are not going well between us; they’re not going well at all,” he said. 

The French submarine builder Naval Group said 500 of its employees in Australia and another 650 in France are affected by the end of the pact with Australia. 

Some material in this report came from Reuters and the Associated Press. 
…

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday the French government would have known Canberra had “deep and grave concerns” about French submarines before the deal was torn up last week.

France is furious at Australia’s decision to withdraw from a multibillion-dollar deal to build French submarines in favor of American nuclear-powered vessels, recalling its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington and accusing its allies of “lying” about their plans.

Morrison said he understood the French government’s “disappointment” but said he had raised issues with the deal “some months ago,” as had other Australian government ministers.

“I think they would have had every reason to know that we had deep and grave concerns that the capability being delivered by the Attack Class submarine was not going to meet our strategic interests and we made very clear that we would be making a decision based on our strategic national interest,” he told a press conference in Sydney.

Morrison said it would have been “negligent” to proceed with the deal against intelligence and defense advice and that doing so would be counter to Australia’s strategic interests.

“I don’t regret the decision to put Australia’s national interest first. Never will,” he said.

Speaking to Sky News Australia earlier on Sunday, Defense Minister Peter Dutton said his government had been “upfront, open and honest” with France that it had concerns about the deal, which was over-budget and years behind schedule.

Dutton said he understood the “French upset” but added that “suggestions that the concerns haven’t been flagged by the Australian government just defy, frankly, what’s on the public record and certainly what was said publicly over a long period of time.”

“The government has had those concerns, we’ve expressed them, and we want to work very closely with the French, and we’ll continue to do that into the future,” he said.

Dutton said he had personally expressed those concerns to his French counterpart, Florence Parly, and highlighted Australia’s “need to act in our national interest,” which he said was acquiring the nuclear-powered submarines.

“And given the changing circumstances in the Indo-Pacific, not just now but over the coming years, we had to make a decision that was in our national interest and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” he added.

Canberra was unable to buy French nuclear-powered vessels because they require charging while the American submarines do not, making only the latter suitable for nuclear-free Australia, Dutton said.

With Australia’s new submarine fleet not expected to be operational for decades, Dutton said the country may consider leasing or buying existing submarines from the United States or Britain in the interim.

Australia will get the nuclear-powered submarines as part of a new defense alliance announced with the United States and Britain on Wednesday, in a pact widely seen as aimed at countering the rise of China. 

 
…

Australia has made a “huge” diplomatic error by ditching a multi-billion-dollar order for French submarines in favor of an alternative deal with the United States and Britain, France’s envoy to Canberra said Saturday.

Canberra announced Thursday it would scrap its 2016 deal with France’s Naval Group to build a fleet of conventional submarines and instead build at least eight nuclear-powered ones with U.S. and British technology after striking a trilateral security partnership.

The move caused fury in France, a NATO ally of the United States and Britain, prompting it to recall its ambassadors to Washington and Canberra, and it also riled China, the major rising power in the Indo-Pacific region.

Malaysia said Saturday that Canberra’s decision to build atomic-powered submarines could trigger a regional nuclear arms race, echoing concerns already raised by Beijing.

“It will provoke other powers to also act more aggressively in the region, especially in the South China Sea,” the Malaysian prime minister’s office said, without mentioning China. Beijing’s foreign policy in the region has become increasingly assertive, particularly its maritime claims in the resource-rich South China Sea, some of which conflict with Malaysia’s own claims.

“This has been a huge mistake, a very, very bad handling of the partnership – because it wasn’t a contract, it was a partnership that was supposed to be based on trust, mutual understanding and sincerity,” France’s Ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault told reporters in Canberra before returning to Paris.

France has previously branded the cancelation of the deal – valued at $40 billion in 2016 and reckoned to be worth much more today – a stab in the back.

‘Deep disappointment’

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said France was a “vital ally” and that the United States would work in the coming days to resolve the differences.

Australia said it regretted the recall of the French ambassador, and that it valued the relationship with France and would keep engaging with Paris on other issues.

“Australia understands France’s deep disappointment with our decision, which was taken in accordance with our clear and communicated national security interests,” a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said Saturday.

Thebault said he was very sad to have to leave Australia but added there “needs to be some reassessment” of bilateral ties. In separate comments made to SBS radio, Thebault said of the ditched agreement: “It was not about selling salads or potatoes, it was a relationship of trust at the highest level, covering questions of the highest level of secrecy and sensitivity.”

The row between Paris and Canberra marks the lowest point in their relations since 1995, when Australia protested France’s decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific and recalled its ambassador for consultations.

Public opinion in France, where President Emmanuel Macron is expected to seek a second term in an election due next year, has also been very critical of Australia and the United States. “You can understand for geopolitical reasons Australia getting closer to other anglophone countries like the United States and Britain,” said Louis Maman, a Parisian surgeon out for a stroll on Saturday on the Champs-Elysees.

“But there was a real contract and I think there was an alliance and a friendship between Australia and France. It’s spoiling a friendship,” he said. “I took it as a betrayal.”

 
…

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s “Smart Voting” app has disappeared from the Telegram messenger following similar moves by Apple and Google on Friday at the start of a three-day parliamentary vote in Russia.

The app, which advised Navalny supporters on which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians, was removed after Telegram announced it would “limit the functioning of apps associated with election campaigns.”

Telegram’s Russia-born founder Pavel Durov said he was following Apple and Google, which “dictate the rules of the game to developers like us.”

In a post on his Telegram channel, he said the tech giants had “already this year” urged the encrypted messenger widely popular in Russia to remove information that violates the laws of individual countries or face exclusion from their app stores.

He said that removing election-related apps was related to Russia’s ban on campaigning during voting.

“We consider this practice legitimate and urge Telegram users to respect it,” Durov wrote late Friday.

But he added that “the blocking of applications by Apple and Google creates a dangerous precedent that will affect freedom of speech in Russia and around the world.”

The election for seats in the lower house State Duma, which runs until Sunday, comes after a sweeping crackdown this year on President Vladimir Putin’s opponents.

Navalny, who was detained in January and has seen his allies arrested or flee the country and his organizations banned, has nonetheless aimed to dent the Kremlin’s grip on parliament from behind bars.

His allies on Friday accused Apple and Google of “censorship”, while sources told AFP that the companies had faced public threats from the Russian government and private threats of serious criminal charges and incarceration of local staff.  

After Telegram removed the “Smart Voting” app, a Twitter account associated with Navalny posted links to Google Docs with recommended candidates, saying they were their last “remaining” tools.

On Saturday, Navalny’s team said that Google had demanded they delete the documents following a request from Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor and would do so itself if they did not comply.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.

 
…

Britain’s food industry called on the government to subsidize carbon dioxide (CO2) production during a spike in gas prices or risk the collapse of the country’s meat industries.

A surge in gas prices has forced two British fertilizer plants to shut down, stripping food producers of the CO2 by-product that is used to stun animals before slaughter and vacuum pack food to prolong its shelf life.

The shortage of CO2, which is also used to put the fizz into beer, cider and soft drinks, comes at a terrible time for the food industry, which is already facing an acute shortage of truck drivers and the impact of Brexit and COVID-19.

Nick Allen of the British Meat Processors Association said on Saturday that the pig sector was two weeks away from hitting the buffers, while the British Poultry Council said its members were on a “knife-edge” as suppliers could only guarantee deliveries up to 24-hours in advance.

Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng was due to meet the heads of the UK’s largest energy suppliers and operators on Saturday to discuss the situation. He said he did not expect supply emergencies this year due to a diverse range of sources.

However, the food industry said more support was needed.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Allen told Reuters, adding that given the exceptional circumstances, the government needed to either subsidize the power supply to maintain fertilizer production, or source CO2 from elsewhere.

British Poultry Council head Richard Griffiths said he was working with the government to assess stock levels and implement contingency plans, but warned that food supply disruption could become a national security issue.

Were slaughterhouses to run out of CO2, pigs and chickens would be left on farms, creating additional animal welfare, food supply and food waste issues, he said, adding: “We hope this can be avoided through swift government action.”

A spokesperson said the government was in close contact with the food and farming industries to help them manage.

 
…

Hungary’s newly united opposition politicians started going to the polls Saturday in the country’s first-ever primary elections that they hope are the key to ousting right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

After years of bickering and a string of landslide losses, the once-factious opposition has come together with one common goal — to push the long-serving leader from power in elections next year.

Their six-party alliance, set up last year, is made up of a diverse cast of political parties: leftist, liberal and formerly far-right.

They accuse 58-year-old Orban — who regularly clashes with Brussels over migration and rule-of-law issues — of endemic corruption and creeping authoritarianism since he came to power in 2010.

Now they hope the new primary system will be their path to defeating his Fidesz party, Hungary’s largest.

“The opposition can only compete with Fidesz if they are in a single bloc too, we’ve learned that the hard way,” Antal Csardi, a candidate for the green LMP party, told AFP.

The winner-takes-all system brought in under Orban in 2012 handed Fidesz powerful parliamentary “supermajorities” in 2014 and 2018, despite winning less than half of the vote.

By contrast, the primaries will let opposition voters select single candidates to take on both Orban himself as well as Fidesz rivals in each of Hungary’s 106 electoral districts.

‘Innovation’

Over 250 candidates are standing in the primaries nationwide that run from September 18 to 26, with voting taking place online and in-person.

If required, a run-off for the prime ministerial candidacy will be held between Oct. 4-10.

Csardi says the primary elections are “an innovation that was forced on us” by the election system, and the only hope of seeing an anti-Fidesz candidate win.

“There are ideological differences between all the opposition parties, so primaries are the best way of deciding who becomes the common candidate,” he said in a televised debate with Ferenc Gelencser of the centrist Momentum Movement this week.

The system is popular among opposition voters too.

Gyorgy Abelovszky, a studio audience member at the debate, said they “a great idea” that “should have been introduced for previous elections.”

“I don’t support either of these opposition parties debating tonight but I will vote for whichever of them wins the candidacy here,” the 67-year-old told AFP.

That sentiment could spell the end for more than a decade of Orban rule at the general election set to be held next April.

Polls so far indicate an unpredictable parliamentary election for the first time since he came to power.

“Despite the ideological cleavages between the opposition parties, for most of their voters, next year’s election is simply about whether Viktor Orban goes or not, nothing else,” Daniel Mikecz, an analyst with the Republikon think tank, told AFP.

Cracks in the alliance?

Despite their differences, the five prime ministerial candidates at Sunday’s primetime debate — the first of three — were mostly on the same anti-Orban page.

But some have cracks in the alliance have appeared. In June, former far-right party Jobbik broke ranks by voting for a controversial anti-LGBTQ law proposed by Fidesz.

Still, the parties hope to build on their success at municipal elections in 2019 when they first applied the strategy of uniting against Fidesz.

That delivered the alliance surprise wins in Budapest and several regional cities in what was seen as the first blow to in Orban’s self-styled “illiberal” system.

Gergely Karacsony, a liberal who won the Budapest mayoralty then thanks to cross-party support, said this week that he “expects to win” the race to take on Orban.

“I can best integrate and hold together this diverse opposition.”

 
…

This week’s nuclear submarine deal between the United States and Australia threatens to become divisive in Australia, where some critics already are saying it risks Australian security rather than enhances it in the face of China’s militarization of the South China Sea.

Under the deal, the U.S. will help Australia build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines during the next 20 years to replace its current fleet of six diesel-powered subs.

This is the first time since 1958 that the United States has shared its nuclear submarine technology, having only ever previously shared it with the United Kingdom. The deal is the highlight of a surprise trilateral security partnership, called AUKUS, announced among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States by the three countries’ leaders Thursday.

Dubbed a “forever partnership” by Australia’s conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the pact comes amid high tensions between Australia and China, and on the heels of Washington’s exit from what has been dubbed its “forever war” in Afghanistan.

The irony has been impossible to ignore for critics of Canberra’s increasingly hawkish posture toward China.

One of those critics is former Labor Party prime minister Paul Keating, a strident critic of confrontation with China who has long advocated Australian engagement with Asia ahead of its traditional Anglo-Saxon Western allies and who scorns Canberra’s reliance on the United States for support.

“Australia has had great difficulty in running a bunch of locally built conventional submarines. Imagine the difficulty in moving to sophisticated nuclear submarines, their maintenance and operational complexity. And all this at a time when U.S. reliability and resolution around its strategic commitments and military engagements are under question,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald after the deal was announced.

Some security analysts advocate less, not more, reliance on U.S. military support, and caution against interpreting the U.S. pivot away from its Afghan campaign as part of a long-awaited pivot toward the Indo-Pacific, first promised by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011.

“What Australia, and other U.S. friends and allies in Asia, need to consider is whether it is possible that the U.S. will make a similar judgment about their presence in this region over the long term as well,” Sam Roggeveen, who heads the international security program at the Lowy Institute, told VOA in an interview.

“This deal signals that Australia is gambling that, over the decades-long lifespan of these submarines, the United States will remain committed to its defense and to maintaining a regional presence in the face of the largest economic and strategic challenge in American history,” Roggeveen wrote separately in the think tank’s Interpreter magazine Friday.

Calling the deal “momentous,” he warned that its scale “will create expectations from Washington.”

“Australia cannot have this capability while assuming that it does not come with heightened expectations that Australia will take America’s side in any dispute with China,” he wrote.

China has imposed several trade sanctions on Australia in recent years, furious at Canberra’s moves to curb foreign direct investment, its rejection of telecommunications giant Huawei, its charges of domestic political interference by Chinese agents, and its support for an inquiry into COVID-19’s origins in Wuhan.

Strategy experts caution that increased defense dependency on the United States could cost Australia more than the price of eight long-distance stealth submarines.

“It cuts both ways,” East Asia expert Richard McGregor, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.

“As a U.S. ally, if the U.S. is confronting China, we’re on one side of that. The South China Sea is where that’s going to be played out. We’ll be caught out, and we’ll always be on the wrong side, according to China,” McGregor, also a senior associate the Lowy Institute, told VOA.

“If under [U.S. President Joe] Biden, as is pretty clear, America now values alliances, that means they also expect us to do more. So if the U.S. is focused on China, they might want more troops here. They might want to put missiles on our soil. More might be demanded of us. That comes at the cost of relations with China.”

“We’ve crossed the Rubicon now. The U.S.-China deep confrontation is a permanent condition of regional global politics. That’s not going to be unwound for many years,” he added.

On the other side of the ledger, the nuclear sub deal may temper anxieties in Australia over weaknesses in the ANZUS treaty, a 1951 security pact among the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The wording of Article IV — “Each Party … declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes” — is considered weak in terms of a security commitment as it does not guarantee military support in response to an attack.

Former leader Tony Abbott, prime minister from 2013 to 2015, extolled the decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines as sending a necessary signal “that we are a serious country and a force to be reckoned with.”

“Given that China is well into what’s probably the biggest military build-up in history, time is not on our side,” he wrote in The Australian newspaper.

The deal, he wrote, “will give Australia vastly more strength to resist aggression and vastly more sovereign capacity to stare down even a superpower if needs be.”

Michael Shoebridge, director of defense, strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has said he believes the deal makes Australia safer.

The nuclear-powered submarines will give Australia “a powerful deterrent and strike weapon, adding offensive military power that any potential adversary must factor in to any decision to engage in conflict,” he told VOA.

“The primary advantage [of the deal] is as an increase in ally and partner capability to deter [President] Xi[ Jinping]’s China from using force against others in the region, and continuing on the path he is taking China of the growing use of intimidation and coercion to dictate the choices that other nations make,” Shoebridge said.

“Being able to raise the costs to [Xi] of conflict is a way of preserving peace in the Indo-Pacific. Australia has always sought to be an active contributor to regional security, working closely with partners and allies who share interests, and the AUKUS alliance empowers us to do so more effectively. It will accelerate other partnerships and groupings like the Quad and the Aus-Japan-U.S. trilateral and reassure other regional nations that do not want to have their choices dictated by Beijing.”

The nuclear submarines won’t be ready until the end of next decade, with some projections putting their delivery as late as 2040. China already has six of its own nuclear-powered subs, according to a U.S. Defense Department report last year.

In the meantime, under the trilateral pact Australia will also acquire a suite of long-range missiles including U.S. Tomahawk missiles, and unmanned underwater vehicles.

“It is impossible to read this as anything other than a response to China’s rise, and a significant escalation of American commitment to that challenge,” Roggeveen said.

 
…

France has recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia after Australia ended a deal to buy French submarines in favor of one to pursue nuclear-powered vessels using U.S. technology.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a written statement Friday that the move “is justified by the exceptional seriousness” of the matter.

He said the decision by President Emmanuel Macron followed “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners.”

This is the first time France has recalled its ambassador to the United States, according to the French Foreign Ministry. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1778.

A White House official said that the U.S. regretted the French decision and would be engaged in the coming days to resolve its differences with France.

At the State Department, spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement, “France is a vital partner and our oldest ally, and we place the highest value on our relationship.”

U.S. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday the deal between the United States, Australia and Britain to provide U.S. nuclear submarine technology to Australia.

Macron has not commented on the issue.

France had been planning to sell conventional submarines to Australia in a multibillion-dollar deal.

The country has also been pushing for several years to create a European strategy to boost economic and defense ties in the Indo-Pacific region.

In an interview Thursday with France Info radio, Le Drian described the deal between the United States and Australia as a “stab in the back.”

“We built a relationship of trust with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,” he said, adding that Biden had acted like his predecessor, Donald Trump.

“This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do,” he said.

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

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday celebrated the 40th anniversary of France’s Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) — “high-speed train” — system, by unveiling a more efficient and environmentally friendly next-generation train. 

During a ceremony at the Gare de Lyon rail station in Paris, Macron hailed the history of the original TGV, inaugurated at the same station by then-French President François Mitterrand.

That first French bullet train first joined Paris to Lyon and then eventually connected the rest of the country, with high-speed tracks now extending to Strasbourg and Bordeaux and trains that travel at speeds of 350 kph. In 2007, a TGV reached a record 574.8 kph, a mark that still stands. 

On Friday, Macron dropped the curtain — actually, a large French flag — on the next generation of high-speed train, the TGV M, which the French president described as a “formidable symbol” … which is going to recapture spaces and win back the hearts of the French.” 

Macron announced a $7.7 billion plan to redevelop and revitalize the TGV network and the state-run rail company SNCF, including new lines serving cities such as Nice and Toulouse, as well as lines serving smaller communities. He said the plan also includes improving rail freight service. 

The new, streamlined version of the TGV will carry more passengers — up to 740 passengers from 600 — and move between cities at a top speed of 320 kph while consuming 20% less electricity.

Increasing train use is also part of France’s plan to reduce emissions in the country. 

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

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin provoked chuckles earlier this month from school kids in the Russian city of Vladivostok when a 10-year-old asked him to subscribe to his YouTube channel. “Sign up please. I’d be very glad,” the kid said.

Russia’s 68-year-old leader seemed baffled.  

“What do I have to sign?” Putin asked. “Sign what? I didn’t understand — what should I sign?” the president queried. The exchange was seen by many Russian commentators as an iconic moment in a widening division between Putin and his country’s youngsters.

The Vladivostok school kids are not of voting age, but as Russians started to go to the polls Friday to vote in parliamentary elections, the turnout and voting patterns of the country’s internet-savvy 18-to-24-year-olds will be scrutinized by the Kremlin as well as Putin’s foes.

Over the past year opinion polling has suggested that young Russians are increasingly unhappy with their president. Around half of young Russians expressed dissatisfaction with Putin in a poll by the independent Russian polling organization Levada Center earlier this year. Only 20% said they supported him, a sharp drop from 36% previously. Nearly half said the country was moving in the wrong direction under his leadership, with just 44% saying the direction of travel was okay.

“Young people are becoming more politically active,” analyst Natia Seskuria said in a recent commentary for London-based think tank Chatham House. “After 21 years of Putin’s rule, regime fatigue is settling in — particularly in the younger generations who have known no other leader.”

“Growing dissatisfaction made many join demonstrations that led to more than 10,000 arrests and dozens of criminal cases against the protesters,” Seskuria said, referring to protests mounted in the wake of the imprisonment of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny earlier this year on charges he says are trumped up. “Young Russians have used social media to mobilize support for rallies and to criticize Putin. Navalny, too, has used the power of social media to connect with younger voters.”

How many of Russia’s young people vote for Putin’s ruling United Russia Party will give some idea of the challenge the Kremlin may face in the coming months. It also will indicate whether Russia’s leader will face a mounting backlash from a young generation that is frustrated with economic stagnation, the lack of job prospects and a propaganda-heavy media machine that does not connect with it in the way Navalny has managed to with You-Tube videos and social media posts.  

Polling data suggests that just 26% of Russians are ready to vote for Putin’s United Russia Party, which is seeking to maintain its Duma majority of 334 seats. That is its lowest opinion poll rating since 2008.  

But few doubt United Russia will retain its Duma majority. Kremlin critics say this election — voting takes place over three days — is the least free since Putin came to power 21 years ago. Genuinely independent candidates are barred from running, cash-handouts have been offered to voters, and there is evidence of voter intimidation, all taking place amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.  

Critics also expect plenty of ballot-rigging in the election for the 450-seat State Duma. Long lines formed at some polling stations Friday, according to local reports. Navalny supporters suggested state workers were being mobilized to vote by the Kremlin and local authorities.  

“Every time [under Putin], elections have looked a little less like elections. Now this process is complete,” exiled Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky told Echo of Moscow radio station this week. “The next time our people will vote for real will be after they earn that right on the barricades,” he added.

But little is being left to chance by the Kremlin, say Navalny supporters.  

And they accused U.S. tech giants Google and Apple Friday of bowing to Kremlin pressure by deleting a youth-oriented Smart Voting app that offers a step-by-step guide on how to vote tactically against pro-Putin candidates.  

“This is an act of political censorship, and it can’t be justified,” said Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press spokesperson.  

“They caved into the Kremlin’s blackmail,” added Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s former campaign manager.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegation of political censorship, telling reporters in Moscow the app was removed in observation of the “letter and spirit” of Russian law.

From prison, via a message on Instagram, Navalny urged voters to undermine the Kremlin by voting for the best placed candidate not affiliated with United Russia, which means in many places voting for candidates offered by the Communist Party. In the message Navalny said: “Are you not interested in trying?”

The removal of Navalny’s tactical voting app by Apple and Google from their app stores also drew criticism from international rights organizations.  

“Russian government officials are putting tech companies in a tightening vise, threatening criminal actions against individual employees inside the country to pressure their employers into yielding to calls for censorship,” said Matt Bailey, director of the digital freedom program of PEN America.  

“The decision on the part of Apple and Google to remove an app from the iOS and Android App Stores being used to organize protest against the government is the result of blackmail, pure and simple,” he added in a statement.

 
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Jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting app disappeared from Apple and Google stores Friday as Russians began voting in a three-day parliamentary election marked by a historic crackdown on the opposition.

“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” top Navalny ally Ivan Zhdanov said on Twitter.

The app promoted an initiative that outlines for Navalny supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians.

Russia had accused Google and Apple of election interference, demanding this week that they remove the app from their stores. 

Exiled Navalny ally Leonid Volkov said the companies had “caved in to the Kremlin’s blackmail.”

“We have the whole of the Russian state against us and even big tech companies,” Navalny’s team said on Telegram.

In a message from prison, Navalny had urged supporters to download the app, which aims to help Russians to vote out candidates from President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party in the upcoming polls. 

On the eve of the vote his team urged Russian voters to back Communist Party candidates. 

Navalny – who was detained in January – has this year seen his organizations declared “extremist” and banned, while all his top aides have fled.

Russia’s media regulator has since barred dozens of websites linked to Navalny including his main website navalny.com. 

 
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The tourism industry in Turkey has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, and until recently several wildfires. Several sites, however, have again started to attract local and international visitors. VOA’s Arif Aslan reports from Van, Turkey, in a story narrated by Sirwan Kajjo.
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Turkish authorities have detained hundreds of unregistered refugees – including many Afghans – in Istanbul. The crackdown comes as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government faces growing public pressure to stop any surge of Afghans who arrive in Turkey following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.

Producer: Henry Hernandez
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France has suspended 3,000 health care workers who were not inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine by a government-mandated Sept. 15 deadline.

“Several dozens” of the country’s 2.7 million health workers, Health Minister Olivier Veran said Thursday, opted to resign rather than receive the inoculation against the coronavirus.

Tens of thousands health workers were unvaccinated in July when President Emmanuel Macron announced the Sept. 15 deadline to have at least one shot of a vaccine.

Veran said most suspended employees worked in support services, while few doctors and nurses were among the suspended.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Friday that France has reported more than 7 million COVID cases and more than 116,000 COVID deaths.

In the U.S. state of Idaho, hospitals have begun rationing care “because the massive increase of COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization in all areas of the state has exhausted existing resources,” the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said in a statement Thursday.

“The situation is dire – we don’t have enough resources to adequately treat the patients in our hospitals, whether you are there for COVID-19 or a heart attack or because of a car accident,” DHW Director Dave Jeppesen said in a statement.

The best way to end the rationing “is for more people to get vaccinated,” Jeppesen said.“It dramatically reduces your chances of having to go to the hospital if you do get sick from COVID-19.”

The Intenational Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the World Trade Organization have met with the major COVID vaccine manufacturers to devise strategies to improve vaccine access for low- and middle-income countries.

The goal of the coalition is to vaccinate at least 40% of people in every country by the end of this year and at least 60% by mid-2022.

WHO said the 2021 target is “a critical milestone to end the pandemic and for global economic recovery.” 

 
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Taiwan’s government called on the European Union to quickly begin trade talks after the bloc pledged to seek a trade deal with the tech-heavyweight island, something Taipei has long angled for.

The EU included Taiwan on its list of trade partners for a potential bilateral investment agreement in 2015, the year before President Tsai Ing-wen first became Taiwan’s president but has not held talks with Taiwan on the issue since then.

Responding to the EU’s newly announced strategy to boost its presence in the Indo-Pacific, including seeking a trade deal with Taiwan, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday talks should start soon. The European Parliament has already given its backing to an EU trade deal with Taiwan.

“We call on the European Union to initiate the pre-negotiation work of impact assessment, public consultation and scope definition for a Bilateral Investment Agreement with Taiwan as soon as possible in accordance with the resolutions of the European Parliament,” it said.

“As a like-minded partner of the EU’s with core values such as democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law, Taiwan will continue to strengthen cooperation in the supply chain reorganization of semiconductors and other related strategic industries, digital economy, green energy, and post-epidemic economic recovery.”

EU member states and the EU itself have no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan due to objections from China, which considers the island one of its provinces with no right to the trappings of statehood, so any investment deal could be tricky politically for the EU.

But the EU’s relations with China have worsened.

In May, the European Parliament halted ratification of a new investment pact with China until Beijing lifts sanctions on EU politicians, deepening a dispute in Sino-European relations and denying EU companies greater access to the world’s second-largest economy.

The EU has also been looking to boost cooperation with Taiwan on semiconductors, as a chip shortage roils supply chains and shuts some auto production lines, including in Europe. 

 
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Russians in the Far East began voting in a three-day parliamentary election in which vocal Kremlin critics have been barred from running following a historic crackdown on the opposition.

Parliamentary and local polls in the world’s largest country spread over 11 time zones began at 8 a.m. Friday. So as Muscovites prepared to go to bed, residents of the Far Eastern Chukotka and Kamchatka regions were gearing up to cast their ballots.

“Let’s go!” Ella Pamfilova, the head of the Central Election Commission, said in a live broadcast. “We are so excited!”

The run-up to the parliamentary polls has been marred by an unprecedented crackdown on Kremlin critics and independent media, with President Vladimir Putin’s top foe Alexey Navalny jailed in January and his organizations subsequently outlawed.

With many voters frustrated by falling incomes and not planning to cast their ballots, Putin urged Russians to elect a “strong” parliament.

“I’m counting on your responsible, balanced and patriotic civic position,” Putin said in a video address.

The 68-year-old Russian leader is currently isolating after the Kremlin announced this week an outbreak of coronavirus cases among his inner circle. He said Thursday that “dozens” had tested positive.

In a message from prison, Navalny called on Russians to cast aside apathy and vote pro-Kremlin candidates out of power.

“Are you not interested in trying?” he said in a message posted on Instagram, adding that even in prison he remained optimistic and urged Russians to do the same.

“I really do not think that I cannot change anything,” said the 45-year-old, who barely survived a nerve agent poisoning he has blamed on the Kremlin.

The opposition politician’s allies have been barred from running, and his team has promoted Navalny’s tactical voting project app, urging supporters to back candidates best positioned to beat Putin’s United Russia candidates.

A majority of the 225 alternative parliament candidates named by Navalny’s allies are running on the Communist Party’s list.

The media regulator has blocked dozens of websites linked to Navalny, including the tactical voting website, and has also piled pressure on Google and Apple to remove Navalny’s app from their stores.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has claimed that developers of Navalny’s app have ties to the Pentagon, and last week Moscow summoned U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan over interference of U.S. tech giants in the polls.

Recent surveys by state-run pollster VTsIOM showed fewer than 30% of Russians planning to vote for the ruling party, down from 40% to 45% in the weeks ahead of the last parliamentary election in 2016.

But United Russia is expected to retain its two-thirds majority in the Duma, enough to change the constitution as it did last year with reforms allowing Putin to extend his rule to 2036.

The vote is being held both online and in person, in a move officials said is aimed at limiting voters’ potential exposure to the coronavirus.

The opposition says that voting over several days gives officials greater opportunities to fix elections.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in August that it would not be sending observers to Russia for the parliamentary election because of a limit on the number of observers imposed by Moscow.

Campaigning was lackluster, and critics said the vote was little more than a rubber-stamping of Putin’s allies.

Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said that the Kremlin needed a pliant legislature ahead of 2024 when Putin’s current term ends.

Widespread claims of voter fraud during parliamentary elections in 2011 sparked major demonstrations, but political observers were not expecting protests this time.

“Once the Duma elections are over, protests are unlikely, since the opposition and civil society are demoralized,” Kolesnikov wrote. “The regime crackdown will intensify.”

Besides United Russia, 13 more parties are running in the elections.

A total of 225 of the State Duma’s 450 members are elected through party lists, while the rest are selected in single-member districts.

More than 108 million voters are eligible to cast their ballots in Russia, and another 2 million Russians can vote abroad.

Russian passport holders from Ukraine’s two breakaway regions can take part in the vote.

Russians are also voting in local polls in dozens of regions, including regional assembly and gubernatorial elections.
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Sir Clive Sinclair, the British inventor who pioneered the pocket calculator and affordable home computers, died Thursday at age 81.

He died at his home in London a decade after being diagnosed with cancer, U.K. media said, prompting tributes from many who fondly recalled their first experience of computing in the early 1980s.

He was still working on inventions last week “because that was what he loved doing,” his daughter Belinda Sinclair told the BBC. “He was inventive and imaginative, and for him, it was exciting and an adventure. It was his passion.”

Sinclair’s groundbreaking products included the first portable electronic calculator in 1972.

The Sinclair ZX80, which was launched in 1980 and sold for less than £100 at the time, brought home computing to the masses in Britain and beyond.

Other early home computers such as the Apple II cost far more, and Sinclair’s company was the first in the world to sell more than a million machines.

Follow-up models included the ZX Spectrum in 1982, which boasted superior power and a more user-friendly interface, turbocharging the revolution in gaming and programming at home.

British movie director Edgar Wright, whose latest film, Last Night in Soho, premiered in Venice this month, paid tribute to Sinclair on Twitter.

“For someone whose first glimpses of a brave new world were the terrifying graphics of 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, I’d like to salute tech pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair,” he said. “He made 21st century dreams feel possible. Will bash away on the rubber keys of a Spectrum in your honour. RIP.”

Tom Watson, former deputy leader of Britain’s opposition Labor Party, tweeted: “This man changed the course of my life.

“And arguably, the digital age for us in the UK started with the Sinclair ZX80, when thousands of kids learnt to code using 1k of RAM. For us, the Spectrum was like a Rolls-Royce with 48k.”

However, not all of Sinclair’s inventions were a runaway success.

The Sinclair C5, a battery-powered tricycle touted as the future of eco-friendly transport, became an expensive flop after it was launched in 1985.

But in retrospect, it was ahead of its time, given today’s attention on climate change and the vogue for electric vehicles.

“You cannot exaggerate Sir Clive Sinclair’s influence on the world,” gaming journalist and presenter Dominik Diamond tweeted. “And if we’d all stopped laughing long enough to buy a C5, he’d probably have saved the environment.”

Born in 1940, Sinclair left school at 17, becoming a technical writer creating specialist manuals.

At 22, he formed his first company, making mail-order radio kits, including what was then the world’s smallest transistor radio.

Other ventures included digital watches and an early version of a flat-screen television.

He was knighted in 1983.

Ironically, in a 2013 interview with the BBC, Sinclair revealed that he did not use computers.

“I don’t like distraction,” he explained. “If I had a computer, I’d start thinking I could change this, I could change that, and I don’t want to. My wife very kindly looks after that for me.” 
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As Germany prepares to elect a new leader, climate change is high on the agenda. Floods blamed on global warming killed hundreds in July. But as Henry Ridgwell reports from Germany, the country is also Europe’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and is struggling to wean itself off fossil fuels
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The European Union’s executive arm asked its member countries Thursday to better protect journalists amid a rise of physical attacks and online threats against media professionals.

According to the European Commission, 908 journalists and media workers were attacked across the 27-nation bloc in 2020. A total of 23 journalists have been killed in the EU since 1992, with the majority of the killings taking place during the past six years.

“No journalist should die or be harmed because of their job. We need to support and protect journalists; they are essential for democracy,” said Vera Jourova, the commission vice president for values and transparency.  

“The pandemic has shown more than ever the key role of journalists to inform us. And the urgent need for public authorities to do more to protect them.”

Murders of reporters remain rare in Europe, but the killings of journalists in Slovakia and Malta in recent years have raised concerns about reporters’ safety in developed, democratic societies.  

Earlier this year, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen expressed support to investigative journalism after the killing of Peter R. de Vries, a renowned Dutch journalist who reported on the violent underworld of the Netherlands.

The commission’s non-binding proposals include recommendations for EU countries to ensure fair and effective investigations and prosecutions, and to provide protection to those under threat, with a strong focus on female journalists.  

According to the EU, 73% of female journalists have experienced online violence and the commission said EU countries should “support initiatives aimed at empowering women journalists and professionals belonging to minority groups and those reporting on equality issues.”

The bloc’s executive arm also proposed the creation of support services, including helplines, legal advice, and psychological support. It insisted on the need to ensure reporters’ safety during demonstrations, where most of the attacks take place.  

“Member states should provide regular training for law enforcement authorities to ensure that journalists and other media professionals are able to work safely and without restrictions during such events,” the commission said.

Noting that digital and online safety has become a “major concern” because of online attacks but also the risks of illegal surveillance, the executive branch also encouraged EU countries to improve cooperation between media and cybersecurity bodies.

“Relevant national cybersecurity bodies should, upon request, assist journalists who seek to determine whether their devices or online accounts have been compromised, in obtaining the services of cybersecurity forensic investigators,” the commission said.

The proposals were unveiled just months after the commission’s annual report on adherence to the rule of law concluded that democratic standards were eroding in several member countries.

That report notably singled out Slovenia, which currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council, for attacks against the Balkan nation’s media.  

“This is not only Slovenia. We see the very aggressive rhetoric in some other member states,” Jourova said, adding that the EU will keep putting pressure on member countries where continuous issues are spotted.
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The Speaker of the British House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, has banned China’s ambassador to Britain, Zheng Zeguang, from entering Parliament until Beijing lifts sanctions it imposed six months ago on five Conservative lawmakers and two peers.  

The ban — the first ever imposed on a foreign envoy by a House of Commons Speaker — is the latest sign that British authorities are growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as Beijing’s aggressive diplomacy. Hoyle consulted with Downing Street and Britain’s Foreign Office before announcing the ban, according to local media reports. 

His bar on Zeguang came just hours before British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed former trade minister Liz Truss as Britain’s new foreign secretary, part of a wider Cabinet reshuffle. Truss is seen as a China hawk and has lobbied for much tougher measures to be pursued against China’s Communist government for rights violations.

In a statement midweek Hoyle said: “I do not feel it’s appropriate for the ambassador for China to meet on the Commons estate and in our place of work when his country has imposed sanctions against some of our members.”

Last week Hoyle met with British lawmakers targeted by the Chinese sanctions. They urged him to impose a ban on the envoy. The Chinese embassy in London described the prohibition on Zeguang as “despicable and cowardly.”

Zeguang, who was appointed as envoy in June, was scheduled to speak to a British parliamentary group on China, but the invitation was withdrawn.

Souring relations

Relations between China and Britain have become fraught over Beijing’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and repression of its Muslim minority in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, where China’s Communist government has interned more than a million Uyghurs in detention centers, according to rights groups.

The Chinese sanctions imposed in March on British lawmakers, one of whom is a former leader of the ruling of Britain’s ruling Conservatives, were in retaliation for Britain sanctioning Chinese officials and a state-run entity for alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang. 

The Chinese sanctions imposed in March on British lawmakers, one of whom is a former leader of Britain’s ruling Conservatives, were in retaliation for Britain sanctioning Chinese officials and a state-run entity for alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang.   

China has denied repeated claims that Uyghur Muslims are being held in detention centers. Beijing targeted 10 British organizations and individuals in its March sanctions. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the British officials were being punished for spreading “lies and disinformation” about Xinjiang.

China’s Global Times newspaper, an English-language outlet of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper, reacted with fury to the parliamentary ban on the Chinese envoy, saying in an angry editorial: “It is extremely rare, if not ‘a global innovation,’ for the UK to ban a foreign envoy from Parliament, a public venue for political discussions in the country. It shows brutality, impulsiveness, and the breaking of the rules.”

The editorial added: “London acts as if only it can sanction others, but not the other way around. Given that it simply does not have the strength to deal with China this way, the UK now behaves like a hooligan after having become a loser.” It suggested Beijing bar the British ambassador from entering the Great Hall of the People.  

The group of British lawmakers sanctioned by China, which includes former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith and MPs Tim Loughton and Nusrat Ghani, welcomed Hoyle’s decision, praising the Speaker for “standing up for freedom of speech in the mother of Parliaments by supporting those parliamentarians who have been sanctioned by China.”

Liz Truss

The appointment of Liz Truss as foreign secretary is unlikely to please Beijing. She has been targeted for criticism by China’s Foreign Ministry and Communist Party-run media in the past for lobbying for tough measures against Beijing as international trade secretary. The 46-year-old is only the second woman to hold the post of foreign secretary and is seen as a vigorous champion of free trade and markets and a strong supporter of the transatlantic alliance with Washington.  

She faults China for not pursuing fair trade and for engaging in “economic coercion” and warned in a speech last week against Britain becoming “strategically dependent” on China, criticizing Beijing for “unfair” trading practices.

Last December Truss fought a behind-the-scenes battle with Britain’s Foreign Office, her new ministry, over whether Parliament should legislate to allow British courts a role in determining whether the repression of Xinjiang amounts to genocide. The Foreign Office opposed giving British courts preliminary power to determine whether genocide is occurring in Xinjiang, or elsewhere, arguing the decision should rest with international courts.  

Nigel Adams, a Foreign Office minister, told a parliamentary panel that there was “credible, troubling and growing evidence” of forced labour taking place on a significant scale in Xinjiang but he feared an “asset flight,” if ministers rushed into enacting measures, warning China could start withdrawing investments from Britain.

Truss backed the legislative proposal.  

Commenting on Truss’s appointment, British newspaper The Times said she “is far more hawkish on China than the prime minister, aligning herself with the American shift towards confrontation with Beijing.”  Other British commentators said her pick to replace Dominic Rabb will help repair bridges with Washington following the U.S.-led NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was criticized by senior British Conservative lawmakers.

“New UK Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, is a proper China hawk,” tweeted Sophia Gaston, director of the British Foreign Policy Group, a London-based think tank. Gaston said Truss would be able at the Foreign Office to hold “China to account on values” while “playing a larger role in coordinating diplomatic efforts with our [foreign] partners.”
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The United States is backing Lithuania in the face of what American officials describe as China’s “coercive behavior” after Vilnius recently became the first European country since 2003 to allow Taiwan to open a representative office.On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis met for talks at the State Department. The meeting followed a call on August 21 in which Blinken “underscored ironclad U.S. solidarity” with Lithuania in the face of China’s “coercive behavior.”“Lithuania and the United States are very strong partners in NATO. We stand together for collective defense and security. We stand against economic coercion, including that being exerted by China,” Blinken said Wednesday.Wednesday was the United Nations’ International Day of Democracy. Landsbergis said it’s “truly symbolic” that the NATO allies “reaffirm our commitment to defend democracy, liberty, human rights across the globe.”On this International Day of Democracy, we celebrate a system that responds to the will of the people, respects human rights, and benefits the many, not the few. We look forward to the upcoming #SummitforDemocracy to demonstrate #DemocracyDelivers.— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 15, 2021Members of Congress have also expressed support for Lithuania’s position on Taiwan. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez in a tweet praised “Lithuania’s courageous efforts to stand up for Taiwan, as well as democracy activists in Belarus, Russia and Cuba.” Menendez met with Landsbergis on Tuesday.Honored to meet my friend @glandsbergis and discuss Lithuania’s courageous efforts to stand up for Taiwan, as well as democracy activists in Belarus, Russia and Cuba. pic.twitter.com/F8L7EX18kd— Senate Foreign Relations Committee (@SFRCdems) September 14, 2021China has long had a policy of urging countries not to develop closer ties with Taiwan, and this week a spokesperson in Beijing pushed back against American officials’ characterization of Beijing’s tactics.“The label of coercion can never be pinned on China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said during a Tuesday briefing.“The U.S. should immediately stop ganging up with others to wantonly smear China and stop provoking confrontation and disputes. Such tricks wouldn’t work on China,” Zhao said.In July, Lithuania became the first European country to allow Taiwan, a self-governed democracy, to open an office in Vilnius with the name of “Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania.” Other nations often designate such offices with the name “Taipei Representative Office” or “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office” to avoid offending China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory.The Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania is set to open this fall, marking the first time in 18 years that Taiwan has opened a new representative office in Europe. The last time Taiwan established a representative office in Europe was in 2003, with the name of “Taipei Representative Office in Bratislava, Slovakia.”Lithuania’s move has already led to repercussions and economic retaliation from China. In August, China’s government asked Lithuania to withdraw its ambassador to Beijing while recalling its own envoy to Vilnius. In a statement, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged “the Lithuanian side to immediately rectify its wrong decision, take concrete measures to undo the damage, and not to move further down the wrong path.”The Baltic Timesreported on August 22 that Beijing had stopped approving new permits for Lithuanian food exports to China. The report cited a Lithuanian official saying the country’s talks with China on export permits for feed, non-animal products and edible offal had stopped.China has also reportedly halted direct freight trains to Lithuania.A Lithuanian Railways spokesperson, Gintaras Liubinas, told Newsweek: “We have received information through our customers that several freight trains from China will not arrive in Lithuania at the end of August and in the first half of September. Meanwhile, transit trains pass through Lithuania in the usual way.”On September 3, Lithuania recalled its ambassador to China. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over China’s actions, but said the Baltic country is ready to develop mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan. The top EU diplomats in China also met to show solidarity with Lithuania Ambassador Diana Mickevičienė as she departed Beijing.@SecBlinken is meeting with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis @GLandsbergis Wednesday. In their 8/21 call, Blinken “underscored ironclad U.S. solidarity” with #Lithuania “in the face of the People’s Republic of #China’s coercive behavior,” per @StateDept#立陶宛https://t.co/1HqFO1f9HW— VOA Nike Ching 张蓉湘 (@rongxiang) September 15, 2021The meeting between the top diplomats of the United States and Lithuania follows Monday’s call between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė of Lithuania.Sullivan reaffirmed strong U.S. support for Lithuania as it faces attempted coercion from the People’s Republic of China, according to the White House.In another move to show solidarity with Lithuania, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa has urged the EU to stand with Lithuania against Chinese pressure. Slovenia holds the six-month EU presidency.Jansa said in a letter, dated Monday, that China’s decision to withdraw its ambassador to Lithuania over a dispute about Taiwan was “reprehensible” and would hurt EU-China ties, according to Reuters report.
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Three British Afghan women are on a hunger strike near the British Parliament to protest the treatment of women in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Yalda Baktash reports.
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